Work Text:
It takes Sokka another four years to figure it out.
When you travel with the Avatar, become a firsthand witness to two-to-four of the most powerful benders in the world coming into their own, learn sword fighting, learn basic gender politics, get kidnapped by a spirit, kiss a spirit—turned into a spirit, she was a girl when he kissed her but thinking about Yue for too long still makes his head and heart hurt—mount a failed invasion and finally help end a war… Well, you learn a thing or two about introspection.
Sokka has looked inward before. His life is practically a case study in learning and re-learning the same lessons over and over until they stick. Humility, being the big one, but also honor and patience and leadership—If Aang were here, he’d say humility was the source from which those all flow, like rivers or something.
If Zuko were here, he’d say the same thing but worse and Sokka might actually understand it.
Neither one of them is here right now. Suki is here, but she’s asleep. Sokka was too, until about four seconds ago, when he figured it out.
He sits bolt upright in bed. His spine practically makes a springboard sound effect and his eyes shoot open. His jaw swings around like it’s trying to make the shape of a swear word but can’t pick the right one.
Sokka’s brain runs smack into his mouth. He shouts, which one shouldn’t do at three in the morning, but he does it anyway.
“I’m BISEXUAL.”
“Wha—?” Suki mumbles. She blinks up at him sleepily. A lock of her hair falls into her mouth and she’s so, so beautiful and Sokka is so, so bi.
“Suki! Suki, I’m bisexual!” Sokka grabs her by the shoulders. He presses a long, loud kiss to her forehead. “I can’t believe it! I mean, I can, which is good. Because it’s true, I’m pretty sure, and I know this must be a lot to take in but so many things in my life make sense now! Honestly, you probably should have seen this coming. I did get pretty excited when Toph told me she was a lesbian, and she told me to shut up and hit me with a rock but I knew I wasn’t making a big deal about nothing! Because I’m like her! Kind of. Only not. But a little bit! Because I’m bisexual!”
“That’s great,” Suki mumbles into her pillow.
“Didn’t you hear me? I said I’m bi!”
“So am I, doofus. Now go back to sleep.”
“Oh. Right!” he whispers, loudly. “Goodnight!”
As Sokka settles back down, he feels Suki shift around next to him. Her lips find his cheek, sleepy but supportive.
It takes him a while to fall back asleep. He spends the next hour grinning at the ceiling.
“So,” Suki says over her morning tea, “congrats on joining the club!”
“What club?” Sokka asks suspiciously. “Did Katara secretly sign me up for yoga classes again? Because I told her, no way am I getting up at the crack of dawn every day to do some fancy stretches and stand around hot rocks.”
“I meant being bi,” Suki says flatly.
“Oh. There’s a club?”
She laughs.
“I just wanted to congratulate you, stupid. It’s a lot to figure out.” Suki pauses. She stares into her tea for a long moment. “I was lucky, growing up. I always had Avatar Kyoshi to look up to. Her wife is in almost every story about her. She even has her own shrine.”
She looks up at Sokka and smiles.
“I only ever had my parents,” Sokka says slowly, “when I thought about what relationships look like. I had to be a man, and that meant— It meant a lot of things. I guess.”
Suki reaches out to lay her hand over Sokka’s. Her fingers are strong and calloused from years of fighting. The callouses built by her fans are distinct from the ones from his sword, but not dissimilar. They match.
“It means whatever you make it mean. You’re amazing, Sokka, and I’m so proud of you for sharing this part of yourself with me.”
“Thanks, Suki.”
They drink their tea and watch the sun climb into midmorning brightness. Suki helps Sokka draft a letter to his dad and Gran-gran. He has the worst calligraphy of any master swordsman in the world, so atrocious it’s almost a badge of honor—and the words are a little hard to find, too.
They get there, in the end.
Suki takes a trip into town after her morning exercises. Sokka prefers to train in the afternoons, so she leaves him to it. Ember Island is a tourist trap, anyway, which Sokka loves unironically and Suki takes as a challenge.
As it turns out, there is an excellent dumpling restaurant hidden away on the north side of the island run by a couple who have been there since before the last time the volcano erupted.
They’re kind as they serve Suki and the two other patrons of the restaurant, though there is an empty space on the wall of the dining room that certainly once held a portrait of Ozai and pointedly does not hold a portrait of Zuko. She doesn’t chat with them long.
She comes back to find Sokka not running through his forms, as he usually does around this time. Instead, he’s pacing the courtyard, enthralled by an animated conversation he seems to be having with his sword, which he swings wildly into shrubs for emphasis.
“—and some people like sea prunes.’ What did he expect me to think he meant by that? I was like ten, I didn’t know metaphors—”
“Uh,” Suki makes sure to stand outside careless blade-swinging range, “Sokka?”
