fuse_box | pushing it

Entry tags:

universe: after the city

pushing it

WHO: Korra & Hei
WHAT: Korra’s getting restless.

[Korra sits on the ground of Hei's toolshed and tells herself that she should seriously work on that patience thing.

She's alone in the house. Her health has been improving enough that she doesn't need a constant babysitter, so when Asami called to say that she had a last minute meeting at Future Industries, Korra told her it was fine and not to worry about it. She can stand up to reach food in the cabinet. She can walk the distance from the bathroom door to the toilet. She can even (as she knows from testing earlier today) walk around the entire house.

The distance from the house to Hei's toolshed? Not so much. It had seemed like such a great idea, practicing walking while getting the tools to fix the wheelchair ramp. She's been itching for something to do, something physical, something that matters even just a little. But by the time she reached the toolshed, her strength was exhausted, and she had to use the last of it for a controlled fall.

So she sits and meditates on the virtues of patience. After some rest, she tries to earthbend herself back onto her feet. When that results in nothing more than a bruised bum and sore ribs, she tries meditating on the virtues of patience some more.

And really hopes Hei gets home soon. She really doesn't want to have Naga carry her back to the front porch like a cub.]

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[ The past few days, life has been eddying into new and hopeful currents. Hei watches them spin Korra as she tries to catch on. Her recovery is going smoothly -- at least on the surface. That gleam of purpose is returning to her eyes. Her energized phases are more frequent; even when they don't last long, every upswing sustains hope. In bed she's kittenish and playful. The renewed wellspring of sex, even at the tender half-speed it is, softens them both up, abrades away the crusty coating of distance that she'd grown around herself over the last few weeks. Each time, curled like two damp wrung towels across the sheets, Hei watches her drift into the shores of sleep, confident there'll be no nightmares for her this time. There are though, and in the mornings he leaves for work even shorter of sleep than usual, vaguely heartsick and tired. ]

[ Still, despite the heaviness of his uncertainty over Korra, there's a skein of cheer than thrums beneath -- wavering but constant. He's not sure where her head's at. Not sure if she's getting better or stagnating. But in the meantime, touches keep them stitched together: little brushes of fingers and shoulders when they sit on the couch together, soft kisses of greeting, want, apology, acknowledgment. It helps to reassure him that there's a subcurrent of being-togetherness that never entirely fades. A subterranean communication. ]

[ She's fine, Hei reassures himself, coming home late that evening to find the door unlocked. No signs of struggle or fall; just Korra's footprints in the sand, etched in shadow by the red slats of sunlight, the smell of the receding tide heavy in the air. He follows the trail quietly to his shed. Korra is sitting there in the middle of the floor, eyes closed, breathing softly. Meditating? Yes. Hei puzzles at the significance of her being in his shed. It is like reading a crime scene: Korra had been restless, had gone out to try her hand at tinkering in the shed, and then ... her brief surge of energy had seeped away. ]

[ Normal. No crime, no crime scene. ]

[ Stepping inside, Hei gets her attention with a soft jingle of his keys, before edging closer. ]

Got lost?

[ A dry question that disguises the frisson of concern beneath. ]

[She's gotten better enough at meditation over the years that she's no longer jumpy when interrupted; she comes out of it quickly without being abrupt.]

Let's just say I bit off more than I could chew.

[She holds out her arms for him to haul her up, and notices a twinge in her wrist. Great. Bruised bum, sore ribs, and evidently her little earthbending adventure messed up her wrist too. She's still calm enough from meditating that the thought makes her feel regretful and not outright sullen.]

