For all the fantasies she'd ever had, Korra never meant for it to happen. Asami was kissing back and if it was all she ever got she could die complete.
Asami finally let her hands wander from drying hair over the expanse of her chiseled back and up again over the jut of a glistening collar bone. Korra was kissing her - hard. She grabbed the heiress' wandering hands before they got any lower, pinning them on the tarp, entangling their fingers. Finally letting her lips roam, over the corner of her mouth, her jaw, suckling her pulse point in a way that made the heiress clamp her thighs over Korra's hips.
Asami moaned her name, biting her lips as she ached to have her hands back, but relished in the thrill of complete submission. It was only for a moment however, at the sound of it, Korra stopped.
She pulled back, hovering over the heiress in the glow of everything. She inspected her natural lips, freshly kissed and distinct bruising forming where Korra had sucked. Half lidded green eyes oozing with arousal, excitement and a smile that held the ice sculptor in place.
What Asami saw was a sight she knew would burn in her heart forever, Korra's intense eyes reflecting the light of the cavern back at her, her shoulders dotted with the bioluminescent algae glowing blue in patches over beautiful tan skin. She was other worldly, a glittering goddess with light pooling over her muscled shoulders, spattered over her abs and the small of her back.
"We should talk about this." Korra said, but it somehow seemed like a futile statement until Asami free'd a hand from her grip and cupped her cheek.
Asami pushed herself forward, straddling her lap as she clawed at Korra's back, returning biting kisses along the column of her throat. Victory was Korra's fingers toying with the string of her bikini top.
Asami couldn't help but roll her hips against her encouragingly, keening sound parting from the back of her throat. She was learning what Korra already knew, that kissing a woman was intense, and intimate, intuitive and soft. Korra knew where the exposed nerves where, where to bite and suck and kiss or even just give the lightest of touch, to have Asami's eyes rolling back.
Red bombarded their vision suddenly and the girls flinched apart at the sound of a megaphone siren. It wasn't the entirely romantic scene either of them had imagined, but they were thrown into it and under a spotlight with no where else to hide.
"Not-newlywed couple!" Joo Dee's voice rang out from the crack in the cave, small lifeguard boat jutting into its mouth. "You've strayed from the tour! Are either of you injured?"
"What?" Korra asked.
"No!" Asami protested gripping Korra's arm to stop her from retreating any further, she took her palm with both hands. "Korra stay with me."
Asami knew before Korra moved that she was retreating into her own mind.
"This place was supposed to be secret," Korra lamented simply, lower lip jutting out adorably.
"I love it when you pout," Asami meant to think it, but it seemed now was a time for the internal thoughts to air, and already she found herself stroking Korra's cheek.
If Korra was going to be wooed by the compliment, it was short lived, the Tour Guide's voice cut through the intimacy like shattering glass.
"I repeat! Are either of you hurt!" Joo Dee continued belligerently through the megaphone.
"No!" Asami called back, shielding her own eyes from the unnaturally bright lights.
"Swim to this life boat! The tour is over! You must return to the island or you will be stranded for the night!"
"Why can't you come to us!" Korra snapped, glaring into the light, not caring for how it blinded her.
There was a pause before Joo Dee responded.
"We cannot fit,"
Korra huffed and rubbed her face harshly in her hands, trying and failing to absorb the impossibilities that had just occurred to them. When they were done kissing Korra had planned on confronting Asami, on having it out and dissecting every second they had spent together on this bizzaro archipelago. Being deafened, blinded and made dumb in quick succession was never on the itinerary, but now as she stood, and Asami peeled her fingers away from her face she gave pause to all her intentions.
Asami was being perfectly pleasant to her after she had kissed her, after Korra had had her lips on that gorgeous neck, and Korra's worst case scenarios had not come to pass. In fact, the heiress was being as affectionate and sweet as she had always been, except now it all made sense. It was then Korra knew that all she had been feeling, the intense romantic fixation with her best friend, was reflected.
The couple paused, and it was in this moment Asami watched Korra, she took in the way flashes of red washed her out and canonical blue made every angle of her body sing, how her eyes caught the light and glinted in her direction.
Asami wondered if she had broken her as she remained in her stillness as though waiting to be woken up from a dream.
"What do you say Korra? Rather spend the night here?" it was then Korra noticed Asami was tenderly running her fingers over the crevices of her hand, not quite taking it for herself, but there all the same.
Korra couldn't stop the look of conflict passing over her face. Her two minds pulling in opposite directions, what she wanted, what should be done.
