Avatar- "Boys' Night" (2/2)
The inside of the bar is exactly as the entrance had advertised it; dark, dingy, noisy, and of dubious cleanliness. And the killing of animals onstage seems to be in full swing, even this early in the evening.
Sokka looks ecstatic, while Zuko is still trying to keep his turban on his head as he warily eyes a group of four girls on stage, shouting out the lyrics to a song that makes them sound like they enjoy public orgies and drinking cactus juice until they’re stupid. Everyone seems to be having a good time and it’s mind-boggling.
“We should go,” Zuko murmurs, because his fighting instinct is actually kicking in, and it’s telling him to either raze this place to the ground or snap his own neck. Which says a lot, because his father and sister had always said he’d had the lousiest battle instinct out of anyone in the history of the Fire Nation’s royal line. If his is acting up here, then clearly only very bad, very violent things happen in this den of iniquity.
Sokka doesn’t seem to have any such qualms about the likelihood of surviving amidst these crazed teens, and jabs Zuko with his elbow again. “Look over there,” he whispers, and is completely unsubtle as he gestures towards a group of girls seated in a booth just to the side of the bar, bobbing their heads along with the singers on stage but not hooting and hollering at them with abandon like the other patrons. “Classy, am I right?”
A girl at the table with her hair up in an intricate bun looks on shyly while two of her friends start throwing their hands up and dancing on top of their table.
“Yeah,” Zuko echoes, numbly. “Classy.”
Sokka eyes him. “Well? Anything catch your eye?”
“No,” Zuko answers. He pointedly looks away from the shenanigans happening on the table now, because if he doesn’t, Sokka is going to get ideas that are not the ideas Zuko wants him to get at all. It’s like that time when they’d been in a meeting over the limit of goods the Earth Kingdom could export to the Fire Nation and the Water Tribes a few months ago. Sokka had thought that Zuko’s staring intently at the treaty outline in thought had meant to go hardline on his policies suddenly and he all but attacked the Earth Kingdom emissary for being mercenary in his intent.
Needless to say, after negotiations had broken down with insulted Earth Kingdom representatives (fruit may have been thrown), Zuko and Sokka had both experienced a terrifying and angry visit from Katara the following morning about diplomacy and building bridges and blah, blah, blah. This moving speech about getting along with others was pointedly illustrated when she slapped them both in the face with the morning dew a few times. In either case, no one wants that to happen ever again.
“You know what? I think I know your type,” Sokka starts up, as he steers Zuko towards a table halfway between the girls’ booth and the stage. “Quiet, kind of cute, but kind of not that cute at the same time, right?”
Zuko blinks. “Hey.”
Sokka waves him off. “You know what I mean. I mean, your ex had that whole tragic-me thing going on; that can be kind of cool sometimes, I guess. It was the basis for the Flaming Ash’s Choking on Volcanic Smog Collection last winter.” Pause. “Though personally, I think you should go for something a little different than your usual. Considering how your last relationship went, you know what I mean?”
“The relationship that ended a week ago,” Zuko answers, dryly.
Sokka hits his hand against the table like Zuko had just uttered some sort of ingenious theorem. “Exactly. So go for someone fun, cheerful, sweet. The opposite of what you had.”
Zuko glares again. “Hey.”
Sokka doesn’t notice. “How about that one? The one with the bun. Looks how cute she is; every time she takes a drink she wrinkles her nose. Every time.” Sokka falls backwards admiringly. “That’s adorable. Isn’t it?”
Zuko eyes the girl with the bun. It is kind of cute, but at the same time, kind of stupid. If it tastes that bad why not stop drinking it?
Once again, Sokka takes Zuko’s contemplative silence for the go-ahead. This is why they can’t work together at a negotiating table. “Alright. I’m going to go ask her two friends if they want to sing with me,” Sokka begins, clasping his hands together in anticipation, “then you sidle up…”
Zuko scowls. “No. I’m telling you, I’m not interested in hitting on random girls I don’t know.” Pause. “Plus I don’t know how to sidle. What does that even mean?”