[ There's a pang as she reaches out for him, little hands like two dark starfish. He is reminded, in a disturbing way, of a kitten. A fragile day-old kitten that suffers sadly, patiently, that conveys its pain only with its eyes and its stillness. This impression -- sometimes stronger than others -- interferes with his certainty that she's getting better. Compared to what she was before -- that brilliant fireball of pure momentum -- it's like watching her get chopped off at the knees. ]

[ She's not, though, and he reminds himself that he needs to be patient. Taking care of someone, with such meticulous, attentive focus, isn't his usual way. But their entire relationship is one of transitions, sometimes difficult, sometimes rewarding. What's one more to add to the list? ]

[ Reaching out, he grips both hands to tug her to her feet. Circles an arm around her when she's upright, a loose embrace in the guise of support. With his free hand he strokes Korra's heaped hair, the curve of a shoulder. ]

[ Maintaining his teasing tone, he says, ]

Should I install a human-sized flap at the door? So you can get inside next time, the way Cat does?

[Better than being reminded of baby Pai, at least?

She doesn't hiss as her wrist yelps in pain when he pulls her up, but her various aches and bruises are sufficiently distracting that it takes her a moment to register what he's saying. As soon as she does, she snorts and bumps him with her hip.]

Cat doesn't need a flap to get in and out. I'm pretty sure she has thumbs.

["Cat", so named because Korra was too depressed to think of a proper name and Hei himself didn't care, has shown a disconcerting ability to be in places she shouldn't physically be capable of being. Sometimes Korra thinks she's actually a spirit, and has to remind herself that Jinora said the feline is just a cat.]

What you need in here is a chair.

[ Baby Pai was far more imperious about his attention. It never occurred to her that help might be refused. It rarely was. ]

[ He hides a twitch of a grim smile. The cat hasn't exactly grown on him, which is bewildering because it follows him around everywhere, all bedroom-eyes and inflamed moews. It dawdles at his feet when he's cooking breakfast. It goes through Night Stalker phases where it deploys uncanny skills at sneaking after him. It tiptoes like fucking Baryshnikov to catch him taking a leak in the bathroom. It even pops up at the end of his and Korra's bed mid-fuck with yowls of jealousy, like it's caught him cheating. Other than that it does nothing but lurk in closets and under furniture. Poor pet-shopping logic: picking the one that shies away from people because you feel sorry for its geeky social awkwardness. ]

[ Squeezing Korra gently, he draws her away from the shed -- slow measured steps. ]

I'll get one. And a separate table for you, if you want.

[ Whatever keeps her hands occupied, he thinks -- hoping the activity will cheer her up with no real certitude, willing it to be so. ]

Woah, don't go crazy now. [Because he does, a little, sometimes, latch onto little things she says and blow them completely out of proportion. (So do all of her friends, honestly. She mentioned off-hand to Tenzin at one point how she wished she knew more about the previous Avatars, since she can't call upon them anymore, and he sent over a dozen volumes of history & lore.)] I have no idea what I'd do in your workshop. I just wanted to fix the ramp. [Hei may notice, as they walk through the front door, that the ramp has gotten a little wobbly and insecure.]

[ Hei bites the inside of his cheek. He can never predict when Korra might decide she's being indulged, versus when she feels she's being outright mollycoddled, but he prefers not to tiptoe around it the way her friends do. Like them, he simply wants her to get better. It's natural for him to hinge his hopes on her offhand comments and little remarks, so he can ease her through that journey -- a perpetual work in-progress. ]

[ The ramp creaks under their footsteps, and he spares it a glance. To Korra: ] I'll handle it. [ A Don't trouble yourself in so many words. Carefully, he eases her onto the sofa, where the cat springs out from under a colorful heap of cushions, a predictable spill of silky white fur and needy meows as it circles his feet. ]

[ Ignoring it, Hei kneels before Korra, both hands loosely splayed on her hips. His gaze shades into something both consolatory and conspiratory. ]

You don't have to do woodwork in the shed. I could teach you how to make smoke-bombs. Fireworks. Chemical kraken monsters. Carbon prints on the porch. Lightning-storms in bottles.

[ He is, for the record, perfectly serious. ]

......I'll pass, thanks. [She makes a face at him.] I think I've destroyed enough of Republic City all on my own.

You didn't destroy it. You saved it.

