Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

(art by nopeemi )

*

Well. That’s not who Kaz expected at his door at five in the morning—not that he ever expected anyone to come calling at five except maybe the cops. But he has covered his traces well, and besides they wouldn’t knock. They wouldn’t give him time to wipe his drives. They don’t know he had switches for that fabrikated into the walls all over his flat and into his cane, plus a tiny transmitter stuffed into his cheek whenever he strays too far from his computers. They’re never going to catch him. Even if they brought heartrenders to ferret out his fears, they wouldn’t best him. He’s just taking advantage of the naiveté of techno-optimists. He’s fleecing venture capitalists and crypto-bros alike. Most of the scams he runs aren’t even illegal yet.

It’s Jesper, though, at the door.

At five in the morning.

After fifteen years.

Age has been kind to him: Jesper Fahey is as lanky as ever, and the subtle grey in his short hair shimmers in the bright hallway light. His hairline’s barely moved, even though Jesper’s Da was half bald at forty. Of course Jes stayed pretty, though. Back when they were friends—when they were all stupid enough to believe in friends forever—in every future Kaz imagined, Jesper was pretty. It’s the only thing he got right. That, and the riches. The vengeance. He just forgot to picture the all-consuming emptiness.

When Kaz saw him last—no, when they last spoke, when Jesper saw Kaz, because Dirtyhands could not lose sight of his Crows even when they all fled his nest—his left ear glinted with helix piercings. They’re all gone, except for subtle leftovers of holes. But then, Jesper abandoned him for university. To become a teacher, of all things. Nina’s a hot-shot attorney in New York now with her trophy husband Matthias who dog-sits and raises their kid, Wylan’s a musician everywhere, Kuwei works at the European Space Agency, Inej’s a captain in the Mediterranean Sea who saves lives that every government would happily, brutally leave to drown—and Jesper’s teaching thirteen-year-olds Physics. And French. And Economics, for two years now, because he got that top-up certificate.

He’s the only Crow left in Ketterdam, apart from Kaz, and he’s become the most mundane of them all.

“You wear glasses now?! Uh. Hey, Kaz,” Jesper says. He’s not smiling, only a tired, rueful grin, and he’s scuffing his socks on the hallway floor. “Long time, huh? Can I come in?”

His socks.

They’re a dark red, easy to miss. No, Kaz was blinded, for a second, by Jesper’s appearance. Blinded by the fact that yes, he’s handsome at thirty-eight when stalked across the street, but from this close he’s as lethally gorgeous as he used to be when watching Kaz’s back—Kaz possibly might have underestimated how much he missed—anyway, the wear and tear is obvious now.

Jesper’s in his socks, at his door, in the middle of the night, in late October.

It’s been raining. The socks are wet and dirty.

There’s stubble on Jesper’s broad cheeks, too. One-day stubble alone wouldn’t have been alarming—Jesper used to go out with stubble and makeup sometimes. Since he was with Wylan at the time and Kaz with Inej, Kaz never quite had a reason to admit he liked it. But he’s respectable, now. There’s a subtle bruise on his left cheekbone, the hint of a scratch. His eyes are lightly swollen. He’s been crying.

“Robbery?”

“Sadly, no.” Jesper huffs a tired laugh. “Look, I know you think teachers are pathetic, but I can still take a couple of robbers. I understand robbers. Robbers are great—used to be one, you know, and some of the best people I know reside on that side of the law, but—look, can I just come in? I have no clue what I’m going to do right now. I was hoping you had some advice.”

If it’s bait to get Kaz interested, it’s working. Not that it’s strictly necessary—the Crows are still his even though they may have moved on. If something is messing up their lives, he should know.

Not even a decade of forcing teenagers to pretend to care about French verbs can have dulled Jesper’s intellect. So if there is a problem that he can’t figure out, to the point he’s here at Kaz’s doorstep again when they aren’t even friends anymore, when Jesper’s supposed to be a respectable tax-paying member of society with a serious girlfriend and not even a single pirated movie on his computer—which Kaz knows, because he checks up on all of them regularly, the Crows are still his—if there is a danger that stalks the entire gang, Kaz is thankful to have advanced warning.

If it isn’t—if this is just Jesper’s own problem—well, Kaz could never resist a mystery.

“You couldn’t have called?”

Jesper shrugs his wide shoulders. He’s packed on wiry muscle in the past few years; he doesn’t go to a fitness centre regularly, but his girlfriend got him into bouldering, and it shows under the thin, wet, blue jacket. He splays his long, ringless fingers in-between them—no phone, he’s saying wordlessly. Probably no wallet either, which does nothing to dispel Kaz’s initial theory that he got robbed, except—

“I forgot my bag on the table. Keys, everything, so I couldn’t get back in.”

You could have easily fabrikated open the lock to your house, Kaz doesn’t tell him. He’s not meant to know that secret. The world has changed. Grisha are tolerated, for the most part, and major newspapers only occasionally publish opinion pieces questioning their right to exist nowadays. It’s exceptional now, not everyday, to see accepting Grisha equated with being anti-science. The world’s changed. It has, but so has their friendship. Withered. He’s no longer a part of Jesper’s family. Kaz isn’t meant to know or care about Jesper’s secrets. Still, breaking through how own front door would have been far easier than a trek across the city on the off-chance that the selfish angry bastard Jesper once knew would—

“I fought with Mareike. It’s over.”

“Come in.”

“You’re not asking me what I did?” Jesper mutters, following Kaz into the hallway and hanging his drenched jacket up on one of the two lonely, disused-for-a-decade coat hangers Kaz keeps on his rack. His coats are in the closet, where they don’t get dusty. He doesn’t need to save the space in there that she left behind to become a hero.

“You didn’t do anything.” It’s not quite a blind guess. Jesper’s a good man. A better man, ever since he left. Nothing he’d do could warrant—

Jesper sobs. Grins. Sobs again. He hides his face in his hands—no, he’s just wiping the tears out of and back into his eyes, rubbing his nose only to spreading a thin layer of snot all over his face. The tension bleeds out of his gangly frame. Suddenly, he looks tired; as tired as a respectable middle-aged teacher should, at five in the morning, after a night where he likely hasn’t slept. A night where he walked barefoot across the city in the pouring rain.

A night where he madly decided to re-establish contact with his criminal former best friend.

He’s keeping his distance, despite the tears. Fifteen years, and still, Jesper effortlessly and thoughtlessly remembers the gulf that Kaz had to keep in-between himself and his Crows back then. The gulf he managed to narrow with Inej but that grew back with a vengeance after they broke up. A vengeance that Jesper can’t have known about, can’t understand. Not when he hasn’t seen Kaz in fifteen years. He knows of the gulf; not the victorious small fissure and not the yawning, empty, lonely chasm that devours Kaz every waking moment now. Except—he’s just standing in the hallway, not touching Kaz even though he was a tactile creature. Even though there can’t be anything he longs for more right now than physical comfort. Even though he’s still Jesper.

And yet, without question, he lets Kaz be.

He’s just crying noisily and pawing at his thin rumpled dress shirt. Apparently… just gracelessly relieved that Kaz isn’t thinking the worst of him.

He’s also taller than he should be, on closer observation. By several centimetres. Sure, when they last interacted—in a way that’s not legally considered ‘stalking’—Kaz wore thick boots, and he’s barefoot now, But Jesper’s in nothing aside from wet socks. That’s not it, then. Dirty, soaked and shredded red socks that he wore on his trek across the city—all the way from the twee neighbourhood of semi-detacheds where he’s been building his nest with the girlfriend who just tossed him out—to the tower blocks where Kaz roosts. He walked barefoot. He’s standing on his tiptoes now. Jesper used to dance around like that a lot, mostly in the three years after he stole his first pair of high-heels. Every stakeout, Jesper—in sneakers because Kaz forced him to remember he might need to run—rose to the point of his toes and danced idly to tunes only he could hear. Enamoured with feeling. With memories. Jesper always swore that as a child he was the king of silly walks.

His thighs are trembling under his slack pants from the effort of staying up, but whenever he sags down onto his soles he jolts back up onto tiptoes. Any moans of pain he might make are subsumed by his loud sobbing, but it should have been obvious from the start. He’s hurt. The streets are never clean, and Jesper must have cut up his feet while crossing the kilometres that separate them nowadays.

“Move,” Kaz rasps. “You can cry just as well on a bed. You look tired enough to keel over.”

“It’s not gambling. I haven’t gambled in five years.”

“I know.” He’s been monitoring all of Jesper’s bank accounts and every casino in the city, every gambling website. Of course he knows. He doesn’t mention it though, because Inej used to disapprove of Kaz watching his estranged friends. He says nothing because Jesper, for all his faults, his attempt at normalcy, is a good person. Like her. If he disapproves, too, he might leave: might keep running across the city in threadbare wet socks until he catches sepsis and dies. It’s pure altruism, that Kaz doesn’t tell Jesper he’s been stalking him. Besides, there’s horrendous gratitude written all over Jesper’s face, simply at Kaz just believing him. Kaz would consider lying even if he believed that Jesper had relapsed, just to see his former friend look at him like that.

“She said—I’ve been lying to her the whole time, that I was… but I tried, I swear.” Jesper blows his nose in the crook of his elbow.

Kaz pulls a nightshirt from a dresser in the hallway just beside the bedroom, and picks up a packet of tissues, too. He walks into the bedroom and, for the first time in a year, turns on the light inside. He doesn’t need lights anymore. He knows the room well enough, and for maintenance or cleaning, he has the light intruding through the gap in the heavy curtains and the open door.

Jesper, mercifully, isn’t taken aback by the fact that the bedroom contains exactly the same items it did when he barged inside uninvited the last time he was at Kaz’s flat, nine years and eleven months ago. The day after Inej left. The day Kaz was so wounded and angry he chased Jesper off, too.

