Work Text:
Zuko hears the sound of the front door open and close from where he lays curled up in the bed. He hadn’t realized that much time had passed, how much time he had spent curled up under the covers. The afternoon had turned to early evening and Sokka was just now coming home from the office.
“Sunshine? Babe? Where you at?” he hears Sokka call out for him.
Zuko doesn’t respond. He can’t respond.
The door creaks open and Zuko can see Sokka’s head popping in just out of the corner of his eye. Druk shakes his tail and slips in between Sokka’s legs, hopping onto the bed with soft meows.
“There you are, Sunshine— oh, oh no, Sunshine, what’s wrong?” his boyfriend asks as he rushes into the bedroom and right to his side. He lays a hand on Zuko’s back, rubbing back and forth.
Zuko buries his face into the still wet pillow underneath his head. He doesn’t want to talk, he just wants to curl up and cry. For Sokka to leave him there in his puddle of sadness and cry until sleep comes for him, hoping that tonight he doesn’t get the nightmares. But Sokka is stubborn, he’s caring and big-hearted and goddamnit, he doesn’t let Zuko wallow ever.
Sokka cups his chin, turning it softly so Zuko will face thin. Though, Zuko refuses to make eye contact.
“Babe, what happened? I can’t help unless you tell me. What do you need? An ear, some cuddles? I could put Druk in a sweater and do a cat dance,” Sokka offers up suggestions.
Zuko looks towards the ginger cat that lays at the foot of the bed. Sokka has been buying little shirts and sweaters for their cat and dresses him up whenever Zuko is in need of cheering up. But that’s not what he needs right now. He picks his phone up and holds it out for Sokka to read the text message still up on the screen:
Hi Zuko,
I’ve taken some time over the last month, and especially the last few weeks, to reflect on myself and my needs, and I have decided that our friendship is not in my best interest and I don’t want to maintain it. I have been growing away from you even while we were living together, and I recognize now that maintaining the friendship just for the sake of doing so, while there is less and less in common to be a meaningful relationship, I’ve been happier and been able to really shape this chapter of my life to be what I want it to be.
I sincerely hope the best for you and your future, but I specifically want my own path and to move forward.
Please continue to take care of yourself and build out your future, and please respect my decision to end this relationship and pursue what I want and what I have found and believe to be best for me.
Jet
Zuko brings the blanket up to his face, his breathing becoming ragged and uneven as he watches Sokka’s eyes dart back and forth of the message. He can see the anger building up in those eyes, the usually calm ocean blues turning into dark rain storm clouds. After a minute, Sokka lowers the phone and closes his eyes, his free hand pinching the bridge of his nose as he lets out a slow breath through his nose.
“I’m gonna beat him up. That’s it, it’s fighting time. He’ll learn what it means to fuck around and find out,” Sokka hisses as he gets up from the bed, only to be stopped by Zuko grabbing his hand.
“Don’t. Don’t go… please,” he whispers, his voice meek and soft.
He had been crying all afternoon, receiving the text message after texting Jet’s boyfriend if everything was okay. Zuko and Jet were best friends, meeting in college and growing into young adults together. They had been roommates for multiple years even when Jet moved to the big city two years after Zuko had moved for graduate school. This last year though, they each decided to move into separate apartments, both wanting to live with their boyfriends. They were excited, coming up with great plans and ideas of at-home brunches and dinners, movie nights at each other’s places, even sending silly cards in the mail so that they wouldn’t just get bills.
But things changed little by little and Zuko began to notice that Jet became different. He was reclusive, his texts coming in less frequently. Zuko didn’t think much about it at first, adjusting to a new apartment and living with boyfriends can be stressful. Plus Jet’s job was taking a lot of his time and Zuko felt like he was annoying him with all his texts.
Zuko did not put a lot of thought into it all until a few months ago. They would go weeks without talking to each other. Even when Zuko suggested a facetime call, Jet would back out at the last minute. There was always an excuse. The new puppy had gotten sick all over the floor, he had a headache from the wine he was drinking, he needed to get a report done for work the next day.
