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Grandma is fussing over Wu again. They've headed toward the kitchen, Wu's half-hearted attempts to learn self defense and full-hearted attempts to pry Mako's life story out of him long since abandoned in the face of lemonade and sweets. Mako drifts along in their wake, watching as Grandma Yin's awe at meeting royalty melts away in the face of Wu's flailing hand gestures and effervescent good humor.
(Mako will not be calling it 'charm'. Charm implies intent. Every time Wu has attempted to be charming has ended with a drink flung in his face and Mako having to smooth things over. Smoothing things over not being Mako's particular skill set, this frequently ends with Mako taking a drink to the face and someone getting a fist to the face.)
Grandma Yin reaches over and smooths Wu's hair back from his face. They both chuckle when Wu's incorrigible curls flop right back into his eyes.
Mako glances away, not sure what to do with the way his stomach twists at the sight, something in him yearning to touch or be touched, he isn't sure which. He wants to be the one to smooth Wu's hair. He wants to be the one his grandmother mothers. The irrational urge to knock something over just so they have to look back and see him rises up like acid in the back of his throat. He shoves his hands in his pockets, rolling his fingers into fists.
Ahead of him, Wu laughs and a shard of ice lodges itself in his chest. His gaze is pulled back, always pulled back, to Wu, like Mako is a compass and the prince is magnetic north.
Wu laughs with his whole body when he really means it - he throws his head back, squints his eyes, shakes with the force of his own joy. Mako would never admit it but he loves that laugh, loves watching the way the prince throws himself into it, loves watching the way Wu takes up all the space around him and then some.
Mako remembers when he first met Wu, how tense and self-contained the prince had been, how painfully formal he was, the way his movements were always so small, his limbs tucked in close to his body, nothing like the mess of elbows and knees and flailing hands he is now. Mako used to tell him jokes under his breath when they were stuck standing around for the seemingly endless gauntlet of photo ops and red carpets and smile-and-wave non-events they'd run every day. Silly jokes - the kinds he'd hoard away to make Bolin smile when they were young and life was an endless cycle of hunger and need. And slowly, slowly, like an ice sculpture encountering spring for the first time, Wu had thawed, melting into the brash, chaotic man he is now.
(Raiko used to shoot him dirty looks over Wu's head every time the prince bit back a laugh at those events, as if, though he'd never caught him, the president sensed Mako was corrupting his favorite political prop.)
But now Wu is laughing with his whole self and he's turned his bright eyes and brighter smile on Grandma Yin, who smiles indulgently and pats Wu's cheek.
(Mako pushes the thought away, but shame curls in the center of his chest, because the first and last time Grandma Yin tried to pat his cheek he hadn't seen it coming and flinched as if anticipating a blow. She'd never tried again and Mako didn't know how to tell her how much he wishes she'd reach for him and how, after years with the Threats, it's baked into his bones to duck away from hands in his face. How both are true: the yearning and the flinching and how he doesn't know how to ask for gentleness but he craves it like sunlight.)
He focuses on Wu instead. The prince is chattering away about...something. Something to do with Ba Sing Se and somehow, despite living in entirely different rings, he's hit upon common ground with Grandma and they're swapping stories rapid-fire in the kind of regional shorthand that exists between two people who know a place inside and out.
Mako realizes, with a sinking sensation, that he's not needed in this conversation. He's superfluous. Why had he followed them anyway? What is it about him that makes him hang onto the edges of things even when he knows he's excess to requirements?
He takes a step back, then another, then he's fading into the background and out the door on silent feet.
...
He finds himself in Asami's workshop partially because he doesn't know where else to go in her massive house and partially because it feels like every corner he turns he's crashing into some new cousin he swears he's never met before. It doesn't help that every time they run into him they say some variation of "oh you're Mako, the fire bender cousin," which really just pushes the knife of alienation deeper.
He leans against a work bench and watches Asami attack something large, metal, and currently undefinable with a welding torch, sparks flaring and cascading around her welder's mask like tiny fireworks. She doesn't look up when he comes in, although he's sure she's noticed him. Nothing happens in Asami's shop without her noticing. She just finishes the seam, shuts off her welding torch, turns off the machine, and then, with all the safety measures observed, pops her mask up and looks at him.
"Hiding from your family or hiding from the prince?" she asks.
"Hiding from me or hiding from Korra?" Mako snipes back because he's in a bad mood and Asami knows him too well.
"Well if I was hiding from you, I've failed spectacularly," Asami says, red lips curling into one of her amused half-smiles. Her hair is tied back in a messy knot to keep it away from any stray sparks, and there's a spot of grease on her cheek. She looks so much more herself than she had when she'd shown up at the restaurant, all neat and tidy and trying too hard under her serene exterior.
Mako nods at the mess of metal between them. "So?"
Asami sighs, "I'm not hiding."
Mako raises an eyebrow. Asami makes a face that says 'hypocrite' at him without needing to say the words.
She's right. Mako has no right to push her like this without offering any honesty in return.
"Grandma is fussing over Wu again. I was," he shrugs awkwardly, "not needed."
Asami gives him a Look. "I think his highness would argue you're always needed."
