Chapter Text
Kaz squints as he surveys sixth harbor. It glitters under the midday sun, throwing star-like smudges that linger in his vision. The obelisk rises by the shore, a stark, unmoving presence against the backdrop of the roving, whirling waters. He can see the entire tower, but the flame that supposedly lights the top isn’t visible from this angle. They’re too close.
The obelisk stands on the shore at the end of a narrow cobblestone road. It’s in a factory district, where there’s very little foot traffic, save for the rotating arrangement of shift workers. During shift change, they rush past each other on their way to and from work in some sort of organized chaos that’s beholden to nothing but its own set of natural laws.
These jobs are hard, and turnover is high. Old workers are exchanged frequently for new ones, like the coins of lesser value in a cash register, a constant revolution of temporary faces. Kaz has no doubt the factory owners see little, if any, difference between the two concepts.
Inej settles in against the wall opposite from him, kicking one leg out to get comfortable. The sole of her shoe nearly meets his where he’s drawn up his own leg with an elbow hooked around it. He keeps his eyes on the blinding sea.
“Do you deign to bless me with the details of this plan now?” she asks, tapping her fingers on her pantleg.
“Don’t look to me for blessings,” Kaz says. “If you’re so eager, maybe you should have prayed harder. It’s not my fault your saints couldn’t be bothered to fill you in beforehand.”
Her little scoff hits his ears, and Kaz rips his gaze from the window to her face. There are splotches of static where the sea has blinded him, and her face is obscured in patches of iridescent black. But he can still make out her delicious expression - the driest of looks, all arranged perfectly for him on her pretty features.
“Your mind is like a black hole. If the Saints peeled back your skull, I doubt they could make out a single thing in there,” she says.
“Good. One less leak to give away my plans.”
A smile tugs at her lips as she casts her eyes to the ceiling.
Satisfied, he finally gives in. “If we can trust the crew to be on schedule, the Talisman will be sailing into view there,” he points to the horizon. “And aiming for the last berth on sixth harbor, where the workers are lazy and more than amenable to bribes. But now that our friends on the Council of Tides should be clued in to the Talisman ’s special cargo, they won’t be allowing such an easy pass. They’ll be steering the Talisman to fifth harbor, at its busiest time, where the workers know how to do their job and are far more expensive to bribe than its captain can afford.”
“And then their special cargo will be discovered,” Inej follows along.
“And confiscated,” Kaz affirms. “Just as the Tides want, so they can stick it to one arrogant Van Eck mercher.”
“So we’re here to watch it happen?”
“Yes, but that’s not all. We’re here to watch what happens before and after.” He flips open his pocketwatch, minding the time. “No one has ever seen anyone enter or leave the obelisks. There aren’t even entrances. Or at least, there aren’t obvious ones.” He flicks the lid closed. “We’re here to watch who goes through a hidden door.”
“I thought the obelisks were manned at all hours. Shouldn’t there already be someone up there?”
“I suspect they keep the flames going in each watchtower to maintain that illusion. There are six council members and five watchtowers. They have to sleep at some point and I doubt they take turns one by one. No one wants to work that much. Simply not enough manpower to do so unless they’ve had parem for the last century to stave off the drowse.”
Inej nods but she still looks doubtful. “I’m sure plenty of shady characters have staked out every one of these obelisks for weeks and never seen anything out of place. How is this any different?”
“You wound me, Inej, with your doubts,” he presses a gloved hand to his chest. “After all this time, you think me no different than some garden variety shady character ?”
“If you don’t start giving me the details of this plan soon, then yes. I’ll assume you dragged me out here with nothing but the vague idea of staring out a window with me.”
He suppresses the urge to deny it. Sometimes Inej is sharper than she realizes. And far more often than Kaz is comfortable with, she hits a bullseye after tossing a dart backwards in the dark.
“Cute, but no.” He says, eager to move this topic along. “Nobody has ever seen anything out of place near these obelisks because what they saw wasn’t out of place. ”
She doesn’t speak, but she’s listening.
