#whatanybodygets

[capinejghafa]

freddy carter as francis of assisi in Poor Clare

for the coven <3

[elysianrey]

It’s like they’re sixteen again and he pays her wages and she’s at his beck-and-call. Has anything even changed since then? Or is she still the same silly girl with stars in her eyes, her heart in her throat whenever he graciously gives her a shred of his time and attention?

It’s too much, all that she’s feeling. It’s unbearable.

He doesn’t even flinch when she pounces onto him; some vicious and ugly part of her wanted him to, but he must’ve been seconds away from reaching for her himself, cause his hands pull her towards him the second she takes a step closer.

**

excerpt from come to me in red by @whatanybodygets & @alltheworldsinmyhead

[totchipanda]

kanej smut and four seasons follow up. Hit me.

Kanej smut:

She had once wondered what he would say if she stripped down in front of him and started to wash herself.

Don’t drip on the desk.

The reality was somewhat less harsh. He, in fact, said nothing at all.

Inej ran the cloth down one arm, wiping away days worth of seawater and sweat. Her back was to the door but she'd been aware of his approach. The uneven gait aided by his cane made him unmistakeable, not to mention the fact that she was currently in his rooms. She'd hesitated at first before stripping off the majority of her clothes in order to wash - but why should she worry? They were partners, in public and in private. He'd stripped before her many times, it was high time she returned the favour.

Four seasons follow up:

He tipped his head down so that his lips brushed against her temple as he spoke. “I really want to strip this dress off of you,” he murmured, his voice pitched for her ears alone.

Her hands tightened on his waist as heat flooded her body. She turned her head so that her breath would brush over his neck when she replied. “Let’s go, then.”

He stopped their slow sway and pulled back to look at her. His eyes were dark, the look he gave her a mix of disbelief and desire, fanning her own. She nodded slowly. He swallowed, throat bobbing.

Inej was not sure how they made it back up to their room. As soon as the elevator doors closed on them, she had her hands in his hair, thoroughly disrupting the careful lay of the waves as she kissed him. Perhaps he kissed her first – it didn’t matter. His cane clattered to the elevator floor as he leaned against the rail and pulled her against him, his hands on her back. They were kissing and they were pressed together and –

[capinejghafa]

kanej author recs | Whitherward

Notable/Favorite works:

roomy, and drenched in sunlight

It was a story they’d told each other often, over too much kvas. A running joke between them, what they would do if they ever decided to leave it all behind. She’d never dreamed they actually would.

Rating: M / Quirks: Broke-Up Kanej/Developing Kanej, (Heavy) Angst with a Happy Ending, Kanej's Children

save the undone years

He’s like all the others, when they bring him in. More than half dead, covered in mud. Leg almost hanging off him, just a mess of torn flesh and exposed bone. Likely won’t survive. God knows Inej has seen better off than him succumb to their injuries. Northern France, 1917. In a battlefield hospital, Corporal Kaz Rietveld lies gravely wounded. His nurse is determined that he will not be another thing she loses to this war.

Rating: M / Quirks: Developing Kanej, Angst with a Happy Ending, WWI AU

[elysianrey]

***

Her heart drops into her stomach. “Do you think I’m beautiful?”

“I think you know that you are.”

“I think that’s not what I asked.”

He’s manoeuvring her again, steering her away from her line of inquiry. She knows he’s doing it, and he knows that she knows. She’s prepared to let it go, for now.

She lifts her chin pointedly, though, and waits. If she can’t get an answer to one question, she’ll get an answer to another.

His voice drops, stone on stone. “Yes, I think you’re beautiful.”

***

excerpt from chapter 7 of Adagio by @whatanybodygets

pairing: kaz brekker/inej ghafa

fandom: six of crow series by leigh bardugo

rating: mature

[elysianrey]

***

“Kaz, look,” she says, barely above a whisper, but silence reigns now and he hears her loud and clear. “It’s a girl.”

