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Nightclubs weren’t really Katara’s scene—at least, she didn’t think they were. She’d never been to one until her brother’s girlfriend, Suki, had insisted they take advantage of the free drinks Sokka could get them as bartender at the Dancing Dragon. And Katara was on vacation after all.
So even though she’d only known Suki for two days, she’d let the other girl prep her for a night out, which involved a scandalous outfit and too-high heels with hair and makeup to match. That’s how she found herself on the dance floor, surrounded by sweaty bodies including that of Suki, the air in the Dancing Dragon crisp from the air conditioner but still humid from the swarm of turning and gyrating people.
“Isn’t this great?!” Suki shouted as she ran a hand through her already-damp auburn hair and then used it to wave to Katara’s brother, Sokka, at the bar. Sokka smiled too wide for his face before turning back to pour another drink. He was lucky—he didn’t look sweaty at all.
“Totally!” Katara cried to Suki, only half truthful as she jumped up and down in time to the music.
However, if Katara was being totally honest…she was checking her phone roughly every ten minutes to see if she’d spent an acceptable amount of time at the club. It’s not that it wasn’t fun—she did like dancing, and the Dancing Dragon seemed a perfect place for it—but the scent of sweat in the air was strong, and Suki kept muttering about fixing her up with one of Sokka’s friends. Yes, she was on vacation, visiting Sokka for a week as respite from her seasonal job—but Katara was not exactly interested in a night with a random stranger eight hours from home.
That was until she saw him.
Katara had just turned away from Suki, away from her brother at the bar, when she locked eyes with a tall man several paces away. He wore long black hair in a neat topknot slick with pomade. The top buttons of his shirt were open, revealing a shiny, golden chain sitting on his collarbone. A small black comb peeked out of the suit pocket where most men would keep a pocket square. Most striking of all was the harsh scar that stretched across his left eye, which could have made his appearance menacing if not for the thoughtful tilt of his mouth and the curious gaze of both golden eyes.
“Let’s dance,” she heard herself say to Suki, her eyes not leaving the stranger’s face. Perhaps he had abnormally good hearing, or perhaps he could read lips, because for some reason his face twisted into an amused smirk as he watched her.
Katara finally tore her eyes away from the man, immediately latching both eyes and arms onto Suki, pulling her next to her so that Katara was in perfect view for anyone standing where that man was standing. Her new friend, delighted at Katara’s sudden interest in dancing at the club, reciprocated immediately. The two of them danced along to a fast-paced beat, Katara trying to mimic Suki’s movements whenever she could, considering that sexy dance moves were not usually part of Katara’s repertoire. But she tried to let herself go, tried to exaggerate each lunge of her hips or sway of her shoulders. It was as if a spirit had possessed her, even though she had no plan for what would or could happen if she indeed caught the man’s attention.
After her and Suki’s display, when the song took a second to fade into another, even faster tune, Katara turned, breath heavy, toward where she had known the man was standing.
He hadn’t moved at all. If Katara was a betting woman, she’d place odds on the possibility that he hadn’t even shifted his gaze from her, so rapt was his attention on her, his expression urgent and downright hungry.
The look on his face made her bold. She crooked her finger in his direction and gestured for him to join her, nerves aflame.
But instead of the man closing the distance between them, he smiled sadly, held up his hands in a gesture of apology, and turned away.
Katara could feel her face flame. Perhaps she hadn’t been as sexy as she had thought. She bit her lip and turned back to Suki, ready to finally flee this club, before she noticed that Suki was also watching the man with interest—Suki had clearly seen everything. Katara felt another wave of embarrassment hit her and opened her mouth to ask the other girl if they could please forget this particular humiliation ever happened, but Suki spoke first.
“Were you just flirting with Zuko?” her brother’s girlfriend asked, something like delight on her face.
Katara’s jaw dropped a bit in her flustered shock. “Oh—um—” she said, struggling to form words. “His name’s—Zuko?”
“Yeah,” said Suki, turning to look at Katara fully, her eyes dancing. “He owns the place—”
“He owns—”
“So if you’re wondering why he didn’t run over here and beg you to grind on him, that’s why.”
“Suki!” Katara hissed between her teeth. “I didn’t—I wasn’t—”
“I wondered why the sudden change of heart, though I wasn’t about to question it,” Suki said thoughtfully, a sly grin forming on her lips. “But “Because Zuko” makes sense.”
“That’s not why—”
“Sure it is!” said Suki, wrapping an arm around Katara’s shoulders and steering her out of the middle of the crowd. “But if you’d like to dance with him, the center of his club probably isn’t your best bet.”
