#kaz brekker be real for five fucking minutes challenge

[doorsclosingslowly]

A Private Sunrise

Ever since Jesper found out he’s the Sun Summoner, he’s been on the run. Well, sort of. He got side-tracked in Ketterdam, but now that Kaz is talking to Grisha of the Second Army, his five-year reprieve is over. Or is it?

7.8k | Kaz/Jesper, pre-Kaz/Jesper/Inej | content note: explicit sex

Jesper’s already in position when the tell-tale clacks of the cane herald Kaz’ arrival. He’s hidden behind the cracked-open door inside of a sick sleeping widow’s house, with a clear getaway path out the back, just within earshot—the perfect spot to find out just how his boss plans to sell him out.

The meeting’s on the docks in Fifth Harbour. Out in the open, but safely within Dregs territory, and in the old well-functioning part of the area that’s used for trade in everyday goods besides. The boring part. Bustling when there are cargo ships arriving and leaving, but this early in the morning and right after a storm, there’s no-one here but Kaz’ new clients: two Grisha from Ravka in their proud blue keftas, conspicuous and unafraid. Soldiers of the Second Army. Emissaries of the Darkling, on the hunt for the Sun Summoner, and they’ve finally caught up to—

Kaz is shadowed by Anika. Hers would have been Jesper’s place, if he’d been around to get asked. If he hadn’t overheard the exchange between Inej and Pim thirty minutes ago and bolted to the meeting place alone. If he hadn’t been on edge for the whole day because it was clear Kaz had his claws in a lucrative offer that involved some sort of fancy political parleying and yet he hadn’t told Jesper to clean his guns and stop drinking. Right behind Kaz’ shoulder, guarding his back, that would have been Jesper’s place.

And most likely, Kaz would have handed him right over.

Even Kaz, blind as he’s been despite the obsession with the Sun Summoner that started just a few months after Jesper joined the Dregs… but then it sometimes feels like Kaz is Ketterdam, and he always claimed his mother’s the harbour, and really it’s Ketterdam who got obsessed with the Sun Summoner. Trinkets everywhere, renamed bars, even plays based on hastily-written romance novels. A new gaudy cult. Kaz just followed his city, and his interest was always tinged with enough private wry amusement that Jesper could make himself believe it wasn’t any danger, that maybe Kaz didn’t actually think of the Sun Summoner as a real physical person that could be hiding right inside the Dregs. Faith is its own thing, after all. And he had faith that maybe Kaz just didn’t want to follow the clues to Jesper, because he knew this would happen, and he didn’t want his second dragged away in chains. Despite everything Jesper let slip, all those mistakes; despite that time Kaz found him passed out in a mercher’s cellar who’d earlier cut him into lighting up. Despite everything, maybe he wouldn’t find out. Jesper’s desperate heart hoped so.

Not enough to not spy on the meeting, though. Not even he’sgoing to continue staking his life on those odds.

Kaz was bound to catch a clue sooner or later as to the prize hiding right inside his grasp. With the right motivation, and the presence of Ravkan Grisha soldiers means Ravkan official business which means a reward from the deep coffers of the Ravkan crown…

Jesper’s been doing his best to hide, but if it’s his own mind against that of Kaz Brekker, yeah, he knows which one he’s betting on. He’s fucked. Obviously, Kaz knows. He’s Kaz.

So when Kaz starts talking to those Etherealki, niceties first obviously, yada yada yada, My time is not cheap, do not bore me with children’s stories, Jesper’s already heard enough.

He shouldn’t even have come here. He just wanted—but that’s stupid, the height of sentimentality and Kaz is going to smirk with that smirk he does when a particularly dumb mark walks into the most obvious of traps. Kaz is going to mock him when he hands Jesper over to the Darkling and collects his two hundred thousand million kruge or whatever, and he’s going to say, “You stayed in one place, with the Dregs, with me the criminal genius, for five entire years despite an international manhunt and a massive bounty and then, when you had advance warning so you could have escaped, instead you went to spy on the meeting hoping it would be a false alarm? Because you’re in love with me? With the Bastard of the Barrel who never tells you anything? Dirtyhands who’s bound to get bored of all your mistakes? Me, who can barely even tolerate you?” (And not all of that is true, Jesper knows he’s catastrophizing out of panic, but that still doesn’t mean Kaz would give up a fat reward for him.) “And you’re even greedier, because you love Inej too. She’ll choose me, you know, and I’ll choose her and the kruge, but you’re just so happy being a third wheel, aren’t you? Anything for those scraps. Well, thanks for the money.” Or something like that, anyway. Jesper’s Kaz impression is much better when he isn’t running. Or trying not to panic. It’s better out loud, too, when he can do the rasp.

(Fuck, the Kaz inside his head is mean. And yeah, Jesper does enjoy that kind of thing sometimes, but not… not when it’s his entire life on the line. His heart. Not when it’s everything he’s ever tried to deny is true, or is that the panic lying to him again?)

It’s just that this was home.

Ketterdam was his home, and the Barrel was, and the Slat… It was home, and after what happened to Da’s farm, he never thought he could have a home again. That cheap bar over there with beer that’s three quarters rainwater so it always tastes of the soothing grime of the rooftops, the mercher statue that’s a pissoir for a perpetually drunk night- and daylife… The house against which on the eve of last Fastebreek he sucked off a guy dressed in a particularly good costume of Matz Drescher, so good he almost looked like the real… so okay, he’s not writing a particularly good tourist brochure right now, but the point is. This was home.

Every single cobblestone he treads on on his way right back to the Slat, because he bolted off tonight nearly skint since he usually doesn’t carry around big sacks of kruge because the children of Ketterdam are impressive little bastard thieves and he’s too soft to break their thumbs and he’d just gamble everything away usually anyway… but now he needs to secure passage off Kerch and so he needs serious money, and that means he needs to go back to his stash before he leaves. Needs to waste precious time. And every stone. Every single house. It’s all calling to him to stay home. Because it was.

For five years, it’s been his home. Five years. Fuck. That’s longer by a factor of ten than any place he’s stayed in ever since people found out Jesper can shoot sunlight from his skin. Since he was a boy, lighting up a room with his stupid hands in his Da’s farm right in front an open window and loose-lipped neighbours. Five years, and now it’s gone.

