Rhombic Dodecahedra

He was still grumbling as he went back to his work, a particularly fiddly contraption he was putting together with the Silver Eve procession in mind. He had already been growing tired before the interruption by Coco, having gotten precious little sleep over the past few days while he'd been working abroad and traveling, but now he found himself distracted too. His nose continued to tickle, no matter how much he swiped at it with the heel of his hand or the knob of his wrist, and after a few minutes of it he found himself teetering on the edge of a sneeze.

It was a relief when it finally crossed that invisible line, and he pushed back from his desk to catch the sneeze in the crook of his elbow. "hh'USHhoo!"

He froze there for a moment, waiting to see if a second was coming. When the sensation began to fade, he resurfaced, sniffling and blinking watering eyes.

If it had just been the single sneeze, he wouldn't have thought much of it, but several of them came upon him in the same manner over the next few hours, which was unusual enough outside of hayfever season that it gave him pause.

Maybe he was getting a cold. He'd just go to bed early (-er than usual) and hope he could sleep it off.

When the morning came and he felt fine again, he assumed that was what had happened. He'd been lucky, for once. Maybe he should start doing this (sleeping) more often.

He even went down to have a late breakfast with Qifrey and the girls, who he could hear chattering in the main room as he made his way over from his tower. Qifrey was working with Coco and Tetia on peeling some vegetables for a stew that Agott was poring over on the stove, while Richeh set about measuring out spices. The brushbuddy poked its head up from Richeh's shoulder when Olruggio entered the room and gave a cheerful "Pwee!~" in greeting, as if it was still appreciative of him drying it off the night before.

"Olly!" Qifrey said cheerfully. "Fancy seeing you up and about before noon."

"Yeah, yeah." Olruggio went over to dish up some of the sliced fruits left on the counter from the girls' breakfasts. "Got things to do, ya know."

The rest of the morning passed in quiet contentment, with the girls studying in their own workspaces and Qifrey puttering around collecting and setting herbs to dry in the kitchen. After Olruggio finished his breakfast, he decided to also bring his in-progress contraption down to the main room. He generally preferred to do his work in solitude, but Qifrey wasn't bothersome, and in fact Olruggio found that he did tend to get more work done when he was around. Something about the quiet familiarity of occupying the same space as Qifrey put him in the proper creative mindset.

However, after a few hours of work, he returned to the main room from a break to find that the brushbuddy had curled up on his draft signs, drawn no doubt to the drying conjuring ink. It was definitely cute, Olruggio thought as he approached the furry white creature curled into a cozy spiral, but it was still in the way.

"Go on now, get," he said gently, reaching out to nudge the brushbuddy with the back of his hand when it opened a sluggish eye. "Go find one of the girls."

It uncurled with a grumbly squeak and hopped from the table, then rippled across the floor towards Tetia and Richeh's rooms, where it knew it would be more welcome. Olruggio brushed some stray fur from his papers and got back to work.

Unfortunately his productivity was doomed to stay fractured, because a few minutes later, his nose began to itch again. It started as a tingle in the very tip, but as he sniffled and scrubbed at his nose with his finger with little luck, the tickle grew and spread until his sinuses were buzzing with it.

Finally, his nose had had enough, and he leaned away from his work to sneeze heavily towards his shoulder, elbow half-raised in anticipation. "hrUSHHhoo!"

But this one required a follow-up, he realized quickly, and he snapped towards his shoulder once more. "USHHieu!"

"Bless you!" Qifrey called from the kitchen.

Olruggio ignored him; Qifrey always seemed to find great pleasure in blessing him when he sneezed, but he knew better than to expect a response from Olruggio in return. But, frustratingly, it wasn't more than five minutes later when he had to sneeze again. He squeezed his eyes shut and brought his elbow to his face again expectantly.

"USHieu!"

"Bless you!"

"hih? — hh'USHieuhh!"

"…Bless you. Are you all right, Olly?"

Olruggio looked up, sniffling wetly, to see Qifrey poking his head around the doorjamb from the kitchen, a half-stripped bundle of sage in his hands.

"I feel fine," Olruggio protested, though a third sneeze had begun to creep up from the back of his thickening sinuses, and he knew he was going to require a handkerchief soon. "Just this blasted sneezing."

