Chapter Text
It starts at the Crow Club, blooms to life under the hazy smoke and sickly yellow lighting.
Jesper is laughing, tossing cards and coins between his fingers like he’s doing party tricks, and Inej is at Jesper’s side slyly egging him on. They’re in the middle of some card game that Kaz isn’t paying attention to. They’re good friends, Kaz knows. It makes something jealous twist in his chest even as something warm and wondering unfolds in his stomach.
Nina and Matthias are at the table, too, but they’re not playing cards. Mostly, they’re drinking, until they’re not. Until they start listing toward each other, closer and closer.
Until Nina is attached to Matthias’s mouth, angling Matthias’s head with a firm hand, and Matthias is trembling under her touch, unashamed. It’s—
It’s not that Kaz is naive. He certainly isn’t— he hasn’t had the opportunity to be. Not about anything, sex included. He’s been in the Menagerie, seen the girls there, seen them mid-transaction, post-transaction, in the preparation process. He's prowled down Ketterdam in the dead of night, heard the whispering and the shuffling and the sighing, coins changing hands, lipstick stains on necks, purpling bruises against pale skin. Disheveled dresses and pulled-on hair and spit wet lips. He’s the bastard of the Barrel, and this has always been another form of currency. The oldest profession in the world. He’s not naive, and he’s not stupid.
But, all the same, he doesn’t touch anyone and nobody touches him. Just the thought of it sends his skin crawling. Nobody touches him, not even himself, and that’s the way he likes it. Oh, sure, it’s impossible to avoid entirely— the crush of a crowd inescapable, handshakes mandatory, so on and so forth— but no touch ever lingers. Not like Nina and Matthias are lingering.
He’s never seen anything so overtly sexual up close: he’s always fled before he could. The sick slide of mouth against mouth, the horrible wet clinging noises, made panic crawl up his throat and choke him. Made his hands shake and disgust twist across his face.
Kaz isn’t quite sure why watching Nina and Matthias is different. Maybe it’s because they’re his… whatever they are. His co-workers, co-conspirators. People he trusts, more or less.
He doesn’t know why it’s different, he just knows it is.
Nina pulls Matthias’s lip in between her teeth, and Matthias clutches strongly at her back, and she pulls his hair, and—
Jesper and Inej burst into cackling laughter, and suddenly Kaz is blinking quickly. Looking away, around the room, before glancing back and becoming fixated on the long line of Inej’s neck. He wonders if she’d pull on his hair, tilt his head, like Nina is doing to Matthias. Kaz wants to know, he wants to let her. Or maybe he just wants to want it.
His head is all twisted up, but for the first time his skin isn’t crawling. Not yet, anyway.
Kaz thinks, abruptly, that he might be drunk. Good, that's good. He can't be having these thoughts sober. He reaches across the table and steals Jesper’s drink, then swallows it in one go.
“Oi,” Jesper says, affronted, looking up from his cards. Inej cranes her head to look, then quickly glances away when Jesper twists to catch her.
“I know you’re cheating!” Jesper says, Kaz’s offense already forgotten.
“I’m not,” Inej denies peaceably.
Kaz can’t help it. He snorts, just a little. Jesper points at him and crows, like Kaz just proved his point. Inej glares.
A shiver runs down Kaz’s spine at the look. Her eyes are dark, and lined with black, and pierce through him like she’s thrown one of her Sanktas at him.
At Jesper’s left, Nina and Matthias are still attached at the mouth. Nina is running her hands across Matthias's shoulders, and Matthias’s chest is moving up and down. Panting. Kaz’s stomach tightens with panic while looking at them, at all that skin pressing together, even while he catalogues it all away. Takes notes. Drunkenly, he wonders at it, at how it must feel. Wonders if he would like it. If Inej would—
If Inej would.
But that’s only half the question, isn’t it? Half the problem. It’s if Kaz would. If he even could.
If he could tolerate all that touch, all that sliding and clinging and sweat and the puffs of air against his skin. Just the thought of it makes him queasy. The abstract images and the shapes that won’t quite crystallize in his mind. Or maybe that's the alcohol. He's really starting to feel it, now. The room is spinning.
Matthias moans, and Nina gives a high response, and Jesper and Inej lose the last of their patience. In unison, Jesper upturns a glass of water on Matthias’s head while Inej dumps her mostly-ice drink down the front of Nina’s dress.
