illuxinated | [For Jason] Post-Tea Party

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[For Jason] Post-Tea Party

Lux won't admit it, even to her own self, but she's waiting. After wandering around awhile and stopping to talk to Tim, she'd headed home, pulled off the fancy dress she'd apparently put on for no reason, and waited.

There's a cold and knotted up place in the pit of her stomach telling her that he won't come. That he won't have even noticed.

Sitting cross-legged atop her bed, staring at the yellow dress tossed across a nearby chair, she can see how it might seem like she skipped the party to try and get a reaction. It goes so much deeper than that, and Lux hopes that Jason knows by now that she's not that sort of girl. It looks really bad, though, and there's a knot of guilt down there right next to the cold place that keeps trying to remind her that she's not good enough.

Sometimes, she just wishes that she could be normal. That she could smile and wear pretty dresses and throw parties.

But she can't forget, and she wishes she were naive enough to talk herself into thinking it was better without her there. She would have just brought it down, right?

Absently, she lifts a hand to wipe at the tear that's slipped down her cheek, then pulls her pillow in against her chest.

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It's a long walk from the stage to Lux's hut. It's a long walk to anywhere on the island, something Jason never really noticed until his injuries forced him onto crutches and a cast. The crutches, thankfully, are gone, but the cast remains, a broken hand making it next to impossible to swing through the trees with any real speed. For the first time since his arrival, Jason's grounded. It fucking sucks.

It sucks even more still tucked into a suit, fear and an underlying shame prickling Jason's skin with more than just sweat under the sun. He's a mess before he's even halfway there.

She hadn't come. That alone sucks more than Jason's jumbled thoughts can put to order, the first day since he crawled out of the ground when he'd been startled into amusement, into genuine laughter, and his girlfriend never showed. Even worse had been the questions, so many new friends gathered in one place, and no one to introduce, only guess and make excuses for. Even now, hours later, Jason can't understand it.

She could be gone. It's a thought that pushed him to a run at one point, until the throb in his broken hand had become too strong. She could be gone, but she isn't, because standing beneath her treehouse Jason can hear her, tiny shuffles against a wooden floor. She's up there, and she could've been with him, with all of them, and she hadn't come.

Stunned into stillness, it's more morbid curiosity than anything that has him moving again, the sudden desire to know just why she's seemingly left him like so many others have done before her, but his grapple hook's not where it's supposed to be, his fingers still trapped inside their cast and protesting the movement. The aborted jerk of his arm hurts all the way to his elbow, and Jason pulls it back against his body with a startled curse. "Fuck!"

How is it possible to feel two such conflicting emotions as happiness and guilt so sharply at once? The curse startles Lux right off the bed, and before she knows what she's doing, she's pulled open the trap door in the floor of her room and is peering down at Jason, her pulse beating hard in her throat.

"You could have just called up," she says, mouth gone dry. "Or used the ladder." As if he would, even now.

She doesn't give him a chance to reply before she's stepping down the ladder herself in her t-shirt and boxer shorts. At the bottom she stops and turns, pressing her back against rungs.

"If you're going to- to- break up with me, just do it now," she says, voice unsteady.

For a moment, he thinks she just forgot. She's not dressed up like the invitation said, looks like she might even have been sleeping, clothes soft and comfortable, and Jason's almost ready to laugh until she speaks again.

"What?" he blurts in response, face smoothed over in surprise like it doesn't hurt, but it does, his insides recoiling as if from a sudden punch to his soft places. "Why?"

The look on Jason's face makes her feel stupid and even more off balance than she was to begin with, but Lux doesn't know how to stop the emotion that's pushing its way up her throat. Just looking at him is like opening a floodgate, and all her frustration and confusion and anger at not just him but everything spills out before she can even think of stopping it.

"Isn't that what you want?" she cries, and hiccups up a sob, fresh tears spilling over her flushed cheeks. "Someone who will throw you parties and not be completely screwed up?" Even to her own ears it sounds ridiculous and juvenile and unfair; it isn't even Jason she's angry at, it's at the idea of losing him. She doesn't want to be noble, she doesn't want to say, Go, she's better for you anyway, but she hurts in a way she hasn't since she was in 7th grade and can't bear it, doesn't know what to do with it. Her body bends with it, hands on her knees because it feels like she can't catch her breath.

