Chapter Text
“Damnit— damnit,” she grumbles, shaking her head as she slams the hood to her beat up Toyota. Ole’ reliable seemed to be kicking the bucket more recently and in truth, it was breaking her heart. This thing got her all through high school and the first three years of college, and she was hoping it be taking her through her senior year too if it would just give her the chance.
Katara prided herself on being frugal, but only because it was a force of habit; growing up poor did that to a person. Not that she wasn’t thankful for the hand-me-down from her father, but… still. It would be nice to not have to bang on the battery with a wrench anytime it started acting up.
The little trick Sokka had taught her years back wasn’t working anymore, and as she rounds the old blue SUV to dig through the trunk, she grits her teeth at the perfect timing of the situation. Her orientation started in a couple of hours and she was at least half an hour away. She was trying to get there early enough to find a decent parking spot to where she did not have to pay for a lot, but the universe just had to have other plans for her.
Well, screw the universe.
All she had to do was jump her car, right? All she had to was get her jumper cables and beg some random stranger to help her before she missed the entirety of her very, very important orientation that if she missed, she would not be able to start her pre-med classes until next spring. That thought alone is enough to cause her throat to close up tightly. She has worked too hard for too long to get kicked out of school already— before it even started. All because of a stupid fucking car battery.
Katara leans into the trunk, shoving aside boxes that she still hasn’t unpacked from her move yet, to get to the bottom of the floorboards where her jumper cables were— not there?
No. No, no, no, no, no. They had to be here. They had to be somewhere. She didn’t leave anywhere without them— except… she had. And she slaps a hand to her forehead when she remembers that she had left them at Sokka’s apartment before she had left. She was trying to make room for more stuff in her trunk because she was adamant in only making one more trip before moving into her own apartment. She had allowed the hype of finally moving out and onto her own to distract her that she let her excitement get the better of her. Stupid. Stupid, Katara— what were you thinking?
Katara groans and throws her head back, stomping her foot like a toddler before inevitably lifting a hand to slam the trunk closed. She tries to even out the unsteady and absolutely gut wrenching beat of her heart that threatened to send her into a panic before looking around the villa. There were hardly any buildings around this part of town— at least, anything that she could walk to without running out of time. And after she has already gone into the gas station down the road and had been told rather aggressively that they didn’t have any jumper cables, she walked out with her head down. Her fists clenched and unclenched as she thinks of something, anything. Even if she’d called Sokka and begged him to drive the thirty minutes that it took to get to where she was, she still wouldn’t make it in time to her orientation.
Katara makes the shameful treck back to her 4-Runner, dragging her feet as she scrolls through her phone for the nearest Uber. She was barely scraping by on cash but she figured it would be worth it to pay for the fare so long as she didn’t end up getting kicked out of school for the semester. She’d already poured thousands of her savings into the registration and the apartment that had been the only one close enough to walk to campus, so she knew it would be a bigger waste of money to not get there before it was too late.
Fuck, she thinks. $150 for a thirty minute drive out of town? Jesus Christ, there was no way she could afford that. So by the time she rolls her eyes and shoves her phone back into her pocket, decidedly telling herself that she was going to miss her orientation regardless, because she couldn’t just pull any cables out of her ass, she leans against the back of her car and runs her hands through her hair. Her fingers tug at her scalp until she thinks she’s going to go blind with rage before she looks up and across the street at the flashing neon sign.
Ba-Sing-Books.
Jesus, Katara, nobody at a book shop was going to have jumper cables. They might have enough paper that she could slit her throat with out of frustration but jumper cables? She thinks she really was going insane. But, then again, she is kind of running out of options and as the clock ticks by, so she bites her lip and pushes off from the car and starts walking across the street anyway.
The dinger of the bell above the door echos through the entryway, and she all but frantically searches for the nearest person that she could find. Off in the corner, she sees some guy turned around reading a book and she clears her throat to try and get his attention. But, when he doesn’t turn around, she takes a step towards him and wraps her fingers around the burgundy fabric bunched at his shoulder.
