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

[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.]

[mortemscintilla]

There are better ways to relax.

[ Simple -- and stunning, with her face bright in a dark mess of hair, that beguiling flush racing up her chest and neck, blotchy and rosy and heavenly. Languidly, Hei drags his hands down her thighs, rubbing along the edges of her kneecaps, feeling out the joins of bones beneath the skin. Parts them by degrees, to press moist openmouthed kisses to her tender inner-thighs, nuzzling at them, deliberately avoiding the dark thatch of curls between her legs. ]

[ Her scent, a thick lather of excitement that perfumes the air, always, even now, makes him think of ... god, what is it? It makes him think back to the days he'd come home as a boy, happy and dirt-smudged from the woods, with pine sap smeared on his hands, and his mother would punt him into the shower, telling him not to come out until his hair squeaked. A quantum leap of memory that makes sense, if only in his own head. ]

[ Kissing her silly little outie, he murmurs, ] Turn over, [ before gently nudging her to sprawl on her belly. Reveling in the slopes and swells of her body, its sweet idiosyncrasies. He drops kisses across the caramely expanse of her back. Mouthing the scattering of faint scars here and there, gnawing her at the soft spot between her shoulderblades; her spine is prominent as a dorsal ridge as he traces it with his tongue, down to the curve of her backside, his breath fanning hot across her skin. He bites her there, playful, taking a plump chunk of flesh between his teeth -- just as he slides a hand between her body and the mattress, palming her sex, teasing the moisture oozing between the pouty lips. ]

[anatural]

[Korra humphs, but lets him roll her over. Seems like he's forgotten that she's never liked being on her stomach. It squishes her breasts, which are already sensitive from the working over he'd given them earlier. He works his way down her back, which feels nice, and bites her butt, which just feels silly, and then she's done.]

Okay, my boobs hurt.

[She rolls back over, trying to swing her leg over his head so he doesn't have to move.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Hei would wryly offer to kiss them better. But he's too busy dodging her swinging thigh. He lets her spill onto her back again, an indulgent little smile at the corners of his mouth. Gathers up her legs, tugging her gently near the edge of the bed, rucking up the mass of the sheets in the process, and moves them open. Idly, he noses her mons, teasing the damp curls with his breath. God, he is such a cuntstruck idiot for her, even now. Or is it especially now? His head swims in intoxicated darkwaters. Needing to be immersed, he presses his open mouth against her, stabbing his tongue into her sodden folds, rubbing at her clit with his thumb. ]

[ Drawing back, he glances up at her with a light spark in his eyes, their defensive hardness easing, along with the usually tense planes of his face. ]

Have I told you how good you taste? [ An idle murmur, as he works his mouth against her pouting sex again, letting his teeth form a mild bite, then sucking on the hard point of her clit, whiskers scraping softly across her damp inner thighs. ] It makes me so hungry...

[anatural]

You're always hungry. [She has to struggle a little to get the words out, though, because fuck. Whatever he did to her breasts has nothing on this. Pleasure, energy, builds up between her legs and spreads throughout her body. She tries to release it by clawing the sheets, wriggling her toes, but of course it just keeps building.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Hei would tell her he's actually extremely particular about where he puts his mouth -- at least where bodies are concerned. Instead he brushes the fingers of his free hand over Korra's knuckles, before lacing the digits with hers, a moist, aching cramp of a grip that somehow matches the dull throb behind his ribcage, where want and gratitude is pricking him like thorns of fire under his flesh. Just being close to her, watching her squirm, sends him spinning almost to the edge of his need -- a disconnect between the body and the brain that is so strange, because it's usually the opposite. During sex, there is some flukey mechanism in his mind that never stops running on its track, even during intense arousal. It is a lifesaver on the field, foolproof playacting for a cover -- but it's fucking inconvenient outside of it. To say the least. ]

[ Between her thighs, his mouth sucks and licks with a fervor which is almost selfishly vicarious. One fingernail tracing a line from the pucker of her ass up to the entrance of her sex, smearing the welling slickness, playing with the delicate fringe of her inner-lips, before he pushes his finger into her. Hot, so hot -- a tight rippling clutch that reminds him how good it is to fuck her. Just thinking about it, he can feel his own groan as much as hear it -- terrible, desperate. His thumb brushes her clit as his finger buries itself inside her, tongue whorling sloppy circles around the twitching nub -- and it's so easy to melt into this, the give and take, the lewd, long slurps and the rhythm of Korra's hips that tells him what to do. ]

[ Three years of change, and he feels like he's stumbling in and out of her rhythms, finding old, remembered spots, cataloging dizzying new changes. ]

[anatural]

[It's magical. It's wonderful. It's mind-blowing. It's one of the biggest selling points of long-term relationships, because even after three years he knows her body so well. Her orgasm comes as fast and hard as a summer storm... and with it, a little something extra.

