Chapter Text
Zuko knows, rationally, that it's normal to be nervous about dropping your kid off for their first day of school – well, nursery, whatever – but rationality isn't making him feel any better right now. To be fair, he thinks most normal kids have spent more than a couple of hours outside their parents' company at some point in the last four years.
It's not like he'd tried to be clingy – but Uncle had given him all the time off he'd needed after Izumi was born, and then he'd gone back to work, waiting tables with a baby strapped to his front or back with a scarf. Once she'd got big enough and aware enough to grab at his tray or interrupt the tea ceremonies, she'd sat happily in the corner of the tea shop to play and be cooed over by the regulars, and then graduated to occasionally toddling around after Zuko and being given the honour of carrying napkins or collecting payment.
When Zuko had come out of surgery, Izumi and Uncle had been there when he'd woken up, and he'd spent his recovery living out of Iroh's spare room, with Mai and Ty Lee doing their coursework at the kitchen table and taking Izumi out so he could get some sleep. He'd felt bad for upending their lives for six weeks, but there had needed to be someone there to manhandle a wriggly toddler who was increasingly frustrated about her daddy's inability to carry her. These days, a couple of times a day, Jin or Song will take Izumi to the park on their break or lunch. But he knows his co-workers and friends. Agni above, Izumi calls them all her aunties, and not just as an honorific. This is leaving her with strangers.
He just doesn't cope well with uncertainty, okay?
Still, he does his damnedest not to let it show as he crouches down to snap a couple of photos of Izumi, bento clutched in one hand and the other wrapped tightly around one leg of her stuffed badgerfrog.
"You've got to smile for the picture, kiddo," he tells her, trying not to laugh at her overly-serious expression. Izumi's brow furrows, but before she can say anything, there's a voice behind him.
"Do you want me to get a photo of you guys together?"
Zuko almost topples as he turns too quickly, catching himself with one hand on the floor, then almost falls again when he sees the guy who asked. Tall, Water Tribe, blue t-shirt stretched tight across his shoulders as he holds his hand out, far too attractive for Zuko's sanity.
Right. His hand.
Zuko very carefully avoids taking it, in a desperate attempt to spare himself the blushing, and grabs his forearm in a more traditional Water Tribe gesture instead. On the downside – it is a downside, honest, and he's not going to let his libido convince him otherwise – doing that means feeling the man's muscles flex under his palm as he hauls Zuko to his feet.
He bites back an appreciative noise that he can already feel rising in his throat and smiles his thanks instead. This is okay. This is fine. This is fine.
"That'd be great, thanks," he says, quietly patting himself on the back at how his voice actually sounds mostly steady, and swings Izumi up onto his hip as she holds her arms up to him. "Oof. You're getting heavier, fireflake."
"I'm not heavy, it's Druk!" Izumi brandishes her badgerfrog defensively, almost hitting him square in the face.
Hands full, Zuko avoids the blow and instead nudges his nose against her stuck-out lower lip. "What? You're saying you're not a big girl, all grown up and ready for school?"
Izumi folds her arms with a huff, then squeaks and scrambles to not drop her bento. Zuko balances her the best he can with one arm to hold his phone out to the stranger, and does not blush as their fingers brush.
Holy fuck, Zuko. He is twenty-three entire years of age. He has a kid. He is too damn old to be blushing like a teenager because a pretty guy smiled at him. He definitely doesn't have Jin's parting words still ringing in his ears – look on the bright side, Zuko, maybe you'll meet a cute single dad while you're there–
Hot Water Tribe Guy doesn't have a preschooler clinging to his leg, but there are plenty running around on the playground behind him. Zuko tries not to focus on wondering which one might be his, or if one of the other mingling parents is a partner, but at least it's a nice distraction from knowing he's having his picture taken–
Izumi's little hand pat-pats at his cheek just below his scar, badgerfrog knocking into his chin. "Smile for the picture, papa" she parrots, and Zuko turns to look at her properly, kissing her knuckles as she goes to poke him again.
