bossymarmalade | 3w4dw: icon keyword fic 2

When she talks about auras and energies, Mai says she lives in her head. Ty Lee doesn't know about that. As far as she can tell, she lives in her body; she lives in the eager bunching of muscles in her thighs and feet, in the clean snap of her arms and fingers knifing into pressure points, in the hot pivot of her hips as the rest of her cartwheels and flips and flips and flips. She lives in her own delight over the succulent weight of her breasts, the round beat of her calves, the sweat shivering down strands of dark hair.

When Mai says she lives in her head, Azula says there's plenty of room.

But Azula is folded in so tight on herself, like scarlet paper dragonflowers they used to make as girls -- hundreds of tiny, cramped creases all needing to be just so perfect in order for the finished product to look right, like a blossom clenched into a blood fist -- so Ty Lee breathes deep and smiles pink at her. If Ty Lee had her way they would the three of them make flowers out of gauze tissue and silk that spread open at the brush of damp fingers, turning deep and moist where they were touched. If Ty Lee had her way they would break down all the barriers and scaly-hard encrusted images of not only themselves but their people, in a whirlwind of whipping hair and bruising kisses and demanding bodies, until the image is no image at all and they are the Fire Nation, one and every one bright proud clear crimson with no need for the blood fist.

It's complicated, though. Because to be honest Ty Lee gets all prickly and hungry inside when she fights and hits and she has to press her thighs together and breathe deep and smile pink and push it down, down until she's ready. So maybe that's how her people are; too aswirl with violent lust to be proud clear crimson just yet. But Ty Lee can see it, just over the horizon of the black sun, and she's starting to reach towards it.

When he'd been a kid, Frank Pembleton had been certain that the most beautiful thing in all the world was the inside of St. Patrick's Cathedral, the way it vaulted over him in elegant, austere shelter when he walked through alone (always alone; having anybody else clattering along next to him would have spoiled it). Even now he can close his eyes and smell the wood and stone, the wax, the hushed rose petal and thorn of so much faith.

When he'd been older, a young man straying out of teenagehood and into the adult world, the most beautiful thing -- apart from attractive young women who felt the same way -- was the feel of words in his mouth and knowledge in his hands, belonging to him as surely as the rhythm of his feet on the pavement or the particular angle of his chin when he won an argument. It felt good, it tasted looked sounded smelled good. Every sense engaged. Every new piece of language and information sinking into his skin until he was sure people could see it there as sure as they saw that skin's blackness.

Here, now. With his wife in his arms, close enough for him to to smell the perfume she only dabs behind her ears and on the pulse of her throat, a breath of roses every time her heart beats. Mary with her dark skin overlapping and intertwining with his dark skin and soaked full of knowledge, holding him so surely with her hands against his back, and as Mary's dress swirls to clasp his trouser legs when she steps up against him, Frank has no doubts about what -- in this whole wide world -- is the most beautiful thing.

3w4dw: icon keyword fic 2

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