Work Text:
Inej had no knives on her. With hindsight, that should've been enough to set off alarm bells, but it was hard to notice anything when all Kaz could see were the hands unfastening the buttons of her vest. Details are, in such circumstances, as minor as they are essential: it all depends on what you choose to focus on.
Kaz Brekker, of course, chose the smooth expanse of skin peeking from underneath the fabric of her clothes.
“What are you doing,” he asked, and it didn't sound like a question as much as it sounded like a scolding. Which was ridiculous, really, given how much he needed her to keep going, every inch of his body alight with a desire so strong that he couldn't contain it.
“You don't want it?”
No, he didn't. He didn't want it, for want was such a small word, insignificant against the ache he felt as she undid yet another button, and then another one, and then another one. There she was, then, naked chest and breeches still on, hair let down in a coal-black waterfall on her shoulder.
No, want didn't even begin to cover it: he burned, and he bled, and what he saw consumed him from within. But still he stood there, weak and hollowed out, begging for more.
A devoted pilgrim at the feet of Sankta Inej.
She took his hand and pulled him to the bed. He sat in front of her, still clothed, with heat pooling in his stomach and lower belly. His fingers itched with the need to reach out and touch, brush away the hair covering one of her breasts so that no inch of her skin would be blocked out of his view. What an embarrassment, to be human and having to admit it to himself.
“No armor,” she said.
He looked down at his gloves, shiny leather catching the glint of the candles. One by one, he tugged at the fingers, then pulled the gloves off. The air in the room brushed against his naked skin and made him shiver.
After that, things seemed to go faster. She was out of her breeches, he was out of his clothes, and the Ketterdam night stuck to their bodies like a freshly washed set of sheets – cool and slightly damp, in contrast with the feverish warmth radiating from within them both. Kaz's hands trembled when he raised them to cup her face.
Reverently, he brushed his lips against hers. The kiss was brief and light and soft, because Kaz didn't know the way and was also scared of what his touch would do to her – like she could be sullied by that contact alone, corroded by the desperation coursing in his veins, the selfishness with which he took and took and took because he didn't know how to give anything back.
He kissed her with the bitter taste of an apology on his tongue and a prayer burning underneath his skin: Inej, Inej, Inej. A name, an invocation.
Then her hand slipped down on his side, his stomach, his thigh. Between his legs, where the heat was becoming unbearable. A spike of pleasure went up Kaz's spine, so intense that the world around him seemed to shake for a second – but something was wrong, the world didn't stop, and suddenly Inej wasn't there and his bed was empty and his erection pressed uncomfortably against his clothes. Untouched.
A dream, then – of course.
How foolish.
With shame curling in his belly, he rolled to the side and let his hand trace the same path Inej's own had trailed in his mind. He stroked himself, closing his eyes to conjure up the images he had just left behind: Inej, naked and so close that he could taste her in every breath. Feel her warmth all over him. His hand was now her hand, wrapped around him with the sweetest pressure, and the murmur of the city outside the windows was her voice. It spoke of long years spent waiting, and of a satisfaction that could only exist in his dreams.
“It doesn't matter,” dream-Inej said. “It's worth it. So worth it, in the end.”
Worth it, worth it, worthy.
As those words echoed in his mind, Kaz came against his belly and over his fingers. He let out a long exhale through the nose and pressed his face against the pillow, still dizzy with pleasure and out of breath. Then everything came crashing down on him: the sweat covering every inch of his body, the hair sticking to his neck and forehead, the mess he'd made. He wiped his hand against the bedsheets and grimaced, disgusted with his own weakness.
Inej had told him that she wanted him, once. The only thing he had to do was cross their distance with a gloveless hand: something mundane, something normal, and yet Kaz was too broken to get her what she wanted.
An armor, she'd called it then, something meant to shield and protect – but what good was an armor when the only thing it could do was hurt you? You wear an armor with pride, while Kaz wore his own with fear and shame, thrashing against it like a wild animal caught in a trap.
No, that was no armor: it was a cage.
Not even his Crows could get him out of it.