Lux burst through the door to the ladies' changing area after her match, tears stinging her eyes. She had done a good job. What was their problem?
She sniffed deeply to keep the tears inside. She could see Katarina and Cassiopeia in addition to Ahri, and she was not going to cry in front of Noxians. They still noticed, and headed her direction, like sharks scenting blood, but at least there were no tears.
"What's the matter, brat?" Katarina asked, sounding fairly mellow as she sashayed over to where Lux was aiming herself.
Cassiopeia undulated forward, ahead of her sister, smile curving into one of its crueler formations.
Lux tried to forestall her. "Oh, nothing big." She slammed her locker open and frowned. "Jerks," she muttered to herself.
"Did you ask someone out and get turned down? How sad." The contemptuous rasp of Cassiopeia's voice kept the frown on Lux's face, and made her give a sharp retort.
"No. I'm grumpy because I killed Baron and we won the match but everyone's mad at me for some reason!" It felt good to voice her frustration so she continued, "Why are they being so weird?"
"Ohh!" the three other women said in unison, sounding as if they somehow knew the answer to her question.
She turned around to give them a narrow-eyed stare. "What?"
The two sisters looked at each other, sharing an amused smile. In the background, Ahri stopped picking leaves out of her tails and wandered over to join the conversation. Lux didn't like the general air of smug superiority emanating from the sisters, and she really didn't like the fact that Ahri thought she might need moral support.
"What?" she asked again, with deep misgivings.
Katarina waved for Cassiopeia to take the lead.
"Well," The snake-woman assumed a confiding tone, and a syrupy smile. "You know how men are... Well... How they are about their dicks."
Lux's jaw dropped. Her throat refused to allow a third "What?" to come out of her mouth and only a strangled "Whuu?" noise emerged.
Katarina picked up the thread of the conversation, sharing another look with Cassiopeia. "I guess she doesn't even know that much." She smirked in Lux's direction while Cassiopeia laughed.
Lux glared back, still speechless.
"Men think their dicks are super-special and need special treatment," Katarina continued bluntly.
Lux rolled her eyes. She knew some guys were like that. She didn't know what this conversation had to do with anything.
Cassiopeia resumed her interrupted lecture, voice mocking, although Lux was no longer sure she was the one being mocked. "Much like in sympathetic magic they tend to believe that anything resembling their... member will impart benefits to their sex lives."
"Like snake-infused alcohol," Katarina interjected.
Cassiopeia nodded in her sister's direction before raising her eyes heavenward and holding up one hand as if in oath. "I swear! Superstitions like this are the only reason I get laid any more."
"Superstitions like what?" Lux asked, a sudden suspicion forming.
"Well," Katarina started gleefully, but Cassiopeia cut her off.
"Baron Nashor is an ancient worm. A large, puissant, vigorous, powerful..."
"Dick-shaped," Katarina interrupted.
"...creature," Cassiopeia continued as if Katarina hadn't said anything. "And somehow a rumor got started that killing him imparts an additional buff to any man who lands the last hit, granting more endurance and... staying power in the bedroom."
"I think it was Tryndamere," Ahri piped up. Both sisters looked at her with interest, giving Lux a chance to process the information. Ahri shrugged. "Just a gut feeling."
"So they're mad their... their... bedroom buff got wasted on a girl?" Lux hadn't thought Lee Sin would be like that. She had put down his cold demeanor to the hurt pride of a proud jungler, but...
"Every man there was probably hoping to land the killing blow." Cassiopeia nodded, interrupting her train of thought. "Despite it being a groundless superstition with no basis in fact." Her tail flicked in disgust.
Ahri laughed. "They never believe me when I tell them it's nonsense." Her eyes met Cassiopeia's, a brief bridge of shared experience between them.
The idea was kind of horrible, but Lux had to ask. "Do I need to apologize for... for what I did?"
The two sisters laughed heartily.
"No way!" Katarina said.
"No," Cassiopeia added, her smile sending a chill down Lux's spine. "I'm certain by now they've remembered how the buff transfers."
Lux let out an involuntary "Noooo..." because she could see where this was going.
Katarina grinned at her wide-eyed discomfort. "Yep! Little sister's going to get her cherry popped tonight!"
Lux flushed beet red. "For all you know I already have a lover!" And then she had to stand there while they laughed themselves out over the idea of her having a lover. It wasn't that funny.
