Author's Note: Ah, junior year of college. Hopefully our Zuko and Katara will find beautiful, sweet, young love. Until then, enjoy angst and sex jokes!
November
"I'm going…"
Zuko kicked the bunk above him.
"To fucking…"
The groaning and humping stopped.
"Kill you!"
Sokka stuck his head between a space in their bunk bed ladder, "Don't you have an eight a.m. class to get to?"
Zuko rolled his eyes, pulling his long sleeve shirt off as he stood on the dorm floor, "I hate morning classes."
Suki laughed, sitting up and readjusting the covers to hide her bare upper-body, "I can still borrow your car tonight, right?"
"Yea," Zuko yelled from the bathroom, a toothbrush muffling his voice, "whatever."
It took Zuko a good thirty minutes to get ready, and he stumbled through the doorway at 8:07.
The professor didn't pause his lecture as Zuko nonchalantly made his way through the rows of seated students, smirking at Jet's typical greeting: a bunched up paper ball thrown at his head. Mai rolled her eyes and Ty Lee giggled as he continued to walk by.
Suddenly, Zuko stopped, taken aback for a second. There, in his usual spot, sat a girl.
"That's my seat."
What was her name again? Katherine? Katrina?
"Katara," Jet didn't even bother to whisper, even though he sat directly behind her. The girl turned to him, and he burst out laughing, "you savage."
So that was her name.
It made sense now. Jet hadn't shut up about the "hot chick who's in our morning class." His description was surprisingly spot on; tan skin, curvy body, long brown hair, entrancing blue eyes, snarky personality.
"I don't see your name on it," she smirked, and he couldn't move his eyes away from the way her lips moved.
"Whatever," Zuko shuffled down two seats next to her, picking up the band that laid on her desk.
"That's my necklace!" She grabbed his arm as he walked by, blushing for a second at the sudden contact.
He pulled away, investigating the pendant, and shrugged, "I don't see your name on it."
Her mouth dropped for a second. She scowled, but only momentarily, before turning her attention back to the lecture.
Shifting to his seat, he frowned. The window was too far away, Jet was making up any excuse to touch Katara, and Mai and Ty Lee were busy playing tic-tac-toe. By the end of the period, he had memorized the light blue design printed on the stolen jewelry.
"Why are you up so early?" Suki wrapped Sokka's robe around her body and leaned against the wall of their shared bathroom. "You have, like, an hour and a half until class starts."
Zuko ran a hand through his hair, slamming the medicine cabinet, "It's not like I can get any sleep with you rabbits anyway. It's just thump, thump, thump all night!"
"I can hear you!" Sokka yelled from under the sheets, then proceeded to snore once again.
"It's not my fault you don't have a girlfriend," Suki turned the shower knob on for him. "I'm just waiting for the day you actually bring someone back here and kick us out for the night. You're so weird around girls."
"Well, not to play the 'growing up without a mother' card, but…" Zuko exited the bathroom swiftly, Suki following directly behind him. "And you know Azula's insane. I mean, she almost got kicked out of high school last month because she 'puts other students at risk.' I don't have much to work with. Plus, commitment sucks. Everybody just lets you down."
"You and I both know that's not true," Suki tossed him a plain black t-shirt to match with the gray jeans he was already wearing.
He sighed, she was right, "I just…haven't met anyone."
"You wouldn't know if you had!" She pointed to his pair of white sneakers and placed the black ones he was putting on back on the shelf. "You're too impatient. You never give anyone a chance. The only reason Sokka's your best friend is because you were both assigned to the same dorm. There's plenty of girls who want you, Zuko."
"None of them are worth the time and energy."
"I'm shocked you're so popular on campus," she shoved an apple into his hand and ruffled his hair as he left the dorm, waving to her over his shoulder.
The door of his next class came into sight. He had forty-five minutes to spare. Great. All of this for a stupid seat.
"Can I have my necklace back? Or will that just embarrass you too much?" No way. No fucking way. There she was, already at the door when he arrived.
He let his eyes trail from her hair, in a sloppy bun, to her breast, in a white crop top, down to the blue skirt that draped so perfectly over her hips. Topped-off with white knee-high socks and grey shoes. Was it just him, or did she look wayyyyyy too stunning for a girl still in school?
"Hello?" She snapped her fingers in his face.
"What?" He retorted, the two or three people in the hallway turned to them, smirking. Boy, was he lucky Jet wasn't here.
"I was just asking for my necklace back…"
He practically threw it in her face, "Here. Whatever. Take it."
He sunk down against the wall and she joined him, "Are you always in a bad mood? Or is it just at 7:13 in the morning?"
She noticed his intense gaze fall on how her dainty hands fiddled with the necklace, and for the first time, was close enough to really inspect the scar that covered his eye. It was chilling, like a million words hid behind it that she was dying to uncover.
He didn't answer, so she whispered, "It was my mother's."
He jolted at her sudden words, his shoulder accidentally hitting hers.
"I know," she cracked a smile. "It's a cliche way of remembering someone. There was a long time when I didn't have anything, but then my grandma found this a couple of years ago, and I rarely ever take it off." Pausing, she held the necklace still in her fist, "Well, except sometimes in class." Her voice quieted, and she looked abashed, "I get nervous and fidget with it."
