"...I can see that!" he manages after a second or two. "Hi."

"Did I spook you? It's all very safe, Shifu Hayaka is a master healer if I messed up somehow and besides I'm apparently really good at this."

"I am maybe a tiny bit spooked," Dao admits. "But I'm glad you're really good at this!"

"Yeah! After today there's supposedly no added benefit to continuing to practice on myself instead of other people except that I'm, you know, convenient, so I'll be volunteering at a hospital for a while, which'll be the first real usefulness I'll get out of anything Avatar-related."

"Congratulations, I guess!"

"Thanks! I'll go dump these bowls and we can go dance." Off she traipses with the bowls, and then she comes back to hold hands with him. (He gets the same one she cut.)

Dao squeezes her hand gently.

The dance club is walkable distance from the waterbending dojo; she doesn't bother to whistle for Liqing. "How's your afternoon been?"

"My afternoon has been pretty good."

"Do anything cool?"

"Not as cool as you!"

"Yeah, but I already know what I've been doing for the past three hours."

"Three hours, really? Doesn't it... you know... hurt?"

"The healing part actually feels really pleasant! And it was only little injuries, anyway. I can handle it." She looks like she's considering saying something else, but appears to decide against it.

"...Pleasant? Really?"

"Yeah, I was surprised too, I've never been badly injured enough to get water healer attention," Beila says. "But it does. All cool and soothing."

"You wanna see what it feels like? I can do that, although you'd only be useful practice if you were really wrecked, now I know how to do the simple stuff... Don't have the knife anymore, it's the dojo's... I know the water whip, a little one would do a shallow cut?" she says, thinking.

"Yeah, sure!"

Beila pulls out her water bottle, and threads a bit of water from it. "Pick a hand," she says as the water sways like a cobrapython.

He offers his left.

"Nice," he marvels, and hugs her impulsively.

Hugs! Yay! "Isn't it neat?"

"It is awesome and you are awesome," he declares.

Dao is not very good at dancing, but he is both enthusiastic and trainable!

Beila is happy to train him!

That works out nicely, then, doesn't it.

It does! Whee! This club has a high ceiling and attracts airbenders for that reason; Beila and a number of other patrons spend a while close to the ceiling.

Dao admires his flying girlfriend!

"...Sure! Please don't drop me," he laughs.

"I won't." She hugs him and sweeps one leg out and up they waft, spinning and surrounded by wind.

"You are so awesome," says Dao.

"It's good that you know that." She kisses him as they spiral gently down again.

He kisses back, beaming happily.

"Want to get dinner?"

"Yes I do!"

"Awesome. How does South Polar sound? I could go for a sea prune right about now."

"South Polar sounds fine to me," Dao says cheerfully.

They find a nice South Polar restaurant and are seated at a little table in the back. Beila orders the sea prunes.

Dao orders something else!

Om nom. "Do you have anything planned after dinner? There's something I wanna talk about. Not in a crowded restaurant, I'm not that good at soundbending."

"Nope! We can totally go talk somewhere after dinner."

"Is your dad going to be home? My parents will be."

"My dad will probably not be home."

Om nom nom food!

And then they go to his house, on Liqing. Beila is clearly edgy but determined to go through with telling him - whatever.

"...Define 'sorta kinky'," Dao says slowly.

"Like, I did not mind slicing my hand open as long as I was in the right headspace first," Beila says. "I'm not sure how far it goes. I only just learned to heal today so I haven't, um, played with it much, and naive introspection only goes so far. Oh, and stereotypes aside, I might be a masochist but I'm not ocean-aspected, like, at all."

"...I am not even sure I know what that means," says Dao. "Ocean-aspected, I mean, I know what a masochist is."

"Ocean-aspected means liking to be bossed around. Contrasted with moon-aspect. Moon pulls, tide follows." She makes a wavy gesture.

"Gotcha," says Dao. "Okay. Um. You're kind of awesome, have I mentioned that recently?"

"Yeah, not long ago. You're taking this well," she remarks.

"Aaaaaand now you are blushing."

"Yep," he says, still blushing.

Beila waits.

"I am blushing because you're a masochist," he says. "Is why I am blushing."

"Okay, but why does that cause blushing?"

"Um because I like it," he mumbles.

"Ooh."

Blushy blushy blush.

Beila's going to sit here and enjoy the cuteness and wait for him to elaborate.

He seems to just be blushing a lot!

"Were you going to be any more specific?"

"How much more specific do you want me to get?" he asks, half-laughing.

