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It's easy to get carried away with Maui like this, riding the cresting wave of shared triumph as he re-learns his magic fishhook, shows off his skills- and teaches her a few, too. The food and fresh water are nearly gone but it'll still be a few days before they reach Te Fiti and he suggests landing on this island he knows, if she thinks she has the skills to find it.
Moana doesn't back down from a challenge lightly and she does her best to use her newfound knowledge of wayfinding, Maui pointing out the signs to look for and (somewhat patiently) letting her put the pieces together herself.
When it crests the horizon along with the first glowing colors of the sunset it's just a tiny spit of land, barely worthy of calling an island, really, but she found it amid the vast limitless sea and the triumph washes over her, leaves her lightheaded and giddy.
"I did it!" Moana cries out, leaping off the canoe as it surges onto the sand, "I found it!"
"Easy, tiger," Maui says with a chuckle, "It wasn't exactly hiding from anyone."
She doesn't care, grins at him and then grins up at the scrubby trees and rocky projection that makes up the bulk of the island's mass. Does it have a name, she wonders? Who else knows about it, who else has visited?
She runs off into the trees before the light can disappear completely, leaving a chuckling Maui down on the beach to stake the canoe up above the tide. It doesn't take long to run a lap around the entire island; it really is small, too small for even a single person to live on more than a few months without stripping it bare. There's a ring of stones around the remains of a long, long dead fire, but no other signs of people.
"We're staying the night, right?" Moana asks when she returns to the beach, arms full of some type of fruit she doesn't recognize but is really hoping is edible.
He's busy starting a fire, a stack of dried kindling and some larger branches set to the side while he works at getting a spark started. "Well I'm not leaving before I get these cooked," he says, and turns his head aside enough to glance at her.
There's a pair of fish he must have caught while she was exploring, propped up on sticks on the other side of the firewood, and her stomach rumbles with the thought of actual cooked food.
"So it's settled," she says, and shows off her armload of fruit, the bright red skins that had drawn her eye immediately. "Do you know what these are called?"
"Kavita," he replies easily. "Didn't make it to your neck of the ocean, huh?"
Moana shakes her head and unloads the fruit on the ground, watching as the sticks Maui is rubbing together at a furious pace start to smoke, then really catch. For someone who stole fire itself from the gods, she kind of expected he'd have a different way of creating it than what she'd do back home.
Soon the fire is a cheerful blaze, the fish roasting over the open flame while they dig into the kavita, the pulp inside sticky and sweet. It's a new taste for her, but she thinks she likes it.
She licks the juice off her lips and digs her toes into the sand. "Is it done yet?" she asks, staring hungrily at the fish.
"In a minute," Maui grumbles, but she can hear the lack of actual annoyance in his voice, can see the smile that hasn't quite left his face since restoring his hook. On his skin the firelight is making his tattoos twist and flicker, or maybe they really are moving- she's seen them do so before, after all.
Moana reaches out and brushes her fingers against the swaying palm tree on the curve of his shoulder, feeling daring beyond all measure.
His eyes meet hers, eyebrows raised, but he doesn't shake her off. Instead the palm tree really does start to sway, reacting like her fingers are a mighty gale.
"What's the story with this one?" she asks, as if she doesn't know. Even considering him basically a villain in the end, Motunui still shared the ancient stories of Maui as their ancestors learned them. And Maui really lived it, she thinks, having seen with her own eyes proof of his demigod status.
He tells her anyway while they eat their fish, eyes catching the light of the fire. How he first battled and then killed the great eel, how from its guts sprouted the first coconut trees, how grateful everyone was- at first. His expression sours at the edges, a twist of a frown appearing.
"Eventually it's just another thing in the world," he says.
Moana hadn't meant to dampen the mood, not when it's been such a good day. Magic and wayfinding and a new island to sleep on, before they press on towards Te Ka as they inevitably must.
"What about this one?" she asks instead, dragging her fingers down his arm, towards some kind of bat-like creature with too many eyes. His skin is warm, the muscles underneath firm, and she feels a blush rising that she pretends has to do with the heat of the fire.
