anatural: Korra frowns (Annoyed: Sulky frown)
[personal profile] anatural posting in [community profile] fuse_box
WHO: Korra & Hei
WHAT: Korra kind of regrets letting Hei come see his kid.

[If the circumstances were any different, Korra would be tempted to drop Mai in Hei's arms and run out the door. Considering what happened last time she did that, the thought doesn't even cross her mind. But she is not looking forward to Hei's visit one bit.

She walked him to the front door after they put Mai to bed. He leaned in — or maybe just inclined his head, Korra didn’t know, wasn’t thinking as she pulled him in for a kiss. Bodies crushed together, both their unspoken desires reflected by the bulge in his pants. Another five seconds of kissing and she would have taken him back to bed.

She groans and buries her face in the rug. Mai giggles & claps her hands in response, clearly seeing this as a gesture for her entertainment; Korra raises her head to give the baby a dry look. It softens quickly into a sigh.]


Don't ever fall in love, Mai-girl.

[If she didn't have Mai to look out for, Korra knows she'd take him back. She hates sleeping alone; that's why she still sleeps in a cot in Mai's room, even though her illness is now almost a year passed. Asami's invited Korra to live with her, and she's been giving it some serious thought, but moving is a pain in the butt and she loves this house. It would be so much easier to just take Hei back (so much better if the events of last year just never happened).

She thunks her head on the floor again, prompting another round of giggles from her unsympathetic toddler. This was going to be an awkward visit.]

Date: 2015-06-21 02:39 pm (UTC)
mortemscintilla: ♥ Promise I'll be kind, but I won't stop until that boy is mine (Li - Wistful)
From: [personal profile] mortemscintilla
[ He's trying to adjust to the disjointed rhythms of his life. Since Korra and Mai have returned from the South Pole, he's kept a tactful silence about Tonraq's death. A tactful distance, too -- for Korra's benefit as much as Mai's. ]

[ They've reached a tentative arrangement. Every week, he is allowed to visit his daughter. Each time, Mai's features grow more uncamouflaged by puppy-poundage. She's begun to manifest a striking resemblance to her mother, and very dimly to Pai -- which is to say that no baby could become more quickly more adorable. It's a prettiness that fails to replicate in photos, though. He has a few snaps of Mai -- given to him by Asami -- and she always seems unremarkable in them, lacking the vivacity Korra had as a child, or Pai's pale daintiness. ]

[ Hei couldn't care less. The moments he spends with Mai -- a litany of lackadaisical activities like playing with trains on the carpet or digging for treasure in the yard or reading to her from her colorful books -- are tiny drops of the purest, more dazzling happiness he's ever experienced. For her, it's as if he is a completely different person than he'd ever been for anyone else. She knows nothing about him but what he is in her present-tense. With her, there is nothing at all to live down. ]

[ Each time, he seems to delight her nearly as much as she delights him. And each time, he finds whole new superhighways of adoration in his makeup, entirely for her. It's more than he'd dreamed. ]

[ Meanwhile, matters between him and Korra remain a point of outright discomfort. Their heated interlude in the last visit -- a mark of leftover passion as much as an outlet for stoppered tension -- makes matters worse, not better. His desire for her refuses to subside; if anything it seems to spring from a deeper place than ever before. But it's blurred, too, by self-disgust. By the knowledge that he doesn't deserve her. Certainly can't keep her happy, or Mai safe. Sometimes he's amazed she can look at him, speak to him at all -- so entwined is he with the knowledge of past failures and trauma. ]

[ He doesn't deserve love, or kindness, or second chances. Not that deserving has anything to do with it, or most of humanity would go wanting. ]

[ That evening, at their arranged time, he arrives at the Beach House. His heart is pounding so hard he can feel his own pulse beat in his fingers -- anticipation, dread. Each time, he's queasily convinced that Korra will turn him away. And each time she doesn't, he struggles with a glad surge of relief that is nearly disorientation. ]

[ At the door, he can almost hear Mai's muffled giggles. The sound wakes something in his belly -- giddy butterflies and bubbles. Hefting the wrapped package of puzzles and home-made red-date rice congee for Mai, he knocks twice on the door. ]

