#jesper fahey oneshots

[xalicitie]

Unwarranted Thoughts — Kaz Brekker (smut)

You’re a new member of Kaz’s gang of crows. You and your boss share a cryptic relationship which neither of you seem to understand how to approach, but within one night in which you attend to a dire wound Kaz receives in battle, the two of you discover your true feelings for each other.

This is only the first half of the story, I’m posting this to see if it actually gets any attention and whether I really want to post it cause I’ve never actually posted smut in my life. If it gets enough response I’ll post part 2

"Sit down here."

Kaz had a hand pressed tautly against the detrimental wound pulsating at his ribcage; blood was melting through his clothes as he stumbled into the seat. You were beginning to hurriedly gather the loosely placed medical supplies along the countertops—scrambling, to say the least. It was rare for Kaz to get injured in battle like this in battle, it sparked a panic hotter than Hell in your chest.

"You're bleeding badly." You said as you placed your hands under the running water of the sink. "Take your shirt off."

Kaz, without a word, followed your orders. Although the command did catch him off guard, he followed through without a thought.

Fleetingly, you rinsed your hands and dried them, then sped to Kaz's side, spilling all kinds of tools onto the table adjacent.

Upon facing back to your boss, It took you quite the moment to realize that he was already shirtless. The shame at your involuntarily wandering eyes set in quickly as you turned your focus to his wound.

It was nasty. A successful sword strike—any further into his core and you might've not been able to fix him up in time.

"How the hell did you get this?" You asked, splitting the silence as you grabbed a large cloth.

"I was caught off guard. Stupid bandits pulled an ambush." You quirked a brow, hoping to distract him as you readied the cloth before the wound. His chest heaved, and you just couldn't seem to decipher whether your thundering heartbeat was due to the direness of the situation or the picture of Kaz Brekker shirtless.

You scolded yourself for even considering such a thing at such a moment.

"Ready yourself. I'm going to apply pressure to the wound." You warned.

"Hurry up and get it over with." He said with a low voice.

You did just that. The moment you enforced pressure onto his side, he breathed a pained groan, eyebrows furrowed as his hands clasped the side of the chair. You tried not to think at all as you continued to try and stop the bleeding.

After such treacherous few minutes, you pulled the cloth, dripping with Kaz's blood—a grotesque sight—to see his wound had just barely stopped producing blood.

"Okay, stay with me." You looked up to your boss to see a tired, pained expression. You could see his unwillingness to completely show you that he was suffering just threading his mien, but the pain seemed to be just enough to tear through most of his armor. "Are you okay?" You asked.

"Yes. Fine." He spat quickly, harshly. "Just, keep on going."

Throughout the whole process of healing his wound, all during it you never seemed to get habituated to the sight of his bare chest. You never thought you'd live to see him so vulnerable, it was certainly novel, to say the least.

Still, you completely forced denial unto your filthy thoughts. Even if they lingered there, watching his muscles heave and move with his breaths, the twitch of his face at the pain, you told yourself they did not exist. You scolded to yourself that it was shameful to conjure up such nasty thoughts at a time like this.

"Okay." You concluded after such tense silence. The wound was cleaned and ready to be covered, and Kaz was still alive. Thank the Saints.

"Can you sit up?" You asked, and Kaz nodded. You were just about to lend a hand before he starting grudgingly lifting himself up on his own. You knew he wouldn't accept your help.

Every rise of his chest, the more your thoughts roused and resisted being denied. The more your heartbeat gained acclimation again, your lips parting, watching as his brunette hair fell before his face, eyes hidden in a shadow, only the lightest of his blue eyes apparent. You knew the look of him right now would be stuck in your mind for the coming weeks.

If Kaz saw you right now, oh you didn't dare let him get a peak of your disorientation right now. You spoke quickly to hide your adoring face. "Hold still. This is going to take a second."

With a muttered "mhm", you kneeled down before him to get closer to his wound.

You were so utterly sinful. As you wrapped the linen bandage around his waist, each little contiguity, each little brush of the skin brought you filthier thoughts. You grasped for control, and just barely—after a torturously long moment—you fixed the bandage around his wound.

"Okay, you're good." You said with finality. Kaz nodded at you, and the moment you thought it was over you began putting the supplies away. You wanted get as far away from this little crush on your newly appointed boss as possible.

"Y/n." You froze and turned back to Kaz at the sound of your name, now finally donned in his vest again. "You've been hurt, too."

His eyes led you to the cut that had been bothering you for awhile. It was just at you lower side, sitting just below your breast.

"Oh, it's..nothing." You brushed off, hoping to settle for some good rest. You began to walk back over to the supplies when Kaz called for you once more.

"Don't think you're leaving here without that being properly bandaged." Oh, Saints. "It could get infected."

There was no way out of this. You sighed audibly, relenting at his wish, more so command.

You sauntered slowly over to the chair as Kaz leisurely climbed out of it, allowing you to sit atop, as he just had done before. Kaz began again gathering the supplies while you sat, wary of what was to come. The cut was placed at a certainly tricky place.

Moments passed and he had the supplies together. His gaze fell upon your apprehensive one. You felt yourself tense at his undivided attention. "Lift up your shirt."

Your lips fell agape at the sudden words. Breathing pattern hectic once again, you followed through with his command just somehow.

Kaz slowly walked over to you. He held a wet cloth in his gloved hand, and as he approached, the air between the two of you thickened so much you felt it, each inch, as it sat between you and your boss. You were absolutely disheveled, eyes not knowing where to look.

The sensation of the cloth hitting your cut made you cringe and seethe out a strained breath. You heard his breaths, each one, one after the other, as he scrutinized you.

..You were so close.

The silence was grating and horribly tense.

You and Kaz looked at each other, and for a moment it seemed he were having the same thoughts.

Then, as each one of your filthy dreams went, you watched in utter disbelief as Kaz Brekker leaned his head in towards yours. As his unoccupied, right, gloved hand traveled towards the nave of your neck, you melting below him, moving towards him meekly. Still with no idea what was happening.

Yours and Kaz's lips hovered not even an inch before each other, both your eyes closed, relishing in the moment. Your chest fell and rose, cheeks burning, everything ablaze.

Is this a dream?

Part 2 is up!

[barrel-crow-n]

Sitting in bed doing nothing as if I don't have a multi chapter fic to cowrite, two flirt!Kaz fics waiting in my notes app, a show canon divergence au where Kaz performs magic to get into Os Alta with the troupe to plan, a dad!Kaz fic where Kaz adopts a little girl off the streets of the Barrel to continue planning, a pre-canon prison fic to start, and a heart-to-heart Kaz&Jesper fic plan to continue working on.

[blossompoet-fanfiction]

what is permanent remains - Jesper Fahey/Wylan van Eck

What do sad boys know about healthy relationships? Wylan has a tendency to overthink, especially when he has to do mercher work. Overthink and worry. And why has Jesper to run late, today?

[1/1 chapter, 3,846 words; overthinking, angst, hurt & comfort]

[restinslices]

Mortality

Jesper Fahey x Spouse (no gender specified) Word count: 2150 Summary: You and Jesper aged differently. You aged as any Otkazat’sya did. Jesper on the other hand is Grisha and ages much slower. As your mortality gets closer and closer, you and Jesper have a much needed talk. Wrote this on my phone at midnight😀

People could say a lot of negative things about Jesper Fahey. 

He was a shit gambler, a flirt, a drunk, he didn't think, he could be selfish at times, he could give you a headache with one sentence, among other things that could make anyone go in the opposite direction. 

But it was impossible to say he wasn't loving. Jesper held onto people and treated everyone like family, even when there were conflicts. There were plenty of times when you and Jesper would have a disagreement, yet he still looked at you like he'd both die and kill for you. Jesper could sometimes make promises he'd easily break for the right price. The promises he made to you though? There was no card game, no shiny gun, no heist, no amount of cash that could make him turn on you. 

Jesper supposed that's how he got himself to where he was now and honestly? He wasn't sure he liked it. 

Was it selfish to say apart of him wished you two never became something more or maybe that he never met you? Was it selfish to look at your aging body and wish he walked away and stayed away after The Ice Court heist? Maybe. He wasn't sure he cared though. 

Aging gave him a tap on the shoulder, but aging slammed into you. That didn't mean you were unattractive in his eyes, it just meant your body felt the stings of aging. Bad knees, hips, shoulder pains, wrinkles, all that was normal and expected. Jesper practically looked the same as he did when you two met. You were closer to death but he felt like the true ghost; forever stuck in a single moment. No changes to himself, only to his environment and the people around him. 

Or maybe even a time loop, but only for himself. Everyone else was free and moved on. Not him though. 

Jesper didn't realize he was staring until you said something, 

“A penny for your thoughts?”. 

“What?”

“You're staring”

“Oh” Jesper said with realization, “an accident”. Partially true. 

He smoothed out the blankets in front of him to distract himself but that worked as well as anyone would imagine. Your face was imprinted on his mind, and although Jesper could've just laid down and went straight to sleep, he knew it'd be all he'd see when he closed his eyes. 

Jesper heard you close and set your book down, then felt your eyes on him. 

“What're you doing?”

“Smoothing these blankets. They're quite wrinkly”

“Why?”

“Why? Why does anyone do anything?”

You sighed, “why won't you look at me?”

“I'm getting rid of the wrinkles on this blanket like I said”

“Because you can't get rid of mine?”. Jesper's hands stopped moving and he finally looked at you and another wave of sorrow hit him. Why did your inevitable death hit him so hard? 

Maybe it was because you were the last one left. 

Kaz, Inej, Wylan, Matthias, they were all gone by now. Matthias’ death was the first hit he received since his mom passed and as time went on the rest of his family, even if not by blood, passed on. Sure, he had Nina but Nina’s home was Ravka. Nina was more often busy than not and she was not the fondest of Kerch. Many times you suggested moving to Ravka for a “change of scenery”. He knew the truth though. You wanted him to get used to living somewhere else so he could be closer to Nina and not alone. You were the last consistent thing attached to his younger life and by some twist of fate, he'd be doomed to outlive majority of the people he met. He wondered if he did something awful in a past life to deserve this. 

“You've gone quiet again Jes”

He shook his head. “I don't know what to say”

“Too much on your brain? Don't know how to get it out?”. He assumed you took his silence as an answer because next you said “just say whatever, even if it doesn't make sense”. 

He took a deep breath then. It's not like you two hasn't talked about this before, but it was usually a small conversation that he'd slip his way out of with some dumb excuse. 

“I have something to do”. “I'm tired”. “Let's go eat”. “I have to go write a letter”. The list went on and on. This time though he couldn't think of an excuse and with limited time, he knew he had to speak to your living body now instead of a tombstone. 

“I don't think I'm ready to do this without you”

“Do what?”

“Live”. It came out breathy and quiet. He could tell he had upset you by how deep your frown was. Or maybe that was another sign of aging. He couldn't tell. 

“I can't do it”. 

“Yes you can”

“I can't”

“Jesper Fahey you can break into a Fjerdan Ice Court, escape, survive months at sea with Kaz Brekker, go toe to toe with every gang in Ketterdam and you still use the words 'I can't’?”. In any other circumstance he would've laughed and made some comment about how amazing he is. He didn't this time though. Nothing really felt enjoyable or funny anymore. Not when you could have some attack at any moment and be gone. 

“You're beautiful,” he said. “Absolutely stunning. I don't think I've ever seen anything as beautiful as you”

“There's the stars and sea yet I’m the most beautiful thing you've seen?”. 

He nodded. “Absolutely”. 

“Is that why you're with me then? My charming looks?”

“You could look like all things wrong with the world and I'd still want you”

“Jesper the poet? I think I like it”. Your fragile hand held his and your eyes locked onto his. “You can live without me-”

“I can't”. The tears he had been fighting so hard to keep away finally slipped. He didn't bother wiping them away, too scared to let go of your hand. “I wanna be able to but I can't”

“Why?”. 

