#korratea

“Can I help you find anything today?” she says, looking up from her ledger, her dark green eyes gleaming like wet stones in the dim light. “We just picked up a box of novels by Cao from Omashu. Well-used, but they’re really popular right now.”

“That’s fine, thanks, I think we’re looking for something else,” Korra says hastily, because she remembers seeing a Cao novel in Mako’s hands and a faint look of disgust on his face as he read through the final pages. What a waste of paper, he’d said, and slammed it facedown on the nightstand. He turned out the light, rolled over in bed to gather her up, and moments later tickled the back of her neck with a heated mutter: unbelievable. More than just a bad book – an insult.

“Whatever you say,” the girl says, and goes back to writing notes in her ledger. Korra glances at Tenzin, already absorbed in a shelf labeled CULTURE & SOCIETY, and hovers awkwardly towards the opposite wall. She’s not sure where to start. Mako’s taste in books is simple: everything he can get his hands on, which gives her an array of choices both liberating and terrifying. He’d be happy with anything she gives him, she knows that… but she wants him to like it.

She reaches up to pull a faded orange book off the top shelf, wiping dust off the cover and opening to the middle with a tentative flip of her finger. A history of Fire Nation Avatars, in rather dry language, but maybe… she’d better read a page or two… ten minutes later she claps the book shut with abrupt alarm and stuffs it back onto the shelf, throwing a nervous look towards Tenzin and the shop girl.

The shop girl looks up and smirks.

“Don’t worry, it only counts as stealing if you take the book with you,” she says, setting her ledger aside, and Korra gives her a sheepish smile. It feels pretty damn close, to be honest. The girl clambers to her feet, tossing her thick black braid over her shoulder and stepping neatly over her stack of books.

“You sure you don’t want any help? I’ve read every book here. I’m also bored,” she says, “and it’s not every day an Airbending master and the Avatar walk into your book stall.”

“Oh… you noticed,” Korra says lamely, but it would be hard to argue against Tenzin’s pale blue tattoos and glaring yellow robes. “Okay, alright. I’m looking for a book for my boyfriend. He likes everything – actually, he doesn’t like Cao, so forget about that, and right now he’s reading… well, it had a blue cover, and he couldn’t put it down.”

“Oh, I know that one,” the girl says, and Korra perks up.

“You do?”

“No,” the girl says. “Can you think of anything he’s liked?”

Korra bites her lip, frowning at the rows of books. She doesn’t really pay attention to what Mako reads – just that he’s doing it, late at night in bed, feeling his body warm and breathing beside her and watching the slow, deliberate way he turns the pages: touches the edge of the page with his fingertip, nudges it up, flattens it, eyes sharp and bright in his tired face. But once – once, he’d stopped and brought her out of a dozy half-sleep, his hand on her shoulder, leaning over to show her a page of verse. Listen to this – the lamp once out, cool stars enter the window frame… his voice carrying her back to sleep, every line falling into her like new rain into the earth.

“Well, he was really into this book of poems,” she says, and keeps the rest to herself as another thought strikes her. “He likes history.”

“That’s a start,” says the girl. She crouches, hands pressed together in front of her mouth as she scans the lower shelves, and then she pulls out three slender green books.

“‘The Seventeen Songs of Princess Li.’ These were written nine hundred years ago,” she says, holding them out to Korra, one at a time. Korra lets the front cover fall open and the pages fan apart, the characters flowing together before her eyes in rivers of faded ink. And she reads: The lotus has wilted, only a faint perfume remains / On the bamboo mat there’s a touch of autumn chill…

“Perfect,” she says, a little breathlessly. Something in the words dislodged an ache in her breast, some old forgotten feeling; and she closes the book with a strange sense of reverence. She looks up at the shop girl. “I’ll take them. How much do you want for - ?”

“Um, it’s on me. I read about you in the newspapers and I… think you’re really cool,” the girl says, her voice fading with sudden embarrassment as she turns pink under the eyes. Korra gives her a grateful, crooked smile, which only makes her blush harder.

“One more thing - do you have a pen, and can you ship these to Republic City?”

“That’s two things, but yeah,” the girl says, and offers Korra a stubby brown pencil. Korra sets the books on the table, flips open to an inside cover, and pouts thoughtfully, the pencil tip poised over the page. She has the books. Now the note.

