Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Sokka’s minding his own business in the kitchen, chugging orange juice straight from the carton (only because he’s finishing the carton right now, thank you), when Katara sprints through the doorway and hip-checks Sokka into the fridge. He chokes and then shrieks, pulp splattering down his front and his socks instantly getting soaked with juice. “What the hell, Katara?” he shouts.

She grins broadly at him, steamrolling right over his irritation. “I’m the best sister in the world.”

“Based on what?”

“I got you a summer job!”

Sokka blinks, the image of the pre-owned motorcycle that’s been sitting in Piandao’s window for two months now shimmering in his mind’s eye. “What? How?”

“I got a call from Lava Springs—I guess they got a copy of my resume, somehow? The woman on the phone told me they have a summer employment program with our school, and when she offered me a job, I told her I knew a few other model students who’d make great staffers.”

Sokka bank-shots the OJ carton into the sink and throws his arms around Katara, who starts screeching like a banshee. “We’re employed!” he yells over her.

“You’re getting pulp in my hair—”

“I’m going to own a fucking motorcycle!”

She starts jabbing an elbow into him, and he only tightens his hug. “Motherfucker—”

“What’s going on here?”

The siblings freeze and turn to Bato, who’s standing in the doorway with an unimpressed, resigned look on his face. His pale blue eyes take in the tangled teenagers, the orange juice splattered on the floor and wall, Katara’s frazzled bush of hair.

“Katara and I got summer jobs,” Sokka says with a nervous smile.

“Sokka was drinking from the carton again.”

“I only do that when I’m going to finish it!”

“It’s still gross on principle—”

Bato sighs, and they both shut up. “Please clean up before your father gets home,” he says. “He just mopped the floors yesterday.”

“We will.”

When Bato leaves again, probably going back to mend skates in the garage, Sokka gives his sister a gentle squeeze and a kiss on the head. “Thank you,” he tells her. “The universe is already turning summer in our favor.”

He spoke too soon, apparently.

The twin old women are droning on and on about staff expectations and rules, sounding eerily similar to horror movie ghouls as they do so, and he leans over to furiously whisper at Katara, “Are you seriously telling me you didn’t know—”

“Of course I didn’t,” she cuts him off. “I would’ve said no to the job if I’d known—”

“You could’ve looked up their website—”

“If only you hadn’t downloaded a virus from that porn site—”

Yue shushes them, taking Katara’s hand as she does so. Katara instantly eases, eyes going soft as she smiles at her girlfriend, and Sokka sinks in his seat, grumbling under his breath.

They hadn’t known Lava Springs Country Club was owned by the uncle of Drama Queen and her hench-brother until they arrived this morning and Azula was immediately peacocking, alternating between smirking at Katara and glaring at the rest of them: Sokka, the other East High first-liners, Teo, and Yue.

There’d been a whole thing, this past semester: Katara instantly being weirdly attached to the new student, Yue, and then coming out as a musical theater performer, which was much weirder and more difficult to process than when she came out as bi when they were in middle school. She’d apparently had a magical awakening through karaoke with Yue at the ski lodge Dad and Bato took them to for New Year’s, which does explain why she came back to their room in the early hours of New Year’s morning with a completely bamboozled look on her face. Stuff happened, the hockey team and the drama department almost drove their entire high school to a civil war, then stuff got resolved, and Katara and Yue starred in the spring musical. Hakoda cried happy tears at his daughter opening up a new aspect of herself.

Sokka’s loose on the details; he mostly kept his head down and concentrated on hockey, because he’s always been an athlete and will forever be an athlete. What can he say? He’s a simple guy.

The wizened old twins finish their speech—as far as Sokka can tell, they’re high-up managers of some sort—and then they disappear, leaving the new employees to find their new stations on their own. Yue and Teo leave together: she’s a lifeguard and he’s the restaurant pianist, two undoubtedly more glamorous jobs compared to the kitchen duties the rest of them have been assigned.

Something smacks Sokka in the face, and he squawks in protest, pulling away the black fabric impairing his eyesight to see Suki grinning at him. Next to her, Haru’s frowning at his piece of fabric—a half-apron, Sokka realizes. “Bet I can clean more dishes than the rest of you,” Suki dares, grinning sharply.

Sokka pouts. “Can you believe we’re spending our summers working for the theatre freaks?”

“Technically, we’re working for their uncle,” Aang pipes up, already neatly tying his apron. “Do you think I can make friends with the baker? I saw some croissants proofing when we walked in. They looked incredible.”

“C’mon, you know that Azula’s gotta be the one really running this place.”

Katara jabs his side and looks meaningfully at his apron until Sokka puts it on. “You spend more time thinking about Azula and Zuko than any of us,” she says. “Besides, we’re not going to run into them. Why would they ever come into the kitchen?”

“To lord over the plebeians.”

Her eyes turn large and imploring. “Look at the bright side, Sokka. You’ll be able to get that motorcycle, right? And we’re all working together. Friends, line-mates—we’re a team.”

If Sokka’s good at understanding people, then he knows his sister better than his own slapshot. There’s a pleading edge to her voice that means she’s worried that she has possibly messed this up for all of them. She was doing what she thought was best at the time, and she really didn’t know that her high school nemesis and her jerky brother basically owned the place. Sokka can’t blame her; he probably would have done the same thing in her position.

The rest of the team is looking at him, because he’s always been something of a leader, even before the C was officially stitched to his sweater at the start of last season. So he puts on a smile, ruffles Katara’s hair, and agrees, “We are a team. We can make this the best summer ever!”

Suki whoops, and then they’re all shouting raucously, until a line cook appears from the main kitchen to shout at them to get to work.

Safely buried in the depths of the kitchen most days, Sokka, true to Katara’s word, never runs into Azula or Zuko. He does meet their uncle, though, when the club’s owner is trying to filch a few pastries from the speed rack one morning. “Please, call me Iroh,” he rumbles, more gregarious than Sokka’s even seen his niece or nephew, and Sokka decides he shouldn’t hold a grudge against the guy for having kind of weird next-of-kin. It doesn’t hurt that Iroh snuck him a stolen Danish.

On their second day, Teo informs them all that there’s some kind of staff talent show at the end of the summer, and Yue turns her puppy-dog eyes on Katara until Katara convinces all of them to participate in an act of some sort. Yue and Teo go off in a cloud of excited chatter, plotting already, and Sokka exchanges a beleaguered look with Haru. They don’t sing, or dance, or do anything along the lines of performance, really, but Sokka tends to cave to things that make his sister happy, and Haru will back him up because that’s what a strong D-pair does: they support each other, no matter how dire the circumstance.

Within a week, Sokka learns to maneuver an overloaded bus bin through a crowded restaurant without breaking a single dish or bone and to scrub every kind of dish and pan imaginable. When weaving through the restaurant, he’s flagged down more than a few times by diners, who ask for more water or bread or coffee creamer, and he’s charming enough in those brief interactions that he gets a tip slipped his way more than once. By Sunday, his first paycheck hasn’t even rolled in, but the dream of owning a motorcycle has become dramatically more tangible.

Katara doesn’t have it as easy as Sokka, in some ways. She’s quickly promoted from busser to waitress to golf pro—which is hilarious, since Katara hates golf and everything it stands for with a burning fury, but she’s also good at it and good at teaching it—and no one is surprised to learn Azula’s behind it.

Azula is an obsessive freak even during summer vacation, apparently. She’s been following Katara around since day one, flipping rapidly between hot and cold like the closet-case lesbian she is—that’s how Suki describes her over lunch, anyway.

“How do you know that she’s … you know?” Sokka asks.

Suki steals a handful of his fries. They’re the only ones on break, now, since the rest of the team has to work double to cover for them being off. The temporary short-staffed situation should be resolved by the first week of June, they were told, when the college kids came rolling in for summer employment. “It’s a whole bunch of little things that stack up for a compelling case.”

“Like what?”

She shrugs. “I don’t know. It’s kind of a feeling. How invested she is in your sister. What she wears, sometimes. The way she was acting at junior prom.”

“She’s invested in Katara because Katara disrupted her drama department dynasty,” Sokka counters, “I’m pretty sure she dresses like a normal person, and I think any girl would act the way she did if Chan, of all people, invited them to prom.”

Suki’s eyes narrow, and Sokka suddenly feels like he’s under a microscope. It’s not the first time she’s given him this look, like she’s seeing something that he’s not. If he ever asks her what’s up, though—and he’s tried, many times—the look disappears and she brings up something else.

This time, the deflection is subtle, not a complete one-eighty. “Some people need time to come into themselves,” she says. “The signs can be difficult to understand, even if it’s about yourself.”

“Maybe if she just kissed a girl, she’d realize.”

Suki rolls her eyes. “Life isn’t a science experiment, Sokka. You can’t just test variables and get results.”

“Doesn’t hurt to try.”

At the end of the first two weeks, Sokka receives a paycheck of about 430 dollars, plus about 15 in secret tips from his occasional waiter activities. He’s so excited he impulse-buys a new tank top and swim trunks—he’ll manage to get into the country club pool at some point this summer, right?—and rides the high of his first-ever paycheck until he finds out Katara got nearly twice as much as he did.

“I mean, I’m not scrubbing dishes all day,” Katara argues, kicking at Sokka where his legs have sprawled to her half of the couch.

“Yeah, because I’m not the one Azula has a big gay crush on.”

A sharp kick to his knee that actually has him hissing in pain. “Sokka! You can’t say things like that.”

Sokka rubs his knee. She’s right, but it doesn’t stop him from mumbling, “You say things like that.”

“Yeah, because I’m actually gay. And it’s rude to speculate about someone’s sexuality.”

“Are you defending your arch-nemesis?”

“No! I’m telling you, again, how to be an ally. Idiot.”

He’s not expecting another kick, which is how he ends up falling off the couch, face smashed into the shag carpet that Bato got a couple years back and Hakoda hasn’t managed to “accidentally” burn or irreparably stain. It’s here, breathing in the carpet fur as Katara stretches out across the whole couch and turns up the volume on the Stanley Cup recap, that Sokka decides he can’t be a dishwasher all summer. He’s gotta move up the ranks, without the advantage of a power-tripping classmate maybe having a crush on him.

If there’s one thing Sokka knows how to do, it’s hatch a plan.

He starts by getting to know the line cooks. Most of them can’t be bothered with the high schooler sticking his nose into their business whenever he gets a chance, but some of the older ones—real veterans, who’ve been around the block, who don’t necessarily want to be a chef or run a kitchen one day but who enjoy what they do—indulge his questions, explaining to him the different dishes and how they’re made. Through Aang, who’s already gotten on the good side of the second pastry chef, Sokka gets to know the restaurant’s dessert offerings, and then one day at lunch he gets the golden opportunity of harassing a sous chef who’s taking a smoke break within earshot of Sokka’s ceaselessly running mouth.

Once he’s convinced he’s educated enough in the food menu, he shifts his focus to trying to pin down Iroh, or one of the twin managers, who, he’s since learned, are named Li and Lo.

This proves to be harder than he thought; they rarely come around the kitchen, and as summer vacationers and day-goers really start trickling into Lava Springs for the first full week of June, his pile of dishes becomes no joke. The pastry chef has taken Aang fully under his wing as an assistant baker, and Suki’s been rotated out of the kitchen to help run the pool deck—“Chlorine and cocktail-soaked pool towels are my new personal hell,” she complained to Sokka—which means it’s just him and Haru holding down the fort in dirty dish purgatory.

They’re still legally required to have breaks, though, and while Sokka’s always grateful for the reprieve from being on his feet, he feels bad about leaving Haru alone—despite their best efforts, when they’re working solo, pots and pans and plates always back up. This afternoon, a customer who’d recognized Sokka waylaid him on his way back from the bathroom, so he’s running back to the kitchen and has to swing himself around the corner to stay at speed when he turns into the room.

“Sorry!” he blurts, washing his hands and grabbing a fresh apron. “The old lady with the eyebrow mole found me—”

He cuts himself off when he realizes he isn’t looking into Haru’s steady brown eyes, but  rather at a pale face that’s almost half-covered by a mottled red scar. “Sorry,” the guy says, and he sounds genuine. “I let Haru go. Told him I could take over.”

Sokka squints, trying to catch a lie somewhere, but Haru’s no where to be seen, and Zuko—Zuko!—is wearing, over his country-club whites, a half-apron that’s done nothing to keep soap suds from getting all over his front.

A sous chef bustles in, dumping several sauce-crusted sauté pans to the left of the wash sink, and Sokka reboots. “I’ll wash, you rinse and disinfect?” he offers. It’s the split that he and Haru have worked out for themselves.

“Sure,” Zuko agrees, lips almost seeming to curl.

They set to work, and with two hands, they’re able to get the stack to a reasonable size, even with more plates and glasses from the lunch rush coming in. Sokka wonders what happens if the dishwashers ever break; he decides he’d better get out of the kitchen before he finds out.

For all the assumptions Sokka might’ve made about Zuko being the owner’s nephew and a quiet theatre nerd at his sister’s beck and call, he works quickly and steadily, as if he’s been washing dishes in a professional kitchen for years. Sokka doesn’t know much about him. They’re in the same year at school, but there’s easily 700 students in a grade at East High, so without any overlapping social circles or classes, Sokka hasn’t had much reason to get to know Zuko. Well, there was the extended fiasco this spring, during which Zuko was Azula’s shadow every time Azula came up to Katara in the halls or attended one of their games to glower from the bleachers—not that Sokka cared, but Suki thought it was funny. And maybe they had an English class together, in freshman or sophomore year? Or maybe he’s thinking of Lee, who looks like Zuko from the back. Sokka did only ever sit in the back of that class.

“I’m Sokka,” he says, just in case, even though they’ve been washing dishes together for some time, now.

“I know. We were in Ms. Wu’s English class together.”

Right, Ms. Wu. Sokka definitely hid in the back for her classes—she had a penchant for cold-calling on anyone who sat within the range of her nearsightedness. “Oh, yeah,” Sokka says dumbly.

He sneaks a glance at his dishwashing partner. Up close, Zuko’s more solid than Sokka would’ve expected from the impression that Zuko’s usually oversized jackets give. The white fabric of his polo is something thin and lightweight, and his shirt is damp enough to be sticking to his skin, hinting at an abdomen that Sokka would be more jealous of if he didn’t know that seeing a washboard was often very different from actually having strong abs.

He turns back to the pan in his heads. “Why are you working back here?”

“Uh. I’m not actually working. I just—when I get stuck on a passage, I come here to think and work through it.”

“You’re a writer?”

“No—sort of? I write … songs.”

He sounds hesitant, almost embarrassed. Has the guy been made fun of for writing songs? That’s some dumb shit. “You’re a composer,” Sokka says.

