"It is the sweet, simple things of life which are the real ones after all." - Laura Ingalls Wilder
Logically, Johanna had always known that sex wouldn't change much of her and Gale's relationship. However, she hadn't expected their first time to take place in a wildly different place that led the entire thing to feel like it almost hadn't happened. It had, of course. Johanna never really doubted that when she could still remember Gale's touch on her skin, but a part of her had struggled to connect sex with reality when they first returned to District 2. It was almost as if they had two first times: one in the Capitol and one during their first night back on the base.
Sleeping with Gale was wholly unlike anything she had done with the boy from her past. That boy had previous experience before Johanna, but he'd still been inexperienced enough to be unaware of what exactly he was doing whereas Gale seemed to know exactly what to do. That wasn't to mention the new emotional level things reached with Gale, which had been what terrified Johanna the most in the first place.
Johanna wasn't one of those people who thought sex had to automatically mean exposing yourself or letting part of your soul open to the other person. She'd had the meaningless, just for fun sex before, obviously. She'd always told herself that the only reason she was avoiding sex with Gale was because of her irrational fear for his safety, and that much was true. That was why she was caught off guard by how much closer she felt to him now that they were having sex. She hadn't expected it, and now she had found a whole new terror.
More than ever she wanted to admit her feelings to him. He already knew how she felt. There wasn't a doubt about that, but Johanna still had a strong urge to say it out loud and hear him say it back. But that was the final straw. Once the word "love" was exchanged, Johanna would officially declare Gale as the most important person in her life, and even now she held onto the fear that everything she loved she lost soon after.
Johanna turned on her side to watch Gale as he continued to sleep. Both of them had the day off. In the past, their days off had fallen on the same days fairly often, but now they coordinated it on purpose. Johanna wasn't sure why they hadn't before. It was at least partially because of Johanna's continued persistence to put some sort of distance in their relationship. She'd never noticed many of the small ways she did it before now, but she was finally working on realizing them all and working against them.
Their work schedules weren't the only thing that had changed. Two weeks ago they'd each moved from their single bedrooms in the barracks to an apartment. They'd only been back in District 2 for a couple of days when Gale broached the idea of applying for one with her. He'd been thinking about it for a while, which made sense considering they'd been sharing a bedroom for far longer than a year, but Johanna had honestly never given it any thought. It did make sense though, and it was far more convenient. Johanna hadn't let her feelings of fear get in the way of saying yes, and it had been easier than expected to turn in the application and be given the one bedroom apartment in the building used for all childrenless couples living on the base.
They had a kitchen now and a living room. Johanna was no longer living in a single room with one extremely small attached bathroom. This was more like a home. A home where she lived with Gale. She hadn't realized how few things she owned until she'd had more space to fill. Even with Gale's things, they didn't have much, and the entire area felt empty. With all the time they typically spent outdoors, neither had bothered with senseless decorations in their old rooms, but it had felt important to make this place seem like a home.
Johanna had poked a lot of fun at Gale when he dragged her shopping for said senseless decorations, but she had to admit that she liked it too. They'd been together quite a while now, but it took moving into this apartment for Johanna to fully realize that they were starting an entire life together. She wasn't stopping it anymore, and that was an unexpectedly wonderful feeling.
Johanna took one last look at Gale's sleeping form before she got out of the bed, careful not to jostle him awake. She wasn't going to sleep anymore, and her stomach wasn't letting up on its grumbling.
She hadn't bothered with clothes as she walked into the kitchen and rummaged around for some fruit which didn't take any effort to fix. She'd forgotten how convenient having a kitchen of your own was until she had one again. Johanna vowed to never give up the freedom of having food around whenever she wanted it and being able to pick what she ate for every meal. The mess hall food could have been worse, but the lack of choice made it hard to eat every single day.
Johanna hadn't noticed that she was humming to herself at first. It was a new habit she had developed only after moving into the apartment due to a combination of thicker walls to avoid being heard and a stronger sense of contentment with her life. She'd sang along with her music occasionally in the past when in a particularly good mood, but the humming seemed to happen almost constantly if there wasn't someone, usually Gale, around to talk to. It also didn't require any music to already be playing. Instead, it broke the silence on its own.
She was stirring some sugar into her coffee, already halfway done with a banana, when she heard Gale enter the kitchen behind her. Johanna didn't bother to stop her humming, and Gale didn't say a word as he stepped up beside her at the counter and poured his own cup of coffee. The sound of them each moving around the kitchen was calming to Johanna, who had never expected for her life to reach this point of normalcy. This was different than going to the dining hall together in the mornings after spending the night in Gale's room.
