caught by the light

"I've started telling really horrendous lies to keep the conversation going. Sometimes I don't even realize I'm doing it, until I'm in the middle of telling the most batshit story anyone's ever heard. My most recent one was saying that I was supposed to be on that Titan submersible that blew up, but I woke up late and missed the boat." Jack looked at Henry with a half-horified, half-amused expression.

Jack delivered his friend a very sympathetic look, reaching out to clap him on the shoulder in a supportive fashion. "You know, buddy, I've just decided I'm way too high maintenance. And I'm not even, well, looking for love, I guess. But I think companionship is the harder thing to find. I did it once, I guess I was lucky to have that. And if something else comes my way, it'll be rarer still."

Henry moved to take a sip of his frappuccino, chasing the straw around the lid for a moment before he finally darted into his mouth with success as he listened to Jack's proclamation. Jack was not just older than him, but generally better at most things, so it made sense for Henry to take whatever guidance the man might offer.

"I think that's the thing," Henry reasoned, setting his cup down and crossing his arms over his chest. His voice was low. "I think it's just...being...alone. That's what's killing me. It's not any of the rest of it, I don't -- I'm not trying to find a soulmate, here. I just want someone that wants to, like, go see a movie and talk about it for hours afterward. Go to the fucking grocery store with me. I dunno." He shook his head, disenchanted. "I guess maybe I'm doing it wrong."

Was it hot in the coffee shop? It felt hot. Mar glanced around them once more, to see if any other patron had clued in that this was one of the more monumental days of her life so far. She dared to sneak another look at Henry, afraid to look too long and risk him catching her. She probably didn't have any right to ask for his attention or time, but it didn't stop her from trying to soak in as much as she could. "So ... you're still here too, then? Unless you're just passing through. Which is valid, if you are." She was stalling, dragging out the conversation, and Mar knew it. But, she reasoned, anyone else would have done the same.

The more he insisted that he was alright and that she needn't apologize or try to make amends, the more Mar felt that old familiar pull of stubbornness, to push back against it. To dig her heels in and insist on her point, regardless of the gravity of the situation. In this moment it didn't matter that it was Henry. She was right, and she was going to make it clear. "Well, it's not fine, actually," she said, gesturing to the stain on his shirt. "And I'm not going to leave until I've done something to make it up to you, so. It appears we are at an impasse. So are you going to let me buy you another coffee, or do we have to come up with another solution?"

This was more information than Mar had asked for, and certainly more than she needed, but Henry didn't know what exactly the perameters were for what was happening, what the rules might have been; she'd made an error, sure, but he was the asshole, the idiot that stood here still trying to smell her shampoo from a foot away, still trying to scramble to remember what her laugh sounded like as clear as he could years ago, her voice now only outlining the memory further.

"Jesus-" Henry exhaled sharply, frustration bubbling forth again, although not necessarily at her, or, at least, at her for this. He breathed deeply. "You don't need to get indignant about it. This isn't the time to get indignant about it, okay? Not a battle to pick, here." He eyed her, seeing that his words might have had an effect. "I'm on my way home, anyway. I'm just going to go home. I'm sorry. I'm sorry that I'm gonna leave you to deal with a bad feeling for a little while."

Henry's words were sardonic, and he felt slightly childish for them, but not enough to earneslty regret it. Still, his tone was a bit more gentle as he continued: "It's just a shirt. It's just a coffee. Just...let it go."

Let me go.

She opened and closed her hands, now empty, for want of something to do. Should she reach out and try to help with the cleanup? Should she take his own drink, toss it away as well? She reached out as if to check the cotton material of his shirt, to examine the stain, and determine if it was salvageable, before letting her arm hang limply at her side. Nothing she could do now would undo the mess they found themselves in, be it the literal or metaphorical one. And wasn't that the horribly funny irony of it all?

He asked after her and Mar looked down at her own shirt that seemed by and large untouched. "No, I'm not," she responded quietly, shaking her head. "Nothing I couldn't fix, anyway." If there was a stain she'd missed, she could far more easily fix it than deal with a potential burn from a hot liquid. "I work here. Well, not here specifically. In Ann Arbor." Henry had told her not to answer, but she felt compelled to explain, give him some sort of context when she never had before. She shoved her hands in her back pockets for lack of anything else to do, and cocked her head to the side, taking in his presence. There had been plenty of times she'd wondered if she'd made the right decision to lie about why they ended, and plenty of people who had simply told her she had made the wrong one. But there'd always been a conviction that it was done to spare him pain. And now here she was, quite literally doing what she'd wanted to avoid.

"Please. Let me get you another coffee. Or a pastry. Anything," Mar pleaded. "I'm sorry."

There was something seemingly cruel about this - the idea that she would effectively return to the scene of the crime, come to the place she knew he had grown up and lived the entirety of his life, and choose to settle there once again. Henry tried not to assume there was some malicious intent in her actions, tried not to take it personally - Mar was many things, but she was never mean - but he couldn't seem to work his way past the notion that maybe Mar was never who he thought she was, that maybe he didn't ever really know her at all.

