Fic: The One Surreal Night of Captain Jee
I have just fucked Firelord Zuko.
He’s sleeping on my bed now, all sprawled and naked and generally looking every inch like a man who’s just been thoroughly shagged. Breathing regularly, peacefully, as though he were snuggled up in silks in his own fancy room at the palace and not in some shabby excuse for an inn, in a narrow, creaky, dirty bed, in a room a few adjectives short of “dilapidated” and reeking of cat piss. Now, of course, the unrelenting odor is dominated by the combined smell of sweat and sex - a heady, lingering taste still there in the air; another reminder that less than an hour ago the boy - no, the man - was moaning in that raspy voice of his like the world was about to end, ordering me to go harder and harder until it was physically impossible and my spine felt like it was going to crack.
If I needed more evidence that the world is seriously fucked up, which I don’t, I only need to look to my left.
He looks different now. Older (what is he now, seventeen? Eighteen?), taller -close to my height, actually, which is rather disturbing - a bit leaner perhaps, but still obsessively muscular. Nothing that says “kid” about his body anymore, except for some scarcely preserved softness here and there which also seems like it will soon disappear. His hair is different, too. The ponytail is no more (and it’s weird to feel nostalgic about it, but there we go) and in its place he’s got a shaggy, unruly mass of shoulder-length hair which dangled in thick wisps all over his face when he had it done in the traditional topknot. I can’t see his scar right now since his left cheek is pressed to the pillow, but even if it hasn’t changed much, it’s somewhat less - striking now, more subdued. Maybe it’s settled a bit, or maybe the kid himself has changed so much that I hardly noticed it anymore in favor of everything else.
I couldn’t sleep - how could I, after everything that’s passed? - so as soon as I felt him fall asleep (which was uncharacteristically quickly for him, he must’ve been completely worn out) I wiggled out of bed and grabbed what was still left of the army-issued writing paper. I haven’t kept a journal since that confounded Zhao Siege, but Spirits, if that isn’t worth writing down, I don’t know what is.
His breathing’s changed. I hope my writing hasn’t disturbed him. Better make sure he’s still out before he catches me noting down evidence -
False alarm. His Highness is still well away in dreamland. I’m going to use what little time I have before dawn to note down exactly what led to having the fucking ruler of the Fire Nation here in my bed, while it’s still fresh. Then I’m going to fold it, tuck it away somewhere no one will ever dream of looking, and take out only when I’m sure no one’ll barge in on me. It’ll be a little like when we were fucking back on the Mizuru and I secretly recorded every single night we spent together - it’s only fitting that I should write about this one, to make the records complete.
But let’s go back to the beginning.
***
It was a dull night, nearly moonless, the air still, the weather hot and stifling like always at this time of year. I’ve spent most of it drinking in Shen’s old pub - that seedy, run-down place by the docks next to the fish storage warehouse. It’s a miracle of sorts that the joint’s still standing, smelly and dingy as it is, but I suppose the marines make for an undemanding clientele in the hygiene department. Maybe to some of them it even smells like home. My own activities that evening are altogether not worthy of saving for posterity - it was the same routine as every night after miserable night since I got my feet back on the blessed soil of our homeland. Drinking, listening to gossip, drinking some more, joining in whatever conversations seemed most entertaining (for the cheap entertainment value available in such a place), exchanging reminiscences with some poor bloke or other, drinking some more and waiting for the usual brawl to break out. I vaguely recall listening to some soldiers temporarily making port share their impressions about the current state of our used-to-be colonies, but I hardly recall any details now, only that it was, for the most part, disappointingly dull.
That seems to be the price for peace that no one mentions, by the way. Not that I’m a big fan of the war, but now that it’s over the tales over baijou got decidedly less captivating.
At any rate, when I got out, feeling the all-too-familiar, routine lull of steady, alcohol-induced moroseness regarding my distinct lack of prospects, or even of proper occupation, and the general shittiness of the position I’ve been finding myself in regularly ever since getting back alive from the spirits-cursed Zhao Siege, I heard something. It sounded rather like a scuffle, coming from the quieter part of the harbor not far away from where I was standing; the metallic clang and swish of steel hitting steel, some distant shouting echoing in the silence, grunting, the usual. It was by no means strange. The docks in the capital may not be as infamous in the brawling department as the formerly colonial bays, but, in recent days especially, what with the homeland ports swarming with soldiers suddenly discharged from duty and finding themselves without a job, fisticuffs were a normal part of the nocturnal port landscape.
