Wild Gardens of Fire
Relationship: Sokka/Zuko
Genre: Sex Pollen, First Time, Post-canon
Length: 4.5k
[Warnings: Slight dub-con due to Sex Pollen, but they’re both on board.]
–
Breath, hot at his ear. A warm touch cutting through the chill of the evening, fingers splaying against his side. Zuko’s cheek presses to Sokka’s like a brand, much too close and overwhelmingly hot.
Hot compared to the cold shack they’re holed up in, and it should be weird but Sokka misses his furs and, also, all the feeling in his fingers. How do people in the Fire Nation deal with wearing so little?
Zuko’s hand slides slow like creeping lava up his ribs, and his ragged breathing turns to panting—okay, yep, it’s weird now. Sokka’s lizard-sloth brain stops focusing on the relief from cold, and starts wondering what the hell is going on.
“Hey, what—” He brings a hand up to push Zuko away; sadly, because the man runs hot, and he’s not exactly ‘cuddly’ most of the time; but his palm barely brushes Zuko’s shoulder before its pushed away, part of one sweeping motion that ends with his other hand badger-snaking up Sokka’s shirt, as well, and him stepping forward smoothly until his torso is nice and flush against Sokka.
“Oookay,” Sokka says, eyes wide.
Zuko snorts, the half-laugh tickling Sokka’s chin; it’s that the unknots the tension in his shoulder blades, worry running out of him at the familiar sound.
He’s held in this weird hug, and he’d still like to know what’s going on, but he should probably get some space, first. He tries to scoot back a smidge and sucks in a sharp breath instead; Zuko’s hands slide down bare skin and rest hot on his hips. It’s not a hard hold, but it’s firm enough that Sokka’s heart rate picks up.
“Stay still.” Zuko’s breath fans out, low and amused. Sokka shivers. Zuko’s so close he can probably feel it, but if so he doesn’t seem bothered.
He leans in, nose sliding along Sokka’s cheekbone until lips reach his throat, tracing a line of pure fire. The path seems etched into his skin. Sokka squeezes his eyes shut, swallows heavily. Zuko can definitely feel that.
Then it’s a teasing flash of teeth and Sokka jumps, a startled catdove with its back feathers standing straight up.
Soft laughter presses into his throat, a breathy chuckle and Sokka can feel the quirk of grinning lips. It’s—
He doesn’t actually know why he’s letting this go on; he likes a good cuddle as much as the next man who grew up on the ice floats, emulating penguins for warmth, but it isn’t even that cold in the swamp-shack anymore.
“Have you been suckling hallucinogenic wood frogs?” He blurted, vividly remembering the last time he was huddled up in a too-cold wood shack in the middle of a creepy swamp.
He expected incredulity—the familiar slack-jawed face rapidly followed by sputtering, scowl flowing into reluctant laughter. It’s a surprise that he gets a hum instead, almost—
–distracted?
Heat; lips brushing his pulse. Once, twice. Again.
They’re soft but chapped; every time he pulls back—by millimeters only—they catch, a tiny pull that shocks like an eelshark.
It’s incredibly hot in the swamp-shack.
Sokka sucks in air and fists his fingers in Zuko’s hair, jerking him up. “Zuko!”
Gold eyes burn into his, pupils shrunk to pinpricks.
He manages to look dazed and wild in the same moment, such an odd combination that Sokka freezes, caught (and definitely not because Zuko’s face is flushed, lips parted, distractingly pretty.)
A shiver raises the hair on the back of Sokka’s neck, abruptly cold with Zuko’s attention elsewhere.
The molten gaze dips down to Sokka’s mouth.
Stunned, Sokka’s hands fall limp, but Zuko chases forward anyway.
It’s clumsy, as kisses go. He’s swept up in the rush of it; suddenly the hands on his hips are hot and possessive, holding him in place while Zuko—Zuko!– leisurely licks into his mouth as though there’s nowhere he’d rather be.
Sokka can think of nothing beyond the solid body against him: the strong chest his hands fall to in sheer surprise, a breathing furnace beneath his palms; the arms on either side of him, bracketing him nicely, a bender’s muscles on display in the sleeveless shirt he wore despite the outdoor temperature; and the long legs pushed right against his, shamelessly stepping into him until they’re neatly flushed.