"Perhaps you're catching cold?" Qifrey offered with no absence of concern. "You have been traveling a lot lately and wearing yourself down."

"And have another trip coming up this evening," Olruggio said with an irritated cough. His throat did feel a bit off too, though it was more itchy than sore. It felt almost like the way he reacted to grass pollen, though it was the wrong season for it. He wasn't sure quite what was going on.

"I'm sure they'll understand if you can't make it," Qifrey said, though they both knew that wasn't necessarily true. Some of Olruggio's clients could be quite demanding.

Olruggio shrugged. "I'll be all right, no need to worry about me."

The symptoms persisted throughout the early afternoon, until he gave up on working and retreated to his tower to bathe. The steam and humid air helped clear the congestion that had begun to set in, and after he emerged and began to dress for his trip, he found he felt almost normal again.

A bit odd, but he wasn't going to complain about it.

And in a way that continued to be odd, his symptoms completely dissipated over the next few days while he worked with some townspeople in a village to the west. Perhaps it had just been a small cold and he'd gotten over it, he thought, mildly perplexed.

But then, to his consternation, they began again as soon as he returned to the atelier. He was chatting with the girls and Qifrey in the kitchen when the brushbuddy scaled him until it could perch happily on his shoulder, fluffed up and preening as it welcomed him home.

The urge to sneeze swept upon him like a gust of wind, and he took a hurried step back from Qifrey and leaned away for an itchy, irritated sneeze into his elbow. "hrr'USHoo!"

The brushbuddy squealed and clung more tightly to his shoulder with its little black feet, but a second, harsher sneeze dislodged it and sent it skittering across the floor to Coco, who scooped it into her arms, wide-eyed.

"Bless you!" She said, echoed by Agott and Tetia. Qifrey, oddly enough, said nothing at first. It wasn't until Olruggio had found a handkerchief to blow his suddenly running nose that he spoke up.

"Have you considered that you might be allergic to the brushbuddy, Olruggio?" He asked mildly. Tetia looked dismayed, and Coco looked down at the fluffy creature in her arms. "You said you weren't sneezing at all while you were away, and it started back up as soon as you came home."

Olruggio sniffled wetly. "It has been years since I've been around them," he admitted. "And I can't say I've ever lived with one before. It's possible."

"This is horrible!" Tetia cried. "Poor Master Olly!"

"Do we need to…get rid of it?" Coco asked in a tiny voice, her eyes wide as the brushbuddy tried to curl into the smallest ball possible, keening quietly.

"I can manage," Olruggio began to say at the same time as Qifrey said, "There is a medicine that should help with it. It's what you already take in the springtime, for the grass pollen."

Ah yes. It tasted foul unless it was in the form of a tea heavily sweetened with honey, and Olruggio was rubbish at remembering to take it, but maybe…

He shrugged. "I can do that. There's no need to get rid of the creature."

"We can make sure to sweep up more often," Agott said quickly. Olruggio was briefly charmed; he hadn't thought that the girl had cared much for the brushbuddy. Perhaps she was speaking more out of concern for her friends than out of her own love for the beast. "We'll make sure the main rooms stay clear of fur."

The brushbuddy had wriggled up onto Coco's shoulder, where it was half-hidden in her hair, but when Olruggio locked eyes with it, it gave a soft "pweeee" that sounded almost apologetic. He rubbed the back of his neck, abashed.

"It'll be fine, girls," he said, and sniffled.

And it was, overall. Taking the tonic, he would occasionally get sniffly or sneeze a few times if the brushbuddy made its way into his tower — apologetic or not, it did seem to be particularly fond of his writing materials, and once or twice his bed — but the girls held up their end of the deal, and they all benefitted from having a stricter cleaning schedule in the atelier.

"They would have been quite sad, if they'd had to get rid of the brushbuddy," Qifrey said one day to Olruggio as they were washing up. Olruggio had sneezed as soon as he'd entered the kitchen — the cooking spices in the air, as like as not — and Qifrey had blessed him merrily as usual. "Thank you."

"And break their hearts?" Olruggio scoffed. "Please. I didn't want apprentices of my own, but that doesn't mean I'm a monster."

