Chapter Text
Toph does realize that Sokka had left without her, of course, and comes to ruin everything just as Sokka had predicted.
But it’s pretty hard to keep track of time right after learning that kissing your crush is a thing you can do.
“Sokka,” Toph says from behind him, and she sounds utterly and completely delighted. Sokka doesn’t have to look at her to know she’s rubbing her hands together. Zuko looks resolutely at the floor.
Sokka sighs and looks at the ground. One of his hands is still on Zuko’s shoulder. “Hi, Toph.”
“Oh, this is good ,” she says. “This is the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”
“ Nothing has happened to you,” Sokka says, finally turning around. “This is none of your business, do you hear me? I swear, Toph-”
Toph cuts him off, waving a hand in the air. “This is absolutely my business. I didn’t ask to walk in on you making out. ”
“You can’t even see anything!” Sokka realizes he sounds kind of crazy. He wishes Zuko would say something useful. “You didn’t walk in on shit!”
____
Zuko is dying, he’s dead, he’s passed away and is peacefully relaxing somewhere very far away from Ba Sing Se and cute boys and annoying, tiny earthbenders, and everything is much better-
“Sokka, how’d you manage this?” Toph asks, and Zuko is ninety-nine percent sure she’s only still here to watch Sokka break down. “I always figured that Sparky’s the type to play hard to-”
“I’m leaving,” Zuko says. “I can’t do this, she’s your earthbender, you deal with her.”
“You can’t leave right now!” Sokka yells and the same moment that Toph shouts, outraged, “ His earthbender?!”
At least nobody seems actually upset, Zuko thinks. He’s not going to take that for granted, not when Sokka’s little sister looms in his brain. Zuko’s grateful that he’ll never have to tell Azula. That would be a genuine disaster, probably ending in a burning building and someone dead.
Dying might be preferable, honestly.
“Lovely seeing you, Sokka,” Zuko says, polite and stiff, “Come by tomorrow, I’m going to leave you to this.”
____
Sokka is still staring at the door Zuko disappeared through with his mouth hanging open a few seconds later. Toph is cackling.
“I like him,” she says, “He’s very funny. You should bring him by the house.”
Sokka groans and says, very slowly, “I am going to kill you.”
There’s a long pause filled only by the sound of Toph snickering. Sokka points at her, very deliberately. He hopes he looks intimidating, as though it would make a difference.
“You cannot, under any circumstance, tell Katara or Aang.”
“Sure,” she replies, and after a beat, starts laughing.
“I’m serious, Toph,” he says, and something in his tone must get through to her because she raises an eyebrow. “I’ll tell them… later, I guess. Eventually. But not right now, okay?”
“Chill out, Snoozles. I won’t get you in trouble with the others,” and she at least sounds sincere.
“Thanks.”
“You do realize, though, that they are going to find out.”
Sokka rubs at his temples. “Yeah. I’m trying not to think about it.”
She shrugs, “You really only have to worry about Katara. Aang will be thrilled.”
“That’s-” Sokka wrinkles his nose. “That’s somehow worse.”
“Oh, absolutely.”
____
“You’re back,” Zuko says pointlessly. Sokka probably knows where he is.
“Uh, yeah?” Sokka tilts his head. “You told me to come today.”
He did do that. The only thing is that he was sort of half-expecting to never see Sokka again. He didn’t really think that Sokka was the type to do that sort of thing, but that didn’t stop his brain from taking the idea and running with it in the middle of the night.
“I did,” he says, because he’s incapable of saying anything useful or not-stupid sounding, apparently.
Sokka looks at him like he’s insane. Zuko appreciates the concern.
“So, uh,” Sokka rocks back on his heels. “Do you want to go… do an activity?”
That’s. That’s not where Zuko thought this was going. “Like… a date?”
Sokka turns red very quickly. It’s endearing. “Yeah.”
Zuko has only ever been on one normal date in his life, and it was with a girl, so that barely even counts. Was stealing food on the ferry a date? It might’ve been, in retrospect, and he guesses it was enjoyable enough.
“Um,” Zuko says. “Yes.”
Sokka visibly relaxes, grinning. “Cool.”
____
The next week is almost perfect, if not for Toph’s new habit of showing up at the worst times. Nobody questions Sokka about where he’s going, Zuko suspiciously has fewer hours than ever, and the weather is nice. Uncle Iroh has even started giving Sokka two free cookies at a time. It’s great.
