Synopsis : A wrong turn leads Sokka into the Fire Lord’s private bath. Unfortunately for him, and very fortunately for the hungry, smug man who finds him there, Zuko decides his lovely ambassador looks far too good spread out in his bathhouse to leave him untouched. They decide to "unwind" in a rather demonstrative lesson.
❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
Pairing : Zukko x Sokka
Content : MDNI, explicit sexual 18+, adult post-canon, top!Zuko, bottom!Sokka, Fire Lord Zuko x Ambassador Sokka, bathhouse sex, dirty talk, praise, fingering, stretching, penetrative sex, anal sex, smug cocky Zuko, flustered Sokka, wet and messy, edging..
❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
When he passed the same bronze lamp for the third time, Sokka halted in his tracks.
He should have known that, alongside his terrible sense of direction and the vague description of the bathhouse corridor, he was bound to get lost.
Why does every corridor in this god-forsaken palace look the same?
He was wandering well past the residential quarters when he finally found what looked like the pathway to Heaven.
He raised a curious brow at how well the bathhouse inner garden was kept, how perfectly lacquered the screens were, and an even more curious brow at the royal engravings along the walls.
He did not remember the foreign quarters being so grand.
But Sokka was too tired to question it. The day had scraped him raw, and he was desperate to slip out of his restraint.
He discovered he was not a man of the court. He detested, with a passion, the wooden chairs and the grand speeches the old ministers seemed so particularly fond of.
The chamber opened around him in a low haze of red light.
Tiled in marble, the walls curved into decorated alcoves, round glass lanterns flickering red shadows over the wet floor.
At the center, a long pool cut through the stone, streams of water pooling with steam while the scent of incense and faint florals lingered in the air.
Heat breathed up from it in slow waves, dampening his collar and slipping under the edge of his robes.
He undressed fast.
Clothes discarded on the floor.
Hair tie pulled loose.
One hand on the carved edge of the bath as he swiftly eased into the hot water.
He let the heat take him whole, climbing up his calves, his thighs, his hips, wrapping around him until the day softened under his skin.
Sokka sank to his chest and let his head tip back against the stone lip, eyes closing, mouth parted around a breath he had been holding since morning.
The water moved in glassy little laps against his ribs.
Suddenly, the door opened.
Sokka opened his eyes.
Zuko stood at the entrance, one hand still resting on the lacquered frame, the amber light gathering around his body in a way that made the steam look almost reverent.
His hair hung loose around his face, dark and damp at the ends, curling slightly against the line of his neck.
A towel sat low on his hips—dangerously low—the hard plane of his stomach cutting into two clean grooves that disappeared beneath the white fabric.
Sokka moved abruptly, his breath hitching in his throat.
Zuko’s eyes moved over him.
Then to the pile of discarded clothes on the floor.
A slow grin stretched his lips.
“Oh, would you look at that,” he said, voice low, mouth curved. “I wasn’t told to expect such delicious company.”
Zuko came closer, bare feet silent on stone, his towel shifting with each step.
Waterlight crawled over his body, catching on the hollow of his throat, the long line of his collarbones, before dipping into the lean swell of his chest.
He was all hard lines and muscle, tension pouring through the way he moved. Sokka’s eyes trailed over him before stopping at the dark line beneath his navel, then the bulge swelling under the towel.
Zuko’s smile sharpened.
“You like what you’re seeing, Ambassador?”
Sokka swallowed.
“I’m surprised, I—” He felt his face redden, his pulse frantic against his ribs. “I wasn’t expecting to see you here.”
Zuko cocked his head.
“I’d argue the same. You can imagine my surprise when I find my lovely ambassador, who missed half of our council, sprawled in my private baths.”
“I—I can leave—”
Sokka didn’t have time to finish before Zuko’s hand went to the towel.
Two fingers at the knot, one slow pull, and the white fabric dropped to the floor, baring the Fire Lord in all his glory.
“Now where is the fun in that?”
Sokka’s mouth went dry.
Zuko stepped out of it as though modesty had never once occurred to him.
Sokka’s eyes could barely track the sheer, hulking symmetry of him before they snagged lower, on the way his weight just… settled.
He was already half-roused, thick and flushed, a pulsing vein mapping its way down the side of his shaft.
Zuko was looking at him, a slow, drunken sort of smirk pulling at his mouth.
“Mind if I join you?” he asked as he stepped into the pool, the water rising to his thighs.
He moved closer without hurry, one hand skimming the surface as though the whole room belonged to him.
And it did.
He settled into the heat beside him, their shoulders nearly brushing.
Sokka cleared his throat, staring straight ahead at the steam, not daring to meet his eyes.
“S-so… how was your day?” he asked, the words awkwardly stumbling out of him.
Zuko let out a soft, huffed laugh.
“Tedious,” he murmured, eyes never leaving Sokka’s profile. “Yours?”
“Tedious as well,” Sokka answered quietly, his hands playing with the water, soft ripples circling him.
For a moment, neither of them spoke. Nothing but the sound of a limb here and a breath there disturbed the silence.
Steam gathered between their faces. The red lanterns made the water gleam around their chests.
Suddenly, Zuko shifted.
The water churned as he moved in front of him. He stopped between Sokka’s parted knees, hands finding the stone edge on either side of him.
Sokka found his back pressed against the warm lip of the bath.
