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It’s weird, Sokka thinks, being around so many people again. It’s not a bad thing, per se—he likes the bustle, the liveliness, the noise that comes from many people just existing around each other. It’s just that he’s gotten used to their little, tight-knit family, and the same bustle and liveliness and noise that used to comfort him is only throwing him off. He’d say all he needs is an adjustment period, but it’s not really as if they have time for that.
He sighs quietly and turns over, his sleeping bag rustling as he shifts. He’s too on edge to sleep, has been tossing and turning for spirits knows how long. It’s frustrating, above all else. He’s never had trouble falling asleep before, can usually tune out every sound and distraction—a very useful skill when travelling for hours atop a flying bison—but tonight he can’t help but be hyperaware of every footstep outside his tent, of the crackle of the dying fire, of the low murmur of unfamiliar voices. He can’t make out what they’re saying, but he can guess well enough. Hatching battle plans, no doubt—trying to figure out how their ragtag group of rebels is going to take down a superpowered Fire Lord, now that their champion has seemingly disappeared off the face of the earth.
It does seem rather like a suicide mission, that’s for sure.
Sokka huffs and rubs at his eyes. He just wants to sleep, but he can’t seem to get his brain to quiet down. It’s running a hundred miles a minute, going over everything that could possibly go wrong during the comet. It seems especially stuck on the fact that all of them, every single one of them, could die tomorrow.
And Sokka’s a realist, he knows it’s true, has slowly been working his way towards accepting it—but just spirits, he wishes his brain could shut up for just one second so he can get even a little bit of sleep before he walks to his doom in the morning.
He lets out a particularly explosive sigh, and there’s a rustle as the form beside him shifts. Sokka freezes. There’s a few seconds of silence while Sokka holds his breath, and then:
“Sokka?” Zuko says. “Are you awake?”
“Yeah,” Sokka whispers.
“Can’t sleep?”
“Yeah. Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you up.”
“No, it’s okay,” Zuko says. “I can’t either.”
There’s even more rustling, and Sokka squints in the darkness to try to distinguish Zuko’s shape as he sits up. The girls are in a separate tent, so it’s just the two of them crammed into a tent that was really only meant for one person. It’s cramped, and Zuko jostles against Sokka as he tries to maneuver around Sokka’s sleeping bag.
Resigning himself to the fact that sleep won’t be coming any time soon, Sokka sits up too and scoots back, freeing up space between the two of them.
It’s quiet for a long moment, neither of them wanting to break the tenuous silence that stretches between them. The sounds of life outside their tent have finally died down, the last of the White Lotus members having retired to their own tents for the night. Everything is so still, so calm, it’s hard to imagine that tomorrow will probably be the most dangerous day of their lives.
“What are you thinking about?” Zuko finally says. His voice is quiet, hoarse.
Sokka shrugs. “A lot of things. The comet. Finding Aang. Dying, mostly.”
Zuko huffs, a weak half-laugh. “Yeah, me too.”
They lapse back into silence. Sokka’s eyes have adjusted to the dark, but he can’t quite make out the details of Zuko’s face. Instead he follows the slope of Zuko’s shoulders, down his arms to where his hands lie tangled in his lap. Sokka’s fingers twitch, wanting to reach out on instinct. It’s a familiar feeling by now, and Sokka has gotten used to quashing down the urge. He’d resigned himself to the fact that nothing could ever happen between them a long time ago, but tonight…
There’s something about tonight that feels…different. Maybe it’s the late hour, or the comforting anonymity of the dark, or the lack of space between them, but to Sokka it feels like they’re the only two people in the world, suspended in time and space. He’s sure that if he tried hard enough, he could hear Zuko’s heartbeat beneath the quiet tandem of their breaths. It’s terrifyingly intimate.
At the same time, it feels like anything could happen.
“Are you scared?” Zuko whispers. It’s quiet, but to Sokka it feels like the loudest sound in the universe.
“Terrified,” Sokka says. “You?”
“More scared than I’ve ever been in my life.”
“We could die tomorrow,” Sokka says. His fingers twitch, and he clenches his fists against the urge to reach out and lace their hands together. “Like actually, really die.”
“I know,” Zuko says. “That’s not why I’m scared, though.”
“Why are you, then?”
There’s a pause. Sokka watches the rise and fall of Zuko’s shoulders as he shifts, gathering his thoughts. After a moment he says:
“I guess…I’m not so much scared of dying as I am of dying before I get the chance to make things right. Does that make sense?”
“No, yeah, that makes sense,” Sokka says. “I think I sort of feel the same way, except it’s more that I’m scared that I’ll die before I get the chance to do all the things I wasn’t brave enough to do before.” His heart is pounding in his chest—he feels like he’s just confessed an important secret.
