Work Text:
Kaz’s nickname has a hundred origins. From his gloves to his bloody, murderous history, the Bastard of the Barrel gives fuel to rumours about his wicked hands at every available opportunity.
A reputation, although hard to maintain, makes keeping the scum of Ketterdam in line easier.
So he lets people believe what they want to believe. That he’ll literally gut you without gagging, cut your tongue from your mouth with the knife in his boot, choke you one-handed while counting his money with the other. There is no job, no deed, no sin too dirty for Kaz Brekker. That’s what they say, what he lets them believe.
Inej Ghafa knows better.
Inej Ghafa knows he has limits. They are few and far between, but they exist. They have nothing to do with specific acts of violence and everything to do with his stubbornly good heart. He will do truly unconscionable, despicable things to those who deserve it but only to those who deserve it.
Some way down the line, Inej Ghafa discovers a whole host of other reasons to call him Dirtyhands.
She is not surprised exactly to find out Kaz is phenomenal with his hands, indeed she’d been very much counting on it, but the reality of it is something else entirely.
Physical intimacy remains a challenge for them for a while after they dismantle most of their emotional walls—brick by brick. There were compromises to be made in negotiating their respective demons. For instance, as Kaz worked through his touch aversion they opted for exploring each other with clothes on. Inej remembers fondly nights spent in his bed, a healthy few inches apart, watching him trail his fingers down her arm, into the dip of her waist, across her hip. Gradually, Kaz worked up to flattening his palm against her thigh and on her belly, feeling the movement of her breath. The inches between them disappeared too, over time, until they could lie practically nose to nose.
This close, a whole catalogue of new possibilities opened up. What if she touched her knee to his thigh? Her head to his chest? Her thigh to his hip?
They discovered, with a bout of shivery, nauseating panic, that Inej was not ready for him to lie or lean over her. The feeling of being pressed into the bed, held down, smothered was too much, too fast. Instead, over the course of days and weeks, they worked their way up from her head on his shoulder, to her arm slung over his waist, to her thigh hooked over his hip, to her nestled fully into his side.
Initially, Kaz had been hesitant, fearing the memory of bodies pressing in, but soon realised that his tiny slip of a girl, warm and lush and alive, would never even marginally resemble those nightmares. Kaz grew so used to sleeping with Inej hugging one entire side of his torso that every time she left to hunt slavers, it took him days to get used to her absence again.
Inej’s first real taste of his talented fingers came one fine morning after her return from sea.
They’d fallen asleep in their usual position but she woke up to find herself curled over him, his back to her front, her arm tucked into his chest and leg over his hip. By the soft rhythm of his breathing, Inej knew he was still asleep. The smell of him wrapped all around her and she pushed her face more firmly into the back of his neck, inhaling deeply. Contentment, warm and familiar, settled into her marrow. Inej could have stayed this way forever. Apparently, she wasn’t the only one because when she moved to pull away Kaz made a small sound of protest and laced his fingers through hers, holding her hand to his chest.
“No,” he said, more or less into his pillow.
“Kaz.” Inej pressed a kiss to the back of his neck. “We need to get up at some point.”
“No.” Kaz tightened his grip on her.
Over his shoulder, Inej could see his eyes were still closed and his voice was thick with sleep. Unable to resist, she reached up with her free hand and pushed his dark hair away from his forehead, carding her fingers through it before kissing his temple. A little sound, quiet and contented, left his parted lips. Kaz turned and blinked up at her, those big, dark eyes soft in the morning light.
“Good morning,” she whispered.
“I love waking up to you,” he said, perfectly sincere.
He’d said similar things in the past but her heart did a little somersault anyway. “Kaz.”
Slowly, he turned onto his back, scooping an arm around her waist and holding her close. Then, he buried his face in her neck, taking his turn to breath her in.
“How do you smell so good?” Kaz’s breath was warm and damp, chased by a shiver down her spine. He took another deep breath and curved a hand around the dip of her waist. “So, so good.”
For several, lazy minutes they lay entangled, just breathing. Kaz’s hands moved slowly across her back, along the ridges of her spine, over the gentle curve of her hip, hooking under her thigh, cupping the back of her neck. Greedy, that’s what his touch was—insatiable and unhurried. It unspooled something in her, something that had grown taut and tense in the years she spent at the Menagerie. Inej melted against him, his hands leaving her warm, lax with pleasure. It was different from anything she’d experienced before, by herself or with others. Calm and undemanding.
Eventually, he let her go and they went about their day.
That night, Kaz wanted to try something new.
“Can I take this off?” he asked, indicating the loose shirt she was wearing.
Inej nodded, sitting up enough to shuck off the garment. Left only in her wrappings, she felt his gaze meander across her skin, taking in the scars and moles and stretch marks. Loud in the night time hush of the room, she heard his breath catch.
As always, his approach was slow, careful. Inej lay back and Kaz began tracing the soft terrain of her body. Slender fingers skimmed her ribs, the valley of her stomach, to the defined jut of her hips. His touch was feather-light, not nervous but cautious, mindful, deliberate. In the safety of the Slat, under his watchful eye, Inej felt herself settle—calm stealing over her.
It was only when he pressed his mouth against the bare skin of her shoulder that she realised her eyes had closed. The sensation woke her up to the heat of his body, the warm wash of his breath. “Is this okay?” He murmured against her skin.
“Yes,” she breathed.
Something about the open press of Kaz’s mouth caused a shift in her, Inej felt desire—undiluted and demanding—pulse through her for the first time in a long time. It coiled heavy in her core as her breathing turned shallow. Kaz noticed. Smiling against her, he began kissing his way over her shoulder, to the delicate arch of her collarbone and the visible flutter of her pulse in the hollow of her throat. All while keeping as much of his weight off her as possible.
