under the stars

[anatural]

WHO: Korra & Hei
WHAT: Their first night in the Spirit World and their first chance for an actual reunion. (nsfw)

[They trek for hours without saying anything, over terrain that varies with neither rhyme nor reason. Sometimes in a desert, other times in a forest, other times across a plain that seems to stretch for miles until suddenly a mountain appears. Hei doesn't ask why they're going the direction they are, for which Korra is grateful because she doesn't know the answer. She doesn't know anything. They're walking not to get anywhere in particular, but to give Korra a chance to figure out what to do, because she can't think while standing still.

Where would Raava have gone? Is there some way she can communicate with the light spirit? Is there anyone in the Spirit World who doesn't completely despise her?

Evening starts to fall, offering no answers, only a reminder that her body is human and, like it or not, needs rest. Luckily(?) they're in a forest. Plenty of material to make camp with.]

We should stop here for the night. [She has to cough a little mid-sentence; her voice rough from disuse.]

Comments

[mortemscintilla]

[ War and fighting and misery. Half Hei's life has been tangled around those words. He remembers the worst months in Heaven's War, when he'd be in the battlefields every day, slitting throats and stringing traps of landmines. He'd be out in the chilly dawn hours with scattered enemy campside lights burning in the hills, signaling to his teammates before an ambush. He'd be out in the afternoon as the sun crested high over the high-hide, its heat burning through the salt on his skin to draw it tight. He'd be out in the evening with the wind crisping the dried blood on his face, the soil around him littered with bodies of his victims. His boots had become so worn he padded them with newspapers; his feet had turned black from the ink. He remembers weeks when they ate nothing but canned peaches: at night, he would scavenge groves to fill his jacket pockets with shriveled berries. Later, he'd collapse in cool corners next to Pai, or facefirst into his pallet with Amber, a teenage boy in bed with a beautiful woman, too exhausted to do what should have come naturally. ]

[ This is a war, too. But it's not the same. Despite the exhaustion weighing down his muscles, there is a shrill whistle of need cutting through him. A sustenance in Korra's tasty kisses and bites, which mutates into a wildness that breaks through him like lightning. His erection strains upright as she teases it to greater hardness. A bead of pre-come oozes down its length; he pants softly into her mouth, a twitchiness descending like darkness. He doesn't care about restraint or games. He wants to be inside her so badly; yet his free hand roams over her body -- mouth, breasts, belly, sex -- almost as if showcasing spots to reacquaint himself with. ]

[ In the end, it's an effort to wrench away, then re-sheath himself with a fresh condom. Lifting her leg -- she feels deliciously loose and warm as taffy -- he pushes into her, her sex still wet, swollen and pillowy. Her heat clasps him, and his eyelids flutter heavily shut. Humming, he holds himself steady, willing himself to relax, not daring to thrust. ]

[alittlebent]

[Korra lets out a faint whine as he pushes inside her. Her insides are more sensitive than she thought they'd be, given the amount of time they spent talking; a thread of pain runs through the pleasure, making it bittersweet. And yet she's pretty sure she likes it best that way. Everything she really loves hurts a little. It's how she knows she's pushing herself.

She's surprised when he gets all the way inside and then stops; her blue eyes are blown with desire and wide with confusion.]

Everything all right?

[She rocks her hips, grinding her clit against his pelvis, tacitly encouraging him to move.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ She rocks against him, and Hei's shoulders tremble with the effort of not rolling into her rhythm, a wave into the sea. One broken sound, a gasp for air that is almost a shaky laugh, escapes him. The first time should've taken the edge off, yet she feels so unbearably good, he almost can't stand it. One misstep and it will be all over, and damn embarrassing, because they've had their rapid-fire first-fuck, and he intends to make the second better. Oh, hell, he just intends to make it. ]

[ Nuzzling her hair, he meets her gaze. Her eyes are so blue. His are blue, sure, but hers define blue. He can feel the excitement steeping him, staring at her, being stared at. He's sure she can tell. ]

[ Raspily, (sheepishly), ]

I don't know if I want to watch you ... [ a slow swivel of his hips, so she feels the pressure across her groin ] or fuck you.

[alittlebent]

Hnnn... [Her eyes flutter at the pressure. Is he expecting her to make the decision for him? That would be a novelty. And hard. How's she supposed to think — much less decide anything — when he's touching her like that?] Can't you do both?

