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You're built to fall (beautiful)

Summary:

Jet's not supposed to be here, but when he's laying in bed late at night listening to the ocean wind and waves, hearing the kids shift around in their rooms in a similar state of unrest, he can't actually think of himself being anywhere else.

Notes:

First!!! This is a moving-birthday gift for Freck, who's been surviving & succeeding through some stress recently, who is an amazing and dear new friend of mine, who I felt deserved something nice this month. They gave me some brain vomit for a prompt and I ran with it >;3 ily m'dear! You're going far! (literally & figuratively) <3

Second, the fic title comes from a song (of course, as expected, I know). However, it's actually got very little to do with the song itself, and more with the memory I have of when I first heard it. It came on over the radio in my car, on my way to see my younger sister, and while I was more distracted with not missing my turn, I misheard the chorus of "You're built to fall," as "You're beautiful." Once parked, I looked up the song proper & realized the difference, but the moment has stuck with me for months now, and I finally have a chance to use it here!

I've long been torn between "You're built to fall (beautiful)" and "You're beautiful (built to fall)" because such a simple swap has such a BIG impact on how the phrase can be taken- a meaning that's heading in opposite directions. So, in a blindfold-coin toss sort of way, I asked Freck to pick either one or two, and here we are :3 Enjoy~

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Work Text:

Once, Jet didn’t know any other sound of water but rain.  Then, for a while, he could only hear the rushing roar of a river, frothing full, whenever he closed his eyes.  Now, the hissing waves on sand and crashing against black-wet rocks are a near constant accompaniment.  He wishes he’d had a choice. 

-

“Get up!” Jet calls, pitching his voice to carry down a wood floor hall, under door cracks and into off-white walled rooms.  “Last warning then you’re getting the water!”

The large teal cup is already half filled on the sink, left over from his bedside routine that he rarely ever ends up using save for the one night the cup is empty when he wants water most.  He doesn’t know why he doesn’t just leave it in his room, except for how the water starts to taste funny if he reuses the cup for more than a week.  He refills it every night, having drunk to the bottom finally sometime during the day.  All that water outside the house, and yet his mind can’t let go that it’s a waste to pour a cup down the sink.  

A discordant chorus of voices answers his threat, a staccato of feet meeting wooden floor at reluctant paces, scrapes and squeals of wooden dressers and drawers opening and closing, and then a finale of the one door that always sticks in its sea-salt warped frame jerking open. 

“Morning,” Jet greets Longshot as he emerges first, also without shoes.  He frowns as he reaches out and takes an offered pale pink half-sheet of paper, dark brown eyes dropping to the text as Longshot takes a seat at the table and starts pulling together pieces of a meal from the array set out in organized chaos. 

Reading, Jet clucks his tongue against his teeth and returns to the kitchen.  He reaches up to the cabinets lining the wall above eye level, knowing there’s a blue pen in the far most right one with a stack of complimentary stationary note pads collected from months of having their address on a fundraiser list somewhere.  Putting the cap on the end of the pen, he scrawls his legal name in illegible cursive on the appropriate line on the pink paper.  At the same time, he can hear Smellerbee shriek and slam a hand into a hollow wall for balance.

“Jet, Zuko left water on the floor again!”

“Then why’re you yelling at me?” Jet yells back, straightening up and sliding the pen back into the cabinet before shutting its door. 

Longshot takes the permission slip back with a nod of thanks, chewing calmly on a fried pancake when Smellerbee thunders into the room. 

Because you’re the one who keeps inviting him over!” She exclaims, her own dark pair of brown eyes jumping around the kitchen, dining, and living rooms absent of another person.  Her fuming gleans a disappointed edge. 

“He left early,” Jet confirms for her consolingly.  “He’ll be back later.”

“He always is,” Smellerbee mutters crossly, then slumps into a seat and sullenly starts peeling a soft-boiled egg of its shell.  

Jet sticks the bowl of yellow rice at her elbow as a hint to balance her meal out and lifts his face back towards the hall.  “You’re getting the water!”

“We’re up!” Pipsqueak hollers back, deep timbre rattling the picture frames on the dining room wall, some of which that still have the generic store images inside the glass as a joke that’s grown outside its original lifetime. 

Sneers precedes The Duke into the morning routine next, but only for the time it takes for The Duke to squeeze around the much larger boy as soon as the hall opens into a room proper. 

“Nuh uh ah,” Jet denies with the words mostly said in his throat, catching The Duke by the collar of a wrinkled yellow dress shirt.  “Go change.”

“Jet,” The eleven year old whines, round face now down in the mostly unbuttoned vee of the shirt from where Jet holds him scruffed.  “I’m presenting my project today!”

Jet considers this and then decides there’s nothing else imminently formal anyway.  He releases The Duke to a cheer, but keeps the kid from running off again in order to kneel down on one leg.  He straightens out the collar and cuffs, buttoning up the dress shirt properly.  He’ll let The Duke borrow his tie for the day, just for effect.  He stands up and ruffles perpetually unbrushed brown hair as The Duke darts for the table of food.

Pipsqueak clunks at last out of the bedroom he shares with their youngest, rubbing one meaty hand into his eye and navigating carefully to the last open chair. 

Jet casts his eyes over his collection of charges, satisfied.  He takes the teal cup of half filled water back to his bedroom to retrieve the tie for The Duke.  He’ll try leaving the cup in his room today. 

