Korra rifled in Kya's airing cupboard, surprised how many guest pyjamas she had stored there. It seemed off-brand for such a free spirit to be so organised, but as Korra pulled the one size fits all set from the heated shelf she mused Kana was a good influence on Kya.
"I hope I have a woman like that with me when I'm 60,"
"Early fifties," Kya snapped startling her. Korra landed on her but and turned to the older couple looking down on her from the doorway.
"Okay!" Korra told her, turning the clothes in her hands and she felt as though she was shrinking. "Why are you looking at me like that?" she hesitated before asking, mainly because she already had an idea of the answer.
"What happened tonight Korra?" Kya asked her calmly.
"I- she said to go," she shrugged, "so I went," she could only look at the ground, thinking only of the way Asami had just clung to her just now. Korra didn't need to know the contents of the letter, she couldn't care less what that arsehole had said to her. She couldn't feel more ashamed of the fact she left her alone to face it.
"I know how bad it is, I know, she's a mess and I let her do that alone, and I hate myself for it and I- I can't be the person she needs me to be, I'm selfish."
Kya interrupted her field of view, kneeling into her level. She touched her wrist, pulling her out of her own thoughts, fingers tracing the seashell bracelet.
"What were you thinking?"
"I was thinking I'm in love with her," Korra surprised herself by admitting it, but it only made her stomach drop, "but every second I spend here I feel like I'm the worst friend in the world."
"Oh hun," Kya brushed a tear from Korra's cheek she hadn't felt fall. Suddenly she was in a cocoon of warm bodies, holding her as she wept without moving.
"She wanted you," Kana told her, "she called us to find you."
Korra's sob came out shattered, the ball she kept herself in cracked just a little.
"I wasn't there,"
"No Korra, listen to me," Kana sat back on her heels to look her in the eye, "She was at her lowest moment and the only person she wanted in the world was you."
Korra sniffed as she took in what Kana was telling her, as her back was rubbed and hair mussed, she turned the words over in her head and looked at them with objectivity. Hoping the letters themselves might give her an answer as to what went on in the heiress' head, and why she was even on this island in the first place.
It occurred to her then that maybe she should ask. She started formulating questions as she pulled herself up off the ground, and committed them to memory as Kana and Kya hugged her goodnight, ready for the right moment.
She knew for a fact that now wasn't it, as she pushed open the guest bedroom door and saw the Carmaker laying awake in her bed, waiting.
Korra took steps towards the twin bed on the right, but before she even touched it she felt nimble fingers curl around the tips of her own. She didn't need to look down at her hand to see who was holding it, but she did it anyway, following the arm to find Asami sitting half upright and edging a wider and more inviting space on her bed.
The heiress didn't tug, she just waited, looking up at her with decidedly schooled features and reaching for Korra's wrist as the ice sculptor watched her. These wordless encounters were racking up, Korra thought, as she knelt into the cotton and warmth. Asami leant back into the pillows to take her in, hands amicably knotted behind her head, taking note of where exactly her lips accidentally brushed her neck as Korra's arms came around her in a tightly wound hug.
She languished the way Korra's body twisted into hers in secret, trying to get comfortable in a bed that barely held them both. Relief and disappointment seeped into her senses when she realised Korra wasn't going to shuffle back to look into her eyes.
She knew what she'd do in the face of it, but the weight of the day left her too exhausted to jump off that particular cliff, she thought, knowing she was being a coward and she should just say fuck it and paint over the marks Kuvira had left on Korra's lips. She dreamed of it as she pressed her eyes into Korra's neck.
Eventually Korra found herself lying on her back, and the heiress once again on top of her, head tucked under her chin. She huffed a heavy sigh as she stilled herself, taking stock of the nimble arms gripping her middle, and the warm breath spilling over her chest.
"Rough day?" Asami asked finally, thumb tracing an arc over the ribs in her reach.
Korra let out a beleaguered laugh, but stopped when Asami's had grazed a particularly sensitive spot and she flinched to grab it. Asami made to tug it back, but Korra kept her grip, before either knew it the tips of their fingers interlocked, and stayed that way over Korra's stomach. The sensation was gripping, pulsing from their fingers into their chests and toes.
Suddenly Korra remembered why she had wanted two beds in the honeymoon suite in the hotel; there was no way she could sleep touching someone who made every cell of her being light up so inexplicably.
"I think that date might have ruined all the zen I had going from the massage," Korra admitted after too long a pause.
Both of them without looking were paying very much attention to the hands, almost intertwined. Asami's fingers edged down about five millimetres, and Korra's gripped them still.
The heiress' trapped hand under Korra's back rode up, rubbing circles over her shoulder blades in response. Korra felt her brain circuits frying as she was flooded with a range of emotions, only to be brought out of it when she tried to twist her legs and found that Asami's ankle was already against hers.
