Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

“What’s this?” says Zuko.

They’re in his office. Zuko’s sitting at his desk, Sokka’s standing over him while his intestines tie themselves into tassels. “New job,” says Sokka, affecting a smile over the more trembly bits of his voice. It’s stupid that he’s… emotional about this, and all the more reason for him to get out of the Fire Nation ASAP. He needs to reassert normality over his life, and being near Zukonian nipples is antithetical to any of that. “Omashu wants a hydraulics advisor. Heading out in a coupla days. Just wanted to say, uh, thanks for hosting me and all.”

Zuko blinks at him, the guileless gold of his eyes framed by his delicate gold wire glasses. He looks fucking hot in them. It took a lot of calming breaths before Sokka could work up the courage to come into the office, knowing he would be wearing them. His lips part, a hint of tongue darts out to wet his lips. “Oh,” says Zuko. “That felt very… quick.”

“I’ve already been here a couple of weeks.” Sokka kicks the toe of his shoe into the rug. “Overstaying my welcome, haha.”

“You never do, Sokka,” says Zuko. “You’re always welcome.” He breaks eye contact with Sokka, who releases the breath he didn’t realise he was holding. Zuko rolls up the letter Sokka showed him and presents it back with both hands. There’s a smile on his face that seems to stretch too tightly. “We should do something before you go.”

“Boys’ night?” Sokka hedges.

“Yeah.” Zuko’s hands dart back into his lap when Sokka takes the letter. “Boys’ night.”

Sokka shows up to boys’ night pacing tracks into the timber floor of Zuko’s sitting room.

“You’re here.”

He jumps only the teensiest bit, but even that isn’t the biggest shock. Zuko’s got a hand on the doorframe and draped across his solid shoulders is the most obscene shirt he’s sported by far. Sokka, who’s becoming the authority on scanty Zuko shirts, is floored by this one. The gauze shimmers translucent red over his chest, a hopeless excuse for a cover. And it’s not only the piercings that shine out from behind the flimsy mesh: gold glimmers too at his throat, across his biceps, around his wrists.

Sokka swallows. You’re SICK, echoes Katara’s voice in his mind.

“Sokka?”

He starts. “Hey buddy,” he says, voice only a little too loud. “Brought us some sugarcane wine, haha.” Sokka holds the jar in front of his body like a shield.

Zuko cocks his head. His long hair is pinned into a messy chignon at his nape, and the escaped strands tilt with the movement. “What are you standing there for?” he says. “Come on through.”

Sokka tumbles in his spice-scented wake. Dinner awaits them, not in a zillion tiny bowls each but meaty sharing plates stacked high with seafood. Sokka, drooling already over Zuko (against his will, Katara!), drools harder when he smells it. Druk comes up to rest a hot, heavy head in his lap as he settles onto his cushion while Zuko pours them tiny cups of wine.

“Cheers,” says Zuko. He holds out his cup. The liquid, if it’s not too cheesy to point out, is the colour of his eyes. Sokka hurries to clink the porcelain together. When Zuko takes his small, polite sip, his eyes hold Sokka’s. The wine flushes warm down his throat.

Zuko fills Sokka’s rice bowl with gravy-rich cockles and some jellyish substance sprinkled generously with coriander. By some miracle that must touch every Fire Nation royal, the draping sleeves manage not to dip into all the sauce between them. “Omashu, huh?”

“Yeah,” says Sokka around a mouthful of rice and seafood. “It just came up, haha.” In fact, Sokka sent a dozen letters off to his contacts across the four seas, begging them to alert him of any upcoming jobs. Not that he’s going to tell Zuko.

Zuko takes another minute sip of his wine. His breath comes out fogged when he puts the cup down and, Sokka realises, it’s his bending heating up the wine. He shifts. He’s only ten minutes into boys’ night. How the fuck is he going to survive?

“What’s the jelly thing?” he says, trying to divert the topic.

“Spoonworm-cucumber,” says Zuko breezily, taking a bite out of his own chunk. “Do you like it?”

Sokka liked it more before learning the name. “It’s a worm?”

“It’s seafood,” says Zuko.

“Mollusc?” Sokka holds another globbery slice up, turning it this way and that before a critical eye.

“I don’t think so,” says Zuko, beatific. “That’s the best part, see—” And then he leans over the table to slurp it from Sokka’s chopsticks.

