Author's note: This chapter is fluffy and feels like it wanders around without purpose, so sorry/enjoy, depending on your taste. I'm working on a much darker Toko AU story, so updates here might be slower. I would like to finish the entire AU story before I start posting chapters. Thanks for reading guys!
It was irritating not to be able to do anything, but at the same time, it was nice not to have to do anything.
Katara brought food and Iroh, they all ate together, and Toph fell asleep in the middle of lively conversation. When she woke up she was in her usual room, not the medical wing anymore. She knew without being told that Zuko had carried her there. She almost wished she'd stayed awake for that.
"Sugar Queen?" she grumbled. It took too much out of her to roll over or even breathe too deeply.
"You're up?" Katara asked brightly. "Oh, good. I'll have them bring up some food. It sure is nice having servants around."
"I guess," Toph said cautiously. Katara was way too fucking cheerful for her liking. "Why are you so chipper?"
"You're doing really well, actually. You're going to need to sleep a lot, but you're already a lot stronger."
"Great." She carefully flexed one knee. It popped, but she was able to prop her foot up on the other knee and pick her toes. Oh, that was a glorious feeling! It had been too long. "What else is going on?"
"Um, Aang and Sokka are on their way back. Oh, and Zuko is having a council meeting tomorrow. Iroh can't wait, beause he's been dying to celebrate and he has to keep it quiet until the announcement is official."
"You know," Toph said thoughtfully, "I'm beginning to think that Iroh actually planned this whole thing. He invited me here for the stupid unity banquet, but he told me to come way early, and he kept trying to make Zuko and I run into each other."
"He's pretty good at matchmaking, then," Katara smiled. "I never thought you'd let yourself be tied down anywhere, much less in a palace."
Toph snorted.
Katara stuck around until she'd eaten and kept everything down, and then she went to rest. As much as Toph hated to admit it, she'd have to thank Katara one of these days for her dogged devotion to keeping the earthquake victims alive, including herself.
She slept again, but only for a couple of hours. The next time she awoke, it was to a gentle hand on her shoulder. She blinked the dryness from her eyes and shifted. "Sparky?"
"It's me." Even when his voice was hushed, it had that rough, throaty edge to it that she loved. "It's pretty late. I had a lot of work to do today. Do you wanna go back to sleep?"
"No way. I had to nearly die to get everyone to leave us alone together. I've earned this."
She started to move herself over, but his arms slid beneath her legs and shoulders and he took her spot on the bed, leaning his back against the headboard as he held her in his lap.
"Wow," she breathed. Her head rested comfortably against his shoulder, her nose at the perfect height to nuzzle into his neck if she lifted it a little. When she did, she could smell a faint hint of his sweat. She'd caught his unique scent before, when they sparred and their bodies passed closely, but now she could freely admit that it flat-out turned her on. "I really love the way you smell."
"I smell?" He frowned.
"In a good way. Ugh, I think I always liked it. Not during the war, I guess, I never noticed, but afterwards, when we'd have those reunions and we'd both be on Appa."
"I thought you were holding onto me because you hate flying."
"I do hate flying!" She smiled. "But Aang put handles on Appa's saddle for me. Holding onto you was just for fun."
He leaned forward, drawing her tighter and higher against his body, and brushed his lips against hers.
She tilted her head up and kissed him harder.
She had expected him to lean back and break away, trying to keep his distance, as usual; but to her surprise, he groaned against her mouth, a low, throaty sound that made her heart pound and sent shivers down her spine. She wrapped her arms around his neck, and he ran his tongue along her upper lip slowly.
And then he seemed to realize what was happening and pull back, breathing so hard that his chest pushed against her each time he inhaled.
"Wow," she said again.
"Yeah," he breathed. "Let's take it a little slower."
"Ugh." Too bad she didn't have the energy to protest.
They relaxed in companionable silence for a little while. Toph firmly believed that if you couldn't be comfortably silent with someone, they weren't worth your time. The fact that there was now an overwhelming sexual tension between them was merely an added dimension to their time together, one that she had seen coming at a distance. They were both fiery and passionate. It was only a matter of time before it came to this.
In fact, it probably would have come to this a lot sooner if Zuko hadn't developed ironclad self-control over the past few years. He probably didn't even notice how tightly he held himself in check. Anything that would indulge his desire or excitement or temper was given the cold shoulder. The firelord's cold shoulder! There was a knee-slapper.
Toph, on the other hand, didn't believe in depriving herself of fun. If she'd ever found anyone she could tolerate before Zuko, she wouldn't have hesitated. There'd been a couple of guys she'd been interested in, but at the end of the day, she found them way too annoying to get serious. Satoru sprang to mind. He was sweet and clever, no doubt, and she didn't mind helping him out with the factory, but he never shut the fuck up. And really, if a guy was too sweet, she didn't think she could subject them to the full strength of her playful scorn, and wouldn't that be a dull relationship?
"Are you ready to read?" Zuko asked.
Toph groaned. "You really want to kill the mood, don't you?"
He exhaled against her hair. It passed for a laugh, she supposed. "Whenever you're away, I want to be able to send letters for you, only you, to read."
"So is this some kind of code? Sounds like a harebrained Sokka idea."
"Sort of. And he did help me a little." Zuko leaned over, and she heard the rustle of thick parchment. His hand closed over hers, and he directed her fingers to a cluster of raised lines. "I was going to write out the same characters I paint with ink, but they're small and complex. Sokka pointed out that it'd take a long time for you to pick out the details of each one, so we switched to this."
Toph was a quick learner, even when she was a reluctant student, and even when Zuko's body was pressed against hers, distracting her from her lesson. He guided her through reading the few short pages, some children's story from the Fire Nation.
He left after that, but he came back the next night, and the next, and as she gained strength she found herself reading with greater ease. Reading! Five days later he gave her a pile of notes on Fire Nation history, and she was so bored she worked through them in two nights. After that, he gave her a transcribed book on wedding customs.
She was nearly well enough to begin to walk about on her own by then, and just in time. A week and a half after she woke up, she asked Katara to help her get ready. The next day was Zuko's first council meeting since the earthquake, and she fully intended to be there to defend herself and Zuko against a roomful of angry Fire Nation nobles for the first time. Probably not the last.