Zuko leaned in, red light glowing along the wet slope of his shoulders.
“I know a way we can both unwind,” he whispered.
Sokka’s breath caught.
“And… what would that be?”
Zuko’s eyes flickered.
“Mmh. It’s rather demonstrative.”
Before Sokka could process the words, Zuko’s hands slipped beneath the water and caught him by the backs of his knees, forcing them apart.
Sokka jolted as Zuko pulled him forward, dragging him until his legs opened around Zuko’s waist.
The sudden contact of his thighs pressed against him made Sokka gasp.
“Zuko—I’m naked! ” he hissed, one hand flying up to push against Zuko’s shoulder.
The man’s eyes dropped, unhurried, over Sokka’s frame, his rising chest, his stomach beneath the clear water.
“Oh, I’m aware.” Zuko’s gaze continued lower, dipping past Sokka’s navel to the—rather hard—evidence of his turmoil, his length taut and bobbing slightly beneath the steam.
“All for me?” he grinned. “How sweet.”
Sokka shuddered, torn between escaping his grasp and easing into it.
He felt his tan skin flush a deeper shade of red and decided against his better judgment, or perhaps surrendered on instinct, to Zuko’s embrace.
“You’re impossible.”
Zuko laughed, pulling him further into his arms, Sokka’s legs closing around him. “Come here.”
Sokka did not know which of them moved first. Only that his mouth was suddenly close to Zuko’s, his hands sliding up Sokka’s side, over his ribs, past his chest, grasping at his throat before two fingers tipped his chin up.
Zuko’s voice dropped.
“How about you entertain your Fire Lord?”
Sokka gave a shaky laugh, eyes gleaming defiantly. “Is that an order?”
“Oh, absolutely. From the utmost authority.”
“Shut up and kiss me, Your Majesty.”
The man did not need to be told twice.
Zuko’s fingers slid into his wet hair and pulled him into a kiss.
It came open-mouthed and hot, tongue pressing past Sokka’s lips as the water rocked hard around their bodies.
He felt as though his very breath had been claimed, Zuko’s tongue sweeping inside his mouth, heavy and demanding, unspooling every thought, stealing every gasp until he was nothing but nerves and frantic hands.
Sokka’s palms climbed over his shoulders, desperate to hold the flesh, slipping once over wet skin.
The first drag of Zuko’s body against his made Sokka gasp into his mouth. Zuko took the sound deeper, drinking him in, one hand cupping the back of his neck, the other moving down his spine to the curve of his bottom, settling him over his lap.
Sokka’s legs tightened around Zuko’s waist, chest heaving against his.
Zuko’s mouth left his only to travel lower, tracing his jaw before burying itself in the crook of Sokka’s neck, teeth grazing the skin, pulling at it.
The room blurred red and gold around them. Sokka felt his mind go blank.
“You have no idea how much I want you, do you?” Zuko rasped. “How much I wanted your pretty little ass bent over my desk all fucking morning.”
Sokka’s head rolled back against his shoulder, moans spilling out of him as Zuko pressed against him, making him feel the hard length of his throbbing shaft.
The man wanted to devour him.
In one swift motion, Zuko dragged his ass down into his grip, the rim of him fluttering around the first press, nudging where Sokka was already trembling for him.
Zuko’s fingers spread him with shameless patience, stretching him open.
“Zuko—nngh—wait.”
His thumb pressed in first, slow and mean, easing him wider around the slick heat until Sokka’s thighs shook against the water.
One finger quickly followed, then another, eating at him, probing him one long digit at a time.
Zuko’s mouth brushed his ear.
“Open up for me, baby.”
Then Zuko lined himself up-heavy and insistent-letting the swollen head of his cock catch there.
Sokka’s whole body seized as Zuko lowered him down, entering him.
“That’s right-t, eat me up.” Zuko’s voice frayed. “F-fuck, Sokka, you’re taking me so well.”
The words made Sokka tighten around him.
Zuko pressed closer, and Sokka’s whole body curved around the blunt nudge of his length.
His fingers slipped against the wet stone before Zuko’s hand caught them and propped them up on his shoulders.
He leaned in, his breath licking Sokka’s earlobe, hot and dangerously low.“Careful now, darling.”
Zuko’s cock pressed into him mercilessly, stretching his slick walls before ramming back in again, filling him even further, inch by inch.
Sokka gripped his shoulders, nails digging into rigid muscle, mouth open into one delicious O.
“A-ah, oh god, Zuko—nghh.”
Zuko’s hips snapped in, then slowed into a heavy roll, grinding into him. “There?”
Sokka’s eyes fluttered. “Fuck, yes.”
Zuko’s mouth curved against his cheek as he steadied him with one hand at his waist, moving him up and down with a maddening rhythm.
“Look at you,” he breathed, voice rougher. “You’re already shaking, Ambassador.”
When Sokka opened his mouth to answer, Zuko pushed forward, thrusting into him, stealing the words clean out of his mouth in a choked whimper.
He worked him slowly at first, like he wanted to memorize the shape of him, before hastening the pace, the sounds of their joined bodies echoing on the walls.
Sokka felt every inch of him open space where there had been none, his whole body surrendering to the dizzying heat and the man eating him. And god, the man was hungry.
Every roll of his hips fed him open, wider-madder.
His nails scraped down Zuko’s shoulders to the wings of his back, mouth falling against the side of the man’s neck, open and useless, all sobs and soft whines.
