"You like that, don't you? ...You want me to go harder? You're a dirty girl."
He caught her hand before she could stab her spit-covered pinkie finger into his ear again and shoved her off the edge of the bed. She took the bedsheets with her in a tangle of tattooed limbs and blue braids.
Jinx swore loudly but bounced back up, limber as ever.
"You could've just told me you're not a dirty girl. Don't gotta be a dick about it."
"I don't have to normally tell people I don't want spit-covered extremities in my orifices. That usually goes without saying," Jayce said into his pillow, wincing as she bodyslammed the bedspace next to him, although the impact her minimal frame made was hardly enough to shake him. He reached over to snag the edge of the blanket she had yanked off his bed in a futile attempt to put it back over himself.
With a perverse snort, she snatched the blanket back from him and patted his backside appreciatively. "That's awfully unsexy of you, pretty boy."
Jayce rubbed his eyes, raising his head a little to catch a glimpse at the alarm clock settled on his nightstand, hoping in vain it was anywhere sort of close to the time he normally got up. It was coming up on four in the morning, which didn't surprise him. It was so like her to attempt to curtail his sleep, in case he might rest well enough that he came to his senses and realize how insane it was that he was involved with her at all. "Is there a reason you're here bothering me at four in the morning or are you just trying to irritate me like always?"
"It's three fifty-four, stupid! Also, don't act like I'm bothering you. I was gonna wake you up by touching your privates but you're on your stomach, so that was a no-go."
"Why are you here?"
She rolled her eyes at his unwillingness to acknowledge her strangeness. "Okay, so I broke into the Academy the last time I was here and—"
"Wait, what? Why break into the Academy?"
Jinx shrugged. "I wanted to look at some stuff about what those nerds are paying you, and also I wanted to unleash a gnarly stink bomb in the vents. I did both, thanks for asking, but that's not what I wanted to talk about."
Jayce could only silently take a moment to appreciate how little havoc she had chosen to unleash upon the Academy. Piltover was still susceptible to spontaneous acts of terrorism at the hands of Jinx, but she denied all involvement when he tried to pick a fight with her over it. She was a notoriously poor liar, but she was also notoriously persistent, especially when it came to lying.
"Why do you care what they're paying me?" Jayce was living well within his means, but he wasn't exactly looking to start paying out to feed Jinx's habits, too, wherever her means of survival came from. He rolled over and propped himself up on his elbow, still using his free hand to rub the sleep out of his eyes.
"That doesn't matter! And they're paying you too much, if you were gonna ask. But I found some other stuff and what I want to know is why you didn't tell me you were gonna leave!"
His brow furrowed immediately with worry. "I'm... going to leave? To where?"
Jinx looked like a rabbit caught in headlights, blinking slowly a few times. "Youuuu... didn't know?"
"No, I didn't know!"
She tilted her head at him, looking flummoxed. "It said something like... I dunno, 'mandatory vacation, code sixty-nine, blah blah blah' in big ol' red letters. Like it's a prison sentence. The point is, if you're going on some fun vacation to a nude beach or something, I wanna come!"
Oh, no. "Mandatory...?"
"Yeah, like you gotta go and get paid while you're there, or you don't go and you forfeit all your pay for like... I don't know. Lots of time. Which is bad, because how are you going to buy me flowers and chocolate and cakes shaped like dicks?"
"I hate it when you're more observant of Piltover law than I am," he grumbled, not mentioning that she could probably find a way to wreak criminal havoc with things like flowers and chocolate and cakes shaped like dicks.
"Oh, don't get me wrong! I really don't care! But if you're going somewhere fun, you better believe that I'm going to tie myself to you so you don't forget your best girl here in Stupidtown."
"The law was passed months ago. It's not like you didn't know this was coming. Stop being so childish and just go."
"I thought all this was optional. I have a lot of work to do," Jayce answered bitterly, folding up his clothes and stuffing them into his bag. "I can't believe you won't just count that time I spent in Zaun as a vacation. I'd be okay with it if you did."