He whips around quickly, his eyes flashing like she just startled the hell out of him, before he reaches up to his ear to rip the earbud out that she hadn’t seen there before.
“Do you always just go around grabbing random strangers? Jesus— you scared the hell out of me,” he rushes to say, and when she takes a step back she is smacked in the face with bold, black lettering across his chest that reads: BA-SING-BOOKS.
Ah, so he worked here. “Oh, uh, sorry? I didn’t know you had headphones in.”
He just stares at her, and he finally lowers his arm and puts the book he’d been holding back onto the shelf before turning back towards her. “Can I help you?” And then she swears she hears him call her a freak under his breath.
Katara swallows at his still timid and quite frankly terror gripped voice before she says, “Yeah, actually— I know it’s a long shot, but my battery kind of died, and— well, I have this really important school orientation that I have to get to and I didn’t know if maybe you or someone here had some jumper cables that I could borrow?”
He looks at her skeptically before raising a brow, but his face somewhat relaxes. “Um, yeah, actually— I have some in my car out back.”
Her heart skips a beat. “Really?!”
Again, he looks at her like she’d just jumped right out of her skin before slowly raising to point a thumb towards the back of the store. “Uhhh yeah. Give me a sec and I’ll go grab them for you. Just— calm down, crazy.”
Katara wants to make a retort about he she is completely calm but before she can say anything, he turns and walks away. He must have felt her eyes boring into the back of his head, though, because he turns around to look at her like she’s insane, his own eyes kind of squinting in confusion through the scruff of his hair before his face scrunches up. But, if he was going to say anything else to her, he doesn’t, and just rolls his eyes before turning back around and disappearing into the back.
Okay, that was… weird. Was she being weird— or was he being weird? No, he was definitely the one being weird, she tells herself. And, just out of curiosity, she looks around to see if he was coming back yet before stepping forward and plucking the book he had been looking at back off the shelf. She flips it around to look at the cover and reads Love Amongst the Dragons. A… romance novel? Had he really freaked on her because she caught him reading romance on the job?
Hmph. Peculiar, but not entirely that weird. He didn’t look like the type to really be into romance but it was actually kind of cute—
“What are you doing?”
Katara spins around as her entire soul leaves her body. The book falls from her hands and clatters to the floor, and she reaches up to grab at her chest as her heart thuds erratically. “You snuck up on me on purpose,” she says pointedly, and once she’s able to straighten her face out, she glares at him before bending down to pick the book back up. But, then he also bends down to pick the book up at the same time and their foreheads crack together.
“Are you kidding me?” He grumbles, and she looks up and stands just in time to watch him grab at his head at the same time as she grabs her own. “Christ— did someone send you to torment me today or are you always this nosy and violent?”
Katara balks. “I am not violent,” she snorts, lifting her arms to cross them against her chest. “And I wasn’t being nosy, I was just… seeing what you were reading. Maybe I was interested in buying a book.”
He deadpans. “No you weren’t, you were being nosy. Here,” he says, and he holds out the jumper cables towards her and without even thinking, she reaches out to accept them.
“Oh my god, thank you,” she breathes, shaking her head as the moment before them gets lost in her appreciation and she tells him, “You’re a life saver.”
Katara makes a move to turn around and walk back out and into the parking lot before she hears him call out, “Uh— you gonna jump the car yourself?” He asks, and when she turns around he yet again points towards the back of the store. “You need two cars to jump. If you would slow down for like, two seconds, I’ll go grab my keys and pull around front.”
“Oh… right,” she says, trying to recover quickly. “I knew that.” But he snorts at her comment without adding anything further and disappears around the corner. She debates on waiting there for him, but decides against it and walks back outside towards her car. It was perfect timing, too, because by the time she got all the way there, the store guy had pulled his own car from around the back of the store until he spotted her, and then drove around to where she stood in front of her 4-Runner.
