#back on my kaz brekker bullshit | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

xiexiecaptain · 2 years ago

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Shadow & Bone rewatch deep dive commentary that was started on twitter and is being moved/continued here!

This is the post for EP 04: Otkazats’ya

[Episode 01 post] [Rewatch Commentary Links Masterpost]

((There WILL be spoilers mentioned for the books in the Grishaverse including the Crows duology & King of Scars duology! This is basically from the perspective of watching the show as someone who knows the books well.))

(Just a disclaimer that I’m picking up doing these commentary posts from here after season 2 is out! Just fyi, I might mention s2 stuff in these where it wasn’t mentioned in the posts for eps 1-3)

Omg not the captain singing the drinking song Nina sang to Inej in the hold of the ship on the way to Fjerda

I love how they just toss in background book details in new places to color in the world! You can tell everyone working on constructing this show was such a massive fan of the books and it warms my heart

As always, I’m just enamored by the linguistics and writing systems the show has designed and fleshed out for all the languages!! They make the world feel so lived-in!

Poor Mal. He really feels so powerless and helpless; even to people who are super devoted, sheer faith and longing can’t keep people going forever.

Boy is living on crumbs atm

Mean Girls (2004) voice: AND NONE FOR MAL ORETSEV BYE

These two are so pure i can’t get over it.

Thank you for giving Mal close relationships (even if they eat it soon) other than Alina!

NOT GENYA CALLING HER SUNSHINE-!!!

😭 😭 😭

YEAH ITS CUS HE WANTS TO FEEL OWNERSHIP OVER YOU ALINA

Yep yep giving her crumbs of vulnerability to draw her in.

Top tier manipulator shit.

Jesper’s hair and expression here I’m fucking laughing so hard

He looks like he just woke up from a week-long bender omfg.

Jesper, honey, I’m begging you, drink some water along with whatever alcoholic beverage is in that glass

LOVE LOVE LOVE how they find ways to weave the Crows’ plotlines into the S&B book plot.

Using the Winter Fete party as distraction was probably drawn from them using Hringkälla for the Ice Court job. But I suppose in the show it’s gonna be the other way around now which is funny. They’re probably gonna be like “Well, remember how we snuck into the Little Palace in Ravka because of their big celebration? Let’s do that with this job too!”

Very Beethoven/Bootstrap Paradox meta shit here and it makes me laugh

Kaz Brekker has never taken a day off in his entire life and it shows

LOOK HOW EXCITED THEY ARE

Even Inej is trying not to burst out grinning

Same you guys

I always get hyped as fuck for a heist!

You’ve heard of Chekov’s gun, but we’ve finally found Chekov’s bullet

The fucking barmaid’s face

I can’t

“Who is this strange Zemeni dude and why did he dump a goat in my arms and start speaking softly and mournfully to it in Kerch???”

Not him blowing Milo a kiss

I LOVE JESPER FAHEY AND HIS DRAMATIC BISEXUAL ASS

LYING THROUGH HIS GD TEETH AGAIN

Spinning his fake little sob stories

Manipulator 👏 Shit 👏

I do appreciate this way of trying to make exposition about the Black Heretic story more active

And making the scene serve several purposes at once (Kirigan trying to draw Alina in with his ~relatable outcast~ stuff, as well as giving the viewers the backstory)

Again, I’m just glad these three got to be on-screen. It gives Mal other people around him that matter. (Which does then help fuel/motivate his devotion to Alina as we go forward.)

That was really also one of the things that bugged me about book!Mal (Although, to be fair, it might be less of a writing issue than a personal one) but it sticks in my craw when characters are single-person focused. (Unless that’s, like, part of their character shit to figure out, them feeling lonely or co-dependent, etc.)

Like I do understand it’s kind of been “Mal and Alina against the world” since they were young. But they haven’t always been together since they joined the military. Having relationships that span back for a long, long time can be powerful, don’t get me wrong. But length of a relationship isn’t the only measure of its importance.

I think part of it was that we only got Alina’s POV and so Mal in some parts of the series felt very one-note, unmotivated, unbelievable, etc. Because all we got was what he managed to say to Alina when he was actually present and interacting with Alina (which didn’t happen for a large part of books 1 and 3.)

The lesbian skepticism on Nadia’s face-!!!

I will never, in my life, get over Freddy’s acting as Kaz acting as a stuffy fancy ~artíst~

CLEVER CLEVER CLEVER CLEVER

I LOVE THEM I LOVE THEM

Ok so remember when this was the first sneak-peek scene they released of the Crows and we got to see them in action together for the first time??

It reminded me of my thoughts about Freddy’s voice as Kaz.

At first I was like “oh, hmm, he’s got kind of a higher, smooth voice as opposed to the way Kaz’s voice is described in the books” which is that rough gravely “rock-salt rasp.”

But as an iteration of Kaz (pluralism is my friend, you guys) Freddy’s voice for him is something I actually super love?

Like it’s a different sort of menacing. It can feel icy, if that makes sense. Like the higher register lends itself to his voice sounding cold, and the smoothness comes across as that kind of menacing sort of calmness. I dunno I just dig it.

I know we talk a lot about Inej’s knives (for good reason)

But dear saints I love Inej being invisible soundless sneaky.

I know she’d dislike me saying it, but honestly, she’s goddess material. This woman deserves to be lauded and honored at every opportunity.

What’s that meme again? “My idea of help from above is a sniper on the roof?”

Also, him waiting for the clock to chime to disguise the gunshot-!!!

Clawing my face off because I love my clever clever little thieves so much

[“Oh, and Inej,” he said as he led her out of the salon, “don’t ever sneak up on me again.”

The truth was she’d tried to sneak up on Kaz plenty of time since then. She’d never managed it. It was as if once Kaz had seen her, he’d understood how to keep seeing her.”]

Ok so we all agree that Kaz 100% did the same thing as with the magician he saw as a kid, right? Where he was obsessed with figuring out how the trick worked and unraveling it so he could learn to see what was actually happening?

Like [“Some people see a magic trick and say, “Impossible!” [...] And then there are the ones who stay awake, running through the trick again and again, looking for that skip in perception, the crack in the illusion that will explain how their eyes got duped; they’re the kind who won’t rest until they’ve mastered that little bit of mystery for themselves. I’m that kind.”]

INEJ WAS A PUZZLE HE THOUGHT ABOUT OVER AND OVER UNTIL HE FIGURED IT OUT

Oh, yknow, just reviewing stolen high-security floorplans in a public bar. As one does.

Lmao so basically my entire family hunts (northern woodlands, man) and I’m relatively sure my grandma has something that looks pretty much exactly like this

every friend group has someone like this in it

(in my experience said friend is usually a transmasc gremlin type)

fucking Mal just Very Seriously doing his Very Serious tracking while these two chucklefucks discuss selling literal shit in the background

knowing our beloved nina, the amount of sheer willpower she’s dredging up to refuse food is seriously impressive

she aint wrong, matty boy

ok so this is actually super interesting?? Because it speaks to Matthias having subtle curiosities/doubts about grisha and not fully understanding why someone would become grisha since he believes (read: was told) they weren’t just born that way.

In the books we never got to see Matthias speak to Nina alone until the shipwreck, there was always either other drüskelle and/or the other grisha captives on the ship (I mean there are other captives tied up here but they aren’t all shoved into a cage together so Nina and Matthias can have their own conversation)

I really like this little peek into Matthias trying to make sense of the indoctrination he was fed

yeah exactly, he’s trying to assuage his doubts about how “human” feeling Nina is because it’s gnawing at the indoctrination of dehumanization he’s been taught

Also, i love the camera work in this scene -- the lights are all hazy with lots of lens-flares and the shots are so so tight and close!

We’re putting two characters whose circumstances of birth and country and beliefs are so diametrically opposed together. But here they’re having a brief moment of connection where they each have a glimpse of each other’s humanity (in between all the vitriol.)

By cutting in close and having the rest of the “world” feel “out of focus” or “out of shot” it’s allowing this moment to feel like they can be two people for a brief moment rather than grisha and drüskelle. I adore it.

Yeah, see and then when they start talking politics about the Darkling, more of the shots have the camera pulling back a bit, because the “world” outside the two of them is shoving distance back between them

(Obv this is not an exact one-to-one this mapping of shots, but the scene in general does that and its really cool)

And then it pushes back in and gets more hazy again when Matthias has a moment of decency and offers Nina the bread without strings attached

mwuah! chef kiss!

ofc then it falls apart because these two are the most stubborn (affectionate, exasperated) people on the entire planet who can’t EXIST without taking petty jibes at each other

Just taking a moment to appreciate Calahan Skogman because he plays Matthias so incredibly well

I’m hoping so damn hard we get to see the Ice Court job adapted so we can see Matthias get let out of detention so he can go run and play with the other kids at recess

These are the faces of two exhausted parents at the end of a frustrating day with their excitable son and I’m living for it

LISTEN YOU TWO

AT LEAST JESPER IS COMING UP WITH IDEAS, STOP GLARING

Ok but this troupe leader, Marko, actually comes off as such a wholesome guy? I lowkey love his face??

Look how tear-stained and puff from crying it is?! This poor guy finally got to perform for royalty and thought his lifelong dreams had just been crushed and was sobbing into a mug of beer!

Inej entrusting Kaz with her knives DOES something to me, you guys

There is a fucking novel of unspoken words in these expressions I’m gonna gnaw my couch cushions in to piecessss-!

He’s so cute you guys I hope he still has a long and fruitful career even after all the fuckery that goes down at the Winter Fete

This whole scene has me gazing in adoration like a doting parent

Me to the person next to me, pointing, with a camcorder in my hand: Those are my kids!!! God, they’re so talented, I’m so proud of them!!

The fact that they made up entirely new playing card suits for this world-!!!

Honestly so much of what makes this world come to life in the show is thanks to how much AMAZING work the props and set people did???

They obviously loved and cared about the grishaverse so much, you can see in the sets and the costumes and the props how much work was put into making this world come to life and feel like a world that really exists with all its little bits and bobs and details!

That kind of worldbuilding minutia stuff just makes my brain go brrrrrr

Also I haven’t mentioned anything about the soundtrack yet but hot damn they’ve done so much to make it atmospheric but also do the A+ soundtrack thing of weaving musical themes for characters/groups

Ok tho Kaz 10000% could have gotten in as a performer too. Man’s got mad slight-of-hand skills he could definitely go in as a stage magician

It’s time for 🎶✨~Alina’s Emotional Mushroom Trip~ 🎶✨

Of course she was!

