that's not how you do it

[anatural]

WHO: Korra & Hei
WHAT: Hei’s made himself scarce and Korra is sick of it.

[It has not been a good month for Korra. The people of Republic City haven't taken well to their new spirit neighbors, and most of the spirits seem to agree. By and large they just won't talk to her. The president has been calling Tenzin almost every day with new complaints and, for the past two weeks, these ridiculous vines have been overrunning sections of the city and nothing she does can get rid of them. It's been one Avatar failure after another.

Her boyfriend killing her uncle has basically been the highlight of the whole thing. But of course, after more or less telling her he loves her, he vanished. The little twerp who lives in his building always took great delight in telling her that Hei wasn't around, so she knew nothing had happened to him. He's just doing that avoidant bullshit he likes to do, and Korra is completely done with it. You don't leave for ten months, come back for maybe two and a half weeks of regular contact, and then disappear for another month. No.

So today, when the brat once again tells her that Hei's out, she smiles and says she'll wait for him in his room. Never mind that she doesn't have a key — she just kicks down the door and uses her Avatar powers to deflect his ridiculously paranoid security system. And then she throws herself on his bed to wait and stew.]

Comments

[anatural]

[It would help if he'd tell her that. The one thing he's told her clearly is that she can't expect fidelity from him. That he didn't sleep with anyone during the 10 months he was gone, that it didn't occur to him to, isn't necessarily because he cares about her — it could just as easily be he didn't see anyone worth the price of the condom. He's said — obliquely — that he loves her, but he's never told her what that means, beyond the fact he'll kill to protect her.

The barb hits exactly where he wants it to; tears well up like blood in her eyes, but she blinks them back.]

It sure seemed that way back in the City. You could barely keep it in your pants when we lived together.

[mortemscintilla]

[ Hei's eyes narrow, brow pinching in reproof. It occurs to him, that he could tell her he'd used sex with her as a time-sink, a way to let off pressure, because the novelty of paid encounters and zipless fucks had worn off for him. Because what she'd given him for free was better than what most men paid good money for. He could tell her -- and it would be true. Or he could tell her that being with her was the first time he'd hooked up with a real live human being who'd made him feel that shaky and anxious, his heart aching with the transient peak of real, deep feeling. He could explain that it was so unnerving to his equilibrium that for days afterward he'd felt minimally functional, forced to plow through his bleak routine with a painfully sharpened awareness of how he'd hollowed out his own soul. He could tell her all that ... and it would be true, too. ]

[ But he can't -- and when her eyes go wet and glossy, he feels his entire body stiffen, a movement of muscle under skin that once would have presaged attack. Now it's just an echo of repressed chagrin. ]

[ When he speaks, his voice is effortfully soft but sharp-edged, too. ]

What makes you think I'm like that with everyone? [ His eyes are dark; not murder-dark but almost as eerie. ] You think if I was, I'd have picked you, out of a hundred smarter options?

[ Harsh, but the subtext is palpable: I'm with you because I want you. Nothing else. ]

[anatural]

[Palpable, maybe, but Korra's in no state to draw comfort from subtext. She can't sustain herself on hints and implications.

Besides which, there's another implication to his words that rings even more clear: she's the bad choice.]

How should I know? I don't see you with other people. I hardly even see you! [And I need you. She can't say that, can hardly admit it to herself. She can't stand the idea of needing someone who so very clearly could live just fine without her.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Not the bad choice. But not the suitable one either. Because when you look at it logically, he and Korra are fundamentally different creatures. Not the DNA helixes, desires, plumbing, hysteria levels. All that is window-dressing. It's at the crux that they're different, in their very similarities. Every graceful turn of her body can make him turn with her, like teeth in one cog turning another. They always mesh smoothly, but Hei isn't so smitten as to recognize that every contact inevitably rolls them in opposite directions. ]

[ Yet, through time and attrition, with proof after proof between them, Korra has become someone to treasure. He might not trust her with his complete self -- mind and heart -- but he trusts no one but Pai with that. And if heart and mind have their doubts, his instincts don't. When he acts without thinking, it is to give her his trust. ]

[ When her face crumples, something inside him crumples with it. He nearly reaches out for her, but stops himself. ]

I'm sorry... if I make you feel that way. [ The words come out strangely flattened of emotion, as if offered by an alien translator. With effort, he tries harder. ] I know it's hard to feel like we're partners ... if I keep you at an arm's length.

