Work Text:
Sokka put down the wrench and took the protective goggles off his face, his shoulders rising and falling in a long, long sigh. He was trying to distract himself by working on some projects – specifically, a special flexible armor one could put on an otter-penguin – but it was no use. His thoughts stubbornly continued to drift back to the summer solstice celebration that happened only three weeks ago. The food, and the drinks. The dance of spring dragons. Zuko’s hand in his own. Zuko’s lips on his own.
“Grrgh!” Sokka growled, trying desperately to shake his head hard enough to stop thinking about all that.
The otter-penguin he lured here with some fish heads growled in response, looking up at him with her big wet eyes. The eyes were so big and so dark that they almost served as a mirror, and Sokka was able to see his own anguish-ridden reflection in them.
“I don’t know what to tell you!” Sokka exclaimed at the animal that just huffed at him and turned her face away, tucking it back under her tail and getting ready to continue sleeping. Sokka preferred her to be rested so that the armor fitting later today went better than it did the first time – with that thought, he looked down at his hand stained with oil and ink. Among the black splotches one could also spot otter-penguin bite marks, and Sokka had no desire to add any more. So… he let the animal sleep. He should probably name it something, huh?
“Maybe I should name you winter dragon,” Sokka mused out loud, his eyes suddenly lighting up as soon as the words left his mouth. He got an idea.
Finding a clean sheet of paper wasn’t difficult, he had all sorts and all colors here in his workshop. He opted for a deep blue color he normally preferred to reserve for machine schematics. He mostly chose this one because it was about the same color as his vest was at the summer solstice party. He wanted to evoke particular images in Zuko’s mind when he read this letter – just admitting that in his mind caused Sokka’s heart to race and his face to feel hotter than it should down at the South Pole.
“You got this, Sokka, there’s no better haiku-master than you in all of Southern Water Tribe,” he muttered to himself as he tapped a piece of white chalk over his chin. “Just think, what would a dragon say…”
A good thought was bound to spark in his mind if he worked at it hard enough, Sokka was certain. The room got filled with otter-penguin snoring, the rhythmic sound providing a comforting background for Sokka’s creative flow. He sat in his chair staring up at the ice-bound ceiling, he leaned against his desk with a hip with his eyes dripping down into the floor, he even stood in the center of the room with his hands locked behind his head, his eyes closed and his face crossed with a concentrated frown. Eventually though, just like he predicted, a high-quality thought sparked in his mind. He quickly sat down before he lost it, spread the piece of blue paper small enough for a bird to carry it in front of him, and began to write:
“Your hand on my scales,
My flame breath on your soft skin:
Let us dance again.”
“Signed, Your Spring Dragon,” Sokka announced as he wrote down his alias, not stopping himself from extending the last symbol into a long serpentine shape and then adding little clawed legs and leathery wings to it. “Would it be too aggressive if I added the flame breath to it?” Sokka asked into the direction of the otter-penguin, but she barely opened one eye to look at him before closing it again. “Yeah, I think you’re right. It’s perfect as it is.”
Sokka spread the sheet between his hands and brought it up to catch the most light out of the window, staring at his creation with pride. But as he kept re-reading the lines, it started to dawn on him that Zuko was actually going to read this too. He understood, of course, that that’s what he was writing for to begin with, but as he created the haiku he was kind of outside of his body as he let the words appear on the paper. Now he was back in his body, fully Sokka, fully and painfully aware that Zuko, one of his best friends and the Fire Lord, was going to read his romantic haiku.
Was it romantic? Was it vulgar? Was it subtle enough? Was it too vague?
Sokka shook his head. The time to be shy was before he kissed the Fire Lord at the royal palace, now it was time to be brave. He nodded with determination in agreement with his thoughts, and rolled up the piece of paper. He sealed it with wax, placed it inside a messenger tube and wax sealed that too. Now it was just a short trip to the postal service office, and then…
And then, he only needed to wait for a response.
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“Anything for me?” he asked the postal clerk on the third day, impatiently shifting his weight from one foot to another and tapping his mitten-covered hands on the wooden worktop.
The clerk sifted through today’s mail and nodded, causing Sokka’s face to brighten up with an excited smile, only to dim when he mentioned it was from Republic city. Just as he was about to leave without pretending that he was excited to get a letter from his sister, the clerk extracted a red tube with a brass seal on it that depicted the symbol for the element of fire. The seal’s glint in the cold sunlight of the South Pole set Sokka’s heart racing, and he barely said ‘thank you’ as he grabbed it out of the clerk’s hand and dashed outside.
