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1.
一 月
January
Emotional reunions aren’t Toph’s cup of tea. She’s not into the whole heartfelt hug thing; she gives whoever she’s meeting again after a while an affectionate-style punch and they catch up and call it a day.
But with Sokka, it’s different.
From him, she accepts the bear hug he gives her after he plows into her the moment her ship docks at the port of the Southern Water Tribe, she accepts the way he lifts her off the ground, she accepts the way he squeezes her half to death, and she accepts the way his face so naturally fits into the crook of her neck.
And if she’s being completely honest, she enjoys it. She likes being close to him like this, but she’ll also be damned if she ever admitted as much to him. He’d gloat to no end and her levels of humiliation and mortification would be off the charts. For now, and for as long as she could, she’ll keep this information to herself.
Still, even in the middle of her enjoyment, Toph pounds on his back with her fists and demands that he lets her down this instant.
“You’re no fun,” he tells her with one last squeeze around her torso before settling her on the ground. “I haven't seen you for ages and you don’t let me hug you the right way. Incredible.”
The very moment he steps away from her, Toph’s body shudders. She’d been so warm mere seconds ago and she knows she can’t credit her South-Pole-certified furs or gloves or hat or scarf for it. She chooses to ignore it, regardless, and says, “You’re lucky I even agreed to come here, dipshit. If it were up to me, I would be in the irresistible heat of Yu Dao right about now.”
“It was up to you, though,” Sokka replies smugly, poking her cold cheek. She barely feels it, however, because it’s numb from the weather. “And you still chose to come to see me, your best friend in the history of the world and beyond.”
He’s not technically wrong, unfortunately. Toph had astutely set aside a few days within five months at the beginning of this year to be able to come down to the South Pole to visit Sokka, starting now in January, in order for them to see each other without much hassle. Sokka, however, is unable to leave his homeland to visit her in return because he has committed to a year of learning from his father in case Sokka ever has to take over as chieftain—and the day will come, though they don’t talk about it much. Still, the concept of their travel arrangement is functional and ideal in her opinion.
However, at present, Toph finds herself regretting it all because something else that is not her thing is the damn snow.
She also very much wants to kick his ass for his comment and for making her want to visit him in the first place; for making her miss him.
Jerk.
Suddenly stumped, Toph frowns in his general direction and socks him somewhere between his chest and stomach. He doubles over and grunts, bringing a winning smile to her face before she bends to pick up her one bag, flinging it over her shoulder with ease.
“If you’re done being a drama queen,” she tells him with a smirk and her arms crossed over her chest, “I’d like to head to the igloo before I freeze to death. I want to beat your sister there so she can shut up about being the first one there.”
Sokka says something in a frustrated mumble before yanking her bag off her shoulder and slinging it over his own with mock aggression. She’s about to protest, but then, he’s grabbing her hand and pulling her elsewhere.
The wind is unrelenting, hitting her face. Frozen droplets of snow fall harshly against her skin. Because of the speed at which he’s walking and pulling her along with him, the snowflakes feel almost as if they’re piercing every exposed bit of her. Of course, this does nothing to make her feel any better about being here, but she keeps quiet and miserable until she feels a burst of warmth and hears the sound of a door closing.
Snatching her arm away from Sokka, Toph grumbles, “I hate you so much.”
“That,” he replies as he walks off to drop her things in the guest room, “is hardly true. It’s actually a blatant lie, but I digress.”
She swipes her hat off her head and throws it in the direction of his voice, hoping that she’s at least somewhat accurate in her throw. Judging by his mocking snort, however, she was very far off. Still, she finds herself fighting a grin.
Sokka walks up to her and settles her hat back onto her head, making sure to tuck her unruly hair and ears into the warm fabric. His now-ungloved hands unintentionally brush against her cheeks and jawline and she tries to blame the sudden shudder that wracks her body on the cold she’s still trying to defrost from.
Fed up with him suddenly, Toph pushes his hands away from her and says, “Quit handling me.”
“I’m not handling—”
“Whatever, but quit it.” She crosses her arms over her chest. “I hope you don’t plan on dragging me back out into that tundra today. Give a girl a few hours to settle in. Or days.”
He guffaws. “You really think I’m going to just let you sit in here when there’s a whole world out there that you have yet to explore? Do you know me at all, woman?”
“Do you know me at all?” she shoots back, her brows surely hidden by her hat. “Do you really think I’m going to want to spend all my time being blinded by these boots and your ice when I could be all cozy and warm in here with some semblance of sight?”
“Yes,” he tells her softly, approaching her again to make sure that she’s all buttoned and hooded up. The closeness is making her sweat and she suddenly wants to put as much distance between them as she can to keep him from noticing how she’s reacting, but she stays where she is, waiting for him to finish. “Yes, I do, actually.”
“Why’s that, hm?” she asks in a tone that she hopes reflects her usual brashness and not whatever she’s feeling right now.
“Because I know that you like making me happy no matter how much you deny it. And I’ll be using that little factoid to my advantage, thank you very much.”
She shakes her head at him as he releases her jacket and brushes off her shoulders. “Manipulative ass.”
“A mild nickname coming from you.” She can hear the amusement in his voice as he rummages the kitchen for something before he presses two sticks of what she can identify as seal jerky into her mittened hands.
Toph lifts the snack to her mouth and eats both sticks in a total of five bites. She's hungry after emptying her stomach on the ride over. She also hadn’t realized until now how much she missed the Southern Water Tribe delicacy and she lets out a long, satisfied moan when she swallows her last bite.
“You’ve made up for your shortcomings so far with those.”
“Ah, music to my ears,” Sokka replies sarcastically, grabbing her hand. “Now, I think it’s about time we get out of here, don’t you think, Beifong?”
Before she can register what’s happening, her so-called best friend is dragging her out of the igloo and back to the unrelenting cold of this icebox of a nation. She tries to resist by digging the heels of her useless boots into the snow beneath her feet to no avail and eventually lets herself be lugged around until he finally comes to a stop.
“You remember Atuqtuaq, right?” he asks before she yanks her hand away from him with a deep frown settled on her face until it slowly melts away at his mention of the familiar name. Of course she remembers Atuqtuaq. Whenever she finds herself to be crazy enough to make trips down to the South Pole, Sokka always takes Toph to this one elderly tea maker who brews some of the best tea Toph has ever tasted. It’s always enough to lift her mood when the snow’s got her down. And it’s a nice replacement for when she’s left longing for something from Iroh.
