There's a ghost in Ekko’s room.
He isn’t completely sure he wants it gone. It wakes him with a single touch, cold and fluttering before fingers lace with his. They can lie for hours on his bed, trapped under his blanket, and her hands never get warm.
He supposes that that was one of the many things he can’t change about her. He supposes he shouldn’t have let her into his bed as often as he already has.
There'd been another raid. A simple one their informant said, a quick in and out before any of Silco’s goons noticed them. Everything had been going well up until the point she showed up.
They came in with twelve people. They left with eight, half of whom were gravely injured. He glanced at her over his shoulder, over the dead bodies of his friends. His eyes met with the barrel of her gun. No bullets ever came.
Ekko decided then and there that last night was going to be the last time he let her in.
He stands in the dark corner of his room. His grip on his metal pipe is tight.
The moment he sees her boot on his windowsill, he swings. She jumps forward and dodges, falling into his room on all fours. Ekko has the fleeting thought to compare her to a cat.
He swings again. She points a gun at him. He manages to grab it by the barrel and slam its muzzle on her forehead.
She stumbles into his bed and Ekko is on top of her in a single step. He traps her hips with his knees and her throat with his hands.
He floods his mind with memories of his dead friends before any other thought invades it. He squeezes.
Her hands scramble to scratch at his wrist, at his shoulder, at his face. She spends only a few seconds clawing at his skin before she resigns, fingers wrapped loosely around his wrist.
He lets go of her throat and jumps to his feet. He feels her pulse on his palm.
She pushes her body to her elbow and her lips to a grin. The cords on her neck are thick. Her teeth are bloody.
He slams her back into the mattress. “Fight back, damn it!”
A single blue nail draws a line from his knuckle to his shoulder.
“Your eyes are still brown,” she says.
Hers are still blue. Bloodshot, but undeniably blue. He doesn't tell her this.
There’s an ugly purple bruise on her forehead, one that he gave her mere hours earlier—right next to the scar he gave her when they were 9 and tinkering with rusted metal springs. Her cuticles are raw. Her polish is chipped. Her lashes are long. Her nails have dark red caked under them. Her skin is sallow. Her lips are stained red. He doesn't tell her any of this.
“Are you going to kill me?”
He tightens his grip around her throat.
“I don't mind if it's you.” She shuffles under him so she’s lying flat on the bed. Her touch is feather-light on his wrist. “I don't mind if it's like this.”
Ekko is crazy. He knows he is because his fingers loosens around her throat.
This isn't how it's supposed to go. She is supposed to shoot him dead and he is supposed to duck every bullet. He is supposed to swipe at her hard enough to crack her skull and she is supposed to evade every hit.
She is not supposed to give up. She is not supposed to die. He is not supposed to kill her.
He presses her further into the mattress with a snarl. The grin on her lips widens. He dips. She tastes like iron, .
She recovers from the shock fairly quickly. In a few quick movements, they are both bare and interwoven, molded into one.
She cries when he sinks himself into her and clutches at his shoulder when he begins to move. She feels like heaven. She feels like hell.
Ekko supposes he should be rougher, grip her hands tighter, hurt her as she hurts him. If he was sane then he might have. (If he was sane, he wouldn't be on top of her at all.)
Instead, he wills his hips to move slower. He gives her reprieve in kisses and shallow bites. He whispers promises both know neither one of them can fulfill. He treats her with a gentleness he knows she will not grant him.
When she comes, her hand muffles the scream begging to be released from her mouth. Her face is crumpled, tears mixing with sweat as they roll down her neck. Her back bows off the bed. Her grip on his shoulder is brutal.
Ekko watches and commits every detail to memory.
When he wakes a few hours later, Jinx is dressing herself. Sunlight filters through her hair, softening its kiss on his eyes. It's still unbraided.
Her pants are halfway her hips when he pushes himself up to his elbow. She must have heard the rustle of the covers. She looks at him over her shoulder, shoots him a smile, and finishes buttoning her pants.
She walks over to his window; one, two, seven steps. Her foot is on the windowsill, the wind playing with her unbraided hair. Ekko has the fleeting thought to compare it to water. She hops off the edge and disappears. She does not look at him.
Ekko promises himself that tonight—and tonight for certain—is the last time he will ever let her in. (If only because it means that she will haunt him again.)
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