Work Text:
The open window allowed in a light breeze.
It floated through the room, following the low sunbeams, caressing everything they’d already tinged in gold. Zuko shivered when the cold air hit his bare shoulder, and he pulled the blanket higher to wrap himself in it. Mai’s face disappeared from his sight as the blanket slid over her head where it was resting on his other shoulder.
She made a low noise, a mixture of a snorting laugh and a complaining sigh, and pushed herself further up to rest her head beside his. Her hand came to rest on his shoulder instead.
“I thought you had such impressive inner heating? Did I dream how convenient it had been to cuddle under the open sky on Ember Island?”
Convenient! Zuko let the bait slide. He was far too content, far too elated to it.
He turned his head to the side and pressed a light kiss to Mai’s forehead. The cool sweat drying on her skin burned where his lips were cracked open. The palace’s healer had said it was still an aftereffect of his months-long poor nutrition. Zuko believed him; the man had always cared far more for him than his father’s orders had allowed. But that didn’t mean it didn’t annoy him to no end.
He rested his head against hers, a sigh slipping from his lips.
“To warm another person and me, my inner flame has to be... I have to, not exactly concentrate, but not be—” He struggled for words while the answer was still filling the thick air around them.
“You shouldn’t be euphoric by mind-blowing sex?”
Mai’s tone was as dry as ever, but Zuko could feel her grinning against the side of his neck. He groaned, his skin prickling with the sudden heat of embarrassment, but couldn’t keep his own smile from spreading over his face.
“Yeah, that, I guess.”
They better didn’t tell the guards or, even less so, potential traitors or assassins how easily their Fire Lord could be disarmed. Zuko was sure there was a joke hidden somewhere. But, right then and there, he couldn’t care less.
His left arm was starting to tingle unpleasantly where Mai was resting on it, and Zuko carefully drew his arm up before it could fall fully asleep, pressing Mai closer to his side in the process. He had to turn on his side to be still able to face her, and, for a moment, he was mesmerized by the way Mai was looking up at him through half-closed lids, dark lashes framing her bronze eyes.
“You’re beautiful.” What an understatement.
He pressed another kiss to her temple, hoping that the little gesture could somehow convey what he could not say with words.
Mai stared at him for a moment. Then, briefly, her lips parted as if to say something before she pressed them against his own intensely. The kiss was quick but strong, precise.
Zuko didn’t expect an answer. Mai was a high Fire Nation noble. Now, as the Fire Lord’s partner, even more so than while growing up. Being beautiful was mandatory; it was expected. Nothing else would have been acceptable. Zuko hoped that she knew that wasn’t the only kind of beauty he was talking about. So, he didn’t expect an answer, and he surely didn’t expect her to give back the compliment. That would have been, well, stupid, obviously.
Mai didn’t reply. Instead, she slung her free arm around his waist and pulled him even closer, their legs entangled, her sharp hip bone pressed almost uncomfortably against his. Nothing really registered over the searing kiss Zuko was drawn into. Mai’s fingers played with his hair, pulling ever so slightly, angling his head just right for their mouths to fit together perfectly. There was a powerful tingling feeling on Zuko’s lips as if electricity was dancing between their joined tongues.
He pushed himself a tad more upright and twisted his body to lean over Mai, to deepen the kiss just a bit.
“Argh!”
Zuko’s core exploded in white-hot searing agony. Instinctively, his body curled up into a ball to protect his middle.
Breathe through it!
Just in and out.
It’s over.
He could still breathe. Everything was fine as long as he could still draw his own breaths. In and out.
You’re not there.
Zuko blinked his eyes open.
He felt disorientated. It was less because of the pain itself, though, and more out of surprise. Which, in hindsight, was stupid because he knew he had a still healing lightning wound all over his chest.
A cool hand lightly caressed the side of his face and through his hair.
“Are you okay? Zuko?”
Mai was looking at him with evident worry in her gaze. Usually, it astonished Zuko whenever he was the one to coax an emotional expression on Mai’s face. Not this one, though.
He let out a careful deep breath, and when no new spike of pain ripped through him, he slid from where he’d collapsed onto Mai’s upper body to lay beside her.
“It’s fine. I’m fine,” Zuko panted.
Her hand came to rest on his head, and for a second, Zuko felt vulnerable in a way he hadn’t in a very long time, probably not since his father had burned him. He couldn’t have said why, but the light touch of her hand cupping the side of his head, holding him firmly, just being there, let a deep feeling of gratitude glow in his chest.
He opened his mouth but closed it before something as simple as Thank you could escape it. Thank you wouldn’t suffice in the slightest to convey what he was feeling right now. Why was he so bad with words? With people in general?!
He did the next best thing that came to his mind. He took Mai’s hand and pressed a light kiss to her palm, letting his lips linger there for a few breaths. Her hands were pale, with short and chapped nails, not long and finely-manicured like they were during their blissful weeks after his return. She’d probably have been able to kill somebody with those.
“Why did you cut your nails?”
Mai’s hand jerked as if she was about to draw it out of his grasp. But, when he didn’t let go immediately, she stilled then and let out a deep sigh before rolling onto her back to look at the ceiling rather than him.
That was new.
He’d seen Mai annoyed, but, usually, she’d draw back completely and hide behind her masks and unspoken feelings. Now, though, she was still holding his hand, and her face seemed almost vibrant with emotions flitting over it.
Zuko waited. He’d learnt that Mai, much like he himself, would talk at her own time. So pressuring her would only push her away.
“Azula had them cut at the Boiling Rock. She feared I’d kill somebody with them and escape. She was right, of course.”
