Chapter Text
Jeannie honestly struggled with her job most days.
She loved helping people, she loved love, but most of the time it felt like all she ever did was help couples transition through a divorce more gracefully.
Which is why she truly loved her success stories.
And why she was so honored to receive an invitation to Kaz Brekker and Inej Ghafa’s vow renewal. It was marketed as a wedding, of course, and she was proud of them for taking this step.
They had graduated from her services a little over a year ago, although she had referred them both on to individual specialists to continue conquering their own, rather unique, struggles.
She put on one of her best summer dresses, wrapped a shawl around her shoulders, and collected her gift for the happy couple before heading to the chapel listed on the invitation.
The guest list was an interesting mix of what appeared to be proud denizens of the Barrel and finely attired Suli families, who mixed together surprisingly well. Children ran underfoot, screaming with laughter and gleefully learning to pick pockets from benevolent thieves. A Kerch fiddler was playing on the lawn outside the church, and an elderly Suli couple was dancing before them. And a Zemeni man with pistols on his hips was surrounded by a crowd of matronly women, who all appeared to be despairing over how skinny he was and pushing plates of food on him.
Inej’s entire caravan must have made the journey to attend her wedding, Jeannie realized with no small amount of fondness. She knew how Inej had worried that they wouldn’t accept her after all that had been done to her, and had delayed reaching out to them after regaining her freedom for that reason. It was good to see that her fears had been unfounded.
She placed her gift, a new waffle iron, on the table where other presents were already stacking up, and headed into the chapel.
She was surprised to find that there were no pews inside, rather low benches lining the walls leaving a large space empty in the middle of the room.
She found a seat and did not have to wait long before the room was crammed full. A colorful collection of characters filled every bench, with children and those too late to snag a seat sat cross legged on the floor. She felt distinctly out of place in her pastel summer dress compared to the rich array of colors and jewels that surrounded her from both the caravan dwellers and the Barrel rats.
The doors opened, spilling light into the dim room, and Kaz appeared, leaning heavily on his cane. He walked briskly through the empty space in the middle of the room until he met the priest at the front, turning to watch as Inej appeared in the doorway.
She looked like a vision, in a white dress made of floral lace with shining gold embellishments at the hem, waist, and wrists. She wore a dupatta-style veil decorated with tiny golden flowers that fell all the way to the floor. She clutched a bouquet of wildflowers in her hands, and was flanked on either side by who could only be her parents.
She processed much more slowly through the room, stopping to greet relatives and smile at the awestruck children. Her parents both hugged her tight in front of the church, kissing her cheeks, before going to join the rest of the congregation.
The ceremony was fairly short and straightforward, though Jeannie was proud to see that when the priest indicated Kaz should kiss his bride, he paused to remove his gloves, setting them aside before clasping her face in between his bare hands and kissing her soundly to raucous applause from the onlookers.
There was a quick exchange of rings, and then the couple turned to face the crowd, hands clasped tight together.
They were really going all out for a vow renewal, although Jeannie supposed that they likely hadn’t had much more than a civil ceremony the first time around. It was good, she thought, that they were doing this. It was what they both deserved.
The reception quickly got underway, in the same room as the ceremony. Trestle tables were quickly set up and loaded with so much food that she worried for their structural integrity and a group of musicians with pipes, drums, and fiddles took up in one corner.
The wedded couple got lost in the crowd for a bit, but Jeannie steadily made her way over to them, wanting to congratulate them now in case she didn’t get another chance.
Inej embraced her when she finally made it to the front of the queue, and Kaz even shook her hand, although his gloves were firmly back in place.
She left the crush to get some lemonade from the refreshments table, only to find herself standing face to face with her old assistant.
“Wylan!” She said in shock, and watched as the boy turned rather startlingly pale.
“Oh, Jeannie,” he said in a strangled tone of voice. He had rather fallen off the face of the earth a few years ago, after abruptly turning in his two weeks notice. She had been sad to see him go, he was a very dedicated assistant.
“Didn’t you used to be blond?” She asked, eyeing his ruddy ginger locks. “Are you a natural redhead?”
“Oh, yes, er - actually, Jesper is calling me,” he said, turning and heading determinedly towards the pistol-bearing Zemeni boy from earlier, who was definitely not summoning him.
Jeannie shrugged to herself and went to go check out the food table. It was loaded with all sorts of dishes she didn’t recognize, but she took a little of everything and enjoyed it, for the most part, all though it was much spicier than her typical fare.
There was dancing, and music, and Jeannie was just thinking that it was perhaps time to turn in when calls for quiet came and a bench was dragged to the middle of the room, upon which the newlyweds were instructed to sit.
