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There are too many damn people in Ba Sing Se, firstly. There’s no room to think, not like the forest. Secondly, all those damn people are incredibly, stupidly fond of the men that are most certainly firebenders, and Jet is so, so close to pulling his swords.
But not yet. The men—the man and the boy—have been peaceful, save for the boy’s absolute lack of customer service and generally pissy disposition, and Jet isn’t desperate enough yet to start a fight where he doesn’t need to. He has a few more tricks up his sleeve before direct action becomes necessary.
The information came from a street corner, actually, a little gaggle of resistance fighters from some backwater village on West Lake, fresh refugees right off the boat, chatting more loudly and obviously than any Ba Sing Se local would dare. They spark when they’re overwhelmed, said a woman with fewer teeth than fingers. I’ve seen it. Firebenders are always about a second from losing control. It just bursts out of them.
(Jet admittedly should probably have asked her to elaborate on what she meant by overwhelmed, but he was really excited to get to scheming and forgot. Oh, well. He can improvise.)
He pays a fortune for it—or rather he promises to pay a fortune and turns tail the moment it’s in his hands—but Jet manages to acquire a vial of cactus juice, which he’s been assured is a fantastic hallucinogen and disinhibitor. It’s light work to spike the tea that Mushi (that can’t be his real name, it’s too perfect) guzzles several times a day. Jet stakes out on the roof of an adjacent building where he can look in the window into the back room of the tea parlor.
It’s not Mushi who picks up the cup, though, and Jet is in the middle of cursing himself, watching stupid Li and his stupid face down most of the tea in one gulp like he’s dying of thirst, when Jet realizes that this is even better than Mushi. Old benders have control. Young ones, especially ones as full of angst and turmoil as Li clearly is, aren’t nearly so disciplined. Li is sure to let a little fire slip. Jet grins into the dimness of the evening.
Li spends a lot of time blinking slow like a pygmy puma, staring at his hands and wiggling his fingers, and otherwise being boring. Jet has the errant thought that it’s kind of cute, which he promptly squashes. He will not be engaging in that line of thinking about a fucking firebender.
Worse, the plan is a bust. Li ends up mumbling some nonsense about his mom and falling asleep curled up on the floorboards with his head on his arm and all curled up into himself. Firebenders are supposed to run warm. Mushi finds him, rubs his back, gives him some different tea, and marches him to bed. (Later, while Jet is still sulking on the roof, Mushi comes back and cleans off the last of the spiked cup with a big stupid smile on his face.)
The second phase of Jet’s plan is… idiotic, in hindsight. He should have known that a mean mug like Li’s must be the result of some serious history, but he didn’t put two and two together, and when he tried to pose as a masked robber and held Li at knifepoint in an alley in the market, Li proceeded to toss Jet bodily over his shoulder, leave him gasping on his back like a beached fish, and just walked away.
Jet spent the evening nursing his bruises and crossing every surprise-related idea off his list. Maybe some other firebender could be scared into lighting up, but apparently not this one, and Jet won’t be risking his skeletal integrity like that again.
The failure of the third phase leads directly into the generation of the fourth. Jet spent a whole day wandering around the artisan district (and what a joke that is, the artisan district, like it’s a bunch of middle-management merchants and not the people who had nowhere else to go) looking for alcohol only to be told by every single person he asked that there’s no alcohol in Ba Sing Se. Not legal alcohol, at any rate, and he doesn’t know the right people yet, so he’s out of luck. He walks home kicking every stray pebble he can find.
He’s laying in bed, brooding, perhaps wallowing, and when the sun sets he has to roll onto his side and drag his hay-stuffed pillow over his head to block out the noise of his newlywed neighbors having obnoxiously loud sex. The girl is practically screaming, voice rocked by whatever vigorous movement is happening, both of them shouting pet names and moaning and making the bedframe rattle, and Jet is just about ready to commit a couple executions without due process when he realizes what he should do next.
Li is boring while intoxicated and stone cold while threatened? Jet smirks into his pillow. Let’s see how you do under ballistic-level emotional intimacy, firefucker.
