Disclaimer: I do not own ATLA or its characters.
62
"What are you doing here?" Zuko asked, his tone gruff with surprise.
Mai stepped through the bar into the break room. "I forgot to take a picture of the schedule when we were here yesterday, and I don't remember what day I work. I texted Suki, but she didn't answer, so I figured I'd just swing by."
Unable to find anything wrong with that answer, Zuko shrugged. He pointed to the color-coded schedule hanging on the wall. "It's over there."
He watched her as she strode gracefully over, like a mist or a wraith, seeming almost to glide. She pulled her phone out of her pocket, raising it to take a picture, but then she paused for a second. A frown hovered over her lips.
"What's wrong?" he asked. "Did I schedule you for a day I shouldn't have?"
"Who made this schedule?" she mused. "With the color-coding?"
"I did."
"And what on earth possessed you to use these colors?"
He shrugged again. "Those were the colors I thought of."
"You thought of this Spirits-awful lavender color for me?" she scoffed. "Do I look like a lavender kind of girl?"
"No," he said, taken aback. "But then, you also don't seem like the kind of person who would make a big deal out of their color."
"That girl Suki is a lavender kind of girl."
"I can't switch you now," Zuko protested. "Suki's already taken a picture of the schedule, and she has a different color. It'll be too confusing."
Mai chewed her lip. "What's with all the pastels?"
"I like pastels. They're soothing. Would you rather I have used those garish colors they use in crayon boxes? It's easier on the eyes."
"Well, you would know all about easier on the eyes," she muttered. But as soon as the words left her lips, she shot an embarrassed look at him.
He blinked. "What?"
"What?"
"What did you say?" he asked.
"It doesn't matter. I was talking about the color wheel."
"Then why are you blushing?"
Her fists clenched at her sides. "I'm not blushing. I don't do that."
"Your cheeks are red."
"I'm flushed, not blushing. It's not the same thing," she explained with exaggerated patience. "You blush when you're embarrassed. You flush when you're angry."
"Oh, of course," he said. He was smiling for some reason, though if someone asked him why, he wouldn't have been able to say.
Mai scowled at him, and his smile grew even wider. "I have to go," she snapped, striding back through the door without another word.
"You didn't even take a picture of the schedule!" he called after her, but she was already gone.
When her phone let out a soft 'ding', Suki rolled over to her nightstand, reaching out for it. But Sokka tightened his hold on her, and she let out a soft 'oomph!'
"We're napping, not checking messages," he complained.
"It's Zuko," she whispered. "It could be about work. I need to see it."
He grumbled something unintelligible before turning away, and she opened her phone to check the message. It was an updated picture of the schedule, though no schedule changes had been made. The only difference she could see where changes in the colors. The original schedule had been much lighter colored. This was one was quite dark, all blacks and maroons and grays, except for her name, which was highlighted in lavender.
"That's weird." She threw her phone away and rolled back towards her boyfriend. As she pressed a kiss to his spine, she felt his breathing pause. "Now that we're already awake..."
"So..." Katara hedged as she lounged idly amid Aang's rumpled sheets. "What do you think of Mai?"
He turned his rolling chair away from his desk, littered with papers and his open laptop. "I think she's really nice in a very candid sort of way. She won't say things she doesn't mean, and I like that."
"Pretty?"
Aang gave her a suspicious look. "Yes, but kind of like she'll eat you alive. Scary pretty."
"And what am I?"
"Ethereal pretty. Stunning. 'Take-my-breath-away-first thing-in-the-morning' gorgeous."
"Well, knock my socks off with your answer, why don't you?" Katara muttered under her breath.
"I just don't want any confusion," Aang laughed. "Mai is pretty. Suki is pretty. Song is pretty. Toph is pretty."
"I didn't need a comprehensive list," she grumbled.
"Lots of people are pretty," he continued, speaking over her. "And I don't want them; only you. No need for insecurity."
Katara sat up in protest. "I'm not insecure."
"Of course you're not," Aang agreed mildly. "Your question was purely academic."
"Purely."
"So glad we cleared that up."
She frowned. "Now you're making fun of me."
"I wouldn't dare," he said, but an crooked grin spread across his face, her very favorite. The one that made her heart pound in her chest, and other interesting things happen other places. He stood from his chair and lay down on the bed next to her. "Don't worry about any of that, Katara. You're it for me."
A shy smile matched his crooked one.
"Although," he said slowly, "this is an interesting take for you. You've never been insecure before."
"I'm not, really," she laughed. "Just feeling a little vulnerable lately. Weird things are happening to me, inside."
His eyebrows raised, and a merry twinkle lit in the gray of his eyes. "Inside?"
"Emotionally, Aang, for Spirits' sake. Weird things are happening emotionally."
"Like what?" he asked.
She turned to him, eyes wide. "I don't know. It's impossible to put in words. I felt it when we were camping, when you looked at me, and I- I don't know. I just felt it." A blush tinged her cheeks. "Oh gosh, do you hear me? I sound ridiculous. So corny. How mortifying."
But he didn't hear her. He pulled her face to his, his lips pressing against hers because he felt it, too, every moment that their eyes held for a moment too long, or when he'd wake in the morning and the sun was on her hair, her head resting on his chest. But that feeling was difficult to speak into reality. It was much easier to glide his lips along her neck, to caress her body with his hands, as if he could press into her the way his heart stuttered at the thought of her.
And when she was sighing his name, when her eyes were closed as her head pressed into the pillow, that feeling was amplified by a hundred, by a thousand. It was easy, when the constraints of the moment weren't holding them down, as if their release freed them of other things as well. The fear of sounding silly, or the fear of rejection.
So as they came down, as his forehead rested against the column of her neck, it slipped out, that one thing he'd been holding onto for weeks. "I love you."
A/N: oop