“This is a factory district. There are new people in and out constantly, and several shift changes per day. This grants a high level of anonymity to the workers, to the point where anyone can walk about in uniform and as long as they look like they belong, never draw a passing acknowledgement.” He drops a knuckle against the window, the sticky leather keeping it in place against the glass. “I did us the favor of obtaining shift records and memorizing the shift time changes. And lucky for us, the Talisman will be docking in the middle of shift, at a time where there are no other ships attempting to dock in sixth harbor, near the obelisk that has the only appropriate view from which a change in tides could be conjured to derail this particular ship’s course to fifth harbor. I’m willing to bet someone will show up here, do the work that needs doing, then be on their merry way for an early lunch.”
He taps his knuckle on the glass, scanning the cobblestone. “So maybe I lied. We are looking for something out of place. Just not that out of place. Comings and goings that would make sense not for a factory worker, but for a tidemaker with a very particular task.”
“What if we don’t see anyone?”
“It’ll be a disappointment. But if that ship blows off course, we’ll still know Corbijn is working with the Tides which will still be valuable. I’m just hoping we get lucky enough to bypass him by finding a Tidemaker directly.”
She mulls this over. “Okay. So we’re looking for any old person in a uniform walking in or out of a door within the next few hours? Seems like a lot of dead ends.”
“Is all your faith so dedicated to your saints that you can’t spare a drop for me?”
“Oh please,” she huffs. “Say something inspiring, and maybe I’ll be moved.”
“Very well,” he says, looking down his nose at the harbor. “We’re not looking for comings and goings through doors. I think these obelisks must have underground entrances, and none of these buildings have basements. Too close to the shore – they flood. There is, however, a sewer system. If I were a tidemaker, and I wanted to get into that tower without any attention, I’d either build an entrance through the sewer on the street side, or underwater on the shore side. I could either go for a swim and never come back up, or I could disguise myself as a sewer worker and hide in plain sight. The shore side is cleaner, but has a slightly higher chance of getting caught. If I were a Tides member, I’d pick the sewer.”
His gaze slides to Inej. She’s facing the window, the light bright on her face, with her hair pulled back in its usual neat bun. Her mouth presses into a thin line while she peers out onto the street. Kaz takes the opportunity to drink in the way the sun glosses her hair. It’s so dark, there isn’t even a hint of brown in it. Just pure, shimmering black. Deep enough to lose yourself in.
Her face drops into a grimace. “There’s a sewer hatch right there by the street. Near the corner of that building.” She looks at him, her mouth stuck upside down. “You really think a high and mighty member of the Council of Tides would trudge around in liquid refuse?”
She says it so politely. Even after all the atrocities she’s witnessed in the Barrel. Most of which were probably committed by Kaz himself. He turns his gaze to the hatch. “People will do a lot for what they care about, Inej. Even dive headfirst into shitwater.”
“I guess I can understand,” her mouth floats back to neutral, the corners of it returning to their upturned positions. “I’d probably do worse for my spice sauce.”
And then she gasps. “There, that’s it,” she says, driving her finger against the window.
And there it is. Still a ways out, but the Talisman is there on the water, nothing more than a brown lump disrupting the horizon.
Kaz scans the cobblestone streets. Empty. Even better. “It shouldn’t be long now at all,” he muses. “Keep your eyes on the shore. I’ll keep mine on the streets.”
The energy in the room picks up, like their bodies could begin levitating at any moment. It’s the thrill of a stakeout, when the dominoes are about to fall. Or will they? It’s never a guarantee. But that’s part of the thrill. Inej’s eyes are wide, skittering across the shoreline, her shoulders squared. She feels it too. Kaz’s stomach twists with a pang he can’t identify.
He shakes it off. Cobblestone. Sewer hatch. The scene is still for a stretch of time that could be minutes, could be the better part of an hour. And then Kaz sees him.
A man appears from an alleyway, walking down the road. He’s wearing a brown, nondescript uniform and a long-billed hat that obscures most of his face. But the giveaway is that he’s wearing chest-high waders.
“There,” Kaz says. And Inej gasps again.
“He’s wearing waders,” she hisses. “That has to be him!”
“Bingo,” Kaz replies, barely restraining a smile. “The sanitation workers don’t even work at this time. They work at night. When no one is here and the sewer is less busy.”
There’s no way this isn’t one of the Tides. Kaz focuses in on the figure, pilfering every detail, filing them away for cross-referencing later. But he’s so far away, it’s hard to make out anything but the most basic features. Tall, lighter skin. Dark hair. A bit stocky. His left suspender hangs oddly. Kaz thinks it might be torn.