I feel like its super obvious that two orphan kids who’ve been through trauma and made a close connection would crave the stability of the life they have with a beloved friend, especially over an unknown where they would be alone and in a new place again having to start over???

I mean, she says she was thinking of Mal and not herself, but it’s both. Because him being alone would mean she would also be alone.

Alina was a scared little kid who had lost everything and was doing what she thought would keep everything she knew from being ripped away again.

I feel like in the books the dynamic of Darklina in the first book, it was obvious/deliberate that Alina felt very isolated at the Little Palace and so was kind of always steered back to the Darkling for scraps of affirmations or reassurances, plus the draw of their powers compounding this manipulation net the Darkling pulled her in by.

The dynamic feels different in the show, for a few reasons. I think Alina being aged up contributes to that. Also, we don’t get Alina’s interiority and descriptions of how her/the Darkling’s powers feel and pull her.

(Also Jessie and Ben have Very Good on-screen chemistry. And Ben Barnes is, well, Ben Barnes so the attraction-angle of the pull toward him is very believable.)

I mean, while Alina is aged up, she’s still a young woman. Her whole life she has overwhelmingly felt less than, invisible, and nothing special. And someone powerful is now telling her she’s unique and powerful and he’s the only one who understands her.

While Alina is still obviously manipulated heavily in the show, it feels less extreme? I don’t know how to word it?

Other contributing factors I think are her actually making closer friends at the Little Palace and that in the show we don’t see that extended period of time of her struggling and struggling and feeling like shit and powerless and “Other”-ed again. Also because we are shown that Mal DOES super care about her, rather than only getting her speculating and worrying.

And not only on Alina’s end is it different but I feel like the show we get shown more of Kirigan feeling helpless (something which is both authentic and strategic.)

Like I think its definitely real that he is struggling with these feelings of helplessness and futility in moving towards his goals.

But he is very deliberate in the ways he goes about showing it to Alina to make her feel like he’s letting his guard down with her and to garner sympathy with. As Baghra says towards the end of the season, giving Alina “a glimpse of the wounded boy.”

And it’s a huge credit to Ben Barnes that I feel that simultaneous nature.

Like in the moment, you do believe him in his pain and his loneliness. Because that is real.

But then you step back and realize he’s only showing it and showing it in such a way to weaponize it to cultivate those feelings of sympathy in Alina and keep her from seeing him as dangerous to her.

Ben Barnes’s performance really sells the Darkling so well. Because these things are all true: he has seen people die and is lonely and feels like he has to claw his way toward any change he can achieve.

But he is also playing bits of that up in very strategic ways in Alina’s presence to manipulate her.

(I always feel like I’m not gonna have more to say about the Darkling and then I end up writing a novel about it??)

”B-b-but-

Wait, was I the only one who believed we were actually giving them a fair trial?!?”

My parents’ walks to school, according to them.

Listen, I just love them

I LOVE THEM PUTTING TIME AND THOUGHT INTO SPRINKLING IN WORLDBUILDING

END ME

Listen all I can think about when I watch this scene is how this actor probably spent 9 hours in hair and makeup and wardrobe just to stand there, grab a stack of letters, shake his head, and walk away because he was a non-speaking extra and if he said “No” out loud they would have had to pay him the under-5-lines rate

Get that shit outta here, Baghra, we celebrate interdependence in this household!!

Also, the entirety of season 2’s themes would also like a word with you 👀👀

Ok not to sound like my northern midwestern mother but

CHILD DO NOT GO OUT IN THE COLD! AND SNOW! AT NIGHT! WITHOUT A FUCKING HAT ON?

You’re gonna get frostbite, Mal!!

It is AT LEAST below 10°F with how crunchy that snow sounds!!

Honestly, good for Alina. proud of her

This is funny to me because I know Jessie had a habit of just napping constantly in random places on set

Just BFF things: having matching palm scars

ARCHIEEEEE

Sometimes I feel for Archie because it can’t be easy playing Mal who, as characters in the grishaverse go, isn’t exactly the biggest fan favorite

And yet he’s out here giving us performances of this caliber

I see you and I love you Mr. Renaux

And that’s the end of episode 4!

[Episode 01 post] [Rewatch Commentary Links Masterpost]

#shadow and bone netflix #shadow and bone #alina starkov #malyen oretsev #grishaverse #the darkling #kaz brekker #inej ghafa #jesper fahey #yes im back on my bullshit #i have so many thoughts and want to talk about s2 but wanted to finish these s1 eps first

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sissytobitch10seconds · 10 months ago

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Expanding the Flock

Fandom: Grishaverse: SIx of Crows Summary: The five times that they tried to have a baby and the one time that it worked. Warnings: Trans male pregnancy, miscarriages, mentions of self harm, canon backstories/trauma, brief sex scenes, and childbirth Word Count: 16,873 Ship(s): Kaz Brekker/Jesper Fahey/Inej Ghafa/Matthias Helvar/Wylan Van Eck/Nina Zenik

Archive link!

A/N: So I'm back on my bullshit when it comes to writing things that only I will like. I love angst, my autistic interest is pregnancy/birth, and Kaz is one of the characters I love to torture here. I hope that whoever else this appeals to enjoys it! Stay sissy and bitchy everyone <3

1. Jesper

He had gone out on a nice date with his husband that night. They had stopped by their favorite cafe and shared a bottle of wine and more pastries than their wife needed to know about before they had gone to the new opera house to watch a show that was a shared favorite of theirs. They had held hands as they walked along the side of the river and giggled together over the jokes that the actors had made. It had been a wonderful night and it was going to be topped off with what he hoped would end up with them both sweating and cuddled up together on their big bed.

That had been before two incredibly stupid looking goons had stepped out from an alley that they were passing by and started yelling at them. The one on the left had long red hair that was brushed out so that it had almost become as fluffy and big as Jesper’s hair, but down to his waist instead of tucked up against his head. He was wearing a pair of mismatched socks that were only on display because his pants had been hacked off at the knee with what appeared to be safety scissors. The one on the right had short black hair and his left arm was such a tight network of scars that it hung uselessly down at his side. They were both dressed in a very distinctive pink and orange polka dot pattern and they were both holding guns.

“Don’t resist, come with us quietly!” the one on the left almost screamed. Jesper would have felt bad for him if the wasn’t threatening his husband.

“Are you attempting to kidnap us?” Kaz asked, raising a brow as an amused smirk began to pull at his lips. Jesper was so unafraid of what the thugs had to offer that he turned his head to the side so that he could admire the absolute beauty that was his husband. It sent flutters of butterflies up from his stomach to his heart and then down to his fingertips. Kaz was bathed in the flickering yellow light from the oil lamps and the silvery moonlight. His skin almost glowed when he was in this kind of mood and it was addicting.

Jesper snapped his attention back to the attempted fight at hand when the thugs began to move. He flicked his coat back and pressed his thumb to the pearl handle of his revolver just to remind himself that it was there if he ended up needing to use it. He didn’t really want to have to kill the new thugs since they hadn’t learned their lesson, it likely wasn’t even their fault. Whoever had sent them to try and do business with Dirtyhands and his sharpshooter should have told them what they were getting into. Maybe he could convince Kaz to just knock them out and then leave them in the alley they had jumped from, since he was already in a good mood.

They looked towards each other and then turned back towards the duo. “We-we’re mugging you!”

“You’re mugging us? I don’t think that anyone has mugged me like this since I was seven,” Kaz snorted.

“You weren’t even in Ketterdam when you were seven,” Jesper whispered through a snort. He saw the dark sparkle in his husband’s eye and knew that Kaz was enjoying toying with the two thugs.

“We’re mugging you!” the thug on the left replied, though he dropped one of his hands from his gun to itch at his leg.

“Likely,” Kaz hummed. “If you want to get money from people in the Barrel then you should learn how to run a con or pick-pocket. If you can’t manage either of those then you could always attempt to sell yourself to one of the whorehouses, though they don’t take the extra guests.”

That got the thugs angry enough that they actually launched themselves at Jesper and Kaz, which was about the stupidest thing that they could have done other than coming after the Bastard of the Barrel in the first place.

They seemed to have the same idea about how they were going to deal with their new problem, thankfully. Jesper went for the one on the right and Kaz went for the one on the left, neither of them bothering to pay attention to the other because of how many fights that they had endured alongside each other. Jesper grabbed the thug’s wrist and then slammed it down onto the streetlamp that they were next to so that the nerves frayed. It caused the thug to let go of his pea shooter, which clattered noisily down to the ground and shot the lackluster bullet through the night air.

“Damn, you really need to up your weapons if you’re going to try and go after people like us,” Jesper laughed. He wrapped one of his lanky arms around the back of the man’s neck so that he could cut off his air. He pressed a little bit harder when hands began to claw at his skin to try and get him to let go. He counted to ten before he felt the body leaned up against him go completely limp. He dumped the thug down onto the ground and then turned to his husband, fully expecting the other thug to be incapacitated as well.

He forgot that Kaz was recently recovering from a cold, or at least that was what they had assumed it was. After everything that Kaz had been through when he was a child, it was almost impossible to get him to admit that he was actually sick when he was. The recovering and slowness meant that Kaz hadn’t quite taken down his thug. The man in question was already beat to a near pulp but was persisting on regardless. He had a black eye and several cuts on the arm that was holding onto his gun, but was standing strong. Jesper walked over and grabbed the revolver on his right hip. He made eye contact with Kaz as the two of them communicated silently.

Kaz lurched forward with his cane clasped in his hand at the same time as Jesper, both of them knocking their weapons against the thug’s head so that he crumpled down to the ground. What they hadn’t been expecting was for him to fall forward and onto Kaz, knocking the already unsteady man down onto the ground.

Immediately after seeing his husband on the ground, Jesper jumped into action. He grasped the thug and tossed him off Kaz with no particular care before he offered his hand out. Kaz was already holding his cane so if it turned out that he had been triggered and needed to not touch someone, he would be able to get up on his own.

He had been doing a lot better lately, thankfully, so he was able to reach out and take Jesper’s hand. He used his cane and his husband to right himself properly. His gloved hands brushed over his suit, Jesper helping but really just using it as an excuse to try and reignite the mood that had hung in the air between them at the time. The sharpshooter only paused his ministrations when he smelled the thick coppery scent of blood and pulled his hand away after feeling something damp.

“Kaz, love, did you get hurt in that fight?” he was trying to keep the fear from his voice. It had been a long time since any of them had been involved in something that could be considered deadly, but he still had nightmares about holding the dead bodies of his partners in his arms.

