"The Ship of Dreams, they called it. And it was. It really was…" Over five days, the lives of Kai Wen and Jinora Gyatso became irreversibly entwined. But their adventure was not the typical love story, for the ship they met on was the RMS Titanic. From the moment the ship set sail from the Earth Kingdom in 177 AG, it was destined for disaster. [Kai/Jinora] Titanic!AU.

Disclaimer: I do not own The Legend of Korra, or any of its trademarked characters. I also do not own the plot of the movie Titanic: that belongs to James Cameron and his associates. I only own the story that you see written, and hope that you enjoy my spin on things.

Those in Peril on the Sea by boasamishipper

Chapter Ten

177 AG

Once Kai was able to walk comfortably again, he began to sprint across the deck, feeling an innumerable amount of paranoia as he did so. He knew that it wasn't possible for everyone to have their eyes on him because the promenade deck was half empty and he still looked the part of a gentleman in his stolen jacket and hat. Then he realized just how odd it was that he actually knew how crowded the promenade deck should be. It was strange how much his life had changed in just the past three days—meeting Jinora really had made the normal aspects of his life turn upside down.

He made it to his and Skoochy's cabin (thankfully empty of Skoochy and Jaya) in steerage without being accosted by anyone—he'd had to backtrack in order to avoid getting jumped on by Qin—and retrieved his meager art supplies and sketchbook. He kept his supplies all in a small pouch: pencils, some charcoals, erasers mostly. Not very impressive or becoming of an artist but it was all he could afford. Giving his room one last glance, Kai began to make his way back out of steerage.

Halfway up the stairs, though, he encountered a problem in the form of his best friend, who grabbed his arm and prevented him from going anywhere. "Kai! Man, where've you been? I haven't seen you since this morning—did you find your gal? How is she? Did she take you back?" Then Skoochy frowned and looked at him, really looked at him. Kai felt uncomfortable, as if his friend's eyes could see into his soul. "Hey, Kai, are you okay?"

Kai shrugged off the friendly hand on his shoulder and said, somewhat impatiently, "Sorry, Skooch, I really can't talk right now, it's an emergency, and I've really got to go." Was it an emergency? When had his mind come up with that? Probably when Jinora told me to come up to her room. Spirits, Skoochy, just move out of the way—

"Whatever you say, man," Skoochy said, sounding a bit suspicious. Kai didn't like lying, especially to his best friend, so he tried his best to avoid eye contact. "Just…you're alright, yeah? You're not in any trouble with the bigwigs, right? Because if you are, I'll help hide you. I mean it."

Kai actually let out a small laugh at that. Two days ago he'd thought that he would've been in trouble. Spirits, how the times had changed. "I'm fine, man, I promise," he said honestly, for the most part, and stopped to turn towards his friend. He squeezed Skoochy's shoulder with the hand that wasn't holding his bag of pencils and charcoals. "There's just…" He paused, trying to think of the best way to word it without giving everything away. "Something's come up and I don't really know what's going on myself, but once I get things figured out, you'll be the first to know and the first I'll explain everything to. Okay?"

Skoochy nodded, despite still looking confused and not altogether reassured by Kai's rambling. "Alright," he said, "then go and sort out your circumstances and the like. I'll be here."

Kai turned to go but then whirled around just as quickly. "Skooch, one last thing?"

"What's up?"

He decided to impart a bit of fear into his friend, just for old times' sake. "I know you've been getting intimate with Jaya." Skoochy flushed the color of a stop light, but didn't deny it. "But I swear to Raava, Skoochy Nakamura, if you guys have been going at it in my bed there's going to be hell to pay later."

Skoochy gave him a gesture that was a mixture of an affirmative salute and flipping the bird, and then he ran downstairs to steerage—probably to continue his exerting activities with Jaya. With one last laugh, Kai was gone and navigating his way back up, out of steerage and back on deck, and thence to the nearly-deserted promenade deck. He moved quickly, because Jinora was waiting for him—and his pencils, for whatever reason—and he didn't want to keep her waiting a second longer than was necessary.

There was no one walking through the hallways now, but that still didn't stop him from constantly looking over his shoulder before he finally got to Jinora's cabin—room twenty-eight, just like she'd said—and let himself in. It looked a lot like Korra's room, but with far fewer suit jackets and bow ties strewn about the place. I guess once you've seen one first class suite, you've seen 'em all.

He wandered to the mantelpiece, where several photographs were propped up in picture frames. A small smile formed on his lips as he noticed one with what he assumed was Jinora's whole family. Jinora looked about eleven years old, and she still had a commanding presence even in the photograph. A younger girl sat next to her, probably Jinora's sister, and on her other side sat Pema. Didn't even recognize her, she looks so much less tense. A young boy, about five years old with a shaved head, was grinning goofily into the camera, and he held a baby boy wrapped in a blanket. An older man with a shaved head and a goatee had his hands on Pema's shoulders and stared grimly into the camera. Must be her father.