He’s in no hurry, swaggering down the road like a mercher on his way to a banquet. But Kaz can’t see a damn thing on his face from this angle and distance. He considers that he should have had the two of them stake this area out from two different locations. But… then he stops considering why he didn’t do that.
Kaz and Inej, fizzing with excitement, watch him as he strolls toward a sewer hatch. It’s not the one closest to the tower, and it’s still too far to make out many details of his identity, but when he lifts the hatch and climbs down into it, the two of them just about boil over. Inej’s jaw drops open and she smiles wide at Kaz. And Kaz, despite his best efforts to stop it, lets fly an arrogant split of a smile across his own mouth.
Everything in its right place. Going according to plan. Nothing sweeter.
Inej sounds stunned. “I can’t believe it. It’s just like you said.”
Music to his ears.
“Well-” she says, holding up a hand, sensing how insufferable he’s about to be. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We’ll see if that ship actually gets pushed off course. If not, we just got our tightropes in a twist over seeing some poor sanitation worker on his morning commute.”
“Tightropes in a twist?” His eyes narrow.
She waves him off, eyes fixed out the window. “Old circus lingo.”
They both fall into an eager silence, waiting for the Talisman to approach, until Inej perks up again.
“Look,” she points to the shore. “The tide is changing. It was hitting the shore at an angle to the right before. Now it’s pulled in and going the opposite direction.”
It’s true. Kaz watches in real time as the patterns made by the waves on shore shift unnaturally. It’s subtle, and you wouldn’t notice it unless you had already been staring at the beach.
And then they watch as the Talisman slowly banks and twists, until the bow changes course and points at fifth harbor.
“Yes!” Inej hoots. “Okay, now we found our guy. And we found an entrance into an obelisk. I really didn’t think this would work, Kaz, but somehow it did.”
“ Sankt Kaz,” he corrects. “If I’m such a miracle worker, you should address me as such.”
“You bastard,” she says, and she raises an arm to backhand his leg.
Kaz catches her brief hesitation before she swats at his shin. The swing is drained of momentum, and nothing but the very tips of her fingers make contact with his pants. It’s a careful, intentionally light-handed touch. But he feels it. He immediately wants her to touch him again. Put her whole hand on him. Slide it up his leg, even though he knows he wouldn’t be able to handle it.
He settles for menacing her instead.
“ Sankt Bastard then,” he says.
“If you don’t stop blaspheming-” Inej raises her arm again, winding up for an open palmed slap, and then her loose shirt gapes at the chest, exposing a flash of dusty pink.
Her satin undergarment is showing. And Kaz sees, in the sidelong light of the window, the shape of her nipple beneath it.
Kaz’s breath comes in sharp. He tears his eyes from her chest. There’s no time to put on a poker face. He looks startled and he knows it. Her arm drops as she mirrors his surprise, and then she looks down at what caused his reaction.
Swift as a knifedraw, she slips her hand over her chest, covering the exposure. He inhales sharply again, over the breath he was already holding, because that just makes it worse. Now it just looks like she’s fondling her chest in front of him. She’s pushing her breast up, making it swell at the neckline of the brassiere.
She looks at him again, her own eyes just as wide as his probably are. She’s frozen too. And now she’s just cupping her chest and... holding eye contact. Neither of them speak. Kaz can’t even breathe. He knows she caught him looking, and it’s now the second time this has happened, and he thinks this is it now. He’s ruined it. Maybe she’ll finally pull out a knife. He thinks he’ll never breathe again.
She drops his gaze, freeing him. He exhales roughly.
“How much did you see?” she asks, tone guarded.
How much did he see? Her hand is still pressed against her chest and it’s taking all his mental capacity to keep his eyes off it. She waits him out, and he finally remembers how to speak.
“Just your undergarment. It’s...” he swallows. “Thin.”
Her face betrays nothing as she scans the floor. She's considering something.
Nearly inaudibly she asks, “Did you like it?”
His brain sputters like it's having a mechanical failure.
Kaz is very used to knowing what people are thinking. Their motivations, the reasons they ask things. If trickery is his language, mind-reading is his grammar. He always has an idea of what's churning in someone's head. But did he like it ? This question whips him across the face as if she invented a brand new language of her own.
Inej’s dark eyes flick back to his. But Kaz is too locked up. He can neither read the expression there nor spit out a response.
“Did you?” she asks, even quieter.
