Chapter Text
Sokka is pretty sure that he is in love with the boy who sits in the desk in front of him in English class.
Or, in lust, at least. When it comes down to it, Sokka simply is unable to help himself. The boy is so pretty in the purest sense of the word. And he just cannot stop looking.
He has shaggy black hair that bushes against the nape of his neck, and the beginning of a tattoo barely peeks out of the collar of his shirts. Sokka can’t quite figure out what it is depicting, though. When he takes notes, he prefers pen, and Sokka often wishes that he could be a writing utensil (just to be held in those slender hands). His skin is so pale it’s almost alabaster and he has a large (but not unwelcoming) scar over his left eye.
Sokka spends most of his class time imagining the ways the scar came to be. Sometimes the stories are sensible and realistic (a cooking accident, perhaps), but they verve into the extreme and sometimes fantastical when he gets too caught up in his admiration (saving puppies from a burning building or riding a beautiful red dragon into the sun.)
To be fair, english isn’t a very interesting subject in his opinion. Especially with someone like Mr. Pakku teaching it. Sokka has a theory that man has never had fun for a single minute in his miserable life. He teaches the material in a constant monotone, making it even easier for Sokka to shift his attention to the beautiful boy in front of him.
Sokka knows for certain that they had never shared a class before (he would’ve remembered a face as gorgeous as that), and wonders if the boy is a new student or an underclassmen. One of the things Sokka prides himself on most is that he knows the name of every single kid in the senior class of his high school, and considers himself a people person. So it doesn’t sit right that he knows absolutely nothing about the object of his affection for the past five months.
It was January already? Jesus.
Winter break had come and gone and Sokka had completed none of the required work for the class. Maybe, he should pay attention, just once. Get a head start on the new year. Prying his eyes away from the person in the desk before him, he glances at the chalk board where Mr. Pakku is scratching the words ‘POP QUIZ’ in big letters.
Well, fuck. What book were they reading again?
__________________
“Zuko. His name is Zuko.” Suki states, crunching loudly on a potato chip.
“Huh?”
“That’s the name of the guy you are currently trying to find on Instagram.”
Sokka quickly exits out of the app interface. “What, you physic now or something?”
“Just not blind.”
This elicits a bark from Toph as she plops down in the sit next to him. “Does Snoozles have a crush?”
“An infatuation is more like it. Whenever I walk past Pakku’s class it looks like Sokka’s eyes are going to melt out of his head staring at the new kid.”
His defenses up, Sokka snarks back, “How would you know? You have math when I have english. Thats on like- the other side of the building.”
Suki bats her heavily lined eyes. “Math is the perfect time for a cigarette break in the bathroom, and I prefer to take the long way, which conveniently passes right by Mr. Pakku’s classroom.”
He raises his hands in admittance. “Fine. Guilty.”
“HA! Knew it.” She slams her hands against the lunch table.
Unable to exert any self control, he finds himself prying for new information. Suki is able to tell him very little, just that he moved here over the summer and that she sometimes sees him working at the boba place in town that just opened up, The Jasmine Dragon. She notes that it doesn’t look like he has many friends, but one time she smoked a blunt with him under the bleachers during a soccer game.
“Hey! You promised you wouldn’t smoke during my games!” Sokka pouts.
She rolls her eyes. “I crossed my toes, Mr. Star Player.”
Sokka never fit the typical mold of the jock stereotype. Sure, he got along with his teammates and went to parties and stuff, but being the only not-white kid (and bisexual) in the group wasn’t all that it was cracked up to be. He wasn’t out to the other boys on the soccer team, and much preferred the comfort of his regular friends during the off-season. He loved his tight-knit group dearly, and wouldn’t trade it for the world.
He had met Suki halfway through his freshman year, when he twisted his ankle and had to sit out of gym class for two weeks. Suki always skipped and sat on the bleachers, drawing pictures of naked women in a worn out sketch-book that smelled vaguely of pot. They became fast friends. Sokka admired her, as she embodied everything he always wanted to be, so totally herself and unashamed of it. She was out and proud, always sporting a rainbow pin on her jean jacket.
