a/n: this is AU, everyone's early to mid-twenties, and apparently no one's a bender, in case you were wondering.

disclaimer: I don't own Avatar: The Last Airbender or else Jetko would have been a thousand times more canon.

lift

Rain fell from a roiling, dismal sky, heavy with the promise of an oncoming thunderstorm. It gently hit the lush grass of the fields, and its soft patter against the earth sounded like one long and final exhale.

How appropriate, Zuko thought without an ounce of emotion, his golden eyes trained on the ornate box where his Uncle Iroh lie still in his eternal sleep. There was no way Zuko could afford to feel anything but numb at a time like this, or all of the progress he'd made because of the man in the casket would come crashing down like an avalanche.

If he couldn't keep his composure, he would suffocate under the weight of his loss. He wouldn't recover. And as much as he knew that was exactly what his uncle wouldn't want, Zuko also knew that it was the inevitable truth of it all. Too many people had left him now—what would be left for him to take hold of?

The sudden groan of metal drew his attention back toward the casket. He watched, swallowing around a dry lump in his throat, as his uncle was lowered into the ground. He realized with a hollow feeling in his stomach that he would never get to see him face-to-face again. His facade was quickly breaking, and the thick darkness manifesting within him was beginning to seep through the cracks.

Zuko's shoulders slumped, his body threatening to collapse into the wet ground where he stood. Immediately a calming hand was on his back, one he knew to be Katara's. Her touch was soothing, as usual, but it did almost nothing for him. No one here could quite understood the feeling of losing the last person one considered family after everything else he'd experienced. He was surrounded by people, all of whom admired his uncle almost as much as he did, but he'd never felt such a sharp stab of pure isolation in his life.

Not when his mother inexplicably left him in the middle of the night, her only parting gift a few words of love. Not when his father told him he never wanted to see his half-burned face again after Zuko had finally stood against him. Not when his sister had sincerely wished hundreds of times for the day she'd become an only child. Not when Mai had told him that she was ready to find somewhere new after an entire life of waiting for something to happen.

Immediately, Zuko felt sick to his core. Even though he was standing in front of hundreds of his uncle's friends and acquaintances, he had to find a way out of here. Out of this crowd of pitying faces, this sea of numbness and loss that was threatening to swallow him whole, straight into the dense, wet ground to slowly rot like his uncle already was. Desperate for an escape, he straightened back up and assessed the surrounding area, attempting to find the quickest way to gain some distance from this whole horrific ordeal.

That was when his eyes landed on him.

It took Zuko a moment to register what he'd seen, but once he had, a crippled gasp, just on the edge of a sob, escaped him. It was just like he'd seen a ghost. After all of this time, there was absolutely no way he could be sure that this was real.

Jet was back.

Zuko stared openly at him, his brow crinkling in disbelief as his eyes hungrily gazed over Jet's face. He hadn't seen him in years—five at the very least—but it seemed that nothing about him had changed.

Jet was simply standing at the back of the crowd, smoking a cigarette under his partly-broken umbrella. Zuko could see the familiar puff of grey smoke from this distance, even through the falling rain. His air of casual confidence and nonchalance, his broad shoulders hunched inward under his leather jacket as he took a drag, his shaggy hair dampened by the weather...it was the same as always. It almost felt as though Zuko were remembering a dream, one where he'd just wake up to an empty bedroom and a silent house as he always did.

"Zuko," Katara whispered gently from beside him. Sound suddenly rushed back into his ears, like he'd broken the surface after being held underwater, and nearly overwhelmed him. Music was playing, signaling the end of the ceremony, and the crowd began to file away. "Zuko, are you okay?"

He looked down to find his pale hands shaking relentlessly. Katara grasped one of them in her own, causing him to glance into her concerned blue eyes. Over the last ten years that he'd known her, she seemed to have taken over the role of the mother that he had missed since he was a child. She and Aang had been wonderful friends to him since his teenage years, and Zuko had always done his best to return the favor, but right now, he felt too tense and exhausted to be anything else but that.

"I'll be fine, Katara." He swallowed, the lump in his throat still present. There was no way she believed him through the evident thickness in his voice, his weakened stance, and the trembling hand she was holding, and it showed on her face. However, she simply squeezed his hand and offered him a sad smile.

