learning the new normal

[anatural]

WHO: Korra, Hei, and Mai
WHAT: Like getting special time wasn't already hard enough.

[Parenthood is even more relentless than being the Avatar. This is the realization Korra has come to (yet again) during her family trip to visit Lord Zuko. At least as the Avatar, you can tell people to handle their own problems for six hours so you can sleep. Try telling that to a two year old. (She has tried, actually. It did not work.)

Korra slinks into her room after tucking Mai into bed. She can only hope that the little girl decides to sleep through the night. She needs Mai to be rested and well-behaved for their visit to the ailing old Fire Lord, who is only now recovered enough from his illness to see the little girl. His health isn't strong enough to deal with a tired and temperamental toddler.

She throws herself onto the futon and takes a deep breath. Whenever Hei gets back, she's going to read him the riot act for not being around at bedtime ... except not really. Mai threw a tantrum about being put to bed without "daddy" around, but Korra doesn't want her getting too used to Hei's presence. This trip is a trial run for letting him back into their lives full-time; Korra's still not ready to commit completely.

Though him not being around isn't really helping his case. Where is he?]

Comments

[mortemscintilla]

[ He blinks at the scream, full of such grumpy energy that it's nearly enough to expel any desire from the entire building. Mai really does have an impressive set of lungs on her. He finds it considerably more endearing when she's laughing or singing or baby-babbling, though. ]

[ Still curled around Korra, he hesitates at her words, his hands making small idle circles across her skin under the sheets. He almost wants to beg off; it's nice and cozy and private here. Surely if they ignore the baby she'll quiet down. That doesn't sound like her Help Me clamoring. More her variety of Entertain Me, Fools. She'll simmer down in a bit. ]

[ Except that's not what A Proper Father would do. ]

[ So he mutters, ] ...Fine... [ before pitching his body close to kiss Korra again, both lingering and parting. Reluctantly, he drags himself up, scrubbing both hands through his hair. As Mai's blaring cry intensifies, he pads over to her room. She's sitting up in her crib, fat fists gripping the bars, unmistakably crocodile tears squirting down her fat pink cheeks. ]

[ Yet, despite Hei's misgivings, something about her always loosens that knot in his temples and his chest. It's like with Pai: even when he's pissed off with her, her tiny fingers are hooked in his heartstrings. Lifting her out, he holds her aloft, until her blubbering softens into a quiet lisping coo. ]

Too much noise, Mai. Your mother needs sleep.

[ A gentle reinforcement of rules and boundaries, the way he's seen Korra do. Mama sleep? Mai echoes, a forlorn question rather than brainless parroting. His daughter has an extensive vocabulary for her age, but she's no chattering twit. Usually she limits herself to two words or so. (Maybe it's from him that she's picked that up?) ]

[anatural]

[Seriously could he sound any more like a teenager? He says "fine" exactly the way she did when she was 16 and being told to meditate.

On the other hand, much like her sixteen year old self, he does indeed get up and do it, however reluctantly.

She resists the urge to follow him & watch. If she's there, he'll no doubt try to foist Mai onto her the moment he gets uncomfortable. She needs to let him be.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ He half-hopes Korra will show up at some point, relieving him of the responsibility. ]

[ When he gathers up the crowing Mai, though, swaying the baby on his hip, waltzing slowly around the crib with a perfectly straight-faced playfulness, the anxiety fades. Bit by bit, Mai stops turning her head distractedly every direction, craning around for her mother, her inquiries getting softer. She plucks at his shirt with her tiny, rather stubby-fingered hands, looking up at him with her head thrown all the way back, eyes shiny with drying tears. When he cuts a second smooth arc across the room, her mouth softens into a sweet little curl, such a replica of Korra's that it's eerie. ]

[ Against his will, Hei smiles back, his lips forming the smile-shape jerkily, as if unaccustomed to using the stiff muscles involved. ]

[ Quietly, ]

Want me to read you that story? [ What the hell was it again? ] Fuu the Whosits?

