Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It started with an argument, an argument over nothing much at all. Honestly, Jesper doesn’t really remember what it’d been about. Dirty socks or skipped dinner, a trampled flower bed or snide comment. He doesn’t remember the cause of the argument but he does remember being confused and angry and sad all at once. It was the kind of argument his parents used to have. An argument made of subtext. Except he isn’t sure he and Wylan are reading the same book.

Afterwards, they lapse into an unpleasant silence that makes Jesper’s skin crawl. In a house that absorbs sound, with its plush rugs and crammed bookshelves and upholstered furniture, silence is suffocating. There isn’t even any music to break it. 

Wylan is busy with council matters and Jesper—Jesper bounces off the walls. Twiddles his thumbs. Daydreams. Journals. Takes up knitting and covers the house in half-finished projects. Practices his powers, which is fun. For a while. When he boils the kettle without heat he’s reminded of Aditi. He invents all manner of tools that serve no purpose and explores the material composition of the Geldstraat mansion.

Still, there’s no peace.

It was supposed to get easier, wasn’t it? Isn’t that what they say. When Grisha use their powers they get healthier, stronger. There’s supposed to be a glow . Jesper has never practised his powers as much as he does now. And yet –

He contemplates going to Kaz and asking about a job; surely he needs his favourite sharpshooter for something. Anything. Jesper wants to get shot at. Not, to be clear, shot, only shot at. He couldn’t do that to Wylan and besides, he likes his life now. He does. It’s just hard, harder than he thought it would be, bouncing around this huge house somehow both wealthy and not at the same time. 

The allowance Wylan gives him access to is enough to buy supplies for his hundred and one hobbies but not enough to properly gamble with, to build with. He knows it’s for the best.

Then, over dinner one evening, Wylan’s blushing while he’s talking about work. For a moment, Jesper thinks he has a crush, thinks maybe he’s cheating. The thought burns hotly in his gut. Every day Wylan is surrounded by men richer, cleverer, and more accomplished than him. Although Jesper had been sure they were all old and dull, maybe he’s only ever been a pretty distraction. It wouldn’t be the first time.

“I’m finally going to be entered into the Merchant Council in my father’s seat.”

This is so unexpected, Jesper has to blink for several seconds to process the words. Then, he reaches across the table – pushing a gravy boat, salt and pepper shaker, and water jug out of the way – to take Wylan’s hand. 

“What took them so long?”

Wylan laughs, cheeks still red. “Well, it’s a lot of paperwork.”

“You Kerch and your bureaucracy,” Jesper tuts, rolling his eyes with a smile.

The petition for Wylan van Eck to join the Council had first been made some eighteen months prior. As the head of the sixth wealthiest family in Kerch and the largest shipping company in the world, the move had seemed natural – unquestionable.

After a year and no progress, Kaz had offered to exercise a little pressure on Wylan’s behalf. Of course the merchling – mercher – had declined with great dignity. No pressure required.

This matters to Wylan, in more ways than Jesper can count. To be elevated to the position his father had once held, to be viewed in the same esteem, to be seen at all. The same men his father had belittled and berated him in front of, forced to acknowledge the power he wields in their game – there is no greater satisfaction for Wylan.

Jesper marvels at the strength in him, this man he loves. After everything that was done to him, the violence and deprivation he has suffered, he stands so tall. Jesper is inclined to call the feeling welling in his belly pride. The bitter aftertaste is shame.

“We need to celebrate!” Jesper exclaims after a pause. 

Already he’s thinking of telling Kaz and getting the news out to Inej and maybe inviting some of the Dregs. Though, perhaps, that wouldn’t be entirely appropriate given the nature of the promotion. They are awfully legitimate these days; the guest list will likely be sadly circumspect.

When Wylan tries to shake his head, Jesper only nods and holds his hand tighter. “Yes, yes! We’ll invite all your fellow Council members and maybe Hilda and Lisle from the market and Jacob from the exchange and Lucille too. I’ll talk to Anke about the menu – maybe we could do a buffet, help-your-self style thing? What do you think?”

Jesper runs out of breath and Wylan laughs a little.

“I think that sounds wonderful, Jes.” Then, there’s something like relief, like a sigh, in the way he says, “I love you.”

“The Merchant Council,” Jesper repeats, slowly. It’s hard to wrap his head around. Instead of trying to, he asks, “Do I have to stop calling you merchling now?”

This elicits a small grunt and a firm head shake. “And call me what? Mercher? Ghezen, no!”

“You don’t want that, mercher?” Jesper stands up, grinning impishly. “Don’t wanna be my mercher?”

Wylan goes red and Jesper tastes victory.

“Stop it – ” The protest is half-hearted, losing heart as Jesper circles the table and crouches beside Wylan’s chair. “Don’t, Jes.”

“Don’t what?” He murmurs.

Crouching like this, he has to look up at Wylan. The view is spectacular; a distant mountain range of chin, high cheeks and button nose, ringlets around his ears and brow, a pouty lower lip.

Without preamble, Wylan holds the side of Jesper’s neck and bends down. The kiss is soft and placating. Wylan is shushing him.

It works.

“Alright, merchling. You win this time.”

It feels like they never fought at all and when, later that night, Jesper kisses his way down Wylan’s chest, cradles his hips between his knees, it feels as if they’ll never fight again.

***

Being a fully fledged mercher makes Wylan even busier than before, which is fine.

Jesper has his projects. He’s in the middle of making a mural on one of the walls in the kitchen. Every day, he goes outside, picks an assortment of flowers and then, he bleeds the colour from their petals into the kitchen tiles. It’s slow work but it fills his mornings.

In the afternoons, he reads cheap spy novels out of Ravka. They’re all centred on malevolent Fjerdan’s plotting world domination. 