“It sounds professional when you say that. But technically, yes.”

Huh. “Do you write the things you and your sister perform?”

A shake of the head. “That stuff’s more … showy. Like show tunes. Teo usually does those. But I help her with choreography.”

Dancing. Very foreign territory to Sokka; time to steer clear of a deeper dive into this conversation. “Your uncle know you’re back here?” he asks and then realizes the genius of the question. Zuko could get him to Iroh, and then Sokka can get promoted from dish duty.

He’s not expecting the fond smile to suddenly brighten Zuko’s face, transforming the usual gloomy reticence into something that’s actually nice to look at. “Yeah. He’s the one who taught me about mindfulness meditation.”

Sokka holds out his washed sauté pan. “Do you see him a lot?”

Zuko pauses with his hand wrapped around the rinse nozzle, frowning lightly. “I live with him.”

Geez, and now Sokka’s curious nature wants to know where Zuko’s parents are, but that’s not going to help him get a better position at Lava Springs. “He seems like a cool uncle to have.”

“He is.”

Haru comes back at 30 minutes on the dot, and Zuko wipes his hands on his apron, stepping back to let Haru take his place. He smiles at Sokka on his way out, and Sokka’s compelled to call, “See you around!” after him, even if it’s unlikely he’ll ever see him again.

The universe loves proving him wrong; Zuko shows up the next day right when Sokka’s about to leave for his break, and he stays in the kitchen until both Sokka and Haru have taken their breaks. He does this for the rest of the week, too—Sokka has Wednesday off, and on Thursday, when Zuko wanders into the kitchen, he stands straighter when he sees Sokka. “You weren’t here, yesterday.”

“Dude, I need some time off.”

“You only get one day off?”

“Monday and Tuesday are technically half days, but I have to stick around until my sister gets off, so I’m basically here all day.”

Zuko absorbs this information, then nods—seemingly to himself—before gently pushing Sokka away from the sink. “Go take your break,” he says, stealing the apron from Sokka’s waist.

He takes lunch with Suki and Yue, who regale him with batshit stories from the pool deck—some guy was trying to get Yue’s attention by strutting around and flexing his muscles, but then he knocked a waiter into the pool, so Yue had to save the waiter and then get the pool vacated for an hour while they cleared the piña coladas and mojitos from the water—and he comes back to the bowels of the kitchen in a good mood that only lifts when he sees Zuko waiting for him.

He tells Zuko the pool-strutter story, and Zuko laughs at all the right places with a chuckle that’s less raspy than his speaking voice. It encourages Sokka to tell more stories, and the more he gets into it, the more Zuko loosens up, offering one-liners and deadpan commentary that probably isn’t that funny but has Sokka busting up, at one point bending over and nearly braining himself on the edge of the sink.

He still hasn’t seen Iroh since determining he’s ready to graduate from dishwasher/busser, but it ends up not mattering—he comes in on a Saturday to Li (or Lo?) shoving a downright ugly blue and white striped polo at him, along with a half-apron that has a notepad tucked into one of its pockets.

“One of the boys quit, and the chef says you’re the most qualified of the new lot to step in,” Li says.

Sokka blanches. “Chef June?” He hasn’t yet gotten up the nerve to pester the head chef who wields her knives like she might hurl them with deadly accuracy at anyone who gets in her way; he didn’t know that Chef June knew he existed.

Li grumbles. “Is she wrong?”

“No!” Sokka shouts, grabbing his new uniform. “I’m so ready. Brunch isn’t gonna know what hit it.”

“Upsell a couple mimosa flights, and maybe we’ll keep you in this position full-time.”

Saturday brunch is an exhilarating whirlwind. There isn’t a busier time that Sokka could’ve been thrown into, but after only a couple stumbles—he forgets one of the specials at a table whose screaming toddler is a distraction, he mistakes a table in another waiter’s zone for his, and he gets yelled at by the expo twice for trying to snag a dish meant for another waiter—he fricking thrives. Upsell a couple mimosa flights? He gets four separate tables to take the upgrade, convinces another six patrons to opt for a more pricey dish, and sends another three parties out the door with doggy-bagged desserts. 

It’s half-past three when he finally gets a break. He’s already racked up 200 in cash tips alone, and he races to his old dish washing station with energy thrumming in his veins. 

Amid a horrifying, teetering stack of post-brunch dishes, he finds Haru and Zuko. Haru looks haggard, and Sokka slips two twenties into Haru’s back pocket before sending him off with a slap on the ass. “Rich middle-aged white moms love me,” he tells Zuko, grinning broadly and taking over the disinfect sink.

Zuko laughs, cheeks flushing as he looks down at his soapy hands. “Everyone loves you.”

“You’re right, actually. Everyone loves me! I’m going to be the richest waiter in the entire state by the end of summer.”

“What do you do on the half-days when you’re stuck here?”

Sokka blinks but takes the abrupt change in topic in stride. “I harass the cooks, usually,” he says. “Though I might start bothering the bartenders, next, now that I’m going to be a waiter. And sometimes Yue forces me to practice for the talent show thing she’s making us all do.”

Zuko’s lips twitch. “You dance?”

“I don’t dance.”

“Uh-huh. Can I show you something, on Tuesday?”

Zuko, certified theatre freak, is asking Sokka to hang out outside the bounds of their dishwashing arrangement? You know, why not. He’s less of a freak than Sokka once thought he was. “Sure, man.”

The smile he gets in response is crooked and soft, as if Zuko’s not sure how happy he’s allowed to be. Sokka flicks his wet fingers at him. “C’mon, dude, dish,” he says. “You’re holding up the line.”

Zuko flicks suds back at him before plunging his hands into the water again.

“She forced me to caddy a full round for her, her brother, and her uncle,” Katara complains viciously.

They’re piled in the back of Sokka and Katara’s piece-of-shit, fourth-hand pick-up truck, parked in Yue’s driveway. Katara has her head in Yue’s lap, and Suki’s sprawled across the roof of the car; Sokka leans against the side of the bed, the groves of the plastic digging into his ass. Suki passes the 2-liter bottle of toasted coconut flavored sparkling water back to Sokka; he grimaces and takes another long pull, wondering why he and Suki have kept up with their tradition of trying horrid seltzer flavors for five years, now. Maybe she just takes joy in his suffering.

“Zuko plays golf?” Sokka asks.

“He was on the course and hitting balls, but was he playing golf? Not really.”

Sokka snorts. “That’s more in character.”

His sisters twists to squint at him. “Since when were you a judge of Zuko’s character?”

An immediate defensiveness rears its head—not for him, but for Zuko. “He’s an okay guy!”

“He helps Sokka and Haru with dishwashing, sometimes,” Suki explains.

“Oh—is that why you’re never at lunch anymore?” Yue asks.

“Yup,” Suki answers for Sokka. “He spends his break from waiting tables on washing dishes.”

“Hey, you’ve seen how that stack grows. What kind of captain—what kind of linemate would I be if I didn’t back up Haru?”

“… Uh-huh.”

Sokka sits up straighter, narrowing his eyes at Suki. “What are you trying to imply, Suki?”

“Life isn’t a hockey rink, Sokka.” She makes a grabby hand for the bottle of seltzer.

“Life isn’t a hockey rink, it isn’t a science experiment—tell me, Suki, what is life?”

Suki takes an exaggerated gulp, and in the silence, Katara answers, “A test of my fucking patience.”

Yue strokes Katara’s hair away from her forehead. “One day, you’ll be flattered by how much Azula admires you.”

“I’d be flattered if she wasn’t so weird about it.”

“Valid,” Sokka agrees.

“Was Azula good at golf?” Suki asks.

“Of course. She’s little-miss-perfect. There was no point in me being there when she selected her own clubs and they all had golf carts.”

“You’re arm candy,” Suki says as Sokka says, “She’s flexing.”

Katara groans, burying her face into Yue’s stomach, and Yue laughs sympathetically.

On Tuesday, Sokka hangs up his apron and clocks out when he’s actually scheduled to at half-past two; he then fidgets in the staff locker room, wondering where he’s supposed to find Zuko if he’s not washing dishes. He’s really not a sit-and-wait guy, though, so it’s only a minute before he decides to wander.

Almost immediately, he runs into Zuko in the lobby. He has a large canvas bag slung over one shoulder, and he’s traded out his country-club whites for colors Sokka’s more used to seeing him wear: black pants, a loose-fitting maroon shirt. A pair of dark-lensed sunglasses sits in his mess of black hair. “You came,” he says when he spots Sokka.

“‘Course,” Sokka says. “The mystery was too enticing to not show up. Where are we going?”

It’s a hike, of sorts, along a barely marked path that winds up the side of the rust-red rock that surrounds most of the country club. At the top, there’s an improbable copse of trees that provide shade for an outlook point that overlooks the country club, its grounds, and several miles of natural scrub land beyond that.

Sokka’s breath catches in spite of himself. He loves a view, loves being able to see everything—above it all, he feels in control and like he matters, because if he can see the big picture, he can more intimately understand the purpose of the small details, and that’s what people rely on him to be: the guy with the ideas and the plans that account for everything.

“This is incredible,” he says, twisting to look back.

Zuko’s spread a blanket in the shade, and he’s unpacking the canvas bag with a spread of food—specifically, fruits and cheeses and cured meats that Katara always mocks Sokka for splurging on. “Oh, my god,” Sokka says, approaching the blanket.

Zuko smiles. “My uncle also likes what you called ‘bougie snacks,’” he says. “And—” He coughs. “I think you said something about needing help taking breaks. And liking overlooks.”

For a moment, Sokka’s brain is stuck in a loop, repeating Zuko’s words over and over. He hadn’t realized that Zuko was actually listening to him. Sokka’s used to running his mouth in casual conversation without people fully tuning in—hell, even Sokka forgets half of the things he’s said when chattering without a point—but here’s Zuko, with a pinch to his brow, his hand hovering carefully over a tupperware of what looks like halved grapes and watermelon balls.

Sokka shakes his head and goes to the blanket, claiming the corner opposite Zuko. “I probably did say that,” he says. “If we weren’t here, I’d just be washing dishes in the kitchen.”

Conversation comes easy, because talking has always been easy for Sokka, but without half of his mind occupied by keeping job-related things, he can give Zuko his undivided attention. Sokka points at different buildings and grounds across the club, and Zuko patiently answers Sokka’s questions about them. There’s the occasional anecdote, too, about Azula setting a gazebo on fire at her thirteen birthday, or about Fourth of July a couple years ago, when Zuko took his uncle’s assistant and his good friend, Toph, to where they launched the fireworks over the golf course, laying on the grass with ear plugs in so they could feel the explosions with their entire bodies. They talk and talk until the food is gone, and then the warm air and his full stomach get to Sokka. He dozes off, head pillowed on his hands as he sprawls on the blanket.

When he opens his eyes, again, the sun has dropped significantly lower. He hears humming and the scratch of a pencil on paper; when he twists his neck up and to the left, he finds Zuko sitting with a notebook propped against his thighs, singing softly to himself.

“Writing a song?”

Zuko jumps but then meets Sokka’s gaze with a soft smile. “Yeah. Good nap?”

“Mm-hmm.”

He’s always been slow to rouse from a good nap, and that must be why he watches Zuko for a few minutes. Zuko doesn’t seem to mind, head lost in a world of melodies, or something. Sokka realizes his hair looks more like a dark brown, when the light hits it a certain way, and that there’s something … nice about the way the bones of his wrists cast softly curving shadows, or the way his tendons draw sharp lines across the backs of his hands and the inside of his forearm.

From a distance, there’s the clang of a bell that Sokka recognizes—the pool deck is closing in half an hour, which means Katara, Suki, and Yue will soon be done with their shifts. He decides to pretend that he hadn’t heard it, so of course Zuko says, a moment later, “We should head back, soon.”

Zuko continues to hum as they pack up, so Sokka stays quiet on the walk down, too. He doesn’t want to interrupt Zuko’s creative flow. When the trail ends and they reach the paved walkway that splits off in two directions—one back to the lobby, the other towards the staff parking lot—they stop and turn toward each other.

It was a nice afternoon, Sokka concedes. Zuko really isn’t a freak. He’s kind of … chill, actually. More steadying to be around than his teammates; he’s just some guy, really.

“Thanks,” Sokka says.

“Enjoy your day off tomorrow. Right?”

“Right.”

They’re supposed to part ways now. There’s nothing more to be said, so why does Sokka feel like they’re both waiting on something? If this were Haru or Aang or Suki, Sokka’d pull them into a one-armed hug, using his other hand to thump them on the back, but—but that doesn’t feel right, here. Zuko’s not the bro-y, jock type.

A fist bump, then. That’s more chill.

Sokka holds out his fist at the same time that Zuko waves. “Oh,” Sokka says, and Zuko’s face turns a pink that only deepens with Sokka retracts his hand to wave back.

“See you Thursday,” Sokka says.

“See you.”

Sokka turns and walks away, before one of them awkwardly tries to wave or bump fists again. He looks over his shoulder once, eyes tracing Zuko’s frame, and then he realizes he’s looking back at—some guy. That’s weird, isn’t it?

He whips his head around again and shoves his hands deep into his pockets.

Saturday brunch rolls around again, and Sokka smashes his personal record for cash tips two hours before the main rush is even over. He quickly spreads the word among his teammates and friends—milkshakes and burgers on him after they all get off shift.

While most of them are off duty by six or so—the college kids, now fully integrated into the staff schedule, take the bulk of the night hours—they still have to wait on Teo, who’s performing in the restaurant until half-past seven, and on Katara, who’s been swept to god-knows-where by Azula. Sokka finds himself wandering around the studio wing of the gym facility, only half-heartedly searching for the room where Yue promised she’d be putting the  team through their dancing paces for the end-of-summer talent show.

Most of the studios are empty, and when Sokka finally catches strains of music floating down the hall, he deliberately slows his pace. He doesn’t like dancing. It’s not him, and he thinks it’s stupid that being a varsity athlete doesn’t positively impact his ability to dance. It’s all just physical movement, in one form or another—shouldn’t something translate?

Eventually, he reaches the door, and he has no choice but to, hah, face the music.

He pushes into the studio, a grand announcement of his entry on the tip of his tongue,  when the thought dies at the sight in front of him.

It’s not his team in this room, but Zuko, Zuko in shorts and an oversized t-shirt and some sort of slipper-but-thinner-looking shoes. He moves in time with the music that’s pumping through the speakers, and it looks less like dancing than pure, distilled motion, energy itself given a manifested form. The graceful lines of Zuko’s body have never been clearer, and Sokka’s jaw drops when a particular flourish of Zuko’s arms suddenly make him look like a ribbon arcing through the air—

Zuko spots him through the mirror and abruptly stops.

