Work Text:
a head swimming with wants
harper's island henry. henry/trish, henry/abby, henry/sully. Henry is objective. He looks at things from a distance. pg13. 1523 words.
notes. This is for 
orange_yarn and the 
the_cannery Holiday Stocking Stuffer Exchange. This didn't quite go where I wanted it to go, so I hope it works for you and that you like it. :) Thank you to crickets who beta'd this for me. Any remaining mistakes are mine.
dis. Title from a line in John Dos Passos's The 42nd Parallel.
How far are you willing to go? Just a little bit further.Henry could sink. He could wake from a dream and find himself slipping into the weight that holds him down sometimes, places shadows in his vision as he tries to reach out and live his life right.
He could. He could, but he doesn’t.
_
There are times when Henry feels as if his life were a game.
He reminds himself to smile. He takes Trish’s hand in his own and places a kiss on her lips that ask nothing. They are on front porch steps and her father is probably waiting in the foyer.
His fake smile is better than Mr. Wellington’s; he and Trish pull apart with practiced ease as the front door opens, foreheads rubbing gently against each other as Trish slides forward one last time to kiss his ear. “See you at school.”
“Good night, Trish. Mr. Wellington.”
_
Sometimes he gets drunk with Sully and the others and his smiles come easier. His skin fits and this is his life. There are no missing links.
Sully slides him another beer and points to where Ashley Sutter is watching them from across the room. “Even if, “ Sully stutters, arm thrown over Henry’s shoulder, personal space grossly violated, “I could get her to go upstairs with me. I still wouldn’t be as lucky as you.”
Abby flits across his mind briefly before he spots Trish in her own little world, dancing with her friends. If he loves anyone, he loves her.
He goes over Sully’s words in his head again and laughs into his beer and nearly chokes as he repeats, “If?”
Sully smiles, finishes Henry’s beer with something bordering on conviction and shoves the cup back at Henry to dispose of, “I can never get anything past you.”
_
Later, much later, Henry thinks about his friendship with Sully and he wonders about what could’ve been.
Henry is objective. He looks at things from a distance.
There isn’t much room for heart. That’s something else John doesn’t know about it.
He thinks about Sully and wonders if maybe they’d met first before Harper’s and before Abby…maybe this would all be about him.
There isn’t really a before Abby though, except for Trish. Sometimes.
When they’d first met, before Henry could put a word to his state…his existence…he’d thought he’d found someone else like him.
Sully was loud where he was quiet. Light when he was dark and quick to pull out of a fight when Henry only saw RED RED RED. Sully did not like blood.
Sully was loyal. He trusted and loved Henry.
Henry did his best.
_
He is sixteen and he feels brilliant. The cool grass pressing through the cotton of his shirt and he can hear Trish in the house rummaging. He believes the clinks and clicks are the sound of rummaging.
Or maybe she was foraging? Trish wasn’t a squirrel though, so rummaging it was.
Sully is lying in the grass next to him, the Wellington’s pool is just on the other side of him, and they aren’t in a hurry to get up. It’s just another party like any other party, only the first one before summer and then off to Harper’s Island and just more of this, only this time with Abby and Trish.
He’ll probably smell of fish too, but neither of them really care about that.
Henry’s starting to think this feeling is about being young and all he needs is college and the future and Trish and his friends—Sully to throw his arm over his shoulder and Abby to tell him when he’s a prick and Trish to love him, trust him.
This too shall pass and all that bullshit. These things get better.
He shimmies a bit in the grass, turns his nose towards it and finds Sully watching him.
“You and Trish done it yet?”
Sully asks every day. Every day Henry says, “No.”
Sully looks doubtful, but he doesn’t press the issue. Henry is tempted to comment on how the light from the pool makes Sully’s hair look silver, but his thoughts stray to Abby and then back to Trish, like a trick of the light.
He’s worried that she might be bored with him. He tries everything and she unfolds and she unfolds and she unfolds until she’s talking about studying for trig and really maybe he should go home, you know how your dad gets, Henry.
