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Zuko knew I was coming home.
Of course he did. He was the Fire Lord, for god's sake — one of the most powerful men in the world. He could dispatch a falcon at a moment's notice, summon the Avatar from across any ocean. In fact, over the three months I'd spent traveling with Aang, Fire Lord Zuko had sent exactly four falcons. All of them addressed to the Avatar. None to me.
And I was stupid enough to sit up straight every single time one of those beautiful red birds arrived, bearing the Fire Nation crest on its chest. My head would lift like a child catching the scent of a bakery — hopeful, embarrassing, involuntary. Four times I watched Aang unfurl the parchment. Four times my heart quietly insisted that this one, this one, would begin with Dear Katara instead of that crisp, singular A.
Now I stand outside his chamber doors, frowning. They are massive things — carved nearly three centuries ago, before the Hundred Year War, commissioned to mark the threshold of the Fire Lord. Dark wood and hammered gold, built to last dynasties. They had been his grandfather's doors. His father's. And now, improbably, his. I wonder if it kept out angry Fire Ladies or Fire Girlfriends. Whatever the name of the Fire Lord’s beloved is.
I scowl at the wood. It is a symbol of tradition, of privacy — a physical manifestation of everything Zuko keeps locked away. Everything he was before he defected from his father's Fire Nation, before he crossed enemy lines to train the Avatar, before he told me he loved me.
I knock before I can talk myself out of it. Three sharp raps — harder than I intend, hard enough that my knuckles sting. Good. Let him hear that.
Silence. Then the low, deliberate sound of a bolt sliding free.
The door swings open and there he is. Zuko. Fire Lord. The most powerful man in the world, standing in his own doorway in a dark sleep robe, hair loose around his shoulders, looking at me like I am something he has been waiting for and dreading in equal measure.
I hate that he looks good. I hate that my first thought is that he looks tired — the shadows under his gold eyes deep enough that I want to reach up and press my thumb beneath them. I don't.
He stares at me, like he can’t believe I would have the nerve to show up. As if I haven’t been pacing in my own chambers trying to gatmy the courage to confront him.
"Katara." My name in his mouth, low and careful, like he's testing whetmy it'll break.
"You didn't write," I interrupt him before the last syllable of my name leaves his lips. Not hello. Not it's good to see you. Three months of watching red falcons land for Aang and not for me, and that's what comes out. "Four falcons, Zuko. Not one of them for me."
Something moves across his face — guilt, or something that looks close enough to it. My eyes drill into his features, it’s clear I’m not leaving without an answer.
"I know," he groans, rubbing a hand over his face — like he can scrub away the exhaustion, or maybe just buy himself anotmy second. I keep frowning. I can't help it. I also can't help noticing how unfairly good he looks fresh from sleep, hair disheveled, robe loose at the collar. My gaze wanders to the opening at his chest before I can stop it.
I don't answer. My eyes snap back to his face and I shift my weight from one foot to the other. Zuko scoffs — at my stubbornness, at the situation, at me — and steps aside to let me in.
"You know, you can't just show up like this." He closes the door behind me as I step past him into the expansive room. "You have to be summoned by the Fire Lord to enter his chambers after dark."
"Please," I scoff, drawing my robes tighter across my shivering frame.
I never know what to pack when I visit the Fire Nation. It feels like a betrayal to admit that — I am a waterbender, daughter of the Southern Water Tribe, raised on ice and wind and temperatures that would send a Fire Nation nobleman to his bed with a fever. I should not be cold here. And yet every time, without fail, the nights catch me off guard. The days are sweltering, all dry heat and white stone that holds the sun long after it sets, and so I pack accordingly. Then darkness falls and the warmth drains out of the palace like water through cracked tile and I am left standing in linen robes that were not made for this.
Zuko's chambers are warmer than the hall, at least. A low fire burns in the grate across the room — tended, I assume, by servants who never let it go cold. Everything in here is deliberate. Rich tapestries in deep crimson and black, heavy furniture, shelves lined with scrolls that I suspect he has actually read. A room built for a Fire Lord.
I am very aware that I do not belong in it.
