Who do you work for baby?

[mortemscintilla]

WHO: Korra & Hei
WHAT: Wherein Hei has important news. As does Korra. 

 

[ In the days that follow, Hei's life seems locked in stasis -- he may as well be frozen in a cryo-chamber. In the gray dawn every morning, the brute vestige of habit wakes him up in time to go to the factory. Sprawled on the futon, he lies with his back to Korra. Eyes open to watch the sun spread across the bottom of the windowsill, immersed in that strange post-sleep clarity. Sometimes he takes a full five minutes to rise, lulled by Korra's breathing: long, slow inhales, smooth exhales. Just a sliver of space dividing their bodies -- but it might as well be a minefield. ]

[ In the late evenings, stiff and dull-eyed, as if he's been engaged in a low-wattage war someplace, he hits up the Triad hotspots, propped up on a stool with the opium-puffing, betel-chewing low-lives, listening to the scratchy music on the jukebox and inhaling the sour whiff of spilled sake as they talk shop. Almost every night he gets fresh info about the Red Lotus -- their agendas, their movements. It never quite makes the eleven o'clock local news, but from what he's gathered so far, this new threat plans to transform the world into a free-for-all disaster zone, with public figures and political leaders toppled down nightly. ]

[ To separate fact from fiction, he turns to the air-bender held captive in his safehouse. She is tight-lipped and defiant at first. But after he's spread and u-clamped her fingers to a table, and meticulously dismantled them one by one from cuticle to knuckle, she grows chattier. From her, he learns the names of the Red Lotus' leaders. Learns of their failed attempts to kidnap Korra once before, which ended in them being locked up. ]

[ Now they're out, and determined to pick up where they left off. ]

[ The details leave Hei quietly unnerved. He needs to warn Korra. It's true, things have been tense since she'd learnt about his affiliation with the Triads. At home, it is as if they are guests at the same small hotel, who have been introduced for politeness' sake at the table d'hote. Meals are spent in near-silence. Little or no physical warmth passes between them; lying back-to-back in the futon each night, there seems nothing to distinguish the bleak well of sleep from the bleak stretches of wakefulness. They don't talk about desire. It is there -- in him, if not in her -- but as if by silent consent, he acts on it separately, or else not at all. The air in the house seems laced with a dark spell; it burns dim and low between them like creeping resignation.]

[ Still, her safety is his first priority. As the smoky dusk encroaches, he cuts a brisk path through the noise and steam and clamor of the city. Hops on a ferry, and heads to Air Temple Island, where Korra is training with Tenzin. ]

Comments

[mortemscintilla]

[ Given everything that's led up to this point -- words, touches, glances -- her impulsive pouncing doesn't take Hei by surprise. What surprises him is the way the air hisses between his teeth in a tea-kettle whistle. The touch of her mouth on his -- small, searing, delicious -- is like a wonderful, red-hot wire slashing across his self-control. The slashing gives way to a steady pulse and grind: a clock's worth of rusted gears meshing in his stomach, his chest, his groin. ]

[ Fuck. It's been so long. Long enough that his desire has grown hard-edged and sharp like the blades hidden in his coat. ]

[ Against his better judgement, he drags her in closer. Kisses her hard, as if distracting himself from the rest of his own wakening body. In the dimness of the room, she is a darker shape against the gloom, shaped in soft crests and eddies, plays of moonlight and starlight. But beautiful despite all that -- or maybe more beautiful because of it. ]

[ He doesn't know. He can only eat her mouth with desperation, hips settled in close, a slow stirring against her heat, as if trying to align their parts just right, find the perfect fit. ]

[ Then he remembers -- the Red Lotus. The baby. The thundercloud of trouble brewing. And the reminder is like a splash of ice-cold water. ]

[ Forcibly, he wrenches back. Lip-swollen, hazy-eyed, his breathing a shade too quick. ]

Korra -- hold on --

[anatural]

[No! There will be no wrenching back! Korra growls and yanks him back in for another kiss. It's not just about the buildup of sexual energy, or the weird chemical magic that gives him the ability to turn her on just by being nearby. This is how they communicate. When words fail them, when their vastly different life experiences put up a seemingly impenetrable barrier, sex is how they break through. It's not that bodies can't lie — even Korra's not that naive — but neither of them have lied yet. Its beauty (and its fatal flaw) is how it strips away the complications and communicates only the barest of bones. I love you. I want you close.

