A/N: dinner date from the february one word prompt list, as requested by my bestie claudia!
Valentine's Day, 2002
Elizabeth stepped through the hallway and her reflection caught her eye in the mirror; she looked over at the glass reflexively.
She had mostly been avoiding mirrors as of late- and this was exactly the reason why.
Her usual blonde hair and blue eyes looked back at her, but the rest was vaguely unfamiliar- dark circles that had persisted for most of the last year, deep worry lines that she no longer had the time to fret about, and tension that settled into her shoulders like it meant to make a permanent home there.
It was certainly not the first time Elizabeth had lived through a period of high stress that left her feeling not quite like herself. But it was the first time she had been a wife, mother to three, and high level analyst, all in a post- 9/11 world.
She couldn't say she was faring particularly well in any of those departments recently. The basket of laundry that she was currently balancing on her hip, piled twice as high as usual, tended to agree. Meanwhile, her second cup of coffee sat cooling on the kitchen counter; when she glanced over at it, she couldn't help feeling like it might be mocking her just a little bit.
That was only fair, she guessed, when it was not even yet six am and she'd already cycled through the first cup and felt no less exhausted for it.
She left the offending mirror empty on the wall and slipped into the laundry room, where she tipped the entire basket of her daughters' clothing into the washing machine and was just about to reach for the detergent when a soft sound behind her caught her ear, and she turned to find her husband standing in the doorway, shadowed in the bruised predawn light. He looked downright cozy in his battered sweatpants and the t-shirt that hung, stretched and threadbare, against his broad chest; for a moment, a rush of warm affection and longing swept over Elizabeth and she wished she could tug him up the stairs with her, back to bed and away from the harsh reality that awaited outside.
Instead, she offered him a taut smile.
"Hey," she said.
"Hey," he echoed, and his fingers found her waist like a magnet as he came to stand next to her and peered down into the washer.
"Reds and whites?" he asked. Elizabeth offered an attempt at a cheeky smile and shrugged her shoulders lightly.
"Figured the girls would be thrilled to have pink socks," she remarked, and it earned her the soft huff of a laugh that brushed over her and lifted her up, just for a moment, like the soft waves of low tide.
"Well," Henry said, "at least they'll be on theme for Valentine's Day."
Right. Valentine's Day. The realization washed over Elizabeth's face before she could remember to school her expression, and Henry smiled.
"You forgot, didn't you?" he asked.
"Yes," Elizabeth admitted, turning to place a pleading palm against his chest. "I'm sorry."
Henry was shaking his head before she had even finished.
"Don't worry," he said, as he swept up her hand and pressed a feathery kiss to her knuckles, and then smiled at her, utterly charming. "I've got it all planned out."
Elizabeth couldn't help melting a little bit. Of course he did.
"Is it too late to change whose holiday this is?" she asked. "Because I really think you're more of a saint than this-" she fumbled with nothing, gesturing aimlessly- "Valentine guy."
Henry laughed, a genuine and warm sound, and leaned in to kiss her cheek.
"He's also the patron saint of beekeepers," Henry shrugged. "Maybe he can just stick to that and I'll take over courtship."
Elizabeth smiled- genuine this time, lacking the tension from before- and reached for the detergent. She finished pouring it in and glanced back at Henry.
"Hey," she said. "These Valentine's Day plans-"
Reading the hesitance in her voice with ease, Henry nodded his head.
"Nothing big, I promise," he said. "But I do think you're really going to like the restaurant." He kissed her quickly. "I'm going to go wake the girls."
And then he was gone, before she could even respond, and she was left looking after him and wondering why he had looked so proud of himself when he said that.
Over the baby monitor that Elizabeth had carried downstairs with her, there was a crackle followed by a sharp cry, and she sighed.
Whatever curiosity she had about Henry's plans, it would just have to wait.
And wait it did- through the rush of the morning and the heart-shaped sandwiches that Henry packed for Stevie and Alison in their lunchboxes for first grade and preschool, respectively, through six-month old Jason's flinging of Cheerios across the kitchen floor, through the rush of hugs and sticky fingers that left Elizabeth laden with guilt as she tried to get out the door; through her commute, her dull-but-important morning meetings, her meager lunch, her afternoon caffeine crash and the subsequent afternoon dose of Advil, her rushed last report of the day, her usual bout of anxiety as to the state of the world, and her drive home, which always seemed to take twice as long as the drive to work had been in the morning.
When she pushed through the front door into the hallway, she was met with the discarded princess backpacks and haphazardly thrown light-up tennis shoes that belonged to her daughters. She slipped out of her own shoes, too, and left the practical black pumps next to Henry's neatly lined-up Adidas sneakers.
"Hello," she called out, and the rush of little footsteps preceded Alison and Stevie as they raced each other around the corner to greet her. For a brief moment, the tension eased, and she smiled brightly as she swept them both up in her arms. Stevie was already chattering about the Valentines she had exchanged at school, while Alison bounced on the balls of her feet in a bid for her mother's attention as she tried to get a word in edgewise around her older sister. But Elizabeth found that she could not quite catch what either of them were saying; partially because they were talking over one another, but perhaps mostly because their father had appeared in the doorway behind them, baby Jason in his arms and a warm smile across his features.
