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In hindsight—
So. In hindsight, she probably should have figured it out sooner.
Katara’s never used a dating app before. She’s never had to. Her teenage to adult life can be neatly divided by her relationships, all spanning years, all happening in quick succession. From Jet to Haru to, most recently, Aang; it isn’t as though she means to find herself embroiled in another romance only weeks after the last one ended. She thinks it happens because she takes care of people, and when she does she fills some sort of maternal void that they feel as though they’re missing and they give her a purpose. Katara finds herself in the middle before she even realizes she’s begun.
When things end with Aang—a friendly end, but an end nonetheless—she promises herself that she’ll be different. She’s twenty-one, fresh, successful, on the precipice of the beginning of the rest of her life. She wants something fun, something new. Gone is the Katara who would drive herself crazy babying someone else; for one she deserves something light. Something good.
So she spends her evenings after med school flicking absently through the app, left and right. The photo she’s chosen, one taken of her back in a bathing suit standing on the beaches of Ember Island, doesn’t feature her face, a deliberate choice that allows her to revel in the thrill of anonymity. She names herself Cat, swapping the ‘K’ for a ‘C’ to add an extra layer of secrecy, and for a moment feels a little bit like she’s taking part in the most humiliating form of subterfuge.
Then she sees Lee.
His photo is taken in the mirror of a gym locker room. Alabaster skin, toned abs, ridiculously hot. His face is cropped out and it’s so fucking douchey, so the opposite of anything Katara would ever even consider before—
She swipes right.
Of course she does.
.
She should have known.
Still, it takes four weeks, several photo exchanges, hundreds of blush-inducing messages, and three days for Katara to realize that Lee, Age 23, Ten Kilometers Away—
Lee is Zuko.
Zuko has seen her bra.
She really, really should have known.
.
Hey Zuko! It’s Kat—Katara. Katara, Sokka’s sister. Your good friend Katara. But you know that, obviously.
I just wanted to…well. We should hang out soon. We haven’t really talked since Aang and I, you know, ‘walked our own paths.’ That’s what he called it, anyways. It was a super cool breakup, actually. Very calm and mature. I think we hadn’t been in love with each other for a long time and we both realized that we were looking for something different, so we just—shit. I don’t know why I’m telling you this in a voicemail. This is why we need to hang out soon.
Sorry. I know I’m being weird. I’m just…going through some stuff. A lot of stuff. And I really need to talk to you about it, but I’d rather do it when we’re not around my brother or Aang or anyone else. And it’s been a while since we’ve done something with just the two of us, hasn’t it? I miss you. Don’t get cocky about it.
You don’t have to call me back. Just like, text me if you want to meet up for lunch or something sometime soon. There’s…stuff. That we should talk about. Not bad stuff, just. You know. Stuff.
Things.
Okay. Katara out!
.
Suki is staring at her.
Really staring.
“I’m literally begging you,” Katara says, seconds away from chucking her iced coffee in the other girl’s face and sprinting out the door, “to say something. Anything.”
“You’ve been sexting Zuko. Our Zuko. Sokka’s roommate.” It’s not exactly what Katara had wanted her to say, but she supposes that it’s a start. They’re not questions. It’s a repetition of everything that she had spilled to the other woman over the last ten minutes, drink clenched in her hand so tightly that she thought the plastic cup might crack in two. “Zuko with the super-intense smoulder and the rippling biceps.”
“He doesn’t—am I the only one who hasn’t noticed his muscles before?”
“Yes. And he doesn’t know that the girl who’s been sending him sexy naked photos—”
“I wasn’t naked in any of them!”
“—That mystery girl is his best friend’s little sister and his other best friend’s ex-girlfriend.”
There’s a moment where they both simply look at each other, a silent game of chicken, neither one of them wanting to make the first move. Katara’s sure that Suki is going to yell at her for being so stupid, so irresponsible, so completely immature and thoughtless as to allow something like this to happen, and she thinks that the other woman would be right to do so.