Reverence swept through the room like wind through a field of wheat as Zuko descended the stairs into the main hall. The room was draped in glittering garlands of silver and gold - that was the theme for the silent auction, he remembered - and even the floral arrangements on each table were frosted with glitter. It gave the hall an appearance of opulent luxury, which Zuko thought was honestly in poor taste given the reason the event was being held in the first place.

But he hadn’t been in charge of planning these events in a long time, so he nodded in acknowledgement of the assembled partygoers and clasped his hands together, long sleeves draping towards the floor, then began to wade into the crowd.

Events that catered solely to nobility were nice sometimes, in that there was considerably less bowing and scraping than there would have been among the general populace. He still had a pair of guards shadowing him from a distance (entirely unnecessary, but it was more for appearance’s sake), and the well-dressed people of the Fire Nation still moved aside to allow him to glide through the masses, but their gazes did not linger on him, and very little whispering sprung up in his wake. Yes, he was Fire Lord, but most of them had held their positions since before he was born, and in their eyes he was still an untested child.

Whatever. He didn’t need their approval.

What he did need was a drink.

There was sparkling wine being carried around by waiters, but the glasses were tiny, and Zuko wanted something stronger anyway. He was halfway to the bar when a broad-shouldered man in horn-rimmed spectacles and a well-fitting suit appeared at his elbow, stopping him in his tracks. It was Josom, Zuko’s current - and longest-running - secretary, as well as his general handler at fancy events like this.

“Well met, Fire Lord Zuko,” he greeted him, though they had seen each other not but an hour ago while Zuko was dressing for the event. Zuko stopped and inclined his head.

“Josom.”

“There are some donors who would like to speak with you before the event begins,” Josom said, nodding towards a tightly-clustered knot of nobles who were stealing glances in their direction. He kept his expression neutral as Zuko sighed.

“Fine,” Zuko groused, allowing a flicker of his true feelings to slip through before obediently composing himself. Josom had seen him in far worse moods and knew well to hold his tongue.

The donors were upper-class tradesmen who had struck gold in textiles as the main suppliers of the Fire Nation army’s uniform during Zuko’s father’s reign as Fire Lord. Their fortunes had fallen somewhat in the decade since Aang had ended the war, and they always seemed to be examining Zuko to see if snooty indifference or fawning gratitude would be most effective with him. Tonight they were skewing heavily towards the latter, which allowed him to set his expression in one of mild, magnanimous interest.

The matriarch of the family was wearing a particularly strong scent that had become all the rage among the richer citizens recently - something peppery and offensively floral that never failed to make Zuko’s nose tickle.

“-- so we figured that a travel package for a stay at our house on Ember Island would be quite a tantalizing item to bid on,” she was saying. Her hair was tied up in an elaborate series of whorls and knots that evoked an old memory of Katara’s hair loopies, and Zuko bit back a smile at the image.

“Well, we are grateful for your donation, and I’m sure that the Earth Kingdom families affected by the recent floods will be so too.” He raised a hand to surreptitiously rub at his nose, which had begun to itch and run in such close proximity to her noxious perfume. Hopefully he could duck out of the conversation before he had to sneeze.

But that was not to be the case; only thirty or so seconds later, he had to bring the back of his hand, cloaked in his draping sleeves, to his face to catch a soft “hh’kissh!”

It was a small and polite sound, but as the nobles blessed him, he realized that he was not going to be able to get away with a single sneeze. He rocked back a step and sneezed into his fist again, a short percussive triple that did little to scratch the itch beginning to burn high in his sinuses. “hh’ISSHu! – tt’shhuh, ishh’uu!

“Goodness, bless you!” The matriarch said, her brows slowly rising. Zuko sniffled faintly in the aftermath and pasted a bland smile on his face.

“My apologies. If you’ll excuse me –” he glanced around for Josom, who was not far away, “I believe my secretary has need of me, but I do hope you enjoy your evening.”

Josom was already subtly offering a handkerchief when Zuko strode by him. Zuko snatched it up and stored it within the wide sleeves of his formal robes. His nose was still prickling with a faint irritation, but he knew it would fade the longer he was away from the offending scent. Everything should be back in order by the time he had to get up in front of the crowd to announce the start of the bidding.