“Sorry!” Sokka scrambles, backing toward the door and instead slamming into the wall. “Sorry, I thought my friends would be in here.”

Zuko pads over to the sound system to lower the volume of the music. “It’s okay,” he says, somewhat breathless. “I trust you.”

Trusts me with what? Sokka wonders. “That looked really cool. I don’t know how you get yourself to look like that.”

“Like what?”

Zuko approaches Sokka, with that hint of extra fluid still in his limbs, and elegant is the first word that comes to mind. Sokka rubs the back of his neck. “I—uh, I don’t know. Like, a dancer?”

He’s close enough now that Sokka can see the sheen of sweat on his forehead and nose and neck. “I can teach you some moves,” Zuko offers.

“Oh, no. I don’t dance.”

He tilts his head, and Sokka’s gut does something funny at the amused look on Zuko’s face. The expression is different than when Zuko laughs at one of Sokka’s jokes; it’s as though there’s something intrinsic to Sokka that draws that expression out of him. Like Sokka doesn’t even have to try.

“Aren’t Yue and Teo planning something for the staff talent show?”

“Yeah, but, like, I don’t dance. I’m more of a hit-the-ball, score-the-goals kind of guy.”

“I thought it was called a puck.”

“Ball, puck, whatever—it’s sports. It’s not dancing.”

“I think some rhythmic gymnasts might argue with that.”

Why are they still having this argument that feels more like teasing? “Do you want me to dance?” Sokka asks.

Zuko’s quiet, and for a moment, Sokka thinks he’s won, but then he realizes that Zuko’s  appraising him, eyes raking up and down his body and lingering on his shoulders, his hips. “I think you’d surprise yourself,” he says cryptically. “Here.”

He takes a step back at the same time as he offers a hand, palm-up, to Sokka. For a fleeting second, he’s consumed by overwhelming curiosity, and his brain flips through what he could say as he takes Zuko’s hand—enchanté, monsieur, or my, what strong hands you have, or good luck getting these hips to cooperate—but then he remembers that he’s already on-purpose late to Yue’s rehearsal, and if he fully misses it, Yue will be sad and Katara will yell at him.

“Sorry,” Sokka begins, smiling regretfully, and Zuko’s expression already shutters a bit. It fills Sokka with the crushing need to bring back that subtle, amused grin. “I’m just already late to meeting Yue, and Katara will kill me if I upset her girlfriend, but—but I’ll see you tomorrow, yeah?”

Zuko nods. “Tomorrow.”

“Okay. Tomorrow. Yeah.” Sokka wipes his damp palms on his thighs. “Uh, enjoy your evening. I mean, the practicing—it looks good.”

He backs out the door, and his heart is still racing when he finally finds Yue.

The mood at the diner that night is ebullient. Their rehearsal had gone well, Teo had received a business card from a restaurant patron that turned out to be an admissions officer for a music conservatory in Chicago, and Sokka, of course, is paying for everything. The warm glow of happy friends lasts through the night and follows Sokka into the morning and Sunday brunch—always a tamer crowd than Saturday—until an irate Katara intercepts him on his way to the bathroom.

“What?” he asks, more occupied by his shrinking bladder than whatever has put Katara in a twist this time.

“Azula’s using Zuko to spy on us,” she says.

Sokka blinks. Usually, Katara doesn’t care what Azula does, only complaining if Azula’s directly effecting her in a negative way. “Zuko? Spy?” he echoes, because he really can’t imagine Zuko getting invested in espionage of any sort.

“Teo saw them talking, and then Azula went to Li and Lo and ordered them change the staff talent show eligibility rules.”

Sokka carefully shifts his weight. “Surely one teenager can’t undermine an entire country club management structure,” he says. “Besides. Do you really care? The winner gets a plastic trophy. I’ve seen them in the front hall, and they’re definitely fake.”

Katara makes a noise of frustration. “It’s just—she asked me to do a duet with her, and I said no, because we obviously have our thing going on, and why would I want to spend more time with Azula? But she can’t even take rejection like a normal person. Instead she’s just throwing around her nepotistic weight! And enlisting her brother as a spy!”

The door to the men’s room opens, catching the tail end of a flush, and Sokka feels like he’s going to die. “I’ll ask him,” he says absently.

“You’ll ask him? That’s subtle. And since when did you even talk to him?”

“Since, I don’t know. Katara, I reallyreallyneedtopee—”

She steps out his way. “Ew, don’t tell me that—”

He does think about what she’s said, as he uses the bathroom and then returns to work. Zuko and Azula seem to have a weird relationship; he wonder what made them like that. He knows now that, underneath the shaggy hair and general reticence, Zuko’s pretty normal, but there’s strong evidence for Azula’s battiness, and Sokka doesn’t think she does it just to put on a show.

So he asks, when washing dishes in the afternoon, “Are you reporting back to Azula what we’re doing for the talent show?”

Zuko passes him a stack of baking sheets for rinsing. “No. I’m also not trying to find anything out, if Katara’s worried.”

“How did you know it’s Katara?”

Zuko shrugs. “Doesn’t seem like the kind of thing you’d be curious enough to ask about.”

Oh, but that interests Sokka. “What do you think I’d be curious about?”

The movement beside him ceases, and Sokka lets go of the rinse hose. There’s nothing but the rumble of the dishwashers in their little corner of the kitchen; Sokka meets Zuko’s eye, trying to make sense of the subtle shifts in Zuko’s expression.

“The physics of a fouetté.”

Sokka’s brow furrows. “Is that a cheese?”

A laugh bursts out of Zuko, and Sokka can’t contain his automatic grin. “No, it’s a ballet turn.”

Zuko picks up another dish, and Sokka turns the hose on again, the moment dropped again to something loose and casual and easy. “Well, what are the physics of it?”

“I don’t know.”

“What? Zuko!”

“What? I’m taking AP chem, not physics.”

“You can’t tease a man like that.”

“Can’t I?”

On Monday, when Sokka’s clocked out but stuck hanging around Lava Springs waiting for Katara’s shift to end, Zuko takes him to an empty studio and demonstrates the fouetté. They burn several hours there, Zuko pulling out endless fouettés on Sokka’s demand as he tries to break down the physics of it (he’s taking AP physics this year, thank you). The equations and diagrams are a distraction from the flex of Zuko’s legs, from the grace in his limbs that doesn’t diminish even on the hundredth turn.

There are no distractions, however, on Tuesday afternoon, when they venture into the golf course and around the backside of the lake that borders the north side of Hole 11. Zuko reveals an old rowboat hidden beneath a tarp behind some shrubs, and he and Sokka drag it to the edge of the lake, where they then row out to the little island in its middle.

“Is this a manmade lake?” Sokka asks.

Zuko nods. The oars in his hands move with a sure fluidity that Sokka’s now convinced is just part of Zuko. “It has to have water pumped in. Uncle’s been arguing to drain it and replace it with a sand trap for years, but the board won’t back down.”

Even with some shade on the island, it’s a hot afternoon, and Sokka’s quick to shuck off his shirt and sprawl flat across the relatively cooler earth. Zuko’s brought his composition notebook again, and his intermittent humming lulls Sokka to sleep.

He doesn’t doze for long, woken up by the discomfort of his own sweat, and when he cracks an eye open, Zuko’s abandoned his notebook near Sokka and disappeared somewhere. Unconcerned, Sokka levers himself upright and goes in search of him.

He finds him on the curve of the island where it’s just becoming visible to those on the green. Sitting on the narrow strip of sand that barely counts as a beach, Zuko has his legs submerged to the mid-calf in the lake, and when Sokka reaches him, he takes off his sneakers and socks to do the same.

“Thought you’d be out for longer,” Zuko says.

“I was betrayed by my own sweat.”

Zuko crinkles his nose, and Sokka grins. Zuko’s kind of a prude, he’s learned, but in a funny, not-annoying way. He swipes his palm across his forehead and then aims for Zuko’s face, singing, “Sharing is caring—”

“Sokka!”

Zuko grabs Sokka’s wrist and diverts it into the sand with unexpected strength, but a lifetime of wrestling with Katara kicks in and Sokka grabs with his other hand, which doesn’t have his sweat, but whatever. He gets a hold on Zuko’s bicep, but then Zuko surges forward, and it turns into a full-on tussle. There’s limbs and water and sand and laughter, bubbling out of Sokka’s chest but then also escaping Zuko.

Sokka’s a varsity athlete and not shy to admit he’s built, for someone his age, but somehow, he ends up underneath Zuko, his face being shoved into the sand. “Okay, okay, okay!” he laughs out and then coughs, having accidentally inhaled some sand.

Zuko releases his face and slides off to his side, landing with a thunk and his own laugh. “Please don’t die,” he says, voice light but a real, watchful concern in his eyes.

Sokka hacks twice more. “We’re clear,” he confirms, voice rough.

Half-propped on his forearms and looking up at Zuko, Sokka nonsensically thinks that he’s found himself in a shady cave formed by Zuko’s chest, a chest that rises and falls with exertion. There’s sand in Zuko’s hair and eyebrow, and when Sokka’s gaze drops to his parted lips, a pink tongue darts out to wet them.

He locks eyes with Zuko. Zuko shifts forward, down, and Sokka swears his heart stops—

And then Zuko’s on his feet again, the dip down nothing more than a light push off the ground. “I’m grabbing water,” he says, “Just in case.”

He walks off, somehow not bound in time to whatever just happened. Sokka drops his chin to his chest, eyes unseeing as he tries to relive the last twenty seconds. Zuko was just giving himself a springboard to get upright again, right? No. No, he definitely leaned down. He licked his lips and then leaned closer to Sokka, but then he leaned away, and those were all choices, Sokka thinks. It wasn’t Sokka’s head slowing down time; that had happened. What would have happened if Zuko hadn’t leaned away? Would they have—did Zuko not want to kiss Sokka?

Sokka blinks. A tiny alarm is ringing inside his head, warning him that he’s skipped a step in the logic somewhere. So he backtracks. He’s gone over the shift, the lips, the deliberate eye contact, the disappointment when Zuko moved away—Oh. He forgot to ask himself if he wanted Zuko to kiss him.

He supposes that forgetting to ask might be an answer in and of itself.

He stumbles to his feet, grabbing his socks and shoes and headed back to where they’d grounded the boat, and he reaches their spot right as Zuko makes a noise of triumph and pulls a water bottle from his bag. “Here,” he says, holding it out.

Sokka’s careful not to let their fingers touch as he takes it. “Thanks.”

Zuko nods, already humming to himself, and in a minute he’s buried in his notebook again.

Sokka spends the rest of the afternoon pretending to nap, but really, he’s sneaking looks at Zuko as he composes. Just looking doesn’t really give him any answers, only confirms that Zuko embodies elegance and hides a lot of strength behind his graceful movements. Touching might give Sokka a better clue to the whirlwind of questions howling in his head, but it’s not exactly normal to just touch a guy, and, besides, hasn’t he heard Katara and Suki rant enough about the awfulness of feeling like nothing more than an experiment to a curious person? Sokka’s not ashamed of his curious nature, but he’d horrified if he made anyone, much less Zuko, feel like an experiment.

Eventually, the pool deck bell rings in the distance, and Sokka stretches with emphasis before rolling to his feet. They pile into the boat, return it to its hiding place, and then trek back to  the club.

“I’ll gonna be washing sand out of my hair for days,” Sokka says when they reach the point where they have to part.

“You say that like I won’t also have the same problem.”

It’s the closest they’ve come to bringing up the almost kiss, and Sokka, frustratingly, can’t read Zuko’s expression or tone. Is he disappointed? Indifferent? Are they agreeing to never speak of it ever?

“See you Thursday,” Zuko says.

Sokka nods and watches Zuko turn and walk away.

He spends his day off thinking about guys, on a conceptual level, and doesn’t really get anywhere. For the first time ever, he realizes how being a hands-on learner can have its disadvantages. He supposes he could ask Hakoda about it—he very obviously loves Bato, the way he loved Kya before she passed—but then he decides he doesn’t want the first person to hear about this to be his dad. Bato is also out, for the obvious reason that he’s Bato.

He arrives at work on Thursday as confused and curious and stuck as he was before, and it doesn’t help that Zuko acts completely normal when he drops by for his usual, unofficial afternoon dishwashing shift.

When Haru comes back from his break and Zuko leaves, Sokka tries to ask a question, but the words catch in his throat. He coughs, and then manages, “What do you think of Zuko?”

Haru hunches over to squint at a particularly stubborn scalded something inside the curve of a pot. “He must have some secret dishwashing knowledge,” Haru answers. “I can never get these fully out, but his pots and pans come out looking brand new.”

Not exactly the kind of response Sokka was looking for. Then again, as far as Sokka knows, Haru’s been unwaveringly straight since day one.

“Hey, you’re sticking around for the staff game on Monday, right?”

Sokka blinks. “What?”

“The staff baseball game? They’re giving us that half-day since Fourth of July is going to be hell. You’re playing, right?”

Right. He does remember talking to Suki and Yue about this. “‘Course.” 

He supposes he should warn Zuko that he won’t be able to hang out this Monday; then he wonders if it’s presumptuous of him to assume that Zuko would still want to hang out with him on his half-days. How’s he supposed to casually inquire whether they’re still going to hang out without calling attention to the not-kiss? What if Zuko says he doesn’t want to hang out anymore?

He ends up never bringing it up, and by noon on Monday, he still hasn’t seen Zuko, so he changes into the athletic clothing he brought and follows the band of summer staff headed to the baseball field on the far side of the gym facilities.

The smell of barbecue quickly crowds out any thoughts of Zuko or guys or kissing, and Sokka’s psyched to find he’s been put on the same team as all of his friends. Yue and Katara are the only two missing, and they still haven’t appeared by the time Teo has turned on the scoreboard, officially starting the game.

“You seen Katara?” he asks Suki, stretching out his glove.

She shakes her head. “Saw Azula storming around the pool earlier today, though. She might have roped Katara into something.”

There’s a screech of golf cart brakes, and Suki brightens. “Yue!” she calls.

Sokka turns and freezes.

Yue, radiant with her reflective sunglasses and sun-glowing skin, is pulling Zuko with her. He’s still in country-club whites and looks incredibly self-conscious.

“Look who I brought!” Yue says.

“What’s he doing here?” Sokka asks.

It must’ve been louder than he thought; Zuko immediately looks at him, and Suki elbows his side. “I—don’t have to be here,” Zuko says.

It’s painful, that Sokka’s caused this uncertainty in him, but he doesn’t have a chance to  rectify it. “Yes, you do,” Yue counters, firmly but gently. “Azula’s been on another level today, and Zuko deserves to join in on something fun and relaxing.”

Sokka snorts before he can help himself. “You’re going to find baseball fun and relaxing?”

