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Ever since Kaz and Inej moved in together, all anybody wanted to talk about was their relationship.
“Six years is a long time.”
“Are you sure you’re not ready?”
“You guys are so perfect together. Why not make it official?”
And, of course, Inej’s personal favorite:
“When are you getting married?”
Her response was always the same: “Never.” But it didn’t stop her mother from being disappointed every time she heard it.
“If he won’t propose, then you should ask him.” Inej groaned, dropping her head into her hands, but on the other side of the FaceTime call, her mother was grinning. “I’m just saying, I want grandchildren in the future.”
Inej rolled her eyes.
“‘Neja,” Mama’s expression softened. “You know that he loves you, and you love him. So why not just go to the courthouse and sign the papers? It doesn’t have to be a big thing.”
It wasn’t like the idea repulsed her, but it was never something they had talked about. They didn’t need rings and a fancy ceremony or a signed slip of paper to know that they were in love. They had never been traditional anyway. She remembered the first time she told him she loved him. It hadn’t been planned. It wasn’t something she had premeditated or tied her stomach in knots over.
He was dropping her off at her morning class, and just before she opened the door, she’d said, “Thanks. I love you.” Her hand froze over the handle, and she stopped.
He was smiling, and without missing a beat, he’d said, “I love you too.”
It was when they decided to take it a step further - when he surprised her with a picnic on the fire escape to watch the sunset and asked if he could kiss her - that she’d ruminated over what she was going to say next.
Her experiences before meeting Kaz and her friends had changed her, but not so much that she didn’t care. Sometimes, Inej thought she felt too much, that her heart was overflowing with how much she loved; the dysfunctional family she’d found in Kaz and their friends. The third-story apartment with the leaky sink that she shared with a boy whose mind was just as scarred as hers. She loved all of it, and she wasn’t shy about letting them know. But it hadn’t always been that way. She still kept her guard up, sometimes even with her friends, but she never had to with Kaz.
So when he leaned forward and asked her again if he could kiss her, she nodded. “Yes. I trust you.”
I trust you not to hurt me.
I trust you with my scars.
I trust you with my love.
I trust you with my heart.
For them, that was bigger than ‘I love you,’ and she didn’t need a ring to prove that.
At least once a month, Inej and Nina had breakfast at a restaurant a few blocks from Kaz and Inej’s apartment. Their waffles were incredible, as were their mimosas. Inej would know; she and Nina ordered them every time they ate there.
But when they sit down in their booth in the back corner of the restaurant, Nina orders regular orange juice. Inej stares as the waiter sets the glass in front of her, and when her friend catches her, her red-painted lips twist into a smile. “What?” she asks.
Inej’s eyebrow shoots to her hairline. “You ordered orange juice.”
“And?”
“It’s lacking its usual alcohol.”
“You can’t drink when you’re pregnant, Inej.”
She nearly spits her drink all over their table.
“Are you serious?”
Nina nods and pulls a sonogram out of her purse. On it is the barely perceptible shape of a baby’s head. “Matthias and I wanted to wait until we hit twenty weeks, but-”
“Oh my god, Nina,” she runs around the table and throws her arms around her friend’s neck. “That’s amazing. I’m so happy for you.” Nina hugs her the way she always does, squeezing her so tightly it’s suffocating. When they were roommates during their first year of college, it used to make Inej stiffen. Now, she relaxes into it, any memories of Tante Heleen or her clients drowned out by how happy she is.
When she sits back in her seat, Nina’s eyebrows are dancing suspiciously. “Anything new with you and Kaz?”
Inej stares into her mimosa as if she’ll find the strength to deal with this conversation at the bottom of the glass. “We’re thinking about adopting a cat.”
They aren’t.
Nina knows it’s a lie, too, because the green of her irises flashes white as she rolls them into the back of her head. Everybody their age has something exciting going on. Wylan and Jesper are engaged, Anika moved to Paris to work for some fancy company neither of them knows anything about, and Nina and Matthias are having a baby. Kaz and Inej are the only ones who don’t have plans for the future. But they’re content with their Saturday nights on the couch and their string-free relationship and the one succulent in their kitchen, which is the only living thing they’re responsible for.
The following week, a scraggly black cat shows up on their fire escape begging for scraps, and Kaz immediately falls in love. Inej swears the Saints are laughing at her.
They name him Binx.
Inej knows that Kaz loves her.
They don’t show it like other couples do, through sex and kisses and touch, but he shows her in other ways when he drops her off at school in the mornings. Or when he leaves geraniums he steals from the neighbor’s planter boxes on the kitchen counter. He shows it on days like today when she comes home over an hour late from work, and she’s running on nothing but anxiety and caffeine. It’s also a few days before the anniversary of her dad’s passing, and even though her mom keeps calling, she can’t bring herself to pick up the phone. She wants nothing more than to crawl under her blankets and hide.
