Adult themes warning in place

"Will you stop floppin' like a dyin' fish, please? I wanna go to sleep," Jet chastised after Zuko tossed over for the seventh time in five minutes.

"Sorry. I have a hard time sleeping in new places," he grumbled back, burrowing under the covers deeper only to kick them off almost immediately after.

"I'm going to sit on you if you don't hold still," Jet growled.

"Looks like going to a different country didn't outrun my insomnia," he joked dryly, sitting up.

"How much sleep do you get in a week? Be honest," Jet didn't sit up too but watched him as he scrubbed a hand through his wild hair.

"Maybe like, sixteen hours a week, if I'm lucky."

"Jesus, kid. How do you hold down a full-time job?" Jet marveled.

"I have fantastic hair. They can't fire me. It would be a sin," he sighed.

Jet fought the chuckle but lost.

~0~

Jet was never one to struggle to fall asleep anywhere; he didn't have to be lying down. He dozed in and out of consciousness for an hour. They had alarms and cameras and buzzers all over the cabin to let them know if anything walked through the doors or windows. He sort of hoped that there weren't mice because the system was so sensitive that it might trigger the sensors if a wayward rodent was to scamper too zealously across the kitchen. Even with all these precautions, his mind wouldn't let him sleep any more in-depth than a snooze.

So when Zuko got out of bed and padded his feet quietly across the room and stood at the side of Jet's bed and deliberated for a few seconds, he was wide awake but kept his eyes closed. He was curious about what was going to happen.

Zuko stopped his nervous fidgeting and seemed to steel himself before climbing under the covers.

Okay, so that is not what he thought was going to happen.

His warm body wormed under as quietly as he could, laying like a ramrod on the precipice, a millimeter away from the edge.

He was acting like a dog that knew he wasn't allowed on the bed but couldn't help himself, so he was ready to jump off at the sound of trouble.

"What are you, doin'?" Jet asked, amused. Even in the limited light, he could see how the blush that was traveling at furious speeds across Zuko's face.

"I can't sleep," he mumbled, pulling the covers tighter up against his neck, hiding his face.

"You can't fall asleep," Jet repeated, rolling on his side to face him. He wasn't getting up. This was going to be too much fun.

"No," he squeaked.

"Last time you couldn't sleep, you called me from across the ocean during a war, and now you're crawling into bed with me? Do you like me or somethin'?" He teased.

Zuko started to slip out of bed to hide in his own, but Jet caught his wrist, laughing.

"I'm kiddin'; you can stay," Not entirely sure he had meant it until it came out of his mouth, but he didn't want to pull the words back in.

"Maybe a little bit," Zuko said gently after a moment of silence. Jet kept his fingers laced around his wrist.

"What?"

"Maybe I like you a little bit," Zuko sighed.

Jet grinned and scooted closer, close enough that he slid his leg between Zuko's. The way that he inhaled flipped his stomach.

"Just a little?"

"Don't make me get up," He threatened, but made no move to walk away.

"I'd catch you anyway," He pulled Zuko's hand up closer to his face so he could kiss his wrist.

Zuko followed the motion with parted lips and wide eyes.

"I'd let you," he breathed out.

Zuko tasted sharp like mint toothpaste, and his hands were hot where they settled on Jet's shoulders, branding him. A brave tongue peeked out from behind rose lips and carefully ran across the seam of Jet's mouth. They laid side by side, bodies impatiently waiting for the right moment to come together.

"You're eager," Jet commented, fingers lazily tapping at the hollow of Zuko's throat, making his heart erratic at the casualness of the action.

"It's not every night I have you in bed, Jet," Zuko replied, running his hands over his shoulders and settling nicely on the back of his neck, ready to take a handful of hair when needed. And there would be a need for that, rest assured.

"You're many things, Zuko," Jet teased, tracing the cut of Zuko's jaw with his nose, words murmured against his fevered skin. It took every ounce of Zuko's self-control not to squirm. There was no helping him when that control broke, though.

