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"You're... real." The words, Henry knows, even as they're bubbling from his mouth like coffee from an overflowing pot, moisture gathering in the corners of his eyes and his voice threatening to crack like a prepubescent teenagers, are cliché.
They're saccharine and glittering, words spoken from the rose lips of Sleeping Beauty as she's kissed from her slumber (the idea of which he's always found to be capital F for fucking creepy, just so you know), blinking amorously into the eyes of her prince before he takes her off riding into the strawberry-cream clouds of their happily ever after.
Henry is no princess, (though Delilah might argue otherwise); and Delilah is certainly no prince.
They're both tired and grubby and suitably peasant; with bags beneath their eyes and ash from the June Fire caught in their hair like pale gray snowflakes.
She's shorter than he imagined. She's got ginger hair chopped off clean at her shoulders, and she's got sunburn on top of freckles on top of more sunburn. Her elbows and even her knees, Henry notices, are freckled and sunburnt as well.
How one woman could manage so much sunburn (and twice as much freckle) is honestly beyond him.
Delilah merely laughs at his sentiment, and her nose seems to screw up as she does so- it's upturned and adorable. "Yeah, Hank, I'm real," she says; and her voice is not distorted by the pop of radio static. It's real and clear and he drinks it in, sucks it down with a swallow and lets it swell in his lungs.
There are tears caught in her eyelashes like dew in spider silk- or maybe that's just his imagination; wishful thinking because he doesn't want to be the only grown-ass adult standing in the parking lot of a rapidly burning national forest with an urge like a tightening knot in his chest to just drop it all and start fucking sobbing.
But it's been a long, long summer and there's a weariness in his bones he suspects will take a hell of a long time to melt away.
She's been his only connection to, well, anything really, for months. Her voice. Her alone.
They both stand there in their hiking boots and cargo shorts, inhaling smoke and exhaling emotion thick enough to frost, slice, and serve at a birthday party.
"Fuck, D." Henry finally breaks, scrubbing at his eyes with grubby knuckles and instantly regretting it. Can you get splinters stuck in your cornea? The answer is probably.
"Aw, Hank, are you crying?" Delilah is teasing, a mischevious glint in her red-rimmed eyes and her fingers curling inwards so she can prop her knuckles on her hips.
"No, no, it's just. You're so much shorter than I was expecting. Holy shit, you're like a shrimp. With more sunburn."
Delilah sticks her lip out at this in an attempt at an indignant pout, her cheeks puffing up and making her look more like a pissed-off child than anything. "Don't you tell lies to me, you big baby," she scolds him. "And if you wanna talk about misguided expectations- wow. You mentioned having a beard, but you never mentioned having a /beard/. Look at that thing. It's practically swallowing your face whole."
"Oh, no," he says, and he swallows his tears in order to spit out his sarcasm. Delilah seems to have that effect on him. "However will I save myself from this monstrous beast?"
"Welllll..." she leans forward, her tone dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. "Have you ever heard of this crazy thing called 'shaving'? I hear all the cool kids are doing it these days."
Henry heaves out a heavy sigh, his head shaking from side to side like a disgruntled grizzly bears. He really should have expected this. "Well, I mean. I would have. But. I... forgot to pack a razor. Don't tell anyone."
Delilah snorts. "Oh my god, Henry."
"Hey- look," he says, suddenly defensive. "I had a lot on my mind at the time. Shaving just didn't happen to be a prominent feature."
Delilah's laugh isn't music; but it is warmth, the sun bearing down on his back as he hiked through trails perfumed with wildflowers, the water bubbling through creeks.
Sometimes Henry was sure nature was what powered the odd amalgamation of a human being that was Delilah; and that if she were cut open tree sap and liquid sunshine would drip from her veins; and perhaps a touch of vodka, as well.
As disgustingly, poetically gruesome as that may be.
She was the essence of summer. Or maybe he was just getting sentimental?
He laughs at these thoughts, and it sounds thick and choked. He has the sudden urge to start hacking and coughing and clawing at the lump until the obstruction is gone and his throat is clear and he can speak like a fucking person again.
His chest's felt like a blackhole for so long; crushing and cracking like porcelain, but then there was summer and Delilah and things got fucked and he wouldn't trade any of it, he'd battle it all over again with every oozing ounce of fear seeping through the cracks in his heart, with bruises on his knuckles and bandages on his knees and a radio in his grip.
Henry is wearing a t-shirt that's gotten a little looser over the summer and he's clinging to the worn nylon straps of an old orange backpack and he looks like a scruffy bear and god damn it, he's never felt so irritatingly emotional in his life.
Delilah's face softens; no longer is it teasing and bright as gingersnaps, rather, it's strawberry shortcake, melting at the edges. Her eyebrows draw together and her lip lowers in an expression that holds far more than concern.
"God, it's, uh-- it's been a long fucking summer, hasn't it?" For once, Delilah doesn't seem sure of her words, something Henry probably would've been drawing pleasure from if his chest didn't feel so tight.
"Um. Listen, Henry, I'm-"
Whatever Delilah may have been, she doesn't get to say; because she's cut off by Henry, who throws his arms around her and practically crushes her to his chest in a big bear hug that smells like sweat, sun, and wildflowers.
"Can we just agree that this summer was a fucked up adventure and leave it at that?"
Delilah lets out a popping, slightly wheezy laugh- Henry has a very strong grip- throwing her own arms around the man she'd grown to treasure over the long, long summer.
"I'll drink to that."
"You'll drink to anything, D."
"Youuu... are not wrong. Shut the fuck up."