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[She wraps her arms around his neck and holds tightly, a silent It's okay.] I don't have anywhere I need to be in the morning. [She says it lightly, though it's a bitter truth.

She wiggles to get him to lower her down, then tugs him onto the couch. They shift, wriggle, and adjust until her head is resting on his thigh. Close, intimate, tactile, and a position that reassures him that he has power. He's the one holding and protecting her. Even if the reality is the opposite, and she is actually trying, in her limited capacity, to help put him back together.]

Did she use too much teeth?

[ Hei knows the arrangement isn't accidental. It's clear she's letting let him believe, with an assumed air of readiness for whatever he has in mind -- talking, cuddles, silence -- that he's the one in a position of power. But Hei knows power isn't physical; it's mental. Superficially, it might be nice if you can be the master-of-ceremonies, if someone's physical placement transmits a softness and submission for you, but you shouldn't have to force it. If you're in control, you can move someone with a single finger look. Power isn't about props. It's about language and presence. ]

[ Pai certainly doesn't lead Hei like a trained bear on a string. But he loves her. Not always kindly, but it's impossible to dispute that he's made her the center of his life, and would've gone on trying to keep them both together all his life, back home, if she hadn't vanished first. In loving, you give a part of yourself away; a part of you out in the open, a part of you that can't be walled-off completely. It's a vulnerability. But in Hei's case -- with Pai -- he's never been so macho or deluded to consider it a weakness. It's been his catalyst to turn the far-off into the tangible. ]

[ Sitting there with her head in his lap, petting it like a cat, his first impulse is to snort at her question. Instead he smoothes his fingers through her hair, gazing down at her. Whatever is happening on his mouth -- he has the oddest feeling it might be a smile -- he hides it behind pursed lips. ]

Amber always said it was one of my personal injustices that I didn't kiss and tell.

[ Which means: No. He's not going to tell her what happened in there. Not unless she's extremely upset about it. ]

[She makes a face at him, although it's not like she actually wants the details of her brother's sex life (nor does she actively not want them. Sex is a thing her brother does. That's just a fact; there's nothing gross about it).

She reaches up with her two index fingers and pokes the corners of his lips into a smile.]

I think most of the City heard what happened. You should soundproof your room.

[ The faint wrinkles between Hei's eyebrows, under his eyes, are too dug in deep to fade. But they dimple a little now as his expression shifts to vacant softness, lips curving. He's seen Yin smile up at him like this. Has always thought it was ironic, that he has the freedom to smile but never does, unless it's a lie, while Yin wants to smile, but can't. He keeps carding lazy fingers through Pai's hair, so feathery and glossy. Since his and Korra's aborted fight, his mind's been wrestling a peculiar heavy sensation. He realizes that the time of the evening when he used to want a few glasses of scotch or a big glass of wine is upon him, but he doesn't do that anymore. Nor does he want to disturb their arrangement on the sofa. ]

[ Instead, dryly, ]

That depends on if I have her over again.

[ If Korra's presence irks Pai that much, he can meet her midway somewhere else. A hotel. Another abandoned house. Maybe he'll take her to that old shed where she'd lost -- (Is that the right word? Lost? It's always sounded so stupid to him. Like there's something missing, afterward.) -- her virginity, even if the very idea is like visiting a disaster-zone, post-trauma. ]

[ Besides. He has no idea if Korra will want to see him, after yesterday. ]

[She idly pumps her fingers against his cheeks, like a kitten kneading. Moments like these are perfect -- just her and Hei in the quiet, together. They never last, but that doesn't interfere with her enjoyment of the present. She never lets the future interfere with the present.]

She didn't seem that angry when she left.

[It actually doesn't occur to her that he might not bring Korra around for her sake; soundproofing his room seems like a perfectly acceptable solution to the problem. (She's still not acknowledging to herself the deeper issues at play.)]

[ His nose wrinkles as she pads her fingers across his face. But the pitch of his mouth is more amused than carrying any annoyance. He can't think of the last time that anyone, woman or child, had lain with their head in his lap -- except for Pai. But she's the only person he'd allow that close anyway. He wants to drowse, and also to go on caressing Pai's feathery hair, enjoying the weight of her, her almost feline stillness. He isn't happy, ever, except in isolated moments like these -- or like that smile Pai gets when they're stopping on the street for snacks, her face glowing in the light of some fast-food franchise, or like Yin's hair fluttering in the breeze as she turns to glance at him when he steps close, the silver shining so bright it leaves a pattern on your retina when you close your eyes. ]

[ And ... ]

[ And that undone evening with Korra, that rippling secret explosion as she gave beneath him, her eyes so dizzily blue and her smile so meltingly sweet, nothing between them but sweat-slick skin. ]

[ Something tugs sharp and red-hot in Hei's sternum, but he's not sure if it's from the realization, or from Pai's words. Just because Korra didn't seem angry ... doesn't mean anything. She'll have had plenty of time for anger -- or fear -- in the hours afterward. Quietly, he says, ]

I know you don't like her much. She's not Amber. [ A beat. ] I also know this isn't just about Amber.

It doesn't matter if I like her. I'm not the one having sex with her. [She notices but does not note how her language has changed, how she's not choosing her words to shock and offend.]

