The first time Zuko jolts awake at midnight to the muffled sounds of singing, he rolls his eyes and lies back down, covering his ears with a pillow. He's not totally stiff and humourless; he can allow the new neighbours their night of partying. He drifts off to a muffled yet emotional rendition of "What Is Love?" and sleeps solidly until dawn.
The second time, just a day later, he repeats his actions with a slight frown. The fourth time it happens, he's ready to tear the damn karaoke machine apart with his bare hands, and then melt the shards into the ground.
So here he is, knocking on their front door at 2am and gritting his teeth against the chill. He's beginning to regret storming out of the house without changing out of the turtleduck pajama pants that Uncle had given him years ago, or at least throwing on a shirt and some shoes, but he can't leave now. He taps his foot impatiently and crosses his arms, listening to the music shut off abruptly as a few panicked voices take its place. Then, the sound of hurrying footsteps, and the door opens.
"Evening, sir! Anything I can help you with?" the man in front says cheerfully, without a hint of remorse. Zuko can see two others behind him, peering out to see who's at their door.
"Yes," he says through clenched teeth. "I'd appreciate it if you kept the music down. Especially since it's two in the morning."
The man - although he seems like more of a kid than a man, albeit a very tall kid - suddenly looks contrite. "Oh! Sorry. We will, I promise."
"Good," Zuko says. He wavers there, not sure if the interaction is over now. The kid is still staring at him - no, wait. The kid is now looking him up and down, and is presumable grinning about the turtleducks printed on his pants, he knew he should have left and changed clothes. His uncle is right; he never thinks these things through. Feeling the blood go to his cheeks, he decides that yes, the interaction is definitely over now, and spins on his heel, marching past the weirdly painted van parked haphazardly on the lawn.
"Nice talking to you!" the kid calls out. Zuko refuses to glance back, but he hears laughter before the door shuts, and knows that he's lost this round.
For a few nights, he sleeps in blissful silence. Apart from Uncle's snoring, of course, but he's used to that by now. The same cannot be said for voices wailing out the chorus of "Two Lovers" in the middle of the night.
So when he wakes up to exactly that sometime after midnight five days after his encounter, he is not exactly thinking clearly.
Thus, he ends up standing in front of the door to the neighbour's house once more, shirtless and in the embarrassing turtleduck pajamas, not so much knocking on the door as trying to gently break it off its hinges. The music stops much quicker this time, but the footsteps down the hall sound more leisurely, infuriating Zuko further. He breathes out a puff of fire, warming himself and releasing a tiny bit of anger simultaneously, and then the door opens.
"You should really stop by in the day sometime," the kid says, and then grins like he's told some great joke. His housemates are standing at either side of him now, and they look just as amused as he is.
"I didn't come here to make jokes," Zuko growls. "I came here to tell you to stop your damn singing all the time, or I'll burn this place down!" To punctuate, he lets a thin stream of fire escape his mouth on the last word, and feels a stab of vindictive pleasure as the kid's two housemates take a step back, eyes wide. The kid, however, doesn't lose his grin at all. Zuko decides then and there that he hates this guy.
"Woah! That was so cool!" he says happily. One of his housemates, the woman, nudges him and gives him a disapproving look. "Uh. I mean, ooh, scary. We won't make too much noise, I promise."
"You said that last time!" Zuko accuses, clenching his fists.
"We thought you meant you meant not to do it at two o'clock anymore," the male housemate says. He nudges the kid in a gesture identical to the one the other housemate had done. "Right, Aang?"
"Right," the kid, apparently Aang, repeats.
"We're really sorry," the woman says with a sweet smile. In the face of their reasonable attitudes, Zuko can only nod, feeling the anger drain out of him.
"Well," he says. "Okay then. But don't do it again, I mean it."
"We won't!" Aang says brightly. "Have a good night!" And then the door is slammed unceremoniously in his face. Zuko can only blink a few times before wandering back to his own house, not entirely sure of what had just happened.
Sure enough, Zuko's nights are once more music-free (apart from the nights where Uncle drags out his tsungi horn and insists on playing for a few hours). He relishes the silence, knowing that soon enough he will be once more awoken in the early hours of the morning, most likely by some pitchy voice shouting out the words to "I'm Blue" or something as equally ridiculous. So it comes as some surprise when an entire week passes with no sign of this happening. On the ninth day, Zuko is on the verge of knocking on their front door again just to check whether the three of them are even alive, but is saved the hassle when he hears some sort of techno beat thumping out from the house late in the afternoon. It's nowhere near as annoying as the 2am singing was, but as the music continues, the loud bass begins to give him a headache, and soon he can't even read the words in his textbook, he's so distracted. For the third time, he leaves his house and stomps over to his neighbour's door, this time thankfully wearing clothes that do not invite mockery.
