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Wu’s least favorite day of the year was, without a doubt, Earth Queen Hou Ting National Remembrance Day. It was a national holiday that he had been bullied guilted talked into establishing by royal decree the first year after he took the throne. His advisors had felt that it was a necessary statement of pro-royal family sentiment if he was really determined to dismantle the monarchy. And he understood their point. He did! The holiday told staunch monarchists that he wasn’t taking the throne in order to reject the history and tradition of the Earth Kingdom. It said that he was still capable of honoring the past even as he urged the nation into the future.
But it also meant that he had to eat dinner surrounded by giant portraits of his great aunt.
He got indigestion every year.
He could just hear her over his shoulder hissing, “Are those Fire Flakes on those green beans? Could you get any more unpatriotic? Don’t you think you’ve had enough rice? Your stomach is going to bloat and then what will people think of the crown? What was even the point of hiring all those tutors for you if you are going to hold your chopsticks like that?”
And in recent years there was also, “You’re still sitting here alone? Where is your wife, you ungrateful boy? Do you think heirs pop up out of the ground like weeds?”
Wu picked at his roast duck apathetically as the portraits of his great aunt berated him in his own mind.
“Your majesty,” Shu, his master of ceremonies, said loudly enough to cut the long-dead Earth Queen off mid-tirade.
Wu looked up and found Shu in front of his table with the avatar in tow. Korra was dressed in greens for the occasion. Asami holding her elbow and looking sharp in a green suit.
“Korra!” he said, sounding a bit too relieved. “Asami! How have you been enjoying the feast?”
“Everything has been beautifully put together,” Asami said. “That speech you made in honor of the late Earth Queen was perfect.”
Korra snorted. Her opinion of Earth Queen Hou Ting was well known in her inner circle, which Wu, possibly presumptuously, considered himself to be.
“I’m glad; I’m glad,” he said. “I’m sorry I couldn’t meet with you when you arrived.”
Korra shrugged and magnanimously said that she understood the demands of leadership.
“And your rooms were all satisfactory?”
“Oh, sure,” Korra said. Then she motioned behind her shoulder with her thumb. “We were talking with the guys and—”
Korra said more, but Wu didn’t hear it. Behind Korra at one of the feast hall’s tables, Mako and Bolin were sitting. Bolin caught his eye first and waved his whole arm in greeting. He elbowed his brother, who was trying to get noodles from the serving bowl to his personal bowl. Mako glanced up sharply and met Wu’s gaze. The noodles fell from his chopsticks to the tabletop.
Wu’s pulse thrummed to life at double speed, and a childish plan came to him in an instant.
“Avatar Korra!” Wu interrupted loudly enough that the nearest tables could hear him.
Korra startled at the formality. “Huh?”
“You are the bridge between the Spirit World and ours, are you not?”
“Uh, yes? Traditionally, yeah.”
“Avatar! I believe that I am being haunted by the spirit of Late Earth Queen Hou Ting!”
Wu stood suddenly. “Spirits above and below!” he cried out, raising a shaky finger to point at the air above the feast hall. “She’s here!”
And then he let his knees give out in a masterful swoon.
The hall erupted in movement and chatter as the tables that had been close enough to his to hear about the supposed haunting passed the story along to the others.
“Your majesty!” Shu exclaimed, clutching his boney hands in his silk ceremonial robe.
“Wu!”
That was Asami.
“Tui and La.”
Korra. Evidently not impressed by Wu’s acting.
Wu’s guard was on in him a moment. He weakly batted away their attempts to check him for mortal wounds.
“Avatar Korra!” he said, still pitching his voice for his audience. “This is something that only Team Avatar is capable of helping the Earth King with. Please, lend me one of your team.”
Korra shook her head in apparent dismay. Her arms were crossed over her stomach. In the initial stir, Mako had managed to make it as far as to be standing just behind the avatar and her long time girlfriend.
“Mako, would you…” She trailed off, sighed, and then simply took hold of Mako’s shoulder and shoved him in Wu’s direction.
Mako, blushing furiously, knelt and scooped Wu into his arms.
“You can’t keep doing this,” he groused.
Wu wrapped his arms around Mako’s neck and let him stand with Wu safely in his arms.
“Can too,” he said quietly just for Mako before theatrically declaring, “Oh, thank you! Whatever would I do without a big, strong member of Team Avatar to keep me safe?”
The gathered people clapped nervously as Mako continued to blush.
“Oh, but this brush with the Spirit World has left me feeling faint. I fear I must retire for the evening,” Wu said. “Please, if you would help me to my chambers, I would be ever so grateful.”
Mako pursed his lips, but Wu knew that he would be forgiven for the embarrassment he was causing him as soon as they were alone.
Bolin, who had joined the hovering circle by then, clapped Mako on the shoulder. “See you in the morning?”
“Don’t forget we have a tour of Minister Hua’s gardens at one,” Asami said.
“I hate all of you,” Mako said in a resigned tone as he carried Wu towards the door that led back to the Earth Monarch’s private apartments.
“Don’t let this put a stop to the festivities!” Wu called out to the crowd as he was carried away. “Please, carry on without me!”
