#kaz rietveld
Jesper: hey best friend!
Kaz: we are not best friends
Jesper : you don’t get to decide that
Jesper: There’s no need to argue.
Kaz: I never argue. I explain.
Kanej Aesthetic
Kanej - ketterdam rooftops
drawing Kaz and Inej staring longingly & lovingly into each other’s eyes is my only hobby. enjoy ➳ ♛
(click for better quality and check reblog for WIP!)
“Dear Inej…”
“…I fed Kaz Pecker today. He ate from my hand and I hated it. I don’t know why I tried to get him to do it. The rest of the winged rats cawed happily.
I hope my namesake crow is their leader.
They miss you, darling.
Kaz. ”
—Chapter 28: Letters For Us (Part 2), from the incredible and by this point iconic fic: “Dealing with our Demons” by @ravenyenn19.
I’ve been wanting to draw something for this fic for ages; and there are so many beautiful moments to choose from! This hilarious endearing little moment stayed with me, though. It never fails to make me smile <3 hope y'all like it! and thank you all for aaall the love on my previous kanej drawing, I really appreciate it :’)
Everything - Kanej
Summary: Kaz braids Inej’s hair (and finally admits to himself just how much she means to him) a.k.a. 1.6k words of Ketterdam’s most notorious crimelord being a fool in love.
Genre: Fluff-ish? It’s real soft, I just don’t think it’s conventional fluff.
Words:1647
Rating:GA
Links:
A/N: I wasn’t sure who’d be interested in this so I stalked the accounts on my usual taglist to see who had SoC content on their blog just took a wild guess. I’m so sorry if you didn’t want to see this, please don’t feel any pressure to read it!
***
Inej’s second favourite place in all of Ketterdam is the windowsill in Kaz’s room at the Slat. Kaz knows this for a fact, because she had told him so three days ago while sitting with her legs dangling out the window, unbothered and undaunted by the multi-storey drop below.
Now, she is perched in that very same spot, one hand loosely holding to the wooden window frame as she leans forward, basking in the warm light of day’s end. Her long black locks are loose around her shoulders, dancing idly in the soft breeze edging its way into the room.
Kaz observes this from his place at his desk, opposite the window, the empty parchment paper and drying quill before him long forgotten.
She’s beautiful.
The thought catches him off guard and he presses his lips together, his brow furrowing. It’s not that he hasn’t noticed before, it’s just that, in all of his prior noticing, he’d never put a word to it. He had never specified to himself that it was beauty he saw in the slope of her nose, the rise of her cheekbones, the coffee-dark brown of her eyes that lit like honeyed gold in the light. Never allowed himself to acknowledge the way his heart ached, just a little, when she wasn’t there, or the way he could be in a room full of people and still, his eyes would be drawn to her.
Kaz watches, mesmerised, as Inej plays idly with her hair, watches her slender fingers dance through the long strands. He imagines his own fingers in her hair instead and is confused to find it isn’t dread that pools in his stomach, but something… different. Warmer, somehow. Softer.
“Can I braid it?” The words come out before he can think about them and the shock on Inej’s face when she glances back at him is enough to jerk him back to himself. He stays utterly still for a moment as he lets sink in what he’s just done.
“If you like,” she says.
Kaz evaluates his options and finds that, short of backing out, his only other path forward is to face this head on. And Kaz Brekker has never been one to back down from a challenge, so, jaw clenched in determination, he stands and crosses the room, the space between him and the Wraith growing smaller with each pace until he is but a foot away.
She gives him a smile as she gathers her hair from in front of her shoulder, pulling it behind her to fall in sheets down her back. Kaz is starting to realise just how very much he didn’t think this through.
He reminds himself to breathe as reaches out with one gloved hand to touch the flowing tresses. He tells himself that it isn’t actually shaking, that it’s just the uncertain light making it hard to see. But Inej has her eyes closed against the bright sun and Kaz knows he isn’t fooling anyone. He steels himself against the instincts that are screaming to absolutely not make contact, and slides his gloved hands into her hair.
His touch is careful, near painful in its hesitancy as he begins working out the knots, as though he is afraid he might hurt her. Inej has her eyes closed, her quiet breath and his pounding heart the only sounds.
He’s seen Inej braid her own hair enough times to have an idea of how it works, and he separates the long strands into three sections. It is thick and heavy and it slides between his gloves when he tries to grasp it, elusive as the wraith for which she is named. He wrestles, gently, with the strands, trying to gather them all in his gloved fingers, until he realizes that this isn’t going to work; he can’t braid her hair if it keeps slipping from his hold.
Kaz lets it fall from his grasp and stares at the gloves over his hands: they’ll have to go. His Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows.
His eyes flick to Inej, to her face, tilted to the sky, basking in the gentle breeze and the warmth of the setting sun. Her tranquility is a steady, tangible thing, and he latches onto it, latches onto the calm that radiates from her, his own shaky inhales falling in sync with hers, like maybe if he breathes in time he might absorb some of her peace.
He so desperately wants her peace.
