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Sokka's necklace gives up in a somewhat anticlimactic way a few years after Sozin's comet. The bone choker, which had been with him through the entire chaotic adventure with Katara, Aang, Toph, and Zuko, snaps open one spring day, scattering its components across a training room floor.
Damn, Sokka thinks.
Then he kneels, gathers the pieces, packs up his training session early, and goes to show Zuko what's happened.
...
Zuko helps Sokka find a box for the necklace pieces where they figure out how to repair it. The part running through the middle, the one that had snapped, is constructed in a fashion known only in the Southern Water Tribe, and they're not planning on going in the next few weeks.
"Would you try a different material?" Zuko asks.
"I don't care as much about having it fixed as I do about fixing it right," Sokka says. "It feels like if you're trying something new, you should try something entirely new. No re-used parts."
"I understand," Zuko says. "We'll wait 'till we travel."
However, despite his bravado, Sokka finds himself missing the necklace. He feels the phantom weight on his throat, and the slight sussurence of his skin against the bone. Zuko catches on to the way Sokka's fingertips go to his throat too many times.
"Is your throat okay?"
"Oh, yeah," Sokka says, becoming conscious of where his fingers are resting. "It just feels strange without my necklace."
Zuko nods. They're outside right now, wandering around as innocuously as they can— for Zuko, that means no Firelord hairpiece right now. He touches the spot where it should be. "I kind of miss the weight of the hairpiece, too."
"Exactly!" Sokka says, snapping. "Although— I have a hair tie, do you want it?"
Zuko cocks his head curiously. There's no visible hair tie on Sokka's wrist. "Sure, I'd like to put my hair up," he says anyway.
In response, Sokka reaches back and starts to undo the wolftail, and Zuko can't hold back a surprised inhale. "That's your hair tie!"
"And it's yours now," Sokka says, handing it over with a grin.
Zuko puts his hair up in a half bun quickly. It's nice to get some strands out of his face. It also really, really doesn't hurt that his boyfriend's hair is down, rendering him even more beautiful than before.
"You all right there?" Sokka asks.
Zuko flushes and stops staring. "Good. Thanks for the hair tie."
"Does it help?"
"It's nice— still wish I had something heavier, but it's okay."
"Sure," Sokka says.
But his mind is churning. The equinox is approaching. As various nations celebrate various solstices, Sokka had last year planned a festival of cultural exchange on each equinox— and it had gone fantastically. Now, the job is out of his own hands and in someone else's, and all that's left for Sokka to do is to get a gift for Zuko.
And Zuko has just handed him an idea on a platter.
It'll be small, not too raised. Zuko tries not to wear anything that imitates the trappings of a Firelord when they go out on the town together. Sokka will try to make it the same weight as the metal hairpiece. But he's not skilled with creating metal, and kind of wants to make it himself rather than buying it or asking Toph for help, and considers other materials instead. There's much to think about...
Unbeknownst to Sokka, Zuko is having similar thoughts as they pass by a jeweller's shop. A bust mannequin is wearing a most gorgeous golden collar necklace— it would look good on Sokka, though he prefers silver, and Zuko is all too willing to indulge that as well— and Zuko remembers that the equinox is approaching, and he knows exactly what to get Sokka. Restoring the old necklace is out of the question, but Sokka hadn't seemed adverse at all to getting a new one, and Zuko knows a nice stone bead seller not far from the palace...
...
After the equinox festivities are over, Sokka and Zuko retire to Zuko's rooms, and Zuko immediately dives into a desk drawer to pull out a box.
"I have something for you," he says.
"Oh!" Sokka says, and reaches into his bag to draw out a small box as well. "Gift time!"
"You go first," Zuko says, and hands over the gift, sitting back on his heels, tense with anticipation.
"Okay," Sokka agrees easily, and grins as he begins to unwrap the gift. He is very careful about it, undoing the string without breaking it and unfolding the paper without tearing. Finally, the jewelry box is revealed— Zuko had purchased the box; this gift was worth it. Sokka opens it slowly.
There's yellow— white— a thick band— once the lid is raised, Sokka slides his fingers under the gift to lift it up. About the same width and circumference as his old bone necklace, it is a necklace of gorgeous stone beads, sewn together in a thoughtful pattern. Larger white stones are spaced along the necklace, with smaller dots of ambers and yellow and red crystals like tiny flames dancing along the necklace. There is a line of blue along the bottom like water. Sokka holds it up and it sparkles, refracting the candlelight.
