warning: Azula kisses where you might not expect (or perhaps precisely where you expect), pretentious over-use of water metaphors, and you might get the desire to pee at the end from reading about water for so long.

and with that said.


two if by sea

if you are the desert, I'll be the sea
if you ever hunger, hunger for me

***

The ocean is wide and the ocean is deep, but even if it dropped down to the depths of forever and swept past the boundaries of eternity it could never hope to rival Ty Lee's loyalty.

And Azula rewards loyalty.

Just as the ocean is not a noun, neither is desire. They are both verbs, doing words -- restless, ever-changing actions. Ty Lee feels the current of her own desire tugging at her as she stares down at the Princess, who is kneeling between her thighs. Azula is silent; that wild, wicked tongue of hers is occupied elsewhere -- but even here, even now, Azula is all sharp angles. With each breath the Princess takes the tides of her flesh pull back, exposing sharp crags of spine and scapula. There are dips and hollows in her muscles where tiny sea-creatures would be caught in the eddies; where the skin stretches against the Princess' ribs the shadows shift and flicker like the inhale and exhale of the ocean.

There is a slight change in the motion of things. Azula knows Ty Lee is watching her.

Ty Lee shuts her eyes and feels the desire within her start to move, like water racing through the cracks of a parched earth. Water shouldn't run uphill but it does now; the heat stretches forth its greedy fingers and spreads up into her stomach. Spreads from ocean to bay, bay to river, river to stream. She shudders a breath -- the current inside churns, a whirlpool of feverish want nestled between her bones and within her blood. Her blood -- it boils, pops, hisses, the blistering scorch of high summer's waters. Azula's head dips and bobs. Tense, tense, the tension of a humid-heavy air where the clouds sit low with anticipation, fat with lightning and the promise of a torrent to come.

Azula's touch is like morning mist lying flat on the harbor; docile, barely skimming the water's surface. But then there is a subtle change, a trade wind setting her course in stone, no need to look toward the stars now -- faster, and Ty Lee feels the rivers overflowing past their banks.

Faster. The churning of river foam, whitewater rapids making themselves known beneath her skin. Faster. The tides rising, rising, threatening to come up over her nose and mouth and stop her from breathing except she can't remember the last time she gasped for breath. Faster-- the pulse of the ocean beating there, there, threatening to pull her down; she is not sure what she will find: darkness or light. Either way it is terrible and wonderful and Ty Lee lets herself be dragged out to sea.

Faster-- Ty Lee casts about blindly for an anchor; her fingernails scrabble for purchase on Azula's bare back. It's of no use; the weight of her fingernails cannot stand against the tempest. More-- the granules of her control are being leeched away from her, fine sand sifting through her fingers -- yes -- the ocean is crashing through her body now, threatening to burst from her skin --yes-- Azula's kiss a deluge, a waterfall from which desire pours-- yes, and--

Waves. Crest and trough and crest and trough and

And--

Ty Lee plummets underwater; it is the rich velvet-black of Azula's hair, and she does not know what direction to swim in: she does not know which way is up.

She returns to herself the way all those who have drowned do: in pieces. A fragment of feeling here, a automatic reflex there. A touch, an exhale. The typhoon's roar has faded to a dull growl; the water still nips enticingly at her, hoping to coax her toward yet another downpour -- but Ty Lee pushes against it, struggles in from where the riptide has yanked her out. She takes great, gulping breaths when some semblance of stability returns to her and when she stares upward, she almost mistakes the brightness in Azula's eyes for the full moon that hangs directly overhead.

"Odd." the Princess muses; Ty Lee can see Azula's tongue running along the inside of her mouth. It makes her own body yearn to flood wet once more. "Odd, that a daughter of the Fire Nation should taste so much like the sea."

If the Princess had bothered to look any closer, she would have seen that Ty Lee's eyes are the color of the flat winter oceans. One cannot tame the ocean, but Ty Lee pulls Azula down and lets the Princess taste the sea-salt on her lips.

The ocean is wide and the ocean is deep, but even if it dropped down to the depths of forever and swept past the boundaries of eternity it could never hope to fill the space in Ty Lee's heart where all her verbs rest. Even so, the murky waters hide much: loyalty can be seen, but fear cannot. Desire can be seen, but hesitation cannot.

Love can be seen.

But betrayal cannot.