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 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. ]

[anatural]

[Shut up Korra is a great team player. Team Avatar has saved the world lots of times.

Korra yelps loudly as he presses his hand against her sensitive clit, though she tries to bite back the sound. The idea of stopping fucking because they woke Mai up is unthinkable, but trying to quickly get off with a baby screaming would make for a really disappointing orgasm. (As she learned that one time she and Asami tried to have sex while Mai was napping.)]

Let's switch — flip over. [She pants the words, struggling to string words together. She's never really liked fucking doggy style, even in situation like anal where the position really does make it easier, but right now she wants to be able to bury her face in a pillow and scream as she comes. (It helps that the sheets feel amazing on her skin ... nobody does decadence like the Fire Nation.)]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Oh, the sheets are nice. If he were with Amber, she'd be having orgasms already over the threadcount. ]

[ Hei is more interested in everywhere skin touches skin -- sticking and unsticking, sweat-damp and hot. The pressure in his groin is unbearable, the pounding of blood through his cock is maddening -- yet there is also a strange lack of urgency in his movements. His muscles are soggy with sleep, a trancelike plateau. When he was younger it was harder to achieve that state. Natural selfishness would always begin to escape around the edges of his control. Now, he can hold himself at this level for a long time, and with only a minor variation, come in a minute. ]

[ Korra asks to flip over, breathlessness making her voice stuttery. He obeys, pulse jerking with excitement under his skin. The tangled blanket is threaded between them. He roughly yanks it and chucks to the corner of the futon, before spinning Korra over and positioning her by her hips. He's always liked doggy-style -- easy-access, so pistony and intense. But Korra is rarely in the mood for it. A pity -- because she's such a beautiful substantial spill of muscle and curves from this vantagepoint. He doesn't know how he'd managed to ignore it in the early days: that mess of hair fanned out across the sheets, the dipping river of her spine that pours into a delta below, that fucking gorgeous ass. ]

[ Yet in place of his usual aggression, there's only a tender, implacable ache. One hand palms her nape through her hair, a reassuring squeeze, the other reaching around her body to snake between her legs, cock nudging her entrance. A sharp twitch, a liquid push, and he's sunk back into her, even as the heel of his palm presses again to her clit -- hard. ]

[ If it gets her noisy -- oh well. That's what she's got all those pillows for. ]

[anatural]

[You try having big boobs and then lying on your stomach. Your breasts get smooshed; your lower back starts to hurt; you have to turn your head to breathe, and even when you fix all that by being on your hands & knees, you can't do anything but take the pounding. Korra likes to participate in the fucking, even if it's just wrapping her arms around him and digging her nails into his skin.

But sometimes, like right now, doggy style is exactly what is called for. He palms her clit and she mashes her face into the pillow as she screams. Fuck this feels so good ... it feels so good ... She rocks her hips, encouraging him to move faster, go deeper.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Oh, don't get him wrong. He enjoys nothing so much as her participation -- the way she slides so seamlessly from playful to kittenish to wild to powerful in an eyeblink. Likes the way it feels to cover her, the weight of his body against her belly and breasts, the way she wraps her arms and legs around him like one of those little clip-on koalas -- whatever happened to those, anyway? Yet, sprawled beneath him this way, she is so different -- not slick heat and muscles caught in a net of curves and thrumming all over with excess energy. The opposite: light and pliant as a feather, letting the glide of his body carry her along. ]

[ It's not something he generally associates with her: that girly submissiveness. But making her cry out is never not fun, and the sense of power he feels in these moments is softened by a strange carefulness. Being in total control should unlock his default viciousness. It certainly has in the past. Yet being responsible for Korra this way makes him saner, cool-headed, gentler. She is so vulnerable, every grind and thrust setting free a brand new sound, from shaky gasps to gorgeous moans. It's flattering, and terrifying. ]

[ He always feels like he should say something to her. How sexy she is. How astonishing -- pure art from every angle. But he doesn't know how to. He's always relied on tactile and visual signals. Letting the way he touches her and feeds on her mouth, the tilt of his head and the glint of his eyes, all convey how he feels. ]

[ She screams into the pillows, a sweet harsh pitch of delight. Gripping her churning hips, he traces her spine with open-mouthed kisses, and revels in each sound and motion. He's tempted to ride her harder, except slow is good too. Slow is better. Slow is ... unbelievable. So he bends over her, gently pinching her clit between his fingers, while his free hand finds hers, interlacing, squeezing tight. Rocks against her with lazy, goading jabs, concentrating on the damp drag of skin on skin, on those fluttering clenches each time his cock passes that good spot inside her. ]

[ It is always -- and only -- in these moments, sunk into her, experiencing the concentrated strength and trust and love in her hot yielding body, that a twist of meaningless happiness blooms. ]

[anatural]

[Slow is unbelievable torture ... But Korra loves every second of it. She rarely bothers thinking about the early days of their sexual relationship, back in the City, when he had a tendency to slide into his head during sex and treat her body as a convenient hole, but if she did, she would marvel at the difference. Nobody gives her as focused attention as he does during sex; he's almost psychically attuned to her. He never gets so lost in the fucking that he forgets to play with her clit; he always showers her with a variety of sensations. She has, without intending to, trained him to be her perfect lover.

No wonder she can't let him go.

