The Importance of Fine Grooming
Title-The Importance of Fine Grooming
Fandom-Avatar: the Last Airbender
Characters-Jet, Zuko, mentions of Katara and Smellerbee
Genre-General/SUPPOSED to have romance, but seriously, I'll give you a cookie if you can find any. I go overboard on 'subtle romance'.
Rating/Warnings-G, unless you want to be a stickler about Zuko destroying a bed, in which case, PG.
Pairing(s)-The tiniest amount of Jet/Zuko you'll ever see in your life.
Summary-Zuko's found Jet, Jet hates Zuko, and we find that Zuko really has no skills with hair. //Oneshot, written for the AtLA General Request Meme over at atla_grm. Check it out.//
Word Count-2,924
Chapters-1
Status-Complete.
Betaed?-No.
Pairing= ZUKOXJET xDDD
Prompt= hair/hair products
Note= Plz no smut/lemons/lotslots of romance? Subtleness is the way to go.
A/N-In any case…AU, where Jet isn’t dead at the end of season 2. Post-war/series finale. And I’m pretty sure that the last Jet saw of Zuko was when he was posing as Lee…well, Jet was convinced that he was Fire Nation, but I don’t think he had a name to attach to the FN persona. So Zuko still equals Lee in Jet’s world.
And subtle romance. Seriously, you’d be hard-pressed to find any romance in this. Any.---
The Importance of Fine Grooming
Jet hated a lot of things. Rotten food, that knowing look Smellerbee gave him when he was about to do something stupid (that he really, really wanted to do), death, soggy noodles, sickness, vegetables, nearly getting run over by a cart, to name a few. But of all those things, the Fire Nation topped his list. Everything that had to do with them instantly rose a flame in the young man-the country had always been and would always be a sensitive spot, no matter how many of his former destructive ways he had given up.
So it wasn’t exactly thrilling when, three months after the war had ended, five Fire Nation soldiers tramped into his house in Ba Sing Se and asked for him.
The following chase throughout the city had been short lived. While the Freedom Fighter was in top physical shape, there wasn’t much of a chance of escape when you had multiple Firebenders chasing after you on ostrich horses and only a few alleys to run down. He was caught easily, and knocked out quickly.
When he woke up again, Jet found himself sitting on a chair with his arms and legs bound behind him and a gag in his mouth. Needless to say, it caused a bit of panicking in him, and for several minutes he struggled against his bonds and tried to spit out the gag. Neither effort did him much good, and eventually he stopped to take in his surroundings. An expensive looking vanity counter and mirror sat in front of him, complete with a mirror and various different jars, bottles, and brushes pushed off to the side to give way to a vat of some cream like substance that sat in the center of the counter.
It looked a bit like the explosive he played around with a couple years ago when trying to find a suitable way to blow up a Fire Nation camp not too far away from his tree house.
He struggled with a new intensity.
“Katara could’ve at least given me a warning that you like to thrash around. That way, my chair wouldn’t get the paint chipped off it.”
Whipping his head around, Jet saw a man leaning against the windowsill that he hadn’t seen in his first brief scan of his surroundings. He had on some loose red clothing that showed off his muscular arms, short, unkempt black hair, and a large red scar on the left side of his face. He didn’t need much of an introduction, though-even if the scar wasn’t there, the general stance of the man would’ve been enough of a give away to his identity.
“Mee!”
Unfortunately, the forgotten gag around his mouth made his heroic proclamation fall quite short of what he had hoped it would be.
“Do you know how long that chair’s been in my family?” Zuko started to walk towards the bound man and vanity counter. “Generations. Over a hundred years, easily. It’s an antique, specifically carved for the Royal Family.”
Jet struggled against his bonds all the harder, hoping that he broke something. It would serve the jerk right, for being a part of the nation that destroyed his family and most of his life, for being a liar and tricking him into something deathly close to trust.
“It isn’t really something I want broken.”
Two strong hands pulled him back and forced his shoulders against the sharp wooden lines in the chair. More unintelligible growls worked their way around Jet’s gag, drawing a sigh from the scarred man.
“I don’t know why you’re so aggressive. You don’t even know me. I’m doing you a favor-the least you can do is not damage my stuff and growl at me.”
