Archive of Our Own

Toph’s hand runs down her face as she tries to focus on her work instead of on the tick-tock of her earthen office clock. She tries not to read the time with every second that passes but the minutes move along like dripping molasses—irritatingly slowly.

There are about thirty minutes until she’s off for the day, but there are about twenty minutes left to the case debriefing she’s half-listening to, so she can probably make a clean escape once the tape ends. 

She really needs to get to him.

Kanto, the man who she’s tried to push away her feelings for, the man to whom she promised that she wouldn’t rule out a relationship with him moments before he was ambushed, the man for whom her heart beats a little faster and her thoughts turn to every day. She’s worried about him.

Frankly, Toph has no idea what to do to help him. She tried so hard to get him out of the operation from the moment word got to her about the kidnapping of half of her team. And with kidnapping, Toph knows that torture is sure to follow, especially if the abductor is aware that he has law enforcement as close as their cards to their chests. 

The day she got him and the team out was one of her worst on the job. She remembers everything vividly, how much pain they were all in, how much pain he was in. Everyone else got away with minor physical wounds, but Kanto? He was in bad shape. It was almost as if the assholes who took him knew exactly who he was and they just took it all out on him for not giving up classified information.

When she found him, he was weak and hurt and slick with his own blood. He smelled charred and he could barely speak.

Toph made herself a promise that day that she would never allow that to happen to him—or anyone on her team—again.

Toph rushes into the abandoned warehouse located on the outskirts of what was once Yu Dao when she metalbends the door unlocked, her heart racing and her desperation at an all-time high.

She hates what she has to do, she hates that she needs to put Kanto through more shit than what he’s probably already endured after being kidnapped and brought to this stupid remote location. But she has to do it if she wants to get him and her team out alive while also capturing the assholes who got them into this in the first place.

Frantically, she searches the warehouse for him, coming up short until one of her officers calls out for her. He tells her that they’ve found a room entirely made out of wood and platinum and that Kanto is the only member of the Republic City Police in this room—apparently, there are others that are holding the rest of their officers. Toph sighs, cursing the fact that whoever pulled this stunt did their damn research.

Before she steps foot into the room, her officer grabs her arm and whispers, “It looks like they’ve tortured him.”

“How bad is it?” Her heart is racing when the query leaves her mouth; she somehow knows she doesn’t want to know the answer.

“It’s bad, Chief. From just here, it looks like they’ve electrocuted him and drilled into his mouth. The good news, though, is that the electrocution seems minor—nothing nerve- or organ-damaging.”

Toph feels sick at the thought of Kanto going through this, despite the better news.

Not caring about the possibility of splintering her bare feet, Toph enters the small room in haste, hearing the creaking of the wood with every step she takes until she reaches him.

She can hear him silently groaning as if he’s being awoken, but she knows that what he’s feeling is pain. All she wants to do is alleviate him, but she has a job to do. Alleviation comes later; feelings come later.

“Kanto?” Poking her tongue out to moisten her lips, Toph clears her throat and places her index finger under his chin to tilt his face up. “Kanto. Come on, it’s me. Say something.”

It takes a minute of this for him to say something incoherent and awaken. “To—I—Toph?”

“It’s me, Hotshot,” she replies with a bit of relief. “I have to do a few things and get you ready for what’s coming, okay? So just—cooperate with me.”

“I need to get out of here,” Kanto tells her pleadingly, disregarding what she just said. His voice sounds nothing like it usually does and it breaks her. “Get me out of here.”

Toph’s peeling off his shirt amid his moans of pain to secure a metal vest onto his torso along with a bag of fake blood the officer at her side hands to her. She shoos him away before she crams the bag into his shirt and firmly tucks it under the material. 

Carefully, once she’s done, Toph places her hands on his dampened face—she’s unsure if it’s damp with sweat or blood or a combination of both. She doesn’t care, though, because so much is being expressed with her touch and the way he leans into her warmth, so much that cannot be adequately expressed in words alone, such as agony, fear, and tears. 

“I can’t. I can’t, not yet,” she forces out, trying to keep her voice even. “I just need you to hang on a little while longer.”

He lets out a heartbreaking, shaky sigh and leans further into her hand. There’s a burning sensation in her eyes that she blinks away and it takes her a minute to recompose herself before she tells him what’s supposed to happen when she leaves again.

Talking him through the plan, she barely registers the words she’s telling him, she’s only focusing on the fact that his bound hands are clutching hers like a lifeline. 

