Chapter Text
The market was loud, packed, and smelled dank thanks to the towering buildings that barred the sunlight from hitting the shady lanes of Ba Sing Se's underground bazaar. Jet should have been making haste to finish the job the Earth Kingdom government was paying him for so he didn't make even less gold pieces per hour than he already was. He also didn't want to be thinking about how his money troubles had led to him needing to take gigs for this stupid, miserly, fascist government.
And yet here he was, down on two counts.
He brought the cup of tea he had bought off the shoddy little tea stall up to his lips. He had picked the lamppost he was leaning against as his refuge while he figured out what to do about the shadow that had been following three paces behind him. He found it hard to believe that this shadow and he just happened to have the same afternoon plans. And he thought he recognised the shadow. The build, the pace, the mannerisms, the height that paralleled his own, all reminded him of someone, but the notion was so ridiculous that he had forced himself to erase the name that came to mind.
He twisted the silver earring at his lobe considering his options.
It was easy to mistake one thing for another in these poorly lit lanes, amid the cacophony of haggling over black market jewels and the caws of rare breeds. In fact, it was what many of the sellers depended on to make their dodgy transactions.
"Don't freak out."
The voice crept up out of nowhere and, well, Jet freaked out. He nearly jumped sideways to face the other party and had his free hand on one of his hook swords before his brain finished processing the move.
"I fucking knew it was you," Jet muttered angrily, letting go of the hook swords as relief gushed through him.
Zuko's face was wrapped up to the nose in dark cloth and he was dressed head-to-toe in black like some kind of outlaw sandbender. Unrecognisable if one didn’t have the outline of his body, and the flow of his movements memorised.
"Yeah, sorry, I was being followed," he said, breathing with some effort.
"What?" Jet spat. "No—you were following me."
"Yeah, because I was being followed." Zuko repeated exasperatedly. He stepped in front of him, turning his back to the market, and suddenly they were standing close enough that Jet could see the sheen of sweat coating his one eyebrow. "Are they still there?"
Jet glanced over his shoulder. Two men, or rather boys, across the other end of the market were looking in their direction. Having noticed that their person-of-interest had a friend, it seemed they had decided pursuing further wasn't the best idea and began slipping back the way they came. "Think they're leaving. Who are they?"
"I don't know, I’m just glad I spotted you in time.” Zuko let out a sigh of relief and grabbed Jet's steaming cup of tea. He reached up to undo the wrap across his face, remembered why it was there, and handed the cup back with palpable irritation. “I'm more worried about what happens if I get into an unnecessary altercation and General Mak subsequently finds out I snuck away to take a stroll in Ba Sing Se's dirtiest underbelly."
"Watch it," Jet sniped.
"It's true, you're just mad I said it."
He gulped down the remaining hot liquid with a wince and pushed himself off the lamppost. "What are you even doing here?"
"Looking to buy a cat…that I heard I’d find here," Zuko fished some coins out of a purse at his hip and tossed them to the tea seller. "Can I tail you for a bit?"
"What? Why?" Jet said. "Those men following you were probably just curious kids that stared too long and caught a glimpse of the scar or something. You're fine."
"I just don't want to be alone until we're out of here, alright?" Zuko said. "I owe my people staying alive. And I'll owe you a beer."
Nothing about it was convenient. "Walk a step behind. I have work to finish before we can exit."
The building was easy to find. There weren't many permanent structures in these markets, where shops were as dynamic as the water flowing through the gutters. Long ago these streets were home to families that held on to the old trades: book-binding, shoe-making, tea-growing. But most of those families had since moved out and the underground bazaar had encroached on all abandoned land. Save a small island of legacy homes that still stood tall.
The door to the house was left open and they stepped in. The facade of the building was as grim as the inside welcoming. Warmer, from many small, intricate lightbulbs. The furnishings were old but looked heavy and indestructible. The curtains were thick and held up the illusion of separation from the outside pretty well. The house bore a quietness-amid-chaos that could only come with lots of money.
Zuko reached out for a small jade figurine on the shelf by the entrance.
"Don't touch anything," Jet whispered, looking around.
Zuko stopped himself from picking it up but pointed a finger too close to the frog figurine. "Do you know there's a way to tell real jade from fake, and it's always right! Super important to know when buying jade."
He reached for Zuko's hand and gently tucked it away from the figurine. "Tell me please so I know when I go shopping for jade next."
"Right," Zuko’s voice carried the sombreness of having been made aware of his out-of-touch statement.