She's tired of words and their complications. She wants — needs — simple, basic reassurance.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ He's as tired of words as she is. Tired of the way you have to be careful of the loaded subtext as if with a gun, to learn how to dissemble and prevaricate to suit yourself, to elaborate only on details the other person wants to hear until you cannot entirely separate honesty from bullshit. Hates how once you try to put matters as tenuous and fragile as what spins between him Korra into words, the words fail, which is why it's better to leave them off altogether. ]

[ Except words are necessary here. They need to talk about the pregnancy. About the risks and repercussions, about the Dos and Donts. A million terrible scenarios wing through his head -- the threat of hypertension so common at her age, trebled by the pressures Korra is facing. Preeclampsia. Miscarriage. All pertinent concerns, and ones that ought to sober him up fast. ]

[ Except her mouth, claiming his, tastes of heat and sweetness; he hums as she drags him in, his own hands clutching feverishly at her hips, her shoulders, tunneling up into her hair. His other parts have decided to start working against him too, because the shifting and rubbing his hips contrive against hers is a kind of sharp, dissonant music that unfurls down his spine and makes him try harder. His mouth breaks from hers only to tongue along her jaw, lips and teeth playing with a tender little ear, sucking the lobe as if it's a nipple. ]

[ But despite her body's disorienting allure, its pulsing heat and the haze it brims in his brain, he has enough sanity left to breathe, ]

'M not sure ... this is a good idea.

[alittlebent]

Don't care. [She bites hard on his neck and grabs his ass, pulling him towards the bed. Details can be dealt with later; right now she needs this. Not like air, or water — nothing so desperate as that — but like sleep. Too long without and she's tense, stressed out, fuzzy-brained, and temperamental. She needs it to restore her sanity. Or maybe she needs it like solid ground, a steady surface on which to confront everything coming her way.

Tell me you love me. Tell me we're in this together.]

[mortemscintilla]

But --

[ He's forgotten how strong she can be when she wants to be. His body feels pitched off-kilter, caught in the current of her bites and kisses, the greedy way she grapples at him, drawing him closer to that hot dark gravity of her body. Logically, he knows it'd be easy to disentangle himself. But all that covert-ops training and the highly-honed senses, any assistance of that persona that so perfectly embodies the Nietzschean Ubermensch -- none of that seems available right now. His reserves of restraint are running dry; he's all out of fight. ]

[ He doesn't resist when they perform a stagger-waltz across the floor to splay atop her narrow bed. Her body seems to be thrumming beneath his, her small hot face like something both solid and fragile caught in his hands. Between gusts of air, Hei spins kisses rapidly into the space between their mouths -- slow probing kisses, wet quick skimming ones. His pulse is like a hive of red wasps filling his skull; he can feels himself, swollen and trapped, already leaking pre-cum into his boxers and dampening even the thick denim. ]

[ But he needs to be gentle, to keep a clear head, if he's going to do this right. ]

[ Breaking from her with a ragged inhale, he says, ]

Easy. I'm not going anywhere.

[ A reminder for himself as much as for her. ]

[alittlebent]

[Are you sure? She almost wants to ask, but doesn't. She's taking him at his word, regardless of how little reason to trust he's given her. Korra takes a deep breath and tries to slow her racing heart, get control over a body that wants to be all over him. She largely succeeds, but lets herself rock her hips against him, a concession to burning desire.]

I don't want to play games tonight. [By which she means the foreplay that's one of the many reasons he's better than Bolin in bed. For all of her seemingly reckless abandon, she is keenly aware of where they are, and how little Tenzin approves. She doesn't want Hei to test how far he can push her, or how loud he can make her scream. She just wants to feel him.]

[mortemscintilla]

Al-- all right.

[ He tries for a level tone. But then she rocks under him, and he gutters out an unsteady breath, the muscles in his body stringing taut in a ripple from shoulders to thighs. It's so hard to stay still, and he can feel his face filling with the same hot, wild rush of blood as his groin. With effort he tamps the need down, keeping his attention off her sweet restless hips, off the stiffening crux of their bodies, despite how unbelievably good it feels, leverage and violin bows and crickets and sex. ]

[ I don't want to play games tonight. He absorbs the words like water, drinking in that earnest neediness in her lovely little face. How long has it been, he thinks, since anyone has looked at him that way? That clear-eyed and raw. He feels as if he's just inhaled a mouthful of fresh mint. It is a sensation that clears the head and lungs, slaps him awake with bracing pleasure. ]

[ Swallowing dryly, he fans his fingers across Korra's skull. Smoothes a hedge of curls, touch sliding down to clasp the back of her neck. ]

All right.

