Chapter 10
At the Hour of Eclipse
Pairing : Zuko x Sokka
Zuko’s eyes had gone hungry, his gaze darkened. For one suspended moment, neither of them moved.
Heat rose between their chests.
Sokka’s skin burned; Zuko seemed to carry fire in his pores.
Sokka spent the next hour discovering that a room could become too small without changing its size.
His quarters had always been serviceable. A bed, a map stand, a low desk, a washbasin, a carved wooden closet, and an obnoxiously large fireplace big enough to fit two people if one of them had very poor judgment.
Now the very room had begun to irritate him.
The desk sat too close to the window. The window let in too much light. The light fell across the copied maps and turned the inked roads into mingled gibberish. His sling hugged him too tightly, and he had already stripped off the silly official robes in favor of a sleeveless tunic while he paced back and forth like a man under domestic curse.
At some point, in a fit of entirely reasonable judgment, he had arranged three cushions, one folded blanket, and an entirely innocent bolster into what was now, in his opinion, a deeply convincing effigy of the Fire Lord.
It sat propped against the wall in frigid silence, perturbed now and then by the sound of Sokka’s unsteady shuffling.
He walked in front of it, turned sharply on his heel, then stopped and planted his good hand on his hip.
“Fire Lord Zuko—”
He paused.
No. Too formal.
He crossed the room again. Stopped. Turned.
He cleared his throat, straightened, and tried again.
“Your Majesty, I—”
He looked back at the stack of cushions.
The stack, shaped by treachery and poor temper, seemed to be looking at him strangely. Zuko’s face kept returning to him in pieces anyway.
Sokka narrowed his eyes at the imaginary creased stare and furrowed brows.
“You PRICK.”
He threw a sandal at the effigy.
It collapsed at once in a graceless heap.
“Excellent,” Sokka muttered. “Now even my imagination is offensive.”
He paced again, one foot barefoot, the other half-laced into a sandal in some crooked act of rebellion.
Who did he think he was.
No, worse.
Who did he think Sokka was.
That man was impossible. Catastrophic in private, ceremonial in public. Did he think he could dismiss him and have him strung along by title and tone like some jilted court singer? He said the most confusing things in one room and then, the second there were witnesses, turned into state-side furniture.
“Un-fucking-believable,” Sokka informed the room.
The room, having no survival instinct whatsoever, remained silent. Unconvinced walls. Judgy windows.
He turned again, nearly tripped over the fallen bolster-Zuko, glared at it, and stepped over it with what decorum he could stitch back together.
“No,” he said aloud, pointing an accusatory finger at nothing. “No. You are calm, Sokka. A calm man who will not storm into that asshat’s room and tell him to shove procedure up his—”
He stopped.
His cheeks heated. His tan skin went curiously red.
He closed his eyes and drew a long breath, steadying himself.
“Flow like water,” he repeated. “Water is calm. Water is graceful. Water is certainly not currently imagining homicide.”
He opened his eyes and sighed.
“Water is also not this angry,” he added bitterly.
Because this felt less like calm water and more like being consumed by too many tides at once. Undertow and storm-surge, currents dragging him back and forth, everything inside him bursting with force and with—
Shame.
He felt less like a river than a pot left too long over an open flame. His skin seemed to simmer, everything in him threatening to boil over at Zuko’s words, his actions, the very way he stood in a room or looked at him as though each glance had a second meaning hidden behind it.
“Great,” he muttered. “If Katara could see me now, I’d never hear the end of it.”
He went to the basin and stared down at his exhausted reflection in the water.
“You-pull-yourself-together-Sokka.”
He mechanically uncreased his brows with his fingers, then pressed at the corners of his mouth, stretching them into a skeptical, grotesque caricature of a smile.
He walked back across the room before dropping face-first onto the bed and muffling an exasperated half-scream into the pillow.
Very undignified.
It was, however, briefly effective.
A knock came at the door just as he rolled over, hair disordered, sling crooked, one sandal barely hanging to his ankle, and his self-esteem held together by a thread.
He wished to the gods it was not Zuko.
Sokka sat up too fast, winced at the pain tearing through the shoulder caught in the sling, passed a flying hand through his hair, and glared accusingly at the floor as though it had chosen this moment to shame him.
“... Yes?”
The door opened just enough for a young palace servant to peer through carrying a tray.
