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Sometime in the middle of the second quarter (or first or third or fourth for all the attention she’s been paying to the game) Mai spots him browsing through the kitchen again.
But to spot would imply that Sokka is a fuzzy presence on the periphery rather than the least boring thing at this party by a wide, wide margin. For the better part of a year, she’s found herself observing the slant of his crooked grins, his unhinged facial expressions, the way his voice leaps and dives when he’s in the middle of telling a story—all while sidestepping the clear conclusion that her observations are more than clinical.
Mai has tried to rationalize that he’s Ty Lee’s type anyway, a charmingly cheesy jokester with dreamy blue eyes and just the right amount of muscle on his limbs, but she may as well braid her hair and take up gymnastics for all the good it’s done. There’s no denying she has a crush, and it’s proven to be a stubborn one.
So there’s really only one thing for her to about it.
“Enjoying the game?”
He perks up—jumps a bit, really—and yanks his powdered sugar-coated fingers away from the polar bear puppy chow his sister brought. The look on his face is priceless: just a little guilty at having gobbled down most of the bowl, and fairly alarmed at having been caught in the act. But that softens when his eyes settle on her standing there, smirking at him with her arms crossed in mock judgment.
“The game? The game! Of course, the game. The big game. Yeah, real good stuff. Instant classic. Total nail-biter.”
She hums quietly, musingly, and spares a look at the massive TV mounted at the other end of Toph’s condo (an amenity which rarely sees use, she can safely assume) for the first time since the game started.
“Looks like a blowout.”
“Oh, yeah. I guess it is.”
“Not much of a nail-biter, then.”
“Nope. No nails bitten.”
“Kinda boring, actually.”
“No kidding.”
When she turns back to him, he’s in the process of stuffing an entire doughnut in his mouth. His cheeks swell to accommodate the excess, bulging like that of a beavermunk. Once he’s physically capable of sealing his lips again, his mouth begins to move with all the methodical certainty of a washing machine, chewing and chewing until he swallows the entire glob of pulverized dough in a single gulp.
Tutored as a child to have world-class etiquette, Mai knows she should be offended by the sight. She is, instead, rather impressed.
Sokka ogles the surviving doughnuts for another few seconds before breaking out of his food trance, wincing in shame as he realizes she bore witness to the annihilation of an innocent pastry.
“Something tells me you’re not that interested in the game,” she drawls, noticing a smudge of chocolate icing loitering around the corner of his mouth. He catches her gaze, consciously or not, and swipes it away with the back of his hand.
He throws a glance of reconnaissance out to the sitting room where their friends are lounging around, fixated on the game or chatting among each other. Dipping his head low in decidedly conspiratorial fashion, he whispers, “If I told you that I don’t give a ratviper’s shit about earthbenderball, you wouldn’t think I was a loser, would you? I mean, I’m still a red-blooded Water Tribe man—I love hockey and hunting and manly outdoor stuff! But this? A bunch of dudes running into each other again and again for sixty minutes of playtime, stretched over four hours? I can’t get into it for more than a down at a time. My attention span just isn’t there. So…I’m really here for the food. And the company, sort of.”
Mai tilts her head, noting that out of all the company present—his sister, Aang and Toph, Zuko and Azula and Ty Lee, as well as a motley cast of colorful characters that includes a guy with a hideous mustache and some tool chewing a stalk of grain—she is the only one whose company he is currently in.
“Well, if you told me all that,” she replies, “I might be obliged to reveal I feel the same way.”
That piques his interest. Both eyebrows raised, his mouth tugs into a smile that goes far beyond mere fondness for a friendly, second-degree acquaintance. He leans in closer, near enough that Mai catches chocolate and teriyaki jerky on his breath—which should be revolting, but has quite the opposite effect—and murmurs so lowly that their exchange instantly becomes clandestine.
“Do you want to, you know, sneak out and do something else?”
“What sort of something else?” she hisses back.
“Like…I dunno…an activity, I guess?”
It’s her turn to raise an eyebrow—but just one.
“What sort of activity do you have in mind?”
“Well…hmm…lemme think. I have to give Katara a ride home after the game, so we can’t just drive off and run around town, which does seriously limit our options...but…Toph has a pool!”
