Chapter Text
Jinx was late.
She was so late, and Vi was going to kill her.
Really, it wasn’t her fault.
Heimerdinger was impossibly stuck up about wrapping up all her work before clocking out — “new hires must always leave good impressions. Even if they’ve graduated top of their class…” — and she’d underestimated her workload for the day, drawing her towards half an hour of overtime.
Then she’d missed her first bus and only narrowly caught the trolley — the goddamn trolley, which scampered down each webbed, narrow street like honey falling from a spoon; slow, incessant. Jinx considered that maybe it’d be faster to just run — but then she also considered how little she cared to go where she was going, and she let the trolley be for what it was.
Tucked against her pocket, Jinx could feel the constant buzz of her phone. She didn’t have to make any wild guesses as to who it was. Five missed calls, way more texts, too.
Vi, 29m ago: we just got here :) lmk when you’re nearby
Vi, 25m ago: we’re seated by the window btw
Vi, 17m ago: everything okay?
Vi, 13m ago: powder?? hellloooo??
Vi, 9m ago: ok where the hell are u im getting freaked out
Vi, 9m ago: at least tell me if ur late
Vi, 7m: please, Cait is tweaking right now cause the waiters keep asking when our third is supposed to show
Vi, 2m: powder r u serious
Shit. Jinx prodded at the cracked screen of her phone — the glass was so shattered she could barely even hit the a’s or the s’s without them doubling.
aaalmosst there. got on trolley. 5 mins tops.
Five minutes was generous — it’d probably be ten and Vi knew her well enough to get it.
Eventually, the cable car stuttered to a stop. Jinx shoved herself off and onto the sidewalk, nearly striking herself against a streetlamp in the process. It was already dark out, despite it barely being six o’clock, and though it was colder than usual, the streets were littered with people — families out walking their dogs, students making their way to bars after class. And Jinx — Jinx heading to a fancy dinner for some off-handed family reunion.
She’d seen Vi last month — saw Vi often. But not with her girl, not at these kinds of places. Usually, they’d meet at Vi’s work — the sandwich shop she co-owned with her high school friend, Jayce, by Golden Gate Park. Sometimes Vi would swing by her and Ekko’s place, too. Rarely — very rarely — would Jinx find herself at Vi and Cait’s house. When she did, it was typically when Cait was at work.
But Vi had insisted for this; said it was for something special. Maybe Cait got a nice big raise at her law firm, Jinx figured, and wanted to rub it in over a bottle of wine priced at a quarter of Jinx’s rent.
The walk to the restaurant — something called Lucia’s or Lucio’s or Luca’s or whatever generic Italian name it was — was quick and windy. The place was tucked away in some homey Pacific Heights borough, and at this time of year, doors and windows and fences were either decked out with rotting, leftover Halloween pumpkins or early Christmas lights. The first week of November always made for that awkward mesh of both. But Jinx liked it — liked the chaos in the sparkling whites and the deep, brown oranges. It made her want to paint — to pick up a brush and slab all the colours together.
She turned a narrow corner. Jinx halted at the sign that hung across the street; a slab of thick wood — Lucilla’s. Huh. She’d been close.
Outside, it was cold enough for the window’s glass to crystallize, but even through its haze could she make out Vi’s deep red side-sweep, the coiled tattooed sleeve on her right arm. From next to her, she could even see Vi’s girl.
Vi was burly — a bolder that often blocked. But Caitlyn was long — willowy where Vi was firm, tall where Vi was hunched. And from above Vi’s lowered head, Jinx caught that pinched ponytail, those taut brows.
Jinx frowned at the sight of her, even from a distance. It was just one night. One dinner. They hardly ever did this. She probably wouldn’t even have to see Cait ‘til Christmas, given Vi planned on working Thanksgiving.
She took a breath before crossing the street and heaving open that heavy oak door.
The whole place was drenched in dim, blooming orange — like the wick of a candle scorched beneath the floor and bled its light through the hardwood. It smelled like fire, too — a wood-burning oven was nestled across the room in a corner, crowded with cooks.
Waiters in silk vests shucked past her holding trays of glossy plates — pizzas topped with goat cheese and Italian sausage; fettuccine drenched in cream and pepper; fresh bread that steamed from their woven baskets.
People were peppered everywhere, cloaked in the orange. Rich-looking people — well-dressed people — people who looked like they belonged here.
