Disclaimer: I do hereby disclaim all rights and responsibilities for the characters in this collection. Kudos to Bryke, indeed.
Pairing: Tahno/Korra
Genre: Romance/Friendship/Drama
Word Count: 4,212
Rating: PG-13/T
Prompt: Tahnorra Week — Day 1: AU.
Summary: Mako can suck it. — Tahno/Korra.
Notes: I'd like to continue this and I actually have some pretty solid plans, but I already have enough on my writing plate. :P Maybe one day?
Musical Inspiration: "Hurricane" by Panic! at the Disco and perhaps "Animal" by Neon Genesis.

Bros & Broomball

"Your teammate doesn't seem to appreciate the time we spend together."

"Mako can suck it."

A smirk.

"I'm not disagreeing. But you must admit... Enjoying the company of a member of the opposing team is not exactly the wisest game strategy."

"Strategy, schmategy," Korra mutters, sending him a dry look. She huffs and returns her gaze to the infuriating notebook sitting on the desk before her. "I already told him we knew each other before college. High school alma mater unity trumps a semester-and-a-half college weekend extracurricular, in my opinion. Besides, it's intramural broomball." She grinds the pencil's eraser into the page so roughly that it rips and she frowns. "He can deal."

"Can he?" Tahno asks seriously, and when Korra finally looks up from the notes, his eyes are glued to the open quad beyond her dorm window, and her playing stick is absently twirling within his long fingers. She watches the spinning broom come just a little too close to the cheap paint on the wall and opens her mouth to tell him to watch it, because man, she is not going to wind up having to explain to her parents that she's been charged for building damages her first year of college and plus, she literally just got that broom the week before, with its shiny, ultra lightweight aluminum and titanium T6 alloy shaft, and it was not cheap so he better—

"He has never been known for his patience," Tahno continues, sending her a look from under a slanted brow, and Korra tries to remember what it was that he had been talking about.

"And neither have I," she says, a little brusquely, and when he twirls the broom just a tad closer to the wall, she yanks it from his hands. "Watch it! This thing is brand new. And I have plenty of dents in the wall as it is."

Tahno narrows his eyes at her shrewdly as his plaything is ripped from his grasp, but after a moment's hesitation, he laughs to himself over the newfound tightness of her behavior—for all the complaining the jerk hothead has done about the two of them together, she's obviously been spending too much time with that stick-in-the-mud-Mako, in turn—and settles himself more comfortably in his spot on her single bed. "You should have done as all smart college kids do, and marked the damage on the room condition form preemptively," he teases. "Have I taught you nothing?"

"My track record would suggest otherwise," she grumbles, scowling as she erases another heavy mark on the chicken-scratch sprawled over the sheets of her notebook. "And your undergraduate debauchery is already more than enough for the two of us."

"At least you still have a few years yet, to make up for when I'm gone."

"As if you'll ever leave," she huffs, and abruptly extends a leg to plant the sole of her right foot into his thigh. Her small kick backfires, however, because he grabs her foot and doesn't let go, holding it prisoner on his lap. Korra privately acknowledges that okay, she sort of brought this one on herself, but she still sends him a warning glare, just so he doesn't get any ideas. Tahno's eyes tell her that he knows the exact kind of vulnerability she has placed herself in, what with the soft pads of her foot left so exposed to his nimble fingers, but he also knows the monster he might unleash should he act on any of his less-than-angelic impulses, and so he keeps his hold firm, but still.

With a sigh that sounds more tired than it does irritated, Korra resumes her half-attentive work on reviewing the notes for the upcoming quiz, paying special consideration to a particularly problematic math problem. Soon the mechanical pencil is flying across the page, a highlighter held aloft in her other hand, all with her leg still stretched to the side, locked onto the lap of the older boy lounging at the end of her bed. After a few minutes of being mostly left alone to her work, with happy almost-summer sounds drifting in on the warm spring breeze, Korra is finally able to see in her messy notes where her instincts first steered her wrong, and soon the chicken-scratch is layered with twisting, splotchy arrows, and her vision is consumed by fluorescent yellow and bold brackets, splattered with wayward blots of graphite. A feeling of light victory sweeps through her as she glances over the mess on the desk before her, and she bites her bottom lip in silent triumph, brimming with pride and satisfaction.