They both looked up and caught sight of the same thing at once. A painting that took up most of the far wall of the foyer. It was enormous and looked very old, handpainted on pure silk by the look of it. It depicted a stunning vista of rolling hills layered in morning light. The green paint used must have been rare, Jet wasn't sure he'd ever seen the lushness of Ba Sing Se's tea estates replicated so truthfully before. The painting was protected behind heavy glass, and even so it felt fragile. Zuko was equally in awe.
The warm sunlight tearing through the clouds gathered atop one particular hill, illuminating it above the others. That must be Whisker Estate, Jet thought.
A door opened and a not-so-kindly looking man entered. He was older and walked slowly, and Jet couldn't figure out what it was about him that instantly told him he was the owner of the house and not a keeper.
"Two teas?" he asked, sizing up both men.
"No—my friend will stay out here." Jet took a step forward. "I’m Jet, you must have received my letter. Can we speak in private, Mr Masoshito?"
The man gave a short nod and began heading toward the inner room. Jet followed, shooting Zuko a glance. But he had already turned back to the painting.
Jet followed the man into what he supposed was the study, if the massive mahogany study table was anything to go by. The old man was making his way toward the tea station with the obligatory energy of someone who didn't really want to do it.
"Please don't bother with the tea," Jet interrupted. "I'll make this quick." He kept his posture easy, hands loose. "Have you sold the estate yet?"
The old man regarded him for a moment. "You work for King Kuey, young man?"
Jet had anticipated this. "Yes, but I wasn't asked to track you or anything. This is a completely off-the-record conversation. I guarantee—”
"If you want information, you always lead with information of your own. You need the other party to trust you," The old man shook his head, disappointed. "It'll do you good to remember that if you want to keep working for the King."
Masoshito seemed far more experienced than himself, and Jet didn’t think he knew how to hoodwink someone like him yet. "I'm tailing an Earth Kingdom buyer," Jet resolves to be honest. "Someone who has made several high-profile purchases in the last two years while the government has little to no information on them, which I’m sure you’re aware has started to put the state at unease. These purchases are land, mostly. Property the cabinet would have preferred to keep well within their sights. Your estate seemed like something that buyer would be interested in, which is why I sought you out proactively."
"And what do you want from me?" Masoshito seemed to be done with this conversation.
"That you inform me about whoever has, or will, approach you to purchase that property. It will help the government… in keeping Ba Sing Se clean." He had nothing else to offer. He'd walked in with confidence as his only currency and he'd spent all of it on that ask.
A moment passed in silence. "You want me to tell you about private citizens who approach me so that the Earth Kingdom can control, and spy on and spook away every serious buyer I get?" Masoshito shook his head. "Look, kid. Unless you're here to talk about buying that land yourself, don't come knocking again."
He should have done a better job of keeping his face neutral on the walk back out. Zuko had taken note of it immediately, and that was how Jet ended up being held to that beer instead of going home and actually working.
"Could you have found anything more crowded if you tried?" Zuko grumbled, his voice close behind. He had both hands on Jet's shoulders as they weaved through the packed beer garden.
"This is the only beer I like," he replied. "No one will care that you have your whole face covered but only if you also stop acting like you committed armed robbery."
This was all such a weird way for the evening to evolve. It was rare enough that Jet and Zuko ended up alone together, and Jet couldn't remember a single instance of it happening when Zuko wasn't the fixed point of everyone's attention as Fire Lord.
He shouldered through toward the bar and slotted himself in at a gap at the counter. He turned, which meant Zuko's hands had to come off his shoulders, unfortunately.
"BSS Stout?" Jet had to lean in and raise his voice above the noisy bar.
"Just water for me, thanks."
"You don't drink?!"
Zuko shook his head. "I could use keeping my senses about me as Firelord."
Jet rolled his eyes and flagged the bartender down, placing both orders with a swish of his hand. Zuko reached down and opened the hatch to his coin bag and looked up blankly at Jet, because he had no idea what it cost.
The bag sat at the belt of his pants. The space at the bar was cramped, making it a little awkward as Jet reached into the bag, feeling about for three thick coins. He kept his fingers as nimble and close together as he could so as not to accidentally make contact with Zuko's body. The crowd pressed in from behind and their heads ended up closer than either of them had arranged for. Jet kept his eyes down and focused on finding the right coins, while Zuko was almost looking heavenward. This was taking longer than it should have.
He fished out the coins, turned and dropped them on the counter.
