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Asami sits back, weight on her hands, and drinks a little from the glass she has brought before setting it on the counter beside her. She’s careful to leave about two thirds of the cool water in there, though in truth she can’t really guess how much Korra will need. Probably, Korra doesn’t either. All that Asami’s mentioned to her about her minor incident in the shop is that the lamp above the pillar drill came loose, and she had to write a very long hazard report about it catching her shoulder on its way down her, none of which means very much to Korra.
She tips her head back and breathes deeply, the now automatic stiffness of her shoulders itching at her patience. The watch on her wrist ticks. She needs to shower before she’s too hungry.
“Come and look at this... Korra, please,” she calls.
She unbuttons her shirt, drawing the shoulder back with less care than she realises she should have taken when the spot of the injury begins to pulse once more. It’s hard to peel the sleeves off without some pressure on her shoulder. As she glances up to check for Korra’s gaze again, she winces.
So does Korra - finally approaching, finished with whatever report she was so close to having sped through, that still took triple the promised five minutes. (Asami had her watch.)
“You should have come home earlier,” Korra says, not admonishingly. Her eyes are already mapping the injury, ready to work. “Hold on, how much does it hurt?”
“Pretty bad. Especially over the collarbone,” Asami says. She shrugs slightly, the despondence finally setting in.
“Baby,” Korra pouts on her behalf, as she pulls the water from the glass with a scoop of the wrist.
Asami sighs in anticipation, and then sighs upon contact. Then she opens her eyes and watches as Korra begins to spread the water over the deepening bruise. Her blinks slow when she concentrates like this. Asami watches for them. She yawns and vaguely recalls hearing that fresh wounds heal quicker, so maybe she should have come home earlier.
“How long?”
Korra interprets the question successfully, before Asami remembers to clarify. “You should probably wait an hour or two before using the muscles.”
Bent over her shoulder, Korra pauses momentarily to tuck her hair behind her ears, which helps Asami’s fingers stop itching to do it. But Asami can’t keep her eyes open for long. Cold spreads to the tips of her fingers, but it’s a welcome, surprisingly invigorating respite. When it does finally compel Asami to open her eyes, they fall upon the same picture of easy concentration on Korra’s face.
The water, cold and bland, blooms across her skin in its unnatural shape. Water bends more beautifully - more finely - than the other elements, especially when Korra does it. When she posited this to Korra, Korra had said that metalbending was probably more precise and she was just better with water, but the second part was all that was ever going to figure in Asami’s esteem. She slumps under its spell. It’s rare for her to experience it this close - the various physicians she’s seen through her life have certainly had waterbenders among their number, but it was rare that she ever required the direct touch of their bending.
Her shoulder is numb throughout, before she knows it, like the blood is leaving to give space to the cool, insensible water - and then all of a sudden, it’s nearly weightless. She sighs again, sharply.
The first time that a pretty waterbending nurse had done this to her, after Asami sprained her ankle playing Kuai ball on vacation in a different life, the sweet shock of the sensation had practically floated her up into a dream. One she spent plenty of the rest of those sticky summer evenings reimagining. It isn’t possible to quite relinquish her consciousness like that with Korra hovering this close; her breath near and warm enough on the tingling skin to tether Asami’s mind to every ministration. But, Asami thinks, as her nipples and all the skin of her torso prickle from the caressing cold, that her fifteen-year-old self would be thrilled at her fate.
Korra sucks her lip thoughtfully. “Almost done, tilt your head back.”
The bubble of water turns course at the gentlest flick of her hand, like it’s hypnotised. When she pushes it up to concentrate it over Asami’s collarbone, the heavy droplets land like kisses. Asami exhales evenly through her nose.
Once the familiar weightless sensation subsides, the water continues to trickle gently. Asami holds her breath and pulls her free shoulder back as it glides from the hollow of her neck and down between her breasts, seeping into her bra. It takes for the thin runnels to cross into streams and reach her stomach before she realises she’s being tested.
And just how blindly she’s met this provocation.
“Don’t make a mess,” she says, eyes flying open, gently deflective.
A piece of reverse psychology maybe, seeing as Korra never really likes being told what to do. She bites the inside of her cheek at the thought.
Korra licks her lips again in response. She says nothing for a moment, cocking her head as though refusing to humor Asami. “How does it feel now? Roll your shoulder.”
The soreness has mostly faded and the residual tension - the one in her shoulder - isn’t the injury, but the odd aftermath of the healing. The bruise was deep. But she’ll be tip top once the skin and muscle have some time to settle. “Yeah. Better.”
“Perfect!” Korra draws most of the water away with a casual curl of her fingers. But she leaves a little of it on Asami; and her eyes flash as she coils it in a flowing ring around her neck, round and round.
Then she does something Asami shouldn’t be so surprised at, and kisses the tender spot on her shoulder. It’s only her present state that allows the sensation to fog her mind in a blind instant, and before she can help it she moans and finds the back of Korra’s head with her hand, holding her there.
“Before I - you go anywhere,” she begins shakily, and burbles the rest through her embarrassed laughter, “I should wait a while to shower, right? To stop the hot water from - from aggravating it while it’s...”
