Fic; When You're Down & Safe
Both of these were written in response to a few lovely requests I got on tumblr. Haha, are y'all sick of me mentioning tumblr yet?
Title: When You're Down
Rating: PG
Summary: Bolin pops in on Korra for a visit immediately following her confrontation with Amon during A Voice in the Night.
Korra had been trying to stop her trembling for two hours by furiously practicing firebending katas by the time Bolin showed up. She was so focused on her movements that she very nearly singed his eyebrows off before she noticed he was there. She jerked back in surprise, but Bolin seemed completely unfazed. He just gave her a warm smile.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, annoyed that her heart was going at a million miles an hour once again.
“I know it’s late, but I just wanted to make sure you came out of that fight okay,” he replied, before pulling a bowl out from behind his back. “And I brought you some noodles.”
“What’s with all the gifts?” Korra demanded, hating how defensive she sounded. The cupcake and the rose he had given her earlier were still sitting untouched on the dresser by her bed; she hadn’t even put the rose in water. Usually when people gave her things, she handed them over to the White Lotus guards and they decided what to do with them. Korra hadn’t been in Republic City long enough to be constantly aware of the fact that someone wasn’t always going to be breathing down her back here.
Bolin didn’t seem put off by her hostility. “I just thought you might like them. They’re good, old-fashioned water tribe noodles!” He waved the bowl under her nose. The smell hit Korra’s nose hard and assaulted her with visions of home. Suddenly, she was so desperately homesick that she couldn’t stand it. The trembling came back.
The earthbender’s bright grin faded as he noticed. “Korra? You okay?” he asked, his voice much softer.
“I need to sit down,” she said in response, and sat down hard right where she was standing. After a moment, Bolin took a seat next to her, cradling the warm bowl in both hands. She glanced aside at it for a moment, and then reached out her hand. “I think I will have some of those noodles.”
Wordlessly, he handed it over, and she twirled a huge bite around the chopsticks quickly before shoving it into her mouth. They weren’t anything like the seaweed noodles her mother made, but they were reminiscent enough of home to make her wish she could fly herself there. At that moment, the Avatar was ashamed to admit that all she wanted was for her mother to hold her and stroke her hair and tell her everything was going to be okay.
She wasn’t supposed to be this weak.
Bolin waited until she had swallowed that first big mouthful before speaking up again. “What happened, Korra?”
The water tribe girl cradled the steaming dinner close to her chest, absorbing some of its warmth into her body. The heat made her feel calmer, in the same way that the heat of firebending was a natural comfort to her. It was the element she always defaulted to when she felt angry or threatened. It was exactly why she had used it so desperately against those chi-blockers tonight.
Their luminous, toxic green goggles suddenly flashed through her mind, followed quickly by the remembered feeling of their fists against her back, once more making her effectively useless. Powerless.
“He ambushed me,” she started, and then shook her head, realizing that wasn’t quite right. “He…caught me by surprise. I thought he wasn’t going to show up…and then suddenly he was pulling me into the dark and I couldn’t do anything. They had me down…those chi-blockers…” She said the word as though it were something out of a horror story. “And then he was right in front of me and I couldn’t even move and he could have taken my bending away right then if he wanted to…”
Bolin stared at her, his green eyes reflective in the soft light outside the temple. “And he didn’t, I see.”
“No.” She stared down at the dark green noodles. “He said it would be ‘premature’. But I was still so…”
“Scared?” he finished for her. When she didn’t answer, he gave her another gentle smile. “Hey, I know exactly how you feel, remember? Amon had me tied up on a stage in front of hundreds of people and I felt completely trapped. It’s okay to be scared.”
“It’s not okay for me!” Korra burst out, finally looking at him. “I’m the Avatar. I’m supposed to be able to protect everyone! I’m supposed to be stronger than the bad guys! But Amon had me at his mercy without even trying! And now that I’m…I’m away from him, all I can think about is how…terrified I am and I hate it!”
Bolin didn’t say anything for a moment. Korra realized she was frighteningly close to tears again and took another bite of her noodles to ward them off. Her eyes still stung, and she hoped her curtain of hair hid them well enough from Bolin.
