Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It’s been raining on and off all day in the Caldera, but the air still feels like it’s holding a storm.

Katara’s still not used to it, not after months of war, years of reconciliation, or weeks across the Fire Nation with this enervating, steamy heat. She can’t quite understand why firebenders don’t mind it – shouldn’t so much water in the air mess with their element? Zuko’s explanation made sense – fire comes from the breath, and it’s the bender that sustains the flame, not the sun itself. And they’re used to the heat and the humidity in their ancestral lands. That’s why this training courtyard is full to overflowing – no firebender worth their breath is going to let a little steamy air get in the way of this morning lesson.

The bitter blazes of Sozin and Ozai’s triumphalism have given way to long-banked flames, old and wild mysteries of Fire Nation spirituality. This is why the Avatar and his wife are joining their Fire Lord – to find old practices of honoring the shifting power of season and element without riding comets to genocidal glory, old lore to use for life and not death. Iroh found old books, old forms, and the Avatar and Fire Lord are teaching them to the Sages and youth.

(Aang loves to teach, whether it’s the orange-clad acolytes that seem to multiply like rabaroos, or speaking through Roku to serried ranks of black-haired Hotmen (and not-men, Katara smiles) dressed in summer sarongs.

Zuko looks at him like water in the Si Wong. Hearing his great-grandfather’s voice through the young man is wonder enough, but even after all these years it is new and strange to hear ancient lore of his nation that does not hurt, maim, or injure.)

Of course, Aang is another set of miracles entirely, and Zuko’s thirsty for more than his people’s pure heritage. Katara can smell it like she can smell the petrichor.

Katara observes, but does little. Under Agni’s eye, in midsummer, with water falling from bright skies, she’s torn between wilting under the sun and joining the song of water so thick in the air she can pull it with a thought. She wishes she can separate the two, the way Zuko and Aang are doing to display lightning bending – positive and negative energies apart, even for a moment before they crash back together.

As the trainees pair up to spar, throw fire, she sees Aang and Zuko turn to each other. Almost as if they can read her thoughts, they flow apart, hands held with two fingers up – the postures for generating and bending lightning. She flinches. She’s seen Azula attempt to strike them both dead, has seen and felt and kissed the matching scars in Aang’s back and Zuko’s chest where her cold fire had passed. Where the young benders see beauty, she’s known terror, and even knowing two of the greatest firebenders in the world would sooner set themselves aflame than throw lightning with intent, she feels fear flutter up her throat.

The lightning isn’t the strike she thought would kill her on the day of the Comet. Zuko generates smaller shocks, Aang dancing and passing back up into the sky, into the moist dirt beneath their feet, occasionally raising Momo’s hairs or shocking a tired student. They switch the polarity, with Aang passing to Zuko and back again, shifting stances and hands as they do so. Sparks catch every so often at the end of punching knuckles or along a spinning instep, but this is not bright, cold death at the hands of the Mad Princess.

As the demonstration ends and benders return to their training, Katara looks back up to find Zuko. He’s standing with Aang off to the side. Their heads are close, and she can see their hands continue to move in locks and grips and non-committing strikes. She can see the blue-white sparks flying between them as they swing, but their clothes seem un-burned and they’ve smiles on their faces. Zuko shakes his hair as Aang’s left hook leaves one side of his head staticky, his hair sticking out all over.

Aang laughs, winking at Zuko, and then cuts his eyes to Katara. His smile broadens, but his eyes seem to dim. His wave is as natural and goofy as the penguin-sledding boy in the iceberg, so it seems there’s no harm done. He still looks a little like he’s been caught out – by his wife, no less.

Aang pokes Zuko, a spark making him jump, and nods his chin up to Katara. Zuko’s eyes are less informative; a broad smile splits his face, his unburned eye widening with pleasure. The Fire Lord, master of a quarter of the world and in his own house, raises a hand in the lazy, informal greeting of a man who entirely expects to be seen.

Katara waves back.

This feels less like the sparring they did together on the road – but it would be, it’s peacetime, and has been for a long time. She shouldn't feel left out. After all, she and Aang hold their heads together like that when they're practicing bloodbending –

Only when they're planning to bloodbend Zuko.

That open, beaming grin Aang has always closes like a nightwatchman’s lantern when Zuko catches them plotting. He’s no good at secrets. She can see it closing now when he feels her eyes on him. Zuko, for all that he’s open under his eyes, remains an expert at closing his face. What are they planning to do? she wonders.

She reflects on what happens when Aang has that look with her. They drown Zuko in his own desire, forcing his blood to cry power. Are they going to boil her with her own need? How do you firebend in bed, besides the obvious? What can they do with fire to make me burn the way we use water to send Zuko adrift on the sea of our shared need?

