Work Text:
In high school, the best time to slack off is during second year. By junior year, you have to start worrying about exams and colleges and grades and extracurriculars. Freshman year is defined by that irrational nervous anxiety of starting high school and finding your friend group.
But sophomore year?
That’s when you can enjoy the springtime of your youth.
And Sokka enjoys his youth with a daily quota of meat and french fries and a determined lack of inconveniences. Sure, the universe tended to throw a few curveballs in his direction and he had solidified his reputation as the “meat guy who complains a lot” but, all in all, he got it pretty good.
He had decent grades without trying all that hard, had an internship lined up with Zaofu Industries for the summer, played soccer with his neighborhood intramural club, and watched action movies and anime over the weekends. Also, he and Yue are friends again despite the awkward summer breakup.
He was single, smart, suave, and had one simple goal: to enjoy his life.
Sophomore year was going to be fantastic, he had thought.
But this eagerness was quickly cut short when he discovered who sat behind him once the second semester began.
Zuko.
Where to begin with Zuko?
Well, he was called:
(A) Depressing,
(B) Emo,
(C) Goth,
(D) Cursed, and
(E) All of the above.
Sokka had avoided the guy ever since he transferred to Omashu Tech at the beginning of the year, especially since his second day when he very obviously got into a fight and had bruises on his knuckles and scratches on his face. Then, when someone had asked about it, he had blown up and shouted, “It’s none of your business!”
Once, someone happened to make eye contact with his bad eye, and that night, that guy fell down the stairs in his own home and hurt his leg.
Or, at least, that’s what he loudly announced to everyone the following day and by then, Zuko’s renown had been established.
“If you make eye contact with Zuko, you will get injured.”
“If you touch Zuko, you will get burned.”
“If you talk to Zuko, your answers on the next standardized test will be off by one row.”
Basically, you should not involve yourself with Zuko.
He was the creep, the school seventh wonder, and whatever else immature high schoolers can claim about the guy with a physical deformity.
Katara - Sokka’s younger sister - had been the first to come to the new guy’s defense when Zuko would be brought up in conversation. “We don’t know anything about him and it’s wrong to assume and spread rumors just because he’s antisocial.”
Katara has always been like that - ready to come to someone’s defense while Sokka would just shrug.
Then, two weeks later, she came home in a huff and told him, “Never mind, we hate Zuko.”
Sokka couldn’t help but smirk. She’s always quick to get on the offense too.
But Sokka is nothing but consistent, so he shrugged and said, “Yeah, alright.”
Then the second semester began and the seats were rearranged and Sokka found himself sitting right in front of the legend himself, and slowly but surely, Sokka felt as though all the rumors were coming true.
Sokka could feel the dude’s gaze boring into him like the burn of the sun on a cloudless day and then he started getting paper cuts like crazy.
Every other day, he would get nicked by every stray piece of paper and post-it note. His hands started getting these small little cuts and the final straw had been the one on his heel after he accidentally stepped on Katara’s 8 page essay on The Bell Jar.
He knew it is statistically impossible to get as many cuts as he had in the past month but that was just as unlikely that it could be caused by simply sitting in front of some guy. But Sokka liked having someone to blame.
The next day at school, as he whinged to himself about having to walk on his cut on his foot, the teacher had handed out some innocuous graphic organizer worksheet from the front of the class and had each student pass a copy behind. Sokka had grumpily flicked the paper behind him only for a sharp stinging pain to bloom from his palm between his thumb and forefinger. He seethed reactively before peering behind him and saying, “Dude, you gotta be careful.”
Sokka only meant to give him a sharp glare and ended up getting a full look at Zuko’s face. And he looked horrified. “I...sorry,” he muttered so softly that Sokka almost didn’t hear him.
The guy then quickly hunched his shoulders and covered his head with his hand to cover his face as if he were utterly ashamed for even saying anything to Sokka.
He blinked at the quiet apology, thinking about how to react. He finally settled for, “Yeah man, just be careful.”
