Work Text:
“Citizens of Luna, I am Selene Channary Jannali Blackburn, daughter of the late Queen Channary and niece to Queen Levana.”
Kai frowned at the opening line of the speech, tapping his stylus to his mouth as he considered the words. The first draft had been composed in a single rush in the middle of the night - or whatever one could call the automatic dimming of lights aboard a spaceship - and like all night-fueled writing, it was a shaky mess. Now was the time to fix things up.
Cinder would probably first address the citizens before talking about herself. He needed to add that in. And using the full name was too formal for her. Just Selene Blackburn was sufficient. And -
Without hesitation, he cut out the title of Queen from the name of his darling fiancee. It would probably rile her up a touch extra to know the true Queen of Luna was addressing her ferociously with her real rank.
Or, well, she would be, once he was through with her.
The only thing more disastrous than his frenzied writing was the massacre of public speaking Cinder had committed when she had recited the first draft in a stuttering monotone.
It had been rather cute honestly. Unfortunately, Kai knew he was more than a little biased and not many others would share his utter adoration if they heard her like that.
Brows furrowed, he continued scratching.
“Queen Levana has enslaved you. Taken your sons and turned them into monsters. Taken your shell infants and slaughtered them. Taken your rights to a safe home.”
Kai narrowed his eyes. It would work better to show Selene as a beacon apart from Levana. Emphasise that she was not the one to perpetuate harm.
“In my absence, Levana has enslaved you. She takes your sons and turns them into monsters. She takes your shell infants and slaughters them.”
It would also help to appeal more to the average citizen as well. Instigating rage through the mention of a class divide was a sure fire way of getting the people incensed.
“She lets you go hungry, while the people in Artemisia gorge themselves on rich foods and delicacies.
Kai wondered briefly if Cinder knew his words came from an understanding of what chords to strike. It was a craft more than it was real emotion. Propaganda writing was an art of symbolism and social psychology after all. When Kai wrote, it was not from a place of passion in his gut.
Not like the scratchy passages Cinder had sheepishly given him from her old attempts at a speech announcing her identity.
The writing had been rough and the prose tilting but the there had been something there, a blazing voice he could extract and emulate. It had been an interesting exercise to write as if he was her, to close his eyes and feel all the anger and determination inside of him that he knew she carried.
Kai would give Cinder her words to change the world.
Head bent, he scribbled away on his port, huddled in the corner of the podship dock. It was the only room that had stayed bright throughout the artificial night and Kai had yet to figure out how to turn on the lights on in his room. Cinder would not laugh at him but she would get a teasing glint in her eyes that he really did not want to see. Nobody wanted to be embarrassed in front of their crush.
Was she still just a crush, he wondered idly, if he was allowed to press his lips to hers over and over again?
Kai shook his head. He had a speech to write. An important, revolutionary speech. Perhaps one of the most important speeches of all time. He could not be distracted by the fact that the pretty girl he could not get out of his head seemed to want him just as much. Lost in his thoughts as he considered the words before him, he barely heard the podship door slide open.
Heartbeat quickening at the uneven footsteps that entered the dock and halted, he knew that everyone else was asleep in this time of the artificial night. He glanced up at combat boots, wrinkled trousers, a loose tank top and an impossibly soft smile. Cinder. His lips parted unbidden as he took her in, her dark hair loose around her shoulders like a halo.
“What are you doing here so late?” Her voice was so gentle that he was sure he had dreamt it. Cinder could be unexpectedly soft at times. It caught him by surprise each time and he hoarded those moments deep inside him.
Sticking the stylus atop the port, he patted the space beside him. “Working on your speech,” he said as she crossed the room to him, “Reworking the issues with how it sounded out loud.”
“I don’t think the speech was the problem as much as the speaker.” Cinder settled down beside him, a knee pressed against his thigh. “I know I butchered it.”
Kai tutted at her far-too-frank self-depreciation, flicking her arm lightly. “It is my job to critique your speaking, not yours. We will work on it once I have the words down.” He scrolled through the edits he had marked in red. “I should be done with the second draft in a couple of hours.”
“So quickly?”
Kai shrugged at her questioning eyes. “First draft is always the hardest.”
“Still. Those scraps had taken me hours.”
“It’s just practice. I have been doing this for a while now.”
Cinder tilted her head as if she was appraising him. “Don’t you have speech writers?”
Kai made a noncommittal hum, reaching out for her cyborg hand. Something about how unequivocally Cinder it was, made holding it that much more special. “I like to write my own. And well.” He traced her finger, sliding his nails into the grooves. Bits of grease got underneath them as he explored her crevices. “I like to think that I am good at it,” he admitted.
Cinder nodded and set his heart pattering as she twined their hands together. “Not an expert by any means but I thought it was really great.”
Ears hot, he ducked his head. “Well, your opinion is one of the only ones that matter.”
Dimples appeared on her cheeks. “Is it?”
Stars.
