Work Text:
"All the cows were falling out of the sky and landing in the mud.
You were drinking sangria and I was throwing oranges at you,
but it didn't matter.
I said my arms are very long and your head's on fire.
I said kiss me here and here and here
and you did.
Then you wanted pasta,
so we trampled out into the tomatoes and rolled around to make the sauce.
You were
very beautiful."I Had a Dream About You, Richard Siken
No, it wasn’t funny─ it wasn’t. In the distance, the flame was the size of his fist, if Zuko held one over his good eye to make it disappear. Still felt his blood rushing through his body like a maze without an exit, because his inner flame wanted to be a part of it. He wanted to be a part of something bigger. That’s why he was out there, in a wheat field, trying to match his breathing to Jet’s.
A hippo-cow fell from the sky in front of him. Mud, which splattered across him, absorbed any audible impact and swallowed the carcass whole. It wasn’t funny at all. Jet laughed anyway. Zuko turned on his heel and stormed towards the orchards before his blood lit him on fire from the inside. Jet came up on his left side moments later, shoving his shoulder, being an asshole, because Zuko’s basically blind on his left side and Jet knew that. He liked that. Liked that Zuko was broken because he collected broken people like beach glass. He looked through people like they’re beach glass, transparent and baring their soul but nothing else. He filled in the blanks himself. Fire made glass, and firebenders raised the glass over their heads to smash on the ground. Li was a wayward shard from a smashed vase.
Zuko didn’t know what that made him. Didn’t think too much about it. If he did, he’d start thinking about the firebending scroll Uncle gave him once that said one’s inner flame was a manifestation of one’s energy and its purpose was to seek out desires. Tasks, as Zuko had interpreted, purposefully obtuse. He did not want to confront his desires. When Jet came up on his left, his blood pulled left. When anyone else in the world did, it was a surprise. Jet would never get the one-up on Zuko, but he could get it on Li.
Zuko jerked his arm away from Jet’s grasp and escaped up an orange tree. “How are you possibly angry?” Jet shouted up after him. It wasn’t the tallest tree, and Jet proved that by reaching up to where Zuko was perched on a limb and pushed his knees apart to stand between.
Zuko glared down at him and tried (and failed) to pry Jet’s hands from his knees. “Did we kill those hippo-cows?”
“You’re worried about the hippo-cows?” Jet shifted his weight forward, his hands a firmer pressure on Zuko’s knees, and tilted his head to the side like Zuko was talking crazy. “Of all the capital offenses we’ve committed tonight, you’re worried about the hippo-cows?”
“Yes.”
It wasn’t funny. Jet laughed again like it was, but it wasn’t. Hippo-cows have kind eyes and don’t deserve to die. All Zuko could think about were innocent, grazing hippo-cows caught in the crossfire of liberation. All Zuko could think about was the turtle-duck pond. He didn’t want to be the kind of person who killed hippo-cows. He didn’t know what that made him.
“Maybe,” Jet said after he noticed that Zuko wasn’t going to keep talking. Squeezed Zuko’s right knee, because it meant something in his incredibly frustrating means of tactile communication. Jet talked with his hands and he talked through his hands, because in the forest it wasn’t bizarre to invade someone’s personal space. Up in the trees, personal space didn’t exist. That’s what he had said after Zuko kept flinching away from his hands on the boat. Said he couldn’t talk without his hands and Zuko stupidly believed him. He let Jet put his hands on his jaw and tilt his face up for a kiss in a storage closet.
“What’s so funny to you about dead hippo-cows?” Zuko didn’t want to be the kind of person who killed hippo-cows.
“Have you ever heard the expression ‘when hippo-cows fly?’” Jet tapped on his right knee then. Some Jet-coded message that meant something, if Zuko could decipher it. Jet huffed out a laugh again and tried to hide it by pressing his forehead down against the back of his hand on Zuko’s knee. His shoulders shook and gave him away.
Zuko carded his fingers through Jet’s hair and immediately felt stupid for it. Pulled back to cross his arms over his chest instead, even after Jet looked back up at him. Jet had kissed him on the boat and never again. Always shoved his shoulder, held him by the back of the neck, tapped messages on any exposed skin of Zuko’s he could reach, but it was always too quick. He ignored Jet’s eyes and stared at an orange instead. Ignored it when the tapping on his knee resumed. “I don’t want to be the kind of person who throws stones at turtle-ducks.”
Jet’s fingers stuttered through their rhythm. “Have you done that before?” Jet asked like it was still a joke that Zuko just wasn’t getting.