Ahri winked at her, because Ahri knew she wasn't a virgin. At first Lux had been creeped out by the level of Ahri's knowledge of her love-life, assuming it was a disturbing facet of her magical allure. Then a much simpler solution had occurred to her. Fox spirit. Sense of smell. And she had been creeped out in a different way altogether, bathing almost constantly for close to two weeks.
When the others had stopped laughing, but were still wiping their eyes, she put on her most dignified expression and made a show of ignoring them to turn back to her original task.
"Oh, don't be like that!" Katarina slung an arm around her shoulders, which she shrugged off before it could get settled.
"Garen's practically a Du Couteau," Cassiopeia said. "We're almost sisters. Let us find you a nice gentleman to... break you in."
Lux met Cassiopeia's eyes with a glare. "Please," she snorted. "I'm more a Du Couteau than Garen is." She almost said something about Katarina being a Crownguard, but so far she had been the reasonable one. "What are you planning to do? Auction me off?"
Katarina laughed. "Not a bad idea. How much do you think we could get, Cass?"
The following debate didn't require any input from Lux, so she hurried through a superficial wash-and-brush before running out the door, face red.
"Hey, Lux!" Ezreal had been waiting against the wall outside, pushing off it when he saw her come out. "I wanted to apologize for the other guys. They said some things they shouldn't have, before."
"Oh!" Really he should be apologizing for himself, but maybe he thought he hadn't said anything hurtful? Or this could be his way of apologizing... "It's fine. Um. Thank you for thinking of me."
Ezreal fell into step beside her. "Here, let me show you a different route to make it up to you. This place is like a maze. It's great!" He did realize he had been out of line. His last comment made her smile though. His enthusiasm was his best trait. Most people grumbled incessantly about the Institute's layout, but to Ezreal it was a fun diversion.
"Okay." She smiled and let him take the lead.
They chatted as they walked, but when Ezreal took her hand, saying, "Through here!" She stopped.
Ezreal looked back at her, puzzled.
Lux preferred to give people the benefit of the doubt, but... "Ezreal, that room has no other exit." She had heard other champions sometimes used it for romantic rendezvous too.
He gave her a startled look, then scratched the back of his head, chagrined. "Ha, ha. You caught me." In one quick movement he leaned forward and put his lips on hers.
She let out a smothered squawk, before pulling away. "Ezreal! Kissing someone on the mouth is something you build up to!"
"Oh?" He used their clasped hands to pull her in closer, placing his free hand on her hip. "And where do you want me to kiss you?"
Today was a day for blushing. So much for him wanting to apologize. She put her hand over his mouth as he leaned in. "No means no."
He licked the palm of her hand, and when she yanked it back he tried to reach her neck, saying, "Oh, come on..."
"Ezreal!" she said firmly, hardening her voice and taking a purposeful step back. "If no doesn't mean no, it might mean lasers."
Ezreal blinked. "Are you serious?"
"About not being interested in a guy who says mean things, apologizes for somebody else, lures me away under false pretenses, then ignores me when I say "no", or about being willing to use force to defend myself? Because yes, and yes." She wrenched her hand away from his grip with a glare. Her hip felt gross where he had touched it.
The disbelief on his face had morphed into anger. "Fine! You don't know what you're missing!"
Trotting away, she turned her head to retort over her shoulder, "And I don't want to!"
She hurried back to the main corridor with a vague feeling of being watched looming over her head. And maybe she wasn't being paranoid, because not two turns later Twisted Fate moseyed into view. He stopped in the middle of the corridor, for all the world like he hadn't been expecting to meet anyone here.
He used his thumb to push his hat up, and took his time examining her from head to toe. She increased her pace, moving closer to the wall to be farther away from him.
"Aren't you looking fine this afternoon, Miss Crownguard."
After her experience with Ezreal, she thought at this point ignoring him wouldn't work. She turned around to discover he had been equally studious about examining her rear-view. She crossed her arms. "I know some women take the long once-over as a compliment, but I find it distasteful to have strangers rubbing their eyeballs all over me without permission."
"I beg your pardon, Miss Crownguard," he said, taking his hat off to give her a formal Demacian bow with all the flourishes. Hat still over his heart, he stepped forward to take her hand for a surprisingly demure kiss. "Do please forgive me. I believe I've been spending too much time outside civilization, in places like Bilgewater."