In truth, she’s never really in a bad mood when she’s down here; she just has to put up a front—something Sokka doesn’t necessarily have to know. She still doesn’t like the snow, though, and that isn’t going to change anytime soon.
But she isn’t going to be one to turn down good-ass tea, either, so she nods noncommittally.
In a matter of seconds, she can smell the several different brews the older woman’s got going in her little corner of the antique village’s marketplace. Toph bites back a smile at the scent and lets out a relenting sigh when Sokka walks up to the kiosk and places a large order of pu’er tea. It’s the same tea she’d ordered from Atuqtuaq every other time she’s been to the South Pole.
In hearing him order for her, she realizes that he gets everything, from the lack of sugar to the sprinkle of cinnamon, right. She’s touched but, of course, she’s not going to be sharing this information with him anytime soon.
So he remembers her tea order. This fact does not make her stomach stir.
She’s about to make a snide remark about his memory not being as bad as she thought it’d be when she realizes that Sokka is no longer at her side. She wonders where he could’ve possibly gone, but shrugs indifferently, pulling her hood off her head because all the fur is bothering her. He’ll be back soon.
A few minutes pass as Toph stands by the kiosk, waiting for her tea to be served and given to her. Then, she feels it—a single snowball hitting her in the back of her head. She immediately knows who the culprit is.
Her eye twitches in irritation and she decides to ignore her best friend’s hijinks and attempts at grabbing her attention right now. All she wants is one of Atuqtuaq’s renowned teas. But Sokka clearly has other plans.
It’s not one snowball this time around; she feels several hit her back and head in rapid succession.
Atuqtuaq finally hands her the tea she’s been waiting for and Toph nods in the general direction of the small woman before sliding her payment over the counter. The woman refuses it, saying in a few words that Sokka has already covered it. Toph’s eye roll does not lack fondness despite her minor agitation at him.
She takes a whiff of her tea, feeling the vapor hit her cold face, then takes one careful, calming sip of her tea. This is before a final snowball finds its way to the very center of her face, causing Toph to drop her cup into the relentless, pesky snow at her boot-covered feet.
The unmistakable sound of Sokka’s laugh reaches her ears, and Toph does the impossible to maneuver her space rock off her bicep and out of her coat. She marches up to him, grabs him by the earlobe, and bends the rock into a point.
Amid his hissing out in pain, Toph brings him down to her eye level and holds the rock to his face. “You force me to come out with you, then you drag me to these kiosks, and when I’m finally feeling not-so-cold, you decide to pelt me with snowballs. Keep it up, Meathead, and I’ll kick your ass in front of all your friends and elders right here, right now.”
Somehow, he manages to worm out of her iron grip and huff as though he’s been the one wronged today. “Excuse me? You’re threatening me? In my homeland? No. No, I’m afraid I can’t have that.”
“I cannot stand you,” she tells him with gritted teeth, especially mourning her tea as a gust of cold-ass wind hits her and causes her to shiver. “Or the snow while I’m at it.”
“Come on,” he tells her, having the decency to walk up to Atuqtuaq’s kiosk to purchase another tea for Toph. He says something endearing to the tea maker, which makes her giggle and put a rush on his order. Toph has to resist the desire of groaning. Finally, when he’s done charming the old woman to get tea on the house, he says, “It’s not that bad.”
It really is that bad.
There’s nothing Toph hates more than the semi-blinding effects of snow and ice, which makes her wonder why in the world she would willingly put herself through this another four times this year. Of course, her answer would remain being Sokka because she really has missed him, and they’re both determined to not let another year pass before getting to see each other.
Part of her, however, wonders if she was deranged when making that decision because she’s fully regretting having put herself in this position, to begin with. She doesn’t think she’s shivered as much as she has in the past few hours in her life.
With her meteorite, now flattened, Toph smacks Sokka in the chest, eliciting a yelp of pain. He should count himself lucky because, without all the layers he’s wearing, the hit would’ve stung a lot more than it did.
Toph snatches the tea off Atuqtuaq’s kiosk, mutters a quick and unhappy thank you, and stomps past Sokka, telling him that she’s going back to the igloo. But of course, he won’t make her life easy for once, and he grabs her wrist before sliding his hand down to grab her hand.
Regardless of the fact that she can’t feel his skin against hers, she still feels the heat he emits and her cheeks warm up despite her frustration.
“No, don’t go,” he pleads. “I want—I’d really like to spend the day out with you. Dad’s probably home for the day by now and Katara’s coming in later for her visit and I—we won’t have much time to spend, you know, just the—the two of us. Like old times.”
When he puts it that way, it’s damn hard to say no to the guy.
Not knowing what else to say, Toph grunts and keeps her tea close to her face so it can keep her from freezing. Then, she kicks his calf. “Lead the way, Snoozles.”
Oma and Shu, he’s so excited. She can tell, just by the way his hand tightens around hers and how quickly he pulls her in the opposite direction of the market, how eager he is about this. In reality, he must know that she’s only being a grump because she can’t see and because she can’t tolerate the snow. And as much as she wants to resist and tell him that she really doesn’t want to be out, she can’t bring herself to. He’s just so happy, and his happiness is one of her only weaknesses—it always has been.
The freezing-cold wind hits her face head-on again as he speedily leads her to only spirits know where. For a second, she considers demanding that he tell her where they’re headed, but she knows well that he’s not going to tell her because he’s all about surprises when she comes to the South Pole. The path feels familiar enough from the little she can discern, though. He’s pulling her up and then down a hill and comes to a stop. She can feel several—lifesaving—boulders around, but not too much beyond that.
She’s been here before with him, Katara, and Aang. It was last year after the group had roped her into penguin sledding for the first time—one of the worst experiences Toph has ever undergone.
“What are we doing here?” she asks with a bit of trepidation that she knows that only he’ll ever be able to sense coming from her. “Are we going to—”
“No,” he says quickly, sounding a bit farther away from her than he was a few moments ago. “As much as I would love to see that look on your face again, no penguin sledding.”
“Okay… then, what? I’m not really in the mood to—”
“Sneak attack!”