But he did need to blow his nose, so he stole away towards a hallway he knew to be tucked behind the ballroom. There, he’d be able to grab a bit of privacy aside from servers coming and going from the kitchen, and he could gather himself before returning to the obligatory socializing.

As expected, the hall was empty but for a table of extra floral arrangements. It was quiet, and Zuko took a moment to tend to his nose with the borrowed handkerchief. He was just slipping it back into his sleeve when someone called his name, and he whirled, professional demeanor rising again, but it was only –

“Suki?” He blinked in surprise.

“Fire Lord,” she teased, ducking into a brief curtsy. She was wearing a form-fitting crimson gown with a black sash and a golden headband. Her hair had grown out some since Zuko had seen her last - how long had it been, five or six months? It now nearly reached her shoulders. “What are you doing, hiding back here?”

“I wasn’t hiding,” he snapped automatically, then softened. It was just Suki, after all. “I, ah, needed a moment. I didn’t know you were going to be at this event.”

“Just got back in town this afternoon. I know some people from Kochasa Village, so I thought I would stop by and see how the fundraiser was going.”

“I hope you went by to see Sokka first.” 

Suki grinned. “Of course. He was waiting at the docks.”

Zuko found himself smiling as well. Sokka was never in as good spirits when Suki was away, and he knew he would be attached to her hip for the next week or so, or until she got frustrated enough with tripping over him that she sent him off on some errand. “I’m glad. He’s been moping for the last few weeks.” 

She rolled her eyes. “He’s a pain,” she said fondly. “Thanks for looking after him while I was gone.”

The tickle in Zuko’s nose hadn’t quite subsided from earlier, it seemed. He scrubbed at it with the knob of his wrist and sniffed harshly. “He’s pretty good at taking care of himself, but don’t tell him I told you that.”

“Of course not,” Suki said cheerily, and came to pluck a pale long-stemmed flower from the arrangement at Zuko’s back. “Mai says hello, by the way.”

Ah yes. Something swooped in Zuko’s chest like a wolfbat diving for a bug, as it always did at the mention of Mai. While they hadn’t been exclusive, or even really dating, for years, she had been one of the few bright points in his youth, and the support she had given him in his early days as the Fire Lord had been absolutely vital as he both got his own feet under him and began to help their nation heal. “Is she doing ok?”

“I think so? It’s…kind of hard to tell with her, to be honest.” Suki bent off the last few inches of the flower’s stem and stuck it behind her ear, where it contrasted prettily with her red hair and shimmering headband. “But she’s a great instructor. The new Kyoshi Warriors are all kind of obsessed with her.”

“Good. As they should be.”

“Have you seen – oh, bless you.” Suki cut herself off. Zuko would have laughed if he wasn’t a breath away from sneezing, and as it was he managed a soft huff of amusement before he retrieved the handkerchief from his sleeve just in time to catch a prickly double in its folds. “hhdt’ISHH! Hih – hihISHHieu!”

“I think you knew that was coming before I did,” he remarked, angling his body away from her politely to sniffle and wipe at his nose, which even after the sneezes was still tingling from the bridge all the way down to his nostrils. 

“You have a couple of pretty obvious tells,” Suki said lightly. She wasn’t quite teasing him yet, but he knew where this was going. “Like…I can tell that you’re probably not done.”

Sure enough, the sneezes had been insufficient to quench the tickle still lingering from the perfume, and Zuko rolled his eyes in expressive frustration before turning three-quarters from Suki and muffling another pair of sneezes in the handkerchief. “ht’ISSHhh! hddt’ISHHoo!”

“And again,” Suki said. She cocked her head as Zuko blinked away tears and gently massaged his nose through the cloth. If he could just get in one good rub, maybe that would convince his nose that the threat had passed and there was no need for further dramatics. “You’re not catching that cold that’s going around, are you?”

“No,” he said, lowering the handkerchief and clearing his throat with a short, irritated cough. “There’s a new perfume that all the nobles seem to be wearing.”

“Oh, that Dragon…Dragon something-or-another? Dragon’s Breath, maybe?” 