Korra nods lightly, cutting her short when she lifts a hand to cup her open, red face. “So did you, like… go and get hurt on purpose?”
Asami doesn’t want to answer her stupid question so instead of just bristling at it, she kisses her. Korra moulds around her immediately, her arms warm and heavy. It jolts her awake; the sudden, solid weight of her after long minutes of all those measured and delicate ministrations. Then, in a split second, her senses sharpen like ice: the water on her skin branches into a dozen tingling trails that rove down her neck, her chest, her arms. All her skin is alive at once.
It’s Korra touching her, in a hundred places on her body that don’t have her hands or mouth on them. The surprise comes not from the fact she’s still bending - she can and does do this automatically - but from the contrast in her touches: skin and water, warm and cool, firm and glimmering. The contrast would be impossible to conjure - is impossible to process, colliding and sparking in Asami’s brain, an exhilarating double bind of each sensation heightening the other.
“Oh, you’re so much,” she gulps, the words tearing free when Korra finally moves her mouth from hers and back to her shoulders.
She kisses the bruised collarbone and bites and sucks the uninjured one, mumbling, “Ouch, sharp,” while Asami hisses and giggles, failing to fully catch her breath in between. It’s all she can do not to roll her hips. Her voice wobbles.
Then Korra draws back and pulls cool rivulets over the spots she’s kissed raw, and the tender splotches glow and even out before her eyes with almost no trace.
“That’s interesting,” Asami pants, itching for her mouth again, “that’s a clever way to get away with doing whatever you want with me.” Her throat closes as she finishes, holding Korra’s blazing eyes. She reaches behind herself to unclasp her bra, and the liquid that streams beneath it the second it loosens forces her hand to slacken, leaving Korra to pull it off while she hunches and shudders.
With the water stinging like ice over her nipples, the hand squeezing Asami’s back feels like a tease. She feels a little savage, watching the drip, the course over her own body - the hum low in her throat bubbles over into a groan. “Please use your hands...” She bows and drops a few pleading kisses into the parts of Korra in immediate reach, her neck, cheek.
Korra doesn’t oblige, but she does use her mouth. She’s not nice about it. When Asami unsqueezes her eyes, there are bite marks in the soft flesh of her breast. And then in the next hazy glance they’re gone, the going just as blissful on her smarting skin. One of Korra’s hands slides to Asami’s waist, thumb pushing into her hip to hold her in place.
She loves that one hand is enough. It’s not a grip Asami could ever resist if Korra didn’t want her to - those soft, quick, hypnotist hands belying exquisite strength - and squirming against it, against that thought, is never not intoxicating. She thinks about Korra wrestling her, the picture of innocence (until she isn’t); about hoping to hell that she isn’t going to let her win. Korra presses hard on her hipbone as if reading her mind, and it’s really the last straw. Asami’s hand worms, with some effort, beneath her slacks.
“No no no, let me. Let me.”
Korra, much more smartly, unbuttons and unzips them for her. She smiles up at Asami as she pulls them off, but her own eyes are dangerous, too. It’s a reason to trust her. Despite her patience ebbing like the water still surging over her pebbled skin, Asami lets herself be led.
If she had thought that she felt relief when her shoulder was healed, it’s nothing to Korra’s mouth on her. Her toes curl and teeth grit at the first lush, probing lick. Her skin jumps at the slightest suckle on her clit. It’s only when Korra settles on a rhythm - dizzying, but at last, predictable - that she can collect herself enough to really see, to speak.
“Slow down,” she breathes thickly. She needs the reprieve if she’s going to enjoy the moment, enjoy Korra, properly; or it’s all going to crash over without a second’s notice. “Look at me.”
Korra does. Asami clenches her thighs around her. Her sweet face framed, she combs a hand through her forelocks, fingers clammy with sweat or water, she isn’t sure. But it makes a mess of her, and the purr in Asami’s throat ripples into a teasing laugh. She tousles it a little more.
“Payback,” she mouths, belatedly, a little stupid, between panting breaths from the slow grind against Korra’s face; the insistent, maddening trickle of water, now funnelling down the creases of her hips, circling her throat again. It immediately proves to be the right thing to say.
Korra pulls her thighs in, fast enough that Asami loses her leverage, the hard grip that comes to clamp her waist on both sides the only thing holding her up. She forgets about taking it slow, pretty keen to the fact that she no longer has a choice in the matter. That she probably never did. On that spine-tingling thought, she comes in a matter of seconds, one hand tangling in Korra’s hair, the other fisted against her own mouth.
The water is soothing on the other side of the ordeal, a sobering shift in perspective that has Asami smiling as she blows out a long breath, hand skimming over her chest. She’s glad Korra doesn’t let her go as she rises, and she throws her good arm around her shoulders, just as Korra throws it all back in her face.
“I didn’t think that was going to turn you on so much!”
“Sure you didn’t.” Asami kisses the crook of the shoulder she rests in, sated beyond argument or embarrassment.
“Oh, man, you’re a mess. That was messy.” The dark relish in Korra's voice is a sure sign of more than just smugness.
Asami lifts her head, determined to meet her gaze unflinchingly. “Just you wait, yeah?" She presses her fingers into her cheek, biting her lip. "I’ll show you a mess. Just... give me one to two hours, okay?”