Who cares what picture you see?

[mortemscintilla]

WHO: Korra and Hei
WHAT: Two crazy kids catch a movie. This thread is about a millimeter deep.

[ A new Mover. Faster Nuktuk! Kill! Kill! The title alone doesn't bear thinking of. Scorpions crawling around in his boxers sound more fun. Hei has no idea why he agreed to go. But Korra assured him it wasn't a four-hour epic, and that if he got too bored they could slip away. With reluctance, but aware of certain unpaid debts of boyfriendly attention, he agreed. ]

[ Since Yin's return, he knows he hasn't been spending as much time with her as he ought to. Too busy setting up living arrangements for his friend, trying without words to bridge the gap of three inexplicable years, to make sure she's safe and -- yes, happy. Because she's wasted eerily away since they've been apart, a dull-eyed washed-out husk of herself. Too Doll-like to fill him with anything but dread. ]

[ The past few weeks, he's compensated by paying her steady attention. Until she understands that he's not going anywhere, until she feels entitled to his time as a friend should. He encourages her to listen to radio broadcasts for events, so she'll be prepared with suggestions about what they might do. He gets her audio books in cassettes, a small, ornately-carved zither to play tunes on, practices his increasingly-spotty German on her, gently coaxes her out to eat all sorts of unthinkable things: arctic hen testicles, jelly of turtleduck, thousand year old eggs. He's not sure the outings make a lick of a difference. But last week, Yin was actually the one to initiate their always-brief, one-sentence conversations, rather than the other way around. Hei takes that as a good sign. ]

[ Tonight, the air carries a chill, and Korra is sunshine temperature, a little waft of summer walking at his side. Hei lets his hand curl around hers, tucking them both with a habitual air into his coat pocket. Also with a habitual air, he scans the street as they drift through the crowd, checking ambush positions, logging exits and hideaways, with the practiced nonchalance of an ex-Syndicate op. Everything looks fine. ]

[ By degrees, he allows his tension to thaw, until it is no more than a small shard lodged in his guts. The theater lies ahead, its marquee of lights boxing in the words Nuktuk like the moral of a Sunday sermon on a church sign. A knot of people wait outside; families jawing amiably, children squealing, teenagers boiling over with hormone-driven energy, giggling and jostling one another. Surrounded on all sides by normal, Hei feels wariness tugging his brows like needle with a thread. But Korra's scent is a sweet tickle in his nose, her fingers delicate, yet comfortingly strong in his, and her soft prattle laps richly at his ear, grounding his scattershot senses. ]

[ Squeezing her hand, he edges in closer. His voice is wary, interest hidden under a hard shell. ]

Is this the theater where they use real butter for the popcorn?

Comments

[anatural]

[No Disney prince, please. Just demonstrating the same level of consideration that she is by not pulling his penis out in public. It'd be kind of fun to blow him here, like when she'd sucked him off with one of Tenzin's acolytes in the room. BUt is she doing it? No.

And he is behaving himself. As hot as this is, as good as it feels, it's not building up to anything or filling her with (much of) an aching need. She could go like this for hours.

BOOM! Korra jumps as something explodes — on screen, fortunately, but ow, fuck.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ The explosion is a deafening clamor -- distracting but not overly-so. Hei tricks out a slow, lopsided smile as Korra jerks in his arms. His chuckle floats out of the darkness, barely a purl of sound against her neck. ]

Want to get out of here?

[ Face it. The movie isn't that engrossing. Not as much as Korra, who sparks a fire that begins as a prickling at his nape and is slowly sweeping through the rest of his body. A few bright memories from the City begin to resurge, and he sifts through them like a dragon hoarding its shiniest trinkets. How would she react, if he coaxed her for a knee-trembler in the back-alley of the theater, or in one of the bathrooms? ]

[anatural]

[She really should stay. Bolin's going to ask her what she thought about the end of the movie and and she doesn't want to tell him that she didn't stay for the end of it. He'd ask why and she'd have to lie because "I needed to go fuck my boyfriend" isn't something she could possibly tell him.]

Let's go.