"You think Uncle Iroh will want a picture?" She nods eagerly, like Iroh's apartment isn't already plastered with photos from the last four years. "He's gonna cry about you being all grown up, you know."
Izumi frowns at him, jumping to Iroh's defense with all the aplomb of an affronted small child. "You'll cry too!"
Zuko kisses her forehead and takes a moment to memorise the baby hairs tickling his cheek, the way she huffs out a little breath against his neck as she leans into the attention. "Of course I will, fireflake. I'm going to miss you being at the shop all day. Who am I going to talk to?"
"You're working, papa," Izumi says patiently and it sounds so much like Jin's chiding, every time he starts indulging his daughter's tea parties rather than taking care of actual customers, that he has to laugh.
Spirits, she's got so big.
If he doesn't laugh he swears he's going to tear up, and he has to go to work after this, he can't cry just because it's her first day, and besides, he needs at least one good photo to send to Iroh–
"Is this good?"
Zuko's head snaps back to the guy holding out his phone. "You already–"
He shrugs, looking a little embarrassed. "I always think candids are better, you know? I can take a more posed one if you like, but there's a couple there–"
Zuko hoists Izumi higher on his hip and steadies her with one arm as he takes his phone back – he really needs to stop picking her up every time she makes pathetic polar-puppy eyes at him. At this rate he's going to have wrecked his back before he's twenty-five, and that is not going to help his already-poor balance.
The pictures are– Spirits, they're good. One with Zuko kissing the top of Izumi's head, haloed by the early morning light. Another with his forehead pressed to hers, both laughing.
"Thank you–" he starts, looking up, but the man is gone. Probably disappeared to grab his own kid – the doors are being unlocked and opened. Zuko lowers Izumi back to the ground and takes her hand instead. "Got your lunch? Got Druk?" Of course she does, but he feels like he should at least check.
The woman waving kids in at the door, chatting to parents she clearly recognises, brightens when she sees them. "Oh, you must be the new student we're expecting!" She flashes a smile at Zuko then turns her attention back down. "Izumi, right? I'm Yue."
Zuko loosens his grip on Izumi's hand, and she blinks up at him for a second before sticking it out to Yue and letting the teacher clasp her tiny wrist in a Water Tribe handshake. Yue smiles and releases her after a moment to shape her hands into the sign of the flame, and Zuko takes a moment to be proud of how easily Izumi shapes the flame and bows, despite her usual clumsiness. He never insists that she be polite to her elders simply because they are, but there's still an instinctive pride in seeing how naturally she politely greets her new teacher, the same as when the elderly regulars at the tea shop coo over her manners.
"We've got a cubby here for your shoes and lunch," Yue tells her, leading Izumi over to a low shoe-rack. "Did you bring your slippers to change into?"
"Papa's got them," and an imperious little hand stretched in his direction, although she does happily say "Thank you!" as Zuko hands them to her and pulls a tiredly tolerant face at Yue's little smile. The slippers are new, red and gold, Iroh's gift to Izumi on starting school and costing far more than Zuko would ever countenance spending for something she'll grow out of at an alarming rate.
Izumi carefully slides her shoes into the cubby, tracing the characters of her name with one finger, then fits her bento into the slot above it with a little flourish that wouldn't be out of place in one of the plays she puts on for him. On that topic, Zuko makes a mental note to check in after a week or so to make sure that she's not monopolising the dress-up clothes and bossing the other kids around in her impromptu skits.
"We've got some last bits of paperwork for you to go over," Yue says as she leads them both out of the entryway and into the building proper. "If I finish showing Izumi around and talking her through how the day is going to go, do you want to finish off signing those?" She gestures to a low table through a half-open door, behind a child-gate. "Someone will be over in a moment to go through–" She laughs as her legs are suddenly swarmed by preschoolers, all raucously chorusing her name, and she crouches down to introduce Izumi to them.
