A/N: Hello! Quick chapter update because, well, it's Christmas break and I should be doing other things but here we are :-)

Also, umm, special shoutout to boundvariable who always gives me the best questions to consider in all my stories. I love reading your replies :')

Hope you all enjoy!

He slides up to the head of the bed too, tucking his body under the shared blanket as she grasps it firmly. Her eyes are darting over and looking at it, getting little glimpses of his body as he covers it, and she holds her breath until he settles.

She stares at the ceiling for a moment and feels her stomach churning, her heart pounding in her throat. Shutting her eyes, she almost flings herself from her side of the bed and onto her feet, feeling uncomfortable in the coolness of the room with no clothes on as she tip-toes to the refrigerator. She squats down and feels even more exposed, knowing that his eyes are on her the entire time, and she grabs a small bottle of liquor out of the door, popping the lid open and walking back to bed.

Tipping it back, she realizes she hadn't even looked to see what it was, and when the Jack Daniels hits the back of her throat she gags immediately, almost spurting it out onto the comforter. He's looking over at her, and she can see him from the corner of her eye, "Are you alright?" He asks.

She brushes the comforter, trying to get as much off as she can without smearing it and making it worse. "I'm alright," she murmurs, frustrated now that she smells like Jack. She sets the bottle down on the floor, her throat still burning, and she sits up and pulls the blanket up around her chest to cover herself. I should've gotten some clothes on, she thinks to herself as she still fumbles around with the spot of drying liquid on the comforter.

She brushes her hand again over the spot, over and over, and then she finally looks at him and tightens her arms around the comforter to pull it closer into her chest, "Don't you ever think about that night?" She asks abruptly, staring at his confused face looking back at her.

"What night?" He asks, blinking a couple times at her.

She wants to grab him by the eyelashes and pluck each one individually, but she refrains. "The night you left," she almost snaps, "The night you just…walked out of my life like it was the easiest thing in the world," she says, looking back down into her lap and brushing her fingers lightly over the stain, somewhat in a trance as she continues to get lost in her thoughts.

Henry leans back against the headboard. His knees pop when he pulls them up a little underneath the blanket, and he's fumbling with his own fingers now as he looks down into his lap. "It wasn't easy, Elizabeth," he mumbles so low that she has to look over at him to see if she imagined him speaking or not. He's shaking his head now, getting a breath and trying to find more words.

"Then why did you do it?" She asks, saving him from too much of a search. "Why didn't you stay and fight for us? Were the two years we spent together just…just not that important?" She asks, staring at him bewilderedly as her hands freeze in her lap.

The silence causes her blood to heat, boiling through her veins as she watches him. He's not looking at her, his eyes just fixated on his hands. The hum of the air conditioner kicking on makes her clench her fist in her own lap, ready to kick him out.

"Henry." She says, her bark stern and low.

He looks over at her and immediately back away, shaking his head, "I thought I was doing the right thing," he finally says

"For who?" She blurts out, staring at him again as she realizes it comes out as more of a demand than a question. His face is contorting into something worse than just frustration from not finding words—it's a blend of guilt, regret, and maybe even something else. "Because it sure wasn't the right thing for me," she continues, straightening her back and her shoulders, "You left me there like I didn't even matter—like nothing—like…" she swallows thick, "Like our time together never mattered at all. And then you never even contacted me."

"You didn't contact me either," he says quickly, looking at her now with a flicker of anger mixed in. He shakes his head and looks away again, straightening his legs out under the comforter and looking at his hands in his lap, "I thought that if I stayed, that if I came back, that you'd resent me. I'd hold you back."

