Chapter Text
As tired as he was, Henry couldn’t get back to sleep. He tossed, and he turned, having to shove himself a little more into the couch so he wouldn’t fall. He’d been sleeping just fine, not too long before, but then his stupid mind decided to drift, drift somewhere deep he didn’t want it to go.
He dreamed about Athena, beautiful and perfect, before he was back in that damn car. Except, his tires didn’t blow out this time. Instead, a woman tumbled from a six story window, right onto his windshield, causing him to spin out and crash straight into a storefront. It was awfully vivid, and he’d woken up in a cold sweat, smelling blood and shaking more than he knew he could.
Now every time Henry closed his eyes, all he could see was broken glass, smeared brains, and two dead women in his passenger seat.
A familiar feeling rolled around inside of him as he laid there, facing the window. The moon shone bright that night, brighter than the city lights nearly, and all Henry could do was shake. His eyes were wet, dribbling tears out slowly, but he didn’t bother to wipe them.
A few minutes went by, and the shaking subsided just enough, while the feeling was still there. Henry couldn’t take it much longer. He needed to move, shout, do something to stop it from taking him over. He sat up, staring at his shaking legs in the loaned pajama pants, and wondered if he could even stand. He took a chance.
When his legs didn’t fall right out from under him, he took it as a good sign. He didn’t know where to go. He didn’t want to leave the apartment, but staying on the couch was making him crazy. He wobbled to the bathroom and closed the doors, trying to be careful of his sleeping friends in the other room. He caught a glimpse of them, when he was closing the second door, curled up together in the middle of the bed, Lila’s head on his shoulder, and Sam’s arms wrapped around her. A comfortable silence all around them.
His chest ached at the sight, and though he knew he shouldn’t stare, he couldn’t peel his eyes away. They were so in love, Sam and Lila. They trusted each other, they could lean on each other, they lived in a world of domestic bliss, a place Henry didn’t belong. He wished for someone like that, and thought of Athena, which only made his chest ache worse. Tears dribbled down his cheeks again, pulling him away from the sight in an instant, forcing him to wipe his face with a shaky hand.
Henry closed the door and leaned against it.
The thought of love made him think of his parents, what they’d said on their last night. His mom was about to tell him some big secret about happiness just before…
Henry shuddered, his legs giving out as he slid to the floor. He landed harshly downward, pulling his legs to his chest as tight as he could, trying hard to hide from the world for even a moment. No luck. He continued to shake, and ache, and soon he was sobbing. He’d placed a hand over his own mouth, he didn’t want to wake the others. Hiccups and whines slipped out through his fingers anyway, and with every sound he made, his chest ached harder.
A door opened to his left, the one opening up to the hall, and a familiar face moved its way inside. Henry eyed the person for a minute, still shaking and sobbing, watching as she moved in and sat in front of him.
“What’s wrong, Henry?” She asked, that relaxed expression searching his face.
Henry sniffled hard, trying to form words but coming up with nothing. He reached out a hand for the woman, and she moved closer, letting him hold her cheek. Her bright red curls tumbled over his arm as she moved even closer, intending to lay on his shoulder.
“Can’t sleep, huh?” She asked. Athena dragged a hand through Henry’s hair, and he could almost smell her perfume, almost feel her touch. It sent a thrill through him.
Some part of him knew this wasn’t real, that this was a delusion dreamt up by his desperation and loneliness, but the other part didn’t care. It was his girl, his Athena, and god how he had missed her. That part of him wrapped her up tightly, watching her through tears.
“You always get so sad when you don’t sleep,” she said, softly and only to him, whispered directly into his ear.
Henry nodded slowly, his body still twitching, tears still falling. He tried to breathe, but the sadness was too much, the pain was too much. He kept on crying.
“I-I don’t want you to go,” Henry whispered, barely able to get his voice above a mutter. If She were even a few inches away, she would have a hard time hearing him. Though, if she weren’t real, who knows?
“Go?” Athena seemed confused. “Henry, I’m right here. I’ll always be right here.”
Henry’s lips twitched up slightly, and he shook his head. “Don’t go, please.”
Athena planted a kiss on his jaw, her hand still trailing through his hair, down his neck just slightly. “You need sleep, you’re talking crazy, Henry.”
Henry sobbed harder, wrapping his arms around her as tight as he could. He buried his face in her shoulder, and whispered a small hope that she would stay, that when the morning came, she would be there with him, on that couch. But she didn’t even last twenty minutes.