He can’t even blame Kaz. Sure, Kaz is right now selling him to the Darkling and if Jesper’s got any luck left—he should have, because it all has to balance out, and today has otherwise been a shitshow, plus all those thousands of gambled-away kruge must count for something, right?—if he’s got any luck, if Ghezen starts giving a fuck and shows any mercy to his runaway saint, it’ll take a sweet minute until they can agree on a price because Kaz is a greedy bastard and—yeah, Kaz is a greedy bastard. And a superb haggler. He’s already got a good deal. He’s coming. Jesper can’t even blame him. He’s known all along that Kaz would sell his brother for a few kruge and still he went and fell in love with the guy. Because Jesper’s the stupidest person who ever lived, and honestly, can’t they make Saints out of people who’ve got it together a little more? Anti-Jespers, if you will. Because sure, Jesper’s a man of many talents, but mind-blowing sex and stellar wit and incredible beauty aren’t exactly—or at least they don’t feature prominently in Inej’s tales, and she’s the premier source of sainthood in his life, so—

He’s panicking, and it’s not even the good panic of a fight, the kind of panic that makes everything sharp and clear and narrows the world to the gun and the target. The panic that orders his thoughts. That keeps him on track. This is cornered animal panic. Everything solid’s dissolving into air around him, inside him, and he can’t hold the gas in his fingers, can’t hold onto home, onto friends, onto his brain. His thoughts are flickering even quicker than usual, and they’re even more useless.

He’s losing it, both figuratively, and, well, actually. It. He’s losing it. He’s losing everything. If only there was something he could cling to, something soft, but he’s completely and utterly alone now. And forever. He’s lost both Kaz and Inej.

At least he’s finally arrived at the Slat. No-one stops him when he goes in (though really, why would they? It’s the going out again part that might get tricky) and no-one even talks to him when he dashes to his room. There’s two empty bottles of his favourite rum in front of Jesper’s door that he didn’t put there, but that’s a mystery he will carry forever. What should he—but actually, getting to his room was pointless, even if it’s full of a million little trinkets and some shirts he really wants—but Kaz is laughing at his sentimentality from somewhere in the harbour, a private little rumble that usually Jesper would give his left pinkie to have caused, but—anyway, no. He doesn’t have enough money in his room to pay for last-minute passage. Six months ago, he started dipping into his emergency escape fund to pay off gambling debts, and there’s not nearly enough left. Stupid Jesper. He felt too safe. Somewhere, Kaz is laughing. Kaz, who’s surely got enough squirreled away…

And yeah, breaking into Kaz’ office and bedroom is a challenge and, even worse, a violation of trust, but either Jesper gets on a boat or Jesper gets on a boat, this time shackled to within an inch of his life and flanked by dour Second Army Grisha on the way to a militaristic creep, so Kaz’ rooms it’ll have to be. He’s watched Kaz lock the door often enough. Breaking in won’t be easy or fun, but then, this isn’t the night for either.

In the wood next to the doorknob, someone scratched a tiny blessing of the Sun Summoner, and Jesper’s still not sure what Kaz believes (he talks of the Sun Summoner enough that everyone in the Barrel knows of his interest, but that could just be—and anyway, he’s working with the Darkling to sell out Jesper. Whatever he believes of the Sun Summoner, he believes in kruge more. But sometimes, on desperate jobs in deep dark cellars when they’re alone and the last light’s flickered out, Kaz will say, “The Sun Summoner could illuminate this—” and Jesper’ll cringe away lest he accidentally does what Kaz asks) but anyway. Jesper’ll never know. He’ll never see Kaz again. And it was probably Inej, that blessing. Kaz’ fascination with the Sun Summoner’s always had a weird edge, as if it’s a joke only he’s privy too, and that’s made Jesper feel safe, but. Maybe it was at his expense. Maybe he was taunting Jesper—

Please please please, Jesper keeps begging the door while he jiggles the lockpick because the stress is actually making him lose his mind, please I don’t want to betray him I just want to live, and when that doesn’t work, he shoots the lock until it gives in. Crude, desperate, not his style—but then, his life’s over. Why should he even care about being a good thief anymore?

The office is the more promising room in terms of small hidden sacks of kruge, but it’s also the place that Jesper’s already been inside, and the bedroom—well, it’s dark. Blacker than the night. Blacker than Dirtyhands’ soul, people would say, and Jesper almost laughs, but. Focus. No hysterics until he’s on the boat. The dark’s unnatural, deeper than the night was outside, almost like the Darkling—but it’s just some sort of specialty extra heavy black curtains, and when Jesper’s pulled them aside to let the moonlight in, the room just looks ordinary.

Well, slightly bigger than Jesper’s room, enough for a small bed and a wardrobe and paintings Jesper only recognizes because some mercher or other made a big stink about losing them and a dinky old chair and a set of storage racks, piled with—seriously? Okay, Jesper actually likes that book. In it, the Sun Summoner’s a young woman plucked from an orphanage, caught between duty to destroy the Fold—or is it duty? She’s manipulated, so—but anyway, she’s caught between duty and love. Of course, she chooses love. It’s a bit sappy, but Jesper likes to think he would, too, if he got the chance. But of course, his loves are not a devoted childhood friend but Dirtyhands and his Wraith, and they’re gonna sell him out. They already have. He’s not going to choose despairing self-sacrifice on the altar of their greed, and, well. Going against duty and love for cowardice and self-pity and gambling doesn’t sound nearly as good. It’ll have to do, though. It’s all he has left. He moves on.

A statuette and some trinkets and knives and more terrible cheap books about fake Jesper and—oh, this is too good. This is actually hilarious. A Saint in Ketterdam, or The Misfortunes of Virtue is the worst of them all. Out of all the books that appeared in Ketterdam in that weird craze for Sun Summoner pulp fiction that started three years ago and nearly gave Jesper a heart attack, it’s the most ludicrously verbose and metaphorical, and the most downright pornographic, so much it makes even Jesper blush, and Jesper’s seen some shit. Once. He didn’t know she was into coprophilia, okay? But the point is, it’s full-on detailed and depraved. It also does Jesper—well, the Sun Summoner, but they’re one and the same which is in fact the root of every single one of his problems—a huge disservice. The sister, he could see himself as: gay, wanton and unprincipled sounds about right, but a naïve virtuous maiden unwittingly seduced? The corruption of innocence? He’s no good for that kind of fetish. He gambles, okay. He has guns. He knows what sex is. He’s had lots of it. Most of it even good. Spectacular, actually. He wasn’t even that much of a pigeon when he first stumbled into Ketterdam, or Kaz wouldn’t have swept him up into the Dregs so quickly.