[ Reassurance, assent, consolation. It could be any number of things. By degrees, he makes himself heavy on her. Lets his lips play with hers again, a humid butterfly tease, before he slips a free hand between them. Strips off his coat and shirt, then undoes the buttons of his trousers, shucking them off awkwardly along with his sandals before moving to peel off Korra's clothes. ]

[anatural]

[She can peel off her own clothes, thanks. She's not going to just lie there and wait for him to do everything — for one thing, that would take way too long. While he's stripping out of his clothing, Korra shucks off her own, sending her boots flying across the room with a loud clatter that makes her wince a little. Whatever. She's an adult and she's allowed to do this. Her hairties come loose as pulls her shirt over her head, and hair gets stuck in her mouth & nose.]

Bleh! [She fumbles to get it out of her mouth. Ooooo, sexy.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Worthy of a Playboy centerfold. ]

[ Hei represses a smile as she fusses with her wolf-tails. Tries to ignore those sinuous wriggling movements of her body, even as they send something like a whiskey-waft of heat spiking through his bloodstream. Trapped in the canopy of her hair, Korra has such a nice shape to her head. Her hair-ties tumble forward like animal-ears and her nose is squinched up, the muscles in her face mobile, alive. She's so funny looking sometimes, and he'd tell her so, but what he really thinks is that she's cute, brimming with the same disarming, charming eagerness as a kitten with a ball of yarn. ]

[ Working the last scraps of his clothes down with hers, he fixes on her hair-ties. Plucks them free one by one, before burying his face in the tossed mess of her hair. With the other hand, he works his erection -- painfully twisted -- at a more comfortable angle between them; it stripes a wet line along her belly and seems to jump head-first into the nest of his hand, slippery-smooth and hot. ]

[alittlebent]

[As soon as the hair is out of her mouth, Korra's back to kissing him wherever she can reach. Invisible brands to claim him as hers, greedy & possessive. If he pulled back right now and told her to choose between him and the baby... she'd still choose the baby's life. But there'd be no hiding how the decision would cut up her insides and leave her heart a bloody pulp on the floor.

Luckily he doesn't, and she wraps her hand around the one holding his erection.]

Let me. [She doesn't try to displace his hand, just moves it with hers as she starts a slow, steady stroke.]

[mortemscintilla]

Fuck.

[ The words buzz against the top of Korra's skull. He lets her little hand guide his, one thumb flicking under the notched ache at the tip and feeling his cock bounce within their clasped palms. Fluid pearls out to coat the head glossily, and he inhales with a ragged catch, heat flaring across his body up into the roots of his hair. Muzzily, he glances down at their linked palms. And in that brief, vertiginous moment the idea comes to him that there are hands forming inside her, hands that are attached to arms, attached to a body with a head and legs and a sex and it is made up of part of him and part of her. Growing. Inside her. Conceived as if he hasn't been a dispenser of death all these years -- alive, and here right now, in this room. ]

[ Something of himself, that he's imagined deader than dead for decades, is quickening. ]

[ Something whirls through him, terrifying, thrilling, like the cracked-open cylinder of a silver pistol, spun by momentum while he stares, spellbound, at the perfect coins of light that glint through each empty chamber. ]

[ Eyes squeezed shut, he catches Korra's mouth with his again. Kisses her hard -- insatiable excessive kisses struggling up his chest to take wing on lips and teeth and tongue, as if something inside him is shattering open with a need to soothe, to be soothed, to remind her that for better or worse, they're stuck in this mess together. ]

[alittlebent]

[It's a sign of the difference in their ages — or maybe just the difference in their life experiences — that it doesn't feel that real to her yet. After Kya pointed it out, Korra did recognize the change in her chi that indicates she has a new life inside her. But she doesn't feel connected to the baby yet. Her determination to keep the child is cultural and a reaction to the violence she's tolerated from Hei; it's not because she feels a bond with the life inside her. How can she? Physically, she doesn't feel any different. It doesn't feel like there's something alive inside her, just an obligation. Once it's more concrete, once it's something she can actually feel, maybe then...

She whimpers softly as he kisses her, kisses which straddle the line between pain and pleasure, but even with that, the room is remarkably quiet. The sound of their breathing, the ruffle of sheets and the wet slide of skin on skin are all swallowed by the night. She can hear an acolyte next door reciting her mantras, yet it doesn't pierce the bubble that surrounds them.