Splat.
The cold, slushy feeling that only wet snow can provide hits the side of her neck without a warning and she lets out a loud yelp, jumping straight into the air. Sokka almost suffocates from how much he’s laughing at her as she tries her best to shake off the clump of snow that is still sliding off the frigid skin of her left cheek.
This. This is why she hates the snow.
On any other occasion, Toph would’ve caught onto Sokka’s supposed sneak attack before he even thought about attempting it, and she would’ve handed his ass to him in the blink of an eye. But here, she has a very limited chance of detecting his next move.
She does, however, know what her next move is going to be as she crouches down to collect her own bunch of snow.
“You’re going to regret that, Meathead!”
“That so?” Sokka replies mockingly from a few paces to her right. “I’d like to see you—hey!”
The snowball doesn’t hit him the way she wants it to, but it skids past him enough to distract him. Knowing exactly where he is now, Toph charges for Sokka and tackles him onto the snow-packed ground, pinning his arms above his head. Now beneath her, Sokka squirms, attempting to get out from under her strong hold with not much success. The most he does is scoot them both up a few inches but not enough to slide out from under her.
Still holding his wrists with her right hand, Toph reaches for a clod of snow and smacks it against his neck, between the collar of his coat and his jaw. The sound of his high-pitched squeal is enough to make her throw her head back and laugh as hard as he had at her a few moments ago.
“You were saying?”
He sputters for a moment. “You—I—you cheated!”
“I wasn’t aware that there were rules to be followed considering how you attacked me first without a warning,” she replies gingerly, moving off his torso and standing up. “I played fair and square in my opinion.”
Sokka sounds amused when he takes the hand Toph is offering to him to help him up. “This was the equivalent of bringing a knife to a bending fight.”
“And I did it expertly.”
“You did,” he tells her, only a few inches of distance between them. Their proximity makes her breath hitch before she cools down at the renewed sensation of ice-cold snow against her jaw. Toph opens her mouth in a silent squeal and shivers as he says, “But you can’t out-snowball the master snowballer, T. You should know better.”
Had this been anyone else, Toph would’ve beaten them into a pulp. But this is Sokka, so Toph pushes him away and despite her new state of frostiness, she’s fighting a smile when she says, “I hate the snow almost as much as I hate you.”
“There’s that lie again.” The grin he gives her in return is evident in his voice as he sends another snowball flying at her. “And about the snow, that’ll change. I promise.”
“Doubtful.”
2.
三 月
March
There are a shit ton of reasons why Toph cannot stand the snow or the cold, one of them being the fact that it can get her sick the way nothing else can.
Toph teaches kids between the ages of nine and seventeen along with her older crop of students, but with children come contagious illnesses that she never manages to acquire. She quite literally and miraculously never gets sick. And yet, every other time she’s down in the South visiting Sokka, she ends up getting a little tickle in her throat or a severe runny nose after a snowball fight or two.
That’s not what’s happening to her right now, however. No, she’s currently in bed, wrapped in several layers of blankets on top of her winter coat, two layers of pants, and a pair of gloves, shivering like it’s no one’s business, and somehow, she’s sweating at the same time. After a long, miserable nap, nonetheless. Naps should not be miserable in her book.
A healer—who wasn’t Katara since she’s not here right now, off doing who knows what in the Fire Nation with Zuko and Aang, much to Toph’s dismay—came around to check her out and told her that she did what she could to lessen the effects of her symptoms but that there wasn’t much she could do for getting them to entirely go away. And much less for the fever.
It was safe to say that it was lucky that Toph was too weak to move and that Hakoda had been astute enough to quickly usher the small-framed healer out of Katara’s childhood bedroom, where Toph is staying.
The ice-pick headache, which intensifies as soon as she thinks about it, causes aches and shivers to flow down her spine and limbs. Her groan is muffled into her pillow, but this time the air gets stuck in her throat and she lets out a string of coughs with an unexpectedly moist sound and far greater pain in her chest than she’s been experiencing for the past few hours. And even though it's brief, her throat continues to hurt after.
So much for whatever the fuck that healer thinks she did.
Toph is a shitty patient, she knows it. Since she barely ever gets sick, she doesn’t know what to do with herself because just laying around, feeling weak, and unable to do much of anything in general is not her norm and she doesn’t want it to be.
Toph coughs repeatedly until she’s unable to do so any longer. Her stomach flips and she has time to grab a deep, metal bucket that Hakoda left for her this morning as something from deep inside her chest appears to loosen; once it does she can breathe more easily. There are tears in her eyes from the toil of the feat and once they roll down her face, they mix marvelously with the sweat that’s already settled on her skin.
Her entire body hurts, she’s clammy, but she can’t stop shivering. She hugs her blanket tighter against her frame and allows her eyes to shut, deciding to rest her eyes for a few minutes before finding the strength she needs to stand up and do something productive, like kick her best friend’s ass for getting her into this.
And just like that, as she tries to succumb to her slumber, Toph can’t help but think about the fact that Sokka hasn’t been around.
It bothers her because she’s sick because of him.
But it also bothers her because she could really use his company right now.
When she next wakes, there’s a heavy presence beside her on the bed. He’s stroking her hair—which she could tell is frighteningly damp from sweat—with one hand and brushing his hand over her blanketed arm.
Before she lets out a protracted sequence of excruciatingly painful, deep, wet coughs, Toph tries her best to take a deep breath, which clearly does not serve to do anything but make it harder for her to breathe. She sits up and can hardly gasp between each breath; every time she takes one, the coughing starts again. Her throat keeps catching midway through her breath. She locates Sokka's hand and squeezes it as she finally begins to settle down.
“Hey, it’s okay,” he tells her, rubbing her back to soothe her. “It’s just breathing; it can’t be that hard.”
The comment makes her laugh, which triggers yet another round of coughs. He lets out a string of whispered apologies as he reaches for something beside him and presses it into her hand. A cup of water.
It takes her another minute to quit hacking, but when she does, she cautiously takes a sip of the room-temperature water, then another, and another until she drains the cup and hands it back to Sokka with shaking hands.
He sets the cup aside and presses a hand on her forehead, then her cheek. “How are you feeling?”
“Not so hot.”
“Have you eaten anything?”
