Archive of Our Own

One thing Sokka could take pride in was the fact that he would do anything for his friends. They needed a hand lemur-sitting for a few hours? He was there. They needed help planning something out? He was there. They needed someone to keep them from unleashing their wrath upon their parents? He was scared, but he was there. 

And Toph was absolutely no exception. In fact, she was the first person he would do just short of anything for, and he knew she’d do the same for him.

Recently, she had one of her housekeepers pen an urgent-looking letter to him, telling him that he needed to be at the Beifong estate as soon as he could because she “required his presence,” without any additional explanation. He didn’t even bat an eye before he started packing to show up at Gaoling. 

He also needed some time away from Katara. She was suffocating him with all her interrogations over whether or not he would bring a date to Aang and Azula’s wedding. It was becoming increasingly annoying by the second. So he gathered that being a nation away from her would do him some good. 

During his time in the air, Sokka sipped his drink and thought about what might be wrong. The last he’d spoken to her or had even seen her was at a dinner party that Aang hosted to celebrate his engagement to Azula a few months back. Toph looked absolutely miserable because, despite the fact that her academy in Gaoling was thriving and that she was actually in a good place, her parents would just not shut up about finding her a husband by the time she turned twenty-five. She was twenty-three.

And it didn’t help that her friends were also starting to settle down. Her parents were taking note of as much and were using the fact to try to coerce her into accepting what they wanted for her. Toph wasn’t having it.

He figured that her cryptic message had something to do with that.

With a touch of apprehension, he raised his fist to rap against the front door, but before he could do so, it began to rain dirt from the roof. 

Coughing and heaving and rubbing his eyes, Sokka turned his head up and saw Toph’s feet hanging over the edge of the roof. He huffed and groaned a little, and was then launched several feet into the air without warning, landing directly next to her with a very high-pitched yelp and his bag falling directly next to him.

“Wha—why are you like this?”

Toph grunted and threw herself back against the roof. “I can’t take this anymore. I’m going to bury my own parents in the depths of the earth. I will. Mark my words.”

Sokka winced, suddenly forgetting about his mini heart attack. “That bad, huh?”

“I’ve met with seven guys in the last three days. Daily. What do you think?”

“Daily? I—why are they in such a rush? It’s not like you’re, I don’t know, old .” 

The idea of people like the Beifongs wanting their children to get married at the drop of a hat at such an early age baffled Sokka. Sure, there were arranged marriages in the tribes and such, but it wasn’t like parents would chase after their daughters with an endless list of men at their disposal. It rubbed him the wrong way.

“They want our fortune to be protected and for the Beifong bloodline to continue beyond their demises or some shit, and they think that the earlier they marry me off, the better,” she responded, sounding both bored and aggravated. “Their words, by the way, not mine.”

He laid back beside her, resting his arms behind his head in the same position she was in. “Are the guys decent at least?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

A groan. “You know what I mean, smartass.”

She laughed at that. “They’re all hoity-toity assholes who are clearly in this whole match-making thing for the money they’ll get from the allowance my parents are supposed to give them for marrying me.”

Sokka’s eyes widened at that. These men got paid to marry women they’re matched with? That wasn’t how things were done in the tribes. 

And, not for nothing, but Toph wasn’t some prized ostrich-horse that was on the market to be bet on.

“That’s—”

“Ridiculous? Yeah. I know. But that’s where I’m at.”

“Is that why you called me here? To get that off your chest?”

Toph turned her head to face him. “No. I called you here because I needed someone to keep me from meeting with the next asshole I’m supposed to talk to today. His name is Yin, I think.”

“Sounds boring.”

“Yeah.” She shrugged. “What about you? Any Katara woes?”

Sokka let out a long groan, to which she laughed again. Then, he said, “She doesn’t get off my ass about finding a date for the wedding. Or just… a date… in general.”

“Spirits, she’s still on that? It’s been, like, two years since you broke up with Suki and she hasn’t dropped it?”

“Just a year, actually, and no. She hasn’t and I’m getting really sick of it.”

“That… that sucks.”

He sighed. “Yeah.”

The two of them remained there in comfortable, light silence. It was nice to actually be around Toph again. He missed her; he always did when they didn’t see each other for long. They were both so used to being around one another after spending the better part of four years seeing each other so constantly that being apart was difficult. Of course they kept in touch, just like everyone else in their group of friends, but it was different for them. He couldn’t place the reason why, but it was.

The rest of the day went by quickly. He and Toph made fun of the way her parents and her guards were scrambling around to find her throughout the estate when the time came for her to meet that one guy. They were all acting as though she had been abducted—which he couldn’t exactly blame them for considering the way Toph even joined him, Aang, and Katara all those years ago.

It was still funny.

They snuck into the house and into the kitchen for a bit to steal some food that they could smell from feet away. It was some kind of beef stew that was making their stomachs grumble, so they snagged two bowls and a couple of rolls and took their rightful places back on the roof of the main house. 

“Are you coming to Aang and Azula’s wedding?” Sokka asked her as they ate. He knew what her answer would be, but he wanted to know for sure. Considering the crap she’s being put through, he wouldn’t blame her if she didn’t want to be around weddings.

He would still be compelled to drag her along to it. He wasn’t about to suffer through that whole event alone.

“Of course I am.” She scoffed. “I’m not going to miss Azula hazarding her way down the aisle.”

“Understandable,” he said laughingly. “And do you plan on going to Zuko and Katara’s?”

She turned to him with her eyebrows raised in surprise. “They finally set a date?”

“Ah, no. Not really. But Katara insists that things are cooling down for them and that they’ll be sending out invites soon.”

“Well, whenever that is, of course I’ll be going,” she told him with an eye roll. “And even if I decided I wasn’t going to go, I’m sure Katara would try to convince me to. She also asked me to be her maid of honor or whatever a while back, so again… no real choice in the matter because she’ll guilt me until I say yes.”

Sokka had to laugh at that. “So you have to walk down an aisle with a bouquet of pretty pink flowers and stand up at the altar and hold yet another bouquet of pretty pink flowers when Katara hands them to you and pretend to not be miserable? I’ve got to see this.”

Toph put her stew down, turned to him, and punched him. Hard.

He deserved it.

After hissing for a few seconds, he said, “Well, at least I’ll be Zuko’s best man. And you know what they say about the best man and the maid of honor...” He wiggled his brows.

Her cheeks went crimson and she made a face of disgust. “In your dreams.”

“What? It’s what they say!”

“I hate you. I hate you so, so much.”

“You could never.”

Toph just shook her head and socked him in the chest again with no hesitation, and he knew that he was right.

Not even a day after Sokka returned to the Fire Nation, his patience began to wear dangerously thin as he listened to his sister yammer on and on about how he needed to get a move on and put himself out there.

He loved his sister a crap ton, of course, but when she wanted to be a pain in the ass, she was that ten times over.

Since he and Suki amicably broke things off about a year ago, Katara had been on his ass about how it had been long enough and that she was beginning to feel bad for him. And despite him telling her that he was fine and that he didn’t need to date anyone right now, she insisted that it was exactly what he needed. She was especially insistent recently, though, the closer the wedding date approached and she stood firm on the fact that he couldn’t turn up alone.

“Look,” she told him, throwing herself into the chair right next to him, “all I’m saying is that the wedding is in a week and I think you should find yourself a date. It’d be sad for you to turn up there all alone.”

He rolled his eyes at her. “I don’t care if I go to the wedding stag, all right? I’m going to be in good company, especially if there’s food and alcohol involved. Why should I care?”

“Because you should!”

He was quiet for some time, trying hard not to lose it all at her persistence and also attempting to think of something, anything, that would get her off his back. At least until after the wedding.

Some short moments later, he sat up. “Okay, what if I told you that I do have a date and I just didn’t want to say anything yet?” he asked her, the beginnings of a possibly lethal plan cooking in his mind.

She scoffed in disbelief. “Sure.”

“Well—well, what if I do?”

After some deliberation, Katara made a face and shook her head at him. “As much as it would please me, Toph doesn’t count, Sokka. She’s not a real date. She’d just be doing you a favor.”

Sokka bit down on his tongue. His sister knew him too well. Still, he wouldn’t let up, even if he still hadn’t managed to convince Toph of this developing plan of his. 

“She is a real date, though!” he defended. Then, in a split-second decision, he blurted, “We’re, uh, we’re together, Toph and I…Yeah.”

Katara stammered for a few moments, stunned, much to Sokka’s satisfaction. “You— no, you’re not. I would have noticed!”

“No, you—you wouldn’t have because we’ve done such a good job at hiding it.”

“I can’t believe you kept this from me! How long has this been going on?”

“A few, uh, months. That’s why I went over to see her yesterday,” Sokka fibbed, scratching at the back of his neck. “I just—I missed her so much and letters just don’t do us any justice.”

“And why didn’t you tell me?”

He shrugged, trying to keep himself together and say things that made sense. “We just wanted to, you know, keep it to ourselves for a bit.”

The way she was looking at him, so skeptically and disbelievingly, was making him want to squirm so badly where he sat, but he tried his hardest to keep his eyes on hers. He couldn’t waver if he wanted this to work. At least for the time being because he still had Toph to convince and that was going to be another mess.

But if Toph managed to see that this plan would keep her from having to meet with the slimy matches her parents were shoving in her face, she’d have a few weeks—maybe months, depending on how far they wanted to take this charade—to keep her parents at bay. They’d both benefit from this immensely.

If she didn’t see as much, though, he feared that the day that he brought the idea up to her would be the last day he’d walk the earth… because he’d be part of the earth… because she will have buried him in it.

Katara plopped down next to Sokka on the couch he was sitting on as she narrowed her eyes into little slits. “You and Toph Beifong are dating.”

“We are. That. Yes.”

“And she hasn’t killed you.”

“I don’t fully believe she has, no.” Not yet, anyway.

Her face split into a grin then and she hugged him. “Oh! This is amazing! I always knew you two would end up together!”

“I—wait. Huh? You—you did ?” Sokka stammered, awkwardly patting Katara’s back before she pulled away from him. “I mean, uh, of course you did!”

“I’m really happy for you, Big Brother. A little annoyed you didn’t tell me from the jump, but I get it. I did the same with Zuko.”

Sokka furrowed his brows at that. This was news to him. “You hid your relationship with Zuko from me?”

Katara laughed nervously, fidgeting with her skirts as she backed away from the couch. “Just for a few months.”

“A—Katara, months? How—Oh Spirits, I’m going to kill him.” 

“He’ll probably kill you first!” she exclaimed, grabbing his arm. “And if he does, who will Toph take to the wedding? And mine when it finally happens, hm?”

Sokka deflated at the vote of confidence from his sister and yanked his arm out of her grip as he unkindly mumbled his way to the room he was staying in to pen a letter to Toph.

He went directly to the small desk in front of the window with an admittedly impressive view of the palace courtyard. With a huff, he laid out some paper and smoothed it out with his paperweight, dipped his finest brush in ink, and froze. 

How did one write to their best friend to tell them that they were now dating?

Shit.

He knew that if he just flat-out told her what was going on, she wouldn’t be very happy about the idea of being used—which she wouldn’t be, but she would think of it that way until demonstrated otherwise. So he figured that his best play here was to just let her know that he was going to be popping up at her house in a few days with some… news. That’s what he was going to call it. 

At least until she killed him.

With a deep breath, he put the brush to paper and began to write.

Dear Toph,

I’ve got a dilemma. I need to talk to you. It’s urgent.

Yours in dirt and death,

Sokka

He shrugged, let the ink dry off for a few minutes, and rolled up the letter in order to take it to the hawk post on the other side of the palace. Pressing an overly dramatic kiss onto the scroll, Sokka dropped it into one of the friendlier-looking hawks’ canisters along with a black ribbon to indicate priority for good measure. He dusted off his hands and sent the letter off before returning to his room to pack for yet another trip to Gaoling.

Toph’s living arrangement was impressive, Sokka thought so every time he entered her quarters.

From the moment Toph returned to Gaoling, her parents asked her to move back in with them. Sokka found it nice that they wanted Toph to live with them after everything that had happened between them; he figured that it was a step in the right direction. That is, until Toph told him that they wanted to keep her on a tight leash in order to help keep the family’s image untainted. She said that they wanted her under their roof to make sure that people didn’t think of the Beifong heiress as promiscuous and whatnot.

So she came up with a compromise—she would live in the Beifong estate but not in the main home with them. There were plenty of empty quarters around the property, so she chose the one farthest from her parents. Lao and Poppy knew well that if they didn’t agree, they’d end up regretting it, so Toph got her own space.

It was a pretty good compromise in his opinion.

Her room was essentially an apartment that was separated from the mansion. It was larger than the one house they were given in Ba Sing Se during the war, in fact. The structure was complete with two bedrooms, a bathroom, and a kitchen. 

When he made it there after sending his S.O.S to Toph, Sokka still found himself impressed. Not so much by lack of décor he could already notice through the windows, but at how well she found herself living at her age. He’d have killed for a place like this. Instead, he found himself bunking with Katara and Zuko for some weeks, Aang and Azula for others, and with Toph, if he had the opportunity to swing by, which had not been often.

Finding a place of his own was bound to break his pockets and nomading around his family’s dwellings was wise in his eyes.

Maybe eventually he would get a place of his own and room with Toph. That was the dream.

He didn’t even need to knock on Toph’s door before she opened it, her eyebrow up in her hairline and a smirk on her lips. “Missed me?”

“ So much. Just, you know, had the urge to come to see you again after two days.”

Toph scoffed and shook her head at him as she opened the door wider to let him in. “Are you planning on telling me why you sent me that letter that had me thinking you were on death’s door?”

“Love what you’ve done with the place,” Sokka said emphatically as he hauled his bag into her home, effectively avoiding the subject matter for a few more minutes. Stalling was his specialty. “Very Toph-y.”

“Sokka.”

The way she said his name—and not one of his many nicknames—all accusingly and with an edge of uneasiness, made his hairs stand up. He turned to her with his most convincing grin despite her inability to see how convincing it was. “That’s my name.”

“What’s going on?” she asked, masking her concern with exasperation, her arms crossed over her chest.