Aang opens the door without cutting off the music, and Zuko is almost knocked back by the volume. "Do you want us to turn it down?" Aang shouts with a smile, and Zuko would roll his eyes if his head didn't currently have a herd of komodo rhinos stampeding through it.
"Yes!" he shouts back. Aang hurries back inside, and a few seconds later, the volume decreases dramatically to an almost bearable level. Zuko sighs in relief and rubs his temples.
"Sorry," he hears, and when he looks up, the female housemate is standing there with a slight smile on her face. "Do you have a headache? I'm a healer - I could heal it, if you want. I'm Katara, by the way," she adds. Zuko grimaces.
"It's fine," he says. Katara eyes him doubtfully. "I'm going to leave now," he continues, and does so.
The next morning, he opens the front door and stumbles outside, then promptly trips over a large object in the middle of the front step. Lying on the ground, completely winded, Zuko takes a moment to looks up at the early morning sky and marvel at how much the universe hates him. Then he sits up and looks at the object.
It's a wicker basket, an honest to Agni wicker basket filled with fruit and what appears to be two boxes of aspirin, along with a scrap of paper, all somehow still upright. He tugs the paper out from between a tangerine and a lemon (who puts a lemon in a fruit basket?) and squints at the characters written there.
Sorry we gave you a headache! it reads in a childish scrawl. Love, Aang and Katara and Sokka and Momo! There's a tiny paw print in ink underneath the last name, almost obscuring the postscript. P.S. We put lemons in to remind you not to be so sour! :(
Which makes absolutely zero sense, but that doesn't stop Zuko from taking the basket inside and placing it on the dining room table. After a hesitation, he snatches the note up and folds it haphazardly before shoving it in his pocket.
The fruit basket puts Zuko in a vaguely peaceable mood for the next few days, despite his best efforts. Next door, the music is only slightly quieter, but he finds he doesn't mind so much. Not even his uncle's questioning over whether a "lady friend" of Zuko's had dropped off the basket breaks his strange contentment.
Predictably, it comes to an unceremonious end when a storm rolls in, the wail of rock guitar making itself known over the crash of thunder. Ignoring his uncle's protests, Zuko steps out into the storm and bolts for the shelter of his neighbour's front step. He pounds on the front door, loud enough to hear even over the screech of music, and a few long seconds later it opens.
"Heeey, Jerkbender!" the male housemate – was this one Sokka or Momo? – says with a smirk. "Here to tell us young folks to turn our tunes down?"
Zuko opens his mouth to angrily retort, but is interrupted by the man being yanked backwards, only to be replaced a moment later by Aang. "Hi!" he says brightly. "Sorry about Sokka. What are you doing out in the rain? Did you like the fruit basket?"
For a few seconds, Zuko struggles internally. Then, "It was… nice. My uncle liked the moon peaches." Aang grins and opens his mouth to reply, but Zuko continues, "I am actually here to tell you to turn it down, though."
Aang rolls his eyes. "Sheesh, I feel like I'm back at the monastery," he complains. "C'mon Zuko, we just want to hear it over the storm. Where's your sense of fun?"
Zuko glares at him with crossed arms. "Ask a stupid question, I guess," Aang says. A calculating gleam comes into his eye, and before Zuko can even worry, Aang's speaking again. "How about, you come in here and beat me at this game, and we'll keep the volume down for a whole week."
"A week?" Zuko says, instantly caught up in the thought of competition. "Nuh-uh. Make it forever."
"Okay, two weeks!" Aang replies.
"Six months."
"One month!"
"Three."
"One and a half?"
"Two months, and that's it!"
"Deal!" Aang says through a broad grin, and sticks his hand out to shake. Zuko takes it, and suddenly realises what he's done.
"Uh, what game is it? It doesn't sound like karaoke," he says uncertainly. Aang, still holding onto his hand, grins wider and uses it to drag him inside.
"Of course it's not," he says over his shoulder. Zuko heaves an internal sigh of relief. "It's Dance Dance Revolution!"
