🔱♥️

For as long as history could remember, the Kingdom of Solis had never bowed to famine, plague or the old gods when they demanded blood from daughters and called it the supposed duty of women.

And certainly not to the seas.

Your kingdom stood where the sun touched first. At the highest crest of the southern cliffs, where the mountains broke into gold-veined stone and warm rivers ran like melted amber through the valleys below, Solis rose in white marble and sunlight. Its palace—Helion Keep—sat upon the highest point of the capital, carved into the mountain itself, where your family had decided it belonged accordingly.

From your chambers, the entire kingdom unfolded beneath you.

Terraced gardens spilled down the cliffs in levels of jasmine and ivory roses. Long bridges of pale stone connected towers crowned with the gold of the sun. Markets below shimmered with silks dyed saffron, crimson, and royal blue. Even the guards looked as though they had been painted there— with bronze armors polished beneath the afternoon and spears gleaming like second sons of the sun.

Nothing in Solis fitted the word subtle. Your mother used to say that subtlety was for kingdoms with something to hide.

Solis had power and power deserved spectacle.

Which was why your bedroom ceiling had been painted like the heavens themselves.

You stared at it now from your chaise lounge, one silk-slippered foot dangling over the edge, a book forgotten in your lap as your ladies fluttered uselessly around the room.

“My lady—” “No.”

“Just hear—” “No.”

Lyra, your longest-suffering handmaid, pinched the bridge of her nose.

“You have not even heard what I was going to say.”

“I know enough from your face to know I dislike it.”

“But my lady—.”

“Maybe I'll ask Father to cut off your head if you keep talking,” was your last reply before opening again the neglected book.

Beyond the open balcony doors, warm wind stirred the gauze curtains, carrying the scent of orange blossom from the lower gardens. Somewhere in the palace courtyard, musicians were rehearsing for the evening banquet.

As soon as your ears heard your mind translated it to nobles and diplomacy matters which = your father was about to ruin your day.

You sat upright. “Who has arrived?”

Lyra hesitated and immediately, your stomach dropped.

“My lady—”

In a second you were crawling between the no-longer-so-tidy sheets of your enormous bed, trying to escape any responsibility that might be placed on your shoulders that very night.

“Tell Father I have died.”

The door to your chambers opened.

Your father, King Helios III of Solis, entered with those golden robes that didn't help to walk, ceremonial rings and the expression of a ruler carrying the weight of six hundred years of war and at least three immediate headaches. (Mind you, you were one of them.)

“Father.” You said, voice muffled by the sheets.

He sat next to you, uncovering and holding your cheeks. “My sun flower.”

“Before we begin, I would like it noted that I may be against this conversation.”

“That saves us both time.”

Wasn't that wonderful? Your kind father wasn't going to torture you for long, only as long as necessary.

You narrowed your eyes. “Who is here?”

He did not answer, a bad sign already. Instead, he studied you with the same expression he wore over battlefield maps.

“The delegation from Atlantis arrived this morning.”

Your father continued, because tyranny now extended into parenting. “Their High Council has requested formal peace negotiations.”

“No.”

Well, that was your favorite word today, wasn't it?

“And proposed a political union between our kingdoms.”

His voice remained maddeningly calm but across the room, even Lyra looked like she wanted to flee.

Marriage to Atlantis.

To the kingdom that had spent centuries raiding your ports, destroying your fleets, and sending awful diplomats.

Your father stood by the open balcony doors, where the last of the evening light poured gold across the marble floor and turned the edges of his robes to fire, and for a long moment he said nothing at all, as though he were deciding which version of the truth a daughter deserved—the one told to princesses, fit for history books, or the one reserved for kings, heavy with graves and numbers and the kind of silence left behind after battlefields emptied.

You didn't need to hear the histories again.

For as long as memory had been kept in ink, the Kingdom of Solis and the Kingdom of Atlantis had belonged to one another only in violence.

No historian could agree upon where it had begun.

Some claimed it was the pride—that ancient kings, both too proud to bend and too convinced the gods themselves favored their bloodlines, had turned a bunch of differences into a holy inheritance of hatred. Others insisted it had been love, which was to your eyes eugh; a Solis princess promised to an Atlantean prince centuries ago, drowned before the wedding could take place, her death blamed upon betrayal, her body never returned. There were old songs still sung by servants in the lower kitchens that spoke of storms swallowing ships in mourning and the sea refusing to calm for an entire year.

Your tutors preferred politics.

Trade routes, they said, while pacing before maps stretched across classroom walls, fingers pressing into painted oceans and mountain borders. Salt and grain. Ports and taxes. Control of the eastern coast. Access to the southern straits. Men liked to call war honorable when it was always about ownership.

As a child, you had preferred the pride story. It felt more according to your personality .

Less pathetic than admitting entire kingdoms had slaughtered one another for generations over shipping rights or over the incident of a princess.

Regardless of how it had begun, by the time you were born, hatred was tradition and lived in the palace walls as naturally as sunlight did.

You learned it in stories told by your nursemaid while she brushed your hair before bed, tales of sea-born princes with smiles like sharpened knives and queens who lured sailors into drowning with songs sweet enough to make men forget they had lungs. Or in the way servants spat over their shoulders whenever Atlantean ambassadors were mentioned, as though the very name invited misfortune.

You learned it in your first history lessons, seated far too straight at ten years old while your instructor, old and severe and permanently offended by joy, pointed to battlefields on maps and recited casualty numbers as though they were scripture.

You too knew your great-uncle had died on the western fleet before you really understood what fleets were. You knew your grandmother still refused pearls because they reminded her of Atlantean royal gifts sent during failed negotiations thirty years before. You knew there were entire wings of the palace where portraits had been removed because the people in them had been lost to the war and your mother could not bear to look at the empty spaces their absence left behind.

Even celebration was about that hate.

Victory festivals filled the capital with gold banners and music and dancers in the streets, but always there was the undercurrent—that joy only existed because somewhere else, someone had been defeated.

Atlantis—always Atlantis—remained something distant and monstrous, less a kingdom and more a threat given architecture.

You imagined it often as a child.

Not as it truly was, but as children imagine enemies when they have only stories to build from. A place of endless storms and black oceans, where the sky was always bruised and the people had blue blood.

Their cities were rumored to be carved from the ocean floor itself, their palaces built into cliffs black with salt and age, their people born from sea water and tempers to match.

As a child, you had believed every ridiculous whisper.

That they slept in flooded chambers beneath the moon. That their royal family could call hurricanes with prayer alone. Even that if an Atlantean kissed your hand, your lungs would fill with seawater and scales would sprout all over your body!

You were embarrassingly old before you stopped half-believing Atlanteans did all this stuff.

Outside, a thunder rolled softly somewhere beyond the southern mountains.

Your father had been talking and you heard nothing, his hands clasped behind his back.

“The war has lasted longer than your grandmother’s reign. Our soldiers are exhausted. Trade routes are broken. We can't rebuild villages faster than they can be burned. Every season costs us more lives.”

You crossed your arms resigning yourself to listening to your father's words.

“And who, exactly, is the unfortunate sea creature demanding my hand?”

“Prince Perseus Jackson.”

Prince Perseus Jackson—the heir of Atlantis, called the Tide Prince by enemies and far less flattering names by your generals. Commander of fleets. Breaker of the Eastern Siege.

Oh merciful gods, this could still be a bad joke!

You had believed, with certainty at thirteen, that Prince Perseus had the head of a fish, and not in the metaphorical way.

You remembered announcing this with confidence at breakfast, explaining to your mother that it was the only reasonable explanation for why no formal portrait of him had ever reached Solis, and if the Sea Kingdom was so determined to hide their prince, clearly it was because he had scales and unblinking eyes and perhaps gills where a proper neck ought to be.

Your brother laughed so hard he nearly choked on fruit.

Your mother, with the kind of patience only queens and saints possessed, had simply informed you that royal diplomacy would be significantly more difficult if you insisted on addressing the foreign prince as trout.

Finally the King moved toward the door.

“The formal announcement will not be made until tomorrow evening. You have tonight.”

“For what?”

“To decide whether you will make this difficult with dignity,” He opened the door to get going. “…or dramatically, which I assume is your preference.”

Lyra approached carefully, like one might approach a wild animal considering arson.

“My lady?”

You turned slowly. “If I throw myself from the balcony, do you think they will still make me attend dinner?”

“Unfortunately, yes.”

This was tragic.

You walked to the balcony, gripping the stone rail.

Far beyond the golden city, beyond the cliffs and the rivers and the sunlit valleys of Solis, the sea stretched blue and endless toward a kingdom you had never seen.

Somewhere beyond that horizon was the man who apparently intended to marry you.

That same afternoon you were given a letter with the Jackson house seal. It was a deep blue color with subtle marine details embedded in silver ink.

You opened the seal with a small knife, considering at some point using it to tear the paper and send it back to him like that.

The parchment was expensive, thick and smooth beneath your hands, edged in so much silver ink it felt unnecessarily elegant. Even his stationery was smug.

You unfolded the letter slowly, suspicious already.

You expected some beautifully phrased threat disguised as diplomacy, or even the arrogance a lot of men used.

What you did not expect was this:

Dear future wife,

I was informed—repeatedly, and with great suffering on all sides—that it would be politically beneficial for me to write to you before our families force us into the same room. Apparently silence is considered poor courtship over Solis.

I argued that forced marriage should excuse a lack of romance, but your future in-laws are, unfortunately, optimists.

So.

Hello.

By now, I assume your father has explained the arrangement, and I imagine your reaction was somewhere between dignified outrage and the active consideration of murder. If so, I find that deeply reassuring. I would be concerned if you accepted this.

I am told you dislike my kingdom.

In fairness, the feeling is mutual, so at least we begin with honesty.

I know what Solis says of Atlantis. I imagine I have horns by now. Possibly scales. Someone, somewhere, has likely informed you I keep drowned sailors in the palace walls and sharpen swords on their bones.

For the record, only one of those things is true.

I will not insult you by pretending this marriage is romantic.

It is political, inconvenient, and being treated by every advisor around me as though it is the personal triumph of diplomacy itself, which should tell you how unbearable my week has been.

But it may also keep our kingdoms from spending another hundred years trying to bury each other, and I am selfish enough to think that sounds preferable.

You should also know that I did attempt to refuse.

This was received badly.

Mostly because I offered no convincing reason beyond “I would rather not.”

Apparently that is not how treaties work, my future queen princess.

So here we are.

I know enough about you to suspect you are proud, difficult, and entirely too intelligent to tolerate fools for long, which means we may survive this if I am careful and if you are feeling unusually merciful.

I will offer one promise, since everyone else seems determined to offer you expectations.

I do not intend to make a prisoner of you.

If this marriage happens—and it will, because neither of us is being consulted nearly enough—I will not ask for sweetness where there is none, nor obedience where it is not deserved.

That feels, at the very least, like fairer warfare.

Until we meet,

Prince Perseus Jackson.

P.S.

If anyone has told you I have the head of a fish, I regret to inform you the rumor is false. I am unfortunately very handsome.

—

Well, that last part was reassuring if we ignored how narcissistic those last words were. So your future husband was going to be the enemy army general? This could cause a scandal throughout the kingdom.

The next morning arrived with all the grace of an execution as the formal announcement was to be made by sunset which meant, according to the women of the palace, that your suffering needed to begin at dawn.

You were woken not by sunlight, nor birdsong, nor any peaceful luxury afforded to a princesses in a sentimental poem, but by the violent betrayal of curtains being thrown open and six women entering your chambers.

You opened one eye.

“Noooo, five more hours.”

“It is too late for no,” Lyra informed you, crossing the room with the merciless efficiency of a woman who had planned your downfall in advance. “The ambassadors have arrived, your father has requested your presence by evening, the entire court talking about the most scandalous political arrangement of the decade, and Lady Cassandra has already selected your gowns.”

You pulled the pink silk sheets over your head. “Tell them I drowned in cushions.”

“Given the circumstances, that may be interpreted as an insult.”

Fantastic.

You emerged from the blankets with all the dignity of a martyr and stared at the room now transformed into your own personal execution.

Your dressing table had disappeared beneath brushes, combs, perfumes, pins, ribbons, jewels, and enough cosmetics to prepare five royal engagements. Two younger maids were carrying in fresh basins of steaming water scented with lavender and orange blossom. Another stood near the wardrobe, holding garments draped over both arms like ceremonial offerings to an unwilling goddess (you).

At the center of it all stood Lady Cassandra, the royal dressmaker, who regarded human emotion as a minor inconvenience beneath the importance of her tailoring.

An hour later, you were regretting every decision that had led you to birth.

Your hair had been washed in rosewater and combed until your scalp hurt. Your skin had been rubbed with oils that smelled faintly of jasmine. Someone had forced tea into your hands while another woman debated with Lady Cassandra about the dress options.

You sat before the great mirror of the room while half the palace adjusted your existence around you.

“I don't like this,” you muttered as one maid fastened a bracelet around your wrist while another argued over pearls.

You met your own reflection.

Princesses, you had decided long ago, were merely decorations for the palace too.

Everything about the royal presentation was important. From the colors you wore, the stones at your throat, the embroidery at your hem— they were literally selling you out in the eyes of the enemy kingdom.

Unfortunately, Lady Cassandra agreed on that.

She approached carrying the gown and for one terrible moment, you forgot how to speak.

It was blue.

Not the pale blue of spring skies or harmless ribbons, but the deep, impossible blue of the sea just before a storm—the kind sailors prayed to and feared in equal measure. Rich silk spilled like water between her hands, layered with silver-thread embroidery that caught the light like moonlight on waves.

At the bodice, delicate patterns of curling foam and cresting tides had been stitched so finely they seemed alive, winding around your waist and ribs. Tiny freshwater pearls had been sewn into the design too—not enough to seem excessive, but enough that when you moved, they shimmered like drops of sea spray.

The sleeves were long and sheer, trailing at the wrists in translucent silk, while the skirts fell in heavy folds that whispered over the marble floor. At the neckline, subtle silver beading formed the shape of stars and compass points.

The maids moved quickly after that, slipping the gown over your shoulders, fastening hidden closures, smoothing every line until the dress sat against you like a second skin.

It was beautiful and that made you hate it immediately because it suited you.

The blue made your skin glow warm beneath the sunlight and turned the gold in your jewelry brighter and the silver embroidery made you look like a princess being offered to make peace.

Lyra stepped beside you, adjusting the final necklace at your throat—a collar of moonstone and white gold, elegant and cool against your skin.

“Well,” she said softly, studying your reflection with the satisfaction of an artist admiring finished work, “if Prince Percy does not fall in love with you tonight, I shall consider it a insult to the crown.”

You gave her a flat look.

“If Prince Perseus falls in love with me tonight, I will push him into the nearest fountain.”

“That's a romantic beginning.”

“A necessary drowning.”

She laughed, and for a moment, so did you until the unmistakable sound of hurried footsteps in the corridor met your doors, by the sort of hushed excitement that only meant one thing.

Someone important had arrived.

You were seated before your mirror while two women debated whether your sleeves required more silver threading when the youngest maid in the room, Elia, abandoned all dignity entirely and rushed toward the balcony windows.

“He’s here.”

“Who,” you asked dryly, though everyone knew exactly who we were talking about.

Elia turned, eyes wide with scandal and delight.

“The Atlantean prince. Their carriage just passed the east gates.”

Half the maids abandoned all pretenses of professionalism and hurried toward the balcony like birds fleeing toward gossip, gathering at the stone rail with urgency. Even Lyra, who prided herself on dignity, and Lady Cassandra, who claimed not to care and still somehow arrived there first.

You remained seated for precisely three seconds before your own curiosity betrayed you.

“This is ridiculous,” you muttered, standing while your hands worked on your hair.

“Completely,” Lyra agreed, already pulling you with her. “Move.”

The balcony overlooked the eastern approach to Helion Keep, where the long marble road curved upward from the city gates through the royal gardens and into the palace courtyards below. From here, on clearer days, you could see nearly half the capital— with gold rooftops, white towers and fountains catching the sunlight.

Now, all you could see was a gathering.

Guards lined the lower courtyard in ceremonial armor; servants moved like frantic ants between columns; even stable hands lingered near the entrance steps, pretending not to stare.

And there, at the center of it all the carriage.

It was impossible to mistake.

Dark as stormwater, polished to a shine that reflected the palace walls around it, the royal carriage of Atlantis stood waiting beneath the archway like a threat wrapped in elegance. Silver detailing curved along its sides in patterns like waves and sea serpents, and the crest upon its door gleamed unmistakably.

Sea-blue banners shifted from its frame in the warm wind with the house mark and the horses were enormous, black and restless, their bridles silver-chained and immaculate.

“I expected something with more fish.”

“Perhaps the fish are inside.”

Elia gasped. “Do you think he really has scales?”

Below, palace officials were gathering near the carriage entrance. Your father stood at the front of them, beside him stood your brother, looking far too entertained by the entire affair.

What a traitor of a brother you had.

One of the younger maids whispered reverently, “Do you think he is handsome?”

Another replied, “I think if he survives meeting her highness, that will be impressive enough.”

One way or another, you didn't get much closer to the balcony like the rest of the maids; only one thought entered your head.

You imagined him inside.

Prince Percy Jackson, heir to Atlantis, commander of fleets, a professional nuisance before even introduction. Perhaps he sat there, enjoying the spectacle, fully aware that half your father’s court was holding its breath for the privilege of watching him step onto stone.

It felt like something an arrogant man would do. That decided immediately if true, you disliked him even more.

You got out of the thought when some of the girls screamed as one of the carriage doors unlatched, the silver handle turning.

And at that exact, divinely cursed moment, the wind changed. Strong mountain wind swept suddenly across the upper terraces, rushing through the balcony in a warm gust that sent every curtain in your chambers billowing like sails. The heavy balcony shutters—usually held open against the stone—slammed inward with violent force.

One struck the marble wall with a crack like thunder and the other shut directly across your line of sight.

Gasps filled the room.

“By the gods—” “Open it!” “I can't see anything—”

By the time the maids reached it, fumbling with the polished bronze latches and silk sleeves and collective despair, the moment below had already passed.

The royal family of Atlantis—whoever they were, however they looked, however much of your immediate future stood among them—were already hidden beneath the palace arches, swallowed whole by marble before your court could properly devour them with its eyes.

The maids stared in open heartbreak, the open doors of the carriage and people below starting to move again. However, you felt strangely calm; you really didn't know if you wanted to see your potential future husband.

The rest of the day went with going from one place to another just to actually prepare you until you were summoned to the Hall of Crowns. The sun had begun its slow descent behind the western cliffs, pouring molten gold through the palace windows and setting the entire world ablaze.

Helion Keep had always been built for this type of spectacle, but nowhere was that more obvious than the great hall.

It stretched the length of the central palace—vast marble columns veined with gold, ceilings painted with the victories of dead rulers, chandeliers of crystal and sunstone hanging high above like captured stars. The floors reflected everything: candlelight, silk hems, polished armor, ambition.

But today the halls of Helion Keep had been transformed for the evening.

Gold lanterns hung from the archways, casting warm light over the polished floors. Musicians played softly from the upper gallery, low harp notes mixing in the environment, it was elegant enough to soothe any temper and expensive enough to remind everyone who was paying all of it.

The long banquet tables stretched through the center of the hall beneath the banners of Solis and Atlantis hanging side by side in what looked, frankly, like a threat.

The sun crest and the sea crest. Gold and blue. Fire n' tide.

At the highest table, beneath the vaulted ceiling painted with gods, sat your father.

On the other end the Queen of Atlantis was exactly what you expected and somehow worse for it—beautiful in the cold way winter storms were beautiful, dressed in silver-threaded navy silk with pearls at her throat like captured moonlight. She looked like a woman who had never raised her voice because she had never needed to.

Beside her sat the King, taller than you expected, broad-shouldered and sharp-faced, wearing his own crown.

And then there was him.

At first, you almost missed him—not because he was a forgettable face, but because he was doing everything in his power to appear as though he would rather be anywhere else in the world.

He was not watching the room, the musicians or ladies laughing between them in a corner.

No, he was looking at his plate with total interest. As though the roasted figs before him had insulted his bloodline and he was deciding whether they deserved to survive being eaten.

For one brief moment, standing at the entrance of the Great Hall with the court pretending not to watch your reaction, you simply stared.

He was, annoyingly, very handsome. Well that was unfortunate.

His dark hair fell slightly untidy despite every visible attempt of the palace staff to make it look presentable with the prettiest sea-green eyes you've probably ever seen.

His face was sharp, with a marked jaw and perfect symmetry, the kind sculptors would spend lifetimes trying and failing to reproduce without accidentally starting religions. Maybe he was some sort of godl— anyways.

There was sun still left on his skin despite the sea kingdom’s colder reputation, bronze against navy silk and silver fastenings.

Beside you, Lyra made a sound suspiciously close to suppressed laughter.

You did not look at her. “Say nothing.”

“I said nothing.” “You were thinking loudly.”

“I am merely relieved for you, my lady. Marriage to a trout would have been very complicated.”

Suddenly there was no more room for private irritation, because your father had moved from his chair and stepped forward from the throne dais and the performance had begun.

“Her Royal Highness,” the herald announced, his voice carrying through the marble, “Princess of Solis, heir of the Sun Court.”

Every eye in the room found you as descended the staircase beside the hall entrance with all the serenity of someone not imagining murder.

The blue gown swept behind you like tidewater, the silver embroidery making soft sounds. The moonstone at your throat felt colder now. Every noble in the room watched as though trying to calculate exactly how much peace cost and whether you looked expensive enough to satisfy the other kingdom.

At the end of the hall, your father extended a hand as you took your place beside him.

Across from you stood the royal family of Atlantis and Percy.

Dear Gods up close was worse. Much worse!

Why couldn't you tear your eyes away from that man? Perhaps it was the surprise of not seeing any scales on his neck or hands. You weren't sure if it was 100% real, but hus skin had freckles on cheeks and hands. What you were certain of was that the skin peeking out from his neck showed a single dark freckle.

The banquet endured for what felt like several consecutive lifetimes. You smiled when required, spoke when demanded, and spent the rest of the evening discovering that there were very few things more exhausting than being discussed as though you were both present and decorative.

Every noble in Solis seemed to have developed an urgent and deeply insincere interest in your happiness.

Every lord from Atlantis looked at you with the politeness of men trying to determine whether you would eventually become their future queen or their prince’s most elegant mistake.

Neither possibility appeared to reassure them.

And at some point, beside you, Percy performed no better.

He was civil, which somehow felt more irritating than open hostility as he answered questions with practiced ease, nodded at all the correct moments, and wore the expression of a man enduring a hostage situation with remarkable restraint.

You caught him staring at the doors more than six times.

But you sympathized because the moment dessert arrived, you briefly considered setting something on fire simply to create an exit.

Unfortunately, your mother had raised you better than that. Your father, regrettably, had not.

It happened just after the final toast. The musicians softened into quieter melodies, wine had made several ambassadors far too confident, and the court had settled into that dangerous part of evening where everyone believed themselves subtle.

Your father leaned toward you with the expression parents wore when they were about to ruin their children’s lives.

“Walk with the prince.”

You turned slowly. “What? No.”

Across the table, Percy’s father was having what appeared to be the exact same conversation.

Percy looked up at you and also said no.

Two kings, separated by kingdoms and centuries of conflict, exchanged the silent understanding of fathers united by mutual disregard for their children’s preferences.

Your father smiled. “It was not a request.”

Naturally.

And so, several minutes later, you found yourself walking with your hand over the arm of Prince Percy Jackson through the western corridors of Helion Keep in a silence so pointed it deserved its own poem.

Two guards followed at a respectful distance, to pretend privacy existed.

Moonlight spilled through tall windows, silver against the marble floors. The evening had cooled; the palace breathed softer at night, its grandeur less performative in the quiet hours.

Your shoes clicked against the stone and his did too.

It felt like an argument waiting to happen.

At last, Percy stopped near one of the smaller receiving rooms overlooking the lower terraces and pushed the door open with the resigned courtesy of a man offering someone the chance to murder him indoors rather than publicly.

You entered first.

The room was big— with velvet chairs no one actually sat in, books no one read, a fireplace large enough to roast tension over properly. The balcony doors stood open to the warm night air, white curtains shifting softly in the breeze.

Behind you, the door closed.

And finally you guys were actually alone. There was no court, no musicians and no parents controlling all your interactions.

For a long moment, neither of you spoke until you turned to look at him.

“I am not marrying you.”

The words left your mouth without mincing words, like finally drawing a blade after hours of polite smiles.

Percy, leaning one shoulder against the door as though preparing for impact, nodded once.

“Yes,” he said. “I had assumed that might be your opening line.”

He had an annoyingly pleasant voice too.

He crossed the room slowly, stopping near the fireplace, hands folded behind his back like a prince would do.

“For what it’s worth,” he said, “I am also not particularly eager to marry you.”

“Good.” “Excellent.”

You stared at each other, it was going to be a problem if you two talked at the same time like that.

This, at least, felt honest.

You moved toward the balcony instead, needing distance, air and needing the moon to witness your suffering.

“I refuse to believe,” you said, looking out over the gardens below, “that two entire kingdoms have looked at centuries of bloodshed and decided the solution was forcing me to attend dinner with you forever.”

Behind you, Percy gave a quiet sound that might have been an agreement.

“I offered several alternatives,” he said. “Most involved gifting a bunch of ships.”

“How dare yo—” “And yet here I am.”

You turned back.

He had removed the formal mask, or perhaps simply grown tired of wearing it. Without the performance of the court, he looked younger and somehow more dangerous for it—less princely in a portrait and more like an actual man.

You folded your arms. “You wrote a very irritating letter.”

He sighed. “I was forced to write that letter under direct maternal supervision.”

“I could tell.”

“That should concern you. Imagine what I would have sent unsupervised.”

“I assume a blank page and an apology as PS.”

“You are optimistic, princess.”

Despite yourself, your mouth moved in a small smile that formed small dimples.

“You are still arrogant.”

“And you,” he said, with maddening calm, “are exactly as difficult as advertised.”

You narrowed your eyes.

