Work Text:
The ballroom is filled with people packed far too close for comfort. They raise glasses and offer wordy toasts, let the words pour out of their mouths like careless waterfalls. They swirl meaninglessly on the dance floor, chests pressed together as if it'd kill them to stand further apart. They talk, and they laugh, and they wear jewelry that looks like it weighs more than the sky.
Inej weaves and bobs through them, feeling the soft material of her dress flow out behind her. It's silver, the color of a single storm cloud gracing the morning. She tries not to pay attention to the way the air licks hungrily at her ankles, how the men's stares burn into her skin.
Finally, she steps out from the mass of people, and it's a little bit like a breath of fresh air.
"Kaz," she hisses, and he appears by her side, dark suit clinging tightly to all his lines and angles. He doesn't have his cane - too conspicuous - yet, aside from a limp, he looks perfectly relaxed without it. The sight of him makes something flame to life inside her, and she beats it down.
"Wraith," he answers in greeting. His gaze flicks up and down her figure, calm and calculating. He watches her movements as keenly as a crow. "Are you ready?"
Somewhere in this foreign palace is the Sun Summoner, and by extension, their cash prize for finding her. It's a wild plan, reckless and daring and basically impossible, but Inej remembers her ship and holds the idea of it closer to her chest. "May the Saints receive me."
The barest hint of a smile plays over his face. "I'm sure they will."
He saunters toward the only corridor branching off from the ballroom - the path to the Sun Summoner - but his path is blocked by a heavyset man dressed in fine livery. Almost immediately, Kaz's entire demeanor shifts: he plasters an innocuous look onto his face, holds himself a little differently.
The older man is clearly tipsy. His champagne sloshes over the edge of the glass as he makes a drunken salute toward Kaz. "We haven't even begun the dance yet!"
"Sir, I really must be going-" Kaz starts.
"No, no, what you must do is stay for the dance." Inej realizes, belatedly, that this is the host of the ball. She rests a hand on her waist, where she can sense the cool presence of her knives, hidden under and in the fabric. They feel like claws.
Kaz's eyes flash dangerously, sunlight glancing off dark tea, but he turns to her, his gaze asking a silent question.
So Inej has no choice but to hurry forward next to Kaz. "Thank you for your hospitality. We will dance."
They move back toward the mass of people, the host watching them surprisingly shrewdly. "What was that?" Kaz growls, though there's no malice behind his tone.
She looks him in the eyes. There's his usual expression, of course, the one he wears to barter and steal from innocent folk in Ketterdam. But beneath it, she thinks she sees uncertainty. It can't be, she tells herself. Dirtyhands is never uncertain.
"I don't think it'd be a particularly good idea to knock out the host of the party," Inej says. She steps into the group of partygoers, which is bright with laughter and beginning to swirl into the dance. "We can slip away after this song."
"What kind of man only builds one exit from his ballroom?" Kaz grumbles.
"Either someone that's very aware of criminals like us, or someone who doesn't believe in fire exits."
"Arrogant."
"And you're not?"
He rolls his eyes, but follows her. The conductor strikes up the band, and the music swells. It's transportive, almost. It sweeps her off her feet in a grand tide of sparkling notes and sound.
She takes Kaz's gloved hand and leads him in the first moves of the dance. To any onlookers, they'd look like just another pair of guests, albeit younger than the majority of the people at the party. But she can sense the tension that comes with their touch, that simmering unease in both of them, and she treads carefully to the beat of the song. Her dress swishes around her feet as she moves.
For just a heartbeat, she's back with her family in a twilight field, dancing around the campfire to traditional music. Her feet have always met the ground certainly, and this is no exception. She can hear her parents' laughter, her cousins' excited chatter, the gentle gleam of the stars in the sky. Everything had been right with the world.
Inej gives herself the tiniest shake. She is not waltzing with one of her cousins anymore. This is one of the most dangerous people in Ketterdam.
And yet... there's something about the way he moves. Here, there, the tiniest hesitation, every time he needs to turn. It's nearly impossible to see, but-
"Kaz," she says, a laugh tucked carefully into the corners of her voice. "Do you not know how to dance?"
With a flash of amusement, she tracks the shadow of frustration that flits briefly over his face. "I do know," he shoots back. "I just haven't done it before."
She lifts an eyebrow at him between her moves. "Just follow my lead."
Even after just a few seconds, it's easy to see that he's already picking it up. Kaz's time in the Barrel has whittled him into a quick learner, with edges as sharp as her knives. His feet flit over the polished floor in time with her own, barely betraying his bad leg.
"Not bad," Inej tells him, something irrational and bright welling up inside her chest.
He shoots her a look, then, wry and swift. "Were you expecting anything else, Wraith?"
"Maybe. Maybe not."
"I would have hoped you had enough faith to entrust some in me."
You already have my faith. "Kaz, we've been over mocking the gods. Be careful of what you say next."
The orchestra's music softens, and the violins begin a gentle, crooning melody, driven by the tender rhythm of the harp. Inej can't help but notice the people around them coalescing from one big group to countless couples, swaying together. The other people's hands snake around each other and their lips press together like it's nothing, like the physical contact doesn't bring them blistering heat, doesn't strike like lightning through their bodies.
Kaz's gloves feel rough against her hands, and she releases them, acutely aware of their presence and the way he draws them into his body. She stares at their fabric, the color of night, the absence of a sun.
