Disclaimer:
Sokka: "What? You think the author of this fic actually OWNS me? Ha! She don't own me! There ain't NO ONE who can own the great, amazing fantabulousness of the Sokkameister! Oh, yeah! That's right! Can't touch this! No, no, can't touch this!"
"OUCH!"
The cry rang for miles. Scholars in the next village over went quickly to work hoping to be the first to discover the new breed of bird that had made such a cry. They were sadly out of luck for, though the cry was made by one often found soaring the skies, it was not a bird's beak it was uttered from.
"Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow! Katara!"
Yes, it was indeed Aang, airbender-cum-avatar-cum-twelve-year-old boy whose voice was ringing clear through the early morning air. After which said airbender-cum-avatar-cum-twelve-year-old boy then proceeded to run clear across the valley and wake a certain waterbender-cum-healer-cum-fourteen-year-old girl. He reached her only to find that she was already awake. Not questioning this (even though it was four in the morning) he merely extended his hand with a pitiful, "The bush bit me, Katara."
"What?" came an aggravated cry from behind them. "You woke us all up because you scratched yourself on a thorn?"
Sokka emerged from the shadows looking extremely disgruntled. Toph came behind him glaring at Aang with surprising accuracy for someone who was blind, and if the airbender had had any good judgment that wasn't being clouded by the pain in his finger he'd be very concerned of Toph's ability of "seeing with her feet" at that moment.
"I didn't scratch myself!" Aang said. "The bush bit me!"
"Don't be ridiculous," Sokka said. "Bushes don't bite."
"It did so bite me!" Aang said. "It bit me hard!"
"Oh, it bit you hard, did it? Well, that changes everything!" Sokka said with his customary sarcasm. "Of course there are bushes that bite hard, everyone knows that!"
The airbender glared at the nothing-but-the-occasional-spoon-bender and attempted to cross his arms over his chest but accidentally brushed his scratch against the fabric of his shirt and cried out in pain, reverted back to just glaring and added for posterity, "This bush does bite hard!"
"Maybe there's something to this," Katara said.
Sokka snorted. "It's dark. He scratched himself on some thorny plant. End of story."
Katara glared at him, "While it's true Aang shouldn't have been stomping around in the wee hours of the morning, there may be more to this bush then meets the eye. Although, if you want to know what I think, I'd say it was probably a sign."
"A sign?" Aang said, tilting his head and looking at her confusedly. "You'd think they'd have a less painful way of getting people's attention!"
"Not a manmade sign," Katara explained patiently, "a sign from a little higher up, perhaps trying to tell you that you shouldn't have been stomping around when normal people were sleeping."
Aang, for some reason he couldn't decipher, found that, despite the fact that Katara—calm, rational, patient Katara—was explaining this in such a calm, rational, patient tone, something about her manner wasn't nearly as mature as usual. While he was thinking about this Sokka snorted again.
"You're loosing it, Katara," Sokka said. "The only thing this is a sign of is that the avatar—our traveling companion, savior and last chance—is a foolish twelve-year-old boy who's just as vision impaired in the dark as the rest of us mere mortals."
Katara opened her mouth to retort but Aang, snapping out of his reverie and looking away from her face (something that made her anger with Sokka a thousand times stronger, though she'd never admit it) got there first.
"Hey!" he said. "How many times do I have to tell you? The. Bush. Bites"
Snorting yet again Sokka opened his mouth to reply but this time it was Katara who got there first.
"Why don't we check this bush out and settle this once and for all?" she said eagerly.
"Fine," Sokka said, looking at her a bit suspiciously. "Though I don't know why you want to see it so bad. What do you expect to find, a big tag that says 'sign from above that Aang should adopt a human sleeping schedule'?"
"It looks like a normal bush to me," Sokka said, "other then the fact that it looks sickly and nasty and more like a weed then anything else."
"I'm telling you, it bites," Aang said, looking at the bush as if it were a ghost and sucking the cut on his finger absently.
"Oh, really?" Sokka said and walked over to the bush. "Hey bush," he said, extending it's arm and waving it in front of the plant, "Bite me. Come on."
He looked over his shoulder at the others with sardonic look on his face. Then suddenly…
"OUCH!"
Birds scattered from treetops, and those excited scholars recorded that this bird's cry caused fear in all other winged creatures and must be quite a large intimidating beast.
Not quite.
