Liar

4 years ago

She tried to see the pavement in front of her instead of the selfie currently sitting guarded behind her phone's lock screen, waiting for her next perusal of it. She tried. Really, she did. But the only thing she could bring herself to focus on was the reflection of his phone camera's flash in his brilliant irises, the weighty shadows beneath his eyes that looked like his skull piercing his pallid skin, the way his hair fell across his forehead and flirted with his eyelashes. The jetlagged smile adorned with the message 'Just landed!'. It hurt to look at him almost as much as it hurt to miss him, to study the frozen features of his familiar face and know this was the only way she could ever see him. She felt the final press of his lips to her forehead at the airport and wanted to claw the memory right out of her brain. She begged herself not to watch him leave her for the thousandth time, not to recall the ache that plagued her everywhere she went now. Just a steady hum beneath her usual operations.

There was one memory she did not try to forget, though. One instant she let herself pore over again and again and again, memorising it from every angle, capturing every taste, touch, word in that place in herself where moments once captured in time were now captured in stone. Even now, walking to her next lecture, she remembered how he had kissed her. The clarity that brought his eyes into sharp focus as he had held her face in his hands and pulled her to him. The heat of his lips and his hands on every part of her skin. The way the floor had fallen out from beneath her and it had just been him and her, Zuko and Katara, aloft and alone.

They had exchanged messages in the week since his departure, but she kept lingering on that one photo he sent her, evidence that he was real and alive and someone she had cared about. Someone who had cared about her. Someone it hurt to care about now.

"Katara?"

A rehearsed exclamation laced with feigned surprise. Katara knew she'd need steadying just from the confident delivery of those three syllables. She folded her arms. Took a breath. Turned around.

"Azula!" She wondered how forced her smile appeared from three feet away. "Hi!"

The afternoon sunlight bounced off Azula's assault of a smile as she approached. "What are you doing here?" As if they hadn't had this exact encounter on at least two previous occasions this year alone.

"Class." Katara nodded in the general direction of the lecture theatre she had been aiming for. "You?"

"Class." The same word, but Azula decorated hers with a tinkling soprano and a widening of her grin. Katara suppressed the urge to retreat a step. "I almost didn't recognise you just now, without your usual accessory."

Katara was perplexed enough to walk into the trap completely undefended. "What?"

"Zuko." And Azula's eyes widened as if she enjoyed the twitch of horror that spasmed across Katara's face. As if she fed on it. "There was a moment there when I thought you two had been joined at the hip!" Azula winked. Katara clenched her fists.

"Yeah, well..." Her thoughts tangled and her words hung, unresolved.

"But I must confess, I was more than a little relieved when he announced he was moving." Azula shifted forward, dropping her voice to something more appropriate to two conspiring friends. Katara leaned away. "I didn't want you getting the wrong idea."

Katara felt the uncomfortably abrupt rush of adrenaline dotting her cheeks pink. "The wrong idea about what?" She shouldn't ask. She did anyway.

Azula sighed. Dared to touch a hand to Katara's sweater. "Your feelings for him weren't exactly a secret, sweetheart."

Katara bristled. "I don't know what you're talking about." It was more difficult than she had imagined to speak through clenched teeth.

"Oh, come on, Kitty Kat. Your little crush was... quite obvious." Katara felt the weight of Azula's condescension like a toddler clinging to her shoulders. "I'm just glad it ended when it did. I couldn't bear to see you broken-hearted."

The next breath Katara took was rushed and shallow. "And why would I be broken-hearted, Azula?" It rather detracted from her attempts to sound brusque.

"Oh, honey, I thought you knew." The façade of pity Azula adopted was shocking, both in the immediacy with which it was conjured and the degree to which it brought the bile rising to Katara's throat. "He was just playing with you." She cocked an eyebrow in the absence of Katara's reaction. "Y'know, leading you on? He never had feelings for you."

"I never assumed that he did." But the way Katara's chest tightened suggested just the opposite.