Is water wet? He can't understand why she would even ask. Like asking a starving man, on his dying breath, if he’d prefer a strawberry or blueberry tart.
But she’s looking at him, expecting an answer. He can’t say no, because firstly, that’s offensive. And secondly, it’s an outright lie. But he can’t say yes either because, even worse, it’s the truth. And it’s one he can’t yet put to words, can’t acknowledge and make real the tangled bramble of thorns between them. He scrambles for a thousand responses at once, preventing him from reaching a single one.
He can't make his mouth move. So before he can think of what he's doing, what he's saying, he just nods his head once. Slowly. Stiffly.
Her eyes flick to the floor and she hesitates for only an instant. Then, her hand slides to the thick brown linen at her shoulder, and she curls a slender finger around it. Painstakingly slow, she tugs it off, letting it fall, revealing the pink satin once more. And again, just under it, her pointed nipple is there.
Kaz’s throat begins to close.
Even more slowly, she leans back against the wall, allowing the satin to form snugly around her breast. It’s so thin. Flimsy even. The shape of her is a little clearer. He thinks he can see the darkening of skin where the fabric juts up in the center.
The strap of her brassiere sits on her shoulder, right up next to the edge of it. It’s precarious. It could fall at any moment, like a teetering vase, threatening to drop. Kaz’s hands are hot and sweaty in a way that has nothing to do with the summer heat. His chest feels tight. He's bolted to the floor.
He can't understand what she's doing. Showing herself to him? On purpose? It’s all wrong. He belongs in the shadows, in doorways, wanting from afar. Not here, across from her in the light. This was never for him, no matter how much he’s wanted it. But saints, does he want it.
She runs a finger along her graceful collarbone, sliding it to the strap. She barely has to touch it before it falls off.
The satin stays there lying on her chest, held up by friction alone. Kaz’s throat caves in. The effects are unstoppable, and he can feel himself beginning to harden.
He needs the fabric to slip. To complete its fall. He needs gravity to double in strength. A gust of wind in this sealed, stuffy room. He'll do anything for a miracle. Take up religion. Follow any Saint that’ll listen so he can repent his way into an act of God.
She slides her finger from her collarbone to the hem of the satin over her breast, and Kaz’s entire world narrows to the tip of her finger. It’s so close. It feels like he’ll die if he doesn't see her whole pretty breast. It feels like an emergency.
“You won’t touch me, will you?”
Shame grips him. Knocks his already spinning head around.
She’s never named his weakness out loud. It isn't something they talk about. Isn't something Kaz has ever dignified with speech. He knows that she knows he’s sick and broken on some level, and that it makes him unable to touch her, but now she thrusts it out where they can both see?
She had made herself clear though, hadn’t she? She wouldn’t have him with his armor. Fully clothed, gloves on . He conveniently assumed she had meant it metaphorically. So he’d never have to tell her how literal that statement actually was. Nor all the pitiful, dignity-dismembering details that went with it. It seems she didn’t need him to. Was he really that transparent?
He has to force the words out. And when he does, they’re hoarse.
“I… can’t.”
“But,” she says, “you can look?”
The swirling in his head slows just enough for him to focus back on her, on what she's suggesting.
“Do you want to see me?” she asks.
Why she’s offering herself this way is a mystery he’s too dazed to examine. All he knows is that she’s right. He can't touch, but he can look. He knows he can look, but he also knows it will probably destroy him. Ruin him for years to come. If he had any sense he’d stop this foolishness and spare himself the torture. He’d throw himself out this second-story window and forget this was ever a possibility. But sense might as well be bound, gagged, and buried six feet under the earth. Sense had no place in this room.
He nods again.
She slides the fabric down no more than half an inch, and it’s off.
He stifles a groan, keeping it low in his throat. The skin of her nipple is dark and rich, and slightly rosy near the tip. It sits on her small, but well formed breast. And it's every bit as pretty as he thought it would be. Elegant even. He grips his knees, sweating.
“Do you like it? Seeing me?” she asks.
Again with the ludicrous questions. “Yes,” he rasps. With the way he likes this, it’s as though he’s never actually liked anything in his life before this very moment.
“What would you do if,” she pauses, not looking him in the eye. “If you could touch me?”
The question stings. But he pushes through. Because it’s Inej, and she's partially naked, asking him how he’d touch her, and it’s so good he could cry.
