Chapter Text
It all starts when Sokka’s having his nice, normal summer holiday in his nice, normal buddy Zuko’s big fuck-off palace.
It’s well deserved, Sokka reckons. He’s been putting in the hard yards advising on some new public infrastructure at Cranefish Town (or is it Republic City now? He can’t keep track) and well, where else to vacay than the land of eternal summer? Eternal summer and free swanky room service, whenever and wherever he wants. So Sokka’s sipping on some fruity iced tea affair, sprawled sweating over a bench under some pagoda while the sun beats down overhead, when he notices.
Zuko’s shifting. Like, a lot.
“Dude, you good?” says Sokka.
Zuko sighs. He shifts again, tugging at the front of his shirt as though it’s too warm for him. That’s weird, cos for as long as Sokka’s known him, Zuko—a literal firebender with the figurative sun inside himself—has never had a problem with the (excessive) heat (of his tropical homeland).
“Dude?”
Zuko sighs again. He scratches between his eyebrows with the end of his brush, props his glasses further up the bridge of his nose. The papers in front of him have barely been shuffled in the last few minutes. Beside him, Druk snorts a puff of steam and settles down to sleep in a different position. “There’s this thing in your culture, right?” he says.
“Sure,” says Sokka, who isn’t sure where this is going. Lots of things are in his culture. Ice fishing. Polar dog sledding. Hair loopies.
Zuko puts his brush down. His teeth worry at his bottom lip. “It’s a bit weird.”
“Probably no weirder than some of the shit I see in the Fire Nation,” says Sokka helpfully.
Zuko looks stricken. Druk, perhaps sensing his worry, puts his big lizard head on Zuko’s lap. It’s the size of two bitter cantaloupes, and probably weighs like six of them. Sokka’s not certain. He’s still a little wary of the baby dragon. “You know I was up in the North Pole a couple of weeks ago,” Zuko says.
Sokka nods. It was the tenth anniversary of the armistice, a whole decade since the bunch of them ragtag kids had dismantled the entire imperialist apparatus of the Fire Nation. Sokka was up in Ba Sing Se with Aang and Katara and Toph, but he knows Zuko went to pay his respects to the Northern Water Tribe.
Zuko lowers his voice. “We had this… ritual, when I was up there. To enshrine ten years of world peace.”
“And?”
What he doesn’t expect is Zuko to pull the fold of his shirt open. The only warning he gets is Zuko’s furtive glance at their surroundings—all leafy, tranquil garden, with only one guard standing under a tree some ways off—before the collar comes down. He catches only a glimpse before Zuko pulls the fabric back up, but it’s like the image is seared into his eyeballs. Framing the lightning scar, they flare in the sunlight.
“Weird, huh?”
Sokka’s mouth is drier than the air around them. It takes a while to get the juices flowing again. “Yeah. Haha. Weird.”
“They healed me right after they did it,” says Zuko, “so it didn’t really hurt at all. It’s meant to be some kind of spiritual connection. But they’re still… sensitive.”
“No way,” says Sokka. It takes a while to tear his eyes away from Zuko’s covered chest.
Zuko seems none the wiser to Sokka’s mental breakdown, which is just as well. He shifts once more then turns back to his documents, as though he hasn’t just shown Sokka a pair of brand-spanking-new piercings adorning his royal nipples.
˖⁺‧₊˚ ☼ ⋆⁺₊⋆ ☾˖⁺‧₊˚
So now Sokka, previously nice, normal guy, can’t stop having nasty, abnormal thoughts about his buddy Zuko’s new diplomatic nipple piercings.
Chief Arnook, that wily bastard, must be some kind of horny genius. It all has to be part of some decade-long ploy to get Sokka back for letting his daughter turn into the moon. Well, Sokka’s suffering. Are you happy now, Arnook? Are you?
Previously, like the average person in the world, Sokka never had occasion to ruminate upon Fire Lord Zuko’s nipples. Now, all of that has changed. It isn’t like Sokka’s never seen nipple piercings before. Zuko was right when he said it was a Thing in Sokka’s Culture. It’s just the sheer incongruity of seeing them on Zuko, who’s from the Fire Nation, where Sokka has never even seen a regular ear piercing—and Zuko has gone straight for the nips.
Then there’s the fact that it’s Zuko, Zuko, who broke up with Mai some seven years ago (that long, already?) and, to Sokka’s discerning eye, has not had a semblance of an erotic life since then. Prim, proper Zuko, who’s more of a monk than Sokka’s actual monk brother-in-law (who has recently proven his not-monkness by fathering a child with Sokka’s own sister), has gone and gotten himself these sexy, diplomatic, tantalising, ritual nipple piercings. He got them for world peace, and now Sokka’s world is falling to pieces.
