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If you'd told Mako at age thirteen that in ten years he'd be having lunch with the Earth King in one of his twenty gardens, he would've nodded along politely and then followed you home, silent and stealthy as a cat owl. If you knew anything about kings you probably weren't one to piss off, and you definitely had enough valuables laying around that you wouldn't notice if one or two went missing. A single gold heirloom, pilfered and pawned, could've kept his little brother fed for up to a week depending on its weight.
Mako doesn't like thinking about that time in his life, so he doesn't. Keeps it walled off in a corner of his mind along with everything else it's easier to pretend isn't real, like the way using his bending still conjures the phantom scent of burnt flesh if he lets his thoughts wander too far off course, or how most men don't look at other men the same way they look at women.
That lesson, not unlike others, had come early and been delivered swift and harsh, and Mako had always been a quick learner.
He'd had to be.
There were certain things in life that were indulgences, certain things that never crossed the line between want and need, never passed Mako's mental risk/reward calculus. Feelings weren't like stealing, or running numbers for the Triads, or pulling food that teetered just on this side of edible out of a dumpster.
Feelings could put what little remained of one's family in danger. Feelings could get a person killed. Feelings could—
“Ooooh Mako you've got to try this,” the Earth King himself says excitedly, his voice piercing through Mako's grim reverie.
Mako blinks, watches Wu's slim fingers twist as he drags a plate toward himself. He blinks again, flicks his eyes over to the plate. Somebody in the palace kitchen had gone through the trouble of arranging slices of moon peach in a perfect circle, a mirror image of the midday Ba Sing Se sun blazing overhead.
They're nice to look at, Mako thinks, gentle curved edges tucked against each other, no empty space between. He almost doesn't want to touch them.
And besides.
“I've had moon peaches before, Wu."
"Mmmm not like this you haven't,” Wu says, plucking a slice from the plate and reaching for a bowl of hot pepper sauce, his mouth curling up in a smile. His lips look petal-soft, and Mako drops his gaze down to his own hands.
“Isn't that for the dumplings?” he asks, picking at a hangnail and tracking Wu's movements out of the corner of his eye.
“So what?” Wu shrugs and spoons a bit of the sauce onto the peach, bright red over deep gold like an arc of flame at his fingertips. “You can do whatever you want.”
The peach is at Mako's lips before he realizes what's happening, and he opens his mouth before his brain has a chance to voice its opinion. Flavor explodes across his tongue, spicy and tangy-sweet.
The tip of Wu's thumb brushes against Mako's lower lip as he pulls his hand away.
Mako's face burns.
He swallows. Looks up. Wu has his chin pillowed in his hands, one eyebrow quirked into an elegant arch like he's waiting for something.
Mako tugs on his hangnail again. "It's good," he says, his voice rough.
"Oh, I know," Wu grins wide, eyes crinkling at the corners, and Mako rips the hangnail clean off.
Wu's smile drops at Mako's little hiss of pain and he zeroes in on Mako's lap almost immediately.
If Mako thought about it—and he didn't—he might have been shocked at how easily Wu can read him these days. How Wu started learning him years ago—before Kuvira's attack, before Guan's treachery, before Mako chose Ba Sing Se over Republic City for reasons he couldn't fully articulate—and never stopped.
Their shoulders brush as Wu leans into him, grabbing his hand and grimacing at the blood. "I wish you'd let me take you to the spa," he says softly. "They could help with this."
Wu's fingers are cool against the skin of Mako's wrist, and he swallows, supressing a shiver and dragging his hand back to his own lap. "I told you, I don't need anything like that," he mumbles.
Wu squints at him, eyes glinting like chips of emerald in the sun. "I would like to formally and officially register my disagreement with that statement. King's Proclamation. Wait, can I actually do that.....?" Wu trails off, mouth going slack for a moment before he gathers himself.
"Regardless," Wu says with an elegant flourish of one perfectly manicured hand, "you don't have to need something to do it. You're allowed to just do things that feel good. You know that, right? Mako? Please tell me you know that." Wu grips his shoulder and shakes him a little, and Mako lets it happen.