“Ah!” Sokka jumps a foot in the air. His sword is braced in front of him in a blocking stance before Suki can blink. “Oh,” he sighs in relief, seeing her and not a platypus-bear trained to rob houses and use nunchucks, or whatever else he expected to find standing in the courtyard of the Fire Lord’s beach house.
“Productive day?” Suki raises an eyebrow.
“My dad totally knew!” Sokka looks a little wild around the eyes. She trusts him as much with a blade in his hands as without, but she does think he should maybe sit down.
“Knew what?”
“That I like boys!” He sheathes his sword and sits on the edge of the fountain. “He used to give me these speeches when we went on fishing trips. I had no idea what he was talking about at the time, but it was all ‘I’m proud of you no matter who you turn out to be’ and ‘I’ll always love you and I’ll welcome whoever you bring into our family someday’ and ‘some people like whale blubber, some people like sea prunes, some people like both and that’s great!’”
His impression of Hakoda is, somehow, both terrible and distressingly spot-on.
“Which gender is the whale blubber?” Suki asks.
“That’s what I’ve been trying to figure out!”
Suki laughs. Sokka’s shoulders go tense, then relax with his answering chuckle.
“I guess we didn’t need to spend all morning on that letter after all,” Suki says.
“Eh, he’ll get a kick out of it.” Sokka stands, stretching, and eyes the basket over Suki’s arm. “Whatcha got there?”
“Oh, nothing,” Suki says innocently, “just an order of the best dumplings in the Fire Nation.”
Sokka is across the yard in less than a heartbeat. Steam wafts from the basket as he lifts the cover and sniffs.
“Have I mentioned lately,” he sighs dreamily, “how much I love you?”
“Do you want to read before bed,” Suki asks, “or should I put out the lamp?”
“What? Oh, no, go ahead.”
“You okay?”
“I was miles away, sorry,” Sokka shakes his head and settles in against the pillows, which are as ostentatious and made of red silk as everything else in this house. “Just thinking.”
Suki douses the light. She climbs in beside him—over him, actually, and for an elite warrior who has trained for many years in the art of stealth she has the pointiest elbows—and settles in.
“Goodnight,” she says.
“Yeah, ‘night.” Sokka closes his eyes. Six minutes later, he opens them again. “I’ve never kissed a guy.”
Suki sighs.
“You know you don’t have to prove you’re bisexual, right, Sokka?” She moves like she’s about to relight the lamp. Sokka is relieved when she doesn’t. It’s easier to talk about this in the dark, right now. “You don’t have to check a box for every gender you like.”
“No, I— I get that.” He’s quiet for a few seconds. The question is stupid, but it’s been bothering him. “Is it a lot different? Than kissing a girl, I mean.”
“I don’t know. I’ve only ever kissed one boy, and he’s one-of-a-kind.” She rolls over and presses her lips to his face with a loud Mwah. “Kissing you is nice, though.”
Sokka turns his head. The shape of Suki is vague in the dark, but she’s close enough he can see her smile.
“Kissing you is nice, too,” he says quietly. He leans in to do just that.
“Why?” Suki asks when Sokka pulls away. “Any particular boys on your mind?”
“We-ell,” Sokka says slowly, and Suki gasps in what he’s relieved to hear sounds like delight.
“Tell me, tell me,” she urges, like they’re nine and talking about their first crushes. Sokka shakes his head.
“It’s not exactly like that,” he says thoughtfully. “It’s more like, realizing this put a new spin on… some things. Some feelings I had a long time ago, that I didn’t understand back then. I feel a little like I missed a chance, I guess? Not that I regret a thing about being with you, and it never would have worked out anyway, and—”
“Sokka.”
“I think it could, maybe, potentially, be a tiny bit possible,” he takes a deep breath, “that I used to have a crush on Zuko.”
Suki’s startled laugh comes out so sharp and loud he hears its echo ring back through the open window.
“Ha, ha,” Sokka grumbles.
“Sorry, but I mean—” Suki shakes her head. “It’s just funny. That it’s one of our friends, who we traveled with for weeks, who you’ve known for years, and it still took you this long.”
“Yeah, I’m pretty much an idiot,” Sokka admits. He wonders how many of these fancy pillows it would take to suffocate him so he never has to look Suki in the eye again.
“You’re my favorite idiot.” Suki kisses him on the forehead. “And I think you should try it.”
“Try…? Zuko?” Sokka feels like he’s just been struck by his own boomerang.
“Maybe try kissing him,” Suki suggests. He feels her shrug. “Since you’re so curious.”
Sokka narrows his eyes, though he doesn’t know if she can see the expression in the dark.