The second bed is still next to the smaller one that Kaz actually uses. That one’s neatly covered with a bedspread until it’s time for Kaz to succumb to exhaustion. Beside it, under a blanket of dust, sits the bed he used to share with Inej on good nights. It’s large enough to comfortably fit two people, as well as Kaz’s demons. It’s pushed into a corner and piled high with all the possessions Inej didn’t take with her when she left. Boxes full of books, scarves, toiletries… Once upon a time, he thought she might return, if only to collect her possessions. He gathered everything in their flat that she might conceivably want to keep and put it there. For easy access. You don’t even have to see me, he’d told her, and she’d replied, Don’t make it about you and your petulance. I need to do this. I need to do good. I love you, but I can’t stay here. It’s not enough.

I’m not happy stagnating here with you, she didn’t say. She didn’t need to. Not again.

“I would’ve,” Jesper mutters. “I’m not saying I’m better. You deserve to know. I went to a casino first, after Mareike and I split, before I came to you. If I’m making one mistake already… Just wasn’t allowed in, for some weird reason. Apparently they frown on people without shoes. Or wallets.”

“It’s easy to retreat back to old vices.”

Jesper gifts him a wet little grin. Maybe he can still understand the words Kaz isn’t saying: that Kaz is sor—that he sometimes wishes he hadn’t chased Jesper away too.

Maybe he’s just tired and grateful for the bed. Jesper staggers over to the uncluttered one, still on tiptoes, undoing his belt while he moves. Unabashedly he pushes his rain-soaked jeans down his thighs before he sinks onto the mattress, and then he’s wrestling with the wet trouser fabric clinging to his calves. He’d have an easier time if he hadn’t opted for the tightest drainpipes. But apparently even in his normal, honest citizen, middle school teacher camouflage, there’s something intrinsically Jesper left. Something helplessly attracted to impractical style.

His legs are more sinewy and hairier now than they were when he turned twenty. It suits him.

Before Jesper can make a joke out of Kaz staring at him, Kaz throws him the nightshirt and goes to fetch the medicine kit from the bathroom.

Jesper’s just finished carefully folding the bedspread and putting it on a chair when Kaz had limped back. His trousers, socks and shirt are hanging over the backrest, neatly so as not to crease any more. They’re sodden, dirty, and Kaz makes a note to bribe one of the neighbouring kids into taking an extra trip to the basement laundry machines later today while Jesper sleeps. He’s definitely going to sleep until noon at least: even if he’s holding down a job these days and had to adjust his circadian rhythm, it’s already five in the morning. He has no phone alarm clock, either. Kaz won’t loan him one. He looks exhausted.

Kaz’s former friend is under the covers, but not curled up, the same way he used to sleep back then—masquerading as an innocent ball before violently flopping from his left side to his right or vice versa. Mareike could have tamed him, but Kaz doubts it. Jesper’s pulled the pillow halfway down the bed so he can stick his feet out at the bottom. He’s trying not to soil Kaz’s bedclothes with his bleeding, dirty feet.

“You’ve grown considerate in your old age,” Kaz rasps. “Still acting prematurely, though. Sit up.”

Jesper does. The nightshirt bunches up high on his thighs.

“Hold this.” Kaz dumps the medicine kit on his lap.

“It’s really not that bad, Kaz, I—”

“Wait here.”

He’s unbuttoned the nightshirt halfway down his chest when Kaz returns, carrying a plastic basin of lukewarm soapy water and towels that he impulsively dug out from the back of the cabinet, so they’re barely used and still soft.

Jesper’s eyes catch on the leather gloves sticking out from Kaz’s front trouser pocket. On the thin latex gloves he’s wearing now as he sets down the basin and pulls up a chair. Jesper swallows. Shudders. “No, seriously, you don’t have to—”

“Shut up, Jesper.” Kaz pats Jesper’s thigh to make sure he stays put, and grins. It’s confidence he doesn’t quite feel. At least his hands don’t shake. He hasn’t been this close to another person in a decade. “I rarely need to remove blood stains nowadays, and since I’m making the neighbourhood kids do my laundry and I’m not entirely sure they know their way around stain remover, I’d like to keep it that way. Give me your foot.”

With almost insulting gentleness, Jesper lays his left foot atop Kaz’s knee. It’s not as bad as it could have been. His sole is raw with some scabbed punctures, but it seems like most of the gravel and glass shards fell off when Jesper removed his socks, it seems. Kaz will have to sweep the floor later.

He holds out his hand. “Give me the tweezers and disinfectant. When was your last tetanus shot?”

“You’re—seriously, Kaz?”

“I’ll make an appointment, then.”

“I was vaccinated five years ago. Do you need to see—wait, the documentation’s at home—at—at Mareike’s house,” he sniffs.

“I don’t,” Kaz cuts in, before Jesper starts crying in earnest again. “I trust you.”

“Why?”

“Jesper—”

“Seriously, why, I’m not—she said I was keeping secrets, that’s why she—we were in bed and talking and I told her why I don’t—and she can’t trust me anymore, she—”

“Well, you were in a gang.”

“I told her that. Years ago. Not—” Jesper’s eyes dance nervously over Kaz’s face— “not with enough detail that anyone could identify you, I didn’t betray you, not again, but I told her—what I did. Who I was. Who I killed. Everything. I told her about the gambling and I got help, I told her I’m bi, I told her I’m poly even though I knew she wouldn’t be happy with that, because apparently saying it means I’m the bad cliché of a bisexual slut. I tried so fucking hard to be good enough. I’m not a liar. I’m not,” he pleads.

“You’re a terrible liar,” Kaz agrees. “Just awful. You’re totally useless when you lie. You’ve messed up so many jobs because you couldn’t keep track of the fake story. You don’t have the focus for long-term deception. It’s the worst of your many, many character flaws.” He pulls the last tiny glass shard out of Jesper’s left foot and pushes it off his lap. “The other one now.”

Jesper obeys. “Mareike said that I obviously didn’t trust her, and if I don’t trust her, how can she trust me? But that’s not the—I don’t—”

“Have you considered the possibility she may be wrong?”

“She’s not—”

“That she’s an asshole who should have appreciated—”

“Kaz.” Jesper’s glaring daggers now, and Kaz should have anticipated that line in the sand. Jesper’s incredibly loyal. Illogically loyal. His voice isn’t half as cold as his facial expression though, when he mutters, “I thought you were good at logical deduction, boss? At taking into account past evidence. If anyone messed this up, it’s me. I said no. It was definitely my fault. I’ve done that often enough.”

“Jes—”

“Hell, you fired me. Twice.”

“I took you back. Both times.”

“As a favour to Inej.”

He’s half-right. Kaz wouldn’t have been able to work through his rage—that time when Jesper accidentally blabbed to the cops or the one where he stole half a million euros that were earmarked for a new business venture—if Inej hadn’t talked him down. That’s all she did, though. She may have pleaded for Jesper’s life a few times and Kaz may have spared it for her, but deciding to trust his best friend again—that was entirely Kaz’s decision. It was entirely his own helpless, shameful heart, and he’s already invited Jesper inside yet again.

Jesper takes the silence as an invitation to fidget with the sleeves of his—of Kaz’s nightshirt, though he looks insultingly gorgeous in it. Kaz almost forgot he had the ability to make the worst carnival costume look like the robe of a god, a god of movement—never still, just like he isn’t now. Jesper rubs the hems in-between his fingers so intently that Kaz wouldn’t be surprised to find them worn down to nothing. Jesper always was a force of nature, as dangerous to touch as the ocean, and the old nightshirt fabric won’t stand up any more than seaside cliffs could.

If this was sixteen years ago, Kaz might have told him, just to watch Jesper preen. None of them were happy, sixteen years ago, but at least it was easier to know where they stood.

“I know what this looks like, but I’m not—I didn’t come here so you’d blow smoke up my ass,” Jesper mutters, just as Kaz finishes up bandaging his other foot. Just as he’s ready to force himself to let go of the only human limb he’s touched in nine years, eleven months and sixteen days. Even through the latex gloves, the feet are soft and warm. “I came to you because you’re the only person who can tell me if I’m wrong to leave. I’m wrong. I’m wrong, right?”

“Do you want an itemized list of your faults? Everything alphabetical order, or grouped by type?”

“I just—I tried, so fucking hard. I tried to make it work.”

If there’s a single certainty left on this earth, it’s that Jesper tried his hardest. He always tries. He doesn’t know how else to be.

It wasn’t for lack of trying, from any of them but Kaz, that the Crows grew apart. They just—grew up. Kaz hadn’t known that as soon as they’d won enough battles to rest and be happy—to learn to conceive of themselves as having futures—his ramshackle little gang would fall apart. What bound them was desperation, having no-one to turn to but the local teenage crime lord. Soon enough, when they were safe and richer, they started talking about university. They started taking aptitude tests, went to work placements and did internships. They got accepted into degree programs, and while Ketterdam does have a university it wasn’t prestigious enough for Kuwei or Nina, so they and Matthias left town. Then Wylan got into a music school in the USA and moved even further. They all promised to keep in touch with each other, of course—they’d call and write and come visit. They did, for a while; they all tried to keep in touch. Jesper tried the hardest of them all, even though as a teacher-in-training and future role model he could’ve lost every job in the city for associating with the king of the underground. Kaz’s operations weren’t exclusively online back then, either. He was feared. He was known. He was a monster.

Now, it’s only Kaz who seems unwilling to cut those last tethers. It’s Kaz who watches. Kaz who secretly deposits money he has no use for into their bank accounts.

Kaz, who balances the washing basin on his knees and cups his hand to pour the lukewarm sudsy water over Jesper’s dirty right foot. He’s tender—he’s not had cause nor wish to be a tender thing, not since her—but it must still sting in those myriad little cuts. Jesper’s squeamish. He’s ticklish. He should be flinching.

He should be pulling away, but he doesn’t.

