Commentary: Tokka Week's over. =( Aw. I had fun! I hope you did too, readers! And because I feel like I should say so: this was done well before the deadline. I just forgot to post it here. Herpderp.

Words: 1,699

Word FORTY-EIGHT: Secrets

Toph steps off the ferry at Chameleon Bay with a queasy stomach and a frown stretched down over her face like a fallen flag. She is the ferry's only departing passenger at this particular stop—the beach is deserted save for the one who urged her here in the first place, and she walks to him slowly, savoring the pulse of him through the sand. He lifts a hand to wave to her out of instinct alone. Toph mirrors the gesture, only partially aware her hand is too high and canted off in the wrong direction. When she draws abreast of him she makes to keep walking, but he reaches out and touches her shoulder, pinching between his fingers the fabric of her tunic.

"Toph," he says, and that's all that's necessary to make her turn roughly on her heel to him. In an instant their mouths are warring with one another, their teeth clicking, his nose driving its blade into her cheek and her lashes tickling sharp over that sensitive spot just beneath his eye. The ferry chugs away and in its shadow he tears open her vest, delving his hands beneath it to grate his palms down her ribs.

"Sst!" She pulls back at that, his wrist caught in her hand, her face thrust into his shoulder. "No—no, Sokka, stop," she demands, but it's too late. He's felt it. He's seeing it now too, probably, if the stutter of his heartbeat is any indication. A sharp sweep of his breath confirms it.

They stand for a moment together there on the beach, his hands frozen partway across the seam of her ribcage, hers holding bunches of fabric just beneath his shoulderblades. The waves gurgle. A single gullpiper lists low on the evening breeze and alights near them, pecking hopefully in the thin surf. "It's true," Sokka says at last, and the gullpiper chides him. Heedless of its cries, the tribesman observes again, because uttering it once was apparently not enough, "Toph, Spirits, it's true."

The swell of her belly, faint but unmistakable even so, gleams like a melon's rind in the moonlight. Her undershirt scarcely covers it.

"Well—yeah. Yeah, it's true." She can't exactly lie, not with the evidence out in plain sight. Feeling vulnerable about that evidence, she takes a single step back from him and leans down to pick up her vest again. Once she has shaken it free of sand, she shrugs back into it and makes to redo the buttons. Sokka's hands stop her, though, clutching at her fingers, pulling at her thumbs. She can feel him trembling.

"Let me look," he manages. His voice hitches thick in his throat. Is he crying? He sounds like he's crying, but they're on a freaking beach and everything smells like salt here and Toph can't be sure. "Let me look," he repeats, and adds a third time, "let me look at it, c'mon."

Shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot, the sand sifting between her toes, Toph protests, "Sokka—"

"I was a part of this too," he interrupts her. "It—it was my idea. To… you know." His weird choked voice cants down to a whisper and he's squeezing her hand tightly now—not so much that it hurts, but almost. "I should get to look," he reasons. "I… I want to look." A moment slips by, strange and soft somehow, and he husks to her in the lull between waves when it is over, "Please, Toph."

His tone is the sort he might normally use in the bedroom, and because of that Toph's ears color a shade of maroon she will never comprehend due to, well, duh. The flush spreads in a blotchy cape over her cheeks and ribbons down her throat next, and she scratches her nails over his knuckles before finally sighing and letting her hands fall. She braces them on her hips, worrying her palms against her belt's rough grain—she thrusts her belly forward too. Sokka's heartbeat wobbles like a branch in a windstorm. Geez, is he going to pass out?

"Oh," he murmurs, small. "Wow. Toph—it's. It's, uhm." Sucking in a hoarse lungful of air, he scrapes his arm across his eyes, too overwhelmed to finish.

"Huge?" she provides.

"No, no, I wouldn't say it's huge," he denies the next instant, which means he would totally say it's huge. "It's… it's very round. And soft-looking." That brings about his next query: "Can I touch—"

"No."

"But it's mine too." A pause. A pregnant, expecting, gravid pause. The dunegrass ripples, saaaah, and the now distant chwon-chwon of the ferry's horn echoes back to them across the bay. "Uh," Sokka hedges, "yeah—so. It, see… it is mine, isn't it?" Her eyes widen. He hurries on, "Because there were a few rumors—"

Toph scowls at him. It's a wonder his flesh doesn't just bubble right off, the look is so venomous. "Rumors?" she fires back. Her fingers crook into claws.

