Thinking of Plums

Started this super self-indulgent accompanying art for my super self-indulgent longfic last year for my birthday and finally finished it off this year for my birthday.

“So what’re ya thinkin’ fer supper?” asks Quyt into Akiya’s shoulder. Still in their work clothes, they’re snuggled up safely in their shared cot. Even without the security a door provides, it’s comfortable enough in the ladies’ bunkhouse. Shapes flicker like shadow puppets across the thin privacy curtain as other workers pass by, on their way to and from their own shifts. The evening is young, and there’s still plenty of money to be made, rubes to be had.

“Zaofu.”

“We’re better off savin’ up.”

“The monorail’s free while we’re in town. S’what I heard.”

“Hrmph…”

“C'mon! Zaofu has real food! Not just food; cuisine!” Akiya reaches up toward the ceiling with one hand, as if beseeching the heavens, and clenches her fist. “I swear, if I have one more deep-fried cabbage-on-a-stick, I'll barf myself to death.”

Quyt pushes herself up onto an elbow and smirks. “Fellas’d probably pay t’see that, actually.”

Akiya clenches her jaw to suppress a grimace. She doesn't do sideshows. Girls are always expected to get their tits out for extra cash, and hers have an exclusive engagement. Even shill work beats the sideshows. Before the ticket booth gig, her main job was tending the circus animals between sets. It was messy but straightforward, and none of the hog-monkeys ever asked her to take her shirt off.

“We can afford a night out. Look,” says Akiya, sitting up. She reaches into her jacket and pulls a tightly folded paper envelope from an inner pocket. As soon as it’s free, it pops open, sending loose change tumbling all over the cot. “Dangit!”

“Where’d ya get all that? Knock over a candy stand?”

Akiya snatches up a coin before it can roll off the edge and drops it back into the envelope. “Walk money, mostly. Not bad for a day’s work.”

“Mostly?”

“I found some of it on the ground.”

Quyt sits up and narrows her eyes.

“Hey, it’s not like I’m shortchanging anybody! If townies wanna leave a little cash lying around, it goes in my pocket, is all,” says Akiya. “Like a tip,” she adds with a shrug.

“Not so high ‘n’ mighty now, are ya?”

Akiya rolls her eyes. “I never said fortunetelling was wrong. I’d just feel weird lying to people like that.”

“You think that’s what I do all day?”

“You mean, what you do all day in the tent with the signs all over it proclaiming magical knowledge of the future?”

“That’s just some spooky showmanship. Gettin’ in their heads. Lettin’ their guards down.” Quyt cups her hands in front of her. “You think I’d get any customers if I walked up to ‘em holdin’ a bowl o’ oily water?”

“I dunno. I’d be curious.”

“Tell ya a secret,” says Quyt, leaning closer. Her big, turquoise eyes manage to gleam in the paltry light of their bunk. “The water’s the thing. The trick is gettin’ ‘em lookin’ at the shapes while I lookit them. You c’n tell a whole helluva lot about a fella if he doesn’t know he’s bein’ watched.” With a smirk, she leans back against the bunkhouse wall, and Akiya relishes the way her hair rustles like soft hay. “I tell ‘em what I see. Throw in a few educated guesses so they don’t feel cheated. They like it. They expect it.”

Akiya joins her girlfriend against the wall, shifting her weight carefully to avoid hurling loose coins off of the cot. “I seem to remember you telling that jerk-ass he was gonna have three kids. If that was an educated guess, then I’m a Dai Lee secret agent.”

Chapter 5! Finally! Here's the header image...

Since I made it up? I dunno, I like the idea. I doubt they'll go that direction in canon (unless they HIRE ME to make some damn COMICS)

Rohan being an airbender is boring to me. It's totally expected, practically makes the kid a non-entity. It's much more interesting to make him something else and explore what that means for the family dynamic. That (likely) means non-bender or waterbender, though earthbender is a possibility since Pema's from the Earth Kingdom. I'm just going to assume that Katara wasn't bullshitting when she touched Pema's preggo belly in the very first episode and said the baby would be a bender. She just got the element wrong. It was a safe bet!

First off, it'd raise some questions about how bending is passed down. Based on what we've seen in canon, it's easy to assume that a bender only passes down their own element to their offspring, with it either manifesting or staying dormant, possibly for multiple generations. But what if it's more complicated than that? Tenzin may style himself as Mr. #1 Air Nomad, but his mother's element and culture are part of him, too, right? With the different nations intermarrying more than ever before, it creates the potential for any type of bending to pop up in any part of the world, which has many fun worldbuilding implications. It'd also make a lot of sense, considering how the new airbenders pop up the way they do. They may all have had airbenders somewhere in their ancestry, with that potential lying dormant for centuries or even millennia until it was finally activated by Harmonic Convergence. I know this isn't a groundbreaking fan theory, but whatever.

