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It’d officially been five days since Toph last showed up to work as of this day, and Kanto was freaking out.
It wasn’t as though he had any right to worry about her or what she had going on in her personal life anymore, but he couldn’t help it.
Toph not showing up at the station was serious. She was never one to skip out on a workday; in fact, she would’ve rather died than miss out on a day’s worth of work. She insisted that she didn’t want to have to play catch-up because a chief’s work is never done, but Kanto knew her better than that.
She enjoyed what she did, she enjoyed helping people and saving them, and overall making Republic City a safer place. Why it took so much out of her to admit it, he didn’t know.
Not only that, but even their officers were asking him if everything was okay. He had no idea what to tell them because this was out of character for her.
For those very same reasons, Kanto couldn’t help but think that the worst happened.
Did something happen? Was she sick? Did she up and leave town without telling anyone about it? Was there a death in her family or group of friends? Did she die? His mind ran wild with reasonable and outlandish assumptions and speculations that would explain her recent absences, and as much as he tried to concentrate on his tasks throughout the day, he couldn’t focus on anything other than her well-being.
Even after they broke up, for reasons beyond his own knowledge, Kanto couldn’t help but continue to think about her. Of course, they worked together, and doing so after breaking up following what was probably the best six months of his life with her made it a bit difficult for him to think of anything or anyone else, frankly. But he managed well enough. She seemed to as well, considering the fact that she wouldn’t even talk to him if it wasn’t work-related.
Things were better than ever when she broke things off, which led him to believe that it was more a Her Problem than it was a Him Problem. Kanto always noticed that being in a relationship—a committed relationship—was difficult for her. It was almost as though she didn’t trust herself or she simply didn’t want to fall too deeply into something that she couldn’t save herself from.
He knew because he felt the same way.
Before Toph, Kanto had only been in short-lived flings and random hookups here and there. He’d been hurt before and he wasn’t in the mood to run that risk again. Until Toph, at least.
With her, things had been so different and instantaneous. It freaked him out a little initially, but he leaned into it, and it seemed that she couldn’t help herself, either.
What they had was magnetic. Special. It was something unlike anything Kanto had ever seen or experienced, but he loved every single minute of it.
And he loved her.
Frankly, he was under the impression that she loved him, too, and maybe she did, but it might have been too much for her, and he had to make peace with that idea.
It’d been about a month since she pulled him into her office and told him that she couldn’t do it anymore. He wanted to say that he didn’t know it was coming, but deep down, he knew that it was going to.
Toph hadn’t even given him the opportunity to say anything or argue—she just said, “I can’t do this anymore; we need to—this is done. You and me–we’re done.” Then, she just walked out on him, leaving him standing like a dolt in her office. From then on, it was as if nothing ever happened between them. She’d been ignoring him since then, treating him only as her deputy chief, albeit begrudgingly.
The past twenty or so days had been miserable for him. He tried to start moving on from her, he tried to turn all his focus on the work he had to do, but nothing helped tear his attention off of her. And he was convinced that nothing ever would.
Kanto tapped the end of his pen against his desk anxiously, trying to get himself to snap out of it and get back to work, but all he could think about was Toph. Not just being with her, but about how she was doing. Whatever was keeping her from coming into work was serious; otherwise, he wouldn’t have been sitting in his office, overthinking like an idiot.
A loud gong sounded around his office, signifying that it was time for him to head off for lunch.
Decidedly, Kanto stood up, ready to skip his meal.
He paced in front of her door for a few minutes before working up the nerve to knock. However, as quickly as he brought his fist up to do just that, he let it fall leisurely at his side as he became aware of the fact that she hadn’t detected his presence.
Whenever he would linger at her door while they were together, she would always detect his presence.
“In or out, Hotshot?” she would ask him sassily once she’d had enough and opened the door.
And, of course, he would always choose in.
The realization only made his apprehension and dread increase tenfold and he took no more time to loudly bang his fists against the door.
He might’ve been overreacting, but it was better to be safe than sorry in his book.
“Toph?” Kanto shouted when he decided that he’d made enough of a racket. “Come on, open up.”
No answer.
“Please, Toph,” he tried again, knocking this time instead of being an absolute dingbat and making a ruckus in the middle of the afternoon. “We’re all worried about you at the station. I—I'm worried about you.
“So just—if you’re okay, please say something. Even—you can even tell me to fuck off, and I will. Happily! Because then I’ll at least know that you’re good.”
Kanto sighed and rested his hand on the door, hoping that she got up from wherever she was and told him off for being so loud and persistent, and annoying.
The last thing he wanted was for anything to be wrong. He couldn’t handle anything happening to her, even if he shouldn’t have cared. It wasn’t his place to do that anymore as much as he still did.
