who’s idea was this anyway

[anatural]

WHO: Korra & Hei
WHAT: Hei promised to be home to set up the baby’s nursery. He lied.

[Korra is going to punch Hei in the face next time she sees him. Hard. This nursery thing was his idea to begin with. Korra had been planning to keep the cradle in their bedroom, but Hei refused. He insisted that the baby have a small room all its own. He promised he would be home to help set up the cradle and shelves for the toys her friends (mostly Bolin) were already overwhelming them with.

So of course he's not here. Korra waited all afternoon, wait through dinner, and now that the sun is setting, she is done waiting. She'll assemble that stupid crib herself, and then she'll beat him to death with it.]

Comments

[mortemscintilla]

[ He's determined for the Equalist threat to die a stillborn death. But that doesn't preclude other threats around the corner. With the way Hei has survived, he is always preparing, contingency plans unspooling in his mind and mapped out in practical steps in every sphere of his routine. The constancy of danger and the certainty of how he will deal with it is a familiar, awful superstructure to his life, and at some level he acknowledges that he's preparing at every stage of his existence, whatever lulls of peace he briefly indulges in about as meaningful and relevant as dreams. Only the preparation exists as a home truth -- the preparation, and the purpose it yields. ]

[ At Korra's words, he smiles with a faint affection -- but only because there's something bittersweet about her optimism, her clear-eyed hopefulness. He regards not her face but her hand, curled in his, the knuckles solid under his stroking thumb, the skin like hot calloused velvet. ]

[ Dryly, ]

There's no guarantee they'll stay quiet. A back-up plan is necessary. [ Lifting her palm, he presses a kiss to the center, idle habit meeting sincerity. ] You'll get sloppy as a stay-at-home mom. I don't want that for you. Better to stay in fighting trim.

[anatural]

I'm not about to go lax on my forms. [If there's one thing that makes her happier than anything else, that she finds more fulfilling than anything else, it's bending. She would give up just about everything before she gave up that.

She leans over to kiss his cheek before finishing her meal.]

Could you take a look at the cradle? I don't think I put it together quite right.

[mortemscintilla]

Fine.

[ The way he inflects the word makes it sound like a herculean chore. But he drains his glass of milkshake, before slipping off the stool readily enough. He'd been hoping to shower and then fix himself a proper meal. But that can wait. He owes Korra for his absence, for an entire wasted evening. ]

[ In the nursery, padding over the crinkled newpapers strewn across the floor, he regards the half-constructed cradle. All told, Korra hasn't done a bad job. But the rockers on the underside are rickety, and one of the support strips is crooked. ]

[ Sighing, he sinks to his knees. Patiently reassembling the cradle, he lets the task, the mindful hammering, the careful measuring, flatten out his brain. It's strange: all this effort is for the baby, yet he's not thinking of the baby at all. Hours can pass without a single concrete thought if he's preoccupied: just empty, static wind gusting and swirling through his head, snatches of instructions repeating themselves in an endless loop. The bubbling paranoia -- about Korra, about their future -- that so often manifests itself in other forms, as cold nausea, as nameless dread, is, if not erased, at least temporarily buried under the weight of simple exertion. ]

[ It isn't long before the cradle is finished. Not elaborate, trimmed, with hand-rubbed varnish or intricate carvings -- but styled like a pretty antique, solid enough to bear a squalling brat. My squalling brat, he tries to remind himself. The words mean nothing. ]

[anatural]

[While Hei puts the cradle together properly, Korra cleans up the mess from her own meal. Before she can rejoin him in the nursery, nausea and heartburn hit. She grabs a glass of water and shuffles to their bedroom to lie down and put a compress over her eyes. Crying always gives her a headache.

That first pregnancy was so much easier. Even with the Red Lotus and the stress, it had been easier. She hadn't had any morning (or anytime) sickness. Definitely no heartburn. But most importantly... she'd felt more certain of Hei. Once the baby is real, she reminds herself. Once the baby is here, he'll connect with it. It's barely a bump in her belly right now, so of course it doesn't feel like something he could love yet. But he will.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Every pregnancy is different. That's what Pema had gently reassured them. Some started out smoothly and ended with difficult labors, some were the other way around. That doesn't stop the anxiety, which Hei usually controls well, from bubbling up each time Korra suffers from unfamiliar cramps, or a disturbing lethargy that roots her to the spot. Korra's own worries, whatever they are, are well-buttoned up -- but under those buttons is a button-sized baby, half Contractor, half Avatar. (An Avatractor?) There's something decidedly queasy-making about her carrying something that's alive, as vulnerable as a jelly doughnut inside the softness of her belly -- yet as draining as a parasite. ]

[ Most expectant fathers wouldn't think that way, Hei knows. Most would, most likely, make their partner wear some body armor -- find a spare hubcap, even a nice cast-iron frying pan that she could tie around her waist. ]