“Like what?” Zuko says. There’s a note to his voice that Sokka can’t quite decipher, but it has his stomach tying itself up in knots nonetheless.
For a second Sokka considers it—reaching out and taking Zuko’s hand in his own, confessing his feelings right then and there, giving in to all his fantasies of pressing his lips to Zuko’s pretty mouth. It would be so easy, he would barely even have to lean over to do it. They’re practically breathing each other’s air as it is. He could take the leap. He could do it.
But at the end of the day, Sokka knows he’s a coward, at least when it comes to this—so instead he says, “Like—I don’t know, like telling someone how important they are to me, or even something stupid like—like trying the spiciest dish at the market, or something. You know? There’s just so many things I might never get to do now just because I wasn’t brave enough before. And that scares the shit out of me.”
Sokka wrings his hands together, his nerves building as he waits for Zuko’s answer. Did he say too much? Did he give himself away? Finally Zuko tilts his head and says:
“If I were Uncle I’d probably have something really wise and poetic to say to you, but…I don’t know. I think you’re already really brave, and there’s a lot of things that you were brave enough to do, so that should count for something, right?”
Sokka is glad that it’s too dark for Zuko to see his face, because he can feel a flush working its way across his cheeks at the praise. “I guess you’re right.”
“And, I mean,” Zuko continues, “it’s not too late for you to tell someone how important they are to you. As long as you’re, you know, brave enough.”
Sokka’s heart feels like it’s about to beat out of his chest. Did the tent get smaller? It feels like the two of them are closer than before, like all it would take is for both of them to lean in a couple of inches and then…
“Zuko, I…” Sokka stutters. He can just make out Zuko’s face, the slope of his nose and the bow of his lips. His eyes gleam in the low light, and he’s staring back at Sokka, his face more open than Sokka has ever seen it before. Sokka swallows. Zuko looks…he looks…
Sokka registers the crunch of footsteps a split second before he realizes why he can finally see Zuko’s face properly. He jerks back, nearly knocking his head against one of the tent poles. The glow of a handheld fire illuminates the side of their tent, and Sokka can clearly see Zuko’s face now. He looks disappointed, and Sokka can’t tell if he feels elated or upset at the sight.
“Are you boys still awake?” says a voice from outside their tent. It’s Jeong-Jeong, first on watch for the night. “You should get some sleep. We have a big day tomorrow.”
“Yes, sir,” Sokka says, at the same time that Zuko says, “Sorry, sir.”
“No need to apologize,” says Jeong-Jeong. “Just get some rest.”
Jeong-Jeong’s footsteps begin to fade away, taking the light with them. Zuko begins to crawl back into his sleeping bag, and Sokka is struck by a sudden burst of panic. This might be his last chance before they march to their deaths in the morning.
“Zuko, wait,” he says, and Zuko abruptly stops moving.
“Yeah?” Zuko says. His voice sounds—hopeful. Sokka promptly loses his nerve.
“I—nevermind. Just…good night.”
In the quiet, Sokka can just barely make out what sounds like a sigh. “Good night Sokka.”
Sokka lies back down, carefully facing away from Zuko. He doesn’t know how long he lies awake, rigid as a board in his sleeping bag, afraid to make even the slightest movement. His mind is still racing, but least his brain has moved on from obsessing about imminent death to reminding him over and over about what a coward he is. It’s not much of an improvement, but it’s less morbid, so that has to count for something.
Eventually Sokka hears Zuko’s breathing even out behind him. He waits a few more minutes, just to make sure, and then slowly, carefully turns over so that he’s face to face with Zuko.
His eyes having since adjusted to the dark, Sokka can just barely make out Zuko’s face. Zuko has his chin buried in his sleeping bag so that just his nose pokes out, and his hair spills out in an inky tangle over his makeshift pillow. Sokka can’t help but grin a little—Zuko’s nose whistles when he sleeps.
Sokka makes a point of memorizing every detail of Zuko’s face until he finally drifts off to sleep.
The next morning at breakfast finds Sokka antsy and nervous—too nervous even for a second helping. It feels like his bones are rattling, and he’s afraid that if he sits still for too long he’s going to start shaking like a leaf. He’s heard that some people feel this calm acceptance before heading off to a final battle, but if that’s true then Sokka is definitely not one of those people. He feels vaguely nauseous. And guilty.
He takes to pacing the camp, pulling his sword in and out of its sheath at random intervals, anxious energy thrumming through his veins. They have less than an hour before they have to leave. He knows that there’s something he should do, but he doesn’t know where Zuko is. He hasn’t seen him since breakfast, where the two of them acted like nothing out of the ordinary happened last night. He doesn’t think anybody suspects anything, besides maybe Toph. Not that there even is anything to be suspicious of. Because nothing happened. Because Sokka is a coward.
