The bootiez

After dinner, when the humans are settled together in the gathering-room and talking about things he neither understands nor cares about, Pak takes a strategic position in Yangchen's lap. She immediately begins scratching and petting, using both hands to crest across the fur covering his back. Contented, Pak purrs and chitters happily, arching his spine into her hands to get her nails deeper into his fluffy undercoat.

"You're so sweet," Yangchen coos softly, rubbing under his chin with one hand and scratching the base of his tail with the other.

I am so sweet!

"What about me? Am I sweet, too?"

Pak's tail lashes across Yangchen's lap at the sound of the boy's grating mouth-noises. He opens his eyes to send a withering glare in his direction, but is totally and completely ignored.

And what's worse — one of Yangchen's hands has stopped petting him!

Instead, her hand is moving to settle against the boy's, fingers twining together. She makes a snorting sound at him, but it lacks the vitriol Pak is hoping for. "Maybe every now and then."

The boy grins and squeezes Yangchen's hand with his own, obviously gloating at stealing it away from finally getting at the itchy spot he's had all day. "I think I'm pretty sweet, truth be told."

Pak can't watch this. It's sickening, absolutely sickening. He hops off Yangchen's lap, chirping in disgust. Who does this boy think he is, keeping half of his owner's wonderful petting power for himself? He barely even has enough fur to pet in the first place!

It's sickening, it really is. Which actually gives him an idea…

Oh, this will teach him.

~~~~

"WHY IS THERE LEMUR PUKE IN MY BOOT?!"

~~~~

"Sorry, you two," Yangchen's voice is apologetic as she places her lemurs outside, carefully blocking them from re-entering the bedroom with her foot. "You can't be in here for a bit. Go and find somewhere else to play, alright?"

The door shuts. Pak waits for it to reopen with Yangchen ushering the waterbender boy out as well, but with no luck. Once again, he is allowed to remain inside while the lemurs are left out in the cold.

There's a slight breeze down the hallway. It counts as cold.

Pik, for his part, yawns widely, spreading his wings in a nice stretch. He curls into a ball next to the door, nose twitching as he quickly resumes his nap. How he can stand to sleep in the face of this injustice, Pak will never understand.

Fine. If Yangchen won't force the boy outside herself, Pak will have to take matters into his own paws and convince him to exit, freeing up Yangchen's attention for her two most devoted companions. He starts scratching at the door.

No reaction. Whatever the humans are doing in that room is rather noisy, so they must not be able to hear him yet. No matter.

After the fourth screeching yowl, the human noises pause. Pak's keen ears can pick up exactly what they're saying, even through the thick wooden door.

"Is he still yelling out there?"

As if he would abandon his mistress — the audacity!

"Just ignore him, Kavik, he'll get tired eventually."

Of course not! When it comes to Yangchen, he will prove himself, always.

So, Pak keeps screeching. And screeching. Until finally, the bedroom door opens, revealing the waterbender boy with an expression of thunder.

"Fine!" He shouts as Pak dashes inside the room, jumping to the bed to reclaim his rightful spot in Yangchen's lap. "You win — this time."

