Chapter 2: Practice Makes Perfect
The silence in Zuko’s chambers was a different creature than the throne room’s. It was velvet-soft, broken only by the gentle hiss of dying embers in the hearth. He stood by the window, watching the distant lantern lights of Caldera swim in the humid night, feeling the ghost of Sokka’s hand on his shoulder like a brand.
The door opened without a knock.
“We need to practice.”
Zuko didn’t turn. He knew the cadence of those footsteps on the polished floor. “Practice what, Sokka? You already kicked a guard. Your technique seemed fine.”
“Ha. Funny.” Sokka moved into the periphery of his vision, a restless blue shadow. “The marriage. The ceremony. There’s going to be a moment, you know. At the end. Where they… expect things.”
Zuko finally looked at him. Sokka was picking at a thread on his sleeve, his usual confidence replaced by a fidgeting energy. The firelight carved the lines of his face, highlighting the set of his jaw. “What things?”
“You know.” Sokka waved a hand vaguely. “The… seal-the-deal part. The public affirmation. The… kiss, Zuko. They’re going to expect us to kiss.”
The word landed between them, solid and unavoidable. The air in the room, already warm, seemed to thicken.
“We’ll manage,” Zuko said, turning back to the window. His pulse was a quick, light drum against his throat.
“Will we?” Sokka’s voice was closer now. “I’ve seen you at state functions. You get stiff as a board if someone hugs you for too long. This isn’t a handshake. It’s going to be in front of everyone. The council, the ambassadors, the press… If we look like two guys who just realized they’re sharing a rotten sea prune, the whole ‘perfect political union’ thing falls apart. We have to sell it.”
Zuko closed his eyes. He could feel the heat of Sokka’s body a few feet away, a tantalizing magnetic pull. “What do you propose?”
“We practice. Right now. Get the awkwardness out of the way so when it counts, it looks… convincing.” Sokka said it with the tactical clarity of planning a raid, but his voice held a thin, unfamiliar wire of tension.
A sharp, unexpected laugh escaped Zuko. It was a dry, brittle sound. “You think I don’t know how to kiss a man?”
The stillness that followed was absolute. He could feel Sokka’s stare boring into the back of his neck.
“What?”
Zuko faced him. The repressed energy of a lifetime, of a thousand stolen glances and choked-down words, simmered under his skin. He leaned a shoulder against the window frame, crossing his arms over his bare chest. “I’m the Fire Lord, Sokka, not a monk. Did you think the scar scared everyone off?”
Sokka’s expression was a fascinating collapse of smug planning into sheer, unvarnished shock. His eyes had widened, his mouth slightly agape. A muscle in his jaw twitched. “I… No. I just figured, with the whole ‘weight of the nation’ brooding thing, you were… busy.”
“I’ve been busy,” Zuko said, and he took a step forward, driven by a dangerous cocktail of hurt and a desperate need to shatter Sokka’s casual assumption. “Just not with noblewomen seeking alliances.”
The flare in Sokka’s blue eyes wasn’t just surprise. It was something hotter, darker. Jealousy, pure and undiluted, flashed across his features before he could bury it under a scoff. “Oh. Well. Congratulations. So you’re an expert, then.”
“I’m competent.”
“Competent.” Sokka spat the word out like it tasted bad. “Great. Then this should be easy for you. Let’s get it over with.”
He stepped forward, too, closing the gap, his body rigid with a challenge Zuko didn’t fully understand. Their chests were almost touching. Sokka’s eyes were stormy, his breath coming a fraction too fast. He tilted his chin up, a parody of expectation. “Go on, then. Impress me with your competence.”
Every rational thought screamed at Zuko to stop. This was the line. The one he had drawn and redrawn in his mind for a decade. Crossing it was an act of self-immolation.
He crossed it.
In one fluid motion, he cupped Sokka’s face, his thumb brushing the high curve of a cheekbone, and kissed him.
