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“Ice cream is the only logical decision,” is not a sentence Asami Sato ever expected to say. But it's August, and it's so hot that the sidewalk is melting in patches and heat shimmers off the road, and standing in the sun for even a minute is enough to make you feel like you're being slowly roasted in a furnace, and for some reason Opal wants coffee. Not even iced coffee, actual hot coffee.
They've been debating the topic for half a block now, and even when Asami reasoned that coffee-flavoured ice cream exists, whereas ice cream flavoured coffee is not something that should ever be invented, Opal still wouldn't budge.
“The logical decision is that the heat is sapping all my energy so I need caffeine,” Opal counters now.
Asami rolls her eyes and thinks for a second. “Okay, what if we find somewhere that does both?”
Opal looks like she wants to argue again but can't find an actual (logical) reason. “Yeah, I guess that would make sense.”
They walk for another couple of minutes before they find somewhere that proudly proclaims that they sell ice cream, drinks, and, for some reason, cotton candy.
The shop is light and airy, and the air conditioning provides a welcome respite from the sweltering heat outside. Naturally, half the town seems to have had the same idea they have, and the line stretches almost to the door, but at least it's cool in here.
The woman behind the counter works quickly and efficiently, and Asami and Opal are almost at the front when she appears to encounter a problem and calls over her shoulder to someone in a back room, asking them to check the freezer to see if they're all out of chocolate.
“No problem, give me a sec!” the person calls back, and Asami stops breathing. She knows that voice, instantly and completely, and it spins her back into a thousand memories of blue eyes and laughter, of scraped knees on the playground, of unproductive study sessions, of bubblegum and snowballs and warm sand and linked fingers and soft lips and the piercing ache of longing.
“Asami? Asami, are you okay?”
And Asami remembers that Opal doesn't know, she doesn't know what happened at all. She's from the part of Asami's life that's post-Korra because ever since Korra left her life has been divided that way, and the two sides can't possibly be colliding right here and now, in a random ice cream parlour.
But the owner of that voice is walking out of the backroom lugging a huge tub of chocolate ice cream, and any hopes Asami had that she was wrong are shattered, because even years later, the face is as familiar to her as her own.
Korra's hair is cut shorter, drawn back into one small ponytail under a blue cap with the shop's logo. She's wearing one of her signature tank tops under her apron and her arms are even more muscular than they used to be, and the sun has brought out a few freckles on her cheeks, and there's a little scar on her chin that wasn't there before, but she's as familiar as breathing, and that's ironic because right now Asami can't remember how, and she actually thinks she might suffocate.
“Asami?” Opal says again, sounding a little panicked now, and Korra must hear because something flickers across her face and she looks up and her eyes widen in shock and she almost drops the tub she's holding. And then she's shoving it towards the woman behind the counter and ducking out past her and weaving her way around the other customers towards Asami.
Asami wants to run, because her heart has started crashing against her chest like a wave breaking and all the work she's done to carefully convince herself she's over Korra has come tumbling down, and she can't have her heart broken by this girl again, she can't. But she also can't get her feet to move, to walk away.
“Korra, what are you doing?” the woman behind the counter asks, frowning.
“Sorry, Kya, I'll be right back, just give me five minutes!” Korra calls back, and reaches Asami and stares at her like she can't believe it. “It's you,” she breathes. “I mean...” a flush spreads across her cheeks and she reaches up to rub the back of her neck awkwardly. The gesture is so familiar it makes Asami's heart ache. “I mean, hi.”
“Hey!” someone behind them says. “You're holding up the line!”
And before Asami can process it, Korra apologises and grabs Asami's arm and her touch is like a shock, still, after so long.
Asami expects Korra to lead her outside, but instead she moves towards a door tucked on one side of the shop, and it opens into a small break room, which is mercifully empty.
Korra lets go of her as soon as they're inside, and mumbles an apology, and as the door closes Asami can see Opal staring at her with a mixture of shock, betrayal and intrigue. Part of her thinks she should really go and explain, but she doesn't know what to do anymore.
“What are we doing in here?” Asami asks, and it comes out almost as a squeak, and she hates herself for it.
Korra's eyes widen like she's only just realised what she's done, and she takes a step back and looks around awkwardly. “I just... I thought we needed to talk. It's been so long, I didn't expect to see you, and... it's not that I'm not glad I did, I am, and I thought if we didn't talk now then maybe we'd never see each other again and...”
She rambles on about something else, but Asami stops seeing her for a moment, at least her as she is now, and sees her at sixteen, cut-off shorts and hair half falling out of its ties, sat in the sand with the firelight glinting off the bottle in her hand. Some party one of the kids at school had set up, that everyone pretended was more exciting than it was. Sitting round a campfire on the beach, drinking whatever they'd swiped from their parents, music blasting out of a portable speaker, jokes and dares and teasing each other.