“Is this a test? Are you testing me to see if I’m going to leave you for a man? Because, may I say, that’s not very bisexual-positive of you. And you couldn’t even think of a more attainable one than the Fire Lord? Tsk, tsk, rookie mistake. I see right through you.”
“Shut up.” Suki swats him on the shoulder. “I know you’re not going to leave me. If you were, I like to think you’d have a better plan than this.”
“I am a master of strategy,” Sokka agrees.
“Although,” Suki says in as sly a tone as her sweet, melodious voice can convey, “you were the one who brought him up in the first place.”
“And you were the one who said I should kiss him! Zuko!”
“Yep,” Suki says. “Zuko.”
Sokka opens his mouth to argue. He thinks for several seconds. He closes it again.
“All I’m saying,” Suki says gently, “is that if you want to explore this part of yourself? I understand and I support you. I don’t think you want to date the Fire Lord, and if you did I’d trust you to talk to me about it. But I also know how weird it can be to reconcile this stuff about your younger self now that you’re an adult. Like I said, I’ve been lucky. I always knew this was something I could be and still be happy, and I know you didn’t have that.”
“I’m happy with you.”
“I know.” Suki strokes his cheek. “And I’m happy with you too. And that’s exactly why I don’t want you to have to push away the parts of who you are that you’re curious about for my sake.”
“I was just a little curious,” Sokka grumbles. He’s not entirely sure if he’s lying or not. “And this is Zuko we’re talking about. I don’t think he— It would be weird.”
“Because you’re so close?”
“Because I’m a guy.”
“Wait.” Suki rolls up onto one elbow and squints down at Sokka. “You think Zuko’s straight?”
“You think he’s not? He’s only dated girls—”
“He’s only dated Mai. One girl. Not a broad sample size, is it, Mister Science? And… I mean, Sokka.” Suki gives him a look that’s hard to make out in the dark, but somehow Sokka is pretty sure he should be offended by it. “He uses dual swords.”
Sokka blinks.
“Yeah?”
“So…” Suki tilts her head like this is supposed to mean something.
“So, what? What does that have to do with anything?”
“Well.” She brings a hand to her mouth, behind which Sokka just knows she’s laughing at him. “Two swords, right?”
“Yes?”
“Two swords means he has to,” a giggle breaks through Suki’s impeccable defenses, “swing both ways.”
The only sound in the room is the distant croaking of frogs in the bamboo outside.
“Nooooo,” Sokka groans, long and pained. “Suki, you’ve stolen my jokes. I’m too good of an influence! The student has become the master!”
Sokka laments the end of his reign of comedy for another minute while Suki laughs and laughs, like the usurper she is.
The room quiets eventually. The frogs still croak outside, and the bamboo clatters gently in the wind.
“You know I love you a lot, right?” Sokka whispers.
“I know,” Suki replies. “Get some sleep. And if you could start having personal revelations a little earlier in the day from now on, that would be great.”
Sokka sighs deeply enough to feel it through his whole body.
“I’ll do my best.”
Suki leaves for Kyoshi Island in the morning. The southern midsummer rings in the initiation of new warriors.
Sokka, on the other hand, has time to kill before they’ll really miss his contributions to hauling in fishnets back home. Too young to sit on the council, but old enough to have the freedom to decide when he comes and goes—the relative lack of rigidity after spending two years as the man of the tribe and then another eight months as the Avatar’s plan guy drives him nuts sometimes, makes him feel like he should be doing more, something, anything—
But other times, like right now, it’s freeing.
Katara and Aang expect him to stay on Ember Island through the end of the week before they pick him up, take a quick jaunt on Appa to the palace, and spend a weekend dragging Zuko away from his work by the ankles.
Believe Sokka when he says, he tries. He really does.
But even the sweet siren song of the island’s endless shopping district isn’t enough to drown out Suki’s voice in his head—not to mention another voice, which peeps out at inconvenient times like a frozen frog in the springtime mud.
The sun has begun to burn the horizon by the time Sokka makes up his mind. He sets down the posable wooden man he bought in town—he intentionally put off most of his shopping until today because Suki would have given him a look if she’d seen the way he waddled back to the house laden with trinkets, but this one has a tiny sword so who’s laughing now?—and grabs his bag.
He thinks far enough ahead to write a quick note, so Aang and Katara don’t think he’s been kidnapped by whatever’s left in the world that hasn’t kidnapped any of them yet.
(Got bored, headed to the palace early. Me and Hothead are having so much fun without you. Suki sends her love.
—Sokka
P.S. Can you bring the rest of my stuff?)
The last ferry off Ember Island almost leaves without him. He only catches it by sheer, dumb luck, which comes in the form of an Earth Kingdom tourist in a wide-brimmed hat holding the ticket booth open long enough to count out exact change for herself and her six children.
