#Kaz is a male | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

usmsgutterson · 2 years ago

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Stay- K.B x male! reader

Okay. This fic is one of three of it’s kind that’s coming out this month. This one comes out today, the next one (for Jesper) comes out on the 16th, the third (for Nikolai) comes out on the 30th.

I’ve always wanted to write something that feels authentic and in line with my experiences as a queer person in aspects of things like heartbreak, yearning, and some of the lighter parts, too, and I chose to do that in the form of these fics. I poured my heart and soul out a little bit so I hope this touches some hearts, too. This is also, by far, my favorite piece of queer fanfic that I’ve ever written. It’s also very long and so that you know what you’re getting into, I’ve added a word count to this fic for convenience.

Also, yes, there are multiple different gifs with this one but they all have their significances within this fic lol

Fic type- this jumps all over the place but the main genres in it are hurt/comfort and heavy angst

Warnings- mentions of death, mentions of and depictions of gunshot wounds/being shot, mention and depiction of yearning and heartbreak, mention of blood and mentions of physical violence

Word count- 11.6k

You had been in love with Kaz Brekker for what felt like forever, but in reality, had been two thousand days. Five and a half years, give or take. Sixty-five months. You had realized you were in love with him when you were fifteen years old, and in the time since, you'd had a sixteenth, a seventeenth, eighteenth, nineteenth, and a twentieth birthday.

You did not know how else to state it. You loved him with the surety of a stream rippling and moving over water covered stones, ones that were always a light-ish brown but looked nearly identical to the color of his hair because they never did have the chance to dry unless someone took them out of the water.

You loved him and were as sure in that as you were in the fact that you loved to watch the sunrise from the rooftops with Inej when she was visiting, as sure as you were in the fact that you would never grow tired of Jespers jokes or the songs Wylan could play on the flute.

Some days, the fact that you were deeply in love with Kaz Brekker and had been for nearly the entirety of the six years you had known him was the only thing you could be sure of.

Because you loved Kaz Brekker, Dirtyhands, the Bastard of the Barrel who was never seen anywhere without his gloves, you yearned. Yearning naturally came with loving him as it did loving anyone else, and it was intense because you had not told him how you felt. You weren't entirely sure that you ever would.

Yearning was odd. Sometimes, it was the phantom feeling of a kiss against a forehead, the overwhelming idea of how nice it would be if you could rest your head against his shoulder or simply wanting to hold his hand. It was mildly pleasant in those times, though still quite the inconvenience, you could admit.

Other times, however, it felt like a punch to the gut. It was the pain of wanting a forehead kiss. It was the pain of wanting to be hugged and a gut punch, a bullet wound, when you really wanted to know what it would've been like to be in a relationship with the one person in the Barrel who had everyone in his pocket, the one person who had become untouchable alongside you after the success of the Ice Court and all of the big heists since.

Sometimes, yearning was like waking up on the perfect morning. It was waking up on your favorite day of the week, finding that the weather outside was just perfect, making your drink of choice just right and finally having the motivation to read the book you'd been setting aside for weeks in the favor of other tasks in need of doing.

Other times, it was like being stabbed. It was an ache; a bone deep, heartsick ache. It was waking up and wanting for the one thing you could not have. It was going down to the bottom floor of the Slat, grabbing a brandy and hoping that it did the trick and got you back to normal, only to remember that alcohol did not always work that way and objecting to take the whole bottle instead. Yearning was drinking brandy from the bottle as you read a book you hated but could not give up and yearning was hoping that drinking yourself to sleepiness would have you back to normal the next morning.

Of course, the bottle of brandy never worked. It made you tired after a bit, sure, but it also left you feeling hungover and sluggish the next morning. It had Nina laughing as she commended you for surviving a rough night as Jesper wrapped an arm around your waist and pulled you lightly into the booth, nodding his understanding because he was your friend and he loved you, and he'd fancied Kaz once, too, so of course he understood.

"It sticks with you," Jesper said as the two of you headed into the Slat from Fifth Harbor. You'd been grabbing breakfast and Kaz had wanted you in his offices for a meeting by nine bells. "The yearning, I mean. I've been with Wylan three years now, and damn it, it really never goes away."

"I can't let that be the case with me," you said. "I can't. I can barely survive this as it is, Jesper. If the yearning keeps going the longer I stay in love with him, I don't know what I'll do."

"There are a couple of gay bars in the city," Jesper suggested. "I can't imagine that they'll quite fulfill the needs you have but they'll be good for moving on if you flirt with the right people."

"The right people for me are the emotionally unavailable ones," you said. "I honestly don't have much of a preference, but if they've got light blue sea glass eyes, a cutting jaw and brown hair that looks glorious when it's been a few months since it was last trimmed and has had a bit of a chance to grow out, that all would be quite the convincing added bonus."

"You lovesick fool," Jesper said with a laugh as you proceeded into Kaz's office.

"Who's in on the job?" Were the first words out of your mouth, eyes scanning the area. You noticed a map of Ravka on his desk, a map of Fjerda right beside it, a cup half full of coffee placed bare milimetres away from the spot where Kaz had chosen to sit his cane while he worked. "I'm assuming Inej, if she gets in from her voyage in time, and especially if you need a spider. Raske is good on house calls and Ketterdam based Dregs business but he would never be suited to something overseas."

Kaz blinked. "How do you know it's a job across the pond?"

"The map of Ravka on your desk helps me to determine that much, though the map of Fjerda right next to it provides more of a clue," you said. "Let me guess, jewelry? Jewelry was stolen by Fjerdans who managed to infiltrate the Little Palace and steal as much as they could grab?"

"Druskelle, specifically," Kaz said with a nod. "At the orders of their new commander. The aim was to make Grisha afraid, and so they did so by breaking into the one place where Grisha felt safe and stealing something valuable.

“They aim to strike fear into the hearts of all Ravkans,” you said with a nod. “The royals are just the start, as their new commander has said to the news. I’ve kept up with the news as their managing to steal Ravkan jewels is of interest to me--I haven’t the slightest idea how they’d managed it--though it seems that the royals are angry with it. Sources say that Zoya feels like she’s been duped.”

"They are quite angry indeed," Kaz said. "Angry enough that they hired us. It'll be us three, Wylan, and Inej. Nina, too, but she's been working for the Ravkans since Matthias died so she'll meet us there.”

"What's the payoff?"

"Six hundred thousand kruge split six ways."

"One hundred thousand for a break in? Seems a bit generous from the Ravkans, doesn’t it?”

“It’s money borrowed from the merchant council. They’re paying us, essentially.”

"It’s boat and life forever spent at sea money," Jesper said pointedly, referencing a conversation you two had had over breakfast.

