Chapter Text
Ty Lee likes to call her a takeout connoisseur. Suki is a little more blunt about it; she says she’s a bad cook. She is, after all, the reason that their spaghetti dinner is currently sitting burnt and in their trash can while they crowd themselves into a corner booth at the Chinese restaurant down the street. Ty Lee says it has a bad aura and the food isn’t even authentic Chinese, but it’s cheap enough for them to afford as two broke college students who barely scrape enough together for their shared apartment’s rent.
“Okay, but after this we have to get over to the library,” Suki says through a mouthful of Kung Pao chicken that… actually, Ty Lee was right. It does have kind of a bad aura, and she’s not even in tune with that kind of stuff. Either that, or the stress of having exams coming up soon is really getting to her. Regardless, the food isn’t sitting well.
Ty Lee is unstressed, unfazed by everything, and Suki has to wonder just how she does it. She floats through life on gentle tiptoes like a ballerina, unaware or uncaring of anything that might attempt to bring her down. Suki really wants to know how she manages to be so carefree about everything. “Suki, you really need to slow down. That paper isn’t due until next Tuesday, and it’s only Thursday. Worrying this much is really going to mess with your aura,” she says idly, using her chopsticks to very daintily eat her lo mein like it doesn’t even require a second thought. “It’s already a sickly green color.”
Ty Lee is always going on about things like that- auras, chakras, the universe and its manifestations. Suki likes to humor her by letting Ty Lee read her palms or do that thing she does with tarot cards, but she’s never fully believed in all the candle burning and aura sensing Ty Lee thinks she does.
Then again, does anyone? No one in their friend group seems to take Ty Lee’s fantasies very seriously, but she never seems to mind (or notice).
“I know, and I’m busy this weekend. You’re the one bringing me to Mai’s party tomorrow, and the girls and I are getting brunch on Sunday.” Combine that with a full day of classes and work on Monday, and Suki knows she has a very limited window in which to get this paper done. It doesn’t help that she’s regretfully behind.
Ty Lee just smiles at her, that wide beaming grin that makes her impossible to not trust, and kicks at Suki’s foot under the table. “Which means you still have Saturday! You have plenty of time to at least finish your dinner,” she says. And, just for good measure, she sticks her tongue out at Suki.
“How very mature of you.”
By the time Ty Lee closes up her container to bring home for takeout and Suki’s finished off the rest of her meal, it’s later than Suki would like and they still have to stop back at the apartment to grab her laptop and drop off Ty Lee’s food.
And yet, Ty Lee still reaches for one of the fortune cookies piled up at the center of their shared table, which Suki bought more for the flavor than the gimmick of a paper strip tucked inside. “Hang on, just a minute!” She says hastily, looking up at Suki who is already reaching for her purse to get going. “We need to see what our fortunes are!”
Ty Lee breaks open the cookie with such excitement that reminds Suki of Christmases at her moms’ house when she was a little kid, and how can she say no to that? She disregards the cookie entirely, though, and opts instead for the fortune inside.
“ Be patient. In time, even an egg will walk ,” she reads, and stares at the little strip of paper like it requires intense deciphering. “I guess it will!” She declares as if the secrets of the universe have just been revealed to her by a mass produced cookie that just so happened to end up in the handful that Suki bought and just so happened to be the one Ty Lee picked out of the pile.
Then again, she’d say it’s fate that it ended up in her hands.
“It all makes so much sense!” She grins, and shows Suki the piece of paper. “And it says my lucky color is pink- my favorite! It must be fate.”
Suki wishes she were surprised. Still, urged on by Ty Lee who wants to know what her fortune is, she reaches for her own from the center of the table and cracks open her own cookie. First, she savors the way the cookie melts on her tongue, and only looks at the fortune once Ty Lee gets impatient.
“ A new romance is in the future ,” she reads aloud for Ty Lee’s benefit, before she crumples up the paper and throws it on the table. “Yeah, right. Like I have the time to be pursuing a new romance. That’s so vague, anyway! ‘In the future’ could mean anything from five minutes from now to five years from now. It’s mass produced crap.”
It’s not that Suki’s against the idea of romance, not really. But being the constant third wheel to her friends- Ty Lee and Azula, Zuko and Mai- gets tiring. And she can only take so many awkward first dates or swipes left on tinder before she just gives up altogether and waits for the universe to drop the perfect person right in her lap.
She goes to grab her purse again, but Ty Lee dives for the crumpled up paper. “And your lucky color is forest green!” She proclaims, as if that’s going to be any help to Suki in her quest to find this new romance.
Suki feels far more content to let it come to her than to seek it out, though. “Come on, Ty,” she says, ushering Ty Lee out of the restaurant before she can make them linger any longer. The cool night air bites at her skin and makes her wish she had a jacket, but she heads in the direction of their apartment without hesitation. “I still need to finish that paper.”