“Even the Avatar’s allowed to be afraid, you know,” he finally said quietly, looking out over the island. “I’ve heard tons of stories about Avatar Aang over the years, and he was never fearless, either.”
“I’ve heard enough about Aang,” Korra cut in bitterly, wiping hastily at her foggy eyes. “All I’ve ever been told is how much is expected of me because of him.”
Bolin shook his head. “But you’re not him. You’re Korra: the most amazing and wonderful and brave girl I’ve ever met, and I thought all of that before I even knew you were the Avatar.”
She glanced over at him, a tiny smile twitching at the corners of her lips. “I thought you only said that because you were hitting on me.” The exact term she’d heard him use was special, but it was still along the same lines.
“Well, I guess that’s involved, too, but those feelings were from the heart,” said Bolin, with a small cough. “But if it helps, you’re also the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen.”
Korra laughed, her face feeling a bit hot, and waved the words away. “You know, you’re pretty good at cheering me up.”
“Anytime you need it, Korra,” he said softly, “I’ll be here.”
The two of them shared the remainder of the bowl of noodles under Yue’s soft light.
Title: Safe
Rating: R
Summary: After a close call, Korra and Bolin spend a sleepless night in each other’s arms.
In the pale half-light that fills their apartment just before dawn, Korra and Bolin move together like two people who plan to never be separated again. Their bodies push and pull against each other, in the same rhythmic motion as the tides, and Korra actually feels like she’s riding a giant wave, one that will never break the shore. Until it does, and the ragged cry that tears itself from her throat is something like his name.
They collapse together, a tangled heap of limbs and rumpled hair, and when Korra catches her breath she can still feel the aftershocks of pleasure running through her body. The next thing she feels is Bolin’s hand in her loose hair, brushing it back from her sweat-damp forehead. With effort, she lifts her head from his chest and regards him with bright blue eyes. The way he’s looking at her doesn’t signal that he has anything in particular on his mind, other than complete satisfaction, but somehow Korra can sense that he has something to say to her anyway.
“I love you,” she starts, because she can’t think of anything else and because those are the truest words she can say to him, especially now, with the events of the recent past still hanging between them. She closes her eyes and still sees him falling, the crunch of his metal as he collides with the hard earth, her world going dark as the Avatar State takes over and it’s beyond her control, and distantly she knows he’s trying to stop her, even though he’s just losing more blood with the effort-
Korra shakes the thoughts away as Bolin’s hand brushes against her cheek, before drifting down to her chin and tilting her head up slightly. She hadn’t been able to look at his face at all as they made love, because of the ugly bruise that darkens his left eye, the bruise he received as a result of her losing control. The bruise he’d gotten when a huge lump of flying rock had struck him right in the face as he tried desperately to get to her, to bring her back to herself. In the light falling on him through the cracks in their curtains, the harshness of the bruise is thrown into sharp relief against his skin. She wants to turn her eyes away again, but he won’t let her.
“What’s wrong?” he asks softly, smiling gently at her. “I’m not that ugly now, am I?”
“It’s not that,” she says, her fingers making idle swirls over his chest.
“It’s because you blame yourself.”
She ducks her head again, shame swallowing her whole, and nods. “I know I’ve never been a very good Avatar. Or even a very good person, sometimes. But…what am I supposed to do when I can’t even protect the people I love from myself? I lost control, Bolin…I hurt you after I promised I’d never hurt you again.” Korra remembers the first time she told him that, when he had still been so sure she was going to spend the rest of her life with his brother. She remembers the way his eyes misted and the way his arms went around her so tightly that he nearly broke her in half.
Bolin’s hands are back in her hair, combing his fingers through the dark, tangled strands, and once she finishes speaking he tenderly frames her face in both hands. “Korra, you saved me tonight. You saved me when everything was going wrong for us. So, I got hit in the eye with a rock. So what? If you hadn’t gone into the Avatar State when you did, we probably would have been captured.”