There it was again—that infuriating ease, that careless confidence like he had never once in his life doubted his ability to survive the consequences of his own mouth.

You stepped closer.

“Let us be clear, Prince. I do not care how beloved you are in your charming sea kingdom. I do not care how many poets have embarrassed themselves over your face. I do not care how many battles you have won. I have no intention of becoming another admiring audience member in the Percy Jackson tragedy of excessive self-regard.”

He blinked as you talked and slowly, one corner of his mouth lifted.

“Oh,” he said softly, “you do have a vicious mouth.”

You frowned. “I beg your pardon?”

He stepped closer too, close enough that you could possibly count his freckles and your breaths could mingle if you both exhaled with your mouth.

“For a princess,” he said, voice low with an unmistakable amusement, “you are remarkably unladylike. I had expected elegance and grace.. Perhaps even a soft smile and some very refined passive aggression.”

You stared at him. He continued, clearly enjoying his own survival far too much.

“Instead, I find myself alone at night with a woman who looks like she might stab me with decorative cutlery.”

Your expression did not change. “Do you want me to prove it?”

“See,” he said, almost warmly now, “that. Exactly that. Very concerning. Not at all lady-like.”

“Percy.”

Your first time calling his name and it sounded like a warning in your mouth!

He seemed to like that far too much because he just leaned into your space. “Yes?”

“If you call me unladylike again, I will throw you from my balcony and tell both our kingdoms diplomacy simply failed.”

Private notes of Prince Percy Jackson.

Not intended for royal archives, review, or my mother’s deeply invasive curiosity.

If found, kindly throw it into the sea.

—

I was told, very firmly and by several people, that keeping a written record of this process might be “good for perspective.”

My mother said reflection builds character.

Annabeth, who I am increasingly convinced enjoys watching me suffer, said if I was going to be insufferable about this entire arrangement, I should at least be insufferable on paper where historians could mock me properly.

So here we are.

For the record, I hate it. I hate arranged marriages. And I hate political banquets.

And, perhaps most urgently, I hate the Kingdom of Solis.

That last one should probably be written down with some honesty, since this journal is meant to be useful and not simply an expensive place for me to complain.

In Atlantis, children are taught early that the sun burns just as easily as it warms.

I was raised to distrust them long before I was old to understand why and I'm pretty sure her highness the princess learned just the same way as I did.

In any case, I had heard rumors about the nobles who lived in the city where the royal family resided and how they looked non-human.

Dear journal, the truth is that I was expecting my future queen with fiery hair.

I have met her.

Unfortunately after weeks of council meetings, endless negotiations, and being informed by every living adult that marrying the Princess of Solis would be “historically significant” and “a stabilizing force for the future of both kingdoms,” I can now confirm that history is a malicious thing and should not be trusted.

I had, over the years, heard enough stories about the Sun Princess to build at least six entirely different women in my head.

Depending on who was speaking, she was either impossibly beautiful or terrifying enough to be a monster.

As a child, I was told she probably had claws! Which was fair, considering Solis spent most of my adolescence convinced I had the head of a fish.

Do I look like a trout? Do not answer that.

Still, when I looked up tonight and finally saw the woman I am apparently expected to spend the rest of my life married to, my first thought was not diplomatic at all.

It was, very specifically:

Oh, that is deeply unfortunate. She is beautiful.

Which is a disgrace, I would have preferred her hideous.

She looked like Solis itself had decided to become a person purely to be insufferable about it—elegant in that polished, sunlit way their entire kingdom seems to be, like she has been designed with the sole purpose of making the rest of us feel underdressed.

Beauty, in theory, should not matter. Entire kingdoms are not held together by bone structure and eye contact. Political alliances are not to become more complicated because the person across from you happens to look like the kind of mistake poets ruin themselves over.

And yet she walked into that hall wearing blue, looking like the best mistake to commit ever and for one brief moment I forgot what my mother had just asked me to pay attention to.

I suspect I am going to enjoy arguing with her and I also suspect it may eventually kill me.

The worst part—and I resent writing this—is that I understand why this marriage might work personally.

She would never disappear into someone else’s court, never let herself become ornamental or let anyone mistake the marriage for surrender of her house.

I would hate a wife I could intimidate.

She, I think, would hate a husband who tried.

So at least there is that.

Still, I remain opposed on principle. She is proud, difficult, and probably dangerous, very likely already planning how to murder me to escape this...

And I—sadly—am looking forward to seeing her again.

This is humiliating.

If anyone reads this, I will deny the part where I admitted she was is??? was pretty.

I would rather return to the fish head rumors.

—

The days that followed should, by all political expectation, have been the beginning of something graceful.

The royal betrothals were not promises of love between two people—they were negotiations, alliances and kingdoms trying to teach two unwilling heirs how to stand beside one another without looking as though they planned to commit murder before dessert 

And so your parents, in all their wisdom and complete disregard for your peace, would insist upon time spent together. 

Walks through the palace gardens beneath careful supervision for some bonding time, lessons on courtly customs and each other's culture or meetings with advisors who would explain, with grave importance, how one properly ruled beside someone they had known for six days and considered a trial sent by the gods.

You'd be made to sit beside him during council, to dine with him, smile beside him while old noblewomen whispered about some invented future heirs as though your body had become the public property.

And worst of all, to walk with him.

It would begin in the lower gardens of Helion Keep, where the white roses climbed the marble walls and the fountains had an incredible amount of decoration dedicated to the sun.

The Queen of Atlantis, Sally, suggested it first, with that serene expression she always wore and your father would agree immediately, because fathers were traitors by nature.

And before either you or Percy could invent a convincing plague, you would find yourselves dismissed beneath the late afternoon sun, sent walking together like characters in one of those terrible romantic poems old ladies adored.

He would offer you his arm because etiquette would demand it and you would take it because both your families watched from afar.

And for several long moments, you walked through the gardens of your childhood in a silence so stiff it might have qualified as architecture.

The sun hung low over Helion Keep, warm and golden against the white stone, turning every fountain to liquid fire. Jasmine climbed the walls in pale blooms, and somewhere beyond the terraces musicians practiced for some other noble event that with no doubt eventually will become your problem.

Beside you, Percy would walk like a man and not like a boy that gave you a headache every 30 minutes. His hand, where your fingers rested lightly at his arm, remained warm.

At last, he would speak.

“I have been informed,” he said, his voice carrying that calm, low amusement you were already beginning to distrust, “that I am expected to learn your favorite flowers.”

“How thrilling for you.”

“I thought so. Apparently this is considered courtship.”

The gardens opened wider here, into a terrace of columns and trailing vines. Below, the cliffs dropped toward the sea, and the wind carried salt even this high, threading through the warmth.

You slowed, so did he.

Percy stood a little apart from you now, though not by much, for the space between you had the uneasy quality of something negotiated rather than chosen, and even that small distance felt fragile beneath the weight of everything neither of you had yet said aloud.

When he spoke again, it was not with haste or provocation, but with a kind of careful deliberation that made it clear he was choosing each thought as though it might be later examined in a court of law.

“In Atlantis,” he began, gaze briefly shifting toward the horizon before returning to you as if measuring your reaction more than the view, “courtship is spoken of in far less poetic terms than I imagine your tutors have taught you here. It is not a matter of flowers, nor music, nor the pleasant illusion that two people might be gently guided toward affection by sufficient candlelight and well-timed conversation. It is instead spoken of as a kind of assessment, wherein one is placed in proximity to another and observed for signs of either compatibility or ruin, and from what I have gathered since arriving in your kingdom, Solis does not seem so different in its practices, only in the way it addresses it.”

You listened without interrupting, though your posture had already begun to harden in response, not because of insult alone, but because there was something irritatingly precise in the way he spoke—as though he had taken the time to learn your world and was now describing it without permission.

He continued, voice conversational in its restraint.

“I was told before arriving that your customs would require me to learn your preferences, and I admit I expected something far simpler, ornamental even, but what I find instead is that nothing here is truly ornamental at all, not your words, not your court, and certainly not you.”

That last part landed differently, though he did not emphasize it, and perhaps that was what made it worse.

You turned slightly toward him, the light catching the embroidery at your sleeve.

“In Solis,” you replied after a pause, your voice quieter now, though no less firm, “we are taught that endurance is not a performance, but a form of loyalty. That one does not measure affection by ease, but by whether something remains standing when ease is gone. It is not meant to be comfortable.” 

“For what it is worth,” he said at last, more subdued than before, “I did not expect you to be what you are.”

You glanced at him again, wary now, though not openly so.

“And what, precisely, did you expect me to be?”

Percy seemed to consider this with far more seriousness than the question deserved, “At first,” he said, “I expected red hair.”

You blinked once. “What?”

He nodded once, entirely unashamed.

“Yes, a hair that looked as though it might set curtains ablaze if left unattended. I was told your temper entered rooms before you did, and I thought it only courteous that your appearance should offer a similar warning.”

You stared at him for a long moment.

The late afternoon sun spilled gold over the terrace stones, warming the marble beneath your slippers, and behind you the palace stood bright and watchful, undoubtedly full of nobles who would have paid obscene amounts of money to witness this exact conversation.

“And who,” you asked at last, with dangerous calm, “told you such stupidity?”

“A diplomat from the western coast. Though in fairness, he also insisted I had gills and slept upright in seawater, so perhaps his judgment was not flawless.”

“That man was my uncle.”

Percy let out a slow breath.

“That explains a great deal.”

You should not have found that amusing.

Instead, you folded your arms and resumed walking, forcing him to follow as the path curved past white roses and sun-warmed stone benches built for noblewomen to sit prettily and discuss each other’s ruin.

“And besides the red hair?” you said. “What else did your vast intelligence lead you to expect?”

Percy fell easily back into step beside you, hands clasped behind his back with the infuriating ease of a man too comfortable while offending people.

“I expected someone softer, perhaps more inclined toward performance. Instead, I find someone who speaks like a knight denied wine.”

You gave him a look.

“How devastating for you.”

“Profoundly. I was hoping for an actual bride. Instead I seem to have been promised a very well-dressed goblin.”

You stopped walking again this time so abruptly he nearly took another step before catching himself.

The fountain beside the terrace murmured softly as you turned fully toward him.

“And what, precisely, makes you believe I would ever concern myself with being your bride?”

Percy tilted his head slightly.

“Your father. My mother. Approximately six kingdoms and one old priest.”

There it was again—that calm, infuriating smile, as though he found your temper not alarming but entertaining.

It made you want to commit crimes.

“And you,” you said sweetly, which was always a bad sign, “are far too pleased with yourself for a man who arrived in my kingdom looking like a little kid.”

He placed one hand over his heart in mock injury.

“You’re cruel, my lady.”

“I believe the word is accurate.”

“No,” he said, stepping closer with that easy confidence that made you want to throw things, “accurate would be observing that for all your pride, you are still only a very elegant little tyrant with the disposition of a churl.”

Silence fell as the fountain continued its cheerful betrayal.

You blinked once. “A churl... How dare you.”

He seemed, for the first time, to realize perhaps he had wandered too far but it was too late now. He continued anyway, because his self-preservation was not a skill taught.

“Yes, certainly, sharp-tongued, suspicious, and trying to look like royalty.”

You stepped forward.

“And you,” you said, with a voice low and terribly calm, “are a loggerhead in expensive boots.”

Percy opened his mouth, likely to make it worse, and you did not allow it.

With one sharp movement, both hands planted firmly against his chest, you shoved him backward. There was a brief, glorious second in which surprise overtook princely dignity entirely.

Then Prince Perseus, heir to Atlantis, commander of fleets, terror of the eastern sea fell directly into the fountain.

Water erupted upward in a magnificent, deeply satisfying splash that also dampened a little of your poor clothes.

For one perfect moment, there was only silence.

Then Percy surfaced, soaked, hair falling into his face, staring at you with the expression of a man reconsidering every decision that had led him here.

Water ran from his sleeves, hiis boots and his now wounded pride.

You stood at the edge of the fountain like divine judgment.

“Well,” you said, smoothing your skirts with composure, “at least now you may feel more at home. Do try not to call for dolphins. The palace staff is already overworked.”

For once—miraculously—he had nothing to say.

You inclined your head with all the grace expected of a future queen.

“Sleep well, Your Highness. Do give my regards to the fish.”

And with that, before he could recover either dignity or a reply, you turned and walked back toward the palace.

Your spine remained perfectly straight but your heart was beating far too fast.

Behind you, somewhere between outrage and shame, Percy shouted your name across the gardens.

Servants moved through the corridors with the discretion of people who absolutely knew everything that happened. Noblewomen spoke in soft voices behind jeweled fans. Somewhere, without question, your aunt had received three separate and wildly inaccurate versions of whatever unfortunate spectacle had occurred in the western gardens.

You had pushed the Prince of Atlantis into a fountain.

In your defense, he had deserved it entirely.

You sat before your mirror while Lyra adjusted the final fastening at the back of your gown, her silence was talking for her.

Finally she said, very carefully, “I hear His Highness required assistance returning from the lower terraces.”

You met her gaze in the mirror. “I am sure the fish were delighted to have him back.”

She pressed her lips together. “My lady.”

“He called me a churl.”

Lyra nodded solemnly, as though discussing matters of state. “A grave offense.”

That, apparently, was the end of the sympathy, because moments later she stepped back, satisfied with your appearance, and said with the merciless calm of a woman, “Try not to drown him again before dessert. It would create paperwork.”

“No promises.”

Tonight’s gown was softer than the first, though no less beautiful—ivory silk threaded with pale gold and your hair pinned back with pearl combs, your jewelry lighter.

The problem with dignity, you had discovered, was that it was very difficult to maintain when one was still remembering the exact look on a prince’s face as he disappeared into a fountain.

You should not have been pleased, but you were.

By the time you entered the Great Hall, dinner had already begun.

The chandeliers burned warm above the long tables, scattering gold across polished silver and crystal goblets. Music drifted from the gallery overhead, soft for you to be ignored and the banners of Solis and Atlantis still hung together in stately disapproval, as though even fabric objected to the arrangement.

At the high table, your father was already seated, speaking quietly with the King and Queen of the other kingdom. And Percy was not there.

That was interesting, and a minor annoyance since your site was still next to his, if he wasn't there it would be very noticeable and you would be bombarded with questions.

But lucky you were, Percy entered as you took your seat.

Changed, thankfully, into dry clothes, though whoever had assisted him clearly deserved a raise for attempting to restore dignity to a man recently defeated by the decorative architecture that was the fountain.

His dark hair was still slightly damp, curling at the edges and he wore deep navy tonight, embroidered in silver at the collar and cuffs, the color making the bronze of his skin warm beneath candlelight.

His mother looked up at him once, only once.

Her eyes moved from his still-damp hair to the faint scrape at one cuff, then toward you.

At last she said, in the calmest voice imaginable, “Did you enjoy the gardens?”

You looked very carefully at your plate and your father suddenly found his wine fascinating.

Percy, without breaking, replied, “Immensely.”

That was all, the queen gave a small smile, nothing more.

He sat beside you, the chair making the smallest sound against marble. You did not look at him and he did not look at you.

The dinner resumed for approximately twelve seconds.

Then your aunt— a menace and a professional destroyer of peace—leaned forward from halfway down the table and said, far too brightly, “It is so lovely to see young people spending time together before the formal engagement. There is such a difference between duty and genuine affection, is there not?”

You closed your eyes briefly as Percy took a very slow sip of his drink.

Queen Sally, bless her terrifying soul, replied, “Indeed. I find mutual understanding far more reliable than charm.”

Your aunt sighed dreamily. “And did the two of you enjoy your walk?”

Percy set down his glass, without turning his head to look at you, he said, “I found it refreshing.”

You kept your own smile perfectly in place.

“How wonderful. I thought you looked more relaxed afterward.”

“I nearly drowned.”

You ended up talking.  “And yet, bravely, you survived.” 

“Your disappointment wounds me.”

“Be patient. I am sure another opportunity will present itself.”

Across the table, your aunt clasped her hands.

“They are already teasing one another. How sweet!”

Private Journal of Prince Percy Jackson.

To be kept far from my mother, the royal council, and any servant. Should this be discovered, I will deny its existence, and possibly fake my own death. 

—

There are many ways in which a prince imagines humiliation may arrive.

One thinks of battles lost, of treaties broken in full view of rival courts, of saying the wrong thing before kings who remember such errors for decades and repeat them at every feast thereafter. One does not, generally, imagine that dignity will be destroyed by being pushed bodily into a decorative fountain by the woman one is expected to marry.

And yet, here we are.

I feel it important to record the event with complete honesty, if only because history has a terrible habit of making fools appear noble, and if I am to suffer, I would prefer future generations understand precisely how undignified the suffering was.

The fountain was cold... Needlessly cold.

It was also shallow and deep, which I suspect was an architectural decision made by someone who hated princes and wished to leave opportunities available for women with good aim.

There were swans nearby.

I do not know why this detail feels important, only that it does. There is something especially offensive about public humiliation occurring beneath the judgment of birds.

I had called her a churl.

In fairness, she had earned it.

In further fairness, I had perhaps underestimated how quickly a Princess of Solis might choose violence when presented with minor provocation. She did not argue nor threaten. She simply looked at me with the expression of someone reaching a deeply personal conclusion and then removed me from dry land.

Well, I was looking into those beautiful eyes and forgot I just insulted her.

There was one brief moment—one single, sacred second—where I understood exactly what was happening and had time only to regret my mouth and the long history of choices that had shaped it.

Then water and her.

She looked magnificent.

This is, perhaps, the root of the problem.

She stood there in all that royal composure, with sunlight on her dress, pearls catching the light, looking less like a princess and more like some old god of vengeance who had grown tired of patience and decided it was my time.

She told me not to call for dolphins.

And the worst part—the truly humiliating, soul-damaging part—is that I nearly laughed.

Not immediately, of course. At first there was outrage and a wounded pride. There was the cold and dripping indignity of climbing out of a fountain while two palace guards looked at the horizon in an effort to preserve everyone’s future.

But on the walk back, with my boots ruined and my dignity somewhere beneath a stone, I found myself trying not to smile like a complete idiot.

There is something alarmingly attractive about honesty when it arrives wearing pearls.

I dislike writing that and I dislike thinking about it even more.

The truth is that she is, for my disgrace, a little too much my type, which feels like a betrayal arranged by the gods for their own amusement.

I had hoped—sincerely and desperately—that she would be easier to resent.I wanted that the marriage could become little more than duty and I could respect from a distance and never think about after dinner.

Instead, I have been presented with a woman who looks at me like she is deciding whether I would improve the landscape as a corpse.

And apparently, for reasons I would rather not examine too closely, that is doing something to me.

She is proud and clever. She has pretty eyes, a beautiful smile and a lovely laugh.

This is not ideal in a future wife.

It is, however, very much ideal in the sort of woman one writes terrible poetry about.

I am trying not to be that man but it is not going well.

Every person in this palace speaks of the wedding as though it has already happened.

They discuss fabrics, who’s coming, the ceremonies, the joining of courts, the endless practical machinery of binding these kingdoms together, and all of it with that tone nobles use when speaking about your future as though you are not sitting directly in front of them holding a knife.

And then comes the matter of having heirs. I won’t enter in detail for my own good tonight. 

Thanks to my own terrible mind, I cannot hear it without thinking of her and is unacceptable.

I would like to return to simpler concerns, such as war because now I find myself in the middle of council meetings wondering absurd things, like whether she would teach our children to be crazy like her or whether they would simply inherit it naturally. Whether they would have her eyes when she is angry, or my talent for making situations worse.

This is madness.

I have known this woman for what feels like six minutes and one attempted murder.

I need to stop writing now, it's late and im writing strange things.

This journal is becoming evidence.

—

Time, unfortunately, did what time always did—make things more complicated.

It would have been far easier if Percy Jackson had remained insufferable in simple and obvious ways.

If he had been nothing more than a boy wrapped in expensive silk, with every conversation ended in some sort of offense and every shared glance in the mutual certainty that history had been correct and your kingdoms were better kept apart.

But Percy, infuriatingly, insisted on becoming a person that actually thought of you.

Weeks passed after the fountain incident, and with them came back the machinery of royal expectation. Walks through the gardens became routine rather than punishment, the shared dinners were unavoidable, but got ordinary. You sat beside one another during council meetings where old men argued over the borders as though none of them had created the problem.

You learned of his silence a lot, he grew quieter when he was truly angry.

He also had the infuriating habit of leaning back in his chair during council as though he were bored, only to speak once and somehow say the most sensible thing in the room.

He was kinder to servants than most princes bothered to be and he laughed rarely, but when he did it was sudden and unguarded, you kinda liked hearing it.

And worse was that he listened and not because the courtship required it.

When you spoke of Solis, of the southern provinces,even of the people your father’s council liked to reduce to numbers, Percy listened like he was trying to really understand you rather than simply waiting for his turn to be right.

You hated how much that mattered deep inside.

Well, he still annoyed you constantly.

He still smiled at the wrong moments and said things purely to test your patience or walked through your palace one poor decision away from being banned permanently.

The western library was one of the oldest rooms in the palace, built in stone that held the warmth of the day long after sunset. Tall windows opened toward the cliffs, beyond them the sea stretched and it smelled of old paper, candle wax, and the kind of silence only old places knew how to keep.

Percy was standing by one of the long tables near the windows, sleeves rolled to his forearms, reading through one of your father’s maritime records with an offended expression because of poor naval strategy.

You sat opposite him, pretending to read when you were actually watching him be irritated by other people’s incompetence.

It had become embarrassingly easy.

Weeks ago, you would have called him stupid for correcting your generals…

Now, you were beginning to suspect he was often right, but it was intolerable.

The room was quiet enough that the turning of a page sounded significant and outside, the sound of the sea seemed to be loud even when it was miles away.

Inside, Percy frowned at a map.

“This,” he said at last, tapping the parchment with the disapproval of a priest condemning sin, “is either the worst trade route I have ever seen or a very elaborate attempt of suicide.”

You looked up from your book. “It was designed by Lord Cassian.”

Percy glanced at you. “Wow, that explains everything.”

“Be careful,” you said. “If my father hears you insulting his council again, he may decide peace was a mistake.”

“Your father has watched me survive three formal dinners with your aunt. I believe he considers me battle-tested.”

“That is fair.”

He smiled then, faintly, and the way your heart jumped unsettled you in ways you were not prepared to name.

When did it become so easy? The arguments are softer and the silences easier in a way.

You had learned how he thought about some cultural things from your land or how when he was truly tired, he rubbed at the scar near his jaw without noticing or how his sarcasm came off when he was uncomfortable.

You had not meant to notice these things, really! You had certainly not meant to care.

And yet you do care and you do notice.

The candles burned lower, the sky outside was darkening as you two relied on the presence of the other.

Then came footsteps— fast and uneven. They weren’t the soft, practiced silent ones from the servants moving through the halls as though they were part of the walls themselves, nor the steady, unhurried tread of guards who carried all that armor. These steps were hurried, careless with panic, striking against the marble with force enough to pull both of you from the fragile stillness of the library.

A messenger appeared in the doorway, breathless and pale, his face drained so completely of color that for a moment you thought he saw a ghost. It was remarkable, the way fear could enter a room before a single word came.

Both of you stood at once.

That was another thing about being raised in courts—you learned young that there were expressions more powerful than announcements, that sometimes a single look could deliver catastrophe long before anyone dared say it aloud.

Something had happened and it was bad.

The messenger bowed quickly, the movement clumsy with urgency.

“My lady… Your Highness.” His voice was strained, and already your stomach had begun to turn.

“There has been word from the eastern coast.”

The silence got worse over the library, heavy and awaiting, even the crackling candles seemed to quiet. Percy straightened beside the table, every trace of ease disappearing from his posture, and you felt your own hands tremble a bit where they rested against the polished wood.

The eastern coast, close to the disputed waters.

The messenger swallowed hard, and in that small movement you could see how much he wished not to be the one delivering this.

“One of the Solis patrol ships near the border was attacked at dawn. It was intercepted near the reefs beyond Thalor Point.”

Your pulse slowed but not with calm, but with the kind of dread so deep it made everything inside you go frighteningly still.

“By whom?” you asked, though the answer was already gathering like a storm behind your ribs.

The messenger hesitated.

“Survivors report Atlantian sails.”

The sentence landed like steel driven through bone.

For a moment, no one moved. The room itself seemed suspended around those four words—the library, the candles flickering low, the endless sea beyond the windows, all of it held in place by that single sentence.

Atlantian sails.

Four words, and suddenly you were not standing in the palace library but sitting as a child in the history rooms, listening to your tutors show wars across faded maps with ink-stained fingers, marking coastlines where your people had drowned, where fathers and brothers and sons had vanished into the sea and never returned.

Atlantian sails.

Stories of burned ships with skeletons on black water and southern tides running red from the blood of your people.

Atlantis.

Beside you, Percy had gone very still.

He was no longer the man with you in the gardens, sunlight in his hair and teasing he pretended not to mean. Now he was simply that prince from Atlantis.

And suddenly, you hated how much that mattered to you.

The messenger continued, his voice low, careful, as though speaking too loudly might shatter what little peace remained.

“Three confirmed dead. Several wounded. The ship barely made it to port. The council has already been summoned.”

Every fragile month of peace—every dinner, every forced alliance, every diplomatic smile—is already beginning to splinter beneath the weight of that old suspicion.

You turned to Percy just to look at him.

At the navy silk draped over his shoulders and that impossible green of his eyes and suddenly it felt absurd—how easily you had let yourself forget what his name meant.

His gaze met yours, and there it was the same terrible understanding.

You still were enemies, maybe with better manners and almost let you forget you were enemies at all.

Your voice was colder than you intended, but perhaps honesty did that to you.

“Were they under your banners?”

Percy’s jaw tightened, and for the first time since you had met him, he looked like someone standing on the edge of a war he could not stop. “I do not know.”

You swallowed against the bitterness rising in your throat. “But they were yours.”

Something changed in his face then—not anger but for sure hurt.

You could feel the slow rebuilding of walls you had foolishly believed were coming down, stone by stone.

“They may have acted without orders,” he said, his voice controlled. “There are captains in disputed waters who still don't know about the new peace we are trying to create.”

You let out a short, humorless breath. “How convenient.”