Korra will apologize for the unexpected gush of menstrual fluid when she can actually use her body again.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ She comes in a gorgeous, rolling spasm, and Hei can feel the fluttering tremors across his tongue, under his grappling hands. He's so caught up in the thrilling sight of her that he doesn't notice the tang of blood until it fills his mouth. Blinking, he jerks back, dragging a hand across his mouth, the fingertips sheened in a slick thread of blood. The sight makes his gorge rise -- but it's more because he's afraid he's torn her with his teeth. His cock, which had filled with a sluggish interest as she'd tossed and turned, wilts at the idea. ]

Shit. [ It's a voice suddenly bereft of ease and finesse. ] Are you okay?

[anatural]

I am so much more than okay... [Still, hearing the concern in his voice, she pushes herself onto her elbows and looks at him. Him, with blood on his fingers and smeared across his mouth.]

Are you okay?!?! [What could have happened to him down there? She's not hiding anything sharp between her legs... Is he coughing up blood? Bleeding from his nose? A warm squirt from her vagina answers both their questions. She covers her mouth to stifle an embarrassed choke of laughter.]

I didn't know it was going to start today...

[mortemscintilla]

[ (Nosebleeds? He isn't from that sort of anime.) ]

[ Hei's gaze wanders worriedly from her face to her spread thighs. He can see it then, the blood seeping out, tingeing the lips of her sex, gathering in the curls. The sight of it, the bubbling red clot, the coppery hot smell, makes him blink, first with bewilderment, then with -- Oh. The stirrings of mild disgust break across his surface, but fade in the next beat. Strange, how the sight of all that red, spilling obscenely between her legs, usually makes his mind switch to automatic technical terms. Vagina. Uterus. Menstruation. All distant, all clinical. It doesn't bother him particularly. He's fucked enough pussies that were bleeding, although he's never gone down on one. Unhygienic, but also ... crossing a line, somehow. ]

[ But there's none of that detachment with Korra. Hard to summon any, when you've shacked up with a girl for months and months. When you once kept tabs on her cycle with the same matter-of-factness as when to change the oil in the car, when to mow the lawn. He'd always labeled that week as Hands Off days, and busied himself with chores or tinkering with weaponry. ]

[ Absently, he wipes the drying blood on his lips. It has an almost grossly slippery texture -- nothing like the richness of arterial blood. ]

[ When he glances up at her, his face is a blend of secondhand embarrassment, unease, and a hint of disappointment. ]

I guess you'll want to clean up.

[ And cut short any prospective fucking. ]

[anatural]

[She kinda does, but more importantly...]

Don't you? You're the one with blood all over your face. [And the discomfort with menstruation. It was hard too miss how willing he was to indulge her high sex drive... Unless she was on the rag. Then she was on her own. She never minded; they had sex so often that this was the only time she had to masturbate. How he could get off on cutting people and yet be bothered by perfectly natural womanly bleeding, she'll never understand. But it's just the way he is. So his evident disappointment at the break to get clean is kind of a surprise.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ It doesn't bother him. He's seen enough blood to last a lifetime. But edgeplay draws a line of transgression -- and for him, all transgressive lines are erotically tempting to cross. He's interested in exploring people, their limitations, their boundaries. But that interest stems from his ambivalence to enumerating and delineating limits in his own intimate relations with the world. Whereas fucking his girlfriend on her period ... just strikes him as messy. Nothing taboo or profane about it. Just a natural bodily function, like pissing or shitting -- but one he prefers to allot her privacy in. ]

[ Korra's remark makes him blink, just as something stretches and ripples in his mind, taking the shape of a dim epiphany. That where he'd withdrawn physical attention, every time she was on the rag, because the workings of those girly-parts didn't interest him any more than the needs of bowels and bladders -- it was possible she'd interpreted it as distaste. In some shelf of his mind he still thinks of her as a Good Girl -- the ones who don't let their boyfriends get a legover during that time of the month. So he hadn't pressed. (He could have. But the idea of pushing her into something against her will -- once a matter of natural course, a way to satisfy his own selfish entitlement -- had instead awakened an instinctive recoil. He should've realized, at that moment, how terminally lovestruck -- whipped -- he'd grown.) ]

[ When he touches her, it's gentle, a skim of fingertips along her calf. In a tone that's mild, but somehow questioning, ]

Blood doesn't bother me. I just assumed --

[ That it bothered you. ]

[anatural]

[Blink. Blink.]

It happens every month. I'm pretty used to it by now. [She's never been bothered by the cramps, aches, or mood swings that always troubled her mother. Her period has always been a messy but otherwise unremarkable part of the month. (Actually, if it had any effect on her, it made her a little more horny.) The idea of avoiding sex just because of her period would never have occurred to her.]

[mortemscintilla]

So its okay if...

