Chapter Text
He wakes up that morning with dread in his heart and no real reason behind it—just the briefest instant of feeling before it’s gone again, nothing left but an after-image, an echo caught on film. Probably, Kaz thinks, it’s got something to do with the prospect of spending the next three weeks or so on his own without Jesper or Wylan to open up shop with, but he takes care not to let the thought linger as he begins getting ready for work.
Of course, the thought of spending the end of the year by himself looms large in the back of his mind no matter what he does to try and make it go away, but Kaz can accept it. It might be the holidays, but it’s still just three weeks. He’s dealt with worse.
“Brick by brick,” he mutters to himself as he pulls on his coat, picking up his cane from where he’d left it leaning against the wall. It doesn’t hold quite the same meaning anymore, but perhaps he can repurpose it. What’s to say after burning it all down he can’t build something new in its place? Black Crow Coffee is his now, for better or worse. And he’s had plans for so many years…
He catches sight of himself in the hallway mirror just before he slips out the door, and finds himself surprised by the expression on his face. Saints, he almost looks happy.
*
Jesper is already there when he gets to work, leaning languidly against the shop window like a tree that’s forgotten how gravity is supposed to work. Kaz shakes his head at him as props his cane up against the front door to dig the keys out of his pocket.
“You’re early.”
“You keep saying that, but I’m actually on time.”
“Stop being on time, then.”
“Would you prefer it if I was late?”
They’re both leaving for Novyi Zem tonight, and Kaz hates goodbyes. He pushes open the warped old front door.
“I hope you brought your apron.”
“It’s the only thing I haven’t packed.”
Kaz grunts an acknowledgement and starts flicking on the lights. When he turns back again to lift the blinds, there’s a tiny parcel sitting in Jesper’s outstretched hand.
“Not you as well.”
“Or ‘thank you’ as most people say. It’s the holidays, Kaz. Have a bit of cheer.”
Kaz snorts and takes it from him. The package is small, perfectly square on all sides, but it doesn’t feel like a box. He gives it a brief shake, then looks over at Jesper.
“Can I open it?”
Jesper grins. “By all means, do.”
The paper is bright red, the better to match Jesper’s horrible silk shirt, a small golden bow perched haphazardly on top. Kaz sighs as he tears off a corner and catches a glimpse of what’s underneath. He holds it up in silence.
“A Rubik cube.”
“Oh, come on. You’re secretly pleased. I even mixed it up in advance so you can’t cheat.”
The plastic cube weighs barely anything in his hand; Kaz twists one section of it to line up a corner of red squares.
“I used to have one of these,” he admits, “when I was a kid.”
“Oh yeah? What happened to it?”
Kaz frowns for a moment as he tries to remember. When he does locate the memory, it’s a surprise to find the recollection isn’t as painful as he’d expected.
“My brother broke it.” He smiles, turning the toy over in his hand before slipping it back into the wrapping paper to keep it safe, and looks over at the man standing opposite. “Thank you, Jesper.”
That classic Jesper expression. It only lasts a moment before Jesper smiles back, a little confused, but there’s something like gratefulness in the divot between his eyebrows. “You’re welcome Kaz. Happy holidays.”
*
It’s just after midday when Jesper finally broaches the subject. Kaz has to admire his self-restraint.
“So,” he starts, leaning against the counter. “About the winter break.”
Kaz doesn’t turn his head, pouring out a hot chocolate with a smooth flick of his wrist. “What about it?”
“A little bird told me that Black Crow Coffee is under new management.”
“Is that so?”
“Well, it wasn’t actually a little bird. It was Wylan. But even so,” Jesper continues doggedly, “That changes things, doesn’t it?”
“It doesn’t mean you get a new line manager, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“You could close up over new year,” Jesper says. “Like, actually take a break for once.”
Kaz puts a lid on the hot chocolate and passes it to the customer standing opposite the counter. “And why would I do that?”
“Because you’re tired as hell and look like it,” Jesper tells him helpfully. “Seems pretty self-explanatory to me.”