-

“Oh, hey,” Jet notices, shrugging the cardboard box down off his shoulder, the clear tape sticking to his bare skin briefly before he sets the box down on the heat cracked sidewalk.  “How’s your fiancé?”

“Fine,” Mai states flatly, and her gaze gleams like a hawk sighting prey.  “How’s your boyfriend?”

“Fine,” Jet returns with a quirk of his mouth, straightening from relieving himself of the package’s weight.  “Leaving water in the hall, as usual.”

“Wouldn’t know the problem,” Mai dismisses, and for her, the joke there is hysterical. 

Jet indulges them both with a laugh, rusty in his chest and rattling in his throat.  “No, I guess not,” He agrees.

Mai’s hazel myriad gaze warms incrementally.  “Slow day?”

“Yeah,” Jet affirms, putting his hands on his hips and leaning back to pop his back.

The market isn’t so busy today.  It rarely is on an early Friday mid-morning, when ordinary people with more rigid schedules are already squared away in their workplaces and kids are trapped in school.  Jet works all over the place, a man of many talents but no masteries; hands capable of delicacy as much as force, but a restless mind keeping his feet moving.  He’s fortunate that he has a reputation of reliability in a small town where everybody always needs something done, otherwise his habits wouldn’t pay for much of anything.  The only job he’s ever kept since the start is being the mail carrier for a sprawling town that only really has one functioning road. 

Mai hums a short note and leaves it at that.  She’s never been one to carry a conversation.  She’s wearing red today, again, as usual.  Layers of translucent maroon and opaque black, with wide sleeves and pants legs but fitted on her hips and ribs.  Her collar is touching her jawline.  The constant ocean breeze tugs at her clothes and twin waterfalls of glossy pitch hair, lending her a liquid illusion that Jet knows probably isn’t as accurate as the real thing.

Jet looks at her and marvels that a beautiful woman who shares so many of Zuko’s physical qualities does nothing further for him than idle appreciation.  The two as people are too separate in his mind.  The overlap is there, but never within his reach.

“You wanna get lunch later?” Jet offers her.  “Ty Lee’s been trying to make bruschetta the past week.  She keeps adding too much basil.”

Mai’s smile is a ghost on her face, where it would strain the cheeks on anyone else but her.  “I would like that.”

-

Pavement left behind an hour and forty two minutes ago, Jet’s palm sweat has warped the white envelopes wrapped in a rubber band, despite the number of times he’s wiped his hands on his sleeveless purple shirt.  He’s always been brown, muddled between nations and never knowing which way was supposed to be home, but countless days out under the sun has made his skin rich in a way his wallet has never been.  His tattoos, colors faded from time, are now pictured closer to grayscale.  He likes them still either way. 

Gravel crunches and loose pebbles slide under rubber soles, and the last house on his mail route is made more out of glass than stone as the highest occupation above sea level.  Jet’s house is the opposite, for necessity on the high wind swept cliffs where the lighthouse stands, now useless and unoccupied save for his family in the attached squat house.  He doesn’t know its history past what the realtor tried to sell him, and he still doesn’t particularly care except for that he’s not responsible for it beyond maintaining its upkeep for an extra storage space.  It was European, once. 

Jet’s pretty sure the last house on his mail route was built by a European, too, but much more recently than the old lighthouse.  It’s modern shaped, with the jutting angles and black paint he’s seen on the faces of magazines in dentist waiting rooms.  He’s heard it used to be a vacation home for some wealthy white person, before the humidity drove them to sell the place as undesirable.  Now, it’s just the recluse of an old hermit named Jeong Jeong. 

It’s a weird juxtaposition- this house, Jeong Jeong, and the amount of mail he consistently gets every couple weeks.  This modern house of expensive black paint and storm strong glass windows, and the reclusive mannerisms of a man who only comes into town for groceries when it seems like he’d starve otherwise, and the number of different names Jet sees on the letters he delivers.  For all the months he’s spent living here in this sprawling town on this pear shaped island, Jet’s rarely exchanged more than a handful of acknowledging words with Jeong Jeong.  Their disinterest is mutual. 

Jeong Jeong is nowhere in sight to hand the rubber band wrapped sweat warped envelopes to directly, so Jet opens the creaky lid of a steel box on the wall beside the opaque glass front door and sticks the mail inside before shutting it.  Task thus finished, he turns about and begins the long trek back.  He’s walked maybe seven minutes when he thinks he hears the faint lilt of his name on the wind.  There’s no one ahead, so he turns back towards Jeong Jeong’s house, thinking he hadn’t known the old man even knew his name.

Jeong Jeong’s white cloud of hair is there at the side of his dissimilar house, but it’s another figure that pulls Jet’s eyes for the blacks and reds they wear.  Jet blinks in surprise, lifting a hand in a motionless wave to show that he’ll wait in place for Zuko to catch up to him.  He hadn’t known Zuko was heading up this morning when he’d left; not down.  He hadn’t known Zuko and Jeong Jeong knew each other.  He hasn’t the faintest idea what connects them either. 

Running downhill, it only takes Zuko two or three minutes to catch up compared to Jet’s original walking seven.  Only a little breathless as he slows, Zuko smiles brightly enough to crinkle the corners of his sunlit honey eyes.  Jet feels his face reflexively respond, warmed that just seeing him again has earned such a response from the boyfriend he saw just a few hours ago this morning. 

