i
It is hard to resist Lin in general but it is even harder when she's a determined, almost-naked drunk. Tenzin has always known Lin had been blessed by good genes and the unforgiving training regime of her mother's metal bending school, but seeing the results firsthand is an entirely different experience. Summers spent on Ember Island have definitely not prepared him for this.
"Happy birthday to me," Lin sings, and Tenzin is surprised she can still speak so clearly despite the endless amount of fire whiskey she has consumed. "Let's do it."
He chokes and sputters and scoots away from her. They are sitting in her living room, on the modern couch her mother had purchased months ago. Tenzin distinctly remembers looking at it and declaring it unsuitable for sexual romps. It had been a joke. Not a challenge.
"Lin," he tries, burrowing his hands into the folds of his clothes to keep them away from the beautiful bare chest that has been exposed just a few feet away from him. The moonlight is exceptionally unforgiving in highlighting every bit of sinewy white skin that hovers beyond reach at the other end of the couch. "You're drunk."
"And you're sexy," she responds, her voice lower, as if attempting to seduce him. It would work, Tenzin figures, if it weren't directly followed by a hiccup.
"Another time. When you're less likely to throw up in the middle of the act."
"We've waited so long." She's exasperated. She huffs an impatient breath. To further prove her dissatisfaction, she attempts to tuck away a few loose strands of hair, but fails spectacularly. Instead, the careful bun she keeps at the nape of her neck comes undone, waves of dark hair spilling over her bare shoulders. His trousers feel oddly constricted.
Tenzin takes a deep breath and says with some finality that he hopes will deter Lin from pushing the issue, "We are not having sex on your eighteenth birthday while our parents sit at home betting on what happens tonight."
Thankfully, Lin does not push the issue. She has fallen asleep, chest heaving with deep breaths. Tenzin sighs and tries to maneuver her dead weight back into her shirt. He succeeds, but he is left significantly flustered and with the sight of her pebbled nipples permanently ingrained in his mind.
ii
They're training. They stand a few feet away from each other, panting. Tenzin watches with fascination as a trickle of sweat rolls down Lin's neck and along her collarbone before disappearing between the valley of her breasts. He still remembers the sight of them bare and lit up by the faint moonlight that filtered through the living room on the night of her birthday, but he hasn't seen them since. And that has been a point of contingency he hasn't admitted aloud.
Lin watches him with equal interest. He knows because he sees her brows furrow and her eyes dart downwards to take in the expanse of his chest, which he knows she's a little obsessed with. She admitted it sometime after he admitted how particularly keen he was of her slender neck. But there they are, heaving, sweaty from training, dirt clinging to their clothes. And Tenzin wants to rip everything off her.
She's on him in a moment, pushing him against the ground, hands up his shirt. He grips her hips tightly to keep them from grinding against him because then all hope would be lost. He kisses her until he can hardly breathe, pulling her bottom lip between his teeth, wondering if it really would be all that terrible to have their first time happen in one of the private training grounds on Air Temple Island.
"Fuck it," she says for him, probably because she was thinking the same thing. He wonders briefly if he should reprimand her on her choice of language but then she is kissing him, moaning into his mouth, trying to rid him of his sweaty tunic. When he moves his lips to her neck to suck at the tender skin, she melts into his arms just as her thighs keep him rooted to the ground. He immediately begins to silently recite mantras. When she moves against him and a high-pitched sound escapes her throat, Tenzin decides that he desperately needs all of her, candles and dinner and a soft, plush bed be damned.
From somewhere in the back of his mind, he registers the sound of the doors opening, but not in time.
"What the—Tenzin! Gross! Get a room!"
The sight of his brother is enough to dampen the mood.
iii
Lin doesn't need Tenzin to wait for her to get back from work, but he waits anyway. He is worried. He can't help it. He has tried meditating, reading scrolls, practicing new air bending techniques—even gardening—but nothing works. So he waits for her just outside of her home, sitting under one of the many shady trees that grace the expansive gardens of the Beifong home until she shows up. This has been the cycle since she started work at Police Headquarters five months ago.
He knows something is wrong immediately once it's past twelve-thirty in the morning. Her shift was to end at twelve, and he always gives her thirty minutes leeway, mostly because she likes grabbing goosechicken to eat on her way home. But she is never late. Not ever.
When he finally hears her dragging her feet at a quarter past one, he stands up and rushes to her just as she bends her metal bending uniform off her body, letting it drop into the dirt.
"What happened?"
She looks haggard, eyes bloodshot, mouth pressed into a thin line, hair out of its knot. He instinctually reaches out to touch her cheek but she moves away.
"First kill," she says, voice void of emotion. And Tenzin understands immediately, so he says nothing else. Instead, he leads her into her safe place, her childhood home, carefully picking up her discarded uniform and placing it at the entrance once he has closed the door behind them.
She sits on the couch, resting her chin on her propped knees, watching him as he sets out to make her some tea. He returns to her with a cup in one hand and a small first aid kit he's always known Toph keeps in the kitchen. He sets to cleaning her scrapes and wounds as she sips the chamomile tea that is her favorite. It takes him thirty minutes to finish tidying her up, and twenty more for her to finish sipping her tea.