"But of all the things you are, I never thought you'd be a thief, and a bad one at that," His chest was pressed solidly against Zuko's now, the deep rumble of his voice vibrated against him, and he couldn't think of anything better. He spoke the words so close to Zuko's ear that goosebumps erupted all over his body, eliciting an unwanted shiver.

"What do you mean?" he questioned. "I haven't stolen anything,"

Jet stilled, and Zuko mentally kicked himself. He didn't know what he said wrong, but it had been something.

"What did you say?" He pulled far enough back that he could see Zuko's face, even though it was dark in the cozy room. The pale blue light from the moon bathed him with a layer of ethereal that Zuko has never seen before.

"Uhm, that I haven't stolen anything?" He choked out, face hot. He wasn't going to hide, though, not when he was lying where he was.

"Is that so? Well, I've changed my mind, I want my shirt back,"

Zuko stared up at him; mouth popped open.

"Now, please. And close your mouth, you never know what might get in there when you keep it open," though Jet's words were commanding, his cheeks filled with color.

It was one of Jet's better-kept secrets, really. The personality he used around other people called for him to be controlling and dominant, aloof, and indifferent at all times. But it wasn't him, not really.

He hasn't been reduced to flustered blushing and butterfly assaults in his stomach since he was in his twenties. Now, there was one of the most beautiful human beings he had ever met wearing his clothes ; delicious pink lips parted leading to a glistening mouth, looking up at him with flushed cheeks and heavy golden eyes. And my god, he looked just as hungry.

Zuko sat up slowly, the sheet pooling at his waist. In one fluid, drawn-out movement, he pulled the shirt over his head and handed it to Jet.

Jet's mouth went cotton dry.

He wasn't scarred up from a childhood playing on sidewalks and basketball courts. There was no healed up keloid mark on his back from where he got shot with a pellet gun by the neighbor kid. No cooking burns on his wrists, no jut of uneven bone tented under his flesh where a rib had set wrong, no skinned elbows that Jet somehow managed to have even when he was Zuko's age, not even a bruise on his body, just the mark on his face.

Miles of smooth, pale skin, Jet wanted to touch so bad it almost hurt.

"Here," He dropped the crumpled shirt onto Jet's chest, running his hands over his now bare arms as they met the cold air.

"I didn't think your generosity would fail you so quickly," Zuko commented, still sitting up.

Jet formed words with his mouth, but he couldn't carry on this menial conversation, even though on most days, he found himself capable of talking with Zuko for hours about nothing at all. But he had nothing to say that his tongue could articulate, his vocabulary was too small to cover the big feeling in his chest that propelled his arm up and out. His warm, rough palm rested gently on Zuko's lower back. If they were strangers, this is where Jet would touch if he were trying to get past him, so it seemed like an innocent enough location to begin. His hand was dark against his satin skin, too harsh and beat to truly belong handling a porcelain doll. He moved his thumb back and forth as gently as he could.

Zuko shivered, goosebumps erupted up the lumps of his spine, tightening the skin under his touch.

Jet wanted this, everything about it, especially the words, telling him that this wasn't wrong or bad, that he wasn't alone in the heat that gobbled up his body and craved the weight of Zuko's body on top of his own.

"You have to tell me why you didn't want to sleep on the other bed and be honest. I can't just sit here until you tell me, I need to know,"

Zuko knew what he was really asking, and he sighed. It took a gust of courage and a pinch of reckless abandon to get the words out, not to mention squeezing his eyes shut.

"Because I wanted to be here, with you." It was simple; Zuko was not one for long, drawn-out speeches about feelings or motives. While some had a gift for lengthening sentences to convey, Zuko was in the department of blunt, bittersweet deliverance of information.

He turned his head and rested his chin on his naked shoulder, cheeks pink. "Was that a good enough answer?"

"Well, it was for me,"

Zuko nodded and slowly laid back down; Jet's hand still tucked away nicely in the small of his back.

He left the blankets at his waist, long, pale torso on display. A sweet hum began in his lower stomach, hungry.

"Can you say that again?" Jet's mouth hovered over Zuko's neck, waiting for the dinner bell to be rung. His pulse sang under his tongue.