There was a very good chance that they would all die and earth would collapse into the hands of a maniacal tyrant but at least Kai had figured out how to make Cinder smile.
“It is. After all, you are my captor. It is in my best interests to please you.”
The indignation on her face made him burst out laughing. He held onto her hand tighter, stopping her from pulling away. Instead, he tugged her closer to him. Her petulant expression could not hide the startle in her eyes. Tucking her hair behind her ear, he took her in. It was such a rare sight to see her hair loose. There was something impossibly fetching about the way her messy bangs framed her scowling face. Fingers lingering, he twisted a strand around his finger. “Did you come looking for me?”
Cinder softened as he played with her hair, his other hand still clasped with hers. “No, actually. I remembered that I had to check on the wiring of the navigation control system. I had been the last one to take off and I’m worried I might have messed something up. Wanted to check in and maybe make some changes to make the take-off smoother.”
Kai blinked. “You piloted a spaceship?”
“Who do you think flew you away from New Beijing?”
Kai ignored the particulars of that particular incident.
“You can pilot a spaceship.”
“Hardly pilot. I just learned how to get it off the ground and into neutral orbit.”
Kai scoffed. “Oh. That’s it?”
Rolling her eyes, Cinder got up, pulling her hand away from him. It had been icy to the touch but Kai felt inexplicably colder without her fingers laced within his.
Maybe the lovesick accusations from Torin held merit.
Kai watched Cinder as she headed to a panel on the other end of the room, tying her loose hair back up. Armed with a set of mysterious tools, she began to disassemble the panel behind her. “It will get a little noisy as I work,” she called, crouched low, “You might want to find a different room to write.”
Kai hummed and picked up his stylus again. He had no intentions of leaving. After a month of wanting nothing more than to be in her presence, what was a little noise as he worked?
It was a mistake.
It was a grave mistake.
There was a lot to think about. There were hundreds of past speeches from revolutionaries gone by to reference for cadence and tone. There were manuals on how to train someone to speak. There were treatises on grassroots movements to browse through. There were hundreds of newsfeeds about his nation. And Kai could not read any of them.
Kai had to write what might be the most important speech of the Third Era and he could barely put a word down.
Because he was distracted.
Contrary to her warnings, Cinder was actually fairly quiet when she was working. There was the occasional mechanical sound, yes, but nothing he could not tune out. Mostly, the loudest sound was of her faint mutters as she worked.
No, Kai was not distracted by anything he heard while she worked.
It was the damn stretches she randomly took in between. Long, deep stretches. The baggy material of her military fatigues did nothing to hide her shape as she stretched. Every single time, tempting slivers of tanned skin would appear where her tank top shifted and her back would arch in a way that made his ears burn.
And then came the heart dropping moment, when Cinder twisted her torso, her toned arms taut above her shoulders. Kai flushed as he caught a glimpse of the flat planes of her stomach and the notch of her hipbone as she groaned into the stretch, blithely unaware of his predicament.
Maybe this was the torture segment of his kidnapping.
Kai knew that he was sneaking glances at Cinder more than he was writing at that point. The whole situation left him out of sorts. It seemed rather rude to stare at a girl this way. Could it be alright if it was his crush who he had kissed a few times? Could he call her his girlfriend? Even if she was his girlfriend, was it really alright to look?
He hadn’t asked explicitly and he was sure that if he did, Cinder would become self conscious. It was obvious that the stretches were a necessity. Was her body always sore with all of the manual labour that she did? He did not want her to stop over him. Moreover, would she not find him perverse for looking at her so? It was not like she had set out to seduce him. She was just fixing the navigational system. He was the one who was voyeuristic.
The ethical thing to do would be to leave her alone but that was the last thing that he could do when she looked like that and-
Suddenly, Cinder turned around, face full of concern as she placed a mystery tool down. “Kai, are you alright?”
Kai froze, heat rising to his cheeks. He was surely as red as his wedding sash. “Wh - Why do you ask?”
Cinder looked almost sheepish across the room. “Your bioelectricity became frazzled suddenly.” She rushed towards him before he could respond. “I can’t help it. And I’m - I’m not using my powers on you. Emotional spikes are - loud. It’s like listening for - for footsteps or - or - a shout or something- Um - Yeah.“ Cinder hung her head nervously as she stood over him. “Are you alright?”
“Huh.“ He had never considered that she could feel his emotional state. Had she felt the way his mind had strayed as well? “I was just a little distracted.”
“Oh. Was it too noisy?” She sat down beside him. “I tried to keep quiet. I didn’t realise it would bother you so much.”
“No! No, it was not noisy at all.”
“Then what was it? You were crackling like an arc welder.”
Kai let a hollow laugh. The bioelectricity thing was still something he needed to get used to. Heat filled his face as he tried to figure out how to tell her that he was ‘sparking’ because she was pretty. “You were stretching, earlier, right?”
“Yeah, but why does that ma -“ Cinder blinked. “Oh.”
