Author's Note: Bolin's PV. This is totally unrelated to my previous Borra fic. Enjoy :)
It'd been around a month since Amon, or Noatak as we came to find out, and Tarrlok escaped Republic City, never to be seen
again. Life went back to its relatively uncomplicated ways. It'd also been a month since Mako broke up with Asami and decided to
pursue a romantic relationship with the Avatar, who just happened to be the love of my life.
Okay, so maybe it was still complicated.
My brother and I still lived on Air Temple Island, along with Asami, which proved to be a rather awkward situation. Especially when
Asami moved out of Mako's room. It was nice for me, though. The walls on the island were very thin, and my room just happened
to be next to the ex-lovers' room.
Yeah, hearing your brother getting it on isn't a very favorable thing to fall asleep to. I thought that when Asami got her own room,
the late-night sexy times would stop all together.
My mistake.
This situation was much worse, seeing that this time, it involved Korra. And yet, on those many lonely nights, I'd pleasure myself
to her throaty moans that would resonate through the walls in the next room. And afterwards, I was left feeling guilty, as if I was
using Korra without her knowledge. Which, technically I was. But I tried not to think about it too much; it made things too weird
otherwise.
She and I would practice bending early in the mornings by the shore, and I'd try to avoid her gaze. If I made the mistake of
looking into her sparkling cobalt eyes, all the images my hormonal imagination would create during my most private of moments
would come flooding back to me: Korra on her back, her face flushed and her chocolate waves cascading off her firm shoulders.
She would writhe with each of my thrusts and dig her heels into my back. She would buck those perfect bronzed hips of hers
wildly, her climax quickly approaching. And her eyes would gaze up at me, half-lidded, and from her lips she would let forth the
kind of moan that only she could make—"Bolin? Haha, you okay buddy?" she'd say, waving her hand in front of my glazed over
eyes, effectively waking me up from my perverted daydreams. And then I would pretend that I was just thinking about food/dream
that I forgot/Amon's whereabouts/ Pro-Bending/other random thought. Maybe I'd make a cheesy joke or something. She would
laugh that laugh of hers that stretched my face into the silly smile and stayed there virtually the entire day. My vision was fuzzy
and it felt a bit too warm deep in my chest, but otherwise, we continued practice as we normally did.
If only she knew just what effect she had on me. Would she feel the same way back?
It'd been a month after the revolutionary chaos faded, and Korra still felt the same for as she always had. One day, after she and
Mako had a little fight, we locked ourselves up in my room and drank lotus wine we smuggled onto the island until we were falling-
over drunk. She'd put her arm around my shoulders, and put that flawless face too close to my own. The alcohol thinned my blood
to the point where I couldn't even blush at the closeness of her body. She said to me, her breath hot on my cheek, "Y'know, Bo…
you really are my best friend. My bestest friend in the whole woooooorld. Y'know that, Bo? We're like…like two peas in a pod. A
bow and an arrow. The moon and the stars…" she slurred, giving me countless metaphors of our inseparable-friendship. Her
drunken words immediately sobered me up. Because, in that moment, I realized that was all we ever would be: friends. The best
of friends, the greatest of friends. The kind of friends that could never stay mad at each other. The kind of friends that could rely
on each other for anything. The kind of friends that never became anything more than friends, because they cared about the
integrity of their platonic relationship. Well, that last one was true for Korra, anyways.
Friends don't usually masturbate to mental images of their friends.
My brain understood that she was always just out of reach, so close and yet so far. My brain understood that she belonged to the
other person I loved most in the world, Mako. My brain understood that even if she wasn't with Mako, she just would never
reciprocate the burning desire that I had for her.
But my heart could never quite grasp those concepts.
It'd been a month since we were the new Team Avatar, driving around Republic City and listening to police scanners in Asami's
dad's car like we were the top-dogs in town.
But it'd only been a few hours since I silently cried myself to sleep. Manly-tears, I'd told myself. But they were tears nonetheless.
Tears of frustration, unrequited love, sorrow, guilt, anger, who knows. Maybe all of it.
In the midst of my desperation, I found some solace in Pema. I couldn't really tell my brother that I jacked off to the sound of him
banging the Avatar, and Korra was obviously out as well. Plus, Pema just happened to be nearest to me when I broke down. I
was in her and Tenzin's room, visiting Rohan, the newest edition to the airbender family. I loved kids, and I loved babies even
more. They hadn't yet been tainted by the troubles of the world, and I found comfort in their innocence. I was rocking him to sleep
when the thought of Mako and Korra having a child together burrowed its way into my mind. I couldn't shake the image of Mako
pressing his lips to a very pregnant Korra's baby-bump, cradling it with his hands, murmuring to their unborn baby. "Bolin, honey,
what's wrong?" A distressed voice came from behind me, and I found that big, hot drops of water were streaming heavily down
my face, splashing onto Rohan's sleeping porcelain face. Pema gently took the baby from me, and once my hands were free, they
were balled into fists, and shoved into my eye-sockets, willing myself to stop being a giant-fucking-pansy this instant. The baby
was laid in his crib, and two thin arms wound around my waist in a tight hug. I guess it was the maternal energy that radiated
from her, because I rose to my feet and embraced her fiercely, burying my head in the hollow crook of her neck. In that moment,
all the feeling I had locked up into the dark corners of my mind broke out of their confines and drowned me. I heard myself let out
the most pitiful sobs, and I could feel them rack Pema's small frame, but I couldn't stop myself. And she stood there with me,
rubbing my back and whispering words of comfort into my ear. After a while, my cries subsided, and she guided my to the edge of
her bed, using both hands to hold one of mine. And she had me tell her everything, and I mean everything. Though she never had
much of a solution besides advising me to tell Korra how I felt, she listened to me. She never judged me, or reprimanded me. I
think that's what kept me coming back to her after that day in her room. And in those few tender moments I shared with her
whenever my emotions became too much for me to handle alone, I knew what it was like to have a mother.
Though she tried her hardest to console me, Pema never really could mend me. The day I met Korra, her radiance, her courage,
her beauty, her confidence, it all shot itself at me relentlessly, slowly penetrating the armor I built around myself. And the day I saw her and Mako kiss, the wordless rejection shattered me into millions of pieces. The one thing that could fix me was Korra, but
every time I heard her and my brother making love in the room next to mine, she made the possibility of me being whole again
less and less plausible.
But I could always pretend that when she hugged me, or when she gave me a light peck on the cheek, there was passion and
longing hidden in those gestures. I could pretend that it was me who was the cause of her orgasm-filled nights. I could pretend that when
she slept in my bed, it wasn't because she just had a falling-out with Mako. I could pretend that her blinding smiles and
contagious laughter was always caused by me. I could pretend that when she said she loved me, she meant it in the way I did.
Yeah, I could always pretend.