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Toph’s eyes fluttered open to their usual darkness, and everything was serene until her entire body started to scream. She bit down on her cheek as pain radiated up and down her entire body, save for her left calf, for some reason, until she heard some shushing and Katara’s soft voice as icy healing water worked its way into her limbs, torso, and face. Any tension in her body vacated the premises as she came to the conclusion that she was at the city’s clinic. She would kiss Katara if she didn’t already have a thing going with her stupid brother.
Her breathing, which she now noticed was quite erratic, settled down; her chest had felt as if a Komodo rhino were perched on it. The pain in her body reduced significantly to a barely-there hum, and she sighed, attempting to get back on her feet. With the pain fading, she felt fine.
“Easy,” Katara murmured, voice closer now—at her side, maybe kneeling. The water shifted again, cool and deliberate, threading through muscle and bone like it knew exactly where to go. “You don’t get to sit up yet.”
Toph huffed, falling back with a thud, as she shuddered when Katara worked on her torso. “Wasn’t planning on it.”
“That’s funny, because you were definitely trying to five seconds ago.”
“Instinct,” she replied. “You ever been stabbed? Body gets a little dramatic.”
Katara didn’t rise to it, which told Toph more than any sharp reply could have. Instead, there was just the water, the faint clink of something ceramic nearby, and Katara’s breath as she bent: controlled, but not quite calm.
“Not stabbed because I tend to do the stabbing,” Katara said after a moment.
Toph snorted. Then regretted it because of the ache radiating from her stomach.
Mitigating the pain quickly, Katara continued, “But I’ve healed enough to know when someone’s downplaying it.”
“Relax, Sugar Queen.” Toph rolled her eyes, though the motion tugged unpleasantly somewhere along her ribs. “I’m fine.”
It had been years of Toph knowing Katara. In that time, she’d gotten used to all of her -isms: what a particular stance meant, how the tilt of her head could mean the difference between anger and annoyance, and what each of her sighs meant. Now, Katara released a deep one that indicated to Toph that she was in for a lecture or an interrogation; perhaps both.
“You were not fine,” Katara said, low. “You were unconscious when they brought you in.”
That made something in Toph’s chest hitch, just for a second. She ignored it.
“They?” she repeated instead, brow furrowing. She didn’t remember much about what happened after her attack, much less even being brought into the clinic. “Who’s they?”
“A couple from the outskirts,” Katara replied, the water sloshing as she reached for some more of it to cover Toph’s face. It felt warm this time, and Toph was ready to fall asleep. “They found you just off the road. Said you looked like you’d been dragged.”
Toph swallowed. She didn’t like being decimated by dirty tricks she could’ve been more readily aware of. Her memory came back in jagged pieces—boots on gravel, the smell of iron, someone grabbing her arm, the sharp, hot flare of pain when she didn’t move fast enough. She’d handled worse. She had. Just, maybe not four-on-one, not when she’d already been tracking for two days straight without real rest. Sokka’s complaints about her lack of any real rest aside from a quick nap every few hours.
Pain was easy; pain was familiar, something she could grit her teeth through and come out the other side of with a shrug and a half-assed joke. She was okay with the pain. Those few seconds where everything had slipped out from under her, where her footing, her awareness, her control had vanished. She prided herself on never losing the room, on knowing exactly where everybody stood, how every muscle shift felt through the ground before a strike landed. That was her edge. It was what made her untouchable, and yet, all it had taken was a moment, one lapse she couldn’t even fully reconstruct, and suddenly she was on the ground, breath knocked out of her, reacting instead of dictating. It made her stomach turn in a way the injuries didn’t.
She shifted slightly, testing her body now that the pain had dulled. Everything felt off and heavy and stiff. Her right side protested immediately.
Katara caught it. “Don’t.”
“I’m just checking,” Toph muttered.
“You have two cracked ribs, a deep cut along your side, and a concussion,” Katara said, each word measured. “And that’s just what I can treat. You’re staying here. Stop plotting your escape like I know you are.”