“I saw your fiancée in town earlier,” Jet informs Zuko as his face is framed by callous patterned palms.  “We had lunch at Ty Lee’s.”

Zuko scrunches his nose slightly, waiting only until Jet has finished talking before he delivers the kiss regardless.  His lips are dry and he smells like sweat and smoke.  Jet wrinkles his nose as well once Zuko pulls back from his greeting, more curious than before.

“It’s always ‘your boyfriend’ this and ‘your fiancé’ that with you two,” Zuko complains, trailing his heated palms down from cheeks to neck to bare shoulders, down tattooed arms and curling with similarly rough skinned fingers.  His hair, equal in shade and length as Mai’s, is braided now but wisps of it still tangle in the wind. 

“It adds to the drama,” Jet explains, marveling anew that such a beautiful man deigns to call himself his.  “You look good today.”

Zuko smiles again, wide enough to show the additional pair of white canines usually hidden under the corners of his lips when speaking.  “You said that this morning.”

“It’s still true,” Jet asserts, loosing one hand but keeping hold of the other.  “I didn’t know you came up this far.”

“Jeong Jeong’s the teacher I’ve told you about,” Zuko offers in explanation, following the cue to resume the walk back down the winding mountainous path of gravel and loose pebbles.  “I didn’t realize you came up this far.”

“I’ve told you I run the mail around,” Jet reminds, mentally adjusting all his recalled memories of the times Zuko mentioned ‘my teacher’ in his stories.  It doesn’t make much of a difference.  He still doesn’t know Jeong Jeong much at all, but at least there’s now a name and face he can picture when Zuko says that from now on. 

Zuko shrugs, past the point of caring about this unexpected correspondence and its technicalities about why they hadn’t known this detail about the other.  Jet doesn’t care much either since it doesn’t actually affect him, but there is one detail that he’d like to have confirmed here.

“Does he know about you?”

Zuko nods, a little surprisingly and then not.  “It’s why he’s my teacher,” He elaborates.  “Walking up this far to meet him is part of the exercise.”

Jet frowns lightly, stopping short and pulling Zuko around to face him again.  He looks closer, past the flawed beauty of his boyfriend’s regal yet scarred features and seeking out the more minute imperfections that hint at a more blatant irregularity.  He pulls at the loose jaw-high collar and it comes apart easily.  Underneath sweat damp merlot fabric, the slits of skin flare in time to Zuko’s still audible breathing of recent exertion.  That’s ordinary enough, so what’s telling is the darkened color surrounding them.

“You haven’t been back to the sea yet,” Jet realizes, eyes lifting to meet Zuko’s watchful, patient stare.  “Is that safe?”

“It’s part of the exercise,” His boyfriend reinstates, not answering the question.  “Building up a tolerance, pushing the limit, and holding the shape for longer without needing to return to the sea every day.”

Jet doesn’t fully understand this aspect of Zuko.  He likely never will, being merely human, but he doesn’t like this proposed idea of extended exercise at pretending to be one.  It worries him.  The ‘what ifs’ of fictional stories are one slip away from becoming an unfortunate reality.  A thought occurs to him.

“Is Jeong Jeong-?”

“No,” Zuko answers this one quickly and effortlessly, preceding the point even.  “He’s like you.  He’s just the one who taught my uncle how to walk on land, so he’s someone we trust.  Mai comes up here sometimes, too.”

Ah yes, Zuko’s uncle, Molten Lord of the Black Trench, King Under the Emerald Sea, and all those other fancy titles that Zuko will eventually inherit as his heir.  Zuko already disparages the titles he does have- the Reborn Prince, the Redeemer of Tarnished Throne, and the one he hates most of all, the Scalded Scale of Agni’s Blood.  Uncle Iroh, the one who permits and encourages his nephew to walk the land of men to have worldly experience before Zuko eventually assumes the throne with Mai as his queen. 

Jet wonders if Zuko’s uncle knows that his nephew has a salt-blooded fiancée and a human boyfriend.  He doesn’t particularly care to ask.  That part of Zuko’s life will never surface for him to meet, and Jet will never descend to see the Black Trench.  He’s neither jealous nor envious of either those facts or Mai’s relationship with Zuko.  Theirs is a political convenience, a preference of an old friendship rather than suffer an affectionless marriage to another.  Zuko and Mai are dear and old friends, but it is not each other that bring them the greater happiness.  Of this much, Jet has never doubted. 

He trails his finger lower from the open vee of Zuko’s high collar into the dip of his throat and watches the skin pebble with a shiver; not with human gooseflesh but with the overlapping pattern of tiny, intricate scales.  The response and difference equally fascinates him still.  They’re still flesh colored and supple to the touch, but when Jet runs his nail in the opposite direction, he can feel them catch and resist.  Zuko’s hand closes over his.

“Quit,” Zuko admonishes, rolling his shoulders.  The appearance of scales smoothes away to nothing, but the fluttering discolored slits in his neck remain. 

Jet smiles, unrepentant to the scolding.  “Why do you smell like smoke?  What were you practicing?”

“Heat manipulation,” Zuko explains, gesturing with his free hand to nothing in particular but including all the humid green jungle.  “Everything burns so much more easily up here.”

“Don’t gotta tell me that,” Jet says agreeably, remembering too many uncontrolled wild fires on the international news.  He supposes the practice makes sense.  The Black Trench has hydrothermal vents.  Water has a boiling point, but in the air, most things either melt or catch fire with enough heat or the right spark.  Either underwater or on the surface, Zuko can provide or withdraw that heat regardless.  Jet’s had the experience of both.

