You have nothing left to squander

[mortemscintilla]

WHO: Korra and Hei.
WHAT: An attempt at Good Fun Couple Times.

[ He's infiltrated the Equalists' gang. Gotten close enough to seep between the gaps, to merge with the leader's inner circle. He's memorized their faces, their patterns, their backgrounds -- and accordingly sketched an outline of their weaknesses. Most importantly, he's learnt their leader's daily routine. After watching him for some time, Hei has discovered that he likes working out at an exclusive dojo downtown. Frequently, he varies the times of his workouts, sometimes arriving at the place early in the morning, sometimes at night. Probably he assumes the resulting unpredictability will make him hard to get to. ]

[ He is half right. Unpredictability is the key to being a hard target, but the concept applies to both time and place. Half measures like this guy’s will protect him from some of the people some of the time. But they won't save him for long from someone like Hei. People, even smart ones, can take strong security measures in some respects, while leaving themselves vulnerable in others. Like double-locking the front door and leaving the windows wide open. ]

[ One more week. That will be enough for Hei to crack the layout of the dojo -- inside, outside. The hit has to look like natural causes, like they always do, so he plans to carry it out here, in a venue where it is far from unthinkable that someone might keel over from a fatal aneurism induced by exertion, or suffer an unlucky fall onto a steel bar, or undergo some other tragic mishap while using one of the complicated exercise machines. ]

[ All told, it's a relatively simple job. The details whirr through Hei's mind, on calm standby -- while the rest of him stays focused on Korra. It is well into her second trimester -- and by that time, he can honestly say none of his worries have receded. Nothing seems to have changed at all, really, except the phases of the moon, and her body. She's gotten round -- alarmingly so, in his opinion -- and has begun to suffer aches and irritabilities and other symptoms of distress. Although she peevishly keeps assuring him that those things are quite natural, they worry him and keep him hovering about her and trying to resolve the perceived issue like it's a rusty blade or a faulty machine, all of which makes her more peevish still. ]

[ Today, though, he'd found a note from her before leaving for work. (Not at the factory; he'd quit months ago, for a more invigorating position with Future Industries, handling some of their mecha-weaponry.) On the late-evening streets, Hei takes out the folded piece of memo paper with its girlishly-scrawled characters. It says: ]

Meeting with the President. Will be back by seven. Be in bed.

[ Hei won't deny his confusion. Or the way his eyes keep bobbling back and forth between president and bed. It is her writing, though he can't imagine pregnant-Korra scribbling those words with him in her mind. Not unless she is under some kind of seriously heavy drug. Their sex life has been sporadic these few months. Korra seems to have learned not to question any willingness for sex that he might show her. ]

[ Except it's clear she's far from resigned to the dry spell. ]

[ Exhaling, Hei drifts home at a measured pace. Between the Equalists, the impending baby, the new job and ever-cropping domestic dramas, his brain crackles like dead television static. But that's no excuse for neglecting Korra the way he knows he's been doing. They both need a good leg-over. It has been...well, a hell of a long time now since the last time. Usually it's just a vague concern; he's always had a low-level libido, which spikes into a cumulative rut-fest only if he finds someone who clicks well with him. But with the recent events, there hasn't been much time for ... clicking. Of any sort. ]

[ Maybe it's time to remedy that. Korra's note is like both a rebuke, and a plea, and a motivational promise. Once the baby arrives, they'll probably have no time for anything -- let alone sleep. Better to indulge in their free time, instead of squandering it. ]

Comments

[mortemscintilla]

[ Under Hei's palm, her belly ripples -- mysterious little jolts. No rhythm that he can ascertain. But there is something inside her. Something alive. It sinks into him, as if for the first time: he feels a species of fear enter his heart that he hasn't felt since Heaven's War. Although he'd been scared most of his time there, it had at least been a coherent fear: fear that a bomb might come whistling out of the chalky dawn sky and through the canvas roof of his tent, or fear that some human grenade might dash inside their perimeter and pull the pin on himself. ]

[ But the fear he feels now is childlike, dreamy. There is no reference point to it. ]

[ Then he realizes it's not fear at all. It's awe. ]

[ Then Korra's hand covers his -- and he jerks himself to his senses. Strange, to realize that even as someone who has existed in the dark, he is so limited by the spectrum of what is visible. How many things are burgeoning and brewing unnoticed? Secretly blossoming into life, just out of sight? ]

[ He doesn't smile. His expression is quietly shocked, torn. But after a moment, he lets his hand twine with hers, fingers a curl of dry, hot kindling. A reassurance, but also a necessary anchor. His emotions are pinwheeling too quickly between overspillage and absence. He doesn't know what to settle on. ]

[ Finally, wrenching his focus on the practicalities, ]

Does it hurt?

