Lin Beifong had settled down to enjoy the first evening of her vacation when a sharp rap on her front door rudely interrupted her quiet solitude. Grumbling to herself about spectacularly poor timing, she answered it, only to reveal the last person she'd expected to see.
"Kya. What the flameo are you doing here?"
Well, perhaps not the last person she'd expected. Tenzin was probably higher up the list. Or her mother. Still, Kya wasn't exactly the type to visit the Chief of Police unannounced.
"Can't I simply drop in on an old friend?" the waterbender replied, flashing a dazzling smile.
Against her better judgement, Lin stood to one side to let her in. She made the mistake of inhaling just as Kya brushed by her and Spirits, she smelled good. Like the herbs and incense used in water healing, the salty tang of the ocean and the cold clear smell of a snowy tundra.
Something inside Lin throbbed in response. Best make this a short visit.
"You haven't 'simply' dropped in on me once in the last thirty years," Lin pointed out in her best talking-to-idiot-rookies-voice. "This better be important. I don't let anyone disturb my vacation time for anything short of a genuine emergency."
"You take vacations?" Kya asked cheekily, only for Lin to throw her a scowl. She deflated at that. "Right, not the point. I guess it's not exactly an emergency. Air Temple Island was just a little full of nibling for my liking. And of brothers."
"Don't you have other friends you can bother when you need to escape your family?" Lin snapped. A single bead of sweat rolled down the back of her neck, soaking into the top of her shirt. A white tank top that showed off any stains far too easily. She had to get Kya out of here now.
"None I wanted to see quite as much as you." Lin had long since learned to let Kya's incessant flirting roll off her back, but did she have to do it right now? Lin's grip on her iron self-control was tenuous enough as it was without Kya's hooded gaze fixed on her.
Was she doing this on purpose to rile her up, or was she stubbornly oblivious to the turmoil roiling around in Lin's gut?
"Now's not exactly a good time for a friendly visit," Lin admitted through teeth clenched tightly enough to crack her jaw.
Kya's nostril twitched slightly. "Oh."
"Oh," Lin shot back mockingly as realisation dawned on the waterbender.
"I'm surprised you still get heats," Kya said, the at your age thankfully left silent.
Her heat was the last thing Lin wanted to talk about. Especially with the alpha stood in her living room, looking and smelling positively edible.
Lin shrugged, trying to give off an aura of casualness. "Beifongs tend to keep having them annoyingly late in life. Most of the time I take high-grade suppressants to stave them off, but my doctor insists I come off them once a year. Something about 'letting my body do what comes naturally,'" she said with as much acerbic sarcasm as she could muster. "At any rate, he keeps threatening to stop prescribing them if I don't. Misogynistic bastard."
Lin closed her eyes after she'd spat out the final word of her rant. Why had she just unloaded all of that on Kya? The only person she'd willingly spoken to about her heats since a very awkward conversation with her mother as a teenager was said misogynistic doctor. And that was only so she could get the damn suppressants that allowed her to do her job the rest of the year.
Almost no one knew that Chief Lin Beifong was an omega. It was hard enough being a powerful woman in this city sometimes, even without the added pressure of people knowing her presentation. And to be a female omega who had no desire to have children... well, that was the ultimate betrayal of her nature, at least according to the backwards thinking misogynists who made up much of Republic City's political elite. Her lack of willingness or desire to reproduce had torn apart her relationship with Tenzin, and it could cost her the only thing she'd ever truly wanted if the wrong people found out; her job.
