Chapter Text
Jet's eyes cracked open and the first thing he noticed was how sore his back was from laying on what felt like cold, hard floor. The second thing he noticed was that he had no idea where he was.
He pushed up onto both elbows and forced his eyes wider.
He was in some kind of elementary housing, the walls were packed mud, smoothed by hand, an uneven ochre that was characteristic of Earth Kingdom clay. Above him was a low ceiling of woven palm fronds. He was laying on a mattress so thin he could feel the slightly lumpy floor beneath him. There were a few small windows, with no glass, only thin cotton curtains holding back the rays of the morning sun.
He sat the rest of the way up.
Memories of the day before were landing in the wrong order. The wobbling ship. The letter he had hidden in his jacket that he couldn’t remember if he’d ever taken out. Jet reached for his chest, but he didn’t have his jacket on. He remembered the spat with that half-Earth girl. Zuko and him talking on the deck. The guard's hand closing on his upper arm and the punch after.
He dropped his head into his hands and waited for the rest. What surprised him was that his head wasn't hurting the way it did most mornings lately.
His stomach dropped when he remembered why. He pressed the heels of his hands into his eye sockets.
After Zuko's room, the memories thinned. There was a blurry image of a glass of water held up to his mouth. Zuko's voice low and saying something to Mai over Jet's head and the sound of her sandals as she rushed out of the room. After that he remembered lying down somewhere small and uncomfortable and ridiculously cold air making him shiver. A blanket had been placed over him.
Jet stood up laboriously and walked himself across the room with the gait of an injured deerdog.
The “bathroom” was extremely efficient. A tin pail beside a thick pipe coming straight out of the wall. A wedge of thin soap on a stone shelf over a rudimentary latrine. A small square mirror nailed askew.
He braced himself before peeking at his reflection, but was shocked to see he looked …fine. His complexion looked well-hydrated, the skin under his eyes was the pale brown that it was meant to be; the bruise-like hollows already disappearing. The body had taken what it had been craving and he was looking at the receipt.
There was a wooden cup on the shelf with some paste in it and a toothbrush beside it with hand tied bristled. The mint was harsh enough to make his eyes water and the bristles felt like they would puncture his gums but he liked the self-inflicted-punishment aspect of it.
He peeled his clothes off in uncoordinated pieces, the shirt catching at his elbow because he'd forgotten to undo the cuff. The pipe spouted cold water and some of his clothes got a little wet when Jet failed to anticipate the strong pressure that ended up wetting the entire floor.
He remembered seeing his satchel on the mattress beside him. So, Zuko had fulfilled his promise and got him off the ship.
Zuko. He folded himself in, hugging his sides and letting the forceful water wash over him. What a fucking disaster. Two months of careful back and forth, of measuring every line he wrote against the line he wanted to write, the painful self-discipline it had taken to not come off completely pathetic—all destroyed in the most humiliating way he could imagine. He had antagonised each one of his friends, hid in a cupboard while Zuko fucked his wife, drank the equivalent of a week in one night, punched a royal guard and blacked out in the Firelord's room.
Jet shuddered. At least he'd gone scorched-earth on it. He would likely be spared from ever having to explain himself since neither Zuko nor Mai would ever want to so much as look at him again.
There was a thin white cotton towel hung over the door which Jet used to wipe the water off his chest, his arms. He dragged it back through his wet hair, slicking it off his forehead in one motion. He stepped out of the bathroom in the midst of wrapping it around his waist, securing it with a haphazard knot in the back.
When he looked up he saw Zuko standing at the curtained doorway of the hut. His eyes were just slightly too wide.
"I should've knocked," Zuko said, voice a little hoarse, "I mean, I would have if there was a door."
Jet’s brain was flailing for words while Zuko stepped in, holding up a tray, and cut across him to the opposite corner of the hut, where he registered for the first time a small open window and a stove set under it.
"The farmers were really keen on us trying these teas.” Zuko’s voice was the right amount of quiet for this early in the morning. "They were really good, tightly packed leaves. Super fresh and kind of flowery, or fruity, I'm not really sure. I thought I should bring some over for you. How are you feeling?"
He had nearly mashed the last question in with the rest of his tea spiel, and Jet was overwhelmed as it was. "Um, where are we?" he asked, then added as he caught up. "I'm alright. Kind of. Not really."
Great conversation, he thought, wilting.
Zuko set a pot on the stove. He held his palm under it and a small flame went up between his fingers, taking the wood. He was wearing a thin sleeveless vest in an Earth Kingdom green and loose pants in the same weave. It was evident the royal seamstress hadn’t worked its fit. It was either bought or borrowed locally. His hair was up in a simple knot. The kingly composure of the cruise had been put away and replaced with this version that was closer to what Jet recalled from their last exchange in the bazaar.
"Not really?" he looked at Jet, dropping tea leaves into the two cups. "Like physically? Do you need to see a healer?"
"No. I didn’t mean—I'm fine, actually." He walked up to the slab with the stove on it. "You didn't have to get off with me. I would've been fine. I was fine, I just—"
"I couldn't leave you like that." Zuko was needlessly toying with the lid of the tea box. "You weren't okay—"
"I was fine," Jet insisted rather sternly. Being at the receiving end of sympathy was simply unbearable and he could not temper the defensiveness that flew out of him. "I'm not that way when I drink normally. I forgot I'd taken a powerful painkiller earlier. It's what messed me up."
Zuko turned to face him properly, eyebrows slightly furrowed. "I shouldn't have invited you on the ship." A pause, before he scrambled. "No, I mean. I should have invited you. Just not on the cruise."
Jet flattened both palms on the counter. His shoulder blades jutted out as he dropped his head. He could not believe he was being made to have this conversation without warning and half-naked.
"I'm an adult." He said it to the counter. "I made some terrible choices and for that I’m really sorry.” He sucked in his lower lip, cursing under his breath so Zuko wouldn’t hear. “When I said yes to coming, I convinced myself all the unknown, unwanted elements would be worth the trouble if I could just do what I'd been wanting to do."
He heard Zuko swallow. “And? Was it?”
Jet looked sideways at him. Zuko was watching with a serious look in his eyes. The tiredness of whatever logistics he’d undertaken last night was evident in his sleepy gaze. His hair was a bit flat on one side where he'd slept on it. He was, Jet noted, one of the most beautiful men he'd ever been less than a foot away from. "I don't know," he mumbled, dejected. "I never got to—"
He paused abruptly, realising he could change the end of that sentence right now. He leaned sideways and kissed Zuko.
Their lips met softly. It was not how he’d imagined it would be. After weeks of being teased by memories he had wanted to ravish Zuko with their reunion kiss. But after everything that had transpired, this felt right. There was a little curiosity in the way Jet’s lips worked against Zuko’s, looking for his answer, a touch of guilt too. Zuko tasted of the same harsh mint Jet had been scrubbing his teeth on before and the domestic coincidence of it nearly undid him on the spot. Zuko breathed deeply, gathering Jet in his arms.
