Work Text:
The repetitive tick of the clock was the only thing keeping Zuko sane. A soothing pattern of four that echoed through his soul and exited through his shallow breathing. It rattled his lungs and struck him to the core, keeping Zuko afloat among the tidal waves of grief attacking his heart. He had no tears left to cry. Those had gone with the storm to fester somewhere else, lying dormant and waiting, because if there was one thing in his life that remained constant, it was the promise of tragedy and those four incessant ticks.
“That clock is so annoying, it’s going to drive me insane.” Sokka bemoaned, swiveling in the rickety office chair to fix his bored stare on Zuko. The fellow student looked up from the mess of trigonometry he could only pretend to understand and snorted at his boyfriend’s whining.
“Then fix it, if it bothers you so much.” Zuko said after giving the object of Sokka’s attention a contemplative stare. Sokka thought for a moment and dragged his chair over. “Sokka please don’t tell me you’re actually climbing that-”
“Shush! Don’t ruin my concentration, I’m in the zone.” He carefully balanced on the patchy swivel chair that was one stiff breeze away from falling apart while reaching up to the clock, only to tip over and take it crashing down with him.
The crack had never been fixed, running deep and through its mechanics, bending the axis itself to keep it perpetually seven minutes behind real time. He could relate, Zuko thought with bitter amusement. Axis thrown and world off kilter, he felt like the broken shell of a clock that was never fixed.
“Come over here babe, look at this.” Sokka was shuffling around on the patio of Toph’s beach house that they had been invited to stay at. Zuko peeked over the sofa to be met with a face full of mismatched flowers and flower-looking weeds wrapped into a crude bouquet. A warm, fluttery feeling bloomed in his chest as something he now recognized as love and he took the flowers with a soft brush of fingers that ignited sparks on his skin.
“Thank you, Sokka.” Zuko spoke with a bashful smile, quietly rasping opposed to Sokka’s excitable chatter. Carefully he took a small yellow flower and loosened the tie in the other's hair, letting it fall to rest around his chin. Zuko brushed it behind one ear and tucked it in with the flower as the buzz of Sokka’s talking fell into something mutely domestic. His eyes looked beautiful in contrast, deep indigo on warm skin and a flash of sunshine framing his face. Distantly, he thought of the chemical formula of what he was really feeling- a mix of dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin and endorphins. But all that really mattered now was the soft press of lips against his and the smell of sea salt and spring air.
The flowers on the casket had been white. Sokka would have hated that, colorless and bland. They reflected poorly on Sokka’s character, leaving the sunshine that had rooted itself into his life a clinical ghost of a memory. Zuko hated the funeral. Sokka would have too.
The casket remained closed. Apparently the morgue decided that the bloodied corpse of his lover wasn’t presentable enough to be shown to his friends and family. Then again, a 65 mph T-bone to the driver side wouldn’t leave pretty results. The picture they had chosen to present was his senior photo, sitting on a podium surrounded by the dull walls and the dull flowers with dull people in black suits and grey hearts.
Sokka would have hated it for sure.
The smell was wrong. Linoleum and a cold minty scent had invaded his senses instead of the warm sea-salt and cinders he had when buried in Sokka’s arms. Now that he thought of it, everything felt wrong. The distraught phone call and Katara’s shaky voice telling him something happened to Sokka. The itch of his button up collar that had him readjusting it every minute and the buttons on the cuffs seemed to drive his attention away from the words Hakoda spoke and the tears shed around him were wrong too. It all felt wrong. Sokka was dead and it was wrong. The air was too still and his mind seemed to gaze distantly upon the scenes unfolding before him, from the car ride to the hospital and declared time of death with an odd detachment to reality. Something was missing, but he was too in shock to even realize.
Zuko left early.
Weeks later he came to realize that the gaping chasm had been the axis of himself breaking and falling apart. Like the clock, his world seemed to slow down and he stared through a distorted glass at what used to be so beautiful, gone like the casket in the ground he never had the chance to look inside. Gone like the Friday nights they had shared in that seedy diner with perpetually sticky chairs, sharing milkshakes and laughter and light and love. It fled him like his sense of reality as his backbone, his rock, his love and left behind the angry, abused boy he was before.
He couldn’t even be angry anymore. All he felt was emptiness. And as time passed, the blue Plato hoodie he had stolen lost its scent even though he tried to drag out the washes as long as he could. The funeral flowers wilted on his dresser and the laughter that seemed to bounce around their classroom was replaced by the ticking of that damned clock on the stupid, peeling dry wall holding pictures of memories he’ll never get to relive again.
Sokka was gone.
“It’s kind of weird,” Sokka muttered, tapping his pen on the latest composition book that held the thoughts running through his beautiful mind. Zuko looked up from his book at the voice that had disturbed his reading.
“What is?” he asked with mild interest once he saw the confusion etched into Sokka’s frame. Sokka turned in the chair (it had to be duct taped together and could no longer swivel) to look Zuko in the eye.
“Entropy. It’s kind of weird.” He frowned, flipping the pen around his fingers. “The measure of thermodynamic energy- or rather what that of which is not in use. Unused boundless energy, just sitting there and waiting for something to happen. A formula with no perceived outcome- it's just the mathematical equation for chance. Infinite randomness, the possibility of everything and nothing.” Sokka sighed, chewing on the inside of his cheek. Zuko processed the information and let the ticking of the broken clock lull them into a thoughtful silence.
“The human condition.” He spoke after a minute passing, “the human condition is the best example of entropy.” Sokka looked up to give Zuko his full attention. “I mean, really, we’re just a bunch of atoms that know we’re atoms. How random is that? In a universe of statistical anomalies, a formula is created by complete chance for no reason that gives us a sliver of consciousness. The world is just bullshit with patterns.” Sokka blinked, blinked again, then started giggling. It evolved into full-on laughter that bounced around the empty classroom they called home base as Zuko joined in. They watched each other as they laughed, adoration dancing in their eyes, full of nothing but love and mirth.
“I think you’re onto something there, Zukes. The human condition; axis of entropy.” He grinned and Zuko fondly shook his head before replying.
“The only axis I have is you, Sokka.”