Sokka sighs in a completely put-upon manner. “Yeah well, you can’t know them until you introduce yourself, obviously. And if you don’t do it now, you’re just going to keep putting it off and putting it off. Kind of like your sculpture sitting.”
Zuko moves to protest, but Sokka stays him with a hand in the air. “Oh I know all about that. Chewy won’t stop complaining about it to everyone. You, Fire Lord Zuko, are an ace procrastinator.”
“That has nothing to do with picking up women.”
“Sure it does,” Sokka insists. “You’re avoiding both because you’re shy and kind of awkward and each of these activities make you look at yourself in a different way, or something. I don’t know… it was more profound when my sister was talking about it.”
Zuko moves to protest again, but stops himself this time, because yeah, that’s kind of true. It’s also kind of disturbing that the siblings discuss him when he’s not around, but he tries not to dwell on that part.
“This is where I’m putting my foot down, as your wingman of awesome,” Sokka insists.
Zuko looks pained. “I don’t think I’m ready yet, okay?”
Sokka is impassioned. “You know what you have to do when the mongoose lizard you’re riding throws you? You get back on the mongoose lizard.” Pause. “Well, in this case, you get a different, less violent and crazy mongoose lizard first. Or trade it for a friendlier, cuter ostrich horse. Then you take that nice, cute, ostrich horse and you saddle it, and you ride it.”
Zuko winces at the mental image that provides, which forces Sokka to consider what he’d just said by replaying it back to himself silently in his mind. He blushes. “You know what I mean,” he mutters. “Take the komodo rhino by the horn.”
“I don’t know if I want to take dating advice from a guy who keeps comparing girls to animals,” Zuko grumbles in the meantime.
Sokka snorts. “Hey, this guy has managed to keep a long-distance relationship alive for years, okay.”
Zuko supposes that’s true too. He does not mention that maybe it works as a long distance thing because Suki is not here to listen to all of the words that come out of his mouth.
While Zuko is thinking these not-so-charitable things, Sokka looks contemplatively over his shoulder, back towards the table of girls. “Okay, how about this? We’ll practice what you’re going to say first, and then once you feel a little more comfortable, I’ll steer us over there. Think of it as dress-rehearsal.”
Zuko is skeptical. “Practice.”
“Right. You be you, and I’ll be Cute Hair Bun over there, and you just say what you’d normally say when you introduce yourself.”
“That’s stupid.”
“Or I could just go over there now,” Sokka adds, with a shrug. “Doesn’t matter to me, oh great and fearless Fire Lord. Maybe they’re part of your fanclub too. I could ask.”
Zuko scowls. Slumps. “Hi, I’m Zuko,” he says, flatly.
Sokka, pleased, takes a moment to stretch before folding in on himself and sitting lower in his chair, to appear at the same approximate height as Cute Hair Bun. Then he twitters, hides his mouth behind his sleeve, and says, in an awful falsetto, “Hi.”
Zuko stares when Sokka doesn’t say anything else. Eventually, Sokka gets impatient and slips out of character in order to wave Zuko on. Zuko panics. “Uh… so, you like karecrokey.”
Sokka looks pained, but when he speaks again, his voice is still high-pitched and ridiculous. “I love karaoke. Do you come here often?”
“No,” Zuko answers. “Never.”
“Oh, you mean this is your first time but you’re really excited?” Sokka gives him a look that is not in the vein of Cute Hair Bun.
“Er…yes,” Zuko answers.
Sokka’s expression softens. “So, what’s your favorite song?”
Zuko stares. “I already said this is my first time here. I don’t know any songs.”
Sokka puts his sleeves down from in front of his mouth so Zuko can see his big fat frown. “C’mon, man, you’re going to make her throw her drink in your face. Be nicer.”
