author's note: I'm not sure why I even posted this, but it's been sitting in my Docs forever. Also, I haven't posted here in a long time - that's mainly because I've mostly moved to AO3 (archiveofourown). My username there is ASGARDIAN, if anyone is curious.
When she bends during a match it is nothing short of beautiful. Sometimes Mako is embarrassed to be caught watching her, observing every careful rolling of the wrist, every fluid step that really makes her into something so exquisite he can barely keep his eyes off of her.
Bolin catches him staring and gives him this little half-twitch of the mouth and a little wiggling of the eyebrow, and Mako discreetly flips him off.
There's something he can't quite seem to forget about her and her intangibility. A certain step and he's in front of her, stopping a ball of fire from hitting her while she's distracted with battling someone else. She twists her arms casually around his torso and moves her fingers in this inhuman fluidity and then water comes bursting out, smooth and quick and never-ending. He unravels himself from her body for fear of rising his temperature too high and ignores the smirks of Bolin, and just concentrates on bending a fiery explosion to the other team.
And then there is a moment he thinks he will remember for the rest of his pro-bending days; she is suddenly everywhere and her foot movements are suddenly swifter. She's dancing around him, underneath his fire, so close to his body he can feel her breath on his ear when she glides past, and her hair is whipping around her head and he can smell her on his skin, etched in his skin. And she's almost like a stream of water around him, an indestructible and untouchable tidal wave, as smooth as a dewdrop rolling down a leaf in the morning but as deadly as volatile rapids, and his fire pales awfully in comparison.
Then, in one split second she ducks underneath one of his arms and stands in front of him, hair in his face and back pressing into his chest, and she's thrusting her hands out and into the fire and his heart gives out, he thinks, just for a second, but then her wrists are crossing over each other and her thumbs are hooked with his and he lets the breath rush out of him in the form of hot steam.
What was a stream of water and a blooming of fire becomes a storm, an electric storm that is so consuming that his breath is literally taken away.
And there - there's the buzzing, and the match is over and they've won, and he can't forget how it felt with her body pressed firm against his; he can't forget feeling impossibly connected to her. He can't forget feeling like he's drowning in her and burning because of her and he can't forget feeling so completely surrounded, suffocated by her - and the strangest part is having her close felt complete. So completely normal to be moving like fluid with her, near her - and he doesn't know what the goddamned fuck that means.
So he just watches her as she's lifted into the air by Bolin, breath whooshing out of her and becoming a startled laugh - and for a second her face tilts toward his and her mouth curves as easily as the rest of her body does. She gives him the tiniest grin, eyes bright and electric; for a moment he lets himself smile back.
author's note: Please do not favorite without reviewing!