A Little Too Hot
By: 1000th Ghost
"Ha! Obviously, you can't handle it when things get a little too hot!"
-Aang (Avatar: The Last Airbender (Love is a Battlefield))
By the time they got back to Iroh's tea shop after the Earth King's celebration, it was nearly midnight. Sokka personally escorted Katara to her room ("personally escorted" here having the meaning "carried her over his shoulder") while glaring daggers at Aang.
"Aaand...STAY THERE!" he shouted to her closed door. Then, turning to the sheepish airbender, he hissed, "I don't care if you have some duty to repopulate your nation, if I see you doing any funny business...or serious business...or any 'business' at all, I'll make sure you can never father any children! Do I make myself clear?"
"We just kissed, Sokka!" Aang protested. Sure, he had meant to do much more if he hadn't caught them, but he didn't need to know that.
"Um, I still need to bathe before bed, Sokka," Katara's voice came from inside her room.
Her brother groaned and opened the door, revealing her standing in a white towel.
"You-you can't walk around like that in front of him!"
Katara arched an eyebrow.
"We've all bathed in front of each other a hundred times before."
"Well, that-that's before you two got all...oogie-inducing!"
"Uh-huh. Well, I'm gonna go take a bath now!" And she stalked past the boys and out the door.
Aang watched her retreating figure until Sokka jumped in front of him, screaming, "Hey, did I say you could look at her?!"
"Oh, lay off him, Sokka!" Toph's voice sounded from the next room. "You're really scared of Twinkle Toes having it in him?"
"Um...yes!"
"Go to bed, Mr. Paranoia! I'm sure Aang, the Obvious Sexual Deviant, can behave himself for one night."
Aang just shrugged.
Sokka chuckled slightly.
"Oh, yeah. You're thirteen."
He waited until Aang had entered his room before entering his own anyway.
Aang flew out the window.
This was too easy.
It wasn't hard to find her. There was only one little pool nearby, fed by a natural waterfall. She was behind the waterfall and couldn't see him, but maybe that was for the best. He stripped in a matter of seconds and silently entered the cool water.
The moon was very bright, and through the wall of water, he could see her blurry silhouette. Her back was to him, and she leaned her head back to wet her long, brown hair. He was close enough now that he could have touched it.
"Hey, Katara."
She screamed and dunked under the water.
"Katara?"
That was...not the reaction he had been expecting.
"Come on, you have to breathe eventually!" he told the unhearing girl, and a few moments later, she came gasping to the surface, now on his side of the waterfall.
"What are you doing here?!" she exclaimed, keeping everything from her neck down firmly submerged.
"Um...seeing you?"
She gasped in indignation and crossed her arms over her chest under the water.
"Not like that!" he cried which was...not really the entire truth at all. "I just wanted to come see you - spend time with you! I mean, we haven't had a moment alone since Sokka caught us today, I just thought-"
"But when you knew I was bathing?!" Then she softened at the hurt look in his eyes. "Aang, I know you want to spend time with me. I want to spend time with you too. But this isn't the right time."
"Well, when is the right time?" He smirked, and he hoped she noticed how familiar their words were.
She did.
"This...this is the right time but not the right time in the right time...oh, you know what I mean." Then her eyes narrowed a bit in confusion, and she looked at him curiously. "You knew I was bathing out here."
He nodded.
She gaped at him in disbelief, a sense of realization settling over her. "Are you not wearing anything?"
"Of course, not."
"'Of course, not'," she muttered. Then she looked up at him and asked, a bit more breathlessly than she would have liked, "Aang, what did you come out here for?"
"Like I said...we were just interrupted before. I wanted to finish." He paused. "Will you stand up?"
The water reached his waist, and she looked somewhat ridiculous crouching to keep covered.
"No."
"Then I have to come down to you."
She gave a quick intake of breath as he did just that and then another when his mouth was on hers.
She made up an on-the-spot morality rule: ten seconds, that's what she would allow before she retaliated. One, two, three-
Around six or seven, she forgot what number she was on, and around what would have been fourteen, she felt their chests pressed together. She jerked backwards, practically sending both of them toppling into the water.
"No, no, no, we are not kissing in the middle of the night with no clothes on!"
Now it was his turn to look confused and disbelieving.
"You don't want to?"
"I..." She turned about three different shades of red. "It's not about what I want!"
"Yes, it is."
He looked so adorable and sure that she almost didn't know what to do.
"I want to do this," he said. "I love you. Or..."
Now he just looked crushed, and she didn't know if she could cope with it.
"...do you not love me?"
Oh, was that all?
"I love you."
The look of despair-turned-ecstasy on his face reminded her that this was the first time he had ever heard her say the words.
But then he just looked confused again.
"Okay, so let me get this straight. I love you, and you love me. We had an amazing kiss today that got interrupted. And you're mad because we're not wearing clothes?!"
