Work Text:
“We’re clearly not going about this the right way.”
Toph rolled her eyes and slammed her hand against the conference table next to her. “It’s no wonder you made fucking detective so quickly after you were hired.”
Kanto let out a long, impatient sigh. “You’re not helping.”
“I am. Much more than you have been for the past seven hours.” Toph paced around the room for a few minutes, trying to think about what the hell they’ve been missing. There were too many moving parts to the case, so many that it was just besting them in the worst way possible.
They had spent hours and hours on end per day for the better part of two months trying to figure out the motive of some group they were looking into. Their attacks on people were so random that they couldn’t even find a pattern to look into. The force also didn’t know how to find out who all was involved and if they had any criminal history to work off of. These assholes were ghosts.
“Hey, okay,” he said, leaning against the chalkboard he was using to map things out. “I want to catch these people as much as you do, so why don’t you try being, I don’t know, more pleasurable so we can get this done and get out of each other’s hair, yeah?”
The tone of his voice set her off. It was a mixture of condescension and sarcasm that she herself used on others but despised when used on her. She marched up to him and jabbed her finger into his chest. “I feel like I’d make a lot more headway if you weren’t in the way, trying to be the fucking hero, so why don’t you get you shit and get the fuck out of my way so I can work .”
“I’d rather stay right here,” he said smugly, wrapping his hand around her wrist and moving it away from his chest. The action both irritated her and electrified her. “Thank you for the suggestion, though.”
The insurmountable urge gathering in her gut to eject him out of the precinct, Republic City, the United Republic as a whole was indescribable. But she composed herself, muttered a few unkind words about her deputy chief, and got back to examining the case.
For a few more hours, the two of them resentfully discussed the facts and figures that they had. It wasn’t very much to work with, but it was some thing.
She was going over one of the circumstances of one of the attacks from these assholes when Kanto smacked the chalkboard and sped out of the room. Confused, Toph scowled and followed him out to find him rummaging for something in his office.
Just as she was about to question him, Kanto excitedly pulled a file out of his desk and slammed it onto the top. “I’ve got it.”
“Got what?”
“Do you remember the Hei case a few years back? The one with all the hostages and randomized attacks…?”
Toph was wearing a comically befuddled expression on her face until her eyes widened in realization. With a new sense of urgency, she sped out of his office and into hers to find the case file with the information about the criminally inclined family. There were five members in that unit, a father, a mother, two uncles, and a kid who was no more than seventeen years old at the time. They went around the City attacking people at random with no plan, no premeditation, or indication. It took Toph and the force a few months to get a lead on them, and when they did, it was probably the quickest they had apprehended suspects in a case.
She pulled out the files, which were organized in a way she would never think to forget, and shoved it into his chest. “I think Penga mentioned the details of the case being on the third or fourth page of that.”
Kanto flipped through the pages and began to mumble the words he read and abruptly stopped, tossing the file onto the small couch in her office. “These cases are too similar for them not to be related… or at least for these new assholes to not have studied it and copycatted it… fuck. We have something to go off of.”
“I knew we kept you around for a reason, Hotshot.”
Instantly after, Toph was being lifted off of the ground and into his arms. Hers went around his neck automatically and she couldn’t, for the life of her, figure out why. Normally, she would have smacked the back of whoever dared to touch her like this and pluck her off the ground. But for some reason, she found herself tightening her grip around him as they laughed in glee.
When their elation began to fade, so too did their hold on each other. As he let her down, she could feel the energy in the room shift from one of pure euphoria to one of what could only be described as intimacy. Their noses brushed as her chest slid down his and she could feel his hot breath on her face when her feet finally touched the ground.
His erratic heartbeat and the feeling of him holding her were all she could focus on, and despite her awareness, it took her a moment to notice that he had leaned down to sweep his lips against hers. Their breaths intermingled with each other as they tried to make sense of what was happening and what was about to happen.
But before they were able to discover as much, there was a rap on the door and they jumped apart as quickly as they came together.
“Yup?” Toph irritatedly called out.
It was one of the junior officers. “We’re all heading out, Chief. It’s been a long day and we figure we’d all pick up where we left off tomorrow. Good with you?”
Toph just nodded and let the officer leave. Then, without much acknowledging Kanto, she went behind her desk, grabbed her shoulder bag, and left without another word.
The whole walk to her apartment, she couldn’t get the sensation of his breath on his lips or the pressure of his hands against her back out of her head. Hell, she couldn’t stop thinking about the entire interaction.
What the hell was wrong with her?
Sure, she had noticed that Kanto was intelligent and had a deeply attractive voice and that he was almost as sarcastic and quippy as she was; she’d be a fool not to have. And she also had to admit that she’d thought about him in a way that was inappropriate to think about a coworker.
Tonight was the closest she’d ever gotten to acting upon it. She’d talked herself out of as much months prior because how inappropriate would it be for her higher ups to call her out for sleeping with her deputy chief? All respect for her would be lost and that’s what her position thrived on in a place like Republic City. She couldn’t afford to lose that.
Still, even as she got home, threw her bag aside, and got herself comfortable, she couldn’t stop thinking about where that could have gone if they hadn’t been interrupted. And maybe the interruption was for the best.
With a sigh, Toph pulled out a carton of fire flakes from her cabinet and turned on the radio. Luckily, there was a pro-bending recap on. She’d missed out on enough games in the past few months because of the damned case.
Just as she settled into her usual spot on her couch, there was a knock on her door and she groaned. She set a foot to the ground and her eyes widened.
It was him .
Toph set her snack on her coffee table and dragged her feet to the door, and opened it. “What are you doing here, Hotshot. It’s late and—”
Her sentence went unfinished as his lips were on hers before she was able to do anything about it. He pushed her into the apartment and kicked the door closed behind him as he pushed her against the neatest wall.
Their hands were all over each other as his mouth explored hers and trailed down to her neck and collarbone.
Spirits, was she dreaming?
The question was answered as soon as he bit down on her clavicle, eliciting a gasp from her. Definitely not dreaming .
“We shouldn’t be doing this,” she said against his lips as soon as he kissed her again.
He pulled away from her, sweeping a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “Do you want me to stop?”
Toph ran her thumb across his bottom lip. “I never said I wanted you to.”