Jinx shot a look down at herself. Her jean jacket wasn’t old, exactly — worn, maybe, was a better word for it. Her boots were pointed at the ends, but their leather was tearing off like loose skin.
She would’ve worn her lab shirt if Vi hadn’t pressed her not to — begged her to dress up, just for this once. Jinx didn’t get the trouble — Vi cared less for what she wore than Jinx did. They’d spent their teenage years thrifting tattered things, coloured things — stealing sported sweaters from Vander’s closet to swap and layer up.
But this was her doing, of course. Cait’s. Vi just loved her enough to follow along.
So, she’d tried; tried for Vi, and no one else. Found some mauve, velvet top from when her and Ekko would club-hop in college.
Still, she didn’t hold a candle to anyone else in the room. Her hair was mostly what did it, Jinx figured — long and braided into two blue parts. It was the way she’d had it since she was fourteen, when she’d first dyed it, and for no one — no place — would that change. Even under the melty, sunset lights, her hair shattered through all illusions of attempted assimilation.
Jinx huffed. Of all restaurants in San Francisco — all diners and sushi bars and café’s — Cait had to settle on the kind that reminded Jinx of their differences.
And by extension, a reminder of who Caitlyn was. A reminder of why Jinx just couldn’t like her. Couldn’t get what Vi seemed to get.
The hostess — some pretty, well-kept blonde — was eyeing Jinx like she was lost.
“Table for…one?”
Jinx frowned. If only. “Try three, tuts.”
She shrugged past the hostess, who shot her a muddled look as their shoulders brushed, and filtered her way through narrow-set tables towards her sister.
When Vi caught sight of her, the look on her face seemed to melt.
“Powder!”
Vi shot up in place, the chair wobbling up with her — she’d almost stirred the whole table. Cait shot her a bewildered look, but Vi didn’t mind it. She snuck past Cait, stumbling out to throw her arms around Jinx’s shoulders.
“Hey, you!”
For that minute, with her head tucked in the crook of Vi’s neck, she forgot where they stood — forgot the people, forgot Cait, forgot the food. For that minute, it was just the two of them — Vi and Powder; Powder and Vi — the way it had been for so long.
Until it hadn’t — (her fault; her own fault) — then, had again.
She didn’t dwell on it — jerked the voice back. Not now.
Vi pulled away enough to look at her. She kept a hand at the back of her head, fingers warm.
“Was gonna blast you for being late, but —”
Behind her, a throat cleared itself. Jinx shot a look across Vi’s shoulder to where Cait was standing now, too. She was wearing a sleeveless turtleneck, and her ponytail was so sleek and dark it almost looked navy against the milkiness of her bare shoulder.
“Powder.” There was that stupid accent. She tried to joke. “Thought you’d bailed on us.”
She shot her a glare. “Jinx,” she corrected.
Only Vi and Ekko could call her Powder—only Vi and Ekko knew who she was in her childhood; before Vi went to juvie, before the group home.
Everyone else called her Jinx. It was the nickname she’d gone by since her first group home—since Vi left—and it stuck. Jinx and Cait had only met a handful of times before, but it was enough for Cait to know her preferred name.
“Sorry.” She didn’t sound very sorry. “I’m just so used to Vi calling you Powder, I thought…”
Cait pursed her lips and settled for sitting back down, like she’d been wrong for standing at all. She reached for the glass of wine at her side. It was already half-empty, stained by red wine. “Never mind.”
Vi pulled back and helped her with her bag, slotting it onto the chair across from herself so that she’d have to sit facing Caitlyn. Of course — Vi was insistent on their need to get along.
“Work was busy, I’m betting?” Vi reached for her own glass — just water.
“Sort of.” Jinx shrugged. “Mostly just my boss being nitpicky.”
She’d been a research assistant at Zaun Tech for nearly three months now, and while Heimerdinger was rather particular, he was still a whole lot better than any other boss she’d ever had.
Cait tugged at the stem of her glass, and the string of diamonds on her bracelet chimed against the rim. She flashed Jinx a smile that looked like it’d been forced out from some deep, deep place inside.
“And the boyfriend — he’s working, then?”
Jinx shucked her jacket off, dropping it down against the seat rest before sitting down. Was this Cait’s way of making a joke?
