across time & space

[anatural]

WHO: Hei & Korra
WHAT: Hei’s been missing for years.

[Are you sure you don’t want me to stay? As Korra watches Mako walk down the beach path, she kind of regrets telling him she was fine. The air feels a lot chillier without his companionable warmth. But he's no better at comfort sex than Bolin is; they're both too romantic. Of all her friends, Asami's the only one who really understands the occasional need for intimacy without its attendant baggage. Too bad Asami's out of town.

Korra smiles and shakes her head as she opens the front door. It doesn't matter. Nights like this are why she remodeled the house so Naga could come inside. The polar bear dog's warm, solid presence is like a campfire, a soft blanket, and hot tea all in one affectionate package.

Speaking of — Naga pokes her head out of the bedroom door and whines a question.]

I'm sorry, girl. She didn't make it. [Even with Korra to stabilize her wounds and the best vet in Republic City, Cat's injuries from the hit & run accident were too severe.

One by one, everything that connects her to Hei is vanishing. A few months after he was officially declared dead, Yin went missing. Her black cat died, and some guy with a poodlebird from Future Industries took all the computer equipment. She's had to renovate the house a few times, due to storms and other emergencies. And now Cat.

It makes Korra feel sad, but mostly it makes her feel old. The normal bumps and pains that occur over a lifetime have been crammed into less than a decade; she's still a few years shy of thirty, but she feels like she's her mother's age sometimes.

Naga nuzzles her shoulder comfortingly, and Korra takes the invitation to wrap her arms around her and bury her face in the polar bear dog's fur.]

I'm tired of losing people.

Comments

[anatural]

[She sits up a little, just enough to stroke his hair.] Just take it slow. We've got time. [She'd been ready to go hard, fast, & quick earlier, but now... now she wants to take their time. Having him back, being together like this, is wonderful but surreal.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ We've got time. ]

[ Do they? Three years, swallowed up into the ether. He's amazed she still wants him, amazed his presence doesn't make her memories careen in a way that skirts the sickening. It does for him. Everything is so fucking precarious. He wants to show her how much he's missed her, but he's afraid of regressing to his usual flash-bang pace, unable to sort out his feelings from the numbness he's laid over them in order to endure the long journey in space. It's too much like right after he'd first hooked up with Korra. When going thorough the motions of living made his psyche blur into nothingness for him -- and he needed a sharp edge of violence and sex to throw himself against in order to keep the outlines alive. ]

[ Now, here, he's wary of doing the same thing. Wary of being unable to express that, You make me feel something hard and big and solid and real. It's ripping me apart so fast I need to cast it off onto you. ]

[ Forcibly, he smooths out his inhales and exhales. Take it slow. He tries. Crawling across her, a heap of fast-twitch muscle and damp weight, he catches her head, cradling it in widespread fingers to kiss her. Heat spikes low in the pit of his belly; he forces the desire to soften. ]

Maybe ... I should've waited ... when I got back. [ Words spoken between kisses, as soft and strangely shy as the warm nuzzle of his lips. ] Given you time to decide what you wanted. Only I missed you. So much.

[anatural]

[Mmmm, kisses. Korra wraps her arms around his neck and hums encouragingly.]

I want this. [It feels so good, so right, in ways that the (very good) sex she's had with other people just hasn't. She hooks a leg around his and presses her body against his erection.] I've missed you too. I never stopped. [Even after she stopped thinking about him every single day. Even after she stopped crying and/or destroying things when something reminded her of him. Grief doesn't end; it changes.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Cradled against her body, all buttery warmth, Hei exhales a noise into the kiss -- a small purl of something both goodnatured and gratified. (Fond, too, no matter how much things aren't perhaps what they used to be). The responsibility of her, of giving her what she needs, of doing his best to mend the rift, is so huge, it daunts him, sends his mind reeling off into icy absence. But her heat, her scent, those soft words, all act like little stitches binding him to the moment. Urging him not to look backward or forward -- but melt into the Now. ]

[ And in the now, inrushing echoes of their every encounter sweep over him with delicious vividness, lucid tactile memories of the her body, the feel and flavor of her, hypnotically warm flesh working greedily against his own. He can have that again, he thinks -- almost shattered with delight at the stupidly obvious realization. Unknowingly, he is stirring against her, loving the velvety-hot feel of her belly -- the way it makes his dick flare with a full-blooded throb. His tongue traces hers, flicking across her teeth, the tip of her nose, the whorl of her ear, the point of her jaw. Fuck, he wants his cock inside her -- but he also wants this to go on forever, because he's afraid that once he's inside her, he'll come immediately. ]