[She'll tell Bolin she had to go to the bathroom. Grabbing his hand, fingers sticky with her, she gets up and squeezes past the other people in the row, ignoring their protests that she's ruining the BEST PART OF THE MOVIE!!!1!]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Hei lets her tug him through the darkened theater, carelessly trodding on people's feet again and sublimely uncaring. His eyes are on the curve of Korra's skull, the gleam of her shorn hair, then skipping down the line of her back to the sway of her hips as she moves, the sturdy grace of a pole vaulter. Excitement has been stirring heavily in his body, down-low and incognito. As they step out of the darkness, into the bright florescence of the hallway, Hei blinks the red spots from his eyes and lets that desire uncoil, by slow degrees, readjusting his grip on Korra's hand, a tight entwining of humid urgency. ]

[ It's too far a walk to the alleyway. Besides, he'd scoped it out earlier in anticipation of their visit. Overflowing with fetid trash, rotting crates and buzzing flies. Not the sort of venue that will brighten Korra's love-light any. Instead, gaze skating around the periphery to ensure no-one sees them, he tugs her toward the restrooms. Part of President Raiko's re-campaign has been to sign deals with Future Industries for the construction of handicap-accessible exits and entrances, special parking and modified restrooms. ]

[ He tugs her into the closest one, with its deep shallow sink sticking out of the wall. Marginally clean -- apple-green paint on concrete walls, dull white tile, the overripe aroma of lemon cleaning solution. He ignores all that, too busy locking the door, then chivvying into Korra until she is scrambling her bottom onto the sink, nudging his own body between her thighs so she parts them. ]

[anatural]

[Korra wriggles until her butt is secure on the sink. Her hands go straight for the fly of his pants.]

This is crazy. [She just wants to make sure he knows this. They aren't hormone-addled kids anymore; they should be too old for fucking each other silly in a public bathroom. And yet here she is, wrapping her hand around him and coaching him to full hardness, her only excuse being they haven't had sex in a couple of days. (You realize most couples DON’T have sex every night, right? Asami had asked her once, and Korra had been surprised. They didn't do several-hour, multi-orgasm marathon sessions every night, but they both got off at least once before going to sleep, usually. Except when Hei was distracted by Yin, and Korra distracted by Asami.)]

[mortemscintilla]

[ They are too old -- but that amps up the sordid thrill. No one says years of intimacy, a hard-won bedrock of trust, should preclude the raunch of spontaneity. Not to say that he and Korra have plateaued to the tepid stage of old-marrieds' once-a-week sex. People have this idea that they are either constantly rutting -- or else are bitterly distanced from each other. Which is an easy assumption to make, either way, if you catch their interactions. They don't talk much, or make with the kissy-goo-goo faces. But there is always a racing current of something between them, carefully downplayed. ]

[ The idea that they're absolute degenerates with no self-control, though? Completely inaccurate. Oh, sure, when they first got together, they went through that phase every couple goes through where they couldn't keep their hands (or other parts) off each other. But these days? Between Korra's Avatar duties, helping Yin settle in, carving out a space for Asami, Hei's day jobs and his more illicit late-afternoon-shading-into-evening jobs, they're lucky to get five straight hours of sleep, much less five straight hours of anything else. The fact that they still manage, on such crunching schedules, to sneak in a late-night nookie, is just a reminder that their physical life ranks pretty high, and that they're determined to keep it flourishing. ]

[ Is that so wrong? ]

[ Hei doesn't think about it. His breath sings low and jittery in his lungs as she closes her hand on his unzipped erection, the thick column of flesh straining upright as she strokes it to a red-flushed hardness. Dizzy, a grateful rasping coming from his throat, he gathers her in past his heavy coat to curl around his body, to inhale that warm scent that is always leaking from her pores, sweet and spicy like dewy earth, to coax her lips apart and taste her slipping tongue, to mouth at the honey-dark smoothness of her skin. ]

[ Gnawing at her thrumming pulsepoint, a playful vampirism, he breathes, ]

Not as crazy as that time at Cafe Satine...

[ He still, in moments of wry satire, likes to tease her about how crazily she'd come that time -- a gorgeous neuromuscular meltdown, a muffled shriek that he was half-sure the whole building would hear. ]

[anatural]

[Just thinking about that time makes Korra groan in equal parts embarrassment and longing. Sprawled across one of the outdoor café tables, early enough in the morning that nobody was walking around outside but still very much in public... Korra had come so hard she couldn't walk afterwards. Hei had to help her pull up her pants so she could slide into a chair and pretend to be the café's first customer. She's pretty sure the head chef knew what they'd been doing anyway... There'd been something in his eyes when he opened the door and shouted for "Li" to get in there and help him.]

I can't believe we didn't get caught. [She rubs her palm around the head of his erection, smearing precum all over as lubricant.] Remember that time I blew you outside the bar, while my boss was looking for me?

