A/N: At the ZukoGetsLaid community on lj, a challenge was issued regarding getting the boy laid in 10 specific geographic locations. I don't know if I will do all ten, but here is the first location: The Cabbage Cart

Disclaimer: If I owned Avatar: The Last Airbender I wouldn't be writing here, now would I?

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The Cabbage Cart

Perhaps it was just his age, but everything these days had a tendency to make him think of, well, he had to admit it, of sex. No matter how hard he tried to concentrate on the obviously much more important considerations of his life, the least little thing screamed erotica at him. It was getting downright embarrassing.

He had finally managed to find his way back into a major population center. He was proud of himself for rising above that period of brigandage that threatened to destroy his last vestiges of honor, bowing his head – and back – to common labor in order to feed his belly and that of the ostrichhorse. And very common labor it was, since Zuko had no real skills beyond combat and command. His shoulders ached from hauling sacks of rice and flour, his back protested hours spent with a shovel clearing stalls of muck

And then there were those damned cabbages.

Apparently cabbages could be planted and harvested sequentially throughout a season in some areas. Who knew? Who cared! And Zuko found himself bent low in a cabbage field with his knife slicing the stems of only those heads he had been taught were nearly mature yet still young enough to survive a cart ride to a reasonably close market. He filled basket after basket, and tried to seek some life lesson in yet another humiliation.

He longed to set afire the entire field.

The field owner was a cabbage fanatic. It figured. He was a tyrant who made Zuko wonder if perhaps his father had yet still lessons to be learned from the peasantry, and it cheered him to imagine the cabbage man and his father deep in consultation regarding the appropriate discipline to exact for the infraction of some arbitrary command.

Ah, and then he knew he was suffering from some kind of delirium, brought on by too much heat and exhaustion.

None of which should have provided fuel for Zuko's preoccupation with sex.

But there it was. The cabbage man was bad-tempered, awkward, gap-toothed and stringy of form and beard. His age was indeterminate. And this man had the amazing fortune to be married to a sloe-eyed, languorous woman of remarkable visage and even more remarkable breasts.

Who made herself apparent as the cabbage man hired Zuko for the day, catching the young man's eye with her all too appraising gaze and a smile that, oh! seemed to promise much more than a hot meal at the end of the day!

Hot meal indeed.

The cabbage man had gone on and on in his discussion as to which cabbages were appropriate to harvest, insisting on Zuko's noticing the faint citrine blush of the outer portion of tightly bound leaves around the firm globes, and their velvety texture. He rhapsodied as to the perfection of their size, the promise of their scent, and the pleasure of their ultimate consumption until Zuko had to close his own eyes and recite to himself a litany of the last eight generations of Fire Lords and their progeny to distract himself from associating cabbages with the cabbage man's lovely wife.

In her kitchen she gave him a meal redolent of cabbage stew and rice. The generosity of the portions on the table reflected the fullness of her hips, the warmth of her smile, and the hint of welcome in the length of time her own hand lingered on the bowl she placed before him. A hand that almost brushed his shoulder as she turned from him to return to the stew-pot.

His face burned as heat focused low in his belly.

Of course, the heat dissipated almost instantly upon bringing a final basket-load to the cart later that evening, almost to stumble upon the scrawny ass of the cabbage man pumping rhythmically between the silken thighs of the temptress of Zuko's haunted afternoon, their combined moans sufficient to cause him to abandon the basket and seek out his stabled ostrichhorse in a frantic effort to get as far away as possible from the scene.

He only prayed he would be able to face cabbage image-free in the future…