Work Text:
I will get you
You will pay, I hope you know
I am a vampire to you, I will sneak up and get you
I'm bad, I'm bad
And I was afraid I would see who I was
You were the child that I once knew
I am a saint, I will haunt you at night
I am the dog that you feed
Won't you feed on me?
I Am A Vampire — Right Away, Great Captain!
As soon as he walks into his room in the home and hideout of the Firelights, Ekko feels her presence. He feels it like an electric charge raising the hairs on his arms. He feels it like a ticking bomb. He feels it like a ghost passing through, creeping at the corner of his eye, filling all his spaces. She could be a vision, a shadow, a dream. More like a nightmare.
But Ekko isn’t like her; he can tell what’s really there and what’s not. Most of the Undercity is haunted, of course, but not like this. He takes a deep breath, then another. There’s no one else around—the night is still, even with the nocturnal heartbeat of the Lanes. The place is a living creature, old and gruff and short of breath, with its people pushing like blood through clogged veins. It does occasionally grow tired of holding up the world above.
Grk. The creak of a floorboard, ripping through the quiet. Her final warning.
He scans the room. It’s a small space with little room to move around. His club is propped in a corner, shadowed by the bed. There’s his advantage; he can get to it in three short strides.
One…
His blood goes cold.
Two…
There, at the end of a long slit of light like a pointing finger—
“BOO!”
Ekko only needs seconds, and it takes him roughly two of them to pin Jinx to the ground with her head between his thighs, shoulders pressed down. Their eyes meet upside-down. She grins at him.
“Missed me, Little Man?”
Ekko drives his knees harder into her shoulders. “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t kill you right now.”
Jinx blows out her cheeks. “Jeez, that’s a tough one,” she muses. “Does ‘Vi would beat you into human chowder’ work?”
“You have ten seconds to explain how you found us and what the hell you’re doing here.”
“Psh. You Firelights aren’t as sneaky as you think, you know. It’s kind of cute how you think you can hide.” He must go pale at that, because she adds, “Don’t worry, big baby. I’m not gonna tell anyone else.”
Anyone else… Something in Ekko’s body must have turned to jelly, because his strength leaves him and he can’t keep her down any longer. Before he can stop her, Jinx hops lightly back onto her feet, making a show of dusting herself off. And then, for the first time since that night on the bridge that feels more like a lingering nightmare than a memory, Ekko gets to look at her; the same wild eyes and dark clothes, hair a shock of blue against the yellow lamplight…
And his stomach plummets to the bottom of his being. Waves crash inside him, his head swimming as he tries to grab onto the facts.
Jinx has found them.
Silco’s prodigy, the apple of his rotten eye, has found the hideout and is standing in front of Ekko, wearing her old grin. After all these years as a safe haven. After they’ve been so careful. So fucking careful. All this blazes through his mind in a split second, and then another realization smashes into him, flooding the room. Jinx…
Jinx is alive.
“Fuck,” Ekko breathes. “It’s really you.”
“Well, if it looks like a poro and walks like a poro and yaps like a poro, it’s probably not a vastaya.” Jinx chuckles at her own joke as if her presence isn’t ripping up the fabric of logic and reason itself.
“You’re…” He blinks; it doesn’t make her go away. She’s not a hazy vision flickering darkly at the edge of his consciousness, not this time. “You know what this means, Jinx.”
“What?” she asks, cocking her head like a lost kitten, and it pisses Ekko off even more that she’s playing dumb because he knows she isn’t.
“I can’t let you go now. If you…” If you go home and blab to Silco, we’re dead. It’ll be the end. “Why are you here? If it’s a fight you want—”
“It’s not,” she says, as if he’s crazy for thinking so. “I wanted to see you. I wanted to talk.”
Which is just about the last thing Ekko expects to hear, maybe after “Let’s settle our differences with a dance-off!” and “I always liked you back, you know.”
“Talk? Are you insane?” He holds up a hand when she opens her mouth. “Don’t answer that.”
