Chapter Text
The sun had no right to burn this hot this early. Just barely past dawn, and already the late summer heat hangs heavy in the air, making its last stand against the inevitability of fall and daring it to make the first move. Humidity blurs the horizon and crawls down Asami's throat and lodges itself there like a damp rag, the draft blowing back into the open cab of her jeep as she makes her way toward Yue Beach providing little relief. Even that feels more like a warm mist than an actual breeze.
The water emerges sluggishly as she rounds an uphill curve in the road, a thin strip of blue-gray that widens its margins against the barrier dunes and sea grasses until the distinctive curve of the coast finally reveals itself—the gleaming spires of Republic City towering over Yue Bay on the left, the soft greens and browns of the Mo Ce salt marshes to the right, and ahead, the full expanse of the sea, shimmering dully in the hazy sunlight.
A wave of anticipation, or maybe just anxiety—it was, at times, difficult for Asami to tell the difference—rolls through her body. She takes her foot off the pedal and lets the jeep coast into a crawl, presses her lips together and inhales deep and steady until her lungs feel fit to burst. She releases the breath in one loud rush of air, and delicately maneuvers both jeep and trailer into the scrubby grass alongside the road in a single, smooth move a small part of her wishes her dad were still alive to see.
Asami eyes her own reflection in the rearview mirror and tilts her head this way and that, evaluating, before pulling a lock from the front of her ponytail and letting it drop to frame her face.
It immediately sticks to the film of sweat on her skin. She grimaces, pulls the rest of her hair out of its tie and starts from scratch, settling for a bun to keep it off the back of her neck.
Quit stalling, she scolds herself, but she makes no move to restart the jeep, reaches instead for her makeup bag. Just a little bit, she thinks. Just enough to make her very best look like it didn't take any effort at all.
The ghost of her dad's voice ripples through her mind, instructing her to never let them see you sweat, but the reflection staring back at her in the mirror rebukes him, insisting (vehemently, damply, greasily) that this simply isn't an option, and offering up never let them see the bags under your eyes as an alternative. Whatever it took to keep her at the top of her game today, Asami supposes. Whatever it took to ensure this deal went through without a hitch.
She'd spent the past five years trying to drag Future Industries out of the red after her father's fuckery had left the company's reputation in shambles and its accounts empty and herself something of a social pariah, and this contract with Yue Beach—Republic City property—could be the thing that broke the dam and unleashed a flood of new projects. Official government contracts that guaranteed a steady flow of money. Big infrastructure deals with hefty budgets that required a sizeable workforce.
Maybe she could finally afford to hire an accountant. Or maybe even an actual salesperson, and she could devote her full attention to what she loved, what she was best at—the building and the tinkering and the assembling of disparate parts into a unified whole that felt something like magic.
Maybe they'd let her build the new generation of buses the city's transit authority had been “looking into” for nigh on seven years now. Or maybe rework the city's traffic patterns to accommodate its ever-growing population and ease the strain on some of the older roads, many of which hadn't been built to carry anything much heavier than a cabbage cart.
Maybe they'd even give her one of those comically huge pairs of scissors and let her cut through a garish red ribbon and say “Miss Sato, please, we're so sorry, we never should have doubted your integrity.”
Asami snaps the cap back onto her tube of concealer and shuts that line of thought down before it can start in earnest. It really wasn't fair to hold grudges like that, considering. When it turned out the city's wealthiest businessman had been covertly funneling millions of yuan into the coffers of a violent militia that had kidnapped several government officials and killed two bystanders in the process, it wasn't unreasonable to wonder if he truly had been acting alone. She might've suspected the same, had her position been reversed.
Sure, by the time she was exonerated Future Industries was worth less than a single grain of rice in a bumper harvest, and the name “Sato” no longer opened doors but instead firmly bolted them shut, but what was done was done. The past was over and the future was now and the important thing was Asami wasn't bitter about any of it.
So today was an opportunity. A fresh start, if she could swing it. An unlocked door at the end of a long, dark hallway, beams of light splintering as they jockeyed to be the first ones out the keyhole.
Asami takes another deep breath, lets her eyes unfocus as she smothers the seething, churning bundle of nerves in her belly into submission. She could do this. It was going to work. As long as they couldn't tell how much she had riding on it, how badly she needed it, how much sleep she'd lost over—
Clench. Crack. Drip.
—over what she'd seen the last time she was here.
Clench. Crack. Drip.
See, the last time she was here—
Clench. Crack. Drip.
The last time she was here—
☆
Asami wasn't entirely sure where she was going. She'd come here a few times with her parents as a toddler, but that was long, long ago, a lifetime away, before three became two became one and the Sato mansion turned into a mausoleum.
She'd also seen little of the beach itself when she'd come to finalize a purchase order for a pair of jet skis early this morning, sat as she was inside a windowless office across from a stern, steely-haired older woman, squinting under harsh artificial light through what felt more like an interrogation than a business deal.
“Lifeguard Captain Korra can show you where she wants these dropped off tomorrow," the woman—Beifong, just Beifong—had said gruffly, jerking her chin toward the door and the beach beyond, and Asami, having no idea who Lifeguard Captain Korra was or what she looked like or where to find her, had walked out into the bright sunlight and followed the voices.
Or, rather, she'd followed the grunting.
"Ahhhrgggggaaah!" somebody growled on the far side of the office building, audibly fustrated. "This is impossible! That guy at the festival made it look so easy!"
"Calling it now. He used a rotten one," said a different voice, a bit higher-pitched than the first, followed by hums of agreement.
"Nah, come on, Bo, you got this!" someone else cheered. A smattering of applause, and then—
"I bet Korra could do it." A fourth voice, silky and feminine and ending on the suggestion of a vocal fry.
Perfect, thought Asami as the beach chorus erupted in response, nearly drowning out the laugh that followed.
"Ok, ok, give it here.” Yet another voice, this one rich and melodic, confidence dripping from every syllable.
Asami rounded the corner, and stopped dead in her tracks.
A woman sat in the sand, clutching a large, green melon between her muscular thighs, her lower lip pulled between her bright white teeth and her brow furrowed in concentration, the blazing morning sun highlighting a sheen of sweat across her coppery skin.
All ambient noise leached out of the world and the woman's—Korra's?—surroundings faded, and Asami thought for a split second that maybe this is what people meant when they spoke of tunnel vision before Korra grunted low in her throat and her thigh muscles rippled with exertion and the melon burst with a wet crack, and all thoughts fled Asami's mind entirely.
The sounds of the beach rushed back in all at once as Korra beat the air with her fists in victory, a blinding smile splitting her face, before flopping back onto the sand, her chest heaving with triumphant laughter and her short dark hair fanning out above her head like an inky halo. Her bright red t-shirt—with the words Yue Beach Lifeguard emblazoned in thick black letters above the City's distinctive Cranefish logo—had slipped up her body, just slightly, revealing a thin strip of her toned stomach above the waistband of her matching red shorts, and her thighs—
—the insides of her thighs were were wet, soaking wet, dripping with the syrupy juice of the melon, which sat open and pink and glistening between her legs, and—
From there Asami's near-perfect recall, something that had always charmed caregivers and clients alike until it didn't, failed her for the first time in her life.
Clench. Crack. Drip.
Maybe one of the voices had said "Hey, I softened it up for you,” and another had followed up with “another few seconds and you would've had it, bro.”
Clench. Crack. Drip.
Maybe a flock of gulls had descended and begun picking through the chunks of ripe fruit, their calls intermingling with the shrieks and laughter of the group, or maybe that was just her brain conjuring up details to fill in the blanks after the fact, like she'd read in that article from last month's City Scientist issue.