“Why?”, he  repeated. “I just can't”. 

Your thumb rubbing over his hand soothed him for a moment, but only a moment. That calmness died when you spoke again. 

“If this is hard for you, you can go. You don't have to see me like this”

“Where would I go?”, he asked with furrowed brows and a mix of hurt and confusion etched on his face. 

You shrugged. “Ravka maybe? Make it your new home-”

“My home is here. With you”

“You'll have to find a new one when I go”. 

His hand slipped from yours, frustration building in his chest. It all sounded so easy but it was only easy because you were the one dying. You wouldn't have to feel another part of you ripped away. You wouldn't feel anything anymore. He would. 

He'd think about it almost everyday and a hole would form in his chest and pull him into this thick fog and within this fog he'd hear the future. He'd hear a heart monitor go flat. He'd hear your breathing become shallow before it eventually stopped. He'd hear his own crying. Yet you would come along and act as if everything was alright. You'd be calm and fine while he was breaking on the inside. 

“Jesper Fahey, I am going to die and there's nothing you can do about it”. 

“What?”

“Jesper Fahey, I am going to die and there's nothing you can do about it”. 

“Stop”. 

But you didn't stop. You repeated it again and again and he thought he must've been hallucinating and finally reached his breaking point. He covered his ears but you grabbed his hands and intertwined your fingers with his. You opened your mouth but he cut you off with a broken voice. 

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because you don't understand you can't control this”

“I understand fully” he said quickly. “That's the whole problem. Can you stop being calm and show some sort of emotion for once?”

“What do you want me to do? To cry? To think about it and stress myself to a migraine like you do everyday?”. He hated how you looked at him then; with pity. It felt like with one foot in the grave, you'd always use the other to stay near him and soothe him and it made him feel selfish. “You wanna know how I feel?”. He didn't answer but you continued anyway. “I am terrified of death. Faith exists to calm us of this fear but honestly, I'm still scared. I don't know what's next. I don't know how it'll feel. I don't know if I'll see a light or if I'll be in darkness. I don't know how I'll go out and I don't know how it'll feel to take my last breath. I'm terrified but worrying about it everyday? That's not living. I'll be on my deathbed slipping away and all I'll think about is how I should've lived more”

“You are so stressed about me dying but honestly Jes? You're just making yourself live through the inevitable every single day. We should be loving each other now more than ever when we have the time. We're gonna get to my final moments and we'll both have regrets, the only difference is you'll have to live with yours”. 

Jesper couldn't help but let tears fall from his eyes. He knew you were right and that he should be holding you close during this time, but he couldn't help but listen to the tiny voice in his head that drove him insane everyday. Everyday was a reminder that for some unknown reason, he'd live much longer. Years would pass and he'd forget your face and always have to look at pictures or letters to remember you. One day he'd even forget your voice. How long would that take? 10 years? 20? 30? 

The more he thought, the more his breathing became erratic and his vision blurred. Blinking away tears didn't work. They'd just come back. You guided his head to your shoulder before your hand found its way to his back to rub circles on it. Jesper wasn't known to cry, but he cried. Hard. And you let him. When his breathing returned to normal, it wasn't because he was no longer sad. It was because he was exhausted. His eyes and nose had gone red by now and his face felt incredibly sore. 

When he quieted down, you spoke again. “I want to love you while I still can but if you don't want to see what'll eventually happen… I’m… I'm willing to let you go”. It was hard for you to say. He could tell because of how quiet it came out. Were you willing to? Probably. Did you want to? Absolutely not. He didn't need to ask or look at you to know. 

Jesper had a big choice to make. He stayed, spent the rest of your life with you and eventually buried you or he could leave and try to get a jumpstart at a new life. He wouldn't see age continue to eat at you and when your time came, he wouldn't be there. He'd be leaving you alone. He probably wouldn't know exactly when you died. Years would pass and he'd just guess that you were gone. 

Jesper was ashamed of how long it took him to make a decision. Leaving seemed so good. The pain of watching you continue to grow old would be no more, but then he'd be left with another pain; the pain of never seeing you again. Of knowing he abandoned you when all you wanted was to hold him close. You had no family and no notable friends besides him and Nina now. You'd probably be found and with no one to identify you, who knew what would become of your body in Kerch. A body with no name. And he'd become a body with no home. 

“I'm not going anywhere”. He finally lifted his head up to look at you and although he still felt that pang in his heart, he didn't look away and try to avoid your gaze. He just looked at you, mapping every detail of your face so he could look back and remember just how beautiful you were when you're gone. 

“I am so going to miss you”

“Of course you will” you said with a small smile and you finally got a chuckle out of him, even if it was small. 

You didn't have forever. You both knew you were on limited time and one day you'd be apart, but you both promised to love and cherish the time you still had together and maybe, just maybe, you'd see each other in the next life when the sun finally set on the both of you. 

I am feral for this man in the most wholesome way possible. Legit just wanna hold his hand and hear him talk about dumb shit.

[honeii-puff]

In which five times Kaz bakes for the crows

[egret-orchids]

for the love of language

Kaz Brekker was stubborn. When he had his mind set on doing something, he did it. No matter how difficult, no matter how simplistic. He wasn't sure what category 'learning his girlfriend's language' fell into.

Kaz lovingly and painstakingly learns precious few words in Suli just so that he can surprise his Wraith with them.

| AO3 | SOC Sideblog |

word count: 948

It wasn't an unknown fact amongst the Dregs and Crows that Kaz Brekker knew one language, and one language alone.

He was stubborn, and though his rough voice and the hints of an accent that stemmed from southern Kerch were normal for him, hearing him reciting words in Suli was... odd. Jesper recognised the language from the few times he'd heard Inej muttering the melodic syllables, although he suspected most of it was just curses and swears, much like Jesper's messy Kaelish.

Jesper didn't want to run the risk of Kaz murdering him for snooping, but he did regale this to Wylan over cups of tea in the merchling's basement workshop.

"I was just walking past- y'know, because he'd asked me to grab a map for a job, and I hear him mumbling in Suli." Jesper said, sighing dramatically. This elicited a small chuckle from Wylan, who sipped his tea and then replied; "I think he has some sort of plan. He's never bothered learning more than basic decencies in other languages, and even then they're not great in terms of pronunciation."

Jesper nodded. "He tried to say hello to my Da in Kaelish and I'm pretty sure he accidently insulted him." Even if the anecdotes his father told him weren't exactly true, Colm Fahey was probably justified in his distaste. Some words in Kaelish were similar to others, and a slight error in wording could lead a pleasant hello to turn into somebody's mother getting called a whore. And it was also Kaz, who would probably do something like that purposefully; fully aware of what he was doing yet still taking the chance to be an ass.

Wylan smiled at this. "Are you going to ask him about it?" he asked.

Jesper shook his head. "He'd probably break my arms and threaten to gut me and leave my intestines for the crows or something like that."

"It's Kaz, of course he'd say that..." Wylan laughed quietly.

"I certainly wouldn't put it past him." Inej said with a smile from the doorway, and Jesper nearly jumped out of his skin as Wylan waved to her with a small, shy grin on his face.

"Saints, Inej, do you have to do that every time?" Jesper complained, rolling his eyes fondly. Inej didn't reply, simply shrugging and stepping towards the two. She sat on Wylan's workbench and looked at both of them with mock-sternness.

"Kaz has a job for you two. Some merchant from Shu Han." Inej passed Jesper a small, folded slip of paper- Kaz's signature way of informing them all of jobs.

Jesper flicked the note open and cleared his throat. "Shu Han merchant ship docked in Second Harbour- Saints, it's like he doesn't want us around all day today- unloading into the Stadhall. Jesper has the map." he read aloud, and the way Wylan immediately hung on the gunslinger's every word with such affection in his eyes almost made Inej laugh aloud.

Wylan hummed in response. "So this merchant if working with somebody in the Merchant Council, then."

"Yeah, and he's obviously going to be..."

Inej slid off the table and walked away, leaving the other two conversing about Kaz's latest job. It didn't need her skills, and she had a feeling that Kaz wanted her nearby.

She pulled up her hood, opting to meet Kaz, wherever he was. She didn't bother climbing the rafters and jutting beams to get to the window or the roof of the building next door and have to climb around searching for him, not in this weather. Besides, she knew Kaz would either be in his office, or somewhere on the Zentsbridge.

As it turned out, Kaz was leaning on the bridge's railings, gazing into the murky grey-green of the canal. He didn't move as Inej's neared his left shoulder, but he did shift his bad leg slightly. "Hello, Inej. Don't you have a job you need to help out on?" he said quietly, though the slight smile in his voice betrayed his joking manner.

Inej breathed a laugh, leaning on the railing next to him, back to the canal. "I wanted to know what you were planning. You normally make sure I'm with Wylan and Jes just in case either of them get distracted, be it by each other of something else." she replied.

Kaz shrugged. "Who's to say I'm planning something?"

Inej rolled her eyes. "Kaz Brekker, do you need to be so stubborn?"

Kaz tilted his head, meeting her eyes. "No." he said simply. "But stubbornness got me where I am today, and it got you out of the Menagerie, didn't it?"

"My stubbornness or your stubbornness?" Inej chuckled.

Kaz didn't reply at first; instead he moved away from the bridge's railing, and turned to face Inej, face almost expressionless but his eyes were less cold then they normally were.

"Volim te." he whispered, just enough for Inej to hear.

She swore her heart stopped beating for a solid five seconds when he said that.

It was a known fact that Kaz Brekker, that Dirtyhands knew Kerch, and Kerch alone. His accent was southern, from somewhere like Lij, but his language was that of someone born and raised in Kerch.

My mother is Ketterdam, he'd said, she birthed me in the harbour.

"What?" Inej murmured, too surprised.

My father is profit. I honour him daily.

"Volim te." Kaz repeated, and Inej can't help but laugh.

"Your pronunciation is awful, Saints."

Kaz glared at her, but it wasn't serious.

Inej moved towards Kaz, about to hug him. She stopped. "May I?" she breathed.

Kaz nodded slowly, and Inej pulled him into a hug.

"I love you too, Kaz Brekker."

[grey-pastels]

Names

Fandom: Six of Crows

pairing: platonic! Kaz brekker x reader

summary: reader is set on finding out what kaz' name is.

_________________________________________

It was ten bells and the night was just getting started. This might have been a quiet time in any place but not here,not in ketterdam,not in the barrell.

I was currently leading Jesper back to the crow club after having to basically pry the cards from his hands. I had found him in one of the gambling dens,as usual. And he was losing,as usual. Normally I would've just sat next to him,letting him do his thing. But tonight I wasn't in the mood for it. I really didn't want to deal with the speech Kaz would have about him losing all the money again. He would most certainly still hold one but I was just hoping it wouldn't take 10 minutes this time. As we entered the crow club I spotted him sitting in a dark corner,his corner. He glared at us, his usual unamused glare or maybe it was just how his face was stuck by now. When Jesper spotted him he immediately looked away and made a beeline for the bar. I did not. I walked towards him and sat down. I was waiting for him to speak,but of course he didn't. He was waiting for something. Maybe an apology or maybe a simple explanation. I would not give him that,not today. If he wanted it he could ask for it nicely and I might just comply.

"Fancy seeing you here,kazper" I said mockingly.

He was staring at me. He hated it. Ever since I joined the dregs, approximately 3 years ago I had started bothering him with these nicknames. To me it just seemed improbable for someone to name their kid Kaz. I have met jespers and even inejs before. Not many but they existed. So I have made it my goal to get his name. Not for the reason others might want it. I didn't want leverage on him or his past. I just wanted him,to know him. He was a walking mystery to everyone, but not to me. I have tried many names over the years. My personal favourites include kazzie, kazper and kazpian. He didn't show a hint of emotion other than annoyance when I said them so I presumed they weren't right.

