Chapter Text
Zuko stares down at the paper in his hand. Other students shuffle past him, ducking out of the lecture hall once they have collected their test back from the professor. But Zuko is frozen to the spot, wide eyes fixed on the huge B- in bright red pen at the top of the page.
He gapes.
A B-? Not even a plain B, but B minus.
He spins on his foot, hoping to at least ask the physics professor where he went wrong, but he’s gone. More students are filling up the once empty lecture room, and another professor steps up to the podium to start setting up for the next class.
Zuko grits his teeth.
Worst Monday ever.
He pushes past the students, shoving his way out of the lecture hall and out to the adjoining parking garage, fingering the car keys in his pocket. He’s going to kill Aang.
The door bangs against the wall as Zuko storms into the apartment. He zeroes in on Aang immediately—he’s sitting in the middle of the coffee table with his legs crossed like a complete idiot.
“Aang!” Zuko yells, throwing his bookbag across the room. The sudden movement spooks Aang’s massive sheepdog Appa, who senses impending danger and skitters into Aang’s bedroom without a sound. Zuko only feels a little bit sorry—he’s too focused on shouting at Aang for being the worst friend and advice giver in what is probably the last entire century.
Aang hasn’t moved. Zuko figures that he must be too deep into his meditative state to notice the ruckus that Zuko has caused. He’s tempted to burn some incense and wave it under his nose, but Zuko’s not a complete asshole. With a deep, calming breath, Zuko settles into the couch opposite Aang, staring at him with the power of a thousand suns. It’s surprising that the intensity of the glare does nothing to drag Aang back to the land of the living.
By the time Aang finally blinks his eyes open, the apartment has gone dark. Bright lights from the streets below shine through the wall of floor-to-ceiling windows, just enough to glint in the whites of Aang’s eyes. In a sudden flash of movement, Aang’s arm darts out to the side, grabbing the vase that’s resting beside him on the coffee table. He swings it straight towards Zuko’s head.
Zuko catches Aang’s arm before the vase can smash into the side of his face. “Calm down, Aang. It’s just me.”
Aang takes a second to process this information, mouth agape and chest heaving. “Zuko!” he yells, setting the vase back down. “What the hell are you doing?”
Zuko huffs. “Waiting for you to wake up.”
Aang groans. “We’ve talked about this, man. Don’t scare me like that!”
“Sorry,” Zuko says, not feeling sorry at all. The few hours he spent glaring at Aang did surprisingly little to quell his anger.
Aang sends Zuko a dirty look. “No, you aren’t.” He swiftly gets to his feet, still standing on their goddamn coffee table, then leans over to flick on the floor lamp. “When did you get home?”
“Like, three hours ago.”
“And you’ve just been staring at me the whole time?” Aang asks.
“Pretty much.”
“Dude. I know you love me and all, but I have a girlfriend.”
“Aang,” Zuko says flatly.
Aang gives him a shit-eating grin, dropping back into his meditative position on the coffee table. “Please step into my office, Sifu Hotman. What can I do to help you this fine evening?”
“You’re such a piece of shit. And don’t call me that.”
“You gonna tell me what’s up, or what?”
Zuko sighs explosively, pushing his hair out of his face. He stalks over to where he’d thrown his bookbag, tearing out the paper he’s looking for. He turns back into the living room; once he’s close enough to Aang, he shoves the test into his face. “Look. This is your fault.”
Aang takes the paper, tilting his head as he reads it. “Oh! You got your physics midterm back!”
Zuko says nothing. He continues to glare. Aang sees this and furrows his brow, looking back down at the test with fresh eyes. Zuko notices exactly when Aang sees the grade—his lips part in surprise, eyes widening. He swears Aang’s breath hitches.
“Oh, shit,” Aang says.
“Oh, shit, indeed,” Zuko replies.
“How was I supposed to know that you weren’t very good at physics?” Aang is saying, ducking behind any piece of furniture he can find while Zuko hunts him down. It’s been going on twenty minutes now—back and forth and back and forth.
“It’s math!” Zuko yells.
“Math is great!”
“You know I suck at math!”
“No, I don’t! How am I supposed to know that?”
“We’ve been going to the same schools for almost our whole lives, Aang.”
Aang freezes where he’s trapped himself behind the kitchen island, hands firm on the granite countertops. He winces. “True.”
“Aargh!” Zuko yells, then feigns right, causing Aang to duck to the left. Zuko dives after him, but Aang manages to evade him, and Zuko goes skidding and sliding across the hardwood floor. When he rights himself, Aang has put the large dining table between him and Zuko, looking like he’s ready to bolt again.
