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5 TIMES ZUKO BURNED THE PALACE + 1 TIME THE MAID FINALLY UNDERSTOOD WHY
18+ MDNI, smut, adult!zuko, fire lord!zuko, established relationship, newlywed, dom!zuko, jealous!zuko, fire lady!reader, water/icebender!reader, cockwarming, oral sex, edging, creampie, semi-public sex, dry hump, etc ...
DEAR DIARY, it’s my sixth day as a palace maid & apparently fire lord zuko burns things down whenever he’s alone with his wife. i asked the head maid about it, but she said i’m still too innocent to understand ...? is it because the fire lord is abusive ?! i just hope the kind fire lady is okay :<
O1 | HOPELESSLY DEVOTED TO YOU
The palace staff had quickly learned to read the architectural warning signs. At first, the occasional flicker of the wall sconces was easy to dismiss as a normal side effect of living inside the Fire Nation royal estate, where ceremonial flames burned at nearly every corner and the Caldera heat had a personality of its own. A candle trembling during a tense council meeting was not unusual. A brazier roaring too brightly after the Fire Lord received bad news was simply part of palace life. Firebenders were emotional people, after all, and the palace had housed generations of them.
But then the Fire Lord got married, and suddenly the entire palace became one prolonged fire hazard.
Whenever Zuko was struck by a particularly intense wave of desire for his wife, his inner fire reacted with embarrassing honesty. The decorative flames burning in the iron wall sconces would surge upward, roaring to life in blinding, unnatural pillars of gold. Lanterns trembled on their hooks, curtains smoked at the edges, and the very air in certain corridors grew so thick and hot that walking through them felt like stepping into the throat of a dragon. It became common knowledge among the staff that if a hallway suddenly felt like a furnace and the torches were licking the ceiling, you simply turned around and walked the other way.
No one said anything directly, of course. This was the Fire Lord and Fire Lady, newlyweds and apparently determined to test the structural endurance of every room, corridor, garden, balcony, kitchen, archive, and unfortunately, the royal study. The guards developed a silent rotation around the affected areas. The maids began carrying water basins with the same exhausted professionalism soldiers carried spears. The council, with great suffering and even greater self-preservation, pretended not to notice whenever their notoriously strict, punctual ruler arrived at official meetings with his collar pulled suspiciously high and his hair slightly more ruined than court protocol allowed.
You, naturally, found the entire situation hilarious. Zuko didn’t.
“You’re ruining my reputation,” he muttered one morning over breakfast, glaring into his tea as if the jasmine leaves had personally betrayed him. His hair was still half-loose from sleep, his robe lazily tied at the waist, and the faint reddish mark just beneath his jaw was doing an absolutely terrible job of staying hidden under his collar.
You lifted your teacup with both hands, blinking at him over the rim with exaggerated innocence. “My love, your reputation survived banishment, piracy, treason, and that one unfortunate ponytail era. I think it can survive people knowing you like your wife.”
His golden eyes narrowed. “I do not merely like my wife.”
His gaze flicked to your mouth, then back to your eyes with the grim seriousness of a man discussing military strategy. “I am devoted to my wife.”
Your heart did something terribly inconvenient inside your chest. Then Zuko, apparently deciding that ruining you emotionally before breakfast was perfectly acceptable royal behavior, added in a lower voice, “Obsessed, even.”
The candle between you burst into a sudden, dramatic flame.
Both of you looked at it.
From the doorway, the head maid closed her eyes and took a very slow breath. “Not again,” she whispered.
O2 | SEVEN MINUTES OF HEAVEN
The first major casualty of your absolute lack of restraint was the royal study. It had started as a minor disagreement over a passing comment made by a visiting Earth Kingdom dignitary, which really should not have escalated as quickly as it did. The dignitary had been harmless enough, charming in that polished diplomatic way, with smooth compliments and practiced laughter that clearly meant nothing beyond courtly manners. You had barely paid him any mind. Zuko, unfortunately, had paid him too much mind.
By the time the heavy doors of the royal study closed behind you both, the Fire Lord’s fiercely protective instincts were already simmering dangerously beneath his skin. The room smelled of cedar, parchment, ink, and the sharp metallic bite of ozone, a scent you had come to associate with your husband trying very hard not to set something on fire. He stood near the shelves with a scroll clenched in one hand, his jaw tight enough to cut glass, while you leaned against the edge of his massive oak map table and crossed your arms.
“You are being ridiculous, Zuko,” you said. The table behind you was covered in carefully arranged naval documents, trade routes, council reports, and one very important scroll that had taken three ministers nearly a week to prepare. “He complimented my diplomacy. That is literally his job.”
Zuko’s eyes flashed. “He complimented more than your diplomacy.”
You rolled your eyes so hard it was honestly impressive you didn’t see the back of your own skull. “You know I only have eyes for you. Besides, you are one to talk. Honestly, with your history, I’m surprised you didn’t accidentally marry half the Earth Kingdom before I got here. Total womanizer.”
