a/n: Fourth chapter! This is a new record for me, I'll have you know. Some notes, the thing with Sokka's necklace – I may have gotten that idea from another fanfic somewhere, but I don't remember. So, if it seems familiar to you, I'm very sorry. The resemblance is unintentional.

Thanks to everyone for your reviews, it means a lot to me! I'm always happy to receive them. And to those of you who aren't reviewing, well...I'm still happy that you're reading!


"Hey," said Sokka, sitting down next to Zuko in what now was a familiar way. It felt as if he belonged there, to speak the least. Their nighttime meetings had become so routine that on the nights where Sokka didn't come, Zuko had to admit there was the feeling that his day was incomplete.

"Hey," Zuko said back. He stared out, the view of the jungle afforded by the air temple's unique position on the rocks and amazing sight, especially under the full moon. Suddenly, he felt an arm hook around his own. "You're...sitting awfully close."

"Oh," said Sokka, seeming disinclined to care. He rested his head on Zuko's shoulder. "Sorry. It's just that all of a sudden, I can't seem to get close enough."

"Wh-what?" Zuko felt his heart flop around helplessly in his chest. He made a futile motion at escaping from Sokka's grasp.

"Don't tell me you haven't felt it, too."

"You're acting strange!"

"And so what if I am? Strange can be good sometimes!" Sokka peered at him, clear eyes seeming innocent and devious all at once. He smiled coyly at Zuko. Coyly?!

"L-look, I don't know what you're getting at."

"I think you really do." And then, in one swift motion, Sokka was on top of the firebender, pinning his arms and legs to the ground. "Stop fighting it. I've been watching you."

As he said this he leaned down, easing himself slowly against Zuko, until they lay flush against each other, faces inches apart. Then, he closed those few inches and Zuko bit back the whimper that was forming in his throat at the sensation of Sokka's breath hot against his ear. The voice, though Zuko could barely concentrate on the words so overwhelmed was he with sensation, was low, seductive.

"I know what you want, Zuko." There was the feather-light touch of Sokka's lips pressed against his jaw. Zuko shivered.

"Zuko," Sokka repeated, kissing him again, gently, on his neck. Zuko tried to wriggle out of Sokka's hold, but the movement seemed only to encourage him. And the more that Sokka went on with this, the less Zuko wanted to get away.

"Zuko," he said again, kissing him more forcefully, this time on his collarbone, "Zuko," on the shoulder,

"Zuko!"


"Zuko?" His eyes flew open. Toph was kneeling over him, staring blankly in his general direction. "You okay?"

Slowly he came to awareness. He felt hot — really hot — and his forehead itched. He reached up to find that it was covered in sweat, his hair sticking to it uncomfortably. He was lying in a bedroll – not his own, he could tell that much just from the smell of it — but at some point he'd kicked the covers away and rolled halfway off of it.

"What—" his throat was painfully dry and raspy, "What happened?" He tried to sit up and his arms nearly gave out from under him.

"You were shaking pretty violently. I could feel you all the way from the next room over." She pointed across the open hall that they slept in to a small archway. It was no small distance to be able to sense something from.

Zuko looked around. Except for Toph, who had presumably come running to see what was wrong, there was nobody else in the hall. Even Appa was mysteriously absent.

"Where'd everybody go?" All of their supplies and bedrolls were put away neatly in a corner, most likely Katara's doing.

"It's already the middle of the afternoon," Toph explained, and Zuko now could indeed see that the sun was high in the sky, "Sokka said not to wake you."

Now that was curious. And then, the mention of the water tribe boy brought the dream flooding back all at once. The touches, his voice...Zuko was thankful that Toph was blind, and therefore couldn't see him blushing.

Toph narrowed her sightless eyes at him. "Why are you in his sleeping bag, anyway?"

Well, that was one mystery solved anyway. Zuko looked at the bag in question as if it held the answer.

"I don't even remember going to bed," Zuko confessed. "And anyway! How do you know this is his?"

"Sokka has a very distinct smell," she raised an eyebrow, "You two are close, I'm surprised you haven't noticed."