You’d been watching Kaz's expression, saw surprise flit across his face for a split second before he schooled his expression back to neutrality.

"You've thought about leaving?" He asked. "What, do you just need an excuse to go?"

"I prefer to call it a reason," you answered with a shrug. "And no. Leaving Ketterdam is not something that I have thought about in depth, I only started thinking of it last night. Figured I could buy a boat ticket and head off somewhere new. I could use a refresh in the scenery, learn to walk a new city until I've memorized every path and shortcut. I need something different, Kaz. I've needed something different since we were seventeen, since I watched Nina climb into a sickboat and lay beside her dead beloved."

You looked to Jesper as he slipped a supportive hand into yours, Kaz's gaze hardening as he turned your words over in his mind.

"Reason and excuse. What's the difference?"

"Reason: you have decided I am unfit to remain on the Dregs, or you have decided that you hate me, or perhaps you love me and it is something you cannot face, so we come up with a solution together. The solution being my departure," you hummed. It was too easy to joke about Kaz being in love with you when you were in fact the one in love with him, but whenever you did, it made your chest ache. You wished he'd felt the same as you did. "Excuse: I find myself with enough money to afford a cheap boat ticket and quite the large townhouse in a port city off the coast of Ravka or Novyi Zem, even the Wandering Isle or Shu Han. It is with the knowledge of the money in my account that I make the decision to buy a boat ticket, pack up what little of my belongings exist in my room at the Slat, and go."

"Ah," Jesper hummed. "Well, if you do leave, promise to visit?"

"Summer and Christmas," you said, pairing it with a smile like that would've made it any easier to think of leaving. Just because it was something you’d begun to debate did not make it any easier to fathom.

"Well, we're in for a week and a half of travel on boat," Kaz said. "To Ravka. We're meeting with the royals for two days to discuss how exactly we plan to pull it off."

"Where are we rescuing the jewels from?"

"The Fjerdan royal palace."

“I normally quite like a good gamble or two,” Jesper said. “Rather unfortunately for you, Mr. Brekker, I’m not seventeen anymore, and the knowledge that the odds are nearly guaranteed to be stacked against me does not sound exciting.”

“Well, even as such, a sharpshooting Fabrikator is needed on this job and you are the best suited for it. You can still say no, Jesper, but you’ll be missing out one hundred thousand kruge if you do.”

“Wylan will probably agree to come along. At least, if you’re putting yourself up against death, you and Wylan will probably die together,” you offered with an uneasy smile, giving Jespers hand a squeeze.

“Hand in hand, provided you get lucky,” Kaz added.

Jesper sighed. “I’ll talk it over with him, and you’ll have an answer by nightfall.”

“You’re in, correct?” Kaz asked, looking to you.

You nodded. “I’ve still got more than half of the money from the Ice Court heist left. May as well add to those funds a bit before I take them with me when I leave.” You still didn’t know if you wanted to go, but it was better to talk like you’d made up your mind as it were. You didn’t like uncertainty, had no particular fondness for variables.

Kaz nodded.

Jesper let go of your hand and left, the door closing soundlessly behind him.

“What of it, then, Kaz?” You asked. You did not mean to stay behind, not really, but you did. Kaz had more to disclose with you, as always, though it was something that went unsaid.

You were the one person in the world that Kaz would--albeit a little begrudgingly and only when he was nearly black out drunk--admit he cared about, and as such, you always got more to it than Nina did, than Jesper or Wylan or Inej or even Matthias had while he was alive.

But, you could not let that, nor how you felt about him, get in the way of your goal. You wanted to know as much of it as you possibly could before you fully committed before breaking into a palace that was located in the Ice Court, which, if your memory served, was a place with more security than any reasonable facility would’ve employed, even a place with a prison sector.

The knowledge you’d long learned pricked in your chest, the thought that accompanied it bubbling up in your mind as you met Kaz’s gaze, saw the blue of his eyes reflected in the rare Ketterdam sun as it filtered into the room through the office window.

Loving Kaz Brekker is lethal. Don’t get caught up in it.

“What of what, Y/N?”

“What of the plan?”

“Why should I tell you what my plan entails when you plan to go once all is said and done?”

“Reason versus excuse.”

“Reason: You are a valued member of my crew and to insinuate that I would ever want you gone for any reason, be it your feelings, my own, or the simple fact that I might deem you unsuited for my crew, is very insulting,” Kaz looked at you. Your heart quickened. “Excuse: I do not need to elaborate. I do not want to.”

You shrugged. “Even if you don’t want to discuss it, I need to know just how likely it is that I will make it out of the heist alive, or I will walk away and I will encourage Jesper and Wylan to do the same. Royals be damned, I am done putting my life in serious risk overseas. I did it once three years ago, and once is starting to seem like more than enough.”

“It’s not likely.”

“My survival or my death?”

“Nobody is likely to survive, Y/N,” he said. “But that’s why we do it, because we know nobody will care about Barrel trash.”

“Nina and Inej are not Barrel trash,” you spat. “Wylan and Jesper are not Barrel trash. Just because the only people who care about you, me, Wylan, Jesper, Inej, or Nina are those who’s names I have just listed, does not make us nothing. It does not make us worthless.”

“If you make it, buy a boat ticket, settle somewhere, and never think of me again,” Kaz said. “I could do without thinking of you, too.”

“The day that you let someone in, allow someone to care about you and let yourself care about them deeply in turn, is the day that my heart stops and I cease to exist, I swear to the saints.”

“The rumor is that I am heartless, so you should remain alive for a very long time.”

You said nothing, only scoffed and walked out of Kaz’s office, up to your room in the Slat.

Inej was at your windowsil by that afternoon, a grin on her face, a braid of black hair sitting on her right shoulder. She was wearing a black roughspun tunic and gray leggings along with a long black hooded coat to hold her knives and conceal her body while she scaled the buildings in Ketterdam, black boots that went up to the middle of her calf adorning her feet to finish the outfit off.

She looked exactly like what she was; a ships captain, one who always rolled her sleeves up to the elbow and had hands calloused from tying knots. She slipped through the opening of your window, vaulting gracefully off of it once she’d gotten her footing--you’d opened the window to let in a draft. The Slat always got humid in the summer and Ketterdam had a tendency for infrequent but strong breezes on days where the sun showed itself--and ended up a foot away from your bed.

“Kaz wrote me,” she said. “Though I assume it’s confirmed now, more than just possible?”

“We’re breaking into the Ice Court again, yeah,” you said, nodding. “When did he send?”

“Three weeks back. He had a feeling, according to rumor. I assume that he gave you the information while stone cold sober, though the letter he wrote to me read like he wrote it while he was drunk.”

