She doesn't know what makes tonight so different. Why his eyes on her from across the room had seemed like such a heavy weight, a burn in her soul. Why she couldn't keep her eyes off of him either, despite everything, despite how she tried. Or why she followed when she'd seen him slip out of the party and into the garden. Her feet and her heart had taken her to him, drawn in by the tide of her emotions.
She is always drawn to him; he has a magnetism that has become harder and harder to resist. An attraction that has taken over her rational thought, put a fire in her spine, a need in her belly, an ache in her heart for the one thing she knows she cannot have—shouldn't have.
She wants him anyway.
Now, standing here before him, neither of them saying a word, she cannot help staring into his eyes and thinking things she shouldn't be thinking, wanting things she shouldn't want.
Maybe it's the moonlight. Maybe it's the scent of the night flowers filling the garden with their heady fragrance. Maybe it's the rising, clawing need in her heart, a need she's been denying for so long.
It doesn't matter. She's here and she doesn't want to be anywhere else. There is a soft and understanding, longing light in his gaze. It is not the first time she's seen that look on his face. Here in the darkness of the palace gardens, surrounded by night-blooming flowers, she stares into his golden eyes and the impulse she's constantly fighting becomes too much to bear.
His eyes search hers as they draw closer together, her heart beating hard in her chest. He licks his lips nervously and his hand tugs on hers, drawing her closer.
She knows. She knows she hasn't imagined it, that pull between them, the rising tension simmering just beneath the surface.
He doesn't say anything—they're beyond words now—but he leans in, the question settling between them as she hesitates. He is giving her the choice, the chance to walk away.
She knows that she should, but she doesn't want to.
She lifts up on tip-toe, and their mouths collide with a hot, wet spark. He presses into her, his hands sliding around her body as she snakes hers arms around his neck.
There is a desperation in the way he holds her, the way his mouth moves against hers, a keen need that begs to be slaked. She strives to quench it, but his kiss opens up a gulf in her, a madness that she knows will consume her for the rest of her life.
She doesn't care.
His hand weaves into her hair as they sway in the shadows of his garden, a soft moan of longing leaving him as their lips slide together. His kiss is sinful, sensual, his taste spreading in her mouth as she opens to him. Her tongue flicks against as his as he angles is head down, deepening the kiss until she is shivering in his arms, lost in the desperate beating of her heart.
They are lost in each other, lost in the forbidden kiss that is consuming them. All of the reasons why they shouldn't don't seem to matter anymore. There is just him, and her and the aching need for each other than cannot be denied any longer.
They almost don't hear the footsteps approaching them until it's too late.
"Suki? You out here? Where'd you go?"
Suki pushes away from Zuko with a gasp, wiping at her mouth and whipping around to face the figure standing confusedly in the middle of the garden. Standing in the shadows, they haven't been spotted yet. Her hands shake as she hears Zuko swear.
"Go!" she hisses at him, and he stops, his eyes full of regret and sadness. He leaves though, slipping away into the darkness like a thief in the night, leaving her to turn back to her boyfriend, who calls her name again. "Over here!"
Her voice shakes. Her breathing is too rapid, her whole world shattered by her betrayal.
Sokka doesn't notice. His voice is bright and happy as he envelopes her in a warm hug, asking questions about where she'd gone off to. She mumbles a reply that sounds plausible enough and together they walk back into the palace, and back into the party, where all of their friends are.
She can't look at any of them in the face. She wonders if they can see the guilt in her eyes, or if they know what she has been doing, what terrible, betraying, wrong, forbidden thing she has done.
No one says anything, but it sits like a weight on her shoulders, and when she looks up and finds him standing across the room, his eyes hot on her, an intense expression of misery and guilt and longing on his face, she knows.
She knows she would do it again, will do it again.
(end)