Really, the only redeeming factor of the book is Matz Drescher, the villain. Seductive and hot and thinly patterned on… oh, he owns this book and the veiling is thin as gossamer, of courseKaz knows that it’s supposed to be him. Bulked up and far more touchy and the writer fucking robbed him of his limp and he’s not nearly as deadpan funny, but with enough of a squint and enough wishful fantasizing, the vile King of Ketterdam might be Kaz, a little grown up and ready to fuck. He’s the only reason Jesper can quote some parts. But sadly, Kaz’ copy doesn’t even have those thin-page-crinkles of a well-used book, so he definitely didn’t appreciate certain scenes the way Jesper did. At least the sequel’s nowhere to be found. What it did to Kaz—well, Matz, and anyway, what kind of lust-killing come-one is Why is there straw laying around here? anyway? Who the fuck would be seduced by—except he can think of a couple scenarios where—focus, Jesper. Kruge. You’re looking for kruge. So you can escape. Stop panicking. Stop distracting yourself from panicking. Just stop.

Being inside Kaz’ bedroom is doing weird things to his brain, but he has to—

Fuck.

Soft dark eyes on the windowsill. Set in a soft face, dark layered clothes, and, thankfully, no knives out. Yet. Still. Inej.

Inej.

She’s caught him.

Caught him rifling hastily through Kaz’ collection of Sun Summoner paraphernalia, not his coins that he still hasn’t found yet, but still. She’s the favourite, and she has her favourites, too. If there’s a choice between him and Kaz, he knows which way she’ll go. So if she’s here, she surely knows what Kaz has in store for him and she’s going to—

“What are you doing, Jesper?” she asks, gently, sadly. He’s never before thought her cruel, and yet—if at least she was gloating, he could try to fight his way out and be at peace with it.

“Just let me leave,” Jesper begs instead, guns in his hands and blinking so the stupid tears stop blurring his eyes. He could aim blind, but—he needs to see. Needs to see if there’s any chance he gets out of this without hurting her. And Inej is soft. She’s good. She’ll do it for Kaz, do anything, but—she likes Jesper, and so he needs to not cry. It’ll hurt her too much if she knows he’s in pain while they betray him. “I won’t even get far. You know the schedules of every boat leaving Ketterdam, but just let me try, please. Just let me—”

“Jes.”

She’s not making it easy. She still doesn’t have a knife out yet; she’s just sitting on the windowsill looking worried and kind and beautiful. Oh, Inej. Jesper knows she believes in the Saints. Maybe if he made her believe in him and then asked her to let him—but no, he can’t make her choose between her faith and Kaz. He wants to live and be free, but he’s not that cruel. Or is he?

Jesper’s not survived nearly seven years of hiding from the most powerful Grisha in existence and the entire country of Ravka and every kruge-drunk idiot who fancies himself a bounty hunter by being kind or by hesitating. Hesitating isn’t his thing in general.

If Kaz had sent anyone else to drag him to his doom, he’d have put a bullet in their chest before they could even say his name no matter how much he likes them, but this is Inej. The scared young girl newly clad in Barrel garb that he tried to impress—but mostly to entertain, to lessen her fear, by trying to climb after her onto the roof of the Slab and then, because Inej’s a human anti-gravity miracle and following her was definitely way harder than he expected, nearly falling to his death. She’d caught his wrist, just in time, and then patiently pushed his legs to foothold after foothold so he'd climb back down safely. Inej, the woman who gives him a heart attack every second day by mysteriously appearing right in front of him, just because she can and because she still thinks it’s funny. Inej, who leaves food and water on his windowsill on the anniversary of the day when Jesper got his Da killed and makes excuses (to Kaz!) for his two-day benders. Inej, who ducks her head at his jokes. Inej.

He can’t hurt Inej. That’s why she’s here. Kaz knows he can’t.

At least she doesn’t look any happier than he is. “Whatever trouble you’re in, Jesper, just get out of this room and go to sleep. Get blackout drunk so he won’t suspect a thing,” she entreats. “I won’t say anything. I’ll help you. I’ll get you the money. Kaz doesn’t have to know.”

“Unfortunately, Kaz does know,” comes a dry rasp from the doorway, and Jesper’s trapped in the middle of his two favourite people in the entire world. It feels like a waking nightmare.

Love is a cruel master. He should have shot Inej and run when he had the chance.

“We were simply testing your security,” she says, like an absolutely atrocious liar who’s already realized there is no point in dissembling, and then suddenly Inej is standing right in-between Jesper and Kaz. It’s a tactically stupid move, because now he can throw himself out of the attic window, but he doesn’t jump to his death because—well, Inej’s protection won’t change his ultimate fate, and yet—he doesn’t want her to watch him jump. He’s stupidly, embarrassingly grateful she doesn’t want him to get hurt. He’ll remember this, when he’s locked up deep inside the Little Palace. He’ll remember Inej trying to shield him. Fuck, he’s going to miss her.

Kaz, though, doesn’t even raise an eyebrow. Not at Inej’s blatant teleportation (how is she real?), not at her lie, not even at the fact that Jesper completely betrayed him and broke into his bedroom. He looked tense at first, but then he always is, and now his shoulders are drooping slightly and his words are calm and measured even if they also absolutely make no fucking sense whatsoever. “You’re accompanying me to the parley with the Razorgulls tomorrow, Jesper,” Kaz orders, as if nothing about this night had happened at all. “Do not be late again. We all know what happened tonight. I had to find Anika because you decided to get blind drunk even though you knewyou had a job to do—”

And that’s news to Jesper. He didn’t have any orders yesterday whatsoever, and yeah, he drank a little last evening before he heard Inej and Pim talk about the Grisha—the Grisha who wanted to talk to Kaz in a meeting he definitely was never officially informed about, but—could he have forgotten—no, he didn’t miss anything. A stupid part inside Jesper really wants to believe Kaz when he’s talking with that much conviction, but he’s fucking lying. For no reason Jesper can understand. He’s—

“—and don’t deny it, everyone’s seen the bottles—”

Right, the rum. The empty bottles of rum outside his door that Jesper definitely didn’t drink. He doesn’t even have the money to buy them. He’s broke. That’s why he’s still here.