Caitlyn rolled her eyes at him, turning her back to him to examine some huge machine in the middle of the room. "Being kidnapped is as much a vacation as being murdered is a romantic endeavor." Jayce had a few responses to that, but she beat him to it: "Although it might be hard for you to tell the difference, I'm not going to let it pass because you direly need a break."
Jayce muttered something about Caitlyn's sour grapes as he carried on packing up his things. She crossed her arms and watched him for a minute before she spoke again.
"I don't know why you act like I'm victimizing you."
He almost mentioned that he hated Demacia anyway, but knowing Caitlyn, she would probably cart him off to somewhere worse, like the notoriously unfriendly Noxus or the oppressively hot and empty Shurima desert. Demacians were by and large creepy, noble and stiff despite the fact that most of them had been soldiers since puberty. Jayce wondered morbidly if their suicide rates were higher than normal.
Beyond their general uneasy Stepford smiles, they lacked a lot of the technology Piltover had, in exchange for an army larger than the population of Piltover itself. To his understanding, they relied heavily on magic in Demacia, something Piltovians often preferred to supplement heavily with techmaturgy.
He wasn't a big fan of Demacia, and he had considered going to Ionia instead, where the technology was nil but at least it was tranquil. But he knew Jinx was going to follow him whether he liked it or not, and he didn't want to inflict Jinx upon Ionia. He didn't think they could stand being invaded by more Zaunites.
"I know, but you don't have tons of catching up to do. And when I get back, I'm going to have to catch up on all the catching up! There's going to be so much to do when I get back."
"So maybe you'll be too busy to moan about it," Caitlyn stated offhandedly, hitting him with an offensive glare. When she looked away, Jayce almost stuck his tongue out at her and decided right then that he was in terrible danger of becoming at all like Jinx.
He sulked for a few moments before speaking up again. "Would it be okay if I took some work to do with me?" Frankly, he wasn't a fan of asking for permission to do things, acting as though Caitlyn was his mother (although she acted like it more often than he liked, scolding him when she was displeased). When he ignored her advice and did what he wanted, she called him arrogant. He didn't agree, but wasn't really given to bickering with her most of the time.
"You're really missing the whole point of this. It's not meant as a punishment; it's meant as a reprieve. Anyone who works as much as you do is probably going to go insane without a break." He frowned at her. She sighed relentingly. "I'll tell you what. You can't bring any of your work with you, but you can do all the research you want. They've got the College of Magic there; it might be worth looking into. It's always valuable to establish friendly contacts in other areas."
Jayce grimaced. He really didn't care for magic and all of its complexities; some people were born with talent for it and he was certainly not one of them. "Demacian technology? Gigantic swords and bulky armor aren't especially advanced, Caitlyn."
"Oh, and a gigantic hammer is?"
"The Mercury Hammer is not—" Judging from the taunting look on her face, she was jerking his chain in a successful attempt to rattle him. He huffed, pinching the bridge of his nose as he resigned himself to his fate. He found it ironic that Caitlyn's favorite word to describe Vi was "stubborn," yet she was staunchly opposed to hearing him out anyway. As if she hadn't bent the law or looked the other way a few times in the past for him before. "Okay. I'll see if there's anything new in Demacia I can work with."
"Ugh! Can I take this off already? I'm taking it off. It's like four hundred degrees and I'm sweating like Fat Hands inside a classroom." Jinx reached up to pull at the thick wool scarf that covered the bottom half of her face, although it left a red ridged pattern from being pressed taut against her skin for so long. She also wore a hefty hooded cloak that made it seem as though Jayce was sharing a cabin on the train with his elderly grandmother. Fortunately for him, she had slept through most of the trip.
"We crossed the border ten minutes ago; you could've taken it off then and I told you that. But you were too busy telling me about the time your gun told you to—"
"Aw, can it already, Hammer Boy. You never listen to my stories. And I'm so interesting! I wouldn't even mind if you stole one of my stories to tell other people, so maybe you can finally make some friends!"
Jayce rolled his eyes. "First of all, I have more friends than you. Second of all," he reached over so he could pluck the hood off her head and knock it backward, "if I told anyone the kinds of things you tell me, I'd be institutionalized immediately."