It is written plainly enough in the colors alone. Everything in his chambers is deep red and black and burnished gold — the Fire Nation bleeding into every surface, every curtain, every carved detail in the furniture. And then there is me, standing in the middle of it in Water Tribe blue. The color of glaciers, of open ocean, of everything that is the opposite of this place. I might as well have walked in waving a banner. In the warm amber light of his fire, the blue looks almost violet, and somehow that makes it worse — like even my own colors can't quite hold their ground here.
I stop just a few feet past the threshold, close enough to the door that I could tell myself I haven't really come in. That this is still a conversation in a doorway and not something else entirely.
I drag my eyes back up to his face. "The Fire Lord doesn't even send me falcons," I quip back to him. "How exactly was I supposed to wait around in my chambers and do nothing?"
Zuko scoffs and shakes his head. He pads across the cool tiles to a cedar chest at the foot of his bed, pulls out a blanket, and tosses it in my general direction without looking. It hits me with a heavy thud. The fabric is thick and substantial — designed to retain heat, the kind of weight that feels like a physical argument against ever getting up in the morning. I unfurl it anyway, shaking out the deep red silk before drawing it around my shoulders.
"I couldn't send you falcons." He says it like it's the most obvious thing in the world. Like I'm the one being unreasonable.
"Why not?" The words come out sharper than I intend — or maybe exactly as sharp as I intend. I pull the blanket tighter and glare at him over the edge of it. "You managed to send Aang one every month. You even sent him an extra one." I let that sit for a second before I can't help myself. "What was the matter — were you lonely for his company?"
"Katara, please." Zuko's voice is strained. He sets down whatever he was holding and crosses the room toward me, and I am reminded — not for the first time — how large he actually is. Broad shoulders, long legs, the kind of build that fills a doorway. He stops close enough that I have to tilt my chin up to hold his gaze, close enough that his warmth cuts through even the thick silk of the blanket.
"Don't." I snap the word out before he can say whatever he thinks is going to fix this. "Don't do that thing where you loom at me like it's going to make me back down." He should know better. I have gone toe to toe with Zuko and walked away standing. I am not afraid of his height or his title or the gold of his eyes bearing down on mine.
"I'm not —" He stops himself, scoffs, drags a hand down his face. "Katara." My name again, but different this time — frustrated, exhausted, like it costs him something to say it. "I can't just send you a falcon. Don't you understand that? It's not — it wouldn't be right."
His voice rises on the last word and my heart leaps traitorously in my chest.
"Stop saying that!" My voice rises to match his and I throw my hands up, the blanket slipping from my shoulders. "I don't understand, Zuko." The anger wavers for just a second, enough that I hate myself for it. "Three months. You went three months without a single word to me, but you could find the time to write to Aang?" I shake my head, something bitter climbing up my throat. “You could summon the Avatar to the Fire Nation but not your girlfriend?”
"Katara—" My name cracks out of him like something breaking before he catches himself. He exhales slowly, deliberately, reigning himself in the way only someone trained to be Fire Lord can. But I can see the conflict in his gold eyes. The war between staying in control and letting go of it. The urge to hold back, to stay composed, to act like none of this is touching him.
It is touching him. I know it is.
I step forward and take his wrists before I can think better of it. My hands against his skin for the first time in three months — and I feel it everywhere, that contact, like water finding a crack in stone.
"I missed you, Zuko." I don't soften it or dress it up. I just say it, plain and true, and hold his gaze so he can't look away from it. “I-“
I barely get anotmy breath out before he closes the distance and presses his mouth to mine. For a moment I go still — his hand finding the small of my back, warm even through the fabric — and then something in me gives way and I kiss him back.
I step forward and lace my fingers into his hair. It has grown out since I last saw him — longer than I remember, soft and dark and impossibly silky against my palms. I grip a fistful of it and kiss him like I've been angry about this for three months.
Zuko lifts my leg to wrap around his hip before hauling me up into his arms. I gasp against his mouth. He carries me across the room like I weigh nothing, like this is easy, like he has done it a hundred times in his head. He drops me onto the bed without ceremony.