“Aw, boo. Can’t even make my own quips anymore.” Jinx smiles at him. That old, lopsided smile of hers, upper lip slanting slightly too far to the right. It’s one of the traits she shares with Vi, like the dusting of freckles across both their noses. She’s grown into her features over the years, but her eyes are still the largest Ekko’s ever seen. Her pigtails brush her ankles, swaying rhythmically as she moves. He feels a childish urge to tug them. They’re crying out for it.
If they were friends, he’d probably ask her why she’d go for a hairstyle like that. He’d probably tease her about how impractical it is, how easily someone could grab and pull it. Then his brain flashes and he remembers—
Two sisters huddled close, the older braiding the younger’s hair. Bruised hands tenderly combing and interlacing locks of blue. Ekko watching from the corner, turning some toy between his hands.
“It’s getting pretty long, Pow-Pow. Sure you don’t want me to trim it?”
“No! I hate scissors. When I grow up, I want to have hair all the way down to the floor and never cut it again.”
“Ha. As long as you don’t expect me to braid it for you.”
He feels sick to his stomach.
Nostalgia is a liar. A drug. Their past together is long gone, blasted to rubble in a blaze of smoke and fire. Rubble that became the building blocks for Silco’s empire, drowning the Lanes in blood and shimmer. The girl who rose from the ashes of Benzo, Vander, Mylo, Claggor, and Vi… she wasn’t the girl Ekko had known.
But his brain has always had a dangerous habit of messing with stuff that refuses to make sense or be understood. It’s no wonder, then, that she was always on his mind. It’s not like he didn’t try to reach her at first, more than once. Back before the Firelights had a name, only a purpose and a handful of people willing to fight for it. Young, stupid Ekko thought he could cross the bombed bridge between them and wrest her from evil’s talons like in the stories. He would say her name—her real name—over and over just to remember it, just to put more of her into the world. Holding it in his mouth because every other part of her had slipped from his grasp. As if he could bring her back somehow.
Then the bodies started piling up and Ekko stopped trying. Eventually you learn you can’t bring people back. She was remade in his image. His little mob princess. His living grenade. And she didn’t want to be rescued.
Drowned things have a way of resurfacing. But they’re never the same again, not with the noxious slime of the Pilt seeping into their core.
Jinx is a broken bone that didn’t heal right.
I had a crush, until…
“Remember how we used to talk?” she asks, wistful.
He does. It cuts him, but he remembers. What, did she think he’d forgotten? “I remember you killing my friends.”
She blows a raspberry. “Only the ones who got in my way.”
Not me, though. “Your way or Silco’s?”
“Does it matter once the pretty fireworks are going off?” Her fingers trace a pattern on the wall like tendrils from her brain. “You guys fight for a common goal. So do we. Well, not right now, obviously—unless you want to pick up that big, scary club of yours over there and have at me again.”
His club. It’s in its corner, the bloody fingerprints of their last meeting still on it. She doesn’t try to go for it, or anything else that could hurt her. Even more shocking: Jinx has been here for several minutes, and nothing’s exploded or been pumped full of bullets yet. Nothing’s smoking or ticking ominously, and her hands are empty. Even the belt loop that usually holds her zap gun hangs loose (he remembers the hiss of that thing like the sound of his own footsteps—all pneumatics, no gunpowder).
Something isn’t right. This is Jinx. She couldn’t even keep herself entertained for long enough to use the bathroom without explosives, much less have the balls to walk into enemy territory unarmed. She must be planning something, but what? He doesn’t know where her limits are anymore…
No—no, that’s Vi. Vi doesn’t know where her sister’s limits are. Vi still doesn’t get it.
Ekko knows Jinx doesn’t have any limits at all.
“Where’s your gun?” he asks her.
“Snoozing at home. Zapper gets tired, you know.”
“What about your bombs?”
“Same. I came here alone.”
“How do I know you didn’t rig this entire fucking place and it’s about to blow so high they’ll feel it up topside?”