Any other night, I would have surely discarded it to the back of my mind and roamed to the other side of the harbor to brood in drunken peace. To this hour I’m not entirely sure what’s gotten into me that I didn’t just turn around. Perhaps the blasted feeling of uselessness, the itch to do something, to be acknowledged, to feel the pleasant tingle of authority instead of this constant pull of nothingness, was stronger than usual and seized my legs to guide them to the scene. Spirits know I’ve been on the hunt for something to pull me out of that black funk for months. So maybe that was it. But it doesn’t matter - in the end, my instincts told me to check what was going on before I could silence them, and, as can be expected, I followed the call before actual reasoning kicked in. Which, as I’ve suspected for years now, is the main reason behind my currently occupying the very ass-bottom of the hierarchy ladder.
Anyway.
When I got to the scene of the scuffle - for it was a scuffle indeed, and quite a spectacular one, judging from the amount of intense noises floating to the night air - I saw three dark, bedraggled figures advancing on one, forcing him back so that he was balancing on the edge of the pier. The object of the assault was cloaked, clad in nondescript shades of black and maroon, his face half-hidden under the shadows from his hood. He was holding his own against the attackers, expertly swinging a pair of dao blades, slashing and parrying and generally giving off the impression that he knew very well how to use them.
The sight of the dao did it - as soon as I caught a glimpse of them, slicing the air in graceful flashes of silver, I knew I would get involved. Of course my thoughts instantly flew back to the Mizuru, to Prince Zuko’s cabin, to the one night when we felt particularly safe and adventurous (the rest of the crew, General Iroh included, having gone to the port at the time) and he let me stay for a while longer - he took his own dao from the wall, then, and started showing off, still very much naked and a little tipsy from the wine we’ve had before getting to bed. I didn’t even need to focus to instantly recall every twitch and curve of his white muscles in the dimmed candlelight when he moved, surprisingly sure-footed despite the wine; or to smell the faint, lingering mix of metal, alcohol, sweat and sex, which seeing the flying blades brought vividly back. I couldn’t help it - the scene comes back to me every single time I see the broadswoards, like my mind is on some kind of automaton. Before I knew it, I was in full sprint and jumping in front of the hooded man, fists aflame, body tense and fully prepared to take over. Yes, I know it was a stupid impulse and no, I didn’t particularly care at the time. I suppose it’s just that I’ve been hearing so much about Zuko for the last year or so that seeing the man with the swords touched something deep inside and just pulled.
Looks like the attackers, whoever they were, decided that whatever issue they had with the man in the cloak were not worth facing a trained, experienced Firebender; they took one look at me, at my flaming fists, at my battered yet clearly functional armor and, finally, at my expression, then promptly turned on their heels and ran.
Well. Talk about anticlimactic.
I had my back turned to the man I had just saved, so I only heard the clang as the broadswoards were brought back together and sheathed, rather jerkily from the sound of it; then, there was a silence that I can only describe as sucking. “Tense” doesn’t even come close. It sucked the air and the noise out of everything else, and though I had yet to discover why, I could sense it stilling the air between us just as surely as I suddenly felt pierced right through, with the man’s eyes boring intently into the back of my head.
And then I had one of the biggest shocks of my life.
“Lieutenant Jee?”
Surreal. That is the only word I can think of to describe this experience, this uncanny feeling that gripped me the moment I heard that voice - his voice. It was barely louder than the sea breeze and the bawdy laughter floating in echoes from the pubs, but it was enough to completely disconnect me from the here and now. The harbor disappeared. The wooden pier beneath my feet turned to metal. The solid ground swayed, started creaking, and the murmur of waves rhythmically striking against the stones of the docks grew and turned into a hungry, booming song of the open sea. The air, previously scented with salt and fish and refreshing, nightly breeze, grew stiffer, hotter, smelling slightly of metal and rust. It was the Mizuru again, vivid and tangible, with all its mechanical murmurs and the stomping of feet and the Prince shouting order after furious order -
The Prince, stepping into the shower cabin that one, fateful evening, his figure covered in swirling steam, his footsteps light and silent amidst the roar of the water, his voice thick and soft, not even waiting for me to grab a towel before he plunged and seared first my eyes with his gaze, then my mind with his words, then my lips with his own.
