Mai does not like her bedchamber. It's furnished in soft pinks and golds, replete with musical instruments and expensive porcelain dolls- her mother spent hours agonizing over the details, constructing the perfect living space for a princess consort-to-be. That pretty room soon turned into a prison, somewhere she was shut up and placed on the shelf while her father lapped at the heels of his betters. It isn't hers.
Now she's fifteen and it's even more of a deflated joke, because she's only a couple of years away from her majority and still sleeps amongst little girl toys and dresses and wall hangings at night. She feels like a sex criminal bringing Zuko upstairs.
Zuko swivels around, obviously torn between laughter and tears. "When I pictured your room," he snorts, "I didn't think you'd taken decorating tips from Ty Lee."
"What did you imagine?" she drawls, flopping onto the silk bedspread. "Black curtains? Disemboweled woodland creatures?"
"Something like that."
She dislodges a hidden dagger from underneath the mattress- not a recent addition- and strikes one of the dolls in the empty head. "Careful. It's booby-trapped."
Zuko's eyes widen- Mai reclines on her elbows and unpins her hair, letting it cascade down her shoulders. "So are we going to, or do you want to wait for a tray of fruit tarts first?"
(Part of her is convinced that he'll run; can see the too-tight topknot, the mercurial moods, the secrecy and the brooding and the lengthy visits to the turtleduck pond that grow longer every passing week. Love is possession, and this is the most basic, primal way she knows to own someone, to suck their soul out through their mouth before they go.)
The bed is too small for them both, but they just barely fit, her head against his sternum. Zuko slides a hand up her torso tentatively, almost reverently, and hesitates when he reaches the border between her skin and her flimsy sarashi. "Are you sure?" he asks, swallowing hard.
(Whore, Mother spits.)
(We do what's necessary, Mai spits in return.)
She doesn't answer, but interlocks their fingers and leads him to the tie in the back.