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"You should come to music night, sir."
"No."
Jee sighed. "If you're serious about getting on better with the crew, come to music night. It's easy. All you have to do is sit there and not look like you'd rather be anywhere else."
"Lieutenant, shut up and work. I want this ship sailing before the afternoon watch is over," Zuko snapped.
Jee shot a glare at the back of Zuko's stupid bald head and went back to bending the last piece of the bridge deck's lightning-warped railing back into place. They'd been scrambling half the night and all morning to clean the ship after the storm, attach everything that had come loose, and make sure it would all stay attached until they could limp into port.
Zuko had spent most of the day yelling at everyone to hurry up. Maybe - maybe - the brat had come to realize that killing his own men wasn't going to help him catch the Avatar any faster, but that clearly didn't mean he wasn't going to make them slave until they dropped. The only thing that made the crew tolerate him right now was that he was doing a lot of the dirty work himself. That, and the fact that Cook had spread the story of Zuko's scar around faster than you could say "agni kai at thirteen". Jee, too, had woken up from a deep but not very refreshing sleep with the vague idea that he should work on getting along with their young commander today.
Unfortunately, Zuko seemed to have woken up with the idea that he should work on capturing the Avatar today. The hostile belligerence he'd been displaying earlier was gone, more or less, but he wasn't being very receptive to Jee's attempts at conversation. Jee was almost disappointed. There had been a time when they could go for days without a single argument about anything at all, but that had been before that airborne menace turned up and ruined... things.
Fine, then. Maybe working to fix the bridge together without getting into a full-blown duel was enough progress for now. The lightning had bent one corner of the bridge's small observation deck downwards, and while the telescope was a total loss, the rest of the damage was more cosmetic than structural. Mechanist Peng had already done most of the hard firebending needed to straighten the deck itself; all that was left was to solder the broken ends of the railing's top bar together. The result wouldn't be very polished, but it was unlikely they'd be able to get a real metalwright in port to fix this. Specialists were expensive even at the best of times. And judging from the number of screaming fits Zuko had thrown at port officials in the last month, Zhao had instructed every harbor on this side of the Earth Kingdom to charge their little ship three times over for whatever services or goods it needed.
They'd actually done a rather nice job, considering the nightmare of twisted and scorched metal they'd started out with. A nightmare Jee would have been resembling rather a lot right now if General Iroh hadn't redirected the second lightning strike. Zuko, too.
A small shiver ran down Jee's spine. Somehow, moments of mortal danger were always a lot more terrifying the morning after.
"I'm not coming to music night. I don't want to play the tsungi horn."
Oh. So they were talking after all? Interesting.
"Then don't, sir." Jee nodded at the end of railing that Zuko was trying to align with Jee's end. "A bit to the left."
Zuko let go of the red-hot metal bar, wiped his hands on his threadbare work shirt, and grabbed hold again. There were two broad vertical stripes of soot on his unscarred cheek. He looked like he was wearing Water Tribe war paint.
"And I don't want to hear Uncle whine about it either," he grumbled. Another tug got the railing aligned perfectly.
Jee wrapped hot strips of metal in and over the gap between the two ends of the bar and began to melt the whole mess together. Soldering was hardly his speciality, but it didn't have to look pretty as long as it worked. And he rather liked showing off in front of Zuko. The brat could heat metal enough to make it bend, but melting seemed to be beyond his skill level, and there was a definite edge of jealousy to the dark look he was giving Jee right now.
But today was for being nice. And Zuko tended to take even the gentlest teasing as a personal attack, so Jee wasn't going to go out of his way to draw attention to all the things he could do better than the kid. Most certainly not. Not on purpose, anyway.
"Sir, all you have to do at music night is be present. None of the men will try to talk with you if you don't want to, believe me."
"No."
It was like trying to make a four-year-old eat his vegetables. "You said you wanted to work with us better, sir. I'm telling you, the easiest way to start convincing the men that you give a damn about them is to take an interest in what they do in their spare time."
"I'm not coming to music night!"
The railing looked finished. Jee gave it a slap and imagined he was boxing Zuko around the ears. "Sir, with all due respect, I don't understand what you find so hard about just sitting there and listening."
"Your music is stupid."
"What?"
"What, sir," Zuko said. "Your music is stupid."
Jee turned to him and made no effort to keep his anger invisible. He'd been trying to help, and here the brat went insulting him. "I'm sorry our musical skills aren't very impressive to your courtly ears, sir, but you'll just have to get used to that."
Zuko waved him off. "No, I mean you only play stupid old songs."
"...Like what, sir?"
"Like... 'Four Seasons, Four Loves', or 'As The River Flows'. Or 'Island Song'." He sneered. "I can hear you all the way from my cabin. If I have to listen to that miserable 'Island Song' one more time, I'm replacing you the next time we make port."
