A/N: The end? Maybe? Or maybe not. I'll let you guys weigh in on that :)
The cabin was cooler now, and Elizabeth was regretting taking her jacket off as soon as she did it. She was also missing Henry's hand in hers, where it had remained for the entirety of their walk home, right up to the point when they'd reached the front door of the cabin and Henry had been forced to let go.
Inside, Henry made a beeline for the hearth, and Elizabeth sank into one of the chairs where she had been sitting that morning, watching as Henry got the fire going again. She could almost still feel his hand in hers, and found herself wishing he hadn't had to let go.
"There," Henry said as he stood up and dusted off his hands over the hearth. It was a little warmer already, with the fire coming to life and crackling brightly.
"Are you hungry? Henry asked. Elizabeth smiled.
"I'm always hungry," she answered.
"And yet, a kitchen disaster," Henry mused good-naturedly. "How do you sustain yourself when you're not with me?"
"I'll have you know," Elizabeth began, "I'm a whiz with a phone and a take-out menu."
Henry laughed, happy and unguarded.
"No take-out here," he said, and Elizabeth had no complaints about that. Henry flicked the lightswitch in the kitchen, illuminating both it and Elizabeth with warm incandescent light.
"So what's on the menu?" Elizabeth asked.
"Spaghetti," Henry told her; he'd chosen it because it was easy to prepare, but Elizabeth could almost feel her mouth water at the mere thought. She wasn't lying when she said that she was a whiz with a take-out menu, but she definitely lacked home-cooked meals in her life. Henry was a very good cook; she'd joked with him plenty of times that she was only friends with him for his cooking.
She watched him now as he rolled up the sleeves of his sweater, exposing toned forearms, and set to work preparing their dinner.
"Can I do anything?" she asked, knowing the answer but feeling bad not to offer. Henry grinned at her, his eyes sparkling.
"I think I would prefer to avoid a fire or a hospital trip," he teased gently.
"Yeah, yeah," she said, but she was smiling, too.
As she watched Henry cook, she was thinking about the way it had felt to hold his hand on their walk home. He was talking animatedly now, glancing up at her between slices of ingredients, elaborating further on a point he'd made earlier in the day at the battle site. It was an interesting and well-thought-out point, which Elizabeth acknowledged, but the truth was that her mind was much more on Henry himself than any point he was making. She was watching the fluid way that he moved, how practiced and comfortable he looked- in the kitchen, and around her.
Henry was her best friend in the world. He meant everything to her. She couldn't imagine a life in which she wasn't doing this, listening to his passionate ranting and stealing bites of the food he was cooking and just being with him. A life in which she and Henry were anything less than best friends.
But since yesterday, Elizabeth had been forced to face that maybe she was okay with them being something more than best friends.
She glanced at the tacky, outdated clock on the wall, inexplicably beach-themed despite the lack of beach anywhere nearby. The evening was creeping on; darkness had fallen quickly outside and slowly, they were approaching the night. Their second and last night at the cabin.
Their second and last night sharing a bed.
Elizabeth was reflecting on the earliest moments of her morning, the softness and comfort of waking up next to Henry. The way she had wanted to lean into him, the way she had wished she could wake him, the way she hadn't wanted to leave the bed. Elizabeth had always been guarded- and more so since the death of her parents. But inexplicably, she'd never really felt the need to guard herself against Henry. That had been unsettling at first in itself, but she was thankful now, to have someone she trusted so much.
Could they risk that? Would it really be a risk? And most importantly, what did Henry think?
He had held her hand- but then again, she had passed it off as nothing, not a big deal. Why had she done that? Was it a big deal to her?
Yes.
It had been a very big deal. She watched Henry in the steam of the tomato sauce he was making, and not for the first time that weekend, was struck by the realization that she wanted to see more of this. More of Henry in this light, more of Henry at home and cooking and with her, a shared bed looming.
The certainty that she felt about it was terrifying. And exhilarating.
Henry could tell that Elizabeth was thinking hard about something, and the truth of the matter was, so was he. But he remembered her declaration from early that morning, her expressed desire to not make things weird between them. Surely- certainly, right- this would be weird? Talking about their hand-holding, or bringing up The Bed. That would definitely be categorized as making things weird.
But Henry was absolutely dying to talk about it.
He was dying to tell her how his heart had raced the entire way home, the way he'd laid in bed that morning thinking about how calm it made him feel to have his hand on her hip, his leg pressed against hers. The way it had felt right to him. How happy he was to have her there with him. How it made him feel at home to be here, like this, with her. How he wanted to cook for her every day, to hold her hand again.
He glanced over at her, and she spared him a smile, small and sweet and so Elizabeth.
What if they didn't talk about it? Henry wondered. What would happen the next day when they returned to UVA and their separate apartments and their lives that, while including each other, didn't revolve around each other?
When they returned to their separate beds.
"Is it ready yet?" Elizabeth asked.
Henry smiled at her eagerness.
"It is," he confirmed, and Elizabeth cheered and stood to grab forks and bowls for them, and Henry thought to himself that he never wanted this weekend to end.
They ate together and talked about nothing significant. Henry told her about his friend Tom, who was having girl drama for the millionth time; Elizabeth was attentive and rolled her eyes in the right places. Henry liked that about her; she always engaged in his stories and their conversations in exactly the way he would have liked for her to. Sometimes, it was to challenge him, but even then it never failed to teach him something.