He stood up and walked up the stairs. He walked rather fast despite his limp so I had a relatively hard time keeping up. He didn't say anything yet but that didn't stop me. I followed him to his room.  When I closed the door of his office he stood alarmingly close to me. Something Kaz never does. He seemed irritated,by me.

"Why are you so set on knowing my name?"

"Well for starters,kazstration. you know mine. You know me and I know you would never admit to it but i am the closest thing to a friend you have. I am aware inej and jesper are there too but it's different with us. Inej is your faith and jesper your- well actually I am not sure what he is to you"

" You are my crow, an investment. You all are. Not more nor less"

"I don't believe that"

He leaned his head to the side in disbelief. He always hated how stubborn and blunt I can be. I would never change it. It was one of my many talents to help annoy people, annoy him especially. When we first became acquaintances he had said " if you keep that up you won't survive long in the barrel and even shorter in the dregs" I simply smiled at him and continued with my day. Three years later I was still alive and he still disagreed with my ways.

"You are my family,kaz" he almost laughed at that. And  I realised what I had said. It wasnt the fact that I called him my brother, I meant that and I wasn't ashamed of it. But it was the first time I had called him kaz in years. I am not sure why I had done it but it felt right. I needed him to see I was serious and it wasn't another joke.

He kept quiet after that. I didn't expect him to say it back. I didn't need him to. I slightly pressed my palm against his shoulder,shoving him gently out of my way. I could hear his breath hitch for a second but he calmed himself rather fast. I was aware of his aversion to touch and I did my best to avoid physical contact. But now I just needed space and I didn't have the nerve to communicate it. Why would I need to speak my thoughts when he never does? I turned around and opened the door to leave. Before I fully shut it again I spoke up again. "You won't get rid of me, not of my energy either. And one day your gonna have to admit it. Speak the truth. Say that you like me around and perhaps admit it to her aswell,she isn't as patient as me with you and i dont blame her" I didn't need to speak her name, he knew. He always did. " I will see you tomorrow, Kazimir" he made a noise. I shut the door and I was sure I had it. I had his name. I had him.

[heliads]

A Happy Death

Loving Jesper Fahey is not something that should feel complacent or forgettable, but for some reason, that's exactly what it is right now.

masterlist

It is half past nine bells, and Jesper has yet to visit you. This by itself is not enough to damn him, not completely, but today is the anniversary of the first time he ever took you out on a date and he has yet to say a thing about it. You have been waiting for him to do something, anything, to indicate that he has not forgotten you completely, but. Your door still goes unknocked, and the hours only tick by.

He’s out in the city somewhere, you think, finding his reflection on the other side of a glass of spirits or hanging on for one more round of Makker’s Wheel. Wherever he is, it is enough to entertain him for quite a long time, and enough to make him forget about you.

You didn’t want to be like this on your anniversary– sad, empty, riddled with heartache– or on any other day. You’re not a native of the Barrel, weren’t born among its smoky chimneys or bloody alleyways, so you’re not prone to the heartlessness that most residents of Ketterdam can wear like the pinnacle of fashion. You still weave your emotions into everything you do, a shameful habit that today, at least, is teaching you that you must end sooner rather than later.

The problem is that you don't have to disguise your true emotions, not always. Jesper liked that best about you, actually. Said he’d never met someone so real in all his life. Now he’s the one off living life to the fullest, able to do whatever he wants on a whim, and you’re the one lying on your bed, trying to convince yourself that you’re fine, just fine. 

Jesper was one of the first people you met in Ketterdam, certainly one of the first friends you made. Your hometown was small and inconsequential, only able to constrain you and make you feel like you’d never be enough. You ran the second you could, and the well-trodden dirt paths you were used to changed to the rainy pavement of the Barrel in the blink of an eye.

Some would say that was the worst mistake you could ever have made. Half the souls stuck in Ketterdam would have traded everything they had for the life you willingly left. Everyone left over after that would kill to stay on top. No one wants to be the thing in between, the wide-eyed creature with tattered suitcases and quickly fading ideals of what it would mean to be a new girl in a new city.

You ended up running with Brekker’s gang before long. It wasn’t the best, nothing was, but it kept you off the street and that seemed well enough for you. Kaz must have been feeling charitable when he took you in, because you’re mainly there for administrative work, fetching things or tallying sums or tasks that don’t involve blood and bone.

Jesper was there too, of course. He said he loved you from the start, but you don’t think that’s quite true. It took him about a week or so, once he’d seen you under the dim glow of dance hall lighting. You two were there on one of Kaz’s jobs, but the way Jesper smiled when he twirled you was nothing fabricated in the slightest.

And it had been good for a while there, after that. Jesper walked you home and picked you up the next night too, just because he could. He bought you drinks and brought you flowers. It was perfect, for a while, or as close to perfect as anything really gets around here.

The problem was when the relationship lost its novelty. Jesper is a wonderful gambler, excellent at always upping the ante, always risking the odds. He loved you at the start because you were someone new, someone exciting. It should have come as no surprise that he could move on just as quickly as he first found you.

He doesn’t do it out of any malevolent intention, you think. The blame does not lie with either of you, it just. Is. It’s something you can’t change any more than him. We all wear out eventually, our pictures gather dust, and at some point you look around and realize that things have lost the spark they had at the beginning, that you’ve been going through life in the comfort of repetition. Love is not a task to be completed, but that’s what it feels like now.

It hurts, obviously. Everything does. You moved to Ketterdam because you wanted a shock to your system, a thunderous rush of blood to your head. You wanted something different, and you got it, but now everything is slipping back to the same sort of nothingness you’d had before. It is terrible that this feeling could follow you all the way from home and still have your name written all over it. It is awful, that this could only ever be your path to follow, no matter how badly you try to stray.

Imagine for a moment, if you will, that there is a young girl growing up with no one around to truly need her, and that she is you. Imagine that she makes up her mind to move somewhere far away as soon as she’s able, so that her family can spend their time looking for her, not just away, never away. Imagine that she moves to Ketterdam and finally meets a boy that truly pays attention to her, how much of a marvel that must be. 

Imagine that boy is Jesper, and one day, he stops looking. You cannot imagine what to do next. You cannot imagine that it would happen again. You must, though. You must decide how to live without him here beside you.

It’s been exactly six months since you first started dating. No one thought it would last that long; things around here rarely do. If you’re lucky, you can hold onto something for a few weeks, maybe even a month or two. This was something else, something better. You used to think that it’s because you and Jesper were destined for each other, something like eternity, but now it just feels like monotony, and one that neither of you want.

Jesper used to celebrate every anniversary. He gave you flowers after a day, took you out dancing after a week, kissed you at a festival after one month. He once promised you that he’d bring you the very Saints to bless you once six months had passed, but that was at the start, and now you’re staring at the ceiling of your empty room and wondering how you could have possibly strayed so far from what you’d had.

This is not the end. Not yet. We only ever realize we’re in the final steps of some dance when the music has started slowing down. Your little turn about the music box is not over yet. There are still beats left, even as your rotations grow less and less frequent. You still have time until the lid snaps shut and plunges you into darkness once more, although it feels as if the minutes are running out faster than you can count.

Eventually, you give up and go to sleep. It is not a deep sleep, this; you’re awoken by every single pair of boots that thuds down the stairs of the Slat, just in case it’s Jesper come to apologize for being out so late.

He doesn’t come. It is crushing. You wake up the next morning, feeling significantly worse for wear, and he is– fine, actually, he’s fine, laughing with a bunch of his friends in the corner of the room about the crazy night they’d had. He looks up briefly to raise a hand when you emerge from the stairs, but goes back to the conversation just as quickly. Saints.

A hand on your elbow; you whip around to see Inej Ghafa, Ketterdam’s resident mirage. She’s managed to get the slip on you again, appearing out of nowhere to regard you with her cautious dark eyes.

“Is everything alright?” She asks quietly.

Were it anyone else, you’d brush it off, come up with some lie about how you’re just great. Inej knows everything, though. She probably heard you pacing late last night, waiting for someone who would never come.

“No,” you admit, and Inej’s lips purse.

“Jesper?”

You nod to acknowledge her question. “He forgot our anniversary. It was only six months, but still. It hurts.”

Inej casts a glare at the corner of the room where Jesper is still crowing over how he’d managed to win a particularly dangerous round of cards against men who all wanted him dead. “He doesn’t deserve you.”

You sigh. “At this rate, I don’t think I deserve him. If I was worth it, he’d stay around, right?”

Inej’s gaze is sad, and you can’t quite meet it. “Y/N, you know that’s not true. Talk to him, please. Jesper is probably just distracted, I swear he’ll come around if you just tell him how you feel.”

You want to tell her that the problem is that you were a distraction from his real life, not that anything happening in Jesper’s life is a distraction from you, but Inej has her own problems and you can’t ask her to play relationship counselor any more than she already is. You muster up a weak smile and thank her for the chat, then go to work like it’ll make you feel any better.

You do get your revenge in some small way. Usually, you and Jesper meet up for lunch, or if not that then at least once before the day is up. This time, though, you mind your own business, and go out of your way not to run into him. You’re not sure that you could stomach the sight of him so happy, so utterly unaware that he’s giving up on you.

Without you making a conscious choice to seek him out, you actually end up passing a few days before Jesper finds you. You were almost starting to think that he’d give up entirely, but no; four days pass since the morning after your forgotten anniversary and Jesper corners you at the Crow Club. You should have known better than to show up, really, but you were just stopping by for a quick drink and it slipped your mind.

Scarcely had you settled at one of the stools lining the bar when Jesper appeared by your side, one eyebrow raised expectantly. “Would you like to tell me what’s going on, or do I have to guess at it myself?”

“Hello to you too,” you say with a sigh.

Jesper groans. “Don’t give me that. I’m trying to be nice but you’ve been avoiding me, don’t try to deny it. Can you just tell me what I did wrong so I can apologize and we can move on?”

His wording irks you. He’s acting like you’re some kind of puzzle to be solved, a temporary issue that he can handle and then subsequently ignored. You don’t want to be ignored, though. Not again.

“Our six month anniversary was earlier this week,” you say simply.

It’s all that Jesper needs to be reminded of what he’s forgotten. He winces in pain, then turns back to you, the perfect picture of apology. “Saints, Y/N, I’m so sorry. I’ll make it up to you, I swear–”

You cut him off, voice blank. “How?”

Jesper blinks at you. “What do you mean?”

You gesture loosely at him. “How are you going to make it up? Are you going to remember the next anniversary? Are you going to pay me a single shred of attention unless I have to fight to get it?”

“Y/N,” Jesper says desperately, “I messed up, I know that, but it won’t happen again. You’re my whole world, I would never do this on purpose. You have to realize that.”

You tilt your head to the side, considering what he’s said. “I was your whole world. I don’t know if I am anymore. I love you, Jesper, more than anything, but I don’t want to keep being on the sidelines of every great thing you do. I’m counting down the days until you forget about me for good. How long do I have left, Jes? How long until I blend into the background and I’m no longer unusual or interesting enough to catch your eye? What will you do when I’m no longer a bet that calls your focus or a gamble worth the odds?”

Your breath is heaving in your chest, but it feels good to say every single word. “I loved being your favorite,” you continue in a whisper, “but I don’t think I am anymore.”

Jesper’s eyes are wide and terrified. He thinks he’s going to lose you, you realize. You don’t know if he already has or not. “I was wrong,” he says slowly, “wrong to make you feel like you were anything but my priority. I know I don’t deserve a second chance, not if I’ve been making you feel like this, but– Y/N, I love you. Really, I do. Let me try to show it again.”

He’s taken your hand, his own fingers trembling as he links them with yours. You look at him and you realize that he’s being genuine. A pause, then:  “Alright, Jesper. One more chance.”

