highschool [ zukaang ]

17 ; help

"What did you do..?" Aang asked, more to himself.

By the time they'd reached the room, Zuko was standing with the help of Aang.

"Lay on the bed," Aang said to him.

His eyes were half closed and was hunched over. Aang pulled his arm from around his neck and pushed him onto the bed.

Once he had gotten Zuko proper on his bed, he ran downstairs to get the medicine box from the bathroom. He glanced at his parent's door, which was closed. There was no light coming from under the door, so Aang assumed they were asleep early for their flight the next day.

He made it back to his room, and found that Zuko had curled into himself, which made it a lot harder to try and clean his cuts.

"Are you even awake?" Aang asked. "I need to remove your shirt incase someone kicked you there... I'll just wait until you can say yes."

Aang rolled him onto his side. Zuko was out like a light, so he started rummaging through his bathroom drawers for a wash cloth. Once he found one that was clean, he ran warm water onto it and returned to the bed.

Being truthfully honest, Aang had never done this before. There were more bruises along his scar that were harder to see, and since the almost dry blood was dripping on yheeft side of his face, it looked like the same color.

So he just cleaned everywhere. There was still blood inside Zuko's mouth but he couldn't do much about that until he woke up to rinse it out. Aang hoped there wasn't internal damage or anything, he knew Zuko was good at fighting though. He also knew that Zuko tried his best to not get into fights.

Seeing him like this hurt. He must've been in some sort of a fight, and from the look of him, lost it. Unless he didn't get a chance to fight.

Aang pulled the blanket over him and went to find more sheets for himself. He couldn't sleep in his bed tonight, so he'd settled for the chair across the room.

The setup reminded him of when he had gotten drunk, and Zuko sat here, waiting to see if he was okay. Before he fell asleep. he locked his door incase his parents got nosey that morning and decided to check in on him.

And that would mean a lot of explaining he didn't know how to do.

♡

Zuko woke up the next afternoon. Aang had decided to skip school as soon as he woke up, realizing he couldn't leave Zuko here alone.

"Aang?" He said in a raspy voice.

"Hey, welcome back," Aang got up from the chair and went to the bedside.

"Am I in... your room?" Zuko looked around. "My head hurts.."

"I have medication, if you want," He said. "Just don't move much. I didn't really check for injuries because you weren't awake."

"I wouldn't have cared," He sighed. "I don't need medication."

"But you-"

"I don't need it," Zuko said, and started to sit up. He make a choking noise and fell back. "Okay, so.... yeah, maybe pain meds would be nice?"

Aang ran downstairs to the kitchen. His parents had a cabinet full of coffee cups, and at the top shelf, was a bin full of pills for various types of injuries or pains. He had to climb onto the counter to get to the bin, but he got it eventually. Once he had retrieved the pain medication, he ran, almost tripping on the stairs, back to his room.

"It says to take one pill every 6 hours," Aang said, shaking one onto his palm. "There's water right there."

Zuko had pulled himself up against the bed frame in a sort of half sitting position. He placed the pill on his tongue and laughed. "I've never taken a pill before."