Despite herself, the familiar formalities caused her to relax a little.
"Please allow me to make it up to you. Perhaps with dinner?"
She had no trouble envisioning Twisted Fate's life as a con-man. There was no polite way to completely turn him down now, but he had left her room to maneuver, and she was going to take it. "Would some time next week be okay? I'm kind of booked for the immediate future, but I hate to turn down such a polite invitation." She smiled to let him know she meant the last part. Please, please let this mess be over with by next week.
He frowned, but smoothed it away into another smile. "I have the opposite problem, myself." His eyes gleamed. "Are you sure you can't make time tonight?"
"I have an unbreakable commitment at home tonight," she said with as much conviction as she could muster. If he took that to mean Demacia instead of her rooms, that was fine.
The tragic look on his face was so convincing she found herself saying, "But if you give me time to look at my calendar, maybe we can fit something in a little sooner." Noooo. Why had she said that? Curse her polite upbringing!
"That's mighty accommodating of you. I'll talk to you later then."
She flashed him a harried smile and watched him go. At least it had sent him on his way, even if she would have to deal with him tomorrow morning (or sooner).
Finally she reached the point where her current route matched her usual route. From behind she heard the sudden pounding of feet and turned to see Jax barreling toward her.
She almost turned invisible right then, but he hadn't done anything yet... Even his earlier comments had been constructive, even if they had smarted in combination with the others.
He skidded to a stop in front of her, and, without preamble, said, "Want to fuck?"
She felt her face turn an incandescent red in one instant. "No!"
"Too bad, I'm good." He started to turn away.
"It's nothing personal!" she blurted. "I just... I'm not... It's..." Her hands were flapping around trying to explain the unexplainable. She heard a breathy sound from inside his mask. A sigh? A laugh? A snort?
He lifted his free hand up to tousle her hair. "It's all right, kid." Then he turned around and left without pressing the matter.
Sighing in relief would be rude, but she didn't wait to get moving. This was getting ridiculous! Not that it had had far to get, but still!
At the next corner she paused, frowning. She thought she heard someone. With practiced ease she took some of the light in front of her and bent it to create an unobtrusive reflection of the hallway she wanted to enter.
There was someone approaching, but it was only Sarah Fortune. Her tense shoulders went limp, and she dismissed the spell before stepping out with a smile on her lips. Miss Fortune gave her a big smile of her own and traipsed Lux's direction on those immense heels she managed to wear without ever twisting an ankle.
"Just the girl I wanted to see!"
A cold chill went down Lux's spine. Miss Fortune was a bounty hunter. Would... would someone put a bounty on her for this non-existent buff? Her smile faltered and she reviewed her exit options.
"Hi, Sarah." She stuck her jaw out, then hand on one hip she leaned the other out, trying to assume the Bilgewater body language most likely to keep them separated by a couple extra feet. Happily it worked, but she stayed ready to cast a harmless light binding, in case of emergency.
"Sooo... You know about the secret buff by now, right?" Miss Fortune asked.
Great. It was more idiocy. "Cassiopeia told me."
Miss Fortune snorted. "I'll bet she did. Well, I'm here to warn you that Gangplank is going to want that buff."
Lux winced. Stupid, non-existent, trouble-making buff! "He's going to have to get his own," she said, setting her jaw.
"I like your attitude," Miss Fortune said with a chuckle. "But you're going to need something a little more concrete than "attitude" to stop him. And I'd like to help."
"Oh?" Lux perked up a little. Everyone knew about the rivalry between Gangplank and Miss Fortune. Maybe she would have an ally.
Red lips curving in a conspiratorial smile, Miss Fortune said, "Pass the buff to me."
Lux recoiled, adding another blush to today's tally. "I'm actually, uh, not interested in women at all. But! Um. Thank you for the offer. It's, uh, very generous of you."
"Oh, honey. You don't have to be interested to get it done."
"Thanks-but-no-gotta-get-going!" she said all in one breath as she turned and sprinted down the corridor.
"Running won't solve anything!" Miss Fortune called.
Lux brought up her invisibility and kept going.
"Huh. That might do it." She heard Miss Fortune mutter in the distance.
After a few turns she cut into a side passage to catch her breath and let her heartbeat slow down. This whole incident was rapidly moving from somewhat inconvenient to downright creepy. It wasn't even the offer, it was the sudden adjustment from potential ally to confirmed pursuer. No more "benefit of the doubt" for anybody.