"You don't need to lie to me, Kitty. We're friends." There was enough sugar in Azula's smile to clog an artery.

"I'm not lying." The lie was immediate. Instinctual. "I never thought of Zuko that way. We were always just friends."

Azula's confectionary smile soured to a smirk. "You'd better practice that line in front of the mirror a few more times before you try it on anyone else."

"I'm not kidding, Azula."

"And neither am I. I thought it better you hear it from me before you hear news of... someone else abroad." The only thing missing from Azula's delivery was a wink.

"Thanks." Katara stiffened in preparation to throw herself in the opposite direction in terror and humiliation, but Azula snagged a hand around Katara's elbow.

"Before you go, I just wanted you to know that I'm here for you if you ever want to talk."

Katara closed her eyes for one breath. Reclaimed her elbow from Azula's grip. "I'm not sure there's anything for us to talk about, Azula."

"Of course." She tilted her head and in a second her smile was dazzling once more in the sun. "Take care of yourself, Kitty Kat."

Katara swallowed her nausea. "You too."

In the last free cubicle in the lecture theatre toilets, Katara gritted her teeth against full-body tremors. Her head ached. Her feet ached. Her palms ached where they had been persistently assaulted by her fingernails. She had never been so conscious of her pulse in every part of her body, the way it thudded and shuddered and barely filled the expanse of her chest. She rested her head in her hands. Tried not to commit any of that most recent event to memory. But there it was, that one deliberately crafted line, burrowing through kisses and yearning to the very core of her being.

He never had feelings for you.

It wasn't until she knew he didn't that she realised she hoped that he did. The crush of disappointment only alerted her to the fleeting weightlessness of desire. It was only now that someone else had dared to utter what she had so long felt that she realised how irrational she had been. And then she was thinking of that photo, fishing her phone out of her backpack and studying it as though it was something far more important than an assortment of pixels, watching the lines of his jaw slowly dissolve as the tears built and spilled over.

She hated this feeling. 

She hated herself for feeling it. 

She hated Azula. 

She hated him.

* * *

The vibration of her ringing phone jolted through her whole body. She felt her cheeks warming, felt her pulse in her neck and her temples and her throat. She sat up on her bed. Crossed her legs. Switched on the lamp and answered the call.

"Hey." She wanted to smile. She wanted to sob.

"Hey." His voice. In her ear. "Is this a good time?" At last.

"Always." She wondered what he was doing right this very second. Wondered if he was sitting in his apartment in the half-darkness like she was, breathless and more awake than either of them had any right to be.

"Sorry I haven't been in touch for a while. It's been crazy here." Something thudded in the background. He ignored it so thoroughly she wondered if it had come instead from the room on the other side of the wall she leant against.

"It's fine. I've been busy, too." She fiddled with her sleeve and remembered Azula's accusations. "How's it going, though? Everything you thought it would be?"

He almost sighed. "And more. Kit, you wouldn't believe the resources this organisation has. The building materials, the vehicles, the local contacts. We're actually doing something out here."

She knew she had exactly zero right to be jealous of a not-for-profit charity organisation on the other side of the country that had no consciousness and therefore the inability to possess malicious intent. But she also knew exactly what jealousy felt like as it sprouted in her stomach and reached its tangled thorns up into her chest, around her heart, through her lungs. She drew her knees to her chest and tried to breathe. Tried to listen to what he was saying as if it had nothing to do with her. As if he was someone she didn't care about anymore. As if she would ever have the power to make either of those statements true.

She tried not to lie. "I'm so happy for you, Zuko." She tried.

"And the people... I think you'd really like them. There are tons of girls our age, which honestly surprised me..."

He chatted into her ear as she fixated on the one thing she truly had not expected him to say. "Anyone in particular?"

"What?"

Distantly, she realised she had cut him off. "Anyone nice in particular?"

"Uh, yeah." He answered with a hesitation that said he did not yet understand why she had asked. What she had asked. "Actually, Mai's here now. I'll put you on speaker."

