Song 1 - Sappho - Frankie Cosmos
It would take Asami almost the entire day to unravel the long languishing event of the night before. Unravelling is what she called sobering up.
Her face firmly planted in rouge silk sheets and coming to consciousness, she couldn't help but compare it to the expectations she'd long since had.
Sure enough Iroh matched the tall dark and handsome silhouette that had been burned into her childhood psyche. To a tee he played the part, even lifting her over the threshold to their hotel room.
This was the first morning of her honeymoon. She gave last night a pass because they were both too exhausted to move beyond untangling Asami's wedding dress, for the first short drunken encounter that consummated their marriage. He tried, bless him, she mused although after the way his army buddies were feeding shots through a funnel she was hardly surprised that he rolled over so soon after.
Still she hoped that life-fulfilling happiness would linger past the morning. The honeymooner mused that tequila had that affect on her, so when she woke without her husband, she tried not to let it get her down.
Standing she winced, immediately tangled in a clothes line of photos. Ugh, she thought, honeymoon newlywed deluxe package, it seemed like such a good idea at the time. She plucked the pegs entangled in her silk locks away and disengaged the photo that almost took her eye out.
Oh Korra, she smiled at her best friend's shocked expression captured in a flash as she and Iroh kissed her cheeks in a sneak attack. Forget about me. She remembered her last words to her. Asami felt a spike of worry, reliving the moment that was shrouded in haze, as she played it, she noted that patented Korra half smirk.
The slight smile that told her she in fact didn't know her best friend as well as she thought, and she never will.
No, Asami seethed reaching for the phone, if she thinks because I've gotten married I've stopped being her best friend she's got another thing coming…
Korra chewed her fingernail, eyeing her own bedroom door.
Her apartment bathed in morning light, she usually found a solace in watching the shadows shrink as the sun rose with the day, except now she was adrift in her own anxious thoughts. As one is want to after taking part in a bad idea.
Shrill ringing shocked her out of her reverie, and desperate not to wake the sleeping mistake in the next room she dove for it, slapping the handset off the wall, catching and cupping the receiver so her voice wouldn't carry.
"Hello?" she spoke in a hushed tone, eyeing the body in the bed through the crack, who stirred but did not wake.
"Hey," the first and last voice she wanted to hear percolated over her in a rush.
"Hey shouldn't you be enjoying your honeymoon?"
"I am, I just wanted to call my best gal, check everything was ok after all that drinking…Iroh and I are just getting out of our hangovers."
"Oh," Korra balked. "I'm okay."
"Why are you whispering?" Asami asked, Korra could hear the teasing smile on her lips already.
"The time," Korra scrambled to cover the truth, still working her way through it as it was, "It's early… 7 am," it was early for Korra at least.
"Oh god, sorry, but you're awake? Why? Are you with someone?"
"I-uh,"
"Did you hook up!" Asami whispered excitedly, "Who is it? Do I know her? Is it a her?"
"It's complicated," so complicated, Korra tacked on, noting her own heart pounding in her chest as her many secrets came close.
"Complicated how? Korra I'm a married lady now - I can take the details, dish!" Asami pressed, the reminder of her marriage had Korra's heart sinking low in her torso, and she became lost in that feeling once again. Korra never spoke to Asami about her love life, and ordinarily she dodged the questions and omitted certain truths. Today she was caught off guard, and she could really use a friend, if only it wasn't the one who made her lips quiver and palms sweat.
"I can keep a secret," Asami added conspiratorially. "I'll be your best friend?"
Korra's sunken heart was still pounding, and in her inertia she had only the energy to cradle the phone to her ear and listen to Asami's breaths.
"Just a name, an initial, anything," She could hear Asami losing patience with her, pressing her toe against the door that hid the secrets. One more question and it would become ajar. Korra couldn't have that.
"I don't know her name." it was only after she said it Korra realised she didn't want Asami to see her this way, but it was better than the alternative, "We met at a bar,"
"Oh my god," her best friend made a noise something between a gasp and exclamation, a eureka, stumbling quite unexpectedly over something new about her best friend. "How do you not know her name?"
Korra winced, training her eyes on the peaceful scene, the moving shadows, the peaches and purples that coloured her living room, the harsh silhouette of her running machine, curved over the crannies of carpet, couch and fur cushions.
"It was loud, we didn't really speak,"
"What about the walk home?"