"I wanted you here, with me-" he shivered as lips met his skin, Jet's tongue loving the cut of his jaw and the hollow of his throat,

"I want you." He exhaled, dangerously close to a moan.

It was the most delicious thing Jet had ever heard.

Jet devoured him.

He put on a good show of being a ladies man, but Jet could count on two hands the number of people he had sprawled out like a canvas beneath him.

They had kissed before, Jet had stood between Zuko's legs weeks ago and wondered what the rest of him tasted like, and the thunderstorm had been a prelude to this moment.

But this was fantastically different.

Zuko's hands roamed Jet's body like a musician learning a new instrument. As their mouths got to know each other better, teeth and tongues and lips, Zuko's nimble fingers gathered the hem of Jet's shirt and slid it up his back.

"Off," he sighed against his lips, the bodyguard complying by sitting upon his knees, and shucking the shirt off, tossing it into a dark corner of the room, forgotten.

Unlike Zuko, whose body was unblemished from years of indoor life, Jet was a roadmap of every indiscretion he ever lived through.

Zuko's piano fingers loved each faded bruise and old scar, found each mark on his body that hadn't healed right, and said not a word.

He also found a genuinely awful tattoo on his left pectoral. He stopped his touches and squinted at it.

"Is that the Geico lizard smoking a cigar?" Tracing his finger over the faded tat, he glanced up at Jet.

"I was stationed in North Carolina, and I was drunk. Don't you have any drunk tattoos?" He teased, waiting for a flustered response of 'Only the Blue Spirit!' But what he got was better.

"You'll have to find them if I do," Zuko replied, eyelashes dusting the tops of his cheeks that were flushed a rosy pink.

"Is that a challenge?" Jet could hardly breathe with those eyes on him like that.

"More of an invitation,"

It had been about five years since someone had been wrapped around him so tightly, fingers woven deep in his hair, legs circling his hips, mouth exhaling noises that made his blood run hot in his veins.

Zuko was a change from what he had before. It has always been a soft body with curves, long hair that got tangled around his fingers, and painted fingernails trailing up his spine.

He had never before pressed a hard body into a mattress, a person without much give and no curves, blunt fingertips biting into his shoulder and something hot and stiff against his thigh, not the other way around.

As Zuko ran his fingers through his hair and sighed softly into his mouth while Jet traced his lips with his tongue, he waited for the disgust to come tumbling through his body like half of his conscious brain thought it would. Jet ten years ago, hell, five years ago, would have balked at the thought of shamelessly kissing another man, eagerly swallowing up his quiet noises and loving the feeling of his back under his fingertips. But there was nothing, just the shivering ache of what was to come.

There were no condoms in the bedside drawer. Zuko had checked. He hadn't had the foresight to pack some, and he couldn't make himself ask Jet if he had brought any. Though the bodyguard was thoroughly enjoying himself, he could feel as much; he was scared that what was happening was a fragile little bubble they were in, and asking for such a thing would shatter it like a wine glass on concrete. That would make it real. It would make all of this real, every kiss and touch and lingering stare.

"What?" Jet asked, teeth dangerously close to biting his chest. Zuko's stomach danced at the thought.

'Huh?" He gasped out, not able to look away.

"I just lost you for a second, where'd you go? Am I going too fast?" He frowned, his body flushed and bathed in pale moonlight coming in through a crack in the shades. Just looking at him made Zuko's throat dry. He wasn't shaped like a swimsuit model; he was built like someone who owed every ounce of muscle they had to working with their hands and living in environments where they worked hard manual labor.

Zuko supposed it was the only good thing that came out of the war.

"I was uhm...actually thinking the same thing. That maybe I was going too fast for you..." Zuko cracked an awkward smile, as shy as he could get with a part of his body that was not shy in the slightest, straining out to touch him.

Jet sat back on his haunches; head cocked as he surveyed the person before him. Zuko's hair was wild from greedy fingers trying to take root in it; his pale skin was marked up with purpling bites and hard marked kisses. But his eyes, nothing could make his heart beat faster. Savage and gleaming with what he was sure could be seen in his own, but Zuko was still in there, always evaluating and calculating things at speeds that Jet could never comprehend.