She rapidly calculated routes based on speed and likely population before selecting the probable best compromise. Carefully maintaining her invisibility, she snuck toward the Demacian quarters, soft-footed and keen-eyed. She checked before rounding every corner and held her breath when she let someone pass by, which was sometimes difficult, given the tenor of certain comments about her personal appearance and (Ahem!) sexual experience (or lack thereof).
Finally, finally she made it to the Demacian section, but her relief was short-lived because it was there that she saw the first summoner. Of course there would be summoners. The only way they could get the "buff" was through a transfer.
She sighed to herself. Not only were there summoners, but they seemed to be operating under the premise that the door was the bottleneck in any escape plan she might have. Which was true.
Not that they were blocking the door, precisely. They simply hovered along the corridor, trying to look nonchalant.
Having to turn one down would make any future interactions horribly embarrassing, and there were a lot of summoners in that hallway. Couldn't they count? There was only one "buff" and only one of her. Were they all that optimistic? Or was it arrogance? Eyeing a few summoners she had worked with, she couldn't rule out the possibility of it being both.
Nevertheless, she still had to get past them, preferably without any embarrassing conversation. And given the fact that some of them were her summoners she was worried they might sense her through the invisibility. It didn't seem like they'd sensed her yet, but... She bit her lip, thinking.
At last she backed away to prepare. First, she got out her key. Then, securely anchored her invisibility so it needed no concentration. Last, she began a mind-clearing exercise from the College of Magic. She closed her eyes, and when her mind felt as clear as possible, she opened them and started walking.
Her mind kept trying to fill up with fear of getting caught, but she managed the short distance to the door with only occasional flutters and ripples in her concentration. It seemed to be working, but that didn't stop her from leaping forward to unlock, open, slam, lock, and spell-seal the door behind herself in a rush.
Her hands were shaking and her heart was pounding when she fell back against the door. She felt like such a wimp! There wasn't even any real danger.
She jumped when Garen popped out of the living room. "Oh, hey! Lux!" He was holding a paper, no doubt filled with messages. "A bunch of people wanted to talk to..."
"Can't talk, got to go!" she hollered at him as she bolted down the hall and ran up the stairs two at a time. Hopefully he would draw the conclusion that she really needed to pee and leave her alone.
From the head of the stairs she made the short dash to her bedroom door. Slamming it behind her, she threw herself face-down onto her massive, curtained bed and buried her face in a pillow. "Waaaah!" she moaned.
"What's the matter? Lose the match?" Talon's voice came from the foot of the bed.
She didn't even flinch, only looked down, still hugging the pillow, to see him sitting with his back to one of the bedposts, a book open in his lap. They really should have noticed when I stopped flinching, she thought. "No. We won. I killed Baron."
"Good job." He gave her an approving nod.
She narrowed her eyes. "You don't believe in that stupid buff?"
"What? Oh!" He laughed. "If I were a powerful ancient worm the last thing I'd want to give my "killer" would be a reward."
She opened her mouth to point out his argument applied equally to the normal buffs, but he continued.
"Besides, I've killed Baron plenty of times and never noticed a difference. Not to mention Cass would have my liver. I trust her expertise even if I have no hand for magic."
She settled into the pillow with a gusty sigh. "It was really unpleasant."
"Oh? Do you want me to take care of that for you?" There was a glint in his eye as he marked his place and put the book aside.
"It won't do any good," she grumbled. "They won't believe me even if I tell them. I'm such a virgin, you know."
He laughed. "That hasn't been my experience of late," he said, scooting up the bed feet first. "Tell you what, I'll put some hickeys on your neck to scare them off."
She lifted her head, surprised. "Usually you hate leaving evidence!"
"Usually I don't have half the idiots at the Institute chasing after my woman."
Head still raised, her forehead wrinkled a little. "You'll really give me hickeys?"
He raised his eyebrows before swiveling so that his feet pointed to the foot, and reached to cup her cheek in his palm. "What's gotten into you? I was all ready to say, "Demacia won't keep you warm at night."" Because that was how it went. He called her his woman, she told him she wasn't his woman, he said "Demacia won't keep you warm at night," and they improvised from there. It was how their banter went.
She buried her face in the pillow again. Without meeting his eyes she mumbled, "I'd rather be your woman than everybody else's."