[The ache of those early memories — the emotional whiplash that was Hei post-sex, and in that case in particular how he'd disappeared for a week right after fucking her brains out in that elevator — that all has passed, leaving Korra with only the heated memories of how fucking sexy everything was. Surprising and exciting and new.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Hei deals too much with clarity for that era to blur into a rosy-colored landscape of nostalgia. Even so, as far as happenstance affairs go, what he had with Korra in the City was pretty unique. More than that. Exceptional. She'd ignored, in her blithe naivity, the ennui and soul-sickness that crackled around him in those days like ambient static. Dared to get close to him, without a thought for being infected with his bitterness, spending her affection out without reserve; just as he'd worked off his rage and numbness off on her without hope. ]

[ But then, there was something crazy-liberating and good about having no hope and yet making the most of the moment anyhow. The humid intensity of it, a quivering jelly of want and satiation, of being allowed to connect without repurcussion, no agendas or strings or double-dealing, come back to him with specific vividness now. His skin burns with a consuming itch that could be self-consciousness -- or gratitude. ]

I remember. [ His gaze slews across hers, a dreamy blue warmth surrounding ironic black pinpoints. A beat, then, wry and quietly honest, ] You weren't my type, you know. So innocent. Practically a child.

[ He draws in a sharp breath, her palm a delicious friction across his wet cockhead, and as if magnetized, all the heat in his body pours there to meet it. His hips jerk restlessly into her touch, while from waist-up, his movements remain almost languid, palms tracing her up under her blouse, then down into the waistband of her pants, while he rubs his stubble-grained cheek against the side of her face, moving to kiss her ear. ]

[ Softer, almost thankful, ]

I tell myself ... I should've kept away from you. Except if I had, I'd be dead by now.

[ Metaphorically -- but also literally. Which might still happen. But he's fucking lucky he got to carve out a solid decade of borrowed time. A decade full of misery, ambivalence and death -- but also brightness and naughty games and spirits and travels and delicious sex just waiting to be had, whenever he stops taking himself seriously for long enough. ]

[anatural]

You tried to, remember? But the City had other ideas. [He used to talk about Stock Home syndrome or whatever it was, because the City never let them get away from one another. It used to piss her off, how he'd act like her feelings were some kind of disease, but it doesn't bother her anymore. He doesn't see the world as clearly as he thinks; he has his own set of biases and traumas that color his perception. He can't define her feelings for her. (Better still, he's stopped trying.)]

I'm glad. [Murmured against his neck as she keeps stroking him, slowly, almost methodically, like she doesn't want to miss any opportunity to pleasure him]

[mortemscintilla]

[ No, he's stopped trying to define her feelings. He's even stopped trying to examine the gravity-well of his own love for her too closely, and it isn't because it doesn't bear up to examination; it is because he's been coaxed and then chained too close to it. That was the paradox of love. He'll have to wrench free to get a good look, and once you float away, you can't get close again. ]

[ He doesn't want to. He likes this. Likes being this close, seeing each detail, taste and scent and sight untranslated. You don't need a vocabulary for a woman who creates her own -- a soft and spinning orb, a tangle of glittering drives and desires. ]

[ He wants to say something, but words are stuck in his throat. Korra's breath moves in and out like tide, mingling with his, washing in and out of his ears. Her palm around his erection is exquisite, a gliding stroke of down-and-up that makes him ripple and shudder against her. But good as it feels, he wants more. One-handedly, he scrabbles for the clasp of her trousers, his movements rough and determined. Tugs off her right boot, letting it thud across the tiles, before yanking the right leg of her pant down. He leaves it unrolled inside-out, dangling haplessly, one gorgeously long leg exposed, swathes of fabric clinging to the other, until she's bare-assed on the edge of the sink. ]

[ The fluorescent light is bright and stark, so that her dark skin is almost olive-toned, each hair of her black brows and eyelashes distinct, the tuft of curls between her thighs glinting flat and decorative. With a half-smile, Hei descends back butt-on-heels for a moment. Kisses all over her parted inner-thighs, soft, intent kisses followed by loud, smacking ones -- the kind that usually make her cackle. Meanwhile the fingers of his right hand slide down, combing through her pubic hair, smoothing and spreading them, before he skims the pad of his thumb across the slick tip of her clit, peeking enticingly between her plump lips. ]

[anatural]

[She laughs and squirms, loving those loud, ridiculous kisses. His erection bobs out of his pants, not hard enough yet to defy gravity but trying its best. And it looks... kind of dopey, in an endearing way, much like the noisy kisses to her thigh. Who would have ever thought they'd come to this.