“I didn’t think that was mean,” Zuko protests. “And you’re not giving me a lot to work with here. It’s like trying to flirt with Toph.”
Sokka looks scandalized. “You take that back.”
“It’s true.”
“How would you even know what Toph does when she flirts?” Sokka rejoins, crossing his arms.
Zuko glares back, which only causes his turban to fall lower on his head, obscuring his view. “I don’t, but it has to be better than what you were doing just now,” he says, evenly.
Sokka huffs. “Hey, sorry if normal girls throw you off, pal! I’ll try to be more sullen on the next try, how’s that sound?”
Zuko’s eye twitches. “She wasn’t sullen she was emo. Apparently there is a difference!”
“Is that what she said?”
“Yes!”
“Do you even know what emo means?”
“No!”
At this point, both of the disguised heroes are arguing so fervently with one another that Cute Hair Bun, who had finally managed to gather up the courage to approach the boy with the interesting turban, is forced to stop in her tracks.
She pauses, standing between the two arguing gentlemen, and is at quite at a loss as to what to do, looking back anxiously at her friends, who just shrug helplessly at her.
She sighs, gathers up her courage, and raises her voice. “E-excuse me!!” she starts.
Both turbaned gentlemen turn from seething at each other directly on to her. “What?!” they shout in tandem, and do it so sharply she takes an involuntary step backwards.
“Um, never mind,” she squeaks, brokenly, and scurries back at her friends.
It is at this point, with most of the bar having gone eerily silent, that Sokka and Zuko realize that everyone is glaring at them, and that they are probably the biggest jerks on the face of the planet. Apparently the entire population of the bar had noticed how adorable Cute Hair Bun was, and is now indignant on her behalf.
“So we’ll just be going now,” Sokka announces after a beat, in which the karaoke place feels a lot like his cell back on the Boiling Rock, except without the sparse cleanliness or the warm ambiance.
“Nice place,” Zuko adds, quickly. “Great… singing.”
The two boys leave a sizable tip as they hastily slide out of the club.
**~**
When they make it back onto the street, there is no time to glare or fight or blame each other for this whole fiasco, because a horde of starry-eyed fangirls waving around crumpled issues of Fire Tiger Heat are waiting for them at the mouth of the intersection, auras alight with holy insanity and smiles tinged with a little foaming at the mouth.
Ponytail girl is at the mob’s head.
“I knew it was him under all those turbans!” she shrieks in delighted triumph. “I look at his picture every day so of course I could tell it was him!”
The crowd roars in cheerful agreement.
Sokka and Zuko turn to look each other in that moment, and find that when in the heat of battle, with their lives on the line, the two of them can work as well in concert as any specially trained military task force, despite their differences.
In that moment, they forgive, forget, and run.
**~**
Toph has a dilemma.
So apparently, despite his haughty obsequiousness and general grumpiness, Chewy is more than just Zuko’s wacky palace sidekick.
The fact of the matter is, Chewy is a much more important member of the palace staff than Toph had initially believed him to be. He is not, in fact, Zuko’s personal towel boy or his butler; he’s not his manservant or personal well of nonstop hilarity either, despite how often Sokka and Toph had always teased him about being the latter. He is, in all actuality, the person in charge of orchestrating the daily goings on of the palace. He organizes the servants, plans the meals, creates the work shifts, and is the one guy in the whole household who the other servants and guards go to when they have questions about things that are beneath Zuko’s notice.
Thus, when he goes missing, people are going to start freaking the hell out.
And by freaking out, Toph means they may have shit themselves running all over the palace looking for Chewy, and as such, may or may not have caught her with him, right when she’d been in the middle of trying to stuff his struggling, surprisingly heavy body into one of the really big, really fancy, family-heirloom type urns that had adorned Zuko’s office. She says had adorned because she might have broken it when she’d made the clay particles it was composed of collapse in on themselves so that she could form a rock wall with which to hit the charging battalion of guards that had been trying to stop her from doing any more bad things to Chewy.