Pak snorts aloud, whiskers twitching. We'll see about that.

~~~~

The waterbender boy is proving more difficult to shake than Pak gave him credit for, he will admit. He learned to ignore the yowling every time the door is shut, and he's started to lock his boots in a drawer or a closet at night to prevent further vomit shenanigans.

Still, Pak refuses to be deterred. He will not lose Yangchen to this lemur-tossing monster.

He just can't seem to figure out exactly why his master is so enamored. Even Pik is on his side these days, willingly curling at the boy's side while he works — he actually heard him purring the other day.

Pak, on the other paw, can see through these charms. He really isn't that great, all things considered. Not as fluffy (already established) and he doesn't even bring good gifts back to the room he and Yangchen use as a nest. It's just paper, paper, paper. And he's so big — he could do better if he actually tried. He just doesn't care about Yangchen the way Pak does.

To prove this, he decides he has to show it. Show his master that without a doubt, this odd boy clearly doesn't have what it takes to remain at her side. She should choose someone better. Better yet, she shouldn't choose anyone. Is Pak not enough for her?

Holding back the yowl he so desperately wants to give, Pak creeps across the wooden floor in the darkened sleeping-room, hopping deftly onto the bed. The two humans asleep on top of it don't register his presence, allowing him to crawl all the way to their heads, totally unnoticed.

They did their odd grooming ritual earlier, though Pak always cringes to see it. Did neither of them ever learn how to groom one another properly? For how little fur they have on their heads, they somehow miss it completely every time, instead focusing their mouths and tongues on every other bit of the body except the most important part. The fur is where all the best bugs hide!

If he really is a good companion, Pak reasons, the boy will have plenty of bugs trapped in his head-fur for Yangchen to enjoy. And she does enjoy bugs — she always pets and praises her lemurs when they leave them on her pillow.

Reaching a nimble paw down, he grabs into the waterbender's fur on top of his head. His fingers meet scalp with no tagalongs to be had. Just as suspected.

But to be sure, really sure, he probably should check the rest of his head. And check it well, at that. He goes in with the second paw, grappling around and tugging.

"What the —" the boy's sleepy mumble turns into a high-pitched yelp when Pak tugs his hair again. And again. And you know, he should probably check with his teeth, too —

More shrieking. The waterbender boy sits up, trying to yank Pak from his head. His fingers dig deeper into his scalp, holding on with all his might. He will not be tossed away by this boy a second time.

Yangchen is awake now too, rubbing at her eyes and yawning. Her voice is soft, but it holds all the command in the world. "Both of you, stop it."

The boy stops tugging, though he gives a long groan of frustration. "See? I'm telling you, he has it out for me!"

Yangchen rolls her eyes. "He just wants to snuggle, Kavik."

Snuggle?? The boy repeats Pak's sentiment aloud.

"Just let him lay down with us for the night. He can't get to know you better if you're always pushing him away."

"Yangchen, his claws are in my head."

"If you relax, so will he."

Slowly, the waterbender boy lays back down on the pillow. Pak's paws remain in place. There are no bugs hiding in his fur, as he knew all along, but Yangchen taking his side has given him hope, warm fuzzy feelings in his equally warm and fuzzy chest. Maybe there's still a chance!

"Yangchen, he's still not letting go."

"Something tells me you're going to survive."

Pak does let go, eventually. Holding on so tight isn't very nice on his paws, and being half smothered by the boy's big head isn't exactly pleasant. He gets up to settle in somewhere more comfortable.

That somewhere, being, naturally, directly on top of the waterbender boy's face. He receives a muffled groan from his action, but no move is taken to push him away this time.

He curls up into a tight little ball, smug to the very tip of his tail. Domination at last!

~~~~

Pik, for his part in this battle of wills, has fully and completely joined the dark side.

Pak glares at him from up in a rafter, watching his brother purr and rub along the boy's ankles as he makes his way to the desk. The boy laughs, reaching into his pocket to grab something: a piece of seal jerky. Pik chitters and flies to sit on his shoulder, receiving the treat with a happy lash of his ringed tail.

The traitor!

Pik glances up into the rafters, chirping softly in Pak's direction. You could get treats too, if you were nicer.

He's stealing our mistress from us, Pik!

The other lemur yawns, wrapping himself around the boy's shoulders. Suit yourself. More treats for me.

So he's on his own now. A minor setback.

The waterbender boy sits down at the desk, scratching Pik under the chin. He sweeps aside the many papers, brows beginning to furrow. He opens up one drawer, and then another. "I could have sworn…"

Clearly, he never needed Pik for his plans, anyway. Pak grips the pencil in his paws tighter, hopping quietly between the rafters until he reaches the corner of the room, the one concealed in darkness even during the day.

"There's no way — it was just here! I can't have misplaced a pencil that quickly."

No, you couldn't. Pak tucks his newest treasure into the nest he's been constructing, settling it between more pencils, loose hair ties, and the shoelace he finally was able to remove earlier that morning. But I could!

~~~~

"Yangchen, he is doing it on purpose, I swear —"

Pak purrs in Yangchen's arms, fluttering his big, green, totally innocent eyes at her.

"I think you're just easily startled," Yangchen replies with a shrug. "Nobody else on the team is scared of Pak."

"Because nobody else on the team is being singled out by him!"

Then, much to Pak's dismay, Yangchen turns her cooing, sweet tone of voice to the boy! "Oh, you poor, poor thing. Being singled out by an animal barely the size of your head — however do you cope?"

The boy puffs his chest out — don't do that, it makes you look stupid — as Yangchen moves in closer, still holding Pak in her arms. "It is pretty hard work defending myself, I'll give you that."

Yangchen snickers. Pak doesn't like where this is going. "Would a little kiss help make you braver?"

"Well, if it's from the Avatar —"

"Oh, shut up." Pak barely escapes before Yangchen swoops in close to the waterbender, hissing furiously as he flies down the hall.

Seriously, how does the boy do it? Is he keeping something tasty in his mouth, and that's why Yangchen has to get inside it multiple times a day? Should Pak start keeping things in his mouth, too? Would that help?

He's almost at a loss, but he's determined to not give up. Time for another plan.