He digs his thumb into the thin line of red beading along the edge of his nail as his mind carefully slips around things that feel good without touching it, and artfully changes the subject.
"What's next for today?" Mako asks the shimmering green silk covering Wu's shoulder.
"Oohhhhhhggggg Makooooo," Wu groans as he slumps dramatically in his chair. "Mako! You mean we can't sit here and eat peaches all day?"
A snort escapes against his will, and Wu beams at him like he set the sun in the sky.
"You're right as always, big guy," Wu says, still smiling as he reaches out and pats Mako on the back. "My big, tough, smart guy."
Mako frowns. "I didn't even say anything."
"Well, your eyebrows sure did. The left one was like—" Wu drops his voice low "—'Wu, there are people depending on you.' And then the right one was like 'Wu, this isn't a democracy yet, your country isn't going to run itself.'"
Mako's mouth twitches as he fights in vain to keep his frown in place. "My eyebrows told you that?"
"I mean, that's what I heard, so..."
Wu's grinning at him again, tilting his chair back until its front legs leave the ground, his body one lean line from head to toe. Mako closes his eyes and breathes through it, yet the image persists.
He hears Wu sigh, hears the chair legs thump back onto the stone, and opens his eyes as Wu straightens and squints at his pocketwatch. There's a little furrow between his brows, and Mako clenches his fists against the urge to smooth it out with his fingertips.
"Probably should get moving, actually," Wu says. "I still want to tweak my draft of the election proposal for Yi before that meeting with the governor tomorrow."
Mako nods, braces his hands on the table and pushes up, but Wu shoots out a hand, stopping him in his tracks.
Wu drops his other hand onto the table and walks two of his fingers over to the plate of peaches. "One more for the road?" he asks, eyes bright and face split by that spirits-damned smile, and when Mako finally leaves the garden it's to the sun beating a heavy tune on the back of his neck in symphony with the heat tingling at his lips.
—
"—so that means if there aren't any major setbacks, Yi should be on track for a spring election next year," Wu says excitedly, punctuating his summary of the proposal with a quick clap of his hands.
It's still hard for Mako to wrap his head around the fact that this is the same man who pushed a child off a replica throne after Kuvira spoiled his coronation. "That sounds—"
Mako doesn't get a chance to tell how Wu how that sounds because a crash and a scream rip through the air in such quick succession that he's not sure he'd be able to figure out which came first, if he paused long enough to try.
He doesn't pause, though, because he's been around long enough to know that combination of noises almost never means anything good.
He grabs Wu and hauls him toward the nearest door, shoves him inside and follows him through. Brings a flame to one palm and curses himself for allowing Wu to talk him into having lunch without his usual retinue of guards.
"What's going on?" Wu whispers, his breathing sharp and shallow, his pulse fluttering sparrowkeet-fast against Mako's fingers.
Mako drops his wrist like he's been burned.
"Not sure," he says, keeping one hand up and pressing an ear to the sliver of light between the wall and the door. There's a muffled laugh, and what sounds like shards of broken glass clinking against one another. Another laugh, closer this time, followed by the rising hum of conversations being resumed and feet shuffling this way and that.
"Might've been nothing. Somebody broke something, maybe?" Mako says, stamping out little sparks of embarassment. He'd come back to Ba Sing Se with Wu to make sure the king stayed alive long enough to see the democratization process through, and it never paid off to be cautious only 99% of the time.
"Stay here, I'm gonna go check," he says after another moment of listening, tossing his flame into his other hand and extending his free arm backward at the same time Wu decides to reach for him. Their hands collide, fingers tangling as Mako tries to yank his back toward his own body, and Wu exhales a gusty laugh like he'd been holding his breath.
"My big tough guy," Wu says, his voice shaky and his hand fumbling before it finds purchase on Mako's bicep. "Always looking out for me."