Clench. Crack. Drip.
Maybe the fabled General Old Iron himself had returned to exact his revenge, and everything Asami had thought she'd seen after leaving Beifong's office had just been one last show written and produced by her dying synapses.
Clench. Crack. Drip.
Two things she knew for certain: that flex of muscle a heartbeat before the melon's hard, green rind snapped like it was nothing had been burned onto the backs of Asami's retinas for all time.
And she could never, ever, visit any of the fruit stands in the City's market district, ever again.
☆
Asami lets out a shaky breath and twists the jeep's key in the ignition a bit more aggressively than strictly necessary, jams her foot down on the accelerator and peels away from the roadside with a squeal of rubber and a cloud of dust. A fresh wave of heat raises little prickles of sweat across her face and neck, threatening to marr her careful makeup application, and if she's being honest with herself, this new flush warming her inside and out has nothing at all to do with the weather.
———
The rest of the drive takes simultaneously an eternity and no time at all, according to the complex calculations Asami's nerves are plotting out beneath her sternum, and the sight of Korra waiting for her at the gate sends an icy-hot bolt of adrenaline skittering down her spine.
She slows the jeep to a crawl as she draws closer and sticks her head out the window. "I'm not too early, am I?" she asks, eyeing the empty lot and deliberately moderating her tone to conceal the anxiety within.
"Nah, right on time," Korra replies with a smile that takes the edge off the roiling energy in her gut, turning it warm and slow and syrupy. "We don't open the gates 'til 7. The rest of the crew should start trickling in any minute now.”
"I'll meet you down there," Korra adds with a little slap to the jeep's frame, and Asami nods, puts her foot back on the gas, and drives down to the boat launch Korra had shown her yesterday, fruit juice drying sticky on her legs and her face nearly as red as her shirt.
Asami parks the jeep and hops out, fishing a key from the carabiner clipped to the belt loop of her cargo shorts and moving to unlock the trailer bed. She allows herself a split-second glance up the beach to watch Korra jogging toward her, backlit by the rising sun like some kind of mover heroine, powerful thighs propelling her inexorably forward, then very bravely turns to inspect the nearest wheel well and brushes away a speck of dust.
Were Korra's shorts shorter today than they were yesterday? They looked shorter. Asami would sooner fling herself from the roof of the Future Industries tower—Varrick Pharmaceuticals, she corrects herself—than admit out loud, to anyone, ever, that she'd noticed.
“Alright,” Korra says, smiling and brushing her bangs up off her forehead as she comes to a stop next to Asami. “Let's get these things off your hands.”
Asami nods. “I'll grab the top if you can take the bottom?”
“Works for me!”
“Great!” Asami drops the trailer ramp onto the sand, where it lands with a hollow, metallic thud, and clambers up to unchain the nearest jet ski while tugging on a pair of thick gloves. She'd learned the hard way to never hold a chain bare-handed when it held this kind of weight.
She gives the first of the pair a little nudge to get it going, and peers over its bulk to make sure Korra has a good grip before planting her feet and allowing it to start a controlled slide down the ramp. The hem of Korra's shorts slips up a few inches and one of her quads flexes tauntingly as she braces herself against the weight of the machine, like it knows the image of her thighs clenching around that melon is permanently etched into the folds of Asami's brain.
Like it knows she'd summoned the memory and mentally swapped out the fruit for her own face more than once last night.
“So,” Asami starts, partly to break the silence and partly to focus her mind before she begins hallucinating the sugary sweet scent of ripe fruit hanging thick in the humid air. “Beifong said you're familiar with the original jet ski model?”
“Oh, yeah! We had a pair here, we loved those things. Lasted a long time considering how often we ran ‘em up into the sand,” Korra says with a wry smile.
Asami chuckles. “You shouldn't have any trouble adjusting, then. The basic controls are the same, but the Beachmaster has few new features I can show you.”
“Beachmaster, huh? Cool name,” Korra says, easing the machine a final few inches off the ramp and into the wet sand, into that malleable demarcation between earth and water.
Asami huffs a little laugh. “Thanks. I thought it was due for a rebrand. It just makes more sense, considering these are equipped for land use as well.”
“You're kidding!”
“Wait, Beifong didn't tell you?”
Korra gives her a funny look. “Beifong doesn't tell me much of anything.”
Asami laughs outright at that. She could certainly believe it.
“Well, the Beachmaster has a new state-of-the-art filtration system, dual-action air and water pumps at each end, and retractable runners to allow for the seamless transition between sea and sand,” she says, slipping back into her familiar sales pitch. “My pet project over the past year and a half,” she adds fondly.
“You made these? I don't know why, but I assumed you just sold them.”
Wow. Beifong really doesn't tell her anything, Asami thinks.
“I'm a one-woman operation,” she says, spreading her arms wide.
Korra raises her eyebrows. “Impressive. At some point you're gonna have to tell me when you find the time to sleep, but—”
She squats down next to the jet ski and lifts it part way up on its side to get a better look at the workings underneath. “—I also wanna know all that extra stuff fits in here.
Asami closes her mouth with a snap, realizing too late that it's dropped open, but really, who would've blamed her. This was ridiculous. If not for the bunching of muscle in Korra's biceps one might think the machine weighed next to nothing.
Spirits, Korra was strong.
“Spirits, Korra, you're strong,” a voice pipes up from behind them, and Asami nearly jumps out of her skin.
Korra drops her right arm, still holding the jet ski up with her left—ridiculous, Asami repeats to herself—and waves. “Ginger, come over and check out the new jet skis!”
Asami turns to greet the newcomer, a woman clad in t-shirt similar to Korra's, only cut wide at the neckline so it hangs artfully off one shoulder and the bold, black “lifeguard” identifier swapped out for “cafe.” Her cherry red hair—blown out and teased skyward—shines under the morning light and chunky gold hoops covered in rhinestones sparkle at her ears.
“Ginger, this is Asami,” Korra says, gently lowering the jet ski until it's level with the sand and bouncing up from her crouch.
Ginger studies Asami, deep brown eyes narrowed and glinting under perfectly sculpted red brows. “Yes, I remember you from yesterday,” she says delicately. “Miss...Sato, was it?”
Asami knows that tone, knows what it means when it's wrapped around the name “Sato,” but graciously pretends she doesn't. Wonders for the 237th time if it might be better to just change her name and move out of the City and start over.
“Please, call me Asami,” she insists with a smile as warm as she can muster.
Ginger sniffs and sidles over to Korra, drapes an arm over her shoulders and leans in close. “The color's a bit passé, don't you think?” she asks in a stage whisper that intentionally carries.
“Actually, Four Nations Art Review chose Seafoam Green as their color of the year,” Asami says, smiling again, this one a bit toothier than her last. “Everything makes a comeback eventually,” she adds, stubbornly holding Ginger's gaze until the other woman breaks and looks away.
“I think it's nice,” Korra says. “Goes well with the whole, you know, ocean thing.”
Something warm fizzes happily in Asami’s chest, and she flashes Korra a smile. A genuine one. Goes well with the color of your eyes, she almost says, switching the words out for “let's get that other one in the water, and we can go over the controls” at the last second.
Asami does her best to stamp out the little sparks of irritation raising her hackles as Ginger watches them—watches Korra—with naked lust as they lower the second jet ski into the shallows. It bobs cheerfully, its bulk diminished by the sheer scale of the surrounding sea, looking almost like a child's toy floating in a bathtub. Cerulean wavelets tipped with white foam slip up its sides with soft little slapping sounds, as if gently inspecting and evaluating this new arrival.