Zuko’s cock breached him, thick and slick, forcing him to stretch around the hard pulse of him. Every vein, every heavy inch, every roll of Zuko’s hips made him gasp against his wet skin, pushing him further to the edge.
“You’re doing so well.”
His hips pressed in deeper as he grabbed Sokka’s dazed face, forcing him to look where they were deeply joined. “Look.”
Sokka’s eyes darted to that place.
All flushed and glossy, gaping around Zuko’s engorged length buried deep within him.
His own cock was hard against Zuko’s stomach, soaked and threatening to leak at every languid stroke.
“Ah—f-fuck, don’t stop.”
“I wouldn’t dare to, Ambassador.”
Zuko’s pupils had blown wide, his scar flushed darker from steam and want, strands of hair clinging to his forehead, a boyish grin on his lips.
His hand went down to touch Sokka’s red tip and began languorously stroking him, his thumb focused on the knob before slowly dragging down its ridge.
His eyes did not leave Sokka’s as he drank him in, brows creasing, the edge of his mouth quivering with pooling pleasure.
“Feel that?” Zuko murmured against the shell of his ear. “Feel how hard you are for me?”
Sokka could have gone mad with the stimulation. Zuko’s hips pressed him deep from behind, his hand mirroring his pace.
Every stroke sent heat up through his stomach, his head tipping back, his whole body jerking forward.
Sokka moaned his name, pleading.
“Zuko—I’m so close—ahhh…”
“Say my name.”
“Z-Zuko.”
His mouth curved against Sokka’s ear.
“I love it when you talk dirty to me, baby.”
.
..
...
Hello my loves 💖💖!!
I wrote this at work XD. I didn't even have time to finish it properly ( hence the part one) because I kept being INTERRUPTED every damn second and everytime someone walked I slammed my laptop shut ( I'm actually ashamed I write these on my Google notes).
I cannot hide my emotions for the life of me 😭😭😭.
But let me tell you, mama absolutely enjoyed herself writing these.
Also, I’m very new to tagging, so writing the content warnings felt somehow more awkward than writing the actual smut. Indulge me 😭😭
( me every time I'd imagine Sokka bent over and f-)
Synopsis : A wrong turn leads Sokka into the Fire Lord’s private bath. Unfortunately for him, and very fortunately for the hungry, smug man who finds him there, Zuko decides his lovely ambassador looks far too good spread out in his bathhouse to leave him untouched. They decide to "unwind" in a rather demonstrative lesson.
❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
Pairing : Zukko x Sokka
Content : MDNI, explicit sexual 18+, adult post-canon, top!Zuko, bottom!Sokka, Fire Lord Zuko x Ambassador Sokka, bathhouse sex, dirty talk, praise, fingering, stretching, penetrative sex, anal sex, smug cocky Zuko, flustered Sokka, wet and messy, edging..
❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
When he passed the same bronze lamp for the third time, Sokka halted in his tracks.
He should have known that, alongside his terrible sense of direction and the vague description of the bathhouse corridor, he was bound to get lost.
Why does every corridor in this god-forsaken palace look the same?
He was wandering well past the residential quarters when he finally found what looked like the pathway to Heaven.
He raised a curious brow at how well the bathhouse inner garden was kept, how perfectly lacquered the screens were, and an even more curious brow at the royal engravings along the walls.
He did not remember the foreign quarters being so grand.
But Sokka was too tired to question it. The day had scraped him raw, and he was desperate to slip out of his restraint.
He discovered he was not a man of the court. He detested, with a passion, the wooden chairs and the grand speeches the old ministers seemed so particularly fond of.
The chamber opened around him in a low haze of red light.
Tiled in marble, the walls curved into decorated alcoves, round glass lanterns flickering red shadows over the wet floor.
At the center, a long pool cut through the stone, streams of water pooling with steam while the scent of incense and faint florals lingered in the air.
Heat breathed up from it in slow waves, dampening his collar and slipping under the edge of his robes.
He undressed fast.
Clothes discarded on the floor.
Hair tie pulled loose.
One hand on the carved edge of the bath as he swiftly eased into the hot water.
He let the heat take him whole, climbing up his calves, his thighs, his hips, wrapping around him until the day softened under his skin.
Sokka sank to his chest and let his head tip back against the stone lip, eyes closing, mouth parted around a breath he had been holding since morning.
The water moved in glassy little laps against his ribs.
Suddenly, the door opened.
Sokka opened his eyes.
Zuko stood at the entrance, one hand still resting on the lacquered frame, the amber light gathering around his body in a way that made the steam look almost reverent.
His hair hung loose around his face, dark and damp at the ends, curling slightly against the line of his neck.
A towel sat low on his hips—dangerously low—the hard plane of his stomach cutting into two clean grooves that disappeared beneath the white fabric.
Sokka moved abruptly, his breath hitching in his throat.
Zuko’s eyes moved over him.
Then to the pile of discarded clothes on the floor.
A slow grin stretched his lips.
“Oh, would you look at that,” he said, voice low, mouth curved. “I wasn’t told to expect such delicious company.”
Zuko came closer, bare feet silent on stone, his towel shifting with each step.
Waterlight crawled over his body, catching on the hollow of his throat, the long line of his collarbones, before dipping into the lean swell of his chest.