Zuko went completely still.
The scroll in his hand lowered slowly, and you realized a fraction too late that you had touched something far more tender than simple jealousy. Over the past decade, Zuko had mellowed into a composed ruler, a man capable of silencing entire council chambers with nothing but a look. But there were still old wounds beneath all that control, places where rejection and loneliness had carved themselves too deeply into him. Your teasing had landed somewhere dangerously close to one of them.
“A womanizer?” Zuko repeated quietly.
His voice was calm, and that was what made it worse. It had dropped into that dark, gravelly register meant only for you, the one that made the back of your neck prickle and your spine instinctively straighten. He placed the scroll down on the desk with careful precision, then moved around the table with slow, heavy steps until he was standing directly in front of you, crowding you back against the polished wood.
“My wife,” he said, his golden eyes burning with raw, defensive intensity, “I haven’t looked at, let alone wanted, another woman in years. I was abstinent before you invaded my palace, pointed a blade at my throat, and drove me completely insane.”
Your breath caught. The firelights in the study flickered at the edges of your vision, but you could barely focus on them with the way he was looking at you, as if the entire world had narrowed down to the space between your bodies.
“That was…” You swallowed, suddenly finding it very difficult to hold onto your smug little smile. “That was a very dramatic answer.”
Zuko only huffed, low and humorless, his mouth twitching like he could not decide whether he wanted to argue with you or ruin you against the nearest available surface.
“Anyway, you have a council meeting in exactly—”
“They can,” he said, and there was something almost dangerous in how certain he sounded. His hands found your waist, scorching through the layers of crimson silk as he pushed closer, forcing the edge of the map table to press harder against the back of your thighs. The carefully organized naval reports crinkled beneath your palms when you braced yourself, and Zuko’s eyes dropped to the movement before lifting back to your face, dark and possessive and entirely too pleased with the way your composure had started to slip.
You opened your mouth to respond, but whatever clever retort you had prepared vanished the moment his lips brushed the side of your neck. Zuko had always loved you with a terrifying kind of intensity, and when his emotions caught fire, he had a habit of kissing like he was trying to prove something to both of you at once. Still, there was nothing uncertain in the way your fingers curled into his collar, nothing hesitant in the way you pulled him closer, dragging him down until his mouth finally crashed against yours.
The kiss wasn’t elegant. It was teeth and heat and months of carefully leashed obsession finally snapping under the weight of one careless accusation.
Zuko kissed you like he was still trying to prove a point, like every word you had thrown at him had struck somewhere too close to an old wound and he had decided the only acceptable response was to make you forget you had ever doubted him. One large, calloused hand slid up your spine, fingers spreading firmly between your shoulder blades while the other gripped your hip hard enough to make the silk wrinkle beneath his palm. You answered by biting his lower lip, and the low, broken sound that tore from his throat went straight through you.
“My lord,” you gasped against his mouth, freezing fingers twisting into the front of his robes. “You’re gonna be late—”
“Don’t care,” he panted, voice wrecked and rough. He shoved your skirts up with impatient hands and lifted you onto the map table in one motion. Scrolls scattered. An inkwell tipped over, spilling black across weeks of careful work, but neither of you noticed.
You barely had time to brace yourself before he pushed your legs apart. He freed himself with jerky movements, and the thick, scorching heat of his cock dragged against your inner thigh. You shivered at the contrast.
“Zuko—s-slow down—” The word broke into a sharp moan as he pushed inside you in one deep thrust, stretching you open around burning heat. The clash of temperatures dragged ragged groans from both of you.
He moved with none of his usual restraint after that, the table creaking beneath you as ruined scrolls slipped uselessly to the floor. Your freezing hands clutched at his shoulders, frost blooming beneath your fingertips before melting almost instantly against the fevered heat of his skin.
“You’re unbearable when you’re—ah!—jealous,” you managed between breaths, the words shaky and broken.
Zuko let out a breathless, almost pained laugh against your neck, hips never slowing. “And yet you keep giving me reasons.”
He shifted just enough to find the angle that made the whole room blur at the edges.
“Zuko—right t-there,” you gasped, head falling back as your legs tightened around his waist. The firelights in the study answered before he could, flickering wildly as his control slipped. Flames stretched higher in the sconces, throwing restless gold across the walls, while a nearby candle flared too bright and caught the corner of a discarded scroll.
Zuko moved with terrifying concentration, one hand planted against the table, the other gripping your thigh as if he needed something solid to hold onto. The room filled with heat, paper crumpled beneath you, and somewhere behind him, another small flame caught at the edge of an old tapestry.
“Zuko—ah, I’m g-gonna—” Your words dissolved into a broken moan as you came first, sudden and shattering. Your walls clenched tight around his burning length.