He goes slowly to his knees beside her, one gloved hand rising to cover his mouth as he looks at the baby. She waits, for what she doesn’t quite know. For him to speak, for him to leave. After a long moment, his hand drops from his mouth, landing with a dull thump on the bloody sheet beside her hip.

“Inej,” he rasps, and his voice is strangled, like it’s an effort to get the words out. “What have we done?”

***

excerpt from roomy, and drenched in sunlight by @whatanybodygets

[elysianrey]

adante

(a/n: I wrote this as a companion piece to @whatanybodygets’s kanej fic, Adagio. This short fic explores a soft moment set in the distant future of the world she’s created between Kaz and Inej. I’ve been thinking about this hypothetical moment ever since I finished her WIP yesterday and this is what resulted! I hope you enjoy! also, if you’re not up to date with that fic, what are you doing with your life?!)

pairing: kaz brekker/inej ghafa

rating: T

tw: chronic pain

The sun is slowly beginning to peek above the collection of tightly clustered apartment buildings in the red light district when Inej sets down her familiar morning routine on the wine crate turned coffee table, saving the cup of heavily spiced tea to serve as a source of warmth on the chilly autumn morning in Ketterdam. Despite the apparent temperature drop, she glides toward the doors leading to the juliet balcony, unlocking the hinge and cracking it open, the city smells and noises immediately enveloping her senses. The cheap perfume from the pleasure houses a few blocks down is inescapable as well as the sounds of crows squawking over the overflowing waste bin at the corner of the street. A small grin blooms across her features, the reality of her life coming to the forefront of her mind.

This is home in the strangest, yet most comforting sense of the word.

She turns around, taking another sip of her steaming mug, and sets it atop the makeshift coffee table. It’s well-past the usual waking time for her companion, but she lets him sleep, knowing he came roughly limping into their shared space only hours ago. Inej pushes the crate against the wall as quietly as possible, then begins her stretching routine on the faded blue rug, her back muscles sighing in relief as she grasps the soles of her feet. Since retiring from the company two years ago, her outlet and purpose had become the studio she opened for the children in West Stave. Teaching dozens of classes each week did not come without consequence, even for her, with years of experience. She always manages to lose a toenail or overextend a limb.

Reaching for the muscle roller on the coffee table, Inej aligns the grooves with the twisting muscles in her lower back and begins to knead out the ache, relief causing her to let out a soft sigh of content. She would defend the effectiveness of using muscle rollers with her life simply because they have never failed to alleviate the pain that’s come with being a professional athlete.

The tell-tale sign of stirring sounds through the paper-thin walls of their bedroom, and not ten minutes later, a disheveled Kaz Brekker comes thumping into the small living and kitchen space, his cane extra loud on the wood floor. From her place on the carpet, Inej can already tell he is hurting exceptionally bad by the harshness of his walk. She continues the back and forth motion of moving the foam roller up and down her spine, her eyes closed, drawing in deep, belly-filling breaths until he quite literally, collapses on the threadbare couch beside her, muttering curses only Kaz Brekker would say at 6:30 in the morning.

“Saints Inej, it’s fucking freezing in here,” he grumbles, which leads to her cracking an eyelid open to take in his oversized, sulking form.

“Good morning to you, too,” she replies, halting her massaging to sit upright and properly take in the sight of her bitter, other half. “Late night?”

“Business as usual,” he snaps, practically heaving himself upright to limp over to the balcony doors, shutting them with more force than necessary in her opinion.

His leg nearly gives out on his return to the couch, his breath catching sharply as he reaches for the arm of the furniture. Inej frowns, chest tightening at the pain he’s so obviously experiencing. Typically a change in weather brings weariness to his limb; however, she knows it’s not uncommon for overexertion to equate to the same pain, or even worse, than the mood of the sky.

She presses lightly, “Not to sound like Nina, bu—”

“No,” he shoots back, likely knowing where she is going with the ‘Why don’t you take the painkillers you so often refuse?’ line.