He stares down at Kaz’s hands on his toes. There are crows feet in the corners of Jesper’s eyes, fine laugh lines around his mouth that map a life of joy and love. A life from which Kaz wilfully shut himself out of when he screamed at Jesper to fuck off—forever traitor asshole failure liar fucking liar you left so why do you pretend to care now—the day after Inej chose a better future. A life Jesper lived beyond the snippets of security camera footage, of emails and text messages, bank statements and streaming account ‘recently watched’ lists that Kaz paid attention to just in case. Just in case, always just in case the past caught up to his Crows.

Far too quickly, the first sole is clean. It takes little time to spray on antiseptic and wrap it in gauze. There is no more reason to touch it. Massaging the instep would only be sentimental, holding onto the slender brown ankle pathetic. He shoves the foot off his lap, and immediately Jesper offers up the second foot to be washed, and then bandaged.

“How have you been, Kaz?” Jesper’s smiling. It’s not the smile of a clown, not the smile he wears as armour in the world, just an honest warm smile, but he’s tense, too. Motionless. The way Jesper never is. Like he’s playing at being someone normal, a stranger who could never hope to match his vibrancy.

He didn’t used to be this polite either, not with Kaz. He never asked questions just out of sheer obligation. Kaz is fine. He’s rich. Nothing in Ketterdam’s underworld happens against his wishes.

He’s just too greedy to be satisfied with his victory.

He’s a bottomless pit.

He’s selfish.

He still helplessly, desperately, miserably wants.

He wants to stay here. He wants to live and die in this moment. His neck feels hot, tense. Alive. If he wasn’t holding onto Jesper’s ankle, he would be shaking—but if he wasn’t touching him none of this would be happening. He wouldn’t be… reacting, like this.

Nor would Jesper. His cock is half-hard, peeking out under the nightshirt that his idle fidgeting’s rucked up to his belly. It exposes how he forewent his underwear, it must be folded up with his clothes, because—did he think Kaz wouldn’t loan him boxer shorts when he woke up? After Kaz gave him his bed, his nightshirt, his—it doesn’t matter. What matters is Jesper’s gorgeous fat dick, the way his arse rises off the mattress with each tentative touch to his toes. It’s not the first time Kaz has seen his penis. They used to live together in a series of tiny squatted flats. It’s not the first time Jesper’s body responded like this to Kaz: they’ve pretended to ignore the attraction more times than even Kaz cared to count, but the lie was easier then. He had Jesper at his back, curled up on the couch, pacing inside his room every day. He hadn’t known what it was like to miss him, yet. Couldn’t have known the true loneliness and regret of a man who only found out how happy he used to be once all his friends were gone.

Kaz could let go. Leave the room. He could be polite. After all, arousal is just a physical reaction to touch—but Jesper didn’t used to err on the side of embarrassment back then, and if he wanted to right now, he could ask Kaz to leave. He should.

He doesn’t ask.

He doesn’t seem to want to.

Not even giving in to desire will make the pain worse. Not even affection could destroy Kaz; not even his selfishness will ruin Jesper’s future; nothing could drive them further apart than they already are.

Jesper’s staring at Kaz’s face, his hands, his face again. He must know that Kaz knows he’s aroused. He’s not ashamed, though. Not pulling back. Not making excuses.

“I missed you every day, you know,” he says. He should know what that sounds like.

Kaz lets go of Jesper’s foot.

He should—

But Jesper’s smile is warm and tender. “I missed you.”

“Do you want me to—” Kaz can feel himself grow hot. He can feel himself grow pleading. He can feel himself grow angry: he’s not a virgin anymore, but the inexperience, the longing seems to have grown back in these past fifteen years, and he has to force the next few words past his lips. “I want to touch you.”

Jesper doesn’t pull away. Kaz half-thought he would. They are not even friends anymore, after all, just memories and could-have-beens and regrets. Jesper has his life to return to. Kaz has his ruins.

“You want to—” Jesper blinks, stares, comes to a decision. Something good. Pleasant. For a moment, his face is as care-free as it used to be. If Kaz was a good man, he’d know what decision to hope for. Kaz is not a good man. He’s a thief. And— “Of course. You can touch me wherever you want.”

Heart pounding, Kaz puts his fingertips onto Jesper’s calf.

“Wherever you want,” Jesper repeats.

The knee.

“Wherever.”

The thigh.

“Kaz.”

“Would you let me finger you?”

“Fuck, darling.” Jesper’s eyes are nigh black. Excitement. Lust. No, not quite: he’s not going to do Jesper this disservice in the privacy of his mind. Affection. Longing. Kaz is not a good man, and Jesper is someone else’s—but still, there is old longing between them. “I’m not—go slow, okay, I haven’t been fucked in—five years.”

The entire duration of his past relationship. Kaz files that away absent-mindedly as he sits down in-between Jesper’s splayed legs on the bed, along with a whole barrage of questions that will only upset Jesper. Tomorrow. For now, there is touch. There is more touch than he’s had for a decade, connection, care. It’s intoxicating. It’s enough to make him forget the emptiness that awaits. He presses a kiss to the nightshirt bunched up over Jesper’s belly, and fetches a tub of Vaseline from his nightstand. He coats the latex on his right index finger carefully, and Jesper’s eyes greedily follow every tiny movement. He traces the outside of Jesper’s asshole—the heat and texture are dulled, and he curses the gloves—and Jes throws back his head as he whimpers. Kaz wishes he could kiss the long line of Jesper’s throat.

Kaz draws another spiral on his sensitive flesh, just to provoke more sound, and it works. Another. Another. Again.

“You fucking tease,” Jesper gasps, tensing his hands. Relaxing again. Jolting Kaz out of his reverie: out of the awe of contact. Jesper’s hard now, leaking precome onto the nightshirt. Just from being in Kaz’s bed, in his clothes, from being touched idly by Kaz’s finger.

From the kisses Kaz peppers onto the shirt, deftly avoiding Jesper’s dick.

“Just—give me a second, please, I…” Jesper wriggles up the bed until he can comfortably hold onto the headboard. Kaz has never slept with him, but he’s imagined it—he pushed Jesper back again and again but oh! he imagined it—drawing on copious information from their nigh-daily interactions back when they were young. He’s always pictured Jesper as especially physically affectionate during sex. Too lost in sensation to remember not to touch Kaz. It was one of the reasons why—but Jesper’s unprompted, pale-knuckled hold on the headboard, after fifteen years, means that he… “I’m ready. You can go back to murdering me, sweetheart, I—”

Kaz carefully pushes the tip of his index finger in.

Jesper gasps. His hold on the headboard doesn’t waver.

Fuck. It’s far too easy, loving Jesper.

Kaz has never fucked a man before, and he’s had little cause to be gentle in fifteen years. He’s out of practice. He over-corrects. Jesper has to beg for the middle finger, for Kaz to start gently scissoring, and it’s probably not enough. Not rough enough, even though Jes is encouraging him, “Yes, darling, like this, just like this, you’re doing fine.” Kaz remembers some of Jesper’s early girl- and boyfriends though, the ones he took aside and threatened when he saw the scratches and bruises on Jesper’s back, only to learn—in far more detail than he ever wanted—about masochism. In more detail than he wanted back then, when he was a scowling, unlovely rat who refused to see the sun caress Jesper’s skin. Now—

He adds a third finger, slightly before he’s sure Jesper’s asshole has adjusted, watches him shudder.

The noises Jesper makes are so small they burrow into Kaz’s pores, deep into his heart, and make their home there. His eyelids flutter up towards the ceiling. He’s not looking at Kaz: afraid, perhaps, of what he could find in the shape of his mouth. Afraid, like Kaz should have been. But he hasn’t thought of Inej at all up until now. He hasn’t gone back to the only person he ever loved. No-one could ever replace her: and Jesper has never been a substitute.

Fuck, Kaz missed him.

“Jesper, do you want me to…” He trails off.

Jesper’s staring at him, pupils blown wide and shock in his mouth. At the loss of their safe, comfortable silence? At the name? Kaz refuses to look away, but he can feel himself flush when he moves his left hand onto Jesper’s thigh next to the hard leaking dick, where the skin is soft and vulnerable.

He pinches it lightly, just to telegraph his intent, and Jesper sobs. Kaz pinches him again. He rubs the spot deftly next, and whether it’s soothing or just another ache is anyone’s guess.

“Tease,” Jesper mutters, and the word’s not an answer to anything, but his open smile… Jesper’s in no hurry. Neither is Kaz: he can feel his own erection hot and desperate against the fly of his suit slacks, but it’s just a body. Kaz has practice ignoring his own body. Pain is just a message he’s refusing to take, after all, and pleasure no different. He’s not usually close enough that he can feel the warmth radiating off Jesper’s body, that he could bend down to kiss Jesper’s welcoming mouth, wrap him inside arms that have not been used to hold, to treasure, in far too long. He could keep him there forever. He’ll lose him come morning.

He spits onto his hand and then smears the spit, and as much precome as seems reasonable—he should have practiced when he had the chance—all over Jesper’s cock. He keeps the movement soft and simple, just a few strokes up-down-up. He’s not moving the fingers inside his ass, but Jesper’s eyes flutter shut. He’s biting his lovely broad lips, and Kaz is too greedy to live on touch and sight alone.

“Talk to me,” he orders. Jesper—and it was a mortifying discovery at the time, because they’d only known each other for four months and ten days by then and Kaz was attempting to shore up his reputation in the gang as a harsh taskmaster by making Jesper clean the headquarters properly this time, dictating every step, looking down at him menacingly, and—anyway, Jesper likes being ordered around, and if Kaz only has these few hours with him, he wants to hear his voice.