Slowly, carefully, Korra shifts so that she can lie back, Hei on top of her, their joined hands holding his erection just outside her entrance. She rolls her hips in an unspoken invitation to come inside as he is.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ He won't say it feels real, exactly. Hell, he still doesn't know what to think, what to feel about this. It is such an impossibility that he's never -- in all the daydreaming he'd once done about leaving the Syndicate, starting a normal life -- both when they were unattainable and after he'd grasped a semblance of them, imagined any such thing. He's come to rely on Korra's presence: her, and Yin, and Mao; the three stabilizing elements of his small life, like inert chemicals that maintain a state of suspended hyper-activity. Adding someone new to that triple-variable equation feels risky. ]

[ Just one combustible element -- acid to base, match to kindling -- and boom. Everything blows sky-high. ]

[ Yet part of him fears too, that he might never be like this again, his emotions and needs so synched with another human being. That irrational creature in his chest reminds him that this is his one chance to imagine a child, his child, as something still in potential, something yet possible. A fact to celebrate before the inevitability of numberless nights spent in hindsight and consolation. ]

[ From the window, an elongated rectangle of moonlight moves slowly across the wooden floor. The room itself feels like the depth-charged interior of a conch-shell, of a cathedral; their breathing is a loud sawing-in-and-out, like whispered prayers or ocean resonance. It fills all the wide gaps and makes a quiet space inside him. ]

[ When Korra spills onto her back, legs fanning open, and guides him down to where she's ripest and hottest, Hei can feel the trapped length of his erection radiate a pulsing, focused heat, from root to tip. For a moment, in a fluttery panic, he thinks he should put a condom on. Just to be on the safe side. ]

[ But -- fuck. She feels so good. Fresh greedy energy percolates through him. His blood zitzes with the memory of the last time they'd done this. ]

[ Edging his hips lower, he scrapes against her folds, snagging friction turning to slippery after a few tentative strokes. His cock notches lengthwise between her slick lips and he rocks slowly. Nudging her clit with the heavy vein at the underside, once, twice, again, half teasing, half experimental, before he changes the angle, slipping down into her opening and pressing in. Her skin seems to open up with a silky sigh, and Hei exhales a low complexity of hums, feeling the pressure of his head pop in and stretch her open. ]

[alittlebent]

[On the plus side, it's not like she can get any more pregnant. Korra probably should be more worried about the risk of disease than she actually is, but it's such an abstract threat compared to everything else facing her that it hardly seems worrying about.

She's not as prepped for him as she usually is — they've skipped the foreplay before, and her arousal has gone from 0 to 60 before, but never at the same time. She hisses as he pushes inside, and it's almost like those first few times all over again, that peculiar mixture of pleasure and unfamiliar discomfort. Without the condom, it's like seeing someone out of uniform for the first time — you recognize them, yet they still seem like an entirely different person.

Korra breathes deeply before starting to move with him. She's walking a delicate line, trying to get as much pleasure as she can without hitting the spots that make her scream. She wants to keep the quiet, not do anything that might puncture the bubble they're in.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Hei absorbs her hiss as he sinks in, his skin stung with lust and regret and a bittersweet tenderness. Grasping her knee, giving the skin of her inner-thigh a soft deep pinch, he widens her legs, one ankle curling around his calf. Lets his mouth play with hers, before latching in a fierce kiss, wanting this to feel good to her, wanting everything for her. And fuck -- she is so tight; it's like she's squeezing him in two. Head swimming, the muscles in his shoulders and thighs ticcing, he withdraws the slightest bit, then pushes deeper. Repeats the process, a steady rocking pressure, edging himself determinedly around the gate like a burglar. Circling, nudging, sliding deep, deeper, then slickly sinking in one swallow, until he is pressed against her womb. ]

Oh.

[ He's forgotten how different she feels without the condom. Forgotten the way it makes his nerves chime -- a high-pitched chorale of being enveloped in living heat. ]

[ Gradually, he sets a deep, slow-motion fucking. Not just because of the need for muffled silence, but because he wants to take his time. Take her with him. Hips keeping a metronomic precision -- a withdrawal, a plunge, a grind -- while his hands roam with a trancelike fascination across her body. One hand ladders up her ribs to cup a breast, which feels rounder, the nipple pooched out. The other hand dips between their bodies, palm pressed to her curly mons as he thumbs fleeting circles at her clit. ]

[alittlebent]

[Don't worry, it feels good to her. She may not show it with her usual vocal enthusiasm, but it's evident in how hard she presses her lips against his, the way she tangles her fingers in his hair and pulls with every thrust.