He should really sit down one of these days and come up with a better way of communication than messenger birds. As cute as they were, they took much too long to exchange words with people that mattered!
As soon as he got to his workshop, Sokka just barely skimmed his sister’s letter to make sure it was nothing urgent and just her usual yapping about the city’s politics and her life with Aang. He was going to read it properly, but later. Right now, his whole body was taught with tension as he opened up the tube with the Fire Nation royal seal on it to extract a…
A wrapped-up sheet of silk? Sokka quirked an eyebrow and held onto one of the thin wooden rods at one end of the fabric to let the rest of it uncoil to reveal a wall hanging of sorts. It was a deep yellow color with a red trim, its shape was a rectangle elongated vertically. As Sokka’s eyes studied what was depicted on the silk, all confusion slipped off his face to get replaced with something mystified.
Two long dragons were caught in a dance, flying through the sky. One was painted with black ink, the other with blue. Their wings were unfurled, their sharp claws spread in the wind. Their bodies slid along each other naturally, their long shapes entwined. The black one’s face was nudged against the blue one’s, their eyes locked on each other.
Sokka swallowed and felt a drop of sweat roll down his temple. He wasn’t crazy, right? There was definite passion depicted in this picture. When Sokka imagined Zuko paint this, it caused blood to rush to Sokka’s head and jumble up his thoughts. And it’s not that he was some prude that thought people should wait till marriage to do what these dragons were potentially doing or preparing to do – that ship had long sailed. That wasn’t why he was suddenly so stricken with something so akin to shame as he guiltily continued to study the intricate painting. It was just…
He sighed, and rolled up the silk back into a tube. He didn’t know what it was, but it wasn’t unpleasant. A little embarrassing to be so stricken by someone he’d known for so long already, to be so surprised with how deep of an emotion Zuko could evoke in him without a single word. There weren’t any words, were there? Sokka double-checked the front and the back of the silk painting, even looking and blowing inside the messenger tube just to make sure. But no, there were no words, no signature. Just a very powerful image that made Sokka remember and imagine all kinds of things.
“I guess I’ll be the chatty one,” Sokka chuckled to himself, and picked up a white sheet of paper and an ink pen to begin composing a response that, hopefully, would bring them somewhere less vague and cryptic than they’d been at so far. It’s with that thought that he decided to just use his friend’s name not his royal title or any of the funny fake ones Sokka’d been using up until now.
“Zuko,
Your artwork sent my heart racing faster than the spiciest of steamed buns did at the festival. I’m not going to display it at my workshop since I’d rather not answer any nosy questions of my young apprentices, but be assured that those spring dragons will be the first thing I look at as I wake up in my bed.
I’ve been thinking of inviting you to the salmon-rat run that will happen in a month, but then I remember what you said: that you don’t wait around for a convenient date to do something that you want. I’m paraphrasing, or course, but that was pretty much the gist of it, right?
At your earliest convenience, whenever your court duties let you be for a couple of days, I invite you to come down here to the South Pole so that I could take you with me to hunt down a rhino-leopard seal with me. It’s just something I do for fun this time of year, and the only thing that would make it more fun is if you were there, too. Bring your swords!
To entice you even further than the promise of a good hunt, I’m attaching a few strips of rhino-leopard seal jerky to this message. Made it myself last year! You can really taste the rhino, don’t you think?
Awaiting your reply – or arrival,
Sokka”
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Only a day later, Sokka held his breath as he uncorked the messenger tube that seemed much too hefty for just a letter to be inside. There was a small scroll, filled on both sides. One side of it read:
“The hunt calls to me,
To see you howl at the moon
As you take down prey.”
Feeling giddy and elated from just those few words, Sokka hurriedly turned the paper over to read the back which said:
“The court is determined to keep me busy for the coming week, but as soon as the new one comes I promise I will be taking my airship south.
With temperatures rising here of late, the promise of cold air and snow seem more and more enticing. Though, I’m certain, there will be things to keep my blood running hot during my visit.
For now, accept the gift I enclosed with this message as an apology for my delayed arrival.
P.S. I can definitely taste the rhino. It’s… interesting. I thank you for the meat, and hope for much more.”
