Only If For a Night(MxM)

Police

So much coffee was in Jet's system; he was buzzing. He wasn't sure if the apartment was shaking or his head, the hand that he was holding the pen in, vibrated.

The two had spent the whole night on the phone with the police; they were supposed to come down the station at noon to talk with the detectives assigned to the case. It was hardly six in the morning, the sun was just a pink smudge on the horizon, but there had been no sleep that night.

When he had called the police, Jet had already been compiling a list of every single person the two of them came across during the day, the description of people that he had seen more than once, the legal pad the two shared was a scratched mess of names and vague faces.

"I think you need to lay down," Zuko commented, staring at the pen quivering between his fingers. Jet couldn't help but marvel. It was completely involuntary, the shaking. He hadn't had this much coffee in months.

He opened his mouth to disagree and tell him that they needed to keep pushing through, but all that came out was a long hum.

"We have," he checked his disgustingly expensive watch, "Five hours and forty-seven minutes until we have to go to the station. If we haven't remembered more in the past six hours, then we probably won't,"

"And while I do that, you're just going to be out here by yourself?"

"I have the dogs,"

He wanted to argue. He wanted to see the flaw in his logic, but it was pretty sound. He was going on almost thirty hours of no sleep, and it was screwing with his head. Zuko saw that he was going to win, so he kept pressing him. "We know the dog walker is clean. It's a girl, and I'm pretty sure she has a girlfriend, so she has no interest in either of us. She's the only person that is supposed to come today; I'll call into work in half an hour and say that I can't make it. It'll all be fine. If it makes you feel better, the second anything of note happens, I'll wake you up. Deal?"

"It has to be somethin' that I would think to be worth note, alright? If I would make a big deal of it, you gotta come get me. Then yes. Deal."

"So," an exhausted but coy smile struggled to life on his face. "If Longshot gets the hiccups again, I need to come to get you?"

Jet pursed his lips, an action that caught a tired Zuko's attention for a split second before he tore his eyes away to the floor.

"Don't be a smartass," He chastised without any actual anger. "I thought it was cute, so I called you over to watch it,"

"You hollered for me from clear across the apartment. I thought you were hurt,"

"We both know that I'm indestructible," Jet teased as he crash-landed on the couch, already losing consciousness.

~0~

The First Precinct was a drab, tan/gray building that had Zuko wrinkling his nose.

"Why was I picturing something more, I don't know, impressive?" He asked himself out loud. Jet glanced at him. When he was a bodyguard the first time around, he wore a suit every day, Zuko couldn't have pictured him in jeans in a T-shirt, but that's all that he wore this time. He had finally ditched his literal combat boots for timberlands, and the suit jacket for a leather one. Zuko had made him put on a button-up before they left the apartment. That conversation had included a significant amount of grumbling and some swearing.

Now, instead of looking professional, Jet looked god damn terrifying. But the way that he walked and the way he was always looking at Zuko and held doors open for him, it made something squirm in Zuko's stomach. He had ignored it for the weeks that they had managed to cohabitate, but there were only so many times that Jet could walk from the bathroom to the office where he kept his stuff, in only a towel, dripping wet, before the feeling came back.