Work Text:
Zuko has a flip phone and it’s the year 2058.
No one understands how it still functions, least of all Zuko. It's like 26 operating systems behind and screams every time it turns on. Calling only works 1/4 the time because it's trying to do the flip phone equivalent of hacking into the international space station. The battery has never died, and no one has ever seen it being charged. Texting works perfectly.
So Zuko has a Nokia flip phone. The unbreaking and undying phone. The kind of phone that outlives the memes about just how immortal the phone actually is, and maybe that would be ironic if it wasn’t for just how weird the phone itself actually was.
It’s survived every kind of possible damage. Not just the day-to-day dropping and falling off balconies (Sokka tries not to think too hard about Zuko’s day-to-day…). Zuko once spent a full day in the ocean with his phone in his pocket and it worked better after. Sometimes in a pinch he’s conked people over the head with it, when nothing else is at hand.
People go down. Phone stays fine.
This of course has happened many times and is, incidentally, Sokka’s leading theory on why Zuko’s phone has trouble making calls.
Zuko of course named his phone Druk and it has several phone charms dangling from it. All characters from his favorite plays, and a few from less-liked plays that he shrugged and said Druk was fond of. The Blue Spirit was just the first of many.
Sometimes Zuko loses Druk, and no one can find it (him, let’s be real) because it’s a Nokia flip phone in 2058 and most people who see it just think it's a particularly oddly shaped rock. Druk always appears again, though, sometimes without charms that Zuko was given but doesn’t particularly like.
No one is entirely sure that the thing isn’t partially sentient up until they are. All the household AI they’ve got in 2058 seem unsettlingly afraid of the ancient tech. (AIs that were meant to be far more advanced than some flip phone from 1993 and yet… Druk the flip phone had more… Let’s call it personality.)
There had been an extended period of texts from Druk just like...coming in weirdly timed and at odd hours and Sokka just kept trying to write it off as just the struggle of this Nokia flip phone trying to communicate with basically the inter dimensional gods that are 2058 technology.
At one point in time his friends would have agreed with him, but...well, there was a progression by which everyone realized Zuko’s phone had sentience. (Everyone but Sokka, of course.)
It had started as an inside joke that this thing is named Druk because sometimes Zuko would try to type things on it and those would be the only keys that would work, and in that exact order. And then those words would just start like...randomly appearing on the screen? Like the screen would appear to be glitching (usually when it tries to display some future-tech interface it just could not fundamentally handle) but it glitches in a way that looks REMARKABLY like letters.
And then calls and texts from Zuko that sometimes would come in as coming from Druk instead of Zuko’s contact, and everyone would laugh it off as a prank except no one would ever own up to actually changing the contact info, which was extremely odd because this was a group that loved a good prank. (Everyone had been convinced it was Toph, since she was the only one who had the willpower for such an extended joke.)
Aang straight up has claimed to have communed with the phone and had had full on conversations with Zuko’s phone independent of Zuko, and no one except Sokka thinks that’s at all weird. (But really with everything that is already weird about Zuko’s phone this would be one of the less completely bizarre things it has done over the years.)
When asked why Zuko named his phone Druk he just shrugged and said, “Druk said that was his name?”
Sokka had wanted to call horse shit on that, but he didn’t really trust that Zuko’s phone wasn’t glitchy enough for the thing to have displayed in error. Still it was Zuko’s phone and he could call the thing whatever he felt like. And it wasn’t like Sokka hadn’t named his own phone. (He had and his holo phone was named Boomerphone.)
Toph liked to claim that she had rather lengthy phone calls with Druk all of which seemed to have fallen during times Zuko had found himself unable to place calls from the old thing.
Sokka hadn’t received one of these phantom calls himself, but he had overheard one of the ones that Toph had. There had been some sort of weird staticy voice on the other end asking her about her day and letting her know that her parents sounded like jerks. There had even been the offer to melt the hardware of the Beifong’s AIs. (Was that why all of the AI tech seemed so afraid of Druk? He had threatened to destroy them?)
Still there had to be a logical reason, like maybe the call hadn’t been from Zuko’s phone and was just one of their friends placing the call as a way to help her prank Sokka.