[anatural]

No. I thought it was gas at first. [She snorts a little, but doesn't linger on amusement. She brushes her free hand through his hair, her thumb caressing his cheek. It's fascinating to watch the emotions flit across his face. She can't even really identify most of them, but that doesn't bother her. It's a reminder of how intensely he can feel things. Normally he's so self-contained... she knows he loves her, can feel that love in a muted way except when they're having sex. (One of the many reasons she likes fucking so much — it brings both their feelings into sharp relief.)

She leans in and kisses him, wanting to savor the moment, yet at the same time desperately needing him back inside her. She pulls the hand on her belly up to her breast, heavy and hard-tipped and aching for him.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Hei's gaze shutters at the touch through his hair, the thumb imparting its warm caress, and his expression begins to alter, like a door slowly shutting. The whirlwind of emotion inside him rages on. But his nerves tingle, shields and masks kicking in, because while it really is a sad thing, how readily he turns himself off, a prostitution of the concept of honesty in a relationship -- it's also a bleak fact. He feels -- intensely and destructively. There's no denying that. But on the surface, there is only a controlled absence. ]

[ Korra's attention is bright as sunshine -- but he'd blacken and disintegrate under total exposure. ]

[ He's grateful when she doesn't try to talk. Kisses are a sweet welcome. Touch is simple. The dark growth of his mistakes, his doubts, weighs everything down when they're apart -- but here he can imprint upon her the undiluted truth. Curling his palm over her breast, he eats her mouth first with a lascivious tenderness, then with a deepening hunger. Heat flares across his body up into the roots of his hair; his wilted erection fills by degrees to an urgent thickness. ]

[ Breaking the kiss, he nudges her back. Dips his head, licking the flat of his tongue across one pebbly nipple. Catches the other between pinching fingers, then, as he switches breasts, gnawing teeth. An ache pounds behind his eyes, and with it, a sense of surrealism seethes at the margins, the awareness of the baby and everything it symbolizes. But the aroma of her excitement blooms out into the still bedroom air, blotting all worries out. ]

[ Nuzzling between her breasts, one palm starfishing her mons, he murmurs, ]

You want to lay on your side? Easier that way.

[ The dresser mirror is right across the futon; he can watch her face as he goes into her, fan his gaze up and down the ripe length of her at leisure. ]

[anatural]

[Easier to watch herself, he means. She likes that idea.]

All right.

[She rolls over and wiggles until she's pressed back against him, his erection hot and pulsing against the cleft of her ass. The mirror cuts off mid-body, showing only a hint of her swollen belly. Her eyes are drawn to her breasts — shiny and discolored from bites. They should look like that more often.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ All of her should look that way: the sleek, voluptuous cascade of her body, the dark skin reddened by the force of his kisses, blotches of teeth-marks on her neck and shoulders and breasts, her lips so swollen they are almost pouty, hair spilling everywhere and eyes a misty blue glint between the dark tangle. Her entire pose from her bare feet to the wicked curl of her mouth says: I am yours, and you need to do wicked things to me. Now. ]

[ Well, Hei thinks, as he spoons her. Okay. ]

[ Slipping his right arm under her neck, he winds it round her shoulders, and palm brazenly spanning her neckline and then her breast, hefting its warm delicious weight. Hardness prods the curve of her ass, his dick a hot, satiny-hard push. With one hand, he draws her uppermost leg in, clasping her knee, to give himself better access. His erection glides along the cleft of her buttocks: then he hooks his hips, and the angle is abruptly optimal. Mouthing the crook of her shoulder, he enters her slowly -- tight and slick and hot and oh sweet fucking yes. ]

[ Hei's breath stirs the hair on her nape as he sinks all the way in. His hum is dreamy, the dreaminess a lie. Every inch of him thrums with impatience, nerve endings alight with the bright-red agony of glass shards grating over exposed bone. ]

[anatural]

Don't pretend. [Or don't hold back. It's hard to tell the difference with him. She clenches herself around him and rocks her hips as best she can. He's going to have to work harder than that to get her screaming again.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ She clenches all those girly-bits around him, perfect and slippery-sweet and playing his hot spots just right -- and for a beat Hei can't even pretend that he's doing the driving. ]