And in the evenings, he brainstorms job possibilities. Based on his skills as a fabrikator he comes up with: wainwrighting or carpentry, metallurgy, smithing or the like. His people skills give him teaching or diplomacy or hospitality. That’s as far as he gets.

Then Wylan comes home. After a day at the Exchange, he invariably collapses onto his favourite chaise with all the drama of a besieged Ravkan princess. If the front door closing after him isn’t enough to summon Jesper, his great heaving sighs are. It becomes something of a ritual, this after-work routine.

Jesper comes in and drops a kiss to his brow. “Long day?”

“The longest,” he murmurs, eyes closed. Against his pale cheeks, his lashes are a faint dusting of colour. “I was in meetings with Councillor Dryden all day.”

Jesper remembers the man clearly. Ashy blonde hair, straight Kerch nose and full, decidedly un-Kerch lips. The snake who’d taken Kaz’s bait during Kuwei’s auction, what feels like a lifetime ago.

“How is he these days?” He tries to inject as much venom into the question as possible.

Wylan sighs again, and slings an arm over his eyes. When he speaks, his voice is watery. “The way they all look at me, Jes.”

“They’re all fools—”

“They’re not,” Wylan cuts him off. “These are supposed to be my peers, the men who run the country. And they pity me. I can see it when they look at me, the assumptions they’re making about my father, about what he said at the auction. It’s been years and all they see when they look at me is him.”

Peaking out above his arm are Wylan’s curls, frizzy and mussed by his anxious hair-pulling. He’s still wearing his suit, starched collar digging into his neck, and his shoes.

Jesper sits beside him and feels useless.

“They’ll come around, Wy. If they’ve got any sense, they’ll see you for who you are.”

“And who is that?”

Anxiety, hot and writhing, begins to stir in Jesper’s belly. They’re arguing again. Or they’re careening toward arguing again and he doesn’t know how to change course, how to fix it. If only Wylan could see what he sees.

“Brilliant, incisive, cutthroat. All the hallmarks of a mercher. You were made for this.”

Wylan scoffs. “I wasn’t made for anything.”

“Don’t say that.”

He doesn’t want to fight but Wylan gets like this sometimes: spoiling. Angry and sad and afraid. Jesper knows the feeling well and if this were anyone else he’d join him, dredge up those feelings from where they lay not an inch beneath the surface and join him. But Wylan doesn’t need someone to fight with, he needs steady hands and steady words. 

Sitting here among books and old furnishings, Jesper isn’t sure he can be what Wylan needs. Really, Jesper feels anything but steady, so instead, he says—

“How about I run out and get some of those sticky sweet buns from the Shu market for dinner?”

After a pause, “It’s not open right now,” comes Wylan’s sullen response.

Wracking his brain, Jesper suggests, “What about Da’s sweetcorn fritters? I think there’s still some corn in the pantry, and the parsley and dill are coming up well in the garden. You loved those when Da made ‘em.”

“Yes, when your Dad made them.” 

There’s just enough humour in his voice now that Jesper knows Wylan’s taken the bait. He doesn’t want to fight either. Nothing’s resolved. All they’ve done is obfuscate, distract—pulled one of Kaz’s stupid magic tricks. Wylan’s feelings will now go where Jesper keeps his, an inch beneath the surface.

Gently, he coaxes Wylan’s arm away from his face and helps him to stand. There are none of the usual signs that he’s been crying but it looks like a close call so Jesper takes his husbands face in his hands and kisses his nose.

“You’ve never had my sweetcorn fritters,” he whispers and watches Wylan smile a wobbly smile. “They’re going to rock your world.”

And so it goes.

Jesper takes Wylan’s hand and leads him through the house to the kitchen, coaxes him onto a countertop and sets about lifting his mood.

There’s no Anke to shoo out of the kitchen today because it’s her day off. Happily, this means that Jesper can potter about at his own pace and make just as much of a mess as he wants.

While cooking, he rambles about his day: about the butterfly he befriended after spending some hours negotiating the aphids making a home of his and Marya’s rose bushes; about the buttery pastry he had for breakfast, the buttery pastry he had for lunch, and the apple he had in between; about the progress on his mural, to which he points with corn-covered fingers.

With some peppers Colm brought from Novyi Zem the last time he came to visit, Jesper makes a smoky sweet dipping sauce. The pinched and delighted face Wylan makes when the sauce hits his tongue is all the reward Jesper needs.

Things will be alright. Wylan will, as he always does, pull through. After everything he’s been through, conquering the Council is child’s play.

***

It’s as Jesper suspected, child’s play. Wylan makes it look easy.

They’re in someone else’s stuffy sitting room, surrounded by stuffy books and stuffier wallpaper. It’s the portion of the evening in which wives retreat to play bridge in the games room and the husbands retreat to drink whiskey and talk politics. Jesper envies the wives.

“Now is our moment, gentlemen. War opens the hand of Ghezen.”

The man speaking is a very solid sort, the same width in all directions. He’s the councillor for agriculture, or transportation, or infrastructure. Councillor Hendle.

“You say that, Ap, but those Ravkan’s have always kept their cards and their weapons close to their chests,” clucks the councillor for domestic trade.

Another one shakes his head. “If they do not seize the opportunity presented by Ghezen, their people will suffer for it.”

“That king of theirs is rather soft. His love for his people makes him vulnerable,” Hendle concurs.

They all nod as if something profound has been said, as if caring for ones people were a very unusual and noble weakness. Jesper feels his over salted dinner turn. Beside him, Wylan leans forward, brows knit.

“His love for his people is what makes him cautious around us,” he says, into the whiskey-filled silence. “They see us as crooks.”

This is met by a few sharp gasps and many a disapproving frown.

“We are highly respected on the international stage, Mr. van Eck.”