“Looks good out here,” Korra says, excitement thrumming in her voice. Her eyes glitter like aquamarine, and Asami's breath catches in her throat. “So the power button is–"
"–here," she replies, leaning into Korra's space a bit and looking back over her shoulder at Ginger with a smirk, a move she knows she won't be proud of later.
Still, it's worth it to see Ginger's perfect, bow-shaped mouth screw up in frustration.
“This must be the killswitch?” Korra asks, tugging Asami's attention back toward her like she's a fish hooked on a line and pointing to a little opening in the hull beneath the handlebars.
“Right, yes,” Asami digs into one of her pockets and produces two keys, each one hanging from its own short lanyard. “I'm sure you already know this, but just remember to loop your wrist through the lanyard before—”
“Oh Korra,” Ginger calls out plaintively. “Can you help me with my sunscreen? I can't reach my back.”
Asami glances over for a brief moment and rolls her eyes. She can't help herself. At some point Ginger had removed her shirt and was now patting haphazardly around the straps of her swuimsuit, the pout on her face somehow subtracting nothing from her beauty.
"Ginger! Heeey hey Ginger! can help you with that!"
A man—the same one who'd been working on that cursed melon before Korra took over—skids to a halt beside Ginger, his hair wind-mussed and his breathing slightly labored, like an alarm had pinged in his head warning him that her delicate skin was in peril and he'd come running to its rescue.
Ginger looks up at him, one elegant, manicured hand shielding her face from the sun, disdain plain on her face even from several yards away. “Absolutely not," she says, angling her body away from him.
Korra hums and Asami's attention snaps back to her again like a rubber band being released.
“Six thirty...” Korra mutters, blue eyes flicking between the shore and a boulder crusted with barnacles some distance out to sea, tracking the gentle push and pull of sea foam on sand, and it takes Asami a moment to realize she must be reading the tide. She looks at her watch and feels her eyebrows shoot rapidly up her forehead. Six-thirty on the dot.
“Bolin, why don't you go make sure the rentals are all set? Ginger, wanna check in on Wu and that fruit delivery? I haven't seen Mako yet today, so....” Korra trails off.
Asami scans their faces, studying, trying to parse the loaded look the three of them are sharing, but comes up empty. Finally Ginger rolls her eyes and turns away with a huff, her hips swaying as she walks through the sand.
Bolin sighs wistfully.
“Don't you dare say it.”
“Hate to see her go, love to watch her walk aw—”
“Bolin!”
“Ok, ok! I'm going, sheesh!” he says, backing away with his hands up.
Korra points to her own eyes with her index and middle fingers, then brings them together and points to him, punctuating that complete sentence with a crack of her knuckles. “Beifong's gonna be out doing her rounds soon,” she calls after him once he begins trudging away through the sand, and he picks up speed instantly.
Asami eyes him as he leaves, a bit mollified by how quickly he scampered at the name “Beifong.”
“Well, I'm relieved to know I'm not the only one she affects like that,” she says. “I made the mistake of greeting her as ‘Ms. Beifong’ and for a second I thought she was going to have me arrested.”
Korra throws her head back and laughs, clear and bright, time itself begging to be stopped and preserved in amber, and Asami kicks herself for wasting her time and money perfecting her father's stupid fucking jet ski instead of taking a drawing class.
“Yeah, that doesn't surprise me,” Korra says, still chuckling. “I can't even get away with more than one ‘Lin’ per year, and she's known me since I was a baby. Old family friend,” she adds after a pause, as if reading Asami's mind.
“We actually have a little more time than I let on before she gets here, though,” Korra continues, a hint of mischief teasing the corner of her mouth. “Wanna take me for a ride?”
Asami coughs, and Korra's eyes bug out of her head. “Sorry, oh man, that came out wrong,” she stammers, a pretty flush spreading across her cheekbones and down her neck.
Asami laughs, and it sounds a little manic. “It's ok,” she says, her own face burning. It was not ok. The past 24 hours were going to haunt her until she died or until the sun exploded and vaporized the seas and turned the Four Nations to dust, whichever came first.
She needs to leave, though—she'd mapped out her entire day down to the minute, but interacting with Korra had become so easy, so uncomplicated, that this delivery had already crept well into Purchase Order Hour with Asami barely noticing. Her nerves from this morning felt so distant they hardly even felt real. Asami opens her mouth to tell Korra that while she'd love to stay, she really has to get going, but—
“How about for now you take me for a ride?” she asks instead. “Show me how you handle this thing.”
Korra grins at her. “Warning you now, it might be a little bumpy. Beifong taught me to drive and we basically spent the whole time screaming at each other.”
It is indeed a little bumpy, at first. But Korra adjusts quickly to Asami's gentle suggestions and once the wobbles and jerking movements smooth out, Asami relaxes into the salt spray on her face, into the clean scent of Korra's skin and the heat of her body against Asami's chest, all thoughts of purchase orders borne away on the wind.
———
The following morning dawned with an even more offensive mugginess, if that were possible, the air that much thicker and hotter, the previous day's haze coalescing into a low, dark cloud cover that blanketed the City in a stifling layer of heat and exploded into sporadic bouts of torrential rain and lightning. By the time Asami had wrestled her office fan into a configuration that directed a steady tream of air her way without sending her numerous, painstakingly organized stacks of paperwork flying this way and that, it was already past noon and she had little progress to show for it.
And she still had to inventory the warehouse at some point today, too. Was she running low on thread-cutting screws, or self-tapping? She couldn't remember.
Asami digs through her stack of last month's purchase orders and makes a mental note to drop by the City salvage yards some time this week. Korra hadn't explicitly said it, and Asami hadn't asked, but she'd bet that's where the old jet skis ended up, and she wanted to see what kind of shape they were in before they were thoroughly picked apart. While she patently refused to be stingy with materials and sacrifice on quality when it came to the products she sold, she could easily repurpose used parts to build new prototypes–sometimes they were even sufficient for the initial phase of testing, depending on the level of wear and tear.
And besides, one could never have too much scrap metal laying around.
Asami slumps forward and rests her head on her arms, turns her face toward the fan and closes her eyes. Just a second she tells herself. Just two seconds. Just long enough to take the edge off this bone-deep exhaustion that defied all attempts at description.
If she let her mind wander, she could almost imagine she was nineteen again, back when she'd thought things had started to improve and right before they'd gone to absolute shit, back when she'd finally made some progress coming to terms with the fact that her mother might never receive justice and she'd hoped her father had, too. It was late summer, right on the tipping point between seasons, and she'd gone up to the roof of the Future Industries tower and sat on the ledge, feet dangling a hundred yards above the bustling streets below, and spoken to her mom.
A few years prior, the City's chief of police had called them in to his office, had sat them down and explained that all the leads in Yasuko's murder case had run cold, that he understood this news was unwelcome but it had been over a decade with no developments, and they had to file it away. Her father had changed, after that, had become unpredictable, frigid and distant one moment and explosive the next. His pain had been so vast, so terribly heavy, had crawled into every last shadowed corner of the sprawling Sato estate until there was no room left for her own.
So she'd swallowed it, as best she could. Learned the subtle art of managing her father's instead, learned how to be a bulwark against despair and when to make herself scarce. But it was eating Asami alive, the sick dread, the festering rage, that raw, concentrated need for revenge, and it was poisoning her memories of her mother, a woman as patient and kind as she was intelligent, who had once relocated a little family of mice from the kitchen pantry to a toolshed after quickly building them an open-ended shelter made of wood and glass so Asami could watch the babies grow.