That familiar, amused look spreads across Zuko’s face. “You think I can’t?”

“Inside sources say you don’t agree with golf.”

“Baseball isn’t golf.” Zuko picks up a spare wooden bat, spins it around his hand, and then tosses it at Sokka.

He catches it. “Well, baseball also isn’t dancing.”

Zuko steps forward, wraps a hand around the bat above Sokka’s hand, and oh, okay, looks like they’re deciding who’ll bat first. “I can play ball,” Zuko says. “You’re the one who can’t dance.”

Sokka raises an eyebrow. What’s Zuko playing at, bringing up that conversation here? “I don’t dance,” he clarifies and then grabs the bat with his other hand, his pinky overlapping Zuko’s second finger.

Two hours later, Sokka’s discovered that baseball was invented to kill him, specifically.

It doesn’t matter that baseball isn’t dancing, because dance has apparently gifted Zuko with an acrobatic capacity that is absolutely an advantage in this sport. Sokka’s going nuts, watching Zuko tumble and dive and sprint and, god, when he swings, that powerful and controlled dancer’s core twists his shoulders away from his hips, and Sokka suddenly understands why so many commemorative baseball sculptures choose this position in which to freeze the greats for all time. 

Sokka’s team wins—really, how could any team lose when they’re stacked with Sokka, Suki, Haru, and Aang?—but Zuko’s still grinning widely while exchanging end-of-game handshakes. His hair’s been mussed by going from hat to helmet to hat, there are grass and dirt stains all over his country club whites, and Sokka feels a spark when Zuko’s hand wraps around his.

“Good game,” Zuko says.

“Good game,” Sokka chokes out.

By now, the barbecue food is ready, and the sweaty staff crowd the plastic tables and grill. Sokka’s shuttled along between Suki and Aang, only half-listening to Suki debating the merits of raw onion as Aang pokes around for vegetarian options. Already seated at one of several picnic tables, Yue giggles at something Zuko’s said, and Zuko smiles at his paper plate.

Where Yue goes, the rest of them gravitate, and Sokka finds himself hyperaware of the three bodies separating him from Zuko. He tells himself to calm down, because what is he even expecting to happen? But it’s futile—there’s electricity in his veins that manifests as a lack  of appetite and a jittering leg and endlessly sweaty palms.

Aang catches on, at some point, because besides Katara, he’s always the first to notice when something’s off with Sokka. “Are you okay?” he asks quietly, bless him, because Aang—unlike most other people Sokka associates with—knows how to be subtle.

“Yeah,” he says. “Just need to use the bathroom.”

It’s an excuse to get up, at least, but when he reaches the bathroom, he keeps walking, following a lesser-used outdoor maintenance walkway that connects the gym facilities to the backside of the pool area. It’s a long and somewhat obscured walkway, and after a minute or two, Sokka spots a small footpath. He plunges sideways and into the greenery.

He eventually comes out a ledge of sorts; at least, he imagines that that’s what sits beyond the artfully arranged wall of boulders that extends out in either direction and must demarcate the property line. He finally stops, turning to lean against the sun-warmed stone, and closes his eyes.

He wants to kiss Zuko. 

But that doesn’t really mean much, does it? Because he can’t just, like, up and kiss Zuko without knowing if Zuko wants to kiss him, too, or without knowing if he wants to kiss Zuko because it’s Zuko, or if it’s because he’s now curious about guys. What if it’s both? Can he ethically kiss Zuko if there’s a part of him that’s just curious to kiss a guy? Are ethics even really a consideration here, or is he just overthinking himself into an insane spiral?

There’s a rustle of underbrush. Sokka’s eyes snap open, and Zuko emerges from the trees.

“How’d you find me?” Sokka asks.

Zuko shrugs. “I’m good at finding things.”

He’s standing at the edge of the trees, a step from being within Sokka’s reach, and Sokka really doesn’t know what to do with that information. He drops his face into his hands and breathes deep, which must look pretty concerning from the outside.

“Sokka? Are you okay?”

“I’ve been … thinking about you, a lot. The last few days.”

He lowers his hands and finds that Zuko’s drifted closer. If he stretched, he could hook a finger through one of Zuko’s belt loops, the one on his right hip that’s fallen victim to a grass stain.

“I’ve been thinking about you, too,” Zuko replies.

Sokka drags his eyes up to Zuko’s face. “You have?”

Zuko nods. Without consciously deciding it first, Sokka’s hand lifts, finding that belt loop. A soft tug, and Zuko takes the invitation to step into Sokka’s space, until Sokka’s hands can spread around his waist, until his nose fills with the smell of grass and sweat. It’s masculine and gross but also kind of good—enticing. He wets his lips.

A soft noise escapes Zuko; he leans in, and this time, he keeps leaning.

His lips are softer than Sokka expected, and in a breath their kiss turns open-mouthed, lips and teeth and sometimes tongue discovering news ways to slide together. Sokka tightens his hold on Zuko, pulling him as close as he can, and his stomach is warm where it presses against Sokka’s. He can feel hands in his hair, squeezing his arm, cupping the nape of his neck, and it’s overwhelming but not enough at the same time. He wants skin, he realizes, and he quickly yanks the stupid white polo from where it’s tucked into Zuko’s pants so he can press into the skin of Zuko’s back, feeling the warmth and muscle against the pads of his fingers. 

He also realizes, in the back of his mind, that he likes that he’s kissing a guy and specifically that he’s kissing Zuko, and he no longer really cares that he discovered both at the same time.

He doesn’t know how long they kiss, how long he’s trapped between a warm rock and a soft body, but when Zuko eventually pulls back, it’s the most natural thing in the world to lower his lips to Zuko’s neck, to wrap his arms all the way around Zuko’s torso. Zuko laughs, squirming, craning his neck. “Wait, I’m sensitive—ha! Sokka!”

Sokka kisses a pronounced tendon. “You’re sensitive here?” he asks, looking up.

“Yes.”

“Good,” he says and goes to dive in again.

He gets a hand to the face, and he laughs, backing down. “Sokka! We’re—outside.”

He loosens his arms around Zuko’s waist and kisses the tip of his nose; Zuko catches his lips again, hands steadying on Sokka’s chest. “Let’s do that more,” Sokka says.

Zuko smiles, and Sokka wants to kiss it right off his face. How is he going to get any work done when Zuko’s in his vicinity? 

“We can do that more,” Zuko agrees.

Chapter Text

They return to the barbecue separately, and no one seems to notice anything different—attention is focused on a rehashing of all the ways in which Azula’s been awful to Yue over the last several weeks. Yue’s the least incensed of all of them about it. “She’s just trying to get to me through the rules of whatever game that only exists in her head,” Yue says. “There’s no reason to get worked up about it.”

Sokka’s inclined to take Yue’s stance, but he’s also extremely distracted by the sense memory of Zuko’s lips on his. In fact, he’s floating in the clouds for the rest of the day, and he doesn’t even complain on the car ride home when Katara puts on one of her I’m-angry-don’t-talk-to-me CDs and jacks the volume up.

He’s so charming on Tuesday morning that when the manager on duty is no where to be found for several hours, the other waiters throw Sokka at every customer-service problem, and he smoothes them over beautifully. He clocks out at his usual partial-day time, spends thirty minutes covering dishes while Haru’s on break, and then goes wandering in search of Zuko.

He finds him in a studio, rehearsing to a contemporary instrumental song. This time, Sokka quietly takes a seat on the floor near the back of the room, and when Zuko notices him in the mirror, he doesn’t stop; he dances through the end of the piece, holds his final pose for two breaths, and then goes to turn off the sound system. He crosses back to Sokka, who waits patiently and indulges in openly staring at Zuko as he walks, because he’s pretty sure he’s allowed to do this, now.

“There’s something about the way you move,” Sokka says, “that makes me think I’m going insane.” Zuko comes to a stop right next to him, and Sokka wraps a hand around his calf. “I’ve never seen a more gorgeous leg in my life.”

Zuko looks amused, asking, “Did your brain break?”

“If it did, you broke my brain.”

He heaves himself to his feet, and with a quick glance at the door and the mirrors, determines that no one could see if he sneaks a kiss right now. Even though he’s been replaying in his head their make-out from yesterday ever since it happened, the memory holds nothing against the feeling of Zuko against him now, real, in this moment with him.

“Where are we going today?” Sokka asks.

A new pattern develops, wherein they bring snacks to whatever clandestine spot around the club and fill Sokka’s free afternoons with food and conversation and kissing. Zuko still composes, sometimes, and Sokka will take a cat nap to the sound of his humming, the difference now being that he’ll use Zuko’s lap as a pillow, or Zuko will stroke Sokka’s hair or shoulder or back with the hand that isn’t holding a pencil. When Sokka’s working a full day, he clocks out as early as he dares and then races to the roof of the club’s main entrance, where, in the dark, he and Zuko can mess around until they hear familiar voices pass on the walkways beneath them, headed for the staff parking lot. Only then does Sokka kiss Zuko goodbye and scramble back down, jogging to the lot and catching Katara and whoever else he’s driving home ten yards before they reach the truck.

He’s obsessed with putting his hands on Zuko, and he thinks he loses his mind a bit every time Zuko puts his hands on him, but it’s more than just the physical. It’s like kissing Sokka unlocked a secret part of Zuko, the part that monologues his feelings and makes puns that are even worse than Sokka’s, the part that asks brazen questions as if he’s never heard of the concept of tact—not that it bothers Sokka, because he finds he wants Zuko to know everything, from his thoughts on starter Pokemon to the size of his shoes to the embarrassing story of his first kiss, which was with Suki when they were twelve.

After two weeks of this, Katara starts pestering him about why he’s “so happy all the time.” Sokka deflects by claiming he’s being normal; it’s Katara who’s always in a bad mood because she’s stuck on a golf course five days a week with Azula constantly lurking.

The last full week of July, Azula traps Katara with some sort of dinner invitation—the finer details of the whole ordeal escaped Sokka, who was remembering the feeling of Zuko’s fingertip lightly tracing the tendons on the backs of his hands earlier that day—and when Sokka clocks out that Thursday night, he wanders aimlessly, looking for places around the club to offer a helping hand and getting shooed away by the college kids.

Darkness falls earlier each day, and he can’t believe he’s still at his place of work for the sunset, tonight. When the last of the pinks and reds morph into purple, he sighs and heads to the staff locker room, but there’s still no sign of Katara. He’s wondering where to drift to next when the door smashes open and Zuko skitters inside, a wild look in his eye.

“Whoa,” Sokka says, automatically stepping forward to touch Zuko but then catching himself. Anyone could walk in, here. “You okay?”

Zuko nods breathlessly. “I escaped,” he says, but from where, he doesn’t elaborate. “Come with me.”

Zuko leads him to the pool, where he easily hops the gate that’s only ever shut when the pool isn’t open. Sokka could also jump over it—he’s taller than Zuko, after all—but he hesitates, wondering what exactly they’re doing here without swimsuits. “Zuko,” he whispers.

He looks back at Sokka, an impish grin curling his cheeks. “Didn’t you say you were dying to try out the pool?”

With a sinuous twist, he pulls off his shirt, and Sokka feels his face heat. He vaults over the fence and races to strip to his boxers.

The water is crystal clear and refreshingly cool against the lingering warmth of the day. He surfaces with a big gasp, and before he’s blinked the water out of his eyes, hands are yanking him back underwater.

In the aquamarine blue, Zuko’s hair billows out around him, creating a backdrop for the bubbles that dance up from his lips. Sokka wants to kiss him, and kissing underwater is a thing, right? He thinks he’s seen it in a movie—

He gets a mouthful of water for his trouble, and Zuko’s laughing at him as he holds Sokka above the surface and Sokka hacks. “You’re so mean,” Sokka croaks when his lungs stop pitching a fit.

“Come on,” Zuko says, letting go of Sokka and slipping beneath the water again.

Sokka follows him into the fake cave beneath one of the manmade waterfalls that flows into the pool. On this side of the falls, sitting on a submerged bench conveniently hewn out of the wall, it’s like they have their own little world, sealed off by the rushing white water and its splattering sounds. The scent of chlorine fills his nose, and he can taste its strange tang when he kisses Zuko.

He flinches at the unexpected brush of a palm against his stomach, and it’s then that he realizes this is the most unclothed they’ve ever been with each other. Before he can put thought to it, his hands become bold, and he curls his fingers behind one of Zuko’s knees, squeezing his calf lightly and delighting in the noise it draws out of Zuko.

There’s so much he’s discovered about Zuko, so much that Zuko’s shown him, and it occurs to Sokka that he hasn’t really shown Zuko anything. Sure, he rattles his mouth off anytime they’re not kissing, but he wants to show Zuko places. There’s a whole great world beyond this country club for them to discover, and why shouldn’t they venture into it? They both have licenses. Sokka even has half of a car.

He tugs at the back of Zuko’s leg, and in one smooth movement Zuko’s suddenly in Sokka’s lap, his knees on either side of Sokka’s thighs. Zuko pulls back to kiss the tender spot behind Sokka’s ear, and Sokka finds himself asking, “Wanna go on a hike on Monday?”

Zuko pulls back and sits up, arms looped around Sokka’s neck, eyes watching him carefully.

“There’s a great view from a trail not too far from here,” Sokka surges on. Maybe Zuko doesn’t like hiking. Food could sweeten the deal, though. “And after we could, like, grab dinner. Maybe see a movie, too.”

Zuko’s head tilts, a reticence that Sokka hasn’t seen in weeks edging back into his expression. “Isn’t that the kind of thing that … boyfriends do?”

Is it? A hike, then dinner and a movie? Oh. That kind of does sound like a date. “I guess so,” Sokka says. “Do you want to be my boyfriend?”

Zuko blinks. “Your boyfriend?” he asks hesitantly.

“Yeah.” He can feel a wave of self-consciousness coming on, and he doesn’t want to feel self-conscious, damn it! So he steamrolls over his own impending flood of emotions: “I mean, we kiss a lot, and we spend most of my free time together, and I also like you, a lot. And even if we don’t go hiking, I can think of, like, five other places I want to show you. Places that would be great for dates.”

“Dates,” Zuko echos, and Sokka wonders if he accidentally hit him on the head when he was choking on pool water, or something.

“Dates,” Sokka confirms. “Like boyfriends go on. Like, if you want to be my boyfriend.”

There’s a strand of water-darkened hair stuck to Zuko’s forehead. Sokka raises a hand to brush it back, and his touch seems to jump-start Zuko. “Yes,” he says, loud enough that the word bounces off the walls of the cave. A smile splits his cheeks. “I do want to be your boyfriend.”

Warmth bursts in Sokka’s gut, and he grins so wide he can hardly kiss his boyfriend.