The heat is overbearing; it’s so deliciously hot.
Firebender hot, not the other kind—except it totally is that, too, and Sokka can’t help a thrilled little wiggle into hard thighs.
Zuko makes a low sound of satisfaction, one hand freeing Sokka’s hips to slide around, pressing the hell of his hand into the small of Sokka’s back until they’re even closer.
Sokka can taste the pleasure in the sound that’s—yep—okay, that’s weird.
(Hot, his monkeylizard brain corrects; it’s hot and perfect—this is why Sokka doesn’t let his monkeylizard brain make decisions.)
“You know this is weird, right?” He pushes Zuko back long enough to gasp.
“Mm.” Zuko agrees, not deterred by the miniscule distance. He takes it as an opportunity, merely nibbling from Sokka’s lips to his jaw and following the line of it.
Sokka brings both hands to Zuko’s forearms, holding on somewhat helplessly. Even that is ridiculously sexy, corded muscle moving under his grip.
He braces for another assault of teeth and teasing at his neck, anticipation coiled tight at the base of his spine. The hand there serves to worsen it, stroking hot coals to keep them aired, keep them ready.
Naturally, Zuko doesn’t kiss his neck again. Of course. Instead, somehow much worse, Zuko breathes out a shaky exhale at the corner of his jaw, then noses back up to his mouth, soft nuzzling broken only by occasional catch of lips on his jawline.
And he hovers, for just second, barely an inch away from Sokka’s lips. They’re breathing the same air, sharing the same breath. The movement is a pocket of time, bended away from reality, folded and separated with those loopy bender hand-waves until it’s suspended on its own, as pretty and fragile as the blown-glass baubles the Fire Nation hands everywhere for winter solstice.
Sokka relaxes—as much as he can with a hot body pressed against him, gold eyes half-lidded and captivated. By him. Sokka. Zuko shudders, like he’s somehow cold, and the gentle moment slips, shatters.
It’s anything but a disaster; unlike the cold horror that strikes quick to the heart when an ice float cracks, this is—like the sound of chains breaking, a hopeful thing suffused with anticipation, urgency, reunion.
(And maybe Sokka’s adolescence was a tad warped, if he first likens romantic tension to the moment before a prison break, a daring rescue, but he is a man shaped by war and, also, he saved the world, so. Go kiss a polar bear-leopard seal.)
Zuko kisses him, open-mouthed and soft, seeking and unhurried.
The red coals burst alight with new flame, as surely as if an airbender fanned them. Sokka fell into the kiss, not entirely sure what was going on but entirely willing, regardless.
Sokka kisses back as well as he can, enthralled by the difference between Zuko’s easy, unrushed enjoyment and his past experiences: Suki, mouth lust by demanding, all but devouring him in her haste, direction every step of their dance for all that it was fun and full of secretive laughter; and Yui, with her barely-there kisses, shy and bold by turns, so sweet in his memory that he can hardly think on it here.
This is neither overcompensating dominance nor shyness broken by little rushes of courage. It’s calm and confident, unhurried except for the underlying sense of urgency inherent to their circumstances; warmth, hot and heady, flows into Sokka’s veins with each drumming heartbeat, as if Zuko were a wellspring of it newly tapped.
He finds himself swept up in the current of it, a canoe with no oarsman, in the strongest storm of the season. It’s easy to let Zuko run big hands up his chest, rucking his shirt up until its simpler to tug it over head and off; easy, to kiss back with no care in the world, as seeking lips and fingers find out what he’s made of and take him apart; easier still to pretend this is normal, that awkward-brave-driven Zuko would somehow express desire in this way, with perfect sureness and prior warning.
No indicators at all, actually, and it’s awful but—
Sokka wrenches himself back, panting and suddenly cold. The space between them might as well be the Great Divide, Zuko’s forearms hovering above Sokka’s flushed chest, sweat glistening. All Sokka could do was stare at Zuko’s mouth, lips red from stimulation, parted as he drew in air—the lower one in particular was mouthwateringly tempting, full and practically an engraved invitation for Sokka’s teeth—
“What—” His voice cracks, embarrassingly overcome. He clears his throat into his fist.