So she'd sat on that ledge and she’d asked to be released from it all and she'd begged for forgiveness, and when a gentle breeze caressed her face—the first on an otherwise oppressively still day, cool with a promising crisp edge—she'd burst into tears. After the last ugly, wracking sob had ripped its way out of her chest, she'd felt at peace for the first time since she was six years old.
If only it had lasted.
A single, sharp rap at her office door pierces the silence, and Asami immediately straightens up out of her slouch, instinctively correcting her posture to avoid reprimand.
Old habits die hard.
She looks up—and then up some more—relaxing when she sees Ishi's imposing bulk filling the doorway, one of her massive fists clenched around a beverage of some sort, the straw almost comically tiny in comparison. The old Sato Estate's security guard was nearly seven feet of solid muscle, and Asami would never understand how she managed to move so quietly.
Ishi was one of a handful of estate employees that had taken Asami up on her offer to continue living on the grounds rent-free after her father had blown up all their lives. It hadn't felt like enough, would probably never feel like enough, but after the dust had settled it was all she'd had to give. They'd needed to find other jobs, of course—after Future Industries’ assets had been seized and liquidated, she hadn't been able to pay them—but she'd refused to make them homeless.
Ishi doesn't wait to be invited in, just slinks through the doorway with cat-like grace and wordlessly pushes a cup of bubble tea across the desk.
Asami frowns. “I can handle myself, Ishi. You know you don't have to buy me stuff.”
“I didn't buy it for you, princess,” Ishi says gruffly, taking a seat at the chair across the desk from Asami's. “Went to check out that new boba place, you know, the one next to Shoe World? Guy spilled the one I ordered all over me, so he gave me an extra one for free.”
A harrowing experience, to be sure, except that a quick glance confirms that Ishi's clothes are conspicuously dry and unstained, and Asami distinctly remembers her not even liking boba to begin with. It had exploded onto the scene and taken Republic City by storm in her late teens, around the same time she'd first aquired her very own credit card, and one of her first purchases had been an assortment of teas for the household staff to sample.
Ishi hadn't been a fan. “Too sweet,” she’d said, and then “if I wanted little balls in my mouth I'd just call up my ex.”
He gave me an extra one for free Asami's ass.
She drags the cup toward her, the cool condensation at her fingertips promising swift relief from the heat, and it takes all her willpower not to moan in ecstasy at the first sip. Asami narrows her eyes at Ishi over the rim, searching for cracks in the older woman's expression and finding none. Typical. There was a reason why Ishi was the only person alive she'd never managed to beat at Pai Sho, and it wasn't for lack of trying. The woman simply emoted like a brick wall.
It was no use pressing the issue, though. One had to pick their battles when it came to her. Maybe next week Asami's hand would slip, and through a strange course of events a pack of those red bean mochi Ishi liked would find its way onto her nightstand. See how she'd like it.
“Working tonight?” she asks. Republic City had no shortage of places and things that needed guarding, and Ishi had easily found work staring down museum patrons whose hands inched too close to the glass.
Ishi nods, leaning back in her chair with a sigh. “Looks like I won't be the only one,” she says, jerking her chin at the stack of paperwork to Asami's left.
Asami swallows back a groan. “The balance sheet won't balance itself,” she says with a shrug. "Not yet, anyway. I'll add that to my five-year R&D plan.”
The corner of Ishi's mouth twitches, and Asami mentally pats herself on the back. That was the equivalent of at least a snort, maybe even an open-mouthed huff of amusement.
“Foil any heist attempts lately?"
“That's need to kno—”
The shrill ring of Asami's office phone cuts Ishi off and Asami's hand darts over to pick it up immediately as she mouths an apology.
“Future Industries, this is Asami.”
A tinny voice crackles over the line. “Hello ma'am—oh, wait, sorry. Asami?”
Asami thanks all the spirits she can think of that Ishi had seen herself out after the first trill of the phone, otherwise she'd be facing some tough questions about why her face suddenly looked like she'd eaten an entire chili plant whole.
“Korra? How are you?” she asks, gripping her pen so tight she hears a crack, adrenaline zipping down her veins.
“Sorry I don't know what happened, but it's not working, and–”
Fear drops like a stone deep in her belly. “What's not working?”
“Ah—sorry, the jet ski, it won't even turn on, I can't get it to work. Sorry about the ‘ma'am,’ by the way, I was expecting a receptionist.”
Asami waves away the apology, anxiety churning in her belly, then remembers Korra can't see her. “No need to apologize,” she hears herself say calmly, almost robotically. “I can swing by now and check things over, if that's alright with you?”
“Oh wow, okay, yeah. That's perfect!"
“Great! See you soon.”
Her palm is sweaty and the phone slips a bit as she drops it back onto the receiver, exhaling in a rush and trying to visualize the tension leaving her body along with it. This was a bad look, but it was salvageable. It was manageable, despite her body's tendency to tell her every stumbling block was a catastrophe.
If it can break, you can fix it she repeats to herself in her head like a mantra as she springs up from her desk and grabs her toolbelt with shaking hands, adrenaline and sugar and not much else fueling her movements.
Asami flies down the stairs and through the sitting room, skidding to a stop before she gets to the foyer when she spots an Ishi-shaped blur on the couch out of the corner of her eye.
“Thanks for the boba,” she says, swooping down and smacking a quick kiss to the crotchety old woman's cheek just to piss her off, and then she's out the door and under the angry gray skies before she can hear Ishi's answering retch of disgust.
———
“Excuse me,” Asami mutters distractedly, sidestepping around a seagull with a clank of her toolbelt and striding purposefully down to the beach at a perfectly normal speed one might expect from a person under an average amount of stress.
She spots Korra instantly, a lone figure in red standing beside one of the jet skis on the beach, the flex of her thigh muscles visible even from a distance as she balances her weight on one foot and draws pictures in the wet sand with the other.
There's no ambiguity about it today, no equivocating. The shorts Korra's wearing are definitely shorter than the ones from yesterday. This had to be intentional, right? Korra had to be doing this on purpose. They're noticeably smaller, the bright red fabric clinging tight to her thighs, the side slits cut so high Asami can see a solid inch of her dark blue swimsuit underneath, and Asami allows herself a single, clipped internal shriek before wrestling her face into into something resembling “pleasantly relaxed” and closing the distance between them.
“Quiet afternoon?” Asami asks with a smile.
“Yeah, Beifong didn't want to take any chances with all this lightning, so she closed the beach early. Just a precaution.”
Asami nods. She could appreciate that.
“Everyone else should be on their way out, but I gotta hang back and lock up, so you're stuck with me for now,” Korra says with a playful grin.
Oh no she says to herself sarcastically. It's a short-lived bit of humor, though, because a moment later the door to what Asami assumes must be the locker room bangs open and out walks Ginger.
She heads in their direction, eyes trained on Korra and ignoring Asami entirely, and when she reaches them, Asami chokes back a laugh. Ginger's wearing the same cropped, bright red Yue Beach Cafe uniform shirt as yesterday, hung low again over one shoulder, but the swimsuit underneath is a cool, seafoam green.
"Wu and I got everything prepped for the morning,” Ginger says with a dramatic sort of long-suffering sigh, resting one hand delicately on Korra's shoulder. Asami might as well have been invisible.
Korra smiles, her white teeth flashing bright against the gloom of the day. “Great work, Ginger! See you tomorrow.”