He dropped his bags by the door and inelegantly threw himself onto her couch, intentionally tucking his legs beneath him. “Nothing! Nothing’s—there’s nothing going on. Nothing cookin’.”

“I think you forget that I know when you’re lying.”

“Well, I’m not actually lying. And my feet aren’t even on the ground for you to truth-seek me anyway, so jokes on you for assuming.”

“Right, but you also seem to forget that I’ve known you for… too long, frankly, and that comes with me knowing that you either fidget with your nose or your neck when you’re fibbing, which I’m willing to bet you’re doing right now, so out with it, Meathead.”

Shit. He’d forgotten about that detail. 

Sheepishly, he let the hand that was rubbing the front of his neck fall at his side as he let out an exhale.

Sokka was a good liar when he needed to be and there were only a few people who knew when he was lying. By a few, he meant Toph. She could see right through him—so to speak—and call him out on his bluff in a second flat. He never seemed to have this issue with anyone else, not even Katara, but he couldn’t keep himself together when he was lying to Toph.

With a long, over-exaggerated sigh, Sokka said, “Fine. But you have to swear you won’t kill me or anything.”

Toph brought her thumb to her mouth and nibbled on her nail a few times before nodding at him and joining him on the couch. “I won’t kill you if what you’re about to tell me isn’t something worth killing you over.”

“Toph. Please. Be serious.”

“I won’t kill you.”

“Or anything?”

An eye roll. “Or anything.”

He inhaled, and in a single breath said, “You and I pretend to date for a few weeks, maybe a month or so, just enough to get us through what we need to get through. It’ll help me handle Katara and the wedding or weddings if it comes to it, while also helping you out with the whole marrying-you-off thing!… It’ll–it’ll be great!”

She was silent for a few moments and he waited for a reaction from her, any reaction for who knows how long, but then, she burst out laughing maniacally. Sokka stared at her with furrowed brows, waiting for her to settle down. 

When she was able to finally recompose herself, she wiped away a tear before noticing that he wasn’t laughing with her and said, “Wait—you’re serious.”

“Toph, please. I’m begging you.”

With an incredulous look on her face, she shook her head. “Are you actually insane? No.”

“Come on, use your head here,” Sokka said, throwing himself at her and tightly clutching her shoulders. “Both our problems will be solved.”

“Debatable.”

“They will. I get Katara off my back about getting a date, and you get your father to quit throwing random, snobby men at you. Hell, he hates me so much that it’ll probably piss him off, too, which is something you live for. It’s a perfect solution.”

“Temporary solution.”

Sokka groaned, dropping his hands. “Sure, temporary. But imagine how nice that temporariness can be when there’s no one barking at you about marrying someone to keep the Beifong bloodline alive or whatever it was you said the other day.”

He could tell that he’d gotten the gears in her head to shift because she clamped her mouth shut and had that face she always put on when something tempted her.

And tempt her it did as the next words out of her mouth were, “What’s in it for me?”

“Uh… I told you. Your dad will back off. At least for a few months. You’ll also get on his nerves by quote-unquote dating me.”

“No, no,” Toph crossed her arms over her chest, using her bending to draw her coffee table closer and prop her feet on it. “That won’t be enough if I have to pretend to be into you for that long.”

“I’m a great date, alright? And I’ll have you know that there are actually no pitfalls to acting like we’re dating.”

“No, right, of course, except the part where people think I’m dating you.”

“Hey!”

She snorted. “So what do I get in return?”

With a huff, Sokka threw himself back into the couch. He knew Toph well enough to know that she wasn’t going to do this for free, so jokes on him for not thinking ahead. He scratched the back of his neck and shrugged after pondering upon what she would ask for to no avail. “Well, what do you want?”

There was a contemplative silence that scared him slightly because he knew well that he was going to regret asking her what she wanted later. Finally, she said, “I’ll get back to you. But I want to hear no complaints when I come up with something, got it?”

“Got it!” His face was split in the largest of grins when he stuck his hand out for her to shake. He tried not to think about whatever it was she was going to ask of him. “So do we have a deal?”

Instead of shaking his hand, she socked him in the chest, eliciting a pained grunt from him. “Yeah, Snoozles. We have a deal.”

Sokka clapped once and pulled Toph in for a hug that she didn’t return. She was rather limp in his arms, but he figured that he lucked out on not getting punched again. “Amazing! Because I’ve already told Katara that we’re dating.”

“You what?”

“I knew you were going to say yes to this—it’s too convenient an offer to refuse, okay?” he said quickly, pulling away from her. “And she wouldn’t stop nagging me, T, I had to do something!” He pointed at her. “You promised you wouldn’t kill me or anything!” 

“That was before I knew you told Katara, jackass.” She shoved him off the couch. “She’s going to tell everyone and their mother about this.”

“That’s good! The rumor will start spreading!”

Toph grunted at that and stomped off to the kitchen, digging around her cabinets until she found an unopened bottle of soju. She popped the cap off and drank it straight out of the bottle, a gesture that made Sokka almost choke on his own spit. He watched as she swallowed the liquid before she leaned against the counter and stretched the bottle out for him to take.

“You’re lucky that this is a good plan or you would have been somewhere near the earth’s core by now.”

He scrambled to his feet and grabbed the bottle out of her hand. The liquid burned down his throat, but it was a terribly welcome sensation. “That’s why I’ve always been the man with a plan.”

“You better hope that this plan doesn’t backfire on you because I’m not the type of girlfriend to want to nurse your ego.”

At the word girlfriend, Sokka began to cough, effectively choking on nothing again. She made a face and smacked his back a few times to help him along.

This was just another plan he concocted and his plans always worked. And the fact that Toph was in on it made it better. It would all be fine. 

A week later, after spending two more days hidden away in Toph’s dwelling to plan out their scheme, Sokka found himself waiting for her outside of a borrowed airship some blocks away from the Beifong estate. Zuko had offered to come to pick her up, but Sokka figured that the gentlemanly and boyfriend-y thing to do was to do it himself. The act would make him seem chivalrous and thoughtful, all qualities real boyfriends possessed. 

He should know; he’d been a boyfriend for a long time before he got dumped about a year ago.

His and Suki’s breakup had been a long time coming. They’d both been so focused on their own lives and careers that they barely saw each other and found it difficult to spend time together. Suki was also in a spot where she had way too much on her plate and having to manage a relationship on top of all of that was a lot to expect from her. Knowing this, the two of them sat down, talked, and agreed that they had grown apart. It was amicable and they were happy with the decision.

To be frank, Sokka had felt somewhat relieved to be single after so long. He and Suki had been together, on and off, since they were fifteen and they knew nothing except each other. But as soon as they were officially broken up, he felt like he was unrestrained, untethered. 

This wasn’t anything against Suki at all; she told him the very same thing, actually. It was something that they each related to because they had been each other’s significant other for such a long time that they just felt pleased to not be called someone’s boyfriend or girlfriend, respectively. They needed the time to just… be. 

They had grown apart, which while sad, was to be expected with all the time they spent away from each other. 

Sokka missed Suki, and he looked forward to seeing her again after all these months apart. She had been working with Zuko as security detail after Sokka and her broke up, but she had already been making plans to head off to Kyoshi to train the new crop of warriors, so she was still doing her thing over there while Sokka did his advisory thing in the Fire Nation. They’d kept in touch with the odd letter every once in a while, so it would be great to see her again.

As he waited for Toph to finally emerge from her parents’ house and meet him at the clearing a few minutes away, he couldn’t help but feel nervous as he thought about this plan of his. He knew that their friends would be so preoccupied with their own goings-on to decipher whether or not they were faking their relationship. And no one in their right mind would fake a relationship, to begin with, so he was sure that no one would notice.

And in truth, there was nothing to be nervous about. It was just Toph. They already had chemistry—they were best friends. They knew each other left and right; he was convinced that he knew her better than he knew himself and vice versa, even. If they stuck by each other, no one would suspect a thing.

There was absolutely nothing to be worried about; nothing they couldn’t handle.

Still, even knowing that, he wasn’t sure if he was reminding himself or if he was trying to convince himself of it.

“Let’s get this show on the road, then, boyfriend,” Toph shouted as she approached him.

For the third time in the past week, Sokka choked on his own spit at her words. He nodded at her as he took her ridiculously large bag from her to lead her toward the airship. Once he composed himself, he turned to look at her, but she wasn’t walking next to him as he expected; she was still standing where he met her.

He huffed. “Toph, come on. I’m not contagious or anything. A—a bug must have flown into my mouth.”

No response.

She looked stunned, almost anxious where she stood. Worried, Sokka walked back toward her and gently kicked her in the calf. “What’s up?”

“We’re not getting on that thing, are we?” she asked him, her eyebrows up in her hairline. “Because I was under the impression that I would be getting a first-class ride on Appa, not a hellride on that hunk of junk.”

“It’s a quick trip, no sweat.”

“I’m sure it is, but I don’t plan on stepping foot into that thing.”

Sokka softened. She was afraid. Terrified, even, because if he correctly recalled, the last time she’d been on an airship was when they were dangling off the wing of one years ago.

Toph had never spoken to him about it, but he knew her enough to know that she was scared to death. It had taken him a while to get used to the idea of travel via airship, but he eventually got over his fear enough to be able to spend no more than an hour on one. Any time more than that, he was certain that he would have a psychotic-level meltdown.

“Look,” he finally told her, “I was freaked at first, too, but it’s not that bad. We won’t be on it for more than thirty minutes and I promise that you can shit on me as much as you want on the way there.”

She bit her bottom lip so much that he noticed a tad of blood surface onto her skin before she licked it away—an action at which he looked away for a split moment—then she shook her head. “I’m not doing it, Sokka. I won’t.”

“Do you trust me?”

“You—”

“Do you trust me ?”

Reluctantly, she nodded. “Of course I trust you, dipshit.”

“I knew that already, but it’s nice to get reassurance,” he said, dodging her fist as he laughed. He gave her a lighthearted shove to get her walking. “Now, we’re going to get on that bird, and we’re going to ask for drinks and we’re going to be so drunk by the time we get to the palace that we won’t know what day it is. And I won’t make you get on one of these again unless you tell me you want to.”

She began to walk slowly, nodding at him again in the process. Sokka could tell that she was nervous and that she was trying to hide her hesitance and fear, but this was something he admired about her: she never backed out of anything, no matter how frightening or hellish it was. 

One thing he didn’t admire about her, however, was her inability to pack light.

“Jeez, what did you put in here?” Sokka grunted, adjusting the strap of her bag against his shoulder as they made their way onto the ship.

Deadpan, she replied, “Rocks.”

“Funny.”

“I know, right?” Toph beamed at him as she threw herself into one of the many seats on the aircraft. She inhaled and patted the seat next to her. “Come on. Where are those drinks you promised?”

Sokka returned the smile on her face with one of his own and went up to the flight crew to hand them drinks throughout the trip. Once they were seated and settled with drinks in hand, they took off. 

Toph was tense, so much so that her hand flew out to grab Sokka’s forearm with an ironlike grip when they took off. Her knuckles were becoming white due to the strength with which she held him, but he didn’t mind. He knew that she hated flying, and the fear she had of this airship made things even worse for her, so he let her immobilize his arm for the time being.

As soon as they reached a certain number of feet in the air, Toph began to knock back her drinks, and within minutes, she was slurring her words and belching like a champ. Sokka wasn’t very far behind, his body all warm and fuzzy, and his head all heavy and spinny. 

He wasn’t sure what happened after that, but the next thing he knew, they were on the ground, waiting to be escorted out of the ship. It took the both of them a few seconds to stand up without wobbling around too much, but they managed just fine and stumbled off the aircraft and into the view of an angry Katara.

Immediately, Sokka snorted and nudged Toph a few times until she misstepped and almost fell. In return, she forcefully shoved him onto the ground, and they both laughed until they found themselves breathless.

“I cannot believe you two,” Katara scolded. Then, she shook her head and amended with, “Actually, yes, I can. You’re made for each other.”

Sokka’s laughing ceased at that while Toph continued cackling as Katara led them into the palace, claiming that she had a tea that would sober them up before the rehearsal dinner in a few hours. But none of that mattered because Katara said that he and Toph were… made for each other.

He shook himself out of his thoughts. This was a good thing. This meant that the idea of them being together was believable as odd as it sounded. This was going to work out for them, they had nothing to worry about, he thought as he followed the women with heavy footsteps. 

The first person he saw when he entered the palace and threw himself onto one of the comfortable seats in the vestibule was Zuko. Sokka squinted his eyes at his soon-to-be brother-in-law and said, “I’m going to kick your ass.”

Zuko let out a choked laugh as he leaned against one of the walls next to him. “Oh?”

“Yup.”

“Any particular reason?”

Sokka waved his hand at Zuko for a few moments before letting it drop at his side, then said, “You and my sister were hiding your relationship for months and didn’t say anything. If I”—hiccup—“had known, this wedding here wouldn’t be happening because I would have kicked your—kicked your ass so far into the sun. I still can, actually. I’m going to do it right now.” He began to struggle to his feet to no avail, then he slumped. “I’m going to do it later .”

“Good call. Might want to be sober to see your demise against me.”

Before Sokka could give Zuko— smug bastard —a response, Toph and Katara made their return to the vestibule, with Toph plopping down right next to Sokka, spilling a bit of the tea she was holding in her hands in the process.

He watched as she brought the large pinming cup to her lips to sip the supposedly sobering liquid and how she swallowed, letting out a sigh afterward. Suddenly overcome with thirst, he plucked the cup out of her grip and drank its contents in a few gulps.

“Hey! Get your own party pooper tea!” she exclaimed, giving him a shove that caused him to fall out of his seat. 

“It tastes better when I’ve snatched it from you, so no, I’m fine sharing.”

“Sharing—you kidnapped my tea!”

Sokka stretched the cup out to Katara as he crawled back onto the seat and pulled Toph into his chest, trying to keep up with the act. “More for the lady, please.”

Toph awkwardly patted his chest. “And for the jackass here, too.”

Their position, though a bit uncomfortable, felt nice. But he quickly brushed the thought away and focused on the tea being poured into his cup. 

“Alright, you two need to take a nap before we can start getting ready for the rehearsal dinner because I will not have you ruining tonight for Aang and Azula,” Katara told them sternly, pulling Toph out of his embrace and toward the guest rooms after pressing a new cup full of tea into her hands. 