"Hah!" he exclaims, and she watches as the tattooed image of himself unsticks from its regular place, facing off against the suddenly-flapping beast. "That was a whole mess of a situation, they're supposed to stay in Lalotai but somehow one of the gates got stuck open-"
She listens and watches, catches the glow in his eyes when he's relating one of his victories, the vast gestures his hands make. He doesn't spin illusions in the air like he had back on his solitary island, but at one point he jumps up to illustrate his point with a quick dance and she feels the energy in the air like it's full of magic all the same.
When Maui finishes with a flourish he crashes back down to sit besides her, closer than before. Close enough that she can catch the scent of his skin, under the crust of sea-salt clinging to the both of them. It's wild, earthy and masculine. There's a faint sheen of sweat on his body, just enough to gleam in the light of their fire, illuminating the lines of his muscles.
She looks away abruptly, grabs for one of the remaining pieces of fruit. It's still sweet on her tongue, but it no longer seems so unfamiliar.
"What about you?" he asks, close enough to nudge her shoulder with his. "Any epic stories of your own, yet?"
Moana swallows the fruit and shakes her head. "Not really," she says, fiddles with the edge of her skirt and doesn't trust herself to look over at him again yet. "Nothing ever happens on my island."
"Well," he says, "You'll definitely have a story to share when this is all said and done." His voice is soft, not teasing like she would have expected. She glances up and he's smiling again, or maybe still smiling.
It's a nice thought, and she wonders- when he himself retells this story in the future, will she be in it? She likes the idea of someone immortal telling her story years and years into the future, even if it's just a tiny sliver of everything else he's done.
"What do you plan to do, when the heart's returned, and Te Ka defeated?" she asks. She draws up one knee and uses the motion to hide the way she shifts closer to him, still not exactly touching but now only a hand's breadth away, close enough to feel the heat of his body in the scant space between them.
Maui shrugs, leans back against his hands, not moving any further away himself. "There's some stuff I gotta check on," he says, "but nothing really pressing. Spend some time with people for a change- it gets real old, having one-sided conversations with yourself, let me tell you."
On his chest his tattoo is playing along as if offended, or maybe there's enough animation in it to really have its own feelings. She laughs a little, regardless.
"It must have been so lonely on that island all that time," Moana says. Getting time to be alone on Motunui is sometimes a struggle; she'd thought she would enjoy being out on the ocean with just herself (And Heihei, and the Ocean…) but it had mostly been strange, those few days before she found Maui. Never before had she been totally cut off from her people, unable to simply run back to the village to hear their voices.
"Definitely not my favorite vacation," he agrees.
She's not sure what makes her move. The honesty under his words? The buzzing energy that hasn't left all day? The simple fact that he hasn't put any space between them, like an unspoken sign he feels the same?
Moana doesn't overthink it, she just pushes closer to him and presses her lips against his smile. For a moment he doesn't react, just lets her kiss him without kissing her back. And then in the heartbeat before she would pull back and pretend- what, that she lost her balance? that it's merely something friends do on her island?- pretend something to cover her actions, his lips soften and move against hers.
He kisses her a lot more gently than she would have imagined, if she'd been thinking about it. Which she hasn't, of course, hasn't given any thought at all to kissing him until the moment it happened. She doesn't have a whole lot of experience but he seemed like he'd be enthusiastic, devouring. Not that she's been thinking about it.
Maui pulls away from her with a sigh. "We shouldn't be doing this," he says.
"Why not?" she asks, because she can't see any pressing reasons. The taste of him is on her lips, now, and she wants to keep exploring. "You can't say you don't want to, after a thousand years alone."
"You're young," he says, ticking off a finger for each point. "You're mortal. You're facing down a lava monster in the morning."
"I thought you said we're still a few days away from Te Fiti," Moana replies. His reasons don't sound very convincing, more like excuses. Sure, she's younger than him- and so is every other living human.
"Moana," he says, and one of his hands reaches up to brush away some hair from the side of her face.
"Maui," she counters. They stare at each other in silence, faces so close it's hard to focus on anything but the way her lips tingle and ache with how much she wants to keep kissing him.
He lets out a defeated noise and captures her lips, and oh, there's the enthusiasm she'd been expecting. It's thrilling for so many reasons, the feel of him against her, the knowledge of who he is, the awareness she has of how strong and masculine he is.