Toph snorted softly. “Yeah, okay.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
Katara stopped healing, and Toph grunted. Before she could protest some more, Katara said warningly, with steel in her voice, “Toph.”
Matching it, Toph turned her head slightly toward her voice. “Katara.”
They sat there like that for a moment, locked, unmoving, and stubborn in entirely different ways. Toph broke first, because she was tired and because Katara had that tone that meant she wasn’t budging anytime soon; Toph was in no mood for it. “Fine. I’ll stay,” she grumbled. “For, like, a day.”
Katara exhaled, some of the tension easing out of her as she continued to work on Toph’s wounds. “We’ll reassess tomorrow.”
“Mm.”
Silence settled, but Toph could hear everything if she focused—the faint drip of water from a faucet somewhere across the room, the rustle of cloth, footsteps outside the clinic. Life going on like she hadn’t just almost—
She cut the thought off before it could finish.
“Speaking of,” Katara started gently, “are you ever going to tell me what happened? I’ve been trying to figure it out since you came in.”
Toph tilted her head back into the pillow. “Tracking job,” she said, like it was nothing. “Guy skipped out on a debt to this Earth Kingdom family that had just opened up a chain restaurant. Thought he could hide in the lower districts of the city.”
“And?”
“And he had friends,” Toph said, lifting her hands a bit and wiggling her fingers. “Surprise.”
Katara didn’t laugh. “How many?”
“Four,” she admitted, not really wanting to recall the whole of it, and glad enough that her concussion was preventing her from thinking too hard. “One stayed back—I think he was the one calling shots. Didn’t dare to join the fight because he saw I was whipping his crew up.”
Katara’s water stirred again, now focusing on Toph’s head; it felt like she was being submerged in a hot bath. “And you thought you could handle that alone?”
Toph’s mouth quirked. “I did handle it. And I typically do handle it. Alone, if you must know. This was a fluke; I do this for a living and will be doing it until the next thing catches my attention.”
“You ended up unconscious on the side of the road.”
“After I handled it.”
Katara made a frustrated sound, something between a sigh and a groan. “You’re impossible.”
“Yeah,” Toph agreed easily. “You love it. But I’m fine, you’re helping reinforce that. I just wish I could’ve done more to stop those assholes. And I will. Their debt is still unpaid. Doesn’t sit right with me that they’re trying to scam a working family out of their hard-earned cash.”
Sighing, Katara said, “I know stopping you is futile, but I just would like it on the record that I am telling you that this is a bad idea. You did enough. I heard that some guys were picked up near where you were found, so you did what you set out to do.”
Toph huffed out something that might’ve been a laugh if it had any humor in it. “Yeah, because they’re gonna handle it so well. I’m sure those guys are already tucked into neat little cells, reflecting on their life choices.”
Katara didn’t take the bait. The water at Toph’s temples stayed steady. “You’re not invincible, Toph.”
That was the problem. The fact that she’d just let herself be decimated at the end of it all irked her. Worse was how avoidable it felt, which was somehow more infuriating than if she’d just been outright overpowered. She could pick it apart now with embarrassing clarity: she’d been tired, slower than usual, too focused on tracking the target’s path and not enough on what might be waiting for her when she caught up. She’d assumed she could handle it because she always did. It was sloppy, her work, the kind of mistake she would’ve mocked someone else for making without a second thought. The kind of mistake Sokka would’ve called out before she even had the chance to make it, if he’d been there, arms crossed and voice annoyingly reasonable as he told her she was pushing too hard and not thinking three steps ahead.
Toph shifted against the bed, jaw tightening as the thought settled in, unwelcome and stubborn. She wasn’t weak. She wasn’t careless. She was just—what, exactly? Human enough to get caught slipping? It felt like a cop-out, like letting herself off easy for something she should’ve seen coming because she should have. She always should. And now she was stuck here, ribs wrapped and movement restricted, forced to sit with the reality that for all her strength, for all the control she liked to pretend she had, it had taken almost nothing to knock her flat.
