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It still feels odd, somehow - to have people outside of his little knot of people who matter. To have friends. The twins are old enough now that Inej feels more confident at home alone so Kaz is back to spending slightly more time at the club. It's a quiet night, someone he trusts on the bar, so he texts Marcus and asks him if he wouldn't like a drink and a catch up.

It still feels baffling to actually care, but here they are.

He settles in the office with a bottle and two glasses and waits for his friend to arrive.

They find a rhythm. Two babies means there's always something to be done, something that needs to be happening and, gradually, they figure it out. For the first time in his life, Kaz trusts other people with his businesses so that he can stay home with his wife, his children. His family. Maybe a time will come when thinking that word doesn't feel like somebody has suddenly kicked him in the breastbone.

Inej is sleeping. There's laundry running, bottle sterilsing and both of the children are quiet but alert in their bassinets. The alertness might last, the quiet probably won't. Kaz knows that it's a while until their eyes start to focus, but, sometimes, he could swear that they're watching the world go by.

When the doorbell rings, he buzzes Marcus up and leaves the front door of the apartment ajar, going back into the kitchen.

"We're through here," he calls, when he hears boots at the threshold.

Once they're home, once he's medicated, and he's put on comfortable, soft clothes, layers that pull down over his hands, once he's poured himself a large drink, he settles on the sofa, and he waits for her to join him. He doesn't know how much she'll tell him, how much she'll want him to know, but he does know that he's willing to listen to whatever she wants to get out of her, and he does know that he told Heleen the truth.

That none of this matters to him. That nothing will change.

He's in need of distraction. Inej has gone to open the club and Nina is off doing something, and, honestly, he doesn't have many other people. Still, he and Matthias have come a long way, since that first day in the Crow Club, since Kaz had kicked him when he wouldn't stay down. Matthias hardly ever calls him a Demjin anymore.

So Kaz pulls out his phone and he texts him, offers games and beer, dinner if he wants it.

It's definitely better than nothing.

Back in Ketterdam, there had never been any need for a creature like Kaz Brekker to learn how to cook. Food shops in the Barrel stayed open through the night, so there had always been somewhere to go out to, somewhere to buy whatever he was craving. Most of the Dregs had never seen him eat; it was part of the legend, that he existed on hate and greed alone.

In Darrow, there were also food places that stayed open through the night, companies that would deliver almost anything to the door at any hour of the day and night. But not the food he'd grown up with - not fried potatoes and pancakes and stroopwaffel and a hundred other things that he gets cravings for. So he's learned to cook and, tonight, he's cooking for Inej and he's cooking for Nina. Because Nina still isn't really speaking to him and if ever there was a way to Nina Zenik's heart, it was through her taste-buds.

He moves around the small kitchen in their apartment like he belongs there, music playing quietly in the background, the windows open to the chill evening. He's got his sleeves pushed up to his elbows, his gloves within easy reach but, for now, for right now, he's doing okay without them.

There is shit going on in the city, but the Crow Club stays open. Kaz is of the opinion that there is nothing more valuable in a storm than the perception of a safe harbour. It's quiet, but that doesn't mean it's not worth being open. With his shirt sleeves rolled up to his elbows, his gloves still firmly in place, Kaz cleans. He empties the back bar and he cleans. Yes, he could pay someone to do this but, honestly, there's never a job done as well as he would do it himself.

Unless Inej does it. And he won't ask her to clean for him.

Some things don't change. She might have been and gone and come again but, when she's out on the roof, Kaz sits and waits for her. He's sitting in one of the kitchen chairs with his feet up on the sill and a cigarette between two fingers. He's reading a book, one of the paperback novels that he's so fond of. He smokes and he reads and he waits for the girl he loves, his Wraith, to come home.

He breaks into Jesper's apartment in the end. When Jesper doesn't answer the door, fingers of cold fear scrape down Kaz's spine. He has an image of Jesper beaten and broken. Dead. It's more than he can stand, and he breaks in, already preparing for all of the monstrous things that he might have to do.

But what he finds is worse. What he finds is an empty apartment, not just empty but vacant, and Jesper's pistols on a table. Jesper wouldn't go anywhere without his pistols. Jesper treats his pistols like a fucking limb.

There's a box under the bed that he's going to need to do something about, but he doesn't have the energy right now. Dirtyhands wouldn't worry about something like that. Dirtyhands wouldn't even stop.

Locking Jesper's door behind him, Kaz heads for the Crow Club. Rage slams through him and he turns, slamming his cane into the wall. But Grisha work is good, and there's no damage to the silver crow's skull at all. And, right then, Kaz wants to see something crumple. So he does the only thing he can.

He slams one gloved fist into the brick wall and feels pain explode.
It's good. It's better than what it replaces.

He leaves Inej in his apartment, swaddles himself in his overcoat and his scarf and he walks over to Jesper's apartment. Everything's been different since Inej arrived; they've been in the same space, but Jesper hasn't been near him. There's been no texting. Nobody has let themselves into anybody's apartment in the middle of the night.

For once, when Kaz gets to Jesper's apartment, he leaves the lock unpicked.
He knocks with the head of his cane. He waits.

It's late. It's very, very late. And he has no idea what he's doing. He has no idea what he's doing.

He's not drunk - a little, maybe, but not enough to actually blame it. He's been at the club all day, finishing repairing the damage that he'd wrought with his cane. He'd thought about going home, but his apartment doesn't feel like home anymore, because home was on the tenth floor, with windows that opened onto the roof.

And what he is is lonely. And he's found something for that - not a cure. But a distraction.

