Chapter Text
There’s nothing easier than to date the wrong people. Now you might be thinking that that’s a weird thing to say and think. It’s not, at least not for Sokka, because, because, in all honesty, there was nothing more true to him.
See, he had had multiple exes, a lot actually, because something always happened.
His first girlfriend passed away from a very rare disease –of which she had been the only case.
This would be fine on its own, a pretty terrible experience, it hurt, but it was okay after some time.
His next girlfriend lasted the longest, an entire year he dated her, and he was happy, she was a martial art master, beautiful, talented, she taught him better than anyone to be respectful and mindful of others. She came out as a lesbian a day after breaking up with him. That was also fine, he was glad she was getting to discover more parts of herself.
Talking about discovery, it’s at this moment that Sokka had his first boyfriend. He was weird. There were no other ways to put it, it was as if he was always high, even though the guy swore he had never even seen drugs in his life. Sokka broke up with him after four months. Again, on its own, a pretty terrible relationship but nothing crazy.
His friends advised that he wrote down the person, the motive, his thoughts and the time they had been together after a breakup just so he could keep track.
A little extract of this notebook:
Imnek - Turned out to be part of a cult. They would not leave this place. It was not my job to get them out of there, but I called the cops anyways. A month with them.
Sun - Was extremely racist. Did she (will she) ever realise I’m not white? A week with her.
Huang - Had a wife and two kids –new-born twins actually. WHAT IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE? Four months with him.
There were several one-night stand after these relationships, quite a bunch of lonely nights in his apartment as well, a lot of first dates filled with weird questions to avoid the precedent events happening again.
“What do you think of cults?”
“Are you truly single or do you have a secret double life?”
“Do you do drugs on the daily to the point where nobody actually knows how you act when you’re not high?”
“Are you a cat pretending to be human?” –this definitely hadn’t happened to him before, but he preferred to be safe.
“How is your health?” This was probably the safest of them all to ask.
It often made things awkward, and his dates would try and escape pretty quickly, pretending to get an important call or truly inventing any other excuses to get out of there.
In the end, Sokka hadn’t thought he’d date anyone again in a long time. This whole catastrophe that was his love life had lasted long enough, maybe it was time to settle down with thirteen cats to stop the loneliness and his favourite album –wasteland baby by Hozier- to fill in the silence. It wasn't so bad a life if you thought about it.
But this was not the way his sister, Katara, saw things. Three days ago, she had sent quite the cryptic message. Okay, maybe it wasn’t that cryptic, it was actually pretty clear, but he didn’t want a life with no mystery so he liked to imagine.
Basically, from what he remembered, what she said had gone along the lines of:
“We made a new friend at uni, I bet you’d get along very well, istg you need to date him.”
She had also mentioned him being Sokka’s type, this bit worried him more than the rest, because, according to his previous crushes, his type was pretty much “I’M A PROBLEM AND EVERYONE KNOWS IT. ALSO, NO, I WILL NOT SEEK THERAPY.” He just hoped he was a normal guy and not a complete freak –for his sister’s and her boyfriend’s sakes of course, because he wouldn’t go on a date with him anyways, that was the way he had chosen now, he was a changed man.
And then, she had sent a picture. There he was, the same man again. He had changed his mind, old Sokka wasn’t that bad.
What was a bit of a problem, was that, people, nowadays, went out looking like deities descended upon earth and called it normal. Revolting but really, it wasn’t Sokka’s fault and there was nothing he could do, truly a shame.
The picture showed Aang and Katara eating cookies and a stranger sipping on a boba in front of a store.
He had long fine black hair tied back in a messy bun, two strands of hair outlining his face, beautiful golden eyes and a pretty big burn scar on the left part of his face clashing with his smooth white skin. He was wearing a white shirt and a chequered red and brown sleeve-less sweater over it, as well as a simple pair of jeans. Chains were hanging on his hip, attached to his jeans’ side with a flame-shaped keychain clipped onto them. He was also wearing earrings and headphones slung over his neck, where two different necklaces rested as well, a simple fine chain and another one composed of little blue, green and white triangular beads stacked into a repeating pattern.