You scoffed. “I may be one of his closest friends, but Kaz Brekker barely tells me anything. The most I can think of in regards to hints is the fact that he mentioned it just the other day while he was whiskey drunk. Said that the Ravkans need something back, something very valuable. I was given no other context clues to this.”

“You’d think for the one person Kaz Brekker will never truly let in, he’d tell you more than he does on the basis that he knows you’d never tell anyone a damn thing,” Inej commented. “Though, he’ll never let anyone in. It’s not his style.”

“Don’t I know it,” you said, sighing a bit. “Oh, don’t I fucking know it.”

Inejs face split into a pitiful smile. “Still?”

“Five and a half years gunning,” you said as you stood up. You draped an arm over her shoulders, let her lead the way out of your bedroom. “Not stopping any time soon, unless I get a one way boat ticket to Ravka or decide to live there permanently after the heist.”

“Come back to Ketterdam with me once this is through,” she said. “I’ll be staying two weeks to check out a couple of leads. Stay until I go, and I’ll take you with me to Novyi Zem. Drop you off in Cofton, where the decent houses are cheap but the good ones in the country are cheaper and have the better views of the sun while it rises and sets.”

You opened your door, left the room. “Yeah. That’ll help me tie up a couple of loose ends, too.”

Inej laughed. “What, will you leave him a note?”

“Perhaps,” you answered with a shrug as the two of you proceeded down the corridor. “A letter is more my style, I think. It’ll make Kaz hate me--for thinking to leave with just a note, for not telling him goodbye officially before I place it on his desk--but it’s what’s necessary.”

“It is not,” Inej said. “You say that you’ll write a letter of goodbye to him now, but I know you. You’ll leave the letter behind after you’ve hinted at your leave, at the very least.”

“No,” you couldn’t bear it. You could not say goodbye to his face nor hint at a goodbye, and that was something you’d realized as you thought of the heist that was to come throughout that day. It was something you realized as you thought of what would happen after it. “I can’t say goodbye to him in person. I can’t see that monotonous expression staring back at me while I’m close to tears and when he asks why, and I tell him I have loved him since we were fifteen, what then? How will I survive leaving Ketterdam--how will I survive saying goodbye to Kaz bloody Brekker, if I don’t do it in the form of written word?”

“You’ll start by drinking a lot of brandy, knowing you,” Inej said. “I started my leave off by learning how to tie every knot the members of my boat crew could. I wanted to leave, well and truly, but that didn’t mean it hurt any less. I learned knot tying, I wrote letters to my parents after Kaz had found them. I’ve never fully moved on from Ketterdam--I still love these streets and if I could die here, I would do so in the middle of a fight with the handle of a knife clutched in my palm--and I don’t intend to. You are not trying to move on from a city, Y/N. You are currently in the throes of trying to move on from a person.”

You said nothing because you knew Inej was right. You were so tired of the yearning, of the constant pain that loving Kaz Brekker brought on.

You loved Ketterdam. Well and truly, you did, but if you loved Kaz Brekker much longer, you were sure you would die of a broken heart. You did not want that for yourself--you did not want to be another one of the bodies brought out to the Reapers Barge and burned on the shores.

You found Kaz sitting at a table on the bottom floor of the Slat where Inej found Jesper and Wylan, and the two of you split off.

“When do we leave?”

“So you’ve made your decision?”

“When do we leave, Brekker?”

“Three days time. Ravka first, then a couple days on foot. We’re using the summer festival as a cover up this time.”

“The royals will be celebrating with the other delegations on the White Island?”

“And we don’t have to move through the prison. It’s just a matter of getting in, getting to the palace and grabbing the jewelry and then getting out.”

“You make it sound entirely safe,” you intoned. “Quite the opposite of what it is to be, I imagine.”

“One hundred thousand kruge is all any of us are getting after the split,” Kaz said. “Less money than breaking in is worth, but I convinced the merchant council out of thirty million once. I’m sure if I ask Nikolai to give us a better offer for our time, he will be the one stuck convincing the merchant council. It means there’ll be more time for me to wonder what I’ll put the money to.”

“Expansions, investments,” you said. “More flooring at the Slat, the building next to it and a couple of construction workers to join the places together. Worth it endeavor if you think about it.”

Kaz smirked at you. “A boat ticket, a farmhouse, jurda crop in the spring that you’ll sell in the fall?”

You snorted. “Or no boat ticket, no farmhouse, no jurda. Maybe a house in the financial district and a bed that feels like laying on a blanket made from the fur brushed off of Samoyed dogs.”

Kaz only shook his head in response, and a somber kind of silence settled over the two of you. A pang struck you in the chest as your eyes ghosted over his cheekbones, ran along the surface of his lips and down from his shoulders to his wrists to the tips of his gloved fingers.

He was looking at you in a way that you could not read or understand. Kaz’s expressions had always been unreadable, always something you had tried to understand when you thought over them. You could read his expression when you saw emotion flit across his face, but otherwise he looked monotonous. Annoyingly, handsomely, monotonous.

He would never say it, but you could tell he wanted you to stay. It was present in the unexpected anger that flitted across his gaze whenever it came up, the sarcastic manner with which he discussed it.

“If you want to leave, you’re welcome to go,” Kaz said. “I don’t need you to stick around if you don’t want to.”

“Perhaps I’m looking for reasons to stay,” you said. “Reasons aside from Inejs bi-monthly visits, reasons that do not primarily revolve around Jespers jokes, Wylans flute, or the rise and set of the sun.”

“Well then, I do hope you find those reasons,”

“And I do hope that if I do not, you’ll find time in your busy mob boss schedule to pay me a visit?”

Kaz looked at the darkly stained wood of the table instead of saying anything. It made you want to punch him in the face, made you want to punch yourself in the face for daring to ask that of him.

You’d dared to ask for some small admittance that he cared about you even slightly, and when did that ever quite go the way you wanted for it to?

But then, after a couple of seconds, he spoke. “You’re to visit during the summers and Christmas time, if you keep to the words you told Jesper this morning.”

“Come visit me in Spring or Autumn,” you said. “If I end up in Ravka, it’s always quite nice to watch the leaves turn and fall to the ground during the autumn season, and spring means lots of rain, which isn’t too different from Ketterdams weather year round anyway.”

Kaz said nothing again. You got up and spun around on your feet, heading straight for the bar. You needed a brandy and to not think of Kaz Brekker or the blue of his eyes or the sound of his voice for a minimum of twelve hours.

The three days leading up to your leave were monotonous. You worked your shifts at the Crow Club, watched the sun as it rose in the mornings and and set in the evenings. You talked with Inej, laughed with Jesper and found solace in the music Wylan played with his flute.