Zuko lingers a moment longer to check that Izumi is actually interacting and not cowering behind Yue's legs – she's never normally shy, but this is a whole new setting – then unhooks the child-gate and fastens it behind him as he steps into the office. The cupboards and drawers are all locked, he notes approvingly. Better than one place he'd looked around, where he'd had to quickly avert his eyes to avoid seeing identifying details of every family in the place.
The gate clicks open and closed behind him, and Zuko turns–
"Oh," he says, slightly gobsmacked, then tries to get himself together. "I mean, uh. Hi again. I didn't realise you were staff." The man's wearing a lanyard now that he definitely didn't have earlier, and his hair has been scraped back more neatly, the braids at his temple pulled back into his wolftail rather than hanging loose. Probably a hazard around small children.
"That's fine," he says with a grin, unlocking a cabinet and grabbing some papers as Zuko folds neatly into seiza on a cushion. "And sorry about running off like that – Yue was about to unlock the doors and she was going to get swamped, I needed to go child-wrangle. And I haven't even introduced–" He laughs and shakes his head. "La, first days are always chaotic. Okay, let's try this again – hey, I'm Sokka, I work here, hope the photos turned out well!"
"It's okay." Zuko just about manages not to jolt away as Sokka drops cross-legged onto the cushion next to him, their knees almost bumping. On his bad side, damn. Zuko's own fault for not deliberately sitting at the edge of the table, he guesses – although he tries not to think about the fact that Sokka doesn't seem to be avoiding his scar, like so many people do. "And– The photos turned out really well. Thank you." He angles himself a bit better, turning enough to be able to see the paperwork.
"It's Zuko, right?" Sokka rifles through the papers. "Great, just checking I've got the right ones. Okay, so the detailed stuff is already out of the way, you went through that with On Ji when you registered." He sets a handful of papers aside, the ones where Zuko can see his own signature already attached. "Some quick contact stuff. I'll just copy your details over–"
Zuko glances down at the page and tries not to grimace, something churning deep in the pit of his stomach, and folds his hands in his lap rather than tap them nervously on the table or leave any sort of scorch marks. Sokka's filling out all of Zuko's details under the heading father, which, yes, good, but then he's going to ask about the other–
Sokka pauses, looking down at the page. "Okay, and then– Oh, Tui and La–" He sighs exasperatedly, flicking through the pages. "I swear, every time we get refills of this paperwork from the council we go have you updated the sheets yet and every time they say yes, we're just getting rid of the stock we've already printed, but that excuse is really wearing thin after more than a year–" He scribbles out the headings and changes them to Parent #1 and Parent #2. "Okay. So, are there any details for a second parent? Custodial, non-custodial, either?"
Zuko doesn't even realise he's staring at Sokka until there's a slightly questioning tap of the pen against the table. "Oh, um– No. No other parent. I mean, there is, but. Not involved. Nothing tragic or dramatic, just–" He vaguely waves a hand, and Sokka nods understandingly.
"Not close enough to have details going on Izumi's contact paperwork? Cool, that's fine, although I'm gonna need some sort of secondary contact." Zuko gives Uncle's details, then Jin's as a second back-up just in case, and focuses on keeping his chi centered rather than sparking nervously from his fingertips.
"Sorry if I was being really weird just then–" he blurts out before he can second-guess himself, staring at Sokka's hands as he puts the first sheet to one side to move onto the next. "It's just. That can get kind of awkward sometimes, but I didn't even need to ask and it was just– Surprising. I guess."
"Hey, it's okay." When he glances up, Sokka's smile is broad and warm. "The first time I managed to put down details for having three parents without someone throwing a fit, I swear I nearly bawled. You don't realise how often it happens until it stops happening, you know?"
