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“Hey, man. How often do you and Mai fight?”
For all his intelligence and good grades even in the toughest of engineering classes, Sokka has a real knack for sticking his foot in his mouth at the most inopportune times. Zuko stares at him blankly, mouth hanging open and eyes wide like a goldfish, and Sokka can’t tell if what flashes across his face after the shock wears off is indignation or bewilderment.
“How often do we… what?” Zuko asks, looking at Sokka like he was worried he might’ve hit his head on the way over to his apartment. But Sokka only stares at his friend with rapt attention, waiting for a very genuine answer to his very genuine question about Zuko’s love life. He has good reasons for asking that, too, even if he’s too far ahead of himself to realize he hasn’t filled Zuko in on that. He nods eagerly, prompting Zuko to continue despite the obvious trepidation written all over his face. “I guess… pretty often? Why? Is she mad at me right now? Did she tell you to ask me that?” He asked, looking worriedly at Sokka.
While it’s far from the reaction Sokka wanted from his question, it doesn’t really help him feel any better. Succumbing to his own internal panic about the subject, it takes Sokka far too long to realize that oh- oh, hey, Zuko was looking for some sort of response to all that. “Uh, no, I… haven’t talked to Mai. I just mean hypothetically, I guess. Every couple of months or something? I’m trying to decide if it’s weird that Suki and I haven’t had an argument yet.”
The minute it leaves his mouth, the concerns feel trivial. He knows that realistically, he doesn’t want to fight with Suki. Their relationship is near perfect: competitive but not aggressive, happy without being complacent, and here Sokka is worrying about whether or not he and Suki should be arguing with one another over something more than trivial things like whether or not they go to McDonald’s or Wendy’s for dinner.
“You know. It’s been six months and all,” he says as a defense, shrugging his shoulders and trying to be ‘cool, casual Sokka’ rather than ‘Sokka with anxiety’. “Is that weird?”
Zuko looks at him like he grew a third head over the course of this conversation and like he might run away at any point. “Yeah… I guess so? Mai and I fight a lot, if you want to say that…”
“Cool,” Sokka replies, unsatisfied with the answer. Maybe going to Zuko was a bad idea, but after all it’s Zuko . The last time he asked Zuko for advice the best he got was a ‘that’s rough, buddy’ and an awkward pat on the shoulder, and he’s dating Drama Queen Gloomy Girl Mai, who seems pissed off more than most of the time. “Thanks, man.”
Maybe he should ask someone else as a more reliable source of information. But for now, he hands Zuko a controller, and settles back on the couch. “So, more Mario Kart?”
-/-
“Hey, Katara. Lemme pick your brain for a second.”
It’s so unlike Sokka to be genuinely helpful around the little apartment he shares with his sister and dad and Gran Gran that Katara does a double take when he grabs a dishrag and joins her at the sink to wash up after dinner. She gives him one of her famous Looks, the one where she’s trying to figure out if he’s about to make some sort of stupid joke or not. In response he only grins at her, toothy and maybe a little too big but earnest nonetheless. “Come on! I can do nice things!”
Skeptical though she is, Katara hands him a plate to clean and dry off. He pushes his sleeves up and gets to work in the sink, scrubbing away at some speck of dried food while trying desperately not to cringe at how gross it is. Quiet aside from the sound of running water and whatever splashes they make while scrubbing the evening’s dishes, Katara finally gives him some side eye and elbows him. It’s just a smidge too hard (in his not-so-humble opinion), and he elbows her back for it.
“So what is it you need to ask me?” Katara asks, and suddenly his stomach decides it’s time to go on a rollercoaster. For a second he regrets all the sea prunes he ate at dinner and worries they’ll make a reappearance, if only because this same conversation with Zuko went so poorly.
But Katara is his sister , she loves him, and she’s helped him through any number of things from the panic he felt when he first went off to college to losing mom so many years ago. He can ask her for advice, because even though she’s younger than him she gives the best advice. So Sokka takes a deep breath, slings the dish rag over his shoulder, and turns to look at his sister.
“Do you and Aang fight a lot? I don’t mean— not like in a weird way, I just… Do you think Suki and I should’ve fought by now?” He splutters. “I just know that you and Aang… you know.” He shrugs, then, and returns to the dishes as if the mess of soap and gross leftover food can distract him from his spiraling thoughts about his relationship.