Her second eyebrow joins the first.
“Between the two of us, only one grew up in the South Pole, and it’s barely forty degrees out there—not swimming weather by most people’s standards. And I didn’t exactly bring my bathing suit, either.”
At that, his eyes go distant, as if the sugar-induced brain fog from eating fistfuls of puppy chow is suddenly hitting him like a freight train.
With a twelve year-old brother back home, Mai is familiar enough with the general processes of the male mind to perceive what’s going on inside his head: her use of the words, ‘my bathing suit,’ sent him on a cognitive detour away from their discussion and towards a faraway beach. If she could get a glimpse, she would probably find herself sashaying across the surf wearing considerably less than she is now, about to join him under a palm tree for some canoodling.
It’s not the worst image in the world, not at all—but there’s a long way for them to go before anyone starts planning a tropical honeymoon. All the more reason to keep the momentum rolling.
“Any other ideas?” Cocking her hip, she leans against the kitchen counter.
“Um, uh, yeah—plenty of ideas,” he sputters, blinking hard. “If you don’t want to go swimming…I suppose we could still head outside and check out what Toph’s keeping in her shed these days. There’s always something whacky in there!”
“Whacky…like, say, a weed-whacker?”
“That’s the first thing that came to mind, yes, but it’s not the only thing in the shed.”
“Hmm…alright then. Show me.”
They nonchalantly step over to the coat closet. Sokka zips up his puffer vest, she slips on her cropped jacket—chosen primarily because it matched nicely with her crimson turtleneck and black ripped jeans, an ensemble intended to catch the eye of a certain Water Tribe boy, not follow him outside into brisk winter weather.
Which is precisely what she does anyway. The two of them sneak over to the patio door, carefully monitoring their friends all the while. At the start of the next snap, Sokka takes the chance and slides the glass door open, holding it for her just long enough to close again when the quarterback throws the ball.
Perfect timing, Mai has to admit.
“Whew…no one saw us,” he sighs. “C’mon, this way.”
She follows him past the pool, the placid water indistinguishable from a solid block of ice. Starting at three feet on the shallow end, the floor slopes down to five and a half at the other, where a diving board hangs over the edge. The water is probably heated, too, but the air temperature would still make swimming a miserable experience.
The path takes them to the corner of the yard by the high picket fence, home to a tall storage shed.
“There’s a padlock,” she points out, preparing herself for disappointment.
“A combination lock,” Sokka quips, winking at her over his shoulder, “which yours truly knows the code for.”
(Mai reviews his wink about fifty times in the next two seconds before getting ahold of herself.)
“Why would Toph have a combination lock for her shed?”
“Well, I don’t think she mows her own lawn—or does the landscaping, either.”
“Fair.”
In a dramatic flourish, he throws the doors open, standing aside for her to get a look herself. There’s the lawnmower, hedge clippers, rakes and shovels and hoes, along with a weed-whacker and edger. Gloves and safety glasses hang from wall hooks alongside some smaller hand tools. Besides several sharp instruments, she isn’t impressed with what the shed has to offer.
“Is this it?”
“If you’re asking whether there’s a second shed, no. There is not.”
“I’m asking how you expect us to entertain ourselves with a bunch of gardening tools.”
She glances over to see Sokka stroking his chin, eyes sweeping over the interior of the shed. While he does have an understated spontaneous streak, he never does anything without a plan—so she expected there to be some planned spontaneity driving this venture.
“Aha! There it is!” He ducks into the shed, stepping over the lawnmower and lunging past the weed-whacker, then carefully slips by the rack of shovels and rakes to get to an inconspicuous plastic tub buried in the back.
Following a great deal of effort—as well as grunting, grumbling, and cursing—he manages to retrace his steps while lugging the tub along, nearly tripping over the mower in the process.
“Alright, let’s see if…” He sets it onto the pavement and pulls open the latches, then flips off the lid. “Jackpot!”
“Like I said before,” she drawls, deadpanning at the contents: an arsenal of water guns, all shapes and sizes, “it’s forty-something degrees out here. This weather may be balmy where you come from, but it never falls below sixty in Caldera. We should go back inside and finish off the puppy chow.”
