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Sokka was already half out of his goalie gear when his phone lit up again on the bench. Another message from Katara, a meme from Toph, someone from the team group chat posting a blurry photo of the snow outside the arena like it’d never snowed before. But nothing from Zuko. Not since yesterday.
He told himself it was fine. People get busy. People sleep. People have lives that don’t revolve around Sokka’s need to see three little dots appear in a text bubble. He even told himself that out loud while peeling off one leg pad: “It’s fine.” Like saying it would make it true.
It should have been true. Zuko had even said he wasn’t feeling great yesterday… stomach acting up, nerves scraped thin from a fight with his uncle about… something. Sokka hadn’t caught the details; he’d been halfway through telling Zuko a story about Toph trying to tape a teammate’s stick to the ceiling, and then Zuko had typed “sorry. gonna crash early” and vanished. Phone dead. Or phone facedown. Or Zuko just facedown in bed, not seeing anything until morning.
Except morning had come and gone. Practice had come and gone. Zuko hadn’t shown.
The first rumblings had started somewhere between the warmups and the third round of drills. Coach Bato did that thing where he pretended he didn’t notice Sokka looking at the clock. “Eyes on the ice, Sokka.” Right, right. Eyes on the ice. The net felt too big without Zuko patrolling the blue line, like every angle was one he hadn’t accounted for, like Zuko normally stood there and made the angles make sense. The team had teased Sokka about it before, how he was better when Zuko was on. Not because Zuko was magical or something, but because he and Sokka had learned to read the same lines through chaos. It was stupid that all of that could wobble just because a text thread went quiet.
Stupid, he told himself, and still his stomach tightened every time he glanced at his phone in the locker stall, at the empty space where Zuko’s name should have been. He replayed their last messages until the screen ghosted them into afterimages: Zuko’s “stomach’s a mess,” Zuko’s “argued with uncle,” Zuko’s “sorry. gonna crash early.” Sokka had typed “get some rest” and a dumb penguin emoji and then put the phone face down and tried not to feel like he’d been left on read by the one person who never left him on read.
There were practical explanations, and he listed them all: dead battery, migraine, uncle confiscated phone like it was 2008, broken charger, fell asleep again, accidentally turned off notifications, actually sick and sleeping it off. Every explanation came with a ghost of another, more poisonous one riding its tail. Maybe I was too much. Maybe I joked at the wrong moment. Maybe he realized I’m- He cut that thought so fast it made his jaw ache. He wasn’t saying that word, not even in the privacy of his own skull. Not about Zuko. Not when they were fine, better than fine, best friends and a dream team on the ice, always there, never doing the silent thing.
The silent thing pressed in anyway. Practice ended, showers hissed, the room turned into a chorus of zippers and chatter and the squeak of wet sneakers on tile. People peeled away in pairs and trios, laughing into scarves as the cold pushed in from the corridor. Sokka sat in his undershirt, damp and cooling, phone face up now like he’d given in to the superstition of it. Staring as if glaring alone could summon a text.
It didn’t. He told himself again that he was ridiculous, that he was absolutely, catastrophically ridiculous, and that knowing it didn’t stop the way it hurt. Like getting poked with a small, stupid knife that couldn’t kill you but could make you act strange.
The room emptied. The hum of the vents got louder. Sokka’s sticks leaned in the corner like accusations, tape frayed and curling. He was halfway to shoving his phone into his bag, fine, done, going home to microwave something and pretend not to check it every seven minutes, when the door creaked open.
“You’re still here.”
The voice carried the winter in with it, low, rough around the edges, like it had been scraped clean by the cold. Sokka knew that sound like he knew the rattle of puck against post.
He looked up so fast his neck twinged. Zuko stood in the doorway, cheeks flushed high from the wind, snow dusting his shoulders and melting through his hair. He wasn’t in gear; no pads, no jersey. Street clothes, heavy coat, his gear bag slung over one shoulder like a promise he’d come to keep even if he was late. Even if he’d missed everything else.
Relief hit so hard it knocked against irritation on the way in. The two feelings collided and bounced, sparking. Sokka heard himself say, sharper than he meant, “Yeah, well, goalie pads take a while.”
He watched the words leave his mouth and hated them immediately. Zuko didn’t flinch, exactly, but he did pause like he’d felt the edge of it. Snow slid off his sleeve to the floor.
“I- yeah.” Zuko shifted the strap higher, eyes flicking to Sokka’s phone and then back. “Sorry I didn’t text back. Yesterday was… a lot.”
The apology made Sokka feel worse, somehow. Zuko’s voice was quiet, not defensive, and it wired straight into that part of Sokka that always wanted to reassure people so hard he forgot to do it for himself. He lifted one shoulder like he could wave the whole day away. “It’s fine. You don’t have to-”
“No.” Zuko cut it off gently, not a snap, more of a careful set-down. He stepped all the way in, letting the door thud shut against the weather, then crossed the room with the steady purpose he had on the ice when he’d decided a lane was his. He set his bag down by the bench, glove-less hands red from the cold, and crouched until Sokka didn’t have to crane his neck. Their eyes lined up. It was such a small, stubborn kindness that Sokka’s shoulders sank under it.