Katara’s look is just as skeptical and confused as Zuko had been, but where his friend had just come across as confused, Katara’s face softens. “Oh, Sokka, it’s not weird ,” she says, though he doesn’t miss the teasing in her voice. No wonder, too, when he knows it’s such a stupid worry to have but it keeps him awake at night anyway. “Aang and I fight sometimes, but not that often. I don’t think it’s all that weird that you and Suki haven’t yet.”
Relieved by the reassurance Katara gives him, he nods. “Right. It’s only been six months, so…” Just a day ago, six months felt like so long to go without a fight, and now that he says it’s only been six months, it somehow feels so much more trivial than before.
“Exactly!” Katara says, and Sokka feels his spirits lift. “Aang and I didn’t have our first argument until later, and there’s no ‘right’ time to argue.”
Okay, that answer has quenched his rising panic about the lack of fights he and Suki are having. Their relationship is normal, there’s nothing to worry about, and there’s no need for him to get so worried that they haven’t fought yet.
And then Katara just keeps talking.
“I promise having arguments isn’t as scary as it sounds, though. Most couples do have arguments, you know. Even Dad and Bato. And it’s healthy! Whenever Aang and I work through our problems we feel so good that we were able to talk about it and figure things out together. Our relationship is stronger for it! I bet Dad would say the same thing.”
Just as quickly as it came, the relief he felt at knowing it wasn’t weird to not fight fades away. Katara’s always been better at being the logical sibling, and the anxiety-ridden, irrational part of Sokka’s brain jumps to conclusions faster than he can solve complex engineering problems in his head. While maybe it’s not a problem that they haven’t fought yet, it does worry him. If they don’t fight—and what if they never do? They’ve gotten along well so far—how are they going to make their relationship stronger? And if they don’t make their relationship stronger, what if they’re doomed to fail from the start? He hasn’t quite thought about how they’ll fall apart if they don’t have a fight, but his mind is thirty steps ahead of him and he’s spiraling out of control.
“Um, yeah, that’s a good point,” he says, dejected and suddenly feeling much worse than he had before asking Katara about all this. “Thanks, Kat. I… think that helps.” More confused than when he started, Sokka takes the towel from his shoulder and leaves it by the sink as he walks away, leaving Katara behind with a sink full of dishes.
-/-
“What’s up, Socks? Are you gonna tell me what’s bothering you or are you gonna sit there stewing? Because I’ve never met anyone who can pout this much through Indiana Jones .”
He comes back to reality and remembers he’s on Suki and Ty Lee’s couch with his girlfriend in his arms and Harrison Ford in a leather jacket and fedora punching someone on screen. It’s an ideal Friday date night, and Suki’s mixology skills means he’s drinking something even fruitier than his high school crush on Jet. Yet, he can’t keep his mind in one place. Every time it wanders, he finds himself mentally replaying his conversations with Zuko and Katara, who for all their best intentions were entirely unhelpful.
“Hellooooo? Earth to Sokka?” Suki shifts so she can look him in the face, her eyebrows drawn together in worry with the cutest pout on her face. He kisses the little crease between her eyebrows, and it makes her smile just a little despite how tense it appears to him.
“Don’t worry about it, Sukes,” he tells her, hands on her waist as he settles back into the couch and pretends to focus back on the tv and its whip-cracks and gunshots like they’ll distract him from his own mind.
She moves again, her head darting in his line of sight so she can catch his attention. “So something is bothering you?” She accuses, worry creeping back into her features. He takes her face in his hands and kisses her forehead again, shaking his head- to lie to Suki feels too wrong to him, and shaking his head is so much more noncommittal than having to tell her nothing’s wrong when something very much is. “Sokka, come on. Is it something I did? Did something happen at home?” She asks, fingers poking and prodding at his stomach to make him laugh.
He could try to pull out some suave line, to try and distract her, but his mind comes up short. For too long, he tries to think of something intelligent to say, and he loses the precious time he could’ve used to brush it off. Shoulders slumping, he sits up enough to shift the conversation from something casual and held between the scenes of a movie and something more concrete and less fleeting. “It’s… okay, but promise me you won’t laugh.” He taps the tip of her nose with his index finger, making her laugh, before he puts that same finger to her lips and she kisses it.
