Work Text:
MARCH
**
Matcha. Of course he’s ordering matcha.
Katara likes to think of herself as somewhat of an expert on coffee orders now, after six weeks of employment at Neutral Grounds Coffee Shop. Coffee orders are her preferred personality test, a private thought exercise that allows her to classify people when business is slow and there’s little to do except think and categorize. Chai latte orderers are high-maintenance; espresso connoisseurs are usually either trust fund babies or desperate pre-meds; the more sugars a person uses, the more likely they are to break down in tears in full view of the campus coffee shop’s patrons. She knows it’s stupid, but it’s a way to pass the time on the long shifts her boss likes to assign to her (no one else ever works eight-hour Saturday night shifts - she’s pretty sure that Mr. Pakku has it out for her).
So she knows now that the people who order matcha lattes - matcha anything - are usually hipsters. And, as such, a single question from her last customer of the evening - “is the matcha here any good?” - tells her just about everything she thinks she needs to know about him.
Probably a hipster, she concludes.
“Um...I think so,” Katara says cautiously, though she’s never actually tried it. It’s almost midnight now, and she’ll have to close in a few minutes, which exhausts her even to think about, so she’s not as sharp as she usually would be. “I’ve never had it, but one of my friends likes it a lot.”
“Hm. All right.” The customer - a boy she’s never seen, tall, lanky, striking both in the cut of his cheekbones and the dark circles beneath his eyes - slides his credit card across the counter. “I’ll take a Venti.”
Katara squints. “This isn’t a Starbucks.” The boy seems taken-aback and she remembers that, tired or not, she has to be more professional than she is right now. “Sorry,” she amends. “Late night. I mean that our sizes are small, medium, and large.”
“Right, sorry. I’m pretty tired too.” The boy examines the sample cups lined up atop the counter for size. “Large, then.”
“All right.” Katara rings him up, then reaches for a sixteen-ounce cup and a permanent marker. “Can I get a name for that order?”
“Right, sorry. Zuko.” He glances up at her so briefly that she almost misses it.
“Zuko. Got it,” Katara mutters, writing his name on the cup. “That’ll be right out for you.”
“Thanks.” Zuko leans against the glass wall separating the waiting area from the bar. “I didn’t even know that you guys were open this late.”
“Yup.” Katara sighs, pawing through the array of syrups and canisters on the counter (Yue’s just gotten off for the night, and she never leaves the kitchen organized) for the matcha powder. “I’m always on the closing shift.”
“Even on Saturdays?”
“Even on Saturdays.” Katara shrugs. “What can you do, right?”
“Are you the only one working out here?” Zuko’s brow furrows. “That can’t be safe.”
“Go and tell that to Pakku,” she mutters under her breath. Then she clears her throat. “It’s not my favorite, but my dorm’s not far and I’ve got my pepper spray, so...it’ll be fine, hopefully.”
“That’s ridiculous.” Zuko shakes his head, shaggy hair falling into his eyes. “Making you work alone this late? They shouldn’t-”
“Well, there is someone working back in the kitchen,” Katara tells him. She reaches for the ice scoop, slides the ice maker’s lid open, and fills the cup with ice in one smooth, practiced motion. “I’m not actually alone right now.”
“Well, that’s good. Do they at least walk back to your dorm with you?”
Katara raises her eyebrows. “Why are you so worried about me?”
Zuko shrugs. “College campuses aren’t safe at night. It’s just common courtesy.”
“We’ve never met,” Katara reminds him. “Forgive me for being a little suspicious.”
She expects him to become defensive - that would be a very matcha-latte-orderer thing to do, she thinks - but he doesn’t. “That’s fair. But...if it makes you feel any better, I just wondered because…” he trails off. “Never mind.”
“No, tell me.” Katara hands the finished latte over the glass to him.
“I have a younger sister here and I walk her back to her room late at night sometimes.” Zuko shrugs. “She’d kill me if she knew I’d told you that, but she never exactly tells me to stop.”
“What year is she? I might know her.”
“She’s a freshman. Azula Kanohara.”
Oh.
Katara would be hard-pressed not to know who Azula Kanohara was.
“Pre-med, right?” she asks, aiming for neutrality and coming up short. Zuko’s eyebrow - the one that’s not burnt like the puckered skin of his left cheek - rises at the obvious strain in her voice.
“She’s a handful, I know.” He shakes his head. “I take it you’ve met.”
“We had three out of four classes together last semester.” Which I thought was never supposed to happen at a school with 20,000 undergrads, she thinks. “I’m also a pre-med freshman.”
“Let me guess. Honors College?”
Katara nods. The Honors College offers smaller classes to some of the university’s top students, so it wasn’t surprising that she and Azula had ended up in an honors literature seminar together last semester, and the biology and chemistry courses that had fit into both of their schedules around it. “She started a lot of arguments.”
“Yeah, that checks out.” Zuko hasn’t even unwrapped his straw yet - Katara notes with amusement that he seems to have forgotten all about his drink. “She likes proving that she’s smarter than everyone. Always has.”
“I can see that.” Katara has to fight not to laugh - it seems like it would be rude, given that she and Zuko have only just met. “She’s not wrong,” she admits grudgingly. Azula is freakishly smart. “Doesn’t seem like the kind of girl who’d let her brother walk her home.”
“She doesn’t. I just don’t really give her the option not to.” Zuko looks rather proud of that.
“Well, that’s very considerate of you.” Katara bites back a giggle again. “But I’m fine, I promise. I can take care of myself.”
Zuko opens his mouth, then closes it.
He’d never actually offered. Now he wishes he had.
“Besides, I still have to close, and that’s going to take at least an hour,” Katara continues, apparently still unaware that he never technically offered to walk her back. “Wouldn’t want to keep you waiting.”