Katara didn’t say anything right away, but the quiet that followed had weight to it. The water at Toph’s temples softened, less insistent now, more like a steady presence than an active correction, and Toph had the distinct, uncomfortable sense that Katara could feel exactly where her thoughts had gone without needing them spelled out. She clenched her fist.
“You don’t have to prove anything,” Katara said finally. “You just need to not die. And you could’ve.”
“But I didn’t. I wasn’t going to.” She squeezed her eyes against a bout of pressure between her brows. “This wasn’t that. I—I was obsessed with catching them, so I didn’t even bother resting before it affected my performance. But I got them, even if it meant screwing me over.”
“I know this means nothing to you,” Katara said, pulling her hands away once and for all, water sloshing into a bucket beside them, “but you don’t have to win them all. You’re only human, Toph. And there are people here who care about you and don’t need to worry about you getting yourself killed to prove a point.”
For a while after that, as Katara cleaned up, Toph stewed. She should be happy that she was handed a win, and what was likely to be a large paycheck from the people who hired her to track these guys down, but any elation was soured by her loss, and by the fact that as she searched for an anchor to keep her from thinking any more, she found none.
“Where’s your brother?” Toph asked coolly before Katara left. “Would’ve thought he’d be here to get on my ass, too.”
The silence was enough of an answer, but Katara still said, “He’s a little freaked out, but he’ll come.”
Instead of nodding or merely acknowledging the answer, Toph turned her head away until the sound of the door indicated Katara’s departure.
Even if he was mad—and yeah, truthfully, he probably was—Sokka wasn’t the type to stay away because of it. If anything, he showed up louder, sharper, more insistent, like he could argue her into being okay just by sheer force of will. Anger had never stopped him from showing up before. If anything, it guaranteed it. It was in his nature to be protective, to make sure anyone he loved was okay, and she would’ve thought that even more so than when their connection was just their friendship. Now that they’d been in a relationship for six months, he would’ve been right at her bedside. So where was he?
She didn’t need him here, but she didn’t have anything against his presence, of course.
Toph exhaled slowly, letting her head sink further into the pillow as the question circled, irritating and persistent. It would be easier if she could just write it off, tell herself he was busy, or delayed, or caught up in something else, but that wasn’t how this worked with him. If he wasn’t here, there was a reason, but she didn’t feel like going there.
The alternative required her to start pulling at threads she’d spent a long time keeping intentionally tied off, and she wasn’t about to start unraveling them now when she was stuck here with nothing to do but think. She’d gotten good at not thinking too hard about him and how he was in a relationship—about what he said, what he meant, what lingered in the space between his words when his voice dropped just a little too soft, just a little too careful. She’d experienced him with other people for much too long at this point to not have started unintentionally making comparisons between the way he acted with her before they got together, afterward, and the way he was with anyone else.
If she really let herself sit with it, then she’d have to acknowledge how inconsistent it was. How it flared up in moments that felt too real to be accidental, only to disappear just as quickly, like he’d caught himself and pulled back before it could turn into something concrete, and she couldn’t afford to build anything on that, couldn’t afford to read into something that might just be curiosity, or a phase; him trying something on to see if it fit. Because what if that was it? What if he was making himself believe that this, with her like this, was what he wanted, but it was never really going to work out with them?
Sokka was like that sometimes. He got ideas in his head, followed them through until they no longer made sense, and then he pivoted. What if she was just another one of those?
If this thing between them existed more in his head than anywhere else, then the last thing she could do was push it. The last thing she could do was meet it head-on and risk solidifying something he hadn’t even decided on yet.
She knew what happened when people expected things from others before they were ready to give them, how quickly that kind of pressure could make someone retreat, second-guess, pull away entirely. And Sokka—annoyingly perceptive, frustratingly self-aware Sokka—would notice. He’d clock it immediately, pick it apart, question it until whatever fragile, undefined thing existed between them collapsed under the weight of it.
