Fic: And That Makes Three
Title: And That Makes Three
Author: SCWLC
Disclaimer: I own nothing. Zip, zilch nada. Not even the normally omnipresent grumpy cat.
Rating: NC-17/M
Summary: Zuko and Mai need help with certain familial issues. Katara assists. Zutara enough to pass muster, I hope.
Notes: So, I have to blame jennibare for this, mainly because it was just recently that that Maikotara fic was posted. Well, that and my penchant for 'the talk' having a role in my fic. That said, I'm going to write this just like Matters of Perception, that is, in the LJ box and without running spellcheck. Because I hate LJ spellcheck. Also, I have no idea what I'm doing here. Lastly, this is based on an amusing little story (that may be completely apocryphal) about Queen Victoria and Prince Albert and a visit to a younger couple. This isn't really that likely, but I loved the idea so much that I'm trying it out anyhow. Oh, yeah, this is my first threesome, so . . . be kind?
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Zuko had often regretted not exploring further what he felt for Katara, but he did love Mai and anyhow, he'd heard some horror stories about how conservative views were in the Earth Kingdom, and the Water Tribes were even more conservative than that. So he hadn't bothered to ask Katara if she'd be willing to be a third in their relationship.
Now that he was waiting for her to arrive back in the Fire Nation in order to discuss something so intimately entwined with his and Mai's marriage, he felt quite uncomfortable. "Are you sure about this?" he asked his wife.
Mai gave him that fixed look and eyeroll that said so expressively that he was an idiot. "It was my idea, wasn't it? Besides, at least you can be sure she'll be discreet."
The ship they were watching finished lowering its gangplank and Katara walked off, greeting them both with a smile. "Zuko, Mai, it's good to see you both."
She looked stunning, having chosen to wear Fire Nation styles of clothing, but in her normal blues. With an uncomfortable tightening feeling under his formal robes, Zuko focussed on not appearing uncomfortable. "It's good to see you too, Katara."
She joined them in their carriage, chatting about Sokka and Suki's first child, Aang's diplomatic work and Toph's latest Earth Rumble win. It was dinner time when they got to the palace, so the inane chatter continued through dinner until finally Zuko was able to toss everyone out but Mai and Katara so they could get down to business. As always, Katara came straight to the point. "So you said you wanted me here as a healer?" she asked. "What's so important that it needs to be this discreet?"
"I can't seem to get with child," Mai told her bluntly. "The succession to the throne is sufficiently in jeopardy that if even a hint of possible barreness gets out Zuko could be backed into taking another wife."
Looking earnestly at Katara, Zuko said, "I don't want to lose Mai, but . . . we just don't know . . ." he trailed off and shrugged.
"Okay," Katara nodded. "I can see why you'd ask me. Zuko, if you'd step out of the room a minute I need to examine Mai first."
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Zuko left, telling them he'd be working in his office, and Mai was alone with the waterbender. She looked the other woman over, seeing just what her husband had seen in her. Katara was brisk and practical, and her honesty would have attracted Zuko as much as anything else, sick as he was of his sister's manipulations. It was something Mai struggled with, but she knew it had helped the both of them every time she told Zuko exactly what she thought or felt. "So, what first?" she asked.
"If you'd take off your clothes so that I can examine you," Katara said, "Then we'll go from there."
The Academy was technically a school for both sexes, but there had been a great deal of segregation and Mai had seen a lot of girls kiss each other. She'd sometimes wondered what it was like. With Katara so close and Zuko's confession that he'd sometimes wished he'd asked Katara to join them, she felt a little curious.
Mai shook off the thought and concentrated on the interesting sensation of Katara's water-covered hand running up and down her body. Suddenly it flowed off her hand, down between Mai's legs and up between them inside her. That was when Katara made a noise that was positively bizarre. It was kind of a cross between a growl, a shriek and wordless inquiry. "What's wrong?" Mai demanded.
