Fearless

"Hey, Snoozles," I drawled casually, sliding into the chair. "What's up?"

"Toph," Sokka squeaked, flushing, appearing as if he'd just been caught in The Act - whatever "The Act" was supposed to be. He quickly slid his hand into his suit pocket. "You look..."

He ran his eyes over my green, slinky cocktail dress. Then, Sokka moved to my upswept hair, my immaculate make-up, and the choker around my neck.

"You look gorgeous." I could tell that he meant it, too.

I blushed despite myself. "You don't look so bad either, Snoozles."

And, well, uh. In that tux?

He definetely did not.

In fact, my boyfriend was lookin' pretty damn good.

X

Right now
Face to face
All my fears
Pushed aside
And right now
I'm ready to spend the rest of my life
With you

—Crazy For This Girl, Evan and Jaron

X

"I don't think that passenger seat has ever looked this good to me. He tells me about his night, and I count the colors in his eyes..."

"...Damn it."

It was your normal, average day.

How could I tell this, exactly?

Well, for one thing, my super amazingly awesome green alarm clock was blaring the song my boyfriend, Sokka, had apparently set it to last night before he left. Again. And I was cursing at him for it.

Yeah, you're probably very confused right now. Explanation: every night he came over to my apartment, Sokka set my iPod to wake me up with a romantic song I didn't even now I'd put on there. In fact, I had a hunch that he loaded them on himself, just for his own entertainment.

Because, seriously. Do I seem like the kinda chick who would put "When You Look Me In the Eyes" on my iPod? By the Jonas Brothers.

In case it isn't clear enough already, please excuse me while I shudder. And puke.

Simultaneously.

With a groan, I slouched out of bed, leaving the song on. Okay, it was annoying, but it was sweet. Sort of. I downed some Apple Jacks, brushed my teeth with my finger, and tossed on a pair of jeans and a semi-casual shirt for work. Right now, I was a journalist. Why, you may ask?

For one thing, I had the inexplicable urge to write. For another, I, err, was slightly nosy. Okay, I could be really nosy, and journalism gave me an excuse to do it.

Hey, if you can't live with it, piss off, bitch. And if you can, buckle down for a wild ride. (Shut the hell up, pervs.)

That's right. A typical morning in the typical life of atypical Toph Bei Fong. I dashed out the door with five minutes to spare. Unsuspecting. Oblivious. Ignorant. And in case you didn't already know, that's what we here in the writing business call foreshadowing.

X

So, yeah, I guess I should give you a recap, for those who missed it. Which would be all of you. I was twenty four now, almost twenty five (yes! Birthday time!). Sokka and I had dated each other for the past seven freakin' years, which was a really long time, in case you didn't realize. But, yeah. We stuck it out, and I was beyond glad about it, too.

Tonight, we were treating ourselves to some fancy restaurant downtown. And, hey, I was totally fine with Taco Bell, like, every other night, but they had some seriously amazing steak at this place. For the record, Sokka's love of meat had rubbed off on me, yes. Our lives were packed to the brim with meat. If our relationship was manifested in the form of a building, it would probably be a meat locker. Seriously.

By the way - I was actually twenty four years old. I was not seventeen and pretending to be older than I was. I know you're thinking what I was thinking, and what my boss probably was most days: 'Oh my god, seriously? She's seven-fricken-teen? No. Way. You've got to be kidding me.'

But, yes. Seriously. I was in my twenties. Hell, I was old, as a pre-schooler might put it. And so far, I'd spent my days growing old with Sokka Kuruk.

On my way to work, I reminisced about old times. There was the night in college when we'd stayed up forty eight hours straight to catch every Batman movie ever made airing on TV...There was the night the last Harry Potter movie came out, and we sat next to each other at the midnight showing, cheering and whooping along with the crowd...and, of course, there were the multiple occasions that we'd wasted money on the Twilight franchise just so we could snicker as we watched.

It was pretty freakin' weird that all of my favorite moments with Sokka in some way involved films, but, hey, we shared a love of the cinema.

As I pulled into the parking lot of the Ba Sing Se Herald, I thought about how I used to think Sokka was a total dumbass. Well, he still acted like one sometimes, but by now, our bicker had refined itself. It wasn't just me attacking him, it was both of us going at it in an equal relationship - and that, I decided while I sipped the last of my morning coffee, was the truest sign of just how far we'd come since high school.

X

Work passed in a whirl, as it always did. I didn't always love what I was doing, but it was usually interesting, and at the very least, I was so busy that the days passed quickly. I stopped by at my apartment, which I'd shared with Katara, Sokka's sister, for two years until she'd moved out a month ago. It was strange how Sokka had never moved in with me, given our long term relationship, but he was a traditional guy at heart, and I don't think he wanted to live together until we were married.

"Living with Sokka. Huh," I muttered to myself as I slipped on my sleek green dress. And, damn, I couldn't help but think as my reflection posed in the mirror, I was lookin' good! "Living with Sokka would be weird," I announced to my bedroom. 'Cause what if he used my toothbrush sometimes and left all this green gunk in it and then I had to find another toothbrush that actually played the Spiderman theme song while I brushed?

