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The Prince wiped off the beads of perspiration from his forehead with the back of his hand before turning around, descrying Aang lagging behind him with the small blob of frolicking flames hovering over one cautious palm. “Hurry up.”
“I can’t,” the monk halfway whined in chagrin, slowly approaching a gibber amongst a caucus of them between him and Zuko. “If I walk too fast, my flame will go out.”
He mounted the boulder while proceeding to gaze at his pathetic excuse for emitted fire, unable to find it in himself to glance up at the tetchy Prince. He despised that Zuko was seeing him like this.
“Your flame’s gonna go out because it’s too small. You’re too timid, give it more juice.”
Aang huffed out of indignance as he attempted to hoist a leg over another ascending plate of stone. “But what if I can’t control it?”
He finally forced himself to avert his gaze up at Zuko and was distantly gratified when he was met with an emboldening, solicitous smile from the latter. “You can do it. I know you can. You’re a talented kid.” The corners of Aang’s mouth hefted up from a coy simper to a full-blown grin, feeling as though claustrophobic butterflies were oscillating along the borders of his stomach. He distraitly thought that he wouldn’t feel any better later today than he was right now.
-
Zuko gaped at the cerulean dragon in bewilderment, and he could feel the tensity of the situation enhance itself by the reciprocated disquietude of Aang’s silence. Before the Prince could whip his head around to the direction of the blaring resonance that alerted his eardrums, the creature ensnaring him snapped open its jaw and Zuko soon realized what the sound he heard was appended with.
Hues of vermillion and amber tinctured massive ropes of fire emitted from the mouths of both dragons, and their corresponding targets immediately screamed; instinctively raising their forearms over ducked heads to protect themselves from the emanated flames.
When Aang felt no adventing heat scathing his bare skin, his limbs fell back to his sides and gaped at what was bestowed to them.
“Wow,” he soughed, and absentmindedly nudged Zuko with the blunt of his elbow in an attempt to elicit a similar reaction to his own.
The Prince lowered his arms and blinked a few times to adjust to the incandescence that had briefly blinded his vision; mismatched eyes soon met with the panorama of various colors being whisked around both boys as if they were dragged across a canvas by a paintbrush.
Instead of the muscle surrounding his unmarred eye being boiled by scorching heat, the flames had blessed him through its emanation from primeval firebending masters as he stood alongside the monk he had spent years attempting to capture. The mnemonic his father had permanently embedded across the left side of his face served to prompt him of that duty every time he caught someone peering at it; until now. He and Aang were declared worthy. There was no one else he would rather be witnessing such a consecration with.
“I understand.”
Aang sensed the back of his arched neck growing increasingly sore by the minute (or whatever time stamp that would be more accurate to the fortuity), but his pain was revealed to be short-lived when Zuko turned him around by the firm clutch of his shoulder and pressed his lips against his. The movement evoked a nebulous “mmph!” from Aang before his eyelids fluttered shut and wrapped his arms around Zuko’s neck, balancing himself on the tips of his toes to converge his mouth easier with the turn of their heads.
Finding himself becoming more aggrieved with their height difference the Prince briefly detached himself from Aang and kneeled down in front of him, the weight of his upper body supported by a cnemis and one foot resting against the floor as Zuko reconnected their lips. He tried to refrain from pulling away and laughing when Aang tittered between the gesture.
Sometime in the midst of their shared affection, the vortex of fire slowly dissipated and the dragons entwined themselves with their serpent-like figures into the sky, unraveling into a circular motion before zooming back to their caves.
Ham Ghao blocked the sunlight from his narrowed eyes with the alignment of his palm, discerning the silhouettes visible before the sun to be holding hands as they began to descend from the stairs of the viaduct.