Archive of Our Own ^beta

1

Zuko was just starting to get the hang of zoom meetings for his grad school research project when it began.

It’s a Wednesday afternoon at 3:36, and he’s been on this zoom call for over an hour with no end in sight. Piandao, the supervising professor, is one of the few professors at Zuko’s university to insist on fully completing their department’s project. While Zuko adored Piandao and loved the project they were doing--he was endlessly grateful that he was able to get his degree in Peace and Conflict studies rather than Business, like his father wanted--he honestly wishes he would read the room and tone it down a notch, just for a few weeks, so that Zuko and the other students could take just a little breather in the midst of a deadly pandemic.

Taking a breather, however, was not an option with Piandao, so there Zuko is, trapped in a never-ending cycle of research hell while his boyfriend, whose advising professor Jeong Jeong has significantly lightened his workload this summer, lies, probably half naked, all alone and incredibly unoccupied, in their bed.

It just wasn’t fair.

At that moment, as if summoned, Sokka pokes his head out of their bedroom. Zuko glances briefly at him and tries to discreetly smile at him using only his eyes (‘smeyesing,’ as Uncle loves to call it in order to drive Zuko up the wall). Zuko hears his name suddenly mentioned by Ming, a fellow student, and glances back down at his screen before he can see Sokka’s reaction.

At some point while he answers Ming’s question, then makes a proposal for the project, he completely loses track of Sokka. He doesn’t notice his boyfriend walk into the room from the kitchen and watch him for a couple minutes, he doesn’t even notice Sokka sit down on the ground with his back against the leg of Zuko’s desk, carefully keeping out of the camera frame. For a good five minutes, Zuko notices nothing, entirely too focused on his meeting, when finally, a scent drags his mind away from the Zoom.

Zuko sniffs and picks up the aroma of fire noodles, like the ones they serve at his favorite restaurant, like the ones he had brought home the night before to eat as leftovers for dinner tonight, like the ones that should, for all intents and purposes, be sitting in the fridge right now. Under no circumstances should they be outside the fridge, placed in a bowl, microwaved, or, most crucially, shoveled into Sokka’s mouth. Yet, Zuko notes first with dismay, then rage, that is exactly where they are.

Zuko glances frantically between his screen and Sokka, who is happily sucking up a huge mouthful of noodles and oh Agni, he’s even slurping them loudly, maybe loudly enough for everyone on the Zoom to hear. Zuko sees Ming and Jin and a few others giving him strange glances every so often, obviously suspicious, and Zuko really doesn’t want them to ask him anything since he can’t tell the truth (he imagines, just for a moment, simply saying “sorry, my boyfriend is a complete and utter twat,” what a wonderful world it would be if he could simply say that out loud, but he’s not out to his class for a reason and he’s far too afraid to do it now), so he panics and begins waving his hand down around Sokka’s face to try and get him to quit eating the noodles.

Sokka keeps eating.

Zuko thinks about muting the call, but no, that would be too noticeable, wouldn’t it? Besides, muting it won’t do much good since they could still see him shouting his head off at someone, and if he turns off his camera even Piandao will notice something is up. So, he figures his only option is to try and get Sokka away from his precious noodles as silently as he possibly can.

Zuko snaps his fingers in front of Sokka’s face, hoping the audio won’t pick it up. No use. Sokka only slurps louder. Zuko sighs and does it twice in a row, closer to Sokka. Again, no response. He hazards a glance down at Sokka and--

The bastard is laughing. Sokka’s shoulders are shaking as he struggles to keep quiet, and there’s a terribly mischievous grin on his lips as he licks some of the sauce off of them.

Zuko sees red.

He reaches out and swats Sokka on the shoulder, making a hissing noise like the one time he had been at Aang’s place and caught Appa eating his shoe. “Don’t eat that!” he snaps at Sokka, making a lunge for the bowl of noodles.