This prompted several large growls from the bonded man and a death glare to be shot at Zuko when he released Jet’s shoulders and walked around to the vanity counter. Immediately, Jet started to struggle again, but now with a renewed anger. “Doing me a favor!?” He thought angrily. “I’ll do him a favor-he’s lucky that I’m tied up, or I’d pound that scarred face so hard…”
“You don’t know why you’re here. Right? I don’t think you were really conscious enough to get it the first time I explained it to you when you arrived.” Zuko frowned. “I told them not to use the knockout drugs unless it was absolutely necessary, because that’s a side effect of them-inability to concentrate, grogginess, irritability. But…you were running. You didn’t leave them much choice.”
More growling.
“Well, anyways. Might as well go through the story again. Do you want the long version or…oh. Yeah. The gag.” At the mention of the ball of cloth shoved in the Freedom Fighter’s mouth, Zuko shifted a bit. Waves of hesitance rolled off him. “Will…you won’t bite me, will you? No, that’s ridiculous. You can’t even lean forward very far. You’ll start yelling, though…”
Jet, although keeping up his potent death glare, didn’t growl at this. If he had a chance to get the disgusting ball of cloth out of his mouth, he would jump on it like a ravenous ostrich horse on a bag of feed. It seemed to be enough to convince Zuko.
“You yell, one time, and I’m putting it back in. Whether you open your mouth or not.” There was a flash of seriousness in his amber eyes before he reached over and yanked the gag out of his captive’s mouth, nearly taking out some teeth in the process. The first thing that Jet did when it was out of his mouth was to try to spit out the stray strands of fabric that had come off and stuck to his cheeks, tongue, and teeth-with having no other effect than spraying spittle all over himself and the front of Zuko, who looked absolutely disgusted at it. (It was a rather satisfying experience for Jet, although he kept his mouth shut to make sure the gag wasn’t going to be put back in for it.)
“Eeergh! What was that for?!”
“I had fabric. On the inside of my mouth. Wanted to get it out.” It took all the self control he had to not burst out laughing at the look on his captor’s face.
“You…urgh. Don’t do that again.”
The scarred man looked like he was about to blast the hair off of the grinning Freedom Fighter, but instead just grumbled and turned around. This disappointed Jet-the natural fighter in him was roaring to go, just to have an excuse besides ingrained hatred to attack the liar in front of him. But his fight wasn’t fated to happen any time soon…or, at least, Zuko wasn’t planning on starting it. In fact, the way the man was acting mystified Jet. Not only was he breaking the cardinal rule of battle by turning his back on the enemy (he was facing the cosmetic filled counter-what, was the idiot just asking for something to go wrong?), but he wasn’t even looking up. From what Jet could see of his head, it was pointed down, and there were some unnerving ‘glop’ sounds coming from the general area.
“What’re you doing? Getting ready to blow me up?”
“After what I went through to get you here, I don’t think so.” More gloping. “You know, if Katara hadn’t been glaring at me all week, you wouldn’t even be here.”
“Katara.” The name was all too familiar to the tied up man. “You mean…Katara told you to send some Firebenders, capture me, and bring me here so you can kill me? I didn’t think she hated me that much…”
“No! That’s not it at all!” Zuko’s head turned to shoot a shocked and angry glare at the scowling Jet. “She wanted me to find you to make sure you’re not dead, not to kill you. If I had wanted to kill you…well. You wouldn’t be sitting in my chair, chipping the paint off.”
This confused the brown haired man even more. Why would Katara even care? The last time he remembered seeing her in Ba Sing Se, most of their conversations consisted of her glaring and him trying to explain that he had changed, except in Lake Laogai…
“Oh.”
The last he had seen of her, they both thought he was going to die.
Understandable, given the circumstances. Although this method of making sure he was alive was more uncomfortable than any death he expected.
At last, Zuko turned around, and Jet could fully appreciate whatever the bender had been doing. Which was…
“Really? You style your hair?” He chuckled. “You know, I wouldn’t expect anything else from some stuck up FN liar like yourself. Look at that, you’re some sort of formal wanna-be.”
The front of the Fire Lord’s hair was slicked back, melding into the untouched part in a way that ruined both sides. Jet couldn’t help but laugh, which brought Zuko’s face to a rather uncomfortable looking red color.