“He only hit me a couple of times and it was mostly in my arms,” Kaz replied, his face grim and a little bit gray.

“Then why do you smell like blood?” Jesper asked, growing more worried by the second. If it turned out that they had misidentified the sickness that Kaz was suffering from and he was far more ill than any of them had anticipated, he wasn’t sure that he was going to be able to handle it. He had already lost someone that was very dear to his heart once and it had torn him to shreds.

Kaz was quiet for a bit, staring down at the ground. He pressed his hand to the lower half of his stomach and then let out a shaky sigh. “I think that I was pregnant, Jesper.”

His mind had been whirling with the thoughts of what might be wrong with his husband and the ways that they could fix it before he lost another person that held his heart. As soon as he heard what Kaz had said, every thought flashing through his mind ground down to a halt. He blinked a few times and then asked, “What?”

“My cycle was late. I didn’t have one last month,” he bit out. He was already limping in the direction of their home, his cane clacking loudly against the ground. Jesper hurried after him, his hands twitching as he wanted to comfort his distressed husband but wasn’t quite sure how he could do it effectively. “I didn’t want to say anything because I know that the Firepox messed up my system. I’ve heard of it causing infertility in people that get it as children.”

“But you had cycles even after you recovered,” Jesper said before he realized that it was a stupid thing to say.

He moved on instinct after that, looping one of his long arms around the back of his husband’s waist so that they were pressed together. He walked them slowly down the streets of their city so that they could find their way back home. Whatever was hurting Kaz wasn’t going to stop soon, so the best place for them to deal with that was back in their own house and away from prying eyes.

They were quiet through the entire walk, Kaz only pausing when they got to the front entrance of their home in Geldstraat. He kept his head bowed down and his body began to quiver, so Jesper tried to pull back. Kaz’s arm tensed from where it was looped over the other man’s body so that he had to stay where he was. “Please don’t leave me,” he whimpered.

“Never, baby, never,” Jesper whispered in promise. He pressed their bodies closer together and then helped Kaz through the front door of their home and down the hall to a parlor. He sat his husband down and then knelt in front of him, their hands still clasped together but no longer quite as close as they had been before. “What did you say was happening, again?”

“I’m having a miscarriage, Jes,” Kaz pursed his lips into a thin white line. It was as if speaking the words into the open air between them had made them all the more real, made them sink low and deep into both of their minds.

They had never talked about children, but it was always kind of understood that they might happen at one point. They had all already opened themselves up to the danger of having something that they loved so adding pets and kids didn’t seem like that far of a leap, not when they were as powerful and intelligent as they were. Still, they hadn’t talked about it and no one had really dwelled on it. Jesper wasn’t quite sure how he was supposed to feel about it.

He didn’t have to try to sort out his own thoughts as quickly as he was anticipating, thankfully, as Nina’s cheery voice rang out through the grand halls of their mansion, “Welcome home!”

Wylan and Nina walked into the parlor to greet their spouses but then stopped when they saw the ashen expression on both of their faces and the blood that was slowly turning Kaz’s pants crimson red through the navy black. “What happened?” Nina immediately asked as she rushed over to her husband.

So that they didn’t overwhelm the poor man, Jesper stood up and tried to brush the blood on his hand off on his pants. He didn’t even know when he had brushed against the part of Kaz that was bleeding to get it, but the idea of keeping it on him made his skin crawl. “We got in a fight on the way back. Just two low-brow thugs that thought that they could get something good out of us,” he explained.

“Did you get shot?” Wylan asked, worry evident across his features.

Kaz shook his head. “I think I was pregnant. Got knocked pretty hard in the stomach and I guess my womb isn’t good enough to hold onto a baby after a little bit of damage,” he pursed his lips again and then turned his head to the side.

None of them knew what to say to try and make it better. None of them had even known that Kaz had the ability to get pregnant, not after they had all spent nearly five years since the Ice Court heist fucking like rabbits with nothing happening. Still, they had to support their husband in the tumultuous time that he was going through before they gave themselves the grace to process their own emotions.

Nina was the first to act, giving him a gentle kiss to his forehead. “Come, let’s get you cleaned up and then into bed. I’ll make you some tea and a hot water bottle for the cramps.”

Kaz didn’t say anything as he took her hand and then limped after her. He kept one hand grasping the head of his cane and the other pressed to the very base of his belly, where their baby might have grown had Jesper just been a little bit faster in protecting him. He winced when he realized what his thoughts were flying towards, so pulled Wylan aside to talk to him so that he could work through his worries. They were going to have to tell Inej and Matthias what had happened soon too, but Jesper had to get his thoughts out of the clump they had formed first.

---

2.Inej

She hadn’t seen any of her partners in far too long, which meant that she had been in her room taking a nap with Koshak for nearly two hours.

Inej didn’t claim to be particularly clingy, she thought that she was one of the more distant members of their polycule. Kaz and Matthias had to spend most of their days in a room with one or more of their partners present to feel sated while Nina and Jesper had to be touching someone at least every five minutes or they acted like they were going to die. Out of everyone, she and Wylan probably had the least damage when it came to aggressive separation anxiety.

Still, she missed them and she wanted to spend some time with them. So, Inej rolled over on her bed while trying very hard not to dislodge the cat from where he had curled up in a happy spot of sunshine. She stood gracefully from her bed and then pulled on the slightly uncomfortable trousers that she had chosen to wear that day. She was still getting up as early as she had during her last voyage, but she was staying up later than she had while she was at sea. It made her more tired throughout the day, so she spent a lot of time napping. She had been doing said napping with Kaz more often than not because he had also been struck by some sort of exhaustion that he refused to talk to anyone about.

Inej had been informed of the loss that the polycule had suffered while she was out at sea. It was one of the reasons that she had chosen to face more of her attention to the land persecution of slavers and bad rich men instead of hunting down ships. She wanted to be there if something like that happened again, and she knew that Kaz was going to be more reckless now that he had another tragedy hanging on the forefront of his mind.

Something in the very back of her brain was letting her know that there was a specific reason that Kaz had been so tired outside of him trying his best to match her own sleep schedule. She wasn’t able to track his cycles the same way that she could with Nina, which was how she made sure that her wife wasn’t unknowingly expecting whenever the other woman made something strange for dinner. She was still a spider and the Wraith, even if she didn’t do as many crimes as she had before they had taken down Van Eck.

She felt bad for employing the same tactics that Kaz had taught her back on him, but there was no other way that she could really figure out what was wrong with him. He seemed to be tired no matter how often he slept, often dozing when Matthias read in the evenings or when Jesper and Nina were arguing about something. He was also clingier than he had been, usually choosing to sit on the couch with one of them instead of in his chair to get his requested space. He had been eating a little bit more than he usually did, but Inej was also fully aware that he did that often when she came back into port so that he wouldn’t be caught mistreating his body.

She hadn’t been able to put her finger down on any type of conclusive proof, but she was beginning to suspect with every nap that her husband took that they might have another pair of feet running around their home before the year was out.

The thought both terrified and excited her. She had always wanted children, it had been something that she had clung on to even with her trauma from the Menagerie. She was glad when she fell in love with two other people that had the ability to carry children because it increased her chances to have the huge family that she knew that her heart was chasing after even if she wasn’t ever able to have sex enough to conceive herself. The idea of having children was overwhelming, especially so early into her slaver-hunting career and with what had happened to her. She knew that they were far more powerful and wary than her own parents had been, so no child that they had would ever have to go through what she had.

Inej shook her head to get rid of her thoughts. She noticed that her braid had begun to come undone around her neck, so she started unweaving the strands so that she could replait them. She opened the door to her room with her foot and then slipped silently out into the hall in search of some companionship.

Wylan had a Merchant Council meeting that day and he was bringing Matthias with him so that he could have the upper hand when arguing about why they should handle the shipping of items to Fjerda in a very specific way. Nina and Jesper hadn’t mentioned having anything to do when they had gotten up to pretend to help her with breakfast that morning, so it was likely that they were also somewhere in their home. Kaz was probably either taking his own nap or down in his office.

She decided that she was going to patrol the house until she ran into someone, like she was a ghost haunting her own halls.

Her first stop was down in the kitchen, which was empty other than a long-cooking meal in a pot on top of the stove. Her hand twitched at her side as she longed to lift the lid so that she could see whatever concoction one of her spouses had whipped up that time, but she knew better than that now.

So she continued through the empty dining room to the family room where most of her spouses hung out when they weren’t working or sleeping. She smiled fondly when she finally came across one of her partners, taking in the sight before she let them know that she was even present.

Jesper was splayed out on the couch so that his lanky body took up the entire piece of furniture. Nina was laid out on top of him, wearing only a chemise and a set of bloomers instead of being dressed in her grandeur like she usually was by that time of day. Jesper had one of his arms around the back of her hips to keep her up on the couch and her arms were pillowing her chin. They were looking at each other and talking in soft voices, neither of them paying attention to a single other thing in the world.

“Have either of you seen the others?” Inej asked as she stepped out of the shadows.

She had to bite the insides of her cheek to keep from giggling when they both startled and nearly fell off of the couch. She walked over so that she could kiss them both as payment for frightening them. Once Nina had finished huffing her way into more affection, she finally answered her wife, “I think that Kaz said he was going to work in his home office. He might be taking a bath, I thought that I heard the water running.”

Inej startled slightly at that and worry overwhelmed her. Baths were a rarity for Kaz, both because they took quite a lot of time to get the trouble to be worth it and because being entirely submerged in water often reminded him of the worst trauma that he had ever endured. “I’m going to go check on him, I’ll see you both later!”

“You’re always welcome to join the cuddle pile, Inej,” Jesper said, his words slurred with comfort and sleep now that his surprise had faded.

The warmth from her spouses was enough to temporarily drown out the feeling of panic that she got about hearing where her husband was. She carefully stepped up the stairs of their home, skipping over the boards that creaked despite their higher quality of the building compared to the Slat. She paused when she got to the second floor, wondering briefly if she should check Kaz’s office before she resigned herself to continuing with the main mission. She wasn’t going to allow herself detours if it turned out that Kaz really needed her or something else had gone wrong.

Inej paused when she got to the door, knocking first instead of just entering right away. “Kaz, are you in there?”

“Go away,” he rasped back in reply. His voice sounded worse than it had before her nap, almost like he had been shouting or crying.