On the ride home, Katara demands to know why he reeks of chlorine, and he says he accidentally fell into the pool. It says something about her degree of distraction or about his general bad luck—or maybe both—that she doesn’t question him further.

The only thing that brightens her mood these days is Yue’s buoyant smiles, so Sokka’s glad they have a rehearsal for the talent show on Saturday evening. For once, Katara can make it, and Sokka can see her step getting lighter as they approach the studio, until she crosses through the doorway and stops short. Sokka runs into her, and she doesn’t even budge. “Why’s he here?” she asks.

Sokka follows her gaze and instantly wishes he could melt into a puddle of limbless goo. Standing next to Yue, wearing the loose shirt and form-fitting pants Sokka knows he prefers for dancing, is Zuko.

Zuko’s eyes flit uncertainly from Katara to Yue, and Sokka feels his heart pound, knowing what Yue’s going to say before she opens her mouth: “Zuko’s going to help us with choreography. He’s really good at it!”

Katara scrutinizes Zuko, and he waves awkwardly. “I promise I’m not spying for my sister,” he tries hesitantly.

It’s good enough for Katara; she shrugs and crosses to where Aang and Suki are stretching. Sokka’s left blinking in the doorway, wondering how he’s supposed to keep it together in front of his friends when his secret boyfriend is demonstrating dance moves.

Turns out, that’s the least of Sokka’s problems. What’s a thousand times worse is Zuko watching Sokka dance.

Or trying to, anyway—his already dismal dancing becomes no better than jerking and flailing about whenever Zuko’s intent gaze is on him. “Geez, Sokka,” Haru says at one point. “I didn’t know you could get worse.”

“It’s not my fault!” Sokka protests. Haru’s one to talk! Haru has two left feet! Sokka flings a hand in Zuko’s direction. “I can’t concentrate when my—dishwashing buddy is watching!”

Zuko’s eyes light up, and Sokka dares to raise an eyebrow, but Zuko just drifts away to help Aang with a tricky sequence.

In the reprieve from Zuko’s attention, Sokka focuses on his feet again, determined to get this move right—if Haru could do it, so can he. They’re evenly matched, it seems, in both on-ice capability and off-ice incapability. He hops from foot to foot, trying to imagine the box in the floor that Zuko was talking about, or whatever, and not fall over, but then his foot knocks into his own calf and he almost wipes out.

“Here,” says a voice behind his ear, and Sokka almost falls over again.

Hands grab his hips, fingers digging into his flesh through his shirt, and oh, Sokka’s going to kill Zuko for this. He doesn’t look back, but he can feel Zuko’s breath on his neck, warm and raising the hair on Sokka’s arms.

“You need to lead with your hips,” Zuko tells him, “or everything else will fall out of line.”

His hands push and pull, making Sokka’s own body demonstrate what he’s explaining, and god, that’s a feeling he’s going to have to tuck away for later. Is this technically manhandling? Is it weird that Sokka’s enjoying it in a way he probably shouldn’t be?

Zuko’s hands leave his hips, and then Zuko circles around him to watch from in front. There’s a glint to his eye that convinces Sokka that he knew what he was doing to Sokka. “Show it to me,” Zuko says.

Sokka takes a deep breath, resolutely does not think a single thought at all, and tries the move.

When he dares to look at Zuko again, he discovers that familiar amused expression, the one that seems to surface just because Sokka’s, like, existing. “Nice,” Zuko says and then moves on, as if he hadn’t just given Sokka a small crisis in front of half of his friends and teammates.

Zuko is evil incarnate, and, somehow, Sokka still likes him.

Monday morning, Sokka uses one of his short breaks to find Katara at the driving range. “Here,” he says, giving her the keys to the truck. “Li and Lo want me to stay late.”

He gives a pout, which might have been a little too much—Katara frowns suspiciously. “Don’t you have the afternoon off anyway?” she asks. “You can’t finish whatever it is then?”

“They said it could take a while,” Sokka replies, hoping Katara doesn’t ask what it is. “I’ll get Dad to pick me up.” She still looks unconvinced, so he adds, “Look, if you stick around after your shift, Azula will definitely hunt you down.”

Katara pockets the keys and kicks Sokka off the driving range.

His half-day shift with the mild Monday lunch crowd has never felt this slow, and, in his distraction, he makes mistakes for the first time in forever, bringing the wrong dish to the wrong table and somehow triple charging a couple for a single glass of orange juice. The shift manager isn’t happy with him, and Sokka’s relieved to escape after covering dishes during Haru’s break—thank god he doesn’t break any plates or glasses.

After clocking out, he changes in the staff locker room into an outfit he spent way too long overthinking, trying to balance a date that would start with a hike in the mid-afternoon and, hopefully, end with a movie in the night, and all with the pressure of it being a date. He wants to look good, but what does Zuko think good looks like?

The anxiety disappears, though, the instant he sees Zuko leaning against the hood of his car, waiting for Sokka with his hands tucked into his pockets. God, Sokka wants to kiss him, but they’re in the front drive of the country club, so he settles for quietly greeting him with a “Hey, boyfriend” as he strolls up.

Zuko’s face flushes. “Don’t distract me like that when I’m driving.”

“I’d never.”

He does sing along to the radio, though, and lean across the console to play with Zuko’s hair, and Zuko smiles about it more than he frowns. They reach the head of the trail in half an hour, and they’re sweating in no time. The exertion doesn’t stop Zuko from asking questions, though, and Sokka finds himself talking about his team and why he loves being a defenseman and adventures in Piandao’s shop when he was a kid. He talks about the adjustment from Bato-Dad’s-friend to Bato-Dad’s-Boyfriend? to Bato-our-stepdad, and how Katara hated him for years and Sokka was caught between his sister’s raging grief and his own quiet respect for the uncle-like figure he’d always looked up to. He talks about how, when Katara came out without preamble over an otherwise ordinary dinner, Bato had been the only one with the right words while Sokka and Hakoda sat dumbstruck.

Zuko’s quiet, after the last story, and Sokka takes the break to guzzle some water. Hiking in the summer heat, and running his mouth the entire time? He’s really putting in the work.

“I think my sister’s gay,” Zuko says, “but she hides it because of what happened when I came out.”

Sokka glances at him. “What happened?”

Zuko gestures vaguely at his own face, and Sokka trips and eats dirt.

He hears Zuko’s cry of shock, and he’s quick to push himself upright, brushing dust off his front and waving a hand. “I’m fine, I’m fine,” he says quickly. His mind is still reeling. “Zuko, I—”

Zuko kneels next to him in the middle of the path, frowning at Sokka’s forehead. “You got a cut,” he says, pulling an honest-to-god bandana out of his small backpack.

He pours water onto the cloth and presses it gently to Sokka’s forehead. There’s a deep concentration to his eyes, and Sokka guiltily keeps glancing at his scar. He doesn’t mean to stare, and he’s never had issues with staring at it before, but—now—

“I think it should be fine,” Zuko says a minute later.

He pulls his hand away from Sokka’s face, and Sokka grabs his wrist to gently hold him in place. “That was a shitty thing,” he says, “I’m so sorry.” He hates that those are the only words he can come up with even after sitting on it for this long.

Zuko shrugs. “At least it let Uncle take us away from our father.” He stands, tugging Sokka with him.

They continue walking, and now it’s Zuko telling stories. It doesn’t take long for Sokka to notice that he only shares tales from his early childhood or after he and Azula moved in with their uncle, but he doesn’t press Zuko for those missing years—he can reign in his curiosity if it’s for the sake of keeping Zuko from closing up again. He learns that it’s Zuko’s uncle who encouraged him to explore his love of dance, when his father had only allowed Zuko and Azula to study and practice the strictest of classical music. Azula scoffs at Zuko’s interest in composing and choreography, but even her gravitation toward musical theatre was a sign of her refusing the expectations of their father. One day, Zuko wants to compose a full symphony piece dedicated to his uncle.

It isn’t until they reach the top of the trail that Zuko pauses, blinking as he takes in the view. “Wow,” he says.

Sokka steps closer, taking Zuko’s hand, and lets the view wash over him.

The country club is large enough that, even from this far, it’s possible to make out its boundaries, but it’s still just one spot in a dry ocean of other pieces that coalesce to become Sokka’s hometown. It’s silly, but he sometimes thinks of the place like a mechanized circulatory system: there’s Main Street, with the town hall in its center, as the beating heart that supports the everything that spreads beyond it. There are the schools, there are the local stores, there’s the supermarket with its massive parking lot that’s a popular spot for street hockey in the colder seasons. Neighborhoods rise and fall the further the streets carry out from the center, and beyond the homes and duplexes, there are the unique destinations popping out like attractions on a board game map: there’s Lava Springs, there’s the community pool, there are the public fields and track where Sokka and Katara used to play soccer whenever they were between hockey seasons.

Sokka sees everything, and he understands everything, and it makes him feel like he can do anything he sets his mind to.

There’s a light pressure around his hand, and he turns to Zuko, who still looks dazzled. “Do you ever think about how small you are?” Zuko asks.

“Excuse me? I’m taller than you.”

Zuko shakes his head. “I mean—I forget, sometimes, how many people and … things there are in the world. And I’m just me.”

“Just you?” Sokka repeats. “Zuko, where did you wake up this morning?”

Zuko frowns, probably wary of where Sokka’s headed, but he still answers, “My house.”

“And when you left your house, where did you go?”

“The club. Sokka, I don’t—”

“And when it’s not the summer, we both go to the high school,” Sokka pushes on, “You told me you take dance classes at Sapphire’s Studio, and since you said you buy Ramune for Azula whenever she’s sad, I know you have to go to the Asian market. Where are your favorite places to go in town?”

“Um. The park on Main Street. And there’s a tea shop on East Quail Run where Uncle hangs out with his friends. I join him, sometimes.”

Quail Run Drive—Sokka thinks that's on the way to the rink, and he definitely knows where that is. “Is that about where the tea shop is?” he asks Zuko, pointing at a cluster of shops that surround the rink.

Zuko nods.

“Okay,” Sokka says, mentally planning the lines he wants to draw before he points with his finger. “The tea shop, the Asian market, school, Sapphire’s Studio, the park, Lava Springs, wherever your house is—.” He starts tracing the loop he’s made, over and over. “You have an effect on each of these places every time you pass through them, and you also have an effect on the other people passing through them. And think of all the places I’m not even including right now! How many people do you think there are in those places, plus these places?”

Zuko shakes his head, a smile tugging at the corner of his lip. “Don’t make me do math.”

“A lot! And we’re not even real adults, or anything,” Sokka emphasizes. “Imagine how many people you will touch in your entire lifetime.”

He’s watching Zuko, who’s still studying the town laid out beneath them. It takes him a long moment before he turns to Sokka. “I still feel small.”

“I’m not saying you can’t feel small,” Sokka says. “I just … I don’t think it means just anything. Small doesn’t mean insignificant, or unimportant.”

He doesn’t expect Zuko to lean in and kiss him softly, slowly, like Sokka’s something delicate and easily startled. Sokka closes his eyes, pursuing Zuko’s lips, taking his face in both hands.

When they part, Zuko says, “Thank you.”

Sokka blinks. “For what?”

“For knowing how to scale the world down into something … manageable. Nothing’s that intimidating, after it’s been broken down by you.”

Sokka doesn’t know what to do with a compliment. He thinks it’s a compliment? If he’s sure of anything, it’s that Zuko looks happy and at ease again, and that Sokka’s allowed to kiss him again, so he does.

“Ready to head back down?” Sokka asks. “Sooner we get down, sooner we get food.”

They go to a diner that offers massive two-person milkshakes, because Sokka’s always wanted to go on a date at one of these places, and it feels like a wink and nudge from the universe when Sokka learns that Zuko loves the maraschino cherries, which Sokka has never learned to enjoy. He almost says something like It’s like we’re made for each other, and then checks himself because they’re seventeen and not in one of those rom-coms that Katara's secretly obsessed with.

The movie is the type of B-rate suspense-thriller that Sokka would prefer to watch in broad daylight underneath a fort of blankets, but having the option of hiding in Zuko’s shoulder is a pretty good second. Zuko teases him about how jumpy Sokka is for the entire two hours, but he kindly holds Sokka’s hand and kisses his forehead at the end when the lights come up. They’re walking by the concessions stand when Zuko gets a twinkle in his eye and says, fake-shocked, “You survived.”

Sokka throws him over his shoulder and runs the rest of the way out of the building, laughing when Zuko shouts so hard his voice cracks.

Unfortunately, the evening has to come to an end, but it’s a nice ending, in Sokka’s book: Zuko leans over his gearshift to kiss Sokka, and Sokka can still taste popcorn butter on his lips. “Good night,” Zuko says, voice low, and something straight-up flutters in Sokka’s chest.

He’s quiet when he goes into the house, easing the front door open only a crack to avoid the creak it gives when it’s thrown open, and he almost has a heart attack when he shuts it, turns around, and sees Bato sitting in the high-backed armchair. “Bato!” he whisper-screeches and then has to gasp for breath.

“Who was that?” Bato asks, jutting his chin toward the front door. He no doubt saw Zuko’s headlights.

“Uh,” Sokka says. The only response his brain supplies him with is the truth, and there isn’t really a lie he would rather tell, is there? “My boyfriend.”

There isn’t enough light for Sokka to see if Bato’s expression has changed. It’s a long beat before Bato speaks again. “How old is he?”

Sokka swallows. “He’s my age?” Does Bato think he’s lying? Does he need to, like, explicitly come out, here? “We go to school together.”

“Hmph. Okay.”

Bato stands, then, coming up to Sokka and laying one of his large hands at the nape of Sokka’s neck. “Go to bed,” he says kindly with a gentle squeeze, and it’s a small gesture, but it means so much coming from Bato.

Sokka throws his arms around his stepdad’s waist. “G’night, Bato,” he says and then hightails up the stairs.

He’s once again dashing to the bathroom mid-shift when Katara sweeps out of nowhere to pounce on him. “Have you seen this?” she snaps, waving a crinkled flier in Sokka’s face.

“Not if you keep moving it.”

He snags the flier and ignores Katara’s noise of protest. Staff talent show, larger number of anticipated guests, blah, blah, more shifts, prohibited from entering …

“Seems like you can still participate,” Sokka says, “While I rake in more cash.”

“That’s not the point, Sokka!” She rips the flier back from him. “No one else can participate.”

Oh. Wow, he’s an idiot. “Azula,” he says, and Katara sets her jaw.

“Told you she ran this place.”

The entire day is thrown off by the announcement that regular staff are no longer eligible for the talent show. Sokka, granted more mobility in his role as waiter, plays messenger for his friends, and when his lunch break rolls around, Suki grabs him before he can slip off to the dish washing station. “We need your level head to get through this conversation, captain,” she says grimly. She only ever calls him captain when she means serious business.