Mako clears his throat, face hot from being so close to his fire. He reaches for the doorknob and twists. It doesn't budge.
“What,” he says flatly.
“What?” Wu echoes.
“I can't–the door won't open.”
“What do you mean it won't open?”
“What you mean ‘what do you mean,’ it won't open!” Mako bites out, yanking on the knob for emphasis.
"This isn't happening. Nooooooo this can't be happeniiiiiiiing,” Wu says, his voice increasing in pitch as he bounces up and down on his toes. “What kind of closet locks from the inside!?”
“You tell me! You grew up here!”
“Not in this closet!”
“Just–” Mako huffs, frustrated. “Just gimme a second. I'll get us out.”
It's nothing he can't handle, really. A single lock should be easier to melt through than prison bars, and he'd managed that just fine.
He inhales, exhales. Steadies his breath, like Zolt had taught him after–too close–like he used to right before a bending match–better–and brings a thin blade of flame to the tip of his pointer finger. Aims it at the lock, tries to keep his gaze trained on the doorknob, on the way the light makes simple brass glitter like gold, and not how he can see the reflection of his flame flicker and dance in Wu's eyes.
They've gone dark in the low light, and his fire shivers across them like twin lanterns floating on lakewater at night–
Mako clears his throat and shakes out his hand. Breathes deep and redoubles his efforts.
It's easy to slip into the rhythm of his bending, easy to get lost in the heat of his fire and the cadence of his breath and the steady drip drip of melted metal hitting the floor.
Finding his focus is as simple as breathing. Keeping it is another thing entirely.
Wu's a fidgeter. Has been for as long as Mako's known him. And the thing is, there's not a whole lot of space available to fidget.
The neverending stream of thunks and eughs as Wu encounters various mystery items in the shallow depths of the closet is difficult enough to ignore, but every soft little sigh that escapes Wu's lips roars like a rockfall, every small shuffling movement sets Wu's body on a collision course with his own.
It's impossible. Unsustainable. Unbearable, really, the way his mind is attuned to the minutae of Wu's existence in a way nothing else in the Four Nations or the oceans between them seems capable of competing with anymore.
Wu shifts again, the skin-warmed silk of his shirt slipping against Mako's exposed forearm, and Mako's flame jumps, engulfing the entire doorknob for a brief moment.
“Will you stop. Wiggling. Around.” Mako grits out, pausing his assault on the lock and pinching the bridge of his nose.
“I can't help it! We've been stuck in here for hours!”
“It's been five, ten minutes tops, Wu.”
"That can't be right!"
"Time exists whether you want it to or not."
"Time lasts forever when you're trapped in a box," Wu says, cringing. "Reminds me of when Kuvira's goons snatched me up," he adds, and guilt flashes through Mako's gut, sharp and shocking as a knife in the dark.
Mako sighs. "Just a little longer," he says. "I'll get us out."
"Oh, I have no doubt," Wu says, and Mako deliberately ignores Wu's soft smile as it teases around the edges of his vision in favor of staring at the glowing red-orange mass of molten brass until his eyes water.
"Besides, I wouldn't want to be trapped in a box with anyone else," Wu adds, and Mako's flame jumps again, higher this time, singeing the door and filling the closet with the scent of woodsmoke.
Wu sneezes delicately and looks at Mako, who looks at the doorknob. It's wobbling, oozing its way downward on a thinning strand of cooling metal, and Mako pokes at it with a single flaming fingertip until it snaps off.
Mako kills his flame. It's dark, without his bending, and quiet, too. Without the soft static of his fire there's nothing but the sound of their breathing.
Wu's stopped fidgeting, and all his sharp angles have gone soft and smudgy in the darkness. Neither of them moves toward the door.
"Mako?"
Mako twitches, jerking his eyes away from Wu. He clears his throat. "We should get out of here, yeah?"
"Lead the way, big guy," Wu says as he pats him on the back, and Mako feels the phantom press of Wu's fingers the entire way back to their rooms.
