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Sokka awakens with a start to a series of pings. He’s apparently fallen asleep in his armchair again. He scoops up his phone and checks it — Katara complaining about her professors in the group chat, nothing earth-shattering. By the time he’s thought up a sufficiently sarcastic reply, he’s more or less awake.
He spends the next few minutes scrolling through Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, barely registering what he’s reading for the most part. On a whim, his finger moves towards one app, and he hesitates.
Not that he ever really used Tinder much, besides setting up a profile. One or two dates back when he registered, but he never really got in the habit of checking it.
What can it hurt, he thinks, and opens the app. He barely glances at the first few — a girl in a coffee shop, a boy with a mohawk, a girl with a fauxhawk — but he pauses on the next. A short girl in purple, with blonde hair and a raised eyebrow.
Sokka unconsciously mirrors the gesture and swipes right. What the hell, she’s sort of cute.
He keeps swiping for a few more minutes, mostly left, a few times right (a girl doing some sort of cat cosplay, because hey, he’s gotta respect being confident enough to put that in your pic; some extremely douchey-looking guy with sideburns and a cigarette who is, unfortunately, hot; Mai, purely so he can make fun of her for it later), before suddenly stopping short.
He knows that picture. He took that picture.
Sokka never blamed Yue for their breakup. She hadn’t been well and she’d needed to focus on getting better — and, she’d said, he should find someone who could make him happy, because she didn’t think she could and he didn’t deserve that. (Not that he agreed with that last, mind, but still.)
They’d lost touch after that — another thing he blames himself for — and he hadn’t heard anything for quite a while.
Apparently she was doing better enough to be showing up on his Tinder.
He swipes left before he can think better of it and sets his phone down, the moment of distraction thoroughly over. He stalks over to the fridge to get a beer, and is halfway through opening it when his phone pings a couple times. The beer in hand, he walks back over to the couch and checks it.
So. Apparently the purple girl matched with him. “Rose”, it says her name is. Her username, though…
The phone pings again with an incoming message.
tentacleTherapist (TT) messaged you!
TT: I don’t know why I let my brother sign me up for this thing.
TT: The whole idea of outsourcing the process of courtship into the hands of an impersonal algorithm, then making so-called choices based on superficial appearances between mates preselected by said algorithm, is crass even by the usual standards of late capitalism.
TT: What the hell. I’ll indulge.
TT: What’s the usual etiquette in these situations? I’m afraid you have me at a disadvantage.
Sokka stares at the phone for a good thirty seconds. Finally, he replies:
SWT: The fuck—
TT: I may be new at this, but I’m fairly certain that usually happens later in the process.
SWT: Haha
SWT: I genuinely can’t tell if you’re clueless or just that thirsty
TT: And, what, you really think you represent a drink?
SWT: That wasn’t a denial
SWT: Also, excuse you, I am a tall goddamn glass of water
TT: Psh. A medium at best.
SWT: ...that also wasn’t a denial.
SWT: Anyway, the usual etiquette is that we exchange names and locations and other inane trivia, dance around the fact that we either do or don’t want to fuck, and pretend to be interested in what the other person says
TT: So far we seem to be admirably failing to do literally all of that.
TT: Also, I must admit I’m quite impressed by the sheer depth of your cynicism.
SWT: Years of practice
SWT: I mean
SWT: With cynicism
SWT: Not with
SWT: Fuck
TT: …
TT: You know, when you said that I assumed you meant practice with cynicism.
TT: But now I’m changing my view on that.
TT: My. You do have the advantage of me, then.
SWT: OK no
SWT: I’m not buying that Little Miss Innocent act after you said all that
TT: Oh, so you’re calling my innocence into question? I think I’m hurt. I’ll have to ask my brother to defend my honor.
SWT: That’s the second time you’ve mentioned your brother
SWT: And that is a weird amount for a fucking Tinder conversation
SWT: Tell me this isn’t some weird Lannister shit
TT: Oh, no, not at all. More of a Melisandre situation.
SWT: ...you burn people to cast spells?
TT: I didn’t say it was a perfect analogy.
SWT: You burn people for some other reason than casting spells
TT: That’s it exactly. You’ve seen through my deep dark secret.
TT: No, my brother is just the reason I wound up downloading this thing in the first place.
SWT: That is not a better phrasing.
TT: Yes, I know, realized it the minute I typed it.
TT: He pestered me into it.