Oh, Aang likes the heat of Zuko’s flames on him, she knows that. Hell, she saw it on the night after the last solstice, when Agni’s power was a little quieter, the Fire Lord didn't have to oversee festivities, and the palace staff took their vacation. She found them in the bath, Zuko's tongues of flame licking Aang’s skin from the color of a lychee’s flesh to that of its skin. She likes to be around for that – not in case she needs to heal, she would never need to heal – but because watching the Bearer of the World Spirit, this wise but infinitely goofy man, her lover, her forever-boy alternate between wide-eyed trepidation and boneless trust in Zuko’s arms took her breath away every time.

But they knew the war didn’t break her open that way.

She loves Zuko’s furnace-like chest in the afterglow after they’d christened an Air Temple or in the polar cold when he comes to them in the dark of the winter solstice. She adores hot hands opening her knees and hotter breath on two sets of lips when the Blue Spirit meets the Painted Lady on the roofs of Ba Sing Se.

But those are old hat after years of war and years more of peace spent twisted around her boys. And out-and-out fire play? No. Candles, wax, and warmth as she screams to the four winds or gasps under a waterfall or throws her body open to the eyes of Yue, but her blood doesn’t need open flames to set it simmering (though that last trick the boys brought back from their last trip was more interesting than she cared to admit yet). Now curious, she wonders: What can two firebenders do to me that we haven’t done yet?

She shifts, her fatigue continuing to war with the oppressive heat, overlaid by a second, slow burn in her chest, an itch in her brain – what are they planning?

The exhibition has broken up further.

Instructors and Fire Sages are pairing up trainees. Zuko and Aang are walking over briskly, Zuko with the long strides of the Fire Lord under his people’s eyes, her husband with the lighter and faster touch that keeps Toph calling him “Twinkletoes.” Nothing in their gait suggests anything but two old friends, two wise benders, two men wearing power lightly and discussing matters of state. Zuko’s scarred face looks more “elder statesman” than “brooding exile” and Aang’s head tilted slightly toward him, an easy grin for the receptacle of the world’s memory advising the wise hero. And yet – are those? – yes, sparks playing between their fingers like the coins that Sokka rolls across his knuckles jumping from hand to hand with Aang’s animated gestures and Zuko's more measured ones.

Zuko whips a fist up, index finger up to make a point, and a larger spark – almost a bolt really – flies up the Avatar’s nose. Aang sneezes, blowing up a little more wind than expected. Zuko flinches, snorts, and a puff of smoke comes out of his nose.

The Avatar and the Fire Lord freeze. Nobody seems to have noticed. They share a sheepish smile, turn back to their path, and Katara looks down, similarly quiet (there’s no benefit to more eyes on them right now) and rolls her eyes at her men.

“Sifu Sugar Queen," Zuko murmurs as they walk up. “You look a little distressed; still not used to our summer storms?” he says as he angles his head down and forms his hands together for the sketch of a bow and salute between old comrades.

Katara smiles back, bows slightly lower – a master bender to a head of state. Where Zuko’s right hand stands erect like a tongue of flame, Katara’s rests naturally over her left fist, a moon over the Earth. They, like Aang and Zuko walking, look like the princes of the world, rather than the centers of each other’s worlds.

“It seems like you aren’t either, Jerk Lord Hotman. What in the world was that between your fingers?”

Aang slides (literally slides, bending the dirt beneath his feet into smoothness) next to her, kissing her cheek gently. “Apparently the summer storms leave more energy around in the world. If you can control it right, you can get some pretty good shocks!”

Katara's left eyebrow jumps. “Nothing so dangerous as...”

“Oh, no no!” Zuko cuts in, waving his hands nervously before sparks fly and he shoves them down. “It’s more like the sparklers we hold at the end-of-summer festival! Sure, they’re bright and warm, but they only tingle a bit at their worst!”

Aang laughs, bright and clear like always. “Maybe don’t wave blue hands at her like that! It looks worse than it feels, Katara, I promise!”

“And worse than it smells, I hope?” Katara giggles.

Aang blushes, the blue arrow on his head sticking out next to the pink of his skin. “You saw that?”

Katara answers, “Oh yeah. It's strange that you can do it so well – is it like static?”

Zuko shakes his head. “No, you need dry air for that. Apparently the airbenders were super good at it before the war. Uncle Iroh assumes that the presence of more water in the air, coupled with more fire from the sun, makes it easier for firebenders to feel and separate the energies to make the lightning happen, but the water in the air conducts it away, so it’s less dangerous.” Zuko’s voice drops. “Aang and I even tried it out this morning when...”