This doesn’t have to end. They've come together despite worse problems. Nothing could be worse than how they'd started out, but they'd overcome that. She'd come to see and appreciate a person behind the psycho-paranoid violent mask, and he'd come to understand that she wasn't a threat to him. If they can bridge that gap, they can tackle anything.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ He wishes he could share that youthful optimism. Despite Korra's disenchanting experiences, it's easy for her to view things from a rosy lens. How can she not? She's grown up with a loving family. A solid network of support. People she can trust and rely on, who feed that bubbling wellspring of hope inside her. It's not the same for Hei. Not when the best parts of him have broken off in cold suspension, and what's left behind is a tar-bubble packed with razor blades and fishhooks and shattered lightbulbs that strain against the heaving walls of his psyche. ]

[ He knows they shouldn't have a baby. A dab of jizz shot at the right spot, at the right time, does not a miracle make. It could be a disaster. Another unwanted responsibility. A great drain on time and energy. Emotional as well as physical. Korra has a special purpose, a unique calling. She needs to understand that motherhood would place a crippling burden on -- ]

[ Oh please, a resentful voice pipes up inside him. All kinds of whacked-out people have kids, and somehow or other, those kids grow up. This could be a missed opportunity. This could be what you've wanted all along. ]

[ He tries not to think about it. Focuses instead on Korra's pretty gasps, on the desperate way her lips are crushed against his, on the wild tug of her little fingers in his hair. Focuses on learning what he fears he'll forget. The flavor and softness of her tongue. The taste of her lower-lip. The sweet curve defining her jaw. The placement of light, nearly invisible scars that zig-zag her skin like a broken necklace of grain-sized pearls. Where she is sensitive, where she likes to be licked, bitten, teased: that spot below the ear. Under the point of her chin. The crook of her neck. The damp hollow between her breasts, their sensitive undersides, the nipples dark and tense as he gulps them into his mouth. Rooting hungrily from one breast to the other, gauging it she can take the same roughness as before, or if he should slow down. While below, between their bellies grinding in a slick cadence, he keeps his free hand wedged, teasing at her clit, a soft wet flicking. ]

[alittlebent]

Slow... [She gasps the word out in a whine that rises up and fades with effort. She still likes it rough, but it's hard to keep quiet when he's mauling her like that. She gets her revenge by clenching her vaginal muscles as hard as she can and biting his shoulder (which has the added benefit of muffling the noises she can't suppress). ]

[mortemscintilla]

[ Bright fractals of color blossom behind Hei's eyelids as she bites him, her sex clenching around him in a slick hot vacuum. The sensations affect him like a collar wrapped around his throat, attached by tugging leather to his balls. A localized storm of tension above the neck, and a warm swelling throb of pleasure below. He can hear himself panting audibly and with self-consciousness tries to calm himself. ]

[ Except it's no good. She feels too good -- the wet clench of her sex a perfect, brutal sweetness. Dazed, half-blinded, he stirs his hips. Blanketing her, rocking her harder, more force than friction -- a deep tight swivel that mashes her clit against his pelvis. But his kisses are gentle, poured across her face and shoulders and breasts like sugar over water, a soft melting touch. Mouth nuzzling the underside of each heavy breast, laving the nipple in almost catlike sweeps. Tipping his head up to catch her mouth between each stifled gasp, each slippery sawing in-and-out, greed and tenderness dueling within. ]

[alittlebent]

[It's not going to be much longer at this rate. Her breaths get faster, more shallow, and her limbs tremble. But she wants him to come first. She wants to feel him break without being distracted by her own climax.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ She won't have to wait long. Not with the neon shapes wheeling and surging below the inky surface of his brain, gaining brightness and intensity until they fritz out all sanity, all generosity, all caution, locking the length of his spine, sending a ripcurl of deepening tremors up from his tailbone across the whole network of his torso. ]

[ He lets off a quiet, ragged noise, his body a taut arch over hers as he fucks her steadily now, relentlessly, her breasts wobbling freely beneath his chest, his fists curling tight around her, grabbing for a handhold; along her ass, her hips, clasping tight around a couple of ribs, before he catches her face in both hands. The soft kisses he's attached to her lips are blown off, petals by storm, as he tips her head back, mouth coaxing hers open and fucking her heavily with his tongue. ]