"You could make friends while you were in the crazy box!" Jinx reached up to smooth out the staticky frizz left behind by the hood, turning up her nose at him. "No shame in admitting I'm your only friend."
"That's a pretty flexible definition of friendship that you're using," he muttered. He tried not to label their relationship when he could avoid it—and rarely did the need to do so arise—but "buddies" probably wasn't even in the top ten labels he might have used. Friendship very rarely started off with bouts of explosive terrorism and kidnapping. But then again, neither did love.
"Hey," she snapped, "I've had delicate parts of you in my mouth and I didn't bite them off! If you want that to keep happening you better start being real nice real fast, pretty boy." She wrestled with the heavy cloak for a second before she managed to wrench it off and out from under her, stuffing it into Jayce's lap like a petulant child. "Are we there yet? This train is starting to suck and I'm bored."
"We're almost there, and I warned you before we left but I'll warn you again since I know it's going to come up," he chided. "Demacia is really boring and I'm probably going to do research for a lot of it. And if you raise hell the way I know you're inclined to, I'll tie you up and leave you in the hostel."
Jinx snickered perversely. "You don't know that I won't enjoy it if you do that. Maybe that's how I get my rocks off."
"I don't care if you enjoy it so long as we don't get arrested," he told her crassly. "I need to find something to research here or this time is going to be wasted. And being that it's Demacia, I might as well just study magic. They still use swords and crossbows in their military. Can you believe that?" To Demacia's credit, their military was one of the strongest on Runeterra. But they were primitive, not unlike Noxus. He doubted they would have the means to arm them all properly even if they wanted to. "It's hard to imagine their crime rate is so low when it seems like they have no techmaturgy protecting them."
Jinx shrugged impassively. "Stuff that's protected by guards with spears instead of robots and turrets and guns that blow up. Snore."
"How would you know?"
"Uh, I saw a spear once in a newspaper. I know what they look like."
Jayce rolled his eyes, but he didn't bother pushing her for an answer he knew he wasn't going to get. He leaned his head back, watching tiredly as tiny flecks of water begin to accumulate on the window and resting his hands on the pile of cloak Jinx had dumped into his lap in a fit of childish irritation. Jinx busied herself with fixing one of her stockings, which had rolled itself down nearly to her knee under the weight and friction of the cloak.
"Are you going to dress like a freak the entire time we're here?"
She grinned up at him. "All the rage in Zaun! Or it was a couple years ago. If you like it we could dress the same, except I think you have bigger boobs than I do and that might be embarrassing for us."
"Very funny."
Jinx successfully managed nearly three minutes of blissful, busy silence before she groaned, flopping over backwards to rest her head on the cloak in his lap. He snatched his hands away and poked her in the middle of her forehead.
"This is boring. Are you sure there wasn't a funner, sexier train we could have caught instead of this lame thing?"
"I promise."
"When will we get to the actual place where all the cool shit is?"
As if it might help him to guess, he looked out the window. He couldn't quite see the Demacian capital on the skyline, but he didn't recognize the villages outside. Then again, he hadn't been to Demacia in a few years at least. "I don't know. Go to sleep and I'll wake you up when we get there."
"Why should I?"
"Because anything that goes on in that insane little head of yours is surely more exciting than anything going on out here."
It was pouring by the time they pulled into the train station. Jayce was reluctant to wake Jinx up, knowing she'd be moody and then irritatingly revitalized after power napping, but he didn't think it would reflect well on him to carry a girl half his size around on his shoulder while he was also hauling all the luggage she refused to carry herself.
Under the safety of the ticket sales awning, he stuffed her skinny frame back into the cloak so she wouldn't get wet (and then complain about being wet) and hefted up the bags containing their necessities onto one shoulder, carrying the hollowed-out cello case containing whichever one she had called "Fishbones" inside it (Jayce wasn't a hundred percent sure which gun it was, and only hoped it was a gun instead of a corpse). He had left the Mercury Hammer in Caitlyn's care, since it wasn't worth it to march through the streets of Demacia visibly armed.