Jason gapes, frozen on his feet in front of her, for a moment unable to feel anything but the sudden cold rush of fear. "I want - " he says and whets his lips, but it doesn't help, doesn't make him any smarter, any more able to understand what's going on. "I wanted you to come, I wore - I found a suit for you, and. I don't even go to parties," he says, stopping all at once.

His head hurts, all afternoon sun and a long walk, confusion and dread pooling between his ears, making everything too fuzzy and too sharp all at once. She's standing there, bent double like it hurts her, and Jason's afraid to even move, to fuck this up any worse than it is, and he doesn't even know how he messed up in the first place. "Why didn't you come?"

"Because I thought—" Lux begins, but in truth she doesn't know what she thought, just that it felt impossible to move her feet until she'd decided not to go. "I don't know. I just…"

Her voice trails off, but it hits her then, as she's wiping at her cheeks, and she just gives up and sits on the soft ground. "I didn't want to look stupid," she says, gaze on her lap. "I didn't want to go to a party that some other girl was throwing for my boyfriend and act like everything was fine." But now she looks stupid anyway, doesn't she? "I got that invitation and I felt so dumb, but you were so excited about it, and I just… I thought that's what you wanted. A girlfriend who will throw you fancy parties with invitations and act like everything is okay when it isn't."

"I know it's not okay," says Jason, words that should be an eruption somehow breathless, squeezed out around the tightness in his chest. She did it on purpose, she chose it, she stood him up, and Jason's been hurt plenty of times deliberately, but he never thought it'd be by Lux. "It's not okay, but this place is - it was closer to okay than home until it buried me, and - and this was the first day since I even felt close to okay."

And then she didn't come. A whole afternoon of chances to relax, enjoy something, find some normal together, and she didn't even want to come. If she didn't want him to smile and be okay, she sure as hell got her wish. "You should've just said," he says, and he doesn't want to be on the ground with her, doesn't want his knees anywhere near the soil, memories too fresh in his mind, but he doesn't feel good, too much sugar and sun and heartache, so down he goes, kneeling in the dirt he'll swear he's not afraid of. "It could've been...better. Not okay, but, better, and I - I wanted you there."

It's true, she should have just said. There had been a few times when she almost had, but ironically, she'd not wanted to upset him. "I'm sorry," she whispers, still unable to look Jason in the eye. This feels so much like the time she'd been caught cheating: The overwhelming guilt for having done something so unfair and underhanded, but intense stress humming just beneath it.

She thinks of what Ryan would say were he here, and another sob jerks free from her chest.

"I don't feel okay, Jason, not even close to okay and I— I should have said, I know I should have said. You've just got so much on you already, I didn't want to add to it, and…" Trailing off, she finally looks at him, expression pure misery. "I built it up in my head so that it was this huge thing, and I tried—I put on a dress and everything—and it was like, anytime I thought of going, I got so scared. I know it's stupid, but I thought I'd get there and you'd be so happy, and it would have nothing to do with me at all."

"I wasn't happy," says Jason, and when the backs of his eyes sting hot and tight, he's too tired to do anything but let it happen, his dignity long since gone, maybe lost from the moment he'd woken up underground. "It was just to cheer me up, it wasn't even a big deal, I've never even - people don't throw me parties, I didn't know what it meant, that it was gonna piss you off."

He raises his left arm wearily, rubs cake-sticky fingers over his eyes and feels like he's sinking right back into the earth. "What's it matter what else makes me happy if you do?" On every day until this one, anyway.

"It doesn't," Lux ejects, increasingly desperate to make him understand, to make him look any way other than how he does right now. "But for months, I haven't been making you happy, I haven't done anything to make you happy, I'm always there when everything is shit, but I'm not throwing you parties and I just…" Her voice trails off, her chin trembling. "I don't want to lose you." Swallowing hard, she looks away, rubbing her cheek fitfully against her shoulder.

"I thought you were going to die and it would be my fault," she adds in a whisper. "I didn't have anything to dig with and I was so slow. And today, all I could think was, what if he looks at me and that's all he sees? Dirt and blood. And I couldn't move."

"Why?" Jason grits out around clenched teeth, his stubborn jaw trembling as pathetically as any child's. "I'd never see that with you, you're my - you're the only good thing I have." He's got Tim, sure, and enough good to go with the bad there to make it worth it, he's got Bucky who he loves as fiercely as he ever did Bruce, who shot him back to Soviet Russia and jammed a scalpel in his heart. He's got nothing else like Lux, not ever, his whole damn life. Dirt and blood, they belong to his old life. Lux, with her golden hair and her bright blue eyes, she belongs to this one.