The ticket-seller looks like he’d love nothing more than to shove Sokka off the volcano the second he steps in line behind the family. Still, Sokka gets his ticket. He was a fugitive from an imperial aggressor when he was fifteen. He can take a little harmless malice from a stranger.
There is nothing but salt spray and stars by the time the crater curve of the palace city comes into view.
“My lord?” The guy Sokka has been mentally referring to as the Fire Butler simpers in the doorway of a room Sokka can’t quite see into. He makes out flickering red light and the edge of a map hung on the wall before the door shuts in his face.
A warrior of the Water Tribe is adaptable and resourceful. He cups a hand around his ear and presses it to the door.
“You have a visitor,” says the Fire Butler.
Sokka hears a familiar, frustrated groan.
“Of course. Wait—“ There is worry in that voice. Sokka leans closer, eavesdropping instincts on high alert. “It’s Wednesday, right?” the voice from inside asks his servant sheepishly.
“It is, sir.”
“The meeting with the Fire Sages isn’t until Friday. Did something happen?”
“No, my lord, it’s—”
“You Fire Nation folks sure know how to treat a war hero, don’t you?” Sokka pulls out all the stops on a finely aged barrel of sarcasm as he shoulders the door open.
The room is papered in maps, maps from all over the world, ones old enough to crumble to dust if anyone dared take them out from under their delicate class coverings and others so precisely up to date the ink must barely be dry. Topography and geology and fluctuating political lines, little flags for strongholds, branching lines for voyage routes—Sokka’s inner cartographer swoons at the sight.
Sokka’s inner Sokka swoons, just a little, at a different sight: the familiar lines of Zuko’s face, the unique topography of him which shifts like a landslide when he smiles.
“Sokka.” Zuko stands from his writing desk and sweeps across the room—literally sweeps, in his big goofy Fire Lord robes that trail behind him and Sokka thinks ha, fire hazard—reaching out to grasp his arm in a Water Tribe greeting rather than giving a Fire Nation bow. “I thought you were on Ember Island for the rest of the week.”
“Eh, what’s the point of traveling if I can’t inconvenience the Fire Lord? It’s tradition.” Sokka grins at Zuko and Zuko grins back.
The second he releases Sokka’s arm, he seems to remember himself. He’s not Zuko anymore, but Fire Lord Zuko, with the disturbingly perfect posture and the lightning bolt focus.
“Thank you. I’ll take it from here,” he says to the Fire Butler with a short bow. “Have a room made up for Prince Sokka. He is our honored guest.”
Zuko doesn’t even flinch at the snort Sokka fails to stifle at that. Not that he tries too hard, of course.
“Prince Sokka?” he guffaws the second the door swings closed.
Zuko shrugs. His mouth curves up in a smirk.
“Your father is the Chief,” he points out. “And it’ll get the staff off your case next time you visit. Just don’t let it go to your head.”
“Me? Me? Let something go to my head?” Sokka waves his hands with a Pshaw. “You’ve got nothing to worry about. Say, what’s the Fire Nation’s policy on diplomatic immunity these days?”
“You’re not a diplomat.”
“I can be diplomatic!” He puts his fists up in a boxing stance. “I’ll diplomacy with the best of ‘em!”
Zuko rolls his eyes. The smirk hasn’t vanished from his face.
“Well I have had enough diplomacy for one day.” He raises one hand, palm flat and facing down, then lowers it slowly. The candle at his writing desk dims, then extinguishes itself. “C’mon.”
Sokka follows him out of the room and down a hallway. They come out into the open air, under an overhang with a path that borders a garden. The pond below a cherry blossom tree is glassy in the stillness, reflecting the stars overhead so perfectly it looks like a hole in the world.
“It’s beautiful,” Sokka murmurs.
“It was my mother’s favorite place,” Zuko answers. His voice is low in the quiet night. “It’s better in the daylight, though. Follow me. I’ll make you some tea.”
They walk in easy silence to Zuko’s chambers. The palace buzzes with activity at any hour, but this is a nation of early risers. Zuko would say it’s because all people of the Fire Nation draw their spiritual energy from the sun, benders or not. Sokka would say it’s because they’re all neurotic weirdos.
Regardless of who’s right—Sokka—they pass few enough others on their way that Zuko has time to exchange with each with a gracious nod and a quiet, Good evening. All of them, to a one, are servants, and none look surprised to receive the Fire Lord’s personal acknowledgement.
None look surprised to see Zuko up at this hour, either.
“Look, it’s late—” Sokka starts to say as they reach the ornate door.
“Are you tired?” Zuko glances over his shoulder. Sokka stopped getting distracted by his scar long before the two were even friends, but when he stands on Zuko’s left his face is hard to read.