They resume walking down the winding gravel path.  Zuko’s fingers return between Jet’s once he’s closed the merlot collar over his throat again.  Jet’s phone rings, surprising for its rarity and the spotty satellite reception.  Zuko startles next to him as well, more for the sudden noise than because it rang at all.  For all the time he’s spent on land, most technology remains bizarre and unexpected to him.  Jet digs out the smartphone from his back pocket, answering and lifting it to his ear with his free hand. 

It’s not a conversation he was expecting to hear today, but neither is it an unheard one.

-

“That’s absurd.”

Unfortunately, Poppy Beifong’s perfectly crafted plaintive voice is the first Jet hears when he finds the right room in the weakly air conditioned school.  He’d been directed to head straight in by the weary receptionist who’s been overhearing the whole spiel since the start.  On the way past, Jet had made deliberate eye contact with Smellerbee and none at all with Toph, both girls sitting outside in the hall with matching scrapes, bruises, and expressions transitioning from mischief to grudging regret. 

“Toph would never engage in such-!”

“Ah, Mister Foster, thank you for coming,” Principal Magellan eagerly greets Jet into the office, gesturing to an empty seat where three are arrayed before his desk, one already taken by the Beifong mother. 

As ever, Jet’s surname sounds strange to his ears, stupidly typecast, and colonized.  He’d rather not go into the whole history of ‘Fausto’ being miswritten ages past until eventually a father he never knew could only be called ‘Foster’ instead on his documents. 

“Just call me Jet,” He reintroduces himself for the countless time to Principal Magellan, and will very likely do so again.  He doubts the man has ever cared to remember anyone’s names for longer than a handful of weeks. 

“As I was saying,” Poppy Beifong reasserts herself primly, a soft slim hand held plaintively to her chest covered in sage green silk.  “My daughter would never engage in something so disorderly and brutish as a fight.”

Jet crudely snorts, slouching in the wooden armed chair and linking his fingers together over his lower ribs, irreverent of the feeble formality of this meeting and its fellow participants.  He knows Toph better than the mother knows her daughter.  Toph is often up at their lighthouse, an equal instigator if not greater than Smellerbee’s talent at finding places normally restricted to a pair of fifteen year old girls. 

Poppy serves him a glance that she’d deliver onto an insect or an employee that hadn’t scrubbed her floors enough to see the reflections from.  Jet knows what she thinks of him, and his opinion of her wealthy status isn’t better.  Their distaste is mutual, but Jet’s not here for the Beifongs.  He’s here for the principal to tell him whether Smellerbee’s suspended again or whatever else the productive-member-of-society will dictate as recompense for the disruption to his orderly school.  Jet’s missing a shift at Ogo’s restaurant for this arbitrary nonsense. 

“Ah, yes.  Be that as it may,” Principal Magellan says quietly, a bent stalk of a dandelion weed to the claims of the island’s wealthiest family.  “Our rules are clear and I’m afraid the evidence against Miss Beifong is also transparent.”

He’s trying to sound intelligent, clever to use synonyms, but he misses the mark and meaning.  He needed to say opaque or any of its synonyms instead, but he’s an administrator and politician first and an instructor never.  Jet’s the only one in the room who caught that Magellan just implied that the evidence against Toph is closer to invisible than obvious.  Obviously, Jet holds his tongue on the correction.  He wants to get out of here sooner than a half hour.  Ogo might let him work later to make up for the missed time if he’s not over an hour late.

Poppy is, of course, offended that her darling daughter- a fabrication that lives only in the head of a mother too stubborn to see- could be convicted of anything other than perfect ladylike behavior.  Jet doesn’t know how deeply the woman clings to this illusion since (as far as he’s been told) Toph quit pretending to be helpless and fragile when she was twelve years old.  Blindness runs in the family.  It’s not Jet’s problem, until the rare moments of hand-tied bureaucracy force him to interact with the wealthy and entitled. 

The dandelion weed of a principal manages to nearly look stern, knobby knuckles crossed atop an imported oak desk with a wet sunlit sheen of sweat on his red tinted forehead.  His charcoal suit and fuchsia tie do him no favors in an office with a closed dust caked window and a three-blade ceiling fan lazily chopping warm air in wobbly circles.  In a striking moment of sincerity, Jet’s glad that he doesn’t share the man’s profession.

“Miss Beifong and Miss Foster are both-”

“Her last name is Villanueva,” Jet corrects, his tone flat and his expression unimpressed as Magellan falters and reflexively checks the manila folders on his desk.  “We’re not related.”

“I should hope not,” Poppy murmurs and straightens her white skirt across her knees with nails painted in matching sage green and white lines.  “You’re hardly old enough to be raising children.”

Jet bares his teeth in a facsimile of politeness.  Single father of none, yet the sole legally responsible adult for five younger teenagers.  They’re his because he took them when he left the orphanage at sixteen, and no one had stopped him.  The coastlines of the continent and several islands later, and still no one has ever tried to take them back.  No one cares about them.  No one but him.

“Miss Beifong and Miss Vianuevo are both suspended for three days for fighting as per our zero tolerance policy,” Principal Magellan finishes hurriedly with a butchering of Smellerbee’s legal surname, but this time Jet doesn’t try to correct a man who’ll forget both their names entirely in less than a week anyway. 

