everymonstrousthing

For Inej

With his cane in his hand, he feels more like himself again. More solid on his feet. He hadn't seen her since Valentine's Day, mostly because he's been avoiding her. There's only so much humiliation that he's willing to stomach. He might have given her all of the peace in the world, if it wasn't for the fact that he can't stop thinking about the warm press of her mouth on his.

There's a bakery just down the road from Dimera that does small fruit cakes not a million miles away from things she would have liked in Ketterdam. He's got a box tied with twine in one hand so he raps on her door with the head of his cane.

He ignores an uncharacteristic flutter of nerves.

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He shakes his head.

"Not now," he says, and then he manages a ghost of a smile. "Maybe later. I..." He swallows, frowning, awkward in a way that he never, ever is. "I owe you an explanation, Inej." Not an apology, but he needs to explain to her why he's broken in such particular ways. "I owe you that much."

She tries not to look at his face, the way his emotions flicker across it, but she can't stare at the floor forever. She sets the little box on a counter, carefully, and shakes her head.

"We were drugged," she says quickly, dismissing it all before he can even get started. "I shouldn't have bought those chocolates. Sounds like it happened to a lot of people." She presses her lips together and manages to look him in the eye. "We'll just forget about it."

"That's not what I mean, Inej." He sits down without her invitation, in a kitchen chair with a straight back, his naked hands clasped between spread knees. She doesn't look at his hands the way some people do, but that's because she's seen them before. He's taken his gloves off in front of her before. He swallows again and then looks up at her. He's not sure that he's ever felt this naked before. "Drugged, maybe. But did you say anything that, somewhere in you, you didn't mean, completely?" A muscle ticks in his jaw. "Because I didn't."

He lets that hang between them for a moment.

Her gaze skitters down and away, following her fingers as she idly traces the lines of grout between the tiles on the kitchen counter. What she said, what she feels doesn't matter. It can't. She's been reminding herself of that every day since.

"Did you do anything you wouldn't have done, on any other day?" she counters. Maybe it's a little cruel, but she feels more cruelly treated than that. It's not every day a boy becomes literally sick at your kiss.

Maybe this will be easier without her near him? Anxiety wells up, thick and tarry in the pit of is stomach and Kaz has to stop for a moment, a muscle in his cheek ticking as he drags in a breath through his nose.

"It's skin," he says, finally. "I can't stand it; the feel of skin against mine. You saw me, on that wagon? That's what happens when I can't get away from it." He closes his eyes, knotting his fingers together. "I wasn't born in Ketterdam, Inej. I didn't crawl out of the Barrel. I was born in the country, a couple of day's walk from the city. I had a father. I had a brother." Had sticks in his throat like a husk. "I was born Kaz Reitvald. My father died when I was nine and we couldn't run a farm on our own, so Jordie sold it, and we came to Ketterdam." He takes another deep breath, keep going because, if he stops, he'll never start again and she'll never let him any closer than he is already and he thinks he'd rather die than that. "We...You know what coming to Ketterdam is like. It wasn't as bad as Heleen's, not at first, but it wasn't a place for two boys from the country who knew half of fuck all between them. We...lost all of our money. Hertzoon. Hertzoon did it. I...didn't find that out until later." He swallows, ignores that stinging in the corners of his eyes. "That was the year of the Queen's Lady plague. They put the bodies on barges, you know? Burn them out in the harbour. I do't think there's been a firepox outbreak since you came to Ketterdam but...that's what they do." A single tear overspills the corner of his eye and rolls down the sharp line of his cheekbone. "I wasn't dead, Inej. I had to..." He frowns, wipes at his face with the back of his hand. "It's a long swim, and the skin...Inej...his skin." He shakes his head. "That's when I started wearing the gloves. That's why I..."

For the first time since he started talking, he risks looking up at her. She's the only person he could imagine opening up to, being weak in front of her. Still, there's a part of him that's so ashamed of himself, ashamed of the tears on his face, of the tremble in his voice. What semblance of a man is he? What is there here that she could possibly want.