Now, it was mid-afternoon and Sokka was staring out the window talking as if there was someone for him to speak to, but, of course, nobody was here. Just him. Oh. There was a bird too. He was talking to a bird.
“I mean; I know I probably shouldn’t. It always ends the same, I date, I discover a huge thing about me or them or life, we break up, I cry. And that’s fine, I guess a lot of people go through the same process of course, no love story is bound to last forever. Maybe Aang’s and Katara’s but they’re something else. I wouldn’t want that. A tad bit too hard-core for me. See what I mean? You know, they got their aura read –whatever that means- and they think they’re soulmates now. I don’t really trust carnivals fortune tellers though, to me they’re just in it for the money, they tell you whatever you want to hear or make it vague enough so that you can identify but precise enough so that you feel special. Maybe that’s just me. What do you think?”
The bird tilted its head, pecked once at the ground than looked back at him.
“Couldn’t agree more.”
The bird chirped once, then flew away.
“It was great talking to you. Love that you said goodbye and didn’t just disappear in silence, that was, really, really nice of you.” A few seconds passed. He groaned.
This wasn’t getting him anywhere. He needed a human being to give him advice.
Fortunately, his sister was coming over today, she was dropping off their cats Momo and Appa for Sokka to keep a few weeks. She would be there any minutes now.
They had been having troubles with their landlord, she wanted all the animals gone, because she had had problems in other apartments she owned, apparently, a dog accidentally set fire to a building. Crazy stuff. Aang and Katara had been planning to move closer to where Sokka lived for a few months now anyways, so it wasn’t that much of a problem.
Sokka loved Momo, among his best qualities, you could note for example that he was whimsical, silly and very stupid. He could go on walks that lasted days, and, when he came back, each time, he had gained something. Sometimes, in their group chat his sister would update them on what their wonderful cat had brought back. If he made a mental list of Momo’s best catches, it would go like this:
- A cabbage
- An old sock with ducks embroided on it
- A dusty crown that might have been a kid’s toy at one point in its life
- 20 dollars
- Several dead rats and other rodents (sometimes birds but that happened less often)
- A green handbag full of stuff (it was returned to its owner, thanks to his id’s presence in the bag they were able to find him).
What an impressive cat.
Appa was… Something else. He liked sleeping and eating, most of the time he laid down in the most inconvenient places and that was kind of it. At least he wasn’t hard to cat-sit.
Appa was Aang’s childhood cat, so he was a bit old of course, but, Aang always said that he used to be able to fly when he was young. Sure thing. They all believed him –they did not.
He was laying on his bed, his arms folded with his head rested upon them, on the window sill. He heard his phone ringing next to him. Katara must have arrived. Great, he couldn’t wait to see her. To say hi to her of course, not to ask any questions about the mysterious golden-eyed guy. Okay maybe that too, but it wasn’t as important.
...
Both those things were important...
Maybe he was more excited about one then the other, yes.
Did that make him a bad person? Certainly not, he was an outstanding citizen and a great brother.
He snapped out of it, realising he’d been stuck in his thoughts again, then quickly rushed down his ladder, stepping over the piles of clothes and empty cans of ice tea amassing themselves in the living room, he really ought to clean all of this someday. From his room, a long hallway led to his front door. His apartment was quite small, he couldn’t afford something big: he had two different rooms, his own bathroom, and another, bigger one, where he had his kitchen, bedroom and living room.
It was kind of like if you took a big empty cube, in which you placed another cube in one of the corners and then added doors on both. On top of his bathroom –the smallest cube- his bed rested, a ladder descended into his living room, where he had his clothes stored and his kitchen. At first, he had felt like he couldn’t breathe in this place, having grown up in the countryside. Now he liked the space it gave him, he had all he needed –though he wished he could have less bathroom and more living room but that was a talk for another time. It had taken a lot of time to actually settle in when he moved to this city, but he had lived here for 6 months now and he was glad he did.
