Work Text:
Jesper raised the glass of champagne to his lips for what must have been the dozenth time and pretended he was drinking it. It tasted good on his lips– it was the expensive kind, where you couldn’t taste the sour tang of alcohol, only grapes and the light tingle of the bubbles.
But he was on a job. He could drink himself insensible later, and he probably would.
He was dressed like an asshole, and the clothes chafed and itched even though Kaz had made sure they were properly fitted. The two of them had to look prosperous– the young shipping magnate and the skilled captain he employed, on a visit to Belendt to solicit new clients. The costume was essential to the con, and Jesper might not be good for much else, but he knew how to wear a mask. He smiled encouragingly at the young man standing beside him, who was determined to show off his knowledge to the foreign captain Jesper was playing by explaining how the Kerch Exchange worked. The courtship dance of the aspiring mercher– he might as well have hopped in circles flapping hopefully.
Thank the Saints Wylan had never tried to impress Jesper with the stock market.
Not that it made much difference, of course. He was living back in the Slat these days. The occasional tea with Wylan or desperate tumble despite both their best intentions…. they didn’t mean anything. He loved Wylan as fiercely as he ever had. And Wylan wanted Jesper back– was waiting for him to come back– but Jesper wouldn’t, not while Wylan insisted on keeping him on a financial leash for his own good.
Wylan refused to let Jesper fall back into the spiral of addiction. And Jesper had discovered that he preferred the weight of debt and his own bad decisions to being put on an allowance and offered investments as a safer substitute for the tables. As if it was only about the uncertainty of making a profit and not the rush of the game, the fragile illusion of control and the tension singing in the air…
Kaz hadn’t turned him away, and Jesper was grateful for that. The Dregs were more than a small-time harbor gang these days, and Kaz found work for him. This particular job was a type of work Jesper hated, because time crawled at these sorts of parties. There was nothing to do, nowhere to go, not even any dancing. He had to sit still or stand still and say his lines. There was decent food, but Jesper would have preferred skipping dinner and being chased across half the city by the stadwatch .
Kaz knew it. He normally wouldn’t have picked Jesper for this con, but Jesper’s tab at the Crow Club had gotten higher than even Kaz could forgive. Jesper wasn’t sure if Kaz had chosen him as payback for fucking up the Zierfoort job last month or just to keep him too busy to dig himself in deeper. They’d fought about it earlier this afternoon.
Not everything is about you, Kaz had snarled. I needed another man for the job and you need the kruge. Why can’t you just fucking do as you’re told?
Now, from across the room, Kaz beckoned him over. He and the mark, De Groet, were sitting at the end of a mostly empty table drinking tiny, expensive cups of coffee. Jesper slid gracefully into a chair beside Kaz, who clapped him briefly on the shoulder.
“This is Captain Van Dijk,” Kaz introduced him, “the most competent seaman I’ve had the privilege of working with.”
Jesper displayed the self-control of a saint and held out his hand to De Groet with a cordial smile instead of cracking a semen joke. The handshake he received was very Kerch– brief, jerky, and firm, with no hint of eye contact. In Novyi Zem, it would have been an insult, but Jesper was used to the peremptory brusqueness that passed for manners in his adopted country.
“I’ve captained the Vollezak for four years now,” he said, letting his face warm with pride for his imaginary ship. “My lady and I can cross the world with your cargo and deliver it safe and sound.”
“Meijers here says your record is good,” De Groet said, his lips folding as if he still had some reservations about that.
“I said his record is flawless, ” Kaz corrected. “He takes the utmost care in every delivery, right down to the spelling on the tax documents and the stowing of the cargo.”
Jesper gave a modest nod, cringing inwardly. The last time Kaz had given him documents for safekeeping, he’d left them behind at a coffeehouse and had to go through the rubbish behind the building to retrieve them. But he didn’t let that show on his face. He dropped the warmth and charm– what this mark was looking for was reliability. “We don’t leave port until every detail is accounted for.”