Kaz sets a bowl of pasta in front of her the second she walks in the door. It’s covered in cheese, and it tastes as good as it smells.
Neither of them are bad cooks per se; they can follow a recipe, and it’ll turn out alright, but with their jobs and Inej wrapping up her last year at school, neither of them really have time to do more than heat a frozen dinner or place an order for takeout. They made a rule when they moved in together, though, that each of them has to cook at least one night a week and anything work, school, or technology related has to be out of sight so they can see each other for at least thirty minutes before they move on to the next thing. It’s Inej’s favorite part of the week.
“This is amazing,” she says as she scrapes the last bit of food out of her bowl. He isn’t wearing his gloves, so she takes it as a sign that it’s alright to press a kiss to his cheek as she walks past him to the sink.
“My dad used to make it for me when I was little.” Kaz hands her his bowl so she can wash it. One of the downsides of the apartment was it didn’t have a dishwasher. “Jordie tried to replicate it but it was never the same. He almost set the kitchen of our foster house on fire once.” When she looks up, he’s smiling. So it’s a really good day then.
“Oh Saints,” she laughs. “That sounds like a disaster.”
“It was, but it was funny.”
They’re quiet for a moment, drying and putting away the rest of the dishes, and then he leans down and whispers, “I made you something.”
“Oh?” she raises her eyebrows, but they immediately drop when he reaches into the fridge and pulls out a butter cake. It’s her favorite, and she hasn’t had it since before her father died. When Kaz sets it on the counter, she thinks she might cry.
“Your mother sent me the recipe,” he says. When she doesn’t reply, his expression sobers. “Did I do something wrong?” He’s so concerned that a startled laugh bursts from her mouth.
“No, you-” she laughs again, dropping her head into her hands. “It’s perfect.”
“Then why are you crying?”
She hadn’t realized she was.
She’d missed a lot in the years she was gone - learning how to drive, her prom, her entire high school experience - and she could live with that. She’d never been the kind of girl who was eager to go to dances and participate in popularity contests anyway. But the one thing that kept her afloat - trying to vanish and forget the things her body was doing - was the chance she would see her parents again. Instead, the police station doors opened, and only her mother walked through them. She hadn’t had to speak the words for Inej to know that her father was gone and she’d been too late.
“My father used to make that for me every year on my birthday,” she doesn’t look at Kaz, but out of the corner of her eye, she can see he’s watching her intently. “And when I got back, he was already gone, and-” she sighs. “I just really miss him.”
“I know.” Kaz doesn’t offer apologies - he knows they would give her no comfort - but he pulls her into his arms and rests his chin on the top of her head. She presses her face into his chest and allows a few tears to escape. There aren’t as many as there used to be, and they stop quickly, but Kaz doesn’t let her go until she steps away.
“He would have liked you,” she says. “I wish you could have met him.”
He brushes a strand of hair away from her eyes with a sad smile. “I would have liked to meet him too.”
The cake, once they got around to eating it, was delicious, and Kaz has a stupid grin on his face when she tells him as much, that bastard.
That cocky, wonderful bastard.
Sharing a bed is something they’ve had to get used to.
They don’t cuddle, always taking care to give each other as much space as possible, but sometimes they’ll wake up and their legs will be tangled together or their noses will be millimeters apart, brushing together if one of them turns their head.
Tonight is not one of those nights.
Tonight, Inej wakes up because Kaz jerks violently in his sleep, nearly shoving her onto the floor. He’s trembling, beads of sweat dripping down his forehead, and his lips are moving, calling out for someone who won’t answer.
“Jordie! Jordie!”
No matter how much progress they make, there will always be nights like this. When he’s back in that car as a little boy, stuck with his brother’s corpse as he waits for help and tries not to drown.
She doesn’t touch him, but she can’t bear to watch him suffer, so she backs as far as their bed will allow and calls out: “Kaz! Kaz, wake up!”
He jolts, his eyes glazed over, and he’s gasping for breath, hands scrabbling for something solid to hold on to. The first thing he finds is his cane, and he keeps a white-knuckled grip around the crow’s head until his breathing steadies and clarity comes back to his face.
“Are you with me?” she asks gently.
He nods. Then shakes his head and clears his throat. “Y-yes.”
“Is there anything I can do?”
Another shake of his head.
She stands from the bed and gathers her blanket. “I’m going to the couch,” she says. It’s another deal they made when they moved in together. On bad nights, space is a necessity.
She’s nearly made it to the door when he stops her. “C-can you stay?”
