You're not quite sure when things changed. Waking up naked early one morning next to a beautiful woman was the confirmation, but the origin point seems lost in your memories.
"Mornin'," you mumble, rubbing your eyes with one hand while your flat white cools in your other. "Last night was fun."
Clarke laughs and the noise resonates in your chest like the vibrations from a subwoofer. Love is not worth the pain, you used to think, and why would it be? You never really understood why people think a few happy moments is worth years of emotional pain till you met Costia, and then she died.
After Costia, you cut yourself off and shut everything down.
Then Clarke came along.
You were at Harbourside, eating waffles and ice cream at that Danish place. She gave you extra hot fudge sauce, asked how's it going and smiled when you shrugged and replied not bad.
Maybe Clarke could see the pain in your eyes, even when she was just a girl in an apron scooping ice cream and joking with you that due to the Dragons cap you wore, you were now banned as the city was Rabbitohs territory.
After everything, she pierced the veil and found you. The real you. The you that hid for so long thinking it was better to suffer in silence than bother anyone with your pain.
"Yes it was," Clarke says, and kisses you on your foam-covered lips. "Maybe we can do it again after lunch?"