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]

[As long as Korra doesn't get sand up her vag, she's happy. She laughs as she helps him wriggle her out of her pants.]

This would go a lot smoother if you'd let me undress myself. [It's a longstanding joke, his tendency to strip her instead of letting her undress herself. But awkward or not, the pants do come off and he's there between her legs, an electric shock given form. Before he can do anything more, she reaches down and places him at her entrance herself.

She kisses him, takes a deep breath, and sinks straight down.]

[mortemscintilla]

I'm just --

[ He can't finish. His breath stutters to a halt, before unsnapping with a wet, wheezy moan. Korra's fingers are chilly, but the rest of her pulses heat, her sex a fluid mind-melting swallow that cuts off higher brain-function like a film reel, a useless dark flapping. His breath gusts hotly against the seam of her lips; he's got one arm cinched around her waist, palm splayed between her shoulderblades while the other hand finds a brutal grip on her ass and kneads. ]

[ Beyond them, in a slice of peripheral vision, there is the edge of the water, waves breaking into lacy foam and the sky speckled with bright stars above. He scarcely notices. This has nothing to do with romance or ambiance; his whole body begs to rut, and will do so in the most convenient place. But it's not so black-and-white as the selfish mess of Want Take Have, either. ]

[ Gathering Korra closer, he circles his hips, deep and fluid. Licks the glitter of salt from the hollow of her collarbones, before he kisses her mouth again, a curl of tongue that is both tender and lewd, somehow matching the glint of his half-lidded eyes. Wanting to focus, for the moment, on nothing but this: the most drag of skin on skin, the smooth, slick fit of their bodies and the soft fluttering of both their pulse. ]

[anatural]

[Ambiance is overrated, but romance? This is plenty romantic. This intimacy, this ache, it's unique to them. It's different from the ache she feels with Asami, that she felt with Bolin back when they were intimate. Flowers and moonlight and music don't hold a candle to that.

She wraps her arms around him and rolls her hips, taking a sinful delight in the feel of skin-on-skin. She doesn't mind condoms — she understands their importance — but those first few weeks after his return gave her a real taste for bareback. But he's so paranoid, they never do it as much as she'd like.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ As far as Hei's concerned, they risk bareback entirely too much. It's a point of outright tension between them. Each morning, he badgers her about mindfully taking the herbs in her special sachet. He's even suggested she try the new oral contraceptives that are trickling into the market, if she wants unprotected sex without the threat of pregnancy. He can't deal with the idea of a baby. The memory of Korra's first pregnancy, the bloody wash of the miscarriage, the dismal era is presaged -- it is still raw. He's barely gotten settled into the wreckage of his life. He's slowly coming back to himself, to his routines; a baby has no place in that wobbly framework. ]

[ He's content with Korra. More than content -- happy. It's so hard-won and precarious, and he refuses to allow a volatile element into that mix. Even sharing her with Asami is more teeth-gritted effort than generous lenience. ]

[ He can't say any of that, though. Or think of anything at all, beyond the taffy-pull of Korra's heat and softness, the way it stirs him from brainstem to spine. The fabric of her sarashi is an abrasive scratch across his bare chest; tugging it undone with an aimless skill, Hei lets her breasts overspill into his hands. Hot, heavy, a slow pulse against his palms. He buries his nose between them, takes a deep appreciative whiff of her saltysweet scent, at the same time thumbing her nipples, matching it to the soft jerk of his hips, his cock a tight, slippery nudging against her sweetspot. ]

[anatural]

[She doesn't actively want a baby, but she knows it won't be as bad as he fears. That entire period was just a decade of disaster, one threat after another, never getting a chance to breathe or relax. Her body was in no condition to deal with the needs of a growing life. She may be older now, but she's still in the peak of her fertility, and her life has settled down. She has never been in a better position to be a mother.

Not that she's looking to be one. It's just that the risk doesn't frighten her the way it does him. The risk, in fact, seems more than worth the pleasure of feeling nothing between them. He can likely hear the difference in her voice and the way she moans. Or maybe that's just the effect of the open night. The thrill of being exposed without having to worry about holding back or being quiet.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ He'll never get tired of those noises she makes -- sweet, wordless exhalations dragged out like a string of candied pearls from her throat. Her every reaction burns hotter, more intense tonight, and the overload of stimuli makes him unbearably, ungovernably greedy for more. He wants to spill her back against the crunchy sand, to cover her and pound her until she's screaming herself hoarse, until he's forcing them both to an upswell of pleasure that's indistinguishable from agony. But he also can't resist the languorous pace they've set, the fascination of hanging in her dreamy blue gaze. ]

[ His hair dusts itself across Korra's chest: he cups her breasts in his palms, sweet pucker-tipped handfuls, warming them, then kissing them, although maybe kiss is too chaste a word. Lets his hips loosen into a deep swivel, repetitive figure-eights that grind his pubic bone against her mons, jabbing her, working her higher. With the stars in bloom around her, slipping white dust-beams over her hair, glinting off her heavy-lidded eyes, she is effortlessly beautiful, burning an after-image of herself into his brain. ]