“Right. Sure. Darling, I—can’t believe I didn’t just show up at your door last year, or six years ago, I don’t—yeah, you tossed me out and blocked my number but I knew where you lived. I just knew and didn’t—yeah, Nina told me you should go fuck yourself but whatever, I don’t listen to her and I certainly don’t listen to Kuwei, I missed you like hell, I don’t mind that you’re a crabby dickhead—uh, by the way, I’m clean, not that it matters with the gloves—” Jesper’s baritone is like glue. Thick with clear bright air bubbles of occasional gasps and whines— “Fuck, I’ll need to be up in—what time is it? I need to—wait, do I need to print anything today, and my laptop—”

“You’ll be useless at work.”

“—and I don’t have my phone. I can’t call in sick, I forgot—maybe you’ll find the number of my department head, I have a good record by now but I still—I’ve been late this year already, I really can’t afford—”

“I’ll spoof your number and voice and call in sick after you go to sleep.”

The surprise on Jesper’s face is an insult. Indignantly Kaz pinches his dick, and it gives way to bliss.

“It’s not hard. I used to do it for your first legit job—”

“Just like—old times,” Jesper hisses, hiding his face against his shoulder while Kaz twists the three fingers in his ass and squeezes his cock at the same time. But the awe in his voice is as inescapable as a glue trap to a mouse. “Like—nothing happened. You’re just… I missed you, and you’re still the same—except I—been teaching age thirteens this—well, different groups, but every year, and—fuck, we were babies. Criminal babies. I look at those kids and think, at thirteen you were already on the streets and—”

“Jesper. Think. Do you really need to talk about actual children while my hand is—”

“Right. I—did you ever want to do this, back then? I did. I do.”

What is there to say? That Kaz is attracted to him is obvious. If he wasn’t, he’d be treating Jesper’s dick to quick, efficient strokes the way he handles his own, not attempting to stave off the end for as long as possible. He’s not even thrusting his fingers in and out anymore, just feeling the hot clench of his ass through the latex. A tether. A needy, maudlin, about-to-rupture tether.

“You can tell me, darling.”

Kaz has already given him everything he can bear to lose. He is a selfish creature, but even he won’t trap Jesper with the knowledge that he’ll be missed—filled with his laughter, the stale bedroom air no longer tastes like a mausoleum—and so Kaz selects a safe anecdote. One that, given the business casual outfit Jesper showed up in, might at least amuse. “There was a day. You’d finally found high heels in your shoe size, and you would not shut up about it. You twirled around in my room because yours was too small to dance inside.”

“Hey, it was difficult back then to find—”

“I know. In great detail. Because you lamented about your lack of high heels for months.”

“I looked good, though,” Jesper says petulantly, and he’s right. He glowed, the entire night he danced in Kaz’s bedroom. He smirks. “So that’s what you think of when you're jerking it? Jesper Fahey’s greatest fashion hits?”

“Crimes.”

“Who am I to doubt you in your field of expertise?” Jesper throws his head back when he laughs, this time, and the sound washes over Kaz like glue running down the cracks of a broken mug. Jesper’s only grown more beautiful with age. He didn’t seem to fit into his own skin, back when he was a teenager, all elbows and strength he didn’t yet know to assess with accuracy. Kaz didn’t mind, back then. He didn’t choose the members of his gang for their gracefulness. But it's undeniable that this Jesper is far more settled, happier than he ever was with Kaz.

“Did you want to punish me? I bet you do, I pissed you off half the time anyway. Next time? You can do it next time. I’ll like it, you know I will.”

“That’s not how punishment works,” Kaz rasps, trying to ignore the sting in his heart. Jesper’s mouth has never been careful. There won’t be a next time for them. There is no tomorrow. There’s only Kaz’s hands, right now, both increasing their pace to bring about the inevitable end.

“Fuck, Kaz, love,” Jesper hisses, and spills into Kaz’s glove. His eyes don’t flick open. He doesn’t immediately check for Kaz’s reaction, and that’s how Kaz knows he doesn’t realize what he just said.

It’s fine. Kaz can carry this secret forever, for both of them.

He strokes and fingers Jesper through the twitchy aftershocks—he doesn’t want this to be over, even if he already stretched it out far too long to fully conceal his attachment—until his touch on Jesper’s sensitive dick makes the man squirm under him, eyes still closed, chest heaving. The sight makes Kaz’s face burn and his own cock swell uncomfortably in his trousers. When he tears his hand away, he’s almost sure he’ll see his hand ripped off like insect wings on a glue trap.

There.

It’s over.

Now both their lives will go back to normal.

This was a mistake. Noone should make potentially life-altering decisions at five in the morning, least of all Jesper. His judgment was always questionable. Still is, given he came to Kaz for help. Given he let Kaz touch him. Kaz refuses to cry. Not in here. Not until he’s alone again. Alone, again, forever. He rasps, “As I said, I’ll contact your department head. Sleep as long as you like.”

“Wait!” Jesper looked fucked out and lazy a second ago, but there’s none of that relaxation left when he bolts upright. He doesn’t even grin until his eyes lock onto Kaz’s tented trousers. “Wait. You didn’t—if you’re just not into… that, me, I’ll understand, but I’d like you to enjoy yourself, too. I won’t touch your skin, I can just—” because of course he's unfailingly generous and will not even allow Kaz to have his sad maudlin wank in peace, and Kaz—damn him—still wants.

He’s weak. These lonesome years have weakened him, to the point he dared to touch Jesper. Weakened him to the point that he nods and mutters “yes!” or “Jes!” or something else entirely. He stands still in front of the bed and watches Jesper kneel and bend down low, still on the bed, and then he grasps Kaz’s hips with two gentle hands. Kaz’s body is a hungry maw. This will not sate his loneliness. He cannot force himself to leave.

Jesper tenderly nuzzles Kaz’s erection through his trousers. Even through cloth, the contact burns on sensitive skin, and then—

He’s expected the tongue. He’s expected the soft, exploratory licks. Expected Jesper to wet the fabric with his spit, gluing it onto the hot throbbing dick beneath. But it still—it’s Jesper, Jesper, and he’s glancing up to see how Kaz is doing, because he’s kinder than Kaz could ever deserve. He presses his warm, wet, flat tongue against Kaz’s crotch and that’s—

It's over quickly.                            

Kaz didn’t even touch his cheekbones. He would have, should have, but one of his gloves is covered in semen and the other might have traces of faecal matter, and anyway, he didn’t last more than four licks of Jesper’s tongue.

Jesper doesn’t call him on it, still laving at the come now staining Kaz’s trousers. Jesper wouldn’t. He’s a kind man. He’s attempting to spare Kaz the embarrassment of this visible proof of his isolation and loneliness. Kaz would pull him up off the bed and kiss the traces of come and fabric lint off his lips if he hadn’t already succumbed far too deeply to his weaknesses already.

Kaz remembers: this is only for tonight. Tomorrow, Jesper will go home again. No matter what happened, Kaz will fix it for him, and Jesper will get to go back home.

He rebuffs any attempt at conversation. Watches Jesper curl up on his bed. Leaves the bedroom.

He’ll have to clean these trousers himself. He can’t pay the neighbour’s kids to toss his clothes into the laundry room machines down in the cellar, not when they’re stained with the evidence of his longing.

He’ll have to call and save Jesper’s job. Call and save Jesper’s relationship. It’s going to be a busy day.

Chapter Text

When Kaz wakes up, it’s almost mid-day. The autumn sun’s beating down on the sofa where he curled up tonight. Jesper got the bed. The bedroom. Jesper’s in the bedroom, and Kaz’s neck hurts. Three-thirty hours of sleep is barely enough to function nowadays. He’s aged in many inescapable ways—belly, bones, and brain—and unlike Jesper, it’s been for the worse. Kaz’s teenage self made do on fewer hours most nights. Choice. Obsession. Workaholism. Nightmares.

Sleep is just one of the good habits she tried to teach him.

He didn’t keep trying after she left.

And then age got him.

It’s the first time in over four years that Kaz slept this little. The curtains in his bedroom are closed and black: sunrise means nothing there. Cybercrime pays at all hours. There’s nothing else to wake up for.

Today’s hardly any different.

He’ll send Jesper back to his house and his life, and then he’ll get to work. Skim off a few million dollars that won’t even be missed on the billion-dollar balance sheets of a candy manufacturer, government or a bank. Wash the money thoroughly through gambling and charities. Manufacture a new astrology grant for Kuwei to apply for, anonymously donate to Wylan’s orchestra. Replace Inej’s impounded ship again. It’s the fifth time she’s been arrested while in harbour. The criminal charges don’t stick, but Kaz hasn’t found the right lever yet to keep her safe, or even the right target. She’s battling the ocean tide with her fingertips. 

That’s what she left Kaz for. That’s her choice. She chose herself and her ship and a few more people with their own ships, against death on a mass scale. Wilful, indifferent, cruel drowning death. It's nothing to do with justice. It’s just mercy for a lucky few. Everyone else still sinks, abandoned by everyone who thinks themself good and powerful. She’s not broken yet, by the interviews she gives every few months, but for how long? Months? Years? The tide of corpses rises and rises. When she falters, Kaz won’t be able to save her. He—

He hasn’t thought this much about her in months. The thoughts are useless. Nothing can be resolved.

It’s just the break in routine that unsettles him. That must be it. He slept on the couch. Soft enough, but it doesn’t feel like Kaz’s bed. Doesn’t have his blankets. Somehow, sometime during the past decade, these steady objects have replaced everything—everyone—that he used to put his trust in. These objects are permanent. Firm ground.

His teenage self, burning with anger and direction, would have scoffed at him. The bed means nothing. It means nothing that Jesper’s back, in that bed, right now. His teenage self would have mocked the physical therapy stretches Kaz moves through, still huddled on the couch, on autopilot. He does them anyway. He’s been doing them ever since she talked him into trying to get better. If he could see her again, he’d tell her she was right. He hated the idea of coddling himself then, but she was always right. He’s just going through the motions now, but even that is better than nothing. Sometimes you know you can’t win. You still don’t deserve to give up.