"Cab, we were…otherwise occupied."
"Oh my god,"
"Will you stop saying oh my god?" Korra couldn't help but smirk a little, but the levity in the Asami's voice couldn't help but move her.
"Korra - as long as I've known you I've never known you to have one night stands, hell the only reason I know you're gay is because a girl walked up to at a party and kissed you thanking you for the night before, I mean I'm your best friend but you keep so much from me-"
"I know." Korra hushed, "I'm not exactly comfortable talking about it okay?"
"But you can hook up with a total stranger?"
"Yes,"
"Oh," Korra listened to the wind get knocked out of her, but for someone so perceptive, she couldn't pinpoint why her best friend would make such a noise. "How many?"
"I…don't think I've counted." Korra scoffed, body vibrating, this type of honesty as her wired and thrumming, as terrified as she was, there was also something liberating about telling someone. She chose her words with the utmost care. "It doesn't happen often," Korra felt the need to express, "but I guess I just," don't say it, don't say it, "Got lucky," goddammit.
"Wait you hooked up the night of my wedding?"
Korra's swirling brain stilled for a moment, it was not the question, but the way it was asked, that gave her pause before responding.
"No-one you know… and or are working with." Korra couldn't help but clutch at her shirt above her chest as she felt a sting of shame. "I'd…hooked up with her before." Korra winced at a phrase so uncouth.
"And you don't know her name? What have you been doing?"
"We got back, we…slept together… she fell asleep just now… I'm just, I'm sure it came up but I forgot or wasn't listening, or concentrating on something else….what? You've gone quiet?"
"You haven't slept you've just been…?"
"What?"
"All night?"
"I don't understand."
Again the she fell to silence, and Korra listened to it curiously.
"Nothing,"
"What?" Korra pressed, instantly feeling hypocritical, but it was a knee jerk reaction.
"I'm feeling a little jealous," Asami answered, and it made Korra's heart stop, "Iroh and I have to catch up,"
Korra had to stop herself from retching.
"Asami-" she warned.
"I know, I know, you don't want to talk about it." Asami hushed on the other side, "we're adults you know its okay, but it's personal. I get it, but Korra," Korra's body tingled at the sound of her name passing through those lips, it was an involuntary, and unfortunate reaction, "you can tell me anything okay? I'm not here to judge."
A litany of responses flowed through Korra's psyche then, some of anger, or of despair, or the rolodex of lies Korra kept to turn her friend away from the truth. Instead, and this was part of her vow to become a better friend, she answered sincerity with sincerity.
"I know." Korra frowned.
"So how do we solve a problem like Blank here?"
"It's just what I was trying to figure out."
"I could call Opal, have her pop by early and when they shake hands-"
"No," Korra interjected, the last thing she needed now was Opal's pitying gaze, and more of a reason for her to interfere, "I need this…separate…also its early."
"Can you cast your mind back to perhaps the first time she spoke to you?"
Korra didn't even have to close her eyes to remember the first time the Stranger spoke to her all those weeks back. Against brick in an alley her arms her full, her mind elsewhere as she breathed an introduction that Korra simply couldn't grasp at the time.
"I was kissing her neck."
She heard a fumble and the phone clattered on something making the receiver wince.
"Asami?"
"Sorry this is just, sorry you-," she snatched the phone back by it's cord and rushed to keep Korra on the line. "Not judging." she urged.
The Carmaker was ingesting mountains of information in the unspoken. What she knew of Korra, and what she now knew, merging unceremoniously as her tactical pragmatic mind filled in the gaps. Korra could entice, seduce and bed a woman without so much as speaking a word on a good night. Not only was she unaware that such a person existed, but she'd been sharing secrets, sleepovers and movie nights with one for years.
"It's okay," Korra felt her face flush, exposed, ashamed, head throbbing. "I'll figure it out."
"K wait,"
"Why did you call?" Korra tried her best not to seem defensive.
"To see if you were okay…last night you seemed off,"
"You were drunk, we were all drinking… It's fine, it was your wedding."
"Is that really it?"
Korra held her breath, again searching, again off her game.
"I said I'm fine."
Again a silence, unexplained but shared all the same. Asami was beginning to learn Korra said more with nothing that with her actual words, and began to turn the pieces of the puzzle in her head, searching for the corners. Create the frame first, her father would tell her, the rest will fall into place.
"Okay," she breathed.