She’d tried to explain a few minutes later- as the guards had flopped around the now ruined office, lolling and bleeding and dizzy-that this whole fiasco is happening solely for the benefit of their heartbroken leader. It is for the greater good of the Fire Nation.
They hadn’t listened, mostly because when they’d asked her where the Fire Lord was, exactly, she’d answered that Sokka may have taken him out the window unconscious, while rolled up in a rug.
Things had kind of gone downhill from there.
Now, some hours later, she is sitting in the actual throne room of the Fire Lord’s inner palace, surrounded by its entire staff of angry servants, bodyguards, soldiers, and courtiers. They are all tied up with whatever antique earthenware, iron fixtures, and combination thereof that she’d managed to find in the palace (which was, admittedly, a lot).
Most of them are wrapped up in metal bindings and submerged up to their necks in the ground. Some are outright unconscious, with their bodies pushed half inside the walls.
All of the ones who are conscious are probably glaring bloody murder at her. She can’t tell.
All that, however, is not her current dilemma.
“So,” she says, as she takes a seat on the throne, “How’s it going? You guys comfortable?”
No one answers, mostly because they can’t. They’re probably still glaring, though.
Meanwhile, outside, the rest of the palace’s Royal Security Corps is applying a very heavy, very loud battering ram to the front doors of the Fire Lord’s inner palace. War horns may or may not be blowing all across the grounds, and word is that a foreign assassin with deadly powers has somehow managed to infiltrate the court and has taken Lord Zuko and the entire population of the inner palace as hostages. It is such a big freaking deal that it will probably make the evening newspapers, despite Toph’s very thorough explanation of the happenings earlier, the one that no one had believed.
She sighs and hopes that Sokka’s diplomatic immunity is really freaking amazing.
**~**
Sokka thinks it might be the adrenaline that gets to them, after he and Zuko end up running through a mile’s worth of winding, twisting, crowded alleyways, after they tear off their new turbans and prop them on the back of a cabbage wagon headed out of town, after they trade their capes and mufflers for a pair of ridiculous hats and dark-shaded glasses. Or it might be the fact that they’ve had more near-death experiences today than they’ve had in almost an entire year.
Whatever the reason, they soon find themselves ducking into a fancy teashop around dinner time, and can’t help it when they both collapse against the wall in a sudden fit of disbelieving, slightly hysterical laughter.
“Oh man, your fans,” Sokka guffaws, slapping himself in the leg with one hand and cradling his stomach in the other. “Your fans.”
Zuko apparently understands what he means when he says that anyway, and chuckles as well, quieter but no less mirthful. “This is why I stay inside the palace,” he manages around one of those rare, genuine smiles, while the hostess stands frozen at her station, just kind of staring at the pair of them in blank confusion. Eventually, she clears her throat.
“Welcome to Cha Boiled,” she manages, once Sokka’s guffawing has dwindled down some. “Party of two?”
Her very serious, vaguely confused question makes Sokka start giggling again, while Zuko manages to stand up straight, school his features (kind of), and say, “Table for two, please.”
Looking somewhat relieved, the hostess picks up two menus. “Right this way, gentlemen,” she says, leading them further inside, past a small replica of the garden inside the Fire Lord’s inner palace and towards an open area shielded by an enormous skylight, where the first of the evening stars are just starting to become visible.
Sokka, finally sobering as they pass an indoor koi pond surrounded with green bamboo shoots and gently bobbing water lilies, crowds up behind Zuko and murmurs, “Hey, maybe we can find you a date in here. I mean, we’ve still got some time before the fireworks, and I bet somewhere in these walls is a nice, tea-loving, zen-following girl for you to watch them with.”
Zuko has often admired Sokka’s determination, his creativity, and his ability to adapt to whatever situation he finds himself in when push comes to shove.