But slowly everyone started jokingly referring to the phone as Druk and sometimes when they would say its name the phone would just...buzz? For no reason? And then people started getting like empty static calls and empty texts and when they would reach out to Zuko for an explanation, those moments seemed to be always remarkably well-timed to when Zuko was in need of some sort of assistance. And they liked to joke that it must be Druk looking out for him but also like… was this some way Zuko was attempting to reach out for help and just couldn’t admit it?
Except he insisted that it was not him.
And due to the wonders of 2058 tech trying to speak to 60+ year old flip phones, sometimes things just glitch, right? That’s the explanation. That’s how all of Ozai’s phone (which is basically a supercomputer) and all its encrypted data somehow got dumped onto Druk, unencrypted...right? Just...a glitch. Right?
But that wasn’t what their friends had thought though. Noooooo, it couldn’t just be a glitchy phone with old hardware and decaying code. It just had to be a ghost!
Aang was the one who suggested it first and Katara was skeptical until the group had hauled Zuko off to see some local psychic named Aunt Wu who absolutely confirms that that thing is a thinking, feeling being that is ready to destroy anyone and everyone at any moment but is really fond of being in Zuko’s pocket because and he quotes “It’s warm there”.
That's what she claimed the phone had told her. (Sokka does not believe her and is pretty sure that she is a fraud. But he had about as much luck trying to prove that as he did proving that Zuko’s stupid flip phone was not fucking haunted.)
Sokka can think of a lot of things that are warm, but it isn’t like he is about to throw himself into a fireplace because the fire is warm! (He does, however, understand wanting to be near Zuko’s warmth.)
And when it came to texting there were clear differences in the way Sokka and Zuko tended to approach the task, and where Druk’s supposed sentience became naggingly difficult to ignore.
Sokka has lightning thumbs and always types/responds so fucking quick, while Zuko, on the complete opposite side of this texting spectrum, literally gives one word responses after two hours of radio silence. Zuko will keep someone waiting on a dot dot dot to materialize into a real text for hours because he accidentally typed a space and then stopped using his phone
But even more egregious, Zuko Was One Of Those People Who Texts Like This Have You Ever Seen That Because Sokka Has. And it drives him nuts.
And Zuko likes to claim that he has no idea why his phone does that or that it's even notable.
Meanwhile detective Sokka over here felt ever tempted to break into the phone to study the auto-correct settings, to film the way Zuko types so he can break it down in slow motion to catch him actively capitalizing every word because Zuko absolutely insists that he texts normally, it just comes out that way
The fact that Sokka came up with a plan to figure this out without having to break into Zuko’s house was nothing short of a miracle. (Because at the rate this was going he would have.)
All it had taken was inviting Zuko over to play video games, eat some food, and then keep suggesting new activities to do until Zuko was too tired to really drive home and then just suggest that Zuko stay the night at his place. Only he hadn’t counted on Zuko pointing out he didn’t bring anything for staying the night and that he hated sleeping in jeans.
Simple fix. REALLY! It was a simple fix. Just offer to let Zuko borrow some pajamas to sleep in and then put his clothes in the wash before going to bed. Besides, Sokka actually had some laundry that he needed to do anyway, so it worked out.
What he hadn’t counted on was that Zuko wearing Sokka’s clothes was something that he was never going to be able to forget.
At one point in time, Zuko had been the tallest member of their friend group. So if this had happened back then, sure Zuko would still have fit into the spare pajamas. But now Sokka was much much taller than Zuko… And well… Zuko looked unfairly cute wearing Sokka’s clothes because they were far too large for him. And he had had to roll the legs of the borrowed pajama pants up and the hoodie Sokka gave him to wear for the night made the need for the pants almost pointless.
Pointless were it not for the fact that Sokka would have been treated to the sight of Zuko wearing nothing but his hoodie. (An image that he was desperately trying not to imagine in his head based on how Zuko’s legs looked when he wore shorts.)
Which okay, Sokka was going to have to unpack those feelings later because moments before laying down for the night to share a bed with his best friend was really not the best time to realize that he may in fact actually have a crush on said friend.
His plan to get a closer look at Zuko’s phone had been a good one. (Really it had!) He just hadn’t counted on the fact that Zuko wearing Sokka’s clothes would make him wholesale forget why he had invited his friend to spend the night in the first place. In his defense, Zuko had looked very cute.