[ Except the unborn baby isn't Hei's concern. Just Korra. (Maybe that won't change, even after the baby arrives.) ]

[ Creeping silently into the bedroom, Hei ignores the seasick lurch when he finds Korra curled up on the futon, her hair a dark mudslide across her scrunched-up face. Carefully, he settles at the edge of the futon. Reaches out, so the curve of her hot face is met by the cradle of his cool hand. A pregnancy isn't an illness, he reminds himself. Yet in moments like these, it's difficult not to regard it as one. To resent the baby like a cancer festering inside her, poisoning her blood even as it saps the life out of her. ]

[ Quietly, ]

Maybe the prawns were too heavy.

[ He's been keeping track of which foods trigger her pyrosis, and which don't, so he knows what dishes to avoid making in the future. ]

[anatural]

Mmm. [She grabs his hand and tugs him down to lie next to her. She demands cuddles. Dinner and cradle-fixing aren't penance enough for bailing on her, and certainly not enough to make up for the lack of sex ever since she told him about the pregnancy.

This close, though, she can smell the reek on his clothes, no longer covered up by the delicious smells of food. She coughs and pushes him away.] You stink. Go take a shower.

[mortemscintilla]

[ Hei can't explain to her, exactly, what the problem is. It's not a physical decline; he's not having trouble getting it up. Nor has the fact of Korra's pregnancy reduced her to a vessel of burgeoning blood-clots, a formless soup of life that he's revolted by. But when he kisses her, it's always fleeting, almost chaste. Right now, sex is at an apoapsis in his life, crowded out by the weight of worries, the deadening pressures of impending parenthood. His entire being is always forking between excitement and dread, between being a pillar of support for Korra but also the unwilling sperm-donor, the silent partner-in-crime. The split makes everything feel surreal and distant from one moment to next. Fills his head with static even as it weighs his bones down with lead. ]

[ He can't say that to Korra. Instead he lets her coax him to sprawl next to her -- only to shove him away because his skin and clothes still carry the miasmic fug from the rally. ]

[ Scowling, Hei hauls himself to his feet. He blames the sprog for making her as unpredictable as a nest of rattlesnakes. She's never kicked him out of bed before for smelling like less than a spring rose. ]

I think I'll take the couch tonight.

[ Stripping his clothes off irritably, striving for that extra, imaginary inch of dignity that this lovesick relationship has deprived him of, he stomps off to shower. Damn hormones. Damn pregnancies. Why couldn't he have hooked up with a menopausal cougar instead of a teenybopper at the useless peak of her fertility? ]

[anatural]

What? [As far as Korra's concerned, he's the unpredictable one. That petulance seems to come from nowhere. He's a very clean person. He doesn't freak out when he's dirty, but he always cleans himself off as soon as he can. There's no reason for him to stomp off top the couch because she told him to do something he would normally be doing.

She's top annoyed to chase after him. If he wants to punish himself by sleeping on the couch, fine. Let him. She huffs irritably and rolls over too her other side.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ It's that stupid baby. The awareness of it keeps prodding at Hei's patience like a sharp stick: makes his anger erupt in unexpected, irregular spikes of heat. In the shower though, surrounded by sluicing water, he dredges up the reluctant recognition of his anger. It's not exactly stress about the baby. It is his own uncertain status in Korra's world. For years he's existed according to fluid codes of obscurity, a pattern he's never diverged from. No real name. No family. No social security. No legal accounts. He's a Contractor -- and they have an aversion to anything official. Any red tape that impedes their exits, any paperwork that leads to their bolt-holes like a breadcrumb trail. ]

[ Except he's going to be a father soon. He'll need a clean identity. Something official. Real, on file, even if it's another alias -- a nobody who is not worth the government's attention. A contingency plan, among the hundreds. If something happens to him and Korra, he knows any baby of theirs will land on its feet. But he wants to place a cushion there. ]

[ Not just a cushion. A nest. Lined in paperwork and fool-proof legalities. ]

[ Toweling himself dry, he slips into a pair of boxers and a T-shirt. Pads into the shadowed aerie of the bedroom, where Korra is still sprawled on the futon, her body an irritable curl. Briefly, he considers sliding in beside her, into the warm declivity of the mattress, apologizing without words but with a kiss to her nape. But he doesn't think he could stand it if she kicked his shin or swatted his hands off in another irrational burst of petulance. ]

[ Instead, he draws the blinds and switches the bright halo of the lamp off. A cool but considerate: Sweet dreams. Vacates to the nursery, to clean up the tools and wooden debris, and then to the livingroom to spend the balance of the evening on the couch, determinedly immersed in one of the dusty Air-Nomad tomes piled on the coffee table. ]