Although the rain was coming down hard, it was only late afternoon and Jinx wriggled out of his grasp as soon as he had settled into the hostel, running amok on the streets of Demacia when he didn't have the energy or the desire to chase her down and drag her back kicking and screaming. Besides, he had told her that they were going to meet at the Wandering Wyvern, a popular tavern he had quite liked the last time he had visited. He didn't especially expect her to show up, but he figured he might as well make an effort to make this a bonding experience so she wouldn't whine about it later.
Jayce himself had ruminated on sitting for a while and pouting about the work he was missing out on doing, he instead opted to head for the College of Magic to poke around a little more—he had been there only once before, and it was only to use an empty conference room occupied by other inventors from across Valoran.
Despite what Jayce said about Demacia being boring, Jinx loved the place. She had found out a long time ago, on her first excursion to Demacia, that they didn't really know how to deal with pranks or booby traps. Most people weren't stupid enough to try them, with the hordes of guards that were always patrolling the streets.
As it happened, Jinx was definitely stupid enough to try them. She hadn't done any real damage; she hadn't been so destructive when she was still only a teenager. Nowadays she preferred to take down buildings, but she hadn't brought Fishbones with her and she doubted that she could get away from hundreds of Demacian soldiers, especially when she had nowhere to run.
Relatively harmless highjinks, on the other hand, she could get away with.
She traipsed through the rainy streets with the wool cloak drawn up over her head, silently grateful that Jayce, in all of his motherly wisdom, had wrapped her up in. With the stupid thing covering up her most identifiable feature, she doubted she would be recognized by the guards that had been chasing her down the last time she was here—if they remembered her at all.
It was hard to take in too much of the capital city's detail in the heavy rain, so she wandered for a bit, ignoring shop stalls staffed by moody citizens who scowled as the rain pounded down on the cloth roofs overhead. She wanted to go inside somewhere and see what havoc she could wreak with limited supplies and knowledge of the area. But she had grabbed a few things while Jayce wasn't looking, and she had a few bad ideas.
Holding a hand over her eyes as a visor, she picked out a shop with a wooden sign hanging perpendicular to it. It didn't boast any cutesy name like many of the shops in Piltover in Zaun; the sign only said "Armorer & Blacksmith" in black, although it did have a little anvil painted next to its name. As she entered the shop, a little bell chinkled to indicate that she had come in.
Inside, a man wearing armor so heavy Jinx wasn't too sure that he would fit through the doorway was leaning against the counter. He was missing a pauldron and the shopkeeper was holding a dented one, so she put two and two together about their conversation rather quickly. Neither of them looked at her as she entered and wandered about aimlessly, eavesdropping on their conversation as she pretended to look at the fine selection of uselessly ornate daggers. She was sweltering in the wool cloak, and there was a fireplace just behind the counter that she guessed was the reason it was so damn hot inside.
"It's only just a dent. I have the gold for you to get this fixed today," the guy in the bulky armor said. He was busy taking off a damp hooded mantle—it barely fit him, although it kept his head dry in the rain—and setting it down on the counter in a pile. "You've been serving the Crownguards for years and we always pay you more than what is owed. I want it done today."
"I know that, Garen," answered the shopkeeper. He was a little man who was far too clean to match Jinx's mental image of a prototypical blacksmith, "but Hawken isn't in today and I can't fix something like this. I don't know the first thing about armor."
The first man scowled. "Then I will just replace it until I can get it fixed."
"Excellent! Let's head to the back and we can find you something appropriate." The little man set down the dented pauldron as he led the other man behind a curtain. Jinx wondered if he was really so trustful that he didn't think she was going to steal anything. Theft wasn't her thing, but it could've been.
A safe amount of time after they headed to the back together, Jinx shedded the cloak so she could dig around in the pockets on the inside. She found the little vial she was looking for—something she had picked up in Zaun from a fabric shop, on the recommendation of an old gang friend. She could hear the two in the back bickering, so she figured she had to be pretty quick.
Jinx peered into the back to make sure they weren't paying attention to her before laying the cloak out flat and uncorking the vial.
She dumped the glitter out into the hood and popped the cork back on, stuffing the vial back into the cloak just as the two returned, navigating around the counter.
