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“I love you.”
It had been years since Kaz had heard those words, living on in the memory of Jordie covered in pox, forcing them out through wheezing breaths.
“I love you.”
And he had never been able to say it back, voice stolen by the sickness and the pain, the sound of them trapped forever in the waves of grief and regret.
Yet again, years later, he was struggling.
It was the first time he had heard Jesper say those words since the last relationship he had watched him in, all spunk and impulsivity and excitement. They had looked good together, truly, and that the dissolution of that relationship would precede Jesper’s interest in him returning was… unexpected.
Kaz had been a disaster since Inej had left, drinking too much kvas, smoking too much jurda, and fighting too many imaginary enemies. A burden, a sack of useless weight, and still Jesper had chosen him again.
What did it mean that this time Kaz had said yes?
“You don't have to say it back. I understand.”
One thing Kaz did not expect Jesper to be in their ‘relationship’… was patient. Yet he was. Always the one opening his heart, expressing his feelings, pouring and pouring into a cup filled with nothing but holes. Kaz struggled to grasp it, to hold it all in despite the cracks and breaks, but it always just poured out. The barrel reminded him, over and over, that he was no more than shattered glass, and shattered glass had no use beyond a weapon.
He didn't have to say it back, but how terrifying it was that he wanted to.
He had never thought those words would leave his lips again. They felt poisonous, sticky like molasses, dripping and choking and filling his throat. They burned like they were on fire, bore tunnels into his armor and left him exposed.
Simple yet complicated, warm yet filled with pain, meaningful yet meaningless.
“Jesper.”
It was the first time he'd spoken the entire hour, basking in the silence of Jesper's love. How selfish he was, to take and never give. How cruel.
“Kaz?”
But he was filled with holes, everything given spilling out to the ground around him, watering instead the weeds. He turned back to his study.
•••
Sometimes, he felt inhuman. Like a puppet pulling its own strings. Barely breathing, every movement intentional and controlled, every choice preplanned.
Sometimes, he was an impostor in his own body, something guided by his past rather than in control of his future. A failure in denial, a disappointment in the grips of revenge.
It was the chase after all that kept him running. He was reaching for his vengeance, reaching for his closure. But maybe, with every step he took toward, he was taking those steps away from something too. He was chasing so that he might run away from what haunted him.
“Jesper.”
It was the second attempt in two days. Three simple words, the hardest to speak. Yet Jesper was there without any hesitation, one moment counting his deck of cards, and the next he had his full attention directed toward Kaz.
“What do you need, boss?”
A working tongue, a throat that didn't choke, but most importantly, a voice that didn't crack.
“Grab your guns,” words that were proof of the failure that he was, “We have a job.”
•••
The words didn't fight Jesper the way they fought Kaz. They were easy with him, simple, formed even in the flip of the cards aimlessly shuffled in his skilled hands, creating a sound that cradled his voice, amplified it.
Once, Kaz had called Jesper’s laugh pretty. It had been meant to offend, but instead of complaints it only garnered a smile that stretched across his face.
“Pretty. You think I'm pretty?”
Kaz had stammered the next words out, realizing only after that his attempt at being callous had backfired.
“Your voice… not you.”
It preceded hours of Jesper humming and singing softly spoken words. Tones and pitches that tickled Kaz's ears and filled the gaping holes in his cup. He remembered the words he chased as they flowed along a voice like that – the breathy ‘I’, the cursive ‘love’, and the certain ‘you’.
It wouldn't be the same from a voice like his; raspy and harsh and broken.
•••
Pathetic.
Jesper was carrying the entirety of them, whatever ‘them’ happened to be. Their relationship, partnership… their situation. Lugging it on the back of experience, and perhaps it was lucky for them that he contained a lot of it. Enough, anyway, to make up for Kaz's shameful innocence, for his complete lack of–
But Kaz wasn't pure, no, not even that. He was incompetent and incapable, touched and ruined by the barrel for nothing. But Jesper loved him anyway. Somehow.
Inej had left. How long until Jesper realized the same truths she had been forced to face, and left just the same?
“You run your fingers over your cards.”
One of Jesper's tells, the very one he was engaging in, lips pursed as if words were forming on his tongue. Maybe those truths had been already found, maybe it was time for him to go.
“Right.”
And immediately, the motions stopped, and Jesper was suddenly a mystery.
Kaz counted the seconds, waited for the inhale of each breath. How much air would speaking the words of leaving him, just as Inej had, cost them both?
“Get on with it then.”
Too much. Before they'd even been spoken, Kaz already felt as if he'd run a race. Perhaps he was forgetting to breathe.
“I lost the ace of hearts.”
Not a goodbye.
Not yet.
•••
Cards were easy to replace. They were inanimate, blends of paper and plastic and ink. Jesper, on the other hand, was irreplaceable.
The new deck had every card, including its jokers. Jesper had swished it from his pocket before Kaz could even blink. Brand new, still in its wrapping. Pristine and shiny and untouched.
Too perfect.
It screamed to be worn down, to be thrown on tables and used as coasters and for its ears to be folded and bent from Jesper's uncontrollable fidgeting. It needed to be claimed, to be touched by his experienced hands. It needed its soul, its character and personality, its worth.
Yet the old deck was already forgotten, scattered across the desk, parts of it lost already in the stacks of paperwork. Kaz would collect every card, all except for the missing ace, and store it neatly in the corner of the shelf. He hoped that one day Jesper might ask for it back.
•••
Nerves. He was a bundle of them, his own tell igniting in waves across the head of his cane. Hand squeezing and pulling and stroking, the point of the beak of the crow nearly breaking the skin of his insistent thumb. Pain was a distraction, and he was floundering for one.
His other hand, sweaty beneath the fabric of his glove, was twitching and grasping and pressing. Fitted in the pocket of his pants, prodding at the corner of the object there.
He feared he would ruin it, press too hard and fray its edges.
Breathe.
It had turned out he was bad at that too – at breathing.
“Kaz?”
He gripped the thing in his pocket as if in reflex, his life and soul and peace. The thing that had kept his eyes open through the strikes of the Ketterdam bell as the hours passed. The only anchor he'd been left with, the only door of escape, the only way to breathe.
“Kaz.”
Jesper’s voice sang soft across his ears. Kaz. As if an echo.
“I–”
But he still couldn't speak. His throat still clenched and choked, his tongue still strained, his body fought. His thumb, however, twitched, fingers tightening. He pulled a card from his pocket – the ace of hearts.
“You stole it.”
He did.
“Temporarily.”
He reached the hand out, card gripped tight between his fingers. As it was pulled out, exchanged between their hands, and he watched it leave his control, the room filled with something thick but invisible.
Breathe.
It looked better in Jesper’s hands. Like it was where it belonged. Like it was home.
Jesper grabbed the deck on the shelf, stuck the card smoothly into its middle, everything suddenly gone.
There was a pause, and Kaz wondered how long it would take for Jesper to notice the words, written in red ink across the back of that ace in a deck that had been worn down and forgotten on the corner of the shelf, in a room that had spent years seeing nothing but his walls crumbling and fighting and rebuilding and begging to feel what he hadn’t felt since Jordie:
‘I love you.’
Breathe.