She keeps a tight grip on the sink, and even goes so far as to push herself off it, just a little, shifting some of the weight from her butt to her arms. They did not make the lip of the sink with cunnilingus in mind. The fools.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Who'd have thought it? Not Hei, that's for sure. Before Korra he hadn't really understood sex could have so many modes -- how fooling around was different from making love and also different from fucking. Her laughter is a seeping heat under the surface of his skin, the ribboning movement like wind across a sun-dazzled lake. Humming, he cups both hands under her buttocks, squeezing greedily before dragging her closer to him, until she's at the right level to lick, his breath a burst of hot air across her sex. ]

[ Her scent tickles alluringly at his nose, rich and sweet and heady. Much as Hei likes the whole package of her -- eyes-mouth-tits-ass-legs-hands-arms-feet -- he has a feeling he's grown painfully, permanently fixated with what's between her legs, with the way he can make her hot and slippery in minutes, with how she's so sensitive and eager. Idly, he wonders if he can persuade the girl to shave every now and then for variety, extra sensation, and how smooth the skin might feel against his fingertips and tongue. ]

[ But the request has no place here -- not right now. Leaning in, he kisses her there, hungry and openmouthed, wet delving licks from the cleft of her ass to the soft delicate clit, swirling slippery shapes around it with his tongue. Then he gives up on licking, on playfulness in general -- and sucks, popping her clitoris between pursed lips, drawing on that part of her with a gentle yet relentless pressure, like he's trying to give her a hickey there. ]

[anatural]

[Mind too, right? Eyes-mouth-tits-ass-legs-hands-arms-feet and mind too. Her mind, after all, is just as much responsible for her hair-trigger sensitivity as her clit is.

She screams and bucks up into his mouth, kicking her legs. Yelps as her wrist suddenly gives out and she almost tumbles backwards into the sink.]

Hei!

[She needs to adjust their position but she can't do that with her clit in his mouth.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ His favorite mind -- whether it's full of wriggly eels or leaking sunshine. Even if that mind of hers is wired by warriors and tree-hugging hippies; because it's the reason she always lives so exuberantly, why she enforces balance as a right, not a privilege. Because that mind fuels moods that burn on a scale of Hollywood Technicolor to Aztec Apocalypse. Because that mind is the reason she loves so foolishly and fiercely, as if it isn't a limbic system but a sugar-factory, spinning entire monuments built from tiny surreal moments of joy. ]

[ Yes. He likes that mind very much -- even if he still understands it not at all. ]

[ Her wild scream bounces off the cheap porcelain fixtures, the dull tile walls, the stain-flecked mirror, and shoots like liquid lightning up his spine, a hunger so violent it feels like it's trying to drag itself out of him, a monster clawing below the surface of his skin. Digging brutal fingers into her thighs, Hei wrenches them wide apart, uncaring of her balance, as long as she stays planted on the sink. She's sopping wet and succulent, and he laps at her rapidly with the tip of his tongue, fluttering nymphae to twitching clit, then closes his mouth over her sex and cleans her in earnest, sucking with a purling growl like a feeding animal. ]

[anatural]

[And ouch okay that's her head whacking against the mirror and her lower back being stabbed by the spout. She doesn't even care. She comes so hard her elbows give out and she just barely manages to fall forward, resting her arms on his shoulders.]

Fuck. [She pants and blinks, trying to pull herself together.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ She melts against the sink, one big floppy boneless tangle, psychadelically hazy of gaze and oh-so-beautiful. Hei manages a brief sketch of a smile, licking his slicked lips, her thighs a slippery-soft enfolding against the hard curve of his skull and her sex radiating heat, beads of clear moisture clinging to the dark curls. ]

[ He kisses her there, idly, before he rises and straightens, his head nudging Korra's encircling arms as he exercises his neck, working the kinks out. His dick has been lured to an aching fullness, and rolls hotly near the skin of his abs, the whispering fabric of his shirt. His balls are a soft throbbing knot of need. But he ignores all that for a moment, leaning in to kiss her gasping mouth, to nuzzle a few loose strands of hair, because she's so fucking radioactively pretty after he's done making her thrash and gibber like a little monkey girl. ]

[ Not that he'll call her a monkey-girl to her face. ]

...Pretty...

[ Sometimes the Cro-Magnon classics work best. ]

[anatural]

[Yes. "Pretty" is much better than "monkey girl." Well done, Hei. Korra nibbles on his lip and giggles as someone tries to open the door. She feels too giddy to be embarrassed or self-conscious about it. Yeah, he just ate her out in a public bathroom. So what? Nobody knows it was them.