“Okay, okay, relax, I’m going, I’m going,” Toph mumbled as they retreated.

Zuko helped Sokka up to his feet and led him to his room. “I really need to know how you and Toph finally got together.”

“Finally?”

“Mhm, finally. But I guess it wouldn’t be fair to ask while you’re, uh, not in your right mind.”

Sokka shook his head as he pushed into the bedroom and plonked down onto the mattress, knowing well that they had come up with a story—a good one—but was unable to remember the details. “That, it would not.”

It was about two hours later that Sokka awoke with a muted headache and dry mouth. Rubbing his eyes, he stretched out his limbs and heard the sound of his bones cracking. He let his arms fall to his sides, then he heard a loud grunt.

“Watch it, dipshit.”

Startled, Sokka flew off the bed, his eyes wide in alarm. “I—What are you doing in my room? In my bed ?”

Despite her eyes being closed and the blanket covering her mouth, Sokka could see the extent of Toph’s annoyance when she said, “Katara insisted that I crash here because she didn’t want to keep the lovebirds apart. Let me tell you—had I not been drunk, I would have thrown up.”

“But—but why? I don’t see why they want us to share a room… and a bed.”

“They think we’re a couple, exactly as you wanted them to,” Toph replied uninterestedly, pulling the pillow she was laying on over her head as if to block out any noise. “Couples share beds. I thought you knew this. Or was your relationship with Suki a fever dream?”

This felt like a fever dream.

“I have to get used to this, okay? Jeez.”

She snorted into the pillow. “This was your plan, not mine. And I don’t know about you, but I think we can share a bed just fine.”

“I know that.”

Sokka huffed and rubbed his eyes again, a little more roughly this time around, and stood up to pace around the room before stopping in front of the wall clock, noticing the time. The rehearsal dinner was meant to start soon, so he anticipated that everyone had already started to arrive and that perhaps he and Toph should get off their asses and get ready.

It took him about fifteen or twenty minutes to get himself situated, fancy get-up and all, and it took about thirty minutes for him to pull—physically pull —Toph out of the bed and force her to get ready. He’d managed to shove her into the bathroom and have her freshen up with many a protest, but despite that, the water was running. 

A short time later, Toph emerged from the foggy bathroom with her hanfu loosely fitted around her body. She was tiredly dragging her feet and her face was slightly swollen due to her fatigue, but her hair was neat in two braids down her back and she no longer smelled like booze.

“I need you to tie this up for me.”

Sokka forced his eyes to move from the bare spot on her shoulder to her face. “What?”

“Tie my ribbon? I can’t be bothered to reach it.”

“Oh. Right.” He walked up to her, straightened out her dress, and tied the fabric that was hanging at her sides. He released a breath that he didn’t realize he was holding, gave her shoulder a shove, and said, “All set.”

Toph huffed and made for the door. “All right. Let’s get this over with.”

...................

“We should hold hands.”

Toph’s face twisted into one of discomfort. “Do we have to?”

“We should .”

“Fine,” she grumbled, snatching his hand and slipping her fingers between his, albeit, quite aggressively. But of course, he shouldn’t have expected anything less from her. He almost laughed.

Despite his amusement and very slight disquiet at this new closeness with his best friend, Sokka cleared his throat and pulled her into the dining room behind him.

The large and lavish room was buzzing with all their friends, Hakoda, Bato, and Iroh. It had been Aang’s idea to invite his and Katara’s family to his wedding because they had been there for him, and Katara nor Sokka was going to refuse.

Besides, if Zuko and Katara finally set a date for their wedding this weekend, they’d kill two birds with one stone by letting them know in person rather than via messenger hawk. 

The excitement for the husband-and-wife-to-be was at an all-time high and Sokka couldn’t help but feel proud that Aang and Azula—unlikely pair as they were—were finally going to settle down. They deserved it more than anyone after everything they’d been through.

As they made it farther into the room and toward the large table where they would all sit for dinner, Sokka spotted Suki a few feet away from him and Toph. Fearful that she might see right through their charade, Sokka’s hands began to feel a little clammy and he considered letting go of Toph to dry them off before opting against it. Toph shot him a look, likely because she could sense the air of nerves that he was very much radiating, but before she could say anything, Suki was approaching them.

Immediately, Suki’s arms went around his neck, pulling him into a short and friendly hug. He relaxed into her embrace and hugged her back with an arm.

“I missed you,” Suki said after giving Toph’s hand an affectionate squeeze. “Both of you.”

“Missed you, too, Princess. It’s been a while, huh?”

Suki raised a brow at them, and her mouth raised at the corners. “Evidently. Can’t wait to hear how this finally happened,” she said, then leaned in toward them, dropping her voice to a whisper. “Been betting on it for a while.”

Toph tensed slightly at his side and her grip on his hand began to loosen, though he didn’t give her the chance to let go. They had to keep up with the appearances and it also helped that he had her to steady him. He wasn’t going to just let her chicken out, either.

“Yeah, we’ve been getting that a lot,” Toph finally said smoothly, so smoothly, in fact, that he wouldn’t have gathered that she was unsettled by the goings-on. He shouldn’t have been impressed, though.

Suki smiled at the two of them and excused herself to greet other guests. It was then that Toph let his hand go and wiped her hand off her dress, her jaw clenched. Sokka was about to ask her if she was all right as he snagged two glasses of baijiu from one of the servers roaming the room, but before he could, she turned to him with a raised brow.

His question fell dead on his lips, and instead, he asked, “What?”

“So what’s with you and Face Paint over there?” she asked almost accusingly, grabbing the glass out of his hand and inelegantly taking a large swig. “That’s over? Like, over over?”

Sokka furrowed his brows. “It’s been over for forever. You know that. Why?”

“No, uh. I was just asking. You seem, I don’t know, affected by her. Your heartbeat’s been going ballistic since we left the bedroom.”

“I—I do? It has?”

“Heartbeats never lie, Snoozles,” Toph told him and walked in Azula’s direction. He watched as Toph gave her a harsh shove and the way Azula returned the gesture with just as much vigor, the both of them holding back their laughs. The two of them caught up in an easy conversation after that, both of them seeming uninterested in what the other was saying, but he knew them enough to know that that wasn’t the case at all.

He found himself smiling slightly at the sight, and once he caught himself, he shook his head to snap himself out of it, thinking about what Toph had just asked him.

Sokka was well aware that he was over Suki; he had been over her before the relationship was, to be honest, and he was certain she’d felt the exact same way. There was no doubt about that. So then why would Toph think that he still had feelings for Suki when he believed it was clear—that he made it clear—that he didn’t anymore? 

And knowing well that that was the case, why was his heart beating so quickly like Toph said?

With a centering exhale, he shook his head and chalked it all to nerves. He was fooling his friends and his family, of course he’d be nervous.

It was, somehow, important for him to convey to Toph that he had no feelings for Suki, especially now that they had what they had going on. He strode over to Toph, not caring how enraptured she was in her conversation with Azula, and wrapped his arms around her waist, resting his chin on her head. Her height was perfect to do so. 

Toph tensed at the contact, but hesitantly leaned into him, the hand that wasn’t occupied by her drink flattening against his right forearm. 

This right here was big. Toph wasn’t one to get physically affectionate with anyone—she’d get physical, but never blatantly affectionate. His heart couldn’t help but swell at the fact that a) she had not swatted him away and that b) she was going along with it.

And the thing was that it felt natural, and nothing about it bothered him one bit. One part of him wanted to run for the hills, but the other was content where he was, knowing that she wasn’t going to kick his ass for doing this just yet. 

“What are you two talking about?”

Azula raised a brow at him and smirked wickedly. “You.”

“I—why? That’s—you were—me?”

“I remember you being more of a talker, Water Tribe,” she told him, then looked down at Toph. “What’s up with that?”

A shrug from Toph. “The world may never know.”

Her smirk widening, Azula pinched Toph’s bicep as a way to tell her that they’d catch up later before walking off. It took Toph no time after that to pull away from Sokka and down the rest of her drink, setting the glass on the platter one of the servers was carrying as he swiftly passed her by. 

He cleared his throat. “What, uh, what did you tell Azula? About—about me?”

She pursed her lips to hide a smile that he knew she was suppressing as she grabbed his wrist and pulled him with her toward the large dining room table. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

Despite wanting to question her more, Sokka’s train of thought was interrupted when his father and Bato approached him before he and Toph were able to take their seats, Katara beaming between them. His heart sank into his stomach. It was one thing to lie to Katara about his love life, but lying to his father was a bit of a different story. Anxiety immediately filled him as he plastered on his winningest smile and hugged his father and pseudo-uncle.

“Ah, son,” Hakoda told him, clapping his back affectionately. “I’ve missed you back at home, but I suppose that comes with the territory of being an important person, and I’d never keep you away from your duties.”

Bato nudged Sokka’s shoulder. “He says that now, but you should see him blubbering in his quarters back in the tribe whenever he particularly misses you and your sister.”

His father snorted, shoving at his best friend. “Ignore him. He knows nothing.”

“We miss you both a lot, too, you know,” Katara interjected, squeezing both their arms. “Sokka even sheds the occasional tear. He does his fair share of blubbering, too, Dad, especially when he and I are apart for long. Must be a family thing.”

“Says the sibling who cries every single time I leave the palace for a few days.” Sokka rolled his eyes. “She goes down a list of things to do and say, I swear, and she gives me nothing short of, like, eighty hugs as if she’s never seeing me again.”

Bato chuckled, beginning to retreat some from the group. “I’m going to grab something to munch on while you two settle this.” 

“Speaking of leaving the palace… has Sokka told you that he’s in a relationship?” Katara asked once Bato was gone. “With Toph, to be precise.” 

It took everything he had to not curse Katara out just then, but him not letting them know now was just delaying the inevitable. So he cleared his throat for the umpteenth time that evening and pulled Toph to his side. He misjudged her height, and his hand brushed her ass for a split second before quickly he settled it on her hip, his face warming.

He hazarded a glance at her, and she appeared to be holding back a laugh, and he couldn’t help but do the same. 

“He hasn’t, no,” Hakoda replied, a much-too-knowing smile gracing his lips. “But I should have known, he looks murderously happy, doesn’t he? Though, that’s the usual attitude I’ve noticed he takes upon when he’s near you, Toph, from the moment he brought you down South last year.”

Sokka couldn’t decipher the look on her face at that moment and it was killing him. Her right brow went up into her hairline and her lips were in a straight-as-an-arrow line after his father spoke. She cocked her head to the side. “That so?”

“Very much so. He talks about you a lot. You should hear what he writes in our letters—I ask how he’s doing and his reply comes back with no less than ten mentions of your name.”

“Dad.”

“What? I was never given the opportunity to tease you when you were with Suki. Give me a chance to tease you in front of your best friend-turned-girlfriend, would you?”

“Yeah, babe, give him the chance to tease you,” Toph smirked mischievously. “I’d love to hear more, Hakoda, whenever you have the time.”

The fake pet name made Sokka’s knees buckle and he mentally scolded himself for it. He was also having trouble understanding that this conversation was actually taking place and his father was seriously putting him on the spot.

Hakoda guffawed, his hand on his belly as he did so. “I’d be more than happy to over tea and rolls one day?”

“I’ll hold you to it, Chieftain,” Toph told him, an oddly shy smile on her face, a light pink blush feathering her cheeks. 

Toph clearly had killer acting skills.

Giving his son another affectionate slap on the shoulder, he excused himself to take his seat at the dinner table as a chime sounded around the room to indicate the first course being served. 

Katara was beaming at them, and just as he was about to tell her to cut it out, Toph groaned. 

“Would you quit that? I’m absolutely sure that neither of us acted this way when you and Zuko finally started fucking last year.”

“I—well,” Katara cleared her throat, “it’s not every day that I can see the ever-stoic Toph Beifong blush, so excuse me if I’m happy about you two getting your shit together after all these years.”

With that, Katara walked off to the dining table, her huge smile once again glued onto her face as she took her seat by Zuko’s side. They looked blissful and Sokka couldn’t help but feel a twinge of pride for his sister. She was doing The Thing and he was elated.

He wouldn’t ever tell her in so many words, but he was.

Breaking him out of his thoughts, Toph grabbed his wrist again and pulled him into a seat next to her. They were near the head of the table, across from his sister and Zuko, and directly next to Aang and Azula.

“So I don’t want your damn hand on my ass.”

Sokka gaped at Toph’s words, then he stammered as he tried to come up with something to say. “I—my hand was not on your ass. It was—it was—I grazed it. I didn’t mean to.”

Toph snorted, throwing her head back to laugh. “I’m kidding, relax. You’re so tense today, jeez. I’m willing to bet Suki’s got a whole lot to do with it.”

“Would you stop it with that? She’s not—she’s not a factor anymore.” She hasn’t been for longer than you know, he wanted to add but bit his tongue.

“Hmm… if you say so.” She shrugged and grabbed his hand, placing them on top of the table for their friends to see their intertwined fingers.

His hand clammed up again.

...................

Dinner was a bit of a mess, to be entirely frank.

Sokka and Toph were seated tautly next to each other, and Toph, never having been much of a fan of public displays of affection or touching in general if it didn’t involve bodily harm, tensed each time his hand took hers, or each time he would pull her into him.

No one questioned it, though, and he was grateful that their friends knew Toph enough not to if they’d noticed.

But as they ate, the interrogation began. Questions flew at them from every end of the table, their friends asking them about how they got together and how he finally grew a pair to tell her how he felt and how they finally realized that they were into each other. 

He and Toph had prepared for this moment, and he was sure that he would have been just as prepared to answer any questions they fired at them, but it seemed as though all of the preparation went to shit as his mind went entirely blank.

“We, uh, it was—it was like—we weren’t—”

“It was simple really,” Toph cut in sharply, intertwining her fingers with his atop the table again. “We were just sitting on the roof of my parents’ house one moment, and the next, we were making out like a couple of kids during a school dance. It was then, his tongue in my mouth, that I realized that we were meant to be, and the rest is history.”