So it had been back to the drawing board and a review of the facts at hand.
Zuko’s phone is clearly haunted, and everyone but Sokka can agree on this. Sokka doesn’t believe in ghosts and he is sure that there is a reasonable explanation for this. He just doesn’t have one yet.
Sometimes Sokka will get texts from Zuko’s phone when he knows that Zuko either doesn’t have it or that Zuko isn’t using it. The texts are written with the same first letter of every word capitalized style but the tone seemed… different somehow. (Almost as though someone had gotten ahold of Zuko’s phone to send the text, which was the obvious, logical explanation.)
Which was relevant in his next attempt at getting a closer look at the flip phone in question because he will never forget how Zuko was napping next to him on his couch during movie night and Sokka had received a text from said phone which was sitting untouched on the coffee table.
Zuko had been telling him about some guy he liked but that the guy didn’t like him back and how Zuko felt doomed to a loveless existence before he’d gotten tired and drifted off to sleep, and Sokka had been trying to be a good supportive friend and ignore the fact that he was quietly dying inside.
And then Sokka’s holo phone buzzed with a text and he saw it was from Zuko.
It was weird as hell but it wasn’t like this would be the first time he got a text like that from Zuko’s phone--the thing was ancient , you couldn’t expect it to actually send texts on time. But this one--this was when Sokka finally knew that someone wasn’t just taking Zuko’s allegedly haunted flip phone for the sole purpose of trying to prank Sokka.
The text had read...
Zuko: This Is Zuko’s Phone Druk Ur The Guy Zuko Likes I Know U Like Him Back N If U Don’t Tell Him I Will Make Good On My Promise To Ur Electronics
Sokka had thought that was exceedingly creepy but when he checked Zuko’s sent messages he didn’t see the text. It was weird but he decided that he would rather not know what threat Druk had made to his things (they were already reluctant enough to work with Druk and shit, now he was personifying them, too), so driven by scientific curiosity and maybe more than a little pining, he woke Zuko up and asked him if he was the guy Zuko liked.
Which was how they became a couple and Sokka will forever refuse to tell people it was because Zuko’s definitely not haunted phone decided to play wing man.
And even though it’s definitely not haunted, Sokka can’t deny that the circumstances through which Zuko came to own Druk were more than a little creepy. (Not that science couldn’t figure it out, of course. If science wanted to. Which it just doesn’t, okay--and it’s not scared, it's just a bit busy at the moment.)
Zuko claimed to have found the phone in his uncle’s attic, when he was maybe thirteen? It was in an old wooden box with symbols on it and the phone had a signal. So Zuko had taken it with him when he went home. Ozai hadn’t wanted Zuko to have a phone and Sokka was pretty sure it had something to do with control and keeping Zuko from having a way to call for help.
But everyone else at school had a holo phone and Zuko didn’t want to feel left out even if his should have functionally just been an antique-shaped brick.
It was maybe two weeks later when Ozai had been hauled off to prison after an anonymous source had sent the local police department evidence that the guy had committed some pretty serious crimes. No one ever stepped forward to claim the reward. But that hadn't been all. Somehow that same person had also reported what Ozai had done to Zuko that day.
The thing that had become the scar forever etched into Zuko's face as a brand of fire.
Years later when Sokka was shopping around for cheap phone plans he’d asked Zuko what his carrier was, but Zuko had just shrugged and said he wasn’t sure, but that it must have been a really good one because he always seemed to have a signal. Which made no sense, tech had moved away from those frequency bands and to the modern AI-enabled Cloud Net for a reason. Not that Sokka was jealous of Druk the phone and the mystery of how something so old got such good reception, of course.
Okay, he was but that wasn’t the point. It’s probably because Druk was the only thing left trying to communicate in 2G, anyway..There was just something really weird about his now boyfriend’s phone. And after years of trying to figure it out he was just left with more questions and no answers whatsoever.
Well… other than the answer everyone else kept suggesting, that Zuko’s flip phone somehow really is haunted. But ghosts weren’t real, so that wasn’t really an answer.
He wasn’t sure if Iroh even knew that Zuko had taken the phone. But the guy had to be paying for the phone plan. Right? The phone had been in his attic after all.
