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"Of all the fucking ways to break your hand," Zuko mutters, unbuttoning Sokka's shirt for him, but there's no heat in it.
"I know," Sokka says sheepishly.
"And the fact that you told people–"
"I know."
They'd asked at urgent care how he'd hurt it, when Zuko's pretty sure that they already knew – it has to be an injury they've seen before – and the answer of punching a wall had led to the nurses subtly hustling Sokka away for 'forms' so they could ask Zuko if he felt safe in his relationship. And then, after they'd both clarified that Sokka was an actor and the injury had actually happened while he was performing a role, taking him aside again while Sokka was getting his hand x-rayed and asking if he was sure he felt safe. Zuko had been very polite and thanked them for asking, he knows it's important, but yes, he feels very safe and secure in his relationship.
By the fifth time of asking, with yet another nurse eyeing his scar in a very suspicious way, he'd acerbically commented that he sure would have been grateful for someone asking him this when he was in hospital with burns from childhood abuse, but his adult relationships are all perfectly okay, thank you, now can he go back and see his boyfriend? Sokka had probably correctly identified that they'd both been pegged as not telling the whole truth, at that point – and clarified that he's an adult actor and the performance in question had been rather adult-oriented, hence neither of them being especially forthcoming with the details of exactly what had happened.
Thank you, Zuko thinks, to the male nurse who had seen them both and done a double take which had definitely confirmed that element of the story.
And now Sokka's got split knuckles, and a prescription of a month of splint-wearing, and absolutely awful mobility in his dominant hand, and is feeling very sorry for himself and his inability to do anything. Zuko has already caught him trying to un-velcro his splint with his teeth so that he can bend his hand enough to chop vegetables and help with cooking, and then again so he could just duck into the shower and quickly wash my hair, babe, it'll only be a minute–
Zuko absolutely forbids that, not when his hand is still this swollen and he can't bend his fingers. He is going to let Zuko run him a bath, and he's going to keep his splinted hand dry – they'll ice it before bed – and he is going to let Zuko pamper him.
Sokka sinks into the bath with a resentful grumble, but his pouting doesn't last long once Zuko has dug clever fingers into his hair, scratching his nails across his scalp and gently working shampoo into a lather, and then shamelessly turning it into a massage that has Sokka groaning under his hands.
"There," Zuko says, once he thinks that a moment longer will have Sokka falling asleep in the bath. He's already a melted puddle of bubblebath and bliss, vocal appreciation turned to sleepy contentment. "C'mon, you have to get out under your own steam." He has a warm towel waiting, though, and bundles Sokka up into it and straight into bed. They hadn't even had an especially tiring day, and it's nowhere near bedtime, but they can have a nap.
Sokka's hair is mostly dry when they stop dozing so Zuko finger-combs a drop of oil through it, silky smooth, and Sokka is still bleary-eyed so Zuko pushes his head down into his lap and tells him to nap some more. Actually, no–
He comes back to the bed a moment later and sits up against the headboard, getting Sokka comfortable next to him.
"What are you doing," Sokka mumbles, presumably rhetorically judging by how he immediately buries his face in Zuko's hip, and Zuko sets the handful of beads and hairties down in his lap.
"There's absolutely no way you can braid your hair with your hand like that," he tells him. "And I know you had it down for the shoot this morning, because you do that for filming sometimes, but you always redo the braids at your temple after you've showered at the end of the day, so I figured you'd want–?"
Sokka's silent for a moment. "'s just hair," he mutters.
"It's not just hair, it's your hair, so. And I know it's not just styled that way because you like how it looks, it actually means something, so if it's overstepping for me to do it, tell me. But I think I've spent enough time playing with your hair to be able to make it look like it should."
In the end, Zuko does Sokka's hair every time he washes it, until his hand heals enough to manage the tiny braids and fiddly beads himself – and sometimes, even after getting his hand back, Sokka just flops down onto Zuko's lap with damp hair and a handful of beads. Maybe it's nice to be pampered occasionally.
Zuko is used to migraines, Sokka knows. He's been getting them for years, made a thousand times worse by lingering nerve pain, and thankfully these days it's normally just a matter of popping meds and pushing through the hour or so it takes for them to kick in. It didn't always used to be that way, from what he's heard, but he's found a cocktail of drugs that do a pretty good job of managing it, if he takes them fast enough.
If he doesn't take them fast enough…well, it hardly ever happens, because Zuko has learnt the hard way that it's not an option. Until it happens anyway. The first time, they didn't live together, but Sokka had camped out at Zuko's anyway – sleeping on the couch, not turning the lights on unless Zuko's door was closed with a blanket blocking the crack, being as silent as possible. Sitting by his bedside when Zuko could tolerate it, slipping into bed to spoon him once he could handle touch, bringing water and making him sip thin broth and ensuring the sick bucket was always within reach and empty. Zuko had hated every second of it and made that clear, when he could speak – being weak, dependent, vulnerable – but he'd reluctantly admitted that it had been easier.
And being constantly at Zuko's side had meant Sokka had seen the aftermath, too, of being in bed for the best part of a week. The matted tangles at the back of his neck, the knots all the way down the length of his loose braid, the way Zuko – still barely able to hold his head up – had slathered his hair in conditioner and sat stubbornly upright in bed as he'd untangled every knot and mat and snarled mess by hand.
Zuko hates being vulnerable, and even so early in their relationship, Sokka had realised what it meant for Zuko to talk to him about it – about how after the injury, never any more details than that, he'd been bedridden for weeks. His hair, that his mother had loved so much and that Zuko hadn't cut since she'd left, had been a single matted mass, days upon days of knots that the nurses had refused to even attempt to untangle. Maybe it was because he'd been at his father's house and the nurses had all been employed by him, Zuko had said, but they'd not brushed it at all while he'd been unconscious or too weak to lift his head, barely bathed him, and once he was conscious enough to realise the state of his hair, he'd been told it needed to be shaved down to the scalp.
Zuko had cried, and had told the nurses it was because the razor pulled at the new skin of his barely-healed burns.
And then, through every multi-day migraine of his adolescence, Zuko had tried to keep his hair tied up to avoid the worst of the damage, as much as he could stand when the pressure on his scalp felt overwhelming, and had insisted on detangling every knot as soon as he could stand the tug of fingers or a comb.
Zuko has only had one awful migraine like that since Sokka has known him, but now he has another. One single day of realising he hadn't brought his meds in his jacket pocket, but he hasn't had a migraine in ages – and then they're out, and Zuko says oh shit with the glassy unfocused squint of a migraine aura only he can sense, and he doesn't have his fucking meds. Sokka races for them the moment they're home and through the door, but Zuko takes them with the dull resignation of a man who already knows they're too late to do anything. Sokka emails everyone they're meant to see in the next week and clears their calendar, and gets Zuko to bed and braces himself for what he knows is coming.
A few days later, once Sokka is back in their bed and can kiss Zuko's head without him recoiling – but still in the dark and with no background TV – he strokes a hand over Zuko's hair and murmurs, "Can I take care of this?"
"I can do it," Zuko mumbles, eyes screwed shut.
"Not until after you've slept, and you still can't sit up without feeling sick. Can I try to get the worst of it untangled? I want to take care of you, sunshine, and I know this is hard for you but–"
With a towel in his lap and handfuls of leave-in conditioner, in a dark room and working mostly by touch, starting at the ends and slowly working his way as close to the roots as Zuko can stand, Sokka takes care of him.