-/-
Ty Lee is terribly persistent, though, and the promise of new romance in Suki’s life has her eager to play matchmaker. “Oooh! What if it’s someone you already know? Or maybe you’ll meet them at Mai’s party tomorrow? I bet they’ll be wearing forest green. It’s your lucky color for a reason .”
She looks up from where she’s cutting out little pieces of construction paper, perfect for the little kindergarteners at her student teaching gig to make hand turkeys from. Suki, on the other hand, types furiously as she struggles through her essay on gender inequality and poverty and all these economic terms that make her want to rip her hair out.
“Ty Lee, I love you, but really? I’m not so sure the love of my life is going to drop into my lap anytime soon. It’s just a fortune cookie and… besides that? I kind of really need to finish this essay.” Grimacing, Suki drops her head into her hands and sighs in frustration. “At least I have all day Saturday to get it done.”
Ty Lee gives her a sheepish, apologetic look and turns back to her construction paper and safety scissors. With nothing but the ambient noise of the library around them- other conversations, the glide of scissors against thick paper, the mechanical clicking of keyboard keys puntucated with aggressively frustrated taps on Suki’s laptop, they fall into a quiet lull.
She’s losing her ever-loving mind the longer she works- that is, until Ty Lee kicks her under the table a little harder than necessary. “Don’t look now, but I think I just found them,” she whispers, and tilts her head in the direction of the library’s entrance.
After dropping her pen behind her for a suitable cover to turn around (not that she thinks it’s very subtle at all, but better to have some tact than none), Suki cranes her neck to see who just walked in.
The guy is… well, okay, he is very attractive. Tan and sun-kissed skin, with defined arm muscles only vaguely hidden beneath a flannel shirt, and- actually? The man-bun look is kind of douchey in Suki’s opinion. He could be her type, but she has no idea why Ty Lee seems to think this guy is the fortune-cookie-destined soulmate she’s supposedly looking for.
“Haha, very funny, Ty Lee. But really ? What’s he-”
“His shirt is forest green! It’s your lucky color!” Suki is suddenly glad that green-clad mystery guy has headphones on, because subtlety is not one of Ty Lee’s best traits. One of the students from another table over shoots them both a weird look, and Suki shrinks behind the screen of her laptop.
“He’s cute and all, yes, but this is not the meet-cute I picture. He just happens to be wearing a green shirt.” She returns to typing with only one more clandestine glance over her shoulder. The guy in green has picked the open table just behind her left shoulder, which is the perfect angle for Ty Lee to keep shooting Suki those looks that say ‘you should go for it’ and ‘it might be fate’.
It’s so amazing how she can read her best friend’s eyes without her ever having to say a word.
More typing, more notes, more highlighted passages in the articles she’s desperately attempting to shove into her paper as quotations to pad out its length.
“We should invite him over to talk,” Ty Lee whispers, that conspiratorial smile that’s so hard not to get on board with on her face. Suki really wishes she knew how to say no to that face.
She considers it, though, just for a minute. What’s the harm in just talking to him? He seems like a nice guy, but he’s also presumably trying to get work done just the same as her. Plus, Suki can’t help but think back to her last blind date with some Ruon-Jian guy Ty Lee was friends with, and decides maybe it’s best not to. “If you explain the fortune cookie thing, he’s going to think we’re crazy.”
Ty Lee’s smile turns more coy, and she shrugs her shoulders. “Everyone already thinks I’m crazy.” Well, it’s hard to argue with that logic.
Not until it’s too late, Suki doesn’t realize that Ty Lee has managed to get the guy’s attention with her dramatic eye-expressions and he’s now standing at their table. Suki looks up towards Ty Lee with something halfway between confusion and panic, but Ty Lee doesn’t even seem to notice.
“You should go on a date with my friend!” She says, and it’s so blunt that both she and green guy do a double take that would be comedic if it didn’t make her heart jump into her throat.
Suki laughs nervously, and she gives green guy a once over. Okay, he is cute, and the man-bun reads less ‘pretentious film student’ and more ‘endearing himbo’ now that she’s had time to consider it. “Ty Lee, come on. You can’t just- no, that’s not a proper introduction.” She’s in it now, though, and she shoots Ty Lee a look of her own. This one is considerably more murderous than anything her friend has given her all night.
With cheeks that she’s sure are pink from embarrassment, she looks up at the guy Ty Lee somehow drew over to their table. “Sorry to disturb you, my friend thinks you’re my soulmate or something because my fortune cookie said my lucky color today is forest green and your flannel is forest green, and… see, Ty Lee? I told you it sounds crazy as soon as you say it out loud. He thinks we’re nuts.”