She was soundly ignored by Katara who bolted to the door, and came back moments later dragging Zuko by the ear. "Ow! Katara! What?" he asked as she practically flung him onto the bed next to Mai.
"What are you both playing at?" she demanded. "Mai's still a virgin!"
The couple exchanged looks. "What are you talking about?" Zuko asked.
"What are . . . do Fire Nation men just not shove their dicks all the way in?" Katara demanded, throwing her hands in the air with an excess of exasperation.
With a sinking sense of revelation, Mai said, "That's what that maid was . . . gesturing." She felt . . . disturbed.
"The . . ." Katara seemed on the verge of having an apoplectic fit. "Where was your mother in all this?"
"Mother just said that getting children was uncomfortable when it wasn't downright painful and that I'd understand when my husband got me with child," Mai felt as though she ought to explain. "I simply assumed she was talking about once the pregnancy had taken hold."
The waterbender made the noise again, and turned to Zuko. "What about you? I can't believe Iroh would have missed explaining the Facts of Life to you."
"The Facts of . . ." Zuko looked as confused as Mai still felt, and she was a little unreasonably relieved it wasn't just her. Suddenly he frowned, and said, "He tried to bring something like that up, but I was more interested in capturing the Avatar and training and I'm pretty sure I threw him out every time he tried." His frown intensified and he added, "He said something about letting the soldier's talk educating me being better than nothing."
"Oh," said Katara, now looking blank. "Oh." Several seconds passed as she slowly joined them sitting on the bed. Then she started making smothered noises before giving in to hysterical laughter. She laughed so hard she slid to the floor with a thump. Mai glared at her, and knew Zuko was doing so as well. "Tui and La!" Katara shrieked, ignoring them, "I'm going to have to . . ." she trailed off into giggles for another minute before reasserting control over herself finally.
"Are you quite finished?" Zuko demanded.
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Katara took in a deep breath and nodded. "Okay. The reason you two aren't having children is because you're not having sex," she explained. "Sleeping together is a euphemism for sex, not literally what you need to do to get pregnant."
The couple sitting on the bed, looking attentively at her made Katara have to redouble her grasp on a clinical delivery. "Mai, it was very easy for me to know that you hadn't ever had sex because your maidenhead is still intact. Actually, I'm kind of surprised it is, since a lot of falls and vigorous activity can make it break, but . . ." she shrugged. "When you have sex for the first time, there's a membrane inside you that gets broken."
Mai promptly frowned. "Does it heal and get rebroken every time? Is that why mother said it's painful?"
Despite her best efforts, Katara winced. "Your parents and guardians should have explained this," she sighed. "No, it only breaks the first time, and it should only be painful the first time," Katara told her. A thought occurred to her. "If she had the same explanation as you did, though, that would explain why she doesn't know enough to make it fun."
"Fun?" Zuko and Mai chorused.
Choosing not to go there yet, Katara moved on to the next practical part of her little explanation. "Zuko, has . . . " This was going to be even more humiliating than the time she'd been hiding from Gran-gran to avoid chores and got stuck listening to her father explain this to Sokka, then getting caught. She ploughed forward. "Has your . . . penis ever stiffened up?" She was turned red to match Mai and Zuko's bedspread, she knew that.
Zuko flushed. "Yes," he muttered. "Why?"
"Because it has to . . . you have to get it that way to . . . to put it inside of Mai, so you can release your seed in her so she'll get pregnant."
The looks on their faces were appalled.
"I have to make it get that way on purpose?" Zuko asked, eyes wide. "After all those years of hoping it would stop doing that and I'm supposed to do that on purpose?"
Mai turned to him. "It does that more than just in the morning?" she asked him. "Wait, is that why you were always wearing that really long tunic?"
"Yes," Zuko gritted out.