“Say, Zuko,” says Sokka over breakfast, casual as you like, as though he hasn’t spent the whole night watching the replay flash and flare of those piercings against his backs of his eyelids, “tell me a bit more about getting those piercings.”
Zuko looks up from his chee cheong fun, surprised. Sokka’s about to take it all back, haha, just kidding buddy! Now let’s talk taxes, when he says, “What do you mean?”
OK, Sokka has an opening. He plunges right in. “I mean, how did it come up? What—what was the process like?”
“Oh,” says Zuko. He wets his lips with a sip of tea. Is Sokka hallucinating, or can he see the outline of the rings under the shift of Zuko’s shirt? “We were exchanging letters about the North Pole visit and it came up as a suggestion. I wanted to do something meaningful to mark the occasion and show my commitment to the deradicalisation of my country. You have this in the South Pole too, right?”
Look, yeah, technically, they do. But it’s not like Sokka sees them all the time, because the nature of the polar regions is that people tend not to traipse around boobs out—something about not freezing to death. As far as Sokka knows, piercing the nipples is about fostering a spiritual link through the heart and the gut, through the perfect balance of both nipples. Sokka’s never been a spiritual guy, but he’s feeling glad now that Zuko is.
“Totally,” says Sokka. There’s another part of him that feels a little guilty at all the—thoughts—he’s been having about those piercings now that Zuko’s expounded on his much-considered thought process, but that part is quickly banished when Zuko pulls his shirt open again.
Sokka didn’t get a good look yesterday, just a glimpse of metal, an expanse of flesh, a flash of light. Now, it’s hard not to gawk at them, glinting around the blushing buds.
“One’s a sun, one’s a moon,” says Zuko, pointing. The sun girdles his nipple in gold, rays splaying out, with a bar stabbed through the flesh; the moon is a thin silver crescent that encircles the other one. “It symbolises the connection between our nations and our elements.”
“They’re not ivory,” Sokka blurts, because yeah, that’s what his brain thought was important at this moment.
“They were commissioned in the Earth Kingdom,” says Zuko.
“Right,” says Sokka. He doesn’t want to look like he’s actively staring, but they’re just so gorgeous and he’s determined to commit every detail to memory. Say something, his brain urges, but it’s like his capacity for speech has gone on its own separate holiday to its own separate tropical island. “You said they were still sensitive?”
Tui and La. Kill him now.
“Yeah,” says Zuko. “It’s just a bit uncomfortable with the”—he tugs his shirt closed, and Sokka watches the nips disappear from view mournfully—“clothes.”
“I’m sure it’ll go back to normal soon,” says Sokka. He feels Druk’s big yellow eyes on him and pointedly does not meet them. “In the meantime, maybe you could wear like… lighter shirts? Y’know… thinner, softer material?” What the fuck? Stop talking, his brain demands, but he has to add, “So they don’t irritate!”
He holds his grin, which he hopes is more reassuring and less garden-variety creep. Zuko just blinks at him, all guileless golden eyes. “Thanks, Sokka,” he says as he tucks back into his breakfast. “I’ll give that a go.”
˖⁺‧₊˚ ☼ ⋆⁺₊⋆ ☾˖⁺‧₊˚
So. So now Sokka’s had a good look at them piercings. He knows what they look like. Thoroughly. Intimately. The little sun and moon haunt his waking moments. They’re so dainty, so intricate against the solid expanse of his muscled chest.
What’s more, Zuko goes and takes his shirt advice. Sokka crosses paths with him the next day, when he’s off to some calligraphy exhibit Piandao recommended and Zuko’s on his way to Council. Sokka stutters to a stop in front of him and his bodyguard.
“You’re wearing that?”
Zuko looks down. The tunic is opaque, sure, but the silk hugs and clings to the lines of his torso. And, Sokka is certain, to those little piercings. He swears he can make out the curve of that moon under it. “You were right,” says Zuko. “It helps with the…”
“Sure! Happy to help.” says Sokka loudly. He’s determinedly not making eye contact with the bodyguard, Osha, who probably has some kind of laser vision that can read all the horny, disgusting thoughts he’s having about her… bodyguardee. On the other hand, he has to make it look like he’s not full on eyeing the bumps where Zuko’s nips might be. “Look, I’m off to—”
He goes to the exhibit. Everything is an absolute mess of squiggles. It’s as though the ghost-print of that clinging red silk is lurking in between the strokes of ink. Sokka is a polar boy, and the heat of this fucking country is getting to him.