[ Hopefully this won't be too awkward a visit. ]

Date: 2015-06-22 12:06 pm (UTC)
mortemscintilla: ∅ We got mouths to feed (Hei - Lost This One)
From: [personal profile] mortemscintilla
[ Hei almost wishes he could fix this moment in light and emotion. It's that time of evening where the sun rests at a particular point in the sky: hitting his eyes directly, the shine robs the world of dimension. The beach house is a black cut-out hammered flat by the refraction of the sun. ]

[ Yet, framed by the doorway, Korra gains perfect solidity, beautiful and bright, the energy coming off her positively kinetic. In her arms, Mai is a zippy, big-eyed bundle. She grabs the air in front of her with plump little hands. Her cries of Baa! Baa! are whisked with an almost carillon musicality into his ears. Slowly, something in Hei's chest relaxes and it is simply good: the yellow-lit tableau on the porch, the cheery toddler, the two silent adults. ]

[ Exhaling, he edges closer. Korra's quiet Hi fills the silence in a way that deepens it rather than underscores it, allowing him to hear all her nervousness. He is nervous in turn, nodding what passes for a greeting. But it's never his way to be paralyzed for long. In the next beat, he dips his head, dropping a kiss to Mai's cheek, near enough that Korra's inrushing aroma overlaps the baby's powdery scent. The nostalgia is nearly overwhelming; if he stays close, he's half-sure he'll do something stupid, like try to kiss her, too. ]

[ Straightening forcibly, he tries for a wan smile. ]


Can I come in?

Date: 2015-06-22 01:17 pm (UTC)
mortemscintilla: ∅ But if you make a move I won't think twice. (Hei - Emo)
From: [personal profile] mortemscintilla
I will.

[ Stepping past the threshold, Hei remembers when there was a strange, straightforward relief to be home. To flip on the light, toss his keys, toe off his shoes and hang his jacket, with Korra following in his wake, her voice rolling lullingly, sweetly, in his ears. Now the whole house feels strange to him. Changed in a dozen tiny ways that, taken together, seem massive. The toys, the aromas, the knickknacks and everything in it is all about a kind of life that feels too foreign to him to just step into and pull up around him like a pair of jeans left puddled on the floor. Nothing here belongs to him -- not since he'd carelessly tossed it aside. ]

[ Even laying claim to Mai -- his own daughter -- feels like a presumption. ]

[ Shaking it off, he carries the congee and the baby's gift into the kitchen. His mind has left a strong residual image of the space; it always disquiets him to glance around and notice jars misaligned, greasy dishes in the sink, crumbs on the counter. Granted, the place is no pigsty. But during his stay, he'd always kept everything forcefully neat in his usual spartan way. ]

[ Carefully, he gathers Mai out of Korra's arms. Their fingers brush in the exchange; his belly sparks a warmth that shoots up his throat and makes his ears hot. Ducking his head, he focuses on plopping the crowing Mai in her high chair. She stirs with a perky restlessness, kicking her little red booted feet and fixing glittery gleeful eyes on him. ]

[ Against his will, Hei melts inside with that familiar, half-distracted tenderness. ]


Hungry?

[ Meh! is the chirping reply. He reads that as a 'Yes.' ]

Date: 2015-06-22 02:38 pm (UTC)
mortemscintilla: ∅  I can't hold back (Hei - Count On Me)
From: [personal profile] mortemscintilla
[ He's not sure having another is the wisest idea. Especially given his wobbly beginning as a father. He's still half-convinced a monster like him is no fit company for a baby -- even as Mai's tiny presence fills him with a general air of being pumped full of a foreign substance he can't digest. Happiness -- or something so burstingly, terrifyingly close to it that the difference doesn't matter. It's nothing like what he'd felt for Pai: he hasn't transferred all that bottomless devotion to the baby, installing her right up there on his sister's vacated pedestal. ]

[ This is something completely different. The sight of Mai burns a bright-dark hole of sweetness right into his chest. Makes him feel almost whole. Alive. (So how could he have walked out on her? His own defenseless child -- how deep must you core into any human heart to find that awful well of expedience?) ]

[ Distantly, he hears Korra bustling around the apartment. The rest of him stays focused on Mai. Playfully, he zooms the spoon towards her face in a zigzag pattern, catching her off-guard before she can think it's a game and push it away. She seems to like the congee; after five or six spoonfuls, she opens her wet giggly little mouth in expectation for another scoop. ]

[ Feeding her patiently, he murmurs -- not in that retarded croon adults use with babies -- but in his quiet, everyday voice, ]


We'll look for seashells later. If your mother lets us. How's that sound?