“The who?”
“Uh.” Vi flashed Jinx a half-apologetic look. “She means Ekko.”
Cait glanced between Jinx and Vi — her brows twisted in the way they did when she was trying to draw something together. “Is he not…. Are you two not…?”
“We’re just roommates.”
And best friends. They’d known each other as kids, then stopped knowing each other for a while, then fell back together again in college.
She hadn’t even known they’d both enrolled to the same school — they just both happened to take Intro to Psychology as a first term elective. She nearly didn’t recognize him at first, but once he’d raised his hand to speak, she’d known. That soft-spoken tone — the shiny demeanor. He hadn’t changed.
(Not like her — she’d changed. Unrecognizably so.)
“Oh,” Cait droned. “I thought — I mean, he’s usually with you, whenever we see each other.”
That was true, and Jinx’s doing. She’d beg Ekko to come to any event Caitlyn would be at — every party, every birthday, every dinner. She’d pry at his arm and latch there.
“Please,” she’d whine. “I can’t take her alone. I’d blow myself up. You’d have to clean my pieces up from the floor.”
And always Ekko would fake his annoyance. Huff ‘til she asked twice — three times —— before acting like his “yes” was burdening him in every way. But she knew he liked coming, liked the way Jinx would mock Cait on the ride home, in the days to come. She’d mime her accent and let Ekko mime it too — they’d bounce off each other.
But there was no one to bounce off now — no one to poke at when Cait said something self-indulgent; something obliviously shallow. She’d just have to fill him in on it later.
“Not tonight.” Jinx reached for a warm bun from the basket at the middle of the table. She tore it open, and steam heaved from its insides. “He’s got a double.”
He’d tried to change his shift, but no one wanted to trade their Friday night off.
“I see.” Cait reached for another drop of wine. Jinx caught the way she was eyeing her for breaking a piece of bread with her hands and dipping it into a slab of butter.
They were saved from awkward silence, thankfully, when a waiter stumbled over and asked if they wanted any appetizers. Cait and Vi settled on sharing a caprese salad while Jinx opted for a bowl of fried calamari.
While they waited, the small talk between them mostly consisted of Cait’s potential business trip to New York and Vi’s plans to expand the sandwich shop — something about more kinds of meals — but Jinx lost interest when their waiter sauntered over with their food.
Jinx was squeezing a lemon slice across her plate when she noticed the way Cait nudged Vi’s shoulder. Vi caught her glance and nodded, reaching down to squeeze at Cait’s hand — the left one that was hidden beneath the table.
“Powder,” Vi started, “we, uh — we asked you to come for dinner with us because we wanted to tell you something. Something important.”
Jinx jabbed at a piece of fish with her fork, dunking into the bowl of marinara. She shot Vi a curious look. “Okay?”
Cait was still clutching at the stem of that wine glass like it held a lifeline, and Jinx was lost to how it hadn’t yet crushed beneath her fist. She looked nervous — Cait often did. Often, she was tense, and tight — like a stick was up her ass, she’d told Ekko once. But this was different. This was genuine anxiety.
Huh. Maybe she was going back home to London — to whatever hole in England her and her family had crawled out of before moving to California.
Maybe now, Vi would stop dragging her to places like this, and could move into her corner of San Francisco — could feel like her sister again, and not someone who was stolen from her twice-over. The first time at twelve, by the law. The second at twenty-one, by Caitlyn — who, really, was just another extension of the law.
Her hope hardly had time to settle — she’d barely wished Caitlyn her goodbyes before Vi’s mouth split into a broadened grin.
“Cait and I ” — she broke off to laugh; that true candid kind of laughter — “We’re engaged!”
Jinx’s fork fell from her grip. It collided with her dish in a resounding clang that echoed through the whole of the restaurant. Marinara sauce splattered, dotting at the velvet of her shirt.
What.
“Engaged?” Jinx blanked. “But…It’s only been like…”
“Three years,” Cait commended. She moved her left hand out from where it had been sitting on her lap, tucked under the table. On her finger, an emerald-cut diamond gleamed. A smile met her mouth; the most earnest one she’d had all evening. “Give or take.”
“But you’re so —” Jinx felt like she was floundering. “You’re so young.”
She looked right at Vi when she said it, who stifled a laugh.
“We’re 27, Pow-Pow. We live together, we love our jobs. This just… This felt like the natural progression of things.”