˖⁺‧₊˚ ☼ ⋆⁺₊⋆ ☾˖⁺‧₊˚
So Zuko gets experimental with his tops, and Sokka steadily loses his mind.
Zuko sports another clingy golden number the next day. Batik flames curl up his torso, and Sokka would bet real cash that the tips point right at the sun and moon. Zuko attends Council like that, which seems positively indecent. Zuko’s Grand Chancellor, an older gent whom Sokka’s always been too scared to talk to, sails past Sokka later in the hallways muttering to a fellow councillor, “Interesting shirt His Majesty’s wearing today.” Then Zuko pulls out some diaphanous thing made of a fabric that is distinctly sheer. Sokka confirms this when Zuko passes in front of a window, which lights up the fabric from behind and throws the fit shape of his body into shadowed relief. Busy as ever with his real job governing a whole country, Zuko whisks away before Sokka can get a good ogle in but he gets a repeat show the next day, when Zuko manages to schedule dinner with him. For once in their ten-year friendship, Zuko does most of the talking: Sokka’s too busy shovelling food and icy drinks into his mouth to disguise the drooling, eyes fixed on a pair of increasingly familiar outlines at Zuko’s chest level.
It’s an exquisite form of torture.
Sokka gets around. He knows nipples, but he’s never seen any as delectable as Zuko’s. It’s like they’ve put worms in his brain. Disgusting, pervert worms in his brain that writhe over the head of state of the Fire Nation. Thin shirts aren’t enough for a lecherous mind like his. No, he yearns to see those nut-brown beauties in their celestial cages again; he aches.
“Hey Osha,” says Sokka, when he caves to a couple more base desires, “know any good beaches?”
She glances up from where she’s sharpening her sword. Sokka plasters a reassuring smile on his face. Osha’s nice enough and he’s known her for years, but those were years in which Zuko’s pierced nipples were not parading through his brain. He’s seen her take down three assassins with her bare hands: he needs to tread carefully.
“Truth be told,” she says, “there aren’t that many around the capital. You could fly out to one of the islands, though. Ever been to Ember Island?”
That’s how Sokka ends up taking an airship over with Zuko at the end of the latter’s work week. The old royal estate where the bunch of them had stayed before Sozin’s comet has since been leased out and renovated into a beachy resort. Bookings are backed up for months, but royal privilege gets them a nice sea-facing room with two beds. Practically salivating with anticipation, Sokka watches the dark line of the beach from the window as Zuko putters around in the ensuite getting ready for bed. He’s gonna get that Fire Lord there tomorrow, tits out.
What Sokka doesn’t account for is his lineup of Shirtless Activities to be witnessed by half the known world. Sokka’s in the Fire Nation on holiday and it seems like everyone on the planet had the same idea. The beach attached to the old royal estate used to be private but no longer: the resort’s patrons are sprawled across it. The black sands are barely visible between the packed, reddening bodies. Sokka can barely admire all the lush, pillowy boobage on display because he’s fending off tourists with a stick.
“His Flameyness is on holiday,” he snaps to a honeymooning Earth Kingdom couple that’s creeping too close. “And don’t touch the dragon. He’ll snack on your fingers.” That one’s directed at a gaggle of kids pointing at Druk, who’s half buried snoozing in the sand.
Zuko, on the other hand, isn’t helping. “Yes, I got these in the North Pole,” he’s telling a gathering crowd of fellow beachgoers. “They symbolise an undying connection between our nations, etched into both the spirit and the body.”
Sokka clears his throat. “Zuko.”
He can’t even enjoy having his hand on the bare skin of Zuko’s back as he ushers him into the water, cos he’s too busy sending dark looks over his shoulder at the crowd. “You need to be careful,” he chides as they sink into the surf. “What if you get assassinated?”
Zuko blinks; he tosses his hair back in a flick of seawater and the piercings come back into view, dazzling under the sun. “Isn’t that what you’re here for?”
But Zuko’s fan club follows them into the water. It’s poor form for the Fire Lord to ignore his chattier subjects or something and Sokka has no choice but to bob stewing in the sea, cursing the obstructed visibility of Zuko’s chest. Some of these riffraff are getting premium nipple views, and they don’t even know how to appreciate them properly. He puts his foot down when he spots what looks suspiciously like a newspaper artist setting up watercolours on a jutting rock. Proprietary arm around Zuko, he pushes through the crowd and back up to the resort, where the staff have enough sense to give them a private room at the dining hall.