"So you just assumed I'd resent you?" She asks, "I told you that I wanted to be CIA that night and you didn't even…" she cocks her jaw to the side, looking away from him as she gets a piercing pain through her chest. She takes a sharp breath, shaking her head, "You didn't even try to make it work out, no compromises or anything." She says. "I would've—"

"I saw how much your career meant to you, Elizabeth," he interrupts, his voice becoming stern and lower, "And I knew how much the Marines meant to be. I couldn't ask you to wait for me, and I didn't want to wait for you, either. And maybe I should've—" he stops, looking up at her, "Maybe I should've waited. Maybe I should've decided that we could make some sort of long-distance relationship work or, I don't know, some bullshit where we wouldn't even actually be together." He says, and she recoils a little when she hears him cuss—he never did that during college, only in bed.

He huffs out a laugh, shaking his head as he looks at her still, "You said our life could continue after the Marines," he says, recalling her words like six years hadn't passed by. She remembers them just as well, though. "I didn't want that. I didn't want to just…to put life on pause or something for a career I wanted just as badly as you wanted to be CIA." He says sharply, the hurt still soaked into his voice. "So yeah, I left. I couldn't bear another fight where we'd make some bullshit compromise and be miserable the entire time we had careers we wanted."

She bites at the inside of her lip a few times, watching him before she finally lets her gaze move away from him, her heart pounding again in her throat. She sniffles a little and sucks on her tongue, feeling the tears want to poke at her eyes. "Well," she murmurs, "I guess we got what we wanted."

"Guess so," he says just as hurt.

She drags her tongue across her teeth and feels the rush of heat in behind her eyes again, this time unable to keep the tears from approaching her eyes. She blinks them away quickly, trying to not let them fall down her cheeks, "I think you should go."

"I have questions too," he asserts, and she looks at him. He swallows thick and takes a shaky breath, "Why did you never reach out?"

"Because you never said goodbye," she says shakily, "You were the one who left the way you did—you should've been the one to reach out."

"I did," he says, blinking at her.

"I never heard from you," she replies defiantly.

He shakes his head, "I looked you up in the yellow pages that summer, Elizabeth," he says, "I tried contacting you in August the first time."

"In August?" She asks, knowing she had already been in Bahrain by July, "Why did it take you so long?"

"Why didn't you answer?" He asks.

"I was gone, Henry," she seethes, taking a deep breath and feeling her blood start to boil again. "Why did it take you so long to reach out? A whole summer when you could've just said goodbye at graduation?"

"I skipped graduation because my dad put a bruise on my mom's face and I was embarrassed to come," he says, and she flinches slightly when he says it.

She had always known that Patrick had a mean streak, though Elaine never admitted it. She also knew that Patrick had a tendency to get a little too tipsy on nights that he was already stressed about something else, something like his son graduating and going into the Marines, and she had heard Henry say little things about his dad getting meaner with some alcohol in his veins.

She looks down into her lap, sniffling and staying quiet, unsure what to say about it. "You should've told me," she whispers, though now she's thinking of Elaine and how mad Elizabeth is at Patrick McCord for ever laying a hand on her.

"Well," he murmurs, huffing, "It's not something that my mom really wanted to address."

She swallows thick and thinks of his mother and how timid she is anyway, understanding the logic behind that. She wasn't someone who would've wanted to draw attention to herself, but she also just wonders what Henry wasn't telling her.

The silence falls back around them for a moment, but this time it feels more like a hug rather than something to anger her.

"Did you just…" she mumbles, regretting starting this question already and staying quiet for a moment, but she hears Henry shift his body to face her more. "Did you just think that disappearing without a word wouldn't hurt me?" She asks.

He shrugs a little, picking at a callous on his palm, "I knew it would," he admits, and she feels the breath get sucked from her, "But I knew it wasn't going to be good if I stayed, if I tried to convince you to make this work. I didn't want to hold you back from your career, Elizabeth, even though I wanted you to come with me more than anything in the world."

She looks away from him and out the window, getting a little piece of twinkling light here and there through the curtains. The corner of her cheek is placed between her teeth, and she's biting down on it, picking at it a little until it's sore.

