Work Text:
Jinx shields her ears from the roar of the monster in the sky, falls into a bundle on the hard, wet ground with her back against the shivering glass wall. She’s cold. So cold. And so alone. She can’t afford the bus that’s coming any minute now, can’t afford to run home in the rain because she’ll catch a cold and miss even more days of school. She can’t afford to wait, because Vi will insist she ‘got up to something’.
Sometimes, she wishes the monster would get her.
But a ray of sunshine pierces the cloud cover, banishes the beast temporarily, and asks her, “Are you okay?” She’s panting, as if she just ran across the street to Jinx’s side.
Jinx nods. This angel should leave her alone. She’s dirty, unlucky and wrong.
The other girl hesitates. Jinx can’t look her in the eyes.
“May I wait with you, then?”
No. Go away.
But she can’t send her back into the rain. She’d ruin that perfect school uniform she has on. It’s pristine. It’s a diamond, next to Jinx’s stained and torn hand me down.
“My name’s Lux.” She says, sitting on the other side of the bench. She doesn’t ask why Jinx is on the ground instead of in the seat.
How dare she? What a pretentious, stuck-up-
“Jinx.”
Wow… she still hates her voice. It’s grating. Her throat’s always sore. She sounds like a rusting rainpipe. Nothing like a girl at all.
“I’ve seen you around school.”
Oh.
So that’s what this is about. She’s here to bully her.
Jinx is no stranger to it, but she usually puts her head down and ignores the jibes between classes. She doesn’t want anyone to notice her any more than they already do, with her blue hair and all the other ways she sticks out. She’s too tall, too boney, too weird and too clock-y. Even if no one knows since she changed schools. It’s only a matter of time before someone sees what’s right in front of them. Then Vi will have gone through the effort of getting another job to pay for her transfer to a school on the Piltie side for nothing.
“I like your hair.”
“What’s your angle?” She snarls.
Lux starts. “I meant it.” She’s defensive. Her voice cracks. She looks away, avoiding eye contact. Like everyone does when they talk to Jinx. No one can look at her ugly face, with all its stupid angles. Even little miss goody two shoes judges her.
Jinx has seen her around school. Always at the front of the class, answering the teacher’s questions before anyone else has even had time to think. She’s rich and popular and oh so full of herself, and she’s right to be. Everyone looks up to her. And now she thinks she can get through to Jinx too, with a sprinkle of ‘emotions’.
Jinx knows they’re fake. She knows there’s something she wants. To embarrass her, probably. That’s what they always want.
“You already have everything.” She says, “Leave me alone.” She hugs her knees closer, forming a cage around her heart for protection. The rain gets heavier, the sun’s far gone behind the clouds again. She’s nowhere close to home and now she’s stuck with this so-called angel.
Lux does leave her be. For a bit.
“You know what? No.” She huffs, “All I said was that I like your hair.”
“No, you don’t.” Jinx insists, “You think it’s weird. Like everyone else. That’s what you really think. You’re a liar.”
“Why would I lie!”
“I don’t know!” Jinx screams as lightning strikes, again. Her heart beats on the bars, her throat tightens, she’s this close to running through the cold winter rain all the way back home. Hopefully, she’d slip in the street and get run over so she can avoid any more school or fights with her sister or any of the stupid teens who hate her, like Lux.
“You’re literally one of the prettiest girls in school.” Lux lies, begging for Jinx to let her in, so she can crush that little fragile heart of hers, “I’m trying to be nice.”
“You want something from me.” Jinx says through gritted teeth. It’s the only explanation for those words words words.
Lux leans away, groaning with her head against the glass. She looks at the billboard advertising painkillers across the street, “What could I possibly want from you? I already have everything, remember?”
“Yes! You do!” Jinx says, more convinced than ever, “You’re rich! All the teachers love you! And you’ll get into any college you want because you’re literally top of every single fucking class!”
“And that’s all there is.”
“Whatever you want, you can’t have it!”