Kaz’s teenage self would have known better than to be Jesper’s rebound. He wouldn’t have used Jesper to plaster over the hungry maw of his own loneliness. He’d have refused that moment of joy, on principle, because it would only cause more pain, but—Kaz knows now that any joy is better than nothing.

They were both selfish four hours ago, but they were less empty. It’s going to hurt soon, but everything does.

Jesper’s going to leave.

He already has a life. He has a future, on the other side of Ketterdam. He has a home. He’s engaged. He’s loved, and the more Kaz mulls over what it could possibly have been that sparked the argument, the more he’s certain that it’ll be easy to resolve. Jesper’s the forgiving sort. If he wasn’t, he’d never have been friends with Kaz for more than an hour. Jesper will forgive Mareike.

Mareike will forgive Jesper. Of course she will—he’s Jesper. Kaz has sacrificed his life to grudge and bitter vengeance—nothing but a husk once he had won and maybe that’s another reason why she left—but even he’s never been angry at Jesper for more than two months at a time, and Jesper’s not stupid. If he chose her, she’s a far better person than Kaz.

Sure, Jesper’s failures are myriad but they’re thoughtless mistakes, overeager, self-soothing, too quick for his sense to keep up with his brain—Jesper is never disloyal, never malicious, and the joy of watching his mouth race through fifteen topics a minute more than makes up for anything else. It would be stupid to let Jesper go. And Jesper’s chose her. If Jesper looked at her, just once, the way he’d looked at Kaz last night, lazy and bright, she’d forgive whatever happened just to have him back.

Kaz would.

If there was any chance of it, Kaz would.

He never quite deluded himself enough to believe that he’s satisfied. He’s achieved everything his teenage self dreamed of: made everyone who contributed to Jordie’s death pay, destroyed every rival gang in Ketterdam—and then let his own slip away. Plus, he’s rich. It’s always possible to get richer, of course, and that’s what he’s working on. He’s always working. It’s the only thing he has left. He—what did that young Kaz even think he’d spend his money on? What stupid dreams did he nurse of luxury? Private jets and diamond-studded toilet bowls and mansions as big as entire Ketterdam public housing towers? Meaningless clutter.

Jesper’s wiry hands on the bedframe, palms turned up, their paler skin only visible for a second before he readjusted his grip to hold on with desperate strength, consideration for a part of Kaz he should have forgotten long ago, just like he should have forgotten Kaz’s face, his name, everything. Jesper is a joy. Kaz is a chasm.

It's time to stop wallowing and get rid of him.

Kaz has the numbers of Marieke’s personal phone, her work phone, the landline, three email addresses she’s currently using and two she created when she was ten and fifteen respectively, her Neopets login details, a forum for amateur novelists she occasionally logs into and then logs out without ever posting anything… The best bet is her personal phone, though. Kaz checked her schedule. She’s got a free period right now, and she brings both her mobile phones to work.

By now she’ll have found out that Jesper called in sick this morning. Kaz used old recordings of Jesper as training data to imitate his voice for that and for the call to Jesper’s GP. He set an alarm for that call. It might be harder to fool Jesper’s fiancée with an obsolete voiceprint. It might not be worth the effort at all. Kaz has read their texts to each other as a security measure, and of course he knew Jesper inside out fifteen years ago, but that doesn’t mean he’ll be able to convincingly imitate him to the woman who now knows him best.

Kaz has seen the two of them together in a picture uploaded to Jesper’s private Cloud. She looks at home wrapped up in Jesper’s arms. She’s a year younger than Jesper, a teacher at the same school, blonde and freckled and smiling in every picture though she had to live through the mysterious death of her brother and an early cancer scare. Jesper looks so happy kissing her.

“I’m an old friend,” he tells Mareike van Poel when she asks. He tells her that Jesper just wanted an outside perspective, that he’s fine, that he’ll be back home today. That sometimes, as she knows, Jesper asks other people to help work through his impulses. That he’s doing well. That he’ll be home in a few hours, that he loves her.

Kaz doesn’t pry into the argument, if it was an argument. He wants to. Jesper’s account wasn’t clear at all. Even if he wasn’t curious, it’s uncomfortable talking to a stranger while in the dark, even though Mareike is not a mark. There’s no profit in this interaction. Nothing but making the future a little easier for Jesper. Kaz hasn’t talked to anyone without a transaction in mind in years, before last night.

“Thank you,” Mareike says. “Thank you for calling. It was just out of the blue. He never said he was unhappy, so I thought—we never had any problems, you know? He was perfect. And he always called before. He should have called.”

Kaz could interrogate her. She seems desperate to talk.

“… but you know Jesper,” she says. “He’s impulsive. It’s probably nothing.”

He should dig. He should solve this fight. He planned to solve this fight. Jesper seemed to think it was momentous, even if she doesn’t. Suddenly, though, the idea of listening about Jesper and Mareike’s love seems exhausting. They’re good, kind people. They don’t need Kaz, who’s made a mess of every connection he’s ever had. In every photo Jesper has, they look like lovers out of a storybook.

He repeats that Jesper’s going to be home soon. He dodges Mareike’s attempts to make him say his own name. He hangs up.

Just in time.

Something’s skidding across the floor in the general direction of the bedroom. Jesper’s awake. He’s probably cursing—or maybe he’s unlearnt that habit by now. He is a teacher, after all. No matter. Kaz will never find out, just as Jesper will never learn to navigate Kaz’s bedroom in the dark.

Footsteps in the hallway, another door, water. He’s taking a piss first, probably cleaning up too. A little over four hours ago, Kaz held his fat flushed cock in his hand and fingered his tight ass open. Jesper bit his lips. Maybe his teeth dug permanent grooves, a forever reminder of that quiet time in the almost-dark. Maybe it was nothing. Jesper sucked him off through his trousers. Maybe it was nothing. Kaz embarrassed himself in seconds. Maybe it was nothing. The water shuts off for a second time. Jesper’s getting dressed. He’ll be gone soon. He’ll go home. And it was all just—

Jesper’s barefoot, walking into the living room. Only his left foot’s still bandaged. The right thwap-thwap-thwaps, damp skin on linoleum, as he comes closer. The nightshirt goes to mid-shin for him, even though it comes down to Kaz’s ankles. He’s still in Kaz’s nightshirt.

Kaz knows every thread in that nightshirt. He’s had it for seven years, one-hundred-seventy-nine tumbles in the cellar washing machine. It’s gone from stiff and black to limp and grey.

It’s never looked this regal.

The shoulders fill out more than they should—more than they would have, before rock climbing with Mareike, but—minute details. Minute, useless details compared to—

Jesper’s beaming.

It’s not a toothy grin. Not lascivious. Not expecting anything. Just—

Happy.

Just happy.

Just stupidly fucking happy. Step after thwapping step, his dimples grow deeper. His eyes stay so tender and so warm, focused on Kaz’s face. He’s clean-shaven, relaxed, and he looks so at home that Kaz, for a second, forgets he’s not. He’s not. He’s not. But he’s also not leaving just yet. He’s twirling around his own axis, instead, two arms’ length from Kaz, and the nightgown’s washed-soft skirt flutters around his strong calves. Show-off.

And Kaz, damn him, will give Jesper whatever he wants. A sigh. “We’ve established you always look good.”

“I just want to hear you say it.”

“You’re very pretty, Jes,” and then Jesper steps forward or maybe Kaz does. Maybe it’s all him. Maybe he clears the distance and maybe he brushes a silent wistful kiss onto the fabric collar that Jesper wears unbuttoned. A deep gash in the armour he doesn’t need. Sparse silver hair like jewellery on his chest. Kaz should have given him a gown that unbuttons all the way. He— “And a thief. That’s my shaving cream.”

This close, Jesper’s laugh is a physical sensation. An earthquake. A light embrace. He smells so familiar, but he’s wearing Kaz’s shirt. It could just be that. Kaz should have been thinking more clearly.

“Your toothbrush too,” Jesper whispers close to Kaz’s ear. His breath is minty-fresh. Kaz never before found the smell of cheap toothpaste enticing, but he can’t help shivering. “I’ll make it up to you later.”

He won’t.

Later, he’ll be back home. This will be nothing but a secret mistake.

Later, Kaz will go to bed and wake up again and go to bed and wake up, go to bed and wake up, forever, forever. And if he’s lucky he’ll learn, once again, not to miss Jesper.

Jesper’s stepped back. The room feels colder. Kaz does not lean into the deserted space like a collapsing building.

He’s just peering at Kaz’s face, though. Jesper’s expression should be cautious, maybe even wary—Kaz acted out of character even coming this close—but instead, he’s protective. Tender. Whatever it is he’s thinking about, Kaz wishes he didn’t.

“Still grumpy in the morning?” Or maybe it’s fine. Maybe Jesper hasn’t noticed his weakness. “You were always useless before noon. Well. Still cleverer than everyone else, but by Kaz standards you were braindead, it was cute. I always remember your homicidal quest for the first caffeine when one of my students falls asleep in first period. I hope they’re not out till three running casinos on the side while burgling, though. It was great for us, but they’re kids, right, so—”

“This is your unsubtle way of asking for coffee, isn’t it.” Kaz rewards Jesper with his least impressed eyeroll.

Jesper beams. “Thanks for offering! Of course I’d like some, you’re too kind—” Kaz walks off towards the kitchen— “and some breakfast, you don’t have to give it to me in bed, I know we’re not there yet, and I always thought I’d bring you coffee in bed first anyway given your general hatred of the hours between six through ten in the morning…” Jesper has no idea what time it is. How would he? Kaz doesn’t need extra clocks when he usually has computers running all day.

If he realized it was past one p.m., he’d leave immediately. Maybe Kaz doesn’t need to tell him just yet. It won’t make a difference if he just steals Jesper for another hour.

There’s just one snag in that plan.

