It's a Lovely Day in Piltover (Lux/Jinx)

Chapter 9: Barbs, Thorns, Rust, Teeth

She was still thinking about it. The way Powder's head had turned, her eyes pink and bright and close and then - so, so warm, warmth locking over her mouth and filling her with fire to rival the heat of her Light, setting her bones aglow and her flesh translucent, transmogrifying her to molten glass.

Lux felt greedy for it, for more, in a way that felt wrong but she couldn't stop. She thought she'd been distracted by Powder before but now - now her gaze wasn't leaving the sinfully unmarked pale length of her neck, or her slim fingers, or thinking about her legs -

Or the way those fingers slipped between hers, clasping her hand and leading her through the smokey air of the Lanes. Gods there were so many people, it would have been terrifying if she wasn't so distracted.

The edges seemed to thin as they escaped the throng, Powder turning and flashing her a brilliant smile as a giant of an aquatic vastaya of some kind - or possibly not, weren't they mostly confined to the water? - slammed his cleaver into the heavy board strapped to the top of his arm. The sign over the stall waved its own cleaver happily as he gurgled a laugh in greeting.

"The infamous Jericho?" Lux grinned at Powder and curled her fingers tighter around her hand.

"Wouldn't say I'm infamous really," and holy shit, she - sort of understood that? It sounded like it was maybe a really colloquial twist on a minor tribe's version of Buhru which meant he came from Bilgewater which - well, sort of made sense. A lot of that was in gestural speech though, so did Powder understand him or -

"Of course! Where else are we gonna get proper food? That isn't laced with actual poison, anyway. Or gravel." Powder plopped herself down on one of the stools and spun, grinning widely. "How's it goin', big man?"

"Haha!" Jericho slapped his belly like a jolly veteran. "I'd thank you for the compliment but given you and your sister used to steal from me as kids I think you owe me. And there was the time you shot up my stall..." He gave her a grin and a stern finger-waggling to punctuate it.

Okay, the key thing Lux had to do was not react, because the sudden impish desire to prank Powder with this knowledge was overwhelming. She couldn't quite resist flashing a few speech signs to the fish man - silence, cardtrick, plan - and hoped that she'd managed to get them right because her fingers did not bend the right way to do card trick well.

"Yeah, yeah, pay first, I know the rules - well, follow the rules these days, anyway. Most of the time. The important ones at least." Powder rolled her eyes and dug some coins out of her pockets.

Lux pulled herself up into one of the seats. "So, I take it there isn't a menu?"

"If you're new, no. If you're a regular..." Powder pointed out a little ladder with symbols hanging over the back stove that looked more like a quickly scribbled graffiti jumble than anything else. "... and can read gutlau, I guess. I already know what to order, just a question of how spicy you want it." Gutlau could be written? Everything she knew about it defied the very idea.

"I mean technically it's more my shopping list for the day that she's pointing at, by the way, but it kinda works as a menu." Jericho leaned one thick green hand on the grill behind him, flipping over a set of thick cuts of meat of some kind, scratching his leg, then shaking out a handful of spices over the sizzling meat.

"Well, that thing you brought me the other day was nice? But it was, uh. Quite - quite a bit more than my mouth was used to." And then Lux had to blush like an idiot because she was thinking about earlier again and Powder's lips were still so bright and red and there -