"I'll go get the bags," She told Asami, looking away before diving in to the fray of benign mantas below them.
Asami watched her in the glow, getting further and and further away and hugged herself, standing on the edge of the boat.
Korra was swimming back, and as she carved through the water and looked ahead, she could see the tall silhouette of the woman she had just kissed on what had been their little oasis.
Sequential flashes burning the black outline of the woman she's adored all these years, even featureless Korra could tell she was tucking her hair behind her ears as she paced waiting for her.
Korra had stuffed their possessions into her well stocked drybag. Best-friend-Asami would have made humorous comments at her expense. Post-Kiss-Asami was tongue tied as Korra waited for her patiently in the water at the bow of the boat.
"Maybe don't jump." Korra told her, "I don't think they'd appreciate it,"
Asami dangled her foot over the edge, beside where Korra floated as she waited for the sculptor to guide her. She lowered herself with grace, all the while devouring the sensation of Korra's fingers skimming against her skin as she came down.
When the water was at her shoulders, that was when they were once again face to face. The conflict was still there, and as much as Asami wanted to kiss it away she knew it would only make it worse. She placed her hand on her arm and told her.
"We'll talk, okay?"
On the dark side of the boat they felt like they were once again in secret, and Korra was awash in a sea of her own, now scattered around them with nowhere to hide. She was lost by it, and liberated.
Wordlessly she drifted once again, and pressed a closed lipped kiss on her mouth just to be safe. Right then it was all she was certain she wanted.
"Asami," she was having an out of body experience as she whispered it. The carmaker pressed a soothing kiss back before balancing her forehead over hers.
"Korra," she responded, still scratching the base of her scalp, which she knew soothed Korra from giving years of comfort. "Just a moment," she requested in a whisper, preparing the emotions swirling in her chest for the best and worst possible scenarios.
Suddenly Korra hugged her tight, arms around her ribs, chin injected into the crook of her neck.
Korra felt a nudge on her elbow, and looking down saw much of the manta population had scattered to quieter places, bar one, huge shining diamond shaped porpoise staring up at them with curious eyes in the shade of their boat. The heiress flinched.
"These aren't people eating and or stinging mantas right?"
"What? No…These little guys are just friendly,"
"Little? Korra, he's the size of a boat,"
It was true, for the tiny portion that came out of the water, below the surface was it's long kite like body waving at the edges, tail swaying gently with the current.
Asami clung to Korra instinctively, but Korra smiled and fed her fingers between the ones on her neck, and guided them over the beasts forehead. The slimy smooth head stayed still, but Asami swore she saw the bulbous eyes close slightly as the beast relaxed under their joint touch.
"Lord of the Ocean," Asami recalled in a breath what Kya had once told them.
Joo Dee gave another unintelligible screeching demand in the distance, and it was enough to scare away their friend.
Korra huffed, exasperated, sparing a shy glance to Asami before pushing off the boat to swim around to the next one. Asami followed, once again slow enough to remain behind, once again admiring Korra as she skimmed the water as though born in it, but perhaps being less discreet about it.
When Korra turned on the surface of the life guard boat to pull her aboard she caught the heiress biting her lip post-trance from watching her climb above her.
Joo Dee intercepted them in a flurry of panic and paper work, practically yanking their hands to sign waivers that neither of them read or cared about. When she was done she had the presence of mind to give them towels to shoulder, and tried to conceal her rage at the two of them through a thin lipped smile.
When it was clear they were done here, Korra stalked off onto the bow of the boat that was now skipping over the open ocean. She sat on a bench and noticed the still glowing slime on her arm and swiped at it anxiously.
Asami watched her curiously, unsure as to how to proceed. There were many conversations to be had, she knew. Was she gay, or bi, or was this all just Korra, Korra, Korra? She'd settle for knowing simply where they stood. She had wanted Korra to kiss her, desperately, but in the aftermath where did it leave them, especially since Korra had been such a great kisser. Now all she knew for certain was she wanted it all again, and to continue from where they had left off.
"I'm sorry." Korra's voice broke her out of her stupor. Her blue eyes cut through the dark and gripped that exquisitely secret place in her chest.
Korra swung her leg on the bench to face her, and scooted back to give her space to sit with her. Asami let her speak rather than joining her.
"I let you get too far with him." Korra went on to admit, gaze steady, "I let my feelings cloud the way I saw your relationship and I couldn't see you needed me. I wanted to think you did but, I just couldn't. And then he hurt you." Korra chewed on her lip and let her gaze drop. "I'm just- I'm so sorry, Asami."