Jet felt the towel around his waist go slack as the knot began to give but Zuko's hands were there in an instant, catching the towel before it fell. He drew it back over Jet's hip, and retied the knot at the small of his back—tighter than Jet had managed—without breaking the kiss.
The move was so counterintuitive, Zuko had done the only thing a hand at a loosening towel mid-makeout was supposed to do, that Jet couldn’t hold back a scoff.
He pulled back and looked Zuko in the eye. "I guess it was."
After they shared that kiss, some tea and updates to bring him up to speed, Jet, unable to hold himself upright much longer, had gone back to sleep.
And he’d slept hard, the way he hadn't in—he wasn’t even sure how long. Ba Sing Se’s spice district was bustling right at dawn and Jet paid for it in broken intervals of rest. From his bunker flat he heard every cart, every shutter coming up, every minor altercation that preceded the early morning shopping rush. Here, there had been nothing beside soft breeze filtering through the curtains lulling him into much-needed slumber. When he opened his well-rested eyes again, the lights had gone orange. The sun was on its way down.
He stepped out of the hut for the first time that day, driven by his grumbling belly.
They were in a constructed clearing that sat in the midst of an ocean of neat rows of cotton plants. The bolls were already peaking out, creating a starkly white highlight to the never-ending green. The farmers’ living complex itself was five or six buildings around a beaten-earth yard. A two-storey clay house at the far side, whitewashed and reinforced wooden fencing. A row of low outbuildings along the south—a granary by the shape of it, a couple of pens for animals that had probably been locked inside either of two barns for the evening, a smaller workshop with the door propped open that showed off a loom inside. There were also some huts like his own, probably for guests.
The farmhouse was modest, but the extra detailing on the fence door, the lamps with sophisticated wicks, the well-saddled ostrichhorses told Jet the family owned the land and owed no debts.
Zuko had informed him they were in a village called Taro, too far from its nearest big city to make the journey by road. Jet was familiar with Taro (anyone who had purchased a foot of decent cotton had heard of Taro) and he'd even crossed it twice before while travelling as a child. Zuko's surprise at this had registered with a soft ding in Jet’s chest: they knew so little about each other.
He crossed the yard towards the main building, the house of the farm family.
The hinterlandish calm, the familiar smell of firewood, the greenery, all reminded Jet of his childhood. This was why he preferred living in Ba Sing Se.
A man was standing at the corner of the family house wearing plain Earth Kingdom clothes but his stance screamed Fire Nation royal guard. Zuko had got two guards onto the emergency boat with them. The other one was probably off trying to sort out their safe travels back to the Fire Nation or Ba Sing Se. Per Zuko’s estimate they would have to stay on the farm at least overnight (if not longer). He had dismissed Jet’s offer to venture out and help plan a way back, his intention was to enjoy the detour instead of stressing out.
Jet walked through the curtains at the entry and was met with a busy scene in the foyer.
Mai was standing in the middle of it, her arms held a little out from her sides, a dark green dress draped around her in a traditional Earth Kingdom style. Not as flowy as her usual silhouettes and a little more revealing around the chest. The farmer's wife was on her knees with a mouthful of pins and a small pair of shears, snipping along the hem and re-pinning the cut edges as she went. Mai was holding a few trimmings of fabric in her hands. It had clearly been made for somebody wider and stouter than her and had to be taken in.
She turned her head a fraction when he entered. "You're awake."
"Yeah.” Jet had stopped where he stood, right by the doorway, not sure if he'd walked in on something he was supposed to wait outside of. The farmer's wife had not stopped pinning though. She was muttering under her breath in a sing-song cadence Jet partly understood. It was a sister dialect to his own but he’d let his command of his native language go rusty over the years.
Mai was looking at herself in the mirror in front and Jet realised he too was looking at her. For a beat neither of them said anything. He was extremely grateful she hadn’t inundated him with are you okays and what happends.
"For the record." She spoke to the mirror. "I told Zuko to leave me behind. He insisted on not doing that."
Jet’s first instinct was to smirk at what he thought was Mai’s clinical humour, but her expression stayed serious.
"I don't mind that you're here,” he replied as plainly as he could.
Her eyes shifted to him in the mirror. You don’t?
"Wait, you thought I’d mind you joining?" He questioned, the line between his brows deepened.
She let out a small sigh. The farmer's wife adjusted a sleeve at her elbow and Mai lifted the arm to make it easier. "I get that this whole thing is odd and we didn’t exactly get off on the right foot. But it’s not like we have to be best friends or anything—"
“Hold on,” he dropped his folded hands from where he'd had them at his chest. "Where the hell did you get this idea?"
Mai shrugged, still not looking at him directly, pulling her sleeve down to the long length she preferred. He kept watching her, folding his arms again. The line of her jaw was stiff.
Unlike a tête-à-tête with Zuko, where his frantic speech left Jet scrambling himself, with Mai, he had to force himself to sink into the long pauses she engineered.
He knew he was getting ahead of himself, but there was something about her that reminded him of this one girl. Not a specific girl, but a type. A subculture of women who went looking for covert outlets to let their real desires and frustrations out—dingy bars, dirty alleyways, puppet politics, poorly picked pseudonyms. He hadn’t seen it yet, but Jet could bet good money that she too, housed this knee-jerk defiance that only sometimes peeked from under the surface of trained decorum. Jet was well familiar with this archetype, but he also wasn’t stupid enough to put her into a mould just yet.
Because Mai had something other women didn't. Power. Over the Fire Nation. Over the Avatar's plans. Over deals and decisions most people didn't even know were being made. Over Zuko.
"Alright, yes, I was a little on-guard before," he admitted. "The Kershin thing. And also the Republic City thing. I didn’t know how to separate that from our casual conversation."
"I didn't want to make you uncomfortable, Jet.” The honesty paid, the line in her neck seemed to relax. “We can forget about the whole thing and never bring it up again."
The farmer's wife who was fussing behind Mai now, turned and said something to him while holding up a fabric belt at Mai’s waist. Jet straightened, he had interpreted her request, she wanted him to hold the belt. He walked over with a nod and the woman handed him the reins and rushed to the front to pin it in place.
"So." He held the belt taut. "You're withdrawing the offer?"
The woman, mouth full of pins, glanced up at Mai. "This okay?"
"Tighter," Mai requested, over her shoulder.
He tugged sharply, and she rocked a step backward into him. Good thing he was looking at her in the mirror, the cinching of the fabric made her breasts swell over her deep neckline. "Because I'm still thinking about it."
The woman finished and stepped away. Jet did too. The dress looked perfect even if he suspected it would be hard to make anything look bad on her body.