His eyes narrowed. “Careful.”

You stepped forward, your fury demanded movement and standing there with his gaze trying to read you was too much.

“No,” you said, your voice cutting through the room with more force than you intended. “My people are dead.”

His answer came low and stripped of every softness you had come to know in him.

“And mine have died in those same waters for generations. By the Gods, do not speak to me like I don’t know.”

You folded your arms, it was the only way to stop your hands from shaking. You held his gaze and forced the question out.

“Then tell me honestly, Prince—if your council decides this was justified, if Atlantis claims those waters again, if this peace fractures the way everyone always said it would… where exactly do you stand?”

He did not answer immediately and to be honest, since you had met him, this was the first time you were afraid of what he would say.

When he finally spoke, his voice was quiet enough that it felt like a blade pressed carefully between your ribs. “Where I have always stood. With my people.”

Of course he did. What else had you expected?

All your conversations in the gardens could outweigh centuries of blood? That one prince could become something other than the sea he came from?

You nodded once. “As do I.”

You turned toward the door, if you looked at him one moment longer, you might say something unforgivable or ,even worse, you would cry.

To say that you walked to your quarters is something, because if anyone was to ask a servant about your wing, they would say that they heard muffled screams.

Your pillow is wonderful for screaming and letting out all your feelings.

The council chamber had been built for war a long, looong time ago so it's normal it sat beneath the oldest wing of the palace, part of the room was carved into the stone of the mountain, the walls were thick to keep secrets and you never saw windows open there, it was probably one of the darkest places in the whole kingdom. 

By the time you arrived, nearly everyone was already there.

Your father stood at the head of the great oak table, one hand braced against its edge. Beside him, your generals were gathered. Lords from the eastern provinces spoke in low, urgent voices.

Across from them stood the royal family of Atlantis.

King Poseidon looked exactly as powerful men did when forced to defend things they had not broken but would be expected to answer for all the same. The queen sat beside him, composed and still.

And Percy stood near his father, shoulders straight and the expression guarded.

You took your place beside your father.

The captain of the attacked patrol ship stood near the center of the room, arm bound in fresh linen and he looked exhausted.

Your father nodded once. “Speak.”

The captain swallowed.

“At dawn we were running patrol near the eastern reefs, close to Thalor Point. Visibility was poor, there was a lot of fog over the water, heavy enough to swallow the distance to the port. We spotted sails before we heard them.”

His voice roughened.

“Atlantian sails, they closed fast and were armed. There wasn't a signal offered bir request for passage.”

Your hands curled against the table.

One of your generals slammed a hand against the wood.

“Pirates do not fly royal banners.”

“No,” another lord said darkly, “but princes do.”

Across the table, King Poseidon’s expression hardened.

One of the eastern lords stepped forward, the grief making him brave and foolish in equal measure.

“For generations Atlantis has called those waters disputed only when it wished to steal them. How many treaties must we sign before your captains learn they do not own every place they can reach?”

Poseidon’s reply came like stone.

“And how many times must Solis build fortresses along shared waters before you stop calling expansion defense?”

The argument erupted with that, the voices rose, accusations started to fly over your head, some maps were unrolled and the borders stabbed at.

You had grown up watching councils like this from doorways, hidden behind the pillars while adults argued over the shape of your future.

Through all of it, Percy remained silent with his hands clasped behind his back, gaze fixed on the maps and his jaw tight betraying what the rest of him refused to show.

When he finally spoke, it cut cleanly through the noise.

“If my father had ordered an attack,” he said, voice steady, “you would not be debating whether it happened.”

Every eye turned to look at the boy as he continued.

“This was not sanctioned by Atlantis. If we intended war, you would not be receiving apologies. You would be receiving fleets.”

One general sneered. “Don't be conceited, kid.”

“I’m honest,” Percy said. “That’s something both our kingdoms claim to value when convenient.”

Your father watched him carefully. “And what do you propose, Prince?”

Percy stepped toward the table.

“Find the captain responsible before this becomes an excuse for every man in the room to indulge a war already wanted.”

One of your lords laughed sharply. “And we are simply to trust Atlantis to investigate itself?”

“No,” Percy replied. “You are to trust that I would not stand here defending cowards. If an Atlantian captain attacked under our banners without command, then he has endangered not only your men but my kingdom. I will not protect him.”

Your father studied him for a long moment and then looked at you not as king but as your father.

He wanted your judgment because everyone in this room had seen the walks, the dinners and the fragile attempt at peace between heirs. Your opinion mattered.

You looked at Percy and you realized with sudden, miserable clarity that both things were true.

He was the enemy and he was not.

Your voice, when it came, was measured. “If this was unsanctioned, then the guilty should answer for it.”

The dark-haired young man gave a small smile while you were speaking.

“If Solis answers blood with blind blood, then we are not defending peace. We are merely admitting we never wanted it.”

One of the generals muttered, darkly with the suspicion of a man who had buried many friends. “And if Atlantis lies?”

Your father said nothing, King Poseidon’s expression didn't give away his thoughts and several lords shifted, preparing for another round of arguments. 

But to your surprise Percy stepped forward.

The prince of Atlantis stood beneath the torchlight, shoulders straight, gaze steady, looking not at the general asking but at you.

When he spoke, his voice carried cleanly through the chamber. “If Atlantis lies, then let the blame fall first upon me.”

Percy did not look away.

“I stand with my people,” he said, now it was only the truth stripped bare to hurt. “I always will. I am the son of Atlantis before I am anything else. Its blood is mine, its burdens are mine, and if war comes, I will stand before it, not behind.”

Your breath had been expelled from your lungs, this mattered because that was his answer.

Yet he continued.

“But do not mistake loyalty for blindness.”

His eyes remained on yours.

“If one of ours has done this—if an Atlantian captain sailed beneath our banners and spilled Solis blood for vengeance, or for the comfort of hatred—then I will not defend him. I will drag his name into the light myself.”

Percy’s voice lowered but no less steady for it. “I did not come here to inherit another century of graves.”

You opened your mouth to give an answer but he didn't let you talk.

“And I did not come here to ask for peace only to betray the woman I intend to have beside me.”

The words struck harder than the shouting of men in the room and across the table, your aunt nearly stopped breathing from joy.

Percy, apparently, had chosen violence against your heart.

Indeed your heart was betraying you in ways you intended to punish later.

“When I say I stand with my people, Princess, understand that I do not separate you from that future.”

Your throat felt dangerously tight.

“This marriage was meant to quiet kingdoms. Fine. Let it begin there. Let duty open the door if it must. But I will not stand in this chamber and speak of alliances as though you are merely another clause written into a treaty.” 

It's not like the room has disappeared, your father was still there, everyone was still there and somehow at the same time none of it existed.

It was only him and his softening voice.

“If you become my wife, you will not be an obligation I endure for peace. You will be my queen. Mine to honor before courts and councils, mine to protect when kingdoms are against us, mine to stand beside—not behind, you'll never be behind.”

You felt like you were going to faint when your brain reacted: he was in front of you and, and painfully slowly, knelt on one knee to take your hands, which were trembling like leaves.

“And if I must choose between disappointing old men who worship war and disappointing the woman I would ask to rule beside me, then let the gods hear me plainly now—”

His gaze held yours like a vow was being made.

“—I would sooner let kingdoms burn than fail her.”

Terrible, magnificent silence.

And you— you stood there with your trembling hands and jumping heart, trying very hard to remember how breathing worked.

Because Percy Jackson, prince of Atlantis, had just declared such love words in the middle of a war council.

Like an idiot! A beautiful, infuriating idiot.

Your father cleared his throat once, but his mouth showed a small smile and King Poseidon looked at the ceiling, perhaps asking the gods for quieter sons.

“Your Highness,” you said, “that was either the most persuasive political argument I have ever heard…or the most elaborate public courtship attempt in history.”

At last—finally—Percy smiled.

“Can it not be both?”

By the time the council chamber had finally emptied, the palace had fallen into a peculiar silence only the deepest hours of night could create, when even the walls seemed exhausted by the weight of the day and every corridor felt longer than it had in daylight.

You were walking quickly to your chambers with your cheeks getting deep in color.

It wasn’t like you were fleeing, you refused even in your own mind to call it that! 

If you slowed and allowed yourself even a single moment of stillness—you would have to think, and thinking, after what had happened in that council chamber, would have your head spining.

Your pulse had not yet remembered to behave like normal.

Your father had said nothing as you left, which was infinitely worse than if he had chosen to give you both a talk.

Your aunt, on the other hand, had looked radiant with a kind of joy usually reserved for coronations and public scandals, and you had no doubt whatsoever that by morning she would have transformed Percy’s words into some elaborate thing involving grandchildren.

You intended never to forgive either of them.

Percy had stood in the middle of a war council, before your father and his own, before generals and men and all the hatred your kingdoms had spent centuries perfecting, and had looked at you as though vows were so simple.

As though loving you was not about the war.

You hated him for that but hated yourself more for the terrible, humiliating truth that part of you had wanted him to say it again.

Behind you, footsteps were approaching.

You already knew the sound of his damned boots, the irritating calm of a man who had just dismantled your entire peace of mind and still believed he had the right to continue speaking.

“Princess.”

You kept walking. “No.”

There was a brief silence behind you, followed by the unmistakable sound of him quickening his pace, and then his voice again, closer now.

“Unfortunately, that is not specific enough to be useful.”

You reached the turn of the corridor with every intention of continuing, of disappearing into your chambers and locking the door firmly and condemning every poor decision your life had made as suddenly his hand closed around your wrist.

The movement stopped you so abruptly your breath caught and your pulse betraying you in one violent, humiliating motion.

“Let go.”

Percy stood close enough now that the corridor seemed smaller for it and his voice, “No.”

The sheer audacity of him!

You stared at him with all the fury you could still afford.

“In case the council chamber was not sufficient humiliation for one evening, have you now decided that physically restraining foreign princesses is the next great strategy in mind?”

“I decided,” he said, “that if I let you walk away now, you would spend the entire night being furious and I would spend the entire night with no rest, so I find both possibilities intolerable.”

Your fingers curled tightly at your side. “You should have considered that before declaring yourself like some mad knight in front of everyone.”

“And yet,” he said, stepping half a pace closer, “strangely enough, I do not regret it.”

“That makes one of us.”

His gaze searched yours, he had the prettiest gems as ocular globes… and those puppy eyes…

“No,” he said softly. “It doesn’t.”

You tried to pull your hand free as he did not tighten his grip, but neither did he release you.

“Look at me.”     “I am looking at you.”

“No,” he said, “you are trying very hard not to.”

“How dare you.”

Percy’s thumb shifted slightly against your wrist, a small movement, barely anything, and somehow it felt more intimate than if he had kissed you then and there. Why did your brain think of kissing him so bad?

“I am beginning to think,” he was giving a small laugh away, “that is how most of our important conversations begin.”

“In the council chamber, in front of both our kingdoms, you spoke as though—”

His expression changed then, the prince receding and the man remaining.

“As though what?”

You lifted your chin. “As though I mattered to you beyond treaties and borders and that noble performance you were attempting to offer your audience.”

For a moment, he just looked at you as he released your wrist.

“Did you truly think I would say those things for politics?”

Your throat felt tight with the answer and your voice lowered despite yourself as if you were scared someone heard.

“Did you mean it?”

Percy held your gaze with no wit left between you to hide behind.

“Yes.”

Your heart betrayed you immediately.

You hated it and hated him for making the truth sound reachable.

So like a fool, you made it worse. “Which part?”

His brow moved faintly.

“The peace? The alliance? The declaration dramatic enough to shorten my father’s life by several years?”

You stepped closer despite yourself, because if you were to be ruined, you would at least be honest in it.

“No,” you said, quieter now. “Not that. Me… Did- Did you mean me?”

“You are the only part of this I’m certain about, my lady.”

He lifted his hand again, slower this time, but it didn’t go to your hand or wrist, oh no, his fingers touched your jaw.

“I would stand with my people,” he said. “I would fight for them, bleed for them, carry every duty they place upon my name. But none of that changes what I know when I look at you.”

His thumb brushed lightly against your skin, and gods, if you really kissed him would it be so bad?

“I did not expect you and I certainly did not want this. It would have been simpler if I disliked you. Simpler if you were merely beautiful, or merely cruel, or merely someone I could survive beside without ever truly seeing.”

His fingers caressed your cheek. “But you are none of those things.”

Your voice was barely yours. “And what am I, then?”

His gaze dropped to your mouth like he no longer intended to fight.

“You are the woman I would choose even if peace didn’t demand it. You are the person I find myself thinking of when I should be thinking of fleets and the thousand practical things princes are meant to care about.”

Your mouth gave a smile as your hands went to his chest, “You are insufferable.”

“And yet,” he said, his forehead nearly brushing yours now, “you are still holding.”

That was enough. You kissed him first.

It was a kiss with weeks of restraint collapsing under its own weight, anger and relief and want and the unbearable certainty that somewhere between hating him and understanding him, you had become hopelessly and disastrously attached.

His hand moved to your waist, yours caught at his collar.

Someone—perhaps both of you—made several decisions neither kingdom would approve of and history would likely judge harshly.

It was absolutely inappropriate for a palace corridor three floors from your father’s chambers but it was perfect.

And when you finally pulled apart, his forehead rested lightly against yours, and for a moment neither of you spoke, because some things, once they happened, made language feel smaller than it had before.

If it weren't for the fact that your entire body and mind were so focused on the prince in front of you, you would have sworn it was a lie when Percy exhaled softly “I love you”.

Private Journal of Prince Percy Jackson.

To be kept far AWAYYY from my mother, the queen. 

—

This was meant, when first I began it, to be a record of my path to discipline and thought, of the observations expected of a prince who intends one day to rule without error, and yet tonight I find that it has become something far less dignified, for I am writing not of things involving this nor even of the fragile peace that holds our kingdoms apart, but of her. 

We kissed. 

I attempt to write it with composure, to frame it as an event of little consequence, an impulsive misstep best forgotten by morning, but the truth refuses this, and so I am left with the plain, humiliating admission that we kissed in a corridor and now has become a place I will not be able to pass again without remembering it in full. 

She smiled, and I find that I cannot write that simply and move on, for it was not the smile she offers in court nor the sharper one she uses as a weapon.

It felt—  No, I will not write that.

I told her that I would choose her, that even if peace had not demanded this union, even if our kingdoms had never thought to bind us together in the hope of ending centuries of bloodshed, I would still choose her, and I said it without calculation, without weighing consequence, as though the truth of it required no consideration at all.

This is not how I have been taught to speak and is not how I have been taught to think.

And yet it is how I spoke, and worse, it is how I meant it.

At one point, in what I must classify as a complete collapse of discipline, I found myself writing—

my wife, my wife, my wife

I find the word returning with an ease that suggests this is not a passing thought but a developing problem. 

my future wife

No, that is worse, for it implies expectation rather than an actual thing happening, and I refuse to grant my own thoughts that level of confidence.

the woman I am to marry

This is correct but insufficient because she’s going to be my queen.

I may have developed the need to have her by my side forever.

—

How did you end up in this situation? I mean, yes, it was your wedding night and the marriage was supposed to be consummated, you got prepared for that, but you were hoping to have a few drinks, talk to your dear parents and family, and... Seriously, all because of a tradition? 

One moment there was the ceremony still clinging to the air like heavy perfume— with the oaths spoken and the weight of a thousand watching eyes pressing down—and the next, everything broke into motion, into sound, into laughter and applause.

Men and women of the court, soldiers and even the attendants who only moments before had been standing like statues, now moving with a jubilanty as though this had always been the point of the entire affair.

Someone spoke your name in celebration and suddenly the ground left you.

The sudden loss of ground startled something unguarded in you, your hand instinctively catching at the nearest solid thing—which, to your immediate and profound irritation, was Percy.

He, too, had been taken by surprise, though he hid it better, his posture adjusting as several men hoisted him upward with far less ceremony than you had been granted, the contrast not lost on anyone present.

Some women tried to take the various fabrics and pearls you were wearing, but they were only able to take out shoes and accessories in your hair.

A roar of approval rose through the hall.

“Comfortable?” he asked, his voice carrying to reach you over the noise.

You held his gaze, refusing to let the situation unbalance you further than it already had.

“If I fall,” you said, your tone even despite the circumstances, “I shall ensure you are blamed for it.”

There were petals on the way—scattered, thrown, caught in your hair and on your dress, their scent sweet.

The doors ahead grew fewer, more private.

And then, at last, you reached it; your shared chambers.

The doors were thrown open with force, the room beyond lit in warm gold, prepared in a way that left very little to the imagination of anyone who had arranged it.

You were carried inside first and set down with far more care than you expected, your feet meeting the soft bed.

A moment later, Percy was lowered beside you.

The noise lingered at the threshold as the last of the laughter and well-wishes spilling inward before the doors began to close, as though savoring the final moments of public presence before sealing you both as newly weds.

Your eyes really didn't know if they could meet those of your now husband; the room felt warmer than the fireplace should been able to bring.

Percy pushed himself up, his breaths heavy from the rough handling, and for you saw his body. The suit, a tailored thing of midnight wool with silver accents, had already been loosened during the toasts, all the buttons undone at the chest, exposing the tanned planes of his torso.

He moved first, sliding off the bed to kneel at its edge and moving you with him.

Your now husband caresses the fabrics; the wedding dress is heavy on velvets, rich wools, golden embroidery, and pearls. The truth is, it's not very easy to remove.

The bed was high, so you basically could see him, and damn, why was he on his knees fiddling with your silky clothes? 

His fingers tugged at the layers of the dress, bunching the velvet skirts up your thighs. The fabric was so pretty on you but he wasn't sad about taking it off if he could connect with your body and you. 

His fingers, callused from sword hilts and rigging sails, tugged at the laces of your gown, but the thing was a fortress of fabric, heavy with wools and pearls that resisted his impatience.

“Fuck this,” he muttered, voice low and rough, like gravel under boots. 

He wasn't gentle about it, yanking at the bodice until the golden threads strained and exposed the swell of your breasts to the cool air. You gasped, but he didn't stop, his hands roaming lower, bunching the skirts up to your hips. 

God, he didn't have enough patience right now to take all your clothes off properly so the poor wedding dress stayed half-on. 

His mouth was on you before you could catch the breath, hot and insistent, trailing kisses along the sensitive skin of your inner thighs. You felt the scrape of his stubble, the warmth of his breath ghosting over your dressed core, making your pussy clench in anticipation. 

Percy Jackson, the man you hated so much, was now parting your legs with those strong hands, his eyes dark with want. 

He hooked one arm under your knee, spreading you wider, and then his fingers were there—the rough fingerpads brushing against your underwear and finally swollen folds. 

You were a soppy mess, slick from the tension of the day and the way he'd been staring at you during the vows, like he was undressing you with his gaze alone. 

“You're soaked,” he growled, a hint of approval lacing his tone as he slid one finger along your slit, teasing the entrance before pushing in slowly. 

The stretch was immediate, his touch firm but not rushed, circling your clit with the thumb while that finger curled inside you. 

Oh gods, his mouth was so close now, lips brushing your thigh as he licked a stripe up the soft skin, tasting the salt of your anticipation. Your hips bucked involuntarily, chasing the heat, and he chuckled against you, the vibration sending sparks up your spine. 

Then finally, you felt the first lick of his tongue—flat and broad, dragging over your pussy with such slowness. His tastebuds rasped against your sensitive flesh, the slightest inch of his tongue squeezing in alongside his finger, probing deeper. 

It was messy, the sounds of his breath filling the room as he lapped at you, sucking gently on your clit before delving back down.

To say that you were euphoric at this moment would be an understatement because you had possibly just opened the gates of heaven.

But still… still you felt nervous, with a million thoughts going on when his mouth connected your most intimate zone and so the words blurted out theirself.

“Wait.. I'm not,” a small moan comes out. “I’ve never done this before..”

His mouth, pink and wet with your juices, lets out a small sigh, “I’ve never participated in these activities either.”

His cheek rests against your thigh, looking up before muttering against your folds. “I learn as I wend.”

And unfortunately, the only thing you can do in response is with your hips, moving them slightly against him as a new wave of slick follows.

Percy won’t make you wait.

In no time his tongue has lapped all those juices and entered your cunt alongside his finger, trying to get more and more of the sweet flavor you are giving him, maybe he’s just getting addicted.

Again and again, you find yourself dragging out desperate pushes of your hips against his mouth— riding your sensitive cunt down his straight nose and making it push on the button of your swollen clit. 

You mewled, the pressure building fast, maybe too fast and he responded with a tiny slap to the cute nub! Even a glob of his spit mixed with your slick, and he rubbed it nice and good with your cunt, fingers circling and thumb pressing sloooow until you feel your walls fluttering around another invading finger— stretching you wider, his pads pressing against your squishy g-spot  making stars burst behind your eyelids. 

“Be honest with me,” Percy murmured against your skin, his voice muffled and lips slick with you. “Like your pussy is…Tell me when you're close.”

Gods, why couldn't you just say it? The words stuck in your throat as he worked you relentlessly, dragging out your orgasm so lengthily, his tongue tickling your constantly throbbing clit while his fingers pumped in a rhythm that had you arching off the bed. 

“How are you so good at this?” you gasped finally, voice breaking as the edge rushed up. “Is this your first time? Are you kidding me?”

He pulled back and gave a grin, chin glistening and eyes wicked. “First time, princess. But I've dreamed about eating your cunt plenty.” No joke in his tone, just raw truth that made your core tighten. 

“You do kiss- ah.. you do kiss your mother with that mouth…”

“As of now I'm kissing something sweeter.”

He dove back in, sucking harder, and you shattered, waves crashing through you as your pussy clenched around his fingers with slick gushing out. Percy didn't let up, milking every pulse until you were trembling, oversensitive and boneless.

You laughed breathlessly, pulling him up for a kiss that tasted of you. 

But the heat didn't fade; it built. 

Percy stood, shedding the rest of his loosened suit with quick, impatient jerks. Finally, you saw it—his cock pulsing, fat with red veins snaking along the length. A sensitive slit at the tip, already beading, and heavy balls hanging low. 

He wasn’t just needy, he was ravenous, the angriest reddened tip flushed like it had a grudge.

He manhandled you onto the bed properly, moving you onto your back with hands that gripped your hips hard. 

It was both of your first times, and lord, he was just using his tip to fuck you—rubbing the head along your slit, teasing the entrance without pushing in. 

He was big, there was no way that would enter your poor pussy.

The stretch was immediate when he tried to push into your orifice, a burn that made you whine, but it mixed with the ache he'd already stirred.

You didn't know who was more pussy-drunk or cock-drunk—you, with the way your walls fluttered greedily, or him, groaning like a man possessed as he nudged in. Just a few more inches out of the numerous ones eased inside your cunt with the most lecherous sounds as if your clingy walls were trying to suck him up and weren't able. 

You were addicted to the way his girth was molding your channel to him, stretching wide, the burn blending into pleasure that had you clawing at his shoulders.

You guys started fighting a bit then—playful, your hands pushing at his chest as he tried to sink deeper, him pinning your wrists with one hand while the other guided his cock. 

“Stop squirming,” he laughed breathlessly, but you twisted, half-protesting the overwhelming fullness, half-pulling him closer. 

“It's not- Oh fuckkk- It's not going to fit-!”

Percy looked down, seeing that there was still some way to go, his cock was screaming in agony, needing to feel you squeeze him to oblivion, and that's how his hands released your wrists.

But it wasn't until you felt his hands on your legs that you understood what he was doing, lifting them up to his shoulders and beeeending you until your legs were giving him the perfect space.

“It has to fit, fit, fit, fit...” His hips moved like a piston, trying to fill you up until the sound of a resounding wap! echoed.

He finally made it fit, bottoming out with a shared groan that left you both dumb at the feeling, brains short-circuiting from the tight, hot clasp and his balls slapping your skin.

Percy started pumping then with no intention of giving a small break, the thick, vein-puffed length of his cock from tip to base to thwack! and plap! your cervix wetly. 

The man was breathing heavily as his hips continued to make the luxurious bed creak over and over again, letting out small grunts that matched your joyful moans.

Your vision blurred when a hand wandered down to give tiny slap slap slaps to your reddened clit, body arching as pleasure bordered on too much, slick coating his shaft and dripping down your thighs.

Percy watched you, transfixed, his own control fraying in a matter of seconds—when he saw the tears streak your cheeks, the way your mouth fell open in silent pleasured cries, he couldn't hold it. 

“Shit—you're—” He really couldn't hold it, hips stuttering as he filled you, hot spurts of cum flooding deep. Your cunt leaked out in both slick n’ his seed, the mess dripping onto the sheets.

The poor guy was trying to pull that high out of you, trying to wrench it as he gave you a puppy look, he just needed you to cum again. And you did, crashing over the edge with a big cry you muffled by biting his shoulder, teeth sinking into the muscle as your walls spasmed around him, milking him dry. 

Percy was fucking you sloppily, the rhythm erratic as his cock dragged through the mess he'd made. His fingers reached down, joining to plug you up. 

Aah, lucky you both were married because for sure he bred you, and in this moment, you were drooling into the cushions, dumb on it, your body limp and buzzing. 

He laughed, dizzy and breathless over your look, collapsing half on top of you, his weight a grounding heat. 

“Look at you,” he murmured, pressing a kiss to your temple, affectionate even in the haze as you rolled onto your stomach, expecting him to rest next to you, catch his breath but oh no no no—he was playing with his cum between your legs, fingers scooping the leaking seed and rubbing it back in, making you whimper. 

Your man pushed up your hips, ass in the air, and you felt the blunt press of his cock against your stuffed cunt again. “Can't just stop at one,” he said, voice teasing as he eased in, the stretch easier now with the slick mess. 

You moaned into the cushions, face buried, as he started thrusting shallowly. 

He even joked, breathing hot against your ear, “Ship's arriving at the port—hope it's ready for round two.”

You managed a weak “Don't mess around,” but it dissolved into a gasp as he fucked deeper, his cock pushing out globs of his own cum, mixing it with your fresh slick. 