Mako scowls and resists the urge to fold his arms across his chest petulantly. "It's weird. I'm -" what? 'I'm used to having all his attention?' 'I'm used to being the eye of tropical storm Wu and it itches under my skin to not have his eyes on me?'. That sounds insane. And controlling. And just...bad. It sounds bad. So Mako will not be saying it. "I'm used to it just being the two of us," he finishes lamely. He's used to the strange little world they've made out of their suite at the Four Elements, the world that was just the two of them, the familiar shape of Mako-and-Wu at home versus the play acting involved in being Mako-and-Wu in public. Here it's like reality has infiltrated their private world and disrupted everything.
"And you're weird about Yin," Asami isn't pulling any punches today. That's what Mako gets for his dig about hiding from Korra, he supposes.
"I'm not weird about Yin," he snaps for form's sake, "I'm weird about," he gestures vaguely, "family. All of...that."
Despite his near-incoherent response, Asami nods like he's said something she understands too well. She comes around to the other side of her current work table to lean her back against it, facing Mako. She picks at the tips of her gloves' fingers and says, "Family is hard," when the silence goes a little too long.
Mako snorts, tries for levity, fails, "I think Wu likes my grandma more than me." He laughs but there's a bitter edge to it he can't take back, "I think my grandma likes the Earth King better than me too."
"Don't be ridiculous, Wu adores you," Asami says, "you know, when he's fake flirting with me, his eyes are on you. And your grandmother, Mako, you and Bolin finding her was a miracle. Of course she loves you."
Mako shrugs. His skin is too tight. "Loving someone and liking someone mean different things, Sami."
Asami grimaces, glancing away, still picking at the flaking leather of her gloves, "You were right. About me hiding from Korra."
Mako doesn't say anything. What is there to say other than 'of course I was right, I'm a detective'? (He's pretty sure Bolin would know something to say other than that but while Bolin was learning social graces Mako was learning how to kill people and fix an ostrich horse races.)
"I've been writing to Korra," Asami continues. "At first she didn't write me back but then she did and it was good. It was...it was precious, to me. To have that piece of her. To be able to tell her things I couldn't imagine saying out loud to anyone. But now she's here and I'm so happy but it's also..."
"Weird?" Mako offers
Asami snorts, an unladylike sound, "Yeah, weird. It's like I've only just realized I cracked myself open and now I'm trying to stuff my guts back inside before she sees. And," she chews on her bottom lip, red lipstick staining her just a little bit. "And now that she's here and I can touch her, and hold her and - it's scary. So I'm hiding."
They stand in silence for a long moment. Mako appreciates this about Asami, she knows how to be silent together.
"For what it's worth," he offers, "I think Korra's trying to stuff her guts back in too. Except she's having to do that and relearn how to be the Avatar in public too. Maybe you should just....be messy together? Things will work out."
Asami gives a choked little laugh, "'Things will work out'? What happened to my cynical friend Mako? He was just here, tall, dark hair, resting frowny face?"
"Just say bitch face like everyone else," Mako sighs gustily.
"Nope," Asami smiles, "I like frowny face better."
He rolls his eyes at her and she reaches out a foot and kicks at his ankles.
"Hey, Mako. You should go talk to your grandma. Tell her what you told me. Well, not exactly what you told me. Tell her you don't know how to be a family but that you're trying. And that you appreciate her love and want to get to know her. She's holding back from you because you're holding back from her. She doesn't want to scare you off. As for your prince - stop being a jealous weirdo."
Mako blinks, momentarily stunned, "Did you just call me a weirdo?"
Asami sighs, "I've been spending too much time with Ikki and Meelo. But my point stands."
"Yeah, it does."
"You'll figure out how to be the two of you around other people. Just give it time."
"You will too, you know," Mako says, "you and Korra."
"Thanks, Mako," Asami offers one her warm smiles and Mako can't help but smile back.
A few minutes later, after extracting a solemn promise from Asami to leave her workshop at a reasonable time and to be very normal and not avoid Korra at dinner, Mako steps into the hallway feeling lighter. He's halfway down the hall when he turns a corner and nearly careens straight into Wu who teeters on his feet, arms flailing. On reflex, Mako reaches out and catches him by the waist, stabilizing him. Wu still lurches forward a little, hands coming up to rest on Mako's arms.
(Mako pretends like every single nerve ending isn't lighting up like a New Years lantern at the feeling of Wu's soft, pampered skin on his own.)
"There you are, big guy," Wu chirps, "I was just looking for you! You snuck away from us before Ms. Yin could get the Mooncakes out. You know, she is a fantastic lady and she makes the best Mooncakes I've ever tasted. And I have tasted a lot of Mooncakes in my time. I saved some of the lotus paste ones for you. I know they're your favorite, don't deny it."
And Mako isn't sure if it's the chat with Asami putting his head back on straight, or if something as simple as Wu remembering his favorite mooncake filling has set the tangle of thoughts and feelings in his head right again, but he feels better. Clearer, somehow, like he just needed to rinse his heart and his head out for everything to make sense again.
He still hasn't let go of Wu. The prince hasn't let go of him either.
Later, he'll talk to his grandmother. Maybe offer up a little sliver of his fractured past, not enough to make her cry, he hopes, but enough to help her understand. So she knows that he's reaching back in his own way even if it doesn't always seem like he is.
But for now, Mooncakes.