"I wanted to, Inej. So, so badly. I've...always wanted to. With you. Just with you. But..." He swallows, shakes his head. "Skin. I don't...I can't..." He worries his lip for a second. "I don't know how."

She doesn't make a move to stop him, doesn't even consider telling him to be quiet because, in her mind, she's decided that it doesn't matter. Whatever excuse he has, whatever his reasoning for making himself this hard and twisted, she doesn't care.

But then he starts speaking and he doesn't stop. And suddenly Kaz Brekker is laid bare there before her. Not Kaz Brekker, Kaz Reitvald, a completely different person that Inej has never seen before, not truly. She stares at him, lifting a hand to cover her mouth because, now that she understands, now that he's said it without precisely saying it, she feels a little sick at the thought, too.

When he looks up at her, Inej's eyes are glossy and wet, but she doesn't cry. It's his story, his suffering, and she wouldn't want someone crying for her, crying for the scared little lynx chained up in a gilded cage. She wanted him without his armor; he's giving her that and she will not cry about that.

But what do you say to something like that?

"Kaz..." She starts to move closer, stops herself and pulls her arms to herself. It's instinct, a hard pull at her heart, to reach out and hold him. But she can't. He doesn't need that.

"We can find a way, Kaz," she says. Just with her. It doesn't have to be the whole world. He doesn't have to take all that on. "We'll make it work."

He's so painfully grateful to here right then that he wants nothing more than to break down completely, in a sobbing mess that he knows he won't be able to pull himself back from. He's barely ever wept even a scatter of tears for Jordie. Why break the habit of what feels, at least, like a lifetime? She sets towards him and that, right there, is more give than he's got any right to expect. And then she speaks and his heart feels raw and bloody, open to the air, like she can see it beating right in front of him.

"I want that," he says, voice little more than a rasp. "More than anything." He looks up and, this time, he doesn't wipe his face. He lets her see his damp face, gives her that, too. "I want you. More than anything."

It costs nothing to admit. It costs everything.

She's keenly aware of how much she thinks that touch would be a comfort right now, to him and to her, and how much of him she cannot touch. That's part of what she wants: that intimacy, to be able to cradle his head against her shoulder and let him cry into the crook of her neck. But it's not an option. She has to figure something else out. It's a challenge she's willing to take on, now.

She won't admit it, but there is, yes, a second of doubt. Kaz has built himself up as this monstrous thing, terrifying because all believe that he will, absolutely, do whatever terrible, monstrous thing is necessary to get things done. What would this be, in the grand scheme of things? How small, how insignificant? A few tears, a story about a brother that didn't exist? The Barrel was full of those kinds of stories. It didn't have to be Kaz's.

But Inej dismisses the thought immediately, with abhorrence. Maybe Dirtyhands is master of terrible things, but what sort of terrible person would she be to think that this is a lie, a game, to think he is capable of such a thing? It disgusts her that the thought it even there for a second. She forcibly pushes it from her mind.

Carefully, and she always moves with care, conscious of every inch of herself, Inej places herself on his lap. Cloth to cloth. She puts her hands on his shoulders, careful that her fingers do not brush against his collar, go anywhere near his skin. But her thumbs find the line of his collarbones under the pressed cotton of his dress shirt, gently rub against them.

"I thought you were being hard," she admits. "I thought I disgusted you. Being weak disgusted you."

Her weight over him, on to of him, her hands on his shoulders, thumbs skimming the lines of bones through white cotton, and she's not wearing gloves, of course, so he can feel the heat of her palms through his shirt. He lets out a sound, a little breath, broken, relived. He lets his head fall back for a moment, eyes closed, still stinging. His own hands come up and skim, just barely, along the length of her thighs, up to her hips. He holds on to her so lightly.

"I don't think I knew," he says. "Before." He looks up at her, how beautiful she looks with all of the light in the room behind her. "It was that day in the harbour."

He doesn't say it, can't say it, but he knows that she'll know what he means. Her blood soaking through his shirt.

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