He lived under the building’s roof, so, at least, the view was nice.
There were windowed doors that took up half the wall in the living room, they led to a balcony but he never actually used it, instead, he had hung big red cloths to cover it up, and, now, during the day, the light coming through was nicely tainted into a warm orange-ish colour. Some fairy lights were hung up on the window next to his bed, the bookshelf sculpted into the wall in the alleyway, his bathroom’s door as well as a lot of other places. He hated direct light. That was why he covered his window and never turned on the big overhead lights, only little lamps here and there. It wasn’t that he didn’t like having the light of the sun on his skin, of course he loved that, but only when he was outside, inside, the bright lights didn’t feel right, little ones made the place cosy and homey.
He pressed a button on the keypad in front of him, then spoke clearly into the microphone:
“Who are you? I told you already, I won’t pay my taxes!”
“Sokka just open the damn door.”
“Yeah okay, come in” he executed with a defeated sigh, letting her in.
They both went down the corridor, when they arrived at the kitchen’s level, he heard his sister gasp. She had always been the neat-freak, and he knew it pained her every day to have messiest man on earth as her brother.
“Sokka. Sokka what is this.”
“My apartment? My dirty dishes? My laundry? My bathroom’s door?” She silently nodded “no” then stepped a few step closer to the only table –it was hardly a table at all to be fair, more so an elevated platform that stood on two metal bars- in the room. On it, a few sheets of paper and a sketchbook.
“Nonononononono. You-really-don’t-need-to-look-at-that.” He rushed in front of her, stopping her, quickly covering it up with his arms and blocking the view with his whole body.
“Have you started drawing? Why won’t you show me, I want to see it from my own two eyes!” She perked up, trying to look over his shoulder.
“Yes, I have and no, I won’t. It’s not really any good and er... You know just... I’m experimenting I guess.”
“Don’t you want to take classes then?” She looked like she was silently piecing things together. In her eyes shined that mischievous glimmer that meant she was up to something.
“I don’t think I have the money-”
“Zuko teaches drawing at his uncle’s teashop on Wednesdays.” She said, eyeing him up and down.
“Yeah you know what, on second thought, I might take classes, that’s a good idea Katara, thank you.”
“I KNEW IT! You are interested.”
“I’m literally not.”
“You literally are.”
“No, I’m really not interested in anyone, especially not Zuka or whatever his name is.” He had memorised his name already but she didn’t need to know that.
“Zukka, that’s a cute ship name.”
“Stop that! I don’t even know the guy! Besides, what if we go on a date and he just doesn’t like me or, more likely because I’m the most likeable person ever, I don’t like him!”
“You’re projecting...” She smirked at him, she was enjoying this as far as he could tell.
“What if I am.”
“Nothing, I just think it’s funny.”
“My point is; he may be an asshole I wouldn’t know.”
“Yeah, cause Aang and I are well known for being friends with assholes.” She raised a knowing eyebrow.
“Anyways I just want to take drawing classes. Nothing else.” He huffed.
“Sure you are.” Katara turned around, then announced “I’m going to get the cats, do a bit of tidying up maybe?” She had already put a bag full of their stuff down.
When she closed the door, he was left alone, in the middle of his kitchen. He could hear some music coming from the open window. Down the building, the road was quiet, albeit a few cars driving back home after a long day of work.
He picked up a few clothes; a rolled up hoodie, some dirty socks and one or two t-shirts, wiped down the counter quickly, put every last food package back where it belonged, hidden safely away in drawers and other such places. It wasn’t perfect, far from that, it was actually rather dirty still, but there wasn’t anywhere for the cats to hurt themselves now, neither was there anything to swallow that might be worth a visit to the nearest veterinarian, that had been the point.
Now, his mission was to try and get more information out of Katara without her suspecting a thing. His cover was already a bit blown up, but for the sake of appearances, he could show himself to be stubborn.
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