[ Fuuuu, Mai concurs cheerfully, clapping her chubby hands. The order decreed, he hastens to obey. There's a small armchair at the corner of the room. Fetching the book -- brightly illustrated with gold binding -- he settles there, Mai nestled in the crook of his arm. Flipping through the pages with mild distaste, he stares at the pictures: animals with freakishly big eyes and luridly colored fur, swirling lines and psychadelic backgrounds. The stuff of LSD nightmares. ]

[ Under his breath, ]

No wonder you can't sleep.

[ Baaaa! Mai prods him, imperious and impatient. With a tired sigh, but secretly amused, Hei complies... ]

It all began on a cloudy day...

[anatural]

[It's a shame she can't hear what's going on from the bedroom (though also for the best, otherwise Mai would constantly be woken up by the sounds of sex) — though she can hear that Mai has stopped wailing. Korra waits to see how long it will take him to put her down.

No surprise — it's taking awhile. To go check on him, or to go to sleep? After a moment's thought, she decides to go with sleep. She wiggles out of her shirt & pants and tosses them to the side of the room. If she's asleep when Hei comes back and he's still feeling frisky, she figures her state of undress will work as a tacit invitation to wake her up.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ To be fair, it's taking awhile because Hei gets completely caught up in the task. ]

[ Mai, it seems, has no objections if Baba reads to her instead of Mama. Painstakingly, he tries to narrate in his sincerest and most enthusiastic voice. It's slow-going at first. But the story's plot -- (no tepid Disneyland bullshit; there is arson and thieving and dice-rolling by chapter 5 alone) -- snags his interest so his voice automatically reflects it. Sifting through the pages, Hei tries acting out the animals in different onomatopoeic voices. At one point, after a particularly spirited rooster-crow, he glances down at Mai when he hears a bright giggle. It's charming, and strange, how the child's eyes are so wide as they study the pictures. How she barely breathes as if for fear of missing a single word. ]

Woowoowoo, [ he breathes, gaining courage as he reads and watches Mai twinkle. ]

[ He's midway through the book when the little girl finally grows drowsy-eyed. By chapter 10, she is firmly asleep. Hei goes on reading, but it's more an excuse than anything else, to keep the light on, to go on feasting his eyes on her, his odd little dumpling. Gently, he spills her back into her crib, draws the covers over her, and hits the lights. ]

[ Padding back to the bedroom, weary yet pleasantly buzzed, he's disappointed to find Korra asleep. Although -- as he slides quietly into the futon beside her, her nude body druggingly warm against his clothed one -- he wonders if she'd shucked her clothes off in invitation. Kissing her throat under her ear, he is watchful, half torn between letting her sleep and following suit, and in snatching any sweetness that is available while this trip lasts. ]

[anatural]

[Korra almost wakes up as he kisses her throat. Her limbs feel heavy and sluggish, in a pleasant way.]

Shezleep? [Asking about Mai, although while still two-thirds asleep herself, words are hard.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Hei smiles, a curl-shaped imprint against Korra's hair. Her sleepy voice laps heavily at his ears, making his eyelids droop, making a yawn bubble at the edges of his mouth. Yet he can't help but think Mai has taken after Korra in so many ways. They have the same faces, those supple features with their constantly shading expressions, whether wide-awake of half-dozing, the same curiosities that grip them periodically with the force of fever dreams, making them intent or loud or adorable or thoughtless or sweet. ]

[ Nuzzling the soft cup of her ear, he folds himself closer around her. ]

Like the drooling baby she is.

[ Meant in the tenderest way, of course. ]

[anatural]

Mmmmuud. [Good is what she is trying to say, to the extent that she's trying to words at all. She rolls over and wriggles closer to him, her hands sliding underneath the waistband of his pants as her lips reach for his neck. The one thought which vaguely crosses her mind, making little furrows in her brow, is that he has too many clothes on.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Hei lets her burrow closer, her lips feeding slow shivery throbs of pleasure from his skull to his groin. Skimming his hands around her back, he gathers her in tight, while trying simultaneously to help her shuck his clothes. It's slow-going, but not impossible -- an awkward twist and yank gets off his T-shirt, and then he's free to kick the shorts off until they're lost somewhere in the sea of blankets. With the warm rub of her nakedness against his, he feels it: that slow dark untethering from restraint and reality. ]

[ But it's better this way, sweet and indolent, both of them half-asleep but wanting just...one... more... ]