"I was scared, I guess," he continues after a while, "I only knew one thing at that time, and it was that I loved you. And that I thought I'd be spending the rest of my life with you. So when you told me no…" his voice trails off, and she hears the hurt again just dripping from his voice, but she can't bring herself to look at him—not when she has a tear dripping down her cheek.

She pulls her knees up to her chest under the blanket, wrapping her arms around the outside of them as her head still faces the window.

"It hurt me to no end, Elizabeth," he admits, "I just heard that no, every man's worst nightmare when proposing to someone he loves…" his voice is cracking, and she wants to reach for him, but she continues to hold on to her legs tightly. "It felt like my world crashed. So then I decided that if you were willing to hurt me like that, then it didn't really mean as much as I thought it did, even though I don't think I ever fully believed that." He admits, sniffling, "And then when you didn't answer in August after I'd worked myself up so bad before calling you, risking getting my heart broken again, I just knew that I couldn't do this to myself, couldn't keep getting heartbroken over and over." He says, and finally she lets her eyes wander back to see him.

He's looking down at open relaxed palm still, "And then the next week I shipped out to Kuwait."

His voice got quiet, and she watches him retreat into himself. She brushes her tongue across the front of her teeth, sucking in and trying to keep herself from letting out a sob. She wipes her cheek across her shoulder, remembering that she had dropped some tears down her skin, and she sniffles and looks back at him again. "I was in Bahrain when you called," she says, "I had no idea you ever tried to contact me."

The silence fills the room again, and she hears the blood rushing in her ears.

She leans back after a few minutes of total silence, the A/C and the occasional click of the refrigerator breaking through. She stares down at her knees, looking past the stain and just blinking a couple times as she attempts to process everything.

"I was in Kuwait for the next year," he admits, breaking through first, "And when I came back, I was really fucked up, Elizabeth," he whispers.

She looks at him, her eyes wide but soft, and she wishes she'd let herself reach for him. But she can't. She can't touch him without falling all over him again, so she restrains her hands by tucking them under her butt, underneath the cover that's now just draped over her chest.

She's not sure what to say, though, and she just stares at her knees again for a few moments.

"And then when I started doing research," he mumbles, "I kept seeing your name pop up, and I was amazed by your work." He admits, and she looks over at him with a little confusion in her expression.

"Why didn't you reach out then?" She asks, her voice trembling, "Why didn't you try to contact me when you saw my name appearing? I was publishing work, Henry, I'm easily reachable."

He sniffles, shrugging his shoulders a little and shaking his head, "I dialed your number way too many times," he admits, "I saw you in the yellow pages again, looking for your number…I had it written on my fridge." He says, his eyes staring straight forward now as he looks like he's getting flashbacks of something terrible happening.

Again, she forces her hands to stay underneath her.

"But I couldn't do it. And then when I was in D.C. on business, I happened to see in the newspaper one day that you had announced your engagement to Ben," he says, looking down now, "And I knew that it was for the best—that you'd moved on and that you were going to be better off without me."

She swallows the lump down in her throat and tries to keep it down, but it keeps rising, and finally she lets her hand out from underneath her body and scoots it toward him over the sheets. Her speed was slower than she wanted it to be, but she was trying to keep herself from just grabbing him, afraid he'd startle if she rushed.

When she reaches him finally, she finds his thigh, and she lets her fingers scrape gently against the hair on his thigh, sliding up his hip and to his ribs, down his arm, and finally ending at his hand. She threads her fingers through his, squeezing a little as he looks over at her finally.

She swallows hard again, "I just wanted you to try," she whispers, "To fight for me, to make me feel like we'd had something more than what you treated it as when you left." She feels the tears rushing to her eyes again and before she can stop them, they're running down her cheeks. "You made me feel worthless." She whispers, her voice shaking too much to speak aloud.

He squeezes her hand back, looking over into her eyes before moving his other hand across his body to wipe her tears away, dragging his rough thumb across each of her cheeks. He sniffles, too, and she thinks he's going to say something, but instead his lips are parting to lean in and kiss her.