“See you tomorrow, Korra," Ginger pitches her voice low, almost sultry, and as she turns to leave she trails her fingers along Korra's arm for longer than is strictly necessary, if anyone asked Asami, which nobody did. Would Ginger begin to wilt like a cut flower if her hands failed to make contact with Korra's arms at least once a day? Was she like one of those fish that suffocated if they ever stopped swimming? Asami’s data, limited though it was, suggested yes.
“Oh. Bye Miss Sato," she calls back once she's several feet away, her hand raised in a dainty little wave that feels like a deliberate performance of an afterthought, the warm, promising note in her voice gone cool and crisp.
"Bye Ginger.” Asami presses her lips together and feels her eyes crinkle in a nasty fascimile of a true smile as she beats back the flame of jealousy attempting a jailbreak from her gut and just barely swallows the words “nice swim suit” before they jump out of her mouth.
She was being unreasonable, and she knew it. Korra's arms—her powerful, muscular arms—didn't belong to Asami. In fact, she’d only just met them. Ginger, for her part, had every right to flirt with whomever she chose, and it wasn't her fault she inexplicably still smelled like crushed rose petals after hours in the sweltering heat and had perfect hair and perfect boobs and likely full knowledge of how it felt to have Korra's strong, nimble hands massage sunscreen all over her—
“So like I said on the phone, it just won't turn on,” Korra says, corralling Asami's spiraling mind just long enough for her to see Korra pressing the power button repeatedly with the pad of her thumb.
Asami has to look away.
There's a man some distance up the beach, walking in their direction, and he raises his hand as he and Ginger pass each other. Korra follows Asami's line of sight and spots him, giving him a little wave.
“You need any help with that?” he calls out as he nears them.
“Nah, I think we can handle it,” Korra says with a quick squeeze of Asami's shoulder. It's a single, sparking point of contact, over in a heartbeat, but it leaves Asami feeling hot down to her bones.
Korra's got calluses on the tips of her fingers, Asami realizes, suppressing a shiver at the soft rasp of them against her skin as Korra drags her hand away, wondering what they might feel like against her—
“Besides, Mako, you should've been out of here already.” Korra's voice pierces through Asami's reverie, and she thanks every ancestor down the line to the very first Sato that she's able to blame her flushed face on the weather.
So this was Mako. Ginger Please Check On Wu And the Fruit Delivery Mako. The man rolls his eyes. "Korra, it's fine, a few extra minutes won't kill me."
"Beifong will run you ragged if you let her, bud," Korra says, a little half-frown pulling at her mouth. "Can't make a habit of working off the clock."
"Oh, also—" she continues, poking him sternly in the chest, “—make sure you take your breaks, too, it's important." She rounds on Asami, turns the full force of her smile against her, and the planet wobbles on its axis.
"Asami, tell him it's important to take breaks." Korra's voice meanders like a river through the ether until it runs up against Asami, still reeling.
The sun finds a crack in the churning clouds, just then, splinters of blazing light arcing off the dull beige sand and painting it a shimmering pale gold, but Korra's smile burns brighter, makes Asami flush hotter, and she thinks—not for the first time—that she'd do just about anything to keep that crooked grin on Korra's face.
"It's important to take breaks," she hears herself say automatically, unthinking, despite having taken zero breaks for at least the past five years.
One day she would have to sit herself down and reckon with the fact that it had only taken Korra roughly 48 hours to utterly shatter her critical thinking skills—
“See, the smart engineer lady agrees. Get outta here, man,” Korra says, giving Mako a playful shove.
—but that day was not today.
Mako leaves to rejoin Bolin, who seems to have wandered out of the building a few minutes after Mako and waited for him at the gate. He's fiddling with something—it's hard to tell from a distance, but she thinks it might be a cassette player, judging from the way he alternates jabbing at it and bringing it to his ear.
Asami rolls her shoulders, trying to shake the lingering, fluttering warmth Korra's words had left behind in her chest so she can focus, and starts her diagnostic. She circles the jet ski, and spots the problem almost immediately: a loose bolt on the the right side of the reverse gate, dangling at a sharp angle like it was one good shake from falling out completely. Had she not tightened the nut all the way? Both jet skis had worked yesterday, so the nut must've fallen off within the past 24 hours.
Irritation wars with relief as she squats next to the offending bolt. It was such a stupid little mistake, but at least it was little.
“Found your problem,” she says to Korra, gesturing toward the rear of the jet ski and pulling a wrench from her toolbelt. “Reverse gate malfunction. It's missing one of its nuts.”
Korra stares at her blankly. “I'm gonna be honest with you. I have no idea what that means.”
“So a jet ski without a working reverse gate is essentially a car with no brakes,” she explains. “Nuts and bolts keep the gate attached to the jet ski, and when you pull back the reverse lever on the handlebar, the gate rotates upward to allow a stream of water to shoot forward, counteracting the machine's forward momentum and slowing it down.”
“Of course, if you keep holding the lever down, eventually the jet ski will start moving backwards, but the important part is that it stops,” she says. “The Beachmaster has internal sensors that monitor the gate and communicate with the engine, so it knows if it's safe to turn over.”
“It's just an extra feature I added when I updated the old model. A jet ski that can't stop definitely shouldn't be out on the water, so if any part of the braking mechanism fails—”
“—the whole thing doesn't even turn on,” Korra finishes, understanding dawning on her face. “That's...actually really smart.”
Asami feels her face heat, but shrugs off the compliment. “It's practical,” she says, and it was—if she'd learned anything during the past five years of being her own chief engineer, accountant, and crash test dummy, it was to have contingencies. And to make sure your contingencies had contingencies.
She hesitates before opening her mouth. "Besides, if anybody got hurt because I wasn't paying attention, I'd never forgive myself,” she says to her wrench.
Korra sighs. “Yeah, I can definitely understand that.” Asami looks up at her, sees something unreadable shuttering Korra's normally open expression before her blue eyes flick away and out toward the sea.
Asami takes in Korra's profile, the subtle, barely-there slump of her shoulders, and something cracks open in Asami's chest. Korra's so carefree it's easy to forget that what she does is dangerous.
And so is the ocean.
“Yes, I imagine you would,” she says finally, and when Korra turns to look at her again Asami offers her a soft smile. Warmth blooms in her chest when she receives one in return.
It's such a quick, quiet thing, over in the span of a few heartbeats, two twisted bits of scar tissue exposed and exchanged for one another, but it leaves Asami feeling laid bare in a way she doesn't think she's experienced before. It's not uncomfortable, exactly, more terrifying and exhilarating in equal measure. A bit like hitting a hairpin turn at a high speed and not knowing if you'll make it to the other side.
Asami sits with that and lets it marinate in the back of her mind as she sinks into the quiet flow of her work, digs a replacement washer and nut out of a pocket on her toolbelt and twists them onto the end of the bare bolt—extra tight this time.
She stands up, double- and triple-checks all the other bolts for good measure, and wipes her hands on her shorts, breathing deep and letting herself enjoy the satisfaction of a job complete and no harm done. “Alright, this one should be good to go.”
“That was fast,” Korra mutters, quiet, as if talking to herself. She faces Asami. “I guess you'll be heading back then?”
Asami should be heading back. She really, really should. But–
“I think I still owe you a ride.”
Korra swipes a hand through her hair, and the shining dark strands feather back down to frame the dusky rose blush blooming across her cheeks. “Well I'd hate to make a liar out of you,” she says. “You're not too busy?”
Asami thinks about the mountain of expense reports waiting for her back in her sweltering office, about another night spent doing math—and not the fun kind—until her eyes glaze over and she falls asleep at her desk without eating, and she briefly entertains the idea of walking into the sea right here and now.