She doesn’t expect her to laugh. She definitely doesn’t expect her to laugh so loud that all of the other patrons in the café turn to stare at them, rocking backwards so far in her chair that Katara is a little bit afraid for a moment that she might fall right out of it.
She doesn’t expect it, but maybe she should have.
It feels like hours later when Suki settles down enough to talk, wiping tears from the corner of her eyes. “This is…incredible.”
“It’s a disaster!”
“It’s amazing.”
And right now, with her brother’s girlfriend looking like Katara’s embarrassment has just won her the lottery, she’s really regretting coming forward with this information at all. She’d just needed to talk to someone, anyone, and Suki had been the only viable option—Aang was out for obvious reasons, Mai and Ty Lee would probably tell Azula who would make her life a living hell, Sokka would lose his mind, and Toph would be even more obnoxious than Suki was. It was almost enough to make her feel as though she might have to go on the hunt for new friends, ones who weren’t all so intrinsically connected in such a frustrating way.
Almost, but not quite.
“It’s humiliating! Suki, it’s Zuko. This would be awkward with anyone, but with him? He has the social skills of a baby turtleduck.”
Suki snorts into her cup of tea, still looking far too pleased for Katara’s liking. “I just—how the hell did you figure it out? Wait, scratch that. How the hell didn’t you figure it out sooner?”
Katara sighs.
Suki waits.
“You…fuck. You have to promise you won’t laugh.”
“You know I can’t do that,” her friend says, gravely serious, and honestly—
Honestly, Katara can’t blame her.
.
That’s the worst part, really.
Katara hadn’t figured anything out at all. She hadn’t done any expert detective work. There hadn’t been any clues that she had pieced together (although in retrospect, there were a lot of clues).
In the end, he had just come right out and told her.
She still has the message saved, unanswered, mocking at her whenever she opens that miserable dating app that started it all. Katara looks at it often, so often that she knows every word of it by heart. My name is Zuko, it read, not Lee. I just wanted to tell you that because I think I might really like you, and I’d like to meet up sometime if—
To be fair, it could be any Zuko. She still hasn’t seen his face. She still doesn’t know that it’s him.
Except for the fact that she knows his grammar. She knows the way he texts, short and succinct to the point where someone else might misinterpret it as cold. She knows how he despises emojis, how he refuses to use lol unless he’s being an asshole. She knows his sarcastic wit, his dry humour that comes as a shock to people who don’t know him. Katara knows him, though. She knows him as well as she knows herself.
And now she knows what he looks like in his underwear. She knows the sparse trail of hair across his chest. She knows that she wants to know a lot more about that.
And she knows that she’s, in a word, fucked.
.
Katara is sitting on Sokka’s couch digging into a bag of popcorn with an almost startling ferocity when Zuko stumbles through the front door.
The first thing she notices is that he’s flushed, from his collarbone (has it always been that sharply defined?) to his cheeks. The second thing is that he’s drunk, or at the very least tipsy, wavering a bit on his feet without any of the usual grace that his movement always possess. He’s a sweaty mess, hair sticking up in every direction, and she wants to run her fingers through it. She wants—
She wants to get the fuck out of there.
“Sokka said you were going to be out tonight,” she snaps at the same time that Zuko says, “Oh, thank God,” looking at her with hazy eyes as if she might be an angel come to Earth.
He flops down infinitely too close on the couch beside her, shoulder to shoulder. There’s no fireworks when they touch because this isn’t one of Suki’s (and Sokka’s) stupid romance novels, but there is a distinct shiver that runs down her spine as he leans in closer to her. It’s Zuko, handsome and infuriating in equal parts, but he smells like cinnamon and vanilla and campfire smoke. It makes her curious to see if he tastes like that too, curious about how he would react if she kissed her way across the mix of scars and freckles that she knows dot his chest, which is something that she absolutely cannot think about.
Ever.
Because he’s her brother’s roommate.
Because he’s her ex-boyfriend’s best friend.