And she sits there, lets him kiss her, lets him take over her body without even one bit of a fight. Instead, she leans into him further, closing the gap between them, and she feels his hand sliding down her side and scooting her hips toward him.

When she gets close enough, she straddles her leg over his hips, sitting on his lap and never breaking the kiss. Her hands come up to his jaws, splaying her fingers across his face as she leans into him, his head pushing back against the headboard.

"You never should've left me like that," she whispers, pulling away just slightly as she looks down into his eyes, her hand still firmly on his jaw. "And you never should've left like that, without ever contacting me at all, and left to Kuwait and did God only knows what to try to ease your pain," she breathes, her voice cracking again.

She shakes her head painfully, trying to take a deep breath through her nose as she attempts to steady her breaths. Her eyes are locked onto his as she breathes shallower, "Do you even feel sorry about it?" She asks, looking at him with this startling realization she just blurted out before ever even thinking it through, "Or do you just…do you think you were justified in the way you left?"

He looks at her, and she realizes the irony of the situation—she's sitting on top of him and interrogating him, a tactic that she strongly argues against, obviously, in her papers.

He swallows thick, "No," he whispers, "I hadn't."

She squeezes her fingers around his jaw a little and pushes his face away, crawling off him and off the bed, going to the bathroom without another word.

The door barely latches shut behind her before she starts crying, and she leans her hands down onto the counter and looks in the mirror at her already-red face. She sniffles, trying to keep quiet and not let him get the pleasure of hearing her lose it in here, but she can barely keep her breaths under control. Finally, she pushes off the counter and turns to let the water run in the shower, telling herself she's going to get in anyway and hoping that maybe Henry will decide to leave.

Without a goodbye, again, of course. Without even stopping to say anything to her.

This was a mistake, she thinks. I shouldn't have ever invited him here.

She steps into the shower finally, deciding to go ahead and get in so that maybe the water will drown out her cries. The heat burns her back, but she stands there with her arms wrapped around her body, letting it tremble underneath her grasp.

He didn't even feel sorry for the way it happened. How could he not? How could he have just left me like that? I meant nothing to him.

But then she thinks about how he said he was so hurt when she turned his proposal down, and she knows that he had to be right. He had to have felt hurt, and there were some times when she'd lie in bed at night and think about how she'd said no to him. She could've said yes, she could've said anything but a straight "no" and not broken his heart the way she did.

Would he have listened to anything I said if I wouldn't have told him no? Or would I be a housewife with two kids by now, at least, and just be following him around the world and being stuck in military bases that I never wanted to live on anyway? I wouldn't have anything of my own—it would all be Henry's or ours. I have this career. I have my research. I did that.

She sniffles again and gasps for air, the steam filling her lungs and drowning her instead. She reaches back to cool the temperature a little, and she hears a knock on the door. It's so faint that she wonders if she imagined it, or if maybe it was actually the front door opening and him leaving without a word.

"Elizabeth?" She hears him now, and she freezes still in the shower. She licks her lips, unsure what to say, wanting to just crawl down the drain with the water.

"Elizabeth?" He calls out again, and she hears the door opening. She watches as it slowly cracks open, and he's not sticking his head through yet. "Elizabeth, are you okay?"

She sniffles in reply, not letting him hear her mangled voice.

"Can I come in?" He asks.

"Why?" She replies, barely able to get it out without sobbing it.

He slowly opens the door a little more, and she sees him in the mirror now. He shies away when he sees her body as though they had not just seen each other naked and not just felt each other's bodies and not just devoured each other's souls.

She sniffles again and turns away from the mirror, facing the wall again as she lets the water burn down her back.

"I wanted to apologize for what I said," he admits, his own voice shaky and unsure too. "I didn't feel sorry for the way I left because I'd always thought it was the best way. But obviously…seeing you tonight…" his voice is crackling as she feels her stomach tighten, trying to keep herself from sobbing, "I see that I shouldn't have just…that it was only…" he lets the door handle loose and it clicks loudly, startling her enough to make her look back. He's still standing outside the door, though. "That it was only a cowardly move to leave like I did."