The urge to descend to hysterical laughter again nearly took hold of Katara, but she held it back by sheer force of will. She turned back to Mai. "Men have an easier time with sex because they just have to . . . to stimulate their . . . stiffness," she said, making a mental note to cover all the normal euphemisms with them both later. "Once it's been done enough, they . . . sort of spurt out their seed from the end of the-"
Zuko interrupted her. "Wait, is that why I woke up with a wet spot in my bed all the time?"
"Yes." She didn't trust herself to say anything else. She just made a mental note to write a scathing letter to Iroh about the gaps in his nephew's education.
"That's normal?"
"Yes."
He seemed to sag in relief. "So I wasn't wetting the bed then. Thank Agni."
Katara glanced at Mai and they both rolled their eyes. Only Zuko. Then Mai cut in. "So, you were saying about men finding it easier?"
Grateful to move on, Katara nodded. "Sex can be a lot of fun," she promised Mai. "You just have to make sure that your partner, that is, Zuko, knows what you like and what you want. You need to get touched in the right ways so that your centre," Katara pointed at the private space between Mai's legs, "becomes wet and slippery."
Suddenly, several things seemed to come together in Mai's head, and she asked, "Like when Zuko and I are kissing?"
With a sigh of relief that understanding was progressing, Katara nodded. "Probably just like that. Zuko's probably gotten hard when you were both kissing too."
From the look on the Fire Lord's face, that seemed to be the case. Since they both seemed to have gotten the gist of things, Katara stood. "Okay, so, I'll go into the library and find some scrolls that have diagrams and things and you two will probably be able to figure the rest out on your own."
The look Zuko turned on her was like a bunny-weasel in the lamplight. Wide and frightened. "Couldn't you just . . . help?" he asked.
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Katara looked poleaxed. "Help?" she echoed. "How am I supposed to help?"
"Just . . . stay and . . . make sure we're doing things right?" he suggested, feeling like an idiot. It wasn't helped by the fact that Katara was looking at him like an idiot. But so many years of cryptic comments from the sailors on his ship, the men in meetings and everywhere else were becoming clearer. Still, he didn't feel like he really understood this process.
"It's kind of a private thing," Katara pointed out.
Mai spoke up, looking more nervous than he'd ever seen her look. "But scrolls aren't always good for practical advice," she pointed out in return.
Before Katara could say anything else, Zuko said, "So . . . kissing to start, right?" Then he kissed Mai. It was perhaps a little more enthusiastic than he ought to have done, but he needed to figure this sex thing out, and it was too important not to have expert advice. That tension between his legs, the stiffening, it started to happen almost at once. Normally, Zuko would ease away and try to get it to calm down. But Katara said that was important. When Mai moaned into his mouth, something about it made him even harder and Zuko gasped himself.
"Tui and La," Katara muttered.
They pulled apart to see her trying to edge out of the room. Zuko bolted to his feet and grabbed her hand. "Okay, so now what?"
She was breathing as hard as he was, and Zuko saw her stare down at where he'd stiffened up. "Zuko, I really think I shouldn't-"
He gave her a pleading look and she sighed. "Take off your clothes, both of you, and start kissing again."
Several times while they got everything off, Katara tried to bolt, but then Mai suggested that Katara should join them.
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Mai had been wondering what it was like to kiss another woman, and Zuko's fear that he was going to do something wrong was good enough for her to create an excuse like that. Before Katara could make even a token protest, Mai wound her arms around Katara's neck and pressed her lips to the waterbender's.
From there it was easy to get her back to the bed with Zuko's help, and soon all three of them were naked and sharing kisses. Zuko, with his trusty sense of poor romantic timing broke off a kiss to say, "So, now what? Because this," he gestured at his hardened organ, "Is getting a little uncomfortable."
Katara went right back to looking uncomfortable herself, but seemed to come to a decision. "Come here," she said to Mai, and started kissing her again, but this time, her hands began to move across Mai's front, cupping her breasts and lightly pinching the nipples that had stiffened up themselves. The feel of a naked body pressed against her like that, the ministrations of those hands and the press and release of Katara's lips on hers somehow started a deep, slow, pulsating feeling inside of her.
