Chapter Text
The barrel was how Kaz preferred it tonight. The stench of sin was thick in the air, the sounds of blasphemy and debauchery rattling the walls of the Crow Club. It was filled with pigeons all ready to be plucked. He wanted to stay and keep watch, but he had things to do. He slipped his way to the stairs, parcel in hand, when a loud voice stopped him short.
“So, the new spider is very pretty…”
Typical Jesper. It took everything in Kaz not to roll his eyes. His sharpshooter concerned himself with 4 things in life: boys, girls, gambles and guns.
If Kaz had been someone else, he would have thought that Inej was pretty. He remembers what she looked like when he had first seen her at the menagerie; sleek and graceful. There was an elegance to her. Not just how she looked, but how she moved. Like she was floating, her feet barely touching the ground.
But Kaz didn’t have time for pretty. Didn’t have a use for it either.
“No flirting with Inej, Jesper.” He snapped. Kaz thought about the way she had flinched when he had handled her clothes her first night, her eyes wide and terrified. “She has been through enough and doesn't need your failed attempts at seduction.”
“Course," Jesper said with a wink. “I wouldn't want to make you jealous, Boss.”
Kaz looked back at the Zemini boy as he leaned on the wall, pistol hanging idly in his hand. He was wearing another one of his ridiculous outfits; a red and green vest with detailed floral designs running down the sides. Bright and flamboyant; bursts of colour against dark skin. He was smirking and there was a smugness in his eyes that Kaz had grown accustomed to. It was a knowing smugness.
Jesper played dumb in the gang but Kaz knew he was more clever than he let on. He was oddly perspective, sometimes. When he wasn’t cracking jokes and goofing off. It was frustrating that the sharpshooter was so good at his job because he was also one of the most aggravating people Kaz had ever met.
Everything about Jesper was too much. Too loud. Too flirty. Too jittery. He was always moving. Always talking or whistling or tapping his feet. He was like a child on a constant sugar high, searching again and again for the next rush. There was a hunger in Jesper that Kaz recognised. It set him on edge.
Kaz valued silence. Jesper seemed incapable of it.
It should have made them an irrevocably incompatible pair. However, despite these differences, there was something about the sharpshooter that stuck with Kaz. Or stuck onto him. Like once he was around, he was impossible to get rid of. After a while Kaz had just given into it, growing used to the noise and colour that coated Jesper like his gunpowder.
Jesper was a good shot, but he was almost a friend to Kaz as well. As close to a friend as Kaz would ever allow anyway.
That didn’t mean he was going to start discussing pretty girls with him like they were schoolboys.
“Don't you have a job to do?”
“Course.” Jesper’s eyes flickered to Kaz's bad leg, smug as ever. “I’ll let you enjoy your walk up.”
Kaz did roll his eyes then, much to Jesper's delight. He began walking up the stairs with perhaps a bit more force than he knew he could handle. He didn’t have time for Jesper and his jabs; he had things to do.