[ It should be no surprise that Jesper's reply comes in almost immediately. Even if he tries for sleep, it's fleeting at best and comes in bursts of half-hours and spare minutes at worst. The fact he hadn't hear a peep from Kaz in days is one of the things that is making sleep elusive and sees him sitting up at this odd hour.]
Who's gone?
[He knows perfectly well who. And he isn't asking to be an ass. It's a confirmation, a clarification that is both necessary and not. It's a question that's punctuated by him scrambling up from his couch, throwing on one of his coats and leaving as soon as the message is sent. An unspoken "I'm coming up. I'll be there" in the hollows between words.]
[He knows it isn't in malice that he's asking. Even if there's really only one 'she' that it could be, that could have produced this particular sort of reaction from him at having lost.
It's a confirmation. It's a stall.
There's no doubt that Jesper is already sprinting his way to Kaz's suite, which is fine, really, it's the intended effect, even. Because he's finally ready to deal with this, with another person. And that person has to be Jesper.
There is no question of it. The three of them are the ones that go back the furthest. For the longest time, it was really just the three of them at the core of it. Nina, Wylan, even Matthias eventually became a deeper part of what makes up The Crows, but it is the holy trinity of Kaz-Inej-Jesper that held the ground.]
[If he wasn't already sprinting his way up, taking the stairs two and sometimes three at a time, that confirmation would have had him bolting. It isn't just the fact that this meant a cornerstone of their trip was gone. It's that it's Inej that went. Arguably the best of the lot, their pillar of morality among all the deeds they've done.
Kaz's person.
That's what made it hit the hardest.]
How long?
[It's the first and only thing to fly out of his mouth when he bounds into the room. Any act of casual ease wasn't making itself known here--there was nothing casual or easy about any of this.
But how long. How long had Inej been gone? How long had Kaz been sat up here alone wallowing in it?]
Kaz isn’t the crying type, so that isn’t how his time has been spent, but there’s nothing to be done about it, either. He can’t slam into action to get her back, there are no plans to be made, no houses to break into to steal her back out of. She was there, and then she wasn’t, and he has just had to sit with that, and no sense of purpose toward fixing it.
Kaz also isn’t a wallower. Three days was… arbitrarily… enough. It isn’t that he’d really ever stop feeling the loss of her— he hates how much any way he thinks of it makes it sound like she’s dead— but he can’t, and won’t, dwell in it, either.
Knowing his sharpshooter was on his way, he's left the door unlocked, but Jesper won't find him immediately on entering. He isn't in the living room, instead he'll find him on the bed in the bedroom. It isn't the depression nest it could have been, were he a different sort of person. He’s just laying on top of the otherwise pristinely made bed, twirling a hairtie in a long, slow rotation between both of his index fingers when Jesper bursts in.
He’s noticeably in the red hoodie he’d stolen from Noah weeks ago, though there is no sign that anyone else has been in the flat at all. He didn’t feel like talking to Noah yet, but there’s still something comforting in wearing it. He’s also in a pair of black jeans from Blue. No shoes on his socked feet, though. No need when he hasn’t left the suite.
Kaz’s eyes cut to the other boy and everything in his chest constricts immediately. It’s a crushing wave of everything he’d spent days trying to neatly store away in a box in his mind with all the things he doesn’t want to think about or look at or touch.
His gaze drops back down to the hairtie resting on his fingers. He starts up the slow circular motion again. His jaw tightens and he gives the small, clipped answer of, “Three days.”
The thing with Jesper being the one to find him, to be the one barging in on whatever disaster Inej's disappearance might leave in its wake--And there would be a disaster, even if Kaz didn't wear the wreckage on his sleeve--is that Jesper knew Kaz. Despite the fact that Kaz didn't wallow or shed tears, he know the other would be feeling this for some time. The loss would leave a hole until Kaz sutured it enough that the frayed edges of his heart somehow managed to stay together.
And finding him in the bedroom, what had been her space, was evidence enough of that. The abandonment of his usual attire for the odd comforts of more "modern" clothing certainly didn't help Jesper think he was all right. A Kaz that had moved beyond it would be skulking about in the libraries, scheming their next move against the Order and Hell itself. Not laid up and twisting a tie about his fingers.
