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The war had been over for four months now, and still Zuko sometimes forgot what peace felt like. But then Katara would show up at his door with that half-smile she reserved only for him, and he remembered.
They sat together on the edge of his bed, shoulders touching, fingers loosely intertwined. The afternoon light fell warm and golden through the tall palace windows. Neither of them spoke. They didn't need to.
Katara traced idle patterns on the back of his hand with her thumb — and then, without any warning whatsoever, she grabbed it.
Not gently. She grabbed it, turning it over, inspecting it like it personally offended her.
Zuko blinked. "...What are you doing?"
She didn't answer. Her brow was furrowed in that specific way — the way that usually meant she was about to do something completely unreasonable and fully committed to it.
"Can I bite you?" she asked.
He stared at her. She stared back. Completely serious. Cheeks already pink, chin slightly raised, like she was prepared to defend this decision in a formal debate.
"...Sure," he said.
She bit him. No hesitation. Her teeth pressed into the skin of his hand — not hard enough to hurt, but enough. Definitive.
Zuko made a strangled noise.
Katara released him and looked up with an expression of complete satisfaction, which was somehow also the most flustered he had ever seen her. Her face was deeply, catastrophically red.
She did not have everything under control.
Neither did he, honestly. His heart was doing something embarrassing. He could feel it in his throat.
They looked at each other.
Something cracked open in his chest — warm and ridiculous and completely overwhelming — and before he had fully decided to do it, he was cupping her face in both hands, the bitten one and the other, and kissing her. Not softly this time. With feeling. With the particular urgency of someone who had been sitting next to her for an hour already and had been unreasonably patient about it.
Katara made a small, surprised sound — and then kissed him back just as hard, one hand twisting into the front of his robe like she needed something to hold onto.
When they finally broke apart, both of them were breathing a little unevenly.
"You bit me," he said.
"You said I could," she shot back immediately.
"I didn't think you actually would."
"Then why did you say sure?!"
He opened his mouth. Closed it. The honest answer was that she could have asked him almost anything in that moment and he would have said sure, and he was absolutely not telling her that.
"...I don't know," he said.
Katara narrowed her eyes like she didn't believe him — which was fair — and then grabbed him by the collar and kissed him again, shorter this time, sharp and decisive.
"Good," she said, like that settled it.
It did, somehow. It absolutely did.