To his credit, guy-in-green laughs, and it’s not fake. It’s wholehearted and he almost snorts a little bit and Suki internally kicks herself for finding it kind of cute despite the glares they get from other people at the surrounding tables. “It doesn’t sound crazy,” he says, and- spirits above- she hates the way the easy rumble of his voice makes her stomach flip.
“Oh, hey!” Ty Lee perks up and checks her phone with a bright smile, before shoving her construction paper squares in a folder and sticking it all in her pink princess backpack. “Azula said she’s outside waiting for me so… I’ll see you tomorrow, Suki! Don’t wait up for me!”
With an overexaggerated wink in her direction, Ty Lee disappears without a trace and Suki is left with nothing but a half-finished essay, a guy with massive arms in a forest green flannel standing over her, and thoughts about a fortune cookie promising new romance in her future swirling around in her head. All she can do is curse Azula’s timing, because Ty Lee is the kind of person who’s impossible to be mad at even when she’s ditched Suki alone with some mystery man.
“So… you don’t think my friend is crazy?” She asks, having to look up at him as he stands over her chair. They both realize this fact at the same time, and he jumps to take the unoccupied seat left behind by Ty Lee. He turns it around and crosses his arms over the back of it, and Suki hates herself again for letting her eyes linger on his biceps for a little too long.
“No, I think your friend is totally crazy,” he answers, and Suki can’t help the smile that she cracks. “But a convoluted story about a fortune cookie is not the worst way I’ve ever been asked out.”
Okay, they’re in a library , Suki suddenly remembers, and she has an essay open in front of her that really needs to get done sooner rather than later. But his smile is so easygoing and he has that kind of personality that could put anyone at ease, so it’s easy to let those little nagging things fall by the wayside as long as he’s smiling at her like that.
“Who says I was asking you out?”
“Your friend, apparently.”
It’s Suki’s turn to laugh now, almost snorting at the easy confidence with which Green Flannel Guy carries himself. “You said it yourself. Ty Lee is crazy. She’s sitting here telling me it’s fate that you’re wearing my lucky color and-“
“Hey, what’s your name?”
Interrupted, Suki blinks once, twice, and pauses. Ty Lee didn’t even bother giving this guy her name, and now she realizes she didn’t get his, either. “Suki Kato. That was Ty Lee, if you didn’t figure it out. Do I get to ask your name?”
“Sokka, that’s with an ‘okka. Two k’s,” he says, with a blink-and-you-miss-it wink that actually sends her stomach lurching like she’s just been dropped off the biggest hill on a rollercoaster.
Fuck, maybe Ty Lee was right. He’s funny, and close enough to her type that it feels like genuine attraction rather than the sense of obligation she’d feel if the perfect guy waltzed into her life and- shit, okay, this is what real chemistry feels like.
She gets all caught up in his smile for a second, and by the time her brain catches up with her mouth she realizes she’s said perhaps the lamest thing she could’ve come up with in the moment. “I guess people spell your name wrong often?”
It’s a stunning display of horrible smalltalk, and Suki cringes at how badly she just managed to shove her own foot in her mouth. Who says that? Ty Lee’s faith in her was definitely undeserved if she’s this clumsy with her words, however tired and stressed over this paper she is.
“I guess often enough. I could always write it down for you?” He says, gesturing to the notebook she has discarded next to her with a half-baked outline that she hasn’t really been following at all. She pauses, thinking that’s an equally stupid comment to make before it hits her. That’s smooth , a setup a step in advance. All she has to do is follow through. That’s clever, really clever.
“Only if I can get your number underneath it.”
In one fell swoop she slides her notebook and pen across the table, and Sokka scrawls his name and phone number way too large across the page. “So, Suki,” he says, sliding it back towards her where she can see not only has he written his name, he added with an ‘okka underneath it in parenthesis. “Are you free this weekend?”
She’s not, not really. She has Mai’s party tomorrow and that brunch with the girls on Sunday, and Saturday is supposed to be the day she really buckles down on this paper to finish it all in time for Tuesday, but how can she say no? “I could do something Saturday if you’re not busy,” she offers, knowing that if this date goes horribly she’ll be kicking herself for wasting time she could’ve spent on a paper.
Still, she has a really good feeling that, come Saturday, she won’t be.
With arrangements for dinner on Saturday made and a renewed energy to get more of her paper done before then, Suki keeps working away at her paper until a text message on her phone catches her eye. It’s from Ty Lee, and the only thing it says is ‘you’re welcome’. Suki sighs, and almost wants to question how Ty Lee knows everything worked out.
But then again, maybe she should start listening to her friend more. Maybe forest green was her lucky color.