***

The first books arrive a week later in Republic City, a single package wrapped in brown paper and tied with twine. For whatever reason, she sent them to the police station, where they sit untouched on Mako’s desk all day, next to a stack of casebooks while he throws hungry glances at them between witness statements and briefings. When Korra left two weeks ago for her trip with Tenzin, to visit Air Nomads all over the world, she’d promised to write. The package promises even better.

“Go home, kid,” Lin says, as she passes by his desk just a few minutes after eleven. “I’m getting real sick of you.”

Mako snorts and claps his casebook shut. “You got it, chief.”

He tosses the casebook onto his desk and leaves, studying the package as he walks through the quiet halls of the police station. The stamp is from a eastern province of the Earth Federation, the twine tied in a neatly centered bow; and Korra attempted his address at least twice before scratching it out and writing down the station address instead.

And he can’t help himself - Korra picked these books, held them in her hands and thought of him; who could ask him to wait? He opens the package at the noodle bar on the corner of his block, hunched over a bowl of spicy beef broth, stirring up green onions and clumps of beef with chopsticks in one hand as he props a book open with the other and begins to read. The Seventeen Songs of Princess Li, Volume One…

“Hey, you done? We’re closing.”

Mako looks up, frowning, at the cook on the other side of the bar, the man’s hand hanging over the now-empty bowl of noodles. The clock on the wall is nudging towards one in the morning. “What? Oh. Yeah, I’m done. Sorry.”

The cook clears away his bowl and Mako stares at the book, riffling through the pages with his thumb. He’d made his way through a good third of it; every line smoother than water and just as clear. And he’s suddenly tired (more tired than he expects to be, at this hour) and there’s something warm in his throat and hot in his eyes, a yearning flickering like a candle… something catches his eye on the inside cover. Korra’s handwriting, her glorious purposeful scrawl.

Mako, got these for you at a street market in a little town south of Ba Sing Se. I have no idea what they’re about, so you’ll have to tell me when I get back. Hope you like them. Love, Korra.

He closes the book, wraps all three once again in the brown paper, and cradles them to his chest as he climbs the stairs to his apartment, dropping them on the nightstand as he himself drops face-down onto his bed. The other half of the bed is empty, painfully so - every minute she isn’t here hurts with the raw precision of a fresh papercut. Mako lies there for a moment, counting the seconds as they drift by into the silence, rolling over to stare at the ceiling… and then he snatches Volume One off the nightstand, re-reads her note, and searches for her in every verse, long into the night, until the shadows start to creep soft and grey towards dawn.

THE SECOND BOOK

Korra finds the second book two weeks later in a hotel, trapped within its humid hallways by a tropical storm that whips relentlessly over the small Fire Nation island. She and Tenzin were supposed to meet a pair of airbenders here, twin girls finally old enough to join the Air Nomads, but then the storm hit and kept hitting - a howling child of a hurricane, throwing its tantrum against the rickety walls of the tourist resort with hot tears and thundery fists. The rain started three days ago. It hasn’t stopped since. Tenzin meditates the hours away in their suite on the 2nd floor while Korra prowls the empty halls, driven by restless energy, listening to thunder clap across the heavy grey skies and bored out of her fucking mind.

She doesn’t mind the storm - it’s just water, after all, and to a waterbender the sound of rain slanting onto the windows is like a thousand tiny heartbeats going all at once, every droplet an old friend - but there’s nothing to do. There’s no one in the hotel save for them and the desk clerk downstairs. The Pai Sho board is missing seven tiles, all of them important; and Korra doesn’t have the patience for Tenzin’s style of play anyway (too many weird, obscure rules. Some kind of sick Air Nomad joke.) Exercise is almost impossible in the thick, oppressively hot air, mugging on her skin like an animal’s tongue, and every nerve in her body twitches for release.

So the bookcase is nothing short of a miracle: squat and white, the cracked paint peeling off its dusty shelves. Its shelves, stuffed with fat yellowing books, artifacts forgotten by tourists long passed by. Korra sinks to her knees in front of the bookcase with an almost involuntary moan of satisfaction - at last, a distraction - she’ll do anything, read anything - curses herself for not finding the bookcase sooner. Now, she thinks, she understands the look in Mako’s and Jinora’s eyes when you put a book in their hands, like the sun finally came up after ten months of midnight. (Those nerds.)

Korra pulls a thick book off the bottom shelf and reads the back. A romance, apparently, something tacky and forgettable. An outlaw disguised as a stable girl. An aristocratic dragon tamer raised by his corrupt uncle. A love triangle between outlaw stable girl, dragon tamer, and the fire shrine maiden, betrothed only to her duty. Good enough.