“So you’ll have to make it up to me, of course. I cannot have a second who gets dead drunk on a day he is supposed to be at work, but I won’t demote you just yet. Anika isn’t as good a shot as you and I need a gunslinger for the Razorgulls. But only because tonight was a waste of time anyway—”

Wait, what?! Jesper hardly dares hope—

“—and you’ll help Kerstjen practice her card dealing, too, however hungover you are. It’s your punishment. Eight bells sharp, later this morning. Do not disappoint me again.”

“Tonight was a waste of time!?” Jesper asks breathlessly, and then mentally kicks himself. The man he’s pretending to be who definitely isn’t a mythic Grisha hunted for profit by half the entire world has no reason to sound that eager.

Luckily Kaz seems to miss his mistake, though, because he just explains, “It seems the military command of Ravka have read one too many novels and lost their grip on reality. I wouldn’t have expected it, but then, merit and brains hardly factor into promotions in Ravka, I suppose.” He looks very pleased with himself when he primly adds, “So I had to explain to them that pornography is not, in fact, real. We all would like to see the Sun Summoner, but here in Ketterdam, seduced by a rakish criminal? That’s ludicrous. The book isn’t even good. Every single person in Ketterdam could have told them to stop announcing they’re perverts in public. ‘Have you seen the Sun Summoner in Ketterdam?’ Please, there are children here. They left.”

It’s too good to be true. Far too good. Wait—

“Back to business. This morning, since you’ll be gambling with Kerstjen on my behalf and will inevitably get distracted by another game, you can have a tab of a hundred kruge. No more,” and—

Fuck. Even terrified and utterly flummoxed as he is, Jesper can’t help himself. “Kaz, are you bribing me to go to work?” he teases.

“Do I have to?” Kaz asks, but he still looks far too amused. His stare is intense and tearing right into Jesper’s soul, and—he knows.

The bastard knows.

Jesper’s face burns. His most awful secret, and of course Kaz knows it. He’s probably always known. Jesper, for five entire years, was hiding right next to the most terrifyingly clever man in all of Ketterdam. All of Kerch. The world. Of course Kaz knows, and now he’s taunting Jesper. Taunting Jesper by pretending everything is okay and that he sent the Ravkans right back home when he could have gained a million thousand kruge by handing over their Saint. Kaz looks weirdly happy while he’s telling a completely made-up story about a world where Jesper gets to have good things too, and nothing makes any sense whatsoever.

Jesper shoots a glance over at Inej, but she looks just as lost as Jesper is right now.

He should—Jesper could play along now with Kaz’ pretend ignorance, and maybe Kaz isn’t just totally toying with his heart, maybe the Ravkans are gone, but even if it’s okay for a while… the next guy will come for the Sun Summoner and they’ll be right back here and the only way out of this is though. He swallows. “What are you talking about, boss?” And so Kaz can’t just spin more bullshit, he presents Dirtyhands his naked, shivering heart. “You know, right? You knowabout me.”

“Don’t be stupid, Jesper,” Kaz says. “The Sun Summoner’s a living Saint. He has dignity. We both know you’re just an idiot. Absolutely no-one could mix you up.”

And that’s the last straw. The terror of the last hour, of five years with the Dregs, of nearly seven years of running and hiding and mourning and the absolute certainty he’ll end up caged somewhere in the deepest basement of the Little Palace for the rest of his life if he starts trusting anyone ever bursts out of him, and Jesper starts laughing. Sobbing. Whatever. “You knew. You fucking knew, you bastard, you knew all along.”

“Inej, close the curtains,” Kaz hisses suddenly, but Jesper’s too busy to pay much attention.

“You knew—”

“Everyone’s talking about the Sun Summoner now. Everywhere. Sightings, every year, every month, but it’ll turn out to be a woman playing dress-up or a child’s flights of fancy after an all-book diet. In five weeks, there’ll be an explosion that looks like sunlight. It will take months to determine that it was an explosive, but they will find hard evidence it was a fraud. They’ll get jaded eventually. They’ll never find the needle in this haystack,” Kaz rasps idly. “Maybe I’ll even set the explosion off in Fjerda. The bomb’s very realistic. You’d like the guy who makes them. Wylan’s a very talented young man.”

“You did all of that—for me?”

“A decent sharp-shooter is hard to come by. I had to protect my investment,” Kaz replies, like Jesper knew he would. But Jesper also knows he’s baldly, gloriously fucking lying.

Kaz doesn’t just give up a million trillion kruge reward for nothing.

But he did it for Jesper.

He should have known better than to believe he can predict Kaz fucking Brekker. He should have expected Kaz to turn his world upside down, to pull off the utterly unthinkable. To profane a Saint so he could disguise him in a sea of romantic stories and idiosyncratic cults. He should have trusted Kaz. He should never have believed his own insecurities about his place in Kaz’ life. By trying so hard not to underestimate Kaz’ greed, ironically, Jesper completely underestimated him in everything else. What a miracle of a man.

For so long Jesper’s been trying to understand what drives the Bastard of the Barrel, hanging onto every scrap of information, desperate to get close to the true Kaz and never managing, two steps forward and two steps back, and for every moment he’s been silently rejected, left in the dark or wondering if after the next mistake Kaz would wash his hands of him—for every hope dashed there was a conversation, a look, something that left Jesper wondering if Kaz actually did like him back.

It’s addictive, that kind of uncertainty. If you play that card, are you going to win or lose? Is it wise to bet on black? And the next time?

Jesper never could walk away from a gamble.

And now all his terrible luck at the tables makes sense. You don’t get unlimited luck, after all, and it turns out he spent all of his years ago, spent many lifetimes of it: Jesper was the luckiest person in the entire world the day he got Kaz Brekker on his side.