Kaz hesitates a moment, then says: “I was thinking of closing for a couple of days after the new year.”
Jesper’s expression of shock is almost comical. “Really?” he asks. And then, a beat later, “Wait, just two days? That’s not a break.”
To Kaz, two days is a goddamn holiday, but he’s not going to waste time arguing the point. “Legally we have to close for one of those days anyway.”
“You’re a workaholic.”
“No, I’m just directly responsible for the entire establishment.”
Jesper folds his arms. “That was already true. You just didn’t have the power to make executive decisions.”
“Well, now I do.”
“I should probably find that more alarming than I currently do,” Jesper says, watching him as he wipes down the counter. “Oh, there’s the scheming face.”
Kaz smirks. “I’m going to buy a new coffee grinder,” he says. “Not ceramic.”
“Of course. Don’t let your dreams be dreams.”
“I’m also going to ban you from adding music to the shop playlist.”
Jesper gasps theatrically, hand on his heart. “You wouldn’t.”
Kaz turns towards the tablet and skips the next song with a flick of a button. “I would if it meant I didn’t have to listen to stuff like this.”
“What did Ariana Grande ever do to you? What do you listen to when you’re at home?”
“I’m never at home.”
“And so the cycle of violence continues,” Jesper muses thoughtfully. “You don’t spend time at home and you don’t listen to music. You probably don’t even watch television. Do you have hobbies? Where do you go at night?”
Kaz turns and plucks the coffee cup out of Jesper’s hands. “You’ve had too much caffeine,” he says. “And you’re giving me a headache.”
Jesper takes it back. “It’s decaf, actually.”
“It’s coming out of your holiday bonus.”
“I get a holiday bonus?”
“Only if you shut up and let me make this cappuccino.”
Jesper snaps his mouth shut, swivelling smartly on his heel to go and wipe the front bench. Maybe Kaz should start bribing him more often.
“Jesper! Kaz!”
Kaz looks up as the front door opens, the old wood creaking slightly in the cold. Wylan’s cheeks are flushed beneath the rim of his hat, his face split in a rather uncharacteristic smile.
“I got an A!” he says, turning to close the door behind him. There’s snow on his boots, now melting onto the floor, but Kaz finds he doesn’t mind too much. “On my first piece of coursework! I’ve never got an A in my life.”
Jesper puts down the anti-bac spray and whoops. “Yes Wylan! Man, I wish I’d got an A in my final paper. My tutor told me my designs looked like frogs.”
Wylan shucks off his coat and gloves, hanging them over his arm. “Were they meant to be frogs?” he asks curiously.
“No, they were meant to be hats. Hat designs. I got a C for sheer effort.” Jesper glances back over his shoulder at the counter. “Kaz, I think we need celebratory cake.”
Wylan’s eyes meet Kaz’s over the counter, and Kaz tips his head in barest acknowledgement.
“Pick a tray bake,” he says, instead of well done, but Wylan smiles anyway as he crosses the length of the room, grabbing his apron as he goes.
“I think it has to be the butter cake.”
Kaz shakes his head as he picks up a pair of tongs. “No taste,” he mutters, lifting two narrow slices onto a plate. He hands them to Wylan with a raised eyebrow. “Share with Jesper at your own risk.”
Jesper makes a hurt sound. “I’m actually very democratic when it comes to shared deserts,” he pouts. “You’re just sore about the croissant shortage at the wholesalers.”
“I asked you to bring me twenty croissants. I did not get twenty croissants.”
“That has absolutely nothing to do with me. It’s the holidays. Luxury pastries are in short supply right now.”
Kaz just shakes his head at him and takes a fork out of the cutlery drawer to give to Wylan. “Make him wait,” he says. “It serves him right for drawing a bunch of frogs instead of hats.”
Jesper gives a mutinous shake of his head. “I was only four croissants short,” he says, as Wylan scoops up a forkful of cake. “Hey, wait. You’re not taking that out of my holiday bonus as well, are you?”
Wylan puts down his fork. “We get a holiday bonus?”
