Work Text:
If Inej hadn’t been so drunk, she would have given him a black eye. As it was, all she could do was sit on the bed in her little room in the Van Eck house, frozen.
Expensive. The word echoed in her mind.
Expensive.
Kaz had paused when she’d tensed up, and now he moved away slowly. “‘Nej? What’s wrong?”
“Really, Kaz? You have to ask me that?” She was shaking, unsure whether to cry or scream. “Get out. Get out of my bed, get out of my room. Get out. Get out! ”
Kaz stumbled to his feet, looking wounded. “I don’t understand.”
“I’m the most expensive thing you’ve ever touched.” She echoed his words bitterly. “It’s not even true. The De Kappel was worth a thousand times what I ever went for. Though I suppose if you were renting it out by the hour, it might be a different story, no?”
Kaz just stared at her, drunk and bewildered. “That’s not– I didn’t mean–”
“Or were you talking about my worth as an indenture? I doubt my value has gone up since I bought it off. Men will pay more for a fourteen year old than an eighteen year old, you know.”
“Inej–”
Inej turned away, curled in on herself. “I’m not your whore. Get out.”
She could barely hear the door shut a minute later over the pounding of her own heartbeat in her ears.
*
She spent the next day at Wylan and Jesper’s, and the two of them were kind enough not to press her about why until Jesper gave her a gentle hug and she burst into tears.
“Oh, shit,” Jesper said inarticulately, stepping away. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to–”
“It’s not you,” Inej managed to say, and grabbed his arm, pulling him back and burying her face in his chest. His arms came slowly around her, holding her. He felt familiar and safe and she clung to him, crying.
“Inej.” She could feel the vibrations of Jesper’s voice in his chest where she had her head pressed against it. “Inej, what’s wrong?”
“I can’t believe he said that,” she managed to say quietly, bitterly. “I just can’t believe he called me that.”
She heard Wylan come over.
“What did Kaz do?” he asked Jesper, and Jesper just shook his head. Inej got back control of herself with difficulty and let go of him. He released her immediately and slowly, giving her time to stop him, wiped tears from her cheek.
She managed a shaky smile of thanks. Wylan guided her to the couch and sat her down.
“All right,” Wylan said calmly as the two of them sat on either side of her. “Now tell us what he did so we can kill him in a manner that fits the crime.”
She tried to laugh, but it came out as more of a sob. “Last night– that’s why Kaz left early. We were drunk, he was kissing me and touching my hair and he said– he told me that I was–” she took a breath. “He told me I was the most expensive thing he’d ever touched.”
Wylan’s forehead creased with worry.“Then what did he do?”
“What do you mean, what did he do?” Inej demanded, her voice breaking on the words. “He got kicked out of my damn room, that’s what he did! I can’t believe he’d–” She buried her face in her hands. “Expensive. An expensive thing.”
“Bastard,” Jesper said softly.
“Do you mean– was he being sarcastic?” Wylan asked slowly.
“Sarcastic? He called her expensive,” Jesper snapped.
“I mean, it’s surprisingly romantic, for him, but I don’t see why it upset her that way.”
Inej looked up from her hands to stare at Wylan. “Romantic,” she echoed flatly.
Wylan looked uncertainly from her to Jesper, who was also giving him an incredulous glare.
“How,” Inej demanded, “is reminding me of my price , that I’m something to be bought and sold, romantic?”
The mercher looked uncomfortable. “It’s not like that. It’s like… I mean, when Jesper tells me that my smile is sweet, he doesn’t mean that’s actually how it tastes. It’s a… whatever you call it, a figure of speech.”
“It’s not okay at all,” Jesper said sharply, his hands fidgeting with a throw pillow, twisting the corner angrily. “The absolute nerve. Figure of speech or not.”
“He’s saying he loves her more than anything,” Wylan said, and Inej realized with a disgusted jolt that the Kerch words for love and value were the same. Kaz loved her more than anything. Kaz valued her more than anything. Perhaps, to Kaz, there was no difference. And the thought of that was almost too much to bear.
“I am not,” she said, her voice tight and precise, “An expensive thing for him to steal.”
“And you deserve better than to be called one,” Jesper agreed. “Kaz knows what you endured better than anyone. He should have known better.”
She shook her head. “It’s… it’s who he is, isn’t it? Years ago, he called me an investment and I should have realized then… he can’t think about people any other way, can he?”
“Look, you’re both being extremely literal,” Wylan protested. “Jes can call me sunshine without pulling the curtain between us when he wants to sleep in, and call me honey without expecting me to sweeten his tea. Kaz doesn’t actually think of you as a commodity. It’s his way of telling you how important you are.”
“Some days I’d like to pull a curtain between us when I want to sleep,” muttered Jesper. “But… wait, is this like when we had the bounties on us and Kaz was absolutely delighted that his was the highest?”
“No. You’re still being literal. That was just him being a smug bastard because he’d committed the most crime.”
Inej had to smile slightly at that. “But… Jesper calls you sunshine and honey because you make him feel the way sunshine and honey make him feel,” she argued. “So you’re saying I make Kaz feel like a particularly expensive item would?" The set of her mouth hardened. "I don’t like that.”
