Title: Lose Myself
Pairings: Zutara
Rating: PG for innuendo
Summary: Nothing more than a useless drabble for the LJ Zutarotica's 2011 Winter Challenge, ridiculously inspired by Robyn's "Hang with Me" and Depeche Mode's "Only When I Lose Myself" in which I used all the prompts just for the sake of doing it. . Mwahaha! I do have a porny story in the works so hopefully this will suffice until I get that one done.
Lose Myself
"…Zuko," she breathed, bottom lip quivering in uncertainty. Her entire body tense fearful that if she let go now she would be lost forever.
"I know." He fought every instinct telling him- screaming at him- to run, to push her away. To pull her in.
"Tell me again how can we be just friends?" She fought back the tears, the urge to strike him with all her strength, the urge to kiss him with all her heart.
It wasn't supposed to be this way. It shouldn't have been this way. Now standing together in that small space above his uncle's tea shop face to face, heart to heart, soul to soul. Desire to be more, have more, do more. It wasn't the physical. That was too easy. It was more. Over the years they had sparred physically more times than either could count. Now it was an emotional battlefield they faced off in.
Confessions and aspirations talked about to the early morning hours. Laughter and tears shared over tea or wine remembering the good and the bad and all the shades of grey in between. Throughout the years since the end of the war and the beginning of reparations, comfort and belonging between them that had been impossible with anyone else. They were two halves separated by more than propriety. Kisses and touches leading but never completing. A layer of armor built up to protect against the inevitable.
The words had slipped out three years prior. after a celebration of some such thing Helping her to her room, which was a challenge in her inebriated state, he helped her slip out of the heavy outer robes, unfastening the intricate beads in her hair, she lounged on the bed giggling like a teenager, finally grabbing his shirt and asking him to stay. If she had been sober, she wouldn't have had to ask twice. If he had been drunker, he would already be tangled with her body. Instead, the words slipped out: I love you. She never took the words back and he cradled them in the recess of his heart holding onto them like such precious jewels. In the lonely nights when sleep eluded him, silence of the world around him, the words sang the sweetest song in his heart.
He had no answer for her. Instead resting his forehead against hers and closing his eyes. Her cool breath tickled his face. Her lips so close yet so far away, her skin soft against his palm, her heart in a self-imposed prison.
"It'd be crazy if we-." She bit her lip, preventing more damaging words to slip out.
"…Insane," he sighed in agreement pushing aside a stray strand of hair from her cheek.
"… I'd break your heart." Her eyes lifted to meet his.
"I know." The words a sigh of resignation. Against all better judgment, he brushed his lips against her forehead hearing a choked sob in response. Frozen in her blue eyes, he swept his fingertips over the spot he just kissed, down her cheek, over her neck, down her side to grip her hip tightly pulling her closer to him. His lips thrummed with the desire to kiss hers. Against all better judgment, he did. Against all sound reasoning, she kissed him back. Together they were drowning in this web of emotion that went beyond lust.
She knew he had lied. He said he couldn't bend lightening but what she felt was a river of electricity coursing throughout her body. It was a mad juggle for sanity as his precious blade impaled in her sheath as if finally finding its rightful home. It was magic as bodies slid and rocked, humorous when parts slipped and heads clanked, and tender when breaths returned to normal as snow-white fingers clasped creamed-mocha digits and vowed never to let go ever again.
And they never did.