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[ She breaks the kiss before he's ready, and Hei finds his lips chasing after the warmth of hers. In the background, there's a ripple of drifting voice, indistinct through the alleyway wall, yet there's something intensely private about this, them, pressed together in the midst of all the pedestrian bustle just a few feet away. Hei kisses Korra through it all -- even as her question seeps into his mind. Comes away on a short breath, his fingers still clamped tightly in the strands at the back of Korra's head, their noses pushed together, his skin buzzing with a stymied want. ]

At home. [ He doesn't say Probably or I guess because he's too well-informed of Pai's movements -- however clever and elusive she is. He doesn't exactly sound disappointed -- there's a disquieting but inevitable lack of boundaries between the siblings. (Besides, he likes coming home to the sight of her lolling around. Something so mundane, a sibling at home; yet it delights Hei every time.) Of course, he knows Korra will be far from delighted. Drawing back, he regards her carefully. ] You'll have to stomach some funny looks.

[ It's either that, or check into a motel Underground. ]

[Korra makes a little face. Of course.]

She gives me funny looks anyway. [As well as the distinct impression that little Xing Does Not Approve of her, despite the sweet friendliness in her manner. Korra wants to like her, but every time she's around the younger girl, she feels like she should be watching her back.] But do you really want her hearing... [Come on, you know her expression says] us?

[ Hei pauses, feeling vaguely embarrassed, and then embarrassed for being embarrassed. In their early years in the war, he and Pai were like beasts in a degenerate Eden; if ever the need had arisen, he could have fucked Amber on the cot eight away from Pai's, free to look her in the face with impunity the morning after. He's slit throats and disemboweled enemies in front of Pai. Bled, puked, sweated and been scraped to the barest rudiments of decency in front of her. What was one more coarse physical function to add to the list? ]

[ Except now, his body is no one's business but his own -- and maybe Korra's? Somewhere along the line, he's re-defined boundaries. Has learnt to establish a semblance of space between him and Pai, if he's to be a fit caretaker. He values his privacy, that's true, and in his line of work you have to call any snatches of solitude precious. ]

[ Quietly, he says, ]

I'll have to play music. [ A beat. ] Loud music.

[For a moment, Korra just looks at him... and then she starts giggling.]

[ Hei raises his eyebrows. Korra's bits of laughter are still sporadic enough around him to be noted and valued. Mustn't put her off them. Part of him wants to press up close to her, dip low and kiss the giggles out of her mouth. He doesn't. He's not particularly an affectionate person, not even a lighthearted person, not a lot of things -- but with Korra he's learning that the little things matter just as much. Maybe more. His fingers spidering across her hip, and the way he can feel the heat of her body along his clothes, the I like you this close that hangs unspoken in the air? That says more than anything else could. ]

[ Eventually, though, curiosity gets the better of him. ]

... Is it really so funny?

No. [She shakes her head, giggles fading but still smiling.] I just imagined you playing an old Water Tribe hunting song. [She'd sing it for you, but she'd start laughing again before she could get the song out.

Still wuffing with amusement, she slides her hands down to link with his.] Anyway, if you think that'll work...

[ Hei ticks an eyebrow at the idea of a Hunting Song, offset by the grin that threatens to form. He wants to ask who the hunter would be in such a scenario, and who the quarry. Instead he drops his gaze down to their hands, his fingers curling slowly but unthinkingly around Korra's. As if, this close, her body holds a sort of magnetism which urges him to react, bypassing his mind and speaking straight to his muscles. He thinks of the press of her heat and the wet slide of her lips earlier and realises he's not quite breathing steadily. ]

[ To take his mind off it, he says, quietly wry, ]

There's only one song I know from your homeworld.

[ The tune he hums has a basslike sonority, but is embarrassingly off-key. (Hei couldn't carry a tune if his life depended on it.) Even so, it's easy to recognize as that absurd Secret Tunnel number. ]

[It takes Korra a moment, but she sputters when she recognizes the tune. How does he even-- Oh, right, she did sing it during that curse? (This is possibly the first time she's thought about that curse without immediately remembering how she was shot. His humming keeps her very firmly in the present moment.)

She snorts and quickly leans in to stop his humming with a kiss. She murmurs wryly against his lips] The song is bad enough.

