Chapter Text
Ekko knew the moment he stepped into the apartment that he wouldn’t know peace ever again. He felt this way the day they moved into their apartment, and he felt it now after hearing the door swing open and close loudly. He was having dinner in the kitchen, probably the only warm meal he had had after his 12-hour shift at the hospital. He planned on eating, showering, and then going to sleep into his day off tomorrow. The forceful rattling of the door, however, smothered any possibility of his plans coming to fruition. Wearily, he took a bite out of his sandwich, chewing slowly and staring at the entrance to the small kitchen they shared, waiting. It didn’t take long before the quick tapping of her footsteps reached the entrance. Jinx stood there with the most devious, cryptic grin he had seen in a while. He took another bite of his sandwich, raising an eyebrow at her. She was basically buzzing while taking a seat in front of him, dropping a beige folder on the small table.
“I have a surprise for you,” she said, violet eyes electric, staring directly into his.
He frowned. He didn’t know they were celebrating something, and the last time they surprised each other, she had already one-upped him with the noise-cancelling headphones that blessed his days when he had to complete paperwork.
“What?” He asked, taking another bite.
“We are going to be parents.”
The piece of sandwich decided to lodge itself in the middle of his throat after she said this, prompting him to cough forcefully, hitting his chest a few times. Tears appeared in his eyes as he finally swallowed, coughing as it went.
“What?”
Before he was able to spiral on this information, Jinx’s smile widened.
“Yeah, we are picking her up in two weeks, too.”
“WHAT?”
“Yeah, I have the paperwork here,” she said, taking out some documents from the folder.
This is it, he thought. This is me having a manic episode. He dropped the last piece of the sandwich on his plate and sat back in his chair. It was a funny thought, really, considering that Jinx was the one diagnosed with bipolar, but then again, he was at the age where schizophrenia symptoms could be the answer. Maybe he had hallucinated Jinx’s words, and in reality, she was screaming at him for not showering first before eating. They were both very particular about their cleanliness, even if the apartment looked like the aftermath of a landmine exploding. Yeah, he probably hallucinated that. They weren’t even married. They actually started dating after moving into the apartment together. So it made no sense for Jinx to tell him they would be having a kid.
Also, they couldn’t be parents. Or could they? Maybe this hallucination was an omen for their future. They had talked about what would happen if they ended up having kids, especially since their childhoods were not the most conducive to happy memories. And they had fostered before. They did all the classes and completed all the requirements in the past to take in Scar’s daughter for a bit. So maybe this delusion wasn’t so far-fetched. Maybe instead of his heart beating out of his chest due to fear, it was out of… surprise, maybe? Excitement? But one discussion was not the whole decision. And what did she mean by in two weeks? What…?
“-ko; earth to Ekko? Hello?”
He hummed softly, grounding himself back to reality when he felt Jinx’s finger reach his own. He blinked once, twice, and then looked back at her. Her smile had faltered slightly, but it was still taunting, like asking for him to challenge her on this. And he could have. He was actually ready to do so, but then she tilted her head, grasping at the metal chain around her neck; she opened the latch and dropped the chain on the table next to Ekko’s plate. The chain was simple, almost too dull and ordinary if it wasn’t for the discoloredly bright ring it held. Oh, so he wasn’t hallucinating. This was real.
During the beginning of their relationship, they found out quickly that they needed to find ways to communicate better than just holding screaming matches, ignoring each other for a few days, and then making up randomly. It was exhausting, and they cared too much for them to continue the toxic cycle. So they decided that, whenever there were important conversations to be had, they would take off the pieces of themselves they treasured the most and lay them out for the other person, both literally and figuratively. It was a silent display of vulnerability, stripping off something you hold dear and showing it freely for someone else to take. But it made the playing field even for them. Jinx usually took off her chain that held Silco’s ring, a present he had given her on the day she decided to change her life. Ekko either took off the ring Benzo left him before he moved to the city, or one of the hair charms he locked his dreadlocks in, the ones his mom had left for him before passing away. To them, it meant openness, a space to be honest and exposed without fear of judgment.
