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It was very rare Sokka saw Toph in a moment of weakness or vulnerability. In fact, he could count all the times in one hand and he’d still have fingers unaccounted for. She was hands down the strongest person he had ever known.
But when Toph got sick, she got sick .
Of course, this did not happen often. She had an impressively strong immune system and she avoided any viral illness floating around, which of course meant that when she did happen to catch a cold or a bug, it would usually slam her for a good week, at least. And it would slam her badly, to the point where she could barely open her eyes or eat.
At some point during the coldest few months of the year, he had gotten word of Toph not showing up to work, which automatically concerned him because she would never willingly miss a day of work. So he made the short trip from City Hall to her apartment with a bowl of Kuang’s bone broth and five different tea leaf boxes and let himself in with the key she had given him once.
Despite what he knew about Toph or what one could assume of her, she usually kept a tidy home. There was never anything out of place and he thought that this was partially because she had next to nothing adorning her apartment. But that day, there were tissues all over the living area’s floor, the main source being the couch.
Before he could look over the edge of the piece of furniture, a nasally voice said, “Snoozles. Do come in. It’s a lovely day for guests.”
“Are you...okay?” He asked approaching the couch, careful not to step on any of the mucussy tissues that carpeted the floor.
“Do I look okay, Dipshit?”
She began to cough violently into her elbow as he took a seat next to the lump of Toph that lay there. He winced. “I brought you some soup.”
Her face slowly contorted into one of disgust. Shaking her head softly, she said, “No. No . I tried to have some soup earlier and it came right back up.”
“Have you had anything to eat? Or drink? Some tea, at least?”
Toph shook her head again and blew her nose into the clean tissue she was holding. She moaned when she was finished and threw the tissue down onto the ground with the rest of her display. Taking a pillow, she pressed her face into it and let out another odd noise and groaned.
“Toph, you have to eat or drink something.”
She gave him another groan in response and weakly threw the pillow she was nuzzling her face in at him.
“Do you have any medicine I can get for you?”
“Bold of you to assume I own any medicine.”
“Toph.”
“Dipshit.”
He felt like screaming suddenly, but controlled himself, instead saying, “I brought you some tea, too, so it’s either I brew you some tea or I shove this broth down your throat.”
Toph scowled at him. “It’s hard to believe you’re related to the best healer in the world. You’re so bitter.”
“Tui and La, Toph, soup or tea?”
“Tea, I guess. Whatever, I don’t care,” she mumbled, pulling the blanket she had over herself up to her nose. “I’m just going to throw it up anyway.”
The answer satisfied him enough that he smiled to himself and stood up to make her the tea. “I brought a lot of tea. Any preference?”
She grumbled some more, so he just grabbed the box that contained the white dragon tea and put on a pot of water to boil. While it did so, he looked around the apartment and noticed that Lin was nowhere to be seen. Worry settled into the pit of his stomach. “What’d you do with Lin?”
“I sent her over to Poppy when I started feeling...like this.”
Sokka rolled his eyes, already calmer at the fact that he knew where Lin was. “Poppy?”
“My mother . Spirits, you know what I meant.”
“Uh huh,” he laughed softly, grabbing a mug out of her cabinet and steeping the tea. “Lucky you’re sick on her winter break from school, then, huh?”
“I miss her,” she rasped after a long string of nasty-sounding coughs. “My baby.”
Sokka smiled a bit at this as he walked over to her with the served tea. He liked to hear Toph talk about her daughter like this because she never spoke of anyone like that, so openly and unashamedly.
He sat back down on the couch and rubbed her calf to let her know to sit up. “A touch of honey, just the way you like it.”
Painfully slowly, Toph sat up. It looked as though she was afraid of moving because her stomach was so unsettled. It was then that he took note of the metal bucket next to her, which was luckily clean. “Thanks,” she said with another string of coughs as she took the tea from him.
He watched her take short, tentative sips of the tea. Her cheeks were tinted in red, probably from the fever she was running, and the edges of her eyes were watery from all the coughing. Impulsively, he reached out to touch her forehead with the back of his hand. “Shit, Toph, you’re burning up.”