Katara cocks her head. “When I was out by the pond?”

Aang's blush deepens. “...Yeah?” Katara smooths out the fear creasing her brow. Her lips crease in a mockery of jealousy. “You mean to tell me you two spent ‘meditation’ making out and playing with lightning?”

Zuko sets his shoulders lower, hands out and up, conciliating. “We didn’t get too far, and you wanted to feed the turtleducks.” He laughs. “We’ll have to show you more closely later. Mind if I freshen up first?”

Katara shakes her head. “Of course not, and I might find something cold. I feel like I’m wearing water, even though I've bent myself dry!”

Zuko cocks his head to the left, sliding his eyes to the right – an invitation they’re used to, pointing in multiple directions to distract onlookers. You go right, I’ll catch up going this way.

Even with a clear and innocent itinerary, they keep up the habits of privacy.

Aang smiles. “I’d actually like to get cleaned up before lunch, too – the katas got me a little sweaty.”

Zuko, startled: “I figured you’d be more hungry. Can’t you just airbend dry?”

Katara shakes her head. “Spirits, it’s too humid! I need a cold shower before anything else!”

Zuko opens his mouth, pauses, then nods. “Of course! Come to my wing when you’re ready, the usual way. Say, a half hour?”

“An hour,” Katara says, curt.

Aang and Zuko look at each other, a little concerned.

Katara shakes her head again. “It’s the heat, and a new moon. Sorry, I just need a little more time.”

Zuko nods. “Of course. I’ll see you at lunch.”

Chapter Text

Katara enters the palace, her husband on her left arm, a blaze of yellow and orange in halls of red next to the cool blues and browns of her kebaya and sarong. Servants nod, but they don’t stop and bow.

As much as Zuko uses pomp and circumstance and ancient custom to soothe his people for the radical changes he’s made, the royal house has been informal. The Red-Eyed Dragon was adopted by the common people and his time in exile brought the soldier, scholar, and poet to the fore, never the distant and divine Son of Agni. Zuko swore like a sailor, danced barefoot like a peasant, and slept on the floor of his office half the time – and the Nine Heroes bent, barged, and ate their way through the palace the other half.

Nobody stood on ceremony for the Avatar and the Moon Sister.

They did smile, though. The Fire Lord was always lighter, more mischievous when they were here, more like the unburned and carefree child the oldest remembered and hoped to see again – when the Lady Mai was ready, of course.

“Oh, they’ll cool his spirits down,” they cluck to themselves when he’s stormy before they arrive. “Ah, the Fire Lord will need some wind and steam!” they chuckle if he brightens to see them.

They rarely know the whole story. Zuko keeps a full and private wing, once for concubines, now rooms for his friends. They know those chambers are full of love, so his friends pass gently, kindly. The minute they find the bath, Katara’s smile drops, and she turns to Aang.

“Lightning, Aang?”

Aang shuffles, the Keeper of Balance caught off balance. “I swear to you, it doesn’t –”

“Do not tell me it doesn’t hurt. I was OUTSIDE when she threw it. I saw his scar last night. Spirits above and below, Aang, I saw yours this morning!” She shudders.

Aang looks down, then back up again. “I know. I saw it too. I felt it, remember? I know how much that hurt him. I know how much it hurt me, and, ’Tara, I swear to you on this life and all my others this didn’t feel like that.”

Katara looks at him, blue eyes soft and watery, for a second that seems to stretch into years. “Tell me. What did it feel like?”

Aang thinks. “Warm. It’s not ‘cold fire’ like Iroh said when he bent it. There’s a buzz, a tingle, like biting into a pepper but without the burn.”

“Does it hurt?”

“Not when we do it.”

Katara’s eyes harden a little, fear giving way to hunger. “Show me.”

Aang asks, “Isn’t Zuko expecting us for lunch? We should get clean.”

Katara positively snarls. Then stops. “Wait. You said that the water in the air seems to take the edge off? It doesn’t shock quite like static?”

Aang cocks his head, and slowly replies, “Yeeeeeeeeahhhhhh...?”

Katara yanks Aang into the washroom saying “Well, good thing we’re going to shower.”

Chapter Text

There are, Katara thinks, some benefits to military technology. The Fire Nation’s use of plumbing beat the hell out of bending water and fire to heat a shower or bath. She kisses her husband, feeling the familiar planes of muscle and skin, murmuring her appreciation against him. If they’re not camping, they’re guests in private homes and palaces, but it’s rare that they – or their friends – get the dual gifts of luxury and absolute privacy. Zuko’s palace is one of those unique places, and Katara blinks water out of her eyes while stroking Aang’s sides.