Poppy dabs an expensive handkerchief at her crocodile tears, insistent on her daughter’s purity of character, but Jet has heard all that he needs to and gets up without another word.  He closes the office door not very gently in his wake, startling the receptionist in a clatter as her pen drops onto her smaller, tin-like desk that’s half in the hall.  Jet smiles a tight apology but says nothing.  He gestures for Smellerbee to follow and she gets up, grabbing her bag in one hand and murmuring quickly, secretively to Toph who unfortunately still has to suffer her mother’s whining for longer still. 

Smellerbee’s sneakers squeak on the faded linoleum floor as she follows Jet’s heavier boot treads in silence, until they’re outside in the sun.  “Sorry, Jet,” She offers then, quiet in that guilty way she gets once she’s realized that her moment of fun has cost Jet a shift of work, money for meals, running water, electricity, and time.

He doesn’t tell her not to worry about it.  He doesn’t ask if she won the fight.  He knows she’ll worry regardless and he already knows she definitely won the fight.  He’s not proud but he’s not going to scold her either.  He’s not her parent.  He’s just the only thing she has left. 

She follows him to work and sits at a blue laminated table in the shade of a faded red umbrella, doing her homework with a borrowed pen from Jet’s work apron because Ogo can sometimes be a pushover and was convinced to let Jet work his afternoon shift after all. 

-

Predictably, Zuko is still damp when he crawls into Jet’s bed that night.  He brings the strong smell of the ocean with him, the wind flapping the dust-gray drapes by the open window he crawled through first.  In the dark, he’s still spines and sharp edges, slowly smoothing to something mimicking mankind again, but lingering enough to prick Jet’s palms and fingertips with the barbs of inherent animalistic threat. 

Zuko makes a discontent noise in his throat when he steals the large teal cup off the bedside table.  It’s empty, because of course it is.  Jet hardly remembers when he drank it all, but he laughs anyway.

-

Laundry is full of sand and loose change, and Jet has lost count of the times he’s had to yank the back off the washing machine to figure out why it rattles like a death metal drummer on the gentle cycle.  Sneers drags the white plastic basket of wet sheets to the line outside, a new package of clothespins pinned in one armpit because they’re always losing the old ones to the yard and lawnmower consecutively. 

It’s early enough- a Saturday of no consequence or obligation just yet.  His kids are scattered, with Sneers off to find his girlfriend once all the sheets are pinned to the line.  Jet’s stuck at the house again, still fighting a failing war of upkeep on a place determined to be worn away by time and wind.  It’s this or worse, and Jet’s had enough of the latter.  This isn’t so bad, if he can hold it together for a while longer.  Just long enough until Pipsqueak and Sneers turn eighteen and the bills start to finally ease up from the long years of Jet always being the eldest. 

He hates it here, sometimes.  He hates the ocean and its constant noise, the squall of the spiraling birds and the looming glass head of the old lighthouse.  He hates the wiry grass of the yard and the way he has to keep buying more clothespins because he still can’t afford a dryer.  He hates having to walk everywhere even though he’s never learned how to drive.  He hates the market and the one road this town has, and he hates seeing the return addresses on the letters he delivers of places he’ll never see.  He hates, and he looks at the tendons on the inside of his brown wrists, and he wonders if this is all he was built for.  He hates thinking it’s such a waste.

He’s lucky not to be dead.

Jet thinks about the first time he saw a red and black monster crawling out of the foaming surf on a dark night where his mind was darker.  He remembers being convinced that he’d finally snapped, because no one had ever read him fairytales as a kid so there’s no way his imagination came up with this kind of thing.  He can still hear the echo of Zuko’s scream in the waves sometimes, and the way Jet’s reflex has always been to run towards screaming instead of away had led to the birth of something new.  Mai had come later, and Jet still has the scar on his neck from where she’d tried to kill him for having her then best friend not yet fiancé crammed in a bathtub.  They’d worked it out.

The washing machine will survive without the internal death metal drummer for another couple weeks, so Jet sits on the edge of the cliff and lets the intrusive thoughts of jumping tumble around his skull like a box of feral hissing kittens.  He’s hardly suicidal.  He’s jumped off cliffs before, albeit shorter ones where there’s less rocks and deeper, calmer water.  For the thrill, to satisfy the aching restlessness buried in his bones, by risking a life that’s never really meant much save for what it can do for others.  He’s started jumping from higher, riskier places once drowning became a non-issue, once he had a friend more scale than skin; stronger and faster and so damn stubborn about living.

It’s bizarre to think, actually, if Jet were the type to care about holidays and anniversaries, that his relationship with Zuko will be closing on a full year soon.  Soon, Jet will be twenty.  Once, he’d thought that he’d never live past his teens.  Another decade is going to sprawl out in front of him, and he doesn’t know what to do with any of it. 

So he sits on the edge of a cliff and thinks about jumping, but never does because Zuko’s not down at the bottom waiting to help him resurface and Jet has so rarely been allowed to be selfish. 

-

When Zuko kisses him, he holds Jet’s face in both his hands- every single time.  It’s a habit he learned underwater, a necessary measure to keep from drifting away from the person he’s kissing- Mai, it’d usually been.  Almost a year of kissing Jet in the open air hasn’t broken Zuko of the habit.  Admittedly, Jet’s never once tried to discourage it.  He can’t remember if he’s ever even mentioned it.  He likes it too much.  He likes feeling that wanted, like he has to be held onto or he’ll drift away and Zuko doesn’t want that. 