She mumbled incoherently, shrugged, and looked at the water.
"Oh, I know what this is," Aang said, half-annoyed, half-mocking. "Obviously, you still can't handle it when things get a little too hot."
"Ugh, I hated it when you said that!"
"Well, I hated that it was true."
"I-it's not..." she whined defensively. "I kissed you today, didn't I?"
"And then I took it to the next level."
"But I didn't stop you!"
"But you are now."
"Aang, I...I'm not even marrying age yet! And you're really far from marrying age."
His eyes narrowed.
"I am not, Katara! I'm thirteen - it's just three years away. And you're fifteen...if you want to be married at sixteen, you should be betrothed right now!"
"I can't get married at sixteen, you'll only be-" Then her eyes widened. "I mean, I wasn't imposing, I'm sorry, I spoke out of line-"
"Will you marry me?"
She blinked.
"Yes."
He beamed.
"Don't worry about my age. They weren't supposed to tell me I was the Avatar until I was sixteen either. I think everyone forgot to make the rules apply to me." He paused. "I could probably get an exception made for you too."
She smiled.
"I can wait a year."
He sighed.
"Yeah, I just don't know if I can." He looked up at her, longing blatant in his eyes. "You have no idea how much I love you."
"Y-yes, but..." Whatever rational arguments she had were getting harder and harder to articulate with the gathering heat in the pit of her stomach. "...there's a difference between being in love and actually acting on it. Do you, I mean, do you even know how to..."
She found that she couldn't move. She almost wondered if he was doing some sort of bending on her, but, no, this was entirely her doing. Closer and closer he came, and all she did was stare and listen to her breathing become more ragged.
His mouth was by her ear, and she could no longer see his face.
"I want to make love to you," his voice told her, darker than she would have thought possible, "I want to touch you until you're begging for me. I want to hear you moan my name, and I want to hold you as you tremble."
He pulled back, and his gray eyes looked practically black with desire.
She said nothing, but her breathing and her face, flushed in the moonlight, gave her away.
"I won't though. For you, I'll wait."
A moan of disappointment escaped her involuntarily, and his eyes widened in surprise.
"Although you're making it very hard to keep that promise!"
"Kiss me."
Her voice was so soft that if he hadn't been right in front of her, he never would have heard it.
He almost said something like "Are you sure?" or "I don't know if I'll be able to stop" or any number of cautionary things, but she had made him wait much too long already, and he had answered her request before his mind had caught up to him.
She fell backwards slightly from the force of his enthusiasm, and she wrapped her arms around his neck to steady herself and only succeeded in sending both of them underwater.
He didn't break the kiss for an instant, skillfully continuing as though nothing had happened at all. Skillful because somehow he was, somehow that she couldn't explain, this thirteen-year-old monk always managed to be worlds ahead of her in this regard. His arms went around her waist and crashed their bodies together, and she should have cared, she should have, but his tongue was plundering her like earlier that day, and when she chanced to open her eyes a crack, his expression looked so intense, even under the water, that she was immediately equal parts terrified and never wanting this to end. In any case, she trusted him completely, possibly a bad idea, but something about the urgency in his kiss told her that fighting would be futile.
Just when she thought she was about to pass out from lack-of-air or from him, he brought them out of the water. Only their heads though; even now he was trying to not cross her self-imposed boundaries.
But this strange crouching position they were forced into caused more problems than it fixed. Her legs were spread wide, and when she felt him, firm and fully aroused, against her, she moaned wantonly into his mouth and ground herself against him.
Then she gasped at her lewd behavior and stood up in a panic, taking him with her.
She had been so scared of what - what had come over her? - that she completely forgot about why she wanted to stay in the safety of the water in the first place.
But it only took one look at his eyes, decisively fixed on her exposed chest, to jolt the reminder back. Then his eyes went to hers, and underneath the desire, the frustration, the yearning, was such profound adoration that she was undone in an instant.
He sensed it, her shift, her succumbing, and murmured, "Katara..." and captured her lips again, one hand on her breast.
She had never felt this before, never dared to, but now she only wanted more of him, wanted to sense him everywhere. As if he could read her mind, he began to circle the nipple, brushing his thumb against it, and then his other hand did the same to her other breast. Her head went back; it was as if, without his arms around her waist, her tether had snapped. Now she was spinning out of control, panting up into the night sky. Her tether came back, his strong arms keeping her stabilized, but his now unoccupied lips found their way to her neck and were kissing down, down... She clutched at him desperately when his mouth took over for his fingers, her hands caressing the top of his head, following his arrow tattoo down his back until it met his scar.
"Keep going," he rasped, and she shivered irrepressibly.
"I-I, your scar, I don't want to hurt yo-"
"Keep. Going. Please," he begged, and she couldn't stand it, him begging, and suddenly she felt so very guilty that he should have to beg, that she hadn't recognized and met his advances months before.