"Where'd you get this!" he exclaims, impressed.
"The beads are from a shop down by the harbor. I sewed it myself," Zuko says, proudly. "I learned a lot of needlework when I was young."
"It's beautiful," Sokka says, his breath catching in his throat. Zuko made it. Surely he doesn't know what it means. "You made it for me?"
"You'd said you missed the weight of the old one," Zuko says sheepishly, touching his own throat.
"I love it," Sokka says, reaching up to clasp it around his neck. It does imitate the weight very well, but even if it didn't, Sokka doesn't think he can take it off ever again. Because, well, Zuko might not have intended it this way, but to Sokka, this is a proposal. It's water tribe custom to carve a stone for a necklace, but Zuko is fire nation, and he used his own learned skill— needlework— to turn the stones into a necklace, and there's no mistaking how the fire and water motifs represent them both.
The thing is, if this had been a real proposal, it doesn't matter that it's culturally much too soon to accept— Sokka would say yes in a heartbeat. Sokka and Zuko have been through thick and thin; and there's really nothing more thin than working together to defeat Zuko's power-mad father followed by a whirlwind few years trying to put the world back together with Zuko as the new Firelord. Sokka knows Zuko is it for him, and loves him more than anything in the world. And so, as he finishes clasping the necklace, he imagines that Zuko had been asking him— marry me? and Sokka would say, yes, a thousand times yes!
"Did you say something?" Zuko says.
Sokka catches his mouth silently formed around the 's' in 'yes' and shuts it. "No, I just— I love it. I love you."
Zuko beams. "I love you too."
"Would you like your gift?" Sokka asks, pressing the box into Zuko's hands before waiting for a response. It feels inadequate now, after Zuko has filled almost every last one of his heart's desires in a single necklace, but Sokka hopes Zuko will like it all the same.
Zuko pinches the string and burns just through it, letting it fall apart like a flower. The paper is more haphazardly peeled off, revealing, similarly, a simple opaque jewelry box.
"We had similar ideas," he says with a laugh, lifting the lid.
"Yeah, I—" Sokka starts.
Zuko gasps.
"Is this what I think it is?"
"A hairpiece?" Sokka says indulgently. "You said you missed the weight."
"Oh, a—" Zuko looks back at Sokka and does not continue his thought. A proposal, that's what he thought it was but— but Sokka doesn't know.
Zuko's face is aflame. Figuratively.
"It's so beautiful," he says, because it is. "You matched it to your necklace."
"Oh, I guess that's true!"
The hairpiece is a low, flat piece that holds up Zuko's hair the same way as the Firelord hairpiece, but on this one, the pin is an almost hidden component, fitting seamlessly into the body of the hairpiece. There's a ring of metal around its base to make it heavier, but that simple ring was easy enough for Sokka to forge. The rest of the body is carved, varnished and painted wood, Sokka's current favorite craft. A painting of a day-night cycle encircles the hairpiece, which does indeed match color for color with the necklace. Tiny details are intricately worked into the design, from miniscule flowers to the summer Fire Nation constellations.
It's not a proposal, Zuko, he tells himself again. Should he tell Sokka? They're living in the Fire Nation, so it's almost certain that someone will comment on it eventually. He should...
"I—" he starts.
"Yeah?" Sokka says, looking somewhat nervous.
Zuko pig-chickens out. What if Sokka takes the hairpiece away? "I, uh, can you help me with it?"
"Sure, you just push the pin out like—"
"No, I meant, will you put it on my hair?"
This is only more tortuous. Of course Sokka agrees with a note of reverence in his voice, and of course he kneels behind Zuko and begins pulling the strands back carefully— caressing. And Zuko wishes with all his heart that Sokka knew what it meant when he made the hairpiece, but he probably thinks of it as barely more than the little things he surely made for Katara, Aang and Toph.
Actually, he probably meant as much as Zuko did in making the necklace. It's true, Zuko hadn't been thinking much more than Sokka had mentioned— a new necklace— and an internal assessment of his needlework skills, to make sure he could complete the project. But he'd spent time on it, and hadn't skimped on the quality, and of course Sokka had done the same for the hairpiece.
But just... a normal gift between boyfriends.
"All done!" Sokka says.
Zuko, who'd lost himself in the sensation of Sokka's fingers and the contemplation of gifts, reenters awareness and stands to see a mirror. His hair is successfully in a topknot, and the new piece looks so nice. It's perfect.