She reached up behind her neck and lifted her hair out of the collar with both arms, letting it fall down her back. “The offer is still very much on the table.”
He was hoping that the conversation she was having was the same one he was having, picking up from where they left off on the terrace.
He moved past her toward the inner door to get to the dining hall which is where his hungry stomach was leading him, but paused half a step in. "I was happy to know Zuko brought you." He declared. "As it is, I don't think I could take forty-eight or more straight hours with one person in the middle of nowhere."
“You couldn’t?” She turned to him, raising an eyebrow, the lightness had returned to her features, judging from the slight curve in her lips. For a brief second she looked at the floor recalling something. "Mine and Zuko's first date lasted three days," she said. "And we were on a tiny warship for all of it."
Jet scoffed. With his particular allergy to sustained human contact, he would've had to stuff himself in a cannon and light the fuse.
Pai Sho parlours were one of the most popular cultural offerings in the Earth Kingdom. And depending on where one went, they reflected a deep variety of cultures chased equally by tourists and locals. There was supposedly one fairly close by that drew traders from far and wide. Zuko’s guard had managed to speak to some of the villagers and secure a carriage for the ride.
At first Jet had just wanted to stay back and let Mai and Zuko enjoy the evening by themselves, and neither of them had tried to force him. Then he’d remembered they were on this unplanned vacation in the hinterlands on his behalf, thrown on the tunic that the farmer’s wife had offered him and jumped into the carriage.
And now he was stepping out of it to a resplendent sight.
The parlour in front of him was no less than a mansion. Two storeys high, windows wide enough to fit a bed through. Hand-carved marble everything. The whole compound was lit warmly from inside, lanterns hung along the eaves on red cord, the light coming through the paper screens of the upper windows in soft squares. The property sat in a garden that even in the dark looked like it cost heavy chunks of gold just to keep alive. Cotton money went deep.
Zuko stepped down behind him, turned, and held his full arm out toward the carriage door, as if blocking the door. It seemed to Jet to be a peculiar way to offer one’s hand.
Mai emerged in the dress that had been fitted earlier. She stepped down to the carriage step, sat sideways onto Zuko's offered arm, slinging her own over his shoulder. He brought her down with ease, placing her onto the ground as though she were a princess. Well, she was a princess. By Air Nomad ceremony, anyway.
A young woman was waiting at the courtyard.
She was wearing one of those traditional dresses but with some additional slits up the leg that the original pattern probably had not called for. Not doubt to appeal to the largely male audience of these parlours. She bowed and welcomed them in the dialect, but it was obvious she wasn’t saying anything that needed active hearing. In any case, her welcome was almost entirely directed at Mai, so Jet allowed himself to zone out as he observed the parlour.
Their young hostess led them in through corridors rich with paintings that depicted the cotton fields and life therein. The insides were dimly lit, the floor a smooth polished slate that reflected the lantern light. They walked past private parlours with sliding screen doors that dulled the low laughs and the clicking sound of tea cups.
The main hall was big with twenty-something tables, some standing, some low with cushions, all of them in some stage of a Pai Sho game. There was also soft music drifting from somewhere. The woman led them to a standing desk near the centre, said one more thing in the dialect that Jet caught the tail end of (anything you need, ask) bowed, and turned to leave.
She glanced back at them once on her way. And Jet was certain she hadn’t looked at him.
A man who looked more in charge approached, and directed himself to Jet having singled him out (likely from his darker skintone), as the only one of the three from anywhere around here.
"Apologies, but could you wait here while we find a private parlour for you?"
Jet was fairly sure he caught that right.
"Yes," he said, hacking the words out of his rusty memory. "We'll even take one in the open hall."
"That will make it easier. Thank you."
The man left.
Jet turned back to a hush-hush conversation between the couple he was thirdwheeling. Mai caught Jet by the upper arm and pulled him in closer to include him. "The woman who brought us in," she said, low. "She was flirting with me, right?"
"Oh yeah," Jet said. "Totally."
Mai smirked satisfactorily at Zuko whose face, already in a mild state of disbelief, had amplified at Jet’s ratification.
"How could you possibly know that?! She dealt with all of us the same," Zuko had started off louder, then lowered his voice.
"You can tell," Mai and Jet said at once, exchanging a look.
Zuko seemed to consider something. The incredulous expression had not gone anywhere. "And at what point does one unlock this ability?"
"Just happened on a random day for me." Jet plucked a toothpick out of the small lacquered cup at the centre of the table and put it between his teeth. "Suddenly I could spot the friendly guys from the friendly guys with not-so-friendly intentions."
"But not everyone has it," Mai added, she sent Jet a quick look and nod, likely alluding to Zuko’s short-ranged social radar. “Don’t let it get you down, baby.”
"Okay, I believe you both," Zuko said, "but I'm not feeling so hot about this."
She put on a polite smile for a waitress who had arrived to pour them three small cups of welcome tea.
"Good thing she wasn't making eyes at you, then," she continued once the waitress had left, picking up her cup, "because I'm going to go find her."
She was already scanning the room.
"Mai, I don't know." Zuko lowered his voice further. He reached for her hand on the table. "People in these settlements tend to be reactive. If someone even guessed that—"
"I'm sure the two strong men that came with me will be good enough to bail me out, then." She pushed her teacup away, and took her hand back. "I'll find you both in a while. Hopefully not too soon."
A flash of a smile, and she was off, cutting a clean line between two tables and disappearing into the warm low light of the hall.
Zuko’s eyes stayed on her diminishing form. "She'll be fine, right?" He'd directed it to Jet, as if he was the authority on these matters out here.
"There's people like us everywhere," Jet replied, registering the unease underneath the question. "You can’t restrict who you are, and what you love to the cities."
Zuko sighed, reaching for a small piece of cake that had come with the tea. "I just can’t help but worry about her when we're outside the comfort zone of Hari Bulkan. There I feel like I can protect us completely. But then again, outside the Fire Nation is where it gets easier to be…explorative without people recognising us."
"You never really explained the arrangement to me," Jet said. "If you want to, that is."
The conversation paused as the man returned to lead them to their table. He took them down the long left side of the hall and along a stone-flagged passage to an interior courtyard, where four or five Pai Sho tables were set out at distance from each other. Their table was right by the koi pond at its centre. A waitress was already there with the tray laden with piping hot tea, warm cups, and a cloth-lined box of Pai Sho tiles carved out of pale stone.
They were seated. The set was laid out for them. The man and the waitress withdrew.
"The arrangement." Zuko picked it up again with a fond smile. "I guess I’ll start at the start."
He began laying out his pieces as he began recounting. Mai had briefly experimented with women during their break-up some seven years ago. When she and Zuko got back together, she'd told him about it. About her affinity, was the word he used.