Somehow, six months in, that makes his stomach flip like it’s their first date and he’s dragging her to a cheap Chinese restaurant again. He doesn’t know how he’s gotten so lucky to have Suki in his life, and it makes what he’s about to say next that much harder.
“Well, okay, we’ve been together for six months—”
“Six months and a week,” she interjects so fluidly that he just has to smile.
“Yeah, six months and a week,” he continues, “but in all that time we haven’t had an argument. Do you think that’s weird?” He asks, wincing as soon as he says it. It’s easy to be blunt with Zuko, who never understands things that are veiled in metaphors anyway, or Katara, who so easily gets to the heart of what he’s saying every time he says it. But with Suki, he desperately wants to sound at least a little more eloquent when he tells her the fact he’s been anxious with worry over this problem for days now.
Her face scrunches up, doing that cute little thing with her nose that he always says reminds him of Wandavision , which only serves to melt his resolve further. “Come on, Suki, you see where I’m coming from, right? Every relationship has conflict! Even Dad and Bato!” He says, realizing in that moment how much he sounds like Katara, complete with that whiny tone of voice she gets when she’s right and knows it. Shit, he hadn’t meant to internalize what she said so much. “You know what I mean, bean?”
Even his worst attempt at a joke does very little to relieve the now-obvious tension in the room, made worse by the way Suki shifts away from him and sits on her heels to watch him. She worries her bottom lip between her teeth for a second, and for a long moment she stares into the middle distance between them both. “You think we need to have an argument?”
When other people vocalize it, the fear sounds so very stupid, and to some degree Sokka knows it is. But if conflict is healthy, productive even, and he and Suki are in such perfect harmony that he can’t figure out if that’s a good thing or not. It sounds like such a good thing, but it’s the kind of good thing that comes at the end of a rom com, and Sokka’s always been pretty sure there’s no way rom com couples stay together forever after their movie ends.
And, okay, it’s only been six months, but he kind of thinks he’d like to spend forever with Suki.
“Uh, well, not specifically!” He says quickly, shaking his head. He doesn’t want to fight with her, but he does feel like he should , and when he worries about things it’s so easy to fall into spirals of ‘what ifs’ and worst case scenarios. “I just… wanted to know if it’s something you were thinking about too. If we should fight, or not.”
His incredible talent for putting his foot in his mouth strikes again, and he actually winces at Suki’s reaction; she closes herself off to him and sits at the other end of the sofa, knees up to her chest and a confused look on her face. And not just confused, but a little pissed off, too. (He knows her pissed off face so well, like when the couples on House Hunters don’t pick the house she thinks is right.)
“So you do think we should fight?” She asks, and suddenly he feels put on the spot the way he did back in school when the teacher would call on him and he didn’t pay enough attention to even know what the question was. It feels too warm in here even though he was content with the cozy weight of both Suki and a blanket on top of him just a few minutes ago, and he comes to the realization that he is in deep, deep shit.
-/-
As if he didn’t learn his lesson about asking his most socially incompetent friend for help the first time, Sokka finds himself back at Zuko’s place, considerably more dejected and miserable. Face-down on Zuko’s sofa and questioning all of his life choices that have led to this moment, he’s actually quite proud of the restraint he is exhibiting by not currently screaming into the couch cushion his face is pressed against. Zuko’s been so kind in making him tea (albeit shitty tea) and he’d feel bad in startling his friend.
“That’s rough buddy,” he says, awkwardly grimacing once Sokka is done telling his woe-filled and extravagant tale of how he managed to be so utterly tactless and, by way of wondering if he and Suki should have fought by now, accidentally picked a fight with his girlfriend. “Well… it could be worse.” The shrug that accompanies Zuko’s advice, if Sokka wants to even call it that, makes him feel all the shittier for making Zuko upset—if he fought with her nearly as often as Mai ends up upset with Zuko, he wouldn’t know what to do with himself.
