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ethandelgado1 · 1 month ago

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❝ HOT & COLD ❞

Jinx x fem!reader / modern AU

summary: Jinx and you are over—officially. But the lease says otherwise. Add a blizzard, a broken heater, one very unfortunate bed-sharing arrangement, and too many grudges to count. The blanket is thin, but the line between hatred and muscle memory is even thinner. Who knew emotional repression could be this warm?

contents: soft angst & fluff, exes to… something, forced proximity, only one bed trope, accidental intimacy, domestic tension, mutual pining, idiots (still) in love, poor communication skills, romcom fic, modern AU.

wc: 4.4k

Jinx masterlist ⭑.ᐟ

Jinx and you broke up.

Like, broke up broke up.

With tears, screaming, one shattered mug (accidental), one shattered phone screen (less accidental), and silence, in the end. Not the peaceful kind—just the kind that buzzed with all the things you didn’t say and probably wouldn’t.

It was Jinx who muttered, “Fine. We’re done,” and you who said nothing in response.

Not because you agreed, but because you didn’t want to beg. Again.

But, in your infinite brilliance, neither of you remembered to check the lease. Or maybe you did remember—just silently hoped the other would cave first and move out.

Because rent was hell, and pride was worse. And if you left, Jinx would win.

She was absolutely thinking the same thing.

Weeks passed. Two months, technically.

Two long, passive-aggressive, emotionally charged, death-by-a-thousand-paper-cuts months of sharing the same apartment like strangers who knew exactly where the other kept their trauma.

She holed herself up in the bedroom, headphones always on, voice rising in chaotic bursts during gaming streaks or mechanical rants to no one. You took the couch, curled into yourself at night, watching bad movies on low volume, mouthing along to the dialogue just to feel less alone.

It was the kind of breakup that involved changing the other’s profile picture on Netflix to their least favorite character just to push buttons, arguing about mugs that were mysteriously “stolen” (Jinx still maintained that the “World’s Okayest Girlfriend” mug always belonged to her), and a dramatic declaration from you that you needed “space to grow without someone damaging your Minecraft village every night.”

You coexisted in a very passive-aggressive ceasefire, held together by sheer spite and a mutual agreement to pretend the other didn’t exist outside of kitchen-related war crimes.

“STOP EATING MY CEREAL” became a recurring sticky note on the fridge.

“STOP BUYING SHITTY CEREAL,” Jinx wrote back, underlining shitty three times.

You labeled your food with threats like a deranged librarian. She responded by using your fancy almond milk to water your plants.

“You poisoned my fern!”

“She was a bitch anyway.”

One particularly tense morning, you found all your movie posters defaced with crudely drawn mustaches. Jinx’s crime was marked by the signature blue Sharpie and the fact that she cackled for ten minutes straight when you discovered it.

You retaliated by unplugging her gaming setup mid-boss-fight.

The scream could probably still be heard echoing down the hall.

She logged into your shared Spotify account and replaced your sad indie playlist with Yodeling Kid remixes.

You bought a life-size cardboard cutout of some D-list actor she hated and propped it up in the hallway.

She put googly eyes on it and called it her new roommate.

It was a cold, petty war. Very stupid, but livable.

Until the blizzard hit.

It came out of nowhere. No gentle snowfall or cinematic build-up—just a sudden, blinding white wall outside the windows, like karma finally cashed in all its receipts. Within the hour, the entire city went quiet, like someone had unplugged the world.

And then came the outage—lights gone, Wi-Fi dead. The fridge stuttered to a halt with a shudder, and everything fell into a hush thick enough to taste.

You were in the kitchen, standing over a sad bowl of reheated soup—portion for one—trying to stir some kind of comfort into it. The only light came from your phone’s flashlight, its narrow beams cutting through the room like a lighthouse in a sea of passive-aggressive clutter.

Jinx emerged from her room like a startled raccoon, squinting at the sudden dark. She blinked blearily, purple hoodie half-zipped, screwdriver still tucked behind one ear, and a half-disassembled drone clutched to her chest like a wounded animal.

“Hey,” she muttered, “did you pay the—?”

“It’s the storm,” you said, not even bothering to look at her as you angled the flashlight toward the stove. Your tone was flat and practiced. The tone of someone who had once shared a bed with her and now shared nothing but bills.

She paused. Processed.

“Cool,” she said flatly. “I love the apocalypse.”

“You would.”

There was a beat of silence. Then she scratched her neck, the way she always did when she was about to say something either vaguely important or incredibly stupid.

“So, uh,” she began, rocking back on her heels, “the heater’s dead, too.”

You turned your head slowly, deadpan. “What.”

“It was making this noise like eeeeeeeeeeeck—” She flailed one arm vaguely, mimicking an engine dying mid-scream. “Then nothing.”