Sokka sucked on the shallow wound as Professor Kyoshi discussed the intricacies of the Peace and Reconciliation Commission at the conclusion of the 100 Years’ War, all the meanwhile trying not to think about Zuko or curses or the fact that he might be a vampire now that he has developed a taste for his own blood.
“Wait...can you be a self-vampire?” Sokka didn’t realize he actually said this aloud until Kyoshi smacked him on the head with her clipboard.
“Pay attention, Sokka.”
The students in his class all giggled softly and Sokka could swear he heard a faint chuckle behind him.
Soon (but not soon enough) the lunch bell rang beautifully in the air. Sokka tucked his papers into his bag when “Hi, Sokka!” came from the door. Sokka looked up to the unmistakable perky voice.
“Sup, Aang - let me just grab my lunch.”
“Sure, no problem,” Aang returned.
Sokka, Katara, and Aang (the resident school genius who skipped a grade and is in Katara’s homeroom) have been getting in the habit of eating lunch together. Katara has club meetings at the start of lunch so Sokka will typically meet Aang at their typical spot on the lawn but today, it seemed like Aang came by to pick him up. As he reached under his desk to grab the box Katara had prepared for him, Sokka mused about how if Katara is the indisputable mom friend which would potentially make Aang the dad friend except that Aang doesn't really act like a dad. He acts more like the fun gay uncle that brings fireworks and good vibes.
As he was waiting, Aang tilted over on the axle of his hips to look past Sokka and he waved. “Hey, Zuko,” he chirped with a bright smile.
Every single soul in the entire classroom stopped to stare. They stood there and gawked, expecting the worst, expecting some sort of terrible reaction, or even for Zuko to explode in a ball of fire.
“Hi,” Zuko responded curtly before getting up and leaving like a ghost.
Sokka started making noises from his throat, “Wha-eh-ah-what? You know Zuko?” he eventually articulated.
Aang maintained his cheery grin. “Yeah, his uncle is my Pai Sho master.”
“Huh,” Sokka uttered, then slowly followed Aang out of the school and to the lawn. Then he turned to Aang and asked the question that has been nagging at him incessantly for the past three minutes, “Who says ‘master’ anymore?”
Two hours later, at the end of the day, Sokka shoved his stuff into his backpack before turning to see Zuko standing there, menacingly.
Like a menace.
“Hey,” Sokka began, now realizing that Zuko had stayed behind to talk to him.
“Hi.”
“So…” Sokka could not think of anything to say so simply thrust his thumb at the window and said, “Nice weather, huh?”
Zuko returned with, “Uh, yeah…nice.”
(Okay. Sure, yeah, end the conversation there, man. Great.)
Sokka sighed and started again, “So...do you play Pai Sho?”
“Huh? What? No...not really.”
“But your uncle plays, right? Aang said that he’s his teacher.”
“I guess.”
Sokka frowned. (Was this guy a Dai Li Agent? Why is he so secretive?) He rubbed the back of his neck and muttered, “SO,” one more time, “Did you want to talk about something?”
“No, just wanted to--,” then suddenly, Zuko flung something at Sokka who shrieked and scrambled about before it zigzagged through the air and into his hands.
It was a bandaid.
“Oh,” Sokka uttered after realizing what it was and calming the fuck down. He looked up to say his thanks but Zuko was already gone.
“Why are people so weird?” he asked himself before heading back home.
Katara had either Student Council or Four Nations Amnesty or some other goody-two-shoes club, so Sokka and Aang hung out at the arcade with Toph (the crazy middle schooler that Aang met at an underground wrestling ring...yeah, kid gets around).
Around 5:00, Sokka said his goodbyes, a bit peeved that Aang was able to get two stuffed animals from the crane game that Sokka might have splurged $15 on with no fruit despite the fact that he studied the stupid mechanism and had figured out the perfect way to get a stupid little cotton-stuffed pikachu but no, the universe just had to gift all the luck in the family to Katara and all the luck and goodwill in the universe to Aang.