Korra gasps for air, struggling to breathe as he pounds her with wave after wave of pleasure. She wants to kiss him so badly it hurts. She wants to wrap her arms around him and come with a scream that will wake up people for miles. She wants to fall asleep with his cock buried inside her, so they can keep fucking with every unconscious movement. She wants this to never end. But how long it lasts - like so many other things in their relationship - will be determined by him: how long he wants to tease her, at what point he decides to finally bring her to climax.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Had she trained him, or did he train her? Hei doesn't know. At this point, he's not even sure it matters. When they were younger, part of him had always encoded Korra's time in her homeworld as a mindboggling pre-sexual state, a miraculous virginity he shouldn't have been allowed near, yet had fully and enthusiastically debauched anyway. Now though, he wonders how he could toss around words like those. Pure. Filthy. Pristine. Defiled. As if his hands or his cock or his presence could ever alter her essential Korra-ness. As if he'd ever embodied anything for her but a learning experience. ]

[ His opinion of himself will never be high. He'll certainly never stop believing she'd be happier if she'd never met him. But he's also stopped thinking of himself and Korra as two opposing forces that can never merge, or co-exist. Their lives have landscaped both their psyches with dense forests of scars. Yet they've found each other through that tangle. He's grown older, little by little. So has she -- but in leaps and bounds. Maybe one day -- if they can get over this latest hurdle -- the differences between them will cease to matter at all. ]

[ He can hear her gasping, and one broken sound, a hitch of breath that is almost a sob, escapes him. Yet everything he does stays hypnotically lazy. Slow, slow, slick and full, in and out. He could keep this going forever, if his nerves weren't so stricken by sensation and craving something definitive. ]

[ Panting, he moves to cage her, muscles like tensile steel, barely exerting pressure but holding her in place. Both their skins are sweat-slippery, but the fit is perfect, legs tangled clumsily, the slope of her ass against his groin, her shoulderblades cutting into his chest, both his arms sliding alongside her own until their fingers twine. Not caressing her clit anymore. Just rocking her with tight, pummeling thrusts -- a gathering momentum that's rough yet tender, a fine line between force and pain. His face is in her hair, buried in that damp soft heap; each labored breath he exhales is muffled there. Each splitting hit aimed at that sweet-spot of hers, a wet riveting precision until she's a shivering, strung-out mess. ]

[anatural]

[He's got her in the perfect trap. She squeezes his fingers as best she can as he pounds her over the edge, sending her screaming into the pillow. There's something violent about almost every climax with him — every one is like an explosion, leaving her wrung out and in pieces.

She melts into the futon and tries to catch her breath. He's fucked the bones right out of her once again.]


Mmmmm. [Sorry, she can't really do words right now.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Hei's back is beginning to twinge, and the fingers of his right hand -- the bad hand -- are sore knotted with Korra's, but the rest of him is caught in a web of sweet, piercing pleasure. That sound Korra makes -- a scream, yet somehow deeper, more frantic and triumphant -- triggers his own climax, so suddenly his hips are whipping her forward with awkward desperation, even as she's still jolting around him. His body seizes up, caught in long, powerful pulses that wipe everything else from his awareness. ]

[ When he regains his bearings, he's in a zone of breathlessness. Sprawled across Korra, a heavy slab of dead meat, his face still buried in her hair. Over the thrum of his pulse he can hear, feel, another noise in his chest: a deep contented purr. ]

[ Wearily, he nuzzles the musky crook of her neck. It's an effort to move his lips. ]

What time is ... the meeting with Zuko tomorrow?

[ Still not one for gooey post-coital chats. Some things never change. ]

[anatural]

Mid-morning. [She turns her head to be able to speak (and breathe), but her voice still comes out muffled.] General Iroh said it's best to see him after he's had a chance to meditate and eat breakfast.

[A part of Korra almost didn't want to see him — she still remembered him as an old but vibrant man; she hates the idea of seeing him frail and weak. But he was Aang's best friend, someone who helped save the world, and he is important to her. She wants him to know her daughter, because family is important to both of them.]

We need to get some sleep. [Problem being, she doesn't feel capable of moving, and this isn't the best position for sleeping.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Family. That's something he can respect, if not always understand. Korra's family encompasses so many different characters -- some of whom are four-legged and furry. Hei's own 'families' -- or approximations of them -- have always been narrower in scope, more temporary. More centered on their utility and cold cohesiveness. At least that's how it used to be. Lately though ... it's dawning on him that he's got a very different family. A real one, in the sense of both social conventions -- and blood. ]

Hmmmm.

[ The humming sound seems amplified by his entire body, a purr again. His eyelids grow heavier as he breathes: Korra would object, but this position is damn comfortable to fall asleep in. Spilled beneath him, she's like a sponge, plush yet firm yet squishy, oozing a sticky waft of pheromones. But he knows that would be a bad idea, and skims his hand down her flank, rubbing it the way you'd rub a cat's, before sliding off her by degrees, first hands then the rest of his body. ]

[ Dropping the condom in the trash, he tugs the blanket back over him and Korra. The air is cool now, edging on chilly as the sweat dries. That makes it easier to curl catlike against her, and under the swaddling of the sheets drape an arm across her body, his hand finding its way between her thighs in that habitual, possessive gesture. ]

[anatural]

[Comfortable for him, maybe, but certainly not for her. While she misses feeling him inside, she's glad when he rolls off her — and gladder still to curl back up against him, to have him wrap an arm around her. She squeezes his elbow and closes her eyes with a contented sigh.]