Chapter Text
inej
"that was a dick move nina"
"saints inej" nina jumped, nearly dropping the plate shed been storing neatly in their cabinets. the suli girl seemed to appear out of thin air "you scared me half to death. how did you even get there?"
inej ignored her. "its not what we agreed on either. they're going to kill eachother"
ninas face hardened, but not before inej could catch the flash of emotion that swept across her features. guilt maybe. or contempt. "let them. it'll be one less problem for me to worry about"
"what do you have against jesper" inej decided to humour her, allowing her to avoid the real issue a little longer. "nothing. i just know he'll win"
inej shot a skeptical glance at the well over 6 foot fjerdan who was standing in their living room, moving furniture in a way that made his muscles flex. "you sure about that?"
nina leaned in as if she was about to tell a secret and said in an undertone."jes keeps guns under his bed" inej blanched. not because it wasn't true- she knew it was- but because she didn't know how nina could possibly know.
she'd found out one of the few times she'd been over at his house after theater practised when they'd been running lines. she dropped her script on the floor and had bent down to find one of the pearl set handles poking out from its box.
"what's that" she'd asked inquisitively. jesper had looked guilty, though it wasn't as if it was illegal. he had a license for them, it just wasn't the most normal thing for a seventeen year old boy to carry. they'd been a gift from his mother, he'd explained and then hastily changed the subject. he never talked about his mother to the point where inej didn't even know if she was dead or had just left.
inej decided she didn't really want to know if nina had gone snooping in their friends room already. "yes but he wouldn't use them on a person. anyway thats besides the point. you put matthias in that room to torture him a bit and i want to know why."
nina stared at her for a second and then went right back to stacking plates. she appeared to be trying to ignore the question. but inej had been told she had a gift for making her silences heard and right now she turned that gift on nina.
it took a few minutes for her to break.. "oh all right. he.... I.... we" she started again "i may have- can we please not do this here" she cast a furtive glance in Matthias's direction.
inej rolled her eyes "fine. our room then" she said, ushering nina along. she spared a look for the unstacked plates but didn't dare argue. inej had been double crossed with the room arrangements- and she wanted to know why
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nina told the story up to the part where matthias left her room, and inej listened quietly. she paused for a moment, and thinking she had finished inej spoke. "why are you mad at him nina...... that doesn't make sense"
"shhh im not finished" nina said dramatically. she may have been upset, but she was still a storyteller at heart. "so obviously i felt awful about what i did, and this morning i came to matthias's house early to apologise and.."
inej hummed encouragingly "saints he was like a different person. I-I dont even.. he called me all these awful things, said that i had been leading him on and.." nina blinked sadly "i know what i did was wrong, but i dont think it deserved that reaction"
"so what? you messed with him a bit. nina that is not a healthy reaction" inej didn't even know what to do with this information. they had both been equally shitty which should cancel out but they were also equally stubborn so it wasn't really working.
"i know i know. but its better then burning down his grandmothers house so..."nina made an elaborate shrugging motion.
"you- I- what? why do you know where his grandmother lives I.." inej looked up to find ninas face lit up with soft laughter "you... i really hope your messing"
"i am. mostly" inej was perplexed by her sudden switch up. shed gone from tearful to giggling in less then a minute and now she looked up at her, suddenly serious again"are you still mad at me? do you think im a bad person?"
inej shook her head slowly "im not mad. it was just a mostly harmless prank. a prank that was only half justified but ill let it slide this time. as for... nina you're not a bad person. at least not anymore then the rest of us. you know what i think" nina cocked her head "i think we're all a little fucked up here. we're either going to fit perfectly or completely explode"
"maybe both" nina quipped, .still slightly tearful
"maybe both" inej agreed. she held out her hands, and nina didn't hesitate to barrel into her roommate, almost knocking her over on the bed.
but inej couldn't stop thinking about that conversation. nina was probably right- they were definitely going to rub eachother the wrong way more then once- but at the end of the day they understood each others struggles better then anyone else could. and that would help them find a balance
she hoped, anyway. she seriously didn't want to cover the cost of any fire damage done to this house...