Thus, Ekko took one of the charms off, placing it neatly beside the orange-ish ring on the table. Jinx nodded, pleased, and held out her hand. He took it without thinking, an action as simple as breathing to him. They stared at each other for a bit, settling, finding the right words. His heart was still hammering, but he knew it wasn’t something they couldn’t handle together. Jinx spoke first.
“Is it too much? I know I can be impulsive, but I…” she bit her lip, frowning. She didn’t show this type of hesitation often; Ekko had always been grateful to be one of the few people with whom she could be vulnerable. “I felt it, Ekko. The same way I did when I decided I’ve had enough of the life I used to have. The same way I did when I realized I love you. It just feels right.”
She held his gaze, anxiously waiting for him to respond. He sighed.
“Take me to the beginning, because this is a lot,” he said, squeezing her hand gently. “I mean, I know we have, like, mentioned it before, but one thing is dreaming about it and another is actually going through with it.”
Her eyes narrowed, a quirk of her lips framing her otherwise hesitant expression.
“So you have been dreaming of having kids with me, huh? I don’t know, mister, we aren’t even married yet.”
“And yet here we are,” he countered, mimicking her smile, “talking about it because you jumped the gun. So, start from the beginning.”
Jinx sat back on her chair without releasing his hand. It felt a little bit more comfortable like this, with their casual banter. She shook her head, huffing quietly.
“Okay, okay,” she said, swatting her other hand dismissively. “Remember when I had to go to the hospital to take measurements for the prosthetic prototypes?” Ekko nodded. “Well, it turns out it was in the pediatric ward. So I was there, doing my thing, and then I met her-”
She cut herself off abruptly, suddenly staring at the table pensively. Ekko waited.
“She reminds me of me… of us, when we were younger,” she said then, voice as soft as a whisper. “She was talking to the social worker about something, and it’s not like I was eavesdropping or anything, the social worker was being too loud in my opinion, like… she shouldn’t be talking about private information just like that, out in the open, you know? So it’s not my fault that I-”
“Jinx,” Ekko said, squeezing her hand again, a little bit harder this time. She tended to spiral most of the time, and although he was more than comfortable sitting there and listening to her, there was an important conversation to be had.
“Right,” she shook her head. “Anyway, I overheard them talking about how her fostering situation fell through, and the social worker was trying to be all nice and sweet, but the kid didn’t even react. It was like looking in the mirror for a second, frown and all!”
Ekko chuckled, remembering the way Jinx, or at that time, Powder, would frown and glare after realizing it felt more menacing than screaming and crying.
“After that, I went to do my job, because even if I do like gossip, I still had a job to do, and lo and behold, she was one of the people I was seeing! Like, not in a sense that she needed a prosthetic or anything, but she has a cochlear implant, and they wanted me to check that it looked okay and that everything was working because she doesn’t talk.”
“Wait,” Ekko interjected. “She doesn’t talk? What do you mean by that? Also, didn’t you say you heard their conversation?”
“Heard, saw, does it matter? The social worker was being very expressive to compensate for her mediocre sign skills.”
“Jinx!” He chastised, pushing her foot softly under the table. “That’s like, literally invading a private conversation, you know that!”
“Oh, save it, boy savior, you would have done the same thing in my shoes. You're a bigger gossip than I am. Anyways,” she started again, giving him a pointed look to shut him up, “I helped her, everything looked great, and they asked her some questions to make sure the device worked. She signed the whole time, though, which didn’t seem to make the social worker happy. But then the kid, uh, she stayed? Like, I was continuing to do my thing, and she just hung around. Just the same way we used to do when we were left with Benzo at his store. She never asked anything, but she looked, like really looked. After a while, I asked her if she wanted to pass me the tools, and we spent our time just going over measurements and the basics of certain medical devices. It was… fun. And she seemed to enjoy it too.”
She stopped here, looking at the table again. She was probably reminiscing. Ekko tries to picture it: a kid next to Jinx handing her measurement tools and writing down numbers, or pointing at some devices to learn what they did. He smiled. He could picture it, honestly, and maybe, just maybe, he could see why Jinx was so excited about it. But he was probably biased; he had dreamed about them having kids together. Granted, it looked a little bit different, but he was always good at adapting, especially when it came to Jinx’s whims.