SWT: I don’t think that’s usually how it works
TT: We’ve already established that this isn’t really a standard conversation.
SWT: I guess
Sokka shakes his head. Usual it wasn’t.
Oh well. It was still better than the shallow flirtation he’d expected.
TT: To nonstandard conversations.
SWT: I’ll drink to that
TT: I would too, if I wasn’t convinced you were too much of a lightweight to keep up with me.
SWT: WHAT
SWT: I come from a long line of hard-drinking men
SWT: And women
SWT: Actually Gran-gran could probably drink most of them under the table
SWT: Anyway, point is I could absolutely take you in a drinking contest
TT: Oho.
TT: Challenge accepted.
TT: How’s tonight?
TT: Down at the Rig?
SWT: You’re on
SWT: And you’re going DOWN
TT: I doubt that. On multiple levels.
SWT: Huh?
TT: Never you mind.
TT: How’s 8?
SWT: Sounds good
SWT: Make sure you wear your losing clothes
TT: *raises eyebrow*
SWT: Dammit you know what I meant
SWT: Because you’ll be losing
SWT: Not because
SWT: Agh
TT: See you at 8.
TT: Hope the booze goes down smoother than the lines.
Sokka sets the phone down and shakes his head again. Apparently he has a date.
A drinking contest date.
In two hours.
With the snarkiest girl on earth — except maybe Toph, he supposes, but this Rose girl could give even her a run for her money.
One hundred minutes of aimless app-hopping later, Sokka’s out of time.
He wavers for a few minutes between a polo shirt and a T-shirt from Zuko’s last concert (between douchebag and dirtbag, he thinks wryly) before settling on the latter. He doesn’t want to come off like he doesn’t care about this, but even more than that he doesn’t want to make her think he’s a tool—
That thought gives him pause. He doesn’t care what this girl thinks of him either way. This isn’t even a date. This is a joke that they’re playing on each other, a sort of shared trolling.
He shrugs. In that case, it doesn’t much matter what he wears, but he’s already put on the T-shirt by the time he concludes this, so he might as well leave it on. He throws a jean jacket over it for good measure.
Sokka checks his phone again — no new messages from Rose, or from anyone else for that matter. He fires off a quick text to Katara (“going on worst date, fill you in later”) and sets off for the Rig.
The Rig is about as Sokka remembers it. Vaguely sticky tables, terrible lighting, a sound system that’s always too loud except when there’s a band playing, at which point it promptly renders them inaudible. It’s been a minute since he was here — he thinks it was for the concert that’s on his T-shirt, actually — but it hasn’t changed a bit.
He takes a seat at the bar, nods to the bartender, and orders a cosmopolitan (Toph isn’t here, so he’s probably safe from getting teased about his drink order). He closes his eyes for a minute and lets the ambience wash over him: the murmur of dozens of conversations, an obnoxious pop song from a couple of years back, occasional pings and buzzes from people’s phones nearby…
At that moment he realizes that some of the pings and buzzes are coming from a phone very nearby, and he fishes it out of his pocket.
TT: My apologies, I’m running a little behind. Five more minutes.
SWT: No problem, just got here myself
SWT: Can I order you something?
TT: Gin, straight.
TT: Not the best choice of words, I suppose.
SWT: You want… what, just a shot of gin?
TT: I take my drinking contests very seriously.
SWT: Okay then
TT: Are you at the bar?
SWT: Yeah
TT: OK. I’ll be there shortly.
Sokka finishes his own drink and signals the bartender for a refill, asking for Rose’s gin as well (to a strange look from the bartender). Moments after the drinks arrive, he hears someone clear their throat behind him, and he turns to face them. (He’s never actually heard someone do that before. In books or movies, sure, but not in real life.)
The woman standing there has to be Rose. Even if she weren’t a dead ringer for her profile pic, he can somehow see sarcasm and scorn in the quirk of her ash-blonde eyebrow, in the cast of her lavender eyes as she sweeps them over him. She’s wearing a purple blouse, almost but not quite the colour of her eyes, and a black skirt that falls to her calves.
“Sokka, I presume,” she says, sliding into the seat next to him and inclining her head. “I’m Rose, Rose Lalonde.”
“That’s me,” he says. “Sokka Erneqkya.”
“I knew your real name couldn’t actually be Sokka Watertribe,” Rose says. Her brow furrows. “‘Son of the lineage of Kya’? Do I have that right?”