For the first time since she’d woken up, his absence made her hesitate.
Somehow, some way, even while actively doing her best to keep the thoughts away and her craving for his warmth beside her, she’d dozed off, only waking when a loud bang against her door roused her.
It took her no time to identify that it was Sokka’s presence filling the room. The faintest scent of sea salt and wood filled her nose, bringing a kind of warmth to her chest that she always associated with him.
For a while, he paced, not saying anything. He stopped a few times, considering, then continued walking back and forth from what sounded like the foot of her bed. She frowned.
“So nice of you to show up, significant other.”
“You could’ve—” He cut himself off, breath hitching in a way he tried to hide and didn’t quite manage. She heard the shift in him. “Do you have any idea how stupid what you did is? I get that this is what you do, but you’ve been tracking these guys for weeks, and you didn’t think to bring backup?”
Her brows rose, irritation flaring automatically, familiar and easier to reach for than anything else. “Yeah, because I definitely need a reminder from you on how to do my job.”
“You can be so damn reckless!” he shouted, voice contained, but his anger, not so much.
She shrugged, then immediately regretted it when pain flared along her side. “I’ve been called worse.”
His next step was abrupt, closing some of the distance but not all of it. Still not close enough. “It’s not funny, Toph.”
That tightness in his voice, she’d heard it before, whenever he was about ready to cry. Her chest squeezed.
“Didn’t say it was.”
“Good because it’s not,” he snapped, strained. “This is about you ending up unconscious on the side of some road because you pushed too far and didn’t think—”
“I did think,” she cut in, the words coming out quicker than she intended. “I made a call. It didn’t go the way I wanted. That doesn’t mean I didn’t know what I was doing.”
Sokka let out a short, disbelieving breath, pacing once—two steps away, then back again. “You were out cold when they found you.”
“But I’m not dead,” she shot back. “So, clearly, I handled it.”
“That is not the point.” His voice dropped on the last word. Pained, and she realized that she hated to be the cause of it, of any pain he endured. She would much rather be its remedy than its genesis.
Toph’s fingers curled slightly into the sheets. “Then what is the point, if you’ll indulge me?” she asked, quieter now, even when she didn’t mean to soften.
For a second, as he thought on an answer, it almost sounded like he stepped back, then forward again as though he couldn’t decide whether to touch her or retreat. She craved the former.
When he finally spoke, the anger was still there. “I didn’t know if you were going to wake up.” He exhaled roughly. “They said you weren’t responding at first. Katara didn’t know how bad it was until she got to you, and I—do you really think you could—I don’t fantasize about losing you, you know? It sickens me to think—I couldn’t get myself to move when I heard, I—”
Toph didn’t move or interrupt. For once, she didn’t have a comeback ready because this filled in the gap she’d been circling around since she woke up. The reason he wasn’t here, why he hadn’t come in right away. He hadn’t been taking his time; he’d been stalling.
She swallowed, something unfamiliar pressing at her chest, heavier than any of the pain Katara had already dulled. “You decided to come in here and yell at me to prove all that, then?”
Sokka let out a short, humorless laugh. “Yeah, well,” he muttered. She could imagine him running a hand through his hair, a restless movement to which he always resorted. “Seemed better than the alternative.”
“Which is?” Toph’s grip on the sheets loosened, just a fraction as he hesitated. When he didn’t respond, she guessed, “What? Standing there and freaking out?”
Almost under his breath, he said, “Yeah.”
Toph exhaled slowly, letting her head sink back into the pillow. “You’re still being dramatic.”
Sokka huffed, something rough in it. “You were unconscious, Toph. It’s hard to not spiral from there.”
“I’m awake now. You don’t have to spiral.”
“That’s not—” He stopped himself again, sharper this time, like he knew he was about to say something he couldn’t take back. “What would’ve happened if you’d died?”