Inej’s mother began singing, a soft crooning song, and stepped up behind her. She pulled the pins from her daughter’s hair that held her dupatta in place, and then gently began unraveling her daughter’s braid. Eventually, some of the other women from the caravan took up the tune, as Inej’s mother was having an increasingly hard time singing through her tears. Jeannie could not tell from where she stood if they were tears of joy or sorrow, although her experiences with mothers at weddings led her to believe it was probably both.
When Inej’s hair hung loose and free around her shoulders, her mother folded the dupatta and passed it to another woman, receiving a rich purple scarf in return. She carefully tied it around her daughter’s head, holding back her hair, and kissed the top of her head when it was done.
Inej’s father appeared then, holding a hunk of bread. Inej reached out and accepted the bread in her beautifully decorated hands, holding it before her. The Zemeni man, Jesper, stepped forward with what looked like a salt cellar, which he passed to Kaz.
Kaz took it, gently sprinkling the bread in his wife’s hands with salt, and then she tore it in half with a smile. Jeannie watched with satisfaction as the two of them fed each other bites of the bread.
And then, without warning, a booming voice rang out.
“Oh, what a tragedy it is to lose this treasured daughter of our caravan!” One of the Suli men cried. There was a long and rather awkward silence in response to this.
“We shall weep without her and our caravan will surely diminish in her absence!” Another shouted eventually, still receiving no response.
There were a few awkward minutes while Inej’s caravan half-heartedly bemoaned her loss until finally one of Inej’s many uncles cleared his throat and grabbed Jesper by the arm, hissing furiously into his ear. Jesper listened and nodded along for a few minutes and then threw his arms wide, turning to the room with his face covered in anguish.
“Oh, what a high price we have paid for this bride!” He lamented. “Our coffers shall surely suffer!” This statement was met by some confused looks among the Kerch present, who had not heard anything about a dowry.
“It is not half of what she is worth to us!” A Suli man shot back, only to have this refuted once more by Jesper. The rest of the Kerch attendees picked up on the act quickly enough, loudly arguing back and forth with the Suli caravan about the price of a bride.
Finally, a girl wearing an astoundingly low cut dress that hugged her generous figure leaped up on top of a bench and shouted for silence.
“How can we say that we have faced a loss?” She shouted to the room at large. “There is no price to be put upon this bride! Look at her! She is unparalleled in beauty and skill, and shall surely be a boon to us all! It was a good price, a worthy price! We have truly paid a bargain for her!”
This was met with much cheering from both sides, a general downing of kvas, and the shattering of glasses as everyone threw them to the floor with a cheer.
Watching Inej giggle into Kaz’s shoulder at this, Jeannie decided that her work with this couple was done, and left before the festivities picked up again.
It was cold for a summer night as she made her way to her bus stop, and she wrapped her shawl around her, feeling proud of all she had accomplished with these two.
***
Inej giggled a little as she and Kaz raced to their bedroom on the top floor of the Slat, escaping the raucous jeering of the rest of the Dregs below.
She couldn’t remember ever feeling so happy as she had that day, not even when she had first seen her parents again. She had both her families surrounding her, and Kaz waiting for her at the end of the aisle. She had finally gotten the Suli wedding she’d dreamed of as a little girl, and proof that Heleen and her clients hadn’t been able to take everything from her in the end.
Kaz was a little tipsy, as was she, although he had been very good at hiding it amongst their friends. He wrapped his arms around her from behind, burying his nose in her neck, and she giggled again at the tickling sensation.
“Are you happy, darling?” He murmured, pressing kisses into the delicate skin there.
“I’m so happy,” she responded. “Are you?”
“As a matter of fact, wife“ he said, spinning her around in his hold. “I am practically delirious with joy.”
And then his lips were on hers, and she lost track of the thread of the conversation.
He was a very, very good kisser, she had been delighted to learn, which had been something of a surprise since she knew he had never even kissed anybody else before her.
She let him kiss her for a few minutes, allowing herself to become thoroughly undone, but then pulled away to get at his buttons, pulling them apart eagerly.
He helped her with her task by pulling his tie open and shucking off his gloves, and then they were kissing again, her dress the only thing dividing her from his bare chest.
And then his hands were on her thighs, pulling her up, and he was hauling her into his arms, spinning her around, and perching her on the edge of his desk.
She reached around herself, pulling desperately at the few buttons she could reach, but was distracted from this task by the devilish gleam in his eyes as he fell to his knees and the wicked smirk on his face as he hiked her skirt up, ducking below it with glee.
She leaned back with a soft sigh as she felt his bare hands upon her bare thighs, a sensation that was still relatively new to her, and then he was yanking her stockings away, no doubt ripping them in the process. He similarly got her out of her panties too, and then she was bare below the heavy skirt, a condition he took full advantage of.
She leaned even farther back on her hands, panting a little, as he pressed open-mouthed kisses and gentle nips to the insides of her thighs, becoming increasingly wet as he teased her.