"Three days." Less than he thought, but still more than Jesper was comfortable knowing Kaz had spent alone. He slinks further into the room before settling onto the edge of the bed. "There's nothing to be done for it...And we know it means she's back home."
That damn well better be where she is, or Hell's higher-ups are going to have more to answer for.
His fingers continue toying with the hairtie, but his eyes follow Jesper from where he'd entered the room and along the path he takes to the bed, where he perches– close, but not close. Not yet. He isn't sure if he can, and Kaz knows it. It's a smart decision because even he doesn't know how it might have made him feel if that had been the first reaction. Things are... slowly shifting into something else between them, have been for months, but... Kaz is still who he's always been. And something that's left him reeling and raw makes it even easier to sink back into the distant way he's always had about him.
But something does release inside his chest at Jesper being here. Small. Miniscule in the grander vice grip in his chest, but it's something. "Nope," he mutters with a sigh, eyes back on his fingers motions. "She won't remember anything, if Nina's disappearance and re-appearance is anything to judge by... She'll just go back like nothing happened."
It's easier, he thinks, to try to stay clinically detached right now. Jesper is one of the only people he might let something real filter through and he doesn't want to do that right now.
"I don't like being left behind," And he's certain Kaz is solidly in that same boat, if not the captain of it. "But she's better for it. She never deserved this place. Not in the way you or I do."
Because honestly, Kaz's ledger may be red with blood and vengeance, but Jesper's runs red with debt and the joy he took in all he's been set to do as part of the Dregs. Inej had her Saints and a path built for her with the goal of saving others from the personal hells she had gone through. But knowing that doesn't particularly help Kaz now, and it's hardly a balm of comfort simply because they don't know what will happen back home. They have such a finite knowledge of their futures. And beyond that? It was an unknown.
"Kaz..." Jesper simply watches him fiddle with the tie. It's almost...sad, in a way. As if he's lost with no mooring. "What do you--What can I do?"
"Me either..." he agrees, face scrunching a little at it. "No...she didn't. She–" it catches in his throat, only obvious if you know exactly the inflection of Kaz's voice, but there all the same. "She never should have been here."
His lips twitch, it isn't a smile, not even a half-hearted one, it's just that. A little twitch at the corners of his mouth at the attempt with no mirth in it at all. "I..." he's at a loss. He can't even pull something from thin air just for the sake of telling him literally anything all. He was usually so good at that, giving Jesper some sort of direction, however useless it might have really been to actually fixing the issue at hand. "You're here..." His voice drops to a soft whisper. "I don't know what else there is."
Nothing. That's the real answer. He can't do anything. No one can, and that's the rub.
Jesper, of course, notices the way his voice catches--he knows him too well to not pick up on it, and knows him well enough to not say a word about it besides. It's the knowing him, knowing the tells and the giveaways, that make this all the more difficult. Because Kaz doesn't have to say much of anything for Jesper to know what's behind any words that are given.
There's nothing he can do. He knew that even as he made his way here. Nothing to be done or said, nothing that can fix this, because for once? For once it's something unsolvable. And all he can offer is his own presence.
So, he moves. He pushes himself off of the edge he finds himself on and makes his way around to the other side of the bed. He doesn't say a word as he strips off his jacket and drapes it over some miscellaneous bit of furniture pressed up against the wall. There's a whisper of sheets as he settles himself fully on the other side, though he makes a point of maintaining a sliver of space between them. Kaz can close that if he chooses to.
"Then...I'm here. Long as you need me." At least he can offer that much.
He knows it's driving Jesper mad already, much the same way Kaz has already been through that part of this realization. How helpless it is. How useless. He just hasn't been able to box it up and put it away yet, which is why he hasn't left the suite. He wants to be able to put it aside when he does.
Kaz notices the movement from the edge of his vision, and he pauses in playing with the band, eyes following the other boy– up to his feet, coat set aside, slipping up under the sheets like he somehow belongs there.
It doesn't escape him this is the sort of thing that Jesper can offer him here, which never would have been dreamed of back home. It's jarring in a sense, especially with the idea of home dangled quite so closely at the moment. Out of reach, not somewhere they can go, but the rough shove back to the reality of how they don't belong here. Not that he's ever forgotten it, exactly, but a person can get used to anything with enough time. Adjustment and adaptability are two of Kaz's best capabilities, and eight months is plenty of time to let himself sink into a place.