He was all hard lines and muscle, tension pouring through the way he moved. Sokka’s eyes trailed over him before stopping at the dark line beneath his navel, then the bulge swelling under the towel.
Zuko’s smile sharpened.
“You like what you’re seeing, Ambassador?”
Sokka swallowed.
“I’m surprised, I—” He felt his face redden, his pulse frantic against his ribs. “I wasn’t expecting to see you here.”
Zuko cocked his head.
“I’d argue the same. You can imagine my surprise when I find my lovely ambassador, who missed half of our council, sprawled in my private baths.”
“I—I can leave—”
Sokka didn’t have time to finish before Zuko’s hand went to the towel.
Two fingers at the knot, one slow pull, and the white fabric dropped to the floor, baring the Fire Lord in all his glory.
“Now where is the fun in that?”
Sokka’s mouth went dry.
Zuko stepped out of it as though modesty had never once occurred to him.
Sokka’s eyes could barely track the sheer, hulking symmetry of him before they snagged lower, on the way his weight just… settled.
He was already half-roused, thick and flushed, a pulsing vein mapping its way down the side of his shaft.
Zuko was looking at him, a slow, drunken sort of smirk pulling at his mouth.
“Mind if I join you?” he asked as he stepped into the pool, the water rising to his thighs.
He moved closer without hurry, one hand skimming the surface as though the whole room belonged to him.
And it did.
He settled into the heat beside him, their shoulders nearly brushing.
Sokka cleared his throat, staring straight ahead at the steam, not daring to meet his eyes.
“S-so… how was your day?” he asked, the words awkwardly stumbling out of him.
Zuko let out a soft, huffed laugh.
“Tedious,” he murmured, eyes never leaving Sokka’s profile. “Yours?”
“Tedious as well,” Sokka answered quietly, his hands playing with the water, soft ripples circling him.
For a moment, neither of them spoke. Nothing but the sound of a limb here and a breath there disturbed the silence.
Steam gathered between their faces. The red lanterns made the water gleam around their chests.
Suddenly, Zuko shifted.
The water churned as he moved in front of him. He stopped between Sokka’s parted knees, hands finding the stone edge on either side of him.
Sokka found his back pressed against the warm lip of the bath.
Zuko leaned in, red light glowing along the wet slope of his shoulders.
“I know a way we can both unwind,” he whispered.
Sokka’s breath caught.
“And… what would that be?”
Zuko’s eyes flickered.
“Mmh. It’s rather demonstrative.”
Before Sokka could process the words, Zuko’s hands slipped beneath the water and caught him by the backs of his knees, forcing them apart.
Sokka jolted as Zuko pulled him forward, dragging him until his legs opened around Zuko’s waist.
The sudden contact of his thighs pressed against him made Sokka gasp.
“Zuko—I’m naked! ” he hissed, one hand flying up to push against Zuko’s shoulder.
The man’s eyes dropped, unhurried, over Sokka’s frame, his rising chest, his stomach beneath the clear water.
“Oh, I’m aware.” Zuko’s gaze continued lower, dipping past Sokka’s navel to the—rather hard—evidence of his turmoil, his length taut and bobbing slightly beneath the steam.
“All for me?” he grinned. “How sweet.”
Sokka shuddered, torn between escaping his grasp and easing into it.
He felt his tan skin flush a deeper shade of red and decided against his better judgment, or perhaps surrendered on instinct, to Zuko’s embrace.
“You’re impossible.”
Zuko laughed, pulling him further into his arms, Sokka’s legs closing around him. “Come here.”
Sokka did not know which of them moved first. Only that his mouth was suddenly close to Zuko’s, his hands sliding up Sokka’s side, over his ribs, past his chest, grasping at his throat before two fingers tipped his chin up.
Zuko’s voice dropped.
“How about you entertain your Fire Lord?”
Sokka gave a shaky laugh, eyes gleaming defiantly. “Is that an order?”
“Oh, absolutely. From the utmost authority.”
“Shut up and kiss me, Your Majesty.”
The man did not need to be told twice.
Zuko’s fingers slid into his wet hair and pulled him into a kiss.
It came open-mouthed and hot, tongue pressing past Sokka’s lips as the water rocked hard around their bodies.
He felt as though his very breath had been claimed, Zuko’s tongue sweeping inside his mouth, heavy and demanding, unspooling every thought, stealing every gasp until he was nothing but nerves and frantic hands.
Sokka’s palms climbed over his shoulders, desperate to hold the flesh, slipping once over wet skin.
The first drag of Zuko’s body against his made Sokka gasp into his mouth. Zuko took the sound deeper, drinking him in, one hand cupping the back of his neck, the other moving down his spine to the curve of his bottom, settling him over his lap.
Sokka’s legs tightened around Zuko’s waist, chest heaving against his.
Zuko’s mouth left his only to travel lower, tracing his jaw before burying itself in the crook of Sokka’s neck, teeth grazing the skin, pulling at it.
The room blurred red and gold around them. Sokka felt his mind go blank.
“You have no idea how much I want you, do you?” Zuko rasped. “How much I wanted your pretty little ass bent over my desk all fucking morning.”
Sokka’s head rolled back against his shoulder, moans spilling out of him as Zuko pressed against him, making him feel the hard length of his throbbing shaft.
The man wanted to devour him.
