Floodgates

Summary: Linorra ficlet (because my version of a "ficlet" is apparently nearly 3,000 fucking words long) taking place after Old Wounds.

Disclaimer: I do not own Legend of Korra. If I did, there would probably be a self-insert character who was in a relationship with Lin.

Pairings: Lin/Korra ("KorraLin", "Linorra")

Author's Notes: I was almost done with the latest chapter of Scars and Bandages, which I haven't updated in a fucking YEAR, but then I saw the most recent LoK episodes and this happened.

Lin was a quiet crier.

At least she had been so far, and Korra saw no reason for her to hold back now. Her face was buried in Korra's neck and her arms were wrapped around Korra so tightly that they felt more like metal cables than arms, and Korra could feel the cloth of her shirt growing damp as Lin's tears dripped onto it. Korra was squeezing her hard in return and, perhaps based on some comforting instinct from when Naga was upset and wanted her head scratched, she had buried one hand in Lin's hair. Lin was taller than Korra, which was why she was able to lean on Korra even though they were both sitting cross-legged facing each other, but now she was pulling away. "Need to readjust." Lin's voice was thick. "I'm sorry."

Korra climbed onto Lin's lap and hugged her; Lin relaxed against Korra, resting her head against the girl's shoulder again, and this time when she put her arms around Korra it didn't feel quite so desperate. "Don't apologize for anything. Except maybe for almost breaking my ribs. I'm the one who should say I'm sorry for calling you bitter."

"You were right," came Lin's ragged response.

"Lin, really, it's okay. Opal was more upset than me, and you already apologized to her."

"At this point I'm mostly sorry about going to pieces like this. I'm supposed to be protecting you, not crying all over you."

Korra gave Lin a little squeeze. "You can still protect me fine."

Lin took a deep breath; Korra felt her ribs expand under her hands. Korra passed a hand up and down Lin's back, hoping that would help her relax. "I won't let anything happen to you."

"I know," Korra soothed. "And thank you for apologizing. I know you were cranky, but it didn't really bother me that much."

"You were trying to help. I should thank you for that." Lin's voice was starting to sound clearer; Korra thought she might have stopped crying so hard.

"Well, you're welcome." Korra curled her hand slightly to trace Lin's spine with her fingertips. "You're still pretty tense. You want to lie down? I can give you a back massage."

Lin nodded and stretched out on the bed. Korra pressed her hands firmly into the low of Lin's back and worked her way up. "You do this a lot?" Lin mumbled against the mattress.

"Not really, why?"

"You're good at it."

"Thanks!" Korra squeezed Lin's sides. "You know, I think Naga was more hurt than I was by you being cranky. She liked that ball."

"Maybe I'll have to apologize to her next."

"You can find some creative use for earthbending to launch a ball into the air if you don't want to touch Naga spit. She doesn't want just anybody to throw her ball for her, you know. That's why I thought your sister might be wrong about you never changing. I mean, if Naga likes you…"

Lin sniffed. "I'm glad your polar bear dog is such a good judge of character."

"She is." Korra began kneading the base of Lin's neck. "Is that too hard?"

"Mmm…no."

"Well, anyway, I think you've apologized enough for being cranky. That's what you wanted to talk to me about, right?"

"That's not all I wanted to talk about. But for this next conversation, you're probably going to want to stop doing what you're doing."

"How come?"

Lin got up and sat on the edge of the bed, facing away from Korra. She gripped her knees tightly and began to speak as if she were dragging the words out. "Tenzin said you were becoming quite a wise avatar."

"Oh, and you disagree?" Korra tried to sound jovial.

"No. I agree with him…for once."

Korra snickered. "Sometimes I have fun imagining you two arguing."

"I think you are gaining some wisdom. And not just that. You've grown up a lot since I first met you. You're still intractable sometimes—"

"Hey!"

"—but you're much less annoying than that entitled little brat who I nearly locked up for destroying private property. Dare I say it, you've even charming sometimes."

"Was that just a compliment? I know you were being super nice to your sister, but that was to make up for decades of avoiding her."

"That was a compliment, yes. There are plenty of other compliments I could give you, and ever since I've had my acupuncture treatments, it's been…increasingly difficult not to. What I'm trying to say is…" Lin took another deep breath. "Spirits help me. I can't say it."

Korra moved close and squeezed Lin's shoulders. "Could you write it down? Or show me."

"I could show you. If you want."

"Yeah, I do. This is obviously important to you."