He could not have been older than eleven or twelve. He bowed carefully, though his eyes flickered once with poorly disguised curiosity toward the pile of murdered cushions on the floor.
“R-representative Sokka,” the boy started, “I was told you were to remain in your quarters, and that you were to have your lunch.”
Sokka blinked at him.
Then at the tray.
Then back at the boy.
“So I’m under decorative house arrest now. How great.”
The boy looked uncertain whether this required a response.
Sokka softened at once.
He always did with children. It was against his better tactical instincts.
He pushed himself upright and crooked one finger at the tray.
“Come on, then. Bring this old man his state-sanctioned confinement feast.”
The boy came closer and set it down on the low table by the window. The room still looked as though a small storm had passed through it. The tray held candied meats, rice, a broth Sokka would not be touching-sliced fruit, pickled vegetables, and, more importantly, a smaller plate with little pastries dusted in sugar.
Sokka’s eyes narrowed at them with newly sharpened strategic interest.
“Council must be terribly boring without my presence anyway,” he said.
The boy, to Sokka’s delight, let out a tiny involuntary laugh before catching himself.
“A little,” he admitted.
Sokka pointed at him. “Aha. Finally some honesty in this palace.”
The boy smiled despite himself.
It improved Sokka’s mood by a small but very measurable degree.
Within minutes, Sokka had coaxed him into a game played with folded paper tags and two buttons that had flown off Sokka’s robes earlier in the day.
The boy cheated.
Sokka liked him even more.
By the third round, the room seemed to soften. Sokka felt the warm breeze of the afternoon brush his skin, and now that the sound of the boy’s laughter echoed against the chamber walls, his temper had settled again. Children had that effect. They forced the world back into scale. He could not remain theatrically miserable while a smug little palace servant outmaneuvered him with a button and a strip of folded paper.
It took him back to simpler things—bickering with Katara, teasing Aang, those first disastrous attempts at riding Appa without losing his dignity ( or his sandals)
He stood and went to the drawer by the desk, rummaging until he found a crumpled little sketch of the lot of them, one he had made when he was younger.
He couldn’t help but smile.
His anger at Zuko loosened slightly, and for one strange second the present Fire Lord overlapped with the terrible bowl-cut fire prince he had once wanted to throttle on sight.
The sound of the boy gathering the empty dishes snapped him back to the room.
Sokka caught one pastry from the tray and slipped it into the boy’s hand. The other he tucked into the front of his tunic with the instinctive speed of a thief who had once traveled with an airbender.
The boy cocked his head.
Sokka winked and put one finger to his lips.
“This,” he said gravely, “is diplomacy.”
The boy nodded with matching gravity and slipped out of the room with sugar dusting his lips.
When the door shut, Sokka looked down at his equally dusted tunic and let out a quiet breath.
He thought, once again, of himself and Zuko years ago. Boys, the both of them, all elbows and temper and very bad timing. The good and the bad, and spirits knew how much the two of them had always loved to bicker. On Appa’s back, through war councils, through plans, through the impossible business of surviving themselves.
They had always been like this.
Pulling at each other. Provoking. And, somehow, inevitably returning.
The thought, annoyingly, eased him.
The man was still infuriating as ever.
He stood, straightened himself, checked that the pastry had survived its kidnapping, and announced:
“All right,” he told the room, the cushions, and whatever gods governed his terrible decisions, “let’s give this diplomacy thing another go.”
---
If Sokka’s chambers had felt too small, the council hall felt as though its walls were stretching beyond any comprehensive or reasonable approach.
It was one of those intermediate chambers reserved for house disputes, where the dignity of spectacle could not be afforded to become too public.
Long cedar floors, high square windows, ledgers sealed behind grilled bronze, and house administratives baring their teeth in the open. The air was heavy with incense, old perfume, and the smell of flesh all mingled together in a suffocating heat that even the breeze through the peeled-back screens could not fade.
The sunlight that came through the carved latticework fell in rigid bars across the floor, striping the chamber like a cage.
Zuko stood at the end of the low table while the copies of the dossier moved through hungry hands. He felt like a singing canary in official robes and a wobbly, too-large crown.
Across from him, the senior representatives of the most powerful houses in the capital were arranged around the room.