God, it all made sense now. The restaurant, the dress code, Cait and Vi’s poorly masked anxieties.
Vi was looking at her with widened, hopeful eyes — like her response was to determine everything. God, she hated that. Hated that Vi looked at her like she needed her to be good — needed her to react accordingly.
Because where was the good?
Cait was nothing like them — had grown up knowing no inkling of struggle, in a nice big home with two nice, kind parents. She’d gotten scholarships — gotten praise — gotten luxury and friends and safety.
And now, she got Vi, too.
Vi, who knew nothing if not what it meant to struggle, to know injustice. Vi, who used to cuss out teachers and principals and cops. Vi, who’d taken the blame for Powder’s mistakes one too many times.
Jinx just couldn’t get it — didn’t get how it worked between them. But she caught their shared glances. Saw the way they looked at each other, huddled close at parties, when they thought no one else was looking — the love there was real; tangible.
Vi was happy. Jinx couldn’t get why, but she was. And Jinx hated how badly she wished she wasn’t. Not with Caitlyn.
Vi was still looking at her now, blue eyes shiny under the flame-like restaurant. She was still waiting for an answer. Jinx hadn’t realized how nice she looked ‘til now — the open-button blouse, the shiny gold band on her finger.
She looked like she belonged. And Jinx was struck, suddenly, at the realization that she was the only one left here who didn’t.
Jinx loved her sister. But she couldn’t love this.
“Oh, wow,” was all Jinx managed. She plucked her fork back up and shoved another piece of fish into her mouth. “That sex must be real good, huh?”
--
Ekko was early.
That wasn’t uncommon — he’d always been too anxious about time — too worried that there’d never be enough of it, that it slipped past him, through him, a brook that leaked into never-ending succession.
He liked to feel ahead, like time was a race he could beat. He’d ran marathons since high school and felt like maybe this was some kind of extension of that.
He still had a solid five minutes left of his break, but after eating his dinner — some cheap burrito he’d bought from the cafeteria — there wasn’t anything else left to do. He tossed the balled-up aluminum foil into the garbage, washed his hands, and made his way towards the fifth floor — paediatrics.
He’d worked as an ER nurse right after grad, before they eventually transferred him over to paediatrics a few months back. He wasn’t sure which he preferred — parents were hard to deal with, most times, but the ER was a realm of chaos in its own way.
At this time of night though, paediatrics was quiet enough — most kids were too busy being fussed over by their parents, lulled into sleep — and Ekko had already done his med rounds before eight o’clock.
That left him with potential urgent calls and boring chores — paperwork and filing crap — the kind of thing that made him wish someone had swapped his Friday for their Monday.
He could’ve been tucked in the corner of a restaurant with Jinx right now, flicking at her thigh every time Cait — Vi’s girlfriend — said the kind of thing that made her sound like she’d been born on another planet.
She hadn’t replied to any of his good luck texts, which caused for some concern. Maybe it was going well… or terrible. He’d only know later.
The elevator chimed to announce its opening, and immediately Claggor waved him down from where he leaned against the reception counter.
"Ekko, hey!” He shot him a smile, eyeing him above his horn-rimmed glasses. “We got a new patient in from the ER for you to add to your rounds tonight. Room 117 — broken arm and a minor concussion. Dr. Medarda should be in to see her soon.”
Ekko shot him a thumbs up, readjusting the stethoscope that hung from the back of his neck. “Sounds good, I’ll check it out.”
“Oh, and be careful,” Claggor reached out to hand him the patient’s file. “I’ve been warned by ER that she bites.”
Ekko shrugged. He dealt with lots of different kinds of kids — mean, shy, emotional, recluse — and all they really wanted was the same thing: to feel better. And so he tried his best to guarantee that.
Knocking on the door of room 117, Ekko prodded his head in before fulling entering.
“Hi.”
The girl was small — couldn’t be any older than eight — with a thin, hospital blanket hauled up around her. Her left arm was wrapped up in a cast, and she was holding it at her chest with her right one, like it might fall off her shoulder if she didn’t.
Under the white, sterile lights of the hospital, her skin glowed paler than it should — as if draped by the thinnest layer of snow — and her short hair stuck up in wild, choppy tufts of brown. Her eyes — big and gold and bug-like — hardened at the sight of Ekko in the doorway.