The rain slows down.
“I’m leaving!” Jinx says. Standing up.
“It’s going to start raining again in a minute.”
“I don’t care!”
She runs home.
***
She’s back in school two days later, because she did get a cold, and Vi did get mad at her for it. Regardless, it’s for the best. She wouldn’t have been able to focus on the lesson with her there. How could she want want want like that? How greedy can a person get? It’s so unfair that she even dared talk to Jinx. She’s off limits and that’s that. This is her setting a boundary. And if Lux crosses it again, she’ll bite. She’s done it before. It landed her in the principal's office, but she got off scot free because she convinced him it was self-defense.
Lux is already at her seat when she slinks in, and she doesn’t return her glare. Jinx takes the seat farthest away and passes the day drawing Lux in countless life-threatening situations. Walking the plank, hung upside down over a volcano, nailed to the wall in a dungeon, tied to railway tracks…
“What the fuck is that?”
Ekko. Shit.
He swipes her notebook out from under her hands. She didn’t even notice the break bell rang, “Give it back.” She says. He’s the one guy who should get it. She wouldn’t call him a friend, not anymore, but at least he’s from the Lanes too.
“Jinx, this is insane.” He flips through it, his disgust growing with each image.
“I said give it back!”
Most of the other students have filed out, but the last few stragglers stick to their spots, watching the drama unfold. The whole school will hear of this by the end of the hour.
Lux is still in her seat too. She glances back.
“Please.” She says. Ekko has a soft spot for her. At least, he used to. He’ll listen. He’ll listen.
He grimaces, “You’re not getting out of this.” He says, “You need help.”
That word. That fucking word. He’d send her to the shrink, just like Vi would if they had the damn cash. They don’t get it. She doesn’t need another doctor. She needs to breathe. They need to let her the fuck go. She’s not meant for school or work or society at all. She’s unfixable. No point in trying. Helping her is tantamount to violence on her psyche. She could handle herself if everyone else wasn’t so crazy all the time.
She attacks him. Shoves him into the desk and grabs at the book. But he was always stronger, even before she got on T-blockers. She bites his forearm, “Jinx!” He yells. She gets hold of the book, he pulls back, it flies from their hands.
Flips open to the page with Lux burning at the stake, her clothes ash and her body singed and the flames covering what’s left.
And Lux chooses to get up just then. To look down at it. To gasp.
She has the gall to look shocked. Betrayed. Hurt.
Jinx doesn’t feel bad. She doesn’t. It’s a lesson. Money, popularity, smarts, being drop dead gorgeous… They don’t get you everything.
Lux hurries away. All the other students in the room follow.
Ekko’s face is split between pity, anger and… Disappointment. “You’re-”
“Get the fuck away from me.” She says. Crawling over to the book to hug it to her chest, then back to her bag to get the fuck away from him herself. She beelines to her spot, picking the rooftop door like she always does, kicking it behind her, sitting on the edge of the roof to feel alive.
If there were any cigarettes on campus, she’d probably have it in her mouth right now. She’s never smoked, but she imagines this is how people feel when they get the itch to do it.
She could jump. That’d show them.
It’s a thought she has every time she’s up here. But today’s no different. She won’t actually do it. She doesn’t have the guts. It’s just a fantasy she entertains, sometimes, of how easy life would be if it just ended.
Fuck. If Ekko tattles, she’ll be in the guidance counsellor’s office all afternoon. She doesn’t think any of the others would, they don’t know her enough to care.
Maybe Lux would. For revenge.
No. She’ll be too traumatized by Jinx’s art. She probably thinks Jinx is a monster who was planning ways to end her, but she wasn’t. She’s not that crazy. Not like other people think she is. It’s just… The images kept rolling through her head and she needed to get them out. She barely slept the past two nights. Somewhat because of the sneezing and the coughing, but mostly from the thinking. She’s been wracking her brain, trying to figure out what Lux wanted. Why she spoke to her at all. What the point of lying was. She doesn’t have an answer. So her only outlet is imagining her demise.