“I’m not sure.” He wasn’t one for colognes or other scents, though there were times in his reign that he had had to be appropriately anointed for ceremonies or other festivities. But Dragon’s Breath, or whatever it was called, wasn’t the only perfume that would send him into quick, itchy sneezing fits, and even after years of trial and error there never quite seemed to be a rhyme or reason to which ones set him off and which didn’t. It was a minor annoyance, yes, but it was one that festered beneath his skin, this apparent incompatibility with the required trappings of royalty. 

Suki was watching him curiously, head still tilted to the side as she seemed to analyze him like an opponent before a sparring match. It made him feel uncomfortable and exposed, and he stowed the handkerchief away again after one final nudge beneath his nose. “If you say so,” she finally said, though Zuko wasn’t sure which of his statements she was suspicious about. Then she softened, and something unintelligible flicked across her expression. “Hey, is it okay if I stick with you tonight? I don’t really know anyone else here.” She winked. “Plus I can get you out of any conversations you don’t want to be a part of.”

Zuko didn’t know how she would manage that, but if he had learned anything over the last ten or so years, it was to trust Suki implicitly. He only hoped her idea of a rescue wouldn’t require a full evacuation of the building. So he sighed and let his shoulders twitch upwards in a shadow of a shrug.

“Fine. I need to speak with some of Uncle’s friends anyway.”

Suki grinned. “Amazing. I bet they’re a lot more interesting than most of the other nobles at this thing.”

She wasn’t wrong – Iroh’s old compatriots (the genuine ones, not just those that had ‘reappeared’ once he had returned to the crown’s favor) were all whip-quick and perceptive, and many of them shared his wicked sense of humor. And for all that Suki had claimed to want to use Zuko as a conversational shield for the evening, she had a natural charisma and grace that, combined with her own sharp wit, quickly had all the old-timers snickering behind their hands.

If he were honest, he appreciated the break. His Uncle’s friends were easier conversation partners than the simpering nobles that were only here to hobnob and float about like jeweled butterflies, but the itch fluttering around his sinuses seemed to have settled in for good, and he could feel his breathing beginning to snag with congestion. Additionally, there were only so many times in polite conversation he could sniffle back the dampness of his still-running nose before it became a clear faux pas. At least in this current social circle he could murmur an apology and turn away for a ticklish cough or to sneak the handkerchief from his sleeve to wipe at his nose.

“h’EISHHieu!”

Or…to do that. Fuck. The sneeze had startled him, but even the Fire Lord sneezed occasionally, and the conversation had continued to flow around his minute disruption without more of a ripple than a brief, perfunctory blessing.

He could feel Suki’s eyes on him again as he turned from the circle again to quietly blow his nose. He was scowling a little too deeply for a public event, he knew, but it was better than giving space to the anxiety beginning to rise in his throat. He couldn’t still be reacting to the perfume, could he? None of Iroh’s friends were wearing the cloying Dragon’s Breath that he’d smelled on the first set of nobles. 

“hdt’ISHHuh – ISHHHiuu!”

Fuck. 

Zuko coughed a little in the aftermath, waving off the concern from the others in the conversation. He was making more of a scene than he’d like, but at least the last sneeze had been forceful enough to temporarily satiate the irritation deep in his nasal passages. It was still there, prickling gently, but at least each inhale no longer presented a risk of triggering more sneezes. “My apologies. Please enjoy your evening,” he said, the default phrase slipping from his lips with practiced ease, and he gave a small bow - which wasn’t befitting someone of his station, but he had far more respect for friends of his Uncle’s than just about anyone else in this nest of vipers. 

“Your eyes are getting red.”

Suki was moving with him, holding position just behind his left shoulder, and he glanced back at her.

“What?”

“Just saying.”

He knew that tone, and ‘just saying’ wasn’t generally how Suki operated, but he had more rounds of social interactions to check off his list before the bidding was set to begin, and he didn’t have the mental capacity to think about anything beyond getting through this evening. He really ought to see if he could ban that toxic scent from formal events, if he was going to react this dramatically to what he would have previously considered a very brief exposure.

Though maybe it wasn’t just the perfume, he thought with a flicker of panic as he muffled another sneeze into a wide sleeve. The tables of the event were overflowing with elaborate flower displays, with crimson lilies and pearlescent hydrangeas sculpted into phoenixes and leaping flames draped with gold and silver garlands..