Wu’s attendants and personal guard fluttered along beside them as they walked the familiar path, so Wu bravely kept up the play that he was incapacitated by his brush with his great aunt’s spirit.
Mako had on a new cologne, and Wu decided he liked it. He tried to identify the notes as they moved through the halls in pregnant silence.
Wu dismissed everyone but Mako as soon as they were in his private sitting room. Mako dropped Wu like a sack as soon as the door had shut behind the last guard.
Wu squawked and landed on the ground in an undignified heap.
“Excuse me! Is that anyway to treat someone who’s just had a fright?”
Mako put his fists on his hips and gave Wu a stern look. He was still blushing, so the effect wasn’t very intimidating.
“Wu—”
Wu cut him off. “Don’t be mad, loverboy. If I had to sit there with my great aunt staring me down any longer, I would have been sick for real.”
“People are going to get the wrong idea,” Mako said.
Rather than stand up, Wu stretched his arms behind his back and arched his spine. “I don’t know, Gaoling, Republic City, the Summer Palace, Republic City again, wherever we were when the zeppelin broke down that one time—doesn’t suggest it’s the wrong idea.”
Mako made a face. “Those were mistakes. They didn’t mean anything.”
Wu ignored the sharp twinge of hurt behind his sternum. “Oh, Mako, you flatterer. You must tell all the girls that.”
Mako rubbed his hands over his face. “Sorry. No, I didn’t mean that. But we can’t keep doing this.”
“Sneaking off for a little friendly petting, you mean.”
Mako folded his legs and seemed to collapse onto the floor next to Wu. “Yeah. That,” he said, rubbing at his face again. He ran a hand through his hair, disturbing the artful way he had done it for the feast.
Wu began to tick down a crisis list in his head. “I thought you enjoyed yourself.”
“Not the problem,” Mako said, still hiding his face.
“Then you didn’t feel… coerced?”
There was a beat and then Mako’s head shot up. The startled look on his face relieved Wu. He hadn’t thought that Mako was one of those people who didn’t realize that they could say no when the Earth King came onto them, but it was shockingly reassuring to know for sure.
“What? No! That’s not—Wu, come on. You wouldn’t do that.”
“Then what’s wrong with what we’ve been doing? What’s a handjob or two between friends?”
Mako stared at him, and the blush that had faded from his cheeks came back in full force. He rubbed the back of his wrist across his mouth as if trying to hide from the words that spilled off his tongue.
“The problem is I’m in love with you.”
The entire world tilted and it was like the cosmic puzzle box of Wu’s life finally clicked open.
“Spirits!” he exclaimed, shooting upright out of the alluring sprawl he had been holding himself in. “Since when?”
“Gaoling? No, it was before that. I don’t know.”
Mako wouldn’t meet his eyes.
“Why didn’t you say something earlier?”
“I didn’t want to ruin everything,” Mako said, sounding miserable.
“Ruin what?” Wu couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Ruin my opportunity to experience unrequited love?”
“‘Unrequited’?”
“Mako, my man, I’ve been—how many times over the years have I said that I love you?”
“Like a friend,” Mako said as if explaining something to a particularly slow child.
“No! I mean, yes, but no!” Wu sputtered and then burst, “Friendly ‘I love yous’?”
“You only ever said that you loved me. You never said that you were in love with me,” Mako said, sounding defensive.
“What’s the difference?”
“There’s a difference.”
“Mako, I’m in-love-in-love with you,” Wu said flatly.
“No need to be a jerk about it,” Mako muttered.
Wu scrambled across the floor and took hold of Mako’s collar with both fists. He straddled Mako’s thighs, and yanked Mako up to face him. Mako went wide-eyed.
“Let me know if I got this wrong,” Wu said.
Mako nodded sharply.
“You’re in love with me.”
A nod.
“You didn’t realize that I felt the same.”
Hesitation and then another nod.
“You liked the sex.”
Mako’s eyelashes fluttered, and he nodded more decisively.
“But you don’t want to keep doing it if our feelings aren’t the same.”
“Wait…” Mako said, suddenly seeming to grasp the full implications of their conversation.
“I can’t believe you made detective at nineteen,” Wu said before hauling Mako in to kiss him.
All at once, Mako came alive beneath him. He scrambled at Wu’s suit, getting his hands beneath the jacket and making fists in the waistcoat.
“I love you,” Mako gasped out between kisses.
Wu laughed at him.
“You’re in love with me,” Mako continued, kissing Wu’s cheeks and nose between words.
“Have been for a long time, thanks for noticing,” Wu said.
“Since when?” Mako demanded.
“Oh, since I saw your picture in the paper the first time,” Wu said flippantly.
Mako frowned. It was cute.
“I’m seriously asking,” he said.
Wu tried to remember when he had fallen for Mako. “I don’t know. I realized it for the first time when you rescued me from Kuvira’s soldiers. On the train.”
Mako was quiet for a moment. His face went thoughtful and solemn. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“If I hadn’t been so pissy, that never would have happened.”
“Water under the bridge, loverboy,” Wu said before leaning down to peck Mako on the mouth.
In the end, Wu decided maybe he didn’t completely hate Earth Queen Hou Ting National Remembrance Day—not when it brought him and Mako together at last.