“Our man on the inside is going to shoot blanks at you and at Rae and Min, you’re going to play dead as best as you can, and once our man leaves with our suspects, I’ll come back in here and I’ll get you while my team gets a head start on arrests. I’m going to be back, I promise.”

It pains her to leave him, especially in his state, but she has to. It’s the only way she’s going to catch the assholes behind all this. 

His voice is strained and full of sorrow and insecurity when he asks, “You’re coming back? To get me?”

Toph can feel the drops of his blood falling onto her hand as he speaks. “I swear I’m coming back in no time.”

Before she leaves, she closes in on him and kisses his forehead, disregarding his perspiration, filth, and blood-stained skin and hair. Then, she vanishes just as swiftly as she had come. 

She just needs to get him out.

Toph isn’t sure Kanto is making any kind of progress in his recovery. 

While she knows that he’s done his mandated therapy—which even without talking to him, she’s well aware that he hated it—and that he’s taken his treatment, she also knows that he’s been refusing follow-up care. Or any kind of care for that matter. 

Earlier in the week, Katara made a visit to her office, coming under the guise of wanting to share a meal with her, when in reality, she wanted to discuss Kanto.

And as much as Toph wanted to pretend she didn’t care to talk about him, they both knew she was lying.

“He’s fielding my calls,” Katara told her in the middle of their lunch. “And he’s not letting me into his apartment to check in on his recovery. He was due for a post-care check-up days ago and he’s not budging.”

Toph shoved her chopsticks into her mouth at this. “What do you want me to do about it?”

“Judging by the way you acted the entire time he was captured and afterward, I would say you care enough to do something about it without me wanting you to.”

Bitch.

“Look, the only reason I even know he’s alive is that I can smell burning tea leaves from outside whenever I go to his place. The man is surviving on tea brewed from burnt leaves, Toph. And last we spoke, which was a while back, he told me he hasn’t been sleeping. Have you even checked on him lately?”

The answer, technically, was yes. She had been over to visit him, but he wouldn’t see her regardless of the number of times she pounded on her door. She’d even contemplated metalbending her way in, and she would’ve under any other circumstance, but she decided against it. He’s been through enough—the last thing he needed was for her to break and enter and force him to see her when he clearly wasn’t up to it.

Following that, Toph kept her distance. She’d go around his place for three weeks and sit on his doorstep with her head against his door, feeling him move around his apartment on the rare occasion he decided to stand up. The weight of his footsteps against the ground whenever he did brought her solace because she’d know he was okay. 

Physically, anyhow.

Then, she’d stay until she figured he fell asleep.

Days after, she decided to try to get him to eat. Toph began to buy their favorite takeout meal—noodles from Narook’s, which works out for him, considering that he should stick with softer foods after what he went through—and a six-pack of beer with a side of something stronger plus an assortment of Fire Nation desserts that she knows that he likes. 

And every single night she returned to find the same bag she left the night before right on his doorstep, untouched.

She still does, in fact, and always replaces the old food with the new order she brings. And she’s so, so close to giving up because he clearly wants to recover alone, and she’s not going to push him. 

Toph didn’t tell Katara all of this, however.

“Well, there’s nothing I can do about it,” she replied to the question less bitingly than she would’ve preferred. “It’s not like he wants to see me either.”

Katara was silent for a moment before she dropped her chopsticks, grabbed a napkin to wipe her mouth, and threw it at her. “In all my years of knowing you, I’ve never seen you give up on something—or someone —so quickly. You’re just proving my initial point further.”

“And what’s that, Shrink-O-Mine?”

“That you care about him.”

It had been too easy to dismiss Katara’s assumption after that, and since her friend knew better than to keep pushing Toph during situations like this one, Katara dropped it immediately after. But everything she said was true.

Toph cared more than she bargained for no matter how much she wanted to deny it.

Fifteen minutes feel like hours as she waits for her criminals to return to the warehouse. She can hear what’s happening inside due to much effort on her part. She wants to make sure they’re okay; that Kanto’s okay.

The suspects and her undercover agent question Kanto and her two other officers on the inside, asking them if they’re absolutely certain that they’re not law enforcement just before her agent shoots his blanks and puts on a show of killing Kanto, Rae, and Min.

Moments later, Toph is rushing back into the warehouse and into the wooden room with a team of Katara’s healers on her tails and transportation to the nearest hospital at the ready. The first thing she does when she reaches him is use her metal cables to cut through the thick ropes holding his wrists and ankles together behind the chair he’s trapped in. 