Jee blinked. He'd be the first to admit that at least half of each music night was filled with perfectly ridiculous drunken ditties, but those were classic ballads that Zuko was mentioning. Jee happened to like 'Island Song', and so did everyone else he'd ever met in his life.
"Sir, I'm not sure what you mean. What's wrong with those songs?"
Zuko sighed and shot a despairing look at the sky, as if this was an extremely stupid question that he'd heard sixty times before, probably from his uncle.
"They're for old people."
Jee blinked.
"Old people."
"Yeah." Zuko sat on his haunches and peered at the newly-connected bar from up close, as if he'd be able to tell if Jee had made a mistake. "Look, all of you are old people, so I suppose you want to play old people songs. Fine. Just leave me out of it."
Just when he thought the brat had run out of new things to insult Jee with. Old. Old.
"Then what songs do you like? Sir?"
Zuko shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe 'A Tale of Puppets Breaking'. And 'A Small Love Song' is kind of nice."
Dear spirits. He couldn't possibly be serious.
"'A Tale of Puppets Breaking' sounds like the singer's being horribly murdered. Sir. Also, it has too many drums. And 'A Small Love Song' is nothing but drums."
"That's what you say. But you like 'Island Song', and that one sounds like it was made for a really sad turtle-sloth. My grandmother thought it was slow."
"Your grandmother? You mean the Fire Lady Ilah?" Somehow, reminders that Zuko was really, truly related to actual Fire Lords and Fire Ladies always caught Jee by surprise.
Zuko squinted. He looked like he was trying to determine if Jee had just insulted his grandmother. "Yeah. What about her?"
"Nothing," Jee mumbled.
"It's a stupid song and it sounds wrong."
"All right, sir. How do you think 'Island Song' should sound?"
"Faster. And it needs a rhythm. Punch. Maybe with some drums."
Punch.
"It doesn't need punch. It's a tragic love ballad. It's a man singing to a lover he's been separated from."
"Well, maybe she'd actually hear him if he used some drums." Zuko took hold of the railing with both hands and gave it a hard jerk. "Are we done yet?"
Jee gave the bar an experimental rattle of his own. "We need a way to test how much weight it'll hold. Can't have anyone leaning on it and going straight through." Maybe he could call up two or three more people so they could all pull at the railing together. They'd have to be firebenders, though, because the metal would stay hot for quite a while. He should probably tie the bridge deck off with rope before some idiot wandered out and burned all the skin off his hands.
"Hmm." Zuko adjusted his grip on the railing a little and flexed the muscles in his arms. Then he pushed off from the deck, both legs kicking up until his whole body swung into a handstand.
The bar gave an ominous shriek, but the yell of panic that shot up Jee's throat never made it out. He was used to acting instead of standing around screaming like an idiot when something new and terrifying happened, so he was already in motion, reaching to grab Zuko before he could plunge to his death.
The railing held. And by some miracle, Zuko stayed upright instead of tipping over the bar and into the void beyond. He even shot an upside-down glare at Jee's outstretched hands.
"What, Lieutenant?"
Jee tried to force himself to let go of the breath he was holding, but it didn't quite work.
"Sir. You're going to fall."
"Do I look like I'm falling?" Zuko's voice was tight, but not all that strained. The end of his ponytail was almost brushing the railing. There was a lull in the wind right now, but those never lasted long at sea. Any moment, there'd be another strong gust, or maybe they'd hit a wave, and then...
"Sir, just... Come down. Please."
"One of my friends taught me how to do this, okay? I'm fine. I'm testing if it'll hold a man's weight."
Jee slowly withdrew his hands and took a few careful steps backwards. It did look like Zuko was keeping his balance, and touching him might actually topple him over instead of helping, but still...
The work shirt began to slide down - up - his pale torso, past the hollow of his navel, well-defined stomach muscles, and the long curve of a ribcage. The fabric settled down just under - above - two small, pale nipples.
Well.
It was during moments like this that Jee was almost entirely sure the kid was actively trying to flirt with him, deliberately and on purpose. He had just enough experience being flirted at to know it when it happened. He tended to get quite a bit of attention in harbors; he looked healthy and clean, and his officer's uniform suggested that he had coin.
The way Zuko was always flexing his arms and needlessly taking off his shirt off during sparring sessions was just not innocent. Really not. And then he'd actually smiled at Jee yesterday. Smiled back. Jee had smiled at him, and he’d smiled back. People didn’t smile for no reason while they were hanging from a slippery ladder during a deadly storm.
If this had been anyone else, Jee would have gone knocking on their cabin door in the middle of the night with a bottle and a pair of cups months ago. It wasn't anyone else, though, and Jee wasn't going to make an overt display of interest until he was certain beyond all doubt that the brat wasn't being a tease simply by accident. If he had it wrong... Maybe he could handle it if Zuko felt mortally insulted and became violent. But the humiliation of being rejected by someone young enough to be his son, by the brat prince - that was a different matter entirely. Jee was far too attached to the small amount of personal pride he had left to let stupid Zuko mock him.