[ Finally, half distraction, half fevery-minded indulgence, he cups both of her breasts. Squeezes with a soft encompassing possessiveness that is gentle, but also rough. He dusts them with kisses, bestowing delicate bites to her nipples, scraping the tender undersides with his sandpapery cheek -- before pressing them together to draw both the pebbly tips into his wide-open mouth, humming as his erection jerks with a live-wire ache. ]

[anatural]

[He's not the only one with a live-wire ache... or the responsibility of closing the gap between them. She's not the prize he works towards or the paycheck he earns; she's an equal partner in this relationship. They both need to communicate and make some room for each other in the lives & habits they developed alone.

The actual work of a relationship is far from her thoughts at this moment, though — he takes her nipples into his mouth and she whimpers, wriggling under him. Instead of tugging his hair, as had been her want, she strokes it... a habit she picked up from her less rough & tumble lovers.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ There it is again. That weirdly shy restraint, even as she's as strong and sweetly insistent as she's always been. What, he wonders, had caused it? The long gap in time -- or the people she'd taken to bed after him? It is too easy to imagine that the guys, though he'd never seen them, were needle-dicked no-hopers. But Korra's responses to his every move aren't those of a woman unused to being satisfied. She is the opposite of passive -- even as her confidence seems less fulsome that he remembers. How many other lovers had she had? Were they good to her? She'd paired off with him so young. He was her barometer for a lot of things, from kisses to fucking to afterglow -- or lack thereof. He wants to know if it was freeing, touching someone else, a revelation of different aspects in her consciousness, her body. ]

[ There is no way to ask. ]

[ He draws back, tongue tracing the rounds of her nipples, spit-shiny and darkly pebbled from his mouth. ]

Don't hold back with me.

[ A coaxing half-whisper, his gaze catching and digging into Korra's as if trying to sift through those soft layers of shyness, to find that wicked, wild girl he remembers. Maybe she's not there anymore? Things change, bodies change, patterns and preferences kaleidoscope with different lovers. ]

[ Gently, he pinches her nipples, chafes them across the rough pads of his thumb. Experimental, but also playful, rubbing his bristly cheek against the springy points. ]

I wonder if I could make you come just by playing with these.

[ It's idle, half-serious, but a skein of dark curiosity lurks beneath. Not just at what her body can do, how it's changed and how it hasn't -- but if she's more aware of the heights she can scale to now, with the right partners. ]

[anatural]

I'm not. [She's a little wounded, until she remembers how they used to tussle. She tugs on his hair in wry apology.] Just taking my time.

[She wriggles as he plays with her nipples — with fingers and even his stubble, which is way more arousing than she would have expected. Could he make her come just with those? One of her early, unfortunate affairs had a creepy fixation on her breasts... It'd been hot, at first, how he lavished attention upon them, but then he wanted to nurse like a baby and that just completely grossed her out.]

Just don't gurgle like a baby.

[mortemscintilla]

[ Gurgle like a baby? Hei's face expresses a mute bewilderment, like she's just listed Ovaltine as one of her top ten kinks, or some such thing. (They both used to lead such a simple life, once. They really did.) ]

[ Wisely, he refrains from a delicate interrogation. There's no need for it. Her words, her offhand actions, fill the gap of three years, the question marks wafting within, with a sticky stew of clues, corroborations. It makes his brain stutter, because it's uncanny to be doing that with Korra. Weaving a map of her history, based on the slightest remark or gesture, fragments carded and heaped together to create a cohesive whole, the way he automatically does with strangers. He still thinks of her face as a blooming-open sunflower. But now he's no longer sure he knows her. ]

[ It doesn't matter. He's so aroused, his senses swimming with her. Her eyes are all for him right now; he can't help but look into them with a soft curiosity, feeling like he's experiencing a reunion with someone he's forgotten even about forgetting. ]

[ Then he stops thinking at all -- and just does. ]

[ She is so radiant when his mouth touches her, the teeth grazing her skin, neck, chest, slope of each breast. Lips closing over the high tight nipples, worrying them between playful teeth, before he sucks them with ruthless wet pressure into his mouth. As he does, he shifts the drape of his body across hers, wedging his thigh between hers, feeling the soft prickling hairs and hot moisture of her sex. Meanwhile, his mouth and hands stay busy. Experimenting with different sensations, different textures and temperatures. Leisurely, in a way he hasn't been since back in the City. ]