Your pussy was red from the smack of his hips against your ass, swollen and tender, and his pubic zone was also messy with your fluids, dark curls matted, and you heard the wap! plap! plap! sounds echoing—wet, obscene, driving you both wild.

Percy was so loving even when teasing you, one hand stroking your back while the other gripped your hip, pulling you back onto him. 

“You feel incredible,” he groaned, pace quickening, the lewd squelches growing louder as he chased his release. Your body responded despite the ache, walls clenching around him, drawing him in deeper as he came inside once more, hard and sudden, flooding you until it was just an overspilling mess, thick ropes leaking down your thighs in rivulets.

The citadel's bells tolled midnight outside, but in the chambers, the real merging had just begun. Percy pulled out slowly and you both collapsed in a tangle of limbs and rumpled sheets. 

His arm draped over you, fingers tracing lazy patterns on your skin. “Think we can skip the morning feast?” he asked, voice muffled against your shoulder.

You chuckled, turning to face him and a hand coming up without thinking, brushing a loose strand of his hair back from his forehead.

“The court would consider that a declaration of war.”

Percy shifted slightly closer, as though the space between you had become completely unnecessary. There was none of the earlier tension left in him now, none of the heat or provocation—just a look of love in his eyes.

“Then we are already off to an excellent start as a married couple,” he said.

For a moment, neither of you spoke.

The bells outside faded into silence, the palace beyond your chambers distant and irrelevant, as though the world had politely stepped away to allow this peace to exist without interruption.

You studied him in that quiet—the way the torchlight softened the features of him, the way he looked at you now without challenge or the distance between kingdoms that had defined everything between you.

Your fingers drifted from his hair to his cheek, resting there lightly.

“They will expect us,” you said after a moment.

“They can expect whatever they like,” Percy replied, his gaze soft on yours. “We’ve already done everything they required of us.”

Your hand slipped from his face, but he caught it before it could fall away entirely, threading his fingers through yours. 

You exhaled softly, letting your forehead rest briefly against his.

“Just this once,” you said quietly, “we stay.”

“A generous decree,” Percy murmured, his voice low with sleep and softer, it did not sound like the prince who argued in the council chambers or provoked you in gardens. “I should thank my wife for such mercy.” 

“Do not grow accustomed to it,” you replied with a small laugh. “I grant it only because you have ensured that walking tomorrow would be… unnecessarily difficult.” 

“I see,” he said slowly, as though considering this with more seriousness than it deserved, though the corner of his mouth betrayed him. “Then I must accept this kindness with proper gratitude, my queen.”

You narrowed your eyes at him.

“Careful,” you warned, though it lacked the bite it once would have carried. “You will make a habit of saying things you cannot take back.”

“I do not intend to take them back.” His thumb moved faintly against your hand, absent and thoughtful. “We could go for a walk in the morning to see your favorite flowers.”

“Sleep,” you said. “If you insist on embarrassing us both in the morning, you will at least require the rest.”

A faint breath of laughter escaped him at that as his arm tightened around you.

“As you command,” he murmured. “My love.”

♡ 𝐑𝐞𝐪𝐮𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞

♡ 𝐅𝐮𝐥𝐥 𝐦𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭 ⸝⸝ 𝐏𝐞𝐫𝐜𝐲 𝐉𝐚𝐜𝐤𝐬𝐨𝐧 𝐦𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭

💭: Guys this is not proofreaded LIKE 70% sooo hopefully you won't find many weird typos or stuff TT Still I'm reallly happy because I don't tend to write such long oneshots, yippieeee!!

“That’s right,” Katara agrees thoughtfully to your dismay, “you didn’t even tell us about your relationship until the day of Zuko’s coronation.”

“I had no idea you two even liked each other,” Aang notes with a sheepish laugh.

“I did,” Toph says with a playfully punch to Zuko’s arm. “I used to hear them sneak around the beach house at night.”

“Thank you for that observation, Toph,” you grumble with a sigh, setting your cup down as you will your gaze to meet Zuko’s. “Do you want to tell them?”

“Well, it’s really not the most romantic story…”

You step into the red hued hallways of the theater in search of a food stand and a chance to get some fresh air. You’re not sure how Sokka had talked your entire group into coming to see the Ember Island Players, but you’re certainly starting to regret your choices. The second hand embarrassment you feel at witnessing yourself be portrayed as some big joke is suffocating, and you figure if you’re going to be forced to sit through this torture you might as well have something to snack on.

You find a merchant selling mochi and reach into your pocket in search of gold pieces only for someone else to place their own down on the counter. Your mouth parts in quiet shock as you look up to see Zuko offering you a meager smile, wordlessly gesturing for you to keep your money as he thanks the merchant for his service.

“It’s my treat,” he insists while handing you the box.

“Wow, thanks, Zuko!” You exclaim with a pleased smile. You carefully remove the lid from the tray and pull one out before offering it to the Prince. “You can have the first one.”

“I couldn’t-” he begins to protest only for you to shove the mochi past his lips as soon as he opens his mouth. He’s clearly startled by the act, eyes widening in surprise and words immediately dying in his throat. If it had been anyone else he would have lost his cool immediately, but he couldn’t find it in him to be irritable with you when he caught sight of the gleeful grin on your face.

“It’s okay to let people be nice to you, too,” you remind him delicately, the softness of your tone awakening an uncomfortable ache in his chest. Your kindhearted nature and fun loving spirit made it easy for those around you to love you, and he was no exception to this rule. You unknowingly hold his heart in your hands, and he’s desperate for a chance to earn your affections by any means necessary.

“Right,” he finally manages to reply, sheepishly grasping onto the back of his neck. “That’s something I need to work on, I guess…”

“Come on, we’re gonna miss the show,” you tell him after a beat, taking hold of his hand as you guide him back towards your seats. He’s grateful you can’t see the red in his cheeks from the sudden physical contact, but he doesn’t dare try to pull away from your touch.

“Would that really be the worst thing in the world?” He mumbles to himself, though he doesn’t protest as you return to your group and take your seats on the bench.

The space is cramped but you manage to squeeze yourself in between Zuko and Aang with minimal difficulty. The room feels suffocatingly hot with the feel of your body pressing against his side, and he concentrates all his efforts on remaining as stiff as possible so as to not disturb you. Thankfully, you take no notice of his odd behavior, your gaze glued to the scene before you as watch the play and enjoy your dessert.

“You’re the most handsome man to ever take me as prisoner!” The actress portraying you sighs dreamily as Zuko’s stage counterpart unties her hands. “I wish you would keep me as yours!”

You scrunch your nose in distaste as you realize the scene is meant to be a portrayal of your time as Zuko’s prisoner. You had stumbled upon him accidentally while exploring Ba Sing Se on your own, and he had temporarily held you hostage demanding the whereabouts of Aang. You feigned innocence by insisting you had abandoned the group to travel by yourself, and with Iroh’s guidance the banished Prince had released you. You told no one of the incident until Katara and Zuko had been taken by the Dai Li, and the rest was history.

“Why would I keep you?! You don’t know where the Avatar is so what could you give me?”

“This,” the actress purrs sultrily as she pulls him down by the collar to plant a loud kiss upon his lips. Your eyes nearly budge out of your sockets at the sight as you start to choke on your mochi, and Zuko melts into his seat with embarrassment and the hopes of the ground somehow opening up to swallow him whole.

“You guys kissed?!” Sokka exclaims in dismay only for Suki to shush him.

“No!” You insist defensively after managing to swallow your dessert without asphyxiating. “That’s not what happened! Zuko realized he was wrong and let me go.”

“After you kissed him?” Toph rebuffs with a mischievous grin.

“We didn’t kiss!” You and Zuko both cry at the same time.

“She’s telling the truth!” He maintains emphatically. His entire face feels like it’s on fire, and he can’t bring himself to meet your eyes as he begins to crack under the pressure of your friends’ dubious stares. “I would never kiss y/n!”

The entire group falls silent at his statement, and with the attention focused on him no one is able to see your face fall in response to his words. Your heart feels as if it’s dropped to your stomach, and you’re left with a quiet sense of shame as you return your disheartened gaze towards the play. His words have struck a nerve within you, for no one but you knows of the feelings you harbor for the Prince.

You may not have kissed him when he’d finally released you, but you’d be remiss to say you hadn’t grown fond of him in the short amount of time you’d spent together. That fateful day had stirred something within you, and your time spent together after he’d joined your group only seemed to stoke the flames of your affection for him. You’ve never expected him to return your feelings, and you have no plans to tell him about your little crush, but to see him acting as if a kiss with you is the worst offense he could ever commit wounds your spirit in a way that’s suffocatingly painful.

Intermission couldn’t have come any faster, and before anyone can stop you you’re rushing out of your seat and towards the nearest balcony to catch your breath. Your entire body trembles as you attempt to keep your tears at bay, willing the cool air to soothe the uncomfortable warmth that spreads across your face. You feel completely humiliated, and you want nothing more than to disappear back to the beach house and pretend this whole night never happened.

“What are you doing out here?” Zuko’s voice calls from the doorway. You bristle at his presence and remain silent, prompting him to come up beside you and rest a fretful hand upon your arm. “Is everything alright? You practically ran out of the theater.”

You wordlessly shy away from his touch, something he picks up on immediately as he hesitantly retracts himself away from you. Your gaze remains glued to the night sky, but your body is rigid and shoulders visibly tense. While Zuko may not be the best at reading social cues, even he can tell that something is troubling you.

“I’m fine,” you finally answer, though the sharpness of your tone suggests otherwise.

“Was it the mochi? I didn’t mean to overstep by paying, I just wanted to try and do a good thing— honest!”

“That’s what you think this is about?!” You retort incredulously, finally whirling around to face him. He shrinks under your fiery gaze and swallows nervously as he tries to choose his next words carefully.

“Well, I did, but… now I don’t…”

You groan with frustration, throwing your hands in the air as you demand, “What’s so terrible about kissing me?!”

“What?” Zuko gapes, clearly taken aback by your question. His flustered features only agitate you further, and with all your rational thinking out the door you continue your tirade against the Prince.

“You said you’d never kiss me like it’s some horrible offense! Am I so embarrassing to be with?”

“What?! No, of course not! I didn’t mean it like that!” He insists desperately, the distrusting look on your face only further spurring his panic to rectify his previous statement. “I just meant it would be weird to kiss you!”

“Excuse me?!”

“Ugh, that came out wrong! What I meant to say-”

“I think you’ve said enough,” you interrupt him firmly, shoving past him as you make your way back into the theater.

Left alone from your angry departure, Zuko lets out a frustrated groan as his palm raises to collide with his forehead. Leave it to his big mouth to ruin what had started as a perfectly good evening with you. The last thing he wanted was for you to think he held any reservations about being with you; he was only trying to preserve your image by insisting the kiss had never happened. Instead, the girl he’d grown to care so deeply for not only thought he found her repulsive but also now wanted nothing to do with him as a result.

When your group returns to the theater for the second act you make a point to switch seats with Aang in order to maintain your distance from Zuko. This doesn’t go unnoticed, and it only spurs the ugly guilt he feels in the pit of his stomach. He can hardly focus on the play in front of him when all he wants is to make things right with you again. Tonight was meant to be his chance to win your heart, but instead he’d effectively crushed it.

“Hey, do you think you could get me some of that mochi?” Sokka whispers as he leans over your shoulder to capture your attention.

“Anything to get me out of here,” you grumble irately. You take the money he hands you before once more leaving your seat to escape into the hallway, and though you do your best to make a swift exit Zuko is still able to match your pace as he follows after you.

“Go away, Zuko.”

“No, not until you let me explain myself!” He demands, quickly maneuvering in front of you to block your path. You come to an abrupt stop to keep from bumping into him and let out a frustrated sigh as you defensively cross your arms over your chest.

“Explain what? That I repulse you?”

“No, that’s not-”

“That you’re ashamed to be seen with me?”

“Spirits, no!”

“No? Then let me guess, next you’re going to say-”

The sarcastic remark you’d prepared to make immediately dies in your throat when he suddenly grabs hold of your shoulders and hastily pulls you forward as he slams his lips upon your own. You let out a muffled gasp, your heart nearly leaping out of your chest as your mind scrambles to process the fact that you’re actually sharing a kiss with Zuko. It’s an awkward uncoordinated kiss that would appear less than romantic to any onlooker, but to you it’s everything you’ve imagined it would be. His lips are intoxicatingly warm, and you find yourself faintly chasing after them when he finally pulls away.

You find yourself at a loss for words as your mouth hangs open in stunned silence. While initially emboldened by the kiss, Zuko now stands flustered with reddened cheeks and a crooked smile. Neither of you seems to know what to say, but he decides to take it upon himself to break the tension.

“I’m clearly not good with words,” he admits with a sheepish chuckle, “so I thought it would be better to show you how I feel.”

“You kissed me,” you state matter of factly, finally regaining your voice as the shock begins to dwindle. “Why?”

“I know my words came across poorly, but I didn’t say those things because I don’t want to kiss you. I mean, clearly I do! I just didn’t want to embarrass you in front of your friends, but I managed to do that anyway. I’m sorry.”

Your features soften as you comfortingly take his hands in your own and offer him a smile of reassurance. “I’ll admit, I was a little embarrassed, but it was only because of how the play depicted our first meeting. I saw humanity in you that day, Zuko, and I’ll never forget it. You’re a good person, and I’d never be embarrassed to be with someone like you.”

“Does that mean you like me too?” He asks with a hopeful gleam in his eyes, earning a giggle from you in return as you throw your arms around him in a tight hug.

“It does.”

“Wait a minute, is that why I never got my mochi that night?” Sokka interrupts dismayed only to receive an irritated look from you in response.

“That’s what you’re focusing on right now?” You point out in exasperation. “You asked to hear the story!”

“And I also asked you for mochi,” he reminds you pointedly only for Zuko to groan disapprovingly as his features contort into a grimace.

“I gotta say, it’s a miracle someone as awkward as you managed to get y/n to be your girlfriend,” Toph compliments with a nod of approval, her comment only serving to embarrass him further.

“I wasn’t that bad… was I?”

“‘Hello, Zuko here’ was pretty bad,” Katara reminds him teasingly only for him to deflate with shame, but you come to his rescue as you move to sit beside him and press a kiss to his cheek.

“I think it’s endearing,” you assure him sweetly, prompting a sheepish smile to form on his lips. “Maybe the story isn’t the most romantic, but what’s important is we’re together now.”

“You’re right,” he agrees with a blissful sigh, taking your hand in his own to press a kiss upon your knuckles. “I wouldn’t change a single thing about it.”

“I would,” Toph says unabashedly, the room filling with laughter at her unfiltered nature. Though it’s at your expense, you don’t mind the teasing. It feels just like old times, and you can’t think of anything better than to be here surrounded by friends as you reminisce on your past.