Sokka scoots quickly sideways and out of Zuko’s reach, causing Zuko to lose his balance and land on one hand, halfway out of the chair. He pushes himself up easily enough, glaring at Sokka’s retreating back, shoulders still shaking with laughter. Zuko huffs, mourning the loss of his precious noodles, and heaves himself upright.

Every face on the zoom call is staring at a single point on all of their screens and no one is talking. He wonders momentarily if the screen is frozen, before he hears someone stifle a laugh.

Oh, he realizes belatedly. They’re looking at me.

His face turns redder than it already was and most everyone on the call busts out laughing.

Zuko is going to have to give Sokka a very stern talking to.

(Unbeknownst to Zuko, his classmates decide collectively that Zuko must have adopted a dog or something in quarantine and just not told them. There are several private messages sent that night speculating what type he would have--doberman? A lab mix? A chihuahua?

When asked, Professor Piandao refrains from giving his opinion.)

2

Zuko should have known this would not be a one-time thing. But hey, if assuming that working on a summer physics project would occupy Sokka enough to keep him from interrupting Zuko’s meeting was foolish and naive, well, sue him.

The first huge banging noise had been awkward, to say the least: all eyes had turned to what Zuko had to assume was his frame on their screens, and he froze up, glancing up at where Sokka was working upstairs. He had played it off with an apologetic little shrug to the camera, and his classmates and Piandao had let it slide without further comment. Zuko could still hear Sokka moving about upstairs, but it was faint enough that he doubted his audio would pick it up, so he let it be and did his best to ignore it.

Now, just a few minutes later, there’s another loud banging noise, then a crash. Then two bangs and two crashes. Then, several bangs in quick succession, easily loud enough for his earbud mic to pick them up. Zuko feels his cheeks heating up as he glances at the screen and sees Piandao raise an eyebrow at him in silent judgement. Everyone on the call stops talking and they all glance about awkwardly, obviously struggling not to laugh at him.

Zuko clears his throat. “Uhm.” He says, eloquent as ever, biting the inside of his own cheek as he tries not to visibly cringe. “Excuse me,” he tries again, “my apologies. I’ve got to go kick him outside.” He yanks his earbuds out of his ears and stands quickly, heading away from his desk and to the staircase. He tries not to think about how he just confirmed to his class that he lives with another man.

“What are you doing?” He whisper-shouts as he barges into the spare bedroom Sokka is using for his project. “Everyone on my call can hear you!”

“Who, me?” Sokka says innocently, turning around to face Zuko, and Agni, Zuko doesn’t even want to know what the wacky glasses-type contraption Sokka has on his head is, much less the huge solid wooden winged contraption that’s sitting on the floor, looking quite roughed up. There are books and various things scattered on the floor that must have fallen off the shelf from whatever the hell it is Sokka’s been doing, and Sokka’s hair is loose but sticking out in every direction as though he’d been lost in the woods for a month or something.

Zuko blinks at him.

“Can’t you go outside and do this?” He asks, annoyance still creeping in at the edge of his tone.

Sokka gives him a wild look. “Perform my genius outside?” He says in a tone far too dramatic than is appropriate for this conversation, bringing a hand to his horrible quarantine-goatee-thing that he’s grown that Zuko hates with unrivaled passion. “Where any random stranger could fly a drone by and steal my ideas before I have a chance to copyright them? Not a chance in hell!” He shifts out of his crouched position in favor of falling back on his ass, a dopey smile on his face.

Zuko sighs, deflating suddenly. He’s just so frustrated with the state of the world and the state of his project and the state of his life that he can’t even be annoyed anymore, just… tired. “Sokka,” he says quietly, studying the carpet. “Please.”

Everything is quiet for a moment. Zuko fidgets nervously, hoping he hasn’t annoyed Sokka too much. Eventually, he dares to look up, where he sees Sokka has already begun quietly gathering his things and walking towards Zuko and the doorway. “Of course, babe,” Sokka murmurs, dropping a kiss on Zuko’s head with a smile. “Help me carry this out?”