“I could kiss you, Kaz,” he bursts out and—

“Not necessary—”

—before Jesper’s brain has caught up to his feet he’s already clear across the room and grabbing Kaz by the shoulder.

Kaz flinches.

Fuck.

Fuck Jesper’s luck. Fuck his brain. Did he really have to fuck everything up now? But when he tries to pull his hand away it doesn’t move because wrapped around his wrist, holding him still, is a strong slim hand in a tight leather glove, and—

“Oh,” comes Kaz’ small, breathy rasp. “That doesn’t feel like bloated corpses.”

Some small part of Jesper’s brain that is greedy for anything Kaz will gave him wants to latch onto this frankly disturbing detail (why would Jesper’s hand on his shoulder feel like a corpse? What the fuck, Brekker?!) but a much larger part of him, equally greedy, wants to bask in his hand on Kaz’ shoulder—his own hand! on Kaz!—and Kaz’ hand on his wrist—Kaz’ hand! Kaz is still touching him!—for as long as he can.

The remaining, utterly horrified part has just realized that Jesper’s hand is glowing like a supernova.

He pulls away again, desperately.

Kaz’ hand is like a bear trap. It still won’t let him move. His voice, though, is still soft and small when he rasps, “You’re safe. Those curtains are Fabrikator-made. No light will penetrate them.”

And Jesper hadn’t even thought of that problem, because— “Kaz, I’m burning you!”

“It’s alright. You’re hot, but far less hot than I thought.”

“Ouch. That’s harsh, boss. Kick a man while he’s down,” Jesper jokes, because he can’t not, and—there are bright red splotches now high up on Kaz’ gaunt cheeks. The sunlight that—fuck, the light that Jesper’s shooting from his pores has turned his dark brown irises almost golden, and his pupils are blown wide. The light reflects too from whatever pomade he’s used to slick back his floppy hair into something severe. He’s flushing even more red from the heat, and he’s worrying his thin lower lip with his teeth. When he releases it, it’s bruised and slick.

He’s the most beautiful man that Jesper’s ever seen.

“You don’t need to—can you—” Kaz is pulling Jesper’s hand from his arm now, and Jesper’s already resigned to another rejection—it’s pathetic, but he’ll feed off this moment forever—but he’s not pushing but pulling Jesper’s glowing hand upwards, and then he pauses. Looks at Jesper, with uncharacteristic trepidation.

“Anything, boss,” Jesper gasps. “Anything you want. Anything. It’s yours.”

And Kaz pushes his cheek against Jesper’s hand.

It feels just like touching a normal human cheek. Except not, because this is Kaz’ actual physical bare human skinthat Jesper’s touching for the first time, and also because now he’s focused on the sensation his own hand doesn’t quite feel like his. It’s buzzing, pulsing, the sensory equivalent of glowing, but it’s also Jesper’s right hand that he’s had his whole life simultaneously and really, he’d love to sort this conundrum out, but he’s busy. He’s touching Kaz. Kaz Brekker. Dirtyhands. Kaz.

Kaz’ eyes are closed now. He’s pushing his cheek faintly, rhythmically, against Jesper’s hand—his cheek’s flushed but there’s no actual burns under Jesper’s fingers, thank everything, and he doesn’t look like he’s in pain. Although he is trembling, shuddering, shaking, so hard that it actually looks like he might fall over, and proactively Jesper gently pushes against his cheek so he starts taking jerky limping half-steps backward until his legs hit the edge of his bed and he sinks gratefully downward, hand still pulling Jesper’s hand against his cheek, a drunk look on his face.

“What do you want, boss?” Jesper whispers, swallowing down the suave seduction that is his area of excellence for something patient and gentle. It’s not a tone of voice he can imagine anyone ever having used for the Bastard of the Barrel, but it feels right, inevitable, when Kaz is underneath him so responsive and debauched from a single hand against his cheek. “We can just stay like this. You can have my hand forever. Or you can have my other hand too, wherever you like it, my mouth, anything. You know it’s yours.”

“It’s—so much,” Kaz whispers hoarsely. “Trail that hand down. No, the other one.”

Fair. Jesper should have known that Kaz isn’t going to let him have his right hand back considering his hand’s still clamped around the wrist tight as a vice. Jesper’s going to have a massive bruise tomorrow. Intense arousal, though, has always been great at turning sensations on their head and it’s no different for this pain. It just feels sweet right now. Promising.

And Kaz wants the second hand as well.

Kaz wants—

Kaz wants him.

It doesn’t even matter right now if it’s just because Jesper’s the Sun Summoner. For the first time, that power doesn’t feel like a curse anymore but actually, like his mom used to say, zowa. A blessing. A part of him, a blessed part that Kaz wants to be touched by, and anyway, Kaz is hiding him. Kaz has put years of work into hiding him, into constructing bombs and spreading rumours and bribing authors and making the Sun Summoner the butt of a thousand jokes, just for Jesper.

Some part of Jesper—the part that drives him again and again to the gambling tables when he can ill afford to lose any more money, the part that feels most alive with his guns in his hands—is thrilling with excitement. Not just because this is Kaz, whom he’s adored for years without any expectation of return, but because this is Dirtyhands, the Bastard of the Barrel, ruthless thief and violent killer and feared by all, far more terrifying and more lovely than Matz Drescher and alive, panting as he pushes his straining dick up to meet Jesper’s left hand.

This isn’t any kind of lewd fiction. This isn’t a boy in costume.

This is real.

This is Kaz.

This is Kaz that he’s bent over, and he isn’t anything like what Jesper dreamed of. He isn’t ordering Jesper to get down on his knees or present his naked ass on the bed, like he did in certain fantasies that Jesper allowed himself a moment to feel sad and pathetic about, once he’d finished wiping the come off his dick. He isn’t demanding his own pleasure, and even the light thrusting of his hips feels very polite. He isn’t saying anything. He’s biting his lips more often than not, and when moans manage to escape the walls he’s built they are small and breathy. He looks so sweet and so incredibly stunned that they’re here at all, and his eyes dart down to Jesper’s hand rubbing his prick through his trousers sometimes but they always come back up to Jesper’s face, as if he doesn’t want to forget for a second that this is Jesper he’s doing it with.