The Prince, whose screams I could never hear, but they still thundered in my ears at night whenever that horrifying explosion haunted my memory.
My mind was still reeling with the memories flashing at me in a disconnected, rapid spree when I turned around to face him. He had pulled his hood back, so I was graced with a full view of his face, now obscured by nothing but the natural darkness of the lantern-lit night and the hair falling over his face.
It is a little ridiculous that my first thought was Where’s the ponytail? But, given the bizarre circumstances, I may perhaps be excused from feeling more than a little puzzled. My next thought was: He looks tired. And he did. The shadows from the lantern nearby did nothing to hide the hollowness of his once-full cheeks or the dark smudges under his eyes, which were piercing me with their lopsided, golden intensity, so painfully familiar. He was also, very obviously, grown.
Of course I’ve heard the rumors about him. Everyone has. They presented such a magnificent collection of utter hogwash that someone should have recorded them long ago and hung the manuscripts in some museum or other, for it would be such a shame if those gems of misguided storytelling were lost to posterity. I have no patience to mention all of them here, but they all went flying through my head the moment I locked gazes with our new Firelord - and instantly I knew that at least some of them must have carried a grain of truth. There was definitely something softer about him. Something different, more profound, more - mature. It had nothing to do with the fact that, during the year we’ve been separated, his teenager’s body has somehow grown into that of a young adult, but everything to do with the angles in his face and the look in his eyes and the way he held himself even then, on the pier. He no longer resembled a bowstring seconds away from snapping; his gaze no longer threatened to shoot fireballs. Instead, he stood upright, back straight but not overtly so, his posture subconsciously graceful and every inch that of a leader.
The tension, however subdued, was still there, though, transformed and channeled differently; it lingered in the thin, set line of his lips, in the pallor of his fatigued, but strikingly handsome face. It was this, apart from the dark blotch of the scar and the unmistakable color of his eyes, that assured me that it was really Zuko standing in front of me.
But the man I saw then and the prince I used to serve under and sleep with were so impossible to reconcile that I blundered, without even thinking about it:
“Prince Zuko?”
He nodded almost automatically, his good eye widened in surprise, completely ignoring my slip as though he, too, were transported back to the ship; and then he gave me another shock by whispering:
“I thought you were dead.”
Perhaps it was ironic that he should say that, given that I still wake up at night to the memory of the good old Mizuru going up in flames - but it startled me enough to blink me back into reality. His voice, although slightly deeper, was still the same. It really was Zuko.
“I looked through the records,” he went on, his tone growing slightly stronger, “I went through every report on the Siege I could find, I ordered other people to look for you and the rest of the crew, and they told me you died with the others. That the Ocean Spirit destroyed your ship. If I knew you were alive, I would have -“
He paused and settled on just staring at me, apparently still too stunned to speak.
Well. I must admit that this increasingly nervous, shaky explanation did fill me with a relief too deep to be entirely comfortable. I did wonder about that - once I got over the momentous, revolutionary revelation that Zuko, my rebellious, determined, bratty little Zuko, was, in fact, our new Firelord. I wondered about him even remembering me now that he had the entire nation under his thumb. Perhaps I thought about it rather more than was advisable, especially in the grey hours of dawn after nights wrought with insomnia. And, strange though it was, he wasn’t lying - the kid had always been terrible at that and back then, on the pier, honesty floated out with every word, peeked out from every earnest look he gave me.
Seeing that, I couldn’t help it. I smiled.
“I guess there must have been a mistake, then,” I said, more gently than I expected. “It doesn’t matter, sir.”
It didn’t. The Siege was a messy business - half of the bodies had not even been recovered. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that my name got lost in the floods of paperwork that followed, and I’m sure mine weren’t the only records that have gotten mixed up like that. But it did warm me to think that he cared enough to look.
He scoffed at me, brushing some strands of hair away from his face. And that was when I first thought of touching him - of touching that hair. But I tried to banish it before it blossomed into a real longing. As far as I knew, that time, those stolen, frantic nights we spent together, was gone, blown up as surely as the ship which had sheltered it.
“Of course it matters. Sometimes I feel like we’ll never be able to get all the files from the war in proper order. But…” he gave me a look then, a surprisingly soft one, his face settling on something disturbingly resembling a smile, “I’m glad you’re alive and well. Lieutenant.”