“You don’t. But I do.” She pinches her features and tightens her lips, a parody of Silco’s stern mask. “You have my word.”
“Do you have any idea how little that means?”
She rolls her eyes like she used to do whenever he’d say something stupid just to be funny. Back when they could do that sort of thing. “Don’t be such a sourpuss. You look like Mr. Tails when we found him facedown in that gutter with flies in his ears.”
Ekko takes a strained breath through the nose. There’s a lot of things wrong with her brain, but her memory isn’t one of them. “You’d think pet rats would thrive in the Fissures.”
“You’d think.”
He considers her, wonders what her game is. A possibly armed Jinx is somehow a lot more discomforting than a definitely armed Jinx. Unpredictable doesn’t even begin to describe what she’s usually like, but at least a big-ass minigun slung over her shoulder would speak for itself—and she’d be speaking to it, too. If she has any weapons with her now, they’re hidden away, waiting for the word go.
“Let me get this straight, Jinx.” Her name leaves his mouth like a bullet leaves the barrel of a gun. “You expect me to believe you broke into a hideout full of enemies with jack shit to protect you? No nail bombs? Not even a pistol? That’s not the Jinx people talk about in hushed tones around here.”
“Aww, you guys talk about me?” That smile again. She’s so close to him. Her eyes are bluer than he remembered. And when did her voice get that raspy tone, like she’s always just finished screaming in pain?
“You’re avoiding the question,” he tells her, firmly ignoring the old heat that’s beginning to pool back into his stomach the more she looks at him.
Jinx throws her arms up in exasperation, as if she’d brought him a homemade cake and he just threw it on the floor. As if their last meeting didn’t end with her pinned to the ground, blood filling her mouth as his fists smashed her face in. As if she’s here for anything other than to finish what they started on the Bridge of Progress.
“You are so not fun anymore,” she says, hands raised in mock surrender. “Seriously. You can check for yourself, if you’re that scared.”
“I’m not scared of you.” He raises an eyebrow, certain he’s being played. “What do you mean ‘check for myself?’”
Hands splayed open, Jinx steps closer until he can count the freckles on her nose. Her eyes, big and shiny and fucking unfathomable, never leave his. “I mean check for yourself, Boy Savior. Only way to make sure I’m not lying, right?”
Ekko snorts. He doesn’t know what kind of sinister shit she’s up to, but this has to be some kind of trick. She’s been messing with him since she came, and he can tell she’s far from done.
Well, two can play at that game. They always liked their games.
And when he pulls Jinx close and a tiny yelp escapes her, it’s a pretty sweet victory in itself. Ekko holds her by the small of her back, finding her waist nearly slim enough to wrap his hands all the way around. She looks deceptively fragile, like a baby crow caught in his arms. Ekko’s heart squeezes for a beat—and then, slowly and methodically and possibly suicidally, he begins to pat her down.
What the hell are you doing? screams the rational part of him.
Hey, counters the part that just ran out of fucks to give. She offered.
Dread sews itself onto Ekko’s heart, and he steels himself. If she really wants to blow him up, she’s more than willing to go down with him. He knows that, and the certainty of it follows his hands as they search her body for hidden blades, detonators, and bomb-shaped bumps in her clothes. He checks the buckles and straps of her belts—avoiding the spikes, which seem to spell out FUCK OFF—and then the frayed folds of the waistband resting lazily on the swell of her hips.
Jinx stands eerily still, her eyes following his fingers as if calculating where they might go next, what they might find. But all Ekko discovers are the wiry ridges of her torso, how they arch and fan into curves like the swirls of her tattoos. Jinx’s skin is almost translucent, slivers of silver light cutting into her like glass shards. His fingers brush down the sides of her top, trailing fire; she must have a heart in there, because he can feel it beating. He cups her small arms, runs his hands down the length of them; ignores the way his pulse quickens when her fingers playfully tap his. Nothing—her mismatched gloves hide only skin and bones and clever hands.
When he turns her around to check her back, she hiccups a laugh. “Figures. Perv.”