She hauled her own arm closer, cradling. He opened her file.
“You must be Isha.” Ekko moved forward, lingering by the very corner of her bed.
“My name is Ekko. I’ll be your nurse for the next couple of hours. You just gotta press this little button here” — he pointed at the switch on her bedside railing — “if you need me, okay?”
The girl — Isha — blinked at him, unmoving. Right. A quiet one, then.
He looked back into her file, tossing through the papers.
Isha’s eyes narrowed — like she was ready to pounce — to run, if she had to. Her file said she’d tried to back in the ER, when the nurses wanted to get a closer look at her arm.
“Where’re your parents?” Still, she said nothing. Her stare was weary — blank. Her papers said she didn’t speak, but Ekko wondered if she was just too scared to. The nurses in the ER weren’t always the kindest.
Then his eyes narrowed when he saw it, scribbled in scrawny ink on the sheet: Foster-Care.
Shit. His head snapped up to look at her — the weary way she held herself, the frayed look in her eyes. Most kids he dealt with were handled by their parents — not always willingly — but whether they were careless or overbearing, they still had them.
For a second — just a second — he felt small again; remembered the way Benzo’s house felt when he first got there. It smelled different — like hard-candies and some kind of metal. But it was safe — safer than the group homes, than the other places he’d been.
He suddenly felt guilty for having even asked. He should’ve read Isha’s file first. He remembered how badly he hated when people just assumed.
Ekko swallowed the lump at his throat and settled on saying something else, something safer. “You’re seven, yeah?”
Isha said nothing, still. She watched the way he moved, her owl eyes wide and careful.
“I remember being seven — Broke a few bones, too.” He reached over from the sink to get her a glass of water, slotting it by her bedside table and recoiling quickly at the way Isha barred her teeth, like slotting a finger towards the trigger of a gun.
She softened once he backed off, and Ekko clenched his brows. He motioned for her arm. “How’d it happen?”
Isha eyed him guardedly, fearless. Then slowly, after a handful of seconds, she made a tumbling motion with her good hand, flopping it onto her lap with a thud. It was the most she’d managed to imply all night.
“You fell?”
She nodded sluggishly, hair tumbling to her face as she did. She reached for the water he offered — looking down into it, then back up at Ekko, then back down again — and gulped it down in one quick swig.
“From where?”
Behind him, a rattling sound echoed out — thin heels clicking against polished tiles — and a woman tumbled in. Her hair was lazily pinned back, with loose curls prodding out at the ends. She huffed, shoving a phone into the front pocket of her blazer.
“Sorry — Sorry, I’m here.” She drew out a hand for Ekko to shake. “Sky.”
Ekko took her hand and nodded. Relief flooded through him. At least she looked kind — so many foster parents weren’t.
“You’re Isha’s foster mother?”
“Oh, no,” Sky sighed, desperate and quick. “I’m her social worker.”
Fuck. The too-big blazer, the thin, wired glasses. Those bags under her eyes, aging her more than they should. Of course.
“And her foster parents? Are they coming?”
“Well, given she was running away from them, I don’t think she’d appreciate that.”
Ekko shot a look back at Isha. She was squeezing at the empty cup he’d just given her with her good hand. She didn’t seem relieved at Sky’s presence — didn’t seem worried either. Like the woman was inconsequential.
“Why was she running away?”
“It’s harder to tell, with kids like this” — kids who didn’t speak, she meant — “but after some investigation they weren’t exactly… suitable.”
“She uses her hands to talk,” Ekko pried, “she did with me, earlier.”
“I know, but she hardly knows proper signs.” Sky was looking at him like he knew nothing — like what he was offering had already been undone. “She just signed the words mean and yell and that left us having to fill in the blanks. Anyway, we’ll be relocating her.”
Oh. Ekko knows he was lucky enough to have Benzo in the way Vi and Jinx were lucky enough to have Vander.
Behind Sky, Ekko only now noted that another woman hovered by the doorway. She was holding something behind her back.
“Good evening, Ekko.”
“Hey, Mel.” To be fair, he’d tried calling her Doctor Medarda for months, but she insisted on going by Mel.
Mel was a thin, stern woman whose presence magnetized every room. Even Isha’s guard dropped a little, just for a second, when the woman approached her.