In one swift motion, Zuko dragged his ass down into his grip, the rim of him fluttering around the first press, nudging where Sokka was already trembling for him.
Zuko’s fingers spread him with shameless patience, stretching him open.
“Zuko—nngh—wait.”
His thumb pressed in first, slow and mean, easing him wider around the slick heat until Sokka’s thighs shook against the water.
One finger quickly followed, then another, eating at him, probing him one long digit at a time.
Zuko’s mouth brushed his ear.
“Open up for me, baby.”
Then Zuko lined himself up-heavy and insistent-letting the swollen head of his cock catch there.
Sokka’s whole body seized as Zuko lowered him down, entering him.
“That’s right-t, eat me up.” Zuko’s voice frayed. “F-fuck, Sokka, you’re taking me so well.”
The words made Sokka tighten around him.
Zuko pressed closer, and Sokka’s whole body curved around the blunt nudge of his length.
His fingers slipped against the wet stone before Zuko’s hand caught them and propped them up on his shoulders.
He leaned in, his breath licking Sokka’s earlobe, hot and dangerously low.“Careful now, darling.”
Zuko’s cock pressed into him mercilessly, stretching his slick walls before ramming back in again, filling him even further, inch by inch.
Sokka gripped his shoulders, nails digging into rigid muscle, mouth open into one delicious O.
“A-ah, oh god, Zuko—nghh.”
Zuko’s hips snapped in, then slowed into a heavy roll, grinding into him. “There?”
Sokka’s eyes fluttered. “Fuck, yes.”
Zuko’s mouth curved against his cheek as he steadied him with one hand at his waist, moving him up and down with a maddening rhythm.
“Look at you,” he breathed, voice rougher. “You’re already shaking, Ambassador.”
When Sokka opened his mouth to answer, Zuko pushed forward, thrusting into him, stealing the words clean out of his mouth in a choked whimper.
He worked him slowly at first, like he wanted to memorize the shape of him, before hastening the pace, the sounds of their joined bodies echoing on the walls.
Sokka felt every inch of him open space where there had been none, his whole body surrendering to the dizzying heat and the man eating him. And god, the man was hungry.
Every roll of his hips fed him open, wider-madder.
His nails scraped down Zuko’s shoulders to the wings of his back, mouth falling against the side of the man’s neck, open and useless, all sobs and soft whines.
Zuko’s cock breached him, thick and slick, forcing him to stretch around the hard pulse of him. Every vein, every heavy inch, every roll of Zuko’s hips made him gasp against his wet skin, pushing him further to the edge.
“You’re doing so well.”
His hips pressed in deeper as he grabbed Sokka’s dazed face, forcing him to look where they were deeply joined. “Look.”
Sokka’s eyes darted to that place.
All flushed and glossy, gaping around Zuko’s engorged length buried deep within him.
His own cock was hard against Zuko’s stomach, soaked and threatening to leak at every languid stroke.
“Ah—f-fuck, don’t stop.”
“I wouldn’t dare to, Ambassador.”
Zuko’s pupils had blown wide, his scar flushed darker from steam and want, strands of hair clinging to his forehead, a boyish grin on his lips.
His hand went down to touch Sokka’s red tip and began languorously stroking him, his thumb focused on the knob before slowly dragging down its ridge.
His eyes did not leave Sokka’s as he drank him in, brows creasing, the edge of his mouth quivering with pooling pleasure.
“Feel that?” Zuko murmured against the shell of his ear. “Feel how hard you are for me?”
Sokka could have gone mad with the stimulation. Zuko’s hips pressed him deep from behind, his hand mirroring his pace.
Every stroke sent heat up through his stomach, his head tipping back, his whole body jerking forward.
Sokka moaned his name, pleading.
“Zuko—I’m so close—ahhh…”
“Say my name.”
“Z-Zuko.”
His mouth curved against Sokka’s ear.
“I love it when you talk dirty to me, baby.”
.
..
...
Hello my loves 💖💖!!
I wrote this at work XD. I didn't even have time to finish it properly ( hence the part one) because I kept being INTERRUPTED every damn second and everytime someone walked I slammed my laptop shut ( I'm actually ashamed I write these on my Google notes).
I cannot hide my emotions for the life of me 😭😭😭.
But let me tell you, mama absolutely enjoyed herself writing these.
Also, I’m very new to tagging, so writing the content warnings felt somehow more awkward than writing the actual smut. Indulge me 😭😭
( me every time I'd imagine Sokka bent over and f-)
It is with a trembling quill and a most scandalous flush upon my cheeks that I must issue this formal declaration 🙂↕️🙂↕️🙂↕️☝️
I have recently fallen victim to a series of very undecent ( to say the least 🤭) vivid dreams of our lovely ambassador and fire lord in various unholy positions ( the fruit of my salacious imagination 😈😈)
I shall be taking a brief sabbatical from my primary literary obligations to indulge in this "week of merriment."
------------
Okay but real talk : I had a daydream so loud and clear about Zuko bending over Sokka and plowing him in a bathhouse all slippery and wet ( at work might I add XD) that I simply had no choice.
My brain has officially been hijacked by my own imagination, and we are pivoting to a series of smutty one-shots because, frankly, your girl needs some happiness in her life right now.
I’m currently drafting the first one and let me tell you!!!! I have NEVER blushed this much at my own keyboard 🫠🫠
I’m taking a tiny break from my main fic to get these out of my system, but it’s just for a "fun week." I’ll be back from my hiatus and back to the regular plot.