Jet licked his lips, and Zuko's breath hitched in his chest as he watched, no other choice but with eyes wide.

"I think we're going at a pace that will take us exactly where we want to go," he trailed his palms over his knees and up to his thighs, all while a shivering Zuko watched until his fingers curled at his hips. "Don't you think, Zuko?" He asked, sincerely.

His skin was so hot as if he had stepped out of a fire before l next to him. Jet's thumbs stroked the cut of his stomach, and Zuko felt himself shallowly surging up.

"I think if we go any slower, I very well might scream." He responded, voice strangled and rough.

He recognized his questionable choice of wording as Jet's smile turned downright wicked.

"I think you've got it mixed up Zuko," he purred, callused hands tightening on his hips, and in one solid, strong motion, Zuko's entire body had slid a foot and a half down, his ass colliding with Jet's thighs. He let out a soft surprised noise that made his neck and face flush deeper, but Jet was hovering over him, hot breath on his neck and in his ear as he whispered, "I'll make you scream, no matter how slow we go,"

Oh fuck.

"Prove it then, take off my pants," Zuko's fevered hands smoothed over his dark skin, fingernails trailing up and down his back, Jet growled against his throat, vibrating his whole body.

Warm, calloused hands rested on his waist, long fingers curling around the elastic of his basketball shorts. Zuko lifted up his hips, and Jet slid them down past his thighs and off his body entirely. Though this was happening all under the blankets, a streak of nerves shot through the both of them.

Jet had a higher body count, but Zuko was the only one who's ever slept with a man before.

"See? Not bad," Zuko teased, which was hard to do when you're lying naked under someone who was going to devour you.

Jet lowered himself down until his chest was brushing against Zuko's, pressing him into the bed with his whole body. "No, not bad. Nothin' 'bout you is bad, Zuko."

Jet swallowed the soft moans Zuko exhaled. Zuko's parted legs grew curious and brave, bored with just laying splayed; they traveled up until they looped around Jet's waist.

"Why are you still wearing shorts?" Zuko panted, grinding himself up against Jet.

"Fuck," he growled, face buried in Zuko's neck as he involuntarily thrust back.

Something witty wanted to leave Zuko's mouth, but the feeling of Jet surging up against him, the way he didn't slam into him but swept him up into it like an ocean wave, it made every nerve in his body squirm and bask in the heat. It was exciting like he hadn't felt with anyone else.

They danced on the edge of something beautiful and something terrible, but right then, they were the only two left in the world.

Jet opened his mouth to apologize, but Zuko beat him to it. "The word sorry is not allowed in this room. If you say it once, I'll only let you watch for the rest of the night, not touch."

He had a dozen threats lurking his head, but not letting Jet touch him felt like the cruelest thing he could say.

"Deal," he ground out, teeth dragging on the side of Zuko's neck as he slowly sat up.

It was too dark to tell exactly what he was doing, but Zuko heard him shuffle for a second, then the soft sound of his pajama pants hitting the floor.

The realness of the situation struck them both as he hovered over Zuko, now that both of them were naked. Jet was on his hands and knees, palms on either side of Zuko's head, knees between Zuko's. He didn't want to say that he didn't know what he was doing, that if he weren't a man, he would be in his element. Though he didn't breathe a word of that out loud, Zuko seemed to understand all of it. With his left hand, Zuko cupped his face and kissed him gently, so sweet it made him hungry.

Slowly, he wrapped his legs around his lower back, bringing their bodies together. The noise that Jet made had Zuko grinning. It was caught between his name and a cuss, a moan and a growl and it settled over Zuko's body like a weighted blanket, giving him courage. He craved to know what other sounds he could make him utter.

Zuko was hot, everything about him was burning and boiling and sweltering, his lips on Jet's mouth, his hands by his shoulders, the delicious heat of their bodies touching but not yet moving, holding perfectly still.

A brave hand slid between their bodies, loving the way Jet's body shivered at the touch. He still had yet to move, on his hands and knees, hovering over Zuko, scared that the already burning coil around his spine would ruin the fun too early if he moved.