Eventually, one she crossed that imaginary boundary, Isha barred her teeth again — ready to pounce, when Sky’s voice sounded out, shrill and high.
“Don’t bite the doctor!”
Dr. Medarda didn’t seem to mind — She hardly flinched. She only reached down and pressed an old, tattered bear onto Isha’s bed. She must’ve grabbed it from their reusable pile. Despite its withered condition, Isha brushed a steady hand across its dried-up fur.
Mel smiled, and Isha gave in with gentle reluctance, letting her flash white light by into eyes, ordering her to look left or right or up or down. She answered yes or no questions with the dull shake or nod of her head.
Once Mel clicked her light off, Sky rose from her seat. “So, how long do you think she has to stay?”
“Just a few days. While we monitor her concussion.”
“That’s fine — better, even — gives me more time to find her a nicer place to go.”
Isha sank into the covers at that, like she didn’t believe her. She probably had no reason to.
Mel offered her an apologetic look. “No screens, I’m sorry. You’ll need to get creative for a few days.”
Isha’s face fell — the room was practically empty. The hospital had toys; some pathetic, generic things that’d been passed on from kid to kid since nineteen-ninety-something, probably. But there were no patterned blankets from home, no familiar pillow. No parents. Nothing but the hospital-supplied TV that hung and rained static when it opened.
“Hey, don’t worry.” Ekko shot her a smile. “I’ll be here tomorrow, we can play some games, yeah?”
Isha eyed him — those gold eyes too tired for their age, too untrusting. She looked him up and down like she was drawing him; measuring his worth.
Then after a while, like she’d made up her mind, she blinked up at him and mustered a tiny nod.
Ekko smiled. “Good.”
Later, when his shift eventually ended, he shot one last glance in the room to find her still awake — that tattered bear sat in her lap, looking like it’d crumble right beneath her touch.
He left the hospital that night with a stone settling in his stomach, sinking, and sinking and sinking.
--
Awkward wasn’t a strong enough word to define how the rest of Jinx’s dinner went.
Cait excused herself three times to run off to the bathroom — Jinx twice, at intervals — and Vi hardly looked at either of them, picking the mushrooms off her pizza because she’d forgotten to ask the waiter for none. Jinx and Cait each drank half the bottle of wine before their main dishes even came out, leaving none for Vi.
By the end of it, Cait sheepishly offered to pay and left what seemed like a generous tip, even if the waiter kinda sucked. They wandered out of the restaurant together, Cait leading them outside with her heels clacking against the hardwood.
She hardly wished Jinx a goodbye before she murmured something about being too cold to stand around, insisting for Vi to meet her in the car when she “was done with Jinx.”
Once Cait was out of sight, Jinx turned to face Vi. Fog hung thick across every dipping, rising street. It draped low behind Vi, turning her to an apparition.
Jinx blew a strand of hair from her face. “It’s not cold enough for her to be doing all that.”
Vi scowled at her — that deep, burrowing scowl she’d use when they were kids, and Powder’d done something she knew she shouldn’t have.
“You know, you could’ve at least faked being happy for us.”
“What for?”
“For me,” Vi urged. Her tone was bordering on desperate, and Jinx almost felt bad. Almost. “So that I don’t have to go home to a fiancée who thinks her sister-in-law wishes she’d just vanish from thin air.”
Sister-in-law. Oh, how gross.
Jinx raised her brows. “Well, we both know I’m not a good liar.”
Vi let out a sigh so deep it looked like she’d been holding it in all her life. She dug her face into both of her hands.
“Look, you two need to get along, okay? Somehow, you need to learn. I love both of you — I’m not losing either of you, not making any choices.”
Somehow, it felt like she already had. And that choice sat now, in the passenger’s seat of Cait’s Audi, handling the diamond on her left hand.
“We’re just —” Jinx struggled to put it nicely. She’d save the bad words for later, for Ekko. “We’re too different, Vi! I can try to put up with her — I’ll sit through her stoning at dinners — but I’ll never like her. I’m sure she feels the same about me.”
“You’ve barely even tried to make it work!” Vi puffed. “Neither of you.”
Jinx dropped her head low. She didn’t want for Vi to be upset, but she couldn’t lie. She couldn’t.
It hadn’t always been like this. When they were younger — before Vander died — before their parents died, too — she’d have never done anything to let Vi’s happiness waiver. Couldn’t stand the thought of displeasing her — upsetting her.