Because he’s hers. He’s her Zuko, and she has to tell him that she’s Cat before things get any more out of control than they already are.
“Toph took me to the bar.” His works break through her thoughts, surprisingly clear despite the harsh smell of liquor on his breath. “She was all, Sparky, it’s time for our friendship adventure! You can’t say no or I’ll beat you up! and then made me go shot for shot with her and I think I lost, Katara. She’s like, four feet tall.”
“Five foot four, I think.”
“She’s like, twelve.”
“She’s twenty, Zuko.”
“And she outdrank me!”
He’s talking so quickly, so openly, that for a moment she forgets about their predicament and feels nothing but fondness for the boy—the man sitting beside her. It quickly fades away when he flops his head against her shoulder, tufts of black hair falling into her eyes and her mouth, tickling her cheeks, and the only thing Katara wants to do is smack him off of her and watch Clueless in peace.
But her brother is out with his girlfriend and it’s just Katara and Zuko, the way that it’s sort of always been them, and she can’t help but fall back into old patterns. He’s here and he needs someone to take care of him, and despite the awkwardness she feels she knows that she’s going to be the one to do that.
“You’re an idiot,” she says, even as she threads her hands through his hair.
“I got your voicemail,” he says after a second, only sounding half as awkward as he might have been if he was sober. “It was weird. Cute, but weird.”
Apparently drunk Zuko is a lot more candid than sober Zuko has ever been. She’s overwhelmed by annoyance with him, but then he lifts up his head up off of her shoulder and shoots her a smile—it’s the kind of smile that’s so singularly him that Katara’s heart breaks a little bit, so awkward and unsure, almost pleading for an ounce of kindness to be send his way.
It’s the same smile he’d worn when they met, only days after answering her brother’s ad for a roommate and the start of their impenetrable bromance. He’d stood in the doorway, box in his hands, and said Hi, Zuko here! with such earnest uncertainty that Katara had fallen a little bit in love with him then. Years later and he still tugs at her heartstrings the same way he had back then, and she can’t help but think that maybe this whole thing had been inevitable. Maybe this had always been her destiny, wanting to kiss her way up his scar until he—
But she can’t think about that, not now. Not when he’s like this, tipsy and clinging onto her for dear life.
“I was drunk,” she says, even though that couldn’t be farther than the truth.
“You don’t get drunk,” Zuko fires back, calling her on her bluff without hesitation. “It was nice, though,” he continues, speaking with such affection that she thinks her heart might break. “To hear from you, I mean. I’ve been worried about you since…you know.”
“Like I said, Aang and I are fine. We’re okay. It was a long time coming, I think.”
“I know. No offense, but I’m surprised it didn’t happen sooner. You two are just so…” He grapples for words for a moment, brow furrowing in a way that shouldn’t be as adorable as it is. “I don’t know. Different. Not in the opposites attract way that everyone always talks about. Just different, I guess.”
She could tell him. Right now, right here, she could tell him everything—she should, she’s going to, but then Zuko snatches the remote out of her hands and Katara thinks that it can wait. Just for a little while. Just until she figures out what to make of all of these emotions, all of the confusion and uncertainty churning in her gut until she feels as though she might be sick.
“What are we watching?” Zuko says, blissfully unaware of the battle occurring in her brain.
“A romance,” Katara says, hyper-aware of the way her voice quivers on the word. “Just a stupid romance.”
She doesn’t know how she’s going to get out of this alive.
.
So maybe her attraction to him had started long before the whole Lee-And-Cat thing.
Long, long before that.
Not that it’s just been her, though. Katara knows that everyone who meets him is at least momentarily stunned by Zuko’s beauty, a beauty that is only enhanced by his scar, his scowl, by the way he wears his years of hurt and pain like an armour.
He’s beautiful. He’s beautiful in the sort of way that can knock someone off of their feet, with his amber eyes and the shyness of his smile. He’s infuriatingly stubborn and impossibly kind, the sort of person who will drop everything he’s doing to help an old lady cross the street and then rush back to return to an impassioned debate about politics moments later. He’s rich but generous with his wealth; he dotes upon his uncle and always helps Katara with the dishes, scolding her brother when he refuses to do the same.