Just when he was about to give up, the door swung open to reveal an irate Toph. She looked paler and, honestly, angrier than usual, and he had to admit that his curiosity was piqued as much as his concern.
“What the fuck do you want?”
“Uh, I—you weren’t at—you haven’t been showing up at work, and we—and I got worried about you since you didn’t leave a note or let us know if you were, uh, good.”
Smooth.
“I’m alive,” she replied tightly, white-knuckling the door. “So you can get back to work and tell everyone to mind their own damn business for a change.”
She went to close the door, but Kanto blocked her ability to do so by slipping his foot between it and the doorframe. He didn’t have to look at her to know that she had a homicidal look on her face that he should’ve run away from.
“Let me in,” he pleaded. “I know—I know you don’t want me around, but I need to make sure you’re okay—”
“I am. I don’t need you babying me. In fact, you’re the very last person I want to have near me right now.”
Something within him broke, just a little, but he mentally shook it off and pushed against the door. “Got it, but I still want to be sure you’re okay and that you have everything you need. You don’t look too good.”
Finally, she relented and allowed him to walk into her apartment with a huff. “I wouldn’t know, would I?”
Despite himself, he allowed the corners of his mouth to curl and entered her very familiar quarters. “Couldn’t help yourself, could you?”
Although she didn’t reply, he could’ve sworn that he saw something that almost resembled a smile, but he couldn’t be too sure. It was darker than he would’ve liked inside her place.
Not that she cared about the darkness of the spaces she inhabited, but still.
The strong smell of peppermint tea hit him almost immediately and he furrowed his brows. Toph hated peppermint anything, let alone peppermint tea.
He watched her as she padded over to the kitchen, grabbed her piping-hot gaiwan, and dragged her feet back over to her sitting room before all but falling onto the couch.
“What do you want, Kanto?”
“Like I said, I wanted to make sure you were okay,” he told her sternly, reluctantly taking a seat on the couch. As far from her as possible, of course. “You not being at work for days on end isn’t like you and—”
“And what?” she barked. “You planned on barging in here and demanding answers?”
“No, I just wanted to see if you were doing alright because I actually give a shit about you, no matter how much you refuse to believe as much.”
Something about what he said or the way he said it must have gotten to her because the tension in her shoulders decreased the smallest bit and the crease between her brows disappeared for a second before she hardened again. She took a sip of her tea and cringed as she swallowed. “Well, you’re wasting your time because I’m just moon-peachy. Thanks for checking in, but you can see yourself out.”
He could tell that she was hiding something. The way her body wasn’t entirely facing him like it usually was when she spoke to him, the way her voice wavered just a bit at the end of her sentence, the vice-like grip on her gaiwan. She was lying to him.
Kanto sighed and scooted over, risking his life and getting closer to her. “You can’t lie for shit. At least, not to me. So what’s going on, Toph? You—I know that we aren’t, you know... but I’m still here and I still care, so just—please tell me what’s going on so I can help you—”
“I said I’m fine, Kanto, so just drop it or get out.”
“I’m not dropping it—”
“Well, you should if you want me to not kick you out of here by force.”
Refusing to lash out at her for being so stubborn and refusing to let him in, he took a deep breath before trying again. “What’s going on, Toph—”
“Nothing is going on—”
“Stop lying to me!”
“I’m pregnant!” she shouted angrily. “I’m pregnant, okay? Is that what you wanted to hear? I’m fucking pregnant, Kanto.”
He blinked at both what she said and the abruptness of what came out of her mouth. Stunned, his knees buckled and he fell gracelessly onto her couch behind him.
His mind went blank, nothing but her confession bouncing around in his head and the anger and pain with which she said them. He was quiet for a while, he didn’t know how long, then looked up at her.
Her face was flushed but otherwise pale and sickly. Whatever symptoms she was enduring were clearly taking a toll on her, and Toph was so cocksure and proud at times that she would never ask anyone for help. She’d been going through all of this alone since she found out and that just didn’t sit right with him.
Well. At least this all explained the peppermint tea she was clearly force-feeding herself.
Before he spoke, he swallowed a few times and kept his eyes on her. “Is it mine?”
If possible, her face twisted even more, her voice sounding like a low growl. “What kind of woman do you take me for, Kanto? Of course it’s yours.”
Kanto noticed a short moment of hurt on her face and mentally chided himself. He groaned inwardly and said, “It’s hard to know what to say in moments like these, Toph, especially when you broke things off with me for no good reason. Just—I didn’t mean to—”
“Would you just—please leave.”
“I already told you I’m not leaving.”
“Then I don’t need you to stick around just because you feel responsible, either. So it’s better if you just get the fuck out of here and leave me and my kid alone.”