Right now though, he kind of wishes the other boy would shut up and just take the entire afternoon’s adventures as the universe’s sign that Zuko and girls probably need to spend some time apart. For the sake of everything. “Sokka, we should just have some tea and go back to the palace. Toph can’t fool everyone forever, you know. Chu Wi will catch on eventually, if he hasn’t already.”
“But this might be perfect! I bet there are some completely refined girls here that won’t try to eat your face or set you up with my sister. Plus, you have to see the fireworks. They’re for your birthday. You can’t ditch your own birthday party. That’s just crass.”
“The celebration is for the citizens,” Zuko clarifies. “They’re just using my birthday as an excuse.”
“Whatever. We are here, we might as well see the show. This tea room is the perfect place to find a mature, refined date to…”
Sokka is abruptly cut off as they enter the main dining area, where it turns out that the city’s Seniors Single Night is in full swing on the far side of the room.
Several octogenarians look up at the two teens as they enter and smile at them appraisingly. “My,” one very small, very hunch-backed woman says, through pink, toothless gums, “what a couple of nice looking young men.”
Zuko and Sokka manage watery smiles back.
“Mature, huh?” Zuko grits out, without changing his smile at the host of elderly ladies now twittering at them.
“Okay, never mind then,” Sokka answers back, in the same, frozen manner.
They spend the next hour getting their cheeks pinched.
**~**
In the meantime, Toph hopes no one will notice the missing steel gates from the main guard tower of the outer palace. Or the giant rock formation that has suddenly taken up residence in their place.
**~**
By the time Zuko and Sokka escape-stumbling, red-faced, and mortified-from the clutches of every young man’s worst granny nightmare, the streets are filled with masked revelers, flaming torches, and portable food carts that mean fireworks and general revelry is on the menu for the night, as the capital city prepares to celebrate their young Fire Lord’s birthday for the entire next week.
“Perfect!” Sokka declares when he catches sight of all the brightly colored masks hanging from the novelty vendors’ stalls. Most of them are replicas of the faces of the heroes who ended the war.
Sokka grins and grabs them masks of themselves, citing, “I bet none of your crazy fangirls will figure this out,” as he steers them towards the main thoroughfare, where young people are gathering to wait for the fireworks presentation.
Zuko grudgingly puts on the mask of his own face over his face. “Somehow,” he begins reluctantly, “I feel like we’re really pushing our luck here.”
Sokka’s answer is to jab him with an elbow. “Check it out, twelve o’clock,” he hisses, in a screamed whisper.
“It’s nearly eight,” Zuko grounds back, rubbing at his ribs. “Stop doing that.”
“No, twelve o’clock,” Sokka insists, and when Zuko just gives him another confounded look, sighs and points straight ahead.
Zuko looks straight ahead and sees a cute girl with her hair down but clipped back, with a few stray blossoms of white jasmine scattered throughout the dark waves. She’s smiling with a friend, clutching a fan in one hand and pointing to some artistic looking sweets a peddler is vending with the other. She has an Aang mask fastened to the side of her sash.
“That hairstyle is totally Earth Nation,” Sokka whispers, waggling his eyebrows. “So I’m guessing, tourist? She probably won’t recognize you.”
“My face is on the money now,” Zuko reminds him.
Sokka waves it off. “No one pays attention to that. Plus, she’s an Aang fan, so she’s probably sane. Even if she does recognize you, it’s unlikely she’ll try to set you up with my sister.”
Zuko supposes he has a point about that.
“Now c’mon, we’ll slip in, act like tourists ourselves, and see if they don’t mind wandering around with us for a couple of hours. Then, before the fireworks start, I’ll steer her friend in one direction, you steer her in the other, and I’ll meet you back at the palace before midnight.” Sokka pauses to give Zuko dual thumbs ups. “Happy birthday, man!”
Zuko scowls. “It’s not my birthday yet.”
“Whatever. We celebrate now. Life is for those who go out and take it for themselves, right?”