You truly wouldn’t change a thing.

~~~

It’s exactly the kind of party Zuko usually avoids, but Sokka had dragged him out under the guise of "celebrating the end of finals," which really just meant Sokka wanted an excuse to drink out of a red solo cup that wasn't in their own messy apartment.

Zuko leans against the doorframe of the kitchen, his fingers hooked into the front pockets of his jeans. He feels entirely out of place, a dark smudge against the neon-soaked canvas of the room. Beside him, Sokka is loudly debating some trivial sports statistic with Katara, who is crushing a lime into her drink with a look of intense concentration. Aang and Toph are somewhere in the thick of the crowd, Toph likely causing a hazard on the makeshift dance floor while Aang tries to ensure no one actually gets hurt.

It’s the Gaang. It’s always been the Gaang. Except it hasn’t been, not really, for exactly three hundred and sixty-five days.

Zuko takes a slow sip of his lukewarm beer, the bitterness coating his tongue, doing absolutely nothing to wash away the phantom taste of regret. He shouldn't be thinking about the timeline. He shouldn't have the exact date burned into his skull like a brand, but every time May rolls around, the air gets too heavy to breathe.

"Hey, man, you're doing that thing again," Sokka’s voice cuts through the thumping bass, a heavy hand dropping onto Zuko’s shoulder. "The brooding thing. Drink your beer. Look alive. Jet actually bought the name-brand chips for once."

"I'm fine," Zuko mutters, twisting his shoulder slightly to shake off Sokka's hand. He isn't fine. He hasn't been fine in a year, but admitting that aloud feels like breaking a scab that took twelve months to form.

"You're a terrible liar," Katara says, not unkindly, though her blue eyes scan his face with that sharp perception she always uses when she thinks he's spiraling. "If you want to leave, Zuko, we can go. Honestly, Jet’s parties always end with someone putting a hole in the wall anyway."

"No, it's fine. Stay," Zuko says, his eyes drifting away from his friends, scanning the shifting sea of bodies under the blue strobes.

And then, his heart stops.

It isn't a metaphorical sensation. It is a violent, physical halt, a sudden, freezing vacuum in his chest that makes his breath catch in his throat. The noise of the party—the laughter, the screeching bass, Sokka’s voice—instantly drops into a dull, underwater hum.

Across the room, standing completely static against the faded wallpaper of the living room wall, is you.

Zuko’s grip on his beer can tightens until the aluminum groans and dents beneath his knuckles. He freezes, staring through the haze of blue light and drifting vapor clouds, convinced for a terrifying second that he is finally hallucinating from the sheer weight of his own guilt.

But it’s you.

It’s undeniably you.

You’re nursing a red solo cup, your fingers wrapped loosely around the plastic, holding it near your chest like a shield. Two girls from your major—girls Zuko vaguely remembers meeting at a campus coffee shop a lifetime ago—are standing on either side of you, laughing dramatically, their mouths moving in animated sentences. But you aren't laughing. You’re just nodding along, polite, as your eyes stare blankly out at the throngs of dancing college students.

You look entirely different. And yet, you look exactly the same.

The first thing that hits Zuko like a physical blow is your hair. The soft, familiar dark strands he used to spend hours twisting around his fingers late at night, burying his face into when the nightmares got too loud, are gone. In their place is a sharp, striking platinum blonde that catches the blue neon light and turns almost silver. It changes your entire aura, sharpening the soft edges he knew by heart, making you look distant, and utterly untouchable.

As you tilt your head back to take a slow, measured sip of your drink, the strobes flash, catching the glint of silver on your face. Zuko’s breath hitches. A small, delicate silver hoop is pierced through your right eyebrow. It’s tiny, but on you, it looks incredibly rebellious, a deliberate mark of a life lived entirely outside of the boundaries he had once drawn around the two of you.

"Zuko? Earth to Zuko—" Sokka starts, trailing off as he follows the unwavering, dead-eyed trajectory of Zuko’s stare.

Sokka goes completely quiet. Beside him, Katara gasps softly, her hand flying to her mouth.

"Oh my god," Katara whispers, her voice sounding small, cracked beneath the weight of the bass. "Is that...?"

"Yeah," Sokka says, his usual boisterous energy instantly evaporating, replaced by a tense, uncomfortable sobriety. "Yeah, that's her."

The silence that settles over the three of them is heavy, a thick, suffocating blanket of history that none of them know how to lift. For three years, you hadn't just been Zuko’s girlfriend; you had been the glue. You were the one who remembered everyone's birthdays, the one who bought the specific snacks Toph liked, the one who sat on the porch with Katara talking about life until the sun came up, the one who validated Sokka's ridiculous theories. You had been woven into the very fabric of their lives, a golden thread that held their chaotic, mismatched group together.

And then, a year ago, the thread had been violently burned.

Zuko remembers the breakup not as a single conversation, but as a series of shattering impacts. It had been loud. It had been ugly. It had been a slow-motion car crash fueled by his own deep-seated insecurities, his toxic habit of pushing people away before they could leave him, and the suffocating pressure of his family's expectations. He had screamed words he didn't mean, words meant to cut deep enough to ensure you wouldn't come back, because a sick part of his brain believed he didn't deserve a love as pure as yours anyway. He had broken your heart on the floor of his bedroom, watching you cry until your chest heaved, watching the light completely die in your eyes.

The next day, you were gone. Not just from his apartment, but from the group. You hadn't made them choose—you had just quietly, completely extracted yourself. You stopped showing up to the diner. You changed your route to class. You first ghosted and then left the group chats.

Zuko remembers the agonizing weeks that followed. He remembers checking your Instagram every single hour, desperate for any sign of how you were surviving the wreckage. One night, three weeks after the split, he had opened the app to find your profile completely hollowed out. Every single photo—the anniversaries, the candid shots of you laughing in the passenger seat of his car, the group photos at the beach, the silly selfies—had been deleted. Cleaned out. A digital scorched-earth policy. All that remained was your profile picture, a small, distant shot of you looking out at the ocean, and your name. No bio. No highlights. Just a ghost town.

Now, seeing you standing there in the flesh, the reality of that year-long absence crashes over him.

You aren't wearing the oversized, comfortable hoodies you used to steal from his closet. Tonight, you are wearing a cropped, tight black top that clings to your skin, exposing a sliver of your midriff, paired with dark, form-fitting jeans that accentuate every curve of your hips and thighs. You look stunning. You look grown. You look like a woman who has entirely reconstructed herself from the ashes of a fire he lit.

"She looks... different," Katara says softly, her eyes welling with a sudden, sharp nostalgia.

Sokka rubs the back of his neck, shifting his weight uneasily. "She looks good, Katara. She looks really good." He glances sideways at Zuko, his expression a mix of pity and warning. "Zuko. Don't."

Zuko doesn't hear him. He can't. His eyes are locked on the way your fingers trace the rim of your red solo cup. He knows that habit. You only did that when you were anxious, when you felt overwhelmed by a crowd but were forcing yourself to stay out anyway. You were playing a part tonight, pretending to be the cool, detached girl in the blue light, but he knew the girl underneath. Or, at least, he thinks he used to.

Suddenly, your eyes shift.

It’s as if some invisible current passes through the crowded, sweaty room, a sudden drop in atmospheric pressure that alerts you to his gaze. Through the shifting bodies, through the haze of smoke and the flashing blue strobes, your eyes lock onto his.

Zuko’s chest tightens so hard it hurts.

Your expression doesn't change. You don't look angry. You don't smile. Your eyes, dark and unreadable simply hold his. The silver hoop in your eyebrow catches the neon light once more, a tiny spark between them. For five agonizing seconds, the world completely stops. The music dies. The party vanishes. It is just him, bleeding internally in the kitchen doorway, and you, standing like a beautiful, distant statue against the wall.

Then, you look away.

You turn your head back to your friends, nodding at something she said. It is the most brutal thing Zuko has ever experienced. It isn't hatred; it is complete, total indifference. It is the realization that you have learned how to look directly at the man who broke you and feel absolutely nothing at all.

"Zuko," Sokka’s voice is firmer now, his hand gripping Zuko’s elbow, pulling him back a fraction of an inch. "Seriously, man. Let it go. It's been a year. You guys had a mutual disaster. Don't go over there and make it weird for her."

"It wasn't mutual," Zuko says, his voice a low, gravelly rasp that sounds raw even to his own ears. "I ruined it. You know I ruined it."

Katara sighs, a deeply sad, tired sound. "We know, Zuko. We all know. But she made her choice to leave the group. She didn't want to see us. If you go over there now, after all this time..."

Across the room, Jet appears out of the crowd. He’s holding a fresh drink, his usual arrogant smirk firmly in place, his backward cap casting a shadow over his eyes. He walks straight up to your group, throwing an arm casually over the shoulder of one of your friends, before turning his attention entirely to you. He says something close to your ear, leaning down to be heard over the bass.

Zuko watches, his jaw clenching so hard a muscle tethers in his cheek, as you look up at Jet. You give him a small, genuine smile—not the fake one you gave your friends, but a real, soft amusement. You raise your solo cup to him in a silent toast, and Jet laughs, tapping his cup against yours.

A dark, hot wave of jealousy and pure, unadulterated panic surges through Zuko's veins. It’s a toxic, ugly feeling, because he has absolutely no right to it. He gave up the right to be jealous the moment he slammed his apartment door and let you walk down the stairs alone in the rain, carrying your life in two cardboard boxes. But seeing another guy—especially Jet, who always circled like a vulture around anything beautiful—in your orbit makes him want to tear the house down.

"I need to talk to her," Zuko says, stepping forward, his boots clicking against the linoleum kitchen floor.

"Zuko, stop!" Katara reaches out, snagging the sleeve of his dark jacket, her face tight with worry. "Look at her. Look at how much work she’s done to move on. Don't pull her back into your mess just because you're lonely tonight."

Her words cut deep, sharp and accurate as a knife. Your mess. That’s all he ever was to you at the end, wasn't he? A vortex of unresolved trauma, anger, and constant pushing away. You spent three years trying to heal a boy who refused to believe he was broken, and in the end, the shards of his identity had just cut you to pieces.

He looks back across the blue-lit room. Jet is still talking to you, his hand gesturing wildly as he tells some stupid story, but your eyes have drifted again. You aren't looking at Jet. You’re looking down at your drink, your thumb tracing the plastic rim over and over again, your shoulders slightly hunched.

You look so lonely in that crowd of people. You look like you're throwing a party in your own head, but no one turned up except the ghosts.

Zuko remembers a lyric from a song you used to play on repeat in his car during the quiet, late-night drives when neither of them could sleep. A song about throwing a party just for someone who wouldn't show up. He had thought it was a pretty, melancholic pop song back then. Now, looking at you, he realizes you had been living in that song long before the final breakup. You had been standing in the blue light of his dark moods, waiting for him to finally show up for you, until you simply ran out of breath.

"I'm not trying to pull her back," Zuko says softly, his voice cracking, his eyes never leaving the silver glint of your eyebrow piercing. "I just... I just need to tell her I'm sorry. I never got to say it. Not properly."

Sokka looks at Katara, an uncharacteristic gravity in his eyes, before looking back at Zuko. "And if she doesn't want to hear it? If she tells you to go to hell, or worse, if she looks right through you again?"

Zuko swallows the massive, painful lump in his throat, his knuckles white against his sides. "Then at least she'll know I'm the one standing in the dark this time."

He pulls his arm gently out of Katara’s grip. She doesn't reach for him again, but her eyes follow him with a heavy, prayerful sadness as he steps out of the kitchen and into the suffocating blue heat of the living room.

The bass thuds against his chest with every step he takes, a physical barrier he has to push through. The crowd is a blur of sweaty skin, laughter, and spilling drinks, but Zuko keeps his eyes locked entirely on the platinum blonde hair across the room. With every foot he closes between them, the ghost of their three years together grows heavier, pressing down on his shoulders until it’s almost impossible to move forward.

He remembers the way you used to smell like vanilla and fresh rain. He wonders if you still do, or if you’ve changed that, too, along with your hair and your clothes and your digital footprint.

Ten feet away. Jet is still there, laughing at his own joke. Your friends are taking a selfie, their phones creating a brief, harsh white flash in the blue darkness. You aren't in the photo. You’ve stepped slightly back, your back pressed firmly against the wall, a solitary figure in a crowded room.

Five feet away. Zuko’s heart is hammering so loudly against his ribs he thinks everyone in the room must be able to hear it over the speakers. His mouth is completely dry. He opens his lips to speak your name, to voice the word that has been a silent prayer in his mind for three hundred and sixty-five days.

You choose that exact moment to look up.

Your eyes meet his again, much closer now, completely devoid of the distance of the room. Up close, Zuko can see the faint, dark circles under your eyes, masked carefully by makeup, and the slight, nervous tremor in your hand as you hold your cup. You see him coming. You know exactly what he’s doing.

You don't run. You don't hide. You just set your red solo cup down on a nearby windowsill with a slow, deliberate finality. You look at Jet, pat him once on the arm to interrupt him, and whisper something in his ear. Jet glances over at Zuko, his smirk instantly dropping into a hard, protective scowl, but you place a hand on Jet's chest, shaking your head gently.

Jet hesitates, then spits on the floor, turning his back to Zuko, taking your friends with him as they move deeper into the kitchen.

And suddenly, the space between Zuko and you grows once again as he retreats back to his friends.

The memory of that blue-lit living room doesn’t fade; it stains. For seven days, Zuko carries the image of you standing against Jet’s wall like a phantom limb, an ache that flares up every time he closes his eyes. He had stood five feet away from a girl who looked like a stranger, watching the silver hoop in your eyebrow catch the neon light, watching the way your platinum hair turned silver under the strobes. He hadn't spoken. Sokka had pulled him back, or maybe his own cowardice had finally frozen his boots to the floor. Either way, you had walked out of that house with Jet's friends, and Zuko had gone home to an apartment that smelled like old take-out and silence.

A week later, the humidity of the late semester gives way to the biting, damp chill of a campus winter. The university is emptying out, turning into a ghost town of concrete and bare trees as finals wrap up and winter break descends. Most students have already dragged their rolling suitcases to the airport or packed them into the trunks of their parents' cars.

Zuko walks down the perimeter of the campus, his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his heavy black coat. The air is so cold his breath blooms in white clouds before him, vanishing into the gray dusk. He’s exhausted. The skin under his eyes is bruised from sleeplessness, his mind a chaotic loop of history and the sharp, sudden reality of seeing you alive and breathing in the world without him.

He turns the corner near the commuter lot, intending to just head straight back to his apartment, shut the door, and let the darkness take him until next semester.

Then, he sees the light.

A single, flickering halogen streetlamp illuminates the concrete pad of the campus bus stop. The light is harsh, buzzing slightly in the winter quiet, casting a cone of pale yellow through the encroaching evening.

And standing directly beneath the sign, perfectly centered in the glow, is you.

Zuko stops dead in his tracks, his boots crunching softly against the thin skim of frost on the pavement.

You’re waiting for the campus shuttle, likely heading back to the dorms to grab the last of your things before the university shuts down completely for the holidays. You look so small underneath the massive, rusted metal sign. You’re snuggled deep into a heavy, oversized coat that swallows your frame, a stark contrast to the tight, revealing black top you’d worn to Jet’s party. Big, padded over-ear headphones are clamped over your ears, the faint, tinny vibration of a baseline leaking out into the cold air. Your hands are stuffed securely into your pockets, your shoulders slightly hunched against the wind.

But it’s the scarf that makes the air leave Zuko’s lungs.

Wrapped twice around your neck, pulled up so high it almost touches your chin, is a thick, forest-green knit scarf. It’s slightly frayed at the edges, a little worn from years of use.

He knows that scarf.

He bought it for you two years into your relationship, during a weekend trip to a tiny mountain town when the weather had turned unexpectedly brutal. You had been shivering, your teeth chattering as you tried to pretend you were fine, and he had marched into the first local shop he found, spending the last fifty dollars in his checking account on the heaviest wool they had. He remembers the look on your face when he wrapped it around you himself, tucking the loose ends under your chin, his fingers lingering on your cold cheeks until you smiled up at him with that fierce, unshakeable devotion that used to terrify him because he didn't know how to hold something so precious.

You were still wearing it.

After the shouting matches, after the slammed doors, after deleting every single trace of him from your digital life, after bleaching your hair and piercing your skin to rid yourself of his ghost—you were still wearing his scarf.

The sight of it does something violent to his chest. It’s a contradiction that tears him apart. You had looked right through him in the blue light a week ago, a vision of complete and total indifference. But here, in the quiet winter gray, you were carrying a piece of him close to your throat, letting it keep you warm.

Don't do it, Sokka’s voice echoes in his head. Don't pull her back into your mess.

Look at how much work she’s done to move on, Katara had said.

Zuko takes a step backward, his heel skidding on the ice. He tells himself to turn around. He tells himself that if he walks away right now, he can leave you with your music and your quiet, letting you go home in peace. He forces his muscles to tense, attempting to steer his body back toward the path to his apartment. He grips the fabric inside his pockets until his nails dig into his palms.

Leave her alone.

But his feet don't obey. Like a man caught in a undertow, he finds himself stepping forward into the light. The distance between them shrinks—twenty feet, ten feet, five feet—until he is standing inside the yellow cone of the streetlamp, the heat of his breath mingling with yours in the freezing air.

You don't move. Your eyes are closed, your head tilted slightly back against the cold metal post of the bus stop sign, lost entirely in whatever song is spinning through your headphones. The platinum blonde of your hair looks ethereal under the halogen light, glowing like spun silver against the dark collar of your coat. The silver eyebrow piercing glints sharply, a tiny, defiant star on your face.

Zuko stands there for a full thirty seconds, utterly paralyzed. He is close enough to see the small crystals of frost caught on the wool of the green scarf. Close enough to smell the faint, ghostly trace of vanilla that still lingers around you, cutting through the crisp winter air.

His hand trembles as he lifts it out of his pocket. His fingers are numb from the cold, but as he reaches out, they feel heavy as lead. He hesitates, his palm hovering just an inch above the thick material of your shoulder. Every instinct in his body screams that this is a mistake, that he is trespassing on ground he traded away a year ago.

He closes the distance. He places his hand on your shoulder.

The moment his fingers press into the heavy fabric, you flit your eyes open.

A sharp, violent gasp hitches in your throat, and you flinch away from the touch, your body tensing instantly as your hands yank out of your pockets. Your head snaps around, defensive, ready to confront a stranger who crossed a line at a deserted bus stop.

But the anger in your eyes instantly freezes over.

The color drains from your face so fast it leaves your skin looking almost translucent under the yellow light. Your lips part slightly, the green scarf slipping down an inch, exposing the pale skin of your throat. For a second, just a fraction of a second, the cool, detached mask you wore at Jet’s party isn't there. Instead, your eyes widen with a raw, bleeding shock that mirrors the agony in his own.

Slowly, deliberately, you reach up and slide the headphones down around your neck. The tinny sound of a melancholic synth track leaks into the space between you, a rhythmic, hollow heartbeat.

"Zuko," you say.

It’s the same name, but out here in the cold, without the bass to hide behind, it sounds entirely different. It sounds heavy. It sounds like a word that has been buried in a shallow grave for twelve months, suddenly dug up by the roots.

"I'm sorry," Zuko says immediately, his voice cracking on the syllables. He doesn't even know what he’s apologizing for first—touching her, stopping her, or the entire year of wreckage behind them. "I saw you from the path. I didn't mean to scare you."

You don't break eye contact. Your gaze drops down to his hand, which is still hovering near your shoulder, before rising back to his face. You wrap your arms tightly around yourself, burying your hands back into the sleeves of your coat, pulling the green scarf back up to your chin as if trying to shield yourself from the sheer presence of him.

"What are you doing here, Zuko?" you ask. Your voice is quiet, steadying itself with a visible effort that makes your shoulders tremble slightly.

"I was just walking home," he says, stepping back a single inch to give you space, though every cell in his body wants to do the exact opposite. He wants to reach out and pull the scarf down, to see if the skin beneath it still remembers the heat of his mouth. "I recognize that scarf."

The words leave his mouth before he can filter them, raw and clumsy.

Your eyes flicker down to the green wool tucked against your chin. A small, bitter line forms at the corner of your mouth, and for the first time, the indifference from the party begins to settle back over your features, a protective armor against the cold.

"It's cold," you say, your tone dropping into a flat, matter-of-fact register that makes his chest ache. "It’s a good scarf. I didn't see a reason to throw away twenty percent of my winter wardrobe just because of how it got into my closet."

The words are a calculated strike, a reminder that to you, he has been reduced to a transaction, a historical footnote that can be compartmentalized and utilized for warmth without any emotional tax. But Zuko can see the way your fingers are tightening against your elbows through the fabric of your coat. He knows you. He knows that when you are lying, your left eyebrow twitches just a fraction of a millimeter.

It doesn't twitch tonight, but your breathing is too fast, the white clouds of your breath coming in short, jagged bursts.

"You look different," Zuko says softly, his eyes tracing over you appearance. "The hair. The... everything."

"A year is a long time," you reply, your voice lifting slightly, carrying the faint edge of someone who has spent twelve months explaining their reinvention to people who didn't care. "People change their hair, Zuko. They get piercings. They move on. They don't stay frozen in the exact shape they were when someone broke them."

"I know," he says, the guilt settling into his stomach like a stone. "I saw you at Jet's. A week ago. I was... I wanted to come over. Sokka stopped me."

"Sokka always had better judgment than you," you say, and though the words are sharp, there is a faint, exhausted sadness in them that cuts deeper than any insult. You look away from him, your eyes scanning the empty campus road, watching for the headlights of the shuttle that will save you from this conversation. "You shouldn't have come over tonight either."

"I couldn't help it," Zuko says, stepping back into the cone of light, his voice growing desperate as the reality of the approaching bus threatens to cut his time short. "I've spent a year looking at an empty Instagram profile, trying to figure out if you were even still in the same city. You deleted everything."

"Because there was nothing left to look at," you say, your head snapping back to him, your eyes flashing with a sudden, hot spark of the anger he remembers from the very end. "What did you want me to do, Zuko? Leave the pictures up? Leave the reminders of every time you screamed at me to leave because you couldn't handle someone loving you? Leave the evidence of the three years I wasted trying to pull you out of your own head while you threw everything away?"

The words hit him like a physical blow. He actually recoils a step, his breath hitching. The silence that follows is deafening, filled only by the low, tinny hum of the music still leaking from the headphones around your neck.

"I didn't mean those things," Zuko whispers, his face contorting with an old, familiar agony. "The things I said that night... I was angry. I was scared. My family—"

"Don't blame your family," you interrupt, your voice dropping into a dangerous, quiet hiss that shakes with a year’s worth of suppressed tears. "Do not use your father or your sister as an excuse for how you treated me at the end. I took every single blow your moods dealt. I stayed through the silence, I stayed through the drinking, I stayed when you wouldn't look at me for days. I didn't leave because it got hard. I left because you looked me in the eye and told me I was a burden."

A tear finally escapes your eye, hot and bright, tracking rapidly down your cheek before freezing in the biting air. You don't wipe it away. You just stare at him, your chest heaving under the heavy coat.

"You told me I was dragging you down," you whisper, the words sounding small and broken in the winter night. "You told me you didn't love me anymore. You said it so clearly. And I believed you."

Zuko feels the tears welling in his own eyes, hot and blurring his vision until the yellow light of the streetlamp smears into a jagged halo around your head. He reaches out automatically, his hand moving toward your face to wipe the tear away, to touch the skin he used to know better than his own.

"I lied," he chokes out, his fingers stopping just inches from your cheek as you flinch back again, your teeth clenching. "I lied because I was drowning, and I thought if I didn't push you away, I'd take you down with me. I loved you. I've never stopped loving you. Not for a single second of this miserable year."

The admission hangs in the frozen air between them, a heavy, bleeding thing that neither of them knows how to fix.

You look at his hovering hand, your eyes dark and unreadable. Slowly, you shake your head, a single, definitive gesture that feels like the final turn of a key in a lock.

"It doesn't matter anymore, Zuko," you say softly. The anger is gone now, replaced by that terrifying, hollow exhaustion that he had seen a week ago at the party. "It doesn't change anything. You think you can just show up at a bus stop, tell me you lied, and expect me to undo a year of rebuilding myself? You think this scarf means I'm waiting for you?"

She reaches up, her fingers wrapping around the forest-green wool, pulling it slightly away from her chin.

"I wear this because it's cold," you say, your voice cracking, but your eyes remaining steady. "And because I wanted to prove to myself that I could carry the things you gave me without breaking anymore."

In the distance, the sharp, bright glare of two high-beam headlights cuts through the commuter lot. The low, rumbling engine of the campus shuttle grows louder, its brakes squealing as it rounds the final turn toward the bus stop.

Zuko looks at the approaching lights, panic rising in his throat like bile. This is it. The bus is going to stop, the doors are going to hiss open, and you are going to step inside, disappearing back into the winter break, back into your new life, leaving him alone under the halogen bulb.

"Please," he rasps, stepping closer, his boots touching yours now, the heat of his body close enough to challenge the winter air between them. "Just let me buy you a coffee. Ten minutes. Just let me talk to you without the shouting. Let me apologize properly."

The shuttle pulls up to the curb with a heavy, concussive sigh of its air brakes, the bright white interior light spilling through the glass windows, washing over the two of you, obliterating the soft yellow glow of the streetlamp. The doors hiss open. The driver doesn't look at you two bickering, they just stare straight ahead into the dark road.

You look at the open doors of the bus, then look back at Zuko.

For a long, agonizing second, the girl he loved for three years looks out through your eyes—the girl who used to laugh into his neck, the girl who used to hold his hand until the nightmares stopped, the girl who threw a party in her own head just hoping he would show up.

"Goodbye, Zuko," you say softly.

You don't wait for him to answer. You turn around, your heavy coat swirling around your legs, and step up onto the stairs of the bus. You don't look back as you pull your headphones back up over your ears, clamping the music back down over your head, shutting out the sound of his voice before he can even try to call your name.

The doors hiss shut with a definitive thud.

Zuko stands perfectly still under the flickering halogen light as the shuttle pulls away from the curb, its red taillights bleeding into the dark winter night until they vanish completely around the bend. The green scarf is gone. The platinum hair is gone. You're gone.

The rhythmic, rubbery smack of the neon pink sticky ball hitting the popcorn ceiling was the only sound competing with the frantic clacking of Suki’s mechanical keyboard.

Smack. Drop. Catch.

You lay flat on your back across Suki’s mattress, your head hanging completely off the mattress edge so the room was entirely inverted. From this angle, Suki’s small off-campus bedroom looked like an upside-down sanctuary. Her fairy lights hung upward like luminous vines; her posters of local indie bands were flipped on their heads; and Suki herself was an inverted silhouette, her auburn hair falling toward the ceiling as she aggressively hunched over a final term paper for her sports medicine major.

Smack. Drop. Catch.

"If you leave a grease stain on my ceiling, I'm making you paint over it by yourself," Suki muttered, not looking away from her monitor. Her fingers flew across the keys, executing a vicious sequence of citations.

"It’s silicone. It doesn't leave grease," you droned, your voice sounding slightly nasal from the rush of blood to your inverted head. You tossed the ball again. It stuck for a fraction of a second longer this time, dangling precariously above your face before gravity reclaimed it. You caught it blindly in your palm. "Besides, it’s a distraction. I’m practicing hand-eye coordination. A basic survival skill."

"What you're practicing is sulking on my bed," Suki corrected, finally hitting a final, aggressive keystroke and letting out a long, theatrical sigh. She spun her black mesh swivel chair around to face you, crossing her legs. She was wearing an oversized University sweatshirt—one she had undoubtedly stolen from Sokka—and a pair of thick-rimmed blue-light glasses that sat crookedly on her nose.

Suki had been your anchor since your sophomore year of high school, long before the chaos of college dorms, changing majors, and catastrophic breakups had entered the equation. She was also, by extension of her four-year relationship with Sokka, the only remaining bridge between your current life and the ghost town of your past. When you had severed ties with the Gaang a year ago, Suki was the only one you hadn't cut loose. You couldn't. To lose Suki would have been to lose your own reflection.

She looked at you now, really looked at you, her sharp green eyes taking in the view of your upside-down face. Your platinum blonde roots were starting to show just a fraction of a millimeter of your natural dark hair.

"You look like a bat," Suki observed, leaning forward and resting her elbows on her knees. "And you’ve been throwing that stupid ball for forty-five minutes. Sit up before your brain starts leaking out of your ears."

With a dramatic sigh, you let your momentum carry you, swinging your legs down and shifting until you were sitting cross-legged in the center of her unmade duvet. The sudden rush of blood leaving your head made the room tilt for a brief, dizzying second. You squeezed the sticky ball in your fist, feeling the tacky material deform between your fingers.