This had happened to him before – not at an event of this size, but in the occasional gathering or meeting where a side table or serving bar were graced with colorful arrangements of blooms and branches. In a larger room with only a few flowers, it took a bit for the reaction to set in, but he could no longer ignore that his current symptoms were in line with how he’d felt during and after those meetings – congested and all-over itchy, his throat and eyes and ears and god his nose, with all of it prompting numerous ticklish fits that left him sniffly and watery-eyed.

But it always seemed to be flower arrangements that set this off, and it wasn’t like he’d ever sat down and tested every bloom in the bunch to see what it was that he was allergic to, but maybe, he thought as he paused with Suki in the shadow of a pillar and retrieved his handkerchief just in time to snap away from her with two more muffled sneezes, it would be worth trying it. 

“Well, shit.” Suki glanced around them to confirm that they were concealed from the view of the rest of the party. “You’re really allergic to that perfume.”

There was a delicate layer of skepticism gilding her words, and Zuko sighed. “It’s probably the flowers too. It…happens, sometimes.”

Suki raised her eyebrows. “I don’t know that I’ve ever seen you sneeze this much.”

She had, probably – there had been some particularly unpleasant instances in certain areas of the Earth kingdom that Zuko didn’t like to remember – but never when he was wearing the mantle of the Fire Lord, never when he already felt sometimes like he was clinging to credibility and the public goodwill by his fingertips.

He folded the handkerchief over his nose and tried again to scrub away the itch that had by this point traveled up through his sinuses into his eyes and ears. He was fighting a losing battle, and he knew it, but he was only forty-five minutes into an evening that was sure to go on for several hours. 

“Zuko…” Suki’s tone was bordering dangerously close to pity, which took the panic and frustration simmering in his chest and twisted them tightly into something sharp and biting. Anger was an old response, written into his bones by two decades of fear and abuse, but it was always closer to the surface when he was stressed, and it was with a distant sense of helplessness that he felt it snap from his tongue. 

“Leave me,” he growled, turning from her. “I don’t want you here.” 

“Zuko,” Suki said again, sharper, rebuking, and it was the hint of pushback in her tone that his anger leapt to meet, because he could do something about that, he could fight it. He scowled over his shoulder.

“I said go away.”

She crossed her arms. “You’ve got to pull it together at least long enough to start the auction.”

He turned his back to her and gritted his teeth into the beginnings of a curse before sneezing angrily. “I’ll be fine,” he said, though the ensuing necessity of a sniffle put somewhat of a damper on his stubbornness.

He flinched when Suki’s hand landed on his arm, but she was only giving him another handkerchief, something plainer than the one Josom had passed him at the beginning of the evening. He snatched it from her grasp without a word of thanks before stalking away towards where he knew his secretary would be waiting to nudge him on to the next group of donors he needed to fawn over.

As expected, the intensity of his symptoms only increased the longer he was in the pollen-saturated air of the banquet hall. He began to shoot angry glares at the cheery bouquets whenever he passed them. The worst of it happened when he caught a glimpse of the saffron pollen smeared on the petals of a ruby-colored lily, which by suggestion alone was enough to make him lapse into an irritated, extended fit of sneezes mid-conversation. 

The nobles hadn’t been quite sure how to handle this inadvertent lapse of decorum; they had started by blessing him, but when he continued to have to step away to catch breathless doubles in his elbow or handkerchief, long sleeves trailing dramatically, it became a necessity to continue chatting and to pretend politely that the young Fire Lord wasn’t clearly in the grip of prolonged allergic reaction.

Josom found him a few minutes later in a side chamber, stifling sneeze after sneeze and panting through parted lips when even breathing through his nose proved to be too overstimulating.

“My Lord,” he started, stiffly formal, and Zuko sighed, then coughed.

“I know.”

He saw Josom’s shoulders drop a few centimeters in relief. “I’ll call for a carriage. I can have Eylon open the auction, if you wish – she is already presiding over the rest of the event, it wouldn’t be unusual.”

Another prickle of ego flared beneath his skin, but Zuko was exhausted at this point. His head was aching, and he knew that his voice had grown far too congested for him to speak intelligibly in front of a crowd. It was past time to call it.

