Count the bodies like sheep

[mortemscintilla]

WHO: Korra & Hei
WHAT: Months after Korra disappears, Hei receives news on her whereabouts.

[ When the word first reaches him that Korra -- missing for months -- has been spotted near the dingy steel-factories in the Earth Kingdom, Hei doesn't credit it. He's hauled in a fishing trawl's worth of Red Lotus members who've supplied him with similar non-leads. It's always a toss-up about what they know; give the order to hook up the alligator clips and crank the generator and they spew so much bullshit that even if there's real intel mixed in with it, you can never be sure, much less make use of it. ]

[ When further word comes confirming the first word -- he's sent tails on the scene -- a heat-flicker he'd like to call joy but that is really shock courses through him, from his toes in the steel-enforced boots to the very ends of his long hair. ]

[ Korra hasn't been abducted. Korra is still alive. ]

[ After the debacle at the South Pole, where the Red Lotus had attacked Tonraq, and where his daughter wasn't even considered an eligible candidate for leading the tribe, Hei had let her return to Republic City -- ostensibly to focus on her Avatar duties. In truth, he'd thought she'd prefer space to lick her wounds, while he hung back to focus the entirety of his energies on weeding out and eliminating the Red Lotus. They'd exchanged letters, terse and to-the-point -- he out of natural reticence and security reasons, she due to time-constraints and a lack of anything new to report. But halfway through, the correspondence ceased. In the dizzying vacuum of silence that followed, Hei learnt, from Tenzin, that Korra wasn't in Republic City. Had, in fact, never arrived there at all. ]

[ Looking back on it, Hei wonders: why hadn't he guessed it sooner? Would a smarter man have come to his senses faster? He'd been so caught up in eradicating the Red Lotus. In safeguarding Korra. But, as usual, he'd lost the forest for the fucking trees. It's so obvious now, so terrifyingly self-evident, that Korra was drifting away from everyone -- her family, her friends. He'd known she had, in clinical terms, posttraumatic stress disorder. He recognized enough of the signs. With it came that morose detachment in her that none of his efforts could regulate. She'd just floated further and further off. Small as star-dust and infinitely heavier.]

[ Maybe it is me, Hei thinks bitterly. Maybe I drive them off. ]

[ But that's useless self-indulgence, and fails to solve the problem at hand. Which consists of the latest bulletin. The Avatar is fighting in illegal underground brawls. ]

[ Collecting his essential gear, Hei abandons the South Pole -- recently his base of operations -- and heads to the Earth Kingdom. He hasn't informed anyone in his network where he's going, beyond a few key players. He doesn't need to. Over the past few months, he's amassed assets who hail from either careers in need-to-know environments, or those who've spent their lives in the dust, right at the fringes of society. They've joined him for profit and plunder and he gives them plenty -- a kind of privatized intelligence operation, more shadowy, better connected, and substantially less accountable than official security firms in Korra's world. ]

[ A miniature Syndicate, Mao calls it snidely -- though Hei prefers not to think of it in those terms. ]

[ He needs to scour through deep waters for the control and intel necessary to stay afloat. The organization doesn't represent a life-vest, but a safety net. An expansive tool to cover greater ground, and secure a heftier bulk of weaponry, manpower and resource. Because no-one fights harder or moves faster than mercenaries when they smell a pay-off. ]

[ At the specified location, not far from the waterfront, Hei drifts in -- a hooded sweatshirt, heavy workboots, clean-shaven but with his hair in the haphazard tie he's taken to favoring after he'd stopped cutting it. The air is bilgy with damp; the pitted streets are pretty much deserted. The few guys he passes aren't dangerous so much as desperate, broken by pills or inhalants or strong drink or the unstoppable craving for all those things. Some pale faces jump out of dark alleys asking him for something, or offering it, but most give him wide berth. A cold glint in Hei's gaze, lurking past the mildness, discourages confrontation. ]

[ Korra. Are you really out here? ] 

Comments

[mortemscintilla]

