(no subject)

[everymonstrousthing]

Some things don't change. She might have been and gone and come again but, when she's out on the roof, Kaz sits and waits for her. He's sitting in one of the kitchen chairs with his feet up on the sill and a cigarette between two fingers. He's reading a book, one of the paperback novels that he's so fond of. He smokes and he reads and he waits for the girl he loves, his Wraith, to come home.

Comments

[tricktofalling]

She turns over, a bit bonelessly, because she still can't quite get up yet. She's well aware of her nudity, of Kaz's, and she admires him and his long, lean limbs.

"I don't want to risk a child," she murmurs. "Not in this city, where I've already disappeared once."

[everymonstrousthing]

He's distracted for a moment by the sprawl of her, by how beautiful she looks naked on his desk like that. Sometimes, he dreams of a little girl running ahead of him, and that little girl is every inch Inej's daughter, and he hopes that he has some part in that.

"You're right," he says.

[tricktofalling]

She can see, for a second, that his gaze is somewhere different, his mind caught up somewhere that isn't quite this moment. It makes her cheeks flush a little bit. For two years, she'd been trying to pay off her debt so she could leave Ketterdam; for months, she's been fixated on her future ship, on saving people from a fate like hers.

It's only been very recently, here in Darrow, that her mind has started to slip sideways into what it might be like to be a little more settled than that.

She slides off the desk, slowly, and fits herself up against Kaz. Slowly, she reaches down between his legs, and strips the condom carefully off of him.

[everymonstrousthing]

"You didn't have to do that," he says, blushing a little as she takes care of it. "I would have done it."

[tricktofalling]

Inej lifts a brow at him, almost imperiously. She ties the condom off, and begins to head out, not wanting to leave it in the trash can next to his desk. They change out the one in the kitchen more often.

"Do you think I would have if I didn't want to?" She smiles at him, tender but a little mischievous. "I've stuck my fingers in your ass, Kaz. I think I can take a condom off."

[everymonstrousthing]

Now his cheeks really do colour and he laughs a little, biting his lip. He nods and pads into the bedroom, lowering himself down onto the bed, on top of the sheets, still naked as the day he was born. Right then, he feels far more Reitvald than Brekker.

[tricktofalling]

She takes a moment out in the kitchen, washing her hands, making him coffee and herself some tea. It's strange, to be so openly vulnerable yet so entirely comfortable.

When the drinks are ready, she brings them into the bedroom, and climbs into bed with him.

[everymonstrousthing]

He sits up a little so that he can take the coffee cup from her, curling his long, pale fingers around it and looking across at her. "You look content, Wraith."

[tricktofalling]

"I feel awfully content," she says, curling up against him with her tea, letting it warm her fingers. "For someone that's going to have bruises on their hips."