things left unsaid

[electric_lady]

WHO: Asami & Hei
WHAT: Hei's return throws Asami's world into chaos.

[Days pass, and Mako's words still echo in her thoughts: Li’s alive. With every echo, Asami wishes that hearts were as simple as machines.

She's happy for Korra. Korra and Li — Hei, though Asami's the only one of their group to know that — have been together for almost as long as Asami's known them. And she likes Hei. She'd been suspicious of him once, when that dorky facade of his started slipping, but his devotion to Korra had been unquestionable. Asami appreciated that about him, even envied it a little. She's never inspired that kind of loyalty in anyone, not even her own father. So she's happy for her friend. Truly.

She's also heartbroken, a fact which is as surprising as Hei being alive. His return means the end of the sweet, secret relationship between her and Korra. Not a romantic one — they're friends who share intimacies. But Asami hadn't realized just how much she's come to depend on those intimacies until now.

She wishes Korra would call. They need to talk about what's going to happen between them, what's going on with Hei, whether she's going to tell him. She refuses to let this relationship end like the one with Mako; she needs clarity. At the same time, she understands why it would slip Korra's mind. Of course she's preoccupied with Hei's return. That kind of shock would knock the ground out from under anyone's feet.

When she ends up on Korra's front porch, it's not because she intended to be there. Asami had overseen the loading of some new products at the dock, and instead of going home, her footsteps took her to Korra's place. Korra and Hei's place.

Taking a deep breath, she knocks.]

Comments

[mortemscintilla]

[ The lazy pleasure and the gathering impatience come together in Hei's groin and chest and head: a cool tingling under his skin, a hot buzz in his skull. It feels like Korra is trying to eat him alive, her teeth sharp and her lips hungry, leaving a snake-trail of blotches that throb in her wake. Breathless, inventorying himself, he realizes he's murmuring something to her, insensible slurred words of approval and affection. Staring at her lush mouth, her eyes heavy and blue and seeming to sing to him, before he tips his head to kiss her, parting her lips and letting his tongue curl restlessly against her teeth. ]

[ It's a long moment before he shifts under her -- a deep, attention-stirring thrust. Pulls his arms in to palm her heavy breasts, cupping them as he starts to rock. The kisses he dots around her face, across the shells of her ears, the points of jaw and chin, are soft, intent, trancelike. The ones he prints to her mouth, over and over, are messy, invasive, unabashedly raw. Letting her know how much he wants this. How grateful -- how fucking idiotically happy -- he is to be here with her. ]

[anatural]

[Oh, she knows. She kisses him back with even greater force, like she's trying to imprint this feeling into his bones, so he can hold onto a sense of security even when they're not fucking. She rolls her hips in rhythm with his, but forces herself to pay close attention to any signs of impending climax. As soon as it seems like he's close, she plans on going still and letting his desire abate a little before she works him up again. She's going to make this last as long as she can.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Hei surges and ripples as she moves, a tense wall of muscle against her, a slow throb of bloodrush inside her. So much throttled reassurance in her kisses; he feeds on it with a dizzy gratitude, his mouth grinding against hers until he can feel her teeth cut the inside of his lip. Breaks on a jittery gasp, forehead rolling against hers, only to resume the kiss again, too needy to be gentle. He's not sure when fear and insecurity will pull the safety pin on his temper again, make it start to tick. But right now he doesn't care. The heat of her cuts through everything like a pure-white knife. Yet her tenderness is a balm, soothing that bitter ache inside him. ]

[ Fingers dimpling the yeilding skin of her hips, leaving bloodless half-moons across her waist, her ass, he lets her ride him. Each swivel of her body is delicious, tortuous. His vocalizations against her mouth are a filthy hitch-and-skip: humming in wordless pleasure, softly, barely audible, like a club-mix where the bass thumps beneath the synth, then with increasing urgency. The way she moves feels like a song, too: she has bluesy jazz, she has rock-and-roll. ]

[ And he has about fifty fucking seconds. ]

Korra...

[ The words are like the rasp of a blade across a strop. Plea, praise, warning -- all in one. ]

[anatural]

[She stops moving; loosens her muscles; softens her kisses. If she were really committed to orgasm denial, she'd pull him out of her entirely, but she's nowhere near ready to feel that emptiness again.