Sokka blinks rapidly as the globbery worm bit schloops saucily into Zuko’s pursed mouth. “Mm!” says Zuko. “No, I do think the chef has excelled on this one. Or you could try the oyster, it’s cooked in tongkat ali. This one’s very good.”

He holds one out. Sokka, feeling foolish, eats it. The oyster is smooth on his tongue, the sauce so bitter Sokka’s mouth puckers. “Um… yummy.”

“It is,” says Zuko. He piles more into Sokka’s bowl with relish, topping it off with yams. “I asked the kitchens to prepare a special meal tonight knowing my friend would be leaving. They’ve exceeded expectations.”

Sokka eats his oysters and spoonworm-cucumbers wretchedly. He’s never been a veggies man but the yams are an actual saving grace. It’s by far the most bizarre meal he’s ever eaten at Zuko’s, a potpourri of questionable delicacies that Sokka hopes he didn’t spend too much money on for a simple farewell. The easy way out would be to slip bits to Druk but Sokka has always been one for self-flagellation. If Zuko knew why he had to leave, then he’d be glad to see the back of Sokka. Probably forever.

Dessert is served in dinky lidded cups, a sweet soup with chunks of a kind of ribbony cloud floating within. Zuko slurps joyously. “Birds nest soup,” he says. “Made of swallows’ nests.”

“You mean,” says Sokka, “the bird that makes nests out of their own spit?”

“That’s the one.” Zuko beams. “It’s very healthy. Good for circulation. A rare delicacy.”

Sokka’s faced more daunting things: punting airships out of the sky while airborne, for one. He eats the damned soup. The nests slip about on his tongue, flavourless save for the ginger from the soup. Bird spit is touching his own spit. He can’t decide whether he likes it or not. When a servant comes to clear the bowls, Sokka asks for a fandango of a fruity iced tea and sucks it down gratefully. He needs to cool his brain down enough for whatever else Zuko has in store for him.

As it turns out, it’s poetry.

“I never took you for a poetry man,” says Sokka in surprise when Zuko spreads the scrolls before him.

“These were gifts,” says Zuko. He traces the edge of one sheet with a gentle finger. “I wanted to put them up in my chambers, but I thought I might get your advice first. Since you’re the expert.”

Sokka inspects the sheaf on top. The paper is creamy, speckled with thin grass fibres. In swishy calligraphy it reads:

I’ll never be that kind of cat—
passionless and mummified,
dozing off while you undress
or offering to turn my head
when you remove your blouse
and reveal your mounds of jasmine.

“What do you think?” says Zuko, a little breathless.

“Who’d you get them from?”

Zuko moves the sheet so Sokka can see the second poem. “One of the local writers’ guilds. The poet is an older man, but he writes with such a fresh sensuality. I find myself so fascinated…”

Sokka turns his attention to it.

No ripe breasts, black or white,
are devoid of a sign of my conquests.
There remains no crevice within a fair lady’s body
that lacks my trail marks.

“I think this one is beautiful.” Zuko presses against his arm, leaning over to point. “No ripe breasts… my conquests… It’s evocative, such a potent image.”

Sokka takes a noisy sip of his drink. He’s more fixed on the fair lady’s body line, and there’s a sourness in his throat that has nothing to do with the fruits in his beverage. “Hmm,” is what he has to say before flipping to the final poem.

I inhale deeply,
exhale,
massage my body with violet oil
and jump from the precipice
of your right breast
to the precipice of your left…

“So?” says Zuko. He’s quivering in his seat, the hand stroking Druk arrested in motion. “What do you think?”

“The calligraphy is”—Sokka clears his throat—“really subpar.”

Zuko stills. “Sorry?”

Sokka sighs and riffles through the sheets again. “It’s not your fault, really,” he says, “but if you wanted to display these, I can’t in good conscience let you put up such poor penmanship on your walls. Look at this.” He points at one of the lines. “This isn’t calligraphy, it’s just messy handwriting. They aren’t following any of the writing forms. Or this one”—he flips to another poem—“the proportions here are just poor. I can’t believe they’d send something this uncouth to the Fire Lord. It doesn’t do the poetry justice at all.”

There’s a beat. Sokka hedges a glance at him, worried that he might’ve offended Zuko there, but then Zuko says, all sincere, “Won’t you show me how it’s meant to be done, then?”

