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Zuko has an assortment of scars covering his body. There are the scars from childhood, scraped knees and elbows, ‘accidents’ caused by Azula, and punishments from teachers and masters. Then there were the scars from after his banishment. Many of them are scars as a result of the years of fire bending practice with his uncle and the others on his ship. Others are from random battles with pirates and other soldiers as a result of being the banished prince on the run. There are also scars from his stint in the north pole, his ship exploding and dragging himself through freezing cold hell. But then there are the scars riddled across his arms, hips, thighs. little white lines that are obviously self inflicted.
Of all his scars, those are the ones he is most ashamed of. He is forced to hide them in public outings as the Fire Lord. The scar across his face represents the banishment by his father, being branded as a failure. But these scars? They are his own personal branding of failure.
They make others uncomfortable. Uncle gets a pained look in his eyes every time he sees them. His friends' gazes always stare a little too long, and Zuko can only guess what everyone is thinking. Maybe they think it’s disgusting, shameful, selfish. Zuko thinks so too.
Sokka is the only one that brings it up outright. They are dating now, so they see parts of each other that no one else does. Zuko has never had this kind of intimacy with another person, not even during his three year long relationship with Mai.
They are both naked, sweaty, and sprawled out on Zuko's fancy king sized bed. Sokka spends more time here than in his own Ambassador guest apartment just down the hall, the room riddled in blue, and little knick knacks, and notes. An organized mess that is so clearly Sokkas.
“Where did you get this scar?” Sokka asks. He has been running his fingers across Zuko's body for the better part of five minutes now. Zuko himself had closed his eyes, relaxed from the events prior.
Sokka's thumb is pressed on his right side in the middle of his ribs. Zuko cracks his eyes open and gazes down, the scar in question is no bigger than the end of a thumb, marked in a distinct X shape.
“The Yuyan Archers shot me with an arrow,” Zuko says quietly, almost relieved that that was the scar he was asking about.
Sokka hums and rolls over so that he is on his stomach, he scoots further down the bed so that he is face level with the scar. His thumb gently runs across it a couple of times, feeling the ridges of it before bringing his lips to it. The touch of warm lips on his scar makes Zuko flush, a feeling closely related to embarrassment fills his body.
“What about this one?” Sokka had brought his hand further up, to a small circular burn just under his peck. It's one of those scars from his childhood that he only knows through stories told by his mom.
“Azula did that when she first firebent. I was holding her and her finger lit on fire. She pressed it against my chest.” It was an accident, but it seemed to outline their relationship to this day. Azula hurts and burns, even on accident, and Zuko accepts.
Another kiss, Zuko twitches when he feels Sokka's teeth scrape it briefly; it makes goosebumps crawl across his skin. Sokka scoots all the way down the bed now, his face in line with Zuko's feet. To get at this level with the Fire Lord is a from of submission, though he is sure that is not Sokka’s intent now. He gazes at both of Zuko's feet, kissing the scar on the bottom of his left foot, the exit wound of the lightning scar across his chest. Zuko has to resist kicking his foot out of Sokka's hand, the soft touch tickling him. If the moment didn’t feel so heavy, maybe Zuko would have giggled. Sokka doesn’t ask where that scar came from, he knows the story all too well. Jumping in front of Katara during his Agni Kai with Azula had been terrifying at the moment, but he finds now that it is a scar he can be proud of. He saved his friend. He saved Sokka’s sister and Aangs life partner. He would get shot with lightning a million times over to save her all over again.
Sokka seems to be mapping out Zuko’s body with his fingers, marking any imperfection with his own lips. It makes Zuko feel unsettled, but loved. So, so loved. Warm lips touch a barely there scar on the bottom of Zuko's other foot, the result of stupidly jumping into a too shallow pond and slicing the bottom of his foot with a sharp rock when he was eight, maybe nine. The warmth that fills his gut now almost reminds him of how his mom scooped him into her arms afterward, wrapping his foot up with a discarded sock and carrying him close to his body to the palace healer.
Sokka’s thumb pauses on three scars just above the arch of Zuko’s foot. They are less than an inch long, one right after the other in thin, straight, lines. They match the other self-harm scars randomly placed about his body. Sokka kisses the area three times, “why here?”
Zuko is quiet for a second, he wants to shrug and move on, but that would feel almost like lying. He doesn't lie to Sokka. “I wanted to feel them, a punishment for every step I took.”
“You don’t deserve to be punished. Then or now,” Sokka says, but he doesn’t dwell on it further. He moves up Sokka’s legs, kissing every miniscule spot from scarred dragon-mosquito bites to more thin white lines behind his calf. There is another pause at the large burn scar on Zuko's right calf, he tells Sokka about it before he even gets the chance to ask, “from when I ran into the boiler on a war ship.”
Sokka kisses it slower, it's big so he spends more time there, tongue running along the outer edges of the scar. It had been a little less than a year ago when it happened, so the tissue there is more sensitive. Zuko almost wants to cry at the soft touch, but he manages to hold it in. It doesn't hurt, but this is the first time someone has touched it like this.
Sokka spends a lot of time on his knees. They are scrapped up to high heaven. He fell a lot as a kid and was pushed around too by Azula and her little girl gang. His father resented him for being such a clumsy boy, but a part of Zuko feels like Sokka is healing him.