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Matthias
stupid stupid stupid. there was a voice chanting in matthias's head and it had been there ever since nina left his house that morning. it only seemed to get louder with every pointed non-look she threw in his face. he wasn't even really aware of what he'd said to her, only that it was horrible and unforgivable and unrepeatable and way too close to his fathers ideology for comfort.
in the village he was from, men were seen as gods and women as less then human. property even. Matthias had seen it first hand in his own parents relationship, where his fathers word was the law and his mother wasn't deigned smart enough to have an opinion. even his sister was told to just "sit there amd look pretty" because a woman should be "seen and not heard". matthias had learnt enough since leaving to know that was complete gendered bullshit, but arguing with his father was like trying to move a mountain. he'd spent his whole life in that village, having his ego stroked and he wasn't ready to give that up easily.
matthias on the other hand, had learned quickly after arriving in ketterdam that he couldn't go around terrorising women, and frankly he was too shy to anyway. he preferred to keep to himself which probably would've gotten him bullied , if he wasn't built like a grizzly bear and on the rowing team. as it was people thought he was snobbish and looked down on them because he wasn't sociable and didn't try to make friends. really he was scared hed somehow offend them if he spoke.
the kerch school system had done its best to beat his fathers misogynistic policies out of him, but sometimes he felt they were still there, clinging to his insides and threatening to bubble to the surface like a demon thirsty for blood. after all hed still spent most of his formative years being told he was objectively better then all the females around him. and when nina had come to him that morning he hadn't been able to keep the pot from bubbling over. hed let the insults spill out, feeding into the rage he felt at being rejected which had been building since hed left her room the night before.
when she left, he cried. well actually hed retreated into his own head when the demon came out and took about twenty minutes to get back out, during which time he succeeded in splitting his knuckles punching a brick wall and smashing a glass bottle off the floor. but after that hed cried heaving silent tears, all the while praying his father wouldn't come to his room and find him like that. Matthias could think of a thousand things that could of happened in that scenario, none of them any good.
now he wasn't even really sure what to do. he knew he needed to apologize, but djel nina didn't make it easy. she was petty and childish refusing to meet his eyes and sticking him in a room with jesper, who although he was sure was a lovely person, was matthias's opposite in every way. itd been less then three hours they were already driving eachother up the walls.
he'd returned from wylans room to find the zemini sat on his bed holding something that was very suspiciously shaped like a gun. the object was on his lap and he ran his fingers over it methodically. from Matthias's angle it almost looked like he had tears in his eyes.
he hadn't wanted to assume the worst, but as he stepped into the room, his heavy footsteps announcing his presence, his roommate made a visibly panicked face and quickly shoved the object back into its box..
"jesper.." matthias started not really knowing how to approach... whatever that was. but jesper didn't appear to see him. he blinked, a single tear rolling down his face slowly, and switched back on the obnoxiously loud music that had made matthias leave in the first place, diving right back into unpacking.
that reaction alone pretty much confirmed his theory- his roommate was keeping a gun in their room. it was at this point matthias begun to wonder if this house had been such a good idea. they were only one day in- and so much had gone wrong already. but maybe that meant it couldn't get worse. they'd hit rock bottom
right?
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despite the constant distraction, matthias had been able to get a lot more done in his room then he'd originally thought possible. that was mostly because hed felt too bad to bother wylan again, inej was with nina the whole day and he knew better then to bother kaz brekker in his current mood (or ever) so he stayed put and dealt with the noise.
and there had been a lot of it. matthias had broken halfway through the day and asked him to turn off the music (he'd complied with little argument which made Matthias feel like hed been too quick to judge him - maybe they would get along okay after all) but that had been nearly worse because now matthias could hear everything jesper was doing. he had the attention span of a goldfish and flitted haphazardly from one task to another which had nearly made matthias's head explode. he was a firm believer in finishing one thing before moving onto the next a value his roommate clearly didn't share.
so honestly it was a little surprising, when wylan told them the take away they'd ordered as a celebration for their first day in the house had arrived and matthias was mere tweaks away from being finished. hed been working in silence for the last hour, because somehow jespers method had proved faster (or maybe he just had less stuff) and hed left to find conversation he wasn't getting from matthias. after he left time flew and matthias hadn't realised how much hed gotten done until suddenly he was just done.
he pattered down the stairs to find pizza boxes laid out on the floor and quite literally could not have been happier. he'd reached flow state around the time the others had stopped for lunch and had decided to forgo food all together in the interest of a little peace and quiet. now he was absolutely starved and sat down on the tiles to grab a slice. nobody had started work on the house furniture yet, all too preoccupied with their own rooms, so they were having to make do for now and honestly he was too hungry to care.
for a couple of second an uncomfortable silence fell over the room before inej broke it, being the sweetheart that she was. "so... how did everybody's day go"
matthias decided to grab this opening and run with it, before nina poisoned everyone against him and made them think he was rude and cold."it went quite well actually. im almost done, i have like five more small things to do"
inej beamed at him "thats great! me too actually. do you think you're going to stay here tonight?"
