Broh Week, Day Three – 'Devotion'

A/N: This may be somewhat incoherent due to the fact that GypsyxBells and my brother Thomas are playing Brawl next to me and my dad is in the room and the scene implies that smut happened, which is always hard. I should probably edit it, and stuff…yeah, about that…

'I wasn't expecting you to be so inexperienced,' Bolin said candidly.

'Yes, well,' Iroh said, too contented and too used to Bolin's way of talking to be terribly embarrassed, 'when one is only allowed to consort with certain state-approved people and everything in the bedroom is furnished exactly as one likes it so that there's no excuse to not be in the mood and everybody has high expectations of one because one is a prince and one has a thousand and one other things to be doing anyway…I suppose it's fair to say that I never really got into it.'

'Hmph, fair enough,' Bolin said. His thick eyebrows quirked and Iroh felt a sudden, irrational rush of love for him. He curled closer to Bolin in the narrow bed, and Bolin wrapped an arm around him and pulled the sheet up over his shoulders. No palace concubine would have bothered to do that.

'I wasn't expecting you to be so experienced,' Iroh said.

'Well, when no-one cares who you consort with and you're used to roughing it and nobody expects anything of you and there's nothing better to do…' Bolin said with a sort of lying-down shrug. Iroh chuckled. 'Plus, you know, I am a Fire Ferret.'

'Of course. Best pro-bending team in Republic City.'

'A lot of girls like Mako, you know, but they're too scared to talk to him so they come chat to me instead. I'm told I'm easy to talk to. They like to tell me their problems.'

'Wow. What kind of problems do girls have?'

'Mostly that they're frightened to talk to boys they like,' Bolin said, laughing. 'But, you know, often they find they like me after all.' He grinned modestly. 'Or maybe I'm just a substitute, I don't know.'

'I – not to me – Mako, I never even…' Iroh said, floundering. That statement was so quietly tragic that it seemed to require some response, but he had a suspicion that he was just digging himself into a verbal hole.

'What I'm trying to say,' he said slowly and clearly, looking into Bolin's green eyes. 'Is that, for me…you're not…' He blinked. 'What were we talking about again?'

'Your absolute devotion to me and only me,' Bolin beamed, pulling him into a bear-hug. It wasn't the kind of hug you could wriggle out of.

Iroh had had his share of physical encounters, but he had no experience when it came to devotion.

A/N: I edited a teensy bit! Be proud of me!