Zuko sits up in the bed, bringing his knees to his chest and holding onto the hand he had grabbed. Zuko still won’t look Sokka in the eyes, scared of what he might see.
“Is… is there something wrong with me? I don’t know what I did, but I have to fix it,” Zuko murmurs, his voice raw from the crying earlier.
Sokka shifts on the bed and brings Zuko into his lap, holding his head against his chest. Zuko can feel the rage buzzing in Sokka’s body and if it wasn’t because he asked him to stay, Sokka would be halfway to Jet’s to give him a piece of his mind.
“Babe, no. No, there’s nothing wrong with you. Listen, he’s an asshole. I don’t know what’s going on, but this has nothing to do with you,” Sokka says to console him, thumbs rubbing circles into Zuko’s back, “he’s a jerk and has been a jerk for a while. You didn’t do anything.”
Before Sokka had come home, Zuko spent hours trying to figure out what happened. What prompted Jet to send him this cold, impersonal text message. Ten years. They were close friends for ten years and all he got was a text. And only then after being ghosted for months and getting the text when Zuko asked Haru what was up.
Zuko huffs, “But why would he just… leave?”
It was not the first time that someone that he loved had walked out of his life. First, his mother when he was still a child. And then he had friends come and go, some just drifting apart after college or after one too many arguments. Zuko had been the one to cut off contact himself before too. He had walked out of his father’s house several years ago to never speak to him again and a friendship that was too much for him.
So, he was scared. He was scared that his father was right, that he was difficult to love and his friends only liked him because he had Ozai as a father. That he was a burden on Sokka, that the rest of the gaang only liked him because Sokka was dating him. He wouldn’t blame them, Zuko thinks that he comes with a lot of baggage. His abusive father, his absent mother, a sister with her own demons, and a lifetime of anxiety and depression and PTSD. He tried to make himself palpable for others, smiling when he doesn’t feel like it, minimizing his abuse and the words that scarred him that hurt worse than the one on his face.
Zuko can hear Ozai now, whispering in his ear that this is why Jet left. Why his friends don’t like him. It's because he’s weak, he’s annoying, and a mess.
“I don’t know, babe, it’s weird and doesn’t feel like Jet,” Sokka says, fingers running through Zuko’s short hair.
Zuko lets out a sob he was holding back, “Do you think it’s… it’s because I’m trans?”
“I don’t think so. But if it is, then he’s an asshole and doesn’t belong in the community. Any LGBs who don’t support their Ts should be expelled,” Sokka replies.
Zuko had put the pieces together and came out six months earlier that year, after a lifetime of questioning and unhappiness with his body. He always thought it was because he was on the chubbier side, that he didn’t have Azula’s figure and didn’t fit the standards of beauty for women. He had spent his twenties working on his anxiety and processing his abuse, putting the gender identity crisis in the back of his head. Ozai had told him once that he was a girl and will always be a girl when he had asked his father about it before.
Then six months ago, he cut off his long locks and asked his close friends to use they/them, switching to he/him a few weeks later. And that’s when Zuko knew, when he looked in the mirror for the first time and felt he was good looking, that joy he felt when someone said he and called him sir.
It all corresponded with Jet’s ghosting. When Zuko told Jet that he’s trans, Jet had asked him if he was sure, if he had spent enough time thinking it through. Jet told him that he felt like Zuko was moving too fast through it all. Jet had questioned him, asking if Zuko was really sure and how he would have just realized in his thirsties. But when Zuko felt happy and excited for putting together the puzzle pieces and understanding himself, his friend wasn’t there with him celebrating.
“But, but it would make sense though. He never texted me first when I started T, never asked how it was going, or liking my transitioning progressing posts. He… never asked about any of it.” Zuko says. The crying had hurt his throat a lot, his throat changing with the second puberty and unsure how to make the sobs. If he wasn’t so hurt, he would have found the crying voice cracks funny.