Zuko takes one part of Sokka’s… something or other into his arms and follows Sokka down the stairs and out the back door to the yard. “Thanks,” Sokka says as Zuko set it down on the lawn. “Now get back to that Zoom, babe! I bet they’re missing you,” and oh, there’s that evil grin and mischievous tone again, and Sokka reaches out, puts his hands in Zuko’s hair, and deliberately messes it up so that it’s nearly as wild as Sokka’s own.

Zuko groans and sprints back to his computer, frantically smoothing his hair down.

(Zuko’s classmates take note of his flushed and disheveled appearance when he returns, but say nothing to him, preferring to conjecture about what the dog did to make him that way in the new group chat they make after the meeting ends dedicated to Zuko’s mysterious dog. They’d found out one thing today: the dog was a very good [and perhaps just a little naughty] boy!

Kuzon, the brave soul, musters the courage to ask Piandao what his thoughts were at the end of an individual phone call with him that night.

“Perhaps it’s a cat,” Piandao says flatly, and promptly hangs up.)

3

Aang is at their home. Aang is at their home and hanging out with Sokka. Aang and Sokka. Are together. Socially distancing and wearing masks, but still. Together. What else needs to be said?

Aang is… surprisingly quiet as he whisper-rants to Sokka in the living room. Zuko’s not sure if it’s better or worse that they’re in his line of vision: he can’t fully focus on his meeting, but also, they can’t run entirely amuck while Zuko stares them down.

As soon as he thinks that, of course, it’s like a timer goes off in Sokka’s head, and he proceeds to run amuck.

Zuko couldn’t even really explain what happened, how it came to this or, most critically, why it happened, but one minute, he was partially listening to Kuzon and Piandao debate an aspect of the project, and the next, he was actually shouting, “Hey! For the love of Agni, get the lighter away from the curtains!”

The embarrassment following that outburst easily tops both of his others as Sokka laughs just loudly enough for the mic to pick it up. Zuko hides his face in his hands and waits for the meeting to get back on track before he emerges from his little hand-hut of shame.

(Zuko’s classmates are stunned by the revelation that the mischievous dog they had all been hoping to finally see running about in Zuko’s background was not, in fact, a dog, and was actually some bizarrely chaotic assumed-human entity. The groupchat had never been more busy than it was that night, with people arguing over whether this mystery person was Zuko’s father, who they had never heard anything about, a roommate, or whether Zuko secretly had a child of his own that loved terrorizing his Zoom meetings.

“Maybe,” Piandao says drily when consulted again, this time by Jin, “it’s a cat.”)

4

This time, Zuko is prepared. He shouldn’t be talking much in this meeting anyway, since the parts of the project they’re discussing are ones other students are shouldering, so as soon as he joins the call he mutes himself. After the past few disgraceful and embarrassing calls in the last couple weeks, he figures Piandao will understand, and if he needs to weigh in at any point he can just unmute himself. Zuko goes into the meeting more confident than he’s felt in a while. He’s prepared, he has a plan, and there’s nothing Sokka can do to mess him up now.

This all goes to shit when Sokka, feeling particularly emboldened today, walks up and, mindful to stay off camera, begins laying down pillows around Zuko.

Zuko’s a little weirded out by this, but manages to ignore it for a few minutes, even as the pillows mounds grow taller and the patterns they are being laid out in become more intricate. He hates how long it takes him to figure it out: it isn’t until Sokka begins to stick broomsticks into each pillow mound on either side of Zuko, then sneaks behind the desk to painstakingly drape a blanket over them without it falling into the camera frame that Zuko realizes.

Sokka has built a pillow fort around Zuko.

Zuko can feel his cheeks starting to heat up as he tries to calm himself down, reminding himself that no one else can see it, it’s not on camera, Sokka wouldn’t dare, everything’s okay. As he repeats this in his head, Sokka must sense his displeasure because he, thankfully, leaves the room. Zuko does his best to pretend the fort isn’t there and goes back to focusing on his meeting.