Kaz regrets ever hiring either of them. “Only if you behave,” he mutters, but as he turns his eyes catch on the Rubik cube sat in the corner by the bags of chocolate, and his glare is only half as hard as he means it to be. “Now get back to work.”
*
It’s almost closing time when it starts snowing again—Kaz is really getting sick of all this weather. He really ought to move to a nicer climate, like Noyvi Zem, where the winters are good and warm.
He’s making up yet another hot chocolate when Jesper sidles into his peripheral vision.
“Kaz?”
“No.”
Jesper sighs. “Every damn time. Listen, I’m going to put you in a group chat.”
Kaz sets the hot chocolate down on a tray for Wylan to take over to the front bench and turns to look at Jesper, leaning against the sink with his phone in hand. “Why.”
“Because! It was time. You’re obligated to check it at least once a week, twice when we’re not here to bother you. Plus, you can use it to keep us updated.”
“On what?”
“On the new coffee grinder, of course. It’s definitely not because I care about you or the dark circles under your eyes. You do realise what a terrible advertisement you are for this place? For coffee in general?”
Kaz folds his arms. “I don’t need you checking up on me.”
“I mean, I don’t expect it to work. You never use your phone, you weirdo. But maybe from time to time you could drop us a line about how many lattes we’ve sold. Exploits in experimental baking, cool dogs. Whatever the deal is between you and Inej.”
Kaz honestly isn’t sure where he left his phone last, so maybe Jesper has a point. “There is no deal,” he says flatly. “She’s just—what? What are you looking at?”
He follows Jesper’s gaze and turns towards the front, the space behind his sternum giving an insistent tug as he spots Inej on the other side of the glass, her dark head bent low against the falling snow. She pushes open the heavy front door, tugging a small suitcase behind her, and when she looks up and smiles at him Kaz can’t honestly think much beyond the dark honeyed brown of her eyes.
Inej pushes a stray strand of hair out of her eyes, stopping in front of the counter. “Hi,” she says, the smallest smile raising the apples of her cheeks. “Hope I’m not too late to ask for take out.”
Kaz is vaguely aware of Jesper moving out from behind the counter to join Wylan, but only vaguely. He slips one of the portafilters under the grinder, the action comforting in its familiarity, a good crutch for when he has to turn and look Inej in the eye.
“Something for the road?”
“The sweetest mocha imaginable. It’s a long trip.” She reaches up and places a small branch of holly on the counter. “Nina said you need to decorate the place while we’re all away, and Matthias volunteered this. I said I’d deliver it.”
Kaz picks it up and shakes his head. “This needs to stop,” he says. “I’m not even Ravkan.”
“Neither is Matthias, but he’s still heading there for the holidays.”
Her smile is like an arrow to his heart. “Dark or milk?”
“You know I’m not going to answer that.”
Kaz huffs a laugh despite himself and turns away to make the shot, leaving the holly branch up on a shelf next to the spider plant. “Anything else?”
He can feel her eyes on his hands even with his back turned, but Kaz doesn’t falter.
“I have a train to catch. You could walk me to the station.”
Kaz turns back towards her, raising an eyebrow as he fills up a jug with milk. “To Ravka?”
“To Belendt. I booked the slower ferry.”
Kaz risks a glance at Wylan and Jesper by the front bench, ostensibly clearing tables. It’s a quiet night—the last night he’ll have company for a while. Maybe he ought to trust them, just this once.
“Alright,” he shrugs. “Let me fix this first.”
*
Five minutes later they’re stood out in the snow again—the golden light of Black Crow Coffee at their backs, the dark waters of the canal right ahead. Kaz shakes his head at the gathering drifts as he hands Inej her coffee.
“I hope this train has a snow plough,” he grumbles, pulling the collar of his coat a little closer as they start off down the street. It’s an excellent excuse to keep an eye on the boulevard ahead and not look at Inej with her dark hair falling round her face, the copper flush of her cheeks. She still hasn’t bought herself a proper coat. If he were the kind of person to give out holiday presents, that would probably be top of his list.