Zuko finds himself smiling back almost without realising it. "Yeah. Yeah, I know. This was–" He glances down again, stilling his hand where it's playing nervously with the seam of his jeans. "This was the first place Izumi and I visited where someone didn't greet me and then immediately ask her where her mama was."
"Oh, man, that sucks. Like, why would you ask that? There could be all sorts of reasons." Sokka twirls his pen. "This is the only place in town with any male staff, too, as far as I know. Not going to say that we're just generally more progressive, but..." He raises an amused eyebrow, lips pursed, then glances back down at the next page. "Okay, so we've got measures in place for unexpected bending accidents, obviously, but just so we know – likelihood of bending ability, if you have any idea?"
"High," Zuko says dryly, then amends it. "Obviously a lot of benders in one family doesn't mean much one way or another, but there's a long line of firebenders there. Presentation anywhere from sparks at eighteen months and full-blown flames at three–" Thanks for that, Azula. He's been on edge about Izumi's potential bending spontaneously manifesting since she was barely capable of walking. "–to not showing a flame until seven. Fairly varied. All Fire-origin non-benders on the other side, as far as I know." He makes a mental note to check that there aren't any unexpected earthbenders on the other side of the family or anything. It had been in Ba Sing Se, after all.
Sokka scribbles down a few notes. "Just so you know, if she does suddenly start bending, you'll get called to pick her up right away and preferably keep her off for a week or so. We usually say they can start back once they're in some sort of training – you can get how dangerous it could be to have uncontrolled bending in here with this many kids."
Zuko murmurs something in agreement, scratching one wrist. The scar of Azula's tiny flaming hand, where she'd grabbed him after he'd stolen a toy mere weeks after she'd presented her first flame, has completely faded, but he can still remember the look on her face when she'd realised what she'd done.
"When you say training– She's been meditating with me since she was capable of sitting still for more than thirty seconds, although obviously not for very long, and she understands the importance of the breath. I think that if her bending manifests, you should be able to talk her down quite easily." He grimaces. "Well. I say that. Hopefully. My uncle has a lot of training experience–"
"That sort of works on an honour system," Sokka tells him, leaning over the table to grab a pamphlet from a pile. "Training with family will do, if you know what you're doing. We've got a list of various places here too, and there's a bunch that are good for parents with weird schedules, or that are low-cost or can work out a payment system, or that specialise in first-gen bender training – all sorts, really. If she trains with family and it seems to be working, we're not going to insist on her going to a specialist."
Zuko hums his thanks, tucking the pamphlet away in one pocket. Iroh knows his stuff, and he trusts him, and he himself is a master as well. He probably won't need to entrust Izumi's training to anyone else, but it's nice that they've got measures in place.
"Okay, what else?" Sokka shifts through the forms again. "Double-checking – we've got her down as lactose-intolerant, but not so bad we need to avoid cross-contamination. Okay, cool, we can do that. Uh, basic housekeeping stuff. If you haven't already got the office number in your phone, you should, in case you need to call us." He gestures at the phone on the wall. "We might not be able to get to it right away, but if you leave a message we'll always get back to you ASAP. Or, like, if it's urgent, call a couple of times in a row. Someone will be able to drop what they're doing and come get it."
Sokka slides the form across to Zuko, number circled, and he saves it in his phone before he forgets while Sokka is still running through the last few details. "Right, cool, what else... Lunches, you can bring her fresh stuff at lunch if you want, but we usually prefer you to pack lunch. Goes in the cubby you saw, or we do have a small fridge–" He jerks one thumb over his shoulder to the corner of the room. "–if you pack stuff that needs refrigerating. Just let us know. Oh, and the last big one – what languages do you use with her?"
Zuko frowns, hoping he looks puzzled and not angry – the scar fucks with that sometimes. "I thought you taught in Common here?" And wouldn't his father be outraged that someone of his blood was attending a common-tongue school, instead of the expensive Fire-language schools for the recent emigrants to Republic City who wanted their kids raised with homeland traditions.
