Disclaimer: I don't own.
A/N: Here is the next word: boy. Thank you to my reviewers for ideas!
Katara was at the age where she began to notice the difference between a boy and a boy. Boys were like her brother: brash, smelly, annoying, and pretty much something she vaguely detested at times but still put up with. Boys were very different. Sure they still smelled, but it was a nice smell, of course they could be annoying but for very different reasons. Boys were annoying for entirely other reasons such as wondering if they liked you or wondering if they were using you for things (at least that was Katara's experience). Boys could also be kind and sweet, or that's what those romance scrolls she had read while in Ba Sing Se implied.
Her own encounters with boys were few and far between. Haru wasn't exactly a boy, he was close though. He had smelled clean but she just wasn't attracted to him. When she saw him before the invasion with that silly mustache any notions of her being attracted to him vanished. Those feelings just got worse when she began taking care of him at the Western Air Temple.
Jet had definitely been a boy. In fact he was the first boy her age she had a crush on (when she was younger she had had a crush on Bato, something that Sokka would never ever let her forget). She had thought he was going to be her hero: take her away from the stupid Fire Nation and protect her while still needing her to be strong in her own right. She had happily wondered what it would be like living in a tree house before being betrayed by him. His coming back and needing her help didn't make her crush any better. There were days she still wondered if he made it out of Lake Laogai.
Aang…well Aang desperately wanted Katara to see him as a boy. Katara's problem with that wasn't so much the idea that Aang wanted her; no, the problem was that he was a gangly twelve year old who could annoy her as much as her brother. She thought of Aang as a friend and brother, she hadn't considered him to be a potential boy until Sokka commented on how powerful a bender Aang is. Aang's kissing her hadn't helped matters. It didn't feel right; nothing like what all those stories had told her a kiss should feel like.
Then there was Zuko. She had absolutely no idea how to even categorize him in her head. On one hand he had been the enemy who had chased her and her friends around the world and tried to capture them. On the other his current state of seeking redemption made him more helpful than any other member of their little gang. He had helped all of them, herself included, with more than she thought possible. As she watched him firebending with Aang her mind recognized that he was quite attractive. In a very good way.
I wonder what it would be like to run my hands over his chest. The words whispered across her mind causing her to start. Where had that come from? She kept watching the pair firebend and suddenly realized what she had been ignoring before: Zuko, who smelled nice and worked hard to make sure everyone was taken care of, was a boy.
And she desperately hoped he saw her as a girl.