[ But his years of scraping out an existence as a boy have taught him that closeness -- especially the kind he feels for Korra -- lies parallel with compromised. They've taught him that power and control are the only things that can bring you safety and comfort, even if they require their own sacrifices. (But if you can't make a small exception for the very person you want to protect, what use is any of it?) ]

In my world, I couldn't afford to get too close to anyone. All I could care about were the dealings of those I worked for. Because they took care of me. Because I was useful to them. But I had to fight for it, to work myself to death for every leg-up I could get. I had to give up a lot, do a lot of things I don't care to remember. But I wasn't going to stop until I'd reached what I wanted.

[ He hesitates, as if he's swallowed a stone that's lodged in his throat. His lips twitch then, but it barely qualifies as a smile. ]

There was no happiness in that type of thing. Nothing magical or personal. Except, now, there is.

[ And she's an idiot if she can't grasp that it's her. ]

[anatural]

[Once upon a time, that speech would have worked on her. Has, in fact, worked on her. He'd give her a little flash of his painful past and she'd melt, all wrongs forgiven, willing to compromise herself to accomodate him.

It's a trick that's lost its effectiveness.]

I'm glad you're happy beating people up in my name. Good for you. But that doesn't help me. [She needs him here, with her, more than one week out of every ten months. She needs him with her for more than just the catastrophic world-ending emergencies. Why is that so hard?]

[mortemscintilla]

[ It wasn't his intention to trick her. Not deliberately, anyway. Just an attempt at loaning her a slice of his psyche. Letting her see things as he does. Except that's impossible. Intellectually, she might be able to comprehend the surface of his past, the preliminary outline if not the entire superstructure. But dig any deeper, and she'll lose all sense of recognition, because his experiences are completely beyond her frame of reference. She's suffered and struggled plenty. But that's not the same as being flayed within an inch of your life by violence and bloodshed, pared down and reassembled into something hard and sharp as cut diamonds. ]

[ (In light of that, is it any wonder they keep butting heads like this? What fool stuffs a wildcat and a viper into a gunny sack, tosses the sack in a raging river, and harbors hope of a pleasant outcome?) ]

[ At her words, he blinks, his face losing some of its rigidity. He hesitates a beat, then lifts an arm to brush his knuckles across her hair in not quite a caress, tugging her ponytail then cupping her cheek.  ]

Beating people up for you doesn't make me happy, Korra. You do. You're the one indulgence I've allowed myself in years. The one person whose happiness can make me happy as well. If I'm trying to erase any dangers to you, it's because I want you to be safe. I know I'll be better for it.

[ He wishes he could say a hundred things, promises to be by her side, to have and to hold. But any promise he makes will be a difficult one. Instead he slips his free hand to her waist, hipbone, slides it around up to her back, under the layers to the soft-fabric blouse warmed by skin. Face siding to face, he brushes his lips over unruly crescents of hair that break rank from the girlish ponytails. ]

[ Softly, ]

I will spend more time with you. I'll give you anything else you need. But I'm not going to watch and do nothing if -- [ He hesitates. ] If anyone tries to hurt you, or plans to, I won't sit by.

[anatural]

[That speech is enough to make her melt, as his speeches always do. And then he ruins it.]

Are you even listening to me? [She pulls away from him, her eyes burning blue.] That was the fight we had last month. That has nothing to do with this!

[This isn't about what he does or who he hurts to keep her safe. This about being lonely. Were you lonely when I was gone? he'd asked her, back in the Spirit World, and she had been, but not nearly as much as now, when he's in the same city but never around. Nothing is as lonely as knowing the person you love doesn't want to see you as much as you want to see him. He says she makes him happy, but he promises to spend more time with her like a father pacifying a lonely child. She doesn't want him around out of obligation. She wants him to want to be with her.]

If you don't want to see me, just say so.