After dinner, which Elizabeth complimented Henry on twice, they did the dishes together side by side. They both enjoyed that; it was productive, but relaxing, another similarity between the two of them. With the dishes dried and put away in their original places in the cabinet, they found themselves back at the little table by the window, lights dancing in the dark reflective glass, playing another round of Scrabble.
It was one of their favorite pastimes back at UVA as well; Henry and Elizabeth were known among their friends for being unbeatable at the game, but when it came to a game between the of them, it was a hard call to guess who might win. They were evenly matched in vocabulary, intellect, and creativity, with a healthy dash of daring thrown in; every third or fourth game, one would call the other out on a play that was not a true word. Henry didn't think a single one had ever gone unnoticed by one or the other of them.
Henry ended up winning this round, largely thanks to his use of the word "dazzle" on a triple word score. Elizabeth maintained that having two Z's was entirely unfair, but Henry smiled brightly at her, and if pressed, Elizabeth would have had to admit that she didn't mind losing to him all that much.
Henry went to take a shower, and Elizabeth wandered into the bedroom. The light in there was dim and warm and welcoming, the bed neatly made by Henry's hands in the morning. She could hear the shower running just on the other side of the wall as she sat down on the bed, tucking her legs under her atop the warm quilt. It was a little cooler in this room, farther away from the fire, but not uncomfortably cold. She ran her hand over the quilt and wondered briefly where it had come from, who had made it, and how long ago. She glanced over her shoulder at the spot in the bed where Henry had slept the night before. She had to think it had been purposeful when he chose the side of the bed near the door, leaving her beside the window. She appreciated that about Henry, that thoughtfulness that was more rare in people than she would have liked it to be. But Henry? He had it in spades. He was still young, and he wasn't perfect by any means, but he was a good man, a genuinely kind and good person.
It seemed so obvious now. She supposed it had always been, and she wasn't entirely sure why it had taken this weekend away and a forced night side by side to make her realize, but now it seemed abundantly clear where just the day before things had been muddy and clouded in her mind.
Henry was more than her best friend.
But the weekend would draw to a close tomorrow, and Elizabeth found herself at a crossroads. She could either stay silent, and risk letting this weekend fade into the history of their relationship, dying a quiet death with all of her what-ifs.
Or she could tell him.
Both, she thought, were equally terrifying. The shower had turned off and she heard the click of the bathroom door, and then Henry was in the room with her and she was thinking about how desperately she didn't want this to be her last night in a bed with Henry.
Henry, meanwhile, took one look at Elizabeth and somehow, in some part of him, he knew that the game was up.
"Are you okay?" he asked. She looked him over, his wet hair standing up at all sorts of odd angles where he had dried it with a towel, a clean grey t-shirt freckled with stray water droplets, blue sweatpants, and on his features a look of beautiful, gentle concern that made her want to cry.
"What are we doing, Henry?" she asked. Her words settled over the room, over Henry, less like a blanket and more like the heaviness of a coming storm. Like the clouds had finally built up all that they could, and were about to break, unpredictable and wild.
"What do you mean?" he asked cautiously.
If Elizabeth didn't want to make things weird, she was certainly taking the wrong path now.
Elizabeth picked at a string on the cuff of her pajama pants.
"When I woke up this morning, your hand was on me," she said. Her voice was soft. Henry's breath caught. He slowly lowered himself onto the bed, to sit across from her on top of the quilt.
"I know," he admitted. She looked up at him in confusion.
"I- I was awake," he confessed. Elizabeth's brow knit together in response, and he stole the question from her tongue before she could ask.
"I don't know why I didn't say anything," he said, sounding mildly frustrated and a little bit lost. "I just...had the instinct to stay still, maybe it was panic or something, I don't know, but that's...just what I did."
Elizabeth's blue eyes met Henry's hazel ones across the space between them, and she was struck suddenly by how young Henry looked, traces of boyhood lingering on his features, in his posture, in the way that sometimes he was so thoughtful and other times he froze up and didn't know why.
She loved him.
In that moment, she knew. She loved him.
"It's okay," she said, gently, softly.
Henry watched her. He was very aware of his lungs, noticing each and every breath.
"Why did you hold my hand?" he asked.
They were past the point of weird.
Elizabeth took a slow and steadying inbreath.
And then, she did the same thing again- her slender fingers passed the distance between them and took his hand where it rested on his knee. He took her fingers in his own like they belonged there.
"I don't want this to end," Elizabeth admitted quietly. Her voice settled into the silence of the room and her words hung between them.
"What don't you want to end?" Henry asked.
Elizabeth looked up, and her blue eyes seemed alight with something he could not quite name, but which he knew he loved.
"Us," she answered. "This us."
Henry wrapped her fingers more securely in his own.
"Is this weird?" he asked. The flickering ghost of a smile passed over Elizabeth's features as her gaze landed on their joined hands. She shook her head slowly.
"It's not," she whispered.
"Then...maybe it never has to be."
His voice held a note of uncertainty.
But Elizabeth was no longer uncertain.
"Henry," she said. "Let's go to bed."
And like the night before, Henry wasn't sure what the morning would bring. But this time? He was not nervous at all to find out.