Thank the spirits. “Of course,” Sokka gabbles. He moves the poems aside, clearing space for Zuko to lay out a fresh sheet. He copies the first poem out again in his best cursive, letting the flow of the ink direct his brush across the page.

Zuko’s leaning up against him again, stray hairs tickling Sokka’s cheek. It makes writing a little hard but Sokka perseveres. If Katara could see him now, she’d be proud. Self control, motherfucker. “You write more beautifully,” says Zuko. “I see that now.”

“I thought you studied with Piandao,” Sokka says. “He would’ve taken you through the fundamentals.”

Zuko shrugs. “I was a kid. Don’t remember much, and I never practised after.”

So Sokka hands him the brush. “I can’t,” says Zuko, astonished, and Sokka wants him to try anyway.

To be honest, he isn’t great. He pushes his delicate glasses on and squints hard as he forms the characters, hand trembling with concentration. There’s something endearing about perfect, serene Zuko, shapely of boob, worrying over his calligraphy. “Looser,” Sokka says and adjusts his pose.

“I feel silly.”

“You have to feel silly before you improve,” Sokka tuts.

Zuko wobbles his way through another character. It looks like if the ink passed through a cuttle-jellyfish. “I can barely—”

“The point isn’t legibility, it’s the artistry.”

Zuko holds out his brush hand. “So show me.”

Bewildered, Sokka says, “I did.”

“No.” Zuko grabs his hand, places it over the one on the brush. The skin is so warm, like clutching a steamed bun in the middle of a Ba Sing Se winter. Sokka gulps. Is his palm too sweaty? But Zuko doesn’t seem to care. “Show me how. The artistry.”

So Sokka guides his hand. Zuko, hard flesh against his arm, presses heat into the line of his body. The characters swirl to life beneath their hands, not quite perfect with the weight of two hands on the brush, but a heck of a lot better than whatever Zuko was trying to churn out earlier. “Feel the movement? The flow of the character?”

“I didn’t really get it before,” says Zuko, “but you’re such a great teacher, Sokka.”

Sokka clears his throat, trying to clamp down on the heat rising on the back of his neck. “Haha, totally!” He lets go of Zuko’s hand before he can do anything stupider. “OK, show me what you can do now.”

Zuko complies. Sokka should be watching him write but as he leans back, it’s hard not to take in, instead, the flex of his biceps, the elegant sweep of his hair, and sun nip winking into view as Zuko’s arm moves back and forth across the paper. And the squirm.

Wait. Squirm?

Zuko moves his brush to the new line, and there it is again: the minute hitch of his shoulders, the squirm. His lips are parted as he writes, a small frown pressing a divot in his brow. And when Sokka’s eyes trail down, he sees the way the limpid silk caresses the tips of Zuko’s nipples, the way they shiver.

It’s like his brain whites out.

“How’s thi—”

“You’re still… sensitive?” Sokka says all at once.

He’s mortified the second the words leave his mouth. Zuko just pulls at the flimsy shirt and sighs. “Yeah,” he says, and the poor thing sounds genuinely miserable. He must’ve been holding it in. So fuck Katara and everything, but after a whole evening on his best behaviour Sokka says:

“I have this—ointment.”

Zuko looks up. To Sokka’s ear, it’s the most pathetic, skeevy thing ever committed to the human voice, but Zuko looks interested, as though Sokka were actually offering to help. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” says Sokka. “I put it on my tatts and piercings too, when they’re fresh.”

That’s not strictly false, though Sokka is omitting the fact he’s used that ointment for everything else from chapped lips to sunburn to—most recently—his ramped-up masturbation efforts. Zuko looks so hopeful, Sokka feels like the world’s biggest sicko.

“Can I borrow it?” Zuko says.

It’s hard for Sokka to drag himself away when he looks like this, barely-there shirt with the rings winking at him from behind the gauzy fabric: forbidden to touch, so infuriatingly present. It takes the strength of Aang in full Avatar mode for him to stumble back to his rooms and grab the little jar. In spite of Sokka’s punishing wank schedule, there’s still a few swipes of ointment left, to his relief.

But nothing could’ve prepared him for the return to Zuko’s office. Sokka nearly faceplants over the threshold when he takes in the sight.

