Title: Collision
Pairing: Tahnorra
Rating: T
Word Count: 510
Summary: Korra hates Tahno. Or so she thinks.
Prompt for for the fic exchange between myself and idolsidle on tumblr. Prompt for this one was "Collision." It's shorter than I wanted it to be, but it's done!
There are moments, Korra believes, in everyone's lives that are defining. Beings drifting amid stars and planets greater than themselves may suddenly come into contact in a bright, explosive collision that lights up the universe and alters their course of travel.
Sometimes these beings will rebound; traveling in opposite directions after the initial impact, they bounce off each other and continue on their different paths as a result of their contact, slightly changed but unlikely to encounter each other again.
Sometimes they'll stick, bound tight and held together by a mixture of heat and force (and urge and attraction). The collision will be the defining moment of their lives, the instance where they make their transition from lonely individuals wandering through life to a pair traveling through the darkness, permanently fused together.
But sometimes, Korra thinks to herself as she glances over her bowl of seaweed noodles, past Bolin's earnest face, and across the tiled floors of Narook's diner to once again lock with Tahno's steely grey eyes, sometimes a collision could go completely unnoticed by both parties, ignored or misinterpreted.
A challenge is what they see. After all, sparks are flying and the exchanges are heated. Each glance, each accidental brush of hands over the next few days before the match that will determine so much, inspires a shudder up her spine (of hatred, of course). Each jabbing insult thrown at him a retaliation for the knots in her stomach he has somehow managed to put there. And the flutter in her stomach and warmth in her cheeks she feels rising every time she sees him eyeing her (or every time she's caught eyeing him) is quickly squashed. They are fighting, but they're not sure what against yet.
Try as she might, Korra cannot stop the silky voice in the back of her mind that sounds so much like his (she can't even stand thinking his name right now) from whispering, "Are you sure this is hatred? Because it seems more like lust." At which point her thoughts dissolve into images of his hands on her, of the way her name would feel whispered against her neck in a brush of hot breath, of his lips tracing their way across her skin and his fingers -
She shakes her head, startled and disturbed by the direction her thoughts have turned and checks quickly to make sure she's not being watched. The last thing she needs, after all, is someone asking what's wrong. Mako hasn't noticed anything amiss, wrapped up in Asami as he is, but she thinks Bolin has caught one too many of the glances that they've exchanged. It doesn't matter though. They don't mean anything anyway, and if he asks, she'll deny it to him just as she does to herself.
But sometimes she can't help but question whether her feelings are those of antagonism or something else. And in the night, when she closes her eyes to find herself swimming in a stormy grey sea, even she can't deny it to herself.
They have collided.
(For good.)