Zuko resisted the urge to squeak. Toph was blind, but he had to remember that she wasn't stupid. Out of everybody in the group, it was Toph who had immediately understood him to the greatest degree. Aside from the incident at the beginning with her feet, which earned him an understandable amount of distrust from the blind girl, Toph shared none of the others' history towards him which made a closer understanding impossible. Partly from that, and partly from the fact that her other senses were heightened, Zuko got the feeling she knew more than she was telling.

"I've noticed," he admitted, for there was a definite Sokka scent to the sleeping bag. He still didn't know when he fell asleep in the first place, let alone how he ended up in the other boy's sleeping bag. He remembered that last night, he'd managed to steer the conversation away from Sokka's favorite subject (namely, Zuko's insomnia) and on to more harmless, less touchy subjects, but there his recollection was cut short. Apparently he'd fallen asleep somehow...

And he'd dreamt. Not his usual nightmares, but a dream of an entirely different sort. This one was upsetting in a way that Zuko didn't feel he was ready to think about. And then, in a turn of events that eluded him, he woke up in what was essentially Sokka's bed. The idea was oddly intimate.

"Hey, so, are you okay, or what?" Toph asked again, "Cause I was sorta in the middle of sparring with Aang. He's probably wondering what happened. And unless you want to explain things to him, too..." she trailed off on a speculative note, again giving Zuko that uneasy feeling that she was reading his mind.

"Thanks, but I'm fine," he said, just as his stomach gave a nauseous lurch and garbled his words, "I think. I'm probably just hungry." He was still shaky all over, but his body no longer felt like it was on fire.

"Okay, if you say so." Toph said, sounding unconvinced. "I'm...gonna go back then." She got up to leave. Zuko watched her go and then focused on his flip-flopping stomach, trying to will it to settle down. He'd be fine once he ate something.


After rummaging through the supplies for a small breakfast, Zuko walked into the room where Toph said everyone else was. The sparring match was apparently over, though Zuko doubted the room, which now featured random outcropping of stone, would ever recover. Toph and Katara were seated together near the fountain; the earthbender had apparently been coerced into letting Katara braid her hair. Aang was whizzing around the air on that little sphere-thing that he made which Zuko did not yet have a name for. He dissolved it when he saw Zuko and landed nimbly on the ground.

"Well, looks like sleeping beauty finally decided to join us," Katara said jokingly, yet her voice held venom in it.

"Hey, Sifu Hotman!" Aang said, running up to meet him. He stopped short. "You don't look so good."

"I feel fine," Zuko said, exasperated. He was only half-lying. Food had made him feel a little better but his legs still had decided to turn to jelly if he moved around too fast, "I just woke up on the wrong side of the...sleeping bag." He looked at Katara. "Where's Sokka?"

But Aang was the one who answered.

"He went up to the upper levels of the temple early this morning, didn't say why. He was very clear that nobody was to bother him."

"And you listened?"

"Everyone needs their privacy," Toph interjected.

Without saying another word, Zuko walked out the way he had come. Privacy? That only made him more curious.


The upper level of the air temple was, architecturally speaking, the bottom of the building though in actuality it was closest to the underside of the cliff that the temple clung to. The floors were wider here with less obstructing them. In short, a perfect area for training without interruption.

Sokka was standing in the middle of the floor, sword drawn. He seemed so immersed in concentration that he did not notice Zuko's entrance. The firebender took a seat on a stone bench towards one of the edges of the room and rested (the climb up all those stairs had exhausted him for some reason), observing the water tribe boy. Sokka was training, he realized. It was something that Zuko had never seen him do. He had assumed based on their few direct encounters with one another that since the boy couldn't bend, throwing around a boomerang was about all he was good for. But Sokka handled that sword like he was born to it.

Slicing the air in wide arcs at times, or cutting sharply forward at others, Sokka sparred against an invisible opponent with a surprising amount of forcefulness and grace. He wouldn't have thought the boy capable of such delicate maneuver if he wasn't seeing it for himself.

Sokka cried out, lending power to a notably forceful thrust of the sword, and then the dream of last night melded with the reality of watching him now, along with the memory of his body from the other day. It was too much at once. A quiet groan escaped his throat, and though he clasped a hand quickly to his mouth, Sokka's concentration was broken and he looked over.

