#kazling

I just really love making Aleksander do weird possessive stuff before they’re in a relationship and Kaz just kind of having to let it go because how the fuck is meant to respond. I need to study him under a microscope

omg I can totally see him getting weird and possessive about not wanting Kaz to do something for anything else and telling the guy if he wanted coffee he should have brought his own secretary lsdfjsilljf

I think he would be the world's weirdest mix of like....wanting to show off how competent Kaz is and how he's better than everyone else's? very taming of the shrew ending 'my wife is the most well behaved wife' but with his secretary being the best. but he also wouldn't want anyone else to ever get to tell Kaz what to do but him.

of course the solution is to just make sure he's always on top of keeping Kaz so busy no one even has time to give him any other orders and everyone else can see how good he is at multitasking <3 <3

He'd thought Aleksander was simply pretending to be righteous -- the town's biggest hypocrite, who will accuse Kaz and all of his friends of being corrupted by the devil out of sick and twisted vengeance because Kaz refused to give in to him. Surely, a man like that knows who he is. It must eat him up inside, the cognitive dissonance between what he wants and who he claims to be. He makes it Kaz's fault.

It's insidious. It's also inescapable. The worst thing, the thing that makes him feel sick to even think about it, is that he would have given in if it would have saved his friends. The man dedicating every second of his life to tormenting Kaz for rejecting him isn't even good at it. He had thought to send Kaz some kind of message by accusing them along with him and executing them first, as though it would scare into compliance. He would have said anything, given anything to save them. Instead, his only choice was to watch. It could not have been anything but cruelty.

Kaz's time in captivity…may have shown him otherwise. Everything he had thought he had known about Aleksander Morozova changed once he realized that he isn't a man pretending to be righteous, fighting with his wants and desires and taking it all out on Kaz. He genuinely believes that Kaz has given himself over to the devil.

so I read a lot of mating hunt fics and decided I wanted to write one for darkazolai and the actual mating hunt bit I have a pretty clear vision for, what I’m struggling with is the backstory T-T

my first idea and what ideally would like to go with is Kaz presenting as an omega when he robs the bank that ends up in resulting in his leg breaking, except he jumps down to get away from the alphas he’s surrounded by and adrenaline carries him into an abandoned building where Aleksander finds him and Kaz snarls at him, fully prepared to attack him, which impresses Aleksander because omega in heat + broken leg still being ready to fight???? interesting. He sort of just watches him for a while but eventually Kaz passes out and the rest of his heat passes in a blur and next thing he knows he’s on a ship to Ravka. He runs away several times until Aleksander finally gets him to explain why he wants to return to Ketterdam and he helps Kaz get revenge. After that, over the years he slowly helps Kaz through his touch aversion and once he’s in a good enough place he tells Kaz he’d like him to participate in the mating hunt this year. Kaz’s instinct is to be like hell no but then he thinks about the fact Aleksander helped him get his vengeance and also has been taking care of him for years for seemingly No Reason because he’s not Grisha or his soldier or anything, he doesn’t really know what he is to Aleksander so he feels like owes Aleksander for all that and agrees because of that, he assumes Aleksander wants him to secure a political advantageous match in the hunt and he also assumes the reason Aleksander enters as well is because he wants to make sure Kaz behaves himself and doesn’t like kill an alpha pursing him. Coincidentally, Prince Nikolai is also entering a mating hunt for the first time, that has nothing to do with him Kaz is sure. He and Kaz are friends in this au btw

the issues I’m having with this backstory is whether Aleksander’s behaviors make sense? like just finding Kaz interesting feels like a weak motivation to kidnap him and while I can see him becoming obsessed enough after getting to know Kaz to keep bringing him back as he runs away to Ketterdam, the initial reasoning feels weak. And why he wouldn’t just claim Kaz himself after Kaz is recovered enough, why risk him being claimed by someone else in a mating hunt? My only thought is plausible deniability, like everyone is going to be side eyeing their relationship already so just claiming Kaz would be a terrible look. But with a mating hunt, he can blame it on them being a victim of hormones and instinct and not like he had planning on doing that to Kaz for years, I mean no one is going to really believe that but it’s slightly better PR. That’s what I’m worried about but if anything else sticks out to you please let me know! Also I don’t think this is necessarily anymore messed up than anything else I’ve read but I will acknowledge Aleksander having known Kaz sense he was so young (14) would make people uncomfortable but they do nothing sexual until the mating hunt, in which Kaz is 19 which I hope helps make it a little more tolerable