“What brought this on?” He tries again.
It appears at first like Zuko doesn’t even hear him—Sokka’s heart plummets—and then reason returns to his eyes.
Zuko steps purposefully forward, expression clear enough that Sokka reluctantly allows it. It has nothing to do with the recurrence of the shack’s chill, now that his shirt is… somewhere… and he misses the furnace of Zuko’s firebending self.
Fingers tentatively touch his elbow and up his biceps. Zuko looses an audible sigh of relief, close enough once more that any trace of nightswamp coolness is firmly warded off.
“Not cuddly” is a bit of an understatement, actually—it’s more that, similar to when Toph first joined them all those years ago, Zuko would sooner freeze to death in an artic cave than cuddle for warmth. Unlike Toph, it’s not out of an overabundance of pride, either; for anyone, but especially for nobility, Zuko is incredibly humble. He’d go to great lengths to warm someone else up. (He’s got a similar thread of steel and noble self-sacrifice to water chief lines—the kind of leadership where you’re suffering with your men—more than your men, oftentimes—and would go hungry yourself long before letting even the meanest son of a spirit in the village starve.
Even amongst the stuttering disbelief—the fire lord’s own son, tracking them through jungle and snow?—Sokka had always grudgingly admired Zuko’s tenacity. He did his own dirty work, with his own two hands).
So one thing is: he never asks for help. Not out of stubbornness, but because he somehow thinks, still, that no one would give it. The looks of surprise still surface sometimes, when Katara has mended his clothes, unprompted; when Sokka sits down next to him, with hot soup and companionship, unasked.
He’s gotten better at it: accepting help, accepting them. He forgets that they’re there, sometimes, to help him along the way, but when he remembers he smiles his small smile and accepts them easily. Going at it alone is just a bad habit now, slowly thawing in the cold winter sun.
The other thing is more pervasive, something about himself that Sokka privately thinks Zuko’s not even aware of. It affects every aspect of his personality, the kind of wound struck deep and young—deeper than the scar on his face, much younger than the trauma of banishment. And despite steady years of carefully, subtly trying to correct it, Sokka hasn’t had much progress.
Zuko doesn’t ask for what he wants.
He knows he won’t get it, on some level Sokka can’t even touch. On bad nights, Sokka punches his pillow and gives up sleep for the training dummies, working his arms to exhaustion with a sword because it’s better than wondering what could have happened in that palace to damage his friend so thoroughly as a child.
Sokka draws on that frustration, ignoring the cold knot of dread—worry; surely it’s only worry, concern for his friend—forming a lump in his stomach, and uses it to pull himself from the moment. Zuko is close, relief etched onto his pretty, aristocratic features. That stark relief, brazenly displayed despite nobody having miraculously survived a would-be fatal experience, or having just rescued him from an awkward social situation, only adds to the sense of wrongness.
He looks up, trying for solemn but probably missing it by a mile. Zuko had been out gathered firewood before his abrupt return and more abrupt—Sokka clenches his jaw—bout of insanity.
What had the stupid swamp thrown at him?
Hopefully not dead people, again.
But even in his head the weak attempt at humor falls flat.
They were on the other side of the world from the Spirit Tree and its ghostly visions, thank Tui and La. La, especially. This was supposed to be an ordinary swamp, free of long-hidden benders and any significant fog.
“What happened?” Sokka forces himself to say firmly, for clearly something had. Even if—Sokka ignores the ache in his cheekbones, the tightness of his throat—even if Zuko wanted him, he wouldn’t be going about it like this.
Zuko leans forward cheek first, brushing his against Sokka’s. The soft fabric of his vest and undershirt touch Sokka’s bare chest. Sokka remains still, the hunting polar-bear-leopard-seal patiently waiting.
Zuko edges back enough to see Sokka’s face. Barely.
“Ahurgh.” Zuko’s complaint is all frustration, vowels sliding into a grown. This, at least, is familiar. Except instead of throwing his hands up, Zuko’s move to his shoulders and cling; and the well-worn scowl fades too quick to something—else.
It’s not a good expression, somewhere between frustrated and lost. Finally, with what appears to be great effort, he works his throat.
