alwaysroomforhope | (no subject)

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The building would go a lot quicker if there were two people working on it. But maybe, Steph eventually realises, once her anger has subsided enough for her to think in as close to a straight line as she ever gets, it isn't the end result that's important.

She can't sit still for too long in this weather. They'll have to move at least some of the gear from the hide tent into the igloo, whatever they're going to need to weather out a storm, Steph guesses. Lamps. Clothing. As much food as theyv'e got. Not hunting gear and none of the drying racks. Probably flooring of some kind. She has no idea what the floor of an igloo consists of - just ice? Definitely the sleeping roll and as many of the other furs as possible, then.

Tea. Definitely tea.

Rope, because they'll need to be able to find their way to the lat and back, and Steph has some recent and painful experience with white-out storms. Her pack, because there's still a handful of dried food supplements and a thermal blanket, which might be useful.

She tidies everything, folds sealskins over the equipment that they won't need in the igloo, moves what they will need into the centre of the tent in preparation for carrying it over.

And then when she's done, quiet and calm - at least on the surface - she makes tea again, and kneels down by the fire to wait, resisting the urge to go to him.

(she has no idea what she's doing, no idea how to fix anything. but she has to try.)

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Eventually, he calms. Maybe not as calm as he was before the radio, but maybe it's better that way. There's a fire in his chest that makes it hard to breathe and it hurts.

But at least it's a feeling.

The tent entrance flaps and lifts and Sokka ducks his head inside, sees the work Steph has done, and looks at her with dark blue eyes. "It's ready," he says quietly, soft but not monotone the way it was before. Testing and wary. "You can go look at it, before we move stuff. It's small."

This is a warning. It's very small.

"Thank you," Steph says, meaning it, quiet and - worried, too. If it was awkward before, not it's even more. She refills the single teacup before getting to her feet, offering it to him. "I'm pretty small too, I'll probably fit."

Setting up the little tent is an option, but ...

Sokka nods awkwardly, agreeing. She'll fit, it'll just be-- close. Very close, especially when it gets cold and they really will have to move close to share heat, amid the furs, heads covered. And the things they'd said to each other, however true, were cruel.

He blinks, tea cup presented in front of his nose, and takes it slowly with still-gloved hands.

"...yeah," he agrees quietly, glancing back in the direction of the igloo, "but... still. Go look and... tell me what you think. If you think we'll need anything else."

But still ... true. Steph nods, her hands over his mittens when she passes the teacup, pressing for a second. "I will, but I think you'd know better than me." Her voice is quiet too. "...What happened?"

Because it just blew up out of nowhere, and Steph's too used to blowing up in return to have stopped and thought about why it might have happened until after.

He was already nodding, mouth opening to say that he knew the logistics of the igloo, but if there was anything extra she personally might need then...

Her question silences him. It also takes the wind out of his sails, shoulders slumping, hands relaxing beneath hers.

"...I'm sorry. I shouldn't have-- it wasn't right for me to talk to you like that. You didn't do anything to deserve it."

Something relaxes inside Steph, tightness loosening, and she smiles just a tiny bit, looking up at him, hands still around his mittens.

"I had no right to come barging in here and just expect you to be OK with it, either. Or to explode at you like that. I'm sorry."

She'll go check the igloo out like he asked in a second - but apologising first.

He nods, accepting that. They both messed up, said things they didn't mean to.

But it's important for them both to understand: they weren't things they didn't mean.

Sokka hesitates, hands around the tea cup, then bends to set it aside on top of the packs. So he can take her hands in both of us, meet her gaze, dark and serious.

Though it's like a dam broke, the mask he's been wearing, that look in his eyes all gone - there's hurt and wariness and fear and a tiny glimmer of hope looking back at her.

"...you really can't leave?"

She nods as well, hearing the unsaid and accepting it. She needs to think about those, about what he said. But he didn't say them to hurt - neither of them were speaking to hurt. And it's good to have that cleared up.

And then he's looking at her like that, and her heart melts with concern for him, and love, and worry, even as she hesitates with her answer.

"... I can," she says finally, settling for the truth. Because he'd know, anyway. "If you want me to. I can call Hal to give me a lift, when the sky is clear again."

She wouldn't have given him no options. She just ... didn't want to make it easy to be gotten rid of, either.

He's quiet for a long moment, looking down at their hands, both mittened and warm in leather and fur, skin hidden from each other. He'd wanted to touch her yesterday, but nearly as much as he'd wanted to stay away from her.

Today, it's-- almost the opposite.

"The storm should last a few days," Sokka reports, quiet. "Maybe a week. I won't be sure until it gets here. You should go when it does, before another one picks up."