Sokka nods, impressed in spite of himself. “Yeah,” he says. “Our ancestor’s name.” Our mom’s name, he thinks but doesn’t say. He takes another sip of his cosmo to cover the pause.
“So—” he starts, wanting to get things back on track, just as she says, “So—” and the conversation stutters.
He gestures to her to go first, and she smirks. “So, I have to ask. A cosmopolitan? Really? My mom doesn’t even drink cosmos, and she’s practically the embodiment of ironic performative feminine excess.”
“Excuse you, the cosmo is absolutely a manly drink,” he shoots back, smiling in spite of himself. “I’m a man, and I’m drinking it. QED. Also, it’s delicious.”
“Oh, I don’t call its manliness into question,” Rose says cheerfully. “Just your taste.”
“I feel like I oughta challenge you to a drinking contest for that,” he says, “but you kind of beat me to the punch on that one.”
“You would definitely beat me to the punch,” she corrects. “That’s even fruitier and cloying than a cosmopolitan. But,” she adds before he can react to the pun, “your reminder is well taken. We’re here for a contest.” She reaches for the gin and waves the bartender over. “What’s your poison?”
Sokka considers. “Vodka,” he decides. “We doing shots?”
Rose smirks. “Naturally.”
While the bartender pours, Sokka says, “OK, I have to know. Why in the names of Tui and La did you choose a Tinder handle like tentacleTherapist?”
Rose bats her eyelashes at him, and says, “Wouldn’t you like to know.”
With the sudden realization that he kind of does, Sokka swallows abruptly and covers it by draining his cosmo glass.
She holds his gaze for a heartbeat, two, three, and then laughs. Sokka blinks, confused.
“OK, it’s mostly to evoke exactly that reaction,” she admits. “Cross that with my teenage interests, and you get me still using it.”
He laughs. “Well, it certainly got my attention,” he says, and immediately realizes how that is going to sound.
“Barely two drinks in and already confessing that you pay attention to tentacles,” Rose muses, shooting him a playful look. “Freud would’ve had a field day.”
“Oh no you don’t,” Sokka retorts. “You do not get to drag Freud into this until we are both drunker than we are right now.”
Rose nods. “Excellent point,” she says, and tosses back the gin in one swallow. He follows suit (wincing rather more than she did, he can’t help but notice), and they signal for another round.
“So how does this work?” Sokka asks, his jaw still twitching a little the way it usually does when he does shots.
“How does what work?” Rose replies. “The contest? Or…” As she trails off, she gestures vaguely between the two of them.
“The contest,” Sokka says hastily. “Do we just… keep drinking until someone stops?”
“I think so?” Rose says, with a shrug. “Who knows. The point here was for you to try, and fail, to defend yourself against my accusation of being a lightweight, because drinking contests are the natural successor to duels. Also more fun.”
“En garde, then,” Sokka says, and takes another shot. It burns a little less this time. Probably because the cosmos and the first shot are definitely hitting him now.
“Touché,” says Rose, and does the same. “Riposte?”
“If that’s your way of saying ‘another round’, then hit me,” Sokka says.
They signal for more shots, and Rose unhesitatingly knocks hers back, while Sokka hesitates. “Conceding already?” she asks with a smirk.
“Taking my time,” he corrects. “I’m two drinks up on you.”
“Hm, all right, let’s remedy that,” she says, and drinks his shot too. “There,” she says evenly, and with only a slight quaver. “We’re even.”
Sokka just stares at her. “I’ve seen Toph be more affected by alcohol. Damn, woman.”
Rose grins. “Years of practice. Told you I could outdrink you. Who’s Toph?”
And so Sokka finds himself explaining his friend group: Toph herself; Katara, of course; Aang, who’s off in Bali right now; Zuko and his band and his punk-rock-star looks; Suki and her general badassery…
“...and Yue,” he finishes, more quietly, his eyes gazing down at the bar. “Well, she was, anyway. We haven’t talked in a while.”
Rose puts a hand on his shoulder, and when he looks up her eyes are, for once, devoid of sarcasm.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “For what it’s worth, I get it. Kanaya and I…” She trails off. “She was… we met at a women’s studies class in college, how stereotypical is that, and before long we were inseparable. We dated for a couple of years, and I guess I thought we’d be, I don’t know, together… indefinitely? But her dreams took her to the literal other side of the planet, and I couldn’t follow her there. And we couldn’t make long-distance work, either. So… that was it. We don’t really talk, either. It’s too weird.”