He’s still clutching Jesper’s other hand against his cheek.

Daringly, Jesper presses a small kiss against the wrist of the hand that’s holding him captive. He’s never kissed leather before. He likes it.

Loves it.

His back’s starting to cramp from the awkward stoop he’s doing to reach Kaz without touching him with anything but his hands, but he could do this forever, he could make love like this forever, he could—

Fuck.

Fuck.

Inej. He’s totally forgotten about Inej, and as turned on as Jesper is right now and as drunk as Kaz is on lust, on touch, on the willing explicit devotion of the most expensive Grisha in the world, whatever—as hot as this weird thing they’re doing is, Jesper should have made sure that everyonein this room is good with every single thing that happens. It’s his responsibility as a decent human criminal. No sex without everyone’s consent.

Kaz isn’t talking, but Kaz is fine; he seems more likely to break Jesper’s hand if he stops right now than if he keeps going, but Inej… It wasn’t just Jesper and Kaz in this room. Inej was here too, and he completely forgot about her.

He just started feeling Kaz up without a care in the world like the impulsive idiot he is, but he should have talked to her first, talked it out with both of them or given her the chance to leave, and he didn’t, and that’s bad. It’s horrendous. It’s the worst thing he’s ever done in his miscreant life, worse than anything he’s ever imagined himself capable of doing. Inej clamped up the one time Jesper jokingly flirted with her, way back long before he found out what happened to her at the Menagerie, and he just turned her into an unwilling voyeuristic participant. Fuck.

He cranes his head for her, subtly, because Kaz finally opened up and Jesper can’t spook him now, he can’t destroy both people he loves in one night, he just can’t, but—

She’s gone already.

Inej silently slipped out of the room and closed the door to the office that Kaz had left open, and if Ghezen has any luck left for Jesper, she did it a while ago.

Jesper’s erection has officially vacated the premises after that shock. Kaz is still hard, though; he’s still making lovely punched-out little noises when Jesper grinds the heel of his palm against his crotch, and—why stop now. What’s done with Inej is done. Maybe she left early enough, and if not—he still has the entire rest of his life to loathe himself. Just let him have this now; let Kaz have it, everything that Jesper can give him and more, and it’s not like either of them was making any use of Jesper’s dick in the first place. Who cares his arousal got killed. This is more than enough.

Just abusing the heat and pressure of the sun to give a handjob to Kaz Brekker. No big deal.

Kaz is as quiet when he comes as he was all along. Just his hips stuttering more and more and his breath growing harsh and his head turning to the side, away from Jesper’s hand that he’s still crushing in his grip, and then the front of his trousers turns wet under Jesper’s palm. (Jesper idly wonders whether he can use the sun to dry it again, but firstly it would just get stiff and also, sure Jesper himself likes it when he’s still sensitive after the orgasm and the stimulation’s so intense it hurts, but he probably has to clear that up with Kaz first before he touches him spent.)

Jesper stays right where he was, forcing himself to be motionless, unwilling to let the moment break yet, and it takes a long while until Kaz turns his head back.

His eyes are even brighter now, and sunlight’s reflecting in streaks on his cheeks, because he’s—crying?

“I didn’t think I was that bad of a lay,” Jesper whispers, just to pierce the tension a little.

“Shut up, Jesper. Fishing for compliments is beneath you. Your ego doesn’t need to get any bigger,” Kaz rasps out, his voice almost back to normal even if it’s still a little soft, and Jesper clings both to that softness and to the familiar rasp, prays this wasn’t a mistake, that he hasn’t just fucked up what he and Kaz had, and then Kaz drops back down onto the bed.

A few minutes later, he starts snoring.

“I should have known you’re that kind of guy,” Jesper grumbles fondly as he stretches out his cramping back. But really. How could he have known? The Kaz inside his head never let him stay afterwards, and the real one never even showed any interest before that he didn’t immediately contradict. And Matz Drescher from the book wasn’t realistic at all, it turned out.

“At least put on bedclothes. Lay down properly,” Jesper exhorts his sleeping boss—lover—Kaz, but he doesn’t dare do it any louder than barely moving his lips. It’s who knows how early in the morning, after all, and Kaz sleeps too little as it is. He can’t be comfortable, laying sideways at the foot of his narrow bed with his entire legs stretching off the edge, spread wide while Jesper’s still standing in-between his thighs, but also, if he wakes up, he might want to talk, and Jesper’s barely processed that what just happened was real let alone dealt with the tears and This doesn’t feel like corpses and the insanity of Kaz’ plan to protect the Sun Summoner by making him the star of a million romantic stories and the incredible, unexpected sweetness that is Kaz in bed. Plus, he’s probably super grumpy when he’s woken up. He’s grumpy at all other times, so it stands to reason.

Jesper, meanwhile, is still a lightshow, (though maybe it’s his wishful thinking but he looks dimmer than before he fucked Kaz), and as far as he knows this is the only room in Ketterdam with curtains that hide his presence. He can’t leave just yet.

So Jesper picks up the cane and leans it against the foot of the bed and then he sinks down to his knees between Kaz’ splayed thighs. Calming his breathing, basking in the afterglow, and then—bored. While he’s here lit up by his unwanted power, he may as well do some good. Heat is good for pain, right? Alternatively, etiquette demands he also clean off the semen, but Kaz definitely won’t like him fumbling with his trousers while he’s asleep. But simple Sun Summoner touch… Maybe Kaz won’t mind. He clutched that burning hand to his face as hard as he clings to sackfuls of kruge. And so Jesper softly touches Kaz’ bad leg, and, when Kaz shows no signs of waking, starts massaging the sunlight deeper into the muscle.

He doesn’t know how long it takes until the light fades. It does, though, finally, and as soon as it does he lets go. Corpses, after all. Wouldn’t want to wake him up like that, not when he fell apart over a simple touch to his cheek, and so in the unnatural safe dark of the Fabrikator curtains, Jesper stays kneeling like a saint before his silent god.

The door creaks.

A growing slither of sunlight bathes the floor, bathes still-snoring Kaz and Jesper before him, and hastily, he scrambles up, careful not to touch either of the legs around him. He scurries out the door and stops dead, right in front of Inej.

