Chapter Text
He can move.
He sinks in his lower back sometimes, and yeah, maybe his port-de-bras isn’t as controlled as it could be, and sure, he occasionally has trouble with overhead lifts, even when the girl is about 95 pounds, and fine, he holds tension in his hands. But Zuko can move: every leap soars, and every pirouette goes on forever, and every movement in his upper body is smooth and expressive. His body is: legs that take up all the space in the room, knees that go just past straight, feet that arch into perfect crescents, endless lines, a pretty face.
Zuko has all that, he knows he has all that. Every puzzle piece is perfectly shaped, there is no excuse not to put the puzzle together perfectly. No excuse at all. Everyone expects that final image to be breathtaking, and it will be. He will make it be breathtaking, even if putting together that puzzle takes years. Even if it’s painful. Even if the paint on some of those pieces is a little chipped. He’ll make it work.
His teacher, Iroh, examines him. “It’s good.”
“It’s fine,” Zuko huffs. He wipes the sweat from his forehead, stretches his ankles out. Cracks both his knees. “The grand jetes en tournant were a mess.”
“Only because you’re exhausted. When you’re this tired, you can’t sacrifice your technique. You can sacrifice height, but not technique. You’ll get injured.”
“I shouldn’t get this exhausted in the first place. I need better stamina.”
“It’s almost ten, Zuko. You’ve been going since nine in the morning. Anyone would be tired.”
“I’m not anyone.”
Iroh smiles good-naturedly. “Has anyone ever told you that this level of perfectionism is a little narcissistic?”
Zuko glares. So he wants the variation to be good—so what? It needs to be good. Prix de Lausanne preliminaries are just a few months away, and he chose a notoriously difficult variation—the Prince Variation from Sleeping Beauty, filled with wild, powerful jumps that require technical perfection to land, that go on and on until he feels like he’s going to vomit from sheer exertion. No one competes with that variation—it’s only ever performed by professionals who have already gone through the competition circuit and found their company, who have earned their stripes and worked their way up to become principal dancers. It’s unheard of for a teenager to even attempt it.
But Zuko wanted to do it, and Iroh thought he could pull it off, so—here they are.
If he goes on stage and he’s a mess, if he can’t pull it off perfectly, he’ll never live it down. How arrogant, people would think, for a sixteen year old to think he was good enough to do that.
Mathias Heymann did it best. He’s a principal dancer at Paris Opera Ballet. Zuko films himself dancing, and puts that video side by side with the one of Mathias on Youtube.
“Alright, let’s call it a night,” Iroh says. “Make sure to roll out and ice your knees and hips.”
“Wait, can I do it one more time?”
“Nope.”
“Seriously, Iroh, I’m fine. I want to do it again. I’m not even tired.”
“Well, I am. It’s ten o’clock. I’m done working.”
“But I—“
“Good night, Zuko. Good work today.” Iroh gives Zuko a hug and a kiss on the cheek, and then ushers him out of the studio.
Zuko gets into his car—well, his dad’s car—and drives home, where his dad will have some perfectly healthy dinner ready for him, where he’ll ice his feet and knees, where he’ll roll out his muscles, paying special attention to his back, which has been twitching and cramping for the best few weeks, where he’ll shower and half-ass his homework and pass out. It’s the same every night, and has been for years.
When he gets home, his next door neighbor is in his driveway with his skateboard, practicing some trick. Zuko’s met the kid—Sokka, he thinks. He’s about Zuko age, and goes to the public high school in their hometown. He’s sort of beautiful, in a clichéd, nineties movie punk-slash-bully type of way—the type of beautiful that normally accompanies stupid. He dresses like it’s 1995 and Doc Martens are still edgy. And he likes to skateboard, and party, and smoke weed, and hook up with his debate-team girlfriend, or fuck buddy, or friend with benefits, or whatever the hell she is. She keeps her notes in binders and wears headbands.
Zuko knows all this because not only is Sokka’s house next door to his, his bedroom is too. Their windows are right across from each other, allowing both of them to look in on the other and occasionally awkwardly wave. So Zuko sees Sokka coming home late, smoking unhappily, hanging out with his friends. And Sokka, presumably, sees Zuko doing push-ups and crunches on his bedroom floor and turning out the lights at 10:00 every night.
But they’ve never really talked. They probably wouldn’t get along, anyway. Not much in common.
