#leantailean

Toph remains still, not wanting to disturb the moment. It’s a nice way to wake up—one can’t blame her.

His warmth seeps into her, wrapping her in a sense of security she’s rarely known and has only ever given to herself. She can’t help but think about how far they’ve come, from the early days when they clashed like their elements would, to this point where they’ve found something unexpected in each other. 

Who would’ve thought?

As she finally gives in to the desire to touch him and gives up her slumbering act, she brings her fingers up to lazily trace patterns on his chest. She can’t help but admire the contrast between his rough exterior and the softness she’s unearthed beneath it all. Her heart flutters again with a mix of emotions she’s not entirely sure how to name—tenderness, fondness, and a longing she’s reluctant to admit.

She’s never been the kind of person to long for another like this, especially when she knows they’re already hers despite any minor disbelief there may have been initially. And yet…

Toph shifts slightly, her head coming to rest against Zuko’s shoulder, feeling his steady heartbeat against her cheek. She can practically hear the smile in his voice when he speaks.

“So you are awake.”

His tone makes her have to hold back a grin of her own. “Barely.”

Zuko takes the hand on his chest and brings it to his lips, pressing a few soft kisses to her knuckles. Against her hand, he asks, “How’d you sleep?”

“Decently enough, considering all your damn snoring.”

“Wh—” His hold on her hand slackens a bit, and he sounds genuinely appalled when he says, “I do not snore.”

She raises her voice for effect as she humorously taps her ear. “Tell that to my eardrum.”

He harrumphs and childishly mumbles something she can’t quite pick up on. Before she can ask him to repeat himself, to not be a chicken shit and to speak up, she feels his leg slide between hers and pull her impossibly closer to him, leaving barely any breathing room. If she were claustrophobic, this would certainly be an issue.

Good thing she isn’t because she’s loving this.

Still, when he nuzzles his face into her neck and she feels the tickle of his very light scruff along with his breath feathering her skin, she finds herself holding back the need to squirm.

When she can’t take it anymore, Toph laughs. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“I don’t think,” he says, his lips peppering her neck and jaw. “I know that I'm not letting you leave this bed anytime soon for telling the biggest lie I’ve ever heard.”

She lets the lie comment slide and focuses on his dramatics. “Letting me? Who do you think you are?”

“Your… significant other,” he says, deciding on a safe term for what they are. “And that makes me entitled to favors.” 

“That right? Favors such as…?”

“Such as you humoring me and allowing me to think that I’m not letting you leave this bed by, effectively, not leaving this bed.”

With a teasing smile, Toph tells him, “You know, if you wanted to snuggle, you could've just said so.”

“I'm not opposed to snuggling.”

She stretches upward a bit to brush her nose against his, their breaths intermingling. As if unable to resist, Zuko immediately closes the minute distance between them, capturing her lips in a slow, lingering kiss that spoke of a love that runs deeper than she can describe.

As they kiss, their love is a wildfire, fierce and untamed. And in this intimate morning embrace, they revel in the simple pleasure of being close, of knowing that their hearts beat as one. There is no space between them, no distance too great, that could ever diminish the magnetic pull they felt for each other.

Except for maybe his snoring.

He’d have to cut that out sometime soon.

--

Thanks again for sending this over!

“Why are you just sitting there?” she huffs, tone nearly brusque as she tugs on her clothes, no art or artifice to it and he’d think that was just Toph if he didn’t vividly remember every second of the way she slinked out of her clothes last night, laughing the whole time, like all she needed to put on a show was his heartbeat to guide her.

“I—” He takes a deep breath, trying to ignore the too-familiar feeling of needing to work up the courage to say something. “I had a nice time.”

She cocks her head, blank.

“…Last night.” He clears his throat when she still doesn’t react. “It was…” Amazing. Funny. Exhilarating. Silly. Just physical in a way he never imagined sex could be. Unbelievable, because he never even let himself hope that she might feel—

“Yeah, Sparrowkeet, it was a good time,” she snorts, haphazardly tying off her belt. “Now what’s a girl gotta do to get food around here?”

“Sparrowkeet?” he blinks, thrown. That's...not what she was calling him last night, or before. “It—I can—or I can have the servants bring—”

“What, like my legs suddenly don’t work?” she interrupts, rolling her eyes. “Don’t think you were that good.”

“No, I—” Right, she doesn’t like to feel pampered, or infantilized, or anything like she can’t take care of herself. Right. “I just thought it could be nice,” he tries again, trying not to fidget, trying to make his voice a little more sure, a little more like it was last night. “To stay here. Together.”

She grunts, tugging her tunic on inside out. “I thought you wanted me to level some farmland or something. Make some terraces.”

“Well, yeah, but—”

“I’m not suddenly some fragile flower just because you fucked me, Zuko,” she cuts in, so sharp that he can’t help from rearing back from her tone.

“What—I didn’t—” He never said—why would she think—

“What happened doesn’t change anything, dude.” She rolls her eyes, somehow managing to give him an unimpressed look without ever actually looking at him, and Zuko doesn’t know if the word dude has felt quite so much like a knife to the gut before.

“You want some fainting fire lily who’ll collapse in your bed all day after a good fuck?” she’s continuing like this is some fight, stomping around for her headband, the fact that it’s on the floor by the door frozen in Zuko’s throat. “You can call Mai back.”

“That’s not—Mai wouldn’t—” He doesn’t want that, never wanted that. And Mai isn’t that, for one, even if he and her were still falling into bed together whenever they got bored enough for it to seem like a good idea.

But more importantly, Toph isn’t that, has never been that. And why would she think he wanted—why would she think he would have done anything they did last night if he—if he didn’t—

“Now where’s breakfast. I'm starving,” she says, jamming her headband onto her head like it’s any other morning, like last night they didn’t—like last night she didn’t…

…Like last night never happened, Zuko realizes, feeling suddenly so, so small. Because maybe that’s what she wants. For it to just...be nothing.

“Right,” Zuko says, squeezing his eyes shut against the sudden, hot sting, falling back on years of experience in sounding steady when he isn't, “Right. Let me just—”

“I can find it,” she says, already shoving through the bedroom doors.

“—finish getting dressed.” Zuko blinks his eyes back open to stare at the door as it slowly swings closed, eventually registering the way his hands are twisted in his tunic hard enough to tear. He stares at that a moment, then forces his fingers to loosen, forces himself to take a slow, deep breath, forces himself to get up and get dressed and not think about the fact that he should know, he should know, that reaching for fragile, impossible things only ever makes them crumble.

--

Toph strides away from Zuko's bedroom quickly as she can without outright running, silently thanking Oma and Shu that she’s the only one who can read heartbeats because she does not need Zuko being able to see through her right now, not like this. Not when she knows exactly how it is for a Fire Lord’s plaything, regardless of who that plaything is or how much he might like to think otherwise and fucking balls, there's a reason she’s never let herself do something this dumb-shit stupid before.

Sure, she’s never heard rumors about Zuko like that, not outside of Mai. But Toph knows how it works, even if he doesn’t. And she’s not going to do that. She’s not going to cut herself down to fit, she isn’t going to make herself small so anyone else can seem taller, is never going to hold herself back.

Not even if it means having...If it means finally getting to have...