She breathes against his lips.] Make it last. [Do whatever you have to do to keep from coming just yet.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Hei lets off a breathless Mmm, either assent or frustration. He doesn't know how much longer he can keep going. At the same time he can't bear to let this end. Not yet. His breaths come in a shallow rush -- he is nearly hyperventilating. With effort, he schools his inhales into slow scoops of oxygen, his exhales into smooth relief-valves of tension. Steam curls from the water; the fronds of trees around them are blurred into a green wall topped by a limitless deep-blue sky. He hasn't even realized how much he's missed that unbroken sky. Nothing like the sheer black emptiness of space. ]

[ Korra's whole body seems to grip his, to hotly swallow it. Stroking the jut of her hips, thumbs rubbing contemplative whorls there, Hei stirs beneath her. A different rhythm, more minute and focused, sweet circles and languid pressure. His expression is turned inward, brow creasing first with strain, then in a completely different way, engaged, smoothing out as he tests his control, gets his balance. An high-wire act finding his footing on a wobbly rope. ]

[ Tipping his head up, he kisses Korra's pointed chin. Then, in a moment of gooey impulse, her nose, peering with a sort of mesmerized amusement into that dreamy blue of her eyes. ]

You should ... see yourself.

[ The lush hitch in his voice implies all the filthy things he won't say to her. All the crude blandishments and gentle appellations he can never solidify into speech when she's this close. ]

[anatural]

[Korra is transfixed by the changes in his expression, the subtle shifts that, compared to when she first met him, seem almost exaggerated. There is so much to see in him if you just look closely. He is a complicated, heart-wrenching, tangled mess — much like the world she was born to serve. By loving him, she's come to understand and accept the dark & ugly parts of the world; by accepting the world, she's come to love him even more.]

Oh yeah? [She smiles, cheeks warming at the unspoken compliment, teasingly inviting him to keep going.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Hei's eyes trace that soft prickle of color across her cheeks, the way it deepens so prettily in the dip of her throat, across her breasts. How strange -- how charming -- that she can still blush, even after all this time. That all the piling layers of a terrible life haven't withered with still unfurls inside her with such delicacy -- the petal-soft curiosity of a child, but with a sibyl's patient, timeless wisdom. ]

[ So unlike Hei, who can sustain neither patience nor delicacy -- never for long. Least of all for her. His desire is like a fever drug running screaming through him, head pounding hotly just as everything else is pounding and pounding for her, like a chorale with a well-known tune, like he is merely a boy and she is merely a girl, and everything is tidal and base and sweet. ]

[ He can tell she's fishing for more praise. He doesn't know how to respond, though. To speak what he can usually get across so eloquently with touches, kisses. To be inventive and swoony without it being a lie, plucked from his well-stocked repertoire of the thousand petty and profound deceptions. But the truth is so complicated. ]

Like you don't already know ... what a raving beauty you are.

[ He's wry, indulgent of Korra's pique, willing his eyes not to cut away with familiar evasion. ]

[anatural]

It never hurts to hear you say it. [Not that the evasion bothers her. He seems to have gotten himself under enough control that she can start rolling her hips again, working him back up to the breaking point.]

I could list your own charms, if you'd like.

[mortemscintilla]

[ Hei lets off a helpless, gaspy cry, half-aborted as his hips snap-stutter, then slow into an undulant grind beneath her. He tries, desperately, not to lose it. Not yet. Not yet. When she speaks, he can't help the fleeting, noiseless laughter that tugs at his lips. ]

Don't.

[ He has no idea what she considers charms. The most suitable words he's ever applied to himself in that arena are assets -- a streamlined body that hasn't succumbed to the sagging pull of weight or age yet, an intuitive sense of different bodies, their pressure-points and pleasure-centers, a hefty handful of cock that (mostly) does its work, a face that's aesthetically pleasing enough to disarm, but bland enough to melt into the crowd when his work is done. ]

[ It's the way he's always labeled himself -- as a weapon, a tool. A deadly and efficient brand of both. But nothing extra -- no thrills or frills. It's never occurred to him that Korra would, of course, view him from a different lens. ]

[ He gathers her in closer, loving the moisture-sticky skid of her skin across his, the gorgeous squashed warmth of her breasts nestled against his chest. He kisses her, first with a gulping fierceness, and then, with a soft, languorous sigh, melts it into a warm nuzzle of lips, a delicate scrape of teeth. ]

[ Quietly, half-snark, half-truth, ]

Anyway ... I'm in the habit of thinking of us ... as that stupid story of Beauty and the Beast.

[ Not a tale she's familiar with. Maybe he'll narrate it, in all its twisted, Stockholm Syndrome-y glory, when they have time later. ]

[anatural]

[No, she doesn't know the story, but the title gives a fairly clear indication of what the broad strokes are.]

My best friend in the world is a polar bear dog. I like beasts. [If he doesn't shut her up quickly with kisses, she might start detailing the things she likes about him anyway, just because she can.]

[mortemscintilla]

Everyone has hobbies.

