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Jinx doesn’t mind the burlap sack over her head whenever Ekko takes her to the Firelight’s basecamp. The years had rendered him tougher than nails and honestly, she gets it. Just because they had recently reunited, that didn’t mean that he trusted her outright. And every time they arrive at their destination and the sack is taken off, the view is always breathtaking. Breath always caught in her throat, she’s in awe every time she’s been here.
The first thing she always notices is the explosion of green in the center. And then the sunlight, funneling golden streaks over arrays of colors — oh! So many colors! All pretty and glittery! — from the murals that decorate the walls to the patched-and-thatched rooftops that line the walls. She scoffs to herself. It’s really just like Ekko to find this sort of place in the middle of doomy and gloomy Zaun — just like him to always find diamonds among coal.
And then she is surprised by how things have not really changed…? Or how things seemed to have changed only because you haven’t been looking at them for so long and then you discover that some things — Shut up! I’m thinking here! — ...are actually still the same.. She doesn’t know, it’s all kinda overwhelming if you think about things like this all the time.
She is grateful though, she can tell you that. She watches the sunlight filter through the treetops above Ekko’s personal study as she quickens her stride to catch up with him. It’s a dreamy sigh she lets out when she leans against him. For now, she’s going to ignore the way his breath hitches when their skin makes contact with each other…
Yeah, you’ve always liked liked him, didn’t you, Pow-Pow? Mylo’s hisses have been incessant today and it’s really starting to get on her nerves. Maybe a bomb to the throat ought to shut him up…
No! Save those for Sevika! She chastises herself. Yeeeaaah… It’s part of her making amends for what she’s done… She’s agreed to help Ekko clean up the streets off of shimmer and that means getting rid of The Ogre, who’s been really keen on her big bad set of ways ever since Sil—... Jinx shakes her head. She means ever since, things turned out for the worse.
Ekko’s observing her again, but he only scoffs with an upward tilt on his lips and doesn’t say anything. He knows that she knows that he knows that she notices. HAH! Thinks he’s so slick, pfft—...
He doesn't know that she observes him too, though.
He’s taller than her now. And wider. But not too wide; fit with nice arms and just right. And, and…
Alright! She admits it to Claggor (and Claggor only! …Even though he doesn't say anything most of the time).
…Alright, I can’t stop thinking about his eyes.
She’s also willing to admit that she doesn’t know since when she’s thought of his eyes that way. It wasn’t like they were any different from what they looked like when they were kids — but she’s also buried all of that pre-pubescent bullshit that was her childhood into the void and nothingness of her madness, so who’s to say what was real or what wasn’t anymore, amirite? ANYWAY—
His eyes are still brown, she observes as she trails behind him while he speaks to the little kiddies and the big dumb bat with the scar on his lip. His gazes are still clear, still warm. Maybe they dull a little when he’s being cocky and bitter. Or that they harden when situations are dire or when he's angry. But they eventually brighten up like clouds in the sky after a rainy day — or like any scrap metal after a good clean and polish. Really, it isn’t any different.
And then, no matter who he’s talking to, he’d sneak glances at her, and she knows — knows it in her bones and in the fluttering of her stomach — that there’s always a smile behind the gazes he gives her, heat in the ones that linger, and suddenly, she has trouble breathing.
“Hey,” Ekko nudges her. Fuck. She’d been staring. Her cheeks warm a little but she’s gonna be cool about it. She's a Cool girl. She’s going to ignore Mylo — annoying asshole Mylo — laughing his guts out in the back of her brain.
“C’mon, you could help me fix my hoverboard…,” he says as they make their way to the top of the tree. “That you broke.”
She rolls her eyes and scoffs sardonically, which makes him laugh (AND she is not going to go there because yeah, ok, it does things to her to hear him laugh again and he's really just so bright, bright, bright —
...that she wonders if she deserves to have this one beautiful, bright thing in her fucked-up life…)
"Pssh," she says, shutting all of her thoughts down. "Don't you worry your little head, hero boy. It won't be so boring anymore!" She laughs gleefully at her little quip.
"I'm sorry, boring?" Ekko is incredulous, and his disbelief makes her laugh even harder. "It's a hoverboard. I don't see you making anything that'll make you fly."
"What do you mean 'fly' ? Its function is in the name. Your little diddly-doo machine doesn't fly. It hovers!"
"And the difference is?"
"Who cares? It's not called a flyboard."
They bicker until they burst into his study, cheeks hurting and sides aching in their laughter. For a while, Jinx chalks their — what is this? Happiness? Joy? You think you're allowed all of this? Shut up, Mylo, shut up, shut u— positive disposition to the sunlight and the rustle of the leaves. Or maybe being this high up makes your brain fuzzy.
Either way, there's a glimpse of what her life could maybe have been like if… if she had never left.
Never left Vi. Never left Ekko.
Suddenly the sunlight is blinding and the shadows around them seem darker. Sharper.
In the corner, she sees Vander, watching. Always watching. Never saying anything. Just watching. She thinks he's disappointed in her and what she has become. Well DUH! But Vi was always his favorite, wasn't she? Why does he care? What do any of them care? Mylo's hissing again in her ear. Nobody who's anybody cares about her. The only other person who did is dead. And it was. All. Her. Fucking. Fau—
"Jinx! "
She blinks, as if waking from a stupor. Vander is nowhere to be seen and all she hears are children playing on the landing below. Pink shimmer-shimmer eyes meet brown eyes that feel like home. And when she blinks again, brought back down to his little study in his favorite place in the world, she realizes that his hands are struggling to unbind herself from where her nails have dug into her arms.