[ He doesn't finish. Just caresses her thigh with a questioning delicacy, feeling a startling leap of hunger break in his ribs. Even as his mind tells him it is ridiculous to be so easily pleased, his body melts with helpless hard-edged need. (God, how long has it been since he's opened up to the feeling instead of shutting it out?) He wants to fuck her. Like a cat in heat, he is flushed with it -- but hinky too, of getting it wrong in some undefined way. He's known so many women who are always ready to be wounded in that very female way women can be. Over a careless remark about their cycle, the messiness of the blood, its smell, the way it congeals. As if that nether valley is a permanent wound forever waiting to split open and bleed at even the mildest criticism. All it will take is one tiny gesture of disregard, one misinflected word. ]

[ Craning his neck, he kisses her instead, first on the mouth, then in a circuit around her chin and cheeks and forehead. ]

[ With a quiet obliqueness, ]

Do you have condoms?

[anatural]

Yeah. [It comes out as a sigh, full of warmth and want. She can faintly taste the blood on his mouth, which yeah, okay, is kinda gross, but there are a lot of things that are gross about sex and that's why you take baths afterwards. She runs her hands along his arms; almost wraps them around him to pull him down, but stops when he asks about condoms.

Condoms... Shit, when was the last time she bought condoms? She hasn't actually needed any in awhile.]

I...don't remember.

[mortemscintilla]

[ (Lesbians really do save a lot of money on birth control. Lucky bitches.) ]

[ Hei can feel the fever she radiates, her breaths sweet and lush against his mouth. In a single moment she seems to have become almost unbearably excited; his own pleasure tastes like validation, and he is filled to the brim with a sudden, suffocating impatience. ]

[ He's about to cover her, to deepen the kiss, when she falters. Dammit. Squeezing his eyes shut, he takes a moment to recognize the crawling moment as what capsulizes the very crux of his sex-life, before he draws back to regard her. His smile is almost a grimace -- the thin, dry, sour curl of a lemon peel. ]

Tell me I don't need to run to the drugstore.

[ He's not in the mood for last-moment grocery runs after being catapulted through different dimensions, okay. ]

[anatural]

It's not like I've really needed them. You've been gone for three years. [Just because she understands the grimace doesn't mean she appreciates it. Huffing irritably, she pushes him off.] Let me check the bathroom. [Which will also give her a chance to clean some of the blood from between her legs. After so many years believing it squicked Hei out, she can't quite immediately switch over to the knowledge that it doesn't. Plus it just feels a little gross.

A few quick wipes gets her clean, and a check of the medicine cabinet reveals a box of condoms...that's empty. Well shit.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ The need, jangling so shrill and strong in Hei's bones, dissipates as Korra pads away. Left alone, he could loll in bed, which is warm, the sheets giving off a sweet aroma of Korra-ness, the mattress half-sunken from the impression of her body. Instead, he gets up, the restless bloodhound in him wanting to re-examine the room, to explore any deeper changes. The whole house feels so strange to him. Changed in a million tiny ways that, taken together, seem massive. It's like not seeing your own face for eight years, then having someone hand you a mirror. Who is that guy? And then you realize: it's you. It's still you. ]

[ Eventually, bored, disoriented, aimless, he gets a lychee drink and goes to lean outside the bathroom. The door is closed. Through its cracks ekes the muffled sounds of Korra searching for something -- fruitlessly. Eyes closed, he holds the cool bottle to his forehead and sighs. ]

There's nothing in there, hm?

[anatural]

[Oh fuck off, you long-suffering asshole.] There's PLENTY in here. [Just nothing useful. Korra's own temper is frayed by both frustrated desire and the shock of his return. A second before she slams the cabinet shut and orders him out, she sees a small packet of herbs Bolin & Opal had given her. Bolin had bought them because the name had Naga in it, and had been horrified when Opal told him what they really were. He'd given them to Korra anyway, because Opal — though Korra wasn't entirely sure what message the young airbender was trying to send her. Either way... She opens the door and holds up the packet.]

Unless you have any diseases I should know about, we're covered.

[mortemscintilla]

None. Unless waiting is a disease.