But then, Iroh did seem to like old things a lot. The man still insisted on making tea by hand, and would only play pai sho with a physical board
Ty Lee had assured them all that the phone’s aura indicated that it meant no harm to Zuko. Which okay? Sokka hadn’t even stopped to think that the phone could be dangerous to a person. Sure, the thing had threatened his tech, but… people were not the same as AI, no matter how advanced they were these days!
But...Ozai. And Druk did help Zuko realize that Sokka liked him back, which was more proof of Ty Lee’s theory than Sokka’s...
Maybe it was just a super high tech phone that the government had made years ago and it had been too secret (Iroh’s definitely Done Some Shit in his past, after all). But whatever program it had been made for was discontinued and so it had been given to Iroh to hold onto and just nothing had ever happened with it again?
Sokka didn’t know.
And so in passing during a game of pai sho with Iroh, Sokka had asked him about the phone.
Iroh looked at him strangely and asked, “Could you repeat that for me?”
“Uh? Zuko has this weird phone?” Sokka explained again. “He says he got it from some box in your attic back when we were still in school?”
“Hmm… That’s what I thought you said.”
The man looked almost disturbed by what Sokka had told him. And really that did nothing to lessen the mystery of Druk the flip phone. (Maybe it was alien tech and all of their phones now were reverse engineered from the thing? That could explain the weirdness of it. Sokka liked that explanation quite a bit, actually)
Iroh didn’t seem to be paying attention to their game anymore, instead choosing to take a long drink from his tea cup, like a man lost in thought.
So Sokka tried prying some more, asking, “So what was with the box? Zuko said it was covered in all sorts of symbols.”
“When there is a leaky roof, we often place a bucket wherever the rain water collects to contain it.” And that was all that Iroh had said on the matter. Their game ended shortly after and the man had gone off to call Zuko about the flip phone, and maybe a half-century overdue upgrade.
Whatever had been said between the two of them must have been enough to convince Iroh that it was fine for Zuko to have the phone and so nothing really changed other than Sokka once again having more questions and no answers.
And by this point he had seen Zuko send hundreds of texts from the thing, and, yeah, Zuko hadn’t been lying when he said that he wasn’t capitalizing each word himself. That really was just the way that the phone typed them out. So at least the mystery of why Zuko texted like that was solved.
And the weirdness of the possibly alien tech flip phone that may or may not have resulted in Nokia (but probably didn’t) did not end there. No, of course it wouldn’t.
He had been sitting at home, watching some Youtube video on sword making, when what was a fairly regular occurrence happened. (And really wasn’t that just funny, that this kind of stuff was normal to Sokka now?)
His holo phone gave a buzz with an incoming text.
Zuko: Druk Again Zuko Had The Nightmare Again Pls Call Him
Sokka sighed and followed the weird phone’s instructions and called up his boyfriend to check on him. After all, the phone did seem to care about Zuko and so did Sokka.
Zuko had sounded groggy when he’d picked up. (His phone always seemed to be able to answer calls when Sokka was told to call him by Zuko’s phone.)
“Hey, you good?” Sokka asked, pausing the video he’d been watching.
There was a moment of quiet before Zuko admitted, “Not really… I had that nightmare again.”
“Do you want me to come over so he’ll stay away?”
Sokka didn’t need to be told what Druk had meant by the nightmare . Zuko only had a few nightmares he had on a repeated basis and only one of them seemed to have Druk telling Sokka to call Zuko.
Zuko gave a loud yawn before asking, “If it isn’t too much-”
“Hey, babe, it is never too much trouble.” Sokka interjected, before Zuko could dismiss what it was he needed, like it was some burden to ask of Sokka. “But at this point maybe we should start looking for a place together?”
“I’d like that.” Zuko answered, and Sokka could all but hear his boyfriend blushing through the phone.
Sokka still did not believe that Zuko’s phone was haunted. Just...glitching in convenient ways. Probability and confirmation bias and...something like that just made things seem more important than they were, right?
At least not right up until the moment that he'd been given proof that left no room for doubt...
It happened the night that Ozai broke out of jail, absolutely convinced that Zuko was the one who turned him in. He should have known better than to just stop at burning the boy’s face. He should have killed him when he had the chance.