"I lost my mom, too," he mumbled into his shirt sleeve, which rested on his knees that pressed against his chest. When she stayed quiet, he became defensive. "I mean, I'm just assuming your mom died, or whatever."
"Yea," she placed the necklace into his hand and turned away from him, prompting him to clip it around her neck. After he hesitatingly did, she she stood up.
"Where are you going?" He tried to sound aggressive, but suddenly the four hours of sleep he got caught up to him. It sounded more like a beg to stay.
"We have, like, forty minutes until class starts," she called over her shoulder to him, as she had already almost exited the hallway. "I'm going to the pond."
"Whatever."
She paused, turning around, and looked at him straight in the face, "You can come, if you want."
He frowned, "No."
"Are you sure?" She stared at him for another second before he turned away.
"Stop looking at me. Just go."
And she did.
"Where were you?" Jet whispered to him the same day, as he walked into the class late. Again.
Zuko plopped down next to his friend, "I went to the bathroom, then I saw Jin and Toph. I walked them to their lockers."
Jet pointed to Zuko's old seat, where Katara now sat, "You lost your seat."
Zuko rolled his eyes, "Whatever."
Mai and Ty Lee had moved next to Katara's seat (or, rather, his seat) this class so they could be a part of the conversations. Jet made a game of seeing how many times he could tap Ty Lee before she furiously turned around and flicked him in the nose.
Zuko was not amused.
When the bell rang and the class stood, Katara looked as if she was about to run out of the classroom all together, but Ty Lee stopped her, "Do you want to hang out with us tonight? You can come to Mai and my dorm. We'll order Chinese and watch tv or something."
"I'd love to!" Katara smiled before her face dropped as she caught a glimpse at Mai's sullen expression.
"Don't worry!" Ty Lee beamed, leaning into Katara's ear. "She's always like that. Oh! And by the way, Jet totally likes you."
The two girls turned to where Jet and Zuko stood by the lockers outside of the classroom. Jet was showing off his soccer skills in front of some younger girls and Zuko was laughing silently as he watched.
"Well," Katara shrugged her shoulders, "I guess you may be right. I'll see you girls tonight! I gotta go."
Ty Lee waved as Katara exited the classroom. When she turned the corner, she smacked right into Toph.
"Watch where you're going, Sugar Queen."
"Toph," Katara sighed, straightening out her hair and making sure Toph was alright, "we're not in middle school anymore. You can't call me that."
"Who's gonna stop me?" Her smirk widened way beyond her small face. "Come to the cafeteria with me?"
"Sure," they both began to walk, before Katara opened her mouth again. "I heard you ran into Zuko earlier."
"What?"
"I said, I heard you ran into Zuko earlier."
Toph chuckled, "I haven't seen Sparky since last week's soccer game."
Katara paused for a moment. Why had he lied to Jet? Why had he been late to class? If he had woken up so early to get his seat, why did he just let her have it?
Toph woke her from her trance, "Let's go, slowpoke. I'm starving."
As they ate, Toph talked about how much she hated her gym teacher. Katara smiled and nodded. But the entire time, she couldn't stop thinking about Zuko.
This daydream didn't last long, because Aang, Sokka, and Suki joined them promptly.
"Hey, Sweetie," Aang said, pecking Toph on the cheek.
"Aang," she blushed, punching him on the shoulder, "not in public."
Sokka sat on Katara's left side, and didn't hesitate to dive into his food. Rolling her eyes at her boyfriend, Suki took a seat on the other side of Katara, and leaned her head on her friend's shoulder.
"I'm so tired," she yawned.
"Yea," a voice from behind scoffed, "I wonder why."
The group turned around to be met with a few familiar faces; Zuko, Mai, Ty Lee, and the owner of the voice, Jet. They took a seat at the same table.
"So the Capital dynasty decided to grace us with their presence?" Suki teased, making a reference to the town the other group had grown up in.
"It gets so boring just the four of us!" Ty Lee chirped, plopping down on Sokka's side. If Suki wasn't so trusting of Sokka, she would've been annoyed by the girl's constant flirting with her boyfriend.
"Not that you all are any better," Mai mumbled, fiddling with the plastic knife on Aang's side.
"Aw, Mai," elbowing her, Jet leaned across the table, flashing Katara a toothy smirk, "don't be so sour. Not all of these dweebs are so bad."
"Hey, doofus," Toph slapped the grin off of Jet's face, "I get annoyed with these nerds as much as the next guy, but we're trying to eat here."
Jet scowled at her, but decided to stay silent and continue eating his food. Katara hadn't eaten with her childhood friends, since for the first two years of college, her schedule never coincided with theirs. But now, junior year, she was thrown face first into the tension between the Capital kids and the city kids, where she and her friends had grown up, and it wasn't too pretty.
It seemed, though, that she wasn't the only uncomfortable one. Zuko sat, silently, and ate without looking up at his friends. If Katara wasn't mistaken, he was the only one with friends from both groups, including her brother, so she guessed the drama didn't affect him too much.
That's Zuko for you, she thought. Though she didn't know him too well, or at all really, she had heard way more than enough about him to draw a conclusion on his personality. He was widely liked on campus, since he didn't meddle in others affairs outside of the clubs or teams he was a part of, and occasionally made an appearance at a party or two.
"You okay?" Suki whispered, when she noticed her friend staring into space.
"Yea," Katara's eyes darted towards Zuko, who had been watching her idly, "yea."