"Well, aren't you a sight for sore eyes," Elizabeth sighed as she met Henry in the middle of the hallway and leaned in to kiss him.
"Hi," he murmured against her lips, but that was as far as he got, because Alison was tugging insistently on Elizabeth's skirt as she reached out to take Jason from her husband.
"Yes, baby, Mama's listening," she said patiently, looking down at their soon-to-be four year old.
"Mama, Daddy said we have to-"
Before she could finish, Henry had scooped her easily into his arms and pressed his hand lightly over her mouth.
"Daddy said," he repeated, "that we have a surprise, remember?"
Eyes comically wide behind Henry's hand that covered most of her face, Alison nodded her head, and Elizabeth laughed.
"A surprise, huh?" she said, smoothing her fingers over Jason's soft tufts of hair as he wrapped his little fingers in the fabric of her shirt.
"Yep," Stevie said. "You have to go upstairs."
Now seven, she had recently entered a bossy phase. Elizabeth raised her eyebrows and smiled indulgently, looking up at Henry.
"I thought there was a restaurant involved," she said, and he smiled, unrevealing.
"Something like that," he answered evasively. "She's right; you have to go upstairs."
Only now did Elizabeth take note of the aromatic layers of garlic that hung in the air, wafting gently from room to room, or the certain sort of heat that emanated through the house, something that hovered when the oven was on.
"Okay," she relented. "Well, let's go see what Daddy has up there, huh?"
Jason squealed happily and for a moment, there was the faint and fleeting thought that it didn't really matter what was waiting for her upstairs. After all, these were the things that mattered.
Still- she was curious.
So she led the charge up the stairs with Stevie right behind her, and Henry carrying Alison right behind. In the master bedroom, she peeked in and found a dress on the bed. It was a simple black cocktail dress with a v-neck and a long skirt, an elegant sort of thing that she had not yet had a chance to wear.
She looked back at Henry, a question in her eyes.
"What is this?" she asked.
He shrugged his shoulders; as she watched, he casually flipped Alison upside down in his arms, sending her into a fit of giggles. At her side, Stevie was smiling.
"You have to put it on," she said.
Both she and her little sister seemed ready to burst with whatever surprise that Henry had confided in them. But when she glanced back at the dress laid out so neatly on the bedspread, she flashed back to early that morning, and catching her reflection in the mirror. She remembered the way she almost had not recognized herself, and suddenly the reserve of joy and anticipation that had built up in the bubble of her arrival at home drained away.
Henry, to his endless credit, seemed to catch wind of it right away.
He set Alison upright on her feet, and turned to Stevie.
"Honey, will you take your sister downstairs and finish up what we were working on?" he asked; it didn't escape Elizabeth's notice the way that he waggled his eyebrows comically at the girls, always preserving their sense of fun and joy in things- even if she was unable to.
He'd been doing a whole lot of that recently, and the guilt weighed heavily on her as she watched her daughters race out of the room and listened to their little footsteps receding down the stairs. Jason squirmed in her arms as Henry turned to her, watching her carefully.
"What is it?" he asked- all openness, no judgenent. Still, she hesitated.
"I just- I don't know if I feel like that person right now," she admitted after a moment. Her eyes laid on the dress, unable to look Henry in the face.
"What person is that?" he asked patiently.
"You know," she said, and gestured vaguely. "The girl who can get dressed up and go out and look nice. I'm- not really there."
Finally, she took a glance up at Henry, and found his eyes sparkling warmly with an understanding that felt, in a way, too generous. When she met his gaze, he took the opening and stepped toward her until he was close enough to put his hand on her arm, drawing her in toward him.
"Do you trust me, Elizabeth?" he asked. His voice was soft and carried a husk that felt intimate and warm.
She could do nothing but nod her head. Henry smiled brightly and dropped a kiss to her lips, soft and quick.
"Okay, then," he said, reaching to take Jason out of her arms. "Just put that trust into action and put on the dress, okay?"
She looked back at it again.
"What are you wearing?" she asked, and he grinned.
"Pick out a tie for me," he answered, and then he was pulling away and taking the baby with him. He glanced at his watch where it rested on his wrist as he approached the doorway, bathed in the golden glow of the hallway light.
"Half an hour?" he asked.
Another glance at the dress, and Elizabeth nodded her head.
Henry's powers of persuasion over her, she thought, ought to be something that the CIA was looking into.
By the time Elizabeth was dressed and had put her hair up in a sort of twist that she thought looked close enough to elegant, nearly the full half hour had passed- she had never once claimed to be a hairstylist, and always found that it took a frustratingly long time to work her blonde hair into something that looked alright.
At six-forty, Henry reappeared; his jeans and sweatshirt had been traded for dress pants and a pressed button-down that she could only assume he'd snagged from the laundry room, and he looked devastatingly handsome.
He stopped in the doorway at the sight of her, and something in his face softened in a way that made her skin feel alight.
