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]

[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.]

[mortemscintilla]

Hnn.

[ The sting of her bite scalds him, exhilarates him. He can feel his erection thump with a surge of heat against his belly, the balls rising; he wants to rub against her, to find delicious relief in the warm soft plane of her belly, or maybe between the pillowy heat of her breasts, at the same time coaxing her mouth open to lick wet stripes across the head of his cock with her pretty tongue. Instead he jerks forcibly away. A length of curtain tie-backs, old and faded to a dull blue, are heaped on the coffee table. Snatching them up, he seizes her wrists and makes short work of knotting them tight. Not as effective as handcuffs, sure, but the puposefulness of sex toys can often make them less exciting. ]

[ He pins her bound arms heavily above her head with one palm. The other, meanwhile, glides down, cupping the warm little tuft of her sex. He squeezes hard, feeling the heat and moisture of her against his fingers, before he brings his palm down in a light slap, like a licking strap over her clit. ]

[anatural]

HEY! [Korra squawks and struggles against him as he binds her wrists — though obviously she can't mind that much, since it would be the simplest thing in the world for her to burn them off with her firebending. She'd clearly rather complain than do anything about it.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ He was expecting her to shred the ties, screaming rape and murder, fists windmilling. The fact that she doesn't is reassuring -- and telling. He decides that, if he gets another chance, he'll only ever use these little ties to keep her pinned, and that he will always have them handy with with him. He ignores her squawk, settling back with an anticipatory air. She's still, which gives him the chance to steal more than a roving eyeful of her. Sweet sturdy curves, kissable pout, mussed ponytail, ceramic hair pieces glinting against the dark fur of her hair, wishbone angles summing up her body. Dust of the outdoors, scents both clean and grubby. Her face is a kittenish pert, a puppyish round, with traces of seaside and sky in the blue eyes. Impossible. ]

[ With a half-smile, he pushes the hand on her mons lower, finding slickness and heat. He doesn't try to be playful or gentle. He twists his wrist, thumb trapping her clit under it, as he works too fingers into her folds. He doesn't prod at her usual sweetspot, though; he only circles it with his fingers before pressing with a rude precision against the spongy wet patch just above it, rubbing and coaxing as if he's fucking her, but with a sustained pressure, a specific friction, that his cock or his tongue wouldn't be able to achieve. ]

[ He's never played with all her hotspots -- too distracted by her other charms, or maybe just too selfish -- but right now he's keen to remedy that. ]

[anatural]

[She growls and knees him in the ribs. He looks way too satisfied with himself — she's still mad at him. He doesn't get to toy with her without consequence.]