Curious, Mai released Katara's neck and tried some of those things Katara was doing to her back on Katara. The reaction was intriguing. Katara gasped and began kissing Mai's neck instead and her fingers wandered down to the private space Mai's lying liar of a mother had said no one was ever supposed to see, ever, and two fingers slipped around and up to the top and gently put pressure onto something that made Mai's hips buck forward without her permission.
A complaining whine brought both women out of it to see Zuko sitting to the side, looking disappointed and very uncomfortable. Mai looked at the stiffened organ jutting between Zuko's legs and said, "That is not going to fit inside me."
"If we get you wet enough it will," Katara said. "Zuko, come here."
Looking pathetic, he scrambled over the bed. Wordless, Katara pointed at Mai, and Zuko settled down to kiss her. With the comparison, Mai decided she liked both, they were just different. He started trying to do the things Katara had done, but it was clear very quickly that practice was going to be needed. Then he just stopped. Mai opened her eyes from where they'd slid shut as she enjoyed the touching to see Zuko's eyes had closed and he was panting as his hips moved in time with the dark hand that was on his erect flesh.
There was something hypnotic about it all, and even Katara's voice as she chided Zuko couldn't quite break the spell. "Zuko, don't stop. You'd going to have to learn how to enjoy yourself without stopping touching Mai."
His eyes opened and they were dilated. Mai cried out as his lips found their way down to her breasts, and one of his hands slipped between her legs and started to slip about before sliding inside her. A second set of fingers slipped in beside Zuko's, and Mai was barely aware of anything else as they guided Zuko's fingers in and around that space. Her hips seemed to have a life of their own. Dimly she was aware of Katara saying something to Zuko, but she had no idea what, until something very large began to inch its way inside her. She looked up at Zuko, who seemed to be in pain as he inched his way in.
Then there was a sharp pain, which she supposed was that membrane Katara had mentioned, and he was pressed to her, body-to-body. It felt odd. The pain slowly eased off until all that was left was a vague sense of irritation. "Now what?" she asked.
Katara's voice sounded odd as she asked, "You're not hurting anymore?"
"No," Mai told her. "So, what are we supposed to do from here?" Katara didn't respond directly, instead coming up behind Zuko and pulling his hips back. then leaning on him to press him forward again. Mai sighed at the sensation and Zuko repeated it without prompting. In too short a time, however, before the delightful tension and pleasure had gone on to do whatever they were supposed to, Zuko's whole body stiffened up and Mai felt a warm rush inside herself.
Zuko collapsed on top of her with a very goofy look on his face.
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Katara looked at Mai, who looked about as wound up as Katara felt. "He'll get better at it," she promised the Fire Lady. "In the meanwhile," she added with a grin. "Let me show you some ideas of things you can make sure he learns to do."
Then she unceremoniously rolled Zuko off his wife and buried her face between the other woman's legs. Mai was worked up enough that it was quite easy to bring her to orgasm. It was while Katara was smirking at her handiwork that Zuko snuck up on her. Say what you would about the man, he was a quick learner when he wanted to be, and two very warm finger slipped inside her while a thumb pressed on her clit.
She gasped, and her head fell back onto his shoulder as he knelt behind her, taking almost all her weight to hold her up. "Oh, oh La!" Katara panted as clever fingers slipping in and out of her, and the hand on the arm holding her up pinched her nipple. "Oh, Zuko!"
It had been most of a year since her last lover, and Katara blindly reached behind her, because it had been too long. She let her eyes flutter shut for one moment, and then Mai was in front of them, her lips alternating between Katara's lips, her neck, and Zuko's lips. Mai's hands touched everything on Katara that Zuko wasn't getting to, and she heard Zuko murmur in her ear, "It's only fair, Katara. Mai and I had our fun, we should include you, too."