“It’s not like you’ve done it with anyone.” He rejoins the conversation. He knows for a fact that Sully has slept with at least two girls and done who knows what with a slew of others. His mother knows, she asks him why he can’t have other friends. “I do have other friends. Sully is my best friend.” His father tells him not to be smart with his mother.
Sully just grins and Henry drifts again. He feels sleepy. His limbs don’t want to cooperate and suddenly he’s warm and being pulled closer and closer. He can hear Trish saying, “My boys. My boys.” The words are slippery and he thinks, “But we’re Abby’s boys. I’m Abby’s boy.” He shakes the thought and settles closer to Trish and senses Sully doing the same.
He’ll tell him to knock it off as soon as Trish’s hair is out of his mouth, as soon as she stops kissing him, but soon Sully’s hand is just holding his and Trish is asleep and Sully is whispering, “Do you think Mr. Wellington is going to be home soon?”
And they all stumble across the lawn, Trish is half asleep and when they all fall just short of the back door Sully is the first to laugh.
There are days that are easier than others.
_
Sometimes he’ll think about the air in Harper’s Island and take a deep breath and just for a moment he can imagine that it’s cool and fresh and life sustaining.
Only sometimes.
_
Just before college, Trish calls him over to her house while her parents are out and they make love on the couch and in her bed.
It had been raining when he got there and she’d stripped him, stuffed his clothes in the dryer and handed him a robe.
They’d almost spilt tea across her mother’s new suede couch and Trish had sighed against his tongue as he’d entered her, still a little sloppy, a little stunned with how okay everything seemed to be.
After he’d finished getting dressed and they’d agreed to meet at Ashley Sutter’s party later, he’d gone home and found he’d missed a call from Abby and it hadn’t stung at all.
_
Before Wakefield, but after Trish had broken up with him because they needed to see new people and try new things and wasn’t he bored with her, didn’t he want to see other girls, it was Sully and Danny and Malcolm and a few girls that Sully called benchwarmers, which put him one up on Henry, who mostly forgot their names and numbers because they weren’t Trish.
He and Sully stumble their way out of a frat party and hit the ground somewhere between their dorms and the Administration building. They hit grass and Sully is laughing staring up at the sky and his laughter is coming in gasps, Henry can’t remember if that’s good or bad.
“Fuck man, what did we drink?”
“I don’t remember Sully.” He hiccups and ends up retching all down his front.
_
When Trish tells him about Sully hitting on her he isn’t angry. He isn’t okay either, but the anger doesn’t come. Instead he turns his thoughts towards Abby and his future plans.
He kisses her, tells her that he doesn’t care. A few months ago, before Trish took him back, but after Wakefield found him, he’d come back to the dorm room he shared with Sully and tried to keep quiet.
If Sully woke up, then what would he say?
“Henry, where’d you go?”
“Oh, you know. I called Trish.”
There’s something that he can’t touch. Sully sits up in bed and sighs.
“Let her go man.”
Defend her. Defend yourself. “We’re forever. It’s hard to just,”
Sully holds up his hand, “Just stop man.”
A minute passes. Henry considers what killing Sully would be like.
Pleasant? Possibly. A little bit like killing a part of himself. Sully would probably fold easily.
“Henry?”
“Yes?”
“You want to check if the Comet Diner is still open, get something to eat?”
“It’s late.”
Sully’s hand fists into his sweater. He pulls himself up and drags Henry down for a few seconds, the heat from the room sweeping into the gap at Henry’s neck, warming his chest.
Henry is open, nothing to hide.
“If it’s open, you’re buying me all the pie I want.”
Sully winds up half asleep, in the booth across from Henry, a deep purple stain from Henry’s blueberry pie is setting in his t-shirt.
He’s explaining all the ways Physics being a University requirement is utter bullshit. Henry hums his agreement at the proper intervals.
end