Chapter Text
Henry has loved words for as long as he can remember. He remembers being six years old and watching his father prepare for a role. How his father could take words and bring them to life. He wonders whether he would have an ability close to that when he would be older. When he is six, he can’t wait to write his own words one day. Maybe write his own story.
The day Bea asks their parents about learning guitar, is the first day he realizes how powerful his Gran has. There are awkward days between Bea asking and their Gran taking convincing from both their parents that it should be allowed. The compromise is violin and guitar. He knows Bea does not want to learn the violin, but he is happy that Gran finally caved. He loves listening to her play, even she is mostly learning chords if in the beginning. His Gran becomes stricter after that and tells them all to always be at their best.
Later, he loves English class. He is mesmerized by words and all the possibilities. His teachers are delighted, and he feels like he found something he likes just as much as Bea loves her guitar. Bea and him spend a lot of time together growing up. She would play guitar and he would write silly rhymes for her melodies. They laugh a lot. But some nights, he is scared that he will not be able to live up to his Gran and her standards. They keep growing higher and higher, stretching far into the sky.
He is thirteen and alone at Eton and he is very worried. He has not yet made a real friend outside of Bea. He misses her terribly. Pip is more distant now and always talks about responsibility. Without Bea by his side, he misses writing. He starts a diary when he is alone in his room and hides it far away from the prying eyes of the other boys. Secretly he dreams about happy endings between a prince and a knight. He doesn’t tell a soul. He doesn’t even dare to write these dreams down for fear that someone will see them. There is something wrong with him.
His Grans' smiles are restrained when she looks at him. He feels as if he is a small pebble in her way, an odd quiet grandchild far from everyone.
After the first weeks he still feels awkward around most boys in his year except for Pez. Pez is loud and colourful and bright. He tells him about his parents and how he misses his nannies sometimes more than them. He tells Pez about Bea and Pip and about the stern eyes of his Gran. They are fast friends after that.
Pez makes him brave. He tells his father that he does not feel like he fits in. His father hugs him, “Your Mom and he have three children. We have Pip, we have Bea and we have you Henry. Be yourself” he says. The words are stuck in his throat after that and he does not tell his father about the other thing.
At sixteen, he feels like a big paradox. The words gay and prince historically don’t mix well. He tries to forget his own family’s part in that. There is a knot in his stomach when he overhears Pip talk about future children. Deep down he knows he doesn’t want any if it would mean marrying a woman. He wonders if he can live up to the history on his shoulders or if he will crumble under it.
Looking at his Gran and her stern eyes he knows he has no choice.
He is seventeen when his Gran tells him that any proclivities not befitting a prince belong behind closed doors. He thinks Shaan suspects. It is difficult in the first weeks after that. Before, he would write about two souls finding each other. Now, he can’t bring himself to write something so foolishly hopeful. He doesn’t dare to dream about a happy ending between knights and princes anymore and instead he tries to hide his heart away in a dark chamber. The night with one of Pips mates he wants to ban from memory, and he locks the night in the smallest closet he can find.
The sentence “Your Mother and I have to tell you something” changes his life. The words ‘cancer’ best care’ and ‘expectation management’ wash over him like ocean waves and he is caught in the current. The unthinkable happens only a few months after that.
Take the worst situations
Make a worse situation
Gran insists on parading them around. He thinks when he dies, he will die publicly as well, to be looked at by thousands of eyes which will never know him and to be discarded the moment a crack is found.
I feel numb
I feel numb in this kingdom
I feel numb
I feel numb in this kingdom
He looks at Beas empty eyes and thinks, there is not much left of her. He is afraid that he will be left alone. Alone between the great nothing of Grans and Pips sky high expectations and his mother’s absence.
He feels hopeless when Bea runs away from rehab and finds himself in the arms of faceless men. Shaan rescues him every time, NDA in hand. Often Pez is there as well and they will look at him with sorrowful eyes.
Chemically enlaced faces
Black out nights and tight spaces
We'll feel distant embraces
Scratching hands 'round my waist, yeah
I'll wash my mouth but still taste you
He locks these nights in the basement, hoping if they are close to the earth they will just sink into it and disappear.
He is so afraid, he tells Bea. Tells her why he is different and not good enough and that he needs her. He needs someone in his family who knows about him and who will be there. She cries and goes to rehab apologizing to him. He feels very selfish after that. That his problems were so big they don’t only suffocate him but also everyone else in his vicinity.
Follow me home, pretend you
Found somebody to mend you
The days blur together when Bea is away. He often does not know what he did the day before, and Pez feels like the only light on some days. When there is no mandatory public appearance he has to sit through under his Grans disapproving eyes, he often wonders if this is what his life will be until then End. A great nothing and emptiness. He feels disconnected from everyone.
He thinks of the NDAs Shaan has stored away in a hidden cabinet and feels numb.
When Bea comes back her eyes are clear and he feels as if the fog has slightly lifted around him.
He feels her warmth and embraces it, hopes that she could make him a little bit more whole again. When she finds him after a sleepless night staring into the gardens, she tells him with a quiet voice that she will never let him alone again. That she never thought it would change something, but that talking to someone outside of their Gran and Pip helped. She does not mention their mother. They have not heard from her since the funeral and it feels as if they lost both of their parents at once.
She took the worst situation and made it worse he thinks, I feel numb in this kingdom.
The Day after, Pip announces to Bea and him that he wants to propose to Martha. He sits in his study and tries to write something with hope. Something with joy but it feels impossible. When he sees them, looking at each other with bright eyes and loving smiles he does not feel joy. He feels envy. After that, he feels ashamed of himself. The memories he tried looking away so deeply emerge slowly and he feels hollow inside. That this is what will be allowed. Closed doors and shameful silence. No bright laughter and loving smiles or talk of the future. He thinks he might lose himself if he does not take care. He will vanish and leave nothing behind.
He does not think he can talk to someone, talking, he thinks was never his strong suit.
The therapist Shaan finds him later that week is calm, and he imagines it's how his father could have been when he would have been older. If he would have had the chance to. Dr. Williams has a grandfatherly voice und warm eyes. He wishes his Gran could be a bit like that. He does not know how to talk about his issues. Dr. Williams somehow knows this without him having to say it out loud and proposes writing therapy. He could do that, Henry thinks. He writes about him and Bea and the big emptiness inside of him. When he is told “There is nothing wrong with you” he wants to believe that and there is a tiny seed of hope growing in his chest. He might find someone someday. He wants to be better for that person.
You better, you better, you better
You better make me
Me better, me better
You better make me better
Later, after more sessions with Dr. Williams he decides to share some of his words with Bea and sometimes Pez as well. She is playing guitar softly when he enters the music room. “Bee, I want to show you something” he says. After, they cry together, and he feels a little bit more whole again.
When a small beagle puppy is brought into his room one day by Shaan the fog feels lifted a little more. He stops existing and starts living again for Bea, for Pez, for Shaan, for David and a little bit for himself as well.