“I’m not stuck up. In fact, I wouldn’t be talking if I was you…since this is the reason you’re tied to that chair in the first place.”
Jet stopped spitefully laughing long enough to throw the scarred man a confused glance until he saw that he held two handfuls of the cream he had saw in the jar on the desk. It only took a few moments for the brown haired man’s eyes to widen in shock and for his body to start jerking away, struggling to get free of his bonds.
“No way, you’re not coming near my hair with that junk-”
“Listen, this is why you’re here. Katara told me-”
“You take orders from a girl, man? Dang, I thought you FN people had more of a backbone than that. Now get away from me, before I…er, attack you!”
This threat only got an ‘oh, really’ look from Zuko, and had Jet been concentrating on anything else than moving away from the liar with the cream in his hands, he would’ve said something else. As it was, he was mostly grunting in exertion.
“I don’t take orders. I helped her out, because…well, because. I owe her and the Avatar a lot. So I promised I’d find you, dead or alive. And if I found you alive, I’d let her see you. But the way you look, I don’t think I’d let anyone see you, because you look dead.”
“Oh, please. You’ve lied before. You’re lying now. Is that just a natural trait of FN people, or is it just you?”
“You don’t believe me?” The bender stepped aside, so that the tied up man could get a good look at himself. “Go ahead, look. Look and see what I’m talking about.”
It was the first time Jet had seen exactly what he looked like in a long time. And, as annoyed as he was annoyed to admit it…the liar was right. His face looked pale and dirty, with two deep dark circles under his bloodshot eyes-probably from not having slept very well since getting out of Lake Laogai. Although he couldn’t see anything else below his neck-unfamiliar, regal looking clothes covered the rest of his body (he made a mental note to punch someone out for taking his normal clothes)-that wasn’t the next detail about his body that drew his attention. The next thing he noticed was the state his hair was in.
While he didn’t often worry about his hair, it not being a very useful weapon for fighting (and therefore holding little significance with him), he knew enough about grooming to keep it in good condition. If only to look good to attract women. But this was absolutely unacceptable. Not only was his hair looking about three inches longer than the last time he had seen it, it was mussed in places that shouldn’t even have been able to get mussed, bits and pieces of nature stuck out of it-honestly, a stick? Smellerbee was getting a talk about the condition of his personal hygiene when he got back home-and the normal healthy sheen that the brown had turned into some sort of grungy, disgusting looking radiation, one that said stay away. It didn’t really surprise him that someone would be afraid of him, with the way he looked in general.
“I’m a mess.”
“Yeah. See? I’m not lying.” Although he tried to hide it, Zuko couldn’t quite keep the small, smug grin off his face. This only deepened Jet’s scowl.
“Whatever. I can fix myself up. Just let me go find somewhere to do that.”
“No. I’m not having someone as dangerous as you running around my palace.”
“I am not danger-glarkmh!”
True to his word, at the first raising of Jet’s voice, Zuko had shoved the cloth gag back in. It was almost comical how the bender had managed to get it in his mouth right as it formed around an ‘o’.
“Don’t yell.” Zuko moved around to the back of the tied up Freedom Fighter. “Now, if you struggle, this is going to take a lot longer than it needs to. All I’m doing is…er, getting the weird dirt out of your hair.”
Even though it went against every screaming natural instinct in him, Jet didn’t struggle. After all, the less he showed resistance, the sooner he could get the cloth ball out of his mouth-which was possibly the best thing he could hope for at the moment, seeing as how it wouldn’t be too hard for the bender to snap his neck the way they were positioned now. Zuko hesitated a moment, his hands hovering over his captive’s head, and a look of displeasure at the situation flitted over his face before he plopped the two mounds of gel in Jet’s brown hair. An awkward silence filled the room as the substance was worked through the Freedom Fighter’s filthy hair, only interrupted by pained grunts and angry growls as the scarred man pulled sticks out and untangled knots. As time wore on, and the grunts and growls were getting longer, the frown on Zuko’s face deepened-his complete and total lack of hair care knowledge was shining through his calm exterior quite magnificently. His frustration at his failure to do this simple task correctly got to the point where he had to focus on not igniting his captive’s hair on fire out of irritation. Eventually, he just had to pull his hands out of the mess and sigh angrily.