“I know I screwed up,” he admits, because of course he did. He’s been unable to get Suki’s distraught face out of his head in the few days since she (understandably) all but kicked him out of the apartment. “I just don’t know how to make up for it.”
The amount of time it takes Zuko to come up with a good answer for him is not particularly confidence inspiring, but eventually his eyes light up like something brilliant has just struck him. “Oh! It’s just like in Great Comet !” And even more unsurprising than the fact that Zuko’s advice is entirely lost on him is the fact that his advice apparently comes from a musical. Hey, he isn’t Moody Theater Kid Zuko for no reason! “Yeah, it’s like, this girl and her fiance have a whole falling out, but it’s actually a huge misunderstanding and everything and it’s so tragic for everyone involved. Except when I got to see it—”
“Why do they have a falling out?” Sokka interrupts, cutting off Zuko’s attempt to wax poetic about Josh Groban yet again.
“Um… she almost marries someone that isn’t him?”
“Oh, yeah, that’s exactly my situation,” he says, rolling his eyes. “Well, she’s already upset with me, so I’m not sure how that’s supposed to help. What do they do to get back together?”
Zuko gives him something that resembles a smile, however awkward and pained it is. “I don’t think they do. He leaves her, and I never read the book it’s based on.”
This time, Sokka does press his face into the pillow in front of him and scream. “None of that is helpful. How has your uncle not rubbed off on you at all?”
Now that’s an idea, to ask Iroh for help, and why didn’t he think of that sooner? But then, he doesn’t want to air out his relationship woes to the entirety of the Jasmine Dragon’s regular customers, nor does he want to be subjected to the experimental teas that Iroh might be trying out before adding them to the menu.
“You could just wait it out,” Zuko suggests, which might work for Mai who likes her personal space but not for Suki- and certainly not for Sokka, who is clingier than a baby otter-penguin to its mother. Seeing the confusion and apprehension in Sokka’s face, Zuko backtracks immediately . “Or don’t. You could make it up to her somehow!”
Now they’re talking, except Sokka doesn’t know how to make it up to her. Suki doesn’t necessarily like all those cheesy rom-com things like fancy dinners or extravagant date nights. And while Sokka (and his wallet) both love Suki’s lowkey sensibilities and the fact that she’s more a Taco Bell girl than a fancy restaurant girl, he knows that extravagant gifts and a big date night aren’t going to make up for this.
“So what do you do to make it up to Mai when she’s mad at you?” He asks.
Zuko is quiet for a bit. Too long, in Sokka’s opinion, before he finally answers, “A good part of my monthly budget goes towards apology flowers?”
Without missing a beat, Sokka responds with his best John Mulaney impression. “We don’t have time to unpack all of that.” Zuko laughs, at least, but none of it solves his problems. “So you think I should get Suki flowers? And then what?”
“Oh, well, I dunno. She’s your girlfriend.”
That’s it. He’s never asking Zuko for advice again.
-/-
It takes Sokka some time to find a suitable bouquet of flowers to bring to Suki, because the ones at the local supermarket are all wilted, the florist down the street is too expensive, and the only thing he can find at Costco when he uses Dad’s membership card to get in is roses, which are too cheesy for him to use as Apology Flowers. It’s a farmer’s market that finally saves him, with a bouquet full of hydrangeas and some other flowers that he definitely doesn’t know the names of but are pretty anyway.
He isn’t sure whether it’s nerves or the three flight climb to Suki’s apartment that has his heart pounding in his chest when he knocks on the door, but his pulse is racing and the time it takes Suki to get to the door and open it. Sokka thinks he could cry when she finally answers the door, standing there in sweatpants and a tshirt that he bought from Five Below and that she stole from him.
She looks fucking gorgeous.
Framed in the afternoon sun coming through the windows behind her and her hair a messy halo of flyaways and wispy curls, the soft lines of her face look even softer and sweeter in golden hour light. He’s awestruck for a moment, standing there in her doorway with a bouquet of flowers like it’s their first date again and he’s tripping over his words because she’s pretty and witty and Suki and a girl like her should be way out of his league.
“Suki!” He grins, faltering only when he realizes how she doesn’t return his smile. She does raise an eyebrow suspiciously, though, her eyes traveling to the flowers in his hand before back to his face. “I got these for you.”