Then maybe she’d get her out of her head.
The door to the roof creaks open behind her. She startles, sure it’s the security guard, sure it’s going to be her last day at school because they’ll finally expel her for going one step too far beyond the red tape.
But it’s not. It’s the blonde hell’s angel in the flesh.
“Well look who it is.” She says, poison drooling out of her mouth.
“Shut up.” She says. “Shut up and listen for once in your life.”
“You don’t know me!”
“Then let me!” Lux screams.
Finally. She shows her true nature. Just as angry and out of control as Jinx is. There’s not so much difference between them at all. Now she can give her some respect. Now she can trust that what she says is from the heart.
“Please.” Lux says, practically sobbing, “I don’t want you to hate me. Anything but that.”
“Why?”
“Just… Just anyone but you.”
“I’m a nobody.” She says. Because she is. No one looks her way unless she’s in trouble. “I don’t got anything but hate.”
Lux’s shoulders slump, she frowns, “That’s not true.”
“You don’t know me.”
“You’re being melodramatic.” Lux says, “And-” She gulps, “And you’re really good at drawing. You have that.”
Jinx looks at her feet. That’s where this went? She was ready to believe anything that came out of her mouth, but that? Why is she using Jinx’s attention to give a compliment?
“And it doesn’t scare me.”
“No?” She asks, “Even if I show you all the rest? And tell you exactly in how much detail I was imagining each scene?”
“Tell me.” She dares.
But it’s Jinx’s turn to be speechless. She’s been trying to push her away: two days ago, this morning, now. She wasn’t actually picturing it. Not on purpose. Her brain just… Shows her things, sometimes. A lot of the time, actually. The handful of people she loves are oft subjected to torment by her demons in retaliation for any minor slight they make on her person. It’s rarer with strangers like Lux, because in those cases her harmful thoughts turn inwards. She’s no stranger to self-harm, but it’s been a while since she cut herself. Getting on HRT helped. A lot. Even if it’s black market. But she still feels broken inside.
“I…” She can’t say it. She can’t lie. “I didn’t mean for… For you to see it.”
“But I did.”
“You did.”
“Now what?”
Maybe for the first time in her life, she says… “I’m sorry.”
“Thank you.”
And Jinx almost thinks that’s that. That she’ll walk away and leave her to mope
But Lux steps closer. Up to the edge. She leans against the wall and looks out across the ground. It’s nicer weather than Monday, and a group of boys are playing soccer for their break. But the best view is beyond: field after field of farmland. A line of trees on the ridge blocking the horizon. The complete opposite of the other side of campus, which looks over Zaun, thirty minutes away by walk.
“I see why you like it up here.” Lux says.
“Yeah.” She doesn’t know what else to say.
“I really do like your hair.”
She sighs, “Me too.”
Lux chuckles, “I’d hope so.”
“Huh?”
“I mean. If you dye it blue, I’d hope it’s because you like it!”
“Oh.” She blushes. She didn’t think she said that out loud. Oops.
Lux smiles. And again, the sun shines through the clouds, washing them both with warmth. No rain to counter it this time. Jinx shuffles. Awkwardly. Uncomfortably.
“Why are you still here?”
“Isn’t it obvious?”
“No.”
Lux chuckles again, “Alright. If you want me to go, I’ll go.”
“You didn’t answer.”
“I know.”
A penchant of anger. She’s so smug about it. About keeping her secret. Whatever it is must be the same thing that led her to talk at the bus stop. It must have brought her up here.
Actually. Did she… Did she stalk her through the halls? Jinx came up right after fleeing Ekko, so Lux must have waited outside of class till Jinx passed and followed her to the staircase. She must have waited. Maybe planned out her speech.
Well. If she’s still here. And she wants to be around Jinx for some god awful reason, she might as well take advantage of it. “Would you do my homework?”
“Which class?”
