Prompt: "It was hot."
Characters: Zuko, Sokka
Pairing: Zukka subtext
"Hey, Jerkbender! Tossing off your shirt again, I see?"
"Wha—?" Zuko's shirt was, indeed, already halfway over his head, and the word came out muffled through the cloth that was covering his face. "We're about to practice firebending!" he said impatiently, just as soon as he had managed to pull it off the rest of the way. "What are you trying to imply?"
"Nothing, nothing." Sokka held up his hands. "Just never seen a guy so eager to take off his shirt before, that's all." As he spoke he waggled his eyebrow suggestively, giving Zuko a knowing smirk.
"It's not what you're—argh!" Zuko was still holding onto his shirt, unconsciously waving it around as he spoke. "You're a lot more likely to get hurt if your clothing catches, and the more clothing you're wearing, the more likely it is to catch. If Aang has any sense at all, he'll do the same."
At that moment, the aforementioned Avatar came running out into the courtyard to meet him, giving Zuko the welcome excuse to end the conversation and get back to doing his job. Even Sokka had the sense to shut up at that point, instead settling down on the front steps to watch. One by one, the others came out to join him as well. By the time he and Aang had finished their session, Katara had started cooking, which meant that Sokka had gone to pester her instead, and Zuko was free to wash up in peace.
Come afternoon, however, Sokka was at it again.
"Soooooo." He came to stand, hands on hips, in front of Zuko, who was sitting on the edge of the fountain sharpening his swords and was not in the mood to be bothered. "I notice you're not training now."
"It was hot," Zuko said shortly. Had Katara been there, she would have told him that he was only making things worse by letting Sokka get a rise out of him. "What do you want, a written explanation?"
"Or, you know, an admission as to the real reason you're—"
Whatever he'd been about to say was cut short by Zuko's shirt hitting him in the face.
"So let me guess," Sokka said with a grin the next day as Zuko took his turn to do the washing—which included, much to his annoyance, some of Sokka's particularly foul-smelling socks, not to mention Toph's dirt-coated… well, everything, really. "It was hot."
"Yeah," he snapped, scrubbing the item he currently held with a good deal more viciousness than was strictly necessary. "It was." In truth, he'd just cleaned his own clothes and didn't want to take the risk of splashing them with the filthy washwater—but by this point he was so sick of explaining things to Sokka that he honestly didn't care anymore.
"If you say so." A mischievous gleam had suddenly appeared in Sokka's eyes, and Zuko belatedly realized that the item he was currently scrubbing just so happened to be a pair of Sokka's pants.
Sokka ran away quickly enough when the stream of fire shot out at his feet. The rest of the day, however, he wouldn't stop muttering "Sifu Hotman" under his breath whenever Zuko was in earshot.
A/N: I was in a weird mood when I wrote this. I started out with the vague idea of making fun of Zuko's status as Official Fanservice Character, and things just... sort of... went from there.