The cold rush dragged him over the edge right after. He buried himself deep with a choked groan, hips stuttering as he spilled inside you. His inner fire roared so fiercely that two of the wall sconces burst into tall, uncontrolled flames for several seconds before slowly settling.
For a long moment, the only sounds were your ragged breathing and the soft crackle of the small fires still licking at the edges of the room.
Zuko stayed buried inside you, arms wrapped tightly around your waist. His breath was hot and uneven against your neck. You carded freezing fingers through his messy hair and pressed a soft kiss to his scarred cheek.
“…You’re definitely late now,” you whispered, voice hoarse.
When Fire Lord Zuko finally strode into the grand hall—hair slightly mussed, ceremonial robes hastily straightened, and a very obvious trail of fresh dark marks blooming along the side of his neck—the temperature in the palace had spiked noticeably. The decorative fire sconces outside the royal study were still flaring brighter than usual.
Avatar Aang took one look at him, then at the faint sheen of lingering frost melting on Zuko’s collar, and choked violently on his tea.
The rest of the council suddenly found the table extremely interesting.
Zuko, however, simply took his seat with that terrifyingly composed Fire Lord mask firmly back in place. Though the faint, smug curve at the corner of his mouth gave him away completely.
He was exactly seven minutes late.
And he didn’t look sorry at all.
O3 | “SIR, I’M NOT PAID ENOUGH FOR THIS.”
The outdoor training courtyard was not safe from your antics either. The afternoon sun was blistering, turning the stone tiles warm beneath your bare feet, but the heat rolling off Zuko’s skin was even hotter. He moved across the courtyard with lethal precision, dual dao swords flashing in sharp silver arcs as he pressed forward. You met him strike for strike, your waterbending weaving through his aggression like a river cutting through stone. He had trained under masters, survived wars, fought prodigies and assassins and spirits, but you had learned his body in motion with a familiarity that made every sparring match feel less like combat and more like a private language.
He swung low. You stepped over the blade. He pivoted, and you caught the shift in his weight before he completed the motion, twisting your wrist and drawing moisture from the air until it hardened into a wicked, glittering blade of ice. With a sharp sweep of your ankle and a perfectly timed pull of water beneath his heel, you sent him off balance. Zuko hit the ground with a rough grunt, and before he could recover, you vaulted forward, straddling his waist and pressing the freezing tip of your ice dagger directly against the erratic pulse beating at his neck.
“Dead,” you panted, victorious and breathless, a smirk curling at your lips.
Zuko didn’t look at the blade. He looked at you.
His dark hair was plastered to his forehead with sweat, his chest rising and falling beneath the open collar of his training robe. His golden eyes dragged slowly from your triumphant expression to the way your thighs pinned him in place, and the sudden clash of your freezing temperature against his scorching skin visibly wrecked whatever remained of his concentration. A soft cloud of steam curled where your bare legs pressed against him. His hands flexed once at his sides, then slid up to grip your thighs with desperate, reverent heat.
He had simply stopped trying.
“You’re distracted,” you accused, breathless and smug.
Zuko’s gaze flicked back to yours, dark and unashamed. “Well, you’re sitting on top of me.”
“That is a terrible excuse.”
“It’s a very convincing one.”
You laughed, delighted, but the sound barely had time to leave your mouth before his hand moved to the back of your neck and pulled you down into a kiss. The ice dagger dissolved instantly, melting into a harmless stream of water that ran over his collarbone and disappeared into the fabric of his robe. You meant to tease him for surrendering so easily, but then his hips shifted beneath you, and the thought scattered completely. Through the thin layers of training clothes, you felt the unmistakable hard line of him pressed against you, hot and insistent, betraying exactly why his focus had slipped in the first place.
Your breath caught against his mouth.
His grip on your thighs tightened, and when you moved by accident—just a slight shift of your weight over his lap—his reaction was immediate. A rough, strained sound broke low in his throat, his head tipping back against the ground for half a second before his golden eyes snapped back to yours, darker than before. The victory in your expression slowly turned into something far more dangerous.
“Oh,” you breathed, unable to stop the smile spreading across your lips. “So that’s why you lost.”
You shifted again, deliberately this time, just enough to make the heat between you drag in a way that stole the air from both of your lungs. Zuko’s hand slid up to your waist, holding you in place, but he did not push you away. If anything, he pulled you closer, guiding the slow, heated movement until the line between sparring and something far less appropriate blurred completely.
Around you, the courtyard seemed to inhale. The lanterns along the wall flared, the training posts began to smoke, and a nearby guard, who had unfortunately chosen that exact moment to enter through the side gate, stopped mid-step, stared at the scene, and very slowly turned around.
He did not get paid enough for this.
Two more guards followed him without a word.
By the time the flames around the courtyard settled, three practice posts had been scorched, one stone pillar had cracked from thermal shock, and Zuko had somehow managed to look both smug and completely ruined at the same time. You brushed ash off his shoulder later, trying very hard not to laugh, while he stood there with his hair destroyed, his robe uneven, and the kind of expression that made it very clear he had absolutely no regrets.
