Mentioned: Lin Beifong/Lightning Bolt Zolt, Lao Beifong/Poppy Beifong
Summary: Lin gets some unsolicited advice from her grandfather, and Lao gets some really nice cigars.
686 words
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For the life of her, Lin could never comprehend the saccharine fuss her former day school classmates always made about her entering the police academy after graduation. The rigors of her grandmother’s event calendar during the Harmony Point social season were surely both more violent and more draining than anything she’d undergone for the duration of her officer training—including her own mother’s rancid attitude about her decision to join the force.
And she could tell by the increasingly agitated vibrations of one septuagenarian heartbeat through the marble floors of the City Museum of Art that she wasn’t the only one who thought so.
With a practiced gesture, Lin discreetly signaled for the valet to bring their car around, then took hold of her Grandpa Lao’s elbow and led him towards the coat check before he could fully commit to the idea of thwacking the overdressed upstart all but begging him for investment funds with the heavy end of his cane.
“Thank you for your time, Mister, uh, rather Lord Beifong.” The sweaty, bespectacled inventor waved after them, his voice barely carrying over the chatter of the auction goers and the poised but urgent movements of the event staff. “Right, well, we look forward to hearing from…”
Her grandfather rolled his shoulder as they waited for the clerk to bring their coats, not feigning the slightest bit of interest.
“I miss the days when loons like that had to be granted an audience before they started begging for alms. That has to violate one of those city laws you've gotten so passionate about.”
Lin rolled her eyes at his perennial grouchiness and kept guiding him towards the doors. “We've been over this, grandpa. Annoying you at an event that's open to the public does not constitute any breach of the legal code.”
“Then justice eludes us still.” Grandpa Lao sighed, leaning against the building’s limestone facade. “Pass me a smoke, dear heart. Your grandmother's found my stash again.”
Lin huffed out a chuckle but still reached into her clutch to pull out the box of fire island cigars she’d nabbed from Zolt the last time she'd seen him, just to see if she could. Some master thief he was, so busy watching her metalbend her belt back through the pant loops around her waist that he didn't notice her hand in his pocket before he started kissing his way down her neck, warm and slow.
Lin caught herself and cleared her throat, grateful her grandfather was too busy lighting his cigar to register whatever had come over her.
“These are actually decent, unlike most of the tobacco this far out from Kyoshi Island. Lin, would you put a few boxes of these in my safe down at the bank for whenever your grandmother decides to raid my study again?”
“You might try actually listening to her,” Lin said. “For reasons I can't fathom, Grandma Poppy wants to keep growing older with you.”
“Yet she insists on killing me slowly with all these insipid events. Half a million yuan that grandma of yours just bid on little more than green scribbles on a stone tile, just so Lotus Park couldn't have it.”
“Spirits forbid,” Lin said dryly. “Though you never seem to complain to her face.”
“And why would I? She's already left me once, and it took years to get her back. I'm too old for all that now. Besides, I have a granddaughter with a police badge who knows I'm right.”
Despite herself, Lin smiled. “I’m hearing excuses.”
“I'm telling you how to stay married,” her grandfather said. “When you have your own personal spendthrift making asinine purchases faster than you can alert the bank, you'll remember this day.”
“You make marriage sound almost as stressful as being separated.”
“Oh, it is. There are no happy endings in this life. Just woes that are better to live with than all the rest.”
After weighing her grandmother's potential disapproval against the nip in the air and the likelihood that they'd be waiting on her for a while longer yet, Lin lit her own cigar and took a pull.