Steph nods, and hesitates again before stretching up on tiptoes to kiss his cheek, a gesture that's at once familiar and awkward. Because it's been so long and she's missed him so much, but now it's ... yes.

Her lips are soft and warm and his skin is chilled from outside, bristly and cool.

"Okay." If he still wants her to go. (She doesn't want to. But she is eating food and taking up space.)

"... I'll go check out your building."

His eyes close before her lips even land, but he lets out a breath that softens his shoulders the moment that tiny touch of warmth lands on his cheek.

Sokka squeezes her hands.

"I'll come with you."

This-- probably, from the way he's said it, has nothing to do with the building outside.

It almost sounded unusre. And that tiny voice - Steph isn't letting go of his hands, looking up at his face surrounded by fur and leather, so different from the cleanshaven boy in t-shirts and jeans she remembers and so exactly the same anyway.

"Like I'd ever tell you not to."

Edited 2009-09-30 22:28 (UTC)

Brown leather parka, white fur of his hood around his neck, face rough with stubble, save for the beard on his chin, so much like his father's. He's slow and sure and not as quick to smile, a little more defined in the face from hard work and hunting, and finding it so hard to meet her eyes.

Sokka nods and squeezes her hands again.

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Steph."

For the fight, for everything that came before it.

"... why?" Steph leans against him a little, their hands and twenty-five-million layers of parka between them, catching his eyes and trying to hold them, her own clear and calm, not hurt or angry or defiant, just - existing. Wanting to be what he needs, because that's what she wants.

"... actually, you don't even have to answer that, it doesn't matter." He's sorry for something, perceived or real, but ... it still doesn't matter.

"You're ... you're family. So forget it. I love you."

Sokka doesn't move, letting her lean, letting her search for his gaze, but blue eyes track elsewhere, sliding away to avoid her hold. Guilt or shame or maybe both.

"Because you were right. I haven't been confronting anything, or doing anything I said I would. I've been... hiding."

Hiding in a world that helps him forget everything that came after the day the Avatar came to the South Pole.

Steph lets his hands go so that she can wrap her arms around his waist instead, leaning against him, cheek to parka instead of trying to look him in the eyes when he doesn't want to.

"I'm always right," she reminds him, gently teasing. Very gently. "... it's OK. You are doing what you said you would - you're taking time for yourself."

What he wants to do with it isn't up to her, and she shouldn't have called it hiding, even if it is. Maybe. She doesn't know what she should be saying to make him feel better. Why don't boyfriends come with instruction manuals?

He startles a little with the sudden hug, but only for a moment. Slowly, Sokka's posture relaxes until he's curled around her, arms curled all the way around her, as far as he can reach.

"I don't know what I'm doing," he admits softly into blonde hair, hands clenching helplessly at her back. "Other than not accomplishing much. And...

"Mel said Loo stopped asking for me. She didn't say anything about Hana."

Oh, that little voice breaks her heart. She hugs him tight, as if she could somehow make up for everything simply by constricting his breathing.

"They miss you. They miss you so much. They probably just stopped asking because Mel got all grim and cross when they mentioned you?"

She's not sure about the last part, and it shows in her voice. But the first two sentences - she's sure of that.

But she's not sure about the last.

All the same, the certainty in her tone - they miss you so much - and Mel's bitter, angry voice in his head just brings the point, well...

Home.

Sokka nods, hugs Steph tighter, then leans back a little. Putting space between them and the emotions that are just-- too, too strong around Steph.

"We really should get ready," he murmurs, glancing toward the tent flap.

The wind is rising outside - Steph can hear it too now, and she nods - but she leans up to kiss his cheek again before letting him have space, turning to pick up a bundle of sealskin-wrapped jerky.

"So, this igloo you made ... enough space to train in?"

Because he always wanted to spend a day - or a few days or a week - inside a tiny space with a woman who has serious trouble sitting still.

Actually, it's only just now, as she says that, when Sokka realizes just how monstrously bad of an idea this all really is.

He blinks at her, then looks over, abruptly anxious. "Uh, Steph," he begins and - fails for words.

Instead, he lifts the tent flap for her to see.

The igloo can comfortably fit two people... if they don't try to stand or move around too much.

Steph laughs, just a little soft giggle really but it's the first laughter in a while. "I was teasing," she reassures him, ducking under his arm to peek out at it. It's about as big as she expected - she helped lay the foundations. "I promise, I'll be as good as I possibly can. Besides, there's more to life than fighting. Or training to fight."

So there, Batman. SO THERE.

"And you can always kick me out if I snore."

