illuxinated | [For Jason] Post-TR Day

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jason

[For Jason] Post-TR Day

Lux doesn't have a watch. She'd not been wearing one the day she turned up, fresh from a midnight swim, and she doesn't know what time it is aside from that it's late.

Really late. Late enough that Baze might start to worry if he wasn't so busy trying to hump that Kate chick so that he can go make a new family with her and her baby and her stupid hut with its stupid palm fronds.

Distantly, Lux understands that having these thoughts means two things: She's a cliche, and she's drunk.

Neither of those things seem to matter much, though, when held against the fact that it's so damned hot here, humidity creeping up under the thin fabric of her sundress and making her skin sticky. Tromping through the jungle, she pauses to lift the weight of her hair from the nape of her neck and then realizes as she stares into the inky darkness that she's got absolutely no idea where she is.

"Oh, just great," she spits out, dropping her hair to fling both arms out in an emphatic gesture that there is no one to see.

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Jason's head feels full, sore in a way that's not a headache but a bone deep one, too many wretched thoughts bouncing against his skull and making his old scar sing in sympathy.

He'd trailed them, Boyd and the cowboy, followed them to the Compound to make sure that Boyd was safely deposited, and he's been wandering ever since, tired and miserable in a way he can only associate with being dumb enough to give a fuck.

He ought to be grateful that he hadn't had to put Boyd down, and he is, but there's a whole ocean of rage in Jason's gut that needs to be burned through before he can feel the relief, and he swallows down every ounce of it at the sight of a blonde head in front of him.

It's late. Way too late for a girl to be wandering, in the city or the jungle or anywhere else. Jason stops and eyes her, wondering how the hell he's going to call attention to himself without her chewing him a new one again.

Finally he frowns, jogging a few silent steps closer and calling as soft as he knows how, "Lux."

The voice sounds so close out of the darkness that Lux startles nonetheless, but the jump of her heart settles easily enough when she can sketch the familiar shape of Jason from the shadows.

"Oh," she says, almost mildly. "Hey," as if there's anything remotely normal about this, happening to meet someone in the middle of the jungle in the dark. She wonders, briefly and to her own amusement, whether he lives in the trees.

"Do you know what time it is?"

"Past midnight," Jason says, louder now that he's sure he won't be sorry for it, and steps nimbly over the roots of the trees to join her. He can feel his mouth pulling down, and not for the first time Jason regrets growing so dependent on the helmet to hide his face from sight. Discipline, Bruce would say, long ago when Jason had worn the domino, and he resolves to relearn it.

"Why are you out here?"

"I was going home," Lux tries with a non-committal sweep of her hand toward the trees, although she has absolutely no idea whether that's even the correct direction. "I'm drunk," she admits, a better explanation than the first, if probably less likely to remove that look from his face.

"Why are you out here?" she asks in turn, hands falling to her hips, blonde hair tossed back over her bare shoulders.

"M'always out here," says Jason, and it's not a lie. "You're not even close to home." He leans down, gaging her sobriety in the slow dart of her eyes, the looseness in her limbs. She really shouldn't be out here like this.

"You could get eaten," he says bluntly.

In her current state, there's only one place Lux's mind goes at that, and it shoots her eyebrows up toward her hairline in indignation. "Not by you, buddy," she insists in an authoritative drawl, hands still fixed on her hips and chin lifting. "I don't do it in trees."

Slow on the uptake, her features fall swiftly and inexplicably into confusion, eyes intensely fixed as she puzzles him out, her inebriated mind stumbling as she tries to make the pieces fit together into a picture that makes sense. There was something weird about what he'd just said, and it wasn't that he was some kind of Jungle Book reject.

"How do you know where I live?" she finally asks, leaning forward into his personal space, earnest face upturned.

She's leaning in, so close he can almost feel the heat coming off her, and Jason spends a long moment wondering if that's only his imagination, or if it's really happening. "Because I've seen you leave it," he says, and has the sense not to elaborate.

He blinks, and his mouth finally gives up on the frown, tugging upwards. "I don't do it in trees, either."

"You so do," Lux swiftly accuses with a faint smile that falters when she finally processes the rest of what he's said. "Oh my god," she says, looking more burdened than surprised, "you are stalking me."

Stepping back, she throws both hands up. "You're stalking me! You were following me right here in the jungle and you're peering in my windows!" She turns takes two emphatic steps away, then stops again. "I have a stalker," she tells the shadowy depths of the jungle, then turns her attention back to Jason.

"You are cute," she says, pointing his way with a wavering index finger, "and you saved me from a pig. I will allow it." Pausing, she frowns in consternation. "For now. And you can't watch me get naked."

"I don't," exhales Jason, his eyes growing larger with every passing statement. He watches everyone with the clinical interest Bruce ingrained in him, cataloging each as harmless or threat, and maybe he does watch her a little more but never through her windows. He'd have put another man down for less.

He closes the distance she's put between them, catching her pointing finger and returning it to her side. "You shouldn't let anyone stalk you," he says, ears going hot in a way that's entirely new to him. "Cute or...not."

"Oh, because I can just stop dudes who flip around in trees," Lux pragmatically asserts, the downward press of her hand swaying her whole body forward. Stumbling slightly, she treads gracelessly on Jason's feet then catches herself on his arm.