She can feel Korra's hand on her knee again, warm and instant as she leaned in to whisper in her ear, something about one of the other kids, something that wasn't important, didn't matter except that it meant Korra got closer to her.
Three drinks in, Korra pulled her up to dance, stumbling and laughing in the flickering light, draped over each other till Asami almost couldn't feel where she ended and Korra began.
Five drinks, and the moment they got too close. The moment talking stopped, and they were sharing the same breath, and Korra leaned in, clumsy and hesitant, and kissed her.
It's a moment Asami has never been able to forget, but it was just a moment. Brief, fleeting, and then it was over, Korra pulling away awkward and shy, mumbling apologies like Asami hadn't leaned in too, hadn't kissed her back. Like it was just one drunk mishap.
There were days after that, where Asami didn't know how to talk about it. Days where Korra never said it meant anything, so Asami never told her that it meant something to her.
And then there was Mako, and he was nice and he wasn't Korra but no-one ever would be, and Asami didn't know why she wanted him to be. So she pretended that she didn't, and agreed to go out when he asked her to.
Things were sort of okay for a while, even if she kissed him and thought about that night on the beach, even if Korra got weird and angry all of a sudden, like she couldn't even look at the two of them.
Things were okay, until one day Asami looked up at Mako and saw him looking at Korra and recognised that look because she knew it lingered in her own eyes. Only this time, Korra was looking back the same way, the way she'd never looked at Asami and probably never would. Asami had tried so hard to be okay with that, but here was this, salt in a wound that had never really closed.
She waited a little while, hoping she'd been wrong, even when she overhead Korra tell Mako that “when you're with her, you're thinking about me” and wondered what would happen if she told her that he wasn't the only one.
But it didn't go away, the way they looked at each other, and even now Asami can still feel the way her heart tore in two the day she found them kissing each other the way Korra had kissed her once, only different, because this time it was for real.
She got angry because it hurt so much, and said things she shouldn't have said, and Korra got angry too and told her she was just jealous and left, and after that none of them talked, because it was too awkward and uncomfortable and difficult, and by the time Asami finally swallowed the hurt and resolved to try and fix things, Korra was gone. Her parents had been thinking about moving back to where the rest of their family lived for years, and they'd finally done it.
She'd left, and she hadn't even said goodbye, and that was the last thing Asami could take. She wouldn't pick up the calls, wouldn't answer the texts. Knew that if she did, if she tried to follow Korra, to rebuild what they'd had, then she'd only break her own heart again. And when the calls stopped coming, when there were no more texts, she resolved, then and there, to forget Korra, and she'd thought maybe it was working. Thought maybe, finally, at twenty-two, that she could be over the girl she'd loved at seventeen.
Only now Korra's standing in front of her, and all the feelings are still there.
“What are you doing back here?” she asks.
“I wanted to get away from home for a bit, and Tenzin's sister offered me a job, so...” Korra trails off. “Listen, Asami, I need to tell you– I need– There are things I should've–” She breaks off, looking frustrated, like she can't find the right words.
Do the right words even exist for this? Asami doesn't know, but if they do, she's never learned them.
“Look, Korra... we don't have to do this,” she says, desperate to put a lid back on all the feelings threatening to spill out. “I just came here for ice cream–”
“Please,” Korra says, and she sounds desperate. “Please let me explain. Then we don't ever have to talk again if you don't want to, just– please.”
Asami sighs. Her better judgment tells her this is a bad idea. But there's too much of her that still loves Korra; that never stopped.
“Okay,” she says. “Okay. But not here.”
They wind up on the beach. Not exactly where that night happened, but close. Clouds have rolled in and a breeze is starting, the weather finally ready to break. Asami wonders how long they have till the storm hits. Wonders if she'll crack before the skies do.
Opal accepted her hasty explanation of old friend, need to talk with the promise that she'd explain everything later. And Kya, the shop owner, heard the name Asami and immediately waved Korra away, telling her she could handle things, though not before Korra got ice creams for them both (“on the house,” Kya'd said with a wink at her employee, “now fix it”).
What's being fixed, Asami doesn't know, but she's grateful for the ice cream. It means she has something to focus on other than Korra.
For a few minutes, everything is silent. Asami can feel Korra's gaze on her, and fights the urge to tidy her ponytail, to dust sand off her blouse. Korra wouldn't care, and Asami shouldn't, either. She should be long past letting this girl make her lose her composure.
“I'm sorry,” Korra says finally. “I'm just– fuck, Asami, I'm really sorry. About Mako, about our fight, about... all of it.”
“You left,” Asami says, against her own will. She wanted to be stronger than this. Strong enough to hear, to accept graciously if needed, to get up and leave and let this finally be closure. But she's not. “You didn't even say goodbye.”