Before Zuko can answer that it’s that kind of thinking that probably got the Fire Nation in trouble in the first place, Sokka grabs him and pulls him towards the sweets stall.
And practically shoves him at the cute girl with the jasmine blossoms in her hair.
“Oh wow, that taffy is in the shape of a dragon!” Sokka crows in over-exaggerated, much too loud wonder. “Hey, we should buy some to take back to our homes, which are far, far away. I bet your little sister would love one of those, huh?”
Zuko looks at him like he’s crazy.
Sokka elbows him in the ribs again.
“Ow...yeah. My little sister would love to bite its angry growling face off,” Zuko manages, while rubbing at his ribs sorely.
Cute Jasmine Blossoms laughs a little bit. Sokka’s eyebrows jump up, so that they show above the part of his face that the mask is covering. Zuko can imagine that their dance is one of encouragement and other distastefulness.
“Er… hi,” Zuko manages, when Jasmine Blossom finishes laughing at him.
“Hi,” she answers back, and doesn’t say anything else for a bit. It irritates Zuko to know that Sokka had been accurate in his girls-they-don’t-know portrayal earlier. At least the way this girl is doing it is way cuter.
“So uh, do you think a girl would like dragon-shaped taffy?” Zuko poses next, before the silence can get awkward. His attempts earn eyebrow-motions of approval from behind Sokka’s Sokka mask.
Cute Jasmine Blossom looks thoughtful, nose slightly wrinkled, lips pursed. “I think it depends on the girl,” she says after a moment, carefully. “But I would personally like the tiger more.”
Zuko looks between the dragon taffy and the tiger taffy uncertainly. Both look equally fearsome to him. He was kind of hoping she’d say she liked the one in the shape of a lily.
Cute Jasmine Blossom seems to understand his confusion and leans closer to whisper into his ear. “The tiger is bigger, but costs the same,” she explains with a little grin.
Zuko finds himself grinning back, because hey, that makes sense to him, and from over his shoulder, he can see it when Sokka introduces himself to her friend. “So, I’m Sokka! Tell me all about you!” he says loudly, with a wink over his shoulder at Zuko that just looks out and out creepy through the eye slits of the mask. Sokka steers her friend towards a nearby balloon catching game.
“Your friend’s subtle,” Cute Jasmine Blossom manages, once they’re alone.
Zuko is slightly sheepish. “Uh, yeah. Sorry about that. So, you’re a fan of the avatar?”
“A fan of his work,” she answers. “I haven’t actually ever seen him in person. For all I know, he doesn’t look like this at all.”
“Yeah me too,” Zuko says. Pause. “I mean, I’m a fan of his work too. I have seen him in person, though. The mask is pretty accurate, I guess. For a mask.”
He winces when he realizes this admission might just be an invitation for her to bring out the inner fangirl crazy.
But Cute Jasmine Blossom just reaches out to tap her Aang mask thoughtfully. “Really?”
Zuko chuckles. “Well, not really. His head is normally rounder.”
She laughs, and at the sound of it, Zuko can’t help it when he abruptly asks, “So I should buy you the tiger?”
“Sure,” she answers, before digging into her sleeve for her own coin purse.
He looks at her in confusion.
She gestures to the stall, “Which one do you want?”
Zuko smiles from behind the mask and supposes this probably means Sokka really is the best wingman ever.
**~**
Sokka, over by the balloon catching game with Cute Jasmine Blossom’s friend, whose name in his head is Crazy Laugh, tries to catch one of the many floating balloons with his slip of paper before it breaks from the weight of the water. He fails, of course, and the brightly colored balloon goes splashing back into the pool.
Crazy Laugh laughs crazily. “Man, you blow at this!” she crows, and already has three balloons of her own from that one measly slip of paper. Who wins that many balloons anyway? Who needs that many? She should save some for the little kids.
“Do you want me to win you one? What color do you like?” she offers, when Sokka doesn’t say anything. In the meantime, his soggy paper-loop finally breaks, sending the green balloon he’d been finessing splashing back into the water with a thunk.