[mortemscintilla]

[ Once again, she's completely misconstrued his meaning. Or maybe he's misconstrued hers. The distinction doesn't seem to matter at this point. ]

[ He blinks at Korra, whose gaze far outstrips the glaciation of any previous ice age. Except a blue-eyed woman shouldn't be able to radiate that degree of paradoxical heat. He wonders if she knows precisely the effect of her gaze, which in its deliberateness is all the more demoralizing. ]

Of course I want to see you.

[ It has nothing to do with obligation. How can it be, when this is the kind of love that is asymptotic to anything that sane or benign? This is an emotion that drags itself, gut-shot and with two broken legs towards death.  It has no restraint, or shame, or sense of logic. There is nothing pretty about it. It turns those of who feel it into irrational, hormonally-poisoned abominations. It only has one limitation and that is of reciprocation. Sometimes, not even that. ]

[ Hei swallows. He wants, sharply, to exit the room, to evade the charged current in the air; it is his first impulse. Not doing so takes an act of will. ]

Look. I know I'm going about this wrong. It's been years since I've --

[ Since I've had a chance to be with someone I cared about. Every day. Repeatedly. It brims him with a sharp anxiety, stronger some times than others, a dread that something will rip her from him, or that he will drive her off himself, by getting it wrong in some undefined way. It's why he swings so wildly between pulling away and staying close, running hot and cold in almost the same breath. ]

[ At length, he manages, ]

Tell me what to do. How can I fix this, so you stop feeling this way?

[anatural]

[She can't believe she has to explain this to him. A part of her doesn't want to explain because she shouldn't have to. This kind of thing should be abundantly self-evident.]

If you want to see me, see me. Don't do it to make me feel better. [She wants to feel wanted, not catered to. Desired, not indulged.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ She is wanted and desired -- and perhaps that's what makes her words so terrible. With a chill, Hei realizes one of them is missing something. More than likely, it's him. Under the surface of his exasperation, guilt gnaws at him. He wishes, for a moment, he could crawl into her brain. See things as she does, so he won't end up disparaging these things that Korra takes so seriously, things that are bound up with her hurt. ]

[ Instead he takes a deep breath and fights for calm. ]

I ...

[ I will. I promise. He wants to say it out loud, with confidence, in a reasonable tone, and follow it, soften it, by a temperate explanation that will make her see and agree with his point of view. Instead a dry whisper of I'm sorry, is all that results. He repeats it as if it is a foreign phrase he is trying to memorize without really comprehending. ]

I'm sorry. I know ... I'm making a mess of this. I just ... I don't want to lose you.

[ Like I've lost almost everyone else important to me. ]

[anatural]

[How would you even know if you never see me? Korra really, truly can't reconcile what Hei says with what he's been doing.

Growling softly, she yanks him in for a kiss. She's still angry and hurt and that's evident in the almost numbing press of her lips, but she's also desperate for something that makes sense. Neither of them have ever been particularly good with words; maybe with this their real feelings will get across.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ When she yanks him in, he's expecting a punch. For one absurd, tipsy moment, he flashes back to that time in the City, when they'd been forced to spew pick-up lines at each other, and she'd fisted his collar with this exact pitch of rage and violence. Except he can smell it on Korra even before her mouth catches his -- the chemical signature of want. It makes him wonder -- where does desire originate in the first place? What comes first, chemistry shaping desire, or desire shaping chemistry? ]

[ Then her kiss dissolves all thought, all restraint. A hot dark gravity that draws him in -- like her body itself. ]

[ Hei inhales sharply, and then hums, an umber vibration against her mouth. The reflexive slide of his arms around her is no great shock. He lets his eyes close for a moment, belting her waist tight with an arm, stroking a hand up along her ribs, coming to rest over that fluttery pulse behind one soft breast. Strange, how he's fully armed, fully dressed, yet he feels naked, his erection already becoming obvious through his trousers. He'd never meant to be this open, this predictable, this vulnerable, but here he is all flushed with want already, the physical longing slipping by all his censors. ]

[anatural]

[If only it could dissolve everything the same way for her. I don’t need sex every 24 hours to stay functional. His words from before still stab at her in the same rhythm as the pulse of his erection. She's tempted to punish him for that — or at least prove him wrong — by pulling away and leaving. (Would he chase her if she did? Or would he just go get it taken care of somewhere else?) But those kinds of mind games just aren't in her nature — nor is self-denial just to prove that kind of point.