Sokka had to grab his napkin and cough into it to disguise his laugh at what she’d just said. If there was anything he remembered from their conversation about this was that they hadn’t planned that part of it at all. To say her version of the story took him by surprise was an understatement. 

He looked around the table and found everyone with their lips pursed or hiding their smiles behind their glasses or napkins. Eventually, they couldn’t hold back anymore and had to burst out laughing.

“That sounds about right for the two of you,” Katara managed, wiping the tears away from her eyes as sounds of agreement chimed around the room.

Sokka leaned over to Toph and whispered into her ear, “Nice.” He was sure that to the naked eye, he looked like he had just leaned in for a kiss.

All she did in response was shoot him a knowing smile, a smug eyebrow raised as she continued slurping at the noodles in front of her. 

The rest of the meal went by smoothly. It was later in the evening when Zuko and Katara took Sokka aside to tell him that they had finally set a date for their wedding, but that they weren’t exactly telling anyone yet because this was Azula and Aang’s weekend. Elated, Sokka pulled them each into an embrace, slapped Zuko’s back, and told them that it was about damn time.

Along with that elation, Sokka felt a bit of dread. Another wedding meant another few weeks of pretending to date Toph.

At that point, Aang had joined the conversation, talking about something in relation to his tolerance of spicy foods. But Sokka panicked and he uttered the first excuse he could think of to Aang before running off to find Toph and shoving her into the nearest bedroom.

“What the hell?”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I needed to talk to you, so I told Aang that we were sneaking off to have sex real quick,” he told her as soon as he shut the door.

Toph furrowed her brows. “Why would you tell him we’re going to have sex? We—that—I don’t think couples just say they’re going to—” A defeated sigh. “Never mind. What did you want to tell me?”

“Turns out,” Sokka started, rubbing his hands together out of pure nervousness, “that we’re going to have to drag this out a little more.”

“What? The fake sex?”

“ No , Toph. Our, uh, arrangement.”

She snorted at him and leaned against the wall beside her, nodding. “Because their graces finally set a date.”

Sokka blinked, wondering how exactly she figured that out so quickly and why she wasn’t going feral. Before he could ask, she rolled her eyes and said, “Zuko told me a few hours ago.”

“Uh, yeah, okay. So, are you in? I understand if you want to, like, end this—”

“No!” she exclaimed then cleared her throat. “I mean, that’s, uh, fine. I’ve still—I’ve still got my parents to convince, you know? They’re still trying to set me up with random guys and I kind of need you to meet them formally over this dinner they host to interrogate my, uh, suitors when they come around. I was meaning to tell you about this anyway, so I guess it works out.”

He nodded slowly, finding himself somewhat relieved that she wanted to continue their ruse. “Okay, yeah.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

“You already said—”

“Right. Sorry.”

Toph nodded at him once and walked off toward the door. “Okay.”

Before she could turn the knob, however, he grabbed her wrist. She gave him a questioning look and he said, “Sex.”

“I—what?”

“We—we’re supposed to be having sex… right now.”

She shrugged. “Call it a quickie, I don’t know.”

“ Toph .”

“Spirits, okay. Fine.” She groaned, making toward the bed and climbing up onto it, offering her hand out to him. When he didn’t immediately grab it, she clicked her tongue and impatiently said, “We have to make it believable, right?”

“And standing on the bed is going to help us out… how?”

Toph smiled wickedly at him and started jumping on the bed, making the springs creak and the headboard bang against the wall. 

He couldn’t help the snort that sounded out as he watched her excitedly bounce on the mattress, a childish glint in her eyes that made him giddy. Without any more pause, he joined her as they both tried to keep their laughs to a minimum.

He felt like a kid again—so much time had passed since he and Toph actually got to scheming because they barely saw each other, and when they did, time was fleeting. So being with her like this, being fools and bouncing on the lavish bed inside one of the Fire Nation palace’s bedrooms, was nice.

They kept at this for a few minutes until there was a knock on the door and a shy, “Uh, guys? Tea—uh, the tea’s ready.”

Aang.

The two of them had to dive into the bed and press their faces into the pillows to keep their laughs contained as Toph managed, “Uh, yeah, Twinkle Toes. We’re coming!”

“Indeed, we are!”

That summoned a whole new fit of laughs and his sides were beginning to hurt—a pain that was more than welcome, though. It took them a while to compose themselves before Sokka turned to her, the smile he had on his face softening. She looked happy.

Likely sensing his eyes on her, she knitted her brows together as a few final laughs escaped her. “What?”

“No, uh, nothing,” he said, shaking his head and standing up. “I just—you—thank you for doing this for me.”

Toph pursed her lips and gave a delayed shrug. “Sure, but it’s not just for you—I’ve got something to gain from it, too.”

With that, she slipped out of the room, leaving him standing there, something tightening in his chest that he was unable to identify the reason behind.

The wedding was beautiful, and if anyone asked, no, Sokka did not cry, nor did he cower at every single sound that echoed around the venue. 

He was, frankly, a little freaked out because he hadn’t been made aware that the wedding and the reception were taking place in the Fire Nation’s Dragonbone Catacombs. The place was just a touch too creepy for him, but he shouldn’t have expected less from a bride like Azula. 

It was admirable, actually.

She and Aang were the happiest he’d ever seen them, and that was a lot for Sokka to say for them, especially Aang, who always found joy in every single thing known to man. While it was cute a lot of the time, it was also grossly annoying.

He was still happy for them.

Sokka watched them interact as he stuffed his face with the best apple tart he’d gotten his hands on. They were such an unlikely pair, but they made so much sense. The fire—no pun intended—between them was clearly undeniable from the moment one laid their eyes on them and he couldn’t help but long for what they had.

But according to Aang, Sokka already had that.

The night prior, Sokka insisted that he, Aang, and Zuko go out to the town for drinks to celebrate the end of the groom’s singlehood while the women did whatever they did. He’d invited Toph along just because she knew that she would have a good time with them, but she declined, much to Sokka’s surprise, in favor of spending the evening with Katara, Suki, and Azula doing only Spirits knew what. 

Still, after the guys went out and got loosened up, Aang had gotten very poetic after a few drinks.

“When you love someone, you love them, no matter how much they tried to kill you when you were aged twelve-slash-a-hundred-and-twelve,” he’d slurred. “When ya love ‘em, ya love ‘em. There’s no other way to slice it.” A belch. “Hey, ha-ha, kind of like you and Toph, Sokka… You know. Except for the killing-you-at-a-hundred part—she’s tried to kill you plenty of times, and we’ve been there to witness them all. But it seems that’s the epitome of the ro-mance.”

Zuko snorted at the nonsense Aang was spewing, taking a sip of his own drink. Sokka hated how elegant he looked while doing it. “He’s not wrong, you know. It took you both a while, but you came around.”

“Ha, yeah. I came around.” Sokka had laughed nervously, scratching the back of his neck. “We—we both did. We came and we went around and here we are. Dating. Together.”

“And aren’t we glad for it!” Aang exclaimed, slinging an arm around him. “We couldn’t take the tension between you guys anymore. It was getting too… too…”

“Tense?” Zuko supplied with a raised brow.

Aang snapped his fingers in Zuko’s direction. “That. The tension was getting tense and it was driving us all nuts. Even ‘Zula was asking about you and Toph, and you know how allergic she is to mushy love crap,” he rambled. “Her words, not mine.”

“Was she?”

“Mhm. And I know Katara was telling Zuko over there that she was wondering when you would fess up about your feelings for Toph.”

Sokka turned to look at Zuko. “Was she?”

“You know how your sister is.” Zuko shrugged. “It’s none of my business, so I never commented on it and I had your back, told her that she should let you be and that you’d come around. And look. I was right.”

“And she hated that.” Aang chimed in.

Zuko nodded. “And she hated that.”

“But! It’s happening! Finally!” Aang said happily. “And we’ve all wanted you to move on since you and Suki broke up, and we’ve all secretly wanted it to be with Toph, so we’re just so glad you’re glad, Sokka. We’re a glad bunch and we’re all coupled up.”

Taking a long swig of his drink, Sokka processed the information that his friends had just given him. They had all really expected things to happen between him and Toph and were genuinely happy to see that they had gotten ‘together,’ fake as it all was. He supposed he should have been happy to hear that they were eating it all up, but some part of him was unsettled and he wasn’t exactly sure why.

He’d shaken it off, blaming it all on the fact that he was lying to his nearest and dearest. That was all it was, surely.

Luckily, the rest of that evening was spent trying to get Aang to stop bouncing off the bar walls like a buffoon, but when he got something in his head and was full of energy, there was no stopping him. So it was safe to say he was a bit tired—partly because of Aang and partly because of the conversation they’d had. 

When he returned to the room, Toph was already passed out on her side of the bed, her lips parted and drool slipping out from the side of her mouth. He found himself smiling at her state before sighing and laying down next to her. His eyes roamed over her face before he dozed off, and he resisted this new urge of reaching out and brushing her fringe away from her face

Come the morning of the wedding, her arm was sprawled over his chest and her leg over his waist. He found that he wasn’t uncomfortable, but he still had to get up and get ready before his sister burst into the room, grabbed him by the ear, and threw him into the shower herself while claiming they would be late. So he slipped out as stealthily as he could with only some sleepy grunts of protest from her and started getting himself together.

The entire time he got ready, all he could think about was the solace he felt in waking up next to someone, of waking up next to Toph. It was something of a new feeling, but he’d always felt comfortable around her—it just felt… different somehow.

Heaving a long sigh, Sokka returned to the comfort of his dessert just as Toph was unsteadily approaching him. They hadn’t spoken too much that day because of the wedding and everything that had to be done, but nothing felt awkward between them, which he was grateful for.

As she sauntered her way over to him, he could see her tipsiness from a mile away and he couldn’t help the quiet snort that he let out at the sight of her.

Her eyes were half closed, her hair was only a bit of a mess, and she was dragging her feet as she walked. A true sight for sore eyes, in his opinion.

“I suppose we should get out there and do—do the thing. For the people and the convincing,” she said quietly once she made it to him, vaguely waving her hand around. 

Sokka furrowed his brows, half amused and half confused at what this tipsy version of Toph was trying to tell him as he shoved yet another slice of apple tart into his mouth. “Get out where and do what?”

Toph grunted, actually annoyed that he didn’t understand her cryptic communication. “Dance, dipshit. We should dance.”

“Toph Beifong asking me to dance.” Sokka smiled widely. “I never thought I’d see the day.”

“You won’t see another if you keep it up.”

“All right, all right. Sheesh. Tough crowd,” he told her, standing up, taking her hand, and guiding her to the dance floor. There were a few couples swaying slowly to the beat of the song that was playing, but for the most part, it was empty in comparison to how many guests were present at the reception.

Her arms went around his neck as soon as they settled somewhere near the center of the dance floor. His hands hesitantly went to her waist and they began to move gradually to the sound of the soft tune that had just begun. 

Sokka had danced with Toph many times before, each time because he had asked her to or bugged her and got her annoyed enough to concede to a lone dance with him, but this time felt unlike those other times. Maybe it was because they were meant to be putting on a show for people, or maybe it was because her head had fallen onto his chest a few seconds prior, but it didn’t feel like it did other times at all.

Toph’s ear was right above his heart, which made him a bit nervous, considering how hard it was hammering. Her eyes were shut and she seemed relaxed, even the tiniest of smiles playing on her lips. 

Without meaning to, Sokka ended up circling her waist with his arms, drawing her closer to him, and she didn’t even complain. He rested his chin on her head as his fingers began to move gently and soothingly against her back, eliciting a small moan from her.

With a smug smile on his face at her reaction, he let his eyes flutter shut as they continued to move along to the beat of the music. He would tease her about it later because this was… nice. He didn’t want to ruin it.

“This actually doesn’t suck,” she told him softly, essentially mimicking his thoughts. 

“It really doesn’t.”

She lifted her head off his chest, her arms still around his neck, but her nails softly scratched his nape, almost making him shudder. “You’re not a bad date, either, Snoozles.”

A strand of hair popped out from behind her ear at that very moment, and though he tried to resist, he couldn’t help but gently brush it back where it belonged. His hand lingered for longer than he would have wanted, and on impulse, he leaned forward to press a kiss to her forehead. 

Toph’s breath hitched and he froze, assuming that she would freak out at him or something for the small show of affection. But instead, her hand laid flat on his chest and slowly trailed up to his neck again. He could have sworn that he stopped breathing.

Neither gesture felt forced and had Sokka not looked around for a split second, he would have forgotten that they were supposed to be playing a part. He deflated at the fact as the music came to a stop, and they both took a step away from each other.

“I’m going to grab another, uh, drink,” he stammered, wanting to give her a reason for his sudden desire to run like a bitch. “You want anything?”

“Nope, no. I’m all drunk out for tonight, I think.” And she wandered over to where he saw Zuko and Katara talking with Aang without another word.

He took a deep breath, physically shook himself off, and made his way over to the very pretty bar in the corner of the space, signaling the barkeep to serve him whatever he had to offer. While he waited, he spotted Suki making her way over to him, a knowing look on her face. He huffed.

“You okay?” she asked him, leaning against the bar next to him before uttering her own drink order to the barkeep.

Sokka nodded, grabbing the drink off the counter and thanking the tender. “Me? Oh, yeah. Just got a bit, uh, thirsty.”

“After watching you and Toph on that dance floor? I can see why…”

“Wh—You—what’s that supposed to mean?”

Suki smiled at him and gave him a nudge with her elbow. “Relax. I’m really, genuinely happy for you, Sokka.”

For a second there, he thought he’d been caught in the lie, but to hear that he hadn’t and that Suki was actually happy about him moving on, in a matter of speaking, made him relieved, and even the slightest bit elated. Suki’s friendship meant a lot to him, truly, and it was sweet that she cared enough for him to want to see him happy.

Still, there was a slight disquiet sitting in the very pit of his stomach. It was a good thing that he and Toph were believable, but were they… too believable?

Sokka quickly dismissed the thought. There was no such thing. They were right where he wanted them to be with this scheme and he should be… proud.

Yes, proud was the right word for this.

He returned her gesture and smiled at her. “Thanks, Sooks.”