"Thanks," Zuko breathed, even though it was his money.
Jet took a step to the side. It was more something to do and than the result of a logical line of reasoning. Zuko moved up to fill the space at the bar, waiting on their drinks.
He turned his back to the bar, observing the crowd ahead. Had he known he'd be lucky enough to clink glasses with the Fire Lord today, maybe he wouldn't have worn this crinkled shirt (or at least he would've tucked it in), his well-worn jacket, or these pants that sat slightly loose around his waist. He ran a hand through his hair, which he could only assume had gotten shaggier in the damp air of the bazaar.
He looked sideways without thinking and found himself unable to turn away, transfixed. Zuko was loosening the scarf, pulling it down, first over his nose, then his mouth. Jet felt something kick him in the gut. The drinks arrived. He didn't manage to turn away fast enough, and for a split second their eyes met as Zuko caught him staring. He slid Jet's beer across the bar without comment.
Jet smiled curtly, as they clinked glasses and made sure he got at least half of it down in the first swig.
"Easy," Zuko leaned in a touch to clear the noise. "I don't want to be accused of compromising an Earth Kingdom spy while he's on his super spy business."
Jet's heart dropped for a split second before he caught up. It was a joke. He exhaled, there was no way for Zuko to know what his business was. Fraternising with the Fire Lord while on business for the Earth King was a risk that he'd reckoned with from the very moment Zuko’s name had popped into his head when he had noted the shadow following him, and he still couldn't explain to himself why he hadn't just walked faster.
"Why are you in Ba Sing Se?" Jet asked.
"Official business."
Well, Zuko was no open book. Jet had known he was in town since yesterday. He had spent some twenty minutes at the public treasury charming a cashier into pulling up records on the transactions that were flagged and gotten precisely nothing for it, not even a name. But he had caught the whispering conversations around the arrangements being made for the Fire Lord's meeting with Ba Sing Se's Financial Minister that day.
"You like what you do?" Zuko asked, nodding vaguely in the direction of the market from where they had come. “When it goes how you want, that is.”
"Apparently I should be switching into illegal cat breeding,” Jet scoffed.
A waiter came shouldering through the crowd, carrying a tray stacked high with empty glasses above head height. Without thinking Jet reached over and pressed a light hand to the top of Zuko's head, guiding it down as the tray cleared them both. He pulled his hand back.
The noise of the bar carried on around them.
Jet turned his glass on the bar slowly. He thought about his empty apartment, the dead ends on this stupid wild goose chase, the fact that the evening had gone completely off schedule. But still he was here, and not in a hurry to leave. Zuko too hadn’t rushed to retreat to the safety of his guarded quarters once they had emerged from the market.
He finished his beer on his second swig and inched closer, tilting his head up toward Zuko's ear. "Let's go upstairs? Get a smoke?"
Zuko pulled back to look at him. Unimpressed.
"Let me guess," Jet sighed. Zuko's face confirmed that he didn't smoke. He shook his head in disappointment, turned around, and started moving through the crowd, confident Zuko would follow.
"Yeah, well, I gotta take care of my lungs!" Zuko defended, projecting his voice to carry over the noise of the bar. "The fire doesn't come out of thin air, you know?"
He hadn't put his hands on Jet's shoulders this time, but he was walking close enough that something was always making contact. Hands, shoulders, his feet bumping into Jet's heels as they worked toward the stairs. Jet had not previously known that firebenders just ran hotter than baseline. But he couldn't be entirely sure it wasn't his own body heat.
"It makes so much sense that you'd turn out like this," Jet glanced back over his shoulder.
"Like what?"
"A health freak," he groaned.
"Oh, thank you."
Jet allowed himself a smile at Zuko's sincere reply, since Zuko couldn't see his face from back there. "How many hours do you sleep a night?"
"Nine. Or at least I try."
Jet let out a low whistle. "How fucking old are you, eighty-five?"
"Why? How many do you get?"
"Three. Four, on a good night." He shrugged. Zuko took two steps at once and came up level beside him so Jet could see the astonishment on his face. "I need the night. It's the only time I can go places and just be myself without anyone having an opinion about it."
Zuko seemed to sit with that for a moment. "I guess if I could do that any time of day I'd take advantage of it too," he chuckled, but it was the dry kind.
