"Here, sit."
Zuko parks himself in the chair Aang pulls out in front of the fireplace in his room, too tired to even think about getting ready for bed. He catches a glimpse of his face in the mirror above the mantelpiece and ponders his own expression. It's not at all the face he used to think he would wear on his coronation day.
Aang's face joins his in the mirror as the other crouches down next to his chair, looking politely puzzled. "Whatcha thinking about?"
He smiles for Aang's sake. "Nothing much, only… I never thought I would one day actually wear this crown."
Aang taps idly on the crown, his irreverence typical of his Air Nomad upbringing, without any interest in worldly possessions. "Is this real gold? You'd think that if the crown makers knew you'd have to wear this all day, every day, they would have made it a bit lighter."
"Hm, well…" He tries to think of a good comeback, but the firelight's merry warmth is making him somnolent. One leaden hand reaches up towards his topknot to take it all down, but Aang bats it away.
"Let me do that."
He doesn't argue, letting Aang take charge. With sure fingers, he tugs the linchpin securing the crown out of Zuko's hair. Next, he loosens the stem of the flame and then lifts the circlet free of his topknot. Briefly, he steps away to set all the pieces down on the bedside table behind them, the thunk of heavy metal on the wood emphatic in the silence that ripples peacefully between them.
"Before I... changed sides," Zuko begins, halting and bitten back, "I always dreamed of becoming Fire Lord. It was all I could think about between the ages of eleven and sixteen, and the thing that was most unattainable for me."
Aang returns to stand at his back, saying nothing. The only indication to continue talking is the gentleness of his fingers as he pries loose the hair ribbons holding Zuko's topknot together, letting his hair fall freely down his shoulders.
"But after I saw what my father wanted for the world, and what he expected of me as his heir... I couldn't keep pursuing that."
He closes his eyes, unconsciously leaning his head back into Aang's hands, their width comfortable and supporting.
"I'd made so many mistakes, trying to capture you more times than I can count with no thought of how much collateral damage I caused to innocent lives and losing my honor entirely along the way. In a way, I was relieved when Uncle took over. It meant that I had time to learn from my past before I had the chance to make more missteps with even bigger consequences as the Fire Lord."
Aang pauses, humming almost imperceptibly against the soft crackle of the fire, the only other sound in the room. Even as Zuko considers his next words, Aang shifts the weight of his head to one hand and starts to draw a fine-toothed comb through his hair, from root to tip, luxuriously slow in its progress.
It feels nothing short of delightful. Zuko doesn't think anyone has brushed his hair for him in years, not since he was a child. Certainly the servants know not to coddle him with menial tasks like this that he can do for himself, but having someone else do it, someone trusted and dear to himself, is surprisingly enjoyable.
"For someone who doesn't have hair, you're very good at dealing with it." That is definitely not what he meant to say next, but it comes out of his mouth all the same.
"I have hair," Aang says, a teasing glint to his voice. "Just not where you can see."
Oh for gods' sake… He groans, head tipping even farther back into Aang's hand in protest. Should've known Aang would run roughshod over his sensibilities no matter what the circumstances.
"Anyways," he says pointedly, dismissing their temporary tangent, "I'm just worried now that I'm actually Fire Lord, worried that I won't live up to Uncle Iroh's legacy, that I won't be able to give the people what they need as their sovereign, that I'll fall short in any and every way possible."
Be careful what you ask for. If nothing else, he would tell his sixteen-year-old self that, but would he have listened?
Long, meticulous strokes card through his hair, and on occasion, Aang pries apart particularly clingy tangles with his fingers, separating out any strands with an inkling of snarling into knots, making sure every bit gets its due. "If the crown's so heavy, then put it down."
Zuko blinks his eyes open rapidly, aghast at the very suggestion. "I've just ascended the throne; I can't throw it all away and abdicate now. It... it's heavy, but I have to carry it."
"It's heavy, but you let me take it off for you."
He hears more than what's being said out loud, and he starts to crane his head towards the ceiling to get a proper look at Aang, who contrarily eases his head to face forward again with a firm though cushioned grip. Some things are easier to say pretending that they're not in the same room, that they're alone with their thoughts and confusing feelings. He gazes into the fire, willing Aang to pinpoint what exactly he means.
"It's heavy, but if you take it off from time to time and let someone else hold it, it's a lot more manageable, right? You're not meant to kill yourself trying to do all this alone, Zuko. I'm here for you."
His fingers have not ceased their passage through Zuko's hair all this time, the teeth of the comb pulling on his roots in a way that's oddly relaxing instead of painful. Zuko falls silent listening to the shallow, steady breathing behind him, trying to count the strokes but getting lost in Aang's touch.
"Forty-nine," Aang reports without him having to ask. "Your breathing was slowing down, like you were trying to concentrate on something else without the sound to distract you and forgetting to inhale."
"Funny how we sometimes forget to live when faced with something... or someone... worth dying for," Zuko says without a shred of levity. He means it, and he hopes Aang understands without seeing his face.
"And... fifty." Aang tugs the comb through his hair one final time, having determined that number to be a wholesome stopping point. He modulates his voice to a stern pitch, at odds with how gently the palm of his hand arcs over Zuko's now perfectly combed hair. "Didn't I expressly say: no dying?"
He tilts his head over the back of the chair so that he can see Aang at last, albeit from an upside-down view. Inevitably, elatedly, Aang interprets this as a signal to drop a light kiss onto his forehead.
He's been feeling out of sorts for months now, ever since Uncle announced his intentions to retire by the end of the year and let Zuko take the throne, but with this one innocent kiss, Aang makes everything feel right again. It should alarm him more, how one person (even if that one person is the Avatar) can have such power over him, though only by his own allowance.
"Why didn't I realize earlier?" he wonders. "Why... why didn't I see you?" Whatever that means.
Aang knows what he means. He smiles, two hands framing either side of Zuko's face.
"Sometimes, the person you love is like a faint star. You can't look at them straight on, because they fade into the background of the night sky."
His thumbs massage Zuko's temples into pliant ease, fingers tracing indolent lines down his jaw. Zuko feels like a drowsing cat before the fire, too content to move, longing to dwell in this moment forever.
"But if you look at a brighter star, out of the corner of your eye you'll see a faint twinkle, and you'll think, ah, there you are. Where have you been all my life?"
"Most of my life, you were in an iceberg," Zuko points out.
"Touché."
In recompense, Aang bends down over him, and Zuko inclines his chin upwards so that they can meet in a quiet, topsy-turvy kiss that is only the culmination of years spent carrying their separate burdens, gazing up at the same stars from different coordinates, and finally, jubilantly choreographing their orbits and their hearts into one united path. With no one but the hearth fire to witness, they embark on this dance of skipping heartbeats, fingers twined in hair, catching breaths and eyelids fluttering shut, looking for each other in the darkest part of the night sky, where the most distant stars yet shine, knowing that they will one day collide.
A/N: Unsolicited science info: the reason it's easier to see a fainter star when you're not looking directly at it is that your fovea (the center of your retina in the back of your eye) has more cones, light receptors that are better for seeing color and bright light; the area surrounding the fovea has more rods, which are better for seeing in dim light. So if you look off to the side, the light from the faint star falls more on the rods and thus can be more easily detected.