“Quit that,” Zuko says lightly, slapping Sokka’s hand away from the little box of fireflakes he’s holding. “You don’t even like them, and they cost a fortune.
Sokka pretends to grumble. Apparently, because the Upper Ring has no clue about the war, Fire Nation food is a bit of a gimmick, but notoriously hard to get.
“You only got them because I showed you where they were,” Sokka points out. “Surely that means I get some sort of cut?”
Sokka does not like fireflakes. They’re too spicy. But, he can’t seem to stop eating them.
Zuko considers this. “I don’t think it does,” he says, “You’re just being a good...” and Sokka thinks he might have been about to say ‘boyfriend’ before he trailed off.
They hadn’t really talked about that, yet. Sokka’s not exactly offended . It’s all complicated, no matter which way you put it.
Zuko is still looking nervously ahead, and Sokka takes pity on him. He snatches a few fireflakes, just to cause a distraction.
His mouth doesn’t stop burning for a good long while.
____
Zuko has been avoiding his Uncle for a few days now. Not because anybody did anything wrong, it’s just that. Well. Zuko doesn’t really want to have The Conversation.
The conversation about Sokka. Uncle already knows, somehow, if Zuko’s randomly reduced schedule means anything. Not to mention all the time Zuko is spending out, which he never did before. It’ll be awkward, is all, and Zuko doesn’t think he can handle it. It was bad enough when he went on that date with Jin, and he didn’t even want to do that.
It can only last for so long, though, considering that they actually live together.
Zuko thinks he’s safe in the back of the shop.
The door opens, and Uncle comes through. He is not.
The silence is awkward, at least it is for Zuko. Uncle doesn’t seem bothered in the slightest. Zuko keeps washing dishes.
“I’ve been meaning to ask,” Uncle says eventually, and Zuko thinks that he should run away as fast as possible. “How is Sokka? I haven’t seen him recently.”
Uncle is looking at a shelf on the other wall. Zuko thinks that Uncle is much more sinister than anybody gives him credit for.
“He’s, uh,” Zuko tries. He doesn’t know what to say. Very handsome? Good at kissing? Actually really sweet? Eventually, he settles on, “He’s fine, I guess.”
“Of course,” Uncle says, nodding.
“Well,” Zuko says, after a very uncomfortably long silence. “I’m gonna go.”
Uncle maybe says something else, but Zuko is practically running up the stairs, so he doesn’t hear it.
____
Sokka goes home at the end of the day soaking. It had started raining on his way back, and whatever good mood he’d been in before has been thoroughly ruined.
“Where’ve you been?” Aang asks, half-floating over to him. It sounds less accusing than it would have been coming from Katara, but that doesn’t mean Sokka wants to answer.
“Out,” he says vaguely, shrugging. Sokka ruffles his own hair, disappointed when the movement flicks water into his face.
Aang seems to accept this, but then his eye catches something just under Sokka’s face. He squints, points. “What’s that?”
“What’s what?” Sokka really wants to go sit down and take a nap. Running across the Upper Ring in the middle of a rainstorm is not how anybody wants to spend their day.
“It looks like you got bitten or something,” Aang pokes him in the neck, and Sokka suddenly remembers exactly what he had been doing before he had to rush home. Zuko, he’d been with Zuko, oh he’s so fucked-
Sokka slaps a hand to his own neck and bats Aang’s hand away. “It’s nothing. Don’t worry about it,” he says, too quickly and too loudly, but it’s too late. Katara is standing up from where she’d been reorganizing something and making her way over to ruin his life.
“How did you manage to get hurt walking over here?” She says crowding into his space while Aang babbles something about how you can never be too careful, and Sokka figures he has approximately four seconds before he dies of embarrassment.
Toph is calling him an idiot and laughing at him, which normally he would be more opposed to, but he’s too busy trying to wriggle away from his sister without full-on running back into the storm.
“I told you guys,” Sokka says, aiming for reassuring but sounding more desperate than anything else, “It’s nothing, don’t worry about it, seriously, it-”
Katara rolls her eyes. “If it’s nothing then why won’t you just let me fix it for you?” she asks, giving the hand still firmly stuck to his neck a final pull, and Sokka’s not really sure what happens after that, because he’s pretty sure his soul leaves his body.
