Work Text:
When Zuko gets home there is a cake sitting on the kitchen counter. It is an objectively shitty cake, baked in a disposable aluminum tin and frosted haphazardly with white frosting. “I’m sorry I blacked out, tried to kill you, and almost got us arrested” is written across it in black icing.
Zuko sighs, sets down his briefcase, and goes to find Sokka.
“Feeling better?” he pushes open the door to Sokka’s bedroom. The interior is completely black, but there is a faint rustling noise from the direction of the bed.
“’M fine, didja get your cake?” Sokka slurs, oddly disembodied in the darkness.
“I saw the cake,” Zuko rolls his eyes even though he knows Sokka can’t see him. “It looks terrible.”
“It looks like I feel,” Sokka says.
“Go back to sleep,” Zuko shuts the door a little louder than necessary on his way out, and can’t help but feel satisfied when Sokka groans loudly on the other side of it.
***
He fields several calls from Katara that evening, who becomes increasingly irate when he refuses to give her details of the night before. Finally Aang comes on the phone, making placating noises to her in the background in between words.
“I mean, no one should ever get Sokka that drunk anyway,” Aang says. “She knows it was Toph. He, uh, yeah, he does dumb stuff. Especially when he’s drunk.”
“Did he get you to help with the cake?” Zuko picks morosely at the frosting, poking a hole through the “b” in “blacked out”.
“He might have,” Aang says evasively.
“It’s a terrible cake,” Zuko points out.
“To represent that he’s a terrible friend,” Aang says seriously. “His words, not mine!”
“Right,” Zuko says, shuffling the phone to his other ear as he hears stirring from behind Sokka’s bedroom door. He glances at the clock; it’s almost 7 PM. He’s made dinner, some of the salmon Sokka loves, but covered in capers, which he knows Sokka hates.
So maybe he’s feeling a little passive aggressive. He loves them, and Sokka can deal.
“Is he awake yet?” Aang asks, sounding amused now.
“I think so,” Zuko says, rolling his eyes. Everyone else would think this was funny. Objectively, it probably is. But he’s the one with the black eye, and quite frankly he’d be just fine sticking with just the one fucked up eye, thanks very much. “I gotta go, give Katara my, well, not my love, but, you know what, just tell her something. Something that will make her less mad at me for damaging her brother.” Even though he did more damage to me.
“Katara, Zuko sends his love!” Aang hollers into the background, and he can practically see the pleased smile she must be wearing right now. Aang comes back to the phone, a little breathless with laughter, “she says she’ll accept you as a brother-in-law again now.”
“For the love of god,” Zuko buries his face in his hands. “How many times do I have to tell her I’m not in love with—Sokka!” He drops the phone, accidentally hanging up on Aang.
“Hi,” Sokka somehow managed to make his way all the way across the living room and to the kitchen without making noise, and is standing a little too close for comfort. He also looks like hell, hair sticking up everywhere, livid purple bags under his eyes.
“Hi,” Zuko repeats dumbly.
“You put capers on the salmon,” Sokka has the audacity to look wounded. “You must be really mad at me.”
“You’re lucky I didn’t grind them into a paste and marinate the fish in them,” Zuko mutters. “How much of last night do you honestly remember? And when the hell did you make this cake?”
Sokka seats himself on a stool on the other side of the counter and folds forward onto the granite, chin propped on his forearms. “I made the cake this afternoon with Aang,” Sokka says. “And about last night—“
“Well you definitely covered the basics,” Zuko says blithely, sliding a piece of fish, garnished with several spears of asparagus (which Sokka also hates) across the counter to him. Sokka doesn’t even wait for a fork, instead using his fingers to feed himself. Zuko watches his fingers disappear into his mouth, watches him suck a morsel off his thumb, swallows hard when his tongue darts out to lick something off his finger. Is completely baffled by Sokka’s ability to be attractive even when stupidly hung over and affecting his very best “kicked puppy” face.
“I remember coming home from the club,” Sokka says, having flicked the last caper clear of his final bite. “And I remember…I think I was really upset about something.”
Zuko swallows again, “You were.”
“I don’t remember what,” Sokka says.
Oh thank god.
“But, like, I crawled into your bed? And then was convinced I was in my bed?”
“I no longer believe you were black out drunk if you remember even this much,” Zuko says drly.
Sokka steamrollers on, his eyes going wider and wider as he remembers, “And I didn’t know you were you so I thought there was a stranger in my bed? Did I hit you with a lamp?”
Zuko winces involuntarily.
“Oh god,” Sokka buries his face in his hands. “And then I tried to jump out the window to run away down the fire escape and Mrs. Miller across the alley thought I was an intruder…”
“You have a remarkable grasp of the night’s events,” Zuko starts eating his own dinner, scooping the excess capers from Sokka’s plate onto his own.
“And she called the police, but you were on the fire escape too because you thought I was gonna get myself killed,” Sokka whispers. “And then we didn’t have keys to our own apartment because we were in our PJs and the police didn’t believe us and…”
“Katara came and bailed us out, yup,” Zuko finishes, stabbing Sokka’s asparagus with his fork.
“Oops,” Sokka mouths.
“’Oops’ is the understatement of the fucking century, Sokka,” Zuko says, clearing his plate into the sink.
“Zuko, why was I so upset?” Sokka asks, his forehead creasing. “Did we have a fight?”
Zuko was really hoping that this just wouldn’t come up, that Sokka would let it go, but he sighs.
“Sort of. I don’t know,” he says truthfully. “What’s your explanation for why you ended up at a gay bar with Toph on a Tuesday night?”