“ Councillor van Eck,” Wylan corrects, beating Jesper to it by a fraction of a second. “And what you mean is that we are feared. Our economic dominance hovers over them like a baton, waiting to strike. Fear and respect are not the same thing.”

Domestic Trade waves a dismissive hand, “Ah, pish posh. It’s all the same to me.”

“Their money spends the same.”

“But” —now Wylan leans further forward— “wouldn’t their respect earn us more over time? If trade between our nations was free of mistrust and fear?”

“We are businessmen; our motives are pure. If they cannot trust us, they cannot trust anyone,” Hendle says, as if this settles the debate rather than blowing it wide open.

Jesper watches the wheels turning behind Wylan’s eyes, watches him formulate his next rejoinder. Admiration and pride swells rapidly in his belly, filling in all the gaps left by an insufficient meal.

“All they have is our word, Councillor,” he says eventually.

“Our word should be enough.”

This is the world of honour and old money; a code written by and for the men in this room. Their word is enough because they decided it was but the decision happened so long ago they have forgotten it was a decision at all. To them it is law, as immutable as God.

Across the room, someone quiet and careful clears his throat. He’s almost swallowed by the cushions on his chosen chaise longue, but his sharp edges point him out. There’s something sunken about him, hollow cheeks and hollow throat—not lean but emaciated. All the pieces of him don’t quite fit together. His suit hangs awkwardly on his shoulders, too big in some places and too small in all the others.

When he speaks, his voice is soft and melodic. “What do you propose, Councillor van Eck?”

“Transparency,” Wylan answers immediately. All he needed was an opening. “We go in with our hands and our eyes open.”

While the rest of the room makes various derisive noises, the quiet one—whose name Jesper missed—only blinks at Wylan. 

There’s a revolution brewing. Somehow, in this stuffy drawing room surrounded by scepticism, Wylan has made an ally in his cause to wrangle the council toward justice. He was never going to get the old guard, the ones squatting on entire rotten empires propped up by secrets and codes but the new ones, the young and the hungry are his. He learnt a thing or two from Kaz.

The best thing is, none of the old guard are any the wiser. They simply scoff and light their cigars.

Hendle chortles, “That’s a good way to get fucked,” which earns him a whole chorus of laughter.

Jesper can see it already, the way Wylan draws more and more people into his influence, the empire he’s building. It will perhaps frighten him, the power he will inevitably accumulate with that intellect and his compassion, but Jesper sees only the good he will do. Ketterdam is a warren of corruption but what might a good man, with good intentions and a whole lot of power accomplish? The world is his.

While the others laugh, Wylan grits his teeth and sits back against the cushions. He answers Hendle after everyone else has stopped paying attention. “Maybe.”

In the dark of the room, Jesper takes his hand and squeezes it.

His husband will take everything that was done to him, every hateful second of his formative years, and turn it into something good. From the terrible, he wrings the impossible and the wonderful. That is who he is.

It throws into sharp relief who Jesper is. While Wylan navigates this room of sharks, friends and colleagues of his father, with faultless precision, Jesper vibrates. He has nothing to contribute beside a perfunctory demonstration of support even though Wylan doesn’t need anyone to hold his hand. He is far stronger than Jesper will ever be.

Pride is the shot and shame is the chaser. He wishes it weren’t so because it’s the shame that lingers, that hits tongue and sours his stomach. Why can’t he just be proud?

Eventually, they all begin making their farewells. Wives kiss each other airily and complement the food; Jesper shakes the hands of each councillor in turn, doing his best impression of masculine fellowship.

Yes, we must do this again sometime.

Gives the wife a good excuse to get out from under the governess.

I want to hear more about that Zemeni oil venture you mentioned.

And so on.

At this stage, it’s a well-rehearsed charade. They’re all diligently playing their parts in this production of Friends with Money. Upsettingly, the others seem to buy into it. Their oily compliments and shallow promises sit like Sten’s special in Jesper’s stomach, but with none of the efficient laxative effects.

The moment they get out of the house and half a block away from the other guests, Jesper sucks down great gulps of fresh air. He feels a little less queasy but an aftertaste lingers.

“I don’t know how often I can do that, Wy.” He says it jokingly, half-heartedly. With a shiver, he adds, “I feel gross.”

Wylan peers up at him carefully, something too discerning in his eyes. “It’s not for always.”

“Well,” he sighs, “I’d be your pretty trophy husband at every one of these even if it were for always.”

It’s not that Jesper’s lying. He will be Wylan’s pretty trophy husband for as long as it’s required of him. It’s only that it costs him. Already, he feels shakier than he has in months, feels an itch rising from the deep dark places he keeps tamped down by mindless tasks, by projects and rituals and his husband’s sweet kisses.

Wylan is relieved. Under the starless sky, he sinks into Jesper’s embrace and exhales. He works so hard, not only to keep them in comfort unlike anything Jesper has ever known but to reform the Council. Jesper would rather die than become a burden.

“It won’t be for always,” Wylan repeats, smiling. “Those men are the past. I’m building the future.”

***

When Jesper relapses, it’s midweek. There’s nothing special about the day except it’s the same as any other: clouds scud across the sky, the sun shines, birds sing, Anke cooks, and Jesper dies. 

It’s slow, dying of boredom. People say it mockingly, flippantly as if one couldn’t really die of boredom. If only that were true.

Boredom is the key; his control the lock.

Every time he leaves the house he finds himself in the Barrel. One moment he’s pottering around the kitchen or pruning in the garden or walking along the canals, thoughts banging hopelessly against the inside of his skull, and the next, he’s here. The sights and sounds are so achingly, horribly familiar his thoughts are lulled into a stupor. 