Johanna watched Gale fix his coffee from the corner of her eye, and she already knew he would take it black. She liked to tease him about it being a way to assert his masculinity. He was almost certainly going fix toast for his breakfast and choose the strawberry jam out of the two jams they had in their fridge. The grape jam was Johanna's favorite. They were disgustingly domestic.
"It's nice," Johanna commented as Gale took a seat across from her at their small kitchen table.
"What is?" Gale asked, looking up from spreading his jam across his toast.
"Us, this apartment, our lives now," Johanna said. "It's nice."
Gale smiled as he screwed the lid back onto the jam jar. "It didn't just suddenly become nice," he pointed out. "I, personally, think it's been that way for quite a while."
Johanna frowned in thought. "It has, I guess. I've just noticed it more recently than I ever did before."
"Since we had sex or since we moved in here?"
Johanna shrugged. "Both. I guess it all suddenly hit me at once."
Gale nodded in understanding. "It kind of did me too, I think. We took things really slowly in the beginning and then sped everything up rather quickly."
"In a good way though." Johanna tossed her banana peel towards the trash can, giving herself a mental high-five when it made it in. "It's like we caught up to where we should be."
Except for the "I love you" part, but Johanna didn't want to bring that up. They were just words anyway. Even if she couldn't say it out loud, the sentiment was still there.
"There's no particular way we're supposed to be."
Johanna looked up at Gale to see him watching her with a frown.
"I know that," she clarified. "I don't mean by society's definition or anything like that. I just mean we're finally where everything feels right. This is how we would have been a long time ago if I didn't have so many problems.
Gale sighed and reached across the table to take Johanna's hand. "You've got to stop blaming yourself for things that aren't your fault."
Johanna shrugged. "If it helps, I blame Snow and the old Capitol for creating all of my problems."
"I can't blame you for that. In fact, I'm pretty inclined to blame them for most of my problems too. I just don't want you thinking that every single negative emotion you feel is from some sort of 'problem.' It's okay to feel that way. Everyone does."
"I know." Johanna sighed. "But you have to admit that I have more of them than most people."
"Maybe, but you're not some giant screw up or whatever else you seem to think of yourself sometimes, Johanna. Besides, you've changed so much over the past two years. You're not even the same Johanna who had to put up with the Capitol."
"Maybe not, but Gale, you always seem to have such high expectations about how I am now."
He looked at her in confusion, still firmly gripping both of her hands. "What do you mean?"
"I mean that sometimes you act like all of my problems have managed to vanish, and that couldn't be further from the truth. I'm still extremely messed up. Showers, for instance. I know you're so proud that I can take them without any problems, but I'm a nervous wreck until I turn that shower off and possibly even awhile after that. Every single time I take one, I'm scared that that time will be when I break down again, but I don't want to tell you that because sometimes I feel like it'll disappoint you."
Tears had begun to roll down her face while Gale watched her with a pained frown.
"I'd never be disappointed in you, Johanna, and I don't expect you to suddenly be cured of everything you've struggled with." He glanced around the room, taking his eyes off her for a second, and sighed before standing and tugging Johanna up. He silently led her into their living room and sat down in one of the chairs before pulling her onto his lap.
"I talk like I'm proud of you because I am," Gale continued, hand skimming across the skin of her lower back in a comforting way as he talked. "That doesn't mean I expect you to be perfect, Johanna. I don't want you lying to me, but do you want the truth? I've always known that you're still nervous around water. Your eyes get really wide, and I know you think you're good at hiding it, but you're really not, Johanna. I know there are times where you hold back from me because you're still worried about what getting close to me will mean, and I know you still think about your family constantly, which only makes me wish even more that I'd known them. I also know that right now you're freaking out because you're realizing that I know you even better than you thought I did."
He was right. Johanna's entire body was trembling, and she thought it was a wonder that she was still capable of breathing. One of Gale's hands continued to stroke her back while the other rested on her knee as a warm, comforting weight. If there had ever been a time when she wanted to say the word "love," it was right now.
But she didn't. She couldn't, and for the first time, she knew that Gale didn't only realize that she couldn't say it. He also understood. That thought had her feeling light and far more confident in their relationship than she had felt before. Maybe they did understand each other far more than Johanna gave them credit for. They both knew how the other felt, and it almost made it seem like the issue of bringing the word "love" out into the open was irrelevant. So why was Johanna still so scared of saying it?
Gale placed a sweet kiss on her cheek, pulling her away from her thoughts and to her boyfriend underneath her.
"It's okay, Johanna. It's not perfect, but it is okay."
She nodded because she knew it was true.
"Thank you," she told him, looking him straight in the eyes. "Thank you for everything."
And she leaned in to kiss him as further evidence of her thanks.