Varric was a weird man with all the integrity of a goatodile cheese riddled with maggots but Korra really couldn't fault his ideas and Asami begrudgingly couldn't either even if he benefitted somewhat more from his partnership with Future Industries than she did.
Korra was a dutiful friend and had awaited in the rock hard seats of Varric's lobby for an impressive amount of time while Asami met with the business unagi before deciding to wander off for a while.
Her valiant quest to stave off boredom led her to a grand bending gym full of bright lights and all sorts of fireproof training mats, rock disks, a waterfall and a water conduit that span across the entire room.
Korra whistled in appreciation as she inspected the room. She wouldn't mind a setup like this back home.
She blushed a bit at the thought. Asami had offered her a whole wing at the Sato mansion for her to live in while she had business in Republic City, claiming that it was too empty just for her. That had been a good five years ago.
As the Avatar, Korra travelled everywhere and over the years had managed to acquire several houses all over the world but... She thought of home as with Asami and she wasn't even all that fond of the city, some of the most harrowing events in her life had happened in Republic City and as a general rule the presidents rarely warmed up to her.
"Hey Korra!" She turned her head to the current sole occupant of the overlarge room.
Bolin dropped the disks he was tossing around and waved, jogging to her.
"Bolin? What are you doing here? You said you were gonna help Mako on some super cop op or other, wasn't counting on seeing you till dinner."
He grinned at her and shrugged, readjusting his messy hair. "Chief Beifong told him his plan was half cocked and said to polish it some more before trying it. Should have seen the look on his face!'
They laughed at the image of Mako getting dressed down on a plan she was sure he thought was foolproof and Korra stopped long enough to notice the odd getup her friend was wearing.
"Did Varric put you up to that, mover star?" He looked down and tugged at the odd straps across his ample chest.
"Oh! This? Yeah its actually great! Varric wanted me to try it for some sponsorship deal, he calls it the athletician support!" He enthused in his usual manner, slinging an arm across her broad shoulders.
"Bolin you do know we call that a bra, right?" The copious fluff that had grown in the last years on his chest appeared in tufts on the admittedly nice cleavage and Korra suppressed the will to snort.
"Yeah, I know! Its great! You guys have the best things, its really great support. Unless you're Mako." He leaned closer and whispered. "Flat as a board."
The Avatar laughed, Bolin never ever changed, and the door to the gym opened again.
Asami walked in and was trying her best to keep a smiling diplomatic face at Varrick and his usual ideas as he chattered at her like a flying lemur.
Korra smiled brightly at her friend and housemate while Bolin disentangled from her and rushed to Asami who was looking just as curiously at his bra as Korra had been.
"Ah my latest invention! The athletician support! For all your sporting needs, made in light form fitting material its gonna take the world by storm!" He snapped his fingers at his long suffering assistant. " Zhu-Li! Find our guests a pair of our latest model."
She quickly returned with the new garment and gave one to each of them, Korra oohing slightly at the nice velvety texture and Asami looking at it with her usual scientist eyes, mentally decoding manufacture and weaknesses.
The material was thin but somewhat stretchy, with crossed back straps and in a simple black colour.
"We're still testing them so they perhaps lack in design but do give them a go, I assure you it will change your life!" Korra looked at it dubiously, face scrunching up in disbelief. Her chest straps worked fine as they were and her normal bras were good for everything else but she knew Varrick was gonna eelhound them till they tried it, so she might as well see what that was about.
He grabbed Bolin and dragged him out to sign for another Nuktuk movie and some whacked out sponsorship deal to plaster the earthbender's face everywhere.
"Hey Asami, what do you say? How about we take these for spin?" She said as she proceeded to take off her blue top.
As soon as the well defined abs peeked from under the shirt, Asami blushed and looked away.
Truthfully, she had seen Korra fully naked quite some times. On missions or when the Avatar showered but forgot her pants in the laundry room and had to run the full span of the house to get them but they had been in quite different contexts, in quite different times.
Korra was always on the move, half the time dragging them all along with her, but lately she had been on Republic City a lot and their relationship was slipping, slowly but surely, into a close intimacy she wasn't quite sure how to handle.
It wasn't unwelcome at all but it was making it hard to keep her mind from straying to those sturdy shoulders on Korra's incredible form and maintain a platonic perspective.
Mako's granma once remarked that she was quite muscular for a woman and Asami couldn't but agree. She was just perfect.
Korra turned her back to her and shed the simple bra she used and tried on the athletician support.