Nina and Matthias separate with shrieks of surprise and laughter. Well, Nina is laughing. Matthias is mostly just surprised, and then briefly angry, before settling on embarrassed.
“Absolutely disgusting,” Jesper cheerfully states. “Send yourselves away, if you’re going to do that. Saints, you can borrow my room, if you’re really that hard up.”
“Do not fuck on this table,” Inej adds sternly. She fumbles for another shot and takes it in one go. Jesper points at her, nods, and takes another shot himself.
A jolt runs through Kaz at the word fuck coming from Inej. Something hot and sharp and new lights up inside him— almost in his stomach but not quite. Somewhere lower.
Kaz shifts uncomfortably. It’s all so— part of him wants to be mad, that this is happening. He has happily and determinedly avoided that part of life thus far. The sticky, embarrassing part of living that everyone else is so obsessed with. Has very purposefully shoved it away and blocked it off, his revulsion and panic at the thought of skin against skin making it impossible to think about sex for too long. Even alone, with himself. Eyes shut, his hands on himself feel too much like a stranger’s and make him panic. Eyes open, he becomes too aware of what he's doing, aware of the inherent foolishness and vulnerability of the action. And then the feeling of skin against skin catches up with him, and he panics anyway.
He’d written it off as a lost cause years ago and has never regretted it. Not until recently.
Not until—
Inej flips her hair over her shoulder. It’s loose tonight, and glistening under the dim lighting, and her lips are so full. Her eyes so dark.
Something in Kaz shakes and trembles. Drunk and swaying, he suddenly has much more sympathy for Matthias and the way he was shaking under Nina moments ago. If Inej can do this to him unknowingly, from across a table, then Kaz doesn’t want to consider what she could do with him pressed against her lips. If she were in his lap, like Nina was in Matthias’s lap.
Kaz stands abruptly, heat and anxiety and embarrassment fizzling through him. He staggers but catches himself with his cane.
“Boss?” Jesper asks, brow furrowed.
“I’m heading up,” Kaz announces, white-knuckling his cane with one hand and adjusting his shirt and vest with the other. He's fucking drunk. Too drunk.
“Already?” Nina asks, wiping at her mouth. “If we made you uncomfortable—” For the first time, she looks abashed.
Kaz just raises a brow at her, valiantly keeping his face blank and smooth, before saying, “No, I just had an early morning. Goodnight, everyone.” He sounds very professional. Not drunk at all.
He limps up the stairs, his cane clicking softly against the wood. He lists sideways and hits the rail hard. Inej’s eyes burn against his back the whole way up.
-~-
They crept up on him, his feelings for Inej.
At first, his feelings were professional. Bastard of the Barrel, aligning with a Suli girl who could scale walls and disappear into thin air. It only made sense. There was some pity there, too, mixed in with all that professionalism. Until he knew better. Until Inej knocked it out of him. Threatened to gut it out with her knives— and she was half serious, too.
That was the first time she made him laugh. It wasn’t the last. As time went by, it became more and more common.
Inej and Jesper can make him laugh like nothing else. Kaz doesn’t let himself think too deeply on why. He can’t afford the answer. Inej and Jesper are strange equals in many ways— a fair match in most things, including their ability to make Kaz smile.
Nobody has made him want like Inej, though. Nobody in his whole life. Sometimes, Kaz looks at her and wants to tear his own heart out by the veins. Wants to claw his face off. Wants to boil his skin until he can’t ever feel clammy and cold again and then crawl into Inej’s bed. If she wanted him to.
Sometimes, and this is Kaz’s most shameful secret— sometimes he imagines she does. Want him to, that is.
When he’s alone in the dark of his room sitting at his desk, he imagines her climbing through his window, hair wrapped, clothes all black. Her mouth quirked at the corner, eager to tell him something. He imagines Inej walking over to him, perching on the edge of his desk. So close their knees touch. Imagines her pressing their legs together, the firm pressure of it, the warm nearness.
And then his thoughts dissolve, his frame of reference abruptly disappearing. No one has touched his hair, stroked their fingers through it, and so he can’t imagine what Inej doing it would feel like. He can’t imagine her hands on his jaw, her nails down his spine, her clutching at his hips, because nobody has done it before. Saints, he can’t bleeding imagine her kissing him, because no one’s ever fucking done it.