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 😪✨
I have had this chapter in my drafts and I kept going crazy trying to perfect it. And I think my issue is I obsess over things to be perfect too much.
Seriously, I’ve been staring at these paragraphs for so long ( I almost deleted it)
But I’m finally letting Chapter 10 out into the wild! It took me almost a week and a half (smh), but here we are 🙂↕️🙂↕️
Oh and I forgot to mention ( IT'S SPICY 🤭)
Also, my brain is currently a 24/7 factory for spicy smut/fluff short one-shot ideas ( I'm open to suggestions! Or requests!)
Anyway, how was your weekend?
I actually managed to get a full night’s sleep for the first time in forever! I finally bought a new bed, but let me tell you, the process of getting it transported into my apartment was a literal nightmare. ( but soo worth it)
Hello! I haven't posted on AO3 yet because, to be honest, it’s a bit intimidating, but I plan on doing it once I’ve made more progress on the chapters.
I have some other works under my belt as well so maybe I'll gather some and post them!
“You stand there talking about theater as though the whole point of this dossier isn’t to turn me into one,”
“A foreign puppet-master, a water tribe schemer, a bad influence at your elbow. It’s almost flattering, really.”
“It is painting you as a traitor, Sokka.”
It was too early to function when Sokka heard the physician announce herself in his quarters.
He stirred in bed and rose with the graceless stretch of a half-feral animal dragged too soon from sleep.
By the time he turned his head, the woman was already pouring a dark, bitter-looking substance into a shallow porcelain cup.
Steam lifted from it in narrow threads.
Sokka narrowed his eyes with the distrust of a man who had survived Katara’s earliest attempts at medicinal tea and several Fire Nation broths that had seemed designed as punishment.
“What is that ?”
“A tonic,” she replied without looking up. “Though your fervor does not appear to require much enhancement. The circles bleeding through your eyes suggest the rest of you does.”
Sokka stared at her.
“I am beginning to feel personally persecuted by your field.”
“You should feel persecuted by your own irresponsible actions.” She extended the cup toward him. “Drink.”
A scoff rose before he could stop it.
“I’ll have you know I don’t appreciate being commanded before breakfast.”
“And I’ll have you know,” she said, “that I do not appreciate rewrapping the same wound because our dear ambassador believes himself beyond advice.”
Sokka opened his mouth.
She raised one finger.
He closed it again and took the cup, downing the tonic in one long swallow. The taste was so atrocious his face nearly tried to leave his skull.
“What in the hell did you make this with,” he choked out, “tears and sorrows?”
“Willow bark, fireweed, ginger, salt, and an amount of honey so generous I considered billing the Southern Water Tribe.”
Her assistant stepped silently forward in the meantime, laying out clean linen, salve, and—Sokka’s eyes narrowed—a sling fitted with a narrow leather brace.
The physician took the empty cup from him and passed it back without ceremony.
“You reopened the strain,” she said. “Aggravated the shoulder, disturbed the ribs, and, most importantly, defied my orders regarding rest and restrained movement.”
When the assistant came closer, Sokka drew back at once.
“Absolutely not.”
The physician paid him no mind and continued arranging her instruments with infuriating calm.
“I did warn you, Ambassador.”
He looked at her.
She looked back.
For one ridiculous instant, he tried anyway.
“Pretty please ?”
She took up the linen, unfazed.
“Now, now, dear Ambassador,” she said, with the calm of a woman announcing weather. “You should know a woman never fails to honor her promise.”
The assistant stepped in again.
By the time Sokka left his quarters, his left arm had been arranged neatly into the sling along with what remained of his dignity.
He had never felt more ridiculous.
Or, annoyingly, more refreshed.
He stepped into the corridor with the sling branded on him like a public accusation.
Mai saw him before he saw her.
She was standing beside a screen lacquered with cranes, one shoulder to the wall, dressed in crimson and black, her hair pinned as tightly as her expression. Her eyes dropped at once to the sling.
She scoffed.
Sokka adjusted the fall of his outer robe over it. “Good morning to you too.”
“I thought,” Mai said, eyes still on the linen, “we might be spared your antics today.”
Sokka stopped in front of her and lifted his chin with theatrical offense.
“Navré, mademoiselle. But it seems my antics and my handicapped state will be gracing your eyes once again.”
To his genuine surprise, she laughed.
Not one of her dry little exhalations. A real laugh.
Sokka stared at her. “That was deeply unsettling.”
Her mouth settled back into its usual line, though the last trace of amusement lingered in her eyes.
“On second thought,” she said, “the sight of you in that sling may be a feast for the council.”
“I’m glad my suffering serves the nation.”
“At the very least, it serves morale.”
“You wound me.”
“The physician appears to have beaten me to it.”
Sokka muttered something uncharitable under his breath and fell into step beside her.
“Zuko’s inside?”
“In the old records room near the east stair. Commander Tairen is with him.”
“Speaking of service and spectacle—what came of yesterday’s bait? Did you manage to trail back to whom he answers?”
Mai’s mouth flattened.
“Funnily enough, the ledger was deposited with the Ministry of Interior Affairs like any other ordinary record.”
Sokka turned his head sharply. “You’re kidding.”