Every step toward the wide-open door of the casino—nameless and featureless in the haze—is a betrayal. He feels it keenly, impossibly, unhappily. But the music leaks onto the street, the sound of voices and coin and chips unmistakable and endlessly alluring.

He can’t stop himself. He never made any progress at all. He’s as he has always been. Sick.

Inside, it smells like kvas and wood polish. The Makker’s Wheel is pressed against the far wall, beckoning to him with its bright lights and colours. There’s a small afternoon crowd. It’s a sea of faces he doesn’t recognise. That’s how long he’s been away; that’s how much progress he’s undoing.

Except when he approaches the first card table, one of the players turns around and—

“Jesper?” The woman says, bewildered.”Jesper Fahey?”

He’s dying. He wishes he were dead already.

“Madeleine!” His smile is a carvery.

Just like that, she’s standing with her arms wrapped around his not-so-scrawny shoulders. He feels her breath against his collarbone and wonders if she knows.

“It’s been so long,” she says, having pulled back enough to look at him properly. “You look fantastic. I heard you married a mercher, became an honest man.”

“I’ve always been honest.”

She laughs because she knows it’s a lie.

“Wanna join us?” With a wave of her arm she encompasses the group at her table, each of whom looks up and nods noncommittally. It’s the friendliest of death sentences.

“Well, if the offer’s going,” Jesper says with a smile.

When Jesper tells this story later, he will emphasise her invitation, the friendliness of her face and the rush of fond memories. Maybe—maybe he even bumped into her outside the casino and she invited him in. It’s a believable tale.

They play five rounds with the money Jesper finds in his pockets and two more with the money Madeleine cops him.

Then, she leaves.

By now, the place has filled up. The little afternoon crowd has burgeoned into a large evening crowd and Jesper can feel his heart beating against his rib cage. He should be hungry but he’s not. There’s a quiet to his thoughts he forgot was possible.

The money from Madeleine has multiplied in her absence. He’s on a winning streak. He could go on forever and ever. Perhaps he will.

When the cards dry up he makes his way to Makker’s Wheel. Once upon a time, the wheel had been his main vice, his greatest weakness. Nothing satisfies the itch like a game of pure chance; his life on odds so long they vanish over the horizon. Everyone huddling around it is wearing the same hungry expression and briefly, Jesper feels less alone.

Jesper feels his pulse in his throat, in his arms and behind his eyes. This is where he’s meant to be, where he belongs. There is nothing in his head but the roar of the ocean.

When he wins, he ups the stakes, pouring more money onto the table with each turn. This is how you win against the wheel, aggressive and uncompromising. In this windowless room, there is only here and now. This bet, then the next.

This is how he loses four thousand kruge. The lucky winner, a man with an impressive handlebar moustache, is quite good natured about it. He laughs heartily with a hand over his belly, but Jesper feels numb. This isn’t how it was supposed to go. This is how it was always going to go. How could he have been so stupid? So reckless? So thoughtless? So greedy? There’s no such thing as a winning streak, only losing with flair.

The man across from him scrapes in his winnings with a grin, getting ready to play again. 

Jesper opens his mouth.

Another player beats him to it. “Your husband should let you play more often.”

“My husband—” Jesper doesn’t understand.

“You’re van Eck’s, no?” It’s Councillor Hendle, who looks as Jesper remembers him. Smug.

Chapter Text

The headlines write themselves.

Newly-appointed Councillor Van Eck keeps husband on too-long leash.

Councillor Van Eck’s pretty spouse pours family fortune into Barrel coffers.

Nothing about Hendle’s expression suggests discretion. ‘The fox that caught the rabbit’ is what his expression suggests. It makes Jesper feel watery.

They’re still standing by the wheel. The sound it makes as it turns resembles a dry cackle, taunting and cruel. Between the look on Hendle’s face and the sound of the wheel, Jesper is trapped. Trapped in this moment, in the Councillor’s control, in his addiction, in his shame and his fear and his stupidity.

And because Jesper has never learnt what to do with all that, he gets angry.

“You got something to say, Councillor?”

Hendle’s pale eyebrows jump to his hairline at Jesper’s tone. He leans back in his chair, arm slung over the back of it, with the confidence of someone born into power. Of course, he is effectively untouchable, especially in a public arena such as this.

“Oh, I’m just thinking about Mr. Van Eck and how he never did tell us what it is you do all day. I guess some questions answer themselves.”

His words are fuel to the flames. Jesper feels his hands begin to shake as he clenches his fists, speechless with impotent rage.

Before he can think better of it – before he can think – his hand is in the expensive silk of the man’s cravat. Now, Jesper gets a taste of his fear. He drags Hendle to his feet, hauling him to eye-level.

“It’s Councillor Van Eck.”

Inexplicably, this makes Hendle laugh. It’s choked by the hold Jesper still has on his tie, but it’s clear nonetheless.

In a pained whisper, he says, “Not for much longer.”

“What do you mean?” Jesper pulls him close, close enough to smell the whiskey on his breath. Then he drops him suddenly, belly full of regret. “What are you talking about?”

The smile on the Councillor’s lips tells Jesper everything he needs to know. He makes a fool of himself by shaking his head furiously. The tremor comes back full force as the depth of his mistake dawns on him. Wylan will never forgive him, not for being so predictable.

“Reckless decision-making and corruption were what saw the elder Van Eck lose his seat on the Council. Your husband seems similarly inclined. It seems to me only a matter of time.”

“Wylan is nothing like his father,” Jesper snarls.

Careless, Hendle brushes off the shoulders of his jacket and straightens his lapel. Then, sitting back down, he waves a hand to someone across the room.

Out of the crowd, nameless hands seize Jesper by the arms. He’s being pulled back into a wide chest before he realises he’s being kicked out. Rough hands wrap around his wrists; foul breath whistles past his cheek. This too is familiar, never mind the fact he hasn’t been thrown out of anywhere in months.