Scrunching her face, she opened her mouth and closed it multiple times as if she couldn’t quite figure out what to say. He opened his mouth to speak but she held her a finger up.
Zipped up, he awaited her response, studying her face as a million emotions flickered through it. Confusion. Bashfulness. Bewilderment. Shyness. But not disgust. Not anger.
“Why?” She said at long last.
“Why?”
“I mean, sure. You can - You can look. If you want. I don’t think I mind per se but I don’t get, well, a why?”
Wait.
“Because I find you very attractive?”
“Really?”
Baffled, Kai tilted his face as he took in her bewildered eyes. “Cinder. What did you think all the kissing was about?”
Mouth gaping, Cinder hung her head. Biting her cheek and not once meeting his eyes, she mumbled, “I just figured you were a personality sorta guy.”
Kai burst out laughing. The soft glare she gave did nothing to deter him as he clutched his stomach hard through the laughter. Reaching down, he pulled her closer by the waist until their legs tangled with one another. “A personality sorta guy?”
“I mean -“ Cinder gestured vaguely to herself and shrugged.
Kai guffawed, suddenly reminded that for all her confidence and capability, Cinder could be ridiculously teenaged.
Pulling her against him, he pushed her hair back from her bashful face. Studying her, he chided himself. How had Kai ever questioned whether Cinder was affected by him? It was obvious. Her lips were parted and he could feel her swallow against his fingers, eyes decidedly fixed to the floor. “Cinder. I just spent the better part of the last hour staring at you. I have maybe written seven words total in that time.”
Even though she bit her lips together, Kai knew he caught something pleased start to bloom. Emboldened, he turned her face towards him with a gentle hand on her chin. “In case it was not clear, I was staring at you because you are very, very hot.”
A startled laugh escaped her. She jerked away, a hand clapped to her mouth. It did nothing to hide the growing crinkles of her eyes. Kai burst into laughter at her shy smile, burying his face into her shoulder. He could not remember the last time he had been so joyful. Soon, Cinder joined in on the fits of laughter, shaking against him. The gravity field of the Rampion must have failed because his heart was soaring. No matter. Cinder could fix it.
Breathing in deeply, he took in the scent of military issue soap and copper fillings, latching onto the faint smell of sweet skin underneath it all. Suddenly, he was struck by the urge to just gather her into his arms and keep her there forever.
Tentatively, Cinder placed a hand on his jaw, metal fingers cold against his skin. Kai stilled in anticipation. They must have kissed over a dozen times by now - he had long lost count - but it was usually him initiating. There was something infinitely thrilling about being kissed by her instead. He felt wanted, he felt chosen, he felt hers. He waited, breathless, as she pulled up his face, her lips finding his in a slow, open-mouthed kiss.
Someday, Kai would be able to show Cinder just how much he wanted her. Someday she would know unequivocally how much he liked her. Liked her wit and her smile and her resilience and her eyes and her grit and her collarbone. Liked her, all of her, in all the ways it was possible to like someone.
For that moment though, all he could offer was to deepen the kiss, arms wrapped around her waist. Limbs intertwined, he already had her half on his lap. He was torn between the desire to draw her into him and the care to not startle her away. He needn’t have worried. Hands dug into his hair, Cinder leveraged herself onto him, pressing him back against the metal panelling.
Blood rushed in his ears. Warmth surrounded him. Her warmth. In the weeks on the ship, Kai had never been quite sure that he was not in a dream. This girl that he wanted so very much was in his arms for those stolen moments, his to touch, his to kiss, his to love.
Because he had already fallen for her, hadn’t he?
Burying his hand up into her hair, Kai tugged at the hair tie. Cinder rewarded him with the smallest gasp against his mouth as he pulled her ponytail open. Fine hair spilled onto his forearm, tickled his ears, got in between their lips as they moved their mouths frantically together. Blindly, Kai just brushed it aside over and over and over, unwilling to part from her. It was to no avail, the hair kept poking in between. Cinder was the one to break away, lips curved against him one moment and pulled back far the next. He watched, breathless, as she pushed the offending strands behind, her kiss-swollen lips smiling wide.
“I keep it tied for a reason,” she said, voice just a touch airless, “Just gets everywhere.”
Kai only nodded as he took stock of their situation, hands settled on her waist. There seemed to be no air left in his lungs. The top of his right thigh ached a little under the pressure of her metal leg. Cinder sat perched on his lap, tank top askew and lips glistening under the harsh lights of the podship dock. As if bidden, he raised a hand to cup her face and wipe away the wetness around her smile. His thumb pressed against the part of her puffed lips and his fingertips felt the gulp in her throat as her eyelids fluttered close.
“I - I should - I should finish up on the rewiring.”
Her words sat hot on his skin as he stared, transfixed, at the way his thumb distorted the shape of her lips.
“I should finish up on writing your speech.”
When Cinder’s eyes flickered open only to settle on his mouth, Kai realised that they would do neither of those things for quite some time.