You stared at her. “I told you we should’ve bled the radiator last week. It was already wheezing like a dying Victorian child, gasping out its final confession.”

Jinx just shrugged, unapologetic. “Yeah, well. He died doing what he loved. Making terrible sounds and being a nuisance,” she shot back like a stubborn teenager before realization hit. “Wait—were you just speaking to me like we’re still on speaking terms?”

“No, I was speaking to the other emotionally stunted idiot I share rent with.” You rolled your eyes, but your jaw tightened.

She blinked at you for a long second, eyes catching the flashlight. “Must be a crowd in here, then,” she finally muttered under her breath.

The tension had been simmering all evening—quiet, sharp, inevitable. You and Jinx stood in the darkened apartment like two ghosts who hadn’t figured out how to leave the place where they died. Wrapped in too-thin hoodies and thicker layers of resentment, you both waited for the other to break first.

“We could light candles,” you offered eventually, voice clipped, arms folded across your chest like armor.

Her head turned slowly, eyes glinting. “You mean my candles? The ones you took from our room after the breakup?”

You scoffed. “You don’t even like vanilla sugar cookie.”

“I like spite,” she snapped back. Then, of course, she went and fetched them anyway. She lit each one like she was performing a ritual—striking matches with far too much intensity, her face flickering in the flame’s glow like she was summoning a demon instead of basic warmth. You watched her set the candles down on the windowsill, the kitchen counter, and the old coffee table stained with memories.

The room was suddenly full of soft light and the scent of synthetic sweetness. It clung to the air like nostalgia—unwelcome and too familiar.

You pulled on another hoodie and cocooned yourself in a blanket from the couch. Lukewarm soup in hand, you sat cross-legged in the living room, the spoon tapping gently against the ceramic bowl like a nervous tic. Jinx paced behind you like she couldn’t stand still for too long without combusting.

“Bedroom’s warmer,” she finally muttered, not looking at you.

You raised an eyebrow without lifting your gaze, watching the soup swirl in your bowl like it held some kind of moral high ground. “Because you hoard all the blankets.”

“It’s called survival instincts,” she replied, leaning one hip against the doorframe. “Sorry you weren’t born with any.”

“I was too busy being born with emotional maturity.”

“Boring,” she tossed over her shoulder and turned on her heel, feet thumping softly against the floorboards.

But she left the bedroom door open.

You stared at it for a while. At the golden light pooling in the hallway. At the shape of her shadow disappearing inside. At the crack in your own will widening with every second.

Eventually, logic won.

Or loneliness did. Hard to say.

Ten minutes later, you stood in the doorway like a reluctant truce offering with crossed arms and toes curling into the icy floor through your fuzzy socks.

“You’re hogging the whole bed,” you said, trying for annoyance and landing somewhere closer to exhaustion.

“You weren’t in it,” she replied from somewhere under the blanket, her voice muffled.

“You left one pillow.”

“I am one pillow.”

“Gross.”

“True.”

You climbed in anyway.

The mattress creaked beneath you like it remembered things you didn’t want to. The blanket was warm in the places she’d already been, cold everywhere else. She didn’t move to make room, and you didn’t ask. Just shifted into the empty space beside her with the kind of caution reserved for old battlefields.

The silence between you was immediate and loud, only broken by the wind hurling itself against the windows like it had a vendetta. You lay stiff and awkward, the air filled with unsaid things and the scent of faint shampoo and stubborn memories.

“I’m still mad at you,” Jinx muttered into her side of the bed, her voice muffled and sullen, breath fogging faintly in the frigid air.

You didn’t bother turning around. “Then don’t cuddle me.”

“I’m not cuddling you,” she huffed defensively, indignation wrapped in shivers.

After a muttered argument and one poorly constructed pillow wall that collapsed under the weight of pettiness and shared body heat the moment you moved, the two of you ended up back-to-back, pressed together beneath the blanket like awkward divorcees forced to share a hotel bed at a family reunion. Two ex-girlfriends, one blizzard, zero dignity. But a whole lot of silence, tension, and regret.

Then, softly—reluctantly—she mumbled, “…Move closer, dumbass. I’m freezing.”

You rolled your eyes so hard it could’ve powered a generator. “Unbelievable,” you muttered, but you scooted back, just a little. She moved, too, slowly, like she wasn’t totally desperate for warmth. Or the smell of your hoodie. Or the shape of you.

Her toes bumped your calf, and you flinched. “Your feet are ice,” you hissed.

“You’ve got the warm ones. Share, frost witch.”

You kicked at her half-heartedly, but she just tangled her legs into yours like it was nothing. You both squirmed, adjusting awkwardly—arms crossing, knees knocking, elbows bumping into ribs—until you landed in a mess of limbs that felt more like a habit.

