Notes: Based on the Tumblr prompt request: "Your fear of looking stupid is holding you back."
when our realities no longer align
"Your fear of looking stupid is holding you back."
Henry stops raking through the drawer of takeout menus and stuff-that-might-be-useful-one-day-but-also-might-be-junk, and looks up.
Jason stands on the opposite side of the breakfast bar, leaning into his hands where they wrap over the bar's edge, the insides of his wrists facing away from him.
Henry stares at his son for a long second, mind blanker than a featureless field in a whiteout. He's sure they were discussing whether to order pizza or Chinese, but now…?
"What are we talking about?" he says.
"Mom." Jason says it like it ought to be obvious.
Though, if they had been talking about Elizabeth, Henry would remember. His chest would feel like it'd been crushed beneath a steamroller, for one.
"You still love her," Jason carries on. "But rather than having the balls to tell her and stopping her from marrying Captain Asshat, you're holed up here"—he gestures to the apartment around them—"acting like some sad, old monk."
Henry doesn't know which part of that sentence to tackle first: balls, asshat, monk?
He goes for the one that allows him to veer away from the conversation, and returns to digging through the drawer. "I'm pretty sure monks don't spend their weekends eating takeout and playing Xbox with their sons."
(That said, he once found a monk at the top of Mount Namsan watching The Fast and the Furious on an iPad…)
"Fine," Jason says. "Deflect. But you know I'm right."
Henry shakes his head; pressure's building in his chest like a pent-up sigh. "It's not as simple as that. Your mother and I aren't together anymore, and she has every right to remarry, if that's what she wants."
"But if she knew how you felt…"
He lifts the whole stack of menus from the drawer and drops it on the bar with a slap. He looks up at Jason again. "Listen, Jase…sometimes a lack of love isn't the problem."
Jason's expression hardens, mouth teetering on a pout. "Then why did you guys split up?"
"Because I did something stupid."
The almost pout turns to full-on scowl. "You mean you cheated on her?"
"No," Henry says. He holds Jason gaze, a look so firm that even if his son never believed a word he said, he'd believe this. "Never."
In the word's wake, silence saturates the apartment.
After a moment, Jason's scowl softens, and he nods.
Another moment, then Henry breaks their stare.
Though his appetite has all but gone, he picks up the menus and shuffles through them; as he does, he says, his voice less than a murmur, the confession more to himself than their son, "Which is what I should have told her. But I didn't, because I wanted to protect her…"
He pauses. Gazes at the topmost menu while he replays every moment since that decision, since their realities, like parallel universes, branched.
With a sigh, he resumes shuffling.
"…And maybe that's worse."
Letting her believe he would do such a thing, letting her live in a lie.