#like rabbits and poets
Grishaverse - Kaz Brekker & Reader, angst, former relationship
Series:Like Rabbits and Poets (they’re born to be killed)
tw: alcohol, one (1) suggestive comment, demon imagery, death imagery, rot imagery, mentions of blood, mentions of burning
word count:2.7k
Summary: something is growing within these kaelish boys, and you must gnaw at all they have to give.
The Crow Club was more lively than usual, the lights bright and the drinks at the bar flowing free. Patrons were betting more than their lives were worth on dice, and others were dancing skin-against-skin to the music of the in-house band - something energetic and fervent, with the same undertone of sensuality you couldn’t escape, this deep in the Barrel. The Dregs were celebrating a particularly successful job, and everyone felt sweet - like new money and strong drinks, like million-kruge smiles and saccharine lips. You took your drink from the bar and slipped through the restless crowds. You snagged someone else’s shot on your way out - just a little fun before the night calmed, and business went back to usual.
You found him outside the Club, standing in the corner beneath the portico, the bright lights of East Stave dousing him in orange and red hues. He heard you approach, and when his gaze met yours, the glint in his eyes was like diamond - his irises a dark Kaelish whiskey on the rocks. You propped yourself up against one of the black lacquered pillars to drink in his deep, brown depths. He leaned toward you when you stilled, and then, as though his mind caught up with him and thought better of it, he pulled away. You noticed - you always did - but back then, you didn’t mind.
Of all the games Kaz Brekker played, you liked this one the most.
“You’re not celebrating?” You spoke after the silence had settled, and all the world was glittering before you, almost soft-looking, the way the dark night blurred his roughened edges - obscurity sanding him smooth.
“I already celebrated—” you raised your eyebrows; he tilted his head “—I counted the kruge.”
You rolled your eyes, making a big show of it as you opened your mouth in a soundless scoff. You looked at him, again, and he was grinning (or maybe just flashing his teeth).
You still had the shot in hand, and seeing as the night wouldn’t get much better than this, you gulped it down, feeling the sting at the back of your throat. Sometimes, burning was your only proof that it was all real. Kaz looked at the other drink still in your grasp, the liquor swirling in a way that seemed like oblivion. His gloved hand reached out, dancing in the space between, and you held out the drink to him.
His fingers brushed yours. He was quick to pull the glass away.
The liquid sloshed against the side; the waters rose higher. Kaz traced the rim with his gloved finger - as though quelling the tide. You watched him carefully. The liquor wouldn’t climb higher than the glass.
“I hope your kruge was worth it.” Your words pulled him out of his head, and Kaz turned his gaze to you. “I hated that poor excuse for an outfit you had me wear at the casino. It was cold! And I never want to paint my lips purple ever again.”
You chuckled at your own joke, not missing the way Kaz’s eyes lingered on your lips, and how his own curled into a smile. It was something genuine, or so you believed, and such beauty was rare. The deep night carried warmth on the breeze, and for a moment, you both swayed together.
“Purple’s your color,” and his voice was so quiet, it was almost not there.
But you had long since learned to hear Kaz Brekker and notice changes in the rasp of his breath. He was closer, now, and you could see the way all his life stood on the edge of his glass - one tilt toward you, and everything might change. You hummed, and the world drew close around you. The night was dark, and the lilt of music still drifted toward you.
His lips parted; he whispered your name.
You wanted to feel his breath against your neck.
The door to the Crow Club swung open, and someone called for Kaz. The world flooded back towards you, and it was loud and uneven - tilted to its side, and jarring you awake. You huffed in annoyance, and Brekker nodded at the intruder. You didn’t know why you were surprised - no one could afford privacy in Ketterdam. The door to the Club slammed shut, and the evening shifted with it.
You raised an eyebrow, half-amused, but not quite. Kaz leaned in, but he never crossed the full distance. “It was worth it,” he breathed, but by the time you registered the meaning of his words, he was gone.
I don’t deal in monsters, but I have met men and I have held their death. I have cradled a demon in my lap, and I have watched the world do the same.
The dying months in Ketterdam were brisk, but somehow, it was in those weeks that the sun shone brightest. It confused many, but you understood. An island of contradictions had to be beautiful in them at some point - otherwise, no one would fill her harbors. The sun painted the sky in burnt, orange hues as you sat in the Boeksplein, papers all strewn around you, with Nanko on your left and Jem on your right.
You looked at Jem until he noticed, then you shifted the other way.