~~~~

The waterbender boy has grown lax about his shoes again, even with Pak having recently stolen the laces. They sit at the foot of the bed, nothing at all to guard them, exposed to all and sundry.

Pak spent the evening flying around the town, gorging himself on the ripest fruit he could find until his belly was so full it was a struggle to slip back in through the cracked window. Then he went into the washroom and drank the bathwater before it could drain away, leftover suds and all.

His stomach is definitely rumbling. Perfect.

Waddling himself over to the boy's shoes, he sets himself up. Head down, perfect angle. Feet nice and wide apart. And heave. And heave. And heave, heave, heave —

"Oh no you don't!"

Pak finds himself swept into the air, the furious gaze of the waterbender boy meeting his own. Unfortunately for him, he's exactly where Pak wants him; he's walked right into his trap.

The boy's shout is loud enough to make Pak's ears twitch as the lemur vomits right down the front of his bare chest.

"Are you — are you fucking kidding me right now?!"

From her own side of the bed-nest, Yangchen stirs, sitting up halfway. "What's wrong this time?"

"Your lemur just puked on me, Yangchen!"

Her only response is to roll over, pulling the blankets back up to her chin. "Leave me out this."

The boy just gapes. Pak tastes soap and vomits a little bit more, this time on himself. Whoops.

Something in the waterbender's gaze softens, just slightly, gone after a fleeting moment. "Fine. Okay. Let's get cleaned up."

He carries the lemur into the washroom, still holding him at arm's length, and sets him down in the sink. Sighing, he pulls water from the faucet and cleans them both off with easy, practiced motions, leaving them both spotless in just a few minutes.

"Look, Pak," the boy starts. He groans, rolling his eyes. "Spirits, I can't believe I'm doing this. This is stupid."

Saying that to the lemur who threw up on you less than ten minutes ago. I did it once and I could do it again.

"Look," he tries again, "I don't exactly know what your issue is, but whatever it is, I'm sorry. I'm sorry for throwing you out the window that one time, and I'm sorry for whatever I did to make you hate me so much. Can we call a truce? Please?"

For a minute, Pak almost considers it. His big blue eyes are somewhat compelling. But no, that's just the upset stomach talking. He can't call a truce, not while he's still ousting Pak from his rightful place as Yangchen's favorite.

"I'll let you lick my plate after breakfast tomorrow."