But as Zuko is walking from his car to the front door, Sokka falls off his skateboard. And it’s not just a tiny stumble, he completely wipes out. He doesn’t even land on his hands and knees, he literally lands flat on his stomach and chest and face, like a cartoon character who slipped on a banana.
“Oh, fuck,” Zuko says.
The kid doesn’t even move. He just lies there.
“Um, are you okay?”
“Yeah,” Sokka mumbles. “I’ve just. Accepted defeat.”
“Oh. That’s cool.”
But Sokka still doesn’t move.
“Should I, like, get your dad? Or my dad?”
“No. Don’t get anyone’s dad.” Sokka pushes himself up, slowly and lazily. He doesn’t even stand, just sits cross-legged on the pavement, smiling lazily. “Your name is, like, Zuke, or something, right?”
Zuko smirks. “Zuko.”
“Right. Zuko. I never see you at school.”
“I’m home-schooled so that I can train more,” Zuko explains, scuffing his sneakers against the sidewalk. Is this kid going to get up any time soon?
“Are you like, a gymnast, or something? I watch you through your window, stretching and stuff. Which is super creepy, now that I’m saying it out loud.”
“No, I’m a ballet dancer.”
“Ballet? That’s cool,” Sokka says. Then he grimaces, like he doesn’t think it’s cool at all.
There’s a painfully long pause that Zuko doesn’t know what to do with, until he figures out that it’s his turn to speak. To ask some polite question. “What do you do?”
“What?”
“Like, after school. Do you play any sports? Do school plays? Model UN? Anything like that.”
“I skate,” Sokka says.
“But what are you good at?”
Sokka licks his lips. “Normally, I’m good at it. I normally don’t fall like that.”
“I fall like that all the time. In ballet. But it doesn’t mean I’m not good at it, I guess. Baryshnikov fell all the time. That’s what everyone says.”
“I don’t know who that is.”
“He was a ballet dancer.”
“Yeah, I got that from…context. I just don’t know. Specifically.”
“I think this is the worst conversation I’ve ever had in my life.”
“Oh. Thanks.”
Zuko turns to go inside, but Sokka scrambles to his feet.
“Wait. I’m going to a party later. If you want to come.”
“I’m okay. I have to be up early for ballet tomorrow.”
“But tomorrow’s a Saturday.”
Zuko shrugs. His chest is warm, suddenly. His neck, too, and his whole face, actually. Which is stupid. So his hot neighbor invited him to a party that he’ll have a terrible time at. Does that type of thing really have this sort of affect on him?
“You probably don’t get invited to real parties, since you’re homeschooled and everything. Unless ballet people throw parties.”
“Not really. But I’d say no, even if I did get invited.”
“Well, how would you know, if you’ve never been invited?”
“Because you just invited me, and I said no.”
“That’s kind of lame.”
“Okay. Good night.”
And with that, Zuko exists the dullest, most awkward interaction he has ever been a part of. Well, he thought, now I know why we don’t talk.
Inside, his dad is ready with dinner for him—chicken, vegetables, rice. Some protein mixed in there somewhere, because Zuko can’t stomach the shakes, but they both know he needs to be putting on muscle. Zuko scarfs it down.
“How was dance?” Dad asks.
“Mmm, good,” he says around a mouth full of rice.
“Did you get a video of you running your variation?”
All the warmth from Zuko’s chest disappears, making way for hard, cold, ice. Zuko hands im his phone. Watches as he presses play, looks away as he begins to watch. Holds his breath.
“Tighter fifths on your tours,” he says, handing the phone to him. The ice in his chest cracks, just slightly.
“Iroh says not to worry about the tours, he says they’re fine,” he mumbles, staring at his lap.
“Fine won’t get you to the Prix finals.”
“There’s still a few months until the preliminaries.”
“It’ll come up on you faster than you think.”
Zuko nods and tries to unclench his jaw. There’s no use in arguing, especially when he’s wrong. His fifths do need to be neater; Iroh just thinks that he should focus on the big jumps, first, but he’ll have to do detail work eventually. “I’ll work on them. I’m focusing on the ménage section right now though.”
His dad nods, seemingly placated. “How’s Toph doing?”
“She’s good. Doing Grand Pas Classique.”
“She’s talented. Good technique.”
Zuko looks down at his empty plate. “Can I have more rice?”
“No. You can have more chicken, though.”
“I don’t want more chicken, I want more rice.”
Dad gets him more chicken.
Protein.