Somehow, they’ve all managed to line up their lunch breaks—even Teo, who’s usually entertaining the late lunch crowd at this point—and they gather at the picnic benches behind the locker facilities. Yue looks cross, which is how Sokka knows it’s bad. “Okay,” he says, clapping his hands once. “What’s our goal?”

“We could trap Azula in a closet,” Teo says.

“Love the quick response time, might not be the most productive goal. Other thoughts?”

Teo shrugs, knowing Sokka would reply with as much.

“It’s not fair that she’s allowed to do this,” Katara says. “There must be something we can do to stop her.” She raises an eyebrow at Teo. “Actually stop her.”

“Is it weird to ask her uncle about it?” Haru suggests.

“Do we really need to go to the owner of the club about this?” Suki counters.

“But he is her uncle,” Yue says.

Sokka shakes his head. “They don’t have the best relationship.” All eyes turn to him. “What?”

“Maybe you could talk to Zuko about it,” Haru says. “You guys get along.”

“Really?” Katara asks. “Sokka, since when did you like Zuko?”

Sokka’s brain freezes. Yeah, he likes Zuko, but not in the way that Katara’s asking, and everyone’s staring at him, and he doesn’t really know if Zuko’s told anyone he likes boys, and Sokka’s pretty sure it’s not up to him to tell his friends about that, so—so—

“He’s actually normal,” Sokka says in what he hopes is a smooth way. Suki’s giving him one of those looks, but, whatever, thinking of Zuko has actually given him an idea. “And—he’s our choreographer, right?”

“Did you completely wipe our last rehearsal from your memory?” Haru jokes.

“Ha, ha.” If only Haru knew how much Sokka wanted to die for those two hours. “I mean that that means he’s on our side, right? And he’s also Iroh’s nephew.”

Yue sits up. “He should have as much sway as Azula.”

“Put that together with our smarts—”

Yue leaps off her bench to throw her arms around Sokka, and from over her shoulder, he’s relieved to see his friends’ expressions turning from frowns and dejection to smiles and determination.

The rest of lunch is spent scarfing food and creating action items. When they finally start splintering off, Sokka’s surprised that Suki follows him instead of heading straight to the pool deck with Yue. “What’s up?” Sokka asks.

She steps close to snake an arm around his waist, and he throws his arm over her shoulder. “It feels like I never see you anymore,” she says.

“We’re already learning to sacrifice our social lives for work,” Sokka jokes.

“Ugh. Sounds like regression, not character development.”

“Speak for yourself! I’m getting plenty of character development this summer.”

“Is that so?”

She lifts an eyebrow at him, a perfect arch that elementary-school Sokka was so jealous of he trained himself to also raise one eyebrow at a time, on both sides. “Put that eyebrow away,” Sokka says, arching his own.

Suki snorts. “You know I love you, Sokka.”

“Wow.” Sokka does know this, but it’s rare that Suki says so aloud, unprompted. “I love you, too.”

“No matter what,” she continues.

They reach a fork in the path where Suki has to turn off if she doesn’t want to make a ridiculously large loop to get back to her post. She lets go of him but waits a moment, biting her lip. The look is back, and something in the set of her shoulders makes Sokka think she’s finally going to say the whatever it is that’s on her mind when she looks at him like this, but then she blinks a couple times and she’s back to Normal Suki, not Psychoanalytically-Scrutinizing-Sokka Suki. “Do what you can with Zuko, yeah?” she says. “I’m still terrified at the thought of an enraged Yue.”

Sokka snorts. “She and Katara would raze the entire town.”

“Exactly.”

When she said do what you can, she probably meant making a convincing little speech, or something, but Sokka has a larger arsenal than she knows. When they’re hiding in the dark of the roof, Sokka thinks he could probably get Zuko to agree to most anything, which is only fair because he thinks there isn’t much that he’d say no to if Zuko were asking. He’s massaging a knot out of Zuko’s shoulder when he brings up the plan the team had come up with over lunch, and Zuko agrees to it between stifled groans. “Not sure if this will show Azula she can’t always get her way,” he says, “or just convince her she needs to be even more conniving than she already is.”

Sokka pauses. “Shit. You think this could turn into her villain origin story?”

“Probably not.”

“That really inspires confidence.”

He digs his thumb into the knotted muscle, and Zuko sucks in a breath through his teeth. “You did that on purpose,” he accuses.

“I’m healing you, babe.”

Zuko suddenly twists to look Sokka in the eye. He can’t possibly be comfortable in that position, when they’re sitting this close. “Call me babe again.”

It’s too dark to be a 100% sure what expression Zuko’s making. “Babe,” Sokka obeys hesitantly.

He’s caught off guard by the hand that yanks him forward by his shirt, his nose ramming into Zuko’s cheek before they fix their angle. Zuko’s lips are more familiar to Sokka than his own, at his point, but that doesn’t make his kiss any less intoxicating. When Zuko finally lets him go, Sokka’s breathless and still a little shocked. “Wow,” he says. “You like that?”

Zuko grins sharply and presses a kiss to Sokka’s jaw. “Yeah,” he says, simple and barefaced as that, and Sokka never could have known that mundane honesty from another person could make his heart twist like this.

He pulls Zuko into his chest, hooking his chin over his shoulder and pressing his temple against Zuko’s jaw. “You’re bringing a whole new person out of me,” he says.

He can hear the confused frown in Zuko’s voice when he asks, “You think I’m changing you?”

“Yes? No. Sort of? More like …” He doesn’t know how to explain what he’s feeling in a non-insane way. Something is finally coming out of him? A dozen scarring images from horror films featuring parasites and aliens ripping out of people’s stomachs flash in his mind’s eye, and he shudders. “Like the thing was always there. But no one knew?”

Zuko laughs. “You’re blossoming.”

“Are you making fun of me?”

“No!”

“Are you sure?”

He’s pulled into another kiss, a hint of Zuko’s teeth tugging at his lower lip. “Pretty sure,” Zuko says against Sokka’s mouth, and Sokka doesn’t know why this makes him feel like his guts are melting.

Two days before the show, Sokka comes back from his break to discover Azula sitting at one of his tables. For a second, he’s frozen, wondering why a sixteen-year-old is sitting down to lunch on her own at a fancy club restaurant, but then he remembers that this is Azula and normal doesn’t seem to apply to her at all, ever. 

“Good afternoon,” he says when he reaches her table. “Did Gabriela already go over today’s specials with you, or—?”

“Seared ahi tuna and sparkling water, no ice,” Azula interrupts. “It’s customary to give your name when you take over another server’s table.”

Sokka can’t help wrinkling his nose. “We go to school together.”

“And you’re spending many afternoons sneaking around with my brother.”

He almost drops his notepad, which is more of a prop, anyway, since he memorizes orders and writes the tickets later. What does she mean by sneaking around? What does it matter to her, anyway?

His mouth isn’t always as smart as his brain, and he finds himself challenging, “You have proof of that?”

She drums her nails against the table, once. It’s a sharp and impressively intimidating sound. “Yes,” she says and doesn’t elaborate.

Her narrowed eyes don’t waver from his face, and god, this is why Sokka stayed as far from the Katara-Yue-Azula drama as he could last semester. He does not have the patience or energy to put up with this for longer than he has to. “Seared ahi tuna and sparkling water with no ice, coming right up,” he repeats and hightails to the kitchen.

He startles Haru into splashing suds everywhere, but Zuko’s already long gone from the dishwashing station. “You good?” Haru asks, plucking his wet shirt away from his body.

“Peaches,” Sokka tosses over his shoulder on his way out again.

Azula doesn’t even look at him when he brings her seltzer, so he’s not expecting her hand to dart out, lightning fast, to grab his wrist once he’s set down her food ten minutes later. “Sit,” she orders, tilting her head toward the seat opposite her.

“That’s a big no-no in the handbook,” Sokka replies, glancing around the room. It’s pretty full, and Li and Lo are insistent on employees not resembling, like, actual human beings in front of the customers.

“There isn’t a handbook,” Azula counters, “but if there were, I’d outrank it regardless.”

If even Li and Lo submit to Azula’s whims, he can’t possibly get in that much trouble for doing the same. Right? He takes a seat and watches Azula pull a pair of gorgeous wooden chopsticks out of her purse.

“You’re planning something,” she says and pops a piece of fish into her mouth.

“Generally, there’s always something going on in my head, yes,” Sokka agrees. He’s not a natural equivocator.

“A week ago, Zuzu signed up with an individual act for the talent show. He never performs alone.”

Sokka resists the urge to squirm. “Well, maybe he does now.”

“He’s never known what to do without me to carry a performance.”

For a moment, he’s shocked into silence by the unfiltered condescension dripping from her tone. Zuko’s told him, that he and Azula don’t have the best relationship, but—god, that’s her brother she’s insulting.

“Zuko’s insanely talented,” he finds himself saying, sitting straighter and leaning forward. “He’s creative and he’s dedicated and he can perform, actually, without you. And he’s never had to perform with you, either. He does it because he wants to, and because he wants to support you, though I still have a hard time understanding why, when you’re constantly disrespecting him like this.”

Her expression is inscrutable, but she’s holding herself very carefully still, her chopsticks resting against the rim of her plate. It makes Sokka think that maybe something he’s said has gotten through to her. “We’re going to be seniors this year,” he continues. “After that, he’ll be gone. Do you really think he’ll just wither away without you? Do you think things will be the same for you when he’s gone?”

“I don’t need him,” she says stiffly.

“I don’t need him, either. But knowing now how much brighter each day is that I get to spend with him? I’ll fight in every way I know how to keep him in my life forever.”

Her eyebrow twitches at forever, and okay, maybe that’s a bit intense for two guys who supposedly are just friends. Might even be intense for two teenagers who’ve been dating for not even two weeks. But he stands by it. “Maybe you should also consider what’s worth making an effort for,” he finishes.

With that, he pushes his chair back and rises to leave. To his surprise, Azula doesn’t try to stop him.

The plan goes like this:

Zuko has signed up as the penultimate act—the last being Azula, of course, for whom he’ll do some accompaniment anyway—and he begins on the stage alone, throwing his heart into a contemporary dance solo that admittedly makes Sokka’s heart flutter every time Zuko defies gravity and throws himself with power and grace into the air.

In fact, he’s so transfixed by the ribbon of Zuko’s spine that he almost misses his cue. “Move,” Suki urges, jabbing his waist, and Sokka quietly yelps but obeys.

He scuttles around the backside of the stage and hears the sudden gasps and oohs of the audience—Katara and Yue must have made their dramatic entrance. Sure enough, there’s Teo’s piano slide, and Sokka mentally counts, in Zuko’s voice, and three and four—

And then he’s on stage, blinking at the unexpected brightness of the lights, but muscle memory is his second language, and he doesn’t miss a beat. From the other side of the stage, Haru joins him in the back of this group of their dancing friends, and they exchange a grinning glance before they dive into a footwork sequence that requires Sokka’s full attention.

He moves his body in a way that he hopes passes for dancing, puts his chest into the back-up oh yeahs and na na nas that are the only vocals he and Suki are allowed to contribute, and then, before he knows it, he’s panting in a crouch at his sister’s feet and hearing what sounds, illogically, like a heavy downpour coming from in front of the stage.

Oh. That’s applause.

There’s some sort of signal that Sokka doesn’t catch, but hands are there to pick him up and guide him off the stage. The rest of his brain finally comes back online, and when he makes eye contact with Katara and Yue, they fly into his arms in unison, almost knocking him over—someone steadies him from behind when he stumbles. He can’t hear Yue from where she’s basically speaking to his armpit, but Katara’s voice is crystal clear in his ear as she says, fiercely, “Thank you, Sokka.”

They release him in unison, and Sokka looks over his shoulder to see it was Suki who steadied him. He throws an arm around her, ruffling her hair, and Suki laughs brightly. “Have you seen Zuko?” he asks her.

“Azula grabbed him as soon as we got off stage.”

As if on cue, the opening notes of a new song blast through the sound system; Azula’s performance must be starting, which means Zuko is already long gone. Well, for the next few minutes; he’ll get off the stage eventually. “I’m going to the bathroom,” Sokka announces to no one in particular, letting go of Suki.

He passes the bathroom, though, and ducks into an old office that Azula had converted into a dressing room. Zuko has been complaining about the costume Azula wanted him to wear for more than a week, now; Sokka bets he’ll want to get out of it as soon as possible.

When he finally catches his breath, he becomes aware of the fact that he’s standing in a room that’s very much Azula’s space. He’s not quite sure how to describe how he knows it, but he thinks it has something to do with the colors and the things left scattered about—they’re clearly all Azula and not at all Zuko. That is, until his eye lands on a neat array of empty Ramune bottles lining a shallow ledge that runs along the room’s ceiling.

There must be fifty bottles in here, at least, identical down to the flavor, and Sokka’s struck by several things at once: Zuko gets Ramune for Azula when she’s sad; identical bottles means it’s unlikely that each kept bottle is meant to commemorate a unique thing; Azula, for all her stand-offishness, has kept all these bottles; and somewhere in this club or in their home, there are likely many, many more bottles.

Sokka doesn’t get Zuko and Azula—not when their relationship is so foreign to what he has with Katara—but there’s something about this cared-for accumulation that makes his chest feel tight.

The door opens, and Sokka whips around to see Zuko, skin shining with sweat, rip off the bedazzled vest that Azula had forced him into.

Zuko doesn’t seem surprised to see Sokka. “You did great,” he says, a smile curling his lips. He crosses the room to crowd Sokka against the counter that runs along one wall, and Sokka’s hands automatically fit against the rise of Zuko’s hipbones.

“Is Azula okay?” he asks.

Zuko tilts his head. “I think she’s fine. Why?”

Sokka lifts a shoulder, his cheeks burning. “You care about her, and I care about you. So. Transitive property?”

“Don’t talk to me about math,” Zuko breathes out and presses up against Sokka to kiss him.

He smells so strongly of Zuko that Sokka can suddenly hear the rush of his own blood. He pulls back enough to say, still essentially into Zuko’s mouth, “Technically, geometry,” and Zuko chuckles—Sokka’s going to die—and kisses him again, sweetly.

Sweet can’t last long, though, when Sokka’s body is still worked up from their performance, and Zuko is so warm and his hands are so hungry. His hand wraps around Sokka’s wrist, tugging so that Sokka’s arm is looped all the way around Zuko’s waist, and Sokka’s hyperaware of the labored breath that passes between them and fills his ears—

“Zuko, have you seen—”

They spring apart, bumping noses and elbows and knees, but Zuko still manages to press himself flat against the opposite wall by the time Katara swings into the room. “Oh,” she says, stopping short. 