His hand lingers on the side of her face, guiding her into the rhythm of the kiss, giving her something to ground herself against. He's the one to deepen it, tongue brushing out between his lips, beckoning hers in return.
She finds her weight leaning against his body, a hand splayed against his chest. Wanting to be closer to him, skin warmed all over from the fire.
Without warning Maui wraps his other hand around her waist and tugs her closer, pulling her into his lap. She breaks off the kiss with a startled squeak of noise, but once she realizes what he's doing, she can't find any reason to object.
"If you really want to do this," he says, his hand still splayed against her waist, huge and hot on her exposed skin, "I'm gonna need you to say it."
His face is entirely too close to hers to allow her to think clearly. "I want to," Moana says, and means it. She's never felt so attracted to someone before, and after just knowing him a few short days- of course she wants to be with him, even if it's just the once, before they face down a giant lava monster and restore the Heart of Te Fiti (or die trying, an outcome she has very much decided to not focus on).
"Good enough for me," he says agreeably, and the hand on her waist reaches up to her chest, fingers sliding under the cloth there. In no time at all he's shucked her top and tossed it to the side, leaving her bare from the waist up.
She hunches in on herself a little, fighting the instinctive urge to cover up with the desire to let him look. Her nipples draw tight under his gaze, her breath stumbling in its rhythm.
"Nice," Maui says with simple, earnest appreciation as he palms one of her breasts, somehow breaking the tension and setting her back at ease.
She puts her hands on his shoulders, a little unsure of where she's allowed to touch him in return. Then he's using his big, roughened fingers to lightly pinch at her nipple and she's glad she has a hold on him, braces herself against his sturdy body at the roll of pleasure his touch sends through her.
He touches her breasts for a little while, ducks in and kisses the curve of her jaw, the side of her neck, finally her lips again. It's pretty familiar to the things she's done before, the little bits of pleasure she and the other youths sometimes dare to seek out, after dark when their parents have gone to their own sleeping mats and left them unattended to keep on singing and dancing and telling tales late into the night.
But she isn't going to be satisfied with some light caressing, not this time. Moana steadies her breathing and reaches down along his waist, to the edge of his leaf skirt.
When she looks at his face he has an eyebrow cocked, waiting to see what she'll do. It only makes her feel more bold, having him look at her like that. She finds the knotted end of the rope he's using for a belt and tries to untie it- and fails, because the knot is way too tightly gnarled up.
"Does this thing come off?" Moana asks, tugging futilely at the knot.
He chuckles and knocks her hand aside to undo the belt himself, unfastening his loincloth at the same time. He doesn't look as if he's fully hard yet, which makes the size he already is all the more intimidating- not inhuman, really, but definitely on a scale larger than any she's encountered before.
"Your turn," he says, startling her out of her staring.
She removes her own skirt quickly, without a second thought really, until it strikes her that she's now fully naked while straddling the lap of an equally naked man.
Maui doesn't give her much time to contemplate this; his hands reach for her thighs, thumbs stroking the doubled line of inked designs tucked up high, hidden from normal sight. It makes her shiver and sway forwards slightly, her bare skin brushing up against his.
"Nice," he says again, in that same tone as before while staring hungrily at her body, and in response she lets out a noise like a cross between a giggle and an exasperated groan. He grins at her, unrepentant, and then curls his fingers a little more firmly against her thighs. "Hang on," he says, which is her only warning before he's tipping over backwards and dragging her along with him, his grip on her legs tugging her up off his lap as he goes, so she ends up sort of crouched on his chest as he lies on the sand.
"Maui!" she yelps out, utterly off balance and barely catching herself before she falls completely flat on top of him.
It puts her chest over his head, breasts hanging right over his smirking mouth as he sends her a smug look. And then puts that mouth to better use, licking first one nipple and then the other, nuzzling his face into the space between.
His hands, meanwhile, caress up and down the length of her thighs, brushing the bottom of her ass, stroking the soft sensitive areas right below the junction of her hips. Moana's breath stutters, lungs struggling to take in enough air all of a sudden.
When he finally rubs his fingers along her folds she's wet already, her flesh almost throbbing with aching eagerness. She's been aroused for longer than she cares to admit, during all that time she was spending not contemplating what it would be like to kiss him.