Edited 2013-09-26 22:48 (UTC)

[ Not during the singing curse. But she'd belted it out when they were caught in that shed, months and months ago. Miserable as he'd been then, terrible as the aftermath was for Korra, that chilly evening has taken an almost nostalgic tinge -- a connection of a sort, sprung up green out of a burnt-over field. He still remembers the cold rage and disdain he'd carried then, dwelling on the narrow edge of despair, and how Korra had dared to think she could call his focus back from that edge. Which was incredibly and abundantly reckless of her, and should've resulted in disaster. ]

[ In many ways, it has. This is a simple continuation of that disaster. ]

[ But Hei doesn't want to think about it. Snagging her upper-lip between his teeth, a quick kiss like a bite, he draws back. ] But not a buzzkill. [ Lightly, he tugs her hand, the fingers threaded with hers. A stopover to pick up a bag of candied fruits for Pai, and he's leading her in the direction of his flat. ]

[Korra has largely forgotten about that night -- partly by choice, partly by the reality of life. Trauma can be forgotten, especially when it's followed by ones far worse. Crueler things have happened to her in the City, have been done to her by Hei, even.

She hums contentedly and follows him, squeezing his hand tight. She peers as he buys the candied fruits.] What kind of fruit is that?

[ Events pile on top of events; the world keeps moving, a slipstream of sensations. But Hei never forgets anything. His eidetic memory often made him the envy of his peers in Heaven's War, but sometimes he wishes for the fogginess of thought, the imperfection of recall. It's one deficiency that would leave him happier. (But also kill him faster, because juggling multiple identities requires cold clarity and the talent to memorize and compartmentalize. You have to keep track of all your lies.) ]

[ (Is it any wonder, then, why Hei used to drink himself into acrimonious stupors when he had nothing else to do?) ]

[ At the corner store, he accepts the skewers of candy-fruit, lush and red, the glossy surfaces dripping syrup as they're packed into a bag. In the spill of light from the shop, they look like staked hearts. At his spot half under the store awning, by the pyramids of glossy oranges and mangos, Hei glances at Korra. ]

Apples. Not the kind you'd like.

[ They'd been Amber's favorites too. Sometimes, biting into the fruit, he can still taste that sticky-sweetness of her kisses, muted by the ghostly flavor of her mouth. But of course he won't tell Korra any of that. ]

Not like any apple I've ever seen. [conversational, not combative]

[ Hei hesitates a beat, before lifting a skewer out of his bag. He takes a bite, the surface staining his lips and fingertips a sparkling red. Chews contemplatively and swallows, before he murmurs, ] It's too sweet for you. [ Even so, he hands it over to Korra. (He just hopes Pai won't scowl when she discovers he shared her treat with someone else.) ]

[She blinks, then takes a hesitant bite.]

Not bad. [It's sweet, but not the heavily processed kind, and the tart apple offers a nice counterbalance. She wouldn't eat the whole stick, but she'll finish off that top apple.]

[ Hei's blank surprise blossoms into a mild amusement, showing more in his eyes than the tilt of his mouth. There is red underneath his fingernails and on his mouth, but that doesn't stop him from leaning close to Korra, taking another bite of the apple. How surreal this ought to be. He wants to reimagine this scene -- the surging traffic, the plodding pedestrians, the melting evening sky, the apples, with Amber's hand wrapped around his. ]

[ They'd so seldom done anything like this. How could they, after all? The bittersweet memories they'd made weren't enough. They felt both too small, yet somehow transcended the ordinary. They hadn't done any of the things lovers do in movies that require a sugary montage with a pop soundtrack -- unless you counted explosions, gunfire, and sirens as a soundtrack, and recalibrating rifles, rigging traps and mapping out ambush routes as bonding. Still, those memories of her existed in little snippets, a film reel in sepia interspersed with sensations of sweetness and warmth here and there. ]

[ He shouldn't be thinking of Amber right now. It isn't fair to him; certainly isn't fair to Korra. But over a half-decade of mutual absorption isn't so easy to escape. ]

[ Quietly, before he breaks up the mood, he says, ] Let's get going.

[It's a good thing Korra doesn't know where his thoughts have gone. It would gut her, particularly under the current circumstances. She's too fragile in herself to handle that complete a rejection -- not just not wanting her, but actively wishing she was somebody else.

She continues munching the apple as they make their way to his apartment, poking the skewer back into the bag when she's done with it.]

[ Pai had accused Hei of using Korra as a poor substitute for Amber. Which is, strictly speaking, both true and untrue. Pai is perceptive, uncannily clever, with a breadth of knowledge no fourteen year old should possess. But she is also just that. Fourteen -- and sometimes static in her comprehension of human relationships. What Hei has with Korra ...it's like his affair with Amber, because there's a spark, undeniable, a star in the compartment of his mind that always burns brightly. But it's also completely different than before, not negating Amber or anything in the past, but layered over it, coloring every memory, every sensation. Amber was one of the few people who wasn't afraid to break him -- or be broken by him. Wasn't afraid of him. And no matter how much Hei had cared for her -- and it was so much -- she had always loved him more. ]

[ You don't forget about something like that. ]

[ Of course, he cared for Amber as a hybrid between a monster and a boy does -- a ruthless, desperate, focused emotion that saw nothing besides her. He isn't that person anymore. Can't love anyone but Pai that way, even if he wants to. What he feels for Korra is something conflicted, lust-ridden and muted, his satisfaction mixed with a very adult bitterness and self-doubt. ]

[ He doesn't say any of that, either. Korra's munching and their footsteps are commas in the silence. Keeping his hand wrapped around hers, he fishes in his pockets for the key with the other. Pushes the door open, and guides her into the pale-walled, sunlit flat. ]

...Pai?

