poly_chromatic | ♦♦ 21st Contract

Entry tags:

darker than black - hei

♦♦ 21st Contract

[ Just the most withering stare. ]

This isn't funny.

And I don't like cookies that much.

.................Do I?

(♥ Tabloid Trash Article: The Rise & Fall Of a Star ♥)

[ OOC: The link takes you to another journal, as the article is long and full of crack. Lots of crack. None of the fodder is meant to be taken seriously. But if any aspects are offensive, PM me and I'll add a warning or something :| ]

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About what you said.

[It's tickling something at the edge of her consciousness, almost as though it's familiar, but she can't quite grasp it.

Her parents...Tenzin and Pema... their relationships were beautiful because they last. If they were transient, it would just be...sad.]

Is that what you think?

[ The faint smile fades. His gaze goes dark and flat, like a television uplugged. But it's not to wall her off. It's to keep something in himself locked in. ]

It's a fact. Nothing lasts for long. [ His focus goes to his own hands. The way they clench and unclench, clean compared to the days where there's sauce or flour between the webs of his fingers. ] Even the person you think you are -- the concept evolves as you grow older. Your feelings for places or people change with it. Sometimes they stay. Often they fade completely. It's a process that doesn't stop until you're dead.

[Some things do last, though. The Avatar spirit. The world. Nature.

She can't deny how feelings change. Hers for him have certainly changed rapidly enough.

The easy days with Chekov...they didn't last long either.]

I guess.

[She shifts slightly, almost hugging her pillow. Talking to him like this is weird. There's a disconnect with this device she doesn't like.]

[ That's where the subtleties of mono no aware lie. The direct translation is the 'pathos of things,' but that makes it seem one-dimensional, almost clinical. Hei prefers to interpret it as The sadness of being human. And isn't it odd, to be reminded that monsters too, are capable of human things? ]

[ He's learning, in a way not too different from hers, the ranges and capacities of it within himself. ]

[ She says I guess, and a part of him flares to life, catalogues her tone and the ways actions speak louder than words, a cognizant machine that processes details, until Korra's thoughts are practically mapped out and established. He blinks and schools his expression into something neutral. ]

Don't look too deeply into it. The whole point of mono no aware is that things are unique because they can't last. So it's better to appreciate them while they're around.

[ You never know when something can go worse. Or worser. He doesn't say that. ]

What you're calling "appreciation," I call creepy staring.

[She slips into snark because it's easy, and because she doesn't like the way she can read her thoughts on his face. She hates being such an open book.]

[ It's not her fault she's an open book. But Hei's been trained to skim through people like the pages of one, to file away details in varying degrees of usefulness. What's rare is when he goes beyond that, or when he lets people see that he's doing. (Korra may think he puts up walls, and he does. But he also opens doors, over and over, letting her step in.) ]

[ Dryly, ]

You'll learn there's a fine line between them. [ This conversation is a particular unexpected bewilderment, but he likes the nothingness of it. He's never quite talked to anyone with so little at stake. ]

[ Which means it's time to cut the chat short. ]

I should go. I have seaweed stew to make.

[Korra perks up a little despite herself.]

You have a recipe for seaweed stew?

[Not that it would taste anything like her mom used to make. But the thought of it makes her a little homesick.]

[ The corner of his lip twitches. He angles the device to the ingredients lined on the counter, with the neat color-coordination of a paint palette. ]

And pickled fish. And tentacle stew. [ Tyr had left him a handful of recipes. It's a process, but he's picked up all sorts of tidbits from the people in the City, these strange and mismatched people, the way he's done over and over on undercover travels. Bits and pieces to lend weight to the theory that Li is acclimatizing to his new environment. ]

Are they recipes from your world?

No. [ There's a light clatter and the rhythmic tok-tok-tok of the cutting board and knife. Water simmers at a low flame in a pot, and there's a rectangle of bright sunlight falling on Hei's workspace from the window. ]

[ It's downright domestic. ]

It's Water Tribe food. Tyr offered a few recipes. [ The twitch to his mouth deepens. Just for a moment. ] It was during the engagement curse. [ Distasteful as the entire arrangement was, that incident had since then taken on a sparkle of humor. If not much of it. ]

[Korra blushes a little, remembering that curse. Still --]

I can't believe you're making Water Tribe food. I can't remember the last time I had real pickled fish.