[ Slowly, he spills her onto her back. Settles his weight across her, his cock only half-woken, rolling heavily between their bodies. Laying kisses on her face, all around her mouth, he lets his hands roam, the laziest possible touch. Now smoothing her mussed hair, now cupping and kneading her breasts, now tracing her ribs, the curve of her hips, the humid curls between her thighs. ]

[ Delicious, well-known territory -- yet that hot kick of hunger to his balls, that liquifying of his brainpain, all feels so perfectly, unpredictably new each time. ]

[anatural]

[Korra actually fights not to wake up more as he wriggles out of his clothes. Sleep and sex, once basic life necessities, have become luxuries since Mai was born. Sleepy sex is as decadent as a triple scoop hot fudge sundae with a caramel drizzle (and much more to Korra's personal taste).

She flexes her abdominal muscles, using the friction of their bodies to massage his cock while her hands run up & down his back, occasionally stopping to grip his ass (you could bounce a yuan off that thing; she loves it — sometimes wishes she could just sink her teeth into it). She lets out little sighs of pleasure as he rubs her good spots, but she's not worked up enough (yet) to really get noisy.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Clearly, it's divine compensation. Great ass: shitty personality. ]

[ He lets off a wordless, breathless hum as she rocks under him. The muscles of her belly are drumlike under the hot silky skin, and he can feel the span of his shoulders reform beneath her wandering palms into a topography of subtly gathering tension. Between their bodies, his cock stirs, gives a little thick-blooded twitch. A glass more than half full. ]

[ She sighs as he caresses her, and he pins her down, swooping in for a kiss to her mouth, a sloppy openmouthed non-sequitur that melts into slow trancelike sips. Holding her head still with his widespread hands, letting his tongue fuck her over and over, he wishes he could communicate things to her beyond simple sleepy affection, beyond the want telegraphed by his rapidly-waking body. At the same time though, it feels enough -- the languid honesty in the heavy weave of their bodies, rubbing together in a way that sparks a prickling fire down his spine. The sheets catch the warm scent of her skin, the hundred different motes of life and greenery, dreams and milk, caught within her hair. (If he could bottle the stuff up, he's pretty sure he could make a fortune selling it as an air-freshener. Or maybe as an incense, like the kind in the copper bowls they swing around on a chain at the temples... what're they called?) ]

... A thurible? [ he says it against her lips, an abstracted half-whisper. He realizes he's been in Korra's world a decade, but still doesn't know the damn word for those things. ]

[ Please excuse him, Korra. He's a little spacey when he's half-asleep. ]

[anatural]

[His ass alone is far from compensation for his shitty personality. But it does help. The mind-blowing sex is really his secret weapon. His kisses alone can drive her completely out of her senses.

Though she's not far gone enough to ignore the odd question.]

What? [Asked between kisses]

[mortemscintilla]

N-Nothing.

[ He kisses her again, both to get that faint, bemused smile off her face, and to conceal his own flushed wave of embarrassment. Because it is embarrassing, how transparent he feels in these moments. How laid open before this strange glowing girl who never seems to realize her own power to destroy him. Who doesn't realize that at issue for him every moment is the difference between untrustworthy gut and lovestruck heart, an idiot's faith and mere futile optimism -- and the awful wreckage that is tied to each. ]

[ Or maybe she does know. Maybe that's just the particular strength she's imbued with -- to accept the ordinary and the uncanny with the same blitheness, to luxuriate only in the moment because that's all that matters. ]

[ He isn't sure -- but isn't terribly interested in asking her. ]

[ So he lets his lips play drowsily with hers. Combs his fingers through handfuls of her soft hair and mouths around her face and neck, worrying the skin with his teeth while his cock, now juiced-up and wide-awake, prods down low between their bellies. Pinning her more securely with his weight, he noses the line of her throat, nuzzling the sweet pillow-weight of her breasts, a lewd lazy fondness that's at odds with the way he drives himself across the cradle of her pelvis, blunt and helplessly impatient with the deliberateness of his need. ]

[ He wants to fuck her before the baby starts shrieking again. He wants these tasty aimless touches to go on forever. (And, yeah, he also wants to sleep -- but not before the prescribed nightly-dose of Korra-nookie. Who knows if he'll get another shot once the vacation ends?) ]

[anatural]

[Sorry, Hei, at this point she's known you too long. He so rarely gets bashful, but when he does ... well, if he hadn't kissed her first, he would've been too cute not to kiss. It still hits her like a kick to the gut, how desperately she loves him. It doesn't matter how many years pass — or even how much he does wrong. It doesn't matter whether they get back together or never see each other again. She will always love him.

