Happy wiggle.

"Well, I don't mind you being circuitous as long as you don't mind me being kinda dense about it sometimes."

"Deal," he says.  (He kinda feels like he might be making that face Toby makes at him sometimes about her calling herself dense, though.)

"But to be really clear, we can talk - as little or as much about this as you want, I think.  I might be hesitant to talk about some of my stuff at first, but if you want to get stuff out in the open early so we can see whether I can - keep up with you - that's fine with me."

"...yeah. Yeah, I think I do want that. It's gonna be really embarrassing but so far every time I've embarrassed myself in front of you you've been really nice about it."

"I really don't think I would characterize you as having embarrassed yourself in front of me at all."

"Are you sure?? Not even with the 'pretty face' comment?"

"I was - I don't know.  If anything I think I should apologize to you for that.  I - "

He takes a breath, and his voice becomes more serious.

"I don't know if it would have been responsible for me to be more careful not to catch you with my power, that sort of thing is hard for me to do in a split second and I think a split second is what I had, but I don't - like that I did that to you."

"...yeah," she says, consideringly. "That makes sense. I don't know, I... I think you did the right thing in the situation we were in? And—"

Now is not the time to be self-deprecating. I'm giving you that look, you know the one.

—she does the tiniest little gigglesnort, and continues with a little smile on her face and in her voice, "...it turned out okay. I think I'm okay with being accidentally set up to embarrass myself if there's monsters around and they're gonna hurt somebody. Like that's just—it's a price I'm willing to pay, you know? Even if you hadn't been nice about it. But I'm really glad you were nice about it."

"I - wanna be nice," he says.  "You should get to have people be nice to you."  He does a gentle little sideways motion that would cause him to shoulder-bump her if they were not already in a pretty cuddly side hug.

"Aww... yeah. Yeah I should. I'm glad you wanna be one of 'em."

"I'm glad you agree."  Pet pet.

Cozy. She makes a happy little sigh about it.

"So," he says, gently, after taking a moment to enjoy the coziness and the happy Kimberly noises.  "We've got a non-coffee-shop conversation to have..."

"Mhm!" Nod nod. "Do you wanna go somewhere that's not a coffee shop?"

That smiiiiiile.  He can just be happy about being smiled at by that smile now.  "I do if you do, I think."

"Cool. Then lemme put this hot chocolate out of its misery." She unsnugs a little to retrieve her arms so she can pick it up.

Bryce will allow her to retrieve arms from snuggle, and look into transferring the remainder of his chamomile to a travel cup.

Oh, does he get to say - "Your place or mine?"

"Probably yours unless you like sad little dorm rooms and being interrogated by Lenore. Which, I mean, you could! If you want!"

"Hmm, would it be more fun for you to meet Toby or for me to meet Lenore..."

"I dunno, I don't hardly know anything about Toby. He seems nice. Lenore will probably make ominous jokes about what happens to people who break my heart. I can tell her not to if that's not your cup of tea."

"Toby's a sweetheart," he says.  "He'll really like you.  He makes mean-sounding jokes sometimes but the people he makes them about are in on them, he won't do that with you if you don't like it.  He'll - "

He fishes his phone out of his pocket and fiddles with it, and then says into the receiver with exaggerated clarity, "He'll probably offer us free rein of his retro video game collection and then say something about how we'll probably be too busy to use it."  He taps his phone again and sets it down on the table.  "And then when he does I'll get out my phone and play that sound clip and he'll double over laughing."