Zuko nodded, and Josom gave a small bow, then left the antechamber. Zuko had about fifteen seconds of solitude and was still in the process of blowing his nose when Suki joined him. He didn’t flatter himself to think that she had been doing anything beyond keeping a sharp eye on him throughout the evening; it was entirely possible that she had been the one to send Jossom his way just now. 

“Are you okay?”

He did not respond at first. Pride still lurked sharp and raw in his lungs, but there was also shame and shyness, and he didn’t trust himself in the moment to keep any sort of composure. He could always apologize to her later, back at the palace, when there weren’t dozens of people waiting on the other side of the wall for him to stumble.

In his periphery, he saw her move closer, and he turned on reflex.

“Your bun – hang on.” Suki started to reach up to fix his hair, like she would do if they were in the privacy of his quarters, then seemed to remember where they were and stopped herself. Zuko raised his hand to the flame ornament stuck into his dark hair and frowned to feel the loose strands.

“How bad do I look,” he sighed, which turned into an irritated cough caught haphazardly against the back of his hand.

“Terrible,” Suki said, but she said it so cheerily that he couldn’t help but roll his eyes, which he realized several seconds later had been the effect that she’d desired. Lighthearted ribbing had been the backbone of their relationship for over ten years, and it was an easy script that gave him comfort, particularly after long days of political maneuvering.

“Thanks.” He scrubbed at his nose with the side of his wrist, then flinched into a sneeze as the pressure set off the hair-trigger irritation once again. He was going to be at this all evening. “IDDT’shhuu! Ugh, Spirits.”

“Let Sokka know when you get back to the palace, will you? Just so if you, like, collapse in the next two hours you’re not just lying on the floor until the morning.”

Another eye roll. “I’m not going to sneeze myself to death, Suki.”

“You never know,” she said very seriously, then broke her brightly antagonistic role to squeeze his shoulder gently. “Feel better, okay?”

He didn’t quite know how to respond to that. He managed a nod, though, and that seemed to be all she needed.

–

It was difficult sometimes, to be known. It wasn’t an experience he’d ever sought or even expected to have in his life. Maybe his mother had given him a sense of that, when he was young – many of his memories of her were tainted by fear and confusion and bitterness, but he remembered her kindness, as well as the careful pride with which she’d treated him.

(He’d had to grow up very quickly after she’d left, and any remaining illusions of safety had gone up in smoke when he’d knelt, trembling, before his father, and been greeted only by violence.)

He saw the messenger hawk pass the carriage as it rumbled back towards the palace, but it didn’t register as significant until he slowly climbed the stairs, rubbing at his good eye with the heel of his hand, and heard the distinctive throaty chortle of a pleased bird.

“That’s a good boy, Hawky.”

Zuko’s head snapped up. Sokka was waiting at the palace entrance, his beloved hawk perched on his forearm. Hawky was getting up there in years, but he was one of the most reliable birds in their mews, and he’d do just about anything for Sokka.

He also had an uncapped container on his leg, and Zuko scowled at the small scroll in Sokka’s hand. “I’m assuming that’s from Suki?”

“Yeah.” Sokka squinted down at Zuko. “She’s right, you do look like shit.”

“Thanks ever so much,” Zuko snapped, and he let his shoulder hit Sokka’s as he brushed past, jarring Hawky’s perch. Sokka yelped as the bird squawked angrily and dug his talons in for better purchase, then took off in a flurry of crimson feathers.

It made Zuko feel a little bad, especially when Sokka caught up with him in the hallway and Zuko spotted the beads of blood on his sleeve. He stopped, wincing.

“Is your arm okay?”

“What? Oh, it’s fine.” Sokka glanced down, unbothered, as if he’d already forgotten. “Are you okay?”

“You already told me I look like shit,” Zuko grumbled. He was past caring at this point how he looked, especially when it was just Sokka present. He could feel his eyes swelling from his aggressive itching, and he knew his nose looked pink and chapped from the abuse of his fist and handkerchiefs. His sinuses throbbed, and every congested inhale made him feel like he had to sneeze. Even thinking about how he had to sneeze made him have to – have to –  he twitched away from Sokka and raised a draping sleeve as a half-effective shield. “h’ISHHuh – h’ISHHiu! hdt’ISHHuh!”

“Wow, bless you –”

“I’m not hh–EISHHieu! hdt’ISHHuh!”