House Senri in dark copper silk and a severe line of the mouth built for disapproving nods. House Tatsu, rigid-backed in military attire. House Noreen, deceptively mild, old merchant blood draped in restraint. House Yuen had sent two cousins and an adviser whose very face seemed born scornful. Lady Reisen of Henshu sat old enough to have watched three Fire Lords rule and clever enough to have survived them all.
And House Maren—House Maren in sober charcoal grey, their insignia almost modest at first glance, yet with that composed look of concern that made Zuko want to burn the very paper every man’s hand touched.
He had learned, slowly and unwillingly, that not using power did not mean pretending it was absent.
He finally sat at the head of the room. Mai stood at the side, hands folded behind her back. They locked eyes once. He cleared his throat.
“Last night,” he said, “restricted material was removed from a palace archive route and deposited through public intake at the Ministry of Interior Affairs.”
A small stir moved through the room. Soft cloth shifted. A ring scraped along the wooden table.
Zuko carried on.
“The recovered packet contained selected internal notes, arranged to suggest improper influence over Fire Nation domestic stabilization policy.”
He turned his head, signaling for the commander to speak.
“The courier has been apprehended,” Tairen said. “He appears to be a carrier, not the architect. The origin of the orders remains unclear and under investigation.”
The first to speak was House Senri.
“These excerpts,” the elder woman said, lifting one copied sheet between two fingers as though it were something that might stain, “raise obvious questions of protocol.”
Protocol.
Of course.
Zuko did not speak. He had learned over the years that silence yielded the best answers, forcing men to show which side they truly lived on.
House Tatsu leaned in next.
“Your Majesty, if I may—the concern circulating amongst the houses is not solely the theft. Theft is trivial and ought to be punished. The larger matter is how such material came to exist in such vulnerable form.”
“Speak plainly,” Zuko retorted.
The man folded his hands into his sleeves.
“The issue is not merely the presence of foreign counsel,” he said. “The issue lies with repeated access. Repeated influence. Repeated advisory involvement in matters concerning internal security, supply routes, and foremost, of course, domestic policy enforcement.”
There.
He did not name Sokka. He did not need to. Plain as day.
Lady Reisen spoke in polished regret.
“No one, Your Majesty, dares question the Southern representative’s past service to the Fire Nation. His contributions during the first reform years are documented.”
Zuko felt his jaw tighten, his gaze cutting back to the woman.
“But extraordinary conditions have a way of becoming habits, and those habits become channels,” she said, clearing her throat. “And channels become authority.”
She smiled before continuing.
“And authority, my lord, must be legible.”
Zuko felt the words leave his mouth before he could stop them.
“The excerpts were incomplete. Context was removed deliberately.”
She bowed her head.
“I accept that, Your Majesty. However, to an unadvised eye, that does offer a feeble plausibility.”
Zuko rested both palms on the polished table and looked down just long enough to ensure that when he answered, his voice would remain even.
“Representative Sokka’s involvement”—since they would not dare name him plainly—“in those matters was requested under direct royal jurisdiction.”
A murmur passed through the hall and died quickly.
That fell on flat ears, Zuko thought, because when House Maren spoke, the lot nodded approvingly.
“No one here disputes the Representative’s talent, my lord. If the excerpts were incomplete, per se, then the remedy would be fuller procedure. Clear records. Clear authority. Clearer limits.”
Limits.
That was the word that sparked their collective nods.
He carried on.
“The Fire Nation cannot be seen to conduct domestic reform through the private counsel of a foreign strategist, however honored.”
House Tatsu added quickly—too quickly—in a scoff,
“Especially one with direct tribal military interest in trade corridors and harbor policy.”
Several heads turned.
The room chilled.
House Maren’s representative gave a sickening smile.
“Careful now with the accusations, Lord Tatsu. We would not wish to anger His Majesty, but simply to convey our honest concern.”
Zuko snickered despite himself.
“And that concern, Lord Maren, might I ask, lies in?”
Maren went on, voice mild enough to insult.
“A talented Water Tribe man is useful, even welcome. But when such usefulness seems, over time, to overlap with the inner mechanics of the state, one must ask, Your Highness, whether the arrangement seems to serve the nation it hosts”—he raised a brow—“or the nation that sent it.”
There it was.
Not crude enough to strike, yet a blade dull enough to cut.
Zuko felt the muscles in his jaw set.
He became aware—too aware—of the heat trapped under his collar. Of the damp gathering at the base of his spine beneath too many formal layers. Of the slow, dizzying heat engorging his head.
