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

[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. ]