“This is ridiculous. I’m never going to get your hair clean with this…goop.”
Jet looked up and saw Zuko glaring at his hands. It was a pleasing sight to the brown haired man-any discomfort or anger he could bring to his enemy was always a good sight for him.
“And to think that I can’t even do this stupid, simple task. Urgh!” Clenching his sticky hands, the bender went to punch the wooden bedpost to the left of him. Instead of simply hitting it, though, a burst of flame came from his fist and lit the post and several other parts of the bed on fire.
“Wrgah dru wru traing wrur droing!?” Although the gag made the words incomprehensible, the panic in Jet’s voice was enough for Zuko to shout out an “I don’t know why I did that!” in response. Quickly, the scarred man looked around for something to put the rapidly growing fire out with, and Jet saw his eyes settle on the large vat of cream on the vanity counter. He ran over, grabbed the entire bucket, and jumped over Jet’s leg and sprinted to the bed. The goo was quickly splattered all over the fire, and seemed to put enough of the flames out so that Zuko could pat the rest down with the non-flaming sheets. After the fire was completely out (and Jet had stopped yelling unintelligible insults about everything and anything that had to do with the Fire Nation), Zuko promptly walked over to the torched bedpost and punched it. The top of the bed collapsed a moment after he pulled his fist away, landing on top of the scorched, greasy sheets with a depressing ‘ploomph’.
“My bed’s ruined.” Although Jet couldn’t see his captor’s face, he could imagine the anger on it. “That bed was older than the chair by at least a hundred years. See, now this was why I told Katara it was a bad idea for you to come here, and why I should’ve just let her take care of your stupid hair. I hope you’re happy now.”
He was, actually. Not only because of the tired glare Zuko shot at him, but because of the black haired man’s fire filled reaction when he pointed out the bucket of water that on the floor to the left of the vanity counter-that was, ironically, also going to be used on Jet’s hair, to rinse out the gel. The scorch marks on his clothes were worth it.
A/N-And yes, I know that is the worst ending in the history of endings, but I plan on completely redoing this when I get some time.
Fandom-Avatar: the Last Airbender
Characters-Jet, Zuko, mentions of Katara and Smellerbee
Genre-General/SUPPOSED to have romance, but seriously, I'll give you a cookie if you can find any. I go overboard on 'subtle romance'.
Rating/Warnings-G, unless you want to be a stickler about Zuko destroying a bed, in which case, PG.
Pairing(s)-The tiniest amount of Jet/Zuko you'll ever see in your life.
Summary-Zuko's found Jet, Jet hates Zuko, and we find that Zuko really has no skills with hair. //Oneshot, written for the AtLA General Request Meme over at atla_grm. Check it out.//
Word Count-2,924
Chapters-1
Status-Complete.
Betaed?-No.
Pairing= ZUKOXJET xDDD
Prompt= hair/hair products
Note= Plz no smut/lemons/lotslots of romance? Subtleness is the way to go.
A/N-In any case…AU, where Jet isn’t dead at the end of season 2. Post-war/series finale. And I’m pretty sure that the last Jet saw of Zuko was when he was posing as Lee…well, Jet was convinced that he was Fire Nation, but I don’t think he had a name to attach to the FN persona. So Zuko still equals Lee in Jet’s world.
And subtle romance. Seriously, you’d be hard-pressed to find any romance in this. Any.---
The Importance of Fine Grooming
Jet hated a lot of things. Rotten food, that knowing look Smellerbee gave him when he was about to do something stupid (that he really, really wanted to do), death, soggy noodles, sickness, vegetables, nearly getting run over by a cart, to name a few. But of all those things, the Fire Nation topped his list. Everything that had to do with them instantly rose a flame in the young man-the country had always been and would always be a sensitive spot, no matter how many of his former destructive ways he had given up.
So it wasn’t exactly thrilling when, three months after the war had ended, five Fire Nation soldiers tramped into his house in Ba Sing Se and asked for him.
The following chase throughout the city had been short lived. While the Freedom Fighter was in top physical shape, there wasn’t much of a chance of escape when you had multiple Firebenders chasing after you on ostrich horses and only a few alleys to run down. He was caught easily, and knocked out quickly.