The room seemed to receive House Maren’s words with quiet appetite.
Zuko spoke before the appetite could bare its fangs.
“Until the internal audit is complete, I must remind this attendance to refrain from such accusatory comments. And I assure you, I will go to great lengths to conduct this investigation thoroughly within my own office’s capacity.”
He added, colder:
“And I will spare no house of the same faith.”
“In good measure, of course,” he said with a smile, extending his palms to the table before clasping them together in a clap that echoed through the hall.
He signaled for the commander to bring forward the paper decrees that had been passed around for everyone to read.
“However,” Zuko said unheartedly, “the representative will no longer review restricted domestic security memoranda, attend emergency reform councils, or access classified archive material concerning Fire Nation internal governance without approval and clerked record.”
The men signed away, seemingly pleased. House Maren bowed.
Zuko invited them to turn the decree’s pages, and the commander, on signal, announced:
“The audit will include the Ministry of Interior Affairs, Internal Safeguards, foreign affairs intake, palace service routes, and, of course, all house offices with access to domestic stabilization correspondence. All lords will be asked to cooperate accordingly.”
Zuko stood.
He felt the ghost of a smile briefly greet his lips at the furrowed seconds of concern on the representatives’ faces before it placarded again into unreadable, composed facades.
“I will have every one of you kindly sign the decree,” he added before anyone dared interrupt him. “Gentlemen, I trust this meeting has satisfied concerns.”
The clerk approached.
“Your Majesty, shall the decree be copied to the inner offices?”
Zuko looked at the wet ink.
“Yes.”
He rose fully from his seat. The assembly copied him before bowing.
“This council is adjourned. You may all take your leave.”
Conniving wolves draped in robes and silk, Zuko thought to himself as he watched them excuse themselves in careful order.
He stood there until the room had emptied enough to breathe again.
Then a young servant approached holding a small tray with a folded note.
Zuko took it.
<Meet me at the west wing garden. I have tea ready >
Signed in his uncle’s hand.
At last.
He folded the note once and closed his hand around it.
---
The west wing garden had gone quiet by the time Zuko arrived.
The evening had not yet tipped fully into sunset, but the day had already begun loosening its grip.
It was one of the smaller gardens of the palace, tucked near the old west wing court; the screens opened onto a narrow strip of green, and the bamboo at the far wall shifted faintly where the breeze found it.
The stone path still held heat. A basin caught the water drop by drop, singing softly. Somewhere deeper in the garden, a servant closed a fanned door, and the faint scent of tea trays and candied nut biscuits perfumed the air.
Iroh had chosen a shaded alcove near the reflecting basin.
The sight of it felt almost foreign to the Fire Palace.
A low table had been laid between two cushions. A painted porcelain teapot sat nuzzled beneath a cloth to keep warm. Two cups, already poured.
Zuko looked around. No attendants. Just his uncle’s warm smile greeting him as he sat down.
He could have sunk into that chair. The cushion gave under his weight, and he had not realized until then how rigidly he had been holding himself since morning.
Iroh slid a cup toward him.
“Cherry blossoms. Your favorite.”
Zuko took it, its warmth spreading into his palms, and smiled—the first real one of the evening.
For a while, neither of them spoke. They sat in careful silence, disturbed only by the faint singing of birds and the sound of water running calmly alongside them.
Zuko spoke first.
“I suspended Sokka’s advisory clearance.”
“Yes.”
“You heard?”
“The gardener from a lampkeeper, who heard from a clerk, who pretended not to hear from a ministerial runner.” Iroh lifted his cup. “Your new protocol seems to have quite the hungry ears.”
Zuko closed his eyes briefly.
“I had no choice.”
“No,” Iroh said.
His nephew looked at him. His face was surprisingly calm.
“There is no good or bad choice in politics, my boy. Simply one with lesser consequences.”
And because there was no point in yielding the pretense of intelligence, Zuko sighed.
“I do not know if I lessened the consequences or aggravated them. If I appeased them, then I wounded him. Had I chosen the latter, I would have fed into the same cursed narrative.”
Iroh’s voice softened.
“Does the boy know?”
Zuko looked away.
“Not yet. But I hope he knows I did it in hopes of protecting him.”
Iroh studied him over the rim of his cup.