“I’m sorry too,” Sokka says, and he realizes that he is. “She sounds pretty awesome.” He puts a hand on hers, and she twists her hand to squeeze it for a moment, then lets out a single, hollow laugh.
“She was. She is.”
Abruptly, she shakes herself, pulling her hand back. “Ugh. Sorry. I’ve turned this entirely into Rose’s Sapphic Misadventures. Also, hell of a way to tell my Tinder date I’m bi, isn’t it.”
Sokka’s fingers twitch, as if wanting to resume the contact, but he pulls his hand back as well. “Hey, I started it. And I am too, so no judgment here.”
She smirks, her composure restored. “I sort of figured from how much detail you went into about your friend Zuko’s abs.”
Sokka splutters incoherently and she just keeps fucking smirking at him.
After a moment, she looks away, then waves the bartender over once again. This time, she orders—
“A cosmo,” Sokka says, his tone drier than the vodka had been. “Didn’t you just get done making fun of me for that?”
“I suppose so,” Rose says, “but I did kind of steal your drink last round, so let’s even the score. Anyway, it’s harder to propose a toast with a shot than with a martini glass.”
She orders one for him too, and when it arrives she raises her own. “To ill-fated ex-girlfriends getting unexpectedly dredged up on ironic Tinder dates.”
Sokka matches the action and repeats the toast, plus or minus a few stumbled-over words. He’s definitely feeling the alcohol now.
They clink their glasses and take a sip. Sokka smiles as he tastes the cocktail, savouring it for a few seconds before swallowing. Rose… doesn’t.
“Good lord, that’s the most cloyingly sweet thing I’ve ever tasted, up to and including maternal affection,” Rose says, her face twitching a little. “I hate it as much as I love it.” She drains the glass.
The conversation pauses for a few moments as Sokka enjoys his cosmo and Rose, amused, watches him do it.
“Do you want to get out of here?” she says at last. “My apartment is a bit of a ways, and my brother probably has his shouty boyfriend over, but…”
“I live a few blocks from here,” Sokka says. “And I have some terrible movies we can make fun of.”
“You know just how to pique my interest, don’t you?” Rose says with that same smirk.
Sokka matches the expression. “Yeah, I kinda think I do,” he says.
The moment holds for a second — their eyes meet, and he sees her lavender eyes anew — and then it ends abruptly; she waves the bartender over so that they can pay. He tries to offer to cover her tab, and she refuses; she tries to cover his tab, with no more success. The compromise they reach is paying for each other’s tabs, which Rose calls “going Frisian” (“like Dutch, only different”).
As they walk back to his apartment, which he’s belatedly realized he never actually cleaned, they try to settle on an awful movie (he’s arguing for The Room; she favours Rocky Horror, which he points out is less awful and more just ridiculous).
She interrupts the discussion as they pass a large lamppost to insist that they replicate the Singin’ in the Rain scene (loftily ignoring his protests that the scene only has one person in it), and she grabs his hand and hauls him up onto the lamppost with her, singing all the while. He sings along as best he can with someone whose idea of singing (as she explains after they finish) involves a postmodern rejection of such bourgeois concepts as “rhythm”, “key”, and indeed “tune”.
She doesn’t let go of his hand after they finish the song.
When they reach his apartment, Sokka apologizes for the mess and hastily attempts to tidy it, at least to the extent of dropping a couple of beer cans into the recycling and dumping a dirty shirt or two into the laundry basket. Rose laughs it off. “You should see my brother’s half of the apartment,” she says, and sits delicately down on the couch as Sokka fumbles with the DVD player (Rose won the argument, because after the Singin’ in the Rain incident he can’t wait to watch her butcher every damn song in the movie). He offers her a beer, which she declines.
Their hands find each other a few minutes in; casually, as if the contact is an accident, though he’s pretty sure it wasn’t a damn accident on her part (and has to admit that it wasn’t really on his either). Which means they’re holding hands for the first few numbers, which they’re doing as duets whether or not the songs are written as duets, and definitely whether or not either of them can manage counterpoint when they’re drunk (Sokka: no; Rose: hell no).
She actually has a lovely alto, he realizes when she reaches for the high notes in “Over at the Frankenstein Place”, even if the notes she’s singing bear no noticeable relationship to the notes any of the characters in the actual movie are singing.