Every muscle in her body recoiled, crushing her in on herself, making it hard to breathe or think or comprehend reality. This reality. The reality that had Zuko and Mai – a stranger, a girl – in a room together at one in the morning.

"Mai, Katara. Katara, Mai." She tried not to hear the smile in Zuko's voice. She tried not to imagine the way he might be meeting Mai's eyes as he gestured between her and the phone. She tried not to think too deeply about her reaction to another female's presence in his life, but she could already feel the jagged edge of possessiveness in her chest, the indignation at having been replaced. Made redundant.

Replaced.

"Hey, Katara. Zuko's told me so much about you." Even through the phone Mai's words sounded like a recitation of something memorised.

"Hey, Mai. Uh, nice to... meet you, I guess?" Katara forced a giggle, something she thought a person entirely at ease with the present situation might do.

"Sure." A word and a sigh emitted with the barest amount of effort. "Zuko, I'm going to grab some snacks. Bye, Katara." A door opened. Closed. Silence fell and they swam in it.

"So... that's Mai."

"She seems nice." Another lie.

"Yeah, she's great." Another smile she pretended not to hear.

She focused on a loose thread in her blanket and prayed it was enough to make her sound truly nonchalant. "Well, Zuko, it's late and I've got an exam tomorrow, so..." The kind of nonchalant that would make a person believe her excuse, the kind she was not currently exhibiting.

"Are you okay?"

She closed her eyes against her thrilling heartbeat. "Yeah. Fine. Just tired." She was not fine but she was certainly tired. The kind of tired that made the task of having to get up and turn her lamp off completely insurmountable.

"Kit." His voice was suddenly closer, suddenly in her ear and her throat and her chest. He'd turned himself off speaker. "It's me. I don't buy that excuse anymore."

She sighed because she couldn't help it. "I know."

"So tell me what's up."

"Zuko, I really do have an exam tomorrow. And you're clearly otherwise engaged, so–"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

She flinched away from the ice in his tone. "Nothing." Everything.

"Mai's a friend, Katara. I was bound to find one sooner or later."

She hated how easily he had seen and acknowledged her hurt. She hated how easily he had inflicted it. She imagined him running a hand through his hair, rolling his eyes, throwing himself back onto his bed with an arm above his head. She remembered how it felt to be held by him on a couch in someone else's house. She remembered the way he looked at her before he kissed her. The way he looked at her before he left her.

"You're allowed friends." She didn't know what else to say without saying everything.

"So glad to have your permission, Katara. What a relief."

"I never said–"

"You didn't have to. You're clearly upset about Mai."

"So you're allowed to be an ass to Aang but I can't be upset about Mai?" She hated herself for saying the words as soon as it was done. They were ugly and bitter and she felt them eating through the remaining threads of the conversation.

"That's different."

"Really?" She swallowed the crack in her voice that foreshadowed later tears. "Explain to me just how that works."

"Aang was in love with you. Mai and I are just friends. Like I said."

"You and I are just friends, Zuko. You never had a right to be mad at Aang, but you were definitely a dick about it all the same." She swallowed. Stood in the warm and inadequate glow of her bedside lamp and wished he were in front of her so deeply it made her nauseous.

"If we're friends, you have to let me be friends with other girls, Kit."

"If we're friends, you shouldn't have kissed me and left."

"You shouldn't have let me."

"I asked you to stay!" There was no longer any hiding the tears in her voice. The cracks were wide enough to admit a cruise ship. "I looked at you and I asked you to stay and you said there were people who needed you. But what about me, Zuko? What if I needed you, too?" She tried to breathe and gasped instead. Loudly. Shit. "You chose to leave me. I have full rights over any and all anger in this situation."

"For Agni's sake, Katara." She imagined him shaking his head. Wished she could see him doing just that here and now, with her, in this room, with feet between them instead of miles. "I made a commitment–"

"I get it, Zuko. Really." All at once she was empty. Defeated. She sank to the floor and rested her head against her mattress and gave up.