Piece of cake, she caps her highlighter with flourish, thinking back to last night in the library and the memory of the rising alarm and suffering shared among her baffled study group. Take that, Asami! she thinks irrationally, knowing that she shouldn't be taking such gratification in something so trivial and petty as figuring out the answer before Miss Perfect... simply because said Miss Perfect just happens to be dating Mako.

Because.

It's not like she cares, you know.

Whatever.

Entirely ignoring the twinge of jealousy that heats the back of her neck, she wonders if Bolin has realized the solution yet, and thinks to text him, when:

"You never answered my question," Tahno muses aloud, squeezing her foot gently as he bounces it on the bed beside his thigh.

Korra blinks, trying again to remember what trail of thought he could still be following, and then cocks her head to the side in slight confusion when it comes to her.

"Trust me, Mako will get over it," she with a steady voice, eyeing him thoughtfully. "But why do you care so much in the first place?"

He gives her a look. "I don't. Not about him, anyway." When she doesn't immediately respond, Tahno rolls his eyes and sends a pointed look at the silenced cell phone sitting on the shelf just to her right, blinking and flashing like an angry lighthouse. "He's been blowing up your inbox with messages for the last hour." His smirk turns devious, and Korra levels him with a warning glare. "What? He's awfully... persistent. Don't tell me that's not annoying. And don't tell he doesn't have an overactive overprotective streak, because he does."

"I'm not getting it," Korra crosses her arms impatiently. "Is this another one of your machista, alpha-male, one-upping each other moments? Because this is really getting old. I mean, I get that you and Bolin aren't exactly pals, but at least the two of you try to get along—"

"Try is a flexible word," Tahno interjects fluidly, rolling his eyes again, and this time with much more drama than Korra thinks is really necessary. "Bolin's too young for he and I to really share any interests besides our common sport, and even those efforts at camaraderie are questionable at best."

"Man, do you always have to talk like such an arrogant snob?"

"Would you prefer arrogant sleaze?"

Korra immediately wants to enlighten him to the very fine line between the two—and his near-constant straddle over it—but has a much more important goal in mind at the moment. "You don't have to be so elitist about something as insignificant as an age difference. Bolin's not much younger than I am, you know," she defends readily, taking a risk by giving him another small kick with her ever-the-hostage foot. "And I'm not all that much younger than you."

"Bolin was never the problem," he drawls, trapping her once more.

"I wasn't aware there was one."

It's clear now that Tahno's patience is wearing thin. "Quit beating around the bush, Korra," he looks her in the eye. "You know what I'm talking about."

And when she sighs this time, it is more irritated than tired.

Because she does know.

"Look," Korra huffs. "Mako's afraid you'll be a distraction in that our... friendship, connection, hatred, whatever, will throw the off the team dynamics in the tournament, or something equally stupid. I've already told him off about it, so there's no reason for you to get so prissy and dramatic."

"Except for the obvious fact that I am a distraction," Tahno smoothly replies, eyes hard, and with a gentle tug on her foot, her rolling desk chair is sliding the meter across the linoleum floor to where he sits on the bed. "The question isn't so much of whether or not I am, but rather..." Finally, with a great show of flexing his fingers, Tahno releases her foot. "What is he actually afraid of me distracting you from?" Korra lets her foot drop easily over his lap, and swings its partner up and over the bed to join its match and cross at the ankles. Though it is not easy, she waits for him to continue his little tirade, to get it all up and out of his system; instead, he glances down at their easy postures with a self-satisfied smirk, one is really not at all unfamiliar but, given the circumstances, still catches her off-guard.

"Although," he muses aloud, slow and dripping with insinuation. "That's not really much of a question either, is it?"

Korra eyes him suspiciously now, and Tahno stares back evenly, almost... challengingly. "What are you talking about?"

"Don't be so dense, Korra," he says, more than a little exasperated, and regains his hold when Korra makes a move to pull herself away from him. His tone isn't harsh, isn't even all that accusatory, but Korra can see the quiet judgment lingering in his eyes, and since she's not sure whom it is meant for, her gaze grows hard.

