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When Toph awoke in the morning, she had momentarily forgotten about her company. Despite having been with Kanto for more than eight months, waking up next to him was still something she had to get used to. She wasn’t complaining, though, especially when she felt his fingers running through her hair the way she liked, or when she would wake up to his infamous head scratches, or to him trailing kisses down her neck the way he was doing now…
No, she certainly wasn’t complaining in the slightest.
Her eyes fluttered open, but the sensation of his warm lips against her neck was so relaxing, making her want to close them again. He was so gentle and loving and she couldn’t get enough of it. It was something that she never thought she wanted or needed but turned out she craved more than anything in the world.
She craved him .
But she was also in the mood to pull his leg; she always was, so without moving, she said, “Do you plan on letting me sleep, Hotshot?”
His lips paused on her jaw for a second but resumed moving up to her chin, then her lips, where he hummed. “But this is so much fun. Who needs sleep when you can have morning kisses?”
“Morning kisses come with morning breath.”
“You wound me.”
Toph chuckled. “That’s not new.”
“Okay, fine, I’ll just go-”
“No.”
“Sorry?”
“Don’t… go,” she said slowly, clutching his shoulder, her arm twisted in a less-than-comfortable position to do so. “You’re warm and I can’t afford the chill today.”
She felt his deep laugh beneath her fingers as he moved to lay next to her again. “You sure? I don’t want to impose or anything.”
“Shut up,” Toph said, cuddling into his chest, her ear pressed right over his heart and her finger drawing patterns against his skin. She loved the sound of people’s heartbeats, it brought her a deep level of comfort that other sounds or feelings wouldn’t provide. But Kanto’s heartbeat was a force unto itself; she loved it and it was a sound she constantly craved.
She inhaled, letting herself drift as his nose buried itself into her hair. She took in his clean linen mixed with leather or wood or something amazing and suddenly became aware of the pitter-patter of the rain against the windows. She moved her head a bit to take a deeper inhale only to smell the ozone, petrichor, and geosmin in the air, indicating an impending storm.
“Ugly day today,” she muttered. “Seems like a good day to do nothing. Sign me up.”
“Marry me.”
Her finger stopped moving against his chest and she was sure she stopped breathing, but she swallowed and resumed the movement as if she had not been phased. His heartbeat was calm, though – not nervous or unsure. Calm. “Come again?”
“I just-” he sighed, probably to collect his thoughts. “Yeah. Marry me, Toph. Let’s get married.”
Marriage.
Spirits .
Toph wasn’t a fan of marriage and her parents were mostly to blame for this. They’d spent so many years trying to match her up with someone and get her married off that she began to see marriage as nothing more than an arrangement or a contract – an agreement. She’d told herself so many times that she wouldn’t get married for this exact reason because if a relationship was to work, it didn’t need some overpriced and hoity-toity event to solidify it. And she was decided on the fact that she didn’t want to get married. Yet here Kanto was making the gears in her head turn, something that, like waking up next to him, she still had to get used to.
“Did I lose you, Chief?” Kanto said, his heartbeat now quickening in nervousness. She must have been quiet for longer than she thought.
“You want to get married.”
“That’s what I said, yes.”
She snorted. “And… you’re serious? Like, actually serious?”
“Very much so.”
“And you’re not just entranced by this whole situation right now?” She asked, propping herself up on her elbow, the bedsheets slipping off her bare shoulder, which he immediately leaned over to kiss. She felt goosebumps cover her arms. “Us, laying here in our birthday suits on a rainy day, isn’t influencing your actions right now?”
“I’m absolutely sure that I want to marry you, Toph Beifong,” Kanto said, a smile in his voice that she felt the need to feel on his face. Her hand reached out to him, her fingers brushing his lips, and he wasted no time pressing a kiss on her fingers, her palm, and down her wrist and forearm. “I love you. And I want to be your husband and maybe we can just– we can elope and run away instead of sticking around here, we can invite Katara and Zuko and the kids and Sokka, and I want to build a home with you and have babies with you if that’s something you want–”
“Let’s get married.”
He stopped talking abruptly and she felt him lean into her, pressing a chasté kiss upon her smile. “Yeah?”
“Mhm,” Toph hummed. She knew she loved him and she knew that he only had the best intentions for her. She trusted him and she knew him backward and forward. So what the fuck, huh? Why shouldn’t she marry the man she adored? “Let’s get hitched, Hotshot.”
There was a brief pause, and he pulled her onto him and kissed her until their chests burned. Then, they giggled like a couple of lovesick teenagers. He was the first to speak again.
“So we’re engaged, then, hm?”
“Shut up about it.”
“I won’t shut up about it, actually.”
“You should .”
“But I won’t.”
A mischievous smirk crept onto her face as an idea as wild as his initial one popped into her head. Again, what the fuck, huh? “Would you shut up if I told you that I wanted to elope?”
And there was some coughing, making her laugh until she was read in the face. When Kanto recomposed himself, he sat up and pulled Toph onto his lap as if she were nothing and wrapped his arms around her. “You want to run off to get married? I only said that because–”
“Quit being a chicken shit.”
“I’m not a chicken shit, Toph, I-”
“Then let’s elope, Chicken Shit.”
“I’m not–”
“Prove it.”
He sighed and she knew she’d won.
“You’ve got yourself a deal, Beifong.”