"I didn't choose to leave you, Kit." He was soft and gentle and a million lightyears away. "I accepted a job."

"Okay." She exhaled through her nose. "Okay, Zuko."

"'Okay' what?"

"You accepted another job. Another life." A hiccup through her tears. "And I'm not in it."

"Kit–"

"I asked you to stay. You didn't. End of story." There was nothing to hear in her voice but the words she was saying. No inflection. No tone. Nothing at all.

"What the hell are you saying?"

"Don't call me, Zuko. I'm not doing this forever."

"This?"

Loving you and losing you. Again and again and again. "You've made it very clear what your priorities are." She never wanted to stop hearing him say her name, and yet she had demanded that very thing. She hardly felt real. Everything ached, thudded with each beat of her heart. She had never thought yearning to be quite such a painful emotion; she clearly had a lot to learn.

"You are a priority–"

"Zuko." She said his name to own him. Remembered that she did not. "Stop. Please."

"I don't want to give you up."

"You already did."

"Katara–"

"Seriously, Zuko. I'm not your friend-with-benefits."

"I never said you were."

"You certainly treated me like I was."

"Spirits. Kit, I'm sorry."

"I know." And yet. "Being your friend hurts too much. And now you're too far away to do anything about it."

Silence so long and deep it yawned like a chasm beneath her. She pictured his face and it was a little too blurry to make out properly. She stared at her ceiling and lost herself to the vague mass of beige.

He took a breath before he spoke. "Okay."

She let her lungs deflate. "Okay."

"Kit, I..." She heard him swear. "Bye, Katara."

She swallowed. Told herself she was doing the right thing. Told herself she would never again feel such acute yearning for someone who did not deserve it. Told herself that one day it wouldn't hurt so very much.

It did not take long to discover all three statements were lies.

* * *

Now

Every muscle in her face reacts the moment she sees him. She cannot control the way her smile leaps to attention for him, pushing her cheeks and baring her teeth in a specifically embarrassing manner. She tries to keep his eye for no more than two seconds, three at most so he can return her smile and she can bask in the sight of it, but he eradicates any ability of hers to think critically and soon she is looking and smiling and catching a chair with the side of her jeans.

She is more familiar with the interior layout of the Jasmine Dragon than she would have neither dared nor hoped to admit six weeks ago, and yet she is stumbling and apologising and rearranging herself as if this is their meet-cute in a Hallmark movie. That ship has long since sailed. Circumnavigated the globe at least three times by now. So why is it so damn difficult to stop blushing and smiling?

She refuses to acknowledge the possessiveness with which she seeks out the stool at the end of the counter, the tasting bar at which she has sampled too many atrocities masquerading as teas to count. If she cared to document her time spent here – which she does not – she could probably have mastered knitting, French and skateboarding by now. She's always wanted to be able to carry a skateboard like she knows what to do with it. She wonders if Zuko's ever ridden a skateboard. Thinks about what his hands would feel like around hers as he tried to hold her steady. Considers buying a skateboard on her way home this afternoon.

"Kit." His mouth curls around her name like his entire body is happy to be saying it. "Good day?"

She rests her chin in her hand and watches him prepare the latest as-yet-unknown tea torture she is to be subjected to. "Work was fine. The usual. Boring."

He settles a teapot beneath a stream of boiling water from the coffee machine and leans toward her from the other side of the counter. "You're wasted there."

She rolls her eyes. "You're stupid."

"Why is it so damn hard for you to take a complement, Katara?" She watches his eyes flick between each of her own.

"Because I know a lie when I hear one." She tells herself she's not fishing for compliments. Of course she isn't. Not from Zuko.

He cocks an eyebrow and smirks. "Unlike some people, I am capable of saying something nice and actually meaning it, too."

"Are you inferring something, Zuko?" Her own smirk turns to a smile the moment she aims it at him. He flicks off the boiling water.