"This may not be what you want to hear right now, but I know your uncle was so, so proud of you, and he would surely be even prouder of you for holding yourself together." She placed her other hand on top of their clasped ones. "But it's okay to let go. We're all here, and we're won't leave you."

"She's right, Zuko," Aang said from behind her, stepping closer to the two of them. "You're our family, and we hope you feel the same way."

Katara smiled at her husband before looking back to Zuko. "We'll wait for you in the car, alright?"

Unable to speak, Zuko simply nodded, attempted to smile, and allowed himself to hug the two of them. Their words were indeed comforting, but as he watched them walk away with Aang's hand on the small of her back, he couldn't stop the nauseating loneliness from creeping back into his bones.

He snapped straight back into a state of anxiety, his head whipping around to find Jet, who he was still convinced was just a figment of his imagination and his frayed nerves. Unfortunately, it seemed that he was right—the only people left from the large group of attendees were his far smaller group of friends. Zuko couldn't help but feel disappointed, not only that Jet wasn't truly here, but for letting himself foolishly hope like a child. Another layer of grim emotion painted itself thickly onto the wall around his darkened heart.

After brief talks with Suki and Toph and failed tries at lightening up the somber moment from Sokka, Zuko was officially alone in the field where his uncle was now buried. He knew that Aang and Katara were waiting for him, but he couldn't bring himself to do move from where he stood. Rain began to fall harder, puddling in the underside of his forgotten umbrella, and water ran down from his now-wet hair, which he'd done his best to tame and look somewhat decent for the funeral.

The funeral. It hit Zuko like a ton of bricks, slapping the numbness off his body and exposing it to the cold rain, filling him up and spreading out the darkness he'd been trying so hard to restrain quicker than water itself. Guilt, anger, and the all-consuming finality of his loss swarmed through his tired mind, brimming over into his eyes in the form of hot tears that mingled with the cool rivulets running down both the light and the darker, scarred skin of his face. At last, he had opened himself to the truth. His Uncle Iroh was dead.

Zuko had made many mistakes in his life, but as he stood alone and sobbing at Iroh's graveside, he couldn't help but feel that allowing himself to feel was the worst of them all.

His white, almost skeletal hands gripped the soaked tendrils of his inky hair, searching for something, anything to hold onto. He hung his head, letting his chin touch his chest, ashamed of the tears that blurred his vision because they reminded him that he was human and weak. Uncle would have seen his crying as a sign of humility and strength of some sort, but Zuko was so trained by his past that he saw his most vulnerable moments as just what they were—impotent and pathetic.

He closed his eyes, no longer able to bear the site of the freshly filled grave. His breath was ragged and difficult to regulate through his raw throat. There was no way to tell how long he'd last out here by himself, and Zuko felt stupidly regretful that he hadn't asked one of his friends to stay out here with him. Too caught up in his own storm, he failed to register the sound of footsteps, loud from the weight of old motorcycle boots, as they approached him.

"Zuko," a low, husky voice called, clearer than a bell and achingly close. Zuko's eyes snapped open wide, and he almost hesitated to turn his head to face the voice's owner. This couldn't be a dream, he thought to himself, but he was too afraid of what another taste of disappointment would bring him at a time like this. Tears leaked from his eyes of their own accord, streaming down his face and dripping off his chin within mere seconds.

A large hand gently clasped his shoulder, familiar though he hadn't felt its weight in so long, and Zuko emitted a soft, involuntary gasp. Without thinking, without realizing the very slight lift in the darkness surrounding him, he finally turned around.

He was greeted by the sight of an angular face, skin the color of warm honey that was trickling with raindrops despite the fact that he held that damned broken umbrella above his head of unkempt brown hair, and the pair of lips he'd longed for set in a straight but soft line. But the part he needed to see most were those hooded, beautiful dark eyes that haunted Zuko whether he was aware of it or not.

