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]

[ 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.]