"I'll let you figure that one out on your own." And he winks before turning to attend to the tea. "Oh, I almost forgot – I've been checking out jobs with other NGOs and there's this opportunity that looks awesome on Ember Island."

With his back to her it is easier to hear through the feigned nonchalance lightening his tone. Her stomach twists and her fingernails bury themselves in the soft skin of her palms.

I just got you back.

She doesn't answer and he doesn't turn around.

"It looks like a full-time thing with some actual responsibility." He stirs a splash of milk into the freshly prepared tea and makes a concerted effort to knock the spoon against every surface of the mug. The tinkling is sharp and grating when her nerves are this tightly strung. She feels it like a physical blow against her temples. "I might stand a chance of doing some real good this time."

He turns back, at last, slow and careful with the tea in his hands. He deposits it before her with a flourish. She feels him seeking her gaze. Waiting. Expecting some kind of response. She cannot look at him.

"What are you torturing me with this time?" She dedicates three percent of her available energy to inflecting her delivery with some kind of enthusiasm.

He stands and says nothing for a moment. "Uh, lemon myrtle and rose petals. Good just before bed, so I've been told."

She nods. Sips. Swallows. Keeps her eyes on the bench. Every part of her capable of feeling joy in his presence has calcified into a single unyielding barrier. She sets her cup down with a clatter, with shaking hands.

"Kit?" He reaches across to cover her hand with his. It feels good and warm and safe. It makes her want to scream. "What is it?"

She swallows – a tearful gasp, this time. How could he not know? How could they have said everything they've said only to be standing here reciting the same lines over again? She wants to tell him the truth. She wants to tell him that her throat is so tight she can barely speak, can barely articulate the terror she has over losing him twice. She wants to tell him that her life is better with him in it. She wants to thank him for the flowers and the hugs and the slow dancing in poorly-lit pubs. She wants to hold his hand and hold his eye and tell him how much she loves him.

"It's nothing." They both know it is a lie. She is suddenly too tired to attempt anything more convincing.

Zuko doesn't press her. He does cross the café to the front door, closes it, locks it, flips over the 'Closed' sign. Returns to her and settles into the stool at her side with his eyebrows pinched with unease. This time when he takes her hand it is with both of his own. His thumb traverses the back of her hand and suddenly it is the only part of her body she is aware of.

"Kit." No pressure. No demands for information. Just her name and his hands and his presence. She hates how she needs him to heal the wound he has given her.

"I'm not doing this with you. Not again." She breathes deep and hard. "Which I clearly remember saying to you not two weeks ago, Zuko. So why am I saying it again?" Her words are angry so she complements them by reclaiming her hand. She doesn't want to. She never wants him to stop touching her. And yet she needs him to look and see and understand. If only for once in his life.

"I don't–"

"No. You don't." She sighs. Smiles in that way that conveys bitter disappointment. "You never do. I've said it before and I'll say it again. You're an idiot, Zuko. Seriously." She looks at him. His eyes are wide and his eyebrows pulled into the kind of worry that consumes his entire physicality. She loves him, but she will not ask him to stay. Not this time.

"Kit, I'm sorry."

"I know." She fingers the handle of her mug.

"But you have a life here. I don't."

"I know." She forces two sips in a row and realises she doesn't hate this tea. Tries to focus on the subtlety of the rose petals rather than the abject horror of telling Zuko goodbye again.

Again.

He leans forward to rest a hand on her arm. She freezes. "Talk to me, Kit. Please."

She remembers the way he looked under the warm glow of pub lighting when he first said this to her two weeks ago. She remembers the way her words were lost to her fear, the way she only gave him half the truth. She opens her mouth now before she has even decided what to say.

"Not that you deserve an answer..." She takes another sip of perhaps the only tea she's ever enjoyed. "I don't know why I'm not enough for you, Zuko. I really don't. You buy me flowers and make me tea and look at me like I'm the only person in the room, but it's always so easy for you to go. You talk about leaving like it's nothing, like I should have expected it. But I didn't expect it. Not in college and not now." She knows she risks coming undone if she meets his eyes but she does it anyway. She studies them like this is the last time they'll ever be this close, swallows the sting of tears. "I waited four years for you. It took six weeks for you to get bored."