“No need to thank me, silly,” she told him with a grin that reached her eyes as she took the drink that the bartender had slid onto the counter for her just then. She pushed herself off the counter, gave his arm a tender squeeze, and said before parting, “You deserve to be with someone you love and who loves you back. You deserve it more than anyone.”

It took everything he had within him to not choke on the spot. The alcohol he’d just consumed was on the very brink of squirting out his nose because of it.

Who said anything about love?

Toph was his best friend. That was all she ever would be and he was fine with that—there was no reason why he shouldn’t have been fine with it. Had he once thought he had feelings for her? Sure, he did. But that was something all best friends went through—he even suspected that Toph nursed a crush on him a few years back.

He and Toph would never really work. And they worked immaculately as best friends; it’d be an absolute shame to put that all to waste.

Love, Suki had said. 

They were damn great actors if they’d gotten everyone fooled into thinking that was their case. 

The last time Sokka interacted with the likes of Lao Beifong, the man would just not stop staring him down. He also questioned him about his parentage and his way of life, questions Sokka had trouble answering for some reason despite knowing the answer to all of them. That day was the day Sokka decided he would never come across that man again if he could help it.

Yet, there he was, about to knock on the man’s front door to announce his arrival. 

Several waves of trepidation overtook him as he summoned the courage to lift his fist and give the door a knock. In his head, he went over what he and Toph discussed about what he would tell her parents, how he would act around Toph, and what topics to stray away from—he had to appear as someone who was worthy to date, to court Toph.

He wanted to think that he was worthy, but he was almost certain that Lao and Poppy hated him—more Lao than Poppy.

Normally, Sokka would have stayed in Toph’s not-apartment because her parents would have had no clue that he was even in their vicinity. But due to the fact that he was there to—as Toph called it— declare his intentions for her, he was going to be expected to announce his arrival to them and stay in one of the guest rooms on the estate.

He really would have preferred to just stay with Toph. They were already so used to each other and he had his own room at her place, too, so he wouldn’t have inconvenienced her, but her parents and their rules were things to keep in mind.

Not that he would have tried anything with Toph or that he wanted to try anything. It wasn’t like that at all.

His chest tightened just as it habitually had been since he started this whole sham with Toph, and he took deep breaths to rid himself of the sensation. 

He bet he looked like a fool facing the door with his fist half in the air, but he just couldn’t bring himself to knock yet. The moment he was going to, however, he heard voices approaching behind him.

Turning to find out the source, Sokka saw Toph dressed in a light green outfit and some guy he’d never seen before following—more like stumbling —behind her. The look on her face was one of pure annoyance, a look that was usually reserved for him, and her hands were balled into fists at her sides. She looked adorably pissed.

Sokka clenched his jaw, letting his hand drop to his side. Not adorable. Just Toph. 

Since they left the palace two weeks prior, Sokka hadn’t been able to stop thinking about their time together. For fourteen days, he couldn’t stop thinking about the dance they shared, how tense things got, how much he wanted to talk to her about it all but was unable to bring up the topic for the remainder of their time at the Fire Palace. 

Maybe it was all in his head, anyway. 

The conversation he had with Suki at the wedding played on a loop in his head, too. You deserve to be with someone you love and who loves you back. He had been thinking about the meaning of that four-letter word that set so many people—including himself—on edge a lot since he started this whole thing with Toph. The word had been thrown around often and people seemed to believe, fervently, that it applied to them.

There were different kinds of love, he knew that, but the love everyone referred to was romantic love, the kind of love he realized he’d never felt for anyone before. And the thought that people, those he held dear, believed that it applied to him and Toph troubled him.

They were so close, he and Toph, so the fear of them losing that because of this plan he cooked up was ever-present. He could feel how things were becoming tense between them, and he didn’t like it one bit. Things were changing, and he didn’t know why.

But even so, despite Sokka thinking it impossible, he found that they had come even closer and got to know each other more deeply and intimately than before during their time in the Fire Nation. He found himself wanting to talk to her more often and wanting to spend more time with her, more so than he had previously.

They got up to sharing a bed, for crying out loud, and they spent their nights at the palace while she was still awake talking about any and everything that came up without reservations, and he’d never had that with anyone else except for her. It reminded him of the conversations they would have when everyone was asleep during the war. And each time they spoke, their discussions were unfiltered and unyielding and he looked forward to them every time his head would hit the pillow beside her.

It was nice to have someone to say goodnight to, especially someone he valued more than anyone or anything. 

And it was true that Sokka had been missing Toph since they parted earlier in the year, only being able to see her on rare occasions, but he felt a more profound sense of yearning for her now.

The only other time he yearned for someone was when he and Suki were in that stage of their relationship. It was this aching in his chest that was only reserved for her.

But now, it was evidently only reserved for Toph.

And he was kind of, sort of freaking out about it.

“I have a collection of rare rocks back at my house,” said the desperate-sounding boy that followed Toph outside of her parents’ house, successfully breaking Sokka out of his thoughts. The kid reminded him of Aang when he was younger and he had to hold back a laugh. “I think you would appreciate it, Miss Beifong.” 

“Neat.”

“There are all kinds of rocks in the collection, Miss Beifong. I’ve also been able to get my hands on rocks that contain metal.”

“I didn’t ask.”

“And there are a whole bunch of very small ones I think would interest you, Miss Beifong—”

Toph stopped abruptly, turned, and grabbed the kid’s collar in her fist. “Call me Miss Beifong one more time—”

Sokka widened his eyes and dropped his overnight bag on the doorstep before inelegantly running toward the pair, extracting the boy from Toph’s iron grip, and sending him in the opposite direction with a shove. 

Placing a hand on her shoulder, he quietly told her, “Hey, hi there. Let’s not kill the guy, yeah?”

Toph harshly dusted her hands off her skirt before turning to Sokka, her voice quiet as well. “He’s eighteen, Sokka, and he’s just—he’s been up my ass all day and I might actually kill him, so don’t tempt me right now.”

Before he could give her a response, he heard the front door of the main Beifong house open up with a slight creak. He turned his head slightly to look and it was her parents. Meanwhile, the pain-in-the-ass kid was stomping back over to Toph and Sokka again, a look of determination on his face.

Wanting to deal with the situation in a way that benefited him and Toph, he turned to her as a plan took residence in his brain, and exhaled the words, “Please don’t kill me for this.”

Toph was unable to react to what he told her because, at that moment, he pulled her into him and pressed his lips to hers. She was stunned for a moment, he could tell by the way she tensed. He was silently hoping that she would snap into it for the sake of their performance, and when she did, he was almost certain that he would have collapsed if not for the hold they suddenly had on each other, keeping him steady.

Both her hands went up to his chest to clutch the fabric of his robes in her fists as his tongue swiped at her bottom lip and she opened her mouth to him. And he became winded in the best way possible.

Sokka was overwhelmed. He was kissing, no, making out with Toph. Toph Beifong. His best friend of over ten years. His lips were on hers and he was making out with her. Their tongues were in each other’s mouths. In front of her parents and some guy that he didn’t know. This was real and it was happening and he was enjoying it.

And she was too, he figured, because she wasn’t pulling away or retreating and cursing him to the depths of hell. The thought of her not hating it made him giddier than he was moments ago if that was even possible. 

It was the most immaculate kiss that he could never have imagined, tender and fervent, full of infinite longing and intent and meaning that not even he could decipher then.

His fingers burrowed into her hair and she responded by raising her own hands and gripping his neck. She was pulling him toward her in an attempt to draw him closer as his hands roamed down to grab a hold of her waist. He couldn’t believe that he was touching her like this, that his lips were on hers. 

There was a fierce and demanding fire pulling at him from within that was in stark contrast to the cold chills sizzling across the backs of his knees and back.

Nothing has ever nor would ever compare to this, he thought. 

Just barely pulling away from her despite not really wanting to, he leaned his forehead against hers breathlessly. He didn’t dare open his eyes and look at her just yet, or he would have gone in for a second round, he was sure of it. 

“Did you just kiss me?” she barely whispered against his lips.

Sokka nodded, unable to say anything, and finally opened his eyes. He brushed a strand of hair behind her ear, the very same one that he had during the wedding reception; he couldn’t resist.

“Oh. Okay.”

“I’m—that was—I’m sorry.”

Toph pulled away from him, patted his chest, and kept her face blank despite the redness on her cheeks. The young man vying for her attention stood gawking behind Toph, his own face reddened in shame, and her parents wore an expression of unadulterated shock. Just what Sokka was going for, though none of that mattered right now because he’d just kissed Toph. 

He’d just kissed Toph. 

And he liked it.

Shit.

“I’m going to—I’m gonna, uh, I’m gonna go,” she told him before disappearing into her not-apartment. “And, aah, hello to you, too.”

Sokka stood there, mortified at what he’d just done as he watched Toph leave. It was the right thing to do. They were meant to be in a relationship in her parents’ eyes. And that kid wouldn’t stop bugging her, so it was the right thing. 

He felt warm and awake and on edge. What he experienced when he was kissing Toph—his best friend —was something he never had felt before and he was freaking out because he shouldn’t be feeling any feelings for her other than the familiarity of friendship. He shouldn’t be feeling aroused by kissing her or by the thought of doing it again and again and again until their lips swelled.

His breath caught in his throat at the image of her swollen lips and he broke into a fit of coughs. 

Lao and Poppy’s eyes were on him, and even then, even despite their scrutiny, Sokka could only think of the feeling of her lips on his, the way heat bloomed in his chest when their lips finally began to move in sync, the way she tasted, and the way her tongue felt in his mouth. He couldn’t help but wonder what she was thinking.

He shook himself off, shouldered his bag, and allowed one of the Beifong servants to guide him to his guest room as he gave Lao and Poppy a sheepish nod in greeting. He felt as though he was on the brink of collapse as he walked. His legs were as good as jelly right then and he didn’t want to face the reason why.

They were friends. The best. That was all they would be.

...................

Sokka paced around the guest room, adjusting and readjusting the collar of the green changshan that he had found laying around in Zuko’s wardrobe before he came. His nerves and apprehension were at an all-time high as he figured out what he was going to tell Toph after their kiss.

As he was getting ready, all he could think about was whether she felt the same thing he did, whether the fire that was started in the very center of his gut was also ignited in hers, whether she was overthinking this as much as he was, whether she wanted to send him to hell and never see him again. So much was rushing through his mind as he figured out what he wanted to tell her or if he should even address it.

They were pretending to be in a relationship; kissing came with the territory. They hadn’t discussed the possibility in depth, but they glossed over it while they were in the planning stages of this sham. He told her that if it happened, it will have been for a good reason, and she nodded and agreed and told him fine. And damn it all, this had been a good reason because of her parents and because that kid was up her ass and she would have very likely ejected him into the next century if he kept it up. He might have saved a life by kissing her.

But what if she didn’t feel the same way? What if she had simply been shocked at the abruptness of it and hadn’t reacted properly at the time it happened? What if she wanted to kick his ass and eject him into the next century for kissing her like that and out of the blue?

Spirits, now would be a good time for a sign.

There was one knock on his door and it abruptly swung open. 

It was her. It was Toph. And he wanted to die.

“Toph, I’m so sorry,” he blurted as soon as she shut the door and he began to pace “I didn’t mean to—to just attack you and do that in front of your parents or piss you off but I saw an opportunity with them there and that kid would not stop and I know you well enough to know that—”

“Meathead—”

“—you would have probably kicked his ass into next Sunday if I hadn’t done something to make him cut it out and—”

“Will you just—”

“I just wanted you to know that I’m really sorry for doing that, especially without warning you about it first. No—I technically did warn you, but that—that’s no excuse for jumping you—”

“Sokka!”

He stopped rambling and froze before turning to face her. His breath suddenly caught in his throat as he finally let himself take in the sight of her fixed up and in an elegant, silk hanfu, her hair done half up, half down. What is happening?  

“Huh?”

“It’s all right. It was—it was bound to happen sometime, right? We knew that. Couples…kiss.”

“You’re not… pissed? Or bloodthirsty?”

Toph let out a quiet snort, leaning against the door she had just shut. “Neither. I actually appreciated the out, so, um, I guess I should thank you because they—uh, my parents—haven’t bugged me for a few hours.”

Most of the tension in Sokka’s body left in one loud, heavy exhale. She wasn’t upset and she wasn’t going to tell him to go to hell. That was good. “Oh. Okay. Th—thank you. Thanks for…that. For telling me. And you’re—you’re welcome.”

There was a thick silence between them before she cleared her throat. “This, uh—will—the kiss… will it change anything?”

Without thinking, he said, “Do you want it to change anything?”

“Do I—What?”

Sokka scratched the back of his neck, then his chin, and let out another long exhale. He didn’t know what he was thinking and he didn’t even know why he asked her that question to begin with. He shouldn’t have.

Was he the one who wanted things between them to change? Maybe the kiss had made his mind go wonky. Or perhaps the close proximity to Toph was making him miss being in a relationship, having someone to call his better half, having someone to come home to and lay with, and just be happy existing together. He couldn’t want anything more, though. That was… that was crazy to even think about.

“I, uh, no. Uh, nothing. Never mind,” he finally stammered. He fidgeted once more with the collar of his changshan and walked up to the door, inches away from her, her signature scent filling his nose and affecting him more than it ever had. He took a second to breathe her in—the smell of grass after it had rained with a splash of lotus—before clearing his throat. “We should—we should get to dinner. Your parents are probably expecting us and I don’t really feel like pissing them off more than I probably have already.” 

With a nod, Toph opened the door again, leading the way swiftly into the dining room. Sokka took a steadying breath, followed her meekly, and politely greeted Lao and Poppy, who already occupied their usual spots around the table.

The last time Sokka had sat around the dinner table with Toph and her parents was during the war, the day they met her and brought her onto the team, welcoming her into their circle of friends once and for all. Nothing much has changed since then, except for maybe the stone the table was made of as it appeared to be lighter than it was when he came last. It looked like marble. Or maybe it was quartz.

There was an uncharacteristically feather-light touch on his arm from Toph that made him jump. A show of affection. A fake one, of course. 

He felt goosebumps cover his body, but he ignored them, trying to focus on the task at hand, which was to get Toph out of any other marriage proposals or courtships that her parents were bound to set up. He wasn’t there to work out whatever feelings had just spawned and made themselves known. That was that.