De Groet sipped his coffee. “You don’t, do you? Do you ever have a problem with leaving and arriving late on account of that? I know your type aren’t always the most punctual.”
Of course sea captains weren’t always punctual, Jesper thought inanely, and wondered if he was going to have to explain storms and tides to the man. Instead he said, “We follow a strict schedule to make sure that all checks are performed ahead of time. As long as reasonable allowances are made for the weather, I don’t foresee any problems.” Jesper thought of Kaz’s organized timelines for jobs, and of the careful lineup of glassware and color-coded materials in Wylan’s laboratory. He inwardly laughed at the monthly organizations of his own room that he managed in late night spurts of energy, only to turn it upside down the next morning when he couldn’t find something. Van Dijk’s cargo hold would be neat as a pin. His employer would be able to set a clock by his arrival, not show up at his door and drag him out with his tie still half-knotted.
“He seems solid enough,” the mark said slowly. Kaz didn’t have a lot of visible tells, but Jesper could see a hint of tension in his jaw. He’d had to lower their price beyond what he’d planned for, Jesper guessed. That always put him on edge.
Not that the price of shipping would even be their main profit on this venture, of course. The real gain would be the fine woolen cloth they would be sailing away with before De Groet realized that Meijers and his company didn’t exist, no ship by the name of Vollezak had ever berthed in the harbor, and the contract he’d signed was only so much worthless paper.
For a moment, Jesper let himself fantasize that the con was real, that he’d graduated University and made something of himself. Van Dijk had finished his education just as he finished everything he started. He didn’t join his men for games of cards or dice. He preferred to play his concertina for the crew to dance to and then retire early to go over his ledgers. He was patient and calm in a crisis, and his crew looked up to him like a father. In fact, he was a father, with a child or two at home, because he was the sort of man who knew how to care for a family. How to make a family strong.
It was possibly the dullest fantasy life Jesper had ever created, but it burned in the pit of his stomach like guilt. Like longing.
That man would have made Wylan happy. Kaz would have been able to rely on that man. His Da would have been proud of him. He was everything Jesper wasn’t, and Jesper gave De Groet his most trustworthy smile and promised him that the job would be done to his satisfaction.
-
Jesper was sulking, and it grated on Kaz’s nerves. He tolerated it, waiting for the mood to pass, as Jesper paced in tight circles around the room with his hands clenched into fists. It wasn’t Jesper’s usual pacing that came with gesturing hands and a running commentary on whatever was going through his mind. It was silent, and that silence prickled on Kaz’s skin. He didn’t like it when Jesper went quiet.
“Sit down,” he finally snapped– something he rarely said to Jesper because he’d sit, then be up again in seconds. Jesper shot him a resentful look but threw himself into a chair. He picked up the beer he’d opened, sipped, and then abandoned on the table when they’d first come in. Giving it a brief critical look, he tilted the bottle to his lips and drained it in a few long draughts. Then, making Kaz nearly jump out of his skin, Jesper threw the empty bottle at the wall. The glass shattered and so did what remained of Kaz’s patience.
This place wasn’t the finest of accommodations, but it wasn’t the sort of place you shattered bottles in either. They needed to be in town until late tomorrow morning to finalize the documents, but since De Groet wasn’t the sort to have them followed, Kaz had rented them each a room in an nondescript inn. Beige walls, beige linens, brown carpet, brown wooden furniture– Jesper’s discarded blue coat and the amber shards of the bottle were the only spots of color in the room.
“Whatever is wrong with you, deal with it now,” he snapped, crossing the room to loom over Jesper. “You’re acting like a cat that got tossed in the canal.”
“Right, I forgot,” Jesper shot back, looking up at Kaz bitterly. “You’re my employer. It’s not your job to care about my feelings.”