So he grumbled his way to the bus stop and was pleasantly surprised by the arrival of “Suki!” Sokka shouted as she approached him with a roll of her eyes.
“Hey, Sokka,” she laughed. “It’s good to see you. How are you?”
“I’m good, I’m good,” he muttered through his set grin, not particularly hiding the fact that he is utterly enthralled to have run into her.
She smirked. “You look like you’ve been working out.”
Sokka preened as he swung his arms around, “Yeah, I’ll do a few chin touches every now and then, nothing major.”
“Yeah? Still playing?” she asked, her hand settling on her duffle bag and Sokka noticed the cleats dangling off the back strap.
Suki had been the neighborhood tomboy who whooped his ass on the field and became a family friend soon after.
“Only the neighborhood league,” he gave. “High school should be relaxing.”
“Sure,” she responded in a clipped but humored tone. “Didn’t make first string?”
“Nope!” Sokka didn’t mind that, he still had the neighborhood league after all, and tried to make sure that his tone conveyed that.
Thankfully, she laughed and he smiled at her as she did. Suki was pretty and strong and super athletic, and Sokka had always wondered if things could work out between them now that they’re a bit older.
But he also wouldn’t be surprised if she and Katara ended up dating. He’s Water Tribe, he can go with the flow.
“Which high school are you attending again?” she suddenly asked.
“Omashu Tech.”
“Oh.” Her attention is piqued. “Is someone named Zuko there?”
“What?” Sokka blinked. He has been getting a lot of Zuko content in one day. “Yeah, you know him?”
“We went to the same junior high. He sure is something, right?”
Sokka immediately agreed, “That’s an understatement!” in that loud boisterous way of his that gets Suki to giggle. He went on, “Geez, I can’t imagine what he would be like as a middle schooler.”
“Oh, he was already like that. I couldn’t believe someone like that could actually exist. Like he stepped out of a movie.”
Sokka started laughing, “Yeah, like he stepped out of a horr-”
But then Suki said, “He was so popular, it was insane.”
“...” Sokka stared, not even particularly at Suki, but in a way that definitely showed how absolutely and utterly dumbfounded he was.
Unaware of how caught off-guard he was, Suki provided even more insanity with: “He was like a prince from a Disney film.” Sokka felt his eyes bugging out as she continued, “All the girls would come out in the hallways to watch him. Some even asked for his autograph.”
“Zuko? Gloomy emo weird Zuko?”
“What? Gloomy? I mean, I can see him turning emo or whatever but-” she trailed off, looking a bit confused by his reaction.
Sokka feels his confusion overwhelming his senses, numbing his vision and sense of smell all at once. “Yeah, must be a different Zuko.”
“How many Zukos do you think are there in the world?” Suki quipped.
“You never know!” Sokka retorted in his characteristic pitch. “But you go to that fancy elevator school, right? Why’d he leave and come to our crappy one?”
“Escalator, Sokka,” she blithely corrects. “And there was an incident. He didn’t show up the last two weeks of school and there was a rumor that he had a stalker that went too far or something like that.”
“Whoa…”
He still could not believe it.
Zuko with a stalker? Handsome Disney-Prince level Zuko?
Nah.
Sokka tried to push the strange train of thought from his mind as he exchanged numbers with Suki but all the way on his commute home, Zuko the anomaly consumed his thoughts.
Then, at home, when he was waiting for dinner, when Suki sent him Zuko’s yearbook photo, Sokka felt like his heart stopped and his breath was caught in his chest.
He had been lying on the couch when the picture popped up and he hadn’t noticed that he sat up in shock.
He stared at the picture in the green bubble of the chatroom.
He stared and stared and stared.
For a moment, he felt like he could be one of those middle school girls rushing to the hallway just to get a glimpse of “Prince” Zuko, because, well, yeah, he could understand now.
Zuko was—“What are you looking at?” Katara asked him.
Sokka snapped out of his reverie and looked up at his sister who towered over him, her hands at her hips.
