#henry mancuso

[asoftershipwrecked]

89% chance of rain

(x)

[asoftershipwrecked]

everything is possible

[asoftershipwrecked]

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[hey-hey-monet-blog]

Audrey x Henry

Thoughts from this episode:

Audrey --------------------------------------------------------------------

"Damn it Rose, this isn't a novel! I love you in real life. Don't you think that's worth trying to be brave?"

Audrey's breath hitched and she felt the confusion and pain that she was just sure was reflected on her face and ugh this isn't Henry and you're losing your grip if that look in his eyes sends you out of character.

But oh, man that look in his eyes was something, and Audrey felt herself wishing just for a moment that it really was just her, Audrey, and Henry sitting there on that bench in the rain. Nevermind that it's LA and it never rains and she hasn't smoked since high school and Henry probably doesn't feel the same way about her as she does when she looks into those earnest, pleading eyes.

And then she leans in for the kiss and dash it all she can't keep herself from stroking his wet hand as he reaches up to her neck and he smiles into the kiss and there are butterflies in her stomach as they pull away. She laughs, both nervous and annoyed at herself for letting it get this far. 

And then he asks her out. well it's not really a date, he just suggested we hang out after wrap, that could be perfectly innocent. But the look in his eyes is so like the one when he's speaking to Rose that she lets herself hope, just for a minute, that it means something else too. 

Henry -------------------------------------------------------------------

"Damn it Rose, this isn't a novel! I love you in real life. Don't you think that's worth trying to be brave?"

Henry watched Audrey as she sat across from him, and the look in her eyes as she stared at him, and the way her chest caught as she stopped breathing almost made him lose it right there. damn it, you can't just go around telling people you love them in the middle of a scene. But isn't that what he'd just done, really? Of course it wasn't him saying these things to Audrey, but he'd be a fool if he tried to deny that if he weren't saying them to Audrey, he wouldn't have put the same emotion into those words. as if she's going to be able to tell how much you like her when she's not seeing you as Henry. You're acting, you dolt, and she is too.

And then she kissed him. And he can't help but smile as she rubs circles into his wet skin and the way she laughs when they pull away makes him want to lean in and kiss her again, only this time without the cameras and smokey breath and scripted lines.

And something about the way she looks at him as she jokes, "I feel like we've known each other for centuries" makes him hope, and it's out of his mouth almost before he can think about it. And then he does think about it, and he stumbles over the words coming out of his mouth as he tries to give her a way out because of course she doesn't want to, you were stupid for bringing it up 

and then she cuts him off and he laughs, almost with relief as he realizes that she's said yes. It isn't a date, not yet, but the way she smiled when he suggested hanging out gives him hope that maybe, soon, it just might be.

[aeternamente]

QUICK! SOMEONE SHOW HENRY THE PUPPIES. HE NEEDS TO BE COVERED IN 200 PUPPIES! STAT!

Ever since this week's canonization, I keep meaning to write a crackfic about this, but then there are other non-crackfics I want to write, so it keeps not happening. But I really feel like there should be a crackfic with Henry and 200 puppies.

[imaginarycircus]

Dear Diary - KitR (Audrey/Henry)

He thunked his head back against the scuffed wall of the yellow waiting room. He had no idea how long he'd been there, turning the remains of the stiff, chewed up phone case over and over in his hands. There was a clock over the reception desk behind the sliding glass window, but when he glanced at it he couldn't remember what time he'd come in or what time it had been the last time he'd looked.

The fake leather phone case was stiff with LuLu's saliva. She'd punctured and torn it with her teeth. Most mornings he woke with her head heavy and warm on his knees. When his eyes opened she whapped her tail furiously against the bed, but she remained otherwise still. It was strange to make someone so happy just by opening your eyes. It made every morning worth waking up though.  

He thunked his head against the wall again. It was the kind of night and the time of night when memories creep up from the places you've buried them. His mother's face a rising pale moon above him in a hospital bed. She'd been so thrilled that he'd opened his eyes. His father's eyes had drifted closed in thanks.

He'd been eight and he'd somehow invented a long and complex story in which his mother was really a spy. He reasoned that she'd make the perfect spy because no one would suspect a suburban mom who taught university students about Herodotus and drove a Subaru. It was the diary that started it. She was always writing in it with the little gray stylus. She sometimes pulled over onto the shoulder of the highway to make notes. You couldn't resent a diary full of important spy things. His mother was saving the world. Her diary had to be full of secrets. She spent so much time with it, updating it, glancing at it. He never looked at it because it was a matter of national security. He watched her chop onions with slim, blue-veined hands that probably knew how to kill a man with ease. That thought didn't scare him. It made him hollow and fidgety like hitting a home run with bases loaded. The memory rushed along like a train with no breaks. He jabbed the pad of his thumb with the sharp edge of the ruined phone case. It didn't help. He couldn't shove the memory down and escape it. It had been a Thursday and they'd been home maybe ten minutes, his baseball game called on account of rain. His mother had asked him to bring her spy diary from the living room. She was on the phone in the kitchen. He'd been so intent on not looking at the screen that he tripped over his cleats. Then he'd been so careful about protecting her diary that he hadn't done anything to break his own fall, which meant his arm broke instead.

Later in the hospital his parents blamed his confused questions about his mother's safety on the anesthesia they'd used when repairing the compound fracture. Henry had never told a soul how he'd gotten things so wrong.

A diary was a schedule, a planner. He kept one on his phone. His phone, which was currently being removed from poor LuLu's stomach. She'd probably eaten it because she resented how much attention he paid to it.

The vet's assistant had little cats with bowties printed on her scrubs. She lead him to an exam room. LuLu was asleep on a stainless steel exam table. He laid his hand on her head and fingered one silky brown ear. Her chest rose and fell. Black stitches stood out against her shaved belly. It cracked something inside him as surely as ice breaks with a sound like a gun shot in the spring. Not that a dog was lesser, but if this drowning panic was what he felt--what on earth had his parents felt looking at him in that hospital bed? It must be terrifying to have a child.

The assistant said they'd call him tomorrow about discharging LuLu. She ushered him back to the waiting room. It was after two AM, but he couldn't even sit down in his car never mind go home to sleep. He walked several blocks to a twenty-four hour Target and bought a new phone. He drove home, activated it, and reinstalled everything from the last backup. A reminder popped up. "Audrey's Party." 

He tugged his hair hard. It was too late to call. He texted an apology that sounded like a flimsy lie. He could ask her for apology coffee. Though why she'd want to go anywhere with him, he couldn't imagine. He was a goof who couldn't make small talk between takes. He thought she was a little nervous too, and that something was spilling over in their kisses from the pretend to the real... No. He reserved flights of fancy for acting. That was the only time it was safe to imagine things were other than they truly were. The only time he could let boundaries blur and see what wasn't there, shape reality to be more interesting. He could be more interesting and confident. He could express himself without fear of being wrong. It was his job. He was expected to be anyone but himself. He made a note in his reminders, "call mom." He slept badly, tossing and turning far too much because there was nothing to keep him still. No large, warm body to maneuver carefully around. Just himself, alone with himself. After he woke up, he lay still and didn't open his eyes until the phone rang and they told him he could come and pick up LuLu.