maskormenacelogs | 32 👶 IN YOUR HAND ALL THE COLORS YOU THOUGHT WERE KINGS

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32 👶 IN YOUR HAND ALL THE COLORS YOU THOUGHT WERE KINGS

WHO: Joseph Kavinsky & Kaz Brekker
WHERE: Bar in Maurtia Falls
WHEN: February 2020 some time!
WHAT: That date that Kaz should have probably not bid on.
WARNINGS: Probable violence, offensive language, sexual harassment, references to past trauma and ongoing mental illness

One day, Kaz has intruders.

He lives in Maurtia Falls, mind you; it's hardly unimaginable, even if those who are willing to fuck with ImPorts number far fewer than those willing to screw natives. There's a scent floating down the dark steps that link the upstairs living quarters to the yet-unopened bar below, something with a hint of spice and peat, rum and saffron, the tropics but in dark, a celebration that would take place by candlelight, as one licked pomegranate seeds out of the fingers of an untrustworthy lover.

Or something like that.

The shadows in here are long enough as it is, behind plastered plywood and contemporary windows, the natural world held at bay by the comforts of the city.

But impossible things are happening in here, as Kaz makes his way into his living room. Motes of light drift off the floor, seem to ring or chime or merely shine with a sound that's so subtle that it feels more like a sensation than a discernible note, like an impression of children's laughter. They're like a thousand infinitesimal glow worms. They're circling, slowly.

Around the little table for two set in the center of the floor. That definitely was not there before.

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Given recent events, Kaz isn't taking many chances. He makes his way up to his little apartment slowly. At the moment, he's living between here and his government housing while he works on getting this place fixed up to his standards.

Still, he likes the privacy. So when he sees light from the windows, he lets the knife up his sleeve slip towards his palm but keeps it out of sight. He won't be kept out of his own goddamn place. If someone thinks they're going to get the jump on him, they're sorely mistaken.

But when he gets inside, little lights are floating around, slowly swirling around the table in the middle of the room. It's not his table. His dark gaze flicks toward one of the windows, where he has his desk set up. Still there.

Something about this reeks of someone familiar. So he takes a guess.

"Kavinsky?"

It comes out sounding more like an accusation or warning than a question.

Let's be real. Accusations and warnings are justified.

At first, he isn't there to greet. But as Kaz steps up from the staircase, he hears the fwomp of a cork coming out of a bottleneck, and lo and behold. There he is. The dream thief, holding a bottle of bubbly, green and voluptuous, foam starting to spurt out of the hole like. well, you know.

"Brekker."

He pours -- just one glass, because he suspects Kaz is going to be a weenie about this, not knowing any better. He places the glittering glass down and gestures at the seat opposite him. In the middle of the table, there's a great, silver domed covered dish, despite the presence of steaks for both of them on either setting already. "C'mon. Don't pretend you ain't curious."

Kaz gives Kavinsky a dead stare as he pours himself a drink. He scowls and moves closer, making it a point not to lean too much into his cane as he does. For a moment he just stands at the end of the table, taking in everything on it and the boy on the other side of it.

Then he sits, dark eyes returning their focus to Kavinsky. He isn't sure if this is curiosity or just determination to see whatever this is through.

"If this is a job offer, it's more elaborate than your usual."

As if he isn't aware of the rather romantic atmosphere that Kavinsky has created.

"No pumpkin carriage," Kavinsky says, gesturing at the room full of its strange, moving fairy lights. "You can't say I was overdoing it. Well.

"Apart from the B&E." He slides casually into the seat, a piranha smile fixed in his teeth but his hair falling loose over his forehead, a little. He picks up his steak knife and his fork, cuts a piece of beef loose just so he can study the cross-section, decide that the temperature and color and texture are exactly correct. And then he dumps the metal implements with a clatter.

Moves instead to dispense wine into Kaz's glass.

"You remember when you first turned up in this world, you told me you had 'indoor plumbing?'" he asks, like a young swain angling toward a proposal. "How you settling in? Really. Horseless carriages and voice-to-text. Don't tell me there wasn't a learning curve. You looked like you were gonna cut open the ATM and check if there was dude inside stealing your money, the one time."