He clicked his phone off. “What?! Nothing.”
She scowled. “Were you looking at porn, Sokka? Seriously? It’s still daylight!?”
Sokka blushed and screeched, “No! And it is totally normal for a high school boy to—”
“EW! SOKKA!”
“YOU’RE THE ONE WHO BROUGHT IT UP IN THE FIRST PLACE!”
“KIDS, STOP YELLING. WE ALREADY HAVE SO MANY NOISE COMPLAINTS!” came the booming voice of their father from the other room.
Sokka calmed to the point where he was only glaring at his sister and she was glaring back at him. Eventually, a non-yelling equilibrium was reached by the time the three of them sat at the dining table.
Their dad had made dinner - his usual low-maintenance sea prune curry - since Katara had club meetings; and they ate in relative comfort, talking about their respective days. Sokka had done fairly well for not talking about Zuko or bringing up Zuko even though he was definitely thinking about Zuko and how cute strange and different Zuko looked in middle school until he had stared at Katara and the words popped out:
“Hey, why did you suddenly hate Zuko?”
“What?” She frowned. “Why are you suddenly asking about that?”
Sokka shrugged. “What? We got paired up for an assignment,” he lied easily. “I was just wondering.”
Katara scowled as she shoveled some rice onto her spoon. “He said something mean about Aang.”
Sokka could not help the reactionary smirk. “You know in most relationships it’s the other way around, right? With the guy coming to the girl’s defense-”
“Shut up, Sokka. That’s heteronormative and dumb,” she chided quickly.
“Who’s Zuko?” their dad asked, reaching over to the small dish of kimchi by Katara’s side of the table.
“Just some jerk,” Katara said at the same time Sokka said, “This guy in my class.”
“Oh, okay,” Hakoda muttered as he took a bite and the kimchi made a satisfying crunch sound.
Then the conversation moved on, but it seemed like that Sokka wouldn’t be able to.
This is so dumb, he told himself as he laid down on his bed and spent an exorbitant amount of time staring at his phone at a particular picture and was reminded about some stupid quote post he saw on Aang’s instagram about love not making sense.
But this wasn’t love. Of course, it wasn’t.
Just intrigue.
Interest.
Not interest.
But, fascination, like one has when they come across an unusual species of fungus or insect.
Yeah, this was all purely scientific. Sokka just wanted to observe Zuko, scientifically, and see whether he was anything like the smiling adorable kid in a sharp Ran-Gi Academy uniform.
Sokka wanted to meet this person, to see their smile, and by the end of the night, when Sokka finally decided to go to bed, he could not exactly say that such curiosity was wholly scientific.
But it definitely was.
“Hey, Zuko,” Sokka called out to him the next day in the middle of the hallway. “Good morning.”
Zuko squinted over his shoulder at him, and Sokka noted the consistent reaction of his peers as everyone in the halls turned to gape at them.
His mysterious classmate said nothing so Sokka chuckled and said, “Uh...well...Thanks for the bandaid and-”
“You’ll get injured,” Zuko cut him off suddenly and Sokka had absolutely no idea how to respond to that phrase of nonsense.
“WHA—?!”
“Apparently, if you talk to me you’ll break a limb,” was the muted and grumbled explanation. “Cursed and all.”
Sokka suppressed a smile. Was Zuko trying to be funny? He reached up to rub the back of his neck. “Aww man, yeah, that’ll be a problem. But we talked yesterday, didn’t we?”
Zuko didn’t respond.
So Sokka pushed forth, “But don’t you think I should be able to thank you, though? You know, without cursing me?”
“Nah, it’s fine. It was my fault anyway.” Zuko tried to walk away when Sokka realized that he had reached out to grab him.
Zuko and Sokka both looked their surprise as they stared at the point of contact and Sokka quickly reeled his hand back and half-shouted (mostly in embarrassment), “You know what? I think that you should actually probably apologize for that. It really hurt and yeah, your um - apology yesterday didn’t cut it so-”
“Oh, I-” Zuko started.