She lets out a soft woof of amusement at the eager rocking of his hips, and pushes his shoulders down.]

First things first ... [Prep the passage.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Hei's hips push forward once, helplessly. But the breath he lets off is a jittery-edged assent. His hands clench on her arms, and then slide down to her waist and to her back, following its own sleek curve. Fingers skimming along the dip of her spine, then greedily sliding under to palm her ass. Drifting lower, through the sheaves of too many blankets, he kisses her breasts unhurriedly, swirls of wet tongue and tugs of biting teeth, one nipple then the other. His face feels hot, stung with that aching tenderness he's come to associate with her. Loving the feel of her hot skin against his face, the scrape of his stubble across her smoothness. Loving the way she looks under him, a sweetly debauched centerfold in the wan light. Hot and messy and brilliant, the most living person he's ever known, ]

[ Beautiful, he thinks, mouthing her belly, biting at her navel. A word that is and isn't enough: if he says it out loud, it becomes strangely one-dimensional, a tepid physical commentary. He means it in a different way though. Means it in the way Korra just is, everything about her that's marvelous and awful and hilarious and evoking pure love. ]

[ Gnawing at the flexing muscles of her abdomen, he drifts lower, burying his mouth in her humid pubic patch, the hair ticklishly rough against his chin. The scent of her fills his face, and his cock, with a hot, wild rush of blood, and he parts her with the V of his fingers, tongue arrowing itself and flicking wetly up and down across her damp entrance, the fringe of inner-lips to the tiny peak of her clit. A playful greeting. ]

[anatural]

[Korra grins and wiggles, settling down more comfortably in the bed.]

Just don't make me scream. [That was the mistake they made that first night — her screams woke Mai up before either of them had the chance to come and it took hours to put her down again. It was a painful case of blue balls for both of them. (Orgasm denial is only sexy when it's not your baby doing the denying.)

He starts licking and she sighs, her body arching up to meet his touch.] Mmmmm....

[mortemscintilla]

[ Sometimes he thinks that's another of Mai's superpowers. Going off full-tilt right when she knows her parents are getting busy. Well, one of her superpowers anyway. The other appears to be absorbing all her stimuli like a sponge so her contact highs last for days. Which can be embarrassing, as when she overheard a private conversation between Korra and him and apparently created a jazzy new superheroine: Flavor Condom Girl. For a minor eternity she'd squeal, in basso profundo voice, "Flavo Condom guwl to wescueee!" Or during her Sneaky Kitty phase, where she'd deploy her skills at sneaking about in the afternoons when she was supposed to be napping -- she creeps like a toddling ghost! -- to catch him and Korra in flagrante delicto. She'd popped up at the end of their futon with a cry of "Nyaaaan!" only for her her little brow to beetle with bewilderment. It's a good thing Korra had fast reflexes; girding them both with sheets before she'd shooed the little girl back to bed. ]

[ Now, he quirks an eyebrow at Korra's words, and whispers with bland pointedness, ]

That's the strangest request a woman's ever made to me in bed.

[ As to whether he succeeds at keeping her quiet or not ... That's dependent on Korra's noise-muffling skills more than his lack of oral talents. Parting her lips with his fingertips, delicately, he presses soft kisses along the length of her; wet whorls of tongue across her entrance, teasing little flicks across her clit. The blanket is tangled over him, trapping her heat and scent. It hurts his lungs to get each breath out, and his trapped cock rubs with an edge of painful friction against the mattress. Yet there's a dirtysweet bliss in being where he is, stroking the restless spill of Korra's body with his free hand -- hips, flanks, ribs, breasts -- while his mouth winds her tighter and tighter. ]

[anatural]

[Oh please, don't act like he doesn't have any control in this situation. He knows exactly the spots that travel straight from her groin to her vocal chords; he just has to not hit them. Much. Considering how often he's played her body like a musical instrument ...