She swallows hard and looks forward for a few moments, pulling the glass door open at the other end of the shower and poking her face around just slightly. "Come in," she whispers, retreating back into the steam and burning hot water.

He does as she says, though, and he shuts the door behind him gently. She wraps her arms around her stomach, shivering even though her body is hot.

He just leans back against the countertop, and she watches him through the foggy glass, almost snickering that he still has his socks on his feet. "Why do you still have socks on?" She finally asks.

He looks down at his feet, his arms crossed over his chest, and she sees him smiling just a little. "My feet get cold," he admits.

She sniffles and looks down at her own feet, feeling them boil in the water pooling in the tub. "Then come in here and warm them up," she whispers, afraid to say it too loudly in case he hears.

But he does hear, and he looks at her for a few moments while standing still. "I don't…" he chokes out, "I don't know if it's a good idea, Elizabeth. I think you already regret what happened."

She continues to look at her feet, nodding just slightly, "But it's a regret I can live with," she whispers, repeating his statement from earlier.

She looks up after a moment to see him reaching for his first sock, then his second, and he's padding toward her and pushing the door open the rest of the way after she'd cracked it. He steps in, and she stares at his legs while he closes the door.

When she doesn't see him moving after a few moments, she finally looks up at him, and he's just standing out of the reach of the water, his arms also wrapped around his abdomen as he looks like he may be close to shivering. "Come in the water," she murmurs, taking a shaky breath and tilting her head.

He swallows thick, "I don't want you to regret tonight," he whispers, shaking his head, "I can get out."

"I don't want you to."

"But—"

"Damn you, Henry." She seethes, looking up at him angrily again. "Damn the hell out of you! I'm begging you to come here and to fight for me and yet you still are too much of a coward to do it!"

He stares at her for a moment, his body still almost shivering as he stands at the end of the tub. Her back is on fire, yet also seems to be going numb from the way it's burning her so harshly. Without warning, he steps to her briskly and grabs her by the waist, yanking her body into his, "Nothing's changed, Elizabeth," he whispers, the steam rising up in front of his face and between hers, "Nothing's changed. We're still two people with dangerous and time-consuming careers, and you said nothing is going to change from tonight."

She swallows thick and looks at him, feeling a little nervous at the way he's staring at her so intensely and the way his fingers are digging into her back. She swallows hard, blinking an image of Patrick McCord swinging at Elaine out of her mind, and trying to focus on Henry. Her Henry. Not Patrick.

"Maybe I want to pretend tonight," she whispers, her voice cracking again, "Maybe I want to pretend that all that never happened, and you stayed, and we made it work, and we're here together in this God forsaken city and hotel and shower, and we've never cursed the other one's name." She whispers, spitting it at him hotter than the shower's water.

He stares at her quietly for a few moments, and then his hands shove into her back harder before he smashes his lips down onto hers, and she moans against his lips at the sudden ferociousness against her teeth.

She stumbles backwards, but he catches her strongly, and he turns her a little and leans against her until her burning back rests against the cool tiles, and she gasps for air against his lips. Her mouth is wide on his, but she's not pulling away, she just lets her tongue slide into his mouth as he pushes his weight against her, squishing her between his body and the wall. She pulls him closer, though, and she wants to feel the full force of his weight against her.

She wraps her leg around his, her hands scratching at the skin on his back as he's now underneath the showerhead too, and he growls into her lips and arches his back, pushing into her chest. She gasps again, her hands trailing up his back and threading through his hair.

Her leg is sliding up his, and she grabs at one of his arms that was around her back, dragging it quickly to her center. "Fuck me, Henry," she demands, "Fuck me right here and pretend we never stopped." She whispers, her eyes burning with tears now that she hopes he can't see. She hopes, instead, that he just thinks it's water.