When he woke up again, Jet found himself sitting on a chair with his arms and legs bound behind him and a gag in his mouth. Needless to say, it caused a bit of panicking in him, and for several minutes he struggled against his bonds and tried to spit out the gag. Neither effort did him much good, and eventually he stopped to take in his surroundings. An expensive looking vanity counter and mirror sat in front of him, complete with a mirror and various different jars, bottles, and brushes pushed off to the side to give way to a vat of some cream like substance that sat in the center of the counter.
It looked a bit like the explosive he played around with a couple years ago when trying to find a suitable way to blow up a Fire Nation camp not too far away from his tree house.
He struggled with a new intensity.
“Katara could’ve at least given me a warning that you like to thrash around. That way, my chair wouldn’t get the paint chipped off it.”
Whipping his head around, Jet saw a man leaning against the windowsill that he hadn’t seen in his first brief scan of his surroundings. He had on some loose red clothing that showed off his muscular arms, short, unkempt black hair, and a large red scar on the left side of his face. He didn’t need much of an introduction, though-even if the scar wasn’t there, the general stance of the man would’ve been enough of a give away to his identity.
“Mee!”
Unfortunately, the forgotten gag around his mouth made his heroic proclamation fall quite short of what he had hoped it would be.
“Do you know how long that chair’s been in my family?” Zuko started to walk towards the bound man and vanity counter. “Generations. Over a hundred years, easily. It’s an antique, specifically carved for the Royal Family.”
Jet struggled against his bonds all the harder, hoping that he broke something. It would serve the jerk right, for being a part of the nation that destroyed his family and most of his life, for being a liar and tricking him into something deathly close to trust.
“It isn’t really something I want broken.”
Two strong hands pulled him back and forced his shoulders against the sharp wooden lines in the chair. More unintelligible growls worked their way around Jet’s gag, drawing a sigh from the scarred man.
“I don’t know why you’re so aggressive. You don’t even know me. I’m doing you a favor-the least you can do is not damage my stuff and growl at me.”
This prompted several large growls from the bonded man and a death glare to be shot at Zuko when he released Jet’s shoulders and walked around to the vanity counter. Immediately, Jet started to struggle again, but now with a renewed anger. “Doing me a favor!?” He thought angrily. “I’ll do him a favor-he’s lucky that I’m tied up, or I’d pound that scarred face so hard…”
“You don’t know why you’re here. Right? I don’t think you were really conscious enough to get it the first time I explained it to you when you arrived.” Zuko frowned. “I told them not to use the knockout drugs unless it was absolutely necessary, because that’s a side effect of them-inability to concentrate, grogginess, irritability. But…you were running. You didn’t leave them much choice.”
More growling.
“Well, anyways. Might as well go through the story again. Do you want the long version or…oh. Yeah. The gag.” At the mention of the ball of cloth shoved in the Freedom Fighter’s mouth, Zuko shifted a bit. Waves of hesitance rolled off him. “Will…you won’t bite me, will you? No, that’s ridiculous. You can’t even lean forward very far. You’ll start yelling, though…”
Jet, although keeping up his potent death glare, didn’t growl at this. If he had a chance to get the disgusting ball of cloth out of his mouth, he would jump on it like a ravenous ostrich horse on a bag of feed. It seemed to be enough to convince Zuko.
“You yell, one time, and I’m putting it back in. Whether you open your mouth or not.” There was a flash of seriousness in his amber eyes before he reached over and yanked the gag out of his captive’s mouth, nearly taking out some teeth in the process. The first thing that Jet did when it was out of his mouth was to try to spit out the stray strands of fabric that had come off and stuck to his cheeks, tongue, and teeth-with having no other effect than spraying spittle all over himself and the front of Zuko, who looked absolutely disgusted at it. (It was a rather satisfying experience for Jet, although he kept his mouth shut to make sure the gag wasn’t going to be put back in for it.)
“Eeergh! What was that for?!”
“I had fabric. On the inside of my mouth. Wanted to get it out.” It took all the self control he had to not burst out laughing at the look on his captor’s face.
“You…urgh. Don’t do that again.”