He felt Sokka’s hand thump him reassuringly on the back. “You done?”

Zuko sniffled, feeling his face heating in shame and frustration. “I guess.”

“You should get out of these clothes, they’re probably not helping.”

Sokka was probably right, and Zuko knew even before the words left his mouth that he would sound like a petulant teenager, but he still scowled and said, “Whatever. The evening’s fucked anyway.”

Sokka arched an eyebrow. “The whole evening, huh?”

Zuko knew he was mocking him, and he scowled deeper, though the effect was ruined somewhat by the damp sniffles still making his nose twitch. “I was awful to Suki. She probably hates me.”

Something shifted in Sokka’s eyes, like an old memory, and Zuko felt his prickliness intensify as Sokka’s faint incredulity morphed into a very clear, familiar expression of smugness. “Oh yeah, she was talking all sorts of shit about you in her letter.”

Zuko knew that wasn’t the case – he had been able to see through the paper that the message was only a few lines – but he still made a grab for the small scroll that Sokka suddenly had in hand again. Sokka nimbly stepped to the side and faked reading the scroll in an imperious tone. “His Royal Flaminess Zuko was an absolute turd this evening. The smelliest of turds. Please inform him I never want to see him ever ever again, ever. Triple underlined. Signed with a heart.”

“You don’t get it,” Zuko snapped, half-panicked, although the better and wiser half of him recognized what Sokka was doing and was attempting to give the orders for his teen angst to stand down.

“Of course I don’t,” Sokka said, and furrowed his own brows into a mock frown. “Because you are the most miserable man in the world, you have suffered soooo much more than –”

“Oh shut up,” Zuko mumbled, then used the excuse of blowing his nose to turn away from Sokka’s gaze for a moment. “You’ve made your point.”

Sokka was still grinning obnoxiously when Zuko tucked his handkerchief back into his sleeve, but the edges of his smile softened when Zuko sniffled pitifully and began walking again. “Sorry. I know you don’t feel great. Do you need me to get a healer?”

“IISHHhhu! No, I just need to bathe and sleep. Although…I may ask if we can reschedule brunch with the Gaang tomorrow.”

“Oh, Toph already asked,” Sokka said breezily. “She went home with that butch Earthbender chick who works at the blacksmith, I think she’s not anticipating getting much sleep either.”

Zuko coughed on a rough laugh. “Good. I’m glad someone’s having a good evening, at least.”

Sokka’s hand was on his shoulder again, this time for a brief squeeze as they arrived outside Zuko’s quarters. ”Do you want company?”

It was incredibly deft and a little bit unnerving, the way Sokka and Suki had handled him this evening. Suki had given him the space to lash out, had taken the brunt of his words when he couldn’t fight the actual cause of his misery, and then she’d patiently waiting for him to burn himself out before handing him off to Sokka, who would poke and tease to keep him from falling into too deep of a brooding state. But at no point had he been treated with scorn or punishment for his actions, at no point had they frozen him out or played mind games to teach him a lesson for being impudent. 

And he knew what Sokka was offering now – an outlet, a distraction, something pleasurable. They didn’t often sleep together without Suki present, but Zuko had no illusions that she would be upset or even surprised if this was where the night took them. For all he knew, she may even have said something about it in the messenger hawk note. “Sure, Sokka, go fuck Zuko, he’s pathetic and would appreciate it.”

“Zuko?”

Oh, right, he still hadn’t answered Sokka. Zuko ducked his head and cleared his throat. “Perhaps for…a bit. If you don’t mind all of this.” He gestured vaguely at his face, at his pink eyes and twitching nose and whistling, congested breaths.

“Nah, I don’t mind. Maybe we can wait up for Suki, too.”

The sense of safety that Sokka and Suki offered to him time and again was unmatched by anything he’d ever experienced, with any of his partners (which, to be fair, was not a very long list). It was the idea that he could be messy and angry and angsty and dumb and suffering an embarrassing allergy attack, but that it would not be held against him in any way that mattered. 

Sometimes he worried about it, if he was letting them (any of his friends, but particularly these two) too close and would regret it, if he was only baring a place on his back for them to bury a knife.

But tonight…Sokka found his hand, laced their fingers together, and then led him into the bedroom.