"Bored?" He utters the word as though he doesn't understand its meaning. "You think I'm... bored?" She feels his eyes on every part of her face. Watches them flit and dart and see her. "Kit, I love you."

She stares at him and forgets to speak. Forgets everything that has ever happened to her except that which is happening now. "What?" She can barely feel her own voice in her throat.

His gaze drops to his lap. Returns to her face. She sees the set of his jaw and she sees him decide. "I love you." Not a whisper. A determined, intentional, conscious pitching of his voice where she can hear it and feel it and hold it. Four words and the heat of his palm against her cheek. "I'm in love with you. And I know it's much too little and far too late but I guess I've loved you for the last six years. And I guess I'm telling you now." He dares to shrug as though she could ever shake this off. As if she could ever want to. And he runs his thumb along her cheekbone and she closes her eyes for a single moment.

"Would you stay? If I asked?" He is so close she imagines she can feel the heat of him on her skin. She remembers asking once before, when they were closer than this and she could feel him on every inch of herself. She remembers telling herself just moments ago that she wouldn't do it again. She takes a breath before breaking her own promise. "Would you stay in Ba Sing Se if I asked you to?"

"Yes." He doesn't think. He doesn't even really speak. His response is an exhalation she could get drunk on.

"Okay then." And she is rewarded by the widening of his eyes in confused shock when she stands and his hand falls from her face and she lifts her own to hold his cheek and kiss him like she has wanted to for years and eons and eternities. He pulls her against him with an arm around her waist and a hand splayed between her shoulder blades, and it is familiar and new and comforting and intoxicating and she buries her fingers in his hair because that is where they belong. She doesn't want to breathe. Not when he pushes himself to his feet and tilts her chin those extra two inches up to meet him. Not when she feels him smiling against her mouth. Certainly not when he is holding her face between his palms and she feels him sigh.

She wants all of him. She is breaking her fast and she has never been so gluttonous. She knows her hands are freezing because they always are but she pushes beneath the fabric of his T-shirt and now there is so much more of him beneath her skin and she clutches herself to him as though she is incapable of feeling shame.

"I love you," he whispers.

She smiles. "Not now, I'm trying to kiss you."

His next kiss is deep and she knows she will pass out if she doesn't breathe soon but there are so many other important activities she is currently engaged in that breathing doesn't seem such a necessity. She feels him smirk as he presses his lips to the corner of her mouth, to her cheek, her jaw, her neck. As if he could read her mind.

"Zuko." His torso is warm where it touches her palms. "I need to tell you something." Her mouth is clumsy around the words. She hears them slurring, blurry and vague.

"Mm?" He hums against her neck with the barest indication of curiosity. She relinquishes her hold on the captivating expanse of his back to force his face up to hers.

"Zuko." Nose to nose. Forehead to forehead. Heart to heart. "I love you, too."

"I did assume, considering..." He ducks his head to press his lips to hers for three, five, a dozen seconds.

"Well, I thought you'd like to hear it, anyway."

"Mmhmm." Another hum against her mouth. "I did like it."

She giggles. She can't help it; something akin to joy is bubbling in her chest and she is physically incapable of restraining herself. Somewhere in another world she hears a door opening, closing, footsteps on stairs.

"Zuko?"

And they are no longer alone and she is turning away from him as though he has shot lightning straight through her but he still has his arms around her waist and he refuses to release her despite the fact that there is another pair of eyes on the scene and she has never felt quite so embarrassed in all her life.

"Hey, Uncle." She wishes she could enjoy being held against Zuko's chest, but all she feels is naked and caught. "This is... this is Katara."

She never met Zuko's uncle, not even during their telenovela of a college friendship, but she possesses so much second-hand knowledge of him that the lines of his face and his dusting of white hair seem almost familiar. The way his face splits into a grin at the sight of her certainly makes her feel like an old family friend.