[ His breath bursts raggedly from his parted lips, catching the end of a repressed groan. Hitching his hips, he jerks closer, mouth buried in the crook of her neck. His cock, heavy and slick, stretches her open from behind: his fingers skim the round pooch of her belly in front, combing through the wet curls of her mons. He hooks one finger into the cleft of her sex, catching her clit with the rough tip. Teases her, little flicks of sensation, as he starts a tight, grinding rhythm. Not gentle but relentless, riveting her sweet-spot with cruel accuracy and repetition, while the right hand tweaks roughly at her nipple, the left rubbing a fingertip butterfly-rapid at her clit. ]

[ He doesn't care about pacing himself. Doesn't care if she gets breathless or oversensitized. He wants to watch the sensations play out across her face, to feel her body thrumming hard and deep along that corded fault-line of pleasure that becomes nearly pain. ]

[anatural]

[Is anyone doing the driving? Because Korra doesn't feel like she's in control. She's watching herself in the mirror without really seeing — her vision turns inward, away from the sight of her rippling flesh, sweat-slicked skin, because it's too much. She wants to focus on the way he feels inside her, and his hand on her breast.

She lets out a strangled cry and grabs the hand on her clit. Too much. It feels like a spike is being hammered between her legs, each thrust bringing searing pain, the rippling afterwaves almost orgasmic before another spike slams her again.

A very dim, distant part of her is glad they don't have neighbors, just before her orgasm hits and she screams like something is being ripped out of her.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ She comes, her body spinning tight as a drawn bowstring, clamping down on Hei's thrusts so fiercely that he snarls. That is all he can manage. No words, but beastly noises on cue, no fucking problem apparently. His thrusts turn sharper and shorter, his entire being narrowing to just the sensations spiraling between them, that needy wet congestion of perfect friction, on the way Korra ripples, the pleasure seeming to tear out of her in a shocked scream. His entire body spasms in demand to hers, thighs to cock to shoulder-blades, pushing deep, grinding hard, over and over, as he gasps against her ear, pressing shaky, messy kisses into her hair and onto her temple and cheek. ]

[ How, he wonders dizzily, had he gone so long without this? Without these lovely tart slices of Korra-ness? Just the sight -- the feel of her -- slides through him like a bell of red-hot brandy, which she might as well be, head to toe, except for that flower of secret glowy tenderness she nourishes in him. Impossible, unchangeable Avatar, dirtysweet little kitten, twisting him all around with her adorable mews and the wicked curls of her smile and her wild-foresty smelling skin and her -- ]

Fuck.

[ The curse tears loose in gratitude as he nears his peak, pure filth and coded love-lyrics as he is released. It hits hard, the undertow of darkness sweeping him under, brightness rising to hover above him as he goes down. ]

[anatural]

[Korra sags into the bed, feeling like overworked clay. It takes her a few minutes to catch her breath.]

Let's not do that again. [A moment later, realizing how that sounds] The going so long without, I mean. The sex was great. The sex is always great.

[She wraps her arms around his, holding him in place so he can't even pull out. His first instinct is going to be pulling away, she knows, but she's not about to let him. It's not like he has to worry about getting so soft the condom falls off. And as far as she's concerned, he owes her for the weeks of deprivation.]

But seriously. Let's not wait so long next time. [They don't have much longer to fuck whenever they want, wherever they want. Korra wants to enjoy it while she still can.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Sure enough, Hei tries to fall away from her and onto his back. But she keeps him in place: heat-puddled and sticky against him, his erection gradually softening in the twitchy grip of her sex. Too weary to resist, he spoons her, one hand cinching her breast, the other splayed across her round belly. Lets his eyes drift shut and buries his face in her hair, inhaling the scent of her sweaty body, that heady whiff of pheromones and drying juices. It is good, and the change of late evening sunlight from minute to minute is good, and the prospect of a shower and a snack later. ]

[ Her prattle laps at the edges of his drowsy awareness. Sweet and heavy like sips of milkshake, but nothing he can make sense of. ]

Sure, [ he says it thickly, meaning it, whatever it is she's asking for. ( Somewhere in the rational honeycomb of his brain, unsoaked by exhaustion and hormones, a man styled after Taro Hirai's mystery fiction types ironically: He was a blind man with an armful of dynamite. He would have signed anything right now, even his own death warrant.) ]

[anatural]

[She rolls her eyes. He's not even really listening. But hey, he said sure, and she's going to hold him to that. Give him a little while to recover, and then go for round two.

He can always take off work tomorrow.]