"Up the stairs, the station where

The act becomes the art of growing up."

~Brand New, "Sic Transit Gloria"

Slate skies, drawn shades. Rustling movement and fingers pressed against a zipper stretched over burgeoning need. Zuko can't breathe where Katara's lungs are even and slow; he can feel them underneath his hands, soft skin cupped in his palms, her hips pressed up into his.

"Do you want to?"

Of course he wants to. He wouldn't want to with anyone else. He feels like a piece of him dies every time he gives himself to her; pretty soon he'll have nothing left but what-ifs and if-onlys.

Zuko nods and Katara tears a condom wrapper with her teeth because her hands are busy with the crease of his shirt over his shoulder and the planes of skin underneath. The air is cold against his body and he wants to shiver but he only hisses when her hand meets his waistband, groaning into her shoulder when her hips start to gyrate against his and tantalize the ache in his groin.

"Please," he whispers. There's so much more than lust in the word, but he tries not to think about it.

Katara notices his fingers trembling. "Are you okay?" She stops fiddling with the condom and pulls the hand into the space between them, the damp space over her chest, her heart. Zuko has to look away. "We don't have to. Please, Zuko, if you're not comfortable then we won't. I don't care how many times we've done it, I would never force you or be upset or hold it agains—" The heavy thing inside of him threatens to overtake him and his lips cover hers; he wants the cold to go away, he wants her to close her eyes so she won't see him trying not to cry.

"I want this." There's relief in being able to tell this one truth, this one certainty, even if the "this" is never specified. He buries himself against her mouth and can feel her smile.

It takes enormous effort to keep his hands pinned to his hips during foreplay, the bed during sex; he has to force himself not to touch the soft brown skin pressed against his too much because it only reminds him of what he cannot have, what he is confined to living without. If he touches her too much it will crack under his weight and be over too soon. His body always cries out with need, and fuck it, he does touch her because she asks him to and of course he wants to and it feels borderline cathartic to have her legs over his shoulders and her hands in his hair and his name on her lips. He always feels like he could lose himself right then, there's something about seeing the woman he loves quaking apart because of hisdoing that sets him on the edge of that precipice begging to have her take him in her hands, her mouth, her folds, and finish him. Swallow me, please, all of me, just fucking take me.He'll watch her back arch over the sheets, her nails digging bloody half-moons into his scalp, and think it's one of the most beautiful things he's ever seen.

The first being her alone, of course.

His stomach feels like it's weighed with stones. The sheets whisper with exasperated disgust. They know, he thinks as he braces himself against her entrance and has to restrain himself from pressing his forehead to hers. They know how pathetic this is.He contemplates the merits of calling it quits now.

She is the one to close the space between them and he gasps, tightness lending to pleasure. He nearly cries when she folds one hand with his and smiles up at him with the kind of trust only she possesses, shredding apart every fortified wall he thought he'd secured to keep the last bit of himself safe from whatever this was. It's going to be the death of him, he knows it, and yet here he is again. He's said since the first time that it would be the last time and he of all people should know he's a terrible liar.

Their hips start to move in practiced rhythm. Slow at first, and then faster as need builds. He tries to stay focused but he will never get used to the feeling of her, every thrust punctuated with a depression that only thickens with the heat building inside him. Katara in unaware (ignorance is bliss) and it's always fascinated him that two people can be so physically close and yet still so separate.

"Please," she groans. "Yes," "Fuck,right there." She encourages him softly, gripping the sheets with whitening knuckles, and he touches her breasts the way he knows she likes and murmurs dirty promises in her ear. All the while he's growing up up up and he wishes everything would slow down so he could just hold her.

He channels his dwindling functioning senses into the fire growing in his lower stomach that coils tighter every time she says his name, threatening to set him ablaze in much-needed release. He has stamina, he'll give himself that much. He throws his head back with a stream of curses and rocks into her harder, the sounds coming out of his mouth joining hers in the air, trying to maintain his hold as long as he can in an effort to prolong what's always too quick. One hand is still holding hers and resentment bubbles to the surface because such an intimate form of contact isn't a loss to her.

"I'm gonna…fuck, Katara, I…I can't hold on much longer, I'm gonna...gonna—fuck—"

Her legs are nearly pressed against her shoulders (how the fuck is someone so flexible) and he buries himself as deep as he can go, skin-on-skin filling the humidity in the small room and coiling him impossibly tighter. Something sparks inside him and he slams his aching cock into her harder.

"Z-Zuko—"

That does it. His name spoken with such desperation and need pushes his entire body into the fizzling abyss beyond and he cries out her name over and over as he spills himself inside of her, shuddering and gasping with the force of his orgasm. Electricity buzzes his body and his fingertips go numb. He's always so much harder with her than he is with anyone else; climaxing is almost a blessing at the end of such physical (and mental) torture.