Kaz blinked. When had he said that? Two, three years ago, maybe, after Jesper had flipped out right before an important job? He’d been upset over a breakup with some stupid skiv who hadn’t deserved him anyway and Kaz hadn’t had the time or the energy. Deal with it somewhere else. We leave in half an hour. I’m your employer, not your– it’s not my job to care about your feelings.
He shook his head. “Why are you even having feelings? The job went fine. You’ll be eight thousand kruge richer before sunset tomorrow.”
“Why get excited about the money?” Jesper muttered, looking away. “I’ll just gamble it away like I always do. You might as well throw it in the harbor so the fish can eat it. They’ll get more good out of it.”
“Fish don’t eat kruge, ” was all Kaz could think of to say, because the comment was idiotic. Jesper’s carelessness was the reason he needed more kruge , not a reason to throw it away. “It would dissolve,” he added uselessly.
Inej would be scolding him right now, he suspected, telling him that it wasn’t about kruge at all or something. Inej was good at things like metaphors and stuff people didn’t say aloud. Kaz just knew how long you could hold someone under the surface of a canal before the cash in their pockets was useless.
Jesper needed kruge . It made no sense for him not to want it, even if he only wanted it to toss it away on the roll of the dice. Kaz had found a way for him to get the money he needed and now he was acting like it meant nothing at all.
“Fine. Whatever,” Jesper muttered. “Just stop pretending I’ll actually make any profit out of any of this. It won’t change anything. I don’t know why I even bothered.”
“Your account books are in the red,” Kaz reminded him. “Any decrease in your debt is a profit.”
“How have you not figured it out yet?” Jesper snapped, looking up at Kaz with resentment in his eyes. “I’ll put it in words that you understand, shall I? I’m a failing business that no one with any sense would invest in. My account books will always be in the red. Foreclosure would be a kindness.”
Kaz stared at him in incredulous growing anger. He knew the pull of despair, knew the weight of having nothing to live for but spite, with no hope that anything would change. He’d carried that weight for years , refused to bow under it even when he was starving and alone. Inej had borne it naked in chains and never surrendered her pride.
And now Jesper thought he had the right to give up? Here, in a warm room, with a full stomach and friends who would fight and die for him? With Wylan Van Eck waiting to sweep him into a life of luxury the moment he got his shit together, and Kaz working to keep him from being buried in his own mistakes until then?
He took a breath, then another, mastering his rage, then bit out, “All right. Now that you’ve gotten that bit of self-pity out of your system, pull yourself together, stop being an idiot, and clean up that fucking glass.”
Jesper raised an unimpressed eyebrow. “Why stop? It’s what I’m best at.”
“I hired a sharpshooter, not a clown.”
“Then why do you have me doing this shit instead of shooting?” Jesper retorted, pushing himself to his feet. It was too much to hope he intended to clean up the glass; this was just Jesper wanting to be taller than Kaz, which he was.
“ This shit pays,” he pointed out coldly, “And you need the cash because you’re out of –”
“Out of control,” Jesper finished for him, taking a step forward, though Kaz had been going to say out of credit. “You want to see out of control?”
Then before Kaz could say anything else, he was ducking to avoid his friend’s blow.
Jesper didn’t outweigh Kaz by much, but he was the quicker of the two and stronger than his gangly frame suggested. Kaz didn’t waste his breath on arguing, just got a hold of Jesper’s arm before he could pull it back fully and twisted it to try to bring the sharpshooter to his knees. Jesper managed to yank it back before Kaz could get the leverage he needed. Kaz stumbled backwards. His cane was lying on the bed and even if it hadn’t been, his cane was for enemies, not stubborn idiots. And for keeping his damn balance .
Jesper backhanded him across the face and he tasted blood. Kaz hissed like a cat. Jesper could hit harder than that. He’d pulled that punch. What was this about? Humiliating him? Proving something?