Lin swiveled to face Korra. She rested one hand on Korra's shoulder and, to the avatar's surprise, laid her other hand on Korra's cheek. "Korra…" she inched closer.

Korra had just accepted that she was about to get a kiss and had decided to relax and enjoy it when Lin pulled away, her lips brushing Korra's cheek so lightly it would be inaccurate to call the gesture a kiss.

"I'm sorry." Lin turned away from Korra and pulled her knees to her chest. "You may go."

"Wait, what?"

"I'll understand if you want me to keep my distance from you now. At least you know I have a personal investment in keeping you safe."

"Lin…" Korra sat on the bed next to Lin and touched her arm.

Lin turned to face Korra slowly, not making eye contact. "If you're going to hit me, I'd appreciate it if you didn't use firebending."

"I'm not going to hit you! Why would you say that?"

Lin smiled bitterly. "Because when I was eighteen, if some creepy old woman had kissed me I would have sandblasted her face off."

"There are a bunch of problems with that sentence. One, you're not creepy. Two, I'm kind of eighteen, but I'm also kind of thousands of years old. Three, you're not old, or at least that old. Four, you call that a kiss? I've seen you give Opal forehead kisses with more passion."

"Well, I do care about you. I didn't want to upset you more that this…this admission would already."

"Yeah, well, I'm not upset. How about you give me a real kiss and we see how I feel?"

Lin looked into Korra's face, her expression a mask of confusion. "Are…are you kidding?"

"No." Korra brushed some of Lin's hair back from her face. "Look, Lin, I've never really seen you as a…potential love interest, I guess. But I do care about you. I guess we both like spending time with each other when we're not annoying each other…you when you're being cranky, and me when I'm being 'intractable'."

Lin managed what sounded like was meant to be a laugh, but ended up seeming more like a sob. "You remind me a lot of myself at your age. When I first met you, Tenzin said I should give you a chance because you reminded him of me."

"Well, I can't say I have the same feelings for you that you have for me. But I am willing to try."

"Only if you want to."

Korra leaned up to answer the question with a kiss, but Lin stayed her with a hand on her chest. "Korra…I'm not her."

Korra's brow furrowed. "You're not who?"

"Opal. I haven't been completely distracted. I've seen the way you look at her, especially when she's with Bolin."

"Okay, okay, maybe I do have a little bit of a thing for Opal. She's adorable. But I said I was willing to kiss you, not Opal."

Lin rested her forehead against Korra's. "If you wanted to have a relationship with me and be thinking about Opal the entire time, I wouldn't mind. As long as you let me know what you were doing."

"Lin, that's…really stupid. Why would you do that?"

"I know who I am. Being here has made it disturbingly clear. I'm a copy of my mother, and a…a dour, faded one at that. Who wants to be with Toph Beifong minus the sense of humor and the ability to have fun?"

"You are kind of bad at fun. I might have to teach you. I thought you were bad at being nice too, but then you called me 'charming'. Maybe you can give me more compliments."

"I can certainly do that."

"Can you give me some kisses first?"

Lin cradled the back of Korra's neck in one hand. "I'd like to."

Korra leaned up and in short order found herself on the receiving end of a warm, soft kiss, surprisingly chaste, accompanied by Lin's fingertips caressing her neck. Korra reached up to put her arms around Lin, but she pulled away. "How was that?"

"Over too soon! I thought you liked me."

"And you don't feel the same. I've never had a potential lover push me away and it's not an experience I'd like to try."

"I am not going to push you away." Korra gripped Lin's shoulders. "Now come here and kiss me for real!"

Lin hugged Korra close and kissed her again. This time, it was the kind of kiss that shot through one's whole body and made the rest of the world fall away. Korra's hands went slack on Lin's shoulders and slid down to the small of her back; Lin's fingers kept stroking her neck, softly and in contrast to the insistent firmness of her repeated kisses. A low moan escaped Korra's throat; Lin immediately backed off. "I take it that was a bit too 'real'?"

"Perfect amount of 'real'." Korra rested her forehead against Lin's again. "Well, I don't know if I can say I…I return your feelings now, but I probably could if you keep kissing me like that."

Lin reached for Korra, her fingertips ending up on the other woman's waist. "I'd like that. To be frank, my highest hopes were for you to not be upset when I told you this. Someone my age with an eighteen-year-old? I can hardly believe you let me kiss you. Now I'm starting to wonder if this is really what's right for you. You can do much better than 'Chief Crankypants', as you so succinctly put it."