"Why are you watching my house?" she demands without stepping back, the sharpness in her upturned gaze considerably muted by intoxication. "Don't tell me who I can and can't let stalk me."

"I'm not - " Jason starts, hands clutching gracelessly at hers when they don't leave his arm, and all at once Jason's very interested to learn who it is that sent her out into the jungle this way.

"I watch everyone's house, okay?" he mutters. It's more than he intended anybody to know, but it's preferable to her thinking he's some kind of pervert. "I don't sleep much."

"Why?" Lux demands, undeterred, drunk but plenty aware enough to know he's not actually answered her question. "You're warm," she adds like an afterthought, seeming almost confounded by the realization that she has, somehow, ended right up against him.

"Got used to being up all night." She's all but curled into him, and Jason stares down at the top of her head, fingers opening and closing until at last he raises his arm, tucks her in against his side. She's right, it is warmer, satisfying in a way his body armor never manages to be.

"You should let me take you home."

Mouth open and poised to fling something incredulous back about how that was still not an answer, Lux falters, finding herself suddenly held close by a very strong arm on a boy whom she can't deny is painfully attractive. Not apple pie, quarterback attractive like Jones or earnestly mature attractive like Eric, but undeniably tall, dark and handsome attractive. Tasha would call him a world-class hottie. Lux just sort of blinks.

Hot, but weird. Hot. Weird. Hot. Stalker.

"Okay," she abruptly concedes. "But only if we walk. None of that whoopdeedoo jungle man stuff," she adds with a waggle of her fingers toward the canopy.

"Be faster," says Jason, but maybe he doesn't mind so much. His stomach hurts, the knots Boyd's divine fucking test had put there only just beginning to unravel, but he feels better for the company. It's a distraction from the things he should be doing, watching the Compound, keeping an eye on Boyd and this supposed Raylan friend, and Jason will have to hurry back, but even so he walks them forward at a pace she can keep up with.

"You always drink like this?"

"No," Lux instantly replies as she takes an inordinately long time to pick her way around a fallen limb she could have just as easily stepped over. "I just felt like it tonight," she adds, tone dipping into obstinance. She's a teenager, she's allowed to get drunk sometimes.

Jason frowns down at her, righting her when she stumbles over the roots of the same tree that's threatened her with its limbs. "Why?" Her father's here, he wants her, he hadn't gotten blown up by Boyd tonight. As far as Jason's concerned, everything's fucking roses. "You pissed about something?"

"No," Lux decisively insists, catching herself on Jason's shirt when her feet fail her. Swallowing, she looks up to him again, expression sobered and fingers still clasped into fabric.

"I'm just sad," she admits, then slants her gaze away again.

Did he miss it? Did Baze make it back to Lux in the time that Jason tracked Boyd to the Compound, is she sad because she knows what happened? For one wild moment Jason actually feels elated, shocked that he's not alone in this but pleased all the same, and then he realizes that she can't possibly be that well informed, and even if she is, wouldn't mourn the loss of a man like Boyd. She doesn't even like swinging up into the trees.

"But why?"

"Because…" Lux begins, then hesitates, a rush of tangled emotions hitting her and making it difficult to speak. "Because," she repeats, more firmly, her brow knitting. "Because I'd just got a real family and now they're gone! And Baze is hooking up with some FLOOZY with a BABY, and he's got a JOB with another floozy and a HUT and what does he need me for, huh?" she asks, flinging one graceless arm through the air. "I'll tell you what he needs me for: NOTHING. Not a thing. NADA." She shakes her head emphatically, blonde hair bouncing.

"But hey, fine," she drawls with an exaggerated shrug. "Fiiiiiine. I'm an adult here, I can get drunk and hang in the jungle with stalkers if I WANT."

Jason doesn't correct her this time, settles for lifting her bodily over the next root and it'd be a hell of a lot easier if they found a proper path, but he's kind of enjoying himself. She's like a little bomb he doesn't know when will go off, and she clings to him in a way that makes his perpetual fucking loneliness seem further away.

"If that's true than he's a bastard," he says and means it. Jason ran out of sympathy for unappreciative fathers long ago.

The manhandling Lux accepts without question, but the dissing of Baze she takes immediate issue with, wheeling to land a solid smack to Jason's arm. "Hey!" she yells, failing to see the irony, "He is not, shut up!" Nobody gets to call her dad a bastard but her, even if it is true.

"It's not his fault," she adds, tone more subdued, and turns to march resolutely through the foliage. In the completely wrong direction.

It doesn't even hurt, but Jason stands stock still for a moment in shock before flipping neatly to land in front of her.

"Only dinosaurs that way," he says, feet set resolutely between her and the path she apparently wants to take. Truth be told, drunkenly running off to see the dinosaurs makes more sense to him than the rest of what she's saying. "Then whose fault is it?"

Lux lets out a shriek and stumbles backwards two steps. Someday, perhaps, she will get used to the flipping around and jumping from trees; today is not that day.

"Life!" she shouts, bolstered by a sudden rush of irritation at the fact that he's not only in her way, but being simultaneously sensible and hot. One or the other, dude. Both at once is just unfair.

"Why do you keep yelling at me?" Jason shouts back, immobile yet still managing to sulk impressively, eyes wide, mouth pulled down, and breathing harder than a simple leap could ever warrant.

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