Henry stared up at the moon, out of the small bathroom window, alone again and too numb to cry over Athena’s second death. He still shook.
“Henry?” A voice called from the hall.
That door had been left open, Athena had left it that way, and another familiar face stepped in. It wasn’t the one he hoped for. It was Sam.
“Henry, what’s wrong?” He asked, moving to the place Athena had been when she first walked in. Instinctively, Sam took Henry’s arms, turning them over carefully to examine them, his fingers running over the burn scars, searching for something worse.
Henry let him, to put Sam’s mind at ease.
“I’m not gonna kill myself,” Henry mumbled, slowly rolling his eyes to Sam.
“Forgive me for being a little paranoid,” Sam said. He placed two fingers on Henry’s wrist, though Henry didn’t know why. Peace of mind, maybe.
Henry sniffed. “It’s not what I told you before.”
Sam shook his head, finally looking Henry in the eye. “No, it isn’t.”
Henry’s eyes felt heavy, though that dread and sadness still tumbled through him, reignited by the visit from someone he thought to be dead. “It still hurts.”
“What does?” Sam asked, sitting with his feet under him.
Henry shrugged, glancing to the small bathroom window, the only source of light in the small room. “Everything. Remember what I said,” Henry sniffed again, “on the bridge?”
“Sure.” Sam nodded. “Bits and pieces.”
Henry wiped that last bit of dampness from his eyes, his hand still shaking like a leaf in the wind. “I think I’m still dreaming.”
“What makes you say that?”
Henry was quiet for a beat, wondering if he’d really seen Athena or if it was some weird, fucked hallucination his psyche sent him because it hates him. He wondered if Sam would think him madman if he shared the encounter, if he would call up Dr. Rashan and recommend another stay in that hellhole where he’d spent two months of his life. But it always helped to talk.
Henry wanted to trust Sam, but he’d been the one to sell him out. He owed the guy his life, but Sam still owed him a gun.
“Henry.”
He turned his eyes to Sam.
“I’ll listen.”
Henry huffed and rose slowly. “That’s part of the problem. You listen too well, it makes me feel bad when I don’t want to tell.”
Sam frowned, standing and placing a hand on Henry’s shoulder. “Are you feeling alright?”
Henry cast his eyes down, to the side. “I’m tired, Sam.”
Sam nodded. “It’s late.”
Henry shook his head, wiping more tears from his eyes. “I’m tired of… all of this. You and Lila, you’re so happy together.” He turned his eyes upward, catching a view of himself in the mirror. “You’re in love.” He imagined Athena just over his shoulder, smiling softly, dressed in pajamas as if she were waiting for him to come to bed. Sam didn’t notice her, but Henry could practically feel her hand on his shoulder.
“…I’m sorry you’re tired of us, Henry.”
Henry closed his eyes, sighing. “No, I didn’t mean it that way. I’m just… tired of being miserable. Alone. It isn’t you, you’re doing all you can to help me, and it’s great, but…” Henry trailed off, turning his face away from Sam again.
“It sounds a bit like you’re breaking up with me here, Henry.” There was amusement in the older man’s voice. He was trying to keep it light, as good as he was.
Henry nearly smiled.
“Would you like a drink?” Sam asked. “Lila stores some good liquor.”
A drink. Henry sighed, pressing the palm of his hand to his head. He could use one of those right about now, just to free himself for a second. “Yeah, I’ll drink. Not too much, though, I get bad hangovers.”
Sam nodded and led him out the door.
Sam placed down two tumblers, one for Henry, and one for himself, before pouring a small bit of liquor in each. Henry stared at it a minute, then took up the tumbler and swirled the liquid around, watching the amber-colored drink catch the light in magnificent shapes. He noted the shade change in the back of his mind, before taking a sip.
It burned on his tongue, and down his throat so bad he thought it would kill him. He gagged a little at it. Henry wasn’t a whiskey drinker.
Sam chuckled at the inexperienced drinker sitting across from him, taking a sip of his own drink. He had no such reaction, just sighed out when he was finished.
“You drink a lot?” Henry asked, swirling his own drink again.
Sam shrugged. “Not too much. Maybe two or three times a week. It’s usually only a glass or two.”
Henry nodded. “I used to drink, back in high school. It was only every once in a while, with friends.”
“Friends?” Sam asked, taking another sip of his drink. “Do you talk to these friends anymore?”
Henry shook his head and leaned heavily against the table. “We lost touch after graduation, and, well… they all went off to their own colleges. We weren’t that close anyway.”
Sam eyed him for a moment. “That’s a shame.”
