everymonstrousthing | (no subject)

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jesper

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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.

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Jesper snorts and flops over on his back, arms folded under his head. "No one deserves you, Kaz Brekker. And from what I hear, I don't deserve anything." He grins, head turned back to look at him.

"I have a lot of questions but none of them I think you'd answer."

He's relaxed, warm from the shower. He shifts, pulling a blanket up over him to the waist.

"Try me."

Jesper reaches out and traces the lightly-inked R on Kaz's arm. He tries not to think about the + G and the person that Kaz really loves and misses.

"Who was he?"

"A stupid kid who should have known better," says Kaz, shivering just barely at the brush of Jesper's fingers.

"There's got to be more to it than that," Jesper says, not phrasing it as a question. It's a little too dark for pillow talk.

Tracing the letter more decisively, Jesper lets himself move in closer, a gesture that's somewhere between a cuddle and aligning himself to Kaz's body. "What happens if someone else touches you? Someone who's not Inej or me?"

"Maybe there is," says Kaz and, when Jesper shifts closer, he doesn't move away. He thinks about the answer to the question. "Depends how long it happens for, how direct the contact. I passed out cold in that prison wagon." Nobody but Inej had ever known that about him. "Nearly threw up when they strip searched us."

"If it helps, you didn't look it. Or maybe I was just too worried I was going to throw up myself." Jesper holds up his arms in the air, turning them. "Paraffin."

"I wondered if that worked," says Kaz, letting out a soft sound that's maybe a laugh. "It was the fingers in my mouth that did it."

Jesper shudders because the thought is nauseating to him too, so he can't imagine that Kaz took it well. "I don't think any of us ever had a clue." Except Inej, because Inej probably knows everything. "I didn't. Not until..." He gestures between them.

"The limp is so obvious that nobody ever bothers looking for the other tells," rasps Kaz quietly. "Nobody ever really looks at a cripple."

"I hate to break it to you, Kaz, but I was mostly looking at your face." Jesper moves his fingers slowly up Kaz's back, along his neck, and lets them rest on his cheekbone. "It's another distraction."

Kaz rolls his eyes, flushing faintly under Jesper's fingertips.

"Podge," he says, smirking. "I bet you say that to anyone you manage to tumble."

He laughs and then kisses Kaz, just to see if he can throw him off base again. It's a silly, smacking thing designed to tease and aggravate. "I've been saving up lines for you."

"I bet you have," says Kaz, and he actually squirms away from the kiss a little, shoving at Jesper with the heel of one hand.

"You know I have," Jesper replies, uncharacteristically sober a moment before he smiles properly again and puts the thoughts away. "Now come back here."

Kaz did know that, even if that was something that he'd never given too much thought to before now, and this. He does move closer again, though.

On 1 October 2016 at 21:10, materialnik - DW Comment <dw_null@dreamwidth.org</p>

Jesper drapes an arm over Kaz's torso, almost protectively. The role of bodyguard is one he's played to Kaz before and it's familiar, an anchoring point when they still don't know what this is between them.

It also gives him the excuse to palm Kaz's ass.

Kaz squirms a little when Jesper touches him like that, possessive and warm. He looks up at him again.

"Don't stop talking." He feels like he's about to fly apart whenever they're quiet.

"That's usually the opposite of what you tell me," Jesper says, laughing a little. He looks at Kaz, those dark, shrewd eyes and he wonders something. "When I'm quiet, is it harder to stay touching?"

"Yes," says Kaz, because there's no point in lying here, trying to trick here, when there's only a single sheet of cotton between them. "Distraction makes it easier." He shrugs. "It's why I tell you to keep asking. Even if I don't always answer straight."

"Fine," Jesper says, because there's nothing he can do like talk into the ether just to fill up silence. "What's your favorite kind of coffee?" He can ask serious questions and he can ask inane questions.

Anything for Kaz.

"Black with one sugar," says Kaz, his mouth twitching with a grateful smile. "But it's not as good here as it is in that little place three doors up from the Crow Club."

He likes that little smile, faint though it is, and Jesper reaches out to touch his cheek.

"Nothing ever is. All the coffee here isn't as good." Another question, then, he thinks. "And your favorite sweets. Do you even eat sweets?"

Kaz shakes his head.

"Hardly ever." They reminded him too much of Jordie. "Just powered sugar on pancakes."

Jesper leans forward and tests his luck by kissing Kaz and then nuzzling at his neck. "Positively Fjerdan in your denial."