this is how she makes me feel...

[everymonstrousthing]

It's a pattern that they've fallen into, since that night she'd slipped into his lap, touched his shoulders so gently. In Ketterdam, they'd got used to existing in each other's space, in and out of each other's rooms, eating together, talking mostly to each other. This is a natural continuance of that, Kaz supposes, only now feelings are out in the open, vulnerable to the air. Now they both know exactly what they're doing.

So it's different, incredibly so, but it feels familiar all the same.

Without really discussing it, it's Inej's apartment that they spend all of their time together in. Kaz has started stripping off his gloves as soon as he comes through the door. He deliberately leaves his tailoring in his own apartment, coming to her in softer layers, his sleeves pushed up to his elbows, until they go to bed and he pulls his sleeves down over his hands so that he can drape an arm over her in lieu of actually being able to pull her close. It's small, but it's progress. They cook together, eat together, are learning to watch television together - Kaz finds that he enjoys films, dislikes programmes because they're short and, often, seem pointless. They sit relatively close together on the couch and, every so often, Inej touches him. Usually, those touches are over clothes - a brush of fingers against his bicep, his thigh, his chest. She touches the backs of her fingers lightly against his cheek. On her way to the kitchen, she ruffles his fingers through his hair. She keeps the touches light, casual, but Kaz knows what she's doing and he keeps a mental record of those casual touches. He catalogues every one.

He comes back from the kitchen chill from sitting perched on the window to smoke a cigarette, a pair of beers in hand. He offers her one before he slides back onto the middle seat of the sofa, as close to her as he can be without touching her.

"What are we watching, Wraith?" he asks, a light note of teasing in his rough voice.

Comments

[everymonstrousthing]

"Good."

He likes this, too, he finds. He trails kisses against the soft skin of her throat, none of them lasting long, all of them light, but it's more than he's ever managed before. His arms stay tight around her. His breathing speeds up a little, but he forces to keep concentrating on how warm she is, how good she smells, the solid reality of her in his arms.

[the_wraith]

His lips are softer than she ever would have imagined and his breath tickles just a little against her skin. But it's the nicest kind of feeling, not one that makes her want to squirm away but squirm closer. She tilts her head to the side, baring more of her neck, even though she knows he'll stop soon. He has to. She sighs his name with a little smile, letting her hands drift up the sides of his torso.

[everymonstrousthing]

"I dream about this."

He breathes the words out against her skin, pressing them there with more kisses, his thumb stroking against her side through her shirt. His breath shivers a little. "Fuck, Inej."

[the_wraith]

"You do?" She doesn't know why she's surprised, except maybe that it's Dirtyhands. A part of her thinks he doesn't dream at all, just schemes in his sleep, and she's not stopped recently to question it. But there's something else in his saying so that startles her. "About me?"

[everymonstrousthing]

"All the time," he says, pulling back enough that he can look at her. He blushes, his hand stroking against her side. "You're...all I think about." His eyebrows draw together. "You have to know that."

[the_wraith]

"I just.."

She never has a problem telling Kaz that he's wrong, ever. But there's something about this moment, held in his arms with him trying desperately to open up for her, that makes the words stick in her throat.

"I'm not all you think about," she says, pushing a teasing note into her voice.

[everymonstrousthing]

"Not all," he concedes, and he grazes another kiss against her skin, this one overlapping the corner of her mouth. "Not always. But more time than I ever thought was possible." He flushes. "Is that bad?"

Kaz Brekker, Dirtyhands, the baddest boy in Ketterdam, is not accustomed to feeling uncertain.

[the_wraith]

"No," she answers quickly. He's trying, and she wants that, she wants this. She's not going to make him feel bad for thinking about her.

But there's thinking and there's dreaming, and she's denied herself the dreaming. There's thinking, which is real, and dreaming, which is the ideal, a fantasy that she has to fulfill. Wants to fulfill?

"What do you dream?"

[everymonstrousthing]

"Little things," he says, his hand still stroking against her side, letting his head back against the sofa cushions and looking up at her for a moment. "Being close to you like this. Kissing." He huffs a laugh. "I think about kissing a lot. Being able to be with you, skin to skin." He swallows. "What you look like when you're..." He's blushing like a school boy. Where's Dirtyhands when he needs him, all sneer and bravado? "Naked." He says it quietly, sure he's over stepping a mark. "I'm sorry, Inej. I can't help it."