He only has vague, instinctual daydreams, thoughts of pressure and wet and warm that he doesn’t know what to do with.
But even those vague, formless thoughts make him tingle. Make him shift behind his desk, good leg bouncing, hips shuffling slightly from side to side. When that happens, he feels stupid and young. He gets so frustrated with himself he storms to his bed and determinedly unbuttons his pants.
And then, without fail, every time, as soon as he touches himself he’s overwhelmed with panic. With the sickening feeling of skin on skin. The feeling of touch where there is never, ever touch. Any hardness he starts with immediately falters, and fails, and disappears, and Kaz is left afraid and half-trembling alone under the covers.
It’s absolutely disgusting. Embarrassing.
He can’t stop trying it, though. The build-up is addicting, even if it never goes anywhere. His body wants it bad, bad enough that the panic is almost worth it. Kaz, alone in his room, is always on a knife-edge of desperation.
Loving Inej comes easy. She makes it easy; she's easy to love. The curve of her smile, the flash of her knife. Her steady presence at his side. Inej is the best— his best spy, his stealthiest burglar. She's the best, Kaz really means it when he says it. Means it with all the respect and faith that’s implied with the words.
The first time Inej settled beside Kaz, reached across his body to steal Jesper’s drink, then pointed out four flaws in Kaz and Jesper’s admittedly amateur plans— he was gone. It was over. And he disappeared into the feeling again and again, more every day. Inej, leaning next to him in the club. Inej, climbing through his window. Inej teasing him, smiling at him, when so few people dare.
Loving Inej comes easy. It always has.
Wanting her is harder.
Sometimes, it’s so difficult Kaz wishes it away, stares up at his ceiling and pushes the feeling down. Tries to burn it out of his body with booze, with the swing of his cane and the crack of a jaw. Tries to stretch it into submission the way he does his leg.
It never works.
If Kaz is honest, he doesn’t really want it to.
-~-
The next morning, Inej meets him outside the Crow Club, munching on a green apple. She greets him with a jerk of her head, her mouth bulging, apple juice spilling down her wrist. Kaz consciously fights down a smile.
Inej sees it anyway. She grins at him, a tiny thing, and holds out the half-eaten apple. An offering. Mindlessly, Kaz leans forward and takes a bite.
The apple is cold and wet. Sweet. His lips are a half-inch away from Inej’s fingers. A strange shiver runs down his spine and he meets Inej’s eyes accidentally. They’re very large, her lashes very long. The juice runs down his chin, sloppy. He can’t look away from her. His tongue brushes the apple.
Inej holds his eyes and a strange tingle runs through Kaz, makes his skin feel too small, too hot. It feels good.
Finally, Kaz closes his teeth together and he pulls away from the apple with a sharp crunching noise. Inej blinks, and for a moment there’s something on her face, something warm and wanting, but then it’s gone, and Kaz straightens up.
“Wow,” comes a voice from behind him. “Alright.”
It’s Nina, with Jesper at her side, both of them looking thoroughly hungover. Jesper’s eyebrows are up his forehead, a large smile on his face, some strange mischief having apparently grabbed hold of him. Nina just looks surprised. But as he watches, she starts to smile, too.
That strange feeling still has Kaz in its clutches— that tingly-warm one. He wants to stow the feeling away, because it’s not for them to see. It feels private. Embarrassing.
Kaz banishes all thoughts of Inej’s fingers and wipes away the sticky wetness on his chin with a gloved hand. The leather soothes him, comforts him the way bare skin doesn't. Between one blink and the next, Kaz becomes Kaz Brekker, Bastard of the Barrel, face blank and condescending.
“What business?” Kaz asks, cordial and blank.
Nina looks thrown but Jesper tosses his head back and cackles. Kaz fights embarrassment, feeling like a child who's been caught doing... he's not sure what. Jesper swaggers over and tosses an arm around Inej, shaking her side to side in excitement. Kaz’s chest twists. Inej grins up at Jesper, greeting him with a quiet “Jes.”
Jesper shakes her again, doing something complicated with his face, and Inej scowls at him and shoves his side. But then she thumps their shoulders together and stays under Jesper's arm, easy as anything. Kaz's stomach fucking hurts, looking at them.
