Archive of Our Own ^beta

Nikolai leans into his hand on the table in front of him, listening to other people talk about…something. It sounds like taxes or tariffs, actually. Which are both objectively boring as fuck topics.

His mind turns instead to Kaz Brekker. A far less boring subject to focus on. He’d been in Ketterdam on business not two weeks ago, and had taken the time to meet up with the Barrel boss. The entire time they’d spent together, Kaz had been teaching Nikolai how to pick a specific kind of lock. Nikolai can’t even remember the name of it; just how it looked and how frustrating it had been to try to pick.

Of all the locks to teach Nikolai to pick, the frustrating one doesn’t even make the top three of how important it is for Nikolai to have knowledge of. There are far more important locks to learn to pick.

Like, say, Kaz. Nikolai wants nothing more than to learn how precisely to pick Kaz’s lock; the one that keeps all of his emotions at bay, the one that prevents him from saying how he really feels.

Nikolai stands right behind Kaz, bent over at the waist to inspect those gloved hands work. Kaz always seems to struggle in his attempts to slow his demonstrations down for Nikolai to actually follow along, but he’s actually going a decent speed right now.

“There. Like that,” Kaz says tartly, the padlock twisting open easily as if it had never been locked in the first place.

Nikolai stares at the lock as Kaz resets it. “This is ridiculously complicated,” he complains, hefting up his small, light lockpicks. “How am I supposed to properly pick this lock, let alone yours?”

Kaz gives him a baleful glare —

Nikolai clears his mind out. This is his daydream, he gets to choose all of Kaz’s responses.

”How am I supposed to properly pick this lock, let alone yours?” Nikolai grumbles to himself, glancing at where Kaz smirks.

“You wish,” Kaz scoffs dismissively, starting to pick the lock himself again. Then, extremely casually after a quiet minute of work, “...do you wish?”

Nikolai swallows. “...very much so,” he whispers.

Kaz stands and turns on his heel to step up closer to him. “Tell me,” he demands. “Tell me what exactly you wish.”

Nikolai knows the answer to his question so intensely that the words start pouring out of his mouth faster than he can block them. “I wish you’d let me unbutton your shirt, at least. Let me see your collarbones.”

Kaz lets loose a honeyed laugh that sends a shiver down Nikolai’s spine. “What, does the thought of my collarbones turn you on, Your Highness?”

Nikolai doesn’t skip a beat. “Maybe,” he hedges.

Kaz’s gloved fingers fly over the row of buttons on his own shirt, delicately flicking the buttons out of their proper places.

Nikolai tries not to salivate watching him, watching his lithe fingers casually expose the pale skin behind the white fabric. He probably fails.

“All of it, do you think?” Kaz muses, slowing down. “Or just enough to show my collarbones? What do you think, Your Highness?”

Nikolai swallows as Kaz fully pauses his unbuttoning. “I think you’d look hotter with it completely off,” he voices truthfully.

Kaz’s face scrunches up in confusion. “What?”

Nikolai jolts back into his body, blinking rapidly at where an advisor looks at him with total bewilderment written across his wrinkled face. He glances around the room quickly. Everyone looks exceptionally confused. He laughs awkwardly. “I’m sorry, what did you just say?”

The advisor stares at him. “...I asked if you thought 4% would be suitable?”

Nikolai glances over at Zoya for help.

She sits completely stonefaced across from it, and is thus of no help whatsoever.

Nikolai sighs. “4% is fine,” he agrees with zero context.

A handful of the people at the table look beyond surprised now, leading Nikolai to conclude that he just said the wrong thing.

But oh well. It’s not like he can feasibly fix it now.

Zoya purses her lips as the meeting ends abruptly.

The advisors and other council people start filing out of the room, whispering amongst themselves.

Zoya approaches Nikolai immediately. “You want to tell me what that was all about?” she spits.

“What what was all about?” Nikolai asks as vaguely as possible, not eager to incriminate himself further.

Zoya raises a stiff eyebrow. “”I think you’ll look hotter with it completely off”?”

Nikolai’s face flushes. “It’s nothing,” he tries.

“Who are you fantasizing about, then?” Zoya asks briskly, looking at him expectantly.

”No one,” Nikolai snaps as they leave the room side by side.