He apologizes in his head again and again but only speaks in the way his hand finds her clit and rubs the swollen bundle of nerves, grasping her breasts and lowering his head to them and following the map of her moans and pleas and sighs. He is almost happy. She freezes midair and he catches her, he always catches her, and then she's bursting apart and every muscle in her body goes taught as her head slams back against the pillow and her hips freeze upward and it's his name on her lips chanted like a rhythm.

This is the moment he tells her he loves her. She never hears him, too lost in the throes of ecstasy, and sometimes he wonders if she says anything when he reaches his. He wonders what conversations they've had in the things they cannot hear.

"…Fuck."

This will kill him if he's not careful. He's too young to feel this way, like everything is ten years more tired. As if being in love with his best friend wasn't enough. As if having to bite back his tongue every time the words bubbled up wasn't enough; bracing himself into the sheets only deadened him a little more each time. He bares this pain and it's all his own doing, he thinks bitterly. It's on his Top Ten Things I Resent About Myself list. Iroh's words: You can't help who you love, Zuko, but you can help how you handle it;Zuko's words: You did this to yourself, buddy, go ahead and cry about it.Zuko suppresses a wry laugh.

They'd been friends for years but it was only in the last six months or so that they began…whatever. He remembers hazy autumn dusks, faded jeans and sweet tea, the smell of smoke from a musty campfire somewhere far off. Katara had tugged him away and they walked, laughed, tripped over some fallen branch and he had dirt under his nails and she had flecks on her cheek. The conversation steered to sex because they're twenty and twenty-two and when the fuck isn't it about sex, and then it steered to them and sex because wow would you look at that they're both curious and frustrated and wow would you look at that now she's asking him if he wants to—no, if they could, leaving off any pressure or social obligation or reprimand if there were refusal. He had said yes, and then wished he hadn't, not because he felt pressured or because he didn't want to, but because he did. His desire had always transcended the physical but succumbing to the one only made the other worse. He could've changed his mind and he knew with absolute certainty that she wouldn't have minded and probably wouldn't have asked again, but he was an idiot and he loved her and just wanted her, all of her. Now it was like suicide to allow her body under his—or over his—to keep happening.

She had reached for his zipper, him for her bra. He had wanted his first time to be romantic, and he supposes it was.

Everything slowly unravels. Toes uncurl, muscles relax, eyes flutter open. His meet her face, hers the bed. His chest hurts and he's still shaking. The sweat glistening across Katara's body is a dull glow and Zuko wipes a damp piece of hair off her neck and smells strawberry and both their sweat. He has to squeeze his eyes shut against the wave of nausea that pounds through him, and he wonders if he's going to throw up right there across the stupid sheets.

Katara says something and the unaware naïveté in her voice only makes him feel like he's being ripped open. Please stop talking, I'm sorry, I can't, I love you, I'm so sorry. His throat tightens and his pulse pounds him into the ground. He tries to swallow back the coldness rising in his chest by closing his eyes and getting lost in the sounds of her rooting around for her shirt, but the thing inside him washes across his senses and he's over his head in cold water, again, and he lets out a dark breath and tries not to scream.

Some call it friends with benefits. He calls it dying young.

It isn't fair when the lights flick on. It isn't fair when she helps him pull his shirt back over his head and offers him his jeans with a playful smile. It isn't fair when she asks if he wants to order pizza and then if they can study together that night, and he can't help but smile at her and mean it. All love but not love; not the love he wants, anyway. Zuko washes his face in the bathroom and tries to muffle the sounds coming from his throat with the tap water.

His nails dig into the porcelain and he makes a weak attempt to collect himself. Ragged breaths. Blinking. Cold water. He's all longing and aching and craving into plain cotton bedding that smells too clean. It depresses him to think that his half of this is based on lies and desire and regret and one moment he wonders dejectedly if all his relationships are going to be like this and then the next moment he remembers that he would never want to be with anyone else, and then he remembers he's not withKatara.

He wants to pull their time together between his fingers and draw it out until it stretches into deep horizons and planes, lifetimes and years. He doesn't measure himself by her and neither her by him, yeah, he's not looking for his other half because "I'm not half"; but he's never met someone who's managed to make him freeze and burn at the same time.

He wipes his face and takes a shaky breath. He prays she won't notice the red around his eyes.

Katara is already on the phone ordering food when he emerges. He flops into an armchair with a theatrical sigh and Katara argues with whatever server messed up her address. They always fight for the last slice of pizza and he lets her fall asleep against him when she's exhausted from studying; she offers to drive when he has rings of circles around his eyes (even though he's the one who's supposed to be driving herhome), and laughs wholeheartedly when he tells one of his Uncle's atrocious jokes. It hurts, but sometimes having even a little bit of someone is better than having none. Zuko's smile is mostly real. Sometimes he chokes, sometimes he's physically sick with the force of everything inside of him.

But she does love me, he reminds himself as she plays with a lock of hair and flashes him a grin, phone still cradled against her cheek. Even if it's not the same, that's still worth something.