"Bolin wasn't kidding, this feels great." She jumped a bit and tried out some quick earthbending forms. "Wow! You gotta try this on!" She urged, flexing her arms in excitement and grinning.
Asami was studiously ignoring the way the cursed thing accentuated the other woman's already utterly delectable upper body, throwing her coat and shirt off quickly and wrangling into the tight top.
Hmm, didn't feel so bad. She tried a warm up sequence and found it to be rather comfortable despite the odd appearance and novel feel to the cloth.
" Not bad but we gotta put this through the paces. What do you say, the usual? No bending, first pin wins?"
Korra was trying her hardest to be subtle about her gigantic boulder of a crush on Asami but she suspected she wasn't being all that successful.
In fact she was actually quite sure the cryptic statements she'd been getting from just about everyone, from Bolin to Tenzin of all people, were about that.
"Korra, yes?" A hand was waved in her face and the avatar stopped remembering the competitive swimmers from the south and how their forms, lean but powerful, so very much reminded her of Asami. In retrospect, the captain of one of the most successful teams, the Sledding Penguins, had been her first crush. The woman wasn't as tall as Asami but had the same dark long hair and well defined back and Korra had watched them, and her in particular, practice at least a hundred when she was a girl.
A dark blush rose to her cheeks and she nodded, getting into position on her side of the mat.
They were evenly matched even if Korra was using all her bending. At twenty five and twenty six years of age, they had been training together for nearly ten whole years, every tell, move and tactic was laid out and improved on each other.
Though they were far from stale, they pushed one another to work harder, to get better and more inventive.
The pace quickly picked up, a fast and precise exchange of blows to feel each other's moods and then the exertion really started.
Asami was fast and light like an eelhound with massive hidden strength and flexibility on her lower body.
Her maneuvers rippled through the muscular legs Korra was working hard to defend from but her success was rather limited.
Today it seemed everything about Asami was distracting her, from the bra support thing fitting so perfectly on her torso to the hard abs that kept rippling into view whenever she attacked. Korra was just completely captivated by the sweaty and powerful and attractive mess Ms. Sato currently was.
Not that said engineer wasn't experiencing the same difficulties as she kept letting Korra in too close, often staying in range of the most gorgeously toned arms in Republic City ( there had been a vote and all, Bolin had been a far second).
Whenever she defended, her hands curled around large biceps or strong shoulders and her body reacted in ways not in context with their fighting.
Their breathing was loud and obvious, both getting tired but no one was moving to finish their sparring as they kept clashing together with teasing blows and lingering blocks.
Propriety was fading rapidly, their fighting resembled more accidental touching and half hearted hugs than two masters and prodigies engaging in combat.
Asami stepped back in rapid motion to gain enough reach for a high kick. Korra followed closely and sprinted after her, not wanting to lose her advantage when a snag in the fighting mat made her partner trip backwards.
Her momentum was too strong and Korra ended up sprawled on top of Asami, in between her legs.
Even after their physical exertion, sweat and the Agni Kai worth of heat they were putting out, their faces flushed harder at the way their bodies had accidentally entwined.
Asami stared straight into Korra's eyes, mesmerized by only the small bit of blue on show, everything other than a scrap of iris eclipsed by inky black pupils, thoughts running in a million directions that she only usually entertained on bouts of loneliness.
Their spell was broken when a drop of sweat fell from Korra's jaw and she traced its trajectory right into Asami's cleavage.
"Err uh... I'm sorry?" She tried but Asami waved her off.
"I tripped like an idiot, its my fault."
A heavy silence, awkward and stifling settled over them and they locked eyes again, seconds stretching into eternity.
"Have dinner with me?"
"Would you like to go on a date?"
They blurted out at the same time, Korra clamming up and scrambling away and Asami blushing an even darker shade of red.
She was the first to reply. "I would love to but perhaps tomorrow? We did agree to have dinner with the boys today." Asami said, standing up and brushing herself off in an attempt to not stutter and turn into a nervous mess.
Korra was a nanosecond from bolting away and not speaking to her friend for a year when she heard the reply. Blinking in slight stupor, she stared at Asami like had just been told she was Kyoshi and Yangchen's love child.
"...Really?" Asami smiled at how Bolin and Korra could be so alike and approached the shorter woman.
"Yeah really." She stated, laying her hands on Korra's hips, somewhat surprised her voice hadn't broken from all the nervousness.
Korra grinned, a smile that lit her whole face and leaned in for a kiss, hesitating when she was almost there and Asami closed the nearly nonexistent distance between them and kissed her.
"Nothing would make me happier."
