#scroll along

She knows exactly how to make it go away. The path is familiar to her, practically second nature, that she can take it with her eyes closed. She ducks over low pipes and steps over roots before the view of the tree greets her.

Ekko sleeps with his window open. The first time Jinx sneaks into his room and sees the midnight sky, eclipsed by the crown of green, unobscured by smoke, she understands why.

But that’s not why she comes here.

His green curtains flutter forward as she slinks past the wooden frame, the ground spinning under her as she does. It's quiet in his room. It always is. It’s why Mylo is particularly loud in her ear, why she hears the groans of her stomach whenever she comes over.

The metal hardware of her shoes clinks as she slips them off. She takes the seven steps—she knows, she’s counted it before—to his bed. He sleeps with his back against the window. If he was awake, Jinx would have called him stupid to his face.

Mylo calls her a stalker. She slaps his claw off her shoulder.

His skin is warm as she ghosts her hand over it, soft when she finally lets her fingertips kiss it. She peels his covers and slots herself against his back. He does not stir.

Jinx forces herself to lie still. She brings her hand to his arm again, finger brushing over brown skin before she flattens them to palms, smoothing over his muscles until she reaches his knuckle.

Bile rises in her throat. She forces her fingers to lace with his. She feels cotton fill her skull. She times her breathing with the rise and fall of his chest. Her stomach lurches. She fills her lungs with the scent of him—wood, iron, and some fruit she can’t name. 

She swallows the urge to gag. She can’t make too much noise, make too many movements. It’s never happened before but it might still rouse Ekko.

She can just pick another person—any person. But the thought of anybody else touching her makes the acid in her stomach worse. She’s tried once and ended up half-naked on a bed with a bloody body on top of her.

That doesn’t happen with Ekko though. Whatever it is that he’s doing or not doing, it satiates the beast in her stomach that demands for offerings.

Once or twice, she thinks of taking him. Tie him up and drag him somewhere nobody could find them, nobody could hear him. She wouldn’t have to sneak through his window and she wouldn’t have to soften her steps. It’d be easy too.

Mylo calls her crazy. She tells him to be quiet.

She doesn’t sleep. She gets a few hours like this, she will not waste it unconscious.

Instead, she watches the wall and waits for the early sunshine. She listens to his voice when he mumbles and catches both her names once or twice in between gibberish. She does not know—or does not admit to herself—why the thought of him dreaming about her makes her happy.

Every now and then as she lies against his back, she thinks of his face. It’s been so long since she’s seen it. Ekko doesn’t look at her anymore. Or maybe he does behind that stupid mask. Either way, Jinx doesn’t see him anymore.

Then again, maybe that’s a good thing. If she sees his face, sees how brown iris melts over white, sees plump lips stretching over teeth, she’d have to recognize then that her stomach is only some inches away from her heart. That when one echoes in its own chamber, she might have mistaken it for the other. They’re so close to each other, afterall. It’s so easy to confuse them.

And then she’d have to think. And then she’d have to feel. And when these pesky thoughts and emotions overwhelm her, how will she feed?