AN: I'm replacing the sneak peek at my HG AU with an actual prompt/oneshot. I reposted it on my Tumblr just in case anyone wants to read it again, but next Saturday the excerpt is going to be included in Chapter Three of the fic. I'd rather use this slot in the limited space for original content that's not posted in the first chapters of another one of my fics.
(Theme Eighty-Seven) Daiquiris
(As Prompted By) Distracted by Lemons
The water is cold but the girl in it is hot.
Azula does not hide the fact she is staring from the searing volcanic sand, and Ty Lee does not hide the fact that she is reveling in the lascivious gaze of the princess. Because she is on this insanely beautiful beach having an insane amount of fun with a completely insane war criminal on an insane vacation to an isle of exile.
Azula loves the sun but she hates the salt in the air. Flowers grow everywhere and she is fairly certain that ZuZu must have hired an entire staff of gardeners to try to distract her from the ugliness of her situation. Because how can she be unhappy with a huge window looking out over the sea and flowers everywhere. Ugh.
Ty Lee loves the cold water against her skin, loves the sun that she can feel scorching her skin and making her hair burn so hot it heats her bare shoulders.
"Stop going out of my line of sight! It is completely inappropriate!"
"And what's appropriate about that request?" Ty Lee giggles and Azula cocks an eyebrow.
She claps her hands on her lower abdomen and haughtily sighs. "You have a perverse mind. I am simply afraid that you will drown."
"Riiiiight." Ty Lee snorts very unattractively but Azula still thinks she is very, very attractive.
Azula sighs again, this time more dramatically. "You are the best addition to my morale that there has ever been. I hate this island, but you make it so bearable by looking pretty and walking around half dressed."
"Thank you," because Ty Lee knows that Azula probably has real feelings and wants to cover them up with such a thing.
Of course It was not the flattering comment that Azula thought it was. But there are certain things about people that you just have to accept because you can't change them; those things like having to live with . Ty Lee brushes seaweed off of her arm and sighs about that fact of life.
She does attempt to explain in her sweetest voice, "I know, but it's still not a good compliment. I'm not a morale heightener even though I want you to be happy. I am a competent warrior and my fantastic assets have nothing to do with it."
Azula smirks, undeterred by Ty Lee's clear frustration. Her muscles are tense, visible through her dripping and exposed skin. And Azula purrs, "There's nothing wrong with that at all. There was absolutely no other reason for me allowing you into my elite team other than your fantastic assets. In all senses of that term, of course. Don't look at me like that."
"Don't lie like that. It's not cute." Ty Lee pouts and bats her eyelashes and Azula wonders what ever made Ty Lee think that such facial expressions were hot.
"Oh, but my pitiful situation is so ugly. Don't I deserve to look at pretty things?" Azula turns up her palm with an innocent shrug and Ty Lee sinks into the frigid water.
"I accept your compliment," Ty Lee states, cool water lapping into her mouth as she forces herself to say it.
"You only accept it? That's it?" Azula leans back and watches the sun disappear behind the clouds."You have hassled me to no end, and I at last relented, through great effort and a clear display of my affections, to give you compliments."
Azula reclines now on her throne built of scrubbed rock and Ty Lee's cute new vacation clothes, lying down as if she is about to take a cat nap. Ty Lee looks at her and thinks it is the sexiest, most romantic thing ever... and she really wishes she did not think that way.
Ty Lee splashes at the water with her hands. "Mmmm, but all of your compliments are about how I look, or how much you want to sleep with me."
"I give you an inch and you try to take a mile. This is what happens when the world loses its respect for monarchy..." Azula sighs too regally and for too long.
With a short sigh Azula pretends not to hear, Ty Lee sinks under the ocean, further, until Azula's mellifluous rant that is meant solely as misdirection is just hums and vibrations above the surface.
Ty Lee swims a little further, but whenever she nears the edges of Azula's beautiful prison without bars, she feels a surge of panic, as if she is going to fall off the side of the world or get stabbed and arrested. She resurfaces, gasps for breath and drifts nearer to the shore.