“Let me—let—damnit, Sokka!” He goes in for another kiss, and Sokka catches him, palms on his vest. Zuko honest-to-ancestors whines, a high thing, short but impactful.
“What is wrong with you?” Sokka demands, regretting the phrasing right away. Under normal circumstances Zuko might shut down at that—or at least immediately move to get more space, some harsh-learned defense mechanism to protect him from more emotional damage. Better to storm off than take it mutely, in Sokka’s opinion.
“I’m not good at this!” Zuko yells right back. His cheeks were flushed red, voice a little breathless. “Agni, I just—I want.”
And Sokka swallowed hard against the emotions that tried to rise, Zuko groaned, and tipped his head forward, catching Sokka’s lips once more in a series of frustrated kisses. His hands twitched on Sokka’s shoulders like he wanted to move them, though every time he restrained the urge and made the succeeding kiss one with an edge—it was a vicious cycle where he got distracted by the kissing until his hands wanted to roam, and of course he once more resisted the compulsion, and once more a kiss with teeth—
Zuko himself found the will to stop, probably from the increasing frustration—and violence. Zuko would sooner pitch himself off a cliff than offer any kind of violence so close to someone’s face. Zuko tore his mouth away, turning his face to the side to heave in a air for a brief time. Sokka’s lips tingled in the best way. Zuko hadn’t caught his own breath when he turned back to Sokka, but neither could he resist any longer.
“I—” A consuming kiss, open and lingering, sweet in comparison. “I just need, it’s—”
Hands now move, finger pads pressing into muscle, palms greedily tracing the geography of Sokka’s shoulders, his back. Zuko steps closer, and his hands slide down to Sokka’s waist from behind. He clasps his fingers there, hands together like maybe they won’t stray—if that was his intent. Maybe it’s to keep Sokka there, instead, so he can’t go anywhere.
He’s very, very thoroughly kissed before Zuko next attempts language, a dozen messages passing silently in that time; the ageless words one body can say to another, comfort and desire and heat through the shift of a leg, the tease of further closeness on the horizon, implied futures sketched out in the way a naked forearm brushes another, long buried verbs rising to the present tense from ancestral memory.
We know this one, says Sokka’s body, ever the strategist but never the scholar. Excitement forms unbidden at the base of his spine, thoughts jumping to the future tense without permission, visions spinning in his head of prepositions—on top of; under; inside…
“Sokka,” Zuko gasps. “Sokka– please.” It’s gasps instead of punctuation, words a clear struggle. The sound of his name in Zuko’s mouth drags hard against his good sense, lizard-monkey-brain sending harsh jolts of pleasure southerly, to wherever it thinks will prod Sokka into more.
Sokka doesn’t realize his feet have been moving until Zuko’s back thumps against the wall by the bed. The thin mattress had long decayed, but the wood frame was serviceable and they’d piled all their sleeping furs—and the fancy sleeping bags from the Fire national capital—on top of it yesterday.
Sokka even had his extremely fluffy pillow, stuffed with soft feathers and Appa fur, which he now thought of Zuko laid back on, dark hair a corona, looking up at him with a dragon’s eyes and laughter on his lips, or face drawn tight with pleasure…
He has to shake himself out of it like a polar bear dog, but instead of getting sea water on Zuko, it seems he passes the idea along. It was probably written all over his face, and no one’s ever accused Zuko of being slow on the update.
Whatever this is, it does nothing to dull his frankly terrifying level of perception, and Zuko doesn’t hesitate.
There’s a bare foot—where are his shoes?—wrapped around Sokka’s calf, a pull to one side mid fall, and then Sokka’s got the Crown Prince of the Fire Nation crawling onto his lap, the welcoming softness of their bedding behind.
The weight of him is immediate, enticing. Color floods dark under Sokka’s already brown cheeks, thoughts stuttering to a stop in the inescapable present. He can’t think ahead when the here and now is Zuko’s thighs on his knees, stomach sliding against Sokka’s groin as he shifts his weight and hand-walks up the bed.
For a long moment he can’t breathe for how good it feels, the solid weight of an attractive man—this attractive man—eclipsing even his realistic fantasies. Nothing could have prepared him for the real thing. By the time Zuko has shimmied up—taking his sweet, perfect time—and they are of a height once, more, Sokka has forced his lungs into action. With reverence and pleasure no longer stealing his breath, his senses seem wide open.