It’s moments such as these that make Inej question why–out of all the perfectly suitable men in the world—did the saints make her so hopelessly attached to the stupidly, stubborn one lying as stiff as a board on their couch with an affixed frown on his stupidly handsome face. She wants nothing more than to argue with him until he eventually relents to defeat and takes the medication, yet perhaps she could attempt a different approach this morning.

Scooting closer to him on her knees, Inej stares at the lines of his sharp, downturned features. Despite their relationship pushing four years, and the progress each of them have made in terms of physical touch, she resists the urge to run the tip of her finger along his jaw, knowing he’s rarely in the mood to accept physical contact, even from her, when he’s hurting so badly. They have learned through trial and error that pain is too close of a trigger to the horrific accident that created his fear in the first place. She will never forget watching him vomit and violently shake with pure terror early on in their relationship after he insisted she could work out the kinks in his shoulders late one evening. It took months before he was willing to accept her touch again.

“What can I do to help you, Kaz?” she says softly, fully aware that he’s going to pretend like he’s entirely fine.

“Nothing.”

The walls are impossible to penetrate when Kaz Brekker is unwilling to let them down.

“Let me help you,” Inej insists, sitting back on her legs to provide space for him to possibly become reasonable.

“I told you, Inej–”

She interjects before he can spout another lie, “I want you to get on the floor.”

This demand gets his attention, his head turning to look at her face, a slight quirk of his eyebrow signaling he was not expecting her request. Inej knows he values a challenge as much as her so it’s nothing short of a miracle from the saints above when he actually obliges, his body ungracefully sliding from the couch down the short distance onto the rug.

“Well that was unex—” she starts to tease before Kaz prods her with the tip of his cane to silence the comment. The tiniest of giggles escapes her throat as she holds up her hands in surrender, saving him from cruel embarrassment.

“Now what?” he bites, leaning back on his elbows, splaying his long body across the floor. His feet practically touch the small island they added last year.

Inej’s mouth goes dry at the view of him on the floor next to her, his hair an unkempt mess, his cotton t-shirt revealing the prominent veins of his pale arms, the black ink of the tattoo on his forearm, and exposing the smallest sliver of skin along the waistband of his sleep pants. Swallowing the distraction away, she forces her thoughts back to the reason she ordered him onto the floor. Her stares do not go unnoticed by the man beside her, and she spots the barest flush of pink on his cheeks at the vulnerable state he’s allowing her to witness him in.

One he most definitely would kill a man over if it came to anyone else in the world other than Inej.

Reaching for her muscle roller, she holds it out for him to accept. His eyes narrow as he glances between the bizarre contraption he’s watched her use on a daily basis and the warm face that is asking him to trust her. In the end, trust outweighs skepticism. Inej bites back the victory grin threatening to show.

Kaz has never been an easy student. Teaching him how to use a muscle roller might as well be like teaching a grizzly bear to perform a grand jete. Since she cannot touch him, Inej provides visual examples with another muscle roller about where to place it under his leg, how to rock his body back and forth over the roller, and the amount of pressure he should apply in the areas that are especially tight. She even demonstrates various hand techniques she’s learned to knead out a muscle spasm on the top of her leg. It’s an arduous task to refrain from biting the bait of arguing with her overgrown student as he grinds out his frustrations and a slew of curses that would put a sailor to shame. Kaz Brekker is clumsy and unsure with the muscle roller under his leg, quite the opposite of his usual daily facade. It nearly makes her laugh–if she also didn’t want to strangle him at the same time.

By the end of their lesson, Kaz is lying on his back, hands over his stomach, panting at the effort of kneading out the pain in his leg. A slick sheen of sweat glistens from the morning sun and causes the front strands of his hair to stick to his forehead. Overall, his body has significantly relaxed much to Inej’s relief.

He reaches out his hand to rest atop hers, turning his head so that their eyes meet. This is a promising sign. “If you ever tell anyone about this, just remember that I know where you live,” he warns half-heartedly, his chest still rising and falling rather rapidly.