"I wasn't put off at all. Which is what she told me she was worried about. I told her I was proud of her." His hand hovered over his pieces, deliberating his first move. "I also made a joke that she could return to kissing women, as long as I could watch."
Zuko placed his White Lotus down at a standard opening point. Jet, who had only played a handful of Pai Sho games in his life, mirrored the move from his side of the board.
"A couple of weeks later, she brought it up again. The joke had got her thinking." Zuko's mouth twitched. "She wanted to keep exploring that side of her and she liked the idea of me being there for it. I chewed on it for a while and was pleasantly surprised to find that I didn't mind at all. I didn't even need to be there. I decided if it made her happy, she should do it. My only boundaries being that it could only be with women, and women who were strangers."
He matched Jet's second move. A Knotweed, standing tall in the centre.
“And you haven’t been jealous?” Jet asked, taking a look at the tiles in his pot. “No marital issues?”
It wasn't the first time Jet had heard of arrangements like this. They were more common than most assumed, but the specific image of Mai and Zuko—a couple who functioned most times as one extended body—giving pieces of themselves to others felt a little displaced.
“It’s so crazy, but I think it's the best we’ve ever been,” Zuko smiled, calculating the board. “Who would have thought that letting your partner express themselves leads to an exponentially more loving relationship.” He made his move. “And then there are times when she calls me to watch.”
Jet and Zuko shared the same shameless look over the board, and laughed.
"And what about you?" Jet took a sip of his tea, slowly losing track of the game.
Zuko let out an audible sigh. "I started questioning things around the same time Mai did. But I never gave the thought so much as the time of day, let alone acting on it. I finally brought it up to her about three years ago. We had some conversations that were really tough for me at first. I was a mess frankly, and think I was unknowingly putting a lot of pressure on her for helping me figure out where I was. So she encouraged me to get some clarity."
He played a Wheel down the right edge of the board, the white stone clicking softly into place. The move flanked the small line Jet had been building.
"We discussed her boundaries." He tapped the side of his cup. "Same as mine—only other men. But the difference is, she needs it to not be a stranger. It had to be someone we both knew and approved of."
“That’s interesting."
"It makes things harder for me. But I didn't care, I wasn't seriously thinking I'd ever actually do it." He picked up a Boat from his side, set it down. "It took me two and a half years of contemplation to make the move that evening." Zuko was staring intently at the board but could not hide the flush that tinged his cheeks.
Jet slid in along Zuko's flank with a tile of his own and lifted the Boat cleanly off the board, setting it aside. "So, how did you get her to approve of me?"
Zuko huffed a small laugh through his nose. "Oh, no. She didn't approve of you. She pitched you." He reached for a tile of his own. "I had no idea you'd care to…you know."
He didn’t think it fit to continue that sentence here.
Mai had pitched him.
All this time when he mulled the circumstances around the events of that evening, he’d never involved her in the equation until he got to the party. He had assumed the idea, the action, the proposition was born in Zuko’s head, and that Mai had been brought into it after the fact. The actual order of events—Mai, watching him from across the few rooms they’d shared over the years, Mai, working out that Jet would be willing to help quell her husband’s curiosity, Mai, passing across his name during pillow talk—was so different to the version he'd been carrying that he had to set his cup down.
The game seemed to have found a rhythm and both decided to let the conversation stick to more mundane topics.
Zuko played slow. He was far more contemplative at Pai Sho than anything else it seemed. Jet, who didn’t understand the deep strategies of the game, was getting antsy. He lengthened his leg, placing his foot flush against the inside of Zuko's ankle.
Zuko's hand, which had been hovering over a Knotweed, stilled.
“Are you going to play, or—"
“I’m thinking,” Zuko pressed.
“You’re thinking too much.” He hooked his ankle behind Zuko's calf and drew it towards him under the bench. Zuko's knee shifted forward and bumped the underside of the table, hard enough to rattle the cups. A waitress glanced over from the tea station.
Zuko panicked and set the Knotweed where he had been hovering it. Jet smirked and before Zuko could reverse his move, captured a Wheel that had been left unguarded. He held it up between his thumb and forefinger to admire it.
“Oh, fuck off,” Zuko grumbled.
He watched, amused, as Zuko rearranged his hidden hand to recoup his strategy. A waitress drifted past their table with the pot and topped both their cups up without being asked. Across the room someone won a hand somewhere and there was a small ripple of laughter and the click of pieces being swept off a board.
Zuko was thinking again. He'd put his elbow on the table and his chin in his palm. The upper garment he’d been offered, sat oddly across his back when he hunched like that, the thick Earth Kingdom weave bunching up under his arm where it had no give. Jet decided he preferred the Fire Nation silks on him more. Where his shoulders ended, the silk moved with him. Those thin fabrics followed the delectable shape of his deltoids instead of concealing them.
He'd never thought he'd come down on the side of Fire Nation fashion on any axis, but Zuko was softening him up it seemed.
Jet was just contemplating running his foot up Zuko’s calf when one of the royal guards— the one who wasn’t supposed to be here—was suddenly beside the table. Specialised in being seen only when needed, Jet hadn’t caught him cross over to them or anything.
Zuko was on his feet in the same beat.
"Ember code," the guard said, low. "There's a band of bandits at the perimeter of the farmlands. They raid these villages frequently—extortion, mostly, taking resources and cash. I overheard them while scouting and expect them to move in sooner or later tonight. It would be best to head back to the farm, my lord. We can protect you better in a smaller space.”
Jet sprung up as well. He knew this setup well. Bandit bands like this one were a feature of any region big enough to have something worth taking and remote enough to make official response slow. They took what they came for and rarely killed anyone. If a village down the line got raided first, the others were warned and people locked their doors. He'd helped run things on the other side of this equation as a teenager.
Zuko's mouth had gone tight. "We can't flee knowing these people are about to be attacked." His words were meant to correct the guard who had been shortsighted in doing his job to protect the Fire Lord. "You and I will go to the edge of the farmlands and deter the bandits. Shinzo will stay and make sure Mai and Jet get to the farm safely."
"I'm coming with you," Jet said. He had had the foresight, this morning, to put two pocket knives into his boot.
"No, Jet." Zuko's arm went over his shoulder. He turned them both away and put a few steps between them and the guard, dropping his voice into Jet's ear. "I need you here with Mai. It's important to me. I can't send the guard looking for her. Please."
"Fine." Jet surrendered. "But what if the bandits overwhelm you?"
"I'll be completely fine.” Zuko sounded confident. “I'll see you back on the farm."
Before Zuko and the guard left, Jet grabbed a cloth napkin and scribbled the words 'Bandits coming. Leave.' with a pencil that was provided for players who wished to map out their moves mathematically. He folded and pressed it into the guard's hand.