“That sucks.” Zuko stares down at his drink for long enough to remember that it’s there and he hastily stabs his straw through the lid, grateful for the excuse not to have to come up with a better response. “But you really shouldn’t-”
“I’m fine.” Katara pastes on her best customer service smile. “Have a nice latte.” Wait, no. “I mean. Have a nice night.”
“I will,” he says, smiling sheepishly. “On both counts.”
Skinny jeans, she observes as she watches him go. Was I right?
And she finds, to her surprise, that she’s not quite so concerned about that as she was before.
**
“Dude, just look him up already.” Toph falls back against the pillows with a beleaguered sigh. “He’s obviously into you. Just, like... do something about it instead of subjecting me to the same conversation over and over.”
“We met once.” Katara glares daggers at her roommate, unconcerned that she’s not actually going to see them. “He is not into me, and I am not subjecting you to anything.”
“Okay, so he’s not into you. Whatever. Doesn’t change the fact that you can’t shut up about this guy.” Toph huffs. “Honestly. It’s not that hard. Open your phone. Pull up Instagram. Type ‘Zuko Kanohara.’ Slide into his DMs. Sate your stupid yearning so I don’t have to hear about it anymore. What about that is so difficult to understand?”
“I’m not sliding into his DMs, Toph.”
“Why not? It’d get you to shut up.”
Toph won’t see the look that Katara is giving her, but she definitely can’t ignore the pillow that her roommate lobs at her from across the room.
She still takes the advice, of course, though it takes a moment to find his account when his name is, inexplicably, @zkan3446789, and his last name isn’t anywhere on his profile. She has to sift through Azula’s followers to find him, but she persists, and though she briefly debates whether to click “follow,” curiosity wins out.
He approves her request almost immediately, and she’s not the kind of girl who’d ever lose sight of what matters enough to think that hitting on a sophomore (she’s pleasantly surprised - she’d thought he was an upperclassman, and though she won’t admit it, it’s nice to know that he’s not nearly so off-limits) and the brother of a girl who probably hates her is a good idea, but she can’t resist reaching out.
@kattttttara_02
(3:14) Do we make good matcha?
@zkan3446789
(3:14) Surprisingly decent
(3:15) Considering that you could barely keep your eyes open while you were making it.
“Rude,” she mutters under her breath, and types the same.
“You’re talking to him, aren’t you,” Toph says smugly. Katara ignores her.
@zkan3446789
(3:15) Wait no sorry
(3:15) That sounded bad didn’t it
@kattttttara_02
(3:16) I wasn’t THAT tired 😤.
@zkan3446789
(3:16) Ik, that was a bad joke
(3:16) sorry
(3:16) didn’t think that through
(3:17) but do I ever?
@kattttttara_02
(3:17) Nah, it’s good
(3:17) But like actually...how was the matcha?
@zkan3446789
(3:18) Well I’m kinda picky about tea
(3:18) but it was still pretty good
@kattttttara_02
(3:19) Ah so you’re one of those tea snobs
(3:19) figures
@zkan3446789
(3:20) what does that mean? 😤
@kattttttara_02
(3:21) Well this is kinda weird but I have this thing that I do to pass the time at work
(3:21) I try to like...use people’s coffee orders to figure out their personalities
(3:21) like MBTI, but caffeine
@zkan3446789
(3:22) and mine is “tea snob”?
@kattttttara_02
(3:22) hipster, actually
@zkan3446789
(3:23) …
(3:23) rude.
@kattttttara_02
(3:24) hey man, the hipster is a very noble breed
“Mmhm. Told you.”
“Shut up,” Katara mutters, wondering how Toph could possibly know that she’s smiling at her phone.
@zkan3446789
(3:25) how does ordering matcha make me a hipster?
@kattttttara_02
(3:25) just does
@zkan3446789
(3:26) ...right.
(3:26) btw how’d you find my acc?
(3:26) people always tell me it’s way too hard to find
@kattttttara_02
(3:26) I have my ways :)
“Or I spent ten minutes digging through Azula’s followers,” she mutters to herself.
(3:27) and it is. You should change your @
@zkan3446789
(3:27) nah
(3:27) why would I do that?
(3:27) it’s a safety measure
(3:28) so random people can’t find me
@kattttttara_02
(3:28) well it’s clearly not working
@zkan3446789
(3:28) yes it is???
@kattttttara_02
(3:28) I am literally a random stranger Zuko
@zkan3446789
(3:29) no ur not
@kattttttara_02
(3:29) yes I am???
@zkan3446789
(3:30) nah apparently Azula knows you
(3:30) I asked her bc you obviously knew her
(3:30) she said you were, and i quote
(3:30) her “academic rival”
@kattttttara_02
(3:31) I am?
@zkan3446789
(3:31) apparently?
(3:31) Idk she’s weird like that
@kattttttara_02
(3:31) yk what i’m actually kind of flattered
@zkan3446789
(3:32) probably fair
(3:32) but you should also probably be afraid
(3:32) very afraid.
@kattttttara_02
(3:33) this is the kind of stuff you don’t say to random strangers, Zuko
@zkan3446789
(3:33) you’re not a stranger!!!
(3:33) you’re my little sister’s academic rival
(3:33) I feel like I know you already
@kattttttara_02
(3:34) but I don’t know you
@zkan3446789
(3:34) do you want to?
“Toph?”
“Mmhm?” Toph takes out one of the headphones she’s using to listen to her audio textbook.
“I think he’s hitting on me.”
Toph snickers. “Toldja.”
She pauses.
“How do you feel about that?”
Katara glances down at her phone and smiles. “Kind of stupid, not gonna lie.”
Toph sits up, crossing her legs and leaning forwards on her elbows. “Explain.”
“This is exactly the kind of thing that I don’t do,” she says. “I mean, he’s Azula’s brother, for crying out loud. It’s just not a good idea-”
“What, it’s not a good idea to flirt with a hot guy who obviously likes you because you can’t stand his sister?”