“Come now,” the bruiser murmurs. 

Lip curled, he tugs out of the stranger’s grip and throws his hands in the air. “I’m going, I’m going. No need to ruin good brocade.”

Outside the doors of the club, the crowd presses in. Here are a hundred accusatory eyes, a hundred loose tongues. He feels their judgement like oil on his skin. Not just a gambler but a brawler, a barrel rat, a good-for-nothing stain on the world.

He goes the only place he knows judgement won’t follow.

***

The Slat is as he remembers it, except not at all. Everything is tighter, cleaner, fresher. Even the faces. Kaz hasn’t let this place go, even as he acquired new property across the Barrel. It’s a strange kind of deja vu.

Jesper looks around for a familiar face, a life-preserver.

There, sitting at one of the long tables with a beer in his massive hand, is Keeg. He looks the same. A few careless strides and Jesper slaps a hand on the big man’s shoulder.

“Fancy seeing you here.”

Keeg looks back over his shoulder with a start.

“Fahey,” he breathes. It’s almost a question but it hasn’t been that long. “Got tired of living it up over on Geldstraat, huh?”

“Never,” Jesper laughs, clasping Keeg’s hand and pulling the big buy into a half-hug. “I like to remind myself how the other half live so I don’t get ungrateful.”

That earns him a good-natured laugh. It does nothing to lift his mood, only joins the mess of his syrupy insides. Jesper clenches his hands and steps back, hoping the smile he pastes on is enough to cover the reek of his anxiety.

“How’ve you been? How’s Van Eck?”

Jesper considers the wisdom of telling Keeg, and in doing so telling the entire Slat, that Wylan is a mercher now.

“He’s been promoted to the Merchant Council.”

Several heads turn toward them as Keeg lets out a low whistle, eyebrows high. “Is that so?”

Maybe this was a mistake.

“As of a month ago.”

“Let’s hope he’s not following in his father’s footsteps too closely or he’s gonna become awfully troublesome for the boss, and you know how he deals with trouble.”

It’s the same thing, over and over again. Wylan and his father, the world into which he was born and the world into which he is growing. It is becoming hard to remember what brought them together. Who is Jesper, really, against all that?

He crosses his arms and, as lightly as he can manage, says, “Kaz never did know what’s good for him.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Oh, you know,” he says with a shrug, “Going after fish bigger than him, starting fights he can’t win. Which is irrelevant anyway, he knows Wylan’s no threat to him.”

The look on Keeg’s face suggests otherwise. He may as well just call Jesper naive.

“You’ve been gone a long time,” Keeg says, eventually.

“Not long enough to forget what Kaz Brekker is like.” Fighting the itch under his skin, Jesper laughs and throws out his chin. “Is he in, by the way?” A murmur passes through the assembled group that tells Jesper more than enough. “Well, it was good to catch up. Take care of yourself.”

They exchange a much colder farewell than their greeting, then Jesper makes his way upstairs. He’s barely knocked on the door when Kaz’s familiar rasp tells him to come in. It’s only been a week since he last saw the Bastard, and yet Jesper is painfully happy to see him. Though he tries to hide it, he’s sure it’s obvious. He always has been obvious.

Kaz looks the same, sharp lines and a face like he’s waiting for you to get to the point. It’s a relief of sorts, a familiar landmark in uncharted territory. Kaz doesn’t often let him get away with self-sabotage – unless it benefits Kaz, of course.

“So, the Mercher let you stray away from the homestead?”

“We can’t always wait for you to visit,” Jesper says with a grin. “You look well.”

After a slow, deliberate inspection, Kaz says, “I can’t say the same.”

Just like that Jesper becomes aware of the way his heel is bouncing, the fact he is shivering  a little, the scab he’s picked off the back of his and and the bead of blood gathering in the now open wound.

“Well, Wy also let me dress myself this morning so—”

“That’s not it.”

Pulling a cord beside his desk, Kaz gets up.

“No, Kaz, it’s fine. Don’t—”

“Sit down, Jesper.”

Jesper sits, because at the end of the day he’s always done what Kaz told him to. Sitting isn’t much better, at first. Now that itchy, tight, fuzzy feeling in his chest spreads out until it reaches his extremities – until he’s shaking all over.

Suddenly, there’s a paper bag in his face. Kaz pushes it in his face with that same look of impatience. There are a million other places he could be right now. It doesn’t help that Jesper doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do with the bag. All he can focus on is the way the world is swimming and the short, sharp pinching that comes with every breath. Then the bag is over his nose and mouth.

“Breathe into the bag,” Kaz rasps. “In for four, out for six.”

Then he’s gone, and Jesper’s left with this bag and the deafening crinkling sound it makes as he breathes. In for four, out for six. It stops hurting after a while—not his heart, but the breathing. He feels less like dying.

After an interminable period of time – at least an hour – Kaz comes back. Without a warning, he drops a second bag, this one heavy with coins, in Jesper’s lap. It lands with a crunch and a grunt.

“ Ow .” Jesper rubs his thigh with a pout, distracted. “What’re these for? I don’t need your money.”

“It’s not for you,” Kaz says matter of factly, before taking a seat behind his desk again. “Check them. Someone’s been bringing fakes into the club – I need to know their composition.”

It’s a blatant misdirect. Kaz doesn’t want a quivering, snivelling, panicking mess in his office, so he’s distracting him with humiliating ease. Obliging, Jesper pours the bag into the palm of his hand and sifts through the coins slowly. Feeling the texture and weight and energy of them, the way the metals resonate with each other – or in this case, don’t .