Zuko’s black hair had melted into damp strands at his temple. His breathing looked like it hurt a little; Sokka could almost see the residual tightness in it from whatever had gone wrong yesterday. Zuko didn’t reach for him yet. He just looked, like he needed to read Sokka’s face before he chose his next sentence.
“I should’ve said something,” Zuko said finally, voice soft enough that the vents almost ate it. “I turned my phone face down and passed out. Woke up at four, felt like I swallowed a knife, and… went back out. That wasn’t fair to you.”
Sokka made a helpless sound that wanted to be a laugh. “Dude- I … you’re allowed to sleep.”
“Mm.” Zuko’s mouth curved, barely. “I am. And you’re allowed to expect me to show. Or at least to let you know when I can’t.”
The ache that had sat under Sokka’s ribs all afternoon, that paper-cut hurt he’d been scolding himself for had finally shifted. It didn’t vanish. It just became less like a verdict and more like a bruise someone had finally acknowledged.
He looked down at his hands. They were still wrapped because he’d gotten distracted in the middle of unwrapping them. Tape ridged his knuckles. “I felt… stupid,” he said, and each syllable felt like pulling off a bandage slowly. “Like… Man, I knew why you might not answer, but my brain kept acting like there was some big, hidden reason. Like I’d said the wrong thing. Or been too much. Or-” He bit down before the word at the edge could jump. “I just felt weirdly alone today. Without you out there.”
Zuko absorbed that with a focus that made Sokka want to squirm and stay still at the same time. Then Zuko’s hand came up, careful like Sokka was skittish. He didn’t grab. He just hooked two fingers lightly around Sokka’s wrist, where the tape ended and skin began, and tugged once in a request.
Sokka let himself go forward. Not much. Just enough that when Zuko leaned, their foreheads met.
On the ice, people liked to bop his mask; a quick thud before a faceoff, a tap after a save. It was ritual more than affection. You knocked on the goalie’s bucket to say, I see you or Well done. This wasn’t that. No fiberglass between them. No cameras. No fans. Just skin and shared breath and the faint salt of melted snow. It felt like being told the same thing, but quieter. I see you. Not just the part of you that stops pucks. You.
Zuko’s voice was there, small in the space between them. “I’m here now. Even when I’m quiet sometimes.”
Soka let out a breath that shook on the way out. He wasn’t dramatic about it. He didn’t sob or make a point. He just… let it go. The worst of the pressure leaked out, and what was left was manageable. Normal human ache. “Okay,” he said, and then, because honesty had already cracked things open, “Next time, at least send me an emoji or something. Otherwise I spiral.”
He felt the huff of Zuko’s laugh against his skin. The sound warmed a place just under Sokka’s sternum. “Noted.”
They stayed there a heartbeat longer than a normal friend thing. Sokka wasn’t tallying, but if he had been, it would’ve been three beats past safe and two past dangerous and exactly perfect for a person who needed something to lean against.
Zuko drew back, gentle golden eyes meeting blue. He didn’t pull his hand away from Sokka’s wrist. His thumb rested against the edge of tape and left little crescents of warmth.
“What emoji works?” Zuko asked, earnest and somehow a little self-conscious about it, which made Sokka’s mouth tilt a fraction. “Like. Do you have a… system?”
Sokka sniffed a laugh. “A system. Yeah. Okay.” He pretended to consider, because if he didn’t pretend he might say, Send a heart, and that would not be funny at all. It would be exactly as much as he felt, and he hadn’t decided if he was brave today. “Penguin is solid.”
“Penguin.” Zuko nodded like he was filing it somewhere secure. “What about the little goal net? That exists, right?”
“You mean the soccer net? That’s dorky.”
“So are you.”
“Tragic,” Sokka agreed, and the ease skated back between them, thin but real. He let his gaze drift over Zuko’s shoulder at the closed door. “You missed practice.”
Zuko’s mouth tightened in the way that meant he’d been beating himself up for hours. “I know. I was late enough that everyone was leaving. I figured I’d… I don’t know. Get some ice time alone. I didn’t want to go the whole day without stepping onto it. That makes it worse.”
It did. Sokka knew that ache like he knew the inside of his glove, the itch under your skin when you hadn’t moved the way you were born to move. “I can stay,” Sokka said. “Go do your zen laps or whatever and I’ll throw pucks for you later.”
Zuko’s eyes softened. “You should go home. You’re already halfway out of your gear.”
“I can put it back on.”
“You hate putting it back on.”
“I hate a lot of things,” Sokka said, and for some reason it came out honest instead of dramatic. “I don’t hate being here when you need it.”
That startled something small and bright across Zuko’s face. He looked at their wrists again, the point of contact, like it was a thing to refer back to when the ice in his stomach came back later. Then he nodded toward Sokka’s phone on the bench. “Did Katara send you seventeen check-ins?”
“Eighteen. I told her not to send the rescue sled yet.”
