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Kaz took a step forward, his cane thumping along with it. Anger mixed with protectiveness within his stance. It turned his voice cold and loud, passion running through it like water under a frozen canal. “No! You aren’t going on-!” He took another threatening step forward only to find himself back in his Slat office. The subject of his ire was now nowhere near him. Instead, he knew for a fact that they were approximately halfway across the district with as few cares in the world as a Barrel rat could have and listening to a street musician.
He growled in frustration and slammed his cane against the floor, listening to the sound reverberate in time with him. “Dammit!”
He had lost count of how many times this exact thing had happened already. Ten? More? Too many, that’s all he cared about. Too many times had he found Y/N, bruised and battered and seeming to only be hanging on to their life by sheer spite, only to have time seem to rewind and find himself back in his office. Even now, he had been through this same process so many times, each time only having few changes outside of what he did, he knew exactly where they were in that moment.
Right then, they were watching a street musician play at the mouth of the Government District and would be there for the next few minutes. After that, they would go on a job Kaz had assigned them a few days ago. Little had he known it was almost a suicide mission he was sending them on and he wished with every fiber of his being that he hadn’t assigned it to them.
He had been through the night enough times to know how it would end. Y/N would come back to the Slat with bruises so dense across their body, their natural skin color would be almost unrecognizable. Kaz’s heart stuttered every time they came in with the bruises, every time he saw the blood running down their side and that determined look in their eye that said they would report what they knew or bleed out trying. Even before this Never ending Night, he hated to see them with even the smallest mark across their skin, no matter how it was inflicted. It was times like that that he wished he was the type of leader who could pull someone into his office and patch them up while getting the report. Instead, all he could do was order them to one of the gang’s mediks to get patched up before they, “stained my good rug with your blood.”
Kaz shook himself back to the present and picked up his coat. He breezed out of his office, coat slung over his arm and cane tapping the ground in an angry staccato. Just as he was in the middle of the entryway, he had an idea to possibly change this night again. Pausing, he turned and scanned the room until he found someone he wanted. He briefly spoke to the other Dregs member, who scurried away as soon as Kaz was finished speaking to them.
With his plans starting to come into place, he stepped out of the Slat and started down the street. Soon enough, he came to the street corner where Y/N was listening to a traditional Kaelic instrument being played. Their eyelashes fluttered against their cheeks as they kept their eyes closed to feel the music better. They leaned against a building, their hand gently swaying to the music. Kaz thought they looked like sound in human form, as if they were going to spring into a dance at any moment or fly into the wind and never be seen again as they spread joy to all who came across them.
When Y/N’s eyes opened, they seemed to instinctively find Kaz in the shadows on the other side of the square. There was a look in their eyes that did something to Kaz, a gravity about them that always tugged at him. It threatened now to pull him closer and into their orbit, closer than he would let almost anyone else get. He managed to resist that gravitational pull, but only just.
If he were free of his mind, he could stride over to them, sweep them into his arms, and show them just how much he thought of them. He’d kiss Y/N so soundly, they would be clinging to him to stay upright. They would be breathing heavily, eyes staying closed even when they both pull apart for air. He’d press them against the wall the way he’d seen other men do with lovers, using it to support both their weight as he pulled them insistently closer, as if they were the last breath of air he would ever breathe.
Instead, he watched as Y/N made their way across the small space of the intersection and came to stand at his side. “Kaz?” They asked, eyes shining in the light of the streetlamps and making them look ethereal. “Did you need something, Boss?”
Kaz shook himself out of the spell. “The job I had you on for the night. It’s canceled.”
“What?” Y/N stepped around him, blocking the alleyway he was turning down. “What do you mean? Did it get rescheduled? Or . . . “ Their voice trailed off, eyes betraying the fear that kept them from thinking of the alternative: that Kaz was deliberately taking them off a job he’d given to them specifically.
Y/N took a step back, disbelief on their face waring with the knowledge of the truth and the hurt they felt at it. “Kaz. You wouldn’t, would you?”
He sighed and continued his steps back to the Slat, a defeated Y/N trailing behind him. “I didn’t take you off the job because I thought you couldn’t do it. I did it because you’re needed on a different one tonight. Someone else is already filling the first one.”
The energy back in their steps caused them to quicken until they were walking two abreast. “This one better pay the same or more than the previous. Tonight was supposed to be my last job and you know that, Brekker.”
Kaz felt his heart twist at the mention of their plans and the impersonal address. Y/N was someone he had picked up off the streets himself. They’d been stealing from those under Dregs protection and had even managed to pickpocket a few of the Dregs themselves. When Kaz caught them being bold enough to go for Wylan’s bag, he’d offered a deal. Work for Kaz and pay back what was stolen, or be prepared to not be looked at kindly by anyone in the Barrel. They made the right choice and Kaz sent them on thieving jobs, what they were best at. Occasionally, they were sent to rough someone up or be a spider if it was needed. They did their job well, sneaking in and out of crowds with the same ease as most spiders sneak around buildings.