She kisses up his neck, nibbling an earlobe. “Is this humid enough to be safe?”

Aang nods, a smile against her wet hair. “Outside would’ve been fine, but I think I can make this work.”

Katara pulls away and looks in Aang’s eyes. “Just a little. I want to talk to Zuko about this, and I’m hungry, even if you aren’t.”

Aang’s stomach rumbles, and they laugh, caught by surprise. “Well, that won’t be a problem. He took a lot out of me this morning.”

“Mmmm, tell me.” She enjoys hearing what they get up to without her, even the others. Well, not Sokka. That’s just a bridge too far for both of them.

“Nothing quite so fun, just kisses. Sorry, love,” Aang replies, a wistful smile on his face.

“Uh-huh.” She feels him harden against her with the memory. “You made out like a couple teenagers with lightning on your tongues!”

Aang pulls her close. “Oh, is that something you’re looking for, wifey?” He’s the more playful of her men, even after all these years.

She places one hand on his mouth, another flicking his nose gently. “Yes, but not now. I don’t know that I want to feel it...inside, not quite yet. Skin only, and not too much. We do have to clean and I want us all to talk about this together.”

Aang nods once, suddenly solemn, before dragging a hand across Katara’s left breast, a trail of blue sparks following as his index finger and thumb grab her nipple. He twists, gently, deepening a kiss as he adds a shock to the pinch.

Katara leans into the touch, gasp ending in a moan against her husband’s lips.

“Nothing more than this, I promise. Not for you now, nor for him then,” Aang whispers.

“My poor sweet boys.” Katara’s mouth is composed into something resembling a sympathetic moue. “No time to fool around and clean up and go be Big Damn Heroes for the youth, hmm?”

Aang jerks out, “No time at all.” His voice is harsher, thicker with lust. “He was so good with the lightning and I wanted to take him in my mouth, feel what it was like to play with his cock, maybe a little on his balls –”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Our strapping young Fire Lord hopeless above you, cock buried in you. You haven’t had the chance to have him beg for a minute, have you. Or me, for that matter.” Katara’s smirk is shaking, the sparks too much fun. They must have been running late if there wasn’t enough time for Zuko to push into Aang as was his wont.

“Would you have looked up at him like this?” Katara kisses her way down her husband, her back to the shower head, eyes up at Aang. Aang shudders. While he’s often the one pushing into Zuko, it’s not often he gets to suck him off. Something about Zuko working out his feelings about “being served.” It’s similar to why he’s so receptive to Katara giving orders – his feelings of worthlessness from youth, and perhaps a need to not be in charge. They need to work on that.

Katara takes him in hand and kisses him. “Love, we’re going to talk later. And you and I are going to give Zuko what you couldn’t this morning. But for now, relax.” She takes him in her mouth.

Aang looks down, knees trembling with tension. All three of them are so used to Katara being in charge – telling them to kiss for the first time, setting the pace when they went to bed together, sitting with Mai and ending social functions with a few looks and a nod – that Aang still sees Katara on her knees as slightly unnatural. It’s not enough of a hangup to make him and Zuko stop her, but it still feels taboo enough that Aang feels a thrill as he wraps his hands in his wife’s hair. Oral and anal sex were seen as questions of power, with the giver being more manly and superior, and the receiver being seen as inferior. Aang was too young and born before Sozin’s rise, so he had missed that part, but Zuko had to be taught that just because a lover was beneath him didn’t mean they were, well, beneath him.

Aang’s breath hitches, remembering one of those early nights, where Zuko, taking Katara from behind, had been shocked when she set the pace. Zuko held onto her hips for dear life, and Aang had simply watched. He remembers Katara and Zuko both meeting his eyes – the former composed and intense, the latter uncontrolled and shocked. Aang wonders if they will get the same unhinged look in Katara’s eyes after lunch.

He looks down at those bright blue eyes, imagining them blown and clouded and wild like Zuko’s, and explodes in his wife’s mouth.

Katara’s throat flexes, and she climbs to her feet, Aang leaning against the wall and gathering her to him.

Katara kisses his cheek. “That was fast,” she says. “Were you thinking about this morning?”

Aang takes three breaths, his heart stilling. She can feel it – surrounded by water and Aang, she can’t not feel it. “No,” he says shakily. “Do you remember the first night it was just you two? I just watched?”

She smiles. She couldn’t see Zuko orgasm that night, but she’s heard Aang describe his eyes many nights after. “We’ll get him there.”

He shakes his head. “We’ll get you there first.”

Katara smiles, but it doesn’t reach her eyes. She soaps him up in silence, and Aang can feel her hands linger on his back. She kisses him there, along the scar, as she rinses, slower than usual.