The third floor was where it finally got quieter and the noise from below turned mainly ambient. They found a window quickly and Jet leaned against the large sill. Zuko put both hands on the frame and pushed himself out a little so he could feel the cold evening air on his face. The last of the scarf came off in one swift motion, and he unleashed his beautiful face and hair that had been stuffed into a bun. But most of it had escaped its shoddy encasing and was falling in long pieces around his face and neck.
The scar was unfair, Jet thought. It was supposed to make him look uglier and yet…
Jet’s hands came up empty after he had rummaged through his pockets. No matchsticks.
He looked up but found that Zuko was already looking at him. Jet held out the cigarette toward him, requesting light with just a tilt of an eyebrow.
Zuko looked down at his hand. He reached out and wrapped his fingers around Jet's wrist and stepped closer, and Jet had approximately zero seconds to work out what was happening before Zuko was mere inches away from him, head tilting as he came down —
Jet's palm hit his chest. "Woah, wait." He pressed back, putting space between them, eyes wide. "Were you..." he looked down at his lips, he couldn't bring himself to say it lest it be the most embarrassing misunderstanding in the whole world. Likely thing to happen to him.
Zuko's eyes were just as wide, and the notch in his throat bobbed, "I was about to kiss you."
A moment passed. Jet couldn't believe his ears.
"You're married," he reminded quietly.
Well, no, he wasn’t married. He and Mai weren't registered under any law in any nation as far as Jet's snooping had ever turned up. But he distinctly remembered being told by Toph about some ceremony where Aang had recreated air nation marital traditions to the best of his memory and presided over the “union”. Whatever, Jet didn’t understand that dynamic and he didn’t care to.
"But I’m not cheating on her or anything," Zuko's expression gave nothing away.
Jet’s eyebrows flew up even more, now completely lost for words.
“We’re on a break,” Zuko blurted impatiently before kissing Jet square on the mouth. The unlit cigarette between his fingers, on his hand wrapped in Zuko’s increasingly warm grip, fell out of the window.
Jet responded almost immediately. He was only human and not a very good one at that. He tried to grab onto Zuko's clothes, palming the fabric at his collar, then down to his chest, but his outfit was nearly taped to him with little give. Both Zuko’s hands cupped his face as they kissed, his weight pushed them flush against the window sill. He grabbed at Jet’s jaw, hair, the back of his neck, his arms, like one grabbed at something that might get taken away, running on pure want with no technique behind it.
Jet wasn't entirely sure Zuko had done this before.
He also wasn't entirely sure the cactus juice at their annual club meetup last night hadn't been spiked, and that he wasn't currently hallucinating tonguing the Fire Lord in a bar in Ba Sing Se. A nasty little idea he had played with before but never expected to come true.
Zuko pulled back suddenly, breaking the kiss. Jet allowed himself one quick look at his slick lips.
"Is this place okay?" he asked, a thread of nervousness in his voice as he glanced around.
"Yeah, yeah it is.” The words tumbled out of Jet. "I come here all the time." He turned Zuko back to face him with a firm hand on his cheek.
Zuko seemed to pause, as if he’d caught sight of himself in Jet’s eyes and was remembering who he was.
A sinking feeling came over Jet. He’d made the only wrong move there was and now the moment was about to crumble away like a dream, and he was going to wake up in his bed-for-one in sweats.
But then Zuko closed the distance between their mouths himself.
Realising that this was indeed real life, Jet's desire to make the most of this rare moment — when things were actually going his way — led to him manoeuvring them until it was Zuko who was trapped between him and the window sill. He wrapped an arm around his waist; he wasn't entirely sure how much of himself Zuko was tracking right now, and if he fell out of the window it was a long way down.
This time he placed a hand on Zuko's jaw and slowed him down, redirecting the pace, licking into his mouth in precise strokes until Zuko matched him. He felt the exact moment it clicked. The tension bled out of Zuko's flexed abs under his palm, his chest dropped on an exhale, and the frantic grabbing softened into strategy. He slid a hand up under the hem of Jet's shirt at his back, flat against his spine.
Now he was kissing back properly. And that was a whole new problem.
Jet slid his hand down to the back of his trousers and squeezed. Zuko made a gruff sound against his mouth. He was softer there than Jet had anticipated for this hench of a man, which was information he was going to have to live with forever.
Jet shifted his weight and pressed a thigh between Zuko's legs. He broke the kiss, sighing against Jet’s cheek, who dipped his head down and grazed his teeth over on a spot on Zuko's shoulder. His hardened muscles were a near-perfect smooth surface to lick and through the thin fabric of his clothes Jet could almost taste his skin.