He cleared his throat, trying to work the knot out. "That's -- good. Good for you," he affirmed, as if she gave a solitary shit about his approval or opinion of her. As if he were of any consequence to her at all. The stupidity of this lapse in judgment hit him, then, and the weight of it overtook him. They didn't have to do this - pretend things were normal, be mutedly polite. He didn't have to do this to himself.

But the alternative - to leave, to never see her again - was no better.

"I'm fine," he reaffirmed. "I'm -- I don't need anything. I didn't even need anything when I came in here. It's -- it's fine, Mar." His voice was soft around her name, unexpectedly tender; he realized he hadn't actually said it out loud in so long. His throat felt raw. "I'm -- I'm glad you're well."

She eyed him curiously for a moment, taking in how still familiar he was even with the passing of time. There was a different hairstyle now, and he looked more tired than Mar had ever recalled seeing him, but the way he held himself, and the frown on his face were exactly the same as they'd been years ago. The lines in his face were deeper, more pronounced with years gone by, but the cut of his jaw was exactly the same. Realizing she was now crossing into the realm of staring, Mar cleared her throat and blinked hard. "I might have a Tide pen," she offered meekly, tossing her now mostly-empty cup into the trash. "If you think it'll help at all."

Mar rocked back on her heels and fought the urge to cut and run, although it was an appealing idea. She could just leave, and get in her car and drive away, and she could find a new coffee place, and just forget this even happened. She had a fleeting thought of calling Grace and telling her about it, assuming the two of them would chalk it up to a crazy coincidence. Until the next time. Or the time after. After all, Ann Arbor was only so big.

"Well, it's not fine," she argued, grabbing some more napkins and handing them to him. "You have hot coffee all over you. And did your coffee spill, too? That's two things." She bit down on her lip, and paused, feeling anything she could say in this moment would be inadequate to address the damage she'd done. "Let me buy you another one, at least."

"No, Mar," he murmured, his voice sharp. He hadn't let their eyes meet until that momen for fear of what might happen; he had darted his gaze in every other direction, trying not to cling to the sight of her so that he knew how to live in famine once again after the gluttonous rush of this moment was over. Looking at her, then, made him feel like he was standing in front of her with an open wound, waiting for her to decide what to make of him. "No. It's obviously not fine."

He exhaled again, shakier than before, trying to ignore the temporary blur of his vision, tears filling his eyes; he blinked, hard, and cast his glance down again, away from the assault, like he was forcing himself to look away from the sun. The attention of the other patrons had largely shifted from their small fracas back to the daily happenings of the cafe, conversations carrying on as if Henry's world wasn't falling apart at its seams in real time. He sighed, the breath a bit uneven. "What are you even doing here? Why are you - " he shook his head. "No, don't - don't answer that. I don't - you don't have to answer that." She had made it clear - quite abruptly - that she was no longer his business, her life none of his concern. Henry struggled to remember that as he swallowed again, ignoring the sudden, perverse urge to check for a diamond on her finger. When he spoke again, he tried to keep the tone level, tried not to betray the clenching of his stupid heart in his chest or the way his lungs felt like they were burning through his ribcage. "You're not hurt?"

"Aw, babe." Jack reached over and patted Henry on the back as he gave him a sympathetic eye. "I'd never leave you mid-season. And hey, you never know. They could bring in a romantic foil to try and fool you away from me, and it might work. I actually have a great attention span and I've been getting a lot of Tiktok edits of um... Teddy Altman maybe exploring her bisexuality. You could do that to me too, but with a real human woman. One day, you know. When you talk to one that isn't my ex-wife." Jack shot Henry a knowing wink. He actually really enjoyed that Henry and Jules were friends through it all. It meant that, in the absence of Jack, they really had formed a bond. It reassured Jack, of, if anything, that Henry was a true friend, not just a 'work' friend.

Henry sighed, exhausted from both the feat of modern dating and his tangent, and slumped back into the back of his seat a bit more, offering it more of his weight. "I just - its never...I dunno. It's never gonna be what I want it to be, I don't think. I can't decide if that's my fault or everyone else's."

Mar murmured her thanks and accepted her coffee from the outstretched hand of the barista on duty -- americano with two sugars, just as she started drinking as a bleary-eyed nineteen year old studying for finals. It had been a long weekend, driving home for a visit and back again for the school week, and Mar was never going to make it through the day without extra caffeine. She headed to the station by the door, with napkins and stirrers and creamers, and she gathered the materials she would need to take her coffee on the go. That's when she saw it out of the corner of her eye. A flash of hair, a shirt that she knew by heart, and Mar blinked once, and then twice, as she took in the vision of someone she'd always assumed she'd never see again.

Her stomach lurched up into her throat and her pulse sped up as she felt her fight or flight sense activate. How were they even in the same city, let alone the same coffee shop? What cruel twist of fate was this, on the Mondayest of days? She looked around the building, at the different exits, wondering how she could get out of here the fastest. She settled on the door toward the back -- a bit of a walk, but kept her mostly out of the line of sight. Mar grabbed her coffee, head down, and shirled around. She took two steps forward and then collided with something, and watched in horror as the lid of her drink popped off and hot coffee spilled all over that familiar shirt.