She’d thought Vi hung up each star in the sky with her very hands, plucked them up one by one. Fought every monster in her nightmares — every kid, eventually, who picked on her at school, in foster homes, in parks.
And then Vi left — Vi left for Powder’s mistake. And really, she owed her more now because of it, but Powder changed — changed into Jinx — and Vi changed, too. Everything changed.
“I’m sorry.” Jinx reached over to brush her arm. She forced out a laugh — aimed for a joke. “I’ll still come to your wedding if that’s what you’re scared of. It’ll be memorable, believe me, with Cait and I throwing all our food at each other.”
Vi shook her head — “You’re impossible,” she mumbled — then draped her in a hug. Her jacket was rough against the skin of her cheek, but it still smelled like her car — her own, from when she was twenty-one — the old Subaru she refused to get rid of, even if she could afford a new one.
On the street, a Tesla pulled up. Jinx caught a glance at it. “Crap, my Uber.”
They pulled apart, and Vi kept a hand at her cheek. “Call me?”
“’Til you have to block my number.”
Vi let out a quiet laugh; it hardly reached her eyes. “Okay, I’ll see you.”
Jinx gave her one last hug before stumbling into the Uber. Through the fog of the window, Jinx watched as Vi made her way towards Cait — towards home.
--
It was nothing like Vi’s place, but still, Ekko loved their apartment.
It had three bedrooms — one of which they used as a shared office space, with Ekko’s PC lodged in one corner and Jinx’s workbench in the other. Their shared artwork was sprawled across each wall, glued to the windows.
Their kitchen was tight — the wooden island at the middle making for it to feel even tighter than it had to be — with checkered black-and-white tiles, chipped from age and heavy footing.
Jinx insisted Ekko keep the master — he paid more in rent, anyway — and she preferred the smaller room with the bigger window; it let in more light.
“Look, if I don’t have the goddamn sun piercing through my eyelids, I’ll sleep in all day.”
Jinx wasn’t exactly the kind of person who slept often, but when sleep came it came hard, holding her down while it did.
Where she slept was a different story altogether. Ekko would often find her on the couch, slung across her desk, curled into herself on the ends of her own bed like a cat. Once, he’d found her on the floor of the bathroom with her toothbrush still half-wedged in her mouth.
To be fair, that time she’d been drunk.
Despite her weary sleep schedule, by three in the morning she was usually knocked out.
Usually.
Even before unlocking the door, Ekko heard the TV’s hum. All the lights were still on; orange leaked beneath the door and into the outside hallway.
Inside, Jinx was hunched into herself on the couch with a tub of ice cream between her legs. She caught sight of him quick, waving him over with a spoon still coated in bubble-gum pink.
“Let me guess.” Ekko moved to hang his jacket on the coatrack. He’d already showered and changed into his sweats at work, so when he fell onto the couch right by her, he did it without guilt. “Your dinner sucked?”
Jinx scoffed. “‘Sucked’ is a pathetic excuse of a word.”
“Yeah?” She held her spoon up to him, balled-up with ice cream, urging him to taste. “What’s a better word for it, then?”
“There are no English words terrible enough.” She plucked her spoon back from him, and the playful look on her face melted into something dull and muddled.
Slowly, she turned to look at him. “They’re engaged.”
Oh. That was rough. Jinx hated Vi’s girlfriend — fiancée, now, he supposed. He wasn’t fond of her either; she was different from the three of them, sure, but Vi had never been happier, and that had to count for something.
If Vi loved her so much, she couldn’t be so bad — he’d tried to tell Jinx once, but she wouldn’t hear it. So, he let her laugh — let her confide in him — let her drag him to their meetings.
He didn’t mind it, really. It was still time together. And honestly, Jinx was a little too good at imitating her accent.
“Huh,” Ekko muttered. “Didn’t take Vi as the married type.”
“Me neither,” Jinx mumbled. Her voice was a mere lull. “But people…they change. They go.”
Jinx’s face contorted — her features loosening — and her eyes held that faraway look from when she was remembering something, dwelling.
She got like this sometimes — lost in her head, lost in herself — she could stay like this for days, ruminating, disassociated. Ekko swallowed a lump in his throat.