Kaz might not have pulled out a knife or grabbed his cane, but at least he respected Jesper enough to hit him like a grown man, so he did. The pain that jarred through his knuckles when Jesper angled his head to take the blow on the hard bone of his forehead rather than the cartilage of his nose reminded Kaz why he preferred his cane or a knife.
If a punch wouldn’t get through his thick fucking skull, maybe words would.
“Is there a point to this?” he gritted out. “Or are you just out to prove to yourself that you really are as stupid as you’ve been pretending to be?” He knocked aside Jesper’s next blow viciously enough to bruise them both as he took another step back. “Is that all you’re good for anymore, destroying yourself? Throwing away your kruge at the tables, barely earning your keep at the Slat, and running back to Wylan to get fucked?”
“Jealous?”
Kaz’s back was at the wall now, and Jesper snarled and slammed him against it with a forearm across his collarbones so hard that Kaz’s head bounced off the wallpaper.
“As if–” he gasped– “I’d want– to be another convenient cock for you to stuff yourself with–”
Jesper smirked. “You’ve always been good at lying to y–”
Kaz didn’t wait for him to continue. He reached up and shoved Jesper’s head to the side with all his strength, knocking him enough off balance for Kaz to twist and push him into the wall face-first. He managed to catch one of Jesper’s arms and twist it behind him, and Jesper only laughed harshly.
“Go on, Kaz, do what we both know you’ve been wanting to. It’s not like I’m good for much else.”
“The fuck– Jes, if you keep talking shit about yourself I’m going to–” he started, not even knowing how he was going to finish the threat.
Jesper twisted a leg back and hooked it around Kaz’s good leg, and they both crashed to the floor in a tangle of shoulders and elbows and knees. Then Jesper was on top of him and pressing his full body against Kaz’s in a way that made Kaz mortifyingly conscious of the fact that his cock was half-hard. Which was normal during a fight sometimes and didn’t mean anything except that Jesper’s was too and their hips were pressed together and–
“If I keep talking shit about myself then what?” Jesper challenged him.
“Then I’ll shut your mouth for you,” Kaz hissed, heart pounding in his chest. Struggling not to let the panic grip him from the weight of another body on his own. Struggling not to arch into the pressure and grind against him in sheer instinct. Struggling to keep a grip on his own fucking mind.
“Try it,” Jesper challenged, and Kaz braced his good leg against the floor, twisted, and shoved Jesper off him, rolling so that he was the one on top.
“I’m not your soft little mercher,” he spat. “I’m not going to hold your hand while you work through your self-centered bullshit or try and convince you what a good man you really are on the inside.” He let his voice drip with sarcasm, trying to ignore the feeling of Jesper’s body under his and the beads of sweat glinting on Jesper’s forehead and upper lip. “It’s not my job to trick you into getting some fucking self-respect. You need kruge and I found a way for you to get it, and that’s where it ends.”
If Kaz were to just move a fraction of an inch, their mouths would touch, and that filled him with terror and heat at the same time. Then Jesper’s muscles tensed beneath him and Kaz was on the ground again and something sharp was stabbing into his back and shoulder, slicing the back of his head. He and Jesper struggled and Jesper’s knee hit his bad leg hard as he got Kaz pinned under him for a moment. The pain was jarring. His vision blurred for a moment. He tried to gulp in air, but the press and weight of a body against him was suffocating, closing in around him and pulling him under. He thrashed and scrabbled for something to hit him with, to free himself with, to get them off of him. He felt sharp glass under his hand, grabbed it, slashed out wildly–
But it was Jesper who grunted in surprise, Jesper whose shoulder was bleeding from a deep gash. There was a bloody piece of glass in Kaz’s hand and he was raising it again, preparing to finish the job–
He froze.
“Jes,” he choked out. Jesper’s eyes were still dark and wild, and he scrambled backwards and raised a fist to fight back. Kaz dropped the glass and struggled to his feet. Bathroom— water— a towel— had he remembered to pack that little first aid kit?