Katara lobs another throw pillow across the room (she loves decorative pillows, and they live up to their name in this dorm). “How would you even know that he was hot?”
“I get the vibe.”
It’s best not to question that, and besides, she’s right.
“Remember how I decided that I wasn’t going to date freshman year?”
“Who said anything about dating?” Toph’s smirk makes Katara feel oddly queasy. “Just...see where it goes. Have fun, y’know?”
“I...don’t really think that’s a good idea, Toph.”
“Why not? It’s better without strings attached.”
“Toph, it’s me. I’d fall for a guy I made out with at a party while I was so drunk I couldn’t even remember his name.” She shakes her head and hugs a pillow to her chest. “Even if I told myself there were no strings attached, I’m pretty sure I’d just attach them in my head and get my heart broken when it ended.”
“Yeah, see, that’s a problem.” Toph’s smirk fades. “You need to learn how not to make it about feelings-”
“No, I don’t, Toph.” Katara shakes her head. “I just don’t want casual flings. I want my relationships to mean something, and if I’m not in a position to have that, I just...won’t.” She glances back down at the unanswered message on her phone. “It’s not like I even know this guy, anyways.”
“All right.” Toph flops back down against her pillows. “But be careful, okay?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“If you really get attached that easily, make sure you don’t.”
Katara smiles wanly, as touched by her roommate’s concern as she is concerned that she’s never going to be able to do that. “Right.”
@kattttttara_02
(3:40) well, what should I know?
**
“My brother’s been asking around about you.”
Normally, Katara would take Azula’s approach as an excuse to run as far and as fast as possible, but she knew this would probably happen eventually and it’s best to face the inevitable now rather than later. (Besides, their Microbiology lab starts in five minutes - she can’t very well run now.) “Has he?” she asks, trying to sound more composed than she feels.
“Yup.” Azula’s chewing gum, for whatever reason, and she pops a bubble startlingly close to Katara’s face. “You were his barista and apparently he thinks that’s a sign that you’re his soulmate or something.”
“...I really didn’t get the impression that-”
“Then you got the wrong impression,” she says coolly. “And I feel compelled to give you fair warning that if you break his heart, I’ll break your nose.”
Katara coughs. “I didn’t know you two were that close.”
“Well, we’re not, but I’m not about to let him blunder his way into the depths of despair again.” She takes her seat and throws Katara a sidelong glance over her shoulder. “He’s done that about six too many times, and I really don’t trust him not to do it again.”
“Aww, you do have a heart,” Katara teases. “And don’t worry. Zuko and I are just...acquaintances.”
“Just acquaintances. Right.”
Azula’s no more convinced than Toph had been, and Katara begins to wonder why exactly people have been reading so far into something that she’s never thought was very complicated at all.
**
“If I ordered an iced macchiato, what would you conclude about me?”
Katara looks up from the tray of scones she’s refilling, and once the initial shock of being spoken to passes, her cheeks flush. Zuko again. They haven’t crossed paths since their first meeting here, and though they’ve texted on and off, she’d hardly expected him to come looking for her.
“That you're either super rich or want to look like you are,” she decides.
“That seems harsh.” Zuko leans his elbow against the glass, just as he had when they’d first met. “True, but still. Harsh.”
“Aren’t you a matcha guy?” Katara makes a minute adjustment to a scone that’s just a millimeter off-center just so she’ll have an excuse not to look at him. For a guy she’s repeatedly heard Azula describe as “pathetically unsociable,” Zuko is surprisingly confident, and she’d rather not think too hard about that.
“No, I’m actually an oolong guy, but you guys don’t make that,” Zuko says, running a hand through his hair. “And what if I wanted to be a macchiato guy? Who’s gonna stop me?”
Katara arches a single eyebrow and privately thanks her brother for forcing her to learn that trick - it’s quite effective at close range. “You strike me as a creature of habit.”
“Am not!”
“Fine, then. Have your macchiato.” She pulls a face at him, figuring that it’s worth the risk of looking stupid since no one is around to see it. “See how you like that.”
“No, I actually want a black coffee.”
“Ah, so you’re also a recovering emo kid.”
Zuko opens his mouth, then closes it, because this is not false.
(He has his middle school collection of band tees to prove it.)
“Or sleep-deprived,” Katara offers. “Or both?”
He tries to smile rakishly, but the confidence he’d been managing to fake deflates like a popped balloon. Katara’s got this way of making him feel terrifyingly exposed and uncharacteristically daring at the same time, but right now the former is winning out. “Both.”
“Well, I can understand that. Midterms, right?”
“Midterms,” he sighs.
“I have this multivariable calculus exam in three days that I’m pretty sure is going to stab me through the heart a few times and then stomp on its remains,” she replies. “I’ve been downing, like, a shot of espresso an hour just to keep myself alive.”
“You’re going to die if you keep doing that.” Zuko looks more concerned about that than he has any reason to. “Like, actually die.”
“Nah, I’m tougher than that,” Katara says, offering him a self-assured smile. “Takes more than a little too much caffeine to knock me out of the ring.”
“Like multivariable calculus?”
She laughs, light and carefree, as if she’s forgotten that she’s supposed to be taking an order (she has). “Exactly like multivariable calculus.”
Zuko knows he should respond, but he doesn’t, because she is so pretty and he is so incapable of coherent thought and there’s almost no way that he’ll be able to come up with the kind of slick retort he wishes he could fire back with.
(He is working on his confidence - working being the operative word.)
Katara leans her elbow against the counter and rests her chin in her palm. “You’re a strange one, Kanohara,” she says thoughtfully.
Zuko’s face reddens, and not just because the way she says his family name makes him feel like his extremities are going to catch fire. “Am I?” he asks, coughing to mask the wobble in his voice.