"I can't send falcons to you." He stands over me, chest rising and falling, hair disheveled from my hands. "You aren't my wife yet." Zuko swallows hard as he gazes down at me.
I flush bright red, the heat of it spreading from my cheeks down my neck. "What?" I push myself up onto my elbows and stare at him.
Zuko drops one knee onto the bed. Then the other. He cages me in slowly, crawling forward until his shadow falls over me, until there is nowhere to look but at him.
"It is against custom," he says, his voice low and unhurried — a stark contrast to the man who was nearly shaking with anger five minutes ago, "for the Fire Lord to send notes of affection to his beloved."
Beloved.
The word sends a shiver through me even as his mouth finds mine again, softer this time, barely a nip. My eyes stay open. My head is spinning.
He is trying to seduce me. I can see exactly what he is doing — trying to get my thoughts all tangled up, trying to make me soft and forgiving before I've gotten a single real answer out of him.
"No." I pull back. "No, you can't just—" The rest of it dissolves when I catch the look on his face. A smirk, slow and deliberate, crawling up one corner of his mouth.
"Katara." He says my name like a promise this time. Like something he intends to keep.
"All of my messages to the Avatar were monitored by my cabinet." He leans in, tracing his nose along my cheek, and I hate that I let him. "I couldn't let them know what I think about you." He pauses, his lips just barely grazing my skin. "How often I think about you."
I shiver. My lashes lift and he is still wearing that stupid smirk, like he knows exactly what he is doing to me. He tilts his head, bringing his mouth closer to my jaw.
"You think about me?" The question comes out smaller than I intend. Softer. Like somewhere underneath all the anger I am still that girl who sat up straight every time a red falcon landed, hoping.
"Of course." He keeps his lips just barely hovering over my skin, close enough that I can feel the warmth of his breath but not the press of his mouth. It is deliberate. Everything he does is deliberate. "I think about you all the time."
I don't move. I'm not sure I'm breathing.
He tilts his head and presses a single soft kiss to my jaw. Unhurried. Like we have all the time in the world, and he knows it, and he wants me to know it too.
"You take up every single space in my brain, Katara." His voice is low, barely above a murmur, his hand sliding to my belly and tracing upward slowly, deliberately, until I can feel his palm warm against my ribs. "Whenever I'm alone, I think about your lips."
My eyes snap shut. I purse my lips instinctively, suddenly unbearably self-conscious, as his hand continues its slow path up my chest.
"My lips?" My voice comes out barely above a whisper.
"Your mouth." He exhales the words more than says them, his nose dropping to my hair, my temple, the curve of my cheek — like he is relearning me by scent alone. "The shape of them when you say my name." He shudders, a full body thing, like something in him is pulled taut and barely holding. "God, Katara. I've missed you."
That's all it takes.
Three months of falcons that never came, of sitting up straight and hoping, of pacing my chambers working up the nerve to cross the palace in the dark — and all he needed to say was that he missed me. I close the distance between us and connect my mouth with his.
I can feel him smirks as his broad hands move to grab my hips lifting me easily, pressing our bodies against each other. “Maybe we should go to sleep?” Zuko offers as I wrap my arms around his broad shoulders to haul myself up. He sounds like he’s offering me an out.
“No,” I shake my head as my mouth finds the shell of his ear. “No, I don’t want to fall asleep.” My voice is light, airy as I roll my hips against his. Testing, teasing him.
A low groan escapes Zuko’s lips as he rolls me over, giving in to my seduction with ease. His lips find my as his hands go to grip my wrists.
I moan under him; my legs wrapped around his hips as I grinds up against him. Shameless, I was here, pinned under his massive body and still not submitting to Zuko’s aggression.
His hand goes to palm my breast through the thin fabric of my nightgown. Gently pinching the nipple just to hear that sweet moan from my mouth as my back arches under him. “Zuko,” I moaned his name softly.
“I know,” he chides my as his hand moves to kiss my neck. Sinking his teeth into my skin to mark me up. Fuck, I now I’m going to have to yell at him in the morning. Something about how I can’t wear a low-cut top out with Aang? “I know, I know. I’m going to make you feel so good.” Zuko promises me.