"I'll be back in a few days to exchange this for my pauldron, after it has been repaired," the big one—Garen Crownguard?—told the little man firmly, fitting the pauldron onto his armor and taking his mantle. "Do not forget and do not waste time."
"Y-Yes. I know. I'll see you soon."
Crownguard's gaze slowly turned to Jinx, who was still kneeling on the ground over her cloak. "I've seen you before…"
Uh-oh. Had Jinx poked this sleeping bear before? She couldn't remember. All Demacians roughly the size of buildings looked just about the same to her. She looked around, feigning innocence, and pointed to herself in fake surprise. "…Me? No, of course not. I'm not from here."
"I'm certain of it," he pressed, tying the mantle around his neck.
"I don't think so… Are you thinking of someone else? I'm very, uh… common?" Jinx took a few steps backward toward the door. She could hear the rain pounding against the street outside and she direly regretting leaving her stupid cloak on the floor.
He narrowed his eyes at her curiously as he flipped the hood up, releasing a torrential rain of glitter over his head. "I know you!" he shouted, and Jinx was about sure he was going to crush her head between his hands.
Jinx didn't stay to see just how furious he was, turning to ram through the door. The bell jingled once as she ran through it, and again as he barreled through it, hot on her heels. She tried to run him into innocent passersby who got out of the way.
She had to admit, though, that the smattering of sparkles on the top of his head was pretty damn funny, although she only got to see him through the rain, over her shoulder.
Deciding that the only place she'd have an advantage in getting away from him was the most crowded place possible, she turned, nearly losing her footing as she did so, and ran into the nearest tavern.
So maybe Lux was a little over-friendly, but Jayce figured there was no real problem establishing a contact in Demacia that didn't seem overtly miserable or militaristic. She had followed him to the Wandering Wyvern—after he had mentioned his plans to go there, she had immediately recommended it and offered they head there together.
Jayce had found the blonde in the library in the College of Magic and had given him an interesting (if not a little long-winded) history of her family. He had mentioned he was from Piltover ("Oh! I've been there! Do you know Ezreal?"), but she seemed to know a lot more about Piltover than he knew about Demacia. By the time they were sitting in the tavern she had asked what circumstances had led him there.
"I'm an inventor on paid leave, and Demacia is better than Zaun or Noxus. I'm trying to do a little bit of research while I'm not allowed to work." Truthfully, Jayce would have loved to research Zaunite tech, but being anywhere in or around Zaun was definitely not worth it.
"Oh, are you traveling alone?"
Jayce took a second to answer, debating whether or not taking responsibility for Jinx now was a good idea. The city hadn't lost any buildings yet, so he figured it couldn't hurt. Maybe she was just exploring.
"No, I'm actually—"
"Jayce Jayce Jayce Jayce—"
A blur of grey and blue sprinted by him, grabbing onto his shoulder and throwing him off-kilter, nearly sending him and the chair he was in to the ground.
Jayce didn't even have time to parse the situation before a gloved fist came in contact with his left cheekbone, and that did knock him down. Momentarily dazed, he didn't get up for a few seconds as he tried to figure out just what the fuck was going on.
"Garen? What's…" Lux began, but she burst into giggles right away.
"See? She finds it funny," he heard Jinx say behind him as he pushed himself to his feet, putting the chair upright and rubbing gingerly at the sore part of his face. Why was he always the one who ended up with a black eye when Jinx did something stupid?
He got a good look at the fuming hulk that had hit him, and decided immediately that it was not a fight worth pursuing. Jayce wasn't about to start a bar fight, especially since he definitely wasn't one for fighting quite like that. Despite the very obvious clumps of glitter stuck in his hair and on his forehead, this Garen was clearly a force to be reckoned with.
"This is your traveling companion, then?" Lux asked. "Your sister?"
"Uh, excuse you, Blondie. Your stripper boyfriend just hit my wife," Jinx stated boldly, and Jayce thwacked her upside the head.
Lux's smile faltered for a moment, but it came right back a moment later. "Ah, he's your husband. You didn't mention you were married, Jayce!"