Zuko, my man, my buddy. Why did you ever think it was a good idea to come find her?
Katara laughs again. “You seem so slick sometimes, but others you’re so awkward.”
She studies his face intently. “It’s kind of endearing.”
That.
That is why I thought it was a good idea to come find her.
“Oh, right.” He swallows hard. “I’m working on that.”
“That was a compliment, Zuko.”
“Which part?”
Katara shakes her head fondly. “All parts.”
“But...you said I was awkward.”
“Are you gonna deny that?”
“No, but that’s usually not a compliment.”
“Yeah, but it’s really sweet when it’s you.” She smiles the kind of smile that’s more eyes than lips.
I’m going to die, aren’t I. I’m going to die, and Azula’s going to find out why and make sure my obituary lists my cause of death as Katara...does Katara have a last name? Why don’t I know that? Anyway. Irrelevant. She’s gonna make sure my obituary says my cause of death was Katara Last-Name giving me a compliment and that stupidly stunning smile and-
“Hey, are you okay?” Katara peers up at Zuko through furrowed brows. “You just got really red.”
“I probably have a fever,” he blurts out. “I should go. You know, before I get you sick and make you miss your calculus midterm.”
“But you haven’t paid for your drink.”
“I’ll be fine without it!” Zuko calls over his shoulder as he bolts for the door.
“Oh...kay,” Katara mutters, turning her attention back to her scones. “Well, I did say he was an odd one.”
**
APRIL
**
“Hey, stranger!”
Zuko looks up at Katara’s voice and the sound of her books hitting the surprisingly flimsy library table. He feels like he’s swallowed a frog, trying not to let the dopamine hit he always seems to get from the unexpected sound of Katara’s voice show on his face. According to the Introduction to Neuroscience class he’d gotten roped into taking by virtue of its being the only open class that counted for the biological science GE when he registered, the limbic cortex is responsible for this reaction, and sometimes he wishes he could switch it off if only so he wouldn’t make it so ridiculously obvious how happy he is to see a girl he’s only known for a month.
(No, who is he kidding? Of course he doesn’t.)
“Um. What are you doing here?” he asks, coughing into his hand.
Beautiful. Well done, Zuko. Absolutely stellar.
This is the second leg of his brain’s now-instinctive response to Katara’s presence. It’s routine now: first, the dopamine; then, he forgets how to speak ( thanks, cerebrum), then finally finds his words again but can’t seem to choose the right ones (that’s on the frontal lobe), and finally Katara gets wind of this and picks up his slack and soon he forgets why he’s ever felt awkward in her presence at all (a failing for which his amygdala is culpable).
But Katara doesn’t know that, of course, and he intends to keep it that way.
“Um...studying?” Katara sits down across from him. “What else would I be doing in the library?”
“Um...sometimes I come in here to look at the books in the rare manuscripts room,” Zuko offers. “You...could be doing that?”
Really, Zuko?
Really?
Katara’s face lights up. “Really?”
Huh. “Really.” He clears his throat again. “I guess I just think they’re neat.”
“I’ve never been in there. You’ll have to show me sometime.” She flashes him a smile that he knows is genuine, even though he knows that anyone else who made such a proposition would probably be emptily flattering him at best. “But today, I have an O-chem exam to study for. Mind if I join you?”
“Well, you are kind of already here.”
“Good point.” She laughs sheepishly and begins to leaf through her organic chemistry textbook. “You haven’t kicked me out yet, so can I count that as a yes?”
“Why would I kick you out?” Zuko finally finds the wherewithal to look up at her. “I don’t…” think. “I don’t want to. Why would you think I wanted to?”
Oh, how Zuko misses the days when he didn’t know Katara well enough to be so nervous around her.
(He sometimes wishes he could apologize, because her first impression of him was utterly unreflective of every other interaction they’ve had since.)
“Some people can’t study with friends. Just wanted to make sure.”
“Oh, right.” Then the implication of her comment sinks in. “Is that what we are?”
“Friends? Well, I should hope so.”
“Oh. Okay.”
Cool, cool, cool. This is fine! This is good. We can work with this-
She raises an eyebrow (which appears to be her trademark - it’s truly devastating). “Unless you’re unsatisfied with that designation?”
“Why do you always talk like an essay?”
Idiot.
“Oh. Um…” Katara scratches at the back of her neck, cheeks flushing. “I guess it’s force of habit. Sorry.”
“No!” he hastily reassures her, though it comes out a little too loud and a librarian turns to glare at him. “No, no, it’s not a bad thing! I just...gah. I’m an idiot. Please ignore me.”
“It’s a little late for that, Kanohara,” she teases, though she’s so obviously shaken that there isn’t much force behind her words.
“In that case, I’m very sorry for your loss.”
She swats him with her textbook.
(This hurts more than it should. She evidently has not thought this through.)
“What I meant by that is-”
“That I deserve pain? Got it.” Zuko flashes her his best approximation of a smile, though it’s really a grimace after the hit he’s taken. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
“ Zuko.”
“I meant that I could never ignore you,” she says, softly, after a beat.
“Well, I am very annoying.”
Katara raises her textbook. “I will hit you again.”
“...please don’t do that.”
Katara drops the book and crosses her arms. “Then quit talking about my friends like that.”
**
“Suki tells me you have a boyfriend.”
Katara rolls her eyes. “Suki’s information is unreliable.”
“No, I really don’t think it is.” Sokka leans across Toph, who’s sitting between the siblings in the bleachers, until he’s uncomfortably close, as he often does to get her goat (she hates it when people invade her personal space and he knows this all too well). “And I have to say, I’m surprised.”
“That Suki told you something so blatantly false? Yeah, so am I.” Katara turns back to the court, even though both volleyball teams are still warming up for their game and there’s nothing to watch. “He isn’t my boyfriend.”
