fuse_box | pushing it

Entry tags:

universe: after the city

pushing it

WHO: Korra & Hei
WHAT: Korra’s getting restless.

[Korra sits on the ground of Hei's toolshed and tells herself that she should seriously work on that patience thing.

She's alone in the house. Her health has been improving enough that she doesn't need a constant babysitter, so when Asami called to say that she had a last minute meeting at Future Industries, Korra told her it was fine and not to worry about it. She can stand up to reach food in the cabinet. She can walk the distance from the bathroom door to the toilet. She can even (as she knows from testing earlier today) walk around the entire house.

The distance from the house to Hei's toolshed? Not so much. It had seemed like such a great idea, practicing walking while getting the tools to fix the wheelchair ramp. She's been itching for something to do, something physical, something that matters even just a little. But by the time she reached the toolshed, her strength was exhausted, and she had to use the last of it for a controlled fall.

So she sits and meditates on the virtues of patience. After some rest, she tries to earthbend herself back onto her feet. When that results in nothing more than a bruised bum and sore ribs, she tries meditating on the virtues of patience some more.

And really hopes Hei gets home soon. She really doesn't want to have Naga carry her back to the front porch like a cub.]

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[ Hei bites the inside of his cheek. He can never predict when Korra might decide she's being indulged, versus when she feels she's being outright mollycoddled, but he prefers not to tiptoe around it the way her friends do. Like them, he simply wants her to get better. It's natural for him to hinge his hopes on her offhand comments and little remarks, so he can ease her through that journey -- a perpetual work in-progress. ]

[ The ramp creaks under their footsteps, and he spares it a glance. To Korra: ] I'll handle it. [ A Don't trouble yourself in so many words. Carefully, he eases her onto the sofa, where the cat springs out from under a colorful heap of cushions, a predictable spill of silky white fur and needy meows as it circles his feet. ]

[ Ignoring it, Hei kneels before Korra, both hands loosely splayed on her hips. His gaze shades into something both consolatory and conspiratory. ]

You don't have to do woodwork in the shed. I could teach you how to make smoke-bombs. Fireworks. Chemical kraken monsters. Carbon prints on the porch. Lightning-storms in bottles.

[ He is, for the record, perfectly serious. ]

......I'll pass, thanks. [She makes a face at him.] I think I've destroyed enough of Republic City all on my own.

You didn't destroy it. You saved it.

[ He says this reasonably, more as a fact than a reassurance. He's repeated things of this sort often, whenever Korra gets broody and reinforcement seems called for -- because they are true. She may have swung Republic City upside-down, but she's also dragged the world, kicking and screaming, out of its cloistered routine and into a new age. One of volatility and upheaval, but also a profounder sense of balance. She just needs to understand that change comes at a price. The transition is hard, but worth it. ]

[ Reaching out, he tweaks one of her hair-pieces. Rubs a tuft of hair idly between his thumb and forefinger, as he adds, ]

Not everything I show you has to be destructive in nature. It depends on who uses it.

How can a lightning storm in a bottle not be destructive?

[Cat is evidently quite jealous of the attention Hei's giving Korra; with a mraow of upset, she jumps on Korra's lap and shoves her butt in Korra's face while rubbing against Hei's arm and purring aggressively.]

It's easy. All you need is what's in your kitchen. Like --

[ He would elaborate. But the cat is being a drama queen. With a mild exhale, Hei tilts his head and stares at it as the words Waste of space nearly appear in a thought bubble next to his head -- a look that perfectly mirrors the cat's as it gazes back at him and you know it's thinking: Give me love or give me fish, stupid human. ]

[ With an air of distaste, he gathers it up and plunks in the kitchen, hoping to interest it in the bowl of kibble. No success. Curling its tail with a sniff of profound disdain, the cat slinks off. Ignoring it, Hei plucks an egg from the ice-box. Pokes a hole in it to suck out raw white and yolk (one of his more charming habits that he doubts Korra appreciates) before carrying it over to her. ]

There's a trick, for example, to draw out the imprints on the flat surfaces of rocks.

[Please note that you're starting to explain how to make one, Hei, and not how it could possibly used for something other than destruction. Also, thank you for not doing that egg sucking thing in front of her. She's always found it a little gross, but her gag reflex has been particularly sensitive recently.]

And why exactly would I want to draw out an imprint from a rock? [She doesn't even understand what that means.]

To see what lived on it. What died on it. What walked across the surface. It's called a carbonized imprint.