"I dunno. I guess there's no rush."

"Are - are you okay? I was worried you'd be weirded out, but you seem to be having some completely unrelated reaction that I don't understand."

"You don't weird me out," he says. "I weird me out."

"...Why?"

"Because I am weird," he mumbles into his hands.

"So'm I."

"Yeah but you're okay weird," says Dao.

"'Okay weird'? What does that mean?"

"It means you are weird in a way that is okay," Dao says to the insides of his hands, "and I am weird in a way that is not okay, is why I was scared when you turned out to be the Avatar, is why I blush at weird times and then don't want to talk about why, is why horror movies are my favourite kind, is why I like it that you're a masochist."

"Aargh," says Dao.

Beila reaches out and pets his hair. "I wanna help you but I don't really get what the problem is. Like, so far, this sounds really convenient, except you're all distressed on top of that."

"I'm distressed because the things I think about doing to people sometimes are distressing," Dao says helplessly.

"Okay, but, that's just thinking. You haven't hurt anybody, have you?"

"No!"

She slides her hand off his hair and takes his hand in hers instead. "Then it's okay."

"Well, why can't it be?"

"Because I've been hating myself over it for years and it has, like, momentum now?"

She kisses the top of his head. "Well, I don't hate you for it. I think it's convenient. Unless you have enough issues around it that you're not going to let it be convenient when we get there?"

"You do have those super spiffy healing powers," he reminds her. "I think I can maybe handle some convenience."

"They are super spiffy! I had not gotten around to deciding what to do about not having them, before I got named, and now I don't have to."

He smiles a little.

"Like, I imagine kinky couples where neither party is a waterbender must figure something out, but drowned if I know what."

"Um - maybe they - do things - that heal pretty well by themselves," says Dao, blushing furiously.

"Maybe. You are so blushy and it is so cute."

"I am pretty blushy!" he agrees. "And I guess if you think it's cute I'm not complaining!"

Beila giggles and squeezes his hand.

He smiles tentatively.

"Well," says Beila. "This wasn't really how I expected this conversation to turn out, but it's better than 'okay, I can't deal with that, we should break up', right?"

"It is way better than that!" says Dao. "Way, way better."

She kisses him.

He kisses back.

Oh good, it would be so awkward otherwise.

Kisses! Yes. It is not yet the time for any significant amount of convenience. Beila wouldn't exactly mind if he pulled her hair or something but he's never been the type to make guesses and that's fine too.

"So -" says Beila, after a suitable number of kisses have been exchanged. "When you said you were spooked did that mean something other than spooked?"

"...yep," he admits.

"Moooostly," he says, ducking his head a little.

"Mooooostly," she echoes softly, and she kisses his forehead. "And the rest?"

"Um. The rest. Yeah. There was some... rest."

"Don't wanna talk about it?" she asks, puzzled.

"I'm just not as good at catching snakenewts as you are," he snorts.

"I had to practice," she says gently.

"Well - I still don't really know what the rest is, I just know it's there."

"Yeah, when I first got the idea there was something to find when I was thirteen I had to spend a lot of time sitting with my screen staring at the ceiling making guesses and seeing if they sounded good or not-good and in what ways," Beila says, "it's not like the snakenewts all line up and I just have to put them in a basket."

"...Like what kind of guesses?"

"How much do you wanna know?"

"...I think I want to know lots!" says Dao.

"Okay. Unsupported by experiment, I think cuts and burns and hair-pulling are good, strangulation and having my movement restricted and actual hitting are bad. For instance."

"...Was healing practice not enough experimentation to figure out your feelings on cuts?"

"And burns! But no, not really, these were little, I don't think I had to be kinky, especially since I'm not attracted to Shifu Hayaka. I mean I haven't messed with those things in context."

"Okay," says Dao.

"Questions, comments?"

"I really like you, you know that?"

"I am happily reminded on a daily basis."

He grins. "Okay."

"But I meant questions or comments about the details."

"Um... I dunno," he says, blushing.

"Or you don't wanna say."

"No, like - I have to let myself think about it first, and I have all this practice doing the exact opposite of that, so it's hard."

"I don't suppose I can help?"

"Uh... I dunno," he says. "Still getting used to the part where I can talk about it, at all, to anybody."

Beila pats his hand.

He smiles a tiny little smile.

"Do you want to talk about it or d'you want me to go away for a while and let you get some processing done?"

"Um... is there a third option?"

"I could... sit here and read stuff on my screen while you think?"

