Lu Ten Kasai and Kenton LaMarche
268 South Haverhill
"CHARIEEE!" Lily ran after the dog with fingers extended, a large smile on her face. The dog was less than thrilled to see her, though, and ducked into a nearby room for solitude.
"Nice to see you too, baby." Kenton laughed as he walked in the house behind Charlie and Zuko, reaching down and picking up his squirming toddler. She was still trying to get to Charlie, and seemed uninterested in her father. In fact she reacted more to seeing Zuko than Kenton.
"Just rude." Zuko laughed.
Kenton lifted Lily up to his face, forcing her to look at him. "Hi."
Her face finally lit up, "DADDY!"
"That's right." He laughed, placing a big kiss on her cheek. "You better be happy to see me."
Zuko walked into the kitchen where Lu Ten was getting started on dinner. "Honey I'm home." Zuko joked.
Lu Ten just rolled his eyes, popping his hip a bit, "You wish you could afford this."
Zuko frowned, lips curling unpleasantly.
Lu Ten laughed, smiling when he saw his husband. They shared greetings and a kiss before Lu Ten leaned against the counter, looking at Kenton with focused eyes. "So… I talked to your mom today."
Kenton sat Lily down, not batting an eye, "Oh?"
"Yep. What suitcase do you wanna take?"
Kenton looked at his husband with his lips pressed into a line. "What did she tell you?"
"Well the real question should be what aren't you telling me?"
Kenton looked into his eyes, a focus and concentration behind his eyes. He was trying to think his way out of this, trying to make it so this didn't have to go down the way he feared it would. However when Lu Ten looked back at him with the same blank yet powerful stare, Kenton knew it was over.
"Fine." He sighed, "My parents are taking us to Europe for a three week vacation."
"Sweet!" Zuko said, helping himself to a beer in the fridge.
"Not sweet." Kenton corrected. "You know my family."
"I like your family." Zuko said, sitting at the bar in the kitchen. "They're fun."
"They're fucking lunatics." Kenton corrected. "Every-single-one of them. They just look cool and fun cause they speak in French sometimes."
Zuko looked at him with an awkward-looking frown, looking to Lu Ten for reaction.
"They aren't crazy, they are just a bit... larger than life."
"They suck the life out of any room that they enter."
"You're just being dramatic. I know the real reason you don't wanna go."
"And what's that?"
"Darla."
Kenton's lips pressed into a line, eyes narrowing at the man across from him.
"You know you're going to have to get along with her eventually."
"Hell, no, I won't!"
"Wait." Zuko interrupted. "This is your older sister, right? The one who couldn't come to your wedding because her guru told her not to."
"Yeah, that's her." Keton groaned. "Darla, the fabulous."
"She's melodramatic, yes, but she's still your sister."
"She's a bitch is what she is." He sighed, sitting next to Zuko at the bar, "She's so wrapped up in her fake accents and all her husband that she doesn't see anything beyond herself. Never has."
Lu Ten went back to making dinner. "I just think she is who she is, can't really be mad at her for that."
"It's not being herself, it's being fake and all mighty and making everyone else in the family feel like we're the embarrassment."
Zuko was intrigued. "But you guys are all doctors, how can you be an embarrassment?" He asked, and then right away got a nasty look from Lu Ten. A look that said 'shut up'.
"Cause she frowns upon the profession. She's one of those modern types that things that OBGYNs are destroying motherhood. Refused to have any kind of doctor involved in the birth of her three kids, even though the middle one damn near died because of it. She thinks of us as some kind of witch doctors!"
Zuko looked at him with wide eyes. "Oh…"
"And that's why I didn't wanna go on this fucking trip, ya' know? The last thing I want or need is to have the fabulous Marie Marche judging me every moment of my life when I'm supposed to be on vacation. No thanks."
Lu Ten just frowned, looking at his husband with sympathetic eyes.
Zuko's jaw dropped, "Wait… your sister is Marie Marche. As in Marie Marche, the actress?"
Kenton growled again, deeper this time, throwing his head back.
Su Wun Extended Suites
Room 245
145 Studio Ln.
He popped open the door to his suite, finding that he wasn't alone at all.
"I've never been happier to see you!" Sokka cried, flopping down onto the bed with her. Azula giggled at him, reaching down and petting the back of his head which was pressed to her stomach. "I missed my babies!"
"We missed you too." She smiled. "I wanted to surprise you."
"Well, you did." he looked up at her, smiling. He sat up kissing her hard on the lips. Azula kissed back, hands going to each side of his face. She wanted to keeps kissing and never stop, to make love and have things be perfect again, if even for a little while.
Sokka, though, pulled away, "I have to talk to you about something."
She creased her eyebrows, "I don't wanna talk, I just wanna fuck."
He laughed, shaking his head. "As fun as that sounds, I have to talk to you about this. There was a woman at work…"
Azula's stomach sank, face hardening.
"I work with her. Her name's Min. I liked working with her, and was friendly, you know how I am. She was kinda… I guess flirty back. I mean I didn't know she was flirting at the time, but looking back I guess I see it now."
"What happened?" She asked flatly.
"Well, she invited me over for dinner the other night, and I went. And it was nice, but then she was very… friendly. And she kissed me."
Azula stiffened, something that Sokka noticed. He reached out and took her hand into his. "I didn't do anything back. I didn't even want her to kiss me. Then today, just before I got here, she was in my office. She got a little more… friendly. She offered me to come over tonight if I wanted. And so I came home and here you were."