He swipes the whole of his left arm over his eyes this time, buries the first sob in the crook of his elbow and tries not to lose another. "You don't have to do anything but be there. That makes me happy."

"I'm sorry," Lux repeats, the words pushed out like they hurt, her small body swaying forward in emphasis. There's always going to be something broken about her, she thinks, something sharp and bent that makes her kick against the good things when they find her before they have a chance to kick her instead. This boy, this singular, dark haired boy whom she loves more than she ever thought she could anyone, he has broken places, too, and she's just made them worse.

"I love you," she says, and pushes forward so that she can close the distance between them, knees in the dirt again as her hands find his face, desperate to look him in the eyes and make him believe her. "I love you so much. Please don't hate me. All I ever want is to just be with you. I don't even care about anything else. I just…I got scared."

She's there all at once, and he holds onto her with his good hand, presses his wet face right to her throat and breathes in hard, tries to rid himself of the winded feeling he's got all over. "I love you, too," he says, still confused but better for her nearness. "I don't - how do I make it better? Is it just the party, is - how are you not okay?"

"It's not just the party," Lux replies, her gaze slanting guiltily away. He's made a habit of holding himself responsible for anything that happens to her whether it's actually his fault or not, and the more he gets hurt, the harder she has to work to help fit the broken pieces back together, and the less easy it is to own up to the fact that she needs to be put back together, too. She holds it together for him as best she can, but sometimes that's just barely. Today wasn't supposed to happen; it wasn't supposed to snap back on her this way.

"It's not really the party at all," she finally says, still unable to look him in the eye. "I don't think I really got that before just now. But it isn't your fault."

"What is it then?" he asks, pulling her into his lap. He'd wanted to see her all dressed up, wanted it the moment he'd found himself a proper suit, but he's grateful for her clothes now, all soft cotton and boxers and barefeet, free to touch with no fear of rumpling.

"What are you scared of?" he asks, tipping his head back to look at her. "Is it from before? 'Cause of Gotham, or because of my grave?"

"I didn't want to tell you," Lux admits, eyes still downcast despite the easy way she allows him to tug her into his lap. "I thought it was okay, I thought… I don't know. That I would just get over it. Like they were just more sucky things in a lifetime's worth of suck." Her eyes squeeze closed and she leans in against him with a sigh. Elaborating seems so counterproductive when she knows he'll just feel bad about it. He doesn't need to know that lately, the nights she spends alone she has nightmares where she either tears the bed apart digging at a grave that isn't there, or thinks she's twelve again, paralyzed in fear by the shadowy figure looming at her bedside. What good would it do?

"The thought of losing you in any kind of way scares the crap out of me," she adds in a muffled murmur against the warmth of Jason's neck. "I feel like I can't shake it and I don't know what to do."

"You - " Won't, he wants to say, but he can't promise it. It almost seems too much to even hope for on an island that can send them home at any time, can bury them in the ground, send them back to relive their worst nightmares over and over again.

"I don't want you to," he says instead, chin bearing gently down against the top of her head. "Scares me, too, and I don't know what to do about it. Half the stuff that happens here, we don't even get to try fighting it."

Lux can feel the reassuring rumble of his voice as much as she hears it, and for a long moment she simply lingers in that familiarity, his pulse thrumming steadily beneath her cheek. She thinks about how they'd first met, and how he'd found her on Christmas. Never once did he ever hesitate, not just in saving her from monsters, but in taking care of her, which is a completely different thing altogether. It's ironic how much she craves that when she spends so much time and effort trying to prove that she doesn't need it.

Gently, she draws back enough to finally look Jason in the eye. "You told me once you wouldn't get tired of me," she says, only barely managing to catch her chin before it begins to tremble again. "Just promise me you won't ever take that back, no matter how screwed up things get."

"I couldn't," says Jason with his first smile since he left the party, a slight but earnest curve of his mouth before he leans in, pressing an equally gentle kiss to the corner of her own. "I'm not one of your crappy foster families, I'm not gonna get tired of you, I love you. But Lux."

Jason pulls back, drawing a breath that sits heavy in his lungs. "Where I come from, it's all screwed up. What happened in Gotham, the Joker, my grave...those are only parts of it." He gets it now, here on the island more than ever. His life is unusual to most, experiences that Jason takes for granted extraordinary to half of those he tells them to. "There'll probably be more. Hell, I've only been here half a year, and so much shit has happened already." He touches her hair, fixes a stray lock like that will make anything right. "My life is pretty fucked. You being around me means it's gonna get you, too. I don't know how to stop it."