Jesper’s smile is back on his face in a flash. “You mean it?”

“Yes,” you say with a laugh, “I do. I don’t want to leave you. That’s the whole reason I was so upset.”

“It’ll never happen again,” he promises.

You watch your face as he smiles back at you. His gaze is centered on you, pleased and happy, but there’s something else there, hidden in the back of his eyes. Relief, yes, but more than that– complacency. An expectation that the normal roles have been followed. He did not really think that anything else would happen, even though it terrified him that he had come so close to losing you. 

So you sit there, let him buy you another drink, and you think to yourself:  what is the line, and how do you know when he crosses it? How will you let him come crawling back to you when he does? That is the worst part of love, you suppose, how you would fight for it even after it died.

Looking over at Jesper, though, how he stares at you like the rising sun, you think you’d let him kill you anyway. It’s a worthy death. Perhaps that is why you let him stay each and every time.

grishaverse tag list: @rogueanschel, @deadreaderssociety, @cameronsails, @mxltifxnd0m, @story-scribbler, @retvenkos, @mayfieldss, @eclliipsed, @gods-fools-heroes, @bl606dy, @auggie2000, @baju69, @crazyhearttragedy

[littlelcvestory]

60, wesper!!

hi rae ily

60. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you’re trying to seduce me.

cw for suggestive content since they are in love, your honor (no smut!)

**disclaimer, i have no idea how business and merchant council stuff works so please ignore my sad attempts

—

Wylan had given up on hiding his yawns at least half an hour ago.

He loved Jesper’s voice, don’t get him wrong, he loved when he leaned into his ear either to whisper sweet nothings or make suggestive comments that ended with Wylan and Jesper tangled together in bed. But hearing ledger after ledger and document after document from the Merchant Council read to him for too long was enough to make Wylan sleepy.

Jesper stood across from his desk, pacing the room and flipping through the documents in his hand and reading off the printed and handwritten notes on them. 

“ ‘...Fifteen percent of assets need to be transferred from von Thunen’s estate to the Ketterdam Treasury, which are to be placed under the loans vault…’ ”

Wylan got out from his desk and crossed to the comfy armchair in the corner and sat as languidly as possible, setting his eyes on Jesper.

The amount of love Wylan had for the man in front of him was so immense that sometimes he felt like one of his bombs when he lit the fuse– so ready to explode. Wylan would lay down his life for Jesper. 

And now, he thought giddily, I’m going to marry him.

Jesper’s beautiful hands used to be decorated with an array of different rings, but since Wylan proposed to him a week ago (actually, Jesper had also proposed the same night Wylan did, which ended with them both laughing hysterically in his mother’s garden. Safe to say, they were the happiest men in Ketterdam that night) Jesper had removed all rings except for the emerald engagement ring he’d given him. Wylan’s was sapphire, Jesper’s Ma’s ring.

Looking at them made Wylan so unbelievably happy. He was going to marry the love of his life.

His fiancé looked up from the papers in his hand. Wylan held his gaze firmly, peering at him through his eyelashes.

“I’m listening,” Wylan said. 

He was not.

Jesper’s soothing baritone blessed his ears for another two minutes before Wylan grabbed Jesper’s left hand and kissed the ring on it. He held his hand gently, moving his lips to kiss each of his knuckles.

“...Shu Han has agreed to– oh.”

Wylan kissed his wrist. “Keep reading.”

He tried, to Wylan’s amazement, but his voice faltered and he cleared his throat when Wylan dragged his other hand up his leg, resting it at Jesper’s hip.

“Wylan.”

“Yes, love?”

The love in Jesper’s eyes was undeniable. Wylan looked up through his lashes again, staring at his fiancé with a small pout on his face.

“If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you’re trying to seduce me," Jesper said, affection lacing his words.

Wylan pulled the hem of Jesper’s shirt out of his trousers. “Is it working?”

“Saints, Wy,” he gasped when Wylan’s hands found the skin of Jesper’s waist. “Yes.”

Sleep had left Wylan and was instead replaced with pure desire. He leaned into Jesper’s ear, pulling him close, and lowered his voice. “And what are you going to do about it, Jes?”

Jesper’s weight buckled into him, the papers fluttering to the floor. Wylan laughed softly.

“What’re you gonna do, love?”

“I think,” Jesper breathed as Wylan touched his lips to the soft skin of his neck, “I’m going to take you to our bedroom and kiss you senseless.”

“Why wait until the bedroom?”

This time, Jesper laughed. “I love you, Wy.”

“I love you too.” 

Their lips met, the documents forgotten. All there was was the soft press of their kisses, their breaths mixing and clothes falling to the floor.

It was everything Wylan wanted, and more.

--

my sillies :)) i love them thank you rae for giving me an excuse to write domestic wesper

i was going to put this on ao3 but its not even 600 words lol

[w1shes43]

Bling to the Ring [J.F]

Jesper Fahey x fem!reader

Summary: Fake marriage, you're already dating, but the place you're going to go on a heist allows only allows a specific married couple.

Taglist: @heliads

A/N: This took forever, but I hope you enjoy!

Masterlist

----☆----

The sound of loud gunshots being fired off in the distance never seemed to faze you. You have lived in Ketterdam for a long time, and that sound is like hearing your everyday schoolbell.

And it definitely helps that a certain sharpshooter is always doing that. Practising his aim, twirling his pearl handled revolvers any time he has the chance. You've become immune to the sound at this point.

Walking down the dimly litted streets, you find yourself strangely calm. You don't know why. Perhaps this is one of your good days, but usually, this means something bad is about to go down. You shrug of all thought of that and walk into the Barrel.

You find yourself scanning the area to look for a certain sharpshooter. You find him at a table in the corner with a drink in his hand. To everyone but the keen eye, it looked as if he was just enjoying his drink, but at close inspection, he was holding his revolvers, ready to shoot at any given moment.

You were debating whether or not to suprise him and see how that would go, but you concluded that wouldn't go so well. You walked towards him, with a small smirk on your face, and sat across of him.

He looked up and locked eyes with you. You could see that he instantly calmed down and loosened up

"Thought you'd be playing cards over on the other table, but seems you've chose a more calm evening, eh?" You joked as you pointed to the drink in his hand. He chuckled and passed it to you, and you took a sip.

He pretended to ponder for a bit and then answered, "Decided to wait for my girlfriend, you know? Didn't want to start anything fun without her. It would be too inconsiderate."

"Well, I'm sure she is thankful Jes." You laughed, putting down the drink to hold his hand.

Over the past few months that you've been together with Jesper were the happiest you've ever been. He always seemed to make you laugh at any given moment and never forgot to include you in heists or anything under the sun.

After chatting along to various topics with Jesper, in your peripheral vision, you saw Inej walking swiftly towards you. You turned your head to greet her, and she nodded your way.

"Sorry to interrupt your moment, but Kaz wants us upstairs in his office." She said, smiling at the both of you and left as quickly as she came.

"She did interrupt our moment, but I didn't want to mention it. She might stab me in my sleep." Jesper gulped but quickly replaced it with a wholehearted laugh. You just rolled your eyes and shook your head with a small smile. He stood up and offered you his arm, you gladly took it.

At Kaz's office, he explained to the three of you that he planned a heist. The reward would be a lot of kruge. Kaz said this information first with a small smirk. He mentioned it being in a huge vault at a heavily guarded place. Only a few people are allowed in, and it's the people who added kruge to the vault.

The catch is that the people who built it only know that it was a married couple who added kruge to the vault. According to Kaz's source, they don't know what the married couple look like but do know their names.

Clearly, he expected you and Jesper to work on this as the "married couple." Inej would sneak in and take out some of the guards to clear your path of entry. But not before you pass the gates with security checks, Kaz made sure to enter you both into the system.

You got yourself prepared before going on the heist. Memorising the names and backstories just in case you were asked, you can only hope Jesper remembered his, too.

You were waiting out on the balcony, listening to the calm, quiet night before you, just hoping everything would go well for the heist. While in thought, you heard footsteps behind you. You knew who it was so you didn't bother turning around and instead answered out loud.

"Hey Jes. You ready?" You asked, turning around and leaning your back on the railings.

"Me? Not ready? Please, do you know me?" He pointed at himself with a smile, "I'm always ready." He laughed and went to lean beside you on the railings. "You doing alright there, love?"

You nodded, "Just hoping this will go well. It usually does, but I just want you to be safe."

He gazed at you intently and pulled you into a hug. You laid your head on his chest and listened to his heartbeat as he spoke, "Come on, we can do this Y/N, we always have." He pulled apart slightly but kept one hand on your waist and the other on your cheek, "Don't back out on me now, darling." He winked, and his actions easily made you to form a smile.

The place where the vault was kept was this mansion like building. The vault was kept underground, so the building on top was just for show or more like security. Trees overlapping the entryway to the building, and layers of gates and guards surrounded the place.

You and Jesper stood to the side, hiding behind a tree right before you entered.

"Ok, about more than a dozen or so guards guarding the front gate." You said, and Jesper nodded. "Stay calm, and it'll all go smoothly."

"My dear wife, let's go get that kruge."

Taking a deep breath, you both walked together to the front gate. You examined the area and saw only a few other people, probably rich people, stuffed with tons of money at their fingertips. The guards asked for identification and checked their names in the system of more paperwork.

When it went to you two, Jesper gave the identification papers, and the guard checked it. He looked at both of you cautiously and you could sense the suspicion.

"We're older than we look," Jesper chuckled, "My wife and I have... uh ... just been eating healthy. For the 34 years we've been together!" You both smiled through the awkwardness and hoped that the guard wouldn't suspect anything.

He gave you both one more glance but nodded, smiled, and handed back the papers. You both thanked the guard and quickly went through the gate. You let out a breath you didn't realise you've been holding in. Well, that's stage one complete, you thought.

Walking past the other gates was a piece of cake after that. Inside the building was less security, so there was less interrogation. It was a huge hall with lots of stairs going up, but what the way down was what you were looking for.

Blending in with the crowd, you and Jesper managed to get down the stairs of the building. Walking past the guards and into the vault room. It was well lit and huge corridor, rows of big vault doors on either side, but they weren't important. The important one you were after was the one with the green vault door, now that had the cheddar. That was at the very end of the corridor, aka the biggest vault there.

Earlier, Kaz had told you that the vault had a pass code but also a word identification. You looked around, and it was surprisingly quiet. You thought there would be at least a few guards, but none? You turned to Jesper, and he was already looking at you, all written on his face the exact same confusion you had.

"Maybe they went for a coffee break?" He laughed, nudging you along to follow him towards the vault.

"Sure and leave the vaults with more than a million kruge unguarded? It seems a bit off to me." Inquiring as you scanned around once more, while Jesper punched in the passcode and word identification.

A hissing sound was made as the passcode punched in caused the vault doors to open. You both glanced at each other eagerly and looked back to see what you had been waiting for. The vault doors opened and you expected to see stacks upon stacks of money.

Instead, you were greeted with two faces, the faces of the couple you were impersonating.

"Who are you, and how did you know the passcode to the vault?" The shorter woman shouted as the man beside her, assuming her husband started to come closer to the both of you, drawing a gun from his right pocket.

"Well, this is awkward," you said worryingly, "perhaps we should start running if we want to not get shot." Starting to take off in the opposite direction back up the stairs.

"Yeahh, good plan. I'll cover fire for us." Jesper said, The man started shooting at both of you, and Jesper shot back with his revolvers.

Suddenly, the alarm was set off, and you knew this was a mess. You could hear lots of footsteps and people shouting to either get out of the way or that they went this way.

You turned a corner instead of going to the stairs, which was your original plan, and went down towards the basement instead. Jesper was still shooting at some guards behind you. You saw an elevator down the hall, which would lead to the back of the building, your escape.