Maybe she’s thought about him for much longer than she’d like to admit. Thought about him as Zuko, thought about the softness of his hands and the powder-pink that rises to his cheeks when she catches him looking at her—something that he does often, something that he’s done since the moment that they met.
She thinks about the way that he refused to look at her an Aang when they kissed, when they held hands, when they sat too close to one another. The way that he’d excused himself from the room whenever Aang would mention their plans for the future. Katara thinks about it, tries not to read too much into it, but it’s always at the back of her mind; she thinks about the what if of it all and feels a bit like she might be sick.
So maybe this isn’t about Lee and Cat.
Maybe it isn’t that much of a surprise at all.
.
Not that this makes it any less complicated.
It makes it so, so much worse.
.
She falls asleep on the couch and wakes up hours later to the rising sun, to the smell of eggs and bacon, to fresh coffee waiting for her on the kitchen counter.
Fresh coffee, and a shirtless Zuko.
(So if there was any doubt that Zuko and Lee were one in the same, that all goes out the window.
There’s the mole under the right side of his collarbone. There’s the small scar by his bellybutton. There’s the rippling of his abdominal muscles when he leans over the stove, something that’s almost fucking unfair—who gave him the right?
They’re all things that she’s seen before, long before she saw them on Lee. It’s just that now she knows them in a new context, knows them in a way that makes her want to dig her fingernails into that perfect fucking skin and never let go, and it’s awful. She can’t remember the last time she wanted anything this much.)
“Hey,” he says, gravelly and rough from sleep but not unfriendly. Gone is the sweet, over-affectionate Zuko from the night before; in his place is a very attractive man, clearly somewhat flustered as he flips the bacon in the pan. “Hope I didn’t wake you. I’m sorry I…I was an idiot last night. I think. I don’t really remember too much of it, but I remember being an idiot.”
Katara stretches, focusing on the soothing tug of her muscles as a distraction from the flush that’s spreading up her cheeks. “And that’s different from other nights how, exactly?”
He glares at her, hair sticking up in all different directions, and Katara can’t help but laugh. “Ha ha. Have I told you how hilarious you are?”
“Once or twice, but I wouldn’t mind hearing it again.”
“Brat,” he snaps.
“Asshole,” she fires back.
Then Katara grins and Zuko returns the expression, eyes full of so much warmth that Katara thinks she might melt—and it’s so easy, the two of them. They hadn’t had the best start after that initial first meeting, not for at least a few days after. She’d found him awkward and short and he’d found her standoffish and volatile, but they’d found each other somewhere in the middle and made it work. It feels like it would be some sort of sin, ruining this gentle companionship that they’ve found themselves in by telling him the truth. It feels cruel.
Zuko places the plate on the coffee table in front of her. It looks…good, actually. Better than anything any boy has ever made her. In fact, she thinks it might be the first meal a boy that she isn’t related to has prepared for her—Jet was too busy, Haru was too lazy, and Aang just assumed Katara would be there at the door to greet him with whatever vegan delicacies he desired.
“I hope it’s okay,” Zuko says, expression turning shy. “My mom used to make this for me on special occasions, and the last time I cooked it for uncle he said it was superb, My Boy, like a rose petal dancing through the wind, and I don’t really know what that means but—”
“Zuko,” she cuts him off, because he’s rambling and it makes her want to kiss him, “thank you.”
His answering smile is like the sun.
.
She’s fucked.
She’s completely, totally fucked.
.
This is just such a Katara thing to do.
It’s so stereotypically her, falling for someone only a handful of months after getting out of a relationship with someone else. She can already hear Toph’s jeers, feel the roll of Sokka’s eyes deep within the back of her skull. Not to mention the complications, the way it’ll risk tearing their group apart just because she’s suddenly decided that she wants to know what Zuko’s lips taste like.
