Chapter Text
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something edible
Katara drags her feet out into the waiting area, head hanging low.
“What’s with you?” Zuko asks from where he’s sitting, and she doesn’t need to look at him to know he’s staring at her as if she’s some sort of extraterrestrial oddity.
She waves her hand above her head and rustles the pill container for dramatic effect. “My hormones aren’t behaving,” she says and plops down on the chair next to him, bringing the hood of her sweatshirt low over her eyes. “It’s not enough that my face looks like Swiss cheese. Now I also have to be medicated for it.”
Zuko snatches the pill container out of her hand and reads the label. He frowns. “Nothing that contains this many syllables can be good.”
“Wait till you hear the side effects.”
“Let me guess. One of them is acne?”
“Bingo. Along with back pain, headaches, and pancreatitis, apparently.” Katara slouches further in her seat, wishing to morph with the leather.
“Does it… hurt?”
“Yeah.” She pauses and peers at him through her fingertips. “Not as much as… well… I imagine your scar hurts a lot more.”
Zuko shrugs and turns his face away so she can now only see his good side. “You get used to it. And besides. It’s probably a different kind of pain.”
“Hm.” Katara looks at the smooth skin on the right side of his face and ponders the phrase good side – she thinks she likes both halves of him equally, even if it’s clear he himself doesn’t; either way, she forces it out of her mental vocabulary.
Zuko seems to sense her staring because he glances at her again and frowns. “What are you still doing here, anyway?”
She shrugs, feeling all too comfortable in these chairs that she’s now positive all have a permanent imprint of her backside on them. “Just taking a moment to ponder the misery of my existence.” And she likes the sound of his voice when he reads aloud complicated names of chemicals, but she omits that part.
He cracks a smile. “Well, if it turns out your misery is expansive enough to keep you occupied for the next forty minutes, we could hang out afterwards.”
She blinks at him and sits a little straighter. “You… want to hang out with me?”
He shrugs, as if it’s not that important. But it is, because what he doesn’t know, what Katara won’t tell him, is that the offer he’s just made is one she rarely receives from anyone. “Sure. We can talk nihilism and avoid mirrors together.”
She can’t see herself, but she feels her grin is positively radiant. “I’d like that.”
Zuko returns the grin. Just then, the nurse calls him in, and he stands up and dusts off his spotless jeans. He looks down at her and seems hesitant for a moment, before saying, “You don’t need to keep your hood on around me, you know.”
She stares at him dumbly. “But… Swiss cheese.” She gestures towards her half-hidden face limply.
“If we’re being foods, then I’m Red Windsor.” The corners of his eyes crinkle in mirth as Katara blinks at him and tries to wrap her mind around the fact that he’s just referred to himself as something edible for her comfort. “And… I’m quite fond of Swiss cheese, actually.”
With that, he disappears behind the register and Katara is left to stare at her shoes, feeling as though she might just have her intense blushing to blame for all the acne.
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“I can’t believe you’ve never seen it.”
“Sure you can. What part of Princess Diaries screams ‘Zuko’ to you?”
“It’s a classic.”
“Yeah, I’m certain they devote an entire lecture to it in Film Studies classes.”
Katara scowls and stirs her melting ice cream as Zuko drives around aimlessly. “You’re more uncultured than I originally thought, Sozin.”
“Oh? Is that a wrong you’ll seek to right?”
“Well, I just might. You won’t get any of my fabulous references otherwise.”
“Uh-huh.”
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“You know, I may like your face and all,” Katara starts and struggles to swallow the rest of her bite, though not without an overly dramatic wince. “But Red Windsor is disgusting.”
“You wound me, Katara. And after I praised your type of cheese? You’re heartless.”
“Well, I don’t particularly like Swiss cheese either. I don’t get why they all have to smell that way.”
“Huh.” Zuko looks down at the precut cheese slices he’s brought to their little impromptu picnic. “Turns out you’re the one who’s uncultured.”
He’s promptly hit with a piece of Red Windsor on the forehead. He grimaces as he discards it in the grass; maybe it does smell a bit off.
“Well, pair it with wine and watch my culture unravel.”
“As if I’m condoning underage drinking.”
“You’re underage too.”
“Yes, and I’m also driving. If I have to stay sober, then so do you.”
Katara groans and lies down on the blanket. “Misery does love company.”
He smiles. “It sure does.”
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“So?” Katara is positively beaming as she presses pause and interrupts the rolling credits. “What did you think?”
“That was…” Zuko just shakes his head and gives up on finishing his sentence.
“Amazing? Groundbreaking? A masterpiece?”
He looks at the ceiling of her room and seems to search for the gentlest possible wording so as to not insult the movie she’s been gushing and pestering him about for weeks. “Groundbreaking… it was not. A masterpiece… well, sure, in its own weirdly deranged category.”
Katara hits him in the chest with a plush Unagi pillow. “You’d be wise to shut up now.”
“What? I mean, it was sort of funny, but the concept seems a bit contrived. And she looked exactly the same before and after her makeover, even though it was supposed to be some life-changing event. It was like Hannah Montana with and without the wig.”
Katara gasps in horror. “She did not look the same. And I’m not discussing Hannah Montana with you.”
Zuko looks at her with raised eyebrows, an amused smile playing on his lips. “All she did was invest in contact lenses and get her hair brushed. She looked alright in the beginning, as she did in the end. You girls focus on hair-straightening way too much.”
Katara lies down on her bed and sighs wistfully. “She’s so pretty, though. I love her eyes. ‘Alright’ is nowhere even near where it’s at.”
“Sure.” She turns her head to find Zuko is looking at her a bit strangely, some indescribable warmth dancing in his eyes. Then he frowns and his forehead wrinkles adorably. She pokes him above the eyebrow and reminds him he’s too young for frown lines, but he swats her hand away. “Why won’t you discuss Hannah Montana with me?”
“Oh, please. She’s the final boss and you’re not ready yet.”
“Well, let me know when I’ve reached that level. I have some very strong opinions to share.”
Katara flips around so she’s on her stomach and starts browsing the Netflix catalogue. “Of course you do. It’s your turn, by the way. What do you want to watch?”
“Oh, Fight Club for sure.”
Despite Katara’s resolve to shit on the movie he’s picked in petty retribution for his disregard of the pure cinematic genius that is her favorite romcom, she ends up loving it. Zuko smirks at her knowingly.
After the movie is over and the popcorn has been eaten and it’s well past dark outside, she looks at him seriously and attempts to alter her voice to a deep baritone. “The first rule of Ugly-Face Club. Is you do not talk about Ugly-Face Club.”
Zuko breaks out in laughter and after he’s managed to calm down – it takes him a while, even though Katara suspects she isn’t that funny – they spend the rest of the evening coming up with a complicated friendship handshake that they immediately forget afterwards.
Katara gathers all her hair in a bun and doesn’t care that the entirety of her face is uncovered, in plain sight with all its imperfections. Zuko, true to his word, doesn’t seem to mind either, and after a while, he stops going through the effort of always positioning his smooth-but-not-really-better side towards her.
Another rule of Ugly-Face Club they borrow from the movie: one fight at a time.
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“Katara?”
“Yes?”
“What you said before… do you really like my face?”
“…Um. Yes.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“But that cheese is still disgusting.”
“Hm. I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that.” A pause. “I like your face too.”
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