"Pass this to the other guard," he instructed. "And tell him to give it to the parlour manager. But not yet, only in ten minutes. Then he waits for Mai and I in the carriage."
Zuko left after sending him a final encouraging nod, and Jet began scouting the room. He had about nine minutes to find Mai and get out. He'd been in enough tight rooms to know that the moment your stride lengthened past social walking speed, every person in the room looked up, so he had to keep his pace measured.
He left the courtyard, where there was no Mai. And found himself in a corridor with more private parlours. Some obviously had guests playing inside, others Jet managed to get a peak into. No Mai.
A waitress drifted toward him with a small smile. "Can I help, sir?"
"Um, bathrooms?" Jet questioned. He couldn’t remember the more refined word for bathrooms which would be appropriate in this context.
"To the back," she said, "I can escort you—"
"No, no." He interjected. "I'll find my way."
He rushed in the direction where the waitress had pointed. One stall was unoccupied the other had a woman exit from it and give Jet a hostile look at how close he had been standing to the door.
He spotted a narrow staircase leading somewhere up, lit by a single hanging lantern at the first landing. Jet bounded up and the high-quality wood did not creak under him. At the landing, instead of going down the corridor towards more private parlours, he saw a second narrower staircase tucked off the side, the kind built for staff. He took it.
It came out onto the roof.
The terrace was a long flat expanse of slate that ran the full length of the upper storey, low parapet around the edge, two clay chimneys rising at the far end against the night sky. A lot less polished than the rest of the establishment. Empty, too.
He'd already turned to head back down the stairs when he caught sounds from far off. They sounded human.
He stepped out properly onto the terrace. Now that he was listening, there were more noises and there was no mistaking that it was a woman. Could it be two? Moans of pleasure emanated from somewhere around the chimney but were broken up by the breeze before they fully reached him.
Jet was approaching cautiously when he saw two women emerge from the side of the chimney, devouring each other in a whirlwind of loose hair, drooping sleeves and clawing arms that made it hard to tell one body apart from the other.
The one of them—Jet squinted and realised, Mai—spun the other woman. The hostess went front-first against the brick of the chimney, palms flat against it, her dress already shoved up high enough at the back that her bare ass was pushed out toward Mai. Mai brought her hand down hard enough to redden her cheeks. The sound of impact was clean and the yelp the hostess let out in response was punctuated with shock and want.
“Mai!” Jet called, raising his arm up to cover his eyes out of decency as he got close.
Another yelp from the woman, but this time of pure horror. Jet looked to find them covering themselves up in a hurry. The woman's eyes were huge and she was throwing ‘sorrys’ and ‘pleases’ at him in a state of alarm.
Mai grabbed the woman, half-hugging her. "Relax! He won't tell anyone."
“Friend. Her friend,” Jet held both hands up in a universal non-threatening gesture. “Please, don’t be scared.”
At this point he had exhausted just about the entirety of his available vocabulary, but the woman seemed to have caught his intention. She nodded, fast, tucking the shoulder of the dress back into place. Her hands were trembling, Mai stepped in to help her with it.
"Why are you here?" She hissed.
"Ember code." He replied. "That's what the guard said. Zuko left with him and we need to go back to the farm as soon as possible."
Mai tucked her hair behind her ears, hooking the last of the woman's dress on, visibly vexed. Now mostly dressed, the young waitress turned to face her again.
“I’m sorry,” Mai rubbed the girl’s arms, not sure how to bid goodbye. “Jet, tell her I said sor—”
The woman kissed her. It was fast and deep, she lifted herself up on her tiptoes to match Mai’s height. It ended soon, and she scurried off, but not without a final look at Mai before she disappeared down the stairs.
Jet knew what kind of kiss that was. The kind born out of desperation, thinking this could be the last time she was held the way she desired. The woman would carry this kiss like water, to sip on sparingly, until the stars aligned again and someone showed up who could fill up her cup back up. If anyone ever did.
"Let's go." he nudged a still Mai, taking her gently by the elbow.
On the ground floor by the staircase he had spotted a window earlier and dogeared it in his mind. It opened directly onto the side field where the carriage was parked. Ten minutes were surely up by now, and if they jumped out through here they could avoid the commotion that must have started to bubble up in the main parlour.
"This way." He took her by the wrist and pulled her left at the foot of the stairs. Mai went without resisting, too irritated to pitch in.
Jet lifted up the glass slab, swung his legs over and dropped to the other side easily. Mai came through next and landed a little off on her feet, and on account of Jet failing to offer his hand, descended ungracefully into the bushes.
"Ouch.” She declared, glaring up at him. There was no pain in it. It was an ouch aimed entirely at him.
"Apologies. Now take my hand." He offered his hand but his eyes were on the entry pathway, looking at their carriage. He waved with his other hand, beckoning for the carriage to come closer and meet them halfway. He could almost hear the commotion of people starting to flee from the other side of the mansion.
"I'm injured," Mai informed him calmly, from inside the bush as she nursed a foot.
Jet groaned and bent down. He hooked one of her arms over his neck, and lifted her clean off the ground, folded her in half across his shoulder in a single motion, the way a man might move a sack of potatoes.
She let out a small startled noise from the back. “What are you doing?!”
"Let me escort you, Firelady," he panted, and began walking down the path to the carriage that was also heading toward them.
"Put me down, Jet." She wiggled, but not too hard, afraid he’d tip her over. “You’re so fucking annoying.”
“Can’t have you hurting,” he huffed. He could feel her hands gripping the back of his shirt for balance. The carriage was rolling toward them at pace. He made it three more strides before it pulled up.
He swung the door open with one hand. He turned, ducked into the cabin, and deposited Mai onto the bench seat. She landed on it sideways with a soft uff.
He climbed in after her and pulled the door. The carriage instantly took off.
She sat herself up a little. "That was no way to carry a lady." Sardonicism laced her tone.
He took the far end of the same seat she was on, one arm along the back of the bench. "And how would a lowlife like me know how to carry one?"
She huffed, but it didn’t seem to him that she was angry. Her dress was bunched at the hip, leaving part of the hem tucked up against her thigh. Her hair looked incredibly messy from being upside down, and was strewn across her chest, her shoulders, sticking to her mouth a little that she’d been using moments ago to bite through that woman's lip. Her emotions and clothes were in a similar state of disarray, and she was making no particular move to put any of it back in place.
He had to look out his own window for a second.
The village began to slip past in a blur, but it was dark enough now that Jet could barely make out much else aside from shapes.
"Does this ember code stuff happen often?" he asked. He noticed that she hadn't bothered to ask what exactly had happened or where Zuko was.
"Often enough that it loses meaning," she replied quietly. She straightened up some more and tried to catch a view of her foot but the carriage was too small for that kind of manoeuvre. She leaned back in her seat and brought her shoe clad foot and dropped it in Jet’s lap. “Check if it’s bruised,” she ordered. “Please.” She added when he looked square at her.