Still...] We should probably free up the bathroom. [She slides carefully off of the sink, but makes no further move to get dressed or depart. In fact, her hand wraps around his erection — intended to be a promise that she's not going to forget his pleasure, but she could get distracted....]

[mortemscintilla]

They can wait a few minutes...

[ Forehead lightly butting hers, Hei glints down at her -- more poutily boyish than suggestive. He's never been inclined to talk when action suffices, but lately he's noticed his own tendency to exercise facial tics and subtle expressions, where before none existed. He tries to chalk it up to the chameleon in him, the shape-shifter mirroring the body-language of those around him. But it runs deeper than that. Around Korra, it's easier to let his habitual wariness go. To just be -- even if it's by degrees and in flickering glimpses. ]

[ His erection leaks a wealth of ropey heat, balm on raw flesh, second to the warmth of Korra's hand. Curling his fingers over hers, Hei jacks them slowly up and down, letting her feel the twitching cadence of his pulse, hard and taut the flesh is. ]

There's no way I can walk out like this.

[anatural]

[The change in him has come so slowly that Korra barely registers it... she can't tell if he's more expressive or if she just knows him better. A part of her likes the idea of him being a cipher only she can read, a mystery only she can know. She grins up at him as he takes her hand in his.]

I don't know... We could give everybody a show. Let them see what they're missing.

[Another person tries the door, and Korra puts her finger to his lips, even though he's not the one talking.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ If it's any consolation, she knows him better than most people -- except maybe Pai. Knows enough, at least, to sift through his layers and recognize which facets of him are calculated smokescreen, which ones an intrinsic reserve. At least she understands better now, that his mind isn't a nest of hissing vipers, but something altogether more mangled and double-edged and unpredictable. He's not sentimental enough to believe she's helped him heal from it, filled in empty spaces and smoothed jagged edges. But honestly? She is high on the list. ]

[ Attention fastened on the rattling doorknob, he keeps half an ear on her words, ]

And get arrested for public indece --

[ Blinking, he breaks off at the press of her finger, his expression reshaping into one of questioning interest. The fingers wrapped around hers squeeze lightly, an unspoken, What? ]

[anatural]

[The door keeps rattling, that's what. To the point that Korra almost wants to shout IT’S LOCKED, GO AWAY! except that would give away the game.

Go away go away go away go away! She thinks that as hard as she can, even as she wiggles her foot into the leg of her pants, half heartedly getting dressed... and continuing to stroke him. They have to give up eventually. Besides, it's kind of hot, doing this and knowing that someone is on the other side of the door.

I'm going to get the janitor. Well fuck.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Oh for fuck's sake... ]

[ Hei keeps his hand clasped firmly around Korra's, pulse pinwheeling on the edge of urgency even as he pitches his voice to an irritable shout for the benefit of the idiot on the other side of the door. ]

I am the janitor. [ And, mirabilia, he sounds like one of its stoop-shouldered, bushy-mustachioed, mop-waltzing breed, too. ] Keep away from this restroom. A pipe's gonna blow and there'll be a mess.

[ Pun unwillingly intended. ]

[anatural]

[Korra chokes on a laugh. Even after all these years, she can be surprised by what he's able to do. She waits until the person on the other side shouts obscenities about the state of the theater and and storms off before she indulges in some giggling.]

A pipe's gonna blow, huh?

[Her other hand reaches down to fondle his balls.]

[mortemscintilla]

The 'mess' is optional.

[ Hei tries to bite down the smile clinging stupidly to his mouth. Korra's body is a radiant heat against his, in delicious contrast to the cool shiver arcing fizzily along his spine, her fingers strolling down to play with the taut weight of his balls and threatening to make his knees jelly out. ]

[ Swaying, he presses closer to her, hips jerking distractedly as his mouth grabs at her -- temple, ear, neck -- with its own erotic volition. He's bought them a few moments of time, but he's torn between utilizing it for a well-earned blowjob or the more greedy and all-encompassing uprising for a good hard fuck. ]

[anatural]

[Korra's got her own preferences. Much as she'd love to have him plow her until she can't walk straight, that's no way to make a clean getaway. Taking a deep breath, she breaks away so she can finish pulling up her pants, brushing off his protests with a quiet Gimme a second.

Once she's dressed again, she drops to her knees and kisses the tip of his erection.]

I told you I wouldn't leave you hanging.