“Oh, I intend to…but only after…” Sokka trails off as he continues rummaging through the tub, down on one knee. Whatever he’s looking for, it’s buried deep beneath Toph’s cache of super-soakers and water pistols. “…we have an old-fashioned duel!”
Rapiers and flintlock firearms both flash through Mai’s head before he stands back up and presents her with a small paper carton. She flicks the lid open, revealing the colorful contents.
“I wouldn’t call this an old-fashioned duel,” she says, playing coy with a subtle little smirk. “But it is a brilliant idea. Count me in.”
The next few minutes are spent in diligent silence. Sokka wraps the mouth of an empty balloon around the spigot, fills it to the size of an orange, pinches the neck and delicately transfers it over to her nimble fingers to be tied off. Louder than anything they might say, though, is the brushing of their hands each time a balloon is exchanged. What should be quick and careless becomes lingering, intimate, like they’re passing an infant between them rather than an inflated rubber sac. It’s probably the most romantic thing Mai has done with anyone in her entire life.
There’s a distinct pang of disappointment when they finish, having filled the bucket with over thirty of her and Sokka’s babies—balloons—plenty of ammo for their duel.
On the back edge of the pool, far from the patio doors and under the shadow of a looming elm, Sokka gently places the bucket on the concrete and offers her a pair of safety glasses borrowed from the shed.
“Believe it or not, I’ve never taken part in a water balloon duel,” she snarks, slipping the glasses over her eyes. “I suppose there are rules?”
“Well, as I am a veteran of countless water balloon duels myself, I can say with some authority that the rules are…something like…um…” Dangling a balloon by its tie, he taps his chin thoughtfully. “…let’s take ten paces in the opposite direction…count to three together…then turn and throw right away. Repeat until we’re out of balloons. Most hits wins!”
“Wins what? I don’t duel without stakes.”
His eyes gleam with mischief in the warm glow of the porch light, mouth stretching into a daring smile.
“If you win, I have to buy you dinner. If I win, I get to take you out to dinner.”
“I’m listening. Dinner where?” she asks, feigning indecision.
“Let’s make it the Hippo Cow—so the stakes are actually steaks.”
She gives his pun an amused snort and starts pulling off her jacket and boots. He follows suit, shedding his vest and sneakers. Each armed with a balloon, they stand back-to-back.
“Ready?” he asks over his shoulder.
“To see you dripping like a wet polar bear dog?”
He barks a laugh as they start their paces.
One. Two. Three.
Four. Five. Six.
Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten.
Mai draws a quick breath to steady herself, preparing for whatever comes next.
“Three…” they call to each other from opposite ends of the pool deck, “…two…one…”
She turns on her toes ninety degrees, sights her target, and releases. Her green balloon zips through the air and nails Sokka squarely in the chest.
“Yikes, that’s cold!” he yelps, examining his watery wound. “I missed you by a mile!”
Sure enough, Mai spots a scrap of yellow rubber clinging to the bark of the elm. A teasing smile winds its way across her lips as she rejoins him at the bucket. “For a veteran duelist, I’m surprised you made the rookie mistake of turning all the way around and giving me your entire front as a target.”
“Hey, I’m rusty,” he mumbles, wearing a lighthearted grimace. “Needed one to warm up.”
“You don’t look warm or rusty. You look cold and wet.”
Actually, with his drenched t-shirt plastered across his chest, clinging to broad pectoral muscles, he looks quite the opposite of cold. Mai keeps that comment to herself, though.
“Hope you’re ready for me to return the favor, then.”
They choose new balloons, turn their backs, and take ten paces. As they count, Mai decides to aim a little lower this time, just to see if Sokka works out his core as often as he lifts.
She’s already admiring his abs in her mind when they pivot and throw—so the sharp impact against her shoulder comes as a surprise. A curse hisses through her teeth at the sting and biting cold; her sweater, suddenly wet and heavy, droops awkwardly off her shoulders.
“Haha! Gotcha! Take that!”
Mai levels a glare across the patio, tempted to challenge him to a duel with Toph’s kitchen knives instead. But her bristling softens when she sees him doing a ridiculous touchdown dance, fists pumping and hips rocking.
“That puts us at 2-1,” he announces, strutting back to the bucket. Even without the score, she can see that his entire shirt is soaked through now—and there are abs to spare down there.