He dries her hair from behind, using her towel that she'd been using to squeeze the water out. She shies away from his touch, already sore and hurting from the way they'd used each other in that shower.

She steps away from him and out of the bathroom, wrapping her towel around her body without saying anything to him.

She hears the door opening more, and she turns, glancing to see him walking out of the bathroom. "Elizabeth?" he asks.

She looks at him again and swallows thick, tucking her towel into itself, "Yeah?" She whispers, her voice catching in her throat.

"Do you want me to leave?" He asks after a moment, and she swallows hard and sniffles, messing with the hem of her towel.

She stares down at it, her body throbbing and still on fire from everything that's happened since she went to the bathroom, and she shakes her head finally. "No," she whispers, "Just stay the night."

He clears his throat quietly after a few seconds, and he walks past her to the side of the bed that he'd been on, grabbing his pants and starting to step into them. She looks over and furrows her brows, "You're not sleeping in your dress pants," she says.

He looks at her, shrugging one shoulder, "I don't have anything else," he admits, "Not in here."

She shakes her head, "Then don't wear them," she instructs, picking at the top of her towel and looking down before deciding to let it slide off her and into the floor. She sniffles, feeling the cool air hitting her body and making her tense up.

She walks to her purse and digs through it a little until her fingers touch what sounds like her ibuprofen bottle, and she fishes it out and pops two into her mouth. She sips them down with water, and he looks over at her.

"You alright?" he asks.

She swallows hard, feeling heat rise to her cheeks when she thinks of her answer and lets it linger at the tip of her tongue. "I'm hurting," she admits quietly, feeling a bit shy as she lets it come out.

"Oh," he whispers, and she looks over at him. He looks like a young boy again, and she feels her heart grow a little bigger.

She walks over after tossing her bottle back into her purse, letting it rattle as it makes its way to the bottom. "It's been a while," she admits, feeling awkward to leave it like it was. "And that was…" she thinks back to the shower, the way she'd gripped onto his shoulders so tightly and actually started crying, the way she'd begged him to keep going even though he was worried about her and asked if he should stop, the way she begged him to go harder when he'd slowed down after fearing for her comfort.

"That was intense." She says finally, stepping to the bed and crawling in on the side she'd been laying earlier.

He climbs in the bed, too, being extra careful and slow, she's noticing. She rolls over onto her side and looks at him for a moment, bending her elbow and placing her head on top of her arm, watching as he settles underneath the covers.

Briefly, she lets her mind wander back to when they were in college and when they would try to fit in on of their dorm beds—whichever roommate was out of town or away for the night. They'd rarely gotten to share a bed together, though they did once or twice in a hotel, much like where they are tonight—except the hotels were always a little cheap and dingier than this.

But she never cared. She'd always had him, and she'd always felt safe with him. Even though she had to check the sheets in the bed to make sure they weren't dirty or filled with bugs, she always loved when they got to escape the campus together.

And now tonight, she's noticing just how much he's grown older, and she wonders if she's grown older, too. She's sure she has—six years passed by and she knows, too, that she's already gotten one gray hair during a very stressful time in Berlin. And her heart aches again, thinking of Berlin and Bahrain and the CIA, and how she apparently hurt him so bad.

She swallows hard as he's reaching toward her, "I'm sorry I hurt you," he whispers, and she thinks he's just talking about her usage of ibuprofen a second ago.

"It's okay, I just hadn't—"

"Not the sex," he whispers, rubbing his hand across her arm gently and propping his own head on his arm now too, the way she was doing. "I mean when I left, and when I hurt you six years ago. I…" he shakes his head.

"Shh," she whispers, blinking a couple times and taking a shaky breath, "We don't need to talk about it right now," she whispers.

She swallows thick when she hears his little grunt of disapproval, and he slides his hand up her arm gently, rubbing little circles on it.

She closes her eyes, thinking back in the shower. It was all pretend, she thinks, feeling tears poke at her eyelids as she has them closed.