Then, not caring who sees, she cups his swollen face in her hands. “I’m here,” she whispers, carefully running her thumbs over both his cheeks. “You’re good. It’s over, okay? It’s over.”

He can only exhale sharply in response before the healers are invading their space, transferring him onto a gurney, and preliminarily examining him before rolling him away and settling him inside an emergency vehicle.

Toph goads one of her officers to follow them because she’s not about to leave him alone again. She needs to be there every step of the way from here on out.

Katara’s already working on him when Toph arrives at the hospital, pushing and shoving anyone in her way to be right by his side, holding his hand while he’s being examined and healed.

Kanto is calm as Katara deals with his wounds and injuries below his neck, but as soon as she attempts to assess the damage done to his mouth, his breathing becomes erratic and he turns his face away from Katara in an attempt to keep her from advancing.

“Kanto, you swallowed a lot of blood,” Katara tells him, notably agonized as she holds his shoulders down to mitigate how much he’s struggling against her. “I need you to open your mouth and let me heal you.”

He turns his face away, resisting. “No.”

“Leave him alone,” Toph says sternly, squeezing Kanto’s hand. “Would you just—just give him a sec.”

For the first time since they got him out of the warehouse, Kanto shows a reaction to something she said. He squeezes her hand back—weakly, but she can feel it.

She leans down toward him and gently pushes the hair off his forehead. “You’ve got to let Sugar Queen do her thing. Please. Do it for me, Hotshot.”

Toph knows it’s too much to ask, especially when she was the one who put him on the lead of this mission, when she was the one to tell him that he was the best man for the job when she said it would all be fine when it clearly turns out that it wasn’t fine.

And that’s on her.

Still, Kanto nods. “For you.”

At the most inappropriate moment, her heart flutters when she hears his words. And just before she’s about to say something else—she’s not really sure what—someone calls her name, beckoning her over to tend to her arrested suspects.

The mission is a success.

But at what fucking cost?

“Have you heard from him, Chief?” 

Toph angles her face toward the door where Jiahao stands with his hands in his pockets. She can tell that he’s just about as worried as she is about their deputy chief, though neither of them has chosen to admit as much to each other aloud. “I haven’t.”

Her favorite detective wipes a hand down his face and shuts her office door. “This isn’t normal. He’s—he’s not taking visitors, he’s not answering any radio calls. I even sent him a few old-fashioned letters and he hasn’t responded to any of them. All this despite him passing his mental and physical evals with flying colors—he should be here. He should be here.”

“But he’s not,” she tells him, pulling her headphones off since Jiahao walked into her office in the middle of listening—or half-listening…or not listening—to the rest of her case debriefing. “And there’s not much we can do about it if he doesn’t want to come out of his wormhole, Kid.”

What she’s saying right now is bullshit because she knows full well that the first thing she’s going to do after she gets out of work in a few minutes is go to his place. 

Jiahao doesn’t need to know that, though. 

“If it’s not too much of an ask, do you mind just—can you tell me if he’s doing all right if you manage to—”

“I’ll keep you updated.”

The detective breathes a sigh of relief. “Thank you, Chief.”

“Take it easy, Detective.”

“I’d never.”

It’s freaky how much he reminds her of Kanto.

The next time Toph gets to be with him again is after Katara is finished with several healing sessions throughout the course of an entire day. It’s not until the very end of the evening of the rescue that she’s let into the room.

When she enters, there’s only quiet. She can’t feel a heartbeat because of his elevation on the bed, she can’t hear any commotion or any sort of activity outside; there’s only the sound of his breathing. Slow and deep, signifying that he’s asleep. She kind of deflates as all hopes of talking with him dwindle. 

Still, Toph makes it to the side of his bed and takes a seat on the large, plush chair set there and she hesitantly takes his hand. It’s cold in her warm ones, so she keeps a hold of it in an attempt to bring some heat back to it.

Kanto has unusually soft skin for an earthbender, yet his hands are dry and rough. She brings his hand up to her lips and brushes them against his knuckles before pressing a kiss to his skin. 

“You scared the shit out of me,” she whispered into the back of his palm. “I’m so sorry you had to go through that.”

Of course, she gets no response, but she hopes that he somehow heard her anyway as she goes on about things not pertaining to work in an attempt to keep him stimulated, even in his sleep.

She doesn’t tell him about how responsible she feels for his being captured and tortured; she doesn’t tell him how much knowing he’s hurt is destroying her; she doesn’t tell him that all she wants to do is pull him into her arms and bring him the comfort he always seems to bring to her.

She doesn’t tell him any of it, but she tries to show him.