Zuko, reclining shirt-open on the couch, seems oblivious to Sokka’s plight. “You’re back.”

Sokka holds up the little jar, as though it can enforce some sorely-needed propriety between him and Zuko. He pops it onto the low table along with Zuko’s documents. The glasses are folded up there. Druk is nowhere to be seen. “Right,” he says, voice a little pitchy. The piercings glimmer in the firelight. “I’ll, ah, leave you to it.”

“You’re leaving?”

“Um, I—”

“My arms are tired,” says Zuko.

“Wh-where’s your dragon?”

“Out.” Zuko’s mouth is parted, his tits distractingly flushed. “Aren’t you going to help me?”

Sokka is dead. Sokka is dying, and despite the last few weeks of nonstop dirty fantasies the spirits have somehow deemed that he’s lived a good enough life to be rewarded with whatever this is. “Yeah,” he manages, “OK. I can. I totally can.”

He scooches beside Zuko on the couch. There isn’t much room. Zuko doesn’t move to accommodate him, so Sokka has to either fall off his perch or press his hip into the bare flesh of Zuko’s waist. He does the latter. Zuko’s eyes, heavy lidded, follow him as he hems and haws. “Let me get the—” he says, wiping his sweaty hands on his tunic before thumbing the jar open. “There we go! Um.” He needs to be sure. “I’m gonna rub this ointment on your”—titties—“piercings for you.”

And to that Zuko gives a little wriggle of the shoulders and says, “Get on with it.”

La’s fins, and he’s bossy too. Who is Sokka to refuse His Majesty? He rubs the ointment between his fingers and runs them over the nipples.

This is everything he’s dreamed of for the past few weeks. The buds are warm to the touch, the natural heat Zuko emanates. They’re held upright by the bars running through them but they perk up even more under Sokka’s fingertips. Zuko gasps, a barely-there sound as soft as the gossamer he’s wearing. Fuck, Sokka thinks. He wasn’t lying about the sensitivity.

“Good?” Sokka manages.

Zuko closes his eyes. “Mm.”

Here’s what Sokka does: he swipes the barest amount as neatly as he can over each of the nips, trembling as he does. It’s insane, literally insane that this is happening—that Zuko’s letting him do this. That he asked for it. So he pulls back before he oversteps.

“Rub it in.”

“Wh-what?” Sokka gibbers.

Zuko cracks open an eye. The lashes sweep heavy over his pupil. “You have to rub it in for the ointment to work.”

Sokka does it. He circles the nipples, thumbs the ointment into flesh. There’s poetry in this too, the way he applies pressure to the skin, the way he has to work it into the yielding skin knowing that anything too rough would bring Zuko discomfort. He maps their scanty topography, skirting around metal. Zuko’s muscles hitch under his touch, reaction without thought.

When Sokka’s done, Zuko is an absolute sight to behold. His hair is slipping out of his chignon, breath coming out in little puffs of steam, glassy eyes tracking Sokka’s lean backwards with the slightest delay. The nipples, those gorgeous things, are flushed and glistening around the hardware, brown blossoming into pink. Sokka is human. He’s hard. He licks his lips. “I’ll—ah. I’ll leave you to it, then.”

He makes to get up, trying to hide his awkward boner. And then a firm grip arrests him.

“If you think you’re going anywhere without finishing what you’ve started, you’ve got another think coming,” says Zuko.

Sokka’s heartbeat rabbits. He chances a glance back—and sees Zuko’s own hard-on tenting the silk of his pants, a dark bead collecting where the tip strains against the fabric. Oh.

“You were planning this,” Sokka breathes.

“Oh very well spotted, Sokka,” says Zuko acidly. “What was it that clued you in, may I ask? Not the weeks of skimpy shirts, not me feeding you a table full of aphrodisiacs, not me asking you to rub my nipples for ten minutes?”

Well—! Sokka splutters, and then he puts together the two brain cells that survived the nipple massage and—ah. Feeding him the South Pole, back on Ember Island. The sleeve story. Taking him to the harbour market. The Grand Chancellor. Now Zuko’s mentioned it, the spoonworm-cucumbers were kinda… phallic. Sokka could facepalm. There were just… extenuating circumstances, OK? Nipple-induced tunnel vision.

“I’ve seen you looking,” Zuko adds, a little reproachful.