Her shoe trailed a little dirt onto the seat between his legs, and a piece of grass came off onto his trouser. But her calf was resting on his thigh, and Jet was distracted by the soft mesh black socks climbing up her leg. “You’d never treat Zuko this way.” He didn’t know why he’d said that, he wasn’t comparing himself to him in any way. Jet ran his finger along the scuff of her sock scoping where it stopped.
“His robes are too nice for that.” She sounded pleased with her quip.
Jet untied the straps of her sandals wound on her ankle, letting it drop to the floor. It unveiled her foot, clad in the socks which were delightfully silky to the touch. He lifted her leg straight up by the calf, and rolled the sock off her foot in one draw. When she set the foot back on his thigh, it was a little closer to his crotch than where it had started.
He ran his thumb along her soft, milky skin. Whatever the royal cosmeticians of the Fire Nation were charging, it was not for nothing. He tilted the ankle gently to one side examining for bruises.
She hissed and tried to pull her foot back.
"Sorry." He didn’t let her go but held her more carefully. "No bruise. No swelling. Looks like a muscle pull. You'll be fine."
He didn’t push her foot away, it was probably good to let it stay elevated. It could stay elevated without his hand still resting on her ankle though, but he didn’t move that away either.
"Do you have one of those—"
"Are you carrying any—"
They both spoke at once, both reaching towards each other with the same curve in their fingers.
He huffed a laugh through his nose, reaching into his trouser pocket. "You want my cigarettes?"
She smirked, a touch of mischief in her voice. "I want to try."
She reached into the neckline of her drape and pulled out, from spirits knew where, a thin pale cigarette of the kind she smoked. They exchanged them with nimble fingers. He struck a match and was courteous enough to hold it out to her first before lighting his own.
It was a miracle how evenly stuffed and circumferentially perfect these thin smokes were. And they were sweet, there were definitely some expensive dried flowers mixed in with the tobacco. Or maybe the tobacco was just so far above Jet’s purchasing power that he couldn’t even imagine sweet tasting tobacco. And it was smooth just like her calves.
He blew the smoke out through his window. “How do you like those?”
"They're—" She savoured the taste, a whisper of the smoke hovering around her mouth.
"Bitter." he offered.
"Harsh." She concluded for herself. "Intense. I like it."
Jet shook his head, deciding he didn’t want to find out what affinity she had to those horrible, caustic things. He hadn't realised until now that his thumb was caressing her ankle absentmindedly, he stopped as soon as he did.
"I noticed something." He looked at her bare wrist where it was resting on her stomach. "You don't wear the bracelet."
The bracelet Jet was referring to was the Fire Nation gold wedding bracelets, forged by priests for newlyweds, and allegedly engraved with the partner’s name.
"Because we did not marry in the Fire Nation," she replied simply.
"Zuko always wears his."
She shifted in her seat. “He arm twisted some poor priest into making us those,” she smiled. “I never took mine off him."
"Why not?" Jet didn’t care that he was prying. She was direct enough to tell him to shut up if she didn’t want to talk about it.
She looked up at the carriage ceiling. The smoke curled slowly out of her hand and got pulled out the window. "If I take it from him already, then there’s nothing…left." She looked back down. Her face was hard to read in the low light, but she seemed a touch more alert. "Not that I want to get married. Not that we aren’t already—Aang was so sweet to wed us. But I meant technically."
“I don’t understand.” Jet wasn’t sure if he was doing a poor job at following or if Mai, for once, was going in circles.
She sighed. “I like for there to be a difference, in being married and not. We are not married and I am not the Fire Lady. Which is how we decided it should be. There are important things that my detachment from the throne allows me to do.”
"So if the logistics weren't an issue, you'd marry him." Jet stated, but it was a question.
"Why are you assuming I'm dying to marry?" There was an edge in it. That spark of defiance flying out. "What—because he's the Fire Lord I'm meant to be beside myself trying to be a Fire Lady?"
She moved her leg a touch. Just enough to shake his hand off her ankle. Jet couldn't deny the small flash of triumph at having gotten under her skin—finally, after constantly trailing one step behind her.
"That wasn't what I meant." He kept his voice level. She was being more forthcoming than he’d ever seen her be, and although it was her vexation coming out, the sight of it landing on her face without anything in front of it left him with the feeling of the thrill at the end of a chase. "I wasn't suggesting you're unhappy or anything."
"Good. Because I'm not." The raspy edge to her voice softened. She held his eye, lips turning up at the corner. "Besides. As long as I refuse to take the bracelet off him, Zuko feels guilty. And that is how I make sure I never have to touch the ground with my own feet unless I feel like it." A small pause. "Among other services."
Jet liked being alone, there was something about being alone that felt right and safe. But whenever he’d been with people for an extended period of time, and on rare occasions like tonight, enjoying himself, then returning to his company punctuated the quietness of it while the chatter in his head felt louder than usual.
Alone for the first time since he had gotten on the cruise and with a sound mind. He had no idea how to handle any of what was going on right now. Firstly, Jet didn’t do any of this. Jet preferred going into one of the four or five bars in Ba Sing Se where queer folks like him like to congregate on any given night. He picked a target or someone targeted him and they finished up the business before he left the bar. Oftentimes he didn’t even pause to exchange names. He had never invited anyone home and had only been invited over himself a few times. He didn’t date, he didn’t wait on letters, and he definitely didn’t bring gifts. So what the hell was all this.
Jet felt that waiting for Zuko in somewhere that wasn’t his room was probably best to quell the narration in his mind. Which is how he had ended up picking the tinier of two barns. There were no animals in here, only large, large stacks of hay and bags of grains. He was staring at the ceiling aimlessly when the barn door opened.
Zuko walked in, he had changed out of his going out clothes into softer silk pants and an inner sleeveless vest up top. He’d stopped by his room first.
“You’ve got hay in your hair,” he said, as Jet sat up.
“What?” Jet hadn’t heard him right as Zuko turned away to shut the barn door.
“Hay,” Zuko replied, latching the door.
“Hey,” Jet stood up. “I got you something,” he began instantly, pointing at the stack of hay on which he had propped up a box of tea cakerolls he had brought with him, because he remembered Zuko writing that he didn’t get the hype around Ba Sing Se’s famous cakerolls.
And suddenly Jet could see how silly the little box looked all propped up. He grabbed it off the stack, brought it over and thrust it at Zuko.
“This is so sweet,” He said taking the box.
“It’s nothing, I just happened to—”
“No, I mean literally, this is SO sweet,” Zuko examined the back of the box. “I can’t eat that.”
Jet rolled his eyes hard, snatching the box back. “I’ll give it to someone who’ll appreciate it. Like Mai.”