[ Kneading her breasts, plumping them high, he revels in the heat and softness of her skin, the sensuous weight of them. Catches her nipples between his fingers, then his teeth, lusty bites and tweaking pinches, hot gusts of breath and cold wafts of air, grazing them with short nails, letting her nipples rasp across his rough palms, chafe against his bristly stubble, then slide across the wet smoothness of his tongue. Keeps at it, his attention growing progressively more hungry, more certain, until he knows her breasts will be a riot of heavy heat and thumping sensation -- just as his cock is, a drunken thrumming against his belly. ]

[anatural]

[She hasn't changed that much... not in the ways that really matter. Think of it as an upgrade on your favorite software. There are a few new little things to learn, but the core structure it all the same.

And she's about to tell him he's cheating on the test, sliding his leg between her thighs where she can grind against it, except he's working her breasts so thoroughly that she doesn't dare distract him. Doesn't have the breath to, even if she did. She makes her pleasure known through little whimpers and sighs — quieter than she would have been a few years ago, but with the promise of a crescendo — and pulls hard on his hair.

Fuck... he might actually get her to come this way... She just needs a little something more, or maybe just different, to push her over the edge.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Hei can hear the rising desperation coloring Korra's tones, even if they are soft and airy as soap bubbles floating up to burst in his ears. Can feel himself rising on the heat, on the ripening scents of lust, her barreling pulse and the wild sway of her hips. The way her fingers yank at his hair is a delicious ache; his own low, raw sighs catch in his throat. ]

[ Teething her nipples, he bounces and massages the flesh of her breasts, feeling them pulse hotly against his palms. She's as delightfully sensitive as ever, and he can feel her climbing, her whole body clinging to him in persuasion, welcome, pleading. ]

[ On a rare impulse, feeling daring, he lets her nipples slip free from his mouth with a lewd pop. Lets the stubble sanding his cheek scrape across them, rough and deliberate, before he gulps them back into his mouth. He strokes them with his teeth until they grow painfully hard -- right before he lets a charge play out, barely a frisson of sparkage, the swirl of his tongue carrying the carefully choreographed swish of an electric eel, nothing else but slick heat and biting half-moons of teeth and kneading fingers and crackling sensation and hard suction. ]

[anatural]

[OH. Ooooooooooh. Korra shudders as her climax hits her — small yet mind-blowing because he did that with just her nipples. She's always been sensitive, but how is that even possible?]

Wow. Congratulations.

[She feels energized, enough to flip him over so she's straddling his chest.]

So...what would you like as reward?

[mortemscintilla]

[ When she comes, it's a small, almost shy ripple, the sight unfurling a hazy astonishment down Hei's spine. His smile is off-kilter, replete with a fond I didn't think you could do that satisfaction. He lets her tumble him over, an easy acquiescence of loose limbs, even as his dick and balls are a tense, twitching heap at his groin. ]

[ Slowly, he circles his arms around her, tracing his palms down the gradated pebbles of her spine, over her lovely buttocks, pinching them into welts of faint color -- just as he tips his head up to catch her mouth, to muffle any protests she might make into a languid, sloppy kiss. ]

[ When he draws back, it's on a rushed inhale, her lower-lip caught in his teeth, then sliding free with a slick pop. ]

Your mouth, for starters.

[ After that, well. His whole body, after a year of forcibly submerging desire, feels the tugging undercurrents of freedom, want unfolding upon want, a wild fevery dream that grips him with white-hot teeth and doesn't let go. He intends to take every liberty she allows. ]

[anatural]

[So predictable. Even after three years, she knew that's what he was going to say.]

Close your eyes. [She bends a little water out of the pitcher she keeps by the bed and makes two small balls of ice which she pops into her mouth. Then she uses a little firebending to make her hands extra warm, and takes him in hand. Lubing up with precum and sweat, she gets him used to the burning warmth of her hand before wrapping her cold mouth around the head of his cock.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Hei isn't easy to read -- but in truth he isn't a very difficult book when it comes to sex, not when you know what to look for. He is a patterned lover. Predictable in his aggression, sharp-edged in his kinks, slow in his arousal. And right now he is just about ready to explode. ]

[ There's a moment's hesitation, before he obliges, eyes slipping shut. Fever-heat clouds his mind, but there is a spiky lick of curiosity as he wonders what she has planned. Then her palm wraps around his shaft, hot as dissolving flame, just as the icy wet of her mouth engulfs him. ]

Fuck.