Although…
As previously discussed, it probably wasn’t so sudden after all.
But the thing she worries most about isn’t Aang’s hurt or Sokka’s anger. It’s Zuko, ruining the friendship that they’ve built, the one that’s always felt so inexplicably fragile. From the moment that they’ve met she’s felt as though they’ve been dangling from a string that’s seconds away from snapping. She’s not prepared to be the one who breaks it.
The thought still haunts her, though. He haunts her. When Katara closes her eyes it’s just Zuko—it’s his smile, his eyes, the way he brews his tea, the gentle brush of his hand against her own. She thinks about the things that he’d said to her through those messages, not horribly explicit but tender, intimate, and a warmth pools through her belly like wildfire. It spreads, spreads to the point where the thinks she just might burn up entirely. It’s something she’s never felt before. It’s just him.
Then she feels awful, dirty, because she still hasn’t told Zuko that she’s Cat and she still hasn’t confessed to him the way that she feels. Suki pins her with an all-knowing look when they’re hanging out as a group and she wants to throw up, just a bit. She wants to run away.
Katara doesn’t run, though.
She couldn’t even if she wanted to.
.
It’s reading break and classes are paused, at least for a while, which means Katara has allowed herself to be pressured by her friends into going to Ember Island when she really, really needs to study.
That’s not to say she didn’t need the break, though. The tension of finals, ever-present, had been hanging over her like a cloud. Ember Island is one of the only places where she actually manages to feel like herself again, as though her body is her own and she can finally relax. Any awkwardness that might have been present with Aang is long gone; he splashes around in the water with Sokka and Suki, grinning like a kid, and all that Katara feels for him is a distant sort of affection. It’s good, she thinks. It’s right.
Lying on the sand with her eyes fluttering shut and a long-since forgotten book in her hands, a book that has nothing to do with anatomy or hematology or any other complicated medical subject, Katara thinks that this might have been exactly what she needed.
“You’re not going to go in?”
There’s a shadow cast over her but Katara doesn’t need to open her eyes to know who it is. She’d recognize Zuko’s voice anywhere. It sends a heat through her that has nothing to do with the glaring sun, and she’s immensely grateful for the oversized sunglasses covering her face—it at least covers up part of the blush that’s no doubt risen.
He’s a little bit pink from the sun, covered in sea water and sweat, and she wants to dip her lips to the divet of her collarbone and—
Shit. So much for self-control.
“I will. Eventually. When I can actually enjoy myself without having to worry about Sokka tackling me into the waves.” She hears Zuko snort, feels the sand shift from his weight beside her, and now she opens her eyes—it almost feels as though all of her nerve endings are on fire, and that can only mean that this is getting even more absurdly fucking out of hand than it already has been. She can’t allow him to have this kind of power over her. She won’t. “What about you? Aang probably needs a chicken partner.”
Zuko bumps his shoulder against hers, and suddenly every part of her is on fire again. Asshole. “You know Aang’s no good at that game. Way too much of a pacifist. I’d much rather be your partner.”
All that does is bring forward visions of her thighs wrapped around his neck, skin against skin, his hands on her calves, and she hates herself for it.
She hates herself for how badly she wants it.
She has to tell him.
She’s going to. She’s really going to. The words are all on the tip of her tongue, right there. Katara has already mapped the speech out in her head, down to the last word. She’ll tell him that it was an accident, that she never meant to make him uncomfortable, that she values his friendship, that she’d do anything to make things right between him again. That she doesn’t want to lose him. She cant lose him.
Katara’s going to tell him everything, but the he levels her with a look that causes the words to die on her tongue.
“Is that a new bathing suit?”
“What?” Katara glances down at the bikini, aquamarine and simplistic as it is. It’s one that been shoved in the back of her drawers since…forever, honestly, since when she’s home her swimwear usually consists of wetsuits and scuba gear. “God, no. Not even close. I think I even wore it the last time we were here.”