“I think I got a defective piece of paper,” Sokka starts, which earns him a skeptical snort and a clap on the back that is not unlike getting hit with one of Toph’s rocks upside the head. What is with these Earth Kingdom girls and doing violence onto him?
Meanwhile, Crazy Laugh pauses in her demolition of the pool’s balloon population to eye her friend, who is with Zuko over by a stall where you can win goldfish by catching them on a paper net. They seem to be having fun.
“Your friend better not be creepy,” Crazy Laugh says after a beat, and ruins the nice picture Zuko and Cute Jasmine Blossom make.
“What? Creepy? He’s not creepy,” Sokka insists, looking kind of indignant on his friend’s behalf. “Sure, he’s a little bit weird, and kind of awkward, and has the worst relatives ever, but he’s you know, a pretty decent human being.”
Crazy Laugh laughs again. “Man, clearly you’re the weird one out of the two of you,” she says, before shoving her collection of balloon winnings at him. “Here, put these in your purse for me.”
Sokka stares. “This is not a purse,” he insists.
“Whatever. Handbag,” she corrects, and Sokka thinks that Zuko better appreciate all the things he has to go through just to get him a date to watch fireworks with.
He grudgingly holds open the flap to his sling bag for Crazy Laugh and glares into the middle distance while she piles her balloons into it.
It is at that moment, while he is still glaring into the middle distance and mentally listing off all the ways having balloons is useless, that Sokka sees it.
At first it’s kind of like a wavy blur of motion in the distance, punctuated by a low rumbling noise. Kind of like what they’d heard as Azula’s armies had advanced on Ba Sing Se.
“That can’t be good,” Sokka says out loud to himself, which earns him a strange look from Crazy Laugh. She turns to look over her shoulder as well, and is just in time to see a mob come to a complete standstill right in front of the intersection beside the goldfish booth. Ponytail, much to Sokka’s dismay, is once again at the head of the pack, clutching her now mangled copy of Fire Tiger Heat. Zuko, apparently sensing great danger approaching as well, pauses in the middle of his attempts to net a goldfish and looks up.
“That’s him!!!” Ponytail girl shrieks suddenly, and Sokka can hear it when the army behind her suddenly takes a collective breath of anticipation upon having Zuko’s identity confirmed. “I look at him every day, so of course I can recognize him, even when he has his own face on!”
“Uh, no it’s not,” Zuko attempts, in vain.
“Yes it is!” Ponytail insists.
Zuko sighs.
“Oh my god, did you get a new girlfriend?!” Ponytail adds, when she sees Cute Jasmine Blossom standing beside the Fire Lord, holding her Aang mask and looking weirded out as all hell. “I hate her already, she’s totally ugly!”
Some of the other girls in the mob murmur in agreement. Others declare, “I bet she’s evil!”
From there, they begin a heated debate about the best way to get rid of her.
“Um,” Cute Jasmine Blossom begins when she hears that, and turns to Zuko uncertainly, “does this happen to you a lot?”
“Say no!” Sokka’s voice shouts out, over the din of the crowd.
Zuko ignores it, slumping slightly at the shoulder. “Yeah, kind of,” he admits.
Cute Jasmine Blossom looks at him apologetically. “Um, you’re nice and all, Zuko, but I think maybe your life is a little too action-packed for me. I… don’t really want to die because your fans are crazy.”
It is surprisingly calm and sensible in the heat of all the seething hatred, and makes Zuko think that maybe he should go for more of Aang’s fans in the future, when he’s safely behind the walls of the palace.
But for now, Zuko can do nothing but sigh as he removes his mask. “Yeah, I get that,” he tells her, with a sheepish smile. “It was nice meeting you, though.”
She nods. “Yeah you too.” Then she pauses and looks over at the crowd of fangirls, as they seem to come to a consensus that involves Zuko needing to be ripped away from the evil influence of girls who want to date him. Cute Jasmine Blossom takes a step to the side. “You should probably run. I know I’m going to.” These are more sensible words, and Zuko is sorry to see her go.