She sits down, back to the wall, and props the book on her knees, flicking the corner of the first page back and forth as she begins to read. Outside, the rain continues, falling relentlessly onto the beach, flattening the ocean into dark rippled silver.

“This is so bad,” she says, ten pages later, crossing her legs.

“The worst book I’ve ever read,” she adds, halfway through the third chapter, as the dragon tamer spurts his load of boiling seed into the shrine maiden’s velvety cavern, making her mewl in bliss. Heat crawls across her face.

“Seriously? Are you for real? Fuck this,” Korra says, wrinkling her nose in distaste, when the dragon tamer licks the sweet moisture of the stable girl’s slit in chapter ten; the shrine maiden’s pearl blushing between her thighs as she watches, hidden in the bushes on the other side of the riverbank. Korra’s read a hundred and seventy pages, every single one of them ludicrous.

And yet...

Korra closes the book and chews her lower lip, looking down the empty hallway with a feeling like frantic unease. After a moment’s pause she gets to her feet and returns to the suite, book tucked under her arm. Tenzin is still meditating, sitting cross-legged in the middle of the floor, prayer beads woven through his fingers.

“Tenzin? I’m... going to take a nap,” she says, and he hums a flat note in response. “So. Don’t bother me.”

“Yes, Korra,” he says, lifting a hand.

Korra slips into her bedroom, locks the door, flops onto her bed, and holds the book up over her face, frowning at how stupid it is. So stupid. She should show it to Mako. He’d get a real kick out of it… she flips back to the scene where the stable girl and the dragon tamer pleasure each other (‘rhythmically swallowing his thick pulsing rod as he laved her swollen womb’) and squirms a bit on the bed, grinding her teeth.

She hasn’t seen Mako in four weeks but it’s the easiest thing in the world to imagine him here, his slender smile and his sunlit eyes, his hands sliding down her bare chest to her waist, her hips… Korra closes her eyes, slips her hand down the front of her trousers, curls into herself; with a happy sigh she conjures up a daydream of Mako’s mouth warm and damp where her fingers are, and forgets the book.

***

Mako, found this one at a hotel in the Fire Nation. It’s the worst book in the world. Don’t read it. Just set it on fire as soon as you get it. TRUST ME. THIS BOOK SHOULDN’T EXIST. I miss you like crazy. Love, Korra. (P.S. we can do way better than page 127)

“Alright,” Mako says skeptically, re-folding the note and tucking it into the front cover of the book. It has a nice heft, thick enough to get lost in; and he settles more comfortably onto the couch, sprawled lengthwise with one foot on the floor. The summer air flows in through the open window, sultry and hot, laced with the sound of crickets, and he has half a mind to leave the book aside for now and call Bolin for pai sho and a bottle of pomegranate soju…

… until he reaches page 127 and stops, sweating, blushing furiously as the dragon tamer throws the stable girl’s legs over his shoulders and lifts her up the wall, plunging his tongue into her dripping entrance and sucking her throbbing button - Mako claps the book shut and throws it on the floor, huffing loudly.

He scowls at the ceiling, hands clasped over his navel, breathing hard and his face flaming red. Korra’s right. He should burn that book. It might even be illegal under current obscenity laws… it’s basically contraband… What was she thinking, sending this to him? Mako fumbles for the book and skims page 128. Just as he thought: complete trash. They can definitely do better. Once again he sets it aside, unable to keep ignoring the growing pressure in his trousers. Slowly, he undoes his fly and pulls his boxers away… thinks of Korra. He misses her with his thighs trembling, a shudder rolling deep through his body - jerks into his hand as her name tears from his lips in a breathless shout: Korra -

THE THIRD BOOK

The third book is somewhat of an apology, mostly a promise.

“I don’t know when I’m going back,” Korra says.

There’s a long second of silence. She sits down heavily on her bed in the Southern Water Tribe palace, gazing at her desk, the ceremonial shields on the wall, the radiator rippling the air with waves of heat.

“You’re pretty busy, aren’t you,” Mako says finally, on the other end of the line. She can hear the ache in his voice, the crestfallen look on his face, even with a continent and several oceans between them.

“Yeah. Tenzin and I finished up with the airbenders, but I’m going to help oversee the new elections in Zhoujiang in two weeks. And I’m staying in the South Pole until then, I promised my parents ages ago,” Korra says. She’s aware that she’s pleading with him a bit and she wraps the telephone cord around her finger, tightening until it turns purple.