Katara could just see the top of Zuko’s topknot bobbing as he talked to someone else—likely a worker—on the edge of the club.
“People would talk and all,” Suki continued, leaving no space for Katara to contribute to the conversation. “You know, the owner of the club threw himself on an out-of-town beauty”—Katara made a noise in her throat to interrupt, but Suki ignored her—"making a wanton spectacle of his need, that kind of thing.”
Katara was so focused on her rising indignation that she didn’t think to consider where Suki was taking her. In the back of her mind, she must have thought they were going to the bar to refuel, talk, and bother her brother. But Katara barely knew Suki—and this was her downfall.
“You’re much better off grinding on each other upstairs, if you get my meaning—”
“Tui and La, Suki, I’ve never even spoken—” Katara finally yelped, but she was cut off as Suki gave her one last easy smile and then, what happened next seemed to blur together.
Katara was vaguely aware of Suki squeezing her shoulder in an affectionate manner—an apology of sorts, perhaps?—before the girl quickly sidestepped behind Katara, skated her hand from Katara’s shoulder to the small of her back, and shoved.
Katara felt her balance—already shaky on stiletto heels—give out as her feet flew out from under her and she careened forward, screeching in surprise and fear as she collided into something hard, instinctively grabbing it to break her fall.
Katara breathed in relief that she hadn’t split open her head on the concrete floor, and then immediately realized the solid something she had wrapped her hands around was very much a person—a person who was turning around to see what or who was gripping him as tightly as a koalaotter on a tree.
Confused golden eyes met mortified blue ones.
“I am so, so, sorry—” Katara sputtered, trying to ignore the fact that the man smelled amazing. “I, um, I tripped—” she said, standing up straight and glancing behind her to glare or yell at Suki—what was she on about—but the girl was nowhere to be seen.
“I’m glad I could break your fall,” the man—Zuko—replied in a low, raspy voice. Katara wanted to scream at how unfair it was that this man’s voice was somehow just as sexy as the rest of him.
“Yes—um—thank you,” she said, heart still beating rapidly in embarrassment as she met Zuko’s gaze—he was so very close—which led to the belated realization that she was still hugging him tightly.
She jumped back with a squeak, which was not the correct move given her stilettos. Her foot twisted as she landed so that one heel slipped out from beneath her shoe and she lurched to the side, sure that she could die from embarrassment as she fell once again in front of the man she had tried and failed to flirt with.
But Zuko was suddenly next to her, grasping her arm and holding her steady as her shoes continued to wobbly. “Careful now,” he said as he watched her, “or you might have to keep me around.” Katara felt her insides freeze up at that line—and then Zuko froze as well before sputtering, “I mean, to catch you if you fall, not in a creepy way…unless you wanted—not that you’d want a creep around you, I just mean—”
But Katara’s inhibitions suddenly died as she melted at the endearingly awkward display, feeling much lighter as Zuko’s own cheeks heated in embarrassment.
“I know what you meant,” she said with a gentle smile that she hoped would calm him, all too pleased that she now had the upper hand—though Zuko was still the one holding her upper arm.
“Cool,” Zuko breathed. “Um, Zuko here,” he said with a small wave with his other hand, before instantly cringing. Katara’s heart seemed to miss a beat at the adorable introduction, her confidence and her want growing in sync.
“Katara,” she said firmly, making no attempt to move from her position in Zuko’s grip.
“Katara,” said Zuko with a small smile. “I know I’ve heard that name before,” he said, crinkling his nose in thought. “It’s beautiful.”
“Thank you,” she said quietly, inching herself forward a bit—so that he could hear her over the din of the club, of course.
It was this movement that seemed to clue Zuko into the fact that he was still holding onto her. He jumped and stared at her arm in his hand before his gaze flew to Katara, who grinned and shrugged as if to say, “I’m comfortable.”
The smile slowly returned to Zuko’s face, and Katara could swear she saw the moment his confidence returned as well, as if his presence had actually expanded. “You caught my eye earlier,” he said in that same low rasp he’d greeted her with. “I wish I could have joined you but…I’m sort of working.”
“Sort of?” Katara asked in her sultriest voice, which any other time would have made her wince in embarrassment, but she pushed away those instincts and instead focused on the fact that Zuko’s attention was fixed onto her, that same hungry expression on his face.
“Well, I’m—a little in charge, here—” he said, breaking their eye contact for a second to gesture toward the club at large with a small glance. Katara resisted the urge to snort at “a little in charge”—he owned the place, but perhaps he felt self-conscious about revealing that. She didn’t feel the need to challenge him.