"Thank you," Zuko says.
"I know it's a little messed up—"
"No! I mean, no. You did perfect."
"Your hair is nice in the first place," Sokka offers. "Um. It looks good on you."
Zuko kind of gets what he means, as he can't seem to tear his own gaze from Sokka's throat, where the necklace sits. "The necklace looks good on you, too."
...
Katara has barely stepped off Appa when Sokka starts barrelling towards her. She grins. It's always nice to be missed.
But Sokka doesn't open his arms for a hug; rather, he mimes several cutting motions at her as he draws even with her, his face blazing red.
"What now?" she says. Then she sees it— her gaze snaps down to his neck. "YOU GOT—"
"Shut up!!" he shouts, launching forward to grab at her face, covering her mouth. "Ow! Don't bite!"
"Don't cover my mouth with your hand," she mumbles at him through his hand.
He obliges, withdrawing the hand and shaking it out. "It's not an engagement necklace."
Katara laughs.
"It's not!"
"Oh, you're serious."
He rolls his eyes at her. "I'm always serious!"
"Okay, then. Why aren't you engaged?"
"He has no idea what it means," Sokka says. "I'd broken the bone necklace, and missed it. He just... made me a new necklace for the equinox."
"Wow."
They stare at each other for a moment while Katara digests that information, then she nods and says, "You two idiots would do this, I guess. Where's your other half, anyway?"
"Greeting Aang?" Sokka says with a shrug. "Isn't Aang already in there?"
"Yeah. Okay, so, to be clear, you want me to pretend you didn't just get engaged to your FireLord boyfriend."
"Because I didn't."
Katara nods. "Because you definitely aren't engaged."
"We're not," Sokka insists.
"Try sounding a little less wistful next time," Katara says, and claps him on the shoulder.
Damn. It's like she waterbended ice right through his veins.
Sokka really has nothing to say to that, so he merely follows his sister as she goes in search of their boyfriends.
...
Zuko greets Katara with a hug, and feels his feet leave the ground as she squeezes his middle. "Spirits, you got strong!"
"I've been doing a lot of reconstruction," she says, flexing her bicep, using the motion to float a spout of water. Off in the distance, Aang swoons a little.
"Oh, of course."
"Nice hairpiece!" she says brightly, looking up at his hair. "Is it new?"
"Sokka made it," Zuko responds, forcing his voice to stay level. "He gave it to me for Equinox."
"It's beautiful. I assume the new necklace is the same?"
"Yes, I gave him that!" Zuko says. "He's broken the old one, and we can't get to the water tribe soon, unfortunately, or he'd repair it."
"Mhm," Katara says. She stares into Zuko's eyes, scrutinizing, and Zuko does nothing but stare back— she knows he's lying, she knows about the hairpiece— but then she says nothing, so maybe she doesn't know.
Zuko and Sokka walk her into the palace and help her move everything in while Aang schmoozes the nobility, then retire to their own rooms to redress for the formal Avatar Welcome Dinner they're having that night. Sokka grumbles as he buttons the high collar on his tunic. The new necklace sits ever so slightly lower, and it's now fully hidden by the outfit.
Once they’re dressed, Sokka having refused to button the robe he wears over the tunic, they wander back out to find Aang and Katara once more and walk them around until they’re summoned for dinner. Katara and Aang spent the Equinox in the Earth Kingdom, and tell them all about their exploits in the upper ring of Ba Sing Se. Aang hasn’t lost his mischievous streak, but now he has a lot more influence, so the stories he and Katara tell are full of royalty-defiance and norm-breaking.
Aang and Katara trade off lines in the story, with Katara acting as the stuffy Earth Kingdom nobility and Aang playing the part of Avatar Aang, and the impromptu play is seamless until one forgets the exact wording and it dissolves into bickering, with an undercurrent of shameless joy. Eventually the story regains its tracks, but all Zuko can think about is how good Aang and Katara are with each other. He expects an announcement of their engagement any day now.
Then it’s Sokka and Zuko’s turn to storytell, at which point Sokka does the vast majority of the lines and Zuko is occasionally called upon to insert various details that Sokka doesn’t know, and as Zuko watches Sokka do a particularly flattering impression of him, he wonders if people think the same way about them. Do they think Sokka and Zuko will last? Are they ready to marry?