The answer to that question surprises even Toph because she hasn’t had anything to eat since last night—kale cookies that Hakoda had left out for them. She doesn’t have an appetite today, and she guesses that it’s probably because of the tightness in her chest and the mucus accumulating there.
So, somewhat sheepishly, Toph shakes her head and lays back down, throwing her arm over her face as if the slight weight of it will somehow rid her of her headache.
She suddenly smells something that brings her appetite running right back as Sokka asks, “Would some five-flavor soup help at all?”
“Only if”—she pauses to sniffle— “you brought flaming fire flakes to go with it.”
“It seriously beats me why you would ever ruin this soup with spice, but yes. Of course I brought them. Who do you think I am?”
A small smile settles on her face before she slowly sits up and reaches for the soup to dig in. The taste and warmth of it coat her tongue and throat and stomach the moment she swallows it, and the spice from the flakes gives each spoonful a kick that she needs. She feels her chest and nose loosening in the process, and she has to pause to blow her nose a few times.
But she feels better. Even if it’s a slight bit.
Sokka takes the bowl from her when she’s done and slides under the blanket with her so that they lay on their sides facing each other.
She scowls and recoils a bit. “What are you doing? I’ll get you sick.”
“I don’t care.”
“But—”
“Will you just—let me fuss over you, okay? I spent half the morning trying to get what I needed for your soup, so I’ll be damned if you don’t let me help you out a little more than that, T. I want—I want to be here for you, so stop complaining, alright?”
On any other occasion, she would fight him back, but because she’s sick, she doesn’t bother and reluctantly scoots closer to him. Her stomach is fluttering at his words, but she tries to ignore it and chalks her butterflies up to whatever illness she’s suffering through.
Gently, he takes her hands and pulls her mittens off before interlacing his fingers with hers, then settles them between their chests. His hands are warm in her clammy ones, and she desperately wants to pull away to dry them off, but she also can’t bring herself to.
Damn her and her feelings for this man.
“No more snow for you, I’m guessing?”
Toph breathes out a laugh and manages to do so without having a cough attack. “Not at all. You know how much I hate it.”
“It—it won’t be long until you—”
“Nope, not happening. I hate it, and I’ll stay hating it.”
“You’re such a pessimist.”
“I’m a realist. Snow can fuck itself.”
“I don’t know,” he says with an air of playfulness in his voice. “If you keep coming down here, I happen to think that I’ll be able to change your mind about it at some point…”
Toph comes down here to spend time with him, not for any other reason, but she doesn’t tell him this. Instead, before she dozes off again, she mumbles, “In your dreams.”
3.
六 月
June
Waking up at the asscrack of dawn seems to be A Thing whenever she accompanies Sokka to the Southern Water Tribe.
This morning, before she even realizes what’s happening, Sokka is shaking her awake to invite her on his hunting trip. She’s so warm, wrapped up in her furs and blankets, and for a moment, she ignores him, thinking that she’s having some sort of dream.
It’s not long after that she realizes that she is, indeed, not dreaming and is really experiencing Sokka incessantly poking her cheek and chanting “wake up, wake up” like a petulant child.
She lets this go on for a few more seconds until she finally groans into her pillow. “Would you cut it out?”
“Nope, because you’re coming out with me on this fine morning, Toph Beifong, and you’re not going to say no.”
“No.”
“Come on—”
“I’m not going,” she says into her pillow with a notable tone of finality. “It’s cold, I’m tired, you’re annoying. Go away.”
Sokka begins poking her cheek again. “You have to come. Our hours together? They’re counted, Toph. You’re going to leave soon and we’ll go our separate ways and it’ll be eons upon eons until we see each other again. And I don’t want that, so come on. Get up. Get up, get up, get up—”
“For the love of Oma and Shu,” Toph says, sitting up abruptly, slamming her hands down against the bed. “Fine. I’ll go if you shut up.”
And just like that, Sokka yelps in excitement like he’s just seen a For Sale sign at the nearest marketplace. She pretends that his happiness doesn’t affect her.
It won’t hurt, Toph supposes, to be up early. She can get her morning workout in earlier and she heard from Katara that there’s usually better food in the kiosks at the market if you’re there early, so she doesn’t particularly mind it in the end.
She also likes the idea of spending the day with Sokka, which she hasn’t done too much of this trip. He’s been busy with chieftaining and whatnot. But, in truth, it’s been good to hang around with Katara during the day before he and Hakoda get back from work. They haven’t had too much time to catch up in the past six months, so to have another friend around is nice.
Being up this early isn’t too bad, she begrudgingly admits to herself. Katara and Hakoda are already on their feet, working on breakfast when she and Sokka step out of her room after she gets herself ready and semi-bundled up. They have food, tea, and conversation, then the two friends set off.
To put it simply, it’s cold, but it’s more bearable than it has been in the past, so she doesn’t complain too much.
What Toph and Sokka hadn’t noticed when they set off was that, from the east, a furious storm had been forming since before they left. They’re both distracted by their hunting, and Toph listening to Sokka talk her through his tactics, her making fun of him whenever those tactics don’t work out, him grunting and groaning as he tells her that the louder she laughs, the likelier it is that the game would flee.
“Yeah, that’s the reason why they’re fleeing,” she says in response. “As if your loud-ass stomping isn’t.”
“Wh—I do not stomp. You’re the stomper in this duo.”
To make a point, she buries her boots into the snow and then kicks the ground with her heel, causing a slab of earth to hit his shin. She smiles at his groan. “Hey, yeah. Looks like you’re right!”
He throws snow at her at that point and they well and truly spook off any game that’s nearby with their racket and laughter.
It isn’t until the storm is gaining on them a few hours later that Toph picks up on the stronger smell of snow in the atmosphere and alerts Sokka. He says that they’ll be fine, that they just have to pick up the pace, and find some nearby shelter to wait out the storm, that they’ll beat it and be just fine.
They don’t, in fact, beat the storm. Instead, they spend what feels like hours trudging straight through it, plodding through piles and piles of thick, cold snow. She isn’t sure how Sokka is even guiding her through it, but his grip on her—and his game bag full of dinner—is unwavering.
His hold on her impresses her. Just about the only thing that does while they trek through the snow.