Korra bites her lip and squeals deep in her throat as his tongue hits a particularly good spot. Her fingers dig into the mattress. She wishes she could grab onto his hair, but he's just a little too far down.]

There. Ooooh there there there ...

[mortemscintilla]

[ Hei's smile as she gets noisier is soft, sidelong. He tries to do exactly what he is doing exactly as he is doing it. He's never sure how to tell her, just how much he loves the sight of her spilled across the bed this way, her plump little sex laid open and juicy in its dark nest of hair, then the pulsing slope of her belly superseded by the breasts hanging full and gorgeously heavy across her ribs. ]

[ His tongue explores her with slow strokes, a wet repeated lapping, alternately suckling and tickling her clit. Sometimes, like now, he's even clumsy on purpose, slurpy and eager, faint scrapes of teeth between each wet stroke, an intimation of danger more than actual pain, loving how, if she's wound up just so, he's rewarded with anxious cries, welling slickness, thrashing and sobs. The right combination that makes Korra go off into her private head space. Better still is when she'll sink into herself, sightless, no longer making words, only sounds, unless he stops what he's doing, drags his mouth off, and then sometimes she'll beg over and over, jittery-voiced and as mindlessly repetitive as a doll. ]

[ When she's like that, locked tight in her own need, free to forget herself and be selfish all at once -- he gets so fucking breathless it's as if he's the one being tortured. ]

[ In a way -- his hips hitching, cock dragging painfully against the sheets -- he almost is. ]

[anatural]

[There's a reason she demanded oral, and it wasn't that Hei is freaking amazing at it. She's struggling to hold onto rational thought because they can't afford to completely lose themselves in sex tonight. It's important that they don't wake Mai up, of course, but it's also important that they themselves get some sleep. Visiting Zuko isn't like visiting her mother; instead of relaxing her vigilance because another person is there, she will have to double it due to the former Fire Lord's ill health. She'll need all her wits about her.

He scrapes his teeth along her clit just so and she slams her hands on the mattress, trying to release the energy instead of screaming. She just barely manages to choke out — ] CONDOM. [She is plenty ready to take him in. (One of these days she's going to hire a babysitter and they will get to fuck each other senseless for a whole 24 hours — orgasms galore. But tonight is not a multi-orgasm night.)]

[mortemscintilla]

[ He hasn't told her, of course, but he's arranged to keep key areas under surveillance during her visit with the Firelord. There's a cost-benefit equation in all these political rendezvous, and the ailing Lord Zuko would be an easy target for rebel groups or terrorists. Ordinarily, he'd be fine with the knowledge that Korra could protect herself and Zuko if a crisis erupts. But with Mai in the mix, it's essential to stay doubly vigilant. ]

[ His pulse skitters fiercely as she asks for a condom, an imperious demand that ends up choking itself into something sweetly helpless. He jerks away on a sharp inhale, a glistening line of moisture breaking between her sex and his mouth. Crawls across her, a vaguely lupine loping, his cock grazing her wetly here and there. Shifting the heavy sprawl of his body across hers, he props himself on his elbows just long enough to give her 'Li's Bambi look, the big shiny eyes radiating such startled innocence. ]

... But I forgot to buy a new pack.

[ The hell he did. His shift back to half-lidded smugness is as seamless, his palms coasting up the insides of her thighs, coaxing her legs to fan open and fit him over her. The condoms are an arm's length away, tucked in the low nightstand. No fuss, easy access. Tearing the foil between his teeth, he makes short work of skinning one on. ]

[ There's a pause as he dips to kiss her, wet and biting, his hair a soft dark fall across both their faces. He's got his cock in his hand, and rubs its sheathed wet tip across her clit, then -- too light, too shallow -- into the folds of her sex, before popping the flared cap in and out of her with short teasing thrusts. Just a quarter of an inch at first, then a few more -- until her hot sopping sex grips him tightly and he lets off a hissing groan, sinking all the way into her, his pelvic bone mashing against her clit. ]

[anatural]

[Don't even joke about that. Fortunately, the big wide "Li" eyes tell Korra right away that he's lying through his teeth, but the intended humor falls completely flat. Down the hall sleeps proof that unprotected sex is risky, even when you are good about taking your contraceptives. Of course she's grateful that Mai exists — but Hei's reaction to her birth makes the specter of a second child terrifying.]