It wasn’t gentle. It was a convergence—heat and pressure and a decade of silence breaking. Zuko poured every unsaid thing into it, the fear, the want, the brutal, aching loyalty. Sokka froze for a heart-stopping second, then melted. A low, ragged sound vibrated in his throat. His hands came up, not to push away, but to clutch at Zuko’s bare hips, fingers digging into the skin with a possessive pressure that burned through Zuko’s core.
The world dissolved into sensation. The taste of him—wintergreen and something uniquely Sokka. The solid warmth of his body. The slight scratch of his wolftail against Zuko’s knuckles. Zuko shifted, walking him backward until the backs of Sokka’s knees hit the edge of the vast bed. They tumbled down together in a tangle of limbs, Zuko landing straddled across Sokka’s lap, never breaking the kiss.
He was lost in it. In the dizzying reality of Sokka’s mouth yielding under his, of Sokka’s hands sliding from his hips to the small of his back, pulling him closer until there was no space, no pretense, no breath between them. This was no practice. This was a confession in the dark.
Sokka broke the kiss, gasping for air. His lips were flushed, his eyes dazed and dark. His grip on Zuko was iron. “Competent,” he breathed, the word husky and shattered. “You call that competent?”
Zuko, chest heaving, stared down at him. The line was gone. Erased. All he could see was the truth reflected back at him in Sokka’s blown-wide pupils. The same desperate want. The same fear.
The door to the chambers clicked.
They snapped apart as if scorched. Zuko rolled off the bed, landing in a crouch, heart hammering against his ribs. Sokka sat up, running a hand through his hair, his breath still uneven.
A servant’s head peered in, eyes politely averted. “Forgive the intrusion, Fire Lord. The Chief Ambassador of the Earth Kingdom has sent an urgent missive regarding the trade routes. He awaits your response.”
“Now?” Zuko’s voice was rough, raw. He cleared his throat. “Tell him I’ll review it in the morning.”
The door shut softly.
The spell was broken, but the room was charged with its aftermath. The space between them crackled. Sokka stood, adjusting his tunic, not meeting Zuko’s eyes. He looked like a man who had walked to a cliff’s edge and looked down.
“So,” Sokka said, his voice attempting its usual lightness and failing miserably. It came out thin, strained. “I guess we’re… prepared for the ceremony.”
Zuko could only nod, the taste of Sokka still on his lips, the ghost of his hands still searing Zuko’s skin. Prepared. It was a ludicrous word.
It was a ludicrous word. The air still thrummed between them, thick with the scent of sandalwood and the salt-tang of sweat. Sokka’s gaze finally lifted, finding Zuko’s across the shadowed room, and the look there was a live wire.
“So,” Sokka started again, rubbing the back of his neck. “When are we doing the whole… announcement thing? Dropping the bomb on the fossils.”
Zuko walked to the hearth, needing to put physical distance between them before he did something irrevocable. He watched a piece of charcoal split, glowing red. “After you tell your family,” he said, his voice low.
He felt Sokka’s wince more than saw it. Telling Hakoda. Telling Katara. That was a reality with weight, far beyond placating a council of old men.
“Right.” Sokka exhaled a long, shaky breath. “Yeah. That’s… gonna be a fun letter. ‘Dear Dad, turns out I’m marrying my best friend, the Fire Lord, for political convenience. Don’t worry, it’s not real. Except we just kissed until I saw stars. Hope the glaciers are nice.’“
A faint, almost painful smile touched Zuko’s lips. He turned. Sokka was watching him, his blue eyes soft and uncertain in the firelight, his own lips still looking slightly bruised. The memory of their pressure was a brand on Zuko’s mouth.
Sokka took a single step forward. Then another. He stopped just out of arm’s reach, his usual swagger replaced by a vulnerable hesitation that made Zuko’s chest ache.
“The ceremony’s still weeks away,” Sokka murmured, his eyes dropping to Zuko’s mouth for a fleeting, electric second. He shoved his hands into his pockets, shoulders hunching slightly. “Maybe we should… you know. Practice just a little more?”
The question hung there, soft and dangerous. It wasn’t about politics anymore. It was an admission, a key offered to a lock Zuko had long believed rusted shut. The heat in the room seemed to condense, pooling in the space between their bodies.