Sokka kneels before him. Zuko is watching him, aroused annoyance written all over his pretty face. “OK,” he says. “I’m sorry.” Zuko lifts his chin imperiously. “And I’m going to make it up to you by putting my mouth on your nipples.”

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” says Zuko, and that fucking mouth on him. It’s gratifying, then for Sokka to hear it give a stuttering moan when he kisses the moon nip. It’s a revelation. If Sokka’s not careful, he’s going to start believing in the spirits. He licks then rolls the nub against his tongue, admiring the give of flesh juxtaposed against the hard metal. Everything he’s dreamed of for weeks, and reality as ever is profane in its glory. The ointment has left a thick, oily layer, but it melts away under Sokka’s tongue and then it’s just the warm, musky taste of skin. Zuko’s eyes flutter shut, his tit arches into Sokka’s mouth.

“Good?” Sokka manages. Zuko whines in response, which, wow. Sokka’s hard, in case anyone needs the reminder.

He dips his tongue under the crescent of the moon, skirting along the areola, its pebbled texture like the skin of an ocean kumquat. Zuko shivers. “More.”

So Sokka applies his fingers to the sun nip, nothing like his previous, gentle ointment-application ministrations. No, now he pinches it hard and is gratified by the wrecked noise it pulls out of Zuko’s throat.

“Fuck,” breathes Sokka. “You are so thirsty for this. I thought you got these for world peace.”

“Fuck world peace!” says Zuko and then because he’s Zuko, he looks immediately contrite. “I didn’t mean that. I mean, I did get them for world peace but…” His unscarred eye grows big. “Isn’t a well-fucked Fire Lord world peace too?”

Isn’t it indeed. Sokka happily lends his services to global disarmament as he sucks the nub, adoring the way Zuko sobs. The other one is rolled between two fingers, bullied by a rough thumb. Beneath him Zuko squirms, like he can’t figure out whether he wants more of the touch or to shy away from the sensitivity.

When Sokka surfaces the sight that greets him is Zuko’s cheeks fervid with red, more beautiful than anything his perv brain could’ve come up with. He tells Zuko as much, and Zuko’s hand comes up to grasp his chin, to lodge his jaw open. Then his eyes slide to fix upon something behind Sokka.

Sokka follows his gaze to the low desk with the abandoned poems, the abandoned glasses, the abandoned iced tea—

“Oh Zuko,” he breathes. “We all thought you were some kinda maiden; Katara sent me this letter—” He lunges for the sweating cup and scrabbles inside. Zuko looks cross-eyed at the cube of ice Sokka holds up triumphantly before him.

When the ice touches the blushing nub that boasts the sun, Zuko’s back curls right off the couch. The noise he makes is feral. “Oh I know,” says Sokka, “I know,” when he’s not sure that he does, when Zuko thrashes from side to side, cushions ruining his pretty hairdo, the scant fabric twisting under him. Sokka weighs him down with an arm, as best as he can; he squeezes and boob flesh swells in the gaps between fingers. He moves the ice to the moon and the fat nipple there pinches against the cold. Zuko’s beautiful, a fucking vision, big man succumbing to a little chip of cold that his hot skin is turning to rivulets that trail down his chest. It takes a while for Sokka to register he’s talking his mouth off, a litany of nonsense praise and wonder as Zuko writhes: “You’re unbelievable… You don’t know how long… If only they could see you like this… But it’s only for me right? I wish I could… Your tits…”

“Touch me,” Zuko chokes out, then again: “Fucking touch me!”

Sokka moves as if through agar. The ice flake ribbons away, his cold fingers quest down the heaving planes of Zuko’s body to press his cock through the silk. It’s hard for Zuko to stay looking bossy when the pleasure suffuses into his features like this. Sokka palms the length, mapping its shape and losing his mind a little at the way the silk slides under his hand. Then he nudges the pants past Zuko’s hips, easing his pretty (he knew it!) cock out.

“Look at you,” says Sokka in wonder. “Dribbling so much just from the touch to your titties.”

Zuko just bites his knuckle, whines around it when Sokka swipes more ointment out of the jar and smears it over his cock. Sokka puts his face into Zuko’s neck, breathes the headiness there. He feels the gulp of Zuko’s throat. “You have no idea how many times I jerked off with this ointment. Thinking about your delicious nips. Rubbed myself raw thinking of you, thinking of doing everything to—”

“I had some idea,” says Zuko, determined to have the last word.