She pushes him against the wall and pulls herself up so she can hook her legs around his waist. (Not the most comfortable position, but a subconscious throwback to the early days of their relationship, when the sex was rough & weird.)]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Hei wishes he could tell her. The breadth of this hunger -- this need that has spread, creeping, to infiltrate almost every last aspect of his life – it's not for every-fucking-body in the fucking city. Barely a handful of other women have ever stirred such interest; Amber was the only one who had roused this kind of senseless, low-level simmering. With Korra, even that takes a darker edge: this is almost pure rut; the need to drive his cock as hard as he can, as deep as he can, into this girl who is capable of matching him with such fierce welcome. ]

[ His breath hitches as she shoves him back. He doesn't falter, though. A coordinated if careless effort results in him scooping her weight in widespread palms: chest to chest, her legs a tight braid around him, heels nudging his spine. For a tall girl, he thinks dimly, Korra is remarkably limber. ]

[ Rocking against her, he tips his head to meet her mouth. His kisses are both lewd and tender, out of sync with the hard bite of his fingers in the flesh of her backside, the rough movements of his hips as if his body is struggling to align them. ]

[anatural]

[While his kisses are tender, hers are forceful, bordering on angry. She's in no mood to trust tenderness from him — it feels too much like appeasement. His honesty has always been accompanied by pain; if it doesn't hurt, she doesn't want it. Her arms are wrapped around his neck tight enough to choke.

It's still not enough. She loosens her grip on him enough to yank at his shirt, more than happy to rip it if that's what it takes to get it off.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ There's an element of the older times in her ferocity -- physically at least: kisses firing like blows, her whole body alight like a feu de joie, all guns blazing, trying frantically to climb him while her hands struggle with his clothes and fastenings. There's an echo, too, of his red-tinged days with Amber: no time for an intricate pretzeling of arms and legs, soft kisses, unpeeled clothes -- the world is crashing down around their ears and they can think of nothing but the wet congested immediacy of Now. ]

[ Korra wrenches his shirt, and something tears. Doesn't matter. He's doing some yanking and tearing of his own -- at her blouse, at the fur pelt, at the waistband of her pants. ]

[ For a moment he tries to imagine her in one of those skintight bodysuits in Heaven's War. Korra with her velvety dark hair bobbed to a short burst of waves about her face or swept up in a no-nonsense pony-tail. Korra in tired-eyed repose after a battle, slumped against a charred wall, Korra drinking something clear and strong. The smell of female sweat and hard liquor and her hips moving snakelike under shifting polyurethane, the lines of her thigh-holsers and suspender belt legible when her uniform is pulled tight. Korra laughing into Hei's ear under the white mosquito netting, alone with him in a tent, murmuring her usual absurd girlishness over the background noise of the practice gunfire and taunts of the recruits. Korra drunk at the end of the night, and him getting an armful of her, slippery warm fabric and skin pressed up against his own, or, hell, perhaps Korra wouldn't go for that, perhaps she would shave her hair close to her scalp, wear blades and a string of bullets, and stand with her long limbs outlined in stark greengray fatigues. ]

[ Can Hei see it? Any of it? No. God. No. The girl he has here -- to maul, to squeeze, to bite -- is more than enough. ]

[anatural]

[That's some imagination you've got there, Hei.

She tosses the torn pieces of his shirt to the floor, finishes off her own shirt (that's going to make getting home interesting, but that's a concern for later) and then — Oops. She unbalances herself while trying to reach the knot of her sarashi. If Hei doesn't react quickly, she's tumbling to the floor and taking him with her in a painful thaw. She doesn't care.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Yeah well. Maybe you inspire him. ]

[ She flings the scraps of clothes aside, then nearly topples over as she tries to undo her sarashi. Hei's reflexes kick in. Circling one arm around her back, he swings them away from the wall. Tries to stagger to the bedroom, but only makes it as far as the adjacent armchair. They land hard; the springs creak and he lets off a grunt, the begins at once to strip off the rest of their clothes: the wild ribbons of the sarashi, her boots and his sandals, the tangling brace of both their trousers. ]

