Chapter Text
Someone is ringing the shit out of your doorbell and you’re sure if you were in a cartoon your head would be blowing steam. But, when you swing the door open ready to commit murder, you see Bolin standing there with his tongue poking out of his mouth looking so concentrated on continuing to make your life hell.
“Bolin,” You say, slowly and deliberately because you want to make sure her knows how not okay everything he’s doing is.
He ‘pfts’ you and your eyebrows raise so much you think they’ll fly off your forehead.
“Don’t give me that look, Sato, I’ve got a bone to pick with you.”
“Number one, it’s too fucking early, number two, no one under the age of forty says that.”
“Well you haven’t been around for so long I’d might as well be forty by now, you’re in no position to argue anyways, we need to talk.”
“About?”
His eye lids droop and his eyebrows flatten and he looks so bored with you it’s almost comical and you’d laugh if it wasn’t so early, “Just let me in and feed me, you owe me that much.” Then he’s pushing his way past you and he heads straight for your kitchen.
You follow him and then watch Bolin rummage through your fridge like he lives with you.
“So,” you start, “what exactly do we need to talk about?”
He pokes his head up from behind the refrigerator door and squints his eyes at you, “You know what I’m here about; stop acting like you’re clueless.”
“Bo, there’s nothing to talk about.”
“There’s actually everything to talk about. I’m not letting you run away from this. One of my friends ran away once and I’m not gonna let it happen again.”
Your stomach drops because you forgot that Korra is Bolin’s friend too, that when she left you, she left everyone else as well, that he loved her at one point and you see a bit of yourself in the green of his eyes.
“Okay,” you say quietly, and you sit down at the table and he joins you with a spoonful or peanut butter hanging out of his mouth.
“Look,” he says scooping another spoonful of peanut butter out of the jar, “you don’t have to listen to me, you probably wont, but I know what you’re thinking, ‘Sams, and running away isn’t going to fix this and it’s not going to make it any easier. You probably don’t want to hear it, but you need Korra and she needs you.”
“No, I don’t—“
“That’s bullshit and you know it. We all need different people okay, without people we’re not really anything, we’re just organisms on a giant rock floating through space. You don’t want to believe it but we give each other meaning and something to live for.”
“I don’t need someone else to give me meaning,” and the words leave your mouth sharp and intentional and you see Bolin’s features soften into something sad and worrisome and it reminds you of the look people gave you when your mom died.
“She really fucked you up, didn’t she?”
You don’t answer his question you just look at the magnets on your fridge and listen to the ticking of a nearby clock.
“Sami, you keep thinking like that you’re never gonna be happy. You’ll never admit it but you need her, I know you need her, if not in a romantic way then in a platonic way.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Yeah I do. Because I need you. I need Korra too, and Mako and Opal, I need all of you—sure in different ways, but either way, I need you.”
You don’t say anything to him because you don’t really want to believe that he’s right. You’ve spent so long trying to convince yourself that you don’t need her, but you kind of do. You need her—not in a way of needing her to keep on breathing, she’s not your air, or your reason for life, she never has been—but more like, you need her because with her everything is easier. She brings ease into everything and makes life brighter. Maybe you thought you needed her to live before, but you’ve come to realize that her in your life is just—well—right. You don’t need her like air; you need her like a kid needs a nightlight, like something to keep you safe.
“For a genius, you can be an idiot a lot of the time, ya know,” he mumbles.
“I’m taking offence.”
“Just being honest, okay.”
“Doesn’t make your honesty less offensive.”
And he gives you soft smile and you see adoration streaked across his features and—shit—you realize he really is being honest. Everything he tells you is true and you remember Bolin had almost nothing for so long. He treats you like safety sometimes and maybe its because you’re older and his mother is gone or maybe its because you both understand loss, you’re not too sure.
But, you’re beginning to understand necessity, and that’s okay. It’s okay to need people and it’s okay to find meaning in them. You thought finding purpose in a person was unfair, but why is it so bad? If you can find it in things you can find it in people and maybe that’s better than nothing at all.
“I hate it when you’re right,” you breathe out and then you laugh because Bolin is so smart and aware and you wish more people saw that side of him.
“I’m always right, people just choose not to listen to me.” He’s playing with his fingers and he looks like a little kid with his bottom lip jutting out, “I’ve missed you, ‘Sami. You don’t—you don’t have to listen to me or anything, I just want things to be right; and you and Korra are right. I need you to know that. There’s a lot of things that don’t make sense, but you guys do, you make each other happy.”
“The problem with making someone happy is that one day you don’t,” you whisper kind of like a secret you’ve always been too scared to tell and you know he sees the insecurity you’ve worked so hard to mask.