“Oh yeah?” says Sokka with teeth, and in revenge he let his slick hand trail down between Zuko’s legs, dip between his glutes to his—

“No way,” Zuko sniffs abruptly. “I don’t use that crap.” He pushes Sokka’s hand away and sits up, nips shining wetly in the lamplight. “Come on.” He says it the way he might say it to Druk, like Sokka’s a pet at his beck and call. And maybe he is, the way he follows as Zuko steps out of his pants entirely and flounces to the door that leads to his bedroom, flimsy little negligee floating behind him.

Sokka’s never been inside Zuko’s room. He realises that now, stepping into this unfamiliar space that Zuko lights with a casual flicks of fire to the lamps. Sokka catches glimpses of shadowed, lacquered furniture and scrolls of calligraphy hung on the walls before Zuko shoves him onto the expanse of his bed and climbs on top. He rips the hairpin out of what’s left of his chignon and the strands spill luscious over his shoulders.

“Oh hello,” says Sokka, hands trailing up Zuko’s (hard, muscled) sides, before Zuko shuts him up with a kiss. It sears hot on Sokka’s mouth, too far gone to be anything sweet: tongue swiping like a flame, teeth nipping sharp into Sokka’s lip. Fingers fumble at the ties of his shirt. He thrusts against Sokka’s erection. Before Sokka can deepen the kiss, he lifts back up and twists away. That’s when Sokka sees the setup on the stand beside his bed: a porcelain jar and a few suspiciously familiar square, wax-paper envelopes fanned out below, like they’re in a honeymoon suite instead of a bedroom.

“You prepared,” says Sokka with some wonder.

Zuko swipes the jar and dribbles its contents over Sokka’s fingers. “Only for the last fortnight or so.”

It’s lube. Fancy lube. Of course Zuko would insist on fancy lube. Sokka rubs it between his fingers. It’s plush as fuck, fit for His Majesty’s asshole. Half an hour ago, Sokka didn’t even know Zuko fucked; now, he knows Zuko indulges in fancy lube. He flings Zuko’s sheer top to the floor and tips him over so that he’s flat on his back, hair flowing like tendrils of ink over the pale gold of his sheets, sun and moon winking in the warm firelight. “You look amazing. Fucking delectable,” says Sokka. “Your muscles, Tui and La, big as melons. You’re so fucking hot. Arnook knew what he was doing.”

“Touch me,” Zuko whimpers.

He can’t not, not when Zuko’s begging so prettily. He gives that drooling, neglected cock a rub, then reaches between those powerful thighs.

The way he squirms on Sokka’s fingers is a wonder. He takes them so well, one after the other. Zuko’s asshole blushes the same pink as his cheeks, the tips of his nips, the head of his cock. Sokka wants to render him in watercolour.

“You’re opening for me so well,” he murmurs, and Zuko snipes, “I prepped, dipshit.”

The dipshit presses up against Zuko’s side and runs his tongue over the closest nipple, lets the metal clash on his teeth. “Are you still mad?” he implores. “I’ll make it up to you, I swear.” He finds the bump inside Zuko’s asshole and fucks his fingers against it. It’s beautiful and sloppy. Zuko’s thighs quiver with the effort to hold still.

Sokka holds the nipple between his teeth and Zuko writhes hard, almost like he’s going to jolt off Sokka’s fingers. He’s strong; it takes all of Sokka’s strength to keep him pinned down. Sensitive, his ass. Zuko’s nips are on a hair trigger.

Sokka works one of the condoms onto himself—again, fancy, Sokka didn’t know condoms this fancy could exist, cos what’d it be made of, the sheepgut of some qilin-ram fed on spirit world meadows?—slathers even more lube, and nudges Zuko upright. He doesn’t wanna, he’s so pouty about it. “Come on,” Sokka chides. “Come sit on my cock, baby.”

When he does it’s a wonder to behold: Zuko propping his pleasure-limp torso up with two hands that burn on Sokka’s chest, head thrown back with the eyes screwed shut, mouth slack and steaming. Sokka holds him by the tits, thumbs rubbing soothing circles over the nipples. “There we go,” he coos as Zuko slides himself down inch by agonising inch, burning hot around his cock. “You’re doing so well. Look at you.”