He's so pretty, she tells Claggor. Claggor doesn't respond.
"Ekko..," she says as she anchors herself, the fog in her brain clearing. She allows him to pry her hands off herself. She ignores the little leap her heart makes when he doesn't let go, thumbs rubbing circles over the pulse on her wrists.
He pulls her close, forehead touching hers, one of his hands making their way to her nape. She breathes him in and exhales in steady counts of 7. She remembers a few moons ago that night in Benzo's pawnshop. How they had realized that this had helped ground her. Life’s funny like that, ain’t it — the person she had mocked to be a “boy savior” is also the only person capable of diffusing the bomb that is her mental state.
She also remembers how she had wished she had kissed him on the lips that night, instead of his cheek.
However, since then, it seems that Ekko has developed a newfound habit of his own when she gets this way. He nudges his nose against her once and kisses her on the forehead always, as she breathes in and out in 7 counts. His fingers splayed on her nape thread themselves in her braids, pulling her closer towards him, and she sighs, long and soft. When was the last time anybody has comforted her like this?
She really shouldn’t be asking stupid questions she knows the answers to.
Not since Sil—
“Tell me about the voices you hear,” Ekko says, voice so low that it makes Jinx think about the roots of the giant tree they’re on. Makes her think about how deep Ekko’s gotten under her skin. She focuses on their intertwined hands instead and the question he’s asked.
“Too much, too much,” she rambles. “Mostly it’s Mylo-lie-low-dead-in-a-ditch-somewhere. Claggor’s there too but he doesn’t say much…” She leans further into him until she finds herself in the junction where his neck meets his shoulder. Still breathing in 7. Heart making funny leaps over his fingers stroking the hair on the back of her neck.
“Vander just watches,” she continues. “Just looks. Just judges.”
He hums against her hair in acknowledgement. “Do you hear me over the noise?”
The laugh she lets out is only a tad bitter. She releases his hand and wraps her arms around his torso, burying herself fully into his chest. His reciprocating hug is almost instant.
“I hear you the loudest.” The same way she could hear his heart through his shirt, pitter-pattering as loud and as fast as hers is going. “Cuts through all the fuzz. Like a bullet through the static.”
“Well, fuck,” is all he says. But Ekko holds her tighter and she can feel the smile on his lips against the skin of her shoulder. “You’re making it so fucking hard, Jinx.”
She blanches slightly at this, confused brows quirking to meet in the middle. He must have felt her tense up because he’s chuckling and pulling away to look her in the eye.
“You’re crazy if you think I don’t want you,” he tells her matter-of-factly, hands cradling her face. She’s getting lost in his eyes, but still, she can’t help but snicker at the comment.
“Didn’t you hear?” she chides, dizzy from how close he is pushing his way into her atmosphere. “Absolutely fucking bonke–”
Ekko pushes past all of what she has to say to finally press his lips briefly against hers. It lasts an experimental second, not long enough for her to register what had happened. Searing brown eyes search hers, gauging, calculating. Their breathing is labored and her heart rings thunderous in her chest and oh gods oh gods does he hate kissing her was she that ba—
And then he's pushing her up against the wall, lips hot against hers. She all but melts, moaning against him when she opens her mouth to him and his tongue makes shy forays against hers. Pressing closer, his hands make hasty grasps for her hips and waist. Her arms wrap themselves around his neck as she lines her body to fit his, earning her a resounding groan that vibrates from his throat down to her toes.
In a daze, it only slowly occurs to her that the loudest thing in her mind at this very moment is just this strange, explosive sensation derived from the gentlest of gestures — in the way she can finally taste the heat in his lingering stares, in the quiet desperation his lips slot themselves against hers again and again and again —
Stars implode unto themselves under her eyelids in different bursts of color when his teeth catch onto her lower lip and electricity surges through her veins in lightning speed; how does he know her so well to not kiss her gently? She shifts in his arms, pulling away slightly, but he chases her lips anyway.
Is this what it’s like to be wanted, she thinks. She can’t hear anybody else over the electric jolts that travel down her spine when Ekko briefly steers his lips away to graze his teeth and tongue towards her jaw and down her neck. She gasps against him, nails scraping the shaved hair on his nape, before his mouth finds hers again.
Want him want him want him
Eventually, the kisses slow to lazy sweeps against each other. She can feel him smile against her lips and she’s about to burst into a fit of giggles herself, sheesh, has he softened her so much in only the past few minutes? Rounded all her edges in just a manner of kisses?
“I’ve wanted you for so long,” he says, thumb stroking down the line of her jaw to her chin.
She hums in reply, her own fingers making lazy patterns on his chest, letting his words sink in. For so long, he said? Since they were–?
“Even after… everything.” She didn’t realize she had asked her question aloud until he answered her. He scoffs at himself. “I gave it my best shot to keep my distance. And for a while, it worked.”
She waits for him to continue, distracted by the way his Adam's apple bobs up and down when he speaks.
“Can’t resist you anymore, though.” He punctuates his confession with another kiss that leaves her light-headed and breathless. “Don’t think I could, even if I wanted to anyway.”
She doesn’t say anything, because honestly what can she say to that. It’s all overwhelming her a little bit but she knows this — to the marrow of her being, the very same marrow of who Powder used to be — that she was his.
She doesn’t say this, of course. Not yet. You don’t jump the gun just cos your favorite person in the world had just kissed you so silly you forgot your own demons.
Instead she kisses him with as much softness, as much tenderness, as she could muster – which is actually saying a lot for her – but he laughs into her lips when she ends up nipping him playfully on his lower lip and honestly, that just felt right. It felt like them; it felt like home.