He’s just gotten comfortable again when Sokka reappears. With--oh, Agni. Arms full of stuffed animals.

Zuko shoots him his best “take another step and I’ll bite your leg off” glare, but this does not deter Sokka, who places a finger over his lips in a shushing movement--the absolute bastard-- and proceeds to arrange the stuffed animals around Zuko’s desk, just out of sight of the camera.

Zuko sits through about thirty seconds of this before he snaps, quickly muting himself on the call and nearly shouting at Sokka, “STOP!”

Sokka looks him in the eyes, pauses, then continues to put the little stuffed turtleduck down right under the computer screen.

“Look, dumbass, I swear to fuck if you don’t cut it out you’re sleeping on the fucking sofa tonight.”

That makes Sokka freeze, eyes wide with panic. He shakes his head minutely, begging. Zuko glares. Finally, thankfully, Sokka hangs his head in despair and picks up the turtleduck, beginning to slowly move away, but Zuko snaps his fingers and Sokka hops into action, running back to their bedroom at a rapid pace, loud enough that, were Zuko’s audio on, they could be heard through the mic.

Zuko turns back to his Zoom, triumphant, and goes to unmute himself, when he sees that the only option is ‘mute’.

Then, Zuko remembers that he had a plan.

“Oh no,” he says weakly, dropping his head to his desk with what would have been a very solid thud, were it not for the octopus-stingray plushie on the desk. He allows the raucous laughter on the call to torment him for only a few seconds before he reaches up and rips his earbuds out.

(That night, the group chat rules out Zuko-has-a-kid as a possibility for who the rambunctious other person that haunts Zuko’s zoom meetings is. He might have a temper, but they’ve seen him around kids, and he’d never yell like that at one. Roommate is becoming the predominant theory among all members, except for Jin, who has suddenly decided to begin parroting Piandao.

“Have you ever considered,” she poses in a gossip zoom they begin at 11 pm that night, “that it may be a cat?”)

5

Zuko is going to combust.

This one wasn’t his fault in any way whatsoever. He muted himself at the beginning and never unmuted. He stared only at the screen, taking no note of anything Sokka is doing. He got through an entire week like this with no incidents, and was delighted. He had apologized to Sokka for snapping at him that one time, but Sokka brushed it off easily, saying he was being a dick and that he thought it was funny (he did accept a different sort of apology from Zuko later that night, however).

The worst thing was, this isn’t entirely Sokka’s fault either. Partially, sure, but not entirely.

This time, it really is an accident.

There’s no preamble, no buildup. Zuko is having his meeting as normal, eyes trained on the screen, focused. He hasn’t had to speak at all yet, he’s just been very quietly scrawling notes every now and then. He’s in the middle of doing this when he hears a gasp over the call, followed in quick succession by several more. He glances up at the screen, and his eyes drift immediately to the frame with him in it, where--

There’s Sokka. After a month of being so careful not to be on camera, there. is. Sokka. And not just, oh, average roaming-the-house Sokka. Not a mere just-woken-up-Sokka.

This is just-out-of-the-shower-Sokka, wearing nothing but a towel, a necklace, and his earrings. This is drying-his-hair-Sokka, arms stretched above his head as he towels off, biceps flexing, his entire toned torso on full display and shining, skin still wet from the shower.

Sokka freezes in place, blue eyes wide, staring at the computer screen, where Zuko and his classmates and his professor are all staring at him. Zuko leans his elbows on his desk and covers his mouth with his hands, fingers resting gently on his upper lip as his jaw drops. He can feel his skin begin to heat up under his collar, heat creeping up his neck and ears as reality slowly hits him.

“Tell Sokka I say hello,” Professor Piandao deadpans, sounding incredibly bored.

“Piandao says hi,” Zuko echoes, stunned. Sokka gives a little wave, still frozen on the spot.

“Well. Can we all get back to our work and give Zuko a moment?” Piandao says, and everyone began scrambling to say something.