“To protect him, or yourself?”
Zuko’s eyes darted back. He found himself, once again, surprised by his uncle’s sharpness. The tea in his cup had gone a pale, cooling pink, almost like softened, watered blood.
“I don’t know.” He paused. “A part of me screams selfishness. Like I want to shield him.” He hesitated, then added more honestly, “To shield us. From the collective. In a little bubble where we can both exist peacefully.” He let out a breath. “I just hope he understands.”
“Understanding a knife does not make the cut painless.”
Zuko had no retort to that.
Iroh looked out over the green of the garden.
“A ruler is allowed softness, Zuko,” he said. “A man is allowed desire. He is allowed affection, preference—even foolishness, from time to time.” One brow lifted. Iroh laughed softly. “Although it is perhaps not wisest to harbor such sentiments in front of House Maren.”
That won a faint exhale from his nephew that might have been a laugh.
Zuko rubbed a hand over his face before stopping where his fingers found the edge of his scar.
“I keep thinking ruling does not do well with having a heart.”
“The danger lies not in having a heart,” Iroh said. “The danger lies in being governed by it to the point of blindness, such that your people pay the price.”
“I made the choice of the crown, Uncle. I am well aware the kingdom comes first.”
“But are you ready to pay that price?” Iroh asked. “Better yet, my boy, are you ready to have him be the price?”
The question struck him strangely.
“By justice a king gives stability to the land,” Iroh said, “but a man who exacts tribute demolishes it.”
Zuko sighed.
“I see you still speak in riddles, old man.”
Iroh laughed wholeheartedly and reached out to pat his nephew’s head.
“What I mean by that, young man, is that sometimes in satisfying your council’s ego, you pay tribute to their vanity and bruise your own integrity.”
His eyes turned grave again as he watched the pained expression settle across Zuko’s face.
“You see, Zuko—stability is not the absence of noise. It is the presence of a foundation that does not yield to that same noise. The Fire Lord’s favor is not some currency they can earn by being loud enough. That turns a kingdom into a marketplace and a king into a merchant.”
Zuko’s brows seemed to crease into an even deeper frown.
Iroh reached out and tapped his forehead lightly with two fingers, almost humorously.
“My ever-brooding prince, do not look so grim.”
“I am not brooding.”
Iroh laughed again.
“If you say so, Fire Lord. Now finish your tea before it goes cold.”
Zuko took a candied nut and felt it melt in his mouth before finishing his cup.
He looked down at the empty porcelain demitasse, then at his uncle.
“Thank you.”
“You know where to find me,” Iroh said with a smile. “Now run along before the walls beat you to it.”
Zuko rose and gave a small bow, more intimate than formal, before turning back toward the inner wing.
By the time he left the garden, the first true folds of sunset gold had begun to spread across the palace walls.
--
When Zuko reached his quarters, the sun had begun its slow unwinding descent into amber.
The city stretched beneath his balcony in terraces of red stone and dimming tile, smoke lifting in thin ribbons from evening kitchens. It seemed as though the capital softened slowly into the night, the harbor laid beneath a sheet of copper light.
Ships moved lazily through it and, for a moment, it looked peaceful.
He stood at the balcony, both hands gripping the rails as though trying to steady whatever sea of emotions governed him.
He had changed out of his formal robes into a sleeveless silk tunic, dark and softened with wear, hanging open at the throat and peering into the carved planes of his chest. His trousers were tied loosely at the hips. His hair mirrored the relaxed state of his attire, falling against the back of his neck, shifting with each faint gust.
He still carried the imprint of the day, etched into his expression, into the ache at the base of his skull, into the way his hands had not yet remembered how to unclench.
He should have gone to Sokka first. The thought had followed him all the way back from the garden.
He had almost turned at the ambassadorial wing, yet his feet would not budge.
Almost.
Instead, he had come here first, as though a change of clothes might be mirrored by a change of heart. Make him less likely to say the wrong thing.
The city breathed beneath him.
He wanted, with a violence that moved him, to be a good ruler.
He wanted the Fire Nation to survive kinder than it had survived his father.
And he wanted—
The door slid softly behind him.
Zuko turned.
Sokka stood in the doorway, one sleeve half-thrown on, the other arranged awkwardly around the sling. In his good hand, he held up a small pastry like a truce flag.
The absurdity of it nearly undid Zuko.