Toph supposes that she also ought to appreciate the fact that they didn’t leave his family igloo until she was properly bundled up because she’d be doubly miserable otherwise.
“Aha!” Sokka exclaims, breaking her out of her thoughts, impossibly tightening his hold around her shoulders. “It’s right there. Just a few more feet.”
Toph audibly groans and adjusts her grip around Sokka’s torso. Somehow, the man feels warm despite the frigid weather and the snow quite literally hitting his back. How he manages such a feat, Toph has no clue, but she quietly wishes to know his ways.
After what is surely three hours—but is really a few minutes—Sokka kicks the wooden cabin’s door open and ushers her in before shutting it quickly behind them. She can hear him pull off his coat and gloves and toss them aside, urging her to do the same. Once she does so, she lets out a shuddering breath. She’s freezing.
The floors are wooden, so there isn’t much she can do to figure out how large the space is right away, but when Sokka takes her hand and guides her across the room, she realizes that the square footage is much more than what she previously expected.
From the way that their footsteps echo and the amount of time it takes them to walk across the room, Toph figures that it’s a pretty big place. He tells her to sit down on a very plush pillow on the ground right in front of a wall before he walks another few paces away, and she hears him tinker with the fireplace before it comes to life, immediately beginning to warm the place up.
Quickly, he takes a seat beside her. “We’ll get closer to the fire when we warm up a bit; we shouldn’t go from extreme cold to extreme heat because—”
“Because we don’t want to shock our bodies,” she interrupts, beginning to shudder as she quite literally defrosts. “I know. You’ve given me the lecture plenty of times before, I’ll have you know.”
Sokka scoffs and scoots closer to her, and suddenly hesitates before throwing his arm around her shoulders, pulling her into his warmth, and leaning against the wall. She immediately feels a tad warmer.
Toph is well aware of the way that she still reacts to Sokka after years of harboring a nonsensical, very likely unreciprocated crush-turned-something-deeper on him. Her palms get sweaty and she can feel her heart rate increase, and even when she’s around him, she gets this horrible sense of longing and this ache in her chest. And she does all she can to not let any of it show. It’s stupid and she despises that she still feels like this after so many stupid years. Even after the man practically dragged her out of bed and through a snowstorm, she feels this intense affection toward him and she hates it. It sickens her, in fact.
Right now, the ache in her chest is in full swing. And so are the sweaty palms and—honestly, all of it. All of it is in full swing and she wants to smack herself out of it.
“Hey.”
“Hm?”
“I just want to make sure you’re good,” he says quietly, pulling the tie out of her hair. She knows he did it because it’ll help warm her up, but the gesture feels strangely intimate that she tenses the slightest bit. Goosebumps cover her skin and she shivers at the way his breath hits the shell of her ear. “Are you? Good?”
“I’m good, Snoozles.” Her voice is just as quiet as his when she replies to him because his question and the way he asked it knocked the wind out of her. “You?”
“Now that I know that you are, yeah.”
Toph nuzzles herself further into his warmth, trying to ignore the way his words are affecting her. “Thanks for today.”
Sokka lets out a chuckle. “Don’t thank me—I’m now a contributing factor in the fact that you hate snow. I’ve failed my mission. It’s a sad day for Sokkas everywhere.”
“Oh, no,” she says, biting back a smile. “You’ve always been a contributing factor when it comes to that, and I absolutely hate snow. There’s no changing that. You need to get it through that thick-ass head of yours.”
“Thick-ass—you know—hmph.” He grumbles childishly and tightens his embrace around her, burying his face in her hair, and she allows her head to fall against his chest.
Toph tries to focus on the fact that she’s feeling her eyelids become significantly heavier instead of the intimacy of this gesture. They’ve done this millions of times, cuddling and seeking warmth from each other, especially when they deal with the cold of the South, but somehow, this feels different. It shouldn’t but it does.
Dismissing her thoughts, the last thing she hears before dozing off is the sound of her best friend’s heartbeat in her ear.
4.
九 月
September
“I can’t believe you’re making me come to this.”
Sokka’s grin is overly evident in his voice when he says, “No one makes you do anything, so you’re here ‘cause you want to be, Beifong, and no other reason. Although,” he pauses, blocking her path and crossing his arms over his chest, “I do wonder why it is you chose to come if you supposedly don’t like events like these.”
Toph shakes her head at her best friend, only mildly irritated and mostly amused by his idiocies, and chooses to ignore his musing. Of course, she’s not about to tell him the true reason behind her accompanying him to this outdoor shindig.
“Who in their right mind would throw a formal party outdoors in the snow?”
“Semi-outdoor, and we tribes folk would, evidently,” Sokka replies, spreading his arms out to his sides. “And we do it in style, which leads me to tell you that you look mighty dashing this evening, date o’ mine.”
“You don’t look too bad yourself, Snoozles,” she teases, willing the warmth in her cheeks at the way he phrased his sentence to beat it. “I’m almost unashamed to be caught beside you tonight.”
He throws a dramatic hand to his chest. “You do flatter me, and I really am proud of this outfit because—wait.” He frowns, evidently catching her joke. “I don’t like you.”
“Even without the earth readily available, I can call your bluff from a mile away,” she says laughingly before grabbing his hand and pulling him in the direction of the rambunctious crowd and live music. “Now, let’s go and get this over with.”
They come upon a large tent—Toph almost walks into the side of it and Sokka has to abruptly pull her toward the entrance to keep her from doing so—and she’s hit with the most pleasant burst of warmth once they’re inside. It joyfully contrasts the cold she was feeling just a second ago and she feels herself begin to defrost.
Before she can even ask him, Sokka tells her, “Space heaters. We’ve been testing them out this past month and they’ve been pretty eventful for things like these.”
“Why,” Toph squeezes his arm, only just now realizing that she’s still holding it, “was this not a thing when I first started coming here?”
“They weren’t even in development when you first started coming here!”
They find a clear table and he pulls out a chair for her. At the gesture, she rolls her eyes but still plops down and lets out a tired huff, throwing her head against the seat-back. “It should’ve been,” she finally mumbles as she shuts her eyes. The warmth brings on a wave of fatigue that she hadn’t even known she was feeling.
But then, the smell of arctic hen fills her nose and she sits right up as her mouth begins to water. She realizes now that Sokka had strayed away for a moment or two while she made herself comfortable to get them a plate of food and she’s never loved him as much as she loves him now.