“Why did you lease the land out, anyway?” Sokka grouses as he glares out the window. All his beach plans have been dashed to dust, and he hates whenever that happens. It’s hot even indoors, like the frustration is getting to his head. “This was a perfectly nice beach house. Private beach house.”
A cold spoon touches his lip. “Open up,” says Zuko, and Sokka does, tasting sweet ice and red bean. Looks like their dessert arrived: a small mountain of shaved ice drizzled over with blue syrup, red bean, and neon green strands of cendol sits between them. Zuko smiles at him, and shit, has he always looked that sweet? “Isn’t it tasty? It’s called a South Pole.”
Sokka obliges to another spoonful. The ice trade between the South Pole and the Fire Nation in recent years has been a truly genius decision, if the explosion of icy desserts up here is anything to go by. Ais kacang, halo halo, che ba mau: it’s all happening here. There’s no reason to eat ice in the South Pole but here, where it’s always steaming, sweltering hot, it’s the only thing keeping Sokka alive. “I just don’t get why you’d let them all take over your lovely house.”
Zuko laughs, light and raspy. “This resort pays most of the bills of my estate. Plus, it’s a nice place. Better to share it with everyone than keep it closed off for someone who’s only going to visit once a year.”
It’s kinda thoughtful, actually, and Sokka has to crush a fizzling lightness that’s starting to gather in his stomach.
“I’m glad you took me out here,” says Zuko, taking a spoonful of South Pole for himself. “It’s nice to unwind for a bit.”
Sokka tears his focus from the window and back to Zuko. He’s sun-burnished, hair crisping with sea salt. Since getting out of the water, he’s only deigned to wrap a sarong around his waist and those generous tits are on display, jewels and all, though now with a smattering of sand still stuck to the skin. Sokka’s been entranced by his nipples, but the entire boob is plush and sexy too. An idle tongue darts out to lick away a bit of blue on his lip. Druk rubs against his leg and lets out a dragony grunt, coils of smoke drifting out of his nostrils. Fahhhck, he’s gorgeous. Does he even know? Sokka is so fucking gone.
˖⁺‧₊˚ ☼ ⋆⁺₊⋆ ☾˖⁺‧₊˚
Since all of Sokka’s Shirtless Beach Plans have been thrown in the bin, stamped on, and set on fire, he acquiesces to Zuko’s proposal of a hike the next day.
He fucking regrets it.
Up ahead, Zuko and Druk are taunting him—Zuko with words, Druk with general lack of sweat and ongoing motor functions. “Come on!” Zuko laughs. “I thought you were a powerful warrior or something.”
“In a polar desert, yes,” Sokka grits out as he trudges upwards. He’s wearing the widest-brimmed hat he could find and it’s still not enough to keep the evil, burning sun off. Zuko’s idea of going somewhere less crowded was to go on the most difficult hike on Ember Island. It’s not hard to see why the tourists avoid it. The Dragon’s Back snakes up up up the volcanic ridgeline, the path a slash of dirt through grass at its most merciful and at its least, a rocky scramble.
The only thing that keeps him going is that Zuko’s donned a tiny vest that doesn’t button up the front. His buff arms swing loose, veiled with the barest sheen of sweat. The nipples are covered but there’s some delicious lightning-scarred cleavage to linger upon and the occasional, tantalising glimmer of shadowed metal. But there’s no way Zuko’s going to let Sokka anywhere near them if he’s this disgustingly sweaty. The indignity of it all!
Sokka might acquiesce that it was all worth it when he descends from the final crest. Zuko and Druk are waiting for him but for once in the last week or so, Sokka’s attention is captured by something else: the expanse of the sea below glittering in fierce sunlight, dashing itself to foam upon columns of basalt. “Beautiful, right?” Zuko murmurs, and Sokka can only agree.
They sprawl on the grass. Zuko unwraps banana-lotus leaf packages of food and Sokka falls upon them, famished from the journey up.
“You been on this hike before?” Sokka asks between bites.
Zuko nods. “We used to come up here, when I was a kid.”
If Zuko’s been scaling this mountain since childhood, that explains the muscles. “Seems like a weird hike to take a kid on.”
Zuko shrugs. “My father said we’d do it, so we did.”
That’s depressing, Sokka thinks. Sokka’s dad never shied away from challenging him and his sister when they were kids, but he can’t imagine Dad ever shunting them up a volcano with a vendetta against calves out of senseless expectation. “Well, look at you now,” says Sokka.