Coffee is easy. Kaz sets his machine up for another pot of extra strong. Breakfast’s always been fine, too, for Kaz, but he—over the years, he’s changed. Developed preferences Jesper won’t share. He buys—

“That’s not milk.”

“It’s breakfast.”

Kaz lives on meal replacement shakes. Shelf-stable, six different flavours for variety, quick and efficient and he never has to leave his flat for groceries because he gets his shakes delivered on large pallets right to his door.

“You’re on Soylent now?! No, thanks.” Jesper laughs. “I like eating people, and I’m good at it, you know that—” he makes a vee with his fingers and licks it first with far too much enthusiasm and then wriggling his tongue between the fingers like a worm until Kaz laughs— “but not from a tube.”

“This isn’t Soylent. It’s Gruel.”

“That’s worse. Do you even listen to yourself? Gruel. They named that shit Gruel. On purpose. And you voluntarily eat it.”

“It has all I need. Including more caffeine.”

“No. I refuse. From now on, I’m going to cook for you and you’re going to eat it.” Jesper’s tongue has always been too rash. If he thought before he spoke, he would have remembered that this is just a stop-gap, a rebound, a lapse before he returns to his happy new life and his happy future wife and leaves Kaz to his empty existence. Jesper’s never cruel on purpose, but this—Kaz should throw him out the door immediately, because he is lying to them both. He’s pretending, if only for an hour more, that he has his friend back.

It's pathetic. Kaz hasn’t hungered for anything he knows he can’t have in decades. He should hate Jesper, for selfishly stirring back up all the dreams that should be dead, and—

“You still have the balcony, right?” Jesper the imbecile asks. Of course Kaz still has the balcony. Balconies don’t run away. Balconies aren’t like friends. He’s probably noticed the awkwardness, noticed Kaz’s despair, and— “I found the pack on your other bed. Ancient, I guess, by the price, because they—fuck, I swear I just saw them at the supermarket—wait. You don’t care. I can be—so I didn’t fully quit stress-smoking, okay.” He flips open the pack of Camels that Inej forgot to take with her when she left. “And I deserve it today. You don’t even have yoghurt. Guess this is gonna be my only breakfast, but you’ll join me, right?”

Without waiting for an answer, he saunters out of the kitchen. The night shirt is wide, but it’s thin enough to cling to the contours of his ass with each long stride. Kaz shouldn’t be watching him. He shouldn’t be picking up a of mug full of coffee along with his Gruel tube. He shouldn’t be trailing after Jesper, who easily, immediately finds the way to the balcony. He remembers it. He used to spend time out there, ten years ago.

Kaz still comes out here sometimes, with his laptop, to work. The table and his chair are clean. That’s all that remains from the balcony that Jesper once spent his evenings on, and Kaz refuses to wallow in whatever emotion it is that’s trying to take hold of him at the thought. It’s only the fripperies that are gone. He doesn’t need them, and so he spared them no thought. There were flowers in the pots ringing the handrails, back when Inej lived here. Now, they only house weeds, and the weeds are dead. The birdhouse hasn’t seen seeds for years.

Jesper pulls out one of the extraneous chairs and turns it so that he can almost sit next to Kaz, looking at him, no table in-between them. No comment, no joke, not even pity. He didn’t mock Kaz last night, either. It’s as if he’s not surprised at what Kaz became, alone. Like he’s not even staring at the flat the way Kaz does, trying to see what his only visitor does and recoiling. It's as if he knew that Kaz was never going to be able to live a real life like Jesper does now, like Inej does, like Nina, Kuwei, Wylan, Matthias. As if he knew, like Kaz did, that everything Kaz thought gave him power and revenge, made him who he is, would eventually wither away, leave him desiccated and hollow. A shell, fallen by the wayside while his friends moved on. He knew there could be no future for Kaz but this, forever, forever.

That’s not what he says, though. He lights a cigarette. Takes two deep pulls. Says, “You went to physiotherapy once a week when we—do you still?”

“What do you care?” Kaz didn’t mean to sound so hostile. Hostility is revealing, and soon enough, Jesper will be a stranger again. Strangers don’t need to know him.

“You look stiff when you move. I could drive you, if it’s a transport thing, I don’t mind. I—okay, I’m tabling it, fine. You were always too grumpy before breakfast. Eat your gross tube.”

Kaz slides the second coffee mug over. It’s not how Jesper likes it, because Kaz doesn’t have any sugar or cream. If Jesper complained, Kaz could hiss back at him, for all this… friendly false conversation, but he doesn’t. He barely grimaces when he takes a sip, and with the sudden force of an ocean wave Kaz misses the exaggerated disgust distorting Jesper’s pretty nineteen-year-old face back when he had the bad-habit-cum-comedy-routine of trying to guess by the labels which of the alcohols tasted the worst and then order them. Jesper was a clown, when the crowd called for it, and they called for it often. After all, they didn’t have to shepherd a drunk loud maudlin Jesper into bed.

The angles of Jesper’s face have changed with maturity. The salt-and-pepper stubble on his skin sharpens his jaw even more. The faint laughter-lines still suggest that Jesper’s a joyous man, a happy man, the kind who’d drink swill just to amuse his friends, who’d show love freely, who’d burst into a dust-covered life to—have breakfast. Breakfast. Gruel tubes and coffee without cream or sugar and ancient cigarettes in the afternoon, and not—not—

Because Jesper’s watching him back with eyes the color of the autumn sky above them, and Kaz can feel heat painting his cheeks. A lapse in judgment, that’s all last night was. He’s not about to make the way home harder for his old friend, whether he enjoyed it or not. It was a moment of comfort, and if Jesper regrets it, if he feels guilty—but he doesn’t.

His smile is as warm as the absent sun. His bare foot is cold, though, as it ghosts against Kaz’s shin, peeking out of his trousers, and then Jesper—whatever it is that Jesper’s trying, his foot hits the clothed part of Kaz’s leg, again and again. There’s no reason it would be flirtatious. Kaz is too at ease for it to be a bother.

Jesper makes the cigarette bob up and down between his long fingers. “Thanks. The coffee’s good. You still like eggy sweets best, right? Pasteis de nata, crème brûlée—get ready for unfathomable pleasure. I’m really good at making those from scratch now.”

“That’s what you claimed at sixteen. You made sweet tiny omelettes.”

“And you ate them, boss.”

“I was hungry.”

“Uh-uh.” It’s not just Jesper’s leg that’s sprawled unseemly: he’s scattered himself boneless over the old plastic chair. Arms hanging down beside the armrests. Head tilted back as far as it can go. His ass is still fully on the seat, but if that’s meant to be a concession to professional adult sitting, it’s a failure. Kaz can see his throat move while he’s talking and look up his nostrils. Eyelashes. A thin halo of greying hair. Jesper takes a drag with his head upside down. “No one else ate them ‘til I got the process down, you know. ‘Omelette’ was generous. Guess we’re lucky that you’re so scary the salmonella never dared mess with you.”

Kaz doesn’t remember Jesper’s concoctions being that bad. He’d remember them fondly, if he remembered anything from that time without bitter longing.

“I practiced a trillion times. Until I no longer had to think of—anything, any step, it was a part of me like breathing. I went through a hundred eggs a week. I needed something I could do that would impress, you know, and they do say love goes through the stomach.” Jesper sits up straight, just to wink at Kaz and drop the smouldering fag end onto the ground, and then he lets his head fall again.

He doesn’t mean to be cruel. It’s just who Jesper is, how he always acted even fifteen years ago. Bragging. Flirtatious. Generous. He’ll forget the offer of sweets as soon as he’s home. Kaz will remember.

“They tore down the Slat,” Jesper says. His head’s bent back so far that Kaz can’t see anything but his slender neck, the adam’s apple, that sharp chin shaved with Kaz’s own razor. His voice is even. This isn’t a passing-on of information, though: surely he remembers that Kaz knows everything that happens in Ketterdam. This is his city. He’s keeping watch, including over the old tower block in which their gang used to squat.

“They did.” Kaz waits for Jesper to move. He doesn’t. “Three years ago.”

“December. I used to see it on my way to work. Never went close, there wasn’t—but it was just there, and then it was gone. I—that day school staff had the end-of-year holiday party. Almost made it to the end. I passed it off as drunk. Nearly got a warning, or at least Mareike’s convinced I almost did—” Kaz remembers snooping through their texts after that party, though it barely seemed worth his attention at the time, and Jesper’s never remembered his body has limits while in good company— “but alcohol works, right. Made sense. I wanted—how the fuck would I have explained why I locked myself in the toilets to cry like a baby?”

“Jes—”

“I know, the building means jack shit, you weren’t there anymore, everyone was gone. I know. But it was just—stupid.”

It’s odd to think that someone else noticed the fall of that old ruin. Kaz refused to prevent the Slat’s destruction, though he thought about it. Daily. Hourly. It was a relief when it was gone, because the tension, the hope that he could still—but it was just an obsolete symbol. The memories it housed were useless. The friendships had already withered. Kaz had watched them all walk away. Keeping the Slat was just sad. And still, even after the last pieces of concrete and rusting rebar had been removed from the site, his eyes still sought out that empty spot in the city skyline.

Maybe he should have saved it.

Maybe he was wrong to only think of his own grief.

Jesper can’t blame him for that. He admitted that the Slat was already empty. Nothing was destroyed but ghosts. He’s already moving on, anyway. City pigeons don’t stay either, always starving for another bite. Thrill. Connection.

Another cigarette. Jesper said he just ‘didn’t fully quit’, and he was lying, if he’s already sucking another one down, though whether he’s lying to Kaz or to his fiancée or just to himself… “Heard from any other Crows recently? I know you have all my numbers blocked, but they probably didn’t try to kick down your door twice after you tossed them out, so…”

“You’re not special.” A peace offering, not that Jesper deserves it.