Zuko settles into his lap, smelling like fire flakes and spices.
He inhales shakily. Zuko’s eyes are wild, no hint of dazedness this time. His hair is ten different kinds of disheveled. Sokka wants to drag his fingers through it and, with a start, he realizes he absolutely can. He does, and Zuko leans into it like a bunnycat.
Sokka gets a flash of longing, of later—when they’re dressed and talking about this in their right minds; wants to cup his face in a different context, watch firelight flicker and reflect the colors of dawn on his skin.
The motion was apparently a wholly unconscious thing, because by stretching up into Sokka’s touch, Zuko braces on his arms and presses his weight down to compensate. The result is a swath of glorious friction that wipes all romantic thoughts from Sokka’s head and visibly startles Zuko—again, like a bunnycat, his eyes go wide and he jumps. He sits up straight, messy brown hair falling against his sweaty brow.
“Oh.” A stunned little sound, his mouth falling into the same shape. But that’s all Sokka sees because Zuko immediately, experimentally, rolls his hips, and his hands fly to grip Zuko’s waist for dear life, eyes slamming closed to process the sheer influx of sensation.
And then Zuko makes a punched breathless, quiet moan and Sokka wishes he could close his ears, too, because this is going to be the death of him. That sound is going to follow him into his grave. He opens his eyes because if he’s going to die, he doesn’t want to die without seeing—Zuko, head thrown back shamelessly, palms braced on either side of Sokka’s stomach. Each breath is now punctuated with a few wordless vowels, low and sexy as they slip through his teeth.
“I always knew the Fire Nation would kill me,” He gasps, sweat breaking out on his chest and neck. He trails one hand up Zuko’s shirt, admiring the sliver of skin showing, and making it worse.
Zuko shifts up—stars dance in Sokka’s vision at the movement—until he can haul his weight over to one arm. Their pace slows as he captures Sokka’s wayward wrist, holding his hand in place on his bare navel. Fabric bunches up.
Their eyes catch, disrupting everything. For a moment they’re just breathing hard, keenly aware of their position—that Zuko could so easily use his hold on Sokka’s wrist to drag his hand lower, that it would take one sure motion…
Zuko pants raggedly, looking absolutely wrecked in his pleasure. Sokka wants to make it approximately twelve times worse.
He gets an arm behind him, leveraging himself up. From there it’s a simple thing to kiss him, languid and slow. Halfway through the second kiss Zuko’s hands come up, both now holding onto Sokka’s one wrist. They let him go to hover near his head, his shoulders.
His freed hand dips a little without the support, not quite touching but very aware of the heat seeping into his knuckles from only a few inches down.
He doesn’t move, doesn’t make any attempt to quicken the kiss or deepen it.
When Sokka keeps this up long enough that Zuko shakes a little and groans behind his teeth, big hands wrap around his jaw, fingers finding divots behind his ear. It’s a hot, possessive hold and Sokka thrives in it. For a long moment Zuko tightens his fingers and kisses him wild, rising up like he’s forgotten everything else they were doing, like he can only pay attention to this—like he’s forgotten why or how he got here, like he can only tangle his fingers in Sokka’s hair and hold on for dear life—and then Zuko uses this grip to pull his own mouth back the smallest fraction of an inch.
“Sokka.” Zuko says into the kiss, unamused except for how laughter snuck in anyway.
“Mm.” Sokka hums, shifting his arms until they’re wrapped snug around Zuko’s lower back. In this position, they’re not appropriately distracted, because Zuko’s up on his knees, head nearly a foot taller than Sokka’s—he has to lean down to kiss, and he does. He sighs into it, sliding his hands back, through Sokka’s hair—Sokka shivers for the drawn-out touch—until he lets his arms drop, hanging lip over Sokka’s shoulders at the elbow.
It’s disgustingly intimate, for all that they’re barely touching below the waist, and they can see each other. The kisses pause and they caught staring at each other again.
There’s something intent and measuring in Zuko’s eyes. Belatedly, Sokka realizes all the urgency has bled out of the prince. Well, not all of it, but the frenzied aspect is nearly absent.