[mortemscintilla]

You make it hard to focus.

[ The words are teasing, but there is a burning seriousness in his gaze. He shifts to accommodate the slick heated braid of their bodies, until they are screwed together tight, her leg riding high over his hip, then begins to fuck her with tight jabs, barely moving, his whole body dipping into every undulation. Eyes open all the while, a soft expression of private pleasure, like some chunk of ice inside him is unchilling as she shares her warmth. It is better than the sun. They way she moves him, the way she can make him move. ]

[ His breath hitches in synch with his rising excitement, yet there's something lazy in the way he touches her, as if he doesn't care when he'll come. Calloused fingertips traveling over her, proprietary yet tender, pausing here and there to caress, to inspect. Smoothing her hair, lifting it off to dust her face in kisses. Tracing the shape of her mouth, the arc of her throat, stroking the shape of her breasts with the rough sides of his fingers. She looks so good to him, but there is too much winter in her little face. Too much sadness from her ordeal the past few months. ]

[ Part of him wishes he could fuck that right out of her. Make her shiny and rosy and sleek as she was when they'd first met. (Impossible, of course. The recent years have shaped Korra from a wide-eyed, wide-smiling delight into a prickly briarwood puzzle, with darker looks, darker moods.) ]

[alittlebent]

[Would you even be interested in a Korra without the winter, Hei? Would you know how to interact with her if she didn't know such sadness? She wouldn't know how to deal with him without it; she'd have no way to understand him. Her capacity for empathy is powerful but also lacking in imagination; she needs experience to understand.

His touch is gentle, but hers isn't. She digs her nails into his back, holding onto him like she's afraid he's going to fly away and she refuses to let him move an inch.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ No, he wouldn't. They're still worlds apart when it comes to cruelty. The juxtaposition of Hei and Korra in his mind still recalls a red-flecked diamond set beside a bloodstained knife. But the more muddy water she wades through, the more he finds himself reaching out to her. He should have loved the original sweet-seventeen Korra, with her innocent limpid eyes and her purity of soul. But he'd only ever been intrigued by her, the way one is intrigued by an incomprehensible miracle. He'd fallen in love with her after that debacle with Chekov; watching her dance around the kitchen as they cooked lobsters, the sunlight of her face flickering as she'd tried to keep the awful darkness at bay. It was that moment when it had happened, the blossoming strains of a sweet sickness, because Hei can't love what isn't a little dark at the center. He'd practiced to perfection on Pai, on Amber, and faithfully followed the pattern with Korra. ]

[ She wraps herself around him, and her nails leave neat semi-circles in his skin, pleasurepain radiating from each one like the rays of a cartoon sun. He feels so turned on that breathing hurts. But his thrusts maintain a languid cadence. Lowering his mouth to her breasts, he kisses each one with worshipful thoroughness. Presses them softly together with his palms, nestling his face between them. ]

[ In a slurred murmur, ]

Tell me how you were. Before ... the war started.

[anatural]

Huh? [She blinks at him, dazed and a little confused. She's so focused on the here & now that she can't follow the mental leap he made.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ He can't help but smile faintly at her confused look. Firelight wavers at the edges of the scenery; Korra's face is a pretty copper coin against the shadows. He keeps up the rhythm, warm and languorous, rocking. His lips visit the crook of her shoulder, trace the line of her jugular before he gnaws almost delicately at the sensitive underside of her jaw. ]

Tell me. How you were. [ A casual repetition, but his gaze is rueful. ] I know ... I left on an odd note.

[ He'd recalled it at random moments in his journey: the dwindling shape of her body at the train terminus, and those three dreaded words she'd blurted with round and glossy eyes, and the hobbling pain they'd shot through him, now a ghostly twinge, fears and stupid self-delusions and the passing joy of thinking: Maybe I don't need to run. Maybe we can make this work. ]

[anatural]

[Ooooooohhhhh. She leans into him and wishes that he hadn't asked.]

Fine. I was just fine. [Except for that stupid decision she'd made to sleep with Bolin. Multiple times. She doesn't like to think about that short-lived affair and how she'd once again managed, through insensitivity and obliviousness, to crush the heart of one of her dearest friends. She doesn't like to think about how she told Hei she loved him and then almost immediately afterwards had sex with someone else.]

