Only If For a Night(MxM)

Morning After

I did the thing again where I took a ~juicy~ bit from another one of my works and plugged it in here and changed the names. Sorry not sorry, this would take another week if I were to make the ~juicy~ bits from scratch again. The pure and simple fluff is original though.

For the second time in five years, Jet didn't wake up alone.

The cracked open shades let in the rising sun, casting the room in every impossible shade of pink and yellow. The dawn light ran across the room in horizontal slats, highlighting the mediocre art on the walls and, more importantly, the severe beauty of Zuko's face. He wasn't frowning in his sleep; he wasn't masking an emotion or tempering the anger down; he was just being.

Memories of the night before lazily flowed through Jet's limbs and heated his cheeks. It didn't matter that he'd been off-handedly thinking about doing that for a few weeks now, because Zuko was curled in his arms right now , pressed against his chest and his scalding breath was coming out in little puffs against Jet's throat.

If he needed to repress the soaring in his chest, he couldn't, nor did he want to, Zuko's skin felt too soft and too right under his calloused fingers.

~0~

Zuko ate his pancakes while sitting cross-legged on the counter next to Jet, who had the sense to stand on the floor. Zuko drowned in Jet's shirt, and he was perfectly fine with never getting it back, he never looked that good in it anyway.

"What do you want to do tod-" Jet started, but Zuko sat up sharply and set down his plate on the counter with a crack.

Jet watched with raising eyebrows as Zuko hopped off the counter and almost ran to the bedroom.

"Are you okay?" he called out, following him into the small room. Zuko tore through his bag, clothes flying all over, a paperback book narrowly missing Jet's face.

"Whoa, hey," he grunted, but Zuko wasn't paying attention.

"It's gone," he sat back on his haunches and scanned the chaos he had just created, eyes scanning everything.

"I thought maybe I packed them, but I don't remember seeing them since the break-in, I think he might have taken them."

"He took what?"

"My prayer beads, my jade Buddhist prayer beads." He looked up at Jet, anger simmering under his skin. "I didn't find them when I went into my room. I didn't dig around for them; I didn't want to touch anything he might have. I never thought he would steal something so simple as my prayer beads; they weren't even that special to me. I don't know why I'm just realizing this,"

"We need to call the detective and tell him," Jet bent down too, only hesitating for a second to reach out and touch him. It was so new, to not need an excuse to touch, and knowing that when he did, it would be well received. As predicted, Zuko leaned into the hand pressed against his shoulder, nodding at Jet.

"I can do it if you don't want to talk," he offered, shaking off the delighted feeling at the notion of always taking care of Zuko.

"You will?" the time hadn't been taken to sculpt his hair into the masterpiece it was during the workweek in several days; instead, it flopped against his forehead and stuck up randomly where ever it pleased.

"If you want me to, yeah." Jet shrugged even though he didn't feel all that nonchalant.

The reception was spotty at best out in the middle of nowhere, so Jet was thankful the detective was short and to the point during the phone call. He told him about how the prayer beads were missing and that the stalker was the only person who would have an interest in them. Detective Barron thanked them and hung up.