[ He drifts over to the closet as he speaks. Inside one of the cabinets is a drywall shelf hung with sealed containers he's traced in black marker. Unlike other people whose toolboxes contain spanners and drillbits and screws, his contains pill bottles full of powders, pellets, shards, clusters, and gems all neatly labelled. Sodium D-Line. Potassium Perchlorate. Rice Starch. Mercury II thiocyanate. ]

[ Gathering the right utensils, he mixes colored magnesium with some flashbulb powder and funnels it into the egg. Wadding, a fuse, then he seals it with a daub of wax. ]

[ Holding it up to Korra, he adds, with a faint flicker of a smile, ]

The first time I did this, I realized it was true, what they say. That everything is connected.

[Korra isn't following any of this, but at the same time, that doesn't really matter. She almost never gets to see Hei like this — excited (what passes for excitement with him) and informed. This is the side he shows Chekov, because their interests are so aligned. A part of Korra is happy to be a part of this, even if it makes 0 sense to her.]

How?

[ Nerd delight!!! (To be fair, it's only a fractional widening of his smile. The reserve bred in his bones, unchanging, is briefly steeped in something warm and brightly fizzling.) ]

[ She asks How? and Hei drifts to the door. From the window, right where Korra is seated, a pathway of white sandblasted stone is visible. He centers the egg on the pathway and waves briefly to her, before lighting the fuse with a spark leaping off his fingertip. Before it ignites, he zips back with both hands tucked over his head, like a soldier running down a foxhole. ]

[ The eruption is modest -- a sharp crack, followed by a breathless puff. But when the powder in the egg blows, powerful chemical magnets draw shapes out of the air to imprint them, recklessly, on the stone. As the dust settles, the pathway is decorated with colours and patterns in their raw inklings. A tiny solar system: every form of life, insect, beast and plant helixing into each other, nameless in their tangled complexities. Limbs and stalks, broken feathers, seashell whorls, gilled forms like those at the bottom of the sea. The arch of a seagulls neck thinning into an umbilical cord shot through with aquamarine threads spidering into beetle-legged pinwheels which in turn shatter into violently-colored orbits. The designs that exist, invisible, all about this world. ]

[ From the window, Hei gestures at the pretty mess to Korra. A silent commentary: Isn't that neat? ]

Edited 2014-09-26 03:08 (UTC)

[It's definitely neat, though Korra can't make any sense of it whatsoever. But she doesn't have to understand what it signifies to appreciate its beauty.]

You did all of that with some powder and an egg? [She's not sure whether you're a magician or an artist, Hei.]

[ It would be so much simpler if he were a magician or an artist. But they both know his talent lies in bloodier areas. ]

[ He sidles back indoors, paying no mind to the fluffy white swirl of Cat dawdling at his feet, rubbing against his trousers as if demanding to be included in the conversation. To Korra: ] I didn't make those prints. They were already there. [ He doesn't get into the technicalities of the chemicals in the powder reacting with the components in the sand and air -- or try to explain the basics of carbon atoms and fossilization. That sort of dry subject-matter would go over her head. ]

[ He simply stretches out on the sofa, peering at her good-naturedly over the edge of a throw-pillow. (It says a lot, that he's capable of this -- how his movements are sluggish, gaze half-lidded and warm, like he's taking the chance for this kind of rare banter.) ]

All living things are based on a substance called carbon in my world. You could say there's a static number of carbon particles in the world. No more or less today than a thousand years ago. Things are born, live, die, dissolve to component elements. They leave a print behind, like a shadow -- while their pieces go on to be part of new life. Like clay: mold a catowl, smush it up, mold a wolfbat. The bulk of matter never changes. Only the creations.

[ He realizes he's getting pedantic, and shakes it off. This isn't a science lesson. Instead he reaches out to gently tweak her nose. ]

People are cobbled together out of carbon bits that were once other things completely. You may have a flying lemur's tail in your nose. A chunk from the South Pole's ice-caps in your eye. Even your ears could have bits of Avatar Aang in them.

[She bats his hand away, nose wrinkling as she imagines a flying lemur's tail replacing it, or having Aang in her ears. The concept actually makes perfect sense to her — she's quite familiar with the idea of returning to the earth to be born again as something new — but she's never thought about it in the way that Hei's explained it.

She wheels herself over so she can slide onto the couch and lie down alongside him. The way he's stretched out, how could she resist joining him? There's just enough space left to practically be an invitation.]

Where'd you learn all this?

Library books.