Her eyes dart between them, and Sokka swallows. He doesn’t like the expression that’s spreading across his sister’s face. “Oh, what?” he asks.

Her gaze drops to his hips, and oh, god, Sokka’s not—is he? He looks down and is relieved to find it’s just his shirt, half-untucked by Zuko’s insistent hands. Still potentially incriminating, but—

He clears his throat. “What?” he repeats, tucking his shirt again.

Katara shifts her stance into something more relaxed, a hand on her hip. It’s totally poised. “I was just going to ask Zuko if he’d seen you,” she says. “Clearly, he has.”

Sokka looks at Zuko, whose expression is half-shuttered. There are excuses—Sokka’s mind is always offering him ten to twenty dialogue options—but none of them will make him or Zuko feel good.

He’s surprised that Zuko speaks up before him, his voice a quiet rasp. “He’s here. Do you need him?”

Not an excuse, but a gentle nudge to gloss right over any questions Katara might have. Sokka tries to send him a grateful look, but Zuko’s eyes are trained on Katara.

“They’re about to announce the winner,” she says. “You should come, too, Zuko.”

Zuko finally looks back at him, and it’s clear that neither of them really care about that stupid plastic trophy, but … but Katara’s waiting for them, and just because Sokka has the brain for logic and planning doesn’t mean that his sister isn’t also smart.

“Oh, cool,” Sokka says. He pushes himself off the counter and jerks his head toward the door. “After you,” he tells Zuko.

Zuko nods, unsticking himself from the wall. Maybe Sokka’s imagining it, but he feels like there’s a strain in the air that follows them out of the room and as they walk back down the hall, trailed by Katara and her watchful eyes.

Zuko’s act wins the silly plastic trophy, which he immediately gives to Yue and Katara so he can chase after Azula when she storms off the stage, biting her lip so hard Sokka wonders how she doesn’t draw blood. He wants to stick around, to at least be there for Zuko, but it’s getting late and he’s supposed to drive half of their crew home. When they drop off Suki one block over from their place, it’s almost midnight, and Katara’s yawning loudly every other minute.

Sokka’s just settling into bed, wishing he hadn’t neglected getting a replacement cell phone after the Zamboni Incident of March 2007 because then he could be texting Zuko to check in on him and Azula, when there’s a knock at his door. “Yeah?” he calls, expecting Dad or Bato to pop in.

Instead, it’s Katara. “Tree house?” she asks.

He sits up, blinks, and then gropes around for a sweatshirt. “Sure.”

Sokka was eight when Kya suddenly stopped going to work and began building a treehouse for him and Katara; it wasn’t until years later that he realized their mother must have quit her job at the bank shortly after she got her diagnosis and dismal prognosis, all within a month. The treehouse, when it was finished, was always their space—“No dads allowed!” Katara used to chant down at Hakoda when he’d come out to tell the three of them that dinner was ready—and after Kya passed, it remained only Sokka and Katara’s space.

They don’t use it as much as they used to. High school made their lives busier, and now they only go to make repairs or occasionally clean it. Sometimes, if Sokka’s about to give himself an anxiety attack over finals, Katara will drag him there with some hot chocolate, and if Katara and Hakoda start gearing up for a blowout argument that will leave no one’s feelings unscathed, Sokka will instead convince Katara rave at him for a few hours in the tree while Hakoda does whatever it is he needs to cool down.

Tonight, Katara wraps herself in a blanket and settles on the floor with her back against the wall. Sokka sits opposite her, folding his legs tight to his chest so he can stretch his sweatshirt over his knees. “What’s up?” he asks evenly, as if he has no clue what this could be about.

Katara chews on her lip. It’s a long minute before she finally asks, “Sokka, have you been sneaking off this entire summer to hook up with Zuko?”

Hook—? “We’ve only kissed, basically,” Sokka blurts. Katara’s eyes flare with surprise, and maybe that wasn’t the first thing to address. “It hasn’t been the entire summer. Just … since the baseball game.”

Katara nods, her expression reserved and careful as it always is when she’s putting things together. “I know you’re supposed to tell me only when you feel ready to,” she says, “but. You’re talking about it so easily, right now.” She meets his eyes, and Sokka’s chest tightens to see tears shining in hers. “Why didn’t you tell me? That—you know. That you like kissing boys, too?”

Why didn’t he? It all happened so fast, he supposes. This entire summer has gone by too quickly, hours he used to spend lazing in the sun with friends and hiding from the oppressive heat in the rink now swallowed by work, and work, and more work. “I don’t know,” Sokka says, truthfully. “I didn’t know I did until it was already happening.”

Her expression is still pinched, and what possible qualm could she have about his answer? He wasn’t lying about not knowing, and he really did find out by just kissing Zuko, and—

Oh. Oh. She’s wondering if she can still lecture him about being an ally and not crassly experimenting when he’s, like, like her, now.

“It’s not just kissing,” he says, the words awkwardly tumbling from his mouth. He never really talked to Katara about any of the girls he liked, and he hasn’t talked to anyone about being with a guy. “I care about him. And I don’t know if Zuko’s out to anyone other than his family. So …”

Her expression softens, because she understands that, as Sokka knew she would. “Sorry I kind of dragged it out of you,” she says, playing with the tassels along the edge of her blanket.

Sokka grins. “Hey. Would you even be my baby sister if you weren’t forcing me to talk about my feelings?”

She cracks a smile, and Sokka rises to pounce a hug on her.

Katara shrieks, hunching protectively so her head doesn’t bounce against the wall, and they wrestle half-heartedly until they’re both wrapped in Katara’s blanket. Sokka puts an arm around his sister, and he doesn’t even complain when she rests her head on his shoulder and he gets a mouthful of her hair.

“I think you’re like Dad,” Katara says.

“Huh?”

She sounds sleepy, but there’s still a clarity to her words. “I talked to Bato about it, once. Bato said he always knew that he was queer, kind of like I did. But Dad didn’t know until later. Until … after Mom died.”

Sokka never really spared much thought to Hakoda’s second marriage—nothing beyond the pertinent stuff, like Sokka now having a stepdad and Hakoda growing into a second happiness that still left space for his grief for Kya. Maybe Sokka didn’t think twice about it because his dad always loved so fully and completely. When Kya was alive, she was like the center of his universe; ever since he and Bato got together, he’s looked at Bato like the man contains the moon and the stars and everything in between.

“Huh,” he says, because. Well. What else is there to say?

Katara hums. “He and Bato spent so much time together, and suddenly, it worked.”

It feels like she’s telling him this as if to say it’s okay, that he found this out about himself the way that he did. And he hadn’t realized he felt nervous about that until now, now that a wave of relief is washing over him.

He hugs his sister tightly, and she wriggles her arms out from between them to return his embrace. “Thank you,” he tells her hair.

She squeezes him. “No, Sokka. Thank you.”

The night air is cool, but they stay side-by-side in the treehouse for some time, warmed and supported by one another.

The next day is an unusually busy Sunday. Sokka barely has time to think while running from one table to the next, and he has an eye peeled for Zuko and Azula the entire time. He sees neither of them. When he finally gets the opportunity to take a break, he almost sprints to the dishwashing station, and his throat tightens when he only finds Haru.

“You good?” Haru asks.

Sokka clears his throat. “Yeah, totally. Go take your break.”

“You sure? I can wait until Zuko comes—”

“Nah, it’s good.”

Zuko never comes, and it’s not good.

He doesn’t get much sleep that night, tossing and turning as his mind unspools fifty different strategies to find Zuko and talk to him. More than two of them take into consideration that Azula might have hogtied her own brother, driven across state lines, and thrown him into a ditch. It’s only when he wakes in the morning that he remembers that Azula doesn’t have a driver’s license and has yet to drive anything other than a golf cart.

Sokka ends his usual half-day Monday doing dishes, but as soon as Haru is back from his break, he rips off his apron and begins his search. He starts in the main clubhouse building, but Zuko is nowhere to be found in the lobby or restaurant or the studios, so he begins his second circle, this time walking a careful loop that includes the patio bar and pool deck. Strategy number four from last night mapped concentric circles radiating out from the main building and stopping only once they encompassed the entire property, golf course included; Sokka hopes he doesn’t have to reach that level to find his boyfriend.

Is he even still your boyfriend? A doubtful corner of his mind whispers.

He forces the thought away. They are still boyfriends, at least until they have a conversation and then maybe Zuko dumps him. Sokka doesn’t know what to expect when he finds Zuko, but two days of avoidance kind of indicates that being dumped isn’t out of question.

The pool and patio don’t have Zuko, either.

Sokka does the loop that includes the stand-alone golf club and athletic facilities, and then the one with the maintenance facilities, and he’s about to embark on his first fully outdoor circle when he walks out of the dirty laundry dump and literally runs into Zuko.

He’s the hockey player in this collision, so Zuko’s the one who bounces off him, but his dancer’s feet help him land upright. “Sorry!” Sokka cries, because hip-checking Zuko was not part of his open communication plan.

Zuko grins, as easy as anything, and what? Is—did nothing change between them? Then why has Zuko been gone?

“Hey,” Zuko says, and the normalness of his voice is what finally gets Sokka’s heart rabbiting.

“What are you doing right now?” Sokka asks.

“Was headed to the baseball field.” He tilts his head in the general direction. “Wanna join?”

It’s a short walk, but the sun is unforgiving. By the time Sokka slinks into the dugout after Zuko, he’s sweated out the pits of his work polo. Zuko takes a seat on the bench, and Sokka hovers uncertainly near the chainlink fence that protects it. “I’m so sorry,” he blurts. “Did I fuck up?”

Zuko looks up, genuine surprise in his expression. “What?”

“I know it was awkward, with the whole Katara thing, and then I didn’t see you for two days, and—”

Zuko’s shaking his head. “No. No, you didn’t—I thought you might want some distance after your sister almost saw us …”

He ducks his head, a flush rising on his cheeks, and Sokka’s brain is repeatedly skipping like a scratched CD. It’s an effort to string together a coherent question. “Why would I ever want distance from you?”

One of Zuko’s shoulders lifts. “You’re not going to convince her there’s nothing between us if we keep spending time together.”

That’s why Zuko’s been—? “I told her,” Sokka says, and Zuko’s head whips up to look at him with wide eyes. Sokka backtracks. “I’m sorry—I hope that’s okay? She basically figured it out. I promise, I haven’t told anyone else, since we haven’t talked about whether you’re out to anyone other than your family—”

A strangled noise tears from Zuko’s throat, and Sokka instinctively rushes forward. He catches himself just before he touches Zuko, instead crouching in front of him. “Oh, my god. Are you okay?”

Zuko coughs into his elbow. His voice is scratchier than usual when he asks, “You kept us a secret to be considerate of me?”

There’s a hesitation in his kinked brow. Sokka wants nothing more than to smooth it away with his thumb, but his words will have to do. “Yes,” he says. “Why else would I keep you a secret?”

Zuko coughs again, breaking eye contact. “I thought you’d be embarrassed, if people knew … knew it was me.”

“Embarrassed?” Sokka blurts. What? “What? Zuko, I feel like I’m always about to explode with how much I want to talk about you! All the time!”

And fucking hell, is that hope reaching Zuko’s eyes? What the fuck?

Propriety and restraint thrown to the wind, Sokka grabs Zuko’s face and pulls him into a hard kiss. “I like you so much it makes me want to scream,” Sokka says, blood rushing in his ears. “And I am so, so sorry if you ever felt like I was embarrassed to be with you. I’m not. I’m really, really not.”

Zuko shakes his head, cheeks squishing adorably against Sokka’s palms. “You didn’t,” he says. “I just … assumed.”

“On the basis of what?”

This time, Zuko initiates the kiss, and Sokka feels relieved. Zuko still wants to kiss him; they still have this.

Then they pull apart, and Zuko says, “On the basis that you don’t dance.”

Sokka’s jaw drops, and Zuko’s mouth splits into a self-satisfied grin. “No!” Sokka shouts, and Zuko laughs so hard he topples sideways. “You’re not allowed to avoid me for two days and then be clever!”

He dives on top of Zuko, pinning him to the bench, but Zuko just laughs harder. They’re an awkward stack of bodies, and Sokka doesn’t even know what his goal is—squish Zuko’s face? Kiss him?—but then Zuko drops one leg off the side of the bench, tucks the other around the back of Sokka’s knee, and wraps his arms around Sokka. Just like that, they’re in a comfortable embrace. A happy hum escapes him, and Zuko’s fingertips stroke the back of his neck in response.

Sokka presses his face against Zuko’s neck. “How’s Azula?” he asks.

“She’s still upset. But she’ll be fine.”

“That’s good.”

“Can I—” Sokka feels against his cheekbone the movement of Zuko’s throat as he swallows. “Can I tell her? About us?”

“Of course.” He thinks about it. “She pretty heavily hinted that she already knows.”

Zuko sighs. “I think we’re overdue for a real conversation, anyway.”

Sokka hums. If Zuko wants to tell Azula, maybe he’d be open to telling other people, too. He’s about to ask as much when Zuko says, “I—haven’t specifically come out to anyone. But I want—”

He goes silent, hands stilling. Sokka counts three of Zuko’s steady breaths before his curiosity beats out his patience. “You want?” he prompts.

Quietly: “I want to be able to hold your hand whenever I want.”

Sokka dies. Sokka dies. What a—what a poetic—what a romantic way to ask the exact same thing Sokka was going to ask. Sokka was just going to blurt, Can we tell people we’re dating?, which is infinitely less precious, and—

“Good,” he says and reemerges from Zuko’s neck. “That means I get to kiss you whenever I want, right?”

Zuko smiles his Sokka smile. “Yeah.”

“That’s, like, all the time, for the record.”

Zuko snorts a laugh, and Sokka—obviously—kisses him about it.

That night, as Sokka’s driving them home, Katara falls asleep in the passenger’s seat.  Yue still kisses her cheek when Sokka drops her off at the end of her driveway, and then it’s just him and Suki quietly trading gossip from the day. When they reach Suki’s place, Katara’s mumbling in her dreams, and Sokka parks on the road next to the mailbox and cuts the engine. “Can I walk you to your door?” he asks.

“Sure,” Suki says, accepting the unusual request without a blink.

Her driveway is short, and by the time they reach the side door, Sokka still hasn’t said anything. Suki takes out her keys and then waits, her expression steady and open but not expectant.

Sokka coughs. “Uh,” he says, and then his throat closes up again. Why was this so much easier when someone was asking him questions?

“What’s up?” Suki asks.