[Pai doesn't have any hobbies. She doesn't particularly care for reading, or making things, or....anything.

She jumps up, excited when she hears her brother come back.]

Brother!

[Her face falls when she sees who he brought home.]

What's she doing here?

[ One more reason Hei misses Amber. If he'd brought her here, instead of Korra, Pai would've been her usual curious and calmly amiable self. Asking the older woman questions, flitting girlishly around her periphery, unconsciously imitating her mannerisms with a tinge of hero-worship. Instead, glimpsing the newcomer, she lights up and deflates in the same heartbeat. Pronounces her words with all the delicacy of scorn, the What's she doing here? clunking into the silence with a coolness that expands between her and Korra, pushing them apart. It sounds unforgivably hard-edged. ]

[ Ignoring it, Hei squeezes Korra's hand before letting go. Places the bag of apples on the table, before leaning in and passing an arm around Pai. He looks her over carefully, his eyes a benign blue in the bright, big-windowed flat. His voice is good-natured but also dryly scolding when he says, ] 'She' has a name. [ Then he tweaks the bangs that hang over her eyes, and kisses her, his lips cool and dry against her warm forehead. ]

[ Detaching matter-of-factly, he says, to no one in particular, ] Who's hungry? [ He doesn't particularly care if the two girls get along. That'll happen -- if it ever does -- at their own pace. But he's not about to succumb to the piqued tension in the air, either. ]

[Korra twitches. There goes even the pretense of liking me. Korra prefers painful realities to pretty lies, but she misses the illusion of being welcome.]

I'm...fine. Thanks.

[Pai wraps her arms around his waist, unwittingly possessive. But when she speaks, it's under her breath, so Korra can't hear.] That doesn't answer my question.

[But of course, he's not going to. Nor does he have to. It's obvious he brought her here to fuck her. Pai looks at him. Are you really trying to buy me off with candy apples?]

[ Catching Pai's look, Hei settles his expression into something mild, almost playful but mostly earnest. The candy apples weren't a bribe; more an alleviant for her inevitable sulkiness. It's the most he can do. As it is, he can feel Korra almost vibrating with tension in her corner. Ignoring her for the moment, he retrieves some tupperware boxes from the refrigerator, brimming with garlic scallops, steamed rice and sesame beef, and sets them in the microwave. With neat precise movements -- barely making any sounds as he opens the cabinet doors -- he sets the table. Korra isn't hungry, but he is, and he and Pai usually eat together after he's off work. It seems important to keep her company. Ticked-off as she is, she might not feed otherwise. ]

[ Eventually, he puts Korra out of her misery enough to say, ] Could you get three glasses out of the dishwasher? [ Then, to Pai, ] Come eat something. [ You may murder each other after supper, ladies. Not before. ]

[He hadn't mentioned dinner first! SCREAM. Korra gets the glasses and reconsiders this whole thing. Maybe she should just go. The music idea had been funny, but here? Now? It's pretty clear it's a bad idea.]

[Pai isn't ticked off. And she would have to be dying in order to not eat. She's not an irrational teenager. She sits down at the table, prim as you please, and waits to be served.]

[ Sorry, Korra. You're hot and everything. But Hei's libido usually takes the backseat to his appetite. The microwave dings; he serves the dishes, with a pitcherful of fresh milky lychee juice from the fridge. Heaping steaming portions liberally into both his and Pai's plates, he pours into the glasses -- one, two, three. At her seat, Pai bears such a neat poise that she might be an illustration for a lo-fat cereal ad, in a magazine aimed at schoolgirls, all without looking like she's personally picked up a dirty plate or made her own breakfast in her life. Meanwhile, at her corner, Korra looks jittery, tense, like a wary animal debating between lapping at a watering hole -- of fleeing altogether. ]

[ Sliding into his chair, he catches Korra's wrist, drawing her to him. His gaze is shaded, but there's a hint of a smile on his lips. ] Sit. The drinks aren't poisoned. [ He's already pulled his chair around so he's sitting between the girls at the little square table, rather than at an angle next to either one. ]

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