“After that,” Jinx continued, now looking at their intertwined fingers, “I spoke to the social worker. Just let her know that if she needed an adjustment or anything like that, she could just call me, you know? And then I mentioned I was also in foster care for a while, and I understand how hard it is. I’m telling you, this woman was eager to talk about it because she started talking about how sad it was that the fostering fell through and how she wishes there could be someone willing to take her, because she’s getting older, and her chances at adoption are getting smaller and smaller as time passes. So I asked,” she tilted her head and gave Ekko a look. “I asked about the process and how we could apply. One thing led to another, and Sevika got me a spot with the head of the children’s system of care, and she told me that, with our experience and our income, we would be good candidates.”
She let the words simmer, looking at Ekko’s every shift in expression. It made sense. He could see Jinx’s thought process as easily as he smiled at his patients every night shift. It was so distinctly her to be cautious and kind, to see someone who needed help and ask how she could do so. She didn’t believe it, but Ekko saw her for who she was, for her big heart and her dedication to others. She might call him boy savior, but she had helped a lot of people, too; she just never admitted it. He could also feel the situation pulling at his heartstrings, the same way it did when they had to foster Scar’s daughter as an emergency. He knew the importance of stability and safety; he was part of the foster care system himself. But logistically-wise…
“I hear you,” he said, smiling at her. She was right; he would have probably done the same thing. “I agree that this would be a good call, especially since she now has to deal with the fostering not happening.”
“But?” Jinx sighed, leveling him with a look.
“But,” he emphasized. “What are we going to do with the spending? Raising a kid requires a lot of money, and though we have good jobs, it’s not like we can splurge. And then, I work night shifts at the hospital while your schedule changes randomly. She will need stability, and our schedules don’t provide that. Then there’s school, and her medical records, and what happens if we are not the right fit?”
The last part caught him by surprise because it was not something he was intending to discuss. It was not just the logistics of taking care of the kid, but also the whole idea of being a parent figure to her. It was different with Scar’s daughter; she was a newborn, and they had the time to dedicate to her. They were both in school at the time. But now it meant taking care of a kid who had her own thoughts and perceptions. Ekko worked with kids in the psychiatric ward already, and he knew how delicate conversations can be for children with trauma. It took a lot of patience, understanding, and commitment to help and guide them. And though he liked to think he was good at his job, it didn’t translate to his real life. Would he be a good parent? Would he be able to help this kid through her issues while making sure she did her homework? It was too much to think about, too overwhelming. Jinx squeezed his hand, giving him a knowing smile.
“Do you think this is how Benzo and Vander felt when they decided to adopt us?” She asked, tenderness in her voice. He huffed a small chuckle. Probably. “I understand the feeling, Ekko, but doesn’t she deserve the opportunity the same way we did at the time?”
He sighed, nodding faintly.
“And, as always, you are right to ask all of those questions; I wouldn’t have expected any less from you, so I’m prepared!” She said, excitement back in her features.
She pulled her hand away and opened the beige folder in front of her, taking out some papers and documents. She dispersed them on the table while she talked.
“When it comes to money, as you mentioned, we both have good jobs, and we are pretty good at making it work for us. However, there is this!”
She shoved a paper at his face, startling him. He took it, brows furrowed as he inspected the words. It looked like a screenshot of an email, so he had to process that first, but then he caught on to it. Heimerdinger’s email in the sender’s section, the words Congratulations! on the topic line, the words confirming a new raise and project, and details listed in neat bullet points. His eyes widened.
“You got it?” He exclaimed, looking up from the paper. Her smile was as bright as the sun.
“Hell yeah, baby! I got the project! And,” she singsonged, “it comes with a raise, so I think money is covered alongside the allowance from the court. The project also gives me a more set schedule, so I will be able to move things around if she needs to go to the doctor’s or they need me at the school. Hell, we can even skip some days and go to-”
“Jinx,” he narrowed his eyes at her; she shrugged innocently.
“What? It’s not like we didn’t enjoy taking a day off from school now and then.”
“Yeah, but we were cutting school without telling anyone. You can’t just take a kid out to, I don’t know, spend the day at the pool or something.”
“God, you’re so good at that! I hadn’t even thought about a pool day!”
“Jinx.”