[ When he comes, it's a forceful expulsion, a trigger-shock of spasms cruel and nasty enough to make him feel the sharp astonishment of love taking shape somewhere in his chest. Hot pulses of salt spilling free from the ocean inside him, leaving him breathless, wrung-out, hanging in space for a while, tethered only by his own oxygen and the slow, stirring motions of his body against hers. ]

[anatural]

[If Hei's orgasm is an explosion, Korra's is a spill — that brief, bright shock when you hit the glass, then everything pours out. Her tension, her fears, her need. They aren't gone, but they are, for the moment outside of her. She wraps her arms around his neck and tugs him down so she can bury her face in the crook of his shoulder.

She can't pretend the rest of the world doesn't exist forever; footsteps outside their door quickly shatter the illusion.]

Korra, are you in there? [Tenzin's voice — the most unwelcome intrusion. The sensible thing would be to grab a blanket and at least do something to cover their nakedness, but Korra just hugs Hei harder.

Much to her surprise, it works. There's a long moment where it seems like Tenzin is going to open the door, but instead he just sighs.]

Sleep well.

[mortemscintilla]

[ Panting, nerves zinging from toes to scalp, Hei feels Korra crest, her skin leaping as if in hot shocks against his, her sex clamping down wetly, deliciously, on the sliding thorn inside her. Then she's melting beneath him, leaving his cock pulsing thickly, languidly inside the sore seam of her, the same way she seems to be thrumming everywhere around him. ]

[ For a moment, he's content to lie in that lush, crumpled heap of flesh. The world fades in watery ripples, then returns with the trick of forgetting, so that he's sure he's dozed briefly -- maybe for a minute or two -- without awareness. ]

[ Then he hears footsteps beyond Korra's door. Tenzin's voice follows, jarring as a brick thrown through a window. For a split-second, Hei's afraid the older man will slide the door open -- and get an eyeful of 'Li' lodged balls-deep between his precious Avatar's thighs. He can almost imagine Tenzin's face flaring so red he'll spontaneously combust. All that'll be left of him is a weird Tenzin-shaped burn on the floorboards. (We couldn't even say goodbye to him, 'Li' will sob to the others, inconsolable.) ]

[ Mercifully, the disaster is averted. Tenzin bids Korra goodnight, then leaves. ]

[ Once he's gone, Hei exhales, muscles loosening with relief. Rolls onto his back, carrying Korra with him, so she's sprawled like a warm sticky stole across his body, her hair tendriled in his face. Smoothing the mess back with both hands, he kisses her -- want subsumed by satisfaction. But beneath that, there's something rueful too. As if there are words, emotions, ideas, bubbling inside him that he can't let out. ]

[ Quietly, ]

This wasn't what I meant ... when I told you to rest.

[anatural]

[She's relieved when Tenzin doesn't enter, but she's even more relieved when Hei continues holding her. He's gotten better about not ruining the afterglow since they moved in together, but he's so hard to predict.]

Good thing you're not the boss of me. [There's nothing acrid in her tone. There's a little snark, but mostly dreamy vagueness. There's no way she could have slept before with all the tension and anxiety. It's much better this way.]

[mortemscintilla]

But I keep trying anyway.

[ His body, spilled bonelessly underneath hers, flexes in a catlike stretch. He glances up at her moist flushed face, cradled in his, studying her with an inexpressive half-lidded facade that might be hidden tenderness or regret or ... or what, Hei has no idea. His feelings on the pregnancy keep pinwheeling, from surprise to dismay, from anger to excitement. He has no idea what to settle on. ]

[ But he knows, for an irrefutable fact, that he can't just float along on the Sparkling Hormonal Sea into making the baby real. Korra's mind may be made up, but his isn't. If he can still appeal to an iota of logic inside her, he can convince her to terminate the pregnancy. Convince her not to throw her safety -- possibly her life -- away, as she seems so determined to. ]

[ What if you can't? ]

[ Again, he shrugs it off. The idea of keeping the baby makes him itchy and twitchy. Like he isn't sure whether he's gone out and left the iron on, only to the tenth power. Letting his eyes slip shut, he gathers Korra closer. Making a pillow for her with his body, his arms a warm heavy circle to keep her close. A dream-drowsy moment passes, then two. ]

[ Finally, in a half-whisper: ]

Are you serious? About ... having this baby?