"Whoa, we're not actually—" Lux didn't seem to care too much for his protests, since she went right on anyway.
"Unfortunately my brother doesn't have much of a sense of humor, but he'll come around. Isn't that right, Garen?"
Garen raised an accusatory finger right at Jinx, who looked like a deer caught in headlights. "I told her the last time she was here that if she came to Demacia again, I was going to personally escort her out."
Jayce frowned at her, turning around as she shuffled to get further behind him (presumably to use him as a meat shield in case Garen got violent again).
"The last time she was here? What the hell did you do?" He didn't give Jinx a chance to answer, putting his hand over her mouth when she tried to defend herself. "Listen, I'm really sorry about, uh… whatever she did." It was pretty clear just what she had done, but he didn't want to offend him on the off-chance that just happened to be his signature look. Jayce had been pranked in similarly harmless ways in the past by Jinx—not counting her acts of relentless terrorism on Piltover, obviously—but he was never furious enough to feel violent about it.
He felt a little odd about apologizing to the person that had just punched him for no reason, but given that he had taken the blow in lieu of Jinx (who he could punish in his own way later), he decided it was probably the best course of action for a bloodless resolution.
"Get that incorrigible maniac out of Demacia and back to whatever vile place she came from," he warned lowly. Did he just not understand the concept of diplomacy?
"She's not going to be here for long, and it's not as bad as you're making it sound," Jayce challenged, feeling personally affronted on Jinx's behalf. "You're not hurt and it'll wash out in a few days. It was totally harmless, and you're being unreasonable over something as trivial as practical joke that she thought might make you laugh. I thought Demacians had better composure than this."
"Just go."
"K-Keep in touch!" Lux interjected meekly in a poor attempt to soften the situation.
Jayce scowled at Garen for a moment before muttering "Come on" to Jinx, grabbing her hand as he dragged her off. She turned around to stick her tongue out teasingly at Garen as they left.
The long walk back to the hostel was silent. Jayce was angry at both her and at Crownguard for ruining his night so quickly, and at Caitlyn for making him come here at all.
By the time they were back in their room, Jinx finally decided to speak up and risk getting yelled at. "So what are we gonna do?"
"We've been here for six hours and I already have a black eye," Jayce lamented as he looked into the mirror in the bathroom at the purple bruise forming on his face. "I guess tomorrow we'll go find some village to stay in that doesn't already have you blacklisted."
"Sorry," Jinx sighed, lying back on the bed they were going to share if Jayce didn't make her sleep on the floor. "Bruises make you look sexy and distinguished, though. Does that help?"
He didn't answer her, disappearing into the bathroom. She heard the shower running, and twenty minutes later he came back out just wearing his pajama pants. It wasn't late yet, but he got into bed and closed his eyes, groaning tiredly.
"I knew you thought I was funny," she announced.
He opened one eye to peer at her. "What?"
"You stood up for me to that guy that was probably about to break your nose."
Jayce shrugged. "He had glitter in his hair. If there was anyone who wasn't in any condition to break my nose, it was him." He cracked a half-smile. "Besides, it was pretty funny. Probably worth a black eye."
Jinx snickered, lowering herself next to him. "I knew you weren't just my sugar daddy. I thought there was a real reason I kept you around." She put one hand on the side of his face so she could turn him toward her and lay a lengthy kiss on him. "Come on," she said, sitting up again so she could swing a leg over his hips, straddling him, "we might as well make your mandatory vacation a little fun."
A/N: Here's a thing I started writing back in February and just now got around to finishing! I hope you don't hate it! I've mentioned to a couple people that a real sequel to Blueprints is coming, and it is! But I want to have a bit of it actually written before I start posting it, and it's got this big plan and it's got such a broad scope and holy shit I am so busy but I will try my best! This isn't anything especially fluffy or sexy but I wanted to write about Demacia and how much of a dick Garen is without having to commit to anything about Demacia and how much of a dick Garen is. Stay tuned for some eventual Blueprints sequel action, friends!
As a reminder, reviews are always welcome and I always respond to PMs if you want to get in touch with me for whatever reason!