Toph mentally narrows her eyes at herself as she snatches her chopsticks off the table. She didn’t mean it that way, surely. At least not right this moment… because she does love him. She’s certain of it, and the months they’ve spent apart have served as a way for her to come to terms with this fact. And with the fact that nothing will come of it. She loves him, she always has from the looks of it, and that’s that.
“Hungry?” he asks, a teasing air in his voice as he watches her enthusiastically dig into her meal.
“I’m a bottomless pit, didn’t you know?”
“Oh, forgive me. I just forget who I’m with when you’re all dressed up—you know, since it’s such a rarity for you to do so in my presence.”
Scoffing, she rolls her eyes and kicks him beneath the table. “Shut up.”
Despite his hissing, she can hear his laughs as he rubs the sore spot on his shin as she hides her smile behind the glass of wine she finds beside her plate. As she sips, the drink warms her to her core, and before she can put down the glass, Sokka nudges her arm, causing her to drop her chopsticks into the small plate of broth she’d been hovering them over. She scowls at him.
“What was that for?”
“I missed you,” he says simply as if that explains the reason why he’s such a heathen.
“It’s been three months,” she replies with a dismissive wave of her hand. She feels the same way, though, regardless of her words. “Get a grip.”
Toph suspects that he’s going to reply with something equally as quippy, but he doesn’t get the chance to because someone else joins them.
“Hey, Dad,” Sokka greets his father, standing up to slap his shoulder.
Hakoda replies in that sunny tone Toph has grown quite used to in the past year, “Son. I was hoping to steal Toph away from you for a dance. Things are getting lively out there and Katara’s left me for Aang again.” He then addresses Toph, “If you’re willing, I’d love to take you out for a spin on the dance floor. It would make this old man very happy.”
With a snort, Sokka says, “Good luck getting her away from her meal and into the cold.”
“I’d be happy to, Old Man,” Toph tells Hakoda with a small smile, ignoring Sokka’s comment. “Anything to get away from your son’s stench would do me just fine right now.”
The chieftain guffaws at Sokka’s expense, a hand on his stomach before offering it to her. “Between you and me—I can get behind wanting to run away from him at one of these things.”
Sokka makes a show of lifting his arm and sniffing, then with an air of offense, says, “I’m literally right here.”
“Smell you later, Snoozles,” Toph shoots back at him with a mocking grin as Hakoda laughingly leads her outside and onto the dancefloor. Once there, Toph gets into position with one hand on his shoulder and the other in Hakoda’s mittened one. “I don’t know how you people put up with him.”
“You know,” he says with a hint of humor, “I don’t know either. It’s a magnificent brainteaser if you ask me.”
She chuckles at his joke and shakes her head. She’s always loved the man; he’s always been exceedingly nice to Toph and Aang from the moment he met them. Even with Zuko, he’d been one to embrace the once-banished-prince-turned-fire-lord. Hakoda has proven to be a good man and an even better father with battle scars that Toph can’t help but admire.
They sway to the music for a little while in a companionable silence accompanied by the live music playing around them. When Sokka first played her some of his favorite songs a few years ago, she realized how much she loves the music from the tribes, yet another fact that she won’t be sharing with Sokka anytime soon because he’s boastful enough as it is. So she releases a relaxed sigh as she lets the music flow through her.
“My son is very fond of you,” Hakoda’s voice suddenly says, mildly startling her out of her comfortable daze.
“Of course he is,” Toph replies quickly, trying to distract herself from her bashfulness and the blush she feels rising to her cheeks. “Who wouldn’t be?”
“My apologies, of course he is.” He chortles. “But it goes beyond the typical fondness, Toph. I can tell. It’s in the way he acts and I know my son; he doesn’t act like this toward anyone else. I thought you should know.”
Toph is stumped for the first time in a long time as she really doesn’t know what to say to what she’s just heard. Her mouth slackens slightly at his words before she catches herself, but amid her disbelief, there’s also this annoying twinge of something akin to hope and she very badly wants to stamp it out as soon as possible. Hope is the worst thing one can feel in a losing game.
But what if something more with Sokka is just the opposite of that?
She’s never risked considering that possibility, and she really doesn’t want to start now, but hearing Hakoda’s observation is pushing her more and more toward the end of curiosity. But she knows what they say about curiosity…
“Can I cut in?”
Brought out abruptly from her daze before she can respond to Hakoda, Toph blinks at the sound of her best friend’s voice coming from the left of her. Of course he shows up now when she’s having some sort of existential crisis.
To Sokka’s question, Toph says no at the very same time that Hakoda chuckles and says yes, releasing Toph’s hand and stepping away with a gentle bow.
Well, shit.
Her disdain must show on her face because when Sokka takes his father’s place—his hands warm on her lower back as he pulls her flush into him, forcing her to place her hands on both his shoulders—, he snickers and says, “Come on—I won’t step on you this time.”
She runs with it, and says, “It’ll take one time that you step on me for me to get on that boat home early.”
“Do you really have to leave tomorrow?”
“Yeah,” Toph replies to his question, disregarding the tightness in her chest at the tone of his voice. “I only got Penga to cover me for another two and a half weeks and it takes about that to get back to Yu Dao.”
Sokka hums at this. “I’m sure that if you tell her you need to stick around for a few more days, she won’t mind taking over for you for longer. You know how much she loves me; she’d do me the solid.”
Toph scoffs at his foolishness and playfully pushes off his chest to get away from the dance floor, but he takes her wrist before she can stalk off and reels her right back in, bringing their mouths dangerously close to one another. She can feel his breath against the tip of her nose. All it would take is for her to push herself up on her toes for her to reach his lips.
The thought of her actually wanting to kiss him crosses her mind. And yes, she does want it; to finally get to taste him; to feel his lips moving against her own.
He can feel it too, she thinks. His breathing is sharper and she can feel the strong thump of his heart beneath her fingertips.
He’s nervous.
Or maybe she’s reading too much into it. But she swears that he feels it.
And just like that, their noses are brushing. This is something she cannot be imagining. She can feel the cold tip of Sokka’s nose against the side of hers and his contrasting hot breath hitting her lips. Toph swallows thickly and decides that she’ll let it happen. That she’ll let him make the first move because she is one to wait and one to listen, and she is not about to abandon her practices for an urge.