“Nice ride,” she quirks, lifting a brow as she steps around to get out of the way. He pulls his practically brand new BMW up until they were bumper to bumper. “Book store must pay you well, huh?”
He only looks at her, eyes with less emotion than she’d seen from their entire exchange, and pops his hood.
“Here, hook these up to your battery,” he more or less demands, not turning to face her as he reaches behind himself to hand her the opposite end of the jumper cables. “You know how to jump?”
Katara tsks, rolling her eyes and refusing to answer that question before she has correctly connected the cables to her battery. And when she turns back around, she practically yelps as how close he was standing, watching her a little too closely with his arms crossed against his chest.
“What?” She snaps, mirroring his position and lifting her arms to cross against her own chest.
The corner of his mouth ticks up, but just barely. “Nothing,” he laments, dropping his arms before waving her towards her car. “Get in. I’ll start my car and then you can starts yours.”
“I know how to—“ but she doesn’t get to finish her sentence before the door of his car slams shut.
Dick, she thinks, cursing under her breath as she climbs into the beat up 4-Runner.
Katara waits for a few moments after the shop worker has started his car before she starts up her own. She forces herself to take three deep and steady breaths before attempting it, praying to whatever God was willing to listen that this works.
Thankfully, it starts right up, and Katara lets her head fall against the steering wheel as she lets out the breath she had been holding. Thank God. ThankGodthankGodthankGod. She even forces out a half panicked laugh, shaking her head against the wheel before chancing a glance back up and towards the car in front of her.
Katara doesn’t notice the other guy getting out of his car until she opens her own door, swinging her legs down and out before they land flat on the lot.
“Thank you so much,” she offers, moving around the lifted hood so that she could do her part in taking the cables off of her battery. “You have no idea how much you just saved me.”
The shop worker just shrugs, his back still to her as he disconnects the cables off of his own car.
With his silence still lingering within the space between them, Katara throws her hands onto her hips, cocking her head to the side just as he turns around. “Even if you are a gigantic jerk.”
Her little comments earns her an eye roll as he wipes his hand on his shirt, the back of the other smearing a black smudge across his forehead that she chooses to not tell him about before he leans against the side of his car.
“Is that how you thank everyone that helps you out?”
Hmph. “No, only the miserable ones.”
“I am not miserable.”
“Could’ve fooled me.”
Again, he balks, pushing off of his car and decidedly ignoring anymore of her comments. “If we’re done here, I need to get back to work.”
Instantly, something unwelcoming pricks at her belly, a little nudge of curiosity at the way her last comment caused his face to momentarily give his emotions away: what she had said upset him. And though she shouldn’t, because he’s just some stranger that works at a book shop, she is inclined to offer him something in return.
“Wait, I—“ but then she realizes that she does not have anything to offer him. “I don’t have anything to give you for helping me.”
Already halfway turned away from her, the man turns over his shoulder and glances at her briefly. “You don’t owe me anything, I only jumped your car.”
Katara crosses her arms over her chest, and hears the way he audibly sighs in response to her next offering. “Well, at least let me buy you coffee or something sometime. I’m only half an hour away, so it wouldn’t be a big deal to—“
“Seriously, it’s fine,” he mutters, promptly cutting her off before she gets the chance to finish. He turns fully around to face her again, popping his shoulder against his door and wrapping his hands around his biceps. “You seemed pretty desperate and I had time. It’s not that serious.”
“I am not desperate,” she bites.
He snorts. “Could’ve fooled me.”
Katara only stands there, unable to formulate any other kind of response as her ears begin to incessantly burn. “You are a dick,” she insists, shoving a finger towards him before turning away to climb back into her car.
But, before she closes her door to cut him off completely, she sticks her head out one last time and mutters, “Oh, and by the way— that book you were reading in there? It sucks.”