That only got her worry to increase so she grasped the handle to the door and pressed it open without asking. She knew that Kaz was going to demand that she leave, even scream or yell at her, but if something was wrong then she was going to help him. He didn’t have to sit alone with his fear and pain, not after so many years of companionship and marriage.

Before she had even had the chance to properly look at him, he did exactly what she was expecting he would and yelled, “Get out!

“Kaz, I’m not stupid, I know that something is wrong,” she snapped in reply. She stepped onto the heated tile of the bathroom and then closed the door behind her so that they could have a shade of privacy, though the rest of their partners could get through the locks in the house or open the doors themselves.

She took in the bathroom then, placing her hands on her hips so that she didn’t look as timid as she felt. Kaz very rarely yelled at her anymore so when he did it reminded her of the time before she had gotten her ship and learned how to be more than just his Wraith.

There was a heap of clothing on the ground between the counter with the sink and the toilet, which was usually where they all tried to hide something if they had been injured. Kaz was sitting in the tub, which was full of rather murky looking water. His hair had been perfectly styled that morning but now it was rumpled and hanging down over his pale forehead into his dark eyes. His shirt was off, which exposed his puffy chest to the open air and made his dark nipples stiff. The most peculiar thing about the whole situation was that he still had his smalls on even though he was submerged into the water.

“Inej, get out,” Kaz growled, doing his best imitation of a feral animal. He then let out something close to a whimper as he wrapped his arms around his belly and hunched forward. His jaw set, which meant that he was in pain, but his eyes also squeezed shut and his mouth twisted, which meant that he was upset about something.

It was then that Inej noticed that his once-white smalls were soaked through with blood in the crotch alone. His slacks were likely stained with the sticky red substance as well.

Her heart sunk low in her chest as she realized what had happened.

Inej cursed her saints for what they had done to answer her prayers. She had asked them to make sure that she was back with her partners if something like that ever happened again, which was why she was staying more in Ketterdam instead of sailing the seas. She was grateful that she had made that decision when she thought that Kaz was pregnant, but now that it was evident that he was having another miscarriage she wished that she hadn’t asked in the first place.

She gracefully closed the space between them so that she was kneeling down beside him. “I’m not going to touch you but I want you to know that I’m here.”

“Inej,” he sobbed. “I don’t want you to see me like this.”

“I’ve seen you vomiting after the first time that we had sex and fainting in a prison carriage, being by your side while you go through trauma is kind of my thing,” she said. He wasn’t going to respond well to gentleness or kindness, she knew that after all of the time that they had spent together.

“I know how much you want children,” he sniffled. His good leg moved so that his knee was almost pressed into his chest, trying to make himself smaller so that he felt protected. Kaz groaned when the shift caused something inside of him to send pain throughout his entire body. He put his leg back down and leaned against the lip of the tub so that he was somewhat close to her.

It was true, he did know how desperately she wanted children. It was so hard for her to imagine herself growing old without a child to take care of, a mind to foster, a baby in her arms. She also knew that this wasn’t something Kaz could control, he hadn’t been in any fights like he had the last time that he had suspected he was pregnant.

Inej took a deep breath so that she could steady her own mind and resist crying. She began to weave her fingers through his hair to put it back where it went, continuing the motion when she saw the shakiness of his shoulders stop. “Talk to me about what happened,” she murmured when his most recent cramp passed.

“Why?”

A small smile played at her lips despite herself. He was always going to be the same bastard that she had fallen in love with, even if his emotional range had expanded exponentially during their time together. “It will make you feel better.”

Kaz was quiet for a while longer before he started talking, “I thought that I was pregnant. I… I know that you noticed the way that I was changing. I was going to do something sweet to tell all of you, but then I was down in my office and I started to feel pain. By the time that I finished up my work and came up here to check what was going on…”

She leaned down and pressed a kiss to his temple. She kept her lips there as she murmured a prayer in the language that her parents had spoken to her, something to send the soul of the child they might have had to their next incarnation. “We will have a child one day, Kaz. It might not come from you and it won’t be in nine months, but one day. This wasn’t your fault.”

He stayed quiet, which made the worry inside of her increase tenfold. There was nothing that she could do about his thoughts, about the way that his mind worked. The only thing that she could do was stroke his hair and remind him that she was there.

---

3.Nina

She felt an arm around her waist twitch and then shudder as the nightmare increased. It was enough that it woke her up from her light doze. It was hailing outside, the droplets of ice shooting against the window loud enough to keep reminding her of what it had been like in the Druskelle ship when Matthias had taken her. She could never sleep well when there were storms, and she knew several of her other partners couldn’t either.

Slowly, she shifted in the bed so that she had turned around to see who was having the nightmare. She wasn’t able to soothe the emotions of people any longer since her powers had changed, but she could still hold them or talk to them when they woke up.

Inej was sleeping directly on top of Matthias, his long arms looped around her tiny frame so that he looked almost as if he was cradling a kitten against his chest. Wylan was sleeping with both of his hands over the top of his eyes and Jesper’s head resting on his shoulder. Kaz was the one that had ended up next to her even though she had come to bed first and him last, which meant that he was also the one having the nightmare.

“Kaz,” she whispered just loud enough that it would be able to rouse him from his sleep. She didn’t want to touch him because there was a good chance that the nightmare was a flashback to the Reaper’s Barge, which meant that he would feel oversensitive and panicked if he woke up with someone’s hand on him.

Her husband’s eyes flew open and he sat up in bed. His chest was heaving to bring in the breath that he needed to survive. His eyes had that wild, panicked look that they always got whenever he was thinking about something that scared him.

Nina carefully slipped from the bed and then placed her hand down on the top of the blanket so that it would pull on him and get his attention. “Love, come on. Let’s go to the kitchen,” she murmured. She didn’t want to wake any of their other partners but she did want to be able to break through the haze of post-sleep panic to get through to Kaz.

He didn’t respond for a second before he gave a shaky nod. He moved to the edge of the bed and then waited as Nina found his cane and handed it to him. That was something that they had done a lot during the beginning of their relationship, when nightmares were far more frequent than anyone in their polycule really wanted to admit.

Once the crow’s head was grasped in his pale, bare hand, he stood up and carefully followed after her. They were both completely silent other than the sound of shuffling feet on the wood floor until they reached the kitchen. “Did you have a nightmare?” Nina asked. She didn’t even turn to look back at him as she lit the stove and got out a pot so that she could heat up some water for tea.

“I suppose that you could call it that,” he rasped. He sat down on the stool that had been tucked underneath the counter next to their icebox so that he could ease the pain in his leg.

She was quiet for a bit longer as she searched through the cupboards to find one of his favorite cookies. The tin was almost empty but there was enough that they could share a few while they talked. She still didn’t touch her partner as she knelt down beside him and then offered him one of the sweets.

Kaz turned his head to the side, his pale skin tinting green as he gave a minute shake. “I’m not hungry.”

“Are you going to be able to handle some tea?” she asked then. She wasn’t going to force Kaz to drink if he wasn’t up to it, but the tea usually soothed them both back to sleep when they had a bad dream.

“I think so,” he replied softly. Something was off about him but Nina couldn’t quite put her finger on it. Her powers had changed so much since she had taken the parem, so much so that she barely knew how to interact with other people now that she didn’t have the natural benefit of her Corporalki powers. Luckily, she had been together and married to her partners for long enough that she could read them decently even without the ability to sense their heart rates without thinking about it.

She carefully placed the lid back on the tin without taking one of the cookies for herself. Her husband was acting strange enough that the idea of taking one of his favorite treats made her skin crawl. She tucked the tin back up into the cupboard and then sat down in front of him. That gave Kaz the ability to reach out and touch her if he wanted, but didn’t force him to if he was feeling overstimulated like she suspected. “Kaz, what’s going on?”

“Can you still feel heartbeats if you focus? Without relapsing?” he asked instead of answering her question.

Nina felt even more unsteady than she had before. The distance in his eyes and the hunch of his shoulders told her that he had had a bad dream of some kind, but it wasn’t the type that usually plagued him based on the way that he wasn’t shying away from her whenever her dressing gown brushed against him in their small kitchen. She also knew that he never brought up her powers because he didn’t want to send her back down into the near-depressive spiral that had been triggered when she had gone back to Ravka and was unable to get her powers back to what they were before.

She took a deep breath as she told herself that whatever was going on with Kaz wasn’t something that required her to panic quite yet. She was sure that he would explain himself in time, he always did. “I can sense heartbeats without wanting more parem. I think that it has something to do with my ability to control the dead. They aren’t really dead if their heart is still beating,” she chuckled to try and lighten in the mood but the only thing that it did was make several watery tears raise in her husband’s eyes.

That by itself was rather terrifying and her heart began to beat a million miles a minute in her chest. She wasn’t sure what the dream had been or why it was upsetting her lover so much, but she wasn’t quite sure that she wanted to figure it out yet.

Kaz reached out before she could ask any more questions. Her breath hitched in her throat when she felt the callouses on the tips of his fingers from too may hours holding a lockpick brushing against her wrist. Her arm moved so that it was out straight and her hand was flat against the base of Kaz’s stomach, her fingertips just barely brushing against his hipbone. “Do you feel anything?”

It clicked in her brain then, what he was asking of her.

She glanced towards the calendar and suddenly it made sense. She kept a little red circle that would be filled in so that she could keep track of her cycles, just in case her powers began to interfere with the natural way that her body worked. She had noticed that a blue version of the system had joined her when Inej had come back and then a black one had started to show up two months after that.

That month her dot was right beside Inej’s, but the black was still unfilled. Nina took a deep breath as she turned back to Kaz and asked, “Do you think that you’re pregnant?”

“I wouldn’t be asking you to search of a heartbeat in my belly if I wasn’t, Zenik,” he growled. “I do know basic human anatomy.”

She didn’t respond to his goading this time. Usually when he said something like that it was because he wanted to fight with her and then they would end up falling into each other with teeth and tongues and grabbing hands. This time he was saying it because he was scared, which was understandable if what he thought was happening really was.

Nina moved so that she was kneeling in front of him. She placed both of her hands on his lower belly and then let her eyes fall closed so that she could focus on what he had asked her to do. After she had recovered from the drug, it was harder for her to sense heartbeats, it was much easier for her to feel when there was the absence of one.

Still, she was going to work as hard as she could so that she could meet her husband’s request. She focused on pulling at that dark, empty place inside of her that had been left after the fall. She let out a low breath when the echo was returned to her with nothing, the same way that corpses did.