[ Cleverest girl he knows. Possibly one of the cleverest Contractors. But how like a 14-year-old she can be, sometimes -- bristly and sullen. He can read past the cool dismissal rippling convincingly, but falsely, in her tone. It doesn't make anything snap through Hei's nerves, doesn't make him irritated. He can be uncannily patient, sometimes, and with Pai, it definitely matters. He carries on with his small caresses, his tone low and gentle, ]

I'm not asking you to like her. But you live here as much as I do. If you don't want her over, I'll stop bringing her over.

[ Matter-of-fact, not resentful. He's compromised and renounced a hundred more important things for Pai's sake. ]

[She shrugs, a little irritated. She's not used to him poking through her defenses at sore points; she's not used to having sore points.]

You'll still see her?

[She doesn't know what she hopes his answer will be. Not that she hopes, because hope is pointless. His answer will be whatever it is.

She just wants him to be happy.]

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[There's things I can't have here that I can at home. Amber. A community. A purpose outside of being the object of her brother's love. And now she's watching him build a new life while she's stuck in place.

She rolls over and sits up so she can nestle her head on his shoulder.]

The only thing I want [that she can have] is not to get woken up by her screaming. [Soundproofing, taking her somewhere else... Pai doesn't care.]

[ Hei will never say it. But he's been where Pai has -- a ragged-edged anomaly that can't find a place anywhere. Not among humans. Not among Contractors. It's what he'd felt when the war ended. South America had become a mouth full of broken teeth; a place with massive blown-apart gaps in it where people had known streets, houses, cities. The sites had been, and still were, an extraordinary emptiness; holes in what had previously been absolutely certain. With Pai gone, Hei had carried that same feeling with him everywhere. He remembers how coming to Tokyo had seemed like nothing so much as one long, unearthly morning after a very private air raid. He'd spent long days, months, years, cautiously probing the tender gaps inside him, feeling out the places where everything familiar had been blown to rubble. ]

[ It wasn't Pai's fault, that he couldn't let himself, in all that time, get close to anybody else. That he couldn't let that part of his life unfurl at the same pace as the rest of the world. He'd read a novel once where one of the characters, a musician who'd triumphed over a troubled childhood, withdrew from her fame and the world little by little, finally able to accept only the company of those who'd known her in her youth, when her sister was alive. Hei remembers he'd read that passage over and over, unnerved, and he'd closed it there, refusing to go on to the end. ]

[ Pai's isolation is like that. But very different, unique, because it's so exclusively hers. He can try to understand it. But he'll never grasp the patterns and colors completely. ]

You won't be. [ He cuddles closer to her on the sofa, like she's a little girl, resting his head on the small glossy one on his shoulder. ] I won't bring her over again.

[ He's had his eye on a secluded loft in the Underground. This gives him leave to rent it, and to give Korra a spare key. ]

[She doesn't think Good, but the same satisfaction is there. She nuzzles his neck.]

I'm tired. [Let's go to bed is the unspoken command.]

[ Funny, how it amuses him when she gets imperious. She's so petite. His response to the statement is to shift, scooping her up easily before rising and padding upstairs to her room. His steps are nearly silent on the thick pale carpeting. Depositing her in bed like a child -- or like the times when she was making her Payment -- he tucks her between the sheets and bundles the covers around her, before his weight shifts the mattress and he climbs in too. The lamp snaps shut; darkness settles. Passing an arm around her, Hei tries not to think of how he's getting accustomed to drowsing with Pai, just like in the war, wrapped around her heat, lulled by the thrumming of her body. He warns himself that if the City ever snatches her away ... he'll have forgotten how to sleep alone. ]

[ Of course, if she's taken away, he'll have so much else to mourn about. ]

[ He tries not to think about that. Shuts his eyes instead, and lets himself be lulled, bit by bit, by the quiet cadence of her breathing. ]

[ Hei almost drawls, No, I'll just switch off my interest in her. But that would sound snarky and belligerent, and his mood is neither of those things. Instead he smoothes the hair off her warm forehead. Leans in, and kisses the tip of her nose. Back at the beginning, when the Gate's appearance was just a curl of cold dread rattling the world, when the Syndicate had just swooped in and snatched him and Pai up, he'd never imagined they'd be alive, ten years later. It was such an impossibility he'd discarded even fantasies about it -- kept himself, where she was concerned, strictly in the moment. Pretty easy, since a soldier never did himself favors by thinking too far ahead. ]

[ He mulls her question over now. But at the same time, he just enjoys her, for a little while -- this miraculous girl who's dissipated into stardust, back home, dissolving bits of him with her. ]

[ Eventually, honestly, ]

There's things I can't have at home. Not anymore.[ Pai. Yin. A semblance of security. Of being able to take a breath, to stop fighting, stop moving. To risk an attachment to an outsider. ] Here, I can. And I find that I like it. Korra's part of that.

[ He's been alone so long, left with no-one but Yin, that he's learned to conceive of himself that way. But millimeter by millimeter, that conception is beginning to include someone else. Sometimes the idea scares him, and feels like a burden. Other times it seems like a life raft, or at least like ballast. Either way, it is real, and deepening. ]

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