"What did it say?" She blurted, "the letter," she loosened her fingers and felt the heiress' land fully between her own, "It must've been bad if you wound up here."
"He said we were going through the motions." Asami mused calmly, reflecting on what she'd learned as though on an impartial island away, "That he didn't care about me in the way I deserved, and that I was trapping him with our apartment, and friends, and a wedding he didn't care about."
At the break in her voice Korra instinctively turned into her again, holding her against her tightly in the hopes to stem tears however, none came. Asami simply held her back, face buried into her shoulder, ankle brushing gently against hers, hands gripping tight the shirt Korra had been given from Kya.
"There was so much I didn't see," Asami whispered into Korra's skin, "I was the one engineering this whole life and I couldn't tell it was a trap, not until it snared me,"
"You are not a trap," Korra assured her, rubbing her back, "You are not unlovable. You knew what you wanted, and he didn't and it's his loss."
Old Asami, the Asami from just a few days ago, would have said something along the lines of, but it feels like my loss, except in that moment it didn't. Her arms and heart was full of one - Korra.
"You're loveable too," Asami told her, feeling the ice sculptor tense beneath her hands, even as she gently drew them up her spine to rest on her neck. "When you find someone…you have to tell me Korra, okay? Promise me," tell me it's me, she added silently. Korra heaved another harsh sigh, loaded with the heavy truths she kept secret.
"When I'm ready, I will."
Asami felt the vagueness of the answer fill the silence that followed. As much as she needed validation, she lived in this moment of hope.
"And it better not be Kuvira," she added, hoping to ease the tension of it, and it worked; Korra laughed.
"Your hair smells like fire." Korra told her, "I think it's bothering me," she admitted.
"Here," Asami shuffled, back, careful not to look Korra in the eye as before she manoeuvred her, turning her away. The separation was short lived however, as she pressed the length of her body against the back of Korra's, reaching over to grab the hand she had claimed earlier, locking their fingers and holding them over her chest.
"Can you sleep like this?" she asked, once again slipping her foot between Korra's, god I love how warm her feet are.
Korra nodded rubbing her ankle over hers in response.
"Goodnight Korra,"
"Night Asami,"
Korra knew this was a dream. She'd had so many of them before. It was a little heartbreaking that it was occurring in the room she'd fallen asleep in. The first thing she saw was Asami, staring at her again, and the next her numb lips were kissing her tightly, arms around her like a vice around her chest.
It was dreams like this that showed Korra exactly how she felt, no matter how far she ran from it. Every time she tried to pull away, the night brought a new dream of the heiress pulling her close, giving her everything her waking self couldn't have. The maddening thing was it still wasn't enough, no matter how hard she pressed or where she put her hands, she couldn't feel any of it.
Korra hated these dreams, but it was all she had.
"Korra," she heard Asami keen her name before sucking on her neck.
Korra smelled smoke, and opening her eyes again, looking out the windows she knew and saw the volcano belching flames and magma.
That old fear jolted her awake.
She was still facing away from Asami, thin layer of sweat coating her skin, cold feet rubbing hers, and fingers still entwined over her chest.
There was a difference to when she had finally managed to drift off however, a soft kiss was being placed on the back of her neck.
"It's ok, it's just a bad dream," Asami mumbled sleepily, seemingly unaware of Korra's impending panic attack, "go back to sleep baby,"
Another kiss, and Korra flinched out the bed. Asami didn't wake, instead reaching blind and unconscious, for the warm in the dark.
"Sweetie come back t' bed,"
Korra covered her mouth to prevent noise from coming out. She considered the options, that Asami had thought she had gone to bed as usual, with her fiance and that Korra was him, or…
She stood, watching the unsettled expression on Asami's face as she slept without the body beside her. The shivering got to her, and Korra pulled the blanket over the bride's shoulders, before slipping out of the room.
She stalked through the house with her head in her hands, not having to look as she turned the corners and walked down the stairs. Her body ran hot and charged and everything inside it was twisting unbearably. Korra walked herself outside and continued across the beach until her feet hit the sea. She waded in until it was starting to soak the bottoms of her borrowed shorts.
She regarded the inky, glinting blue for a moment, and endured the cacophony of emotions throttling her before diving straight in. It was cooling and relieving and as she floated and she did her best to separate herself from her feelings. Asami was good at this, she recalled, no room for feelings in business.
Korra's came out in a big wet wad as she breathed deep breaths and her body jutted with the gentle current of the water. She looked up at the stars and saw a limitless sky, it went on from horizon to horizon, she got lost in the zenith, and reminded herself that she was lucky to be alive.