“Maybe for Nutcracker Toph be Sugar Plum and you’ll be Cavelier. You two would make nice pas de deux partners.”
“Mmm, we’d be in different casts. Iroh will never let us be partners.”
“Why not?”
The real reason is because Iroh thinks they’d work each other—and him—to death. The reason he tells his dad is: “He says she’s not the right size for me.”
“Toph’s not a big girl.”
Zuko shrugs.
“Look, if you’re not strong enough to lift a girl that size, then that’s a problem. If you’re stuck partnering Mai forever just because she’s skinny—“
“Mai’s a good dancer.”
“She’s an alright dancer. But you and Toph are the best in the school and you should be pas partners. I know that Mai’s your girlfriend, but she doesn’t have to be your pas partner, too.”
“Iroh’s choice, not mine.”
“You need to get stronger. Eat your chicken.”
The rest of the meal passes in silence. Zuko tries to think of something else to say, but he and his dad don’t really talk about anything but ballet. It seems to be all he cares about, but Zuko knows that’s not true. He loves him, and everything, it’s just—
Dad was a ballet dancer. Had a contract with ABT, and worked his way up the ranks. But just a few months after he was promoted to Principal Dancer, he injured his knee, and well, that was that. So, college and marriage and babies, on girl and one boy, both with perfect dancer’s bodies. But now Azula is off training at the Vaganova Academy in Russia, and well, his dad needs someone’s training to hyper-focus on, god damn it.
Zuko knows it’s not “normal.” But it’s also not normal to be the best, so. And maybe it would be one thing if Zuko didn’t really like ballet, but he does, so it’s fine that Dad pushes him so hard. It’s helpful.
Zuko has trouble sleeping that night. And as he lies in his bed, shrouded in darkness, he looks into Sokka’s room as he comes home. Watches him relax with his friends late at night. Watches him drink and smoke. Watches him make out with his debate-team quasi-girlfriend.
Sometimes, it feels like while everyone else has been growing up, Zuko has been doing tendus.
He watches until Sokka’s friends pass out on the floor. Until the girl goes home. Until Sokka flips the light off. And then he falls asleep.
***
“I have so many blisters,” Toph whispers, looking down at her toes. They sit on the floor by the barre together, stretching. “So many blisters.”
“I have zero blisters,” Zuko says, stretching his feet.
Toph hits him with a pointe shoe. “Only because men don’t go on pointe. That’s male privilege.”
Zuko snorts, then goes back to stretching. They’re about thirty minutes early, so it takes a while for the other kids to start filtering in. But eventually, Mai plops down next to them and gives Zuko a kiss on the cheek, then starts sliding on her soft shoes. She never wears pointe shoes for barre.
“Do you want to come to my house tonight?” she offers. “We can do a movie night, or something.”
Zuko looks at her—her bun surrounded by a halo of flyaways, her tights torn, no make-up. She sees him watching, and she smiles tiredly, prettily, leaning back against her elbow so he can see every rib straining against her cotton leotard. A movie night would be nice, but… “I’m going to be here late tonight.”
“Well, come over after.”
“It’ll be pretty late.”
She lowers her voice to a whisper. “My parents won’t be home.”
Which would be tempting, except Zuko doesn’t really know what she’s getting at, considering that she’s a born-again virgin and isn’t going to let him have sex with her anyway. Her parents aren’t home, so… they’ll hold hands extra tightly? Maybe make eye contact for more than ten seconds at a time?
Mai used to be a party-girl, lost her virginity at fourteen, (“Which doesn’t make her a slut, have some fucking respect for women, asshole,” Toph berated Zuko, once), and it was all good until her period stopped coming. Well, she turned out not to be pregnant, just underweight, (which is really not a big deal at all, according to Mai), but it terrified her like a near death experience. It was as if Jesus came to her in a dream and said, “hey, maybe stop getting 95% of your calories through vodka” but Mai heard, “never have any sex for the rest of your life, never go to any parties, and date that uptight kid in your ballet class to make sure you stay in line.” And then Jesus came to Zuko and said, “if you don’t socialize outside of ballet for at least 30 minutes a week you’re going to go insane.”
So now they’re in a relationship.
“What will I tell my dad?” Zuko asks.
Mai shrugs. “Sleepover with someone?”
“Okay.”
Zuko gets permission from his dad, sets everything up, but by the time he’s done at the studio, he’s exhausted. It’s a full day: Technique class, then men’s class, then pas de deux, Nutcracker prep, then private rehearsals with Iroh for Prix de Lausanne. And it’s the sixth day in a row he’s been dancing ten hour days, and all he wants to do is fall into a brief coma.