Slowly, eyes closed, he pulls the glove from his left hand. The gentle wind through the window is tepid on his bare skin and his chest tightens suddenly. He focuses all his attention on Inej’s steady breathing as he loosens the fingers of his right glove and slowly, slowly, slides it off. The leather is still warm and he doesn’t look at them as he reaches around Inej, always maintaining what little space is between them as he does.
He can almost feel the way she resists watching as he sets the gloves down next to her on the windowsill. He isn’t sure if he is grateful… or disappointed. He also isn’t sure what he expected to feel, if anything, but the ambiguous weight that settles in his stomach is certainly not it.
He shakes the uncertainty off. This is not what he is supposed to be thinking about, certainly not at this moment, as he mentally prepares himself to brush a bare fingertip to the loose strands of her hair, forcing himself not to flinch. It is soft, swaying at his touch, and warm with the gentle heat of her body and the setting sun.
He steadies himself with another slow inhale, and then carefully gathers the length of her hair into his hands. A jolt runs through his body at the brush of his finger against her neck, and Kaz stands frozen for a moment, waiting while his heart settles to a steady pounding instead of a plunging gallop.
To her credit, Inej doesn’t react to the accidental touch, or his sudden lack of movement—or at least, if she does she doesn’t show it.
When he is able to continue, Kaz lifts the hair a little farther from her body and twists the strands together. Some fall away from the rest, and he does his best to gather them again, guiding them back into the loose plait he has created.
When finally he ties it off, letting go a shaky breath as he lowers it cautiously to settle on her back again, his hands are trembling too much for him to deny, even to himself. He balls them into fists as Inej pulls the braid over one shoulder to inspect his work, then turns to give him a small smile.
“Not bad,” she tells him. He wants to return her smile, but all he can manage is the slightest twitch of the corner of his mouth.
She understands anyway. Inej always understands.
Her eyes drop to the gloves on the sill next to him, and she gathers them almost reverently, staring at them for a long moment before her eyes once again find his. She holds them up to him—those gloves; his defense against the corpses that lurk in his past, the things which all at once give him strength and reveal his greatest weakness.
Kaz doesn’t try to hide the bareness of his skin from her as he reaches out to take hold of his gloves, but once again he feels that strange mix of relief and disappointment when her gaze stays fixed to his face.
He holds her gaze, and she gives him the tiniest of nods as he lifts the leather pieces from her grasp, before she returns to looking out the window, while he slides them onto his hands. The feel of the well-worn material around his fingers is familiar and comforting, and the pain that has been sitting in his chest begins to lessen as his heartbeat settles.
He still doesn’t move away, though, and he isn’t sure why, until Inej slides to one side of the big window in silent invitation.
A heartbeat passes before he sits, stepping one foot over the sill and then the other, a scant couple feet separating him from Inej’s quiet presence. The wind is gentle and warm, and Kaz watches as the people of Ketterdam roam the streets below, finishing their errands and heading home before the sun finishes setting. When he looks over, Inej has her eyes closed again, face tilted up to meet the day’s last rays of sunlight.
He clears his throat. “Um. Thank—you,” he says, but the words catch in his throat, his mouth dry.
“What for?” Inej casts a sidelong glance at him, her eyes turning to liquid honey as they catch the dusk light.
For the invitation to sit with you, he thinks. For handing me my gloves. For letting me braid your hair. He isn’t quite sure. For being the one person I can trust with anything, he thinks, and his chest tightens at the revelation. For being YOU.
But Kaz says precisely none of these things. He presses his lips into a thin line.
Inej turns her face to him fully, her eyes holding an emotion he’s not sure he recognizes.
She watches him for a mere heartbeat, holds him under her gaze for infinite eternities, and when she finally looks away, his stomach feels tight and he has to remind himself to breathe.
“For what, Kaz?” she says again, and he opens his mouth like maybe that will make the words come to him.
The silence stretches as she stares out at the far away horizon, and he studies the familiar lines of her face; the slope of her nose, the rise of her cheekbones. Her coffee-and-honey eyes.
Finally, Kaz says, “For everything, Inej. For everything.”
***
A/N: I hate writing summaries because I never know how to summarise my fics. Like, yeah, I wrote it, but what do you mean I’m supposed to know what’s in it? Anyway, I hope you got what you were expecting from this fic and aren’t reaching the end and realising I totally mis-sold this (which is very possible tbh). And, as always, thank you ever so much for reading! Please consider leaving kudos and/or a comment to let me know what you thought! This is a bit different from what I usually post, both in content and style, so definitely tell me if you like this kinda thing! I treasure all the feedback I get from you all, truly! Your support is so valued. <3
Also,please let me know if you want to be tagged in any future Grishaverse fics! (Or, if I did tag you, if you want to continue to be tagged in Grishaverse content or not!)
Tagging:@jurdanhell@my-one-true-l@eldritchred@hpcdd3 @bookavert @queen-of-demons-and-hell@black-like-my-soul@myunfortunatenightmare @stardustsroses
