Sharp sense of insecurity

[anatural]

[This is a really bad idea. Korra knows this, repeats it over and over to herself as she takes the elevator up to Hei's apartment.

Just a sad little girl willing to spread her legs for anyone who'd pay attention to her. A sad little girl who can only love people who hurt her.

She thought she had worked these issues out years ago. She's no longer ashamed of her sexual history or her turbulent relationship with Hei. She's comfortable with who she is. And yet ... The spirit's words clawed their way under her skin, turning her blood into slime. Making her feel tainted and deformed. She destroyed the spirit, but the wound remains.

She can't bear to go home to Mai and Asami like this. She's in no condition to really accept the comfort that Asami has to offer, without secretly wondering if the other woman was just blinded by affection. Most importantly, she doesn't want this taint to reach her little girl.

This is a bad idea. But she presses on because she suspects it's the irrational, self-loathing part of her talking and not her real self. Yet a sick feeling in her gut leaves her uncertain whether this is something she really needs ... or a terrible mistake.]

Comments

[mortemscintilla]

[ There should be a familiar anonymity in the darkness. Should turn Korra into a fragrant rumpled shape, barely distinguishable from shadows -- just like in the old days. It shouldn't matter what she does or says; Hei can just get what he needs. Because he needs this fucking, this sweet, sinuous female body in his arms, so much. ]

[ Except it's not that simple. The blackness is too vivid with the past. Korra's every motion sparks nostalgia behind his eyes. A shock to the core. Memory made flesh. ]

[ She folds herself around him, the tangled dark bloom of her hair tickling his jaw, and it feels like she's bursting with some titillating secret -- the way she won't kiss him, look at him. Hei's throat feels tight, and he knows he is scared, on some level. Because this messy interlude won't change anything between them. Won't undo his own selfish betrayal. But it's hard to swallow that reflexive lump of denial -- that irrational hope that maybe... maybe if he tries hard enough... ]

[ Stop it. Squeezing his eyes shut, he rubs the heavy fistful of his cock across her belly. Kisses her ear, her jaw, the damp heap of her hair, while his two fingers determinedly work deeper and deeper into that tight pucker -- sinking in to the knuckle, resting, then probing deeper, until he's got her cored like an apple. He's never considered himself an obsessive-compulsive sex maniac. But with Korra, it's as if he's always driven to discover how close he can get to the threshold of both self-denial and cruelty without triggering a mutual brain-fry. ]

[ Luckily, Korra never seems to mind his frequent and consistent string of failures. ]

[ When he's judged she's ready -- more-than-ready? -- he carefully tips her thighs up and back, letting her legs fall wide open as he kneels up, the better to watch her. Rough fingers part the cheeks of her ass but give no further preliminary as the head of his cock presses in. She is hot and fluttery and perfect and he stirs his hips, drilling into that tightly muscled hole and opening it up with slick, controlled stabs. Deep, deep, deeper -- while his thighs shake and his balls tighten. ]

[ Halfway inside her, he stills. Lets off a small but expressive whoosh of breath, like puffed steam escaping a kettle on the boil. ]

...Okay?

[anatural]

[Except it is changing things between them, though Korra knows it shouldn't, the same way fantastic sex shouldn't have lulled her into forgiving his numerous other transgressions. Her weakness for him goes deeper than a superficial addiction to pleasure; great sex isn't that hard to find. Korra feels like she's spend the past year holding her breath, and it's only now that they're tangled together that she can let it out.

It's love. It's relentless, uncompromising love.]

Yeah. [Her voice shakes from the tension of her frustrated climax and the sudden pressure of unwelcome tears. I want him back. I want him back.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Something about the wavery effort in her voice makes the rims of Hei's eyes sting. Curled up beneath him, doubled like an acrobat, her body feels at once obligingly dewy and bittersweetly distant. Something that's washed into his arms for the space of a few heartbeats -- but may unexpectedly be swept away on a hopeless tide, beyond reach but never beyond recall. ]

[ Carefully, he sinks -- into her arms, and also deeper inside her, his dick a hot ache as it rides in, full and twitching, splitting her up the middle. A chill jolts electric-bright down his body; he lets off a seething hum at how perfect it is, his spine dipping helplessly, the hard bone of his forehead pressing to Korra's as he melts closer. ]

[ Panting, he turns his face to her hair and kisses the messy strands. For a long moment, he simply stays spilled across her, a heavy frieze of muscle and sweat. Waiting for that moment of sweet flexion, where she adjusts to the pressure, her body pulsing around the thick intrusion. Always, it seems as if it will never come -- until it does. ]

Korra...

