ch: alternate universe.
characters: jet, katara, zuko.
tumblr prompt: jetko week.
…
Katara had been amazed to watch the Sun Warrior woman pull Jet close, her long hair swept up in an intricate hairstyle with several blocks wrapped around curls of hair, her smile radiant and turned down towards him. After all, he'd saved her son (she still didn't understand how he'd been so fast, how he'd just known), and she smiled as the woman laid the ornately designed beads around his neck, an honorary tribute to his heroics.
He had deserved it, no doubt. Katara's heavy blue dressed weighed her down too much to be of any help, no matter that she could swim as strong as any boy her age.
But the celebration was beyond the scope of her understanding and even though she expected Jet to return to her side—he'd always been at her side, there to scoop her up and pull her into trouble, because that was what he did—she found something welling in the pit of her stomach at the sight of them.
The Sun Warrior boy and her Jet.
He was a cute boy, snarling nevertheless and horribly scarred. His features were slightly round but narrow, sharp jaw and sharp nose and bright golden eyes, almost the same color as the bangles over his bicep. She wanted to look away—curse them for being at the precipice of adulthood, for being fourteen and red-blooded—but he didn't wear a shirt and the cut of his hips disappeared into a loosely draped fabric.
He was cute and Jet was making eyes at him, those eyes he made when he'd found those boots with the steel toes, no matter how ratty they'd been, the face he made when he managed to look past flaws of things. He was good at that, making a place for everything and everyone.
Katara folded her arms across her chest and turned her head away as the boy started to walk Jet through the chants and turns of some Sun Warrior dance; she could tell with the way their palms raised to the sky and his long tail of hair swayed in the breeze, and the fleeting smile on his lips.
Something froze her blood when they leaned together, his chest pressed into the uneven fabric of Jet's makeshift armor, and she wanted to storm over and yank that silly ponytail of his away from her Jet because she couldn't believe the way he was looking at him.
They were both smirking, (it must be a boy thing, really, because they looked so stupid), and she could see the boy's lips move, hear him mumble a name—his name, Zuko—and something lit up in Jet's eyes.
Katara knew there was an invitation on his lips, but even so she snorted and petulantly entertained the idea of shoving this boy back into the water sometime soon.
…
notes: one of my friends, the talented songofhopeandhonor, wrote some peter pan!jetko a long while ago and i have been unable to shake the tigerlily!ko out of my head, so here it is. i sorta think tigerlily and peter are super cute, and apparently there's a book about them somewhere.