Well, okay. Maybe there can be a ceasefire. Just for now.

~~~~

The ceasefire holds. At least, it does on Pak's end. The boy doesn't have the decency to leave Yangchen alone still, but Pak is letting it slide. He's running out of ideas for how to remove him from Yangchen's life.

The boy even offered him a piece of seal jerky yesterday. Which, much to Pak's chagrin, was delicious.

He had crawled under the bed in Yangchen's room earlier, intending to do some plotting, maybe jump out and grab at the boy's ankles, things of that nature. But plotting is tiring, even moreso when you're a five-pound lemur who's out of ideas, and he ended up falling asleep.

He's awoken when the bed above him begins to creak. He might have slept through it if it were just the single creak, the kind made by a body settling down onto it.

This creaking is different. It's loud, incessant. The bed frame almost seems to move in time with it. And what's more — the humans that are on top of the bed and causing all this creaking are being ridiculously noisy.

They must not have noticed Pak was still in the room. Usually they kick him out when they do… whatever it is they're doing that's so noisy and making the bed shake. The boy gives a particularly loud groan that makes Pak twitch his ears and wrinkle his nose. There's weird smells, too, like the normal human scents have been heightened.

Above him, Pak catches the sound of Yangchen's voice. Even his superb hearing can't make out the words, but she sounds happy enough. This human activity is strange. He curls back in on himself with a yawn, hoping to sleep through it.

Then — a sharp cry. Yangchen. She's crying out words he doesn't understand, but he doesn't need to. Something is wrong. He has to save her!

Scurrying out from beneath the bed, Pak can hardly believe his eyes. The waterbender boy is on top of Yangchen, pinning her down to the bed. Her nails are digging into his back, she's crying out — he's hurting her!

Pak sees red. Screeching with all the fury his tiny body can muster, he flings himself onto the bed, landing on the boy's back with all four sets of claws out. There's shouting, but he pays it no mind, hissing and yowling until his teeth meet flesh.

In the blur of his protective rage, Pak doesn't realize who the hands that grab him belong to. He keeps hissing, fighting back, fur flying until a voice he recognizes cuts through. "Pak, stop!"

He halts in his tracks, green eyes wide. He can taste blood on his tongue. Yangchen is holding him in place, her chest heaving as her own eyes flicker between her lemur and the boy in her bed, at a loss for words.

The waterbender is the first to speak, voice breathless. "What the fuck just happened?!"

Pak hisses at him, raising hackles only stopped by Yangchen's tightening grip. "We must have startled him, Kavik. I didn't even realize he was still here."

"Startled," the boy scoffs disbelievingly, "I doubt it. I bet he was lying in wait for us, just so he could get me where it really hurt."

Yangchen's eyes widen slightly. "Did he actually hurt you?"

"Yangchen, there are bite marks on my ass."

"Not the first time that's happened to you…"

The boy sputters. "Not the time! Just get him out of here — I'm not going to die of some horrible lemur disease now, am I?"

"You'd have to be really unlucky to die of lemurpox," Yangchen replies. Ignoring the boy's startled noises, she pulls Pak tighter to her chest, keeping him contained. "But no, he's not going out of here. Come on, put your clothes back on."

There's a frustrated groan in response, but the boy does as she says. Pak glares at him the entire time, a fluffy ball of unadulterated lemur rage. While the boy gets dressed, Yangchen carefully maneuvers Pak to still keep a firm hold on him while she tosses an orange robe over herself and goes to grab something from the desk.

Yangchen settles herself on the rug covering the floor, setting up a small dish with a particularly pungent scent. She gestures for the waterbender to join her, and again he does. Still, following orders now does nothing to erase what he did earlier, not in Pak's book. He deserves that bite in the tenderest spot of flesh.

"We're doing a cleansing ritual," Yangchen declares, flourishing an arm to light the incense sticks she grabbed.

The waterbender boy pinches the bridge of his nose. "This is so stupid."

Yangchen shoots back a withering glare. "No, what's stupid is that I'm having to do a cleansing ritual between a grown man and a flying lemur. I don't understand how it came to this."

"I told you, he hates me. He always has. Today was just another one of his revenge plots."

Yangchen ignores him, instead turning her attention to her lemur. "Pak, I'm going to let you go now. Do not attack Kavik again. I'm just trying to understand what's going on."

Fine. If it makes her happy. Upon his release, Pak curls up against her side, still glaring at the boy.

"Alright," Yangchen continues, "everyone is going to get their chance to air their grievances, and then we'll let the smoke carry it all away. Pak, did you bite Kavik because you don't like him, or because you got scared?"

"Are you seriously asking the lemur —"

"If you want any chance at finishing what we started earlier you'll hold that thought right there."

Yes, Yangchen, make him shut up!

"Pak." He turns to look at his master, imploring her to understand. He was hurting you!

Her voice softens, and she strokes a gentle hand across his back. "He was scared. He thought you were hurting me, and so he tried to protect me."

Pak turns his gaze to the boy. His lips are in a tight, displeased line. "How can you be so sure?"

Yangchen scoops Pak back into her arms, scratching behind his ears just the way he likes. "Pak, Kavik wasn't hurting me. Thank you for looking out for me, but I was okay."

Are you sure? Are you sure it isn't just his mind tricks making you like him?

"Pak," the boy speaks, and the lemur glances back at him in surprise. "I wasn't hurting Yangchen. I promise."

His voice gets a bit lower, a bit quieter. "I would never hurt Yangchen. I care about her, the same way you do."

A hand is offered in his direction. Pak tenses, tail lashing. Yangchen scratches his head one last time and places him back on the rug, as if in encouragement.

The boy — Kavik — speaks again. "It's probably been hard to share Yangchen, hasn't it? Probably feels like I'm taking her away a bit?"

Pak blinks at him, but doesn't move. Kavik keeps speaking. "I'm not trying to take Yangchen from you, Pak. You're her lemur, and she loves you. Me being around doesn't change that."

After so long and so much time spent trying to get rid of him, trying to make sure Pik and Pak remained Yangchen's best and only companions, it's hard to hear. Hard to believe.

But then again, Yangchen likes him. For some strange reason he may never know, she really likes him. And Pak likes Yangchen — loves Yangchen. Maybe… this boy loves her too?

Tentatively, he reaches for Kavik's outstretched hand. He licks at it with a rough tongue, getting a small chuckle in response. He steps closer, letting Kavik pet him with a surprisingly gentle hand.

"There we go," Yangchen says, a smile in her voice. Her arms wave to bend the incense smoke, weaving it around the three of them on the rug until she sends it out the window, extinguishing the flame. "That's what I like to see. Feel better?"

Pak chitters back at her, allowing Kavik to pet him again. Maybe, just maybe, this boy isn't so bad, after all.

Yangchen grins at them, lighting up the room. As if drawn by the same invisible force, Pak and Kavik meet eyes, the same understanding transcending language and species.

If it's for you, we'll make it work.

----