A/n: Yeah, I finally wrote a shippy story for Legend of Korra, and it's the last ship I expected to write for! It's not totally unprecedented, I suppose - I do love me some Bolin. He's a precious baby. As for the word "cliche": I know the e has an accent a giu, but past formatting experiences have taken that fancy e and turned it into a question mark for me, so I left it as is. Now, I must thank you for taking the time to read (and review, if you feel so inclined), and I hope you enjoy!

It's an awful cliche, but it holds absolutely true for him: she is love at first sight.

Another cliche fills his brain as he stares at her standing in the gymnasium badly lying to Toza: two strangers' paths colliding by a twist of fate. He decides to take destiny into his own hands, that he will be that twist. He strides into the room and covers for her. "There you are! I've been looking everywhere for you," he tells her, and it occurs to him that it's only half a lie.

Toza gives him a grumpy stare - or what is a regular stare, for Toza.

"It's alright, Toza," he hams it up, flashing the other man a grin. "She's with me."

"Yeah, I'm with him," she says quickly.

His grin widens. She's turning faster and faster into someone he needs to know. He piques his eyebrows and delivers the expected line to Toza. "So, y'see, we're together."

The girl turns to him slightly then back to Toza. He gets the feeling that they're a comedy duo and that Toza is their unwilling audience. "Well, not together together. More like friends."

She's whip-fast. He falls a little deeper, puts a hand to his heart. "Right, friends. Friends. I didn't mean to imply-"

"Oh, you implied it," she mutters under her breath.

And bam, it's a one-two-knock-out.

Her name is Korra.

Her skin is a beautiful mocha, coffee with two creams, and she glows in the way a happy, healthy young girl does. Her teeth are perfectly white. She has articulate hands. She walks in an easy, certain way, kind of like he does but without the swagger. Her arms are gracefully muscled. He finds himself staring at her a lot. This is another cliche - loving every little thing about her - but he's too caught up in the blue of her eyes to notice. Light plays across her irises, casting them the colour of pure ice, and they're dancing back and forth, all over the arena.

There's something special about her, he just knows it. It's more than him falling for her at first glance - there's something legitimately special about her, but he can't place his finger on it.

After their win, he catches her attention, takes his helmet off and says, "So, what'd ya think, Korra? Bolin's got some moves, huh?" He makes to rub his fingernails on his uniform and glance at them in a practised move, but-

She grabs him by the shirt and hoists him a few inches off of the ground. He feels bewilderment slip over his senses and love grip him a little tighter.

"What did I think? What did I think? That was amazing!" she exclaims, those eyes lit up with excitement. She shoves him in the chest with both hands - she has very solid, beautiful hands - and sends him back against the opposite wall.

The wind is literally knocked out of him for a few seconds. He looks up at her from his slouch against the wall.

All she does is flash him a wide grin.

He has to smile back. This girl is really something. She's reeling him in. For the first time, he feels like he's bitten off more than he chew.

This is especially true when, not five minutes later, she tells him that she's the Avatar.

Maybe they're not cursed for cliches, he thinks as he takes the two o'clock boat ride over to Air Temple Island. The ocean breeze whips his hair back from his face and rustles the freshly bought cupcake swinging from the plastic baggy in his sweaty palm.

After all, if this were a classic movie, he would've been the one to save her, right? She would've been the one to get kidnapped and he would've asserted his masculinity by beating the tar out of her kidnapper. But that wasn't the way it had happened, and it was okay by him. In fact - he grins to himself - he likes that she shatters conventions. She isn't classic anything - not even her beauty is classic. It's the farthest thing from. She has a bit of an overbite, her eyebrows are kind of bushy and her cheekbones aren't high. The golden proportions of beauty would slot her somewhere in the average bracket. This is an objective view of Korra's looks. The thing about Korra is that her beauty transcends scales. There is no measure of the contrast between her skin and her eyes that make both pop, there is no meter that counts the watts she can smile. He knows it's cheesy, but what she does to him is sheer, inexplicable magic.

Yes, he decides. Korra is the one who breaks down the norms and turns something that seems complicated into something simple. He twirls the short-stem rose between his fingers, looks out across the water and sees the colour of her eyes.

Korra is heart-stealing, name-taking, door-crashing, cliche-ruining magic.

He dreams of her nearly right after their night on the town. It's too good to be true, that the night went the way it did, with ridiculous Tahno reeling back from Naga, with Korra's considerable belching skills, with Korra's hand gripping the railing so close to his as they looked out over the city.

His dreams are full of her in every setting- scratch that, her and him in every setting. In the arena they're the best, most co-ordinated team. At the park they ride one of those silly little karts and stick their heads out the windows, Naga and Pabu running alongside them. Along the river they float with their hands pillowed behind their soaking hair, locking ankles. He dreams in full, glorious colour, with a symphony playing at all times. (What? They're his dreams, aren't they?) Korra is laughing in every single one.

These dreams can become realities, can't they? Although she's the Avatar, she's a seventeen year-old girl, too. She's on their probending team. She lives just a ferry ride away.

It doesn't matter that those scenes are pulled from dreams. He knows they're played out cliches, but he'll dive right in anyway if it means more of her. What's a cliche when you're happy?

He buys the bouquet with the idea that if she liked one of the flowers two weeks ago, she'll definitely like a dozen of them on the night after they've won their match-up. It can't hurt his chances either, that he won it for them.

He knows she's standing atop the arena staring at the skyline, so he climbs the steps rehearsing what he'll say. Pabu is a comforting, if not unenthusiastic, coach perched on his shoulder. Again, his hands are sweating. Not smooth at all. But nothing is the way it is usually when it comes to Korra. He'll get used to it. He looks forward to getting used to it.

Then he's fully up the steps and he sees Mako standing across from her. He knows his plan just lost some of its oomph. He'll have to wait until they're finished talking. Maybe he can amble over to the other side of the roof and-

His eyes widen, his throat dries out, his jaw locks and his arms tremble. Korra and Mako are... kissing. The girl of his dreams and his brother. It screeches through the back of his mind that this is an awful, awful cliche. That it is nasty and contrived.

But as the flowers fall from his hands and he turns away crying, he can't find it in himself to care. Cliches be damned - this heartbreak is all his.