“But you tried to stop me!” Korra points out, thumping his chest with her fist. “Because when I came to…the next thing I remember is seeing your face, and you had my head in your lap…and I remember you tugging on my hand and trying to get me to come back down…”
“Yes,” says Bolin softly, “because I didn’t want you to hurt yourself. Korra, we’ve learned a lot about the Avatar State since we’ve known each other…and sometimes it’s brought on by desperation and the overwhelming desire to protect the people you care about. I just wanted you to know that I was okay.”
She sighs a little, and finally raises her eyes back to his. “You’re lucky that armor of yours is so thick. I still could have lost you…”
Maybe it is the barely-contained emotion in her voice, or maybe it is the words themselves that makes Bolin sit up so suddenly with her against his chest. He lets out a little groan as his battered body protests, but before Korra can open her mouth to tell him to take it easy (even though they’d made not-so-gentle love for hours) he leans in and presses a soft kiss against her mouth.
“I can promise you you’re never going to lose me, Korra,” he says, with a bit of a twinkle in his eye.
Her mouth twists in confusion at the sudden brightness in his tone. “How can you make a promise like that?”
“Because,” he replies. “I’m never going to leave you. I can’t.”
“But that doesn’t mean…”
“You’re never going to lose me,” he repeats, firmly. “Never.”
She is silent for a moment, chin still propped up on his chest, body still aligned with his. Her fingers continue to trace soft lines over his warm skin, following the paths her hands had taken earlier when she had healed him after the fight. And suddenly, the memory of Master Katara springs into her head; Katara, who had taught her how to heal. She remembers something her sifu told her shortly before she left the South Pole, when Korra had asked her something about Aang.
Even though he’s gone, I’ll never truly lose him. We’re just going to be separated for a little while.
She smiles a little against Bolin’s chest. Her sifu is wise. And even though Korra doubts she will be able to have the same mentality should Bolin ever leave her alone like that, the words are comforting.
“You’ll never lose me either,” she says finally, even though Bolin’s eyes are closed and she thinks he might have drifted off to sleep. Closing her own eyes, she snuggles down into his warmth and turns away from the daylight threatening to rouse them both from bed.
Title: When You're Down
Rating: PG
Summary: Bolin pops in on Korra for a visit immediately following her confrontation with Amon during A Voice in the Night.
Korra had been trying to stop her trembling for two hours by furiously practicing firebending katas by the time Bolin showed up. She was so focused on her movements that she very nearly singed his eyebrows off before she noticed he was there. She jerked back in surprise, but Bolin seemed completely unfazed. He just gave her a warm smile.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, annoyed that her heart was going at a million miles an hour once again.
“I know it’s late, but I just wanted to make sure you came out of that fight okay,” he replied, before pulling a bowl out from behind his back. “And I brought you some noodles.”
“What’s with all the gifts?” Korra demanded, hating how defensive she sounded. The cupcake and the rose he had given her earlier were still sitting untouched on the dresser by her bed; she hadn’t even put the rose in water. Usually when people gave her things, she handed them over to the White Lotus guards and they decided what to do with them. Korra hadn’t been in Republic City long enough to be constantly aware of the fact that someone wasn’t always going to be breathing down her back here.
Bolin didn’t seem put off by her hostility. “I just thought you might like them. They’re good, old-fashioned water tribe noodles!” He waved the bowl under her nose. The smell hit Korra’s nose hard and assaulted her with visions of home. Suddenly, she was so desperately homesick that she couldn’t stand it. The trembling came back.
The earthbender’s bright grin faded as he noticed. “Korra? You okay?” he asked, his voice much softer.
“I need to sit down,” she said in response, and sat down hard right where she was standing. After a moment, Bolin took a seat next to her, cradling the warm bowl in both hands. She glanced aside at it for a moment, and then reached out her hand. “I think I will have some of those noodles.”
Wordlessly, he handed it over, and she twirled a huge bite around the chopsticks quickly before shoving it into her mouth. They weren’t anything like the seaweed noodles her mother made, but they were reminiscent enough of home to make her wish she could fly herself there. At that moment, the Avatar was ashamed to admit that all she wanted was for her mother to hold her and stroke her hair and tell her everything was going to be okay.
