Work Text:
Whatever people thought filming never was easy. Actors, decorations, CGI… Usually it took at least 10 hours a day to make a couple of scenes.
“Maybe, we all need a day off,” Victor said, looking into his cup with an absolutely lost expression. “I’m about to start thinking I live here.”
“Try Instagram reels,” Jayce muttered, his mouth full with a piece of sandwich he struggled to chew for the last five minutes, too busy with useless scrolling, “Or Tiktok. Ot Twitter…”
“Can’t believe you waste your time doing these things.”
“I spent months in the gym, preparing for the role. Maybe I finally deserve the bliss of doing nothing during the breaks.”
“Man,” Vi, coming into the studio with her makeup finally done, stretched herself, the tattoo painted on her skin the deep blackness of tangled lines and exquisite details, “your tits are the thing literally giving you the best days of your fame. Thank god you went to the gym!”
Then she started to laugh as if she was going to bark her lungs out of her body. Absolutely awful. Jayce only rolled his eyes, looking at the stage being prepared for the next episode.
“Where are they?” Caitlyn walked down the stairs, sighing loudly.
“You mean chocolate milk?”
“Disgusting, but, yes.”
“They have a day off. They don’t have a part before 2 pm today,” Vi knocked her boots off her feet, “Jezz, these are awful, should i really wear them?”
Caitlyn only sighed again.
Jinx appeared at 1.38 pm, ran into the studio like a hurricane, Subway sandwich in her mouth, mayonnaise dripping on her worn T-shirt. Probably, she looked the most happy among actors, while her character suffered for the whole world. Her long hair, now dyed blue with extensions to make it longer, was tangled in a messy bun at the top of her head. Ekko followed her with a genuine calm expression, handing her phone like a loving retriever he actually was himself.
“Wait a damn minute,” Vi frowned, smudging the black under her eyes even worse than it was before. The 12th take for the last scene exhausted her like a long training, “you two just had a date? And, my god, you dyed hair just for a series?” she almost yelled.
“Whatever. It’s just hair. And wigs are itchy,” Jinx winced at her like she stared at the most idiotic person in the world. “You look freaky.”
“yeah, and it’s your turn to be a bitchy freak.”
Ekko liked watching her. Jinx was spending not so long with her preparations. The makeup girl usually put some foundation first to hide her blush, then drew purple lightnings on her eyelids with a thin brush, every stroke like a piece of art itself. Her lips with lipstick chaotically smeared on them, bangs styled with a tone of fixator. Hell-long false lashes, fake tattoos… She turned into someone he used to know too well. Much too well. That’s why nobody gave them the full script, they spoiled some scenes last time being too excited with timebomb interactions… Whatever, Netflix cut it anyway.
“Heya,” Jinx dropped next to him, her eyes now different with lenses. He must have been hallucinating, but did her pupils just dilate?
“Yeah?”
“You repeated the text?”
He felt like he never knew it. But Ekko eventually nodded. “Almost. Need a couple of minutes.”
“Just try to not stutter,” she shook her head, braids waving behind her back. Her real braids. Ekko still couldn’t believe that his colleagues (some of them, at least” were that crazy about acting to change their appearance for the role. He was just… born like that. And hairstyle with his dreads weren’t something taking long. Vi came early to have tattoos, Silco with his eye and scars… well, now he had only a cameo, so he appeared at stage usually to meet others (or he just flirted with Vander in his furry costume, who knows?).
“Look!” Jinx slumped on the chair next to Ekko, her eyes, blue now, glimmering with pure excitement. “We have shared scenes!”
“Yeah?”
“Well, I… barely understand. And they change my appearance and all that powdy-cutie-boring thing.” She looked bored. “They said I’m going to wear a dress, and it’s old gang coming back.”
“Don’t call me that,” Silco muttered with a slight frown. They gave him a completely different appearance this time.
“Whoa…”
“If you hadn’t spoiled half of the cliffhangers, you’d have known what’s going on,” Vander teased them.
The idea of Powder and Ekko (or Jinx and Ekko?) being together, being a COUPLE, might blow the internet up. Probably, they’d take over the hashtags in Twitter and Tiktok for weeks. And they kissed. Three times at least, because Jinx couldn’t stop giggling. And her complaints about wig… oh, never ending crap.
It was the end of the week. Working week. Jinx sat on the floor, trying to tie her shoelaces while listening to Victor telling about the mask.
