I see we all have feelings about Aang, Aang's attachment to Katara, and her ambivalence in the previous chapter. I feel you, people, I do. Allow me to spin you some meta for a moment? (Also feel free to skip this and get straight to the juiciness that is this update).
Aang's canon sense of entitlement to Katara and her feelings is gross, I think we can all agree on that, yes? He has his reasons sure, I totally get those and feel for him: wanting to cling to a parent-figure in the wake of discovering his people's genocide. Very understandable. I honestly love the little guy. But his attachment to Katara is fraught with problematic behaviour. He is, however, twelve years old. I know adults in their thirties who can't self-regulate well enough to not make their problems everyone else's problems so it's unlikely a twelve-year-old can. Let's give Aang the benefit of the doubt: being an occasional douche is kinda part and parcel of the growing up process. NOTE: this does not excuse his behaviour, it merely explains it. No apologists here, scout's honour.
On with the show! You guys are going to like this one, I bet!
Zuko Unravelling I
Are you with him? It's not like that.
'Zuko?'
Are you with him?
'Hey. Zuko?' Soft hands. Soft like kisses in the grass. Soft like the delicate thing in his chest, crushed by the Avatar's words. By the waterbender's reply. 'What's wrong?'
Aang, It's not like that.
Her eyes are his undoing, soft as her touch and hurt at his silence. But his element is seething in his veins, so he lashes out with words like wildfire, words fit to scorch much harder things from this earth.
'What happened with you and him?' The words are choked full of venom, spilling and spitting from him. 'What the hell is the lover's cave?'
Her shock only fuels the tempest. He doesn't wait for a response but speeds further on, further up the path and into the bamboo forest. 'What—?'
'Why didn't you tell him?' he demands, turning on her as his flight becomes fight. 'Why wouldn't you?'
She's still a lady of crimson swirls, her shoulders exposed under the netting of her veil. Like a bride's, the incongruent thought interrupts jealousy's hold on him. It mollifies him long enough for her touch to gentle him, still him, draw him down from the towering height of hating the Avatar's very name to stand beside her in the bamboo forest.
'He asked you if we were together. And you said nothing.'
Zuko Unravelling II
She is water and so her words pool in the hurt places inside of him, soothing. 'It's not… Aang has this… crush on me. There was a time…' She winces like Azula the first and last time she tried oysters. 'I was confused. I used to think maybe I might like him but it's hard when there's so much he needs to learn, and he leans on me. Toph's right, I do mother him and it just...' She gestures helplessly, palms upwards, beseeching. 'It never really took, my feelings for him. They were always closer to how I feel for Sokka. Nothing like—'
Her eyes dart towards him and away as colour rises like flames in her cheeks. 'Can you take the mask off?' she demands, fists clenching in her skirt. 'I can't see your face.'
As he slips the Blue Spirit's mask from his face, she hugs her arms around her middle. 'I didn't tell Aang anything about… about you and me because I don't—I don't really know what this is. I didn't know what to say. I didn't want to presume…'
His mind is white with shock.
She didn't want to presume?
She doesn't know what this is?
'I like you,' he blurts, the white noise of shock obviously shorting the filter between his thoughts and his mouth.
She looks pretty with dusky cheeks. She looks pretty all the time, but Zuko secretly thrills at the colour of his nation in her cheeks. 'Me too,' she squeaks, clearing her throat and smiling shyly. At him.
'Good.' He doesn't know where to look, where is safe. It's like being under the arch of the gate to the Upper Ring in Ba Sing Se all over again; the urge to kiss her must be stamped across his forehead but he doesn't know how to make it happen…
Kisses in the Dark I
As it turns out, the feeling is mutual.
Katara's lips find his and now his back is pressed against a pine tree on the edge of the forest and the waterbender's body is touching every part of his own and he cannot think.
Katara, for her part, is floating. Her thoughts are distant, silent things and her blood is singing in her ears to the tune of the firebender's breath hot on her tongue. He is warm, so warm, and tall enough for her to stand on toe tip to kiss.
Later, when she pulls away, drunk on the headiness of his kisses, she'll laugh at the stains of red paint on his face. She'll giggle and rub her nose over his to smear him again. To mark him.
But now, right now, there's a feast at Zuko's lips and she wants to taste each and every dish.
Chapter break here because I am quickly catching up to myself and by Friday won't have anything edited to post! If work is slow today, I'm going to try and get some chapters written! Kisses are to be continued in the next chapter…