She nods and sits cross-legged on top of the comforter, once again giving him as much space as she can without falling off. “What do you need, Kaz?”
“Talk.”
“About what?”
“Anything.”
So she tells him about her sociology final and the professor that seems dead set on making sure she doesn’t graduate. She tells him about Nina’s last doctor’s appointment, where she found out the baby was a girl, and how she and Matthias are arguing over names. He wants Ingrid, which she absolutely hates.
“I agree with Zenik,” Kaz grimaces. “That name is awful.”
She tells him about when she was a little girl, and her father was teaching her to walk the high wire. She fell off halfway across and wound up fracturing her wrist. It was the first and only time she ever got seriously injured while performing, and even now, the thought fills her with pride.
She must have fallen asleep because when she opens her eyes, sunlight is streaming through the window. She can hear Kaz in the kitchen - probably making his third cup of coffee - and she pulls one of his Ketterdam University hoodies on over her sleep shorts before heading out to join him.
He’s already dressed, even though it’s nine o’clock on a Saturday, and he’s wearing his gloves.
“Good morning,” He doesn’t look up from the paper he’s reading.
“Good morning.” She pours herself a cup of coffee and sits next to him at the kitchen table. “Did you get any sleep last night?”
“No.” Is all he says.
Knowing he isn’t going to be much of a conversationalist today, she goes back to sipping her coffee and scrolling through her phone, glancing at the messages in the group chat with Jesper and Wylan. They’re talking about doing dinner at their house while Wylan’s mother is in town. As she scrolls, she sets her hand next to Kaz’s without thinking, and he jerks back, spilling his coffee.
“Shit,” he curses. Inej hands him the roll of paper towels and when the mess is clean, he throws them and his ruined newspaper into the waste bin with more force than necessary, the lid slamming against the side of the counter. “I’m sorry.” his voice is muffled behind his hands. “You shouldn’t have to-”
“Kaz, look at me.” She can handle him being upset, but she refuses to listen to him talk down on himself. “It’s ok.” He opens his mouth to protest, but she stops him. “It’s ok.”
And it is, because no matter how many bad days he has, it doesn’t change how many good days he has too, and Inej wouldn’t trade the good days for anything.
“Ok,” he repeats.
And as the day goes on and they finish up chores and assignments and last-minute projects for work, the nightmare slowly fades from his mind. The tension bleeds from his shoulders, and before they go to bed that night, he sets the gloves on the bedside table.
Today was bad, but tomorrow will be better.
The house the newly-wed Fahey-Van Eck’s bought together is cute; a two-story cabin tucked into a neighborhood with a cul-de-sac and fenced-in backyard. Past the gate, there’s a dock, and Inej can see boats floating on the other side of the water. There’s an extensive wood that borders the neighborhood, with a stream and plenty of hiking trails, and it’s not too far from town. At the front of the house, the neighbor’s kids are playing basketball. It’s a good place to raise a family. For now, though, Jesper and Wylan’s furbaby - a black lab named Jack - is enjoying not being cooped up in an apartment, his head dropped into Kaz’s lap as he scratches behind his ears.
“What are you looking at?” Jesper appears beside her, wearing an obnoxiously bright striped shirt paired with green pants, and she has to shield her eyes when she turns to look at him.
“The horizon.” she gestures to the boats with the hand not holding her beer.
“Ah,” he nods. “Do you see wedding bells on it?”
She knows he’s joking, but she elbows him in the ribs anyway. “That was bad, even for you, Jes.”
He presses a hand to his chest, a wounded expression on his face. “I’ll have you know, I’m hilarious.”
Jesper only jokes about Kaz and Inej getting married to get under her skin, but he never hints at it like everyone else does. He’d known Kaz longer than any of them and he knew what it had taken for both of them to get to the place they were at now.
And he gets it. Since he and Wylan got married, Marya and Colm have been pestering them about grandchildren.
Inej doesn’t tell Jesper that if Kaz asked her to marry him, she knows she’d say yes.
They’re sitting on the couch, eating plates of Chinese takeout, and Inej is annoyed because Kaz is still working.
It’s been happening a lot this week. He’ll come home and work until the early hours of the morning. He skipped his night to cook, opting to order pizza instead, which was fine, but he’d done it again tonight, and he’d barely said more than a few words since she walked in the door.
He doesn’t even like his job. But every time she brings up the possibility of him quitting, she gets the same answer: “I can’t afford to quit Inej.”
She’d tried to start a conversation, asking his opinion on gifts for Nina’s baby shower next weekend, but he’d brushed her off with a noncommittal shrug, and she gave up, turning to watch Damon mock Stefan’s relationship drama on the TV instead. By the time the credits roll, she’s over it. She clears the table and grabs her book from their room before she opens the window and climbs out to the fire escape. His eyes are on her, but she doesn’t offer an explanation.