[ Meeeeeeeh! She says this the same way Marlon Brando shouted "Steeeeeellla!" in A Streetcar Named Desire. Hiding a smile, he spoons more pureed rice porridge into her mobile mouth. He half-hopes, if Korra agrees, she'll tag along, too. ]

[ He feels closer to her, somehow, when the baby is between them. ]

Date: 2015-06-22 09:43 pm (UTC)
mortemscintilla: (Hei - Earnest)
From: [personal profile] mortemscintilla
[ Once Mai is fed, she signals her satisfaction with a gurgling little burp. Unfastening the highchair tray, Hei lifts her out and sets her on the kitchen tiles. She is still so very light -- barely the weight of a puppy, in his opinion. But at the same time so solid, her body girded with a pudge-edging-on-fat. He's always been thin and Korra, for all her succulent mapwork of muscles, is trim as a willow switch. The charitable genes they've inherited seem to have reversed polarities in Mai. ]

[ Hei doesn't mind. He's seen babies wasted away by malnutrition, tiny cadavers twitching in their cradles. At least Mai is healthy. If she doesn't shed the doughiness by seven or eight years, he'll consider a structured fitness regimen. Right now she can barely walk. The idea of subjecting her to athletic training is no better than forcing her on the Bataan death march. Hei has little experience with fatherhood. Even less with being a good father. But he has no interest in becoming Maxley -- that overbearing giant with his face twisted in its irritable scowl, his voice booming commands and his fists like battering rams when you didn't obey fast enough. ]

[ Gently, he grasps Mai's hands. It's a little ridiculous: he's practically bent in half as he coaxes her to walk. She is wobbly as a tightrope walker -- swaying to and fro as she tries for balance -- but so perfectly trusting. Her hands so tiny and soft in his, hot with a shivery heartbeat. A casual intimacy he wishes could go on forever. ]

[ Glancing up, he notices Korra gazing at them from the window, Naga an enormous white mass at her side. He blinks, before managing a dry twitch of a smile. Falling down on the big bad predator tip, if you don't even notice you're being watched. ]

Date: 2015-06-23 12:03 pm (UTC)
mortemscintilla: (Hei - Now what?)
From: [personal profile] mortemscintilla
[ It's not quite like the early days. Back then, this dizzy, curious sweep of heat never existed. Affection rarely escaped around the edges of his control; he'd understood his own limitations. He'd existed in those days as a creature of cold drives: eat, sleep, fuck, kill. An automaton cored-out by the Syndicate. And Korra had dared to stay with him. Monumental bravery or abysmal stupidity -- he isn't sure. Yet her attention, her warmth, had been a secret, subtle re-birthing. ]

[ Even now, when he's with her, he feels that familiar numbness fading from his extremities. ]

[ She flushes, and his mouth almost twitches into a real smile. Instead, he dutifully gathers Mai up into his arms. She crows a mighty moist-eyed protest, clearly wanting to try more of the Walking Thing. As Hei rocks her gently, she subsides into a burbling sputter, her round head swiveling on her neck like an owl's as she spots Korra and the Polar Bear Dog at the window. ]

[ Naaaadaaaa. Gleefully, she surges in his arms, practically attempting to swim through the air toward the Polar Bear Dog, like a salmon splashing upriver. With effort, Hei readjusts his grip so she won't fall. Brings her to the window, where Mai presses both pudgy hands flat against the glass. After a beat, Hei does the same, left palm flat, fingers spread, thinking absurdly of how, in prison movies, the convict and his girlfriend always try to touch hands like that through the Plexiglas barrier. ]


Window, [ he says to Mai, in English, enunciating it slowly but casually. An experiment of how many languages she can pick up. Then, in Portuguese, ] Janela.