And all of this just after a week of receiving information about his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather. He knew that his grandfather and great-grandfather weren’t good people, he knew they were racist and sexist. But Ozai said in a letter that he could acknowledge not being a good father, but that was because he did not have a good father or a model of what fatherhood was supposed to be. That his father was strict and abusive, cutting him off for a time after Ursa left, that his own grandfather was a part of a race massacre.
It was all too much for Zuko to process. Just getting a letter from Ozai alone was enough to cause him to spiral into a depression. But after reading the contents and now Jet walking out of their long friendship, it hit Zuko hard and reopened wounds that were once healed over. Scars that were like cracks that he filled with gold lacquer to piece himself back together.
Sokka pulls Zuko back so the younger man can cup his tear-stained boyfriend’s face in his hands. He rubs his thumbs over his cheeks, wiping away any remnants of his tears.
“Look, Sunshine, we… we may never know why he said what he said. Why he’s been flakey and an asshole or why he never communicated any of this earlier. But it's not something you did or who you are. There’s some bullshit going on on his end and he’s probably just scrambling for some control of anything he can.” Sokka states firmly, “You are not too much. You are not a bad person or difficult to love or a bad friend. I love you. Katara and Aang and Suki and Toph, they love you. Even Mai loves you and she doesn’t love anyone except Ty Lee. Who also loves you.”
Sokka brings Zuko’s face closer to his and gives Zuko a soft kiss on the forehead then moving down to kiss the tip of his nose.
Resting his forehead against Zuko’s, Sokka continues, “This is your father’s voice telling you that you’re not loveable and not worthy of others. But fuck that and fuck him. You are a kind and compassionate person, one of the biggest hearts I’ve seen and you are always there. Remember when Appa went missing and how you spent all night with Aang looking for him? Or when Ty Lee got her wheelchair and you helped her bedazzle it? You spend so much time giving love and making yourself available for others. But you don’t need to. You don’t need to make yourself bite-size or prove that you are worthy of friendship and love. Fuck, people can just go choke if they can’t handle the snack that you are. You. Are. Worth. It.”
Zuko’s eyes are wide as Sokka goes on his monologue about his self-worth and his role in their friendships. His nose scrunches up and the sobs bubble up in his chest before they burst out loud and cracking. Fat tears roll down his face and his nose runny, the sounds of his cries filling up the entire apartment.
“Why? Why does this keep happening? My mom, Ozai, Jet. I just… I just want to be loved,” he sobs. “Why do people keep leaving?”
Sokka brings him in tight for a hug, cradling Zuko’s head under his chin and rocking him back and forth.
“You are loved. And by those that matter. You have me, the Gaang, Mai and Ty Lee. Your Uncle. Hell, you know my dad and Bato are a signature away from adopting you. Gran Gran calls you her favorite grandson.”
The sobs lessen as Sokka rocks Zuko back and forth, he needs to let it out. Let out all those fears, the sadness, the pain through tears rather than bottling it up. After some time, Zuko lets out small stuttered breaths and clings onto Sokka’s soaked shirt.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Sokka, you probably wanted to come home and relax and not have to sit with me through this. And now your shirt is gross. I’m sorry,” Zuko whimpers.
Sokka rubs his back, hushing him, “You don’t need to apologize, Sunshine, not for this and not ever. You needed me and I’m happy to be here. Because I love you and you’re worth it.”
Zuko nods against Sokka’s chest and sits there quietly for a few minutes. He doesn’t know what he wants to do next, whether to just go to sleep or take a bath. Sokka is probably going to force him to drink some pedialyte to rehydrate.
“Hey… Do you want to sign Jet up for spam newsletters and change all the passwords on his accounts that we know of? I’m not above petty revenge.” Sokka muses.
Zuko looks up at Sokka, the corner of his lip twitching upward in a smile and he lets out a small chuckle.