When you have to go there...

[mortemscintilla]

WHO: Korra & Hei
WHAT: Korra moves in to Hei's place.

[ He's found an old loft not too far from the beach, strangely customized by a few generations of previous tenants. Tucked away among the sand dunes and flapping palms, it takes a while to find the strange cedar building, low and spread out like a child's blocks jumbled into the hillside, windows flashing like jewels. There's a set of wooden steps up the side of the building, turning from flight to flight like a fire escape, and a boarded genkan walkway along the bricked side that brings any visitors (or intruders) to an open area of the roof, enclosed by low walls. Deck furniture, crates, a few legacy plants that survive on rain. A good place to sit out at night and watch the stars -- or to spring a well-placed trap on trespassers. ]

[ Inside it's bigger than expected, but it's sectioned off by shoji, and the sections are cozy. (Well, cozy is what came to Hei's mind the first time he saw it, dry and ironic because any other meaning was too complicated to explain.) A dark-laqured kitchen area with an antique keyaki-wood hibachi; a livingroom made airy and pale by the paper blinds of joined squares of crumpled washi; a narrow bedroom with sea-blue walls and a moon-window with dark bamboo lattices, but bare of anything except a wide futon and a nightstand. Everything runs together except where retaining walls and counters and furniture and a few stone columns mark one part of the loft from another. ]

[ Further down, there is a lot of empty floorspace that once might have been a tatami room. Had the loft been occupied by a family, this would have been the location of the kotatsu, its heavy quilted skirt draping to the floor and an electric brazier radiating cheerfully, their legs tucked comfortably under the quilted skirt as they gossiped about the neighbors and griped about the household bills. Now, it serves as a training room. A floor of polished but pitted boards covered by dull gray mats. A weight bench. A punching bag. A pommel horse. A trapeze rig with a bright tangle of aerial silks. The only truly bizarre item in the mini-dojo is a wooden wing-chun training dummy, about the dimensions of a large man, which Hei has placed in the corner. It keeps his reflexes sharp and the striking surfaces of his hands callused and hard, and allows him to practice some of the deadlier strikes and blocks he'd neglect to some degree while training in a real dojo. ]

[ It would make an interesting conversation piece, if anyone ever visits the apartment. But mostly, Hei's hoping Korra won't find it too unnerving. ]

[ He's already sent her a passcode to disarm the security system at the door. (It only works once, so if it falls into the wrong hands, it's useless.) He's also taken tomorrow off work. Half to help her move any extra stuff in. And half because, well ...  he's planning to say hello to her until they can't say hello anymore. ]

Comments

[mortemscintilla]

[ She reaches down to palm him through his pants, and a tiny, jittery whoosh of breath answers her. Humming, Hei gathers her in close, fingers plucking at the bindings of her sarashi; her hair is a warm soft avalanche around him as he bends his head. Unhurriedly he kisses her, shoulder to throat, throat to chest. His face burns furiously, stung with tenderness and lust and the feel of Korra's skin against his cheeks, the scrape of his rough hairs against her smoothness. ]

[ Below, between them, his erection is a sharp weighty cramp. He needs to unzip his jeans but the pain is better than the risk of ruining this, so he martyrs himself with pleasure and brushes his lips across the slopes of Korra's breasts as her sarashi slowly unravels, before more hungrily begins tracing the points of her nipples with his tongue. ]

[ Without letting her go, he breathes, ]

Give me your wrists.

[ It's more a coaxing whisper than a command. ]

[anatural]

[Aesthetically, Korra prefers Hei clean shaven, but there's something dizzying and delicious about the burn of his stubble against her skin. She'd like to feel more of it against her breasts.]

What are you planning?

[She asks dryly, but she reluctantly lets go of his erection and offers him both her wrists. She thinks she knows where this is going, but she's eager to find out if she's right.]

[mortemscintilla]

I think you know.

