zukka university au but zuko is an english tutor
from the first day of school, zuko is enamored with the beautiful boy with shiny sneakers and messy hair who sits in front of him in his composition class
he’s way too shy to talk to him, but learns from what he says in his presentations that he’s really fun, really nice, and really smart
like really, really fucking smart; he’s majoring in something to do with engineering and has crazy marks in math
basically, zuko is entirely smitten with the boy and badly wants to talk to him but can’t get himself to do it
after school, to help himself pay for his education, zuko works in the english department tutoring other students
given how obviously smart pretty boy is, he never expected him to come into the library for tutoring, but lo and behold, there he is
zuko is immediately flustered and awkward as he sits down to help him, and blurts out that he likes pretty boy’s shoes
pretty boy smiles and introduces himself as sokka, glancing down at his shiny blue sneakers and saying zuko would look great in with gold ones ‘cause they’d bring out his amber eyes
he just nods along, blushing madly and somehow forgetting that he’s supposed to be there as a tutor
when he does finally remember, zuko asks what sokka needs help with, and sokka just hesitates and mumbles, “kind of everything”
though it’s very hard to put aside his gay disaster state, zuko manages to do it for long enough to ask sokka what exactly he struggles with and where he wants to start
sokka admits that he doesn’t even know, and confesses that he just has really bad grades in his english classes and his sister and professors thought he should try tutoring
so zuko asks if sokka’s ever been tutored before, to which he laughs and says “no” because, just as zuko initially thought, the guy’s a literal fucking genius
but he’s also esl and even though it’s not that noticeable when he’s talking, he put all his effort into math and science growing up, and struggles a lot articulating his thoughts in english
obviously, zuko should try and help him with this, but he’s a gay disaster and instead of doing his job, the first thing he does is blurt out that he’s bilingual too, and then ask where sokka’s from because his accent is as beautiful as he is
before he can apologize for the embarrassing comment, sokka tells him he’s from alaska, he grew up speaking mostly inuktitut and he does know english too, which he speaks really well, but he’s faster at writing in inuktitut so that’s mostly what he wrote in since he was more focused on numbers and equations anyway
(he also notes that katara kept telling him “if you want to go to [university], you’re gonna have to write in english” and he just. didn’t listen. because he likes inuktitut better)
again, zuko should start the tutoring, but his stupid gay mouth moves faster and suddenly he’s asking sokka if he can show him how to write in inuktitut because he’s never seen it before
and holy hell sokka’s writing is beautiful
zuko is frozen in an absolute gay panic but somehow manages to snap out of it and write a little japanese for sokka when he asks
they finally manage to start the actual tutoring after that, and zuko ends up mostly critiquing things sokka’s already written, helping him work on his sentence structure, wording, etc.
given how quickly sokka learns, zuko doesn’t think he’ll see him in there again after that day, but sokka comes back again
after a few weeks they’re really just spending the whole two hours flirting and teaching each other how to write different words in their respective languages
having acknowledged this, zuko starts to wonder if he’s not the only one with a big gay crush because surely sokka doesn’t need him to proofread every paper he writes????
they’re two (2) pining idiots and it takes them fucking forever but by the end of the semester, their “tutoring” is basically just making out in the back of the library
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