“Fine,” she groaned, but her smile was untouched. “Moving on, I can schedule my things around if needed. And also, you have been talking about how much you want to switch to the day shift after Seraphine’s leave, mister. Maybe this is the push you needed to make that change. Then that way we can do things in the afternoon like regular families do.”
He groaned lightly, rubbing his face. She was right; he had been getting burned out, and before taking her leave, Seraphine told him he could take her spot. It would be a bit hard to readjust, but it’s not something he hasn’t done before. It would be nice to feel like a normal person again instead of a vampire reclusing himself in the morning. His patients will still be there. And it’s not like he would be changing positions; he would still be a psych nurse.
“Alright,” he conceded. “What else do you have?”
She smirked.
“As I told you, Sevika got me a spot with the head of CPS, and she told me the social worker would work with us to find schools, get possession of her medical records, and all the boring stuff. She gave me some forms we need to fill out. She also told me we might need to redo parenting classes because it’s been a while since we fostered. Did you know they used to date?”
This came out of left field.
“Who? Sevika and the social worker?”
“No, dummy! Sevika and Margot! She is the head of CPS.”
“Wha-? What are we even talking about?” Ekko asked, rubbing his face again. The fatigue and exhaustion from his shift caught up to him suddenly.
“We are talking about fostering, Ekko, keep up!”
He took a deep breath, looking at Jinx humorlessly. She tried to be serious for a second, but she still burst out laughing. He looked over the forms while she gasped for air, clutching her stomach and trying to breathe. These were forms they had seen before, so nothing new. Some of them were updated, though, so he would have to take a look at them properly at a better time. There was also a flyer for morning and evening parenting classes with the cost and the schedules. Coincidentally, they started next week and went for two weeks. Sneaky idiot, Ekko thought. It would take some time before he could start the morning shift, so he might have to sacrifice some hours of sleep, but it seemed doable. Maybe it would be right, after all.
Jinx was finally breathing normally aside from her fit of giggles. While looking over the papers, Ekko found a file with a picture of a kid. She was eight years old, according to the file; family members were unknown, she had been in the system for almost two years, and was hard of hearing, although there was a note about her selective mutism. He ran a thumb through the edge of the page. She looked so young and so tired. She wasn’t smiling in her picture. Her hair was a mess of brown strands under a bucket hat that looked like a miner's hat. Her eyes were impossibly big, a warmth to their amber color that was missing in her demeanor. He saw it too, the resemblance she had to Powder. He can understand why Jinx was so keen about this. His eyes focused on the name on the file. Isha.
Truth be told, maybe he was also into impulsiveness and unpredictability. He was just more cautious with how he went about it.
“So, what do you think?” Jinx asked, linking their fingers again.
It took him a little bit to complete reading the file, even if there was not a lot of information to go by. He looked back at the picture and gave a tentative smile.
“Yeah,” his eyes found Jinx’s. “Yeah, let’s do it.”
She squealed and jumped off her seat, running and crashing into Ekko’s chair. He caught her while balancing the chair. She squeezed him tightly, locking her arms around his neck. Once he felt stable enough, he wrapped his arms around her waist, pressing his forehead against hers.
“We are really doing this,” she said, no doubt or fear in her voice. She smiled.
“We really are,” he answered, smiling back.
She laughed again and dropped down to kiss him, a tender touch that assuaged the anxiety and nervousness in the pit of his stomach. There were a lot of moving pieces to this, and he did not feel confident at all, but just as Jinx mentioned, it felt right. He kissed her back just as tenderly, cupping her cheek. She smiled against his lips before pushing further, deeply, a promise that it was not just him, but the two of them in it together. And he pushed back, a confirmation that, regardless of what happened, of where they ended up, that it would be the two of them, now and always.
She pulled back after a while, lips a beautiful shade of pink, cheeks scattered with freckles, and a blush. She was the most beautiful person he had ever seen in his life.
“You'd better dust up those sign language skills, pretty boy.”
☆★☆★☆★☆★
Even after going through the logistics of finances, forms, and parenting classes, there was a sense of impending pressure hanging above them. Ekko had requested his switch to the morning shift, which would take effect the week after the foster process was completed. He would work the night shift, come back home, eat, shower, take a nap, and then get up again to go to parenting classes. They received curious looks now and then from the other families, either for their age or for how out of place they looked. It wasn’t a big deal, though. They were used to standing out wherever they went.