Their indenture almost fully paid back, Y/N had made it no secret that they planned to leave Ketterdam as soon as they were free from the Dregs. They’d even gone so far as to say there would be nothing they would miss and Ketterdam would hold no lost love from them.
Love.
Kaz loved them. The revelation was so sudden, it almost made him stop in his tracks. He stole a glance at the Dregs next to him, wondering at the thought that made everything fall into place. How had he been so blind as to not see it before?
Quickly, he stepped down a different alley at the nearest crossroads, changing the plans for the evening. Y/N stayed silent next to him, unaware of his original plans nor his new ones. It didn’t take long to come to the sparkles and glam that was the showier side of the pleasure district. Y/N stayed close to him as they wound through the buildings.
Eventually, he stopped at a small theater that was out of the way but always showing something. Y/N bounced on the balls of their feet, a throwing dagger slipping into each hand. “What’s the mark here, Kaz?”
He glanced up at the title of the play being shown. He didn’t know why he’d come here. Maybe he needed to think.
No, that wasn’t true. He knew exactly why he’d come here. If his life was this one night repeated forever, he was going to have at least a few turns of it be good. He wanted to take them here, to watch a play and talk about it like a normal courting pair. Because he wanted to court them.
Ghezen, he was in deep.
He knew from previous loops that no matter what kind of interference he ran on the job, it always ended the same way. So, he was taking them away from the job. If even his presence on it with them caused them to still almost die in his arms back at the Slat, there was nothing to be done about the job. Let the other Dregs deal with it, they could have other methods of avoiding the danger or getting stitched up by the mediks. Right now, Kaz was being selfish. He couldn’t hold them, couldn’t bring them close and whisper sweet nothings into their ears. Nor could he kiss them the way he wanted, keep them safe in any way possible except this way.
So, if the ambush always results the same and Y/N never remembers the previous tries through, there was nothing left to do on the job but not go. Instead, he switched his tactics to being selfish. He wanted to spend this night with them, even if it was the only night he would ever see again, especially if that. If they were to leave him as soon as their next job paid enough, the most he could do for himself is to spend this one night telling himself he did what he could. He needed to show himself they didn’t want him, not the way he wanted them. The way their eyes shone wasn’t for him, their smile wasn’t broader when he was around, their humming and dancing was not for him to experience. He didn’t deserve them and they didn’t want him and he needed to use tonight to truly understand that.
So, they sat together and watched the show. Y/N asked if the job was in the theater and Kaz just squeezed their hand through a glove and told them to enjoy the play. When it was over, Kaz took them walking down the pier where there was some dancing and music, a few people offering snacks. Kaz paid for the food, a welcome warmth against the chill of the night. Y/N hummed along to the music.
Kaz watched them, the way they almost seemed to glow from the inside with joy at the music, the tapping of their feet that begged to dance, even just the way they held themself was gorgeous. His eyes couldn’t move from them, as if he could commit that moment to memory the same way he did numbers and documents.
All of a sudden, it was pulled away. One moment Kaz was staring at Y/N and enjoying life, the next he was breathing in the smoke tinged air of his office. No matter how many times it had been cleaned, nothing could remove the smell of Per Haskell’s old pipe. Kaz took a few more greedy gulps of the almost rancid air to clear his head.
The next sequence went much the same as that one. Kaz found them in the square, called off their job, and asked for their company for the rest of the night. Even so, all they could talk about was Y/N leaving. They sat on a park bench in the brightly lit University District and Kaz asked about where they planned to go when they paid him off. They didn’t say, only that they might never step foot in Kerch again.
Kaz felt his heart break again just as he found himself back in his office, sitting in his chair and looking out the window.
Not willing to give up, he did it again. He hastily pulled his coat on, yelling to a Dregs to take Y/N’s job, and stormed out the door. He stopped once again at that street crossing, watching Y/N soak in the music as if it were the one thing to energize them. He stepped through the crowd, watching the way they mouthed along with the song. He had done this exact moment so many times, Kaz was sure he could sing along with the song himself.
When they opened their eyes, Kaz was in front of them. “The job is off, someone else is handling it for the night, I need your company instead tonight.”
Y/N nodded, their eyes wary. “Okay, boss, what are we doing?”
He took a deep breath and did the only thing he could. “Whatever you want. I’m paying off the last of your indenture from my own pocket. If you want to consider this your last night in Ketterdam, so be it. Just know, you will always be a Dregs. You can keep doing jobs and get more money, keeping all of it. Even if you don’t, you bear the Crow and Cup and that marks you as one of us until the day you die.”
