Chapter Text
The smell of breakfast fills Toph’s nose, rousing her from slumber. Her hand, despite knowing what she’ll find there, groggily flies over to the other side of the bed, still hoping to find the lump of her boyfriend that had lain with her the previous evening. Regardless, a sleepy smile overtakes her face as she stretches the fatigue out of her limbs.
A fluttering in her belly registers to her immediately after she relaxes, letting her arms fall to her sides. She takes a shuddering breath as she’s still getting used to the idea of having a baby, one who is literally growing within her every second of every day, and will eventually swell her up like no one’s business. Right now, Toph only feels as though she’s gained a tad bit of weight. Her boobs feel heavier and her stomach, while still firm, is beginning to increase in size. Not too much, though. Not yet.
Toph’s hand finds her stomach and rubs gently as she kicks out of bed and sets her feet to the ground, partially because she’s about to get up, but mostly because she wants to acutely feel her baby’s heartbeat. It always brings her calm—save for the day she found out about the second heartbeat; she was quite uncalm that day. But it all fell into place. It feels right, now.
Morning sickness, thankfully, is a thing of the past. The early morning barf sessions, complete with sprints to the restroom or even to the potted plant in the corner of the room and gentle back rubs from Kanto, stopped a few weeks ago. She’s never been more grateful for the lack of puke before this pregnancy.
With a quiet grunt of exertion, Toph stands and drags her feet over to the bathroom a few paces from the bed. Her lower back hurts like no one’s business but after walking around for a bit, it should become tolerable, even more so after she gets some training in later when she sends Kanto out to buy some food to satisfy a craving of hers.
She makes quick work of peeing, cleaning her teeth, and brushing her hair up into a bun—in that order—then she reties her banbi and walks over to the kitchen as stealthily as she can. The distinct scent of hotcakes and sweet cream along with some kind of meat—likely komodo sausage, since Kanto put her onto believing it pairs well with hotcakes—make her mouth water and her stomach rumble.
The next thing she registers, other than the mouth-watering aromas in the room, is the sound of her boyfriend’s humming. It’s quiet and she can’t really make out the song he’s trying to perform a rendition of, but it makes her chuckle silently into her palm, anyway, as she leans against the door frame.
For a while, she listens to him and feels him through the ground. He seems happy, something she’s always quietly worried about and he continues to prove that he wants to be here without even realizing that he’s doing so. And she knows he loves her, even though it took her too long to admit the fact to herself; even though she accused him of lying in order to push him away when she found out about the baby.
She’s always had a reason to trust him, and that’s what freaked her out the most. And it scared her, too, that she couldn’t help herself from falling for him. It was—at risk of being absolutely cliché—so slowly that she didn’t even realize it was happening; then all at once.
And it scared her shitless.
But he stayed. No matter how much she pushed him away, he kept coming back; he kept proving to her, without the obligation to, that he wanted to be there. That he wants to be here. And eventually, she didn’t have the strength to try to make him leave. She realized that she loved him too much.
As much as it scares her, that love continues to grow, even now, as he burns his hand on the stove because he was too distracted, humming.
Kanto is still not aware that Toph is in the kitchen, standing only a few feet behind him, so she uses this to her advantage and she stealthily sneaks toward him. He’s hissing and letting cold water run on his hand from the faucet when she’s at arm’s length from him.
Carefully, she wraps her arms around his waist, an action that makes him momentarily tense but he immediately relaxes as soon as he realizes it’s only her.
She laughs into his shoulder blades. “What? Did you think an intruder would be so affectionate if he saw you nursing your burn at the sink?”
Kanto playfully groans, reaching for something before turning off the faucet, rubbing her belly as a greeting to their baby, then turning around to wrap his arms around her. “Maybe, okay? I’m not thinking all that straight because I am a man, injured.”
“Right. And that’s only the product of being injured.”
“Here I am,” Kanto says in response to her joking jab, “making you and Badgerfetus breakfast, and this is how I’m treated. Incredible.”
Toph gets on her toes to press a kiss to the corner of his mouth—though she was really aiming for his lips. “And we appreciate it. I can show you as much as soon as we’re done here.”
“I’m tempted, but I also want you to know that you ruined my breakfast-in-bed surprise for you, so there will be a lot of making up to do after we get done.”
“I can make that happen.”
Brushing his lips with hers, he quietly says, “Oh, it’s the least you can do after wrecking this blissful morning I was in the middle of crafting.”
“How rude of me, huh?”
“The audacity.”
They laugh against each other’s mouths before he takes hers in his. Her fingers tangle in his curls as she melts into his kiss as she does usually while his arms tighten around her waist. Kanto exhales into her mouth in pleasure, their tongues brushing each other in a taste of what’s to come after they’re done with breakfast.
The way he makes her feel—this heat, this stirring, this constant love—it once made her want to recoil and run away. She didn’t think she was capable of ever feeling this way for someone. But Kanto very clearly defies her previous beliefs, and he shows her how much he loves her every day.
Sometimes she wonders if he’ll ever tire of loving her, of putting up with her. But the doubt quickly dissipates when she experiences the way he reacts to her on a given day, or when she hears the things he says to her and about her. They all hold truth, and that’s something she values over everything.
Too soon, they part, but not before she presses one last kiss on his jawline.
Toph takes a few steps back until she hits the island behind her. “So, breakfast?”
His heart is beating into the ground and she can feel his everything. He shakes his head, shuts off the burners, and pulls her into the bedroom.
“Breakfast can wait.”