“Oh, so there is a guy?” Sokka leans forward.
“I mean, I think I know who she’s talking about, but that doesn’t mean he’s my boyfriend.” Katara scans the court for #22 - Suki’s jersey number. “I’m not sure where she got the idea that he was.”
“Well, you have to have done something to make it look like you’re a thing,” Sokka reasons. “Why else would she-”
“Oh, she’s done plenty,” says Toph, who’s been silent for the duration of this exchange.
“See?”
“Oh, so every guy I talk to is my boyfriend now?” Katara crosses her arms. “Why are you people like this?”
“You message him nonstop and you get all flustered every time I ask you who you’re texting,” Toph points out.
“Yeah, I don’t know, Katara. Seems pretty thing- ish to me.”
“Sokka, I will smack you.”
“Hey, I’m just curious.” He shrugs. “Seeing as I did hear you swear up and down that you weren’t going to date freshman year.”
“Yeah, I did say that.” Katara turns to glare at him. “Which is precisely why Zuko is not my boyfriend.”
“Zuko Kanohara?” Sokka arches a single eyebrow (he was, after all, the source of that trick of Katara’s). “The English Lit major?”
“I’m surprised you even know him,” Katara mutters under her breath, looking down so he won’t see her cheeks flush.
“He’s on my floor,” Sokka explains. “Last year he got blasted at a party and started bawling like a baby because his ex was also blasted and she started making out with his roommate.”
“Ouch,” Toph comments.
“He has a single this year,” Sokka informs them both.
“That’s nice. He’s still not my boyfriend.”
“Y’know, he seems nice enough. I’m not gonna say anything if-”
“I don’t need your approval to date, Sokka.”
“Nah, but I do have a vested interest in your social life.” He gives her a pointed look. “Which you don’t have and aren’t going to if someone doesn’t step in.”
“I have plenty of social life.” Katara returns his glare, gesturing to Toph. “Exhibit A.”
“Okay, so you have one friend and your brother. That’s still not a social life.”
“Suki?” Katara reminds him.
“Well, yeah, but-”
“There are four other girls in our suite,” Katara points out. Their suite is composed of three adjacent doubles, and though Toph is the suitemate she’s the closest to, it’s not as if she doesn’t know the other four. “Plus Yue at work.”
“And Zuko,” Toph snickers.
“See? I do have a social life!”
“Okay, so you have friends, but when do you ever actually do anything with them?” Sokka challenges. “Seriously, all you do is work and study. I honestly don’t think getting a boyfriend would be all that bad for you.”
“Yeah, well, getting a boyfriend isn’t going to get me into medical school,” she retorts. “Or pay for it.”
“Yeah, but Kanohara is rich.”
Katara leans across Toph to punch her brother’s arm.
“Jokes aside, it seems like he makes you happy.” Sokka’s tone is surprisingly earnest now. “I think you could stand to have a few things in your life that you actually, you know... like.”
“I love my major,” Katara protests, and although it’s true, the statement does feel a little flat. Now that she thinks about it, she realizes that she finds herself lamenting the lack of time she spends with her friends often, and attending this volleyball game against Caldera University’s crosstown rival is the first thing she’s done purely for fun in a while.
But having a boyfriend is a whole different story, he reminds herself. Friendships are simpler; they don’t require the painstaking attention to detail, the laser-focus on a single person which often comes at the expense of all else, or the constant heartache of navigating an emotional minefield nearly every moment of the day. Friendships build up; relationships are built up only to fall down.
“But...he does make me happy,” Katara admits. “All of my friends do.”
“Then maybe you should, I don’t know, actually talk to them?”
“Well, I’ll give you that.” She pulls out her phone. “Interpersonal relationships are important.”
“Only you, Katara,” Sokka sighs. Nevertheless, he reaches over to pat her arm.
**
Katara
(11:52 P.M.) Were you at the vball game earlier?
Zuko Kanohara
(11:54 P.M.) ew, sports.
(11:55 P.M.) I have a moral objection to organized sports.
(11:56 P.M.) and by that I mean I think they’re stupid and people need to stop hyping them up so much.
Katara
(11:56 P.M.) Oh, really?
(11:56) that’s too bad, it was a great game
Zuko Kanohara
(11:57) ok but define “great”
Katara
(11:57) idk, it was fun?
(11:58) yk that a little school spirit wouldn’t kill you right?
Zuko Kanohara
(11:58) you sound like a hs principal trying too hard to be hip
Katara
(11:59) love ya too :)
“Oh, crap,” she mutters. Toph stirs beside her but doesn’t say anything.
You mean it platonically. He knows that. It’s fine, she tries to reassure herself.
She’s not entirely successful, but there’s nothing she can do about it now.
Zuko Kanohara
(11:59) so i take it you like volleyball?
She breathes a sigh of relief.
Katara
(12:00) kinda ig?
(12:00) but I was mostly just there to support my brother’s gf
(12:00) bc she’s on the team
(12:00) loml <3
Zuko Kanohara
(12:01) my last gf played volleyball
(12:01) so i kind of avoid it out of spite now
Katara
(12:02) oof
(12:02) bad breakup?
Zuko Kanohara
(12:02) one could say that
Katara
(12:03) again, oof
(12:03) do you know her jersey #? I might’ve met her
Zuko Kanohara
(12:04) 92
(12:04) Mai Ichimori
Katara
(12:05) OMG I HAVE!
(12:05) she’s friends with Suki!
(12:05) (my brother’s gf/my life aspiration)
Zuko Kanohara
(12:05) wait hold up
(12:05) your brother is dating Suki?
(12:05) as in Suki from volleyball?
Katara
(12:06) ikr? He’s p lucky ngl
Zuko Kanohara
(12:06) ...I kinda asked her out last year after Mai dumped me for my roommate
(12:06) she said no
(12:06) but i had the biggest thing for her for like three months after that
(12:06) ofc now that I think ab it she was probably talking to your brother at the time which explains a lot
Katara
(12:07) ADFIHSDODSH WHAT?