He heard me. Zuko looked up, almost guiltily. For a while neither said anything.

"You surprised me," Sokka finally spoke, sheathing his sword.

"I didn't want to interrupt,"

"I take it you were, um, watching me?" he said hesitantly, sitting down next to the prince. Zuko nodded in admission. "Haa, that's a little embarrassing."

"Why?" Zuko asked seriously, "You're good. Why didn't you want anyone to know what you were doing?"

"Really, what's good about waving a sword around?" Sokka said, sounding a little depressed, "Even if I'm good, it's nothing compared to what the four of you can do."

He could firebend, Katara had mastered waterbending, and Toph was an earthbending prodigy. That wasn't even mentioning the Avatar. It stood to reason, Zuko thought, that Sokka would feel a little inadequate in the face of all that.

"I wanted to learn how to use a sword so that I could be helpful. But that wasn't even enough to protect everyone. So I practice in private."


"I have to admit...I am curious about what Sokka's been doing up there. He's been gone all morning," Katara said. The other two looked over as she stood up, "You know, I'm going to go find him."

"Zuko's with him by now," Toph stated, not moving from her perch.

"Uh, so?" she turned to leave.

"I'm just saying, if you see something you didn't want to see, don't come crying to me about it," Toph said defensively.

"I think I can handle their bickering, thanks."

Toph closed her eyes and sighed.


"That necklace..." Zuko said, noticing it glint in the sun, "Why are you always wearing it?" Sokka looked down, though it was impossible to see it himself. He touched a hand to his neck.

"What's it to you?" he said with a smile on his face.

"Just curious,"

"My father carved it out of whalebone. It's a tradition from my village," Sokka said, unclasping the necklace and handing it over to Zuko, "sort of like my sister's..."

"She told me a little about that, once," Zuko interrupted.

"...only, the significance is reversed."

"Reversed?"

"Yeah. Technically, Katara's supposed to wear her necklace when she gets engaged – it's a symbol of marriage. I'm supposed to wear this until I get engaged. Or until..." he trailed off.

"Until what?" Zuko asked.

"It's embarrassing, okay?!" Sokka snapped. He looked at the ground, blushing. "I'm supposed to take it off when I 'become a man' in that sense..."

"You mean...?" Zuko turned the necklace over in his hands, feeling the smoothness of it.

"Yeah," Sokka said softly, clearly feeling self-conscious. Zuko smiled.

"That puts a lot of pressure on you, doesn't it? To find somebody." he said. Sokka sighed and slumped over, letting himself lean against Zuko.

Zuko felt his heart rate increase at this simple gesture and willed himself to not think about that dream, which was harder than expected considering what they were talking about. He tried to continue the conversation as normal.

"Still, to have something so personal constantly on display like that..."

"Tell me about it," Sokka whined, "I'm just lucky that the tradition's gone out of fashion, mostly. Not many people know of the significance. Katara makes sure I keep following it, though, to remember our mother."

"She cares about you a lot," Zuko said, glancing at the boy resting against him. He felt more at ease like this then he ever imagined he could be.

"Yeah..."

"Sokka?" Both boys looked up suddenly at Katara's voice. "We were all wondering what you were doing up—" she stopped short at the sight of them, sitting so close together. He eyes darted to Sokka's necklace, still held by Zuko, and her eyes widened. Zuko handed the necklace back to Sokka, but it was too late.

"You..."

"He was just showing me—" Zuko tried to explain.

"Sokka, you traitor!" She shouted, tears in her eyes.

"—huh?" "What did I do?" they both spoke at the same time. Katara ran out of the room.

"Katara, wait!" Sokka shouted after her. Zuko leapt up to follow, but as soon as he stood, his legs buckled and his vision danced with dark spots. The cry of a hawk distracted him further.

He spun around to face the source of the noise, and there at the window was a messenger hawk from the fire nation, peering in at their window. It was a bird he recognized well.

"That's—"

"Katara—" THUMP "...Zuko?"

Everything went dark.


Chapter 4 End


Sorry if it got too confusing at the end there, I tried to write it as clearly as I could. In any case, all will be explained in the next chapter! Which might not be written as quickly as I've been writing them so far...we'll see.