[ Bin bela! Mai chirps in reply, looking so pleased with herself that he doesn't have the heart to correct her. Doesn't have the head, either, to contemplate anything beyond the satisfaction of her small squirmy weight in his arms. ]

Date: 2015-06-23 12:52 pm (UTC)
mortemscintilla: ∅  I can't hold back (Hei - Count On Me)
From: [personal profile] mortemscintilla
[ Hei shakes his head. For now, Mai gives off a scent of powdery milk, mixed with the dusty residue of wherever she's crawled across the floor today. She's attempting to crawl in his arms, too. Across the window, knees pumping so quickly he is sure the friction would will the glass, her face squinched with confusion as if caught in an invisible barrier. ]

[ Children are so clueless. It tries to be a snide thought. Except this baby must surely have been constructed by a wizard, her flailing arms and free-spilling giggles working like a pattern of inky lines in a magic spell, acting directly upon his belly to force a hiccup of laughter no matter how hard he tries to resist. Biting his lip, he grasps Mai around her rounded tummy. Lets her climb with hands and feet across the window -- a pint-sized spidergirl -- before he dares to meet Korra's gaze through the glass. ]

[ His grin has faded; the rest of his face seems pleasantly exhausted by trying to stopper the laughter. Quietly, ]


Is it okay if ... I take her to the beach?

Date: 2015-06-23 02:19 pm (UTC)
mortemscintilla: ∅ Pass before these eyes (Hei - y u no listen?)
From: [personal profile] mortemscintilla
[ He can see that wary, dark-edged contemplation that takes residence in her gaze -- if only for a few minutes. He knows what it means. Much as Hei wants her forgiveness, he knows better than to imagine he deserves it. Mai comes first and his own needs come second. There aren't any illusions that they'll be a family, but Hei wants to offer his unremitting attention, if Korra is willing to take it. His uncertain status in this world, his floating disconnection, which drops down heavily moment to moment, the gory memories of his past -- all this makes him afraid. Afraid he won't be equal to fathering a child, equal to the responsibility it thrusts upon him. ]

[ Equal to Korra's expectations. ]

[ But he's staying, for Mai, for her. She is what he wants, to do right for her, to be right for her. ]

[ Maybe, if he can do that, and if she will go on being kind to him, her presence will help dispel those haunting reminders of his failure. Maybe her presence will make him into a normal man. (And if it doesn't -- it'll hurt, but that's how life is.) ]

[ Cradling Mai, he steps out onto the front porch to sniff the coolish evening air. Cicadas and crickets creak out of the tall grass, while the dark arcs of birds swoop across the purpling sky. The air has a salty, bracing tang that rapidly fills his nose and lungs. In his arms, Mai kicks and lets off a high-pitched burble, before subsiding into a fascinated silence as she regards the vista. ]

[ Peering down at her, Hei waits for Korra and Naga to come around. Her eyes glitter like two blue marbles in the gloaming; her focus is absolute, the lineaments of her face resembling Pai's when she first woke from her Remuneration, dreamy yet clear-gazed, her mouth a soft sated curl. ]

[ Quietly, ]


We'll try swimming. Not now. Maybe soon.

[ 'Oooon! Mai twitters in agreement, fat fingers plucking at his shirt collar. He has to fight a brief, terrible sadness -- knowing he'll return to his own little flat empty-handed, nothing but her nonsense prattle wheeling around in his skull. ]

Date: 2015-06-23 09:18 pm (UTC)
mortemscintilla: ∅ Oh, there ain't no rest for the wicked (Hei - Bluest Of Blues)
From: [personal profile] mortemscintilla
[ Something fizzes in Hei's chest -- bright and unnameable. Despite his own dry-eyed cynicism, he grasps onto this offer on a thin string of hope, the same way he longs to grasp her body, gathering her close, a mute misshapen creature both fearing and daring to trust. ]

[ His voice is soft out of surprise, not reluctance. ]


Sure.