"Oh, yeah, we do, but this age is really important for character recognition and learning to read, and it's good for them to get exposure to lots of scripts, so–" Sokka pushes himself to his feet and steps around the table, leaning around the half-open door to grab something. "So we do things like this."
Door at the top, in black and in the pidgin script of the common tongue, then below again in green, red, yellow, blue, purple, all different.
"Both Water Tribes?"
Sokka shrugs. "Yue's Northern, I'm Southern, so we do both. Same language, different scripts. My brother-in-law did the air translations, although he says some of them are Southern Temple dialect. And I don't know if you noticed, but we've also got–"
He flattens the label out on the table and slides it under Zuko's hand, their fingers brushing for a moment before Sokka abruptly pulls his hand back, and Zuko's face is flaming. He doesn't dare lift his head to see if Sokka is similarly affected – because let's face it, he absolutely isn't, this is just Zuko being a fucking disaster – and tries to focus on the paper under fingertips.
"Oh. Tenji?"
"Yup! We don't have any kids here who need it, but it's something some of them like learning, and I have a friend who uses it who did the translations for us."
Zuko idly traces one finger over the characters. If this age is the most important one for learning new scripts, no wonder his grasp on languages is so shit. Growing up in a home with anything bar Fire being off-limits didn't exactly make a conducive environment for picking up even the basics of any other tongue – leaving at thirteen had been a steep learning curve.
"At home we speak a combo of Common and Fire, generally. Although, uh, if you want different scripts–"
"If it's something you want her to learn to read, this is probably the best time to introduce it," Sokka points out and Zuko nods.
"It's another same language, different script thing. One of the archaic Fire scripts." Not exactly archaic. It had been his first language, and was still Uncle's usual writing style. But then, his family wasn't exactly normal. "We have some old books and things written in it, and my uncle uses it sometimes."
"Yeah, sure!" Sokka bounces back up onto his feet and goes to rummage through a drawer. "We don't use online translation for this stuff, it's pretty dodgy, but there's a list of all the words we label, and you can just...write down translations, I guess? Fill it out whenever you get the chance and we'll get it printed up."
"Yeah. Yeah, that's good." Another bit of paper folded and slid into his pocket. He'll probably have to get Uncle to help with that – he's put a lot of effort into avoiding the old imperial script and has probably forgotten half of it. Somewhere in his room are his mother's old play scrolls, though, and he wants Izumi to be able to read them when she's old enough.
"Okay," Sokka says, straightening up again and brushing off his jeans. "I think that's enough stalling for time."
"Stalling–?" Zuko stands and follows him to the door.
Izumi is kneeling next to a basket of dress-up clothes and talking animatedly to a boy who is staring, enraptured, as she holds up a mask and gestures wildly and then thrusts it into his hands and rummages for another.
"We like to give them a few minutes to settle in," Sokka says from just behind his shoulder, and Zuko just about manages to not jump out of his skin. "Or more to the point, a few minutes for you to see that they've settled. Kids are like platypus-bears, they can smell fear. They know if you're freaking out and then they start with the sympathy freak-out, you know?"
Zuko knows. The if you panic, so does she lesson had been a hard one to learn once Izumi had started toddling, and he thinks it'll only get worse if she ends up firebending.
"She does seem to be settling in," he murmurs, and glances across at Sokka. "So what should I–"
"Whatever you think would be best for Izumi. Probably don't just walk out, but don't make a big deal out of it. I'll give you a full rundown of how the day went this afternoon, yeah?"
Zuko takes a deep breath. "Yeah. I– Yeah. That's great. Thanks."
The kids stare as he heads past them, but at least here it's 50:50 on whether it's his scar or just the fact that he's an adult they don't know.
"Hi, papa," Izumi says distractedly as he crouches down next to her, digging through the box again, and Zuko lightly touches her arm and waits for her to glance up.
