Work Text:
(What) Exact(ly) Change(d)
Coinage was by and large an inefficient and overall inconvenient way to carry around cash. There were few uses, and with the invention of bills, credit cards, debt cards, and even checks, Kaz Brekker had nearly sworn off the entire heavy obnoxious system of managing currency.
Or would have.
If he had been capable of doing so he would have.
If it was realistically possible, he would have.
But Saints… he just…
He glared at the coin machine. An outing he was forced to make once a week and cram in a fiver to receive the equivalent coinage that exactly three vending machines on campus would accept. He had vehemently propositioned their useless Dean to update those vending machines, had raised hell and threatened three people about it specifically.
Those same three vending machines remained.
He’d taken other avenues of approach.
He had observed the selections on the out-dated models. Had gophers note down the discrepancies and the purchases of the odd individual who stumbled upon them. Then advocated for the other vending machines to expand or alter their inventory to appropriately meet the need.
It was Business 101.
Nazyalensky had been - unsurprisingly - infuriatingly obtuse about the entire affair on the one occasion he had seen fit to bring it up to her, seeking to bend Lantsov’s ear to her much more enticing (for some daft reason) lips.
She had fixed him with a flat look.
And then said, to quote, “I think you’ll find that needing exact change is not a requirement for affection.”
And then swept out of her office as if she wasn’t going to go and tattle on him to the meddling Dean. The two of them were gossip hounds. Mongers.
Kaz huffed, shoving his gloved hands into his pockets as he watched the machine finally remember it’s intended purpose and succeed at fulfilling it. It slurped up the bill he’d almost been tempted to punch through the receiver, and he listened to the maddening grind of it’s internal components before it shuddered and started spitting out his change.
If it weren’t important he wouldn’t bother with it.
Maybe he should instead just go to the bank and take the time to get a sleeve of coins. Would that be more efficient?
Potentially. But then he would need to justify a trip to the bank.
Kaz took a deep breath and sighed as he watched the coins clunk into the tin at the bottom.
Or maybe he should just… tell her?
Her parents were coming soon…
How many weeks away? Four? Five? His Suli was improving. He had started slipping words in just to test to make sure his pronunciation was correct and he hadn’t fallen into the trap of a strained Kerch accent. The Suli restaurant he ordered from took his entire order in Suli now. When he picked it up in person he could understand the slurry of orders and conversations the cooks would have in the back.
He started plucking the change out of the tin and ferrying it into his pocket.
He could just tell her.
There was no practical need for this sort of thing.
But…
Then he would have to be blunt with her.
And somehow this seemed substantially easier.
He just wished there was a coin machine that didn’t sound like it was being shredded when it was operated.
“Do you want a drink?” The question is a harmless one, and Inej already has started the process of digging into her backpack for change even as she lobs it at Kaz.
He hums, eyes shifting from her to her back and then back to the vending machine in question.
It was perhaps a bit inconvenient for the rest of the student body, but she found herself in the area often enough to know this one in particular only took change and it didn’t handle small coins well.
It required exact change.
But it had a Suli drink that she really liked, a mango flavored pop that reminded her of her parents and summers and the sea and the wind.
It made her think of her dad standing in the sun and laughing. It made her think of her mom, spices in the kitchen and the smell a warm balm against even the coldest of days.
She pinched the coins out of a side pocket she did not remember depositing them into, counting them out as she approached the machine.
It was tucked away in a back hallway. Forgotten about most assuredly, but it was near her philosophy class and near enough Kaz’s sociology class that it wasn’t unusual for them to walk the additional distance for her to indulge her ache for something that reminded her of home.
“I’m not picky.” Kaz allowed, his expression neutral, his gaze distracted as he pointedly pulled out his phone.
“I have change for two.” She did not in fact know if she had change for two.
But she suspected.
In the same way that she suspected she would always have change for this finicky machine tucked somewhere in her backpack. Usually within one of the small side pockets that she seemed to tuck all other small items.
“Whatever you’re getting.” Kaz said dismissively, as if he didn’t know she got the same drink every single time.
She hummed, checking another pocket, finding another set of exact change in her bag. A happy coincidence.
Perhaps.
She slotted in the coins. Punched the button. Listened to it tumble down the chute and clunk noisily in the bottom. And then did it again for Kaz’s beverage of ‘choice’.
She handed it back to him, and he took it, leather squeaking slightly as he flexed his grip to pull it from her.
Professor Nazyalensky floated around the corner, her gaze shifting from Kaz to her and then the drink in her hand. She huffed, rolling her eyes, and then turned on her heels and walked away.
Perhaps to go see Dean Lantsov.
Perhaps to do something else.
Kaz clicked his tongue and shook his head. “As if they don’t have something better to do than…” He said, as if he didn’t even need to turn around to know who had come and gone.
And maybe he didn’t.
