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Someone’s hands can be a communication tool much greater than a mouth, sometimes.
You can tell by the way someone touches you, the way they hold you, the way their fingers trace so delicately down the planes of your cheek while the other tilts up your chin, demanding your attention. Until eyes clash with eyes, until all that is left in this world is the two of you alone; until all that you are is two people, on the cusp of something great, trying to figure out what it all means.
Sometimes, hands can show you how much someone revolts you, cares for you, perhaps even loves you; sometimes they are the door that opens your heart to feeling these emotions, this vulnerability, that you’ve never quite felt before.
Katara hadn’t really focused on Zuko’s hands until much later in life, until years forced them into proximity, until their jobs played their part in pushing them together more than she thinks they’d ever intended them to be.
Sometimes, she would catch herself staring at the way his fingers would wrap around his brush as he signed document after document. She’d since gotten used to the way he’d lie it down, flex his fingers, ball them up into fists to keep them from aching before picking it back up and continuing to work.
Most of the time, he would not complain. Rarely, now that she thinks about it, he never complained. But she’d know that he was in pain, that the long hours working along side of her were tiring, so the first time she’d insisted that he rest— the first time that she had grabbed his hands and pulled them into her lap without giving it so much as a second thought— was the first time this new routine had been subsequently added to their already endless days.
Katara would sit in his office, more often than not, running her fingers down the palms of his hands, massaging the ache out of his muscles until his head would fall back out of relief.
Zuko would do the same for her, insisting that he return the favor, forcing her to realize the pains she had been feeling, too.
It felt natural— it felt right— and she comes to the very sudden and almost staggering realization sometime much later that she does not mind the feel of his hands. That she might even like them.
And sometimes, her mind would not be able to focus on anything but.
It was frustrating, at first, when anytime he would touch her, even as innocent as the touches may have been, her skin would feel as if it had been set ablaze. It was as if his fingers were burning her, setting the entirety of her body on fire, leaving her alone to fan out the flames.
She thinks about how this is not how she had imagined her time in the Fire Nation would be.
Foreign dignitaries arguing over the hearth— trade policies being fought for one’s country over tea in a candlelit study. These things would become incredibly more intimate as time went on, and although not intended by either one of them, it had become abundantly clear that it was certainly not unwelcomed.
Especially when one day, Katara does not think she can help herself any longer. She had been staring at Zuko’s hands, much like she had been doing as of late, as they held her own. They wrap around hers so easily, swallowing them whole, and he holds her in the palms of his own before bringing them up to his mouth and letting his lips ghost across her flesh almost instinctively.
She doesn’t even think he means to do it. They’d been deep in conversation about something she had since forgotten by now, and all she could focus on were his hands gripping her own, staring at her a little too intensely before letting them fall back down to her lap, mouth open as if he were going to utter an apology for something he had not meant to do.
Instead, before he can get the words out, she reaches out does something that she hopes she does not regret.
She cups his cheek, lets her thumb smooth across the uneven skin. It’s the first time she has allowed the intrusive thought to take hold in the form of action, telling herself that this was right, that a lifetime of holding back would never get them anywhere.
And Zuko just stares at her, perhaps afraid to move, to say much else. But he does not look afraid, he does not look the way that he looked when she had surprised him in that cave. In fact, she could not really decipher what swims within his eyes, what kind of look he is perhaps trying to hide from her. All that she knows is that he does not pull away— he does not dare to even move. He sits there, allowing her to hold him in her hand, knowing that he feels the way that she feels. That the tightness in her chest is stifling his own, that the way they seem to hover is not something undecided between them.
It is a decision, as much as it is a surprise, when she lifts the other hand to the other side of his face, as she holds him like she thinks no-one else has ever held him. And when he closes his eyes, when he finally releases a breath that feels as if it has been held for more than just this life, she brings his forehead down to her own.
“What are you thinking?” She whispers, her voice betraying her in the way that it shakes.
It was no wonder, with the way that they hover on the edge of something so foreign, that he does not respond right away. Instead, he nods against her, perhaps at a loss for words, maybe even thinking things that he did not wish to speak aloud quite yet.
So she lets the moment linger— doesn’t push him. Only continues to let her thumbs caress his cheeks, lets her fingers gently card through his hair at the base of his neck, and keeps her eyes closed, her breathing steady, trying not to give it away that this was scary to her, too.
She doesn’t move until Zuko moves, until his hands rise to grip her by the wrists, pulling her touch away.
For a moment, she thinks she has done something wrong. She sits up, leans back, and tries not to let the disappointment linger too long in her eyes before anticipating for him to pull all the way away.
But he doesn’t do that— only continues to hold her close, his fingers tightening around her wrists, pulling her a little closer until they were practically breathing the same air.
She felt a little nervous under his gaze, a little unusual, a little taken aback at the way his eyes bore into her own with a heat she had not ever known before now.
And instead of looking upset at the boldness of her touch, he looked as if he had been searching for it for the entirety of his life— maybe even then some. Because he does not push her away, he does not pull himself away. He only looks down at her, down and into the impossibly vulnerable heart on her sleeve, and says, “I was thinking about kissing you.”
Katara blinks up at him, the air inside of her lungs having long since grown stagnant, and swallows hard. “If I asked what you were waiting for?”
She can see the surprise on his face, perhaps the weight he had been feeling somewhat dissipate, because Zuko shakes his head and whispers, so impossibly low that she barely catches it. “I was waiting for you.”
At that, she can’t help but smile, and the corners of her lips peel back so tight that it hurts. “Well, don’t keep me waiting.”
And suddenly, something so simple as hands has changed the trajectory of their lives for what they can only hope is the better.