Jesper pulled you into a room, well, it turned out to be a closet. It was dark and stuffy, and the only light source was from the small window above the both of you. Brooms and dust pans were brushing up against you, and you were trying to wriggle out of the small space.

You could hear the guards running past, calling out to find out where you and Jesper were. It is literally the most cliche place to find the robbers, but you were glad they didn't think of it.

"Right, well, I'm not sure how we ended up like this. I'm not complaining though, got a great view from this angle." Although it was a bit dark, you could make out the outline of his smug grin.

"Jesper, as much as I love you, I would really like if we were able to live through this."

"Don't worry, I promise you, you won't get hurt. I won't let you get hurt. In fact, if anyone lays a hand on you I'll-" You cut him off with putting a hand over his mouth as a shadow of a guard was near the door. You hoped he wouldn't open it, and you thought he was about to until you heard the other guards call him over.

You lowered your hand from his mouth and let out a sigh, but Jesper quickly took your hand and placed a kiss on the back of it. "Couldn't let that opportunity go to waste." He winked, "I think the coast is clear we should be able to go now."

You swear this man always wants to give you butterflies every chance he can get. But you can't deny that you do enjoy it.

He opens the doors carefully, and you both make a run for the elevator on the left. Running as fast as you both could go, and this reminded you of your very first heist. It didn't go as planned, but you still enjoyed the adrenaline from it, maybe because you were with Jesper or because you enjoyed the feeling of knowing you'll stay alive at the brink of death.

As you entered the elevator, you pressed the buttons to the back of the building. The elevator wasn't a normal one. It could go all different sides if it wished. The owner of the building thought it would be useful to use to go whenever and wherever he wanted in the building.

You waited impatiently for the doors to close and stood at the side of the elevator while Jesper stood on the left side. Inej is supposed to meet you back outside at the back of the building, with the money, which you don't have.

You rubbed a hand over your face, annoyed. Well, there goes your chance of joy with bathing in some kruge. As if you'd get most of it anyway, Kaz would probably take most of it, to be honest.

Just as the doors were about to shut, you heard something you never knew would frighten you until now. A deafening noise of shock and horror that would twist your stomach into tight knots that would almost make it snap into two. The scene of crimson red blood slowly showing up.

The bullet came at the speed of light, and both of you never expected it. The sound deafened your ears and and everything was blocked out. A ringing covered your ears as you looked over at Jesper, whose normally grey shirt now started flooding with red.

"Well, this was definitely unexpected." He tried to make a joke and chuckle, but he collapsed onto the ground. With shaky knees, you rushed towards him, worry scanning all over your face, and even your eyes started to water.

The doors were closed, and the elevator started moving to the back. You checked him, and thank saints he wasn't shot in the heart, but it was dreadfully close, leave it untreated for too long, and he would die. You rushed to take off the jumper you had on and wrapped it tight around his chest to try stop the bleeding.

"Jes, you're going to be okay, I promise." You tried to reassure him, but honestly, you weren't sure yourself how much time was left.

"I can't die. I'm too amazing," he laughed painfully, so you put a hand on his shoulder to steady him. At this point, you're hoping the elevator moves fast to get him to safety.

"Y/N, I'm serious if anything happens to me. I just need you to know -" he started to speak, but you cut him off. "Jes, please, stop.. I need you to be safe. You're going to be okay." You looked around, hoping that Inej would be here soon to help both of you.

The elevator stopped, and you were now at the back of the building. You helped Jesper up, slinging one of his arms around your shoulder to help carry his weight. And you tried your hardest not to lean too much pressure, so he wouldn't hurt as much. You heard more voices, that of guards, and you both knew it would only a matter of time before they get to you and Jesper.

You tried to hurry to hide behind the old shed on the right side, but you weren't fast enough. And Jesper was getting worse by the minute. You didn't know what was going to happen next. All you saw were guards with flashlights running from your left towards you. And you tried to stop them by pulling out one of Jespers' guns, but suddenly, you felt something sharp hit your leg.

You looked down to see a dart of some type. It was one of those darts that can knock you out flat in just a bit. And you looked back up to Jesper, and he knew you wouldn't be able to carry him up for much longer. He grabbed the gun from your hand and started shooting at the rest of the guards who were armed. You felt dizzy, and you tried to stay awake and keep your balance. You couldn't just leave Jesper by himself. You needed him to be alive more than yourself right now.

Right before your unconsciousness' desire to take over won, you saw a figure taking out the guards and helping Jesper up. And this figure went towards you too, and you tried to get a better look at their face, but the sleep took over.

...

Dark. That was it. All you could sense was your unconsciousness. The feeling of falling asleep but not on purpose. You felt something down in the deep darkness, some hope, some light. Some hope that everything is going to be fine, and you wanted that.

You wanted that so much that nothing mattered anymore except that you wanted everything to be fine, go back to messing around with your friends, be in Ketterdam safe and sound. And what you wanted the most was for your Jesper to be safe and sound.

So you moved. You moved towards the hope. The shining brightness that you so wish to achieve.

You opened your eyes and realised you were in a room, not on the ground outside. But in your room, your bed. You peered around, the light stinging your eyes a bit, but after a while, it adjusted.

Suddenly, you're hit with memories of what happened earlier. You were taken back to The Barrel, but by who? Maybe that mysterious figure was someone you knew?

But right now, that didn't matter. You needed to find Jesper. You needed to know if he was ok and safe. You ran out of your room, hoping to find him.

Suddenly, you bumped into something, or actually someone. This figure turned around, and it was Inej. You gasped in relief and hugged her, she returned it and you had to ask.

"Inej, what happened? I blacked out. Where is Jesper? Is he ok? And-"

"Y/N. Calm down. Everything is fine, Jesper is in his room," You were about to say something, but she cut you off knowing what you were about to ask, "Recovering. And yes, he is fine. You can go see him."

You thanked Inej and quickly made your way to Jesper's room. You took a deep breath and opened the door, and there he was sitting against the headboard of the bed. He had bandages wrapped all over his chest, torso, and arms. It took you a minute to register that he was really ok and alive, and when you both made eye contact, you broke down.

You staggered over to him and hugged him so tight. You never ever wanted to let him go. Your eyes flooded with tears as they ran down your cheek, soaking through his bandages, he returned your hug and kissed your forehead.

"I'm so sorry! I knew something like this was going to happen, and I-" you bawled out into his chest, but he stopped you, taking your face with both of his hands gently and looking you in your eyes.

"Hey! Hey, calm down. It's ok, it's over. I'm here, I'm here with you," he wiped your tears with his thumbs, "right now."

Tracing his thumb over a scratch you had on your face from the heist, he clicked his tongue in annoyance, "I'm gonna get those guys back for hurting you."

"Me? I should be getting them for what they did to you. You're in bandages, love."

"Eh, it's nothing I can't take." He chuckled, "But I do need one thing from you that will make it all better." He whispered, and you knew exactly what he meant as you leaned in towards him.

A kiss was all it took to heal the sharpshooter. He smiled into the kiss because he knew now that he loved you more than ever. And you would always be there for each other, knowing that in his heart was everything to him.

Pulling away, he took the palm of your hand and kissed it, turning it over and looking directly on the ring finger. Rubbing a thumb over it, he pondered for a bit and then looked into your loving eyes.

"I should really add a real ring to that finger now, shouldn't I?"

[a-simple-gaywitch]

Weather the Storms

Wylan van Eck x Jesper Fahey

Summary: my take on the van Eck reveal with Show!Wesper

Word Count: 2104

Warnings: Hurt/Comfort, mention of Jan van Eck's shitty parenting

“Do you think I'd give up?

That this might've shook the love from me

Or that I was on the brink?

How could you think, darlin', I'd scare so easily?” - Francesca, Hozier

~

“Are there any questions?” Kaz turned towards the three Crows sitting behind him. 

Nina raised her hand and said, “Yeah, I’ve got one. Who’s the job for?”

“The Merchant Council. Specifically Jan Van Eck.”

“The Merchant Council?” Jesper scoffed. “They’re not gonna pay up.”

“They will,” Kaz stated. “Because we have insurance.”

“Insurance?” Nina asked. 

Kaz turned his gaze on Wylan. “Jan Van Eck’s son. Everyone, Wylan Van Eck.”

Wylan felt the world crash around him. He knew people were talking, but it all sounded like they were underwater. Wylan had known, of course, that Kaz had known who he was. Who his father was. But he had assured Wylan he wouldn’t tell anyone his secret. Amidst the panic unfurling in Wylan’s chest, there was burning anger. His eyes narrowed ever-so-slightly as he leveled his gaze at Kaz. 

“Fuck you,” he hissed out before jumping up from his stool, knocking it down in the process. He knew Nina and Jesper were watching him, but he didn’t care. He needed to get away from the suddenly too stuffy bar. He pushed through the door connecting the club to the Slat and rushed up the stairs to the room he now shared with Jesper. 

Wylan slammed the door behind him and began pacing, muttering to himself. But he wasn’t alone for long. 

~

Jesper’s head was swirling with emotions: shock, betrayal, anger. Anger towards Kaz, anger towards Wylan. How could they keep this from him? After Wylan’s abrupt departure, Jesper followed after him, not hearing anything Kaz was saying to him. 

He pushed open the door to the shared room and found Wylan pacing. 

“Wylan.”

He spun around. “Jes-”

“You lied to me.”

Wylan looked shocked. Jesper scoffed internally. Why should he look so upset when he’s the one who lied?

“I never lied to you,” Wylan said, taking a step closer to Jesper. 

“Oh, no? Because from where I stand, this feels like a pretty big fucking lie! What, did you not trust me?”

“No, Jesper, you know I trust you-” Suddenly they were both yelling. 

“Then why wouldn’t you tell me?”

“I was going to, I just-” He cut himself off, his eyes becoming glassy. 

“When, Wylan? When were you going to tell me? When were you going to tell me that your father is one of the richest Merchers in Ketterdam?” When Wylan didn’t answer, Jesper scoffed and shook his head. “What are you even doing in the Barrel? Why would you choose to be here when you could go back to a big mansion on Gildenstraat?”

Wylan’s posture straightened and he took a deep breath. Definitely a Merch, Jesper thought bitterly. 

“You don’t know what it was like in that house, Jesper. No one chooses life in the Barrel.” And with that, Wylan walked out of the room, slamming the still-open door behind him. The door slammed so hard the oil lamp on the bedside table rattled dangerously. 

Jesper huffed and flopped down on the bed. 

~ 

Jesper was languishing in his room, twirling his revolvers around. He was still angry- no scratch that, he was still furious, at Wylan for keeping such a big secret. He was also mad at Kaz for not telling him earlier. But he was thinking. It just didn’t make sense. Why would Wylan be in the Barrel if his father was one of the most influential men on the Council? 

Ketterdam’s never really felt like home to me.

What was Wylan’s childhood like? Was it really so bad he felt unloved? He thought about the look in Wylan’s eyes when Jesper found out he couldn’t read, the fear that radiated off of him. He thought about Wylan’s tendency to flinch at loud, sudden movements, like the yelling common around the Barrel or the thump of Kaz hitting his cane against a table. He thought about how Wylan panicked any time his neck was touched.

He was missing something. Something huge.

Jesper was also starting to get worried. Night was falling and Wylan still had not returned to their room. Jesper may be angry, but he still cared about the younger man. What if he went back to his father’s house? What if he got jumped in the street? What if another gang attacked him? What if-

“Jesper.”

He jolted at the sound, but relaxed when he saw who had called his name. “Inej!” She was standing by his window, leaning against the sill. Jesper took three big strides across the room and wrapped her in a hug. “When did you get in?”

“This morning,” she replied. “Kaz had me running errands all day. Otherwise I would have dropped by sooner.”

Jesper’s hands fell back to his sides. “I’m assuming he caught you up on this new job?”

“He did.” She took a seat on the bed. “I know you’re angry, but you have to talk to him.”