[ Hei folds himself around her, a living prickly-hot blanket. Nudges his head in and carefully nips at her lower lip, then opens her mouth up with the wet point of his tongue, kissing her with hunger but also with a dark-edged tenderness. Down at hip-level, his cock throbs in sympathetic greed. Meanwhile, behind the cage of his chest, something twinges with a high-pitched agony. She is the Avatar, yes, but it still sickens him, the idea that they're cut together now in a way that actually fits. ]

[ It shouldn't be that way. She'd once been so shining and sweet, so fucking naive and trusting, and Hei had derided that purity even as he'd pedestalized it. Because she was everything he'd never had the chance to be; because he'd wanted much more for her than everything he'd been dished out. He isn't sure what. But at least something better than this. Better than the sharks of trauma swimming in her blue, blue eyes, the heavy anchors of misery weighing down the sides of her mouth. ]

[ He keeps the kiss going until her heartrate isn't spiking. Listening as if with his whole body, through the fevery saw of their breathing, as if for tiny explosions of stress and adrenaline across the scorched earth of her body. ]

[ When he speaks, it's barely a buzz against her lips. ]

Remember ... it won't kill you.

[ The panic attacks, he means. ]

[anatural]

[She stares at him, a little blank and confused, not following his train of thought. But she doesn't ask; to press would come too close to subjects she doesn't want to touch right now. Instead, she nuzzles him and whispers ]

I missed you.

[mortemscintilla]

[ Then why did you run away? He wants to ask that. Except there's no point. He can understand, on both an emotional and intellectual level, why she'd done it. Has been where she has, too often -- except he'd never had the burdens of public scrutiny to contend with, in addition to navigating through the pressures of a crucial role. It's hard to be the Avatar, trying to do the undoable, then having to deal with a world that judges you mercilessly and always finds you lacking, and her friends and family can be so suffocating, always crowding in on her, right up close and yet shutting her out as they go on with their routines. ]

[ It's easy to feel isolated, out-of-sorts, when your own life is on standby. ]

[ Exhaling, he lets his forehead roll against hers, warm and lazy. A habitual intimacy of theirs that he hasn't even realized he's missed. Slipping an arm under her body, he gathers her closer, his rough palm cradling the back of her head, where the base of her skull meets the top of her neck. The hair at the nape is uneven, as if chopped off with a blade. He explores it carefully with his fingertips, caught in a blind mix of sadness and marvel. Some of it sticks up in kittenish tufts, and rasps daringly against his fingers; some of it is still much too long by far. ]

[ It's ruined, he thinks dimly. Yet the thought is accompanied by an aching swell of joy. Because despite the changes -- interior and exterior -- it's still Korra. Lost goods. Damaged goods. Stolen goods. But mostly still good. (Better than he ever will be, by far.) ]

[ At her words, he tightens his arms around her, rubbing slow whorls with his palms. Kisses her ear, and breathes, ]

Don't leave me again.

[ An order, a threat, but most of all a plea. ]

[anatural]

[A shiver runs down her spine as he breathes against her ear. Even after the huge shock of hearing him actually say that he loves her, it's still surprising to hear him say things like that out loud. She feels both a bittersweet thrill and a prickle of resentment. You left first. To protect her, but that was never what she wanted or needed.]

Same goes for you. [Don't ever leave her behind like she's a princess in a castle.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Hei swallows a hard lump of reflexive argument. Butts her gently with a roll of his shoulder and head -- acceptance, apology. There's things he could say. I didn't go anywhere. There's things he wants to say. I'm sorry I couldn't see how unhappy you were. Both are true. He's come so far with her. But in most ways, he's exactly the same -- sore and bitterly wary at every point, determined to survive and terrified to trust that survival to anyone else, unable to love except in vertiginous extremes of height, as if poised at a high-wire, about to crash down. ]

[ He's conducted his affair with Korra the same way: as if the ground is swooping up to meet both their careening bodies. It's exactly why the pace and fury of what he feels for her hasn't died down. Because he knows what it's like to exist on the opposite end of the spectrum -- a cold and solitary existence with no peace or hope anywhere, aware that everything he values has been torn apart and destroyed. ]

