Work Text:
Zuko doesn't mean for it to happen. He isn't even quite sure how it did. One second they're sparing (because Sokka is adamant at becoming the best swordsmen he could possibly before Sozin's comet hit), and the next Zuko has him pinned down and Sokka is kissing him. And Zuko tries to pull away, he really really dose, but Sokka's lips are so nice and warm and chapped and there's a sword (not that Zuko really minds the sword. In fact he's rather of the opinion that all kisses should involve swords). When it's over, Zuko's adamant- it was a one time thing, a heat in the moment jolt of electricity that neither of them truly meant.
And yet it keeps happening.
In hidden arcovers of the western air temple, on secluded beaches of ember island. In the white lotus camp, where Zuko's uncle is in the Angi forsaken tent next to them! And after every single time, after Sokka's touch had lit him on fire and they had kissed until their lips were swollen, Zuko swears that it will never happen again. And every time Sokka smiles and say "last time. promise".
But that doesn't stop him from pulling Zuko behind crates and into empty tents when no one is looking.
"Are you afraid to die?" Sokka asks the night before the comet arrives. They lay on the grass just outside of camp, hair damp and dewy, stars shinning bright over their heads. Sokka's hands, rough and calloused and grounding, are clasped within Zuko's own.
"No." Zuko says, a bit to quick, a bit to sharp. Then, he sighs "I just....I don't want to be. I want to face my death with bravery and honor."
"Is that why you would always jump so quickly into battle? Ya' know, back when you were chasing us; because you wanted to be brave?"
"Yes." Zuko breaths, barely a ghost of a whisper.
"My dad says it's okay to be afraid, that doing things even though you are scared is what makes you brave, not how big and strong you are."
"It that case I must be the bravest person you know." Zuko jokes, and Sokka just gives him a look
"Yes." The Water Tribe boy says plainly, "You are." And he leans in for a kiss.
"This is the last time," Zuko whispers, before he makes their lips connect.
"Yup," Sokka promises, "Last time."
But that doesn't stop him from sending Zuko off the next day with a very public kiss on the cheek. This time, Zuko doesn't mind all too much because when he's fighting Azula, it's that kiss that reminds him to be brave.
After the coronation, things shift. They have too, for Sokka's own good.
He doesn't understand this, but then again Sokka has never understood what Zuko intrinsically knew- that they can't be together. That they can't be anything more than friends.
Sokka is, of course, indignant at this.
"You're the Fire Lord." He says. "You can do whatever you want now!" and Zuko has to explain to him that maintaining a close public friendship with an ambassador from another nation will cause a diplomatic crisis. Everyone will thinks he's favoring the Water tribe- the Earth Kingdom will be pissed, Zuko's advisors will be pissed. It might even start another war!
Before, they couldn't be anything more than friends. Now, Zuko explains, they can't even be that.
"It'll just be temporary," He assures, "Until the political hostility dies down a bit and it doesn't look like I'm playing favorites."
"I don't know," Sokka says. "I've heard pretending to be pissed at someone makes pretty good foreplay." And Zuko should slap him, but instead he kisses him.
Mai is his.... well Zuko doesn't really know what Mai is, they have yet to put a label on things. But it still feels wrong to be with Sokka when Mai is the one by his side at court. And every time Sokka lays a hand on his thigh under the table where no one can see, or slips into his chambers late at night, Zuko feels a jolt of wrong wrong wrong crushing through him. But he and Mai aren't anything (he and Sokka aren't anything either, but that feels different) so it must be fine.
It is fine, for awhile.
Until one night, when Sokka is tracing swirling sings on the fire-bender's skin, he leans in and whispers: "What are we?" and Zuko just freezes, because he doesn't know how to explain to Sokka that they aren't anything.
"I-Friends." He stutterers out, and Sokka just stares at him.
"Friends don't kiss."
"Mai and Ty lee do sometimes." He says. Sokka gives him a look.
"Maybe they're not really friends either." He says, propping himself up with one muscular forearm. Zuko scoffs.
"Of course they are- what else would they be?"
"Lovers" Sokka says (like us he wants to add). Zuko sighs- he doesn't understand why he has to keep explaining this.
"Or," He says, snuggling close to his favorite ambassador. "They're just best friends."
"Like us?" Sokka says sadly, and Zuko nods. Finally, he thinks, Sokka gets it. And then Sokka's lips are on Zuko's, kissing him passionately. As if, if he tries hard enough he can forever banish the word "friends" from Zuko's lips.
Zuko and Mai get engaged on a cool spring day, when the fire lilies are just beginning to bloom. She is the one to propose, which is unconventional, but then again everything Zuko and Mai do is unconventional- they had just decided they were dating less than a month ago (well really, everyone in the court assumed so anyway, so really they had just decided not to bother correcting it). And as unconventional as it is seeing a women get down on one knee, the proposal is just sort of the natural conclusion of things- everyone knows it. Zuko needs heirs (for the good of the nation, as the sages kept reminding him) and Mai, as beautiful as she is, isn't getting any younger.
Sokka finds out through a courtier before Zuko can tell him. The look he gives the Fire Lord is withering and broken and Zuko wants to breakdown and cry right then and there.
"It was always going to be her wasn't it?" Sokka asks, and Zuko doesn't respond to that, because logically both of them know knows the answer is yes. Mai can give him heirs. Sokka can't. It should be simple (why doesn't it feel simple?).