My dad got hurt not long after you left. I was in the South Pole almost the whole time you were gone. [It's not really a lie. Completely.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ A thick silence drips in, and Hei thinks, dimly: She's no better at lying than she ever was. But what exactly she's hiding, he can't put it his finger on. (Or maybe he's already subconsciously aware of it, but refuses to give voice to it and spoil the tenuous bliss of the reunion.) ]

[ So he says nothing, his mouth settling across hers instead, coaxing her lips apart to fuck her mouth with his tongue, slow, slick stabs that echo the movements of his body. He breathes in and smells salt and burning wood and sea grass. He even likes the undignified noises they're making, low bubbles of liquid friction, the ones that used to make him wince when he was a teenager. ]

[ Quietly, ]

I thought of you like that. While we were apart. Fighting. Getting on with things.

[anatural]

[She's grateful when he doesn't pick at it, and hopeful that she's dodged the subject entirely.]

Did you hear about the civil war? While you were traveling? [One of the things she could never figure out was how much the rest of the world knew, or even cared, about what was happening in the South Pole.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Keep dreaming, Korra. If there's one thing Hei has learnt in his profession, it's how to bide his time. ]

[ At her question, he pauses, bewildered before he realizes: Oh. She still thinks of the war, the struggle she's endured here, as something of a one-man show. Isolated within its sphere of inner-strife. She doesn't realize that no matter how hush-hush governments try to keep news about a conflict, distracting the public with foolishness and frivolity, word travels fast if you keep your ears peeled. Especially in the circles Hei gravitates toward. ]

[ Breathing deeply, he stirs and hitches himself in deeper. Lips tracing the line of her neck, then hovering at her ear. ]

There were rumors. They tried to keep it ... hushed up in Republic City. But it was big news in the Fire Nation ... at least when I left.

[anatural]

[She doesn't think of it as a one man show. She just thinks other people don't care. The South Pole is far away from everyone in Republic City, and at first, when she'd been trying to rally help for her people, everybody basically said to her: Why should we care? It’s just the South Pole. The South Pole has always been looked down on and ignored in favor of the North, even though the Avatar's wife and now the new Avatar both call it home.]

Really? [She's surprised to hear that the Fire Nation was interested. After all, the Fire Nation had practically eradicated them eighty years ago. Most of the people who had lived during that time were long dead or old, like Master Katara. But that kind of attack leaves wounds on a culture that last for generations.]

[mortemscintilla]

Maybe it's colonial guilt.

[ He's aware of the brutal history between the two nations. But not enough to care about puzzling out their motivations. Mostly he suspects the Fire Lord's affinities for the Avatar -- or at least the concept of an Avatar (he doubts Korra has met the latest regent in person -- had dictated the sympathies, or at least the curiosities, of the colonies as a whole. Well, that, and most conservatives were of the haughty opinion that backwater cultures like the Water Tribes could only devolve into dissolution, without the 'purifying' and 'stabilizing' elements that the Fire Nation's aegis would've offered. ]

[ Mouthing at Korra's plush lower-lip, he wedges a hand between them. Lays his palm flat across her pelvis, thumbing the slick bead of her clit. Dryly, ]

You ... want to talk about politics right now?

[anatural]

[She gasps and shudders against him, her eyes fluttering shut. When she speaks, her voice is breathless and clearly distracted.]

You're...the one who wanted to make... conversation.

[mortemscintilla]

I only ... wanted to hear you talk.

[ But now he's more interested in hearing other kinds of noises. He kisses her again, and it's forceful, wet, his tongue teasing at hers as he jerks forward, entire body launching itself against her, deep friction and the slippery drag of skin on skin, so he is fully inside, balls deep and gasping, his damp hot muscled weight draped across her. Riveting her sweet-spot with cruel accuracy and repetition, he catches her clit between pinching fingers, a sustained, maddening pressure that matches his relentless thrusts. ]

[anatural]

[She screams, and winces even though the sound is largely swallowed by his mouth. Loud noises like that feel eerie in the unnatural quiet of their surroundings. The awkward consciousness doesn't last long, considering Hei is doing all the things guaranteed to shut off rational thought. She tightens her legs around him and grabs his ass as though he could possibly get deeper inside her. She's not going to last long at this rate.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ She screams, and Hei's synapses misfire like an old car on a winter morning. He hears himself swallowing a sound like a sob as he's pulled in by that sweet, wet sex and her strong hands. Loving the way she forces him deeper into her, her pretty legs tangled around him, hips rocking up to meet him, all of her heat and need for him. It's a buzz he can feel all through his bones, as if she is music only he can hear. The way he rides her is relentless, wrecking her, growing reckless, but his kisses are almost sweet, as if he is talking desperately into her mouth, subvocalizations that might be words muffled by each unrelenting press of teeth and tongue. ]