They step out of the shower, bending air to them and water away. Aang blows air gently through her hair, fluffing it a little – the humidity has it puffing as it dries. He’s always dry quickly, but he can feel her behind him again, her hand tracing the Lichtenberg figures around the scar.

Aang turns, lays a hand on her chest. “Hey. I can hear you thinking.”

She hugs him. “You know why I’m so rattled, right? It’s not because you played without me.”

Aang nods. “Lightning is different. Azula.”

Katara nods back. “I saw you die, Aang. I saw Zuko jump in front of me and take a bolt to the chest. I heard your hearts stop, thinking that both men I loved were going to be taken from me. And there was nothing I could do about it,” she sobs.

Aang cradles his wife gently. “I know. I’m not going to tell you to not feel scared, but I promise you it won’t take us from you.”

After a couple minutes of rocking each other and whispering words of love, Katara hiccups. “What you did...that, that felt good. I can watch you...and maybe do more.”
Aang’s embrace tightens. “Let’s figure that out later. We’ll decide together how we want to play with it.”

Katara nods. “Come on, let’s get dressed. Poor Zuko’s probably starving.”

Aang nods. He has a glint in his eyes. “Red?”

Katara grins. “Just a little.”

Chapter Text

Katara feels electric as they walk down to lunch. Her last sarong was hopelessly wet, and Aang firebending it dry in this heat would make no sense. She’s opted for a new wrap in ochre, phoenixes and dragons and salamanders tapped on gently in blacks and reds and golds with the ancient batik wax printing popular in the Spice Islands south of the Caldera, hair down and tied back with a simple, deep vermilion ribbon. Aang walks a half step behind, with his usual tunic swapped for a wrapped orange-and-yellow robe tied at one shoulder, dark crimson under-robe peeking out as the habit swishes.

Zuko, observant after years of war and years more of assassins, doesn’t miss it on either of them. To the untrained eye, it’s maybe a nod to their host. Architecture and color haven’t quite caught up to the reforming and open spirit Zuko’s brought to politics.

Zuko knows better, though. All of them are ruthlessly possessive, and pleasantly possessed. He likes when his presents wrap themselves.

The great and good of four nations would lay intricate and delicate spreads before the Nine Heroes fit for monarchs and conquerors; it’s wasted on them. One is a vegetarian monk, one a runaway, two are refugees, four are traitors to nation and class, and all are soldiers. None of them have ever shaken the habits of light sleep, short rations, and simple pleasures like tea, rare meat, or cheap hooch. The rising generation has modeled modest appetites to fuel the burdens of power, yet another mark in their favor for conservative elders healing from war and defeat.

(Of course, they’ve other, more complicated, appetites privately. The Fire Lady’s effervescent chi-blocking sparring partner doesn’t endanger the succession, after all. Sokka Starblade of the South, Iron Suki, and Beifong the Blind Bandit are more than just platonic knights-errant restoring justice beyond the reach of Kuei’s walls and Zuko’s blades.)

So it’s a quiet and simple lunch the Fire Lord and his guests sit down to. Trainees and ministers are absent, and the three of them sit on their feet over a table with rice, spicy pork potstickers, salmon collar, bok choy, pea sprouts, and green beans seared with chili. Tea sits at the center, and Zuko pours for his guests.

As hashi click, Aang coughs from the kick of the beans. Zuko laughs deep in his chest, remembering his earlier sneeze.

They clear the table, and then quiet. The Fire Lord’s schedule is clear for the day.

Katara sips at her tea gently, and coughs. Her boys leap, attentive.

Katara takes her time. Fooling around without her is one thing, and a fine thing. She was with the turtleducks. Lightning is another.

She looks coolly at the Fire Lord, pinning gold eyes with blue, until the tension becomes unbearable and says:

“So. Lightning.”

Zuko jumps in. “Katara, it’s nothing like –”

“So I’m told. That said, I wonder why it took you so long to tell me that? Or if it was even possible? Or would you have gone on doing it without me?”

Zuko stutters, looks at Aang. The Master of Four Elements shrugs. “I told you we should have talked about it first.” Zuko splutters, indignant, “You weren’t too firm about it this morning!”

Aang flushes with memory. Zuko’s embrace is warm and distracting even when he’s half-asleep, and he wasn’t that morning.

Zuko says, “I thought it would be like when we...did the fire thing the first time and showed you after.” Katara softens. Aang had said the exact same thing in the shower. And it would be, usually.

Katara’s eyes water. “It's lightning, love. I’ve seen you both get hit with the real thing.”

Oh. OH. Zuko gets it now. “It’s not that we left you out...”