One of his fingers slides between her lips and she rocks into the touch, a soft noise stuck in her throat. He certainly doesn't need any help knowing where she wants to be touched, she thinks fuzzily.
She lets herself collapse fully against him, draping over his chest and abdomen and reveling in the way his skin feels against hers. His one questing finger probes at her entrance, slips easily with how wet his touches are making her.
"Nice," Maui says again, muffled where his face is pressed to her chest.
She bites back on a noise halfway between a startled laugh and something annoyed, her fingers sinking into his hair so she can give him a not-too-gentle tug.
He doesn't seem repentant at all; she can feel his grin against her skin, and he uses her distraction to sink his finger inside of her, a sure and practiced motion. She can't help but moan a little at the feeling of it- his fingers aren't exactly small, even just the one is something to take notice of.
"Easy," he says, "Don't get all tense."
She doesn't think she is, but now she's thinking about it so she probably is stiffening up, or at least would be if Maui wasn't touching her just right. He curls his hand in such a way that he can rub her clit at the same time as he rocks his finger inside of her, and Moana squirms and rolls herself against him, wanting more, wanting him to keep going.
Her hand is gripping his hair still, she realizes, not really tugging so much as just hanging on.
He slides a second finger inside of her alongside the first and she whines at the extra fullness, caught between wondering if it's too much, or if it only makes her want more.
His cock will be larger, she reminds herself, she'd seen it, wanted it inside of her. She rocks her hips against the movements of his fingers, finds that soon it doesn't seem like nearly too much at all.
"Maui," she pants out, feeling the peak of pleasure just out of sight, "I need, can you-"
Whatever she's trying to say is swallowed up by a shriek; Maui has chosen this moment to once again manhandle her by suddenly reversing their positions, rolling her underneath him and crouching up over her body. He looks massive, imposing, the firelight behind casting him in deep shadows where his tattoos seem to writhe in dark shapes across his muscled frame. He's grinning, though, a flash of white teeth and gleaming eyes.
"Yeah, I'd say you're ready," he says. The hand he'd been touching her with he brings down between his own legs, strokes his hard cock.
She's a little annoyed at him- she'd been starting to feel so good, it wouldn't have taken much more for her to climax- but mostly her attention is taken up with looking at him, eyes tracking the movements of his hand as he touches himself, wanting to reach out and touch him herself, imagining what it'll feel like to have that inside herself. His cock is larger than it was before, fully swollen now, and she licks her lips unconsciously as she takes in the full size of him.
"Well, come on then," she says, trying to sound unaffected and probably failing miserably, her voice breathy and her legs sliding open wider, invitingly.
Maui just smirks at her and guides the head of his cock down between her legs, rubbing their slick skin together and then- and then he's pressing inside of her, and she throws her head back as her whole body goes tense, drum-tight.
"Relax," he says, makes a shushing noise. "Easy does it." He doesn't stop moving against her, inside of her, sliding deeper at a slow inexorable pace.
It should be too much too soon and yet, and yet, Moana finds herself only feeling the pleasure of it, the shock and awe of having another person fitting inside of her. She reaches for him blindly, finds her hand tangled up in the gentle grasp of his fingers.
His necklace of teeth swings between them when he starts to move, drawing his hips back only to repeat the act of sliding in deeper again, and she turns her face to the side to avoid getting smacked with them.
"Watch the teeth," she says when it keeps swinging with every roll of his hips, and he pauses, sunk so deep inside of her their hips are pressed tight with no possible air between them.
"What?" he asks, and she tilts her face back towards him.
"The necklace," she says, "It's kind of hitting me."
He laughs, and it's such a strange feeling- she can feel his entire body quaking as he does so, his cock still buried inside of her, his face so close it's all she can see of the night sky; it feels as if the whole world is laughing. Then he shifts his weight so he can free a hand and remove the necklace, tossing it aside carelessly. "Whatever you want, princess," Maui says.
"Not a- oh!" she starts to say, interrupted by the way he's started moving again, hilting himself with more force- "Not a princess!"