The trip to Ravka in and of itself was turning out to be just as monotonous. You’d taken to watching the waves, to closing your eyes and breathing in the cold air, listening to the sound of the waves as they hit the boat and rocked it lightly side to side.

You were another six, maybe seven hours out from Ravka. The shore was beginning to show itself, a mere dot across the almost endless expanse of the sea. You’d stood, watching and listening to the waves, for upwards of an hour by then. Jesper had joined you at first, you’d discussed what you would do with the money--you were still contemplating leaving, where Jesper revealed that he and Wylan were debating buying a farm house in Novyi Zem so that they could visit his father in the autumn and help him sell the jurda he grew--and laughed as you shared anecdotes.

But then, Jesper left. You stood in silence for the next thirty minutes, contemplating everything as it were.

You remembered what it was like to fall in love with Kaz Brekker. It had not been easy. It had been a mess and was a mess even still, and it made you want to leave.

Leaving, you quickly realized, meant moving on. Moving on, in the end, meant that you would probably fall in love with someone new and you would experience it all over again.

Could you handle falling in love again, though? You were entirely unsure of it.

Falling in love had been a mess the first time. Once, you found, was more than enough, especially if it meant you went through a repetition of what you’d been going through with Kaz; a love unrequited and a flame never lit.

Moving on almost sounded worse, though. You’d fallen in love with Kaz Brekker and, even as heartbreaking as it was, you’d grown used to it. You could handle loving him forever, never getting rid of the ache in your chest that he’d been the direct cause of, if it meant you never fell in love again and never had to go through it all a second time or a third after that.

However, speak of the devil and the devil shall come. You barely had a second to register the sound of his cane against the flooring of the boat before he was at your right, cane leaned against the railing as he pressed his back to it. His gaze was skyward, pointedly avoiding the water.

“What of it, Y/N?”

“What of what, Kaz?”

You were not looking at him. You could not stand to look at him.

“What of all of it?” Kaz asked. “One moment, you speak like you only ever want to leave and be rid of me forever, the next you talk as though you’re not going anywhere. What of it, Y/N? What of that?”

“Nothing,” you said, shrugging your shoulders aimlessly. “Perhaps I speak like I do with the aim of keeping you on your toes. It seems to be working in my favor.”

“Make a decision and stick with it,” Kaz said. “I cannot deal with not knowing whether you are to stay after all of this is done or if...” Kaz paused.

Kaz Brekker never paused. He never hesitated in anything.

“If you are to leave Ketterdam behind,” Kaz finished. You looked over to him, saw a surprising bout of regret flash in his gaze before yours moved back to the water. “I cannot handle it.”

“Well, you will have to handle it until my decision is made,” you said. “And besides, other than these random fits and starts, you have made no effort to indicate that you really do want me to stay. If you would like me to stay, just say it, Brekker.”

A long pause passed over the two of you. Kaz felt so close, but like he was miles away all the same.

“And if I do not?”

“If I am being honest, whether or not you want me to stay plays a very little part in whether or not I will,” a lie. A complete and total lie.

If Kaz Brekker asked you to stay in Ketterdam, you would have. It was quite as simple as that, but he could never know as much. You would never ever tell him that whether or not you stayed in Ketterdam was nearly entirely dependent on him because it would break your heart and harden Kaz’s into steel.

You would be let go from the Dregs and forced to leave regardless, for Kaz Brekker loved nobody. He thought love was a weakness, and those who were weak had no place in the gang he’d built from the ground.

“Then why does my admittance of whether or not I want you to stay mean anything?”

“I told you once that the day that you allow yourself to care about another human being is to be the day that my heart stops and I cease to exist,” you said. You turned to look at him. “Perhaps I just want you to admit that you care, or perhaps I have a death wish. I shall leave that up to your own contemplation.”

“If I asked you to, you would stay?”

“If you asked me twice, I would consider it. If Jesper and Wylan asked me once, I would consider it further, but if Nina offered me a place to stay or if Inej offered me a place on her crew, I would yes on the spot. I cannot do this forever, Kaz.”

“Do what?”

You flinched, felt grateful that Kaz only turned to look at you after it had happened. You realized that you had said too much.

I cannot keep loving you and wallowing in my heartbreak for the rest of my life, even as terrifying as moving on seems, even as terrifying as falling in love again sounds, you thought.

“This,” you gestured broadly. “The heists. The near constant act of risking my life for much less money than even I, a criminal, happen to think it’s worth.”

“So that’s it, is it?” Kaz asked. “You’ve made your decision. You’ll do the heist, you’ll collect what you’re owed, and then you’ll move on? You’ll forget about Inej and Nina, about Jesper and Wylan, and...” there it was again. A pause.

“I did not say that,” you said exasperatedly.

“You implied it well enough.”

“I was not trying to imply anything,” you said, growing more exasperated by the second. There was fire in Kaz’s gaze. It made you want to kill him, made you want to kiss him, and made you want to shoot yourself in the foot all at once. “I am only trying to say that I will stay if I am asked by the right people or if I decide that I do not want to leave after all is said and done! I am trying to say that I do not know what I will do, and that if I decide to leave, you are welcome to throw a party to honor my absence! Saints know you won’t miss me, Brekker, if you’re so bloody emotionally cramped that you can’t even bring yourself to ask of me the one thing that might prompt me to stay in Ketterdam for at least another little while!”

“I am not--”

“You are emotionally cramped like nobody I have ever seen in my entire life,” you said. You knew you were being cruel, but you decided you didn’t care. “You cannot bring yourself to admit that you care about people, and how dare you love anyone else because love is weakness even when you have more of a hold on Ketterdam than Pekka bloody Rollins did in his time. Love is weakness to you, Brekker, and I look forward to the day that you wake up and realize that love does not have to be weakness, but it can be strength if you would just listen to your emotions and let it be! Saints, you are awful.”

“I am treacherous,” Kaz said somberly. “I know that. You know that.”

“Well then, it looks like we finally have something in common,” you snapped. “I care about you, Brekker, and I care about you very deeply. All I need in order to stay is for you to finally just say it. Ask me to stay, tell me that you care, pretend to believe it when I lie and say that whether or not you do really doesn’t matter at all.”

Kaz said nothing. You watched him turn around, turn his gaze to the water. You saw his gaze harden, realized he was relieving something painful--a memory he hadn’t told you about, so it seemed--and grimaced.

“Caring is weakness,” Kaz said. “Weak is the last thing that I can afford to be.”

You scoffed and walked away, not meeting his gaze as you headed belowdecks in the hopes of finding a bit of peace of mind and the will to rest.

