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It was a simple job. For old time’s sake.
It wasn’t supposed to go like this.
But it’s been a long time since Inej has been the Wraith, a long time since she’s slipped on those trusted rubber-soled slippers of hers and disappeared into the shadows. And it seems she didn’t slip into the shadows quite as completely as she used to.
Which is how she’d ended up with one of her own knives, Sankt Petyr, pressed against her throat.
And Kaz Brekker hadn’t even spared her a second glance.
She knows it was part of the job, that the Dirtyhands the rest of Ketterdam sees and fears is a drastically different creature than the boy underneath the persona, but she can’t help but resent him a little for that. She was right in front of him, and she very well could have had her throat slit and bled out right then and there, and he wouldn’t have even graced her with a parting look.
She’s accustomed to giving him grace for things like that, acknowledging that the relationship between them is never going to be one that’s normal, never the sort of thing where they walk through the streets of the Barrel holding hands showcasing their love like so many other pairs do. But for some reason - maybe just the rawness of thinking how close to death she was just a short while ago, before she managed to catch the Tip off guard and shake free from his hold, regaining Sankt Petyr in the process - it’s bothering her more than usual tonight.
She hops another rooftop, always watching and listening to the commotion of the streets of Ketterdam down below.
Inej sleeps at the Slat when she’s in town. It’s something some of the other Crows know but none of them dare to ask questions about. Just as none of them dare to talk about the fact that Kaz upgraded his bedroom to contain a bed far larger than one person needs. It’s far more suited for two people - and even at that, two people who need to be far enough apart in the bed that there’s no chance of any accidental contact in the middle of the night.
She gets to the top room before he does. She picks the lock on his windowsill and slides it open, but she doesn’t go inside just yet. The crows - her crows - are there waiting for her tonight, but she doesn’t have anything to feed them. Their eyes follow her every move nonetheless, ever hopeful that she’ll suddenly have something to give them.
After a few minutes, she hears the lock on the door click open, then sees Kaz come into the room, letting his black wool coat fall off his shoulders and hanging it by the door.
Next comes his vest, then finally, those black gloves, delicately plucked off of each of his lockpicking fingers, stacked on top of each other on a small table by the door.
His armor, off.
“Is there a reason you’re still waiting outside the windowsill?” he asks. “You’ve never needed an invitation to enter before.”
She slides herself onto the windowsill, still not fully entering his room. She’s fighting every urge to keep her own armor up, to not say a word about the thoughts running through her head tonight because some part of her was conditioned by Heleen to keep those things to herself. Men lose interest if you’re too much of a challenge .
But Kaz isn’t any of those men. If anything, he’s the opposite; he’s drawn to a challenge, and he’s never found one he can’t conquer one way or another.
So she lets the armor fall, and there’s the faintest tremor in her voice when she speaks. “I was almost killed tonight.”
He softens at that - as much as the boy of rough edges and sharp corners is capable of softening, anyways. “You’re not hurt, are you?”
She shakes her head. If she was, she has no doubt he’d be plotting the death of the Tip who’d held her immediately and would have his body thrown in the Harbor by morning.
“If I had been though, if that Black Tip had slit my throat with my own blade… when would you have cared?”
A wrinkle appears between his eyebrows as he appraises her. The look betrays a thousand thoughts running through his mind, the same strategy he applies to figuring out how to pick a lock applied to figuring out how to unlock her.
“I would have ended him if he even tried , I would - ”
“I don’t give a fuck what Dirtyhands would do to a Tip who killed his Wraith,” Inej interrupts, perhaps with more force than necessary. “I care that you wouldn’t so much as look at me. I could’ve died and you would’ve still been too focused on the mission to even spare me one last glance.”
He’s silent for a moment, though it doesn’t appear to be from a lack of trying. It looks as though he starts to speak several times, but thinks better of it.
“Is that what you think this is?” he eventually manages. He sounds like he can’t quite believe what she’s suggesting.
“If I’m seeing things the wrong way, I’d appreciate it if you’d correct my course.”
She slides off the windowsill, letting the window fall shut behind her. Kaz has moved to stand over his desk, gripping the edges of the wood tightly.
Instinctively, she wants to move closer to him, but for some reason, her feet stay glued to the spot she’s standing in.
“You asked me, years ago, what my tell was in a fight,” he rasps.
She’s not expecting the sudden pivot, but she goes with it nonetheless. “You said it was your bad leg.”
He turns his head to her. “You knew as well as I did that that was a lie.”
She nods.
She’d watched him that night at the Slat, and in many fights thereafter, trying to figure out what exactly it was that made Kaz Brekker predictable in a fight, what was guaranteed to score someone a point against him. He’d found her tell, so surely she’d be able to find his. But she’d eventually given up on the pursuit - every time she thought she’d rooted something out, he went and proved that he was still completely unpredictable, completely unable to be bested.
“Van Eck knew it. That day on Vellgeluk.” He turns away from her, gripping the edges of the table tightly. His gloves are off, and she can see his knuckles turning white.