Why did I say that? Zuko hadn’t meant to say that─ he’d been talking about the hippo-cows they accidentally put to death. Massive, heavy animals with kind eyes who were opposite to turtle-ducks in every way, so why did he say that? It was fucking infuriating. Zuko snapped his head forward to glare at Jet, pulled his legs up to brace against Jet’s shoulders and shoved, got those stupid hands off of him─ “you’re fucking infuriating!”
Stumbling backwards, Jet tripped over his own feet and landed on his ass in the grass. Zuko continued his assault by pelting oranges at Jet. Jet, who had cornered him after his shift at the teashop and held his hands and asked him if he was up for some liberation. Jet, who lit a match with his teeth and threw it in a trail of gasoline. Jet, who thought it was so funny that Li was so angry at him over some hippo-cows. Why had there been barrels of blasting jelly in a tax building?
“Li, knock it off! Li!” Jet crossed his arms over his face in an attempt to shield himself from Zuko’s attacks.
In the moment it took for Zuko to glance upwards for another orange, Jet jumped to his feet, grabbed Zuko’s ankles, and pulled . Zuko scrabbled for the branch and ended up cutting up his own wrists on the bark. He positioned his legs to land on Jet’s stomach but the fucker rolled out of the way at the last second, letting Zuko land on his feet just so he could come up behind him and pin Zuko’s wrists. He even avoided the kick Zuko aimed back at his knees. It was halfway purposeful on Zuko’s part, and he felt stupid for it. All the blood in his body raced to his wrists.
“Can you stop fighting me?” Jet growled in his right ear. “We wiped out half the Lower Ring’s debt in one night. Do you know how many people that is? Do you know how many people we helped?”
“I don’t want to be someone who kills hippo-cows!” Zuko struggled against Jet’s hold, walking them backwards until Jet’s back hit the orange tree.
“Then blame me!” Forcing his leg between Zuko’s, Jet hooked his calf around Zuko’s and effectively immobilized him.
“I don’t want that!” Zuko knocked his head back with the intention of hitting Jet.
He missed, of course. Jet kept Zuko’s wrists pinned with his right hand while the left one reached up to hold Zuko’s head in place by the throat, allowing him to speak directly into Zuko’s right ear. “What do you want? I don’t know what you want, Li, I never know what you want.”
I want you to stop calling me that, but Zuko didn’t say that. I don’t want to be like my sister, but Zuko didn’t say that. I want to be better, but Zuko couldn’t say that. It was all on the tip of his tongue but he wouldn’t say it. Not to Jet, not to Uncle, not to himself. He was on fire from the inside out. His blood scraped at his veins where Jet’s skin met his. The enormity of his desire disgusted him.
Squeezing his eyes shut, Zuko forced himself to breathe. In, out, in, out, and again. A bastardized meditation meant to ground himself for a moment so he didn’t say something stupid, or do something stupid. He knew himself enough to know it wouldn't work.
“I want you to kiss me,” Zuko said and he immediately felt stupid for it.
Jet held Zuko’s throat a little tighter and flexed each of his fingers in a coded message. “Where?”
“Here,” Zuko tilted his head. His jaw clenched when he felt Jet’s lips barely brush behind his ear.
Slowly, Jet let him go. Loosened his grip on Zuko’s wrists, let his hand fall from Zuko’s throat, and shifted his weight back onto himself. He leaned back against the tree so Zuko would make the decision on whether or not to move. Zuko didn’t know if it was on purpose. He moved forward, out of Jet’s hold, with the intention of running back towards Ba Sing Se. Back to the tiny apartment where Uncle was asleep and unaware that Zuko was gone, so he could shove his face into his pillow and scream.
But he didn’t. He turned around instead and stared at Jet. Jet, against the tree, chest heaving like he’d been sprinting. Jet, looking through him like beach glass. Jet, who didn’t know Zuko was the kind of person who threw stones at turtle-ducks.
“And here,” Zuko stepped back into Jet’s impersonal space, but didn't show Jet where he meant. Felt stupid for it, but he wanted Jet to know where he meant, and he couldn’t say that part out loud.
Jet’s hands were on his jaw again. Zuko tilted his head up for a kiss, and it was the bravest thing he’d ever done. He was on fire. His fingernails dug into his palm and he was vaguely aware of the blood crawling down his wrists and gathering in his fists. If he concentrated too hard, it might’ve changed direction and climbed up his arms instead to reach his mouth, where Jet’s calloused thumb left a charcoal print on Zuko’s bottom lip. The hands of an ashmaker, but Zuko would never say that, even as a joke. Even to shatter the tension that hung between them like frail glass that had been glued back together. He thought about it, though.