He looks over at him for a second before he looks back at the tie in his hands and starts fussing with it. It takes a few minutes to loosen the elastic of it enough to make it work, but eventually, he does get a cat's cradle spread between his fingers. He draws his eyes back to the other boy and holds his hands out.
It's stupid. Utterly stupid, but he doesn't care. It's something Jordie used to do play with him when he was little. It's something that has no connection whatsoever to the situation at hand.
Jesper doesn't say a word while Kaz keeps fussing with the tie, over and over until the elastic has enough give to do more with it. He's no stranger to repetitive motions, the calm they can give when every other thing around can seem like overwhelming chaos. Or when the world strips something from you that you can't take back.
When Kaz's hands are put in front of him, he can't help the soft almost fond chuckle the image of a cat's cradle spread between his fingers draws out of him. It's a simple game, familiar enough to someone that needed simple things to keep occupied. So he sits up a bit and reaches for the center crossing strings to draw them to the outside.
From cradle to soldier's bed to candles.
A simple game that could be played with little communication, if you knew the person well enough to trust they knew the rules, the sequences, and could read your intent. All things he and Kaz had in spades at this point.
He can’t stop the soft amused sound from escaping when Jesper indulges the game, and goes through each next pattern as expected, even though they’d never played the game together before. It was such a simple thing, but he doesn’t miss the importance in that underlying truth of just how well they know each other. To never utter a word and still manage each turn perfectly spoke loudly to that trust in each other.
When the last sequence is played through, he pulls the elastic from both of their fingers and sets it aside on the bedside table.
He turns back toward Jesper, pulling onto his side and tucking one arm under his head. “Thank you.” He says, barely a whisper in the space between them. Thank you for indulging him the distraction. For being here. For answering that text.
Kaz hadn’t realized how badly he needed the other boy until he’d seen his words on that screen. Made even more obvious when he felt that tiny release of pressure in his chest just for laying eyes on him.
“You’re not allowed to leave,” he says, as though anyone has any choice in the matter. But the next words are no half attempt at a joke, he’s wholly serious as he says, “I don’t think I can be here without both of you.” He hasn’t actually been without both of them at all yet, not really. Inej was preparing to leave, Jesper was staying more nights than not at the Van Eck mansion, but there was evidence of them around still.
There’s something sad about the idea that, eventually, that may not be true. There may be a time when Jesper doesn’t darken the doorways of The Slat again. When Inej stops coming back to a city she hates for a boy she hates less.
Funny the way sad thoughts just collide like dominoes one on top of another until there’s nothing left.
It’s an overwhelming thing, this kind of grief. The sort of thing that chokes all hopes of words out of his throat, even when he feels desperately like he needs to say something. But what would he even say if he could? That it hurts, that he hates that she’s gone? What good would it do him?
But. Jesper is here. He’s here now and he’s not leaving. He’s not going anywhere, short of it being utterly out of his control, and that’s what he needs to focus on before the increasing tightness in his chest turns into something he can’t stop.
His fingers inch toward the other boy. Impossible as ever, down to his most vulnerable moments— he hates needing anything from anyone, and asking outright is a blatant admission of weakness. But if he pushes the idea, and Jesper takes the lead, it becomes an offer he can pretend was never his idea to start with.
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Text » @ 3:15am
Date: 2022-03-02 10:56 pm (UTC)Who's gone?
[He knows perfectly well who. And he isn't asking to be an ass. It's a confirmation, a clarification that is both necessary and not. It's a question that's punctuated by him scrambling up from his couch, throwing on one of his coats and leaving as soon as the message is sent. An unspoken "I'm coming up. I'll be there" in the hollows between words.]
no subject
Date: 2022-03-02 11:24 pm (UTC)[He knows it isn't in malice that he's asking. Even if there's really only one 'she' that it could be, that could have produced this particular sort of reaction from him at having lost.
It's a confirmation.
It's a stall.
There's no doubt that Jesper is already sprinting his way to Kaz's suite, which is fine, really, it's the intended effect, even. Because he's finally ready to deal with this, with another person. And that person has to be Jesper.
