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#title is pulled from the lyrics of only you lonely you by andrew lloyd webber
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hi! can i please request a kaz brekker x reader fic based off of episode 5 of season 2 (despise your heart)? when kaz panics in the market reader finds him and takes him somehwere safe and gives him his gloves, and in that moment kaz kinda of realizes how he feels about the reader. and then the poison fog the reader hallucinates about kaz and him finally making physical contact and giving her love and she thinks it’s real until someone shoves the antidote in her mouth, once she regains consciousness she rushes over to help kaz and kaz sees her pulling him out of the water and the readers just sitting there holding his face and anything else you wanna add !
if it’s a little complicated i understand, thank you have a great day :))
You were always in plain sight
❀ Word Count: 2,145 ❀ CW: Panic Attack, Discussions of Trauma, Pining, Admissions ❀ A/N: Added a few more scenes than requested. I hope you enjoy!
He’s going to panic, you think to yourself. 
In fact, his body was already panicking, even if he wasn’t. Nina is too focused on the target's heart rate to notice, but Kaz’s heart rate has been slowly increasing ever since he took off the gloves.
You watch as the woman they were meeting with gets up, and Kaz goes to follow. Unfortunately, another woman immediately runs into him, spilling tea all over the front of him, and definitely accidentally touching him.
“Give me his gloves,” You whisper to Inej.
She hands them over silently. You put on your own set of gloves, a pair you keep on you in the event something like this happens. 
Nina places her hand on top of Kaz’ and you watch the life drain from his face. And then he’s running.
“You follow the target. I’ve got him.” You say. 
It doesn’t take you long to catch up to him, but by then he’s already completely disassociated and in complete panic. You take him by the arm, leading him to an empty alley, careful only to touch the clothed parts of his arm. Even with your hands in gloves, you are worried any kind of touch to his exposed hands will send him spiraling further. 
He collapses to the ground in an unceremonious heap. 
“You were supposed to follow her,” He says.
“Inej has it covered.” You reply, sitting down on the opposite side of the alley, a decent distance from him.  
There’s a moment of silence before you add, “Someone had to follow you. You can’t be by yourself when your…” And you don’t know how to finish the sentence. Traumatized? Panicking? Having a PTSD flashback to an event you refuse to discuss with anyone? “...like this.” 
It pains you to see him so deep in his own pain, so desperate to keep other people out of it. To keep you out of it. You place his gloves close to him, but far enough away that it doesn’t look like you’re trying to touch him.
He notices your gloves, “When did you-?”
“A while ago. There just in case-” And you cut yourself off with a sigh. In case this happened. “Do you want me to stay?”
Yes? Kaz thinks, but he’s still panicking too much to say anything. In fact, the thought sends him into even more of a panic, because he’s not ever had a thought like that before. 
“I’ll be on the other side of the alley. We’ll regroup once you’ve had a chance to calm down.” You say, leaving him to decompress.
XXXXX
“Nina wants an explanation,” Inej tells you as you watch over Kaz from a distance. He’s finally come out of the worst of it and is now trying to act like nothing happened. It’s a behavior that you simply have never gotten used to, despite years by his side. 
“Then tell her the truth.” You say.
“Which is?” Inej asks. She sometimes thinks you know more than she does, but that’s not really true. You both know exactly the same thing about Kaz- which is that Pekka Rollins killed his brother and that he absolutely cannot stand another person’s touch. 
“He had a panic attack.” You reply. “She’s not going to tell the others, is she?” 
“No. But I think Jesper should know. He hates it when we leave him out of the loop.” Inej states. 
“I think I’m going to try to talk to him this time. See what else is going on.” You say, watching as Kaz sits down, clearly deep in thought. 
“I’m not sure that’s a good idea.” 
“I didn’t think you’d be happy about that idea.” You say, cleaning the dirt from under your nails.
“He will open up when he’s ready.” Inej tries to reassure you.
“We both know he’d never be that vulnerable.”
“Then why ask?” She asks.
So I know how to fix it. 
“Let’s just get this over with, shall we? The world isn’t going to save itself.” You state, heading towards Kaz and the rest of the group to figure out the plan. Maybe you’ll ask him once all of this over.
XXXXX
“We should talk about what happened in the market.” You say, sitting on his desk. 
“Must we?” Kaz replies, lowering the newspaper he had been reading to meet your gaze.
“Yes.”
He set the paper aside, making his way over to you. He towers over you in a way he’s never done before, closer than he’s ever been. “What do you want to know?” 
“I want to know what happened.” 
“You saw what happened,” He says as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world.
“I want to know why, Kaz.” You respond. 
“Why?” He retorts. Is he flirting with you or just trying to get under your skin?
“I want to fix it. Or prevent it or- I don’t know! I just. I never want to see you like that again. I don’t want to see you suffer.” 
“It won’t happen again,” He reassures you, a gloved hand coming up to caress your face. You block it with the back of your forearm.
“Won’t it? Jesper told me what happened when you got thrown in that cart together. I watched as you tried not to panic while helping Inej clean her wounds. Do you think I can’t sense your heart rate when people get too close to you? That I don’t know exactly how your body reacts? Who hurt you so badly that you can’t even be physically near another person without wanting to vomit?” You ramble, letting out all of the questions and feelings you’ve been holding inside for all of these years.
“Pekka Rollins” He replies, the answer he gave you before. It’s always been the answer, and in some ways, it really is the truth. 
“Kaz… I just want you to let me in. You carry so much inside of you that you let nobody see. But I want to see it… I want to understand.” You say, and you want to reach out and hug him but you know he can’t receive that kind of affection. 