I was so taken aback by his expression - so, so utterly different from the haughty, spoiled brat I remembered - that what I said next still makes something twist in my stomach in embarrassment at the recollection:
“Technically, it’s Captain now. Sir.”
And then he smiled at me fully. Actually smiled, real humor glinting in his golden eyes, his face lightening up, the exhaustion clearly painted on it fading for a second; not a smirk or a sneer, not a brooding grimace or a sated, post-orgasmic beam. A smile. And then a soft snicker when he turned his head a little to the side in a manner which could have been called coquettish if not for the circumstances, and said:
“Well, technically it’s Firelord now, captain.”
My lips quirked upward, but I managed to swallow the burst of laughter which threatened to spill out; instead, I took a deep bow and answered:
“Yes, my Lord. I heard.”
“I’m sure you did.”
Another spell of silence fell between us then; each of us was too taken with staring at the other. I’m sure he was surveying me just as intently as I was him, comparing, remembering. Once more I was struck with all the differences between the Firelord before me and the Prince I once knew. The two were, in that moment, incomparable. But I could not deny the rising, steady thrum of lust underlining my own examination. My gaze lingered, brushing over his lips, whatever was exposed of the white of his neck, over his figure, concealed by his clothes, but obviously fit. And although I struggled to keep the memories of touching him, of kissing and fucking him, out, I could no more stop them from flooding me at the sight of him than I could keep water in a holey old bucket. My rebellious mind conjured up pictures of this new Zuko, supplying me with unwanted questions of what he tasted like now; if his mouth still held the sweet spice of youth; if his thighs were still as soft and delectably muscular to the touch; if he would still react with that half-hissed moan if I licked that spot on his neck, just beneath his healthy ear; if his hair felt as soft and silky as it looked; what would it feel like now if I ran my fingers through it and whether I would miss the sensation of cradling his bare scalp. All of those were fleeting, hazy thoughts, more flashing images than consciously formulated phrases and desires, but they were there, nagging at me and getting stronger the longer I looked.
Given that, it was no surprise that what Zuko said next, very, very quietly, struck me like a bolt of lightning from the sky:
“Do you have a place to stay somewhere nearby?”
_______________________________
Part 2: http://dracomaleficium.livejournal.com/21615.html#cutid1
He’s sleeping on my bed now, all sprawled and naked and generally looking every inch like a man who’s just been thoroughly shagged. Breathing regularly, peacefully, as though he were snuggled up in silks in his own fancy room at the palace and not in some shabby excuse for an inn, in a narrow, creaky, dirty bed, in a room a few adjectives short of “dilapidated” and reeking of cat piss. Now, of course, the unrelenting odor is dominated by the combined smell of sweat and sex - a heady, lingering taste still there in the air; another reminder that less than an hour ago the boy - no, the man - was moaning in that raspy voice of his like the world was about to end, ordering me to go harder and harder until it was physically impossible and my spine felt like it was going to crack.
If I needed more evidence that the world is seriously fucked up, which I don’t, I only need to look to my left.
He looks different now. Older (what is he now, seventeen? Eighteen?), taller -close to my height, actually, which is rather disturbing - a bit leaner perhaps, but still obsessively muscular. Nothing that says “kid” about his body anymore, except for some scarcely preserved softness here and there which also seems like it will soon disappear. His hair is different, too. The ponytail is no more (and it’s weird to feel nostalgic about it, but there we go) and in its place he’s got a shaggy, unruly mass of shoulder-length hair which dangled in thick wisps all over his face when he had it done in the traditional topknot. I can’t see his scar right now since his left cheek is pressed to the pillow, but even if it hasn’t changed much, it’s somewhat less - striking now, more subdued. Maybe it’s settled a bit, or maybe the kid himself has changed so much that I hardly noticed it anymore in favor of everything else.
I couldn’t sleep - how could I, after everything that’s passed? - so as soon as I felt him fall asleep (which was uncharacteristically quickly for him, he must’ve been completely worn out) I wiggled out of bed and grabbed what was still left of the army-issued writing paper. I haven’t kept a journal since that confounded Zhao Siege, but Spirits, if that isn’t worth writing down, I don’t know what is.