"Whu-huh!" he half-laughed. "I... I'm touched. I'm genuinely touched." The corners of his eyes were crinkling like a smile
She shifted, so she could glare more effectively without letting go of her pillow. "I can't tell if you're joking or being serious."
His smile made an appearance for that comment. "Can't it be both?"
"I guess." She pushed a strand of hair behind his ear.
"That's my girl," he said.
"Ugh. I'm definitely not your girl."
"Mmm." He gave her an appraising look. "I'd better find somebody else to give all these hickeys to then."
"Nooo!" Even though he didn't move, and despite knowing he was kidding, he looked so serious that she abandoned the pillow to clutch at him. "Please take this buff off of me Talon!" She looked up at him from under her lashes. "I'm begging you..."
Talon was Noxian enough that a little begging went a long way, and he leaned back in to nuzzle her ear. "When you put it that way..." He reached for the buckles on her breastplate. "Normally I feel kind of bad taking your buffs, but if you're going to beg..."
He paused, motionless, and she smiled at him. She crossed the short distance to kiss his cheek, then, lips brushing his ear, she whispered, "Please?"
His hands went back to work on her buckles, if anything faster than before. She bent her knee to start working her greaves loose.
Soon she was nude and Talon was sticking knives into the thick strip of cork she had installed over the headboard after cutting herself on him one too many times. During the days the maids cleaned it lived in the closet.
"I notice," she commented dryly. "A distinct discrepancy in our states of undress." That was always the case, Talon never took off more than he needed to. She had considered it a major milestone in their relationship when he was willing to leave his knives above the bed instead of on his body.
He looked at her over his shoulder, one corner of his mouth quirked up. "I already took off my cloak."
Kneeling on the bed, hands on her hips, she couldn't help but smile. "And your glorified punch-knife."
"That's my favorite blade you're talking about, woman." His eyes glinted.
"Today," she taunted back, then heaved an exaggerated sigh. "I guess visible hickeys and skin is too much to ask." She leaned forward to pluck at his shirt. Maybe she couldn't see, but at least she could feel.
However, he turned around and took her hands in his, bringing them up to his mouth for kisses. The heat in his eyes gave her a pleasant shiver. "Whatever you want, tonight."
"Oh, you don't have to..."
"No." His voice was firm. "Tonight we're doing whatever you want."
She swallowed more objections, eyes following his hands as he moved to take off his shirt, baring his torso. Her greedy hands went out to touch his chest, fingers trailing through the hair.
"You're funny," he said, his hands warm on her hips.
"What? You like looking too." Her palms felt the movement in his diaphragm when he huffed out a breath.
"Not what I meant."
"If you're not going to elaborate, I'm going to assume it was a compliment," she sniffed.
"Of course you are."
She ignored what he said and enjoyed the rare treat of having him topless, darting her tongue across his collarbone in a damp, scalloped line. Meanwhile, she could feel his fingers testing along her muscles, gentle, gentle.
Before, she would have made the same assumption about Talon she had heard other women voice, thinking that by nature his love-making would be hard, and fast, and violent. In fact, his preference was to be soft, and slow, and gentle. Not to say that he couldn't or wouldn't be those other things, but they weren't his preference. That was Talon, always unexpected.
Mimicking his motions, sliding her palms over his back she brushed the edge of his pants. Wondering how far his earlier offer extended, she dipped her eyes down, but quickly pulled them away, not wanting to press. Talon had some truly impressive excuses for paranoia scored into his skin. She had seen them, she could see them now.
But he smiled, grabbing her hand again to kiss the inside of her wrist. "Don't worry, I haven't forgotten what you want."
She flushed and started to deny it, but he put a finger to her lips. "Hush."
He unfastened his pants, pushing them down to his knees. He rolled to a seated position to kick off the clean boots he wore to bed. She idly wondered where he kept them, whether there was a stash in her room she hadn't found, or maybe somewhere nearby, since she doubted he carried them with him. Then he stripped off the rest of the way, and stretched out beside her.
Her happy laugh cut off when she saw a gash on his calf, crudely stitched together. "Oh, Talon!" she said, leaning down to cast a healing spell on the wound. He rose up on his elbows, meeting her troubled look with his usual calm. This was how she knew he still took missions in addition to being a champion; wounds and bruises announced it.