No, it was just Sokka, the manly man, whose eyes were streaming tears and whose bottom lip was all aquiver.
Oh, yeah, and whose hand was stuck between to thorny leaves of the plant folded over in the shape of a mouth.
"I think we can safely say that the bush bites," Toph said.
"Yeah…" Katara said. "Look, you try and get Sokka out, then send him over to me at the stream and I'll heal him, meanwhile I'll see to your cut, Aang."
Aang nodded and followed her over to the stream.
"Give it here," she said holding out her hand for his.
A bout of expert water bending later Aang was fully healed and dancing for joy.
"You've counteracted the evils of the demonic plant!" he said grabbing her hand and pulling her up to dance with him.
"Aang!" she cried in protest though the effect was somewhat ruined by the fact that she was laughing.
He answered her with more laughter and danced more energetically. Now everyone knows that dancing joyously is rarely done with one's eyes open, nor is laughing, so, considering young Aang was doing both it was really no surprise that his eyes were closed and because of this he accidentally danced himself into the stream and lost his balance in the unexpected combination of dampness and coldness that enveloped his feet. Due to having been holding Katara's hand when this occurred, he dragged her down into the water with him, and that since Aang was in the one who stepped into the river first and not Katara, he was clearly going backwards, so he fell in that direction, causing Katara to fall in forwards, that is to say, right on top of him.
Needless to say, neither was laughing anymore. They were both, however, thinking the same exact thing, which was that, with the water being so freezing cold, it was quite strange for them to feel so very warm.
"Uh…oops," Aang said eventually, with a sheepish grin Katara found adorable.
She later blamed her being distracted by the adorability of the grin for the fact that she didn't just get off of him then and there. And she would also argue that as the sheepish grin began to fade into a nervous one, that it was just all the more adorable, and how could she have been expected to think clearly? She'd had little sleep after all, thanks to someone trouncing around at an ungodly hour of the morning. So, her going into a trance and not being able to break their eye contact was completely to be expected. And his grin eventually fading completely didn't matter because it was his eyes that were mesmerizing her that point and they probably would have stayed like that for ever if they hadn't heard footsteps approaching, breaking them out of the trance.
With both of them scrambling to get up at the same moment it was no surprise that their lips brushed, causing them to freeze again and just like that the reason they had been getting up was forgotten again. Katara would also later say that there were some things in the world that a brief taste wasn't enough of to satisfy you in the least, and all it would do was clear your head of all thoughts but getting more of that thing, and this was one of those things. So she did lean in again and kiss him. And he was quite surprised, but when he recovered from his shock he kissed back, and that went on for quite a while due to the fortunate fact that it was still quite dark and it wasn't until Sokka was quite close that he was able to decipher their silhouettes and what position they were in and cry, "WHAT IN TARNATION IS GOING ON HERE?"
And Aang groaned, and not for the reason most guys do when their caught kissing a girl by the girl's older brother, but because he was thinking the meaning of Sokka's outburst was that there was a fifth nation he hadn't known about and he was no going to have to learn to tarbend as well. But then he remembered that he'd just been caught kissing a girl by the girl's older brother, which made him remember that he'd just been kissing a girl, which made him remember that, not only had he been kissing a girl, but he'd been kissing Katara, which made him happy again. But then he remember once more that he had just been caught kissing a girl by the girl's older brother and somehow managing to slip out from under Katara and cause her to plop down into the sand, he made a run for it. But he was grinning, thinking that whatever Sokka may do to him was worth it.
Katara, now far, far behind him (after all, how fast would you run if you had the girl whom you had just been kissing's brother after you?) was grinning also, thinking that she was eternally grateful to those swamp guys for teaching her how to control the water in plants.
AN: My first fic. Wrote it in forty minutes. I didn't go back and edit it because I felt semi-okay about it when I finished writing it and I knew if I went back and reread it I'd hate it and never post it so I'm sorry for any errors. Oh, and I wasn't sure of their real ages, sorry if I'm wrong. I was aiming for silly and pointless fluff, but I think I've missed the target a bit. Flame away! Tell me how horrible and OOC it is! I look forward to your criticism! Concrit is good, too, but bear in mind that I know it's completely ridiculous, so don't bother saying so, it's a waste of your time. Praise is also welcome, but don't award it just to be nice, I want to know what you really think. Though, if I made anyone laugh even once (doubtful) I'll be happy. So if you did laugh, please tell me so.