“-SO, come on, let’s -uh- do this in private. Yeah, come with me,” Sokka ended abruptly and potentially, in some weird accent since, at this point, he lost track of his own actions.
He quickly rushed through the crowded hallway and to the outside stairwell, where they were alone.
Sokka heard Zuko follow him out and begin to say, “Hey, look, if you want money-”
Then, Sokka turned around and gave him a face.
Not just any face, mind you, this was his patented creep face, with his chin smooshed down and his eyes crisscrossed, as he brought his hands up like a distorted T-Rex.
It always made Aang laugh (and Katara roll her eyes but Sokka isn't too concerned about that).
And, well, there was a split second where Zuko did absolutely nothing and Sokka maintained the face until he started thinking that maybe this was a bad idea.
Then, Zuko started shivering and he turned away. And, boom.
He laughed.
A genuine, sincere full-bellied laugh.
It got so good bad that Zuko almost stopped breathing. “Dude!” he huffed out in laughing breaths. “What the hell was that?”
And there it was, that fucking smile.
That incredible time-stopping heart-pumping smile.
“Shit,” Sokka muttered as he brought his hands down, knowing full well that he was staring. “You...that’s it!”
He stepped forward and just as easily as that smile came, it disappeared and Zuko took a step back.
“Oh,” Sokka uttered, realizing he overstepped and leaned back against the railing. “You know you should laugh like that more often. Instead of pretending to be a weirdo.”
Zuko looked askance. “I don’t know what you heard but you don’t need to try with me. I’m fine on my own.”
“Look, dude...it’s fine. I mean, I’m a weirdo too but—”
“It’s not the same,” Zuko said curtly, not rudely but in a very quick and nearly defensive manner. “You’re...you’re likeable and everyone likes you and it’s fine for me. Being alone. Everything’s just a pain in the ass, having to answer questions that I don’t want to answer. And, people do get hurt when they’re near me.”
A lot of things suddenly made sense to Sokka.
He listened to these burdened words (and genuinely listened. Honest to the moon, he did) but all he could think about was that smile and his lips and geez, were his lips always that full? He was shocked by how natural their conversation flowed once the initial awkwardness dissipated with the clear sound of Zuko’s laughter (and by his lips apparently).
Sokka watched fitfully as Zuko climbed the stairs and back into the school, caught by the very real possibility that his feelings for Zuko may not totally be completely platonic.
“Zuko,” he called out again, without realizing, the name already leaving his lips before he could decide what to say.
Zuko sighed. “What?”
Sokka slouched over the railing as words started coming out of his mouth. “You know, I’m pretty clumsy anyway. And a distant crazy weird aunt of ours who's super into astrology said that I’ll have a lot of self-inflicted pain in my life so even if you did curse me, I don’t think it’d cause that much of a difference,” he ended up saying blithely, half-joking but half sincere.
The look of pleasant surprise that Zuko wore was - dare Sokka say it - sweet (ah monkey feathers, might as well lean into it) and honestly, pretty damn endearing. A soft almost smile. Then Zuko scoffed, but it was a light laughing one, as he said, “That’s rough, buddy.”
He left Sokka there at the landing, dumbstruck.
After a moment, Sokka stood there, just staring at the place Zuko had just occupied and merely watching as the door closed after him.
It took a few minutes, but Sokka eventually made it back into the school and through the hallways but something deep within him could not rest until he pulled out his phone and stared at that picture again.
Some teacher walked past and said, “No phones in the hallway,” in a sharp tone.
Sokka muttered, “Yeah,” but still could not pull his eyes away from his screen and the picture of Zuko at thirteen, bright and smiling like the sun during a crisp autumn day, and thinking that Zuko is still pretty cute objectively good-looking even with the scar. Kinda made him look rugged and...
Sokka pursed his lips together when he finally blackened his screen with a deliberate click.
He looked up and said to no one in particular, though mostly to himself, “Well, fuck.”