“You’re beautiful,” Zuko asserts with his voice like the grind of gravel and the growl of churning water, synonymous to the wide unnatural black of his eyes, slivers of gold buried in his eyelashes.  Held like he is, Jet finds it impossible to deny him or his claim.  

His face doesn’t heat and his blood doesn’t stir.  If he’s broken, his sharp edges match Zuko’s pieces.  Together, they have enough to make a warped carnival mirror, whole but horrifically comical.  They’re probably a joke in a bar somewhere.  It’s hysterical how the only person Jet’s found like him came from the bottom of the sea as a previously thought impossibility turned flesh.

“I really like you, Jet,” Zuko continues, insistent and forgetful that Jet’s not going anywhere if he relaxes his grip. 

“I really like you back,” Jet replies, the words clipping their chapped lips while his palms are open on the dip of Zuko’s back, reciprocal. 

Zuko hums a pleased sound and Jet mirrors him.

-

Suspensions have never deterred Smellerbee from finding and creating trouble.  In fact, it just gives her more free time to do so.  Usually, she comes back with a sweaty fistful of bills and an odd collection of coins laden in jean pockets that Jet then has to dig out of the washing machine instead.  She’ll come back with new stains on her clothes and sand pouring from her shoes, her short hair twisted by the wind of running recklessly and relentlessly.  She only sped up when a blind girl joined her. 

Of all the people on the island and under the surrounding water- not that he has any expertise in that area- Jet never would’ve expected to find a fellow chaperone out of Mai.  Her responsibilities on land typically start and end with Zuko, but she’s fond enough of the pretty girl in pink at the knock-off Italian restaurant, and she’s never held it against Jet that they both kiss the same person.  She keeps an eye out, and more than a few times her sharp looks and cutting words have loosed Jet’s kids from nets of propriety and prejudice.  He’s grateful for her understated friendship.

Today, Jet can trust Mai not to let Toph and Smellerbee be dragged into the sea by the changing current as they hunt for undiscovered treasures of indeterminable value in the tide pools.  The Duke had insisted on tagging along, and where The Duke went, Pipsqueak often followed.  They wouldn’t be digging for shells or shellfish or lost jewelry or neat bits of coral, but splashing in the waves directly and constructing fortresses out of wet sand.  Mai would watch over them regardless, unspeakably strong enough to even drag Pipsqueak back to shore if need be. 

It’s Sunday, and for Sneers, Jet will go to a church with Sneers’ girlfriend’s parents for that whole thing of meeting each other for the sake of the ones under their care.  It’s Poppy Beifong all over again with the half offered exclamations of surprise at Jet’s youth, but at least it’s a little less of the staggering wealth gap.  Jet knows how to smile and say the right words at the right time in the right tone, to laugh at the father’s jokes and preen at the mother’s kindly offered compliments.  They’re not bad people.  In Jet’s fading memories, his mother was sort of like them.  They only want their child to be happy.  Jet’s doing his best to do the same.

-

It’s an understandable limitation that cooking underwater isn’t as expansive as the surface internationally allows.  There’s a wealth more that can be grown from soil not beholden to the overwhelming pressure of water a couple hundred meters deep. 

As a prince of the salt-blood, Zuko’s never cooked anything- nothing further than a flash fried fish clumsily gutted with his nails before scavengers could catch the scent on the current and become nuisances.  It’s a vast difference from standing in a sun dappled kitchen with fabrications of clothes rolled up to his elbows and a cookbook propped up against the blue sugar container.

Jet’s made it a personal goal to teach Zuko how to cook like a surface-dweller, like him in particular, both for the sake of his boyfriend and his own self-interest in the display.  A pair of obsidian blades in each hand and Zuko will dance as if to the complex melodies of an orchestra only audible to his ears alone.  Put a measuring spoon in his hand and he’s suddenly the most anxious chemistry student alive, hesitating to add anything to a volatile mixture of flour and water as if it will explode if he’s not exact.  Jet finds immense amusement out of the ordeal, particularly on days where he can just cook for fun and not to supply a small personal army.

He likes to take the time of teaching Zuko how to prepare things outside of seafood, because often enough it’ll be a learning experience for Jet just as much in the process.  Sometimes, Jet has had enough of being the leader, the instructor and the pathfinder, and merely just wants to stumble along the way with his adorably confused boyfriend who still has to triple check whether he’s using the TSP or the TBSP spoon.  On the contrary, Jet’s always been more of the person to measure by the handfuls and by sight and taste, the feel of the dish under his bare fingers and the way the meal starts to respond to the first touch of heat.  There’s an overlap in their Venn diagram, where Zuko’s learning not to be so fastidious about following the recipe to the letter and Jet’s learning that maybe a little more adherence to the instructions will result in less dubious concoctions.

There’s something breathtakingly serene in the kitchen, with the afternoon sun turning the window pane into a sheet of gold and the fulfilling scent of sizzling pork thickening the air.  The comfort of well worn cool tile under his bare feet and the way he can put his hands on Zuko’s hips from behind and breathe in the smell of him- that alien scent of deep water that always clings to his hair and that visceral connection to an oven or furnace, the kind of smell that Jet feels more in his throat than tastes.  This gorgeous creature from another type of world, leaning into Jet’s embrace and mingling willingly with the surface spices of turmeric, cayenne pepper, and coriander.  The subtle static softening the warbling female vocals on the radio, twined with Zuko’s raspy voiced worrying about whether he should stir the white rice or leave it to boil longer. 