[ The pond was their favorite place to soak, a slice of private paradise -- although he'd always suspected Korra had used it with Asami before -- and the memory of it makes him heat from balls-up. Shaking it off, he focuses on Mai. It's easy enough -- the shore lies dreamy and tranquil under the blanket of the evening. Surf booms against the beachhead several yards down the gentle grade, a sound of earthbound thunder that makes Mai's eyes go hugely bright. ]

[ Baaa. Baaa. It's a quavery little question. Half-smiling, he stops where the sand is sparkling-wet, lapped by the lacy sway of surf. Kneels, and gently plucks Mai's miniscule shoes and socks off, before setting her down. She giggles, tiny toes wriggling in the sand; squeals at a stunned pitch of delight when the waves slosh in, the shock of cool water hitting her ankles. ]

[ Keeping a secure grip on her hands as she bounces, Hei dares a sideways glance at Korra, ]


Definitely half Water Tribe girl.

Date: 2015-06-23 11:49 pm (UTC)
mortemscintilla: ♥ Torture me with a smile (Li - Comforting)
From: [personal profile] mortemscintilla
[ Hei can't explain it, even if he tries. He's never experienced happiness in its raw state. Not since he was a boy. Yet each time, he's confounded, even disturbed, by how tactile his feelings for Mai have become. What started as an attempt at apologizing, clumsily, for his past mistakes -- at doing Mai no harm -- has become an entirely different determination that infuses his bloodstream, tiny seeds planted in his brain, growing to spread through every extremity at an alarming rate -- blossoms of helpless affection. ]

[ He doesn't know how he fell so dizzily in love. It really was like falling: one day Mai was just this bitsy squirming burden, and in the next she was enthralling, precious. He wants to know what this little girl holds dear: he'll give her as much of it as she wishes. He wants to know what she hates: he'll spare her the worst. ]

[ Dimly, he's aware of Korra settling closeby -- a pretty blue-eyed sentry. He resists the darkly wistful itch to glance at her, trace her with his gaze. Instead he focuses on Mai. Scooping her in his arms, he swings her so her tiny feet skim the glittering surface of the waves. Tosses her -- only to pluck her out of the air -- a playfully giddy twirl. The child lets off peals of laughter, looking positively tickled pink. Clearly the antics have her blessing to happen again and again. ]

[ The sky deepens from purple to inky blue. The moon and stars gain brightness, standing on their exact reflections on the surface of the night-darkened water. Splashing with Mai in the surf, Hei tries not to think of when he'll have to leave. It's already near Mai's bedtime. When he gathers her up, she opens her smiling little mouth in a yawn, exposing a bright scattering of milk teeth. ]

[ Fighting a mixture of affection and dread, Hei lets her burrow against his chest. Quietly: ]


Eat. Sleep. Play. It's a tough schedule.

[ Meh, sighs Mai, in drowsy agreement. ]

Date: 2015-06-24 12:45 pm (UTC)
mortemscintilla: ∅ I got mouths to feed (Hei - Considering Options)
From: [personal profile] mortemscintilla
[ Hei isn't sure what he misses more. The growing warmth where their arms brushed as they'd drifted to the Beach House. Or the soft Mai-morsel cradled to his chest, which now feels like an empty space as Korra takes the baby away. Against his will, his gaze lingers on her without blinking. She's so perfect she belongs in a music box. It's a marvel that anything so lovely could be carved from flesh and sinew and bone. ]

[ Reaching out, he splays his fingers across her belly: a ticklish piano movement. Mai lets off a sleepy, lisping murmur, squirming to lay her furry dark head against Korra's shoulder and hide her face. After a beat, she peeps at him, eyes twinkly, a shy curl of a smile at the apple of her cheek. ]

[ Hei almost smiles back. But his eyes are a contrariety, as if he's thinking already of his rickety little flat with its creaking ceiling fan, the threadbare pallet and the pervasive stench of mold growing in dark corners. He rarely ever sleeps there; mostly he prowls the streets at night, patrolling for trouble though there is nothing to find, feeling like he is poised on the lip of something big and enormous, a dark gelid lake he is supposed to dive into, that will envelop him so he vanishes. ]

[ He blinks forcibly, lifting his gaze to Korra's. His throat moves as he swallows. ]


I should be thanking you.