"I've got to go back to work now, Izumi," he says, trying to sound as casual as he can, watching for any widening of her eyes or wobble of her lip. "I'll come and pick you up at the end of the day. You're going to be good for everyone, right?"
"Mhm," Izumi says, nodding obediently, then brightens and holds up the mask in her lap. "Look, papa, I’m gonna be the Dragon Emperor!"
For a moment, Zuko expects her to thrust a Dark Water Spirit mask in his direction – he always ends up taking that role when he plays with her, just like he always had with Azula as a kid – but thankfully there isn’t one in sight. He’s not sure he could have torn himself away if she had.
"Have fun, ‘zumi." Zuko allows himself one last kiss dropped onto the top of her head. "You can tell me all about it when I pick you up later, fireflake."
He pauses on his way out the door to glance back at Izumi, brow furrowed in concentration and tongue sticking out the side of her mouth as she picks at the knots on the ties of the mask. Sokka, kneeling at a table with a couple of other kids and with his hands already covered in paint, flashes him a reassuring smile, and it's easier than Zuko would have expected to force one in response.
It's a brisk ten minute walk to the shop this morning, although he knows it'll take more than twice as long with a four-year-old in tow, and it's not until after he's already slipped behind the counter and is tying on his apron that he realises how damn quiet it is. Izumi isn't an incredibly loud kid – she never has been – but at this time in the morning the shop is eerily silent without her quiet chatter as she monologues to Druk about her drawings.
Song emerges from the back a moment later, tray of sponge cakes balanced precariously on one arm as she sets a drink down in front of Zuko. "Already miss that kid," she says wistfully, and Zuko rolls his eyes.
"Can you not? I'm thinking about it enough as it is."
"Drink your matcha," Song tells him. "She'll be fine."
"I know that," Zuko snaps, then softens at her raised eyebrow. "Sorry. But. I know she'll be fine. It's me I'm panicking about."
"If you revert back to angsty teenage Zuko the moment your daughter is out of your sight, I'm throwing cake at your head," Song warns, and gets a damp cleaning cloth thrown at her face for good measure.
Being a grown adult with a kid doesn't mean he has to act like one.
If Zuko thought the morning rush would take his mind off thinking about Izumi, he was wrong. The rush means the morning regulars, all of the commuters and students, and even the ones that he doesn't think he's ever seen interacting with Izumi, are all coming up to the counter with an apologetic smile and a I hope the little girl is okay–
"I didn't think people would worry about her," he complains in a brief moment of quiet, under the cover of the clatter of plates. "Should I have said something before today? Did I need to warn people that my kid was starting nursery?"
"I mean, looking at this lot? Yeah, probably. She's practically furniture here."
"Don't call my daughter furniture," Zuko says absently, and plasters a customer service smile back onto his face as he turns around to the next woman in the queue. Still, even if the flood of questions makes it impossible to ignore Izumi's absence, it at least makes him more casual about acknowledging it. He can't throw dishcloths at them all.
The morning rush has been over for long enough that Zuko has had chance to replenish the disposable cups, set the dishwasher going for the cups and plates, start wiping down tables– He tries not to think about this being the time that Izumi normally gets up from her corner to follow him around and tell him all about what she drew that morning. She's fine. He's fine.
The bell over the door rings as Jin gets in, later than usual, dumping her rucksack behind the counter before rummaging for her timesheet to sign in. She can bitch about her Monday morning 9am lectures all she likes, but at least they get her out of serving the hordes of sleep-deprived commuters and grumpy students. In the end she waits for Zuko to head back behind the counter before pulling a stack of papers out of her bag with a flourish.
"Ta-da!"
Zuko gives her a flat stare. "Is this why you were late?"
"I wasn't late, I don't even have a regular start time, and Uncle's gonna be pissed if he thinks you're trying to enforce one instead of letting me work the hours that fit around my schedule and are mentally healthy–"
Zuko pulls the papers out of her hand.