[ Fuck. It's like being melted into tapioca, so helplessly lost inside her he can't even form thoughts. Had he ever in his life looked at Korra differently? In contempt and indifference? It's like he's broken free of the most foul fever; as if there's nothing in him now that could dismiss her again. For a moment he wishes her quintessence was something he could hold in his hands, a thick sweet body of flesh he could fuck into bliss. ]

[ But he's so stupid. It is right here. ]

[anatural]

[Her climax hits and it feels like she's dissolving — does she even have a body anymore? Everything is tingly and sparkles and she'll laugh at herself later but it does feel kind of magic.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Hei circles her in tight as she crests, trembles, melts, energy leaping with agile force inside her skin; she seems to come the way shamans have visions. He can't help but feel used, in a strangely virile and satisfying way. He tries to make it last, hips riding in a slow roll, watching her break apart beneath him. But from his brainstem to his spine there is a line running down to hook at the knot of exquisite tension in his groin, tightening further and further until the line snaps and a blossoming heat makes him explode into the latex, hips jerking erratically against her as he bites off several fucks in a ragged voice. ]

[ Slumping, he breathes deeply, and then his breaths judder into something like a soundless laugh, as if he's just finished a race and won. Kisses warm and sticky, dotted across her nose and chin and throat as he stretches lazily, damp forehead rolling against the plush tumble of her hair. ]

[anatural]

Hnnnnnnnn. [Korra closes her eyes and practically melts into the earth.] Ohhhh. [She's too sated to move or think; she just savors the way he feels on top of her and the pleasant afterglow of sex.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Beat by beat, Hei's peripheral starts to broaden beyond the space between him and Korra. The cave stones glittering overhead, the firelight making them move like beetles. The skewer of meat, cold now but still edible, lying off to the corner. The silence of the forest beyond, so profound he imagines he could hear an ant trundle across the earth. Eyes slipping shut, he swallows and nuzzles Korra's ear. Heaves a long considering sigh, before rolling off her. ]

[ He stays close, face to face, knees and shoulders kissing, his longish hair strewn across hers in a mercurial weave. Regarding Korra, mussed and soft-eyed, so near, he briefly feels eight years old, fourteen, twenty, getting something he's always wanted but can't put a name to. An odd sort of comfort, sexual, and beyond sex. ]

[ A minute or so later, the haze fades. Mild as milk, in a non-sequitur that isn't, he asks, ]

Were you lonely? After I'd gone, I mean.

[anatural]

[Way to (unintentionally? or so she thinks) ruin the pleasant haze, Hei. Korra was all set to curl up against him and doze off when he had to ask that question.

Yes. Very. Which was stupid, considering they hadn't been seeing that much of each other anyway, but the possibility at least had always been there. She had her friends, but they were all still trying to navigate that weird divide of time & space & experience. Nothing was easy. Nothing was comfortable.]

You're here now. [What does then matter?]

[mortemscintilla]

[ What does then matter? He tries to tell himself it doesn't. The fire is a warm glow, he's chucked the condom, and scooched closer to Korra, and their legs make a simple, heavy weave so his foggy mindcomes home to a place where his legs tangle across hers and there is nothing more in the world he wants except for this, their bodies in a beginner's knot. Why complicate it? ]

[ Let it go. The past doesn't matter. But then he realizes, with bitter clarity, that it does matter. Of course it matters. It matters in the spaces between people, and it matters in those sunless and empty spaces within every person. It matters. And it can hurt like hell, because there is nothing so audible as the unsaid, nothing so obvious as the unthought. ]

[ He puts his hand in Korra's hair, smoothes it softly. His tone matches the touch. ]

And I'm not leaving. But -- [ A beat, almost tentative. Information gathering has never been his weak suit, but this isn't an assignment, and he's unsure how bluntly or delicately to approach the crux of their conversation. ]

[ Finally, in a rare moment of honesty: ]

It's just ... you're different somehow.