Zuko Kanohara
(12:07) okay at least i have taste
Katara
(12:07) very good taste ngl
(12:07) i just thought that was funny bc
(12:07) 1. We’ve been friends since hs and she never mentioned it to me
(12:08) and 2. Apparently she told Sokka we were dating
(12:08) no idea where she got that from
Zuko Kanohara
(12:08) well that’s embarrassing
Katara
(12:08) rude.
Zuko Kanohara
(12:08) wait no not like that
(12:08) I mean that a girl I asked out told her boyfriend I was dating his sister
(12:09) that’s...idk it’s very weird to me
Katara
(12:09) oh agreed
Zuko Kanohara
(12:09) Azula probably said something to Mai and their other best friend Ty Lee that she repeated out of context
(12:09) and then Mai told Suki we were a thing because Ty Lee made it sound like that?
(12:10) idk you get really good at figuring out how weird rumors got around when you’re related to Azula
Katara
(12:10) ohhh
(12:11) anyways that reminds me why I messaged you in the first place
Zuko Kanohara
(12:11) what, is my charming conversation not enough?
Katara
(12:11) Sokka and some of my friends have been telling me to get out more lately
(12:11) and like i’m really busy but I need to have friends yk?
(12:11) so I was wondering
(12:12) in the interest of being sociable and well-adjusted
(12:12) if you might want to hang out soon
Zuko Kanohara
(12:13) [ZUKO is typing.]
(12:14) [ZUKO is typing.]
(12:15) well uh now that you mention it
(12:15) i have to go to a play for this Shakespeare class I’m taking
(12:15) it’s free
(12:16) if you want?
Katara
(12:16) you NERD
(12:16) I would love to!
(12:17) what play?
Zuko Kanohara
(12:17) Troilus and Cressida
Katara
(12:17) how hard would you judge me if I said I’d never heard of it?
Zuko Kanohara
(12:18) not at all
(12:18) everyone hates T&C
(12:18) which is why they’re doing it
(12:18) the girl who runs ATG was pissed that the theater dept chair suggested that she do a Shakespeare play so she picked one that no one likes
Katara
(12:19) yk what I can respect that
(12:19) what’s ATG tho?
Zuko Kanohara
(12:19) Amateur Thespians Guild
(12:19) it’s what it says on the tin
Katara
(12:20) when is it tho?
Zuko Kanohara
(12:20) friday the 5th at seven
(12:20) I’d suggest we get food before but that would be too date-ish
(12:20) bc you don’t do that?
Katara
(12:21) ...why would i ever say no to food?
(12:21) idc what it looks like I’m never gonna turn that down
(12:21) if you want?
Zuko Kanohara
(12:22) no i’m also down
(12:22) it’s a not-date then?
Katara
(12:22) it’s a not-date :)
**
MAY
**
Zuko tells himself to give Katara space.
At first, he’s quite good at it. He avoids the library unless he knows she has somewhere else to be. Uses the hotplate and kettle his uncle had insisted he bring with him to college - never mind that he’s not, technically, allowed to have a hotplate in a dorm - instead of ordering his now-routine green tea from the coffee shop. When he feels compelled to text her, he flips through his contacts and finds someone else to talk to. (This is usually a random classmate whose number he has from a long-finished project, and he’s usually left on read, which is entirely fine with him.) After all, he’s going to be spending Friday night with her, and he doesn’t want her to get the impression that she’s the only thing on his mind.
Three days of this leads him to the unfortunate conclusion that she is.
(Sort of. There is also Intro to Neuroscience, which is far less enlightening and far more confusing now as the class hurtles towards the final than it ever has been before.
But mostly Katara.
Katara is much nicer than the brain.
Also, prettier.)
That, though, is all the more reason to keep trying. Katara wants a friend, after all, and friends don’t think of nothing but each other. She does not want to be bothered with his delirious three-A.M. thoughts, no matter how tempted he is to text her with his earth-shattering revelation that collarbones are neck knuckles. She doesn’t need the burden of listening to him vent because Ty Lee’s frantically texting him to report that a phone call from their father made Azula cry and he’s worried sick because Azula never cries, and she won’t tell anyone what he said to her. She especially shouldn’t be subjected to paragraph after paragraph of his exclaiming how glad he is that he decided to try being outgoing when his attempt to make conversation with a barista way back in March made him the first and best new friend he’s had in ages, and how he can’t believe that a girl as smart and driven and polished and big-hearted as Katara would ever want to spend her time with someone like him.
Katara doesn’t want a boyfriend.
Especially not a boyfriend whose false confidence obscures a deep, constant, and pervasive sense of “what-am-I-doing.” Or a boyfriend with six tons of emotional baggage that she isn’t even aware exists yet.
This is unfortunate for Zuko, who realizes barely a second after he logs off the night that he asks Katara to watch a play with him ( Shakespeare? Really?) that he wishes this were a date. He’d pay, because there’s no way he’s letting Katara spend her hard-earned coffee money to feed herself, and maybe wear something other than an oversized t-shirt and skinny jeans, and perhaps she’d let him discreetly take her hand. She’d probably fall asleep on his shoulder, and naturally, he’d have to walk her back to her dorm after she woke, and maybe at her doorstep she’d smile sleepily and tell him it’d been fun, even though the play is objectively awful by Shakespearean standards, and then she’d stand on her toes and kiss him and he’d probably fall down the stairs, or at least run into a few trees on the way back to his own room.
