Those hands fascinate me more than they should. Blunt fingers that can splice fiber-optic cables or adjust hydroponics with equal precision. Knuckles marked with old wounds, white lines against darker skin. I've watched him coax reluctant equipment back to life with the patient focus most people reserve for prayer.
And I've watched him build. Actually build, with metal and wire and sheer stubborn will.
"This coupling is degraded." He doesn't look up from the tangle of pipes he's wrestling with, stripped to shirtsleeves, forearms corded with muscle and effort. "Need to replace it before we expand to Dome Four."
I lean over his shoulder, studying the worn connector. This close, I can smell him beneath the ever-present scent of recycled air and machine oil. Something warm. Something that shouldn't feel as safe as it does.
"Can you fabricate a replacement?" I keep my voice steady, professional. Ignore the heat radiating from his body, the way my pulse kicks up when his elbow accidentally brushes my ribs.
"Already queued in the print bay." He straightens, and suddenly we're eye to eye, barely a hand's width between us. "Should be ready by?—"
He stops mid-sentence. His jaw tightens almost imperceptibly, and I watch his throat work as he swallows whatever words were about to follow. Those dark eyes flicker down to my mouth for half a heartbeat, just long enough that I know I didn't imagine it, before he deliberately, carefully takes a full step backward. Creating distance. Rebuilding the walls I hadn't even realized were crumbling.
"Tomorrow," he finishes, his voice rougher than it was a moment ago, like he's forcing the word through gravel. He reaches down for his tool kit with movements that are just slightly too controlled, too precise. The kind of deliberate calm that betrays how rattled he actually is. "I'll install it then. First thing."
This keeps happening. These moments where the space between us collapses to nothing, where I swear I feel some kind of current arcing across the gap, and then he retreats like I've burned him.
Likehe'sthe one in danger here.
Thanatos bringslunch to the control room. Protein paste with synthetic vegetables and something that might generously be called bread. I've stopped asking what's actually in it. Better not to know.
But today there's something new on the tray. A steaming cup of black liquid that smells like industrial solvent mixed with burnt coffee beans.
"No." I push it away immediately. "Absolutely not."
Haid picks up the cup, takes a long drink, doesn't even flinch. "It's Void-Coffee. Traditional. Good for you."
"It smells like you're trying to poison me."
"If I wanted you dead, there are easier methods." He offers me the cup again. "Come on, little flower. Where's that courage you showed jumping into collapsing infrastructure?"
The nickname makes something flutter in my chest. He's been using it more often lately, and I can't quite tell if it's mockery or something softer.
I take the cup. Immediately regret every choice that led to this moment.
The taste is worse than the smell. Bitter doesn't even begin to cover it. This is what I imagine motor oil tastes like, if motor oil could also somehow bespicyand coat your mouth with a texture like ground chalk.
I gag. Actually gag, hand flying to my mouth as the horrific liquid burns its way down my throat like liquid fire, eyes watering so badly I can barely see. My whole body rejects it on an instinctual level, every cell screaming that I've just consumed something fundamentally wrong.
And then, despite everything, despite the burning, despite the taste that's probably going to haunt my nightmares, despite the fact that I'm pretty sure I can feel this stuff corroding my stomach lining in real-time, I start laughing.
Can't help it. The whole thing is so absurd. Me, Ksara, daughter of High Minister Demeter, Bio-Genesis Architect, choking on battery acid masquerading as coffee while a warlord watches with something dangerously close to amusement flickering in those void-dark eyes.
The laughter bubbles up from somewhere deep, spills out in waves I can't control. Real laughter, the kind I haven't felt since before the abduction. Before the ball. Before I learned my mother was complicit in selling me to strangers for political favors.
When I finally catch my breath, I realize Haid has gone completely still.
He's staring at me with an expression I can't parse. Not angry. Not confused. Something else entirely. Something that looks almost like wonder, if wonder could also carry a thread of pain.
"What?" I wipe tears from my eyes, still grinning like an idiot despite the fact that my throat feels like I've gargled broken glass. "Is there something on my face besides the literal poison you just fed me? Did I grow a third eye from the toxicity?"
"No." His voice comes out rough. Rougher than usual, stripped of that careful control he always maintains. There's something raw in it, something almost vulnerable. "Nothing. I just..." He pauses, and I watch something flicker across his face, an emotion too quick to catch. "You should laugh more often."
The words land between us with unexpected weight.
The moment stretches. Changes. Transforms into something I don't quite have a name for. The air in the control room suddenly feels charged, electric, like right before a thunderstorm breaks and everything goes still in anticipation. My skin prickles with awareness, and I'm suddenly hyper-conscious of every detail, the distance between us, the way the light catches the sharp angles of his face, the sound of my own breathing.
Then he turns away abruptly, breaks whatever spell was forming. Busies himself with checking atmospheric readings on the nearest console, numbers and graphs that definitely don't need checking right now. I can see the tension in his shoulders, the careful deliberateness of his movements.