“Rub it,” he chokes. “Rub you.”
She cups herself again, and runs a thumb over the tip of her breast. He can imagine the texture. The weight. How soft she might feel, if he wasn't too defective to hold her with his own two hands.
“I’d…” he starts to say, but it's like his mouth is full of sand. Words normally come easy to him, but now they’ve deserted him completely. He licks his lips and tries again, but he only manages to let out a frustrated grunt.
Inej slips her thumb over her tongue, then places it back over her nipple, sliding it leisurely back and forth, making it shine in the light.
The wetness should bother him. But he's at a safe distance. His gloves are on. And he's too turned on to feel anything but the way he’s coming apart at the seams.
He exhales raggedly, and slides his hands down his thighs. Friction. He needs friction.
“Are you hard?” she asks.
He almost laughs, but it comes out as a moan. There’s probably more blood in his cock than the rest of his body by now. From this angle, in this light, it should be more than evident. He glances down, just to make sure, and- yes. It’s there. To a mortifying degree.
“Are you?” she presses. Even with her eyes running along his length.
She’s going to make him say it.
“Yes, Inej. I’m fucking hard,” he spits. Or tries to. The words at least come out, but they're too breathy.
“Mmm,” is all she says before her other arm slithers into the waistband of her loose linen trousers, and she starts moving between her legs.
He can hardly believe his eyes. He watches her hand move under her clothes, almost unable to process what's happening in front of him. Almost. Despite his lack of experience, he’s not so precious that he can’t connect the dots.
“What are you doing?” he still asks. Because he wants to hear her say it too.
“Thinking about you,” she murmurs, then throws on his tone of voice, “being fucking hard.”
At that his hand reflexively runs down the front seam of his slacks. He moans open-mouthed. Inej cursing is a rare thing, and it’s jarring when it happens. Like seeing a kitten slaughter a man in cold blood. But hearing her sweet, meek voice, saying that word, in this context, about his cock... He's seen Inej slaughter countless men. But what she’s doing to him feels so much more violent.
Without taking his own eyes off the motion between her legs, he keeps touching himself. Touches himself to her touching herself. He squeezes the head of his dick and feels the wetness gathering there through his clothes.
She keeps moving too and stares at where he's feeling himself. “Can I see it?” she says.
His brain experiences another mechanical failure. “You want to… see it?”
“Yes,” she breathes, and has the audacity to look shy.
His collar is tight as a noose around his neck. He’s maybe a little embarrassed. No one has ever asked him for anything remotely close to this before. And of all people, Inej is asking.
When she sees him hesitating, she looks down at her thumb over her tit. She rubs it again, swirls over it delectably and says, “You’re seeing me. It’s only fair.”
Not fair, he thinks. Not even close . Because Kaz is making out like a bandit. Every inch of her skin exposed to him is like acquiring a new national treasure for his personal possession. And in return, Inej is getting… whatever this feeble offer is. His lame, broken body? His fractured affection? At this point he doesn’t have the will to talk her out of this bad deal. She can have whatever is in his power to give, however paltry it may be.
Wordlessly, he unfastens his pants and takes himself out, wrapping one still-gloved hand around the base. And now he’s got his wet, hard dick out in front of Inej. He can't meet her eyes.
But he hears the pace of her rubbing pick up, the scraping of knuckles against cloth.
“Will you stroke it?” she says, her voice getting airier. “Touch yourself for me where I can see?”
Kaz’s mind is still locked up like a cart stuck in a ditch. He had, to a wildly incorrect degree it seems, assumed that Inej would never want to see another naked man again, let alone watch one jerk off in front of her like some panhandling sex pest. His mind rushes to accommodate this new fact, but it just sloshes around in his skull uselessly.
But before he obeys her, by some act of the saints, the last functional gear in Kaz’s head makes one revolution.
He doesn't move. Just holds himself there.
“First, I need you to answer a question,” he says with some effort, ignoring the strung out bent to his voice.
And then she laughs. Laughs! It’s airy and soft, and it nearly undoes him right then and there.
“Never something for nothing with you,” she says. “What do you want?”
“I want to know, back in Dedric’s library, in the confessional,” his words are stilted. “Why did you say my name? Not the fake name. My name.”
She huffs, a faint smile lifting the corners of her mouth. “I-” she says. “It was a mistake.”
“You’re better than that. You’ve never used the wrong name on a job.”