"You still haven't answered my question."

"Seriously?" Tahno leans forward, and the intensity of his expression is so out of sync with the indistinct summer tunes blasting alongside the ultimate frisbee tourney from below that Korra has to remind herself of why she should still be annoyed with him. "Don't tell me you don't see it."

"See what?"

"That guy wants you. Bad."

And just like that, no longer does she need a reminder. "Knock it off, Tahno," she snaps, dropping her heel roughly onto his quad. "We're just teammates. That's all. And besides, he already has Asami."

"And what, it's impossible for him to want both?"

Heat sears through her gut like a hot coal toppling over and over, and her tongue feels thick. "Not every guy is quite as much of a jerk as you, Tahno."

It's not like she hasn't called him this before—say, at least once every single day for the almost-entirety of their young lives—but there is something in the way that she says it now that gives him pause, makes him lean back, his spine pressing into the wall.

"At least I don't pretend to be any better of a person than I really am," he says lowly, and his voice takes on a dark, self-depreciative edge that Korra has grown all too familiar with since... well, since his accident three years ago. And under normal circumstances, on a normal day, she'd play the comforting, supportive role that she always plays, reminding him to buck up, to keep his chin up... that there is so much more to him than just martial arts and, whatever, he didn't need that scholarship anyway, and there are plenty of highly successful people who attend community college—hell, who haven't gone to college at all!—so stop moping around, mopey pants, because I'm still around, and I'll be here for you, no matter what happens, okay?

But not today, apparently.

"Well," she begins hotly, awkwardly, only barely understanding where this antagonism is coming from herself. "Mako's not a saint, but at least he doesn't parade around his conquests like a some Don Quixote copycat. He's... he's committed to Asami, and that's that. He's not the kind of guy that would cheat, all right? So drop it. End of story."

Tahno gives her a look; truthfully, she's just as taken aback by her sudden outburst as he is, and he can tell that there's something clearly off. "Who said anything about him acting on it? You'd punch the guy in the throat before you'd let somebody make you the other woman, but it doesn't change the fact that he's into you."

"I said to—"

"And I'm no poster child for monogamy, sure, but that doesn't mean I'm a two-timer, either."

Korra scoffs. "Well, there's a rationalization I haven't heard before."

"Where is this coming from?" Tahno sits upright, eyes narrowing. "If you didn't want to talk about your little hothead teammate anymore, you could have just said so... without all the jabs at me. There's no need to get so up-in-arms about it. So the guy's a dick, and he's hot for you, but he's got a girlfriend. No need to jump down my throat as well." He eyes her carefully, mulling over his words while Korra fumes. "And what I do with my free time has never bothered you before. You could have told me," he snipes. "If I'd known that my conquests were disgusting you so much, I wouldn't have shared. And it's not like I ever gave you all the gory details, you know."

"Now there's a thought," she says crossly. "Let's get you a medal then, shall we? Perhaps the Not As Big of a Jerk As You Could Have Been Award? I hear they're quite popular these days."

But Tahno only laughs, bold and bitter. "I'm sure your teammate would know." And when she looks up at him from her spot on the chair, dark and impatient and really not in the mood, he asks, "Who are you really mad at, Korra? Be mad at me for being a little more open about my encounters than the average college jerk, fine—you could have spoken up about that anytime, whatever—but don't keep trying to compare me to that tool as some weird way of defending him."

"Fine," she sighs, exasperated. "Fine," she repeats, but then sighs more heavily, running a hand through her tangled hair.

For a moment there is only tense silence, Tahno's shoulders stiff and jaw tight, but then he considers her profile, the defeated tilt to her spine, the frustration clouding her bright blue eyes, and he lets go.

"You feeling all right?" he asks, his voice purposefully nonchalant, but she knows him well enough to hear the concern lying underneath. The sound of it shakes her from her dreary thoughts, breaks her from her self-inflicted spell, and she gives up.

"Ugh," she presses the heels of her palms into her eyes. "I'm sorry. I don't know why I'm so grouchy. It must be the stress of all the upcoming final exams."