Mushi, as it turns out, enormously enjoys setting his nephew up with anyone around his age who frequents the tea parlor. On recon runs, Jet sips (admittedly very good) tea and observes the old man nudge and wink, and how Li usually responds with a blush and a scoff even when he seems kind of interested. It’s kind of endearing, in an evil, slimy, fiery monster way. Jet finds himself looking forward to the next step in his plan and he confidently tells himself that it’s because it’s a lot of fun to pull one over on firebenders. No other reason, naturally.
It’s not even difficult. Some smoldering, a little bit of softness and shyness whenever Li hands him his tea, some staring over the rim of his cup, and it’s less than a week before Mushi is ushering a clearly mortified Li over to Jet’s table with the I-enjoy-meddling look on his face that old people seem to pick up from the air itself.
“My nephew is free this evening,” Mushi says, eyes twinkling, “and if you’re not doing anything, he would quite like to accompany you somewhere.”
Li says, “Uncle,” through his teeth and is ignored.
“That sounds great,” Jet says. He makes sure to play with his hands a little and sound kind of airy and breathless. Like an idiot.
It works perfectly, and Mushi beams at him, then at Li, and walks away dusting his hands off and whistling. Li’s eyes are scrunched shut and his fists are balled. Jet is about to poke at him, see if he’ll get riled up, when he exhales slowly and lets all his muscles go loose.
“I’m sorry about him,” he says, quiet, entirely un-pissy. “He’s… anxious to see me make friends, I think. He’s been doing this since we arrived in the city.”
Jet doesn’t say I know, because that would be kind of creepy. Instead, he says, “Well, your demeanor doesn’t exactly invite people in. More vinegar than honey.”
“That doesn’t sound like a compliment.”
“Well, it is,” Jet says, and smiles big and charming. “Bitter and sour aren’t bad. And I think there’s some sweet in you, somewhere. You gonna let me in long enough to look?”
Li tilts his head, pygmy puma as ever, and looks Jet up and down. His expression is suspicious but his body language is getting less tense by the second. After a long moment, he says, “Sure. Why not.”
And that’s how Jet cons the cutest firebender in Ba Sing Se into his bed.
It didn’t start in bed, Jet’s not that kind of guy—he took Li for an after-dinner treat, candied honey in fun shapes on sticks, and even paid. Jet picked a sword. Li picked a dragon, which Jet noted looked kind of like the ones the Fire Nation prizes in their mythology and art. Ha. Another point against him. A less concrete one, but still.
Jet asked if Li had a curfew, and Li said no. Jet laughed and said that it would be weird if he did, since he’s obviously the independent type, and Li didn’t say anything but his face went all soft, like he wasn’t used to being recognized as his own person. Jet resolutely has not thought about it since.
Now they’re back at Jet’s sad little place, shutters closed against the cool of the night, fine dust from the walls coating Li’s back where Jet’s got him shoved up against one.
“Ah, hah.” Li drops his head back when Jet kisses his jaw, heedless of the dust now getting in his hair. Jet mouths down his neck as tenderly as he can manage, then retraces his path with his teeth, leaving blooming reddish marks in his wake. Li claws at his shoulders and sounds a bit like he’s hyperventilating.
When Jet finishes his quest to mark this stupid firebender up, he lifts his head and murmurs, “You okay? You seem, I don’t know, overwhelmed.”
Li closes his eyes and says, “I haven’t… No one has touched me like this in some time. Too much time. I’ve been moving too quickly, under too much supervision. I… missed it.”
Against his better judgement, Jet softens. “Doesn’t answer my question, though. Are you okay? You need to slow down?”
Instead of responding, Li pitches forward and gives Jet a mouthful of tongue and teeth, and Jet’s not about to argue with that. He kisses back with all he’s got and starts guiding them to his bed.
He notes how Li’s breathing picks up when Jet touches his waist, his hips, the back of his neck. How his step falters like he’s surprised every single time. No one has ever touched you like they wanted you, huh, Jet thinks, and quashes it.
When they hit the bed, Li falters again, harder this time, and Jet pulls away to look at him. Flushed, panting. Cute, if Jet’s being honest with himself, which he isn’t. He smirks again. “Trying to figure out if you’re going to let me climb on top of you?”
Li scoffs, and quick as anything, spins them around and dumps Jet on his back on the bed. Li clambers up to straddle his thighs. “No one climbs on top of me.”