[ He says this reasonably, more as a fact than a reassurance. He's repeated things of this sort often, whenever Korra gets broody and reinforcement seems called for -- because they are true. She may have swung Republic City upside-down, but she's also dragged the world, kicking and screaming, out of its cloistered routine and into a new age. One of volatility and upheaval, but also a profounder sense of balance. She just needs to understand that change comes at a price. The transition is hard, but worth it. ]

[ Reaching out, he tweaks one of her hair-pieces. Rubs a tuft of hair idly between his thumb and forefinger, as he adds, ]

Not everything I show you has to be destructive in nature. It depends on who uses it.

How can a lightning storm in a bottle not be destructive?

[Cat is evidently quite jealous of the attention Hei's giving Korra; with a mraow of upset, she jumps on Korra's lap and shoves her butt in Korra's face while rubbing against Hei's arm and purring aggressively.]

It's easy. All you need is what's in your kitchen. Like --

[ He would elaborate. But the cat is being a drama queen. With a mild exhale, Hei tilts his head and stares at it as the words Waste of space nearly appear in a thought bubble next to his head -- a look that perfectly mirrors the cat's as it gazes back at him and you know it's thinking: Give me love or give me fish, stupid human. ]

[ With an air of distaste, he gathers it up and plunks in the kitchen, hoping to interest it in the bowl of kibble. No success. Curling its tail with a sniff of profound disdain, the cat slinks off. Ignoring it, Hei plucks an egg from the ice-box. Pokes a hole in it to suck out raw white and yolk (one of his more charming habits that he doubts Korra appreciates) before carrying it over to her. ]

There's a trick, for example, to draw out the imprints on the flat surfaces of rocks.

[Please note that you're starting to explain how to make one, Hei, and not how it could possibly used for something other than destruction. Also, thank you for not doing that egg sucking thing in front of her. She's always found it a little gross, but her gag reflex has been particularly sensitive recently.]

And why exactly would I want to draw out an imprint from a rock? [She doesn't even understand what that means.]

To see what lived on it. What died on it. What walked across the surface. It's called a carbonized imprint.

[ He drifts over to the closet as he speaks. Inside one of the cabinets is a drywall shelf hung with sealed containers he's traced in black marker. Unlike other people whose toolboxes contain spanners and drillbits and screws, his contains pill bottles full of powders, pellets, shards, clusters, and gems all neatly labelled. Sodium D-Line. Potassium Perchlorate. Rice Starch. Mercury II thiocyanate. ]

[ Gathering the right utensils, he mixes colored magnesium with some flashbulb powder and funnels it into the egg. Wadding, a fuse, then he seals it with a daub of wax. ]

[ Holding it up to Korra, he adds, with a faint flicker of a smile, ]

The first time I did this, I realized it was true, what they say. That everything is connected.

[Korra isn't following any of this, but at the same time, that doesn't really matter. She almost never gets to see Hei like this — excited (what passes for excitement with him) and informed. This is the side he shows Chekov, because their interests are so aligned. A part of Korra is happy to be a part of this, even if it makes 0 sense to her.]

How?

[ Nerd delight!!! (To be fair, it's only a fractional widening of his smile. The reserve bred in his bones, unchanging, is briefly steeped in something warm and brightly fizzling.) ]

[ She asks How? and Hei drifts to the door. From the window, right where Korra is seated, a pathway of white sandblasted stone is visible. He centers the egg on the pathway and waves briefly to her, before lighting the fuse with a spark leaping off his fingertip. Before it ignites, he zips back with both hands tucked over his head, like a soldier running down a foxhole. ]

[ The eruption is modest -- a sharp crack, followed by a breathless puff. But when the powder in the egg blows, powerful chemical magnets draw shapes out of the air to imprint them, recklessly, on the stone. As the dust settles, the pathway is decorated with colours and patterns in their raw inklings. A tiny solar system: every form of life, insect, beast and plant helixing into each other, nameless in their tangled complexities. Limbs and stalks, broken feathers, seashell whorls, gilled forms like those at the bottom of the sea. The arch of a seagulls neck thinning into an umbilical cord shot through with aquamarine threads spidering into beetle-legged pinwheels which in turn shatter into violently-colored orbits. The designs that exist, invisible, all about this world. ]

[ From the window, Hei gestures at the pretty mess to Korra. A silent commentary: Isn't that neat? ]

Edited 2014-09-26 03:08 (UTC)

[It's definitely neat, though Korra can't make any sense of it whatsoever. But she doesn't have to understand what it signifies to appreciate its beauty.]