But spirits, the arch of his back was just plain beautiful. And the hollows next to his hipbones looked made to fit Jee's thumbs.
Lovely as this view was, though, he had to make the brat come down somehow. If anyone on deck happened to look up, Jee would get scolded for standing around while the General's precious little monster balanced above a fifty-foot drop. Perhaps General Iroh was used by now to Zuko finding a new and exciting way to nearly die every other day. But the old man didn't take kindly to anyone actually condoning his nephew’s dangerous stunts, not when they were perfectly placed to stop them. Not that he'd hurt Jee, oh no. But he'd be disappointed.
Jee wondered which would be more dangerous - letting the brat do his acrobatics and hope the General didn't see or hear of it, or grabbing Zuko around the middle and plucking him off the railing. He didn't believe Zuko would injure him on purpose, not really. But the brat was very quick to spit fire when unhappy, and with the way he was standing there, his mouth was rather alarmingly close to groin level. Which Jee wasn't going to think about for a second longer.
Wait. Maybe if he just pretended not to be at all interested in the whole display, Zuko would stop showing off by himself. Yes. That was it.
"'Island Song' was made for the pipa, sir," Jee said. He began to order the welding tools back inside Mechanist Peng's crate, taking care not to even glance at Zuko. "It doesn't matter if you want drums, there's not supposed to be any in there."
"I don't care!" Zuko still sounded upside down. "It's boring with just a pipa!"
Jee arranged three wrenches next to each other, in order of size, as carefully as if they were made of blown Shu Jing glass.
"You're a disgrace upon all humans who ever played music," he muttered, just softly enough that he was almost completely sure Zuko couldn't have heard it. He rose to his feet and stared out over the sea, as if there was no attractive young man making a spectacle of himself right behind his back. "Sir, the railing is clearly going to hold. Are you going to stand there until sparrowgulls start perching on your boots?"
Zuko's feet hit the bridge deck with a hollow bang.
"Look, I told you, like your old man music all you want!" Oh, he was getting angry now. His highness didn't like being ignored. "Just keep me out of it! I'm not going to sit around listening to boring music when I could be tracking the Avatar."
And there we go. The familiar stab of anger that accompanied every mention of the thrice-cursed Avatar was barely less sharp than before. Hearing the story of the agni kai had made Jee a lot more sympathetic to Zuko's dangerously obsessive chase, but he still hated every bit of it. He longed for the days when this whole journey was no more than General Iroh's largely uneventful retirement cruise, and Zuko was no more than a loud nuisance who made up for his nasty temper by walking around shirtless a lot.
Damn him.
"Of course, sir. The Avatar. I'm sure he's a lot more exciting than your boring old crew."
"He's from a hundred years ago. I bet he likes 'Island Song'," Zuko snarled, with his nose scrunched up like the petulant child he was. He stalked into the bridge before Jee could start mimicking the ridiculously pissy expression and kick off another fight.
Of course Zuko didn't show up for the next music night. He was probably still upset about the visit they'd had from Zhao's sneering flunkies, wanting to steal his precious intelligence on the Avatar's movements. Still, Jee had been hoping he'd gotten through to the brat a little. Obviously not.
Annoyed, he told everyone about Zuko's utterly moronic suggestions for adding punch to 'Island Song'. To his considerable irritation, the drummers got all insulted and took it as a challenge. Then their flute player started whining about being left out while the drums and the pipa got to play. Before the moon had completely risen, they were performing the song with every instrument they had on board. The cacophony they were making out of it had even acquired a stupid rhythm all by itself. Jee needed to drown his conscience in a very considerable amount of paint stripper before he could bring himself to sing this twisted mockery of what had once been a heart-wrenching ballad. The others seemed to love it, though. The General called it a "stirring" performance and seemed to mean that in a good way. In the end, even Jee had to admit - silently - that he'd had fun.
And the light in Zuko's window had stayed on the whole evening. He'd listened. Maybe he'd even liked it. Once in his bunk, Jee let his hand drift down and enjoyed a very pleasant midnight fantasy about how Zuko would turn up in his cabin, in just those thin sleeping pants he sometimes stalked around in, and admit that Jee had done a good job brightening up the song. He'd slide his fingers into the hollows next to his hipbones to tug the pants down, and his spine would arch just so when Jee touched him...
The next morning, Jee found out that the brat hadn't even been on board. He'd taken the skiff and gone gallivanting off to do whatever teenaged royals did all on their own in dark Earth Kingdom forests. Several people reported seeing him come back at dawn, looking like he hadn't slept a wink and had a headache the size of Zhao's ego.
Jee took his pipa, sat down in the corner of his cabin that he knew was right under Zuko's bed, and belted out 'Island Song' as slowly and boringly as he could until his voice was completely drowned out by the shrieking from above.