Because I need to fuel my inner Zuko fan...

Bad Habits

That is what Zuko’s etiquette teachers told him, day after grueling day as they

corrected
his
posture;

drilled his formal salutations (“Good evening, Lord So-and-So of the So-and-So empire, Your So-So-ness…);

Made.
Him.
EEE
NUN
SEE
ATE

every royal word he spoke (because they simply had to drive that garish lisp out, which, even ten years later, still showed up when Zuko was nervous); and basically tortured him out of his adolescent fidgeting so he’d SIT! STILL!

For you see, Zuko was a prince. And princes don’t have bad habits.

But Zuko did have bad habits. Bad habit. Singular. That’s what he thought it was, anyhow. He’d just never admitted it to anyone, never let anyone see him indulging himself.

Because princes don’t have bad habits.

He reached up and speared his digits through the coarse, unkempt growth of hair, the ghost of the long silky queue he’d lobbed off months earlier palpable in his mind’s eye. He sighed. It’d be months more before he could feel that luscious cascade feathering against the back of his neck again, like a lover's soft kiss…

His hands itched. He flexed his long fingers, hastily running them through the cool grass…but no…it just wasn’t the same.

He ran a palm over his scalp once more, feeling the rounded slope of his skull, the jagged, too-short ends of his ebony mop, that drop-off where his symbol of power and virility had once been, and he growled in frustration. If he could just feel that thick rope of silk in his hands once more…

And then finally, after months of this torment, his compulsion finally drove him to the brink of sanity. Stop it! he screamed at himself as he desperately scanned his sleeping traveling companions for help. Escape. Relief. Princes don’t have bad habits!

But princes did have needs. Needs that Zuko simply could not fathom being denied, not even by this ragtag bunch of peasants and commoners.

And this was a simple need, wasn’t it? he reasoned with himself as he scuttled stealthily toward the slumbering quartet. They were a team. They were teammates. They would not deny him this…not if they knew how much he needed it…

His hands were surprisingly steady. The tie unraveled easily, a slip of rough, dark linen trickling out of the silky auburn cascade. Gently, gently, he slid his fingers into the cool tresses, rolling his eyes in ecstasy as he plundered that glossy mane, raking his hands softly through that length of wondrous chocolate hair…

And then she stirred. Katara slowly opened her eyes and focused in on the pale Firebender, his figure limned by the light of the moon. She blinked slowly, languidly studying his hazy simper, his face a study in gratified perversion.

Her eyes suddenly widened with horrific realization and she scrambled to her feet, tangling herself up in her sleeping bag, shrieking. “ZUKO! WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING TO SOKKA!”

Princes don’t have bad habits.

But they do have some very strange fetishes.