That’s not a no!
“I can’t pay you.”
“That’s fine.”
“Um.”
“Which class, Jinx?”
“All of them?”
Lux rolls her eyes, “Then no.”
“Just English, then.”
“Too late.” She says, “If you’d asked that first, I’d have said yes.”
“Jerk.”
“Since you were greedy, I’ll tutor you instead.”
“What?”
“I said I’ll tutor you.”
“I know what you said! I just don’t understand why!”
“You’ll get it.” She says, “Eventually.” Her mouth’s parted, she’s still smiling but it’s a little strained.
“I don’t have anything you could want. I can’t pay you and I can’t even bring you home.”
“We can study at mine. It’s empty, most of the time.”
She sounds… Sad. Saying that. And Jinx is still so confused. Why why why? “Stop looking at me like that. Stop being nice. I’m not nice. I don’t deserve nice!”
Lux shrugs, “You can’t tell me what to do.”
“I can’t be your friend.”
“Why not?”
“Is that what you want? A poor girl to be compared to, so you look better?”
“No.” Lux sighs, “I just want someone honest.”
“I’m not-”
“Everyone else lies to me.” Lux says. “My parents lie to me when they say they love me. My brother lies when he says he’ll come back home next year. The other students lie when they say they aren’t friends with me just for clout. The teachers lie when they say I’ll get far in the world.”
“But you will!”
She shakes her head, “I won’t. I don’t want to.”
“Then what do you want?”
“To be happy.”
“That’s a cop out.”
“It’s not.” She says, “I don’t know what’ll make me happy. Or who. But… I have ideas. And nothing I’ve been doing has been working. Are you happy, Jinx?”
“Gimme a fucking guess.”
“Yeah.” She sighs, “Having everything isn’t all it’s made out to be, by the way.”
“I’d rather have everything and be sad than nothing and still be sad.”
Lux nods, “You’re right. I’m sorry. I… I’m feeling sorry for myself.”
The bell rings.
“You should get to class.” Jinx says.
“And you?”
“I need to think.”
Lux frowns.
“Only a minute.” She rolls her eyes, “They’ll be more suspicious if I’m on time.”
“Alright.” She says, “But if I’m going to tutor you, you won’t be missing any more lessons. Promise?”
Jinx chews on it. It’s a tough pill to swallow, but it’s for her own good. And at this point, she’s hella curious. About what Lux’s place is like. How she acts at home if she’s sad while being rich. What she’ll really do instead of tutor her. Or if she actually intends to do that, what favours she expects in return. That’s something rich people do, right? They keep contacts and grudges and track and exchange favours because money loses meaning after six zeros.
“Fine.” She says.
“See you.” Lux says. Much happier than earlier. Happier than she should be, to be honest, now that she’s aligned herself with Jinx and glued their future afternoons together studying. She’s really going to regret it, but it’s not Jinx’s fault she’s crazy.
Does she think Jinx is a project? Another test to ace? Maybe.
But to be honest… Jinx wants to be fixed. It hurts to be so alone. Maybe… Maybe learning how to be human from the girl who’s the best at it is a good idea. Plus… She really does need friends.
She starts down the stairs, haunts the empty corridors in the direction of physics class. Her favourite, actually. The only one she does well in because she doesn’t have to try. Not that she tries much for the other subjects, but this one she’s actually kind of interested in, even if the teacher sucks. She gets there right as he’s starting to write on the whiteboard, earlier than she usually does. She avoids eye-contact with Lux, because other people would notice and talk, and makes her way to her desk.
But she trips. On some idiot’s leg, stuck out inconveniently or intentionally. She catches herself, but the kids around her all look and chuckle.
She’s furious. If she was still on T she’d deck him in the face. But she has some self-control, now. She’ll only imagine doing it.
She sits down. Spills her bag out for her notes.
Lux raises her hand. “May I be excused?”