“Come on ‘Sami, you’re way smarter than this!” And he’s putting his face in his hands and his shoulders are slumping and you can tell he’s getting fed up with you. Maybe that’s what you want. Maybe you want him to get completely frustrated and give up on you because you know that he’s right and you just don’t want to admit it.
“That’s how life is,” he sighs, “you gain and it’s great and you lose and it sucks and it’s shitty but that’s how it all works. You’re just gonna give up because of the possibility of it not working out? You’re smart as hell, ‘Sami, but not even you can tell the future.”
Then Bolin is getting up from his chair, and he gives you a sad look and he walks over and ruffles your hair the same way you’ve always done to him, “See ya around, kid.”
You rub your face with your palms and—fuck—you kind of just don’t want to deal with anything anymore. You walk outside to your backyard and you hear water trickling into your pool and the rustling of leaves. The concrete feels cooler under your feet and you know it’s the end of the summer, and you’ll mourn it like the passing of the day. Even if nothing turns out the way you want it to, you’ll remember stars and cigarettes and luke warm beer and dancing and hazy, slow days and love.
And Korra.
Your lovely Korra.
Though everything has tried to push you apart there’s something that continues to inch you back to her. And—god—you never believed in the universe controlling things or anything being meant to be, but you feel like you’ve known her since the start.
Not just the start of you, but the start of everything, since the first particle that came from the expansion of the hot pinpoint that was the beginning of time and space.
To you, it seems like the entirety of the universe has waited for the moment you realize that, yes; this is how it’s supposed to be.
You can do this, you think. You’re standing on Korra’s doorstep and it’s been a week since everything happened, and you’ve had time to think, to sort out your thoughts and try to plan what you want to say, but nothing is helping the nauseous feeling you have in your stomach. It feels like water trickling backwards up your throat and kind of like you’re going to throw up and you know your hands are sweaty so you’re hoping you don’t have to make any kind of physical contact.
“Alright,” you breathe out, and you knock on her door. It feels like an eternity, like the time between seconds has gotten longer, or like one of those dreams where no matter how hard you try, you can’t seem to run fast enough. Then the door opens and it’s more like everything has stopped all at once.
You’ve noticed that with Korra, everything is slowed down, like you could wrap yourself in each moment spent with her and tuck yourself away in it.
“Hey,” she says, and you hear her voice and there’s a feeling in the middle of your chest that’s feels like something is filling up all the empty space inside you. It spreads through the cracks in your ribs and the space that separates your lungs and it feels like warm sunshine on your arms when you’ve just stepped outside. It’s inexplicable and full and it makes you want to never hear another sound again because nothing will ever make you feel the same.
“Is it alright if I come inside?”
“Seriously?” And she looks almost hurt by your question, “You’ve been my best friend for more than ten years, you practically live here, and you’re asking if you can come inside?”
“I just—“ and you’re sure you look like a goddamn fish because you’re just kind of opening and closing your mouth, “I’m coming in.” You push past her and you take a deep breath because—fuck—you’ve never been more nervous in your life.
“Come on,” she says, “it’s too nice outside for us to stay in, I need a cigarette anyways.”
You follow her out to her backyard and you sit beside her under the fruitless apple tree and you remember the last time you sat there with her. How you stared at her lips puckered around the end of a cigarette, and now the lines of her lips are etched into the skin of yours. It feels like you’ve been molded to fit her perfectly, like now there’s no going back because you tasted her and you don’t want to know the taste of anyone else. It’s like you look at her now and you feel like her name is the only one you ever want to feel rolling off your tongue.
There’s no one else, you realize. There can’t be anyone else, not any more.
After everything you’ve been through you’ve forgotten how easy it is to just be with Korra. How silence isn’t deafening or thick and it doesn’t feel an uneasy settlement, instead it’s the subtle comfort between quiet breaths and slow heart beats, and it’s bursts of air catching in your throat after loud laughs.
Hearing her take a deep breath was always enough—it’ll always be enough, because you came to realize a long time ago that words have always been too small for the two of you. They’ve always lacked and been insufficient and they’re never right and you know she deserves so much more than words.
“’Sami I—“
“Shut up. Just—let’s just sit for a second.”
“Yeah,” she whispers, “yeah okay.”
You hear the end of her cigarette burning every time she takes a drag and you think of how it’s all over. You’re right back where you started and you know it hasn’t been that long, but it feels like you’ve lived a lifetime this summer. Like everything you could ever possibly feel has been felt, and some of it sucked but you’d feel it all over again. You’d repeat the new cracks in your fragile foundation, the one that has threatened to give out so many times, you’d pull every string in your heart, burn down all the forests in your stomach and re-grow the flowers between your ribs. You’d do it again because you feel more like yourself than you ever did before.
When you breathed your secrets into Korra’s mouth, you showed her everything you couldn’t show anyone else and suddenly nothing was as heavy as it was before. You don’t feel like you’re going to crumble anymore because now she knows, and you think that no matter what happens, you’re glad it did.