And then, about half an hour in, Rose turns to him and says, “Sokka.”
He turns to her and begins to say, “Yeah?”, but then her lips are on his and she’s climbing on top of him. He knows he should pull back from this, knows this is an absolutely terrible idea, but he can’t quite make himself care about that.
Her mouth tastes of cranberries and the slightest lingering hint of vodka, and he feels himself getting lost in that taste, and wanting to drink of it still more deeply.
Rose breaks the kiss and gazes into his eyes, and he can see desire and determination and more than a hint of reckless mingled in them.
“Rose…” he murmurs, not sure what words are going to come next.
“Yes?” she answers, her voice still steadier than his, just as it’s been all night.
“Yes,” he says breathily. And then Rose takes off her shirt in one smooth motion and he’s left gazing at her for a few eternal seconds before she kisses him again, and Sokka decides that now would be a wonderful time to turn his brain off.
Some time later — he’s quite thoroughly lost track — he starts coming back down, now sprawled on his bed, tangled up in Rose.
“This was a terrible idea, wasn’t it,” she says, her voice still even despite everything.
“Definitely,” he says. “No question. I’m fine with that.”
He feels her lips quirk against his cheek. “Good. So am I.” She twists around a bit and kisses him again.
“But,” she adds, “I think I’d better be going before long. This was lovely, Sokka, you were lovely, but…”
His heart does a sort of descending swoop. He’d almost let himself think… no.
“...but this was only ever a one-night thing,” he finishes, trying to keep his tone light.
“I never really intended it to be that,” Rose admits. “I thought we were going to show up, have a drinking contest, make fun of each other, and part ways. I never…”
She trails off again. Sokka nods. “I know,” he says. “I didn’t either.”
“I don’t think I’m meant for relationships,” Rose says quietly. She looks down at the bed, her eyes dark. “Trust me. I’d wind up hurting you, and you’d wind up hurting me, and before long we’d both be miserable.”
Sokka winces at her words. “You don’t know that,” he begins, but it’s hollow and he knows it.
“No,” says Rose, shaking her head, “I do. I’m sorry, Sokka. This really is ‘it’s not you, it’s me’. We’d be bad for each other.”
He sighs. Maybe she’s right. And either way, it’s not really the kind of thing he can argue her out of.
“After tonight, then… friends?” he says. “You’re pretty fun to hang out with.”
She smiles, and he can see the light kindled in her eyes again. “I’d like that. And…” She reaches down and very effectively gets his attention. “Technically, it’s not ‘after tonight’ yet.”
She leaves in a cab a couple of hours later, refusing his offers to stay over. He changes the sheets, has a couple glasses of water, and drifts off to sleep for a few hours, hoping to avoid the hangover he knows perfectly well is coming.
In the morning, he turns out to be right, and is decidedly overhung. He mopes about for a few hours, making some toast and eggs in a (fruitless) attempt to make the pounding in his head go away. He tidies the place a bit more, then sags down into the armchair to check his phone.
When he does, he finds that he has a couple of messages from Rose.
TT: Got home safe.
TT: Hope your hangover wasn’t too bad.
SWT: Ugh kill me
TT: That can be arranged. I know people.
SWT: You know headache assassins?
TT: Well, in the technical sense that if you don’t have a head you don’t have a headache…
SWT: Yes that sounds great
SWT: Decapitate me and my headache
TT: Happy to help.
TT: Also? I did tell you I’d drink you under the table.
SWT: Do you somehow not have a hangover
SWT: Curse you and your failure to suffer
TT: Ooh, speaking of suffering, I saw this meme and thought of you...
A few days later, they’re texting about Rose’s conviction that My Little Pony is best understood through a poststructuralist lens. Sokka doesn’t actually understand half of what she’s saying, but he’s definitely entertained.
TT: Seriously, I’m going to write a paper on this. “‘My Little Penology’: On the Foucauldian Undercurrents of Twee Children’s Television”. It’ll shake the world. Or at least the world of poststructuralist equine critique.
TT: ...
TT: I have to ask.
TT: Are we all right? With the other day, and… and with our conversation?
He pauses to think about that. About the swerves the evening had taken, about the raising and dashing of his romantic hopes in the course of maybe three hours. About the fact that they’re still here, texting each other nonsense, in spite of it all.
The answer surprises him a bit.
SWT: Yeah
SWT: We’re all right