"Wait, are you kidding? You haven't seen them, Korra?" Asami asked me, obviously surprised.
I shrugged. "Nope. I mean, it was still filming when I left for the Fire Nation, and then I lost my memory, and then I had to stop the world from falling into 10,000 years of darkness. Then there was the whole Republic City integration fiasco before the airbenders started popping up. It was a really busy few months, and then I was at the South Pole..." her frown deepened and I cut that part of the run through short. Neither of us liked talking about it if we didn't have to. "I guess I just missed out on it."
I could see the gears in Asami's head turning as I talked. "Yeah, I guess so." Her frown slowly pulled up into that cute little grin of hers. "We're gonna have to fix that. Tonight."
As the mover ended and the film reel spun down, I saw Asami turn to me out of the corner of my eye. I sat with my chin still resting on my fist, still staring at the screen, as I tried to make sense of what I'd just seen. "Well," she pressed me, placing a hand on my knee, "what did you think?"
I thought about fibbing, but she'd have seen through it. She knew me too well by then. I put my had on hers as I turned to her. "I think that that made no sense. At all. But if Bolin asks, I thought it was awesome."
Asami's face cycled quickly through surprise, then confusion, then curiosity with just a hint of annoyance. "Really? I know it got kind of overdramatic with the drill thing, but don't you think 'no sense at all' is a little harsh?"
I managed to turn my scoff into a much milder snort. "Maybe a little bit, but seriously," I gestured with my free hand as I made my points, "ice to the earth's core? Eye beams? Reversing the polarity? Bringing Pabu-"
"Juji," she interjected.
"- Juji," I conceded, "back from the dead? I mean, it started off fine but it just kept getting weirder. Don't get me wrong, the acting was good, and the effects were fantastic, but I kind of lost interest in the story when it started getting so unbelievable."
She huffed and pulled her hand out from under mine and turned away from me, arms crossed, playing offended. "Well, I thought it was great. Plenty of action, a little bit silly, just the right amount of romance." She glanced back at me from her mock-angry pout, which turned into a smirk. "Kind of reminds me of you." She dropped the act and turned back to me. "And even if it didn't make sense, it was still fun!"
I returned her smirk and put my arm around her shoulders, scooting in closer to her on the couch. "A little nonsense can be nice sometimes. I mean, I am dating you." She elbowed me lightly in the ribs, but smiled, and I laughed back. "We'll have to watch it again sometime and I'll try not to take it so seriously. I guess I just had a hard time getting past the Unalaq thing."
Her smile disappeared and she turned to nuzzle into my shoulder. "Right. The mover character is just so melodramatic, I sort of forgot it was portraying someone who hurt you so bad. I didn't even think about it bringing up bad memories for you. Sorry."
I shrugged and gave her a little hug. "It's okay. It really wasn't too bad. I'm just glad I didn't try to watch it when..." I trailed off. There it was again. It's not like we hadn't talked about our three years apart plenty of times. We'd worked through everything just fine, and I knew she didn't blame me for it and she knew I still felt bad. But every time it came up, it just seemed to put us both in a worse mood. Not tonight, I thought. I moved my hand up to her head and massaged the spot where her neck met her hair. She hummed in approval. Come on, subject change... "Hey, you wanna go get some ice cream? There's that new place that opened up on Roku Drive, I hear they're pretty good." Yeah, that'll work.
"Isn't it a little cold out for ice cream? All the snow from last week just finished melting."
"Oh, yeah." Right. She didn't grow up at the South Pole, 5C is chilly for her.
She nuzzled in a little harder and I pulled my fingers out of the black waves. "I kind of just want to stay here, like this, for a while." She wrapped her arms around my waist and gave me a little squeeze. "Did I tell you I've finally got a whole week off?"
She had, twice actually, but I wasn't going to stop her from telling me again. I knew she was excited about it. "Nope, just that you thought you might be able to pull it off. How'd you manage it?"
"This one was pretty light for once. I only had three meetings and one contract. I pushed them all to the week after, and the factory can run itself for a few days. It's been so long since I've gotten to really take a break."
"Yeah, since we took that vacation to the Spirit World. It's been, like..." I tallied in my head, "Wow, almost two years since then."
"Mhmm. I'm really looking forward to it. And you don't have much going on at the moment either, right?"
I nodded. "It's been pretty quiet lately. The elections in the Earth Kingdom have been running pretty smoothly. There hasn't been an insurgency since that one in Shung. I've got a diplomatic visit scheduled in April, and you never know when some lunatic's gonna try to kill me again, but things seem pretty calm." I felt her smile. I hadn't been attacked by a lunatic in years, and I knew it put her at ease to hear me joke about it. It showed her I wasn't still having issues with my past. Well, fewer, less severe issues, anyway.
"Great. That means there'll be plenty of time to go out and do things later this week. Right now, I just want us." She emphasized with another little squeeze.
I kissed the top of her head and smiled down at her. "You got it, Ms. Sato." I could almost hear her roll her eyes. I pulled her in tight as I shifted so we could both lay down on the couch. We chatted idly about the stars and buildings she could see out my window, the marks on my ceiling: the scorch mark in the corner from my first day there when a giant spider-rat surprised me, the scorch mark over the stove from the first time I tried to light it with firebending, the scorch mark in the middle of the room from when she casually tossed her electric glove and it landed on a spider-rat trap and got flung to the ceiling... there were a lot of scorch marks. She eventually started yawning between giggles, and the next thing I knew, she was asleep on my shoulder. I wasn't far behind her.