He stumbled back to his carpetbag with a hand towel he’d hastily wet in the sink, dug through it frantically, and pulled out the box, then had to rummage for the wet towel he’d dropped in the search.
“Kaz, what are you doing?” Jesper’s voice was still breathless with a tinge of anger beneath– and maybe something else. A different kind of tension that he wasn’t going to think about, that he didn’t deserve because he’d just been about to cut Jesper’s throat with a shard of glass because his fucked up psyche had forgotten this wasn’t that kind of fight. Fuck. There was the towel. It probably wasn’t clean anymore. His head was still too tangled to think clearly.
He returned and knelt with difficulty on the floor in front of Jesper, fumbled his tie loose, and tore his shirt open to get to the bleeding slice. Jesper sucked in a sharp breath, then, as Kaz pressed the towel to it hard to slow the bleeding, he slowly looked down.
“... Oh,” he said distantly. He pulled at the towel, trying to get a look at the wound beneath.
“Stop that,” Kaz snapped. The blood was starting to seep through the folded towel, but there wasn’t as much of it as he’d been afraid there might be.
Jesper took a shaky breath, then another. “You, uh, got me good there, I guess.”
Kaz’s jaw tightened. “This might need a few stitches.” He refused to apologize. His leg ached from the fight and burned from the position he was in, but he didn’t move, kept the pressure up until he felt like he could take the towel off and get a good look at it.
It wasn’t pretty. He’d slashed the edge of the glass across another scar that was already there, and the scar tissue hadn’t cut cleanly. He kept his face expressionless, carefully examining without touching the skin to calculate how many stitches it would need. Kaz knew firsthand how hard it was to try to sew up your own shoulder, so he’d have to be the one to do it. As if this wasn’t a disaster enough. The next time Jesper was with Wylan, he’d probably tear them open while fucking and have to explain. He wouldn’t have the sense to tell Wylan beforehand so Wylan could make sure to be gentle with him, or hold him down to keep him from moving that shoulder and graze rough kisses over the bandaged wound it while he took him.
Kaz shoved the image away. It wasn’t a thought he'd intended to have. He wrenched open the first aid kit with more force than necessary. Poured antiseptic on the wound– Jesper barely flinched, even though Kaz knew it burned. He was just… watching Kaz in a way that made his throat tighten. Kaz squared his shoulders and pulled the curved needle and thread out of the kit. His hands were shaking.
Jesper took them from his hands and threaded the needle for him with deft fingers. The man was made of adrenaline; of course he wasn’t shaking after their fight. He was energy and rage and despair and joy trapped in human flesh. He never shook. If Kaz allowed himself to feel half as much as Jesper did, he would be shaking all the time.
He took back the needle, not letting himself dwell on the faint pressure as Jesper’s bare fingers brushed against his gloved ones. Poured the antiseptic over it and the thread, ignoring the drops of it that spilled on his trousers and the floor and how much of it he was wasting.
Jesper, never still, was rocking back and forth slightly. Kaz took a few deep breaths, then grabbed Jesper’s other shoulder and held him in one place for a moment until he got the message and stopped. He immediately began tapping his fingers against his leg instead– Kaz was not going to look to see if he was still hard. Of course he wasn’t hard. Kaz had sliced him with a shard of glass.
He lined up the edges more carefully than he would have if it were his own skin. He could– not fix this, but at least– at least not make it worse.
Jesper was silent as Kaz worked, his shallow breaths loud in the quiet room. Fidgeting a little, but trying not to. Kaz breathed the smell of his sweat and cologne, carefully keeping the touch of his gloves to skin as brief as possible. He wouldn’t let himself panic again.
Only three stitches. He rested his gloved fingertips lightly on the wound after, then pulled his hand away quickly. Why had he done that?