Katara freezes, opening and closing her mouth like a fish, and Sokka takes the chance to put his hand back where it was. It doesn’t matter. She saw it.
Aang doesn’t seem to notice. “It looks bad, doesn’t it?” He sounds a little concerned, which would be touching at literally any other time.
Toph is grinning. “Is it what I think it is?”
Katara doesn’t answer, and Sokka decides that he might as well exert some control over this situation. “Yeah,” he says, scrubbing his other hand over his face. “It is.” Toph starts cackling, and Sokka’s not sure why he expected anything else.
“What? Who- I-” Katara blinks rapidly, looks at the ground, looks at Sokka, and then seems to return to normal. She screws up her face and shoves Sokka’s shoulder. “ Sokka ! Gross, I don’t want to see that, what is wrong with you?”
“I was trying to cover it up!” He’s glad she’s freaking out, it means he gets to freak out right back. “It’s not my fault you are all nosy!”
Katara makes an exasperated noise and throws her arms up in the air. “I swear, you are the most annoying, indiscreet little- Ugh!” She stomps to the other side of the room.
“I just want to know how you got a girl to give you a hickey,” Toph says, and Katara and Sokka groan in unison. Sokka glares at her, not that she can see it, thinking shut up, shut up, shut up, as hard as he possibly can.
“What’s a hickey?” Aang asks, and is promptly ignored by everyone.
Sokka sighs and resists the urge to bury his face in his hands. One of his hands is occupied, anyway. This is quickly becoming the worst day of Sokka’s life. “Look, none of this is my fault-”
“Yeah,” Toph interrupts. “Your secret girlfriend is definitely the problem here.”
Sokka thinks that throwing Toph out of a window would be a good use of his time. “All I’m saying is that if you people learned how to mind your business, none of this would have happened.”
Katara seems to have an issue with this. “It’s huge, Sokka,” she says, silently gags, and then continues, “We all would’ve seen it.”
“I don’t get it,” Aang puts in, looking between the three of them, “What’s a hickey?”
Sokka decides that whatever conversation that question results in, he doesn’t want to be here for it. “I’m going to my room,” Sokka says, cutting off an excited-looking Toph. “And then we can forget this ever happened.”
He’s shutting the door behind him just in time to hear Toph say, “Okay, Aang, listen up. When two people like each other a lot-”
____
Zuko gets grabbed while taking the trash out. He has approximately two seconds to be surprised and confused until he sees that it’s Sokka who grabbed him.
Sokka, who Zuko is normally excited to see. Except, right now, Sokka’s frowning and his hair is down (which is actually kind of nice), and, inexplicably, he’s wearing a scarf. Zuko has about a million questions.
“Hi?” Zuko tries.
“Hi,” Sokka says back, but he’s still upset about something.
“Are you okay?”
Zuko is quite sure he knows the answer, but he thinks it’s polite to ask anyway.
“No, I’m not, actually,” Sokka says, and Zuko thinks that maybe he’s about to get broken up with until Sokka tugs off the scarf and drops it unceremoniously onto the ground. Oh.
“Um.” Something tells Zuko that laughing right now would be a bad idea, even if the idea is incredibly tempting. He’s not really sure what to do. Apologizing seems safe. “Sorry?”
“ Sorry? ” Sokka yells, voice cracking, and then the dam breaks. “My sister saw this! Everybody noticed! Toph had to explain what a hickey was to Aang!”
“Um.” Zuko is at a loss for words.
“They think I have a secret girlfriend!”
“They’re not too far off, I guess.”
“I hate you,” Sokka says, but Zuko doesn’t quite believe him. “You’ve ruined me.”
Zuko takes a deep breath. “I, uh- Look,” he says. “In my defense, you seemed to be enjoying it at the time.”
Sokka freezes, mouth hanging open. There’s a very long pause until he finally says, “I can’t believe you.”
“Well, uh,” Zuko says, trying to think of a way to change the subject. His eyes land back on Sokka’s neck. “I think my shift just ended, and since you’re here…”
____
Sokka’s life only gets worse from there. He can’t walk into a room without his sister or Aang or Toph pestering him about his ‘girlfriend.’ Hypothetically, he could lie and say he doesn’t have one, because he doesn’t, but then that would lead to a whole other conversation about how he ended up with a hickey.
He’s not really looking to talk about that, is all.
