out of touch.
characters: jet, zuko.
notes: for katie, all nsfw.

…

He doesn't expect the realization to keep threading through his body the way it does, a slow, searing sensation that spreads over his flesh and draws it tight around his bones, making him squirm. The space between his knuckles is raw and it creaks with pain whenever he flexes his fingers into a fist.

Zuko.

Zuko sits in the corner of the apartment, occasionally stretching his mouth open, ignoring the painful crack of his jaw as it tries to shift back into its proper place. Prince Zuko lifts his own bruised knuckles, rubs them against his cheek until they settle. Jet presumes that he's quiet because his jaw is dislocated, although he's not sure whether he'd know what to say if Zuko was to speak to him.

Jet winces when he scrapes his hands against the wooden board behind him, pushing away from the wall. He keeps his head down, narrows his eyes as he walks out of the room, the air suddenly cool and thin and relieving against his face. He doesn't need to hurt any more than he already does, and where he had placed trust in Zuko to protect him, he found a surprising void.

Maybe he hadn't trusted the other boy at all. Perhaps it had been his own judgment of him that he trusted even more, and perhaps that was why this hurt so much.

…

"What are you doing back he—"

Jet smashes his lips into Zuko's, grips his wrists as he pushes him back through the threshold of the doorway. Zuko makes a noise into his mouth as Jet treads on his feet clumsily, stumbling blindly through the apartment he'd once known his way around in hazy darkness.

He grunts when his bruised knuckles are pinched between the wall and Zuko's hands that desperately want to move, but Jet only moves his mouth away from his, slides it over his scarred cheek and against his jaw, and the only thing he can do is press his hips forward, the only thing he seems sure enough to do.

What starts as a moan blossoms into a wild cry of frustration as Jet backs away, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, stares into the lines of his palms with confusion and slight disgust. Zuko doesn't seem at all stunned as he leans off of the wall, grips his jaw between his fingers just to make sure Jet hasn't broken it with his feverish kisses.

"I just wanted to see if it was all lies," Jet's voice shakes with uncertainty and Zuko's unflinching posture says that he is not the one to bring him comfort, he has never been that person.

Zuko says something but it's only static in Jet's ears as he blinks and tries to shake off the rush of blood in his head. "It wasn't," Jet clarifies.

…

He's not sure whether he can touch Zuko, not the way he touched Li, because Li was someone he trusted. He created Li out of the things he saw in this other broken boy, the bits of himself no one else had ever been able to understand. He pressed them into this clutter of things the way he does everything else; the way he saves little children and presses them into the fold of the Freedom Fighters, the way he salvages unwanted pieces of cloth and presses them into the rusty and ratty mosaic of clothes he already wears.

He pieced Li together just as much as Zuko had.

Perhaps it is his own accessory to this that makes it as treacherous.

But he can't remember the last time he lay like this, shoulders aligned together, Zuko's heart beating against his back. They fit together too well to not have been broken of the same material.

"I don't know whether I should be trying, or whether I should just let you hate me," the Prince admits and Jet wants him to try, because for once in his life this is something that he needs, he needs to accept Zuko. But his carnal heart roars for retribution, and it thumps to the syllables of Fire Prince.

"You knew before?" Jet asks, his question cut with a bitter aftertaste. When the boy falls silent, Jet focuses on the way his chest pushes into him with every inhale of breath, focuses until it is even with the serenity of sleep.

…

The rubble doesn't hurt as he expects it to, not as much as the sight of those golden eyes set behind a blue mask, not as much as it hurts when Zuko rolls a particularly large rock away from his chest with a painted, white-lipped smile.

Jet hates this. He hates the way he wheezes because he can feel the blood bubbling in the back of his throat, he hates that this doesn't hurt more than anything else that has happened to him. He hates how weak his body is, how it can survive the pain of betrayal—what gives these things more of a right to hurt him in the ways that count? Why should he have to die from this after surviving so much?

Zuko doesn't speak and Jet is grateful for it. His chest hurts more with every stone pushed away from his body, his lungs constrict in his chest the moment those thin, stained fingers touch his cheek.

Jet remembers how he'd melted into this touch before, how he'd felt it rippling through him with some sort of otherworldly effect.

Now, Zuko's touch slowly turns his lungs to stone, or it's the way it seems when it becomes impossible to breathe.

Damn him, he thinks weakly as his face moves closer, blurring out of focus, damn him for making him realize that death is still not the realest thing he has ever felt.