But the night actually goes like this:
They meet at one of the fast food restaurants on campus that you can’t use dining swipes to pay for. She is wearing a floral sundress even though it’s getting chilly, and her hair is down - it’s almost always up, and he has to take a moment to compose himself after he sees her. They eat, he tries not to choke on his chicken tenders (she teases him endlessly about that choice of entree) or say anything unbearably stupid. They bicker over the check, he attempts to give her a rough summary of the plot before the show starts because they’re probably both going to need it, and he keeps his hands folded in his lap for the duration of the show because he just knows he’ll try to reach for hers if he doesn’t. He pays very little attention to the stage - that’s not where the real view is. He does, at least, get to walk her back, but he ruins that when Katara asks him why Azula’s seemed so off lately and he blurts out the whole story of the phone call and she all but insists that he come in and talk it out when they get back to her room.
He does not want to “talk it out,” but he’s not about to tell Katara that. And she has a way of getting it all out of him: his father’s murky past, their mother’s disappearance, going to live with Uncle, the reason half his face is burned, the way he still has Azula under his thumb even with a restraining order he’s managed to bribe the relevant individuals not to enforce and her every effort to get out. He tells her why this phone call has him so worried, and when he rubs at his stinging eyes, he’s surprised to find that his hand is wet when he pulls it away.
Katara doesn’t say anything at first. He’s never seen her speechless, and he curses himself internally for making it happen now, but it’s only a beat of silence before she lunges across the bed and throws her arms around him.
“I had no idea,” she whispers, her hands shifting to bracket his waist.
“I didn’t want you to.” He’s so shocked that it doesn’t occur to him to wrap his arms around her in kind for a few seconds, but once he does, he holds her as tightly as she does him. She feels small and slight in his arms, and the feeling of having something to hold is more comforting than it has any right to be. “And I don’t want you to apologize.”
She pauses for a moment, and he guesses that she’d her intended next words had probably been some variation on “I’m so sorry.” She’s probably rethinking them now, which he hardly minds - silence, and Katara in his arms, are better than words.
“I’m glad you told me,” she finally says.
“But it’s not your problem to deal with.”
“You shouldn’t have to do this alone,” she says softly, and her small, cool hands stroke circles against his shirt, and Zuko thinks he might melt and he does slump forwards in her arms. She catches him - he’s beginning to suspect that she’ll always catch him - and lies back against her pillows, letting him rest his head against her sternum.
And he’s almost positive, all told, that he isn’t going to survive this.
“You deserve so much better, Zuko,” she says after he doesn’t speak for a few more moments.
He knows what she means, but this moment is the one on his mind, and in light of that, he cannot comprehend how she can even begin to insinuate that he deserves better than what he has right now.
**
Katara’s never been heartsick before, but she thinks she might be learning how.
She can’t lose her focus if she wants the life she’s been working for since she was a little girl; she finds herself doing it anyways.
She makes time for her friends, now; the one she makes the most time for is starting to nudge out of the healthy, safe territory of friendship and into terrain she doesn’t have the know-how to navigate.
She knows now that Zuko Kanohara is passionate and kind and caring and funny (sometimes intentionally, sometimes not) and has met maybe four people in his entire life who’ve seen and admired that as they should, and she wants to punch someone every time she thinks about the ways he’s been hurt. But she can’t, of course; she appreciates him instead.
She appreciates him far more than she ever intended to, and as much as he deserves it, this is a problem for her, because appreciation is a slippery slope and she can’t risk this when so much is on the line.
Heartsick - noun. Technical definition: “despondent, especially from grief or loss of love.”
Heartsick - noun. Alternative definition: holding back feelings that it’s becoming almost impossible to believe that one should repress.
“Flat white for Zuko,” she calls out into Neutral Grounds Coffee Shop’s crowded dining room, pretending that name means nothing to her, refusing to meet his eyes when he takes his coffee and gives her that private smile she wants to believe he doesn’t show anyone else.
Heartsick - noun. True definition: Katara Natatok, right now.
**
Zuko is getting good at reading Katara’s moods now, or so he thinks.
(In reality, he reads a very select few moods as “give me a hug” and the rest as “never speak to me again,” even though 90% of her emotions call for the former and she’d give him a tongue-lashing for ever presuming that she’d ever even consider the latter.)
Regardless, when he runs into her at the library as it’s about to close and they’re both collecting their books to head back for the night, the exhaustion and unreadable sadness on her face are impossible to misread.
He extends his arms to her before he even remembers to ask what’s wrong, and she buries her face in his shirt and holds him like she’s afraid he’ll turn to dust if she lets go for even a moment.
It’s not quite dark out, so she doesn’t ask him to accompany her back to her dorm. And he has about six near-misses on the walk back to his own as he types, face down and completely unaware of every tree, lamppost, trash can, and bench in his path. He collides with about six people, some of who are angrier than others at his lack of situational awareness. He couldn’t care less. The message he’s typing is far more important. Of course, he’s writing in his notes app and he knows he’ll never send it, but he has to say it somehow.
I just wanted you to know that you’re the best thing that’s happened to me in years, he types, but that sounds like a line of dialogue in a romantic comedy about an elderly couple of old friends finding a second chance at love or something, so he deletes it.
I’ll keep this quick. I know this sounds weird, but I think I might be in love with you, he tries next, but that one gets erased even more quickly than the last one. He knows better than to throw around words like that after only three-going-on-four months of friendship.
Hey, is there any chance you’ve changed your mind about having a boyfriend? He writes. That one’s quickly scrapped because there’s no non-sleazy way to say that and he knows by now that the wrong wording might be disastrous.
Katara - more than pretty much anything, I wish that I could be with you.
That’s the one that stays.
**
“ Freedom!”
“Finally,” Zuko agrees, and he laughs as Katara throws herself into his arms, half-delirious with happiness. He’d promised to buy her shaved ice after finals ended in a moment of what might’ve been idiocy or genius during study week, and he assumes she’s come to collect, but he secretly hopes that’s not the only reason she’s here. He pats her back and then lets her go. “How was your calc final?”