Sokka feels like he can’t go anywhere without being interrogated by his sister, or without having to send Aang back inside before he follows him, or without Toph dog-whistling after him. They all know where he’s going every day. It sucks.
Toph is the worst, though, because she not only knows exactly where he’s headed, but she knows who he’s going to see, and she can’t seem to stop toeing the line of exposing him.
“Was that Zuko kid hot?” She asks, horribly casual over dinner. Sokka is mildly comforted when the other two are as disturbed as he is.
Katara blinks a few times. “Are you insane?”
Toph shrugs. “No, I just never saw him. I’m curious. That’s not a crime, is it? So, tell me. Was he hot? At least a little bit?”
That’s not as bad as the way she eggs on Aang and Katara, though. Constantly dropping hints that are just shy of being disastrous. Sokka’s taken to hitting his head against the wall.
Zuko, at least, seems to feel guilty about the whole thing. Sokka would like to think that things are going pretty well, even if they still haven’t really talked about whether or not they’re boyfriend-and-boyfriend yet.
Sokka’s pretty sure that he can assume yes. He keeps replaying what Zuko had said in his head. They’re not too far off, I guess. He should ask, he knows, and he’s working his way up to it, but he’s fairly confident.
So, sure, everything sucks with his sister and his friends right now, but it’s more annoying than anything else, plus he gets to see Zuko, like, all the time. He supposes it’s not all bad.
____
“I’m not climbing that,” Sokka says, pointing to the rickety little ladder that Zuko is currently perched on.
“No, come on, it’s fine,” Zuko jostles it once or twice to prove his point. It creaks ominously. “It’s the only way up, anyway.”
Sokka looks up at him incredulously. “How did you even know about this? How often are you climbing onto buildings?”
Zuko thinks of the Blue Spirit mask shoved in the corner of his room. “Um. A little bit.”
He’s trying to do something nice, but even Zuko has to admit that the ladder is falling apart.
“Please?” Zuko asks, and then Sokka’s face does something funny, but he rolls his eyes.
“Fine,” he says, exasperated, but Zuko is pretty sure it’s for show. “Fine.”
Zuko gives him a tiny smile and then moves to the roof. It’s sloped, maybe a little steeper than he would’ve liked, but perfectly fine for sitting on. The sun is starting to set, which he’s heard is usually a good thing when it comes to dates, so by all accounts he’s doing great.
As soon as Sokka gets off the ladder he scrambles and nearly falls over. Zuko manages to grab him before it’s too late, but now they are very close together.
“Um,” Sokka says, breathing a little shakily. “Hi.”
Zuko feels awkward, all of a sudden, which is strange, because he’s pretty sure that Sokka is his boyfriend by now. This shouldn’t be weird. “Hi.”
Sokka turns red, very slowly. Zuko kind of likes watching.
____
“Why’d you want me up here?” Sokka asks, mostly just to fill the silence. His first instinct was to kiss Zuko or something, but they’re both sort of in a precarious position on a roof. Maybe they should wait a second.
“Oh, oh, right,” Zuko stands up and lets go when he’s sure Sokka won’t fall. “I don’t know, I thought we could, like. Hang out.”
“On a roof?”
Zuko crosses his arms, “I like it up here.”
Sokka glances out over the city. The view is nice. Eventually, he shrugs and tries to sit down nonchalantly. He fails. Zuko grins, and Sokka suddenly wants to throw up his heart, for some reason.
They sort of just sit there for a while, but the silence isn’t awkward. The sky is pretty, purple and pink and orange, so much so that Sokka can’t bring himself to worry about whether or not his sister will notice he’s gone.
Then Zuko says, “Are- are you my boyfriend?” Which Sokka was not at all expecting, but is sort of a question that he wants an answer to, too.”
Sokka considers his words for once in his life. “I sort of thought so.”
Zuko seems to think about this. “Okay. That’s- That’s good. Unless you don’t want to be?”
“Yes. Yes,” Sokka says, nodding enthusiastically. “That’s a good thing, I want to be.” And then Zuko smiles and Sokka feels his heart flip again .
More silence, and Sokka thinks that even if the silence isn’t awkward, maybe he should say something anyway.
“My first girlfriend turned into the moon.”
What the fuck?
____
Zuko isn’t exactly sure what to do with that.
