Take Me Out (Like Murder or on a Date?)
Hi @andromeda3116 I heard you were looking for some Kaz and Inej fics so I pulled this from the depths of my drafts…. I hope you like it!
“You need to get out more, she said. It’ll be fun, she said,” Inej mumbles to herself as she pushes her way through the busy sidewalk, pulling her purple scarf tighter around her neck, “Since when do I listen to Nina?”
Finally reaching the bar at the corner of the street, Inej stops to fix her braid, giving up after the loose strands refuse to stay put. She pulls her phone out of her bag, scrolling through her date’s profile one more time, whispering the details to herself to help her remember.
“Kaz Brekker. 21. Search History Includes: how to kill someone off and make it look like an accident, which wounds bleed the most, high quality knives. Honestly, this guy sounds like a serial killer, but I’ve written so many of those that I think I can handle it. I’m a writer. I write crime novels for goodness sake. Did I think that a search history based matchmaking app would put me with anyone else?”
Inej switches apps to text Nina.
“If I die, I’m not leaving you anything.”
“Sure, honey. Enjoy your date ;)”
Taking a deep breath, she turns off her phone and steps into the bar.
Immediately, she locks eyes with a painfully handsome pale dark-haired boy her age who’s seated in the farthest corner of the bar. They seem to take each other in, Inej noting his slicked back hair and his black trench coat placed on one end of the booth. After a few moments of staring, he raises an eyebrow, and Inej feels her face flushing, but she refuses to show any kind of weakness, lifting her chin slightly and resolutely not making any eye contact with anyone, including the boy.
She walks towards the booth, and the boy stands to greet her, towering over her, even in her three inch boot heels.
“You must be Inej,” he says, a barely noticeable smirk tugging at his lips.
“And you must be Kaz,” she replies, sitting down as he motions for her to take a seat.
As if taking the hint to fix the awkward silence that follows, Kaz orders her a drink, repeating her request for an old-fashioned. The drink is eventually placed in front of her by Kaz, but remembering his search history, she doesn’t take a drink just yet.
“So,” Inej begins, “what do you do?” At the apprehensive look in his eyes, she continues, “The app matches us using our search history so I’m not going to be surprised by anything.”
“Well, Inej,” he drawls, a sharp smile slowly spreading across his face, “if you must know, I work in extermination, specifically in the homo sapiens sector of the field.”
“Oh so you’re a serial killer,” she replies bluntly, not batting an eye, “I’ll be honest, I was expecting that,” she pulls her laptop from her bag, “Now I was wondering if you could help me edit this death scene in my story. So this character got stabbed in the back just to the right of her spine by her shoulder, and she collapses immediately. Is that accurate? I was hoping you’d have some experience.”
Surprisingly, Kaz’s pale face turns bright red, and he stutters slightly as he answers.
“Actually… the shock of the wound might be enough to keep the victim from feeling it until they actually see the knife sticking out of their back.”
“Interesting,” Inej muses, editing her chapter as Kaz becomes visibly more flustered as she whispers the narration of the death scene under her breath, “Also, I was wondering if you could help me come up with a way to kill off this character. She’s one of the most loved characters in the story and so her death needs to be completely devastating.”
“Maybe keep her alive, but still dying until one of her loved ones comes in to see her? And make it a fairly slow death, but she shouldn’t be able to speak. Choking up her own blood maybe?”
By now, Inej’s hands are shaking slightly as she rapidly types out an outline of her character’s demise, and she’s grinning uncontrollably.
Without thinking, she reaches for the old-fashioned that she’d avoided drinking before, but before it could reach her lips, Kaz slaps it out of her hand. The glass shatters on the floor and the liquid bubbles and smokes violently when it hits the polished concrete floor.
Inej slowly turns to Kaz, who is shaking slightly and bright red with shame.
“OhmygodInejI’msosorrythisisjustusuallyhowIgetmyvictimsandIwantedtotrypoisonthistimebutitturnsoutthatyour’rereallyreallygreatandreallyprettyandexactlymytypeandI’msososososorryandI-”
“Kaz,” Inej cuts him off, “I had guessed you were a serial killer before I even walked in, so of course I didn’t take the drink at first, and I wasn’t planning on ever drinking from it, ok? Calm down. I just wasn’t thinking.”
At this point, Kaz won’t look her in the eyes.
“Anyways,” she tries to change the subject, “I’ve been talking a lot. How about you ask some questions?”
“Sure….. I guess….” Kaz sits for a few moments, his fingers tapping at a near frantic pace on the cushions of the booth, “So hypothetically………. If you wanted to say…… I don’t know……. Murder someone without getting caught……… how would you do it?”
Immediately, Inej responds.
“Air shot. Duh. Maybe somewhere like between the toes. It’ll look like a heart attack. However, I do prefer more flair with my deaths. My specialty is writing about some sort of knife fighting. I’ve also been taking self defense classes with knives ever since my junior year of high school.”
At this point, it’s obvious to everyone in the room, even though none of them had heard their conversation, that Kaz is long gone and already planning some incredibly elaborate proposal for Inej in his head.
All too soon, the bar is closing, and the owner escorts the pair outside into the cold. They stand under the streetlight, Kaz pulling his black trench coat tighter around him and carefully adjusting Inej’s scarf with his black gloved hands. Inej doesn’t bother guessing what the gloves are for. Her current murderer is constantly wearing black leather gloves, not too different from Kaz’s.
Eventually, Kaz offers to walk Inej home and they slowly make their way to Inej’s apartment. Ever vigilant, Inej keeps a hand on her emergency call button on her keychain, just in case.
Once they reach the front door of her apartment building, Inej carefully keeps the code and her apartment number hidden from Kaz’s vision, but just as she’s about to step back into the building, Kaz pulls on her scarf slightly and bends down to press his lips to her cheek before stepping back out of the doorway.
Inej smiles and reaches out to him, pushing his now messy dark hair out of his eyes, before turning away and walking towards the elevators. Once the elevator arrives, she steps into it, and realizing that Kaz is still standing there, sends a wicked half-smirk in his direction as the doors close, not failing to notice the flush of red that makes its way to his ears.
Oh, she is definitely going to write about this.
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