"Katara. It is an honour to finally meet you." He ambles around the counter with arms already extended. One moment she is in Zuko's arms and then she is enveloped in his uncle's, and both embraces are so sincere she feels the startling prickle of tears in her nose. "I am Iroh, Zuko's uncle." He sets her in front of him with his hands on her shoulders.

"I've heard so much about you," she says, mind racing to find something a little more intellectual to contribute.

"And I you." He leans toward her with the kind of wink only an uncle can perform. "I feared that perhaps my nephew would never introduced me to you."

"Uncle..." She can only imagine the face Zuko aims at Iroh as he steps forward to take her hand, to reclaim her from his surrogate father. And she can only blush and smile at the memory of Zuko telling her he loves her followed immediately by an impromptu introduction to the most important person in his life. She thinks this might be the most irrevocable series of events she has ever personally experienced.

"Uh, this is something of a recent development." Suddenly she cannot meet Iroh's eyes, but they immediately widen so much she can see the whites in her periphery.

"Then congratulations are in order! Shall I make us some tea?" He is already moving back around the counter before he makes his offer. Katara strongly suspects a pot of tea will soon be gracing the counter regardless of her response.

"Uncle, I was just about to take Katara home." His hand tightens around hers for a moment. "Can tea wait?"

Iroh doesn't miss a beat. He doesn't even slow in his retrieval of a particularly ornate teapot from one of the upper cabinets on the back wall. "Of course, Zuko." He turns with a smirk and a bow. "It was a pleasure to meet you, Katara. I trust we will be graced with your presence again soon?"

It is phrased as a question but she is incapable of considering a refusal. "Of course." She glances at Zuko for the first time since they were... interrupted. He is already looking at her and her cheeks hurt from the force of her answering smile. She is surprised when Iroh doesn't shield his eyes from the blazing glow of her happiness when she turns back to him. "It was lovely to finally meet you, too."

Zuko steers her toward the door before Iroh can make any further attempts at conversation. She's held his hand before – she's been closer than this for much longer, too – and yet it is as though she is feeling his skin for the very first time. The moment the door closes behind them, he pulls her to him and kisses her just the once.

"Sorry." His smile easily contradicts his apology. "I wasn't done yet."

She rolls her eyes at the same time that she smiles and rests her hands against his chest. His skin burns through his shirt as though he is alight. Her skin burns with him. "Well, it's looking like we've got plenty of time for that now." A breath of wind throws her hair across her face. "Just not in public."

"Back to yours, then?" He releases her only to take her hand and steer her in the approximately right direction.

"I thought you had tea to get back to," she teases.

"As long as that building is standing, there'll be tea in it. Uncle can wait." He presses his lips to her hair. "But we need to make up for lost time."

An ounce of heaviness returns to her chest. "Zuko..."

"Yeah?" He hears her hesitation. Stops to take her hands and hold her eyes and make it difficult to breathe.

"You know how I asked if you would stay... if you'd stay here if I asked you to?"

His lips twitch. "I remember."

"I wasn't kidding."

"Neither was I. I love you, Kit. Seriously. I'm not going anywhere."

She hates herself for doing it, but she waits for too many seconds for that flick of his eyes away from her that says he is lying. She waits for him to make another excuse, to choose something else, to tell her he loves her and make it look so painless to leave. He says nothing. But he watches her watching him and his face softens into something far too understanding.

"I'm not lying this time. Though you'd be forgiven for thinking I was."

"Zuko, I–"

"Don't you dare apologise for something I made you feel." He tucks a hand around the side of her face, buries his fingers in her hair. "I'm still an idiot who doesn't deserve you, but at least now I'm not a liar." His thumb traces her cheek and his eyes search her own. "Wanna help me look for jobs in Ba Sing Se when we get to yours?"

She kisses him because she wants to and for the first time she can. "I'd love to."