Anyway, back to Rohan.

The discovery that Rohan's a waterbender would be a surprise, maybe even a shock, and it'd give the Kataang clan a new point of conflict and introspection, particularly for Tenzin. He'd have to grapple with his kneejerk reaction being denial, followed by disappointment. Then comes the doubt...

Why does he suddenly feel more distant from Rohan? He reviews his own interactions with the boy, both before and after the discovery. Does he treat him differently now? Should he? Of course he doesn't love his son any less, but it changes their relationship, or seems like it must. Is it fair to bring him up like an Air Nomad, the way his siblings were raised? Would it be better to introduce him to more Water Tribe traditions? He realizes how little he valued his mother's culture compared to his father's. It's not that he doesn't care, but...

Is this how Aang felt about Bumi and Kya, before he was born? How did he come to terms with that? Did he feel this same ache? And knowing now how alienated Bumi and Kya felt from their Air Nomad heritage for so long, how can he stop himself from making the same mistakes? What does this mean for the future of his people? Can Rohan be an Air Nomad but not a member of the Air Nation? Is such a thing possible?

He sees himself reflected in his son's innocent, trusting eyes, his own expression one of confusion and fear. He's lost again. Nothing in his readings of Air Nomad wisdom or his memories of Aang tell him what he should do, and he's too ashamed to admit his conflicted feelings.

Finally, Tenzin's head explodes.

Plus, hey, it's a great excuse to bring Auntie Kya around for lots of fun waterbending lessons! Both she and Bumi get to say "toldja so" to Tenzin once he admits his struggle over his relationship with Rohan and what that made him finally truly understand about their childhoods, about what it meant for all three of them to be children of the last airbender.

Meanwhile, Rohan's just being this precocious kid—a lot like his sister Jinora—inventing whole new ways of bending water like it's no big deal, and all the adults are too tied up in knots to even notice. His siblings notice, though, and help him figure himself out. He's a true Cloudbaby, a perfect cinnamon roll.

As friends of convenience go, Heng and Solongo are alright. They buddied up in Bumi’s class just this week, a trio of misfits. Heng, the ex-Terra Triad bruiser. Solongo, the aging Zaofu socialite. And plain ol’ Hana.

It reminds her of elementary school, when every student just socialized with the classmates they sat closest to. But her two fellow novitiates are friendly and close enough to her age to have a decent conversation. Her only complaint is Heng and Solongo’s flirting, which has really ramped up the past couple of days. She’s played the third wheel enough times to know it’s not for her.

The three of them are leaving the dining hall one evening when Bum-Ju appears right in front of them, which is normal behavior for most spirits but not for him. Solongo’s busy giggling at something Heng just said, so Hana’s the first one to notice the spirit’s frantic gesturing.

“Something wrong?” Bum-Ju nods, followed by a series of chirps and trills. He stops when she holds her hands up. “Look, I’m sorry. I don’t understand. Can you just—” And off he goes, a cyan streak down a nearby footpath. Without a word, Hana follows, using her gust-skipping technique to pick up speed.

It’s as dark as the bottom of a well when she catches up, at a spot on the path far away from any lamps and beneath trees that block the moonlight. With only Bum-Ju’s gentle glow to rely on, she doesn’t see Bumi at first. He yelps when she bumps into him.

“Oh, sorry!”

“Whozzat?” As her eyes adjust, she sees him doubled over, hands braced on his knees with his butt in the air. It’d be hilarious, if not for the pain he’s obviously in. His legs are trembling with it.

“It’s, uh, Hana.” She hears two sets of footsteps close behind. “Solongo and Heng should be here in a sec.” She’d worry about them tripping in the dark, but unsurprisingly, most airbenders are good at avoiding that.

“Aw, c-crap.”

She crouches down, close enough to make out his clenched jaw and sweaty brow. “Are you hurt?”

“M’back.”

“Chirrrup!”

“Not helping, Bum-Ju,” he snarls through gritted teeth.

Courtesy of a really terrible week, I found the ~inspiration~ to write more Bumi smut. It was originally going to be another bonus chapter for Tangled in Red, but it just got too long. IT IS VERY EXPLICIT FYI, but it’s like half non-smut (banter, worldbuilding, lovey-dovey fluff) because that’s just how my brain works.