There is no question of it. The three of them are the ones that go back the furthest. For the longest time, it was really just the three of them at the core of it. Nina, Wylan, even Matthias eventually became a deeper part of what makes up The Crows, but it is the holy trinity of Kaz-Inej-Jesper that held the ground.]
>> Action
Date: 2022-03-02 11:42 pm (UTC)Kaz's person.
That's what made it hit the hardest.]
How long?
[It's the first and only thing to fly out of his mouth when he bounds into the room. Any act of casual ease wasn't making itself known here--there was nothing casual or easy about any of this.
But how long. How long had Inej been gone? How long had Kaz been sat up here alone wallowing in it?]
no subject
Date: 2022-03-03 12:10 am (UTC)Kaz also isn’t a wallower. Three days was… arbitrarily… enough. It isn’t that he’d really ever stop feeling the loss of her— he hates how much any way he thinks of it makes it sound like she’s dead— but he can’t, and won’t, dwell in it, either.
Knowing his sharpshooter was on his way, he's left the door unlocked, but Jesper won't find him immediately on entering. He isn't in the living room, instead he'll find him on the bed in the bedroom. It isn't the depression nest it could have been, were he a different sort of person. He’s just laying on top of the otherwise pristinely made bed, twirling a hairtie in a long, slow rotation between both of his index fingers when Jesper bursts in.
He’s noticeably in the red hoodie he’d stolen from Noah weeks ago, though there is no sign that anyone else has been in the flat at all. He didn’t feel like talking to Noah yet, but there’s still something comforting in wearing it. He’s also in a pair of black jeans from Blue. No shoes on his socked feet, though. No need when he hasn’t left the suite.
Kaz’s eyes cut to the other boy and everything in his chest constricts immediately. It’s a crushing wave of everything he’d spent days trying to neatly store away in a box in his mind with all the things he doesn’t want to think about or look at or touch.
His gaze drops back down to the hairtie resting on his fingers. He starts up the slow circular motion again. His jaw tightens and he gives the small, clipped answer of, “Three days.”
no subject
Date: 2022-03-05 08:11 pm (UTC)And finding him in the bedroom, what had been her space, was evidence enough of that. The abandonment of his usual attire for the odd comforts of more "modern" clothing certainly didn't help Jesper think he was all right. A Kaz that had moved beyond it would be skulking about in the libraries, scheming their next move against the Order and Hell itself. Not laid up and twisting a tie about his fingers.
"Three days." Less than he thought, but still more than Jesper was comfortable knowing Kaz had spent alone. He slinks further into the room before settling onto the edge of the bed. "There's nothing to be done for it...And we know it means she's back home."
That damn well better be where she is, or Hell's higher-ups are going to have more to answer for.
no subject
Date: 2022-03-05 09:43 pm (UTC)But something does release inside his chest at Jesper being here. Small. Miniscule in the grander vice grip in his chest, but it's something. "Nope," he mutters with a sigh, eyes back on his fingers motions. "She won't remember anything, if Nina's disappearance and re-appearance is anything to judge by... She'll just go back like nothing happened."
It's easier, he thinks, to try to stay clinically detached right now. Jesper is one of the only people he might let something real filter through and he doesn't want to do that right now.
no subject
Date: 2022-03-06 02:36 am (UTC)Because honestly, Kaz's ledger may be red with blood and vengeance, but Jesper's runs red with debt and the joy he took in all he's been set to do as part of the Dregs. Inej had her Saints and a path built for her with the goal of saving others from the personal hells she had gone through. But knowing that doesn't particularly help Kaz now, and it's hardly a balm of comfort simply because they don't know what will happen back home. They have such a finite knowledge of their futures. And beyond that? It was an unknown.
"Kaz..." Jesper simply watches him fiddle with the tie. It's almost...sad, in a way. As if he's lost with no mooring. "What do you--What can I do?"
no subject
Date: 2022-03-06 03:02 am (UTC)His lips twitch, it isn't a smile, not even a half-hearted one, it's just that. A little twitch at the corners of his mouth at the attempt with no mirth in it at all. "I..." he's at a loss. He can't even pull something from thin air just for the sake of telling him literally anything all. He was usually so good at that, giving Jesper some sort of direction, however useless it might have really been to actually fixing the issue at hand. "You're here..." His voice drops to a soft whisper. "I don't know what else there is."