Finally, Jesper looks back at Kaz and shrugs. “No business, boss. Just saw you out here.”
Kaz gives him a dead-eyed stare. “I’m certain you’ve got a job to do.”
“Not until tonight,” Jesper denies cheerfully. Inej tucks her hand into Jesper’s coat pocket.
“Hm,” Kaz says. He taps his cane against the cobblestone twice and then turns on his heel. “You can come with me, then. I’ve got business with a few Dime Lions and could use you.”
“What business?” Jesper echoes, and then the three of them are off, leaving Nina to the still-sleeping Matthias and her waffles as she waves them cheerfully down the street.
It is, for a moment, just like old times. Before they crossed the Fold, before they took on Nina and Matthias, before they met a living Saint. Back when it was just the three of them and Kaz didn’t want so badly. When it was enough, more than enough, to just have them near. To just have Inej near.
For a moment, Kaz pretends. He does the dirty work of Dirtyhands, Jesper crowing with laughter, Inej dangerous and twirling like a shadow. He throws himself back in time and for a moment, it’s easy.
It’s a good way to spend a morning.
By the time they get back to the Crow Club, they’re blood soaked and grinning. Jesper and Inej have their arms around each other again, and Jesper is telling some elaborate story, Inej smiling quietly. Kaz is walking two steps ahead of them, cane clacking. There’s a kind of bone-deep contentment that comes with being feared. With having them at his back, armed to the teeth and grinning like wolves. Eyes glinting.
He loves them very well. He loves them so well, in fact, that he doesn’t say anything when they disappear into the club and come back with drinks, plates piled with food. Kaz knows they didn’t pay for any of it.
They know they never have to.
“Siddown, boss,” Jesper tells him. He says it through a mouthful of wet bread and beer. Spit-soaked food flies off his lip and his Kaz on the cheek. Kaz gives a minute flinch, but nobody seems to notice.
Nobody except Inej.
She tilts her head, examining him, before kicking at the chair at her left. Kaz stares at her, then at the chair, and finds his body moving without his permission. He sits down beside her, across the table from Jesper.
Jesper grins, his teeth gleaming, and Kaz suddenly is so fond of him he doesn’t protest when Jesper produces another plate of food from nowhere. Setting it in front of Kaz, Jesper waves his hands like go on, eat it, you absolute annoyance and Kaz pulls it toward himself grudgingly.
Inej, bent over her own plate, smiles again. And even if Kaz looked at her expression forever he wouldn't get bored.
For a while, nobody speaks. They just soak each other in. Half way through their meal Matthias wanders down the steps, obviously hungover, and plops down next to Jesper. He’s got his own plate of food, Matthias does, but Kaz has faith that Matthias paid money for his.
It’s strangely silent in the club, the daytime gamblers quieter than usual, the drunks mostly slumped into their cups. It’s calm.
And then— and then Inej knocks their knees together. Softly, at first, then more firmly when Kaz doesn’t startle or pull away. Looking around the club warily, Kaz hesitates for a moment and then presses his calf to hers.
Jesper breaks his long silence, turning to Matthias and chattering about something unimportant.
Kaz and Inej don't move.
Out of the corner of his eye, Kaz sees Inej’s chest hitch. Kaz’s own breathing stutters, like an echo, and he looks down at his plate. He tightens his grip on his fork. His hands are firmly wrapped inside his leather gloves, crawling flesh hidden away, and he’s as safe as he’s going to get. They’re both clothed top to toes— shirts buttoned to the hollow of their throats, Inej’s hair half hidden under her scarf, Kaz’s gloves tight against his fingers. Their jackets are still fucking on, the Saints’ sake.
Slow as molasses, Kaz reaches out, almost stunned at his own boldness. He touches her arm, three layers of cloth between their skin. It makes his heart pound like he’s running.
Inej looks up at him, her eyes wide and shocked, and then she shifts. For a moment, Kaz thinks she’s pulling away, but she doesn’t. Instead, she reaches out and softly, hesitantly, puts her hand on his knee under the table. It’s his bad leg, the sensitive leg, and she’s not wearing gloves. This time, there’s only one layer of cloth between them.
He can feel the heat of her through his pants. She’s burning him. Or maybe he’s just burning up.
On the other side of the table, Jesper babbles happily on. Every so often, Matthias nods at him.