"I thought...." Sokka's voice breaks, and Zuko wants to disappear into the floor. "I thought if I loved you heard enough you could change your mind. I thought you loved me too." He's crying now, silently. Zuko wants to rush forward and wipe those tears away, to shout that he does love him. But Zuko cannot love Sokka (its for the good of the nation, he reminds himself) and so he does not.
"Katara said you would come around, that you just needed time. But Tui and La I gave you so much time Zuko! So. Much. time!!"
Its for the good of the nation, Zuko reminds himself as Sokka's face shifts from despair to anger, as he throws his arms up in furry. "Did this.... did I even mean anything to you?!" he screams, voice filled with rage.
It means everything, Zuko thinks, you mean everything. But he can't get the words out (maybe its for best that he can't), and so he's forced to watch as the boy with the striking blue eyes and the wolf tail and the mind he loves so much turns and walks away from him.
The next day, Sokka accepts a position on the Republic City council. He does not come to the wedding.
Three years later, when Zuko's daughter is born, they name her Izumi. It means water.
Zuko lets Mai tell everyone it's for the fountain.
When the two are well into their thirties, Sokka becomes chief of the Water Tribes, unifying the south and the north under one crown. Zuko isn't quite sure how it happens; he knows that chief Arnook didn't have any heirs, and he knows that, long ago, Chiefs were chosen through a set of trials rather than through a line of succession. But he isn't quite sure if Sokka completed those trials or if he was just sort of..... appointed.
He asks Katara about it once, and she fixes him with that withering glare she gives him every time the subject of her brother comes up.
"If you want to know," She says, and Zuko can tell she's fighting hard to keep her tone neutral. "You can always reach out." Zuko almost laughs.
The day Aang dies the world goes still. People move slower. Birds stop singing. The air acolytes refuse to wear anything but black.
But Zuko doesn't have time to grieve. He orders the fire sages to the north pole to aid chief Sokka in the search. He knows that Water Tribes haven't had to search for an avatar in over 500 years, that many of the records have been lost to time. He hopes his nation, the nation that caused such imbalance, can be of aid.
The letter Zuko receives back is six words long and dripping with venom. "I didn't ask for your help." Sokka doesn't even need to sign it for Zuko to know who it's from. But the fire sages remain. And they must help, a little, because a few weeks later the avatar is found; a little girl from the same village Sokka was born in.
When the two see each other at Aang's funeral, they don't speak.
When the avatar is four, she gets kidnapped. Angi, Zuko isn't even sure how that's possible- by all accounts, she's already a prolific earth bender, a prodigy in her own right. And even if that wasn't true (Zuko is certain it is- he's lived long enough to know the avatar is capable of anything) the white lotus was meant to be protecting her!
Katara explains (it's her who has to explain because Sokka refuses to even look in Zuko's direction), that the group who kidnapped her is an offshoot of the white lotus dedicated to sewing chaos, that they have accomplished this through spies on the inside. As she talks, Zuko faintly wonders if his father knew about this group. It's sounds like a very Ozi thing to do, kidnapping that avatar and molding them into a weapon. It's certainly better than just killing them like Sozin tried to do, because this way you didn't have to worry about the issue of reincarnation. He says as much (because even after fifty years he still hasn't learned to keep his mouth shut) and Sokka scoffs.
"Figures you would know about capturing the avatar" He spits.
For a split second, Zuko's feels like he's sixteen again, trying desperately to be good. But he's not sixteen (he hasn't been for a long time), and he is good, or at least he thinks he is- the guilt he feels every time he looks Sokka in the eyes says otherwise (he remembers, faintly, the blue eyed boy once telling him he's the bravest person he knows. Zuko isn't sure he believes that anymore).
"Well." Zuko says flatly. "I am the fields leading expert."
"And that," Katara declares shooting Sokka a glare that is clearly meant to remind him to to behave, "Is exactly why we need you."
It turns out that all Zuko's avatar tracking experience is rendered almost completely unnecessary; the Red Lotus aren't even trying to keep a low profile. It's a brutal battle, one that almost saws Kya's leg off and ends with Sokka in a coma, but they get the avatar back unharmed and that's what matters.
And if Zuko refuses to leave Sokka's side until he wakes up, well, maybe that matters too. And when, finally, Zuko sees the piercing blue eyes of his old friend staring back at him after days and days of nothing, the words I love you are on the tip of his tongue.
He stays silent.
Two weeks later, Sokka's injuries get the better of him.
Years later, the new avatar comes to him. She asks about Sokka (spirits knows why), and Zuko tells her.
"Do you regret it? She asks.
"My uncle used to tell me the best thing one could do with his life is to love another. I should have listened." The avatar frowns- apparently, she does not like that answer.
"Did you love him?" She presses.
And Zuko, hesitantly, breaths out a small "Yes."
It's the first time he's ever even dared say it. She nods like that solves everything, like she's just put something together.
"Korra," He calls as she turns to leave-its the first time he's ever called the avatar by her name. "If this girl's worth it, don't let anything stop you. Not president Raiko. Not your teachers. Not the spirits themselves. Please," He begs, voice barely a whisper now, "Learn from my mistakes."
Sokka once healed Zuko's hand under the stars and told him he was the bravest boy he knew. And Zuko knows that must've been a lie, because if he really was brave he would've told Sokka he loved him. He would've shouted it from the rooftops, damn the need for a secure dynasty, damn the peace between all four nations.
If Zuko really had been that brave, he would've said those three words every day.
Zuko never told Sokka he loved him; he was too stupid, too afraid. But he did tell Sokka's granddaughter and that has to count for something.