There’s something to be said about the way Zuko wrests his body to his will: muscle mass, nipple piercings, bottoming. Sokka would say it, but he’s busy admiring the squeeze around his cock and the big hunk of Fire Lord bouncing on it. “Look at you,” he says again. “Aren’t you pretty? We got here in the end, huh? You got my hands on your nips, my cock in your ass.” His hands ghost over those generous pecs again, drawn there as though magnetised. “Look at these babies jiggle.”

Zuko doesn’t respond; maybe he doesn’t hear, lost in his head, or maybe he can’t even string together a reply. Sokka meets his thrusts, adoring the wet sound of lube, the slap of skin on heady skin. The way his arms are posed in front of him pushes his titties together, making him look bustier than ever. And Sokka needs to get his tongue on them.

So he sits up. The movement makes him slip out of Zuko who makes a choked sound, like the loss of Sokka’s cock physically pains him. “Oh baby,” Sokka breathes, feeding himself back inside. It slides back in so smoothly, an arrow finding the red dot of the target, a sword clicking into its scabbard. Now they’re pressed chest to chest, the hard piercings digging hot into his pecs. He reaches up to smooth back Zuko’s hair where it’s sticking to his damp brow. “We good?”

Zuko leans into his touch, open mouth dragging sloppy-hot against his palm. Sokka thrusts experimentally—there isn’t much room to go, with Zuko bearing down heavy on his lap—but it pushes a soft sound from his mouth anyway.

Sokka dips his down into that hot valley between their bodies, pressing open-mouthed kisses along the path. When his lips find their target, Zuko keens. He throws his head back, thrusting his tit up hard. The metal slams against Sokka’s lip, so hard he can practically taste the iron burst of blood. Zuko's fingers bite into Sokka’s shoulders. Trapped between Sokka’s arms, feet planted into the mattress, Zuko begins to move. And in spite of all the whimpers and all the begging, his cock stays untouched, trapped between them and smearing wet over Sokka’s abs.

Woozy, Sokka lifts his mouth from the bud with a filthy sound. “You have no idea how much you titillate me,” he slurs.

Above him, Zuko rolls his eyes. “Did I say you could stop?” he snaps, and forces Sokka’s head back down.

Sokka has entertained fantasies of suffocating in boob and they look ready to be fulfilled. Zuko grinds down at a punishing pace and he rubs his tits all over Sokka’s mouth like he can’t decide which stimulation he needs more. His moans gain a rhythmic quality—uh, uh, uh—buzzing through his diaphragm against Sokka’s spit-slick lips.

“Tui and La,” Sokka murmurs, voice mangled by the nipples he can’t take his mouth off, “are you close? Are you close, baby?” He runs his teeth over the nip, savours the stuttering wail the action incites. The hand twisted in his wolf tail tugs, pain glitters at his scalp. Sokka bites down. He feels limitless, doped up on endorphins or worm aphrodisiacs, or both. “Yeah, baby? You gonna use me as your fucktoy?”

Sokka feels the vice grip of his ass, sees a flare of light in his periphery. Did Zuko just breathe fire? And then he feels the hot liquid ropes still spurting onto his skin. He looks down. Zuko’s made such a pretty mess, pearly white all over their stomachs. Shit. Zuko just came from the stimulation in his ass, on his titties. When Sokka meets his gaze, those slits of amber look so smug Sokka just has to kiss him.

“Having fun?” he murmurs against the plush of Zuko’s bitten-red lips.

“I’ll have more fun if you—” says Zuko, then sweeps his fingers invitingly over his tits.

Sokka’s mouth waters. Chaste, virginal, and celibate his ASS. “Yeah?” he growls. “You want that? All over your tits?”

Oh, he does. Zuko sprawls on the bed when Sokka pulls out. He’s a picture of rose on gold. The nipples are bitten raw and red as hawthorn berries, caged in gold and silver. The bite mark glows beside the moon. Sokka gets on top of him, knee-walks up to his chest, while Zuko looks lazily up at him through those heavy-lidded eyes. “Aren’t you gonna give it to me?”

Sokka strips off the condom and flings it somewhere. He’s so fucking turned on it doesn’t take long before he’s painting those damn nipples and the naughty fucking spiritual jewellery that’s been haunting his mind for weeks with his own cum.

