Everything is fine... (Negovanman)

Woah...

Every fiber of her being wanted to just run up and comfort Elise, to tell her everything but she just looked away, scared to look the smaller girl in her eyes. "I'm sorry, Elise, I'm so sorry. I don't know why I said that because I didn't mean it, I promise I didn't mean to say that!" she said shaking her head in frustration.

Elise looked down. "Yeah, I know... I can't think of any reason why a person would say that other than to push someone away when things are getting too real."
Elise looked up with determination and walked up to Natasha, kneeling down before her, getting her attention back. "What is going on, why are you trying to push me away?"
Elise kept looking Natasha straight in her eyes while she grabbed Natasha's hands that were resting on her thighs.

"I don't want to lose you, Elise." Natasha said almost whispering, while her eyes were becoming teary again.

"Well that makes two of us. But you're not going to lose me Nat. I promise. You can't push me away that easily." she said with a little but meaningful smile.

Accepting that Elise was not going away without an explanation she finally gave in and momentarily let go of her fears. So she closed her eyes and took a deep breath. "What am I to you?" she asked Elise who in turn looked at her confused.

"What do you mean? You're.. my best friend, I care about you."

Natasha looked down to her hands which were still being held by Elise.
"What I am to you is not what you mean to me." She kept staring at their hands but continued. "And that is okay, I care about you too, a lot. It's just..." She took another deep breath before continuing. "...In the months you were gone, I realized that I feel a lot more for you than I am supposed to. I took on project after project to keep my mind occupied, which sorta bit me in the ass because it didn't really help with the whole, we'll.. 'getting you out of my mind' situation, but instead added like a ton of new layers of stress. That is the reason why I have been acting the way I have these past couple of weeks, or actually since you've been back.
I wanted to talk to you about it, I wanted to talk to my best friend about this but I couldn't because that's you. So I just bottled it up and ended feeling more and more crappy about the way I have been handling this, and handling you."

Natasha looked up from her hands to see a wide-eyed and surprised Elise who was still processing everything she just heard her say. Natasha stood up and began pacing back and forth in the hotel room waiting for a reaction.
Elise turned around to her, still kneeling on the floor, looking at her with a surprised look on her face. She rapidly blinked a couple of times but remained wide-eyed. The only thing that came out of her mouth was "Woah".