"Sure, if I want you to freeze to death," Sokka points out, though he's smiling, helplessly amused with her. He's lived in snow and ice for - four months? has it been so long? - and there's blue sky above his head and his tent is neon red, but he's watching Steph in her bright pink parka and thinks he's seeing in color for the first time in a long time.

He's still smiling, watching her inspect the igloo.

"You never know," she says, grinning, and links her free arm through his to drag him over to the igloo, through the first flurries of snow. It's light and soft and the first few flakes stick to the outside of their parkas, but they melt on Sokka's face, and Steph wants to kiss them off for the first time since arriving.

Things are okay again.

"It might be your only form of self-defence. Hey, this thing is way warmer than I thought - awesome!"

Sokka gives her a very light, very loving shove into the igloo, smirking behind her.

Then kneels to peer in at her and grin.

"That's part of why it's so small. The friction of the ice keeps it warm by itself. Add in body heat and there's a chance we'll get too hot, without even making a fire."

Body heat. Steph's smile suddenly has an added element to it. She reaches out to grab his hands and yank him in as well.

"Yeah? What about other kinds of fire?"

Seven months is a long time. And he's still her favourite person in the entire world.
"I mean, after I bring you up to date on the farm and the girls. Up to, like, a month ago when I left, anyway."

Sokka is adding in even more body heat. Just from the face.

Dragged in and suddenly very close and almost-not-quite-horizontal with her, Sokka hesitates and keeps hold of her hands. Seven months is a long time, but so is four when you're a teenager - or in your early twenties.

He... hesitates, fingers linked with hers.

"...so what was happening when you left?"

Steph wraps her mittened fingers around his, wriggling back to lie on the snow, not quite touching except for hands. Just ... close, and happy with that.

"Mel and I fought a herd of enormous beast things," she recalls. It was nearly four months ago that she left the farm, in her time. She frowns a little, because they'd killed a lot of them. "Pretty gory. Oh!"

Dismay, outright.

"And they crushed my bike!"

She loved that motorbike.

Sokka frowns a little, concerned especially for 'gory.' But it's the exclamation that really gets him, sitting up a little in the snow, brows drawn and worried and--

Actually looking just as dismayed.

"What?! Your bike?! The purple one?"

He helped tune that motorbike!

"I know!" Steph exclaims, scowling at the absent monsters, grumpy as anything. "And all the work you put into it, and me, and you even painted it for me! Ohhh, I was not happy."

She folds her arms, lying back in the snow, glaring at the ceiling - and then laughs at herself. "Mel and I rode the monsters for, like, a hundred miles, and then we had to walk back. It took us a day and a half. That day sucked."

Sokka continues frowning, grumpy and irritable because, damn it, he liked that bike for Steph and she liked it, too, and they'd worked together to get it running so well, and maybe he can just build her a new one when they get back, yeah, he'll grab a Honda chassis with a Harley engine and some dirt biking tires and he'll...

...he'll think, for the first time in four months, about technology more high-class than a knife made out of stone used for carving.

Smile slow and thoughtful now, Sokka reaches over to tuck blonde hair behind Steph's ear. "You guys probably had the time of your lives," he points out, amused. "Sounds like something you'd both do by choice."

Steph wrinkles her nose ... and grins just a little, especially with his hand at her face. "The camping was fun," she admits. "I don't know about all those monsters."

It was fun at the time, but ... Steph thinks she was probably a little bit crazy at the time.

"I like them best when they stay away from the farm and we go to them. Plus, Hana and Loo were super grumpy that we missed storytime. Iroh had to tell them the catper book about fifty times before they'd sleep, apparently."

Which is funny again.

"They still haven't burned that book? I'm not sure if I want to go back."

At this point, Sokka would probably read the catper book fifty thousand times, just to get his family to forgive him.

Steph laughs, but it dies quick. She reaches up to touch his cheek, a bit aimlessly, a bit just wanting to touch, to reassure herself he's here. If only for now.

"... do you? Want to go back? I mean, it's been so long..."

He blinks at her touch, then looks away for a moment. They're lying on their sides in snow and fur, close but not touching save for the hand on his cheek.

"...I think if I don't go now, when you're here to make me, I might never go back," he admits quietly. "Mel... she's really angry with me. I don't know if she needs me, I don't know if anyone's better off if I'm there... but if she's mad enough to say... things, then she at least wants me there. Maybe... maybe that's enough for now."

Steph brushes her thumb against his nose gently.

"... everyone wants you back," she says, and grins suddenly, relief and delight. "Mel's angry, the girls are lonely, even Spots wants you back. And I don't think Mel knows how much she needs you either, but I know - she does. You don't stop needing family just 'cause you're mad at them."

"And I need you, too.

"... and I need you alive, so we should drag the supplies in here before I sit you down and tell you just how much."

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