Only If For a Night(MxM)

Déjá vu

Though his ribs ached, his head throbbed, and his knee refused to move the right way, Jet couldn't sit down. Zuko perched on the island counter; hair fluffed up from his fingers, continually running through it. The anger was evident in the set of his lips. The worry tapped out of him through his foot like a telegram of his anxiety. A smear of Jet's blood was on his shirt sleeve still, dried and brown.

"Do you have any whiskey?" Jet tore his eyes away and glanced around the kitchen. There was a sizable wine rack on the dining room wall, but wine gave him hiccups.

"No."

"Tequila?"

Zuko wasn't quite glaring, but it was not a hospitable look. "No."

"Isopropyl alcohol?"

"Saki,"

" Salud," Jet replied solemnly. Zuko leveled his gaze at him, backfiring his joke.

"If you want something to 'take the edge off' or whatever you closet alcoholics say, the best thing in my house is Saki."

"I am not an alcoholic," Jet tried to defend himself and frown simultaneously, but a roar from his black eye told him not to move his face.

"Okay," came a disbelieving snapback.

Having little evidence to prove him otherwise, Jet let the conversation go.

"You should call your bosses or whatever, and tell 'em that you're not comin' into work tomorrow,"

"Why am I not going into work tomorrow?"

Sarcasm made him want to gesture to himself and say that he wasn't going to get up at the ass crack of dawn with Zuko in the morning because he was only going to feel worse later.

"Police are goin' to want to talk to us more, guarantee it,"

"But I talked to them for an hour tonight,"

"I know what I'm talkin' bout, okay? The family that was with before you, they were always gettin' in fights. It was exhaustin', that's why I switched over to your family. The police never seem to get enough info. They always want to waste your whole day with dumb ass questions and right down shit on their little notepads," He sighed and leaned heavily against the counter. "Then, they'll leave the room, talk to some other officer, then they'll come back in, and then that officer will ask the same fuckin' questions the other one asked. It's an infinite loop of bullshit,"

Zuko watched with raised eyebrows as he sipped his tea. "No wonder you went into personal security and not law enforcement," he commented.

"I was a brown kid that grew up in the projects. I don't have the best stories about the NYPD,"

"You're just scared you wouldn't look good in a police uniform," Zuko said casually.

Jet blanched. He was the one that was supposed to tease and poke fun, not the other way around. But as the barest hints of a smirk pulled up the corners of Zuko's mouth overtop the perfectly composed face as he took a sip of his tea, Jet decided that he didn't mind.

"Excuse you," He grinned even though it hurt like a bitch "I look pretty damn fine in a uniform, you've never seen me in my fatigues,"

"What? Is that supposed to change my mind or something?" He joked.

As Jet licked his lips, it snapped him out of it. The stinging flare of pain on the cut made him realize what they were doing.

Flirting. 

It was so easy when they were alone. It was easy to think that they were the only people and there wouldn't be consequences when other people were around, because other people make things real, when the threat of being seen or found out was imminent, then it was real. But here, alone in the kitchen after sunset, this wasn't something to be found out, because to them it wasn't a secret.