He doesn’t want to be a coward anymore though, is the thing. It’s the day of the fucking comet, and if he’s going to die, he wants to die having done something brave.
It’s about ten minutes before their scheduled departure time that Sokka finally runs into Zuko again. Sokka has just finished getting dressed in his full armour, and he’s walking past Iroh’s tent just as Zuko emerges from behind its flaps, blinking against the sunlight.
“Oh, hey Sokka,” Zuko says. Sokka’s heart rate immediately triples.
“Zuko! Just the guy I wanted to see,” Sokka says. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”
“Uh, sure?”
“Great!” Sokka says, and before he can begin to doubt himself, he grabs Zuko by the wrist and drags him around to the far side of Iroh’s tent, out of sight of the rest of the camp.
Sokka’s nerves return in full force the second he lets go of Zuko’s wrist, and he forces himself not to fidget as Zuko turns the full weight of his gaze on him. He clears his throat once, twice, and addresses himself to a spot just over Zuko’s left shoulder.
“Right, okay, so,” Sokka starts. He can already feel himself blushing. “Um, I was thinking about what you said last night. About being brave and stuff, and I, uh. I just wanted you to know that you’re really important to me, and I wasn’t brave enough to say it before, but since either of us might die today I thought screw it and, well. Yeah.”
Sokka cuts himself off before he can start rambling too much and say something stupid. He then forces himself to meet Zuko’s eyes, which he thinks is incredibly brave in and of itself.
Zuko is looking back at him with a soft look in his eyes, a flush working its way across his cheeks. His mouth is pulled into a faint smile, and Sokka finds his gaze drawn to his lips—his pretty pink lips that he didn’t get a chance to memorize last night—and Sokka thinks fuck it. If he’s going to be brave, he might as well go all the way.
He takes a step forward, cups Zuko’s jaw with both hands, and kisses him.
There’s a split second where Zuko doesn’t react and Sokka considers dying on the spot—but then Zuko’s hands settle on Sokka’s waist, and he’s tilting his head to the side and he’s kissing him back and oh.
Sokka slides his hands up into Zuko’s hair, and Zuko pulls him closer until they’re flush against each other, and Sokka thinks that this might be the best thing that has ever happened to him.
They break apart, and Sokka leans his forehead against Zuko’s, a grin threatening to split his face in two.
“I just had to do that at least once,” Sokka says, “before I go.”
“I was hoping you would,” Zuko says.
Sokka laughs—he feels light, light as air—and leans back in to kiss him again.
A shout splits the air. “Sokka! Zuko! Where are you?” comes Katara’s voice from afar. “It’s time to leave!”
Right. They have a war to fight. Sokka feels like he’s plummeted abruptly back to earth as reality sets in once again.
“I guess we should go,” Sokka says.
“Right,” Zuko says, sounding disappointed.
They reluctantly disentangle themselves from each other and take a second to set their clothes back to rights, then head back towards the centre of camp.
From then on it’s a mad scramble to make sure everything is ready to go, animals saddled and loaded with weapons and supplies. Soon enough, Toph and Suki are sat astride the eel hound, and Sokka is making some last-minute adjustments to the tack. He doesn’t want to admit that he’s trying to put off leaving for as long as possible, but he’s checked and double-checked the tack at least three separate times, so it’s probably time to stop lying to himself.
He’s just about to finally give in and climb aboard when Zuko’s voice makes him pause.
“Sokka!” Zuko exclaims, practically sprinting towards him. Sokka can see Katara waiting impatiently aboard Appa across camp.
Sokka turns to meet him. “Zuko, what—”
Zuko crashes into him, cupping his face and pulling him into a fierce kiss. Sokka doesn’t even hesitate before kissing back. He goes to wrap his arms around Zuko’s shoulders, but it’s over before gets the chance.
Zuko pulls back as Suki whoops from above them, leaving Sokka slightly stunned.
“Don’t die,” Zuko says.
“I won’t if you don’t,” Sokka says without thinking.
Zuko grins, and kisses him quickly again. “Deal.”
They separate, and Sokka scrambles aboard the eel hound. Zuko makes his way back towards Appa, Iroh clapping him on the back as he passes by.
“What was that about?” asks Toph once Sokka is settled in front of her.
“Nothing,” Sokka says.
“He and Zuko are having a passionate affair,” says Suki gleefully, and Sokka turns to glare at her.
“It’s not an affair,” he whines, and she and Toph laugh.
With a flick of the reins, the eel hound lurches to its feet. Toph lets out a squeak, flinging her arms around Sokka’s waist. From across the camp, Sokka catches Zuko’s eye.
Zuko nods. Sokka nods back.
And then they’re off. Sokka doesn’t let himself worry about Zuko as the eel hound weaves its way across the countryside. They’ll be fine. They’ll make it through this.
They have to.