[ Perched across his lap, Korra arrests his attention with the focus of a camera snapping a picture. Every time he looks at her he sees her more sharply, every last dot of her connecting to another: the fixed blue kiss of her eyes, the glowing familiarity of her face, the lock of neck to shoulders, the pretty handfuls of breasts like scoops of something dark and sweet he wants to sink his teeth into. For a moment Hei can't remember what he is supposed to be doing; thoughts blur just out of reach. An ache rises in him, pressure-cooking his jammy, very confused brain. ]

[ Then his mouth collides with hers -- a breathless, swooping kiss like freefall. ]

[anatural]

[Well done, sir. Points for effort. While he busies himself with incidentals, Korra hones in on what really matters: the zipper to his pants. Of course he makes it difficult, but she's always been equal to a challenge. She wants to have him vulnerable in her hand. (Except what she really wants, what she can't admit to herself that she wants, is for him to pin her down and drive her crazy like he used to.)]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Her messages skitter in a tangled whorl through Hei's system of understanding. He can pick up that she wants it rough and dirty tonight. Whether that includes being topped, tormented, teased... he isn't sure yet. More data needs to be accumulated. ]

[ He lets off a grateful sort of hum as she drags down the zipper of his pants, where his erection is trying to unfurl against the tight confines. Want is dancing in his body, atoms of it bouncing one against another, a liberating expansion of life energy, a wave of greed. Running his splayed fingers up the V of her ribcage, he cups her breasts roughly in both hands. He presses them tight together, so both her nipples are at his mouth, dragging his tongue across them in broad, careless swathes before he sucks them hard, until they crinkle to stiff points between his teeth. Her whole body holds a warmish glow of health, an almond and coffee blend of flesh and sun that makes him want to nuzzle close and bite. ]

[anatural]

[More data. Okay. What conclusions can be derived from the way Korra grips his hair, hard enough to pull strands out? What about the choking grip she has on his erection before she starts to stroke?]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Conclusion? She's trying to kill him. ]

[ She yanks his hair, the fingers of her other hand a sweet stranglehold on his cock, and Hei's breath hitches around a growl. He feels pretzeled into dizziness, face heated, flesh racing. If want had been an atom, now it is split. It spins his equilibrium. Every touch is like a light wallop that connects a necessary circuit and reminds him that his body is primed for shocks and sparks, not just calculated tenderness. ]

[ In the next breath, something inside him, that cruel little thing that licks heat across the back of his spine, crackling under the surface of his skin, jerks awake. Cording an arm around Korra's waist, he twists to spill her on her back across the faded pillows of the armchair. It's almost too narrow, but it's not comfort he's aiming for. Matter-of-factly, he hoists himself across her, weight settled on her groin instead of her knees, in case she tries to kick him and the family jewels suffer a fatal impact. His cock feels live, jumping, hot-tipped against his belly, and he gazes down at Korra with a dark, satisfied expression. ]

Good thing I'm not the type to file assault charges.

[ Because seriously, Korra: Are you trying to kill him? (You are, aren't you?) ]

[anatural]

[Hey, she's been way rougher with him before.]

Don't be a baby. [She twists his erection hard as she squirms, trying to unseat him. She could push his chest but that would mean letting go of him.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ She has -- but there's a certain gap between stasis and arousal, in being cathected with enough desire that pain translates into pleasure. (How would she like it if he bit her clit right off the bat -- no teasing, no foreplay?) ]

[ There's a grimace as she twists his erection, a cramp of oversensitivity that quickly blossoms into a sweet full-blooded ache. Settling himself more firmly across her, he keeps those often-flailing legs pinned beneath his. Braces himself on one arm, his torso a pale curve over her, and reaches for her breasts with the other. He finds a nipple, clamps it between his fingers, hard enough to make her produce either a yelp or a moan, to make that gorgeous body tense and push in its familiar way, all her soft-hard edges ramming up against him. He pinches too roughly, twists, then wedges his knee between Korra's legs. ]

[anatural]

Ow! [Point would have been taken, if she were taking notes. But this is more of a fight than sex, regardless of how turned on they both are, and she's less concerned with pleasing him and more interested in making him cry uncle. Even as she rocks her hips, grinding herself against his knee, she leans forward and clamps her teeth down on one of his nipples. His fault for shoving them in her face, honestly.]