Jet says, “Right,” and pulls his legs up until Li has slid directly onto his hips.
“...Oh,” Li says.
“Oh?”
Li says nothing.
Gods, he really is adorable. Slowly, Jet reaches up to cuff Li around the back of the neck, scoops up his thigh, and rolls them over. Li goes boneless against the mattress. His good eye is so wide, something hopeful, something fearful, and Jet is… charmed, just a bit. He leans down and kisses him.
“This okay?” he murmurs against Li’s mouth.
“Yes,” Li says, and he must mean it because he arches and gasps prettily when Jet picks open the ties of his tunic and bares his chest.
He’s gorgeous, unfortunately. Pale as the damn moon, scarred in a couple places, slices and punctures and the odd burn. Jet drags his hands down his sides and watches him squirm like he’s never felt it before, and maybe he hasn’t, and that shouldn’t excite Jet nearly as much as it does.
Jet tugs at his waistband and says, “These too?” and Li nods like it pains him, like he likes that it pains him.
“Only if you’re willing to match.”
Oh, is he ever. Jet sheds his shirt as fast as he can and nearly tears a seam getting out of his pants. Li is calmer about it, going so far as to sit up and fold his pants like some kind of society boy, and Jet takes enormous pleasure in more or less tackling him back onto the bed and kissing him stupid.
He’s getting more into this than he should be, he realizes, letting Li suck on his tongue for a minute so he can think. He might be compromised at this point. Still, the mission is moving forward, and all Jet has to do to keep from fucking it up is shut his mouth and continue doing what he’s doing. They’re still far from the point of overwhelm, though, so he decides they need a leap forward.
He pulls away from Li’s near-desperate mouth and smiles at the sound he makes about it. Jet kisses and bites his way down the smooth expanse of skin, pausing to work more marks into it from time to time because he’s only human. Besides, Li trembles harder every time, so it’s part of the mission anyway. By the time he reaches the tent in Li’s underclothes, there’s a growing wet patch at the tip.
“Someone’s enthusiastic,” he says, knowing full well that the smirk he’s wearing would enrage most people. “Or just needy. Don’t worry. I’ve got you.”
And Li whimpers.
Oh, this is going to work. Jet yanks the remaining clothing off Li’s legs and then pushes them open, and Li just lets him, breathing hard and biting his lip with pupils so wide he looks high. Jet kisses him again, then sits back up, spits in his palm, and wraps his hand tight around Li’s cock.
“Ffff-” Li says, then bites his lip hard.
“Relax, I haven’t even done anything. Wait till you see what else I’ve got in mind.”
“Please,” Li says.
“Please what?”
“Do it. What you’ve got in mind.”
“Well, if you insist,” Jet says, and puts two fingers on his other hand into Li’s mouth. Conversationally, he adds, “And that wasn’t what I would call begging. Not really. We’ll have to work on that.”
Li’s face gets even redder and he squirms beautifully, but when Jet removes his fingers and begins reaching down between Li’s legs, he smacks Jet’s arm off course.
“Wait,” he says, and rolls off the bed to rifle through his discarded clothes, leaving Jet sitting there with two wet hands hovering, baffled, in the air. Li digs a little tin out of his pocket and returns. “Coconut oil. It’s much better for these things.”
Jet takes the tin and opens it—smells excellent, feels hard on his skin until he rolls it around a little, melting it into clear liquid. He says, “Did you bring this tonight because you thought I’d take you home?”
Oh, that bashful look is lovely on him. “No. I’ve been using it on my hair for years. And for… this.”
Jet just grins and kisses him. Li goes back down easily, legs falling open like he’s finally comfortable, and Jet remembers that the entire point is to get him to let go, loosen up, allow a crack in his control. Jet wastes no time in working a finger into him.
Focus focus focus focus. Li is slick and hot and tight, so tight, and Jet asks, “Even if you hadn’t said anything, I would’ve been able to tell you’ve done this before. How long?”
“Several weeks,” Li says, a little breathless. “There has—ah—there has been very little time.”
“Several weeks since you had anything inside you or several weeks since you came at all?”
“Both.”
Jet slicks up another finger and shoves it in more roughly than he would with anyone else. Li’s toes curl and he hisses, and then he moans. Having a small epiphany, Jet says, “You like a little pain, huh.”