He showers, flops into bed, and texts Mai: hey, im super tired and i think im just gonna pass out. really sorry
Mai: seriously?
There’s a sinking feeling in Zuko’s chest. I’m sorry. I’m just so exhausted.
It takes a while for Mai to respond, and when she does, it’s not what Zuko expects: Am I doing something wrong?
What? Zuko types back frantically. Why would you think that?
Sometimes it feels like you never want to hang out with me. Am I too clingy or something?
Zuko drop his head against back against the pillow. Fuck. He knows that he’s been neglecting Mai, has been a shitty boyfriend, and he’s known that eventually she’d react. But he always expected her to get angry or jealous, the way girls did on TV shows. You’ve been ignoring me, we’re doing on a date tonight. Let me look through your phone. You’re tired, being with me should rejuvenate you. He didn’t expect her to get insecure.
It’s not about you, Zuko replies. I promise. I’ve just been really focused on prix de lausanne
Mai doesn’t reply.
Let’s reschedule, Zuko says. Tomorrow. Pancakes + movie???
Mai replies moments later: okay :)
Well, she seems placated, at least. He knows he has to be a better boyfriend if he wants this to last. But when he starts thinking about the relationship lasting, he feels an acute tightening sensation in his whole body, the same way he feels when he’s trying to force another rotation out of a wobbly pirouette. Staring at some spot on the wall until his eyes burn, willing his gaze to whip the rest of his body around one last time.
He lets his head fall to the left, and sees through his window, Sokka, lying on his bed, texting just like him. Zuko watches him for a moment, wonders who he’s texting. Is he making plans with friends? Maybe he’s going to another party tonight. He seems like the kind of kid who would get invited to lots of parties. Seems like the kind of kid who would walk through the hallway at school and all the girls would blush walking past him and all the guys would do that weird, bumping-into-each-other-but-affectionately thing to him and his Spanish teacher would be like, “fuck me under the bleachers, Sokka.”
Well, maybe not that last one.
Sokka drops his phone and glances over at Zuko, catching him staring. Zuko blushes hard but doesn’t look away. Sokka starts blushing too. Then he gets up and opens his window. Zuko follows his lead, then plops down on a bean bag by the window. Sokka stands.
“Hi,” Sokka says.
“Hi.”
“How was ballet?”
Zuko shrugs. “Kind of tiring. I have a day off tomorrow though.”
“Maybe we can hang out?” Sokka offers, his entire face reddening.
Zuko’s chest heats up again, like it had last night. But he has plans with Mai tomorrow, and he can’t bail on her again. “I can’t. I just—made plans, a few minutes ago.”
“Oh.” Sokka’s face falls. His gaze drop to his lap, his hand floats to his hair, and—
“But another time!” Zuko says. “Another time, we should definitely hang out. Definitely.”
“Definitely,” Sokka echoes.
“How was the party?” Zuko asks.
Sokka smirks. “Don’t even remember.”
“What do you—Oh.”
“Yeah. So I’m, like, pretty hungover.”
“You don’t look hungover.”
“Well, I am,” Sokka says snappishly. “You don’t even go to parties, how would you know what hungover looks like?”
“Okay,” Zuko says, feeling chastised, suddenly aware of how Sokka is standing up while he is sitting down. How he has to tilt his head up to look at him. “Sorry.”
Sokka shakes his head. “No. Sorry, I shouldn’t have—sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Zuko mumbles. He looks at his lap, picks at the drawstring of his pajama pants. Looks up at Sokka. “What are your friends like?”
“Which one?”
“Your best friend.”
Sokka climbs onto the windowsill and sits down, so his feet dangle down over the side of his house.
“Be careful!” Zuko says.
Sokka smirks.
“I’m serious. That’s dangerous, you could get hurt.”
“I’ll be fine. This ledge is sturdy,” Sokka says, then looks off to his left. “I guess my best friend is probably Jet. Or at least I spend the most time with him.”
“What’s he like?”
“He’s cool. We’ve been friends since we were, like, three. And he skates, too. He’s funny. He does good impressions. He’s into, like, business stuff? Always trying to come up with some billion dollar idea.”
“Are his ideas good?”
Sokka snorts. “Nope.”
Zuko laughs.