Henry shrugged. “Happens.”
“Well, they would still be close by, wouldn’t they? Every break, I mean?” Sam leaned forward, setting his glass down. “You lived close to the city, didn’t you?”
Henry didn’t say much, just looked down into his glass. He didn’t want to see those people again, he didn’t want to know what they would think of him now. Besides, they probably all changed numbers and wanted nothing to do with him anyway. He only hung out with them because of proximity, because he’d known everybody he’d gone to school with for years and they were the few that didn’t annoy the shit out of him, and vice versa. As soon as they had the chance to move on, to get away, they took it. And who could blame them? Henry did the same.
It was a mutual thing.
It really was.
“I’m not a good friend, Sam,” Henry muttered, turning his eyes to him. “I mean, look at us.”
Sam furrowed his brow. “What do you mean by that?”
Henry shrugged. “Well, I mean… we’re friends, aren’t we? And we’ve spent the last two months talking about me. Always about me. ‘How are you, Henry?’ ‘What’s up with you, Henry?’ Don’t you want me to ask about you? Worry about you like you worry about me?”
Sam took a moment before speaking, eyeing the young man in front of him. “Henry, you’re forgetting that you and I didn’t start out as friends. I was your therapist. There’s still going to be some of that, isn’t there?”
Henry shrugged, looking down at his glass. “That doesn’t mean it isn’t different now.”
“That’s true, yes.” Sam took another sip of his drink, then looked back to Henry. “But if it bothers you so badly, then ask me a question.”
Henry frowned, looking up. “Like what?”
“Anything.”
Henry thought for a second, feeling a bit of pressure to come up with something good. “Are you from New York?” What a dumb question.
Sam shook his head. “I’m from Maine.”
Henry cocked his head to the side, surprised. He couldn’t imagine the man in Maine. “Why’d you move?” He asked, sitting up a bit in his chair.
Sam sighed and thought for a moment. “Well, I had this girlfriend.”
“Lila?”
He smiled and shook his head. “No, not Lila. Berlin.” He sighed wistfully before continuing. “Her and I were in high school, and thought it would be a good idea to go to the same college. We really thought we’d be married before the end of our freshman year.” He paused to take a sip of his drink. “She wanted to go to NYU, and I wanted to go to The University of Pennsylvania, but eventually, I figured it didn’t really matter where I went, as long as I was with her.”
“So you went to NYU.”
Sam nodded. “I went to NYU.”
Henry tried to picture Sam as a college student, maybe fifteen years younger with a little more light in his eyes. College would’ve suited him well, Henry imagined.
“So, what happened after that? Why aren’t you two still together?”
Sam shrugged, swirling his own drink on the table. “We made it through two years before we had this big fight, and I moved out. We’d been putting all of our arguing off for too long, and eventually we just exploded at each other. I think it was the worst argument I’d had with anybody.”
Henry found it a little funny that a man studying psychology would have a breakup like that. It seems he would be the one to have healthy relation with everybody around him.
Sam sighed, taking the bottle of liquor in front of him and pouring a bit more into his cup. “After that, I dated around a bit, but there wasn’t anything serious until I met Lila. That was a few years after my degree, though.”
Thoughts of Athena came back to Henry as he thought about love. No matter what he did, he couldn’t forget her, put her out of his mind. He didn’t want to, of course, it was Athena, but every time his mind wandered back to her, there was this deep ache in his chest that hurt worse than anything. He looked down to the drink in front of him and gulped down the rest of it.
He coughed once or twice at the burning feeling, as Sam offered him more. Henry nodded.
“Thank you,” he said, and Sam nodded as he poured more.
They were quiet for a minute, Henry staring at his fresh glass, and Sam sipping away the rest of his. Finally, he took up the glass and sipped it.
“Do you miss her?” Henry asked, to Sam’s surprised.
He shrugged. “I used to, but I haven’t been with her in a long time. I doubt if I met her now we would want to get back together.”
Henry nodded, looking back to his drink.
“Do you miss Athena?” Sam asked.
Henry tensed at the mention of her, and said nothing. The silence sat heavy in the room, the only sound being the clinking of glass against the table, and teeth as the two drank.
“I see her sometimes,” Henry admitted, looking down into his third cup. He was already drinking more than he wanted to. There would definitely be a hangover waiting for him when he opened his eyes the next morning.
“See who?” Sam leaned forward, startled by how Henry had decided to open up. He was curious about the boy, worried all the time. He wanted to understand the kid, so he could help, even if Henry was no longer his responsibility.