And maybe it isn't fair. But what about life is?

He knocks on Jesper's door and then leans against the wall and waits.

Kaz lets Jesper lead the way. It isn't the first time that he's been in Jesper's apartment but it's the first time without Inej, and that makes everything different. Once he's inside, he shrugs out of his jacket, leaves himself in his shirtsleeves, looks down at his gloves for a long, long time. Irritated, he passes one hand back through his hair and lowers himself down onto the couch.

"Not too late to turn me out onto the street, Jesper."

Waiting while Inej finishes getting ready, Kaz checks his cuffs for, perhaps, the thirtieth time. The suit is new on, crisply tailored, deepest charcoal. He had endured a haircut and shave that afternoon. His boots have a mirror shine. He's made an effort which, while not dissimilar to how he looks every day, is enough that he's sure Inej will notice. His tie is navy blue, not a colour he'd normally choose but one that he knows Inej enjoys when he wears it.

So he's trying.
He's more than trying.

In the days after she goes, he's Dirtyhands more often than not. He stalks Darrow, sharp enough to cut. So little soft left in him. It's worse, because he'd let himself soften. He'd let too much of Kaz Reitvald come back and now reminding himself how to be the man he was in Ketterdam is hard work. It hurts.

Still. There's rough work to be done. So here he is.

The air in the club is close with tobacco, the smell of bodies. Kaz's mouth makes a moue of distaste as he slips up to the bar and orders gin, neat. He leans his back against polished wood, looks up at the stage. He's in time to catch the tail end of the performance.

There are coffee shops here that he likes. It's not Ketterdam - it never will be Ketterdam - but, between them, he and Inej are starting to construct a life that makes sense here. Last night was a particularly late one; Inej hadn't come in off the roof until dawn was staining the sky and, as a result, Kaz finds himself a little slow to start. He's sitting at an outside table at one of the coffee shops he likes best, a double espresso at his elbow and a cigarette between two gloved fingers as he idly reads the paper.

Maybe later, he'll be useful. Maybe.
What he's finding is that it doesn't matter as much here as it used to.

They were always, he supposes, creatures of habit. In Ketterdam, they had coffee houses and food places they preserved and most evenings that weren't spent at the Crow Club ended together in Kaz's rooms in Per Haskell's house. Her company was always what he preferred, what he sought out. Now, they're living together, without any prior discussion. He has nothing in the apartment downstairs. All of his clothes are here, his books, everything.

Home is wherever she decides to be.

One particular habit that he's developed is that he doesn't go to bed until she's home. He sits and watches television or reads until she's home. Tonight, he's sitting with his feet propped on the sill of an open window, book open across his knees, cigarette between his lips. He's been smoking since just after Jordie died but, here, it's become just another habit.

He smokes. He reads. He waits for his girl to come home.

It's a pattern that they've fallen into, since that night she'd slipped into his lap, touched his shoulders so gently. In Ketterdam, they'd got used to existing in each other's space, in and out of each other's rooms, eating together, talking mostly to each other. This is a natural continuance of that, Kaz supposes, only now feelings are out in the open, vulnerable to the air. Now they both know exactly what they're doing.

So it's different, incredibly so, but it feels familiar all the same.

Without really discussing it, it's Inej's apartment that they spend all of their time together in. Kaz has started stripping off his gloves as soon as he comes through the door. He deliberately leaves his tailoring in his own apartment, coming to her in softer layers, his sleeves pushed up to his elbows, until they go to bed and he pulls his sleeves down over his hands so that he can drape an arm over her in lieu of actually being able to pull her close. It's small, but it's progress. They cook together, eat together, are learning to watch television together - Kaz finds that he enjoys films, dislikes programmes because they're short and, often, seem pointless. They sit relatively close together on the couch and, every so often, Inej touches him. Usually, those touches are over clothes - a brush of fingers against his bicep, his thigh, his chest. She touches the backs of her fingers lightly against his cheek. On her way to the kitchen, she ruffles his fingers through his hair. She keeps the touches light, casual, but Kaz knows what she's doing and he keeps a mental record of those casual touches. He catalogues every one.

He comes back from the kitchen chill from sitting perched on the window to smoke a cigarette, a pair of beers in hand. He offers her one before he slides back onto the middle seat of the sofa, as close to her as he can be without touching her.

"What are we watching, Wraith?" he asks, a light note of teasing in his rough voice.

With his cane in his hand, he feels more like himself again. More solid on his feet. He hadn't seen her since Valentine's Day, mostly because he's been avoiding her. There's only so much humiliation that he's willing to stomach. He might have given her all of the peace in the world, if it wasn't for the fact that he can't stop thinking about the warm press of her mouth on his.

There's a bakery just down the road from Dimera that does small fruit cakes not a million miles away from things she would have liked in Ketterdam. He's got a box tied with twine in one hand so he raps on her door with the head of his cane.

He ignores an uncharacteristic flutter of nerves.

It's probably almost as bad as it looks. His cane lost, rolled into a gutter, stepped on, snapped, Kaz has no choice but to limp. He doesn't have a clear idea of where he's going. He turns his head and spits blood onto concrete for what feels like the thousanth time. He's not sure how far he's walked; he glances back but can't tell which direction he came from.

He recognises his surroundings, though. He knows more or less where he's headed.

He makes it to Alec's door. He's got no idea how late it is. He knocks with a curl first, blood smeared on leather, and then his knees give out and he slides down to sit on the floor with his back against Alec's door. He closes his eyes. Darkness comes flooding in. He fights it, as much as he can.