word count: 873
rating: k+
a/n: I really needed some pointless fluff in my life. So, I wrote some.
"Do you remember the first time you tried cooking water tribe food with me?" she says, her voice partially lost against the pillow she's resting upon on his lap, the hair she's kept short for years now soft under his fingers.
"Yeah, it was a disaster. You ruined nearly all the ingredients we spent hours searching for in areas of the city I didn't even know existed." Mako glances down at her, running his hand over her shoulder and arm, smiling when goosebumps appear on her skin. "I should've realized then that I'd be doing ninety percent of the cooking in our relationship..."
"Hey now, I try. And I can make noodles. You like noodles." Korra turns from her side to lie partially on her back with only a little bit of difficulty, stretching her legs across the plushy sofa they probably spent a few too many yuan on when they moved into their apartment a few months ago.
"I do like noodles," he manages to voice through his yawn, and he can feel the smile on his lips distorting his face in a strange way when he does. She raises her hand to poke at his cheek, clearly entertained by the obviously very attractive face he's just made.
"Thanks for staying up with me. I know you have to be at the station early to help Beifong tomorrow." Her touch turns soft, the prodding fingers replaced by the back of her hand rubbing softly over the stubble on his face. He leans into her touch and it's a little overly sappy for two people in their late twenties, but she's always brought that side - that grossly affectionate, nickname-making, cotton-candy-feeding side- out in him. "It's been really boring the last few times, listening to slow jazz music by myself in the middle of the night."
The music bleating through the old radio is hardly more than white-noise beneath their conversation at this point, but she says it helps when she (well, they think it's a girl) starts kicking and refuses to let Korra sleep.
"She's going to be a handful, isn't she?" He slides his hand from where it rests on her arm to her stomach and, within a few seconds, feels a flutter of kicks against his hand. It still makes his chest constrict in a way he'd never experienced until Korra had pulled his hand to her stomach, her eyes wide and mouth gaping at the movement the first time it had happened.
"Without a doubt." This time she yawns through her words, eyes staying closed even in the seconds after her yawn. He leans his head back against the sofa, letting his own eyes close before moving his hand in circles over her round stomach. His head feels excessively heavy when he lifts it again to look down at her; even as he's just barely fighting off sleep he's struck by how beautiful she is, has always been.
"Will you keep doing that, the circle rubbing thing? She's finally stopped moving around and I think that's what did it." Her voice is thick with sleep, her breathing evening out into a slow, steady pattern.
"Can we move back to our bed first?"
She opens her eyes to glare at him before forcing her feet and legs to slide from the sofa to the floor in a graceless motion. He stands, his joints cracking in slight protest when he does, before he offers his hands to help her up (that moment, the moment she realized it was now surprisingly difficult to stand up on her own, had caused hours of bickering over her stubbornness and his over-doting, but she'd conceded to his help in the end, a Momentous Victory for him during her pregnancy) and watches as she drags herself back to their room while he walks over to the radio and turns it off.
Honestly, there are few things he loves more than going to their bedroom at the end of the night and climbing into bed beside her, he thinks, as he flicks the switch to the yellow overhead light in their living room and makes his way through their apartment in the dark by memory.
He has only just settled into the warmth of their bed when Korra groans and pulls his hand onto her stomach again, moving it in circles for him in a somewhat desperate, exhausted act. "She started kicking again when I got up. This is your fault."
He can't help the breathy laugh he lets out before taking over, rubbing soft circles through the thin material of her nightshirt. "I'm sorry, I'll make it up to you, alright?"
"Will you make me seaweed noodles tomorrow?"
"I thought noodles were your thing."
"Yeah, but... I like the way you make them."
"Alright. Seaweed noodles it is." He runs through the ingredients he'll need to get before coming home in his head, watches as the clock on the wall ticks to two in the morning. He makes circles against her skin until the movement beneath his hand calms and the breathing beside him even outs, and both of them - no, not both, there are three of them, he thinks, a warmth filling his chest - finally fall asleep.