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It’s something she hadn’t anticipated would come of opening her life to Kya.
Her girlfriend is gone. She’s away for the next few months, travelling to the Earth Kingdom to help out with the rebuilding efforts.
The apartment is quiet. There’s no shuffling around the kitchen, no quiet humming of silly nomad songs, no crackling of the radio with Kya’s stupid radio drama prattling on.
The sound of silence used to soothe her. Now she thinks she might hate it.
Lin sighs, hauling herself off the sofa and over to the kitchen. She’ll just have to readjust.
She’s pulling together the fixings for dumplings and noodle soup when there’s a knock at the door. Lin frowns - she’s definitely not expecting anyone. She closes her eyes and slams her foot against the floor. A stocky man, fairly tall, bounces from foot to foot at the door. Frowning, Lin walks over to the door and throws it open.
Bolin stands opposite her, startled.
“Uh, hi Chief Beifong,” he gives her a nervous smile.
“What the flameo are you doing here?” she asks. Since both Kya and Opal are away, Lin’s sure she’s not forgotten they’re having dinner.
“Oh, well,” the boy hesitates, and Lin scowls at him. “Well, uh, Opal’s away, and Mako’s out doing police stuff, and Korra and Asami- I, uh... I don’t know why- I’ll just go, goodnight Chief-“
Lin sighs, rolling her eyes at herself and wondering what exactly it is about these brothers that trigger some kind of... caring feeling.
She reaches out to grab Bolin’s collar as he turns, and yanks him through the door. The boy yelps and automatically attempts to shake her off, but stops squirming as soon as he realises what she’s doing. Lin releases him once they’re through the door and reaches over him to push it shut. She grunts, gesturing to his shoes, and stalks off back to the kitchen.
Bolin shuffles in moments later, looking equal parts confused and relieved. Lin’s laid out a chopping board, a knife and some vegetables for him and stares at him until he comes to stand by her side.
“Uh, Chief?”
“I was making dinner. Opal says neither of you know how to cook,” she says brusquely. “So you’re going to chop the vegetables and you’re going to watch and learn. Quietly,” she adds after a moment. Bolin nods quickly and picks up a knife, watching Lin for a moment and then attempting to copy her.
It’s really quite spectacular, how wonky his cuts are. Lin barely manages to repress a snort because the boy looks so pleased with himself.
The silence, of course, lasts all of the three minutes it takes Bolin to become comfortable in the situation. He starts yammering on about some project he’s working on with Varrick, and while Lin rolls her eyes a lot, she finds she doesn’t mind the noise as much as she was expecting.
“Whoa, hold up!” Lin snaps, but it’s too late. Bolin’s howling, dropping the knife towards the floor as he shoves his finger in his mouth. Lin suspends the knife an inch from where it had been about to embed itself in Bolin’s toe.
She bends the knife onto the surface beside the sink, and immediately pushes Bolin toward the tap, yanking his hand out of his mouth and holding it under the stream.
“Have you ever held a knife before?” she asks exasperatedly. Bolin shakes his head quickly.
“N-no ma’am- uh sir- uh Chief,” he stammers. Lin rolls her eyes and quickly throws away the bloodied half an onion the boy had been attempting to cut into. She retrieves her first aid kit from the bathroom and gently pulls Bolin’s hand away from the water, pats it dry with a cloth and inspects the tip of his finger.
“Well,” she says dryly, “at least it’s still attached.”
Bolin’s eyes widen so comically that for a moment, Lin’s afraid they might escape his skull. She quickly dresses Bolin’s injured finger, before returning to wash the knife he’d attempted to maim himself with.
Bolin watches her warily as she grasps the newly-cleaned knife and takes his right hand in hers. He blinks as she wraps his index finger around the handle, and pulls his thumb out to rest on the blade. She lets go of his hand and the rest of his fingers stick out dumbly as he stares up at her.
“Well, what are you waiting for? Curl up the rest of your fingers. They’re there for support, so don’t grip the handle too tight with them,” she instructs. Bolin blinks again, and his fingers slowly come to rest on the handle.
“Good,” Lin nods. “Now when you’re holding the food in your other hand, tuck your fingertips away from the knife like this,” she demonstrates for him on one half of a new onion, and Bolin quickly copies.
“Wait, won’t it be easier to hold if you-“
“You wanna try to lose your fingers again?”
Bolin gulps, and immediately recurls his fingers around the onion. “Nope, definitely not.”
She demonstrates how to correctly dice an onion, and the boy is absolutely terrible . They’re supposed to be neat, little diced cubes. His are all different shapes and sizes, and definitely not small, but it’s... a start, she supposes.
Somewhere, between demonstrating how to correctly fold dumplings and how to season the soup (Bolin’s dumplings all fall apart and she’s not risking the quality of the soup to let him actually season it), Lin realises she might not actually be having such a terrible time. The boy asks a lot of questions (some of which she thinks are incredibly dense), and for a supposed actor, he’s not very good at imitating her. He plays with the little cutoffs and puts on silly voices when he thinks she’s not paying attention, and creates a huge mess by knocking them on the floor, babbling to himself as he hurriedly tidies it away. But she’s not annoyed. Her chest feels warm. Fond , almost.
She screws up her nose and pushes the thought away. That’s quite enough of that.
She manages to dig out a bottle of lychee wine. Lin absolutely can’t stand the stuff (it’s so sweet she’s not sure how anyone can drink it), and nor can Kya, but there’s inexplicably always a bottle in the house. Bolin gives her a surprised smile as she brings it to the table, along with her bottle of soju.