“And then the advisor said, ‘It’s impossible to restructure like that, sir Firelord sir! Because...”
“As a river flows downstream, so flows the energy from nobility to commoner,” Zuko cuts in in the same nasally tone.
“He didn’t honestly say that...” Katara says.
“No, he did!” Sokka says. “I’ve never heard that saying before—”
“Because it’s not one that exists,” Zuko says.
“So Zuko responds, ‘A river may flow downstream, but heat rises. Are we the river nation or the fire nation?’”
“I’m pretty sure what I actually said was, ‘I’m not basing my policy on proverbs,’” Zuko says with a grin.
“Semantics,” Sokka says. “You said that, he said it was tradition, and then you stared him down for a minute, said, ‘well, heat rises,’ and didn’t say anything else until he reneged on his position.”
“That’s a good one, though,” Aang says. “The one Sokka said. Can I hire you as a speech-writer?”
Their laughter carries them through the short remainder of the garden they’re walking through, at which point a woman from the palace staff runs up to them and informs them that dinner is ready to start when they are.
They have dinner, which is a somewhat stuffy affair with far more courses than necessary. (Zuko will keep the perfunctory traditions if it means he gets more leeway with the important ones.) Then there’s music, and when it gets too late to stay up, they plan to go out to the market the next morning and head to bed.
...
In defiance of the previous night’s outfit, Sokka dresses in one of his lowest-collared, most open tunics.
“We’re trying not to attract attention,” Zuko teases, not making a significant effort to get Sokka to change.
“My neck must be free,” Sokka says, and runs his finger over his necklace. “So everyone can see the beautiful necklace my beautiful boyfriend gave to me.”
“Oh, speaking of,” Zuko says, once again fighting to keep a casual tone, “put my hair up for me?”
“Of course, sunshine.”
As Zuko does his buttons and ties, Sokka stands behind him and begins once more gently carding through his hair. It’s soft and silky-smooth under his fingers, and he almost regrets finishing the small topknot, pushing in the pin, and forcing himself to let Zuko’s hair go.
“Let’s go meet Aang and Katara.”
The other two meet them outside, at the palace entrance. They are similarly dressed casually, with Katara wearing a light scarf over her hair and Aang wearing a sun-hat. However, as they draw even, Aang gasps.
“What?” Zuko says, looking frantically down at his clothes, making sure he’s done nothing indecent. Sokka’s hand similarly goes to the exposed part of his chest, and he looks wide-eyed at Aang.
“You’re ENGAGED!” Aang shouts.
Zuko and Sokka both react to this calmly and reasonably, which is to say, they both start yelling and grasping at their respective jewelry items. The words “Fire Nation” and “Water Tribe” and “culture” and “tradition” are intelligible amongst the babble, while Aang watches with some confusion and Katara with amusement.
“You’re not engaged?” Aang asks finally.
“Well, he doesn’t know—” they start simultaneously, each looking at the other.
“Oh...” Aang says, and blushes. “Whoops.”
“I mean...” Sokka says, “I wasn’t mad that I got a necklace, you know...”
“I thought you were proposing,” Zuko says. “I would have... I would have said...”
“What would you have said?”
“What would you have said?”
“Well, I hadn’t—”
“TUI AND LA,” Katara shouts. “Just say yes!”
There’s another moment of silence, and Sokka asks, “Will you marry me?”
“Yes!” Zuko says, and launches himself at Sokka to kiss him.
“Oogie!” is Katara’s contribution. Sokka manages to make a rude gesture at her without breaking the kiss at all, and Zuko watches it out of the corner of his eye, much too content to care.
After far too little time, they break the kiss in order to return to their guests, and Sokka says curiously, “How did you know about the hairpiece?”
Aang shrugs. “I was looking up inter-national proposal styles when I was researching how I’d—”
He freezes.
The group falls into silence while Sokka’s face slips into unrestrained delight. “What were you researching, Aang? Inter-national proposals?”
“Wait, are you going to propose?” Katara squeals.
“Well— yes— but I haven’t made you—”
“YES I’LL MARRY YOU,” Katara says, which silences every single one of Aang’s protests as he catches her to kiss her deeply as well.
“Who’s being oogie now,” Sokka mutters halfheartedly, and grasps Zuko’s hand.
“Definitely you,” Zuko says, because Katara would normally say it, but is currently occupied. “Let’s get to the market; we have to buy the happy couple an engagement gift!”