"Finals are done," Suki said, removing her glasses and tossing them onto her desk. "Which means I am officially off the clock, and you are officially out of excuses. Talk to me."

"About what?" you asked, aiming for a tone of breezy indifference and failing spectacularly. "I'm fine. Just ready to start moving in here for the break."

"Right. You're so fine that you ran into Zuko at a deserted bus stop at seven o'clock on a Tuesday night, had a cinematic crisis in the freezing cold, and then texted me a single string of incoherent emojis at two in the morning," Suki said, her voice dropping into that grounded, no-nonsense register that usually meant she was about to lay out your life right front of you. "Sokka told me Zuko came back to their apartment that night looking like he’d been hit by a semi-truck. He hasn't left his room in three days."

The mention of his name felt like a cold finger tracing the length of your spine. You looked down at your lap, your thumb brushing against the silver ring on your thumb. "He shouldn't have come up to me. I was just trying to go back to my dorm."

"But he did," Suki countered softly. "And you didn't run away. Not immediately."

"I took the bus, Suki. I left."

"After you let him see you wearing the scarf."

You flinched, the accusation landing cleanly. You pulled the collar of your sweater up instinctively, even though the forest-green wool scarf was currently tucked safely away inside your duffel bag across the room. "It’s a piece of clothing. It was like zero degrees outside."

"You have four other scarves, babe. I helped you pack them when you moved places," Suki said, her expression softening from clinical to deeply empathetic. She slid off her swivel chair and moved to sit on the edge of the bed beside you, her shoulder brushing against yours. "Look, I’m not lecturing you. God knows I watched the two of you burn that bridge down from space. I know how bad it was. I was the one holding the box of tissues while you cried in my bathroom for a month."

"Then why does it feel like you're taking his side?" your voice cracked, the raw, jagged edge of an old wound tearing open in the quiet of her bedroom. The anger came up fast, a defensive shield against the sheer vulnerability of the memory. "You know what he said to me, Suki. You know how he made me feel. Like I was some kind of... some kind of anchor dragging him into the bottom of the ocean just because I wanted him to talk to me. I spent three years trying to decode his silences, trying to make up for the fact that his dad is a monster and his sister is a psychopath. And the second things got hard for him, he threw me away like I was the problem."

"I know," Suki whispered, reaching out to place her hand over yours, stilling your frantic squeezing of the silicone ball. "I’m not taking his side. Zuko was an idiot. He was toxic, he was defensive, and he handled his survival by hurting the only person who actually had his back. I wanted to punch him in his stupid face for months after you guys split. Sokka had to physically hold me back from keying his car."

A small, wet laugh escaped your lips at that, a single tear slipping past your eyelashes. You wiped it away quickly with the back of your hand, cursing mentally. "Then what are we talking about?"

Suki let out a breath, her fingers gently squeezing yours. "We're talking about the fact that it's been a year. A whole year of you bleaching your hair, getting pierced, deleting your social media, and trying to pretend that three years of your life just... vanished. But you're still carrying it. You're carrying it in the way you look at the floor when someone mentions the others. You're carrying it in that green scarf. And you're definitely carrying it in the way I know probably you looked at him under that streetlamp."

You kept your eyes fixed on the floorboards, your jaw tight. "He told me he lied."

Suki paused, "What?"

"At the bus stop," you whispered, the admission tasting like copper in your mouth. "He said he lied. He said he told me he didn't love me anymore because he was drowning, and he thought he’d take me down with him if he stayed. He said he’s loved me every single second of this year."

The silence that followed was heavy, filled only by the distant hum of the apartment building's heating system. Suki didn't interrupt. She just sat there, processing the words, her mind working behind her eyes.

"And what did you say?" she asked finally, her voice incredibly gentle.

"I told him it didn't matter," you said, your voice shaking. "I told him it didn't change anything. Because it shouldn't, right? You don't get to destroy someone for their own good. You don't get to decide what I can handle. That’s not love. That's just... isolation."

"You're right," Suki said, and the absolute certainty in her tone made you look up, surprised. She wasn't giving you a platitude. She was validating the anger you had cultivated like a garden for twelve months. "It is selfish. Zuko has a massive, deep-seated savior complex mixed with a martyr fixation. He thinks the only way to keep things safe is to burn them down before anyone else can touch them. It’s what he did with his family, it’s what he did with his old friends, and it’s what he did with you."

She got off her chair, sitting beside you, forcing you to meet her gaze directly.

"But here is the piece you’re missing," Suki continued, her hand moving to rest on your shoulder, right where Zuko’s hand had been a week prior. "He didn't run away this time. For three years, every time Zuko got overwhelmed, he withdrew. He went silent. He pushed people out. But a week ago, he saw you across a crowded room looking completely different, totally untouchable, and his first instinct wasn't to hide. He wanted to go to you. Sokka had to stop him. And then, a week later, he saw you alone at a bus stop. He touched your shoulder. He told you the truth, even knowing how much you probably hated him for it."

You shook your head, a defensive instinct. "So what? I'm supposed to just forget everything? Go back to his apartment and pretend he didn't break me into pieces?"

"No," Suki said firmly. "Absolutely not. If you went back to him right now, I’d lock you in this room. You worked too hard to find your feet this year to let him knock you over again. But..." She hesitated, searching your face. "You haven't moved on, babe. You’ve just built a very high wall. And you're standing behind it, freezing to death, holding that damned green scarf."

A sob caught in your throat, hot and agonizing. You squeezed your eyes shut, letting the tears fall freely now, the weight of the past year crashing down on your chest all at once. Suki pulled you into her arms, wrapping her limbs around you tightly, letting you bury your face into the stolen sweatshirt.

"It hurts so much, Suki," you choked out, your hands clutching the fabric of her back. "Seeing him... he looked so tired. He had the same dark circles he gets when he doesn't sleep for days. And I wanted to hate him. I wanted to look at him and feel nothing, like I did at the party. But the second he touched me, it was like the last year didn't even happen. I was just... I was just back on that floor, watching him walk out."

"I know," Suki murmured, rubbing your back in slow, soothing circles. "I know, sweetie. Because you loved him with everything you had. You don't just turn that off because he screwed up."

She let you cry for a long time, until your breath slowed and the heavy, ragged sobs turned into quiet, occasional hitches. The room grew darker as the sun set completely outside the window, casting long, gray shadows across the bed.

Finally, Suki pulled back just enough to look at you, her hands resting on your upper arms.

"Here is my advice," Suki said, her green eyes steady in the dim light. "The best advice I can give you after watching this disaster play out for twelve months. Give him a chance to explain himself."

You blinked through your tear-blurred vision, your mouth dropping open slightly. "What?"

"I don’t mean get back together with him," Suki clarified quickly, her tone sharp and authoritative. "I don’t even mean you have to forgive him. But you need to let him sit down, face-to-face, without a bus arriving in five minutes, and tell you exactly what happened in his head a year ago. You need to let him speak his piece, not for his sake, but for yours."

"How does that help me?" you muttered, wiping your nose with a tissue Suki handed you from her nightstand.

"Because right now, you're ghost hunting," Suki said. "You're fighting a version of Zuko from twelve months ago—the version that yelled at you and left. You haven't allowed yourself to see the guy who has been living in the aftermath. If you let him explain, one of two things will happen. Either you’ll look at him and realize he hasn't changed at all, and you’ll finally get the closure you need to drop that scarf in a donation bin... or you’ll see that he’s actually trying to fix his own broken parts, and you can decide, on your own terms, if you want him in your life again. As a friend. As an ex. As whatever."

She leaned back, crossing her arms, a small, knowing smirk starting to form on her lips as she watched the realization dawn on your face.

"You're in control now," Suki added softly. "A year ago, he made the choice for both of you. He ended it. He drew the line. But right now? He's waiting on you. The ball is in your court. You get to decide if you want to hear him out or leave him in the dark. But staying in this middle zone—where you're running away from him at parties and crying over his clothes—is killing you."

You sat in silence, the neon pink sticky ball rolling out of your limp hand and settling onto the duvet between you. You hated it when she did this. You hated how cleanly she could strip away the layers of your anger and expose the bleeding, frightened core of your pride underneath.

She was right. She was completely, entirely right, and it was infuriating.

"I hate you," you mumbled into your tissue, though there was no venom in it.

"I know," Suki smiled, leaning over to press a quick kiss to the side of your head. "That’s why I’m the best friend you’ve ever had. Now, wash your face. Sokka’s coming over with Thai food in twenty minutes, and if he sees you've been crying, he's going to think we fought, and then he’ll try to give us a lecture on conflict resolution using spring rolls as a visual aid."

You let out a genuine, wet laugh, shifting off the bed to head toward her small bathroom. As you turned on the faucet, letting the cool water pool in your palms before pressing it against your swollen eyes, you looked at yourself in the mirror. The platinum blonde hair, the silver piercing—they were still there. They were part of you now. But as you stared at your own reflection, the wall behind your eyes felt just a little bit less heavy.

The ball wasn't stuck to the ceiling anymore. It had fallen, and for the first time in a year, you were actually looking down at your hands, realizing you were the one holding it.

The white screen of the notes app cast a stark, digital glare over your face, illuminating your dark bedroom with a ghostly hum. You had been staring at the same ten-digit number for exactly ten minutes, the cursor blinking rhythmically at the end of the line like a tiny, mocking pulse.

Three hundred and sixty-five days. That was how long this number had sat exiled in the graveyard of your phone's utility folder. You had deleted his contact the morning after the breakup, your hands shaking so violently you’d nearly dropped your phone. It had felt like a necessary exorcism at the time—a frantic attempt to scrub his name, his custom ringtone, and his existence from your life. But a small, terrified part of your subconscious hadn't been strong enough to let the line go completely dead. You had copied the digits, pasted them into a blank note titled simply with a period, and buried it beneath grocery lists, and class schedules.

In case.

It was a pathetic safety net, an admission that even when you were screaming at the walls of your empty room, you weren't ready to let the universe completely erase him.

Now, your thumb hovered over the screen. You highlighted the number, copied it, and dropped it back into the empty 'To:' field of a fresh text message thread. The bubble was blank. The gray text read Text Message, an empty chasm waiting for you to bridge it.

Your heart thudded an irregular, heavy rhythm against your ribs. Suki’s words from the night before echoed in the quiet space of your skull, scraping against your pride. You haven't moved on, babe. You’ve just built a very high wall. And you're standing behind it, freezing to death.

You closed your eyes, took a deep, shuddering breath of the stale dorm room air, and let your fingers move before your brain could sabotage the impulse.

Let's talk. The Daily Grind near Suki's place. 2:00 PM?

You hit send.

The blue bubble shot upward with a soft swoosh. You instantly flipped the phone face-down on your comforter, pressing your palms against your eyes as if the sheer physical distance could shield you from the reality of what you had just done. Your skin felt hot, the adrenaline spiking through your veins so quickly it left a metallic taste on your tongue. You expected to wait. You expected him to take hours, to let the message fester in his notifications while he brooded or debated with Sokka about whether it was a trap.

Buzz.

The phone vibrated against the mattress before you had even drawn your next breath.

Your hand flew out instantly, flipping the device over.

Zuko

I'll be there. Thank you.

The response was instantaneous. It was so fast it was almost terrifying, an validation of Suki's theory that he had been sitting in his own dark room, staring at his own empty screen, waiting for the sky to fall.

The digital clock on your lock screen read 1:00 PM. You had exactly sixty minutes.

The bathroom mirror was a cruel witness to the civil war raging inside your own head.

You stood in front of the glass, a curling iron smoking slightly on the counter, staring at the version of yourself that stared back. You had spent the last forty-five minutes executing a meticulous, calculated transformation that made absolutely no sense given the thesis statement of this meeting.

This was supposed to be an eviction notice. This was supposed to be the final chapter, the heavy iron key turning in the lock of a three-year history so you could finally take off the forest-green scarf and finally breathe.

So why were you wearing baby pink?

You looked down at your outfit, a sudden, sharp spike of self-loathing twisting in your gut. You had chosen a soft, oversized pastel pink cardigan that fell off one shoulder, paired with a short, pleated skirt and thigh-high knit socks that met the hemline with a sliver of exposed skin. It was sweet. It was intentional. It was an outfit that screamed for attention in the softest, most vulnerable way possible.

"What are you doing [Y/N]?" you whispered to your reflection, your fingers tightening around the edge of the porcelain sink.

You had spent a year cultivating your armor. You had wanted to look like someone who could survive a wreck. But today, you had styled your hair into soft, tumbling waves that framed your face in romantic curves. You had spent ten minutes with an eyelash curler and a tube of expensive waterproof mascara, ensuring your lashes were perfectly fanned out, making your eyes look wide, and devastatingly familiar.

You were dressing for him.

The realization hit you like a bucket of ice water. You were standing on the precipice of a final closure, yet a pathetic, lingering part of your heart was still trying to curate the way his mind would hold your image after you left. You wanted him to see the new, untouchable girl, but you also desperately wanted him to remember the soft, sweet girl he used to hold on the couch on Sunday mornings. You wanted him to look at you and bleed from the sheer gravity of what he had thrown away.

"You're pathetic," you muttered, reaching for a nude lip gloss and applying it with an aggressive, defensive swipe.

You checked the silver hoop in your eyebrow, ensuring it was straight, a tiny glint of defiance against the soft pink of your sweater. You didn't change. You didn't put the heavy black boots back on or hide behind a leather jacket. You grabbed your keys, stuffed your phone into your pocket, and walked out into the gray winter afternoon, your heart hammering a relentless, terrifying rhythm against your breastbone.

The Daily Grind was a small, independent coffee shop tucked between a vintage clothing boutique and an old laundromat. It was the kind of place that smelled permanently of roasted espresso beans, cinnamon, and damp wool. Inside, the heating was turned up too high, fogging the large glass windows and turning the world outside into a smeared, gray watercolor.

When you pushed the heavy wooden door open, the brass bell jingled overhead, a sharp, cheerful sound that felt entirely inappropriate for the execution you were about to attend.

You stepped inside, pulling off your gloves, your eyes instantly scanning the dim, wood-paneled room.

He was already there.

It was 1:50 PM. You were 10 minutes early, a strategy to ensure you could choose the table, establish your territory, and be the one waiting. But Zuko was already sitting in a corner booth near the back, half-hidden by a large, leafy fiddle-leaf fig tree.

A heavy, aching sorrow settled into your chest at the sight of him.

He looked like he had been carved out of charcoal. He was wearing his heavy, dark canvas jacket, the collar turned up against a draft that didn't exist inside the heated cafe. A paper coffee cup sat untouched in front of him, the plastic lid off, a faint wisp of steam rising into the air before dying out. He wasn't on his phone. He wasn't reading. He was just staring fixedly at the grain of the dark oak table, his large, scarred hands flat against the wood.

Up close, as you walked down the narrow aisle between the tables, the details of his exhaustion became brutal. Suki hadn't been exaggerating. The skin beneath his amber eyes was dark, a bruised, violet shade that spoke of days spent staring at the ceiling in the dark. His dark hair was messy, longer than it used to be, falling over his forehead in jagged strands that almost touched the old, puckered scar on the left side of his face.

He looked small. For a guy who used to carry himself with a defensive, rigid intensity that filled every room he entered, he looked entirely hollowed out.

As your presence drew closer, Zuko’s head snapped up.

The breath caught in his throat, a distinct, audible hitch that you could hear even over the low acoustic indie music playing from the cafe's speakers. His eyes widened, his gaze sweeping over you in a frantic, unblinking rush. He took in the soft waves of your hair, the glint of the eyebrow piercing, and then, his eyes lingered on the baby pink cardigan slipping slightly off your shoulder.

A look of profound, agonizing recognition passed over his features, followed immediately by a flash of deep, internal pain.

"You're early," you said, your voice sounding detached, a protective mechanism you had practiced during the walk over.

Zuko scrambled to his feet, nearly knocking his untouched coffee over in the process. His hand shot out to steady the cup, his movements clumsy, frantic. "I—yeah. I wanted to make sure I got a table. The one in the corner. I know you don't like sitting with your back to the door."

The fact that he remembered that—a tiny, trivial preference from a lifetime ago—made the wall behind your eyes tremble. You didn't acknowledge it. You just slid into the vinyl booth opposite him, setting your keys on the table with a soft clink.

Zuko sat back down slowly, his eyes never leaving your face. He looked like a man who had been granted a temporary reprieve from a life sentence, terrified that if he blinked, you would vanish back into the gray mist outside.

"Thank you for coming," he said, his voice low, gravelly, and thick with an emotion he was trying desperately to suppress. "I didn't think... after the bus stop, I didn't think you'd ever want to see me again."

"Suki gave me a lecture," you said plainly, resting your forearms on the table, the pink wool of your sleeve bunched around your wrists. "She thinks I'm ghost hunting. She thinks I need to hear what you have to say so I can finally move on."

Zuko flinched at the words move on, his head dropping slightly. He looked down at his hands, his fingers tracing the rim of his paper cup over and over again, the exact same anxious habit you had noticed at Jet's party.

"She's right," Zuko whispered. "You shouldn't have to carry any of it. It was my mess. It's always been my mess."

"Then talk, Zuko," you said, your voice softening just a fraction, the anger from the previous week beginning to melt under the sheer, heavy sadness radiating across the table. "You told me you lied. Why? Why would you look me in the eye after three years and tell me I was a burden? Do you have any idea what that does to a person?"

A single, jagged breath left his lips, and when he looked up, his amber eyes were bright with unshed tears, reflecting the warm amber lights of the coffee shop.

"My father called me two days before I broke up with you," Zuko said, his voice shaking so violently he had to lock his jaw to force the words out. "He... he found out about the academic probation. He found out about the money I was trying to save to get our own place next semester. He told me if I didn't pull my grades up, if I didn't come back home for the summer to work at the firm, he was going to cut off my tuition. All of it. He was going to pull the apartment lease."

You sat frozen, your fingers curling into the pink fabric of your sweater. You knew Ozai was a CEO tyrant—you had spent years helping Zuko navigate the text messages that left him shaking in bed—but this was different. This was total economic and emotional leverage.

"I went into a panic," Zuko continued, a hot tear finally breaking free and tracking down the scarred side of his face. "I felt like the walls were closing in. Azula kept texting me, telling me how much of a disappointment I was, how I was going to ruin everything and to just come home during the summer. And I looked at you. You were sitting on my bed, studying for your finals, laughing at some stupid video on your phone, looking so... so completely pure and safe. And a sick part of my brain just clicked."

He reached out, his hand moving an inch across the table before freezing, remembering his boundaries, and pulling his fingers back into a tight fist.

"I thought about what my father does to things I love," Zuko choked out, his chest heaving under his dark jacket. "He destroys them. He uses them to hurt me. And I convinced myself that if I stayed with you, if I kept dragging you into my family's psycho-drama, my father would find a way to break you too. I thought... I thought I was being a martyr. I thought if I cut you loose, loud enough and mean enough that you’d hate me, you’d run away and stay away from me for good."

He wiped the tear from his cheek with the back of his hand, a frustrated, angry motion.

"But it wasn't about saving you," he whispered, looking directly into your eyes, his gaze raw and entirely devoid of pride. "It was cowardice. I was terrified of failing you. I was terrified of you seeing me lose everything and realizing I wasn't enough. So I broke your heart before my family could break us both. It was the most selfish, disgusting thing I’ve ever done. And the second I walked out that door... I knew I had destroyed the only good thing I had ever built."

The silence that settled over the table was heavy, suffocating, and deeply, profoundly sad.

You sat there, staring at the boy who had spent twelve months living in a prison of his own design. The anger you had nurtured like a shield for a year didn't feel like armor anymore. It felt like ash in your mouth. Suki had been right. You had been fighting a ghost—a cruel, unfeeling shadow from a year ago. But the boy sitting in front of you wasn't a monster. He was just a broken kid who had grown up in a house without love, trying to navigate a world he thought was permanently rigged against him.

You looked at his hand—the one flat on the table, the knuckles still white, a slight tremor running through his fingers.

The weight of the year—the loneliness of the parties, the bleaching of your hair, the digital ghost town, the tears shed on Suki's bathroom floor—it all seemed to converge into this tiny, wood-paneled corner. It was so sad. The entire situation was just a tragedy born of silence and fear.

Without thinking, driven entirely by an ancient, instinctual muscle memory that your pride couldn't stop, you reached across the wood of the table.

Your fingers, small and soft against the oak, slid forward until your palm rested over his trembling knuckles.

Zuko froze. He looked down at your hand, his breath stopping completely, as if he were looking at a miracle he didn't have the right to touch.

Slowly, gently, you turned your hand over, sliding your palm beneath his, threading your fingers through his large ones. His skin was freezing, cold from the winter air he had walked through, but as your fingers locked together, the heat of your body began to transfer into his.

"Zuko," you whispered, your own tears finally blurring your vision, turning the coffee shop into a smear of warm, golden light.

With a ragged, broken sob, Zuko collapsed forward, his forehead coming to rest on his free arm against the table. His grip on your hand tightened until it was almost painful, his fingers clinging to yours like a drowning man catching a rope in the dark. His shoulders shook violently under the dark canvas jacket, the quiet, suppressed sounds of a year’s worth of isolation finally breaking out into the open space between you.

You didn't pull away. You sat in the baby pink sweater you had chosen for him, your eyelashes wet and clumped together, holding his hand tightly across the table while the acoustic music hummed and the winter gray pressed against the fogged windows.

It wasn't a fix. It wasn't an erasure of the last twelve months. But as you squeezed his cold fingers, letting him cry into the dark wood of the booth, you knew the wall had finally come down, and neither of you had to freeze in the dark anymore.

The warmth of the coffee shop stayed with you even after the brass bell jingled behind you, cutting you both loose back into the sharp, gray winter afternoon.

Outside, the air was still bitingly cold, but the heavy, suffocating tension that had defined the last twelve months had finally lifted, leaving a strange, fragile quiet in its place. Zuko walked on the outside of the sidewalk, his hands buried deep in the pockets of his dark canvas jacket, his shoulder occasionally brushing against the soft wool of your cardigan. It was a rhythm your bodies hadn't forgotten—the instinctive way you slotted together when navigating a crowded street, matching each other's stride without a single word.

"Are you... do you have to get back to the dorms right away?" Zuko asked, his voice still carrying that low, gravelly scrape from the tears he’d shed in the corner booth. He wasn't looking at you; he was looking straight ahead, his jaw slightly tight as if he were bracing himself for you to tell him that the coffee was all he was going to get.

You looked down at your boots, watching your breath form a soft, white cloud in front of your face. "Suki doesn't expect me back until later. Sokka's bringing food, but... I have time." You paused, a small, tentative feeling fluttering in your chest. "We could walk. Go down by the lower campus."

Zuko’s head snapped toward you, his amber eyes wide with a quiet, disbelieving gratitude. "Yeah. Let's do that."

For the next three hours, the last year seemed to blur, dissolving into the familiar geography of a history you had both spent twelve months trying to pretend didn't exist. You didn't talk about the breakup. You didn't talk about the screaming matches, or his father, or your empty Instagram profile. Instead, you let the old spaces do the talking for you.

You walked down to the small, gravel-paved courtyard behind the humanities building—the exact spot where you used to hide between classes during your sophomore year. The stone benches were dusted with a thin layer of frost, but Zuko immediately pulled a spare flannel shirt out of his backpack, folding it neatly and placing it over the cold stone so you could sit down without getting your pleated skirt wet.

"You still carry extra layers everywhere," you noted, a soft, genuine smile tugging at the corners of your lips as you sat, pulling your knees up toward your chest.

Zuko rubbed the back of his neck, a faint, dark flush creeping up his neck, contrasting sharply with the pale skin near his scar. "Old habits. Sokka always forgets a jacket, and... well, I used to always make sure I had something for you in case the weather turned."

The admission was quiet, completely stripped of the defensive armor he usually wore. You looked at him—really looked at him in the clear, honest light of the winter afternoon. The platinum waves of your hair caught the pale sunlight, and as you tilted your head. Zuko’s eyes traced over your features, his expression soft, almost reverent.

"It suits you," he said softly, gesturing vaguely toward your face. "The piercing. When I saw you at Jet's, I thought... I thought you looked incredible."

"I needed to change," you admitted, shrugging, your fingers tracing the knitted pattern of your cardigan. "I felt like if I kept looking at the girl in the mirror who had dark hair and wore your old hoodies, I was never going to stop crying. I needed to build someone who could survive without you."

Zuko’s chest heaved with a slow, painful breath. "I'm sorry I made you feel like you had to rebuild yourself from scratch."

"Don't," you whispered, reaching out to touch his sleeve, the canvas rough under your fingertips. "We're not doing that right now. Let's just... let's just be here."

From the courtyard, you walked to the tiny, subterranean convenience store off the main quad—the one that sold the specific brand of sour gummy candy Toph always stole from your purse. The elderly man behind the counter recognized the two of you immediately, his eyes crinkling as he rang up a single coffee and a bottle of tea.

"Ah, the long-distance travelers return," the old man chuckled, entirely unaware of the twelve months of wreckage that had transpired between his last sighting of you. "I haven't seen you two together in months. I thought you forgot about my shop."

"Just busy with finals, Mr. Chen," you said quickly, your heart doing a strange, aching flip in your chest.

Zuko didn't say anything, but as he handed over a crisp five-dollar bill, his hand was steady, his eyes catching yours in a silent, shared understanding. It was a bittersweet sting—realizing that the world had kept a space reserved for the two of you, completely unchanged, while you had been busy tearing each other apart.

By the time you reached the edge of the campus, the gray dusk had deepened into a dark, bruised violet, the streetlamps flickering to life one by one along the avenue. The wind was picking up, rattling the bare branches of the oak trees overhead.

"The shuttle should be here in five minutes," Zuko said, standing beside you at the exact same bus stop where you had confronted him a week ago. This time, however, there were no headphones shielding you, no green scarf pulled up to your chin to act as a barrier.

When the large, white campus bus rumbled up to the curb, its air brakes letting out a familiar, heavy hiss, Zuko didn't step back. He let you climb the stairs first, and then he followed you, his heavy boots clicking against the rubber matting of the aisle.

The bus was nearly empty, a ghost ship sailing through the final evening of the semester. You picked a row near the back, sliding into the vinyl seat beside the window. Zuko sat down next to you, his large frame instantly making the cramped space feel warm and secure. He didn't crowd you; he kept his hands folded in his lap, giving you the space you had fought so hard for over the last year.

As the bus pulled away from the curb, shifting gears with a low groan a heavy, incredibly comfortable silence settled over the two of you. The interior lights of the shuttle were dim, casting a soft, yellow glow over the rows of empty seats. Outside, the storefronts and university buildings smeared into long lines of neon and shadow against the dark glass.

The steady, rhythmic motion of the bus, combined with the emotional exhaustion of the afternoon, made your eyelids feel impossibly heavy. Your head began to loll slightly with the swaying of the vehicle.

You didn't think about it. You didn't debate the pride of it, or the boundaries Suki had outlined on her bed. You just let your body weight shift, leaning sideways until your cheek pressed softly against the thick, dark canvas of Zuko’s shoulder.

Zuko stiffened instantly. For a terrifying half-second, you thought you had made a massive mistake, but then, you felt the air leave his lungs in a long, shaky sigh. The rigid tension in his frame completely melted away. He shifted his weight slightly, leaning into you, his head dropping down to rest against the top of your head, his shoulder forming a perfect, solid cradle for your head.

Your eyes drifted shut. The scent of him—old smoke, cedar, and the sharp, clean winter air—enveloped you completely, a familiar blanket that instantly quieted the restless ache that had lived in your chest for a year. In the quiet, dark space of the moving bus, you let yourself believe, just for twenty minutes, that the wreck had never happened.

The bus ride ended too quickly. When the driver announced your stop over the intercom, the sudden halt of the vehicle made you blink your eyes open, the bright street-lamps outside the window scattering the shadows.

You pulled your head back slowly, feeling a sudden, sharp coldness where his shoulder had been. Zuko looked down at you, his eyes incredibly soft, a quiet sadness lingering in the amber depths as he realized the sanctuary of the bus ride was over.

He walked you out into the night, down the short, concrete path that led to your off-campus apartment building. The building was quiet, most of the residents having already left for the winter break, some of the windows dark and empty.

He rode the elevator with you, walking you to your door and stopped in front, the yellow lights above casting long, stark shadows across the floor. You turned to face him, your keys heavy in your hand, the baby pink cardigan offering little protection against the biting winds.