He holds the flowers out for her to take, and her steel-cold gaze softens as she mutters some curse under her breath. With a tilt of her head, she lets Sokka inside, where he’s careful to remove his shoes while she digs around in the kitchen for a vase. She pops up from behind the counter holding the same Hydroflask she procured on their first date (and he makes a mental note that someday he’ll get her a new one), and fills it with enough water to comfortably hold the flowers.
The silence between them is awkward and unbearable, and Sokka mills about uncomfortably in the front entrance of Suki’s apartment like a fish out of water.
They both open their mouths to speak at the same time, and under other circumstances he thinks it might be the kind of thing that sends them both into fits of giggles. But for now, he shuts his mouth and gestures for Suki to speak instead- and good thing, too, because she doesn’t seem to wait for him at all. “You really think bringing me flowers is going to fix all of this?”
“Yes,” he says, holding for laughter (there is none). “I mean, no! The flowers are just to say I’m sorry. But I’m also going to say I’m sorry, with my words, because I let my anxiety get the better of me and was panicking that we don’t have a normal relationship, and-”
“You don’t think we have a normal relationship?”
He winces, and makes a point to choose his words more carefully. “I was worried about that. And normal’s overrated! I thought it was a bad thing that we don’t fight, when really it’s a good thing that we’re so compatible and we get along so well! Conflict is healthy, but we work everything out before we get to fighting and that’s healthy too. I just let Katara and Zuko’s advice get in my head but our relationship doesn’t have to be like theirs, and… I’m sorry.”
Sokka’s not really sure what else to say besides he’s sorry, and though the words come into his brain faster than he can even process them, wanting to tumble out, he stays quiet until Suki can take all of that in. On the other side of her island counter, she stands silently, chewing on her bottom lip and not quite looking him in the eye. “You know you can talk to me, right? About that kind of stuff? When you’re worried, or upset, or whatever. You don’t have to go to Katara and Zuko, because honestly, Socks?” The nickname makes him smile, just a bit, because it’s a little reminder that everything will be okay. “I think the two of us know our relationship best.”
“I’m sorry, Sukes,” he says again, because he is and he’s not sure there’s much left to say. All he can do is hold his arms out for her and sigh in relief when she walks around the island to put her arms around his middle and bury her face against his neck. “Can you forgive me?”
“Of course I can,” she says, her voice muffled by the way her face is pressed against the fabric of his t-shirt, though he can’t bring himself to ignore the way her voice wobbles and wavers like she might cry. He gently strokes a hand down her back and feels her melt in his arms, and standing there in the warm sunlight with the ambient sounds of her apartment building creating a beautiful little melody around them, everything is, for a long moment, perfect.
And then, he starts laughing.
He’s hysterical, really, the kind of laughter that makes him nearly double over with the effort of it, usually reserved for him laughing at his own jokes but right now crashes over him so suddenly it startles Suki away from him.
“Sokka!” She admonishes, gently smacking his shoulder as laughter comes over him again and he holds his sides to keep himself upright. She doesn’t sound annoyed, though, only confused, and it takes him a good minute to calm down enough to form words at all. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” She asks, but by the time she gets the words out she’s wheezing with laughter and they’re both egging each other on.
“We had our first fight!” He exclaims, suddenly pulling her into him for a hug. “We actually had our first fight over whether or not we should’ve had a fight. That is so like us.” She laughs too, and they’re both standing in the kitchen laughing their asses off and being so loud that he’s worried her neighbors are going to be mad over the noise.
“I can’t believe you,” Suki wheezes, still laughing and having to hold onto his shoulder to steady herself. “No, no, actually, I can believe you, because this is exactly something you would do. Only you would be so excited for us to have our first fight.”
“It’s a milestone!” Sokka proclaims, his arms around her waist to lift her up to seat her on the counter. He steps between her legs, hands on her hips, and he can’t help the cheeky grin on his face when he leans in to kiss her. “Besides, you know what this means.”
“It means that in the future you’ll remember this conversation and realize that you can just talk to me about things instead of letting them fester until we have an argument?”
“Even better!” He says, and when he kisses her this time he can just feel her realize what he’s going for. “Now we get to have make up sex!”