(Zutara) Hold it Gently; My Heart Burns For You

Starlit

When Zuko comes back the next day, he refuses to talk about their game. Striding in, plonking down, he starts playing before she's fully woken up. He's so focused on not reacting, on pretending the air of his tantrum still hangs in the stale room, he forgets to watch her drink from the cup.

Three moves in, he speaks. "What was the lie?"

"What was what?" Katara asks, brow pinching as she focuses on her lily play because he's clearly trying to dominate with the moose-tiger fang strategy.

"What was your lie?" he repeats louder.

"Oh. I'm seventeen, not sixteen." Her interest in ancient Watertribe Declaring ceremonies weeks ago makes sense now. Seventeen, so she must have had hers. He doesn't react, just slides his piece into her lilies bud and severs the root when he switches the fangs for the claws. She frowns, wondering how she could have missed the obvious manoeuvre. He's a sore loser, doesn't mean she's any better. "Your topknot looks weird."

"You'd look better in red," he mutters without much thought, but slashes her with a victorious grin nonetheless as he scoots her spent pieces into his hand.

~ ~ ~

Suffering Katara on the trip north isn't as bad as Zuko thought it would be. She still never shuts up, and each week he's subject to the next asinine game she's concocted to please her overactive mind while they actually play Pai Sho. But she's challenging without being spiteful. Competitive without the game being ruined if she loses. She never does grow out of being a sore loser though, or winner. But he's no saint either, and getting better at returning her verbal sparring matches.

Despite his backhanded compliment their first week, the red Fire Nation leisure clothes he sent remain unworn. According to Lily, relayed to him with a faint touch of amusement to the handmaiden's usual purr, she prefers to keep them folded under her scrolls so the paper doesn't erode against the hard wood.

He's never seen her in anything but the oversized watertribe parka or her pelts, but when you're surrounded by the ocean and firebenders, laundry isn't exactly a time-consuming task. Not that he minds. One consistent thing about Katara, she's not a morning person. It's a common occurrence that she's still half asleep when he comes with tea and a determination to beat her at Pai Sho, even if she has no idea if it's morning, noon or night in her modest accommodations. As a red blooded, hot tempered man of the Fire Nation, he won't do her the disservice of pretending he hasn't noticed she's pretty. He gets the chance to notice the further they sail from the poles and the ships running pipe insulation takes less time to kick in. She sheds the parka usually halfway through their games, until he comes in one day and it's tossed beside her chest of scrolls. The loose tunic flutters when she drags herself over to the table, spilling over long, umber legs.

"How in spirits names do you survive this heat?" She's not even set up the Pai Sho board this time, using it to fan her flushed face.

"Do you always complain this much?" Zuko responds behind a sip of tea.

She watches the motion with faint disbelief. "Apologies, your royal sunshine, months of repressing my own displeasures with the world. If I don't let off some steam, I fear I'll melt all over this lovely box."

He raises an unimpressed eyebrow at her. He'll get her dry wit whether he's silent or not, so shrugs. "You're the waterbender. Figured that's what you'd want."

"It's unsettling when you do that," she mutters.

"Do what?"

"Crack a joke without smiling." He was joking? "Spirits, you look like one of the blank black depth demons of the Ever Night."