There are more white lines on the crook of each knee, five on each side. He doesn’t ask why like the previous ones, even though they aren’t conventional places for self-inflicted wounds. He just kisses, five for each knee. Zuko suddenly has the urge to apologize, and they aren’t even at the worst ones yet. If he apologized for every self-harm scar on his body, they would be there all night.
Sokka runs his index finger along the slash on Zuko's thigh and actually smiles. Zuko smiles too. Over the last couple of years, Sokka had gotten better at sword fighting to the point where they are equally matched, in fact Sokka is almost better. This scar is from the time Sokka managed to get Zuko on the ground. Zuko wasn’t used to losing, but he liked losing to Sokka if only to see the huge grin light up his face and to hear the easy laugh. Zuko hid the wound from Sokka for a long time, because he knew that he would feel guilty about actually hurting him.
“I was so mad at you for this,” Sokka says quietly. Zuko twitches slightly at the feeling of Sokka’s warm breath near the sensitive skin of his inner thigh.
“I like it,” Zuko interrupts before Sokka can get into another rant about how if Zuko had told him about it they could have just used Katara’s magic healing balm and maybe it wouldn’t have even scarred at all.
They’ve reached Zuko's upper thighs and hips. It is a warzone of scars all self inflicted, some of them handprints where Zuko had pressed his burning palms into his own thighs, others the usual thin lines even, small and one after the other after the other. A couple of them run deeper and longer, more erratic. All of them faded, it’s been years since he had hurt himself in such a manner, but sometimes he feels like the urge may never go away.
Sokka spends a lot of time there. He seems determined to press his lips to every scar. There was a point in his life where Zuko had hurt himself every day for nearly a year; the scars seem endless, but Sokka doesn’t care. Zuko finds himself crying, he brings his arm to cover his own eyes. He doesn’t want Sokka to know how much this is effecting him, but for much of his life, Zuko felt unloved. He felt as if he didn’t deserve love, and here Sokka is, loving every part of him. Even the fucked up, gross parts of himself that Zuko still hates.
Sokka notices, he brings his hand up to Zuko’s intertwining their fingers together and bringing his hand back down onto the bed. “I want you to watch me, Zuko.”
Zuko chokes and flushes. It’s so much like the times they have made love, where Zuko would close his eyes in a mixture of embarrassment and pleasure and Sokka would hover above him saying look at me baby, I want you to watch as I take you apart. Sokka is taking him apart now, too, but in a totally different way. He looks down at Sokka, who is mouthing at a series of scars across Zuko’s left hip. He finds that his hips and thighs are slick with Sokka’s wet spit and pink because of scraped teeth. How can Zuko be ashamed when Sokka has marked him so well?
Sokka is back up to his abdomen, he pecks the scar that started it all, the little X from the arrow, and spends a long time on the scar on his chest from Azula’s lightning. It branches off across his stomach and is so sensitive, but Sokka’s fingertips are feather light so it doesn’t hurt him at all.
There are a series of scars in the middle of his chest, in between his pecs where he always imagines his heart beating. The aching there is present even now, but not because he is in unfathomable emotional pain, but because he feels so loved he doesn’t even know what to do with himself. Sokka had kissed these scars a lot before tonight, he had an obsession with Zuko’s chest.
“Why do you…” Zuko doesn’t know how to ask his question. He is all flushed and hazed. Sokka pauses his kiss to look up at Zuko curiously, bringing his hand up to Zuko's face to wipe the tears from his cheeks.
“Why do you like them so much?” Zuko knows that ‘like’ may not be the right word, but he doesn’t know what the right word would be when Sokka shows so much affection to his chest so often.
Sokka smiles and brings his lips back to his chest, “I feel your heart beat here. I can feel it racing when you are right there on the cusp. I feel it skip a beat when I touch you. I feel it slow after you cum. I love your heart, it tells me everything.”
Zuko squawks and blushes even more. He feels like Sokka has torn him open, every part of Zuko is Sokka’s. Sokka laughs a little at his reaction but moves onto his collarbone,
Zuko's arms are riddled with scars too, though not nearly as bad as his hips and thighs. There is a puncture wound on the top of his shoulder, more self harm scars just above the crease of his armpit then scattered down the inside of his arm. Scars from where Zuko picked at bug bites, a nasty habit he still does sometimes. Sokka kisses his scraped elbows and the battle scars on his forearms.
Sokka takes his calloused hands into his own, a gesture that has been done a million times before. He kisses each fingertip and kisses the scars on the outside of his hand, two cuts crossing over each other from a cooking accident.
Then, as if saving the best for last, Sokka lines his face with Zuko's. His most prominent scar that covers half his face is his first victim, Sokka licks the bottom of the scar. It’s probably salty from dry tears, and presses his lips against Zuko's ruined ear. The scar hurts sometimes from the phantom pain of melting skin and nerve endings that never properly healed. It doesn’t hurt now, though, Zuko relishes in the softness of Sokka’s lips against his scar. Sokka moves to the other side of his face, to the eyebrow that split when his ship exploded during the raid up north. And finally, finally, Sokka’s lips are on his own. A long kiss reiterating all of his affections, telling him over and over and over again I love you, I love you, I love you.
“Thank you,” Zuko whispers. Thank you for loving all the pieces of me that I hate.