"I mean an option where I am hanging out with you and not thinking about... conveniences," he says.

"Oh." Pause. "Yeah, sure, if that's what you want to do, we can talk about - I dunno, that book we started in Literature, it looks terrible, I don't think a single thing anyone wrote during the Hundred Years' War was not terribly depressing."

He laughs. "I'm sure there's some book somewhere from around then that's not, but you're right, it's a theme for sure."

"I wonder what the Literature class book selection process is like. Like, are the teachers all sitting in a room at some point between terms going, 'Okay, let's flip a yuan, and if it lands elements we'll use this story about an earthbender coming of age under Fire Nation rule, and if it lands statue we'll use that one about the same exact thing."

Dao cracks up.

"I mean, I'm sure there are six interesting ways to handle that premise. But there aren't forty, and there aren't forty plus a hundred-odd sequels, and it's not a particularly landmark feature of literature, it's just something that got a lot of attention for a century. But because it got so much attention we have to read one. Could be worse, we could be reading terrible thinly veiled political rants about bender/nonbender conflict early in Korra's time."

"That entire segment of history actually really bothers me. I think it deserved, like, a better class of villain, if that makes sense. The nonbenders had legitimate grievances but they had to wait thirty years to make any progress on them because of Amon and the fallout from the mess he made of things."

"...yeah, I see what you mean."

"Korra didn't handle it that well, either. She had every opportunity to play that whole situation but she got pushed around by politics and scare tactics. I mean, I'd be terrified if someone were threatening to de-bend me, but the solution to that situation is not to throw in with the ass who's curfewing random nonbenders. I disavow identity with her," Beila adds, nodding to herself.

"Can you even do that? I mean, she was the Avatar, you're the Avatar, you're not the same person but you're... kind of the same person."

"I dunno. I inherited her powers, but, I'm really not seeing any personal similarity. Between me and her, or her and Aang, or any of the three of us and Meixing or Tendo or Roku or Kyoshi, or - we're different people. We're all lined up neatly and we have this particular relationship to each other, but the parts of people that make them people aren't the same between us. I mean, there are animals that bend, having the same bending powers does not make me Korra any more than it makes me a skybisondragonbadgermolemoonspirit."

"...I'm just gonna take a moment to appreciate that mental image," giggles Dao.

"I don't really know what a moon spirit looks like, so I'm just imagining something... long and undulatey with big whiskers and a lot of limbs. And very fluffy. But with a scaly underbelly. I might have to carve this," he snorts.

"That," says Beila, "would be hilarious, and you should totally do it."

He giggles some more.

"I've never seen a badgermole. I've seen sky bison, and once I saw a dragon, but never a badgermole. Should probably arrange to do that sometime when I get to earthbending."

"I've seen, like, pictures of all those things!"

"Have you not even seen a sky bison? People fly them to and from the city sometimes. The folks who came to tell me I was the Avatar showed up on one."

"Not up close. I might've caught sight of one off in the distance once or twice."

"I could take you to the nearest air temple sometime and you could meet a bunch. They might lick you, though."

"I think I'll pass."

"You don't want a gigantic sky bison to slurp you? I'm astonished."

"Astonishingly, I am not into being slurped by large animals! Actually, make that any size animals!"

"Not even cute little puppykittens?"

"No!" he says firmly. "No slurping."

"Awwww, I can't believe you wouldn't let a fluffy little puppykitten lick your hand."

He covers his face with his hands and giggles.

"Or a goatpuppy, those also lick people," Beila says. "Ranyi sometimes goes through phases of wanting a goatpuppy."

"I have never wanted a goatpuppy in my life."

"Me either, I'm generally the one to argue her out of it. I don't mind playing with ones that belong to other people but I prefer my nice low-maintenance non-licking-inclined giant bird."

"Rocs are cool," Dao agrees.

"Especially my roc! I was so thrilled when I got her - I had to be certified glider-safe first or Chali wouldn't hear of it - and I got my own egg and rented an incubator and I checked on her three times a day to see if she'd hatched yet, it was constantly exciting even though nothing was happening."

"Spirits, that's adorable," snorts Dao.

"It was! I was a very cute nine-year-old. And then she did hatch, and she made this little peeping noise and she was only about as long as my arm - wrist to shoulder - and I had to feed her till she was old enough to fish on her own, but that only took a couple months."

"Awwwwwwwwww," says Dao, and he hugs her.

Hugs!

Snuggy hugs.

Snuggy happy hugs. Kisses?