“But I didn’t, Sokka.”
“You could’ve!” he shouted. “You could’ve, and one of these days—what am I going to do if I ever have to lose you?”
“You won’t,” she said, quieter now, the edge worn down without her meaning for it to be. “You’re not going to lose me.”
Sokka let out a sharp breath, something almost like a laugh, but without any humor. “That’s not up to you,” he shot back immediately. “You don’t get to just decide that nothing’s ever going to happen to you.”
Toph’s jaw clenched, the reflex to push back still there, still strong. “And you don’t get to act like I’m just supposed to stop doing my job because you don’t like the risk.”
“That’s not what I’m saying at all, and you don’t get to throw that into my face because you know that I support everything you do, Toph.” He was seething, she could tell. “Stop trying to give me an out because I’m not taking it.”
She reared back. “I don’t—”
“Yes, you do. You’ve been so distant lately, and I haven’t been able to figure out why,” he told her, still pacing. “But the more I think about it, it’s because you think I’m going to just walk out on you, and I don’t know why when I’ve given you no reason to—have I ever—Toph, I told you: I am all in, and that’s not going to change no matter how much you put your life on the line, but the more you do that, the more I have to prepare for—” He exhaled convulsively. “I don’t want to lose you.
“I don’t get to just shrug off the fact that you almost died because you decided it was worth the risk,” he continued, voice shaking. “And you don’t get to act like I’m overreacting just because it makes this easier for you.”
“I’m not acting like that.”
“You are,” he said with finality. “You always do this. You brush it off, you make it a joke, you move on as if nothing happened, and everyone else is just supposed to keep up.”
“That’s how I deal with things,” she snapped, the edge coming back, familiar and easier to hold onto. “Sorry if that’s not—”
“It’s not about how you deal with things,” Sokka cut in. “You just don’t let anyone else deal with them with you.”
“I don’t need—” she started, the words automatic.
“I know you don’t need it,” he interrupted again, sitting down at the edge of her bed. “That’s not what this is about. You don’t need me to do your job. You don’t need me to fight your battles. I get that, but I need to not feel like I’m standing on the outside waiting to find out if you made it back or not. I don’t like how I felt today, and I don’t like that you tend to just—brush it off each and every time. I don’t get a say in whether I lose you one day, and you act like that doesn’t matter because you’re used to it.”
She was aware of him at the edge of the bed, closer now than he’d been since he walked in, close enough that if she shifted just a little, she could close the gap entirely. Close enough that she could hear the uneven edge of his breathing, the way it hadn’t quite leveled out yet. She didn’t move, though.
If this had just been anger, she could’ve handled it. She could’ve met him there and pushed back until it flattened out into something manageable, but the fear he was vocalizing was so much harder to just brush off. She couldn’t hear him like this while being forced to accept that it was her fault he was in this state in the first place.
As if it made anything better or changed anything at all, she said again, “You won’t lose me.”
“But what if I do?” he volleyed brokenly, grasping the same bed sheets she was clutching when he could’ve easily been squeezing her hand. “I don’t—I don’t want to find out what that would feel like with you. I mean—I’ve known loss, you know I’ve known loss, but I—I don’t want to have to go through that with you.”
Her eyes stung. This almost sounded like a departure. This was him saying goodbye, saying that he couldn’t handle her way of life, the way she chose to live it, nor the fact that she refused to live it any other way. This was him ending things.
She hardened.
“Then don’t.” The confused silence welcomed the continuation of her thought. “You don’t have to. If this is too much for you—what I do, how I do it—if that’s something you can’t deal with, then don’t.”
The ultimate out. If he thought she was offering him one earlier, that was child’s play. Better this way and easier, too. If he was already halfway there, she wasn’t going to drag it out or sit here and wait for him to phrase it in a prettier way that made it hurt more than he might have intended for it to. As ironic as it was, she’d seen this coming, hadn’t she?
But then she felt the warmth and weight of his hand on her knee.