[ The gasp is like a catch scraping across his chest, as if down in the depths of him an anchor tugs violently at its nest of steel, threatening to break loose. Wildly, his hands scrabble to bury themselves in her hair, palms cradling the back of her skull. His hips jerk in a short, uncontrollable spasm before he forces himself to still: the only movement seems to center at his groin, where his cock is a jut of burning heat, twitching pressure, at the mercy of her attentions. ]

[ God. She's really learned a thing or five. If he has her other affairs to thank for it, well ... He won't thank them, but he won't kick over it either. ]

[anatural]

[She honestly can't remember where she picked this little trick up from. She knew that Hei likes temperate play, as did several of her other partners. It just kind of evolved from there.

Her one hand keeps hold of him as she sucks; the other runs a burning finger from beneath his balls to the pucker of his ass (not threatening to push it, just teasing the surface with warmth. She uses her tongue to roll the little balls of ice around his head, careful to not let the cold linger too long.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Hei's fingers play with Korra's hair, still damp from her shower, until it sticks up in all directions. His whole body is an aborted tremor, prickling with cold, sweating with heat, the warring sensations making a bubbling stew of his brain and a knotted net of his muscles. He can't decide what's better -- the icy-cold shock of her mouth as she laves all around the sensitive head. Or the hands on his balls that are like the heated towels they wrap around your head in a spa. ]

[ When her finger dips lower, a hot but gentle prodding, he jerks as if singed. Swallows, and forces himself to relax. Not the kind of play he goes for -- but this is Korra. He'll never tell her, but sometimes, the way she takes him into her mouth, a drunken-warm engulfment, makes him feel less like she's devouring him whole and more as if she's keeping him safe. ]

[ But safe doesn't mean peaceful. He's aware of his agitation increasing, along with the sound of his labored breathing. His palms are wedded in a hot clasp to her skull, her hair spilling ticklishly over his fingers. His hips tremble with the urge to buck, to fuck her mouth in a rapid, jamming rhythm. Instead he lets off a low noise, almost like a helpless chant of Yes that parallels a fear that she might stop -- or that he might call things to a halt by blowing his load too soon. ]

[anatural]

[Right — she forgot he has a thing about his ass. She draws her finger away from there and settles for just fondling his balls. She can feel how close he is, and how he wants to put it off as long as he can. Don’t, she wants to tell him. Just let go. We can do this as many times as we want. Caught up in lust and the thrill of having him back, she doesn't ever plan on leaving bed, or letting him go. They've got three years of sex to catch up on.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Hei can feel the shrill throb rising, from his temples to his groin. His cock doesn't seem to ooze pre-cum so much as let it off in uncorked judders; the heavy, underlying vein tics with the same cadence as his pulse. He wants so badly to hold off. To enjoy -- through action -- the benefits of fucking this ripe, gorgeous girl, who feels like a miracle made flesh after a year of little or no contact. Every gift she bestows on him is a favor and a surprise. ]

[ He lets off a faint growl, tensing with the effort of holding back. But his body is too unruly, too starved. When she fondles his balls, he seizes up on a jittery hitched gasp, before feeling the climax explode -- inside, outside, shaking him all over, his arms stretching over his head and his hips riding fast as he spurts into her mouth with a sudden unexpected gush. ]

[ In the wet-tissuey bonelessness that follows, shame descends, weaving uneasily with satiation, like dark honeycombed with lightness. ]

...Damn...

[anatural]

[As quickly as it comes, Korra's not taken by surprise — nor does she cough the way she used to. She melts the ice so she doesn't choke on them and then opens her throat wide, swallowing every last drop. Protein, one of the guys she'd hooked up with told her while trying to get her to do more blowjobs. Good for your health.

She licks him dry and then crawls up his body to kiss him, burrowing herself against his side and tangling their legs together.

That must've been building up for awhile...

[mortemscintilla]

Don't remind me.

