Chapter Text
Sokka rolled his shoulder and yawned, wondering where Zuko could be on this frosty South Pole morning. It was true that Sokka slept in quite late today, and that Zuko preferred to rise early, but it was still unusual for Sokka to wake up alone in his yurt when Zuko was visiting him down here.
This particular visit was a really calm one. True peace and blissful—it was boring, okay, he could admit it. They did literally nothing except hold hands and eat and make love. And while all of that was great and Sokka was more than ecstatic at the sheer amount of physical affection they were able to share in the past few days, he still wanted to do something exciting. Today he was going to ask Zuko to come with him and do some ice surfing since the winds were high and the waves promised to be even higher. For that, though, he needed to find Zuko first.
Gran-Gran didn’t know where he was, and the children that usually swarmed Zuko and asked him to ‘make flame birds dance through the air’ didn’t know where he was either. Zuko was running out of options, unless of course he suspected Zuko could be out with the morning hunters culling the reindeer-lynxes out in the wilderness, which was highly unlikely and so Zuko rejected it. The image was kind of funny when he thought about it, but entirely unhelpful.
Out of options, he decided to try the chief’s tent. Sokka was nervous to be with Zuko so openly around his father – their culture wasn’t exactly tolerant of irregular unions – but in the end, he should’ve given his father more credit. Hakoda was as accepting of his relationship with Zuko as he was of Katara’s and Aang’s, and if he perhaps preferred Aang to Zuko it was entirely based on the man’s prejudice against Fire Nation and not on his dislike of Zuko personally. Sokka was almost sure his father actually liked Zuko. It was difficult to tell, because whenever Hakoda and Zuko were in the same room together they somehow automatically put on their official chief and Fire Lord personas – Sokka couldn’t imagine that made any bonding easier.
When Sokka entered the tent and shed his fur coat to hang it on a rack by the entrance, he was immediately greeted with a tense atmosphere. He felt stupid for having his usual half-smile on his face, and it quickly slipped off to get replaced with a confused silent mouthing of ‘what?’
Hakoda and Zuko sat across from each other on the pelts on the floor, with a Pai Sho board between them. Sokka recognized the board – it was his father’s favorite one, that got passed down to him from his father, and to him from his father before him. Now that Sokka thought about it, the board was probably going to be his one day, so maybe she should start learning how to play it in a more advanced way that he’d been doing so far – which was basically rushing to put down as many tiles as he could wherever he could and hope for the best.
The board was made of leather stretched over a large baleen hoop, with the game squares painted on top in white, red, and blue paint. The tiles were made of mother-of-peal shells and dyed pieces of bone, with the figures carved into them in a stylistic manner rather than life-like. It was a pretty set, and Sokka remembered watching his father taking it off the wall to play with some of his most trusted friends and other chieftains. Now, he was playing with the Fire Lord of all people. Sokka’s boyfriend.
“Hey, guys,” Zuko attempted to greet the two men engaged in the game, his voice almost timid and his steps as quiet as he could make them. It did not feel like a good idea to disturb the serious, tense atmosphere that hung around the Pai Sho board.
Hakoda, who was merely observing his opponent’s turn, looked up at Sokka and nodded at him in greeting. Zuko, who pensively held his own chin and studied the board intently, only hummed in response to Sokka’s greeting but never raised his eyes at him. They were taking this game very seriously! It wasn’t surprising, of course, knowing who these two were separately – it only made sense they would be this serious together, too.
Sokka held his breath at how good Zuko looked, though, with his hair half-up and the lines of his profile sharp with focus. Zuko’s entire attention was directed at the board, his gold eyes flicking from one tile to another and then gazing over the whole board to determine the overall strategy. His pink, soft lips were pressed into a tense line, and his skilled fingers held his chin, only his forefinger rising and falling as it tapped right under his nose. His other hand was on top of his knee, his legs crossed in a lotus position just like Hakoda’s were.
Sokka sat down by the board between his father and his boyfriend, crossing his legs the same way as them and locking his hands in front of his mouth as he looked over the board, too. He didn’t understand much of it nearly as well as the two players did, though. He pretended to think about it, but it was growing more and more boring by the minute. After ten minutes of literally nothing happening, Sokka straightened his back and chuckled:
“How come you decided to play together?”
Hakoda looked at him and smiled, a spark of amusement lighting up the blue of his eyes – a spark that, for some reason, made Sokka a little nervous. His father explained:
“I found Zuko wondering around the village, looking like he didn’t know what to do with himself, so I dragged him here.” The man gave out a short laugh and looked back at the board as he added: “He really perked up when I mentioned Pai Sho.”
Zuko finally made his move – he outstretched his hand to move a tile that was already on the board several squares over, and then sat back with a satisfied look on his face. He smirked, joined his hands inside the sleeves of his robe, and said:
“My hopes are that my uncle’s extensive training managed to prepare me for this battle.”
Hakoda smirked back at him, their eyes meeting for only a moment before they both looked down at the board again. That short moment was filled with the tension of competition, and Sokka didn’t know who he was rooting for as both men weren’t exactly very gracious losers when it came down to something silly like a game of Pai Sho. Neither of them treated it as silly, though.