PSA
THE TEASHOP BABY HAS STARTED SCHOOL
NO SHE ISN'T ILL
NO SHE HASN'T LEFT
SHE'LL BE BACK AT THE WEEKEND
TELL HER PAPA YOU MISS HER, HE DEFINITELY HASN'T HEARD IT A HUNDRED TIMES YET
"The teashop baby? Really?"
"Well, I wasn't going to use her name or a photo, was I?"
Oh, yeah, photos. Zuko knew he had been forgetting something.
"I did it as a favour!" Jin hollers after him as he heads through to the kitchen – his phone is in his back pocket, obviously, but he tries to avoid having it out when he's front of house.
"How did you even know to do it?" he calls back, running down the list of people who will need copies of cute Izumi school photos and hitting send on all of them at once.
Song glances up from where she's piping cream into the buns that have been cooling all morning. "I asked if she could use some of her university print credits to make a flyer or something, just to stop everyone asking. I could see it was grating on you. Didn't think you'd be able to handle a lunch and afternoon rush like that."
"I would say thank you," Zuko notes. "But that would mean acknowledging that you were texting during a morning rush, which I'm sure you'd never do, because you're a responsible employee who wouldn't leave her supervisor in the lurch. Right?"
Song, as mature and responsible as ever, sticks her tongue out at him as Jin snorts.
He's pretty sure that Song is constantly texting her, honestly, with the number of times they seem to have a new in-joke between them each time an overlapping shift rolls around – not to mention how Jin has blatantly admitted to texting during her lectures – but so long as it never happens in front of customers and doesn't get in the way of her doing her work, he'll let it slide.
There's also the fact that last time he told Jin to put her phone away during a rush, during a day that happened to not give them overlapping shifts, Song had apparently moped for the entirety of the afternoon and had very much taken it out on Zuko the following day when she was working, so. Small sacrifices.
"How many of your print credits did you even spend on–" Zuko flips through the pages. "–on literally dozens of these?"
"Not as many as she did when her ex-girlfriend asked her to print her entire thesis," Song says, and grins at Jin's groan and the mumbled And it all had to be in colour because of those damn graphs–
"And you had to use your credits because she'd wasted hers on printing out full-colour photos instead of buying posters–"
Jin drops her forehead down against Song's shoulder with a dramatic sigh. "Don't remind me."
Zuko very carefully doesn't notice the way Song flushes pink at that, her hand hovering at the small of Jin's back and not quite making contact. He knows from experience that there's absolutely no use in bringing it up.
Brief gratitude at the sound of the bell is almost immediately dispelled by Jin bouncing past him to reach the counter first, dropping her pile of flyers next to the stack of loyalty cards.
"Hi!" she chirps, customer service smile firmly in place. "Welcome to the Jasmine Dragon, how can I help you today?"
"Uh–" The guy glances from Jin's blindingly fake smile to the pile of paper in front of her to finally shoot a slightly questioning look at Zuko, and he resists the urge to facepalm. It's going to be a long day.
---
Zuko manages to get a lunch break after the midday rush has finished, and automatically claims his favourite corner table before realising that he doesn't need the extra space or easy access to the box of children's books near the window. This is going to take some getting used to.
Mai's response to the messages is an apathetic Someone managed to get a good photo of you?, but he's perfectly capable of reading between the lines after so long of knowing her, and it's more than made up for with Ty Lee's scattershot texts of how big Izumi is getting, and how long it's been since they visited, and does she remember them, and is she old enough to start any sort of gymnastics, and is Zuko free to vid-chat this weekend–
"So," Jin says, sliding into the chair opposite, and Zuko glances up.
"So? Shouldn't you be working?"
"The place is dead. I'll get back to it once someone walks in." She sits forward, elbows on the table. "So."
Zuko doesn't stick his tongue out at her, because he's a grown man and also her boss, but it's a close thing. "What's this interrogation about?"