“God, my face sweats like I’m in hell. Why can’t they do it in CGI?”
“Baby, Riots hate CGI since good one is too expensive and bad one isn’t a thing hooking new players into the game easily,” she said.
“Are you so into this?”
“I started playing. But, honestly, i prefer playing NOT Jinx. She’s a tough start.”
“You play?” Ekko asked instead a thing he REALLY wanted to ask. “Can you show me?”
“Oh, kids,” Victor shrugged, “if I could spend my weekend in front of the screen without the feeling my spine is cracking every time I breathe in too deep.”
They could tease each other for hours. It was unlikely for both Jinx or Victor to stop, but eventually nobody wanted to spend their time here unpurposefully.
So, Jinx ran down the steps looking around for her motorbike. “You really wanna try?”
Ekko… wasn’t a fan of that kind of games, but who was he still? Just a weak man.
“Oh, I’d really love to try.”
“Then you’re wearing my helmet.”
Week after week (usually some days in a row if filming wasn’t really exhausting) Ekko spent at Jinx’s. She ordered takeouts, brought him her favourite plush toys and chewed her food annoyingly loudly, but Ekko couldn’t stop himself from listening to any noise she made. She was… adorable, to say the least. She was barely able to brush her hair properly now, so he never refused to lend her a hand. He actually liked it.
Now, she pointed at the screen, her long nail shining in the light of the desklamp. “Here you’d better used smite before you die. But it’s too late.”
“What do you mean?”
“If you want to take objective, try to keep the smite in case someone’s here to steal. Like this Kayn bitch,” Jinx frowned. “Even if you die, you’ll more likely take it. So you won’t die uselessly.”
She wasn’t a very good player. Usually she yelled at her screen and then Ekko turned his laptop off and called her to just… have a chillout.
“I hate them, just go fuck yourself, damn feeder…” Jinx muttered in the cushion, ready to crash something. Rage. Not a thing Ekko couldn’t handle now.
“Hey,” he gently patted her back, “they can be bad as hell, but you’re the real Jinx. C’mon. Losing a game won’t change that.”
Then her eyes peered at him, stirring his insides. “Do you like Jinx or me?”
He felt unease rising in his chest. “I guess, you’re both.”
“Damn, they cut everything!” Jinx said to the interviewer. “It took us days to film that,” she tilted her head, and the word pretty invaded Ekko’s mind like a falling bomb. As if there were something else on his mind…
“But can you tell us what’s behind the scene?”
“Oh… let that die. Maybe they’ll get you some scenes in the bloopers episode, coming soon.”
After that… Ekko never expected paparazzi following them everywhere. They couldn’t leave and it was just a stupid interview, but the crowd seemed to grow bigger any second. He saw panic in Jinx’s eyes, when someone’s hand grasped on her wrist, and his reaction turned to be faster than brain. He tore her body away from people, hiding her behind himself. “Let’s wait for the guards coming a’right?”
Next morning the rumors started.
They ignored them as much as possible, since… nobody ever confirmed it was something. They kissed only on the stage, and all of that romantic stuff died out after the series was released. But the third act came out and the nightmare started, yellow press stamping articles about their romance. Hate comments on Instagram and Twitter, more for Jinx, less for him. One final night she closed her accounts.
I’m sick of that TT 02.52am
wdym? 02.52am
r u k? 02.53am
Jinx never answered in time. Ekko always wondered if she knew how to use her damn phone, so he just… caught a taxi, wearing his pajamas, a stain of toothpaste on his T-shirt too visible for the driver. Did he care?
What if she was crying? Or extremely sad? or… or… or…
The first thing he did — ordered flowers. In case she liked them. He still had no idea (he actually slept in her apartment and???). Then her favourite takeout. Bought a chocolate bar in the supermarket, the sweetest one, and only then went straight to the destination.
Oh, she WASN’T expecting him to come. When Jinx finally opened the door, he could see the print of the pillow on her face.
“Ekko? What the fuck—”
“You ‘kay?” he skipped sounds feeling way too nervous. “I, erm… hungry?” He almost threw the chocolate at her.
“Huh—” she pulled him into the hall and slammed the door. “If you kiss me, I can give you a smile.”
Oh. Well, they definitely must do that. Why the hell people bully them for things that never happened?
Ekko didn’t think twice (and he barely could once) when he caught her long braid and weight it in his palm. Jinx was nothing close to a good temper, so she kissed him first.