But before anything can escalate, before his lips finally touch hers, Toph’s eyes flutter open at the feel of gentle snowflakes falling onto her cheeks. She releases a breathy laugh and shakes her head because of course this is how a moment between them is interrupted. He laughs along with her, though she’s not sure if he’s laughing because of the same reason she is. Maybe it’s for the best that nothing was able to happen. She takes it that way at least. Things could get weird if that line is ever crossed and she doesn’t want that, so it’s best things remain the way they are now.
But that doesn’t mean that she wants him any less.
With Sokka’s grip still on her hand, Toph tilts her head back. Foolishly, she keeps her eyes open when she does this, and she suddenly feels the sting of ice when it falls into her eye.
Any laughing that she’s doing ceases in favor of a string of curses as she rubs her eye, trying to get rid of the dull pain she’s experiencing.
“No, don’t do that!” Sokka exclaims, forcing her hand away from her face. He tilts her chin up to inspect her eye and he lets out a little chuckle. The nerve of him. “You’re fine. But the more you rub, the worse it’s going to hurt, and you’ll probably be all itchy until tomorrow morning.”
She hmphs, keeping her ‘bad’ eye firmly shut. And even bundled up as she is, Toph finds herself freezing anew. Before she can even open her mouth to complain, she feels an extra coat wrap around her shoulders. It smells of pine and wood and faintly of cologne.
“I hate the snow,” she tells Sokka finally, wrapping the coat tighter around herself. It’s doing miracle work to fight the cold, and she can’t even bring herself to worry about how Sokka is fairing in the weather without protection from it. She’s sure he’s fine, though, considering the fact that he’s probably part-abominable snowman at this point.
She tries not to read into the gesture. He would do this for anyone because he’s just that good.
Sokka guffaws as he nudges her back into the large tent, the space heaters welcoming her into their open embrace again. “The snow hates you, too,” he replies good-naturedly, pulling out a chair for her to sit in. She does.
Toph snorts, glad that things don’t seem uncomfortable or tense between them after whatever it was back there. She accepts a cloth that he hands to her and brings it up to her eye, drying away the pesky tears that the snow induced. “That’s a new one.”
“Got to keep things fresh or you’ll get bored of me and split.”
“I would,” she replies, “but I’ll probably freeze to death, so I have no other option than to stick it out.”
“Oh, no.” He sits beside her, his knee grazing her thigh. She can hear the humor in his voice when he continues, “I couldn’t let that happen. Maybe I’d let you catch another little chill just to get you used to it, but I could never let you freeze to death.”
She raises a brow. “Of course you couldn’t. Who else would you bamboozle into coming to things like these with you?”
“If it’s not you, then I’m afraid no one else would be worth the trouble, T.”
Suddenly reticent and aware of the fact that Sokka is looking at her judging by how her entire right side is prickling with awareness, Toph simply clears her throat and picks at the plate of food in front of her that she had to leave behind earlier.
+1.
十二 月
December
For being the final month of the year—the one month wherein unyielding cold is never not present—Toph doesn’t feel as frigid as she has throughout her previous visits to the South Pole since January. Perhaps she’s warmer because of the new coat Katara delivered to her when she visited Yu Dao in October (Toph tries to forget the cheekiness with which she handed her the gift), or maybe it’s because she’s gotten used to the low-low temperatures somehow. But she thinks that it’s not too bad this time around.
This doesn’t mean that she no longer loathes it; she does. Very much so, almost as much as she despises the snow. That much will never change.
Still, Toph has found herself looking forward to her last visit of the year since she returned from her previous one a few months back. And the thought of the snow and the cold and everything that comes with the South Pole no longer made her want to scream into the frozen abyss as much as she once did.
The desire is still there. The urge has only been minimized minutely.
Of course, Sokka isn’t to be privy to all of this, which is why she is taking longer than she should to finish getting ready for whatever he has planned for them now. She mustn’t seem too eager about their outing or he’ll get the wrong idea and think she’s a fan of the weather here—she isn’t.
She is readjusting her undershirt in the guest room when Sokka, without knocking, barges in. Immediately, plops himself on her bed.
“I could’ve been naked, you know,” she tells him, her sweater hanging off her shoulder. And she really could’ve been.
“Well,” he said nonchalantly, “you’re taking too long and I wanted to know what the big idea was.”
“I just got here like an hour ago, so I’m taking my time,” Toph says with a grunt, sending a pillow flying at him. “Can’t you let a girl settle in before you attack her?”
“Not when that girl is you, and especially not when I have places to take you and things to show you on this very special night, Toph Beifong.”
She makes a face; hopefully, one that betrays her unwillingness. “I don’t like the sound of that.”
“You will by the time we get there,” he replies with a grin as he stands up and approaches the room’s exit. “So get settled, we’ll grab some dinner and a few drinks, and we’ll go. Okay? For me?”
With a roll of her eyes that contains more fondness than annoyance, Toph sighs, raising her arms at her sides and dropping them against her thighs. “Funny how you make it sound like I have a choice in the matter, dipshit.”
“You don’t at all, but I thought I’d give you the courtesy of a warning.”
“Interesting, so courtesy stops at knocking on a door with you, then.”
He pretends to think for a moment. She can almost feel him cooly leaning against the doorframe with a mocking smile on his face to match the stance. “Can’t blame a guy for trying to take a peek at the goods.”
Toph’s mouth drops open and she conceals her laugh at his comment with a cough before grabbing the disregarded pillow from earlier and launching it at him at full speed. He manages to duck before it hits him, but he grabs it and sends it right back to her; she avoids it, much to what seems like Sokka’s dismay.
“I’m kidding.” Sokka laughs, leaning against the doorframe. “I kid. I’m a kidder.”
“Let’s go,” she tells him, grabbing Katara’s coat and shrugging it on. Then, without protest for once, she slips on her mittens, her hat, and scarf before shuffling past him. “Or I might change my mind, bonehead.”
They bust each others’ chops on their way to the tavern where they plan on having food and drinks, and they do the same on the way to the festival. All laughs and teases and some mild, playful flirting that makes her insides annoyingly tighten.