Y/N nodded, eyes soft with unshed tears. “Kaz, I-”
“You don’t need to say anything right now. Just allow me to spend this night with you doing whatever you wish.”
Y/N shut their mouth and instead started walking down the street. Kaz trailed behind them, keeping watch for anything that would ruin the last time they would spend together. If he wasn’t to be pulled out of this night, he didn’t want his last memory of them to be walking away from him forever or dying in his arms. Instead, he wanted their smile lighting up brighter than the moon, he wanted their joy wrapping him in the warmest cloak ever. He wanted them. Pure and simple. There was nothing else he could do but want them, even if they forgot what had happened come morning.
That time around was the easiest with them and the best one. Kaz kept every moment locked in his mind, determined to remember every detail of how they looked in the moonlight, their joy and light and the essence of them that had pulled him from a dark place.
Finally, both lounging in Kaz’s sitting room that had replaced his attic office, Y/N brought it up again. Leaving. Kaz couldn't help the way he felt heat rise in his chest, as if the long buried anger from many rounds ago had finally caught up with him.
“Why?” The word came out so cold and hard, as if it were an icicle he hurled at them in defense of his thawed heart.
Y/N took a step back. “Kaz? Why what?”
He sighed, hands clenching on his cane in an attempt to rein in the anger they didn’t deserve directed at them. “Why are you leaving? Is this place not good enough for you? Are you so desperate to seek out more you are willing to trample others to get there?”
Y/N’s brow furrowed. “I don’t understand what you’re trying to say. Kaz, you’re starting to scare me.”
“Good!” He almost threw the word at them. “Be scared, be as scared as I am!”
With that, it was like a gate opened and the words came pouring out like water. “Because I’m scared, deathly so! I’m scared of putting a name to the feelings I’ve had for years now, scared that as soon as I put that word to what I’ve been feeling that my heart will shatter at the impossibility of it all. Scared you’re going to leave me, to go away to someplace else and find someone who can love you the way I’ve always longed to. I love you so much and I’m so scared of losing you and this is going to kill me if it keeps happening.”
Without realizing it, tears had started to course down his cheeks. “Please,” his voice started to break with the effort of admitting all of this. “Please, Y/N, don’t leave me, you can’t. You can’t go away and find someone soft to love, I don’t know what would happen to me. I’ve dragged myself up tooth and nail with just the sight of your light to guide me, I don’t know what would happen when that light is no longer there. I’m-I’m not strong enough to do this alone, I need you. I know it’s not right, it’s not fair, it’s selfish of me to say it. But I’m a selfish man so, please, stay with me.”
“Oh, Kaz,” they started, taking a step closer to him.
Kaz backed up. “No, I don’t need your pity. If you’re going to leave, just do it quietly. I don’t know what would happen should I actually have to watch you leave.” He dropped into his chair, head falling into his hands to hide the tears and give himself a moment to recover. “Please, just, do as you wish. Don’t let me influence you.”
Footsteps crossed the floor until Y/N was crouched before him, ducking their head down enough to see him. “Kaz, darling, I’m not going anywhere.” They laughed. “The only reason I said I would leave is because I love you.”
Kaz raised his head slowly, brows furrowed in confusion. “What? What do you mean?”
“I love you but seeing you always being so cold to me, I thought you didn’t feel the same. So, I was determined to leave Ketterdam and leave you alone. I thought it would be better that way. It broke my heart to decide and every step closer, every word we spoke about it tonight, only tore my heart into smaller pieces.”
Kaz looked into their eyes, his gaze intent and searching. “Do you still want to leave?”
Y/N shook their head, a smile and laugh brightening the room. “Not in the slightest. I’m here to stay.”
Before his courage and elation could fail him, Kaz stood and pulled Y/N to their feet as well. One hand went up to cup their cheek, leather sliding against skin until they fit together perfectly. The other hand held their waist, pulling them in. For a brief moment, Kaz stared at their neck, watching the skin there faintly pulse in time with their heartbeat. He needed to know they were alive, and there with him on dry land, not dead in the water.
Y/N looked at him with those eyes he adored so much and he couldn’t help but lean in and press his lips to theirs. It was gentle and soft and only lasted for a few heartbeats before he had to pull back, the water rising around him. Already, he could feel the cold and wet hands grasping at him and threatening to drag him under again.
Y/N smiled at him, tucking a stray hair behind his ear. “Oh, look, the sun’s rising! We rarely ever get such a clear view of the sunrise unless it’s a countryside job, but I do love it so.”
He turned to look out the window at the night finally coming to an end. He was still there, seeing the sunrise for the first time in a week. Smiling, he pulled Y/N in again and kissed their face, feeling the puffs of their breath on his cheeks and chin as he worked his way around it. Those kisses would not be reset, they would not be wiped away to be replaced with the bruises of a job gone horribly wrong. Those kisses would instead stay on Y/N’s smiling face.