“Right,” Mako says testily. “Two weeks in the South Pole. And then the elections. And Republic City, when?”

“Don’t be like that,” Korra snaps. “I’m doing my job. You’re doing yours over there. We both knew this would happen. Stop moping about it.”

“I’m not moping,” Mako says. “I just want to know when you’re coming home, and you can’t tell me.”

The edge in his tone stings. Korra scowls.

“You’re not the only one in this relationship, you know. I miss you too, dumbass,” she says.

Mako sighs, a long, staticky sound through the receiver.

“Sorry,” he mutters. “I’m sorry. I’ll stop. Why don’t we just talk again tomorrow?”

“Yeah. Tomorrow,” Korra says, and she lets him retreat.

Long after the end of the end of the phone call, she’s still thinking about it, picking apart the lingering remains of his voice in her head. Her absence is getting to him; that much is clear, and Mako’s still learning the subtle art of distance. She doesn’t need to come home. What she needs to do is reassure him - show him that separation is just an illusion, soothe the slow-moving bruises of yearning before they set in too deep. Korra goes to the palace library and wanders through the stacks, the shelves towering into the vaulted ceilings, wondering…

Senna finds her in the reading nook, grumbling as she stokes the fire, an abandoned pile of books by her knees. In a fit of frustration, Korra unloads the story onto her mother.

“When are his vacations? Couldn’t he come visit you?” Senna says, idly running her finger around an ornate globe sitting atop a low bookcase, and Korra shrugs.

“I have no idea. I think his next vacation is at the end of the year and that’s months away. But I need to do something,” Korra says. Senna gives her a sympathetic look and flicks her hand at the globe, sending it into a smooth, gleaming spin. Her fingertip hisses over the surface as it turns and Korra stares at it, the continents blurring into the oceans, streaks of desert and snow and water shining with firelight. Everything coming together.

The globe slides to a stop, Senna’s pointed finger poised over an empty spot in the Si Wong desert.

“Let’s go somewhere else,” she says, frowning, and she spins it again.

“That’s it,” Korra says. “Perfect.”

***

Mako lets the package sit untouched on the coffee table for a couple of days, moving towards it like a feral cat towards a stranger’s hand. He wants more than just conciliatory head-pats.

But, like a cat, his curiosity gets the better of him, with a nudge from Asami.

“Is this box from Korra?” she says, dropping onto the couch with a loud whump, glass of chilled soju in hand. “You should open it.”

Mako glances over his shoulder. Asami leans forward and drags the box towards her, running her fingers over the edges, the shipping sticker, lips pursed as she scrutinizes Korra’s gift. Big, flat, square. He returns his attention to the pan of noodles on the stove, dousing them liberally with peanut sauce.

“She said I was moping,” he says, to the noodles. Asami raises an eyebrow over the rim of her glass.

“Right, ‘cause you never do that,” she says, smirking.

“I just want to know when she’s coming back. Just - a date. I don’t like not knowing things. Is that too much to ask?”

“You’re dating Korra,” Asami says, with a tone of patient explanation, and Mako braces his hands on the countertop, pushing against it and hanging his head. He’s not good at this – this digging into himself, searching through the cloud of thoughts; not for the feeling, but for the name of it. Never has been.

So he organizes the facts in his head: Korra left Republic City to meet airbenders with Tenzin. She has been gone for almost four months. She doesn’t know when she’s coming back, but she is sending him gifts, and that’s better than the last time she left for a while. (A judgment, not a fact, but the difference feels irrelevant.) Now he has a box and a nameless feeling. The more he looks at the box, the more the feeling slides away, like water in his cupped hands.

He cleans a smear of peanut sauce off his hand with a towel. Korra’s not gone - just away.

“Ah, shit. I am moping,” Mako says, slapping the towel onto the countertop.

“Nice work, detective,” Asami says, lifting her glass as Mako falls onto the couch next to her and sets the box on his knees, undoing the twine. Immediately he starts collecting details: there are actually two shipping stickers, one on top of the other, and he unpeels the top sticker to see the bottom is for the Southern Water Tribe.

The tabs move out of the slots without much resistance – this isn’t the first time this box has been opened – and when he opens the box, the nest of tissues inside has a rather haphazard appearance. Pulled out and stuffed back in. Mako pushes them aside.

Inside the box is an atlas.

Two more details: it has a simple, black and blue matte cover, with ATLAS OF THE WORLD AND ITS PEOPLES, 4th Edition, embossed in gold, and the spine is creased with use.