“...or that she doesn’t trust us...” Aang picks up.

Katara nods, sniffling slightly. She has no problem with what the boys get up to alone, even enjoying hearing about it as they pant helplessly next to her. Zuko’s fireplay with Aang (and maybe with her, when she’s ready) comes to mind, and she’s whispered to Aang how Zuko rode her into the ground and put her away wet on Ember Island as she reaches into Aang’s blood on the full moon a week later, dragging him into sweaty screaming madness without a touch, the twitching of her hands the only movements in their house on Air Temple Island.

But they had had time to grow – to get used to being apart and coming together, to see bloodbending as a tool for joy, to relish flame along the skin. Pleasure in danger was nothing new. Pleasure apart for heroes, again nothing new. But Aang had died and Zuko nearly so.

They’re on her in an instant, I’m sorry and I love you and We’d never leave you alone like that all rolling together in her ears, a hundred promises of love and loyalty surrounding her. It’s Aang that stops first, leaning back on his heels, his right hand in Katara’s left. “How can we make this right?”

Katara smiles. Just as she planned. “What did you do this morning?”

Zuko looks at Aang, and says, “We just kissed. A lot. We didn’t have enough time to clean up before the training field.”

“How long?" Katara asks.

Zuko pauses, thinks. “About 30 minutes?”

Katara snorts. “You both can’t get off in 30 minutes? Getting older much?”

Aang laughs, “Oh, we could. We just can’t do that and get clean!”

Katara smirks.

“Well. that’s a half-hour you owe me, then.”

“Huh?” Zuko’s as awkward a turtleduck as ever, so Aang leaps to him, having seen Katara’s plan. He grabs Zuko by the front of his robes and kisses him, pulling the crown out and releasing his hair to fall around his face. It’s shorter than usual – shaggy like that of the disgraced refugee they both fell for, not elegant and smooth like the Fire Lord he is now.

Katara loves seeing them like this. Switching from wholesome to wanton is half the fun, and Aang seems to travel the farthest. The century-forgotten free-love philosophy of the Air Nomads to the side, it’s unreal watching somebody as gentle and goofy and ethereal as Aang leap across a table to tackle a lover, let alone a man.

There’s no less pleasure in seeing Zuko respond.

The Fire Lord is not his father, nor even his great-grandfather. He seeks to undercut the Fire Nation’s imperious image. He is, however, still a man of parts – a formidable warrior and leader of men, the charming and brilliant politician working his nobles, the thoughtful scholar, poet, and calligrapher Iroh has trained. In private, he lets the reserve fall away to quote his favorite plays to Aang and Mai’s mocking laughter, to match Toph courtesy for unctuous courtesy, neither of them cracking a smile while the rest of the party riots at their ludicrous pomp.

Fewer still, however, see Zuko burn likes this. The Red-Eyed Dragon is a man of many faces, and none of them are contorted with as much lust and hunger as the one that breaks away from Aang, gasping for air.

Katara doesn’t want to look too pleased, not yet. She made Aang work in the shower, and now its Zuko’s turn.

She channels Mai’s flat, sardonic tone that she knows sends her husband into compliance. “I’m glad to see you’re feeling up to the task, love. Don’t stop on my account. And do show me what you were doing with those sparks.”

Zuko, face clouded with desire, nods. He closes his eyes, breathes deep, rubs a hand down his face as if he’s wiping the fatigue of a day of papers from his eyes, and draws his hand across his lips with obscene slowness.

As the tips of his first two fingers touch his lips, opening his mouth, Katara sees a trail of blue sparks rest on his lips and tongue. Then he is on Aang again, lips everywhere, blue-and-gold sparks warring between tongues and lips and teeth. Zuko’s the messier kisser of the two, and Katara loves seeing him sloppy, undone, every kind of out-of-sorts an absolute monarch can't be.

Aang airbends himself upright, dragging Zuko along to a mat further from the table. Katara can feel the pressure in her blood the way she hears it in theirs. It’s so bright – almost like sparklers, like Zuko said, and she can feel herself breathe again – had her breath caught when she saw the blue? It moved freely now.

Whatever they were talking about in the morning had left them worked up. Katara had enjoyed that first-hand in the shower, and she could see both of them whine with need.

“Wait, clothes, don’t want to get burns, just in case –” and Aang pushes off Zuko’s robe, clutches at his sarashi, while Zuko runs a hand up Aang’s shoulder, pushing the robe down his arm, the inner red now sliding out for the three of them to see. Zuko, appreciative of the quiet pledge of fealty, fairly growls with satisfaction, rolling Aang’s bottom lip between his teeth with sparks.