Maybe he just knew.
In the same way that she knew come tomorrow morning her bag would have another set of coins dropped into it. Coins she did not collect from any place, did not find in the couch cushions. Did not pick up off the street.
Coins that most likely came from a bank, or from the two coin machines on campus. Coins that did not logically fit into her purchases, and whose collection would not have fit neatly into any time slot except for perhaps when Kaz would be a few minutes late every odd Wednesday coming back from a business elective on his way to join her and the others for lunch.
He would walk slightly off-kilter, his grip on his cane tighter. His mood almost always a little snippy with Jesper or Nina. He would huff and grumble like his leg hurt- the way it did when he stood about in the same place for too long waiting on something.
Like for cash to be changed into coins.
Or something.
She glanced at him as they started walking towards the elevator, cracking open her soda and taking a cool sip.
Memories of summers back home danced in the back of her mind. Nostalgia combining with the tropical smell of fruits and the familiarity of the drink in her hand.
It was starting to combine with other thoughts too.
Walking side by side with a man who surely would never admit to giving her money for the soda in his hand.
The man who sometimes acted like a boy, unsure of his feelings or how to act on them.
The man who looked out for her in a dozen quiet ways that need not be confirmed nor even addressed.
They just happened.
Assuredly.
Without question. Kaz was always there for her.
“Did you know my parents are coming this spring?” She asked as they stepped into the elevator. “They’re already reserved their tickets.”
Kaz let his eyebrows lift, as if he didn’t already know. “Oh? It’s good of them to come and see you.”
It would be good of them to meet him. Her mama already knew so much about him. Inej had warned her about touching though. Kaz was many things, but touchy-feeling was definitely not one of them. And her mama nor her papa did not need to know why necessarily.
“I think it may be nice for you to meet them as well.” She offered, taking another sip of her drink.
Kaz finally cracked open his own soda, taking a slow reserved sip. The way he did when he needed to steel himself for the taste.
He was always the same.
“I’ll have to brush up on my Suli so I don’t make a fool of myself.”
She knew he wouldn’t. His Suli was getting better. It wasn’t perfect, but she’d caught him talking in it quietly, running through general statements as he studied or worked on jobs. She’d heard him on the phone, ordering in it. A half dozen sentences in perfectly functional Suli.
He would certainly make an error here or there.
But she didn’t mind.
“I’m sure my parents aren’t going to begrudge you if you do.” Inej told him.
Kaz just gave her a look.
She took another sip of her drink, watching him out of the corner of her eye.
Choppy haircut or not.
Perpetual scowl or not.
The grim grit of his jaw, and the way he ensured he stood straight backed and firm on every occasion, not like a boy wanting to be seen, but like a man who deserved to be heard, always caught her eye.
There were plenty of boys who played at being men. Plenty of them who shirked responsibility for their own actions and refused to be caught by the consequences of them.
Few men that accepted them, took on them, and walked with their shoulders squared and their gaze set firm.
She wondered when she started to notice which of those Kaz was.
That Kaz was determined and levelheaded, but that his expression seemed to soften and his manners ease when he looked at her.
She wondered when the tension in his shoulders had started to slip around her. She wondered when she noticed how he relaxed when she stepped into the room. She wondered when she caught how his gaze searched for her here and there, as if he couldn’t nearly always tell she had appeared.
As if just knowing wasn’t enough, but instead he needed to see her too.
She took another sip.
She wondered when she started thinking about enjoying these drinks with him as opposed to ruminating about her childhood with them. When the sweet punch and the fizzle on her tongue started to remind her of how the sunshine would sometimes flash in his eyes when he looked at her and the sharp way laughter stole away from his lips- his stoic expression broken by surprise and her wit.
She wondered what had changed.
She wondered if nothing had, and instead it had always been like this. If they had always been dancing about each other, tokens of not-quite-but-nearly-affection traded back and forth as easily as they breathed and worked and studied and lived together.
Maybe they always had been.
She hummed as she finished offer drink and they pushed out the front doors of the building. The sun was amazing, and the heat of it on her skin made her way to find her hammock and curl up somewhere warm, or ask if Dean Lantsov would let her borrow his boat for some extracurricular sailing over the weekend.
She doubted it. The weather was clear, and it was warm enough for him to reasonably be able to coerced Professor Nazyalensky out to the docks and then onto the boat.
And neither of them would particularly care for company.
She turned back, looking back as Kaz’s cane clicked against the threshold of the door.
And he was looking at her. Gaze sharp. Expression neutral. His drink held loosely in one hand.
But she saw it. The hesitation in his step. The shift as his breath caught in his lungs. The twitch of his lips.
She reached up, combing her bangs back with her fingers.
“Kaz?” She asked, a question on her lips.
What had changed?
“Inej.”
Maybe nothing.
“Thank you.”
Maybe everything.