Kai tilted his head, picking up the photo and examining it closer. Wonder if Jinora knew that six years from now she'd end up being engaged to a pompous windbag like LingShi Zhang.

"Kai?" He whirled around to see Jinora wearing the same dress as earlier, although she'd let down her hair from the bun it'd been in earlier. He made to apologize, but she waved him off. "That's my favorite picture," she said by way of explanation. "My mother doesn't much like taking photographs, so we haven't really taken much ever since." She sidled up next to him and pointed out the people in it. "That's my mother and I. Next to me is my younger sister, Ikki, and my brothers, Meelo and Rohan. Rohan's the youngest—he's only seven now. And the man next to my mother—that's my father. Tenzin."

"Your father," Kai repeated dumbly, looking between Jinora and the stern man in the photograph. "He's dead, isn't he? I mean, if you're part of the Gyatso family that I'm thinking of—the ones that run the Ayre Corporation." He'd spent a while the first night they'd met trying to remember where he'd heard the name Gyatso, because it had definitely been important-sounding—otherwise the Master-at-Arms wouldn't have made such a big stink over things. The only thing that had come to mind was the patriarch of the Ayre Corporation, who had died years ago. He had heard about it in one of his foster homes.

Jinora's breath hitched. "Yes, he's dead. He's been dead for seven years."

Kai stopped talking for a moment, only because he wasn't sure what to say. There were a thousand questions fighting for supremacy in his head, and it was getting hard to figure out which one he should ask. Which one was the most important, more like.

"Is that why you're engaged to LingShi?"

Thankfully Jinora didn't tell him to stick his question where the sun didn't shine. "Sort of." She paused a moment, obviously trying to figure out how to say it. "See, my father only has two siblings—my Aunt Kya and my Uncle Bumi, who's a United Forces commander—which left him to run the Ayre Corporation by himself. My grandfather, Aang, was an only child. The only possible heirs to the company are my brothers, but they're too young and they aren't fit to run a business. The corporation can't survive without a strong head—it's been failing ever since my father died. Thus, the only possible solution was my marriage to LingShi Zhang, who can take on running the company and save us from all humiliation and bankruptcy."

He swallowed, not liking where this was going. "So what happens if you don't marry him?"

"My father's company will collapse in on itself in three years' time and my family will lose all its worldly possessions."

"Oh." Kai swallowed again. "That's—not good."

Jinora actually let out a small chuckle, albeit despondent. "Yeah—it…it really isn't."

There was an extremely awkward silence between the two of them that seemed to go on for years, until Kai spoke again. "Speaking of LingShi," he said, eyes wandering around the room, "is there, uh, any chance of him comin' up soon?"

Jinora shook her head. "Not as long as the gossip and brandy hold out." She walked toward her vanity mirror and opened a drawer, taking something out that he couldn't quite make out. She turned back to him, and his heart skipped a beat as he saw what she was holding.

"Is—is it an emerald?" he said, fighting to remain neutral as he caught sight of the necklace. The sheer magnitude of the gem was unbelievable—he half expected that he was hallucinating.

"A diamond," Jinora gently corrected him, fastening it around her neck. Her long, slender neck—Spirits, and there went his composure. "A very rare diamond, called the Eye of the Sea."

"That's worth more than any of us steerage folks will ever earn in our lives," Kai said begrudgingly. It was a fact of life, after all, which was why Jinora nodded in agreement.

"Kai," she said, a Cheshire ferret-cat smile blossoming on her lips, "I want you to draw me like one of your Fire Nation girls. Wearing this."

"Okay," Kai said, unsure of what else to say as he pulled out his supplies. "Uh, the necklace will look—it'll look good with a dark blue dress, maybe? I dunno, I'm not a fashion designer. You can choose."

"No, Kai." Her voice was gentle again and without even looking at her, Kai could tell she was smirking. "I want you to draw me wearing only this."

A thousand more questions bubbled up in his mind. He wanted to know why she was asking him this. Why she was allowing someone other than her fiancé to see her naked. Whether or not she was playing a joke with him. He wanted to know if Sir Varrick could draw, or Korra, would she be asking them? What made him so worthy to do this?

But this was Jinora, he reasoned. There was no way that she was doing this without a very good reason, and he knew that that reason probably began and ended with LingShi Zhang. Due to his growing love for Jinora and his hatred of her husband-to-be, he knew what he had to do.

So what came out of his mouth was not a question or a denial, but a statement. "Alright," he murmured. "Alright, I'll do it."

Jinora smiled and bobbed her head in acknowledgement, almost to herself, and glanced at the carpet. After a moment, she nodded again and said, "Well, uh…" She actually looked speechless, as if she'd expected him to refuse. "Please…do whatever you have to do to prepare yourself. And I'll—prepare myself as well."

While Jinora went to change in her dressing room, Kai laid out his pencils and charcoals as though they were surgical supplies, tallest to smallest. He then opened his sketchpad to a fresh page, placing it on his lap. If there was one thing he was methodical about, he surmised as he sharpened one of his charcoals, it was his art.

