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By the time Jinora, Korra, and Asami were finally able to touch back down at Air Temple Island, it was dark, even chillier, and the three of them were utterly spent. After spending the whole day together already, at least an hour lost to little puffball spirits hijacking their plane, and another half-hour of Asami meticulously making sure that the plane was safe for use again, they were ready to turn in for the night.
“Goodnight, you two!” Jinora said in a whisper-shout. Most, if not all of the island must already be asleep. “Thanks again for the talk!”
They both smiled fondly at her. “You don’t give yourself enough credit, you know,” Asami said. “But we’re glad that we could be there for you.”
Jinora beamed as if Asami had just awarded her a gold medal. Korra gets it. That was how she felt every time Asami complimented her, too.
“Goodnight, Jinora,” Korra said before pulling Asami into their bedroom with her.
It used to only be Korra’s bedroom, but most days, unless Asami was needed especially early in the city the next morning, she would find herself preferring to sleep on the stiff airbender beds instead of the plush king-sized bed she had at her penthouse apartment.
One day Asami asked Korra if she had seen her book anywhere. The island was large, and the mere thought of looking for it on her own was daunting. But Korra had so easily said, “It’s in our bedroom on the nightstand,” and that’s how they referred to it from then on. Not Korra’s bedroom. Their bedroom.
Besides. Asami liked to wake up to the smell of breakfast in the morning and a whole community outside the window. Not to mention the feeling of strong arms wrapped around her first thing in the morning.
It’s homier here.
After Korra slid the bedroom door closed behind her, Asami lifted a brow playfully. “Eager to get me alone?”
Korra laughed, taking Asami’s other hand, too, using it to pull them closer together. She rose to her tippy-toes to kiss Asami softly, much more softly than if she were in the mood for more. Asami wanted to pout and plead her case before a yawn overtook her.
“You always spend at least half an hour reading before you turn the lights out,” Korra said. “As much as I love having you to myself, I’m eager for the both of us to sleep, babe.”
Asami laughed lightly, kissing the tip of Korra’s nose. They know that Korra didn’t mean it as an indictment or a complaint. They’re both used to this routine, of Korra going to sleep earlier than Asami while she read a book. When she felt that she was at a good enough place in the story to stop for the night, she’d gently lay the book back down in the same exact place on the nightstand like it was an altar, turn the lights off, and snuggle into Korra’s arms. Korra would always gain just enough consciousness to fully take Asami into her arms, kiss her hair, and whisper “I love you.” Occasionally she’d even let Asami read her book aloud to her, even if Korra barely followed along, more often than not didn’t even know what the story was about, just so she could listen to her favorite voice in the world. As if she were in a hurry to wake up to the voice in the morning instead. There are worse ways to fall asleep.
“I don’t always read right before bed,” Asami said.
Korra raised a brow in skepticism. “Asami, you go through books like Rohan went through diapers.”
“What? It’s true.” Asami wrapped her arms around Korra’s waist, pulling her in even closer until she could nip at her ear. “Sometimes something else puts me to bed instead. I wouldn’t mind skipping a chapter or two tonight.”
Korra’s cheeks heated up before she cleared her throat and took a half-step back. If she didn’t put some distance between them now, they may never go to sleep, and they had another early morning and long day ahead of them tomorrow.
She second-guessed herself and contemplated the proposition for a just second until another yawn overtook Asami. The yawn spread, and Korra responded with her own in return. “Raincheck?”
Asami begrudgingly agreed with a pout, giving Korra a quick peck before releasing her hold on her. “I’m holding you to that.”
A facial wash, brushing of teeth, and change of clothes later, the both of them finally settled into bed. Asami grabbed her book from the nightstand as expected, treating the pages with reverence as she flipped to her latest bookmarked page. Before she began reading, she leaned down to give Korra a kiss goodnight. Another part of their nightly routine. Korra usually preferred sleeping on her side, but she began each night on her back in case Asami felt like sleeping on top of her instead of being wrapped under or beside her.