There was hardly another moment wasted before Zuko unwittingly abandoned all of his shame—and even his wonder as to where this man had been for so long—thrust himself against Jet, and embraced him with every last ounce of strength he had left. Without any hesitation, Jet encircled Zuko's lean, trembling body with his own arms, their dampened clothes sticking as they pressed their bodies against each other.

Regardless of the situation, something finally felt okay inside of Zuko. The edges of his raw insides smoothed out just enough to temper the tumultuous war invading his body and soul. He turned his face into the skin of Jet's neck, craving its heat and its smell and the feel of it against his lips, which curved into somewhat of a frown as he began to fall apart in the arms that held him closer than anyone ever had.

Though he had suppressed all hope and want for Jet's return, never allowing himself to indulge in the fantasy of being near to him again after the last time he left, Zuko hadn't realized that this was what he'd desired more than anything. He no longer felt alone in this rain-soaked, empty life.

Jet was back.

-l-

After nearly half an hour of patiently waiting in the blissfully dry car, Katara and Aang began to worry about the state of their friend.

"I know you said Zuko needed some time to himself, but don't you think we should at least check on him or something?" Aang asked, his eyebrows furrowing as he rolled up the sleeves on his sweater, a bit too warm now that the heater in the car had been blasting at full power.

"Well...yes," Katara reluctantly agreed. Though both she and Aang had experienced losing family before, she knew how rough Zuko's life had been. She was willing to give him as much time and help as he needed while he recovered from losing his beloved uncle, but she didn't want him to catch a cold in this rain. They also had a reception where his attendance was perhaps needed.

"I'll go get him," Aang said, reaching for their umbrella, but Katara stopped his hand with her own and grabbed the instrument instead.

"Let me," she replied, smiling softly at him before kissing him on the cheek and heading back out toward the field.

As she marched purposefully through the grass and mud, cursing herself for wearing her warmest pair of suede boots on this terribly sad and rainy day, she thought about how far Zuko had come. Ten years ago, when he was only sixteen, she hadn't trusted him as far as she could throw him. After chipping away at the surface, though, she had come to see the almost naive sense of good within him. It was a wonder that people could change so much and still be a part of your life, Katara mused, and a positive one at that. Zuko had been a great friend to her and the rest of their group, and in his roughest times, they were also there for him.

After a few short moments, Katara finally spotted Zuko about twenty feet away, but he wasn't alone as she had expected. A somewhat familiar figure was hugging him as he shook from what she could tell was crying. She was momentarily perplexed, wondering who he could be comfortable enough with to let his guard down so completely, and then she realized with no slight amount of shock that it was none other than Jet standing with her friend.

Katara was certainly not Jet's biggest fan. He'd come and gone in Zuko's life more than once, not to mention in her own—but for much less personal reasons, of course. Though he would never admit to it, she had seen Zuko in pain over him. A few months after Mai left, Jet had come back for the last time, and it had torn Zuko into pieces when he suddenly disappeared. Now that her friend's only family was gone, Katara sincerely prayed that Jet wasn't here to string Zuko along for a short time before moving on again.

When she saw Zuko's shoulders shaking—even heard him crying from where she was standing—and noticed the tender way with which Jet tangled his fingers in Zuko's hair and spread his hand across his back, however, she decided to let them be. She knew better than anyone that with grief came the strangest, deepest urges, and that time would help things work themselves out. And if Jet hurt her friend again, she and Aang and their friends would be there to stitch the pieces back together.

Though she was anxious for the outcome, she dared to hope for the best. It was what Zuko deserved, after all.

Katara headed back to the car, no longer caring what people thought about Zuko not attending his uncle's reception. They would just have to be as understanding as she was and know that with death came the chance for new life, and leave Zuko to himself for just a short while to begin building his own before they aided the process.

When she arrived back at the car, it only took a few words and a significant look between Katara and her husband for him to understand that everything was taken care of. For now, Katara simply prayed that Jet and Zuko safely arrived wherever they were going, and remembered to change into dry clothes the second they did.

-l-

The rain poured relentlessly even when Zuko and Jet reached the former's home later that afternoon, closer to the evening. The sky was too dark to tell whether the nighttime had begun to fall or not, but it didn't matter either way. Zuko was all at once hungry, tired, and more alive than he'd felt in quite a while.