He wishes he didn't have time for this, that he had a ready and available excuse, but there are none. And he's sure that Kavinsky knows that somehow. He watches the wine glass fill and resists the urge to roll his eyes.

"A well-meaning check in? I'm fine. I'm adapting like any good canal rat would."

Kaz resists the urge to mention he'd ridden in a tank once, so horseless carriages didn't exactly throw him after the first few days. He wonders how likely it is that the wine is drugged with something.

Edited 2020-03-25 00:42 (UTC)

Perhaps pre-empting that question, Kavinsky is already taking his own wine glass in hand. Raising it up. Taking a long sip. Look, no poison. Unless it was on the glass--

--and that's a thought that makes his eyes crinkle with laughter. He sets down the one he just drank from, putting it down right beside the one on Kaz's side. He takes Kaz's newly-filled glass itself, in a moment, and drinks from that one too. Tadaa. No poison.

"I owe you a fucking date, Brekker. Will you sit your ass down? You want to be stalked for another couple weeks?"

Joseph Kavinsky is nothing if not dreadfully romantic. He opens his tattooed hands expansively. "Besides. You're gonna love what we got for dinner."

Kaz still isn't convinced that the wine itself hasn't been tampered with, but eventually he slides into the chair and picks up his glass for a quick taste. He's not exactly a connoisseur. The scent of whatever Kavinsky is wearing lingers in the air and it makes Kaz think back to the gift he'd been given over the winter.

"And give up your distant, persistent company? I should keep playing hard to get."

He sits back in the chair and lets his leg stretch out beneath the table. Kavinsky's comment makes him look at the food he can see, then at the covered dish.

"And what is dinner, exactly?"

"Dry-aged steak," Kavinsky says, gesturing at the meat already on their plates. It smells amazing. Looks amazing. Is amazing, in every way except for the ones that count, but luckily for Kaz, this has absolutely nothing to do with poison. ('Luckily' is debatable.) "Fingerling potatoes and apple-bacon slaw.

"Oh, and this." His tattooed fingers go to silver dish cover, as casual as you like.

Too casual, considering that the very fabric of reality is splitting its fibers to accommodate the dream thief's whims.

Swish. Kavinsky lifts the lid, and underneath, there is the head of one Pekka Rollins.

This isn't reality manipulation, mind you. But it nonetheless must feel in some way impossible. Improbable. Cheating, somehow. It's not even hard to imagine, probably; Kaz's mind has spilled its secrets into the world more times than the young Crow could possibly want, between intrusive dream thieves and kidnapping Fates.

Kaz has seen him do things like this before. He wouldn't be wrong to assume dream theft, even as Pekka's head slumps slightly, without the lid to keep it upright, and one of his lifeless eyes slides an inelegant circle in its socket.

The sight of Pekka's head flopped over doesn't inspire revulsion. If anything, it stokes anger. Pekka's head is his to get and he won't see anyone else take that from him. He looks at Kavinsky, keeping his features as schooled as he can but he cannot help the wrathful thing inside him that pushes to the front every time he sees Pekka - even supposedly dead, Pekka is the center of all his rage and his revenge. This man took everything from him and Kaz will take the same.

His fingers tighten and his jaw ticks. He wants to destroy something. He wants to hurl Pekka Rollins's head through a window and into the canal.

"Is this supposed to be a gift?" he rasps at last. What is Kavinsky playing at?

Will you look at that. Not even a blink. Well, maybe blinking, but just anger blinks, if anything. Kavinsky studies Kaz with interest. He prefers praise and adulation, what with being a specific kind of a dick himself, but angry blinks are-- interesting.

"Yeah."

Maybe. Kind of. Or he was trying to get a rise out of Kaz. Both? Is 'both' a valid answer? Kavinsky opens and closes his fingers, then he picks up the fork from the table. The motes of light drifting around them seem to have sped up, subtly, drifting a little faster, deepening the shadows of Kaz's home. "You don't like it? You wanted it fileted for a fuckin' flesh mask, or something?"