[ For letting him see Mai. For welcoming him into the house when she had every reason to reject him. Even if it's just a validation of their history, a compulsion fed by pity, he doesn't care. His visits to Mai have become a lifeline. ]

Date: 2015-06-24 02:02 pm (UTC)
mortemscintilla: ∅  Ain't nothing in this world for free. (Hei - Mask Off/In Wait)
From: [personal profile] mortemscintilla
[ He drifts after Korra to the door, a cold, certain dread of leavetaking rising up like bile. Tries to burn the after-image of Mai into his brain: bundled up in her fuzzy blanket and bright blue otter penguin pajamas, her small, rather stubby hands curled into pink fists near her drowsing face. Wafts of her sweet milky smell still cling to his nose. They are muted by Korra's own alluringly jangling aromas, which have a more visceral pull as he follows her toward the door. ]

[ He feels cool air on his teeth, and knows his mouth is open, ready to say a stilted goodbye. Instead Korra drags him close, her kiss exploding like hot sugar on his tongue. Hei lets off a ragged noise -- shock, approval, epiphany. It occurs to him, with a transfixed horror, that she might have stayed with him all this time, in a state that seems in retrospect like such bliss, if only Mai hadn't been born. She'd ejected him -- rejected him -- for the baby's safety. If not for that she'd have gone on treating him the same way, being the same way. ]

[ It's terrible; it reminds him of women who stay with bastards all their lives. Who go on tolerating the worst of abuses. Until it all runs together, a cold piling stream of wrongs, gathering and snowballing into disaster. ]

[ He is a disaster. Her desire for him -- it feels wrong no matter how welcome she is against his body. The symptoms of a damaged psyche, a youth of warped innocence, misjudged priorities -- even it was ever explicitly said, by either of them. ]

[ Shit. Shit. I can't be this person. I can't do this to her. ]

[ It is unthinkable. He refuses to think about it. He needs to escape. ]

[ Inhaling sharply, he jerks his mouth away from Korra's. Sets his hands on her shoulders, trying to gently edge her back. ]


You don't -- [ He sounds like there are gritty shards in his throat. ] You don't need to do this.

Date: 2015-06-24 02:40 pm (UTC)
mortemscintilla: (Hei - Personal Space Pls)
From: [personal profile] mortemscintilla
[ He doesn't want to argue with her. The very sound of her voice seems pour down his spine, heating his flesh, threatening to melt him into compliance. But he needs to consider the details, clicking together like beads in a calculus, a cold efficiency of facts. He's hurt her enough times already. Has endangered Mai, and there's no guarantee he won't sink into himself again at some point -- toxic, immovable -- and do it again. He understands that Korra is lonely. The demands of single parenting and Avatar duties are brutal. She's just lost her father. She's been softened into vulnerability by that sloshing stew of grief that is sister to alcohol. Imbibe too much, and you lose your clarity and do stupid things. ]

[ Like sleeping with him. ]

[ There is a silence at her end. Stubborn, incredulous, angry. He can't tell. His head is spinning. He'd never meant to embark on this physical shambles with her at all. Never meant to kiss her, not when he knows he's a bad habit she needs to drop. Yet here he is all flushed with tenderness, the impulse to touch her slipping by all his censors. ]

[ One hand stays clasped to her shoulder. The other lifts to encircle her head, fingers tangled in her hair, thumb stroking back and forth across that wonderful three-inch spot on her smooth brow. ]

[ When he speaks, it's imperceptibly shaky, self-conscious. ]


You can't want this. [ Or me. ] Not after everything I've done.

Date: 2015-06-24 09:37 pm (UTC)
mortemscintilla: ∅♫ All these icons are keyworded to hooker songs :D (Hei - A Moment To Grieve)
From: [personal profile] mortemscintilla
[ Startled, Hei swallows his first sharp protest before saying, ]

It's not -- about being noble.