“You told me to check. I’m checking.”
“Hm. Take your time. Get real frisky. Don’t hate all the ways I’ve changed, do ya?”
The absurdity becomes too much for Ekko, and he cracks a smile despite his unease, feeling all of twelve years old. Shit. He doesn’t know what to feel worse about, the fact that she’s right or the fact that it’s Jinx. He likes looking at her. He likes touching her. He wants her to touch him back. And that alone makes him want to leave Scar in charge of the place, smash his hoverboard and go throw himself in Bilgewater Bay. The Firelights deserve a less pathetic leader.
He straightens himself. No. No, this is just a moment of weakness. Jinx is getting in his head, as Jinx does. Her eye catches his over her shoulder, mascaraed lashes bowing; she rolls her shoulders back, arching against him for a brief, dangerous moment. The movement leaves half an inch of space between them. Too much. Not enough.
Ekko takes a breath and crushes his fingers around the leather strap between Jinx’s shoulder blades like it’s her spine. A raspy breath leaps from her throat. He pulls. She straightens.
“I guess I don’t,” he says.
“Tryin’ to keep me in place, are we?” She’s turned her head again, but he can hear the smile in her voice. “No need. I like it when you touch me like this. Your hands are warm.”
Inside Ekko, something stumbles off a cliff and falls to its death.
He’s only 99% sure Jinx is actually unarmed, but it’s the best he’s going to get. “Well, shit.”
“See?”
“Okay. I’m making the decision to believe you. For now.”
“You better, after that little groping session. You’re lucky you grew up so darn cute.” She’s grinning when she turns back to face him, sweetly and full of teeth.
And then Piltover’s most wanted criminal boops Ekko on the goddamn nose.
A smudge of his face paint catches on her fingertip; she rubs it off on his tricep, tracing a white line with the needle-like gaze of a tattoo artist. “It’s more fun when they fight back, anyway. And I know you wouldn’t. Not after last time.”
Last time. The bridge. The blood. The bomb. He didn’t find any knives on her, so how is she cutting him up like this? Jinx’s hand drifts across Ekko’s torso, sliding under the fabric of his tank top. Her cold fingers play over his heart as if preparing to squeeze it.
Suddenly he needs to talk to her, really talk to her.
“You didn’t kill me,” he says softly.
“Nah.”
“I could have killed you.”
“You sure gave it the old college try.” She chuckles. “Gotta hand it to you, Little Man. I mean, who the fuck brings a stick to a gunfight?”
“You keep doing this. You keep holding back. You could have pumped me full of holes on the airship on Progress Day. But you held your fire, saved it for the others.” For Eve. Behind closed lips, Ekko grits his teeth. “Or you could have just ratted me out to Silco years ago—you’ve always known it was me behind the mask. But you never did. Because you don’t want me dead. Not then, not now. Isn’t that right, Jinx?”
There’s a pause before she speaks. “Someone’s confident.”
“With you? Always.”
A smirk. “Guess I’m predictable.”
He snorts. “If only.”
“You did miss me,” she says, cracking him in two. Her hand burns through his chest. “Didn’t you?”
Ekko wants to scream the answer. He wants to let the whole world know the truth of it, because she’s right. Of course she is. He missed her so much it feels like half his heart was carved out the day Silco took her and Ekko’s been fighting to breathe ever since. They were best friends. But what does she care? The smiling girl in front of him is a living, breathing reminder of what he lost. What they all lost.
“I miss my friend,” Ekko replies. “I miss Powder. And she’s not around anymore.”
The corner of Jinx’s mouth twitches. “Oh, but she is.” Her voice is drawlingly sweet, like she’s speaking through a mouthful of syrup. She pats her belly, right next to the blue clouds etched into her skin. “In here. I ate her.”
Jinx’s laugh could have made the full Council of Pilties piss their pants in unison. Still cackling, she saunters away from Ekko, arms swinging like a cat batting at the air.