Jinx’s nose brushed against your shoulder—accidentally, on purpose—and neither of you mentioned it.

A long pause settled over the room. The kind of silence that comes after too many almosts and not enough apologies.

“…Are you still mad at me?” she asked softly, her voice barely above a whisper, like the question had snuck out before she could stop it.

You stared at the ceiling for a moment, then exhaled. “I don’t know,” you admitted, the words leaving your mouth half-formed, like they didn’t want to exist outside of your chest.

Silence settled again. Not cold, but careful.

“I saw you crying during Finding Nemo last week,” she blurted out, trying—and failing—to keep the amusement out of her voice.

You turned your head slightly, just enough to glare half-heartedly. “That movie is devastating. He literally loses his son.”

She grinned in the dark. “Yeah, but I was emotionally dead inside before the stingray scene.”

You let out a short, reluctant laugh—sharp at the edges, but real. “You’re the worst.”

“You love it.”

“I did.”

The air shifted.

Not just the temperature, but the weight of everything unsaid, and you could’ve sworn you felt the mattress dip with the gravity of it.

“…So. Past tense,” she said quietly.

You shifted beneath the blanket, fabric brushing against her leg. “Don’t do that.”

“Do what?” Her voice was too innocent.

“Make it sound like I’m the villain in your sad indie song,” you murmured.

Jinx blinked. “I would never.” Then, she smiled. Softly, almost fond. “Your vibe is more… tragic lesbian who dies in Act III.”

That earned another huff of laughter from you, but quieter this time. Sadder.

You turned to face her—just barely—and your noses nearly touched. Her breath was warm against your mouth. You didn’t move, and neither did she. The space between you was almost nothing, but still everything.

For a long moment, you simply stared at each other in the half-dark. Breathing the same cold air, wearing the same old ache, still pretending the word love wasn’t curling in both your throats like smoke.

Her eyes fluttered. You could see her trying to stay present, to stay with you. But every few seconds, her gaze would soften, blur a little, until she blinked hard again and refocused on you—like your face was something she didn’t want to lose track of.

Your chest rose, and so did hers. In time.

It was around 3:00 a.m., though neither of you knew it. Because Jinx was curled against you like she forgot you broke up and lost the right to touch, and you didn’t remind her.

Maybe neither of you cared.

You fit together the way people who’ve fought and fucked and forgiven each other a hundred times always do—like old puzzle pieces with frayed edges, soft from use.

You weren’t really awake, but not quite asleep either—somewhere in the middle, suspended in that liminal space where your body acts before your brain does.

So when you stirred beside her—shuffling closer, sighing softly into the crook of her neck—it felt natural to respond. Familiar, like muscle memory. Her arm curled instinctively, draping over your waist like it used to.

You didn’t flinch. Simply exhaled, deep and steady, while your nose brushed against her collarbone in the dark. A second later, your lips followed, grazing soft skin—too lightly to be deliberate, too precisely to be random.

“You still grind your teeth when you’re about to fall asleep,” Jinx mumbled suddenly, her voice low and heavy, half-buried in the pillow between you.

You smiled into the dark—one of those worn-in smiles that surfaces from memory before thought. You didn’t mean to. It just happened, the way muscle remembers softness even after months of tension.

She exhaled, her breath warm against your temple, slow and even like the rhythm of a tide she couldn’t resist. Her lips brushed skin—not purposefully, not quite. But close enough to blur the line.

It wasn’t a kiss.

But it wasn’t not a kiss.

More like an echo.

A ghost of the old days, when goodnights always came with kisses and mornings meant shared coffee—too sweet, made one-handed while you still wore your blanket like a cape—and legs entangled in sleepy domestic knots.

An entire life lived in tiny routines.

You shifted slightly, voice drowsy as you murmured, “You’re breathing on me.”

“Can’t help it,” she mumbled, her words slurred with sleep. “You’re warm.”

“You’re dreaming.”

“Probably,” she hummed in response, a quiet, contented sound. The words melted into the quiet like honey in tea.

You moved again, slowly, thoughtlessly—half-lost to sleep yourself. Your nose brushed the curve of her cheek, skin to skin in the dark. “You’re soft.”

Jinx didn’t respond to that.

Because what could she say?

That she knew?

That she’s only ever soft with you?

That the word soft coming from your mouth made her want to cry in a way nothing else ever did?

That she missed being called that more than she’d miss breathing?

So, she said nothing.

She just leaned forward and pressed the gentlest kiss to your temple—so light it could’ve been imagined, so instinctive it didn’t feel like a choice at all.

Not even thinking.

Just moving. Reacting. Remembering.