Which he proves immediately. “True. I know you blocked them all too. Even Inej. She asks about you sometimes. She thinks you pay—anyway. They all told me—we chat, during the usual occasions, birthdays, holidays, so if you’re curious…” He trails off. His bare foot is tapping nervously against the cold tiles of the balcony. Kaz is wearing socks and slippers, and even he can feel the chill. The October sun’s not enough. Jesper looks off to the side, swallows, waits for Kaz to say something and then, “I don’t dread those calls but I do, too, you know? They’re magnificent, all of them. Always knew it. Fucking hell, what Inej—anyway. Don’t toss me out just yet, I’ll behave, I promise. I’m not jealous, that’s not it, but… honestly, I’m just a boring old teacher now.”

“I have it on good authority that you’re very popular, Mr F. The students went on an actual strike until you got the money to fix that oven for the after-school cooking class you do.”

“You fucking stalker.” Jesper laughs.

Kaz imagines, for a second, taking the cigarette from his restless hands. Grinding it on the table. Kissing the smoke from Jesper’s mouth. Kissing the words from Jesper’s mouth. The fear. Fifteen years. Everything.

“Thanks, by the way. For the patch-up job.” Jesper’s crouching on the chair now. Kaz looked away for a second, and he’s crouching, naked toes peeking over the edge of the chair, bandaged soles on the seat.

Kaz ponders teasing him about whether his students have betting pools for how long he manages to stay still. Kaz never made bets back then. It’s a pity. He’d have made bank. He knows Jesper.

“Just like old times, eh? I take care of everyone else, and you make sure I don’t catch gangrene and die.”

“It’s a thankless job, but someone has to do it.”

“You do.” Jesper grips the chair’s armrests tightly. If he wasn’t in a long-sleeved nightgown, Kaz would probably see sinews and veins stick out, barely hidden by the soft hair on his skinny forearms. Signs of age. Life. He’ll never have Jesper naked in his bed—he’ll never have Jesper after today—he’ll never be able to relearn how to bear that much skin—but he’ll still glory in this movement. This survival. Despite everything the world threw in their way. Jesper’s alive. He’s here.

He pushes himself up, hovering over the seat, flying, rocking back-and-forth—he’s watching Kaz watching him and grinning toothily—and then he untucks his legs and lets himself fall, ass on the chair, feet on the dirty unswept balcony floor.

Kaz humours him with a round of applause.

Sitting, smiling, Jesper bows.

It would be so easy. Kaz could stand up. Pull Jesper from his chair. Push him against the wall, and he wouldn’t protest, only complain for complaining’s sake, because it’s fun, and he’d close his eyes and thunk his head back against the wall and let Kaz kiss his broad beautiful lips. He’d let Kaz’s hands trail down his waist without protest, without trying to escape, let them push up the skirt of his nightgown to get at the hard cock beneath. Kaz would use both hands, one to dive far beneath his legs and then, with agonizing love, trail up the taint towards Jesper’s balls. The right hand would grip the very tip of his prick instead. Toy with the head, just as affectionately, and Kaz’s mouth would gnaw at the pulse in Jesper’s neck until he begged.

Jesper would beg quickly.

He’s never been good at waiting.

Kaz would be cruel, and ignore Jesper’s begging for both their sakes. Jesper used to like a little cruelty, a little pain. Kaz used to envy the people whose cruelty he enjoyed. Jesper, in the real world, hated his own mistakes and Kaz hated them too and then Jesper would paste on smiles and jokes so they both could keep working together. In bed though, Kaz heard…

But this isn’t back then, and this isn’t real.

Kaz would tell Jesper to hold up the skirt of the nightgown. He’d tell Jesper he’d stop jerking him off otherwise, and Jesper would be so desperate for his touch that he’d obey. He’d hold it up high, higher than Kaz ordered, his bare ass against the building wall and his cock only shielded from the world by Kaz’s hand and body. When he was close, Kaz would wrap a naked hand around the base of his dick and squeeze and Jesper would kiss him and beg, “Not yet, keep me here, keep me, forever…”

Real Jesper shows no signs of leaving. He’s moving on the chair incessantly, tapping his feet, hands, dropping the second cigarette and then the coffee mug and it shatters and his eyes flicker to Kaz but he doesn’t stand up. His eyes go wide for a second and then he flashes a charming grin, as if he could pretend nothing ever happened.

“It was my least favourite,” Kaz tells him. “I know you.”

“Thanks.”

Every mug is Kaz’s least favourite now. He eats gruel. He has one cup he refills with coffee and rinses occasionally. He hasn’t touched the cupboard since her. It makes Jesper happy though, to know Kaz planned for the inevitability of him dropping the mug, and Kaz slipped so easily back into wanting him happy. He never really stopped.

“I’m cold.”

“It’s October.”

“I’m cold,” Jesper repeats, and see-saws on his chair to adjust his position for—

A bare foot nudges Kaz’s trousers. Jesper’s staring, his eyes wide, not afraid but—careful. Kaz should tell him to put on socks. It’s ludicrous, to go to Kaz for warmth. When Jesper goes back inside for socks, he might just get dressed though. And then, he’ll leave. What harm is it, just for a minute, to let him instead warm those feet in Kaz’s lap?

Kaz nods.

Jesper’s foot lays against Kaz’s closed thigh. Slips lower.

The foot lightly nudges Kaz’s crotch.

Oh.

If it wouldn’t massively inflate Jesper’s ego, Kaz would tell him he’s impressed at the subtle approach. Well, Jesper’s never quite been as sure of himself as he looked. Maybe he was just focused on impressing everyone but Kaz. Maybe he had no choice back then but to reveal his true fears on occasion, and Kaz just happened to listen. Maybe Jesper wanted someone to praise him for how hard he was trying, every day, to be the easy happy flirt that he couldn’t quite manage to stay with no audience but Kaz. Kaz didn’t praise him, but he let Jesper cry on his pillows. Kaz didn’t keep Jesper around to be happy. But Jesper thought he had to be, for everyone else.

Kaz didn’t keep Jesper around for his moves. They came in useful, sometimes. Flirting was a useful tool for scams. Kaz encouraged him, even used to watch him flirt, jealous and ashamed of it. Jesper’s attention was intoxicating.

It still is, he can’t help thinking. Even though he’s watched Jesper flirt a million times, it’s working on him. That nonchalant, idle stretch that just happened to brush his groin.

The way Jesper’s eyes are on him now, not quite staring, but attentive nonetheless. He’s smiling. It’s small, all in the eyes. Still cautious.

He’s waiting for Kaz to give in.

A good man would tell Jesper not to make it worse. It’s been fifteen years, but Kaz still knows him well enough that he could turn him down a million ways. Gently, or so harshly that he runs far, far away—not that he’s guaranteed to never return. Before last night, Kaz thought their bond had been cut off completely, and yet here he is. Kaz could tell Jesper he prefers intelligent conversationalists—the way he ended Jesper’s advances when they met—and not babbling addicts. He could tell Jesper the sex last night was boring. Either would be kinder than telling Jesper that what he wants is just impulsive, rash, a whim. A symptom. That if he just thought it through, he’d know that he doesn’t actually want to wank off a depressed criminal on a fifth-story balcony in the cold October air.

It’s true, though. Of course it is, even if Jesper hasn’t realized it.

Jesper’s tiny, hopeful smile is stupid.

He has a home. A fiancée. He doesn’t need Kaz.

Kaz—if he were less greedy, if he were a good man… he could say it like that. He could remind Jesper that he’s clinging to obsolete affections. That Kaz is nothing but dust and cobwebs on an old picture-frame. 

Wounding Jesper… he’ll curl into himself. Hide his vulnerable belly. Pretend. He’ll be safe.

And Kaz knows Jesper. He was Jesper’s boss. He tried to teach him, to shape him. He hissed this kind of criticism before, often, when he was young and less careful, specifically to wound.

If you thought clearly about this, you wouldn’t want it.

Jesper was shit at thinking anything through then. Still is, given he came to Kaz’s door. He’ll never consider problems the way Kaz does. His brain doesn’t work in straight lines. He thinks the fact that it never will is a moral failing. There’s nothing but the illusion of a paper-thin line, for Jesper, between calling him impulsive and calling his impulses fake and unreal and if you just think about it you’ll know you do not actually want it. Telling him that if only he was a hypothetical, better, more lovable person he’d want something else. If he wasn’t a failure, he’d want what other people want him to want.

Kaz is not a good man. He’s a good manipulator.

He knows how to use words to rip open weeping old wounds.

And he can choose not to.

It will hurt anyway. Every possible course of action will. Telling Jesper he shouldn’t want. Letting Jesper want. Neither of them can be anybody but who they are. If Jesper was less impulsive, he wouldn’t be here. If Kaz was a better man, he’d gently steer him away and rot in his own empty home a few hours early. But Kaz isn’t good. He’s a thief, he’s greedy, and he’s not going to turn Jesper down. What’s one more fuck? There’s no difference between having sex once and having sex twice with your former best friend, and if there is, Kaz is already miserable. No one needs to know.

The balcony’s high enough up that no one will observe them. Jesper doesn’t know that for certain. He should be concerned. It wouldn’t be good for his reputation or his chances at reconciliation with his fiancée to be witnessed in indecency with a—suspected, on the radar of the pigs though they’ve failed twice to pin anything on him—criminal kingpin of cyberspace.

Perhaps he trusts that Kaz already ensured privacy here. He trusts Kaz. It’s his worst fault. Kaz just sat here imagining the most emotionally brutal ways he could turn him down, and Jesper trusts him. Fucking idiot.

If it was anyone else but Jes, it could be a chess move. Making himself ostentatiously, ludicrously vulnerable to appeal to some sort of hidden pity that Kaz never had.

Jesper’s just Jesper, though. An idiot, who for some reason trusts Kaz.

Who for some reason wants to get him off.

