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Lin can't remember a single hour of the last thirty years wasted to idleness, is twice as active as those half her age, and yet a lifetime of iron-clad dedication to protecting the city hasn't prepared her for this. Korra shifts next to her, mumbles as she wakes, and Lin's already exhausted, in spite of the night's sleep afforded to her. She feels like she's the teenager, curled up beneath the covers, pleading for five more minutes.
(And in the Beifong household, requests for lie-ins were met with trembling walls and rattling floor tiles.)
Korra shuffles against the mattress, stretches with a wonderfully content mmph, and throws herself onto her side, arms wrapped tightly around Lin's waist. Lin briefly considers feigning sleep, but Korra's morning kisses against the nape of her neck, more like nuzzles than anything actually involving effort on Korra's part, show that sleep isn't an option here.
“What would you do if you weren't an earthbender?” Korra asks, diving straight into a conversation, no need to scrub her eyes or exchange hazy greetings. She doesn't wait for an answer, if only because she knows Lin isn't about to grace her with one. “I think I'd do alright as a pro-bender! Sure, the money wouldn't be amazing at first, but once I managed to get my name out there—”
“You'd have a swarm of dedicated fans at your beck and call, far more cut out to deal with your incessant squirming than I am.”
Korra's been shifting her legs back and forth as she talks, knees bumping against the backs of Lin's, one leg sliding between hers and back out again, as if she's thoroughly fascinated and delighted by the prospect of skin touching skin. Lin huffs into her half of the pillow, and tells herself not to be too hard on Korra. It's a new experience, after all, and Korra's hardly to blame for not having yet learnt to deal with Lin Beifong first thing of a morning, thankless task that it is.
“Not a morning person, huh?” Korra asks, and before Lin can confirm all claims by vehemently denying them, Korra's repositioned herself, propped up on one elbow, leaning down to press a poorly aimed kiss against the corner of her mouth. “Don't sweat it! We'll just stay here until noon comes and goes.”
Korra becomes bored of kissing Lin when her affections aren't returned, and strays from her mouth, down to the line of her jaw. A convincing argument, Lin thinks, but pushes her shoulders back anyway, trying to ease Korra away.
“Some of us have to work,” she points out, to which Korra says pffft far too quickly. Just like she knew that tired old excuse was coming.
“Not anyone in this room! That's why you let me stay the night, remember? I don't have any training until late this evening, you've only got a handful of paperwork that's not due until tomorrow, so stop—”
Korra grabs her by the shoulder, rolls Lin onto her back, and before Lin can point out that it's the complexity of the case that matters, not how many pages are involved, Korra's straddled her waist, and has both hands pinned up above her head.
“—making excuses!”
The thin cover they somehow kept hold of throughout the night slips from Korra's shoulders and slides down her back, and there she is, very, very naked, bright blue eyes fixed on her. Lin would like little more than to reach up and brush Korra's hair back behind her ears, loose strands tangled, falling around her face when she tilts her head forward, but has too much self-control to struggle in her grasp.
She thinks this disappoints Korra a little.
Assuring herself that it's sleep clogging her brain and killing her reaction times, Lin lets her eyes travel across Korra; soft, smooth skin, muscles close to the surface, strong shoulders and arms working to hold her down. Her fingers curl towards her palm, wrists aching as she remembers, all at once, how it felt to run her hands over her.
“I'm too old for this,” Lin says with a sigh.
“Yeah, right!” Korra rolls her eyes, tips forward, pressing her lips to Lin's jaw and cheek but never her mouth. Already Lin's slipping: she tilts her head back, waiting for a kiss that never comes. “Look at me! I used to be Tenzin's dad. I had kids. Grandkids! I wasn't just a Kyoshi Warrior, but the Kyoshi Warrior. I was friends with Fire Lords! There are statues of me so old that nobody remembers who built them. Compared to me, you're brand new.”
Lin scowls, but says, “Fine, fine,” if only to stop Korra from having to resort to inventing fictitious forms of her past selves. Korra grins, yeees, sways her hips in a little victory dance, and though she doesn't know what's fine, exactly, she loosens her hold on Lin's wrists. Arm slung around Korra's waist, Lin pushes Korra back down to the mattress, flat on her back; if they're going to do this, they're going to do it her way.
To which Korra seems to have no objections. She lies there, persistent grin plastered across her face, teeth showing, and Lin props herself up onto her side, reaching out to brush Korra's hair back into place. She's made a complete mess of it, and doesn't want to imagine the state of her own appearance right now. She doesn't have that spark of youth that seems to be buzzing through Korra now, eyes clear and so painfully full of affection that Lin can't help but bow her head and place a kiss on her lips.