"You can ask me for healing, you don't have to wait." She ran her thumb over the stitches, brushing them away with the scaly, peeling skin where the wound had been.
"And you can ask me to get naked."
She didn't really think the two compared, but she wanted to keep the peace, so she smiled. "You're never naked."
He sat up to wrap his arms around her shoulders and pull her back on top of him. "What do you call this?"
She giggled as they sank back into the pillows. "You're nude, Talon. Naked implies a degree of defenselessness. You're always nude." She put a hand to his cheek, smiling down at him from scant inches away.
He rolled her over to be underneath him. "Flattery."
She just kept smiling and tilted her lips up to meet his.
Later, feeling gloriously buff-free, she drowsed in the shared warmth of the bed as Talon sucked on her neck. "How many are you putting on there?" she muttered sleepily. He already had his pants back on, but had left off the shirt, and she ran her hand up and down his flank in a slow, rhythmic motion. He didn't take his mouth off her, but she felt a snort of his breath, and a hum against her skin.
Finished with this latest mark, he raised his mouth up to her ear to whisper, "Enough."
"Biting would be faster," she said, then yawned.
"But I enjoy giving you kiss marks," he answered, before he reattached himself.
She made a noncommittal noise, not wanting him to read her another lecture on the merits of kiss marks versus bite marks. Keeping her eyes open had become a chore, so she let them droop closed, to spare more attention for the feel of his mouth on her neck, until even that sensation blurred into the nothingness of sleep.
When she woke and stretched out her arm, he wasn't beside her. She slid out of bed, heading for the dresser, to examine her neck in the mirror hanging above it. Tilting her head and pushing her hair back with one hand, she laughed. A vivid, heart-shaped ring of hickeys decorated the side of her neck.
"Oh, Talon!" she said, amused.
"What?" Talon materialized behind her, fully clothed. He put his arm around her, barely touching with his outstretched fingertips in deference to the giant blade jutting out from his wrist. His face was stern and grim.
When she first stopped flinching, she resigned herself to the fact that she would one day die by her lover's hand. Naked, and suddenly surrounded by the hard, sharp reality of Talon reminded her of that feeling. But she recognized this particular look from when he was on teams with Cass or Kat, and she knew it meant "protective".
She reached up to hook her hand behind his neck, pressing back against him. "A heart?" she asked, laughter in her voice.
His mouth softened out of its hard line into a shape that wasn't yet a smile. "You lost your buff and it suddenly appeared."
"No! Think of the next poor girl who it doesn't show up for!"
"I think it would be funny," he said, solemn-faced.
"You wouldn't be the one hunted through the halls like Kha-zix with Rengar behind him." She frowned.
He rubbed his chin in her hair. "It will always show up for you."
"No," she said firmly, straightening and moving her hands to his forearm.
He smiled at her in the mirror, and combined with the loud proclamation on her neck, it made her bold enough to ask, "When was the first time you knew I was serious about you?"
"When you said yes," he answered promptly. In answer to her look he continued, "You aren't the kind of woman who would say yes without being serious. When did you know?"
She felt a shiver of exposure. He had known all along. "When you started leaving your knives above the bed."
"It was long before that." He drew her in closer. "Ask me when I realized it though..." He dropped a kiss onto her cheek. Her fingers tightened on his forearm, she was relieved to know he was serious too, that he had been, since "long before".
"You need to go?" she asked.
"Yes."
"All right." She turned around to give him a proper kiss goodbye, one hand on his shoulder, the other on his cheek. When she broke away she exposed her neck, smiling. "Thank you."
He eyed his handiwork, face impassive. "My pleasure." Then he took a step back, and was gone.
She shivered, not quite from fear and not quite from cold. "Brr," she said to herself, rubbing her arms.
"Time to face the world." With a smile, she reached up to touch the hickeys one last time before moving to shower and get dressed.
She left through Garen's window, because a) he wasn't there, and b) nobody was watching it. Then, invisible, she skipped toward the common dining hall with a smile on her lips and a song in her heart.
When she was young, if someone had told her that one day she would proudly display her lover's marks for all the world to see, she would have laughed in their face. If they had told her she would have a Noxian lover, she would have never spoken to them again. It was funny how the world changed while you weren't looking.
Sneaking into the dining hall itself was a little trickier, but not by much since no one was expecting her. She made it to an empty table near the center, then, dropping her invisibility, dragged out a chair to stand on.
