Work Text:
Inej woke up to late morning sunlight filtering through the blinds of her window, comfortable in her bed, in perfect peace.
The covers weren’t too warm or cold, but perfectly soft, and her pillows kept her content as she shifted positions and appreciated the feeling of joy that washes over a person when they can enjoy opening their eyes in the morning.
Mildly, she thought she should get up and check her phone, but she didn’t move, and let the minutes pass by. She didn’t fall back asleep, but her mind didn’t take her to logical thoughts or the things she had to do that day.
When the light started brightening into proper afternoon sunlight, and when she heard the sound of a coffee machine being put to work in the kitchen of the apartment, she finally got up, shirking the blankets off her body and making her way outside of her room.
She stopped at the entrance of the kitchen and dining room. Kaz was sitting at the kitchen bar counter, his computer already open. The skylight, which she knew wasn’t covered purely for her sake, filled the apartment with natural lighting, making his dark eyelashes shine gold.
He was dressed comfortably in what she knew were the closest clothes he had to pajamas, long and soft dark pants, and a tad too big gray sweater that he’d rolled up to his elbows. He only did that in the apartment, much like he only took his gloves off when they were alone.
Inej appreciated the view for a few seconds longer, taking a snapshot of this relaxed and comfortable Kaz in a space that they shared, folding it up and tucking it into her heart.
“Good morning,” she said eventually, stepping into the room, and Kaz glanced up at her.
“Good afternoon,” he said back, amused as he looked her over. “Waking up so late is a bit unusual for you,”
“My bed was comfortable and my mind happy,” Inej told him in reply, and he gave a small smile before turning back to his work.
“I put the kettle on for you,” he followed up, and Inej glanced at the stove. She didn’t like coffee as much as Kaz did, and usually made herself a cup of tea right after getting up. That morning, he’d beaten her to it, with a mug set out and her favorite tea sitting next to it, a kettle with water already on.
She smiled and walked over to look at his computer screen. He was looking over the finances for a client, and Inej tried not to roll her eyes at how he was already working. He was a financial consultant and he did his job well, but he didn’t know much in the way of taking breaks.
Inej made the rest of the tea herself and grabbed the coffee pot to fill up Kaz’s mug which was already half-drunk, and his eyes flickered up in acknowledgment.
She sat across from him and continued to study him, sipping her tea quietly. At least five minutes passed before he seemed to properly register that she was doing nothing else but watch him, and another five before he raised a brow.
“Yes, Inej?”
She smiled over the top of her mug and watched him struggle to not smile back. Kaz had a great poker face about 99% of the time, but she’d known him long enough to know when he was trying to keep it up the most.
“Nothing,” she told him, and he didn’t seem impressed, turning to his screen again.
“Just admiring you,” she continued.
He paused for just a moment, the only tell that he was flustered, before taking a sip of his own mug. “You’re in a good mood,”
“Mhmm,”
“Any particular reason?”
“I’m just happy,”
He looked up at her properly that time. “That’s good,”
Inej used to worry that she would give too much into whatever she and Kaz had and that he wouldn’t be able to, or would refuse to, give her anything. She had realized some time before they moved in together that she had to just learn to look at Kaz’s actions from a different angle, although he also had to learn how to make his actions more clear, but it wasn’t until they lived together that she realized how much things like her comfort and happiness mattered to him.
If she said she was happy, he would always react like that, with genuine appreciation that she was smiling or whatever else, although in his own Kaz-like manner. And if she ever wasn’t, he’d shift things around until she was in an environment made to make her the most comfortable so she could be happy once more, without ever forcing her or guilting her to seem it.
Taking him up on his offer to live together was probably one of the best decisions she’d ever made.
Inej had met Kaz in their first year of university, although it was less of a meeting and more just being in a shared space that they’d somehow agreed to keep away from anyone else.
The fourth floor of the library was already empty enough as it was, but in the very back there was a small opening between bookshelves that led to a small open space, with two small tables and two chairs, almost entirely closed off from the rest of the floor. It was hard to spot, and Inej had only really found it by chance.