“Athena.” It came out strangled, like he didn’t want to say it. He sniffled hard, and rubbed his eyes. “Sometimes, I’ll think about her, and it’ll be like she’s there with me. Sitting next to me, talking to me.”
Sam eyed Henry. He knew Henry used to hear voices, but visual hallucinations were a tad more concerning. “What does she say to you?”
Henry leaned his chin against his hand, a sad little smile spreading across his face. “She worries about me. I saw her… not that long ago. In the bathroom. She told me I needed to sleep.”
“That’s good advice. Are you going to take it?”
Henry shrugged, gulping his drink. “This stuff is making me pretty sleepy.”
Sam nodded. “Do you see her often?”
Henry looked to him. “You’re doing it again.”
“Doing-” he clicked his tongue, “you’re right. I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine.” Henry shrugged, finished off his third cup, and walked over to the bookshelf. He had a bit of a drunk wobble to him, confirming that Sam would not be giving him a fourth drink. Henry dragged his finger across the titles of the books, all the words getting bleary at the edges from the alcohol in him. Even with that, he could read most of them. He scoffed quietly to himself.
“What?” Sam asked from the table.
Henry turned halfway to him. “It’s obvious what you two do for work.”
“Is it?”
Henry nodded. “Do you guys read anything that isn’t about art or psychology?”
Sam smiled, shrugging. “We’ve both got to stay up to date.”
Henry smiled and turned back to the shelf, grabbing a random book. Psychology. He put it back.
“Even if that is true,” he paused to yawn, “you only read about one thing, you turn into that thing forever.”
“Well, what do you read, Henry?”
Henry paused. Sam had him there. The only thing he’d been reading about for months was…
He sighed. “Tristan Reveur.” He nearly laughed. “Guess I’m a hypocrite.”
Sam shrugged. “Most people are.”
Henry yawned again, moving from the bookshelf to his make-shift bed on the couch. “What about you?” He asked Sam. “Are you a hypocrite?”
Sam nodded. “I am. Every day, I treat people with conditions I couldn’t imagine going through myself, and I tell them how to be happy.”
Henry frowned. “But you are happy.”
Sam nodded again. “But I tell them things I wouldn’t believe if I were in their shoes.”
Henry snorted, something he wouldn’t do sober, and looked out the window. A weight sat itself in his chest as he remembered that woman again. He rubbed his eyes. He didn’t want to remember her.
“Do you still think I’m crazy, Sam?”
Sam sighed. “I really don’t like that word.”
“You didn’t answer the question.” Henry brought his feet up onto the couch, his body heavier than it was before.
Sam was quiet, watching the kid get comfortable. When he noticed Sam had gone quite, Henry looked over from the throw pillow he was resting his head on.
Sam sighed. “I don’t think you’re crazy.”
“What about… paranoid? Or depressed?”
“Not paranoid, definitely depressed.”
Henry sighed, rolling onto his side and crossing his arms over his chest. “Mm. I am that,” he mumbled into his pillow. He told himself he would only close his eyes for a second, that he would get back up and talk to Sam some more if his eyes would just stop stinging. He sighed out quietly.
Sam still sat at the table minutes later, watching a sleeping Henry, and he couldn’t help but think about that night from two months ago. He’d stayed up all night just so he knew Henry wouldn’t sneak out while he was resting, and do something awful. Lila had told him to call the hospital. An ambulance could take him down and Sam could sleep, but he was worried about taking his eyes off the kid at all. It wasn’t like him to be so laser focused, but he rationalized it by his lack of sleep, and all that running around. He didn’t want it to be in vain.
Sam rose from his seat and collected the glasses, and taking them to the sink to be rinsed. The two had finished off the bottle of liquor together, so Sam placed it carefully at the bottom of the trash can and made a note to buy Lila a new bottle on the way home tomorrow. Maybe he could grab dinner from her favorite place, too. She would love that. It could be a little date. But Henry… What to do about Henry? A date plus Henry.
Sam smiled to himself and shook his head, as he flicked off the kitchen lights. He glanced back to Henry in the dark, an outline of him illuminated by the moon. Sam walked over, taking the blanket from his feet, and draped it over him gently. With all the brick in the place, the apartment got cold at night, and he didn’t want the kid to be uncomfortable.
He looked down at him again and sighed.
“Goodnight, Henry,” he whispered, before heading back to bed.
Lila had scooted over to his side of the mattress, so he smiled and took hers, wrapping his arms around her and pulling her close. She stirred, yawned, and went straight back down without a word.