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There were many benefits to dating the daughter of the richest man in town, not that any of them factored into Katara’s decision to go on a date a year ago. In fact, the main factor at the time was how ridiculously good she looked when she smiled.
As they approached the last weeks of 11th grade, however, Katara discovered a major drawback.
Her girlfriend’s family could afford to spend an entire summer travelling abroad, meaning week after painful week of not getting to see her in person. Daily FaceTime sessions were not enough.
This culminated in completely unnecessary nerves during the final hours of her wait while feeling her father’s amusement as her knee bounced up and down.
She didn’t drop her phone.
She’d received a message in the early hours of the morning to announce they were on the plane but it was taking too long in Katara’s biased opinion.
“We can watch something else if you want?”
Katara glanced up from the notification screen that was populated only with a message from Suki asking when they would be arriving before the party to find her father looking at her with a tilted head and a smirk.
Why did he find it so amusing that she wanted to badly see her girlfriend?!
The rectangle in her grip flopped to her lap so that the man had a good view of her scowl, not that he was at all put off by his daughter’s ire.
“It’s fine, dad,” she replied, covering her phone to make sure she could feel any impending vibrations.
“Azula will be here soon, Katara, you need to relax,” he said, gesturing towards the screen that contained a high-speed car chase that was soon punctuated by an explosion. Katara sighed and sank into the couch grumpily and Hakoda let out a huff of laughter.
This position didn’t last long, however, as the doorbell rang.
Katara was over the back of the couch before her father could even blink, the man shook his head while laughing again.
Just outside the hallway, Katara found an obstacle to her goal in the form of her yawning brother who had been patting at his hair as if he hadn’t already spent thirty minutes styling it.
“I can get it…” he offered, but was promptly thrown against the wall in his sister’s mad dash, “rude!” he shouted, going unheeded.
Katara wouldn’t register his presence until much later as she pulled the door open and crashed into the body on the other side.
Azula caught her by the waist to support her as their lips met in a kiss that was unfortunately impossible over FaceTime.
Eventually, the young couple were forced to breathe so Katara had to pull back a few inches to take in the twinkling ember finally looking back at her in the high definition only possible in reality.
“Hey,” Katara said, bashfully dropping her arm over her girlfriend’s shoulder.
“Hello, Katara,” Azula laughed, loosening her grip to let the other girl drop.
Katara drew her eyebrows together as the impact shot through her body and she realised she had a rather significant drop and she looked up.
In reality, the other teen was probably just over a head taller than her, but the stark difference in their similarly height-ed departure made her feel like she was looming over her.
It made it difficult to appreciate how good she looked in her captain’s letterman jacket.
“What’s wrong?” Azula asked, placing her hand back to her waist.
Katara ran her tongue over her lips and said, “nothing…it’s just…” she gestured vaguely along the length of her body and Azula’s frown turned up.
“Oh yeah,” she said, “growth spurt. Zuzu’s furious, I’m almost taller than him…”
Katara’s fingers trailed down the jacket, planning to steal it in the near future and said absently, “I didn’t know it had been that long…”
Azula took her hand and dragged her into a hug and, with a smirk, she said, “don’t worry, I’m sure you’ll catch up, someday…ow!”
She retracted her embrace upon receiving a sharp pinch to her back.
Azula pouted and Katara huffed as she took her hand again to lead her towards the car.
“C’mon, Suki’s wanted us to help set up before the party,” she said, but stopped and added, “new rule, no short jokes!”
“Don’t put yourself down like that, Kat, you’re not short. You’re just vertically challenged,” Azula replied innocently and Katara stared at her blankly.
“I can’t believe I missed you so much.”
The seriousness only increased Azula’s smirk as she stole another kiss and made her way to the car, already formulating comments about reaching the pearls.
Despite expecting this, Katara followed her.
Even if it was likely going to be the start of endless comments, she did notice the first benefit of her girlfriend’s new height.
The tight skinny jeans were only accentuated now that her legs were seemingly endless, which carried too many benefits for her to mentally list right now.
S
At Suki’s party, Katara discovered another plus to Azula’s height.
Already clothed in the jacket bearing her girlfriend’s name, Katara found it was exceedingly easy to find her among the crowd, talking to Suki.
So far, each member of their friendship group had at least let out a surprised snicker upon finding them standing together.
This couldn’t deter her from returning to the other teen to pass over a red cup swishing with liquid.
“Thank you,” Azula smiled, taking a thirsty drink from it readily as Katara sidled up to her.
Suki quirked an eyebrow at them, deciding that it perhaps wasn’t as strange as she thought when her own partner appeared, making her realise that they had a similar height difference.
A goofy smile adorned Sokka’s face, making her certain that he’d found the spiked juice.
“Hey Azula,” Sokka said, having forgotten his sister’s earlier flippant assault as he made a show of slouching so that he could tilt his head up to her, “wow, I never realised how short Katara is!”
Azula laughed into her cup and then said, over the music, “we’re not supposed to talk about it.”
Katara just finished her own beverage and discarded the cup as she took Azula’s forearm, thinking of only one way to make sure that this didn’t go much further.
As unlikely as their friendship was a year ago, she quickly discovered that her brother and girlfriend were rather adept at volleying insults towards whoever their current target was.
On that particular day, she knew that it would be her until they either got bored or she magically grew a few inches.
“Dance with me,” she announced, not bothering to give her brother the eye contact that would only egg him on.
As it wasn’t said as a question, Azula didn’t feel the need to provide an answer and instead followed her further into the dance floor into the rabble excitedly bouncing around to the booming music.
As the tempo slowed, Katara discovered yet another benefit. The height difference meant that she was easily able to place her face into the crook of her girlfriend’s neck as they swayed together, both of them forgetting that there had been any teasing.
She breathed in ‘Azula’, the slightly spiced scent that she was hoping was already on the jacket, right up until the song ended and the DJ announced that they were speeding it back up and the swarm of high school students cheered loudly.
Katara leaned back, finding the smile that had her agree to their first date somehow looked even better from this angle.
With a reverent sigh, she tip-toed so that she could say against her ear, “I really did miss you, Az.”
“I missed you too,” Azula agreed, sounding completely serious for the first time since she got back to the country.
A month or so later, Katara had her own growth spurt, closing their height difference to only a couple of inches, but she didn’t mind at this point.
With each day, she found a new benefit to having a girlfriend who was taller than her and the increasingly low-quality ‘vertically challenged’ jokes were absolutely worth it.