“Sweet,” Sokka broke another silence that settled between them, “I’m glad you guys found something to do together.”
Nobody said anything in response, and Sokka sighed deeply. How did he fit into this dynamic? Should he encourage their competition or… should he diffuse it somehow? How much attention did he need to pay to the game? Because for as long as he’d been staring at the board that hadn’t changed at all because neither player made any new moves yet, he didn’t find anything gripping about it. Frankly, he was starting to doze off.
…Sokka volunteered to arrange some tea and lunch for the players, bringing everything on a tray and sharing in the meal but not the conversation due to there being no conversation. They just kept playing, one achingly long turn at a time.
…Sokka lied down on the cushions by the wall of his father’s tent, and napped for about an hour. When he woke up, the game board looked practically the same except three or four tiles were placed differently. Did they really only make two or three moves while he was asleep?
…Sokka found his father’s flute he helped him carve out of a walrus tusk when he was a child, and started playing. He went through three different songs and then a loop of playing them again, only to eventually sit by the Pai Sho board and find that only four turns had passed. If this is what real Pai Sho was like, then Sokka wasn’t sure he wanted anything to do with it. He had the strategic mind, don’t get him wrong, but he was also decisive and often impatient and he was mature enough to admit that.
…Gran-Gran joined them in the tent, making herself busy by the rug loom and humming a song to herself as she worked. Finally feeling like there was a lively person here – and it says a lot that it was Gran-Gran he was compelled to call that – Sokka sat by her and played the flute to provide her humming with some background music. She finished about a third of the rug while Hakoda and Zuko exchanged a turn each, and then eventually stood up to pat Sokka on the head and leave to continue her Gran-Gran duties.
…Sokka sighed and came back to the Pai Sho board, pleading to all spirits that could hear his thoughts that the game was close to being over by now. Surely it was close, right? The sun was setting! He blew on the strand of hair that escaped his warrior tail, and propped his chin on an elbow that he put on top of his knee. Sokka frowned as he made one more honest attempt at getting excited about the game’s outcome, but he wasn’t even able to tell which player was winning.
He actually did doze off, only waking up when Hakoda loudly placed both hands on his knees after making one last move.
“Excellent game,” his father said as Sokka blinked at them sleepily. The man extended his arm above the board, and Zuko grabbed his forearm in the traditional Water Tribe sign of respect.
“Most excellent,” Zuko agreed with a slow nod and a blink, joining his hands on his abdomen once more. “A very satisfying tie.”
“What? A tie?” Sokka demanded to know, incredulous as to why they’re so excited about a tie when they spent the whole day playing.
“Yes,” his father nodded at him, “I knew that’s where we were heading at my fourth turn, but was curious to see how would we arrive there.”
“Your mastery of the game humbles me, chief Hakoda,” Zuko said, his voice pleased and respectful. “I could only foresee such an outcome at the tenth turn.”
“The ninth one was quite exciting,” Hakoda admitted with a chuckle.
“Yeah, a real nail biter,” Sokka rolled his eyes and slumped his shoulders, his chin back in his hand. Then he perked up and groaned: “Wait, hold on, that was hours ago! You knew it was gonna be a tie and kept going anyway?”
His father stroked his beard and chastised him with the usual proverb:
“Salmon-rat runs upriver, struggling over each rock—”
“Getting stronger and brighter with every bend of the river, yeah, I get it,” Sokka finished for him, trying to pacify his father with a gesture of a hand. “It’s the journey that makes it interesting.”
“What a good saying,” Zuko noted reflectively, stroking his own chin and looking up.
Before Zuko picked up any more pieces of Southern wisdom from his father, Sokka grabbed him by the hand and asked him to go do something even more interesting than six hours of Pai Sho that ended in a draw.
“That is a tall order, son,” Hakoda laughed at him just as the young men left his tent, shaking his head at Sokka’s lack of patience but ample energy.
Once out of the tent, Sokka didn’t wait a second before he jumped on Zuko, his lips meeting no resistance. Zuko laughed into their kiss and closed his eyes, wrapping his arms under Sokka’s and suspending him in the air as Sokka bent both his knees and brought his heels up. He had to sit for hours and hours of nothing, so why not enjoy the excitement of being picked up into the air for a moment?
He did put his feet down on the ground eventually, but he found it much more difficult to let go of Zuko’s face. They kissed until they were both breathless, right there by chief Hakoda’s tent and under the night sky that pelted them with snow ever so lightly.
When Sokka finally leaned back and saw the snowflakes getting gently caught on Zuko’s hair and his dark eyelashes, he smiled like a predator and knew that they had to do something fun, and now!
“How does night ice surfing sound to His Flaming Majesty?” he asked, his sharp canines showing as he smiled.
“Cold and wet?” Zuko asked him back, unimpressed by the prospect.
Sokka laughed, low and menacing, and then grabbed him by the hand again to lead towards the perfect place on the snowy beach. He only looked back over a shoulder to wink at Zuko and tell him:
“I foresee it’ll take you at least four tries before you get it right!”
“And I foresee another draw once I pull you off your board just as many times,” Zuko stubbornly argued, letting himself be dragged forward but not making it too easy for Sokka.
Sokka preferred it this way – a little competition never hurt any relationship, right?