Now that would be awful, I thought, shuddering. Living with Sokka would probably be pretty hard to get used to.

Well, little did I know that I would be looking at the prospect of getting used to sharing a living space with another person very, very soon.

After brushing up with some make-up, I was on my way to Meng's (which was an odd name for a restaurant, now that I thought of it). I snuck passed the hostess' desk-podium-thingy and found Sokka sitting on the edge of a cluster of dables.

"Hey, Snoozles," I drawled casually, sliding into the chair opposite his own. His head jerked up. Huh. That was weird. What had he been so absorbed in that he hadn't noticed me? "What's up?"

"Toph," Sokka squeaked, flushing, appearing as if he'd just been caught in The Act - whatever "The Act" was supposed to be. He quickly slid his hand into his suit pocket. "You look..."

He ran his eyes over my green, slinky cocktail dress. Then, Sokka moved to my upswept hair, my immaculate make-up, and the choker around my neck.

"You look gorgeous." I could tell that he meant it, too.

I blushed despite myself. "You don't look so bad either, Snoozles."

A waiter swept by, despositing our menus in front of us. "So, are you gonna get the steak or what, dude?" I asked. Food conversation was part of our dinner date ritual. "It would totally mesh with their new creamy potatoes, I think."

Sokka stroked his chin thoughtfully, and I was reminded me of the beard kick he'd gone on, with sideburns and everything. Man, kissing him had been annoying back then. Too scratchy!

But I'd taken care of that soon enough with my "you'll get lice" speech. 'Course, he didn't believe me at first, so then I had to actually give him lice, but maybe that was going too far, in retrospect...

I snapped back to the present as Sokka asked me, "You think I should get steak?"

"Duh!" I exclaimed. "You mean you weren't gonna get the steak? But this is, like, heavenly steak!" I reminded him. "Remember what you said? It's the kind of steak that they served Jesus when he went up to heaven and all of that crap!" Oh, how my Catholic parents would have winced at my sacrilegious interpretation of the Ascension...

"I was actually gonna try the fish," Sokka admitted.

"Fish is for wimps," I denounced. With a roll of my eyes that was more for show than out of contempt, I sighed, "Wow. I'm dating a wuss."

"Must you constantly attack my manhood?" Sokka shot back, albeit cheerfully. After all, he was a stranger one that I'd thought, as I'd discovered over the years. He liked it when I insulted him.

The reason he loved my insults was something about, uh, sexual tension, I think. Which I clearly knew nothing about - because I didn't think that Sokka's arms were strong or that his eyes were smoky grey or that his jaw was weirdly attractive for being so damn unusual in shape...

Yeah, I think I'll save myself the embarrassment and shut up about my boyfriend's body now.

As I sat there, musing on his elegantly shaped ears (okay, this was getting creepy. Seriously), Sokka gazed at me from the corner of his eye.

He broke into a smile. "Okay, I'll get the steak," he decided.

"I know you won't regret it," I reassured him. I'd never admit it, but I was always happy when he took my advice. But it was in his best interest, after all, since I was pretty much always right.

Before we'd even had the change to order, Sokka began fidgeting again. I watched him curiously as our champagne was served. As his hand caressed the slender glass out of a nervousness I didn't usually see in of my boyfriend, Sokka inhaled deeply.

"Hey, are you gonna say anything, or are we just going to sit here?" I inquired, a tiny bit bored. What? I had a short attention span!

"Toph, I've waited a long time for this moment. First, I was only going to postpone it until we were old enough to go to Vegas..."

"I remember that Vegas trip!" I interjected, grinning at first, then wincing as I recalled the awful hangover that had accompanied our drunken escapades with an Elvis impersonator. Still, it had been outrageously fun on the night of. "Good times," I remembered fondly.

Briefly, Sokka snapped out of his uncharacteristically nervous state and laughed with me. "Yeah, it was awesome." With a clear of his throat, he resumed his serious expression. "Anyway, Toph, I've waited a really long time for this. Honestly, I was sure about you a while ago, but I wanted to make sure we could have a good life together, and now that we're old enough, I know that can happen."

I blinked at him. My heart was beating rapidly and I was consciously beginning to understand why. "Snoozles," I whispered, my eyes widening as I wondering if anything I did could preserve this wonderful and terrible moment of hope and anticipation.

Sokka's eyes softened at the resurgence of my high school nickname for him as he smiled nervously. With a huge gulp of air, Sokka pushed back his chair and paced the distance to my side of the table. Kneeling down before me as I gaped at him - not the most flattering facial arrangement for a proposal, I know - Sokka revealed a tiny box from his suit pocket.

"Toph Bei Fong," Sokka began, clasping my hand - the hand that loved to fill empty pages with her nonsensical writing, the hand that had occasionally smacked him upside the head (hey, he deserved it at the time!), the hand that I so often intertwined with his own - with his, "Will you marry me?"

X

...Holy. Shit.

X

A/N: Line breaks weren't working properly, so X's have to do! Anyway, I'm making no promises to continue this fic. :P The chapters will be short, updates not too regular, etc. (Sorry about MSM, btw. D: Maybe if I'm inspired???) Hope you all like this as much as the original, I'd Lie! :D