deercountry | it's the solstice

Who: Mako, Wu, & close CR
What: They might be in a different world, but the solstice is the solstice, and that means it's time to feed everyone you care about, if you're Mako
When: Night of December 21st
Where: Mako and Wu's loft above the Raccoon Room

Content warnings: Sadness from potential memory-share stuff, homesickness, mentions of Mako and Bo's dead parents

© TESSISAMESS

If you have close CR with Mako or Wu, in the days leading up to the Winter Solstice—December 21st—you may have gotten a small text invite in your inbox. A few simple lines inviting you to the Raccoon Room on the night of the 21st for dinner "because it's the solstice." Normally the Raccoon Room is closed early in the week, but on the 21st they've opened it up.

They're actually having people over in the loft above the Raccoon Room, and their living space is decked out in lanterns and candles to keep out the long darkness. Snow falls quietly outside, but in here it's warm and it smells like ginger and pepper. Wu's put on a few scratchy records in the background. Here and there, Winter Mournings are hung, not quite out of reach. It's very easy to accidentally or purposefully touch one.

If anyone comes in early enough, Mako is still at the counter with his sleeves rolled up, rolling dumplings, covered in rice flour. Maybe help him cook? He's looking better than he was early in the month: his skin is the correct pallor without that odd gray cast, and there's no smoke rolling off his body, so that... has to be good!

For the later arrivals, Mako's made dinner, which means hot tangyuan in gingery broth, an entire bowl of mushroom noodles for sharing, and a simmering pot of broth for people to cook things in, as well as a lot of a tangy sauce that Mako gets kind of cagey about when people try. Sit down, enjoy some hot pot! It's a time to be together, after all.

[ ooc: tag around, top-level, have a good time! ]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Hey, I get it.

[ It's hard to listen to him talk like that for reasons Mako can't put a finger on. Mako doesn't know the situation, exactly: maybe it's true, maybe Ryan really did blow up his life for the sake of pride and ego, but something tells Mako that isn't the whole story. Ego's one thing, and pride a powerful motivator, but Mako's done shit like that, and it was more about trying to do the right thing. Be good, while fucking it up immensely.

He lets out a slow breath, watching a car drive past and ignore Ryan completely. ]

When, uh. When Korra and I broke up—did I tell you we dated? It didn't... go well. We're better friends. But I broke up with her at the worst possible time, when she really needed support, and I ended up driving her straight to her shitty manipulative uncle who was trying to start a civil war. You don't... make good choices when stuff like that happens. Generally.

[The truth sits somewhere between the two. Pride doesn't quite encompass all of it, not when he was dreading Min finding out that he was a colossal fuck-up who couldn't make it on his own like he always insisted he could. At the same time, there's a part of Ryan that even in the moment knew this wasn't the right answer and did it anyway, because in that moment of falling apart it felt like the only thing that might actually work.

These are the actions of someone desperate, who doesn't think he has other choices.]

I don't think you did? But oof, that's rough. ...At least you got to stay friends after?

[Watching this version of himself in the memory, Ryan sincerely has no idea how he and Min managed to patch things up. Another car zooms past without stopping and his past self finally reacts and just groans in frustration and tangles his fingers in his hair.]

So...I already told Wu a bunch of this. [He says with the full understanding that Wu may or may not have shared it, as if to say "stop me if you've heard this one before".] But. I hitchhiked all the way back to Powell Lake, where Min and me are from. I only had a little bit of money left after that and I spent all of it on two one-way train tickets to New York City. The second I was back in town I ran to find him and told him I'd gotten us an actual show there, but that he had to leave with me right away. I framed it like I was giving him another chance, but I made it all up.

[ Mako winces again in sympathy for Ryan and Min both. He knows what it's like to be caught like that, to run out of options and end up doing things that, in retrospect are... so far from your best moments they might as well be on another continent. ]

The whole thing? Show and everything?

The train tickets were real at least?

[Ryan's not sure if that's better or worse really, considering he spent so much on them when he had almost nothing to spend.]

But yeah, the show was a lie. I just...wanted him to come with me? And I didn't think he would if I didn't have something solid to offer him.

[He turns to Mako and laughs just a little, even though the next bit isn't that funny. It's just...so absurd that it might get a rise out of him.]

When he said no, I grabbed his keys and kiiiinda ran away with them.

You forced the issue.

[ Mako fills in, his brows drawing together. He can picture Ryan's desperation, his last-ditch plan falling to pieces around his ears, rock bottom crumbling away to something deeper.

It's not the best look, and that shows pretty clearly on Mako's face. ]

Yeah. Pretty much.

[He can see that look and feel it coming off of Mako in waves, and he shrugs defensively.]

Look, I don't know why he stuck around after all of that either! Especially since it just got worse from there. I made him chase me onto a train and kinda...chucked his keys in a wormhole? That part's a long story, but it was totally not my finest hour.

[ Mako is all set to just nod along wincingly with that, watching the sun sink lower and lower over this sad lonely place, except— ]

You... want to run that by me again? What's a wormhole?

[ Thank you Ryan for that new and fun piece of terminology. Mako is picturing the cracks in the ground left by those giant awful worms back in the desert. ]

It's like, you know. A swirly magic vortex that takes you from one world to another, or something like that. They're super sci-fi.

[As though that isn't a completely absurd thing to say with no context at all. Ryan hums a bar or two of his signature song in Trench, instead of using it in a real sentence.]

♫ Go ahead, take a swing,
Is this another wormhole thing? ♫

[He doesn't go through the whole song, but it's enough to make the point, probably.]

[ Sounds a little like the portal to the spirit world. Mako imagines tossing Korra's keys in there and winces. ]

...are there a lot of wormholes in Canada?

[ It is part sarcasm and part legitimate actual question. ]

[That gets a chuckle out of Ryan. The sarcasm doesn't seem to bother him.]

Nah, man. If we told anyone from home about it, they'd think we're nuts. There isn't really magic or sci-fi weirdness there normally.

it's the solstice

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