Just as he closes the kit, Lin is kissing him, desperate, hands gripping the lapels of his robe, pushing into him as if she intends to occupy the same space as he does. He lets her do this because he suspects she needs to feel something, anything, to rid herself of the feeling of death. She pushes his tunic up, lets her hands wander over his chest, before letting them head downwards. Her kisses are hungry, almost animalistic, and he's about to say something when he feels wetness against his face. He reaches a hand to cup her chin and finds a trail of tears.
He pulls her into his arms and lets her cry into his shoulder, not minding at all that she is drenching his clothes.
It is the first time he has ever seen her cry.
iv
To say that Ember Island vacations are Super Fun Awesome Time with Avatar Aang! is a little over the top, but Tenzin likes spending time with his father, his family, and even Uncle Sokka, Uncle Zuko, and Aunt Toph. But right now, he would much rather be sneaking around in the dark with Lin's hand in his than listening to his uncle recite yet another war story. Aunt Suki stares at him with both parts awe and boredom, and Toph has given up entirely and gone ahead with picking at her toes. He spots Lin fidgeting nervously, glancing his way, before she's up and stalking out of the large mansion Uncle Zuko insists on them using.
"Where's she going?" Sokka asks, slightly put out someone has walked out in the middle of the Greatest Story Ever. Tenzin wants to jump up and run after her but he keeps still.
"Off to wait for Tenzin on the beach or something," Toph answers, uninterested.
Tenzin wants to die of embarrassment but he refuses to let mortality stand in the way of touching Lin. It seems like his father is about to die for him anyway, with the way his face turns red and his eyes bulge out.
"I'm going to go now," Tenzin declares.
"Sand can be tricky to remove," Toph calls out.
When he finds Lin, she tackles him into the sand as her form of greeting.
"I've been," she kisses him eagerly, "waiting," kiss, "a year for this," and then her tongue is wrangling down his throat, making any answer nearly impossible.
He's just as eager. His hands are up her shirt and her bindings are gone and her hands are all over him and it sends electricity through every single one of his veins. He should tell Ursa about his new discovery—electricity in veins!—but Lin's hand is gripping him and his hands have found her breasts and there is nothing that could stop them, not even sand.
Except as much as he's enjoying this, he can't function. He's mortified. He's nervous. He wants this to be the best night. The moon is out. The tide is warm. The night is still young. But he—
"It's okay," Lin says in between kisses. She covers herself, barring him from the sight of her perfect chest. His trousers have been pulled back up his bottom half, hiding his failure. "You're just nervous. Me too. It's probably—tonight wasn't the right time."
They lay in the sand for hours. He tries to find Lin's naked body in the sky, like Bumi always insists he can, but all he can see are Lin's beautiful eyes reflected in every glint of the stars.
v
Lin has finally moved into her own apartment. They've finished bringing all of her things up the rickety old stairs, half-unpacking musty boxes, and setting up her bed, desk, and closet. She leans against the window, the setting sun sending a pink streak across her face, painting her in fading gold. She smiles tiredly at Tenzin and surveys the room, clearly proud of what she has accomplished.
"I think I did pretty well for myself," she says. He had convinced her of setting up a coffee table in the tiny living room she has. On it sits a half-dead plant he knows Lin will either let die or nourish back to life. It all depends on her mood.
He nods, releasing a sigh of exhaustion. "Not too bad. An apartment, a bed, a plant. Maybe you'll even get some kitchen utensils."
She scoffs and rolls her eyes. But then she's back to looking at him. "I also have a really cute boyfriend."
He blushes against his will. "Who insists you think of buying pots and pans."
"Thank you," she whispers.
And when they come together, her hands draped over his shoulders, his hands at her hips, her mouth angling slowly towards his, he knows this is it.
Their kiss is gentle, sweet, achingly familiar to the first they ever shared. His hands brush up and down her sides, hers seek purchase around his neck, clinging to him as an anchor.
They fall together to the floor, gently, knees first, and then her on her back. They unsettle the dust that has fallen around them, the particles dancing in the light. He's too busy lifting Lin's tunic upward, helping her out of it, and then setting it aside carefully. He's too busy finally, finally looking at her, the swell of her breasts, the pale scars that run across her stomach, the birthmark on her shoulder. He marvels at the fact that it is he she has chosen to be with, and certainly there is some greater power that has made this possible. He kisses her everywhere he can reach, as tender as he can, until she is writhing and her hands are pulling at his arms, trying to get him to do something she won't request aloud. She is as unyielding as the floor is hard.
He lets her pull him back up, lets her tongue sweep along his teeth, let's her divest him of his cape and all the layers of saffron he wears. She's a little more hurried than he is though, so he stops her as she reaches for the cord at his trousers, catching her hands in his and kissing her knuckles.
"We have the rest of our lives together," he sighs. Her green eyes are watching him and he is struck by how appropriate her name is. She takes a deep breath and holds it, waiting.
Lin is warm beneath his touch. Tenzin had never realized there were so many parts to her, some soft, like her hips, others lined with muscle, like the back of her thigh and the expanse of her stomach. For all of his time spent imagining her, this is a million times better. He can't help it when her name starts to fall from his lips like his own little prayer. Like the goddess she is, she takes it carefully.
It is slow and measured. Every move she makes is calculated and balanced. She hovers above him and he knows without asking that she is memorizing the planes of his body, the ridges along his stomach, the small hills along his arms. She surveys and understands and when she grips him in hand, he knows that she is ready.
Lin sinks down carefully, holds him steady, and when he is finally inside her Tenzin understands that this was what he was searching for, this was peace. He has finally reached enlightenment.