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Henry loves days like this. He and Bea haven’t had enough time together recently, but today, their outdoor event has been tragically rained out, so they’ve sequestered themselves in the music room. Henry’s brought a book of Byron, and he’s already planning to read especially good bits aloud. Bea’s got a cross-stitch project, since, in her own words, she ‘felt stabby’. His legs are draped across her lap, and she’ll occasionally rub his knee, humming at a particularly good line. He’s just finished reading a bit as he looks up to watch her tie off a thread, then she looks around and sighs.
“Fuck, I left my threader in the other room. If you move your legs, I can—“
“Let me,” Henry says, and she smiles. She passes over the needle and thread, wiggling her fingers a bit to stretch them. It takes him a bit, his eyes crossing as he focuses on it. When it’s threaded, he hands it over with a smile and looks back to his book. Bea turns to her project again with a “thank you”, and Henry reads out a couplet before he looks up to watch her hands. She seems alright, at least as far as he can tell.
He’s sort of generally known that the cocaine affected her fine motor skills. Before she got help, they didn’t see much of each other, but once, they’d been forced to go to the same banquet. She’d come to find him as they were getting ready, and he’d been so happy to see her that he almost didn’t notice the way her eyes didn’t quite focus or the fact that she barely said hello as she stepped into his room. He’d thought maybe she was there to talk, to finally admit she needed something, anything, but instead, she’d just pulled off a cardigan and asked him to zip her up. He remembers standing there, trying to process the way her spine stood out, as she fumbled along the back of the dress. He distinctly remembers thinking that she should have been fine. He’d watched her hand find the zipper pull, but she couldn’t seem to hold it.
He’d zipped her up, and helped her put the cardigan back on, and she’d left. At the banquet that night, she’d been wearing too much clumsy eye makeup, and she might have dropped a fork before she snuck out early, leaving Henry to pretend he didn’t know what she was doing. Philip had come home the next day, and he’s not sure how much she remembers of that particular night. She’d gotten most of her fine motor skills back with therapy, and Henry’d sort of assumed that was the end of it. But suddenly, he wonders if it really was.
He’d known she bought a packet of needle threaders a few weeks after she got home from rehab. She’s used post-it tabs to help her turn pages in speeches recently. A few days ago, she’d been filling a teabag and had spilled, scattering leaves across the counter.
“Bea?” He asks after a minute, and she hums, still focused on her cross stitch. Henry’s pretty sure it’s going to say ‘fuck’, which makes him smile. “Do... if you don’t want to talk about it that’s okay, but do you still... I know you keep your sobriety chip handy and don’t drink so you don’t... and I know you’ve joked about it, but do you ever want to...”
“I do.” She’s still focused on the cloth in front of her, but her hands are still. “I... I mean, I don’t want to use, not... but it’s always sort of there. Maybe not always, not times like this. But when things get stressful, or when we’re in a club sometimes. When it would be easy, it would seem like an easy way out, to just... have everything stop for a while. But I’m fine; you don’t have to worry.”
Henry watches her face as he asks his next question, trying to judge from the set of her mouth if he’s getting too close. They have the same tells; their mouths pinch in the same place when they’re uncomfortable. Looking back at their dad’s work, they probably both got it from him. “Do... we don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want, but are there other side effects that still bother you? I looked them all up when you went to rehab, but I don’t think we ever talked about them.”
She’s still for a moment, then she sets down her hoop, one hand coming to hold Henry’s tightly. Henry just holds onto her and waits, watching her cycle through barely-noticeable stages of uncertainty before she says, “It’s... I still get the cravings. And it... I mean internally, I’m all fucked up. My heart, my gut, it... it’s all a mess in there. But other than that, I’m alright.”
“You’re sure? I just... I want to be able to help you. If I can. I don’t know, but if there’s anything like that I can do, I want to.”
Bea moves her project aside and pulls him into a hug. His arms wrap around her automatically, even as he wishes he could still see her face. He’s not sure how she’s feeling; not sure if she’s being honest or just trying to get him to relax when she says, “You don’t need to worry about me, Hen. I’m just fine.”
“I’ll... I think I’ll sort of always worry about you,” he tells her shoulder. Her hold tightens on him, but he forges on before he can let himself think that maybe he’s making her feel guilty. Maybe he should lie to her just to make sure she doesn’t feel bad for talking to him about any of this. Maybe lying would make her feel better, but they’ve promised not to lie to each other or shut each other out, not anymore. If he tells her he’s not worried, it’ll be the first step down a path he doesn’t want anything to do with, so he forges ahead. “But I’m serious; if you want to tell me, maybe I can help somehow.”
She’s quiet for a bit, petting his hair as the rain taps against the window behind them. Henry's suddenly glad they're having this conversation here, rather than in any of the big, impersonal rooms in their suite. Eventually, she says, “I... I can’t always... delayed gratification is hard. It... for so long, I’d just... I’d want to feel better and I would. Just like that. And it didn’t really matter for a while, but now that I’ve got the charity, and there are so many choices and things there that take time, and it... do you think maybe we could find something you could do there?”