His breathing’s changed. I hope my writing hasn’t disturbed him. Better make sure he’s still out before he catches me noting down evidence -
False alarm. His Highness is still well away in dreamland. I’m going to use what little time I have before dawn to note down exactly what led to having the fucking ruler of the Fire Nation here in my bed, while it’s still fresh. Then I’m going to fold it, tuck it away somewhere no one will ever dream of looking, and take out only when I’m sure no one’ll barge in on me. It’ll be a little like when we were fucking back on the Mizuru and I secretly recorded every single night we spent together - it’s only fitting that I should write about this one, to make the records complete.
But let’s go back to the beginning.
***
It was a dull night, nearly moonless, the air still, the weather hot and stifling like always at this time of year. I’ve spent most of it drinking in Shen’s old pub - that seedy, run-down place by the docks next to the fish storage warehouse. It’s a miracle of sorts that the joint’s still standing, smelly and dingy as it is, but I suppose the marines make for an undemanding clientele in the hygiene department. Maybe to some of them it even smells like home. My own activities that evening are altogether not worthy of saving for posterity - it was the same routine as every night after miserable night since I got my feet back on the blessed soil of our homeland. Drinking, listening to gossip, drinking some more, joining in whatever conversations seemed most entertaining (for the cheap entertainment value available in such a place), exchanging reminiscences with some poor bloke or other, drinking some more and waiting for the usual brawl to break out. I vaguely recall listening to some soldiers temporarily making port share their impressions about the current state of our used-to-be colonies, but I hardly recall any details now, only that it was, for the most part, disappointingly dull.
That seems to be the price for peace that no one mentions, by the way. Not that I’m a big fan of the war, but now that it’s over the tales over baijou got decidedly less captivating.
At any rate, when I got out, feeling the all-too-familiar, routine lull of steady, alcohol-induced moroseness regarding my distinct lack of prospects, or even of proper occupation, and the general shittiness of the position I’ve been finding myself in regularly ever since getting back alive from the spirits-cursed Zhao Siege, I heard something. It sounded rather like a scuffle, coming from the quieter part of the harbor not far away from where I was standing; the metallic clang and swish of steel hitting steel, some distant shouting echoing in the silence, grunting, the usual. It was by no means strange. The docks in the capital may not be as infamous in the brawling department as the formerly colonial bays, but, in recent days especially, what with the homeland ports swarming with soldiers suddenly discharged from duty and finding themselves without a job, fisticuffs were a normal part of the nocturnal port landscape.
Any other night, I would have surely discarded it to the back of my mind and roamed to the other side of the harbor to brood in drunken peace. To this hour I’m not entirely sure what’s gotten into me that I didn’t just turn around. Perhaps the blasted feeling of uselessness, the itch to do something, to be acknowledged, to feel the pleasant tingle of authority instead of this constant pull of nothingness, was stronger than usual and seized my legs to guide them to the scene. Spirits know I’ve been on the hunt for something to pull me out of that black funk for months. So maybe that was it. But it doesn’t matter - in the end, my instincts told me to check what was going on before I could silence them, and, as can be expected, I followed the call before actual reasoning kicked in. Which, as I’ve suspected for years now, is the main reason behind my currently occupying the very ass-bottom of the hierarchy ladder.
Anyway.
When I got to the scene of the scuffle - for it was a scuffle indeed, and quite a spectacular one, judging from the amount of intense noises floating to the night air - I saw three dark, bedraggled figures advancing on one, forcing him back so that he was balancing on the edge of the pier. The object of the assault was cloaked, clad in nondescript shades of black and maroon, his face half-hidden under the shadows from his hood. He was holding his own against the attackers, expertly swinging a pair of dao blades, slashing and parrying and generally giving off the impression that he knew very well how to use them.
The sight of the dao did it - as soon as I caught a glimpse of them, slicing the air in graceful flashes of silver, I knew I would get involved. Of course my thoughts instantly flew back to the Mizuru, to Prince Zuko’s cabin, to the one night when we felt particularly safe and adventurous (the rest of the crew, General Iroh included, having gone to the port at the time) and he let me stay for a while longer - he took his own dao from the wall, then, and started showing off, still very much naked and a little tipsy from the wine we’ve had before getting to bed. I didn’t even need to focus to instantly recall every twitch and curve of his white muscles in the dimmed candlelight when he moved, surprisingly sure-footed despite the wine; or to smell the faint, lingering mix of metal, alcohol, sweat and sex, which seeing the flying blades brought vividly back. I couldn’t help it - the scene comes back to me every single time I see the broadswoards, like my mind is on some kind of automaton. Before I knew it, I was in full sprint and jumping in front of the hooded man, fists aflame, body tense and fully prepared to take over. Yes, I know it was a stupid impulse and no, I didn’t particularly care at the time. I suppose it’s just that I’ve been hearing so much about Zuko for the last year or so that seeing the man with the swords touched something deep inside and just pulled.