Instead she swings a leg over the side of the jet ski and checks the kill switch, feels the corner of her mouth twitch up into a smile and beckons Korra over with a quick jerk of her head. “Hop on.”
A wide grin splits Korra's face, and Asami suppresses a full-body shiver when she feels Korra settle in behind her and rest her hands low on her hips.
“You're not worried about the weather?” Korra's breath ghosts across the shell of Asami's ear, raises little pinpricks of heat across the flushed skin of her neck, and Asami knows she should be, sees the unspent fury in those roiling, purple-gray skies, but something about being around Korra makes her feel a little bit giddy, a little bit reckless. Like maybe the version of Asami who used to steal her dad's favorite car to go racing at night while Ishi pretended not to notice wasn't actually dead, just buried.
She reaches out to adjust the mirrors and flashes Korra a smile when she catches the reflection of her bright blue eyes. “I think we can handle it,” she says, then she kicks the engine into gear and squeezes the throttle back nearly as far as it will go, and with a spray of saltwater and a rush of air they leave the shore behind.
Korra's hands burn like a brand around Asami's waist through the thin fabric of her tank top and Asami grips the handlebars so tight it almost hurts, gluing her eyes to the mottled gray and white blur of the choppy waves as they fly along the water's surface and pointedly ignoring the heat of Korra's thighs bracketing her own, the sharp, jackrabbit-fast staccato of Korra's breath against the back of her neck.
There's a white crest in distance that looks promising, so Asami releases the throttle and lets the jet ski coast through its momentum, tapping one of Korra's knees to get her attention.
“I'm going to catch that swell up ahead,” she calls out over the engine, meeting Korra's eyes in the mirror. “When you feel me start to stand up a little bit, match me, ok?”
Korra nods, her face split by a feral grin and her fingers digging little dots of heat into her hipbones. Asami grins back, squeezing the throttle and kicking up a spray of saltwater as she angles the jet ski to the right, calling back “hold on!” as she rises onto the balls of her feet.
Korra lets out a whoop that sings through Asami's veins when they go airborne over the cresting wave, so Asami does it again, and again, and then one more time, just to pull more of those sounds out of her, just to feel the grip of Korra's hands tighten around her waist.
The thunderheads above them have crept closer and the air feels thick, heavy and electric, buzzing with potential. There's a lightness in Asami's chest that she hasn't felt in years, that she hadn't realized she'd been chasing, and she squeezes the throttle back further, as far as it will go, Korra's exhilarated laughter ringing in her ears and hanging in the air for a single, crystalline moment before the wind snatches it away.
Asami releases both handlebars when they run out of waves and slip into a calm stretch of water between swells, lets the jet ski idle and trails her fingertips through the summer-warmed surface of the water as the engine slows to a low hum.
“I love it out here,” Korra sighs. She hasn't loosened her grip despite them being at a near-standstill, and her words tickle the back of Asami's neck.
“Me too,” Asami realizes out loud. She'd never really noticed it before, but this swirling gradient of stormy grays was beautiful in its own way.
“We'll have to do this on a clear day next time. If you squint you can sort of see a bit of the Fire Nation out there,” Korra points.
Asami imagines it in her mind, the near side of the archipelago rising out of the ocean, a soft, green-brown smudge between twin bands of blue, until her brain snags on next time and starts picking at it, turning it around to examine it from all angles. The jet ski rocks gently beneath them, and the near-silence of the calmer waters between swells leaves her other senses hightened. Pressed as close as they are, she thinks she can feel Korra's heartbeat pounding into her back—or maybe that's just the echo of her own, hammering against the inside of her skin.
“I'd like that,” she says softly, and she thinks she can feel Korra smile against her neck.
A drop of water hits the hull of the jet ski, followed quickly by another, and then another, until solitary droplets become a soft, steady drizzle.
“That might be our cue,” Korra murmurs, and Asami nods and wakes the engine, drinks the gray in one last time and points them toward the shore.
———
"So. Hey I have to tell you something," Korra says, her eyes not quite meeting Asami's and her teeth worrying her lower lip for a moment before she releases it and opens her mouth. "I—" she starts, and then the sky cracks open with a blinding flash and drizzle turns to downpour in an instant.
“Shit,” Korra half laughs, half yells, swiping water out of her eyes. “Come on, we can wait it out in the locker room.” She points toward a little shack up the beach with one hand and offers the other to Asami as the rain throws itself against the sand in a deafening fury.
Asami takes it, doesn’t overthink it, breaks into a run and tries to match stride with Korra, squinting and blinking rapidly to keep her eyes trained on that watery smudge of gray against gray.
“Wait!” Korra yells, skidding to a halt so abruptly Asami overshoots her and nearly drags them both down into a heap. “The jet skis—”
"Leave them!" Asami shrieks over the deluge. "They're made to get wet!"
“Oh, right,” Korra calls back with a laugh, and it's infectious, pulls a little cackle out of Asami's throat and then a stream of bigger ones from her belly, their sound instantly smothered by the pounding rain and howling wind, but their echo radiating clear and bright through her veins as they sprint and stumble in near-blindness toward the locker room.
Korra hits the door running, pulls Asami in after her, and they both gasp for air, their labored breathing and the rapid dripdripdrip of rainwater pouring from their soaked clothes nearly drowned out by the storm beating itself viciously against the tin roof.
Asami sucks in a breath, peeling a limp lock of hair away from her eyes. She must have lost her hair tie at some point during their mad sprint, and she imagines she must look like one of the Kemurikage from the old folktales, her long hair clinging to her face and shoulders and dripping down her back like a dark shroud.
She swipes another rivulet of water off her face and looks at Korra, and a laugh bubbles up out of her chest unbidden. The wind and the rain and the running had proved to be a fatal combination, leaving her short hair plastered to her face on the right side and sticking out at a near-90 degree angle on the left. She reaches out impulsively, struck by the sudden urge to make it look even goofier, and gathers up two handfuls of wet hair, one on each side, twisting her wrists until Korra has a matching pair of floppy, tapered horns.
Asami bursts into giggles as she drops her hands, but when Korra grabs one before it can come to rest at her side and twines their fingers together loosely, looking up at Asami with a shy smile flirting around the edges of her lips, Asami's laughter dies an undignified, choking death in her throat.
Her body lurches forward before her brain has a chance to offer input, like it knows she'll overthink the opportunity until it's squandered, and her mouth finds Korra's, warm and soft and still wet from the rain.
The first brush of their lips sends electricity shooting up and down her spine, and when Korra exhales a sharp breath against her mouth and leans back in, tilting her face to deepen the kiss, warmth catches fire in her belly and spreads across her skin, heating her inside and out.
Korra's burning up, too, Asami can feel the heat of her skin through her swimsuit and her damp uniform tee, and when she teases the hem of Korra's shirt, her bright red shirt—
"Wait, wait," Asami springs back with a start. "What about Ginger?"
"Huh? What about her?"
Asami shoves her hands into her wet pockets to keep herself from fidgeting, to keep herself from reaching out to grab Korra by the waist again and fuck the consequences. “You two aren't—together, are you?"
Korra frowns at her. "What?"
"I just want to make sure—I mean, it seemed like—"
"Ginger doesn't even like women."
Asami gapes. "Korra. You can't be serious."
"I don't—" Korra starts, and Asami can almost hear the pieces clicking into place.
“—huh. Okay, yeah. That explains a lot, actually," she continues with a chuckle, before sobering. "Oh, Bolin's gonna be so jealous—"
"Korra."