“Zuko, stop,” Aang pleads, eyes big and round. “If we break the dining table again, Roku is going to disown me. Don’t make this a repeat of the Golden Egg Incident.”
Zuko straightens up, crossing his arms and rolling his eyes at the mention of the incident. It wasn’t even that big of a deal. “Fine.”
Aang slumps over the table with a large exhale, but then stands back up quickly. “Okay, look. I’m really sorry I suggested taking physics as an elective. I thought that you’d be good at it.”
Zuko’s lips twist into a snarl, and Aang holds up his hands like he’s warding off another attack.
“But I think I know someone who can help.”
They’re sitting across from each other at the dining table, the offending physics midterm laying between them.
“Who?” Zuko asks, eyes narrowed.
“My girlfriend’s brother,” Aang responds. “He’s a physics major. I bet he’d–”
“Wait,” Zuko says, holding up a hand. “I thought you were kidding about the girlfriend thing. When the hell did you get a girlfriend? We’ve only been in Canada for a month.”
Aang’s expression goes disgustingly soft and dreamy, and Zuko has to suppress the urge to throw up. “Her name’s Katara. We met at the university! In a History of Icebergs class.”
“History of Icebergs?” Zuko asks, dubious. “What kind of class is that?”
“It’s all about the changing water levels throughout the years. It basically proves global warming is real. Katara is majoring in Environmental Studies with a focus on Water Environments and Ecosystems. We’re a match made in heaven! Y’know,” Aang says thoughtfully, “with her water background and my major in Atmospheric Environment and Air Quality, I bet we could save the world.”
Zuko stares.
“But I’m getting ahead of myself,” Aang says hastily. “We were talking about Katara’s brother. I think he’d be a really good tutor for you.”
“Tutor?” Zuko bites out. “Aang, you know I can’t get a tutor.”
“Why not?” Aang asks.
“Do I really have to explain it to you?”
Zuko knows that he doesn’t—Aang bites his lip, eyes sad as they look down at the table’s surface. Aang knows exactly why getting a tutor would be a bad idea.
Zuko’s father has always put pressure on him to get high grades. But using a tutor to achieve those high grades is extremely frowned upon in his family. Asking for help is seen as weak and dishonourable. And the last time Zuko was seen as weak and dishonourable, he got a scar along the line of his left cheek to remember it by. A permanent reminder of his father’s disappointment.
The last thing he wants to do is be seen as weak in the eyes of his father. But the thought of Ozai seeing his transcript at the end of the year with something less than an A fills him with a sense of heavy dread.
So what does he do? Aang’s right. He needs help.
Aang scratches the back of his bald head. “Your dad makes no sense. If he’s so concerned with you having perfect grades, you’d think he’d be okay with you doing whatever you needed to get there, tutor and all.”
“You’re telling me.”
Aang sighs. “Well. Do you think you can bring up your grade to an A without help?”
Zuko scoffs. “No! I thought I was doing great in the class! I don’t even know where I went wrong.” He drops his head into his hands. “I don’t even know if it’s possible to get to an A now. I’m screwed.”
“It’s okay, um. I can fix this. Let me fix this.”
Zuko slumps, his head dipping closer and closer to the tabletop. “It’s not possible. Just make sure that there’s fire lilies at my funeral.”
Aang reaches over and pats Zuko on the head. “Will do, buddy.”
The phone is ringing.
Sokka is in the shower and simultaneously shampooing his hair and brushing his teeth, but the phone is ringing. And it’s Toph’s ringtone.
Sokka spits into the drain, dunking his head under the spray to rinse the suds out of his hair before shutting off the water, then practically vaults out of the tub. The bathmat slips under his feet but he catches himself on the edge of the sink, grabbing a towel on his way out the door. Stumbling into his bedroom, he palms his phone and swipes a thumb over the screen, accepting the call just before it goes to voicemail.
“Toph!” Sokka says enthusiastically into the receiver.
There’s a pause, and a crackle, and then Toph’s voice finally comes through, crisp and clear. “Hey, Snoozles.”
Sokka huffs a laugh. “I fall asleep on one call and this is what I have to endure?”
“What can I say? Your snores were kinda cute. It left an impression.”
Sokka smiles, nickname be damned. “It’s good to hear your voice.”
Because it’s been a while. Toph has never been that big on phones, considering her lack of eyesight, and she barely calls. It never bothered Sokka when they were roommates, other than the fact that he would go to text her to pick up milk on the way home, then call instead, only for it to go straight to voicemail because Toph never charged the damn thing. But Toph’s been gone since May—she’d left to go study abroad for a year in Italy, some geology-based excavation program that Toph had been wanting to go on for years. Being blind, her protective—or as Toph would say overprotective—parents hadn’t wanted her to go alone, but Toph had finally just up and left without telling them.