He opens his mouth a few times, surely looking like a rather stupid fish, before finally settling on, “That’s rough, buddy.”
Oh, hmm. No. That’s bad, too.
Sokka looks at him like he wants to say something, even though he’s the one who started it. Zuko wonders if he’s supposed to confess something weird about his first girlfriend. Jin doesn’t count. Jet… also doesn’t count, he decides after some deliberation, so he thinks he should just confess something in general.
“I was the Blue Spirit?” he says, and winces when he realizes it sounds like a question.
“You’re joking,” Sokka shoots back immediately. “There’s no way.”
Zuko’s mostly just grateful that the conversation is sort of normal now. “I still have the mask.”
“The Blue Spirit broke Aang out of prison .”
“Well,” Zuko sucks in air through his teeth, “I was sort of planning to put him in a different one, so. He knows, did he really not tell you guys?”
Sokka shakes his head and puts a hand over his mouth. “I thought you were so cool.”
“Um.” Zuko’s not really sure if he should be offended by that.
“You’re being serious?” Sokka asks, swiveling his head to face Zuko. “Like, you did all the crazy running around and mysterious shit?”
Zuko nods, not exactly sure what's going on. “Yeah,” he says, and then Sokka is grabbing the back of his neck and kissing him, which Zuko doesn’t mind very much, actually, until he lets go of the roof on instinct and starts slipping down.
____
They’re back in the tea shop a few minutes later, mostly because it was too cold and Zuko had nearly fallen off of the roof three more times.
Sokka is sitting next to Zuko next to the counter. He leans over and kisses him, just because he can. Nobody else is there, the lights are all off. It’s nice.
Then there’s a thud and the door flies open. Aang is standing on the other side in an airbending stance. His eyes flick from Sokka to Zuko then back to Sokka again.
“ Zuko is your secret girlfriend?!”
“Oh, great,” Sokka mutters, while Zuko sighs. “Hi, Aang.”
Aang doesn’t seem that concerned, at least, mostly just surprised.
“Your secret girlfriend is Zuko? ” Aang says, quieter this time.
“My secret girlfriend is Zuko,” Sokka replies solemnly.
“Hello,” Zuko says, rather unnecessarily, in Sokka’s opinion. “I’m the secret girlfriend.”
“You’re not a girl,” Aang says, pointing, as though that is at all important and worth mentioning
“Uh,” Zuko looks at Sokka, as if asking what the hell do I do? “No. I’m not a girl.”
Aang stands there, considering. “Sokka, you’re cool with this?”
“With Zuko not being a girl?” Sokka is officially lost, which is good because it seems like Zuko is too, so at least he’s not alone in this. “Yeah, no, it’s- I know that.”
“No,” Aang rolls his eyes as though whatever the hell he’s thinking about is obvious to everyone else. “With Zuko being Zuko.”
“I mean, probably,” Zuko says.
“It’s just that you kidnapped me and stuff, so-”
“Which he’s very sorry for,” Sokka says, too loudly, while not-so-subtly elbowing Zuko. “Right?”
Zuko sits up straight. “Right, yes. I am very sorry about all of that. I wouldn’t now, and, uh-” Sokka facepalms.
“Of course you wouldn’t now ,” Aang says, exasperated. “Sokka would break up with you.”
Zuko looks at Sokka. Sokka nods. Zuko shrugs. Fair enough.
There’s a very awkward pause. Sokka really wants Aang to leave, because this conversation is terrible and he’s still riding the high of the sort-of date from earlier and Aang is definitely killing the mood.
“Wait a minute,” Aang narrows his eyes. “Did Zuko give you that hickey?”
“Alright!” Zuko stands up very suddenly. “I think you can take it from here, right? Great. Lock the door on your way out, please. See you later, Sokka,” and then he gives Sokka a kiss on the cheek and looks very surprised about it, like he didn’t really mean to, before disappearing into the back.
Sokka is staring after him, confused as to how this somehow happened again, when Aang tilts his head and says, “Aw, you two are kind of cute, actually.”
____
Aang’s silence comes at a price, Zuko is disappointed to discover. The price is that now Zuko has to endure visits from Toph and Aang. Wasn’t his whole goal at the beginning of this to avoid them all entirely?
That plan went to shit pretty quickly. At least Sokka’s nice.