[ He couldn't afford a repeat of that. Doesn't know how or why he'd endure it. Which was why he'd been so relentlessly hellbent on eliminating the Red Lotus. It was a purpose equal to his particular abilities, to the sharp focus of his limited ability to protect, which, while not wide, goes so very deep. ]

[ But it's not worth it if this is the cost. Korra's aimlessness. Her intense unhappiness. ]

[ Gently, he tips a kiss to her forehead. His tone conveys a sardonic amusement that's at odds with his darkly-bruised gaze. ]

I should handcuff us together.

[anatural]

It'd be a little hard to fight like that. [A ridiculous, co-dependent idea... but it makes her smile.]

Anyway, enough talking. [She reaches down and wraps her hand around his erection. A harsh, violent grip — the hand on her neck may have taken her out of the moment, but it hasn't lessened her desire for rough play.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Hei's gaze is soft with a peculiar shade of inexpressiveness that anyone close to him will recognize as wistful. His erection evidences a more honest show of interest. It had softened when the momentum slowed, but now as she curls her warm little fingers around him, he feels it twitch -- a stiffening resurgence of greed. ]

[ His breathing hitches, very faintly, as if something in his chest has tripped up but caught itself before stumbling. In contrast to Korra's rough grip, his is almost gentle as he handles the nape of her neck, runs his thumb up a line of tendon behind one ear, before tipping her head up to kiss her. It's heated and wet, deliberately sloppy, as if clouded in a haze of want. Yet there's a precision too, in the way his free hand skims across her body. Palming her breasts, letting the soft springy points of nipples rasp across his callouses. Stroking the warm drum of her belly, the curves of hips and ass, fingertips pushing into warm dimples of flesh, before he dips his palm low between her thighs. ]

[ He lets his fingers comb through the humid tangle of pubic hair, tracing the damp seam of her, without pushing inside. Instead he lets them rest there, a possessive imperative that matches the way his lips play with hers. Letting her do what she likes, even as he sets to reacquainting himself with lost territory, determined after months of deprivation to take his time. ]

[anatural]

[Korra growls. She wants it rough, not gentle. Can't he read the freaking mood? It's been seven months but she's not hard to read. She twists him punishingly and bites down on his bottom lip — it's practically a scream. Don’t coddle me.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ She bites his lip, her hand twisting with exquisitely cruel force across his cock -- and Hei exhales in a thrum against her mouth. Almost a laugh, hot and muted. He's tempted to deny her, a repayment for all those months of itching frustration, held back by a short but steely leash. But he's harder than he's realized; the pull of Korra's body makes him aware of nothing but his need. And, fuck, how long has it been; the waiting that he refuses to call by its name? He tightens his arms around her and kisses her hard -- letting her taste that bright unholy charge of relief. Mouth to mouth, he has to acknowledge that this reunion is lifesaving for him, or near enough that it makes no difference. ]

[ He breaks the kiss on a sharp inhale, just as two fingers slide between her pubic lips -- so hot and slick -- teasing her in circles before curling into her, instantly wet, crooking and stroking as the web of his thumb presses against her clit. At the same time he nuzzles the crook of her neck, the undersides of her breasts, taking a couple of idle licks, before shifting his head so he can draw as much of one breast as he can into his mouth, sucking hard, rolling the pebbly texture of her areola against his teeth and tongue. ]

[anatural]

[Now that's more like it. Korra moans as she bucks up against his hand, fireworks going off behind her eyes and between her legs. She'd forgotten just how good simple contact like this could feel... simple contact like this with a partner who knows what he's doing and isn't disgusting slime. His fingers explore her, finding the good spots that she forgot even existed. It's not that she didn't masturbate the seven months she's been gone. She's even discovered some sex toys that she actually likes and keeps them in her bag. But that was fairly early on in her journey, when she'd felt a renewed sense of almost hope simply because she was doing something, going on a journey. As that hope faded, her enthusiasm for masturbation waned. Instead of a chance to spend some quality time with her own body, it became perfunctory, something she did to keep her muscles loose and help her sleep.