"Well," you said softly, your voice carrying a strange, floating quality. "This is me."

Zuko stood a foot away, his hands still shoved in his pockets, looking at you as if he were trying to memorize every line of your face. "Yeah. This is you." He took a slow breath, his chest expanding under his jacket. "Thank you for today. Seriously. You didn't have to give me ten minutes, let alone the whole afternoon. It was... it was the best day I’ve had in a year."

"Me too, Zuko," you said honestly, the truth slipping out before you could filter it.

He hesitated, then pulled his hands out of his pockets. He stepped forward, his movements cautious, giving you ample time to pull away if you wanted to. When you didn't move, he reached out, wrapping his large arms around your shoulders, pulling you into a tight, heavy hug.

It was the same hug he used to give you when he came home from a long shift at his campus job—solid, grounding, and desperate enough to make you almost suffocate from the lack of air. You buried your face into his chest, your hands coming up to grip the fabric of his jacket, absorbing the heat of him.

"Have a good break," Zuko whispered into your hair, his voice thick. "Take care of yourself."

He began to pull back, his hands sliding down your arms, his fingers lingering on your wrists for a fraction of a second before he started to turn away, his boots pivoting to head back toward elevator.

The space between you instantly turned freezing cold.

You looked at his back, at the sharp lines of his shoulders beneath the dark jacket, moving away from you once again into the winter night. A sudden, violent panic surged through your veins—the exact same panic you had felt a year ago, watching him walk out on you, but this time, the door wasn't locked from the inside.

The ball is in your court, Suki’s voice echoed sharply. You get to decide.

Before your brain could formulate a single doubt, your hand shot out.

Your fingers wrapped firmly around Zuko’s left wrist, your grip tight enough to stop him in his tracks. Zuko froze, his head snapping back over his shoulder, his amber eyes wide with a sudden, breathless confusion as he looked down at your hand on his sleeve.

You didn't say a word. You turned around, slid your key into the lock of your door. Your hands were shaking so badly as you opened the heavy wooden door. The apartment inside was dark, smelling faintly of vanilla and linen, the blinds drawn against the city lights outside.

The door was slightly ajar, a sliver of yellow light from the hallway cutting a sharp line across the dark linoleum of your entryway.

You turned around to face him, standing in the threshold, the heat of the apartment rushing out to meet the cold air on your skin. Zuko stood right outside the line of the door, his breath coming in short, uneven bursts, his eyes searching yours with a raw, terrifying vulnerability.

"Zuko," you whispered.

You reached up, your fingers wrapping around the lapels of his dark canvas jacket, and pulled him forward into the dark room.

Before he could even draw a breath to ask, you leaned up on your tiptoes, tilted your head back, and brought your lips directly against his.

The impact of the kiss was a physical shock to both of your systems. It wasn't the slow, cautious reconciliation you had imagined during your walk; it was a desperate, starving collision of two people who had been living in a drought for three hundred and sixty-five days.

Zuko let out a low, ragged sound—a mix of a sob and a gasp—and his hands instantly flew out of his pockets. His large palms slammed against the sides of your face, his fingers burying themselves into the soft, tumbling waves of your hair, holding you against him as if he were terrified you would dissolve into smoke if he didn't anchor you to the earth.

The kiss tasted like the tears you had both shed at the coffee shop—salty, raw, and heavy with the profound sadness of a year wasted in silence. His mouth was hot, moving against yours with a frantic, trembling intensity that made your knees buckle beneath your pleated skirt. You gripped the rough canvas of his jacket, pulling him deeper into the dark entryway, your bodies slamming against the wall beside the coat rack with a soft, heavy thud.

The door to the hallway swung shut behind him, clicking into place, plunging the room into complete, velvety darkness, save for the blue neon glow of the city lights leaking through the gaps in the blinds.

Zuko’s lips trailed down from your mouth, his breath hot and frantic against your cheek, before burying his face into the crook of your neck, right beneath your ear. His chest heaved against yours, his entire body shaking so violently you had to wrap your arms around his waist just to keep him steady.

"I'm sorry," he sobbed into your skin, his hands gripping your waist through the baby pink sweater, his fingers digging into your hips. "I'm so sorry. I didn't think... I didn't think I'd ever get to hold you again. I've been so cold."

The sheer sadness of his voice broke something final inside you. You squeezed your eyes shut, letting your own tears fall into his dark hair, your fingers tracing the sharp, familiar lines of his shoulder blades through his jacket.

"I know," you whispered, your voice cracking as you pulled him deeper into the apartment, leading him toward the quiet dark of your bedroom. "I know, Zuko. Just stay."

And there, in the quiet, neon-streaked blue shadows of your room, the wall didn't just come down—it vanished entirely, leaving only the heat of two broken people finally learning how to piece themselves back together in the dark.

The first sensation that filtered through the heavy fog of Zuko’s consciousness was the heat.

For twelve months, he had slept in a bed that felt permanently frozen. No matter how many heavy blankets he dragged from Sokka’s couch, no matter how high he cranked the radiator in his cramped, off-campus apartment, he had spent three hundred and sixty-five nights shivering beneath the sheets, his own skin feeling cold and hollow. It was a phantom winter, a perpetual chill that had settled deep into his marrow the moment he let you walk out of his life.

But right now, his skin was burning. A deep, radiating warmth enveloped him, thick and heavy, pressing down on his chest like a weighted blanket.

Zuko blinked his eyes open, his long eyelashes brushing against a pillowcase that didn't smell like his cheap, unscented laundry detergent. Instead, the air was thick with the gentle, unmistakable scent of vanilla, linen, and the faint, crisp tang of the winter air that had clung to his clothes the night before.

He didn't recognize the ceiling.

He lay perfectly still, his heart instantly doing a sharp, panicked flip against his ribs. The ceiling above him wasn't the water-stained, cracked plaster of his own bedroom. It was smooth, painted a soft, muted cream color that caught the pale, silver light of a winter morning leaking through a set of closed blinds.

Slowly, deliberately, Zuko turned his head on the pillow, his amber eyes scanning the unfamiliar room. There was a small white desk in the corner, a stack of textbooks neatly arranged beside a laptop, a plush rug on the floor, and a duffel bag sitting open near the closet.

And then, his gaze landed on you.

The breath left his lungs in a sharp, silent gasp, his entire body locking up as the reality of the previous night rushed back into his brain like a tidal wave.

You were asleep beside him, lying on your side, your back turned completely toward him. The heavy duvet had slipped down to your waist, exposing the smooth, bare expanse of your back to the warm morning air. In the dim, silver light, your skin looked almost translucent, a flawless canvas framed by the tumbling, messy waves of your platinum blonde hair.

Zuko stared, his eyes wide and unblinking, a terrifying wave of vertigo washing over him.

He was convinced, with a sudden, agonizing certainty, that he was still asleep. This was a nightmare disguised as a sanctuary. He had lived through a dozen variations of this exact dream over the past year—dreams where he would wake up, reach out, and find you breathing beside him, only for his fingers to pass through empty air as the morning light dissolved the illusion, leaving him utterly alone into the silence of the shared apartment.

He felt a desperate, almost violent urge to pinch himself, to dig his nails into his own palm until he bled, just to force his brain to wake up before the crushing weight of the reality could destroy him again.

But then, he felt the weight on his arm.

His left arm was completely outstretched across the mattress, acting as a cradle. Your head was resting perfectly in the crook of his elbow, your platinum hair spilling across his bicep like spun silver. And beneath the heavy covers, your small hand was wrapped tightly around his, your fingers threaded securely through his large, scarred ones, holding on even in the deep vulnerability of sleep.

He could feel the slow, rhythmic pulse of your blood against his palm. He could hear the faint, soft whistle of your breath escaping your lips, your chest expanding and contracting against the mattress.

It wasn't a dream. You were actually there.

A heavy, incredibly aching sorrow mingled with a profound, terrifying joy in his chest. Zuko swallowed the massive lump in his throat, his eyes welling with a sudden, hot burst of tears that blurred the image of your bare back into a soft, glowing smear of silver. He didn't deserve this. He knew, with every shred of his being, that he didn't deserve to be lying in your bed, holding your hand, absorbing the heat of the body he had willfully cast out into the cold a year ago.

Yet, you hadn't pushed him away. Last night, in the dark entryway of your apartment, you had pulled him into a kiss that had entirely obliterated the twelve months of wreckage behind them. You had led him into this room, your hands frantic as you stripped the heavy canvas jacket from his shoulders, your lips never leaving his as you both collapsed onto the mattress, desperate to burn away the isolation in a fire of tangled sheets and whispered, tearful apologies.

Slowly, carefully, as if trying not to disturb a fragile glass statue, Zuko shifted his weight.

He slid his body closer across the mattress, the sheets rustling softly in the quiet room. He closed the tiny, gap between them, pressing his chest directly against the bare skin of your back. The contact was an instant, electric shock of warmth. He curled his larger frame around yours, tucking his knees behind your legs, slotting his body into yours like a missing puzzle piece his muscles had remembered perfectly.

He buried his face into the soft curve of your neck, right beneath your ear, where the scent of vanilla was the strongest. He let his nose brush against the short, soft hairs at the base of your skull, his eyes closing as the absolute reality of your presence anchored him to the earth.

As the heat of his breath hit your skin, you stirred.

You let out a low, soft, incredibly contented hum—a small, sleepy sound that vibrated through your throat and straight into his chest. You didn't pull away. Your fingers tightened their grip around his hand beneath the duvet, pulling his arm just a fraction of an inch closer against your stomach, anchoring him to your side.

Zuko squeezed his eyes shut, a single, hot tear slipping past his lashes and vanishing into the waves of your hair. He held your hand tighter, pressing his forehead against the space between your shoulder blades, finally letting himself believe that the winter was over, and he was finally allowed to come inside as he fell back asleep.

An hour later, you blinked your eyes open, the silver-gray winter light filtering through the blinds and painting the bedroom in quiet, muted tones. For a long, disorienting second, your brain tried to latch onto the usual morning routine—waking up alone, checking your phone to see a blank screen, adjusting to the hollow ache that had lived beneath your ribs for three hundred and sixty-five days.

But the air was warm. The scent of vanilla and linen was entirely compromised by something heavier, darker, and devastatingly familiar.

You felt the solid, radiating heat before you even shifted. Zuko’s chest was pressed flush against your bare back, his large frame curled around yours so perfectly it felt as if your muscles hadn't spent a single day apart. His breath was a steady, warm puff against the nape of your neck, a rhythmic reminder of the reality you had voluntarily pulled into your bed the night before. Beneath the covers, your fingers were completely locked in his, your hand wrapped around his knuckles with a desperate, sleeping grip.

Slowly, carefully, you untangled your hand from his, the sudden absence of his skin leaving your palm feeling instantly frozen. You shifted your weight, rolling over on the mattress to face him, the duvet rustling softly in the quiet room.

Zuko didn't wake up, but as you moved, his brow furrowed slightly, a faint, anxious line appearing between his eyes as if his subconscious were already panicking that you were slipping away. His left arm remained outstretched where your head had just been, his bicep bare and marked by the faint shadows of the room. Without the heavy canvas jacket, without the defensive, rigid posture he used to navigate the campus, he looked incredibly vulnerable. The puckered, uneven skin of the old scar on the left side of his face was pressed into the pillow, his dark hair falling in messy, jagged strands across his forehead.

You lay there, resting your cheek on your hand, your eyes tracing every familiar line of his face.

You didn't regret it.

The thought formed in your mind with absolute, unshakeable certainty. You knew what Suki would say when she found out; you knew the entire communication major cohort would think you were insane for letting the guy who broke you back into your bed after a single afternoon. But looking at him now, in the honest, unfiltered light of the morning, you knew last night hadn't been a mistake. It hadn't been a weak lapse in judgment or a cheap attempt to seek comfort. It had been an exorcism. You had needed to burn down the wall you spent a year building, and you had needed him to be the one to help you do it. Sleeping with him wasn't a regression; it was the first time in twelve months you had felt entirely alive, entirely embodied, rather than just surviving behind a mask of platinum hair and silver piercings.

But as the initial warmth of the morning began to settle, a cold, heavy knot of anxiety started to tighten in your stomach.

You looked at the sharp line of Zuko’s jaw, your eyes dropping to the way his lips were slightly parted. A familiar, terrifying question began to circle in your head, peckish and cruel: Does he regret it?

Your heart did a slow, painful twist. Zuko was a creature of intense, agonizing guilt. You knew him better than anyone else in the world, and you knew how his brain functioned in the aftermath of a crisis. He had spent the previous afternoon crying into the wood of a coffee shop booth, pouring his heart out about his father, his cowardice, and the protective, twisted lies he had told to keep you safe from his family's wreckage. He had been raw, bleeding, and entirely defenseless.

What if he woke up today and realized he had crossed a line he shouldn't have? What if the gravity of sleeping with his ex-girlfriend—the girl he had spent a year trying to save by destroying her—felt like a mistake? Zuko’s savior complex was a living, breathing thing, and you knew how quickly his comfort could curdle into self-loathing if he believed he had hurt you again by dragging you back into his orbit.

You bit your inner lip, a sudden, sharp panic making your chest tighten. You couldn't handle him waking up and looking at you with apology in his eyes. You couldn't handle him pulling the blankets up, scrambling out of your bed, and retreating back into that defensive, silent shell because he thought he had compromised your healing. If he looked at you with regret today, it would break you in a way the initial breakup hadn't even managed.

As if sensing the sudden spike of adrenaline in your system, Zuko’s eyelids fluttered.

Zuko froze. The sleep instantly vanished from his eyes, replaced by a sudden, breathless intensity that made your heart stop. He didn't move a single muscle, his gaze locked onto your face.

"Hi," you whispered, your voice small, cracking slightly in the morning quiet.

Zuko swallowed hard, his Adam's apple bobbing. He reached out, his large, calloused hand trembling slightly as he lifted it from the mattress, his fingers hovering just a millimeter away from your cheek before he hesitated, his knuckles tensing.

"Hi," he rasped, his voice incredibly deep, rough from disuse. He looked at his own hand, then looked back into your eyes, his expression twisting into a look of such intense, concentrated worry it made your stomach drop. "Are you... are you okay?"

The question was loaded with a year’s worth of fear. He was checking the damage. He was looking at you as if he expected you to start crying, to tell him to leave, to realize that the previous night had been a catastrophic mistake.

"I'm okay, Zuko," you said softly, shifting slightly closer to him, trying to close the emotional distance that was already threatening to open between you. "I'm really okay."

Zuko didn't look convinced. He let his hand drop back down to the mattress, his eyes falling to the space between you, his jaw clenching. "You don't... you don't have to say that just to make me feel better. I know last night... I know we didn't plan on this. I know you’ve been trying to move on, and I don't want to be the reason you feel like you took a step backward."

There it was. The guilt. The immediate, suffocating assumption that he was a disease and you were the patient he was infecting.

"Zuko, look at me," you said, your voice firmer now, reaching out to place your hand flat against his bare chest. The heat of his skin was instantaneous, his heart thumping a frantic, rapid rhythm beneath your palm. "Do you regret it?"

The question hung in the quiet room, sharp and heavy as an axe.

Zuko’s head snapped up, his amber eyes wide, flashing with a sudden, fierce desperation that took your breath away. "What? No. No, absolutely not. I could never regret last night." He reached out blindly, his fingers wrapping around your wrist where your hand rested on his chest, his grip tight, almost bruising in its intensity. "I've spent a year wishing I could wake up like this. I've spent three hundred and sixty-five days dreaming about holding your hand in the dark. I could never regret a single second of being near you."

He stopped, his eyes searching yours with a raw, pleading vulnerability that made your own eyes well with tears.

"But I’m terrified that you do," Zuko whispered, his voice cracking completely, a sudden, heavy sorrow breaking through his defensive shell. "I'm terrified that you're going to look at me today and realize that I'm still the same broken guy who ruined everything. I don't want to hurt you again. I’d rather walk out of this room right now and never touch you again than be the person who breaks you twice."

A hot tear slipped past your lashes, tracking rapidly down your cheek and pooling on the pillowcase. You let out a small, wet laugh, a mix of pure relief and the deep, aching tragedy of how much you both still carried. You shifted your body forward, sliding your arm over his waist, burying your face into the warm, solid crook of his neck.

"I don't regret it, you idiot," you choked out against his skin, your fingers gripping the muscle of his back, pulling him down against you until there was absolutely no space left between your bodies. "I don't regret a single thing. I just... I was so scared you were going to wake up and tell me it was a mistake."

Zuko let out a long, shuddering sigh, a sound that seemed to come from his soul. His arms came around you instantly, wrapping around your naked back, his hands large and warm against your skin as he pulled you into a tight, desperate embrace. He buried his face into hair, his chest heaving as he let out a trembling breath.

"It wasn't a mistake," Zuko murmured, his grip tightening until your ribs ached, his voice sounding surer, stronger than it had in a year. "It's the only thing that’s made sense in a whole year. I'm not going anywhere. Not this time."

Zuko’s hands remained splayed across your back, his fingers tracing the dip of your spine with a slow, almost disbelieving tenderness. The frantic, desperate edge of his morning panic had settled into something thick and heavy, a profound quiet that seemed to pool in the space between your chests. He didn't move his head from your hair for a long time, just inhaling the scent of vanilla and the clean, warm musk of you, his chest rising and falling against yours in long, steady increments.

For a moment of silence, he finally spoke. "In my apartment... the light is always gray. Even in the summer, it feels like the sun doesn't quite reach the floorboards. I used to wake up at three in the morning and just try to remember what color your skin looked like when the sun came through the window."

You tightened your arms around his neck, pulling him a fraction of an inch closer, your fingers tangling in the messy, dark length of his hair. "It’s just cheap blinds, Zuko."

"It’s not the blinds," he whispered, finally tilting his head back to look at you.

The proximity was intense, almost suffocating. His amber eyes were clear now, the glassy film of sleep entirely gone, replaced by a dark, concentrated focus that made your skin prickle with sudden, localized heat. The scar on the left side of his face was flush against the white pillowcase, the red, puckered tissue soft under the morning light. Up close, you could see the tiny silver flecks in his irises—the ones you used to count when the two of you were trapped in his bed during summer thunderstorms.

He looked down at your mouth, his jaw clenching slightly, a muscle tensing in his cheek. His hands slid down your back, his large, calloused palms smoothing over the curve of your waist, his thumbs pressing into the small indentations above your hips. He didn't pull away, but his movements slowed, becoming heavy with a sudden, deliberate hesitation.

"Can we..." Zuko started, his voice cracking slightly before he cleared his throat, his eyes rising to meet yours with a raw, almost painful vulnerability. He swallowed hard, his fingers tightening against your skin. "Last night... it was so fast. I felt like I was losing my mind, like if I didn't touch you right then, the floor was going to open up. I want... I want to remember it this time. Without the panic. If you're okay with it."

The question was entirely him—clumpy, honest, and stripped of any game-playing. He was asking for permission to stay inside the boundary you had opened for him, his eyes pleading for a reassurance that he wasn't overstepping the fragile peace you had negotiated.

In response, you didn't say a word. You gave him a small, slow smile, the anxiety that had lingered in your stomach completely dissolving under the fierce, unwavering heat of his gaze.

You shifted your weight, the heavy down comforter rustling loudly as you pulled your legs out from beneath the sheets. In one fluid, deliberate movement, you slid your knees along the mattress, lifting yourself up and straddling his waist.

Zuko let out a sharp breath through his teeth, his abdominal muscles contracting instantly beneath your thighs as you settled over him. You were already bare from the night before, save for your black lacey thong, your skin completely exposed to the warm morning air, while Zuko was back in his dark boxer briefs, the thin cotton doing very little to hide the rigid, heavy length of his arousal.

You sat back on his lap, your knees pinning his hips to the mattress. From this height, you looked down at him, your platinum hair falling forward in soft, silver-blonde waves that shadowed your eyes.

Zuko’s hands found purchase immediately. His palms didn't slide or hesitate; they locked onto the plush, soft skin of your hips, his fingers digging in slightly, his thumbs tracing the line where your thigh met your torso. His skin was incredibly hot against yours, the heat of his palms transferring through the thin lace of your underwear like a brand. He stared up at you, his chest heaving under your hands as you rested your palms flat against his sternum, feeling the rapid, concussive thud of his heart.

"You look so beautiful," Zuko choked out, his eyes darkening until the gold in his irises seemed to catch fire. His thumbs pressured the fullness of your waist, his knuckles turning white against your skin. "You look like a dream I'm not supposed to have."

"I'm not a dream, Zuko," you whispered, leaning down slowly, letting your hair fall across his cheeks like a silk curtain. "You can touch me."

He didn't need the invitation twice. His hands slid up from your hips, his fingers tracing the outer curve of your ribs, his palms rough and warm as they slid beneath your back, lifting you slightly. He didn't even bother pulling his boxers down; instead, his trembling fingers reached for the button fly, parting the dark cotton. With a low, ragged breath, he took out his cock at the hole of his boxers, the thick, fully erect length springing free, slick with a bead of pre.

The sight of him, thick and heavy between your thighs, made a sharp, electric ache flare in your lower belly. You leaned forward, pressing your chest against his, the contact of your bare skin against his warm, pectoral muscles sending a violent jolt of adrenaline down your spine. You pressed your lips against his, capturing his mouth before he could say another word, before his brain could cycle back into the guilt that always threatened to tear him apart.

The kiss was entirely different from the desperate collision in the hallway last night. This was slow, heavy, and drenched in a deep, agonizing luxury. His mouth opened beneath yours, his tongue tangling with yours in a rhythmic friction that made it dizzy for the both of you. Zuko let out a low, vibrating groan into your throat, his arms wrapping completely around your torso, his large hands flat against your shoulder blades, pulling you down until the entire weight of your body was supported by his chest.

His hand moved down to the space between your thighs, his fingers calloused and warm as they slid along the sensitive inner skin of your legs, making your thighs tremble against his ribs. When his hand found the damp, covered aching heat between your thighs, your eyes squeezed shut, a low, gasping breath escaping your teeth as his thumb found the small, sensitive bud of your clitoris, slicking your own moisture over your thong in long, heavy strokes.

"Look at me," Zuko rasped, his voice breaking on the syllables. His free hand reached up to grip your chin, his fingers firm but gentle, forcing your head up until your eyes met his through the blur of your tears. "Please. Look at me."

Your vision was swimming as you stared down into the golden intensity of his gaze. He was breathing through his mouth, his cheeks flushed, the scar over his eye looking dark and stark against his pale skin. He was watching your face with an intensity that felt almost holy, his thumb continuing to stroke you until you were dripping, completely slick and ready for him.

He slid his hand away with a wet, heavy friction that left you shivering, gasping for the space to be filled. Zuko gripped your hips again, his large hands guiding your body upward. You lifted yourself, pulling your panties aside, feeling the tip of his hot length brushing against your wet opening. The heat radiating from him was incredible.

Slowly, you lowered your weight.

The sensation of him entering you was a slow-motion rupture, a thick, stretching fullness that made your breath catch in a choked gasp. Your head fell back, your throat exposed to the silver light as you took him in, inch by inch, your body tight and resisting for a fraction of a second before your muscles remembered the exact dimensions of him, melting around his thickness until your pelvis clapped against his with a soft, heavy thud.

Zuko let out a long, ragged groan into the quiet room, his head throwing back into the pillow, his back arching off the mattress as he buried himself completely inside you through the parted cotton of his shorts. His hands on your hips tightened until his nails left small, white crescent marks in your skin, his eyes squeezing shut as his jaw locked in pure, physical agony.

"Oh my god," he whispered, his chest heaving beneath your palms, his voice a broken, trembling thread. "You're so tight... you're so warm. I forgot... I forgot how perfect it is."

The ache in your lower belly had transformed into a driving, relentless friction that demanded movement. You lifted your hips, sliding up his length until you almost cleared the tip, before pressing down again, the wet, sliding heat of the motion making Zuko let out another low, guttural groan.

You established the rhythm, your hips rolling in long, slow circles that utilized the plush fullness of your thighs against his hips. Every time you dropped your weight, the friction of your bodies created a soft, wet sound that filled the quiet spaces between the sleet against the window. Zuko’s gaze was fixed on the way your breasts moved with the motion, watching how the platinum of your hair whipped against your shoulders as you moved over him.

He couldn't stay passive. His hands moved from your hips to your waist, his arms locking as he began to meet your descents, his hips thrusting upward with a sudden, powerful intensity that drove him deeper against your cervix, hitting the sensitive back wall of your vagina with a force that made your vision go white at the edges.

"Faster," you gasped, your hands flying from his chest to grip the wooden headboard behind him for balance, your fingers slick with sweat. "Zuko, please—"

His thrusts became shorter, harder, a relentless, concussive rhythm.

The friction built rapidly, a tight, coil-spring tension gathering at the base of your spine. Every stroke of his length felt like a match striking against dry wood, the heat spreading through your thighs, your stomach, your throat, until your entire body was shaking with the approach of the cliff.

Zuko was close, too. His breathing had devolved into short, ragged hitches, his teeth bared, his neck muscles tensed as he drove himself into you over and over again, his movements frantic, desperate, as if he were trying to dissolve the last twelve months through the sheer, physical force of his collision with you.

"Look at me," he gasped out again, his eyes wide, wild, and swimming. "Look at me... while I finish. Don't look away."

You forced your eyes open, your breath coming in small, pathetic squeaks as the tension inside you snapped.

Your orgasm hit you like a physical blow, your walls contracting around his length in a series of violent, involuntary spasms that left you entirely breathless. Your head fell forward, a cry tearing out of your throat as the pleasure rippled through your hips, your body shivering against his chest.

The tight, crushing grip of your climax was the final straw for him. Zuko let out a low moan, his hips lifting off the mattress in one final, deepest thrust. He froze there, buried to the absolute root, his body shaking violently as he came inside you, the thick, hot pulses of his release filling you up, a heavy, radiating warmth that seemed to anchor your souls back to the center of the bed.

He stayed inside you for a long time, his chest heaving, his heart hammering against your ribs like a trapped bird. Slowly, the tension left his muscles, and his arms came around your waist, pulling your limp, sweaty body down against his chest as he rolled the two of you over onto your sides, never breaking the connection between your hips.

The duvet was dragged over your shoulders by his large, trembling hand, shutting out the cool morning air once again. You buried your face into his neck, your skin wet with sweat and tears, your legs tangled with his beneath the heavy covers.

The metal-on-metal scraping of a wire whisk against a ceramic mixing bowl was the loudest sound in your apartment, entirely drowning out the soft, muted patter of the snow outside.

You stood at the kitchen counter, wrapped in a plush, oversized cream-colored shirt that swallowed your frame. Your hair was pulled up into a messy, structural topknot held together by a silver hairstick, a few loose, tendrils falling around your face and sticking to the faint sheen of sweat on your neck.

You added a splash of buttermilk to the batter, a small, involuntary smile tugging at the corner of your lips as you worked. For the first time in a while, the heavy, suffocating static in your head had vanished. The apartment didn't feel like a digital graveyard anymore. It felt grounded. It felt real.

From the hallway, the heavy, distinct sound of a floorboard creaking perked up in your ears.

Zuko emerged from the bedroom, his tall frame cutting a striking silhouette against the narrow corridor. He was shirtless, his chest and broad shoulders bare, exposing the hard, clean lines of his muscle. He was wearing only his dark canvas pants from the day before—wrinkled, slightly rumpled from being cast onto the floor, and riding low on his hips. His long, dark hair was an absolute disaster, completely uncombed and sticking up in jagged, chaotic directions from the pillows, falling over his eyes and shadowing the puckered, red tissue of the scar on the left side of his face.

He looked incredibly soft, entirely stripped of the rigid, defensive armor he usually wore to face the world.

"Smells good," Zuko rasped. He walked into the kitchen with slow, heavy steps, his bare feet silent against the linoleum.

"Buttermilk," you said softly, setting the whisk down.

Before you could even draw your next breath, Zuko closed the remaining distance between you. He slid his large, warm arms around your waist from behind, pulling your back flush against his bare chest. Through your shirt, you could feel his skin emit a sleepy warmth that enveloped your back. He buried his face into the side of your neck, his nose brushing against your skin as he let out a long, shuddering sigh of absolute contentment.

"Stay right there," you murmured, leaning your head back against his shoulder, your fingers coming up to rest over his large, calloused hands where they were locked across your stomach. "The griddle is hot. If you crowd me, I’m going to burn the first batch."