Katara has her hands on herself, moving gently. She just wants to examine this, learn to trust in its safety, but she can’t see her men maul each other like this and not touch herself.

“St-stop,” she says, panting.

The Avatar and the Fire Lord pause, looking at her with concern. “Aang said it feels like tingling, nothing like...you know.”

Zuko and Aang exchange looks, obviously concerned. None of them want to bring Azula to bed, so “you know” is less than welcome. They look at Katara, wondering what’s next.

Zuko says, “Yeah, it's like a buzz, a tingle, but we try to not to it near things that can burn. Haven’t gotten any holes in anything, but want to be careful.” Katara asks, “But it doesn’t hurt – o-on the inside?”

Zuko’s eyes go wide. “No, not at all.” Katara sets her jaw. “Prove it.”

Aang can never pull off sly smiles – his anticipation is guileless and he has Zuko on his back, pantsless, and lays his mouth on Zuko, sparks flying.

Zuko gasps, eyes locked on Katara. They’re used to her directing them for her benefit, whether it’s arranging them just so on a full moon night when her bloodbending is at its most precise, or directing Zuko to rub the tension out of Aang after days of conferences in some capital or another, but this doesn’t feel like their bossy love.

This feels planned.

Zuko grunts, voice strangled by Aang’s mouth on him. “Did you two talk about this?”

Katara laughs. “Of course, and we agreed that you should finish what you started this morning before I got any experience with this new trick of yours.”

Lust dazes Zuko’s reasoning more often than his lovers. “Finish? FUCK!” He curses as a cool Airbender tongue flicks the underside of his shaft.

Katara nods. “Neither of you finished before breakfast and the exhibition. Aang came in my mouth in the shower after we talked about the lightning. Now it’s your turn, sweetheart.”

Zuko’s eyes roll back. He can’t believe his good fortune.

“But,” Katara says, “it’s hot. And sticky. And you didn’t talk to me about this first. So only mouths and hands until after sundown. I think that’s fair.”

Zuko whines. He misses Katara’s skin against his. He misses Aang inside him, him inside Katara, both of them whispering filthy encouragements until he screamed against her hair. They’d been back less than a week and Katara had been feeling too tired to deal with the hard work of warm bodies and Mai had been tired and so Zuko hadn’t been able to fuck anyone for two weeks.

Katara holds his face gently, tracing her other hand down his chest to the dark red scar from their fight with Azula. As with Aang, she feels her eyes prick. Zuko’s love for her is written on his chest. It feels almost frivolous to use the same brush and ink for something like this.

Through the haze of sensation, Zuko meets her eyes. He knows nobody’s going anywhere. The lightning and her healing of both of them bound them together before their love did. She’s not angry at them, she’s angry because fear of lightning – fear of loss, Zuko corrects himself – makes her feel powerless.

But he knows that Katara takes more control when she’s frightened. And they’ve all written old nightmares into new memories of flesh and fantasy all over the places they were broken. And if, by getting her to lose her fear of losing them by lightning, he gets this, he didn’t much feel like arguing.

Katara breaks this chain of though by pulling blood away from his groin. He snaps back to her.

“Yes, Mistress, by all the gods, yes, I’m sorry, that’s fair, please please.”

“Very good, love.” Zuko strains up at the praise. Katara looks down, raises an eyebrow, and kneels next to Zuko, kissing him gently. She lacks the subtlety and power the full moon brings, but she can feel the electricity along his nerves, the rush of his blood, and she holds his blood against giving him release.

“So very good.” She smiles, twitches her left hand, palm down and fingers splayed out as she presses a kiss on the scar on his chest. In the same moment, Aang sends a pulse of electricity up his cock.

Zuko whites out, shaking and gasping both their names, smoke coming out of his nose, screaming his thanks to the sultry air.

Chapter Text

Zuko’s breath returns, as does his reason. He moves his limbs experimentally. Katara stopped bloodbending when he came. He looks down, Aang nuzzles his cock, sparks coming infrequently off his fingers and nose.

Katara giggles. They haven’t got him so wild he’s accidentally firebent in a while – Zuko’s control has gotten considerably better. Of course, only a handful people can leave him that helpless.

Two are with him, and neither forgets Mai’s proclivity for nailing her husband to a wall with blades and taking what she wants. Sometimes Ty Lee chi-blocks him first. For safety, she claims.

Katara leans over Zuko, still flat on his back, and kisses him gently. “That’s good, you’re good, you’re okay. I’m right here.” She strokes his chest, fingers tracking the edges of his scar as she goes.

Aang stretches his legs, pulls himself up on his elbows, kisses Zuko’s side.