The two of them were lone agents for awhile, until Suki started dating Yue at the start of sophomore year. Yue was in remission for cancer, and wore this cool white wig that Suki was absolutely obsessed with drawing. They were an odd pair, the gentle and the rough, but they evened each other out perfectly. Embarrassingly enough, Sokka and Yue had hooked up at a halloween party the year prior.“I was dressed as Han and she was LEIA! God Suki, it just had to happen that way!” However once the awkwardness was put aside, the three of them were inseparable.
Aang, Katara, and Toph had joined a year later, when they were freshman and Sokka was a junior. At first it had been annoying, his little sister and her gross boyfriend following him around, but the little buggers had grown on the two older girls, and they were quickly enmeshed into the group. Now, Sokka couldn’t imagine high-school without them there.
Sure, he liked his jock friends, but nothing could compare to the acceptance he found with these guys. (They all had a rainbow emoji after his name on their phones, it made his heart warm.)
“Can we stop talking about Sokka’s crush, and more about the fact that he texted the group chat during second period that he got a zero percent on his english quiz?” Katara butts in, ever the pragmatist.
Yue purses her brow. “How did you manage to do that? Let me see the quiz.” He hands the quiz over and she takes it in her delicate hands.
“Maybe you could tutor me!” He exclaims, that would be perfect. Everything about Yue was gentle, like water ebbing on rocks in a stream, she would be the best tutor, never pushing too hard.
“Well, I don’t know if I can help you there…” Yue says, clearly looking distressed in the face of his quiz.
Snatching the paper out of her girlfriends hands, Suki looks over the quiz. “Sokka. The question was; ‘In the space below, please describe the plot of Macbeth by William Shakespeare.’ You wrote: ’The plot of Macbeth is simple. It is about a boy whose Uncle is sleeping with his mom, but the boy wants to sleep with his mom. This makes the boy very jealous. So the boy kills everyone. Also, his girlfriend becomes a nun or drowns herself or something.’ You are beyond help.”
“What? I looked it up on Spark Notes!”
“Sokka…” Katara sighs, “That’s Hamlet, not Macbeth.”
“Are we really gonna call whatever that was Hamlet?” Toph scoffs.
Sokka glumly looks down at the linoleum floor of the cafeteria, scuffing his worn down blue converse against it. He wasn’t stupid, he swears. His dyslexia just made it a bit harder to focus on the board during the subjects he didn’t excel at. It also wasn’t helping that the most gorgeous human to ever walk the face of the earth, Zuko, his brain supplied, sat a mere seven feet in-front of him.
Aang pokes him, taking him out of his self deprecating haze. “I’ll go with you to Mr. Pakku’s after school to help you ask for a tutor!”
And so they do.
Sokka’s tutor is going to meet with him every Monday and Thursday in the library after school for one hour, to go over material and answer any question’s that he might have. He initially protests, as he has to drive Katara home, but Suki offers to drive her home on those days (she already hauls Toph around, so the extra addition will be no problem, she says).
It’s going to be fine, Sokka thinks. Maybe, if he swallows his pride and goes along with the tutoring, he’ll have a better grade to show for it.
__________________
The library is cold and quiet. And his tutor is late. This sucks. It shouldn’t be hard to for his tutor to spot him, as the place is pretty much empty spare the librarian and two dweeby freshmen arguing quietly over what Animal Crossing villager is the best. Sokka lets out a shiver and pulls his worn blue sweatshirt over his head. Why was this the only room in the entire school with AC? And why is it blasting in the middle of fucking winter?
He pulls out his phone and begins to type out a text to the group chat.
TO: suki’s bitches :)
(3:05 pm) nobody is even here yet
(3:05 pm) please remind me why i signed up for this
FROM: katara
(3:06 pm) Because you literally got a ZERO on a easy assignment, Sokka. You need a tutor.
FROM: aang
(3:06 pm) they’re only 5 min late. your tutor will show up!
FROM: suki
(3:08 pm) hey lover boy!
(3:08 pm) guess where we are????? ;)
A photo appears. Suki, Toph, and Katara are smiling, heads pressed together, holding up cups of Boba tea with the icon of a dragon on them. He recognizes the logo even though he has never been before, and whines to himself.