[ The word tastes like a rivulet of salt in his mouth. Burying his face in her hair, he starts a slow, steady, almost serpentine rhythm. Almost frictionless, his mind thinning into a dreamy darkness as he sinks into the sensations, into Korra, and somehow deep into himself as well, indifferent to whether he comes back, or comes. ]

[anatural]

[He sinks into her and she wraps her arms around him, tight enough to choke a weaker man. She doesn't want him to move too much, afraid climax will bring an end to the spell they're under. She doesn't want sense, responsibility, reality to come back.

I want him back.

She clings to that thought as she cries out with every thrust; petulantly rails against the voices reminding her why this should only be an interlude. She's behaving like a child, refusing to listen to reason (and yet that childish refusal to listen to reason had gained her Naga. Hard to argue with success.)]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Each time she cries out, Hei's heartbeat feels like a stop-motion explosion in his chest. Warmth uncurls up his body, not like a sizzling coil but like the first slice of daylight in darkness, until a strange sense of both nostalgia and passing sadness touches him, stirred by everything Korra embodies. Serenity and brazen, spinning fire. Soft-floating innocence and that pure, bright power that burns within her like a flaming sword. ]

[ Folded up in her arms and legs, Hei feels his world narrow and blur, the elements of the room coming together as if to evoke a different, better self. When he was just a boy, and the stars were still real, and he had a family, a sister who still smiled. When he was old enough to have only a dim understanding of the world's risks, too young to feel any real sense of danger. ]

[ He says nothing about it. Only gasps, a basso profundo thud of sound as Korra engulfs him -- inside, outside -- her hands grabby, wonderfully strong, until he imagines his bones creaking at the pressure. He knows she is struggling with some excess of emotion, too vivid even for what they are doing. His own throat is a knot, and his vision spangles and fades so everything disappears, and the idea that he might never have this again, never be this close to her, chokes him. A snarl tears at his chest, like a beast struggling to escape through the flesh. ]

[ Swallowing it down, he saws his hips faster -- a fine line between force and pain. Korra's ragged breaths feather across the ridge of his collarbone; his own punched-out exhalations stir her hair. Angling his head, he kisses her temples, her eyes. Dips to feed on that succulent pout of a mouth, while his strokes grow at once erratic and hyperfocused, the hard crest of his pelvis grinding across her mons. ]

[anatural]

[Korra's mind goes blank as her climax finally hits her — a punch to the gut that knocks the breath completely out of her, with such intensity that she can't even scream. She claws at him like she's trying to climb her way back from the fall. She doesn't want to come, doesn't want this to end.

I want him back.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Her whole body seems to swallow at his, secret shudders beneath the skin. Hei almost can't stand it: his optic nerves are going to fry in his skull at the sight and feel of Korra falling apart, her entire body gorgeously wet and shaking with want, nails blazing across the sweat-damp expanse of his back. His thoughts jumble incoherently at every new, lapping crest of pleasure -- it is that good, but it can't get better because it will kill him. It is already breaking him, making him ecstatic and vicious. His hands curve tighter into the contours of her hips as his spine coils helplessly -- a jerking breathless spend that ripples all down the long, long line of his body. ]

[ Afterwards, he surfaces only to blink heavy eyes, the hot moist spill of Korra's body still filling his arms. Isn't sure if he was dozing or unconscious for that millisecond, except that his arms are still clasped loosely around her, his cock, not hard anymore, but still long and unbearably sensitive, inside her. They are both drenched, but he hasn't felt this drained and comfortable since ... ]

[ His mind shies. There is a weak tremoring in his chest that makes him cough. ]

[ Raspily, not-quite-joking -- (not-quite meeting her eyes): ]

I think ... you gave me a heart attack.

[anatural]

[Korra melts into the bed, her eyes closed, and laughs weakly.]

That's nothing ... to what you've done to me.

[She pulls him down so he's completely sprawled on top of her, his weight a reassuring press against her body.]

I might not ever walk again.

[mortemscintilla]

Good.

[ A forcible swallow. He feels like he is talking through ground glass. He's aged a decade. God help him. ]

[ It doesn't seem as if Korra is going to slip away. Strange, but miraculous; these days she handles him like a radioactive rash. (And how sad is it that his every thought carries that mental tag: these days?). Feeling bold, he draws up the blankets, shifting only so he can dump the condom in the trash, before splaying across her boneless languid body. It doesn't feel like a cuddle: it's too insatiable, too tightly-woven. He doesn't want to stop touching her. Every bit of friction, the pebbles of her spine where he strokes her back, the warm ticklish drag of her hair across his cheek, is exquisite. ]

[ Outside, it is still raining. The faint scent of downpour fills the room. Everything almost-silent except for the dripping of water from the eaves and windows -- and his and Korra's gently sawing breaths. ]

[ There's a beat, before he asks, his voice edged with quiet, ]

Stay?