[ He can feel the undercurrents of ambivalence spiking under her surface. Almost to diffuse them, he pauses, and then pushes onwards, a light kiss to the insides of both her wrists, right at that vital killing-point, the cluster of blue veins. It's not that they've never played rough, never skirted that line of submission versus control. But there's a difference now. There's more to lose, somehow, if he gets it wrong. There's a sharper knowledge, stenciled into his brainsphere, that this isn't give and take. This isn't partnership. It is inescapability. And because of that, he wants her to be comfortable, to get settled into it. Something like this is always difficult to sink into, but it can also be its own reward. ]

[ He presses her wrists together, then reaches into his nightstand. Draws a length of fabric, a rough-hewn tabby weave, and wraps it around the bones twice, studiously avoiding the pressure-points, before he secures it with a tight square knot. Their faces are close, almost touching, and he can feel the warm nuzzle of her breasts through the thin fabric of his undershirt. It takes everything he has not to start in on her. ]

[ Instead, setting his palms on her hips, he carefully edges her away, a strange backward foxtrot, until she's spilled back across the futon. ]

[anatural]

[Much more comfortable than last time, she thinks, and not just because they aren't fighting and vines aren't busting through the window. Arms above your head for an extended period of time is just not comfortable. But this isn't as bad, and her arms are low enough that she can still palm his erection as they dance their way back to the futon. She lets out a little oof as they land.]

You've got me right where you want me.

[mortemscintilla]

Not quite yet.

[ His face softens almost imperceptibly, and his gaze sweeps from her face, lingering on her softly-curved lips, and down Korra's body, a dark hungry wandering that he doesn't bother to hide. The day's inversion -- dark outside, light in -- makes her seem the most solid object in an otherwise shadowed world. A lush curling corona of hair, loosely tethered to its ponytails. A dreamy blue glint of eyes. The pretty breasts, round and full, with the taut dark nipples begging to be bitten. She looks delicious. She looks like New Year's morning. ]

[ He doesn't move to cover her. Not yet. Instead he draws closer, settling crosslegged at the edge of the futon. Reaches out, lifting her bound wrists, easing them up over her head. He runs his finger around the border of fabric and skin. Dimly, he wonders: is he not equally bound at this moment? Constrained by the trust he's somehow earned -- and which he knows he doesn't deserve? ]

[ He tries not to think about it. Instead, he glides his hand down her arm, across cheek, across breast, pausing, pausing, and then down her sides to hips. Tracing the rough fur pelt around her waist. The thick material of her loose pants. All of it extraneous, an unnecessary barrier between her skin and his. He starts in on her boots, slipping them off in neat motions, letting them drop with muted thuds to the floor. Drags his palms, with a sort of rough tenderness, up the backs of her legs, still clothed, warmed from her body, and stops just under her ass. He squeezes gently. Then hard -- leaning over at the same time to lick a slow wet stripe from the band of her pants up to her bellybutton, before he bites there with a wicked scrape of teeth. ]

[anatural]

[She has absolutely no idea where he's going with this. That unpredictability is both the fun and the danger of being with Hei. She thinks he'll go hard, then he goes soft. Thinks he'll move fast, then he moves slow. She waits with baited breath as he looks at her, as he runs his hand down her body.

He may expect her to struggle against her binding, but Korra holds herself unusually still. She's not in a fury, like the last time he bound her hands, or helpless like she'd felt when he'd tried tying that rope around her. She can get out any time she wants — but that doesn't mean any time is the right time. It's like earthbending; you have to listen, and sometimes wait, for the perfect moment to strike.

Even with her commitment to stillness, she can't help a little gasp of pleasure-pain when he bites down on her belly button.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Cool sheets and hot skin and already Hei's heart is beating fast. Korra is so still under him. Not the eerie, hideous pliancy of a Doll, or even the fixedness he's learnt to school in his own mouth and body, the mechanical response of one who has been trained -- or who has trained himself -- to deliver pleasure without joy. This is something different, and he doesn't recognize it. A new, unfamiliar look after two years of knowing each other. ]

[ It stuns him -- which is a little funny. Strange, too, that he'd assume he's unpeeled every layer from Korra. He always thinks of her face like an open rose cradled in his palms. ]

[ At her gasp, there's a staticky shift in the air between them. Hei's heart jerks like a snared viper in his chest and he has to exhale slowly. Because it's not resistance or fear that made her cry out. It's encouragement. ( As if her agreement means anything right now. As if now she could grant or forbid him anything. He'd think that ... if he were that kind of man. He would. Does Korra know he doesn't want to be that kind of man? Does he?) ]

[ He's not going to think about it. Instead he makes a second slow pass up her legs, until her knees slip apart, an inch at first, then another. He hugs her waist, and, impulsively, unexpectedly, rubs his cheek against her belly -- a soft-sharp rasp of stubble and warm skin. He loves the she's just a little softer than you'd believe, lacking his own hard edges or sharp cuts. Her muscles are gently defined; a braided blend of lean and lush. ]