Sokka lifted the offering a little higher, brandishing it, and said with an expression somewhere between bashful and defiant,
“I come in peace.”
Then, when Zuko didn’t speak at once, he added,
“Get it? This is my white flag.”
The pastry, slightly crushed at one edge, matched the front of Sokka’s tunic, both dusted in sugar.
“It looks like cake,” Zuko said.
“It’s a culinary-adaptable white flag.”
He wanted, suddenly and almost helplessly, to laugh.
Sokka crossed toward him in those big, awkward strides of his.
“Also a sweet rice cake from the kitchens, because apparently when one has been on house arrest, one requires sugar.”
Sokka joined him on the balcony. Behind them, the room still held the last of the day’s warmth, sunset spilling long and honey-thick across the marble and low cushions. Zuko took the pastry from him, their fingers brushing slightly. Sokka dusted himself off before plopping onto the very same cushions that had suffered earlier at his hands.
Zuko went to the side table where a half-finished evening tray had already been laid out and poured them both rice wine into two small metal goblets.
He handed one over.
Sokka drank first, then said, “For the record, I still came to scold you.”
Zuko cast him a curious brow, goblet in one hand, the balcony rail in the other.
“I thought you came bearing peace offerings.”
“Both. Peace and reprimand. It’s a nuanced pastry-bearing envoy.”
Zuko studied him. His tanned skin had taken on a deeper bronze beneath the sinking light. The sling hung at his side. His hair had fallen loose enough to nearly cover his face from where his hands had clearly passed through it too many times.
He looked a little tired, the skin beneath his eyes faintly drawn, and yet still beautiful.
It was the first time Zuko had allowed himself the thought.
He cleared his throat and took another sip of the smooth wine.
Sokka found himself engulfed in the slow merging of darkness over the golden light.
For a while they drank in silence.
The city below them darkened by degrees. The last rays caught in Zuko’s eyes and cradled their molten gold as if the dying sun had chosen them as its final solace.
Sokka’s own eyes, when he met Zuko’s gaze, held the quiet blue of the first rising night.
Sun and moon drinking each other in with one last breath.
Sokka felt the coolness bite at skin still warmed by wine and by the faint heat radiating from Zuko’s body.
He let his gaze travel over the man beside him almost instinctively.
He took in the line of his throat, the breadth of his shoulders beneath the loose tunic, the strong severity of his hands resting on the balcony rail.
I’m incorrigible, he thought.
Sokka swallowed.
Zuko spoke first.
“About earlier.”
Sokka glanced at him over the rim of the goblet. “Mm.”
“I apologize. I shouldn’t have spoken to you that way. I didn’t mean it. And Mai was misplaced.”
The wine left a slight shine on Sokka’s lips, some sugar still caught faintly at one corner.
Sokka looked away first, then out toward the city.
“Well,” he said, “I did still come in here to scold you. Wait until I do that at least.”
Zuko smiled faintly.
“I’ll let you beat me in a game of Pai Sho.”
Sokka snorted. “Pfft. You are not even a good player.”
“I’m aware.”
Then, more serious:
“The council will move to formalize the review by morning. I would rather you hear it from me first.”
Sokka’s fingers tightened around the goblet stem.
“Your title remains,” Zuko added, as though it could somehow ease him into it. “But your advisory clearance is suspended until the audit is complete. Public-facing, at least.”
The words sat between them for a while.
It was the first time Zuko disliked his silence.
He continued, quieter,
“I do not wish for this to alter the way you look at me.”
As soon as the sentence left his mouth, he hated the nakedness of it.
To his surprise, Sokka only shrugged.
“The title never mattered much to me, Zuko.”
He turned to face him. His expression had gone quieter than before. Zuko still feared he had wounded him.
“After all these years, sparky, you of all people should know better.”
He set his cup down.
“I could care less about those old wilted asses’ vision of me. All I ever cared about is whether it mattered to you.”
The wind shifted.
Zuko could not trust a word out of his mouth. He was afraid his tone would betray him.
Sokka leaned back, head thrown toward the giant now-night sky.
“I keep thinking of how we met.” He laughed. “You with that criminal haircut. Me with my gorgeous head of luscious locks.”
Zuko’s mouth twitched. “That haircut was practical.”
“It was tragic.”
“It was wartime.”
“It was a war crime.”
