Tahno | Reader Insert | Futureverse

"Whether he was famous or not, you couldn't remember, but his name.. His name.. Wasn't it.. T..? Tan.. Tah..?"

A girl who calls a bluff, and a man who gets sucked in.

-7:45 PM-

"I have one, I swear! I have a boyfriend-uh?" you protested as you were pulled out of the shop by your friends. What wonderful friends they were indeed, for knowing when you were calling a bluff, ..like now. But they didn't want to hear any part of it.

"Ah, yeah?" your friend, Asa, questioned. Between her and Zhenzhen, she had known you the longest and knew that face you made when you were telling a lie and totally knew it. She blew a few strands of her light brown hair out of her eyes and swept it back behind her ears with the rest of her short hair. Zhenzhen continued to stare at you with light blue eyes. Her hair was in a high pony that split up towards the end into two thin braids. Her tall figure loomed over you as the two pressed on. "Well, then, who is it? Where'd you find him?" You almost heard a 'Why'd he want to date you? Why're you special?' but dismissed the statements to avoid getting extremely upset.

Buuut, you did kind of bring this on yourself. After all, who was the one who was touchy enough to deny being single just because you didn't know how to handle a guy crushing on you? In your derp moment, you had said that you were already in a relationship with someone else, and that's why you were so dumbfounded. Looking back at it, you didn't know whether it was a smart move, or a swimmingly idiotic decision. As you pondered, your friends were becoming impatient. "Look, [y/n]. We know you're lying. The jig is up, girl. We know you, but it doesn't matter if you have a boyfriend or no-"

"-But, I have one!"
Really. You couldn't have just let it drop. No, of course not. You were too macho to let your pride dwindle like that. At that moment, you just wished your tongue could be as smart as it was fast.
Oh, screw it. You got yourself in this, time to own up to your work. Now, to find a completely impossible boyfriend that would be so busy, you wouldn't have to be a real jerk-off to introduce to anyone.
Someone busy, someone busy...
Hadn't you met someone like that last night on your way home from work at the bakeshop?
A vision of the man's sharp face came to mind, and the reminiscent feel of his grey eyes on you smacked you into your own little never-never land.
He was a waterbender.. Whether he was famous or not, you couldn't remember, but his name.. His name.. Wasn't it.. T.. Tan.. Tah..?

"THEN WHO IS HE?"

"His name is Tahno! He's a pro-bender. We met a few (months) ago at the market.."
The word "months" came out as a faint whisper, as the statement would have been true if that word had been replaced by "hours" instead. Your bluff, however, was still a bluff.
"No way," they said simultaneously. "If he's your boyfriend, then why don't you introduce us?"
You tried hard to keep your cool. Was it working? You'd better hope so! "He's usually too busy training anyways; we barely see each other now that it's that time of the season again." What a lie. Oh man, this had better be a one-time thing.
Zhenzhen and Asa just frowned at you as you continued to stare at the building behind them. Suddenly, they turned, faces lighting up as, speak-of-the-devil, Tahno came around with his posse, turned the corner and into their usual hangout spot.

'I wanna die.'
He was walking with a curvy woman hooked on each arm.
'Just kill me.' NOW.

"Well, there goes your boyfriend." Asa said flatly.
"Guess this means he's cheating on you?" Zhenzhen added.
You didn't know if you were offended or just embarrassed. He wasn't even a friend or anything. How would you know he was actually a lady killer? Although... You guessed he had the looks for it..

You shook your head violently before stepping back into reality, where you had confused your friends a bit.
"Wait, he's not? ...[y/n], it's time to move on. Let's face it, you're not a very good pick." Zhen comforted. "He's a player after all. It's probably happened to all kinds of girls." Although, in any context, the comment didn't make you feel any comfort whatsoever. Perhaps it was best to just agree and cut this fiasco short.

"Y-yeah.. I guess you're right.. " you said, turning to walk back home.

But just as you thought you could get away with such a ridiculous fabrication, the situation got worse.

"Oh, hey! If it isn't [y/n]?" someone called from the water tribe-themed restaurant. "Yeah, our leading lady from the other night! Thanks for taking Tahno for the night!" a teammate waved.
You cursed repeatedly as you turned to see Ming and Shaozu of the White Falls Wolfbats.

Lord, God, just go away, dammit.

You turned around and put on the best smile a person possibly could. "No problem!" The boys laughed pleasantly and walked to you and your friends. "Woahhh, you're actually pretty easy on the eyes like that. Why isn't that guy dating you again?"

You hadn't known who the speaker was, but it didn't matter that much anyways. You just hoped your friends wouldn't snap or anything at their gestures.

The two of them laughed at the joke, knowing the predicament they had been in that prompted you to meet, and you thought you were having heart palpitations. "Ha.. Haha.." You laughed nervously. One of your friends took you by the shoulder and forced you to walk in the other direction with the duo close by, blocking off the boys. Soon enough, however, you found yourself being pulled into a human tug-of-war between two pro-benders and your aggressive earth-bender friends. At any rate, you'd be pulled in half if the two groups started to even pinch at you!

Not good, not good! You opened your mouth to shriek—

"No one told me there'd be a party."

At the creamy voice, the foursome looked from you to a man who had apparently just walked out of the restaurant. His expression was cold, albeit confused. He obviously hadn't remembered who you were nor what you did for him the other night and you could tell from the look on his face that he had no interest in you at all.

He shook his wavy hair out of his face and let his pointer finger fall in your direction. "..Since when did you start liking girls like her..?" the man said with a clearly condescending tone, "Man, have your standards dropped.." he continued, shaking his head. The boys finally let go of you, and so did Zhen and Asa. You let out a small sigh of relief and sunk back into your own skin. Ah, thank GOD.