[ Hei watches her in wry amusement, those quiet, ever-cresting surges of affection for her displacing his earlier impatience and distracting him, however briefly, from worry about Yin and Mao, collapsed networks, stolen time and wasted opportunities. ]

[ His gaze glints toward the packet, ascertaining its contents, before his eyes resettle on her, fanning up and down. The sight of her -- all nude and shining and tossed-about, skin blotched pink with the force of his kisses -- makes him at once jelly-limbed and rampant, but also almost absurdly solemn. This is such a narrow save. All these years she hadn't known he was out there somewhere, and today, if events hadn't unfurled with such perfect, jarring serendipity -- God. ]

[ What if she'd fallen in love with someone else in all that time? Had a family? Forgotten him? ]

[ He tries not to think about it. Instead he snatches her wrist, drawing her up close, his own body a hot rough wall. The juice bottle dangles loosely from his fingers; he sets it aside, his mouth dipping low to nudge and connect with hers, even as he moves them towards the bedroom in a way that is like a halting foxtrot. Backing her up in stages, as if his mind isn't quite sure even now that he is going to get away with this -- while all his senses can do is drink her in. He can almost smell how aroused she is -- the humid scent of her wafting up from her cleavage, that coppery hormonal fug between her thighs. ]

[ Carefully, he tumbles back with her across the bed. Breaks away on an inhale, with enough presence of mind to grab a towel from the rack, to spread it across the sheets beneath her. Somehow it's that gesture, the signifier of innate neatness, of a meticulous regard for stains and dirt, that makes him realize, with something like a thump between the shoulderblades, that he's really home. ]

[ He wants to say something. But his hands are grappling Korra closer, hips, waist, shoulders, burying themselves in her hair. He stops only to kiss her, sloppy and biting and insatiable, unable for a long minute to do anything else but kiss and kiss, getting lost in her hot pliant little mouth. ]

[anatural]

That doesn't even make any sense. [This is said with affection instead of annoyance. They're back on track — not just today, with the condom interruption over, but in their lives. He's back where he's supposed to be.

The save is not nearly as narrow as Hei thinks. Korra had no interest in finding another relationship after she lost him. Relationships are work, work that is unnecessary if your only goal is sexual release. She's never felt compelled to start a family; she doesn't need a partner to feel her life is complete. She never would have fallen in love with Hei if circumstances hadn't bound them so tightly together; it would have taken circumstances nearly as remarkable for her to grant someone else a space in her heart and his place in her life.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ That makes two of them. It's almost miraculous, that given his fossilized traumas, his fraught and fucked-up human relationships, his faulty emotional thermometer, the blood-drenched Battle Royale of his childhood, that he's managed to spark and click with someone so different, and that the connection has stretched across years and upheaval into something so solid and real. It astonishes him -- Korra astonishes him. She was never what he'd expected then, and she isn't what he expects now. ]

[ He enjoys it, that electric hum under his skin, because it's been decades since something has surprised him so rewardingly. ]

[ He tries to tell her that. With deep gulping kisses between ragged breaths, a soft fuck fuck fuck in his mind because he knows he's gasping her name into the humid space between their mouths. With the trembling strain of backed-up need as he gathers her close, his erection an entrapped roll of flesh that radiates a hot pulsing, skidding moistly across her skin with an imperfect friction that is both pleasure and pain. Hooking his arms under her knees, he draws her legs up high and tight around him. Angles their bodies, at once practiced and clumsy, so his prodding cockhead snags against the seeping red folds of her sex. ]

[ He doesn't break their kiss. Instead he slows it, letting it melt into something lingering, soft, his senses hooked for a moment by the hot sweetness of her mouth, the kindling rub of her breasts against his chest, the braided arms and legs and the way their skins stick and unstick -- sweat-hot, damp. ]

[ Then he can't think anymore. A slick nudge, a twitch of his hips -- and he's inside her. First an electric inch, a shaky retreat, and then a slippery stroke that seals his pubic bone against her, a full, juddering invasion of hard flesh as his groan vibrates raspily against her mouth. ]

[anatural]

[It's hardly an invasion when it's been so warmly invited. His dick is more like a welcome guest, or maybe a warrior returned safely from a great battle, greeted with fireworks and dancing and celebrations. Welcome home, her body says to him, tightening around him, trembling, moaning. And perhaps also Don’t ever leave again.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Hei reads the signals clearly, even through the drugging timbre of sensations that judder through him. It is a lose-yourself upspiraling -- the slick fluttering squeeze of her, how his own body is so oversensitized he's aware of the cool texture of the sheets, the hot rub of Korra's thighs and arms ribboned around him, the sheen of sweat across her breasts and running down between their pressed bellies. An overload of hazy heat dropping over his vision, yet so slow and deep, shaking him to the core. ]

[ Gathering his breath, he props himself up on trembling elbows. Kisses the hair scattered damply across Korra's face, ruffled by his breath, before nuzzling his nose against hers, a moment of piquant sweetness. When he starts to rock, it's gentle -- a fluid circling of his hips, slow pushes and deep pressure. Between their bodies, across the expanse of bare skin, between her raised knees, he watches himself sink into her. Feeds himself into the red mess of her sex, swollen and seeping, streaking his cock with blood each time he pulls partways out of her. ]

[ It should be strange -- the awkward spectacle of copulation turned into artful butchery. But it's not her blood he's interested in. It's her. Being steeped in her, breathing in the pungency of her scent, loving the smooth fit of their bodies, the dueling pulse of their stymied pleasure. ]