You did all of that with some powder and an egg? [She's not sure whether you're a magician or an artist, Hei.]

[ It would be so much simpler if he were a magician or an artist. But they both know his talent lies in bloodier areas. ]

[ He sidles back indoors, paying no mind to the fluffy white swirl of Cat dawdling at his feet, rubbing against his trousers as if demanding to be included in the conversation. To Korra: ] I didn't make those prints. They were already there. [ He doesn't get into the technicalities of the chemicals in the powder reacting with the components in the sand and air -- or try to explain the basics of carbon atoms and fossilization. That sort of dry subject-matter would go over her head. ]

[ He simply stretches out on the sofa, peering at her good-naturedly over the edge of a throw-pillow. (It says a lot, that he's capable of this -- how his movements are sluggish, gaze half-lidded and warm, like he's taking the chance for this kind of rare banter.) ]

All living things are based on a substance called carbon in my world. You could say there's a static number of carbon particles in the world. No more or less today than a thousand years ago. Things are born, live, die, dissolve to component elements. They leave a print behind, like a shadow -- while their pieces go on to be part of new life. Like clay: mold a catowl, smush it up, mold a wolfbat. The bulk of matter never changes. Only the creations.

[ He realizes he's getting pedantic, and shakes it off. This isn't a science lesson. Instead he reaches out to gently tweak her nose. ]

People are cobbled together out of carbon bits that were once other things completely. You may have a flying lemur's tail in your nose. A chunk from the South Pole's ice-caps in your eye. Even your ears could have bits of Avatar Aang in them.

[She bats his hand away, nose wrinkling as she imagines a flying lemur's tail replacing it, or having Aang in her ears. The concept actually makes perfect sense to her — she's quite familiar with the idea of returning to the earth to be born again as something new — but she's never thought about it in the way that Hei's explained it.

She wheels herself over so she can slide onto the couch and lie down alongside him. The way he's stretched out, how could she resist joining him? There's just enough space left to practically be an invitation.]

Where'd you learn all this?

Library books.

[ He says it in the tone a boy would use, a secretive, half-playful, Don't tell anyone. ]

[ When she stretches alongside him, he enfolds her, carefully, senses leashed to her warmth. This sort of closeness between them still feels novel enough that something foamy sloshes in his gut, a gentle warmth lapping out across his body's meridians. He curls an arm around her, palm sliding down to her waist and to her spine, following its sleek natural declivity. Fingers skim along her hipbone, through too much fabric, then boldly slide under her shirt and rub circles across bare skin. ]

[ The look he gives her is sloe-eyed, appreciative, as if Korra has just invented gunpowder, chopsticks, electricity, the Black Russian, all in one. ]

[It's still thrilling to Korra to really feel something when he touches her like that. Silly as it may sound, those weeks of detachment and disinterest had been terrifying, as she wondered if she would be that way her entire life. Fortunately, that isn't the case. She might not have the same strength and abilities as before, but she's still able to enjoy her body...and Hei's. She slides her own hands under his shirt and impulsively kisses his neck, scraping her teeth gently where it meets his shoulder.

She'd like to have some kind of witty response to him, but she doesn't, and there are much more interesting things to focus on.]