“I used to believe that,” he says to her back. “I kept telling myself the friend I had was gone forever. I was pretty fucking adamant. Until I saw your eyes that night on the bridge.”
Jinx stops, braids swaying like twin pendulums behind her.
“I knew those eyes. That’s why I froze up. You felt it too, I know it.” Ekko pauses, the memory of what she did next threatening to cloud his mind and turn everything black. He takes a breath. “Powder’s not around, but I don’t believe she’s gone forever. Not anymore.”
Like lightning, Jinx whips around with a groan. “Ugh, shut up already!” she roars, waving her arms wildly about her head. “Powder this, Jinx that! Why is that all anyone cares about? So I changed. Big fucking deal. That’s what people do. It’s not like I exploded and came back as someone else.”
But you did come back, Ekko thinks. You did it twice, because I saw you die that night on the bridge and now you’re here and there’s no other explanation.
But he doesn’t say any of that. He just looks at her, cracks a smile and says, “You look so much like Vi when you’re pissed.”
A beat.
Jinx’s laugh cuts through the silence, choked and joyless. “You’ve changed, too, you know.”
“I know.”
“You’re not so chickenshit anymore.”
He rolls his eyes. “I was never chickenshit.”
“And I was never that sweet, pure little girl everyone seems to want back. Even if I were, how do you backtrack on life? Got a gadget for that, Boy Savior?”
Ekko’s heart whirrs like a clock in his chest.
This time, the smile is in Jinx’s eyes. Her mouth flutes into a pout. “I’d like to see you go back to being the innocent kid you were before you watched Benzo get torn to bloody bits in front of you.”
The air stills.
And Ekko doesn’t know where the courage comes from, but it fills him like a swig of hard booze and he finally grabs Jinx by the goddamn pigtails. He pulls her to him, a little less gently than he probably meant to; when her chest collides with his ribs, electricity zips through his bones until he can taste it.
“I’ll ask you one more time, Jinx. Why are you here?” Gliding slowly down one braid, Ekko’s fingers stop just before reaching her breast. The braid, of course, doesn’t. “Just to fuck with me? Or do you want a rematch after all?”
Jinx stares at him, unblinking. “What, I can’t reminisce with my old bestie now?”
“About the worst day of our lives?”
“About us.” She touches a calloused hand to his cheek as her eyes wander off, staring wistfully at nothing. “About me and my very best friend, Ekko. Ekko was such a cool guy. Bit of a dork, but so was I. Maybe that’s why he was so fun to play with when the big kids were being annoying or Vi was off doing something and I couldn’t come. Ekko was never too busy for little old me. He was always way into it when I showed him something I’d been tinkering with, even if it was stupid and didn’t work. He even held my hand when I ran into Benzo’s crying the first time Mylo called me a… well, you know.” Jinx bites her lip, an ancient habit of hers that makes Ekko’s heart rattle in its cage. Their faces are so close. “But I don’t think Ekko likes me anymore. Welp, what are you gonna do?”
Images tear their way through Ekko’s mind, choking it with childhood memories that feel more like hazy dreams. Shared beds and shared firsts. Broken bones and baby teeth. They came loose at the same time. Our gums were swollen for a damn week after Vi treated us to her genius string-and-doorknob solution, do you remember that, Powder?
The bump of her knee against his under the table at Jericho’s, wetting his palms and igniting his heart. Everything feels so much bigger when you’re a kid.
“You know what the thing about you is, Jinx?” Ekko says after what feels like a small eternity. A hard lump is forming in his throat that he hasn’t felt since the last time he tried to make her see sense. Before he gave up on her and put Powder on the mural. “You could have done so much good. For the Lanes. For our people. You know that? You ever think about that, or did he fuck you up so bad you can’t think for yourself anymore?”
Jinx’s eyes flash like a predator’s in the night. “Good, huh? What, like you?” She taps her chin as if pondering a philosophical quandary. “You know what the thing about you is, Ekko? You only get to be all goody-goody because you’ve never had to make any tough decisions. Not really. And you know why? Because you don’t have any real power. You have your ragtag gang and your funny little gizmos and your non-lethalness, and that’s cute and all. But if bigger fish ever swam your way…” She waves her arm softly toward him before closing her fist an inch from his nose. “… you might just have to do some not-so-good things to fry ‘em.”