[ He says it in the tone a boy would use, a secretive, half-playful, Don't tell anyone. ]

[ When she stretches alongside him, he enfolds her, carefully, senses leashed to her warmth. This sort of closeness between them still feels novel enough that something foamy sloshes in his gut, a gentle warmth lapping out across his body's meridians. He curls an arm around her, palm sliding down to her waist and to her spine, following its sleek natural declivity. Fingers skim along her hipbone, through too much fabric, then boldly slide under her shirt and rub circles across bare skin. ]

[ The look he gives her is sloe-eyed, appreciative, as if Korra has just invented gunpowder, chopsticks, electricity, the Black Russian, all in one. ]

[It's still thrilling to Korra to really feel something when he touches her like that. Silly as it may sound, those weeks of detachment and disinterest had been terrifying, as she wondered if she would be that way her entire life. Fortunately, that isn't the case. She might not have the same strength and abilities as before, but she's still able to enjoy her body...and Hei's. She slides her own hands under his shirt and impulsively kisses his neck, scraping her teeth gently where it meets his shoulder.

She'd like to have some kind of witty response to him, but she doesn't, and there are much more interesting things to focus on.]

[ That period of deep ennui still rattles him, a reminder in its own way of how he and Korra began. When he'd started his relationship -- such as it was -- with her, he'd felt barely alive. He can remember all those times, when there seemed to be an invisible glaze of ice between them. When he couldn't decide if he didn't care, or if he merely lacked the energy for her intensity. It is exactly the same with Korra. Everything she is going through now ... is what he'd been inflicted with before. ]

[ He can't decide if it's karmic. Or just pathetic. ]

[ She palms his chest, lips doing those shy yet amazing things to his neck, and a prickling surge goes through him, a river rush of feeling like he's only ever felt for Pai, a strange vertiginous thing -- but far from innocent. Lashes lowering, he curls out a faint smile for her. His hips push forward, helplessly, letting her feel the hardening crux at his groin. He can feel taste dancing on the tip of his tongue. A bright crackle like lightning-bolts and pure sugar. But it's dangerous -- always -- to give them a proper shape. ]

[ He starts to say: ] Listen. I -- [ But then he stops, as if teetering at the edge of a blade, as if he's read a bad verse on a hallmark card and is slapped by disgusted dread. ]

[ In the end, all he does is exhale. ]

You know.

[She grins, a mix of smug satisfaction and giddy delight as he presses against her, but she doesn't reach down for it, or acknowledge it in any other way. She just presses more kisses against his neck while her nails gently scrape his back. She doesn't look up when he says Listen, assuming that he's going to make some suggestion about what they should do.

Except he doesn't. He stops, sighs, and ends with You know as if his meaning is perfectly clear, and she has no idea what he's talking about. So she pulls back enough to look at him, frowning a little in confusion & concern.]

What?

[ Something in his dark gaze shifts. It isn't exactly a softening; more an uncertainty. He can feel something collecting under his skin: the same vicious buzz-saw sensation he gets before a fight, when he grabs instinctively for his blades, or when sirens whoop in the distance and he whips out a wire and exits the crime-scene. A need to establish distance, stability, control -- because the Black Reaper never gives more than is wise. Because he understands that's how life works, that it's harder to love than to feel nothing at all. Harder to be there for those you love -- to see them get hurt, get sick, be taken from you in sudden awful ways. Indifference is dead simple. It asks nothing of you. It eats you from the inside out, sure, but it takes no effort or thought at all. ]

[ Unlike this -- which asks more from him than he'll ever be ready to give. ]

[ He shuts his eyes and sighs. It is a compressed, bitter sound, small but weirdly isolated from the warm bubble around them. When he speaks, his voice is almost a stranger's, dark as dark, dry as wintry sand. ]

I love you. But you work my nerves.

[ The inflection is emotionless, its truth plain and smooth and flat like a bullet, and the bullet slides into the chamber of awareness with a quality that is exactly as it should be, fitting with a click of completeness and a potential for danger. ]

[Korra has never really indulged in fantasies of hearing him say those words directly. He's hinted at, alluded to, and most importantly, shown through his actions how much he cares. But if she ever had entertained little dreams, they never would have been like this: flat, distant, dark. A declaration of emotion without any emotion in it.

Also, you work my nerves What's that supposed to mean?]

I'm...not sure how to take that. [She squeezes him gently before adding —] But I love you too.