She uses her own hand on his dick to show how she wants to be touched — brutal, aggressive, just short of painful. Punishing.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ The 'disgusting slime' part is up for debate. Often, in moments of wry cynicism, he wonders if Korra would be so enchanted with him if he were ugly, or deformed, or just plain obnoxious. Wonders if she'd like him as much if each fuck were dictated at his pleasure; if it was about two and half minutes of pawing at her, of shoving his dick into her at an awkward angle he wouldn't let her protest, of riding her rough and hard, then rolling off and leaving as if she were a blotch on the bedsheets. ]

[ He tries not to think about it. 'Lovers' is a sweet and hilariously inappropriate word for what they'd once actually been, for their numbered handful of secret fuckings -- crude, tragic, banal, messy. But what they'd had had been enough to forge a bond -- fragile and wavering as a current, but containing in its intense brightness the best of himself, as well as the worst. ]

[ She moans, and the sound is so gorgeously desperate. It sends Hei's mind spiraling, waking something that is both ravenous and envious behind the bars of his ribs. Altered and abraded in so much else, this is one thing about Korra that remains intact. The depths of emotion available to her, the luxury of experiencing everything -- pleasure, pain, grief, joy -- so honestly and intensely. It always seems just out of Hei's reach, though he'll admit it's almost palpable when he's with her. ]

[ Squeezing her clit with the pad of his thumb, he works his fingers deep, like the twist of a key in a lock, punctuating it with the scrape of his teeth across her warm soft breast. He lets it pop free with a slurp, the noise dirtysweet, an echo of his busy fingers and the seeping heat between her thighs. He focuses on the other breast -- biting at it, printing dark flesh with darker crescents, feeding on the nipple with a shameless gulping cruelty. Meanwhile his hips jerk, his cock a jutting throb in her palm, slick and dark and painfully hard. ]

[anatural]

[Of course she wouldn't, moron. He wouldn't be him. Her love is flexible enough to allow for some change, but that doesn't mean she would still love him if everything or even just a few things about him were different. She loves the person who's with her right now — the attractive, incredibly powerful, cruel & tortured, detached & devoted person who knows her better than anyone else, who has been the cause of some of the worst moments in her life and supported her through all of the absolute worst ones.

She gasps and whimpers. Another thing she's missed — she could never mouth herself like that. She hooks her leg around his: to pull him closer, to hug him as best she can, to release some of the tension building up inside. He's not quite lubed enough for how hard & fast she's stroking him, but she's only going to go harder unless he complains.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Hei is past complaint -- and quickly unraveling past patience. His hips jerk spasmodically as she tugs him closer, her arms and legs a lovely warm tangle, the clasp of her palm both intensely good and abrasively dry, too much yet not enough. ]

[ With a raw noise low in his throat, he abandons her breasts. Snatches up her hand with his free one, then brings it to his mouth. Gnawing at the heel of her palm, licking up its surface to suck three of her fingers into his mouth. He laves at them, hot and slippery and messy, tonguing the whorls of fingerprints and those faint fighter's calluses, before he guides her hand back to his cock. Shows her how to strip him -- fast, brutal, giving her the freedom to be as rough as she likes. Meanwhile his other hand stays wedged between her legs. Hot digits jab with a cruel tenderness inside her, rubbing at her sweet-spot. Slickness between his fingers, in the sodden tangle of curls; the scent of her, sharp and heady, wafting up and making his mouth water. ]

[ He doesn't know what he wants more. To fuck her, to taste her, to feel her hot little mouth on his cock. It all makes blazing-red fingers span across his brain, squeezing it tight around a single mantra -- I want I want I want. ]

[ In the end, he settles for kissing her again. Wet biting gulps, over and over -- a hot triangle from mouth to both breasts and back again. Keeping at it until her lips are as bruised as swollen as her nipples, the flavors disquietingly identical on the tip of his tongue. ]

[anatural]