Zuko had his phone on him when Ozai attacked him that day all of those years ago and the thing had let out an ear piercing scream that had made both of their ears bleed. It had given Zuko the time he’d needed to flee to his bedroom and shove his dresser in front of his door, until help could arrive. (He hadn’t actually called for help but it had come nonetheless.)
But that was when he was thirteen.
This was now.
When the news had broken, Sokka had raced to his boyfriend’s house and found the front door beaten in. Zuko was nowhere to be found.
At least not until his holo phone buzzed with the find my friend app and showed an icon for Zuko going at a good pace on the Highway. There was no reason that Zuko’s phone could have ever even downloaded that app let alone actually use it, but by this point Sokka wasn’t surprised when Druk did things he shouldn’t be able to do.
So without stopping to think, Sokka had thrown himself back into his truck and cast the feed from his phone onto the nav screen of his truck and slammed the gas. A dozen blank texts coming in from Zuko’s phone to the group chat.
And then a text that described the car Ozai was in. Something so low tech that it made Zuko’s phone look advanced by comparison.
And then Sokka was on the highway.
There were a few cop cars that were ahead of him so he had to be close.
His wheel jerked itself out of his control then and swerved around the first few before Sokka spotted the car.
Sokka understood what a pit maneuver was but he had never seen one in real life. And he certainly hadn’t been behind the driver seat of a vehicle performing one before.
But that’s what his truck did and Ozai’s car was brought to an abrupt stop.
Apparently the car was also too old for an airbag.
Zuko, however, was fine. Ozai had for whatever reason actually buckled him into the back seat and Zuko was fine. Which made no sense considering this was Ozai he was talking about. You know, the guy who burned his own son’s face for saying “ hey maybe killing innocent people is wrong? ”.
Sokka couldn’t help but let out a small laugh of relief as he reached through the shattered window to open the rear passenger door and removed the gag from Zuko.
He was kind of out of it. Muttering something about the dragon that lives in his phone buckling him in right before the car went still.
And that absurdly had made more sense than it having been Ozai.
That had been what tipped Sokka over the edge into belief–that Ozai sure as shit wouldn’t be looking out for Zuko’s safety, and with Zuko unconscious and no one else around from this damn phone…
Sokka was just happy that Zuko was safe.
And yeah, okay, Zuko’s phone was definitely haunted. But at least it was a friendly ghost.
Sokka decided that Druk is going to be the best man at their wedding right then and there. He has no idea how they’re going to make that happen, or how Druk would deliver a speech or organize a bachelor party, but he suddenly had a lot of faith in this damn hunk of component parts whose very existence is proof of the unexplainable.
Sokka made sure to text Druk thank you for saving Zuko, as his boyfriend curled up against his side and fell asleep later that night.
Druk: Thank You 4 Protecting His Heart
Sokka looked down at the holo phone in his free hand. (The other was gently petting his sleeping boyfriend's hair.) Druk knew Zuko better than most parents knew their own children. Druk had been there for Zuko from the time he was thirteen and Sokka had only known the guy since he was sixteen. He couldn't help but wonder about some of the things that he'd talked about with and on and around the phone.
Secrets he had shared with it. The dreams he'd likely muttered at the phone thinking about what it was he had wanted from his future and what it was he had thoroughly expected to receive instead. Composing texts out loud that he never intended to actually send.
And so Sokka had to wonder if Zuko had ever told Druk about what kind of ring it was that he dreamed of wearing on his wedding day. (Not that Sokka needed to be told what size ring Zuko would need. He was already very familiar with Zuko's hands from just holding them while Zuko got much needed rest.)
Really this wouldn't be the weirdest thing that he had thought of doing in his life, so he hit reply and tapped out a quick message and asked, “So what kind of ring would Zuko want to be proposed to with?”
He hit send, and it didn't take long at all for Druk to reply with an answer.
Actually it was less an answer and more a link to the exact ring that Zuko wanted and it already had the right size selected, along with suggestions for a box to store the ring in.
Yup. Druk was going to be his best man at their wedding and Aang was just going to have to deal with that fact.
Sokka placed the order for pick up the next day.
Until then he had a proposal to plan with the help of a haunted flip phone.