Chapter Text
Toph Beifong was a late riser, but even she was bested by the man that lay beside her. She found Kanto snuggled up behind her, his arm wrapped around her waist. Normally, she was perfectly content with the current scenario, but something was off this morning…
Without hesitation or further thought, Toph tugged at Kanto’s arm and said, “You’re wearing pants.”
Kanto stirred in his sleep, slowly waking up from the intrusion. “Hmm?” Was his big response after a minute of silence.
“You’re wearing pants,” she repeated.
“You’re wearing pants,” he retorted in a mumble.
“Why are you wearing pants?”
“Why are you—”
“—Oh, just answer the question, will you, Hotshot?”
The man chuckled into her hair, tickling her neck. Kanto tightened his grip around her waist and replied, “Because you didn’t tell me to take them off.”
“Why does that matter?” she demanded. “You don’t wear pants when we sleep.”
Kanto laughed fully this time, finally finding the energy to sit up and start silly banter with Toph. “And how would you know what I wear when I sleep? I’ve only been staying the night for like, two weeks now.”
“Because every time you sleep over you’re not wearing pants in bed,” she countered.
“Gee, I wonder why…”
He earned a sharp jab to the ribs for that comment, and in return he playfully trapped Toph and tickled her sides until she was in fits and could barely breathe from laughing too much.
When she finally conceded, and as they lay on the bed catching their breath, a random realization hit her.
Her hands found their way to the stubble on Kanto’s cheeks. She grew curious, but she remained silent as her fingers lightly tickled him.
“What?” he asked, sensing that there was more on her mind than she let on.
“Nothing,” she replied quickly. It wasn’t something she normally asked for, mainly because someone else always brought it up, and it made her want to be guarded, yet vulnerable at the same time. But then, she relaxed a bit, and opened up to Kanto. “It’s just that… I don’t think I’ve ever traced your face, or looked at you.”
Kanto hummed in thought, then said, “I thought you did, but go for it.”
“Huh?”
“You can look at me if you’d like,” he repeated. “You were bound to find out how handsome I was at some point,” he teased.
Toph laughed as she shoved his face away from her, but Kanto just bounced back and held Toph’s hand to his face before she could remove it.
“No seriously,” he whispered, rubbing his thumb across her wrist. “If you want to see me, go ahead.”
She hesitated for a moment, but she didn’t know why. Toph wanted to know what he looked like, but it had been a while, months perhaps, since she last saw someone. That included her friends. Seeing a person’s features was never a big part of her life because there were never many people in her life that she cared about to really see. What would be the big deal if Kanto was another figure among millions?
Because it was Kanto.
After allowing her guard to drop once again, Toph flattened her fingertips on his face, moving them up toward his hairline. She used her index fingers as her primary line indicator, moving them around and along the outside of his face and head to capture the shape.
A strong jawline and chin, that she remembered.
Her hands returned to his forehead feeling the miniscule wrinkles that appeared when he teasingly raised his eyebrows. Toph breathed out a laugh, then found the bridge of his nose and his eyes. She gently traced her thumbs over his eyelids, taking in the almond shape of them as best she could and finding where his cheekbones began.
But before she found his familiar cheeks, she returned to his nose. Somewhat long and spirits, crooked.
He always did get into random fights…
She smiled though, because his crooked nose was perfect to her. Easy to see.
Toph then followed the lines his cheeks made all the way to his ears. They were proportional to the rest of his head, his ears, that was. She took in their shape and jokingly tugged at his ear lobes. Kanto made a funny noise that got a giggle out of her.
Immediately after, she went back to his cheeks, feeling the softness of his skin and the prick of his stubble. It was something she could get used to, and she memorized the feeling as she held his face in her hands and rubbed his cheeks with her thumbs.
All that was left was his mouth.
Her hands hovered for a moment by his lips, but then she felt his upper lip, where it dipped at the center and where the corners of his mouth were. She followed the line to find his lower lip, and when her fingers stilled for a moment, Kanto kissed them. Toph laughed and protested at the interruption, to which Kanto just grinned at.
Toph swiftly moved her fingers to find his grin and all its crookedness. She felt the dimples that his smile made, and took in the shape of how he grinned, the left corner turning up and higher than the right.
Spirits, she already loved his smile, and this was the first time she really saw it. Toph always heard it in his voice and felt it in his heart rate when he smiled, but to know what shape his smile took was something special.
Kanto took Toph’s stillness as a sign that she was finished looking, so he broke the silence by saying, “Pretty handsome, no?”
Toph grinned mischievously. “Psh, in your dreams, Hotshot.”
“What?” he playfully gasped. “You saw my grin! Only a hunk could smile like that.”
“Oh, you mean your crooked grin, you dork?” she laughed, pinching his cheeks. “Yeah, let’s just say I’m glad I don’t have to see that everyday,” she fibbed.
“You don’t mean that, most ladies fall for my show stopping grin.”
“Too bad I’m not like most ladies, Hotshot.” Her hands found his unruly hair and began to comb through it mindlessly.
Kanto paused in his retort, because spirits, she was right. She wasn’t like most women.
She was better.
He pushed stray strands of hair from her face, and sat there wondering how many saw Toph Beifong’s guard down like he did just now.
Because he felt like he was the only one who ever saw her this way.
The urge to spill his entire heart out to this woman was powerful and frightening. He wanted to confess his fears, hopes and dreams to her, to talk about the future that he conjured up for them, to tell her that he thought she was the most amazing woman in the entire world. And deep in a crevice of a long forgotten piece of his heart, he wanted to confess the biggest secret he’d been harboring for well over two weeks now: that he was absolutely, helplessly, and completely in love with her.
But he didn’t. Not today. Such a topic was much too deep and serious a conversation for pillow talk, especially when it first began about pants.
Instead, he hovered over her and kissed her. Kanto pressed his forehead against hers, and quietly remarked, “No, you are not like most ladies, Chief.
“But I like it that way.”
The playful smirk on Toph’s face made him wonder if he should be nervous or excited for such an expression. But then she pulled his head down toward her and whispered in his ear, “Take off your pants, Hotshot.”
Excited was his answer.
Kanto returned the smirk and kissed the crook of her neck before travelling down the bed and responding to her order.
“Ladies first, Chief.”