Sokka’s hand covered the one Toph had laid on his forearm and let his index finger gently caress her wrist. He wanted to look at her, at whatever expression was on her face, but he couldn’t bring himself to or he might have kissed her again.

His eyes widened at the thought. Where did that come from?

Before he could find a way to bury himself deeper in all his confusion, Lao Beifong cleared his throat from the head of the table, calling him, Toph, and Poppy to attention. 

“It is certainly a surprise to see that our Toph has finally decided to bring a man she deems worthy of her affections into our household without being persuaded to do so,” said Lao, his voice booming and his mustache as impressive as ever. “She said so herself how taken with you she was and we didn’t quite take her at her word. But I must admit that you aren’t quite what we envision for her. Nor are you at all, in fact. You’re probably the very last person my wife and I would want our daughter to begin a life with, yet here you are. How about that.”

Despite himself, Sokka’s jaw clenched in anger. He swallowed the curse words that were ready to be let out and he gave Toph’s hand a squeeze before letting go. 

“With all due respect, Mr. Beifong, I think your daughter has the right to make her own choices when it comes to who she wants to spend the rest of her life with. It’s not something that’s up to you to decide because it’s not your life. Your life has been lived and, may I say, very well established, so it’s not—it’s not fair that you’d expect for her to marry the person of your choosing. 

“If she wants to be with me,” Sokka continued, confidence suddenly roaring through his veins and the words he was saying flowing out of him easily, “then I won’t complain in the slightest because it’s what she wants and it’s—it’s what I want, and I think that what makes your daughter happy is what should make you happy, too. Uh, your Beifongness, sir.”

It was then that the servers came into the dining room with four covered plates and cups of water and Sokka breathed out a sigh of relief. Food. He would need as much as he could get if he was going to survive an evening like this one. 

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the smirk Toph was trying to suppress, likely at the nature of the light tongue lashing he had given her father. A swell of happiness spread around his chest because she was proud of him. Or at least of what he was able to say.

Poppy clapped her hands, trying to cut through the tension in the room after what Sokka had just said. “Let us eat then. We can’t very well get to know the man who is courting our daughter if we do so on an empty stomach, can we?”

“Couldn’t agree more, Ma’.” Toph grinned, allowing the server to remove the cover from her plate before she grabbed her chopsticks and dug in. 

Their meal consisted of noodles and beef and vegetables, and Sokka didn’t mind the greens that evening because he needed to make a good impression for this to work for Toph.

There was a lot of small talk as they chowed down on the top-tier food, mostly surrounding Sokka’s childhood and how many kids he planned to have in the future—two was the sweet spot for him, he replied in all honesty—but that he wouldn’t mind if there were more or less, so long as Toph was happy. And he surprised himself by meaning it all.

Even though this was fake. Not real. Not in a million years would it be.

“You’re doing great,” Toph whispered into his ear as her parents spoke about the joy of having kids. Sokka beamed.

Finally, when the entire table had finished eating, Lao rested his elbows on the table and intertwined his fingers, looking directly and intimidatingly at Sokka, who nervously gulped.

Toph’s hand flew to grab his under the table, and something in his chest swirled as he thought about how they had previously held hands during their time of fake dating. They would always make a show of doing so where people would see—on the table, on each other’s laps when they were visible—but this time, it wasn’t for show. It was for them. It was her showing him support.

Sokka bit his tongue in an attempt to forget, for the billionth time that night, about the fact that he wanted to kiss her again.

“Let’s cut to the chase here, Sokka,” Lao said sternly, “and tell us what your intentions with Toph are, what you wish would come from your union, should there be one.”

“My intentions. With Toph. And our—our union.”

“It’s what I said, yes.”

Sokka took a few breaths, trying to come up with something coherent to say, but came up short. He couldn’t remain quiet for too long, so he sniffled once, readjusted himself in his seat to face Lao directly, and let himself talk. “Toph is—Toph is my best friend. There is no one in this world I’d rather have take up that title, and when—when I realized that there was something more there, something for us to explore, I couldn’t pass on the opportunity. She is simultaneously the largest pain in my a—pain in my neck and the reason I will myself to do better and be better every day, sir.

“She may be tough and brash and stoic a lot of the time, but she has the biggest heart and she’s kind and thrilling and downright amazing. Just thinking about her lights me up every single day and the idea of having her by my side for—for the rest of my life is overwhelming but just as amazing as she is. 

“My intentions, your—your Beifongness, are to—” Sokka faltered for a moment, his face warming and his heartbeat in his throat, but steeled himself and continued saying what he felt, “My intentions are to love your daughter every day without fail just as I’ve loved her for so long.”

Lao seemed satisfied with his answer as he gave him one nod of approval and told Toph that he would speak with her briefly before they said their good nights after dinner. Sokka felt exhilarated at the fact that he had been able to do what he came to do.

But he was also filled with something akin to dread. Everything he told Lao, every word that came out of his mouth regarding how he felt about Toph was true, though he hadn’t realized it until he said them aloud. But they felt… right to say. Even if this was all meant to be fake.

Even if he wasn’t sure what was real and what wasn’t anymore.

Toph was frozen at his side and he reluctantly took a chance to turn his head toward her. The look of shock on her face mimicked the same that he felt, having admitted something he had no idea he felt but now knew was true. Her hand slowly slipped out of his and settled on her lap as her lips pursed and her jaw bounced a few times. 

He wondered what that meant as dessert was passed around the dinner table and the parents wrapped themselves up in conversation. He was well aware that he couldn’t talk to her now, so he nudged her arm with his elbow as a way to say we did it but got no reaction.

...................

When dinner was finally over, Sokka walked Toph to her not-apartment, servants walking over with them to make sure they got there safely, he supposed. It was interesting how the rich lived.

As soon as they were secluded in her room and alone with no lingering ears, Sokka turned to her with the biggest grin on his face.

“Did you see their faces—wait no, uh, never mind that, but if you could have seen their faces, man. That was—” He paused, noticing her angered expression. “Hey, what’s going on? I thought you’d be happy.”

Toph scoffed in response, giving him nothing more than her back as she pulled off her jewelry and tossed them angrily into a ceramic bowl. 

Sokka got a sinking feeling in his stomach, knowing that it had been something that he did or said. He was sure that he hadn’t done anything cross or inappropriate. She was smiling the entire time, knowing that her parents were clearly defeated for the time being.

He walked up closer to her, and gently took her arm. “Toph?”

Abruptly, she pulled her arm out of his grip, startling him. “You don’t say things you don’t mean, Sokka, you don’t just—you don’t—you don’t throw shit like that around, alright?”

“I—what are you talking about? I never said anything that—” Sokka started, but immediately quieted as he thought back on everything that had transpired at dinner. He had said all the right things, he persuaded her father and mother, and he had managed to do what he had to do to keep them satisfied. He’d even topped it off and said that he—

Sokka shut his eyes, agonized. “Oh.”

“Yeah. Oh.” She swallowed convulsively, frankly looking a bit green. “Just leave, Sokka. We’ll talk in the morning or something. I just need to—I need you to leave.”

Looking at how affected she was made his stomach churn more than it had been. Was she upset at what he said because she felt the same way he did? And because she thought that he said it to keep up with the act? Sokka dismissed the possibility because that would be insane of him to assume. She would never feel the same way about him; she considered him too good of a friend for that to be a reality. 

That broke him a little because even if he’d just then realized what his feelings meant, it didn’t make them any less true.

“Who said I didn’t mean it?”

She shook her head, blinking rapidly as if that would rid her of the confusion he could see clearly all over her face. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying, Toph,” he said slowly, taking another step in her direction, knowing better than to take her hands like he wanted to, “that I know this was all supposed to be fake but that it—it felt real to say that I—that I love you.”

She shook her head again, tears brimming her eyes as she gave him her back. “Fuck you, Sokka. You don’t mean that. I know you don’t mean that.”

“Toph, I’m not—”

“Get out. Go .”

“I didn’t—”

In a dangerously low tone, she said, “Don’t make me say it again.”

He let his hands fall to his sides as he gave her one last look, and left the room. 

People spoke of walks of shame after sneaking out of their lovers’ bed and out into the real world again, but this felt more shameful than what he could assume that felt like. His chest was tight and his head was pounding and he just needed to get out of there. 

He wouldn’t be there in the morning.

“Okay,” Katara said after bursting into his room at the Fire Palace and sliding open all of the shuddered curtains. “You need to get up and get some sun. This is pathetic.”

Sokka brought his covers over his head and burrowed himself into the bedsheets. “Get out of my room, Katara.”

“I’m not leaving until you tell me what’s going on. It’s been a week since you left this room for more than ten minutes, Sokka. Zuko says you haven’t even been to your scheduled meetings, and that’s not like you at all.”

“I don’t know what to tell you. I guess I just haven’t felt up to it.”

He felt the bed dip as Katara took a seat beside his torso and pulled the blanket off his head. “Did something happen with Toph?”

“What?” Sokka asked defensively, sitting up. “Why would you think something happened with Toph?”

“I don’t know, but I don’t think you’ve been this down-in-the-dumps since… ever.” She rested a gentle hand on his shoulder. “What’s going on? I’m worried about you.”

What was going on, Katara, was that I was an idiot and made a plan that bit me in the fucking ass, and now I’m down a best friend. Oh! And I’m also very much in love with the best friend in question. Let’s not forget that.  

Since he left the Beifong estate, Sokka hadn’t heard a word from Toph. He tried reaching out to her a day after he touched down in the Fire Nation again by writing her a letter, but she still hadn’t responded. They never let their letters go unanswered. That was when he accepted that their friendship was over; that he had lost her in more ways than one.

“We just—it didn’t work out between us, alright?” he told her, laying back down and pulling the covers over his head again. “So forgive me if I need time to… mourn my fallen, erm, relationship.”

“No. No, it’s something else that you’re not telling me. What’s going on?”

He stammered a bit, the back of his hand rubbing at his nose. “Nothing! Spirits, Katara, nothing’s going on, okay? She—it’s not—nothing’s going on.”

For a while, she sat in front of him and stared him down. Sokka hated when she did this. If she did it for long enough, he would end up breaking because her intense gaze made him otherworldly uncomfortable. And he always broke, which Katara knew well. 

He didn’t even last two minutes before breaking.

“Oh my— Fine !” Sokka exclaimed, throwing his hand out to his side and letting it drop loudly against his thigh. It wasn’t like he was going to lose anything by telling Katara everything at this point; he already felt like he’d lost it all. “It was fake, Katara, okay? Toph and I were never dating. It was all an elaborate plan for you to get off my ass about finding someone to date or whatever and for her parents to stop trying to marry her off. We were never in a relationship, and—and we never will be.” He looked down at the bedsheets. “So can you please just let it go?”

Katara looked at him as though he’d grown another head, an antler, and two fish fins. “Are you serious?”

“I wish I wasn’t. It was cleverer in my head.”

“You’re ridiculous.”

“So I’ve heard.”

She shook her head. “What I saw… that—that was the farthest thing from fake I’ve ever seen, you idiot.”

“Well, it was. We shook on it and everything.”

“Oh, you shook on it, and that makes it officially fake. Makes sense.”

“Right.”

Her hand collided with the side of his head, making him yelp in surprise. “Again— idiot .”

Sokka scrambled out of the bed with his blanket draped over his head and groaned. “Get out of my room and leave me alone, Katara.”

“I’m not leaving until we talk about this because I have never seen you as happy as you were these past few weeks and I know that Toph had everything to do with it. You may say that you were faking the whole thing, but I know what I saw and what I saw was real. ”

“You’re just saying that because you want me to be in a relationship so badly.”

“While that last part’s true, all I want, really, is for you to be happy,” Katara said. Then, she pulled him back onto the bed. “Now, spill.”

Despite himself, Sokka groaned and told Katara everything, from the moment he conceived the idea while she was pressing him about finding a date for the wedding all the way to the moment Toph kicked him out of her bedroom threateningly. He told her about how he immediately felt things changing and how afraid he was of that and of losing Toph because of it.

He told her how much of a fool he was for not realizing it sooner and waiting for the worst possible moment to blurt the truth out to her—not that he had intended for it to be that way, but still. The fact that he hadn’t noticed that he was utterly in love with his best friend until they were in a fake relationship was a new low, even for him.

Once he was done talking, he let out a long exhale as he waited for Katara to process the information that he had just given her. Her face was blank, except for a crease between her eyebrows, one that would appear there when she was thinking long and hard about something.

Just as Sokka was about to ask her what she was thinking, Katara’s hand flew out to whack him on the side of the head again. He didn’t complain this time, though, because he deserved it. 

“I don’t really mean to sound redundant, but you’re an idiot,” she started, standing up and manically flailing her arms around. “How do you just—you literally waited until you’re trying to convince her parents you’re together to say that you love her. Do you know how that looks? Seriously!”

Rubbing the side of his head, he replied, “I see that in retrospect, it was a stupid move, but it—it kind of just slipped.”

“Well, I would imagine it did because you’ve been head over heels for that girl forever. At least since after you and Suki ended things for good, anyway.”

“I—what?”

An eye roll. “You and Toph have insane chemistry. It’s the type of thing that I’d be jealous of if I didn’t already have it, Sokka. That and you know each other like the back of each other’s hands. That’s the best thing you can ever find in some you love—someone who’s your best friend, someone you know you can’t live without. And you have that, so you need to get your shit together and go tell her how you feel. Make her listen.”

Sokka played with the hem of his sleepwear, his cheeks burning at what Katara had just told him. Had he really been such an oblivious dumbass? All of this, pretending and lying to himself and to his family, could have been avoided if he had just opened his eyes sooner.

Still, as much as he wanted to try to talk to Toph again and get her to understand that what he was telling her was real, he knew better. Toph was grossly stubborn and convincing her of something she was set in her ways about was an impossible feat. 

So he shook his head. “You know Toph. No one can make her do anything unless she wants to do it. And she needs to cool off. I’m almost a hundred percent sure that she hates me right about now, so I’m not—I’m not doing that any time soon. I don’t even know if she feels the same way, to begin with, Katara. Why would I humiliate myself any more?”