“Uh huh,” Zoya says disbelievingly. “If you don’t tell me, I can’t help you.”

“Could’ve used your help earlier,” Nikolai grumbles just to be contrary.

Zoya gives him her own baleful glare. “I shouldn’t need to help you like that,” she counters. “Pay more attention next time.” She starts to walk away.

“I was,” Nikolai mumbles.

Zoya stops short purely to clarify with, “Pay more attention to the right thing,” before ditching him entirely.

Nikolai sighs.

He then immediately goes to his bedroom to continue the daydream. He locks the door and hopes that Zoya doesn’t know how to pick locks the way Kaz does — he doesn’t think she does, to be honest, but he hopes regardless.

He lays down on his bed, staring at the ceiling, willing his mind to pick up where he left off.

“All of it, do you think?” Kaz muses quietly. “Or just enough to show my collarbones? What do you think, Your Highness?”

“I think you’d look hotter with it completely off,” Nikolai repeats seriously.

Kaz offers him a little smirk that Nikolai desperately wants to kiss. “Oh, do you?” His gloved hands start unbuttoning his shirt again. They don’t stop when his collarbones fully peek out from behind the shirt. He keeps going at a measured pace until his entire sternum is visible.

Nikolai watches him intently. He itches to run his hands all over Kaz’s now bare chest. He’s gathering excessive amounts of saliva in his mouth again.

“Hmm,” Kaz says lightly as he runs a gloved hand down his own chest while looking down at it.

“Hmm?” Nikolai asks distractedly, eyes focused intently on the sight of black leather resting on pale unmarked-as-of-yet skin.

Kaz looks up at him. “You’re quite horny, aren’t you?”

It’s not really a question, so Nikolai nods agreement slowly.

“My shirt’s not even fully off and you’re drooling about it,” Kaz points out.

“I’d drool even more if you did take it off,” Nikolai says.

Kaz laughs again, throwing his head back to expose his pale throat.

Nikolai suddenly wants to kiss him there, too.

Kaz rights his head to eye Nikolai. “You think I want to see you salivating over me?”

Nikolai shrugs. “Don’t you?”

Kaz looks at him for a long while before saying, in a flat tone, “And if I did?”

“Then I would happily oblige you…if you finish taking your shirt off,” Nikolai faux-compromises.

Kaz narrows his eyes a little, but he starts to strip his shirt off completely without any protest.

Nikolai watches him hungrily, wishing he could lick and nibble at the lean muscle on display in front of him.

Kaz steps up closer to Nikolai, now shirtless and even more beautiful.

Nikolai doesn’t know where Kaz’s discarded shirt even went, but he also doesn’t really care right now. He hesitantly reaches out a hand to Kaz’s bare chest.

“Do it,” Kaz whispers. “You won’t be able to do it to the real Kaz, after all.”

Nikolai frowns. “Don’t remind me.”

Kaz smirks. “Well?” He gestures at his own chest like it’s a product he’s trying to sell.

And Nikolai is just about to pay an exorbitant price for it.

Nikolai finishes laying a palm on Kaz’s sternum.

Kaz inhales sharply.

Nikolai starts to withdraw his hand.

Kaz grabs his hand and keeps it pressed up against him there. His dark eyes bore into Nikolai’s.

“Okay?” Nikolai whispers.

Kaz nods, moving Nikolai’s hand so it trails down his chest to his stomach, down to his belt.

Nikolai grabs the rim of Kaz’s belt while Kaz stares at him unendingly. Nikolai’s fingers carefully dig into Kaz’s pants, between his belt and his waist.

Kaz still looks at him hard.

“Can I kiss you, Kaz?” Nikolai asks in a rushed breath.

Kaz leans forward, capturing Nikolai’s lips with his own.

Nikolai sighs into the kiss where Kaz’s mouth is notably soft against his. He lets Kaz’s gloved hands come up and grip Nikolai’s hips to pull him closer.

Nikolai and Kaz stand so close to each other that when Kaz smirks and says, “Just kissing is making you this hard?” Nikolai knows that Kaz knows it’s happening. He can probably feel it straining up against his inner thigh through Nikolai’s pants.

“No,” Nikolai denies. “Just you are making me this hard.” He pulls Kaz’s hips toward himself by his belt sharply.