[Korra votes for fucking. He sucks on her fingers and it throws her mind inexplicably back to the City, when they'd fucked after switching sexes, the one time she'd felt what it was like to fuck with a penis. Fuck she wants it. She wants to feel that tight squeeze, that aching fullness, the punches that bring pleasure instead of pain. He works her higher and higher and she can't take it anymore. Panting, whimpering, she shifts and aims his erection at her entrance. Too far gone to care about things like condoms or safe sex; even if she wasn't, she's been through too much shit to care.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ For Hei, the fucking during that curse -- astonishingly hot as it was -- hadn't been the most remarkable aspect. It was the almost scientific opportunity to gather data, to make discoveries. He'd often wondered what penetration was like for women. Whether it was nothing like anal sex -- or similar. But those he'd asked had rarely offered a good comparison. And though a few had given favorable testimonials, the pros versus the cons, Hei suspected that possession of a prostate was nine-tenths of the thrill. (Call girls were another story. Their enthusiasm on the subject -- Oh, baby, yeah, I love that big meat up my cunt/ass -- had to be taken with a grain, a whole gunny-sack even, of salt.) ]

[ Right now, though, that curse is the farthest thing from his mind. She guides his erection against her sopping entrance. The head nestles against the wet curls with a liquid kiss; he can practically feel the red-hot energy humming off her. So wet, he could slip in without any effort at all. ]

[ Shit. ]

[ Hei's thoughts splay in different directions, spooling and stretching, snapping like spiderwebs. He wants badly to wrench away. There's a condom in the pocket of his fallen trousers -- old, generic, but still usable. He is of the times of his homeworld, a product of his profession; meticulous and careful by nature. Knocking Korra up again isn't high on his list of priorities anyway. Especially after he'd nearly lost her the first time. ]

[ Except he can feel the hot burls of impatience gathering in his muscles. His hips twitch, thighs ticcing. When he sinks into her, it's with a slippery, splitting, unexpected force -- not by degrees but with one snapping thrust, the full length of his cock filling her, sealing his pelvic bone against the wet thatch of her curls, a relentless pressure against her clit. ]

[anatural]

[He slips inside easily; her body is more than ready to accommodate him, is eager to take him in. And yet the shock is enough to make her throw her head back and scream. It's not that different than with a condom and yet that slight difference is everything. She takes the chance to wrap both her legs around him and winds her arms around his neck, pulling him as close as she can.]

Fuck me hard. [She doesn't want to walk straight for at least a week.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Hei's not sure if it's that thrilling scream -- or her words, liquid and clotted with want -- that make something roll wildly down in his guts. A shock of yearning to do anything, everything she likes. A seasick lurch as the rational part of his mind, crowded to the fringes by lust, fumbles through the mental calendar it keeps for Korra's cycle, hoping desperately it's the wrong time of the month, that this tragic fall into impulse will result in little more than a stain on the sheets and no future consequences. ]

[ Except he can't think. Not now -- not anymore. She knots herself around him, a pretty flushed bow, and he settles gratefully, their damp bellies pressed together, his weight on his elbows. Cupping her ass with one palm, and her head with the other, fingers threaded tight into her hair. When he sets up a rhythm, there's nothing measured or controlled about it. Nothing like the way BK201 fights or lies or schemes. He drives into her hard -- the kind of brutal pounding that makes the cheap springs in the mattress whine, the headboard judder. Over and over, as if he wants to wreck her, inside, outside. Wants to crawl up into her and just be. His ragged breathing interrupts the gloom, and the way he kisses her is drunken and clumsy, sucking at her lips, her tongue, swallowing the hundred unspoken words that seem to hang in the tiny spaces between them. ]

[anatural]

[It wouldn't be the worst thing in the world, if she got pregnant again. No, it's not something she's actively courting, nor is it something she subconsciously desires. But being pregnant, being a mother, is no longer something she fears. She's not alone, like she would have been in the City, and motherhood at least would give her some purpose. Not the kind of purpose she wants — she saw how Katara, the powerful woman who helped save the world, had her accomplishments forgotten and neglected when she became "the mother of the Avatar's children" — but not a purpose to be ashamed of either.