“T,” he muttered, voice a bit muffled; she assumed he was running a hand down his face as he spoke, “what are you talking about?”
Toph’s brow furrowed deeper, irritation flickering back up, accompanied by bewilderment. “You just said—”
“The last thing I want is to walk away. I want to—” He laughed sadly. “I’m just trying to figure out how to keep you. Why are you so bent on this not working? Is—do you want it to not—”
“No,” she interrupted before clearing her throat. “That’s not—no. I don’t want it to not work out.”
Sokka scooted towards her, carefully bringing his hands to her face. Her eyes shut as she leaned into his right hand, and a heaviness she hadn’t previously acknowledged fell away. His thumbs caressed her cheekbones as he quietly told her, “Then quit talking like you’re already bracing for the end of it.”
“I’m not.”
He huffed softly, not quite a laugh. “You are. You think I don’t notice, but every time we start feeling particularly real, you start talking like it’s temporary, or like I’m going to wake up one day and decide I don’t want this anymore.”
Toph wasn’t used to being read; she also wasn’t used to not being the one doing the reading. She dealt in heartbeats, and footfalls, and tone changes, in the way people moved before they spoke, in the tension that traveled through the ground before it ever reached their voice. She knew how to anticipate a strike, how to feel someone hesitate, how to tell when someone was about to lie. But this wasn’t any of that.
“You say that now,” she said, shaking off the momentary unease of being so seen by him, and accepting the crumbs of appreciation and ardor it also elicited. “But what happens when it stops making sense? When I—” Her mouth twisted faintly. “When I make it harder than it needs to be?”
She felt him shrug. “Same way I’ve dealt with it since I met you: by just dealing with it, talking you off the ledge—which I’ve literally done once in the past. Think I’m the only one who can, actually.”
“Please.” She couldn’t help her eye roll, accompanied by the slight twitch of her lips. “You would think that.”
“Mhm, I disarm you.”
“Do you?”
Sokka pressed his nose against her cheek so she could feel him nod. “I do, and you know it.”
“Do I?”
“You should,” he told her softly, brushing his lips against her jawline. “You should also know that I’m never just going to drop everything and let you go, especially not when it took so long to get you.”
At this, she scoffed, even with the heat continually rushing into her face. “I think I win the waiting game.”
“Not a contest.”
“Only because you’d lose.”
He buried his face in her neck and groaned. “That’s not the point. The point is that I—” He paused, sucking in a breath before he continued. “I’m not going anywhere. And I don’t want you to go anywhere, either. All I’m asking is that you’re more careful. I mean, do you know how easily you could’ve avoided this with, like, a few more hours of rest?”
Toph raised her hands up in defense with a little bit of difficulty, trying not to express her strain on her face. “Woah. Next you’re gonna tell me I should drink more water and get eight hours of sleep.”
“Don’t forget stretching,” Sokka added immediately, pulling back slightly. “Very important. Prevents injury.”
“Yeah?” she shot back, the corner of her mouth twitching. “You been stretching before you run your mouth like this, or—”
“Every morning,” he said, dead serious. “Full routine. Ask Katara. Not stretching can kill, you know. Especially during verbal spars.”
She huffed, shaking her head faintly. “You’re unbelievable.”
“And you almost got yourself killed because you didn’t take a nap.”
“I don’t take naps.”
Pressing a kiss to her cheek, he pulled away slightly, but not enough for him to take his warmth with him. “Just proving my point.”
The light smile she had on her face faded slightly as she took in his scent again, more acutely. She never tired of it; his was one of her favorite smells, along with grass after it rained, and freshly potted soil. She inhaled, then said, “I’m sorry I freaked you out.”
“I’m just glad I didn’t pick up the radio phone to find out that you’d done something stupid like die.” He took her hand and brought it to his mouth, kissing her knuckles.
“I’ll try to lessen the probability of that happening.”
“Much appreciated.”
