for day 2.
Kuvira tipped her head back, a hiss escaping her. "How much longer did she say?" she asked through gritted teeth.
"I don't know," Baatar admitted, ceasing his pacing and squatting next to the chair where she sat. "How're you doing?" he asked anxiously, twisting a handkerchief in his hands. Sweat beaded on her brow, both from practice and pain from the new injury, and he wondered if dabbing it away would come off as intrusive or as a thoughtful gesture.
"How do I look like I'm doing?" she muttered, digging her nails into her palm. "It hurts like hell."
Baatar had stopped by Su's studio to deliver a message from his father. The dance troupe was mid-rehearsal when he entered, and he had stood by with his arms full of grid paper and blueprints of the new extension for the family compound. The moment his father had successfully finished the design, he had sent Baatar off to show Su, and Baatar found himself awkwardly waiting for the dancers to come to a stop. They were performing a complicated routine that consisted of more acrobatics than classical dance, and Kuvira was the featured performer. As he watched her fluid movements, her body extending, tensing, and releasing as she spiraled through the air, he felt a small smile spread over his features as waiting for Su to finish up suddenly became easy.
Now, the waiting was excruciating.
Kuvira had caught his eye during a particularly complicated segment of the routine, and consequentially the distraction rendered her unable to catch the cable that would serve as a segway into the next few moves. Instead, her body contorted into a decidedly unnatural position, her left arm still entwined in a metal cable, and with a sickening pop, the dance practice came to an untimely end. Su thought it was a shoulder dislocation, and she had dashed off to bring a healer, insisting that Kuvira would be happier if she didn't have to move.
"Sorry," Baatar said. "Do you... I mean, can I-"
"Wipe my face? Please," she said, grimacing.
He obliged, dabbing at the droplets. "It shouldn't be much longer now."
"It's amazing how an hour of practice flew by, and now time drags on like crystallized honey," she said crossly. "Time?"
"It's only been fifteen minutes, Kuvira."
She sighed noisily, ending with a strangled little gasp as the expansion of her chest caused her affected shoulder to slightly move. "I'm fine," she said, more to herself than to him. "I'm fine, I just need it popped back in... Baatar, distract me before I go crazy from waiting."
"With what?" He made the mistake of looking at her, and something about her face, with her dark furrowed brows, clenched jaw, and parted lips made his mind go embarrassingly blank. "Um.."
"Literally anything," she said, her voice a curious blend of authoritative and pleading.
The swelling had caused the area to nearly double in size, and the sight made the continuum assumption pop into Baatar's head as suddenly as Kuvira's shoulder had popped out of place. "So, I'm working on a tank model as a side thing... it's based on hydrodynamics, sort of like a modern variant of the Fire Nation counterbalanced tanks."
"So fluid dynamics?" Kuvira knew little of engineering, but prolonged exposure and patient listening to his excited ramblings had left her with a rudimentary knowledge of the subject.
"Exactly," he said. "So, fluids aren't discrete, right? They're continuous, which means-"
"All right Kuvira," Su said, the healer in tow. "Let's get that shirt off, dear. Let Master Xing pop that shoulder back into its socket."
Baatar straightened up to leave. "Wait," Kuvira said, grimacing as Su helped her peel off the damp undershirt. "Keep talking."
He thought he detected a smile on his mother's face, but it was gone so quickly that he wondered if he'd imagined it. "Right," he said, determinedly focusing on her face. "So properties of flow velocity, or density, or temperature are taken as points along a continuum..."
Kuvira nodded, her good hand closing around his. "Keep going," she said through gritted teeth as the healer readied himself to pop the distended shoulder. Baatar resumed his explanation, keeping his voice at a low, steady level. Her fingers slowly relaxed, as did her breathing, and when she was ready Su signaled the healer to proceed. He was pointing out that ionized solutions served as an exception to the rule when Kuvira pitched forward, her fingers crushing his and a tiny whimper escaping her throat as the sound of her shoulder returning to its socket interrupted him mid-description.
"There you go," Xing said soothingly, bending the water over the affected area. "We'll just put you in a sling for a few weeks and you'll be good as new."
"Thank you," Kuvira said, sighing in relief. "And Baatar, sorry about your hand.."
"Oh, this?" He shrugged. "I'm just sorry that I had to distract you with something so boring.. listening to me explain fluid dynamics must've made the shoulder feel less painful."
She smiled, her expression uncharacteristically shy as she squeezed his fingers, gently this time. "Don't be ridiculous, you make it interesting."
"What did you stop by for, Junior?" Su asked, smiling openly at the two of them. Baatar flushed and Kuvira pretended to listen to the healer, but as he gave his mother the blueprints and explained his reason for being there, he could only think of Kuvira's fluid motions through the air, the result of infinitesimally small changes in posture that flowed continuously from one pose to the next. Perhaps, he thought, fluid dynamics wasn't such a dull subject after all.
A/N: Fun fact, I know precious little about fluid dynamics but what I do know is standard boring stuff. And listening to someone talk about it is dullAF, more so than pchem. So Kuvira's either in love and doesn't know it or a dirty liar. :P