"Mmm?"
“Are you sure you want to talk about Bolin right now?"
"Ah. No," she says with a laugh before pulling Asami back in and crushing their mouths together.
Asami smiles into the kiss, their teeth clacking against each other for an instant before they find their stride, before Asami tilts her head to kiss Korra deeper and tease the tip of Korra's tongue with her own.
Korra's breath hitches, and her fingers spasm and dig into Asami's waist, ten tiny points of heat that bloom across Asami's hips and spread between her legs.
She fiddles again with the damp edge of Korra's shirt, her own breath coming short and quick. “Can I take this off?”
“Don't make me do it for you." Korra's voice is a little shaky, and isn't that an idea.
Part of Asami wants to take that challenge, itches to grab onto that thread and see where it leads, but her hands move with an almost dreamlike urgency, like they're convinced this is all in her head and at any moment she might startle awake at her desk, untouched and alone save for stacks of invoices.
So she pulls Korra's shirt over her head, sucks in a sharp breath at the sight of her nipples pressing against the inside of her swimsuit, stiff and peaked despite the heat of the day, and then peels off her own tank top, too, in the interest of fairness, a layer for a layer. The thin white fabric—wet from the rain and clinging to her body—can't have left much a mystery, but when Korra's eyes grow wide and her tongue darts out to wet her lip, a bolt of heat shoots straight through Asami's gut all the same.
“You're not wearing a—sprits, you're so—” but Asami doesn't let her finish, doesn't wait to find out what exactly she is, captures Korra's lips again with her own and can't quite swallow her moan as Korra's hands sweep up her waist to cup her breasts, heated skin against heated skin.
She drags her own hands up Korra's back, across her shoulders, savoring the subtle shift of Korra's muscles against her fingers, then sweeps them down along the bend of her waist and back up across the planes of her stomach, greedy for contact, gasping into Korra's mouth and nipping at her lips when her thumbs brush over Korra's nipples.
A little whine catches in Korra's throat and she pushes her breasts into Asami's hands, a slight motion that sends Asami's mind spinning. She wants to suck on them, wants to see if she can turn that whine into a scream.
She crowds even closer into Korra's space, pressing their bodies together as she licks into Korra's mouth and walks her backward until she bumps into the edge of a rickety old wooden table pushed up against the window. Korra breaks away, gasping, so Asami drags her lips down to her neck, teasing the sensitive skin with her teeth.
Korra lifts herself up onto the edge of the table and wraps her legs around Asami's waist, and Asami hooks one thumb into the waistband of Korra's shorts, resting the tips of her fingers against the side of her ass. She sweeps her other hand up Korra's thigh, pressing her fingers into soft skin over hard muscle, slides her fingertips up the split in the side of Korra's shorts. Trails her thumb along the join of Korra's hip and then slips it beneath the elastic of her swimsuit, teasing the soft hair at the apex of her thighs.
Korra whines again, her ankles tightening at Asami's back, and Asami's pulse jumps, skitters down the veins in her arms, throbs between her legs.
“Off, off, take it all off,” Korra gasps against her mouth, and Asami doesn't need to be asked twice. Korra's bright red shorts land in a damp heap, followed a heartbeat later by her swimsuit, and Asami swiftly unbuttons her own shorts and tugs on the zipper—
—and tugs again. And again.
Korra mouths distractingly at her neck, mumbles an unintelligable questioning sound against her skin.
“I—my zipper's stuck.”
“You're an engineer, you got this,” Korra says, her voice a bit dazed, looking up at her with a loopy grin on her face.
Asami tries to scowl, but her heart isn't in it. “I make jet skis, not zippers.”
“Here, lemme—” Korra reaches for the zipper and yanks, offering Asami a smug smile when it comes unstuck immediately.
“Don't brag,” she says, covering Korra's mouth with one hand, something giddy bubbling up in her chest when she feels Korra cackling against her, something that bursts out into a sharp laugh when she shoves her shorts and underwear down over her hips in one swift movement and they hit the floor with sick, wet plop.
She kisses Korra again, presses her back against the table, drags a hand down her stomach to trail her fingers along Korra's—
“Ah–hold on,” Korra says, unsealing their mouths with an obscene pop and tapping on Asami's shoulders until she has enough room to wiggle away. She trots over to a closet Asami had been too distracted to notice before, and pulls out a ratty, oversized beach towel. It’s thready and thin, clearly well-used, and—
Asami does a double-take. Printed across the faded green fabric is a life-sized action shot of one of City's biggest mover stars, Jian Xi, in one of his classic fighting poses.
She barks out a laugh as Korra trots back over to the table. “What in the Four Nations is that?”
“First thing I grabbed when I went in there,” Korra breathes, dropping the towel haphazardly across the table before plopping herself down on top of it and and dragging Asami toward her, their lips meeting in a sloppy kiss. “I don't want splinters in my ass again,” she adds, inexplicably.
Asami splutters through another laugh. “Again?”
“Long story,” Korra mumbles in between kisses, the words muffled against Asami's lips. “Tell you later.”
Korra wraps her legs around Asami's hips again, drawing her back in, and that first brush of the searing wetness at her core against Asami's skin rips the breath from her lungs, shoots molten heat down her spine.
If she focuses her mind she thinks she can catch the scent of it, not the phantom aroma of melon juice that lives forever in her memory but something better, warm and rich and mouthwatering. She scrapes her blunt nails along Korra's thighs, from her hips down to her knees, admiring the goosbumps rising up in their wake and sinks down to the floor between Korra's legs and—
—and comes face to face with Jian Xi. Asami looks at him and he looks back at her imperiously, one hand raised in a slicing motion.
“Hold on, can we—”
“Everything ok?”
“No—I mean yes, I’m fine—I'm sorry, I can't—he's staring right me,” Asami gestures to the towel.
Korra looks down and bursts into giggles.
“Yeah, ok, here,” she grits out between snorts of laughter. “Lemme just—”
She slides off and drags the dangling fabric up over the end of the table, folding Jian Xi in on himself, and sits back down. Korra gets herself comfortable, shifting slightly on the edge of the table, just enough for Asami to catch a split-second glimpse of dusky pink peeking through the patch of dark hair between her legs.
“Any other adjustments?”
“No,” Asami says, and it comes out a little rough. “Looks perfect.”
Korra flushes prettily, red spreading from her cheekbones to her neck to her breasts, humming when Asami moves to press a kiss to the crease of Korra's knee. She trails her mouth upward, pressing a line of kisses along the inside of Korra's thigh, spurred on by Korra's breathy little gasps, by the minute shiver of Korra's muscles when she scrapes her teeth against her skin.
“You can–” Korra starts before cutting herself off.
“Mmm?” Asami prompts. She presses another kiss into the crease where Korra's leg meets the rest of her body and then licks it for good measure, and when she looks up all the breath leaves her body. The color is still high on Korra's cheeks and her hair is still sticking every which way from the storm and from Asami's hands, her big blue eyes fucking glowing in the near-dark of the locker room and making her look almost otherworldy.
Asami doesn't think she's ever seen anything more beautiful.
“I can't give you what you want if you don't ask for it,” she murmurs against Korra's skin, voice steady despite the energy testing the limits of her nervous system.
Korra exhales a shuddering breath, her lips swollen and bitten red, sweat beading on her brow, and Asami drinks her in, commits this moment to memory and tucks it carefully away in a corner of her mind reserved for precious things.
She kisses Korra's thigh again, rubs circles into the soft skin at the bend of her knee and waits. Watches.
