When You Weren't Watching

Her Favorite Flower

From day one he seemed awful. From year one he seemed broken. From year three, he seemed... Kaz.

She often caught herself staring: from the hairline of his awful hair cut, to the arch of his eyebrows, to the crook of his nose from being broken too man times, his cheek bones, his soft pillowy lips, and the scars. So many scars. Physical and mental, scattering his body, his mind, and his soul.

Jesper laughed at her more than once when he has caught her staring longingly at his face, at eyes. His eyes were something so amazing they couldn't fit in a list with other minute details.

Dark as coffee, dark as his soul. Most eyes had other colors, or gold specs or something. His eyes seemed soulless. Unless he looked at her.

Whenever he looked at her his eyes lightened to a chocolate color, showing a whole other side himself.

His chest would puff out, he would lean less on his cane, and he would open himself up.

Then one day.

He completely shut himself in.

His eyes remained a mystery to whoever looked into them. His limp just and bad as before she came. His happiness stripped.

Whenever she asked Jesper what happened, he would always reply that he's jealous. That he's jealous of Jesper?

She never understood. Whenever she looked towards Kaz her heart fluttered, her eyes brightened, and her smile widened.

He could see when she was happy around other people, but never himself.

Inej longed to run her fingers through his stupid hair and tell him that it's only him. She wanted him to take her hair and take it out of its braid and tell her she's the only one.

A longing she often felt, a longing that sent her feet flying over the roofs of Ketterdam to only land on his windows ledge. She longed to push open those windows and just sit with him.

After doing this for many months, she finally caved.

She pushed the window in and looked into the office. And there he sat, hunched over a stack of paper.

She silently tiptoed to his desk and silently sat down.

He looked up at her, of course he knew she was there, looked down at his work, back up, and back down. Where it stayed.

It was something. She saw the chocolate in his eyes again.

She felt her heart rate pick up. She felt her fingers itch to touch his hair, to touch him. Yet she sat politely on his desk. At 1:00 am sharp she picked up the pen from his hand and put it on the table. She sent him off to bed, and when she knew he was asleep she would slip home for her own rest, only to do it again, and again, and again. Something that should bore her, but with him. Never.

One night, much like the rest, she found herself back on the desk. She found herself staring at more than his face.

The black gloves that hid a thousand mysteries beneath them.

She found herself laying awake at night wondering what his skin feels like. If there was skin, maybe people were right and they were in fact sharp talons. If so, what did those feel like. To wrap her hand around his, to press his hand to her cheek, to feel his lips against her hand. To feel him.

She never noticed him looking her way whenever she entered his room. His work taking him twice as long, because she was precious time.

He wanted her to know he cared. So he started small, waking around his desk to brush his gloved hand against her free hand.

Inej froze every time he did this. Every night, sometimes more than once.

It wasn't even a touch really. Just a glance of skin... and leather. But slowly, this became their communication. Every brush had a meaning. Every look a word. Every time she came into his room, it was comfort.

It wasn't what either of them wanted, but it's what they needed.

Inej thanked every saint the day it became known that they mutually benefited from each other. She thanked them for the bastard of the barrel, and the darkness he brought her. It was all she could ask for.

It was all that and more when she found the simple single flower left on the window ledge before she came in that night. Her favorite flower.

Her favorite flower.

A/N
When writing this I so just wanted to add dialogue and slap the seal of approval on it before shipping it off to the internet. This writing experience has really let me expand my horizon. I don't know if I will ever actually publish this story, but I have always been a little scared to actually write anything besides lunar chronicles. Something I'm very familiar and comfortable with. But this is kinda like a dive into the deep end. A new experience.