“If you’re sort of working, but you’re a little in charge—perhaps you could take a break?” she suggested, moving that much closer to him so that her chest was barely touching his.
“I think I could do that”—he took a shallow breath—“yeah.”
Katara felt a little high on the power she had to wreck Zuko’s breathing while barely touching him. In the haze of that, she pressed her chest further into him, delighting in the clear restraint on Zuko’s face.
She wanted to watch that restraint falter. “Dance with me,” she whispered.
Zuko only took the time to give her a quick nod before he was using his grip on her arm to pull her into the darkest corner of the club—which, considering the already dim lights, was saying something.
Away from the crowd, just another body in the dark to the clubgoers, it was clear that Zuko felt he could actually let loose, because he pressed her against him as they swayed in time together. Katara, however, quickly turned around and pressed her hips against him, allowing him the perfect opportunity to snake his arms down her sides and clutch at the thin fabric barely covering her thighs. She reached up one hand, intent on running it through his hair, before she remembered the topknot. Without asking, she pulled his hair free, and relished the tiny moan she earned as she combed her fingers through the length of hair that was now tickling her neck. They danced like that for what felt like hours—what may have been hours—but time seemed to stop making any sense at all in the club, which may have been some sort of exception in the space-time continuum, a place where time didn’t exist.
All anger at Suki had mysteriously evaporated. She loved Suki like a sister. The girl was definitely her very best friend.
Katara lowered the hand in Zuko’s hair to curl it around his neck and he slid his fingers repetitively over her stomach, giving Katara the impression that he would very much like to remove the dress covering it. She judged that assessment was 100% correct when she felt warm lips on the back of her neck, hesitant but refusing to stray from her skin. When he opened his mouth to drag his tongue across the dip between her neck and shoulder, Katara inhaled a shaky breath and made one more reckless decision.
“I’m staying very close to here…if you’d like to come home with me,” she said in a low voice, and though the music was loud, she was sure that he heard her by the way he stiffened against her.
“I would very much like,” Zuko whispered in her ear. “But I’ll do you one better—my apartment is just above the club. We don’t even have to go outside.”
Katara raised her eyebrows in surprise and twisted toward him, momentarily dimming the sexy atmosphere. “No way! I’m staying just above the club too—I didn’t realize there were multiple apartments up there.”
Zuko pursed his lips at her, his eyes narrowed in confusion. “There’s—not—” he said, before his eyes widened comically and he jumped back and away from her with a screech not unlike how she had jumped back from him earlier in the evening.
“What?” she bit out, barely concealing the hurt and humiliation at having this man jump back from her—
“I’m sorry,” Zuko said quickly. “I just didn’t realize—you’re Katara, that Katara—”
“What do you mean, that Katara?” she asked in a shrill voice.
“I mean—not that—you’re Sokka’s sister,” Zuko said, wringing his hands and looking around them as if expecting Sokka to pounce on him any moment.
“Is that a problem?” Katara countered, jutting her hands on her hips.
“No—of course not—it’s just—Sokka—well, he’s my roommate, and he’s been very clear about anyone who touches his little sister—”
Katara would have chuckled at the coincidence that Sokka was Zuko’s roommate if not for her rising anger.
“That sexist pig,” she seethed. “As if I can’t make my own decisions.” She glared at Zuko as if she were challenging him to prove he wasn’t a sexist pig too. “So that’s it then, you don’t want to touch me because my brother said you couldn’t?”
“No—no—” said Zuko, at once bridging the distance between them and putting his hands on her shoulders. He placed his chin on the dip of her right shoulder. “I very much want to touch you,” he said in a husky voice that tickled her ear.
“But you can’t, because you’re friends with my brother?” she retorted, forcing away the urge to melt into him.
“I didn’t say that,” Zuko said, moving his head back to look at her, and even in the low light Katara could finally see how dark Zuko’s eyes had grown. “You can make your own decisions,” he said passionately. “I’m a feminist.”
Katara snorted at that, ready to roll her eyes at the man in front of her, but in an instant he had gently tugged her to follow him, coursing through the smaller crowds of people in the dark part of the Dancing Dragon and pushing open a nondescript door that led to a dimly-lit stairwell.
“So—speaking of making your own decision—” he said, a bit of awkwardness returning now that an exit had been revealed.
“Yes, I’ve made it,” she said, all annoyance gone and replaced with gentle encouragement. Katara now took the lead, pulling Zuko along behind her and smiling to herself with satisfaction as he kicked the door closed behind him.
When they finally reached (his) room and he melted back into her, lips kissing her furiously now they had privacy, he breathed “I love women’s rights.” Katara shoved him lightly, but still smiled against his chuckles.