Slowly, staring into Jesper’s tender eyes, Kaz slides forward on the seat of his plastic chair. Lets his legs fall open. Grabs the armrests. His fly is still closed underneath Jesper’s bare foot, his dress shirt neatly tucked into his belt, but Jesper never said anything about undressing, and Kaz isn’t sure he could bear it. Not now. Not anymore. He's kept up the physical therapy exercises for his leg after Inej, but every triumph of touch they achieved together he let wither. Being human is a skill, a muscle. Muscles waste away.

Jesper’s elegant toes are firm unmoving pressure against Kaz’s groin. His lower leg rests on Kaz’s thigh, warm through suit fabric, not uncomfortable.

He’s watching Kaz carefully.

Slowly, he tenses his leg. The hard muscle on his shank pushes the limb up a little. His toes bend. The balls of his feet push against the ache of Kaz’s already hardening cock, and then Jesper relaxes, tenses again, relaxes, tenses—pushes, pushes, building to a deliberate rhythm. Jesper’s still watching, and Kaz watches him back. His skin warmed by the autumn sun. His focused little frown. His intense kindness. There are so many acts he could have gone for instead. So many ways to get his pleasure from Kaz. But he still remembers enough from fifteen years ago to make this easy on a wretch who almost learned to be human enough and then forgot again.

It feels good. Not too much, not overwhelming, not drowning. Just good.

Push, push—the stimulation’s so good but it’s gentle, a careful foot through layers of fabric, it can’t be enough to get to climax, even if this kept going for hours. If Kaz asked for—but if anyone knows what this feels like, it’s Jesper; if anyone’s done this before it’s him, so he knows. He knows the friction’s turning Kaz on, but it’s not getting him off. Keeping him in the air. He suggested it anyway. He’s showing no inclination to change course. Maybe he just wants to keep going, and going, and going.

He could. Kaz would say yes. Even if it was hours. There’s a hot tight knot inside his guts, a flush on his face and ears. He would. He’d take whatever he can get. He’d let Jesper keep him here all day.

Jesper breaks off the rhythm to wriggle his long toes, right over Kaz’s crotch. He’s smirking. Gloating. Happy.

Maybe Kaz should beg now. Maybe he should tell him something, anything, to make him stay. He could. He’s a good manipulator, and Jesper’s impulsive, easy.

Jesper seems content, though, running his bare toes over Kaz’s socked feet, tiptoeing them up Kaz’s shins, stroking his calves, resting on his thighs before first the left, then the right foot massages Kaz’s crotch again—and then it’s back to teasing. His eyes are flickering all over Kaz’s body and then back to his face, but that’s the only restlessness in him. Kaz should beg him to stay. He should beg him to leave.

He ruts up against Jesper’s feet whenever they touch his dick.

If he was wearing his gloves, he could hold Jesper’s ankle and keep him still, but he doesn’t. He’s been alone in his flat for decades. He forgot.

He’s at the mercy of Jesper’s playful dance.

Shins, cock, thighs. Kaz’s world narrows. His skin, even underneath clothes, feels hot and tender. He doesn’t need to watch Jesper’s movement: he trusts him. He watches the face. Jesper’s staring shamelessly at Kaz’s flushed face, his own dick tenting the nightshirt but he’s just holding the armrests of his chair for more control when moving his feet all over Kaz. He’s biting his bottom lip and he’s smiling.

Kaz waits helplessly for the next time he deigns to massage his cock.

And the next.

And the next.

And the—

When it comes, Kaz focuses on breathing for just a second, or maybe two. The orgasm’s less overwhelming than last night. Less alien. The rush and the pressure still fill him up, though, just as much. His heart still feels warm. Loved. Jesper got him off because Jesper wanted him. Jesper touched him without touching, yet again, and prodded him to ecstasy. Watched him come.

The seat of his trousers is still warm. Still mostly comfortable even though his cock is sensitive now and the fabric is wet. It’ll cool soon.

Jesper’s foot is gone.

Kaz spent too much time processing, or maybe Jesper thought he was being considerate by finding something else to do. He’s fidgeting, rocking his chair. Maybe he’s waiting for praise. They haven’t talked for fifteen years; maybe he’s forgotten that Kaz doesn’t hand out pointless compliments. Maybe he’s getting impatient to leave, though Jesper never had that much impulse control—if he wanted to leave, he’d be gone.

Maybe he just wants to destroy Kaz’s furniture.

A scream, and Kaz is staring at empty air.

Jesper’s head is three feet further down than a second ago and two to the left, bobbing up right away, muttering, “’m fine, boss, it’s all good, I’m fine,” so even if he is injured, it’s highly unlikely this respectable middle-school teacher will die from hopping around on the back legs of Kaz’s cheap old plastic balcony chair after playing footsie with Kaz’s penis. He’ll be just fine.

So Kaz does the only sensible thing.

He starts laughing.

The chair’s broken. One day of having Jesper back in his life, and both back legs of his plastic chair, which survived fifteen years of exposure to frost and storm and boiling heat without any issue whatsoever, immediately snap off. Nothing ever survives contact with Jesper unchanged.

And Jesper… Jesper’s far too pleased with himself. He’s a teacher. Kaz didn’t go to school for long, but even he remembers the repeated exhortations not to tip their chairs too far back. Jesper’s probably told thousands of kids the same, and here he is, on the ground still sitting on the fallen chair, thighs on the now vertical seat sticking up into the air, choking on his own spit because he’s laughing too hard. No dignity, but he’s never needed dignity to be gorgeous. He’s never needed dignity. He needs to be seen like he needs air. As hard as he’s laughing himself, down on the floor, he’s looking up at Kaz because he cares. He still delights in making Kaz laugh, by any means necessary.

Kaz gets up onto his socked feet and walks up next to poor, fallen, laughing Jesper Fahey. He can feel the wet jizz patch on the front of his trousers rub against his skin, but that’s not why he’s doing this. Jesper’s so beautiful, but that’s not why he’s doing this. It’s not about reciprocity or even lust. Jesper would never ask, though the thin fabric of the nightgown doesn’t hide how hard his dick is. He didn’t initiate the foot job because he wanted to get off. He just wanted Kaz. 

And Kaz wants him. It’s impossible and selfish, but Kaz wants him. All of him. Every greying hair and every joke and moan and stare and fear and tremble and memory and spurt from his hard cock, Kaz wants everything he can steal for as long as he can keep it.

The wide-eyed surprise when Kaz’s right foot prods his crotch. The immediate nagging about balance—from a hypocrite who just fell to the floor—until Kaz gives in and pulls the table closer so he can brace himself up. The way his cock feels underneath Kaz—hot, desperate, needy. Kaz can give him this. It’s like learning to walk again. The way he thrusts up into the arch of Kaz’s foot, no leverage, all desperation.

Kaz wants him. Kaz wants to fuck him.

But Kaz wants even more for him to be happy.

This dalliance has to end, even though Jesper’s spreading his legs as wide as the nightshirt will let him. Even though his grunts and moans and helpless begging are sweeter than the birds who haven’t sung up here in years. Kaz loves him. Jesper’s eyes are stubbornly open. He’s trying so hard to stay focused on Kaz, and Kaz wishes he could think of anything to tell him, anything to say to make this less grubby. He’s outside slowly kicking a supine man to orgasm. Jesper deserves sweet words and marriage and true love. He deserves more than this. Kaz loves him. That’s not enough.

Kaz is a black hole. He was happiest as a teenager, and as a teenager he wasn’t happy. Inej saw. Jesper doesn’t. He’s here, so obviously he doesn’t understand that Kaz was no more than revenge and now that he won, there’s nothing left of him. Nothing but a hungry, greedy pit, and Jesper deserves more. He deserves the life he already has. He—

“Fuck!” Kaz throws himself back against the table. He barely keeps it from tipping over. From taking him down with it.

At least he didn’t stomp on Jesper’s cock, he thinks, breathing heavily to make the shock leave his body. Or did he? Jesper wouldn’t complain if he had. Jesper never complains.

“I told you,” Jesper gasps, “I told you, this was a bad idea!” He’s trying to swing himself upright unsuccessfully because his legs are still on the chair. He’s not even pausing to take his legs off the chair. He’s not pausing for his erection. It’s been fifteen years since anyone cared. Kaz hates how much his throat aches. He misses Jesper, and the man hasn’t even left.

Almost falling jolted him free of this mirage. Kaz should be grateful.

Jesper lays back down after he’s reassured himself that Kaz is physically intact. He palms his cock through the nightshirt—Kaz doesn’t ask to touch him again, for fear of drowning once more in this dream—and brings himself off with five harsh, efficient strokes. He stays down there for a minute, breathing. Kaz’s throat aches but he should be grateful.

“Thanks for calling in sick for me, by the way,” Jesper says when he’s upright again, smoking another one of Inej’s old cigarettes. He doesn’t kiss Kaz. Kaz should be grateful. His throat aches. His crotch is wet and uncomfortable now, just like his heart, and probably Jesper’s dick too. Jesper notices where he’s looking. “Sorry. I should have pulled it away, just forgot—I’ll wash your nightshirt,” but he won’t.

“I’ll be back soon,” he says when he disappears into the bedroom to get dressed.

“Thanks. I won’t scuff them,” when Kaz gives him fifteen-year-old house shoes for the way back.

“I’ll pay you back. No. I’ll buy you dinner,” when Kaz calls him a taxi and gives him the fare. Kaz walks him to the door of the flat, too. It’s needless. It’s big enough to get lost in. It’s just the narrow cage of Kaz’s life. He’s just being greedy. A few more words from Jesper’s tongue. A few more glances at his ass. He’ll keep them locked deep in his brain with the other treasures he’s stolen and lost.

“I’ll be back soon,” says Jesper.

Kaz loves him.

But Kaz needs him to be happy. He needs him to go back home to his life. There is nothing left in this flat for anyone. It’s hard to tell what he fears more: that Jesper is lying, or that he isn’t.