"You?" Tahno's brows raise, but the humor in his eyes has been restored. "Stressed? About tests? What has this place done to you?"

"Obviously what South High was never able to," she grumbles, slouching back against the chair. "And what you always inhibited, I suppose."

"Oh, come on, it wasn't my fault that school just came a little more easily."

"Whatever, you cheater."

"A photographic memory is hardly cutting corners. And didn't I always give you my notes from previous semesters? Not to mention the tests, when the teachers were naive enough to return them to us." He flicks her knee. "Cheater," he hisses affectionately.

Korra pouts from her slump against the backrest, ignores the barb, and fires off, "Yeah... All for a price."

"As all of the best things in life are," he smirks. "You're just lucky I exacted payment in Halo level-ups."

"As opposed to what? Baked goods?"

"You know very well that I wouldn't touch anything you bake with a twenty foot pole."

"Ugh," Korra kicks him again, awkwardly, with both feet in some pseudo-bicycle movement that has Tahno's eyebrow twisting so severely that she thinks it may very well get stuck like that forever—she considers telling him so—but then he yanks her feet forward, bringing her hamstrings flush against the side of the raised bed, and when her arm instinctively lashes out to maintain her balance lest the chair topple over, Tahno grabs that too, and swiftly pulls her up at the waist to join him on the bed. He tosses her unceremoniously against the pillows, leaving her sprawled along the covers and her knees tented over his lap, one bare foot dangling off of the edge. Slightly winded from all the manhandling and the drop, Korra glares up at him from where she lays with narrowed eyes.

"I hate you," she grumbles, wiping a hand over her face, but Tahno merely looks smug, his smugness beaming out through his white, shiny, smug teeth, the smug asshole. "I should bake you something, just to spite you. And I'll make sure that your Nana from the foggy swamp is visiting when I give it to you, so she'll lecture you on being a gracious, respectable gentleman and you'll have to—"

"Share it with her, which will most likely kill her."

"Shut it, pretty boy."

"I could make millions of dollars, you know, just by creating some sort of warning label to paste onto every product on which you dare brand your name. They'd thank me for saving billions of lives."

"You're clearly exaggerating."

"You've clearly never experienced suffering as I have. It isn't right when a ten-year-old has to draft up a formal contract in order to avoid being force-fed rock-muffins."

"They were chocolate chip, Tahno! And you agreed to be the taste-tester. You backed out of a offer to help!"

"Because you were trying to poison me."

"I certainly wish I had been," she says stiffly, crossing her arms over her chest so she won't reach up and punch him in the teeth.

"You see?" he teases. "It was all a matter of self-preservation."

"Stop being so ridiculous," she scolds, but her mood only sours further when she is hit with a rather sickening image of Asami in a white, frilly apron with a delicious, artfully-made apple pie in her apple-patterned oven mitts, standing against the backdrop of some hellish, vintage kitchen layout like the ones you'd see on the cover of an Anne Taintor calendar, but without the clever feminist captions. Korra doesn't even know if Asami can cook, not when her rich family has enough dough to buy the Sato housing staff their own mansion, but in this picturesque scene Asami's smile is beautiful and blinding and genuine, just like she truly is, and this just makes Korra feel worse.

Whatever, she scoffs. It's not like I actually care.

But Tahno is still waiting for a response and she's still trying to make a point.

She nestles back into the softness of her blue pillowcase, closes her eyes as she gets comfortable, and shifts her bent knees just slightly until they lean against his abdomen. "Actually, you know what? Bitch all you want, but one of these days I'll learn how to bake, or whatever, just you watch, and then you'll be eating right out of my hands."

At first he says nothing, which Korra quietly takes as permission for victory!, but as the seconds tick on by without a response, Korra starts to get fidgety, and she fights against the urge to rustle about, fights to remain still. Tahno releases a small cough, deep and low in the back of his throat, and for some intuitive feeling that she doesn't have a rational explanation for, she's suddenly nervous and terrified of opening her eyes.