“Korra read it before she sent it to me,” he says. “I wonder why.”

“So what are you waiting for? Take a look,” Asami says, and Mako throws her a glance.

“Did you have anything to do with this?”

She shrugs and looks away, taking an innocent sip of her drink. “I might’ve helped jog her memory with a few things.”

Mako finds the note in its usual place, the inside cover, and holds it up: SKIP TO THE MAPS. LOVE, KORRA

So he flips through the smooth, glossy pages to the maps in the back. The first map is of the United Republic, clinging to the underside of the Northern Peninsula, and there’s a swiftly-drawn circle around Republic City. And, in neat little characters above it, Korra wrote home.

Mako turns to the next page, a map of the city itself, with his heart rising up his throat.

She circled his apartment, Air Temple Island, and the police station (crash pad #1, crash pad #2, Chief Crankypants) and then some other places too: the library (not a romantic place for a date), the park (slept under a tree together) and the probending arena, where she wrote two things: love at first fight – kicked a bloodbending terrorist out a window to save your ass.

“Keep going,” Asami says, nudging him in the elbow, because for a moment he’s lost in the memory of Korra’s desperate shout of NO! as she reached for him, the impossible blossoming of air from her closed fist – determined to save him…

“Okay, just let me look,” Mako says, and turns the pages again. Onto the Earth Kingdom, where Korra circled Ba Sing Se, Zaofu, the Misty Palms Oasis, and a whole host of towns dotted across the top of continent. Mako’s family. Fought the Red Lotus. Kept watch for Ai Wei, fought the Red Lotus again. Kai’s hometown.

Asami fixes him with a look half smug, half coy. “Noticing a pattern?”

He doesn’t answer yet. Struck by a thought, Mako turns to the map of the Southern Water Tribe lands. There on the page, Korra marked an otherwise blank spot on the coastline, and wrote unlocked the Avatar state here – said ‘I love you’ for the first time.

“She marked everywhere we’ve gone,” he says quietly. “Everywhere we’ve gone with each other.”

He closes the atlas and puts it back in the box, leaning back on the couch with his hands over his face. Now, more than ever, he misses her.

“I’m an idiot,” he groans. Asami confirms this with a sage nod of her head.

“There should be one other thing, she wanted me to make sure you found it,” she says, plunging her hand into the crinkly waves of tissue paper. Asami fishes out a sleek pen and hands it to him, taking care not to dislodge the slip of paper wrapped around it.

Mako takes the pen and unrolls the paper. Korra wrote: Mark everywhere you want to go. We’ll go together.

THE FOURTH BOOK

Korra delivers it by hand.

The call from Bolin comes at roughly four in the morning Zhoujiang time (eight hours off Republic City) to the province capital city hall, of all places; and she’s woken up by a local policewoman pounding on her door.

“Avatar Korra? There’s an urgent message for you from Republic City,” the policewoman says, handing her a folded note, and Korra takes it in a haze of sleepiness. What the hell could be four-in-the-morning urgent, she wonders, as she unfolds the note, standing barefoot on the plush carpet and reading in the light of the hallway as it spills through the open door.

Oh.

“Telephone,” she says. “I need one. Now.”

“There’s one in the lobby,” the policewoman says, and Korra sprints down the staircase to the sleek black phone sitting on the front desk. With her heart pounding like drums in her head she tucks the receiver to her ear and dials the number on the message, her hand shaking.

Bolin picks up on the second ring.

“Korra? Is that you?” he says, and Korra wipes sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand.

“Bolin, what happened?! Is Mako okay?” she says. The note crumpled in her fist - Mako’s in the hospital. Call as soon as you can.

“Well, he… it was a hit-and-run. He was tailing someone and they sort of… got the drop on him and hit him with a car? He’s at Republic City General Hospital. He hasn’t woken up yet. Just thought you should know,” Bolin says, in an oddly calm voice. That, more than anything, pulls her nerves even tighter.

“Just thought I should know? I’m leaving now!”

***

She makes it to Republic City in a day, claiming an air bison from the airbenders stationed in Zhoujiang and flying through the night. It takes forever - every single second sliding by far too slowly, the cool night wind whipping through her hair and into her skin with all the sharpness of a knife. He’ll be fine, she repeats to herself, as the haze of Republic City lights begins to glow on the horizon, the sky speared by the spirit portal; he’ll be just fine -

- and, thank the spirits, he is.