Asami Sato had kissed her neck. She could put the memory in her pocket.
Asami Sato woke alone. She had fallen asleep with her forehead against the back of Korra's neck and now there was no sign of her. When she sat up she inspected the rooms for signs, her bed was empty but the door ajar, and now that she saw that she saw the wet footprints leading from the door to the bathroom.
She followed it and found Korra's soaked clothes draped over the side of the tub. Korra was nowhere to be found.
The sun was rising, it was only 7 am. Asami knew Korra hated mornings, or more accurately, she thought they were evil. Which is why she thought it odd to find her in the kitchen, finishing an intricate carving of a watermelon owl.
"Korra?"
The sculptor jumped. Wide eyes clashing with Asami's and taking in her friend, confused and messy and looking like she just walked out of a dream. Korra tried not to look at her lips.
"Hey," she responded, before returning to the task at hand, displaying apples carved into swans next to strawberries trussed into roses.
"How long have you been up?"
"A while," Korra admitted, regarding her work on Asami's side of the kitchen island, but careful not to get close to her.
"Can we eat…any of this?" Asami asked incredulously, still not sure if she herself had actually woken up.
"Sure, maybe wait until Kya and Kana come for the watermelon owl, or the apple swans, but if you can't wait, I can make you a banana duck."
Asami blinked and stared at her friend to try and gauge her sanity levels. She leapt into action and placed her hand on Korra's forehead.
"Are you sure you're ok? You're not getting feverish?"
"I'm fine Asami," Korra took her hands away from her, "I just, I woke up early,"
"Why?" Asami asked, "You hate mornings,"
Korra couldn't help but feel a little interrogated, but of course Asami remembered none of it, and what it meant to Korra. She swallowed sand, and answered.
"I had a nightmare."
"Oh Korra," Asami went to hug her and Korra was immediately tense beneath her hands, and wouldn't hug her back. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"It's ok." Korra tried.
"Is it?" Asami snapped, stepping back to look at her, "What's going on with you? Why wont you talk to me?"
"You thought I was him," Korra snapped back, "You kissed my neck, called me baby, sweetie…After I woke up from the nightmare." she averted her eyes and gripped her own elbows. "I didn't want you to wake up to the wrong person so I-"
"Went swimming?"
Korra stared at her pleadingly, biting her lip, shrugging. Now that Asami was awake she did recall Korra leaving her, how empty it felt, how she wanted her to come back. Bit by bit the wording came back, but she absolutely knew who she was talking to, and in sleep her inhibitions had been eroded to nothing.
Suddenly she grabbed at her fingers tucked under her elbow and grounded her in her gaze, Asami took a moment to make her mouth work around her words.
"You are not the wrong person Korra," she assured, finding herself in Korra's orbit, feeling it's pull. Her eyes skimmed her lips once again. She was living in the moment, the still, the possibilities, the pleasures she stole in from the woman in front of her, drawing the blade of her finger along her jaw.
"Holy shit, Korra!" Kya interrupted them, and Korra leapt back from Asami as though she had been burned, "is this all the fruit from the bar?"
"I couldn't sleep," Korra responded, turning to her almost-aunt, and watching as her sleep deprived partner came in, opened the fridge, took a sip from a bottle of water in there, saw the decorations and spit the contents of her mouth in response of the ridiculous scene before her.
Kya patted her back as her partner sputtered. Asami watched as Korra's crooked grin returned and she gripped the back of her own neck in that shy way of hers.
"How did you sleep?" Kya directed the question to Asami.
"When Korra left it got lonely," the heiress admitted, ignoring the follow up choke Kana had on her drink and instead watching the conflict on Korra's face. For the first time in as many days, Asami finally understood what it all meant.
She took a strawberry rose from the table and bit into it, eyes never straying from the swirling blue's in front of her.
"We have a hike," Asami told her, "on the other side of the island," she inspected the rose she had halved in her fingers, "We should go soon if we're going to meet up with the tour."
"Is that the Mt Makapu tour?" Kya asked. Asami nodded popping the other half of the rose into her mouth. "Well when you're done with the yuppies, there's a path I want you to take."
"I'm sure the regular death volcano tour is fine," Korra jibed offering Kana a swanned apple.
Kya rolled her eyes and took out a notepad, "About a third of the way up, theres a plateau where the steps go on, don't go up them."
"Sounds logical." Korra mocked.
"Behind the foliage theres a footpath that hugs the cliff face, you'll come to an opening in the rock, a cavern and inside well, why don't you tell me what you find inside."
Korra gave her a sarcastic thumbs up.
"Do you really want us to eat this owl?" Kana asked.
Korra looked at her creations, and into the berry eyes of the owl she had so lovingly carved.
"I'll make some eggs,"