But then he does something you aren’t excepting. Slowly, he begins to remove his gloves. He sets them on the fireplace, one by one. One of his ungloved hands traces its way up the side of your neck and rests on your cheek. You gasp at his touch. 
And then you are staring into each other’s eyes, into each other’s souls. Like you’ve always seen each other- like you’ve always known. Kaz plays his cards close to his chest, but you don’t. Nina has teased you for it relentlessly.
When he kisses you, you can’t believe this is happening. It’s perfect. These are things he would only do in dreams. These are things he would only say in dreams. These are…
“This is a dream,” Kaz tells you, or rather, the Kaz of your imagination tells you as he ends the kiss.
“I know” You reply, opening your eyes.
You see Inej hunched over you and taste something disgusting in your mouth. 
“We were poisoned. Go to the door- Wylan will give you another antidote.” She says before leaving to go wake up Jesper.
You crawl your way to the door, still feeling the lingering effects of the poison. “Wylan. Antidote?” You croak.
Once you are given the butterfly, you make your way over to Kaz, the only person still under the effects of the poison. 
XXXXX
Kaz is confused. He wakes up, back on that mountain of bodies in the river, but his brother is alive.
“Jordie?” He asks, confused.
His brother stares at him, full of rage. Without a word, he begins to drown him. Just when Kaz has almost lost all of his oxygen, his brother pulls him back out from under the water.
“Who are you without your vengeance?” Jordie yells. 
“Kaz. Wake up” You say, one gloved hand cupping the side of his face, the other moving his jaw to try to force him to chew. He can’t hear you.
“What is the worth of life if you have no one left to fight for?” Jordie asks, before plunging him under the water again. 
“Kaz” You repeat, and he hears you this time. “You’re going to be alright” 
You come into focus in a water gaze, the remnants of the poison still giving a dreamlike quality. It takes him a few moments to realize that it’s no longer a hallucination and that both of your hands are on his face. Gloved hands.
You pull your hands away from his face as soon as you see him come out of it. 
“Sorry,” You say. 
You don’t have to apologize, he thinks. 
XXXXX
“Kaz, a word?” You say, wanting to get him alone. You’ve obtained the Neshyenyer and are getting ready to head to East Ravka. 
He nods in acknowledgment while the others in the room make no effort to leave.
“Alone.” You add, so the others get the picture. 
Everyone exchanges suspicious glances with one another except Kaz, who is only looking at you. Nina winks as she passes you on her way out of the room. You resist the urge to roll your eyes. 
You position yourself by the door, a good five feet away from him, in order to respect his boundaries. The boundaries that you’ve consistently had to cross recently to protect him.
“What do you need?” He asks. 
“Are you okay?” You ask. 
Of course he isn’t, but you want him to admit that. You suspect he’ll respond with something defensive, something clever, something like “Why wouldn’t I be okay?” or “Why does it matter?” or “We have a job to do”. For it to be like the dream. 
“Are you?” He responds.
“No. And I’m getting a little tired of pretending I am.” You answer honestly. The difference between you, and all the other crows, and hell, everyone else that you interact with, is that you aren’t emotionally repressed. You don’t hide it under a sense of revenge, don’t mask it with a face of no emotion, and don’t keep your true thoughts and feelings hidden under a veil of humor. He told you it was a weakness, once. 
“You’re still wearing the gloves.” He comments.
You glance down at your gloved hands and then back at him. “So I am.”
“You don’t have to do that for me.” You don’t have to do anything for me, He thinks. 
“I know.” You say, “I just don’t want to hurt you.” 
There is a long silence as you look at each other, not really sure what to say.
“I wanted you to stay,” He states, looking away from you. Almost as if he’s ashamed that he’s allowing himself to be this vulnerable. “When you asked me in the alley… I wanted you to stay.”
You feel your breath catch in your throat at the admission. Maybe the poison-induced hallucination wasn’t too farfetched after all. 
“I’ll stay.” You take a step towards him, still unsure of his boundaries. Still unsure how close or far you can get without causing him pain. 
“Will you tell me why?” You ask. I can’t help you through something when I don’t know why it causes you pain.
“I don’t know if I can,” It’s the first genuine answer you’ve gotten out of him in a long time. 
“When we were poisoned I- you were in my hallucination,” You admit, taking a few more steps closer to him.  
“What happened in your hallucination?” He asks. Throughout this, he’s made no effort to move from his seat at the table, but his heartbeat has become steadily faster, stronger. 
“I was angry at you- but you seemed to understand why. And you took your gloves off and touched me and- that’s how I knew it wasn’t real.” You reply. “What did you hallucinate?” You add, not wanting him to ruminate on your confession too long. 
“My brother was drowning me,” He states.
“I’m sorry,” You say, reflexively. 
“He asked me, ‘What is the worth of life if you have no one left to fight for?’ and then I saw you,” You’ve never seen him sheepish before- vulnerability doesn’t exactly suit him. 
“Oh,” You breathe. “So what now?” 
“We go to East Ravka.”
“Right,” You say, trying not to let the disappointment show in your voice. “Time to save the world. Again.” 
“We’re not saving it. We’re just getting paid.” Kaz responds.
You steel yourself, trying not to beat yourself up for thinking you were finally getting somewhere. That this would be anything more than words.
"After. We will discuss us after." He adds, quelling your doubt. "We still have a job to do."
You nod.
"I'm here if you need me." You say, turning to leave.
"I know," Kaz replies.
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