The most frightening part of all of it is that Aang’s silence isn’t very good, anyway, if Sokka is to be believed. Lots of cutting himself off and covering his own mouth and forgetting when Katara is in the room.
At least Toph can read a room. Sure, it’s fine to talk to Toph or Aang with Sokka, but at a certain point, he definitely wants the twelve-year-olds to leave them alone. Toph might make a show of it, but she backs off eventually.
Aang is either truly, deeply oblivious, or an evil mastermind. Maybe even both.
But he doesn’t make jokes about how terrible it will be when Katara inevitably finds out, which is a nice change of pace from the other two. Zuko knows that he’s right to be nervous, and in fact should maybe be genuinely scared , but it’s comforting that someone thinks she’ll be reasonable.
“I mean,” Sokka says from the chair across from Zuko, “She’ll get over it eventually, obviously. Katara’s just hotheaded, not flat-out insane.” That last bit is accompanied by a very pointed look that Zuko decides to ignore. He guesses Azula is a little crazy.
“Still.”
“You only say that when you can’t think of anything else to complain about,” Sokka takes a sip of his tea. Zuko stops wiping the counter to glare at him.
“Alright, fine, but she’s your sister,” Zuko says, pointing at him. “She has literally zero reasons to like me whatsoever.”
He’s still sort of shocked that Aang had accepted this all as fine so quickly. Toph had made sense, at least. He didn’t chase her across the world.
Sokka shrugs. “I got over it, didn’t I?”
“You thought I was hot and decided that was more important.”
Zuko is incredibly proud of himself for getting it out with a straight face, even if it falls apart immediately once Sokka starts cackling.
____
Katara is mad at them. Which is new, because usually Katara is just mad at Sokka, and tends to leave Toph and Aang out of it.
“At first you were acting weird,” she says, tapping her foot. “Which, whatever, you’ve got a top-secret girlfriend, good for you. What I want to know is why Toph and Aang suddenly seem to be in on it?”
Sokka has a few options here. He could rip the bandage off, he could change the subject, he could run away, or he could never say a word to her again about anything.
None of those are particularly appealing. Sokka’s tempted to just tell her and get it over with, but that feels like the sort of thing he should mention to Zuko before he does, so.
Maybe next time.
So, he shrugs and says, nonchalantly, “Why are you asking me?”
Katara crosses her arms and glares. It has little effect. Sokka’s been dealing with her since she was born.
“I’m going to figure this out,” she says. “Whether you want me to or not, I’m going to find out what’s going on.”
Sokka is slightly more nervous. He believes her. He has to tell her like, yesterday, but that’s impossible, so he’s thinking he can settle for tomorrow. Just talk to Zuko when he goes down, and then come home and face his little sister’s wrath.
Not particularly appealing, but necessary.
“I don’t doubt it,” Sokka tells her honestly, which seems to briefly bring Katara up short before she scrunches her face back up and storms off in the other direction. Teenagers .
Zuko, unsurprisingly, doesn’t love the idea.
“I have to tell her at some point,” Sokka says, hoping he doesn’t seem annoyed. He’s not annoyed, just mildly frustrated, maybe.
“No, yeah, I know that, it’s just-” he pauses, breathes, tries again. “You can tell her when you want to, really, I’m just. Nervous.”
Sokka’s heart does another one of those funny little flips and he softens. “Yeah. I know.”
“She’s your sister. ”
“If it makes you feel better, I’d be nervous to meet yours”
Zuko gives him a glare. “That doesn’t make me feel better.”
If someone had asked Sokka four months ago if he thought he would ever see Prince Zuko of the Fire Nation nervous, and let alone find it cute, he would have laughed in their face. Sokka grabs Zuko’s hand without looking down. “It’ll be fine, I promise, and if I’m wrong you can get your revenge.”
Zuko smiles, one of the ones that Sokka knows he does without noticing. He pretends to think, “Hmm. Maybe I will kidnap Aang again. You know, if I can ‘get revenge.’”
“Okay, no,” Sokka knocks his shoulder into Zuko’s. “That’s off-limits.”
“Fair enough,” Zuko turns to look at Sokka, grinning, and Sokka feels unsteady. “Yeah, alright. Tell her. It can only be so bad.”
____
Zuko is annoyed that he has to work in the morning. Sokka is apparently going to finally tell Katara everything over dinner, which means that he can’t come by when he usually would. They’ve hung out while Zuko was working before, but apparently, Uncle has to draw the line somewhere. Zuko sighs. There’s practically nobody out, he almost has the entire store to himself, which would be nice if he weren’t already bored.