Sokka’s been a chatterbox for so many years, now, that not many people in his life remember that he was a shy kid. He was fine with people he was familiar with, but with strangers? Or when he had something important to say, so important he couldn’t risk getting the words wrong? He’d freeze up, and then his own silence would start bearing down on him, but he couldn’t stop the silence, and then the tears would well up because he had to do something, but he just couldn’t—

Kya was the one who helped him through it. Hakoda was a great speaker, for sure, but it came naturally to him, the way it came naturally to Katara—they spoke, and the words just came, and suddenly they’d have entire crowds ready to follow them to the ends of the earth. Hakoda never knew how to help Sokka grow into it, because he never had to grow into it.

Now, at seventeen, Sokka still grasps for the hazy memory of Kya putting her hands on his shoulders. “Start with a small, simple thing,” she’d tell him. “You can always share your thoughts at your own pace.”

Sokka clears his throat, eyes dropping to the ground. A simple truth: “I wanted to tell you that I like guys.” He glances up for a second, too brief for him to parse Suki’s expression. “Specifically,” he continues to her shoes, “I like Zuko.”

“Sokka, that’s awesome.”

The genuine brightness of her tone makes him look up, and he discovers she’s wearing a proud smile. He reflexively grins back. “It is kind of awesome,” he agrees. “He’s definitely awesome.”

“I bet. Are you going to tell him?”

“Uh. He’s already my boyfriend?”

Suki blinks. “Boyfriend?”

“Yeah. It all kind of happened at the same time?”

She snorts, shaking her head. “Only you, Sokka, would have a boyfriend on lock when you finally came out.”

His mind snags on finally, and—it kind of has been finally, hasn’t it? The last few weeks, he finds he’ll be talking to Zuko about something from the past, and suddenly his understanding of the memory is totally different. Like, he can stand to watch the Star Wars prequels as much because of Ewan McGregor as Natalie Portman. Maybe there was another aspect to eleven-year-old Sokka’s obsession with his hockey summer camp instructor other than how he reliably laughed at Sokka’s jokes.

Maybe that’s why Suki gives him that look when they talk about certain topics or he says certain things.

“You kinda already knew, didn’t you?” Sokka asks.

Suki shrugs. “I had a feeling. But everyone needs to discover things at their own pace.” She readjusts the strap of her bag. “So. Do I get to officially meet Zuko as your boyfriend at some point? Or is he not out?”

“He hasn’t really told anyone outside of his family. But we’re both ready.”

She breaks into a wide grin and throws her arms around him. He squeezes her back, inhaling the Suki scent from the roots of her hair. “Sokka, I’m so happy for you,” she says, voice muffled in his chest.

A horn blares, and Sokka jumps, letting go of Suki. Katara’s glaring from just above the dashboard, her hand stretched out over the gearshift to threateningly hover over the steering wheel.

“You should go before Katara wakes up my neighbors,” Suki suggests.

“Yes, okay—I love you.”

His best friend smiles and waves, and Sokka dashes back to the truck. When he slides into the driver’s seat, her silhouette is standing in her open doorway, and Sokka gives her a wave before starting the truck.

The last day of work is five times the euphoria of the last day of school.

Sokka almost dies twice in the morning. The first time is when Chef June—whom he still hasn’t spoken a word to all summer—grabs him by the scruff of the neck as he’s walking to check out the specials board. She scrutinizes him from head to toe, lip curled in a dissatisfied half-snarl the entire time, and then declares, “You weren’t half-bad. Come back next summer.” It’s only when she lets him go that Sokka realizes the hand holding the collar of his polo was also holding a chef’s knife.

The second time, he’s balancing a tray loaded down with not one but two mimosa flights when he turns a corner and suddenly Azula is smack in the middle of his path. He yelps and resists his immediate instinct to flail; somehow, he doesn’t knock Azula over and doesn’t spill a drop of drink. His heart is palpitating so intensely he wonders, briefly, if he’s going to have a cardiac event at the tender age of seventeen, and he absolutely does not register whatever Azula’s saying to him.

She’s expecting something in response, though, and when he recognizes that he’s not about to die, he gasps out, “What was that?”

He gets a scathing eye roll. “Zuko says you’ll teach me how to drive,” she says.

Sokka blinks. “He did?”

She lifts a shoulder, as if she couldn’t care less, but she won’t meet his eye as she says, “He says you know how to scale things into something manageable.”

That—that has to be a direct quote. Zuko has said that his conversation with Azula went well, but Sokka still doesn’t know exactly what the siblings talked about, or how much was about him. But Zuko said almost the exact same thing to him on their first real date.

It dawns on Sokka—“Are you scared to drive?”

She whips her head up to shoot wide eyes at him. “No,” she protests, too loudly.

Sokka can’t help his wide grin. Azula’s definitely scared to drive. “Yeah, I’ll teach you,” he agrees.

She casts a calculating glance at Sokka’s mimosas. “Your ice is melting.”

“Sure is,” he says, taking her comment as the goodbye that it is.

The rest of lunch flies by, and then he’s dashing to the dishwashing station one last time. He slaps Haru’s butt as they pass each other in the doorway, and then it’s just Sokka and Zuko in the place where everything between them first started. Zuko’s wearing his country club whites, shirt half-drenched in suds as usual, and his lips are curling into his fond little Sokka smile.

“Breaking news,” Sokka says.

“What?”

“I’m looking at the most beautiful man in the entire world.”

Without hesitating, Zuko snags the rinse nozzle and sprays Sokka. Sokka lunges for him, laughing and grabbing for the hose. Even though Zuko is, as Sokka has learned, a fighter, Sokka’s also discovered that an unexpected kiss on the cheek is a foolproof way to break his boyfriend for a couple seconds.

He does just that, taking advantage of a flustered Zuko to shut off the hose and return it to its place, and then kisses Zuko on the other cheek for good measure. “You’re cute,” he says, and Zuko flushes harder, shaking his head.

“When’s everyone leaving for the diner?” Zuko asks.

“Around ten.” He picks up a pan and starts working at whatever gunk has been scorched onto it. “You ready?”

“Yeah. Are you?”

Sokka pauses to look at the guy next to him. Once a theatre freak, then just some guy, and now someone Sokka can’t imagine being without. “I’m so ready,” he answers.

He’s glad Katara already knows about them, because that means he doesn’t have to flounder for a convoluted reason why she needs to the drive their friends to the diner, and no, he won’t be in the truck with them. Instead, when he hands her the keys, she grabs his entire hand to pull him into a tight hug. “I’m so excited for you,” she says into his ear, and ugh, gross, Sokka loves his little sister.

He then follows Zuko’s directions to Iroh’s office. Throughout the summer, he’s seen Iroh around the club, but they still haven’t spoken directly since Sokka caught him stealing pastries. Zuko wanted to officially introduce them; he also told Sokka to not stress about it. “He already loves you,” Zuko told him, patting Sokka’s head like he was comforting a toddler.

“How? How does he possibly know me? Do you talk about me?”

Zuko blushed in response, and Sokka forgot his anxiety in the face of teasing his boyfriend.

Now, though, the nerves are back.

He straightens his shirt—he changed out of his work polo, since they’re headed to the diner right after this—and knocks on the wooden office door. “One moment, please,” an accented voice calls from within.

Oh, god, Sokka got here before Zuko.

The door opens way sooner than Sokka expected, and Iroh’s eyes are twinkling as he gestures for Sokka to come in. “Sokka,” he rumbles kindly. “So nice to be able to speak with you again.”

“Same,” Sokka says and then wonders if he should have said something less casual. Likewise? I’m also glad we’re talking now?

In the office, there’s an ornately carved yet sturdy desk in one corner and a few soft chairs around a low table in another corner. Iroh gestures toward the chairs, and as Sokka sits down, Iroh opens a cabinet on the wall to pull out a tray laid out with individually wrapped snacks. “I have heard many wonderful things about you, from my nephew and also from the staff,” Iroh says. “I am sorry we have not spoken much this summer.”

“I’m sure you’re a busy guy,” Sokka offers.

“We should never be too busy for those who bring happiness to our loved ones.” He sets down the tray and takes a seat opposite Sokka. “Please.”

Sokka’s always ready to eat, but he knows better than to be rude by, like, actually gorging himself. He takes a little individually wrapped cracker thing with dried seaweed around it. “Thank you,” he says. “Was it a good summer for the club?”

“Very. The hard work of you and your friends definitely helped our successes.”

Footsteps come running down the hall, and Zuko swings himself into the room. “Sorry, Uncle,” he gasps and then approaches their corner at a normal pace. “Uncle, this is Sokka. We’re dating.”

Sokka blinks—he guesses that he expected more preamble—but Iroh takes it right into stride, smiling warmly. “I’m so happy for you, nephew,” he says and then turns that smile onto Sokka. Any last trace of Sokka’s stress melts away from the kindness in Iroh’s brown eyes. “Take good care of my nephew. I’ll make sure he is also good to you.”

“Uncle,” Zuko whines, embarrassed.

Sokka grins. “Yes, sir.”

Zuko turns to pout at him and then sees the one cracker in his hands. “You’re always hungry,” he says and then takes a whole handful of snacks to place them in Sokka’s.

Sokka smiles at Iroh. He’s half joking, half dead serious when he says, “He is good to me.”

Zuko shoves the side of Sokka’s head. “We should go.”

Sokka nods, and they all rise. “Come visit at anytime,” Iroh says.

“Thank you. And thanks for the snacks.”

With Zuko driving, Sokka can munch and encourage the excitement that’s bubbling in his chest. While he has no regrets about this summer, it has felt a bit like he’s split his time between two worlds, one with Zuko and the other with his friends. Tonight, they’ll finally merge into one, and Sokka just knows the result’s going to be fantastic.

Zuko is quiet, which Sokka picks up on, but he doesn’t want to distract him while they’re on the road, so Sokka happily chatters until they park at the diner. He can see his and Katara’s truck a few spots down. Zuko cuts the engine, pulling out his keys, and Sokka reaches out to hold his wrist. “Hey,” he says. “You okay?”

Zuko looks down at Sokka’s hand. “Yeah.”

That won’t do. “Zuko.” But also… “We don’t have to do this now. We can wait.”

Zuko shakes his head; that’s not what’s bothering him, then. “Uncle says that people change with the seasons.”

Sokka swipes his thumb over knob of Zuko’s wrist. “Okay.”

“Summer’s ending.”

He looks up at Sokka, and the hesitation is clear as day in his expression. Not hesitation, exactly—worry. Sokka unbuckles his seatbelt and shifts in his seat. “So you think people are going to change?”

Zuko shrugs. “Seems likely.”

Sokka fully takes Zuko’s hand to interlace their fingers. “Hate to break it to you, babe, but we’re definitely going to change. We’re not—like, inertia’s stupid. We’re not simple objects in a normal field, or whatever.”

Zuko snorts, but Sokka’ll take it—the corner of his lip is twitching up, the tension in his brow smoothing out. “Inertia’s stupid?”

“Okay, it’s not stupid,” Sokka admits. “It’s actually very important. But also, still, fuck inertia, because without change, we wouldn’t be here.” He squeezes Zuko’s hand for emphasis, and Zuko immediately squeezes back. “We can’t stop change. But we can decide to try to change together.”

Zuko begrudgingly smiles. “I’m not sure if that made sense, or if it just sounds good because it’s coming from you.”

“Bet on both,” Sokka suggests and kisses him.

Zuko surprises him by grabbing the back of Sokka’s neck, turning a peck into something deeper and achingly sweet. When he pulls back, he’s wearing his Sokka smile, and Sokka thinks to himself, I’ll change however I need to in order to keep this person in my life.

Sokka blinks. He’s not in a romance novel. “Let’s go,” he says. “I’m dying for a burger.”

“You’re always dying for something to eat.”

“And?”

They don’t need to ask the host where their friends are; Aang’s hold raucous court in the corner booth, juggling ketchup packets as Suki intermittently tosses popcorn in his mouth. Whenever she misses, she hits Haru, which makes Sokka think she’s missing on purpose a lot.

An arm nudges into his. Zuko’s sidled up to him; Sokka takes his hand. “Wanna split a milkshake, too?”

“I’ll eat the cherry,” Zuko promises, like it’s some solemn duty, and Sokka bumps their foreheads before tugging his boyfriend toward his friends.

Sokka has never felt so sexy in his goddamn life. He wriggles in his seat, settling his butt into the leather seat and flexing his fingers around the handles that feel like they were designed for his hands specifically.

“I swear to god, if you start dry-humping that thing, I’m not taking anymore photos,” Katara warns.

Sokka squawks, and Bato chuckles as Hakoda pinches his nose with a sigh. “Katara, please,” Hakoda says.

“Tell Sokka to reign it in.”

“Let me love my baby,” Sokka protests, hugging the handlebars of his motorcycle as best he can.

His motorcycle.

“You two need to get going if you don’t want to be late to school,” Bato advises.

Katara snaps one last photo of Sokka on his bike before she hugs Dad and Bato goodbye and hops into the truck that’s now three-fourths her, one-fourth Sokka’s. She backs out of the driveway, almost hitting their mailbox, and waves cheerily through the windshield before speeding off.

“You have the second helmet?” Hakoda asks.

Sokka nods, patting the top of his overstuffed backpack. “I’ll be safe,” he promises.

Hakoda claps him on the shoulder, giving him a proud smile that makes something prick behind Sokka’s eyes. “I know you will,” Hakoda says.

Seeing his hometown from the perspective of a motorcycle feels different. Exhilarating. Streets and faces and places he’s been familiar with for his entire life whip by at speeds he couldn’t even come close to on ice, but instead of being boxed off from the world in his truck, he’s fully exposed to it. His body is a live wire humming in harmony with his baby’s engine, and he’s so overwhelmed by the joy of being that he can’t help whooping as he whips around the corner that’ll take him further west.

When he finally pulls up at the end of his boyfriend’s driveway, Zuko’s wide-eyed and slack-jawed. Sokka can’t stifle his grin, even after he’s pulled off his helmet. “Morning, babe,” he says, cutting the engine and swinging a leg over the body of his baby to meet Zuko.

Zuko rises from his seat on the front steps, eyes trained on baby. “You got a motorcycle?”

“Had to do something with those mimosa tips.”

He kisses Zuko’s cheek, and Zuko finally looks at him, a pleased grin curling his lips. “You’re ridiculous.”

Sokka laughs, pulling a little shimmy of a dance move because he’s excited and the energy needs to get out somehow. “Am I?”

Zuko snorts. “I thought you didn’t dance.”

Sneakily, Sokka hooks a finger through Zuko’s belt loop. “I do for you.” 

His tug is hardly a tug since Zuko’s already drifting into him, his hand curling around the back of Sokka’s neck as he kisses Sokka—or tries to, anyway. His laughter in Sokka’s mouth tastes like citrus.

When they pull apart, the sweetness is still in Zuko’s smile, the bright tang in his eyes. “Ready to go?” Sokka asks.

Without missing a beat, Zuko replies, “Anywhere you’ll take me.”