Instead she just laughs. Kaz hates and loves that laugh in equal measure—it makes concentrating on the road ahead so much harder when all he wants to do is count the lines of her face, the crinkle of her eyes as she smiles and sips her mocha, suitcase trundling happily on behind her on the uneven snowy ground. It’s the laugh that he’ll miss the most—he’s quite certain she knows exactly what she’s doing every time she lets it out in his presence.
“You know, one of my flatmates brought a stray cat home recently that’s exactly like you. I’m seriously considering making introductions.”
Kaz scowls. “No one with sense would choose to go outside in this weather.”
“Clearly you don’t have any whatsoever, then.” Inej jokes back, her hair whipped back from her face for a moment as the wind gusts down the street, nearly taking her woolly hat with it. She stops for a moment to set it right; Kaz waits patiently a few steps ahead, the better to keep a hold of his sanity. When she looks up at him again he swears there’s a glint in her eyes that wasn’t there before. They keep walking.
“This is really nice,” she tells him, taking another sip of her coffee as they cross over a frosty bridge, the canal beneath rimed with ice that’s cracked in the middle, little floating icebergs that don’t belong. “I still don’t know how you do it.”
Kaz smiles indulgently, the tap of his cane on the cobblestones loud in the relative quiet, Inej matching him step for uneven step. The streets surrounding them are full of people heading home, most of them carrying bulging shopping bags under their arms. Most of them are heading the other way, back towards the university district and First Harbour.
Tonight he can see lights in almost every window: little specks of spherule-yellow peeking out from behind closed curtains, their occupants tucked away like nesting dolls. He doesn’t look at Inej as he speaks.
“Practice makes perfect.”
They take another right. “So it would seem.” She glances at him briefly as they make their way along the road. “I can’t tell from your face if today’s been a good day or a bad one. It always looks the same.”
In truth, his jaw aches from not smiling. “A good one. A popular day for cheesecake.” He hesitates a moment, then adds: “I’m taking over the business.”
“Ah,” Inej says knowledgeably. “That explains it.”
“Explains what?”
“That little smile you keep trying to hide.”
Kaz raises an eyebrow. “I thought you said you couldn’t tell?”
Inej laughs. “Well, now I can.” Another bridge. How badly he wants to reach out and take her hand like before. It seems impossible that it was only yesterday, that so much of his life could go on in snapshots: an inch of bare wrist as Inej tips back her coffee; the slender lines of her throat as she swallows. Bare fingers here, the tip of her nose turning red in the cold as she turns her head, shaking her ink-black hair from her shoulders. He’s going to go mad before they even reach the train station. “It was a good day for me too.”
“Coursework all finished?”
Inej gives an elegant shrug, opts to turn left. Kaz hasn’t been in this part of the city for a long time—the buildings here are strangers to him, taller, dourer cousins of the houses built on the backs of the Barrel, standing lean and gaunt in the snow. Why does every building in this damn city look like it’s had too much to drink?
He feels a little punch-drunk himself as Inej tosses her empty cup into a nearby bin, turning the full brilliance of her smile on him in one unexpected movement. “Finished and finished well. I’m afraid you’ll be seeing a lot more of me after the holidays. Lots of reading to be getting on with.”
“I think I can live with that.”
They turn another corner, and there is the station—all tall turrets and red brick, out of place amongst its drunken neighbours. Kaz follows Inej through into the station proper without saying a word, and keeps silent even as they slip past the ticket guard onto the platform. The buzz of the lights overhead, bright white and arctic, do nothing to combat the growing feeling of unreality that he carries with him as he and Inej wander down the platform, the open air cold on their faces, biting at the sliver of exposed skin where Inej’s scarf has slipped down her neck. Kaz knows on some level that he needs to stop staring, gathering up details like the greedy thing he is, but he can’t.
Inej turns and sees him looking, but doesn’t cut her eyes away; instead she just smiles. At the far end of the platform Kaz can see snow falling on the tracks, the lone benches that aren’t covered by awning. Inej’s train is due in approximately three minutes and the space around them is blessedly, ridiculously empty.
