Fanfic Recs

It’s a little bit hard to sleep alone in an empty palace when you’ve just gotten used to having friends, a little bit hard to lead a nation when your family’s gruesome legacy still colors everything you do, and a little bit hard to hold onto your last vestiges of heterosexuality when you’re starting to realize that you never had them in the first place.

The plan: get Zuko a boyfriend. The execution: poor. The success: none to speak of.

It's the ten year anniversary of the end of the Hundred Year War, and Sokka has a few ideas on how to help Zuko loosen up.

Ambassador Sokka and Fire Lord Zuko exchange letters after a good bye kiss opens the floodgates of unresolved sexual tension.

Or, for one evening and one evening only, Sokka and Zuko are twenty-somethings on a date in Republic City.

Nanase Haruka never thought he’d be whole again. Not after his parents left. Not after his grandmother died. Not after he was left alone. But Rin’s always loved a good challenge, and Haru is definitely worth the effort.

“Asia sucked without you,” Yuri admits eventually after a moment, as he falls backwards onto the bed, his t-shirt riding up. It must be still hot in Saint Petersburg, if the forecast is to be believed, but Yuri has the hood up, obscuring his face at this angle. “But we all went back to the hot spring run by Katsuki’s family after the Fukuoka show, so I guess it wasn’t that bad.” A story of a relationship, told in photographs and Skype calls.

Yuri convinces Otabek to get snapchat, just to send selfies of himself making faces at Victor and Yuuri. He gets more than he expected.

"Where are we going...?" || "Isn't it obvious? An onsen!"

"What does this change?"

“Haru, we can’t go to America or Australia or Spain to get married and come back here and be married,” Rin looked at him and made sure he was still following. Rin had never minded dealing with the details, but in this instance, the details appeared to make him furious. I hate the details.

Haru snaps his head over to the adjacent lane, searching for what’s missing, knowing he’s alone in the pool but filled with such an intense, gaping void that he looks anyway. This is their dream, together, and more of it should be shared. This isn’t how Haru saw it unfolding when he spread his wings to begin soaring towards his goals.

When Haru unceremoniously shows up at Samezuka to inform Rin that they're driving to a swimming meet in Kyoto over the weekend, Rin is forced to come to terms with his future swimming plans, his mom's cranky old car, and his annoying crush on his old rival.

Haru’s mission should he choose to accept it: distract Rin long enough for Makoto to take Gou out on a date.

The Boiling Rock is a horrible place.

Rin looks up and catches his eyes. His stomach jerks, like the truth is on a string and it’s being drawn slowly out of him. When he doesn’t answer, Natsuya pulls harder. “I wouldn’t have thought Haruka would be your type.”

"So," says Rin. "I guess this is it, then."

(In the days that followed a disqualified relay race, in the days that Haruka and Rin spent learning to share their lives with one another, there were often chimes in the air; but it could not have happened any other way, should not have happened any other way, because everything about this disjointed love of theirs was nonetheless real.)

Rin wouldn't mind moving in with Haru.

“Dare,” Rin replied absentmindedly, dragging his palm down his cheek and wincing as he still felt wetness on his skin. The reality of what he had answered, hit him after a second. “Wait…” he lifted his hand, trying to stop his former Captain. “Kiss Nanase.”

A spur of the moment offer leads to Rin moving in with Haru the summer before University. Will it force them to finally untangle the truth of their relationship, or cause them to break apart for good?

Haru keeps looking at him. And his expression has shifted now—he’s not so determined anymore, because there’s a frailness to it that Rin’s only seen a handful of times in the years he’s known Haru. Like he’s balancing a lot on this. Like he’s hoping Rin will trust him with something like he’s had to trust Rin with feeling inferior.

When Rin hugs him, Haruka makes the best attempt he can to hug back, tight and warm and in a way that he hopes doesn’t say "don’t go," because Rin needs to. He needs to, and they both know it.

It's brighter today than he thought it would be.

Sometimes, Haruka wonders what it is he might have missed, feels it like a hollowness twisting itself into his bones; and, of course: it's always the same lopsided grin scribbled on the margins. Always.

He thinks that it might be different if Haru ever remembered him in the same way. But no matter how they find each other, Haru never does. In which Rin hasn't asked to be reincarnated, and certainly hasn't asked to remember each lifetime.

Rin’s fingers tangle with Haru’s and Haru is knocked out of breath by the flash of platinum on Rin’s hand. Haru, who never wears so much as a watch, with a gorgeous ring of his own on his left hand, matching Rin’s, because of what it means.

Haruka waits, and is patient, but that doesn't mean he does nothing wrong.

The weight of Rin’s victories feels as burning and alive inside both their chests.

On a visit back from Australia, Rin comes out as gay to Makoto and Haru. Haru finds himself more troubled by the information than he should be.