Zuko laughed then, his eyes crinkling.
“This is not where I expected this to go.”
Encouraged, Sokka went on.
“You used to look at me like I’d personally invented inconvenience.”
“You hit me in the head with a boomerang.”
“You kidnapped Aang! ”
“I had my reasons.”
“You had a ponytail, a bald head, and the emotional range of a forest fire.”
“You had war paint, and thought you could stop a Fire Navy ship with a wooden club.”
Sokka slapped Zuko’s leg, laughing.
“It’s a boomerang!!!”
Zuko feigned a wince and drank his wine, a smile still at his lips.
Sokka’s voice turned softer, sweeter to Zuko’s ears.
“I still remember the night you tried to join our camp at the Western Air Temple. You were practicing your ‘friendly’ face in the woods, and I actually saw you apologize to a toad. Or the Appa rides where you’d sit there all fucking dramatic while Aang tried not to laugh and Katara kept cursing at me not to make it worse.” He tipped his head, cheeks faintly reddened. “And then I’d make it worse.”
“That you did.”
“Still do.”
“Arguably.”
Zuko held his eyes.
The light had lowered enough that the gold flickering across his face had gone deeper, almost copper at the edges. His scar caught it differently from the rest of him. His eyes still held the last of the sun.
“That’s the boy I remember,” Sokka said quietly. “And that’s the man I see in front of me.”
He had said it just like that.
Like he meant it more than anything else in the world.
Zuko set down his goblet.
Then he held out his hand.
Sokka let him pull him gently to his feet.
They stood side by side at the balcony. Sokka felt his shoulder brush against Zuko’s, the night gathering around the roofs.
He looked out over the capital.
“It’s beautiful,” he murmured.
Zuko looked only at him.
At the way his hair seemed alive around him, along with his tunic and that marveling expression.
“It is beautiful.” he said.
Sokka turned to him, his back now half to the city. Zuko had turned toward him a while ago. He stood close enough now that Sokka no longer had to imagine the heat of him.
The wine had left his mouth damp. Zuko watched his throat work once when he swallowed. Then, slower than thought and long before reason could intervene, he lifted his hand.
His fingers touched Sokka’s mouth.
Just the edge first. The soft wetness left by wine. Then the shape of his lower lip, bitten and rough at the center. Sokka drew in a breath so suddenly it hitched in his throat.
Zuko felt it in his own lungs.
He traced his mouth once more, as though to memorize its shape.
The city, the room, everything around them vanished.
Zuko’s eyes had gone hungry, his gaze darkened.
For one suspended moment, neither of them moved.
Heat rose between their chests.
Sokka’s skin burned; Zuko seemed to carry fire in his pores, it burned through him.
He couldn’t breathe.
Zuko’s hand slid from his jaw to the back of his neck, fingers moving through the hair at his nape.
Then, in one swift motion, Zuko’s lips crashed against his.
The kiss began like a question, gauging the distance, tugging at his lower lip.
Sokka kissed him back, melting like ice into his warm embrace.
He felt his head fog as Zuko’s arm circled his waist and pulled him in with the hunger of a man who had waited too long.
The caress deepened, no longer polite, and Sokka felt as though he was being devoured alive in some hot, blissful mess.
A moan escaped his mouth, quickly swallowed by Zuko’s urgency.
He pressed against him, hands tangling at the tunic to touch the bare skin of his back.
The balcony rail left his spine. The room had gone blue at the edges, the lamp bathing them both in a luring light toward the inner hall.
Zuko’s hand never left his back and his mouth now trailed along Sokka’s jaw to his neck. His back met the wall with a muted thud.
The hand at the back of his neck tightened, almost fisting his hair, and their mouths found each other again, opening deeper still.
Outside, the city went on glittering beneath the first rise of night.
Inside, whatever distance had once existed between them did not survive the door.
.
..
...
Hello my loves !!! 💖💖💖🤭🤭🤭
(evil smirk) I just needed them to KISS and to pause the angst for a second, hehe. Honestly, this chapter gave me the hardest time!! I think it’s my longest one yet 💖🤭
It's canon atp idc
I’m already kicking my feet just thinking about what’s coming in the next one 😏 ( even more evil wink)
Side note: I really, really appreciate all the cute comments you guys leave under these. They are literally my motivation to keep going 😪✨
Bisous!!! 🤭🤭💖💖