“I still set the kettle out for you,” you whispered suddenly, voice barely audible in the dark.

She stirred beside you. “What?”

“Every morning. I don’t know why.”

She went quiet for a long moment. The kind of quiet that meant she was holding something between her teeth, turning it over.

“I still charge your phone when you forget.”

You blinked, eyes stinging suddenly, inexplicably. The quiet pressed in around you again, heavy with all the things you hadn’t said.

“…We’re so dumb,” you said, almost laughing. It came out cracked.

“The dumbest.”

Another silence, but not empty.

Never empty.

Then she shifted, just slightly, like her whole body braced for impact before the words even left her mouth. “You know,” she said, quiet and careful, “I didn’t stop loving you. I just got tired of trying to become someone you could stay with.”

Your breath caught.

You didn’t respond right away. Not because you didn’t have words, but because none of them felt like enough—not for this, not for her, and not after everything.

But slowly, tentatively, your hand found hers under the blanket. The touch was gentle, almost shy. Yet when your fingers slid into hers, they fit the same way they always had. Like nothing had changed. Like everything had. Like love learned how to hold on even when you tried to let go.

Your thumb brushed over her knuckle once. “You were always someone I wanted to stay with,” you whispered. “I just didn’t know how to stay with you and not lose pieces of myself in the process.”

Jinx’s grip tightened, just a little. Just enough. “I would’ve given you space,” she murmured.

“You didn’t know how,” you said, not unkindly, just true.

“I do now.”

Silence again.

Then, slowly, she tilted her head. Her mouth brushed the edge of your jaw—featherlight, slow, like she wasn’t sure she had permission. Like she was trying not to wake you. Like the memory of loving you was still rooted in her muscle memory, twitching to life in the dark.

And you let her. Turned into it, just slightly, because you were too tired to pretend you didn’t miss the way her lips used to know exactly where to land.

You met halfway.

The kiss was nothing like the ones you used to share. No urgency, no hunger, and no frantic pulling at clothes or gasps between apologies.

It was soft and short and not entirely awake—it happened so gently, so sleepily, you didn’t even realize you were kissing until it was already over.

Just a peck. The kind people don’t mean to give—like a sigh, or a yawn, or reaching for the light switch in a room you haven’t lived in for months but still remember.

Like coming home for three seconds in the middle of a snowstorm.

And then, without thinking, you leaned forward and pressed another kiss to the tip of her nose. Barely a whisper of contact. Just enough for her to breathe in sharply, like even now, even half-asleep, your affection still caught her off guard.

Then a third one—this one landing a little off-center, a little clumsy, brushing messily across the corner of her mouth.

A hello.

I remember you.

This still lives here.

Jinx made a small, involuntary sound—something between a sigh and a whimper—low and soft against your lips, like her body remembered you before her mind could. Your noses bumped lazily, and you smiled into it like it hurt.

When you finally paused for air, foreheads pressed together, you whispered, “This doesn’t mean anything… right?”

She nodded against you. “Right. Just… survival. Warmth.”

You huffed a quiet laugh, breath puffing against her lips. “Like penguins.”

She cracked a smile. “Exactly.”

“So if I kiss you again—”

“It’s so I don’t freeze to death,” she finished for you.

“Obviously.”

Another kiss.

This one lingered—longer than the last, warmer, steadier. There was a quiet kind of certainty in it.

“Penguins mate for life,” you whispered against her lips, the words soft and teasing, but not without weight. Like you tried to make it a joke so you didn’t have to admit it sounded like a promise.

Jinx blinked, caught mid-breath.

“…Shit.”

You laughed, breathless, and buried your face in her neck again, smelling her body wash and deciding not to comment on the fact that it smelled suspiciously close to yours.

Her arms slipped around your waist, pulling you closer. “Sleep,” she murmured, voice raspy with exhaustion and something far too tender. “Before we say something even dumber.”

“Too late,” you mumbled back, the words muffled against her collarbone.

You fell quiet again, tangled up in heat and history and every part of you that never quite let go, her thumb tracing something lazy into your spine.

“We’re a mess,” she whispered.

“Always have been.”

“Still want toast in the morning?”

You smiled, eyelids heavy now, the weight of the moment pressing down like warmth. “Yeah.”

Jinx’s grin was lazy and crooked, her voice slurring at the edges of sleep. “I’ll burn it just how you like.”

Outside, the storm continued.

Inside, two idiots kept forgetting they ever broke up, suddenly remembering how to be soft again.

And maybe the heater would come back.

And maybe you’d go back to hating each other in the morning.

But the body doesn’t lie the way the mouth does.

Because love doesn’t vanish—not really.

Sometimes it just moves into the living room and leaves sarcastic sticky notes.

yippeee i haven’t forgotten how to write softness!!

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