that's not how you do it

[anatural]

WHO: Korra & Hei
WHAT: Hei’s made himself scarce and Korra is sick of it.

[It has not been a good month for Korra. The people of Republic City haven't taken well to their new spirit neighbors, and most of the spirits seem to agree. By and large they just won't talk to her. The president has been calling Tenzin almost every day with new complaints and, for the past two weeks, these ridiculous vines have been overrunning sections of the city and nothing she does can get rid of them. It's been one Avatar failure after another.

Her boyfriend killing her uncle has basically been the highlight of the whole thing. But of course, after more or less telling her he loves her, he vanished. The little twerp who lives in his building always took great delight in telling her that Hei wasn't around, so she knew nothing had happened to him. He's just doing that avoidant bullshit he likes to do, and Korra is completely done with it. You don't leave for ten months, come back for maybe two and a half weeks of regular contact, and then disappear for another month. No.

So today, when the brat once again tells her that Hei's out, she smiles and says she'll wait for him in his room. Never mind that she doesn't have a key — she just kicks down the door and uses her Avatar powers to deflect his ridiculously paranoid security system. And then she throws herself on his bed to wait and stew.]

Comments

[anatural]

[Daft? She would kick him so hard if she knew he'd thought that. He knows she has obligations and responsibilities and things she needs to consider on top of her own desires. She's not being high maintenance or unreasonable, unlike His Moody Majesty.

Fortunately, she doesn't know what's going on in his head, only that his hands are still on her and he's actually telling her where he'll be.]

What are you doing at a smoke-house?

[mortemscintilla]

[ She's daft in a cute way, if it's any consolation? ]

[ At her question, he hesitates. It's always a risk, divulging too much information about his whereabouts. Especially when he's prone to hanging out in the seediest quarters of the city, with individuals who have never represented the best of mankind, or even the best of snitches and mercenaries. Most of them are a step above sociopaths. Most of the rest are a step below. That's the problem with sinking into the underworld without a reputation to back you up. What you lack is the right connections, and that is what he's steadily made over the past months: connections. A person who is worth nothing must introduce you to a person worth next-to-nothing, and that person to another, and so on and so forth until finally you can step across the threshold to the Kingpin's den, almost one of the family. ]

[ Eventually, (gently), he says, ]

I rent a room there. Good thing about opium addicts? They have no energy to survive burglar traps.

[anatural]

[Grrrr.

She makes a face. Spending time around a bunch of drug users just sounds gross.]

Charming. But thank you. [She leans up to kiss him again. As much as she doesn't like the idea of him disappearing for another week, at least this time he's warned her. She can live with that.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ At least he hasn't mentioned the prostitutes -- a veritable buffet of jailbait. Or the fact that it's the sort of street where even the cats are thin and hollow-eyed for want of meat, where men who profess to be laborers never seem to labor and so-called washer-women rarely wash. Why bother? A do-gooder like Korra would do no good there, and likely storm home with despair and rage in her heart and shit on her shoes. ]

[ So instead he kisses her, with a soft greedy gasp vibrating against her mouth. Breaks away to lay his moist lips on her forehead, then spreads their drifting wake around one eye, across cheek and bone, across the tiny wayside of her ear, down to the pretty lips again. ]

[ After a beat, with effortful steadiness, ]

Let's go.

[ Before I do something stupid. ]

[anatural]

[She sighs and stands up.]

Okay. [Squeezing his hand, she starts heading reluctantly towards the dock.]