The scarred man looked like he was about to blast the hair off of the grinning Freedom Fighter, but instead just grumbled and turned around. This disappointed Jet-the natural fighter in him was roaring to go, just to have an excuse besides ingrained hatred to attack the liar in front of him. But his fight wasn’t fated to happen any time soon…or, at least, Zuko wasn’t planning on starting it. In fact, the way the man was acting mystified Jet. Not only was he breaking the cardinal rule of battle by turning his back on the enemy (he was facing the cosmetic filled counter-what, was the idiot just asking for something to go wrong?), but he wasn’t even looking up. From what Jet could see of his head, it was pointed down, and there were some unnerving ‘glop’ sounds coming from the general area.
“What’re you doing? Getting ready to blow me up?”
“After what I went through to get you here, I don’t think so.” More gloping. “You know, if Katara hadn’t been glaring at me all week, you wouldn’t even be here.”
“Katara.” The name was all too familiar to the tied up man. “You mean…Katara told you to send some Firebenders, capture me, and bring me here so you can kill me? I didn’t think she hated me that much…”
“No! That’s not it at all!” Zuko’s head turned to shoot a shocked and angry glare at the scowling Jet. “She wanted me to find you to make sure you’re not dead, not to kill you. If I had wanted to kill you…well. You wouldn’t be sitting in my chair, chipping the paint off.”
This confused the brown haired man even more. Why would Katara even care? The last time he remembered seeing her in Ba Sing Se, most of their conversations consisted of her glaring and him trying to explain that he had changed, except in Lake Laogai…
“Oh.”
The last he had seen of her, they both thought he was going to die.
Understandable, given the circumstances. Although this method of making sure he was alive was more uncomfortable than any death he expected.
At last, Zuko turned around, and Jet could fully appreciate whatever the bender had been doing. Which was…
“Really? You style your hair?” He chuckled. “You know, I wouldn’t expect anything else from some stuck up FN liar like yourself. Look at that, you’re some sort of formal wanna-be.”
The front of the Fire Lord’s hair was slicked back, melding into the untouched part in a way that ruined both sides. Jet couldn’t help but laugh, which brought Zuko’s face to a rather uncomfortable looking red color.
“I’m not stuck up. In fact, I wouldn’t be talking if I was you…since this is the reason you’re tied to that chair in the first place.”
Jet stopped spitefully laughing long enough to throw the scarred man a confused glance until he saw that he held two handfuls of the cream he had saw in the jar on the desk. It only took a few moments for the brown haired man’s eyes to widen in shock and for his body to start jerking away, struggling to get free of his bonds.
“No way, you’re not coming near my hair with that junk-”
“Listen, this is why you’re here. Katara told me-”
“You take orders from a girl, man? Dang, I thought you FN people had more of a backbone than that. Now get away from me, before I…er, attack you!”
This threat only got an ‘oh, really’ look from Zuko, and had Jet been concentrating on anything else than moving away from the liar with the cream in his hands, he would’ve said something else. As it was, he was mostly grunting in exertion.
“I don’t take orders. I helped her out, because…well, because. I owe her and the Avatar a lot. So I promised I’d find you, dead or alive. And if I found you alive, I’d let her see you. But the way you look, I don’t think I’d let anyone see you, because you look dead.”
“Oh, please. You’ve lied before. You’re lying now. Is that just a natural trait of FN people, or is it just you?”
“You don’t believe me?” The bender stepped aside, so that the tied up man could get a good look at himself. “Go ahead, look. Look and see what I’m talking about.”
It was the first time Jet had seen exactly what he looked like in a long time. And, as annoyed as he was annoyed to admit it…the liar was right. His face looked pale and dirty, with two deep dark circles under his bloodshot eyes-probably from not having slept very well since getting out of Lake Laogai. Although he couldn’t see anything else below his neck-unfamiliar, regal looking clothes covered the rest of his body (he made a mental note to punch someone out for taking his normal clothes)-that wasn’t the next detail about his body that drew his attention. The next thing he noticed was the state his hair was in.