Zuko's hand shook still as he unlocked the front door and stepped inside with Jet walking rather indifferently behind him, as though this was the most natural thing on earth. He suddenly realized how dim and bare his house looked now that it was being seen through someone else's eyes, and not just any someone at that. The last time Jet had been here, this place had still had a woman's touch, but now...

"You know," Jet murmured, his voice breaking through the dusty silence, "this place looks hardly any different."

"Think so?" Zuko replied, attempting to absorb some of Jet's innate confidence. However, it failed as usual, and Jet simply smirked and kicked off his boots by the doorway. Not quite sure what to do to calm his embarrassingly fast heart rate, Zuko trudged into the kitchen and put a kettle of water on to boil.

When he turned around, Jet was standing right in front of him, so close they were almost touching again. Zuko's body seemed to hum with electricity, a sensation he hadn't felt since...well, since the last time Jet had been here. The urge to tilt his own face just slightly upward and close the distance between their lips filled his senses so quickly he almost felt dizzy.

Jet placed his large hands on Zuko's chest, causing his eyes to flutter closed at the sensation. God, he'd missed the warmth of Jet's skin, even if he was only feeling it through his soaked clothes. More than anything, Zuko craved closeness. As it were, he couldn't get enough.

He nearly came undone when he felt those hands slip beneath the lapels of his coat and slowly slip it off his shoulders, the tips of Jet's fingers tracing the muscles of his biceps through his damp shirt. Zuko leaned into his touch without even meaning to, close enough to feel the heat of Jet's breath spread across own mouth.

"Zuko," Jet whispered, pushing the rest of Zuko's coat off his arms and letting it drop to the floor. The pale skin of his arms was covered in goosebumps the second it was exposed to the cool air.

"Yes?" Zuko breathed, hoping he'd feel Jet's hands at his waist, tugging his wet shirt off before—

"Go run a hot bath. I don't want you to get sick."

Zuko's amber eyes snapped open, and a flush of color flooded his cheeks. Jet's face carried the same nonchalant expression as it did most of the time, as though he were completely unaffected by their proximity. This certainly was not the case for Zuko, but regardless, he nodded and slipped past Jet's body, just an inch or two taller than his own. When he reached the kitchen's doorway, a thought occurred to him-Jet was still standing around in his wet clothes.

"What about you?" Zuko asked, still not quite able to form Jet's name in his throat. He turned back to find Jet picking up the coat he'd removed from his body, gently draping it over a chair. There was an unusual tenderness to Jet today, and whether it was because of Uncle's death or not, Zuko couldn't help but appreciate it.

"Trust me, Zuko," he replied with a smirk, meeting his eyes. "I've got everything I need."

-l-

Zuko could have fallen asleep in the delicious warmth of his foam-topped bath water. He felt at peace, a welcome sensation after the last month or so of chaos. Something about Jet's presence made everything that was plaguing him seem so insignificant, as though he were seeing how small he was against the enormity of the world for the very first time. His moment of weakness in the cemetery earlier was long forgotten.

He was about to submerge beneath the water and get his hair wet when he saw Jet enter the room, wearing nothing but his slightly damp jeans and a towel he was using to rub his hair dry. Zuko was too consumed by the sight of Jet's lean but well-toned abdomen to be touched by the fact that he remembered where the linen closet was.

Suddenly, he was grateful that the soap bubbles on top of the water concealed his nudity and any sort of reaction that came with the sight before him.

As easy as ever, Jet sat down on the closed toilet lid, flipped his head over, and gave his thick hair one last rub of the towel. Zuko barely repressed a smile as Jet's posture returned to normal, revealing his far-past-disheveled puff of hair.

"So," Jet began, not missing a beat, "how are you holding up?"

Honesty came to Zuko as naturally as breathing, as it always did when he was with Jet. The words seemed to spill out of his mouth of their own accord.

"If it hadn't been for you, I don't think I would have made it." Zuko stared at the slight patterns in the suds surrounding him. "This isn't nearly like it was with Mai, or anyone else in my family. There was always the possibility of something else, something more, if I decided to change how to deal with what already happened. But with Uncle..."