Zuko slowly turns in his spinny chair until he’s sideways to Sokka, removing one earbud.

“Uhm.” He says to Sokka.

“Uhm,” Sokka says to him. “Yeah. Uhm.”

Zuko’s heart is beating faster than the wings of a hummingbird on Red Bull. He had been planning for a little while now how best to come out to his whole research team, and Professor Piandao in particular (Zuko was not eager to lose the support of another father figure in his life), and, well, this had never been the plan. He supposes they might not have immediately assumed he and Sokka were dating had they both reacted more normally to the situation, but it’s too late at this point to go back.

A sudden bolt of courage flashes through him, and Zuko looks Sokka in the eyes and tilts his chin up, the way he does when asking for a kiss.

“Really?” Sokka says quietly, not knowing Zuko was on mute.

“Yeah,” Zuko breaths. “Hurry up. Before I chicken out.”

Sokka stays still for just a heartbeat, then his face breaks out in a huge grin. He lets his hair towel fall around his shoulders as he strides over to Zuko’s chair, on his left side, his scarred side, then wraps a hand around the back of his head to tangle in the hair on his right side as he leans down and kisses him fully on the mouth, the corners of his lips still drawn up in a smile. Zuko cups Sokka’s cheek quickly, before growing bolder and placing the hand on Sokka’s chest, almost possessively, as shouts and gasps crescendo in Zuko’s good ear, the one with the earbud in.

Sokka pulls away after a moment, ruffles Zuko’s hair with a fond smile, and then he’s gone, a little extra bounce in his step as he heads off towards the kitchen.

When Zuko turns back to the Zoom, he is met with congratulations and questions and incredulous looks. He knows he’s blushing, knows he’s stammering awkwardly while trying to process everything, and is becoming quickly overwhelmed when Piandao cuts in suddenly.

“Zuko, if you want to leave the call now, please feel free. You obviously have more… pressing matters to attend to than our repetitive meetings.”

Zuko gapes. “I--uhm--” he clears his throat, giving himself time to formulate a response--”thank you, sir.”

Piandao gives him one of his rare big smiles. “No problem, son. But don’t miss tomorrow’s!”

Zuko promises not to and logs off quickly, positively glowing. He hadn’t expected his team would be that supportive of him, and never would have imagined that Piandao would, unprompted, call him son in front of other people. He feels like he should sit and ponder that for a moment, but Piandao was right. He does have more pressing business.

Zuko shuts his computer down and wanders off in search of Sokka.

(The class is, of course, stunned. They hold another group gossip zoom, which consists mostly of everyone repeating some variation of “what the fuck, how the fuck, I wasn’t expecting this.”--well, except for Jin, who just watches everyone freak out with a smug smile.

When Piandao relays this new development to his husband Jeong Jeong that night, he grins sharply.

“About damn time.”

Piandao rolls his eyes. “What are you planning now?” he asks, familiar with his husband’s antics.

“Never you mind,” Jeong Jeong says, and they leave it at that.)

(The next morning, Sokka is wrapping up a zoom call with Professor Jeong Jeong about his latest experiment when the man suddenly asks him, casual as ever, “Hm, yes, and how’s Zuko?”

Sokka chokes on his coffee.)

+1

Zuko is panicking.

It’s not a full on panic attack, but he’s getting pretty damn close, closer to one than he’s been in a month. He hasn’t had all that much to panic over recently, what with his father being in prison and the whole stay-at-home thing (a blessing to him and a curse to Sokka), but this he considers to be quite panic-worthy.

He and Sokka are going to meet Sokka’s dads at a distanced picnic tomorrow, and Zuko has no fucking clue what he’s doing.

He doesn’t know what to wear, how to wear his hair, which mask to wear (he has dozens of homemade masks, each with different designs and colors, because style is important, okay, Uncle?), or, most importantly, what the hell he’s going to say when he meets Hakoda and Bato. Because, although Sokka had found him awkwardly waving and saying “hello, Zuko here” despite Sokka already knowing his name when they met to be endearing and cute, it simply would not cut it with Sokka’s dads.

