A/N: Thank you to Rouxls Kaard for the favorite and follow!

Passed 600 views since last time, that's pretty cool.

Enjoy!

"You, me, hiking, now?" Bolin suggested to 'Mike' through his room door the following day. It was early in the morning; breakfast hadn't even happened yet. "It's the perfect time to do it!"

He heard footsteps and jumped at the door opening suddenly. 'Mike' appeared to have just woken up, wearing the bottom of his acolyte wear but not the top, showing a faint six pack and arm muscles that had been previously covered by his flowier clothes. His hair was flopped over, and his eyes were half open, narrowed down at Bolin. "Ey, it's not even sunrise," he said in a grumbly low voice, pushing his hair up and back out of his face with one hand while the other kept the door open. "'re sleepin' in…so get outta m' face." He started to close the door-

Bolin stopped it with his foot. "Come on, a little walking in the early morning never hurt anyone!" he insisted.

Vito was unamused, moving the door back so that Bolin would move his foot. "I ain't tryna hurt your feelings or whateva, yo, but workin' out without sleep is just not a good move. Good night-" He shut the door in Bolin's face.

"Hey, maybe later? I'm off again today!" Bolin conceded.

No one answered.

"Later," Bolin decided, walking off.

The second time Bolin asked, Mike was back in his own clothes and agreed, a little hesitantly, to go on the walk after asking why. "You have stuff to do in the city, don't you?" he asked.

"Not today. Taking it easy for a little bit," Bolin explained. "My teammates won't mind."

"Still, you can go wherever, whenever you want. This place can't be interesting enough to make you stick around when you could be somewhere else," Mike remarked with a small sigh.

"I disagree!" Bolin exclaimed. "You know, what makes a place interesting is the people! The people make the place, my man, and there's a certain person and or people I want to spend quality time with here." He made a pair of finger guns and pointed them both at Mike.

So he was more aware now. Someone else must have told him. And he wasn't turning away from them? "I don't know…will your bestie the Avatar smite me down for being in your presence?" Mike asked, a little more jokey in his tone and a hint of a smile on his face.

"No, Korra? She's great, but she doesn't have that much power over who I hang with. Mako used to, but he's working right now," Bolin said with a wave of his hand and a wink. "Put your best hiking shoes on and meet me in the courtyard in ten, 'kay?"

Mike only had two pairs of shoes and opted for the ones they'd given him to wear out of jail. He also decided to not wear his jacket, seeing as the day would only get warmer, keeping his yellow shirt sleeves unrolled and covering his arms.

The walk started awkwardly as the two observed each other from the side; Mike's gait was longer than Bolin's due to his height, and he had to slow down so he didn't accidentally leave the shorter earthbender in the dust. Bolin was smiling, seeing the acceptance of the invitation as a success in itself.

Eventually Bolin started to talk about pro bending, one of the few topics he thought might get things going. "This one time me and Mako got slammed into each other and nearly knocked out of the ring, but our teammate at the time just barely swiped his water in the right spot and pulled us back! The refs were screaming their heads off trying to call the play, but we were just happy to have our heads still attached," he wove one tale with a small laugh as he recalled the memory.

"Your brother and head trauma seem to go hand in hand," Mike remarked. "He mentioned his ex-girlfriend hit him with her car as their first meeting."

"Oh yeah, Asami! She's great, good at driving and electrocuting baddies, we lived with her for a bit but then her dad was kinda evil and-" he stopped himself. "Now don't get me all sidetracked, we're not here so I can blab on an on for the next hour!"

"Really? I couldn't tell."

Bolin laughed again. "You tell me something about you," he challenged Mike. "Something I don't know already." Which wasn't much.

"I lived in the Earth Kingdom for a little while," Mike said immediately. "With my grandpa."

"Oh, cool! Which part?"

"A hop and a skip away from Ba Sing Se. My grandpa's extended family had a farm out there during the war and he inherited it, eventually, after he'd outlived all of them. By then it was nothing more than fields of fruit trees and rice and he'd lived his more mobile years in the United Republic as a laborer, so he hired people to work for him."

"Sounds like a cool guy to live with," Bolin commented.

Mike nodded in agreement.

"Another thing!" he invited him to say something else, preferably not going on a tangent about a relative or someone that wasn't him.

"Hm…I almost won a dance competition once," Mike revealed, almost immediately regretting it.

"Really? You like to dance?"

Mike had anticipated mocking, for some reason, but there was none. He shrugged. "Yeah."

"Sweet! I'm terrible at dancing; I always trip on my feet from nerves," Bolin admitted. "Really embarrassing when you do it in front of every rich person in the city. You gotta teach me sometime!"

"I don't know, the styles of dance I'm familiar with are…a bit funky to learn. They were developed by people in the early United Republic by combining traditional Earth Kingdom and Fire Nation dances." There was also influence from the Water Tribe, but he didn't feel the need to mention that.

"That's the two parts of me, sounds perfect!" Bolin said, excited. "Some time when neither of us have something going on, you show me your moves." He said it in the most innocent sounding way.

Mike almost smiled. "Alright, sure. It's a date."

They kept on walking, letting the conversation go as it would from then on.

Bolin saw the hike as a success.

Mike was still a little wary of Bolin's eagerness, and he wasn't going to open up too much more right away. Still, he could admit it was kind of nice to do something that felt…normal, for once. He was there the whole time; he felt present. There was very little cloudiness in his head.

Maybe he should hike more often.

Of course, with how distracted they were by each other's company, neither teen noticed that they were being watched from afar by the Avatar.

"Come on, screw up…" she mumbled as she waited for something, anything, to go wrong.

"Korra, what are you looking at? Get back to your training!"