A laugh bubbled up her throat before she could stop it, and that just brought on another string of laughter that Sokka followed suit. Soon, they were both in hysterics with tears prickling in her eyes for more reasons than one, though she chose to credit them to the laughing. The pain in her ribs reminded her of her injury, and she grunted, clutching her wrapped stomach.
Just like that, worry filled the space again. “What happened? You okay?”
“You forget,” she bit out, “I’m broken.”
Despite his worry, he rose to her bait and snorted. He said, “I can get Katara, and see if she can get in another session?”
She shook her head, pain beginning to ebb, coming and going more softly each time. “I just want to get out of here.”
Sokka was quiet for a while, perhaps too long a time for her to begin to question what the heck he could’ve been thinking. She let him simmer, though, as he slowly released her hands and finally spoke. “Hypothetically, if I were to break you out of here…”
“Your sister will kill you, and then we’ll really be in a pickle,” she replied immediately. “But I like the way you think. Continue.”
He inhaled as if he were about to present a fully thought-out strategy. “Okay,” he murmured, lowering his voice. “So, we wait until the hallway clears out a little. There should be a shift change soon, meaning less traffic, fewer witnesses—”
“Witnesses?” Toph echoed, already smiling.
“Focus,” he whispered, lightly tapping her wrist. “I go first. Have to be casual and unassuming before I scope it out.”
She snorted. “You? Unassuming?”
“I can be subtle.”
“You absolutely cannot.”
“I can,” he insisted. “You just don’t notice because you’re always—whatever it is you do.”
“I notice everything.”
“Great, then you should know I’m incredibly stealthy.”
“You walk like you’re narrating your own life.”
“That’s confidence.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
Sokka ignored her and covered her face with his hand, removing it when she licked a strip on his palm, wiping it on her lap without letting it break his stride. “Anyway, I go first, check the corridor. If it’s clear, I come back, and then we move you.”
“Move me,” she repeated slowly. “Like cargo.”
“Valuable cargo,” he corrected. “Very high-risk, high-priority extraction.”
She reached out, feeling for his cheek, and squeezed it hard. “You flatter me.”
Sokka continued to ramble about acquiring a wheelchair, and her leaning on him to get her out of the room before he sat her down, then wheeled her out of the hospital at warp speed before Katara or any of the other tattling healers noticed. She was barely listening; it was all kind of going in through one ear and out the other. The sound of his voice alone, saying whatever nonsense he was saying, brought a smile to her face; it filled a small vacancy that had appeared within her when she’d realized that he wasn’t there when she woke up earlier.
She hummed faintly, not really in response to anything specific, when she heard a pause in his spiel. He was so close, close enough that she could feel the way his weight shifted when he talked, the small movements of his hands when he gestured like she could see it.
It wasn’t her most characteristic move; it even startled her, quite frankly, but Toph let her hand drift up, resting it against the side of his jaw, her thumb brushing along the line of it without much thought.
He immediately stopped saying some nonsense about the most optimal exit route in the clinic, letting his little sales pitch fade out. “You’re not even listening to me, are you?”
“Mm,” she hummed, not even pretending otherwise.
“Wow.”
“You talk a lot.”
“Wow,” he repeated, taking her hand and pressing it into his face more firmly despite his tone. “I’m trying to save your life.”
“You’re trying to kidnap me from a hospital.”
“As if you aren’t a willing participant.”
It might have been her bad that she didn’t hear the door creak open, but it was also on Sokka not to have realized that Katara had managed to walk in until she asked, “A willing participant in what, exactly?”
Sokka deflated, letting Toph’s hand drop onto the bed. “Nothing?”
“He was hatching a plan to break me out,” Toph admitted. “It was a very long plan and I doubt it would’ve worked.”
“Gee. Thanks for the cover, sweetheart.”
Toph chuckled. “She’s treating me; she could make it hurt a little more. And as much as I can take it, no thanks.”
Approaching her, Katara sighed. “You’ve got broken ribs.”