“Who, Kaz?” Inej shot him a look. Jesper sighed and sunk onto the bed next to her. “You knew? Stupid question, of course you knew.”

Inej glanced to the side before saying, “Kaz had me tail him for a while, when he first surfaced in the Barrel. He couldn’t figure out what he was doing working in the tannery. So he sent me looking for information at the Van Eck estate.”

“What did you find?”

She sighed. “Not much. Van Eck pays his employees too well to get information out of them. All they would tell me was that the boy was attending music school in Belendt.”

“But- He’s not?”

“And that’s why I turned to the rumor mill. The only one that seemed to stick was that he had run off with one of his tutors.” She saw the hurt behind Jesper’s eyes. “But I wouldn’t put any kruge on that. Go talk to him. Ask him.” 

Jesper scoffed. “He doesn’t want to talk to me.”

Inej took one of Jesper’s hands in her own. “Jes, I see how much you care for each other. How much you love each other. Don’t let him slip away because of a fight. Life brings us many storms. Love is what gets us through them.”

~

Jesper practically flung himself down the stairs of the Slat, the need to talk to his boyfriend practically burning him from the inside out.

“He’s not here.”

Jesper spun around to see Kaz leaning on his cane by the bar. “But you know where he is?”

Kaz was silent for a minute before sighing. “Look, Jes. I hadn’t predicted that you and Wylan would grow as close as you have. And I assumed he had already told you.”

Jesper knew that was as close to an apology as he would get from Kaz. “Where is he?”

“The workshop.” As Jesper wrenched open the door, Kaz called, “Oh, and Jesper? Don’t fuck it up.”

A small smile crossed Jesper’s face. He may not say it in as many words, but Kaz cares about his Crows.

~

When Jesper reached the workshop, he started pounding on the door, panting. “Wylan! Wylan, it’s me! Please open the door!”

Jesper heard the locks being undone, but was not greeted with the face of his boyfriend. Instead, he was met with an angry-looking Nina Zenik. 

“Nina? What are you doing here? Where’s Wylan?”

Nina crossed her arms over her chest. “Kaz sent me to check on him after he ran out of the Slat. His little heart was going so fast I thought he would go into cardiac arrest. When I finally caught up to him, he told me that the two of you got into a fight. And you know what the first thing he said to me was? He apologized. He apologized for who his father is, something he can’t control any more than you or I,” she jabbed at Jesper’s chest, “can control being born Grisha.” Nina sighed and took a step back. “I don’t know what his childhood was like, but Wylan’s been abused. Profoundly abused.”

Jesper looked down at his feet, his face flushing with shame. “I, um, I came to apologize.”

Nina opened the door a bit more and stepped to the side. “Well, he’s asleep now. I had to calm him with how much stress and anxiety he had.” As Jesper walked down the stairs of the lab, Nina said, “Oh, and Jesper? You break his heart or hurt him again in any way, I will make you piss your pants in front of the entire club. Understood?” After Jesper nodded, Nina walked out of the workshop, slamming the door behind her. 

Jesper walked over to the shitty little mattress in the corner of the room where Wylan was laying. He sat on the edge of the makeshift bed, brushing his hair away from his eyes. Even in his Grisha-induced sleep, there was a divot of worry between his brows. Jesper reached out and smoothed over the worry-line. 

Wylan started to stir. He rubbed at his eyes. “Jesper?”

“Hey, Novice,” Jesper said, smiling at his boyfriend. He grazed Wylan’s cheek with the back of his hand. 

“What-what are you doing here?” Wylan asked, sitting up. “I thought you were angry.”

Jesper took a deep breath. “I was, at first. But it wasn’t so much you I was mad at, more the situation,” he admitted. At Wylan’s confused expression, he continued, “For as long as I can remember, people have been keeping things from me. Kaz especially. I’m always the last to know about plans, about jobs, about secrets. And you know how I tend to act on impulse.”

Wylan looked down at where Jesper had taken his hand and linked their fingers together. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. 

“Hey.” Jesper tilted Wylan’s head up so he could look in his eyes. “I’m the one who should be apologizing. You’re right, no one chooses life in the Barrel. I should have heard you out. I should have listened.”

Wylan took a shuddering breath. “Wylan van Eck is dead. He died in the harbor three years ago, and was reborn as Wylan Hendricks.”

“What? Wylan, what are you talking about?”

Wylan looked up at the ceiling, blinking rapidly. He exhaled shakily before saying, “He told me he was sending me to a music school in Belendt. He sent me with two of his staff. Once we were on the boat and far enough out into the harbor, they tried to kill me. The only thing I could do was jump off the boat and swim.” Wylan shivered and squeezed Jesper’s hand, and Jesper wrapped his free arm around his shoulders. “The water was so cold. I thought I would drown out there. But I made it to shore. I survived. My father tried to have me killed, and I survived.” he let out a bitter, hollow laugh. 

“I’m sorry, Wy,” Jesper said, rubbing his shoulder. “I had no idea.”

“I didn’t want to tell you because I was scared,” he admitted. “I was scared you’d see me as some dumb Mercher’s kid in way over their head. I was scared you’d leave me.” Wylan started picking at a hangnail as the air between them grew static. 

Jesper swallowed back the lump in his throat. “Wylan-”

“I-I’m not trying to guilt you into staying, if you want me to move out, I will. I’ll start packing my stuff-”

“Whoa, whoa, Wylan! Who said anything about leaving or moving out?”

Wylan looked up at Jesper, his eyes misty. “You don’t want me to move out?”

“No,” said Jesper, cupping Wylan’s face in his hands. “I want you to stay. I want you to come back home. You mean the world to me, Wy. No little argument is going to stop me from loving you.”

“You love me?” he whispered, almost as if he was afraid it wouldn’t be true if he said it too loud. 

Jesper smiled. “Yeah, Wylan, I love you.” Saying it out loud was probably the easiest, most thrilling thing Jesper’s ever done. More than rolling the dice, more than pulling the trigger. And seeing Wylan’s face light up in a smile made it all worth it. 

“I love you too, Jes.”

Jesper kissed Wylan’s forehead, gripping both of his hands. “Can we agree, no more secrets between each other?”

“Yeah. No more secrets.” 

Jesper laughed, giving Wylan’s lips a quick peck. “Let’s get back to the Slat before Nina makes Kaz send a search team, yeah?”

[aphroditestummyrolls]

Not me with a new wip idea I CANTTTTT

[delusionalgirlwritingfanfic]

So apparently, I'm never leaving my hyper fixation on the grisha verse yet again. I have an oc one shot that I had not planned on writing but loved too much not too keep and will eventually realse it because it's been sitting at already six pages long, I wanted to knock it out. However, ignoring the rabling, I am taking requests for Kaz Brekker slash any crow ideas and Nikolia Lantsvo. School has restarted college is tame as of thus far I will try my best to keep up if y'all want anything.

[changenamelater]

A Kanej One-shot; Lingering

Inej has never been one to linger. Always jumping from one thing to the next, rooftop to rooftop, caper to caper. Lingering gets you caught. She knows this.

Then why is it that she can’t seem to make herself look away?

Kaz is sitting by the large window of the caravan, leaning over a small desk as he works in a scuffed-up leather notebook that he tracks finances in while away from the barrel.

There’s nothing unusual about this, but she finds herself admiring the furrow between his brows as he works in his head before scratching it onto the page in front of him. How if something stumps him, his eyes quickly flit up, where the falling sun could catch them and Inej could almost see his pupil, and just as quickly land back onto the paper, the equation solved.

Here, where his coat is hooked to the back of his chair because of the Ravkan heat, and his sleeves are rolled to his elbows. Normally pristinely pressed shirts are now travel creased, and once greased-back hair has since curled and fallen onto his forehead due to the humidity. He blows it out of his eyes, his focus not splitting. It had gotten longer in the time he’s been here, she notes. It suits him here.

In a different reality, the sun would have suited him, for it welcomes him like a familiar stranger. Inej knows if she was only closer, she could see sweat shining his face, and faint freckles on the bridge of his nose from a past life, not yet faded.

The curtaining daylight dances across him, laughing with mirth as it washes over him. There he is, bathed in orange light in her worn wood caravan, surrounded by warm and colorful spices, rugs and silks, completely unaware of its acceptance of him there.

He spoke then, not turning from his work.

“Hello Inej.” His mouth is slightly quirked, and she can hear the hint of amusement in his voice.

This is why you never linger.

“Kaz.”

Well, this is just embarrassing on her part.

Shaking herself from her thoughts, she joins him at the desk, scanning the the little book, and strictly ignoring his eye contact.

Ever attuned with her, Kaz extends an escape through quiet explanations of the numbers laying in front of them. In their own little world carved from her space, Kaz rests his hand by hers, letting the touch linger.

[ri0tforcr0ws]

hi tumblr moots!!

just wanted to share my new wesper oneshot! Please read the tags before reading <3

[sissytobitch10seconds]

Birdsong: Hollow Moon

Fandom: Grishaverse: Six of Crows Summary: Jesper likes taking little odd jobs, they let him meet new people. Very pretty people, that he likes collecting. Despite the fact that he already has four of them waiting for him back home, he can't help but flirt with the woman that just walked into his friend's bar. Warnings: implied unhealthy relationships, implied ableism, alcohol, and implied sexual content Word Count: 6,388 Ship(s): Nina Zenik/Jesper Fahey/Kaz Brekker/Wylan Van Eck/Inej Ghafa/Matthias Helvar

Archive link!

A/N: I edited and got this ready to be uploaded on the same day that I'm posting it so if there are typos and spelling errors please be kind to me because I wasn't able to spend as much time on it as I wanted. I hope that you guys enjoy this installment! Stay sissy and bitchy everyone <3

Jesper Fahey had been taking odd jobs for as long as he could remember. Back when he was living with his father, across the country from where he was now, he had always signed up to do whatever had sounded interesting. Several of the farmhands that were the same age as him at that time had dedicated jobs that they had to check on every day, but Colm understood that wasn’t right for his son. Jesper was allowed to drift from job to job as long as he completed the tasks correctly and on time. It was what had worked best for him, which is why his schooling had struggled so much before he had the supporte he needed from his partners.

Jesper’s favorite job was working with the local theater near where he lived. It was the first place that he had managed to secure a job while trying to figure out what he wanted to do with his life now that he was no longer twenty miles from the nearest other living person. Poppy was the child of a family friend of theirs and had taken him in, but had also pushed him towards the theater. 

He liked acting well enough, but memorizing the lines under the more strict directors that wouldn’t let him improvise was dull so he had to make sure that he avoided them. That limited the amount of acting jobs that he was allowed to take, but he was good when it came to the props as well. The stage crew was always so light that he was allowed to drift from job to job to job while completing about half of each. Sometimes he would leave them and someone else would come and pick them up, sometimes he found himself scrambling to get them finished the night before they had to be used. He liked the rush-rush-rush and changing nature of the theater jobs. It was alway something different and new, never the same show and rarely ever with the same premise.

He had a soft spot for the specific theater that he had been working in not just because it was the first place that really let him thrive as an adult, but also because it was the job that he had when he met Matthias. The other man had just barely moved from Denmark and was struggling to speak English, let alone hold down a job that required him to decipher the language through reading as well. Jesper had been a wonderful conversationalist and helped him adapt to a culture that he didn’t really understand.

They had both been rather lost in the big city, Jesper having grown up on a farm and the new place that Matthias lived being so different than his last one. It didn’t take long before they became as thick as thieves, and then only a week after that was when they had shared their first kiss. Things had been a little complicated in the moment since Jesper was also navigating the relationship that was beginning to develop between him and his two best friends in the entire world.

Tonight brought him a job that he was enjoying at least a little bit, though he was excited for it to end. A friend of his owned a bar close to the one that his boyfriend ran, so Jesper had agreed to be a stand in bartender during the interim of the last one quitting and the owner being able to hire a new one. He hadn’t anticipated that quitting to happen directly when Inej was getting back from the shows that she had been doing in Germany, which made him a little antsy to get back to his home.