Just as Asami liked to read before bed, Korra liked to count her blessings. It isn’t often she gets to go on missions with only Jinora (Asami is a part of her. She doesn’t count), and throughout the day, she noticed tiny ticks that were unlike her. A strained smile, a twitch in her brow, a labored breath. Jinora was one of the most patient people she knew. She could tell that something was up. Knew that Jinora would open up about it eventually when the time was right.
Despite being held back by the spirits on their way back home, Korra was happy for the opportunity for Jinora to share what was really bugging her. It broke her heart a little, hearing how much her baby sister had been struggling, not knowing how long it had been eating at her. But the sight of Asami comforting Jinora warmed Korra’s heart. She knows how much Asami would have loved having younger siblings.
Now they can share.
But there’s a detail that stuck out to her in Asami’s pep talk. A piece of information that Asami had mentioned in passing once, but they hadn’t been able to really sit and talk about it in detail at the time.
“Asami?” Korra asked, halting Asami in her book. Asami looked up immediately, surprised that Korra was still awake. Korra glanced at Asami's book, not realizing that she had apparently already gone through a considerable amount of pages while Korra was stuck in her thoughts.
“Yes?”
Despite her sleepiness, it was still vivid in Korra’s mind. Something that poked at her curiously, cataloged in her brain to ask about later.
“Korra’s right. You never know what you’ll discover about yourself. If I didn’t embrace my own discoveries, I would never have ended up with Korra.”
“Did you like any other girls before me?”
Asami trapped a finger between the pages to keep her place. Her other hand went up to stroke her chin in thought, her eyes rolling up to the ceiling as if searching for the answer there. A face, perhaps. Korra imagines some sweet, cute girl from her school years. Someone Asami was best friends with, maybe; just like her. Perhaps she just didn’t have the words for it at the time.
Finally, Asami shrugged simply. “I don’t know. Maybe?”
Korra tilted her head curiously. “You’re not sure?”
Asami sat up a little from her relaxed position against the headboard. “Why do you ask? Jealous of someone that probably doesn’t exist? Maybe I’ll dig up an old yearbook and see who tried to ask me out for a Summer date in their signatures.”
Korra smiled at the teasing tone. She knew Asami was a one-Korra woman. Never even questioned it for a second.
She sat up to face Asami more comfortably, bending her leg and resting a knee against Asami’s thigh. “I’m just curious. We never really talked about it before. I wasn’t even sure if you liked girls until I came back to Republic City.”
“What, me offering to be your live-in caretaker wasn’t obvious enough?”
“You’re feeling very cheeky tonight,” Korra pointed out playfully, leaning her head against their headboard. “But really. I’m curious. How did you know?”
Asami moved her bookmark to take the place of her finger and put her book away before facing Korra straight on, their legs shifting to accommodate the new position, but never breaking apart. She blew a breath out. “If you can believe it, my dad actually pointed it out to me.”
Korra’s eyebrows shot up and she leaned in an inch in intrigue. She knew that Asami had realized it while they were apart, how Asami had almost told her in one of her letters, but she never knew that Hiroshi had played a part somehow. This was definitely new information to her. “Really? When? How?”
Asami smiled, even as a little hurt laced itself into it at the memory of her father. “After a few visits in prison, somehow, we got to a point where it felt… comfortable again. Easy. Like I could talk to him as I did before. Obviously, it wasn’t exactly the same as before, but…” Korra nodded along, knowing well enough how complicated Asami’s feelings were toward her father. Asami skipped ahead, letting Korra fill in the context of that “ but.”
“Anyway,” Asami continued, “I talked about you. A lot.” Korra wanted to tease her for the blush that spread across her cheeks, but she could hold that thought for another time. It wasn’t exactly rare for them to make each other blush like idiots in love.