This was the dozenth time you’d met them here - on one of the benches in the vast courtyard - a brief get-together in between classes, where the world around you was taking its failing breaths, and you contemplated just when you would follow suit.
“It’s too florid, isn’t it?” And you gnawed on your bottom lip, creasing your eyebrows just so.
You had cultivated this closeness between you slowly - like an aria - one step, then another. It had started with nights at the wall. Then meetings like these - clandestine moments stolen from the stream of time - sweet encounters between classes, where the world was amber-colored. Honey.
The first time you tracked them down, it was under the pretense of giving them back something you’d taken - a sheet of poetry Jem had shown you, one night by the wall - something still incomplete and not yet raw. They had been surprised you cared, rather than shaken you knew how to find them, and it would make all the difference, in the end.
The next time you chatted with them, you made sure that Nanko spotted you. The time after, it was Jem who sought you out. You had met enough times to make your presence comfortable and made just enough gambles to ensure your admissions felt right. They wouldn’t be surprised to know you, now, and it would save you when your hand was played.
This time, you had found them to share a piece of your own writing - something flowered and kaleidoscopic, romantic, and not quite breathing. You loathed it, from the moment you penned it. You hated that you had once believed its fragrant lies.
But you smiled at them, innocent, and asked for their opinion. You were all new to this, after all. Little things like yourselves should cling together.
“No! No.” Jem smiled and licked his chapped lips. He caught your gaze, and you held it more carefully than a smoking gun. “I like it. It just… feels different than what you’ve written before.”
On your face, you painted the visage of an embarrassed longing. You let your fingers dance outward as though subconsciously testing what lay between.
You bit down on a smile; you looked up through the lashes of your eyes. “I got some inspiration, is all.”
Jem shifted closer. You pretended that it sent you reeling.
You shook your flustered head. “I mean… I’m a nutcracker, after all. Remember the soldier prince? ‘My life began with wanting something for myself’.” —(and what did you want, now that you were just heaving?)— “We all have to find something to covet.”
Jem’s eyes glittered like far diamonds; Nanko bowed his head.
The clock marked the hour, then, and they were off to their next lesson. Nanko was swift as a rabbit - like some kind of prey that was too smart to be taken alive. Jem lingered in his farewell - as he had done for some time now - standing up slower and catching your eye before turning around.
Your mouth fluttered into a smile because it was designed to. You looked into his dark eyes because it was your con, and when they caught the sunlight, you pretended not to notice the shade of their depths.
They were just brown, and you were just a nightingale.
“If you refine your poem and bring it to the next meeting, I can help you carve it.” Jem fiddled with the strap of his bag. He had remembered what you said, one night, about his beautiful penmanship. He clung to your every word.
“You don’t think it’s too shallow for the wall?”
“It’s truthful, isn’t it?” And you didn’t know what to do but smile. Jem shrugged and stuck his hands in his pockets. Sometimes, they still snagged. “That’s all it has to be. And if it is, it’s enough.”
Enough. You hoped it would be, in the end.
“I’ll bring it, then.”
He was dazzling with the light of the sun before he was gone. You watched him as he left - his black curls bouncing with every step - and it was hard to mourn the living. The Kaelish boy was a dreamer - like he didn’t yet have smoke trapped in his lungs or a demon curled in his lap.
What a beautiful thing - to be that alive.
You sat on the bench for a moment, and the world passed you by. Two weeks had passed since you began this lie; for fourteen days, you had been living a version of the life you’d always longed for - something tied in poetry and lined with expressions of love. Part of you longed to enjoy it, but another, more broken division demanded you end this game before it got out of hand.
Before their blood was on your silver dagger, their fortune in Kaz Brekker’s coffers.
Silly thoughts - they’d get you killed. An actor was only so good as their scenes - a liar only as successful as the reading of their lines. The last time you had believed in your own artistic liberties, you’d paid the price for it, and so had others, dead and gone. This time, there would be no deviations from the plot.
The only mercy you had was time.
You made your way to the library, swallowing the Kaelish boy’s goodbye and feeling the way such a good-natured parting sat in the space behind your teeth. You slinked into the book-lined rooms of the library and wandered over to a table in the corner, writing little messages about the knowledge you’d gleaned. You breathed in deeply on lines that were harder to pen, and the honeyed smell of the University wasn’t as strong as it had once been; something in the shadows of your deeds had poisoned it. Already, it started a rot.
You found yourself choking on memories that no longer belonged to you.
