keep the paper lantern lit

beach

last day of zutaraang week 2020! kind of, at least. i chose to upload the bonus prompt today lol. zutaraang week 2021 can't come soon enough, tbh! this oneshot is set not long after they all got together (so aged 18/19/21 i'd say). i hope you enjoy! i'm so glad i was able to write something for every prompt! :)

~*~

beach: this is my family. i found it all on my own. it's little, and broken, but still good. yeah, still good.

"Shh! Zuko, you're walking too loudly!"

"Well, why don't you learn how to actually whisper, Katara?!"

"Oh, you little -"

Aang rolled his eyes at his partners' bickering. He'd expected them to be snippy with each other - he loved them both to death, but Katara tended to be rather passive aggressive and Zuko had a habit of taking everything way too personally, which was admittedly a recipe for disaster - but still. He hadn't expected them to be at each other's throats quite so soon.

"Okay, executive decision," he muttered under his breath before he lifted his arms and airbended them both off the ground.

Katara covered her mouth with her hands to muffle her surprised squeak while Zuko looked like he'd rather be anywhere but hovering above the wooden floor.

Aang didn't speak, instead simply sending them a look that he hoped conveyed the message of, Hush, both of you. Neither of them said a word in response, so he assumed it did.

Thanks to some nifty airbending that kept his partners off the ground and his own fancy footwork, Aang was able to get all three of them out of the house without waking anyone up. Or at least without disturbing anyone to the point where they came out to investigate what was going on.

"Okay," Aang whispered as he lowered them both to the ground outside before taking one of their hands in each of his. "To the beach!" He began practically sprinting down the dirt- and pebble-covered path, and both Zuko and Katara stumbled before matching his stride and running along with him.

If Aang was being honest, he wasn't sure what had sparked the desire for an impromptu beach trip inside him. He'd woken up in the dead of night and just - just really wanted to go to the beach. Notably, he'd realized that he wanted to go with both of his partners. Easier said than done.

Well, Katara hadn't been hard to convince, what with the moon's energy rousing her quickly. He'd left her changing into her beachwear before attempting to get Zuko to join them, too. That had been considerably harder, and Aang had been halfway-worried that his boyfriend was going to murder him - or worse, break up with him - for waking him up in the middle of the night to go to the beach, of all places. But he hadn't! So all was well. And now they'd actually made it to the beach itself, which meant Aang couldn't be happier.

"Yeah!" he crowed, now plenty far away from the house here he didn't think his shouting would wake anyone up. "Beach time!" He released both of their hands to airbend himself upwards before catapulting down into the deeper waters of the ocean.

"I still don't know why you felt compelled to have 'beach time' at two in the morning," Zuko grumbled as Aang waterbended himself a wave to ride back to the shore.

"Oh, don't be such a downer, Zuzu," Katara said, rolling her eyes. "You're here now, aren't you? You might as well have a little fun." She gave him a sideways glance that read as more of a challenge than anything else. "If you even know how to have fun, that is."

Zuko's eye twitched at the nickname, and Aang was starting to wonder if maybe he should have just come by himself. "Of course I can have fun!" he snapped. "You're the one who acts so uptight about everything."