“Well, I could try one—” Zuko tried to reach for the box but Jet tossed it away onto the hay. “Okay, now you’re mad.”
“I’m not mad, I just should’ve never tried to bring you on the same page as me about desserts you obviously have horrible taste,” Jet took his jacket off, clad underneath in a vest similar to Zuko’s. Much cheaper though.
“I’m sure we can find common ground, what do you think about pudding?” Zuko offered with a smile.
“Shut up,” Jet shook his head, putting his jacket away.
“You didn’t even ask me about the bandits!” Zuko took a step closer, holding his hands out. “I could’ve died.”
“You look fine.”
“Yes, but there were like twelve of them and—”
“I’m sorry that happened, sounds tough.” Jet stepped closer and grabbed Zuko by the face. "Now, stop talking because I feel like we have the worst luck together and I would rather not waste any time.” Zuko was looking at him with wide eyes. “Is that okay?”
Zuko nodded once and that was all it took for Jet to smash his lips to his. And this time, he did ravish him. Jet had the front of Zuko's shirt fisted in his hand for all of five seconds before the impatience got the better of him. "Take it off."
Zuko broke away and pulled it up over his torso at once, the effort making him flex. Jet let out a low sound from somewhere in the back of his throat, dragging his thumb over his lip at the mouth-watering sight in front of him.
"Return the favour. Don't be rude." Zuko ended the sentence in Jet's mouth, unable to stay away from him for long. He lifted Jet’s cotton inner up over his head, throwing it to the ground.
Jet slid his palms down the bare, warm plane of Zuko's chest, and his hand caught on the rough textured scar low on his diaphragm. Old and fully healed by the look of it. A lesser-known cousin of Zuko's famous scar that Jet was taken aback to be meeting. It was a story he hadn't been told and was not going to get told right now, because Zuko's tongue was in his mouth.
This time Jet decided he wasn't going to wait around for Zuko to build the courage. He reached down and palmed him through the silk of his trousers, the shape of him very clear.
Zuko broke off the kiss to pant an ‘ah’ into Jet's ear.
"Just say when you want to stop. Alright?" Jet had said versions of that line over a hundred times, but never had it come out this tender.
"Alright," he mumbled into Jet’s hair.
Jet moved them to the hay bed, pushed Zuko down onto it and climbed on top, pushed him once more so he lay flat under him. His hair fell out of its bun and spread around him like a halo.
He stopped, hovering over him.
"What?" Zuko breathed.
For a man like Jet, for whom sex had always been performance, the line that came out next was extremely unrehearsed. "You look fucking good."
Zuko's whole face went red.
Jet went for his neck. Braced his elbow into the hay by Zuko's head and worked his mouth down—the corner of the jaw, the side of the throat, the thin skin just under the collarbone that pulled a small noise out of Zuko and made him squeeze Jet’s thighs he'd been holding on to. Down further. Jet ran his tongue across Zuko's nipple and felt his hands fly up into his hair, tugging hard.
He was venturing further south with his kisses when Zuko's hands moved to close on his upper arms.
For a second Jet thought he was being pulled back up—that he'd rushed it. But then Zuko sat up under him in one fast movement, head cocked, listening.
Jet stilled.
Outside the closed barn door, a wheelbarrow was being trundled across the yard. The creak of the metal wheel and footsteps alongside it. Whoever was out there was taking the barrow back to the little shed beisde the barn. Likely a nightly activity.
"They're just going past," Jet said.
But Zuko's grip didn't loosen, he was still listening intently.
"Zuko, they can't hear us." Jet sighed and put his palm against the scarred side of his face. He leaned in to kiss him again. Zuko turned his head away a fraction and Jet's mouth caught him on the jaw instead.
That burned.
Jet got off him in one decided movement and slumped backwards into the hay stack opposite, frustration bubbling up. He scrubbed his face with both hands.
"Let's just wait a minute or two." Zuko’s voice was no louder than a breath, he caressed Jet's knee.
"Zuko." Jet kept his own voice low, but not as low as Zuko's. The exasperation bled in around the edges. "You need to let go of this fear." His palm was flat on Zuko's chest. He slid forward until their knees were threaded between each other's. "No one is going to find us. No one is going to tell. No one is coming for us."
Zuko tried to nod, but his eyebrows slanted, he was fighting with Jet’s words silently, using his knee as an anchor in a place Zuko had never been in before. Jet felt the frustration drain out of him, and fill up with something protective instead.
He had been like this once too. Nineteen, scared, waiting for the other shoe to drop every time he got too brave.
"You did all the hard stuff already." He held Zuko's face securely. "You're allowed to enjoy it now."
Zuko wasn't ready but Jet kissed him anyway. Soft at first. Zuko held still for a beat. Then his hand came up, closed at the back of Jet's neck, and his mouth opened, reciprocating slowly, very quietly.
A clatter went up outside as one wheelbarrow was slotted into another.
Zuko broke off and tried to turn toward the sound on instinct, but Jet caught his jaw, brought him back, and fitted his mouth to Zuko's and held him there with a firm hand at the back of his head. Zuko gave in quicker this time, shoulders going slack. They eased down into the hay together.
Jet was on his side, Zuko on his back. His head rested on Jet's bicep. Jet brought his mouth to Zuko's scarred ear, licking along the thick, ridged skin and felt the shiver that ran the whole length of Zuko's body.
Jet's hand slipped under the waistband at Zuko's hip. Found him hot and hard and barely contained inside the loose silk, and wrapped his fingers around him.
"Fuck yes," Zuko let out accidentally, biting his lip in the same instance to keep any more from coming out. Jet stroked slow, feeling under his fingers what he couldn't see yet. He was thick, blunt-headed, heavier in the hand than Jet had allowed himself to anticipate. He closed his fingers a touch tighter on the second pass, and on the third Zuko's mouth opened against the side of Jet's neck and let out a strangled moan.
Jet thumbed the head on the upstroke, dragging the wet of him across. Zuko was breathing hard, eyes pressed shut.
Outside, the wheelbarrow had stopped its squeaking. Footsteps now.
Jet watched his face from inches away, observing the careful holding back that was making the muscles in Zuko's jaw flex. Every moan he swallowed made the notch in his throat bob, and it was killing Jet. He was painfully hard against the tight front of his own trousers. He hooked his leg over Zuko's thigh, pressing himself into the line of Zuko's leg. His hand snaked around Jet's waist, palmed his ass, and pulled him in tighter.
The footsteps outside turned and walked the other way. Gone.
They sat up, Jet pulled his hand out from under Zuko’s waistband. "I'm going to suck you off."
Zuko stared. He nodded rapidly, hair falling to obscure his face. "Sounds good. Cool."
