Work Text:
Kaz is in the living room. Kaz is in his living room, Wylan reminds himself when he walks in and sees the head of the crow crane leaned against a low table, the top of Kaz’s hat peeking over an easy chair. This house is his house now. Despite the bad memories and the bolted doors hiding the ghosts of Wylan’s childhood, Kaz made sure this house and this fortune were his. His mother and Jesper, and occasionally Inej when she returned from her boating lessons, were making it feel more like a home.
Not Kaz though. Wylan didn’t think it was his thing.
“Hello,” he says because at this point, it’s normal to see Kaz in his house at odd hours. It’s the middle of the night; it feels like the whole world is asleep besides Wylan, and now Kaz. Kaz twists to look back at him, his silhouette illuminated by the low-burning fireplace.
“Hey.”
“Can I join you?”
“It’s your estate.”
“And yet you’re here. And you’re the one who gave it to me,” Wylan says. Kaz waves him off. Wylan sits across from him, eyeing the decanter of whiskey and the half-full tumbler in front of Kaz. Kaz gestures to it.
“Help yourself.”
Wylan refrains from mentioning that it’s his whiskey anyways, and instead fetches a glass and sits back down. It’s late, Wylan thinks, and just accepts the unexpected invite.
“Everything okay?” he asks.
Kaz nods. “How was the hearing?” he asks. Van Eck’s trial in front of the Merchant’s Council had been that morning. Only Wylan and Jesper had gone. Wylan shrugged.
“Fine. He started raving the moment he saw me and Jes, which helped prove how unfit he is to have his own estate, so. Pretty good. And the paper trail for the money hasn't failed yet. So.”
Kaz just raises an eyebrow. “I’m sure his comments were flattering.”
“No one believed them,” Wylan says quickly. Which was good. Because they’d been. A lot.
“Good,” Kaz says.
He looks at Wylan as he takes a sip of whiskey. Wylan taps his foot on the floor.
“If you think anyone did believe him,” Kaz says, “tell me. I'll handle it.”
“No one has to die for believing rumors, Kaz.”
“Of course,” he agrees, his smile small but sharp like Inej's knives, “as long as no one poses a problem for my friendly neighborhood Merchant Councilman. Including Van Eck. There’s always a way to bring someone even lower.”
Wylan rolls his eyes. “No. All good. It’s - it’s surprising how much I just don’t think about him anymore. Besides today, he’s just - he’s not in my head. And he isn’t hurting me. It’s nice.”
“Do increase your standards, but I agree,” Kaz says. Wylan resists a smile. He’s aware his relationship - or lack thereof - with Van Eck was dysfunctional at best. But somehow, Kaz of all people telling him he deserves better is something novel.
He thinks about his father now. Van Eck’s hair was thinning, he was dressed in baggy, dirty prison clothes, and brought in front of his former colleagues in chains. And Wylan didn’t feel a hint of guilt. Why should he? Why, after Van Eck had discarded him? It was only right to discard him in return.
He looks back at Kaz and takes a deep, fortifying breath. “For the record,” Wylan starts slowly, cautiously. “I - I don’t know what Pekka Rollins did to you.”
The glare Kaz shoots him sends a chill down his spine, so he rushes on. “I just mean that whatever it is he did, whatever he did to make you want revenge. I think I get it. Now, I mean.”
“Glad to have your approval,” Kaz said, tone biting. Wylan sighed.
“Never mind.”
He didn’t know where he was going with it either. But somehow, watching revenge - not justice, not really, but the next best thing - play out in front of his eyes made him get it. His father would never recover from this. He’d be known for fraud - not nearly as bad as what he did to Wylan growing up, or kidnapping Inej, or double-crossing Kaz, but it still guaranteed his place in prison, a place he could never get to Wylan again. It brought him a sense of peace.
“Do you have your revenge on your father, Wylan?” Kaz asks slowly. “Is that what you think?”
“I have enough of it,” Wylan says.
“No, you don’t.”
“You don’t need to kill my father, Kaz,” he mutters, because he truly can’t predict where else that train of thought would go in Kaz’s head.
“That’s not what I was gonna say,” Kaz says. He looks oddly contemplative, brows furrowed low and eyes staring down at the table.
“What else, then?”
Kaz took his time looking up, leaning his head on his hands. Wylan waits.
“You have to be happy, now,” Kaz says matter of factly.
“Huh?”
“Best revenge, isn’t it?” Kaz asks. “Be happy. Be happy in this house with his old money, with your mother and Jes and whoever else you want here. Can’t think of anything better, after taking him down.”
“Is that your plan too, Kaz?” Wylan asks softly. He can’t quite picture it. He just knows it would include Inej and kruge, safety and bountiful locks to pick. More midnight meetings in his own living room after Kaz fucking breaks in since no locks will stop him.
But for now, Kaz just crosses his arms. “That’s not for you to know, merchling,” he says. Wylan resists rolling his eyes again.
“You’re the one checking in on me after you know I’ve seen my father,” Wylan says, a smile creeping onto his face. “You almost seem concerned.”
“I am making sure the newest Councilman is settling well into his role,” Kaz deflects immediately, “and wondering if he can lower the stadwatch’s presence in Fifth Harbor on a few select nights this month.”
Wylan did roll his eyes then, but says, “I’ll see what I can do.”
“Good,” Kaz says. He takes a sip of his drink. So did Wylan.
“How’s your mother?” Kaz asks. Wylan raises his eyebrows, but answers anyway.
“She’s okay,” he says. “Settling in. I think she’s…she’s unnerved being back here. But. I mean, so am I, so we’re getting through it together. We’ve been talking. It’s been good.”
“Good.”