“It’s past seven bells,” she says. “If you want to get to the Crow Club in time you should start getting ready.”

“What,” Jesper says, intelligently.

“Kerstjen? The ‘punishment’ for your absence? He is serious about that, even if everything else was him messing with you.”

Oh. Right. Kaz did talk about something to do with her before he told Jesper he knew he was the Sun Summoner and that he’d been secretly scheming to hide him and was also madly in love with him, or at least liked the feeling of the sun on his face. Or his dick. Both. Focus, Jesper. Right. Kerstjen. And the hundred kruge tab.

And Inej.

“Thanks. But listen, Inej, I don’t know how much you’ve seen…” No, that’s not a good apology. “I’m sorry. I should have checked in with you. I knew you were in the room while me and Kaz—anyway, I should have stopped and made sure you were okay or given you the time to leave. I didn’t. I’m sorry.”

“I slipped out when you touched his cheek. It seemed you were busy, and I didn’t want to interrupt.”

Inej’s words are light—and they lift a thousand heavy stones off his heart—but there’s something in her face that seems melancholy, that seems familiar, almost like… jealousy. Jesper’s always known that Kaz tells her more, that he trusts her more, that he loves Inej more than he does Jesper. He’s been jealous of Inej for so long. It feels wrong to see the emotion on her face now.

“I wouldn’t have minded if you’d stayed,” he says quietly. “If you’d joined in. I don’t know how Kaz feels about it, if there’s even going to be a next time, and it’s only if you want to, of course, if you want me too—”

“Jesper,” she whispers, touching something at her neck.

“—we really need to talk about this, talk about what each of us wants, but yeah. I’d like it.”

She nods. She’s smiling more brightly now, the sadness almost gone, but what she says is, “So. You are Sankt Jesper. Hiding right here in the Barrel.”

“Hey. I’m a really shit saint. I’m not meant to be locked in a palace—could you imagine depriving the good people of Ketterdam of this gorgeous face? A tragedy. Nay, a crime!” He winks exaggeratedly, and to his joy, she grins. “I plan to keep running from my responsibilities forever, and I’d really like it if you help me do it.”

“Kaz has everybody convinced already that the Sun Summoner is a character from awful books and that those who talk about him are delusional or, at best, perverted. So I don’t see how you need my help. But you have it.”

“Thank you. I knew you were my favourite for a reason, Inej Ghafa.” Jesper kisses her left hand softly, and when she glows with delight, her right hand too and then both her cheeks. “I love you.” He looks back into the bedroom, where Kaz is still half hanging off his bed, completely dressed in his mercher’s clothes and still wearing his coat, with a barely visible stain on the front of his pants and snoring softly. “I love you.”

[rotzaprachim]

the closest to heaven that i'll ever be (Kanej Guardian Angel AU)

From @elorcaning‘s prompt of Kaz just being an idiotic human getting in trouble all the time and inej is his guardian angel just trying to keep him from dying while doing stupid shit, which I thought was a BRILLIANT idea and kinda ran with. At 1 AM while on jetlag so I Apologise. 

Props to @kettvrdams for not killing me when i sent an incomprehensible WIP for her to beta. All accidentally unfinished sentences and spelling errors are entirely My Own Fault 

On AO3 - 1816 words, Teen

In her illustrious career as a guardian angel, Inej has learned several things. The first is to believe in the fundamental good of all people- well, almost all people. Almost. But really, she likes to think the best.

The second thing is that no matter how hard she tries- and damn, she really tries hard- humans will still find ways to screw their own lives over, and even if her role is supposed to be more hypothetical or spiritual than anything, she always finds herself getting involved in more practical ways.

But still she thinks, as the poor Dutch farm kid tries to eat fertiliser from the container for the third time, only to be shooed away by his older brother, that this is going to be a challenge.

--o0o--

“Organised crime? Really?” sneers a figure in the corner of the precinct station with their dark hood pulled down low. Kaz glances around. There isn’t anyone else around aside from the beat cop who’s just let him out of the holding shell with a glare and a kick to his good shin.

The figure pulls their hood down. It’s a girl about his own age. Looks like a university student, with a purple jacket and a rain slicker.

She holds out a plastic Albert Hejn bag. Ah. So this is what it’s about. Per Haskell, Pekka Rollins, whoever the fuck it is this time, want him to move something. Cash, drugs, fucking tulip bulbs for all he knows. He doesn’t really care, as long as he’s alive on the other side of it.

But it isn’t really heavy enough to be either of those things.

“You haven’t eaten anything in over twenty four hours.”

He doesn’t know how she could possibly know that, but when he looks inside, what he finds is a cheese sandwich and a bottle of orange juice. Sealed, so it would have been goddamn hard to hide a USB or whatever it is Pekka wants out of the country inside.

“Who sent you? Pekka? Ferry Bouman? Sonny Castillo?”

“Are those the only things your mind goes to?” Now the girl just sounds annoyed.

“I’m not in the habit of beautiful girls meeting me in police precincts without having some other angle they’re working. So what is it? Who do you work for?”

Beautiful girl. He didn’t mean to say that. He’s a lot of things, but a flirt isn’t one of them. Yet even in the yellowy light of the precinct, he can tell that's what she is, with her heart-shaped face and the fan of her oil-dark hair.

“Eat your damn sandwich” she says, and is gone before he can say anything else.

--o0o--

“Don’t get too involved,” says Zoya.

“The job description is guardian angel, ergo, I guard.”

--o0o--

Organised crime. Really. Perhaps not in the highest echelons, and it’s fucking Amerstedam, but still, organised crime.

Sometimes she really doesn’t think he’s organised enough to get mixed up in organised crime.

--o0o--

“Genuine Givenchy. Also got Rolex watches, Hugo Boss shirts-” he offers the middle-class housewives out on a girl’s trip to Amsterdam. The back of the florist’s he’s operating out of is packed with genuinely decent-looking fakes. It’s also on Sonny Castillo’s territory.

“Best space brownies in Amsterdam,” he promises a group of tipsy Erasmus students from Manchester with a smile that’s the image of sincerity. The coffee shop is on Ferry Bouman’s territory.