“Your head’s on fire,” Jet told him. His other thumb grazed Zuko’s cheek and his eyes darted all over Zuko’s face like he was trying to memorize it. Probably made a topographical map of the scar on Zuko’s left eye that Jet had invented a story for, probably calculated the temperature of Zuko’s red cheeks, probably came up with a hypothesis from the data he collected and decided to test it. Jet tilted Zuko’s head to the side instead and pressed his lips against Zuko’s neck instead of his mouth.
Again, Zuko thought about the scroll. He could never tell Jet about it, not in a way that he would understand, like he could never make a joke about Jet’s perpetually dirty fingers and how he left charcoal prints on everything he touched. Jet would take it the wrong way. It didn’t matter that it had been Jet’s idea to set the row of government buildings in the Lower Ring on fire. For someone who hated fire so much, Jet had lit the match with ease, and for someone who needed fire, it had been Zuko to pull Jet away from the flames. Yanked him back and shoved at him until Jet broke from the spell and ran, leading them to the Agrarian Zone in time for the first hippo-cow to fall dead from the sky. Fire could never burn without a sacrifice. Wasn’t that why it was funny? Wasn’t that why Jet had been laughing? How had it taken until now for Zuko to decode Jet’s message?
When he had been standing between Zuko’s legs, tapping codes into Zuko’s skin, hiding his face so Zuko wouldn’t see him laugh─ he hadn’t been laughing at all. Zuko just only realized.
Jet kissed a path down his jaw. “Stop thinking so much. I can taste it on you.”
“I didn’t know what you meant,” Zuko sighed and pressed closer, “I don’t blame you for it.”
The hand on Zuko’s cheek dropped to the hollow of his throat, fingers splayed out like Jet would wrap them around his neck instead, but never did. “For the hippo-cows?”
“Yeah.” And everything else you’re guilty over, Zuko couldn’t say out loud. Maybe he could talk through his hands like Jet did, so Zuko wrapped his arms around him and pressed his bloody hands to Jet’s shoulder blades and applied pressure with his fingers. In a coded message, he wanted Jet to know what he meant: the part he couldn’t say out loud.
“Where?” Jet replied, and at Zuko’s confused expression, elaborated, “where do you want me to kiss you?”
In a quiet, terrifying, moment, with his hands turning to fists in Jet’s shirt, stained with his blood─ it stuck when Zuko pulled at it so Jet must’ve known, right, that Zuko was bleeding, and he had made a mess─ Zuko accepted that this was love. In an orange orchard, under the moon, under stars that looked more like shattered glass blinking messages at him, Zuko was in love. With an Earth Kingdom peasant, no─ an orphan who built a home out of beach glass people for a sense of belonging, or responsibility, and swallowed their guilt for love. Zuko didn’t want to be the kind of person who threw stones at turtle-ducks, but in Jet’s glass home, he hoped he could be a kitchen knife fallen from a shelf and stuck in Jet’s chest. He flattened his hands against Jet’s back again to pull him closer, like if Jet got close enough Zuko could step inside him.
“I don’t know what you want.” Jet pressed his thumb into the hollow of Zuko’s throat. There were tracks down his cheeks that had been scrubbed at with blackened fingers.
“Here,” Zuko tilted his face back up, “on my mouth.”
Jet kissed him hard, like he had on the boat. Dropped the hand from Zuko’s head to the base of his spine, gave him shivers, pressed his tongue to the seam of Zuko’s lips until they parted, like he had on the boat.
Zuko didn’t know if Jet loved him. Maybe. Even if half were spoken through his hands, Jet told him all of his secrets. Sometimes it took Zuko a minute to understand, like when Jet told him to blame him for the hippo-cows and the unspoken everything else, I’ll bear your guilt for love. But Zuko always figured it out. He always understood.
“I see you,” Zuko whispered into his mouth, because it was easier than saying I understand you. It was easier than saying I love you. It was a loaded confession because I understand you, I love you, hung heavy in the air. I understand you, I love you bled into Jet’s shirt. I understand you, I love you each time Zuko told Jet to fuck off, but followed him anyway.
“I never know what you want, Li,” Jet tugged at Zuko’s lip with his teeth.
If Jet knew at all that Zuko loved him, Zuko loved him in a way he couldn’t understand.