Zuko laid his face on the side of the tub and shivered when his neck and scarred cheek met its cold tile surface. He looked up at Jet, ignoring how the hair hanging over his eyes obscured his vision of him.

Jet leaned forward from his position to gingerly brush Zuko's hair back from his face. His touch felt inexplicably good, and as always, he craved more. He'd waited long enough.

"Sit back up," Jet muttered lowly into Zuko's ear, and his soft demand was instantly fulfilled. Without another word, Jet reached over Zuko's naked shoulders to grab a bottle of shampoo, his tan forearm just grazing the back of the other's white neck. He poured some of the bottle's contents into his palm before he began to wash Zuko's hair, lightly scratching around his scalp in vaguely circular motions.

An involuntary moan emitted from Zuko's mouth. This was something Jet had always done for him, the few but long periods of time they'd spent together, but normally they were showering together, and actions like this led to something a hell of a lot more intimate. This was much slower, much more intimate than any time else, and the feeling of Jet's blunt fingernails against his sensitive scalp created a heat that stirred deep within him.

"Jet," he finally managed to say, his mouth caressing the word like a prayer. In awe, he watched as Jet's eyes closed, finally showing some reaction to Zuko himself. The hands in his hair paused their soft scrubbing before resuming their glorious movements. It took a lot of courage Zuko wasn't sure he had to decide on his next words.

"Why did you leave me?"

And for once in all the time he'd known him, it was Jet's turn to become vulnerable. His shoulders hunched, but he continued his work on Zuko's hair and began to pour palmfuls of water over the crown of his head. His dark eyes followed the trails of soapy water as they ran down Zuko's neck and chest before meeting the rest of the liquid in the bath.

"I wanted to do things right this time," he told Zuko, his voice nearly a mere rasp. "I always felt like if I was there for you after something terrible happened to you, as it already has many times, you would build yourself right back up again...and you'd just detach yourself even further from the people who care about you because you couldn't bear to watch them betray you too." It was quiet for a long moment before he spoke again.

"Zuko, I..." Jet brushed back the wet, clean hair that stuck to Zuko's cheeks and carefully caressed the scar on his face with his thumb, knowing that it wasn't always the preferred spot for attention. This time, though, Zuko hardly flinched.

"Honestly, I was scared. I was so goddamned afraid that you'd push me away too, and so of course I did the dumbest thing I could think of—leave you instead—and ended up hurting you." The arches of Jet's eyebrows flattened as the space between them crinkled with obvious guilt. "You've always seen me as this confident, straightforward guy, but it's so much more than that. It's always different with you, and I know that's not an excuse, but—"

The jagged stream of Jet's words was cut short as Zuko finally closed the distance between their faces, his lips instantly seeking the usually-smirking ones he'd wanted to feel again for far too long. Their kiss was passionate but a bit clumsy, as though they were both out of practice, just at the edge of being completely in sync.

"You have to know, Jet," Zuko panted the second they broke apart for air. "You have to know that it's been you all this time. I loved Mai, and I love my friends, but I never feel right until you come back. I've let myself hope for you without even knowing. It's always been you, Jet. Always."

Zuko placed his hand on Jet's face, letting water drop from his palms and wrist onto the side of the bath. Amber met deep brown as they looked straight into each other's eyes with a silent sense of understanding. Whether they'd known it or not, this was what they'd needed to say and hear in all the time they had spent spinning the threads of their lives together.

It didn't matter to Jet that Zuko was as soaking wet as he had been in the rain earlier; he wrapped his arms around his lover's torso once again, reveling in the feeling of his action being reciprocated. Zuko was right—everything felt so blurred and strange until he found his way back into a life like this.

"Just promise me you won't run off again," Zuko whispered into Jet's ear before embracing him even tighter.

Jet did his best to put the immense amount of sincerity he felt into his next words: "I swear to you, Zuko. There's no way I could even think to."

While the two continued to wrap themselves in each other, returning to a bit of kissing after some long while, the bath started to cool down. There were some important words still left unspoken, but those could wait for another day when things were less fragile. However, thanks to a flow of hot water and the eventual addition of another body to the tub's basin, things finally started to come back up to temperature.