"So…" She sucked her teeth, "Do you like her?"
"NO!" He cried. "Not at all! I mean, yeah, she's pretty but she's nothing like you, I feel nothing for her. She just forced herself on me and I reacted, and it was horrible because I was just thinking about you the entire time, wishing that you and not her were there."
Azula finally smiled, smirked actually. "Did you get a hard on when she groped you?"
Sokka pulled away from her, tucking his hands under his arms and looking half bashful, half horrified. It actually made her laugh, a hand running over her stomach.
"It's okay." She smiled. "You don't have to be upset. I'm not mad."
"You're not?"
"Nah." She smiled. "It was uninvited, and you clearly don't want anything to do with this… what I can assume is a huge slut with a gaping vagina." She said the last words with a bit of a grind in her voice, a twitch in her eye. She relaxed, shaking her head as to relieve the internal pressure. "It's not your fault."
"Well... you're taking this better than I thought you would."
She shrugged, "If you wanna know the truth, I'm relieved."
The one side of his lips dropped to the side, eye brow raising. "Huh?"
With a giggle she looked at him with that side stare that he loved so. "I told Lu Ten about us, right after we started going out together."
"Even when I was with Suki?"
"Even when you were with Suki. I told him everything about the bike rides and what happened at your house and in my dorm, all of it. You wanna know the first thing he told me?"
"To not do it?"
"Actually no." She laughed. "He said to do whatever I wanted to. But that I should know that relationships that start out in cheating hardly ever work out. He encouraged me to take our affair for what it was, temporary."
He looked at her sadly, taking her hand into his again.
"So I always thought that you would stray, that you would cheat on me. Just like you did Suki."
"But you're way more fun that Suki."
"Well, yeah." She said slyly, with a small smirk. "But you did love her once. Things went sour. I fell into your lap and we had what we had. So I had no way of knowing what you'd do if someone else fell into your lap when things got bad with us. Now I know different."
"You do?"
"Yeah. Things between us are… trying right now. While we're still very much in love,and very much going ok, things are just rough. So the fact that you had a woman thrown at you and you stayed true is pretty… amazing."
"Well, yeah." He smiled, "Because I love you. You're my girl."
Azula shook her head another giggling slipping from her. "I am." She reached next to her, grabbing the yellow envelope she'd gotten earlier in the day. "This is the real reason I've come today."
"Oooo?" He sat next to her on the bed as she told him about her day. Even though her visit was a surprise, the fact that she was going to have a sonogram was not.
Together they opened up the envelope, Sokka getting the biggest grin on his face. "Correction." He turned to look at her. "You're my girls."
Azula looked the picture, and at the little pink bow that bad been placed on the outline of the child's head.
The Jasmine Dragon
15 Upper Bing Street
Iroh took stuffed another piece of cake into his mouth happily, grinning at his wife-to-be.
"What do you think, dear?" Ma Lin asked.
"It's good. But I'm not sure about the lemon."
"Mmmm…" She looked at the plate of cake samples, "Would you like to try the almond one again?"
He grinned, "Yes please."
She just giggled, taking a piece of the cake and feeding it to him. Iroh just smiled, chewing happily. They, together, were pouring over wedding magazines and pinterest boards, planning their wedding which was only a few months down the road. The guest list was finalized, the cake was being picked at, the dresses would be fitted in the next few weeks.
"Is there anything else we need to worry about?" Iroh asked once he'd eaten his last piece of cake.
"I don't think so." She smiled. "Most things have been taken care of. Just have to wait for Azula to have the baby so we can get fittings for them. Other than that, everything is on track."
He smiled, taking a sip of his tea. "Well, good."
Ma Lin laid her head on Iroh's shoulder, looking out at the tea shop around them. There were a handful of people in there for afternoon tea, the two waitresses who worked there helping the guests. The place had never gotten much traffic, even though it was well known around the city for being the place to get tea. It was mostly just something for Iroh to do. He loves it, but it was very very profitable.
"Will you keep the shop?" She asked, rubbing his arm.
"Oh course." he smiled, "I love this shop, this building."
"As do I, darling. But how are we going to have two business and two homes?"
Iroh swallowed hard, "I was thinking we could keep both. I mean, you don't really want to move in with me, do you?"
"Well, I figured we would." She insisted. "What's the point of getting married?"
"Because we love one another, and we love spending time together."
"And we're going to move in together. That only makes sense."
Iroh frowned, sitting his tea down. He'd not thought about post-married life that much. He just assumed that they would be like they were now. One of the good things about being his age was that things were much more transparent. Sadly, after this, it was apparent that for the first time they were not on the same page.
"I thought we would both maintain our separate homes and business. Then just go to one another's places as we wanted to."
"Huh?"
"We have our own places. If you wanna come over, then you come over, if I wanna go over, I go over. We can spend our evenings together, just have our own places to go to when we want to be alone."
She looked insulted, eyes showing hurt. "Is it that you don't want to live with me?"
"No dear, that's not it at all. I've just lived on my own for so long I'm not sure if anyone would want to live with me." It was a half truth. He was nervous about having to live with someone else. He'd grown used to his settings and his routines. He did love her, but he was scared of giving that up.
"I wish you could have told me this." She sighed.
"It doesn't change things that much, dose it?"
La Min sighed, reaching out and grabbing the magazines that were in front of them. "I'm not really sure Iroh." She said, holding her things close to her as she held her items close to her chest.