“This is why the staff avoids us,” you told him.
Zuko leaned down until his mouth brushed your ear. “Good.”
O4 | STEP ONE: CALL HIM ZUZU!
But the most chaotic incident happened in the supposed privacy of your royal bedchamber, fueled by three generous glasses of imported plum wine and your unfortunate discovery of Zuko’s old travel chest.
You were delightfully, shamelessly drunk, rummaging through the old belongings he had kept tucked away at the back of the chamber while he watched you from the bed with the wary patience of a man who knew his wife well enough to expect disaster. There were old cloaks, worn maps, a few dull blades wrapped in cloth, and several items from the years he clearly did not enjoy discussing unless he was already half-asleep and emotionally ambushed by your cold hands on his chest.
The infamous wooden Blue Spirit mask stared up at you from beneath a folded travel cloak, its painted grin just as dramatic as the stories had promised. Your eyes widened. Your mouth fell open. Zuko, immediately sensing danger, sat up.
You slowly lifted the mask.
His expression tightened. “Don’t Zuzu me.”
You turned toward him with the biggest, most delighted smile he had ever seen, clutching the mask like a sacred treasure. “Katara told me about this.”
Of course Katara had told you. Katara had a gift, and it was not just waterbending, healing, or her terrifying ability to mother people into becoming better versions of themselves. No, Katara had the supernatural ability to make traumatized boys confess their entire life stories to her. Jet, Aang, Sokka, Zuko; somehow all of them had, at one point or another, looked into her kind blue eyes and decided, yes, this girl absolutely needed to hear the worst thing that had ever happened to them.
And now, thanks to her, you knew about the Blue Spirit, which meant Zuko was doomed.
It started as a joke, as most of your terrible ideas did. You had dragged the mask out of his travel chest with far too much excitement, demanded he put it on, and somehow managed to bully the Fire Lord of the Fire Nation into indulging you with nothing but sparkling eyes and a smile he had never learned how to refuse. The bargain had been simple, if deeply unfair: he would wear the mask, and in return you would sit sweetly in his lap—taking him fully inside you and staying there without moving.
Which, technically, you were doing.
The plum wine had left you warm and loose above him, your arms looped lazily around his neck while Zuko sat against the pillows with the last of his dignity barely hanging on by a thread. He was buried deep inside you, thick and throbbing while your walls wrapped snugly around his cock. He tried very hard to act like this was not the most unreasonable form of torture you had ever invented.
The mask stared back at you with its sharp painted grin, pale tusks, hollow eyes, and all the dramatic menace of a nightmare that had learned theater. It should not have been funny. It definitely should not have been romantic. But you, warmed by plum wine and your own terrible sense of humor, looked at him like this was the most delightful thing you had ever seen.
Zuko, unfortunately, had no idea what to do with that.
He had been perfectly willing to toss the mask aside the second you dragged it out of his travel chest, but you had whined so dramatically when he reached for it that he froze mid-motion, one hand hovering beside the painted blue grin.
“Nooo,” you complained, clutching at his wrist with both hands. “Keep the mask on.”
Zuko went still beneath you.
“It does,” you insisted, squinting at him with the solemn concentration of someone trying very hard to appear artistic while very drunk. The Blue Spirit’s painted grin stared back at you, all sharp teeth and dramatic menace, while the actual Fire Lord behind it sat painfully still beneath your attention. “You look very mysterious.”
“Ridiculously hot,” you said, then reached up with both hands to adjust the strap.
Unfortunately, your coordination had been murdered by plum wine. Instead of fixing it, you somehow made the mask tilt even farther to one side, turning the fearsome Blue Spirit into something lopsided, sulky, and deeply offended. You stared at him for one long, silent second.
It was such a small thing. A drunken little request, harmless and silly, made with your eyes bright from wine and your smile too soft to be cruel. Still, insecurity struck him faster than reason could. For one brief, awful second, his mind went somewhere old and ugly, back to every stare that had lingered too long on his scar, every flinch hidden behind polite manners, every person who had looked at the burned side of his face before they looked at him.
His voice came out quieter than he intended. “What, is the mask better?”
Then your expression changed so quickly it almost hurt to watch. The teasing vanished, replaced by something fiercely offended, as if the thought itself had personally insulted you. “No, silly,” you said, already reaching for the edge of the mask. “I just wanna tease you.”
Before he could answer, you pulled it off his face and yeeted it over your shoulder with absolutely no grace. Weee. The mask sailed through the air in a tragic little arc before landing harmlessly somewhere among the cushions.
Zuko stared after it, then he stared back at you.
Without the mask, his face was fully visible in the dim amber light of the bedchamber: the strong line of his jaw, the softness of his mouth, the old scar that had shaped him without ever making him any less beautiful, and the golden eyes that had once burned with anger but now looked at you with something so painfully devoted it made your chest ache. You cupped his face with both hands, your thumbs brushing over his cheeks with tenderness.