At the end of the day, no matter what she did, she was still a criminal and a spy. That meant that she was usually very used to having to say hard things to people and was very sharp-tongued. This time, when she tilted her head up so that she could look at her husband, all of the words that were swirling in her mind had completely disappeared. “What other symptoms have you been feeling, love?” she asked, not moving her hands.

“Don’t stall, just tell me the answer,” Kaz replied bitterly. She could tell by the dark look in his eyes that he already knew what it was going to be before she even said anything.

“I can’t feel a heartbeat. I think that you were definitely pregnant but the only thing I can feel is…” she trailed off, unable to say anything. This was the third time that Kaz had conceived that they knew of and the third time that they had lost the baby before they even had the chance to grow. She wasn’t sure what that was doing her spouse if he felt even half as heavy as she did.

She watched the sharpness in his dark eyes dull slightly. Nina kissed his forehead as she pulled her hands away from him, forcing thoughts of a happy pregnancy into her mind to stave off the sadness for a while. She handed him the tea that had finished steeping and then sat with him until the rest of their partners could get up and help her take care of their husband.

---

4. Matthias

After three miscarriages from unknown conceptions in four years, Kaz had finally told them that he was pregnant.

They had all been absolutely overjoyed and nearly exploded all over him when Wylan put together the words found in the notes that Kaz had left all of them in a song. They all knew that the next several months were going to be spent treating Kaz enough like glass to soothe their own worries while not enough that he would snap at them.

Matthias was very careful when he opened the backdoor to their home before he reminded himself that Koshak had gone with Inej and Nina to Ravka. He closed the door tightly behind himself and then walked further into the house. He dumped his exercise equipment where it belonged in the mudroom before he stepped into the kitchen. He was searching through one of the cupboards for his favorite cup so that he could have some water when he felt another body press up against his back. A while ago, that would have made him feel so aggressively overstimulated that he wouldn’t have been able to handle it. Enough time had passed that he knew that it was his husband and what was going to happen.

An ungloved hand pressed onto one of his shoulders while lips kissed at the other. Kaz rasped, “You’re going to drive me insane.”

“That was certainly not my intention, karaste,” Matthias chuckled. He turned around and his hands easily settled down onto his husband’s hips to bring him closer. “I was simply giving you a show to keep you entertained.”

“Well I can think of something else that I would prefer entertain me,” Kaz grinned. Now that they were facing each other, he let his bare hand slowly trail down Matthias’ shoulder and abs down to where his pants were barely clinging to his hips.

The taller of the two men resisted the urge to grin maniacally. That was exactly what he had wanted to happen when he went outside to workout that morning. He could barely contain himself as he reached out and took hold of Kaz’s hips, which gave him the ability to lean down and connect their lips in a very passionate kiss.

Carefully, he let his hands slip around the back of Kaz’s hips so that his palms were pressed to the perky ass hidden beneath another pair of perfectly tailored trousers. He gave a cheeky squeeze before he let himself continue down to hold onto Kaz’s thighs. The other was able to pick up on what he was doing almost immediately, so Matthias lifted his partner up into the air and then turned them around so that he could place his husband down onto the counter. The kiss didn’t break even for a second while he was doing that, both of them meeting together over and over again.

He only stopped when he could feel himself beginning to get lightheaded from the effort that it took to keep the kisses going without taking a breath. “Is it okay if I fuck you right here?”

Usually Matthias was a lot more chaste when he spoke about sex, years of repression and purity culture telling his mind that it was indecent to say such things even though he was already going against those teachings by being married to so many people at once. He was riled up enough that he could barely think about the teachings that had been enforced in him for as long as he could remember, though.

“Of course it is. I would have waited for you to come find me in the bedroom if I was having a bad pain day,” Kaz snarked.

Matthias drank the words in like he was a dying man and Kaz was air. He used to hate the way that the Kerch man spoke, the vile bitterness that was pumped into every word feeling like a poison to his already fragile mind. Now he loved it more than he knew was possible. He longed for the dirty words and bitter musings whenever they were away from each other for a few hours. This time the words made him smirk. His hands moved to begin undoing the front of his husband’s pants as he said, “So ravishing me was an inevitability?”

“Of course it was. I’ve been so horny since you knocked me up that I got off in the office of the Crow Club last week,” he grumbled.

The idea of his dear husband sitting behind his desk, one gloved hand plunged down the front of his pants while lewd noises emitted from his dripping wet cunt was enough to make Matthias speed up the process.

He nearly ripped the fabric when it wasn’t getting off of the pale thighs he wanted to sink between fast enough. Once it was finally off, his breath caught in his throat and he spent a long moment looking at the curls of neatly trimmed dark hair resting just underneath the barely changed curve of Kaz’s stomach.

“You’re not wearing anything under your trousers already? Should have made sure to knock you up when we first met,” he mumbled as he began to work on the ties of his own pants, only to find that his husband’s nimble fingers had already taken care of that. He was sure not to mention the pregnancies that they had lost on the way to getting to where they were now, since it would kill the mood immediately.

“Shit, if I had known that me getting knocked up would have made you this horny I would have let you,” Kaz groaned. They both knew that it wasn’t true since they had hated each other when they first met, but neither of them were going to say that.

As soon as they were both nude from the waist down, Matthias slotted himself back between his husband’s legs again. He curved the leg with the good knee around his waist to keep him in place and then bracketed Kaz in with his hands against the counter. Their lips met in another tender kiss as he pressed forward and into his lover with practiced precision. He gasped when he felt the slick wetness and heat waiting for him with every inch that he pressed inside.

“Oh, oh fuck, Matthias,” Kaz groaned when the other man bottomed out so that he was completely full. He looked debauched already and they had only been going for a little while. It was enough to make Matthias want to go entirely feral, ripping Kaz apart with his teeth and sharp thrusts. That was going to have to wait for another time because he was going to take his time while they fucked, he had already decided that when he went outside that morning.

As soon as they had both adjusted to the new flood of sensations that were overcoming them, Matthias slowly pulled out and then pressed back in. He knew that Kaz liked to be held down against every surface and used almost like a toy when he was having his good days, but Matthias was so excited about the little potential life that had burrowed its way into the famed Dirtyhands that his thrusts were slow and worshipful.

He felt a hand reach up to his shoulder, fingernails digging into the skin and muscle there. He was worried that he was going to lose all control if Kaz ended up begging him like he always did, but his mind was immediately snapped out of that line of thought. Kaz whimpered and said, “I need you to stop.”

Matthias pulled out and took a step back from his lover almost immediately. He knew what it was like to get overwhelmed from touch without a phobia coming into play, so he could only guess how much worse it was with one. He held his hands out to the side so that Kaz could see them and knew that he wasn’t going to advance forward again.

What Matthias was met with again surprised him. Kaz looked down to the space between his legs and then let out a startled sob when he saw the sticky crimson that was beginning to spread between onto the counter.

“Love, what happened? Are you alright?” Matthias asked. He looked down and saw that his cock was also streaked with the sticky material, which reminded him of the time that Nina had started her period in the middle of them having sex. Given that Kaz was pregnant, the period was a non-option, but that meant that the blood was being caused by something else entirely.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” Kaz whispered as tears began to streak down his face.

They were both aware of what was happening, they both knew it and neither of them were able to admit it out loud. Saying the words would make it all the more real and that felt more damning than the blood that was slowly seeping out of Kaz. All of their hopes and dreams were spilling in crimson, just like they had thought that they would when Matthias had a bullet lodged in his shoulder and broken aspirations in his mind.

This time, he was not the broken eighteen-year-old boy that he had been back then. He leaned forward and pressed their foreheads together. He didn’t bother to try and dress again since it would only ruin his clothing. He was going to have to strip out of it again when he got them to the bathroom. “It’s alright, it’s alright,” he murmured as he pressed gentle kisses to Kaz’s forehead.

He brought them up to the bathroom and then lowered Kaz down into the tub. He took a cloth from under the sink and washed them both off before he got Kaz a pair of the underthings that he wore when he was on his cycle so that they could track the blood, just like they had done with the last three miscarriages.

He had just settled Kaz down into bed when the other turned to the side so that he was looking at his husband. Matthias felt his heart break a thousand times over in his chest and he had to ask, “Did I do this?”

“No, I was having cramps yesterday. I assumed that it was normal, I lasted so much longer than I had with all of the other ones,” Kaz whispered. “I broke the hopes of everyone again… you were all so excited to finally be parents.”

Matthias realized he shouldn’t have brought up his own guilt to the person that was going through the most pain in the situation. He brushed Kaz’s hair to the side with a slightly trembling hand and said, “It will happen, Kaz. One day we will have a child. No one is going to blame you for what happened, it was simply not the right time.”

---

5. Wylan

He didn’t work in his lab as much as he did before. Despite his rampant protestations to the contrary, Wylan did like making bombs and whatever other chemical compound Kaz required for his newest job. The compounds made sense and the rush of being able to control that much destruction was enough to make him forget about the weakness that had been assigned to him for so much of his life. With the combination of his Merchant responsibilities and having as many high-maintenance partners as he did, he barely got the time to spend with the bombs as he used to.

Today was one of the rare times that he was basically alone in the mansion, while also having no work to do for the empire that he had inherited from his father. That meant that he got to do what he pleased, and this time he chose to experiment with some of the powders and chemicals that Kaz had gotten him for his birthday. Nina and Matthias were meeting with some of her old teachers in the Embassy, Jesper and Inej were staking out a new brothel that they were working to take down, and Kaz was going back and forth between the house and his clubs for business meetings. Wylan missed his partners, but he was excited that he got that time by himself.

He heard the door behind him open slightly and assumed that it was Koshak since the cat hated being alone. Inej had originally gotten him to keep the mice out of her vessel, but she became very attached to her little companion. They were in the process of socializing the creature with dogs so that Matthias could have a pet of his own.

He turned his head and then startled slightly when he saw that it was not, in fact, his wife’s cat but rather one of his husbands. Kaz was standing in the doorway to Wylan’s laboratory with a rather pained looked on his face. His suit was still immaculate, tailored lines making him look angular and dangerous in a way that got them all very riled up. He had his gloves securely on over his hands even though they were back in their own home, which meant that it was one of the days were he was feeling too overwhelmed for even his partners to touch him. He was also leaning very heavily on his cane.

“Kaz!” Wylan gasped, adrenaline rushing through his system from seeing a figure much bigger than what he had been expecting. He set down the vials that he had been toying with and then stripped off his work gloves. He also removed the goggles that were not serving a purpose other than keep his red-brown curls out of his eyes. “I thought that you were going to be working today.”