[ It's said in a drunken tone that matches the slowing skitter of his heartbeat, the way the light in the room pulses, blurring and sharpening. He wants to applaud at the way she swallows like a champ, not a drop wasted. But he can barely bring himself to move. Skin flushed all over, sweat-moistened, chest rising and falling as he tries to fight the soft encroaching blackness of sleep. Still reeling from the crunching timelines, the different dimensions, a sleepless night of recon and burgeoning tension, he's gripped by a cataleptic exhaustion. ]

[ Forcibly, he shakes it off. He's already left Korra once to neglect and sadness. He doesn't plan to do it again -- even if it's for a few hours of rest. Especially when the orgasm has taken the edge off his hunger, but done nothing to deplete the want that is even now brimming fizzily over, leaving him half-hard and drowsily antsy. ]

[ She settles against him, and he lingers on the kiss, tasting his own pungent spendings, bitter with amines and stress. Breaks to bury his face in the crook of her neck, breathing in her deep saltysweet aroma of sweat and spunk. The reunion is providing him even more than he'd missed, or hoped for. But in the back of his mind, the worries remain, sharp glints clicking and snapping, like scissors cutting away at his blissed-out contentment. Yin is missing, and Mao. The network he'd pieced together here is gone. He and Korra have been robbed of three years that he can only now contemplate with bitterness, speculation, sadness, hindsight. ]

[ They've both been cheated of something, he thinks. Better roads. Happier possibilities. But what's the point of considering it now? It's enough that she's here, inviting him back into her life. Not like two puzzle pieces clicking together, exactly. But as if the fibers of his skin, his psyche, are still loosely threaded with hers. ]

[ Gathering her close, he kisses her forehead, both old habit and gratitude. Wryly, ]

If I get this fourteen or fifteen times a week, I'll be cured though.

[anatural]

[Korra's let regret go. For now, at least, which is easy to do when he's so close and her body feels so good. The actual process of letting things go is one she's been working on for years, first with the trauma of Zaheer, and then with every subsequent hurt. It really is so much easier when you have something good to replace the pain with.

That little comment of his gets a smile.]

I might be able to arrange that. But not if you fall asleep on me. [Poke poke poke.]

[mortemscintilla]

'M awake...

[ More or less. The warmth of her skin, the soft rhythmic thumping of her heart, helps dispel his torpor, but also keeps away the worries that are threatening to jostle forward.]

[ Blinking heavily, he shifts to press her breasts softly together, covering them in cool kisses. Unwinds himself a little, to trace his palms down the length of her body. Feeling the strong suppleness of her arms, the bones of her wrists, exploring the more calloused palms. Runs his fingertips along the lines of her ribs, prodding the hollow of her belly and the juts of her hips, poking a finger into her navel -- tender, but somehow investigative, gathering clues he can't bring himself to ask her. ]

[ There's a beat, then, quietly, ]

For three years ... you're none the worse.

[ Maybe the years haven't been kind, sure -- but they haven't been ugly, either. ]

[anatural]

[Oof don't poke in her outie! Korra laughs a little as she bats his hand away from her bellybutton.]

It's been pretty quiet. I've been focusing on my spiritual responsibilities.

[She traces her own hands over his skin, looking for changes.] What about you?

[mortemscintilla]

[ Hei doesn't meet her eyes. Instead he lets her hands roam, perfectly still except for a fine, fluttering tremor that might be ticklishness or nerves. He doesn't want her to focus on the myriad clues on his body. But he doesn't know what to tell her, either. ]

[ How it feels so strange not to be in a place where the surfaces aren't artificial. Formica. Vinyl. Plastic. Fluorescent. How everything here feels so real, so strangely gritty and textured. Iron, wood, leather, wool. He can't tell her how it's so wonderful to sprawl in bed with her, bathed in the bars of honey-colored sunlight that fall through the blinds. Inside the Enterprise, the light, despite its luminosity, had never felt the same as real sunlight: it was as if the architecture of the ship, or the compounds used to build it -- the chrome and steel and plastiglass -- leeched some part of the brightness away. Not just the heat -- but its vitamins or the really nourishing part of it. When it had touched his skin, it had felt as cold as the light from a bare bulb in a broom closet. ]

[ He wants to sprawl here in bed, bathed in this airy sunlight, for as long as he can. Drinking it in, the same way a plant does. ]

[ And nestled against him, Korra is like a ripe tasty fruit, warmed by that same wonderful sun. ]

[ Finally, in a tone of deceptive jocularity: ]

Months and months on a ship? Not much to do but read and work out and sleep.

[anatural]

Sounds relaxing. [She knows he doesn't want to talk about it. But you know what? He knows what to do to distract her. She's simple.]