“No," Sokka says truthfully. He’s wide awake, and he doesn’t know if he’ll get the chance to say what he came to say if he waits until morning. Under the moonlight cut into strips by the spaces between the wide palace windows, he feels bold.
Maybe there is something to that spiritual mumbo-jumbo after all.
“Then have some tea.”
Sokka lounges on a sofa meant for guests much fancier than he’ll ever be and thinks about how strange it still feels to watch Zuko putter around and make tea. Not even because he’s the Fire Lord, but because he’s Zuko. Sokka is always put in mind of watching this same scene for the first time in an ancient temple hidden under a cliffside. Zuko, younger, hair shorter and messier. All of them shorter and messier, now that Sokka thinks about it. He was an ally, then: someone they trusted enough not to poison their tea, but not quite a friend.
The angry jerk, prince ponytail, all the—very funny—names Sokka gave him before he knew who Zuko had the potential to be… Sokka had tried to apply them to the boy eager to earn his keep, who knew good jokes and told them badly, who talked incessantly about his uncle, who had nearly died cleaning up his own mess, who bore humility with the honor of someone who finally understood it and had taken a lot of lumps getting there—
And found that he couldn’t.
That’s not to say he ever stopped thinking of more hilarious nicknames. The day Sokka stops calling Zuko anything but his name is the day he finally hands his comedy crown to Toph for good—the only one truly worthy of being his successor, obviously.
But the memory reminds Sokka of what he’s here to say. And what he’s here to do, maybe, if Zuko wants. If he’d be amenable.
The clink of a teacup on the table startles Sokka back into the present.
“You know,” he says by way of a thank you, “I’m sure not many people can say they’ve been personally served tea by the Fire Lord.”
“There are plenty,” Zuko disagrees easily as he settles onto a cushion across from Sokka. “Your sister, Aang, Toph—”
“Besides them—”
“—my uncle, Haru, Teo, the Duke,” Zuko continues as if he hasn’t been interrupted. “my sister, Mai, Ty Lee, Suki—”
“I get the picture—”
“—a few hundred citizens of Ba Sing Se, Appa, Momo—”
“Now you’re just being a jerk.”
“—and your father.” Zuko sips his tea to punctuate his point. He pauses thoughtfully. “It’s funny that you came to visit me today, actually. I have a letter to Chief Hakoda on my desk right now that I plan to send in the morning.”
“What about?” Sokka leans forward, elbows on his knees.
“Reparations for the Southern Water Tribe. I’m sorry it’s taken so long,” Zuko says, genuine remorse and a strain of tired frustration. “Every minister in this palace who doesn’t still wish we were burning the rest of the world to ash insisted the Earth Kingdom and Northern Water Tribe had to come first. More powerful allies,” he spits. “As if we’re not the reason the Southern Tribe—”
Sokka watches silently as the steam over Zuko’s tea roils thicker above the cup, around his face. Zuko takes a deep breath. Some of the steam clears.
“Sorry,” Zuko repeats.
“I didn’t know.” Sokka picks up his cup but doesn’t drink yet. Even after so long away from home, a hot beverage in hot weather makes him feel feverish. He likes the feeling of holding it, though—it gives him something to do with his hands. “Thank you.”
“You shouldn’t—”
“You said it yourself. Today, I’m Prince Sokka. So I have the power to thank the Fire Lord on behalf of my people, okay?” He softens his tone. “Seriously, Zuko. Thank you.”
Zuko looks taken aback for a moment. He blinks his golden eyes and nods.
“I’m happy to do it. It’s the right thing. It’s the honorable thing.” This conversation is getting too heavy, and Zuko looks tired. He must be burning the candle at both ends—burning is sort of his whole thing—to push through reparations from a rapidly deindustrializing nation coming off a century of imperial conquest in four years.
He’s twenty years old.
“Enough honor already.” Sokka rolls his eyes. “I’m on vacation! I hereby rescind my diplomatic immunity.” He adds a wiggly gesture with his fingers for emphasis, casting away any residual dregs of diplomacy.
Zuko huffs his near-silent laugh.
“You have to get immunity before you can give it back. And I don’t think you get to just declare it gone, either.”
“Whatever! I’m not here to talk to the Fire Lord.”
“Oh,” Zuko looks… confused. And disappointed.
“I’m here to talk to my friend, Zuko.”
“Oh.” Zuko smiles. He’s twenty, and his frown lines are visible. Sokka likes the idea that he’s counterbalancing them. “I’m sorry. You’re right, you didn’t come here to talk to the Fire Lord.”
He reaches up to undo his topknot. His hair falls around his face to just past his chin—he’s been growing it out, traditional for Fire Nation noblemen. Sokka knows he put it off this long for fear he’d look like Ozai.