She doesn't look jealously at young mothers. She doesn't dream of babies. She's just comfortable with the possibility.

But even if she wasn't, this feels too good to waste energy on fear. She kisses him like she wants to eat him alive, pants and whimpers with every thrust. She can feel tears gathering at the edges of her eyes, a physiological reaction to the tension not just building up as he pounds her, but the tension that's been building for the past seven months. Maybe even the last three years.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Not the worst thing -- but certainly not the best. He'd never wanted a baby. Didn't need that sort of responsibility -- a vulnerability -- tying him down. Self-preservation and pragmatism still took precedence over everything else in his life. Yet ... the loss of that supposedly unlooked-for burden had absolutely gutted him. Unthought of right from the outset, the child -- theirs -- had become shockingly real to him when it was gone, absolutely solid. He'd grieved for it as if for a real person, wishing it could've been saved. Not as a symbol, nor a trophy, nor a souvenir, not merely proof that he and Korra had something beyond a flimsy attraction tying them together. But a reality, that would have been a sharp focus of his life. ]

[ Part of him knows he'd have valued the baby for itself, whatever it was, and through it maybe he would've been able to accept some part of him that was lost forever. ]

[ Except Korra had nearly died the first time. He can't afford a repetition of that. Not after everything else. ]

[ He keeps the pace ruthless, sensation piling up more rapidly than his overheating body can dissipate it. Sweat is breaking across his skin, clean and sharp; he feel the prickle of rising desperation across his nerves. His hands go everywhere across Korra's body, taking possession, mouth gasping as she presses her thirsty kisses into it. The hot pressure matches that sweet sucking pull of her sex. Each time, he slides in deep, rocks his hips in a wicked grind, withdrawing only to slickly plunge back in. It feels like he'll never slow down or stop -- he can't bear to. But he can't bear to come yet either -- not until she's breaking apart beneath him, a crumpled sobbing ruin of flesh as he pounds her. ]

[anatural]

[She had nearly died fight Zaheer. Losing the baby, as physically and emotional traumatic as it was, came nowhere close.

Korra's ribs start complaining as he continues slamming her into the mattress; the pain doesn't detract from the pleasure at all. She even arches up against him, trying to put more pressure on the bruise, which seems to be wired directly to her clit. She's going to come any second now, no matter how hard she fights it off. One little press in the right spot and she'll —

Shatter.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ She crests, and it sends bright red shocks right through Hei, the hard tattoo of his embedded cock growing more ruthless. It's exquisite, the feel of her contracting around him in a rippling sequence that sets off what feels like a gun's sharp metal click. Then the sensation expands at the speed of sound, spiking electrically up his spine, detonating at the back of his skull like a shotgun. His eyes stay fixed on her as she rides her climax out: so wild and beguiling beneath him. Perfect, utterly self-absorbed, blinded and heat-stricken. ]

[ Groaning, he sinks one last time into her spasming body, his thrusts erratic with the tension of the encroaching end. He can feel it waiting for him, yawning darkly somewhere beneath the ache in his lungs, the gaping want, the thudding arousal trying to fill out every empty space inside him. ]

[ Gasping, unsteady, he withdraws from the gorgeous clutching heat of her. His own palm is a miserable replacement: sandpaper after being wrapped in wet silk. But it will have to do. He finishes himself with rough repeated jerks, his hand almost a blur. Comes in a deep rolling expulsion, a half-dozen hot laces scattering across Korra's thighs and belly. ]

[ A flawed precaution to a situation already mired in disaster. But it's the best he can manage. ]

[anatural]