[ He wants to tell her that -- but there's only so many ways you can say it before it takes on a ring of redundancy. He can only hope, with the way he kisses her mouth, delving thirsty gulps, with the way he collects her crushingly close, feeding on the flutter of her pulse, inside, outside, that it's a given. ]

[anatural]

[It's a given... and it's returned. Does he know how beautiful she finds him? Hot, yes, that much is obvious, but he's beautiful to her as well. It's not just his features, or his collarbones, or the way his body is all compact muscle. He's, to steal a phrase she picked up from Chekov, a singularity. Complicated and strange and difficult to understand. He's a living, breathing koan. Sometimes she looks at him and her heart just stops.

She slows her hips when she feels herself getting too close to coming; she wants to hold onto this, make this last as long as she can. She doesn't notice the clouds that drift across the moon, or how they slowly blot out the stars; she's too wrapped up in the way he mauls her breasts. She doesn't even notice the first drop of rain that lands on her head...or the second, or the third. She doesn't notice until it's raining in earnest and she's too far gone to care.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Does he know? Vaguely: her usual look, reserved for him, is one of a twinkly-eyed hunger. But often there are flashes of something else. Something that fill him with a feeling he can't quite parse or dispose of. He'd call that look curiosity. A spark of both softness and wonder. (Has anyone looked at him like that? Amber, maybe, on her palmiest nights. No one else.) ]

[ She slows against him, and Hei jerks beneath her, issuing a tar-throated complexity of purrs, both pleasure and demand. Everything in him quivers to go harder, deeper, a fire-bright buzz under his skin. He ignores it. Too caught up in that wet, melting heat of her, on the sticky, sea-side scent of sex riding the air, on the salt of Korra's skin and the pebbled pliancy of her nipples against his relentless teeth and tongue. ]

[ It actually takes him by surprise when the sky cracks open and pours. Blinking, he breaks away to glance up -- just as fat raindrops hit the sand around them, soaking clothes and hair, slicking skin, like miniature water bombs. Oh for fuck's sake. The noise of gathering clouds must have been gaining on them like a herd of flying bison for minutes now, but it's clear that Korra hadn't heard it either. ]

[ Hei's hair is plastered to his skull, a stream hastening down his forehead; it drips off his nose and onto Korra's chest. Nuzzling between her breasts, he mutters, almost to himself, ]

...And when it rains ... it pours...

[anatural]

[Korra laughs and and shivers. It's remarkable how quickly they're both soaked through. She could bend the water off of them, create a little dry pocket for them, but she's never tried bending during climax. She's not sure she could keep it up.]

Guess we should finish this up quickly.

[Though the cold shock from the rain has knocked her arousal down a few pegs.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ She's not the only one. The sky is huge; the rain seems to be falling from a very great height. Its icy tattoo on his bare skin and the nerve endings beneath is a sharp prickle and a silky slide. Set astride him, Korra's hair is flattened ink-dark to her skull, face lined with trickles, an alluring cold-hot mess that fills him with both a sharp-toothed hunger and a bottomless tenderness. ]

[ He doesn't answer her. He just moves her, spills her on the moist sand without uncoupling, covering her with her skull pillowed in his right hand while the left skims down her body, grasping her knee and tipping it firmly back until he's lodged smoothly inside her, buried balls-deep. Gnawing at her neck, he takes slow hip-grindy thrusts, not gentle so much as relentless, his whole body a bridge of sleek hot muscle across hers, deflecting the cold downpour even as he luxuriates in the pulse of her blistering inner-heat. ]

[ His eyes are squeezed shut, the expression a curiously vulnerable self-absorption, a single-minded intent to bring them both off -- or, failing that, at least get one of them there. ]

[anatural]

What a gentleman. [She giggles, breathless and grateful for the cover he provides. She hooks her legs around him and pulls him in even deeper -- or perhaps it's more accurate to say she doesn't let him pull out. She squeezes him as tightly as she can with her entire body. Come on, she wants to whisper, except she doesn't have the breath. Come. She can feel her body getting tense, winding up like an animal about to pounce, climax an explosion of wild ferocity and need.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ The whole situation is pretty fucking ridiculous. Hilarity burbles up like groundwater through Hei. It's almost a sexual twinge, it starts so deep inside him, stomach muscles quaking, breath singing jitteringly through his teeth as he hides the sharp sickle of his smile into Korra's tender neck. It's amusement at the stupid weather, at their own dumbassery, at the dizzying lungfuls of rain-fresh air and the night of empty freedom and Korra's own wild-blooming aroma. ]