“I had to improvise and-” she lays the back of her head on the wall and turns her face, like she can hide from him. Even with her chest half naked in plain sight. “I was already… on you. Your arm was around me. And you were just - panting . In my ear. It was all I could think about.” She lifts her hips, seeking against her own hand. “And Corbijn was there, and I had to do something, and it was all I could think. So I just- I ran with it.”
“What was?” Kaz asks. He pulls on himself, just one stroke, and watches her gaze follow it. “What was all you could think about?”
She lets her eyes drift closed and knocks the back of her head against the wall. He thinks she’s frustrated. She doesn’t want to tell him.
“Tell me,” Kaz presses anyway. “What were you thinking?”
“Just,” her brows scrunch in the middle, making his favorite little wrinkle appear. “You.”
“Doing what? Doing what you’re doing to yourself now?”
Her eyes flick open and she stares back at him, eyes half lidded. She says nothing, and he knows he guessed right.
It’s enough to break his resolve, and she barely has time to blink again before he’s already jerking himself.
“Oh, fuck. I’m right, aren't I?” Kaz swallows thickly. His mind begins to race. He has to know. “You were thinking of my hands on you? Reaching around and touching you? With your legs spread on my lap like they were?”
She lets out a short, abortive whine, and he feels it slam into his chest.
He’s pumping himself too fast already, and he notices her pace pick up with his. But she’s so much smoother. Fluent. She’s composing a masterpiece and he’s just clamboring frenetically in the dark.
“Show me. Show me what I was doing to you,” already reduced to begging. And when she obliges without a word, when her thumbs hook into the waistband of her pants, he nearly chokes.
And then she’s bared in front of him. Dark curls and swollen, dark skin with a shock of pink in the center. It’s almost too much. Like staring at the surface of the sun. He’s seen this part of a woman before, as anyone in the Barrel has grown accustomed to the first time they step foot near the West Stave. But he’s never seen one this close, and never for this long, and never attached to anyone he truly wanted to see. His cheeks start to blaze, and he thinks it feels a little like being at the surface of the sun.
“Fuck,” he whispers.
She bites her lip and reaches down, her slim fingers running smoothly over herself. “You want to see where you touched me? How you did it?”
Some strangled noise is all he can manage to produce.
It's as good as a yes. She moves more purposefully and rubs on the outside, near the top, in circles. Clockwise. She uses her middle and ring fingers slowly, exaggerating the downstroke, her breath catching each time. He jerks himself even faster and wrangles his attention towards memorizing the exact way her fingers move. Vaguely, he’s aware that life will not be the same after this. That no matter what, any time he touches himself from this point forward, this image will feature prominently.
“Come closer,” she says, sounding just as desperate as he feels. “I thought you wanted to see.”
Her legs are bare, which makes him nervous, but he leans forward and carefully shifts onto his hands and knees, the old wood creaking under him. It puts him a little off balance, on account of one hand staying occupied, as he assumes his three-legged shape. Her legs are spread wide, flanking him on each side, and his head is nearly between her knees.
A piece of Kaz is trying to panic at the proximity, but it's crowded out by the scene in front of him. Inej’s lovely, graceful fingers rubbing down her cunt not three feet from his face. He can see the tendons straining in her hand as she works. Every twitch of her hips. For saints sake he can see the wet sheen on her red nails.
It’s too fucking much. If he doesn’t get it together he’ll be bursting within the minute, and he’s not done watching. He tries looking at her face, but it just hurls him closer to the edge. Kas has spent a stupid amount of time stealing glances at Inej, seeking her beauty in the way she moves and the way she stills. But with her features drawn up in delicious tension in a way he’s never seen, all with her dark eyes on him, it feels like the earth is about to buck him straight off the surface.
“Fuck,” he curses again, squeezing his eyes shut. He can’t come now. He’s afraid she’ll stop. And he has to – has to- see her come first. See her, hear her, know what she looks like when she falls apart. So he’ll be able to replay her in his head til the image catches fire.
“Inej.” By sheer act of will he stills his hand. “I want to see you come,” he tells her.
“You want to see that?”
“Yes – fuck – please. I need to see you come,” he can’t control his voice, the tinge of groveling in it. “Can you do it?”
“I think so. It’ll help if you keep talking,” she says as her rubbing gets more frantic. “I like to hear you.”