Helplessly Sokka gestures. The knuckles of his hand brush her belly and they both freeze, Toph's face clenched in something close to a snarl, Sokka's expression more akin to panic. "Yeah," he agrees. He must have a death wish. "Some… some other guys said you might've… uhm. You were gone a long time and… and they said they'd heard you might've seen other people along the way—"

"Seen?"

"You know what I mean." Sokka chews his lip and stares down at his best friend. "Is it true?" he forces out. "Was there… someone else?"

Spirits, he sounds like he's about to cry again. Buckling her arms tight over her middle, Toph sighs, "Sokka, you're being a drama queen here—"

He drops to his knees in the sand and, without asking, presses his palms over the swell that's been getting harder and harder for her to hide over the past few months. He tucks his cheek to it next, his cheek rasping tight against her flesh, and all the wind goes out of her as he demands, "Is this baby mine or not?"

The gullpiper sobs.

"Do I really have that much of a reputation?" Toph asks softly, reaching down in a rare moment of supplication to touch her tribesman's cheek.

Sokka agrees, sullen, "It's no secret that you're really good." He turns the purse of his mouth into the webbing between her thumb and forefinger. Grouchily he kisses it, and Toph smirks.

"I am really good," she affirms. "I'm the best." But then she leans back a little, jostling him away, so she may dip a hand down into her pants. She unhooks a clasp. His breath catches. "I'm wanted everywhere," she continues, "but Sokka, come on, okay? Do you really think I'd let anyone else do this to me?"

Her pants fall around her ankles in a puddle.

"You wanted to look," she mutters. She drives her face into her palm. She can't believe she's humoring him, and as she peels up her undershirt with her free hand she indulges, "So go ahead. Take a good long look at your baby, Sokka."

Sokka looks.

The keg of firewhiskey is tied to her waist by way of a myriad sashes and scarves. Pairs of socks stuffed into its cracks serve as padding; a line of tiny hooks, like teeth, keep it affixed high to her belt, and there are red marks on her thighs where the keg's lowermost rim has slapped again and again, presumably as she's walked. With a great sigh she yanks it free, shredding cloth, snapping metal, and drops it onto the sand between them. It sloshes faintly.

"Six months I carried that around for you," she growls. "Six. Six freaking months, Sokka." She smacks his shoulder with the flat of her hand. "I have splinters in my—"

"When I wrote asking you to bring me something special, I meant a flask! And people started talking months before you got here—I mean, they said it was big, but I didn't think—"

"Well, go big or go home," Toph snaps. She opens her mouth to say something else when Sokka flares his hands over her belly again: this time he's touching bare skin, though. Rocking forward on his knees, he traces his mouth slowly down the stretch of flesh between her navel and the seam of her loincloth, his mouth hot, his lips a little wet, and Toph curls her toes in the sand and closes her eyes and thinks that six months was a long, long time to miss out on this.

"You've lived up to your reputation," he informs her, smiling into the twist of her hip. "Confirmed all the rumors."

"Yeah." She scuffles her feet and twines her fingers in his hair. It's gotten longer in her absence, more shaggy. She likes it. "So, uh. You gonna… show me how much you appreciate my efforts?"

His thumbs feather over her thighs. "Right now? Here on the beach?"

"You gotta problem with that?"

He laughs into her waist and drops his mouth down her body like a coal in answer.

Later, when they are sprawled together on a blanket of their clothes and sipping at their firewhiskey—Sokka brought cups and little paper umbrellas—the tribesman glances over at his best friend. She's like a living statue in the moonlight, muscle and might made real by the smudges he's left on her neck, on her breasts. "How did you get the keg past the embargo line at the border customs points anyway?" he ventures. "I mean, a parka can only hide so much. And it's almost summer."

Her eyelids fall down over her gaze like curtains. She smiles at him, slow and lazy, sated—for now. Her finger traces possessive circles across his hip. "I didn't try to hide it," she says simply. "I just told them it was something else."

Curiosity lifts his brows high. "Yeah? What?"

"A pregnancy," she replies, and clinks cups with him. "You're the father. Congratulations." As he spews out his precious mouthful of illegally imported liquor, she tacks on innocently, "Speaking of rumors, hey, guess what? I heard you're having twins."