“I never joke about bureaucracy. It cheapens me.” She folded her arms. “We apprehended him because the trail went blank. Same story all through the night. He knows nothing, saw nothing, thought he was following internal instructions.”
Sokka frowned. “Internal instructions don’t come with discretion and night retrieval.”
“No.” Mai’s gaze went colder. “Which means they chose the duller end of the chain.”
---
The corridor opened into the old records room.
It was square and low-ceilinged, lined with municipal ledgers and obsolete registry tubes, with one long table under the high slit of a window. Four cups of tea sat untouched at one end.
Zuko stood at the other.
He was in his usual formal black and red. His hair was tied back with a plain clasp. Light from the narrow window cut across the table and left his face half in shadow. His eyes went first to the sling.
Then to Sokka.
Then away.
Mai dragged out a chair with one hand. “The fellow claims it was internal instruction. I have my reservations. Palace municipal orders do not usually arrive dressed like smugglers.”
The commander spoke.
“The collector’s route was clean. Too clean. The packet went through Interior Affairs intake with a legitimate receiving mark before being diverted to secondary handling.”
Sokka moved toward the chair, struggling half a second too long with the angle of the sling before sitting.
Mai clicked her tongue. “For the love of the Flame, try not to bleed on anything official.”
He glanced at her. “You say the sweetest things.”
Then he turned to the commander.
“Who did the order come from?”
“We don’t know that yet.”
“This is becoming a tiresome answer.”
“It is the one we have.”
Zuko sat at last and lifted one hand in a curt motion.
“Report.”
Mai crossed one leg over the other and began.
“The collector was followed after leaving the west archive route. We did not take him inside the palace, per your order. We apprehended him later. The packet was delivered to the Ministry of Interior Affairs in the public deposit court. When questioned, he claimed innocence.” Her mouth curved slightly. “If I had it my way, I’d say the man would benefit from a little exercise.”
Zuko cut through that at once.
“The collector walked into a public ministry with stolen material. Where did he deposit the dossier?”
Tairen answered.
“In the third petitions chest. Then he went to buy candied nuts from a street vendor.”
Sokka stared.
“That is either the stupidest man alive,” he said, “or someone very committed to appearing stupid.”
“We considered both,” Tairen said. “I would say more operational than informed. We matched his claims to his movements. Fair enough, they verified his innocence.”
“There is a difference,” Sokka said, “between innocence and compartmentalization.”
Zuko asked, “What did he say when seized?”
“That he was told to deliver a dossier. That he did not know the contents. That he believed it involved a property dispute concerning old land registers.”
Sokka let out a humorless breath. “Did the man believe himself?”
Mai answered before Tairen could.
“He sweated through his collar enough.” She rose from the chair and leaned her palms against the table. “My offer remains on the table. Steel still makes the toughest tongues sing.”
Zuko rose too. Annoyed.
“Enough.”
The room tightened around the single word.
“Did he confess to any form of payment?”
“Half payment only,” Tairen said. “Common courier marker. No house mint. No merchant stamp.”
Zuko picked up the broken seal and held it toward the light.
“And this?”
The outer wrapping carried no full crest, but the wax was not common black.
Cinnabar mixed with iron ash, expensive, old-style. The impression had been broken before deposit, but one edge had survived.
He turned the fragment once.
Sokka leaned closer despite the drag in his shoulder.
The wax held only part of an image: a curved shape that might have been flame, or breath, or the opened edge of a fan. Beside it, three fine ridges close together.
Mai spoke first.
“House Maren uses the three-ridge border on an older household seal.”
Zuko set the wax down. “House Maren would not be so careless with its own mark.”
“Not unless,” Sokka said, “they wanted everyone to think no one would believe they would be so careless.”
Tairen tapped the copied strip beside the wax. “There is another complication.”
Sokka read the heading and went still.
Memorandum concerning external influence upon domestic stabilization policy.
He felt Mai look at him. Zuko did not.
Sokka picked up the strip with his good hand. The sling made the movement awkward and slow, which irritated him enough to steady his voice.
“What exactly was in the dossier besides the stolen ledger?”
Tairen answered after a beat, her tone careful.
“Select meeting notes. Partial. Ordered enough to suggest…” She paused, glanced once at Sokka, then continued. “To suggest that Representative Sokka has been advising on internal security rotations, harbor restrictions, restricted archive access, and domestic reform enforcement.”
Zuko’s jaw worked once.
Sokka kept reading.
The excerpts were not forged. That was what made them useful.
He recognized his own recommendations, his own phrases, stripped of the rooms that had given them meaning.
Harbor rationing with none of the emergency context. Temporary rerouting of grain and coal without the unrest that had made it necessary. Delays in policy announcement until Southern envoys arrived. Piece by piece, it painted him into a very ugly shape.
A foreign manipulator.
A deviant influence.
A Water Tribe hand inside the Fire Nation’s machinery.
And Zuko... Zuko made to look like a ruler pliant enough to bend under it.
Sokka set the paper down.
“This is smart,” he said quietly. “Smarter than I anticipated. This isn’t the work of a novice.”
His fingers trembled once.
He pressed them flat against the wood.
“So the play isn’t private impropriety,” he said. “The play is to make me look like a corrosive influence.”
He laughed once without humor.
“Bravo.”
Mai’s eyes sharpened.
“Only you would find wit in a threat this sophisticated. Must I remind you this would carry consequences not only for you, but for all of us—and the Southern Water Tribe besides ? Spare us the sarcasm for once.”