The statement might have sounded proud in any other situation, but Zuko couldn’t hear a trace of emotion in it. Mai had detached herself completely, it seemed. He hated how his sister had hurt even her own best friends so deeply. He ignored the little voice whispering that, technically, Mai had been the one to strike first.
“I’m sorry, Mai.”
Mai snorted at that. That was something, at least.
“They’ll grow back in no time.”
Zuko tried to catch her eyes, but her gaze was still fixed to the high ceiling above them.
“I know. That’s not what I was talking about.”
Another sigh, and Mai turned to her side to face him once more. Her eyes held a strange intensity Zuko couldn’t quite place.
“I know. But there’s nothing you can apologize for here, Zuko. It was my decision to help you. It was my decision to stand up against her. I had thought I was doing it for you. But really, I had a lot of time to think afterwards.”
Zuko almost flinched at that and struggled to look at her for a moment. He’d only been at the Boiling Rock for a few days and only half of them as a prisoner. He didn’t want to imagine how Mai had been there for weeks. It hurt to think about it, but this wasn’t about him right now, so he’d listen.
“Oh, don’t look like that.”
“What? I don’t look like anything!”
The unimpressed stare Mai gave him at the blatant lie was so typical of her; it was almost a relief.
“I’m just sorry that you were in prison because of me. I’m--”
“My uncle is literally the warden of the Boiling Rock. Did you really imagine me sitting in a damp cell for weeks there? As soon as Azula had left to hunt you down, I was free and lived at the highest official’s quarters there. Again, it was my decision, and I knew the consequences. Please, please don’t take that decision away from me too, Zuko.”
The relief that had spread through him at knowing that Mai hadn’t, in fact, been imprisoned for weeks because of him was abruptly drowned in icy guilt as the rest of her sentence registered.
“I didn’t mean to leave you like that. I didn’t... I didn’t have a choice.”
“No, Zuko, I didn’t have a choice. And you were the one to decide for me not to get one.”
This time, Zuko did flinch. Yet, Mai still didn’t seem to be angry, really, and he didn’t feel like she was fighting with him. But she was confronting him, so... maybe they could talk about this without fighting? It was still an alien concept for him. Even if several verbal sparring matches with Katara and especially Toph – that child knew more curses than he did after spending three years with literal sailors – surely had managed to make Zuko more comfortable to talk about nasty things and nasty feelings without blowing up at the other person.
“I’m sorry that that hurt you, Mai. But what should I have done? Tell you I was about to go and teach the Avatar and ask you whether you’d like to come with me? I couldn’t have been sure that you would be more loyal towards me than Azula.”
“You didn’t trust me.” There was no accusation in Mai’s voice. Instead, it was a blunt statement of the truth.
Zuko’s impulse was to say No because, of course, he had trusted Mai. But she wasn’t entirely wrong.
“I guess I didn’t trust in your experiences. I didn’t trust that you’d seen enough of the damage the war had done to the other nations and to ours, too, for you to understand my reasons.”
Mai’s forehead creased at that. She looked deep in thought for a moment, but she didn’t interrupt or argue, so Zuko went on.
“Even after I’d given you kind of an explanation in my letter, you still didn’t understand when we met at the Boiling Rock. How—”
“That,” Mai’s voice had retaken on a sharp note, “had nothing to do with your reason to leave and everything with you leaving me.”
“Really? What would you have said if I had come to you a few days before the eclipse, told you about my plan and asked you to join me? Honestly?”
Mai shifted towards him, and her hand found his under the thick blanket. She gave it a hard squeeze.
“I’m not sure. I can’t tell you. But I can say that even if I had not come with you, I would have never ratted you out. I wouldn’t have even told Ty Lee. But then I’d at least have had the choice to stay or leave, to let you go or to stay at your side.”
Zuko’s chest hurt. His heart clenched. He’d messed up, and he knew that there was nothing he could do to change that. Why was he hurting every single person who cared about him and whom he cared about?
“I’m sorry, Mai. I’m really, really sorry.”
Zuko held her gaze and hoped that his expression was as obvious as usual. He hoped she’d see how really terribly sorry he was.
Instead of getting up to leave, like Zuko feared she’d do (like a much younger part of him was sure she’d do), he felt her suddenly relax, and she sank deeper into the pillows.
“And I forgive you. I just wanted to make sure that you understood me.”
Zuko sank into himself, tense muscle he hadn’t even noticed suddenly relaxing.
“Thank you.”
He pressed his forehead against her shoulder, basking in their closeness. Losing her would have been-- He couldn’t think about it.
“I understand you now. Do you understand me?”
“Yes. You’re right that I probably wouldn’t have seen what you had when you left. But after betraying Azula and after what you tried to tell me at Boiling Rock, I had a lot to think about and a lot of time to think. Otherwise, my time there would have been deadly boring.”
Zuko waited, giving her hand an encouraging squeeze.
“And?”
“And I am not stupid. I may not have had the same experiences as you when I was in the Earth Kingdom with Azula, but I spent enough time there and came through enough villages to get an impression of what it meant to be on the other side of the war. Well, your words and actions just gave me the push I needed to actually think about it, you know?”
Zuko hugged her with one arm, drawing her closer to him.
“Yes, I know. And I’m very happy you did. And I’m proud of--”
A finger pressed to his lips, sealing them shut.
“Don’t get too mushy, Zuko.”
He swallowed his words. He knew how it felt to hate to hear such things about oneself. And he also, begrudgingly, knew by now how helpful it could be to hear them anyway. But from the way Mai was almost hiding her face in his neck now, he had already succeeded at that. No need to ruin the moment.
He pressed a kiss to her finger.
“I’m glad you’re here with me.”
A kiss. A heartbeat. Silence.
“Me too.”