Inej surveys him in silence for a moment, then:
“You look almost happy, Kaz Brekker.”
Her eyes, the curved arch of her nose, her lips. Kaz steps a little closer, forcing himself not to think of anything but the precise gold-red mahogany of her eyes. She is so startlingly beautiful.
He doesn’t say it. “Now, maybe. I could still freeze to death on the way back.”
Inej smiles and ducks her head, looking up at him through her dark eyelashes. “Thanks for walking me here. I appreciate it.”
He’d get on the train and ride away with her if she asked him to. “Of course.”
“You didn’t have to.”
“I wanted to.”
Inej’s lips quirk up at that, and she looks away towards the tracks. “My train’s coming,” she says. She digs a hand into the bag at her side and pulls out a small box wrapped in tissue paper. “Don’t be mad at me for this. I promise we didn’t set out with the aim of conspiring against you.”
Kaz shakes his head but takes it anyway. It has a heft to it, but curiosity can wait. “I didn’t get you anything.”
“That’s okay,” Inej says softly. “I don’t mind.”
The train is drawing level with the platform now, the few passengers scattered about slowly beginning to move towards it. Kaz gives a slight swallow, incredibly conscious now of how little space exists between them, how few atoms between their hands. When he reaches out this time he doesn’t think of Jordie so much as the memory of him—Inej’s silhouette tucked up next to Kaz’s on the bench as he’d whispered his brother’s name. He really ought to have gotten her a present.
Inej’s hand is warm in his, comfortingly solid. It shouldn’t hurt his chest, but it does anyway.
He sees Inej lift her other hand out of the corner of his eye, doesn’t move. It’s only when she says his name that he realises she’s asking for permission.
“Kaz?”
Unsteady nod. Unsteady, traitorous beat of his chest. His heart has been limping along for such a long time now that he hardly knows what to do with it—now it rabbits along with his pulse, gun-sharp and ready, turned greedy with proximity to the girl he loves. His voice should not be the thin thing that it is.
Inej lays a hand on his cheek, her fingers warm thanks to the knitted gloves sitting on top of her suitcase. She is so much more than he deserves. The brush of those fingers against his jaw is softer than feathers.
When she leans in to kiss him there, standing on the very tips of her toes, he melts like ice. He thaws like snow in morning sun, like the first watery rays of sunrise breaking over the horizon. Kaz breaks once, and then many times over, just from the quiet brush of her lips on his jaw.
He very carefully does not show on his face what the electric touch of her so close to his pulse is doing to his insides as she pulls back, but he does look at her, so maybe that is enough. There is no getting away from Inej and her quiet, studious eyes. She smiles.
“Have a good holiday, Kaz. I’ll see you soon.”
Inej gets on the train and Kaz watches her go, the flash of the train compartment window bright in those white station lights—just a brief snapshot of her face as she waves to him from her seat before the train picks up speed, onto Belendt to a ferry where he won’t be able to follow her.
But she’ll be back. Three weeks—Kaz is capable of that. He’s good at being patient.
It’s only once the train is gone and he’s left standing on an almost-empty platform that Kaz remembers the box in his hand, the sharp corners of it digging into his palm. He swallows and pulls off his gloves, stuffing them into his coat pocket, then tears open the wrapping paper and lifts the lid.
Inside is a watch. Not a pocket watch, but an old-fashioned wristwratch with a silver face and a dark leather strap, neat little Ravkan numerals arranged round the edge. Kaz takes it out carefully, holding it steady as he angles it away from the light, examining the smooth face of it. His heart trips unsteadily over his ribs over his throat and he has no idea what his face looks like, but he’s glad he’s alone.
It’s a perfect fit, of course, and when he shuts the box again he sees a note he hadn’t noticed before—just a few lines of Inej’s neat, careful letters with a number scrawled underneath. Until next time. Kaz sighs and puts the box in his pocket, slipping on his gloves again.
There is a possibility, however slight, that this winter may not be as lonely as he imagined it would be. Kaz snorts to himself and adjusts his grip on his cane, then steps back out into the night.