Not. Funny. [But it's a passing annoyance, soon forgotten as he kisses her and then pushes his way inside. She gasps and wraps her arms around him, her nails digging into his flesh.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ A second child would be an impossibly stupid idea. Sometimes he wonders if he can possibly venture the suggestion that she get her tubes tied. Except it's ghoulish to suggest that to a woman so young, who's only ever borne one child. Anyway, the paranoia fueling those thoughts is all his. Selfish and baseless and ultimately out-of-line. After what he's done, he has no idea if Korra might one day, in a storm of remembered rage, boot him out of her life. If she did, she'd be well within her rights. Maybe one day she'll take up with another man. Maybe one day she'll decide Mai is lonely and deserves a sibling. There are many twists down the road. He can't predict how any of their lives will turn out. ]

[ What he can do is appreciate his daughter while he has her. Hard not to, when she is perfect, and a bona fide miracle to boot, and anyway his. His and Korra's, always, ineradicably. Half-link, half-legacy, the chattering, prancing, pestering, sulking, giggling result of their strange connection. ]

[ Odd to have these thoughts, as the valley of his spine dips beneath her palms. He mouths her jaw, her throat, tracing its arc with his tongue as his hips stir lazily. He never gets tired of it: that first liquid in-and-out, the whispering slip of her most tender flesh swallowing his. The way Korra's nails dig into his skin, a bright sexy pain, the way she gasps as if trying to make some sense of what she's feeling. The way he can feel his own brain melting, a formless waxy puddle against her heat, that push and stretch that seems to consume every muscle and tendon. ]

[ When he kisses her, it's greedy -- a wet insistent probing, something in his chest cracking, and he'd almost call it sadness except for that giddy excitement icing up his spine as he sinks deeper into her. ]

[anatural]

[The suggestion, if ever made, would be emphatically rejected. One for being an invasive procedure she's never heard of, an unnecessary risk considering they can use condoms & contraceptives; another being its (more or less) irrevocability. Korra doesn't particularly want a second child (with or without Hei), but she would hate to lose that option. She wants other children in Mai's life, so she's not raised lonely & isolated like Korra was. Tension's children, assuming they decide to have children, are already spread across the globe; Bolin & Opal are in distant parts of the Earth Kingdom; Mako is forever alone (with Wu), and Asami has said outright that she doesn't want children of her own. There aren't children who live near their home, and there's no compulsory education where Mai could be surrounded by kids her own age. There's no easy answer to finding friends for her daughter, though fortunately Mai is still young enough that it doesn't quite matter.

For now, she lets herself sink into the present moment, the electric shocks that run through her body with every kiss and every thrust. She devours him like someone starving, afraid that the feast will be taken away at any moment.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ It does bother him sometimes, the way Mai seems so solitary. She never evinces any signs of loneliness; then again, she's only just developing the rudiments of a personality. Watching her tumble around in playgrounds with other toddlers, he's learnt that she is sporty, no surprise, although, like both of her parents, apparently not much of a team player. Whether she'd be happier with a little brother or sister -- he honestly can't say. His own childhood memories are indelibly tied to Pai; he can't remember a time it was otherwise. They'd always been together -- little mischief-makers and allies in arms. Her absence -- even now -- is a vacuum that can never be filled. ]

[ But it doesn't have to be that way for Mai. Surely she won't miss something if she's never had it? ]

[ He isn't sure -- and now certainly isn't the time to be contemplating it. Korra's kisses race through him in tiny quivers, like champagne bubbles bursting. His whole body is an expanse of damp taut muscle stretched over her; grinding his hips within the clamp of her thighs, his cock feels red-hot and throbbing, the friction a sweet counterpoint to that hot fluttering squeeze of her body. Nuzzling his mouth against her cheek, he focuses on those blue eyes so close to his, always so brightly smoky in these moments, wide and honest yet somehow so far away. Then he's slipping a hand between them, pressing the heel of his palm against her clit. No urgency; just a way to coax all the sensation down to just that tiny point. To remind himself, maybe, that this isn't just about routine or distraction or remembrance. ]

[ He wants them both to be nowhere else but here, feeling this. ]