Chapter Text
A long, lush green field glinted as the sunrise reflected on the dew. Birds sang in the trees surrounding the peaceful scene. Kaz exhaled deeply, and surveyed the area with a relaxed expression. He turned to his left, where another young man sat on the grass.
“Jesper.” Kaz said, with a hint of yearning- as though the man next to him was a long forgotten memory.
Jesper smiled and shifted to relax his position and rest on his hands. “Where are we, Kaz?” he said, keeping his eyes fixed on Kaz. Watching as Kaz glanced away, stiff and melancholy. A beat passed. The ambiance of insects filled their silence.
The field Jordie and I played in, Kaz wanted to say; it belonged to the gray and wrinkled old woman who lives in the spare room in the town hall because her farmhouse burned down. Jordie liked it especially because there were no overbearing adults to tell them to get to work, or to leave land that did not belong to them. Lij. My home.
“Nowhere- only a pasture.” he lied.
Kaz turned his head back towards Jesper, and let his mind be thrown into orbit around his best friend. Kaz, circling around a star that shined a trillion times brighter than he would ever admit. A star… Jesper was certainly a star that anyone would look at: with the way he handled his pistols, the way his nature could mend a heart, sooth a soul or strike a match and excite anyone he pleased. The ways in which Jesper excited Kaz---
Kaz consciously cleared his mind: shifting his attention to this nostalgic green. The seeds Jordie would throw for the birds still laying on the dirt. The chilling way the wind glided over their bodies, without any hints of buzzing. The empty burrow of a rabbit nearby, with no squeaking to be heard. Kaz strained to hear anything coming from the field, but the only sound was his own breathing. Not even Jesper made a sound. Unnerved, Kaz eyed him. He locked eyes with his blood brother.
Jordie sat in the same position Jesper had just been in, his eyes glazed, yet blinking. He looked well, as though he were healthier than Kaz ever remembered him being. Jordie reached out for Kaz’s forehead, perhaps intending to mindlessly brush Kaz’s hair back. Kaz leaned away from the touch, and felt a hard shove against his back. Swiveling around, he was again met with his brother, flesh swollen and ripping. His eyes were unfit for their sockets, and had a rotting glaze slimed over them.
Disgusted, Kaz lurched back, feverishly stumbling to his feet. His haphazard escape dance led to him sliding back down once more. Where his hands had connected with ground previously, they fell further and landed in crashing, frenzied waters. He felt cold waves bite the feeling from his arms and legs, his vision blur from the collision with water. Distantly, he felt touches on his skin.
Distantly, as his mind faded away from him.
Laying under a suffocating sheet, Kaz lurched forward and tensed.
Every muscle in his body stiffened---his neck dove down---his breathing spiked---his eyes crashed closed.
Hands groped at every minute piece of flesh they could find, tearing him down to center. He silently gasped, shaking as tremors rocked through him. Intangible fingernails ripped at every vulnerability he spent his waking hours shielding. Each strangling breath that fought its way through his lungs sped up the next. No light made its way through his eyelids, and yet all he could see were crashing blue-green waves, splotches of drying red and decaying oranges. His veins pumped adipocere, his body became taxidermy. Still and unmoving.
Kaz’s breathing slowed, and his bedroom came into focus.
“Kaz?” A softer voice called to him from the other side of the bedroom.
A shuffling noise. Then, a match was struck.
With the room illuminated, Kaz could watch as Inej tentatively stepped closer to him and sat atop the woven blanket on her side of their bed. Her mouth was tightly closed and downturned. She stalled the conversation (she allowed him more time to steady his breathing) that Kaz knew was inevitable, and sent one of her meaningful, layered glances towards him. 'Is this okay?' was prominently fixed on her expression. But she wasn't forcing him to give her a verbal answer. Just a signal that he was seeing the scene in front of him, not reliving one far behind in his memories.
"Didn't mean t.." he sighed, cutting himself off. Any apology he tried to give Inej for waking her, scaring her, annoying her- she never took any of it. Kaz settled on "It wasn't horrible, that one."
"Still."
Kaz no longer slept with his gloves on. He was more comfortable with kisses and touching (when alerted). He has told her about so much of his past. And... even with his significant progress he still felt as though he was giving her so much less than what she asked of him. Without his armor- and yet here he was, hunching his shoulders and measuring his breathing.
Inej sat closer to him, a blanket pushed between their thighs. No accidental touches. She put her hand down on his leg, palm upward.
"Talk to me. About anything." Inej said. Her voice was soothing. She wanted him to take his mind off of what had woken him up and talk about some mundane topic; like recent redrawings of the invisible borders between Ketterdam gangs or something one of his Dregs had done that had him grinding his teeth together in annoyance. (a never-ending well).
He wanted to tell her everything, and the words kept sliding down his throat. But Saints, he was going to be honest. He was going to heal, and it wasn't for Inej. He could only change and grow if he did it for himself. And the next step was saying "Jesper."
Once Kaz cleared his head of his nightmare, Jesper was at the forefront of his remaining thoughts. His silver eyes and charming smile. His long legs... easy to get tangled in. Did he want to tell Inej of his emotional infidelity? How would she react? On the other hand.. how could he keep a secret from her? Especially one so prevalent to their relationship and their everyday lives. He could easily just tell her about what had occurred in the dream- but that was hardly the half of it. Jesper was in his dreams and he would tell Inej exactly why.
"I want him to.."
They had been having sex- the penetrative kind, not the frottage that they were too scared to push further when they first began- for about three years now. He hoped he wasn't pushing them too fast when he said this.
"I want to have a threesome with him." He said. No retractability- he left himself no loopholes to deny what he said.
"Oh."
""Oh", and nothing else?" Kaz said.
"Really?" Her tone alarmed Kaz.
"Are.. are you mad?" he asks, more tentatively that he wanted to.
"No. Well, yes." Inej stood, and walked towards the windowsill. Recently, when they had significant conversations, Inej would sit at the sill and turn to feed the birds when he, inevitably, pissed her off. It gave them both a moment to calm down.
"You think you were hiding that from me? Genuinely?" So, not mad. Astounded, more like.
"I.. not, well, hiding.." Kaz tried, but he wasn't in the right headset to phrase any sentence the way he wanted to. Inej could tell, and she knew to let him be.
"I'll be back. Cinnamon tea, right?" she said, assuring herself. Inej walked out of his room, and Kaz listened to the sound of her footsteps down the stairway.
Kaz sat on the side of his bed, tracing every stitch in the sides of his gloves. He stood, and spent several minutes in the bathroom, shaving and focusing on his breathing- in and out. Peculiar behavior for the Bastard of the Barrel, but an everyday routine for Kaz Rietveld. He continued to patter around his bedroom, his tendency to pace without regard for his tense and sore leg getting the better of him. Fucking Saints, he was bad at relaxing on command. For Inej, he thought, as he laid back down and waited for her to return.