“It’s an alloy,” he says, after a moment, then proceeds to rattle off everything else he can discern about these coins. Kaz watches him, nodding occasionally. It’s just like old times, except —

Jesper just got caught gambling away someone else’s money at a rival boss’s club by a rival mercher and the only thing that’s waiting for him is a too-big mansion on Geldstraat that he may very well have put in jeopardy, with a husband to whom he is nothing but a liability. This whole time, he’s been a fool for believing he’d made it. There is no such thing.

“Jesper,” Kaz says, from far away.

All he hears is silence.

***

The upholstery on the little settee in Kaz’s office smells vaguely of the man himself – cheap soap and shoe polish. Jesper is helpless thinking about Kaz falling asleep here, two storeys down from his bedroom. It’s so like him.

A curious doubling happens then, when Kaz walks in with Wylan and Jesper looks up at them from where he’s curled up foetally on the couch. The Kaz in his mind and the Kaz in this room; the Wylan in his mind and the Wylan in this room. There’s a mirage-like shimmer over them as they resolve into solidity. Distantly, he thinks he might be losing it. Everything else has gone wrong, it would be only too appropriate if his senses betrayed him too.

“Jes.” His husband’s voice is soft and real – just as he remembers it. Sharp as a knife. The hand he lays on Jesper’s shoulder is sharper still. Somehow, Jesper manages not to flinch.

“He’s been like this since he stopped panicking,” Kaz explains from beside his desk.

Wylan looks up, frowning. “He’s still panicking.”

“I meant—”

“I know what you meant,” his husband snaps. It’s unexpected; both Kaz and Jesper flinch. Apologetic, Wylan turns back and smooths a hand down Jesper’s arm. “I’m sorry, love. I would’ve gotten here sooner.”

“You’re not an easy man to reach.” There’s a note of defensiveness in his voice.

“Oh, don’t give me that. You took your time,” Wylan shoots back. Then, before Kaz can voice the retort on the tip of his tongue, “Save it. I’m taking him home. Thank you for watching him – genuinely, but we’re going home.”

His tone brooks no argument, so Jesper lets himself be helped up despite how small this makes him feel. As Kaz said, Wylan is hard to reach because he’s busy and important, but here he is scraping his husband off a barrel boss’s couch in the middle of the week. Jesper would like to disappear, would like to stop being a nuisance, would like to stop.

In the foyer of the Slat, Wylan looks strange and unreal. In his crisp mercher blacks, accented with a sea green cravat and his signature curls, he looks as much the lost prince as he ever did – more so, perhaps.

“Leaving so soon?” Keeg calls from the first floor.

“It’s good to see you, Keeg,” Wylan responds, hand on Jesper’s elbow. “But yes, we’re not staying.”

“Well, it was good of you to stop by.”

There’s something in the big man’s tone of voice that gets Wylan’s attention. He hesitates at the entrance, hand halfway to the doorhandle. Maybe he senses Jesper cringing at all the terrible possibilities of a conversation between them, maybe he’s tired, maybe he’s outgrown arguments with barrel thugs. Whatever it is, Wylan gives a vague affirmative before leading Jesper out of there.

The walk across the city to their home on Geldstraat is never ending. Wylan is silent. Jesper is silent. The city is loud and haunted and terrible. Every stranger they walk past casts strange, furtive glances in their direction – trying to decipher the mystery of them. They can smell the failure on him; they know a leech when they see one.

Slowly but surely, Wylan’s silence burrows beneath Jesper’s skin. This is it, he thinks. The end.

***

Wylan closes the door to the mansion with terrible care and for a moment, they’re left standing in the foyer wrapped in complete silence. Then, the sound of Marya singing in another part of the house floats down to them and Wylan lets out a long breath. Without saying anything, he walks to the kitchen in the back.

He once told Jesper that the kitchen had always been a safe place. In the whole house, it was one of the few places his father would never go. Why would he, as master of the house?

Because he can’t think of anything else to do, Jesper follows him.

The silence chews on, interrupted here and there by the banging of kitchen cabinets and disturbed crockery. Wylan is upset.

“I’m sorry,” Jesper says from his place in the doorway, watching the setting sun catch in his husband’s burnished hair.

The banging continues. From what he can tell, Wylan’s looking for the booze, which they keep in the sitting room. Interrupting him to point this out would be a bad idea, but continuing to watch him look in the wrong place is also a bad idea.

“Wy,” he says, taking a step into the room. “Love, please. Your Ma—”

This gets his attention. The last cupboard door he tore open – revealing a carefully curated array of herbs and spices – swings on its hinges as Wylan lowers his hands to the countertop.

“My Ma what ?”

“She’ll hear. I don’t want her to think – I don’t – we shouldn’t frighten her.”

“Frighten?” He turns halfway to look over his shoulder, eyes wide and wet. When he looks away again it’s with a small furrow between his brows. “That’s not – I’m just – I just need to—”

He cuts himself off, voice very quiet. His shoulders bunch up around his ears and on the countertop, his hands ball into fists. This is not a state Wylan allows himself to get into often; Wylan is angry. Justifiably so. It was really only a matter of time.

“I know,” Jesper says, sure that he knows.

“ What do you know?”

“That you’re angry.”

“You think I’m angry?”

“Aren’t you?”

“Jes, I’m exhausted.” This echoes oddly between them. “I can’t remember the last time I slept through the night – the last time I ate a full meal. And you – you’re in the Barrel? What were you doing at the Penny Fourth?”

“I—” Jesper recalls the lie he was going to tell, about Madeleine, about himself.

“If you’re going to lie, save your breath.”

“I wasn’t going to.” 

“Is this not enough?” Wylan gestures at the kitchen, the mansion. “Is all of this not good enough for you?”

“That’s not… It’s not about enough .”

“Then what? Am I boring you? I thought you wanted to get better.”

