A/N: This is kind of an AU thing where Bolin comes home for spring break from college with a friend. Mako and this new friend don't get along too well, but this plan for the beach? It doesn't stop for anyone. Mhm.

Disclaimer: Disclaimer-ed

Sand Strange Senses

"Spring break!" Bolin shouts as he races for the beach. He whoops loudly and takes off his shirt, waving it wildly over his head. Cargo shorts ride low as he runs towards the sea. Mako reigns in the urge to yell at Bolin to pull his pants up.

It was a rare sight to see a man of a boy, his red ferret, and a hulking white hound race down to a beach crowded by people, gulls, and sand.

Mako opens the door from the driver's side and closes it behind him as he slips his sunglasses down from their perch in his hair. He looks on as his little brother make a fool of himself in sepia colors, smile just as bright or even brighter than before he left for the Academy. It was a good decision, Mako thinks to himself.

Last to slip out of the car, Korra closes the doors that Naga and Bolin left open. She pops open the trunk and begins to take a few things out before she stops. Her head appears around the side of the car to look at Mako.

"Hey, Flame-O, want to help me take practical things down to the beach?"

Mako scowls and grunts as he makes his way back to the trunk to do battle with an umbrella and a trunk-box-ice-containing-monster-creature. Korra has the strap of a bag full of beach essentials settled on one shoulder and a hand holding another bag containing four beach towels.

"Ready?" She grins.

Mako locks car.

Setting the V at his brow at an even sharper angle, Mako trudges after her. He only deigns the angry sounds of his flip-flops slapping against his feet as sounds good enough to direct at her.

Korra hums innocuously and seems to lead him from one end of the beach to the other. Every time Mako wants to stop dragging out the hulking trunk full of ice that seems to be containing the entire South Pole in its walls, Korra shakes her head like the spot Mako is pausing at just isn't right enough.

By the time Korra picks the "perfect spot" Mako thinks the back of his neck is going to peel off. He is just about drowning in his own sweat, yet Korra, despite hailing from chilly origins, seems to have not yet broken a sweat.

"Set the umbrella down for me?" She asks sweetly as she drops her bags into the sand and shimmies out of her shorts, throwing her tank top into the air as she makes her way to the sea. It's almost comically how her tank lands on his hair and Mako can only swipe it off his face and glare at her retreating form.

The umbrella smacks him in the chin as he tries to open it. The trunk scrapes a bit of the skin off his left shin and foot. The bag of beach essentials spill onto the sand and Mako can only step carefully and cautiously around the "camp site" in order to retrieve them all and avoid getting too much sand onto them. The bag full of towels stubbornly refuses to open. The zipper catches on his fingers and Mako can only lay in the semi-hot sand in the shade of the horrible umbrella.

Sand particles slip into the cloth of his t-shirt and they seem to scratch at his skin. His shorts are all prickly too and just when he is beginning to accept the terrible, all-pervading sense of sand someone goes and adds salt into the miserable equation that is his day.

Someone, three guesses who, manages to bring the sea to Mako, who is laying on his back in abject misery in the perfect pose of defeat.

"I'm really wet." Korra says as she leans over Mako, water slipping and sliding down the slopes and planes of her body. Mako feels his own eyes snag on smooth, dark skin stretched across lean muscles and impeccable cheek bones. Her eyes are a bright blue and flash dangerously, lightning. Her teeth are white and shine down at him, stars.

"Mind helping me dry off and put on some sunscreen?"

In the twisted world that it is, Korra manages to find the sun block that would have prevented the skin on Mako's arm from turning an angry red and she also opens the bag full of towels that would have kept Mako from becoming so damn itchy. Mako has no choice except to press his lips into an angry slash and force himself to turn his mind from the fact his hands are slipping and sliding across sinfully, smooth skin.

By the time Bolin finally finds where they have set up camp, Mako is trying to dig himself a grave in the sand and Korra is happily back to splashing in the water with Naga protected by the goodness of SPF 55.

"Bro, you know the silent treatment only works if the other person actually cares if you talk back, right? She's totally using the fact that you can't say no. I don't see how if she didn't stop in the first two hours of your silent treatment she would stop a day into it. So you're making things harder on yourself than need be."

Bolin pauses and looks down at his tortured, brooding brother, but Mako is laying on a semi-wet towel thinking dark thoughts.

"Seriously. Let it go. It'll make your life better and our time at the beach that much fun-er."

"All those years of school. All those sacrifices made for you. All of that time and effort getting you into the best college and all you can manage to try to convince me to do something is the promise of "fun-er" things?" Mako deadpans. His arm is thrown over his face and his eyes are hidden but Bolin continues to stand over Mako patiently.

"Uh...yes?" Bolin chirps.

"You are so lucky I love you so very much."

"Yeah. Yeah. I know."

Bolin proceeds to scoop Pabu up before he can try to skitter all over Mako with his muddy paws and heads back over to see what kind of game Korra as set up with Naga. It looks kind of fun.

Mako tries to go to sleep, but the heat is too oppressive and everything is full of feelings, even his heart and his head and his fingers still tingle and so he is stuck laying under a demon umbrella thinking things on a day he had taken off so he wouldn't have to think.

"Flame-O. Wake up. Are you up for a challenge?"

Moving his arm away to look at Korra hovering over him again for the second time that day, Mako wants to cry even though he knows he is too manly for such pitiful displays of emotion. This was no TV drama. There would be no need for such pathos.

It was almost noon he guesstimated, and the way his day was going, there was a chance he would be faced with the challenge of looking at Korra's eyes while her...the rest of her was going to be distracting him. Not that he had a problem keeping eye contact once he looked into her eyes because they were so blue. So deep and flickering and always with hidden light.

At this point, he wasn't even quite sure why he wasn't talking to her any more.

"Always. What's up?"

"Volley ball game." Korra blurted out, the surprise on her face almost worth all the suffering Mako had suffered in the late morning before this fortuitous turn of events.

When the three of them had been in high school together, Korra had been a varsity swimmer, wrestler, and volleyball player. The highlight of her time at high school was when she became a varsity member of the track and field; she was a master hurdler by the time she graduated. When she was playing the sports she loved it was like she was in her element. The water moved with her in the pool. The earth seemed to shake when she planted her feet to overcome an opponent. Her serves were like meteors raining fire from the sky. When she jumped over hurdles, it was like she was floating on air, evasive and free.

Mako wasn't too shabby of a volleyball player himself and so he dragged himself up from the sticky and sandy towel below.

"I would like to call on a favor." He announced. He tried to keep a straight face. "Mind helping me put on some sunscreen?"

Korra looks only slightly flustered when the two of them emerge from the shade of the horrendous umbrella and Mako is only slightly smug as he tells Bolin to 'hold down the fort'.

"I was never much of a volleyball player." Bolin sighs dramatically. "Wrestling was all there was for me." He hangs his head in mock shame before his green eyes brighten. "And girls."

Bolin snickers at his own joke and waves at them before rummaging around in one of the bags for something to eat.

"Ooh, we are going to be awesome. Do you ever still remember how to play?"

"Of course."