[ His face burns, either from want or from the seeping heat of her body, as he drags himself lower. Mouthing her through her slacks, right between her thighs, feeling the humid outline of her sex beneath the fabric. He gnaws her there, a tracing drag of teeth, before he rolls her trousers down and off her, cool pads of fingertips trailing the inside of her thighs. He lets them spill to the floor, leaving only her underwear in place. Scant swathes of protection. ]

[anatural]

[That's the problem with the layer metaphor in general: it assumes the self is solid and pieces can be pulled away. But this isn't a part of Korra that has been secret and hidden away; it's a part of her that didn't even exist until the right combination of circumstances brought it into being.

She closes her eyes and digs her nails into her palms, her breathing already a little unsteady from the way he's touching her. He rubs his cheek over her stomach and she wants more than anything else to flip their positions so she can devour him completely, explore and caress parts of him that she's never given the proper appreciation. Wait, she tells herself firmly. Just wait. The time will come.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ That's the problem with any metaphors -- especially for the eleven-year-old boy who'd replaced his own heart with them, and set out to spin an ironclad carapace of a persona, to create an inner-world, where metaphor is indestructible. It hasn't worked, of course. Watching Korra, he can feel the literary and psychoanalytic rising up to mock him everytime he thinks he has her all figured out. ]

[ She's quiet now. So quiet. But tense. Taut muscles beneath the skin under his kisses. He feels a pressing need to connect, to waken her from that shimmery shell of serenity, to see her surface in all her zesty, restless glory. He wants her gaze to brighten and deepen to reveal every sparky and amazing passion that blooms within, for that smooth flesh to stir with vivid, brimming life. ]

[ But he's not sure how to articulate that. So he presses his lips just above her womb, clinging onto a single word as an imperfect descriptor, trying to make it make sense. ]

Mine.

[ It's almost inaudible, more a ghostly susurration than a real sound.]

[ Crawling onto the futon, he slides his knees between hers. Widens them, parting her legs, and skims his palms up her thighs until he can feel the damp material of her panties on his fingertips. At first, a tiny pressure on the private cloth, just at her mons, right above her clit. Then a little harder, small tight circlings with his fingers, until the fabric dampens. He presses harder, just where she likes it, tiny whorls of friction. He can feel her clit softly throbbing; he gives it a soft flicking with his thumb through the cotton, working the edges of it, giving and denying, speeding and slowing, until the material grows so saturated that it might as well be part of her skin. ]

[anatural]

Hm? [She asks because she didn't catch what he whispered, but then his fingers are going to town on her and she doesn't really care. Her hands clench and her muscles strain with the effort of not bucking up into him. She can't make it that easy for him; she wants to make him work a little bit harder than he usually does. Challenges are good for people.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Hei probes with one hand through the wet cotton, fixing on the spots to tease her, to withhold anything beyond a fraction of relief. With the other hand he strips out of his jeans and kicks off his sandals, leaving his boxers in place. His erection is a trapped hardness that nudges Korra's hip, a pulsing counterpoint to the burn skittering through his veins. Joining her on the futon, he settles alongside her and resumes his determined assault on her sedate silence. It is new territory, somehow. Korra, in suspension. More fragile than expected; more enticing, even at a half-simmer. She lies passive, accepting his touch, her face and entire body placid but tense. If there is any furor of resistance in her, it is buried deep and doesn't show itself on the skin or in the eyes, their color dimmed to a cloudy blue in the shadow of his body. ]

[ From her panties, he slides a hand down her damp skin, to the hollow between hipbone and belly. Insinuating fingers under the waistband of her underwear and lower until they curl into the wetness between her spread legs. His eyes slip half-shut, and he dips his head, nuzzling the warm hollow of her throat as he edges his fingers deeper into her. Rubbing at her clit with the web of his thumb, just so. Working his fingers through wet curls and plump lips, massaging deeper, each tiny shift of his fingers playing along that tender, swollen strip that is sensitive to the lightest flicker. ]

[ The silence between them should hold a charge of challenge and heady diseqilibrium. No fair exchange. Just him, taking. (How strange, that it's not like that at all.) ]

[anatural]