Ekko feels like he’s been drained of blood. “Is that what Daddy taught you?”
“That’s what life taught me.”
“So you’re here to impart life lessons on me now?”
“I’ve already told you a bajillion times I came to talk,” Jinx says. “Getting your hands on my tits was a nice bonus, though.” She chuckles as her fingernails scrape his jaw, one by one, pink by blue. “Oh, my old man would have had your throat ripped out for that.”
He knows taunting her is dangerous. Deadly, even. One wrong move could set her off like a missile. Still, Ekko scoffs. “Which one? I’m kind of losing count.”
And that’s when Jinx wrenches him down by the scarf and sinks her teeth into his neck, hard enough to make him gasp. She sucks the bruise into her mouth as if trying to draw blood; Ekko stumbles forward, caging her against the wall.
“I could do it, too.” A vicious grin forms against his ear. Jinx clutches his scarf like a tightened noose. “Wanna see?”
Ekko can only groan wordlessly against her, the tang of her bite still stinging. After that, it’s no trouble for her to wrestle him to the ground and get on top of him, her knees stabbing into his sides. The floor is cold against Ekko’s back, like ice threatening to crack and send them crashing into freezing water together, limbs tangled.
It all happens rather quickly, then. The fight.
He pushes his hips hard against hers, breaking her mount and eliciting a groan from her throat. She slips to the side in a blur; her hand clamps one of his wrists like a shark’s jaws, nails biting at the pulse point, and pulls him to her. The other makes for his neck, but only gets as far as his chest before Ekko kicks out her knee and sends her rolling onto her back with a yelp, and then he’s on top of her and the scene is achingly familiar.
Jinx’s breathing is strained, and Ekko realizes his hand is wrapped around her windpipe. Even then, she manages a smile.
“We done already?” she croaks, eyes flashing. “This is where it ends, right?”
Ekko scoffs. “You could never fight with your fists.”
“Nah. The fat hands gene skipped a sister.”
“Yeah. I get it now. You’re nothing without your gadgets and gimmicks.” He swallows back spit. “You’re just a little girl.”
“And you’re just a little boy.” He can feel the column of her throat stirring as she speaks, like a trapped animal trying to wriggle free. “I can see it in those pretty eyes of yours. Under that freaky-deaky mask, there’s a scared little boy. Not so tough after all, are ya?”
Jinx’s voice breaks, and it breaks Ekko’s grip. His hand finds her cheek instead. He can’t. He can’t.
“I miss playing with you,” she whispers through a smile. Her voice is a razorblade.
“Isn’t that what we’re doing now?”
“Why, are you going to let me win?”
“No way in hell.”
“See, Little Man? Not everything’s changed.” She gazes up at him. “Kind of like how you still want to kiss me so bad, you look stupid.”
They had staring contests sometimes as kids. They would sit across from each other, eyes locked in unblinking combat, until one of them made a face or a stupid noise and they’d collapse into laughter. Just another silly game they’d play when the world sucked and they were bored.
Now, as Jinx’s eyes burrow into Ekko’s, there’s no threat of laughter. There’s nothing to laugh about at all, because she’s right. Nothing’s changed in that regard.
“Is that a challenge?” he asks. For a guy who hasn’t been breathing for the last couple of minutes, it’s pretty coherent.
“Depends.” Jinx props herself up on her elbows and slithers back, sliding out from under him. “Are you up for one?”
Silence stretches like a slingshot as they both rise to their feet, eyes still locked. Jinx slowly backs herself against the wall, looking equally likely to kill him or kiss him if he comes closer.
Motherfucker.
It’s not like there’s a friendship to ruin. Not like when Ekko was twelve and having vulnerable, terrifying thoughts about confessing to her and looking like an idiot. What is left to ruin between them? What do they still have that isn’t buried in ash and rubble and corpses?