Kaz watches him carefully. His gloved hand drifts down to carefully grab Nikolai by his erection.

Nikolai moans into his mouth.

His own hand holds himself now, to match what’s happening in his daydream, but that’s immaterial.

”And if I wanted to make you harder?” Kaz asks slyly. “What would you say to that?”

Nikolai looks at Kaz with hazy eyes. “Yes, please,” he breathes.

Kaz’s eyes sharpen. “I can work with “yes, please,”” he agrees, squeezing Nikolai in time to how Nikolai currently handles himself on his bed.

Nikolai pants against Kaz’s jaw and cheek.

“You know, daydreaming that a guy in another country is holding your cock isn’t exactly a usual activity for 1 pm,” Kaz says flippantly.

“Shut up and help make me cum,” Nikolai orders.

Kaz smirks as smugly as Nikolai has ever seen him. He reaches down into Nikolai’s pants with his other gloved hand. He clenches around Nikolai tighter inside his clothes.

Nikolai moans louder.

“Shhh,” Kaz shushes him. “If you don’t stay quiet, the guy holding your dick might let go. Then where would you be? On the edge, forever, that’s where,” he answers himself. “Because I am not helping you finish if someone tries to interrupt you to ask what the fuck you’re doing in here.”

Nikolai struggles to stay silent so Kaz will let him finish.

Kaz’s hand starts to carefully pump him in a way that sends him into the clouds way too quickly.

“Kaz, you’re — this is — how are you so good at this —?” he gasps, jolting upward on his bed from overstimulation already.

”Because I’m technically you,” Kaz says bluntly. “And you know how to get yourself to the brink. Shut up and let me help make you cum.”

Nikolai nods quickly to every last drop of that logic.

Kaz handles him a little rougher, sending his body into overdrive trying to hit a satisfying peak.

“I want – you — to — ruin me —” Nikolai pants.

Kaz looks at him with a raised eyebrow. “Well, I don’t know if I can manage that. I can certainly ruin your pants, and I can ruin your orgasm. But unless you know how to ruin yourself, you’re shit out of luck,” he says as he expertly builds Nikolai up.

Nikolai grits his teeth against the onslaught of climbing euphoria. “Don’t you dare ruin my orgasm.”

“I won’t if you don’t,” Kaz half promises as he helps get Nikolai up to speed inside his pants.

Nikolai doesn’t particularly care if he cums inside his pants, because Kaz is the one in charge right now, and he’d do anything for Kaz, daydream or otherwise.

“You’re going to need to grab something,” Kaz tells him.

“Why —?” Nikolai gasps harshly.

“Because you’re about to cum harder than you have in a while,” Kaz informs him.

Nikolai’s hands grab Kaz’s hips.

Kaz laughs at him. “I meant something real.”

Nikolai’s free, real hand grips the blanket under him tightly just as Kaz lets him go over. Lets Nikolai spray himself entirely with his own cum. Nikolai’s back arches off the bed as he makes a wildly pleasurable noise.

Kaz still massages him, the pressure and speed somehow perfect. The imagined texture of the glove hits him at odd intervals.

Nikolai jerks around at the stinging euphoria of his climax, and Kaz’s hand on his cock.

Kaz’s hand lets go of Nikolai’s dick for him as Nikolai’s real hand flops across his heaving chest and stomach.

Nikolai tries to catch his breath, the sound of his exhales vibrating the walls of his daydream.

Kaz strokes his gloved hand down Nikolai’s chest, over his stiff nipples, lazily playing with them the way Nikolai does to himself through his shirt.

“I need to change,” Nikolai gets out.

“Okay?” Kaz says like he’s not sure why Nikolai is telling him such a thing. “Don’t let me stop you.”

“Thanks for helping to make me cum like that,” Nikolai slurs out.

Kaz nods stiffly. “Don’t expect it again,” he warns.

Nikolai pauses. “Never again?”

Kaz stares at him. “...not for the next little bit, at least,” he amends.

“Okay,” Nikolai agrees. “Okay, I can do that. I need to — change —”

He sits up slowly, his daydream starting to ebb away from him.

But not before Kaz says, in his soothing raspy voice, “I’ll be here when you come back.”

Nikolai stares at the empty wall opposite from him on his bed.

Then he sighs and gets up to change his cum soaked pants.