They had so much to get accustomed to together. It wasn’t all things, but the small things, that Toni had come to notice mattered the most. How it wasn’t about going out all the time, but when they’d go out it’d be to a shitty Chinese restaurant, where Cheryl would know how to handle her chopsticks readily and easily, but blanched when Toni would walk her through the 400 dish strong menu, and point out all the things that she loved. It was in teaching her how to ride a bike, because the redhead simply couldn’t take the fact that she didn’t know how and everyone else had a bike, so why didn’t she? It was in the quiet moments when they had a bare moment of privacy to share between them at the camp, or when Toni came over, when they kissed and--
It felt that they could work, really work. A flush in her cheeks, a warmth in her stomach, she couldn’t help but wonder, was this what love felt like? She’d never been before, confessed in moments when they were together, the both of them waxing poetic about what it might be like. Laying out on their backs on the floor of her room within Thistle House, staring up at the ceiling as it seemed to grow and shrink before their eyes. “Love isn’t like the movies. I swear. I don’t know if I’m ever gonna be like, running through the rain and acting like a crazy person because I want someone to notice me.”
Pausing, with a softer laugh. “Me saving you from the Sisters of Quiet Mercy doesn’t count, okay? Totally had a crush on you before that, and besides, you shouldn’t have been there in the first place.” there were still so many things between them that didn’t make sense, that were being worked through, but in the end? What did it matter if they were both willing and able to explore what they meant to each other? “Like. All I know of love is like, what I see around me. And people don’t really seem to love each other the way I hear love described in music and poetry, you know? Like love is supposed to be this all consuming thing but like. All I see is people being tired all the time. What about you? What’s love mean, look like, to you?”