“Ummm….” Sokka’s ears turn a very appealing shade of pink, and he looks mortified. “Zuko, are you gay?”
“What?” Zuko actually takes a step back, caught completely unawares by the question. “Does that have something to do with why you picked a fight with me last night?”
“Yeah, no, maybe,” Sokka examines his own cuticles, then chomps viciously down on his thumbnail. Zuko reaches across the counter to smack his hand away from his mouth on instinct. Sokka catches his hand and looks at him somberly, “Zuko, did you get back together with Mai?”
“What? No!” Zuko tries to retrieve his hand, but Sokka has it in a death grip. “Sokka, what is your issue?” His hand is going a little bit numb and Sokka is sort of freaking him out. “What does any of this have to do with anything else have anything to do with whether or not I’m gay?”
“Mai told me—and Toph—“ Sokka pulls on Zuko’s hand so he’s awkwardly sprawled half across the counter. “Shit, I’m too hungover for this,” he releases Zuko, who stumbles back, and walks over to the fridge. He comes back with a beer and pops it open on the edge of the counter, despite Zuko’s protests. “Hair of the dog,” he says, toasting in Zuko’s direction, and takes a sip.
“That doesn’t actually work,” Zuko shoves a mug of water over to him. “You dehydrated idiot.”
“I am an idiot,” Sokka says, frowning, and starts peeling at the bottle’s label with his thumb nails. “All right, I’ll front with you,” he finally says. “Yesterday Azula told me she thought maybe you were getting back together with Mai, so I called Mai—“
“What the fuck would possess you to do that?” Zuko groans, but Sokka ignores him.
“—and she said that you weren’t getting back together, and that you broke up because she’s pretty sure you’re gay,” Sokka says, and all the breath shoots out of Zuko’s lungs at once, “and, like, if I’ve lived with you for all this time and not known you’re gay, it must be because you know how I feel and not wanted me to think I had a shot, which is fine, I get it, I guess I just freaked out a little. But I didn’t want you to know I’d been snooping, so after I yelled at you about—“
“—socks,” Zuko mumbles automatically.
“…I called Toph and told her what happened and she said the only way to get over you was to go get my dick sucked at the closest gay bar,” he says in quick rush. “Which is exactly what happened,” he has the good grace to look a little ashamed, “but then I got so drunk, and you know Toph can’t count my drinks like you do…”
“…she’s blind, what did you expect?” Zuko snorts.
“So I got too drunk, and the rest is history,” Sokka finishes lamely.
“Why you can’t just drink like a fucking adult and keep track of your own alcohol…” Zuko sighs again, walking around the counter. Everything that Sokka said is starting to sink through to him and he feels a little unsteady, but wants desperately to project something akin to calm. He seems to be succeeding, because Sokka is watching him approach with the same expression usually reserved for a gazelle who has frozen in the hopes that the lion slinking towards her is not, indeed, about to pounce.
“Zuko, I swear it’s ok if you don’t want to talk about it, I can handle my feelings, I won’t make it weird,” Sokka starts babbling, his hands rising into the air like he’s trying to surrender. “You can move out if I freak you out, I know you have an important job, and they might not be cool with you being gay, I’m not gonna spread it around, I just—“
But he can’t finish the sentence because Zuko is kissing him, kissing him like he’s wanted to do for years and never had the guts. Because Sokka is Sokka and he’s so effortlessly cool and funny and likeable and hot and he fucking bartends at the hottest gay bar in the city and has a different person in his bed every night and why the fuck would he ever look at Zuko? Zuko realizes that his train of thought just went careening hysterically off the rails, but he doesn’t care because Sokka’s chest is warm and broad and firm under the palms of his hands, and Sokka’s big arms are coming around to cradle him gently to his chest. He feels like the swooning maiden on the front of those terrible romance novels Aang is always reading, but he also doesn’t care, because Christ, if Sokka wants to role play and dress up like a fucking pirate and ravish him, he’ll play along, just as long as he gets to keep kissing Sokka.
Sokka tastes like beer and boy and home and the kiss starts relatively chaste and rapidly spirals, Zuko sliding in between Sokka’s knees and pushing Sokka back against the counter. Sokka’s hands pull Zuko closer until he’s practically on top of him, their kisses openmouthed and needy, and Zuko is gasping into Sokka’s mouth, and Sokka is groaning because Zuko can tell how much he’s enjoying this through his thin cotton sleep pants.
Sokka finally pulls away and drops his hands from Zuko’s ass (Zuko sort of wishes he’d keep them there) to instead grab his hands (Zuko is ok with that as well, it turns out). He leans back into Zuko and rests their foreheads together and says, very seriously, “I really want to bend you over this counter and fuck you senseless, but I’m really hungover and I think that if I don’t drink water and take painkillers, I might actually die.”
“You’re so romantic,” Zuko laughs, wriggling his hand out of Sokka’s grip to card fingers through his hair.
“I am fucking romantic,” Sokka gasps like Zuko has mortally offended him by daring to imply otherwise. “Just you wait. Pretty soon you’ll be so fucking overloaded with cute romantic shit that you won’t even know what to do with yourself. You’re gonna combust into a pile of rainbows and hearts and other pink romantic shit, and dear god stop me, I really need to go back to bed.”
Zuko nods fervently and drags Sokka off the stool.
“Come to bed with me?” Sokka asks plaintively, and Zuko turns around to study him thoughtfully.
“Only if you promise not to attack me with a lamp.”
"I don't make promises I'm not sure I can keep."