To his surprise, instead of standing and pulling his shirt back on, Jesper picked up the washcloth from where Kaz had set it on the lid of the kit. He sort of crumpled it up to find a part without his blood on it, then reached out with it toward Kaz’s face. Stopped.
“Can I?” he asked, his voice low and unsteady.
Kaz nodded curtly. Then he sucked in a sharp breath despite himself at the cool damp of the towel touching his jaw. Had Jesper hit him in the jaw? He didn’t remember. The towel didn’t feel like flesh. It felt like… it felt okay. He had to struggle not to lean forward into the gentle touch as it smoothed up to press against his temple. That stung– a cut there, maybe. From the glass? From Jesper’s rings?
Carefully, not touching his face with bare skin, Jesper reached over and smoothed Kaz’s hair out of the way of the cut, and he shivered. His eyes fluttered shut. There was something tight and painful in his stomach.
Softly, so softly, Jesper pressed the cloth to Kaz’s split lip. It tasted like blood and his own sweat. The sound of Jesper's breathing was uneven in the quiet room. So was his own.
They stayed like that, unmoving, for about half a minute too long before Kaz was able to make himself pull away and open his eyes.
He could feel drying blood on the back of his head and the place where the glass had cut through his shirt. Jesper would clean the scrapes if Kaz told him. It would be… terrifying, intimate, too much. He didn’t let himself say anything. He’d pull on his waistcoat to hide it when Jesper went to rinse the towel. Or just drop it in the sink, more likely. This was Jesper.
-
Kaz’s mouth was hard, thin-lipped, and the lower lip was split and swelling. Jesper had done that. He wanted to punch it again. He wanted to kiss it as he buried his hands in the soft, messy hair above the shaved sides of his head. Kaz had shut his eyes when Jesper had touched his hair. He might lean his head back into Jesper's hands and give another of those little shudders. He might shove him away in panic. He might say something that would cut deeper and more painfully than any glass. He might drag him closer by the shirt he'd torn open (and fuck, that had been an experience hed relive in his fantasies for months.)
Jesper might be an idiot, but he knew when someone wanted him.
But he wouldn't kiss Kaz without his permission, and no matter how much he wanted to, he knew already that Kaz would say no.
He was in love with Inej, Jesper knew that. And he wanted Jesper and Wylan to get back together. That he knew Jesper wanted himself and Wylan to get back together.
Kaz wouldn't stop Jesper from fucking up his own life, but he wouldn't help him do it either. And Kaz would see anything that might happen between them as a mistake. He'd told Jesper as much years ago. I'd tear up your heart and give you nothing in return because you're too reckless with yourself to insist on it. Stop asking. The answer isn't going to change.
So Jesper got up and rinsed off the towel in the little sink, watching blood spiral down the drain. Kaz was right. Kaz was usually right.
He hated it when Kaz was right.
He wrung the towel out and left it in the sink.
When he came back, Kaz was sitting on the chair, digging his thumbs into the muscle of his thigh with a wince. His face was already blooming with bruises where Jesper had hit him.
"I hurt you," Jesper said quietly.
"You pulled your damn punches. What, did you think I couldn't take it? Asshole." Kaz glanced up at him. "You hurt me, I hurt you back. You're the one who started this. Don't start feeling guilty over it now."
"I'm sure Captain Van Dijk would have hit you properly, like a good employee. Someone you can rely on , " Jesper replied, because he couldn't let go of it and leave well enough alone, and he didn't want to.
Kaz's hands paused on his leg and he looked up at Jesper, eyes narrowing. "So that's what all this was about?" he asked incredulously. "For fuck's sake. He was a bigot. He didn't want to trust his cargo to a part-Zemeni captain. I had to make you the perfect paragon of the trustworthy merchant seaman in order to get him to agree to it. I figured you could play that role for an hour."
Suddenly "I know your type aren’t always the most punctual" took on a whole new meaning. Jesper forced himself to shrug it off.