“Nothing beats your pretty face, Zuzu.”
Zuko went completely still.
There it was again, that impossible thing you did to him. You could tease him until his ears went red, bully him into wearing an old vigilante mask, laugh at his suffering like it was your favorite hobby, and then suddenly say something so gentle that it cut through every defense he had ever built. You were smiling at him like his face, scar and all, was not something to tolerate or look past, but something precious. Something beloved.
And because the spirits were apparently cruel, you said it while sitting so close, while your body was wrapped around his, while he was already buried deep inside you and trying very hard to pretend he was not losing every last scrap of composure he had left.
It made him want to come right there and then.
You tilted your head, still smiling. “Huh? Why?”
His hands tightened at your hips, not enough to hurt, only enough to keep you still. His jaw worked once, the muscle in his cheek jumping as he tried to gather whatever dignity had not already been ruined by you. “Just…” His voice came out strained, almost embarrassed. “Don’t move, unless you want to get pregnant.”
For one second, your wine-softened mind processed the warning.
Then your smile turned wicked.
“You do know I can just bend your—” You paused, waving one hand vaguely between you with far too much confidence for someone explaining absolutely nothing. “Your fluids, right?”
The gesture made no scientific sense whatsoever, but you delivered it with the calm certainty of a woman who had never once allowed anatomy, physics, or basic decency to stop her.
You leaned closer, lips hovering near his, mischief bright in your wine-soft eyes. “Besides, it’s not like that hasn’t happened before.”
Zuko’s eyes shut for half a second.
“That is not the problem.”
“Then what is the problem, my lord?” you asked sweetly, pressing slow, teasing kisses along the side of his neck, up the sharp line of his jaw, and finally near the corner of his mouth.
His breath left him unevenly, almost a laugh and almost a groan. He looked humiliated by his own body, but too far gone to pretend he was not completely ruined by you. “The problem,” he said, voice tight with restraint, “is that we have barely done anything.”
Your expression brightened with realization.
“Oh,” you whispered, delighted. “So this is about your pride.”
“Don’t sound so pleased.”
You shifted just enough to make his grip tighten again, just enough to pull a rough, broken sound from low in his throat. His teeth caught against his lower lip, his head tipping back against the pillows as if sheer stubbornness alone could hold him together. It was adorable, actually. Devastating, but adorable.
The more he thought about it, the worse it became. The warmth of you around him, your legs wrapped lazily around his waist, your hands still cradling his face like he was something worth loving carefully. Every soft movement, every breathless little laugh, every fond look you gave him pushed him closer to the edge he was desperately pretending he had not already reached.
So naturally, you moved again.
Ever so slowly. Teasingly. Just enough to shred whatever pride he had left.
The lantern beside the bed flared so brightly the room flashed gold.
Zuko’s composure broke all at once. His hands clamped around your hips, his whole body going tense beneath you as a low, wrecked groan tore from his throat and disappeared into the curve of your neck.
“Fuck, Y/N— I’m—” His voice broke into a wrecked groan. His hips jerked up once, twice, then he came hard.
You felt the first thick spurt of his cum shoot deep inside you, hot and sudden. His member pulsed strongly, again and again, flooding your walls with rope after rope of warm release. It was so much that it quickly spilled out around where you two were joined, slick and messy, dripping down his shaft and over your thighs every time he twitched.
Zuko shuddered beneath you, mouth open in a silent moan as another powerful spurt filled you. His whole body tensed, muscles straining, while the sconces around the room surged with bright blue-white flames that lit up the entire bedchamber for several long seconds. One of the hanging lanterns flared so intensely the flame nearly touched the canopy before settling.
When it finally slowed, Zuko was breathing hard, chest heaving, looking thoroughly ruined and a little mortified. A faint sheen of sweat glistened on his skin, and his golden eyes were glassy with pleasure and embarrassment.
Then you looked down at him, unbearably pleased with yourself.
Zuko dragged one heavy hand down his face as if asking the spirits why they had made him fall in love with the most infuriating woman alive.
“Haa…” he breathed, glaring at you with absolutely no real anger. “You just love to test my patience, don’t you, my queen?”
A sweet, bright giggle escaped you, echoing through the quiet chamber. You leaned down and pressed a soft kiss to his scarred collarbone, feeling his pulse jump beneath your lips.
His laugh was low and wrecked, his hands sliding carefully back to your waist.
And the night, of course, was only beginning.