Katara threw herself back against the bed and grabbed a pillow to groan into it. She then tossed the pillow at him and grabbed his shoulders. “If the way she reacted to you having said that you love her out of the blue doesn’t tell you how she feels, then I have no idea what to tell you except that you are an idiot. ”

“You’ve mentioned that a few times, actually, so thanks for the reminder.”

“I wouldn’t be saying it if you weren’t proving me right about it,” she retorted, then heaved a sigh. “Look, I know that this is different and it might be scary to be feeling this way about your best friend of all people, but you need to talk about this. You owe her a conversation, even if she doesn’t want to have one.”

“Just please let it go. I’ll—I’ll see if I can drop by her place in, like, a year or something and see if she feels like talking. How does that sound?” Sokka told her sarcastically, getting back under the covers and giving her his back.

Katara was silent, still sitting next to him, and he could tell that she was planning something, though he didn’t have the energy to question her about it. Eventually, however, she left, allowing him to get back to drowning in his bedsheets and sorrow.

...................

About an hour after Katara finally left him alone, Sokka managed to drag himself out of bed and take a bath. He wanted to convince himself that he did so because he decided to get himself together, but it was really because he couldn’t tolerate his own stench. He smelled Momo when he was damp and dirty.

He kept thinking about the conversation with Katara and as much as he tried to push it away, he could only find more validity in what she told him. If Toph truly didn’t care about what he’d said, she wouldn’t have reacted as strongly as she did. He knew that well because he knew her well.

Still, though, he also knew her well enough to know that she wasn’t just going to sit down and have a conversation with him just like that after he’d hurt her. Toph was the kind of person who would put up walls to not have to deal with her emotions or have to open up about them to anyone. And Sokka had been lucky enough to get her to show him all of her when barely anyone was able to.

How he wanted to kick himself for fucking it up.

For the first time since they’d become friends, Sokka felt that his relationship with her was in jeopardy and the thought made him sick to his stomach.

He ran a hand down his face and let out a frustrated exhale as he plopped down onto his bed to try to get himself together. There had to be something he was able to do. He couldn’t just let this go.

Before he could start listing ideas to run through, Katara burst into his room, startling him off the bed.

“Katara! I could have been stark naked and you just—” Sokka stopped talking when he registered the look of urgency on her face. “What happened?”

“It’s Toph. She’s in the vestibule storage space—I don’t know—She just showed up and she’s asking for you.”

Without awaiting a further explanation, Sokka pushed past his sister and sprinted downstairs, trying to reach Toph as fast as his legs could carry him with Katara on his heels. 

She’d actually shown up to talk to him. Or at least he assumed that was the case. What if she had only come to tell him off and to ensure that he understood that their friendship was over? He couldn’t let her do that, though, because no matter what he felt, he just—he couldn’t bare losing her.

Sokka figured that he could hear her out and then plead his case, then hope to anything that would listen that she would let him talk before just up and walking out of his life.

They could work through this.

Out of breath, Sokka made it down to the storage room and flew through the door, his eyes landing on her standing with her hands on her hips, a worried look on her face. 

“Toph.”

She let out a sigh of relief at the sound of his voice. “You’re okay.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m—I’m fine. I’ve just been, you know, worried about you and how—how we left things. And, uh, Katara told me you were here and I was hoping you came for the same reason…”

“I’m not here to—”

The door behind him slammed suddenly and he heard the click of the lock sliding into place. Almost immediately, Sokka deflated as a wave of realization washed over him. 

He was going to kill Katara.

Toph’s eyes widened as she stomped up to the door and knocked her fists against it. “This your idea of a sick joke, Sugar Queen?”

“Mm, not a joke,” Katara responded thoughtfully from the other side of the door. “More like an elaborate plan.”

Sokka watched as Toph unraveled a bit, the banging against the door becoming louder and more furious with each passing second as she uttered curses at his sister that he couldn’t very well blame her for spewing because she was saying what he wanted to say at that moment.

Abruptly, Toph stopped, a eureka look on her face, and metalbent the lock to unbolt it, but it immediately clicked to indicate it being locked again by Katara on the other side. This continued for a few seconds until Toph gave the door a strong kick and her face twisted into a scowl.

“You two need to talk!” Katara explained calmly. “You won’t get anywhere if you don’t, so I won’t be letting you out until you get it together.”

“I hope you realize that I can earthbend myself out of here.”

“You’re not going to, though, because I doubt that you’ll want to spend the next few weeks fixing what you damaged if you do earthbend yourself out of there.”

“She has a point,” Sokka mumbled, earning himself a scarily accurate glare from Toph as she grumbled her disappointment.

Apparently defeated, Toph slid her back down the door and slumped onto the ground, her jaw clenched and her head in her hands. He wanted to reach out and pull her into him, but that was sure to be a lethal decision on his part, so he kept to himself.

She was mumbling, the way she did when she was angrily working something out with herself, and he could have sworn he heard her mumble the word airship.

“You got on an airship to come here?”

The question came out of his mouth before he could stop himself, but he hazarded a glance at her. It took her a while to answer and Sokka figured that she wasn’t intending to, so he slumped back against the wall. 

“Katara said you were hurt,” she finally said. “So yeah. I got on a damn airship.”

As much as he shouldn’t have, he smiled at that. Something about the fact that, despite the current state of their friendship or relationship or whatever it was at this point, she found it important enough to get on an airship of all things, regardless of her fear of them, to see if he was okay. 

How the hell had he been so oblivious to notice that he loved this woman more than anything he’d ever known? He had no clue, but he was sure glad that he caught onto it before it was too late.

“How do you know I didn’t mean it, Toph?” Sokka asked her suddenly. His voice was quieter than he had intended for it to be.

Toph inhaled and stood up, beginning to walk to the far side of the cramped room. “I don’t know. It just—I don’t know.”

“What?”

“You loving me? It sounds like the shit thirteen-year-old me would fantasize about, Sokka. I’ve been holding out for years like a fucking numbskull for you to open your eyes and realize that I’m right fucking here.

“And I’ve never said this, not because I was afraid to or whatever, I just—your friendship is more important to me and I know that something like this would change things between us because you’re an idiot.”

She let out a frustrated huff before lifting her hand up to her head, probably trying to make sense of the fact that she had just said everything she said aloud. All Sokka could do for a few beats was stare at her; he couldn’t believe what he’d just heard. Toph’s eyes had been blazing as she spoke, and she had been talking a mile a minute, letting out what she had apparently been suppressing for years. And as much as he wanted to make sense of it at that moment, he couldn’t because all he could focus on was that she had just said that.

So despite being called an idiot for the fifth time that day, Sokka gathered all the courage and grit he could muster and risked a step toward her. He took her hand in both of his before placing it flat on his chest. 

“Use that earthbending of yours for a second, will you? And take note of whether I’m putting any of my stupid tells to use.”

“Sokka—”

“I love you. I do. And I’m, well, an idiot for not realizing it sooner, I know. It took us faking a relationship for me to come to my senses, but I’m—I can’t go back to just being your best friend, Toph. I can’t. And I really need you to tell me you feel the same way right now. Or I might die.” He paused and added, “Actually die.”

Toph bit her lip to keep from smiling at that; he saw the corners of her lips twitch and it made his heart swell. But whatever smile she was trying to keep him from seeing dropped almost immediately. “Shut up.”

“Do you believe me?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well,” he cupped her cheek and lowered his face down to hers, “you should.”

His lips just barely brushed hers before she gave a shuddering exhale and turned her face away from him. Her hand was still on his chest, but it was tightly clutching the fabric of his robe as if she was trying to keep herself from doing something. 

“It took me a long time to get over you, the idea of you,” she finally said quietly, hardly above a whisper. “It’s one of the reasons why I did this stupid fake dating thing. I wanted to prove to myself that I was done with whatever I felt for you. But then all of this ”—she gestured between the two of them—“happened and like I said: if this turns out to be some weird side effect of spending more time with me or something, I rather have you as a friend than not have you at all and—”

“I’m telling you the truth.”

“No, you’re telling me what you believe, and that’s okay. I get it now. It’s not something I’ll hold against you believe it or not. Maybe we’ll laugh about it one day, too.” Toph chuckled dryly, bringing the hand that was white-knuckling his robe to her forehead. “Now what the hell do I have to do to get Sugar Queen to let me out of here, huh? Not a huge fan of cramped storage rooms.”

Sokka stared at her, a mix of shock at her complete denial and pain at her forced rejection of him. Spirits, he knew that she was stubborn, but this was a totally different level of hardheadedness. 

In a split-second decision, Sokka gathered all the courage he had—little as it was at that moment—grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her into him before fiercely pressing his lips to hers. 

Her response was immediate, and the blissful feeling of the fire igniting in his chest was perfect, but only for a few seconds because she pushed him away from her. Toph looked furious. She was flushed, her chest was rising and falling at a quick pace, and her brows were drawn together, her swelling lips parted in shock.

Sokka’s eyes felt like they were saucers, they were so wide. How could he have just done that? Especially after what she’d told him. He just wanted her to believe that he wanted it as much as he was telling her he did. Still, that was no excuse.

An apology was about to leave his mouth, but then, in the best kind of twist of fate, Toph’s lips were back on his. She was kissing him, her hands on both his cheeks. She was balancing herself on her toes as his arms instinctively went around her waist to pull her closer.

She backed him into one of the shelves behind him with a slam as they reacquainted themselves with each other in this new way. He was fairly certain that they would have laughed at that had they not been so caught up with each other. But right now was no laughing matter as her hands began to travel down his neck and torso and around his waist to clutch his robes behind his back. 

Spirits, she was everywhere and it was better than he’d ever imagined.

A newfound strength in him, he flipped them so that her back was against the metal shelves rather than his. She moaned into his mouth at the force and the sound made Sokka want to devour her right then. But instead, his left hand lifted to caress her cheek, and his right hand gripped her tightly by the waist, his fingers digging into her as she bit his bottom lip. This time, he was the one who moaned. 

Sokka felt exhilarated. He felt his chest grow increasingly warm with every single passing second. The scent he was so used to from her was driving him to drink and he wanted the closeness to last forever.

The kiss was slowing and the overall intensity was decreasing, though the passion and meaning were still there. He felt Toph melt against him and his heart began to pound even more strongly in his chest.

He really, truly loved her.

They needed air, unfortunately, and Toph was the first to pull away, and he almost complained at the loss of her. She brushed her nose against his.

“So you mean it. You really mean it, then.” It wasn’t a question, which made him hopeful.

Wracking his brain for the right thing to say, Sokka took her hand and kissed the inside of her wrist before saying, “I want to kiss you, hold you, be the person you wake up to every morning and go to sleep next to every night, make sure you’ve eaten and slept well, marry you, have babies with you, watch your hair go grey and your skin wrinkle and your belly go soft and you shrink with age.

“I want to be next to you for the rest of my life and whatever comes after it, Beifong. So yes. I damn well mean it.”

She was quiet for a painfully long time, her face betraying no emotion apart from the almost imperceptible smile on her lips that he was sure only he would’ve picked up on had there been anyone else present. 

“Sounds fun,” she finally said. “But I think we can wait a few years before you do most of what’s on that list of yours, Snoozles. Don’t get ahead of yourself.”

A shit-eating grin crept onto his face and he pulled her into him again, nuzzling his face into her neck. He kissed her there, and trailed his way up to her jaw, to her cheek, and finally her lips. And like the way he felt the first time he’d kissed her not even a week prior, his heart pounded in his chest.

She pulled away again, her breath on his lips. “You still owe me for going through with this thing, you know.”

“I’m sure that whatever you come up with will be worth it.”

“What I’m thinking would benefit both parties involved.” She brought their lips together again, slipping her hands under his shirt before he was able to eagerly respond to her implication. His insides were no longer solid after that.

Toph smiled into the kiss as she got on her toes again to get better access to him. He couldn’t help but smile back, feeling her cool hands against his back.

Sokka melted. Her kiss was the kind of kiss he had never experienced until her, the kind that left him giddy and weak in the knees and caused him to lose all sense of time and location. 

He drew her impossibly closer, simply unable to get enough of touching her as his hands traveled down her back, to her waist, her hips, and then one snaked up to tangle in her hair. She seemed to feel the same, her hands coming up to stroking his shoulders with her palms and grabbing the back of his neck. He let out a moan against her lips as he imagined his hands gliding over her in this manner when she was completely naked.

Just as he was about to go in for another kiss, there was a prominent knock on the door that creaked open without either him or Toph giving the interloper— ahem, Katara—permission to enter.

“So I see you’ve worked things out,” his sister said with a smug brow raised, only her head peeking into the storage room. “Or heard, I should say.”

Sokka glared at her and said, “get out” at the same time Toph said, “scram, Sugar Queen.”

“All right, all right, I can take a hint,” Katara told them, shooting her brother an over-exaggerated wink before she finally shut the door. From outside, she shouted, “Try not to break anything—or each other!”

There was a small bout of silence before Sokka and Toph burst out laughing, clutching at their sides and gasping for air. 

When they recomposed themselves, she asked, “Anyone ever told you your sister’s a cockblocker?”

“Not really, but it goes without saying. I mean, we’re talking about Katara. It’s a given.” He shrugged, pulling her into his embrace. It took her a second to respond, but she did, wrapping her arms around his midsection and leaning her chin on his chest, her face angled toward his. “But I don’t care because you and I have all the time in the world and she won’t be able to cockblock all the time, will she?”

“I don’t know if you thought that would be charming or what, but it was—no.”

Sokka scrunched up his nose. “No?”

“Nope. Horrible. Zero out of ten. Never again.”

“Never again? Doubtful. But guess what?”

She raised a brow in question, a smirk on her lips.

“You’re going to have to deal with it,” he told her, his fingers beneath her chin to tilt her face up to his. “Because you love me.”

“Mm, do I? You sure?”

“I think you do, especially because you didn’t bury me in the depths of this palace when I told you so. In fact, I’m certain you do.”

“I suppose you’re right. I love you or whatever.”

He scoffed at that before kissing the corner of her mouth. “You suppose? Or whatever? You wound me.”

“Serves you right for taking so long to come around.”

“Well,” Sokka said against her lips, “better late than never, right?”