Asleep, with several broken ribs and a concussion, but fine.

“He woke up a few hours ago,” Bolin whispers, as Korra leans over Mako’s sleeping form, peering at the bandages around his head. Even asleep, his face is locked in a faint scowl. “He told the healer to quit bothering him and then went right back to sleep.”

“Typical,” Korra snorts. She grabs Mako’s limp, warm hand and runs her thumb over the back. She can hear his breathing sticking in his chest, a clipped sigh of release, as she gently plants a kiss on his cheek. She’s hesitant to wake him just yet.

“I’ll be right back,” she says.

Korra trots down to the hospital gift shop, passing over the flowers with their soft velvety petals and the crisp get-well cards, stopping in front of the book rack. She picks out a thick paperback at random, its cover bursting with gaudy fiery colors. Hot Head, Cold Case, reads the title, as underneath a lantern-jawed man in a fedora stares in horror at his blood-splattered hands. Korra grins - it’s as though fate itself guided her hand. She takes the book and a pair of peaches and goes back to Mako’s hospital room, where Bolin is still sitting in the chair by his bed.

“I’ve been on an air bison for the last century,” she says, putting the book and the peaches on the bedside table. “I’ll just stay and rest here. Go home.”

With a half-grateful nod Bolin gets out of the chair and she drops into it with a thump, watching Mako sleep, her eyes bleary and warm from exhaustion. She keels over, rests her head and arms on the bed, and within moments falls asleep.

***

When she wakes up, Mako has the book propped open on his knees, his brow furrowed. By the color of the sky outside, a soft yellow-grey and getting lighter, it’s early morning.

“I didn’t want to wake you up,” Mako says, turning his head, and Korra yawns.

“Me neither,” she murmurs. She crawls onto the bed and Mako shifts aside, wincing as Korra settles down next to him. As usual, he radiates with warmth and strength, and silently she thanks the universe for the reliability built into his bones, his muscles. He’s alive.

“So, someone hit you with a car?” she asks, resting her head on his shoulder, and Mako dog-ears the page before closing the book.

“Yeah. I was trying to arrest this guy for arson, I finally caught up to him, but he fled so I chased after him - he led me right into an alleyway, where he hit me with his car. I woke up here, sore as hell all over.”

“More than just sore,” Korra says, touching the bandages on his head with a finger, and Mako smiles. He slings his arm (the scar from fingers to bicep still not entirely faded, still red like a sunset) around her, groaning through his teeth, and pulls her closer.

“I’m fine,” he says.

They stay there for a moment, warm and quiet, Mako’s chest rising and falling under Korra’s hand and every beat of his heart pulsing into her palm. 

“How’s the book?” she says.

Mako makes a face.

“It’s awful. It’s so inaccurate. They don’t follow proper procedure at all and I’m pretty sure I figured it out five chapters ago,” he says, mouth twisting into an annoyed grimace. Korra laughs.

“Are you going to complain like that when they write books about me?” she says, grinning, and Mako shakes his head.

“No,” he says seriously, setting the book aside. “I’ll read all of them.”

Korra lifts herself up and gives him a playful smack on the cheek. “Dumbass. You’re going to be in the books.”

“I am?”

“Yeah. Duh. You didn’t think you’re gonna be in the books they write about me? Of course you are.”

Mako doesn’t say anything to that; just stares at her with slightly wide eyes. Then his other hand drifts up to her face, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear, and he hugs her to him.

“I love you,” he murmurs, his breath riffling over loose strands of hair, and Korra closes her eyes, smiling.

“Okay, alright. I’m looking for a book for my boyfriend. He likes everything – actually, he doesn’t like Cao, so forget about that, and right now he’s reading… well, it had a blue cover, and he couldn’t put it down.”

“Oh, I know that one,” the girl says, and Korra perks up.

“You do?”

“No,” the girl says. “Can you think of anything he’s liked?”

Korra bites her lip, frowning at the rows of books. She doesn’t really pay attention to what Mako reads – just that he’s doing it, late at night in bed, feeling his body warm and breathing beside her and watching the slow, deliberate way he turns the pages: touches the edge of the page with his fingertip, nudges it up, flattens it, eyes sharp and bright in his tired face. But once – once, he’d stopped and brought her out of a dozy half-sleep, his hand on her shoulder, leaning over to show her a page of verse. Listen to this – the lamp once out, cool stars enter the window frame… his voice carrying her back to sleep, every line falling into her like new rain into the earth.