[ That whole martyr mentality makes him ill -- being ennobled through suffering, love a spiritual sickness rather than a sustenance, all that bullshit. Somewhere along the line it's become fashionable to be who you are not, squeeze yourself into cramped cubbyholes, spend your life in abject misery to disguise your basic self. If your nature is selfless, giving, honorable, open, unabashed, forthright, decent or whatever -- great, wonderful, bully for you. Not everyone is built the same way. ]

[ Which is what the problem is. Korra believes he's making excuses. That instead of struggling to change -- to bend and break himself into better shapes -- he's taking the coward's way out. She doesn't understand what a fine line he walks every moment -- submerged between who he wants to be, and what he'd forced himself to become. He knows he's dimensions and years away from the Syndicate, Heaven's War, Contractors. Yet he's so utterly altered by his ordeals in that life that he can't fit in to his new settings, can't meet the expectations of those around him, or his own expectations -- despite his best efforts. ]

[ He doesn't want to be this carved-out carcass. This walking hand-grenade. Yet he understands his problem is intensely personal so he must be responsible. Find that fine line between his needs and the existence of others. ]

[ His fingertips trace the curve of Korra's cheek. When he speaks, the words are rough and low with effort. ]


I know you're the best judge of what you need. But some things I did, Korra, not forgivable. We both know it.

Date: 2015-06-24 10:34 pm (UTC)
mortemscintilla: ∅ We got mouths to feed (Hei - Lost This One)
From: [personal profile] mortemscintilla
[ Hei understands everything she's laying out. Understands it is justified, and right, and true. Yet his heart flutters weakly in his chest like a half-crushed bird on the pavement. The pressure of his banked sadness is only bearable when he doesn't have to think of what he's thrown away. Whatever he thinks he'll achieve by improving, becoming a better man, a better father, are only his own fantasies. Whatever he thinks he'll find by sleeping with Korra again is fantasy too. She doesn't trust him, he can't possibly make her happy -- and there are dozens of others who will scratch her itch better than he can. ]

[ If he succumbs to her right now, fucks her, it will be fed by obligation and self-loathing, because he is so heartsick for her that he'd almost like to believe such a thing could overcome his terrible betrayal. ]

[ He swallows around the knot in his throat. His fingers skim across Korra's cheek -- affection, apology -- before he forces them to drop away. Forces his body away from hers, his face held carefully inexpressive, even as want races along his nerves to reach every inch of his skin. This isn't about trust, she says. It's true that they've fucked while devoid of trust for years. Frequently fast, and violent, done in positions that let them wring pleasure from each other while yet remaining distant. Bodies banging together. ]

[ Except that neat expedience has lost its appeal. ]


I know you don't trust me anymore. But whatever's come between us, you'll always have Mai. You'll have your family, your work, and people who love you. You'll have your fling -- with me or with anyone else -- get the loneliness out of your system, and pull through.

[ He keeps his tone gentle, like it is some kind of reasonable proposal put to her. Tries not to stare at her, to throb with want. ]

[ Quieter, ]


It'll be worse for me after.

[ A few scraps of intimacy with her -- that's worse than none at all. ]

Date: 2015-06-24 11:00 pm (UTC)
mortemscintilla: ∅ He stuffed his bank account with righteous dollar bills (Hei - I'm All Aloooooone)
From: [personal profile] mortemscintilla
[ Not guilting or comforting her. Simply warning her that he knows she's unhappy, only it'll be worse if he's in her life, in any intimate shape, whether she thinks so or not. Worse for him, too, because as much as the predator in him disdains a life as a domesticated dog -- a doting husband-and-father -- spending time with Korra, sharing her bed while knowing he doesn't deserve to share her life, or Mai's ... It's like pressing his nose up against her window, wanting to be inside even as he understands he doesn't belong there. ]

[ Not anymore. ]

[ He can't say that to Korra. He simply nods, cutting his gaze away -- reticent, awkward. Feels at his back for the doorknob, not daring to glance at everything he can't have again -- before he slips out and makes his escape. ]

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