[ Catching the blush, he lifts an eyebrow, but otherwise doesn't comment. (It occurs to him, with a bleak factuality, that the longer she stays around him, the more likely it'll stave that innocence out of her bit by bit. By eighteen he'd been incapable of embarrassment or flushes. Not unless they were feigned. Not unless they had a purpose.) ]

I'll send some of the stew over later. [ Hei sounds pleasantly casual; not quite warm because such disconnected conversations are, understandably, not his cup of tea, but it's a close approximation. ] Or [ A smile in his eyes if not his face. Calculated, yet not. ] I could teach you sometime.

Edited 2013-03-24 02:30 (UTC)

[Korra's never cooked before, or had any interest in learning. That's one of those things someone else has always taken care of.

But...]

Okay.

[It'd be nice to get some food from home.]

[ An acknowledging nod. ]

[ He realizes, in a peripheral moment of idleness, that if he were playing her, luring her to his place for ulterior motives, this is the moment he'd summon a sweet smile. (These reactions are still instinctual to a degree, but he's trying to put a small measure of genuineness in them.) ]

Your place or mine? [ For lessons, he means. He's not risking his kitchen burning to a crisp in the wake of a bending-related disaster. ]

Yours. [With an unwitting blush. She knows what he means, and what that question usually implies.

She doesn't want him at the beach house. She doesn't want his other persona around -- the shy, bumbling idiot he pretends to be in front of other people. (She doesn't want the others to know they're involved, either. It's too new, tenuous and uncertain. She wants to keep it safe to herself.)]

[ He reads the reasoning behind Yours, and nearly says, Guess I'm still your dirty little secret. Except that would be cruel, even confrontational. Hei knows it's rarely that one-dimensional. He may be a walking folder of some of Korra's private vices (weaknesses?) but he understands why she'd prefer to avoid the weight of her friends' scrutiny. He would too. Outside attention leads to questions and labels . Labels like involved? dating? we have an arrangement? that are tacked with premature expectations. ]

[ Better to consign this fling to comfortable ambiguity. At least until something gives. Or explodes. ]

[ (That suits you perfectly, doesn't it? Carrying on a shadow-play with a girl who knows about one-tenth of what you are? What does it say about him, that he can only unleash softeness in miserly doses, as if they're being wrung out of him? Always for self-benefit? Always in secret?) ]

[ He refuses to think about it. ]

Fine. [ If worst comes to worst, he has fire-extinguishers. ] On one of the next weekends, maybe.

[He's not a secret out of shame. He's a secret because he makes himself a secret -- because the person he is with her is so different from the person he is with everyone else. If he was reliable or predictable, or if she really really understood what was happening between them, she wouldn't mind the others knowing. But it's tenuous and ill-defined and she can never be certain who he will be, only that when it's just the two of them, in the privacy of his apartment, he's somebody she can be with.]

Okay. I'll let you get back to your soup.

[ Reliable. Predictable. He's so far beyond that nacreous spectrum of Nice Boy. In a way the clean deft naivety with which Korra accepts this fling is shocking. She knows he's dangerous. Knows he's cruel. Yet here she is, smiling at him, agreeing to drop by for cooking lessons. He's not sure if he should exploit that willingness further, or be grateful for the almost-trust, which even those he'd worked with for years wouldn't extend to him, but which she does so (seemingly) easily. ]

[ Granted, she's guarded with him -- but she'd be insane not to be. It's enough that she treats him as something resembling a person, not a ticking time-bomb. (Of course that won't last if she ever delves deeper into his history. That'll put an end to any late-night sneaking out. No more sex. No more snark. Nothing at all.) ]

[ Hei keeps the thoughts off his face. Smiles at her, as close to that brand of sincere as he's capable of getting, and switches the device off. ]

Edited 2013-03-24 06:29 (UTC)

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♦♦ 21st Contract

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