Nothing.
That's the real answer.
He can't do anything. No one can, and that's the rub.
no subject
Date: 2022-03-06 11:54 pm (UTC)There's nothing he can do. He knew that even as he made his way here. Nothing to be done or said, nothing that can fix this, because for once? For once it's something unsolvable. And all he can offer is his own presence.
So, he moves. He pushes himself off of the edge he finds himself on and makes his way around to the other side of the bed. He doesn't say a word as he strips off his jacket and drapes it over some miscellaneous bit of furniture pressed up against the wall. There's a whisper of sheets as he settles himself fully on the other side, though he makes a point of maintaining a sliver of space between them. Kaz can close that if he chooses to.
"Then...I'm here. Long as you need me." At least he can offer that much.
no subject
Date: 2022-03-07 12:12 am (UTC)Kaz notices the movement from the edge of his vision, and he pauses in playing with the band, eyes following the other boy– up to his feet, coat set aside, slipping up under the sheets like he somehow belongs there.
It doesn't escape him this is the sort of thing that Jesper can offer him here, which never would have been dreamed of back home. It's jarring in a sense, especially with the idea of home dangled quite so closely at the moment. Out of reach, not somewhere they can go, but the rough shove back to the reality of how they don't belong here. Not that he's ever forgotten it, exactly, but a person can get used to anything with enough time. Adjustment and adaptability are two of Kaz's best capabilities, and eight months is plenty of time to let himself sink into a place.
He looks over at him for a second before he looks back at the tie in his hands and starts fussing with it. It takes a few minutes to loosen the elastic of it enough to make it work, but eventually, he does get a cat's cradle spread between his fingers. He draws his eyes back to the other boy and holds his hands out.
It's stupid. Utterly stupid, but he doesn't care. It's something Jordie used to do play with him when he was little. It's something that has no connection whatsoever to the situation at hand.
no subject
Date: 2022-03-19 07:25 pm (UTC)When Kaz's hands are put in front of him, he can't help the soft almost fond chuckle the image of a cat's cradle spread between his fingers draws out of him. It's a simple game, familiar enough to someone that needed simple things to keep occupied. So he sits up a bit and reaches for the center crossing strings to draw them to the outside.
From cradle to soldier's bed to candles.
A simple game that could be played with little communication, if you knew the person well enough to trust they knew the rules, the sequences, and could read your intent. All things he and Kaz had in spades at this point.
no subject
Date: 2022-03-21 02:04 am (UTC)When the last sequence is played through, he pulls the elastic from both of their fingers and sets it aside on the bedside table.
He turns back toward Jesper, pulling onto his side and tucking one arm under his head. “Thank you.” He says, barely a whisper in the space between them. Thank you for indulging him the distraction. For being here. For answering that text.
Kaz hadn’t realized how badly he needed the other boy until he’d seen his words on that screen. Made even more obvious when he felt that tiny release of pressure in his chest just for laying eyes on him.
“You’re not allowed to leave,” he says, as though anyone has any choice in the matter. But the next words are no half attempt at a joke, he’s wholly serious as he says, “I don’t think I can be here without both of you.” He hasn’t actually been without both of them at all yet, not really. Inej was preparing to leave, Jesper was staying more nights than not at the Van Eck mansion, but there was evidence of them around still.
There’s something sad about the idea that, eventually, that may not be true. There may be a time when Jesper doesn’t darken the doorways of The Slat again. When Inej stops coming back to a city she hates for a boy she hates less.
Funny the way sad thoughts just collide like dominoes one on top of another until there’s nothing left.
It’s an overwhelming thing, this kind of grief. The sort of thing that chokes all hopes of words out of his throat, even when he feels desperately like he needs to say something. But what would he even say if he could? That it hurts, that he hates that she’s gone? What good would it do him?
But.
Jesper is here.
He’s here now and he’s not leaving.
He’s not going anywhere, short of it being utterly out of his control, and that’s what he needs to focus on before the increasing tightness in his chest turns into something he can’t stop.
His fingers inch toward the other boy. Impossible as ever, down to his most vulnerable moments— he hates needing anything from anyone, and asking outright is a blatant admission of weakness. But if he pushes the idea, and Jesper takes the lead, it becomes an offer he can pretend was never his idea to start with.