As of this post, 2 out of 4 chapters are up, but the rest will be available within the next week.

In this one, Bumi and Hana can’t find the guaranteed privacy they need to get freaky, so they act like adults and get a hotel room.

**********

“Here we are,” says the porter. He sets down their bags, pulls out a keyring, and unlocks a door in a few snappy movements. “The Kalluk Suite… One moment, please.” He snatches their bags back up and scurries ahead one last time to deposit them on the threshold at the end of the entryway.

The three of them then perform a polite little dance to get out of each other’s way in these cramped quarters, ending with the porter half-bowing in the doorway, cleverly positioned so that they’d have trouble closing the door on him if they tried.

“We hope you’ll find the accommodations to your liking, sir.”

Hana leans against her big strong boyfriend and grins. “Aw, I’m sure it’ll be great. Right, Bumi?”

“Oh yeah.” He laughs and kisses her on top of her head, as giddy as she is to enjoy some quality time together.

The porter leans forward almost imperceptibly. “Dinner will be served at 7 o’clock. Is there anything else I can do for you…?”

“I think we’re all set, thanks,” says Bumi as he reaches into his coat and pulls out a billfold. He licks his thumb and counts out 500 yuans in crisp, pink notes, which disappear into the porter’s jacket as soon as Bumi holds them out. Hana stares, unsure what she just witnessed, until the porter meets her gaze. His expression is what she could only describe as a simper. It’s unsettling on his smooth, chinless face.

Oh, that was a tip. That’s a thing people do. Hana blushes when she realizes tipping didn’t even occur to her. Bumi seems happy enough cough up the cash, at least. She’s the one who got them a free night at a swanky hotel. If he wants to even the score, he can feel free to try.

“Have a good night,” says Bumi with a small nod.

The porter snaps into a deep bow, then back up again. “Good night, sir,” he says brightly. His eyes flick over to Hana, then back to Bumi, before he smirks and says, in a slightly lower tone, “Enjoy.”

The door closes swiftly behind him and locks with a solid clack.

Hana waits a few moments before she turns the deadbolt and says, “I think that guy might’ve been a creep.”

Bumi looks over from where he’s hanging his coat. “A creep? Nah, he probably just thought y—” She sees panic flash across his face, and he looks away again, mouth clamped shut.

“He thought what? And don’t say ‘nothing’.”

Bumi sighs. “Ah… He mighta thought you were a… a good-time girl.”

Hana snorts with laughter. “A what? You mean a sex worker?”

“Not necessarily,” he says with a shrug. “I know some officers’ll show off around town just to find a warm, eager body for a night or a weekend. I mean, not that I ever did, but that’s kinda what this looks like.”

“It’s fine if you did. I won’t be mad.”

“I didn’t!”

“Okay, okay…”

Bumi leans against the wall, tugs on his left boot, and frowns when it doesn’t seem to budge. The boots are a shiny, dark brown leather, and she’s only seen him in them—along with the rest of this dressy uniform—once before. He probably wears them so rarely they’ve never been properly broken in.

“Why’re you so dressed-up, anyway?” she asks, hanging her jacket next to his coat.

Bumi straightens up. “Don’tcha think it looks handsome?”

Hana feels herself smirk. “You’re always handsome, Bumi.”

“Heh…” He blushes like a teenage boy at his first dance. “Sure, but… it’s an extra layer of handsome, right? Double-ply?” His face gets redder, and he shakes his head as he sits on the step to pull his boots off. “Hey, you’re the one wearin’ a dress.”

It’s true. She is.

“Not that I’m—” His left boot releases his foot with a quiet voop. “Not that I’m complainin’. You look pretty. Uh, sexy. Pretty sexy.”

Finally, a new chapter, and it's not a novella this time.

As she trots up, rubbing juice from her face, Hana doesn’t see any customers, just an old man and a young woman fighting behind the counter like a demented puppet show. At least, that’s what she assumes when she sees the woman—with short cropped hair so uneven she must’ve done it herself over the bathroom sink—smacking the flailing man on the face with a rolled up magazine. Then she sees the tiny spirits buzzing in a furious cloud around his head.

“Augh! There’s one in my ear!” The woman swings back her arm as far as she can in cramped quarters and smacks him on the side of the head. The man yelps and collapses, barely holding himself up with one gangly arm slung over the countertop. Newspapers tumble onto the pavement.