“He’s not stupid though. Everyone at school—they think that me all my friends are dumb. And we’re not dumb, we’re just…”
“I don’t think you’re dumb.”
Sokka quirks an eyebrow. “Do you think I’m smart?”
Zuko shrugs, tries to rub the tiredness out of his eyes. “Can’t tell yet. Do you think I’m smart?”
“Smart enough to get out of going to high school.”
Zuko shakes his head, smiles.
“What’s your best friend like?”
Zuko warms. “Her name is Toph. We’ve been friends since we were twelve. And she’s a ballet dancer, too, and she’s like, really, really, really good. And she’s really funny and she’s into, like, politics, and activism, and, um, feminism, and gay rights and racial equality and stuff.”
“Politics and activism and feminism and gay rights and racial equality and stuff.”
“Yup. She’s really, like, knowledgeable. When she’s done dancing, she’s going to go to law school and be an attorney. And then the president, probably.”
“What are you going to do when you’re done dancing?”
Zuko grins. “I guess I’ll just shoot myself.”
Sokka cracks up, and Zuko laughs too, pleased with himself for his successful joke.
“What’s Toph’s stance on gun control?” Sokka asks.
“Oh, it’s ‘no one gets a gun, except for Zuko, who can have one but has to shoot himself within thirty seconds of getting it.’”
“Well, she has my vote.”
Zuko giggles. “Are you going to another party tonight?”
“No. I might go over to Jet’s but… I don’t—“ He cuts himself off, suddenly clams up, staring at something behind Zuko. Zuko whips around: it’s his dad, standing in the doorway with a a basket of laundry, staring at Zuko and Sokka.
“What’s going on?” Dad asks.
“We’re just talking,” Zuko mumbles, sheepish. He looks down at his lap and picks at his nails, waits for whatever is coming next. He feels as though he’s broken a rule that he didn’t know existed.
“I didn’t know you two were friends.”
Zuko shrugs.
“Have you stretched yet?”
Zuko nods.
Dad raises an eyebrow. “Have you?”
“No,” he admits.
Zuko watches Dad’s face go through twelve different emotions, before settling on patience. “Just make sure you do before bed.” Zuko agrees, and he closes the door before she goes.
Zuko turns back to Sokka. “Sorry.”
“He’s strict,” Sokka says.
“I guess.”
“Are you going to stretch?”
Zuko shakes his head. “Too tired.”
“Always tired,” Sokka says, and as if on cue, Zuko yawns. Sokka laughs. “You should go to bed.”
“Probably,” Zuko says. “Not yet, though.”
“Not yet,” Sokka says softly.
They stay up talking for hours, just chatting about nothing. It’s not talking to someone who knows nothing about ballet, who isn’t going to bring up gossip at the studio or how their fouettes are so bad. Instead they talk about: Sokka’s skateboarding, cities they want to travel to, movies they’ve watched recently.—Sokka is adamant that the best movie of the year is Parasite. Zuko hasn’t seen it. Stupid jokes that don’t make any sense. They keep going until Zuko can barely keep his eyes open, and Sokka says softly, “you’re tired. Sleep.”
And he does.
***
The next morning, Zuko goes to Mai’s house to fulfill his promise of pancakes and movies. Mai’s still in her PJs when she answers the door, and she bounces towards the kitchen without so much as a hug the minute she sees him. Zuko follows, shutting the door behind him.
“Okay, so, I have all the ingredients,” Mai says, and waves her hands over them as if she’s a presenter on a cooking show. They’re all pre-measured in little cups.
“I see,” Zuko says. If his dad knew he was going over to eat pancakes, he’d kill him. Where is the PROTEIN? Nowhere, Dad. Nowhere.
The two of them start working on the pancakes, while Mai starts chatting about some TV show she’s been watching that’s so so so good, you need to watch it. Yeah, yeah, everything is so so so good, it’s the golden age of TV; if Zuko watched everything someone told him he needed to watch he’d die before he got the season finale of the 30th-to-last one.
Mai keeps talking, and Zuko tries to listen, tries to contribute to the conversation, but he can barely keep his eyes open.
After Zuko fucks up his third pancake-flip, Mai notices. “Are you not feeling well?” she asks, taking the spatula from him.
“No, I’m just exhausted. I was up late last night.”
Mai’s spatula hovers over an unflipped pancake, frozen. “Oh.”
“Yeah, so, that’s why…” Zuko says, watching her closely.