“No,” Wylan said gently. “Kaz calls you expensive because he’d give everything he has for you. It’s a measure of your worth to him. And your worth is greater than anything he has ever touched.”
Inej swallowed hard. “It made me feel like I was back at the Menagerie,” she said. “Tan– Heleen used to remind me how much I’d cost her. How much return she expected on her investment, and what she’d be forced to do with me if she didn’t get it. When Kaz called me an investment, years later, it made me so angry. Like no matter how far I ran, I would always be an investment, never a person, never valued for myself, only for how quickly I could compensate people for any time and effort they wasted on me.” Her hands clenched in her lap with resentful fury.
“Oh, love.” Jesper pulled her into his arms again, and she let him, closing her eyes. Slowly her hands relaxed, though the aching knot in her chest did not go away.
“Investment is a complicated word,” Wylan said slowly. “Used the way Heleen did, it means exactly what you felt like it meant. But used between equals, friends… it can mean something else.”
“If you say it means something romantic, I’m going to kick you,” Inej said, her voice slightly muffled against Jesper’s chest.
“Not romantic, no,” Wylan assured her. “It’s more like a commitment. It means you’ve put a certain amount of trust in someone. You know you can expect them to be there for you in return, to give back the loyalty you’ve given them when they need it, the way you can draw on an investment in a time of need.”
“Why do I even like you?” Jesper asked incredulously, and then, “Ow,” as Wylan smacked him with a couch pillow.
“Because you like the attention. Now hush, this is about Inej. Inej, when he called you an investment, Kaz was telling you that you were someone he knew he could trust. That you’d be there if he needed you, and that he was willing to invest in your well-being in turn. And remember, not every investment is good. He knew there was no guarantee but his own belief that you’d always be there. But he was willing to take a risk on you, because he trusted you.”
He sounded so much like Kaz right now, with his talk of risks and return on investments, that a part of her wanted to reject his words out of hand, but instead, she forced herself to listen.
It made more sense that Kaz would think of it that way than actually see her as a literal business asset. He was blunt and tactless, but one thing had always been true between them. Unlike the men at the Menagerie, who had projected on her their own fantasies of the exotic Suli girl, from the first day they met, Kaz had looked at her and seen a person, an equal. Inej nodded slowly.
“In other words,” Jesper said, kissing the top of her head, “We are in love with emotionally constipated Kerch men who lack the vocabulary to express any emotion but greed.”
Inej sighed and wriggled out of his arms, sitting up straight and looking Wylan in the eye.
“Be honest with me. What he said, calling me the most expensive thing he’d ever touched– it really was romantic? An– an endearment?”
“Honestly, yes.” Wylan nodded. “The kind you’d sigh over in a romance story and feel too embarrassed to use in real life. It’s very difficult to imagine Kaz Brekker saying it.”
She sighed again.
“Does it really make any less sense than anything you’d say in another language?” Wylan wanted to know. “In Fjerda, a man will call a woman ‘hearthfire’ or ‘little bird.’ Because she means warmth and home to him, or life and hope. In Shu Han, telling a woman that she makes fish sink and geese fall means she’s so beautiful that when she passes the fish forget how to swim and the geese forget how to fly.”
Jesper snorted. “So, it could always be worse. You could always be a sinking goose,” he told Inej.
“That is absolutely not how it is used.” Wylan reached for Inej’s hands and took them in his. “I’m not saying you shouldn’t be hurt. I just think you should know what it was he was trying to tell you.”
Inej nodded, feeling drained. “I guess I have to think about it.”
“Would you like to eat obscene amounts of cake and drink tea while you think about it?” Jesper offered. “Because we can make that happen.”
“Yes, please,” she said in a small voice. Jesper tousled her hair with his hand and headed to the kitchen. Wylan have Inej's hands a reassuring squeeze and let them go, and she tilted her head back to lean it against the backrest of the couch.
“Did you ever call Jesper something like that?” she asked.
“No,” Wylan said quietly. “He calls me all sorts of endearments, and they’re sweet, but I like it best when he just calls me Wy, you know? So that’s what I do. Call him by his name. And as for things like what Kaz said…” he trailed off. “I’d feel stupid. Like I was trying to be someone I’m not. All overblown and romantic and…”
“So not only was he telling me he loved me,” Inej mused, “But he was telling me he loved me in a way so over the top that it was embarrassing.”
“Uh. Yes. He was.”
She groaned and leaned her head against Wylan’s shoulder. “And I kicked him out. We’re a pair of idiots, aren’t we?”
“Weren’t you always?” Wylan pointed out.
“Maybe.”
*
When she came into his office at the Slat the next day, Kaz did not look at her. She’d entered through the door for once, because the seriousness of the conversation they were about to have deserved it, and as she glanced at the window, she noticed that it had been latched.
The silent invitation of his unlatched window had been withdrawn. He’d been sulking.