(Well, there’s the way she’s looking at him now. That’s real. That’s not a memory.)
Ekko’s always been good at figuring things out. Cracking the world’s codes, working out how stuff is wired together and coming up with solutions—it’s kind of his thing. But the one thing he can’t figure out, the one problem he can’t solve, is Jinx and how to stop wanting her. After everything she’s done, he’s starting to think he never will.
Guilt chews at him like a rat.
What’s wrong with you? a voice in his head roars. Don’t kiss her, moron. She killed Eve. She’d blow us all up if she had the chance. Don’t. Kiss. Her.
Don’t…
“What’s the matter, Little Man?” Jinx whispers. “Not down for a challenge all of a sudden? Or d’you just not want to mess up your makeu—“
But Ekko doesn’t let her finish the question, and when they kiss, it’s fucking explosive.
Her lips undo him the second they crush against his, hard and hot and all-consuming. There’s no easing into it, no hesitation, just the slam of his enemy’s back against the wall. Their hips lock together like the cocking of a gun. Her arms wrap tight around his neck while his hands grip her waist; flames lick his insides with every swipe of her tongue against his.
Time becomes a haze, a mere suggestion, and Ekko’s heart beats like it’s drumming for an army. He can’t think. Won’t think. For the first time in a long time, all he wants to do is feel. Suddenly he’s a kid high on a puppy crush again. But this kiss is nothing like he could have imagined as a kid—hell, he didn’t have the imagination to picture it until this moment. They kiss like a magnet kisses metal, like gravity kisses the earth. It’s brutal and addicting and completely wrong for a million reasons—but just as Ekko is about to break away and start the list, Jinx’s fingers dip down his tank top and scratch their way up his spine and holy shit, she’s got him. His brain has officially short circuited. He could lose half his brain cells and a lifetime’s worth of memories to the way her body presses against his, and he wouldn’t mind. Maybe it would erase the bad parts, the long, black shadow of everything he’s built in the last seven years. Cut off the sick limb by its root. Ekko wants the pain scratched out of him. Wants to scratch the Jinx out of Powder.
He wants to forget. And her kiss is sending him into oblivion.
There’s a rage to it, dark and wild and full of teeth. Ekko doesn’t know where to put his hands except everywhere at once; he feels her nails mark his skin with crescent moons in return. They part just long enough for Jinx to tug off his scarf, uncovering the mark she left—a flesh wound to add to the hundreds she’s put on his heart. Then, almost too fast to register, she dips her head to his neck and lets her tongue soothe the bruise. Her hands slide under his clothes again, to where his heart is racing and his vitals are screaming, and Ekko wants to hold her to him, hold her here forever so she can never hurt anyone else again. So she only gets to hurt him. He can take it.
He can hurt her back.
He can drag his lips to her neck too, chase her pulse like a predator chases its prey. He can hold Jinx against the wall and stroke his way up her body to cup the sides of her breasts. And when he bites down on her lower lip, he can’t decide what feels sweeter, revenge or the moan that springs from her throat. Her teeth drag hard against his tongue in retaliation, and it’s impossible to tell who breaks through skin first; blood wells between them, its metallic taste blooming on Ekko’s tongue. His chin is slick with it, with her. The flavors mingle in his mouth. He presses harder against her, disgusted by himself and his weakness. He wasn’t ever this close to her, not even when he was trying to kill her.
Jinx draws back first, just enough to not be kissing him. Ekko’s face paint is smeared across her nose and cheeks, and blood trickles from her bruised lips like ink. Her eyes are deep and dusky, pupils dilating like a lunar eclipse under each lid. He cards his fingers through her bangs. If she’s a mess, he must look even worse—fucked up, kiss-drunk and delirious.