If there’s one thing she missed about him being around, it’s his conversations and his company. The two of them had grown so close over the past year, even closer when they decided to go from reluctant partners to friends after a long period of not trusting each other. 

Toph doesn’t know exactly when it clicked for them, but she knows it did. She wouldn’t be feeling the way she is now if they hadn’t.

They talk about everything under the sun. Things she wouldn’t normally divulge to others, she would find slipping out of her whenever they talk. He knows things about her that Toph would’ve never made anyone privy to, and the same goes for him. 

It’s beyond her how they became so closer after hating each other for so long. But they did and she isn’t going to question it anymore if she doesn’t have a reason to.

She likes being close to him.

It’s scary to her how close they are, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t like it. 

Her slight fear is one of the things that made her make her promise to him just before the mission.

It had all begun after Kanto stood the night at her place. It was all innocent, no sex, no kissing, although she wouldn’t have minded as much, upon reflection. It’d just been a sleepoverish kind of night.

But Kanto didn’t think as much—he was icy when they got to work and barely spoke to her throughout the entire day. It was bugging her.

“Okay, what gives?” she asked him at the end of their workday after barging into his office. He and the team were supposed to head out on their first stakeout some hours later, which meant that he had to get going soon. Toph didn’t care at that moment.

He failed to reply to her as he was too busy shoving materials, supplies, and belongings into a bag.  Angered by this, she stomped up to him and poked him in the chest. “I’m talking to you.”

They were inches apart, so much so that she could feel his breath on her forehead, moving her bangs ever so slightly. “I’m aware.”

He pushed past her and before he was able to get too far, she grabbed his wrist tightly in her hand. “Would you tell me what the hell crawled up your ass?”

“Nothing crawled up my ass, what about you? It sure seems like something crawled up your ass.”

She wanted to smack him. “Maybe I’m just playing off your shit attitude.”

“And maybe,” he said as he moved away from her, easily pulling out of her grip since she was distracted by her annoyance at him, “I’m playing off how you act toward me.”

That catches her off guard. “What?”

“You show me a bit of emotion, then you backpedal.” Kanto shrugged, shoving something else into his bag. Then, he waved his hand in front of his face. “It gives me vertigo.”

“I don’t—I don’t understand what you mean—”

“You suck at communication,” he interrupted. “You suck at it while saying that you want people to be open and transparent with you. And I get it. You’re guarded, you keep your cards close to your chest for a reason, but we were going somewhere up until I told you I want more from our relationship, that being just your friend and work partner feels like something’s missing, and you just—you pretended to be asleep.”

It was true—they’d been on the couch in comfortable silence when he said as much. She didn’t know how to respond and so she just didn’t. She even held her breath for effect.

It clearly didn’t work.

“I didn’t hear anything—”

“Yes, you did,” Kanto told her, no longer looking at her. “And quit lying, you’re a shit liar.”

Toph just stood there, a scowl on her face and her mouth set in a straight line. She hates having her lies flung right in her face, yet he stood there doing precisely that.

“Okay, I did. I’m woman enough to admit it.”

“Great, so now try to say something you mean, say something you want to tell me, what you want me to know because I’m pretty sure we’re on the same page, but I’m not one to jump to conclusions.”

Again, she kept quiet, fidgeting with her sleeve. He knows her too well and it’s unsettling. It’s one thing for her friends—people she’s known forever—to know her like the back of their hands, but it’s another for a person she met not more than a year ago to read her like a goddamn book. 

She heard Kanto scoff. “I have to get ready for this mission, Chief, so if there’s nothing else—”

“I want what you want,” she blurted. “I want it all. With you. But you need to be patient with me. I’ve never—I don’t—”

Suddenly, he was in front of her again, crowding her space and making her suffer by inhaling his addictive scent. “Was that so hard?”

“I hate you. Get out of my face.”

“You’re in my office.”

Good point. “I will… see myself out.”

“You do that.”

“I will.” She backed up toward the door with a ghost of a smile on her face. “I am .”

“Mhm, I can tell,” he said laughingly. Then, he reached for her hand. “We’re having dinner after this thing.”

Toph bit her cheek to keep from grinning. “I’ll hold you to that, Hotshot.”

Even now, as she thinks back on the memory, she feels giddy at the idea of them trying the relationship thing out. 

Everything with Kanto is different, and she misses him. She just wants him to be okay, she wants to be there for him, but she has no idea how to in case he doesn’t want her there.

And she’s not sure that he doesn’t after how their most recent conversation ended.