“I do.”

“Then what was this?”

“I don’t know, Wy. I didn’t think about it. It wasn’t a plan . I just – ended up there.”

“You just ended up there?” Wylan frowns, losing patience.

“I can’t – I don’t know how to stop fucking up. I’m just in this house all day, waiting for you to come home. There’s nothing to do and I’m going mad , Wy. Even housewives have parties to plan and kids to pretend to raise.”

The attempt at humour doesn’t work. “What’re you saying?”

“This life… I don’t know if it’s for me. If I can do it.”

“This is my life, Jesper. Are you saying you can’t do us?”

“Of course not,” Jesper sighs, exasperated. “I just need more time, I guess. It’s not the same for me.”

“You think this is easy – for me? Living in this house? Running my father’s company?”

This feels like a trap. “Well, not easy but—”

He doesn’t let Jesper finish.

“I am drowning , Jes.” His voice wobbles in the middle, gasping for air. By his sides, his hands are still balled up and his shoulders are still around his ears. Humiliation and anger rouge his cheeks. “I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m always afraid. Nothing – nothing prepared me for this.”

This is just totally wrong. Wylan isn’t a liar and Jesper believes him, but this is wrong.

“You know these people, how to talk to them – how to be with them.”

“Just because I can doesn’t mean I want to or that I’m comfortable around them. I – they – it’s too much, Jes. It’s too much. They’re all like him , they want the same things, talk the same way – I can’t .”

Now, Wylan is shaking, his sentences blurry and incomplete. It hurts to watch because Jesper had no idea. How did this happen?

“I…” Jesper reaches out to touch him, to pull him close, to undo this. “I’m sorry.”

Flinching out of his reach, Wylan shakes his head. “Don’t be sorry, Jes. You’re always sorry but you don’t even know what you’re sorry for.”

This lands like a blow, like an echo. Jesper hears it again and again and again.

I didn’t come looking for an apology, Inej once told him. The Suli have no words to say ‘I’m sorry’.

The problem is Jesper is made of recurring mistakes. That’s his beginning, middle, end. The same mistake made over and over because he has no sense of time, no sense of forward momentum. It’s all gyres. Endless cycles. 

How can an action have no echo when life is four walls without furniture? A shallow cave, a shallow grave.

That’s where they are now, a dead end.

At some point both of them had sunk to the floor, the black and white kitchen tiles between them. Jesper sits with his hands palm-up in his lap. With his back to a wall, Wylan hugs his knees. He has retreated entirely into himself and Jesper doesn’t know how or even if he should try pulling him back. Maybe he broke them. This is it.

The silence is a noose tighter than boredom.

“I didn’t know,” he says eventually, mostly just to say something. “I don’t know.”

After a pause, “You don’t know what?”

“How it is for you.”

“So you assumed it was easy.”

“No. I never thought it was easy for you. I thought—” With the clarity that comes after a jackpot win, Jesper knows that the end of this sentence should never be spoken.

“Spit it out.”

He spits it out. “I thought you were better.”

“Better?” When Wylan looks up his eyes are red, lids drooping. He hasn’t cried but it’s taking everything not to. 

“I thought you were better than me.”

Wylan’s brows knit a sweater of consternation and confusion and anger. It might be enough to make him forget his tears. Jesper can’t stand it when he cries.

“Thought?” He’s clever, you see, which is precisely what Jesper means.

“Think.” Jesper swallows. “I think you’re better than me. In fact, I believe it.”

As if trying to clear his thoughts or his eyes, Wylan shakes his head. “How? Why?”

“Because you are.” It’s like the sky is blue or Jesper will gamble , a statement of fact. “You are the better man. Stronger, cleverer, kinder. All of it. I know I give you a lot of shit but we both know it’s true.”

“All those times I came home and cried? What did you think – did you think I was exaggerating? Faking it? ”

Jesper kisses his teeth before he can stop himself, a derisive gesture he remembers his mother making.

“Of course not,” Jesper insists. “But you always bounce back! You vent and cry and then you – you go back.”

“I go back because I have to.”

“No, you don’t.”

Wylan’s long lashes flutter as he blinks at Jesper, utterly confounded. “What are you talking about?”

 “You don’t have to go back. You don’t have to do anything except meet your basic needs and there are a thousand different ways we could do that.”

“Are you saying I should leave the council? Sell off the company? Is that what you’re saying?”

They’re going around in circles. The frustration takes on a new pitch, a new tenor. Jesper raises his eyes to the ceiling and wraps a hand around his neck, pinching his pulse point. His blood slows until he can hear it, like molasses in his ears. This, at least, he understands.

“Don’t roll your eyes,” Wylan snaps. “I’m sorry I’m trying to build something, that I keep you fed. I’m sorry this life is so burdensome.”

“That’s not what I said.”

“You may as well have.”

Somehow, Jesper is even more confused than he was before. Looking at Wylan feels like looking at a stranger. 

“Why do you think you have to do what your father did? He’s gone. You’re free, Wy.”

“That’s not – I’m not – I’m not doing it for him, but even if I were. Do you not sometimes think about going back to university for your da? To do right by him.”

Jesper inhales sharply at that, trying to breathe around the hurt. In truth, he has had this thought every day since dropping out. Without a degree, he is a failure; he uprooted his future and gambled his father’s life’s work away for nothing . But it is also true that going to university was killing him, would kill him if he went back. Of that much he is certain.

“I can’t go back, and my life is worth more to Da than any piece of paper.” Saying this, he’s thinking about the last few months, about the mural and the cooking and his powers. He is not thinking about today, about yesterday, about the day before yesterday. “This is me doing right by him.”

Wylan is quiet for a long time after that. The threat of cruelty hangs in the air, unspoken. Eventually, he says, “If I fail, it means he was right.”