“On to Round Three, then—if you want to keep playing, that is. I don't miss.”
“I guess we’ll find out, won’t we?”
Ten paces and three seconds later, they do. Only when her balloon sails over Sokka’s shoulder does she realize how the shivering interferes with her aim. Her South Pole-grown opponent, however, hits her in the hip.
“All tied up!”
“I know, Sokka. I, too, can do basic math.”
“Sorry, just trying to keep track!”
The following rounds carry on with mixed results. She aims for his center of mass, but when he remembers to start turning only ninety degrees while throwing, the advantage narrows like her target.
But she does manage to stop him from ever taking the lead. Their score jumps from 3-3 to 5-4, then 7-5 to 10-7 over the next ten rounds, and Mai is beginning to like her odds when Sokka lands back-to-back balloons on the side of her thigh. The cold air prickles directly at her wet skin through the openings in her ripped jeans, providing an unpleasant taste of what swimming would be like. While she does return the favor by knocking his safety glasses off his face with the next throw, her full-body shivering does her precision no favors.
With four balloons left in the bucket, they arrive at a 12-12 tie.
“You doing alright?” How he can sound so chipper after taking a dozen balloons to various parts of his body, she doesn’t understand. “You look like a wet cat. An angry wet cat.”
“Trust me—I’m having a wonderful time,” she snarls, baring her teeth like said cat. “And for the record, you look like a wet dog. An unnaturally happy wet dog.”
He beams at that. “Thanks!”
They each grab a balloon, and Mai stalks back to her throwing spot, fighting her cheek muscles to keep the smile off her face.
Truth be told, she is having a wonderful time. This is the most fun she’s had all year—maybe in years. Sokka’s game is simple, creative, and provides just the right amount of thrill; each round, there’s a priceless, surreal moment when both their balloons are airborne and neither of them know who will hit who, and where they’ll be struck. Twenty paces lie between them, but meeting his eyes during that brief rush of adrenaline excites something inside her that she could never put into words.
Like every time before, Mai spins around on the count of three to find his wide grin waiting for her. She might have enjoyed the sight a little longer, even as she releases, if it weren’t for the balloon closing in on her face. It hits just above her brow, breaking across her forehead and soaking her hair.
“Tui’s Tail, are you okay?!”
“I’m fine.” She parts her dripping fringe, pushing it off her safety glasses. Her soggy buns sit heavy on her head, now like a pair of little water balloons themselves. “Did I hit you?”
“Yep, right above the belt—any lower and you would’ve made me a eunuch!”
Mai does want to win, but she’d prefer not to hit him down there. If he ever drops onto one knee for her, assuming it’s not to fill up more balloons at the spigot, they’re both going to want his pair of balloons functioning properly.
“Tied 13-13, then,” she says.
“Yep!”
She trudges back to the bucket, trying to wring out her hair as best she can before the final round. The all-encompassing chill wracking her body is taken for granted at this point. If Sokka proposed another ten or twenty rounds, she wouldn’t object.
“Sure you want to keep going?” he asks, eyebrows slanted in concern.
“There are only two balloons left in the bucket.”
“Yeah, but you look miserable. You know…I’m really sorry for dragging you out here.”
Mai doesn’t pretend to be an empath, but she can tell that he’s feeling guilty, probably anxious that he spent so much quality time hitting her with water balloons over and over.
“Sokka, nothing about this has been miserable. You didn’t drag me out here. I came out because you promised an alternative form of entertainment, and you came through. This has been nice. Really nice.”
“Oh. That’s…that’s great to hear.” His cheeks warm, eyes brightening again. “We could, uh, make it a regular thing, if that’s something you’d like…?”
“It is. How about the parking lot of the Hippo Cow, after you buy me dinner?”
“Ha! You mean after I get to take you out to dinner!”
He scoops the remaining two balloons out of the bucket, handing her the red and keeping the blue for himself. They share a brief, glancing smile before turning to take ten paces for the last time tonight.
“Three…”
Mai inhales slowly, filling her lungs. The stakes may be mere steaks, but the thrill of the throw adds more weight than any prize could.
“Two…”
She holds her breath in. This impromptu date with Sokka has demolished her expectations—not just for dates in general, but of what she thought spending time with him would be like.