Sandwiched between the pair, any thoughts about how awkward this might be vanished. Two sets of hands from two very fast learners sent Katara into raptures. Three long male fingers were sliding in and out of her, while the other hand played with one of her nipples. Delicate female fingers were caressing Katara's clit and cupping her other breast. Mai's lips were on her neck while Zuko lips were on hers. Everything was blurring, and when the fingers withdrew only to be replaced with Zuko's cock, all Katara could do was ride the sensations.
By some miracle of self-control, Zuko didn't come in her, instead tackling Mai to the bed a second time for an enthusiastic second coupling while Katara lay there, trying to catch her breath. This had not gone the way she'd expected. At all. She turned to watch the royal couple.
It was soon apparent that Zuko wasn't going to last long enough for Mai again, so Katara slid a hand between them and with the added pressure on her clitoris, Mai was soon climaxing with her husband.
Zuko, appearing to be only half aware of what he was doing, wrapped his arms around both women, flinging a possessive leg overtop them before falling asleep. Mai wrapped herself around Katara like a sucker sloth, going to sleep rapidly herself. Katara tried to wriggle away six different ways before giving up. She wasn't getting away, so she just braced herself for awkwardness the next morning.
She woke up to find herself in an empty bed and Zuko and Mai having breakfast at a small table on the far side of the room that had scrolls stacked up all over it amidst the food. "Good morning," Zuko said pleasantly. "I was hoping we could talk," he told her.
After the revelations of the day before, Katara wasn't sure she was up for any talking. "What about?"
"The position of Consort and whether you'd like it."
"What?"
Zuko sighed as though she was being obtuse. "The Fire Lord can have his wife be Fire Lady, or she can be Consort. There's a not-frequently used loophole that would allow me to marry you as Consort."
"What?"
With that same, why-are-you-being-dense? look on his face, Zuko 'explained' further. "When we were on Ember Island, before the comet, we kissed. You've done things for me and helped me in ways no one else ever did. I've always wondered about how things could have been if we'd tried."
"What?"
"Zuko, you're not helping," Mai said.
"What are you . . ." Katara turned away from Zuko to Mai. "What is he talking about?"
Mai smiled that half-smile of hers. "I don't doubt that Zuko loves me, but he's forever on about 'Katara this' and 'Katara that'. He's pretty much in love with you too. I know that I think you're very . . . attractive. So, this morning, Zuko and I talked. We want you to join us. We'd be three instead of two. There's a loophole in the law that would let him do this."
"I . . . what about your people?" Katara asked, playing for time so that she could absorb this crazy information.
Zuko shrugged. "It happens more than you'd think. I know that Yang, the guard outside, is sharing his home with another man and a woman and they're all . . . together."
Katara shook her head to jar her thoughts loose. "I need some time to think about this. How did we get from my giving you both The Talk to three-person marriages?"
"Well, while you think about it," Mai said, picking up a scroll off the table, "Why don't we try some of those scrolls you recommended?" As she spoke, she unrolled it to show an incredibly explicit series of pictures with writing too small to see from across the room, and little arrows all over it.
"Um . . . okay?" Katara said weakly as the couple descended on her. Vaguely she supposed they must be making up for lost time, but the discussion that followed on the precise interpretation of those instructions kept her too busy to think more about it.
The End
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The possibly apocryphal tale of Queen Victoria and her husband on that visit goes something like this. The royal couple were visiting to relatively recently wedding young nobles and the conversation turned to their unhappiness that they didn't seem to be having any children. They were rather worried about this, because they had been trying for quite some time now.
Upon closer examination of the couple's efforts Victoria and Albert made the . . . unexpected discovery that the couple did not know that sex was needed to have children. More, that they did not know what it was. Thus, as a kindness to the poor, undereducated unfortunates, the royal couple explained the ins and outs of what their hosts needed to do in order to have children.
So there you have it. Queen Victoria. Spreader of Important Sexual Information.
So . . . yeah. Don't hold back, tell me what you really think.
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