Zuko didn’t answer with words. He closed the gap, one hand coming up to cradle the side of Sokka’s neck, his thumb stroking the frantic pulse point there. He searched Sokka’s face, finding no trace of a joke, only a mirrored, breathless want.
“Maybe,” Zuko whispered, his own voice rough.
“Maybe,” Zuko whispered, his own voice rough.
That single, cracked-open word was all the permission Sokka needed. The hesitant distance vanished. Sokka’s hands, which had been shoved so defensively in his pockets, shot out and fisted in the loose fabric of Zuko’s sleeping pants, pulling him flush. Their second kiss was nothing like the first. It was a landslide.
It was hunger, plain and simple. Zuko groaned into it, his fingers tangling in the hair at the base of Sokka’s wolftail. Sokka’s mouth was hot and insistent, his tongue tracing the seam of Zuko’s lips until they parted on a shaky inhale. The control Zuko prized, the discipline he wore like armor, it all dissolved under the sheer, overwhelming reality of Sokka’s hands sliding up his bare back.
“Shirt,” Sokka mumbled against his mouth, the word slurred with want. His fingers tugged at the non-existent fabric on Zuko’s shoulders in confused frustration. “Why are you never…?”
Zuko pulled back just enough, his breathing ragged. With a sharp, impatient motion, he reached back and tugged off the simple linen shirt he’d thrown on after the throne room, tossing it aside without a glance. He famously hated wearing them. The fire in his veins always made fabric feel like a cage.
Sokka’s gaze dipped, taking in the expanse of scarred and muscled skin now fully on display in the firelight. A slow, wicked smile spread across his kiss-swollen lips. He took a deliberate step back, then another, until his legs hit the side of the enormous bed.
He sat down on the edge of the mattress and opened his arms, a silent, challenging invitation. His blue eyes were dark, certain, stripping away every last pretense.
Zuko didn’t stand a chance.
He crossed the space in two strides and moved into his arms, straddling his lap again, their bodies aligning with a practiced ease that stole the air from the room. Sokka kissed him, deep and searching, his hands settling on Zuko’s bare hips. The feel of those calloused palms on his skin, so direct and warm, made Zuko’s head spin.
He decided to up his game. To really wow Sokka, to wipe that smug, surprised look about his "competence" clean away.
Breaking the kiss, he trailed his mouth along Sokka’s jaw, feeling the stubble rasp against his lips. He nipped at his lower lip, a sharp, playful bite that made Sokka gasp, then soothed it by sucking the tender flesh into his mouth. He licked into Sokka’s mouth, a slow, deliberate invasion that had Sokka’s hands flexing tight on his hips.
Sokka’s hands began to move. They slid from his hips, up the gorgeous, bare muscles of his sides, tracing the defined ridges of his abdomen, mapping his shoulders. They finally buried themselves in the long, dark hair that Sokka had loved so much for so long. He fisted it, a grip born from pure, overwhelmed sensation.
He accidentally tugged on it, a sharp, unintended pull.
A low, wounded noise tore from Zuko’s throat, part pain, part something else entirely. He jerked back, just an inch, his amber eyes blazing. He dipped his head, his lips brushing the shell of Sokka’s ear as his own arousal, hard and pressing, became unmistakable against Sokka’s stomach.
“Careful,” Zuko murmured, his voice a dark, smoky promise that vibrated through them both. “Or you’ll have a hard Fire Lord in your lap to deal with.”
Then he reconnected their lips, swallowing Sokka’s shuddering exhale. The kiss turned filthy, open-mouthed and wet, all pretense of practice incinerated in the heat between them. Sokka’s hands, now gentler, cradled Zuko’s head, his thumbs stroking the harsh line of his scarred cheekbone. Zuko ground down, a slow, deliberate roll of his hips that had them both breaking the kiss to gasp for air, foreheads pressed together.
Sokka’s laugh was breathless, punched-out. “Competent,” he repeated, the word now a reverent prayer against Zuko’s sweat-damp skin. “You utter liar.”