The sun is hanging low over the rooftops, but it’ll be up long enough for her to get through a few chapters. She doesn’t get past the first page.
She isn’t usually this petty, but she’s irritated. She’s irritated that she spent her first free week since finishing school watching Kaz stare at his laptop. She’s irritated that this is the third night they’re eating takeout. She’s irritated that even though he knows she’s bothered, he’s still sitting on the couch.
As if he can read her mind, the window opens, and Kaz steps out, stretching his long legs out in front of him. Binx jumps into Inej’s lap and pushes his head into her sternum, demanding her attention. Kaz rolls his eyes.
Then he looks at her. “I get the feeling you’re upset with me.”
“You’ve been working a lot this week.”
“I know.” He reaches to scratch Binx behind the ears. The cat turns and bites his hand. “I’m sorry.”
She isn’t sure if he’s apologizing to her or the cat, but she thanks him anyway.
“I promise I’m done working for tonight, and I’ll try to be better about putting it away when I come home.”
“Thank you.” She says. “Is there a reason you’ve been working more this week?”
“Per Haskell’s talking about retiring next year,” he rubs his thumb over his knee, wincing. “And if he’s lining people up for the promotion-”
“That job should be yours,” she says. “You’ve done more for that company than anyone else there.”
“Yeah.” a pause. “Also, if I work extra hours now, it would pay for that trip to go see your mom this summer.”
Inej blinks at him. “Kaz, that trip is already paid for.”
“I know, but I figured we could add a couple of days just for us. Sit on the beach, drink kvas , have some peace and quiet.”
She smiles and feels slightly guilty for being upset with him. Only slightly.
“I’d like that.”
Her father always told her that the heart was an arrow and that the Saints sometimes sent signs to guide it in the right direction. Now, after years of wondering and searching, she thinks she knows what it is.
It was the boy who left gardenias on the kitchen counter and brought her chocolates from the market on his way home from work. The boy who played Taylor Swift in the car because she liked it and didn’t complain when she belted the lyrics obnoxiously. The boy who had her heart. It was Kaz. It would always be Kaz.
They do get to sit on the beach, leaning back on reclined wicker chairs, listening to the waves and a gull screeching as it circles overhead, searching for scraps of people's forgotten picnics. It’s peaceful, though it isn’t entirely quiet. A few yards away, a small child is chasing the waves and he shrieks every time the water touches his bare feet. Someone else has pulled out a bluetooth speaker and is playing indie music at top volume. But Kaz is sitting beside her, with his gloves off and a bottle of kvas between them, and it’s not traditional, but they never have been anyway.
She sits up and pushes her sunglasses to the top of her head. “Kaz?” He turns toward her, and she almost laughs. He’s very sunburnt. “Do you want to get married?”
He blinks, sitting up a little straighter, and he asks her, “When?” like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. Like it was never a question at all.
“What about today?”
He grins and reaches into the pocket of his jacket - only Kaz Brekker would wear a jacket to the beach - and passes her a velvet jewelry box. Her stomach swoops dangerously when she opens it and sees a gold band with a single diamond set in its center. It’s the ring she’s seen on her mother’s hand a thousand times, and it’s dinged and nicked from all the years her parents were married, but it’s still as beautiful as it was when it was new. “Kaz-”
“Your mother gave it to me before we left yesterday,” he says. He’s wringing his hands like he’s worried she’ll say no. “I was going to ask you. That’s why I wanted to get the trip extended. I should have known you’d be a step ahead of me.”
“Yes, you should have.”
He takes the ring and slides it onto her finger. “So?” he asks.
She’s grinning as she holds her hand up to show him. “It’s perfect.”
They elope in their hotel, on the balcony overlooking the ocean with Inej’s mother as their witness. Inej doesn’t wear white, but she buys a sundress from the gift shop, and her mom helps her pin flowers in her hair. Their reception is a party with the three other people in the bar, and the hotel offers free champagne for the happy couple.
It’s not a fancy ceremony, but it’s perfect for them.
When they get back up to their room, they Facetime their friends.
Nina spits her drink all over her screen, and Jesper walks off, offended.
“You got married without us?” Jesper cries. “I’m your best friend, and you got married without me?”
Wylan hits him on the arm, congratulating them before Jesper and Nina dissolve into an argument about who is who’s best friend.
Inej laughs, her head resting on Kaz’s chest. “Should I tell them,” Kaz whispers, “That you’re my best friend?”
She swats at him, but her stomach flips all the same. “Don’t you dare.”
It’s not traditional, but it’s theirs, and there’s nothing more Inej could ever want.