Jet paused mid-way to bending, half-lidded. "Do not respond that way to people offering you a blowjob."
"Sorry. I panicked." Zuko shoved his hair back over his shoulder sloppily, tucking the rest behind his ear. "I meant—please do. I want that. I want that badly."
"Better." Jet brushed his thumb along Zuko's bottom lip. He presumed it was a soothing motion, he didn’t know, he didn’t do a lot of soothing. The small unfair fact that Mai had unrestricted access to this mouth and Jet did not, struck him as a downright act of war on the Earth Kingdom by the Fire Nation.
He shifted to his knees in front of Zuko, now on the floor between the two beds of hay. Zuko leaned back on his hands and tipped his head, throat bared. Jet's hands found the waistband of his trousers. He started to pull.
"Wait."
Jet stopped.
"Can I do it instead?"
He looked up at him. "Suck me off?"
"If you don't mind."
If I don’t mind. Bitch, Jet thought, I would evaporate.
He kept his face level.
"It—it might not be great." Zuko was already losing his nerve, running an idle hand over his stomach scar. "I've never done it before. Okay, you know what, you're right, you go."
"No." Jet decided. "You do it.”
They switched. Jet sat back into the hay where Zuko had been propped, in the same depression his body had left. Zuko went down to his knees in front of him. "What if I do a bad job and you don't feel good?" His hands settled on Jet's thighs.
The Firelord on his knees in front of him, flushed to the collarbones, his own erection still tenting his trousers, lips wet, a little nervous. Jet could have come from the thought of that alone. He took Zuko's wrist and pressed his palm flat to the front of his own trousers, where he'd been straining for the last ten minutes, on the edge of bursting through.
"Spirits, Zuko! You see how hard I am for you? You could whisper near my cock and I would come."
That, evidently, was the right answer. Zuko exhaled, a small smirk working at the corner of his mouth. He began undoing the button at Jet's hip, got them open and eased them down.
Whatever he was thinking about the sight flashed across his face, and Jet wished he could read people well, because he was aching to know what Zuko thought. Whatever it was couldn’t have been too bad, because Zuko had licked his lips.
"Just go slow," Jet said, voice rougher now. "And mind your teeth. You can use your hand. You don't have to take much."
Zuko nodded and leaned in.
The first contact was Zuko's mouth on the side of him, tentative. A soft warm press of lips along the length, not knowing where to begin. It was an unexpected touch. His preferences in men tended to run older than younger, and he couldn't remember the last time someone had been this fragile with him. Jet's hand twitched against the hay but he kept it firmly planted there. He let Zuko find his way without grabbing for him.
Zuko's tongue came out and ran a flat stripe up. He paused at the head. He kissed it once, in preparation, and then his mouth opened over it and he sank down.
Oh, fuck me, Jet thought, biting the inside of his cheek hard.
Zuko was obviously not skilled, but he was earnest. And the earnestness was making it hard for Jet to so much as draw a breath. Zuko kept glancing up to check his face—was this the thing he was supposed to be doing? Was it any good?—and the ferocity of his attention was so much worse than skill. Jet got one hand into the hay behind him and braced. The other he kept loose at Zuko's jaw, his thumb drawing circles.
Zuko pulled off, releasing Jet from his mouth. "Good?" He tucked his lips, tasting whatever Jet had left behind.
"I’m fucking dying here, Zuko." Jet was man enough to be return the sincerity, already moving back closer to his lips, impatient. He brought Zuko back down with the hand on his jaw.
Zuko settled on a rhythm, which wasn’t too intense. He used his hand around the base, worked it in tandem with his mouth. And he took his time spanning the length of him. His hair fell forward over his eyes and he didn't push it back. His mouth was warm and wet, his tongue a nice heavy weight along the underside, curling at the head where he kept finding new ways to linger. He hollowed his cheeks once, experimentally, and the suction of it pulled a loud moan out of Jet that he was relieved no one was close enough to hear.
Jet was going to lose his mind in this barn and never regain it fully once they were done here.
Zuko's mouth sliding up and down his cock would have been a problem on any normal day. After two months that had contained two short-lived kisses and a couple minutes of footsie under the Pai Sho table—it was a catastrophe. 61 days of frustration was frothing inside him, and he was fighting to keep it from going off too soon. He was failing steadily.
Time felt irrelevant, but Jet was sure he was reaching his peak faster than was respectable. He tried not to focus on the wet sounds Zuko's mouth was making which was sending him to the spirit realm but it was useless.
"Zuko." He warned.
Zuko hummed around him without lifting off.
Jet's hand left the hay and tapped twice at Zuko's shoulder. Zuko seemed to not understand. Jet tapped with urgency. Off. Off. Zuko looked up at him, mouth still on him. Jet had to physically move him back with both hands on his shoulders. He managed just in time, finishing across Zuko's chest in two thick stripes. He fell back into the hay, both hands laid out above him, chest heaving. He was looking at the ceiling, but the stars at the corner of his eyes were were not the same ones visible from the cracks in the barn.
The real thing was a million times better than the scenarios Jet had built in his head to jerk off to. Depending on his mood the fantasy shifted locations, angles, intensity. The shape of Zuko's mouth was a thing he'd had to invent because he'd only kissed it twice. But in none of his fantasies had he gotten the eyes right. None of them had Zuko looking at him through his brows. Nor did he ever imagine all that glorious hair and the things it would do for him.
Memory was a weak thing. This whole escapade would be a blur in a week, when Jet was back in Ba Sing Se with nothing more than this evening to go off on. He dug his nails into his palm—a small punishment for taking something this good and going morose with it so quickly.
Zuko came to lie down flat beside him. He took Jet's hand without speaking, brought it across his own body, and placed it on his bare cock under his pants. A reminder that he still needed to be taken care of.
Jet hadn't forgotten. His hand closed around him automatically.
"Is it okay if we take it slow?" Zuko turned his head sideways to watch Jet. "First time with someone who's not my wife, and also a man."
He hadn't meant it as a joke, which was what made it funnier. Jet let out a chortle, moved his head closer, and kissed him. Kept his hand moving.
"You did very well."
Jet would be lying if he said Mai's encouragement of Zuko in the message room, and his audible reaction to it wasn’t something he’d filed away for his own application.
Zuko's next breath came out as a moan, almost scalding hot—and from there, getting him to come was no challenge.
He kissed the corner of Zuko's mouth, careful to not muffle the moans now that Zuko was being more liberal with them. The eye contact had gotten too much for Zuko, who shut his eyes. His hips bucked into Jet's fist on their own, and Jet tightened his pace. He bucked a second time. And on his third he let out a choked grunt and his whole body went rigid for one suspended second. And then Zuko was coming hot across Jet's hand, his own hip, and the inside of the silk trousers.
Zuko's forehead found Jet's, and then neither of them moved for a while.