"Hey," she said; she spread her arms out and spun in a half-circle, sending her skirt swishing pleasantly around her legs.
"Hey, yourself," Henry said; his voice had taken on that darker note that she loved, and her nervous reluctance ebbed immediately. He crossed the distance between them and pulled her in by her waist until he could kiss her, and where earlier it had been soft, now it lingered.
When he pulled away, he was smiling.
"Here," she said, hoping that she could hide how easily his touch made her blush after all this time. And she held out a silk tie with a subtle red and pink pinstripe.
Henry smiled fondly at the sight of it- remembering that it had been a gift from her two Christmases past- and reached up to pop the collar of his shirt, then gestured to her; perfectly in tune with him, she immediately looped it around his neck and wrapped her fingers around it until it formed a neat and perfect knot.
"Ready?" he asked as she smoothed her fingers over the tie, pressing it to his chest.
"I don't have shoes," she said. Henry grinned, unabashedly amused.
"Don't need 'em," he said, holding out his free hand to her.
"What?" she asked, but still she followed him out into the hallway and down the stairs. As they went, the aromatic garlic scent grew stronger and mingled with something definitely tomatoey that had Elizabeth yearning to eat.
At the bottom of the stairs, she paused, and then a smile that she could not contain blossomed on her features.
In the kitchen, the lights were off, and the table was lit by an assortment of taper and votive candles in a mix of colors that told Elizabeth that they'd been cobbled together with what they had in the house. The table was set with a white tablecloth and two place settings- next to each other, rather than across. And, perhaps best of all, Stevie and Alison bounced excitedly on the balls of their feet next to the table; Stevie was holding a wire breadbasket in both hands, and Alison had a white dishcloth draped awkwardly over one arm.
Elizabeth could not help but laugh in delight at the sight of them.
"Happy Valentine's Day," they chorused together, like it had been well-rehearsed.
"Well, what are you two doing here?" she asked as she floated the last few steps and crouched in front of them, tugging lightly on Alison's towel to elicit big, broad smiles in both of them.
"We made a restaurant!" Stevie exclaimed. "Your table is here!"
Elizabeth laughed; when she twisted around to look up at Henry where he still hovered on the stairs, he found a brightness in her face that sent a vague and not altogether unpleasant ache through his chest; it was the joy and delight that he had missed in her features over the last few months, and it immediately lifted him as if on the wing of a bluebird.
"Restaurant, huh?" she said, and her eyes sparkled as he shrugged his shoulders.
He joined her at the table as Stevie and Alison tugged their mother to her seat, and Elizabeth noticed for the first time the lopsided pieces of paper lying on each of the plates: handmade, crayon-scribbled menus that bore Henry's block letters, traced over by Stevie in red and pink marker and surrounded by messily drawn hearts.
She thought that she could have cried at the sight, but instead she turned a sparkling smile on her daughters.
"Did you two make these?" she asked, and beamed when they nodded proudly. "They are so beautiful," she said.
"Daddy helped!" Alison piped up, and Elizabeth's smile grew, if possible, more tender as she glanced up at her husband.
"Did he?" she asked warmly. Henry shrugged.
"A little," he said.
"Well," Elizabeth proclaimed, "I think this is just the most perfect Valentine's Day ever."
"Here," Stevie said, and held out the basket in her hands for Elizabeth, who plucked a dinner roll from it and smiled.
"Thank you," she laughed.
"Okay," Henry said, appearing behind the girls and drawing their attention to him. "Time for our waiters to get going. You guys have your own dinner to get to, don't you?"
Stevie and Alison nodded, and Stevie put the basket on the table unceremoniously in front of her mother.
"Sounds like my cue," came a familiar voice from the doorway, and Elizabeth looked up to find her brother grinning from the doorway.
"Will?" she asked, looking between him and Henry as the girls ran full speed at their uncle.
"Jason's sleeping upstairs, but Will agreed to take the girls out for a couple of hours for pizza," Henry explained.
"You're lucky I'm single," Will said, but it held no bite. "Have a nice evening, Lizzie."
And just like that, he was gone again, the girls were rushing through goodbye hugs and Henry was momentarily distracted helping them with their shoes; Elizabeth, momentarily alone in the kitchen, took a bite of her dinner roll, and looked down at the traced LASAGNE on the paper in front of her.
She had just enough time to start thinking about her good fortune before there was the distant sound of the front door, and Henry was back.
"Hey," he said, grinning.
"Hey," she laughed, watching as he pulled a lasagne out of the oven and set it on the table between the candles with a flourish.
"I was not kidding about that saint thing," she remarked as she leaned in and let the fragrant steam wash over her. "You really do have the romance thing down, McCord."
Henry smiled.
"Happy Valentine's Day, Elizabeth," he said- all soft tenderness- and then he kissed her, and the tension in her shoulders fell away like magic.
She leaned back in her chair as Henry reached for her plate to fill it, and suddenly the morning and all of its dark worry felt miles away.
Everything else was sure to come rushing back but for tonight, at least, Elizabeth was feeling entirely herself.