Li makes a sound adjacent to a whine and tightens around Jet’s fingers. “I like—sensation. Pain is the same as anything.”
Jet isn’t sure he particularly believes that, but overwhelm is overwhelm, so he takes Li’s cock back in his free hand and works him open rough and thorough until he can go from nothing to three fingers with next to no resistance. Li moans and groans all the while, dropping some flavorful curses, all of which are unfortunately geographically vague. When Jet curls his fingers up and digs, Li abandons his words entirely and just makes a punched-out sound accompanied by a spasm of his legs and a twitch of his cock.
“Jet, Jet, I– I might–”
“Shh.” Jet pulls his fingers out, slowly, and watches Li’s hips rock. “You said do whatever I had in mind. Still true?”
Li blinks owlishly at him for a second. “Yes.”
Jet takes a moment to palm himself, because he’s been very patient and deserves it, then hangs half his torso off the bed to hunt on the floor for his bag and the length of rope he keeps there for Longshot. He holds it up. “You sure?”
Li stares. He swallows. Licks his lips. (That would be a very fun place for Jet to put his dick, he notes.) He’s silent for long enough that Jet starts to get kind of worried about his plan. How is he supposed to push this firebender to actual, genuine overwhelm if he can’t–
“Yes. Yes, please.”
“That’s what I hoped you’d say,” Jet says, praying his relieved smile reads as cocky instead. Li crosses his wrists and puts them over his head, looking pleased, looking hungry, and Jet decides that it’s okay to give a sworn enemy everything he wants if it’s only once and in service of the resistance.
Still, he murmurs praise while he ties Li’s pale arms together and knots the line around the foot of the bed. He would really have preferred a good headboard, or maybe a solid tree if they were out in the woods, but it’ll do. They shift a little more diagonal and Li’s hands clench hard when he tugs on his new restraints. His head falls back and his stupid gorgeous eyes flutter. “That’s perfect,” he whispers.
It’s too much. Entirely too much, too tender, too vulnerable, so Jet says, “Good,” roots around for the oil, spends an indulgent moment stroking himself, and finally wrestles one of Li’s legs over his shoulder and pushes into him.
Sadly, he feels absolutely incredible. Jet’s mental coherence stutters dangerously. Li gasps and arches prettily, teeth grit, muscles straining. Jet watches him fight the rope for a minute before his breath slows, his ass loosens up, and his arms relax. He’s such a sight. Then Jet experimentally rolls his hips, and it gets so much worse, because Li moans with an edge of tears, like he’s missed sex so desperately that that little movement is already overwhelming, and it takes Jet way too long to remember that that’s the point.
“Hold on,” Jet says, not quite sure what he’s referring to when Li’s hands are out of commission, but he proves that he means it by readjusting his stance and his hold on Li’s leg, taking a breath, and fucking into him hard.
Li doesn’t even finish making his startled noise before he moans, and the sounds melt together. He closes his eyes and tucks the scarred side of his face against his arm like he’s trying to hide. Jet runs a hand over his cheek and through his hair to remind him that he can’t. His eyes just scrunch tighter and his breathing goes harsh and regular. Breathing for discipline, for control. They can’t have that, can they?
Jet says, “Remember when I said to relax?” and takes Li by the backs of his knees to fold them against his chest. His next thrust is deeper and drags noises out of both of them.
“I’m relaxed,” Li says, but it’s whiny, defensive.
“I love how tight you are, don’t get me wrong–”
“Mmh.”
“–but you’re gonna be sore tomorrow if you keep this up.”
“Maybe I want to be sore,” Li counters, pissy even like this. “Maybe the parlor is boring and I can’t stand another day without a distraction. Now stop telling me to relax and fuck me like you mean it.”
“Sure, your majesty. Bossy.” And Jet doesn’t miss the way Li’s eyes go wide and fraught, but an oil-slick hand on his dick reduces him back to tight-wound, trembling want.
Jet tries to analyze that, he really does, but he’s balls-deep in a boy who hasn’t gotten off in so long that he let himself get tied to the bed on the first date, and that takes precedence. Jet focuses on how good he feels, how soft-wet-warm, then realizes how dangerous that is and stops. He turns his attention to Li’s body language instead. Legs wide and tense, doing most of the work of holding himself open at this point. Chest heaving, muscles tight, too alluring to look at for long. Hands wrapped around the rope for dear life—which gives Jet an idea.