“Harder,” Korra finally grits out, and the word hits Asami like a brick to the chest. She exhales sharply, brings her mouth to Korra's skin and sucks, nipping at her skin with her teeth and soothing over it with her tongue.
The engineer in her wants to be methodical, but she simply can't be bothered. She zigzags sucking, biting kisses up and down across the inside of one thigh, from Korra's knee inward, ghosts over Korra's wet and needy center just to hear her little of huff of frustration, and then repeats the same haphazard pattern down Korra's other leg, relishing every twitching muscle and gasping breath.
Eventually she pulls back to admire her handiwork, humming as she brushes a fingertip whisper-soft across one of the dozen or so hickies blooming across Korra's thighs. She presses her thumb into one, just a little bit, just enough to hear Korra's voice crack on a whine, then kisses it gently and looks up at Korra through her lashes.
"Asami, please," Korra grits out, her voice raw and her head flung back, sweat glittering across her collarbones in the dim light as her hand scrabbles for purchase at the back of Asami's head, and Asami means to draw it out, means to suck another bruise into the soft skin of her thigh, and then another and another until Korra's shaking to pieces against her lips, but–
"Fuck, it's so hot when you beg," she hears herself blurt out against her will, and then her traitorous tongue licks a long, wet stripe from Korra's entrance to her clit and her lips seal themselves around that swollen bud like it's the last drop of water in a desert.
Korra moans, loud, loud enough to put the storm to shame, her hand twisting in Asami's hair until its almost painful and her heels digging into Asami's back and her thighs clenching around Asami's face.
“Sorry, sorry,” Korra gasps, loosening her grip almost immediately, but Asami hums in protest, shooting a hand out to hold her in place, certain she'll die if she can't feel every twitch and shiver of Korra's muscles against her own skin.
She hooks Korra's thighs fully over her shoulders and thrusts her tongue inside her once, twice, drags it back up to circle Korra's clit and close her mouth around it again, sucking gently as Korra cries out, her hips rocking forward, grinding herself against Asami's face.
She moans and presses even closer, all her senses screaming Korra Korra Korra, the storm howling ceaselessly overhead and the grit digging into her knees fading into nothing against the onslaught of scent and the taste of her, dripping onto Asami's chin and soft as silk against her tongue.
Korra's gasping moans turn ragged and Asami focuses her efforts, traces Korra's clit with her tongue and sucks with gentle little pulses, and when Korra sobs and shakes and comes against her face all the blood in her body burns white-hot.
She coaxes Korra through the aftershocks, presses one whisper-soft kiss to Korra's clit and then another, dips her tongue inside her one last time and is rewarded with high, shivery little moan.
“Come here,” Korra says, shaky, grabbing at her shoulder and pulling some of her hair again in the process.
Asami crawls up Korra's body, not giving her own any time to adjust after kneeling for so long, her head swimming as she presses messy kisses into the lines of hard muscle on Korra's stomach, the soft swell of her breasts, the underside of her jaw, the corner of her mouth.
She digs her fingers into Korra's thighs, bracing herself and resting one foot on the table's low bench, and when Korra grips her hip and brushes the curve of Asami's waist with the pad of her thumb, it feels like a live wire. “How do you–”
“In me,” Asami interrupts, gasping, grabbing Korra's wrist and putting her hand right where she needs it, capturing Korra's lips in a sloppy, open-mouthed kiss and drinking in Korra's pleased little sigh as her fingers slip inside her.
Asami rolls her hips and chokes on a broken gasp, sinks down onto Korra's fingers and grinds shamelessly against her hand, desperate for friction. Korra curls her fingers, pressing them relentlessly against a spot inside her that makes her vision blur and rips a hoarse moan from her throat, and she slumps forward against Korra's chest, moves to kiss her neck but finds herself breathing wetly against her skin instead, all coordination shot.
She can't bring herself to be embarrassed by the noises Korra wrings from her, by the speed at which she races straight to the edge and topples over it, her voice cracking and her ears ringing as the coiled energy in her belly collapses in on itself before exploding and radiating outward, setting every nerve ending aflame from her throbbing core to the tips of her shaking fingers.
Asami shudders, slumps even further against Korra's chest and digs her fingers into her back, rolls her hips down against Korra's hand again, and then one more time, riding that knife's edge between pleasure and overstimulation as long as she can bear. Korra gasps and clutches her tighter when Asami clenches around her fingers, still deep inside her, and warmth tingles through Asami's veins again as she catches her breath and her racing heart slows to match Korra's beat for beat.
———
Asami picks at a loose thread on the inside of the towel, Jian Xi still blessedly tucked out of sight even after they'd shuffled around and sat side by side on the bench, pressed up against each other with Korra's face tucked into Asami's neck and the towel wrapped around them both.
Something itches in her brain.
"Hey."
"Mmm?"
"What were you going to tell me?” she asks, murmuring the question into Korra's hair. “Earlier. Right before it started raining."
Korra shifts, unsticking her face from Asami's skin and flushing. "Oh. Hah, well—” she starts, and Asami twists toward her, rests her chin on her hand and props her elbow up on Korra's shoulder to get a better look at her.
"I broke it." Korra blurts out.
"What?"
"I broke it. The—the thingy. The reverse gate."
Asami splutters incredulously. "Wha—"
"Well first I unscrewed the whole thing, and I was gonna call you and say it just fell off, but then I felt bad, so I put it back on, but I lost the—the nut? Is that it? And I thought it would be fine, but then it wouldn't even start, and then—well, you know the rest,” Korra says in a rush. “I just thought you were so cool, and pretty, and I was worried l'd never see you again! I panicked!”
"So you—okay," Asami laughs, her brain flitting from flattered to annoyed and back to flattered in the span of one heartbeat. "You know, I would've said yes. If you'd just asked me out like a normal person."
"Like I said, I panicked."
“Mmm. You know, you really freaked me out.”
“Urghh,” Korra gurgles into her hands. “I know, I'm sorry. The second I did it I regretted it.”
“Hey.” Asami pokes her gently in her side and snorts at Korra's squawk of surprise. “It's ok. Just don't break any more of my stuff,” she says with a little smile.
Korra looks at her with a raised eyebrow, a glimmer of mischief in her eyes and a smirk playing at the corner of her mouth. "I mean it's not your stuff, right, not anymore. Technically it's Beifong's stuff, she paid you for it."
Asami raises an eyebrow right back. "Oh so you broke Beifong's stuff? Well that's fine. I'm sure she'll understand."
Korra groans, dragging her hand across her face. "Please don't say anything."
“We'll see. You know, that was very unprofessional. I'm not sure I want to do business with you anymore," Asami says primly.
"Will you do other things with me, though?" Korra asks, wiggling her eyebrows.
"Are you asking me out?"
"Yeah, like a normal person."
"Well then, yes,” Asami says with a little huff of a laugh. “Does this mean we get to use a bed next time?”
Korra shoots her a smile, a sly, lopsided sort of thing. “I mean, I don't wanna brag, but I do have all the components of a bed.”
Asami snorts. “And that means...”
“A mattress on the floor and a frame I never got around to putting together.”
“Right. Well, I usually fall asleep at my desk, so I guess it's only fair if I reserve judgement.”
“That's very kind,” Korra says with a hand to her chest and a faux air of solemnity. “Hey, maybe you could come over for dinner some night and we could set up the frame together? I make a mean grilled swordfish.”
Something warm flutters in Asami's chest and she smiles. If she's not careful, her face might get stuck that way. “Sounds like a date."