[Come on her skin is one of those things that you'd think would feel erotic, but it's...not. It's just messy. She's coming down from the climatic high, sweat cooling on her skin, the pain of her various bruises and bumps actually feeling like pain... She has a new appreciation for condoms and how they keep that stuff in. Though it's easy enough to clean up with a little waterbending. And then... she doesn't really even know what to do. There's a brief, instinctive urge to pull him close and use him as a pillow, but she's had 7 months to get used to sleeping alone. She doesn't enjoy it; she prefers having a warm body with her, but she's gotten into the habit of a cold bed and the little intimacies that once felt natural are now awkward and uncertain.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ As awkward for him as for her. ]

[ Hei lets her handle the clean-up. Remains where he is, his long swathes of hair coming undone from the tie; skin slick from heat and exertion. The temptation to curl up against her is a fleeting one; cuddling was a recent development between them, its sheen of novelty still fresh enough that it seems unnecessary, even uncomfortable, to resume it like an old habit now. It's Hei's nature to default to distance anyway; the few encounters he's had during their separation were compounded by a selfish carelessness, a necessary purging of tension from the flesh if not the mind. Afterwards, he'd always gone to bed alone. ]

[ He sits loose-limbed on the edge of the bed, hands curled around his kneecaps. Regards Korra quietly, dark eyes detached like those of a jungle cat, but soft too. Interested. ]

[ After a beat, almost casually, ]

Guess I don't need to ask if it's been a while for you or not.

[anatural]

[Why does he always go for the uncomfortable topics? I guess I don’t need to ask if you still like to ruin the afterglow.]

I didn't leave so I could sleep with other people. [She'd been sad, lonely, and frustrated the night she almost slept with that one guy, which is why it got so far between them and part of the reason she tossed him out of the room butt-naked to grab his pants from the puddle outside her window.

She doesn't ask about him; she doesn't want to know. It's no longer that she's insecure about her skill in bed, and it was never about being afraid he'd fall in love with someone else. Strip the excuses away and the truth is, she just doesn't want him having sex with anyone else. But they've never renegotiated their agreement, in large part because when they were living together and fucking just about every day, it wasn't an issue.

She sits it, banishing irritation as best she can, and reaches out to tug his hair.]

What are we, switching hairstyles? That's some wolftail you're growing out.

[mortemscintilla]

[ What afterglow? The fucking should have knitted them back together -- a delicate happiness weaving itself around them like a shell. It hasn't. Instead what should've been a renewal of intimacy feels more like a frantic, awkward handhold between two strangers who've caught each other mid-fall. She's still given no indication of returning home with him. Intellectually, he understands why. She's so altered in herself, so unsettled by everything she's endured that it's excruciating to fit comfortably back into the niche of her daughterly, Avatar-ly life, to meet the expectations of her friends and family. ]

[ He's been where she has. He knows. But he also refuses to return empty-handed. If he has to knock her out and stuff her in a burlap sack, so be it. ]

[ He ignores the fizzle of irritation in her words. He doesn't care who she has or hasn't slept with. He'd asked because he was wary she'd hit the same self-destructive wall as him. When his vitality had slowly returned, after the Syndicate found him in the brutalized remnants of San Pedro Sula, and he'd learnt UB001 was still active. By day -- by night -- he'd sunk into wetwork. The skills he'd honed in the warzone were still there. Along with a streak -- miles wide -- that hadn't been. He was eerily reckless, in a don't much care about the outcome way. More than a few times, he'd swung himself away from maiming and certain death, right at the last moment. Felt like he was high afterwards, when the mission was completed, and he'd prowl the streets looking for women who were willing to fuck him, for free or for a fee, even if certain venereal easter eggs might get tacked on. ]

[ He hopes Korra isn't caught in that vacant headspace. Hopes she never will be. ]

[ She reaches out to tug his hair, and he lightly bats her hand off. In the next beat, he's threaded his fingers with hers. He squeezes them gently, half-wishing she'd shrink and disappear into his palm. Be small enough for him to cradle there forever. ]

I'll get rid of it, if you want.

[ He'd only let his hair grow out of indifference and neglect. It helped that he was residing in the South Pole; the locals interpreted it as an attempt to blend in. (Tonraq met the happenstance hairdo with something almost resembling approval, although Kya had teased, It's not a nice look. It ages you.) ]