"Ah-huh," he hums agreeably, and she'd keep arguing with him except he's really moving now, rocking his body against hers in the most distracting way possible. It feels so good, having him fill and stretch her like this, the friction of their bodies like he's trying to start a fire.
Moana's legs tighten against his hips, clinging to him, drawing him in. She can't believe how well all of him is able to fit inside of her, how delicious the feeling of being so full is.
One of her hands reaches up, touches the side of his face. He smiles a little, an expression she'd call dopey if she wasn't afraid of whatever her own face looks like, and nuzzles against her palm.
Somehow her fingers end up brushing over his mouth and then he's parting his lips, letting her fingers slip inside where his mouth is soft and lush. His tongue swirls over the pads of her fingers, reminding her of the kisses they'd shared.
He says something, garbled so badly she can't make it out, and she tugs her fingers free. "What?"
"Watch the teeth," Maui says with a broad, self-satisfied grin, snapping his teeth together in an exaggerated motion.
She snorts out a laugh, caught off guard. She does take her hand away from his mouth, though, mostly because she needs to wrap it around his neck to draw him down for a kiss, his mouth still smirking against hers.
Moana doesn't know which would be better- having it go on just like this forever, the pleasure and laughter and closeness, or reaching for the climax she can feel hidden just a little ways further.
As if sensing her indecision he reaches down to her hip, hitches her up against him a little, changing the angle while he gains a new momentum to his thrusts. She drops her head back to the sand and hears a high-pitched noise escape her throat that she's certainly never made before, the pleasure of this new adjustment overwhelming.
He says something above her that she doesn't listen to; his voice is smug, self-congratulatory, and that tells her all she needs to know. She might be saying words back to him, she can't even tell anymore, her head is full of just heat and friction and the feeling of him moving deep inside of her.
His hand on her hip reaches instead to touch just where he's sunk inside of her and with this last point of contact climax finds her swiftly, pleasure rushing through her veins and sparking along her skin, illuminating nonsensical shapes behind her eyelids.
She's still shuddering with her orgasm when he follows her over the edge, thrusts rough as he drives himself against her, grinding in deep with a muted growl.
The moment stretches in shared stillness and then all at once breaks, Maui pulling himself out and flopping onto his side next to her, limp and boneless like a gutted fish.
She winces a little as she tugs her thighs together but doesn't otherwise move, stares up at the stars overhead. When she feels like she's caught her breath enough she turns to face him, feeling his gaze on her. He's smiling, still, a tiny smirk like he couldn't be more pleased with himself.
Moana feels herself smile back at him, like they're sharing a secret. Then she's laughing, a giggle blooming out of her chest with how giddy and satisfied she herself is also feeling, and Maui joins in along with her until the both of them are wracked with full-bodied laughs, cackling like they've gone mad.
"What are you laughing about?" he asks, between gales of laughter.
"I don't, I don't know!" she replies, which only makes the both of them laugh all the harder.
It dies down after a little, when the sweat's dried and she's starting to feel the ache of having used her body in such a new way- not just the sex, but all the sailing before that. Their laughter tapers off to just random spates of giggles here and there.
"I'm gonna go rinse off," she says, when she thinks she can stand to speak without breaking out into more laughter.
Maui nods, tosses another branch onto the dwindling fire. They're both still naked and she can feel another tug of arousal as she looks at his body, wonders if he'd be up for another round- but no, she tells herself firmly. Once is enough, something to satisfy her curiosity. Proposing to have sex with him again would be admitting she's really attracted to him, would open the way for more complications than she wants to consider.
She gathers up her clothing and leaves the glow of the fire to head for the tiny stream a little ways inland. It isn't large enough to really wash off in, but it'll leave her less itchy than dunking in the salt-laden ocean.
She just got caught up in the moment, Moana tells herself, drawn in by his charm and the joy of all they've already accomplished, the excitement of knowing what is still left to face ahead.
When she returns to the beach Maui has swept the sand smooth where they had disturbed it, dressed again and looking as if none of it had ever happened. Maybe it didn't, she thinks, despite the way she can still feel the shape of him inside of her, her body still thrumming with the energy that prompted her to act in the first place.
He offers her up another piece of kavita as she sits back down, and she shares a smile with him as she bites into it, savoring the once-unfamiliar taste.