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“This again,” Katara mutters, flipping the newspaper over in her hand and scanning her eyes across the offending headline. A small section on the front page reads in bold, black text, KATARA’S CURIOUS COMPANIONSHIP WITH THE AVATAR: ROMANTIC, OR SOMETHING ELSE?
She sighs irritably. Another one of the Harmony Herald’s groundbreaking opinion pieces on her and Aang’s relationship is just what she needs after a long day of surveying the building work for the new training hospitals all the way over on the other side of Republic City.
Aang lies sprawled over their bed, arms crossed uncharacteristically tight across his chest. He'd nudged the paper into her hand the moment she entered the house. “How can they be so spiteful?”
Katara puts the paper down and begins undoing her braid. It’s been a windy, wet day, the rain still lashing against the window across the room. Even though she’s only been settled here for a few months, she’d gotten used to the warm summer, and the encroaching winter feels less welcome that she had thought it would be. She misses the thick furs they kept with every bedspread in the South. “Are you really that bothered by it, Aang?” she asks, resisting the urge to pinch the bridge of her nose. She's gotten in the habit of just ignoring their speculations, but Aang always seems to have a harder time with it. The last time there was a big exposé in the tabloids - however loose that term was when the Harmony Herald was concerned – they had insinuated that she and Zuko were exchanging amorous letters right under Aang’s nose.
They've spent years dodging these kinds of rumours, and by now they're easy to laugh off, but she knows that that one had seriously bothered Aang, who had been with Zuko at the time and had to endure the awkwardness. Truth be told, it had bothered her too, but she wasn’t interested in dwelling on such a ridiculous notion.
Aang grumbles in response.
She sighs. He’s fiddling with the untied clasps on his tunic, looking more tired than anything else. She would bet he was halfway to undressing before he got distracted by the stupid paper. Aang had been away for the past week sorting out some minor mishap between the Spirits and local librarians in Ba Sing Se, and tonight is his first evening back. So picking up that paper probably wasn't the nicest welcome home.
Katara sheds her outerwear quickly and climbs onto the bed next to him, back resting against the headboard. “All right,” she says placatingly, picking up the paper again. “Let’s see.”
She scans through the first paragraph quickly. The usual culprits are there: it’s a childhood dalliance gone on too long, and she’s merely a trophy wife, and he’s simply not dashing enough, and how can a monk possibly satisfy the needs of a grown, gorgeous woman? It's all old news, until she reads further on, to the most novel theory.
Katara’s mouth slowly turns to a frown.
As I have recounted, much of the mystery surrounding the continued existence of the Avatar’s relationship with his childhood love Katara eludes the best of observers. Many believe that the relationship is a sham; a continued publicity project. However, I am here to pose a different explanation: their apparent inability to leave each other alone through these years is not due to any romantic desires, but the waterbending master’s relentless maternal instinct towards the Avatar.
Why else would a capable, compassionate woman such as the Southern Water Tribe’s Katara associate herself so fondly with a man two years her junior, with no apparent sexual interest that we can speak of? It is understandable that the heroes of the traumatic War would remain in close contact, even more so that one so nurturing as Katara – this is the woman currently heading an ambitious project to train healers and carers for the whole city, after all – would feel the need to stick close to the young man whose wellbeing she had nursed to health time and again during the War which he ended. But it is no basis for a relationship between adults.
While Katara’s motherly instincts surely make certain Avatar Aang is cared for, who is caring for her? This burden on females in our society is mirrored starkly in the lives of our heroes, it is unfortunate to admit. Much of this is clear in their interactions. Many of us who have seen the two at public functions can attest that they have witnessed Katara coddling Avatar Aang, like a mother to her son, whether it is by making sure that he eats, or ensuring that he is on time for his many scheduled events. And yet the adoring glances between them speak to some kind of assent that other detractors speaking out about this bizarre relationship are unwilling to address. One cannot help but wonder if Katara’s motherly desires mean that she is wasting her time rewarding the mediocrity that the Avatar’s affection offers her when she could be aiming for something so much better.
The nerve of these so-called journalists. The sheer ludicrousness makes Katara nearly speechless. Did they think at all before publishing this one? And to couch it all in pity for her.
“Wow,” she says, stunned. She thought she’d heard it all before, but this is a new low, even for the city’s notorious tabloids. Their usual angle was that Katara and Aang had a sham relationship – usually to cover for her real one, that usually being with Zuko, of all people – but this writer was insistent that they were together, which somehow makes the accusations worse.
“I told you,” Aang says, rubbing his forehead.
It’s hard to take them seriously, harder still not to laugh from the absurdity. “Like a mother to her son?” She lifts a hand to stifle her laughter. “Are they serious?”
“Apparently,” Aang mumbles.
“This can't be real–” She flips through the rest of the paper and then the front page again to be sure.
“Nurturing...huh.” Many people over the years have used that word to describe her, and she's always been proud of it. None have ever managed to paint it so negatively as this article does. “And they're still so obsessed with you being younger than me… you'd think we were in some Northern village, not Republic City.”
Aang lolls his head towards her. “It is pretty ridiculous.”
Katara shakes her head. “Completely idiotic.” The unhappy tension still radiates from Aang, even though he’s trying to match her levity. Attempting to lighten the mood, she says, “Someone ought to tell them you're really a hundred and twenty.”