[ That period of deep ennui still rattles him, a reminder in its own way of how he and Korra began. When he'd started his relationship -- such as it was -- with her, he'd felt barely alive. He can remember all those times, when there seemed to be an invisible glaze of ice between them. When he couldn't decide if he didn't care, or if he merely lacked the energy for her intensity. It is exactly the same with Korra. Everything she is going through now ... is what he'd been inflicted with before. ]

[ He can't decide if it's karmic. Or just pathetic. ]

[ She palms his chest, lips doing those shy yet amazing things to his neck, and a prickling surge goes through him, a river rush of feeling like he's only ever felt for Pai, a strange vertiginous thing -- but far from innocent. Lashes lowering, he curls out a faint smile for her. His hips push forward, helplessly, letting her feel the hardening crux at his groin. He can feel taste dancing on the tip of his tongue. A bright crackle like lightning-bolts and pure sugar. But it's dangerous -- always -- to give them a proper shape. ]

[ He starts to say: ] Listen. I -- [ But then he stops, as if teetering at the edge of a blade, as if he's read a bad verse on a hallmark card and is slapped by disgusted dread. ]

[ In the end, all he does is exhale. ]

You know.

[She grins, a mix of smug satisfaction and giddy delight as he presses against her, but she doesn't reach down for it, or acknowledge it in any other way. She just presses more kisses against his neck while her nails gently scrape his back. She doesn't look up when he says Listen, assuming that he's going to make some suggestion about what they should do.

Except he doesn't. He stops, sighs, and ends with You know as if his meaning is perfectly clear, and she has no idea what he's talking about. So she pulls back enough to look at him, frowning a little in confusion & concern.]

What?

[ Something in his dark gaze shifts. It isn't exactly a softening; more an uncertainty. He can feel something collecting under his skin: the same vicious buzz-saw sensation he gets before a fight, when he grabs instinctively for his blades, or when sirens whoop in the distance and he whips out a wire and exits the crime-scene. A need to establish distance, stability, control -- because the Black Reaper never gives more than is wise. Because he understands that's how life works, that it's harder to love than to feel nothing at all. Harder to be there for those you love -- to see them get hurt, get sick, be taken from you in sudden awful ways. Indifference is dead simple. It asks nothing of you. It eats you from the inside out, sure, but it takes no effort or thought at all. ]

[ Unlike this -- which asks more from him than he'll ever be ready to give. ]

[ He shuts his eyes and sighs. It is a compressed, bitter sound, small but weirdly isolated from the warm bubble around them. When he speaks, his voice is almost a stranger's, dark as dark, dry as wintry sand. ]

I love you. But you work my nerves.

[ The inflection is emotionless, its truth plain and smooth and flat like a bullet, and the bullet slides into the chamber of awareness with a quality that is exactly as it should be, fitting with a click of completeness and a potential for danger. ]

[Korra has never really indulged in fantasies of hearing him say those words directly. He's hinted at, alluded to, and most importantly, shown through his actions how much he cares. But if she ever had entertained little dreams, they never would have been like this: flat, distant, dark. A declaration of emotion without any emotion in it.

Also, you work my nerves What's that supposed to mean?]

I'm...not sure how to take that. [She squeezes him gently before adding —] But I love you too.

[ It means what it means. ]

[ Her response is so matter-of-fact -- so bittersweetly simple -- that he can't help but smile: quiet and small. He notices nothing else around him, could be shot dead that moment from point-blank range and never see it coming. Most people would think of someone with Korra's history as being anything but innocent anymore, but at that moment, to him, innocence practically defines her. Pegging emotions so neatly has always failed Hei. He complicates everything he touches; it is his nature. He problematizes things, possesses ambivalences, deals in verbal traps and coded subtexts and all the masked jargon that comes with spycraft. If the rest of the world is solved tomorrow, his own emotional state will remain an open case to him. ]

[ Korra isn't like that. She's a big tangled fascination of little details within, yet she cuts through everything like a slice of sunshine. She doesn't reside in the gray; she still sees things in shades of black and white. You're happy or you aren't. You love someone or you don't. It's childlike yet he's grateful for it. Because with her he can stop trying so hard, and sink down into the pursuit of ... whatever he is pursuing. Closeness. Heat. Understanding. ]

[ He doesn't say anything. Just kisses her, a soft slide of lips, brushing his tongue into the seam of her lips, along the crooks, his focus honing on those tiny wet folds, that place on a person's mouth which is like the smallest furl of a univalve. Home from work, he should be making a beeline for the fridge, yet this is the first thing he wants to taste; the only thing that speaks to his hunger. ]

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