Kaz’s heart is pounding, flying, but he’s not panicked. He feels too hot, his skin feels too tight, Inej’s palm on his knee is so warm— but none of these are bad feelings. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Inej duck her head, a small smile on her face. Her braid swings over her shoulder, the scarf falling from her hair a little.
He wants to touch it. He wants to feel it on the back of his hand, on the sensitive skin there. The thought scares him. Reflexively, he flinches away from it, a tiny motion.
Inej catches it, of course. She pulls her hand away gently, as if not to startle him, and Kaz immediately misses its warmth. Kaz stares down at his plate, motionless, for a long moment. Jesper is still talking.
Slowly, Kaz reaches out— and he’s still wearing gloves, this is still safe, touching Inej like this is still safe because his gloves are still on, and he’s got to just fucking do it— and so he does. He grabs her hand, soft as feathers, and brings it back to his knee. He keeps his hand on top of hers, a firm pressure, and now he can feel her warmth in two places: on his knee and beneath his hand. Beneath the leather glove. Or maybe he’s imagining it.
He thinks, stupidly, that he’ll never be cold again.
Inej keeps her hand on him for the rest of the meal.
And Kaz keeps his on her.
-~-
Three nights later, Inej is leaping across a series of roofs, scaling balconies and twisting in the wind. Her strong arms are pulling, thick legs pushing.
Kaz, on the street with Jesper beside him, finds that his mouth is dry. He licks his lips.
“Alright?” Jesper asks, annoyingly cheerful. When Kaz looks, Jesper is moments away from laughing, a wide smirk on his face.
Kaz doesn’t dignify him with a response. Jesper smirks harder. Above them, Inej soars and tumbles, an acrobat with incredible skill. A crow flying on dark wings.
Fingers twitching, Kaz fiddles with his cane, spins it against the ground. Inej leaps another balcony, sets the last letter into place. Her business finished, she slides down a roof flat footed, leaps off the edge, somersaults, and lands back on her feet with her arms outstretched.
“Perfect ten!” Jesper cheers.
Inej smiles, a delicate and perfect thing. She mocks a curtsey in Jesper’s direction, and Jesper laughs. Tosses an arm over her shoulder. Kaz’s chest squeezes to see them.
When the guns fire, none of them are prepared.
Across the road, four Dime Lions— low level, no one he recognizes by face— are taking shots at them. Whirling into action, Inej and Jesper pull apart as Kaz ducks behind a wall. And then they’re off: the Lions don’t stand a chance.
Inej is there with her knives between breaths, appearing behind a Lion like a ghost. There’s a knife in the man’s gut before he knows what happened, and then she’s on the next one. Jesper squares up and fires round after round. He doesn’t even need to look; every bullet finds a bloody home.
Kaz leans against the wall and waits patiently. The fight will be over soon enough. No reason to strain himself. He lets himself get swept up in the sharp curve of Inej’s knives, the sharp curve of her jaw, her bending back.
Which is a mistake, of course.
Behind him, out from the dark, another Lion banger comes out swinging. Kaz catches him by the wrist, but he’s startled. Off balance. The man kicks Kaz’s legs out and Kaz sprawls out on the ground.
“Kaz!” Jesper and Inej call, in chorus.
Kaz brings his cane up and clubs the man with it, and the man topples like a ton of bricks, but there’s an acute sense of embarrassment in his chest anyway. Oh, but that was foolish. He looks so fucking foolish.
There’s silence on the street again, which means Inej and Jesper dealt with everyone, not that he expected anything less. Kaz shoves the unconscious man off his legs and hoists himself back onto his feet.
Inej reaches him first, Jesper just behind her. She stops a breath away from his body, their chests almost touching. The tips of their shoes are touching. Kaz’s hands twist on his cane.
“Are you alright?” She asks, and her eyes are intense. Her shoulders, dressed like she is, look strong. Her hood swoops delicately over her forehead. Kaz doesn’t know why he notices all this.
“Yes,” he says, too brusque. Inej isn’t offended.
“I’m just going to go— handle them,” Jesper says, waving at the unconscious or dead Dime Lions.
Kaz doesn’t answer him and neither does Inej.
She’s still standing in front of him, looking at him. Only the toes of their shoes touching. She isn’t looking away— but, then, Kaz isn’t either. He can’t. Her eyes flicker down, then meet his gaze again. Her lips are flush and parted. Kaz’s heart pounds.