Sokka is so unbelievably proud of her. But god, he misses her. More than he thought he would. She’s been gone for just over five months, and she’s only called three times.
“Aww, did you miss me?” Toph says, and it snaps Sokka back to the moment. “Of course you did. I’m a gem.”
“You are a gem,” Sokka agrees easily.
Toph hums. “How’s Montreal?”
“It’s Montreal,” Sokka replies, picking at the knot of his towel.
“Katara settling in okay?”
That brightens Sokka up a bit. “Yeah!” he enthuses. “She moved in at the end of August. Majoring in water sciences, or something. She already has a boyfriend.”
“Damn,” Toph says, sounding impressed. “You better step up your game, Sokka. Only took her a month.”
Sokka pouts. He wants to tell Toph about Yue, the short fling he had before he went back to Iqaluit over the summer, but he also doesn’t want to get teased for the rest of the phone call, so he keeps his mouth shut.
“I get around,” Sokka says instead.
“The box under your bed doesn’t count as getting around, Sokka.”
Sokka flails into a sitting position from where he’s been lying on his bed. “How do you even know about that?” he practically yells. “You’re blind.”
He can hear the smirk in her voice when she speaks next. “I have my ways.”
“You’re the worst roommate I’ve ever had,” Sokka tells her.
“Good thing I’m not your roommate anymore. I’m living it up in France.”
“Wait, France?” Sokka asks, momentarily thrown. “I thought you were in Rome.”
“I was,” Toph says. “Now I’m in France. What, I can’t have a weekend off?”
“It’s Wednesday, Toph,” Sokka tells her with a snicker. “How’s the Eiffel Tower, then? Is it as beautiful as everyone says it is?”
“Sure is,” she says wryly, and Sokka snorts.
There’s the sound of the door to his and Katara’s apartment opening and closing, and then Katara’s voice rings out. “I’m home!”
Sokka pulls the phone away from his cheek to shout into the hallway, “There’s dinner in the fridge for you!”
“Thanks!”
“Katara’s home?” Toph asks.
“Yeah,” Sokka says.
“Is there dinner for me too?” another voice calls, and Sokka rolls his eyes.
“With the boyfriend?” Toph asks again.
“Yup. I better go.” Sokka silently curses the entrance of Aang—he wanted more time to talk to Toph. Who knows the next time they’ll be able to chat?
“At least you didn’t fall asleep on me this time, Snoozles.”
Sokka stares up at the dingy ceiling. “That’s not going away anytime soon, is it?”
Toph cackles. “Definitely not. Love you,” she says, and then she’s gone.
“Hey, Aang,” Sokka says, hopping onto the countertop. Momo, Sokka’s rescued Siamese cat, immediately jumps down from his perch on top of the fridge and lands precariously on Sokka’s shoulder. Sokka reaches up to scratch the cat between his giant ears, and Momo purrs into the side of his neck.
“Sokka!” Aang says, cheerful as always. “Just the guy I was looking for!”
That gets Sokka’s attention. He stops scratching Momo’s head—much to Momo’s dissatisfaction—and looks over at Aang with furrowed brows. “Why were you looking for me?”
“I have a predicament,” Aang admits.
Sokka looks over to Katara, but she just shrugs, too busy eating the leftover dinner that Sokka made for her.
“How can I help?” Sokka asks.
Aang grins. “I was hoping you’d ask that.”
“No,” Sokka says immediately.
Aang’s face falls. “What? Why?”
“I’m not a good teacher,” Sokka says.
Katara almost chokes on her plate of food. “Sokka. You’re literally studying to be a physics teacher.”
“Oh,” Sokka says. “Right. Ha. Guess I should have come up with a better excuse.”
“Sokka, please,” Aang continues. He’s kneeling on the floor beneath Sokka, all but begging. “It’s my fault he took the course to begin with, and he really needs your help. If he fails this class, something really bad could happen.”
“Something bad?” Sokka wonders what it could be. “Is he gonna lose a scholarship or something?”
Aang’s eyes dart to the side, then up at Sokka. “Uh, yeah! Something like that. Please help him.”
Sokka hesitates. He did his tutoring time back when he was a first and second year—he thought he was done teaching dumb kids who thought they wanted to be engineers how to calculate basic physics equations. But Aang is still looking up at him with those big eyes, and even Katara is getting in on it, and his resolve is slowly crumbling–
“He’ll pay you a hundred bucks per session,” Aang says.
Well. Sokka raises an eyebrow. That helps. “I’m in.”