This lie is as familiar to Jesper as breathing, but it’s strange hearing it out of Wylan’s mouth.

“That’s not true.”

“Yes, it is.” Wylan shakes his head and tucks his chin into his shoulder.

Jesper, sick with the distance between them, crosses and sits down beside Wylan – shoulder to shoulder. “No, it’s not. Your father believed you would ruin everything he’d built, everything his father built before him, and what was that? A shipping empire that he almost ran into the ground because his greed had him tripping over himself falling for Kaz’s schemes. What does the bastard always say – you can’t con an honest man. You won’t fail because you don’t answer to greed.”

“How do you know?”

The light in the kitchen had faded to indigo, washing all the green and yellows of Jesper’s mural in blue. And beneath them, the tiles had grown cold, but still they sit there – shoulder to shoulder.

“I know you, Wylan van Eck. You are not your father. And even if you do fail, you’re in good company.”

Wylan takes a deep breath. In the darkness, it sounds like tears and regret. Then, ever so slowly, he turns to face Jesper, which is only discernible by the way his shoulder, then his elbow, then his knee knock against him with the movement. They sit across from each other, two silhouettes carved of grief.

“I think – I think we both have some homework to do.”

Jesper breathes a laugh that’s halfway to a sob. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” he whispers.

In the cover of darkness, Wylan reaches for Jesper as Jesper reaches for Wylan. Their hands find each other’s shirts and jumpers and chins and shoulders. Quickly, they knit their limbs together – become an indecipherable tangle. All Jesper can hear is Wylan’s wet breathing and the thunder of his own heart.

“We should take a trip,” Jesper says, eventually.

“What?”

“You need a break. I need a break. We should take a trip.” Despite the dark, Jesper can make out the glisten of his husband’s eyes as he looks up at him, beseeching. “Let’s go see the stars.”

Chapter Text

They’re headed as far out of Ketterdam as a single outbound ticket will get them. Gradually, the scenery transitions from spires, dockyards, and smoky chimneys to rolling fields of undulating flowers. The journey reminds Wylan of all the other times he’s left this city and all the pieces of him that never came back.

Standing at the railing, he’s quiet. All around him are the sounds of the water, the sounds of the other passengers, and the sounds of his past.

“What’re you thinking about?” Eventually, inevitably, Jesper sidles up beside him.

He’s never told Jesper what happened that day. Why would he? He has chosen this life, has achieved everything his father thought he couldn’t and more. There’s nothing else, he’d thought, to say about the life he left behind. But their argument had unsettled something in him, stirred up the silt in a long-stagnant pond, and he couldn’t help but wonder if the past hadn’t been poisoning the waters. 

Forming the words, however, is another challenge altogether. Even thinking about it closes a fist around his throat.

Jesper, in a way that Wylan both hates and loves in equal measure, senses this terrible silence and turns slightly. His hand is big and warm on Wylan’s right shoulder, his eyebrows a worried thatch. Instead of saying something, asking what’s wrong or distracting them with some inane segue, he just waits. And because his waiting is a vacuum begging to be filled, Wylan eventually speaks.

Once he starts, he finds he doesn’t know how to stop. It feels like breathing for the first time, like being born – cold and sudden and inevitable. 

The boat keeps moving and the clouds traipse aimlessly across the sky. Nothing changes as Wylan unravels. Even Jesper, eyes wide and grey as the overcast sky, only listens. This truth becomes just another thing they know about each other.

When Wylan finally stops, he’s a little out of breath.

“I don’t know what to say.” Jesper’s voice is very quiet when he speaks, softer even than the hand still on Wylan’s shoulder. “I – I don’t want to say the wrong thing.”

With that, Wylan realises it’s not about what Jesper says or does, nor is it about anyone else at all. He’s said it. The truth is out there. His father tried to have him killed, to erase him as if he’d never existed at all. Instead, here he is – alive and defiant.

“Nothing,” he says, eventually. Turning slightly, he slides a hand into Jesper’s waist and pulls him closer. “You don’t have to say anything.”

There is a brief pause before Jesper moves the hand from his shoulder to his neck, playing with the curls at his nape. There are tears glistening in his eyes, which Wylan can tell he’s holding back though it’s not in his nature to do so. Then, he says, “You are the bravest man I’ve ever met. It is an honour to know you and I’m so, so grateful I get to share a life with you.”

The fact that there are other passengers around them, that the boat comes to a shuddering stop against a small jetty, or that the crew are asking them to disembark only registers after several too-long moments.

They walk around this riverside village until Jesper leads them down a road just wide enough for one cart and perhaps a chicken. Passing snarls of blackberries Jesper can’t help but pick, they eventually come to an open field. There, beneath a solitary oak tree, they lie down beside each other. The dappled light and soft breeze smooth all their edges and blur all their memories. 

Just for an afternoon, they forget why they came, what they’re going back to. Just for an afternoon they get to be Wylan and Jesper – nothing more, nothing less. 

It’s when Jesper whistles a song at a mockingbird high in the tree that Wylan finally cries. The bird replies with a bright sparkling ribbon of sound to go with his silent tears. It’s a primordial kind of music – absent composer.

Gradually, like the prestige of a magic trick, the night sky unfurls a great cascade of stars unlike anything Wylan has ever seen. In the city, the sky is grey. On the ramshackle horizon, pollution and clouds smother everything. He knows there are stars, that they are too numerous to count. He even camped under them, on their trip across the ice in Fjerda, but somehow – somehow he had been too lost, too fearful to note them. Seeing them now, fresh tears spring to his eyes.

Feeling small and vulnerable, Wylan turns his head to hide his reaction. Jesper takes his hand and neither of them say anything else. 

Nothing more needs to be said.

The End