The large crowd of people is evident when they step into the square. Toph hears lively music and the sound of content and excited chatter filling her ears and she can’t help but share the sentiment. There’s something about the atmosphere that makes her feel like she’s a part of this whole thing, even though she, in truth, knows nothing about it other than the little Sokka has told her.
Automatically, she assumes that they’re going to join the mass of people, but he pulls her in the direction of a quieter, more intimate area where she can actually make out his silhouette. Everything becomes a little muted. She doesn’t recognize where they are, however, so she waits for him to say something before she asks.
His hand squeezes hers. “Take off your mittens.”
“And what?” She frowns, pulling her hand away. “Risk losing all my digits because of this frosty death trap you call home? No, thank you. You’re on your own, buddy boy.”
“Trust me.” Sokka laughs, grabbing her hand again and tugging on the mitten. “Don’t you trust me?”
“Unfortunately.”
After gently flicking the frozen tip of her nose, Sokka slowly pulls off the mitten. The gesture feels intimate and she can’t help the blush that feathers her cheeks. She turns her face away in hopes that he doesn’t notice or comment on it.
He takes her now bare hand in his own and lifts it, placing it onto a cold, hard, and wet surface. She almost recoils at the contact but relaxes when she realizes she’s touching ice. Toph allows her palm to flatten against it and for the cold to radiate through her body. She thinks about how the sensation would’ve bothered her, especially after she’d managed to warm herself up enough to not complain about it.
Before she can ask, Sokka says softly, his breath brushing the shell of her ear, “So there are a bunch of things to do at this festival, but my absolute favorite thing is these ice sculptures.” His hand never leaves hers as he speaks and she can feel his warmth radiating into her back. “My mom used to bring me and Katara here every Winter Solstice and she would let us run around and play with the statues—and, I don’t know. It’s just—I love it here. Too few people come to this particular area. I guess because they find it boring or something—”
He pauses for a moment, likely to check if Toph is listening—she is. Very intently. Then, he clears his throat and drops his hand away from hers as he steps back, giving her more space that she didn’t want or ask for.
“Fair warning. Tell me to shut up if I ramble—you’re good at that.” Toph snorts as he continues. “I can’t help how excited this whole thing makes me, okay? So it’s not my fault that I get on my soapbox and get all monologue-y with it.”
Sokka goes on, telling her how much he loves this place, telling her what makes it so special and why he chose to bring her here. “It’s just—it’s really something I wanted to show you,” he admits.
Toph briefly takes her hand off the statue as he speaks, listening more intently to what he has to say instead. Her heart swells when she hears him talk about something he loves and is so enthusiastic about. And in stark contrast to the chill she feels when touching the sculpture, the fact that he is sharing this with her—something that is connected to a memory of his mother, especially—warms her to her very core. She can’t help but smile as she notes the adoring tone in his voice and the sheer love in his words.
He’s still talking, but when she gets this sudden impulse, she can’t ignore it because she’s already done so for long enough. Fuck it, she thinks. What’s the worst that can happen? He puts on one of his awkward I-forgot-I-have-a-thing routines and she shrugs it off as an off-handed, spur-of-the-moment incident that they can laugh about later? She can deal with that. She can deal with anything so long as it doesn’t mean the end of them. She just can’t hold back anymore.
So, in the middle of his impassioned monologue, Toph grabs the back of his neck with one hand and the side of his face with the other and pulls him down to her mouth.
She’s highly surprised at her accuracy in finding his lips considering how totally blind she is in this icebox, but she manages to catch them with hers. For one or two terrifying seconds, Sokka is motionless and tense, his arms out to his sides, and she’s about to break away from him to avoid any further self-humiliation, but his hands find either side of her neck, his thumbs caressing her jaw. And he’s kissing her back.
Her body feels so warm and liquefied right now that she thinks that she’s melting, and Toph Beifong does not melt. She simply doesn’t.
The number of times she’s thought about this moment in the past is mortifying, but it’s better than she ever imagined it would be. Their movements against each other’s mouths are so deep and languid that she needs to pull away for a moment to get a grip.
When she does, Toph still brushes her mouth against his as she whispers, “You told me to shut you up if you spoke too much.” Her thumb pulls on his lower lip. “Shut up.”
His forehead falls against hers and she realizes that he’s as breathless as he is stunned. “Yeah—yeah, that—good plan—”
More put-together now yet equally eager, she quietens him again with her lips on his. This kiss that she’s dragged him into is more desperate than the last, the both of them, it seems, catching up on lost time. Through his kiss, she realizes that she wasn’t alone in how she felt and, damn it, she should’ve known. There were signs, weren’t there? There had to have been. In the unnecessary yet welcomed touches, the lingering, the way her skin would prickle with awareness whenever she suspected he was looking at her, the almost kiss a few months back… It wasn’t nothing after all.
This isn’t Toph’s first kiss, nor her second or third. But this is the first time she feels something worth feeling. The pressures of his lips on hers makes her feel warm and safe, and she can’t stand not feeling more of it.
Their mouths are insistent, tongues parting lips, hands desperately searching for skin, something to hold. She settles on balling his coat into her fists and holding on until her fingers feel stiff.
The more they kiss, the more she wants from him. Her pulse is climbing, she can hear it in her ears, and feel it thrumming insistently against her chest and in her lips. This spark, something akin to a flame, even, begins to grow in her stomach and spreads to her chest and head, and legs, making her crave more of him than she ever thought she would. She feels suffocated and intoxicated, and yet, nevertheless, she can’t get enough of it. She never wants to get enough of it. Of him.
She loves it and she loves him, but she’s fine with keeping this to herself for now.
When oxygen becomes an issue, Toph pulls away at the very same time a few snowflakes hit her cheek; this time, not injuring her. Puffing out a laugh at the memory of her last visit, she leans her forehead against his chin before angling her head up at him and kissing the corner of his mouth.
“Still hate the snow?” he asks her, a smile in his voice. “Even after all of this?”
Toph can’t help the grin that spreads across her face or the way her heart feels almost as if it’s about to burst out her chest or the way she feels her entire body warm up, particularly because of his fingers gently caressing her hips over her coat.
Still, not wanting to tell him that she doesn’t hate it, perse, she gets on her toes and kisses him again before saying against his lips, “I’ll get back to you on that.”