Already Asami could see a portion of the weight on her shoulders lift.
"You have feelings for me?"
Korra couldn't help the laugh that escaped her then.
"If it wasn't clear already."
Asami tightened the towel around herself before mounting the bench in front of her old friend.
"Is that why you stopped talking to me?" Asami asked, reaching forward delicately, fingers prone on Korra's, balancing and interlocked on the wood between them, "You didn't want me to know how you felt?"
"It's like coming out plus." Korra breathed, "and you looked happy."
"Looks can be deceiving," Asami muttered, "and Opal knows?"
"I mean-"
"I saw you two, whispering in the corner giving me side eye. You looked embarrassed, I thought maybe she was giving you gossip on me…how did she find out?"
"I-" Korra's throat seized, and she turned to look out onto the dark horizon. She'd kept this information locked in, and it was fighting to stay that way. "I came to see you with sketches, for your wedding sculpture. She got a hold of my notebook."
"Why what's in it?"
"Nothing bad!" Korra insisted, "Just alongside the professional, preliminary sketches was you. A lot of you."
"Was that the day you never showed?"
"I ran, it broke me." Korra recalled her first real world taste of exposure, the way her heart raced and palms mopped with sweat felt but a fraction to the way she was feeling now, under the full force of the naked truth and half naked Asami.
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"This wasn't supposed to happen!" Korra lifted their twined hands, "I couldn't fathom telling you, because it meant I could lose you, and it is information you can never unlearn, and I could never deal with the pity and the regret and you were getting married so what was the point in any of it. We were destined to grow apart."
"Korra, look at me." reluctantly she did, "Does this look like destiny to you?"
Korra couldn't answer, because she knew what she wanted and the answer Asami expected to hear were not one and the same.
"What about you?" Korra accused, "you've been all over me since we got here. What is this to you? A rebound? Am I a binky for you to suck on while you recover from being dumped?"
She hadn't meant to sound so harsh but the effect was clear, already Asami was rescinding her fingers into a fist between them.
"That didn't come out right." Korra admitted.
"No it's fine. It's fair." Asami scooped her hair back behind her ears. She turned away from Korra and started out as the black sea rushed out from beneath them. "I was so humiliated, and I was most worried about how people would see me being jilted as a sign of tactical weakness, not that I'd lost him. But this trip, it's like - my feelings have been switched back on. I'm looking back on my life with a whole new perspective. I can see you Korra for what you were for me and you're perfect. I was so consumed with what my future was supposed to look like it didn't occur to me I could just be with you."
She swiped the tears leaking from her eyes.
"I feel like such an idiot for not seeing it, and since I'm here and feeling all I want is you. To touch you and be near you and talk to you. I could see you suffering and I couldn't figure out how to fix it."
"There's nothing you could've done." Korra told her as she sniffed, rubbing circles between the taller woman's shoulder blades.
"Yeah, you're stubborn like that."
"What about him?" Korra asked the dreaded question, "if he were here now would you go back to him?"
"You want me to tell you he meant nothing?"
"A week ago you were marrying the guy, now you're telling me you could cut out all his pictures and replace him with me? And you're over it? At the flip of a switch."
"I-" Asami began, before stopping to search her feelings, this was Korra she was talking to, and whatever she told her next, she had to be sure about it. "I don't know. I don't know if I'm dissociating because I don't care about the life I envisioned for myself anymore- how psychotic is that?"
Korra remained stoic and silent, waiting for the and, the link back to her. As the moment stretched Asami reached back tentatively and squeezed her hands.
"All I know is I was broken, I was at bottom and now I'm out. And honestly you're the only person I can come out to. There's no-one else left."
"That shouldn't be a reason for this." Korra didn't pull away when Asami scooted closer, nor did she when the heiress placed a hand on her cheek.
"Shouldn't this?" Asami asked, thumb skimming an arc over her skin, tracing the edge of her lower lip. She watched as a sweeter kind of tension encompassed her best friend, her breath came out in shudders, and every part of her that Asami was touching was shaking with the thrill of it. Korra was alive and living beneath her touch.
Korra's hands gripped her arms firmly, blue eyes nearly black as the distance between them began to shrink.
The boat pulled into harbour without either of them noticing, however they were yanked out of their trance by Joo Dee screaming at the top of her lungs.
"The tour is over!"
Korra caught herself, and immediately ran the minutes of this meeting through her head as she stepped away and plucked their possessions from around them.
She needed to shower. She needed to think. But that didn't stop her from grabbing the heiress' hand and marching her off that boat straight to their hotel room.