Oh come on! [Not so much words as a faint growl of need and frustration. Her hands clench and unclench, trying to work off some of the terrible energy building up inside her, and she turns her head, desperately searching for his lips. She has to hold on, no matter how hard it is — the moment is not yet right.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ She growls, and Hei's face melts into a light map of silent laughter. He can feel the impatience brimming in her, and that's a good sign. She was too quiet, before, and even now she is playing some foxing game; someone, apparently, who can succeed at submitting and being still, at relinquishing argument and effort. Or perhaps this is simply another kind of effort. She is so still, so disciplined in her motionlessness, that Hei privately marvels. If any one thing characterizes Korra, it is her kinetic energy, that vital force which betrays itself in near-constant motion, however muted. Whether draped across a couch after a tiring day, wedged bonelessly against him after sex, or sinking into the murk of boredom, she can't help but twitch, grimace, pout, paddle her feet, tug at her hair-ties and fiddle with her clothes like a sulky kitten. ]

[ Now, she is in complete repose, a boneless drape of flesh across bone, unmoving but not exactly easy. Not at ease, but at the ready. ]

[ Studiously, Hei avoids her warm pooched lips. Leans closer, instead, and lays a light kiss on her forehead, then spreads its dreamy wake to the curve of one brow. The orbital ridge is a hard furl under the skin, and he can feel the softness below -- the rich smooth fold of eyelid -- flicker with movement under his touch as he eases it closed. Meanwhile, below, his two fingers push deep, curling, dragging along the roof of her sex until the slippery texture changes subtly against the pads of his fingers, his thumb swiping over her soft-hard clit. ]

[ He wants to see how long she holds out. Tonight's conclusion is in no way forgone, but he wants to know how long she can keep challenging the impossibility of being able to stop him, or change anything. ]

[anatural]

[The answer is not much longer. The forced stillness had been kind of an experiment, an attempt to see if it amplified pleasure like she's heard people say it does. For her, the answer is no. Not moving is both really hard and kind of boring.

But he shifts just so and she seizes her chance. She brings her bound arms around his neck and in the half-second where his balance is a little questionable, wrenches her hips to flip them over. Time to change the game.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ In hindsight, he should have seen that coming. If there's anything he can expect from Korra at this point, it's the unexpected. ]

[ Her looped arms descend around his neck, and as he blinks, muscles spring-loaded to resist, she's flipped them over. He lands in a half-drunk, half-dazed sprawl, flat on his back. Flashes his half-lidded eyes at her, and for a second they appear like two jaded pennies, cool and dull, if not for the flicker of amusement limning their edges. ]

Should have known that wouldn't last.

[ He pushes out the words, pitch lowered, his timbre a violin, its straining need issuing from behind his ribs. He can hear himself too in the drumming wells of his ears, the raspy, vibrating notes of a played body. Between them, in his boxers, his erection is a trapped ache, a straining heat and pressure. ]

[anatural]

[She wriggles her hips until his erection is flush against her clit, then starts grinding herself against it. There's an absurd little grin of pleasure on her face — she almost never manages to take him completely by surprise like this.]

Would you really want it to? [The only fun thing she can see about forcing your partner to keep still is the force of the inevitable explosion.]

[mortemscintilla]

No...

[ His breath braids painfully between the words. She grinds against him, and Hei can feel his nerves arrowing a trickling heat to his groin. Stirring against her is automatic; it is as if a spark arcs through his wiring to make the full connection. His hands, both unsteady and greedy, caress her spine, knead her hips, thumbs grazing close to her center but never touching. ]

[ It would be easy to tumble her over, to resume his game. But she looks, in the bluntest possible terms, incredibly fuckable, and he can't help but trace her lazily with a map of ownership. A thumb strokes along the band of her panties, and then his palm dips lower to cup and squeeze her through the wet cotton. Both a distraction, and a reminder that he was just getting her warmed up. ]

[anatural]

[Oh, she's plenty warm. She removes her arms from around his neck so she can safely burn off the bindings. Her hands free again, she grabs his wrists to bring them up over his head.]

Now what should I do with you?