Without conscious thought, he shuffles a half-step forward. Not even that— half of a half-step. Half of a half of a half. Just until their chests are brushing when they breathe in. Kaz tries to time it so they do. Holds his breath so it happens.
Their thighs are barely touching, so near and so far that it almost tickles. The brush of her pants against his is so delicate it’s almost overwhelming. Hazily, Kaz thinks, more. Thinks, there’s got to be more, I need more than this—
But then Inej shuffles closer, too, and suddenly there’s pressure all down his front. Her chest is pressed firmly to his, and their stomachs are touching, now, their slight curves bending toward each other. Her hips are flush with his, her thighs solid. Even their arms are lined up.
Like an idiot, Kaz thinks, yes, yes, this. Exactly this, exactly this—
His breath picks up, faster and faster until he’s almost panting. Kaz waits for the panic to come but it doesn’t. Their bare skin isn’t touching. There’s only that wonderful, wonderful pressure, and Inej. Inej, Inej, Inej, all along his front. Her dark eyes linked with his. This is so good, this firm touch.
It’s warm and dry and strong, no part of it slippery or cold, and it’s so consistent. No part of him is panicked. Kaz decides to push it, just a little. The tiniest amount.
In one motion, he links their hands together, bends down, and clunks his forehead to hers. Her hood prevents skin on skin contact.
It’s perfect. It’s so good that Kaz’s head feels hazy.
He hasn’t touched anyone like this in— years. Years and years. Not one hug, in all that time. This isn’t a hug but it’s close. It’s better, even, because Kaz isn’t being trapped, isn't being held in place. All there is is that wonderful firm pressure, Inej’s strong body against his.
Kaz thinks maybe his knees are shaking. He can’t quite tell. Oh, fuck, this feels good. Fuck, this feels good. Inej’s breath ghosts across his mouth and Kaz lets out a tiny, trembling noise. She squeezes his hands tight, tight, tight, and he presses his chest against hers even harder.
Another noise falls from Kaz’s mouth and he thinks, shocked at himself, that was a moan.
And then, from ahead: footsteps.
Jesper.
Kaz pulls away, shaking, his breath coming fast and hard. Inej steps back but doesn’t let go of his hands. Her eyes are wide and startled and something else. Something thick and warm and syrupy. Hot.
Kaz bites his own lip and a sharp pleasure jolts through his gut. Inej bites her lip, too, and it’s almost like a kiss.
“Sorry to interrupt all… this, but we need to get going.” Jesper is determinedy not looking at them. He’s clutching three bags of coin in his hands, juggling them absentmindedly.
“You’re right,” Kaz says, and is genuinely shocked at how steady his voice sounds.
At that, Jesper finally glances over. He takes them in and then grins, lightning quick. Tosses them each a liberated bag of coin.
“Let’s call it a night,” Jesper suggests.
“Let’s,” Inej agrees.
And Kaz wants.
-~-
Kaz Brekker almost bursts through the door to his room, collapsing at his desk and furiously tugging his jacket off. He yanks on the top button of his shirt, undoes his vest. He’s burning up like he’s got a fever and all his clothes feel too tight, are choking him. He falls more than sits down in his chair.
Inej, Inej, Inej— the thought of her crashes over him like a wave and he drowns in it. Remembering her pressed against him, firm and steady and strong, sets his knees to trembling all over again. It’s ridiculous.
It still feels so good. Even just thinking about it feels so good.
He’s at that point, that cliff, that he comes up against sometimes. That edge where it becomes too much, where he’s so worked up he wants to try to touch himself. Needs to try, even. It clouds his thoughts, the need, and he pulses and throbs in his slacks. He’s hard, so hard; he’s been hard for ages, it feels like.
He’s almost certain he got hard when Inej was pressed against him, except he was so caught up in the feeling of her he didn’t notice. Fuck, he noticed on the walk back, though. The dry rub of his pants, that steady tight friction, drove him near to distraction. All he could do was bolt upstairs as soon as they got back to the Crow Club.
He’s never felt like this before. Has never wanted this much, this pin-point desire, has never lusted for something specifically. It's so different, being turned on because of someone instead of just being turned on. His hips twist against nothing, and even that feels good.
