I'm so in love with this ship. I plan on having more doling out more fics for them! ^_^

This fic is also on my tumblr blog where my username is Kuno-chan and my blog name is Dragoness Ramblings.

Disclaimer: Legend of Korra belongs to Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko

Drift My Way Please

"Jinora?"

"Hmm?"

"I really want to go to sleep. Can we please turn out the light already?"

"In just a second... I'm almost done with this chapter."

"You said that supposedly two chapters ago," said Kai, arm over his eyes as he lay pasted against the sheets. Not that the summer night was helping him any, his back seemingly glued to the sheets beneath them and the blanket already pushed off until it rested at his waist. He cursed himself for being one of those picky sleepers who needed a blanket over his body and a sense of darkness for him to get a good night's rest. Or perhaps it wasn't so much the candle burning at Jinora's side of the bed as it was the fact that he couldn't feel her against him as they lay there ready to bed down for the night.

It was hardly that unusual for Jinora to stay up late reading. He was so used to this by now that sometimes he would lean against her and try to read along with her, but tending to the sky bison in the day's heat had taken it's toll and now all he wanted to do was try to rest his tired muscles. Unfortunately for him, Jinora seemed to have other plans. There was a way in how loudly she was turning the pages beside him that made him feel like this was one of those books that she just wasn't going to put down until she finished it. Kai sighed, waiting for either sleep to take him or Jinora to be finished at last.

To his glorious relief, there was the unmistakable snap and soft thud of what he assumed was a book being shut and placed on the nightstand. He waited to feel the weight of her against his side, but it never came. Praying she hadn't opened up yet another book, he lifted his arm off his face and opened one eye. She wasn't reading at all. Instead, now she was sitting up with her hands folded in her lap, looking somewhat disconcerted the way her eyebrows knitted together.

"Jinora?" Now he started to sit up. When she didn't answer him, he sat up all the way, becoming more and more awake with every second of silence from her. "Jinora, what's wrong? Are you okay? Hey, say something you're starting to scare me-"

"Do you think we'll ever drift apart?"

It took Kai a few seconds to register what she had just asked. He blinked, "Wait, what?"

"Do you think, you know, we'll ever just..." she made a parting gesture with her hands.

"Wait a second." Now, he was rubbing his eyes as if doing this would activate his slumber-ready brain, "I'm not- I don't understand what you're trying to say right now."

"I'm saying—asking – do you ever think we'll grow apart...? Like, get tired of each other?"

He didn't hesitate. "No, of course not. Jinora, I've known you for like seven years why would I all of a sudden get tired of you? I don't even think that's possible. I mean..." A sudden horrible thought occurred to him, "...are you tired of me?"

"No!" She finally looked at him, panicked, "No, that's not what I'm trying to say at all. It's just... that book I was reading... there was a man and woman in there that kind of reminded me of us, but they didn't make it. Both of them ended up taking different paths and drifted apart until it was too late and... and at the end they only could reflect on what could have been. I just... it made me wonder if that could happen to us."

There was a moment's silence between them in which Kai watched her features in the candlelight. A certain hollow feeling opened up in his chest as he examined the worry in her face and, what scared him the most, her eyes. Perhaps their recent conversation with Ikki about how she wanted to go travel the world as soon as she got her airbender tattoos had brought this on. Or perhaps it was her parents more frequent trips to the air temples with the new airbenders. Or how much time Korra was spending with her infant son nowadays. He hadn't really sat down and thought about it, but he supposed that everyone had been doing their own thing lately. Even Meelo, who had always been right there when you needed him, had really turned out to be quite the leader and taken on a more active role teaching the new airbenders.

The whole thing hadn't occurred to him until recently, but even the two of them just laying there together told him how much things had changed since they'd first met almost eight years ago. Was she afraid that he was going to up and change direction too?

"Well... well of course we're going to drift. It's just not going to be like that."

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"Sweetheart." He took her hand in his and held it against him. "Of course, we're going to drift. Here, there, everywhere... anywhere. You know that's just what we airbenders do being nomads and all. The only difference is that I'm going to drift with you. Where you drift, I drift... and the only way we'd go in opposite directions is if you really wanted me too, but you know I'd do anything to make you happy so that it would never have to come to that. You've been a partner in my life since the day you started teaching me how to master airbending. We've taken all sorts of adventures together where you've ended up having to save my neck and you even rescued me from being a soldier for the Earth Queen against my will. Why on earth would I ever get tired of you? What am I, an idiot?"

She cracked a smile and squeezed his hand. "I guess you're right. I think sometimes I just get scared that something is going to attract you away from me."

"To be honest, I get that same fear too with you sometimes."

"But you know that's never going to happen."

"Then we're in agreement because you know that nothing in this world could take me away from you," he kissed her on the cheek. "Are you feeling alright now? You started to make me a little nervous there."

"Yeah, I'm alright now. Thank you. I needed that," she said. "But tell me, how long have you had that speech tucked away for just the right moment?"

"Ages. Not word for word of course, but those romance novels of yours really did help teach a fellow a thing or two over the years," his grip on her hand slackened. "Now, is it alright for us to go to sleep?"

When she smiled at him, he kissed the back of her hand and lay down against the now cooler sheets, ready to finally let sleep overcome him. Just as he had closed his eyes, he felt her weight press over him and a warm heat at the side of his head near his ear. Her voice rolled with the heat.

"Not just yet."