As Zuko wrapped his fingers around him, a clear and growling "Fuck," was said against his shoulder as his head dropped to it.

"Yes, Jet," Zuko whispered back, sliding his curled hand up and down, tortuously slow. "I'm working on it,"

Jet chuffed out half a laugh against his skin.

Zuko pressed himself tighter against him and slowly started shallowly thrusting his hips.

Neither was ready for anything more in-depth that night, supplies and bravery were lacking in that department. But that didn't stop them from this tangled sheet masterpiece of messy kisses and sharp gasps as they slid against each other, rolling their hips against each other's, reveling in the wash of feeling that splashed over them with each movement. Feeling Jet's lips moving in random patterns and hearing panted Spanish in his ear, Zuko felt the need to raise questions.

"Are you praying?" Zuko asked, and in Jet's opinion, he had no business looking the way he did. Pale body flushed, hair wild and eyes gleaming, with each soft snap of Jet's hips, his whole body rocked with him, sliding him up and down on the white sheets.

"Yes," he whispered, knowing anything louder would have come out a groan.

"Why?" He marveled, lip catching between his teeth as Jet changed their position. No longer where his legs around the marine's waist, but flat on the bed, spread wide while he shamelessly rutted against him. He slid a rough hand under Zuko's lower back and changed the angle of his hips, an action that elicited a low moan from his clenched jaw.

"I'm apologizin',"

"For what?"

"Whoever changes these sheets is gonna need a raise,"

Zuko laughed until Jet swallowed the sound, crushing their mouths together, his body never ceasing to move.

It had been too long for Jet, and he knew it would cut his ministrations shorter than he wanted, but from the glassy eyes, open-mouthed panting happening from Zuko underneath him, he knew his end would be a shared thing.

Zuko's hands scoured his body, finding a spot on the backs of his thighs, pulling Jet against faster and harder.

He fought with himself for a second, but for reasons, he never thought. Do I kiss him or watch his face?

He pulled far enough away from Zuko's face to get a good look at it, and just watching his face almost pushed him over the edge. Eyes barely shut and fluttering with every thrust, head tilted back and mouth open.

Balancing on the one hand, he slipped the other between their feverish bodies and curled his fingers around both of them.

With his newfound grip, he snapped his hips against Zuko's, letting him set the pace with his hands at the backs of his thighs, fingers biting his flesh in a way that only felt good right then.

From the way he pushed and pulled, Jet thought for a fleeting second that he might not be able to keep up with him, but Zuko didn't seem to notice.

The moans coming out of him were pretty much just a continuous, a low hum that bounced with every surge against him.

Jet heard his name leave his lips twice, once as a warning and the other significantly louder. Zuko's back arched, hands abandoning his legs and holding on to Jet's shoulders as he cried out gruffly, hardly above a whisper.

Jet was right for wanting to watch. It was art if he ever saw it.

Hearing his name gasping on Zuko's breath did him in. He shuddered long and hard, riding out the tremendous waves with slow hips and murmured words.

He collapsed on the bed, not all of him missing Zuko, his shoulder coming to rest atop his.

Both of them rolled over to face each other, bodies intertwined, and eyes locked. They floated in their little bliss bubble for a few minutes before Zuko finally whispered, "Hello,"

"Hey," Jet grinned, slow and lazy.

"I'm sticky," Zuko observed.

"Huh, wonder why,"

Zuko dreamily ran his fingers through Jet's hair, so uncharacteristically affectionate that it was melting Jet's heart.

"You don't remember?" he teased "Do you want an exact scribe of what happened? Every sultry detail?"

"Of course," he purred. Zuko squirmed out of his hold and pulled back the covers to get out.

"Then," He leaned over Jet's reclined position and, in one quick movement, licked his stomach from navel all the way downward. "Write one yourself," he grinned as Jet jerked against his touch.

He didn't bother with pants before walking to the bathroom.

For one selfish, despicable minute, Jet was thankful that they had been driven to Canada. As the shower started and he was too spent to even move, he allowed himself one minute to enjoy the way everything had played out, leading up until this moment, this finalizing knot in the frayed rope it had all been.

They very well can't ignore each other now.