“I’m sure we can find something. Maybe I can... I don’t know; we could talk through some of the more long-term decisions? And I could help you think through things a bit? Not make them for you, but just... help lay things out?”
“I’d like that,” Bea says. She lets him go, but she doesn’t pick up her embroidery hoop again. Henry watches her carefully as she rests both hands on his legs, which are still draped across her lap. After a long minute, she doesn’t look up at him, but she says, “If... you don’t have to, but if I’m completely honest, I don’t... that night you came and found me, I... I don’t think I remember everything. I remember... I remember leaving rehab, thinking that if Philip and Gran were upset then I must have been doing something right. And I remember getting into the club, but after... after I started smoking it’s... it’s all sort of hazy until you were crying. I remember you being upset, and afraid; I think that’s sort of what shook me out of it. You were afraid, and you’d said you were gay. But it’s... before that, it’s a bit of a haze.”
“Oh. Well, I... I don’t know all of it, obviously, but I can... I’ll tell you what I know?” Bea nods, still not really looking at him. She’s chewing her lip, and she’s going to hurt herself, but this isn’t a moment for him to tell her how to cope. “I... we found out when you left rehab; they called us here. Philip was... upset, so I... I was up here when you called me, mostly to be away from him. It was loud; I couldn’t hear much, but you... you were crying. So I got your phone’s location, and I... this is probably stupid, but I think I just went. It’s… It’s all sort of just a haze of worry from there; I was so scared you’d change your mind and wouldn’t let me help. I remember talking to you, trying to tell you to go outside so I could hear you, and a few minutes after you did the call just… dropped. I think your phone died or something, but I was so scared I’d done something wrong I couldn’t focus on much else. I know Shaan was with me; someone else drove and I can’t imagine I’d have asked anyone else.” He goes quiet for a bit, trying to figure out how much of the next bit she needs to know.
Does she need to know that when she saw him, round the corner and come into the alleyway at the back of the club, she’d struggled to get up to meet him? Does she need to know how sharp her ribs felt when he hugged her, or how her shoulder stabbed into his when they sat back down and she leaned against him? Should he tell her that she’d still been smoking, and he has a tiny scar on his wrist from where he’d been burned as he took the drugs away from her?
“I, um, I... found you,” he says eventually. “You were... you were in a sort of alleyway behind the club, sitting on the steps. And I... I sat beside you, and I just cried. I don’t... I’m not sure I’d cried since the funeral, but I was so scared. I didn’t know what was going to happen, to you or me or any of us. You were talking about how Philip and Gran were conspiring against you, trying to lock you away in a hospital when you didn’t need any help. I just... I don’t remember what I said, not exactly. Something about how you weren’t eating and you weren’t talking to me. I... I used to text you every day.” He’s getting choked up, his eyes fixating on where Bea’s hands rest on his legs. “I used to text you from school every day, and you never answered. So I think... I think I told you that, about how hard I’d been trying. And that didn’t work, at least not really; you were quiet but it wasn’t... you weren’t there. I don’t know how to describe it, but I knew it... that’s when I told you I was gay. I made you look at me, and I made you promise not to tell anyone, and then I said you couldn’t die because I was gay and you were all I had left.
“After that, it... I think you cried, too. You said you weren’t going to leave me, and you hugged me.” He remembers that hug as much as anything; remembers how fragile Bea felt in his arms, how she’d been shaking but had hugged him tightly anyway. “We got you into the car, and Shaan must have driven us home. I just remember holding onto you; I was... I was so scared you were going to make a break for it. We tried to sneak in, but you... you weren’t the steadiest on your feet.”
“I knocked over a... a painting, right? Knocked it off a wall? The frame broke; there’s a scar on my shin from where a piece hit me when it fell.”
“It was so loud,” Henry says, finally looking at her with a wry smile. “But it... it felt like we were kids again. We had our shoes off, and we got up here as fast as we could. You... we both fell asleep in here that night. It was the only place I could think of that felt… I don’t know, safe somehow.”
“I didn’t want to be alone,” Bea says, nodding. “I... I thought if I didn’t have you to remind me, I might try and sneak out again. You made me take the couch, and then you slept on the floor next to me so I couldn’t get out without waking you.”
Henry nods, not sure what else to say for a moment. Eventually, he says, “You texted me from rehab the next day. I don’t... you weren’t supposed to have a phone, so I don’t know how you did it, but I got it while I was on my way back to school and it made me so happy I cried.”
“I think I might have bribed a nurse. Her kid really loved princesses, and I might have pulled some strings. It’s all a bit hazy,” she says with a wink, and Henry laughs, hugging her again.
“Thank you,” she says quietly. “I... I don’t think I could have done it without you.”
“And I couldn’t have done any of the rest of it without you.”