"I don't care about that," Lux insists, catching her small fingers around his wrist. "I swear to you, whatever happens, we can figure it out and get through it, if you just promise me that one thing. Okay?"

She leans in and lets her lips linger soft and warm against his, just breathing him in as she feels his pulse beating beneath her fingers. "Just promise me we'll make it work," she murmurs, eyes downcast. "You're all I want. Just you."

"We will," says Jason, and he really doesn't give a fuck that he doesn't know what he's talking about, or how to do it. He wants it, and it's going to happen. "What makes it better?"

Shifting, he starts to stand up, good arm wrapped around her to bring her with him, her legs snug around his waist. "You want me to stay over more?" he asks, assuming that, like him, it's the worst for her at night. "You want to stay at my place sometimes?"

"Would James let you do that?" Lux asks, surprised more by the suggestion than that she's been so suddenly lifted from the ground. Baze has no idea that Jason climbs through her window most nights, and as far as she's concerned, he can live on not knowing. The island says she's technically an adult, but he's her dad, and he'd tried to give her the sex talk at sixteen when she'd been dating the same guy for two years. She's convinced he doesn't live in reality where she and sex are concerned. Which brings up another problem.

"If Baze found out, he might flip," she says, arms around Jason's shoulders as she tries to settle on the hip opposite his hurt arm.

"Dunno," says Jason, "never asked before." His whole life has been a string of act first, flee second, and Jason's still young enough to believe it's been the best course. "I mean," his brow quirks, "we couldn't do stuff, he'd know. But if you think you're not safe..."

Glancing beyond her, Jason decides he can get them both up the ladder without ever letting go. "Your dad doesn't have to know, he hasn't found out so far, right?"

"It's not that I don't think I'm safe," Lux says, instinctively firming her hold around Jason's shoulders when he starts moving. "I just sleep better when you're there."

Abashed, she ducks her head in against his neck, but smiles anyway as she nuzzles against warm skin. She could try to argue against him carrying her up the ladder when he's injured, but knows it will do no good. To think, she used to get upset anytime he picked her up without asking permission first.

"You'd have to sneak me out at night and then sneak me back in the next morning." Pausing, she presses a kiss over his pulse. "That's a lot of work."

"I'm up for it," says Jason, grinning when he feels her nose and then her lips against his throat, good hand and feet pulling their weight easily up the ladder. "If it makes you feel better, I'll do anything, I don't care."

Head breaching the trap door, Jason catches sight of her dress as he climbs them the rest of the way through. "Still want to see you in that."

"What, like right now?" Lux asks on a laugh after following Jason's gaze over to pleated yellow fabric draped over the chair where she'd left it. "You'll just take it off again," she adds with a pragmatic tilt of her smile as she leans in to bump the end of her nose against his.

"So?" says Jason, undeterred, though he spares plenty of time when he leans in to kiss her. It warms him, even more than the tea and cake, and Jason smiles when he pulls away. "You got me here in a suit. One time only event, now I want to cash in."

"Oh fine," Lux relents, although if the little self-satisfied smile sitting on her lips is anything to judge by, she actually has very little problem with obliging him. Taking care not to knock his arm, she extracts herself from the addictive warmth of Jason's body and pads over to the dress in her bare feet.

"But you have to turn around while I'm putting it on," she says with an impatient little wave of two fingers. "And no peeking."

"Really?" Jason asks, but he turns away, chin jerking repeatedly in the opposite direction when he catches it turning towards her. The rustle of fabric behind him sparks an almost Pavlovian response, his skin flushing warmer than it'd been even a moment before, and Jason has to busy himself with his cuffs, tugging them down over his wrists to prevent himself launching himself at his girlfriend.

Halter secured behind her neck, Lux fluffs out her hair and throws her shoulders back, only feeling slightly ridiculous. It was easier to accept her part in this little fashion show when she kept in mind how dubious things had been only ten minutes before. If Jason wanted to see her in her party dress, it seemed only fair that she let him.

"Okay," she said, still in bare feet and smoothing her hands down over the lemon yellow fabric of her skirt. "You may now look upon me in all my sunny glory."

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[For Jason] Post-Tea Party

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