Zuko, flushed and happy, whispers, “What’s breezy, Blowman?”

Katara snorts. “You can still pun after that?”

Zuko smiles against Katara’s neck. “You rise with the moon, I rise with the sun, right? It’s noon. I’m totally awake.”

Aang mock-frowns. “Where does that leave me?”

Zuko grins. “Surrounding us like the wind always does.”

Aang replies, “I feel like somebody else needs to be surrounded.”

“Wha-AH!” Katara starts as Zuko wraps his legs around her and forces her onto the tatami mat, hands at the knot in her sarong. Aang is deft, fingers untying the ribbon and re-tying it around her wrists. Aang, unfamiliar with his own hair, loves pulling his hands through theirs, and it’s his cool hands tangled in Katara’s nut-brown hair, crushing her lips to his.

Zuko, on his knees with Katara lying between them, kisses his way down her body, sparks rolling over nipples, over navel, and between his teeth as he licks his way down, fingers trailing sparks down her sides.

Katara doesn’t know where the hell her clothes went.

She also doesn’t know how she ended up with one man at either set of lips, drinking her in like she’s water, not just a waterbender, but she feels Aang kissing her and he’s warm and oh, OH they weren’t lying, the sparks feel amazing, it’s got the light burn of too much spice with something like massage but infinitely faster and deep inside and this is something else.

She can feel Zuko’s warm, dry hands parting her knees and kissing up her thighs and leaving trails of sparks up her legs and there’s his breath against her core and oh god how is it going to feel down there, yes, more, more, and – he stops there, kissing her thighs.

After what feels like eternity and thirty seconds kissing Aang she lifts her head for a gasp of air, looking down at her second lover.

“Zuko.”

He nips her thigh, leaving sparks trailing.

“Yes, Mistress?” His eyes are mocking, with a little curiosity behind the humor.

“Do you, do you think you could control the sparks if you licked me there?”

Zuko smiles. “But of course. Wasn’t Aang proof enough?”

Aang kisses Katara’s ear and neck, showering sparks.

Katara huffs, blowing a lock of hair out of her eyes.

“Sparky, if you don’t bring that tongue onto me I swear by the Painted Lady I’ll –”

Zuko and Aang move together, capturing two sets of lips in hot mouths and breathing lightning onto her skin.

Aang looks at her – yes, there’s that look, she’s close. She needs to be in control before she lets herself be taken out of it, and they’ve done that perfect. She looks up at Aang, lips swollen, panting.

Katara forms her lips, about to thank Aang, but gasps, caught up in what her lower lips are feeling – how in the world did they not fuck each other senseless after this? How did they not take each other into their mouths this way in the morning? It looked beautiful, and she could feel Zuko’s blood sing earlier, but by all the Spirits, this was –

She’s caught unawares as Zuko takes a long, vicious lick up her labia into a long suck on her clitoris, punctuated by what must be an enormous single spark echoed by a second with two fingers curling inside her and Katara howls.

“ZUKO!”

Chapter Text

Aang smothers her with kisses through her climax, swallowing her screams until they come down to satisfied mewls and whimpers. Eventually, Katara flops to the side, spent, the tension of fear and of need finally driven out of her. Aang cradles her head, Zuko crawls up the side of her body. Katara reaches out to Zuko, bringing his head in and kisses him gently on the forehead.

“Zu, that was...oh, that was amazing, and your tongue is inspired.”

Zuko smiles, shuddering with pleasure a little. He knows Katara likes ordering them about as much as she likes riding his face. “High praise, Mistress.” Katara pulls herself up onto one shoulder, Aang nestling in behind her to kiss the back of her neck. “Did you invent that yourself?”

Zuko shrugs. “There are old scrolls that talk about the use of lightning to heighten sensation, to stay awake, or to otherwise stimulate muscles. I think we may have rediscovered it. You know how Sozin directed everything toward military use, especially bending.”

Aang murmurs assent. “Yeah, we may have to write this down.”

Katara giggles. “Aang, you do it. Zuko’s calligraphy is too easily recognized.”

“Oh, and mine isn’t?” Aang smiles indulgently, relieved.

Katara’s head lolls back toward Aang, her shoulder dropping. “You're both forgiven. That was unbelievable.” Katara touches Zuko’s lightning scar, and kisses Aang’s shoulder. In the distance, there’s a flash, and thunder rolls. Drizzle patters the roof. Aang shuffles closer, content that Katara’s been convinced. “Maybe we can go out and bend some more of that for you?”

Zuko huffs. “No, let's not push our luck.”

They’ve ridden enough lightning today. Let heaven keep its own storms.

Three chests settle into slow and even breathing.