Then suddenly, grabbing-!

-8:07 PM-

"Huff… huff…"

"Ah, [y/n]!"

"…"

"[Y/N]!" the waterbender shook your hand off violently as you rounded the corner and stopped at a small alleyway. You looked at him, and he shoved you in the crammed space, following closely behind.

Right.. so.. the situation right now? You backtracked. A few minutes ago, you were saved from being stretched to death by this guy right in front of you, ..Tahno? Unfortunately, the fake boyfriend you had chosen wasn't as busy as you thought he'd be, and your over-protective friends had snapped at him after he insulted you.. sort of. You had tried to play the fiery-in-love(-yet-dumped-and-heart-broken) girlfriend by saying he always jokes around like that and that you were in a very flexible relationship because you wanted to remain chaste—The wolfbats have no freaking clue what you're talking about—You try to cover his mouth to prevent him from saying anything—the girls come at him—and BAM. You were running away from your friends and the pro-bender's teammates.

The man slicked his jet-black hair out of his face, only to let it fall in place again, then stared at you intensely. The look he gave you emanated a dark aura that said 'Tell me what's going on or else I'll throw you off the bridge.' You instinctively looked down at your shoes, but you could still feel those eyes burning on your head. You felt like you were going to start losing hair soon.

-8:12 PM-

"Listen, I can be a reasonable guy." You could hear him waterbending the sweat from himself. "But I'll freeze you in this sweat-water if you don't explain this mess to me." You looked up and immediately caught a glance of the water orb he was holding over your head. Shoot. He wasn't joking. What do I do! You weren't a bender or anything. You'd taken some martial arts classes when you were little, but you were out of practice. What if he actually froze you in water! Maybe you should just tell him it was a prank..? Or maybe that your friends pressured you to do it..? You ruffled your [h/c] hair in frustration and looked to the side, and you felt the temperature increase by at least twenty degrees between the two of you as the wolfbat leaned in closer and put a hand at the side of your head.

"I'm waiting—"

"I told them you were my boyfriend, okay?"

"Boyfrie—You're kidding."

"Oh yes. I'm joking. I wanted to prank you so hard that I told my friends to Earthbend and rage-chase after you. Hardy-har-har."

"Aren't you a card."

Ooh—that's it. Stupid jerkbender.

"Hey! Hey, hey, look, buddy. I'm sure you don't remember, but I helped you out big-time last night. I mean, embarrassing, covered up for your sorry butt and took you home, humiliating. Couldn't you at least do me this favor?"

The pale man just stared at you silently, and you realized you were looking straight into his eyes. Switching your sights to the wall behind him, you couldn't help but wonder, why were you doing this? You'd been challenged by and embarrassed in front of your friends before. Getting a good stare-down from this jerk totally wasn't worth your pride. What was pride anyways? Whatever it was. This just. Wasn't. Worth it.

You heard the water being released from its place in the air and you tensed up in anticipation.

Splish.

"Okay."

You were dry.

Okay…

Wait what! C-come again? Did he really just say that? He said okay? Your neck snapped towards him. His face was stoic. He raised his eyebrow as you continued to stare at him, struck mute with disbelief. As if sensing your confusion, he spoke again.

"What's the favor." He stated bluntly.

"U-uh, well, if you could, um." You cleared your throat nervously. You weren't actually asking him out for real or anything, but this was still embarrassing. The next words that came out of your mouth were said so fast that it all seemed like one jumbled-up word:

"Just pretend to be my boyfriend for a little while until my friends can calm down and we can have a spat and 'break-up' or whatever." You kept your eyes on his collar and waited for an outrageous answer. But in your state of mind, continued to ramble on about useless details. "You can still hang out with your dude-friends and go out with other girls, like, it's not like we're actually dating or anything, you know, like, it's just to shaddup my friends, and—"

"Fine by me." Came his answer. "No strings attached? We hold hands for a little bit, and then break it off?" there was a pause, as if he was thinking about it. "Better than feeling indebt to someone I don't know." You would have thought how you probably would have said the same thing, if it weren't for your total distrust in your ears' sound receptors and your brain's reality processing abilities at the moment. Maybe you just wanted this so bad that your mind was just creating this new world over real life for you.

'…Hm…Thanks, mind.' You nodded to yourself.

You relaxed a bit as the flow of cool, fresh air was restored when Tahno backed away. Without realizing it, you had slouched a bit and let out a nice, long sigh while enjoying the caress of the night air on your skin. And the jerkbender snorted at you a bit. He held out his hand and you reluctantly put yours in it.

"Close your eyes."

What. Fine. You closed your eyes and waited. 'Sweet Cherubs, don't kiss me..' Because we all know that would have been pretty awkward.

Instead, you felt something cold and solid being pressed into your palm. Your eyes shot open and you tried to pull your hand back on reflex, but the bender held the ice firmly in place.

"Wh-what.." An ice rose?

Just the head. No stem. Just a simple, open rose head. And it looked like something white was frozen in the center. You stared at it, then at the guy's face. He just smirked and removed his hand from under yours and into his pocket.

"That's my address. I take the bus near that building every morning and I go to the gym, after that I mess around town with the guys."

"Why the heck would I—"

"—If we're going to pretend to be a couple, the best I could do is give you private lessons." He smirked before walking out of the alley and stopping at the entrance, his back still facing you. "So if you're free, I better see you there tomorrow morning, got it, sweetheart..?"

"..Sweetheart..?"

And he just leaves.

WHAT WAS THAT! Who ever said they wanted "Private Lessons"!

You decided you would kick him in the tenders the next time you saw him before also leaving the alley.

Leave a review and tell me what you liked/disliked about it! Be brutal, I can handle it! :'D