"You go," Korra told her, tone unreadable "Enjoy your honeymoon."
"I will," as well wishes go, this one seemed to leave a bitter taste in Asami's mouth.
"Bye,"
"Goodbye Korra,"
Korra set the receiver down somewhat reluctantly, she couldn't explain why, that conversation was agony. Still plastic met plastic in a gentle way, and just as inexplicably her mouth formed the words.
"Without me," Immediately she berated herself for it.
Her gaze had fallen from its vigilance, and on its return she found the body she had been watching had moved.
Shit.
The ajar, became the open, and the Stranger from last night stepped through, mussed, half dressed.
"Water?" she ignored that she had been left alone.
"Uh," Korra balked, "Sure," she obliged in silence, avoiding eye contact, longing to disappear into the ether, praying she hadn't been overheard.
The stranger stood beside her when the water was ready to serve, took it to her ruby lips and sipped gratefully.
"What you've been through, I presume?"
Korra regarded her, palms flat on the counter, before nodding, decidedly weak.
"It gets better you know, with time."
"What does?"
"Anything." the stranger shrugged casually. What do you know about it? Korra seethed, but this girl didn't deserve it. She deserved so much more than Korra was capable of then, "And it's June, by the way." June extended her hand out, "June Shirshu,"
Gingerly Korra placed her palm under June's who shook it twice, before leading her back to her own bed.
"Time and sleep," she explained, to which the Ice Sculptor was skeptical, but grateful for all the same.
"Good morning, wife!" Iroh entered the room like a gameshow host, baring prizes and precious coffee.
"Hey hubby," she scrunched her nose immediately at the new nickname, before adding, "no," it just didn't taste right.
Iroh chuckled, grinning, and placed a lumbering kiss over her forehead.
"Cursing that free bar of ours?"
"How could such tiny drinks cause such devastating damage?" Asami mused sipping java elixir.
"Too much damage you can't enjoy being felt up by a stranger or a dip in the deep blue lagoon on our Island Getaway honeymoon that awaits us?"
"Not if I shower first," Asami smiled, despite feeling unsettled by the call she'd just had with her best friend, but it was too much to put on Iroh this early, "Where were you?"
"We left the plane tickets in your office." Iroh shrugged, "That almost set our trip off the rails!"
Asami's eyebrows shot up, speechless, for someone so prepared for every eventuality, the near miss shook her. Iroh shrugged and kissed her quick.
"Jitters I guess," she concluded aloud, sipping coffee and b-lining for the bathroom and a warm cleansing shower.
Doused in the spray she lathered and washed letting her mind wander. With all this new evidence presented to her on her best friend, by her best friend, she tried to place it all in her mind.
Korra in a bar, her blue eyes cutting through darkness, catching someone beautiful. Her best friend was beautiful so it stands to reason whomever she chose would be too. Without words how was it possible? What could she say without speaking? What language did Korra know that made no sound?
This was something she'd never been faced with, Korra hid her sex life and sexuality, and to be honest, Asami had never noticed. Now that she'd let slip something so personal, she should be grateful she could finally share, but the bride felt something else entirely, and her mind was stuck, just a little, on the what.
Korra could draw a crowd if she wanted, she was magnetic and infectious and just so fun when she wanted to be. It made the Asami smile to think about.
Perhaps it was dancing, close quarters on a lit up floor, something that just happened naturally, the right song, the right touch. At what point would she start kissing her neck? Running her fingers through her hair? What noises would she then make? Where would her hands be? Where would it all be leading to?
"Babe?"
Asami flinched, ripping her hands from herself, opening her eyes. What the hell? The image of her best friend kissing an amalgam of mystery women burned bright even in her wake. It's just because it's new, she told herself, a lot to take in and new.
"Yeah?" she tried to keep the quiver from her voice.
"I'm gonna order room service?"
"Sure, I'll have what you're having." she tacked on breathlessly.
"You okay?"
"Mmhmm!" she fiddled with the taps and changed the temperature, "Gonna rinse off!"
It was nothing, it was just my mind trying to figure it all out. Asami dared to close her eyes once more, My mysterious best friend. Once again she saw that half smile, taunting her.
You don't know me, and you never will.
Song 2 - i wanna be your girlfriend - girl in red
I keep trying to paste the spotify playlist link but aint having it, maybe you can search 'To the Brink' and my profile is HoHF