He spends a minute adjusting his angle until Li makes that punched-out sound again, then zeroes in on it until Li is that loud on almost every thrust. He spits in his already wet hand and works Li’s cock with all the methods he uses on himself when he’s exhausted and just needs to come before he can sleep. Like a charm, it makes Li’s pretty eyes roll back in his skull and his noises even less human. He’s so tense, so, so tight, and Jet has to remind himself firmly that this is a firebender he’s got in his bed, a scourge, the enemy. The enemy now moaning from deep in his chest every time Jet drags his thumb over the slit of his cock. Jet is so turned on. God, this was a bad idea.
Li grits out, “I’m–” then chokes on the rest of the sentence. He buries his face again. His legs are shaking. Jet can’t help but smirk—bad idea or no, this firebender certainly doesn’t look controlled, and the plan might pan out yet.
Jet says, “That’s it, let go for me, pretty boy,” and apparently Li is not used to being called pretty, because he makes a strangled noise and comes all over himself. Jet succumbs to the base urge to swipe up some of the mess with two fingers and shove them in Li’s mouth.
Li moans, more air than sound, and it certainly looks like overwhelm, but the rope he’s clinging to is distinctly unburned. Jet slides his fingers deeper, waits for the gag, and picks up the pace of his hips. His legs are starting to ache (karma, probably) but he clears his mind of everything except the schema of his body, his movement, his goal. There’s no place for weakness in a freedom fighter, even when Li’s eyes go glassy and his voice tips high in his register, visibly failing to brace himself against the amount of sensation. His arms keep jerking against their restraints. He’s infuriatingly beautiful.
Jet lets the rage take him under for a while. It should probably ruin how hot this would otherwise be, but it doesn’t. Jet is angry and vengeful and dead set on pushing this stupid firebender beyond overwhelm. He wants to see him crying, writhing, screaming, wracked with tremors, tortured, but all in the context of this, of what Jet can do to him with his hands and his cock and a few tools.
Li must not have been exaggerating about the length of his unwilling abstinence, because he comes again before Jet does, adding weakly to the mess he’s made of his torso. His voice is shredded, ragged little moans clawing their way out of his throat, and as much as Jet would really, really love to drag this out for what would be days in an ideal world, there’s only so much a guy can take before the undeniable sexiness of the situation overtakes him. He watches a regal, solitary tear slip from the corner of Li’s eye and he comes.
Li makes a small, animal noise when Jet pulls out of him. At a glance, his hole is reddened and puffy, not quite able to close but not dripping yet, and Jet has to look away when his dick valiantly tries to express interest. You got yours, shut up. He eases Li’s legs back down to the bed and watches his body go limp one muscle at a time. He’s staring at the wall, trying to figure out how best to clean up, when one of Li’s hands pushes into his hair. He sighs and leans into it until his brain kicks back in.
“What the fuck? Are you kidding me? You knew how to get out of that the whole time?”
Eyes still closed, Li tosses the end of the rope over the side of the bed. It slithers to the floor in a heap, not a singe to be found. “Yes,” he says, sounding kind of offended, and doesn’t elaborate.
Jet is dumbfounded, can’t think of a single thing to say, so he clambers like an ostrich horse hatchling onto his feet and grabs his rumpled shirt to wipe them both down with. He got an embarrassing amount of honey on it earlier anyway.
Once he’s tossed it back to the floor, once he’s more or less settled and Li has curled into him (adorably, maddeningly), Jet traces idle patterns on his bare shoulder and zones out at the ceiling.
All that, and not a single spark. Not one. What must he to do get this fucking firebender to light up?
Li’s thighs press together, and Jet reaches over him to find his own come beginning to drip down towards the mattress. Because he doesn’t want it to stain, and for no other reason, he swipes it up and pushes it back in, and Li lets out that throaty whimper that’s quickly becoming one of Jet’s favorite sounds.
Oh, well. Even failed missions are strategically valuable. Jet thinks about a knotted piece of cloth in that pretty mouth—phase five it is.