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

Chapter 13: We Happy Few

It seemed a little strange to - well, to have left and come back within a few hours, but it was nice. Wearing better clothes, more fitting for a dinner - though picking them had been a confusing blend of her conflicting understandings of social mores. Lux had just gotten engaged, which caused the voice of her mother in her head to scream wear a lovely dress, but the Kirraman household wasn't quite like that. And even if they knew - oh gods she'd almost had a panic when Powder had burst in and said that, envisaging all sorts of rightfully deserved threats and imprecations from Lady Caitlyn and Vi and should she try, and find a way to discreetly send for the family ring to give to Powder? No, no, she didn't want to be a Crownguard with her so that seemed wrong but she wanted to give her something so she'd also spent a fruitless twenty minutes turning her jewellery box upside down.

Perhaps it was the changed context that it made it so panic inducing. They'd had food together before - at Jericho's, snacks stolen over workbenches, lunches at the academy with Lue still there. She'd alternated between trying to intimidate Lux with some sort of hamfisted mimicry of action upon her food - it had almost been amusing to try and work out what exactly Lue was trying to threaten Lux with - and making the kind of lewd comments that rivalled Vi's.

And - Vi and Lady Caitlyn would be at this dinner. Given that Vi seemed to have worked out that the best way to threaten Lux was to follow every remark to Powder with a suggestive eyebrow wiggle or pause, just in case she was suddenly going to remember that she wanted to leap across a worktable and ravage Lux amongst the metal shavings, that promised to be... challenging.

Of course, given Powder's infinitesimally small sense of shame, a good chunk of those pauses were followed by her loudly, and in complete emotionless monotone that somehow made Vi cringe more than Lux, describe in lurid, dramatic detail how much she wanted to suck face with her Sunshine. Or dirty talking in the same manner (and Lux was absolutely certain she'd lifted several of those lines straight from her own sister, which was a whole new level of mortifying). That would - well. Enliven the dinner. Hopefully it wouldn't happen now that they were engaged, but. Powder did enjoy being unpredictable.

Anyway, the Kiramman household was complicated, and didn't hold to the standards she expected from nobility or underclasses. They all - not just Powder - seemed to dress however they wanted, which was a novel and frightening prospect. Though Powder took it too far, like that time she'd taken her shirt off before bringing out a welder. While, intellectually, she understood the excuse 'I can't regrow the nice clothes!', emotionally, that was - a complete and utter trainwreck. Watching Powder work from a safe distance, the beads of sweat dripping down her bare midriff -

So, despite her nerves, she'd finally settled on a fine, high waisted pair of trousers and a simple white shirt - more of a Piltover style than she tended to like, but not terribly posh and topsidery either. Which did cause the voice of her mother to start ranting about the merchant class but that didn't matter because Powder loved Lux and they were going to be married. Or - or almost were - the Light inside her kept surging at her joy and it was a struggle to keep it under control, for it not to burst out in fractal branches spelling out she loves me she loves me I don't know why but she loves me and I trust her and she loves me.

It felt strange, applying any kind of hindsight to it. Or just - thinking about it in general. How 'polite company' would consider them barely even acquaintances for having known each other less than a month, but marriages had been arranged on less. Mother and Auntie Tianna had tried to arrange marriage for her for less.

Still. Her mind was - what she'd done the day before -

She kept waiting for something to go wrong. Lux had thought for sure that leaving, even to change, had been a mistake, that Kayle would smite her for her crimes. But apparently not. So, here she was at the door to the Kirammans' small home again. Raising her hand to knock on the door -