He found you in the palace a day and a half later. Negotiations had been completed, the carriage that would get you up to the Fjerdan permafrost in the preparation stages but nearly ready to go. You’d negotiated up from 100,000 kruge per person to 200,000 kruge. Not much, compared to the money you’d grabbed for the initial Ice Court heist--the theft of Kuwei Yul-Bo--but just in the realms of being good enough.

“What are the chances we survive this, Brekker?” You were sitting by the lake, feet in the water. trying to calm your heart down. “How many of us are risking our lives in having agreed to this?”

“All of us are,” Kaz said. “Nina knows it just as well. Inej and Wylan and Jesper know it. We’re the only ones who are capable enough to do this job, and if you survive, you get a decent pay out.”

You nodded. You’d known that all along, had figured that the odds of one of the six of you who remained dying were not quite the best. You just hoped it wouldn’t have been Kaz or Jesper. Had either of them died, your heart would’ve shattered in two with no large enough pieces to put back together again.

“I’m sorry for what I said on the boat,” you were. Kaz might’ve deserved all of your cruelty, but you were still apologetic. A lot of what you had said had been heat of the moment anger, some of it just a little true but never meant to be said as you had said all of it. “I never meant to say it like that.”

Kaz Brekker went still.

Silence lapsed. It was a silence that went on for several agonizing, suffocating minutes, silence that had your watching the sun as it set encompassed only by the sound of your heartbeat thrumming in your ears, the almost silent sound of Kaz’s breathing as he sat to your right.

It was suffocative. The silence you were experiencing in that moment had made you want to die like you’d never quite experienced it before. It was intense, a pain in your chest that you could only hope would go away. It hurt. You were hurting.

“Will you go?”

“I would very much like to as of now,” you said. “But I also would not. Thinking about it has become an absurdly repetitive process.”

“If you intend to, find Genya. I’m sure she’d be willing to tailor away the crow and the cup tattoo that sits on your forearm.”

“If I am to leave, I will not get rid of it,” you said. “I will be keeping my crow and cup, along with the Dregs affiliation that it carries, thank you.”

You were being sarcastic. It was the only thing you could will yourself to do in that moment.

“How long will you go, if you decide to leave?”

“If I am to leave and not come back around to visit, I wouldn’t be expecting my presence for at least three years,” more than half of the time during which you had loved him was the amount of time you expected moving on from him to take. You didn’t quite want to move on, but you needed to. You needed to move on from Kaz Brekker, to stop loving him, or you would die of it.

You would die of the love you felt for Kaz Brekker because loving him would’ve broken your heart in the end. There was no more escaping it, no more denying it. Loving Kaz Brekker would kill you whether or not that was something you wanted to admit.

“Will you write, in the least?”

You let yourself grin. It wasn’t quite the ‘I care about you’ in the direct, forward fashion you’d hoped for, but it was enough.

“I may,” you said. “I’ll enclose a return address so that you have no excuse when you do not respond.”

Kaz smiled. You noticed how rarely you actually saw him smile. You wished you were a Heartrender for a moment so that you would be able to listen to Kaz’s heartbeat instead of your own, and the moment passed.

“Be ready at sunrise,” were Kaz’s parting words before he was walking away, the familiar sound of the click of his cane being the only thing you heard before you heard the familiar sound of Jesper and Ninas footsteps.

Jesper joined you at the lake, pulled his trousers up a bit and put his feet into the water as he wrapped an arm around you, pressed a kiss to the top of your forehead.

Nina did the same, hiked up the skirt she wore to her knees and dipped her feet into the water as she grabbed one of your hands, shot you a somber look. It had been the first time you’d had the chance to see each other since she left Ketterdam in a schooner designed to look like one of the ones that would go to the Reapers Barge, laying beside her deceased beloved.

She hadn’t been too involved in the negotiating process simply due to the fact that she was busy tying up a couple of remaining loose ends in Fjerda, and while Kaz had been filling her in on the details you already knew, you’d been sitting by the lake or drinking tea by one of the samovars, wallowing within the depths of your own mind and trying not to resent every single second of it.

You wanted to cry. The first time you’d seen one of your closest friends in three years and there you were, wallowing in pity and in heartbreak because you had fallen for the worst person in Ketterdam who you could’ve fallen for.

“What’s happened?” She didn’t know. You hadn’t told her.

Jesper had found out from one too many times finding you crying about it in your room at the Slat, but Nina had never seen you cry. She had never known about how you felt for Kaz because you had never quite gotten around to telling her in the hopes of avoiding her pity filled gaze, but you had meant to. You’d promised yourself you would tell her before the Ice Court and you just...never had.

“He’s fallen for the worst person in Ketterdam that one is capable of falling for,” Jesper said. “And now, every time he thinks about that person, he wants to die because it is either A: continue to live in Ketterdam and exist in the pain that this person brings on, or B: leave and move on and debate coming back to Ketterdam three years from now while hoping that one look at the aforementioned person will not have him falling head over heels all over again.”

“You fell in love with Kaz Brekker?” Nina asked. You turned to look at her, and there it was. The pity in her gaze. “Oh, Y/N. You glorious fool.”

You laughed, a tired, sad laugh. “I know it was dumb,” you said. “But, if it helps, I didn’t mean to fall in love with him. It just kind of happened.”

She gave your hand a squeeze. “He’s an idiot.”

“As am I.”

“You two have that in common then,” she gave you a grin, and you grinned back, and for a moment you felt like you were seventeen again. You felt like the boy who laughed with Nina on the boat as you were headed for Fjerda, occasionally looking to her Fjerdan to find him glaring at you because he thought you were standing too close.

You were the boy who looked at Matthias as Nina laughed at one of Jespers jokes and saw that it looked like he had stars in his eyes.

You were the boy who flinched when Kuwei said that Kaz looked at you whenever you laughed or grinned the same way that Matthias looked at Nina whenever the sound of her laugh met his ears, denied it profusely because you had not seen it for yourself.

“He’s Kaz,” Jesper said. “Never knows shit about shit with his emotions but he’ll figure it out once he lets his emotions in a little bit, if he does do so. Doesn’t want you to leave, which is clear as day.”

“He doesn’t want me to go, but he refuses to tell me to stay,” you wanted to die. you wanted to jump into the lake and die. “I wish he would.”

“If he asked, would you say yes?”

You would’ve. You would’ve stayed, for at least another little while. “Yeah.”

“So all that needs to happen for you to stay is for Kaz to ask that of you?”

“Yeah.”

“Lovesick idiot,” Jesper shouted. “Saints, I know I might’ve been this bad with Wylan, but at least he’s never ripped my heart out a thousand times and still had the gall to ask me to stay with him. If he had, I wouldn’t’ve said yes. I would’ve vowed never to speak to him again. You are a lovesick idiot.”