That’s it. There’s no coming back from that. It’s too late now. Or maybe, if he’s being honest, it was already too late when Jinx showed up in his room, alive and breathing and apparently not trying to kill him. Even though she knew he would have to kill her for it. As far as peace gestures go, it’s pretty fucked up. But no one’s died yet, except maybe Ekko’s pride. His throat feels thick, his diaphragm squeezed tight, and he’s starting to understand why they call it a crush.
“Ekko,” Jinx whispers and sinks into his chest.
And then they’re standing there with their arms around each other like that’s logical. Ekko didn’t notice until now, but all the tension he’s been carrying for the last—how long since she showed up? An hour? A day? Seven years?—has melted away. It must be the first time in history, he thinks, that someone has felt less tense with Jinx in the room. With Jinx this close.
There are no more rational thoughts left in him, only a screaming need to comfort her.
He says her name. He says it again. “Powder.” And she hugs him tighter.
The air morphs; the light bends, as light does. Ekko doesn’t know what to do. She feels so light and intangible in his arms, as if she might slip away from the world at any moment and he has to be ready to pull her back down. He can’t let her slip away. He won’t. But why? Just because she’ll run to Silco? Or because of something else? Something that shattered between them all those years ago, and now—now they’re walking barefoot on the shards of it, crunching the sharpened bits between their toes and ignoring the bleeding. Jinx helped make the Lanes bleed, constantly reopening the raw wound they grew up in. What’s another gash to her?
Ekko’s blood coats her tongue; hers stains his teeth. He wants to kiss her again and again, wants to taste more of her. He wants to fall on the bed and line his torso up to hers and let her press into him until he can feel every little part of her. He wants and wants and fucking wants, even though he shouldn’t. He should end this once and for all, but…
Tears pool in her eyes, and—shit—his, too.
Blood.
Water.
Him. Her.
Powder.
Jinx.
Time shifts, and Ekko sees that Jinx’s tears run purple.
Shiny, shimmering purple.
Her eyes squeeze shut, then flash open again; the stuff trickles out of her, welling in her irises and filling them up like pools. Like vials. He thumbs at her cheeks, but there’s no stopping it. Purple tears ooze down her face and neck in rivulets, branching like the veins of a tree struck by lightning.
“Powder?” The blood in his mouth warms when he says it.
Her eyes plead with him. They’re too bright, too piercing. There’s so much pain in them it’s hard to look, and he wants to fix it so bad he might just break into pieces. Things were so much easier before that night on the bridge, before Powder came back to haunt Jinx’s eyes. Now Ekko doesn’t know what to believe. How could Vi stand to do this for so long? Believing in her, refusing to accept that she was gone?
It hurts to hope. And he doesn’t think he can stomach any more hurt.
“Ekko,” Jinx whispers once more, through those wet, crooked lips. It’s like she’s calling him from far away. Her eyes flash purple, then blue, then purple again. Inside him, something starts ticking.
Ekko leans in to kiss her. The next time he opens his eyes, he’s alone.
☀︎ ☀︎ ☀︎
Reality sets in, suffusing the room like a burst of cold air. For a brief, disoriented moment, Ekko thinks he’s been drugged—until his hand clamps around the rough material of his sheets, feeling the familiar shape of his own bed.
The air is still and suffocatingly warm. The sticky sheen of sweat covering his skin doesn’t help. Turning to his side like a door on its hinges, Ekko takes a few moments to get his bearings and gather his scattered thoughts.
Of course. How could he be so stupid? He touches a hand to the side of his neck, expecting to wince, but finds it smooth and unbruised. The shadow of Jinx haunts the room, the ghost of her lips lingering on his.
But Jinx was never here.
Ekko should feel thankful for that. He should flop back on the bed in relief, thanking every god there is that none of it was real. But the dream has left his head so scrambled that he can’t think rationally, and so he doesn’t. He just lays there, heart gasping in his chest.
Powder is dead. So is Jinx. He lost his friend for the second time on that bridge, her own explosion tearing through Piltover’s sky and her flesh.
Now, pulling the covers over himself and ignoring the damp patch on his pillow, Ekko lets go of the dream and loses her again.