"I don't care about the pancakes," Zuko mumbled into your skin, his grip tightening just a fraction of an inch, his thumbs tracing the plush curve of your hip through the thick fabric of the robe. "I just want to stay like this. I feel like if I let go, the room is going to change again."

"I'm not going anywhere, Zuko," you whispered, turning your head just enough to press a soft, lingering kiss to his jawline, tasting the faint, familiar salt of his skin.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

The sudden, aggressive pounding on the front door shattered the quiet of the apartment like a brick through a glass window.

Zuko stiffened instantly, his chest locking up against your back, his eyes flying open. His hands dropped from your waist, his jaw clenching as his head snapped toward the short entryway.

"Who is that?" Zuko muttered, his voice instantly dropping into a low, territorial hiss. "It’s barely nine in the morning."

You blinked, your brain scrambling to catch up with the sudden intrusion before a memory from the previous night hit you like a bucket of ice water. Sokka’s coming over with Thai food... No, that was last night. Suki and Sokka are coming over to help you pack the rest of your duffel bags before the building shuts down.

Your eyes widened in pure, unadulterated panic. "Oh my god. It’s Suki. And Sokka."

Zuko blinked, his expression completely blank for a fraction of a second. "Sokka? Why would Sokka be—"

"They're helping me move the last of my things to Suki’s place for the holidays," you scrambled, your hands flying out to push against his bare chest, trying to steer his massive frame back toward the bedroom. "Zuko, you need to hide. Go to the bedroom. Put a shirt on. Go out the window—"

"I am not jumping out of a second-story window in my pants," Zuko countered, his stubborn, rigid pride flaring up instantly as he resisted your pushing, his boots—no, his bare feet—planted firmly on the floor. "Why do I have to hide? We’re adults. We talked."

"Because Sokka has the emotional processing power of a teaspoon and Suki thinks I spent the last twelve months building an impenetrable wall against you!" you hissed, your face turning bright red. "If they see you like this, they’re going to think—"

Knock. Knock. Knock.

"Hey! Open up!" Sokka’s booming, cheerful voice cut straight through the wooden door, entirely too loud for the quiet morning. "We brought the big rolling cart from the dorm lobby! And Suki has bagels! The good ones from downtown, not the cardboard ones from the dining hall!"

"Just open the door, Zuko," you groaned, throwing your hands up in complete defeat as you realized the battle was already lost. "But for the love of god, pull your pants up."

Zuko rolled his eyes, a faint, dark flush creeping up his neck as he walked out of the kitchen and into the tiny entryway. He didn't look back at you. He reached out, unlocked the deadbolt with a sharp, metallic click, and pulled the heavy wooden door open.

The silence that followed was absolute, heavy, and loud enough to be cut by a knife.

Sokka was standing mid-knock, his hand holding the handle of a blue plastic rolling cart filled with empty cardboard boxes. He was wearing a ridiculous, bright yellow University beanie pulled low over his ears and a heavy winter coat. Beside him, Suki was holding a brown paper bag that smelled intensely of toasted garlic and cream cheese, her green eyes going wide.

The second the door swung back, revealing Zuko—shirtless, hair completely wild, wearing only his rumpled pants from the day before, and looking thoroughly, unmistakably like a man who had just crawled out of your sheets—Sokka’s mouth remained perfectly open, the words dying a violent death in his throat.

Suki's eyes darted from Zuko’s bare chest, down to the low-riding waistband of his canvas pants, up to his messy hair, and then shot straight past his shoulder into the kitchen where you were standing, frozen like a deer in high beams, holding a wire whisk.

Safe to say, they were thoroughly, entirely, and completely SHOCKED.

"I—" Sokka started, his voice squeaking a full octave higher than normal. He dropped the handle of the rolling cart, the metal bar clattering against the linoleum hallway with a deafening bang. He pointed a trembling, gloved finger at Zuko’s chest. "You. What? Zuko? Why are your... why are your nipples out?"

Zuko crossed his arms over his chest, his jaw clenching as he tried to maintain an aura of dignity while being completely bare from the waist up in front of his roommate and his roommate's girlfriend. "Good morning, Sokka. Suki."

Suki didn't say a word for a full five seconds. She just stared at him, then slowly turned her head to look at you in the kitchen.

"You," Suki said accusingly, her voice dangerously quiet, carrying the exact same tone she used when she caught Sokka trying to eat raw cookie dough from her fridge. "What happened to, talking it out?"

You let out a small, pathetic squeak from the kitchen counter. "Suki, it's not what it looks like."

"It looks like he slept here," Sokka accused, his eyes practically popping out of his skull as he stepped into the apartment, completely bypassing Zuko and slamming the front door shut behind them. He grabbed his own head with both hands, his yellow beanie shifting crookedly. "Zuko! You told me you were going for a walk on Tuesday night! That was three days ago! I thought you were dead in a ditch or doing something else weird! I didn't think you were... you were here!"

"Sokka, shut up," Zuko grunted, his face turning an incredibly dark, bruised shade of crimson as he rubbed the back of his neck, his defensive pride finally crumbling under the sheer absurdity of the interrogation. "We talked. We met at the cafe, and we talked."

"And the talking involved losing your shirt?" Sokka yelled, his arms flailing wildly. "Because when I talk to people, Zuko, my shirt stays firmly on my body! Suki, tell him! Tell him about the rules of communication!"

Suki didn't look at Sokka. She walked past Zuko, her boots clicking sharply against the floor, and stopped at the threshold of the kitchen. She looked at the preheating griddle, looked at the bowl of buttermilk batter, and then looked at the faint, unmistakable red mark on the side of your neck that your shirt hadn't completely covered.

A slow, knowing, and incredibly smug smirk began to spread across Suki’s face, her green eyes twinkling with the absolute satisfaction of a best friend who had been proven entirely right, even if the execution was chaotic.

"Well," Suki said, leaning her shoulder against the refrigerator, crossing her arms. "I did tell you to give him a chance to explain himself. I just didn't realize Zuko’s explanation was so... persuasive."

"Suki, please," you groaned, burying your face in your hands, the warmth in your cheeks hot enough to cook the pancakes without the griddle.

Zuko looked between Sokka’s frantic flailing and Suki’s smug expression, letting out a long, defeated sigh. He looked over at you, his amber eyes catching yours through the chaos, a tiny, subtle glint of a smile finally breaking through his stoic expression.

The wall was definitely down. And apparently, the entire apartment building was about to hear about it.

A little bit after pancakes, the heavy plastic rolling cart sat in the center of the living room like an awkward monument to the sudden shift in the apartment’s atmosphere. Sokka was currently wrestling with a roll of packing tape, the loud, aggressive shhhk-shhhk-shhhk of the adhesive tearing echoing off the walls as he tried to construct a cardboard box with maximum structural integrity.

"I’m just saying," Sokka muttered, his voice slightly muffled because he was holding a pair of scissors between his teeth, "there is a proper way to do this. If you don't tape the bottom joints with a cross-weave pattern, the whole thing loses its integrity. And when your shoes fall through the bottom in the parking lot, don't come crying to the guy who literally has an engineering minor."

You let out a soft laugh, shifting on your knees beside a stack of sweaters. "Sokka, they’re just shoes, not bricks. If the box breaks, they’ll just fall softly onto the concrete."

"It's the principle of the thing!" Sokka spat the scissors out into his hand, pointing them at you dramatically. "We are packing for winter break. This is a strategic operation."

You smiled, but your eyes kept flickering toward the closed door of your small bathroom. Zuko had finally been banished there to put on a shirt—specifically a clean grey University hoodie he’d unearthed from the bottom of your laundry hamper—and to do something about the wild, static-induced bird's nest that was his morning hair. Suki had vanished toward the back of the apartment, ostensibly to "check for loose scarves" in your bedroom, but her sharp green eyes had given you a look before she left that said everything.

When the bathroom door finally clicked open, Zuko stepped out. He looked significantly more put together, though the dark circles under his amber eyes were still prominent. He caught your eye across the living room, a brief, silent question passing between you, before Suki stepped out of the hallway, intercepting him neatly near the entrance to the living room.

"Zuko," Suki said, her voice dropping into a calm, authoritative register that instantly made Sokka freeze mid-tape-rip. "Walk with me to the lobby. We need to grab the extra luggage dolly from the front desk."

Zuko blinked, his shoulders tensing under the grey hoodie. He looked at you, then at Suki’s unblinking green gaze. He knew exactly what this was. It wasn't about a luggage dolly.

"Yeah," Zuko said, his voice gravelly. "Okay."

The heavy wooden door of the apartment clicked shut behind them, leaving the living room in a sudden, thick quiet, save for the hum of the old refrigerator.

The metal walls of the elevator was freezing, the damp chill of the winter morning rising up from the lower levels.

They reached lobby, exiting the elevator and walking towards the extra dolly but Suki stopped, turning around to face Zuko. She crossed her arms, her expression completely unreadable beneath her auburn bangs.

Zuko stopped two steps away from her, his hands buried in his pockets, his chin tucked slightly into the collar of his hoodie. He looked like he was preparing for a physical blow.

"I don't know the full context of what you two discussed at the coffee shop," Suki began, her voice quiet but carrying an unshakeable weight that reverberated softly against the lobby walls. "I don't know the details of why you did what you did a year ago, and honestly, Zuko, I don't care. That's between you and her. But I was the one who spent the last twelve months watching her try to put herself back together. I was the one who sat on my kitchen floor with her when she couldn't breathe because she saw an old photo of you on her phone she thought she deleted."

Zuko flinched, his head dropping. His jaw clenched so hard the muscles along his scar twitched. "I know."

"No, you don't," Suki countered cleanly, her green eyes narrowing. "She gave you a chance to explain yourself because she has a good heart—too good, if you ask me. But I swear to you, Zuko, if you hurt her again—if you pull that defensive, self-sacrificing martyr act because things get heavy with your family and you decide she’s a burden—I won't just be disappointed. I will do everything in my power to keep her so far away from you that you won't even remember the sound of her voice. Do you understand me?"

The threat wasn't delivered with anger; it was delivered with the absolute, chilling certainty of a best friend who had high-school-level roots of loyalty.

Zuko looked up, his amber eyes locking onto hers. The defensive, stubborn pride that usually flared up when he was challenged was entirely absent. Instead, his face was dead serious, his posture straightening.

"I swear on my honor," Zuko said, his voice thick. "I don't intend on ever hurting her again. I was a coward a year ago. I thought I was protecting her from my father, but I was just protecting myself from failing. I've spent a year realizing that the dark doesn't go away just because you push the light out of the room. I’m not letting her go again."

Suki searched his face for a long, agonizing five seconds, looking for any trace of the old, volatile boy who used to slam doors and disappear for days. All she found was a tired, fiercely determined man who looked like he had finally grown into his own skin.

Slowly, the tension left Suki’s shoulders. The terrifying, protective older-sister aura faded, replaced by a soft, weary sigh.

"Good," Suki said, a small, faint smirk returning to her lips. "Because Sokka really likes having her around, and if you screw this up, he’ll try to fight you, and we both know you’d destroy him, which would just make my weekends very annoying."

Zuko let out a short, surprised breath—a ghost of a laugh—and rubbed the back of his neck. "Yeah. Okay."

Back up in the apartment, the atmosphere had shifted into something lighter. Sokka had finally managed to tape three boxes, and he was currently sitting on one of them, using an empty cardboard tube like a telescope to watch you fold a blanket.

"So," Sokka said, his voice echoing slightly inside the tube. "Are we, like... official again? Is the Zuko-and-[Y/N] dynamic restored? Am I allowed to invite you back to group chats again?"

You rolled your eyes, tossing a balled-up pair of socks at his face. He caught it with his telescope tube, grinning. "Sokka, we’re just... talking. We’re figuring it out."

"Right, right. 'Talking.' With the shirts off and making pancakes session," Sokka nodded sagely. Then, his expression softened, the goofy, flippant mask slipping away to reveal the genuine, fiercely loyal friend underneath. He set the cardboard tube down on the box beside him. "Honestly? I missed you. Like, really missed you."

You stopped mid-fold, looking up at him.

"The last year was weird," Sokka admitted, looking down at his sock covered feet. "When you left, it felt like this huge chunk of our high school life just got deleted. Zuko was a miserable zombie, which, you know, is his default setting, but it was worse. And the rest of us... we felt like we had to choose sides, even though nobody wanted to. Katara was mad at him, Aang was stressed, Toph kept complaining that the vibe was ruined because nobody was there was no one to steal the good snacks in between classes."

He looked back up, his blue eyes bright with an honest, puppy-dog earnestness.

"If you guys are actually doing this—if you're letting him back in—it means you have to come back to the group," Sokka said, a massive, genuine grin spreading across his face. "You have to come hang out with me, Aang, Katara, and Toph. We’re doing a big reunion thing at Suki’s place next week before everyone flies out for the holidays. You’re coming. No excuses."

A heavy, incredibly warm wave of relief washed over your chest, the final lingering shards of your isolation turning to dust. "Yeah, Sokka. I’d love to come."

The front door clicked open, and Suki walked back in, followed by Zuko, who was carrying a completely unnecessary second luggage dolly with an expression of intense focus. Suki caught your eye and gave you a single, subtle nod.

A week later, the silver-gray sleet had turned into a thick, heavy blanket of snow that quieted the entire city.

You had spent the last seven days settled into Suki’s apartment, which was significantly larger than your own place and smelled permanently of cinnamon tea and the lavender wax melts she kept in the living room. It had been a week of quiet transition—texting Zuko at night without the notes app, cheesy texts, clumsy photos of his morning tea.

Tonight was the night. The reunion.

You stood in front of Suki’s bathroom mirror, adjusting the collar of a soft, dark green sweater you’d chosen—a subtle nod to the color that used to define you without letting it control you. Your platinum hair was pinned back with two simple silver clips, and the hoop in your eyebrow glinted under the warm vanity lights.

"They're downstairs," Suki called out from outside the closed door, her voice accompanied by the muffled sound of Sokka shouting something about calling dibs on the bean bag chair.

Your heart did a quick, nervous flutter against your ribs. You hadn't seen the entire Gaang in one room since the night of the wreck a year ago. You had seen Suki, obviously, and Sokka occasionally through her, but Katara, Aang, and Toph had been distant figures, names you avoided on socials and at school.

"Ready?" Suki asked, when you left the bathroom. She was wearing a comfortable flannel shirt, her auburn hair tied back in a low ponytail. She reached out, giving your shoulder a reassuring squeeze. "They’re practically vibrating through the floorboards."

"Ready," you said, taking a deep breath and following her down into the living room.

The front door was already wide open. Sokka was in the middle of welcoming Aang and Katara, who were completely bundled up in heavy winter coats, their faces flushed red from the walk up the stairs.

"The queen has arrived!" Sokka announced dramatically, stepping aside and pointing a hand toward you as you descended down the stairs.

"Oh my god, [Y/N]!" Katara’s voice broke the air first. She didn't even take off her gloves before she lunged forward, bypassing Sokka entirely and throwing her arms around your neck. She smelled like the cold winter wind and expensive body lotion, her dark curls brushing against your cheek as she squeezed you tightly. "I missed you so much!"

"I missed you too, Katara," you whispered, the warmth of her embrace instantly melting the last bit of ice in your stomach.

Aang was right behind her, his bright gray eyes crinkling as he gave you a huge, enthusiastic hug that nearly lifted your feet off the floor. He had a massive knitted scarf wrapped three times around his neck, looking exactly like the golden retriever of a human being he had always been. "It’s so good to have you back. Seriously. The group chat hasn't been the same without your specific emoji usage."

"Yeah, yeah, enough with the emotional sap," a sharp, raspy voice cut through the room from the couch.

Toph was sitting cross-legged on Suki’s oversized beanbag chair, casually tossing a small rubber ball up and caught it—exactly the way you used to do. She didn't look up, but a massive, rare smirk was plastered across her face. "Took you long enough to come out of hiding, Sparky's girl. The vibe in this circle was getting dangerously boring without someone to balance out Katara’s mothering."

"Missed you too, Toph," you laughed, walking over and nudging her shoulder with your hand. She reached up, giving your hand a quick, affectionate slap before returning to her ball-tossing.

The apartment door opened one final time, and the room went completely quiet for a brief second.

Zuko stepped inside. He had walked over from his own apartment, his nose and cheeks flushed a dark red from the biting cold outside. He took off his heavy black coat, revealing a simple black sweater that fit his broad shoulders perfectly.

He stood in the entryway, his amber eyes instantly scanning the crowded room until they locked onto you.

A year ago, a moment like this would have ended in a defensive comment from him or a sharp, hurt look from you before he retreated to the kitchen to wash dishes alone. But tonight, Zuko didn't hide. He walked straight through the living room, navigating past the shoes near the door until he was standing right in front of you.

He reached out, his large, warm hand finding yours in the space between you, his fingers threading through yours with a quiet, unshakeable certainty.

"Hi," he said softly, his voice a low, gravelly rasp that was meant only for you.

"Hi," you smiled, your fingers tightening around his knuckles.

"Alright, everybody!" Sokka shouted, clapping his hands together and breaking the spell as he dragged a massive box of pizza onto the coffee shop table. "The Gaang is officially back together! Nobody talk about finals, nobody talk about GPA, and for the love of god, someone give Toph a soda before she starts throwing something!"

The apartment dissolved into a loud, chaotic symphony of laughter, shouting, and the familiar, beautiful noise of the people who had known you since the beginning. You sat on the couch beside Zuko, your shoulders touching, his hand a constant, radiating source of heat against your thigh. The winter was still cold outside the glass, but inside, the fire was finally burning exactly the way it was supposed to.

A: Aftercare (what they’re like after sex)

KING of aftercare. Seriously, this man will do anything for you. He’s been training as a prince his whole life, chased the avatar for a while, AND NOW HE'S THE FIRELORD. so his stamina is pretty high, and after sex he’s ready to do anything you ask of him.

B: Body part (their favorite body part of theirs and also their partner’s)

He doesn't have a lot to be proud of with his body(HE'S BASICALLY PERFECT THO), but he’s never really thought about a part of him he likes the most. If he had to choose, he’d probably say his hands, simply because of the pleasure they give you. When it comes to you though he's unable to choose because every single part of you means a lot to him.

C: Cum (anything to do with cum, basically)

Zuko prefers to cum inside you as it feels the most intimate. It also means there’s less to clean up. Though a part of him thinks about how you'll look like with your belly swollen and full of his babies.

D: Dirty secret (pretty self explanatory, a dirty secret of theirs)

I don’t know if this would class as a dirty secret, but he really wants to see you masturbate in front of him. He’s the kind of person to get off on the sight of you getting off.

E: Experience (how experienced are they? do they know what they’re doing?)

Before you, Zuko didn’t have much experience. In fact it is highly likely that he didn't indulge with his previous partners if he's not in a serious relationship.

F: Favorite position (this goes without saying)

Doggystyle.

He LOVES seeing you with your ass up (He also likes pulling your hair from behind)

Cowgirl/Riding.

It gives him easy access to your tits and you clit.

G: Goofy (are they more serious in the moment? are they humorous? etc.)

He’s pretty serious. He believes sex is an intimate thing, and he’s completely invested on making sure you have the best time possible.

H: Hair (how well groomed are they? does the carpet match the drapes? etc.)

He keeps himself pretty neat, usually shaved as it just makes everything easier and cleaner.

I: Intimacy (how are they during the moment? the romantic aspect)

I don’t know how many times I can say that Zuko is a killer when it comes to intimacy during sex. Have you thought about the idea of having rose petals covering the bed and candles around you? Well he pulled it off on your first time with him. Though he still does it occasionally.

J: Jack off (masturbation headcanon)

He doesn't have the highest sex drive, so he’s unlikely to really need to jack off, and when he does, you’re usually around him to help out.

K: Kink (one or more of their kinks)

Temperature play.

He loves it when you get excited over the thought of his hands either being warm or just hot(not enough to burn you though) He knows you get off easily when he does it.

Body worship.

No matter how many times you say that you don't feel confident when it comes to your body, or if you talk about your insecurities. Your body is Perfect to his eyes. That's why his hands are wandering everywhere on your body while he's fucking you.

L: Location (favorite places to do the do)

A traditional man likes a traditional location, so the bedroom is his favorite. Zuko wants you to enjoy yourself as much as possible.

M: Motivation (what turns them on, gets them going)

The thought of seeing you with your belly swollen with his baby.

N: No (something they wouldn’t do, turn offs)

The classic one.

Choking, he doesn't like the thought of accidentally hurting you.

O: Oral (preference in giving or receiving, skill, etc.)

Depends on your mood, whether you ask him if you can suck him off or you'll ask him if he can eat you out.

P: Pace (are they fast and rough? slow and sensual? etc.)

Slow and sensual, he likes taking his time with you. Though he can be fast and rough at times.

Q: Quickie (their opinions on quickies, how often, etc.)

He considers it as a normal practice now since he's the firelord, so naturally, his schedule would be full of meetings.

R: Risk (are they game to experiment? do they take risks? etc.)

AS I SAID. He doesn't like the thought of accidentally hurting you, so no, he's not open to experimenting or taking risks.

S: Stamina (how many rounds can they go for? how long do they last?)

I don’t know if he ever runs out of stamina. I mean, he's trained and was looking for the avatar for three years. So YES HE HAS A HIGH STAMINA.

T: Toys (do they own toys? do they use them? on a partner or themselves?)

He doesn't own any toys, he pleasures you either with his fingers, tongue, or his cock. Nothing more.

U: Unfair (how much they like to tease)

He’s unlikely to tease you to begin with, unless you ask him. If he’s teasing you, it’ll be when one of you brings up the idea of edging you, although it’s not really teasing. It’s a little frustrating being brought right to the edge and then denied that glorious release, but the build up makes it so worth it in the end

V: Volume (how loud they are, what sounds they make, etc.)

OH HE'S THE FIRELORD RIGHT? OFCOURSE HE DOESN'T CARE IS SERVANTS HEAR HIM MOANING OR GROWLING.

In fact he knew they wouldn't even dare talk about it.

W: Wild card (a random headcanon for the character)

Zuko has had many thoughts about letting you tie him up and have your way with him, but he’s just scared to voice those ideas to you. He’s just curious to see what you’d do.

X: X-ray (let’s see what’s going on under those clothes)

7.1 inches long and 2.4 inches thick.

His tip has a faded pink color, little to no veins but some stick out.

Y: Yearning (how high is their sex drive?)

He’s used to keeping his urges suppressed, as they tend to just get in the way of things. But overall he has a pretty decent sex drive. Not high, but not low either.

Z: Zzz (how quickly they fall asleep afterwards)

As I mentioned, Zuko has incredible stamina, so he’s not gonna fall asleep quickly. He’ll clean you up, perhaps even run you a hot bath being the aftercare god he is, and after that, he’s happy to just cuddle with you until the both of you fall asleep.

(FIRST SMUT IN LIKE AGES)

↓REQUEST HERE ↓

At the center of the rowdiness of the Gaang sat Zuko. He looked every bit the Fire Lord—broad-shouldered, regal, and wearing his hair in a topknot secured by the Flame Headpiece—but his posture was relaxed. His arm was draped over the back of the chair occupied by his wife, (Y/N).

(Y/N) was, by all accounts, the "grounding wire" of the group. She was a woman of few words, known for her sharp wit and a impassivity that rivaled Zuko’s own. While Toph and Katara were currently engaged in a loud argument about the best way to steer a sand-sailer, and Aang was trying (and failing) to teach Momo how to juggle berries, (Y/N) usually sat back with a small, knowing smile, sipping her tea.

Usually.

But tonight, the tea had been replaced. Sokka had been "testing" a new batch of fermented plum wine, and (Y/N), being the polite guest she was, had finished three glasses before anyone realized she hadn't eaten dinner.

Zuko felt a soft weight lean against his shoulder. He glanced down, expecting (Y/N) to be tired. Instead, he found her staring at him with wide, glassy eyes, her cheeks flushed a deep, dusty rose.

"Zuko," she whispered, her voice uncharacteristically high-pitched.

"Yes, love?" he asked, his voice softening. He adjusted his arm to pull her closer.

She blinked slowly, her eyelashes fluttering. Then, with a sudden jerk, she pulled away, staring at his hand on her shoulder as if it were a strange spirit. "Oh! Excuse me, sir."

The table went silent. Sokka paused with a chicken skewer halfway to his mouth. Toph turned her head, her milky eyes scanning the room as if she could "see" the shift in the air.

"Sir?" Zuko repeated, a confused smile tugging at the corner of his lips. "Is this a joke? Did Sokka put you up to this?"

(Y/N) smoothed out her robes, her movements exaggerated and clumsy. She looked him up and down, her gaze lingering on the gold headpiece and then the golden eyes that usually looked at her with such adoration. She let out a soft, dreamy sigh that made her sway on her stool.

"You’re... you're very handsome," she murmured, leaning back in toward him, but then catching herself and snapping upright. "But I shouldn't be saying that. A man of your... fire-ness... probably has a lot of ladies waiting for him."

Sokka let out a muffled snort. Katara’s eyes widened. "Oh, no. Zuko, how much did she have?"

"Just the plum wine," Zuko said, his brow furrowing in genuine concern. He reached out to touch (Y/N)’s forehead. "Honey, are you feeling okay? You’re acting a little... displaced."

(Y/N) batted his hand away with a pout that could have melted a glacier. "Don't 'honey' me! You don't even know me! We just met... in this very loud building with the blind girl and the bald monk."

"I’m sitting right here, (Y/N)!" Toph cackled, leaning back. "This is gold. Sparky, she’s gone."

Zuko looked back at his wife. She was currently staring at his wedding band—a simple, elegant gold band that matched the one on her own finger. She looked at her own hand, then his, and her lower lip began to tremble.

"Are you..." (Y/N) started, her voice breaking. She looked like she was on the verge of a tragedy. "Are you... married?"

Zuko took a deep breath, trying to suppress the urge to laugh. He knew how sensitive she was, even when she wasn't tipsy. If he laughed now, she’d never let him live it down. "Yes, (Y/N). I am very happily married."

The reaction was instantaneous.

(Y/N) let out a tiny, heartbroken whimper. She slumped forward, burying her face in her hands on the table. "I knew it! All the good ones are taken by some... some Fire Nation duchess with perfect hair and a mean streak!"

"Actually, she’s quite kind," Zuko said, leaning in close to her ear, his voice dropping to a teasing rumble. "She’s a bit of a lightweight, though. And she’s currently crying into a plate of dumplings."

(Y/N) lifted her head, her eyes rimmed with tears. "Is she pretty?"

"The most beautiful woman in all the nations," Zuko said earnestly.

(Y/N) wailed—a soft, pathetic sound. "It should have been me! I saw you first! Well, I mean, I saw you just now, but I felt a connection, you know? Like... like Agni himself told me, 'Hey, look at that guy with the grumpy face, he’s the one!'"

Aang let out a chuckle, "Zuko, I think you should tell her."

Zuko sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose. He turned back to his distraught wife. "(Y/N), look at me. Look at my face."

She peered at him through her fingers. "I am. It’s a very nice face. Even the part that looks like it had a run-in with a dragon. It adds... character."

Zuko chuckled. "Thank you. Now, look at your left hand."

She lifted her hand, staring at the ring. "I know! I’m married too! That’s the worst part! I’m a married woman pining after a married Fire Lord! We’re both terrible people! We’re... we’re star-crossed! Like that play in Ember Island!"

"Please don't compare us to that play," Zuko groaned. "(Y/N), I am the person you are married to."

(Y/N) paused. She squinted at him, her brain clearly trying to connect the dots through a fog of plum wine. She reached out, her small hand cupping his scarred cheek. Her thumb traced the edge of the burned skin with a familiarity that survived even her intoxication.

"You have a very soft voice for a King," she whispered.

"I’m a Lord, actually," he corrected gently.

"Whatever," she huffed, her pout returning. "If you’re my husband... prove it."

The Gaang leaned in. This was better than any theater performance.

Zuko felt the heat rise to his cheeks. He wasn't one for public displays of affection, usually preferring to keep their romance behind the closed doors of the Caldera palace. But (Y/N) was looking at him with such genuine, drunken suspicion that he had no choice.

He leaned in, closing the gap between them. He kissed her deeply—not a quick peck, but a lingering, sweet kiss that tasted of plums and home. He pulled away just enough to whisper against her lips, "You have a birthmark on your inner ankle shaped like a turtle-duck. And you hate it when I leave my boots in the middle of the room because you trip on them in the dark."

(Y/N) froze. Her eyes cleared for a split second, a spark of recognition lighting up. Then, just as quickly, the fog rolled back in.

She let out a gasp and pushed him back, her face turning a shade of red that rivaled the Fire Nation flag. "You... you scoundrel! You're a mind reader! You've been spying on me and my husband!"

Sokka finally lost it, falling off his chair in a fit of hysterics. Katara was clutching her stomach, laughing so hard no sound was coming out.

"I give up," Zuko muttered, though he couldn't stop smiling. He stood up and scooped (Y/N) into his arms, bridal style.

"Put me down! Unhand me, you handsome tyrant!" she yelled, though she immediately snuggled her head into the crook of his neck. "I’m a married woman! My husband is going to... he’s going to firebend at you! He’s very powerful! And very grumpy! He’s like a big, warm heater with legs!"

"I'll be sure to watch out for him," Zuko said to the group, nodding toward the door. "I think it’s time to take the 'other woman' home."

"Good luck, Sparky!" Toph shouted. "Try not to let her 'husband' catch you!"

As Zuko carried her through the cool night air of Ba Sing Se toward their carriage, (Y/N) continued to grumble.

"You know," she whispered, her voice trailing off as sleep finally began to win the battle against the alcohol. "You smell just like him. Like cinnamon and... and smoke."

"Do I?" Zuko asked softly, stepping into the carriage and settling her onto his lap.

"Mmhmm," she hummed, closing her eyes. She reached up, fumbling for his hand and interlocking their fingers, their matching rings clicking together. "I guess... if I can't have him... you’ll do. But don't tell him. He gets jealous."

Zuko leaned his head back against the carriage wall, watching the moonlit streets pass by. He looked down at the woman in his arms—the fierce, brilliant, reserved woman who usually ran a ministry and advised him on international policy—now fast asleep and convinced she was committing a scandalous act of infidelity with her own husband.