The spatula still hasn’t moved. “I thought the reason you couldn’t come over last night was because you were going to bed early. Because you were so tired.”
Zuko shifts his weight from one foot to the other. “Well, yeah. I was planning on it, but then I ended up just, staying up late anyway.”
“Just, in your room?”
“Just in my room.”
“You must not have been that tired, then,” Mai remarks.
This isn’t Mai. As weird as she can be sometimes, she isn’t the suspicious type. She doesn’t look for betrayal in every misunderstanding.
“What’s up with you?” Zuko asks.
“Nothing. Nothing.” Mai drops the spatula, walks away from the stove. “I have to use the bathroom.”
Zuko grabs the spatula, flips the pancakes. They’re charred black on one side, gooey and soft and creamy on the other. Duds. Mai doesn’t come back for a while, so Zuko lingers at the stove, finishing off the rest of the pancakes and trying not to think of what’s coming.
When Mai returns, they plate the pancakes in silence and sit on the couch, a couple gargantuan feet away from each other, staring straight ahead.
Zuko reaches for the remote. “What movie should we watch?”
Mai doesn’t respond.
“I heard that, uh, Parasite, is pretty good?”
“That sounds scary,” Mai mumbles.
“Yeah, I guess it’s maybe not for today.” Zuko braves a glance over at Mai—her face is blank. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
She doesn’t look at him. “I’m okay. I just think. I think, um—“ She turns to face him, makes a facial expression that Zuko can’t decipher. “I think maybe we’d be better off as just friends.”
Zuko feels the blood drain from his face. “What?”
“I’m just tired of trying to force this into something that it’s not. Force ourselves into something that we’re not.”
“I do not understand anything you’re saying to me,” Zuko says, his voice sounding very far away. Is this actually happening?
“It just feels like our relationship has reached its natural conclusion. Don’t you think?” she asks.
“No.”
“You’re just never going to be the boyfriend that I want you to be.”
Zuko shakes his head, trying to clear it. He knows he sort of fucked up, but is this seriously happening? “Because I stayed up late last night?”
“No, because—“ She sighs, shakes her head. “You’re just, like, not that into this. Which is fine, actually. It’s kind of a relief. Because I don't think I’m that into this either.”
“I am that into this,” Zuko insists, standing up. “I really like you.”
“You like having a girlfriend so that you can tell yourself that you’re normal. But you’re not normal. And I wanted you to be my boyfriend because you’re a goody-two-shoes and I thought dating you would turn me into a goody-two-shoes too. But I’m not actually that into you. Or, like, attracted to you.”
“Oh. Thanks.”
“Doesn’t it just feel like we’re not actually dating? Like, we’re just friends who hold hands sometimes.”
“Only because you don’t want to have sex!”
“Why would I want to have sex with you? I just said I’m not attracted to you!”
Zuko takes a step back as if he’s been burned. As if she’s fire.
So their relationship is stupid, fine. But she doesn’t want him at all? That stings, it slices, it… It feels like he’s been cut first in an audition. Which has never happened to him. Except now it’s happening, and it’s his fucking girlfriend who’s telling him his alignment needs improvement.
“Seriously, Zuko, you don’t want to have sex with me either, admit it. All you ever think about is ballet. You’d be in mid-orgasm thinking about triple-tours. You don’t even want a relationship! You can never hang out because you’re always at the studio, and then when we do hang out, you just talk about ballet. And like, I get it, ballet is great, and beating your sissones is like—“ Chef’s kiss. “But seriously, you’re so tunnel-visioned that you can’t think about this relationship at all. So why be in it?”
“Jesus Christ.”
“Anyway, since neither of us want this, let’s just stop. Let’s just stop forcing it, and be friends, and we can finally relax. So. Let’s eat these pancakes as friends.”
Zuko’s eyes burn. He sits down, grabs the plate, realizes what he’s doing, then starts shaking his head. Is he really going to eat pancakes with his non-girlfriend? Is he really going to platonically eat pancakes and watch a movie? These pancakes, that they made as boyfriend and girlfriend—he’s supposed to eat these as friends? These fucking consolation pancakes? With no protein?
“Actually, I’ll go home.”
***
Zuko spends the rest of the morning sulking. At noon, he mopes. From one to three, he broods. From three to six, he despairs. Six to seven, he pouts. At seven, he takes a break to shower and masturbate (somberly). At eight, he languishes. And at ten, Sokka opens his window. So Zuko opens his.