O5 | THE FIRE LORD IS A SUCKER FOR HIS WIFE
Tucked deep behind the private wing of the palace, the moon garden was quieter than the formal courtyards and far more intimate than the public terraces. Zuko had commissioned it shortly after your wedding, though he had tried to be painfully casual about the entire thing, as if personally designing a secluded garden filled with your favorite flowers, a koi pond cold enough for your waterbending, and shaded stone paths made specifically for evening walks with you was not the most obvious confession of devotion in the world. It had a narrow pond lined with black volcanic stones, clusters of red fire lilies blooming beside pale moonflowers, and a curved stone bench beneath a low maple tree whose leaves looked almost black under the night sky. The servants rarely entered unless summoned, the guards only passed the outer gate during patrol, and the entire place was usually reserved for those rare moments when the Fire Lord wanted silence with the only person he could never bear to be away from for long.
Naturally, that peace didn’t last.
You found Zuko on the stone bench long after midnight. Stripped down to only his outer robe hanging loosely from one shoulder, he stubbornly braved the biting cold as if the freezing night temperature meant nothing. His long hair had slipped free from its tie, dark strands falling over his face and sticking to the damp line of his neck. The moonlight caught the hard planes of his bare chest and abdomen, tracing silver along old scars, tense muscle, and the familiar golden warmth of his skin. One arm was draped lazily over the back of the bench, but the pose was too deliberate, too careless in the way only Zuko could be when he was trying to pretend something didn’t hurt.
A dark smear stained the exposed skin of his upper thigh, where a shallow but ugly cut had torn. It was not fatal, not even close, but it was bleeding enough to make your stomach twist and your irritation rise immediately behind it. Zuko, of course, looked more annoyed at being discovered than concerned about the wound itself, because apparently becoming Fire Lord, surviving assassination attempts, getting married, and promising to stop carrying the entire world on his shoulders had done absolutely nothing to cure him of his lifelong allergy to asking for help.
“You’re bleeding,” you said.
Zuko glanced down at his thigh as if the wound had personally inconvenienced him. “It’s just a scratch.”
“That is usually what blood does.”
The lantern beside the koi pond flickered once, as if even the flame knew he had said the wrong thing.
With a long, suffering breath, you crossed the garden, gathered your skirts in one hand, and crouched down between his parted knees before he could argue again. Zuko’s expression shifted immediately, the sharp edge of his stubbornness catching on surprise. You ignored it, drawing water from the koi pond with a smooth curl of your wrist until it rose in a clear ribbon and wrapped itself around your fingers. The moment your glowing palms settled near his thigh, the moon garden filled with soft blue light.
“You should have called me,” you murmured, keeping your eyes on the wound as the healing water spread gently over torn skin.
“I didn’t want to wake you.”
“You woke three guards, two ministers, and probably half the turtle-ducks by bleeding through the royal hallway, but yes, thank you for sparing me.”
His mouth twitched. “The turtle-ducks are strong. They will recover.”
“Still questioning that.”
His quiet laugh was low and tired, but it warmed the space between you more intimately than any flame. You pressed your thumb near the edge of the wound to guide the healing water deeper, and Zuko’s breath caught despite his best effort to hide it. The muscle beneath your hand jumped. His fingers curled against the stone bench, long and tense, while the lantern above his shoulder flared a little too brightly.
He looked away with the stiff, guilty dignity of a man who knew exactly what his own fire had just confessed.
His jaw flexed. “It is not related.”
“You’re sitting here half-dressed, bleeding on a garden bench, and somehow still finding a way to be embarrassed because your wife is touching your thigh.”
The faint color climbing his neck betrayed him completely, but he still had the nerve to look offended. “You’re kneeling between my legs and scolding me. I’m reacting with impressive restraint.”
The words landed between you with enough heat to make the glowing water tremble around your fingers.
For a moment, neither of you moved. The wound was nearly closed now, the angry red line fading beneath the blue light of your bending until only smooth, warm skin remained beneath your palm. You should have stood, smacked his shoulder for being reckless, and dragged him back inside before the night patrol circled past the outer gate again. The moon garden was private, yes, but not unguarded; there were still soldiers beyond the walls, servants in the nearby corridors, and a very official expectation that a secluded garden built for quiet walks would not be used for anything else.
Or so everyone kept insisting.
Instead, your hand lingered against his thigh for one second too long, and Zuko’s golden eyes darkened beneath the loose fall of his hair.
The look he gave you made the koi pond steam.
“You’re enjoying this,” he said.
You blinked up at him with exaggerated innocence, though your hand was still resting a little too comfortably against his newly healed thigh. “I’m healing you.”
“I’m just naturally joyful person.”
“Joyful person, huh? No wonder you threatened to freeze a councilman’s tongue this morning.”
Your expression didn’t change. “He interrupted my breakfast.”
“That doesn’t support your argument.”
A laugh slipped out of you before you could stop it, soft and bright in the quiet garden, and just like that, whatever remained of Zuko’s restraint seemed to fold in on itself. His expression changed, irritation melting into something far more dangerous and far more tender. He looked at you the way he always did right before the palace lost another curtain, like your laughter was the only sound in the world that mattered and his fire had no idea what to do with the feeling.
His hand lifted from the bench and touched your chin, tilting your face up with a gentleness that made your chest ache.