"What if I told you that I like proving people wrong and we show your sister that you're not going to be bitter and lonely?" Korra copied Lin's earlier gesture, except instead of lightly placing her hands on Lin's waist, she ran her palms up Lin's sides and back down, boldly slipping under the hem of her sleeveless undershirt. "Also, you definitely don't look your age. Or should I say you don't feel your age." She gave Lin's narrow waist a quick squeeze.

"Korra, I…" Lin gave herself time to think by taking Korra's hands and kissing them. "My mother knows I've tried to be exactly like her and ended up being more of a career than a human being. Whatever else I might say about Suyin, at least she's her own person. You might say I'm my mother's greatest failure."

"Lin, that can't be—"

Lin cut her off. "For a while all I could do properly was protect Republic City, but I failed in that when Amon terrorized it. I failed Tenzin and his family when I tried to protect them from the Equalists but they were still captured. I failed my precinct when I let my metalbenders get captured and 'equalized', and again when I was too wrapped up in having my job back and trying to get back to being the stern authority figure that everyone hates to realize how incompetently some of my detectives were acting." Lin blinked back tears. "You're the only person I care about who I haven't failed, if you don't count how I let Amon take my bending rather than tell him where you were and he still got to you."

"Don't talk like that!" Korra flung her arms around Lin and hugged her hard.

"I'm just saying I don't have the best track record. On a good day I'm abrasive, and on a bad day I…well, I just went over that, didn't I? I don't know if I trust myself with you."

"What happened to the new happy Lin? I liked her!"

"It isn't just that I was suddenly pleasant after my acupuncture sessions. It's more like…it tore some of my walls down. And it feels like it opened some floodgates, too; I'm feeling everything with such…such intensity. I thought it was a terrible idea to tell you that I had feelings for you, and I never would have done it if…if it hadn't been building up for so long."

Korra kissed Lin's hair, which was silky and smelled like jasmine and sandalwood. Korra made a mental note to ask Lin if she treated her hair with any special shampoo or oil before asking a more pressing question. "How long?"

"Since Tarrlok kidnapped you. I was injured and should have been resting, but I heard on the radio that you'd been abducted, and I got up and went after you. Or maybe it was since the night at the pro bending arena when we both sparred with Amon. I'm not sure; I wouldn't admit what was going on to myself. I have a long-cultivated ability to ignore or suppress it when I have feelings for someone who I know I have no chance with—I started working on that way back when I was at the metalbending academy, when I was younger than you—but it seems to be gone now."

"Yeah, that doesn't sound healthy. What happened at the academy that you decide you wanted to make your crushes go 'poof'?"

"My best friend. My only friend, really; I never got special treatment for being a Beifong, but everyone assumed I did and resented me for it. Orchid actually bothered to get to know me. I thought maybe she'd give me a shot because she was into girls, but when I asked her out she not only turned me down, but started avoiding me. At the end of the school year, there was an optional award ceremony and I'd won…I don't remember, something for keeping my grades up while also advancing quickly in bending…I asked Orchid to be there, because Mom was too busy to go. She said she would, but didn't show, and when I asked her why, she said she did it because it would 'help me get over her'."

"Wow. What a bitch."

"I didn't want to believe that was an isolated incident, but she kept deliberately hurting my feelings to 'help me get over her', even when I asked her to stop. I didn't have any other friends to talk to, Suyin was only eleven, and of course Mom didn't have time to listen to me whine about girl problems, but I was sick of it hurting. So I would meditate for hours every day, trying to meditate away my feelings for Orchid, and eventually it worked." Lin shivered and squeezed Korra tightly. "I haven't thought about this in years. It feels like everything I've tried to forget or ignore is rushing back."

Korra sifted one hand through Lin's hair and stroked her neck the way Lin had done for her earlier. Lin let out a long breath and laid her head on Korra's shoulder. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to unleash all these feelings on you."

"It's okay." Korra kissed the top of Lin's head.

"You don't have to do this." Lin's voice was barely above a whisper. "You don't have to stay with me because I'm crying over you."

"I want to. And not just because you're a good kisser."

Lin sniffed, a noise that had perhaps begun its life as a laugh. "The floodgates are still open. Last chance to get out now."

"It's okay, Lin. Tell me about it."

So she did.

A/N: I'm about halfway through the latest chapter of Scars and Bandages. That's happening, I swear.

Also KORRA CATCHING LIN AS SHE PASSED OUT AAAAAAAAH I LITERALLY SQUEALED WATCHING IT