Looks like the attackers, whoever they were, decided that whatever issue they had with the man in the cloak were not worth facing a trained, experienced Firebender; they took one look at me, at my flaming fists, at my battered yet clearly functional armor and, finally, at my expression, then promptly turned on their heels and ran.
Well. Talk about anticlimactic.
I had my back turned to the man I had just saved, so I only heard the clang as the broadswoards were brought back together and sheathed, rather jerkily from the sound of it; then, there was a silence that I can only describe as sucking. “Tense” doesn’t even come close. It sucked the air and the noise out of everything else, and though I had yet to discover why, I could sense it stilling the air between us just as surely as I suddenly felt pierced right through, with the man’s eyes boring intently into the back of my head.
And then I had one of the biggest shocks of my life.
“Lieutenant Jee?”
Surreal. That is the only word I can think of to describe this experience, this uncanny feeling that gripped me the moment I heard that voice - his voice. It was barely louder than the sea breeze and the bawdy laughter floating in echoes from the pubs, but it was enough to completely disconnect me from the here and now. The harbor disappeared. The wooden pier beneath my feet turned to metal. The solid ground swayed, started creaking, and the murmur of waves rhythmically striking against the stones of the docks grew and turned into a hungry, booming song of the open sea. The air, previously scented with salt and fish and refreshing, nightly breeze, grew stiffer, hotter, smelling slightly of metal and rust. It was the Mizuru again, vivid and tangible, with all its mechanical murmurs and the stomping of feet and the Prince shouting order after furious order -
The Prince, stepping into the shower cabin that one, fateful evening, his figure covered in swirling steam, his footsteps light and silent amidst the roar of the water, his voice thick and soft, not even waiting for me to grab a towel before he plunged and seared first my eyes with his gaze, then my mind with his words, then my lips with his own.
The Prince, whose screams I could never hear, but they still thundered in my ears at night whenever that horrifying explosion haunted my memory.
My mind was still reeling with the memories flashing at me in a disconnected, rapid spree when I turned around to face him. He had pulled his hood back, so I was graced with a full view of his face, now obscured by nothing but the natural darkness of the lantern-lit night and the hair falling over his face.
It is a little ridiculous that my first thought was Where’s the ponytail? But, given the bizarre circumstances, I may perhaps be excused from feeling more than a little puzzled. My next thought was: He looks tired. And he did. The shadows from the lantern nearby did nothing to hide the hollowness of his once-full cheeks or the dark smudges under his eyes, which were piercing me with their lopsided, golden intensity, so painfully familiar. He was also, very obviously, grown.
Of course I’ve heard the rumors about him. Everyone has. They presented such a magnificent collection of utter hogwash that someone should have recorded them long ago and hung the manuscripts in some museum or other, for it would be such a shame if those gems of misguided storytelling were lost to posterity. I have no patience to mention all of them here, but they all went flying through my head the moment I locked gazes with our new Firelord - and instantly I knew that at least some of them must have carried a grain of truth. There was definitely something softer about him. Something different, more profound, more - mature. It had nothing to do with the fact that, during the year we’ve been separated, his teenager’s body has somehow grown into that of a young adult, but everything to do with the angles in his face and the look in his eyes and the way he held himself even then, on the pier. He no longer resembled a bowstring seconds away from snapping; his gaze no longer threatened to shoot fireballs. Instead, he stood upright, back straight but not overtly so, his posture subconsciously graceful and every inch that of a leader.
The tension, however subdued, was still there, though, transformed and channeled differently; it lingered in the thin, set line of his lips, in the pallor of his fatigued, but strikingly handsome face. It was this, apart from the dark blotch of the scar and the unmistakable color of his eyes, that assured me that it was really Zuko standing in front of me.
But the man I saw then and the prince I used to serve under and sleep with were so impossible to reconcile that I blundered, without even thinking about it:
“Prince Zuko?”
He nodded almost automatically, his good eye widened in surprise, completely ignoring my slip as though he, too, were transported back to the ship; and then he gave me another shock by whispering:
“I thought you were dead.”