I whine under him. My eyes rolling back for a moment as my lips part. Just like that, so pliant, so needy. “Okay,” I relent, lifting my hips so Zuko can pull down the panties I was wearing.
“Fuck,” he curses into my neck as his fingers gently slides up between my legs. I’m so wet and Zuko barely touched me. It’s clear that after nearly three months I was pent up and aching. “You get this wet from a few kisses?” He teases as his fingers gently rubs circles against my clit.
“Ngh!” My back arches against the bed at his actions. He grins as he gently slides his index finger into my soft, pliant cunt.
“That’s it,” He coos as I continue to cry out in pleasure. “That’s it. Feels so good right?” He talks me through it as his finger’s curls inside me.
“Zuko,” I moan in pleasure as my hand comes up to cup my breast. “Fuck, just like that.” My voice is uneven and shaky as my finger rolls my nipple.
“Hey,” Zuko grabs my hand and pulls it away from my breasts. “No,” he tells me sternly before pulling his finger out from inside me. “No, let me make you feel good.” He instructs my as his hands go to pull up my night wear.
I lift my hands above my head. Obediently complying to his actions as he peels off the skimpy fabric. I’m naked under him now. My swollen perky tits on display as my flat belly gleams with a belly button piercing. Zuko’s cock throbs painfully between my legs as his eyes flicker down to my belly.
"Is this new?" he pants, his free hand drifting up to ghost over the piercing.
"Yeah," I gasp, flinching at the contact. It's still healing — only a few months old. "Suki and I thought it would be a fun bonding experience." I lick my lips nervously.
Zuko lifts his head. His eyes are hungry. Like he's been missing out on every fun, reckless thing I've done in the three months without him. "God." The curse comes out low, almost reverent, before he pulls me into a crushing kiss. When he finally breaks it, his voice is rough. "When I'm done with you — you're telling me everything. Every detail."
I moan into his mouth. God yes. I want to tell him everything. Every little details of my escapades. But right now? Right now, I need his cock inside me.
“I’ll tell you later,” I whisper against his mouth, tugging him back before he can ask another question. “Right now I just want you.”
Something in Zuko’s expression breaks at that.
Want.
Not the Fire Lord. Not the man carrying half the world on his shoulders. Just him.
His hands slide down my waist almost desperately, like he’s reassuring himself I’m real beneath his palms. I shiver when his fingers find bare skin again, rough callouses catching against the softness of my stomach.
“You have no idea,” he says hoarsely, his forehead falling briefly against mine, “how hard it’s been not touching you.”
The confession burns hotter than the kiss.
I kiss him again before he can retreat from it — slow at first, then hungry when he groans into my mouth. Zuko always kisses like he’s trying to restrain himself and failing at the same time. Careful hands. Devastated sounds.
His mouth drags down my throat, and I arch instinctively, fingers threading into the dark hair at the nape of his neck. He’s changed since I last saw him. Broader somehow. Harder around the edges. There’s tension living in his body now, woven into every movement.
Zuko reaches between us to guide the head of his cock between my folds. My pussy is practically radiating heat as he sinks into my inch by inch.
“Oh god,” I whimper as he feels my legs tighten around his hips. It’s been a while since we’ve had sex. It takes me a moment to focus on relaxing under him as I adjust to his size.
Zuko begins to pump into me. Moans leaving my pretty plush lips as the bed creaks with his actions. “Oh god,” I repeat again as my breasts tug against his chest.
I feel myself tighten around him and the reaction it pulls from Zuko is immediate — a sharp inhale against my throat, his hands gripping my hips like he’s losing control.
My fingers dig into his shoulders as I gasp, eyes falling shut for a moment from the overwhelming heat of him. “Keep talking,” I whisper.
Zuko laughs softly against my skin, the sound rough with satisfaction. “Yeah?” He lifts his head just enough to kiss me again, slow and devastating. “I’m not even trying yet.” The smugness in his voice makes my stomach twist pleasantly.
“Missed me that much?”
I can only answer by pulling him closer.