"See anyone you liked?"
"Really? That's what you're going to quiz me about?"
Jin shrugs, unrepentant. "Look, I said I hoped you found a cute guy now that Izumi is out and about in the world, and I meant it. So, any handsome single dads catch your eye?"
"I didn't have time to talk to any other parents anyway," Zuko says with a shrug, turning back to his phone, and Jin's hand darts out and flips it face-down.
"That wasn't a no," she says gleefully.
Zuko takes a moment to stare past her shoulder at the door in the vain hope that someone might walk in and save him, but apparently all his luck today is going towards Izumi's schooling. "The guy who offered to take mine and Izumi's photo this morning was cute," he allows at last, and ignores Jin's smirk. "But he's also very much off-limits, so. Someone nice to talk to and nice to look at, and that's the best you're getting for me."
Jin sighs. "Worth a try," she says wistfully. "Why's he off-limits?"
"He's staff."
They both work customer-facing jobs. They both know how this goes. Zuko's fairly sure the only thing that could possibly stop Jin from suggesting he flirt with any guy she deems worthy is the realisation that someone is working and therefore contractually obligated to be nice.
"Oh, come on. What is it with you and the unavailable ones, Zuko, I swear–"
He shrugs lopsidedly. "They're emotionally safe?"
She flicks the paper wrapper from his straw at him. "Still, I'm glad you've got some eye-candy to be getting on with. And nice, too. Maybe being forced to speak to this one means that at some point you'll finally be able to go from gazing longingly from a distance to actually approaching someone."
"Maybe me having a nice unavailable crush to enjoy means that you'll stop bothering me about dating every available guy in a twenty-mile radius," Zuko grumbles, then glares at the way she brightens.
"Oh, I didn't say anything about a crush. That one was all on you, buddy."
Zuko crinkles up the straw wrapper into a ball and flicks it back at her. "I spoke to the guy for half an hour. It's not a crush, I'm just saying that at some point it might be. And that if it is, I'm going to be even less receptive to your stupid blind date ploys than usual."
Jin makes a face at him. "Look, all I want is for you to find someone nice. It's all well and good having a crush on someone, but it's not exactly much compared to actually dating."
"Oh, yes, that's very true. You have a lot of experience with knowing how a crush feels versus dating someone?"
Jin flushes crimson and glares at him before whipping her head around to stare at the counter and the doors to the kitchen. On the edge of hearing, muffled by the whir of the fans set up to cool down the pastries she's just taken out of the oven, Song is humming along to the radio.
"Shut up," Jin hisses, and Zuko smiles contentedly, flipping his phone back over and smiling when he sees Uncle has replied.
"No idea what you're talking about," he says blandly, and Jin's quiet fuming gets him through most of the rest of his lunch break.
He's just about to head back to the counter when Jin straightens up from wiping down a table and catches his arm. "Look, Zuko– I know we joke about this sh– this stuff– Wait, the kid's not here, can I swear? Whatever. I know we joke. And I know that you want to focus on Izumi, and that's, like, super understandable. But I really don't think she's going to want you to throw away the whole of your twenties and thirties doing nothing but caring for her."
Zuko tugs his arm away, trying not to be too harsh. "Thanks for the thought, Jin, but I really don't have time to be thinking about dating."
"Once she's in school full-time–"
"Once she is, I'm going to be taking classes. The university already knows that my schedule will have to be around Izumi's school hours and my shifts for work – I'm not going to be gallivanting off with a pretty boy during the afternoons or anything."
"You know we'd watch her in the evenings, right? Or Uncle would?"
"Thanks, Jin, but–" But I'm not just going to bring someone into Izumi's life on a whim. But I'm not going to leave her with other people to go off on stupid selfish errands. But it's not the same. "–but it's not going to work."
He slips away from her hand with an apologetic smile, going back to the counter and back to his shift and back to watching the clock and counting down the hours.