Kaz had already been in the forgotten nook before her, but other than his eyes flicking up whenever she’d arrived, they hadn’t really interacted. Sometimes she tried smiling at him, and he’d blink like he was surprised.
They had some mandatory classes together and lived in the same dorm building, and at least then he’d nod to her, and that was the most of it for three months. He was intimidating in class, but calm and studious in the nook, and although she had no incentive to talk to him, she didn’t exactly mind getting to see him so often.
They didn’t really speak until boys from Inej’s latest class had followed her from one building to another, and she was on the steps of the third floor, desperately hoping she could get them to leave her alone without exposing her and Kaz’s little hideaway.
When they started crowding her, with loud expletives and hands reaching out, there was suddenly a hand on the back collar of one guy, and a cane coming around the throat of the other, and without a word, Kaz had turned and violently dragged the boys down to the lower floors. Several moments passed, there was a scream and several “Shhhs!” from distracted library-goers, and then Kaz was back on the steps, his hair a bit messy.
He’d looked her over as if checking to see if she was okay and nodded to the 4th floor. They’d walked up silently, and Inej hadn’t been able to say thank you.
The next night, she came bearing coffee and a pastry, and she’d waited for him to appear. When he had, she pushed the objects into his hands.
“What for?” He’d asked.
“The boys weren’t in my class today and the school said they’re working on a restraining order,” Inej said. It was a more extreme punishment than they’d usually get, and when she’d ask her teacher who had reported it, she’d been told ‘Kaz Brekker’.
Kaz, a tired and naturally quiet 18-year-old, had only shrugged but seemed to like the coffee, and after that, they walked in and out of the library together. When a group project came up in one of their classes, she had immediately paired herself up with him, and the silence turned to working together, and the working turned to casual study meets. That became hanging out almost every day, and Kaz helped her get a job, they became friends with some of the other kids in their dorms, and then suddenly they were in every part of each other’s lives.
At one point or another, they both knew they were more than friends, but Inej had feared Kaz would remain just-so-ever-unreachable.
In the weeks before they moved out of their old student-housing apartment with their chaotically collected group of friends, Kaz and she were awake in the early morning.
“I’ve been looking at apartments,” Kaz said, glancing up to see her reaction. “After we can’t be in student housing anymore,”
“Oh?” Inej had asked, looking up from the mangos she’d been slicing and eating slowly while looking over her schedule.
She’d thought about asking him it about it since he’d been stubbornly refusing to tell anyone his post-graduation housing plans, but she hadn’t been able to bring herself to, in case Kaz would tell her that whatever they had wouldn’t last outside of university and that they didn’t matter to each other anymore.
Kaz nodded slowly. “Do you know where you’re going to go?”
Inej cringed internally. Guess he was already planning on them going their separate ways. “Not… yet. I’m not sure I want to live alone, but Nina and Matthias are moving in together, and Jesper and Wylan are going to get Van Eck’s house redone for them and I don’t want to impose… I don’t know what I’ll do,”
“You don't want to live alone?’
“Not really. I’m not used to it. I had a single dorm back when we met, but I could always visit you or Nina and Jesper just by walking down the hall, and before that, I never lived alone either…” Inej watched Kaz, who was suddenly staring at her intensely. She tried putting herself just a bit more out there.“I just don’t think I’d be very comfortable, like I am here with you,”
Kaz’s eyes caught the early morning light as he glanced away from her and looked down at his phone screen. “You wanted to live closer to the embassies, right?”
“Yeah,” Inej nodded, not surprised he’d remembered.
Kaz bit his lip and passed his phone over to her.
It was an apartment listing. Was he trying to get rid of her so fast he was finding her a place to live?
“I was... I was just looking. And it’s on the top floor, I know you’d like the view, it even has a skylight. It’s pretty spacious, lots of windows, and it’s only a few blocks away from the Ravkan Embassy,”
Inej looked it over, trying to feign excitement when she’d noticed something that gave her a small twinge of hope. “Two bedrooms…?”