TO: suki’s bitches :)
(3:10 pm) REALLY? WITHOUT ME?!?!?!?
FROM: toph
(3:10 pm) I don’t think your boyfriends working today.
FROM: katara
(3:11 pm) It’s just some sweet old guy behind the counter. I think he’s the owner.
Sokka begins to type out a response, trying to convey just how much he wants to try and go to The Jasmine Dragon to see Zuko, but not wanting to sound like a lovesick idiot in front of his friends. He is on his third draft of the text message when there is a slight shift in the chair next to him and a raspy voice says “I’m so sorry I’m late, my sister called and I…. Uh- it won’t happen again.”
He looks up, and oh my.
There are those golden brown eyes that he spent so much time fantasizing about.
All the thoughts in his brain come to a screeching halt. He is screaming at himself to say something witty, but all that can come out is a stumbled, “A-ha. Sisters, am I right?”
Wow. Could he sound anymore idiotic? He scolds himself, but decides that he has to just keep rolling on. “I’m Sokka. You’re Zuko, right?” He asks.
The other boy quirks an eyebrow, his mouth opening in a small circle, surprised. “You know my name?”
“Well, duh.” Sokka replies, despite the fact that he literally just learned Zuko’s name a few hours ago, “I know everyones name, especially people I sit behind in class.”
Was that creepy? It could have came off totally creepy.
Zuko doesn’t seem to notice Sokka’s internal panic attack and plops his backpack, which is more of a shoulder bag, onto the table. He pulls out a worn copy of Macbeth, the pages dog-eared and thin. It isn’t the school issued copy, a white cover instead of a red. There is a sketching in pencil across the top that reads; ‘actors script, Ursa’ in jagged lettering. “So… um. I heard you’re struggling with the play.” He says, not making eye contact.
Sokka knew that the Zuko was shy because he hardly ever raised his hand in class and kept entirely to himself, but hearing him speak confirmed any doubts that may have been there. His voice was quiet and guarded, but not unwelcoming. There were hints of warmness that broke through the cold exterior.
“I get distracted.” Sokka quips. “It’s embarrassing, really, but I swear I’m not like stupid or anything. I’m really good at math and science but I got dyslexia, so the words kind of all blur together. Especially this… since its like old english and stuff.”
“It’s actually modern english, just a earlier form.”
“Oh.”
Zuko turns pink. “Sorry! I didn’t mean to sound really rude, it just came out that way. It’s a common misconception.”
“No problem man. Whose Ursa?”
Zuko bristles at this comment, clearly Sokka hit a nerve. “My mother. She is- was- an actor.” He looks away, clearly upset.
Oh. He understands immediately. Images of his own mother play through his mind. She had died in a car accident when he was just a kid. Usually, he would offer up this type of information to try and make the other party feel better, but he doesn’t want to over-share or scare Zuko away. Instead, he decides to turn the conversation back to its original roots. “So, whats it about?” He asks, pointing at the book.
Zuko regales the tale for him in the library that afternoon. The way he tells it, it isn’t boring or stuffy like the Spark Notes or Mr. Pakku’s lectures, its actually kind of riveting. It’s a story of magic and horror and lust. There are witches and sword-fighting, two topics Sokka had found very interesting in his youth. And, at the heart of it, its a story of trying to prove your worth, and what lengths some troubled people will go to achieve it.
Best of all is the way Zuko explains it. His reserved air melts away. He tells the story soft and low, like a campfire tale at dusk. There is a light in his eye that is just so gosh-darn pretty, and his perfect lips make the words feel electric coming out of his lips.
Sokka hates that he’s staring, but he just can’t help himself.
Any question that he has, Zuko answers it without any judgment, and the hour passes easily. Sokka actually takes notes, fucking notes! He finds himself racing to keep up with how fast his pencil is going, wanting to have a written documentation of every word that drips off of Zuko’s tongue. And when the session is up, Sokka wishes he could hit the rewind button.
Zuko packs his bag wordlessly, but catches Sokka’s eyes when he mutters the phrase “See you on Monday?”
Sokka nods eagerly.
Oh, he is so totally fucked.