Trepidation is all Toph feels as she paces the length of her office for the eightieth time in the past hour. 

Kanto was released from the hospital not too long ago, two days after her first and final visit, and because she’s been caught up with yet another important case, she couldn’t just pack up and visit him; let alone leave to get him.

Her plans, instead, were to show up at his place unannounced, knock on his door, and propose a night of drinking and scarfing down food. Yet, as she was planning this out, Jiahao turned up at her office as happy as she’d ever heard him, and said, “He’s back.”

“Who’s back?”

“Deputy Chief Kanto. He’s back. He’s here .”

And so Toph cursed out everything in existence before pursing her lips and nodding once at Jiahao, telling him that she’d swing by for a visit in a bit.

That was more than an hour ago.

Mustering up the courage to meet him at his office is taking more than she imagined. There’s literally nothing to be nervous about. It’s probably just going to be a hi-and-bye conversation. He’s in the middle of recovery, he’s not going to want to stick around and talk to her.

With that, Toph shakes herself off and walks the few paces to his office. There’s nothing to it.

She knocks and there’s a faint “come in” on the other side. Her heart races.

“Hey,” she says, stepping into his office and shutting the door behind her.

“Hey.” She can hear shuffling when he replies. “How’d the case end up?”

Her brows furrow at the question.“Well, we caught the guys soon after we got you all out. They had a plan of making an escape to Ba Sing Se, but we ended up intercepting them on their way there. They’ve been put away.”

Kanto scoffs ironically. “You know how much I love a happy ending.”

Toph frowns and leans back against his office door, trying to figure out how to approach a conversation with him. She doesn't know the first thing to do after someone goes through what he has. She clears her throat. “What are you doing?”

“Ah, I don’t—I don’t know. Just cleaning up some stuff, sorting through what to take home. I just—I don’t know.”

She nods, not knowing what else to say, but she figures she should say something. She’s here for him, she wants to be here for him even if she has no idea how to do that. 

After a beat or two of silence amid his shuffling, she says, “I just wanted to say that I know what you’re going through—”

Kanto stops her by shaking his head. “I really hope that you never do.”

“Right, uh, sorry.” Toph purses her lips and gives him a bashful nod. “But—but if you want to talk about it, or not at all, I’m here.”

“I think I’m done with this, with work,” Kanto tells her suddenly, his voice cracking. She doesn’t know if he dismissed what she’d just said, but she doesn’t care right now. “I just—I want to walk away from it.”

Toph nods again, this time, in understanding. “Yeah, so just take some time off.”

“I just need to get away from everything, you know, I just—I—”

“And everyone ?” she asks after a slight pause, this time her own voice faltering as she allowed the emotion she barely shows him to come to the surface.

When she receives no response, she swallows the lump forming in her throat and nods again, this time to herself. “Okay.”

Feeling like she’s got her tail between her legs, she turns on her heel and places her hand on the doorknob, though just before she twists it to make her swift exit, Kanto walks out from behind his desk and up to her, leaving a good few feet of distance between them. And while she wishes she could close that distance, he says, “T—I just—you were all I could bring myself to think about while I was in there.

“You took the pain away, you were—you made it all stop. Your smile, your laugh, the way you tease me, what you said to me before the mission… All of it.” He sighs. “All of it.”

At the mention of their conversation that took place prior to the mission, Toph feels her cheeks heat up as she remembers what they spoke about.

Tension that she doesn’t know she harbors in her shoulders melts away as she processes his words. Her breathing quickens, as does her heart rate, and just as she’s going to respond, there’s a knock on his door.

Toph knows it’s Jiahao before she even registers his heartbeat.

She opens the door to him, gives him a curt nod, and bids them both good night.

And she walks away.

In truth, Toph can’t blame Kanto for not wanting to see her or talk to her or associate with her in any way, no matter how many bags of takeout she leaves on his doorstep and no matter how many times she knocks on his door, demanding to speak with him. 

This whole thing is kind of her fault. All of it could’ve been avoided if she’d just cleared her schedule and made time to conduct this investigation herself. It would’ve been so much easier for her to have taken his place because the last thing she wants is for Kanto to ever get hurt; for anyone on her team to get hurt.

But she didn’t do that, and she’s been kicking herself for it every single day for over a month.

It takes Toph a few seconds to realize that her debriefing tape is no longer playing, and as soon as she does, she tears her headphones off, shoves them and the cassette player into one of her desk drawers, and gathers her things before practically sprinting out of her office.