[the_wraith]

She stares at him, at the flush in his cheeks and that nervous look in his eyes. She's entranced by it, simply because it's so strange. This is Kaz Brekker. This is Dirtyhands. All those people who are so scared of him... and it really is her that can make him blush. Just her. Little Inej.

"It's fine," she says, quickly because she knows she's been quiet a moment too long. Without thinking, she pulls her hand up, brushes back the fringe of his hair from his face. "It's--"

Inej ducks her head with an embarrassed little smile. "You'd take your clothes off around me.. like I wasn't even there," she says. "It'd do such awful things to me."

[everymonstrousthing]

She brushes back his hair and he turns his head and presses a kiss to the heel of her hand. Every movement feels like a step forward, feels like progress. His hands slip down to her hips.

"I always knew you were there," he says, and it's the truest thing that he has in him. "I just...you were the only person I trusted enough. The only place I felt safe."

[the_wraith]

"Safe," she echoes, then chuckles softly, low in her throat. It's not that she doesn't appreciate that, understand that being the safe one to him means he can be this way with her. But he has to see how that creates a strange dichotomy.

"I didn't think boys dreamt that way about girls they call safe," she explains. She goes quiet for a moment, licks her lips and twirls a strand of his hair between her fingers. "But I like being your safe place. Now."

[everymonstrousthing]

"I've never done any of this with anyone else before," he points out, and he doesn't pull away from her fingers in his hair. One of his hands slips lower, cautious, just skimming the curve of her ass. "I just know how I dream about you." He smiles, crooked, but true and brushes a kiss against the point of her chin, featherlight as all the ones before it.

[the_wraith]

It makes sense of course, when he says it, but again it's not what she expects. Not what she'd thought at all.

"The girls at the Menagerie would look at you." She moves her hand from his hair, runs the pad of one finger as light as she can down the side of his face to his chin. "They'd whisper your name like they were scared but I saw them look. You could have had anyone, you know."

[everymonstrousthing]

"I never even noticed anyone but you," he says, and he knows it sounds ridiculous, sounds like a line thrown by a handsome boy to turn a pretty girl's head, but there's never been anything more true than that. Objectively, he knew that other girls, girls like Nina for example, were beautiful, but he never gave them a second thought. Not when Inej was there.

She doesn't pull away and his touch turns a touch bolder, one hand on her hip, the other sliding up the back of her thigh to her ass. They're careful touches. Exploratory. Every couple of breathes, he' inhales deeper to remind him of what they're doing, to convince himself it's safe.

[the_wraith]

It does sound ridiculous, especially with his hand where it is. It's not as though she expects Kaz Brekker to be honest, not all the time, not even with her. But she believes him. She's still getting used to believing in this. It's both difficult and easy as can be.

She dips her head lower, hesitating so her lips hover above his, her eyes finding his to check to be sure, before she brushes her lips softly against his.

[everymonstrousthing]

He wishes, more than anything, that he could push the kiss deeper but he remembers what happened on Valentine's day and he won't do that to her again; he can't. Still, even this is heady enough, this light brush of her lips against his. His body reacts, which only serves to push his blush darker.

[the_wraith]

She can feel him between her thighs, and though she does grin against his mouth, it's a little nervous, a little shy.

"Maybe we should go back to our movie," she says, pulling back a little.

[everymonstrousthing]

There's disappointment, but a little relief, too. It's not something that either of them are ready for, just yet. Still, this is the most that they've ever managed to do and Kaz can't help the way he's smiling. He nods, taking his hands off her, brushing the backs of his fingers against her chin.

"Keep telling me what a girl wants from her man," he says. "I'll keep trying." He glances at the TV screen, pushing himself into more of a sitting position with her still in his lap. "Think we need to start it again?"

[the_wraith]

It's another statement that catches in her chest and sits there, warm and unfamiliar. It's part joke, light and teasing, but there's a promise in it that Inej can't help but marvel at, the depth of it.

She moves around his movements, understanding that she's not meant to leave his lap. "Maybe," she admits, glancing up at the screen to realize she has no idea who these people are or what they're doing. Inej grabs the remote from the table, then settles herself comfortably in his lap again. Her shoulder presses up against his chest, her legs stuck out on the sofa, her head ready to fall against his shoulder.

[everymonstrousthing]

She settles and, after a moment, Kaz wraps his arms back around her, hands swaddled in the sleeves of his sweater again. For a second, he rests his cheek against her hair before he lifts his head again.