“Terrible,” she laughs, too relieved to be worried.
“Oh, no. Katara Natatok got a 98?” he teases.
“Shut up,” she mutters.
“You definitely did fine,” he reassures her. “Now, shaved ice?”
“Bingsoo,” she corrects, “and yes.”
**
It strikes Katara halfway through a bowl of mango bingsoo.
I’m not a freshman anymore.
It doesn’t mean anything, because freshman year had really been a cover for the fact that she doesn’t know if she’ll ever feel ready to take that particular risk. But her verbal contract is up.
She looks across at Zuko.
Oh, Spirits.
**
“So. First year in the books now, right?”
Katara nods, forcing a smile. “Three to go, right?”
“Halfway through.” Zuko smiles just as wanly as she did.
They fall into silence. He pushes his watermelon bingsoo around in its bowl.
Find something to talk about, he reminds himself, and pulls out his phone. “I, um...you know how that one junior girl just got an emotional support dog?” he asks.
“The pug?” she asks. “Yeah, I’ve seen him! He’s adorable.”
“No, different girl. With an Australian shepherd puppy.” He flicks through his camera roll. “I ran into her, so I asked to pet it, because...you know. Socializing. And she let me hold it.” He pulls up the photo he’s referring to and holds out his phone to Katara. “And made me take a picture.”
**
Katara has to make a valiant effort not to choke on her bingsoo.
The picture he’s showing her is from an awkward angle, but it catches Zuko’s unabashed smile and the tiny puff of mottled grey fur in his arms, which looks up at him through wide, ice-blue eyes. He’s wearing an oversized t-shirt, as he always does, and the dog sniffs his chin.
It’s criminally adorable.
“I love him!” she exclaims, pretty sure she’s not referring to the puppy.
“She, actually.”
She doesn’t correct herself.
“I’m texting this to myself,” she says, swiping out of the photo gallery and opening his text messages. She scrolls through until she finds the one under her name ( Katara <3, she notes with amusement) and opens it to send the photo to herself.
Then freezes.
He’s typed a message and apparently forgot to delete it.
Katara - more than pretty much anything, I wish that I could be with you.
**
Zuko realizes what he’s done the moment Katara’s jaw goes slack.
He’d never meant to send that message but it’d crossed his mind, when he remembered that her freshman year was over, and he must’ve forgotten to delete it, and he feels almost faint with a potent combination of shame and adrenaline by the time he gathers the composure to stammer, “I promise I can explain.”
She’s not angry when her eyes meet his, just shocked. “Zuko?” she asks timidly, her shoulders rising and falling rapidly as her breath quickens.
“Katara, I am so, so sorry-”
“Were you ever going to send that message?”
**
Heart pounding in her ears, Katara sets Zuko’s phone down on the table and slides it back over to him. The message is still open, and it takes self-control that she’s surprised she has not to read it again just to make sure it’s real.
He feels the same way, she realizes, elated.
He feels the same way, she thinks again, horrified.
This is what she’s been afraid of since she realized that whatever she felt for Zuko wasn’t fading with time. This is a distraction; she has a future to think of; dating isn’t her thing; she can’t risk heartbreak. She can’t risk this.
But didn’t I want this? A smaller voice asks. Wouldn’t it make me happy? Doesn’t that matter, too? Why should I have to choose?
Because you can’t have it all, and at least a degree won’t break your heart, says reason.
You don’t have to choose at all, says hope.
But she considers, in the split-second between one frantic heartbeat and the next, that maybe this has never been about whether or not she had time or energy. Maybe she’s been hiding, afraid of her own feelings or what they might do to her if she let them show. Maybe-
Maybe I’m being a cynic, she thinks, and she almost laughs, because she’s been teased her entire life for her optimism and seems like the unlikeliest person in the entire world to be cynical when it comes to love.
Love.
When she meets Zuko’s crestfallen eyes, her own are dancing - with joy, with mirth, with the irony of it all.
She gestures to the door and leaves her half-eaten bowl of bingsoo (she was never going to be able to finish it anyway); he follows, his footsteps leaden. Hot, humid early-summer air hits her face as she opens the door, and as soon as they’re out of the store and out of the walkway, she stops and turns to face Zuko.
“Please don’t apologize,” she tells him, and rises on her toes to meet his height before she can be properly amused at the shock on his face when it’s been so obvious where she stood all along.
She kisses him with mango-flavored lips still cold from the shaved ice, and she finally - finally - lets herself melt like the bingsoo she’d left behind.
“Katara?” Zuko asks, disbelieving, when she falls back to the flats of her feet. “ What?”
“Well,” she explains, “I’m not a freshman anymore.”
**
This - incontrovertibly - is the greatest day of Zuko Kanohara’s life.
“I thought that was code-speak for ‘I don’t believe in love’ or something!” he squawks, indignant. She laughs and presses her palm to his chest; he stares at it, unable to believe it’s actually there, doing that, for this reason.
“Well, it was, but then I realized that that was stupid,” she says lightly. It all seems so easy now and she wonders at its ever having seemed like a mystery before. “So was it true? That message?”
“You’re asking me that after you kissed me?”
Katara’s eyes widen. “Good point. Sorry.”
“No, no, don’t apologize.” He laughs sheepishly. “I was...pretty explicit about, um. Where I stood.”
“As was I,” Katara teases. “I think.”
“So you...you actually want to give this a shot?”
Katara considers for a moment, and then nods. She looks up at him, pushes a stray lock of hair out of her eyes, nervously fiddles with the hem of her shorts. He reaches for her fidgeting hand to still it as he takes it in his own, and only then does she finally reply.
“I do.”
With his free hand, he brushes his thumb across her cheek, and her eyes flutter shut at his touch. “Really?” he asks, just once more.
“Yeah.” She opens her eyes once more. “I can’t think of a better risk to take.”