The parenting classes or the endless forms were not the problem, however. It was something that snuck up on them, really. It started when they sat in the living room, drawing a rough layout of the apartment. They had two rooms in the apartment, which made it such a crammed space. They usually used the spare room for guests or an office when Jinx could work from home. With this, they decided to turn it into Isha’s bedroom. That meant buying a new comforter and some more pillows. It’s not like they had a lot of information about her preferences, but she looked like she liked plushies, so a trip to the mall ended up being three trips up the stairs of the apartment building. Fortunately, they lived on the second floor. They got Isha her own plate, her own cup, her own mug, her own apron, and some other things she would need.
They were in constant communication with the social worker regarding school and other stuff. The medical records and other legalities would come later, but they started asking for school visits and researching online their reviews. Because of her hard-of-hearing condition, they went over the pros and cons of public school. It’s not like they had a great experience in school, so they wanted to be as objective as possible. Ekko asked the other nurses about their children’s experiences in school and what they recommended. They also looked into extracurriculars she might be interested in; the social worker said Isha was really good at math and was obsessed with bugs. They might have run with that too much because now all of her bedroom bedding, toothbrush, and bath supplies were bug-related. They hoped it was the right bugs. By the end of the week, the social worker had visited their apartment, had them sign some more forms, and had given them a tentative time to pick Isha up.
It was during that weekend that the pressure finally broke, engulfing them in a sea of uncertainty, apprehension, and overall fear. It came to a head when they were finishing Isha’s room. They were building her dresser and bedside table, working silently together while the speaker blasted some sort of pop rock. Ekko had had a particularly rough shift and wasn’t able to rest before parenting classes. Jinx was struggling with adjusting to her new schedule and the bureaucracy that came with the new project. She always did better in an environment she could control. And she always did better when she didn’t have to talk to stupid people (her words). The project was in coordination with a medical devices organization, so they had to abide by their timelines and deadlines, which took control away from Jinx, and the main representative they worked with, Sky, was too nice, too proper, too sweet, too condescending, which pissed her off; nothing like her team (again, her words). Granted, the only person in her team with a grain of social skills was Jayce, and even then, that was high praise.
None of them was having a good time. The lack of sleep, of control, of certainty was drowning them to the point where they wouldn’t even speak to each other before getting into a screaming match. It didn’t help that they were both stubborn as hell too.
“I told you already, you are doing it wrong,” Jinx groaned, rubbing her face and pushing the loose strands of hair away from her face. She held the manual, swatting Ekko’s hand away when he tried to look at the pictures. “No, that’s not the right side, dumbass!”
“Well, I would know if I could see the pictures, you control freak.”
“And have what happened to the bathroom dresser happen again? Remember that I had to take it apart and reassemble it because you couldn’t distinguish left from right?”
“Jesus Christ, Jinx, that was one time!”
“One time? Look at you, you can’t even-”
Before she could continue, her ringtone startled them both, bringing them to the present. She dropped the manual on the floor with a loud splat! She picked up the phone without looking at it, glaring at the floor as she crossed one arm above her chest while the other held the phone to her ear.
“What?” She asked the person on the other side, her frown deep enough to split her face in two. Ekko rolled his eyes, taking the manual off the floor and checking that he was, in fact, on the wrong side.
“Oh, uh, sorry, I forgot we had our phone call, let me just-” Jinx looked around the room, lost for a second; she turned once to the right and then to the left, looked at Ekko with alarmed eyes, and then left the room.
He didn’t know what that was about, but he was more in favor of fixing his mistake before she came back. If he was lucky enough, he would act like he had done it right the first time and never admit blame. While Jinx talked on the phone, he was able to complete more than half of the steps for the bedside table before she came back, mulling her lip over her teeth. She looked frustrated and uneasy, which made him drop the screwdriver and place all of his attention on her. Her words were quick, almost inaudible. Whoever was on the other side of the phone was giving her a hard time with the way Jinx glared at the floor while she talked.