“Hey.” He reached across to tuck a stray hair behind her ear, drawing close. “Aren’t I the same?”
Amidst her haze, Jinx blinked up at him. “Insufferably so.”
Ekko laughed against the top of her head. Good; she wasn’t fully out of it.
“See. I’ll always be here to bother you.”
Jinx nuzzled her nose against his neck before pulling away, and Ekko’s breath hitched at the feeling — she was always so cold; how was it that she was always so cold? Even now, draped and piled in blankets, Vander’s old hoodie swallowing her whole.
She looked like she was going to make another joke — mock Cait, probably — but drew herself back at the last second. Her brows pinched, and the fog she’d been lost in thawed from her eyes completely. Instead, her gaze on him hardened.
“Something’s bothering you.” Jinx poked at his cheek with her thin, painted nail. It scratched.
“It’s nothing.” Ekko shrugged. She was already upset enough from her dinner. He didn’t need his night to worsen it. “Just work crap.”
“It’s not nothing.” Jinx patted at his cheek. “I can tell. C’mon, spill the beans, Boy Savior.”
(She’d started calling him that in college after saving everyone’s asses before the psych exam — he’d given out his notes, knowing damn well he shouldn’t have. Then he did it again when he and Jinx took more electives together, this time only for her.
And of course, there was the underlying matter that he was a nurse.)
Jinx was looking at him with those blue eyes, expecting. For a second, he considered lying — making something up.
But he couldn’t help dwell on the image of the girl — her wordless murmur, her wild eyes. The hospital could get creepy at this time of night, especially for a kid — the hallways less huddled with nurses, each room flooded by an empty teem of static.
Besides, if anyone knew the system, it was Jinx. She’d barrelled from home to home after Vander — while Vi rotted in juvie — before eventually settling into a few different group homes for girls.
“There was this foster kid who came in tonight,” Ekko said. “She was running away from her place; fell off a ledge and broke her arm. She has a concussion, too.”
“Ouch.” Jinx tugged at the empty pint of ice cream and hugged it close to her chest like some makeshift teddy-bear. “Can’t blame her — system sucks. Play-pretend parents suck even more.”
“She just — she looked at me with those big owl eyes and I felt my heart break. She didn’t even cry. Mel was poking at her broken arm and everything.”
Jinx smirked — her eyes were earnest. “Strong kid.”
“You don’t even know the half of it.” Ekko groaned. “She didn’t have anything of her own — not with her, at least. They left her with some ancient bear.”
Jinx’s brows hardened at that — something angry sobering up inside her. Then she paused, like she remembered where she was. She drew her knuckles to his face, tickling.
“Hey, at least you’re there to help.” She said it like she was making a joke, but he knew she meant it for real — she just sucked at being sappy. “You’re pretty good at helping.”
Boy Savior.
But what a help he was. Bring her meals, pour her glasses of water. Then let her fall back into a system that would drown her — push her down until she had to make another run for it. What bones would she break next, trying to get away? How many more bites?
The thought made his stomachache. He didn’t feel like any help at all.
But Jinx was trying, and he wouldn’t make it worse.
“Yeah,” he mumbled, “I guess.”
They stayed like that for a while, with Jinx’s fingers at his skin while she fiddled with the spoon that sank into the empty pint. The TV was still on — some late-night cartoon that always gave Ekko the creeps — and together they pretended to watch it, knowing each of their minds were settled elsewhere.
Eventually, Jinx stumbled into reality. She yawned and pinched at Ekko’s cheek before standing.
“Gonna hit the hay. Dream of big ol’ dirty diamonds and bloody weddings.” She hurled the pint into the garbage bin and stretched out her arms. Shooting him a look she said, “and sad orphans, too, I guess.”
Ekko huffed a laugh. “’Night, Powder.”
He hardly caught it, but for a second her face flinched, though Ekko wasn’t sure why — he’d usually alternate between Powder and Jinx without second thought — but the name seemed to draw on something obscuring tonight.
He almost felt like apologizing, but she was already halfway to her room. “’Night.”
Later — much later — after he’d scoffed down some cereal and washed his face, he found it in him to lie down. His head hit the pillow that night, cool and firm.
That exhaustion whirred on, but sleep couldn’t find him. Something in him — something inherent and innate; something that always tied back to her — told him that somewhere down the hall, Jinx was succumbing to the same fate.