Zuko ducks his head and looks out over the sea. “The view is worth it,” he says. Then after a pause: “You’re right, though. I can’t help thinking about all the ways I’ve cut what tied us together…”
“Deservingly so!”
But Zuko doesn’t seem to hear him. “The Fire Nation has so much reverence for its ancestors. We believe the body is the gift of our parents,” he says, idly slipping a chunk of otter-veal to Druk. “Cutting the hair, piercing the body, we see this like self-mutilation. But the forefathers that gave me this body were the ones to destroy the balance that all the nations had. I wanted to dedicate it to a cause that would mean something new.
“They did it at the spirit portal. I was kneeling there, in that place I had so foolishly attacked all those years ago, watching the Ocean Spirit and Moon Spirit swimming in perfect harmony in the pond. I was entranced…” There’s a faraway quality to his eyes and Sokka can see it too, Zuko with his top off in the nightless glow of the polar summer, kneeling at the pond as Arnook stands over him. “When I came to, it was finished. The waterbenders healed the wounds so quickly.”
“That’s amazing,” says Sokka. The way Zuko tells it, it honestly is.
“Enough about me,” says Zuko. A lock of hair slips out of his chignon to cover half his face. He touches the tattoos that adorn Sokka’s arm. “What about these? What do they mean?”
Sokka does not choke on his komodo chicken. “These?” he says. “Oh, the usual, you know.”
“I don’t,” Zuko chuckles. “Tell me.”
Sokka points. “This one means I’m sexy. This one means I beat five pai sho grandmasters in one game. They took turns stabbing me with the needle. This one means I have a massive cock.”
Zuko’s eyebrow goes up. “How big are we talking?”
“Druk-sized, definitely.”
Zuko guffaws. He flings himself over Druk to cover the dragon’s innocent baby ears, showering Sokka with imprecations. The vest flaps open: his bedazzled chest heaves with laughter. Tui and La. He is such a sight. All eighteen levels of hell are yawning open for Sokka for sexualising the Fire Lord’s spiritual nips and he doesn’t give a single shit.
˖⁺‧₊˚ ☼ ⋆⁺₊⋆ ☾˖⁺‧₊˚
Their two-bed room is a source of absolute suffering for Sokka that evening. When Zuko gets up early the next day to organise their flight back to Hari Bulkan, Sokka leaps at the chance to have a ginormous wank about it all.
It’s kinda sick of him but he steals Zuko’s pillow from the adjoining bed. He slicks his palm up with ointment and runs it over his cock in slow strokes. Zuko’s pillow smells a little spicy from his hair oil, and there’s that warm underlying man smell that makes Sokka’s cock jump in his hand.
He lets all the pent-up lust take over. He thinks of Zuko pulling his top down. Zuko with his skin glowing in the sun. Zuko’s eyes crinkling with an indulgent smile. Zuko blowing fire at Druk. Zuko’s bejewelled nipples, Sokka fitting his mouth around them. Maybe getting a hand around Zuko’s cock, which Sokka bets is cute and shapely as the rest of him. Tui’s gills, what would he sound like? Would he grunt quietly, bite his lips? Or would he moan, loud and wanton with that throaty voice, so responsive to any touch to his nipples? The smell on his pillow is heady as Sokka pants into it, tugs at his cock. Would he ever let Sokka touch him the way he deserves?
Sokka’s great at sex, good enough for a monarch. He’s low maintenance. Zuko could stick him in a harem and feed him nipple jewellery every two weeks. He’d be so happy.
After he cums, Sokka feels contrite. What kind of friend is he? Wanking over the piercings Zuko got to show his commitment to the spiritual balance of the world? They’re just tiny little things. Nipple piercings are normal! Katara was meant to get some as the South’s last waterbender, before his nephew happened—and nothing Katara touches is sexy, obviously. Sokka needs to get a grip. Get over them. He can. He SHOULD. Zuko’s been his friend for ten blissful, wank-free years. He can stop thinking about them. The piercings. The sun and moon piercings, Zuko’s culture entwined with Sokka’s on his body. Gold and silver… Those gorgeous, delicate piercings… Those blushing nipples… Sokka just cannot wait to get his hands on them. The softness of his skin against the unyielding metal. What if he got dangly ones, maybe they’ll sway and sparkle as Zuko thrusts above him, Sokka stuffed full on one end with the tantalising filigree swinging just out of reach of his hungry mouth…
Shit. Sokka has to reach for his ointment again.