Her mind reels. “The day that I…?”
“Yes,” he replies sharply, and Inej would be annoyed by his interruption if she hadn’t caught a glimpse of his reflection on the glass. The seemingly emotionless Bastard of the Barrel has certain expressions that only she can read, and this is one of them. This is pain. He doesn’t like thinking about that day - and the days that followed - any more than she does.
She stays silent, waiting for him to elaborate.
“I looked at you. I looked at you, and Van Eck immediately knew exactly where to strike. My weakness, my tell… it’s you.”
“Oh.”
He picks up a scrap of paper on the desk. “This city thrives on information. It thrives on ferreting out weakness, love , and lighting it on fire. And that’s why I’ve gotten so damn good at arson - I can’t be burned if there’s nothing to attract the flames.” He crumples it in his hands, letting it fall back down onto the wood with a soft thump. “But for whatever reason… this particular tell isn’t one I’m able to hide. So yes, I didn’t look at you tonight. Because I knew, the moment I did would be the moment that Tip actually went through with it. Your best chance at making it out of there alive was me pretending you didn’t exist.”
He runs a hand through his hair, and Inej notices that, subconsciously, she’s found herself drawn closer and closer to him with each word.
She knows he has a point. Secrets are Kaz’s chosen currency in the Barrel, more precious to him than even his kruge, and she’s seen him weaponise them countless times before. The memory of Pekka Rollins grovelling for the life of his son appears in her mind, uninvited.
And she’d done the same, hadn’t she? She knows firsthand what threats to a loved one can drive a person to do - the distinct absence of Rollins in a city he’d once proclaimed himself king of is proof of that.
“But I don’t ever, ever want you to doubt for a second how much I care about you.” His voice wavers, and she knows he’s struggling to put this into words. Kaz has never been particularly adept at being forthcoming with his feelings, preferring instead to communicate them in other ways - showing rather than telling.
He’s gotten miles better at it than when he was just a teenager, but it’s still not something that comes naturally to him. The Barrel has trained him to see emotions and attachment as vulnerabilities, and undoing years of those teachings has hardly been smooth sailing.
The directness is what she needs tonight though. She can’t have him out in the world, not right now, at least, but she’s desperate, greedy for everything he can offer to her here.
She takes two more steps towards him, until they’re only about a foot apart.
“I know you do,” she says softly, letting some of her own vulnerability show. “Sometimes it’s just hard to remember when none of this… none of us ever leaves this room.”
“It can’t. That’s the only way both of us survive.” He looks at her and frowns. “And I hate it, because you deserve better than that. You deserve better than what I can give.”
The small tendrils of doubt creeping at the edge of her mind fully wither away now, and it’s abundantly clear to her that she doesn’t give a damn that Kaz can’t give her a flashy, showcased sort of love. She wants this room, and this boy, and that soft, vulnerable look he reserves just for her.
She shakes her head. “This isn’t a question of what I deserve. This is a question of what I want . And I don’t want anybody who isn’t you.”
He stands up fully and turns his body to her, and they’re face-to-face now.
She brings a hand up, letting it hover an inch away from his cheek. This is the compromise they’ve worked out, the safest way to deal with their collective demons. One person makes a move, but they don’t make contact. It’s up to the other to close the gap.
And Kaz does, leaning his head so that his cheek rests in her hands. His skin is warm under her fingers, and he brings a hand of his own up to hold hers in place. She feels his thumb against the inside of her wrist, unconsciously seeking out the feel of her heartbeat, proof that she’s alive and here and that he’s nowhere near the cold, dead flesh of the Reaper’s Barge.
His tolerance for touch ebbs and flows, though it’s improved drastically since they first started… whatever it is they started. Hers has too, but the spectres of their pasts still come back to haunt them every so often. Some days, they lay in his bed together, touching practically everywhere, and their demons seem so very far away from the safe fortress they’ve built with each other; other times, Inej feels herself withdrawing from her own skin at a simple brush of his lips on her cheek.
But right now… right now feels good. The storm raging on inside of her has calmed, and from the tender look in his coffee-coloured eyes, the one in him is at peace as well.
“I love you,” she says softly, hardly above a whisper as she presses herself onto her tiptoes. It’s been six months since Kaz first said those three words and she’d said them back, and she gets no less of a thrill from it now.
“I love you too,” he replies, closing the last of the gap between the two of them, his words only a hair’s breadth away from her lips.
When he kisses her, it’s soft and sweet and all the things she’d never expect from Kaz Brekker, Dirtyhands, Bastard of the Barrel, if she hadn’t once learned where to look for them.
He breaks the kiss for only a moment. “And that Tip that threatened you will be handled. I’ll see to it personally.”
She almost has to laugh. He can’t shout it from the rooftops of Ketterdam, so this is how Kaz Brekker tells the world he loves her.
Her unbreakable boy, who breaks only for her.