Zuko’s laugh came easier this time. “Tell her I’m alive. And I’ll text next time, penguin included.”
“Better,” Sokka said. He cleared his throat and peeled his gaze off Zuko before it could get sticky. “Also, uh. How’s your stomach?”
“It’s fine now. Uncle and I walked it off around the block. We said sorry without saying sorry, which is our ancestral family tradition.”
“Classic.” Sokka nodded solemenly. “I know that ritual. The Beifongs also do it. Toph calls it ‘do you wanna get dumplings or what.’”
“Great ritual.” Zuko glanced at the clock tucked high on the wall, then back at Sokka. Hesitated. “If you really don’t mind… stay while I skate? You don’t have to suit back up. Just… be there. I skate better when-”
“-when I’m chirping you from the boards,” Sokka finished, because he knew the rest of the sentence not from hearing it but from living it. “Obviously.”
Zuko’s hand loosened on his wrist and finally let go. Sokka’s skin felt abruptly cold where the warmth had been, like stepping off the ice into air. Zuko stood, shouldering the bag again. “I won’t be long.”
“Don’t be,” Sokka said, which sounded ruder than he meant, so he added, “I mean, not because I don’t want to be here. Just because you’ll freeze to death later if you overdo it. It’s dumping outside.”
Zuko tipped his head toward the thin smear of snow that had tracked in behind him. “I noticed but you know, once I’m warm, I stay warm… at least for a while.” He chuckled and got halfway to the door before pivoting back like he’d decided he didn’t want to let that forehead thing be the last unfiltered thing between them. “Hey.”
Sokka looked up.
Zuko’s gaze was steady, and for a moment he looked exactly like he looked at the blue line when he could see the play three moves ahead. “You are not nothing to me,” he said, simple as a clean pass. “So don’t let your brain tell you otherwise.”
Sokka’s throat did something uncomfortable. He nodded because his voice would embarrass him if he tried. Zuko nodded back, like that was enough, then left, the door giving a soft, complaining sound as it swung shut.
The room felt different in the quiet, like someone had opened a window inside Sokka even as the temperature held. He finished unwrapping his hands and texted Katara a photo of his own face making a thumbs-up, which she would absolutely interrogate later. He added, Sparky’s alive. Do not bring sled. Then he added a penguin.
He tucked his phone away before he could stare at it again and grabbed his coat. He didn’t put his pads back on. He didn’t need to and this wasn’t about standing in front of a hundred shots. It was about being a body on a bench for someone else’s lap around the darkened rink, which somehow felt bigger today than any save Sokka had made.
When he stepped out, the corridor was colder and darker than during practice, the overheads on a timer that made the shadows long. Rink lights glowed through the glass like a second winter sky. Zuko was already out there, a lone figure tracing patient, deliberate lines into the ice. He wasn’t pushing speed. He wasn’t punishing himself. He was moving the way he only did when no one needed him to be loud about it: methodical, quiet, almost kind to himself. It made something warm settle under Sokka’s ribs, a weight that didn’t hurt.
Sokka sat with his elbows on his knees and watched Zuko skate. He let his brain talk at him a little, in that stupid, familiar way. It tried a few times to pull him toward old habits, toward doubt. It had less material now. It slowed down. It looked at Zuko, and the argument slunk away on quieter feet.
When Zuko finally coasted to the boards by Sokka and leaned in with his gloves on the ledge, he was breathing evenly. There were small arcs of ice spray on his coat. He looked at Sokka like the air tasted better now.
“Feelin’ better?” Sokka asked.
“Better, yeah.” Zuko said. He hesitated, then bumped his forehead lightly against Sokka’s beanie over the glass. A ridiculous little motion, barely anything. It still landed like a promise.
Sokka raised his hand and tapped two knuckles against the plexi in return, the closest thing to a mask-tap he had. “Good. Now were is your phone?”
Zuko blinked. “Why?”
“I’m putting the penguin and the net into your top three most-used. If I don’t see them by tomorrow morning, I’m filing a complaint.”
“To whom?”
Sokka considered. “Coach Bato. The commissioner. The snow.”
“The snow is busy,” Zuko said, deadpan, went to grab his phone from the bench and passed it over.
Sokka took it with a grin he didn’t try to hide. He wasn’t cured. He wasn’t going to stop being himself tomorrow. But there was a new little icon in his head, next to all the stupid, helpful lists: a penguin on skates, a net, and Zuko’s breath warm against his forehead in a cold room. Something to press there when the silence tried to tell him a story that wasn’t true.
He added the emojis to Zuko’s favorites, then sent himself one from Zuko’s phone for good measure.
The penguin popped up on Sokka’s screen a second later.
Sokka tucked the phone back through the gap in the glass, touched his forehead to the plexi one more time because it felt like luck now, and sat back to watch Zuko take one more lap, the kind where you know you’re headed home and your body can finally believe you.
Outside, snow kept falling. Inside, it felt like something else had decided to keep falling, too. The kind of quiet that didn’t hurt but layered soft over everything and didn’t demand a single word.