He waves a little, and then takes her advice. He runs.
Sokka, in the meantime, pulls Crazy Laugh’s balloons out of his bag and shoves them back into her arms without very much delicacy. “Yeah, that’s my cue. Nice meeting you, I hope I never see you again.”
He turns and takes off after Zuko.
“Oh my god, does this mean you’re gay!?” Ponytail demands as the two boys race off into the gathered crowd together, “Because I might be okay with that!”
Sokka and Zuko run faster.
**~**
The fireworks start just as Zuko and Sokka manage to lose the mob again, the pair of them climbing blindly over a series of fences, through a hole in a wall, and over some porches and verandas before coming out on the rooftop of a stable that houses a pair of unimpressed komodo rhinos.
They are out of breath and dirty from a few alleyway garbage can collisions they might have been involved in. Most of all, Zuko is still completely and utterly dateless.
“What a disaster,” Sokka breathes when he can again, stretched out on an awkwardly balanced piece of sheet metal that’s been propped over the stable to keep the sun out during the day. “I can’t believe nothing I did worked.”
Zuko sits with his knees up against his chest, breathing deeply and watching the fireworks out of the corner of one eye. “My fans are just crazy,” he says apologetically.
“No joke,” Sokka agrees.
“But everything that happened today was also kind of pointless,” Zuko adds.
“Okay, I get it,” Sokka mutters. “Sheesh.”
“And tiring, and slightly against the law,” Zuko continues, anyway.
Sokka huffs. “Right, so no more wacky adventures of Fire Lord and Wingman. You’ve made your point, your royal highness.”
Zuko’s lip curls slightly upward. “But it was kind of fun too. You know, after being ridiculous, pointless, tiring, and criminal,” he admits.
Sokka blinks. “What, really?”
Zuko shrugs. “Sure.”
“Huh.” Sokka pushes himself up to a sitting position, while fireworks that explode into flowers and pinwheels shimmer in the sky over their heads. “Really? Fun?”
“I said kind of,” Zuko reminds him. “But yeah. So…thanks. It got my mind off of things for a while.”
Sokka preens a little at that. “Well of course it did. I’m the world’s most awesome wingman, and manly bonding time is my specialty.”
Zuko nods and concentrates on the fireworks from there. He even wishes Mai well on her journeys adventuring across the globe. Everyone should do it at least once, and not purely for the sake of hunting the Avatar. She’ll probably have fun.
Sokka, seeing the contemplative look on his friend’s face, clears his throat, awkwardly. “You uh, you don’t want to talk about your feelings or anything right now, do you? Because that’s not really my thing. That’s my sister’s thing, not mine.”
Zuko smiles a little, wryly. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
Sokka relaxes visibly at being let off the hook like that. “Great fireworks,” he says, eventually. “You put that together yourself?”
Zuko shakes his head. “Chu Wi, I think. He wanted my birthday to be spectacular. Probably to offset the whole thing with Mai.”
Sokka nods once. “Man’s got flair. I didn’t know they made fireworks in the shapes of your face.”
“Hmmm.”
They manage to idle like that for a few more minutes, just watching the fireworks, while people ooh and aah in the distance and the komodo rhinos stamp their feet and settle in for the night, down in the comfort of the stables below.
Eventually, something occurs to Sokka. “Hey, did those fangirls of yours really think that you and I were…”
Zuko shrugs. “Probably.” He doesn’t need to turn to the side to know the weirded out expression that Sokka is making; it’s a lot like the one he’d made when the fangirls had insinuated that Zuko and Katara should try dating. “We did spend the whole day running away from them together.”
Sokka shakes his head in disbelief. “Man, is there no such thing as friendship between men anymore?”
Zuko snorts. Then adds, “Maybe you should get rid of the purse.”
END
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