Quickly, she stops at her secretary’s desk to let her know that she needs an order placed from Narook’s Seaweed Noodlery.

“Way ahead of you, Chief,” Aiko tells her. “Should be ready to pick up.”

Toph grins as she rushes off. “I don’t pay you enough, Aiko.”

Within fifteen minutes, Toph manages to collect everything she needs from the noodles all the way down to a couple of mini fire cakes before she stops right in front of Kanto’s apartment building.

She takes a moment to walk up to his front door and it takes even longer for her to lift her fist to knock. When she does, she’s surprised to notice that footsteps are closing in on her just before the door opens.

“You—you actually opened the door.”

“It appears as though I have.”

She clears her throat and lifts the bags of takeout and drinks in her hands. “You said we were having dinner after the mission. Thought I’d take you up on it.”

It takes him a second, but he steps aside and lets her into his apartment. With a deep breath, she enters and sets the food on his coffee table then plops down onto the couch. 

Kanto’s about to sit with her, but he stops in his tracks. “Is that—”

“Narook’s? Sure is. Just like all the other times I brought over takeout, but you were too busy fielding my radio calls and visits to notice.”

He winces at the jab as he takes a seat beside her. She instantly wants to take her words back, but he says, “Radio must’ve been off, and, uh, I haven’t been outside in a minute.”

She reaches for one of the bags and pulls out their food, handing a carton over to him, smirking at his half-lie. “Not the whole truth, but I’ll let it slide.”

“Is, uh, did you bring beer?” 

“Topic change—something else I’ll let slide,” Toph remarks as she grabs a couple of beers and offers him one. “But yes. I’ll be happy to finally share this six-pack with you instead of draining each bottle to the last drop on my own for a change.”

His laugh warms her heart. “Ain’t no one like you, Beifong.”

“Just what I like to hear.”

The fact that their banter remains somewhat intact brings Toph some hope as they eat in surprisingly comfortable silence. With each second that passes, her earlier insecurities about him not well beginning to melt away.

“So, uh,” she starts after a while, “how are the chompers?”

Kanto lets out a surprised snort. “My chompers?”

“Too soon?”

“A little bit,” he replies with another laugh. “I’m good. Physically, I’m… good. Better. Recovery was easier than I thought, with my, uh, chompers, I mean. Katara was really good with that, and I really have to thank her for getting the nerve pain to stop and for the implants. I hope she forgives me for, uh, not seeing her when she’s been around.”

Toph leans over to him and nudges him with her elbow as she shovels some noodles into her mouth. “She’s more worried than mad. She can hold a grudge, but she’ll forgive you. She means well.”

Kanto nods. “And, uh, you. I—I’m really sorry—”

“Quit that.” She dismisses him with a wave. “You’re—it’s fine. I can understand why you would isolate yourself.” 

She’s greeted with a nod from him and some silence. Shit.

Wanting to smack herself for making things slightly awkward, she clears her throat and stands up to cross over to his radio.“There’s a pro-bending recap on tonight and you’re going to listen to it with me. I need someone to keep me from lunging at the radio when someone does something stupid.”

“I thought that was your favorite part of listening in,” he says, readjusting himself on the couch to face her once she sits back down. 

“It is, but half the fun is being held back.”

He grins. “It’s not so fun for the one doing the holding back, though.”

Dramatically, she falls against the back of the couch. “You wound me.”

“Alright, then.” He sets his food back on the coffee table after taking a swig of his beer. Making himself comfortable against the backrest of the couch right beside her, he says, “Catch me up. I haven’t tuned in in a while. Who do we hate?”

She loves his question. “Easy. The Omashu Pentapi.”

“Oh?”

“Mhm. Team of idiots if I ever heard one. They pull moves out of their asses and they keep managing to win rounds.”

“Mm.”

“Last week, their earthbender was flinging pieces of the arena at the opponent like a loose cannon. It gave me secondhand embarrassment. I literally—” She stops talking when she realizes that he’s dozing off against her shoulder. A smile creeps onto her face at the sound of his deeper breathing. “You with me, Hotshot?”

“I’m with you, Beifong.”

It’s not until then that she notices how close they are to each other. Her hand hesitantly goes up to his cheek and she brushes his scruff gently. “Still harboring that patience like you promised?”

He sighs. “You bet your ass I am.”

Toph has no time to hide her grin before she hears light snores coming from him. She feels a slight sense of relief. Katara had told her that he wasn’t sleeping, and there he was, knocked out against her shoulder.

“You better be,” she whispers. “‘Cause I’m in this.”