While he didn’t often worry about his hair, it not being a very useful weapon for fighting (and therefore holding little significance with him), he knew enough about grooming to keep it in good condition. If only to look good to attract women. But this was absolutely unacceptable. Not only was his hair looking about three inches longer than the last time he had seen it, it was mussed in places that shouldn’t even have been able to get mussed, bits and pieces of nature stuck out of it-honestly, a stick? Smellerbee was getting a talk about the condition of his personal hygiene when he got back home-and the normal healthy sheen that the brown had turned into some sort of grungy, disgusting looking radiation, one that said stay away. It didn’t really surprise him that someone would be afraid of him, with the way he looked in general.
“I’m a mess.”
“Yeah. See? I’m not lying.” Although he tried to hide it, Zuko couldn’t quite keep the small, smug grin off his face. This only deepened Jet’s scowl.
“Whatever. I can fix myself up. Just let me go find somewhere to do that.”
“No. I’m not having someone as dangerous as you running around my palace.”
“I am not danger-glarkmh!”
True to his word, at the first raising of Jet’s voice, Zuko had shoved the cloth gag back in. It was almost comical how the bender had managed to get it in his mouth right as it formed around an ‘o’.
“Don’t yell.” Zuko moved around to the back of the tied up Freedom Fighter. “Now, if you struggle, this is going to take a lot longer than it needs to. All I’m doing is…er, getting the weird dirt out of your hair.”
Even though it went against every screaming natural instinct in him, Jet didn’t struggle. After all, the less he showed resistance, the sooner he could get the cloth ball out of his mouth-which was possibly the best thing he could hope for at the moment, seeing as how it wouldn’t be too hard for the bender to snap his neck the way they were positioned now. Zuko hesitated a moment, his hands hovering over his captive’s head, and a look of displeasure at the situation flitted over his face before he plopped the two mounds of gel in Jet’s brown hair. An awkward silence filled the room as the substance was worked through the Freedom Fighter’s filthy hair, only interrupted by pained grunts and angry growls as the scarred man pulled sticks out and untangled knots. As time wore on, and the grunts and growls were getting longer, the frown on Zuko’s face deepened-his complete and total lack of hair care knowledge was shining through his calm exterior quite magnificently. His frustration at his failure to do this simple task correctly got to the point where he had to focus on not igniting his captive’s hair on fire out of irritation. Eventually, he just had to pull his hands out of the mess and sigh angrily.
“This is ridiculous. I’m never going to get your hair clean with this…goop.”
Jet looked up and saw Zuko glaring at his hands. It was a pleasing sight to the brown haired man-any discomfort or anger he could bring to his enemy was always a good sight for him.
“And to think that I can’t even do this stupid, simple task. Urgh!” Clenching his sticky hands, the bender went to punch the wooden bedpost to the left of him. Instead of simply hitting it, though, a burst of flame came from his fist and lit the post and several other parts of the bed on fire.
“Wrgah dru wru traing wrur droing!?” Although the gag made the words incomprehensible, the panic in Jet’s voice was enough for Zuko to shout out an “I don’t know why I did that!” in response. Quickly, the scarred man looked around for something to put the rapidly growing fire out with, and Jet saw his eyes settle on the large vat of cream on the vanity counter. He ran over, grabbed the entire bucket, and jumped over Jet’s leg and sprinted to the bed. The goo was quickly splattered all over the fire, and seemed to put enough of the flames out so that Zuko could pat the rest down with the non-flaming sheets. After the fire was completely out (and Jet had stopped yelling unintelligible insults about everything and anything that had to do with the Fire Nation), Zuko promptly walked over to the torched bedpost and punched it. The top of the bed collapsed a moment after he pulled his fist away, landing on top of the scorched, greasy sheets with a depressing ‘ploomph’.
“My bed’s ruined.” Although Jet couldn’t see his captor’s face, he could imagine the anger on it. “That bed was older than the chair by at least a hundred years. See, now this was why I told Katara it was a bad idea for you to come here, and why I should’ve just let her take care of your stupid hair. I hope you’re happy now.”
He was, actually. Not only because of the tired glare Zuko shot at him, but because of the black haired man’s fire filled reaction when he pointed out the bucket of water that on the floor to the left of the vanity counter-that was, ironically, also going to be used on Jet’s hair, to rinse out the gel. The scorch marks on his clothes were worth it.
A/N-And yes, I know that is the worst ending in the history of endings, but I plan on completely redoing this when I get some time.