A/N: Guess who actually wrote something?! That's right, I'm back! Sort of. I have this for you either way- we'll see if I start up anything more than this or write more but maybe! For now, enjoy this little one-shot :) I love you all and am so thankful for your support whether I am writing five fics a day or zero.
Prompt: the skywriter thing wasn't as completely random as it sounds- it's because of something Elizabeth said on one of their first dates (perhaps a joke she made) and Henry has never forgotten it.
Henry glanced over at Elizabeth in the warm slivers of incandescence that filtered through the street lamps to light the meandering sidewalk on which the two of them made their path. In the night air, Elizabeth's blonde curls lifted briefly from her skin to reveal elegant facial structure and delicate eyelashes that Henry thought he could probably gaze at forever and never be tired of looking. It was only the second time he'd taken her out, and yet he was already completely entranced. Truth be told, he thought as she glanced over at caught his eye, he had been from the moment they had met. It hadn't taken two dates for him to know what an incredible, delightful human being Elizabeth Adams was, and Henry thought he might just devote the rest of his life to learning everything about her.
Elizabeth, meanwhile, was falling harder for this Henry McCord than she would have wanted to. There was just something about him, some kind of charm or some ease in the way that he spoke to her, that made her feel at home and as if she belonged. She'd never felt that way with anyone, at least not in a long, long time. It was at once reassuring and unsettling; she couldn't imagine getting attached to that feeling only to have it ripped away from her again, and as she stood on that precipice she wondered if it was worth it. She looked over at Henry only to find him watching her- thoughtfully, openly, with no scrutiny behind the wonder in his hazel eyes, and warmth spread over her like a summery breeze, something exotic in the cold Virginia night. If asked right then, Elizabeth though she would probably say that it was worth it.
"What's the best thing anyone has ever done for you?" Henry asked abruptly; normally, he was a better conversationalist than this, but he was just so desperate to know the deepest things about Elizabeth that to spend his time discussing anything more routine seemed futile just then. Elizabeth furrowed her brow and tilted her head, looking vaguely uncomfortable as she considered the question. Henry thought that he liked that about her- that she would take his sudden question as just that- a question- and not beat around the bush wondering why he would ask it in the first place.
"I don't know," she answered honestly.
"You don't know?" Henry repeated, surprise and a hint of amusement lifting the notes of his voice.
Elizabeth flashed him a quick smile as they walked side by side, somehow both open and covert, a paradox in itself as much as Elizabeth herself seemed to be sometimes.
"It's not like people are lining up to hire skywriters for me, you know," she quipped with a laugh that sounded like the best kind of music, and Henry smiled slightly as he watched her.
"They should be," he said decisively, catching the flash of hesitant surprise and affection on her face at his words.
And that had been that, until now, as Henry glanced between his watch and the path that led to the little open field where he stood, waiting for Elizabeth. As he nervously counted down, Henry thought back on that conversation and the countless moments since in which he had reflected that same sentiment. Elizabeth, he thought, deserved to have a million people lining up to hire skywriters for her, and yet somehow she had chosen him. He wasn't sure where his momentary insanity and fear had come from; all his hours apart from her had taught him was that he never wanted to be anywhere but at her side. Now, he just hoped that this gesture- and more importantly, the sentiment behind it- would translate from his heart to his brain to his mouth in a way that made enough sense to convince the girl of his dreams to marry him.
"Henry?"
She had approached from the opposite direction, catching him off guard. He whirled around and his breath caught. She looked beautiful, he thought a little bit wildly, with her hair down like that and the way her eyes somehow managed to be the exactly the color of the sky that served as a backdrop for- wait. The sky. Right. Henry checked his watch nervously, and Elizabeth raised her eyebrows in question.
"Elizabeth," Henry breathed.
"Hi," she said. She watched him for a moment, and then: "Are you okay?"
Henry let out a breath and flashed her a nervous smile.
"I'm okay," he answered. "Listen, I'm really sorry for walking out like I did. I just- I needed to clear my head and I went about it all the wrong way, and I'm just-"
But Elizabeth's gaze was no longer on Henry, and she was squinting at something behind him, and Henry's heart leapt in his chest when he turned slowly to find that the skywriting- his grand gesture- seemed to be starting early.
"Is that a skywriter?" Elizabeth asked, and Henry was seized by a bizarre urge to either laugh or throw up; he wasn't sure which. Perhaps both.
"Yeah," he breathed. As they watched, Elizabeth in blatant curiosity and Henry in abject horror, letters appeared one after another in the sky.
"Mar?" Elizabeth asked. Henry took a risky glance at her, head tilted quizzically to the side as she tried to make sense of the message.
"Mar me," she read slowly. "Is someone trying to-" but she broke off as the plane continued to misspell the final word in the trifecta, leaving the message Mar Me, Elibet suspended in the sky.
"Elibet," she whispered, and Henry could practically hear the gears turning in her head as she whirled to face him. Henry looked hopelessly between Elizabeth and the total failure of a grand gesture that mocked him from its place in the sky.
"Henry," Elizabeth said slowly. "What's going on?"
"I hired a discount skywriter," Henry heard himself say as if from somewhere far away. Very quickly, this whole ordeal had spiraled from something only vaguely promising to a complete disaster. There was a moment of silence in which Henry sunk slowly to one knee and pulled a blue velvet ring box from his pocket. And then, like sunshine bursting through the clouds after a particularly fierce storm, Elizabeth began to laugh. She looked between Henry, on one knee in front of her, and the letters in the sky, and she laughed- openly, feely, because the whole situation couldn't have been more ridiculous or, despite her, endearing, if it had tried.
"On our second date," Henry began through his fear and dry mouth, "you said that people weren't lining up to hire skywriters for you and I said- I said that that they should be, and then we never said anything about it again but I always thought so. I always thought that you deserved to have your name written in the sky and- well-" he faltered, looking between her and the slowly fading, pathetic attempt at Elizabeth in the blue sky, but she had stopped laughing and when he looked back at her, he found that there was unabashed affection on her face and in her gaze. Heartened by that softness, he took a deep breath and continued.
"I think you deserve the world," he said. "And the skywriter may have been a complete disaster," he continued with a nod. "And," he admitted, "I really screwed up leaving you for even a minute, regardless of the reason but-" he paused, and took a breath. "But I am just hopelessly in love with you, Elizabeth Adams. I'm so crazy about you, and I want to spend the rest of my life ruining grand gestures and making you laugh like that. So...will you marry me?"
Elizabeth's breath caught at the words and she took another glance at the fading white letters in the sky, then looked back at the earnest, warm gaze of the man on one knee in front of her, and right then she remembered the conversation that Henry was talking about. The moment when she'd wondered to herself, is it worth it? And just then, looking at him looking at her, with the backdrop of what she was sure was the best thing anyone had ever done for her based on the sheer intention of it, Elizabeth knew the answer to both questions.
"Yes," she said aloud and watched the brilliant smile break over Henry's face. As he wrapped her up in his arms, Elizabeth decided then and there that she would never doubt the worth of a life with Henry McCord again.