—
Wu likes to work with his desk pushed up against one of the windows, likes to take advantage of the natural light that pours in from the west every afternoon so he can avoid turning on the lamps and putting on his glasses for as long as he can.
He likes to twist his pen between his long, elegant fingers and tap it against his pillowy lower lip as he works, and Mako can't look at that so he turns on his heel, walks toward the far side of the room. Inspects one of the wall hangings, picks at a loose thread hanging from the embroidered face of one of Wu's ancestors.
Wu hums thoughtfully, and Mako spins back around to see him staring out the window, eyes unfocused, face bathed in golden sunlight. The rays glitter along the gold hoops in his ears and bounce off his bronze skin and pull deep copper highlights from his shining hair and he looks—
And Mako needs to—
To get a fucking grip. To grab Wu by the front of his fancy silk shirt and pull him close and kiss him senseless. To push him away. To fake his own death and find a humble little village somewhere and make a humble little living. Grow cabbages, maybe.
Looking at Wu right now feels like staring into the sun, so Mako figures he might as well turn away and start another lap around the room before he goes blind.
“Mako.”
Mako whips back around toward Wu. “What,” he says, a little snappish. “Do you want something?”
“No, I'm fine." Wu pushes his chair back a bit and twists to face him, rolling his pen between his fingers again. There's a smudge of ink along one of his cheekbones, left behind by one or more frustrated swipes of his face, and in another life Mako might trace it with his fingertips, might—
"I think maybe you want something, though," Wu continues, and the bottom drops out of Mako's gut.
"Look, I—" he starts, defensive, but Wu cuts him off.
"Why don't you take a break, get out of here," he says, a strange little smile on his face. Unreadable. "Go do something fun!”
“Fun,” Mako repeats, silently congratulating himself on the flatness of his tone.
"I don't know, what about those sketches you started for the children's center the other day? You seemed excited about that idea. Or—" Wu squints at Mako's hands, like he knows the cut from earlier has reopened "—you could go to the spa," he says pointedly. "Or wait, go for a walk! Take all this pacing around you're doing some place nice!"
"I'm not pacing," Mako bites out, mid-stride.
"Mako."
“You want me to just leave you unprotected? Wu, all it takes is one lucky strike, and–”
“There's six guards outside this room, Mako, and Beifong vetted all of them personally.”
“Yeah, but–”
“And I know you did your own secret investigation too,” Wu adds, his voice airy and teasing.
Mako turns his head sharply in Wu's direction, then looks away just as quickly. That was true, of course, but Wu wasn't supposed to have found out about it.
"Okay, well. I mean, so what?" Mako finally says. "None of that matters anyway because I don't need to go anywhere, I'm fine right here."
Wu groans and rubs his face, giving himself a matching smear of ink on his other cheekbone. "If you won't do it for yourself, will you do it for me?"
Mako crosses his arms. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"I—" Wu hesitates, his eyes flicking to the side before he tries again. "I want you to be happy here, Mako. You need to take care of yourself, too, you can't only worry about me."
"It's my job to worry about you!" he spits out, and that's the wrong thing to say. Mako realizes it before the whole sentence is out of his mouth, but by then he's already said too much.
Wu's face shutters and he twists back around in his chair, ducks his head down toward his paperwork. The silence is smothering.
"I should go," Mako says after a beat, and the words feel like broken glass in his throat.
"Yes, I think that's for the best." Wu's back is turned and his words are quiet, but they land with the bluntness of a door slammed to the face.
—
"Oh good, you must be the new apprentice they were sending my way.”
Mako only has a fraction of a second to process the words before a hunched, hooded figure in a lumpy brown robe shoves a heavy leather sack into his chest and shuffles past him.
“Umm," he says eloquently. A seemingly endless array of gardens in which to find solitude, and he'd wandered into the one frequented by strange old women. And why not?
“Come on, come on, daylight's wasting!” she calls over her shoulder, and Mako catches a fleeting glimpse of wispy white hair and weathered brown skin.