“Oh,” he says. “Thank you.”
Lin waves it off, returning to the kitchen to retrieve their plates. As they eat, Bolin begins firing questions at her, asking how her week has been, if anything interesting has happened, all the kinds of small talk she usually leaves Kya to field during their dinners.
To her surprise (Bolin’s astonishment is poorly concealed), she actually answers his questions. With full sentences, too, not just one word grunts. He seems to pick up on her sensitivity for the volume of his voice, because Lin suddenly realises he’s speaking quieter. He’s a good listener, too, reacting with anger (and also some confusion) when she details the bureaucracy that holds up the job, and asking all the right questions to keep her talking. She’s starting to see what Opal might see in this overeager polar bear puppy. He might not be that bad after all.
And then he belches loudly.
Lin’s face screws up in disgust as she looks away. For his part, the boy is very sheepish, turning a scarlet colour as he profusely apologises and starts to clear the table. He immediately begins tidying up the mess from dinner, and Lin watches him with a slight hesitance, clicking the radio on as she passes. She bites back noises of admonishment as he sets the crockery down too heavily and hums tunelessly along to the popular dance song playing. When he catches sight of her hovering, he starts to shoo her away, and falters as Lin raises an eyebrow at him. She has to smother a laugh as he hastily returns to his cleaning, banging his hand on the counter as he brings his hands back up to the sink.
Lin busies herself with drying and storing the dishes Bolin’s washed, and she’s so absorbed by the rhythm of the motions and the music that she almost misses him speak.
“Thank you for dinner. It’s been a while since I had a home cooked meal, I always forget how much better it can make you feel.”
Lin pauses for a moment, and scrutinises him. “Well, if you didn’t pull so many late nights with Varrick, you might actually be able to make it to Air Temple Island more often.”
Bolin shoots her a look and she knows she’s a hypocrite but Spirits, for a second there she sounded like Aunt Katara. She shakes off the realisation and rolls her eyes.
He doesn’t leave. Instead, he sits on the sofa, thinks better of putting his feet up on the coffee table (after seeing Lin’s warning scowl), and flips through the radio until the tinny sound of Shiro Shinobi’s voice bounces around the living room walls.
“Who’s playing tonight?” Lin asks as she swipes her reading glasses and newspaper from the ottoman beside the sofa, and pulls the cushioned cube around so she can use it as a footrest. Only, she finds Bolin sitting in her spot.
“Move,” she grunts at him, although there’s no heat to the command. The boy shuffles over absently, listening intently to the radio.
“It’s the Badgermoles and the Eel Hounds, the semifinal.” Bolin says as Lin sits, putting her feet up and donning her glasses. She flips her paper to the puzzles page.
“The Badgermoles made it through?” Lin asks, arching an eyebrow as she fills in a word on her crossword. “I missed the end of their game.”
“ What ?” Bolin turns and gapes at her. “It was only one of the most dramatic matches in recent history!” Lin looks over the top of her glasses at him, and Bolin settles into a rapid, yet detailed account of the quarterfinal against the Rabaroos.
His retelling is only stopped by the sudden increase in pitch and volume of Shinobi, and they both turn their attention back to the current match. Lin’s puzzle lays discarded at her feet as she and Bolin get sucked in.
During half time, they heatedly discuss the events of the first half, as Bolin helps himself to her teapot.
“Want some tea, Chief?”
Lin blinks, but then decides she’s not all that surprised that Bolin is making himself comfortable.
“There’s a box of Keemun in the front of the cupboard,” Lin responds. “Have you ever tried it?”
He shakes his head. “How hot should the water be?”
“Boiling,” she instructs. “And let it steep for five minutes.”
It takes Lin a moment to place the song Bolin’s butchering under his breath, but it’s an old nomad song she recognises, from when Sokka used to sing them as kids. (If she sings along with him, nobody would ever know.)
It’s late. Lin uncurls herself from her seat, stretching and letting out a soft grunt as her bones pop and her bad hip twinges. She sets her letter down on the table, and turns to Bolin.
The boy is sound asleep, letting out soft puffs of air as he breathes. His head is tipped back over the edge of the sofa and his feet are tucked up underneath him. She’s not sure exactly when he’d fallen asleep. Sometime between the end of the probending game and the hour-long radio drama that Kya is partial to. Lin absolutely abhors it herself, but Kya loves it, and is not always able to keep up with it when she’s away. So Lin suffers through it every week her girlfriend is away, and writes her a letter detailing the events. The first however long had been at least more interesting than usual - Bolin bought into the over-the-top acting and ridiculous plot lines right away. Only, he took Lin’s usual game of ‘whodunnit’ (Kya calls it ‘spoiling the show’) and elevated it to more ridiculous heights, spouting theories so absurd that even the show’s writers wouldn’t think of including them. She’s not sure Kya would enjoy the additions to the plot, but it made it much more bearable to listen to, at least.
Lin would feel bad about waking him. She fetches a blanket from the cupboard and gently manoeuvers him so that he’s in a somewhat comfortable position on the sofa, draping the blanket over him and tucking him in before she’s thought her actions through.
She laughs to herself as she heads to the bathroom. Nobody would believe him if he told them. Lin grabs a towel and a toothbrush, leaving them on the coffee table where he can see them, and sets a glass of water beside them. She goes about her nightly routine, tidying the apartment, locking the door, closing the windows and curtains, and turning out the lights.
She turns to look at Bolin one last time before she heads to bed.
She had surprisingly enjoyed the evening. Perhaps she wouldn’t mind if he invited himself over again.