A surprise scoff left him before he could stop himself and it stopped her in her tracks as she began to walk away from him. He found it in him to stand up and said, “Your kid, huh? And you’ve just up and made that decision yourself, haven’t you?”
“What?”
“You just decided that when I found out about your pregnancy, I was just going to stick around because I pitied you, because I felt like I had to, or that I was just going to leave,” Kanto seethed. “Is that right?”
For the first time since he’d met her, Kanto rendered Toph Beifong speechless. The fact didn’t make him feel as good as he thought he would. He felt pretty shitty, actually.
But as he looked at her reaction to his scorned words, things started to fall into place for Kanto right then, making his chest ache. When things got hard for her—emotionally, at least, because otherwise, she faced everything with no fear—she ran. She found out that she was pregnant and she isolated herself without even considering what he would have to say about it.
“I don’t think you understand,” he said, less angered and more soothing, “how much I loved you. How much I still love you. You—you mean everything to me, and the fact that you think so little of that just—”
He shook his head, finding the strength and courage to take the steps necessary to approach her. Hesitantly, he took her hands, which were balled into fists, in his.
Massaging them open, he gently told her, “I want this with you. I want to be there for you when you get sick in the morning, I want to hear you curse me out for hovering, and I want to argue with you about bending too much while you’re pregnant.” He paused to chuckle sadly, pleased to see that she was struggling to keep her lips in the right line they were in minutes ago. “I—I want to be there with you every step of the way, okay?
“I just—I want this. I want you and I want everything that comes with you, Toph. You don’t—you don’t have to run from me, and I don’t know what I can do to prove that to you.”
There were tears flooding her eyes and she was refusing to blink to keep from letting them spill over. “You’re going to leave eventually, and I don’t want to deal with that. So I did it first. People always do, anyway. I'd rather beat them to it. It’s not—you weren’t the problem.”
“So you just decided to—”
“Avoid getting fucked over? Yeah. Pretty much.”
“And you thought that—”
She shook her head, cutting him off again. “I never thought you would. I just—the moment I started—I guess I started realizing that you meant more to me than I thought, I wanted to make sure that I was able to get away while I could.”
Kanto brought her now relaxed hand up to his lips and kissed her knuckles. Trying his luck, he smirked against her skin. “How did that work out for you?”
“It would’ve worked out fine if you hadn’t left your forsaken sperm behind—”
“Okay— ”
Toph rested her head against his chest with a very light laugh. Then breathed out a shaky sigh as Kanto rubbed her back. After a bit of silence, she quietly asked, raising her head off his chest, “You’re not pulling my leg? You want this? You—if I have this kid, you want to be here with me? Because if you’re just saying that, I’m going to kill you, get Katara to resuscitate you, then kill you again, or so help me—”
“No—I—Toph, I told you I wanted this, I want this. I want to have all your babies. Every single one of them.”
“Hey—”
“All of the kids,” he said humorously, squeezing her hands. “We’ll have a brood of little Kantos and little Tophs. It’ll be great.”
“I don’t remember agreeing to this.”
“Too bad. It comes with the package.”
Toph rolled her eyes and pulled her hands away from him. “We can have a brood when you figure out how to push a baby out your urethra.”
Kanto made a face. “You ruined it. You ruined my pitch.”
“That was kind of the idea.”
“You’re missing the point, Toph,” he tried to say seriously as he settled his hands on her hips and pulled her into him again.
“Mm. And what might that be?”
He rested his forehead against hers. “That I love you. And that you and I are going to be the best parents any baby has ever known.”
Her silence scared him a bit, and had it not been for the fact that she looked, for the first time since he walked into her apartment, so serene and relaxed, he might have been afraid of what was going to come out of her mouth.
But there was no reason to be, because she said, “Yeah—I’m starting to believe that.”
Trying to break out of the seriousness between them, Kanto sank down to his knees suddenly, lifted her shirt, and slid his head under it to kiss her flat tummy. Her stomach contracted when his lips made contact with her skin, and then again when she laughed.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she asked, trying to keep her cackling under control.
“I need to have a quick one-on-one with Baby since we haven’t had one yet,” he responded simply against her stomach before kissing it a few times. “Isn’t that right? You need to know how much Baba loves you already and how much he loves your mama, or I don’t know how this whole thing will go, Mini Beifong.”
Her hand fell against his head and gently scratched. “You’re an ass.”
“None of that around Baby.”
“You’re an ass,” she repeated emphatically. “But I love you.”
His lips froze against her stomach before he left some final pecks there and came to his feet again. “So what does that mean?… that you won’t run again?”
“I might try,” she started sheepishly, “but I’m sure you won’t let me make that mistake again.”
As he took her lips with his for the first time in months, Kanto agreed with her. He wouldn’t ever let her run again.