“-like, no, what? Why do I need a reason? I just have things to do!” Her eyes narrow, the garbled noise of the other person coming off on this side as well. It was probably Vi. Jinx only got like that when Vi was teasing her about something. “Oh, you wanna know that bad? I’m about to peg the fuck out of Ekko, okay? Can I finally hang up?”
His cheeks did not flush, nor did his eyebrows raise in thrill. That was probably somebody else.
Jinx hung up and threw her phone on the bed, groaning loudly as she sat at the edge. She dropped her head on her hands, her groan becoming louder. Ah. It probably was all a ploy to get Vi off the phone. Bummer. He moved the tools away in favor of sitting next to Jinx at the edge of the bed. He was tired; his muscles were sore, and he had eye bags from the lack of sleep. He was also exhausted from the emotional toll this whole process was taking on them. He bumped his shoulder against hers.
“So I’m guessing we’re doing none of that and instead talking about this?”
Jinx shook her head, taking a deep breath.
“I just needed to get Vi off the phone.”
“Any reason in particular?”
There was a pause for a second. Jinx rubbed her hands over her face and leaned into Ekko’s shoulder; her head fit perfectly in the crook of his neck. He leaned his temple on top of the crown of her head.
“I haven’t told her about Isha,” Jinx started, voice low. He could feel the exhaustion and tension on her shoulders. “I haven’t told anyone aside from my boss, and that little rodent is such a busybody, I wouldn’t be surprised that Viktor and Jayce already know. But I…” she moved her head, trying to look up at Ekko. “I want to make sure it actually comes true. I want to make sure everything is set up before I tell anybody else.”
Ekko nodded gently, pulling away to move a strand of her hair out of her face.
“You always try to carry everything by yourself,” he admonished, not necessarily angry; he said it like it was a fact of life, regardless of how much it affected her. “But you’re not doing this by yourself, remember? You have me. You don’t have to carry everything alone anymore.”
“But what if I’m not good enough?” She continued, shaking her head slightly. “What if I mess her up even more? What if this was the wrong decision?”
It was something Ekko thought about daily. He had spoken with his therapist about it, about the constant fear that he would do more harm than good, about the weight he felt at the pit of his stomach whenever he thought about having to reprimand the girl if she did something dangerous; about how it would define him, how it could challenge him, and how it would change him. He understood the fear. He placed a hand on her cheek. Her eyes were glassy, an ardor behind them that showed how angry she was at herself for feeling this way. She tended to give herself the most crap, unfortunately.
“Remember how we felt when we finally found Vander and Benzo? How we hoped and prayed for them to be good people? I remember I was delighted when Benzo allowed me to take some of his clocks to fix and play with. He was the first person to see my potential and the first one to encourage me to be who I wanted to be. Who else will we be if not the shadows of those who came before us?”
She let out a breath he didn’t know she was holding, scoffing slightly.
“Can you stop being philosophical for a second? I am freaking out right now.”
“And so am I,” he exclaimed, giving her a reassuring smile. “I am terrified, Jinx. I don’t know if I will be good for her, or if I will be able to help her. But I have decided to try. I want to do my best, even if she ends up leaving us in a few months. That must count for something, right?”
She examined his face, the honesty and vulnerability in it. She didn’t seem to find the bad, the ugly, or the negativity she craved as her normal when she felt this way. He was right. It was terrifying, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t try. She wanted to try her best, too. She wanted to give this kid the life she deserved, a life of bliss, joy, and peace. She knew she didn’t regret her decision. But she didn’t want to mess it up for the kid. She knew that, potentially, if anybody was going to screw it up, it would be her. So would it be too selfish of her to try? To want to do this regardless?
“Promise me,” she started, leaning into Ekko’s touch and placing her palm atop his hand. “Promise me that we will do this together, that we will be there for each other, and that every step we take, it will be a mutual decision.”
His smile grew.
“Of course,” he said, pressing his lips to her forehead. “Always, my love.”
She leaned up, then, pressing her lips softly against his. It wasn’t like all of her fears had disappeared, but there was a sense of calmness that came from Ekko’s reassurance. She pulled back, pressing her forehead against his.
“I love you,” she whispered, smile reflecting his.
“I love you too,” he whispered back, bumping noses together.
“So, are you ready to go get our girl?”