Chapter Text
“I love you.”
The words are out before she realizes she’s opened her mouth.
With a short gasp, Ty Lee pulls back, just far enough to see blue eyes growing wide, pupils dilated in the moonlight.
“…you make it so easy for him. You're not a challenge. You're a tease. It's not like he actually cares who you are.”
Azula’s derisive chiding, now years old, chews into her thoughts. She wants to throw herself off Sokka’s lap and sprint away, flee across the sand and keep running until she’s made a circuit around Ember Island. By then, maybe the shame will have worn off, and she can bring herself to face him without feeling like a fool.
(This is the first time she’s ever said those words to any boy, ever. This is the first time she’s ever felt strongly enough to say them, voluntarily or not.)
His arms don’t move. They’re still around her, holding them close in the beach chair. She’s not going anywhere unless she chi-blocks him.
At least three whole seconds pass, the longest of Ty Lee’s life. Tears start to prickle around her eyes. She waits for Sokka to stumble through a half-hearted response. ”Yeah…I like you too.” Any moment, his body language will shift, only a matter of inches, but enough to signal that he’s uncomfortable with the new commitment.
What hurts the most is the persistent hope that he won’t. She wants to believe he likes her, loves her, and enjoys her company for more than how she looks in her swimsuit.
(True, she did dig it out of the back of her closet for him. It’s not as if she wasn’t going to pull out all the stops.)
“That makes two of us.” She stares at him like he’s speaking the ancient dialect of the Sun Warriors. It doesn’t sound like a rejection. It’s not what she’d been hoping for either. She’s not sure what she heard until Sokka’s mouth breaks into a grin. “I love you too.”
Ty Lee throws herself into the kiss, fiercely enough to knock them off the beach chair and into the sand.