Jet covets these moments like a thief with jewels, willing the memories to embed themselves in his mind to the pattern of a mosaic that will remain longer than the disintegrating lettering on a sweatshirt like his oldest memories.  He doesn’t want to forget the honey glow of Zuko’s laughing eyes in the way that he can no longer recall his mother’s features.  He doesn’t have so much as a single picture of her and it breaks his heart that he never will; that there’s people who say the true death is when you’ve been forgotten, and his mother has been dying twice for years if that’s the truth.  He misses the potential of what she could’ve meant to him more than whom she actually was as a person- a mother, but also an individual of her own identity separate from him.  He’d only been a child of eight without any chance to know his mother beyond what she’d allowed him to see.  He’ll never know her truly.

So Jet encourages Zuko to dance with him in the sun dappled kitchen of what used to be the base of a European lighthouse.  He pulls on the frayed apron that Zuko is borrowing to keep his strange-shifting-fabric from stains, encouraging his boyfriend away from the meal simmering in coconut milk on the stove.  He runs his fingers along where ebony tipped spines would be if Zuko weren’t wearing warmth imbued skin and the appearance of clothing, and he can almost feel the prick of them into his fingertips when he presses down to encourage Zuko into a lackadaisical waltz.  He presses his cheek into Zuko’s temple as they sway off beat to the lilting tune on the radio, passing in and out of the sunlit square on the floor with every shuffling half turn.

Jet breathes in deep and wills himself to remember that this is what it feels like to be happy.

-

When he can’t see the proof otherwise, when there’s no cell phone ringtone to startle Zuko or exact TSP measurements for him to puzzle out, Jet can almost forget that his boyfriend technically isn’t human.  At least, human by definition, who are generally restricted to only one shape and need to breathe solely air.  Zuko’s plenty human in the ways that truly matter- more human than some people Jet has met in the past, like the types who looked at children and saw munitions instead.  There are reasons why a poor kid like Jet hadn’t joined any military; reasons beyond his presence being worth more to his kids than his absence.

It’s easier to remember, obvious and opaque, whenever Jet gets the chance to watch Zuko come out of the saltwater or walk back into it.  It’s the way that all the scales and fins and spines melt and contort into the folds and stitches of fabric but maintain all the same shades between red and black.  It’s how Zuko’s face is almost the same between both of his shapes, regardless of color, but just animalistic enough to be blatantly separate from human.  It’s in the places where Zuko’s body doesn’t change, like the delicate slits in his neck and the extra pair of canines in his mouth and the way his pupils can still devour the gold and whites of his eyes. 

It’s easier to forget when Jet watches how Zuko can read Longshot’s intentions behind subtle expressions and body language better than anyone else outside their family.  It’s in the way Zuko (and Mai, for that matter) can walk into their house through either door and The Duke will jump up and run to receive a hug.  It’s how Sneers will ask for Zuko’s help in finding the perfect piece of jewelry to give his girlfriend for her birthday.  It’s in the places where Pipsqueak has added his pencil sketches of Zuko alongside the ones he’s done of the rest of them.  It’s water on the hallway floor. 

“Do you believe in reincarnation?” Smellerbee asks Jet on her second official day of suspension.  She’s found Jet on his mail route for an apparent lack of anything else to do, her partner-in-crime elsewhere for the time being.  Her bruises have only just started to take on that healing green tinge and she’s got a smudge of red something on her cheek from somewhere doing something Jet probably doesn’t want to know about.

He tucks the mail under his arm and licks his thumb, more to hear Smellerbee shriek in protest and frantically duck and weave his attempts to rub her face clean than to actually wipe the red mark off her face.  He thinks about her unexpected question while she darts ahead on the road to escape his long arms and licked thumb.  He remembers a time when Zuko had been so frustrated about his separate life under the waves that he’d told Jet, “I wish I could treat you like my first priority.”  He recalls the way his throat had gone tight, unspeakably touched by the sentiment, and the way he’d never felt more understood in his long(short) life than in that moment.  No one had ever told him something like that before, but there’s been other moments throughout his life that have felt terribly familiar.  He’d chalked it up to déjà vu, the same as anyone else.

“Why’re you asking?” Jet asks Smellerbee a question of his own once he’s caught up to her in front of the restaurant where Ty Lee works, since he doesn’t quite have an answer for her otherwise. 

Smellerbee shifts her weight and scuffs her sneaker toe on the sidewalk, uprooting a few green stalks of weed in the cracks.  The red smudge on her cheek has smeared more in her secretive attempts to clean it off on her own without a mirror, but Jet focuses more on the way she’s suddenly gone nearly shy. 

“Bee?”

She glances up at his prompting, huffing air up through her bangs like him being worried about her change in behavior is something ridiculously unnecessary.

“You seriously don’t feel it, too?”

“Feel what?” Jet returns, quirking an eyebrow.  “Reincarnated?”

“No,” Smellerbee denies, huffing again and watching as Jet shuffles his stack of mail to double check his next address.  “Maybe.  Like we’re not supposed to be here.”

Jet experiences a tightening sensation in his chest, a feeling he’d equate to how it’d feel if his heart suddenly decided to try and squeeze out through the space in the ribs. 