His hair was disordered as if he’d been running his fingers through it. His coat from last night had been tossed carelessly over a chair rather than hung up. The covers on the side of the bed that she had last slept on were mussed; his side was untouched. It looked like he’d slept with his head on her pillow last night, wanting the comfort of the scent of her hair in his sleep. Even though he was still angry and hurt. Even though, she realized, he didn’t understand why she was upset.
He was an emotionally constipated Kerch bastard, and she was still upset with him, even now, knowing what he’d been trying to say. But damn it, he was her emotionally constipated Kerch bastard.
“Can we talk?” she asked quietly.
He nodded, shoulders tense, his eyes still fixed on his paperwork. She wondered how much extra work he got done through his habit of gazing at figures and accounts as a way to avoid making eye contact. It was a strategy she was familiar with by now. He was listening, he just didn't want her to see his eyes, because Saints forbid anyone realize he ever felt an emotion.
“What you said the other night upset me.” She came and perched on his desk. He moved the blotter aside to make more room, still avoiding her gaze. “Until I came here, I never heard people talked about in that way– as if their importance was like a sum of money, something to be measured and paid and tallied up.”
Slowly, Kaz closed the account book in front of him. She continued talking, watching his profile and the lines of tension around his mouth.
“And I was one of those things. I was sold to be a possession, rented out to earn my keep." She kept her voice as even and matter of fact as she could, but some of the resentment bleed through. "I was taught that my body was something men would pay to use. So when you tell me that I’m expensive, I don’t hear that you value me.”
“You know that I–” he started, but she interrupted.
“Listen. I am telling you what I hear. And what I hear is that I’m for sale.”
His hand clenched in its glove. “Never,” Kaz insisted. “I never meant that.”
Inej let out a breath. “I know. But it hurt. Please don’t say that again.”
He said nothing for a long moment, the quiet of the room only broken by their breathing and the muffled sounds from the streets below. Finally, Kaz reached for her hand, paused, and removed his glove before reaching out the rest of the way. “I’m not sure I understand it, but… I won’t say it again. If that’s what it means to you.”
She took his hand. It was warm against her cooler skin.
"I don't know any other way to say things like that," he admitted after a moment. "And I know that hearing how I feel… it's important to you. But I'm Kerch, Inej. It's how I talk, how I think."
She sighed, running her thumb back and forth over his hand.
"Then we do what we do when we're not getting what we want. We find a way. I learned Kerch. Maybe it's time you learned my language."
Kaz looked up at her, and she saw uncertainty in his eyes.
"I'm not good with languages," he said, and he could hear in his words how much it cost him to admit that he was bad at anything. "I pretend I've never cared to try to pick up Ravkan or Zemeni or Shu or Fjerdan, but the truth is that I have. It would be an invaluable skill in a city like this. The words just… they don't stay in my mind like numbers do."
"Will you try for me?" she asked. "Even if you're terrible at it, can you try?"
He swallowed. “Yeah. I can try. But it won’t be easy. The words. And feelings. I’m going to screw up again.”
Inej felt the corner of her mouth quirk up in dark amusement. “Yeah. You definitely are.”
Kaz scowled. “Why is that funny? I don’t want to hurt you.”
Inej squeezed his hand, trying to work out how to put it into words. “I guess… because it won’t be on purpose. Because you’re important enough to stay around for, even when you do say something colossally dumb.” Because you’re my emotionally constipated Kerch bastard, she thought but didn’t say. Because you haven’t the slightest idea how to say it properly, but you love me. “Because you’re willing to try to say things my way instead of insisting that I learn to like yours,” she said instead. “Wylan explained what it meant, but–”
“You told Wylan I said that?” Kaz demanded, looking mortified. “That’s blackmail material, Inej.”
The two of them apparently affectionately blackmailed each other regularly. Another thing Inej could accept but would never understand.
“And Jesper,” she admitted, “But he’s not Kerch, so he just thinks you’re an asshole.”
Kaz grumbled something incoherent.
“On the bright side,” she said to stop him from sulking, “He explained your horrific concepts of value and expense. So I’ve more or less been educated about how to talk dirty in Kerch.”
Kaz looked up at her again, this time in surprise. “What?”
Kerch would never be her language. It did not have the words to tell him the secret workings of her heart. But for him, she would try to translate. “Kaz, you are extravagantly expensive.”
His eyes widened and he looked uncertain.
“Your touch is like a string of jewels across my skin. You return every investment I make in you threefold.”
He was blushing. Kaz Brekker was actually blushing. “Inej,” he protested. “That’s not– it’s not talking dirty.”
She just smiled. “I value you, Kaz. You’re the treasure I’d buy the most dearly.”
He opened his mouth but the only sound that came out was the sort of sound one of the crows from the windowsill would make– a sort of croak. He swallowed and tried again. “Inej.” His hand tightened on hers. “I love you too.”
Inej nodded. “And I’m going to teach you to tell me so in words that will make me feel the way you’re feeling right now. And you will use them often, Kaz.” She gave him a mock-stern look, but couldn’t help smiling at the flustered vulnerability in his eyes.
There was still a hot red flush on his cheeks. “Yeah. I’d like that.”