[ Not that this is a hobby he'd encourage. He'd tried -- and failed -- to starve it out of her, right when he'd first sensed that leaping spark of interest for him. This girl with the jouncing ponytails and the big liontamer's eyes, made fearless by her naivety, going so far as to stick her head in the monster's maw just because she could. What if, instead of letting her closer, he'd bitten down, snapped her in half? What if he'd let the undercurrents of distrust and violence, always a thrumming skein in his psyche, gotten the better of him? Ignored the allure of Korra's promise, everything about her a sweet siren's song. I will give you a new life. Perfect, shiny and new. ]

[ He doesn't want to think about it. ]

[ Instead he catches the melony curve of Korra's skull with widespread hands, fingers threaded in her damp hair. Tips her head back to kiss her throat, the underside of her chin, thumbs smoothing her feathery brows, tracing the lashes that dance like ticklish velvet against his touch. He loves this: the smooth, strange fit of their bodies; the skittering pulse of their blood. Loves the rocking of her hips, the restless stir of his, like two waves meeting and melting, quieting the storm of his thoughts even as they make his brain chime to itself like a choir of broken glass. ]

[anatural]

[Korra knows she shouldn't, if she wants to prolong this as much as possible, but she can't help sliding a hand down between their bodies so she can touch herself.]

You're not a hobby. [She doesn't have the words to explain just how important he is to her, nor the breath. Pleasure is building, stealing her voice and her ability to think.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Hei can't help the smile, faint and off-center, at the sight of her, hair mussed and skin glittery-wet, palm starfished between her splayed thighs. He can feel the after-echoes of her shyly strumming fingers, the way she clenches around him, a slick ripple of heat, a slow throbbing pull of muscle. Gently, he insinuates his own hand between their bodies. Displaces her fingers with his, teasing over her clit very lightly with the pad of his thumb. Each time, it's so strange to imagine it, an arrowhead of sensation focused in such a small place. ]

[ He works her with a soft relentless pressure, his hips picking up rhythm under her, a deep repeated prodding inside her, sending ripples flowing out across the surface of the water. They match the heat cresting inside him, wave upon wave, his erection painfully beestung, pleasure threatening to drag him over the falls and crash him. Hungrily, he nudges Korra's lips with his, coaxing them open and feeling hot breath blossom against his skin like some invisible aerial flower that blooms and dies a thousand times, an instant at a time. ]

[anatural]

[Just like that, she's hurtling up towards her peak. She wants to slow it down, keep prolonging this encounter, but that requires a degree of self-control she can't be bothered to muster, not when everything feels so good.]

Do...the thing... [She's panting, struggling to get what passes for thoughts into words.] The sparks... [Hei had been the one originally to demonstrate the sexual appeal of a little electricity, but Asami had developed it into a full-out kink.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ He loves the feeling of her climbing, her body caught up in little pr-orgasmic jolts, her face flushed and mottled under the damp tangle of her hair. At her words, he feels a crazy glee light up his brain. It's a lot of coherence at such a delicate moment: not a talker, his Korra. ]

[ They're in a pool, so he's wary of letting off too strong a charge. Instead he repeats that game he'd played the first time, his free hand closing around the orb of one breast, squeezing it roughly, lifting it to his open mouth. He sucks with a singleminded pressure, the hard tug of teeth and a wet flick of tongue. God, she tastes so sweet, her breasts so soft, yet plump at the same time and resistant to his kneading fingers. ]

[ With his other hand, he keeps grinding the heel of his palm on her clit, in between sloppy whorls of thumb, deep nudging strokes of his cock. At the same time, trapping her nipple in the wet vaccum of his mouth, he lets a jag of electricity crackle out, brief and hot-cold, just enough to send the exquisite sensation shooting through her breast, then down to where he can almost feel the line connecting between her thighs, where heat blossoms and pressure builds to snapping-point. ]

[ He's determined, after all this unbearable waiting, to get her there. ]

[anatural]

[She screams and shudders — not coming, but fuck, so close. Her fingers dig into his scalp, a wordless but far from silent demand for more. Earlier she'd entertained thoughts of trying to get him to come first, just for the challenge; now she's too wrapped up in her own pleasure to indulge her competitive instincts.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Groaning, Hei drives deeper inside her, her scream like flecks of superheated shrapnel raining across his spine, making him arch and shudder. It's hard to tell if she's come or not; she keeps twisting with frantic movements he recognizes as when she's slid into the zone, single-minded and wild and shamelessly ecstatic, and her cries reach a certain pitch that matches the shrill pain of her yanking fingers in his hair, a palpable demand for more. ]

[ So he lets her have it -- deep rapid stabs, the snap of his hips brutal, ruthless, as if he's overcome by the denied passion. At the same time he roots feverishly at her breast, sucking the distended nipple into his mouth, gnawing it with his teeth before he fastens on the other one, a fizzling torment of sparks that dance off her skin, soothed by the wet swathes of his tongue. He can feel his climax looming like a heat-wave shimmering on the highway. Can almost taste the impending fireworks, all friction and fury and beating pulse in glorious Technicolor.]

