Title: Sawaru
Summary: Her love is simple. Non-Korra compliant.
Character(s): Toph, Aang
Notes: According to google, 'sawaru' is 'touch, feel' in Japanese :) correct me if wrong, please!


She likes the way his back tapers.

There's something soothing about the feel of his smooth skin on her palm, still rough despite the influx of caretakers and desert-bee infused lotions that have come with the end of the war. He's got that spot - even softer than the rest of his back, taut and thin - the one that Katara helped make when she saved his life all those years ago. Since then the two of them have grown apart, slowly at first and then with the force of a komodo-rhino charging.

She doesn't know what lead to it, still doesn't, nor does she quite understand how she ended up filling that role Katara left, but somehow or another she ended up on the Avatar's arm at some inaugural ball for the new king of some little kingdom her home country, and the jokes and terrible attempts at dancing lead to him tripping over himself in his haste to kiss her.

Terrible, she tells him, but the feel of his delicate fingers tracing the bridge of her nose still makes her want to curl her toes and kiss him senseless.

He, too, adores her skin, the shape of her body against his, the warmth he finds when he dips his nose to her collarbone. But the noblewoman is more than that, and it holds his love, too. She returns the favor and more, lets him pull her from her comfort zone the same way she does to him.

That physicality has been brutal from the start - but innocent, which remains despite the discoveries she's found in him, the way his breath might hitch when she dresses for bed and the way her mouth dries and the feel of his breath at her mouth. That same mouth has her in the palm of his hand, no matter the toughness she always exudes, the same one that exists within him when he lets it. It's hard, sometimes, moving forward and fighting towards fixing the world, but in the end it's the ideal, it's a personal firmament, glorious and perfect. But they have been built upon battles that weren't meant to be theirs, have overcome the loss that should have never been. They have survived, they have flourished.

And it begins with the touch of their hands in the darkness.


a/n: Not too hot on the ending but I've no idea where I was going. R&R :)