"i.. uh" matthias hadn't really thought about it. even before being roomed with the human version of an golden retriever, he hadn't thought hed get enough done in his room that itd be livable and had told his mum hed be home that night. but his room was actually quite nice and if he texted his mum... he didn't think shed necessarily mind if he stayed. on the other hand …"is anyone else?" he had stayed overnight in a house that was empty before and it was not an experience he was eager to repeat.
thankfully inej nodded "yeah definitely. i was kind of planning on it and my aunts not home tonight anyway so id just be alone and i hate that"
matthias chuckled internally at the similarity but stayed silent, waiting. jesper, wylan and kaz all murmured their agreement to stay as well, but still matthias said nothing. then finally nina shook her head regretfully. "ugh sorry my parents are having guests round tonight and i have to entertain" she said accompanied by a heavy eye roll. matthias remembered her telling him about these guests back when they were still talking. apparently their son had a major crush on her and could be very persistent when he wanted.
"but nina darling you live to entertain" jesper said, noting the sarcasm. "not this crowd" she replied with a dark look. matthias had almost forgotten what they were talking about, perplexed by how nina could still be so alluring while glaring when kaz cleared his throat.
"matthias are you staying tonight" matthias immediately knew two things. that hed been caught staring at nina by the demjin himself and that said demjin knew exactly what had happend between them somehow and was treating this as his personal soap opera. damn Matthias hated him
"uh yeah. i think i will" he added hastily, tearing his gaze from a certain vision in red. kaz gave him a look. shit caught again.
"wait guys. since its our first night together why dont we have a sleepover in the sitting room. like roommate bonding" inej exclaimed clearly trying to keep the peace.
kaz was not impresses "more roommate bonding? and are we seriously not going to sleep in the rooms we just spent all day setting up?" he said glancing around the barren room
"kaz dont be a buzzkill" jesper said, shooting to inejs defence "you can never have too much bonding. and it'll be fine. we can bring up some duvets and mattress's. ooh and we can go get snacks!"
"ugh im so jealous" nina said, pouting " dont have too much fun without me"
"we could never" jesper grinned " hey who wants to come to the shop with me. we can drop nina at the bus stop on the way"
before anyone could speak kaz pointed directly at him and said "take matthias. i trust him not to crash my car"
matthias bristled despite the compliment. kaz was so infuriating it was hard not to "we could just take me car" he said
"even better" and they were shoved out the door before matthias could realise what had just happened. it was only when they climbed into matthias's ford focus (a very practical car that kaz had made fun of a day earlier) that Kaz's plan dawned on him. he was now trapped in a metal can with a fuming nina amd a hyper jesper for the next who knows how long. great
new motto: always question the demjins motives
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the ride to the bus stop had been tense but bearable, as jesper had kept up a constant flow of conversation and had managed to have either matthias or nina engaged in it at any one time. when they dropped nina off it became easier to breathe and harder to think because of jesper questions. just the way matthias liked it.
despite what jesper had said, the bus stop was nowhere near the store they were going to and they had to drive for a good half an hour after letting nina out. around the twenty minute mark, jesper had gone quiet and started staring at his phone. eventually he seemed to give up and slammed his phone into the cup holder with a sigh.
matthias hesitated for a minute unsure if he should say anything, but then the people pleaser in him took over and he asked just to make sure his roommate was okay. "what's up?"
jesper sighed again "this guys just keeps texting me and i dont know how to get him to stop. like we literally met up a few days ago and he already on me to hang out tonight. i feel kinda bad refusing but..."
he was slightly confused "why wouldn't you wanna see him. i mean i know we have the roommate thing but thats not that important. ninas not even going" matthias couldn't understand. he never passed up the opportunity to meet a friend.
" yeah i dont know. like he's attractive and everything but hes just not..." okay not a friend then. matthias didn't hear the rest of what jesper said. he was too busy thinking. he hadn't known that jesper liked guys. like obviously going to the same school since he was fifteen, he might've had an inkling but itd never been in his face stark information before. and it wasn't like he had a problem with it personally- but his culture certainly did. in fact where he was from it was still illegal with massive punishment attached. it was safe to say matthias went a bit tense.
"…so what do you think" jesper finished
"huh" yep matthias had definitely zoned out. now he struggled to find an answer that wouldn't let jesper know he hadn't been listening. "uuh yeah sound good"
based on the look jesper gave him that was not the right answer. luckily they had arrived at the chosen shop and matthias bolted from the car before he could question it.
fuck his fjerdan values were really messing this up for him. he was going to need to find a way to keep himself in check, before he said something he'd really regret…