“We cooked together,” Wylan says, and Kaz doesn’t actually stop him, and he would if he wanted to, so Wylan keeps going.
“We made a cake together. She told me I was more helpful now than when I was eight. I told her it isn’t so different from chemistry. She laughed at that.”
“That’s good, Wylan,” Kaz says quietly.
Wylan stares at Kaz a bit too long. “Why do you ask?” he asks. Kaz turns to him and frowns.
“It’s polite.”
“Your excuse is that you’re polite?”
“I’m…in polite company.”
“That never stopped you before.”
“You have a mansion now.”
Wylan scoffs. Kaz smiles a little behind his glass. He looks a little softer now, slouched in an easy chair. Wylan thinks this was truly just a social visit. And it's nice. Even if it was nearly 1 bell in the morning.
He's softer with Marya too. They haven't spoken much as far as Wylan knows, but he's noticed that Kaz is noticeably more patient with his mother's long pauses or wandering mind.
Something about parenthood makes Kaz sentimental. If someone had asked Wylan a few months ago what made Kaz go soft, it would not have been his first guess.
“Who were your parents, Kaz?” Wylan asks tiredly. Kaz’s brows furrow.
“My mother was Kett-”
“Oh, that’s not what I meant,” Wylan mutters. “I remember that line. It’s suitably dramatic. You can just say you don’t wanna answer.”
Kaz glares at him. Still, Wylan didn’t care. Life was good right now, with the Van Eck estate running as smoothly as ever despite Jan’s opinions of him, and Inej had dinner with her parents every night with Wylan and Jesper, and they’d received letters from Nina on her journey to Fjerda, and even the Dregs were falling in line behind Kaz and his new chain of command. Things were good right now, and if Kaz hadn’t killed Wylan when he’d been pissed off after Inej was taken, then Wylan would be fine now.
“Why do you ask, merchling?” Kaz asks. Wylan shrugs.
“Curious,” he says. “I should know what got me to win a bet against Kaz Brekker. So I can tell the story better. Were they…were they good to you?”
Kaz glares at him, but Wylan’s still sure this is him in a good mood.
Kaz looks back down into his lap. Maybe the question is childish, and that’s why Kaz won’t answer. But Wylan really is just curious. Kaz was notorious - Dirtyhands, Demjin, Bastard of the Barrel. And yet, he’d said it himself; he’d been sentimental. He’d even bet his precious kruge on Jan Van Eck being a good father.
What had caused that faith? Who had been such a good father to Kaz in his past for Wylan to end up being the practical one?
It hadn’t been the other leader of the Dregs. Wylan had asked once why Kaz was only technically known as a lieutenant. Jesper had laughed. “You’ve never seen him with Haskell,” he’d said. “You wouldn’t recognize him, all shy and polite, ‘yes, sir’ and ‘no sir’ after every question. It’s the only way the old man let him climb up so high. Doesn’t get that someday, Kaz is gonna pull the rug out from under his feet. Or that Kaz is the only reason he still has a damn rug in the first place.”
An act then, no different than Kaz fooling Smeet right after they’d broken into his own house. And he'd done exactly as Jes had predicted; Haskell had fallen and Kaz had been left broken and bloody but standing tall enough to rally his gang around him when the Crows had needed them. And Kaz was undoubtedly the leader of their own little gang, even if that bothered Nina to no end. He was the leader everywhere he went, in everything he did.
So when had he followed a parent’s lead willingly, without scraping and scrabbling for approval or putting on a mere act of obedience? Wylan couldn’t imagine it.
Kaz looks up from his glass. Wylan realizes he’s been staring but doesn’t look away, not when it looks like Kaz was actually formulating a response besides “fuck off.”
“Yes,” he says simply. There’s weight behind it, and Wylan realizes with a pang that maybe Kaz just misses them, misses his parents. Maybe it made him nostalgic enough for Wylan to win a bet.
Wylan sighs. He couldn’t tell anyone that, could he? Then again, it’s not like he has anyone to tell besides the others, and he thinks maybe then Kaz would actually kill him, and he’d deserve it a little bit.
“I’m glad you had them then, Kaz,” he says quietly instead.
Kaz scoffs. “They still left,” he says.
Wylan frowns.
“It wasn’t their fault,” Kaz says quietly. “Just happened. And they didn’t stop anything else from happening to us either.”
Wylan notes the use of ‘us’ but picks his battles. “You still had them,” he retorts.
Kaz looks at him then, head tilted, eyes matte black. Wylan sips his own drink, concentrates on the burn in his throat and
not the burn from Kaz staring at him.
“Yeah,” Kaz says, and Wylan raises an eyebrow when he realizes Kaz is smiling a little behind his glass.
“You know,” Wylan says, ignoring how Kaz’s eyes roll a little when he keeps talking, “I’m sure Mr. Fahey wouldn’t mind having you visit him. You might stick out a little in jurda fields, but if you wanted - ”
“A substitute father?” Kaz asks, and Wylan recognizes the warning note in his voice.
“I just think it’d be interesting to see the Bastard of the Barrel in the middle of the countryside,” Wylan says. “I can’t picture it.”
Kaz grins again, sharp and puzzling. “It’s more likely than you think, merchling.”
He tosses his empty glass to his other hand and grabs his cane, standing up. “I think I’ll head to bed. You have a guest room made up, yes?”
Wylan blinks as Kaz breezes past him towards the stairs. He rolls his eyes and drains his glass. Every time he thought he knew something about Kaz, it turned out he knew nothing at all.
But he thinks of the twenty kruge tucked in his drawer, not his coffers - perhaps overly pleased that it was borne of a won bet with Kaz - and thinks he’s learning a bit more every day.