She doesn't know what's just happened, but she is suddenly really afraid of this turning awkward—What? With Tahno? Tahno doesn't do awkward!—so she blurts, "Besides, I'm not the kind of person to poison someone. Way too underhanded. And sneaky. But not in the good way, not like a ninja, or Batman, especially in Nolanverse, but more like Peter Pettrigrew—oh, wait, that's right, you don't read Harry Potter because you think you're too cool for that stuff and you're like sixty-years-old—whatever, it's Wormtail from the movie, the rat-guy. Anyway, it's the bad kind of sneaky. Underhandedly sneaky."

Korra is about to continue, but she hears him exhale sharply, a bite of humor to his quick breath, and she forces herself to relax. She is suddenly aware of her calves against his ribs, of his long, warm fingers encircling her ankles and this is Tahno that we're talking about, so it's not unlike her to ramble on and be silly and illogical—this is so illogical—and shit, why hasn't he said anything?

"Is that all?" he asks, voice thick with amusement. She wants to punch him all over again, but the awkwardness is gone—it better be gone, she thinks—so she settles for a smirk and a shrug.

"Mostly," she throws in casually. "And I suppose that if I were going to find another taste-tester, it sure as hell won't be you."

"The individual will be a lost soul, certainly," he intones somberly with mock-reverence.

"More like considerate."

"And most probably stupid," he says, lighthearted, but then he laughs a laugh that is cold and rough. "Why not enlist Mako? He's the perfect candidate."

Without her permission, her eyes snap open, jumping immediately to his face; the eyes there are burning with resentment and the lips are curled with derision.

"Seriously, will you lay off already?" she demands, and she has no more time for patience. "I am so sick and tired of you guys—all of you—being at each other's throats."

"What, are Bolin and Mako having brotherly issues, too?" he taunts.

"You are both my friends," she interrupts, clenching her fists, ignoring him. "And I don't care if you don't like each other, but I at least need you to understand—"

"Shit," Tahno stills, eyes widening as realization suddenly dawns, abrupt and shocking like a bolt of lightning. "You... you like him, don't you?"

Korra hesitates, caught by surprise.

Shit.

"I... I don't—"

"Are you kidding?" he asks, his voice suddenly no longer sounding like his voice. It's too high, no, it's too low, it's— "You actually like that stuck-up, stiff, woe-is-me, self-absorbed excuse for a—"

"You know what?" Korra snaps, bolts upright, and within seconds puts the entire length of the narrow single dorm room between them. "You are a distraction. From my work." She gestures to the stacks of books and notebooks covering her desk with a messy wave of the hand, and then unbolts the door with a loud, echoing click. "So beat it until you can stick around without kicking up a fuss."

"Korra, don't be so—"

"I'm not having this conversation with you," she says firmly. "Not like this, anyway."

There is a moment, a moment in which years of friendship and arguments and comfort and misunderstandings spread thick across the floor, spinning heavily through the air, but Korra holds firm; he may be closer to her than anyone, and he might let her in even when he doesn't want to, but she's had enough of his crap, and she's not about to let him cross a line. Which line? she thinks, but she kills the thought.

She's still waiting.

"Fine," Tahno scoffs, almost a full minute later, and he slides off the bed with enough grace to make her annoyed. "Does this mean I should reconsider my invitation to Tenzin's tonight?" he asks nastily.

"Think you'll be any closer to cutting Mako some slack?"

He glowered. "What do you think?"

"Then don't count on it." Her eyes narrow. "I'll see you at the match tomorrow."

Tahno huffs out a scathing breath. "Guess that alma mater card doesn't count when it comes to college school girl crushes, does it?"

"Out," she glares, and she sets her mouth firmly to keep from giving herself away.

The door slams shut behind her—she absently hopes that her RA isn't next door to hear—but she doesn't look back or even flinch when it connects with the frame. But instead of feeling a heavy burden being removed from her shoulders, she feels as if one has been suddenly placed upon them, and she wants to sink down to the floor. Korra feels exhausted, which is stupid, because she should know better than this; after all these years, she should know better than to let Tahno rile her up. But here she is, anyway.

With a creeping feeling of anticipation, of something like dread and excitement and eagerness and hope rolled all into one, Korra looks to the shelf by the window.

And there's her cell phone, silenced and screaming at her from across the room.

Blinking, still.