The benefit of being kind of (read here: very) pushy was that Toph usually was the one to make plans for things. This gave her all sorts of advantages, like choosing when, where, and why.
So when she’d more or less told Aang he was going to buy her coffee, and he had (amazingly) agreed, the diminutive Chinese girl had been free to pick where, too. Obviously, she didn’t drive. And more to the point, she really hated her personal aide, Mandy, and so made it a priority to ditch the girl whenever possible. She’d picked the cafe nearest to her apartment for that reason. Less than a block away, finding it had been like taking a stroll into her own living room.
Toph was all bright colors and scuffed combat boots. Pink hair in pigtails, and ironic fake glasses with thick, thick plastic frames perched on her nose in front of unseeing eyes. But she didn’t need to see this coffee shop to know her way around it; she was here a lot. The people behind the counter knew her, and so only offered a hello as she leaned against the counter, arms crossed and half bemused expression on her face as she waited for Aang, who seemed nice, and just a bit on this side of moronic. Also cute. Maybe she liked them dumb? It was hard to say without actually having met the boy.
Aang didn’t think he was particularly lacking in intelligence, but he would admit to a certain amount of social awkwardness. It was hard to read people over the internet, unless they were those people who used expressive smileys all the time. He was excited to meet Toph in person, eyes scanning the interior of the coffee shop for pink hair.
He ignorantly gave a little wave when he saw her, calling out her name as he moved to join her at the counter. “Toph? I’m Aang.”
Toph gave a bright smile in his general direction, and probably looked a little rude for ignoring the wave -- but it wasn’t exactly like she’d been able to notice it in the first place. “Awesome,” she said with her own brand of excitement (which was to say, none really), her expression was cheeky. “Nice to finally meetcha.” Which was true. She had been looking forward to visiting him at the zoo that one other time, but had promptly gotten distracted and forgotten about it until it was a bit too late.
“You too,” he said, taking a seat beside her. “Sorry I missed you at the zoo the other day. I tried to find you, but then I had to clock in, and I got busy.” He hoped she didn’t think he was a total flake, but he wouldn’t blame her if she did.
Well, wasn’t he just earnest? Toph grinned again, and it was nearly predatory. She couldn’t help herself, sometimes. Then she shrugged and rounded it all off with leaning her elbows a little lazily on the table between in front of them. “It’s no big deal -- I got a little busy and ended up missing it anyway.” She, he might note, did not apologize.
“But hey,” she said, suddenly, and very brightly. “You’re here now!” And then, because she was excited and kind of pleased in her own right, she punched him in the arm.
Aang might have noticed that she looked like something that wanted to eat him, but she was smiling, and she was cute! And then she was punching him, and he was laughing because he wasn’t sure what else to do. “I’m here. You’re here. The coffee’s here! What could be better?”
That’s right. Aang was a smooth operator. Not.
Yeah, not at all. But Toph kind of liked that about him, actually. He was a little awkward. Which meant that he was just a little easier to read by voice alone. It was the totally smooth people that she felt a little strange around because they were the ones who was was more likely to think were lying about -- well. Who knew what? Plus he’d passed the punch test! Always a good sign!
“Damn straight,” she said, because Toph secretly liked to think that in another life, she was a sailor. So she swore like one here. “Speaking of which -- I’m for a macchiato.” Toph translation: go get me that coffee now.
Aang ordered the macchiato for her, and a mocha for himself--which he would probably dump a bunch of extra sugar in--grinning happily as he handed over his money and waited for the drinks to be made. “So,” he said to Toph, trying to be conversational instead of just sitting there like a doofus, “How was your weekend?”
“Okay,” said Toph, resting her chin in her palms and quirking her eyebrow in his general direction. “I didn’t do much. Studied a bit -- lounged around. Yours?” She was a jerk, she knew, for not admitting to him that vision wasn’t something she had. But she always liked this part of the meeting first -- the not knowing. Because after that things tended to get awkward and annoying. People became too nice for the wrong reasons and she just couldn’t handle the patronizing, even if it wasn’t always intentional.
“Busy,” he said, “I worked for most of it. Though I did take time out to do some freerunning, which is a new hobby of mine.” And a good hobby for the boy who would be Avatar, and his endless supply of energy, if there ever was one.
“Freerunning?” Toph asked, just curious enough to ask. “What’s that? No -- wait. Like... what is it? French? Parkour?” The art of jumping and running off of shit and not dying? Toph was sure she’d heard of something like that before.
She was pleased as anything when one of the employees showed up with their drinks -- hers was pressed helpfully into her hands. She really did need to remember to tip these people better.
“Yeah, that’s it!” Aang was visibly--and audibly--excited. He may have noticed the little things like the lack of direct eye contact, and the drink being placed in Toph’s hand, and begun to put two and two together, but he didn’t say anything. “I’ve been leaping over furniture for as long as I can remember--my parents were always yelling at me for it--so it seemed like the natural thing to do.”
“Obviously,” said Toph, with a touch of sarcasm. Here, in person, it was obvious she did indeed know what that word meant. She was quite possibly the queen of snide inflection. But she hadn’t meant it to be mean. Not really. “Is it fun?” She held her cup in both hands, blowing on it in a way that was nearly dainty before taking a sip.