His mouth was a blatant, sinful distraction from the meandering path of his hand, which had flattened against her belly and crept lower. When it came to tease the low-slung edge of her pants, Kaz stopped and sat up.
“May I?” His eyes were dark and determined as he scanned her face.
Inej could barely think, barely breathe around what he was suggesting but she had wanted his hands on her for so long she could hardly deny herself now. Biting her lip, she nodded, and joined his hands in undoing the fastening of her trousers. Kaz moved to kneel between her legs as he pulled the garment down her calves.
Inej was sure she’d never seen a finer sight: shirt-sleeves rolled up, collar undone to reveal the undershirt beneath, hair slightly mussed, eyes glazed.
“Look at you,” he breathed. One broad hand curled around her calf and parted her legs a little wider. It took every ounce of willpower not to throw an arm over her face. As it was, she couldn’t meet his eye, instead indulging in a coy exploration of his forearms, the breadth of his shoulders, the way his torso tapered to his slender hips. She was interrupted in her perusal when he spoke again. “See something you like?”
Any tension she might have been harbouring slipped out of the room at the light in his eyes, the smirk on his mouth. She raised her foot and poked him in the shoulder with a mock glare. “You’re insufferable!”
Kaz only laughed and took hold of her foot, pressing a kiss to the inside of her ankle. “You knew what you signed up for when you jumped into bed with the Bastard of the Barrel, Inej.”
There was just enough doubt in Kaz’s expression that Inej sat up on her elbows and smiled at him, knocking his hip with the foot he wasn’t holding. It had the desired effect. His expression softened, he trailed a hand up her leg and goosebumps rose in its wake.
A small sound escaped her when his thumb stroked a wide sweep along the inside of her parted thighs. This was uncharted territory.
“I want to do such unspeakable things to you,” Kaz rasped, thumb sliding closer and closer to the inner hem of her underwear.
“So far,” Inej’s own voice roughened in her thickening lust, “it seems like you’re all talk.”
“Is that a challenge?” The dangerous glimmer in his eye was the same one he got when faced with a tough lock, a new safe.
“What if it is?” She purred.
Kaz didn’t break eye contact, not for one moment, as he slid his hot palm all the way up her thigh and swiped his thumb over the aching centre of her. Not even the Wraith’s considerable willpower could stop her from bucking her hips into his touch. The smirk he gave her then held fathoms of sinful promise.
Saints, the man was wicked.
His hand returned to her core, thumb moving in slow, firm circles, and Inej let out a long breath. When he increased the pressure, she couldn’t stop herself from reaching down to wrap a hand around his forearm, his shirt, him.
“Uh—” Inej protested when she felt his fingers pull away, only for them to return and hook into her underwear. A few tugs and she was bared to him, flushed and panting.
At his touch, skin on skin, Inej thought she might combust.
Kaz was mercilessly gentle. Each caress, each stroke coaxed her right to that sweet precipice but never quite over it. With his conman’s attention bent to her every reaction, the way her breath hitched and brows furrowed, Kaz kept her whimpering, dangling on the edge.
“Kaz,” she breathed.
“What is it?”
Inej could have cursed for how unaffected he sounded but one look at his eyes belied his unruffled demeanour.
“What do you need?”
His eyes were dark as blackest night and Inej drowned in them.
“More.”
There was no denying her.
All of Inej’s focus narrowed to the feeling of two of his fingers sinking into her. The slide was slow, easy but the stretch was enough to make her keen.
“Like this?”
“Uhuh—oh.” She moaned through clenched teeth, biting into the meat of her thumb.
Other hand gripping the sheets, she fought the inevitable. Inej was coming apart. Though she tried desperately to cling to what remained of her control, this feeling—hot and achy and very nearly frightening—wound its way around her bones, pulling tighter and tighter. When it snapped, Inej thought, she might snap with it.
Distantly, she knew she was gasping and panting, arching into his touch but she was too far gone to pay any mind. The sound of her arousal, of his fingers sinking into her, dripped from the walls. It was too much. It was not enough. She didn’t know it could feel this good, this horrible.
“Kaz,” she begged.
“Yes, my love?”
“Please.”
“You don’t have to ask, Inej. You never have to ask.” When she opened her eyes—she didn’t remember closing them—she found Kaz staring at her, mouth open, pulse vibrating in the hollow of his throat. “You can have anything, everything.” Not slowing the steady pump of his fingers, crooked slightly to reach all the scary sensitive parts of her, he bore down on her clit in perfect, harsh little circles. “Come, Inej.”
Is that what she had been begging for? Permission?
Regardless, before the words even finished sounding, release barreled down her spine. Toes curling in the sheets and back arching off the bed, Inej was overcome, her every fibre awash with sensation. Kaz worked her patiently, meticulously, until she was shooing his hand away.
With her eyes mashed shut, she didn’t see the way he brought his fingers to his lips and with her pulse a dull roar in her head, she didn’t hear the way he groaned at the taste of her.
“That was…” Inej laughed at the ceiling, a little giddy as the high receded, before lapsing into silence.
Kaz waited for the end of the sentence, tracing idle circles on the outside of her hip. “That was… what?”
“I’ve never come like that,” Inej whispered and turned her face to hide the heat she knew was rising in it. “I guess now I know why they call you Dirtyhands.”
For a beat Kaz just blinked at her, stunned. Then, he tipped his head back and let out a sound rarer than parem. His laugh was so free, so joyful she had to sit up and taste it.
“I’d appreciate it if you kept this to yourself, Inej.”
“I’m sure we can come to some kind of agreement,” she chuckled.