[anatural]

[She's not entirely sure when she comes either — it feels like one endless wave of pleasure, his touch spiking her back up every time she thinks she's finally coming down. Her voice gets scratchy; her limbs start melting into jelly, and yet her insides continue to ripple and she feels like she's drowning.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ The sight -- the feel of her -- makes his head ring like a perfectly struck bell, the last of his control sliding away in one long shudder of madness. His hips go into their irresistible stutter-snap, his vision thinning at the edges as Korra's wet sex stretches wide over him, throbs in a frenzied rhythm, clamping down to trap his pounding cock, as if it is a rough bludgeon that will ride her blind and stupid. And god, yeah, he wants that sometimes, isn't the first time he can imagine her rolling over and goading her way to delicious punishment, a gorgeous dirtysweet bitch belly-down in heat and panting for it, squirming and desperate like the way she is now, overcome with the heat of her spasms, her climax seeming to render her perfectly without will, her arms and legs flopping helplessly around him. ]

[ He rides higher and harder, filling her, pinioning her, and a moment later one perfect, splitting hit ignites a spark inside him, and he is coming, a sharp, clench-jawed series of shudders, his come jetting like milky venom into the pillowy, fluttering geography of her sex. ]

[anatural]

[Korra wouldn't readily admit it, but she's come to love raw sex. She keeps meaning to get condoms while she's out, but she always manages to forget because she doesn't want to go back to that fake plastic feel, not after days of fucking with absolutely nothing between them. She loves feeling his come shoot inside her. Loves especially how they don't have to hurry to pull out so the condom can be discarded, and she can feel him gradually grow soft inside her. (She and Asami would fall asleep sometimes, Asami's strap-on still buried inside of Korra. They'd doze, fuck, doze again, fuck again ad nauseam without ever really separating.)]

[mortemscintilla]

Fuck...

[ Panting, Hei buries his face in the damply tangled heap of Korra's hair. Takes deep snuffing breaths, loving the way she feels, half melted across him, her sex giving off the occasional belated ripplet around his cock. The water has gone cold, and the sun has slipped away, leaving dying pink streaks in a star-salted sky. He'd like to sprawl there a little longer, letting their sweat cool and their breathing synch up. Outdoors Zen and evening pre-supper afterglow. ]

[ Except mosquitoes are beginning to helicopter around his ears, giving off a maddening whine. One draws so close that he is sure it will fly straight into the canal and then into his brain to suck the blood out of the grey matter. When it lands on the hard little hump above his eardrum Hei pinches it between his fingers; the bastard crumples with a satisfying feel, like softest metal. The satisfaction is short-lived, Dark, sparse clouds of bugs are surfacing everywhere, whining, buzzing. It's disconcertingly like being back in South America. ]

[ With an irritable noise, Hei bats them off. Nudges Korra away, letting their bodies disengage wetly under the waterline. Climbing out on legs that should not be trembling from exertion -- big bad Contractor, here -- Hei shakes himself, like a wolf caught in the rain, drops of water shimmying around his body, then evaporating with hissing puffs as he lets a hot charge flow across his skin. ]

[ Scrubbing one hand through his hair, he offers the other to Korra, blinking with a sated slowness, ]

Come on.

[ Before they end up with more bug-bites than hickeys. ]

[anatural]

[Korra takes his hand, and once she's out of the water, uses a little airbending to both dry herself off and temporarily banish the horde of insects.]

I love you. [Once upon a time, she would've been afraid to say it so openly, for no particular reason. Not anymore.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Hei, zipping up his pants with efficient quickness, glancing around for his belt, blinks at the words. They are, to him, even now, both a precious gift -- and a terrifying chaos. It is never easy for him to say he loves her, not since that time, in bed after he'd dropped back into this world. He seldom says it directly; more often making himself understood by more oblique means. Korra, on the other hand, seems to have no qualms telling him, straight out. But then her talk is often full of giggly, bawdy commentary and snarky nicknames for him. He still can't bring himself to call her anything but her name. Kiddo, once in a blue moon, but never without an edge of facetiousness to it, even now. Sometimes, in the depths of passion, Korra, breathed in both a prayer and an endearment. But nothing else. ]

[ Still, he's graduated past the stage of amateur hinkiness. Enough that there's only a beat, before his blank, see-no-mush, hear-no-mush, speak-no-mush expression erodes, leaving a soft-eyed wistfulness behind. Affection wells in him. Scooping up his belt, then his shirt, he doesn't put it on. Sidles closer instead, draping it around her like a wrinkled, badly-fitting dress. ]

[ Stooping, he kisses her nose. Smoothes the messy licks of hair from her eyes, which are almost periwinkle in the gloaming, twinkly as stars. ]

Let's get you inside. Before the blood-suckers descend en masse.

[ It's I love you too. In so many unromantic words. ]