Perhaps it was ironic that he should say that, given that I still wake up at night to the memory of the good old Mizuru going up in flames - but it startled me enough to blink me back into reality. His voice, although slightly deeper, was still the same. It really was Zuko.
“I looked through the records,” he went on, his tone growing slightly stronger, “I went through every report on the Siege I could find, I ordered other people to look for you and the rest of the crew, and they told me you died with the others. That the Ocean Spirit destroyed your ship. If I knew you were alive, I would have -“
He paused and settled on just staring at me, apparently still too stunned to speak.
Well. I must admit that this increasingly nervous, shaky explanation did fill me with a relief too deep to be entirely comfortable. I did wonder about that - once I got over the momentous, revolutionary revelation that Zuko, my rebellious, determined, bratty little Zuko, was, in fact, our new Firelord. I wondered about him even remembering me now that he had the entire nation under his thumb. Perhaps I thought about it rather more than was advisable, especially in the grey hours of dawn after nights wrought with insomnia. And, strange though it was, he wasn’t lying - the kid had always been terrible at that and back then, on the pier, honesty floated out with every word, peeked out from every earnest look he gave me.
Seeing that, I couldn’t help it. I smiled.
“I guess there must have been a mistake, then,” I said, more gently than I expected. “It doesn’t matter, sir.”
It didn’t. The Siege was a messy business - half of the bodies had not even been recovered. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that my name got lost in the floods of paperwork that followed, and I’m sure mine weren’t the only records that have gotten mixed up like that. But it did warm me to think that he cared enough to look.
He scoffed at me, brushing some strands of hair away from his face. And that was when I first thought of touching him - of touching that hair. But I tried to banish it before it blossomed into a real longing. As far as I knew, that time, those stolen, frantic nights we spent together, was gone, blown up as surely as the ship which had sheltered it.
“Of course it matters. Sometimes I feel like we’ll never be able to get all the files from the war in proper order. But…” he gave me a look then, a surprisingly soft one, his face settling on something disturbingly resembling a smile, “I’m glad you’re alive and well. Lieutenant.”
I was so taken aback by his expression - so, so utterly different from the haughty, spoiled brat I remembered - that what I said next still makes something twist in my stomach in embarrassment at the recollection:
“Technically, it’s Captain now. Sir.”
And then he smiled at me fully. Actually smiled, real humor glinting in his golden eyes, his face lightening up, the exhaustion clearly painted on it fading for a second; not a smirk or a sneer, not a brooding grimace or a sated, post-orgasmic beam. A smile. And then a soft snicker when he turned his head a little to the side in a manner which could have been called coquettish if not for the circumstances, and said:
“Well, technically it’s Firelord now, captain.”
My lips quirked upward, but I managed to swallow the burst of laughter which threatened to spill out; instead, I took a deep bow and answered:
“Yes, my Lord. I heard.”
“I’m sure you did.”
Another spell of silence fell between us then; each of us was too taken with staring at the other. I’m sure he was surveying me just as intently as I was him, comparing, remembering. Once more I was struck with all the differences between the Firelord before me and the Prince I once knew. The two were, in that moment, incomparable. But I could not deny the rising, steady thrum of lust underlining my own examination. My gaze lingered, brushing over his lips, whatever was exposed of the white of his neck, over his figure, concealed by his clothes, but obviously fit. And although I struggled to keep the memories of touching him, of kissing and fucking him, out, I could no more stop them from flooding me at the sight of him than I could keep water in a holey old bucket. My rebellious mind conjured up pictures of this new Zuko, supplying me with unwanted questions of what he tasted like now; if his mouth still held the sweet spice of youth; if his thighs were still as soft and delectably muscular to the touch; if he would still react with that half-hissed moan if I licked that spot on his neck, just beneath his healthy ear; if his hair felt as soft and silky as it looked; what would it feel like now if I ran my fingers through it and whether I would miss the sensation of cradling his bare scalp. All of those were fleeting, hazy thoughts, more flashing images than consciously formulated phrases and desires, but they were there, nagging at me and getting stronger the longer I looked.
Given that, it was no surprise that what Zuko said next, very, very quietly, struck me like a bolt of lightning from the sky:
“Do you have a place to stay somewhere nearby?”
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Part 2: http://dracomaleficium.livejournal.com/21615.html#cutid1