[ Hei wants to tell her, That's no reason to encourage me. Instead he exhales a huff of air, tinged with rueful amusement. ] You're a masochist. [ It's muttered under his breath, almost too low for her to hear. He tries to ignore the mental riposte: So what's that make you? Instead he combs his fingers through her hair, up and down, a languid motion. The weight of her is somehow light yet confining; an unwelcome second skin needing to be sloughed off. But he doesn't. Counting backwards from fifty, listening to Korra's quiet breaths, he banishes the suffocation. It isn't so easy for him as he makes it look, to keep it all up -- the warmth, the dollops of kindness. ]
[ What if it can never be enough for Korra? Worse -- what if it leaves her exactly the way he is. Warped and bitterly aloof. ]
[ That isn't something he can ask her. He only knows he's willing to try, as much as he can. For the most idiotically simple reason: she makes him happy. ]
[ And so he strokes her smooth back, lulling, dreamlike, listening to the changes in the air until she's drifted off to sleep. ]
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[ What if it can never be enough for Korra? Worse -- what if it leaves her exactly the way he is. Warped and bitterly aloof. ]
[ That isn't something he can ask her. He only knows he's willing to try, as much as he can. For the most idiotically simple reason: she makes him happy. ]
[ And so he strokes her smooth back, lulling, dreamlike, listening to the changes in the air until she's drifted off to sleep. ]