Sokka stood at the head of the altar, his hands crossed in front of him as he tried to keep himself from worrying himself into oblivion. The bride was already fifteen minutes late and he was growing wearier and wearier with every passing second. He knew women took forever to get themselves ready, but how did they not account for that on a day in which they had to be on time?

It took everything within him to not begin to pace from one end of the altar to the other. There were thousands of eyes on him including Iroh, Bato, a whole army of Fire Nation Important People, and Toph’s parents to name a few. His eyes caught Lao’s every few seconds and he kind of felt like shriveling up and dying whenever he did. The man’s stare was intense—even more so since he and Toph actually began their relationship a few months prior.

Things had been… amazing if he was being completely honest. There was so much that he’d missed out on, that they both did, and he was happy to not be wasting any more of their time together. Nothing in their dynamic had really changed, except for the fact that they managed to spend more time with each other, there was more sneaking around on his part as he slipped in and out of Toph’s not-apartment as frequently as he was able to, she also managed to get away from Gaoling more frequently, and there was kissing. A lot of kissing. And more-than-kissing. 

He kicked himself every day for not coming to his senses sooner, but he was ever so happy that he did. 

And now, Sokka was standing at an altar. Nervous out of his wits for absolutely no reason.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Zuko hissed into his ear, suddenly appearing directly next to him. “You look constipated.”

Sokka ignored the jab. “Where the hell is she? This is taking too long and I’m afraid she found a window to jump out of.”

“How are you worried right now? This is my wedding.”

“And she’s my sister. If she’s jumped out a window, I should know about it,” Sokka whispered to him. Of course, he knew that Katara would never beg off from their wedding—she loved Zuko too much to do that, but it was fun to mess with him. “In fact, I should be the one helping her escape, shouldn’t I?”

Zuko deadpanned and flatly said, “I’m just so glad I made you my best man.”

“I’m flattered, really. But I’m a brother who gives empty third degrees to husbands-to-be because it’s my job to, and if she wants to jump ship, she should jump ship.”

“She’s not jumping ship, Sokka.”

“You sound awfully confident, buddy. What if she does? I should be the one to check, so I can deliver the news to you myself.”

Zuko grabbed his arm to keep him in place. “You just want an excuse to see Toph.”

Sokka put a sheepish look on his face and reached up to scratch his neck. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. This is about me being a good brother to my sister and checking on whether she needs me to find a getaway ostrich horse.”

“Uh-huh,” Zuko responded with an eye roll. “They’ll come out in a few minutes. Relax.”

Truthfully, he just really did want to see Toph. An entire week without her, since they started their relationship officially, was practically unbearable for him. When he’d told Katara that letters weren’t enough when they were faking things, he hadn’t realized how true that was until he actually had a reason to notice. 

They hadn’t been able to connect for about five days because she was busy getting things together for her Yu Dao metalbending academy reopening. She’d closed it down a few months before their friends’ wedding season because the trip from Gaoling to Yu Dao was a bit of a pain for her, but she figured that she could use the time away from her parents from time to time. And while Sokka wanted to be there, he was busy in the Fire Nation helping Zuko get things together so he was able to have the time off for the wedding.

The job of a best man and special representative to the Fire Nation was never done, apparently, and he was happy to do it, but he really needed to see Toph.

She hadn’t arrived until this very morning, and of course, the moment she touched down after Aang and Azula had picked her up, Katara ushered her to her quarters so they could get ready for the wedding together and they’d been locked away for the better part of the day, and Sokka was agonized because of it.  

And also because he’d had a Very Serious conversation with her father, which was another reason he was eager to see her.

Earlier in the day, before Sokka had taken his position next to Zuko at the altar, Lao Beifong himself stood behind him and cleared his throat, successfully scaring the living shit out of Sokka. Toph’s father gave him a look that indicated that he wanted to go somewhere more private than the crowded ceremony room of the palace, so Sokka led him to the Royal Gallery, which was a few feet away and quieter.

“I don’t want to prolong this conversation more than I have to,” started Lao, expertly skipping pleasantries as he looked at the portrait of Zuko in front of him, “so I’ll just say that it’s quite evident how fond of you my daughter is.”

“Oh—”

“I wasn’t finished.”

Sokka pursed his lips. “Apologies.”

“As I was saying,” Lao grunted and continued, “Toph is very fond of you and although you are certainly not who I would choose out of the widening pool of suitors she currently has at her feet, I am also not one to make the mistake of dismissing her wishes as I’ve done so readily in the past.

“You have proven to be what she needs and you have made an impression upon my wife and me, a much better one than your first, to be sure. And it… pleases me to say that I have never seen my daughter as happy as she is when she’s with you or when she speaks of you. I want nothing more than her happiness. Do you understand, young man?”

All he could do was nod dumbly to wordlessly answer Lao’s question.

“So, Sokka,” said Lao, “what I am intending to say is that you have my wife and I’s blessing to marry my daughter once you see fit.”

Sokka was unable to form words then; he could only blink and open and close his mouth like a damned fish. This man—the same man who had very blatantly expressed his dislike of him in the past—had stood before him to tell him that he had the Beifong Blessing to marry Toph. 

Spirits, they had just started dating—seriously, anyway. He wasn’t even thinking of marriage—in the near future, anyway, because he knew that he would marry Toph in a heartbeat eventually—and he was certain that she wasn’t either. Her parents had been shoving the idea down her throat for months already, maybe even longer, and it was understandable that marriage would be the last thing on her mind. And of course, he loved Toph, and it had taken him way too long to come to that conclusion, but marriage and discussions of it were still premature, despite already knowing what he wanted for their future.

But that was it—the future. Not now. Not when he had just gotten Toph in his arms and they were actually happy with where they were at.

Steeling himself, Sokka managed to say, “I appreciate that, Mr. Beifong, but Toph and I… we’re not anywhere near ready for that— she’s not ready for it. But, uh, I’ll keep that… in mind.”

“Very well,” replied Lao, adjusting his robes. Then, he stuck his hand out for Sokka to shake. “Take care of her, nonetheless, will you?”

Sokka had stared at Lao’s hand for a second before taking and shaking it. “She can do that for herself, sir, but I’ll keep an eye out.”

It had surprised him when Lao guffawed before disappearing back into the ceremony room, leaving Sokka there to think about the future. A future with Toph.

What he’d told her in the storage room was all true; he had been able to imagine an entire life with her, and he wanted to experience all the highs and lows of it with her—all the fights and disagreements and the makeups and tears and all of it. There was nothing he was more set on than that and he didn’t seem to hate the idea of it, either, when he unloaded all of that onto her.

But would she really want to make things so permanent and official? It was Sokka’s guess that she wouldn’t.

 “A few minutes is too long, Fire Lord,” Sokka told Zuko finally. “I’d think you’d feel the same way considering the fact that your bride is late to your wedding.”

“I do. On the inside. Like you should be because your eventual parents-in-law are watching you and your constipation face very intently from where they’re sitting.”

Sokka shot a glance over at where Lao and Poppy were sitting again, actually chatting with his father. Lao seemed interested in what Hakoda was telling him and so did Poppy, though the moment Sokka had looked over at them was the moment Poppy decided to do the same. He was about to probably pass out when her eyes landed on his, but she sent a soft smile and a nod of approval his way that made him feel a little more stable. He nodded at her in return, feeling his hands clam up suddenly.

“You’re an asshole, you know that?”

All Zuko did was chuckle cynically and nod his chin toward the large double doors across the room that had just opened up to reveal his stoic-faced, flower-donning, stunning-looking girlfriend. She looked absolutely miserable and he couldn’t keep the smile off his face at the sight of her.

Katara made sure that Toph looked the part of maid of honor, despite Toph’s dislike of the idea. She was wearing a beautiful red and gold-trimmed dress, her hair was in two braids down her shoulders and she was holding a huge bouquet of tiger lilies in front of her. His eyes trailed down to her feet to see if she was wearing shoes, but it looked like that was where Toph decided to draw the line and he had to suppress a chuckle. 

He couldn’t take his eyes off her as she made her way down the aisle, looking as though she barely wanted to be there, but doing her part to make her friend’s day worthwhile. Toph would clearly do anything for the people she loved, so if that meant being his sister’s maid of honor and slapping on a dress and makeup, she would do it in a heartbeat despite any of her empty threats and protests. 

Toph must have known his eyes were on her because once she took her position across from him because the scowl on her face deepened but there was the faintest smile on her face. All he wanted to do at that very moment was take her in his arms, kiss her, and do what the best men and maids of honor did religiously after weddings. 

Instead, he turned his head toward the double doors again to see his sister clutching the arm of their father as they began to walk down the aisle.

Katara wore the biggest smile on her face as she neared the altar, and once she did, she turned to Hakoda for a kiss on the cheek, and to Sokka for a tight hug.

“Got her here safe and sound,” she whispered in his ear before pulling away and winking as she turned toward a beaming Zuko. 

The wedding went by quickly. There were words spoken, vows exchanged, and a liplock at which not even Sokka could call oogie. Though, as much as he enjoyed the wedding and as much as he may or may not have cried at his sister and closest friend getting married, all he could think of was how much he loved Toph.

And how quickly he could slip her out of that dress. It looked easy enough from where he was standing…

When the wedding reception finally came around, he and Toph gave their kickass best man and maid of honor speeches, he grabbed her as soon as he was able to and kissed her senseless until she pushed him away and told him to cut it out as she stuffed a dumpling in her mouth. He was giddier than he ever had been. 

“Can we get out of here now?”

“Not a chance. I’m hungry.”

Sokka grabbed her hand and tugged. “What if I told you I’ve got that covered?”

Toph turned her head slightly in his direction as she tried to keep the smile off her face. “I’m listening.”

He grinned, made sure no one was looking at them or for them, and he pulled her out of the ballroom, up a staircase, and onto one of the terraces in the west wing of the palace. The night wind was cool on his face and it contrasted how warm he felt with Toph next to him.

In front of them was a blanket and a picnic basket set neatly beside it. He turned to look at Toph, and there was a small grin on her face that she was biting back. 

“Dinner’s served, milady.” He bowed, stretching his arm out to present his setup.

“You are,” Toph started, her grin widening, “ so disgustingly cheesy.”

“You love it.”

“A fault of mine, really.”

At that, he shook his head as he sat down on the ground and pulled her into his lap, which caught her off guard and made her yelp. He brought his hand up to her cheek and kissed her deeply. Toph’s arms went around his neck and his tightened around her waist before he pulled back, barely able to contain his grin.

“Weren’t you hungry?”

She bit his bottom lip and tugged a bit. “Very much so.”

“We should eat, then, in that case.”

“No, no. I’m good right here.”

Sokka smirked. “You sure? The food’s going to get cold and cold noodles are never good—you know this better than anyone.”

Toph looked adorably torn, but her indecisiveness was short-lived as she pushed him onto his back, straddled his hips, and leaned down to kiss him again. “I said I’m good here, Snoozles. What part of that don’t you understand?”

He smiled into the kiss, his hands gripping her waist and holding her in place as she relaxed against him and ran her fingers through his hair. Spirits, he loved when she did that. 

As much as it pained him, though, he pulled away, and amid her groan of protest, he told her, “The noodles are actually going to get cold and I know how much you hate that.”

“I want to be annoyed, but I also can’t be because I’m starving,” Toph said, moving off him and sitting beside him. She grabbed the basket without being told another word and opened it, breathing in the delicious smell of the stir-fry from the reception that he had the Fire Palace cook set aside for them a few minutes ago.

For a while after they each took a heaping plate of food, they ate in comfortable silence, allowing the sounds of the wind and the night to fill in the blanks. Sokka turned to look at Toph as he ate, watching how animatedly she enjoyed her meal, something of a permanent smile on her face that he couldn’t get enough of. Her eyebrows were drawn, though, and his curiosity piqued.

“You good over there?” 

“Hm? Yeah, I’m just—” she shook her head and put down her chopsticks. “Did my father speak to you today? About anything?”

Sokka’s eyebrows raised. “He did, actually. I was going to tell you after we ate.”

“Did he grill you about marriage?”

“I wouldn’t exactly call it grilling …”

“Sokka.”

“It really wasn’t! I—” he set his plate down on top of the picnic basket and did the same with hers before taking her hands. “He was just telling me that when the time came— if we wanted to —that we, uh, have his and your mom’s blessing to, you know, get hitched.”

Toph pursed her lips at his phrasing and he could tell that she was holding back a laugh. But she sighed and readjusted herself to lean her head on his shoulder. “He didn’t pressure you to say or do anything, did he?”

He pressed a kiss on her head. “No, actually. He was… nice for once. And he said that he wants you to make your own choices, and he seemed to feel bad about pushing you into things you don’t want to do. I was surprised. He was still intimidating, but he—he seemed different… Has he been different? With you?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t been home much since I reopened the academy, but he actually made an effort to talk to me when I greeted him and Mom before the wedding. He asked me about you, and we talked about that, and he asked me if this was serious between us, and—and I said yes. So I just—I thought he would have come at you or said something stupid and I would have told him off if he had.”

The thought of her talking to her parents—to her father —about them made him smile into her head. “Well, he seemed okay with my answer when he told me that we have his blessing if we ever do decide to get, um, married. I told him that it’s too soon to tell if that’s what we want.”

“Is it?”

“Hm?”

She sat up and faced him, a crease between her brows. “Is it something we want?”

Sokka recalled what he told her in the storage room for the second time that day, feeling a bit nervous all of a sudden. He twiddled his thumbs for a moment, then responded, “I told you what I want, Toph, and I meant every single word. But we’re—this is new, you and I, like this. I’m not—I’m not in a rush because I think… I know that this is it for me—that you’re it for me, so, uh… yeah. That’s—that’s where I’m at. Is… that where you’re at?”

The look on her face wasn’t one that he was able to easily decipher and with each passing second that she was silent, he felt more and more worried about having scared her off and made her reconsider everything.

But then she grabbed his hand and kissed his knuckles. “I want to kiss you”—a kiss on his wrist—“I want to hold you”—a kiss on his forearm—“and I want to do all those other things you told me you wanted to do with me”—a kiss on his jaw—“so, yes, Dipshit, that’s where I’m at, too.”

The idea of tearing her dress off popped into his head again, so he beamed at her and got to work, leaving the noodles out to cool.