Prompt: Henry thinks he is ready to be intimate with Elizabeth again after an illness or injury, but he isn't.

A/N: This is set at the end of season 3, episode 1 "Sea Change", and is canon-divergent, picking up where it might have left off if Henry and Elizabeth had never received the stalking photos of the kids.

When Elizabeth had said that it would be like college, she hadn't really anticipated that it would be true. But on that night, with each of their own responsibilities on their shoulders and spread out in physical form over their bed, it actually did feel a lot like college. The cheeseburger pizza had certainly helped. Henry and Elizabeth had eaten straight from the box in their pajamas, just like they had so many times before on nights that often felt a lifetime away from the busy schedules they held now. There were other differences now, too; the pizza, which would have once been easily devoured between the two of them, was left with a third in the box. Henry, in a break between term papers, had left the room to go and put it away in a container- another sign of their age, she supposed. There had been a time when all leftovers were housed in their original containers in the fridge and she didn't own a single tupperware dish. Now, she was pretty sure she owned enough of it to house Thanksgiving dinner- if she could find all the matching lids, of course, which would be nothing short of a miracle.

She had just finished going through one of her files, the words beginning to become blurry both on the page and in her mind. She tugged her glasses off of her face and tossed them on top of the growing pile of pages that she had finished reading. It was all daunting, all the time, this job, and these files were no exception. Elizabeth took a glance over at Henry's paperwork instead. Term papers on religion, penned- or typed- by bright-eyed young students who truly believed the world was at their feet. Sometimes, Elizabeth really missed when she had been just a professor. She skimmed a couple of paragraphs of the paper on top of Henry's pile, and was struck by the student's insight, however cavalier and bold it could be.

"Snooping on my papers?"

Elizabeth looked up at Henry's warm, teasing voice, and smiled.

"Just wondering if you wanna trade," she suggested wryly, with a glance back at her own work. Henry laughed, shaking his head as he moved back toward their bed.

"Not a chance," he said, looking her over as she shrugged in response. Elizabeth was not the same young woman she'd been all those years ago when they had stayed up late together, working on their separate degrees well into the night. But he could still see that girl in her- the way her skin glowed warm in the lamplight, the familiar and practiced motion of her tucking her hair behind her ear, the way she still sat in the same position with one knee drawn up against her and the other leg folded against the bed. So much had changed since those days, but Elizabeth was still, as she had always been, the most beautiful woman Henry had ever known.

"What are you doing?" she asked curiously, looking up again only to find Henry still just standing there looking at her.

"Kissing you," he said, and then he was kissing her, leaning over the bed in an instant with his lips on hers. Things had been busy lately; it had been too long for either his taste or hers since they'd had a chance to be together like this. Technically speaking, they didn't have a chance now either; the bed was still half-covered in the work that they'd both so urgently needed to do. But right then, it didn't seem like it mattered as much as it had before. Elizabeth leaned into Henry, pressing her lips more deeply against his, and when they broke apart a moment later it left her feeling desperate to touch him again.

Wordlessly, they cleared the bed of their papers, leaving an empty space in a matter of seconds. Elizabeth made the first move, with her hand on Henry's cheek and jaw, pulling him close as her fingers made their way around to the nape of his neck. She kissed him deeply and warmly, the feeling of her lips on his own somehow at once familiar and new, alive with the feeling of returning to something that felt so much like home for both of them. Henry pushed his wife down onto the mattress by her shoulders as he had done so many other times before, eagerly lowering his head to kiss her again. Elizabeth leaned up into him, her heart already racing, resting her hand on the slightest inward curve at his waist as he moved to balance above her. But just as his lips met hers, she felt him shift slightly for better balance over her, and then in an instant she could tell that something was wrong.

Henry let out a groan that was far from pleasure, sending alarm bells ringing loudly in Elizabeth's head as he pulled back and rolled so as not to fall on her.

"Henry!" Elizabeth exclaimed reflexively, scrambling to switch her own position as Henry landed on his back on top of the comforter. His features were twisted in what was unmistakably pain, his eyes closed, and his hand was pressed against the side of his chest over his ribs. Visions of Henry in the ER with the same cracked ribs, limping into their home not so long ago, swam before Elizabeth and a wave of guilt washed over her. Henry had been attacked not that long ago at all, and so much had happened since then that it had not even crossed her mind that night that he might not be ready for this kind of activity. Henry panted there on the bed, trying to catch his breath in a way that didn't make his ribs ache even more, and deeply regretting having turned in just that way. The twist toward Elizabeth had done him in, intensely and with no warning.

"Babe?" Elizabeth's voice was pitched high like it always was when she got scared, and Henry forced himself to open his eyes and look at her, finding her gazing anxiously down at him, nearly a mirror of the position they'd been in moments earlier.

"Are you okay?" she asked, her blue eyes worried. He watched her bite her lip nervously and even in the haze of pain that was very slowly fading, he thought she was absolutely adorable.

"I'm okay," he gasped. Elizabeth shook her head.

"You're not," she objected. Henry moved to sit up, maybe to prove to her that he was alright, but the movement sent him back to the mattress immediately with a hiss of pain.

As Elizabeth pressed a hand to his shoulder, whether to comfort him, keep him lying down, or both, Henry felt tears sting the backs of his eyes. He didn't know whether it was more from pain or from frustration at the situation, though he might've wagered a guess at the latter.

"Henry," Elizabeth breathed. She settled next to him and ran her fingers soothingly through his hair. "Honey, I'm so sorry."

Henry did not quite trust himself to speak, but he shook his head, clearly indication to his wife that he did not think she should be apologizing.

"It's okay," she said softly. "Just breathe."

And Henry did. He laid there in the quiet and let Elizabeth brush her fingers through his hair and with every touch, he felt a little bit less frustrated. When one of those stray tears made its way onto his cheek, her fingers were ready with gentle and familiar touch to brush it away, almost as if it were never there in the first place. She tried not to think about the attack, about Henry in pain, and chose instead for right then to focus on him, safe in their house with her now. The pain faded slowly, and Henry's breathing regulated, and he looked up at her apologetically when he was sure he could speak again.

"I'm sorry," he said, but Elizabeth was shaking her head before he even got the words out.

"Henry, come on," she said. "You don't have anything to be sorry for."

"Well-"

"Henry."

He fell silent and looked up at her, upside-down sitting above him. He slowly shifted closer to her until his head was in her lap, and a tiny sweet smile played over her features.

"Are you okay?" she asked quietly. Henry nodded.

"I promise when I'm all better we'll try that again with a better ending," he said. Elizabeth laughed lightly, reaching for Henry's hand and tangling her fingers with his on top of the bed.

"I promise next time you get attacked with a bat I'll double check to make sure you're ready for sex first," she said with a straight face, and Henry couldn't help but laugh.

There was a familiar, comfortable silence in the room for a few minutes.

"Wanna go finish the ice cream while we don't have to share it with the kids?" Elizabeth asked. Henry grinned.

"You're beautiful," he said seriously, and she laughed.

"But," Henry added with a chuckle, "you have to help me up, I think."

Elizabeth laughed as she obliged, carefully easing Henry to his feet with her hands in his, and as they headed downstairs together, she was thinking that maybe things were not like they'd been in college- and that maybe, she actually preferred these years after all.

As long as she had Henry beside her, things were okay in her book.