intensely emotional
It's quiet. The street is empty. The air is cold. The sky is a smooth, sleek slab of obsidian. It's a welcome relief from the dingy, noisy, busy bar. Jinx takes a deep breath. The wind feels like the holiest of benedictions on her flushed, heated skin.
"So," she clears her throat. "That was some show, Flashlight."
Lux smiles faintly and doesn't look at her. Jinx swallows. Her pulse pounds like the drumline before an execution. She wants to laugh, to grin, to play it off as a joke because it is so damn funny. She stretches her lips wide like a noose pulled taut.
"You didn't really mean it, what you sang back there, right?" She asks.
There's no moon. There are no stars. There's not even a cloud to excuse the absence. There is only the naked expanse of black, black, black. It's so quiet.
"I meant it," Lux says, slicing through the silence. "I am. I am in love with you."
A stillness follows her words. It's as if time stopped, as if the world ceased to exist, as if only they were left. No more air, no more street, no more yawning empty skies, it's just them. It's just Lux and…
Jinx starts giggling. She presses a fist to her mouth, like a cork stopping up a river - it's not enough. The giggles spill around her knuckles, sharp and piercing the still, cold air. She saw a hanging once. It's not done often in Zaun, but maybe some rich guy wanted something old school. She watched the thief, for it could only be a thief, claw at the rope, jerking, twisting, swinging. It must have felt like this, she thinks, as her body shakes, as her lungs ache. It must have felt just like this.
"I thought," she gasps. "You were supposed to be smart."
Lux turns to Jinx then. The look on her face resembles broken beer bottles and popped open pill packets. It's like crashing from a high Jinx never asked for. She keeps laughing.
"You're too easy, Flashlight! I got you so good! Oh, man! I can't believe you actually fell for me! You're an idiot!"
Jinx hears footsteps, the sound of heels running on concrete. She hears because she doesn't see. She can't see, her eyes squeezed shut, tears forming from laughing too hard. And the tears keep coming, rolling down her cheeks, dripping down her chin.
"What a stupid thing to say," she spits out between large, gulps of air. "What a stupid, fucking to say."
It was too much a thing to be given. It was too much a thing to be offered. It was too much - knowing she was thought of, knowing she was cared about. It made Jinx feel grounded, like her bones were solid, like her flesh had weight. She feels substantial, heavy, real. She was becoming real. She was becoming.
And it suffocated her.