They had all finished moving into the estate that he and Wylan had cleared out, which meant that they were all finally back together. It was a bit of a steep learning curve but they each had their own rooms and space so that they could be away from each other when they needed it. Still, of course, they were living together which meant that they had to learn and work around the new quirks of every person in the house.

Jesper had tended a bar before, usually at the Crow Club after Kaz asked him to with those puppy dog eyes that he just couldn’t ignore. Kaz was better at begging with his eyes than Matthias’ dog Djel, which was saying something.

This establishment was different than Kaz’s in the aesthetic and the types of people that it attracted. The layout had tables scattered around the main floor, all of them the same color of dark cherry wood with a different numbers of chairs littered around them. They were all stocked with a bowl in the center that could be filled with peanuts, fries, or chips depending on what they ordered. The walls were lined with booths that had red coverings and silver outlines, along with a couple of tasteful art pieces. There were also TVs littered around the space, pointed in different direction so that people could catch the news or a variety of sports games playing on the cable channels that the bar paid for. The bar itself had the three regular flavors of juice that were mixed into cocktails, as well as the soda gun. The rows and rows of alcohol behind him were kept in place with a thin clear plastic band so that he could see the label for when someone asked for something specific. In front of him were a couple of stools for people to sit on, which Jesper half hated despite his general love for people and communication.

He had been serving drinks to people for the better part of two hours and was growing bored with it. He wished that he could switch the TV to something else to distract him from the growing pile of texts in his pocket. Inej and Wylan were being bad influences on each other and encouraging him to skip out on the rest of his job and come home early so that he could spend time with them. Inej had only been back home for a couple of days so having her around them was relatively novel again, which made the fact that he was away from her during that returning honeymoon period all the more annoying.

The people milling around the bar were still far and few between for how early it was in the night. He’d see a much larger surge in the crowd leaning towards midnight, when the bar closed. His friend owned one of those places where working people were supposed to come after they got dinner with their friends to get a drink before they returned to the monotony of their lives. That meant that he was making a lot of whisky and not a lot of the cocktails that he enjoyed making.

He had recently been experimenting with his recipe’s on Matthias’ behalf to try and find him a non-alcoholic version of the drink that he had gotten at The Blue Jay when he and Kaz had met up a business partner a few weeks ago.

Despite the time, things seemed like they were about to get a lot more interest as a big group entered into the bar. There were two men and four women from what Jesper could see. He didn’t like to assume that kind of thing more than he had to, but he also liked to looked for the stereotypical dramas that played out in a lot of people’s lives. He was always open to being corrected, but speculating about what was happening in groups he wasn’t a part of was one of the only things that kept him sane during the monotony of this kind of job.

Jesper continued to work on the drinks that had been ordered from him, keeping his eye on the group as they found one of the booths towards the back of the bar that was big enough to fit everyone. They were discussing something between themselves, obviously already very close based on the way that they were knocking against each other and grabbing things out of each other’s hands.

It reminded him of being back home with his partners, which made his heart ache. He didn’t realize how much being out of the house at night just a few days after Inej came back home was going to be tearing him up, but it was.

He tried to distract himself as he focused on making the drink that he had been sipping on himself for the last hour. He made a point of not drinking when he was at work even if Kaz could very easily coerce him into having a drink or two when they were having date nights, but he would allow himself one if he fucked up a cocktail in a very slight way. It felt like a shame to waste alcohol and juice just because he had accidentally messed up the ratio away from the vodka.

“Barkeep!” a sultry voice from behind him said. It was rich and deep in a way that would have made a wonderful second alto if she was singing, and entrenched in a very nice accent.

“Yes?” he asked, a smirk playing over his lips as he turned around to face her. She had the looks to match the voice that she had, absolutely gorgeous and very obvious that she was somewhat aware of that.

She had long brown hair that was curled around the side of her face and woven intricately back into a bun on the back of her head. Her jawline was just sharp enough to be accentuated with a tiny bit of bronzer but still soft enough that it highlighted the beautiful plumpness of her body. She had a smokey eyeshadow and perfect catwing eyeliner to bring out the pop of her gray-blue eyes and a matching plumb lipstick. She was wearing a black suit jacket with nothing underneath other than a red lace bra that clung to her skin in just the right way, flush but not squishing anything. Jesper could see the sneaking curve of a feather tattoo resting above her heart, hidden mostly but still visible enough to be tantalizing.

“You’re not the regular bartender,” she commented when he turned around fully.

Jesper pouted at that, tilting his head to the side, “Sorry to disappoint.”

“I don’t think that you could disappoint me if you tried, darling,” she replied easily as she folded her arms on the edge of the bar and leaned forward. 

Jesper had been working with enough sexually promiscuous and exploitative people for long enough that he could tell the difference between someone trying to hit on him and someone trying to get something out of him. She didn’t want free drinks like the last group of women he had tried to flirt with while bartending had, she was genuinely interesting him.

She sighed as she toyed with a single lock of her hair that had been left out of the updo, winding it around her finger until she released it so that it bounced next to her naturally freckled face. “I do have to actually tell you what we want now, though.”

“Oh, do you come here often?” Jesper asked. He had been washing down the bar, and it felt oh-so-terribly cliche to do so, but he moved his arms out wide with the towel grasped in one hand so that he was lower down and closer to her.

The woman tilted her head to the side as a beautiful little smile toyed at her lips. She was clearly enjoying the attention that she was getting, and he loved giving it to her. “I played a show here last week. Something small and intimate to help drive up nighttime numbers,” she supplied. “A friend of mine recently went through a bad breakup and she liked this place so we decided to come back this evening.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. About your friend, that is,” Jesper pointed with his head back towards the table where the rest of her group was waiting. He knew that she had come in with them because he had gotten a decently long look at them, but he was glad he got to see her much closer than he had before. “I could never be sorry about you coming here again because it meant that I got the pleasure of meeting you.”

A rosy glint took over her cheeks and the catlike smile painted on her plumb-colored lips widened. “I can’t say that I’m particularly sad about what happened to the other bartender either, you’re much nicer than he was.”

“I do try my best for pretty ladies such as yourself. Can’t say that I take great care of the dodgy old men that come to leer at the sports,” he smirked back in reply. He was, of course, at least courteous to all of the patrons that came in so that that bar could keep up its business, but it was more fun to pretend that he wasn’t to her.

“Well, I do feel special,” she tilted her head down towards one shoulder as she did a half-shrug. The gesture was cute and it made Jesper feel warm inside to know that it was directed specifically towards him.

“Good, someone was pretty as you certainly does deserve to feel special,” he smiled. He remembered that he was there as a worker and not another patron, so he did have to work. “Now, what can I get you?”

“Well, the table wants a load of shots while they decide what they want to be drinking all evening. And then I’ll just take some soda water for myself,” she replied, a little bit of a pout taking over her beautiful features.

“Soda water?” Jesper wrinkled his nose. He tried not to judge other people for what they wanted, but it was such a bland drink for a woman that outwardly seemed so rich and complicated. He knew that type of dichotomy did exist in some people but it was also the first time that someone had ordered carbonated water from him while he was tending.

The woman sighed, toying with the strand of hair again as she shifted her weight to her other foot. “Unfortunately, I’m the designated driver so I will not be drinking tonight. Someone has to stay sober enough to make sure that Nikolai and Zoya don’t fall into bed with each other. Again,” she cringed, wrinkling her nose cutely.

Jesper had the impulse to kiss her on the nose for just a moment before he pushed the thought from his mind. He had developed crushes on people very quickly before, but that had mostly faded now that he had four partners of his own waiting for him at home. They kept him busy and fulfilled enough things in his life that he never felt like he had to continue looking for anything else.

He cleared his throat and stood back up. He grabbed one of the shot trays from behind him, a wooden plate with indents for the glasses. He placed ten of the shot glasses down in it while he asked, “How about you tell me your favorite cocktail and I’ll make a virgin?”

“Are you really going to be able to do that?” she asked, eyeing him nervously.

Jesper tried not to be offended. A lot of the other bartenders that he had met were so focused in with the alcohol that they didn’t know what kind of flavors could supplement them when it was removed. He also had no precedent with her, so while he hated people doubting his ability to do his work he couldn’t really fault her for it. So he smiled confidently at her and said, “Yes, I can.” 

And, because he had so much trouble being able to contain himself, he said, “One of my boyfriends recently got into vintage cocktails. He doesn’t do very well when it comes to kitchen work and doesn’t want to be getting wasted every night so I’ve been making him virgin cocktails for the better part of two weeks.” It was a bit of a curveball when it came to flirting. Matthias liked to hide the fact that he was polyamorous until he was sure that the relationship was going to lead to something romantic or sexual because his Christian upbringing made him feel so awkward about it. Kaz never flirted with anyone, which was probably for the best. Inej and Wylan usually brought it up towards the end of the first date that they were having with a prospective partner, which didn’t happen very often. Jesper liked to throw it in at the beginning of his flirting so that he could talk about the partners that he adored without it convincing the person that he was pursuing that he was off the market.

She raised her brow at him, “Just had to slip that in there, didn’t you?” Her accent got thicker when she teased him, which he thought was absolutely adorable.

“I thought that it was worth mentioning,” he winked. He was letting the flirting go on a little bit longer than he probably should have as some of the other patrons were nearing the end of their drinks, which usually meant that he’d have an uptick in things that he was supposed to do. Still, he was validating it to himself with the fact that he had brought the shot set and the glasses over with him.

Something that he couldn’t quite read crossed her face as she stood up to her full height. Jesper wondered what kind of heals she was wearing and how tall she would be compared to Inej and Matthias, the extreme end of the spectrum in height out of his polycule. He hadn’t been able to see the bottom half of her outfit when she was walking over to him since he had been trying to distract himself from the heavy heart in his chest.

She glanced back towards the booth where her friends were getting restless before she drilled those piercing eyes back on him. He felt like she was trying to peel him apart so that she could see exactly what made him tick, examining the mechanisms of his heart with the eye of a clockmaker. “You’re not trying to flirt with me so that you can get to one of my friends, right?”

“Darling, if I wanted to flirt with one of those boys over there then I would flirt with them directly,” Jesper said honestly. It amazed him that someone was divinely beautiful as her thought that she would be passed up for the others that she had come into the bar with. While they were generally handsome, none of them held the mystique and grace that she did. 

“Really? You’re not trying to make me feel so special and doted on that I get flustered and send someone else to the bar so you can pounce on them?” she asked, eyeing him suspiciously. “Because Nikolai isn’t the type that you should date and David is engaged.”

“Do you think that I’m gay?” Jesper asked, realizing the mistake that he had made. In trying to tell her a little bit more about his romantic life to show that he was interested, he had made the mistake of leaving out the fact that he could be and was interested in her that way. It was a flub that he had made before, and it would not be the last time, he was sure.

She raised her perfectly penciled brow at him as she placed both of her palms flat down on the table. “What else was that line about your boyfriends supposed to do for me?”

“I may have misspoke,” he replied awkwardly. “I was simply trying to come on to you a bit harder, beautiful. You’re a very pretty woman, it’s easy to get tongue tied,” he winked at her.

Her shoulders dropped as she became more relaxed. He wondered how often someone had overlooked her despite her obvious beauty and wit, to try and get to someone that she cared about. She tilted her head to the side again and said, “I’m Nina.”

“Jesper,” he replied as he mirrored her look. “Now what can I get you, before my boss decides that I’ve done a horrible job and you have to spend the next night getting to know a new bartender.”

She laughed at that, her beautiful eyes sparkling. “I’ll take a virgin pina colada if you think that you can make that.”

“What kind of shots would your friends like?” he asked as he got out the class that her served those drinks in.