Kisses!

Yay!

Snuggy happy kisses!

Lap-sitting? Happy snuggy lap-sitting hugs?

...You know what, yes. Absolutely.

Oh goody.

Also kisses.

Those are one of Beila's favorite things!

Awesome! Because Dao is pretty fond of them, too.

Good, good. Pleasedness with the situation all around.

Yaaaaaay.

"We at any risk of your dad walking in and wanting to know why there is an Avatar in your lap?" Beila murmurs.

"Nah, probably not."

"We at any risk of him showing up and already having a very good idea why there might be an Avatar in your lap?"

"I think if he shows up he will probably figure it out all by himself," snorts Dao. "But I don't think he'll show up."

"Wait, does he know about me," wonders Beila, "or would there in fact be figuring to do?"

"Nah, he doesn't, why?"

"I dunno, we've been dating for a while, my parents know."

"Well, mine doesn't."

"Is he going to continue to not till you come up in an interview or some amateur photographer takes a picture of us or something? Like, if you have reasons to keep it quiet, that's okay, but my life is not set up to make that indefinitely possible."

"...Oh." Pause. "That's... unusual."

"I guess." He shrugs. "Dad just doesn't care about much."

"That sounds hard." Beila leans her head on his shoulder.

"I'm used to it," he says, snuggling her a little. "No big deal to me. It'd be weird if he started paying attention."

"If you say so. I'm used to my parents wanting to interact way more than I do. I love them but they're not that interesting."

Dao snorts.

"Like, Chali and Ranyi are both really sweet, and they probably are actually reasonably interesting when they're at work - I took introductory airbending lessons with Ranyi, she's a good teacher even if she's not qualified enough in airbending to handle higher levels - but when they get home they just argue about whether it's fair for airbending to still be excluded from league-level probending, or talk about how the neighbor's sparrowkeet got loose and if you see it please tell her, etcetera. Fine in small doses, nice to come home to, not how I want to spend all my time."

"Why do you call them by name all the time?" he wonders.

"I don't always, I address them to their faces as Mom and Dad, now and then I'll do it other times too. It just seems natural to me to default to using their names. Those are their names, I'm the only person in the world who'd be expected to call them anything different outside a professional context. Like, Chali wouldn't ask you to call him Chief Guxiao, even, not unless you got arrested."

"Okay, that makes sense."

"I'd probably call them Mom and Dad all the time if they called me Daughter all the time," Beila laughs.

He giggles.

"I think you're actually the first person to ask about that habit of mine, and now I'm wondering if half the people at school quietly think I'm adopted and keeping my guardians at arm's length or something. Which isn't it at all. It'd be weird and distancing if they called me Daughter and not my name. I don't see why it'd be different the other way around."

"Well... it's different the other way around because people expect you to call your parents Mom and Dad but they don't expect your parents to call you Daughter. So if you're not calling them Mom and Dad, people will feel like there must be some reason you don't do that, and if they don't ask you, the easiest thing to assume is that you're not calling them that because you don't want to call them that - because you don't want to relate them to you that way."

"Sure, I'm not conforming to the expectation, I get that. I just think the expectation is weird. Ancestor relationships are the only thing we do that to. No one expects me to call you Boyfriend or my friends Friend or if I had a sibling to call them Sister or Brother, but a parent or grandparent gets titled, all the time."

"Maybe it's because ancestor relationships are more important," he suggests. "Theoretically."

"If I had a sibling I think I could easily be more close to him or her than to my parents," says Beila. "Maybe that's not supposed to be true, for some reason."

"Well, and you might have a lot of sisters or brothers, but you usually only have one mom, two grandmas, and so on."

"Me and Ranyi are technically descended from Avatar Aang, and this is important because he's famous and the reason there are still any airbenders, and stuff, and there's only one of him, but we don't count the intervening generations and call him some-number-of-greats-Grandfather, we just call him Aang," Beila points out.

"...well, yeah," says Dao. "There's only one Avatar Aang. You probably have a lot of dead great-great-great-and-so-on-grandfathers. But there are a whole bunch of people named Ranyi, probably, and only one of them is your mom. See what I mean?"

"Lots of them are somebody's mom. Way more people get called Mom than get called Ranyi."

"Only one of them gets called Mom by you," he counters.

"Okay, but that wouldn't necessarily be the case, if Spirits forbid they divorced and Chali remarried some nice lady, if I liked her enough I might start calling her Mom, at least to her face."

He shrugs. "I guess."