♦♦ 21st Contract

[mortemscintilla]

[ 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 :| ]

Comments

Private

[anatural]

[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.

Private

[mortemscintilla]

[ 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.

Private

[anatural]

[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.]

Private

[mortemscintilla]

[ 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. ]

Private

[anatural]

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.)]

Private

[mortemscintilla]

[ 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.

Private

[anatural]

[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.

Private

[mortemscintilla]

[ 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. ]