[ It means what it means. ]

[ Her response is so matter-of-fact -- so bittersweetly simple -- that he can't help but smile: quiet and small. He notices nothing else around him, could be shot dead that moment from point-blank range and never see it coming. Most people would think of someone with Korra's history as being anything but innocent anymore, but at that moment, to him, innocence practically defines her. Pegging emotions so neatly has always failed Hei. He complicates everything he touches; it is his nature. He problematizes things, possesses ambivalences, deals in verbal traps and coded subtexts and all the masked jargon that comes with spycraft. If the rest of the world is solved tomorrow, his own emotional state will remain an open case to him. ]

[ Korra isn't like that. She's a big tangled fascination of little details within, yet she cuts through everything like a slice of sunshine. She doesn't reside in the gray; she still sees things in shades of black and white. You're happy or you aren't. You love someone or you don't. It's childlike yet he's grateful for it. Because with her he can stop trying so hard, and sink down into the pursuit of ... whatever he is pursuing. Closeness. Heat. Understanding. ]

[ He doesn't say anything. Just kisses her, a soft slide of lips, brushing his tongue into the seam of her lips, along the crooks, his focus honing on those tiny wet folds, that place on a person's mouth which is like the smallest furl of a univalve. Home from work, he should be making a beeline for the fridge, yet this is the first thing he wants to taste; the only thing that speaks to his hunger. ]

[This is much better. This, at least, she understands. He's always been better expressing his feelings physically, like touch bypasses whatever's in his brain that makes him shut down and detach in the middle of an emotion. And she's fine with that. Words are important, but she'll be the first to admit they can be really hard, and she likes to cut through them whenever she can.

It takes a depressing amount of effort to hook her leg around his so she can rock against it, but at least it's well-rewarded. She makes little noises of pleasure and need into his mouth as the roll of her hips sets off sparks deep in her belly. Her hands slide down into pants to cup his bare ass and pull him even closer.]

[ His breath hitches in his throat as she rocks beneath him, rubbing the way the shamans in those Brazilian tribes made fire. The heat and weight in his groin gets less diffuse: his kisses take on a hungry, questing edge, eating up her sweet little vocalizations like spools of spun sugar. His cock is a solid fistful by now, trapped in the tight confines of his pants. Wedging a hand between their bodies, he unzips himself to free its aching length, takes it in his hand and twists on the upstroke, as if warning himself not to leap too far ahead. ]

[ The recent pace between them is like running butter, a slow sticky melting. He's wary of pushing for anything harder -- yet somehow the restraint only whets his appetite, makes him hungrier for what he has and parched for what he can't. Carefully, he maneuvers so they're almost side-by-side, a warm mesh of tangled limbs. Spanning one palm across the small of her back, he keeps her close. The other hand lets warm fingers stray under the waistband of her pants, beneath her blouse, tugging it undone before he drives his palm between cloth and skin, into the soft dark thatch of hair between her legs. Cupping her sex, squeezing gently, he traces the pad of his finger across the moist lips, front to back, before dipping into her. ]

[Korra whimpers and clenches her legs together, trapping his hand between them. While he works her with his fingers, she pulls out one hand to grasp his erection. She doesn't have enough room for long strokes, but she twists it hard.

A spasm runs up her leg, briefly overwhelming pleasure. She pulls back with a little hiss.]

[ She twists his erection in that warm palm, and Hei lets off a raspy strangled noise into their kiss. Heat-lightning is a gathering force in his balls, even as the rest of his body is lax with pleasure. The sound of her whimper still leaps through him; he sinks two fingers into that welling slickness between her thighs. But before he can work her up to a good rhythm, he feels her hiss and edge away, her muscles tightening in a different manner. ]

[ Concerned, he breaks the kiss to draw back. His breaths are a slow humid flutter against her skin. ]

You okay?

I'm fine. [She rubs her sore leg, trying to banish the pain, more than a little annoyed at having their nice time interrupted like this. It's not just the spasm in her leg now, but her hip, complaining about lying on one side for so long. The couch really is too small for these activities.]

But maybe we should take this to the bedroom?

Yeah.

[ Before Cat decides to leap on his back, anyway, nails sharp and meows ear-splitting. ]

[ He gathers her up, carefully, her weight in his arms like the sharp satisfaction of catching something costly mid-fall -- melded with a ruefulness for the days when he could manhandle her with rough freeness, secure in the knowledge of what she could and couldn't take. Hell, he even misses the way she'd try to pick him up, reminding him who was, if not bigger, than definitely just that much stronger. ]

[ He hasn't realized until now he'd liked it. Liked the push-me-pull-you, almost as much as he likes the warm pillow of her lips on his right now, the slow probing of his tongue into her hot little mouth. Rays of dying red sunlight carve through the blinds at the bedroom window. Without breaking the kiss, he spills her across the mattress. Hovers over her, a strange delicate negotiation of his body on hers, pressure without the weight. ]

[ His lips skim her cheek as he murmurs, ]

I'll give you a rubdown, if you want.

[ Something to get her blood flowing, help with the circulation and stiff muscles. Usually a soothing thing, as part of the complex process of her physical therapy -- but that doesn't mean he can't turn it into a game for her to enjoy. ]

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