“I know,” you said. “I legitimately yearn for death whenever I think about it too much, it’s just that--”

“Kaz Brekker is your first love,” Nina said. “Letting go of first loves is never easy for anyone.”

“The thought of leaving and moving on is terrifying to me,” you admitted. “Falling in love with Kaz was scary enough. Moving on just means getting over Kaz and doing it all again with someone new.”

“Yeah,” Nina nodded. “Trust me, it’s never easy. If you lose him, moving on will feel like a betrayal at first.”

“You can’t seriously think that--” began Jesper.

“It’s the bloody Ice Court,” Nina said coldly. “We went from seven to six the last time. Who’s to say we won’t lose someone else?”

“It’s more likely than not,” you chimed in. “Let’s just hope we do our jobs well enough. In and out, no losses.”

“No losses,” Jesper said, cutting a flare at Nina. “We’ll make it.”

“Making it out of the toughest situations is what we do best,” you offered, grinning slightly.

You didn’t know if you were right, but you had to hope, even if just a bit.

Kaz and Jesper had been walking through the halls of the Fjerdan Royal Palace when Kaz’s mind wandered. He was thinking about you again.

Just as he had been for four years. You, it seemed, had found a way to occupy all of the corners of his mind, sneaking up on him when he’d least expected it. He’d not found a way to stop thinking about you in the days since he’d begun to at sixteen, but at twenty, he was more than happy to allow that to keep on as it was.

The thoughts were a bit of a distraction as Kaz and Jesper moved, but Kaz had set a quick pace and he was able to keep it up even when lost within the depths of his mind, so it didn’t bother him much.

He was thinking of you again.

He did not know whether or not you would stay in Ketterdam after the heist. He knew what he needed to do to incentivize you to stay, but he just could not bring himself to say the words.

He’d wanted to when it was first discussed in the weeks before, when you had brought it up as a mere possibility. He’d wanted to say it when you were in the Slat the same afternoon, had yearned to do so on the boat amidst your fighting and as the two of you sat by the lake.

All that you had wanted was an admission from Kaz; a simple admittance to the fact that he cared about you--which, deep down, he knew he did. Hell, even on the surface, he knew he did.

He’d started truly giving a damn when the two of you were sixteen and he had not stopped since. He’d liked you, at first, and then somewhere along that line, liking you had turned into romance. It had turned into a love that Kaz had always thought would remain unrequited.

All that you had wanted from him was just “Fine. Yes. I care about you and I care about you deeply.” An admittance. Even a begrudging admittance would’ve worked, Kaz knew.

What did you get instead?

Caring is weakness, he’d said. Weak is the last thing that I can afford to be.

Thinking about it made Kaz want to grab one of Jespers revolvers and use it to shoot himself in the foot.

He remained unashamed to say that he’d had his idiotic moments but that moment was not idiotic. It was the next thing below it. It was the last thing he’d wanted to say to you right then, the first thing that came to his mind.

He would’ve told you to stay if it meant you would’ve. He would’ve said it a thousand times over, but there was still the necessity of acknowledging that you did not quite know what you were going to do. You did not know whether or not you were going to stay in Ketterdam and it was entirely too unfair of Kaz to ask that of you if staying was not what you wanted to do.

Kaz Brekker was not going to ask you to stay if it meant that he was making you feel like you had been forced. He was not going to ask you to stay if you really did want to go out and see what the world had to offer outside of the streets of Ketterdam, all of the familiar walkways in the Financial District and the abundance of alleyways and shortcuts throughout the best spots in the Barrel.

He was not going to ask you to stay if it meant he was forcing your hand in the matter. If you truly wanted to leave, Kaz Brekker was not going to ask you to stay and get in the way of your yearning for a life outside of the Barrel and its depths.

He’d wanted to ask you to stay, though. That much, he could admit. He’d really wanted to ask you to stay.

But he had not, and he would not. Not if it meant he was getting in the way of some bigger dream of yours.

Kaz and Jesper proceeded to take a left, run up a set of stairs, and move down a long corridor to the end of a long hall. The heist was simple enough.

You and Nina had walked every corridor in guards uniforms the night previous, Inej had scaled nearly every corner of the building in search of a window that could be opened from the outside, only to find that all of them locked and unlocked from the inside.

All that Kaz and Jesper had to do by that point was get the jewels, open a palace window that had been locked from the inside and give the jewels to Inej, From there, Inej would get the jewels to Nina and Wylan and you were left with distracting the guards to keep them from noticing as Kaz and Jesper slipped out of the palace through the entrance and left through the White Island exits, forged papers on their person so that they held up when they were examined at the exit checkpoints.

Easy enough, when one discounted the fact that alarms sounded off in the palace every two hours during the summer celebration to alert guards to the presence of possible thieves.

Kaz and Jesper were working in that two hour window, and even with how fast they were moving, getting to the top floor of the palace was taking a lot more time than either of them had anticipated. By the time they’d reached the top, they had only an hour and fifteen minutes to get the jewels out of the triple-locked safe the royals had stored them in, exit the room and get down to the bottom floor before escaping without being noticed.

The first step was unlocking the window and pushing it open so as to allow for Inej to slip into the room.

The room that the safe was in was a perfect representation of Fjerdan honor. icy white tiled floors, pristine white walls, clear windows displaying your average scene of snowy Fjerda and the mountains beyond the Ice Court and the palace. The safe was the same depth of black as the bulky Druskelle wore, the key lock on the window just a bit darker than the safe had been.

Kaz cracked the lock on the window first, grateful that it was a simple lock that only required a key and could be picked with one of the lockpicks that Kaz had managed to tuck into the inner pockets of the rough spun coat he wore. That cut down on time significantly, made it less likely that he was to be risking his own life, though the risk had always been the fun part.

“Jesper, you get the window,” Kaz said as he moved to the corner of the room, resting the lock atop the safe that stood at six feet tall. “I’ve got fifteen minutes to crack the safe before Inej gets here, and it took us forty five bloody minutes to get from the bottom to here. We’ll be running on borrowed time with the more of it we waste.”

Jesper heaved a sigh, opened the window. He and Kaz both bristled at the harsh winters breeze that flooded through the room with the action, though Kaz’s gaze was already on the first of three locks, eyes scanning the room for clues in the numerical code.

“You’ve not asked him to stay,” Jesper said as he began to scan the room as well, eyes searching at the same time as his hands moved under windowsils and along walls, in search of number shaped dents. “All that Y/N wants is for you to ask him to stay and he’ll do it.”

“That’s the elephant in the room, isn’t it? Him wanting me to admit that I care and my continued refusal?” Kaz asked, eyes going to the ceiling, squinted, searching for a number combination.

“Fjerdan queens birthday?” He asked.