“I was angry,” Korra says. “And ashamed, and sad, and confused, and... when we fought, you told me you didn't ever want to see me again. I wasn't brave enough to find out if you really meant it.”
Ice cream is making cold tracks down Asami's hand, and she takes the excuse not to answer, because if she tries to speak, she's sure she'll cry. She keeps eating, staring resolutely at the sand, even though the sweetness churns in her stomach.
Whatever reprieve it is doesn't last long enough. Soon she has no more reasons, no more excuses, and she's fighting a losing battle with her tears.
“You didn't call,” Korra says, like she can't handle the silence any longer. “You didn't text. You never... I thought that meant you'd meant it. And it made sense. I'd kissed your boyfriend. I was the reason he broke your heart. Why the hell would you want to see me again?”
Asami laughs. She can't help it. She laughs, choking on it, on the hollowness, because there's no humour in her at all. Not right now.
“What?” Korra says, staring at her, hurt and frustration warring in her eyes. “What's funny?”
When Asami doesn't answer, she goes on, her words tumbling over each other. “If you're saying I was wrong, that you were just being dramatic, that you didn't mean it, then I'm sorry for that too, but we were both kids, it felt like the end of the world, I didn't know what else to think, and if you did want to see me you could've called or–”
“I wasn't heartbroken because you kissed him,” Asami says, cutting her off, unable to bear it, the flow of words, the truth she's been choking on for years. “I was... I was heartbroken because you'd never want to kiss me.”
Silence. Asami looks up, finally, and Korra's staring at her, eyes wide open, her lips parted, frozen with shock.
“What happened was worse because it was him,” Asami says, so low it's almost a whisper. “Because you didn't just kiss someone else, you kissed someone you knew would hurt me and you didn't care. Of course that made it worse. But I didn't care that he liked you. I never cared he liked you. I cared that you liked him.”
“What?” Korra falters, still staring at Asami like she's just slapped her round the face.
“You liked him,” Asami repeats, “you loved him, and I... I loved you. And you'd never love me. That's what broke my heart. You kissed me and the only time you ever mentioned it, you laughed and said we were drunk. But you kissed him and you meant it.”
The silence stretches, and then...“Why didn't you tell me?” Korra whispers. “Why didn't you say?”
“What was I supposed to say?” Asami bursts out, breaking the quiet that's brewed between them like the storm. “That I wanted to kiss you again? That I was in love with you? That I wished you'd tell me to drop him and be with you instead? How would it have made a difference, Korra? Would you have pitied me? Treated me like some breakable thing instead of your friend? Would you have let me down gently and kissed him somewhere a little more private? Or do you mean you wish I'd told you so you had a reason to leave without feeling bad about it, because it would be just too weird being around a girl who was in love with you?”
“No,” Korra says. “God, Asami, that's not... none of those are right.”
“What is, then?” Asami asks, and loses the battle. Her voice breaks around the words. “Tell me what the truth is, if not that.”
“You were wrong,” Korra says simply. “You are wrong.”
“What am I wrong about?”
Korra takes a breath. In the distance, the first peal of thunder splits the sky.
“I didn't love him. God, Asami, I shouldn't have kissed him, but I was sad and jealous and messed-up and he was there, and he was pretty, and he liked me like.... he liked me like I thought you never would.”
It's Asami's turn, now, to be speechless. The words ring inside her head, trying to arrange themselves into something that makes sense, something less impossible than what she thinks they mean.
“It's fucked up,” Korra says, and there are tears in her voice, too. “But I was sixteen, and my head was a mess, and I think I thought touching someone you'd touched was a little closer to touching you.”
“What does that mean?” Asami whispers, because no way, no way is Korra saying what she seems to be saying. No way could Asami have got it so wrong.
“I loved you too,” Korra says, and her eyes are so sad. “I loved you so much it terrified me.”
Asami's frozen, trapped in those words, in Korra's eyes, in the sheer impossibility of this moment.
“I still do,” Korra says, and that's when the skies break open, like the storm can't handle this any more than Asami can.
Rain pours down in sheets, lightning flashes too close for comfort, and Asami still can't move, stuck here, in this moment, in everything Korra just told her.
It's Korra who moves, reaches down a hand to her, and Asami takes it instinctively, lets Korra pull her to her feet, lets her hold on, leading them both to safety, out of the storm. She makes a beeline for the ice cream parlour, and despite the closed sign on the door, Kya lets them in the moment she sees them outside the window.
“I'm clearing up in here,” she says to Korra, “but you two can go in the break room till the storm lets up.”
“Thanks,” Korra says, and heads for the door they went through earlier. Only once they're through it does she seem to realise she's still holding Asami's hand, and lets go with a mumbled apology.