"I'm not—"
"I don't know how things work in whatever village you came from, but seedlings don't transplant themselves here in Ba Sing Se," the woman cackles. "Let's get a move on!"
Mako hesitates. He's almost certain that when Wu had said "go do something fun" he hadn't meant "stumble into a second job," but, well. This could be interesting. At the very least, it would keep his mind occupied, keep it from spiralling over his talent for consistently fucking everything up without even trying.
He trails after the woman, trying to get a better look at her. She's short, about the same height as his and Bo's grandmother, and upon closer inspection the lumps on her robe appear to be pockets, sewn on haphazardly without any meaningful pattern or placement. The woman rattles as she walks, muffled clanks emerging from the depths of her clothes, and Mako wonders what on earth the leather sack is for if she's already got the whole toolshed on her person.
She stops in front of a long tray of little leafy plants arranged in neat little rows and points to an empty plot of soil to the left. It's a deep black-brown, freshly tilled and filling the air with the thick, potent scent of decay giving way to new life.
"That's where we're putting these," the woman says, nudging the tray with a foot. "Do me a favor, drop that bag over by the dirt and then we'll carry these little guys over together."
The woman is squatting next to the tray when Mako returns from depositing the bag, and that's when he notices the cakey white mess sitting in a clump at the top of one her shoulders. The stain continues several inches down her back, like it had dripped for a bit before drying, like a bird had flown by overhead and—
"I think you got—" Mako starts. "Uhh—"
The woman twists, looks up at him. "What's that, son?"
Mako scratches the back of his neck, considering. "Nothing. Nevermind. Ready whenever you are, ma'am."
"None of that 'ma'am' nonsense, you'll make me feel old," she says with a toothy grin. "Call me Qin Li."
Together they march the tray over to the fresh patch of soil, and lower it carefully to the ground. Qin Li brushes her hands off on her robe and kneels, gesturing for Mako to join her.
"Alright, so. First things first—" she stops and squints at the far corner of the dirt patch, her face falling. "Oh dear. Well, that's no good."
"What's wrong?"
"Death spiral. Look, over there." Mako follows the line of Qin Li's finger until he sees a spot of earth that looks like it's moving. He shakes his head, like that'll teach his eyes to stop lying, and leans forward for a closer look. The soil continues to heave, almost rhythmically.
It's ants. What must be thousands and thousands of ants forming a small, dark cyclone as they walk round and round in a circle, climbing and tripping over each other in their haste to go absolutely nowhere.
It's unsettling. It makes Mako's skin crawl. "Why are they doing that?"
"Trauma to the nest, most likely," Qin Li says, nodding toward the fresh soil. "Sad isn't it? One of nature's little cruelties. These cabbage seedlings will grow over the next few months, get harvested, probably end up feeding you and me," she says with a smile and a thwack to Mako's arm. "But everything has a cost," she continues, sobering. "Even if we don't always see it."
Mako sits with that for a moment. "But wouldn't they just scatter? I mean, why follow each other around in a circle?"
"Instinct gone wrong," Qin Li says sadly. "It might help to think of an ant colony like a single being, rather than millions of individual little lives. Heart and lung and muscle, all following the brain and working together to keep each other safe and healthy."
"It works perfectly...until it doesn't. Until there's an obstacle, or an act of violence—" Qin Li gestures at the tilled surface "—that throws the brain off course, sends it scrambling around looking for safety. The rest of the body follows, running itself in circles until it drops."
She pauses, then adds, "Think of it this way. If something scared you so bad you ran until you couldn't anymore, your arm wouldn't pop off to save itself. It'd die with the rest of you."
An icy sort of horror crawls down Mako's spine. "I don't understand why they don't just—stop? Just stop walking, or walk somewhere else?"
"They don't know how," Qin Li says sadly. "They're not quite like us, they don't know there's options beyond what their instincts tell them."
She sighs. "They don't even realize they're killing themselves."