The inside of the house is bright and airy, with photos plastered over every wall and flowers arranged in everything from plastic water bottles to what looks like a Ming vase. As Zuko stalks down the hallway after Aang, Katara pokes her head out of a doorway and smiles. It's a testament to how focused Zuko is that he barely even notices the white lemur perched on her shoulder with its tail around her neck.
"Hi! What're you doing here, Zuko?" she asks, forehead creasing when they both walk straight past her.
"I'm ending this," Zuko says without looking around.
"Oh," he hears Katara say. "That's… not creepy."
The doorway at the end of the hallway leads into a cramped living room, dominated by a massive television and a squashy-looking couch, upon which sit two people arguing loudly
"I'm just saying, I have better things to do with my time," the dark-haired girl says with an indifferent expression. Next to her, Sokka waves his hands wildly.
"But I need to know!" he insists. "It's my throatal flap!"
Luckily, Aang interrupts before he can continue. "Guys, we need the TV for a while," he says excitedly. "Me and Zuko are gonna have a dance battle!"
"Alright!" Sokka yells, punching a fist in the air as Katara wanders in. "This is just the kind of wacky nonsense I've been missing lately!"
"Who the heck is Zuko?" the dark-haired girl says, looking straight at him. "Wait, is that the crazy guy who lives next door that you make fun of all the time?"
A beat of silence. "Hello," Zuko says, waving uselessly. "Zuko here."
The girl blushes. "Oh," she says.
"That's Toph," Katara says awkwardly. The lemur on her shoulders chatters, then stretches out its arms and jumps - no, glides over to land on Aang's head, and sits there like a particularly awful hat. "Now seriously, what is going on?"
Aang, who'd been ignoring the animal on his head and making a face at Toph, brightens instantly and replies, "I told Zuko that if he can beat me at Dance Dance Revolution, we'll stop playing music at night for a month."
"Two months," Zuko corrects. He glances over at the dance mat, crumpled half under the table that the television is resting on. "Are we doing this or what?"
"Let's do this," Aang replies, eyes narrowed. He reaches up and finally pulls the lemur off his head, then says firmly, "Momo, go sit with Toph."
Momo squeaks, then squirms out of Aang's hands and flaps his way over to sit primly in Toph's lap, leaving Aang to turn around and tug at the dance mat. Zuko tries to shoo Toph and Sokka off the couch so he can move it further back towards the wall. Toph stares blankly outwards and Sokka gives him a "really?" look. Behind him, Katara rolls her eyes and says, "Aang, you know that-"
"Shhhh!" Sokka suddenly hisses, jumping up to flap his hands in her face. Zuko squints at him suspiciously.
"There!" Aang says, nudging the mat with a toe until it's perfectly flat in front of the television. "Where's the remote?"
With a casual smirk, Toph reaches out and grabs the remote on the end table next to here, and throws it to Aang with startling accuracy. "Go ahead, let's start this party," she says with a shrug, patting Momo absently. "You know how much I love watching you guys dance. When are you getting stone floors for this place? It's so boring being blind."
"Soon," Aang promises in reply to this incomprehensible remark, then presses a button on the remote. Nothing happens. "Huh."
"Is the battery flat?" Zuko asks. It's been just long enough for the adrenaline of the challenge to wear off, and he's suddenly aware that he's standing in a near-stranger's living room, about to do a video game dance battle. It's not the most dignified of situations, but he's been in much worse, most of which had involved his uncle in various states of undress.
"It shouldn't be," Aang says with a frown, and then abruptly stills. "Ohhh," he says, and goes red in the ears.
"What?!" Zuko demands. Behind him, the others have started laughing.
"The power's been off for like an hour," Sokka says between hoots.
"Nice one, Airhead!" Toph cackles. Katara's hiding her mouth behind her hand, but Zuko can hear her giggling. Even Momo is chittering loudly.
"I guess I just got excited," Aang says sheepishly. He meets Zuko's eyes and grins, ears still red. "You wanna wait here until the power comes back on? Then we can have our duel!"
There are a hundred better things he could do with his time then hang around in this strange house with these weirdly happy people and their weird flying pet. His uncle is probably wondering what's taking him so long, and eating all the ash mangoes from the fruit basket even though Zuko specifically told him that those were his. He should roll his eyes and say snap something about keeping the volume down, and then walk out the door.
Instead, he smiles. "Sure," he says, "I'll stay."