"All right! You can all stop stalking me!" She held her collar down and turned to show the proof to the entire room. "I had my lover take care of it!"
She put her fists on her hips and glared around the abruptly quiet room. It didn't take long for the whispers to start behind her back, but before she could turn to glare them into silence Rengar blurted, "What, you haven't smelled it on her these past seven..."
"Rengar!" she interrupted, both hands outstretched in a "Stop!" gesture. "Do you think we could keep as much of my private business out of the public as possible?" Kind of a ridiculous request considering her previous announcement, but she didn't think Talon would want his identity revealed, hickeys notwithstanding
He looked rightfully taken aback. "Of course, little one. I will keep your secret." Leaning over to Lucian, he asked in a quieter, but still audible voice, "You really can't smell it?" To which Lucian shook his head, bemused.
Giving up on trying to quell the gossip after that, she hopped down and made her way to Rengar, to thank him for keeping the details out of it. Chin up, both to show the hickeys and to let them know she didn't care about their curious stares, it took longer than usual to cross the room.
Garen was there before her, pestering Rengar. "I'm her brother! I only want to make sure this guy is treating her right. Please, tell me?"
Meeting her eyes over Garen's head, Rengar winked. Or at least she thought he winked. It was hard to tell from just the one eye.
"I can assure you that the... person in question treats her very right, in a variety of ways."
She had made it this far without blushing, and managed to hold the line, but Garen went red and mumbled something before slinking away.
"Thanks, Rengar." She went up on her toes to plant a kiss on his furry jaw.
"I never remember how scent-blind your people are," he said in his throaty grumble.
"Well I think they should have figured it out for other reasons, but I don't mind that they haven't." They shared an amused smile at the expense of the other champions.
Later, in the Du Couteau quarters, Garen was trying to wheedle the secret out of her.
"Garen," she finally said. "I know you're curious, but it's none of your business."
Talon, leaning against the wall by the door, looked up, eyes dancing, although his mouth remained serious. "Yeah, Garen," he imitated her tone. "Leave her alone about the guy."
Garen swiveled back to face Lux. "It's a guy?" He sounded excited by this new revelation, and then indignant. "It's a guy, and Talon knows?" He gave her his big, dewy, kicked-puppy eyes of betrayal, which made Katarina snort and squeeze his hand.
"Please," Lux said. "Talon knew before I did." A statement which had the benefit of being true.
Katarina had perked up and looked over to meet Talon's eyes. Talon's gaze shuttered for the short time their eyes were locked. Katarina relaxed back into her seat, willing to bide her time.
Talon looked back to Garen. "Yeah, I know all about your sister's little clandestine romance." His mouth twisted into a mocking smile, and he wiggled his eyebrows in Lux's direction.
"Tell him whatever you want!" she said, feeling a blush crawl over her face.
"Oh, don't worry. It's much more fun not telling him." The smile hovering on Talon's lips turned cruel.
"Come on!" Garen burst out. "You know about me and Kat. I need to know..."
Lux cut him off, crossing her arms and glaring. "All you need to know is that I'm happy, and in a relationship with someone I love." Her blush intensified and she refused to look at Talon when she made her declaration. Stupid Garen making her say stupid things in front of stupid Talon.
"Awww," Talon said, and she could hear the repressed laughter in his voice if no one else could. "He loves you too."
Lux put her nose in the air with a sniff. "Then he can tell me so himself."
And it was banter, it was just banter, like every other day. So when Talon ended his beat of silence with, "I do. I do love you," she was completely blindsided, gasping for air. Because that was Talon. That was how he worked. You thought you were safe and then you were choking on your own blood.
"I guess I don't need Demacia to keep me warm at night," she said, voice thick and a little wobbly. Was she about to cry? Was she about to cry because Talon told her he loved her for the first time? In front of witnesses?
"I've been telling you that for a while now." Crossing the space between them, Talon pulled her to her feet and into his arms.
"Wait. It's you? It's you?" Garen rose to his feet, hands curled into fists.
"What? You don't think it's a fair trade?" Talon responded.
"Oh, hell no," Katarina said, surging up at the same time Lux punched Talon in his lowest rib.
Garen glanced at Talon trying to squirm out of Lux's grip, and then at Katarina's menacing advance. "I don't even need to do anything, do I?"
"That's what I've been trying to tell you," Lux said, rolling her eyes.