“What’s wrong with you?” Sokka asks. “You’re in a pit of despair.”
“‘My girlfriend broke up with me,” Zuko spits.
“You have a girlfriend?”
“Not anymore!”
“Well, yeah, but. I’m just surprised you had a girlfriend.”
“Because all male dancers are gay, Sokka?” Zuko spits. “That’s a stereotype.” Even if it does, sort of, kind of, maybe apply to Zuko.
“No, you just didn’t seem like the type of person who would date.”
Zuko starts pacing. “She said our relationship has reached its natural conclusion. Who says that?”
“Uh, your girlfriend?”
“She also said she wasn’t attracted to me.”
“Maybe she’s gay.”
Zuko stops pacing. Looks at Sokka. Looks back at the wall. Goes back to pacing. “That’s flattering. Thanks.”
Sokka shakes his head, sits on the ledge of the window. “That sucks, dude, I’m sorry. But, you know, you’ll be sad for a while, you’ll miss her, and then, you know, you’ll move on. Find someone new.”
“I’ll never get over her insulting me like that. Forget someone new! My ego, Sokka.”
“It’s bruised.”
“It’s far more than bruised. It’s broken. It’s… It’s…”
“Disemboweled?”
“Yes! She disemboweled me!”
Sokka laughs, then, slowly, sobers. “Do you think that you’ll actually miss her?”
“I won’t even have the opportunity. I’ll see her every day in ballet.”
“Miss dating her, I mean.”
Zuko thinks about it. Dating her was… It felt more like a performance than anything else. A show where they were each both the audience and the performer. Every date was like a checkmark on their to-do lists. “No. I mean, dating her was… I don’t know. It wasn’t bad, it was just… unnatural.”
“Then maybe she was right to break up with you. Maybe you’re better off just being friends.”
Zuko shakes his head. Mai was not right.
“I’m serious. You don’t actually seem sad about the relationship ending. You’re just upset that she rejected you.”
Most of the heat of Zuko’s anger dissipates, leaving nothing more than passionless annoyance. He falls onto his beanbag but her window. “Easy for you to say,” he grumbles. “You have your perfect hot girlfriend.”
Sokka’s face wiggles. “What perfect hot girlfriend?”
“You know, the girl that comes over, with the—headbands. You and her make out a lot,” Zuko says, then blushes, and stares at his lap. ‘Not that I’ve been watching. But you leave the curtains open and you’re right there and sometimes I just see it.”
When Zuko looks up, Sokka’s jaw is hanging open. “Suki is not my girlfriend.”
“She’s not?”
“Of course not! She’s on the debate team!”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“How am I supposed to date someone on the debate team?”
“I am really not following.”
“She’s hot,” Sokka explains. “But she’s… preppy and high-maintenance, and she would never be caught dead dating me and I’d never be caught dead dating her.”
“But you make out with her.”
“I fuck her, too.”
Zuko drops his voice by several octaves. “Oh, look at me, I’m Sokka, and I have sex, I’m so cool.”
Sokka ignores him. “We have sex. But no one knows about it. And there are no emotions in it.”
“Oh,” Zuko mumbles, embarrassed. Of course Sokka isn’t the type of guy who needs feelings to fuck. He must think Zuko’s so innocent. So naive.
“Well, she’s not. She’s just, you know, a body.”
“Alright, chill out, Donald Trump. Don’t make Toph come over here and beat you up.”
Sokka laughs. “Alright, alright. But. Yeah. She’s not my girlfriend.”
“So neither of us have girlfriends,” Zuko muses.
“So neither of us have girlfriends,” Sokka echoes.
There is a moment or two of silence—it starts out comfortable, but quickly grows awkward.
“So I guess we’re both losers,” Zuko blurts out, searching for something to say.
Sokka laughs, shakes his head. “I have to do homework. And it’s getting close to your self-enforced bedtime of 10:30, and you seem to be feeling better, so…”
Zuko smiles. “Yeah, I can’t let you keep me up late tonight too.” If he does, who knows who will break up with Zuko tomorrow?
“Well, then,” Sokka says, a crooked, shit-eating grin on his face, “It seems our conversation has reached its natural conclusion.”
Zuko giggles. “Good night, asshole,” he says, shutting the window.
“Good night!” Sokka calls out, climbing inside.
Zuko gets ready to go to sleep and crawls into bed, but he doesn't close his eyes. He watches Sokka through the window until his vision blurs and his eyes droop closed. Until sleep steals him away.