"Nothing I haven't heard before. The Kaelish are charming liars, a good time between the sheets but never trust one with your money. The Zemeni are clever but lazy and incapable of showing up anywhere on time. And here I am, the worst possible example of both, every bigoted cliche rolled into one." Jesper gave Kaz a faint, insincere grin. "Good thing you lied."
"As Inej likes to point out, I'm every single Kerch stereotype in the book. It's not our job to prove people wrong."
"That doesn't make it any better when I prove them right. Don’t pretend you wouldn’t prefer the mask I was wearing tonight to the real thing." Jesper let himself fall into the bed and rolled over on his side to face Kaz. He'd done this hundreds of times, intruding on Kaz in the attic while he worked, throwing himself onto his cot and unraveling the loose threads in his pillowcase while Kaz sat at his desk and they argued. The familiarity of it was like a blanket.
Kaz carefully straightened his collar and tie, his gloved hands steady and precise once more. "There are plenty of Kerch who are free with their money and their emotions. And there are plenty of punctual, responsible Zemeni who wouldn't risk their lives to get between someone like me and a bullet. Why do you think you piss me off so much? I need you and that means I have to put up with your bullshit."
There were no frayed ends of the pillowcase or sheets to tug loose and there was a hollow place in Jesper's chest. "Don't let me have any of the take," he said. "Put it towards my debts."
"Do it yourself," Kaz told him. "Wylan's right. You need to stop. But you have to do it yourself. We can't do it for you." He met Jesper’s gaze flatly. "The gambling's just another mask. Either you'll take it off or you won't. It's the man beneath the mask I depend on.” With a poorly hidden wince, he got to his feet. “And I expect that man to be at my room at nine bells tomorrow to make sure I spelled everything on the contract right before we send it out."
Jesper let his breath out slowly as he watched Kaz retrieve his cane and leave, his limp more pronounced than usual.
For a moment, Jesper let himself hope. Hope had always been his downfall. It was what brought him back to the tables again and again-– reckless, senseless, aching hope that this time, this time it would be different. This time he’d win big and then walk away before he lost it all.
Jesper told himself that he’d try harder, he’d conquer the habit for real. He’d stay away from the tables and make Kaz and Wylan proud. He’d still spend his earnings on stupid shit, because he was Jesper and he couldn’t resist pretty trinkets and clothes that made him feel alive, but he wouldn’t throw his kruge away on the turn of a card. He wouldn’t be prey for the loansharks, wouldn’t need Wylan to bail him out or Kaz to find him extra jobs. Maybe this time his common sense would be stronger than the self-destructive need that had burrowed into his gut and made a home there.
But even hope had its limits. Gambling’s just another mask, Kaz had said, but what was beneath it was torn and ragged and gaping. There was something missing inside him, something everyone else either seemed to have or had learned to do without. It was something that couldn’t be fixed with self-control or careful planning or loyalty because it had devoured those parts of him years ago. He’d belonged to that hunger since before he’d even known why the lights and laughter of the Lid drew him like iron filings to a magnet. He’d been barely more than a child, and it had already been too late for him the moment the chips touched his hands.
But he clung to hope, because it was the only thing keeping him from breaking Da’s heart completely and losing what was left of Kaz’s friendship and Wylan’s love.
And like he always did, Jesper made a bet. He bet himself that he’d last a month before he broke again, before he failed them one more time and had to throw himself on their forgiveness and their fraying patience. One month of starving the thing inside him and letting Wylan start to believe again and earning Kaz’s curt approval and tossing and turning every night until exhaustion numbed the itching desperation and he sank into something that could almost be called sleep. A month before he couldn’t resist rewarding himself for waiting, for holding back. Before he told himself as he always did that this time it would be different.
A month before he failed them. A month and two days before he resolved once again to stop, desperate not to lose the steady regard of Kaz’s eyes as he told him the man beneath the mask was worth anything at all. Jesper closed his eyes and placed the wager.