“One…”
All at once, she exhales through her nose and turns on the balls of her feet, her soaked socks making a gross squelching sound against the deck—but as she does so, her heavy bangs shift, dropping back over her eyes.
Vision obscured, she goes off muscle memory, releasing when instinct tells her to. Through her wet hair, she barely glimpses Sokka throwing his own balloon. His eyes grow wide as hers hurls towards his face, and he scrambles to duck away.
An instant later, she feels a rather undignified impact to her posterior.
“Victory for the Water Tribe! Drop the confetti! Bring out my trophy!”
“You cheated,” she snaps, hands on her hips. “When did we agree that dodging was part of this? You can’t dodge in a duel.”
“But my feet didn’t move!”
“That doesn’t matter. You ducked like a coward, instead of taking my water balloon to your face like a man. I could have tried to dodge, but you hit me…”
Mai scrunches her brow, confused. The seat of her pants doesn’t feel wet. And it undoubtedly should be. She checks just to be sure—and finds that she’s drier back there than she is anywhere else.
In the corner of her eye, she notices a broken blue balloon lying on the deck about a foot behind her heels, surrounded by a fresh puddle.
“Huh. Doesn’t look like you hit me after all. Given that you cheated and missed, you definitely didn’t win. I did.”
“But I hit you right there!” He jogs across the poolside to join her near the deep end, candidly gesturing to her backside. “I saw it hit you, and…”
“I thought I felt it, but the balloon definitely broke on the ground.”
“It did break on the ground…but…”
“If it broke on the ground, you missed.”
“No! It broke on the ground because…well…” Sokka rubs the back of his neck, struggling to find the right words. “…the balloon bounced off your butt. Which is to say nothing bad about your butt! It’s very nice. Obviously, the balloon would not have bounced off a subpar butt…not that I’ve been observing it closely, of course. I mean, not observing it beyond the normal amount that one happens to do so in the general course of human interactions. Anyway…that’s what happened. The balloon trampolined—er, uh, ricocheted off your butt and hit the ground. And that still counts as a hit. Which means you lost. Sorry.” He concludes with an apologetic shrug.
“I disagree,” she says flatly. “I didn’t take a water balloon to the face, four to the shoulder, six to the torso, two to the leg, and one to the ass—which doesn’t count as a hit—to lose on a cheap technicality.”
(Out of necessity, Mai developed excellent impulse control as a child. Her parents brought her along as a sort of prop to business dinners and fancy charity galas, where she learned to master every muscle in her face and the errant twitch in her fingers.
But Toph’s patio isn’t a business dinner or a fancy gala.)
Without another word, she flashes Sokka with a sly smirk, watching the realization cross his face the moment before she puts both hands on his chest and shoves him backwards into the pool.
“Mai—!” is all he gets out before crashing through the water, disrupting the pristine surface in a single flailing splash. He goes under, sinking to the bottom no different than if he were the lawnmower from the shed.
She stands there patiently, waiting for him to emerge. He’ll probably try to splash her, lob a clever pun or call her a sore loser. And she might be sore from taking so many balloons to the flank, but she’s no loser. If he wants to try claiming a controversial victory, she’ll demand a rematch.
Seconds continue to tick by with no sign of Sokka coming up for air. The rough water has relaxed to neat, concentric ripples stretching out to the corners of the pool, distorting the vague lump on the bottom. The lump does not appear to be moving.
Her intuition tells her it’s a prank. He couldn’t have drowned in water shallow enough for him to stand in—unless he hit his head, of course—but then there would have been blood. It has to be a prank. Sokka is just lurking down there, holding his breath for a freakishly long time, waiting to scare her. The odds that he’s actually dying are negligible.
But not zero.
Mai takes a tentative step forward, then another. She peers over the end of the deck, trying to pick up on whatever he’s doing. Venturing one more step, right to the edge, she finally spots him.
In the blink of an eye, he surges out of the water. There’s a devilish grin on his face, a hand on her ankle, and then Mai is tumbling face-first into the pool herself.
”Sokka, you son of a—!”