Aang chuckles. “That would be a different kind of scandal.” He clears his throat and puts on shrill voice, cupping his hands like a megaphone, “Creepy old man preys on innocent, clueless young Water Tribe girl.”
Katara rolls her eyes emphatically, nudging him in the thigh with her foot. “Well,” she says, "why don’t you make yourself useful and warm me up with some air? Maybe then we'll be better matched, at least according to the Herald's standards.”
Aang shakes his head disbelievingly and rolls over to face her, all loose limbs and twinkling eyes. “Yes, mama.”
Katara gives a burble of giddy laughter at the reply, though she’s quickly distracted by the heated air, the tickle of the hemline of her shirt billowing against her stomach. She sighs and closes her eyes, pleased. “Good boy.”
Aang wraps one bony hand around her calf for leverage to pull himself up, before arcing it over her raised knees to bring the localised breeze even closer to her. Katara murmurs approvingly, shivering as the hot air meets her cold skin. This is definitely the Avatar ability she’s come to appreciate the most, one she misses dearly when she visits the poles alone. Though it’s not clear whether it even is an Avatar ability – even Aang doesn’t know whether it’s some advanced form of firebending combined with airbending, or just an innate air trick, and since there aren’t any other airbenders, there’s no one to compare to to check.
Either way, Aang is a perfect space heater. Absentmindedly, she rubs under his chin. “Ah. That’s perfect. You’re such a good boy.”
She can feel the catch in Aang’s throat against her hand, teetering on the brink of laughter. Impressively, he holds it in. “Uh oh,” he says instead, voice carefully light. “There you go rewarding mediocrity again.”
“Oh, there’s nothing mediocre about this,” Katara says. She nuzzles her body into Aang's, resting her head on top of his. She waits for the last of the cold to seep away from her extremities, tucking her hands in the crook of his shoulder, digging her toes into the warmth between his legs and the mattress. It's what she's been looking forward to all day. She coaxes her lazy muscles into a smirk. “Though what should I expect, really. You've gotten so…” Katara makes sure to catch his eye and presses her lips together before they betray the joke. “...Big."
Momentarily, Aang looks scandalised. And then there's a blanket of uproarious laughter over them, thicker than the heat and quicker than the air. She can't keep his gaze for more than a second without doubling over. They end up on opposite sides of the bed, too hysterical to form even a sentence. Eventually, Katara presses a hand to her aching ribs.
Aang stifles another laugh on his sleeve and leans on his elbows, chin resting in his hands. He arranges his eyebrows into an expression so lecherous that Katara nearly throws her head back again. “Hey, mama, give me some love.”
She grins and sits up, trying for a semblance of normalcy, and draws her arms out for him. Aang leaps back into her embrace, and then her arm is snug in the groove above his shoulder, her fingers caressing the line of the tattoo. Another ripple of laughter overcomes Katara as she draws their faces close with an impish smile. “Anything for you, baby.”
Her giggles fade and they catch their breath. Aang’s breathing eases first, as it always does, and she listens; follows it out of their silly stupor. Her hands wander, one pressing to his chest, reading his heartbeat over the soft linen, and the other stroking over his shoulder, and the sinewy muscles of his arm, again and again. “Baby,” she murmurs, lashes low and skittering close to Aang’s brow, her lips deliberately lingering after she presses a gentle kiss to it. That was Aang’s favourite greeting for a while when they were teenagers, for no reason but to draw attention to their recently reversed height difference, so it's nice to do it the other way around. Katara remembers complaining about their heights for the fun of it, and secretly appreciating the way it changed the entire way he held himself – taller, more ready. She kisses him again. “My sweet baby.”
She's maybe too hot now, and they’ve done this enough times that Aang can sense that, so he worms from her side to underneath her; Katara ends up in his lap. She smiles again, all cheek, looking down at his hooded eyes. “Really, baby. Anything for you.”
She doesn't want him to feel insecure at all. Not over this, not over anything. Sure, she can laugh, but the press attack him far more than they do her.
Aang gives her a slightly alarmed look, face reddening up to the tips of his ears. Katara’s just about to ask, when she gasps, cupping her hand to her tingling mouth. Belatedly she realises how her tone had been. Not joking. Silky. Sultry.
She watches Aang swallow with wide eyes, the seconds ticking slowly as her embarrassment rises. Finally, he opens his mouth. “Anything? Oh, you are a nurturer.” There's no whimsy in his tone anymore. It's low, grounded in a way that makes Katara’s brain feel fuzzy around the edges. She kisses him again, far too hungry, setting off a halfhearted bout of snickering against each other's lips.
Katara can’t help but feel like they’re laughing to avoid talking, now.
She gathers herself. Then she studies his face in her hands carefully, running her thumb along the high, wind-kissed apples of his cheeks, the soft slope of his nose and the curiously stiff set of his jaw. She pushes herself higher onto her knees, her body flush against his, closer than she would have dared imagine the first time he turned to her tonight with his grey eyes bright and that smirk on his lips, and – “Oh.”
Katara gulps down a breathless sigh. There's no way to ignore that. “Oh, you– you actually liked that?“
Eyes cloudy, Aang just squeezes on his grip, haphazard and high on her waist. He manages a strangled grunt in response.
Well. She’s going to need a clearer reply than that.