broken open
Her hands are woven into his shaggy hair and his hands are shamefully tight on her waist and she seems desperate to press her inexperienced hips as roughly against his as she can, which Zuko doesn't think is a very good idea because he's already feeling incredibly guilty. Katara is fourteen and he is seventeen and he gets the distinct feeling that even if he isn't taking advantage of her, she is certainly taking advantage of him. Maybe they're taking advantage of each other - which rarely happens, but when one of two teenagers is drowning in her own grief and the other is lonely enough to accept her advances, well, what can you do?
Zuko doesn't know how this happened. One moment they were setting up camp and Katara's face was shattered after her encounter with her mother's killer, and the next she was walking purposefully towards him.
"Is something wrong?" he'd asked. Katara didn't say anything but peered at him as if he was the only clear object io a blurred world, and in a swift motion she pinned him against the tree with a forceful kiss. At first, Zuko wondered if it was smart to return her advances - if Aang and Sokka would murder him if they found out - if she is really as beautiful as he imagines - but her demanding movements barely give him the chance to resist.
Lips clumsily move against his jawline, and he shivers as he thinks about how this is wrong in so many ways, because she isn't like this - she isn't desperate and weak and eager for a distraction; she is Katara. She is strong and stubborn and unyielding, and she hateshim. At least, she despised him last time he checked, and her fingernails are digging into his scalp far harder than necessary, so maybe she still does. But at this point, Zuko can hardly summon the will to care.
There is a slender leg that is subtly pressing between his own and Zuko doubts it's actual experience that gives Katara her confidence, so he decides that it's a twisted form of instinct. Whichever leads her to grind up against him exactly like that, Zuko knows it runs in the polar opposite direction of her relationship with the Avatar, and he can't think about how she'll probably be doing with this Aang one day, because Katara is like his mother and that is just sick.
Something about the idea of Katara and Aang making out like Zuko and Katara are now drives him to go farther; he wants her to moan. His mouth brushes her earlobe and his tongue darts out to taste her skin. Katara's sudden realization of her situation converts her to stone, and Zuko realizes that he should probably stop, but his desire for companionship - his desire not to be totally alone - won't depart so quickly as her willingness for a distraction. As she freezes in his arms, her shoulderblades hunched as she curls in on herself, Zuko merely bends down to better reach her chin and continues to use his tongue to the best of his abilities.
He's racking his brain and trying to remember everything that used to make Mai moan when Katara chokes out, "Stop," so quietly that he wonders if he's imagining it.
"What?" Zuko murmurs, so dazed by lust for any form of a relationship that he can't keep his hands from slipping her right shoulder free from her skin-tight shirt.
"I said - I said, 'stop,'" Katara whispers again, dropping her trembling hands from his hair, and despite the weakness of her protest - or perhaps because of it - he obliges, slipping his hands away from her top.
"What is it?" Zuko asks, expecting her to pull away from him and start screaming any second now, except - she doesn't.
Hesitation and indecision and lust flicker across her face, mirroring Zuko's expression when she first smashed his lips into hers, and just like him, she is too weak to weather the loneliness and grief for another second. In the blink of an eye, everything she was going to say vanishes from her eyes, and Katara informs him, as if it exactly what he expected, "I can take off my own shirt. That'll be easier."
Maybe they should stop: he considers the possibility for only an instant, because Zuko knows very well that he is too selfish and weak to halt now. He nods then, because of course Katara's right, he's horribly clumsy at undressing another person, and she tugs her shirt off in one fell swoop. Something about the sight of her breast bindings forces him to reality and Zuko realizes that he respects her too much to carve every detail into his memory, so he forsakes his attentive memory in favor of the urges and sensations that sweep his body. Minutes later they've collapsed onto the ground, soaked in sweat.
Katara pants onto his chest and her hair is matted against his neck, but he doubts that she'll spend the entire night curled up next to him. A soggy breeze whirls through the clearing and she shudders in the relentless chill of the rainy peninsulas of the Fire Nation. Katara's skin is bare, of course - they're both naked - so Zuko reaches for his blanket and tosses it over them both.
She wraps herself around his torso, the smell of their exertion trapped around them, and attempts to lift her head enough to look at him. Zuko doesn't look back - he can't bring himself to; there is a twitch in his jaw and in his heart that screams, 'you are horrible, how could you give in to her, how could you do this,' and he can't ignore it any longer.
At last, Katara gives up looking him in the eyes and sags on top of him as she whispers into his collarbone, "I'm sorry."
'I am, too,' he thinks, but he just says, "It's okay," because Katara's like him, she can't survive without forgiveness.
"I'm really, really sorry," Katara repeats, and now she sounds choked up with tears. "I don't know why I did that. I just didn't want to be alone." There is a pause, and Zuko swears he can sense her struggle with depression and guilt and despair as sharply as he feels his own. "I didn't mean for it to happen like this."
Zuko murmurs, "I know. That's something we have in common."
She starts at the resurgence of a too familiar phrase, and for a few seconds afterwards Zuko thinks she might reply, but Katara never does. They drift to sleep in a sweaty, huddled mess, their breath swirling in the cold air surrounding them.
When Zuko wakes up, Katara is on the other side of camp, and refuses to look him in the eye. "I'm sorry," is all she'll say whenever he tries to talk to her about anything during the flight home.
"It didn't mean anything, Katara," he tells her tiredly, again and again. "Nothing's changed."
Zuko tells himself that he isn't lying, and from the look of anguish in Katara's eyes, he knows she's trying to convince herself of the same thing.
A/N: So I actually wrote another version of this minus the smexytiems, which wasn't exactly worse, persay, but I think this actually fit better. If you want to read it, though, PM me and I'll send it to you. =) Anyway, this is just the latest edition of my recent Zutara kick. Hope you enjoyed! ;D