Aang watched her, struck by how Toph’s very presence was a juxtaposition of daintiness and toughness. Cute, petite, snarky...and she had a heck of an arm. “I like it,” he said, though whether he was talking about parkour, or remarking on his silent observations of Toph’s looks and personality was anybody’s guess. Maybe a bit of both. “It’s good exercise. And it gives me an excuse to jump off of things.”
Well, the last bit of that sentence was definitely about parkour. Hopefully. Maybe. “Cool,” she said, because it probably was. It wasn’t really something she was suited for, obviously, but she wasn’t really going to be cruel about something just because she couldn’t do it. There was no point in that when she could be mean about anything else if she so pleased. Her specialty, in fact, was in her bluntness.
After another sip of her caramel coffee, she set it down on the table -- the ceramic clicked a little harshly against wood in slight misjudgement of distance. “So?” She asked him, quirking a brow and offering a raised fist, as if she might just punch him again. “Are you about to get weird on me?”
Yes, he was talking about parkour, but he did kind of like this strange girl who had dragged him here for coffee. He looked from her face to her fist, then raised his own until his knuckles touched hers--risking getting his arm twisted to dare to fist-bump her. “What is there to get weird about? It’s not like I think girls have cooties or anything.”
At the fist bump she laughed -- an honest, strong bark of noise that was nowhere near dainty. Toph wasn’t the sort to giggle, not really. Aang was all right, she decided. A little weird, but all right. He sounded like the honest type, anyway. She lowered her fist (for the moment). “If you thought that,” she said, “I really would think you were twelve. But I meant because I’m blind.” She waved a hand in front of her face, as if to emphasize the fact.
Aang smiled to himself, pleased that he seemed to have gotten something right. "Well I'm not twelve, so you don't have to worry about that. And so what? You obviously don't let it stop you from being independent and enjoying life, so why should I let it stop me from hanging out with you? Bouncing off of walls isn't the only thing I like to do."
To that, she grinned widely and couldn’t seem to stop herself from giving him another punch. It was a nicer punch this time -- more like a tap, really. And then she shrugged, and picked her coffee back up. “I never said it was an issue. But some people get weird. Start talking louder. Ask if I need help for the stupidest things. It’s tiring.” Clearly, she had no tolerance for bullshit.
Aang did notice the quality of the punch was different this time, and gave the vocal equivalent of a shrug in response. A few more of those and he might start to be able to decipher their nuances, maybe. "I mean, sure, you're kinda loud, but that doesn't mean there's anything wrong with your ears," he quipped. "I'm pretty sure if you wanted help, you'd have no trouble making it known."
“Shaddup,” she told him, and it came out almost fondly. That was, if Toph even had a tone of voice that could be considered such. “But you’re right. And that’s cool, I dig it. Thanks for not being extra retarded about it.”
No sir, Toph would not have any trouble making her needs known. But at least she didn’t sound angry--and while she could be completely deadpan most of the time, Aang was fairly certain that he would know if she was genuinely angry--so he didn’t feel too bad. “Thanks for saying that I’m just regular retarded,” he said with exaggerated earnestness, “I feel so special!”
Toph rolled her eyes at that -- kind of an odd gesturing, considering, but whatever. At least he was funny. She could do with some more funny in her life, even if it was a cheesy sort of variety. “I live to please, kiddo,” she said, because that was funny to her, too.
Aang had to laugh at the way she kept calling him ‘kiddo,’ as if he really were a twelve-year old. Not that he minded--he had kind of set himself up for it--Toph seemed like the kind of person who knew how to have fun, and he liked that.
In all reality he was probably the same age as or older than she was. But hey, if he was cool with the nickname, she certainly wasn’t going to stop. Aang, so far, seemed pretty cool with basically anything she dished out. It was almost a little too easy.
She sipped her coffee again, swinging her feet in her chair, because she was tiny and her toes didn’t quite touch the ground. “So?” She asked, because she didn’t care to be awkwardly silent. “What else do you do for fun?”
Unless she started actually bullying people, Aang was pretty easy-going. “I listen to music, I swim, I walk people’s dogs. Sometimes I go to movies or concerts. You know. Stuff. What do you do for fun?”
Which she wouldn’t! Because she was a jerk, but she wasn’t a jerk. “I do all that, too. Except for the dog thing. I don’t do the dog thing.” She supposed she could, technically, but the last thing she wasn’t was one of those disabled people sight-dogs. Also, dogs smelled a bit.
She leaned back in her chair, arms crossed and a half-smirk on her lips. “Otherwise? I force cute boys into buying me coffee, sometimes.”
Aang smirked back, and gave a snort of laughter. Toph looked sort of like the proverbial cat that ate the canary, at the moment. “Yeah, because it’s such a dreadful chore,” he quipped. “However shall I survive?”
Toph shrugged and spread her fingers wide in exaggerated innocence. “Mystery of the universe, I guess.” Still, even if she didn’t let on, she was a bit tickled pink about the whole situation. Whatever that meant.