“Grampa! I’m sorry!” With a pained expression, she leans in and seems about to swat him again, but backs off. “It’s not helping!” The grandfather lets loose a blistering string of obscenities that seems to further agitate the spirits. They don’t seem fully dark, just pissed.

“Uh.”

The two of them freeze and glare at Hana, who realizes she’s just been staring like an idiot this whole time instead of helping. With no water or salt at the ready, she has to improvise. Over the edge of the countertop, the old man’s eyes go wide when Hana reaches for her fan. It opens with a loud, satisfying ZAK.

Before anything else, she twists it in the air, letting the midday sun glint off its blades. Then she holds a vision of clear running water in her mind and waves the fan, slowly, above and around the man’s head, at least the part she can reach. Calmer now, the spirits drift up in a lazy swarm, which Hana circles and scoops toward her.

“Shhh, it’s okay…” If she were any good at whistling, she’d try that, but speaking gently is nearly as effective. The spirits seem to shed the last hint of negative tension, and she gets a good look at them in their natural state, like silvery one-eyed cuttlefish. That’s a type she’s never seen before, but the Spirit Wilds must be full of exotic species. She grins at the thought.

Hana lifts up her fan and softly blows the spirits into the sky, where they shimmer out of sight. “Go in peace, little guys.”

Still grinning, she hooks the fan back onto her belt loop and tries to remember what she was just doing.

“Did you see that, Grampa?!”

Rating: Explicit (No Archive Warnings Apply)

Words: 9,992

Setting: Republic City, 176 AG (post-canon)

Now for a snippet~!

Very quickly, it became undeniable that there was a new link between them, so thick it felt like he could almost grab it in his hands.

He can’t, obviously, but Hana can.

He can feel it right now, a joyful rush while they huddle together in an alcove on Air Temple Island, immune to the chill of the courtyard. While Lucky, Hana’s young dragon-horse, gnaws on a flagstone she yanked out of a walking path somewhere, the lovers conspire silently. Bumi runs his fingers through her hair and gazes deep into her eyes, which a slightly removed part of himself knows must make him look like the most lovesick dope who’s ever lived, but who’s he trying to impress? Every brush of his skin against hers is a sigh.

“It should be safe, now that it—” Her moving mouth draws him in, and he cuts her off with a shallow sloppy kiss that dissolves into a fumble of lips and steam. She braces the sides of his face with her hands and wrestles back a bit of breathing room. “Do you wanna hear the plan, or not?”

“Yeah… Sorry…”

“No, you’re not,” she says with a smirk. “But I was about to say, now that it’s past lunchtime, my place should be free and clear. Until lunchtime tomorrow.”

“Hope it won’t cause too much trouble shooing everyone off.”

“Nah. I mean, they can do a lot of the work at home. Now that we’ve passed the trial stage, we’re in the middle of reviewing applications for the first stage of the real-ass housing project, so most of them took a box to compare notes on tomorrow.”

“Y’know, I probably don’t say it enough, but I think it’s amazing what you’re doing with all that. Using that penthouse for an office, even.”

Hana gives a little half-shrug. “What’s the point of having nouveau riche real estate tycoons for parents if you can’t leverage it into something useful?” Her hands slip down his neck and over the chest of his wingsuit. “Not terribly conducive to privacy, though.”

“Ain’t that the truth.” Bumi puts his hands over hers and mushes their foreheads together.

“Mmmm, so I can call a water taxi—”

“Why don’t we just fly?”

“Ah…” Hana turns to look at the pony-sized dragon-horse, now curled around the stolen flagstone. “I don’t trust Lucky to be able to carry me back. You didn’t see, but she was really struggling on the way here. I know a good taxi service, if I can just get to a phone. They handle dock transfers and everything.”

“Well, make it quick. I got jizz leakin’ outta my ears over here.”

“EW!” Hana whirls back on him and swats his arm in mock disgust.

He guffaws, surprised by his own volume, and pretends to rub a freshly bruised bicep. That was kinda sexy, actually. Maybe they could try—

“What was that?” chirps a voice from above. Bumi’s niece Ikki lands daintily next to Lucky and leans over to stroke the sleepy thing’s downy mane.

Horrified at what the kid—no matter how old she gets, always a kid to him—almost overheard, Bumi flinches. Both Ikki and Hana smile at him serenely, expectantly. “Oh! Uh, I just said… Golly wizz, over the years out here, it’s been… great!”

Hana’s grin widens. “I love you.”