She throws out her hands to brace herself, but the impact is just as unpleasant as the balloon she took to the forehead. The water rushes around her, enveloping and swallowing her whole. Her clothes, already soggy and heavy, quickly become sponges in the worst way. Even when she comes up for air, trying her best to tread water in a sweater and jeans, she’s still disoriented and partially blinded by watery vision—though she can tell Sokka is nearby thanks to his roaring laughter.
Eager to avenge herself by giving him a two-handed splash, she stretches her legs to touch the bottom—and in doing so, discovers that she might have misjudged the depth; if her mouth were on her forehead, five and a half feet would be sufficiently shallow; as it is not, she goes under and swallows a mouthful of pool water before her socks brush the bottom.
For the brief moment she spends down there, Mai questions her decision-making. She could be inside right now, perfectly dry and warm and munching on some perfectly tolerable snacks while watching a perfectly boring game. She could’ve continued to sulk over her irrational crush on Sokka, opting to bury it deep down and move on with her life.
But here she is, half-drowning in Toph’s pool, and for some reason she can’t seem to regret a thing.
As she breaks the surface, Mai surrenders to graceless coughing and sputtering. Her arms and legs resume their treading, though not so fluidly as before; the chlorine stings at her eyes as she blinks it away, her vision a foggy blur. Her first thought is to reach for the side, and she does—but her fingers haven’t quite found the concrete when the water shifts around her.
“Need some help?”
Big, strong hands close around her waist, holding her steady and keeping her afloat. Now free to use her own hands again, she stops treading water and parts the wet curtain of hair draped over her face. She draws it back to find Sokka—tall enough to stand with his head above the surface—beaming proudly as if he’s her savior rather than the one who launched her into the pool in the first place.
“What do you say we call it a tie?”
Mai doesn’t particularly care for the concept of ‘ties.’ They are, generally, a boring cop-out, a way to resolve a competition in a way it never should be: no winner, no loser. Just an excess of apathy.
Sokka, though, is anything but boring. In fact, she can’t recall the last time she felt as unapathetic as she does now.
“You think I’ll let you get off that easy?”
She frames his face with her hands, loosely slinging her legs around his waist and crossing her ankles behind his back. When they were filling the bucket at the spigot, and each time she caught his eyes while their balloons were mid-flight, this is what she felt. It’s the same thrill as before, now soft and certain and close.
“Mai…”
Her name rolls off his tongue, full and heavy. She knows he feels it too—the fathomless, wordless longing is written across his blue eyes, where her reflection appears in darkened pupils.
The remaining distance between their faces disappears gradually, then all at once. Their lips brush first, making a languid introduction, before colliding in earnest.
Whatever doubts lingered in the back of her mind, poking and prodding, are swept away the instant Sokka hums against her mouth. She replies with a sigh, resonating down in her ribcage—one of relief, contentment, and subtle giddiness. The chill of the night gives way beneath the overwhelming warmth blossoming in her chest; Mai recognizes that she is deeply, truly happy with where the night has taken her.
Just as she’s beginning to struggle for air, a muffled cheer goes up from inside the house, and they break away at the same time.
“Must be a touchdown,” Sokka gasps, his eyes still on her lips.
“Yeah.” She gently swipes a droplet of water off his cheek with her thumb. “Must be.”
At the sound of the patio door sliding open, the tension shatters, and they both jerk their heads around to see the diminutive blind girl standing over the threshold—and their friends crowded around the windows.
“Hey!” Toph barks, pointing an accusing finger in their general direction. “When you two lovebirds are finished getting it on, you’d better pick up those balloon scraps! I won’t have a bunch of animals choking on garbage and dying on my property!”
The others laugh, a few hooting and hollering—the tool known as Jet, namely—while Sokka’s sister does a melodramatic facepalm. After Toph slams the door closed, they begin wandering back to their seats.
“So…” Sokka murmurs, walking them up the sloped pool floor towards the shallow end. “…should we stay out here and keep tempting hypothermia…or search for a different alternative form of entertainment?”
“Do you still have unfinished business with that puppy chow?” she teases. Her feet could reach the bottom by now, but she’s content to let Sokka carry her a little longer. “We could swipe the bowl and spend the rest of the game soaking in Toph’s hot tub—fully clothed, of course.”
His face lights up, and he gives her another cheeky wink. “Now that sounds like an activity!”