He doesn’t. He just looks like Zuko, albeit with an awkward mid-length haircut.
“Now we’re talking! Let loose.” Sokka whoops and pulls the tie from his own wolf-tail. It’s a blatant ploy to get Zuko to laugh again, which works, and not a little bit a way to deflect his own nervousness.
“So, what did you want to talk about? Anything in particular?” Zuko drinks his tea.
Sokka opens his mouth. The words on his tongue blow away like desert clouds. He’s been talking and thinking about this nonstop for the past twenty four hours, but all of a sudden he can’t.
“I had a weird dream,” is what comes out instead.
“A… dream?”
“Yeah,” Sokka continues. He squints and tries to remember how it started. He didn’t bother telling Suki about it. The realization it shocked into him was too exciting to explain the buildup. “I was in a forest. Like the Foggy Swamp, or when I got stuck in the Spirit World, but it wasn’t exactly either of those places.”
“When were you in the Spirit World?” Zuko asks. He nearly snorts out a noseful of hot tea, which is funny enough to put Sokka at ease.
“Oh, back when you were hunting us and stuff.” He waves the question off casually. “I got kidnapped by a big panda spirit that was angry you guys burnt down his forest. It was only for, like, a day. I’m trying to tell you about my dream here,” Sokka scolds.
“Of course. That’s way more interesting.”
“Leave the sarcasm to the professionals, Your Flaminess. Now where was I?” He thumps a hand down onto the table between them. “The forest! I was cutting my way through the vines with my sword, only it was my old space sword, and then I came to a clearing. I was excited, because I was exhausted and I thought I could finally sit down, except then there were these toads.”
“Toads,” Zuko repeats flatly.
“They were everywhere! I couldn’t find a place to sit that wasn’t covered in toads. It was really upsetting, actually, so I’d appreciate a little more sympathy right now.”
Zuko smiles, and Sokka sees with horror the trap he’s set for himself snap shut.
“That’s rough, buddy.”
“Ugh,” Sokka smacks his own forehead. “You and Suki are both getting way too good at jokes. Last night, she—” He stops himself, realizing this is all happening backwards. “I’ll tell you in a minute. These toads, right. Everywhere I looked, more and more toads. I couldn’t even walk away or I’d step on one, and I knew I shouldn’t. I was just trapped in this forest with every toad in the world staring at me.”
“Sounds creepy.”
“Oh, I haven’t even gotten to the creepy part. This one toad hopped up on a rock or something, and then it started talking.” Sokka bugs his eyes out, adding spooky hand gestures for good measure, trying to channel the essence of the dream-toad.
“What did it say?”
“I don’t remember.” Sokka slouches back against the sofa. “But its voice was familiar. And then I woke up.”
“Right…”
Zuko stares at him. Sokka’s heart rate picks up, wondering if he’ll be asked whose voice came out of that toad, what happened after he woke up, what color the toads were and what that particular species might be called—
“So,” Zuko says, “uh, how was the ferry ride over?”
“I’m bisexual,” Sokka blurts out.
“Uh,” says Zuko, famous orator and leader of a nation. “Right. Um. Did I know that?”
“Nope.” Sokka pops the p-sound at the end, hard. “Or, if you did, I sure wish you’d told me before I figured it out two days ago.”
“Thank you for telling me.” Zuko clearly finds his balance again now that he knows his friend’s sexuality didn’t just accidentally slip his mind while he was poring over economic reports. “I know how hard it can be.”
Sokka’s throat goes dry. He is not known for his mastery of what many would call tact, but the question he wants to ask is a delicate one.
“You do.” Somewhere between a statement and an inquiry, inviting elaboration without demanding it. There. Aang would be proud.
“Yeah,” Zuko says with the kindling-dry humor that comes into his voice when he talks about the past, when things aren’t really humorous at all. “I knew pretty young. And I knew it wouldn’t exactly make my father proud.”
Sokka can’t help the sharp Ha! he lets out at the understatement. Not that he knows Ozai’s feelings on the matter, specifically, but given everything else about the guy it stands to reason.
“Tell me about it,” Zuko huffs. “Then I was Crown Prince, which meant eventually I’d need to—” His right eye widens. Sokka can see the way he swallows, having reminded himself that this particular issue is even worse now, or at least slightly more immediate. “But—But I like girls too, so I thought, hey, I’ll just… do that.”
“Your eloquence never ceases to amaze me.”
Zuko glares at him. Stray hair has fallen into his face and his unscarred cheek is pink—from the warmth of the tea or the teasing or the fact that he’s talking about his feelings at all.