“I don’t regret anything,” you say and she looks at you and her pupils are wide and dark and sad and you wish you could look in and see what’s behind them. “I’m not going to give you a speech and I’m not going to take anything back or apologize or anything like that. I’ve done enough, I think.”
“I’m—uh—I’m sorry,” she says picking blades of grass and her nails are dirty like they’ve always been and her hair is tied up and there are bits falling out of place near her ears. “I don’t really—like—remember when I started liking you, it was before Mako, maybe even before before Mako—I don’t know. I was scared, ya know. I didn’t want to fuck anything up, I was afraid of making a mess of everything again. And—look ‘Sami I’m an idiot, and I did what I do best and I ran because that’s all I really ever do.”
“Korra—“
“Let me finish please, I—just—I need to get this out,” her brows are furrowed and she’s looking at the small pile of grass she’s created.
“For a long time nothing made sense, or at least it seemed like things were dragging on without any sort of reason, and that was okay. But, I spent a lot of time questioning why—trying to understand things that didn’t need to be understood. But when I’m around you it’s kind of like none of that really matters. I don’t question—not because all of a sudden I found a reason—because everything seems all right. You make everything a little more okay. You always have, and it was you I came back for and it’s you that keeps me from spiraling out of control again.”
“I’m not—I’m—“ you take a deep breath and Korra’s scent is so familiar and strong and safe that you realize no matter what happens you’re going to be alright.
“Korra, I need you to know that I’m not going anywhere. You’re my best friend, you’ve always been my best friend, you’re always going to be my best friend, nothing is gonna change that. But—but we don’t know what we’re doing.”
You look at her and her eyebrows are scrunched and her eyes look sad and her lips are parted almost like she’s going to say something. Even after months she looks the same under the speckled light that filters between the gaps in the leaves.
“Tell me what you want,” she says, and it’s not really what you were expecting—well—you don’t really know what you were expecting.
“Time, I think. It’s—I just—fuck—“ you rub your eyes with the heel of your palms and you see spots of purple and blue form and fade behind your eyelids.
“I get it—“
“No, Korra, you don’t. I just really like you—I mean—I more than like you, I—“
“Shut up, I get it, you don’t have to say anything.”
“Okay.”
“Yeah,” she smiles, and you think there’s a secret hidden in the creases of her smile lines, and there’s something in the way her eyes crinkle when she laughs that makes your heart stop for a second and you kind of have to catch your breath because it’s one of your favorite things.
“So what do we do from here?” You ask, flicking a bug off your leg.
“Wait.”
“You don’t have to, Kor.”
“I know I don’t have to, I want to, you’re worth it. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before.”
“Nah,” you laugh, “you can make it up to me or something.”
“Anything for you.” She says with her crooked grin.
“You’re an idiot,” you laugh. And it feels good, because you’re both kind of broken, roughed up around the edges; torn and frayed, held together with tape and bandages, and if her bones come apart you’ll sew them together because you know she’d do the same for you.
You turn to look at her and she looks so soft and the afternoon is so slow and you want to put your hand over hers; hold it for a second and run your thumb over the smooth ridges of the skin stretched over her tendons, but you also really want to kiss her. Like—really want to kiss her.
“Korra?”
“Yeah, ‘Sami?”
“Can I kiss you?”
“The first time not good enough for you?”
“You’re a dick.”
“How sweet. You can if you can catch me,” and just like that she’s on her feet and sprinting away from you, and you follow close behind.
She’s running like she always has, but this time it feels different, she’s not so unobtainable this time it’s more like you know she’s going to let you catch her. You’ve spent so long following a path of dust trying to get some sort of hold on her, you’ve tried so hard to understand her and figure her out; but she’s not a puzzle.
She looks back at you and you swear to god she winks at you and her hair is all over the places and it’s tinted gold by the sun and her shirt is rippling against the air blowing against her body. You reach your hand out and just barely graze her shoulder and you hear her laugh and it’s loud and hard and the best sound, probably your favorite—well—everything about her is your favorite, really.
But she speeds up and she’s just out of reach again and your throat burns and there’s a rock in your shoe but you’re smiling.
People aren’t meant to be caught, you think.
You walk down the street you spent the summer on. Your feet are bare on the pavement and it’s warm, but not like the start of summer, more like stepping in the shade after the hot sun has been shining on the ground all day.
The taste of Korra’s name is on your tongue and the sun is going down and you’re smiling because you don’t have her, you never did—no one did, really—and you’re okay with it. Because you think that this is more than you and that it’s not just luck you made friends with the messy girl and it’s not because of luck that she decided to love you back. So, you kick at a pebble on the ground and you wonder how the universe managed to come up with someone like her, and how it managed to bring her to you. Then you laugh because—fuck—this summer really has been the best you ever had.