Fic: distant rhythm of the drum [ATLA, KuZu, Eldritch]

[quillpunk]

• Rating: T
• Categories: M/M
• Fandom: Avatar: the Last Airbender
• Relationship: Zuko/Kuei
• Characters: Zuko, Kuei
• Additional Tags: Ficlet, First Meetings, Pre-Slash, Pre-Relationship
• Status: Complete
• Wordcount: 1047
• Published on AO3: 2021-08-17

Notes: For KuZu Week 2021: Day 2 - Horror

Disclaimer: I do not own Avatar: the Last Airbender or any associated trademarks.

---

Overwhelming.

That was the only way to describe the presence blanketing all of Zuko's senses. Overwhelming. Overpowering. Drowning him in sensations and feelings that weren't even his. It beat up against his heart, pounding in a rhythm that he could almost convince himself was his own. It drifted through his veins, seeking out his every organ and nestling in it like a parasite looking for a place to make a home. Over and over again, the feeling surrounded him.

"Are you okay?" Kuei asked, his voice anxious as a mouth formed in the shadow beside his head. The mouth on his face hadn't moved.

Zuko took a deep breath and let his fire move through him, burning the shadows to a crisp. Kuei shuddered, his mouths snapping closed. Zuko said, "I'm fine," and he even meant it.

Sure, it was strange that instead of getting killed for breaking into the Earth King's palace and finding that the Earth King was some kind of spirit, he was dragged to the library and spent a couple of pleasant hours studying about the Avatar. But it hadn't done him any harm, and this was his fifth visit to the palace. Sometimes he wondered why Kuei kept welcoming him back, beaming at him every time he appeared, but he also didn't want to change it.

It was nice, reading in the library.

Even though Kuei was a literal monster that had eaten Long Feng when the man attempted to brainwash Zuko, it was still nice.

Eyes blinked at Zuko from the corners of the library, staring at him from every possible angle. Zuko was used to this by now, and so he merely waved at them. The eyes widened and the internal light coming from them shone brighter. At least with eyes that bright, one barely needed lamps to read.

"Good, good," Kuei bobbed his head and it fell off his neck, tumbling to the floor as Kuei's arms flailed in the air, trying to catch it and failing epically. The monster in human skin—literally—cursed softly and picked up the head, a new one already forming on his neck. The old one crumbled into dust, falling apart in Kuei's hands. Zuko winced a little, not quite used to that yet.

Kuei stared at his empty hands for a minute, frowning, before he snapped his new head around to look at Zuko. He blinked, then grinned. "I'm glad you came back," he said, walking over to sit next to Zuko on the floor. Zuko pointed to the cushion before Kuei sat on the stone floor again, and Kuei immediately changed tracks to sit on it.

"I told you I would," Zuko frowned.

Kuei nodded, his head staying on this time. "Yes, but... a lot of people say they'll come back." Unspoken went but no-one ever does.

A mouth bit down on Zuko's swords, and he irritably slapped it away. Kuei didn't react—Zuko was half-convinced that he barely knew what his own body parts were doing. Evey stared at him from shadows, mouth forming out of them to whisper words he couldn't understand in a language he didn't know. The darkness around them soared, hiding them away between shelves and scrolls and old memories of lives long-since forgotten.

Zuko breathed in the scent of ink and paper that always seemed to linger around Kuei. The air around the man twisted, reality seamlessly bending to Kuei's will. A table made of shadows popped into existence in front of them, and Kuei gestured to it. Zuko, already knowing what the man wanted, placed his scroll on it so he could read easier.

Kuei scooted closer with every passing minute until he was sitting with his side touching Zuko's. Zuko didn't move, didn't twitch away from the cold or the sudden knowledge that he was buried fifteen meters underground and was slowly suffocating to death. Instead he stayed still, allowing his fire to burn brighter, hotter, until smoke was leaving his lips in time with his breaths.

"How is your uncle?" asked Kuei, sometime later.

Zuko took a moment to register that he was being spoken to, and then another moment to recognize what had been said. He looked up from his scroll and to Kuei—dispropriate body and all. "Yes," he said, "He's enjoying his new teashop."

Kuei smiled at him, his thousand eyes glittering with joy. The mass of existence that was probably supposed to be Kuei ended below his chest now, fusing into the shadows surrounding them. A void existed there instead, a lack of existence that made Zuko's head hurt. He forced his eyes away, rubbing them slightly to stop the spots of darkness from eating up his vision.

"I'm glad," said Kuei.

Zuko smiled at him, his smoke smelling like burned charcoal.

There was no-one else near them. The area around the library was always abandoned when Zuko came to visit, always left to rot on its own. And it was rotting, he was sure. The scrolls and books and bookshelves were losing form, bleeding shadows and ink staining the floor. Dark plants ate their way into the foundation of the stone, shadows settling into the cracks like spiders. The darkness ate up all light, every candle useless in here. Zuko's firebending was the only reason that he could read in here at all.

He allowed the shadows to embrace him, allowed them to hug him until he looked as black as any other shadow in here. When he looked at his own hand, he could scarcely see it. Ignoirng the unconscious beat of instinctive fear that nearly swallowed him whole.

Kuei's hand curled around his, their fingers slotting naturally together. The fear eased back into something more manageable—Zuko had always been very good at ignoring his instincts. At ignoring the voice in his head telling him that he was making a mistake, insisting he would regret it. It was easy enough to push those voices aside now, too, easy enough to curl into Kuei's darkness and let his fire breathe freely through them. Easy enough to smile, and turn and trust that Kuei wouldn't hurt him.

Zuko had made a lot of mistakes in his life, but he didn't think that this was one of them.