“I was,” he replied. His voice was tight, like he was hiding something that was upsetting him.

Wylan carefully brushed his hands off on the cloth that had been resting next to his chemicals on his work table. He didn’t technically need to be doing that because what he had been working with wasn’t that dangerous and he was wearing gloves when the was touching it, but it gave him something to do. He always struggled to figure out how to move around Kaz when either of them were too overstimulated to be touched. He understood the emotion since he had experienced it enough himself, but he was so awkward and malformed when it came to being in a relationship with anyone.

“Oh,” he nodded. Something about the energy of the room had changed when his husband entered. It was making him feel a lot more like he did when Jesper first came to get him from the tannery so that he could make bombs for them for the job that they did in Ravka. His stomach was tied up in knots and his hands were beginning to get shaky with worry. “Um, not that I don’t love being around you, but why are you here?” He did adore his partner almost more than life itself, but it was rare for Kaz to come all the way up to Wylan’s lab and even rarer for him to come in and then stay there.

Kaz walked from where he had been standing near the doorway to the little seating area that Wylan had next to his worktable. It was supposed to be so that he had more places to sit down when he was being flighty, but Jesper and Nina primarily used it to take meals with him when he was too distracted to come down to the dining room for dinner. Slowly, the man lowered himself down into the seat, though Wylan was unable to miss the wince on his face.

“D-do you need more pain meds?” he asked as he fluttered over to the edge of the table. Something had shifted in his husband so that Kaz felt almost completely unrecognizable to who he had been that morning, his face unreadable and his body language stiff.

“I’m not sure that I can have medication in my present condition,” he replied, tilting his head down towards his lap so that he didn’t have to meet Wylan’s eyes.

The cryptic way that he was speaking was enough to get the other man to pause. The anxiety began to drain from his system now that he had a puzzle that he could help riddle out. He set the cloth that he had been grasping down next to him and then settled himself at the table. He traced one of the grains in the table just so that he wouldn’t have to look up at his husband as he asked, “Are you pregnant?”

“I might not be for much longer, unless you have something to help me,” he said, his voice rasping even more since he was speaking quietly.

Wylan’s mind stopped and then jumped to the next thought all at once, so quickly that he almost gave himself whiplash. The thought of them getting another chance at being parents when the last pregnancy that had been announced to them had ended far before its time was exciting. He was also terrified of the idea that Kaz was expecting out of the three members of their polycule because he was the one that had been through the most out of them all concerning that kind of loss. It took him a moment to process the fact that Kaz had just admitted that he was pregnant after the fight that he had with Inej the morning before when she had asked him. He then finally caught up to the present when he realized that Kaz was asking him to make something that would chemically stop another miscarriage.

“Oh, love,” he whispered. He wanted to reach across the table so that he could take his spouse’s hand but he knew that it wasn’t the day for that. “I… I’ve never heard of something that can stop a body from rejecting a pregnancy. I don’t think that I have the stuff to make it even if I had.”

“Then just the painkiller is fine. Leave it outside of my room when you finish,” Kaz said briskly. He pushed himself up from the desk and silently walked out of the room, leaning even heavier onto his cane than he had before.

Wylan didn’t take it personally. He had seen Kaz go through four miscarriages before and knew the drill at this point. Even if Kaz was simply anticipating losing the baby before he actually had, he was going to be going through that same cycle of grief that he had every time before. Wylan got up so that he could move aside the explosives that he had been working with so that he could get make what was asked of him.

By the time that he was able to get the bottle up to his husband, there was a pair of blood stained pants sitting on top of Kaz’s dresser with his husband curled around a hot water bottle. The pain reliever was the only thing that he could do to help, so after he dropped off the first batch he went downstairs back to his lab so that he could make another.

---

+1 Kaz

He thought that his partners were never actually going to pack up and leave. They all had something that they were supposed to be doing out of the house that day. Normally that would bother him, but today he wanted them gone. He also knew where they were all going and was sure that they would send someone back to the house to tell him if plans changed so that he could find them if he had need.

Matthias was going to be visiting a local breeder so that he could pick out a puppy or work with the dogs, whichever ended up working out best for him. Wylan had a meeting with a couple of interested investors but nothing serious enough that he had to bring someone else along. Nina was going to be spending some time with the friends that she had made while working at the White Rose, which meant that she was going to be coming home with a new dress. Inej and Jesper were going out on their monthly date to their favorite cafe and then likely to a bookstore so that Inej could pick something new out for her upcoming voyage. Kaz himself was supposed to be heading into work so that he could finish up the tax paperwork for the new Barrel empire that he had been shaping up since the day before.

He knew that wasn’t going to happen. He had been trying to get as much work done as possible before what inevitably was going to happen ended up happening, though it was turning out to be a little different than he had expected.

Kaz hadn’t necessarily meant to keep his pregnancy a secret from his partners. He also hadn’t meant to tell them about it, but he was half expecting someone to force it out of him. Inej had known every other time he had ended up pregnant, sometimes even before he did, afterall. He wasn’t not telling them about his pregnancy out of some sort of malice, but rather because he was terrified of seeing the disappointment on their faces when he miscarried again.

He had been pregnant five times before and none of them had even lasted long enough for him to pass something that resembled a baby when he started miscarrying. Every single time that had happened, he had to deal with the sorrowful looks that his partners wore when they tried to take care of him and the grief that they carried about the disappointment he had handed them. He wasn’t sure that he would be able to handle that again, and so he had actively worked to keep his pregnancy hidden as soon as he noticed that he had missed one of his cycles.

It had started while Inej was out on her ship, which meant that the person most likely to notice that something was off with him was gone. It had been easier to hide the cravings and increase in appetite, especially since he didn’t have any morning sickness. The exhaustion and increase in libido had been harder to pass off but Jesper and Nina were excited enough to nap with or fuck him that they were able to subsconsciously help the others brush it away as well.

He found that even when he passed from the first trimester into the second, his body hadn’t changed all that much. He had put on a bit of weight but blamed it all on Matthias’ increase in baking to put off his stress about getting a new dog soon. Even when Kaz finally got to the blessed third trimester, his belly had only swelled ever so slightly. He had regressed back into not letting his partners touch him more than a few brief kisses or hand holding when he got to that point because he knew that if they felt his belly they would feel the butterfly-wing movements of the baby inside of him or the rounded nature of his torso.

Kaz really had meant to tell them when he finally passed the first trimester. He had been secretly seeing a midwife to make sure that everything in the pregnancy was going smoothly and she had informed him that was when the ‘danger zone’ passed. He had meant to tell them for the last five months, but every time he opened his mouth to say it all he could see was blood covering his underthings and their sad faces.

So he had kept it a secret, trying to figure out ways that he could explain the sudden appearance of a child that none of them had known he was carrying or find another way that was easier to inform them of their upcoming parenthood. Nothing had come up and now he feared that it was too late, though he was also in denial about that.

He had gone to bed the night before feeling a tiny bit out of sorts. It was mostly a foggy head and vague cramping in his stomach, but that also could have been because he had no appetite that entire day and had thus barely eaten anything. When he woke up the next morning he had felt even stranger than he had when he went to sleep, but he wasn’t willing to show any of those symptoms until his partners had finally left.

Once he was alone, he slipped from his bed and walked to the mirror hanging in the corner of his room. He looked himself over to make sure that he was presentable and his belly wasn’t noticeable in the suit that he had had chosen for his meetings that day as he got ready to head down to the club. For a reason beyond him, he was still planning to go to work despite his anxiety around his pregnancy the night before.

He got to the top of the stairs that would lead down to the rest of the house before he had to stop. It was an almost overwhelming feeling when he finally let his brain process what was happening. There was a stark pressure building up along his spine before it spread out through the rest of his hips so that it was hugging his entire pelvis. It shifted into bone-shattering pain only when it wrapped around the front of his stomach.

It wasn’t the first time that he had a contraction, he had several practice ones that the midwife he was seeing had warned him about. They were very similar to what had happened when he was miscarrying but more intense. The contraction that he was currently experiencing was like the practice ones had been ramped up to ten and like the cramps he had with his other five pregnancies times twenty.

It left him winded and leaning on his cane so that he didn’t sink down to the ground. When his mind finally returned to him, the only thing that he could think about was the panic he had felt when he realized that he was losing his pregnancies the last several times that he had conceived. All he could think about was blood and gore and the sorrow that came with knowing that he was too bad and too monstrous to actually bring good life into the world.

He decided against going into work that day. He turned around and slowly made his way back to his bedroom so that he could change into a fresh pair of sleep things. He laid down on the bed with his back propped up with half of the pillows they kept spread out on the master bed. He wasn’t sure what was happening but he knew that he had to be in the safest place that they had in their entire house.

About seven minutes had passed before he got another one of the pains. By that point, his panic had ceded enough that he was able to realize what was happening. It made him anxious to think that he could be in labor before he had the chance to tell his partners that he was even pregnant, but the thing that scared him more was the fact that it was about a month too early.

He had heard of babies being born early and then nursed into full health by their parents, but he had also heard of babies that were born looking raw and red and without breath because they were far too small. Part of him was worried that he had gotten his dates wrong even though the midwife had assured him that everything was alright. He didn’t know what was going to be waiting for him at the end of his labor, but he did know that he was going to be facing everything alone.

Kaz relaxed back into the bed and tried to keep his mind about him so that he didn’t lose himself when his child needed him. His thoughts eventually began to drift over the past few months as he started mourning the things that he could have shared with his partners, the things that he had denied both them and himself from having with his own fear.

He could have been worshiped and waited on the same way that Alys had been when they kidnapped her by Matthias, who was always eager to cherish them. He could have told Nina about his cravings and had her fatten him up even more with her delicious cooking. He could have sat with Inej in front of him while she rubbed that oil that her parents had brought them when they heard that they were trying for a family during one of their visits. He could have slept in Jesper’s arm as the zowa sang Kaelish nursery rhymes to his belly. He could have sat with Wylan while they both worked, helping each other get thing squared away so that they could enjoy the first couple of months with their baby without the panic of work on top of it. He could have watched Matthias build the baby’s first cradle. He could have spent days with Wylan discussing traditional Kerch names. He could have cuddled with Inej while they both napped during her adjustment back from sea life. He could have taken long walks with Nina in the garden while she told him all about the place that she had come from. He could have watched Jesper struggle to make their child’s first soother.