“Huh.” His brow furrows, and she can feel the heat of his gaze—not leering, not at all, but studying her. Studying her far more intently than she’d like. “I like it. It looks nice, I mean. It suits your…skin. You know.”
From anyone else it would be a bizarre statement, borderline creepy, but Zuko sounds so earnest that Katara can’t help but laugh, the sound conveying only a portion of the affection that she feels. “I know. Thanks, Zuko.”
“You’re welcome.” He coughs, a sound that Katara knows to be an unconscious attempt to cover his awkwardness, and glances towards the book in her hands. “What’re you reading?”
“Oh. Just a book.”
“I mean, I can see that much.” Zuko’s smile grows, and she feels like a child with a crush. She doesn’t know what to do with her hands, doesn’t know how close she can get to him without it being too close. “What’s it about?”
It shouldn’t be this surprising. Zuko’s always interested in things like that; Zuko always cares about the small details, about what she’s studying, about what she’s cooking for dinner, where she likes to get her coffee on the way to school. No matter what it is, he’s always made a point to ask.
Maybe she’d just never realized how earnest it is.
Maybe she’d just forgotten how good it felt to have someone to care about her.
“It’s about a pair of star-crossed lovers,” she says, turning her face away from him just a bit so that he can’t see her ever growing blush, “I don’t think that you’d like it.”
“Even then,” he says, voice impossibly kind, “even then, I’d still like to hear about it.”
Somehow, she believes him.
.
It’s not until a day later when she figures it out.
The bikini.
It’s the same one from the photo—Cat’s photo.
So, yeah. Maybe she’s not as smart as she thought.
.
Hey, Zuko here!
But…you know that. Because you have caller ID like everyone else, probably. I really hope you have me saved as a contact, or else this is going to be really awkward.
Anyways. Lately I’ve been thinking about stuff between us, you know? That sounds bad. I don’t mean it in a bad way. It’s just that I’ve been thinking about things, and Uncle says that words unspoken are like flowers that never get to bloom. I don’t really know what that means but I think he’s saying that you have to talk about what’s on your mind, so I think that we should talk about it. What’s on my mind, and what’s on yours.
Not over voicemail, obviously. That would be weird. I’m just heading towards your neighbourhood now to meet Azula for coffee and then I thought I could swing by? Maybe? I’ll bring those donuts that you like, the ones with the earl grey filling in them. Just text me if you don’t want me to come. I’ll still leave the donuts at your door, but we don’t have to talk.
So…that’s it. See you soon, maybe. If you want. Bye!
.
He knocks on her door thirty-five minutes later, donuts in hand.
For a moment they just sit there, cross-legged on the floor at her coffee table, neither of them daring to utter a word. The silence feels like glass—it feels like something even more delicate than that, something that could shatter if she even breathes. She’s never felt this way with Zuko before, as though everything between them is falling to pieces. She’s never felt so unbelievably on edge.
Fucking dating apps. Once he’s gone home and this is all over she’s going to make a point to give them all a one-star review, even the ones that she’s never used.
But one of them is going to have to break it. One of them has to talk, and Katara knows what she has to do. It’s her who’s let this whole charade go on for so long; it’s her who’s been biting her tongue, drawing it out until things reached this unbearable boiling point that’s only going to hurt them both. She’d known that this moment would have to come eventually. She’d just really, really hoped that it wouldn’t be so soon.
She really, really wishes that she’d done a better job preparing that speech.
Katara takes a deep breath.
Zuko sits up a little bit straighter.
“I was Cat,” she says, but her words get jumbled together with Zuko’s as he blurts out, “I think that I might be in love with you.”
Which—
Oh.
That’s really not how she expected this to go.
They stare at each other for a moment, Katara wide-eyed and disbelieving, Zuko with the ghost of a smirk playing at the corners of his lips. He looks far more confident than he had a moment ago; he looks amused rather than shocked, unbearably affectionate rather than appalled.