This was what Zuko was determined to get across to Sokka as he slammed open the door to their bedroom and barged into the living room, where Sokka was sitting on the couch wearing AirPods (they were brand new and they were Zuko’s, goddamn thief) and making a face at his laptop, which was settled on the coffee table. Sokka glanced up at him, wide-eyed, and Zuko began speaking.

“I can’t fucking do it, Sokka, Sokka what the fuck am I gonna say?” He began, voice whinier than he liked but he couldn’t really bring himself to care right now. Sokka glanced at his laptop and went to say something, but Zuko cut him off. “I don’t know how to fucking act around fathers! What am I supposed to do? Do I shake their hands? Do I hug them? Do I fucking bow?! How do I say hello? How do I talk to them?”

“Zuko--”

“I was just practicing in the mirror,” Zuko barrels on, marching over to the couch and collapsing on it with even more melodrama than is typical for him, “and I figured, ‘Oh, Zuko, ask them how they met! Everyone loves to talk about meeting their partner!’” Zuko lies back on the couch, feet dangling over the arm with his head resting in Sokka’s lap as he glares at the ceiling. “So I plan to ask them ‘how long have you been together?,’ right? And I walk up to the mirror, and open my mouth to speak, and you know what the fuck comes out?”

Sokka shakes his head, eyes wide.

“‘How long have you been gay?’” Zuko says gravely. “Then I try again! This time, ‘how together have you been long?!’” Zuko lifts his head off of Sokka’s lap, staring him down for dramatic effect. “Wanna know what I said next?” He hisses, eye as wide as it can go.

“What?” Sokka whispers, sounding parched.

“‘How gay?!’” Zuko shrieks, then collapses back into Sokka’s lap with a groan, closing his eyes. “I just want to make a good first impression on your dads!” he whines, pouting a bit.

Sokka clears his throat, taking out one airpod. “Well,” he says slowly, “you don’t have to worry about that anymore.”

Zuko opens his eyes. “How’s that?”

Sokka’s eyes flick towards his computer as he takes out his second AirPod. There’s a sudden burst of sound from the laptop as Zuko turns, overcome by horror, and--

“Oh no,” he says brokenly, seeing none but Bato and Hakoda on the screen.

Sokka was on a Zoom call. Sokka was on a Zoom call with his dads.

And Hakoda is absolutely busting a lung. He’s cackling, full on cackling, at Zuko’s expense, gasping for air and clutching at his chest, tears in his eyes. Zuko hears Bato saying, “Stop, stop, you--you’re gonna embarrass him, you oaf, you’re gonna scare him away, Koda, shut up,” but Bato is laughing as well, a low, rumbling sound, but there’s something else, too, something more high-pitched, something familiar--

Fuck. It’s Katara. But her face is nowhere to be seen, and the frame with her name on it only shows the back of a phone.

She’s filming.

Zuko lets out a high, keening sound and buries his bright red face in his hands. He then turns over and hides his already hidden face in Sokka’s stomach, for good measure. He feels more than hears Sokka’s laughter, softer and more gentle than his family’s, and one of Sokka’s big hands comes down to rub Zuko’s shoulder in comforting motions, squeezing just slightly. Then, he’s being manhandled, dragged up until he’s laid diagonally across Sokka’s chest, face tucked into the joint between his neck and shoulder, legs lying useless on the couch cushion as Sokka holds him against his chest and cradles him, a hand petting at his hair.

Sokka continues the Zoom call like that, and at the end, before everyone leaves the meeting, Zuko musters the courage to untangle himself from Sokka and wave at the camera, smiling shyly at Bato and Hakoda and, after they leave, flipping Katara off.

She sends him the video later that night. He sends her three vomiting emojis and a fist and saves it to his camera roll.

(That night, Bato asks Hakoda what season he thinks their sons’ wedding will be.)