[mortemscintilla]

[ He'd protest at the pretty fabric going up in a puff of acrid smoke. He was planning to use it again if given the opportunity. Instead, he merely offers her a quirked brow as she pins his wrists over his head. Ordinarily, Hei detests this position. The overtones of Boxed in and Trapped gain such volume and resonance as to become clamoring parodies of themselves. But with Korra, he's learnt to school himself against resisting. His mind might be wired for combat, but for all her aggressive posturings, the almost feline ferocity, things with Korra have evolved to a delightful tussle more than a real battle. ]

[ So he stays under her, watchful and patient; illusory Zen-like qualities that can segue in an instant to reveal an interior wildness, darker and in no way calm. ]

[ Wryly, ]

Something tells me you're going to do as you like.

[anatural]

[Lesson number one: Never tie Korra up with something you plan to keep. She leans down to kiss him, chiding him with a nip to his lip.]

There are a lot of things I like, though... [It's really quite a dilemma. She could slip him inside right now quite happily, but she also likes the idea of kissing him all over and then giving him a blowjob. She could also go for a little anal.... So many things to do, so much time to do them, but where to start? ]

Pick a number between one and five.

[mortemscintilla]

[ Guessing games? ]

[ He makes an amused, fuzzy sound, and smiles his small, unreadable smile. How convenient for them both, that a lot of the things he likes mesh so delightfully with what Korra does. He imagines her riding on top, hair swinging down as she tilts her head, the sharpness of her clavicle as she leans toward him. Ripe heavy breasts. Lips parted. Eyes like Curaçao or the burnt-out blue edges of a stormy sea. Imagines her face down on the futon, gasping into a pillow and letting the sweet slicked seam of her body open up to his, bang, bang, bang, nailed to completion, leaving her a tossed mess, hair exploded in sex-tangles, his cock like a split dandelion stem inside her divine heat, ripe and spilling milk. ]

[ Images and ideas whirl through him in a dizzy-making roulette, and for a moment he's at a loss, spoiled for choice. ]

[ Eventually, contemplatively: ]

...Three.

[ A not-so-arbitrary choice. He's always liked threes. (He also hates them.) ]

[anatural]

[...flaw in plan — she can't remember what three was. Was it him going down on her? Except she doesn't want to give up being on top. Umm... She scoots back so that she's still sitting on his legs, but he can sit up and bend forward.]

How horribly uncomfortable would this be? [She rubs her clit with her fingers to indicate what she wants him to do. If it would even work. Maybe she should've just gone for the blowjob.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Propping himself up of his elbows, Hei watches her touch herself, mesmerized for a moment, then gets the message. Waves of hot blood bubble across his scalp, his dick. It would be so easy to roll them over, to strip his boxers and her panties off, and sink into her until all the shrill noise thronging in his brain like crazy flies whites out into imperfect silence. ]

[ Instead, not replying, he reaches out, manhandling her with a careless, yet somehow tender efficiency. In a minute she's sprawled across him back to front; his fingers tangle in the elastic of her panties, ripping them off with a wrench of fabric and a snap like bubblegum, giving him a view between her wide-spread thighs, of the pucker of her ass, and her glistening sex, the clit peeking reddened and swollen from its curly little pooch. ]

I like this better.

[ The greed in his words is so low and raw his voice comes out like a scrape of glass on gravel. He doesn't give her a chance to reply. Just seizes her hips, dragging her closer to force her sex open with thick, slippery stabs of his tongue. ]

[anatural]

HEY! [She squawks and flails her arms as he suddenly yanks her onto her back. She can feel his voice on her skin; it's an effort not to moan at the thrill it sends through her.]

That's not — [She doesn't get a chance to finish the sentence before his tongue is there and all thought flies out the window. ]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Hei grips tight to her hips until he feels the hard scrape of bone beneath the press of his brutal fingers. Bites her wherever he can reach. Her thigh. Her hipbone. A mottling of dark blotches along her spine, right across the curve of her ass. And there, he bites especially hard, not a nip, but holding the soft skin between his teeth. Both his palms skim along the soft skin of her thighs, her buttocks, roughly squeezing and massaging. This close, he can smell her, a tart and gorgeous fug. With one hand, he grips her steady. With the other, he spreads her lips to lap first at her clit -- a series of long, sloppy sweeps -- before placing hot wet kisses all along her seam, down and up, before dragging her flush against his open mouth, his tongue fucking deep into her. ]

[ He wants to hear her cry out, beg, the sound and sight of her melting something in him; he can already feel it going, a piece of himself softening like caramel under a flame. ]