Chapter Text
The beach is warm, the air a soft whisper through his hair. Zuko frowns—there’s something he’s supposed to remember, something important, but it’s dancing out of the corners of his mind, fuzzing up into darkness. He tilts his eyes to see if he can catch it, then gasps—the stars are wheeling in bright circles overhead, so lovely it hurts.
“Come on, Sifu Hotman,” Sokka’s saying. “On three?”
Zuko blinks. He notices the glass in hand, then the matching one in Sokka’s, and breaks into a grin.
“On three,” he affirms. Sokka’s smile stretches wide and wicked as he counts, and then the two of them knock back their glasses. Zuko coughs; the liquor burns going down, a line of heat from throat to belly, but it tastes a hell of a lot better on his third round than the first two.
“You’re gonna make yourselves sick,” Katara says, clucking disapprovingly, but she’s swaying a little herself, something pink and fruity sloshing in her cup.
“Oh, lighten up, Katara,” Sokka says grandly, throwing an arm around Zuko’s shoulders. “It’s not every day my boy here gets crowned Firelord, huh?”
Zuko leans into his touch, warm and comfortable. He likes hearing that phrase from Sokka’s mouth. My boy. My. The careless possession of it. Like it wasn’t even a question that Zuko should belong to Sokka.
“Isn’t it, though?” Toph grumbles. She’s perched on a rocky outcrop that Zuko’s pretty sure didn’t exist an hour ago. “This is like our third celebration of the week.”
“Yeah, but those were boring,” Aang says, sprawled on his back in the surf. He’s bending the sand into fleeting shapes above him—a lemur, a dragon, a bison. “This one’s actually fun.” He rolls over and grins dopily at them, and Zuko has to stifle a laugh. Katara made sure not to give Aang anything stronger than mango juice, but you’d never believe it by looking at him.
The full force of it hits Zuko, all at once—just how much he loves these people. Really loves them. All of them. Toph’s good-natured grouchiness, Aang’s flighty optimism and core of strength, Katara with her passion and kindness. And Sokka—
Sokka.
“Of course it’s fun,” Sokka replies, indignant. His voice is close enough that Zuko can feel his breath ghosting across his neck. Despite the heat, Zuko shivers. “I planned it, didn’t I?”
Katara snorts. “Yeah, ‘cause your plans have always worked out so great in the past.”
“Hey!” Sokka pulls off of Zuko and plants his hands on his hips. “You take that back right now, young lady.”
Katara just sticks her tongue out at him.
With a yell of mock outrage, Sokka charges her, only to be doused with a wave of seawater that Katara sends with just a flick of the wrist. Dripping wet but undeterred, he continues on and promptly smacks headfirst into a wall of rock.
“Toph,” Sokka whines over the girls’ giggling, rubbing his forehead, “not cool. Aang! Jerkbender! Back me up!”
“Oh no, I’m good right here,” Zuko says, and flops down into the sand, sitting back to enjoy the show just as Aang springs to his feet. A minute later Toph’s got Aang in a headlock, and Sokka’s lobbing gloopy handfuls of wet sand at Katara, who shrieks as one splashes into her drink. They tussle like family, all four of them—because they are a family. Not just by blood, but by trust and care and months of shared experience.
A family that Zuko’s still not entirely a part of.
For as much as he loves them, it’s all too apparent in moments like these that he can’t be one of them. Not just that he doesn’t know how, but—
The four of them, their legacy was hope and goodness and faith. Together, they’d beaten insurmountable odds and left the world better than they’d found it.
But Zuko?
All Zuko had done was play catch-up. Try and fix his mistakes before he and his family ruined any more lives. And it was better than nothing, but still—too little, too late. The fact that the group even tolerates him at all is a miracle, one that Zuko doesn’t take lightly. He’s no hero. Hell, he’s barely even good.
It’s a hard thing to stomach, whenever he’s forced to confront it.
The drink makes it easier.
So he sits and watches them wrestle, plucking a half-empty bottle from the sand and taking a long swig. No matter. They’re happy, and he’s happy—(happy enough, he tells himself)—and that’s all that matters.
“Hey, jerkbender,” Sokka says. “Anything left in there?”
Zuko tosses him the bottle, and Sokka plops down next to him in the sand. It’s quiet, Zuko realizes. He cranes his head and finds that at some point during his musings, the beach had emptied out completely. “Hey—where’d everyone go?”
“They got tired, if you can believe it,” Sokka says, scoffing. “Lightweights, you know? Not seasoned party animals like me and you.”
“Oh, that’s me, alright,” Zuko says drily, “Firelord Zuko, notorious party fiend.”
Sokka throws his head back and laughs in the way that only drunk people can laugh, full-throated and unselfconscious. It’s infectious—and what the hell, Zuko’s drunk too—so he joins in, warmth settling in his bones as Sokka bumps their shoulders together. Zuko keeps waiting for Sokka to pull away, to slide back into a comfortable bubble of personal space.
He never does.
Instead—inexplicably—Sokka rests his arm in the space between them, palm open in the soft bed of sand.
Almost like—
Like an invitation.
Zuko dares to meet his gaze. Sokka’s eyes are bright, playful; his cheeks are flushed, soaked tunic clinging to the rapid rise and fall of his chest.
“And what about you?” Zuko asks. “Are you tired?” It comes out less breezily than he’d intended, and when he swallows, Sokka’s eyes flick to his throat.
A slow grin spreads across Sokka’s face. “Not at all,” he says, and doesn’t break eye contact as he drains the rest of the bottle.
Zuko has that feeling again, like there’s something he’s forgetting. Something important. They’re sitting close—so close, is it normal for friends to sit this close? He can’t tell—he’s having a hard time even thinking of a world beyond this moment. Besides, Sokka doesn’t seem to mind, and honestly?
Neither does Zuko.
There’ll be time for analysis later, he tells himself. Later, when his head is less fuzzy and his mind is clear enough to pick himself apart. But for now, he lets himself get lost in the beauty of it all, of the sky and sea and jasmine-soaked air. Of the boy sitting next to him, stars in his eyes and the devil in his grin. Beautiful.
He must’ve said it out loud, because Sokka laughs and says, “I am rather stunning, aren’t I?” And then Zuko’s shoving him without thought, and Sokka retaliates, grabbing Zuko by the collar and pulling him close enough to count the eyelashes dusting his cheeks.
They stare at each other for a moment—two sets of wide, unblinking eyes.
Then Sokka leans in and kisses him.
It’s only when Zuko’s eyes are closed, one hand threading through Sokka’s unbound hair and the other gripping his waist, that he remembers. The one thing he’d reminded himself over and over before the night began.
Whatever you do, don’t let your best friend find out you’re in love with him.
Shit.