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Kaz Brekker hates chocolate. It's not a well known fact, but it's something Inej has learned from observation. When you spend enough time perched on someone’s windowsill, you come to know such things.
He might be a brutal man, but his coffee-colored eyes aren't unappealing. He receives love letters, chocolates, and flowers from the Barrel's girls and boys. Sometimes kruge, if they think it'll make him happy. He keeps the letters—they make for good blackmail if he needs it—always wearing an expression of distaste as he reads them. They aren't refined, poetic words, but they are heartfelt, sometimes. She imagines herself falling for such a person, who from a distance seems a cheeky boy with a confident smile, and in private regards her with such dispassionate cruelty. She feels a curl of bitterness wrap itself around her heart.
The kruge is spent. No kruge is bad kruge. She tells him once, once, that he should return it. His gloved hand grips his cane and he tells her with a self-satisfied smirk that you never give up what you've gained. Inej sighs, and then spends the rest of the evening wondering if she agrees—if the Saints would forgive her if she did. She never comes up with an answer.
When it comes to the flowers, he tells her to get rid of them. Leave them to your Saints, throw them in a gutter. Instead, she puts them in a vase by her bedside and enjoys having something beautiful to keep her company, even if they wilt and die only a few days later.
But the chocolates are different.
She’s never known him to hate sweets. Inej has seen him eat almost as many waffles as Nina in a single sitting before. However, chocolates are always pushed into the wastebin. Or, if there are enough, taken to Rollins's office and tossed into the fire pit. On one occasion, he’s even asked her to move so he could throw a large, finely wrapped and ribboned box out the window. It lands with enough force to scatter the crows and they hesitate to return to her for days.
Inej never asks, just like he never asks why she keeps the perfumes Nina buys for her untouched and unopened. They know, on some level, that it's not something that can be talked out. Carelessly prodding wounds only leaves you with bloody hands, and this is a sacred comfort they only find in the spaces between them.
***
She doesn't know why she gives him chocolate.
It’s many months later, after she knows her mother’s embrace and laughs at her father’s jokes again. After she’s sailed away from Kaz and written her own love letters. After she’s gotten replies which make him seem nervous and worried and kind, just like the gentle boy she thought she'd fall for when she was younger.
They're sitting in his new room, on his old bed, barely leaning against each other but enjoying the sensation of their shared warmth. She learns to take a self-imposed leave and Kaz learns to relegate his work so he can be hers for a week.
She brings back souvenirs for everyone, but she only shares the gifts from her parents with him. Between them, they go through a set of pens, potpourri which carries the scent of flowers that remind her so much of home it makes her ache, and matching daggers. (Kaz gives her one of his own to make up the difference). They’ve given her spiced chocolates this time, homemade. They're from her mother and the first bite floods her with a feeling of contentment that she’s been steadily regaining ever since she found her purpose.
She thinks before she does it, creasing the bag they’re in with her hand. They aren't meant to breach every wall yet. Some, not ever. But it's too easy to take a piece between her fingers and raise it to his mouth. His eyes meet hers and he freezes like a startled cat.
“Do you want a piece?” She already knows the answer, and he knows she knows. She waits for him to react, for the refusal, for his disappointment.
He moves away and she's sure that this has been a misstep—she prodded the wrong wound, desecrated something sacred.
And then he puts his open palm beneath her hand.
“Give it to me,” He’s barely able to meet her eyes.
She drops the chocolate into his hand.
Inej only gets through the middle of you don't have to do this before he eats the entire piece in a single swallow. She startles and breathes. His eyes start to swim when he drowns in memories, and he shuts them, and time passes at a frighteningly slow pace.
He opens them and stares at her defiantly. No cold sweat, no gasping for breath.
“It tastes like cinnamon.” There's a pause. “It’s not so bad.”
She grins up at him and leans against his side more fully. He presses against her and she can feel him, the way his hip rests against hers, the curve of his shoulder, his lungs expanding with every inhale. It’s more like home than anything else has been since she stepped into Ketterdam again. His laughter is breathless, and she feels a little braver again.
Not every barrier is meant to last forever.