also I’m So Sorry I know this is so long already but I do feel obligated to share the other backstory idea I’ve come up with (I have not thought of this in nearly as much depth as the one above full disclosure)

my second thought was Jordie lives au, he’s Grisha he travels to join the Second Army and obviously Kaz comes with him, so Kaz wouldn’t have participated in a mating hunt before because Jordie being protective of him (or maybe he has participated before just never been caught) but eventually Aleksander convinces him to let Kaz participate. I’m hesitant about this because I don’t really know how to approach Kaz’s touch aversion with this because I don’t like out right erasing it, even when writing smut I like to acknowledge it exists/existed even if I don’t explore the recovery in detail and I’m not sure how to approach it in a Jordie lives au

anyway again sorry for how long this 😭 I’d just really appreciate opinions/advice

Hello!!! I do think you're cooking, and I can also see why you'd be struggling with that backstory point...hmmm......

I could almost see it working out better the other way around? where Nikolai takes Kaz in since he has canon reasons to be in Ketterdam and actually is respectful and they have some kind of friends to lovers arc and he encourages Kaz to join the hunt (maybe there's something about that being the only way royalty can find mates??) but the Darkling gets fixated on him and decides this will be the first one he joins.

Otherwise, there are a few options I could think of. maybe giving Kaz some kind of weird mystery about him, like powers he doesn't know he has? (make Kaz the sun summoner-- who said that???) or some reincarnation of a past lover like Ludo ksdjfkldlj or maybe male omegas in general are extremely rare and the Darkling is enough of a freak that he is specifically hoping to be able to have Kaz when he's old enough. and that's obviously such a bad look he goes for the hunt angle because he's already overconfident that ofc he'll win and then there will be less questions. i think that's a good instinct when keeping in mind the way that the darkling views himself. he would also be just as determined to convince himself that the way he approaches kaz is healthy even if it's not.

as to the second point re: the possible Jordie lives angle, in the AU I'm currently exploring with sumatraizam I've kept him traumatized for basically that same reason sljdflsj I love Kaz's character and personality and worldview and so much of that is shaped by his trauma that it feels like a different character to me if you remove it....so we have simply found other ways to traumatize him. Ketterdam is still not a safe place (considering they were scammed and lost all their fortune in the first place) so there could be any number of ways Kaz could still get traumatized. especially if (in the case of our AU) they were separated by some outside forces so Jordie couldn't protect him like he would have wanted. anyway. much to consider.

Kaz doesn't exactly love the idea of getting married, but he does love the security that comes along with it. Tax benefits (not that he even does his taxes), legal protectioon, not to mention the Morozova fortune.

Aleksander is old. Older than him, at least. He has no other family or anyone who he would even consider leaving his considerable fortune to aside from Kaz. Even if Kaz can't take it anymore and decides to get a divorce, he could easily take half. Marriage is a completely reasonable thing for Kaz to decide on here.

He also doesn't think he would mind waking up to him every day for the rest of his life, letting him cook for him and clean for him (and fuck him, not that it's a consideration) and always manage to say exactly what Kaz needs to hear when Kaz needs to hear it. So maybe Kaz is a gold digger…and maybe he could also be just a tiny bit in love.

continuation of this fic where Nikolai is possessed by the Darkling

Something impossible is currently wearing his boyfriend's face, and Kaz is too busy being pinned to a wall by shadows to begin to try and get him back.

The real Nikolai is still here. Inside. Kaz wants to believe it's a Tailored intruder, he wants to believe it more desperately than he's wanted to believe in anything since his brother's died, but the facts are not in Kaz's favor here.

"I'll kill you before I let you have him," Kaz hisses. "I don't care if he's in there; he'd rather die than have someone steal his life. If you know him well enough to pretend to be him, you know him well enough to know that."

"I'll certainly be interested in watching you try," Not-Nikolai says, his voice almost lazy sounding. "But no, that won't be happening. You will, however, be coming with me."