“I was thinking we could live together?” Kaz spoke the words quickly, trying to keep his voice steady, and Inej’s head shot up to look at him, lips parted in surprise. “I mean, we both know each other’s habits pretty well, and you don’t want to live alone, and… I’ve enjoyed living with you. But it’s not like we have to. It’s up to you,”
Inej felt her surprise fade and her mouth curled into a smile. “You’ve been thinking about it?”
“For the past like, six months,”
She couldn’t stop the laughter that bubbled up from her chest, but Kaz knew her laughs and didn’t seem to worry that she was making fun of him.
“Kaz,” she said. “Kaz, I was worried you weren’t even going to talk to me anymore,”
He stared at her incredulously. “What? Why?”
“You hadn’t mentioned anything! I wanted to talk about it but you never participated in the discussions or said what you wanted to do, and I didn’t want to assume anything and—”
Kaz reached across the counter to slowly grasp her hand, and she stopped talking, taking in his pale fingers. She hadn’t realized he’d slipped off a glove. He had them both on just seconds before.
“I know I wasn’t saying anything, and I’m terrible at communicating,” Kaz said, and Inej chuckled. At least he was self-aware. “But I want to be with you, if you’ll let me. It doesn’t have to be like this, moving in together, and if you don’t want it, it doesn’t have to be anything. But if you’ll have me…”
Inej still had her doubts. How could she live with him, when he still struggled so much?
But offering to live just with her was its own step, his own progress, and she genuinely wanted to.
“Alright,” she smiled. “How about we go look at it this weekend?”
Kaz had smiled. In the past, when he’d smile whenever one of his underground campus schemes went well, she’d thought ‘that smile isn’t for you, Inej, never for you.’
This one was.
Inej didn’t have doubts anymore. Sure, they argued still, or spent hours inside their own heads and not being able to explain why they were aggressive or distant, but through it all there was still companionship, understanding, and never any judgment.
And as time passed, they got more and more mornings like that one, in which Inej could watch Kaz work happily on her days off and get to soak in sunshine and casual acts of love.
In moments like that, smiling at him without being able to stop herself, Kaz looking at her with soft eyes and reaching out to brush her hair away from her face with softer fingers, she feels like her heart overflows with happiness.
For most of Kaz’s life, he’d never considered happiness as a prime motivator. Or compassion, or love.
Sometimes, the fact that those things were a part of his current life was a shock, and he’d spend a few minutes grappling with what I was sure would happen to me versus what ended up happening to me , trying to make sense of his reality.
Almost every time, the realization hit him in the long hours he’d spend with Inej in their apartment, or coming home and realizing that the term applied.
Just like then, arriving late at home to see Inej curled up on the couch, tightly covered by a blanket. She wasn’t doing anything, in fact she was asleep, but the air was light and Kaz’s mind easy as he watched her, relaxed and comfortable
There were a few lights still on, but Inej had clearly mostly cleaned up for the night.
He set his stuff down and locked the door, then paused as he noticed the two plates covered in foil on the kitchen bar counter. They had a dining room table, but they only ever used it for projects.
She must have not eaten. Kaz had told her not to wait up for him, knowing he’d be home late, but she must have decided to wait anyway.
He sat on the edge of the couch next to her sleeping form, and she shifted, mumbling something.
“Hello, Inej,” he whispered, and offered her his gloved hand when she sleepily reached out to hold it. “You should have eaten,”
“Wasn’t hungry when I made it, thought I should wait and fell asleep,” she muttered back, not opening her eyes. “Was everything alright?”
“Well, this time no one from when I was in juvie decided to crawl out of an alley and jump me, so yeah, everything went swimmingly,”
She opened one eye slightly to check if he was being sarcastic. “I’m going to start tailing you at night again if you talk like that,”
“No need, Wraith,” he grinned. “And I can always just hit them with my cane,”
“And then go to jail for shattering their jaws,” Inej yawned. “Hungry?”
“Very,”
Slowly, Inej extracted herself from the blankets she’d been curled up under. She didn’t lean into Kaz since he’d been out most of the day around more people than he’d like, but she squeezed his hand again and gave him a smile softened by sleep, and Kaz felt short of breath.
“It’s nothing special,” she told him as she pulled him towards the kitchen. He looked around.