The bell above the door rings, and when Zuko looks up all he very suddenly remembers how he felt when he’d run into Sokka that very first time.
“Um,” Zuko says because he’s not really sure what else there is to say.
Katara is staring at him, confused, but not nearly as angry as he thought she would be. “I- Zu- You?”
Zuko gulps. “Can I, uh. Help you?”
She just keeps staring, which Zuko doesn’t like very much. When this happened with Sokka they had spent some time yelling at each other. Somehow that doesn’t feel appropriate this time.
“You work here?” She asks. “Like, every day?”
“Yeah.”
Katara takes a step back. She’s not fighting him (yet) but is freaked out, which Zuko sort of expected. Zuko wonders if he should say something. She opens her mouth and closes it.
Zuko clears his throat. “Is your- is your brother with you, or?”
Something that looks like a realization settles across her face, followed immediately by horror. “It’s you. It can’t be you, there’s no way, why would he-”
“I’m what?” Zuko asks and hopes it doesn’t sound confrontational. It’s just that there seems to be something happening, even if he’s not entirely sure what it is, and he’d like to be involved.
Katara points at him with a strange expression. “You’re the girlfriend.”
“Ah,” Zuko says.
“There’s no other- you? ” She suddenly seems much more herself. “You disappear after trying to kill Aang and then what? Start making out- ” she gags, “I can’t believe you, I can’t believe this , I don’t know what I expected-”
Zuko isn’t sure what she expected, either, but he thinks it’s reasonable that she didn’t see this coming.
“Toph knows,” she says, and Zuko wonders if she knows he’s still there. “Tui and La, Aang knows , and nobody told me? I-”
“He was worried-” Zuko tries, and then she looks at him, shocked. Zuko presses on. “He was worried about how you’d… react.”
It’s the most normal sentence that he’s ever said to this girl in his entire life.
“I- And you weren’t?”
“No,” Zuko says a little absently. “No, I was worried, too.”
Katara stares at Zuko. Zuko stares back.
“He was going to tell you tonight, I think,” Zuko tells her, mostly because he’s nervous that she’ll get upset with Sokka for a problem that Zuko definitely caused. “So, timing-wise, this is honestly impressive-”
“You’re being weird,” she interrupts. “Well, no, you’re being normal, I guess. Which is weird for you.”
“This isn’t exactly going how I thought it would, so.”
She narrows her eyes in an expression that she definitely learned from her brother. “Oh, yeah?”
“I thought you would’ve tried to fight me or something by now,” Zuko says, and she gives him a look that says fair enough.
“Yeah, well, I- There’s not really a way you’re supposed to deal with this, is there?” Katara crosses her arms again. “And I guess you’re my brother’s boyfriend, so. Hate you or not I don’t think I’m supposed to fight you. Even if I really want to.”
“Right,” Zuko tries and fails to sound casual.
Katara keeps going, though. “Sokka didn’t like Jet very much but all he really did was complain about it.”
“Right,” Zuko says again, horribly strangled this time, because of course, they would know Jet. Of course, she would’ve had a thing with him. Zuko takes this to the grave.
There’s even more awkward silence.
Katara uncrosses her arms, stares at him a while longer. “I think- I’m gonna go, I-”
Zuko hopes his nod isn’t too enthusiastic. “Yeah.”
____
Sokka hears the door shut, and twists around to watch his sister approach him. She looks dazed.
“You alright?” He asks, not really paying much attention.
“Your girlfriend,” she says, slowly, and Sokka gets a very bad feeling, “is Prince Zuko?”
Toph starts laughing.
Sokka groans. “Yeah, uh,” he gives her some very disappointing jazz-hands. “Surprise?”
Katara looks at him with an expression that Sokka very easily recognizes as disappointment. She sighs. “You have, without a doubt, the worst taste. ”
“Okay, wait, hang on-” Sokka tries, but then she starts the lecture and the yelling (even if it’s not as bad as he thought it would be, honestly) and he gives up.
Toph pats him on the back afterward. “See, that wasn’t so bad, right?”
“Yeah,” Sokka says, praying that Zuko somehow made it out of whatever encounter he and Katara had alive. “Right.”