“Vodka,” she supplied. She moved to one of the stools and got up on it so that she was able to continue to talk with Jesper without being in the way of the other patrons that might need to come and speak with him. 

He got out the vodka that they kept for when people didn’t give them a specific brand and then filled up all ten shots easily. He moved the plate up towards her on the bar as he got to work on mixing her drink. “Is this something that you do often?” Nina asked, placing her elbow up on the bar so that she could rest her head on her hand.

Jesper shrugged, glancing at her while trying to focus mostly on his work. “I have a bartending license, if that’s what you’re asking,” he replied. “I don’t usually hop from bar to bar to startle people that are used to seeing a certain face back here. Though mine is usually an upgrade.”

“It certainly is for me,” she winked playfully at him.

He felt heat pool in his veins, dripping down from his heart. The longer that he spent time around her, the harder it was to deny. Nina was magnetic. 

“Well I’m glad that I can be a bit of change in decor for you. You said that you had played here the other week?” he asked, trying to get to know her better. The flirting in between the conversation was usually his favorite part, but flirting just to flirt got a little boring after some time.

She toyed with the edge of the plate with one hand as she said, “I’m in a band with all of the people I came in with, sort of. Alina, Zoya, and Nikolai are my bandmates but Genya styles us to make sure that we don’t look like a complete disaster.” 

He wasn’t able to put the names to faces, but it was nice to be supplied with a bit of information anyway. “I could never imagine you being anything other than immaculate.”

“You’re quite the sweet talker,” she commented. “Not that I’m complaining now that I know you’re not trying to get me involved in yet another relationship drama I can’t even have the fun of being part of.”

“Two of your bandmates sleeping together whenever they’re left drunk or unsupervised does sound stressful,” he nodded. Before he had gotten into his current polycule, it had been a hassle to try and navigate the friends-with-benefits relationships that he tended to become a part of back when he was doing theater full time. 

“It’s not quite that,” she rolled her eyes, clearly annoyed at even the memories that were popping up in the back of her mind. “I do love my bandmates and I’m so happy that we’re back together but Nikolai and Zoya having the weird on-again-off-again thing that they do is the least of my worries.”

“Do tell,” he supplied as he finished up with her drink.

She took the glass with her nimble fingers and then smiled. “You better hope that this is good enough for me to want another so that you can find out more of my drama,” she winked. She slipped off of the barstool and disappeared to the back of the bar with what she had ordered.

Despite barely knowing anything about Nina, he desperately hoped that she would like what he had made her. Both so that she had something to cheer her up since she seemed to be so upset with the way that her life was going and so that she would come back to talk with him more.

---

Jesper tried to get lost in his work. He made sure that he was focusing on all of the patrons equally instead of keeping his eyes glued on Nina, who was sitting with her friends and sipping on her drink. She had sent the blond man over to the bar so that he could order martinis for the drinking members of the group, but Jesper had made sure to just be professional with him as he was taking the order and preparing it. He wasn’t sure if that was supposed to be a test of some sort so that she could confirm that he was focused on her, but he hoped that he had passed it.

Given that it was a weekday, even the large rush of people towards the evening who wanted to pregame before they went clubbing was relatively small. Jesper had to card two teenagers that thought enough makeup and a suit would make them look adult enough to avoid that. He had just finished sending them away, rubbing out the headache that was beginning to form on his temples, when he heard Nina’s voice again.

“You were right, you are rather good at this,” she purred as she set her now empty glass onto the counter. “Would you make me another?”

“Only if you spill your secrets for me, beautiful,” he said teasingly.

She was already positioning herself onto the stool that she had been on before, directly in front of his workspace. “My band is called Shadow and Bone. We’ve been together for four years, but we had to take a huge break in the middle because one of my bandmates got into a relationship that wouldn’t let her play with us. It’s not my place to talk about that, but it meant that we couldn’t even practice, let alone make our own stuff. Each of us went and made our own side bands so that we could continue creating, other than Alina, but it’s left things a little twisted now.”

“Something you’re still untangling?” he asked.

She nodded. “I got very popular with my music, but it isn’t something that can work with the type of music that we play as a group. Just the other day I had someone try to accuse me of changing the sound of our music even though Alina and I switch off singing and all four of us write everything together,” she rolled her eyes. 

A mischievous look overtook her face as she said, “If you’re interested in looking me up then my solo work was under the name Heartrender. I wasn’t nearly as good as Nikolai, but he passed on the name of his work to a mutual friend of ours. Have you heard of an artist called Sturmhond?”

She was assuming that he worked in bars more often than he did by asking that, but by some stroke of luck he was actually familiar with the name that she had just given him. “I am. My friend Poppy did a set with him during a drag show she did,” he supplied. He hadn’t been able to attend said show because Wylan and Kaz had both ended up getting a cold and he was the only one that was able to take care of them, but she had told him all about it the next time he was able to show up for rehearsals.

“You know Poppy?” Nina asked, her face illuminating with an excited look. “Small world!”

He chuckled alongside her, basking in the brightness of her warmth. He wished that she could sit by him the entire time that he was working, but he knew that she had come to help comfort her friend through a breakup. Jesper had been around enough broken hearted people and been consumed by it enough himself to know the importance of having support during those times. “Your drink, my dear,” he handed over the finished cocktail that she had ordered.

“Thank you, handsome,” she winked.

---

For the rest of the night, Jesper worked alone. He poured what felt like a thousand glasses of beer and a million shots, until his arms and wrists were sore from the repetitive motion. Nina hadn’t strayed over to the bar again as she continued to nurse the singular refill that she had gotten on her virgin cocktail. He was right about the rush happening closer to midnight, but everyone had already trickled out by the time that they hit eleven.

When they were at the height of the crowd, the owner had slipped behind the bar to help him out. They had worked in tandem with each other, silent but efficient. Jesper was terribly exhausted by the time he finally slipped into the back with a plate of fries and a water to rest up before the last stretch of his shift. He brought his phone out and connected the wireless earbuds that he kept with him in his pocket for when he got overstimulated. He opened Spotify, searching up the band that Nina had given him.

He chose the one that she was in with other people first, clicking on the first song that popped up, obviously their most popular. He could tell that it was her voice crooning to him immediately as the first couple of lines played, “Late at night, when the stars don't look quite right. In the darkness, slowly crawling over my skin. Whispers at the door ‘Let us in, let us in.’ I'm a fool! I've been howling at a hollow moon! There's something burning in the empty room inside of my head. Fill it up with doubt, let it in, let it spread. I won't be sleeping, there's too many monsters in the backyard and I feel them creeping closer, closer, closer. I'm afraid. Is this a bunker or a shallow grave? Either way I'm left holding onto the shovel and rope, digging in the dirt, finding bones, finding ghosts. I won't be sleeping, there's too many monsters in the backyard and I feel them creeping closer, closer, closer. But if I made my bed did I make the demons in it? Set 'em free from my head, did I make the demons in it?”

She sang the chorus over and over again, the notes seeping together and burrowing their way into Jesper’s soul. He had always been a fan of music, which was how he and Wylan had met in the first place. They had been attending the same small music course and immediately hit it off, even if the other had a harder time reading music and instead just memorized a song. He wondered what it would be like if Wylan and Nina performed together, if Jesper would be able to handle it or if it would kill him on the spot.

He favorited her band so that he could come back and check it out later as he searched up the name that she had told him she used for her solo work. It was easier to listen to the more manufactured, pop-leaning stuff while also finishing up the other business than the more raw sounding classical that her band made. He let the songs play in the background as he flicked through the messages that his partners had sent him. He replied to a few and then took a screenshot of the song that he had listened to from Nina and sent it to Wylan so that he could get his boyfriend’s opinion on it.

Almost immediately afterwards he got a text from Matthias, which meant they were like watching one of their medical drama shows while waiting for him to come home. Inej and likely coaxed Kaz into the bath with her, the only person that understood the touch issues he had well enough to have that kind of special intimacy with him.

Jesper felt the fry that he had been eating become lodged in the back of his throat as Matthias informed him that the girl he had been flirting with over Instagram for the better part of the last two weeks also happened to be the woman that he had met at the bar. It really was a small world afterall.

He rushed through the last part of his break so that he could hopefully get back out in the bar before Nina left. He hadn’t want to be so creepy as to obviously check to make sure that she had stuck out the busy part of the night, especially since she would have been there for hours if she had. He made sure to calculate his walk so that he had slipped back into the persona that he used when he was working, suave and smooth, much like acting. He didn’t want it to seem like he was too frantic or desperate to get back to work lest he freak her out.

He had stepped back behind the bar and served two other patrons, switching out with the owner, when Nina finally came back up. The relief that he felt upon knowing that she hadn’t left despite having been huddled in the back corner for hours at that point made him feel a little embarrassed. He ignored it as he looked up to her, waiting for what she had to say.

“I was wondering when you were going to be back,” she smiled as she took the same stance that she had when they had first begun their interaction.

“Sorry for leaving you, baby, but I had to take a quick break,” he explained as he set down the glass that he had just finished cleaning.

“I understand, being that handsome has to take quite the toll on someone,” she winked back in reply, which made his heart flutter. He hadn’t known how Matthias had fallen so hard and so fast for Nina, especially since it had taken him almost a week to get to the point where they could even hold a conversation with each other. Now that she was standing in front of him in all of her smooth, gorgeous, suave glory, he understood. 

“If you keep this up then I’m going to fall in love with you,” he grinned. He was telling the truth, of course. If she continued to treat him like he was something special then he was going to fall head over heels for her the same way that Matthias had. He’d be tender smiles down at his phone and one earbud in to loop the sound of her crooning musical voice into his mind while doing mundane tasks.

Nina had the common decency to look a little bashful at that as she shifted awkwardly. “I have to admit that the idea of that doesn’t sound too bad. I came over here to pay my tab but I was also hoping that I could possibly get a way to stay in contact with you?”

Excitement burst through him like fireworks as he leaned forward like he was going to share a secret that no one else was allowed to hear. “If you ask Matthias then he’ll give you everything,” he winked.

She looked a little confused and scared, as if he had found out that she was somehow trying to give him the runaround. He tilted his head back towards the door he that led to the back room, “When I took my break I searched you up and sent one of your songs to my partner who likes music. Turns out that he was with Matthias and we found out that we had been flirting with the same woman. So it sounds like you’re going to fit into our relationship quite well if you’re serious about pursuing us.”

Immediately the panic left her and she laughed. It was louder than the quiet giggles that she had given her before, all rosy tinkling and shaking shoulders. She then shook her head, causing a few of the curls that had come loose from her tight bun to bounce around her beautiful face. “I should have known when you mentioned the cocktails, it’s all Matthias has been talking about lately.”

“He gets like that sometimes,” Jesper agreed. It was endearing how one thing could take over Matthias’ entire personality until he had discovered how it worked or how he could navigate it properly and then moved onto the next thing.

Nina shifted and handed him her card. He processed it for the tab that the table had wracked up and then handed it back to her. She said, “I don’t want to take up all of your time tonight, but I would like to see you again. I’ll ask Matthias for your handle and then we’ll talk more, alright?”

“I think that the both of us would like that very much,” Jesper nodded. Even if he didn’t actually develop a romantic or sexual relationship with Nina, the idea of getting to have someone as wonderful and mysterious as her in his life was very enticing. He leaned across the bar so that he was closer to her, giving her the hint of what he wanted. Jesper asked, “May I kiss you?”

A pretty smile split across her face and she said, “Polite as well as handsome, color me surprised. You may.” She placed one of her hands on his cheek, letting him feel the calloused nature of her hand. She then leaned in and pressed their lips together in a quick, chaste kiss. She smelled like green apples and lavender, mixing together distinctly to make her smell overall sweet. He could taste the vanilla of her lipstick and the pineapple clinging to her tongue from the drinks that he made her throughout their evening of flirting.