It’s a minute after she’s left before Jinx realizes Lux has never left class during a lesson before. Is she sick? Did talking to Jinx affect her that much? Is the idea of tutoring her so uneasy she has to go throw up about it?
It’s too much of a coincidence.
She sighs. Tries to banish the brain worms by following the teacher’s marker. She most certainly can’t follow his voice. It drones on and on about optics. How can they let teachers get so old? Don’t they know kids need someone closer their age to pay attention to?
The speaker dings. “Will Deckard please come to the principal’s office?”
Holy shit.
The boy who tripped her pales. Stands up to a judgemental stare from the teacher, and a myriad of looks from everyone else. He doesn’t look at her, or anyone in particular. He just drags his bag out as if he’s walking to his public execution.
The silence in the room is deadly. To have the threat of a random call to the principal's office hanging over everyone’s heads puts everything into perspective. Everyone’s on their best behaviour for at least the remainder of the hour.
But it passes in a blur. The bell rings again, and Jinx runs out. Her bag flies behind her like a parachute holding her back from a dangerous velocity. She heads straight for the principal’s office, because Lux hasn’t come back and she’s sure now that nothing that just happened was a coincidence.
She finds her drying her red and puffy eyes with a tissue.
And Jinx is sold. She’s convinced something did actually happen. She came here thinking Lux told a tall tale on her behalf but now she’s regretting ever doubting her. “W-what happened?”
Lux sobs, “I-it’s too hard.” She says. A twinkle in her eye, “M-maybe later.” She shoves past.
Jinx trails her, her hand reaching out, but Lux gets away.
She’s so confused. But she has to get to the next class. Lux won’t miss that one too, would she?
***
Lux does miss it.
And Jinx is convinced she’s done something wrong. She really did make Lux sick. Sent her home. But Deckard also misses it.
She walks to the bus stop deep in thought. She really doesn’t feel like walking home, even if it gets her there slightly earlier, even if it’ll use up tomorrow’s lunch money.
No one else is there, like usual. Everyone else gets picked up by their parents, or has their own car, or pools with someone. Only Jinx ever uses this stop.
And… And Lux. Two days ago. Why did she? When she has everything? Self-admittedly?
“Hey, Jinx.” Lux jumps out from behind the wall.
“Holy fucking shit!”
Lux twirls a strand of hair around a finger, “Did you like my performance?”
Her hunch was right. Lux did lie for her. “What did you do? Why!”
“I made a choice.” She shrugs, “Being me has that privilege.”
Jinx drags her hand through her hair. Maybe… Maybe Lux isn’t so different from her after all. If this isn’t an impulsive, reckless decision, she doesn’t know what is. And she does not look remorseful. She’s proud.
“You’re nothing like I thought you’d be.” She admits.
Lux smiles, “No one knows the real me.”
“Is-” She gulps, “Is this it? The real you?”
“Part of it.”
“Fucking hell.” She says, laughing. “Fucking hell.”
Lux watches her lose it.
“Did you get him suspended?”
“The principal suspended him. Not me.”
“What did you say!”
“Just a lil’ thing I had in my back pocket.” She says, “I saw him go into the girl’s bathroom once. On a dare, I think.”
“That’s it?”
“I may have embellished.”
“Holy fuck.”
With every curse word, and every exclamation, Lux’s confidence seems to build. “I should go. Thought I’d come to sate your curiosity.”
“Oh.” She’s disappointed, for some reason. This was starting to get somewhere. To get good. If this is the real Lux? Maybe there’s something to explore here, actually. Maybe Jinx isn’t the only one with a monster inside her.
“Yeah. Can’t keep my chauffeur waiting too long or he’ll tell on me. See you tomorrow? We still need to plan our da-” She bites it off, coughs, sputters “Tutoring session.”
“Yeah. See you.” She says. Still in her head.
Lux turns to walk away.
“I like your hair too.” Jinx says.
She stops, looks over her shoulder. It’s… Cute. “Was that so hard?”
Jinx laughs. “Fuck you.”