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This is the only time Jinx elects to sit still.
Still, but not frozen, not like a doll patiently waiting to be played with. Even now, her hands are moving, fingers drumming up and down her knees, from designs at her side to scrap metal in her lap. The ocean of her hair spills down her back and over the desk and further, where Silco’s feet skim carefully over the ends so that he doesn’t accidentally step on it. Jinx is humming, clicking her tongue, occasionally chirps to him half a thought and forgets to finish it before she’s back to work.
Silco plays servant. Jinx’s hair is thick and uncooperative under any hands but his own. He scoops a bundle of it up over his lap as he drags his chair closer, careful not to pinch it underneath and break her concentration. His fingers disappear between the locks. Her hair shines, soft as silk and tumbling off of her head. Washing it all’s not always an ordeal she can put herself through, and even if he’ll braid it while it hangs dull and limp, he savors the smooth way it runs between his fingers today.
She’s ninety percent hair by body weight, and the other ten percent split between muscle and stubbornness. Her head suddenly tips back, coinciding with a snap of her raised fingers, as she cocks a narrowed eye over one shoulder. “What’s taking so long?”
Silco gives her one of his most long-suffering frowns. So deep and so exhausted that Jinx delights in it, her grin open wide enough to show her sharp little canines glinting in the light of his office. Silco lifts his hands through the weight of her hair to cup it over the back of her head and turns her back around. “If you cared about how long this takes, you would cut your hair,” he says.
Jinx snorts, and her hands lace together, squeezing until her skin pales before breaking apart. “What other excuse would I have to-” The sentence dies there, shot, as Jinx abruptly talks over herself, “If you’re so sick of me, why don’t you order Sevika to do it? I bet she’d love trying to figure out how to tie a noose with it.”
“Jinx,” he says, half warning and half permission for her racing thoughts to stop. He can’t hear them, but he sees them in how she leans away from his touch and how she curls her legs in closer to her body. Jinx exhales. He begins to split the waves of her hair into manageable ropes, one, two, three, spread between his hands as the other half of her hair falls aside for later. “No one else would ever be able to tame your hair.”
“Never?” she asks, seeking for a promise.
“Only me,” he gives it, “so hold still.” Tension melts out of her, leaving her loose to follow the gentle tugs of his braid. Her head rocks back and forth as he spins strand over strand. He could go faster; the motions are familiar, and once the base is firmly in place, the rest of the braid comes easily. He remains at the same pace despite that, slowly working his way down from her scalp along her neck to her shoulder.
Jinx’s movements have slowed. There’s a senselessness to the way she runs her fingers over her newest design, like she’s not absorbing any of it. Her breath comes in long and slow, and then-
Silco doesn’t register what the noise is, exactly. Only the sudden intrusion of it, the threat, and finally, his tempered relief as he realizes it was outside and far enough away to not be either of their problem.
Only then does he notice his grip on Jinx’s half-braided hair and the stiffness of her body, yanked back towards him. He releases her immediately and watches the rebellious braid undo half of his work upon sensing freedom, unraveling up her back as Jinx jolts away from him again.
I’m sorry, speeds to the tip of his tongue, but he catches it just barely by the tail as he watches Jinx. She braces one hand against his desk, the other going to her scalp, and then a shiver rushes through her. It goes down her spine with a sharp inhale and escapes back up her body as she whispers, “Oh,” and a moment after, gingerly touching her own head and sounding like she might laugh, “Fuck.”
“Did I hurt you?” he ends up saying instead. He watches his progress fall apart as the strands further escape the braid.
“Yes,” Jinx answers, and in the same breath, “and you wouldn’t do that again? If I asked? Would you?”
“Are you asking?” All he needs is the dip of her head to confirm. His hand shoots out to grab at her braid, stopping it from being completely undone. Jinx’s breath catches again.
“Say if it’s too much.” He waits for her to nod, but she’s waiting for him to pull. If one of them doesn’t go first, nothing will happen, so he takes responsibility and tightens his grip at the base of her braid.
He doesn’t pull hard. She’s not a whore he’s paid to take it; she’s not someone who failed him who deserves half of their scalp torn off; she’s Jinx, and he will untangle his fingers from her hair if she so much as flinches.
Instead, she follows the pressure of it at first, leaning back and back, leaning on her own hand as he tugs her braid. She breathes out again, “Fuck,” as her other hand scrabbles back to support her, half-curled into a tight fist.
And then he loosens his grip. He lets the weight of her body toppling forward again guide his hand, never letting go of her hair.
There’s another stifle of laughter upon her release. He can hear it as she speaks, surviving in the excited curl of her lips. “That feels…” Silco smiles and rubs his thumb against her scalp where the pressure was the hardest. “Like you’re pulling all the thoughts out of my brain,” she settles on.