“Can you talk?” Sokka asks, loath to break the bended-time-bubble in which they can kiss and touch like this. But.
“Mm.” Zuko agrees, then leans down to steal another slow kiss. Oh, thank fuck. Sokka leans up into it, head tilted back. Zuko shifts his weight a bit, brushes a thumb along Sokka’s cheekbone.
He disengages slowly, but doesn’t go far. He sets his forehead against Sokka’s.
“Yeah. I’m good.” His voice is breathless, though, and the general pinkness acquired through exertion is deepened, high in his cheeks, with new blood flow.
Sokka has the overwhelming vision of pulling, just so, until Zuko is seated firm in his lap again. He’d get redder and redder until—
Chagrined, Sokka forced a slow, slow breath. He tries to shake it off, but it’s stubborn. He physically shakes his head, trying to clear it—like that’ll help. But miraculously, it does.
The last vestiges of the vision fade, though he’s knocked Zuko slightly away.
“Sorry,” Sokka says instantly. He goes as if to move his arms, remembers they are quite locked up keeping Zuko in place, and stills. His arms are basically the only thing supporting the unstable position. Zuko wiggles a bit, shifting his weight from side to side until Sokka squeezes him in what is basically a platypus-bear hug to keep him still.
“Stop.” He begs, cheeks ruddy. Zuko, pinned, acquiesces.
“Oh.” He says eloquently.
He pauses, head tilted, something considering drawing his brows together. Sokka opens his mouth to ask, but in that moment Zuko slips down in his grasp. It’s exactly like the time his whole pack slid right out of a similar hold and directly to the earth, some few thousand feet below Appa; stomach-dropping, which isn’t a good feeling, until suddenly it is, it absolutely is.
The question poised on his tongue becomes a moan as swiftly as the Avatar switches between elements, seamless and without warning.
Unlike dropping your entire life, shoved into one travel bag, over the side of a flying bison, Zuko merely drops down a handful of inches, still securely within Sokka’s arms.
Instead of to the unforgiving ground—or, as the case had been, Aang’s quick-gliding arms; and thank all the Spirits that’s not the case now—Zuko’s knees slide forward on the bed.
He leans back enough to have leverage, tied by crossed wrists around Sokka’s neck, and rubs the hard line of his cock right into Sokka’s with no warning whatsoever.
When Sokka opens his eyes wide again, punched closed by unexpected pleasure, Zuko is red but defiant.
“Okay?” He asks, voice more rasp than alto.
“Yep.” Sokka veritably squeaks, visage a botchy mahogany. He swallows and tries again, just to save face. “So, you never explained—ahhh, okay. Okay.”
Zuko looks him dead in the face and, though his expression also grows impossibly more red—Sokka knows, somewhere in his brain, that it’s the lull between flushes that allows it to seem that way, but lizard-monkey brain ruthlessly hurls the knowledge elsewhere—he rocks his hips in a gorgeous slide.
After a few more of these, during which Sokka can do little more than exultate breathlessly in the feeling, he untangles his wrists and bears down on Sokka’s shoulders, which is. Wow.
Sokka doesn’t actually have words for what it does to him to have Zuko’s weight on his thighs, hands holding tight to his shoulders, and the slick and dirty grind between them, perfect even through the layers of cloth.
It’s very wow.
He could only watch, enraptured. Zuko’s arms shake, a little, and sweat beads at his temple. Soft sounds fall out of his mouth like gold, perfect for hoarding, and into that treasury Sokka also places the knowledge, now burning into his brain, of what Zuko looks like in bed, driving to heights of pleasure; that his eyes flutter shut for long blinks if Sokka grinds up just right against his downstrokes; the way blood flushes down Zuko’s neck and disappears into his collar; the way he chews, almost absently, on his lip when he catches Sokka staring but doesn’t look away.
Zuko huffs, rolling his eyes under the scrutiny.
He leans in, disrupting the pace they’d made between them. But he keeps their hips deliciously flushed during this maneuver, and it’s Zuko close enough to kiss again, so Sokka can hardly care.
He melts into it, surging up like a wave to press lips to lips and Zuko makes a surprised sound somehow, like he hadn’t been angling just for this, like he had somehow expected Sokka to be able to resist.