[ He can feel the orgasm gathering inside her, feel the pulse of his stoppered need all through his body's meridians. It's a building strain of countless muscles seeking to uncoil, soon and with violence, a tremolo stress in his architecture, a moist rhythmic grind of chest to chest, grappling arms and clutching fingers, the trembling widespread sprawl of Korra's delicious thighs against the buffer of his heavier muscle. ]

[ Blindly, water dripping across his face, slicking his hair like shiny tar, he catches her mouth with his. Kisses her, messy unbeautiful kisses with too much teeth and spit, his breathing louder than the rainfall, edging towards frantic, everything in him surging toward that neon-bright crest, then leaping past it, a juddering head-to-toe spasm that turns him rigid, dissolving into a hot gush, then collapsing in a heavy sprawl across Korra, boneless and drenched and blind-sided. ]

[anatural]

[Korra ripples and purrs beneath him, enjoying the last aftershocks of pleasure. But not for long. Being naked in the rain is not as delightful as the romantics say. She kisses him and then shoves him off.]

We'll get sick if we stay out here. Where'd you put my -- ah. [Her panties are full of sand. She uses a blast of air bending to clear most of it out, but they're still not wearable. Sighing, she shoves them in her pants pocket. Makes sure she isn't going to leak out spunk (the big problem with going raw) and then pulls on her pants. It's a good thing they don't live far from the water; she doesn't want to walk through the city streets like this.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ There's nothing delightful about being in the rain. Dragging on his soaked pants one-handed, Hei daubs the dripping water away from his eyes with the back of the other hand. Sand, the residue of seasalt, clings to him as a second skin, itching and moist. It should have felt good to reaffirm himself with a dose of spontaneous rutting in the great outdoors. Instead it's just tedious, as it's always been -- the grime, the clean-up. The only highlight is having Korra so close, watching her do that silly bendy-hoppy dance as she slings her clothes on, stuffs her unwearable panties into her pocket, and in general behaves like the heart-tripping, mind-melting, glowy-eyed one-girl-carnival she is. ]

[ With a half-smile, he watches her, drenched in the steady patter of the rain. Then a tiny crab crawls down his bare shoulder and onto his arm, its tread a whisper and a tickle, and he scowls and flicks it off. Bleakly, he realizes he'd left his shirt and coat at the apex of the statue. Considers fetching them, then decides -- fuck it. Both are easily replaceable. He's ready to go home to a hot shower, clean dry boxers, and a big bowl of ramen washed down by a few cups of sake. ]

[ Edging closer, he gently grabs a handful of Korra's hair at the nape, and the rear belt-loop on her pants, then drags her in to kiss the ticklish spot of her nape. Scoops up the unraveling loops of her sarashi, binding them around her torso with a practiced briskness, before helping her into her wet, sand-crusted blouse. There's always, he thinks, a strange intimacy to dressing her afterward -- almost as potent as the fucking itself, yet small and satisfying as a full-stop after a sentence. ]

[ Once she's presentable (or at least semi-decent), he nudges her shoulder, ]

Come on.

[ The faster they get home, the faster she can boil and drink those special herbs of hers. There's no warm afterglow for him after fucking her bareback, no masculine pride at the idea of her hobbling home with his spunk dripping down her thighs. Just a niggling anxiety, like leaving the oven on at home -- multiplied by a hundred. ]

[anatural]

[Sometimes she wants to tell him she can dress herself...and other times she deliberately goes slowly so he can do it. Which is what she does now. He binds her sarashi again and she bends the rain away from them, using a small movement she developed as a more subtle, if more energy-consuming, alternative to the traditional method of bending water away.]

Pushy pushy pushy.

[She kisses him, a silent Don’t worry so much.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ He watches her with something like an idle admiration, the dainty fan of her fingers and the potency of the bending itself like an invisible calligraphy, strokes and slashes that deliver so much meaning within their simple motion. What, he wonders, is it like to wield all that power so carelessly on your fingertips? A question that often arose around Pai -- but which he'd never asked her. ]

[ He doesn't want that power. Not even now, when Pai's energies are fused with his. Not even when, with practice and patience, he can summon the most mind-boggling death-charges with a snap of his fingers, disintegrate solid objects in an eyeblink. That brand of power makes him wary. It isn't hard to open yourself up and let the enormity of it flood in, shadows splashing up against the psyche, pouring from the skull, a tide of arrogance rising. What they don't want you to learn, the war-mongers, the godlings, the ubermenschen, is that power wants to flow. If you make yourself a door, it will open you. Fill you. Then unhinge you, once it's seeped past your limits of self-control. ]

[ He doesn't need that. Better to rely on what you can't lose -- sane or insane, crippled or whole. ]

[ Butting his head lightly against Korra, he responds to her silent message in kind. But that's my job. Threads her small fingers with his, and drifts with her through the watery curtain of rain, wistfully content in the way a traveler might be, as if he knows that his stay in a place like this -- even if the place is just in his head -- won't last forever. ]