“The wound is healed,” he murmured.
You glanced down. It was. Completely.
“So it is,” you whispered.
“Well, duh, you’re holding my face.”
His thumb brushed once along your chin, then higher, grazing your lower lip with the kind of careful heat that made the entire garden feel suddenly too quiet.
The moon garden went very still around you. The koi pond steamed faintly at the edges. The fire lilies glowed red beneath the lantern light, and the night air warmed until the scent of maple leaves, water, and Zuko’s familiar cedar heat wrapped around you like a warning.
You forgot whatever clever thing you were about to say.
Instead, your gaze dropped, which Zuko noticed almost immediately.
His thumb stilled against your mouth. “Y/N.”
There was warning in his voice, but not nearly enough conviction behind it. Not when he was still half-dressed on the stone bench, hair loose around his flushed face, newly healed thigh still warm beneath your hand, and looking at you like he had already lost the argument before it began.
You tilted your head with exaggerated innocence. “What?”
You pressed a slow kiss to the inside of his newly healed thigh, right where blood had stained his skin only moments ago, and Zuko’s breath fractured so sharply it nearly ruined his attempt at dignity. His fingers curled against the stone bench before slipping into your hair. His touch was impossibly gentle, as though holding on to you was the only way to keep himself from falling apart.
His eyes narrowed. “That is not what thorough means.”
“It is when I’m the healer.”
Moonlight painted silver across his bare chest, the hard lines of his abdomen, the old scars scattered across his skin, and the faint sheen of sweat gathering at his throat. His long hair hung loose and messy, a few strands clinging to the sharp line of his jaw. He looked like a man who had survived wars, assassination attempts, exile, palace politics, and half the world trying to break him.
And somehow, this was what undid him.
“You’re going to be the death of me,” he breathed, voice rough and helpless.
Your smile softened for half a second. “Wrong,” you murmured playfully, kissing him again, slower this time. “I’m going to make you feel better.”
Zuko’s laugh came out low and wrecked, barely more than a breath.
Whatever answer he meant to give disappeared when you tugged the rest of his robe aside and freed him. He was already achingly hard, flushed dark and leaking at the tip. You dragged your tongue slowly from base to head, savoring the way his thigh muscle jumped under your free hand.
Zuko let out a shaky exhale, head tipping back against the bench. “Hah—Y/N,”
You answered by taking him into your mouth, slow and wet, sinking down until he bumped the back of your throat. A low, broken sound escaped him—something between a groan and a sigh, like the tension he’d been carrying all night was finally cracking.
You worked him with lazy, deliberate strokes of your mouth, one hand stroking what you couldn’t take while the other rested possessively on his uninjured thigh. Every time you hollowed your cheeks or swirled your tongue, his hips twitched, fighting the urge to thrust.
The muscles in his abdomen flexed visibly with every stroke of your tongue as his breathing grew more uneven. You could feel him throbbing, getting impossibly harder against your tongue.
When you looked up, his golden eyes were fixed on you—dark, overwhelmed, and completely unguarded. The sight made something warm bloom in your chest.
It only made you greedier. So you slowed down, cruelly deliberate now, learning the exact rhythm that made his breath catch and then denying him the moment he got too close. Every time you felt his thighs tense and his member start to throb harder against your tongue, you eased off, licking lazily along the underside or sucking softly on just the head until his hips twitched with frustration.
His fingers tightened in your hair, not forcing you, but clearly fighting the urge to. “Y/N…” His voice was hoarse, almost pleading. “Don’t—ah—don’t tease me like this.”
You pulled off with a wet pop, lips glistening, and looked up at him with a wicked little smile. “But you look so pretty when you’re desperate.”
Zuko’s eyes shut, his jaw clenching as if the words had struck somewhere embarrassingly deep.
You sank back down immediately, taking him to the back of your throat in one smooth motion. Zuko groaned, head falling back against the bench as his hips jerked. You could feel him getting dangerously close again—thick and pulsing on your tongue—so you pulled back once more, stroking him slowly with your hand.
He let out a wrecked sound, half curse, half whimper. “You’re cruel… but—fuck, hah—you’re so beautiful.”
You hummed around him in response, the vibration pulling another quiet curse from his lips. You took him deeper, faster, letting the wet sounds mix with his ragged breathing and the gentle ripple of water. One of your freezing fingers traced the sensitive skin just beneath his cock, the sharp temperature contrast making his whole body jerk.
The second time you pulled him back from the edge, he lost whatever pride had been keeping him silent.
For once, he looked less like a ruler and more like a man entirely at his wife’s mercy.
You looked up at him with a wicked, affectionate smile, still stroking him fast and tight. “Cum for me, Zuzu.”
For a heartbeat, he tried not to.
You saw it in the sharp clench of his jaw, the way his fingers tightened in your hair without pulling, the way his breath caught and broke like he could still argue his way out of surrendering. Then his restraint snapped quietly, then all at once.