“So I’ve heard.”
“I don’t want you leaving yet,” her friend added, bending over some healing water to coat Toph’s ribs once more. “But I suppose it would be worse to have to station security at your door than to have you go home with my dolt of a brother. If he promises to keep you on bed rest, and not engage you in… coital activities.”
Sokka grunted. “I don’t want to ever hear that come out of your mouth again. But even so, that is way too much to ask. I am just a guy, after all, little sis.”
In the midst of Toph’s (painful) snort, it was Katara’s turn to groan. “Just take her home before I regret it, will you?” She turned to Toph again. “And I’ll be around your place to check on you by the end of the night to give you another session, see if we can’t get these healed more quickly.”
“It pays to be a part of your family, Sugar Queen.”
The healing water sloshed away as quickly as it had come, any pain in her ribs ebbing even if it was momentary. “You always have been, Toph,” Katara replied, cupping Toph’s cheek before walking off. “I’ll arrange for a carriage to take you home. The less you’re on your feet, the quicker you’ll be back on them.”
Door clicking closed, Sokka leaned into Toph again, his breath tickling her ear. “Hear that? Stay off your feet, and the coital activities can continue.”
Despite herself, Toph burst out laughing, stabbing pain in her ribs immediately returning. She felt for the earth beneath her bed and jutted a chunk up to bury it in his leg. “Quit making me laugh!”
“I can’t help it!” he exclaimed, both rubbing at his bruising leg and squeezing her hand in comfort. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” she managed, breath hitching once before she forced it to even out. “You’re just—” She exhaled sharply, shaking her head. “—the worst.”
“Yeah,” he said, not even pretending to argue, his hand still wrapped around hers like he hadn’t noticed he’d done it. “But you love me.”
She did. She really did, she realized. It was this burning hot feeling that she could never separate from him that only grew more and more intense with every passing second. But never one to say what she means, she replied instead, “You’re on thin ice.”
His fingers came up to push her bangs away from her eyes. She could feel the heat of his gaze on her face before his lips pressed softly against hers. His warm hand cradled her face so tenderly that she so easily melted into the kiss she hadn’t noticed she needed from the moment she’d woken up. Like usual, an ardent pool formed at the base of her belly, stirring up a feeling she could only compare to the gathering of chi deep within her gut as she prepared to perform a particular earthbending move.
Her hand came up and weaved into his hair, coiling the strands around her fingers, scratching his scalp, and making him moan into her mouth. The sound vibrated through her, low and warm, and she answered it without thinking, tilting her head deeper into the kiss, pressing into him like she needed more of it, more of him.
Sokka’s hand shifted against her face, sliding from her cheek to the back of her neck, fingers spreading there, firm and steady as he drew her closer. The kiss changed under that touch, his mouth moving against hers with a kind of quiet urgency that hadn’t been there before.
But all too soon, he very lightly pulled away. “No coital activities,” he rasped before clearing his throat. “Remember?”
She grumbled, releasing him. “Hard ask.”
“Funny choice of words there.”
Regardless of her own arousal, she laughed lightly. “Fitting.”
Shortly after, Katara returned to let them know that the carriage was ready whenever they were, and they both helped Toph—who much protested—into the wheelchair that would take her to it. After loading her inside, Sokka squeezed in beside her, and gently pulled her into his chest, a sudden wave of exhaustion hitting her as he recited the instructions Katara gave him about her care.
“She gave me some tea for you,” he murmured against her hair. “They should put you to sleep if the pain gets too much and she’s not around.”
“Mm.”
“And there are also some extra wraps for your ribs that I should swap out with every bath or shower you take—”
“Snoozles?”
“Wh—yes?”
She angled her head up towards him, his breath brushing against her lips. “Know you talk too much?”
Catching her drift, he mumbled, brushing his nose against hers, “Been told.”
And frankly, she wouldn’t have him any other way. Right now, though, sleepy makeouts sounded just fine to her. She had him.