"I would've taken a living version," he admits. He isn't entirely sure how Kavinsky got his hands on a head that looks just like Rollins, but even a substitute would be good for some catharsis.

"I want to take him apart. Brick by brick, I want to see his entire life fall to pieces and then, if I'm feeling merciful, I'll kill him."

Kaz Brekker nurses and nurtures his grudges and the one he has against Pekka has become a monster. He looks at the head again, slack and dull. His dark gaze flicks back up to Kavinsky.

"Let me throw it into the canal," he says at last. "He's ruining the view."

It was a considerate gift. Clearly Kavinsky pays attention.

Kavinsky studies the other young man with interest as he makes this proposition. It's not a bad one. The view is nice; they're good-looking kids, the two of them.

He gestures with his hand, an oddly graceful movement for him, of the middle fingers, sphinx-like cokehead stare, and hidden knives. Assenting for Kaz to stand up and take the head with him, where it'll slide slightly on the silver plate. Over to the window, which is locked because Kaz owns this place and only cedes his space to the most intrusive of shitty intruders, and

and out there, in the cool night, is Pekka Rollins.

And out there, the cool night is not such a one at all. Instead, the sun beats down on the grimy cobblestones of Ketterdam. And the small, bright motes that had lit the room inside start to diffuse out into the open, only to fade to nothing, like dreamstuff-- because they are dreamstuff—-

--but not in the way that Kaz understood, probably. The man in the street below wears a dapper suit, in lighter colors than Kaz prefers. He's gladhanding a neighborhood merchant who is eager for his business.

Kaz gets up. He leaves his cane behind and uses both hands to pick up Pekka's head. He unlocks the window, apparently not at all perturbed by carrying around a severed head. But he goes still when he looks out the window and sees--Ketterdam.

With a scowl, Kaz hurls the head toward the canal, though pelting the living Pekka with his own head. For a long moment, he stands there at the window, hands tight on the sill. But he knows this isn't real, either. He isn't in Ketterdam. Pekka isn't here and as much as he wants to race downstairs to beat the daylights out of the man in the street, he doesn't. He shoves the window shut again and limps back to the table, dark eyes on Kavinsky.

"What game are you playing?" he asks as he eases himself back into his chair.

"The game where I was expecting the lady to doth protest a little more," Kavinsky admits, with a wry twist to his mouth. "You know. Thought I'd have to rip her panties or her stockings or something. But here she is. So terribly polite."

He's quite confident, if Kaz hasn't figured it out by now he's going to figure it out soon. So why not push his luck? What the fuck is luck for. He slides his chair nearer, the wood scraping long noisy trails across the floorboards. He exhales, and his breath moves a subtle tide through the glowing motes in the air. He studies Kaz's face from a closer proximity now.

"What game do you want to win? Stakes aren't as high here, but that means the rules get to be whatever you want."

Kaz lifts a scarred eyebrow and ignores the jump in his heart. What the hell.

"What can I say, even gutter rats can have table manners."

He watches Kavinsky as he scoots closer and the little glowing things shift as he breathes. He holds Kavinsky's gaze, refusing to be the first to blink. He hates how distracting Kavinsky can be, hates that he's needled his way under his skin.

"I only play games I can win," he answers. Which is why engaging in any kind of game with Kavinsky makes him hesitate. He isn't sure he'd win. And he isn't sure he can handle what might happen if or when Kavinsky wins. "Did you think I'd be tickled by Pekka's head on a platter? Interesting foreplay."

Kavinsky can read enough between the lines. There's cold heat scintillating behind his eyes, which are half-mast, sly.

"There's a knife under that napkin, if you want it," he says, enunciating the words with a lazy precision, the pace of it-- very deliberate, very steady. "You can shove it between my ribs. Reach around and put it under my scapula, carve your way to my fuckin' heart. That'd be one game. No consequences, sweetheart. Not even parole. But on the flipside--"

Kavinsky flicks the napkin with a forefinger. The steaks are getting cold and he doesn't care. Steel glints from underneath the folded fabric edge, drawing Kaz's eye.

