I'm gonna say Bolin's probably between 3 & 4 and Mako's 5 or 6? This is probably the earliest I'll ever go. - J

"Mom…!" Mako gnawed his lower lip and gave his mother's hand a tug. There was a pharmacy coming up at the next corner.

Naoki looked down at him, discreetly raising a questioning eyebrow. His urgent whisper had her attention. And when he pointed with his head toward the shop approaching on their right, her eyes widened slightly with understanding. She gave him a sly wink and then cleared her throat.

"Sweetie?" she started, smiling innocently up at her husband. "Why don't we cut across that way today? We could stop and get the boys some steam buns."

"Ooh! Yeah! Can we?!" In his excitement, Bolin nearly topped down from his perch on San's shoulders, threatening to take a chunk of his father's hair with him.

San—checking quickly to make sure his scalp was still intact—plucked his son from his precarious position and set him on the sidewalk alongside his brother with a grunt. He didn't want to go a block out of their way to spend money they didn't have on treats they didn't need. And he was about to say as much when Naoki gently smoothed his lapels and looked coaxingly up at him.

"Oh, all right," he grumbled, rolling his eyes and deflating, but unable to keep the tender grin off his face. He never could tell her no. "But just this once," he insisted. "We can't afford to pamper ourselves just yet."

Their budget may have loosened up a little, but San knew better than to get careless.

Naoki planted a gentle kiss on her husband's lips. "Just this once," she agreed.

At the proclamation, Bolin, who up to that point had been tugging eagerly at his brother's arm, burst into a celebration distracting enough that San didn't catch the victorious grin that passed between his wife and eldest son. "Mako! Mako! You know where we should go?" he babbled, grabbing Mako by both arms as he continued to jump around. "What's that place we went to before?"

Mako let out a longsuffering sigh, doing his best to be patient. "I don't know. Ask Dad."

"Oh! We should get those dumplings with the stuff inside! They were really good!"

Twisting out of Bolin's grasp, Mako groaned loudly. "Okay! I get it! Calm down!" he snapped. He loved his brother, but guy could only take so much.

Sensing the onset of friction, San traded a look with his wife and took both of his children by the hand. He glanced conspiratorially up and down the block. "You ready?"

The boys barely had time to giggle in response before he spun them around and darted across the street with one dangling over each arm. All three of them landed in a laughing huddle on the opposite sidewalk, just catching their breath when Naoki joined them at a more dignified pace.

"You're going to drop them one of these days," she worried gently, giving San a light smack on the back of his head.

He shrugged, smirking as he turned their happy faces her way. "Do these look like weaklings to you?" he kidded. "Even if I did drop them, they could take it. Right, boys?" They seconded him so enthusiastically that San considered his point proven.

Naoki shook her head, but kept her thoughts to herself. She was in the process of fixing Bolin's hair when San glanced across the street and caught sight of the corner drug store.

"You see that," he inquired gravely, pointing low for his sons' benefit. "Let me tell you something about those pharmacists or herbalists or whatever they call themselves. They're not as honest as they'd like you to think."

Bolin joined his father's attention, absorbed in every word, but Mako slapped his forehead and sighed, looking to his mother for help. She sighed, too, and pouted in frustration. They'd done everything they could. There was no stopping this story once it got started.

"When I first came here to Republic City," San was saying, "I had to do all kinds of crazy jobs. And you see those pills they have stacked up in there? I used to sell those things." He gestured with disgust to the display of Pao-Lin's Cure-All Tablets that filled the front window. "Don't you ever buy anything that claims to be a Cure-All, because it's all a bunch of junk."

Naoki gave him a patronizing pat on the arm and tried to lead him away. She had heard this story so many times she could recite it from memory. How he'd peddled those pills as the cure for everything from toothaches to the common cold. How he'd reacted when he found out they were made of sugar and rice flour. Even Mako—who could barely suppress a groan of boredom—knew it word for word. That only left little Bolin.

Scooping up her youngest son, she leaned her forehead fondly against his. "You don't really want to hear this story again, do you?" she asked pointedly, glancing up at San for emphasis. Her husband seemed to take the hint, abashedly stroking his moustache.

But Bolin grinned obliviously and hugged her head. "I like when he smashes the boxes. That's the best part!"

San blushed a little as she peeked out over Bolin's embrace and threw up his hands in surrender before awkwardly readjusting his scarf. "Okay. You win. I'm done."

Looking uneasily up at his parents, Mako frowned. He felt kind of bad for not letting his dad finish his story. After all, it didn't hurt anybody and he really seemed to like telling it.

But when San spotted the guilty look on his son's face, he just laughed and roughly tousled his hair. "I guess I'd better find some new stories to tell, huh?" he conceded. Draping one arm around his son and looping the other around his wife, he started off again in the direction they'd been travelling and pursed his lips thoughtfully for a second. "Let me see… Did I ever tell you about the time I outsmarted the Dai Li?"

Mako rolled his eyes. He knew that one, too. But instead of interrupting, he sighed indulgently to himself and kept walking. At least it wasn't the pharmacy story.