Zuko in the afterglow is adorable, if Sokka says so himself. He melts into his bath and the water starts to steam around him. When Sokka sloshes in, he lays back in Sokka’s embrace to let him thumb the cum off his chest. His nipples are oversensitive now; Sokka avoids them and pours handfuls of water over them while Zuko gasps and twitches. Tendrils of his hair float in dark loops on the water’s surface.

“I hope you’re happy now,” says Sokka.

“Could say the same about you,” is Zuko’s content reply.

Sokka holds him for a while, then after some thought he nudges his nose under the sheet of Zuko’s hair. He presses his lips under the scarred ear. Zuko shivers in his touch. He nuzzles closer. “You’re telling Omashu you’ll be there in a week,” Zuko says.

It isn’t a request. “OK,” says Sokka, and kisses lower.

Zuko tilts his head and the line of his neck lengthens. Sokka mouths it diligently. Callused fingers trail over his arm. “So what do these mean?”

Sokka lifts his head; he meets the hazy amber of Zuko’s eyes before turning to the place where his fingers point. The time for subterfuge is over, he thinks as he leans in to press his mouth to Zuko’s, as he swallows a happy gasp and touches his tongue to Zuko’s. “There isn’t a single thing they mean,” he says. “It’s a number of things. I’ve come of age. I hunted my first tiger-seal, my first whale. I can protect my tribe. I am…”

“Hmm?”

There’s a gentleness to it, unexpected after a night of being bullied by the bossiest incarnation of Zuko. Maybe that’s why Sokka says it, even though he didn’t quite believe it while the tribeswomen were sticking the sooty needle into him, even though he still doesn’t quite believe it. “Worthy.”

“Mm.” And Zuko turns in his arms, and he just lays his head upon Sokka’s shoulder. After weeks of seeming so untouchable, it’s surprising how easy it is to gather him closer, press a kiss to the crown of his head, rest an idle hand against his pec.

“All the ointment’s gone now,” Sokka observes.

Zuko slants a look up at him, heated through the haze. “I guess you’ll have to rub it back on.”

Sokka gusts into Hari Bulkan on a favourable jetstream. Everything about the flight was impeccable: the meal, the service, his cushy seat with enough legroom to do a jig. He could get used to the first class treatment, he thinks, as he breezes through immigration and emerges from the airship port to bathe in the blinding eternal warmth of the equatorial sun.

He shields the rays with a hand. When they disappear, a figure comes into view, and the wind trails red silk from his body.

Sokka runs. Zuko reels him in. He lets Sokka press his nose against his cheek and leans his forehead against Sokka’s when he’s done—skirting the edge of royal propriety. Druk winds around their legs, thrumming happily. Sokka breathes them in, the smell of spice warming him more than the sun.

“Missed me?” says Sokka.

“I know you did,” Zuko says. He makes it sound like an accusation. “I know you can’t get enough of—” Sokka hums and goes in for a second kunik; he settles his hands on Zuko’s waist, even dares to skim a little under the fabric. Osha, standing some ways off, sighs and plonks herself in front of them.

“Thought about you a lot,” Sokka admits. He hauls Zuko closer, savouring the soft sound of surprise he makes. For good measure, he sneaks a titty grope in there. Through the silk, a familiar hard circle digs into his palm. “Every night. And during the day too. Going around the markets in Omashu…”

“Tell me you like them less than our markets here.”

“I don’t know if you’d agree. Lots of goodies on sale. Got my imagination going.” Sokka slips a hand into the fold of his tunic and pulls out his souvenir. He dangles it before Zuko who gazes, lips parted in wonder, at the delicate gold chain that glitters before his eyes. “I was thinking,” Sokka says, “we hook this onto the sun on one end, the moon on the other…”

Zuko snatches it. Before Sokka can react, the chain is looped around his neck and the ends are in Zuko’s hand. The metal bites into Sokka's skin as Zuko drags him to the waiting palanquin. Sokka, tripping a little over the dragon, follows laughing. “Well,” says Zuko sweetly, “I can’t wait for a physical demonstration.”

Fuck. Sokka lets himself get tossed inside, cheeks hurting from the force of his grin. He’s done being nice and normal. He’s diving headlong into demented titty land. Happily ever after, bitch.