“And then I had bigger things to worry about,” he continues darkly. Zuko shifts subtly so the hair falls away from the puckered skin around his eye. Burning in the amber of his irises is all the rage and determination that had once chilled Sokka to the bone, had haunted him across three continents, and the candles behind Zuko flicker in a nonexistent breeze—
Zuko snorts loudly. He reaches across the low table to ruffle Sokka’s hair so it falls over his eyes.
“Don’t do that!” Sokka yelps, laughing. He sobers a little. “Did you tell anybody at all?”
“My uncle, uh,” Zuko closes his eyes, smiling, “sort of. Wait,” he snaps them open again, looking panicked for a moment. “Sokka, we were talking about you. I completely took over this conversation with stuff you already know, I’m so—”
“I didn’t know,” Sokka blurts again. “About you, I mean.”
“What?”
“You never really? Told me?” He shrugs. “It’s no big deal. Like you said, it’s hard.”
“Then why did you come here to tell me like this? I— Not that you shouldn’t have, but I assumed it was because we’re, you know. The same.”
The same. It rings in Sokka’s head. It settles somewhere deep in his chest. His cheeks are flushed with warmth from the candlelit room and tea, his blood is full of moonlight and the drunken feeling of late-night conversation. His face aches from smiling.
“We-ell,” Sokka drags the word out awkwardly, like he did with Suki. His heart is in his throat. This is it, this is the perfect chance. “I hoped we’d be the same.”
“But you weren’t sure.” Zuko loses some tension in his shoulders—he carries his stress there, which has always been a lot even before he started running a nation. “Thank you for putting your trust in me.”
“Can I trust you with something else?” Sokka asks before his brain can get the better of him.
Zuko nods. His eyes are steady on Sokka’s face—he has his full attention.
“There was a lot of stuff that made sense when I thought about it,” Sokka says. “How I looked at some of the warriors back home, before they left. How connected I feel with Toph and Suki. But that dream I had? The one that woke me up?”
The only sound is the low crackling of candles and the frogs, again, outside.
Zuko inhales as if about to speak. Sokka feels the tension of drawing a sword and the relief of sheathing it all at once when he cuts him off at the pass.
“It was about you.”
“Me?” The high color in Zuko’s face darkens even more. He looks surprised and younger than Sokka has ever seen him. He rubs at the back of his neck. “I— Sokka…”
“No, hold on,” Sokka raises a finger in Zuko’s face. “Let’s get something straight, Mister Fire Lord. I am not secretly in love with you or whatever. I, it’s— Coming here was Suki’s idea anyway, mostly, so— Ugh.”
This is turning out to be harder than Sokka thought. He buries his mortified face in his hands and stays there until an unexpected sound pulls him back to the room.
Laughter. Zuko is laughing at him.
“We’re not,” he forces out between deep belly-laughs that sound endearingly like Iroh, “getting anything straight.”
“Wha—? Oh. Oh!”
Laughter carries them out of awkward tension with the ease of bison-flight. It winds down, the room is quiet again, and Sokka still feels warm but he no longer feels feverish.
“I think younger-me wanted to know what kissing you was like,” he explains, shocked by how easily the words come all of a sudden, “and I’m not upset that I never did back then, but.”
“But,” Zuko agrees. He stands. He comes around the table.
He sits down next to Sokka.
“Uh, Zuko? Wha-aat are you doing?” he asks slowly, afraid of misreading the situation and even more afraid of spooking Zuko away.
“Do you want to find out?”
Zuko hasn’t stopped blushing. His gaze is steady, though, and so are his hands when he puts them on Sokka’s shoulders.
“Are you secretly in love with me?” Sokka has to check. Just, real quick.
Zuko chuckles. “No.”
“Okay.” Not to be outdone, he raises his own hands. There’s no way to put them on Zuko’s shoulders in return that isn’t horrifically awkward, so he summons all that moonlit boldness and cups Zuko’s face in his palms. “Let’s do it.”
“Why,” Zuko asks, amused, when his mouth is inches from Sokka’s and he can feel his warm breath on his skin, “do you look like you’re getting ready for a fight?”
“I don’t,” Sokka protests.
“Do you make that face every time you kiss Suki?”
“I’ve never kissed a guy—”
“You don’t punch each other first.” Zuko rolls his eyes. “It’s not that different.”
Sokka breathes in deep, closes his eyes. Just like he’s not here to talk to the Fire Lord, Zuko isn’t trying to kiss a swordsman. He takes his hand off the hilt.
There is a quiet intake of breath just before their lips meet. Sokka thinks it comes from Zuko, but he can’t be sure, and then it really doesn’t matter anymore.
Kissing Zuko is— It’s— It’s weird.