But he had denied himself and them all of those things because he had been too afraid to tell them that he was pregnant simply because he didn’t want to let them down again. By refusing to give them that disappointment, he had offered himself another by keeping the baby a secret to himself.

He was basically writhing on the bed by the time that the noonday sun began to creep over the slanted rooves of Ketterdam. He had started crying while imagining how his pregnancy would have gone if he had trusted that information to his partners, and he hadn’t been able to stop when the pains overcame him.

Kaz had tried to stand up and sway against the bed like his midwife had encouraged when they had talked about what would happen while he gave birth. He found that whatever position his little one had taken was playing games with his hip and he was basically imobile from it, so was stuck in the bed.

Eventually he was overcome with a rush of energy and had to move around. He grabbed his cane and began to pace up and down the hall while leaning heavily on it and the wall on the other side. He paused every time that he had a contraction, letting his head rest on the cool plaster. It was one of the only things that brought him any relief. His entire body felt hotter than a fever, but without the cool sweats that made him feel clammy. His stomach was clenching around the nothing that he had eaten and his mouth was dry with panic. His hand couldn’t stop moving to his stomach when he was having a contraction, trying to feel any movement from the baby that would reassure him that they were okay.

“Shit, shit, shit,” he swore as he leaned heavily against the wall when a particularly strong contraction chose that exact moment to try and make him feel horrible. He leaned so heavily against the wall that he was basically sliding down it. But then there was the feeling of relief that came whenever the pain left him, right before something splashed along the floor and soaked through his pants.

He stared down at his toes that were now soaked with clear fluid, blinking a couple times when the only thing that his brain was able to bring up was blood and viscera.

His labor was steadily progressing now, even though it was a month early and he was completely alone. He certainly wouldn’t be seen walking the streets of Ketterdam while moving into the second stage of labor and he had no one that he could send to his midwife, not that any of them would know where she was working. His water breaking only confirmed the thing that he had half been denying, so he stripped off his pants and his smalls and left them in the hallway over the top of the puddle because he didn’t have the energy or ability to lean down and clean it up properly.

When he got back to his room, he continued his pacing. He was restless, almost like a caged animal in the back of a zoo or a royal palace. He was surrounded by gold and opulence but he didn’t have the one thing that he really needed, companionship.

After his water had broken his labor began to progress even faster than it had before. He could barely walk at all now that the pains were coming less than five minutes apart. He knew what it was to be so sick that pain was the only thing that he felt, and he had been scared that labor would be similar to that every time he had gotten pregnant. Now that he was in the midst of it, he knew that the sensations were completely different and the only thing that he could see in his mind’s eye was his babe.

Kaz hiked himself up onto the bed when his knee began to scream at him, informing him that the pacing had to stop if he wanted to be able to walk normally for the next week. He wasn’t sure that he would be able to do that regardless, but he was okay with laying down because he was beginning to get tired. He leaned back against the pillows that smelled like his partners, allowing his brain to drift off into the thought of them surrounding him like he so desperately wanted.

“Shit, fuck, ow,” he swore when he felt the babe he had been secretly carrying begin to shift lower down inside of him. It was only just then dawning on him that it was all real and happening right then, and that he had no control over it. Fear overwhelmed him so that his breathing was rapid and his heart felt like it was trying to break through is ribcage. He could barely stop the tears that were running down his face as he grasped at the bedsheets with his ungloved hands. He wanted his parents, his brother, his spouses, anyone to be there with him and reassure him that he was going to be okay.

The urge to push started to overwhelm him just as the day began to creep into evening, which was when his partners were allegedly going to be coming home. Inej and Jesper were likely going to come home last unless one of them got worn out. Wylan and Matthias were both a toss up about when they were arriving, but Kaz was honestly surprised that Nina wasn’t back yet.

As soon as he felt the urge he knew that he had to give into it. He was usually so good about controlling his body and what it did that it wasn’t a concern what he wanted, just what he had to do. This time there was no question about what he was going to do, so he placed both of his hands on the top of the headboard and began to push so hard that his body curled forward over his tiny baby bump.

When the urge passed and he had no more strength, he collapsed back against the bed and panted so that he could get desperately needed air. He could feel his arms shaking with the force that it took to keep himself in one place.

He was so tired and so scared. The only thing that he wanted was his partners by his side, to tell him that he was doing well and give him their strength. The images of a happy, gurgling baby and happy spouses interacting with their firstborn had been replaced by angry faces and a limp body. It only served to scare him more. He wanted to go back and correct all of the mistakes that had made, to tell them that he was pregnant so at least he wouldn’t have to go through the traumatic loss of his sixth baby on his own.

He knew that he couldn’t hand them the pain of having missed his pregnancy and helping him through a stillbirth instead of a miscarriage. He hadn’t given them any of the joy of seeing the minute changes of his body as their baby grew or letting them feel the baby move, so he didn’t deserve the comfort they would provide him. The thought of not getting to have them made a pain erupt in his chest that was more intense than even his contractions.

His attention was brought back to his labor and his baby when another contraction wrapped around his belly. He grunted as he leaned forward and pushed as hard as he could to try and make as much progress as he could. He felt the baby inside of him slowly moving down further into the birth canal.

His mind began to scream at him to call for help so that he at least had someone else with him when he heard the door at the front of their home open. He could tell by the pace of the footsteps that it was Matthias, but he was walking slower than he normally did. The part of Kaz’s mind that was always looking for the most information he could get to help keep him safe was able to process the fact that he had a dog with him. He had to physically bite the insides of his cheeks until he tasted hot, coppery blood seeping from his tongue and gums to resist the urge to call out to him. He wasn’t going to ruin the happiness that Matthias had just earned by getting another canine companion with a dead baby.

A sob escaped Kaz’s mouth when he leaned back against the bed so that he could try to catch his breath again. He felt almost as if he were drowning, like he was never actually going to be able to overcome the agony that he was in while trying to birth a human.

He could hear Matthias moving to the living room, his deep voice reverberating through the home while he talked to his new companion. Kaz briefly wondered if he would talk to his child that same way but with different affectionate nicknames, or if he would want to speak to them like an adult.

The contractions kept relentlessly coming and Kaz kept pushing. He heard the door open again before he had made any more progress and then Nina’s voice joined in with Matthias. They were both laughing and shouting at each other and the dog, but in the way that meant they were overly excited and had lost the ability to control their volume instead of being upset with one another.

Kaz’s entire body was shaking with the force he was exerting to not only birth their child but to hold himself back from calling out to them. He could almost feel the way that Matthias would hold him in his strong arms, helping him bend forward. He could almost feel Nina’s calm hands moping the sweat that was running down his forehead off of him. He wanted them so badly that his entire chest felt hollow with the ache and yet he refused to let himself have it.

He had to move to make more progress, so he painfully raised himself onto his hands and knees and then into a squatting position while grasping the rails of the headboard to support himself. “Please, baby, please,” he begged, though at this point he had thoroughly convinced himself that the lack of movement meant that he had once again lost his child. He wanted to wail and scream in pain as he pushed down hard enough to get the head to come to his opening, spreading him wide so that all of the nerves down there burned with the fire of nothing he had ever felt before.

When he gasped and stopped pushing, surprised by the pain, all of the progress he had just made left. He felt like crying when he felt the sliver of his baby’s head slip back into him. His entire body was quivering with effort and aching with hurt but he was going to get no relief. He must have pushed without any change for about ten minutes before he got the entire head to crown. He had collapsed down so that he was kneeling instead of squatting at that point, but he released one of his shaking hands from the headboard so that he could touch the slimy, blood-covered downy hair on the top of his baby’s head.

His heart was already mourning the loss of the child once he did, he knew that it was temporary. This baby was not going to last, just as the other one’s hadn’t. He was doomed to never create anything good, to be a monster that could only bring forth pain and misery. He knew that Inej and Nina would tell him that he was being stupid, that Wylan would reassure him that he could make great things happen, that Jesper would give him that sad look, and that Matthias would just kiss his forehead and say that demons did not look like him. He wanted them with him so badly, but he knew that he couldn’t have them no matter how badly he wanted it.

That pain was amplified to the point that he started crying again when he heard the door open. He wanted the others to be waiting for Wylan so that they could tell him the happy news, that they were moments away from being parents, but instead he had to listen to them ask him about work as if Kaz were an intruder in his own house. He knew that he had to be quieter now that one of the more aware people had returned. Nina was a spy and could hear things easier, as was Inej, but Wylan had had to listen for his father and danger at all times so was more attuned to noises than the rest of the polycule was.

He was trying to push while staying absolutely silent, but he almost felt like the effort that he was expending on keeping himself quiet meant that he was making less progress than he had before. He was in so much pain, he just wanted the entire process to be over with. He couldn’t move out of the position that he was in despite the red hot burning pain that was spreading through his body from where his knee had been bent for too long.

On the floor below, the door opened and his last two partners came home. Everyone that he loved and cherished that was still loving was now in his home and he had no way to reach out to them for help. He knew that he could scream and shout and they would come running, but the pain was swirling together with the panic in his brain so that he felt so vulnerable he thought that he would disintegrate into nothing. He also couldn’t ruin the joy that Jesper and Inej had brought with them, both of them laughing happily. It was the laugh that he could get drunk on, the one that made him feel safe and warm and happy, the one that he would sooner kill himself than cause to disappear.

He was certain that forcing Inej to see him go through another grisly, bloody loss like the one he was sure he was about to face would be enough to strip the rest of the joy from her life. So he kept his jaw clenched so tight that he was going to crack his teeth and kept pushing to try and finish the ugly process that he was embarking on.

Kaz gave a grunt of discomfort as he pushed again and the head slipped entirely from him and into his waiting hand. He kept it there while he shifted positions so that he was laying back against the bed. He wracked his mind with the panic of a man being hunted for sport while he tried to remember everything that the midwife had said about that stage of the delivery.

Finally, he was able to connect what it was and ran his fingers around the base of the baby’s neck to check for the cord. There was nothing, but he was given the overwhelming sensation of feeling their little face for the first time. His hand moved almost reverently down across a tiny nose and a little puckered mouth, then two eyes that were still closed.

He was barely aware of the sounds out in the hall where he had left his bottoms when his water broke and then hurried footsteps coming towards his office. He jumped slightly when he heard two doors bang open and his partners calling his name throughout their massive house. He had to ignore it as the urge to push overwhelmed him again and he had to listen to it. He kept his hand underneath the head of the baby as he let out a small, strangled noise.