Mako's stomach churns. "And there's nothing we can do to help them?"
"Well, let's see," Qin Li says, patting at her robes. "Ah! Here we go." She dips a hand inside one of her 672 pockets and pulls out a moon peach, and something clenches painfully in Mako's chest.
She produces a knife from a different pocket and slices off a sliver. Places it gently in the dirt next to the ants, flesh side up, and waits.
They watch in silence as the ants continue circling. The way the breeze whispering through the trees melds with the thundering of Mako's pulse and the rushing of blood in his ears is almost hypnotic, and his eyes start to unfocus, following the spiral around and around and around until—
One of the ants at the edge of the spiral slows, its frenetic pace turning into something more of an amble. Then it stops. Wiggles its antennae. Turns toward the peach.
It makes its way over to the fruit, and another follows. And then another breaks away from the spiral. And then another, and another, and before long there's a steady line of ants heading toward the peach and Mako lets out a breath he didn't realize he'd been holding.
Mako leans forward and watches them, tracks the twitching of their antennae and the clacking of their little mandibles. Away from the panicked swarm, away from the frantic, helpless death march, they're almost cute.
Qin Li slices up the rest of the peach for the ants and drops the pit into yet another pocket. "Sometimes all a critter needs is a push in the right direction," she says, her wrinkled face splitting into a smile, and Mako reels back like he's been shocked.
He bounces up from his crouch so quickly his head swims. "I have to go," Mako blurts out, already walking away.
"But—"
"I have to, uhh—sorry. Thank you for your time!" he calls over his shoulder, walking even faster.
Qin Li watches him stride away and break into a jog, turning into a gray-green blur before disappearing completely. "Sweet kid," she mutters to herself. "Questionable work ethic, though."
She glances over at the ants, smiling as they swarm the peach in greater and greater numbers, the spiral unwinding little by little as the ants catch their breath and eat their fill.
Years of practice makes quick work of the tray of seedlings, and just as she's giving a final pat to the soil a shadow falls over her from the left.
She twists, looks up to see the youth from earlier has returned, though he's changed his outfit and it seems like somebody ran his hair through with a gardening fork.
"Well that was fast," she says. "No need for the new clothes, though, these ones will get just as dirty."
"What? Uhh, maybe I'm in the wrong garden?" he says, uncertain. "I was supposed to start an apprenticeship today, but I got here a little late. Are you Qin Li?"
"Well, yes, I told you that not twenty minutes ago!"
The youth stares at her, his mouth hanging open like a fish.
Qin Li peers up at him. "This is some sort of prank, I assume? I cannot even begin to understand your generation's sense of humor." She flexes her fingers, sighing as the joints pop. "Well, there's still plenty left to be done. Let's get back to it!"
—
Mako bursts through the door of their rooms like a human battering ram, barely registering Wu's little squawk of surprise.
“Wu, the ants!” he gasps, gagging for breath. At some point his walk back from the garden had turned into a jog and his jog had turned into a sprint.
“Eww–where? What? Mako, are you okay? Why are you covered in dirt?”
“The ants!” Mako waves his hand, dismissing Wu's questions. “They just run around in circles until they die and they have no idea! They don't know to stop, they don't know how to know! It's like they're brainwashed! Well, not really, but–”
“Mako, slow down, I–what are you trying to say?” Wu asks, his voice soft. He stands up and walks around the desk, reaches an arm out toward Mako. Lets it drop, like he's not sure what to do with it.
"I don't want to be like that!"
Wu frowns. "I don't think you're like an ant, Mako."
"No, I–" Mako scrubs his hands through his hair. "I dont want to just–run from things until I drop dead! I don't want to ignore everything that might be good, and–and die miserable because I only ever did what I thought was safe."
Wu picks at the cuff of his shirt, smoothing out an invisible wrinkle. “Okay, so. There's a lot you don't want. Is there anything you do want?”
Mako's pulse jumps, hammering against the inside of his skin, his breath coming fast and shallow again for an entirely different reason. He looks helplessly at Wu, who looks right back.