She obeyed, skimming her hands gently across the crisp, red skin and then continuing with a more purposeful, sure touch. She hesitated for a moment at his inner thigh despite herself, she had to, and he kissed her again, fiercely, pushing up against her lips with a passion that frightened her and made her glow with the evident, all-consuming nature of his love.
When she touched him, he gasped against her mouth, momentarily frozen.
Maybe she was wrong, he was in fact too young, she misread his cues-
"Do-do you want-? I don't have to-" she stammered, her fingers twitching around him.
"Katara..."
She furrowed her eyebrows in concern, questioning. Then he reached under the water and cupped her between her legs.
"Touch me..."
And she was gone.
The water between them splashed erratically, hinting at the frenzy occurring beneath the surface.
He was still a of couple inches shorter than her, and his face was pressed against the side of her neck. She stared past him across the pool, attempting to keep her eyes open, only to have them slip shut as she practically cried.
It was much too new and exciting for them both, and there were no intelligible words between them as they were lost in their private little world of ecstasy.
When she was about to climax, she had no idea what it even was, and she just screamed, "AANG!" as if in some crazed plea for him to help or stop or explain.
He only sped up, and she shouted a brief exclamation of nothing and gripped his shoulder crushingly to keep upright.
He did not raise his head from her shoulder but lifted his arm out of the water, the tattoos glowing bright, and wrapped both around her and held her to him hopelessly and chanted her name against her skin, "Katara, Katara, Katara..."
She stroked him until he had stopped shaking and was silent.
Neither moved until she spoke, "I love you so much, Aang," reverently, as if it was a sacred phrase, which maybe it was.
He finally raised his head and then kissed her before she could see the tears that were in his eyes. Then he laughed and spun her around in the water, creating a mini-wave around them.
"Come on," he said, mirth still in his voice, "I'll let you sleep now."
They walked slowly out of the pool, the wet sand squishing under their feet and the water causing resistance around their legs.
It wasn't until they reached her towel and his pile of discarded clothes that they turned to each other. Both of their eyes widened, and it could have almost seemed comical if there was anything humorous about it at all. Each scanned the other, fully without the protection of the water for the first time. She felt incredibly insecure under his scrutiny, which was nonsense since, if she had been paying any attention, she would have noticed that he was growing hard again just from the sight of her.
"You're the most beautiful girl I've ever seen," he breathed, and all insecurity fell away.
In fact, she almost felt something like confidence. He was the Avatar, after all, and she, a mere Water Tribe girl, had this effect on him? She must be as beautiful as he claimed.
She bent down and picked up the towel, used it to wring out her hair, and proceeded to dry herself off, a bit slower than necessary.
He just watched as if viewing this mundane task was some marvelous treat. Then she came towards him and, starting at the top of his right arm, dragged the towel over him.
He stayed silent, simply moving limbs slightly to allow her better access as she continued her exploration.
She saw rather than heard his breathing increase tenfold as she knelt in front of him.
She smirked, and he shouted a deafening, "YES!" as she took him into her mouth.
For approximately two seconds.
"How's that for being able to 'handle it when things get a little too hot'?" she gloated triumphantly, standing up.
"That was - you are-" He put a hand to his forehead. "I already asked you to marry me, right? Because if I only imagined that, now would be a good time to."
"And I already said 'yes'." She smiled, still looking entirely like the cat that caught the canary, and wrapped the towel around herself.
He hastily followed suit, clumsily putting his clothes back on, head spinning far too much to care about such things as armholes.
"Hop on?" he finally asked, brandishing his glider.
"You realize it's like, a two minute walk, right?"
"Yeah, but, I, uh, flew out my window," he confessed sheepishly. "I figured Sokka was hiding outside my door with a battleaxe."
She gasped.
"Sokka! Oh, he's going to kill you!"
He placed his arm around her, his hand closer to her breast than was needed.
"I just defeated the Fire Lord. Do you really think your brother has a chance at me?"
She laughed, and he launched into the air.
Then landed silently inside his room, and he spun his glider closed and leaned it against the wall.
"Goodnight, sweetie," she said, placing a small kiss on his cheek.
Oh, no.
"'Sweetie'?"
"You don't like it?"
"It's just...the first thing that came to mind is when you called me 'a sweet little guy, just like Momo'." He crossed his arms.
"You are sweet!"
He groaned.
"I don't want to be 'sweet'! I want to be...I don't know, 'ruggedly seductive'."
She giggled.
"Well, actually, I called you 'sweetie'..." She leaned down and whispered, her lips brushing against his ear. "...because that's how you taste."
Then she backed out of the room, eyes fixed on the blush on his cheeks and his slightly-agape mouth.
The door was an inch from being closed when she heard his voice from inside.
"Goodnight, sweetie."
The End