And all of a sudden, the two of them are frozen, a moment plucked from real life and preserved in a motionless photo album. Standing an arms-length away from each other, even as everyone else draws closer to their partners, like two magnets with north facing north, afraid to draw any closer.
"We should go now," Inej says, hushed. She isn't sure of what dark monster tore through Kaz's past and now haunts both his present and future. But he shouldn't be forced to confront it here.
Kaz looks stiff, almost brittle, in the light of the chandelier. It throws specks of white over his suit, rippling and jumping, full of electric energy. He turns his head discreetly over his shoulder to check the exit of the ballroom, where the host still blocks it, surveying his party with a satisfied sort of expression.
His eyes dart around the room like the observant thief he is, and then they come to rest on Inej. She's trained herself to recognize the faint glimpses of uncertainty that appear on him every once in a blue moon, but this time, she sees something like steely resolve as well. "I think we can afford to finish this dance," he says, and his rough voice shakes ever so slightly.
"Okay," she breathes. Around them, the rest of the partygoers are still pressed together like blissful teenagers, untouchable in their reverie.
Inej tucks the music's cascading melody into her heart and steps closer to Kaz.
Neither of them is wearing multiple layers, for the purpose of blending in. Inej has her dress and Kaz has his suit. As she watches, he inhales deeply, his chest heaving, and he takes his own step toward her.
Inej thinks of her family again, then, the stories they told her. She remembers one of her favorite myths: about the constellations in the sky, the eternal waltz they were locked in. Her father had explained to her a concept he called "orbit" - two bodies, two stars, circling each other for eternity, never closer or farther. The moon and the ocean, the sun and the earth. Dirtyhands and the Wraith.
But they're closer now, she thinks wildly. Her heart flutters like some winged creature in her chest. No more orbit. No more quiet gazes restraining hours of words.
She can see the way his hands tremble as he removes his gloves, one after the other, and tucks them into his pocket almost tenderly. Inej has the distinct feeling that this is no longer about blending in. They're not criminals playing at a heist anymore. They're just two people, who might be in love, who might not be, who fall apart and fall together and fall apart again. Who make mistakes, and a lot of them.
There's no greater destiny at play here, only the bond they share after all the cocky winks and midnight plans and adrenaline-fueled rushes are stripped away. And Inej never thought she would be caught up in this gang, a dark and twisted city, and find someone to trust anyway.
Inej realizes with a jolt just how close they are. (Close enough to hear the way Kaz's breath wisps from his mouth, a delicate spirit of ice that might melt with warmth.) She wants to pull away, and she wants to touch him, and she wants to run and she wants to stay, to run, to stay, to run-
To stay.
She lets the words beat through her mind in time to the racing drums of the dance. They don't feel quite right.
It's not staying, not really. That implies a passivity, a sitting down and letting the world revolve as they build their own little corner of the universe. But she and Kaz aren't neat like that. They're as messy as the streets of Ketterdam, but they're here, and that has to count for something, and they're trying, and that should count for everything.
Yes, that feels right. To try.
Kaz looks delicate, like a boy of blown glass. But his jaw is set in a look of determination Inej has seen before, and his eyes are locked on her in a way that makes a tremor rush through her body. It's easy to see the way his fingers quiver as they reach toward her, how his feet hesitate as he circles Inej in tempo with the song.
It's not as easy to measure the jump of his pulse in his throat, or the tiny quirk of his mouth that Inej has studied out of the corner of her eye countless times. But she sees it. She knows it. And she cannot follow him into whatever canyon the monster has trapped him in, nor can she simply wait at the edge, but she can watch him claw his way out like he does from everything, dusty and ash-streaked, and bask with him in their newfound light.
Twelve inches. Six inches. And then they are so close she can feel his shaky exhale.
Their hands find each other, little by little, touch by gentle touch. Electricity erupt all over her skin, blistering, burning. But she stands still, fights the urge to pull away, and the lightning begins to fade into a kinder sort of warmth. A fire, a burn, an ache that pulls at her and one that she doesn't want to leave.
Kaz's breath catches, but he holds still, and he finishes interlocking his fingers with hers. Their palms meet like two colliding stars. For so long, they've circled each other, and now their lights and shadows finally combine. It feels nice, she realizes, and the realization feels nice too.
"Is this okay?" she asks him.
For the first time tonight, he smiles. It's hesitant, small, but it's there, and she knows he's willing. To try. "Of course, Inej."
She hears her name from his mouth, and she wants to hear it a thousand times more.
Inej can sense the song beginning to come to a close: the music crescendoing, the other dancers twirling, their clothing sparkling in the sheen of the lanterns. Kaz raises Inej's hand and she spins with the trained grace of an acrobat.
She finds herself very close to him, canting her head up to meet his gaze. There's something soft there, so different from his normal look, like sunlight reflecting off glass instead of shards of broken mirror, like fabric peeking out beneath armor.
The orchestra goes quiet, and the world holds its breath, but Inej and Kaz are still there, and she thinks they always will be.
Slowly, she becomes aware that the host of the party is no longer guarding the doorway. She steps back, but holds on to Kaz's hand, and he does the same.
"Let's go," he says.
She nods, feeling light, a spirit, an ethereal girl who's reclaiming herself.
The two of them slip through the crowd and walk toward the hallway hand in hand, toward the light, toward an unseen sunrise.