Title: One of Us
Fandom: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Pairing: Jet/Smellerbee
Rating: PG
Word Count: 1,253
Summary/Description: Now, she was speaking his language.
Warning/Spoilers: None at all.
A/N: 31 days, May 7th: the dream of a common language. For Ingrid, who will recognise the first bit of this. Another sleepy!fic. ): I need to stop that.
Disclaimer: I do not own A:TLA.

Jet dropped next to her with a thump, shaking the branch and jostling loose leaves out of the tree. Smellerbee was deep in thought, pulling her hair forward into her face, fingering the strands, twisting them between her fingers. She didn't look up when Jet sat down, but she said 'hey' quietly. She didn't take her eyes off her fingers.

Jet furrowed his brows, and bumped her shoulder with his own.

"What's wrong?"

Smellerbee glanced at him. Her bottom lip snuck between her teeth, finding safety between the small squares. Jet waited; the raid was over, the weather was cool and he had all afternoon.

"Nothing," she finally said, looking away. The coarse brown strands between her fingers seemed to crackle and create static. Jet knew that they were rough to the touch, from years laid bare to the sun, dirt, and the wind. He bumped her again, and gave her a sceptical look.

"Uh huh. So what's wrong?" he repeated. He removed the twig from his mouth, and looked at her until she looked back at him. One of the things he liked about Smellerbee was that she would always look him in the eye. She might look away after a beat, but there was always that initial moment of eye to eye contact that made him sure she had nothing to hide, that he could always trust her. This time, he didn't give her time to look away; his hand dropped onto her shoulder.

"What is it?"

His friend's lips crumpled and screwed themselves to the side. She looked embarrassed. He'd have liked to say he didn't know why, but he did. It had been easy enough to figure out, once the others were gone and he had more time to pay attention. He didn't smile, but she must have seen that he wanted to, and groaned.

"You're gonna laugh," she said with a scowl, shrugging away from him. It was temporary; she was leaning subtly back into him after a couple moments.

Jet laughed.

"No, I'm not," he said, and earned himself a small glare for the deliberate contradiction.

"Yeah, go ahead, make it harder," she mumbled, looking at her fingers threading through her hair once again.

"I'm not making it harder," he protested casually, raising his hands in a defensive sort of gesture. Smellerbee just looked at him sideways, brown eyes filled with reproach and-- well, not-reproach. He tried not to smile again.

"Listen, would it make you feel any better if I told you I already know?"

Smellerbee looked up at him, mouth turned down.

"Not really. I dunno... maybe. Whatever, how could you, anyway?" She said it all like it was one word, and ended with a frown. "I only found out this morning."

Jet laughed again, and dug his hand into her hair, ruffling it.

"Yeah? Well, it's been going on for weeks. And, well... one of us had to know, right?"

He grinned at her, hand still in her hair. Smellerbee didn't do anything but stare at him for a full minute. Jet let her, slightly amused, and took the opportunity to wipe some dirt off her nose. Her eyes followed the movement, and when he pulled the hand away, she was looking at him. It was a very open look, Jet saw. There was always a certain level of guardedness to the light behind Smellerbee's eyes, depending on who she was looking at. Right now, however, she was laid bare.

"...You're making fun of me, aren't you," she muttered, and started looking at the space between his eyes instead. Jet smiled.

"I'll let you answer that question for yourself, since I'm pretty sure you know the response to that."

He swiped at another smear of dirt on her forehead as she looked at him with uncertainty flashing in her eyes. He didn't prompt her; just waited. They had time.

"Yyyyee...?"

"No," he cut across her in slight exasperation. "I'm not making fun of you." He flicked her under the chin like one might a child; she swatted swiftly at his hand and made a show of looking more peeved than she felt. "It's no big deal, and I don't mind, so stop worrying. Grey would not be a good colour on you."

Smellerbee exhaled, long and deep, as if from the pit of her stomach, as she cut her eyes across at Jet.

"Well, I don't know, I have to worry." Jet raised an eyebrow, and she scowled a bit more. "At least a little. I don't speak your language fluently all the time, you know."

Jet gave her a considering look, and then, rose fluidly out of his sitting position and nodded, signalling that he expected her to do the same. They both stood balanced on the thick of the branch, Jet with his knees bent slightly. He spoke as he jumped; his voice carried through the leaves and the rush of the wind.

"Really? You sure about that?"

She was right behind him. They landed on the balls of their feet on the forest floor, almost in unison, but not quite. The three seconds between their landings seemed to stretch for minutes.

"Yeah, I'm sure," Smellerbee said when she steadied herself next to him. "You're pretty hard to figure out, sometimes. It's not exactly a piece of cake, to get in your head."

Jet was already moving again; walking backwards with his eyes trained fully on her. One of the Fire Nation's animal traps was right in his path; Jet had seen it, and would have sensed it somehow, even if he hadn't. He kept on walking right towards it, though. Smellerbee looked confused for a moment, but she evidently had other things on her mind; she simply threw a knife at the rope securing the cage, and watched it crash to the ground. Jet smiled, and side-stepped it neatly when the time came.

"Par for the course, for people who don't know me." He grinned, spitting the stick out of his mouth and getting a new one form a nearby bush. "They're not supposed to know. You, now, you've spent a good amount of time in here."

He found a suitable tree, and started climbing back up. He was sure he was getting strange looks from any forest animals that happened to be about at this time. And from Smellerbee, as well. He examined the look she was wearing as she observed him, mouth screwed to the side. As if she was determined to follow him no matter what; as if she didn't even have to think about it.

"Obviously not enough time. " She shrugged as she scaled the tree trunk after him, a good thirteen feet up."'Exhibit A: this. Tree to ground to tree? I have no idea what you're doing."

Jet smiled, and waited for her at the top.

"But still, you understood pretty well, didn't you?"

He summed up the last five or so minutes in a wink. It hit Smellerbee abruptly, and she stopped, looking up at him. Jet bent forward and offered her a hand, smiling lopsidedly.

"Uh huh," he answered her unspoken question. "Now try to think of some other things that you probably already know, and just haven't figured out as yet."

Smellerbee thought, and he watched the emotions and a little bit of realisation shuttle through her bark-brown eyes. She'd get it; she was smart.

Soon, she was reaching up to grasp the hand he offered. It was warm to the touch.

A/N: Please take the time to leave a comment, if you can.