Sokka let his hands holding the letter drop down and looked up at the ceiling. He breathed in, closed his eyes, slowly breathed out. Despite his best efforts, he felt his face grow hotter as some of the words kept echoing through his mind. He raised the letter up again to re-read some of them. ‘My blood running hot.’ ‘As you take down prey.’ ‘Hope for much more.’
“What am I doing?” Sokka laughed quietly, hiding his face inside the letter. He continued to laugh until his nose picked up a certain scent from the paper – it was not Zuko’s. It was… “Meat?”
Upon inspection of the messenger tube, Sokka found a small packet within it that contained very intriguing pieces of dry meat. At first, he wanted to try and determine what animal it belonged to only by scent, but the amount of spices infused into the meat obscured too much of its nature. Even as Sokka bit down on the jerky and expertly tasted it, grinding down the hard fibers between his teeth, he was still unsure of what animal it was. Was it a land animal? Or something marine?
“Whatever it is, it’s good,” Sokka determined out loud, still chewing on a mouthful. “You sure know your audience, your Royal Fireness,” he grinned at the letter still in his hand, already thinking of what to reply with.
He sat down at the desk properly, the packet of jerky in front of him ready to be his muse and inspiration. Sokka was so focused on trying to come up with phrases as charged as the ones Zuko managed to fit into his letter, that he didn’t notice when a shadow of a person was cast over the table.
“What are ya working on, great inventor?” Katara asked him right into his ear as she bent down to look at his writing. It startled Sokka enough to yelp and jump in his seat, his pen falling from his fingers and creating a splotch of black ink in the corner of the paper.
“Katara!” he exclaimed at his sister angrily, turning in his seat to look at her with righteous indignity.
She ignored him, however, and reached over for the ruined letter. With a graceful hand she used water bending to remove the splotch of ink and then guided it back into the inkwell without even looking at it, her blue eyes entirely taken with the text. Sokka rolled his eyes, and sighed. Even when he lived on a whole different continent from her, he still got no privacy!
“Are you wooing someone?” Katara asked him with laugh in her voice and sparkles of merriment in her eyes. Oh, it was amusing, was it?
“So what if I am?” Sokka asked back, taking the paper out of her hands by force and then folding it twice so that she couldn’t see it anymore.
She giggled into her hand, and then walked around him to pick up the packet of jerky that had a fire symbol on it – as well as an odor of strong spice. Katara threw a piece of jerky into her mouth and nodded in approval, patting her brother on the shoulder.
“Is it a gift from your wooing victim?” Her eyes lit up, and she squatted down to look at Sokka from under and ask him with a lot of hope and even more amusement: “Is she a Fire Nation girl? Oh, did you meet at the solstice?”
“No, we didn’t meat at the solstice,” Sokka cut her before more questions came, and stood up. “And it’s none of your business, anyway!”
“I don’t mean to pry, Sokka, I just—”
“Then why do you?”
“I’m just excited for you,” she smiled as she jumped up, and the amount of kindness in her voice and in her hands that held him by the arm were enough to disarm Sokka. Yeah, okay, he wasn’t going to tell her anything, but he didn’t have to be so short with her.
“I’ve dated before, you know,” he tried to defend himself somehow, and didn’t know why or how that even made any difference.
“I know,” Katara admitted, her smile slipping momentarily. “But it’s been a long time since your breakup with Suki. I was starting to worry that…” she started to say something, but then noticed a change in Sokka’s demeanor, or maybe felt how much his arm tensed under her hands, and decided to change her approach. “I’m just really glad you met someone. Tell me about her, do I know her?”
“I appreciate the interest, Katara, I really do,” Sokka said unenthusiastically, patting her hand on his arm. “…But I am not telling you anything about this. It’s not even anything yet. We’re just… talking.”
“Yeah, for now,” she smiled again, wiggling her brows suggestively. Sokka groaned and rolled his eyes, and she laughed at him before beginning to tug on his arm to follow her towards the door. “Come on, I wanna show you a new water bending technique I’m developing.”
“Joy of joys,” Sokka sighed, but there was a smile on his face when he did. She wasn’t so bad some of the time. Still nosy and annoying, but…
It still made Sokka feel guilty over not being able to tell Katara about what was going on between him and Zuko. What, should he tell her about everyone he kisses at festivals now? But even if he did, how could he tell her about whatever it was between him and Zuko if even he didn’t know what exactly was it between them? He definitely wasn’t going to tell her, or anyone, about any of this until he was more sure himself.
For now, he was just going to send Zuko some more rhino-leopard seal jerky.