She keeps touching herself. Her hips start moving again, pushing into her hand. Kaz is breathing so hard he might pass out. Nothing in the world exists but the slide of her fingers, and the way her body flexes.
“You like when I talk about the filthy things I’d do to you? When I talk about fingering you?”
“Yeah,” she says, all breath. “Would you do that to me? If you could touch me?”
“Yes,” he answers her, and he fights off the way his shame hooks and pulls at his skin.
“What else? Tell me. I want to know.”
“If I could touch you…” he says, ignoring a pang of regret. She listens, and keeps rubbing, panting. “I’d learn you. Take you apart, put you back together. Then I’d do it again faster.”
At that her thighs twitch and her legs cave in for a split second before they return to their positions. She’s careful. Careful not to get too close, even now with her spread out before him like this, she’s trying not to push him.
It’s more than he deserves. She needs more than Kaz can give, and he knows it. More than him and his heart’s destitute coffers. His shame begins to pull, hook in deeper, puckering his skin til it’s near tearing. He wants to touch her so, so bad. But it's all he can offer to only speak, and he gives her only what he can.
“I’d kiss your neck. Better than I did before.” He doesn't know why he says it. They don't talk about this either. But it's all he can scrape for her from the dregs of his heart.
“Kaz,” she breathes, and it's different than the library. Lower, more broken. And real. So real .
“Fuck, Inej -” he curses out loud, and it seems to feed her momentum. Her hips start to buck.
“I’d put my fingers inside you,” the words tumble out of him. “I’d let you use them. Ride them til you come.”
She slides her two fingers into herself, and Kaz watches the red on her nails disappear. He makes a humiliating noise. The things he would do to be the polish on those nails.
“Is that all?” she nearly whines, hips moving faster.
“I’d let you use my mouth. My hands. My cock. Anything.” He starts to pump himself in time with her fingers, and he can almost imagine it. Almost feel what it’d be like. “Oh, fuck- Use me, Inej. Use me. All the way up.”
Her legs start to shake, and at first he isn’t sure what’s happening, until her whole body tenses and her jaw drops open to let out the sweetest sob he’s ever heard. The sight of it – her chest, one breast still exposed under her grip, her whole body trembling through her climax – sends him to the brink.
He wants her to burrow into his flesh. Let her flay his chest open so she can curl up in the bloodied ditch of his heart and pull his ribs around her. He wants her to slice off a piece of him, if even a piece of him can be salvaged, to keep with her, to purify, to make some small part of him good enough for her to love.
Something dislodges inside him, and it's like each desire, hoarded for years under the surface of his mind, breaks free. Like a freak show out of a back alley circus tent, every sacrilegious want, every grotesque affront to the saints that has no right to exist springs forth in his mind, towing desire after profane desire behind it, each more unholy than the last.
“I want to taste you,” he hears himself say.
Her face is rosy and her eyes hazy as she's coming down. But her brows pull up. She doesn't give him her hand. He knows she wants to be gentle, but he doesn’t care. He doesn't deserve gentle, and if he doesn't do this he will never permit himself to experience anything gentle ever again.
He beckons her hand with his eyes, pumping himself viciously. “Saints, fuck. Please Inej. Please- let me taste.”
Tentatively, Inej lifts her hand towards him. Nearly caving forward, he snatches her still-glistening fingers from the air, holds them up to his mouth, and closes his lips around them.
He comes almost immediately, all over the floor, and maybe some on her, moaning around her fingers, sucking lightly.
Her taste – Inej’s taste - in his mouth, on his tongue. She’s savory. Full. She’s perfect. And she’s touching him. Her fingers are on him, in him. He sucks harder, pushes his tongue against her fingers until they’re at the roof of his mouth.
For something like five divine seconds, he’s immersed in her, spilling himself at her feet while his own climax shreds him alive.
And then he coughs. Which turns into a gag. He tears her hand from his mouth. Terror rakes its icy claws down his back. He’s going to throw up.
No, no, no- not here. Not where she can see, he thinks wildly. He needs to get out of there now .
Between coughs, he scrambles for his cane and then lurches for the door.
He flings his arm in the general direction of the window without looking at Inej. “When he gets out of that sewer, follow him,” he orders, and plunges out of the room. He’s barely putting himself back in his pants by the time he stumbles out the ground floor entrance and vomits into the street.