[ Stay the night or Stay forever? He isn't sure. ]

[anatural]

[She shouldn't. She should shower, go home to Mai and Asami, let them know she's all right. Except ... it's not like Asami is expecting Korra back tonight. (Times like this, Korra actually did miss those stupid devices in the City, which she could use to send a quick note to Asami without letting reality intrude too much.)]

Okay. [It's not like the world will end if she stays. Besides, she's exhausted. And she wants him so badly...

Sighing, she nuzzles him, burying her face in his neck to block out all light. (Something she's never really done with anyone other than him.) She wishes she could slide him inside her, not to fuck again (yet); just to feel him in there. There's a black hole of need inside her that doesn't care if her body is spent.]

I'm thinking of taking Mai to the Fire Nation for a month. To visit Ambassador Zuko. [The former Fire Lord was getting too old to travel like he used to, and Korra wanted to see him again before he passed.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ She says Okay, and there is a quiet wing-beat flicker in Hei's chest. Gratitude and relief. And he once thought she was the only one who was needy. Exhaling, he shifts, settles himself closer against her, kisses the warm patch of skin he finds near his -- her temple. His eyelids are heavy, but he can't turn his gaze from the grainy-gray window, shimmering with rainfall. The seafoamy smell in the room is familiar, almost pleasantly comforting, and suddenly the futon seems so cozy and accommodating. He has nothing like this contentment in his life anymore, can't he just, for a few minutes, enjoy it, before ... before... ]

[ His eyelids flutter and close. ]

[ Taking Mai to the Fire Nation. ]

[ Tension plucks the strings of his nerves. He isn't sure how to take this. A gentle distancing? A reminder that they both lead separate lives -- and should continue to? Or maybe ... an invitation? ]

[ Keeping the strain out of his voice, he says, ]

You could leave Mai here. [ He nearly says Our daughter, but stops that knee-jerk needling in time. He lost the privilege to toss around words like us and ours after what he did. Fingertips stroking lightly down her back, he hastens to add, ] If you want, anyway.

[anatural]

No! [Korra has gradually made her peace with unsupervised overnight visits, but it is a hundred years too soon to leave her daughter alone with Hei for that long. Her voice softens after the knee-jerk response fades.] That's not what I meant.

[She takes a deep breath, gathering her scattered thoughts and tangles of feelings. Her fingers trace nervous, idle patterns on his skin.]

You could come with us, if you want.

[It's a compromise between her good sense and her aching desire to have him back.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Something in his chest flares, as if he's been pierced with a red-hot shiruken. He nearly asks Really, except he is afraid she might backtrack, make a nick-of-time escape once she remembers herself -- either five minutes after the hormone-soaked indolence fades, or tomorrow, in the bright sobriety of daylight. He's afraid too, of being absolutely crushed after his long-dormant hopes are stirring. Of disturbing the comfortable nullity he should not dare breach -- otherwise all the heartache and misery sweeps through him in a dark wave. ]

[ Hard to succumb to the seduction of trust, after everything that's happened. But, he reminds himself, if he's in a precarious spot, then Korra's is ten times riskier. ]

[ Eventually, his voice dropping before it trips into a boyish stammer, ]

I -- all right.

[ Although he knows he should be cooler, nonchalant, because BK201 never used to tolerate being unnecessarily jerked around -- he feels ready to fly to the Fire Nation with Korra and little Mai at once. With his eyes half-closed and Korra's heavy skull nestled against his cheek, he imagines nights of this, days of this: this beautiful girl in his arms, smooching, undressing, her eyes blue and glowy and opaque as he gazes into them. Or baby Mai's warm wriggly weight in the crook of his elbow, her words like a chiming nonsense tinkle from a music-box. ]

[ How could he possibly refuse? (How can he ignore how much it will hurt afterward?) ]

[anatural]

[It's dumb to feel so happy because of his response. Dumb to have invited him in the first place. Dumb to have done so many things, and Korra doesn't care. Her mind flies straight to where Hei's is: happy picnics with Mai running around giggling; steamy nights tangled together as the little girl sleeps.

Almost as though in preparation, she reaches down and slides his cock between her thighs, so its length rests nuzzled up against her curls. She's not addled enough to take it inside without a condom, but she wants it close.]

Good. [They can work out the details later. For now, this is enough.]