“Pain can be grounding.” One of Jinx’s legs kicks out across the desk. Papers scatter, and her own new creation has fallen to the side and been momentarily forgotten.
“So that’s why you like when I stab you,” she says, lifting her index finger to her own left eye and flicking it up. On cue, the memory of the needle’s pain stings in his eye and fades. Her voice lowers, gets sharp and cruel. “And I thought you were just getting off on it.”
He runs his fingers down the side of her head, over the curve of her ear, and lets them rest at the warm hinge of her jaw. Her pulse flutters against his skin.
“Do you think I wouldn’t have told you?” he says. Jinx’s expressions are hard to follow. All he gets are the shadow of them: the way her jaw works, the tension that melts from her shoulders, the toss of her head, and finally, her voice, light again.
“You’re gonna do it again, right?” she asks.
He can’t deny her anything.
This time, when Silco pulls her hair, Jinx resists. Little at first, but as her head tips back, he watches her lock herself in place as well as she can. He doesn’t let up, the pressure growing and growing against her scalp until they reach a breaking point. Jinx gasps, each breath open-mouthed and desperate. He falters first. He relaxes his grip, but Jinx whines like a kicked dog, her spine arching back to shove her head into his hand.
Her braid is a lost cause now, and both hands get lost in the endless blue of her hair again. Jinx pants out half-giggles, caught between the exhilaration of being released from the pain and the anticipation of him taking hold again.
He pulls hard, and Jinx fights.
She bucks against his grip, once, twice, kicking her legs out against the desk. There’s so much of her and so little at the same time: hair that shakes down her back and into his lap, catches under his not-so-careful boots, and the shadow-slip of her body that writhes against his insistent pulls as inch by inch, she’s dragged up the desk by her own hair.
Jinx has tears in her eyes and a grin wide enough to swallow the sun. She tries to brace herself with her hands and the heels of her ankles, but he wins, because she wants him to win, because her forfeit is teetering on the edge of the desk right before he releases her and tries his best to catch her in his lap without too much of her hair getting caught under her. He only partially succeeds. Jinx squirms, grunting as she wriggles around and sweeps her hair out from between them.
She slumps. He lets his head fall to rest against hers. He can hear her breathing too loud, too fast. Her heart hammers where she’s squished against him.
He should know she won’t be satisfied. She perks up again, straddles his lap with blown pupils and teeth bared. “Again,” she demands. “Do it hard enough to make me scream.”
He pats her cheek, condescending in a way she hates and pulls a pout out of her. “Not while you’re right next to my ears.” She rolls her eyes and runs her fingers over her lips to mime zipping them shut.
“Fine, but harder?” The pout juts, eyes wide and pleading. “Please, Silco?”
Her eyes slide shut when he puts his hand in her hair again.
He doesn’t have the same leverage he did before. She’s too close for that, but he’ll give her what she wants anyway. He tangles his hand as tightly into her hair as he can manage and yanks. It’s the first time he’s pulled her so suddenly, not worked her up to the pain slow and patient. Jinx groans, her head popping back until the column of her neck is almost perfectly straight. She breathes harshly, each one almost shaped like another ‘Please’ like he might stop too soon. She rises, her back straightening, arching, leaning away dangerously. She grabs onto him for stability, nails digging into his shoulder. The tears brimming in her eyes start spilling over, and her next groan becomes a sob.
Silco lets go.
Jinx collapses into him again. The tears keep coming, a rising flood that she struggles to manage. She chokes on them as she falls from understandable pain into something more intense, into the release and relief. Silco wraps his arm around her, his other hand gently stroking her hair now, considering how much longer it will take to get her braided now. She shudders.
It takes a while for her to stop crying.
Many, many, many years ago, it took him even longer, his first time. He can wait. He cups the back of her head, pressing his chin over her as she tucks herself against him.
She doesn’t meet his gaze to speak. She sniffs, and pretends to nuzzle into his chest when he knows very well that she’s just using his clothes to wipe off her runny nose from crying, and lifts her head only high enough to drop it into the crook of his neck again.
“It’s not quiet,” she says, “but it’s calm. That make any sense?” He can feel her words against his throat, as though time slows to let him memorize each puff of breath.
“It feels safe,” he agrees, knowing exactly what she’s experiencing.
Jinx huffs against him. It’s hot and damp and gone just as quick as it escaped her. He can hear her smirking, like she’s so much smarter than him and… sometimes she’s earned the right to be. “I am safe.” He opens his mouth to disagree. Jinx’s shaky hand rises up to the top of his head, curls into his short hair, and tugs.
He grunts quietly. Her grip relaxes with a snicker.
“I’m not moving until you push me off, so…” She waits, expecting what won’t come. Silco twirls a thick strand of her hair between his fingers and says nothing.