“I’m not one for poetry,” a shadow had confided, once, in you.
And you had liked the way you danced around its jagged edges. You had coveted the broken knuckles and the fractured glances. You had longed for this shadow and the way you teased it in the hushed pitch of night.
You circled around it with a smile - close enough to feel its breath, far enough away to never touch its heart. “Ah, but you’ve never read mine.”
And your shadow liked to bare its teeth.
“(Y/n).”
You looked upward, and the darkened tendrils of the Barrel were gone. Quiet Inej stood in front of you, and just how long she’d been waiting to announce her presence, you’d never know. You blinked away the past, but for a moment, it lingered. It clung to you, unfreed.
But still, here you were: the library, the note, the con.
The Wraith had the mind to smile.
“Inej.” And despite the years of distance between you - stretches of time where you hadn’t seen her, and had only heard of the deeds of her ghost - the contours of your worried mind smoothed into something genuine. “I wasn’t expecting you.”
She took a seat across from you, and you wondered what the both of you must look like. The Wraith and a nightingale. A university student, and something more. In another life, such a scene would have never fit together, but Ketterdam liked to blur her edges and lines.
“A pleasant surprise,” you mused, smiling and tilting your head. “Did I wander too far, and Dirtyhands asked you to find me?”
Inej scoffed, as though the thought of losing you was impossible. “You’re not hard to track, y'know. Anyone could find you if they wanted to.”
You shrugged. “That’s the point, actually. I can’t be hidden and noticed.”
‘Why bring it up, then?’ a part of you insisted.
‘To hear something that isn’t my own desperate thoughts.’
“Are you here for this, then?” You folded your page of secrets and held it out to Inej. She hesitated, but took the note and slipped it somewhere within the folds of her vest. “I was going to take it to the Geldcanal later tonight, like every week. Is that not soon enough for Brekker? Does he really need it now?”
For a hairbreadth of a moment, she didn’t meet your gaze. It betrayed more than it should have.
“What is it?”
Inej breathed in, and when she spoke, her voice was low and even. She was expecting something rash, then, was she? What ruin had Ketterdam brought you, now? “Kaz wants you to come to the Slat tomorrow night.”
You blinked against a wave of something more. “I thought he said—”
“One night won’t blow your cover. If you come late enough, everyone will think you just blew off some steam at the Crow Club and wandered your way in - no one will think much.”
You held in a scoff, and the bitterness was acidic. The Slat. You hadn’t been back there in nearly two years, and when you had left it, you swore to yourself you’d never pass its foyer, again. You didn’t need the Slat. Or, more aptly, you didn’t want it. It was just an extension of Dirtyhands - just another way you were indebted to him.
Kaz Brekker, the Bastard of the Barrel, Usurper of the Dregs. He was smart. Clever, even. Brekker always knew what made others tick. And more than that, he always knew when to play his hand.
You kept your tone even but raised a calculatedly curious brow. “Why not the Crow Club?”
And Inej tipped her head, something rueful in the depths of her gaze. Why did Kaz do anything he did? For power. For kruge. For the pleasant feeling of vengeful blood dripping down his throat. All the diamonds in the world wouldn’t compare to that copper taste at the back of his tongue. It would never be enough, and the acridity of him would soon burn all of Ketterdam through.
You wanted to scream. You wanted to leave. You wanted to burn all of Kerch.
You painted something calm on your face.
Inej blinked. It was as though she wasn’t sure what was reality, and what was your game. If you were to look in a mirror, would you know, yourself?
“Tomorrow night,” you conceded. “The Slat. I’ll stop at the Crow Club for a game, first - a cover story in case I’m seen. Who else will be there?”
“Jesper and I.”
That’s right. One of you was already gone. Nina had left on a barge to Fjerda, with a new face and long-aching woes. Inej would take to the seas herself, in a few months’ time, on sails of her own. Even Jesper was close to leaving the Slat - he’d still be caught in the web of the city, but he’d remove his place in its balance. They’d all be scattered to the wind soon - some of them already were - perhaps somewhere better than here. They were already gone, but some things would stay.
You would be at the Zelver, all the same, singing operas that would make audiences itch for someone to come home. Kaz would be in his office, working until the candles burned low, and everything in the harbor lost its breath.
“A reunion, then,” and your lips curled into something that resembled a smile. Inej settled comfortably into your features, and you ached at your own lies. “I haven’t seen you or Jesper in years. You might want to have a drink beforehand.”
Inej laughed, and then she was gone.
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