Inej’s face breaks out in a full smile. “Are you threatening me, Mr. Brekker?”

“Do you consider me a threat, Ms. Ghafa?” he quips, giving her hand the slightest of squeezes.

“Oh, most definitely,” she concedes, bringing his knuckles to her lips and brushing the barest of kisses upon them.

The corner of Kaz’s mouth ticks upward in a tender grin and Inej knows today will not be the last for stretching lessons with her idiotically, adamant man, yet she would not have it any other way.

find me on ao3

[feelinglikecleopatra]

WIP - The Monster Under the Bed

This goes out to @whatanybodygets mostly just for being a great writer and a better friend but also as a lil balm/distraction/home remedy on a maybe not so great first day back at work.

*

Hanna is fidgeting with her dress. She’s never liked the way the collar sits high and prickly against her neck, tight around her throat. It feels like being choked or how she imagines being choked would feel. Today, she can’t stand it because the maids lit the fire in the nursery long before she came in and it’s now roasting in here.

The heat is driving her to distraction. It’s fogging up the windows and making her palms sweaty. Plus, plus she has something she desperately needs to get off her chest. It’s very nearly bursting out of her. She needs to tell Agnes.

Beside her, sitting cross-legged on the expensive Suli rug, back ramrod straight, is Agnes, Hanna’s very best friend. She somehow manages to sit still even though she’s dressed in the same horrible style. Despite her placid appearance, though, Hanna can see the fine hairs around Agnes’ temples clinging sweatily to her skin. Not so unaffected after all.

Noticing her staring, Agnes turns and sticks her tongue out at Hanna. Her eyes are crinkled with laughter so Hanna knows she’s not being mean.

“I have to tell you something,” Hanna whispers, darting glances at the Fjerdan woman organising character cards at the front of the room.

Agnes arches one barely-there eyebrow in a near perfect imitation of her well-to-do mother. “Well, you better say it quickly, Enke Hansson is sure to turn around at any moment!”

Hanna couldn’t stifle the giggle that rose up at the look on Agnes’ face. Gone was her imperious mother and now, with mouth drawn thin and nostrils flaring, she did a perfect impression of Enke Hansson.

“What are you two giggling about?”

Hanna’s head snaps to the front of the room, taking in the stern look on the mistress’ face—the spitting image of the expression on Agnes’—and promptly dissolves into a further fit of giggles.

“Hanne Smeet, your mother will hear about this!”

Eventually, the giggles die away and Enke Hansson returns her focus to scratching elaborate Fjerdan calligraphy onto the chalkboard.

Enke Hansson does everything with considerable zeal. The chalk squeals and grates and scratches against the slate making Hanna’s hair stand on end.

“Agnes—Agnes!” Back to the matter at hand, “I saw him last night!”

“Who?” Obligingly, Agnes drops into a conspiratorial whisper.

“Him! I told Mama he was real and she said I was making things up but I’m not, he’s real.”

“The monster?” In her incredulity the whisper becomes voiced, an exaggerated stage whisper. “You saw him? When?”

“Last night! He was very scary.” Hanna hesitates a moment. “Actually, he said I shouldn’t tell anyone—not even Papa!”

Agnes is not fazed. “What did he look like?”

“Sharp,” Hanna answers without second thought, “thorny.”

“Well, what does that mean?”

“I don’t know.” Now that she’s talking about it the memory seems foggy, shrouded in darkness and sleep. It was not a dream, of that much she is sure. “Dangerous. He had a scar under his eye and a very mean voice, like Enke’s chalk on the board. It made me feel cold.”

*

This is very nearly everything I’ve actually written for this idea so it’s less a snippet and more… my draft. But where the cause is right, I don’t mind baring my unfinished nonsense. Not me taking one tiny little scene from CK and just completely running away with it.

Have it! Read it! Do what you will with it! I don’t know if this’ll help or if I’m being an idiot but it’s worth a shot.

<3