“Hmm,” she hummed into her mug. “Comes with the territory of being sick.”
Sokka stood again and rummaged her linens closet for a rag to run under cold water and grabbed a small bowl to fill. Fevers were always scary to him because he remembered so many people back in the tribe getting horrible ones. So much so, that many of them would seize if their body temperatures didn’t regulate; he didn’t want anything like that to happen to Toph if he could help it.
When he returned to the couch and set the bowl down, most of Toph’s tea was gone, but her mug was set on the edge of the coffee table and she was tightly clutching the bucket he had previously seen on the floor. “Are you alright?”
“Nope, I’m dying,” she said as enthusiastically as she could, her head halfway inside the bucket, just as a precaution. “Time to draft up my will. This is the end!”
“You’re ridiculous,” Sokka said in what he hoped was annoyance, but had really come off as fondness. “Get your head out of there so I can put this on your head.”
“You’re the one that’s ridiculous,” she coughed, the bucket amplifying the sound. “I’m fine. I’ve had fevers before.”
“I could fry a platypus bear egg on your face, that’s how hot you are.”
Even with how sick she was, she raised an eyebrow. “You think I’m hot? I’m flattered.”
“You just-” he felt his cheeks heating up and was fairly happy she couldn’t see his reaction to her words. “Would you just let me put this on your head?”
She shook her head inside the bucket, then she stopped moving abruptly. He thought she was getting ready to greet the tea she had drunk again, but instead, she spoke. “Why are you here right now? You should be...I don’t know, getting it on with some councilwoman or something. Why be here and risk getting sick?”
When he was about to respond, she started coughing violently again, so he waited for her to finish. Slowly, he brought the cool compress up to her forehead, his face some inches away from hers. “Why wouldn’t I be here?”
She sniffled. “I literally just said that-”
“Toph, I want to be here.”
A smile ghosted onto her lips, but the moment was interrupted when she gagged and opened fire right into the bucket. Luckily for Sokka, she hadn’t fully pulled her head out of the bucket before she threw up. Looking away and pulling the stray strands of hair out of her face, he rubbed her back while she finished.
He couldn’t help but think of a joke as he went to the bathroom to wash out the bucket and returned to set it next to her again, so as she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, he said, “That repulsed by the thought of me?”
“This is new information for you?”
His hand flew to his chest dramatically. “You wound me.”
“Dumbass,” she mumbled, a small smile playing on her lips.
“Can I get back to nursing your fever now?” he asked, sweeping the hair that was stuck to her forehead away. She shivered at his touch.
“I’d kiss you if I didn’t just throw up.”
His eyebrows knitted together, his heart about to make a break out of his chest. Surely, he had heard her incorrectly. “What?”
“What?"
“You just said-”
“No, I didn’t.”
“But-”
“I said nothing.”
“Toph, you just-”
“I’m sick,” she said quickly, fake-coughing until it became a long, seemingly neverending stream of horrible coughs. When it was over, she said, “See? Must be the fever.”
“You know,” Sokka’s grin was huge, his hand still over the rag on her forehead, which was already hot under his touch. He reached to his side, dunked the cloth into the cold water, and wrung it before setting it back onto her head. His hand went to her cheek. “I would kiss you even with barf breath.”
Her face contorted into one of disgust. “That wasn’t- That’s disgusting, Meathead.”
“I speak the truth.”
“I don’t- Spirits , I hate you.”
Her cheeks were tinted redder than before, and he was certain it wasn’t just because of the fever this time. “Aw, come on. Is that how you’re going to talk to your nurse?”
Toph tried to push his hands off her face but was met with much resistance from him. Usually, she would have beaten him to a pulp, but she was so sick that she couldn’t find the strength to even shoo him away. What a fun time , Sokka thought.
“You want me to go?” Sokka asked, half-jokingly. “Because I can go.”
“ No ,” she said quickly, wrapping her fingers around the wrist he had closest to her face. “I- uh, please don’t. Stay with me. Please?”
Sokka readjusted himself on the couch, momentarily taking the rag off of her forehead and pulling her into his chest. His arm went around her shoulders and she seamlessly snuggled into him. “As long as you need.”