The Visit part two
Bad joke time
What do you call Aang with an eye patch?
The AvatAARRRR!
The group hug gradually dissipated to the point that even the maniacally grinning Toph loosened her grip allowing a heavily blushing Katara to pull away from a Fire Lord who could not look her in the eyes while he tried to be as subtle as he could about adjusting his clothes to conceal……uh….. Katara’s mind went into emergency override as she tried to avoid whatever diplomatic “incident” that would result from pointing out the Fire Lords raging-
“Zuko!”
-Temper! Raging temper, Katara mentally cursed as she anticipated Aang’s patented tackle hug that he liked to give Zuko and judging by his ‘oh crap’ expression he had already realized the dangers of getting hugged by the Avatar while fully-
“Oof!”
-Clothed! Fully clothed, because Zuko was most exceedingly not naked and thinking about Zuko naked and wrestling him to the ground, sweaty limbs writhing in constant competition for dominance was a bad thing, a very very bad thing.
.
.
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Crap.
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.
.
Katara shook herself out of her reverie and was thankful that not all her brain was quite so occupied as she replayed the last few seconds in her head.
Aang had been about to tackle hug Zuko, check.
Zuko had, in one smooth motion, backed up and leaned forward while grabbing the shoulders of Toph’s shirt, check.
He then flipped a very surprised Toph over his head, and held her a few inches above the ground, lest she take affront to this and earthbend him into next week, exactly where he had been standing about half a second beforehand………Check.
Katara looked over to the side where Aang and Toph had tumbled off in a dusty pile of limbs as one green clad arm raised unashamedly.
“I may have deserved that.”
Katara heard a snort of suppressed laughter and was surprised to see Zuko risk a roll of his eyes, a sidelong glance and a smirk of shared private humor, he then jogged over to his two younger friends to help them, and she quickly followed to do the same. Zuko was helping Aang up while greeting him in a far more sedate manner, so Katara went to help Toph who was sitting up and dusting some of her ‘healthy coating of earth’ off.
“Toph are you ok?”
“I’m fine, I’m fine. No need to thank me by the way, just invite me to the wedding.”
Aang who had overheard the young blind girl’s declaration decided to interject.
“Of course we will Toph, air nomad weddings need at least one bridesmaid.”
Katara’s expression froze, Aang didn’t notice and began thinking aloud.
“But with no more monks to do the ceremony I guess I’m going to have marry us myself.” He frowned in consternation. “I am the Avatar though, so I should be able to do that. Right Zuko?”
Zuko coughed discretely into his hand. “I think perhaps you should greet the rest of your guests before thinking that far ahead.” Aang got up and walked towards the other guests, but continued to talk.
“It’s not that far ahead anyway, Katara and I should be getting married this spring, unless there’s another war” He gave Zuko a mildly dirty look, as if the last one had been a personal deliberate inconvenience on Zuko’s part.
“Hmm.” It was a very diplomatic ‘hmm’, neither for nor against, however he did start walking faster. Who said Zuko was a slow learner?
Toph gave Katara a look, it was a look that somehow managed to condense all the verbal barbs, all the heaped scorn available in the world into one quirk of the eyebrow. If it was somehow spread, the entire world, perhaps the universe, in fact everything that was not Toph would suddenly, perhaps subconsciously become aware that they in fact were not Toph, and would lament, from this twist of her lips. It was a feat all the more impressive, for an expression, to come from a girl who did not know what facial expressions looked like. Regrettably for expression coinsures, Katara was watching Aang and Zuko’s backs so she missed the uber-scorn that would have otherwise gone down in the history books, and was left with a relatively mundane expression that only be described as, lost.
“What the hell was that Sugar Queen?” Katara seemed unresponsive.
“But I’m water tribe….” She said in a small voice, far removed from the Master waterbender who took down Fire Lord Azula.
“Hey! Stay with me here, don’t you zone out on me.”
“We haven’t even talked about when……” There were definite notes of confusion.
“Oi! Don’t you ignore me!.”
“We haven’t even talked about if!” anger was beginning to creep in.
“…….” Toph realized something important was going on.
“Who the hell does he think he is!”
“There’s my girl.”
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5