He knew this was a bad idea. Not only was he a very lucky stowaway on the Titanic, but he was also currently infatuating himself with a proper woman: not just an upper class woman but an upper class woman with too much pressure on her shoulders and a stuck up snob of a fiancé who could walk in at any moment and discover them. He could get castrated and killed if he did anything wrong by every man in first class.

And yet, Kai stayed.

Then Jinora exited the dressing room, wearing a yellow silk robe that ended a little bit past her knees. Her hair rested in loose waves around her shoulders. Around her collarbone rested the necklace, although he thought that the brown of her eyes was far prettier than the diamond would ever be.

"I expect to get my money's worth, y'know," she said, twirling the ties on her robe with a seductive smile. "I'm sick of constantly being drawn like a china doll. Mr. Wen, I leave myself in your very capable hands." Oh, he could've made so many euphemisms out of that. "Where should I sit?"

It took him a few seconds to realize that she'd asked him something, he was so preoccupied with the amount of skin that she was showing. Spirits, when had their relationship gotten so intimate? "Over on the bed," he said before he coughed awkwardly and covered up his slip by saying, "sofa. On the sofa."

With a nod, Jinora dropped the robe from her shoulders, and Kai's train of thought (already frail) crashed into a brick wall and shattered into pieces the size of sand molecules. As he'd expected, she was slim, but not without muscle. There were no scars on her body aside from the pair of brown birthmarks that rested on both of her shoulder blades. The diamond necklace dangled between her creamy breasts, and Raava, she was gorgeous, every porcelain-skinned inch of her.

She rested her hands on her hips and shrugged as if to say what do you think of me now, making no attempt to cover herself up. "Well?"

Kai was afraid that if he tried to say something all that would come out would be a squeak. "You look…" Sure enough, his voice cracked like he was going through puberty all over again. "You—you look…amazing."

A faint flush rose in her cheeks, and oh Spirits, he could feel the arousal blooming in his pants again. Please don't let her notice please don't let her notice—

"Stop me if I'm wrong, Mr. Wen," Jinora remarked as she positioned herself on the sofa, stretching out languidly like a ferret-cat. The pool of light she was bathed in seemed to radiate from her eyes. "But is it altogether proper for an artist to have an erection while doing his job?"

Kai's cheeks and ears could rival the flags of the Fire Nation in their redness. "Um, I, uh—no," he stammered. He could feel himself sweating and decided to change the subject to the matter at hand. "Uh, just bend your left leg a little, Jin, and…and lower your head. Eyes on me. Keep them open, now." The artist inside of him took over, much to his relief. He didn't think he could keep on stammering and squeaking like a fool.

She did, and he began to draw with sure strokes with a mixture of his charcoals and pencil stubs on his sheet of paper. His eyes flickered between Jinora and his sketchbook constantly—he wanted to do this perfectly.

He wanted to make this moment last until the end.

The world melted away from us both, and while Kai managed to relax after a few moments, I was unbelievably nervous. The fact that we had left the boundaries of acquaintanceship so very far behind—surpassing even the stage where we could call each other best friends—so quickly both astonished and frightened me. The illusion, of course, had been shattered when we'd kissed under the newspaper, and neither of us had any intention of going back to how it had been.

The drawing took an hour to complete. The entire time, I could feel my heart hammering in my chest, beating so furiously I was sure it would jump right out and become a part of the portrait. It was, without a doubt, the most erotic moment of my life—up till then, at least.

And as for if we 'did it', Mr. Teishi…who knows what could have occurred in my bedroom if we had not been so suddenly interrupted.

"Spirits." Jinora couldn't help but be somewhat at a loss for words as she stared at the final result of Kai's labor. "This is really how you see me, Kai?"

"Well, yeah," Kai chuckled, brushing his blackened hands on his pants. He seemed to have finally relaxed. "I mean, this is how you look."

"No, it's not." The woman Kai had drawn looked like the human embodiment of Raava, more beautiful than words could describe. It wasn't her, and she convinced herself of that as she placed the necklace and drawing, along with a note she'd prepared beforehand, into the safe that housed her and her mother's remaining belongings—LingShi had his own.

Kai looked over at her, confused, and the urge to kiss him, to kiss this wonderful man, built up so suddenly that it made Jinora's breath stop halfway up her throat. Not being able to resist, she leaned in and caught his lips with hers. His lips were warm, sweet, everything and more that they had been back on deck. He did not react outwardly; instead he traced his fingers hesitantly up Jinora's neck, over her cheek and around the back of her head, his fingers tangling in her hair. Their kiss began to evolve past romantic and delved its way into pure passion.

And then there was a knock on the door.

Well, school's over now, so you know what that means: more updates! I'll be able to devote more of my time to this fic now, along with Illogically Logical and Age of Innocence. Pinky swear.

Thanks for readings, guys, and don't forget to leave me a favorite, a follow or a review!

Yours in Fanfiction,

-Boa :)