She wasn’t supposed to be this weak.
Bolin waited until she had swallowed that first big mouthful before speaking up again. “What happened, Korra?”
The water tribe girl cradled the steaming dinner close to her chest, absorbing some of its warmth into her body. The heat made her feel calmer, in the same way that the heat of firebending was a natural comfort to her. It was the element she always defaulted to when she felt angry or threatened. It was exactly why she had used it so desperately against those chi-blockers tonight.
Their luminous, toxic green goggles suddenly flashed through her mind, followed quickly by the remembered feeling of their fists against her back, once more making her effectively useless. Powerless.
“He ambushed me,” she started, and then shook her head, realizing that wasn’t quite right. “He…caught me by surprise. I thought he wasn’t going to show up…and then suddenly he was pulling me into the dark and I couldn’t do anything. They had me down…those chi-blockers…” She said the word as though it were something out of a horror story. “And then he was right in front of me and I couldn’t even move and he could have taken my bending away right then if he wanted to…”
Bolin stared at her, his green eyes reflective in the soft light outside the temple. “And he didn’t, I see.”
“No.” She stared down at the dark green noodles. “He said it would be ‘premature’. But I was still so…”
“Scared?” he finished for her. When she didn’t answer, he gave her another gentle smile. “Hey, I know exactly how you feel, remember? Amon had me tied up on a stage in front of hundreds of people and I felt completely trapped. It’s okay to be scared.”
“It’s not okay for me!” Korra burst out, finally looking at him. “I’m the Avatar. I’m supposed to be able to protect everyone! I’m supposed to be stronger than the bad guys! But Amon had me at his mercy without even trying! And now that I’m…I’m away from him, all I can think about is how…terrified I am and I hate it!”
Bolin didn’t say anything for a moment. Korra realized she was frighteningly close to tears again and took another bite of her noodles to ward them off. Her eyes still stung, and she hoped her curtain of hair hid them well enough from Bolin.
“Even the Avatar’s allowed to be afraid, you know,” he finally said quietly, looking out over the island. “I’ve heard tons of stories about Avatar Aang over the years, and he was never fearless, either.”
“I’ve heard enough about Aang,” Korra cut in bitterly, wiping hastily at her foggy eyes. “All I’ve ever been told is how much is expected of me because of him.”
Bolin shook his head. “But you’re not him. You’re Korra: the most amazing and wonderful and brave girl I’ve ever met, and I thought all of that before I even knew you were the Avatar.”
She glanced over at him, a tiny smile twitching at the corners of her lips. “I thought you only said that because you were hitting on me.” The exact term she’d heard him use was special, but it was still along the same lines.
“Well, I guess that’s involved, too, but those feelings were from the heart,” said Bolin, with a small cough. “But if it helps, you’re also the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen.”
Korra laughed, her face feeling a bit hot, and waved the words away. “You know, you’re pretty good at cheering me up.”
“Anytime you need it, Korra,” he said softly, “I’ll be here.”
The two of them shared the remainder of the bowl of noodles under Yue’s soft light.
Title: Safe
Rating: R
Summary: After a close call, Korra and Bolin spend a sleepless night in each other’s arms.
In the pale half-light that fills their apartment just before dawn, Korra and Bolin move together like two people who plan to never be separated again. Their bodies push and pull against each other, in the same rhythmic motion as the tides, and Korra actually feels like she’s riding a giant wave, one that will never break the shore. Until it does, and the ragged cry that tears itself from her throat is something like his name.
They collapse together, a tangled heap of limbs and rumpled hair, and when Korra catches her breath she can still feel the aftershocks of pleasure running through her body. The next thing she feels is Bolin’s hand in her loose hair, brushing it back from her sweat-damp forehead. With effort, she lifts her head from his chest and regards him with bright blue eyes. The way he’s looking at her doesn’t signal that he has anything in particular on his mind, other than complete satisfaction, but somehow Korra can sense that he has something to say to her anyway.