“I figured. About the Cat thing, I mean.” At the twist of her lips he starts, bringing his hands up in a declaration of innocence. “Not when we were talking! It was a while after that. After I told you my name and you…Cat ghosted me. I was really hurt, but then you left that voicemail and everything just sort of clicked. I mean, you literally called yourself Kat in the first five seconds. You’re a really bad liar.”
He knew.
He knew.
This entire time, weeks upon weeks of stress, and Zuko had known everything.
“I can’t believe you didn’t say anything!”
Katara knows she has no right to be this angry. And she isn’t angry, not really. She’s embarrassed and she’s confused, so much so that she can’t even think about what it was that Zuko had said to her a few minutes before—all she can focus on is the way that room is closing in on her, the sudden spike in temperature, how her skin feels as though it’s crawling and her sudden, desperate need to run.
“I didn’t—you didn’t say anything either!”
“Because I was nervous, you...ugh! This is why boys are the worst!”
“Well maybe I was nervous too!”
“Or maybe you’re just a giant, flaming, asshole!”
They’re both shouting, both shifting closer together as if drawn by some sort of gravitational force. For all of her frustration Katara can’t help but notice that Zuko doesn’t look mad; there’s a spark of amusement in his eyes, a look of fondness that’s so fierce it nearly knocks her over.
“Katara,” Zuko says after a moment, laughing over his words just a little bit, “Katara. I’d really like to kiss you now, if that’s okay.”
There’s a lot more that they’re going to talk about. There’s the Aang of it all, there’s the fact that he shares a flat with her brother and that could potentially make things very awkward. There’s the bit about how she’s in love with him, a fact that she has yet to mention.
The air is heavy. The world is shifting on its axis.
“Zuko,” she says, trying not to focus on the fluttering of her heart. Her voice is low; there’s no one else in the apartment, but this still feels like it’s something that should be whispered. It’s just for the two of them. “I’ve wanted you to kiss me for weeks. I think I’ve wanted you to kiss me from the moment I saw you. And, if it’s alright, I’d really like it if you could make good on all of those messages you sent me.”
He blinks, confused.
“Messages?”
“You know,” she nudges his shoulder, shifting just a bit closer, close enough that she can feel his breath on her cheek. “From Lee. The ones where you told me about all the different ways you’re going to—”
It’s Zuko who closes the gap. It’s Zuko who dives in head first, a kiss that is all lips and teeth and tongue yet somehow still less sloppy than it feels as though it should be. He cradles her head in his hands, pulls her so that she’s shifting into his lap—but it’s not close enough, Katara thinks. She wants to be closer, wants to crawl inside his skin and never, ever leave. He makes a sound, something between a gasp and a moan, and she digs her fingernails into his back the way she’s wanted to for weeks, fuck, the way that she’s maybe wanted to forever.
She counts all the different flavours on his tongue, on his lips. Sugar, cinnamon, tea, vanilla—Zuko arches up into her, pulls her closer, and the list goes out the window. She’ll finish it later. She’ll finish it when his fingers aren’t playing with the hem of her shirt, when he’s not kissing his way across her jaw, down her neck, teeth nipping at her skin in a way that feels both playful and utterly explicit all at once.
“Wait,” she says, pulling his head back from her skin. “Wait. I haven’t told you that I love you yet.”
He grins.
“You can tell me when we’re done.”
And—
Okay, she really should have told him sooner.
.
There’s probably a lesson here.
Something about trusting your instincts, maybe. A proverb on honesty, being true to yourself, of knowing how to understand when the thing that you want is sitting right under your nose. Iroh would have something to say, but then Katara doesn’t really want to think about Iroh when his nephew is kissing his way down her stomach, fingers threaded through her own, gripping her hand so tightly that she doesn’t think he’ll ever let go.
There’ll be fallout. There’ll be awkwardness, fighting, disbelief, annoying brothers, horribly understanding ex-boyfriends. They’re only just at the starting line.
And it’s nice, Katara thinks.
For the first time in a long time, she feels as though she might be at the beginning of something.
.