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It was not as easy as he thought, forgetting those images. Every time the barest hint of a smile formed on Inej’s lips for days after and days to come, Kaz would see her, the girl from the dream, the Inej from his dream. The laughing, the singing, the red silks, the way she breathed as heavily as she had.
He had thought to himself, ‘What I would give to be the man to hand her that future’ before steeling himself, and stalking off from the crew meeting. Nina had given a snort, and followed his footsteps with her glittery eyes, but not her feet. He would find a way to throw her far enough into someone else’s affairs than his own, but right now, he needed a distraction.
And my god, did he get one.
Wylan rushed in barely minutes after Kaz had sat down, deck of cards in gloved hand.
“Kaz, there’s a group, they’re coming up the halls of the inn, claiming to be Dime Lions, what’s the plan?” he had asked frantically, trying to get Kaz to whip a plan out of his ass with four seconds notice, hands whipping and slicing through the air.
Kaz strode out of his room, the cards scattering across his makeshift desktable. He began hurriedly whispering what needed to happen, and they parted with a quick, ‘no mourners, no funerals,’.
Wylan and Jesper would fight the long distance, Nina and Inej the short. Matthias and Kaz would take the leaders and stronger members of the party.
It was an exhilarating fight, even Kaz had to admit. From square one, the false claims of working with Pekka had put his gang one, two, three steps ahead. It was beginning to seem as if they were unstoppable.
Kaz had a small bead of sweat gleaming across his brow. These fighters were brutes; they knew of little technique and fought with whatever they could find. The came at him with knives, candelabras, statuettes and oil lamps pulled from the walls of the inn hallway. Kaz dodged swiftly, in tandem with Matthias. He easy grasped the basic of their fighting techniques and outsmarted it. Though there seemed to be an endless supply of me coming for him, trying to strip him of his… anything, really.
One, stupidly, had reached for Kaz’s cane.
Kaz would have made a sneer, a snarky comment, a verbal declaration of how much a podge this thug was, if he hadn’t had been too busy staring at Inej.
She fought like music; a symphony of staccatos, long slashes of his knife, tricky footing and feints. He whole body strained, the pull of muscles and tendons in her arms, her neck, her back-
Focus, Kaz, you absolute podge. You’re no better than Jesper ogling Wylan in the Ravkan bathhouses.
Though he couldn’t ignore what it’d feel like to have her breathless like that again, cheeks flushed, grinning at the victory. Perhaps in a different context, a different timeline, a different place. Perhaps his bed, under him, where neither of their bodies had been corrupted, and they could let themselves touch, let themselves feel, let themselves make each other’s toes curl, etch pretty, soft noises from the throats of the other, let themse-
“Kaz, you look like you’re about to pass out,” Jesper pointed out helpfully, as they sat at their joint dining table, recovering from the fight. No one was injured, thankfully. They were all just exhausted. “And you’re oddly spacey. It wasn’t even your scheming face,” he pondered aloud.
Nina snorted. “If it’s going to make you pass out after every battle we fight, let a Grisha fix up your leg,” she easily popped a dried berry into her mouth, before settling back into her chair. Well, settling back into Matthias’ lap and broad shoulders, her head to his nape, eyes closed.
Their concerns were displaced. His leg was bothering him, sure. Was it the reason his cheeks were crimson? No. He was putting that to exhaustion from the past weeks of little sleep and constant need for presence of mind. Not his thoughts. About a certain Suli girl. Whose name had been banned within Kaz’s mind.
Kaz ignored them, rolling his eyes. “Your concerns are so wholesome, Zenik, how I lasted a day without you is truly beyond me,” Matthias flashed him his ever present glower, and Kaz was, unsurprisingly, unfazed. “However I, in your regards, am perfectly fine,” he said, getting up, and grabbing his cane. He wobbled a bit, head spinning. Perhaps he was more exhausted than he thought.
“Brekker, you need a long sleep. Get to bed,” Nina said, eyes barely open, but obviously open enough to catch his small mistake.
Kaz sneered. “I don’t recall you being my mother. It’s a pleasure to finally meet you,” he said, before walking away, resting more and more on his cane. He allowed himself one satisfactory glance back to the table to see Matthias’ blonde eyebrows almost at his hairline and Jesper give a low whistle.