“Iwantustogetsmoothiestogether," he says, forcing the words out all at once before they have a chance to crawl back down his throat, and it's like a spark catches, dry tinder to inferno in a heartbeat, words tumbling out so fast he can't be sure they're in any sort of order.
"Like we used to in Republic City. I want—I want you to keep workshopping your music with me even if I look grumpy about it, I want. Umm. I want you to ask me again if I want to come to the spa with you."
Wu makes a small huffing sound, like he's smothering a laugh. "Do you want to come to the spa with me?"
"Yes," Mako blurts out, his breathing still heavy.
"Alright" Wu says, like it's easy, like it's nothing to have strangers put their hands on your skin. He bites his lip. “Anything else?”
Mako opens his mouth but nothing comes out. He swallows, tries again.
“I want–” His throat is very dry and Wu is very close. Close enough that Mako thinks he catches the lingering scent of moon peaches.
Wu steps even closer, reaches out and fiddles absently with the lapels of Mako's jacket. Lifts his face and opens his plush mouth.
“You can have anything you want,” Wu says, and Mako can barely make out the words over the thundering of his own heart. “Anything. But I need to hear you say it.”
Mako's almost certain that if he opens his mouth again he'll either laugh or throw up. He might pass out. He forces the words out anyway, and it feels like signing a confession.
“I want you." A question in the form of a statement.
Wu's eyes are wide, and he's so close now Mako thinks he could count his eyelashes. "You have me," he says. Simple. Easy, like the answer was right there all along.
Mako exhales sharply. He brings one shaking hand to Wu's face, brushes his thumb against the inkstain on his cheekbone. “I want to kiss you,” he whispers, like an accused man pleading guilty.
“So kiss me," Wu murmurs, and it sounds like absolution.
It's clumsy and it's awkward and their noses bump a little painfully, but Wu's lips are warm and even softer than they look, and when he presses something that sounds like "finally" against Mako's mouth, Mako swallows it down like a drowning man gasping for air.
Wu rises onto the tips of his toes and slides his arms around Mako's neck, tilts his head and slots their lips together just right, and the air feels charged, electric, like it does in the those moments right before Mako brings lightning to his fingertips.
Mako pulls Wu in tighter, fingers twisting in the soft fabric of his jacket, and Wu shudders against him, pressing even closer like he wants to crawl inside Mako's skin.
The arms around Mako's neck tighten, and that's the only warning he gets before Wu jumps into his arms and winds his legs around Mako's waist. Wu presses a soft kiss to the corner of Mako's mouth and looks down at him with a giddy smile on his face.
“You know I hate when you do that," Mako says, not bothering to smother his answering grin.
“Mhm, sure you do," Wu says, a little smug. "Lie to yourself all you want, big guy, but you can't lie to me.”
Mako scowls halfheartedly. “I will drop you.”
Wu gasps dramatically. "Another lie!"
Mako tries his best to glare, he really does. But the reality of having Wu in his arms, so different now that he's allowed to touch, allowed to feel the heat of Wu's body against his hands, is overwhelming. And besides, Wu would see right through it just by reading his eyebrows, probably.
“Sooo,” Wu says, trailing his fingertips through the short hairs at the nape of Mako's neck, sending shivers down Mako's spine. “When should we get smoothies?”
Mako shrugs, just to feel Wu grip him tighter. "Whenever. As long as you're paying."
Wu throws his head back and laughs, and Mako's possessed by the sudden need to put his mouth on Wu's neck, to feel that soft skin against his lips.
"Okay okay, fair," Wu says, "but I get to tell everyone you ran in here yelling about dead bugs right before you kissed me.”
Mako kisses him again, because he can. Says "I changed my mind, actually, I don't like you anymore" and kisses him two more times after that.
Wu laughs again, and this time Mako doesn't hesitate, just ducks in and presses his lips to the warm skin under Wu's jaw and feels the beat of his heart, sure and steady as life.