The Fire Lord came with a choked, broken groan, his hips jerking up uncontrollably as the first thick, hot spurt flooded your mouth. You moaned around his pulsing cock, swallowing greedily, but there was too much—thick ropes of cum kept shooting across your tongue, so much that it overflowed almost immediately. It spilled from the corners of your stretched lips, dripping messily down his throbbing shaft and over your fingers as you kept stroking him through it. The sheer amount of it made your thighs press together, heat pooling low in your belly at how desperately his body was giving in to you.
He shuddered hard beneath you, muscles taut and trembling, his long hair sticking to his sweat-damp neck and chest. His golden eyes were half-lidded, glazed with raw pleasure as he watched you take every drop like you were starving for him.
The koi pond steamed violently. A nearby fire lily bush glowed red-hot before slowly dimming.
When it finally subsided, Zuko was slumped against the bench with his chest heaving, your husband looked beautifully ruined. You pulled off slowly, licking your lips clean with a small, satisfied smile. A thin string of cum still connected your bottom lip to him before it broke.
“Good boy,” you teased softly.
Zuko stared down at you for a long moment, something raw and helpless in his expression.
“…You’re impossible,” he finally whispered, voice hoarse and wondering, as if he still couldn’t believe you were real.
You pressed one last soft kiss to his thigh and smiled.
“Isn’t this exactly what you wanted, my lord?”
His smirk deepened at your question.
Clearly, you had not realized how much danger that pretty little mouth of yours had put you in.
Zuko was still flushed, still catching his breath, still looking far too ruined for a man who had any right to recover so quickly. But his hands were steady when they reached for you, sliding beneath your arms and pulling you up into his lap before you could even think to escape.
You landed against him with a soft gasp, your skirts spilling messily over his thighs. The warmth of him pressed through the fabric, unmistakable and already returning, and suddenly your teasing smile did not feel quite as victorious as it had a moment ago.
“My wife always knows best, doesn’t she?” he murmured, his voice low against your mouth.
O6 | UPDATE: THE FIRE LADY IS FINE
By the end of the first month, the palace had adapted with the grim efficiency of a nation recovering from war. The maids carried water buckets as part of their standard duties, the guards learned which corridors to avoid based on heat patterns alone, and the council stopped scheduling meetings too close to breakfast, lunch, dinner, sparring sessions, diplomatic arguments, late-night kitchen raids, library research, moon garden strolls, or any moment where the Fire Lady happened to smile at her husband for longer than three seconds. The palace seamstresses quietly reinforced your gowns, the head chef hid the good towels, and the royal archivist posted a handwritten warning outside the study that simply read: NO OPEN FLAMES NEAR NAVAL DOCUMENTS, which everyone understood was not actually about candles.
Zuko pretended to be offended by all of this, but you knew better. For all his muttering about dignity and decorum, the Fire Lord was utterly hopeless. He had spent years learning how to contain himself, how to swallow rage, how to make his fire precise enough to serve a nation instead of destroy it. Yet somehow, all it took was your hand on his sleeve, your mouth near his ear, your laughter pressed against his throat, or apparently the simple act of healing a wound on his thigh, and the most powerful firebender in the world became a walking architectural threat.
The newest maid finally understood after one night, when she heard your bright, breathless laughter from behind the royal chamber doors, followed by Zuko’s low voice murmuring something far too soft to be anger. The sconces outside the hallway flared blue-white, the temperature spiked, and suddenly every vague warning from the senior maids made horrifying, embarrassing sense.
By dinner, her diary had only one update:
thankfully, the fire lady is fine.
the furniture, however, is not.
After that, she stopped asking questions and started carrying a water bucket like everyone else.
These days, the palace staff had been working very hard. If they were lucky, you had already set the fire down with your bending before anyone arrived. If they were not, they had to manually put out the flames before replacing another curtain, cushion, napkin, table runner, practice post, garden lantern, or emotionally unfortunate bread basket. Still, no matter how violently the sconces flared or how many unfortunate pieces of furniture fell victim to the Fire Lord’s complete lack of restraint around his wife, the flames never once touched you.
Even when his control slipped because of you, even when desire made the air shimmer and the palace lights burn brighter than they had any right to, Zuko’s fire always curved away from your skin. It burned around you, sparked above you, and curled through the air like devotion given shape, but it never hurt you. It would never hurt you. His fire had been raised in anger, sharpened by war, and forced for years to survive on pain, but with you, it had learned something gentler, something warmer, something sacred.
With you, his fire had learned love.
And love, no matter how brightly it burned, would always know how to keep you safe.
this is part of the sublimation ( my zuko fic ) universe! read more chapters
this oneshot took me like ~8 hours btw. i need everyone to clap because what the hell </3
anw i alr finished the atla la s2 n it was so good !! altho they skipped n reordered some parts, but it’s prolly bc of the budget... welp, i can’t wait for the movie to come out.
