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Sokka still has trouble sleeping, sometimes. Maybe too much of the time.
Usually, it’s that he gets himself completely lost in a project that he’s passionate about, and the hours fly by like minutes when he’s hyper-focused like that. When that happens, Zuko finds Sokka and coaxes him to bed. Or to eat dinner. Or outside to see the light of day for the first time in hours.
And when that doesn’t work, he sends in the heavy artillery: Izumi. Izumi, who’s two and adorably perfect for the job, based on the fact that neither of them are very good at saying no to her.
But it’s nights like tonight that are the worst. Nights when he tries to get a good night’s sleep, but can’t. Nights when Izumi’s tucked away safely in her crib, but his mind won’t stop racing with endless possibilities of ways she could be hurt, or the all things he’s not doing enough of as a father. Nights when his leg won’t stop aching and he can’t seem to get comfortable enough to lie still, but Zuko’s fast asleep in the bed next to him, and he doesn’t want to move around too much and wake him up.
Nights, like tonight, when after hours of restless wakefulness, he gives up, steals Zuko’s favorite robe, and goes for a walk.
It’s summer, and the air is too thick and too hot to be any kind of a balm for his anxious mind. He walks anyway because it’s better than staying still.
He’s frustrated with himself. He hates when he gets like this—all anxious and twisted up for no good reason. He’d seen someone for a little while, a few years after the end of the war—a therapist who told him that anxiety didn’t always have a clear trigger, and that trauma was something the body held onto, something that can’t be so easily forgotten as it can be shoved down. That the human brain, for some reason, likes to remind itself of its biggest fears and worries and worst moments, and play them all in a sick loop.
He still doesn’t really understand, though, how he could be fine all day, could be good all day, and then suddenly feel like he’s about to fall apart.
Sokka walks until he’s almost sweating, finding himself in a courtyard halfway across the palace. He sits on a patch of grass, a bit damp already from the night’s humidity, and plunges his hands into the earth, ripping up tufts of grass in each grip.
He does this, over and over, tearing handfuls and handfuls of grass and mud, trying not to think too hard about anything in particular, and failing, spectacularly.
An unwarranted image flashes in his mind—Toph, dangling helplessly off the side of the airship, hot, vicious flames threatening to engulf them. Almost automatically, the pain in his knee flares, and he tries desperately not to live in that moment of being fifteen and injured and certain that they were all going to die.
He rips more grass. Shifts his focus back to the feeling of the cool mud between his fingers and under his nails. Revels in the small catharsis that destroying something sometimes brings; pulls up the grass the way he’d like to gauge the terrible thoughts right out of his mind.
But he’s totally out of control. The more he tries to stop picturing it, the more intense and persistent the horrible image becomes. The more power it holds. Before he knows it, he’s imagining Izumi in Toph’s place. She’s staring up at him, fear wide in her young eyes, and he wants to scream how terribly sorry he is that he couldn’t do his one job, couldn’t keep her safe. She drops, and she screams, and he feels like he’s going to die, like everything is on fire, like he’s going to—
“Stop.” Sokka says, out loud. He shakes his head, brings his dirty hands up to hit at his temples, like some amount of shaking or jostling could actually physically clear his mind. “Stop it,” he repeats, wondering vaguely what he would look like to someone watching.
This is ridiculous, he thinks, standing abruptly and wiping his hands together, trying to get as much mud off as possible.
His legs are shaky as he walks back to their rooms, and he’s working hard to keep his breathing in some kind of steady rhythm.
The door creaks when he opens it, and he slips inside. He pokes his head into Izumi’s room, watches her back rise and fall and cherishes the slack look of peace on her face as she sleeps, safe and completely untouched by all those fears Sokka holds for her.
Satisfied, and feeling marginally better having seen her safe, he heads for his and Zuko’s room. He tiptoes to the bathroom where he washes the grime from his hands and pointedly ignores his reflection in the mirror. He dries his hands, throws Zuko’s robe back over the chair in the corner of their room, and creeps towards the bed, hoping he can climb back in without waking his husband.
“Sokka,” Zuko whispers, and Sokka actually jumps.
“Shit, Zuko! I thought you’d be asleep.”
Sokka can barely track his movement in the dark, but he hears the bed sheets rustling as Zuko sits up and lights the lamp on his bedside table.
“I woke up and you were gone. I figured you probably couldn’t sleep, but I couldn’t leave Izumi here to come find you,” Zuko says.
“Sorry,” Sokka replies, a little ashamed, “I didn’t want to wake you up. And I didn’t mean to worry you.”
Zuko shakes his head a bit, and he looks a little sad. “You can always wake me up, Sokka.”
Sokka fidgets with a loose thread on his waistband, and casts his eyes toward the ground. “I know. I probably should have. I just thought I could handle it on my own.”
“Come here.”
Sokka crawls into bed next to Zuko, laying his head on his chest and inhaling the comforting scent of him. Zuko wraps his arms around him and holds tight, and they stay like that, quiet, breathing together, for a while.
Zuko leans down, pressing a kiss into Sokka’s hair. “You don’t ever have to deal with it alone, Sokka. If you’re feeling like this, I want you to wake me up, okay? I know I don’t always understand exactly what you’re going through, but I want to help you, however I can.”
“You do help, Zuko, you help so much,” Sokka eagerly assures.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“Not really… just the usual stuff. I was feeling on edge and couldn’t sleep, so I went for a walk, but then I got caught up in intrusive thoughts and I don’t know. I was freaking out a little bit.”
Zuko hums, running a hand up and down Sokka’s back. “I’m so sorry, baby. What do you need from me?”
“Just this. Just you.”
“Okay,” Zuko replies simply, pressing another kiss to Sokka’s hair.
Sokka shifts, turns around so he can press his back to Zuko’s chest. He lets Zuko wrap his arms around him and press his face into his neck, lets Zuko make him feel safe and small and protected in a way only he can. Zuko breathes slowly, deeply, and Sokka tries to match him. He focuses on the warmth of Zuko’s body and the plush bed around them, and reminds himself of Izumi sleeping peacefully in her room, and begins to relax a bit.
Like a balloon slowly deflating, the tension eases out of him. Zuko holds him and tells him he’s safe and he clings to those words, repeats them in his head to drown out all the other awful noise, and slowly, surely, he drifts to sleep.