“Now this is a real Vermeer,” he tells the new-money-oil-don looking for a bit of old-school, Cultured, flash for his new penthouses in Dubai and London. The art gallery is on Pekka Rollins’ territory.

--o0o--

“He’s going to get himself killed,” Inej tells her boss.

--o0o--

“You think I can’t smell a rat, Brekker? You don’t fucking think I can’t tell when some bastard ratfuck tries to fuck me over?”

There have been many points during which Kaz thought his ass to be well and truly cooked. Almost drowning in the harbour in Rotterdam when he was twelve was certainly one of them, but it was also far from the last.

But now he’s got a gun to his temple and there’s no more talking he can do, not one more trick more trick up his sleeve or one more secret he can leverage into five more minutes, ten more minutes, another day to make things right.

There’s just him and a dark alley at the edge of the city and the freezing rain, pelting down and soaking him to the bone. And the angry hands slamming his face into the alley wall, over and over again, until blood runs down his face and chest and the rainwater tastes salty.

“Please. A week. No, a day, I’ll make it up-”

“Like last time you promise me, huh? Promise me twenty thousand? And then I find out you shelling out ten thousand Euros to Ferry Bouman to keep selling on Pekka Rollin’s turf. He ain’t gonna forget this, boy-”

“Ten thousand. I can get you ten thousand, you know I can-”

He sees the flash of a gun being raised, can almost feel the air change as the man pulls back the trigger, and then-

Like a flash of lightning, the moment after the fireworks go off. Light everywhere, the snap of sound of thunder, condensed, and then-

In the moment after the light, Kaz can’t see a thing. And then he can: the three grunts Pekka sent after him, lying in an alley, and the remains of several guns, incinerated to crisps. And the flash of something, a person maybe, going around the corner.

“THE FUCK ARE YOU?” He screams into the pouring rain, but no response comes back.

--o0o--

Sometimes, Inej wants to scream at him so loud he can hear it.

“And what were you expecting, exactly? Why can’t you just. . . .” she thinks of the words she hears people using, these days, “stay in your darn lane? You waste your mathematics scores dealing. You waste your German scores on conning tourists. You just . .. you waste your life.”

He’s had the pinched face of a businessman, and an older man, since his parents died. Since his brother died, and he spent his youth pinballing between foster homes and getting increasingly involved in things that the Korps Nationale Politie tend to take a rather dim view of. In all that time, though, she’s rarely seen fear on his face like this. She almost wants to reach out, across the train, tuck the edges of his carefully slicked-back hair back behind his ear, but she doesn’t.

“Why couldn’t you have just . . . stuck to selling overpriced marijuana to tourists or designer knockoffs from behind a tulip stand? Forging Vermeers? Stealing actual Vermeers?”

--o0o--

It’s only when he gets off at Utrecht Centraal that he notices an unfamiliar weight to his jacket pocket.

A neatly folded wad of cash. He flips through it gingerly. Twelve thousand euros.

--o0o--

“You can’t save his ass every time. Otherwise, he’ll never learn, and he’ll go beyond the point where you can save him.”

“But if I don’t save his ass now, he’ll die before he can learn.”

“Ah. That’s the eternal conundrum, isn’t it? Of the teacher and of the guardian angel.”

--o0o--

It’s not a particularly big country, but every time the train ride seems to last all day, and stretch into the night. Inej, at least, doesn’t need to buy a ticket. He buys flowers at Amsterdam Centraal. Changes trains at Maastricht and then again to a rural line, until he gets off at a station that’s nothing more than a strip of concrete alongside the track in a rain-soaked wheat field. There’s no taxis, no buses, only a long road through the countryside and the remainders of a life he’s tried to forget about at the end of it. He unfolds his walking cane and gets a move on.

On a hill, on a farm where the apple orchards have gone to seed and the roof of the house fallen in:

Annemarie and Jawad Rietveld. And a scratched out stone for Jordaan Rietveld.

He leaves the flowers, not particularly giving a fuck about the fact that he could be shot, right here and now, by Pekka Rollins, because this is Pekka Rollins’ land, even if it was Jawad Rietveld’s land first, and then Albert Rietveld’s land before that, even if, on a day so far removed from Kaz’s present life that it feels like someone else’s life entirely, Kaz thought that it would be Jordaan Rietveld’s land in the future.

He feels, in a way, her presence before he can see her.

“I know you’re there.”

She sighs and makes herself visible.

“It’s you. The girl on the train.”

“I don’t think so-” she says, taking on a heavy Flemish accent just in case he remembers her from the police precinct in Groningen. “I’m from Ant-”

“You. Your face.” I could never forget you face, he thinks. The police precinct, and then the train to Utrecht Centraal. A rare sunny day in this pit of gloom and rain, and the way that the sunlight hit her lashes, the curve of her cheeks, the splash of her dark hair, made him think that it was impossible there wasn’t something divine and benevolent in this life, and this world. “Police precinct up North. Gronigen. Train. Amsterdam. Everywhere i go you’re always-” He thinks about pulling the shiv from his pocket. Anyone so interested in following him certainly has ulterior motives, and yet-

“What are you? Why are you always- there?”

“I don’t think, Mr. Brekker, that your . . . theological opinions would permit you to believe me when I tell you what, exactly, I am.”

He shrugs. “Grandson of lapsed NHK’ers and Javanese Sunnis. No god helped them a whit. I don’t think God, if they ever existed, ever looked at this drowning spit of dirt.”

“I think there are many who wouldn’t disagree with you. Some of them, like myself, being of a divine persuasion.”

“Why are you here?”

She doesn’t answer, just turns towards the graves. A light rain has started to fall.

“Do you think you’re following the path they’d be proud of?”

--o0o--

“You know I count as a fucking mature student? Mature.”

Even she has to laugh.

“I’m fucking twenty three. Twenty three. I got carded trying to buy a beer yesterday.”

“But now a student.”

He flashes his new, shiny plastic student card at her. The photo on it still looks like a mugshot.

“What are you studying?”

“Politics. International Relations. How different can the European Council be from the mob, really? Common Agricultural Policy, pay off Europol, work some backroom deals to get shit done.”

Inej resists the urge to burrow her forehead in her jacket sleeves. There are, it turns out, many, many ways for a human to get themselves killed, on this world.