“Dad had mentioned how I sounded like himself, pining after my mom. I don’t think that he meant it in ‘that way’ at the time, but for me, everything clicked and fell into place right then and there.” She tutted her tongue, and Korra could see her mentally crossing out the lines of her own script before rewriting it. “Well, not exactly. It sounds a little too easy when I put it like that. It definitely was a slow acceptance, even when I did want to write to you about it. Maybe especially then. Spirits, I was still a little confused until you came back to Republic City.”
Korra hadn’t even realized that she’d taken Asami’s hands into her own at some point, rubbing her thumbs against her knuckles to soothe her. It’s become so instinctive and natural for them. Asami smiled at their joined hands, probably noticing it at the same time as Korra. “But then I saw you again, we hugged, and then everything just… made sense. Why I wanted to keep holding onto you, even if I knew that Mako was waiting for us to join him at the table. It was much more than just missing a friend. I didn’t realize just how much I’d been feeling that. Once I reconciled that I’ve felt that way about you for, well, years, I knew. Why all that time without you made me feel like… like I was missing something. Why I suddenly felt whole again. Right.”
Korra stared adoringly at her girlfriend for a while, soaking it all in. She of course knew that Asami had pined after her years before they got together. They tried to make a contest of it once, seeing who pined over who more. “Well, the Republic City recycling center probably has hundreds of discarded drafts to prove how much I angsted over you.” “Yeah? Well the South Pole probably has twice as many drafts, and my wall has each of your letters that did make the cut.” “I had a crush on you the second I met you, even if I didn’t know what it was at the time.” “I was already a little in love with you, even then. And I’ve always known.” Eventually, they agreed to a tie, although neither of them actually believed that.
Korra had never heard the story told quite like this before. “I never thought that I was your first.”
Asami tilted her head. “First what? Girlfriend? First love? First time I second-guessed if someone actually felt attracted to me back? Because it’s all of the above.”
Korra chuckled, bringing her hands up suddenly to kiss Asami’s knuckles, pleased by how it made Asami melt immediately. When Asami spoke like this, all Korra wanted to do was shower her in kisses and bathe her with love. “I don’t know. I guess I’m just surprised that I’m your…”
“My what?”
“Your gay awakening,” Korra muttered, a bit embarrassed.
Asami’s eyes widened and twinkled in amusement before a sudden, surprised laugh escaped her. She buried her face in Korra’s shoulder to continue laughing into it, conscious of everyone else probably already being asleep at this hour. “I mean, when you put it like that, I suppose you were.”
Korra turned her face into Asami’s hair, laughing along when she realized how absurd it sounded. “So there were really no other girls in your past that you had a crush on? And maybe just didn’t realize it at the time?”
After getting the rest of her giggles out, Asami lifted her head and took Korra’s face into her hands, staring intently into her eyes with a dopey smile. Idiots in love, Korra liked to remind herself.
“My love,” she said dreamily before planting a soft kiss on Korra’s lips, “man, woman, anyone outside or in-between; if any of them exist, it’s not even worth the comparison. The only person I’ve ever felt so much of anything for is you.”
Korra felt the words like an embrace, a tug at her heart to remind her that the stars aligned for the two of them to end up right where they were, with each other. What a blessing it is to live within the same minuscule span of time as Asami Sato, the same speck of dust. To breathe the same air. Two small drops of life that could’ve landed anywhere, yet came together to become one in their vast universe.
She remembers, suddenly, when she asked Katara what the point of everything is, back when she was recovering in the South. If there was even anything worth looking forward to anymore.
Now she knows.
It’s Asami.
It’s always been Asami.
“Other people exist?” Korra whispered, wanting to contain the wonder between just the two of them in the small bed that they share, even though she knew that it was far past lights-out for the rest of the island.
She didn’t realize that she had begun falling asleep until she felt Asami leave featherlight kisses on each of Korra’s eyelids, which felt heavier by the second.
“Suddenly I can’t recall,” Asami whispered back. “Goodnight, Korra. I love you. More than anything in the world.”
Although she was already halfway asleep, Korra heard the words slip out of her mouth anyways, like her brain was on autopilot. Again, just another part of their nighttime routine.
“I love you too, Asami. Always have, always will.”