Normally, she would have grabbed his hair just about then, guiding his head where she wanted it, but the damned skirt of her damn wedding dress was in the way, and she just had to sit there, writhing and whining, until he had satisfied himself with teasing and descended upon her vulva with enthusiasm.
It was well worth the wait, she decided semi-coherently, as the hot slick warmth of his mouth covered her, his tongue probing and insistent, licking strong broad strokes across her folds.
She whimpered above him, trying to hold still as he played her like a master at an instrument, his fingers joining in, sliding into her drenched hole as he lapped happily at her clit.
It wasn’t dignified, she thought briefly, to be so undone so quickly. It would inflate his already engorged ego.
But she quickly decided that she did not care, so long as he kept on doing what he was doing so well.
Her hips bucked involuntarily against his face and she heard him chuckle below her skirts, felt the huff of warm breath across her wet skin. She was becoming increasingly close to orgasm, she could feel it building, waiting to crash over her, and her breath came as harsh gasps in her throat.
She moaned as he became twice as insistent, trying to ride against him as he licked and licked and licked, his tongue proving to be just as clever as his fingers.
It wasn’t much longer before she was crying out, her orgasm slamming into her with the force of a freight train. She positively writhed against him, her head thrown back in pleasure as she came down from it, her vaginal muscles clenching rhythmically.
Kaz appeared back out from under her skirt, hair disheveled and wearing a self-satisfied smirk. His face was shining with her slickness, and he wiped it away with the back of his hand, grinning up at her.
“Help get me out of this thing,” she said, although her threatening tone was embarrassingly breathy given her recent orgasm. “And then I’m going to pay you back for that.”
“How could I refuse an offer like that?” He said, pulling himself to his feet as she hopped off the desk and turning her so he could get to her buttons. It wasn’t too much effort to get her out of the dress, and then he slid the straps of her slip off her shoulders, letting it slide off her body to pool on the ground around her feet.
He started kissing down the back of her neck again, paying special attention to each knob of her vertebrae, but she didn’t let him get away with it for long, turning to face him and practically dragging him to the bed.
He pressed her back into it, crawling over her, and then his lips were on hers and she wound her legs around his hips, stomach growing light with anticipation for what was to come.
He pulled back, frantically fumbling with his belt, and then shoving his trousers down to the tops of his thighs.
And then he was leaning back over her, his hands braced on either side of her, and he was shoving into her in one smooth motion. She gasped, throwing her head back and wrapping her arms around his waist, pulling him even closer.
He was slow, and rhythmic, stroking gently in and out of her which was…lovely, but she soon grew bored with it.
“Come here,” she muttered, grabbing his shoulders and rolling so he was under her. She grabbed his cock in her fist, positioning it below her, and then sank down onto him, sighing in pleasure at the way it filled her so perfectly.
The intensity of his gaze upon her was overwhelming as she began to bounce upon his cock, slamming her hips down onto him over and over and over again.
She was sure they made a ridiculous spectacle, Kaz flat on his back below her, still wearing his shoes and socks and trousers, and Inej riding him furiously, bare but for her headscarf.
She kind of liked it that way, though. Her mother had tied the scarf into her hair as a sign that she was a married woman now. Back home in Ravka, she would have worn the scarf every day for the rest of her life, and while she wasn’t planning on doing so here, it felt right that she should wear it, the first time she and Kaz fucked as husband and wife.
“Kaz,” she gritted out finally. “Touch me.”
It was needy, and demanding, but it got the point across and his hands were suddenly everywhere, dancing across her bare skin.
She threw her head back, squeezing her eyes shut and letting pleasure course through her. Kaz squeezed one of her breasts, flicking at her nipple, at the same time as his other hand returned to her clit, rubbing gently and causing her to whine at the sensation.
And then he was flipping them back over, her hair splaying out around her on the mattress as he pounded into her, once, twice, three times before spilling within her. His lips descended onto hers again as he pulled out, his fingers playing over her clit still, rubbing littles circles into it until she was arching and twisting below him, crying out as her second orgasm of the night raced through her, lighting her up from the ends of her hair to the tips of her toes.
She lay there for a few moments, breathing in tandem with her husband, his bare chest pressed to hers, stomach to stomach with her breasts flattened against the hard muscles of his torso. She reveled at the luxurious intimacy of skin to skin contact for some time, until she started to feel a little crushed by his weight atop her, at which point they rearranged themselves into a comfortable, if sweaty, pile of limbs.
“Marriage was a good idea,” Kaz murmured, taking her hand into his to inspect the sight of the ring upon it. He wore a simple silver band himself, but had gifted her a beautiful ring with pieces of coral set into it, and she had not yet grown used to the weight of it on her hand.
“Yes, well,” she replied sleepily. “You always were a genius.”