"Everything that holds you back from doing other shit in the real world is gone, too."

And too late, Kaz's eye will find its way back to the other tattooed hand that snuck its way up to his face. Real sleight? Or part of this gratuitous illusion? There's a slender forefinger sliding up Kaz's cheek then down to the thin skin of his throat, a sensation that's real, but-- as promised— bizarrely disconnected from the gut-level, wrenching revulsion conditioned into him. He's left with only: a choice.

The knife is tempting. There's something intimate in the way Kavinsky describes each potential wound. His gaze flicks to the flash of metal, and he's an idiot for falling for the trick. Because then he feels a touch tracing his cheek and down to his throat, but--

The revulsion isn't there. The stomach-turning, choking fear isn't there.

His eyes snap to Kavinsky's face.

"What are you doing?"

How is he doing it? Kaz never could let a magic trick go and now he's on the receiving end of something he doesn't remotely understand. Goosebumps roll over his skin, rising and falling in a breath. The last person to touch him had been Victor Vale and it had taken all of his willpower to get through that without vomiting on the good doctor.

Quite possibly the least charismatic person in the multiverse, Kavinsky's answer is simple:

"Touching you, dummy."

And suddenly there are fingers wrapped around Kaz's throat. Another hand digging into the fabric of his jacket. Kaz is hoisted up with startling strength, though nothing he hasn't met before in the grimey streets of Ketterdam, short of the Wraith's shocking ambushes, but a ferocity that Kavinsky's rarely shown him before. To be fair, the last time they engaged in proper violence, it was two little girls they were abducting.

Kaz's back meets the table. Dishware skids away, clatters to a stop short of falling, but a glass isn't as lucky. Crack. Kavinsky peers down at him, his nose inches from the other boy's nose, his weight pinning him down.

But there's a neglected knife still there, easily.

"How do you feel, baby?"

The hand on his throat is strangely welcome: it's familiar at least, even if the lack of clawing sickness is jarring. He expects suffering and it just isn't there. He doesn't know what to do now that it's suddenly gone, no longer a barrier impeding him.

Kaz doesn't have a lot of time to think about it. His back hits the table to the sound of breaking glass and Kavinsky is leaning over him, close enough for Kaz to feel his breath. A gloved hand grabs for the knife just to have it. He doesn't lash out, doesn't plunge it into Kavinsky's side (up between the ribs, that's where he'd go).

He stares, too bewildered by his own sudden freedom. The cage door is open but he's been there for so long that he doesn't know that he can leave. Or what the world looks like if he does.

Or what it will feel like when this is over.

How does he feel? Kaz isn't even sure how to answer.

"Pinned down," he growls out, fronting some aggression rather than coping with the sudden freedom to just be aroused. Kavinsky's close enough that he'll surely notice. Kaz's pulse is pounding against the fingers closed over his throat.

"Your feelings is real accurate," Kavinsky says. And then he kisses him.

This is not the advisable course of action for anybody with a) a conscience or b) previous acquaintance with Kaz Brekker. In general, people should know better. There are so many reasons why one should know better. And yet.

And yet, here is Kavinsky's mouth pressed against Kaz's, warm and sky except for that instant where it gets a little damp, because Kavinsky's tongue darts out as quick as a viper and teases the closed seam of Kaz's lips. The fabric of the dream swells and ripples. Grows warm. The light seems brighter, less broken.

The kiss breaks too, the next moment. With a chuff of warm air against Kaz's lips. Kavinsky doesn't pull back, leaving a margin of-- half an inch, at best. So close that Kaz can't focus on him; there are two Kavinskys, one for each of his eyes. The more Kavinskys to punch, maybe.

"How about now?"

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32 👶 IN YOUR HAND ALL THE COLORS YOU THOUGHT WERE KINGS

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tw some gore

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mild powerpose lmk if not ok

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more powerpose!!!! lmk if not ok!!

power pose away i trust u

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