note: I'm going to hate myself for posting this in the morning.
steady, now
After his third date with Asami, Bolin asks Mako how serious he is about the girl. Mako shrugs, slipping out of the expensive jacket he'd had to wear to dinner. The silk ends up crumpled by the side of his bed, and he pauses just long enough to toe off his shoes before falling back against the mess of sheets and pillows.
"Asami's nice."
His brother appears above him, one eyebrow raised in skepticism. "That's not what I asked, bro."
Mako closes his eyes, shutting out Bolin and the flickering lamplight. It'd been a long night; Asami had been beautiful and brilliant, but sometimes the clothes, the people with their choking perfumes and the receptions, the balls and all the lights—sometimes it just feels like too much.
"You know, I almost thought you had a thing for Korra when we first met her. You were all moony after she left the match." Bolin's voice fades as he continues, and Mako hears the soft whuff that tells him he must've settled into his own bed.
Groaning, Mako rolls over, pressing his face into the blankets. "I like Asami."
"I like her too man—hey, watch it, not like that—but you know, Korra's alright. She's cute."
Mako pulls a pillow over his ears, but even through the thick linen he can't quite block out the contemplative hmm at the end of Bolin's sentence.
—
Things go on.
Sato takes care of the Fire Ferrets' tournament fee, the team trains and in his down time Mako and Asami go on more dates. The city continues to buzz around Amon.
They're at the air temple today, sans training gear because it's too heavy to lug. Bolin lounges next to Mako in the shade of the bamboo grove while Korra sits further away, stretched out full in the sunshine.
"I'm sorry you guys had to come all the way out here," she offers after a long stretch of comfortable silence.
"It's fine, you were missing too many practices anyways. There's no way we're going to win if we don't practice as a team more."
Bolin elbows him, hard. Mako curses and glares, but his brother is already smiling apologetically at Korra. "Don't worry about any of that, we know you've got more important Avatar-y things to do, right Mako?"
Mako grunts, and Korra turns her head and looks at him for a long moment, her eyes nearly opaque in the glare of the sun. She looks away after a little while and rises to her feet, the light from the sunset washing her skin in red and shadows. For a split second Mako doesn't recognize this girl at all. But then she looks down again, her smile wide and easy, and she morphs back into the girl Mako's grown to know.
"Well then, come on. Let's practice before it gets dark."
—
"She's gotten better." There's more than a little awe in Bolin's voice as the two brothers rest, breathing hard. Korra stands alone in the center of the courtyard, coaching herself through some bending motions.
She has.
She'd only used her waterbending because that's all she was allowed in matches, but Mako could still tell that her strikes had gotten faster, more brutal. There's an intensity to the way she bends now that wasn't there before, a specific focus in her eyes. It makes him infinitely more aware that this is the Avatar, and not just the impulsive girl who'd forced her way into their lives, who had given him her help without ever being asked.
"We're all improving," is what he says.
Bolin scoffs, and the brothers make a face at each other before turning back to watch Korra.
The sun has nearly set now, and a chill descends. Korra stands against the backdrop of the darkening sky, and moves with careful grace, the lines of her arms and back sleek. A flame flickers into existence, steadies, and the Avatar begins bending.
There's a harsh intake of breath from Bolin, and Mako knows why:
She's beautiful.
—
He's on another date with Asami—a picnic by candlelight in the park this time. She smiles at him over a plate of expensive chicken, her lips slicked a deep, wet red, and he smiles distractedly back. They're talking about the Fire Ferrets' upcoming match and the start of the finals in the tournament, but Mako is having trouble keeping track of the conversation—he can't help it, his mind's been wandering a lot for the past couple of days, and he blames it all on Korra.
The first time she had shown up for practice in days, she had look so tired that Mako banned her from lifting a single disc. But instead of being relieved at the reprieve, Korra's entire face had darkened, her lips thin and her eyebrows harsh, dark slashes above her eyes.
Mako just barely managed to dodge the stream of fire she bent towards his face, and when the smoke cleared, she was gone.
She'd apologized the next day, but there was a new reservedness between them that hadn't been there before, and as much as it killed Mako to admit it to himself, it bothered him.
"Mako?"
He starts, and realizes that Asami's been asking him the same thing for the past minute. At least he has the decency to blush.
"Uh, yeah. Sorry Asami, I've been out of it lately—the finals and all."
She leans towards him in conspiratorial understanding, and the flickering candles cast her face in shadow, lights the softly rounded lines of her cheeks and makes her green eyes nearly glow. Mako's reminded of another girl, her face also lit by fire, although her eyes had been blue, and they did glow, so bright that they'd glinted like points of starlight in the dark and her cheekbones had been nothing but sharp, her expression less than gentle as she breathed fire, played with it like she owned the element—she did, she does.
There's an appeal to Korra when she bends, when she looks at someone with her eyes of water, of ice. It's the strength, Mako thinks, and the potential for more; it's the savage something that flickers across her face when she fights, that makes her movements fluid and graceful and nearly spellbinding; it's what made Bolin lose his breath that first time and what's responsible for the nervous, excited way he acts around her now.
That moment—her face lit by fire, her body a clean dark curve under the rising moon—catches Mako off guard, again and again, keeps him from concentrating on the beautiful dinner his probably-girlfriend had prepared for him, changes the green of her eyes into blue. He doesn't know how to make it stop; he just knows that it has to.
She's cute.
Bolin's words from before comes back to haunt him, and Mako thinks that this might be his brother's fault too, and that she's more than cute—
The firebender forcibly ends his train of thought there, and brings himself back to the present, and Asami.
—
fin
note: Started this on Friday after seeing episode four, expected it to be super easy to write. It. Was. Not. orz The end product doesn't match what I wanted to write in the beginning at all. Oh well.
My version of a post-manhandled-by-Amon Korra, which will get tossed to hell after episode 5 comes out, I'm sure.