“October eighth,” Jesper said. “Thank Nina for that one.”

“No thanks are owed. The code on the first lock is six digits, and with luck, October eighth presents itself as four at most,” Kaz said. “Did you notice any numbers while we moved?”

“You had us moving like bolts of lightning. Of course I didn’t.”

“We walked six floors,” Kaz began. “Two flights from one floor to the next including the lead up to the palaces. Two flights per floor is twelve flights at minimum. Did you count the steps you took?”

“Twenty steps per flight,” Jesper said with a nod. “Try 621220.”

Kaz input the code, and to both his and Jespers collective relief, it worked.

The next lock was less simple. It was a more complex version of the lock on the window, three key locks that needed to be unlocked in four second intervals. When one wasn’t prepared for something of that sort, opening them was akin to walking through hell twice and then exiting to find you’d only left the previous circle and gone into the next.

Kaz input all three lock picks, got the first free, then the second and the third. He could feel Jespers gaze on him as he stood by the window, listening for the distinctive silence that meant Inej was just around the corner.

“I’ve wanted to ask him to stay,” Kaz confessed as he examined the third lock. It was another set of triple locks that needed to be unlocked rapidly, four seconds one after the other at minimum. There were two sets, and Kaz had to hope that they were programmed as two sets of three. There was also safe code that needed cracking. It was a word that time, thankfully. “I have, and I have almost done it several times.”

“Then do it,” Jesper said. “Forgo all fears of weakness and just tell him you want him to stay. I don’t know if you’re in love with him or what, but if you are and you don’t at least ask him to stay in Ketterdam for the sake of the waffles and the views, he will go and you will lose him forever.”

Kaz only turned his gaze to the safe. “Word of Fjerdan significance?”

“Djel,” Jesper said.

Kaz input the code as Inej slipped through the window. “Talking about Y/N, I would assume.”

“Jesper is,” Kaz said pointedly. “He’s doing most of the talking, actually.”

The code did not work.

“Maybe it’s more than four letters,” Inej suggested. “Try honor. Pride. Druskelle. Loyalty. Murdering innocents.”

Jesper gave an ungraceful snort at Inej’s last suggestion, and Kaz only shook his head, though he could admit that he’d found it amusing.

Kaz typed in pride first, then when that didn’t work, typed honor. He took a deep breath in when the code scanner gave a warning that it was the last time a code could be inputted before the lock reverted to it’s original coding--a code set during the manufacturing process, one that had been changed by the royals since the locks purchase.

He typed in his last hope. Druskelle.

The screen on the lock turned a bright green color, and relief flooded the room as Kaz grabbed the lockpicks and situated them in the first locks, moving with deft hands and feeling almost at ease as the first set of three locks clambered to the floor and sat around his feet. He repeated the process, putting the lockpicks in and working the locks within four seconds, feeling relief flood his system as the locks fell to the ground.

The final of three doors opened, and Kaz was back in his rhythm. He took all of the Ravkan jewelry that he could see in the safe--several emerald necklaces, an antique tiara worn by one of Ravkas previous queens and each Fabergé egg that had been taken--and passed them to Inej, who put them into the bag she’d had on her back and reminded Kaz and Jesper of the time of the rendezvous and the rendezvous point.

“Jesper, it’s best you go,” Kaz said. “I’ll relock the safe and meet you at the rendezvous.”

“If you don’t make it--”

“Provided that I make it to the bottom floor, Y/N will have my six. Stop worrying.”

Jesper only shrugged. “No mourners.”

“No funerals.”

Kaz did not watch Jesper go. Instead, he closed the first of three doors and got to putting the locks back in their places. He had a job to finish, money to collect, and someone to ask to say in Ketterdam on the way back home.

Kaz was on the bottom floor, close to the exit, when the alarms went off and two guards saw him, firing off two shots rapidly. Kaz was able to get one of the guards with the gun he’d thought to hide in the pocket of his coat, though he missed the shot he fired at the other.

Kaz was disoriented as his eyes moved rapidly around the corridor, searching for an out at the same time as he tried to take inventory of his injuries.

He’d been shot in the arm, if the burning pain in his right bicep was of any indication, and it felt like he’d been shot in the stomach as well.

“Oh, you’re a Ketterdam criminal,” said one of the guards as he approached. “Brekker, isn’t it? You’re one of the hot shots in that wretched Barrel spot?”

Kaz didn’t say anything, eyes continuing to rove around the corridor as he took cautious steps back. He realized he wasn’t looking for an out any longer, but instead trying to find you in a sea of black guard uniforms.

I am going to stay alive, Kaz thought. I am going to make it through this. I will not die without telling him that--what? What will I tell Y/N?

“Kaz Brekker,” Kaz said. “Bastard of the Barrel, Dirtyhands. Pick one.”

A shot rang out from somewhere nearby.

“Who’s on your crew, Brekker?”

“The worst of the worst,” Kaz said with a shrug, trying to ignore the fact that he was losing blood and feeling in his right arm. “If you wanted names from me, shooting me in the arm and the stomach was not a good idea. How can I give you names if I fall unconscious and die before you have the chance to actually question me?”

In response, Kaz recieved a bullet wound in his leg, one that made it harder to stand and near impossible not to lean on his cane.

“That is more counterintuitive than you think.”

Another shot.

“Looks like one of your buddies is comin’ round to save your arse,” said the guard. “Too bad you’ll be dead before they get the chance.”

A third shot, though that time it went through the head of the guard who had been taunting him.

“You really can’t go one Fjerdan mission without risking your life?” Nina asked as she, you, and Jesper came into sight. “Saints, Brekker. I thought Y/N had a death wish, but it seems you do instead.”

“Can you walk?” You asked as you approached. Kaz realized he was sitting on the floor, having fallen at some point without realizing. “Ghezen, these wounds are bad. You can try, but you’ll fail.”

“I will not--”

“You might not have a choice, Kaz,” you whispered. “You need to be able to walk or I will have to carry you out.”

“We could just leave him here to die?” Nina suggested.

Kaz watched you turn around and glare at her, knowing that the fury in his gaze likely seemed futile to Nina.

“I am not leaving him here,” you said. “No. That is not an option that I am willing to consider.”

Kaz blinked, fighting off his exhaustion as you draped one of his arms over your shoulders and helped him to stand. He felt the bare skin of his wrist against your shoulder as you got to moving, and instantly, it felt like he was drowning.

The waters were rising again. He could hear Jordies voice somewhere far out, feel the water at his ankles and quickly rising to his knees. He wanted to die in that moment, yearned for it more than he did anything else.

But he was going to leave the Ice Court alive or not at all, and he refused to stay, so he forced his gaze to the ground. He reminded himself that your heart was still beating. He focused on the sound of your breath, in and out. In and out. Alive. You were alive.