"When have you ever given me a compliment that wasn't sexual or...?" Azula trails off as she remembers the fact that Ty Lee has complimented ─ "You have given me so many compliments about everything that they do not even count anymore. I bet if I threw my drink into your face you would, I don't know, compliment my aim." Pause. "Not that you shouldn't..."
Azula is so deep in thought about that suggestion that Ty Lee takes another deep breath and delves beneath the surface. She forces herself to open her eyes, ignoring the stinging; it isn't nearly as bad as Kyoshi Island and she used to have to swim there every morning as a training exercise.
But then she sees a fish, and the air escapes from her lungs in one gasp of horror. She pushes off with her feet, leaps to the surface, feels its slime touch her, and starts running as fast as she can, half-supporting herself with her hands as she dashes so quickly to Azula's eternal hell-soaked lair and slides across the beach, falling flat on her face.
Azula makes a yelping sound and Ty Lee looks up, blinking sand out of her protuberant eyes.
"Did I scare you?"
Pause. "You knocked over my drink into the sand."
Ty Lee closes her eyes again. "I'm going to take a nap. I'm just going to take a nap right now, right here," she mutters into the sand, pretending she doesn't know that Azula can hear her.
"That drink was very important to me Ty Lee and you have ruined it." Silence. Azula jabs her sort-of-girlfriend in the ribs with her bare toe and Ty Lee squeaks.
"What do you use those for? Climbing trees?" She rubs her ribcage and rolls over onto her back.
"There are no trees on this island. This might as well be the Boiling Rock if it decided to remodel and become postcard friendly."
"You live in a beach mansion. With an entire staff. And the ability to guilt trip Zuko into literally anything."
"Yes and I just recently guilt tripped him into buying me a fancy drink slave."
"A chef who knows how to mix those frozen berry things?"
"A fancy drink slave, Ty Lee. I know what I'm talking about."
"Of course, princess. You know I'm not that smart."
"I do. I had just used the normal you are just like our father, you monster act or whatever to get a fucking daiquiri to make this beach slightly more bearable, and you have knocked it into the sand to be devoured by sea creatures."
"I don't think sea creatures like daiquiris. Oh!" Ty Lee's face lights up so brightly that Azula has to fight hard not to smile back at her. Why is this woman so abysmally cute? "Oh, imagine though if a little sea animal like, uh, uh, huh, like a... sunfish drank it and got drunk. What would happen if you got a sunfish drunk?"
Azula is torn into two pieces. She could tell Ty Lee that there were a thousand easy sea creatures who actually scavenge on land, or that sunfish probably can't get drunk, or she could kiss her on the mouth. They both would make the situation the same level of less terrible, and so Azula forces her lips tightly against Ty Lee's.
"You taste like sand and ocean. I hate the ocean. Have you smelled the ocean? It must be home to a thousand corpses and fish fu─"
"Stop whining and I'll make you another daiquiri. And clip your toenails." Ty Lee stands up with a tiny squawk of unpredicted levels of exertion. She wipes as much of the sand off of herself as she can, and fails. Then she moves to wipe it off with her tongue before she realizes she has just put more sand into her mouth, and it tastes faintly like berry tea and sunny Ember Island days.
"I don't believe I can walk now."
"I'm the one who fell?"
"I am emotionally devastated by losing my drink and almost losing you." Azula lies further back onto her perch. "I cannot physically bear to stand up and face the cruel world without having a nervous breakdown."
"Those are my cute vacation clothes. I bought them for this trip."
"Why? Who do you have to impress out here?"
Ty Lee's lip twitches as she faintly mouths you before loudly interrupting, "Your fancy drink slave, of course. We're having an affair. That's how I learned to mix daiquiris."
Azula wordlessly extends her arms to be carried.
AN: If you write Tyzula (or read it, or like it at all) holmesfreak1412 and I have made a Tyzula Forum for discussing headcanons, suggesting prompts, reccing or self-plugging fics, creating Tyzula contests and generally discussing fun Tyzula things. I have no idea what I'm doing since I've never really done forums on here before, but if it piques your interest it's called The Tyzula Renaissance Forum.