The door to the grand bedroom opened just as he gave a final push and the baby was born. He was quivering like a leaf in the world’s worst storm, his hair was caked to his forehead with sweat, and fluids from the delivery a babe were now covering his bottom half and their bed. He could barely think about any of that as he held his tiny little one in his hand and stared straight ahead at his partners.

Inej was leading the charge with Nina right behind her, peaking over her shoulder at what was happening. Wylan was standing beside Inej with his face as pale as paper and his mouth covered with one of his delicate hands. Jesper was holding onto Matthias like he was going to fall over, his eyes as wide as saucers.

“What is that?” Jesper asked, astounded and terrified.

“A baby,” Kaz replied weakly. There were no cries, no movement from the little limp body in his hands. He had known that it was coming, but it was still too much. He didn’t know how he was supposed to handle the overwhelming surge of energy in the room when his partners had piled into the space and the death of the fist baby that had actually been able to hold.

“Kaz-” Inej started.

She was cut off by their wife shoving past her and into the room. Nina stopped by the edge of the bed and then carefully reached down so that she was holding the baby. “Matthias, go and get me some hot water from the tap in the kitchen. Wylan, I need you to find as many towels as possible. Inej get me the suture kit,” she commanded as she took the baby. She sounded every bit the trained soldier that she had been when they first met her.

“She’s not crying, Nina, she’s not crying,” Kaz sobbed. He had lost so many people before, and yet he hadn’t known that it was possible to experience grief like the kind that was currently washing over him. There would have been a time that he wouldn’t have thought twice about a dead baby in the streets, just focused on his own rage. It was so different when it was his own child, the one that he had longed for with his entire heart and soul.

“Shh, shh, it’s okay. Babies take a little bit of time to perk up sometimes,” Nina soothed easily. She knelt down on the edge of the bed so that the cord didn’t have to stretch between Kaz and the baby quite as much as before. She then placed one of her fingers into the baby’s mouth with a scooping motion towards her little throat.

The entire house went completely silent as they heard the tiniest cough and then the shrill cry of a baby who had been through something terrifying.

Wylan had stopped in the doorway, his pale face flush with exertion as he looked on to their eldest daughter taking her first deep breaths. Inej had returned with the suture kit and was smiling so wide that her cheeks had to hurt. Downstairs, Matthias could be heard whooping loudly as he no doubt cued in to what that sound meant. Jesper let out a little broken noise as he staggered over to the edge of the bed and looked down at the tiny face of their babe.

“There we are, there we are,” Nina crooned as she carefully cradled the newborn in her arms. “Kaz, we’ve gotta put her on your chest while we get everything settled out. Are you okay with that?”

“Please,” he nodded so quickly and eagerly that his head actually dizzy because of it. He barely registered what was happening when he got pushed forward by Jesper’s calloused hands so that they could remove the shirt from his pale body, which revealed the tiny bump that he had been sporting in secrets for months. Neither of his present partners said anything about it as Nina carefully moved the newborn so that she was laying against Kaz’s chest.

His entire world shrank down to her like he knew that it would if he ever got the chance to have an actual child. She was grimy with mucus, blood, and vernix, but she was so utterly perfect that he couldn’t believe that she was really there. Her skin was as pale as his had been, but there was the chance that it could darken as she got older. Her tiny body was still curled into a tight ball against his skin even though she had already been born. Her little legs were tucked up into her stomach and he could feel the feet that had been battering his kidneys for months pressed against his lower belly with ten perfect little toes in a line. Her arms were close to her face, wiping at herself while she cried. She had wispy black hair and likely blue eyes, but those were also things that would change when she moved out of the newborn stage. Even the idea that she would eventually move out of that phase of her life sent a thrill of joy throughout his body.

“I’ve got you, Papa’s got you,” he whispered quietly to the newborn now cradled in his arms. She soothed when she felt the vibration of his voice against her tiny body, likely remembering it from when she was inside of him only moments prior.

“Love, this is very important, have you been going to see a midwife?” Nina asked. She had taken the suture kit from Inej so that she could tie the cord off in two spots and then cut it, which allowed Wylan to carefully take the newborn so that he could wash her with the warm water Matthias had just brought upstairs in their biggest pot.

“Yeah,” Kaz nodded sleepily. His entire body ached like nothing else, but he knew that he was safe because his partners were there and his baby was crying.

“Thank the Saints,” Jesper whispered from the spot that he had taken up behind his husband. Kaz barely even remembered him moving back there but he was so happy that he had. He wished that was the place that Jesper could have been during his entire labor and birth process. “Hate to think about the pain you might have gone through all on your own if you actually hadn’t told anybody.”

“I’m sorry,” Kaz whispered morosely. He was, truly and deeply. He had wanted them to share the moments of his pregnancy that he had rejoiced after, but he had let fear reign over him the same way that he had after Jordie’s death. He whimpered and shied away from his own body when he felt another small cramp and then something wet and slippery move out of him.

Nina soothed him with a gentle hand on his knee. “Just the afterbirth love. The entire thing is out now so this is really over. I’m going to check to make sure you didn’t tear anything too badly and then have Nej sew you up,” she explained. The two woman worked in tandem like a well-oiled machine as they got him fixed.

As soon as they had finished, Jesper’s lanky arms wrapped around his knees and his back as they shuffled towards the edge of the bed. “Come on, my love, we’re going to get you into something clean. Do you want a bath?”

The idea of having to be submerged into water after thinking that he was to be surrounded by death in the same way almost made him vomit. He focused on swallowing down the bile and giving his head a strict shake. “Okay, no bath,” Jesper said softly. Instead, he settled his lover down on the chest at the end of their bed. Matthias and Wylan worked together so that they could strip the bed and replace the sheets with the emergency set that they kept just under the frame. Kaz felt bad for ruining such expensive items with his ignorance of just how messy birth was, but he could barely focus on that.

Jesper took a wet towel and began in the messiest part of his lover. He cleaned off the blood that was caked between his legs, along with all the fluids that had dribbled through his smalls when his water broke. As soon as he had done that, Inej appeared with a pair of the period smalls that belonged to him. She and Jesper worked together to get Kaz’s hips tilted up enough that they could slip the garment over his wrecked body. They were soft and compressive enough that he felt grounded, to the point where he began listening for the sounds of his baby.

Kaz had turned his head to the side so that he could look for the newborn girl while Jesper finished up his work, ridding Kaz of the sweat that was sticking to his skin. He smiled and relaxed softly when he saw Nina speaking delicately to the baby in hushed tones that he couldn’t hear from his distance as she got the makeshift nappy pinned into place.

He was dressed in a soft pair of cotton pants and then one of his sleep shirts before he was placed back down onto their blissfully clean bed. The others were still whirling around the room as they got into the process of soaking the blood and fluids out of the sheets, as well as disposing of the suture kit that they had used to clean him up. He could barely pay attention to any of that as his body finally got the chance that it needed to relax.

His world turned miniscule again when his daughter was carefully placed back into his arms. Nina knelt beside the bed so that she was looking over her husband’s shoulder at the baby. “She’s going to need to be fed. Are you comfortable with doing that?”

Despite the panic that he still got at times when his own partners touched him, there was something different about having his baby pressed up against his warm skin. He hypothesized, in the back of his very tired mind, that it was because she was a part of him. He had wanted her so desperately when she was growing in the safety of his belly that all he could think about was how much he wanted to keep her safe. The lapping of water at his ankles wasn’t something that even crossed his mind.

“I can do that,” he mumbled. Awkwardly, he shuffled forward so that he could lift up his shirt and help his babe find his nipple. By the time that she had gotten the hang of suckling and was greedily drinking down her first meal, everyone else had finished what they were doing. Inej and Wylan were sitting at the end of the bed, their hands clasped together but every other part of their body separated from the other. Jesper and Matthias had made their way up onto the bed so that they bracketed Kaz and their baby in, keeping them both safe from the outside world. Nina was fussing slightly but eventually got dragged down into the bed by their husband so that she also had to be still.

“Why didn’t you tell us, Kaz?” Inej asked, her voice small and slightly scared. Kaz wasn’t sure what she wanted the answer to be or what she was expecting, but he was so tired that the only thing he could say was the truth.

“I wanted to. I wanted to tell you all the second I noticed that my cycle was a week late, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t bear the thought of you all getting to excited about the potential to be parents just to have my body kill off that hope because nothing good can ever happen to me. I… I wanted you to be there for all the parts of the pregnancy but then I was just so scared,” he didn’t realize that he was crying until his daughter let out a tiny, fussing noise.

“Sorry, sorry baby,” he mumbled as he wiped the tear from her head. He leaned into the touch that Jesper offered to him, curling into the warmth and protection that it offered.

Wylan reached out to offer Kaz a blanket so that they could burp the baby as he said, “We’re not mad at you, Kaz. We’re all a little bit scared and shocked that this suddenly happened because I don’t think that anyone even realized that you were pregnant, but we’re not mad.”

“We could never be mad when we have this,” Matthias whispered reverently. Kaz had always known that Inej and Matthias were going to be the best parents out of all of them since they had the longest to go without trauma and the nervousness that came with everything Jesper did. It still made him feel like he was melting when he watched his husband’s huge hand brush over the top of their baby’s head, though.

The others gave a murmur of agreement. As soon as the baby had finished her first meal and been burped, he wrapped her up in the blanket that Jesper had found in between helping Kaz get cleaned up and settling into the bed. Matthias was the first to hold her, but she made her rounds with every one of her parents so that they could all meet her for the first time. Kaz kept himself awake so that he could savor those first few moments of her life, reassuring himself that she was okay every time he saw a blissfully pink nose or heard a little gurgle of discontent when she was shifted the wrong way.

She had finally landed back where she belonged in his arms when Nina asked, “What are you going to name her?”

Despite having thought about so many things when she was carefully hidden away in his belly, a name had never crossed his mind. He had so many names that were assigned to him through his life, from the one that his mother had given him to the one that he had chosen when he was five and figured out he was a boy, to the last name that he had chosen after Jordie died. “I… I like the name Posey but if any of you have something that you need to name her then we can also do that.”

“I like Posey. It’s a good Kerch name, in between the stupid upper class names and the peasant ones. Gives her opportunity to do a lot in her life,” Wylan grinned.

“Posey,” Inej whispered softly as she moved forward to look over their daughter. She placed a gentle kiss to the baby’s forehead and murmured a prayer to her, the only word of which Kaz understood being the newborn’s name.

He fell asleep with his partners carefully tucked around him and his daughter steadily breathing in her sleep. They had wanted that for so long and they finally, finally had it.

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