So he does it again. Kaz shifts in his seat, hips moving side to side. Almost rocking. He’s not sure what to do with himself. Nothing he’s tried has ever fucking worked.
He just wants— for a brief, angry moment, he wants to be normal. Wants to wrap his fist around his cock and come— not that he knows what coming feels like. But he wants to know. He wants to have managed it years ago, wants it to not be strange or new or frightening, a challenge to overcome. He wants this throbbing, pulsing feeling in his hips to be gone. He wants to drag it on forever.
Kaz moans. It works like a pressure valve— he’s got to do something, and he doesn’t know what to do, so he moans. It’s part frustration and part new pleasure. He squeezes his thighs together, then crosses his legs and thrusts back and forth again.
“Fuck,” he says. “Oh, fuck. Fuck.” Because it feels… it feels good. It feels good, he feels good, his cock is so hard. He thrusts his hips again, squeezing his thighs, then rocks. And rocks.
Abruptly, his patience snaps. On trembling knees, Kaz stands back up, kicks his shoes off clumsily, and collapses onto his bed.
He stares up at the ceiling, hazy and overwhelmed, and tries to make a plan.
Kaz has never been this desperate, has never felt like this. Never felt like he needs, needs, needs to finish this. Go over that cliff, hell or high water. His hips kick up into the air and another noise tears itself from Kaz’s throat.
“Oh,” he says. And even making noise feels good, so he does it again. “Oh, oh. ”
Plan, he needs a plan. Touching himself bare-handed has never worked. Not in all the years he’s tried it. So— so he won’t do that tonight. He won’t.
Kaz fumbles for a solution but winds up distracted by thoughts of Inej again. Of her chest against his, their thighs brushing. Her eyes locked on his. That tingling warmth tearing through him. That wonderful, perfect, perfect pressure. The firmness.
And— firmness. Firm pressure, that felt good, didn’t it? How could he— how could he make—
Fuck, he wishes he could think. He can’t think, it’s just, just—
In a stroke of genius, Kaz flips over, grabs his headboard, and thrusts his hips down into the mattress.
“Ah,” Kaz gasps. “Oh, oh, shit.”
And then he bites his lip, buries his face in his pillow, because he needs to shut the fuck up. His hips haven’t paused, like now they've started moving they can’t stop.
Kaz’s knees slip and shift against the bed and he struggles to find a position that’s good. He ends up spreading his knees wide, legs out straight, cock thrusting shallowly against the bed. Tiny, strong strokes of his hips, so he didn't aggravate his bad leg. But, fuck, oh, it feels good. Those little fast thrusts feel good. Every motion tears a noise out of him, a steady and rhythmic ah, ah, ah, that he can’t choke down.
Unbidden, he thinks of that apple, days and days ago. Thinks of that juice down his chin, Inej’s eyes on him. And then that thought gets all tangled up with images of Nina and Matthias, Nina tugging at Matthias’s hair, and suddenly Kaz is imagining himself and Inej in their place. Inej in his lap, her fingers in his hair.
Then the older fantasies come, the older daydreams about wet and friction and pressure. The abstract, instinctual thoughts, formless and strong and overwhelming.
And, of course, Inej.
He thinks of Inej.
His legs spread wider, his toes curling, and his whole body is throbbing, now. He’s moaning with every breath, moaning because his cock is leaking and his knees are trembling and his nipples are rubbing hard against the mattress. Kaz hadn’t even known rubbing against his chest like this could feel good. It all feels so fucking— it's so—
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh—
Frantic thrusts, now. His whole body feels like it’s dissolving. His cock is wet and getting wetter, his hips working fast and getting faster. The whole bed is creaking. His toes are curling.
His cock is down his left pant leg, he’s not getting quite the right— what if he— yes, side to side, rocking side to side, faster and faster and—
And—
Fuck, there, fuck, there— he’s there, he’s going to come, this is what coming is, he’s going to, he is—
And he does.
The feeling pulses through his cock, over and over, wet and hot and tingling. It travels down his legs, up his spine. Through his nipples. It makes his fucking scalp tingle.
It goes on forever.
By the time it’s done, his pants are so wet they cling, and he’s certain the blanket is a mess, too. He’s sweating. His shirt is sticking to his back, his pants are sticking to the pits of his knees.
Kaz is asleep between one blink and the next.