Commentary: And they talk still more. Sorry if there are errors—I will look and fix them later, but I thought you all might want to read this before I lose computer access for the day!
POT CALLING KETTLE
Chapter Eleven
The day sizzled by uneventfully and the night went with it. On the following morning they set out early again, though this time at a brisk walk: it was raining so hard visibility was nil, and neither Sokka nor Appa felt a keen desire to fly headlong into a tree, cliff, or mountainside. As the bison alternately ghosted low over the forest or trundled along the mucky road nearby the two friends, the sound of a few persistent crickets rose in crescendo. The badgerfrogs soon contributed a deafening baseline, and Toph broke the natural medley eventually with the growled query of, "So, do you always suck this much at the whole conversation thing or am I just lucky?"
Jerked from his thoughts by the sound of her voice, Sokka blinked over at her through the rain's sheeting haze. "Huh?"
She pinwheeled her arms, fists pumping, face closed in a glower. "Don't huh me, Snoozles. I used to call you Snoozles, right?" Before he could reply, she plunged on, "You've said approximately ten words to me since yesterday morning. I could sum up the rest of your communication with a series of various grunts. I guess I was just wondering if, I dunno, you're like this all the time or if talking to me is really so much of a freaking endeavor that you've found solace in silence."
"Nice vocab use there."
"Hey, I try." A smile flitted over her features. It was gone in a blink. "Seriously, though. What's your malfunction?"
Sokka shook his head. Rain flew off the wide-brimmed straw hat he was wearing in thin bright chains. "Nothing. I'm sorry," he put in, and Toph's taut jaw relaxed its clench a little. "Really. It's not you. I was just thinking."
She clutched at her chest, choked out a gasp. "Thinking?" she wheezed. "Thinking?"
"Oh ha-hah." But he confirmed, "Yeah. About what you said before. About maybe"—he was glad she couldn't see him and grateful for the rumble of the rain too; both made his red face and lolloping heart a little less conspicuous—"liking me. At some point. In the, uh, past."
She stepped closer to him, tipping up the saucer helmet she'd been granted by the Earth Kingdom military years ago. Her thumb settled in a dimple at its edge, and a thread of water ran down her sleeve. With a disgruntled hiss she shook the dampened limb. "It's bugging you that much?"
"I wouldn't say it's bugging me," he denied. "I'm just trying to remember times when there may have been some, eheh, sparks?" He glanced at her. She looked remarkably unimpressed at his word choice, and he tried again, "Indicators. Special moments"—she pretended to gag and he sighed—"c'mon, you know what I mean!"
"Yeah," she acknowledged, "I get it. You're trying to remember occasions when it might have been obvious I liked you if you'd been paying attention. But"—and she bumped his arm with her knuckles—"you clearly weren't paying attention because, let's face it, you've been racking your brain for a whole day and you haven't come up with anything. If you didn't notice it then, you're not gonna magically remember it now."
He gave her a light shove. They both slid in the mud a bit. "My memory's not full of holes like yours."
"Yeah?" She shoved him back. "It's just that slow naturally, huh?"
"He-EEEEY—" The road sloped. Sokka's foot caught a spot more slippery than most and went skidding out from beneath him. He flailed and felt Toph's fingers close over his wrist, and heard her bark laughter next as her footing gave way and they went plummeting down the shallow embankment together. They landed at the bottom of it in a filthy, sodden, squelching heap. After vigorously clearing mud from a nostril, Sokka provided, "That? That was not my fault."
"Sure it wasn't." Toph upended her helmet and let globs of the stuff in it fall earthward again. "You know," she said conversationally, giving said helmet a shake, "remembering whether or not I liked you might be great and all, but there's something you should consider before you bother investing too much more thought in my feelings."
"Yeah?" Sokka shifted in the slimy muck. A foothold seemed like too much to hope for, and the wet ooze was having its way with his pants. "What's that?"
Maybe because she was an Earthbender or maybe because she just had better luck than the tribesman, Toph made it upright before Sokka. She seized twin handfuls of his tunic to drag him to where the ground was vaguely solid, and she said as he gathered his footing, "You should think about whether or not you like me, buddy. If you don't," and she gave his hip a healthy smack, leaving behind a dark handprint, "there's no sense in getting all worked up over how I feel. Felt," she corrected belatedly. A muscle in her cheek jumped.
He rubbed at the handprint she'd gifted him. It smeared. "That's a little harsh," he opined. "And not very fair. To you, I mean."
She shrugged, her smile wry and wet for the rain. "It's fair enough." She blew beads of sweat from her upper lip and murmured, "Because it how it's always been, I think. I mean… if I did like you, you never noticed, right?" He could do nothing but nod. "And it didn't matter how I felt then, did it? Because you didn't like me." As Appa came padding down the embankment to sniff at them, she finished, "If you still don't, it's best to just not worry about my take on the situation. I'm gonna stick with you no matter what." She help up her hands in the downpour. "Isn't that obvious? I can't remember you and yet, hello, here I am!"
After studying his best friend a moment, Sokka felt compelled to insist, "It's not that I never liked you. Not that I've been harboring a secret crush on you or anything," he rushed to clarify, "but it's just—I guess, it never even occurred to me to look at you that way and…" The corner of her mouth dipped. Her brow wrinkled too, just a bit, and the signs weren't much but Sokka, who had been Toph's friends for years, knew hurt when he saw it. "Wow," he managed, "uhm. That—yeah, that didn't quite come out the way I wanted—"
"Save it," she muttered. "I get that I'm not exactly a walking column of femininity here. And"—this was grudging—"I guess Suki probably had, well. Giant boobs."
"Actually, they were pretty avera—uhm." Sokka gnawed his lower lip. "Maybe we should… not talk about this anymore."
"Brilliant plan. You have my undying support."
They started walking again. After a few squishing steps, though, Toph reached for his arm and squeezed it. "Sokka," she said, her voice soft, "I have a confession."
Sokka's pulse was an abrupt drum in his neck. "Yeah?"
With a wince and the unmistakable sound of suction, Toph pulled free a scrap of something that had been cemented to her backside. Offering it up to him, she admitted, "I think I sat on your hat."