Asami stands still, trying to breathe, unable to process everything that's just happened.
“Are you okay?” Korra asks awkwardly, running her hands through her rain-damp hair, pulling it out of its bun till it falls loosely past her chin. She's anxious, Asami can see it in her eyes, in the shifting of her feet, in the way she can't keep still.
“You love me?”
It's not what she meant to say, it's not shaped like yes at all, and Asami curses her mouth for being so unreliable.
“I, uh. Yeah. Yes, I do. Sorry,” Korra says in a rush, staring at the floor. “I didn't mean to tell you like... I didn't think I'd ever tell you. But you said you used to love me and I... I just wanted you to have the truth from me, too. I know it's not fair, and I'm not expecting you to... I'm not expecting it to change anything.”
“I didn't,” Asami says. “I mean. I didn't use to love you. I do. Still. Always. Even though I've wished I didn't.”
Korra swallows, looks like she's fighting a smile and tears and everything in between. “Do you still wish that?”
Asami looks at her, and wonders. It's not like they've solved everything. Five years worth of hurt isn't shaken that easily. But still, after all this time, she can't pretend she's not still lit up, giddy at the thought that through everything, Korra's loved her, too.
What's breaking her heart now is how easy it would've been not to hurt like this. How all they needed was to be a little bit braver, a little bit clearer. If Korra had just told her she meant the kiss, if Asami had just managed to ask her if she had meant it, then five years of buried hurt might never have happened.
“I don't know,” she says. “This is just... it's a lot. I'm not sure what I think right now.”
Korra's shoulders sag a little, but she nods. “I know. I'm sorry. Just... take all the time you need, okay? And then... if you want to... I'll be here. Even if it's just to talk sometimes.”
“Okay,” Asami says.
“Okay,” Korra echoes. She stands there a moment longer, then heads for the door. “I should probably go. My place is just down the street, the storm won't kill me. If you want to talk again, you can find me here. I promise.”
Asami nods. “Goodbye,” she says, and she can almost taste the word's inadequacy.
Korra smiles at her, a little sad. “Goodbye.”
The door shuts behind her, and Asami stands there for a moment. Even through the rain, and the thunderclaps, and the sounds of Kya clearing up the shop, the air feels quiet. Empty.
This is the right thing to do. The smart thing. Take time, think it through, process. Throwing caution to the wind isn't smart. Following the tug of her heart isn't smart. Not now. Not yet.
Five years can't just fold away into nothing. One conversation doesn't mean she knows who Korra is now, not really.
And yet.
Asami opens the door, crosses the shop, and runs out into the street. The rain lashes her face, the sky so overcast it's almost dark.
“Korra, wait!”
Halfway down the road, Korra stops like she's been frozen in place. Turns slowly, like she can't believe it, just as Asami reaches her.
“I thought you needed time!” she says, half-shouting over the storm.
“I do. We do,” Asami replies. “There's a lot we have to figure out. But I lost you the first time because I wasn't brave enough to take a risk! I don't want to do that again. Because I know that if I go, if I talk myself out of it, if you leave or something happens without me having kissed you, I'll regret it for the rest of my life. I don't want to regret anymore.”
“So don't!” Korra says, and Asami grins, and takes the leap, and kisses her.
Her clothes are stuck to her skin, and there's wet hair plastered to both their faces, and it's damp and uncomfortable and god, romcoms really oversell this. But Korra's mouth is hot amongst the cold of the water, and Asami can feel every line of her through their clinging wet clothes, and the sound Korra makes when Asami scrapes her teeth along her bottom lip makes Asami feel like she might fall to her knees on the rain-battered sidewalk. And it's everything, even though she's cold, even though she's ruined her blouse, even though the thunder's too loud and this will all be more complicated tomorrow.
It's only when lightning flashes close, so close Asami's sure it must've hit the next street, that Korra pulls away.
“We should probably get inside!” she says, breathless and laughing. “Before we die out here!”
Asami laughs too, and nods.
As they cross the threshold to Korra's apartment, shivering and holding on to each other, taking stumbling steps between clumsy kisses, Asami realises life's ridiculous. Where's the logic in it? Five years of pining only to meet again in an ice cream parlour and confess in one afternoon all the things they couldn't over thousands of days of friendship.
Another time, she'd be mad about it, about how unnecessary the years of pain were. But right now, all she can do is laugh.
“What?” Korra asks her, eyes sparkling, and god, Asami is ready for complicated. She's ready to spend the next year talking everything out if it means they get to be together.
“Just thinking,” she says instead, because complicated can wait for tomorrow. “I'm really glad I wanted ice cream.”
Korra laughs and presses a brief kiss to her lips. “Yeah. Me too.”