“You did the dishes too? If you cooked I would have cleaned,”
“It’s fine, you do the same for breakfast tomorrow and we’re even,” Inej claimed, and Kaz agreed easily enough.
They sat together in relative silence and ate, Inej still clearly sleepy, and Kaz tried not to laugh at her nodding off.
He was happy. Wasn’t that weird?
Kaz had never really planned to talk to, never mind fall in love with, Inej. Unlike almost every other decision he’d ever made, his feelings towards her had been completely accidental and unplanned.
At first, he just appreciated that she wasn’t an invasive person in his own space, that she never tried to touch him.
Later on, it was an admiration for her competence as they tackled classes and other university functions together, and perhaps profiting off other student’s bad behavior a bit too much.
But then she’d started smiling at him, or remembering throwaway comments and bringing them back with gifts and jokes, or willingly hanging out with him when she simply didn’t have to.
So he hadn’t meant to fall in love.
But he’d basically hurtled off the cliff after first hearing her laugh. Sure, he’d made a valiant effort of ignoring it for several months….or something like two years.
But he’d gotten there eventually, and now they lived in the same space and shared almost every meal, and would put on a show and complain loudly about a character’s actions while cooking or doing work, and it was perfect.
Seventeen-year-old Kaz would have laughed in his face, probably bleeding from a fight and looking at everyone with mistrust and anger.
And eighteen-year-old Kaz would have just stared at him, too exhausted to care and too detached to recognize that contraction in his chest was a reaction to Inej chuckling at a sarcastic remark he’d made and not caffeine overdose.
So it was unexpected. Kaz typically didn’t like surprises, but Inej had always been an exception.
“ ...Bad day?” he asked as Inej walked into the apartment, angrily unraveling her hair.
She only grumbled, as good as an affirmation.
He’d suspected it would happen soon enough. Inej worked with a lot of different shelters and organizations, and Kerch’s rainy season always complicated things, with flooding, mold, things breaking from their foundations, a lack of funds as people got sick or buildings started to crumble. She would come home after spending hours arguing with city officials over donations and funding or public infrastructure and having to worry over a variety of dangers, exhausted and more than ready to stab someone.
If it happened to be one of Kaz’s good days, she’d crawl onto the couch and lay her head on his lap, her face tucked against his torso, and silently fume for however long she needed.
Kaz had never expected Inej to need that, because she’d done an excellent job at making herself seem independent at all times. Later, he’d considered that she’d grown up in a place in which you really could go to people and have them hold you until you feel better, and then he understood.
It was one of those days. Essentially, a bad day for her, and a good one for him.
Her hair covered most of her face as she settled, and she asked for an ungloved hand without really having to say anything. He gave her one, and kept the other one on his phone, starting what he liked to do when she was upset.
That is, blackmail and scam stingy and miserly Merchers using anonymous means.
He couldn’t help with things like sick or homeless people, or fixing houses, but if she wasn’t able to wrangle money out of the Council and other wealthy individuals, Kaz was only ever waiting for an opportunity to screw them over and help her out at the same time.
She’d never directly implied that she knew he did it, but sometimes she’d get off a call with an apologetic and suddenly philanthropic Mercher and raise a brow at him just so while he feigned ignorance.
They were in that position for at least forty minutes, and Kaz got distracted by the way her eyelashes fluttered when he shifted and by the circles she rubbed into his hand.
“Do you want ice cream?” he asked eventually, setting down his phone and smoothing out her hair.
“In this weather?”
Kaz looked at the dark rain pattering outside. He didn’t really feel much one way or another about most of Ketterdam’s weather, unlike Inej, Jesper, Nina, and Matthias, and even Wylan, who all had very passionate opinions on the topic, and thus he’d never let it stop him from anything.
“It’s coffee and caramel flavored,”
Inej opened her eyes and looked up at him. “We didn’t have any this morning,”
“Perhaps not,”
She smiled against his shirt. “ Kaz ,”
“So you want some?”
“...Yes. But let me stay like this a bit longer,”
The rain lulled them both to sleep, but they got ice cream after.