“I love you,” she starts, because she can’t think of anything else and because those are the truest words she can say to him, especially now, with the events of the recent past still hanging between them. She closes her eyes and still sees him falling, the crunch of his metal as he collides with the hard earth, her world going dark as the Avatar State takes over and it’s beyond her control, and distantly she knows he’s trying to stop her, even though he’s just losing more blood with the effort-
Korra shakes the thoughts away as Bolin’s hand brushes against her cheek, before drifting down to her chin and tilting her head up slightly. She hadn’t been able to look at his face at all as they made love, because of the ugly bruise that darkens his left eye, the bruise he received as a result of her losing control. The bruise he’d gotten when a huge lump of flying rock had struck him right in the face as he tried desperately to get to her, to bring her back to herself. In the light falling on him through the cracks in their curtains, the harshness of the bruise is thrown into sharp relief against his skin. She wants to turn her eyes away again, but he won’t let her.
“What’s wrong?” he asks softly, smiling gently at her. “I’m not that ugly now, am I?”
“It’s not that,” she says, her fingers making idle swirls over his chest.
“It’s because you blame yourself.”
She ducks her head again, shame swallowing her whole, and nods. “I know I’ve never been a very good Avatar. Or even a very good person, sometimes. But…what am I supposed to do when I can’t even protect the people I love from myself? I lost control, Bolin…I hurt you after I promised I’d never hurt you again.” Korra remembers the first time she told him that, when he had still been so sure she was going to spend the rest of her life with his brother. She remembers the way his eyes misted and the way his arms went around her so tightly that he nearly broke her in half.
Bolin’s hands are back in her hair, combing his fingers through the dark, tangled strands, and once she finishes speaking he tenderly frames her face in both hands. “Korra, you saved me tonight. You saved me when everything was going wrong for us. So, I got hit in the eye with a rock. So what? If you hadn’t gone into the Avatar State when you did, we probably would have been captured.”
“But you tried to stop me!” Korra points out, thumping his chest with her fist. “Because when I came to…the next thing I remember is seeing your face, and you had my head in your lap…and I remember you tugging on my hand and trying to get me to come back down…”
“Yes,” says Bolin softly, “because I didn’t want you to hurt yourself. Korra, we’ve learned a lot about the Avatar State since we’ve known each other…and sometimes it’s brought on by desperation and the overwhelming desire to protect the people you care about. I just wanted you to know that I was okay.”
She sighs a little, and finally raises her eyes back to his. “You’re lucky that armor of yours is so thick. I still could have lost you…”
Maybe it is the barely-contained emotion in her voice, or maybe it is the words themselves that makes Bolin sit up so suddenly with her against his chest. He lets out a little groan as his battered body protests, but before Korra can open her mouth to tell him to take it easy (even though they’d made not-so-gentle love for hours) he leans in and presses a soft kiss against her mouth.
“I can promise you you’re never going to lose me, Korra,” he says, with a bit of a twinkle in his eye.
Her mouth twists in confusion at the sudden brightness in his tone. “How can you make a promise like that?”
“Because,” he replies. “I’m never going to leave you. I can’t.”
“But that doesn’t mean…”
“You’re never going to lose me,” he repeats, firmly. “Never.”
She is silent for a moment, chin still propped up on his chest, body still aligned with his. Her fingers continue to trace soft lines over his warm skin, following the paths her hands had taken earlier when she had healed him after the fight. And suddenly, the memory of Master Katara springs into her head; Katara, who had taught her how to heal. She remembers something her sifu told her shortly before she left the South Pole, when Korra had asked her something about Aang.
Even though he’s gone, I’ll never truly lose him. We’re just going to be separated for a little while.
She smiles a little against Bolin’s chest. Her sifu is wise. And even though Korra doubts she will be able to have the same mentality should Bolin ever leave her alone like that, the words are comforting.
“You’ll never lose me either,” she says finally, even though Bolin’s eyes are closed and she thinks he might have drifted off to sleep. Closing her own eyes, she snuggles down into his warmth and turns away from the daylight threatening to rouse them both from bed.