Tairen continued, her voice stern.
“The ministry cannot ignore a dossier once it is logged. It entered the public administrative register before we could recover it.”
Zuko closed his eyes for half a second.
“Who has seen it?”
“Two intake clerks. One assistant registrar. Junior secretaries in Interior Affairs.” Tairen’s mouth tightened. “So, effectively, everyone.”
“Of course it has,” Mai said. “This is the Fire Nation. Paper grows legs when it smells blood.”
Zuko looked at the commander. “Names.”
Tairen laid another list on the table. “Already under watch.”
Sokka spoke before anyone else could.
“We cannot delay formal engagement with the houses any longer.”
“No,” Zuko said.
Sokka’s mouth tightened. “Good. Because if you let every minister, every house elder, every noble debate evidence in the dark, they’ll turn this investigation into theater.”
“Your very existence is theater.”
The words were out before either of them could stop them.
Sokka looked at him.
Zuko’s face had not changed. But the air had.
Mai’s gaze flicked once toward Tairen, who with admirable discipline became suddenly and completely interested in the edge of the table.
Sokka tilted his head, slow and dangerous.
“What exactly,” he asked, “does that mean?”
Zuko’s eyes were already on him now.
“It means,” he said, “that you have an astonishing instinct for turning every serious moment into performance.”
Sokka let out a short, humorless laugh. “Right. Because this room has been so welcoming to sincerity.”
“That is not what I said.”
“No,” Sokka replied. “You rarely say exactly what you mean when there are witnesses.”
Zuko’s jaw tightened.
“This is not about witnesses.”
“Isn’t it.”
The room had gone very still around them.
A silence passed. Sokka knew he should stop. He knew it and kept going anyway.
“You stand there talking about theater as though the whole point of this dossier isn’t to turn me into one,” he said. “A foreign puppet-master, a water tribe schemer, a bad influence at your elbow. It’s almost flattering, really.”
“It is painting you as a traitor, Sokka.”
Zuko’s voice had dropped, and somehow that made it worse.
Sokka gave a small shrug with his good shoulder. “Oh, would you look at that.”
Zuko stared at him.
“This is serious.”
“I am aware.”
“Are you.”
Sokka’s mouth curved without humor. “You tell me, Your Majesty. You seem to have become an expert in deciding what I understand.”
That landed.
Mai pushed herself away from the table.
“No,” she said. “Stop this.”
Zuko turned sharply. “Mai.”
For a moment, everyone froze up in silence.
Her eyes were on Sokka now, hard and utterly unimpressed.
“This is not clever plotting anymore. This is not one of your nice little patterns on a desk. This is painting you as a foreign hand inside the Fire Nation, and him”—she jerked her chin toward Zuko—“as a child-ruler too compromised to know when he’s being led.”
Sokka’s face changed by almost nothing.
Zuko’s voice cut through at once.
“Mai. Stop this.”
She did not even look at him.
Then, with that same terrible calm, she said,
“Since no one else dares say it, I will. He should be relieved of his ambassadorial duties until further notice.”
Zuko’s head snapped toward her.
“You do not have the authority to make formal declarations,” he said, his voice rising at last.
“Must I remind everyone in this room that I am the Fire Lord?”
“What does that mean?” he asked.
Sokka looked between them.
Zuko’s gaze cut to him.
For a second, absurdly, Sokka thought he might answer him as Zuko.
Instead the ruler spoke.
“This meeting is adjourned.”
The words struck hard enough.
“All of you leave. Until further notice.” Then, more sharply: “And that includes you, Ambassador. Not another word.”
Sokka stood too fast.
The sling dragged. Something in the room went taunt. Uneasy. He did not let any of it reach his face. He couldn't bare it.
He looked at Zuko faintly hoping he would offer him a kind gaze, perhaps even a word, or a faint smile.
Zuko did not.
Fine. Have it your way then.
Sokka turned and stormed out before anyone in the room could decide to pity him.
The door shut harder than etiquette preferred.
The air darkned, tight with unspoken words.
Zuko remained standing at the head of the table, one hand flat against the papers, creasing their edges. Brows furrowed.
After a moment, he said without looking up, “You could have worded it better.”
Mai folded her arms, defensivly.
“No,” she said. “I couldn’t have.”
That made him look at her.
She held his gaze without flinching.
“Delaying this only adds fuel to the fire,” she said. “And you know it.”
Neither Tairen nor anyone else in the room moved.
Zuko did not go after him.
The copied slips lay between them on the black wood, neat as ever, as though nothing in the room had just gone wrong.
It took more discipline than anything else the morning had asked of him.
.
..
...
Hello my loves 💖💖!!
I know this one took a while to get out and I'm sorry for the delay 😞.
I also in a moment of misguided confidence tried to draw fanart for this arc and it looked so horrid I had to stop before I had the entier artist Fandom curse me out 😭😭
- So words it is for me 😌☝️-
I want also to thank everyone who left a nice comment or took some of their time to read this. It truly feels like I transported back in my wattpad times ❤️❤️
I'm thinking of crossposting this on AO3 but I don't know if it's a good idea. I promise I won't take forever for the next chapters XD ( I have chapter 10 in my drafts and let me tell you I'm kicking my feet 😏🙂↕️🙊🙊 so stay tuned!)
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