Korra grabs both of Lin's cheeks, lets out a note of surprise like she's only discovered that kissing is a thing and she needs to keep on doing it forever and ever, and Lin lets herself smile against her lips, hand resting on her stomach. Korra shuffles, gasps ah into her mouth, and Lin almost retracts her hand, having not expected Korra to react quite as strongly.
She's just full of surprises, and certainly knows what she wants.
“I told you,” Lin says, sliding one leg across Korra's, brushing her own hair out of her face as she leans down to kiss at the side of her throat, “To stay still.”
But the kisses don't do much to help the situation. Not when Lin lets her lips travel across Korra's collarbone, mouth trying to memorise every curve, and certainly not when she moves lower still, planting a path of barely-there kisses between her breasts, down to her stomach. Korra gasps at every touch, twists against the bedsheets and digs her fingers into the fabric, because everything is so new to her. Lin knows that everything she does now, the way she runs her tongue across the rises and dips of her stomach, trying to trace the shape of every muscle that pulls taut, only reminds Korra of what happened last night; only makes her all the more impatient.
Korra drags one foot up the bed, knee bending, and whines out “Chieeeeef...” so needfully that Lin regrets having slept through so much of the night. Teeth scraping at a hipbone, making Korra's back arch beautifully, Lin places a hand against her knee, and pushes it to the side, spreading her legs apart.
Goodness knows Lin has the energy for this. She absolutely does, and as Lin kisses Korra's inner thigh, already becoming familiar with the best spots to bite at, Korra says something like “Chief, can we just, can I—” and groans in frustration, both hands clamping over her face.
“You have such a way with words, Korra. Do you write all your own speeches?”
Korra slides her hips forward, groans again, and only moves her hands away to replace them with a pillow. Lin does her very best not to laugh, holds Korra's hip with one hand, thumb idly drawing half-circles across the curve of her hipbone.
“C'mon, just—” Korra whines like this wasn't all her idea to begin with, and then grumbles, “Please! Look, I asked nicely, that has to count for something.”
Lin works her mouth lower, feels Korra's whole body shudder, and says, very plainly, “Move the pillow.” She's looking up to meet Korra's gaze when she does so, and finally, finally, Korra manages to keep herself still. Lin watches the way Korra has to swallow down a lump in her throat, watches the way she runs her tongue across both of her lips, and this new found resolve not to writhe around lasts for approximately three seconds.
Around the time Lin finally presses her mouth between Korra's legs.
She just doesn't know how to deal with it, and Lin has absolutely no complaints. Lin hooks one of Korra's knees over her shoulder, and relishes in pushing Korra further than she thinks she can be pushed, humming against her. Korra arches her back, and grabs at the bed covers; she lifts her hips clean off the bed, clinging to the headboard; she finally figures out that, oh, yes, she definitely likes tangling her fingers in Lin's hair, because the Chief seems to work twice as hard, when she does that.
Korra's as enthusiastic as any she's ever met, eager to be pleased and shamelessly grateful for it. Everything is there, there, yes, ah, there, Chief—, and by the time she's just about done, she makes sure to let it be known.
Lin only pulls away when her ears burn with the news, and Korra lets out such a forlorn, heartbreaking whimper that Lin almost pushes two fingers insider of her and watches her unravel, knelt by her side. Instead, she decides to put some of that stamina that has less to do with her age and more to do with the fact that she's Korra to good use, rolls onto her back, and pulls Korra on top of her.
She rearranges their legs, pulls their hips down together, and there's a moment of confusion before Korra says, “Oh, oh, this is new.”
But Korra's always liked a challenge, and Lin watches as she takes to this as quickly as anything else she's ever tried. Korra rolls her hips atop her, back arched, chest pushed forward, head tipped back, and Lin grips at her hips, pulling her closer, creating more pressure than even she needs. And Korra, she can't keep her hands to herself, of course she can't, and Lin thinks she's probably not even entirely aware of the way she's reached down to cup at her breasts like that, palms working in small circles, fingers massaging.
Towards the end, Korra, already taken care of, is clinging to the headboard so she can really move her hips, breathlessly promising over and over again that she's going to make sure Lin isn't left hanging.
It takes Lin a moment for her vision to clear. She pinches the bridge of her nose, barely having caught her breath, and silently congratulates herself on having drained away the early morning dregs of Korra's energy. Korra, hair in a worse state that before, now sticking to her forehead, flops back on top of Lin, bites at the shell of her ear, and says, “What's next? There's gotta be more stuff you haven't shown me yet, right?”
Lin groans, blindly reaches for a pillow, and covers her face with it.
“You're going to be the death of me.”