Kaz had been trying to work on his touch aversion since he was seventeen. There were good and bad days both, but it seemed that that day was terrible, that it was Hell incarnate.

He wanted to die. He wanted to live. He wanted to ask you to stay in Ketterdam despite the fact that he did not want to know whether or not you would. Kaz Brekker needed to tell you that you’d consumed his every thought since he was sixteen years old, and he needed you to understand that he was fine with that.

As he slipped into unconsciousness, hearing only the sound of your voice as you begged for a medik to see to him, Wylans voice as he asked Jesper what happened and Jespers voice as he explained, he was thinking about you. He needed to tell you everything.

The following few days were a blur. Leaving through the exit point with a medik in tow, getting to a hotel and eventually heading back to Ravka in a carriage. Kaz had pockets of consciousness and every time he woke, your name was the first thought to enter his mind and the first word to leave his lips.

When he woke in a bed in the Ravkan palaces, he found you at his bedside.

“The money has been split six ways into the offshore bank accounts we were set up with during the first Ice Court heist,” you explained as Kaz looked at you. “I told Nikolai to talk to the Merchant council again, demand an additional fifty thousand for each of us.”

“On what grounds?”

“You nearly died,” you said. “You deserve 250,000 kruge for that. The rest of the crows deserve the additional compensation because they know that they’re worth more than 200,000.”

“And you?”

“I don’t deserve it,” you said. “I’ve taken to the habit of not believing I deserve anything good as of late, but I figured that Nina, Jesper and I saved your life and that does count for something.”

“Thank you,” Kaz said. He wanted to ask you to stay. He would not. “For saving my life. I owe you.”

“You owe me nothing,” you said. “I cannot let you owe me, Brekker.”

Kaz turned his head. He wanted to sleep. He wanted to die. He wished that the guard had killed him while he’d had the chance.

“You and the others will leave tomorrow at nightfall,” you said. “I wish you luck, Kaz.”

Kaz did not watch you go, only heard your footsteps and the door opening and then closing.

He turned again, sat up and took inventory of the room. It was a typical room in the Little Palace--lots of windows, bright yellows and warm blues. There were lamps burning high, and from Kaz’s first guess as he looked out the window, he assumed it was early morning, the last hour or so before the sunrise. The clock hung on the wall parallel to his bed confirmed his suspicions.

The only thing that looked even slightly out of place was the letter placed on the pillow to Kaz’s right. His name was on it, and the letter was written in your hand. He picked it up cautiously, began to read.

Kaz,

I am writing you this letter because I am a coward. I am a coward who would not be able to manage saying my goodbyes to you, confessing all of this, watching your heart become steel while mine shattered into a broken, unfixable mess. You may call me cruel, you may call me cowardly, you may choose to never reach out to me again. I will understand whatever choice you make, and I hope that you choose to cut contact. It’ll make moving on easier.

I have loved you since I was fifteen years old. I cannot handle it any longer--the yearning, the heartbreak, the constant reaffirmations that you cannot care about me, that you refuse to let yourself.--and I have chosen to leave.

I have loved you since I was fifteen years old and if I keep going as I am, the heartbreak that I feel day in and day out will kill me. When you read this, I will have explained that the money is in the offshore accounts you set up during the first Ice Court heist, and I will have told you when you and the others are to go. Jesper and Wylan are the only ones who know I plan to leave.

I will see you again as I have things I need to grab from the Slat before I go, but I ask that you do not acknowledge me. I am trying to move on, as much it breaks my heart to do so, and moving on will be a lot easier if you just pretend I do not exist.

Best regards,

Y/N.

Kaz didn’t have much time to react. He only set the letter down, closed his eyes, and willed himself to go to sleep again. He could save reacting to the letter for later if it was to be so necessary.

A week and a half later, Kaz was approaching Fifth Harbor with nothing but an ache in his heart and an extremely diluted sense of hope lingering at the corners of his mind.

The minute he found you, the hope grew stronger. He willed himself to move forward, found himself standing at your left just minutes later. His hands were gripping his cane, the typical coat gone so that he didn’t die of a heatstroke in Ketterdams summer humidity.

He was wearing a white button up with the sleeves rolled to the elbows, black slacks and a black tie. He looked like a relaxed version of himself, though he was anything but relaxed.

“You wrote me a letter in the presence of a goodbye,” Kaz said. “In your letter, you say that you couldn’t’ve done this in person. You said that you couldn’t bear to watch my heart turn to steel while yours broke. You didn’t even give me a chance to say goodbye, and you’ve been avoiding me while you’ve packed up the last of your things that were in the Slat.”

“I told you to act as though I did not exist.”

“And I listened for two days,” Kaz said. “You didn’t give me a chance to say goodbye to you, Y/N. I have more to say to you and I am not going to be saying whatever it is that you think I will be.”

“And if I assume you’re professing your love for me?”

“Well, it’s a very good thing that Inej is currently dealing with the spies from our rivals that are within earshot, then,” Kaz said.

“My boat leaves in a half hour,” it hadn’t even docked yet.

“Then I’ve got at least twenty minutes,” Kaz said. “I do care about you, Y/N. I have loved you since I was sixteen years old, even as much as I do not want to admit that. Love is weakness to every last person in the Barrel, and I could not have anyone knowing I loved someone else.”

“Even so, loving you has been--”

“A trainwreck,” Kaz said. “A medley of heartbreak and sorrow and near constant yearning. I know. Jesper has told me all of it, as have Inej and Wylan. They read the letter you left me and while Jesper and Wylan took a more direct approach, Inej was subtle. She would bring it up in ways that felt like I was being stabbed in the gut. I know that all loving me has meant for you is constant emotion, not all of them happy, and I accept that for what it is.”

“I have to go. I have to move on--”

“Stay,” Kaz said, desperation crawling in through his blood and being pumped straight into his chest. “Stay in Ketterdam. Just for another little while.”

You turned to look at him. You finally turned to look at him.

You thought on it for a while, until your boat had docked and you and Kaz were hearing the captain shout last call for passengers.

“Okay,” you said, nodding. “I’ll stay for another year.”

Kaz couldn’t help it. He grinned. You grinned back at him, and he felt his heart grow so light it could’ve left the cavity of his chest and he wouldn’t’ve noticed.

You walked back to the Slat while talking of the next job and joking and jabbing at one another, though that time, it was different. Kaz had said as he needed to say. You were staying in Ketterdam, on the way to becoming a couple, and Kaz was happy. Well and truly happy for the first time in what felt like forever.

#kaz brekker #kaz brekker x reader #kaz brekker x male reader #six of crows #shadow and bone #shadow and bone netflix

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