“Are you unhappy here?”

Smellerbee’s brown eyes widen in subtle alarm, because Jet’s possibly said the wrong words at the wrong time in the wrong tone, but it scares him realizing the possibility that Smellerbee could feel the same thing he does late at night alone in bed with only the wind against the closed window for company.    

“That’s not what I meant, I like it here,” She hurriedly claims, almost frantic in the face of whatever’s Jet given her in reactionary worry.  “I like my friends and school and the house and- and Zuko!  I like that he makes you happy, and that you’re friends with Mai.”

She isn’t lying, so Jet tries to squeeze his heart back into the spot it’s supposed to be.  It resists, beating uncomfortably hard because Smellerbee’s reaction still strikes him as concerning in its own regard. 

“And that matters to you?” He asks Smellerbee, his quiet voice the only privacy they have in the middle of town on an open road in broad daylight.  “That I’m happy, too?”

“Yeah,” She confirms without hesitation, but quiet and awkward in the way of a teenager unexpectedly presented with an emotional talk from a caregiver.  She still cringes when Jet licks his thumb again, but she holds still and lets him rub off the smudge of red off her cheek this time.

“I’m happier here than I’ve been anywhere else,” Jet tells her softly and truthfully.  “Whether we’re supposed to be here or not.”

“Okay,” Smellerbee mumbles, rubbing her cheek into her shoulder to wipe away the sentimental gross feeling. 

“Okay,” Jet returns with a smile, briefly cupping the back of her head in his palm and gently urging her forwards.  She follows his guidance easily, whether because she’s a teenager trying to duck out from under his hand, or because he’s done it so often in this life (or the last) that she doesn’t need to think about it anymore. 

-

Zuko doesn’t particularly like storms.  He doesn’t really have to deal with them in the depths of the Black Trench, where ‘weather’ down there is the ocean currents and whether a hydrothermal vent acts outside the norm.  The excessive wind and the sluicing rain unnerve him with its inconsistent onslaught; how the waves are whipped up to frothy, crashing heights that make entering or leaving the water inadvisable.  He wouldn’t have walked the cliffs up to their house in the late afternoon if his uncle expected him somewhere underwater tomorrow, so Jet’s not worried that Zuko staying overnight because of a sudden storm will cause any problems. 

It’s more that Zuko doesn’t sleep well with all the extra noise clamoring outside and against the house- the wind finding every possible crevice to whistle through, the rain drumming against the roof and windows, and the thunder that either cracks sharply enough to rattle the frames hanging on the walls or rumbles for an entire handful of seconds.  With his eyes wearily closed, Jet can still see the occasional flash of lightning, usually accompanied by a slight flinch of the body against his side, but Zuko doesn’t otherwise need a lot of light to see by. 

He’s tracing Jet’s tattoos again to occupy himself, waiting out the worst noise of the storm, not speaking in case Jet can lull himself to sleep.  They’re in that hanging phase in the dead of night where thoughts could be occupying either minutes or stretching into hours.  It’s Wednesday tomorrow, and Jet doesn’t have anywhere to be in the morning.  He can afford to consciously linger for a while longer, to turn his arm into the travel of Zuko’s fingertips to allow him to follow the grayscale pattern from one side to the next.  It’s not a bad night.

“Did you mean it?” Jet asks, prompted by nothing but how Smellerbee had asked him earlier if he believed in reincarnation and the way his mind keeps turning it over.  He keeps his eyes closed, since he wouldn’t be able to see anything with them open anyway.

“Mean what?” Zuko inquires clarification, understandably since he’s not actually privy to Jet’s thoughts, even though it sometimes will feel like he’s running along the same tracks.  His fingers are warm against the inside of Jet’s wrist. 

“Do you still wish I could be your first priority?” 

Maybe it’d be simpler if he just asked Zuko if he loved him, but love doesn’t mean as much to Jet.  Love doesn’t stop parents from leaving their children as orphans and it doesn’t mean that Jet will ever pick his boyfriend over his kids; the same way love can’t take away Zuko’s birthright to a throne that most of the world doesn’t know exists.  Jet doesn’t want to hear about love for the same reason he doesn’t want someone to ask if he’s happy.  He wants to hear a sentiment that means more to him than love.

“Yes,” Zuko answers, simple and pure- and it means being unable and unwilling to forget and forsake the world and his place in it, but if he ever had the choice to reorder the priorities the world gave him, he’d put Jet first. 

Maybe that’s the same thing as love, but Jet’s never wanted to be the whole world for someone anyway.  He can’t give it, so he doesn’t deserve to take it.  This way, it’s fair and they’re equal.  Zuko’s people come first.  Jet’s kids come first.  At least Jet’s finally on the list of priorities for someone. 

Zuko doesn’t question why Jet suddenly asked him for that reassurance right now.  He doesn’t try to promise Jet anything more than he can expect tomorrow, up to a week.  They’ve been living this way for almost a year.  Maybe it’ll last for another year. 

Jet’s not asking for more.  He doesn’t need to. 

Notes:

Happy moving-birthday Freck!! ily!!! 💞
I think I got all my bases covered in your 'prompt' >;3

P.S. I refrained from mentioning any real world countries beyond European and Italian references, but I did base some character history from Guam and geographical references from Pulau Tioman.
I welcome corrections for typos or inconsistencies.

Thx for reading! I hope you enjoyed! <3