It’s weird because it’s Zuko, and it’s nice because it’s Zuko. His mouth is warm and dry, not as soft as Suki’s, thinner than Yue’s, and that’s the end of Sokka’s baseline for comparison. He runs hot. The skin of his jaw is barely prickly in Sokka’s hands, late as it is, which he surely would have expected if he’d bothered to think about it.
Zuko tilts his head, catching his lower lip in the divot between Sokka’s own. Something in Sokka slides into place—no, more like it releases. He takes a burden from the shoulders of his younger self, one a fifteen-year-old boy never even realized was there. He promises they’ll carry it together.
Sokka pulls away first, because he’s kind of holding Zuko’s entire head.
“Did that—” Zuko seems to shock himself with how hoarse his voice comes out. He clears his throat. “Did that answer your question?”
“Yeah, that pretty much does it!” Sokka grins. He pats Zuko’s cheeks and lets go.
Zuko’s hands slide off Sokka’s shoulders to rest on his biceps just long enough for a brief squeeze. It’s something he’s done a thousand times before. To this day, all of them are in one another’s space any chance they get, years after they were children, alone but for each other, huddled around a campfire. Sokka is sure Zuko will do it a thousand more times and mean the same with each one: Friendship, through anything.
“Glad I could help,” he says with a smile.
Sokka thinks again, The same. He feels a little more the same with each passing moment, like Zuko and Suki and Toph—
“Hey,” Sokka says, relaxing into the sofa, “have you told anyone else that you’re bi? I don’t mean you assumed they know,” he adds, raising his pointer finger. “Have you used your words?”
“Aang,” Zuko replies with a shrug, “since I knew he’d get it.”
Sokka’s mouth falls open.
“Get it?”
“Yeah,” Zuko’s brow furrows like Sokka is the one saying earth-tippingly wild things. “The Avatar has never been straight. It’s well-documented. Also, he said the Air Nomads didn’t have a… concept of heterosexuality… Like, culturally— Wait. I think he might have been messing with me about that part.”
“Why are you all coming out to each other when I’m not there?” Sokka cries, betrayed.
“You just came out to me! Do you see anybody else here?”
“That’s different,” Sokka snaps. “I came here to plant one on you. I can’t do that in front of my sister!”
“I don’t want to kiss you in front of your sister either!” Zuko looks annoyed—until he seems to mentally play back what he just said, and then he just looks bemused.
Sokka laughs and throws an arm around the back of Zuko’s neck.
“You’re up too late, Sunrise King. Beddy-bye time.”
“I guess so,” Zuko mutters, dropping his head onto Sokka’s shoulder. Then, “Sunrise King?”
“Not my best work,” he readily admits. “Guess I’m tired too. Prince Sokka’s gonna go hit the hay.”
“Mmph,” he grunts in muffled agreement from somewhere around Sokka’s neck.
“Uh, Zuko?”
“Mm?”
“You have to get off me first.”
Zuko sighs like this is the greatest of all his life’s trials and tribulations. “Fine.”
As he lifts himself from Sokka, Zuko yawns so wide his jaw cracks.
“That,” Sokka says, “was adorable. I’ll see you in the morning.”
Zuko nods sleepily and smiles. Sokka looks at him one more time through the closing door as he leaves: hair down and messy, pulling off the long, embroidered cloak that must be heavy to wear all day.
Sokka sleeps well that night. He dreams a dream he can’t remember come morning, but it’s a good one.
In it, he thinks he sees his own face.
When Katara and Aang show up, hugs are exchanged with enthusiasm, frequency, and utter chaos. Sokka must hug them all three times each, including Zuko, whom he’s been hanging around for two days already.
The Fire Lord insists he has an important Fire Nation meeting with some Fire Sages this Fire Afternoon, so they won’t see him until dinner.
“Sokka.” Katara comes up to him almost—nervously, which is such a deeply un-Katara emotion he almost asks Is Aang dead again? before seeing Aang himself over her shoulder. “Can we talk for a minute?”
“Sure,” Sokka says warily.
She even hauls him up onto Appa’s saddle, the one place in the palace where they’re guaranteed utter privacy.
“Okay,” Katara sighs, steadying herself. “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately. Aang has been talking me through it, helping me.” She nods to her boyfriend, who gives an encouraging nod back with a soppy, proud look in his wide eyes. “And I wanted to tell you first.”
A dozen worst-case scenarios pile up ten feet deep in Sokka’s head. He’s in the middle of drafting a plan for faking each of their deaths—just in case! You never know—when Katara touches his hand.
“I think,” she says heavily, “that I’m bisexual.”
From somewhere in the distance, Sokka hears a strange bird call. It’s high and chaotic, unlike any bird he’s ever heard before. It takes a few seconds to realize that it’s his own hysterical laughter.
“Katara!”