"Oh my god, I'm so sorry, she said, taking one of her napkins and futilely trying to sop up the no doubt steaming hot liquid. "I'm ..." she looked up and made eye contact with Henry before closing her eyes and letting out a sigh. "I'm so sorry."

As he ambled into the coffee shop, he wasn’t particularly paying a great deal of attention to any of its other patrons, a bit too in his head to care. This, he quickly learned, was a mistake. If he had seen her from outside — if he had noticed the shape of her as she loomed over the coffee bar, recognized the flare of her cheekbone as she turned to move — he…well. It didn’t matter, now.

In his mind, Henry’s life had been quantified by the time he had been with the woman before him and the time he had been without her. He had grown comfortable with this truth only recently, the idea that she defined him in a way he clearly never had the pleasure of doing for her. When Mar had left, it had taken Henry years to understand the person he knew and the person that would do that to him; he still struggled to knit those people together in his mind, to reconcile that the person he had anchored his life in had changed her mind. Or…whatever.

And there she was.

“Jesus fucking—“ he hissed, his jaw clenching, the heat of Mar’s coffee singeing his chest. He forced a hard exhale through his nose, trying to keep his breathing even, focusing on that endeavor so as to avoid focusing on anything else. When he found his voice after a moment, it was low. “It’s fine. Just—“ he sidestepped slightly, heading over to pluck a few more napkins from a dispenser and futilely pressing them into the fabric of his shirt, as if they would be effective at anything. As he worked, he felt the anger rise in his chest, and his hands and reasoning became less effective. “It’s fine. It’s fine."

Jack took a sip of his coffee, winking at Henry over the brim of his cup. "You're not the first to tell me I have a twinkle in my eyes. But I have to agree... For all the ways we work, we can't throw romance into the mix. This is why we're a dynamic duo. It's also too predictable. We're not on Grey's Anatomy, here. I pride us for living more of an ER storyline. I'm like the Mark Greene to your Doug Ross. Or, better yet, I'm the Carol Hathaway to your Doug Ross. I mean, minus the becoming pregnant with your twin daughters. But I think that's the more realistic dynamic."

Nodding sagely in agreement, Henry took a sip, then swallowed quickly to tack on, "The predictability of it is, ultimately, what would be our downfall. On every show, the second the leads get together, the writers have to make it difficult. God forbid you leave me mid-season to move to Seattle and I have to raise our twins alone, or something. Or Chicago. I don't - I'm gonna be honest, I didn't really pay attention to either show very well. I think I might have ADHD, but I'm old and I know I'd be insufferable on stimulants, so - this is what you get forever, baby."

"You? Die alone? Do you not see how the entire nursing staff follows you around like a lovesick puppy? I know Madge might be sixty-eight and mean as hell, but she never takes care of my charts the way she does for you. I think you're missing out on your next chapter there with her. She's experienced, no-nonsense. Hey, I'm actually kind of liking the sound of this for you." Jack grinned as he ribbed his friend. "You forget that someone married me by choice twenty years ago. I was more energetic, younger, better looking, I think probably way more eager to please, too. And you... You're not, annoying, necessarily... You're just an acquired taste. If I swung that way, I'd just say we could end our mutual suffering here and now. But I think what makes our friendship work would doom our romantic life. And, you know... I don't know if I can kiss with your whole beard thing."

Henry shook his head. "Madge and I could never go there." He said this gravely, as if it were dire for Jack to understand the intensity of their bond. "...Just like you and I. Romance complicates things. What you and I - and Madge and I - have is something much more pure. Much more real." He gave Jack a look, evaluating him as his eyes scanned over his physique while Henry himself absentmindedly scratched at the aforementioned beard. "I think you're still plenty handsome, though, for the record. And I could shave this off. But you - you've got some years left in you. Like a beloved horse with a twinkle still left in its eye."

Jack lingered patiently as he waited for his order to be completed, always opting for the same: a flat white. As he lingered by the pick-up counter, he looked over at his 'date' for the outing — one of the few friendships he maintained so consistently (and really, mostly due to the fact that they worked together). "Had another truly disastrous blind date last night. I was fifteen minutes late, she had bad veneers, and also tried to light a cigarette inside the restaurant." Jack's tone carried a beleaguered amusement. "I don't know, man. I can't take much more of this. The last one used an all natural deodorant. She didn't even tell me that, I could just tell. Well, smell. Last week Lily called me a depressing bachelor. Maybe I should just lean into it."

Pondering their predicament for a moment, Henry took another sip, watching as Jack's order was filled and the other man swiftly grabbed it. They ambled over toward a table, seemingly always gravitating toward the same one each time they were here, and, as they settled, Henry continued, "I've kind of just assumed I was just going to die alone for a while, so, to be honest, the dating app stuff is just a some sort of psych experiment I'm performing on myself. How long will I last? Who's to say?" He crossed his awkwardly lanky legs, ankle over knee, and continued, "But there's no feasible reason this shouldn't be working for you. I'm fine face-wise, but I'm sort of annoying, as we both know. You've got a lot more going on for you. Namely, someone married you by choice."

She'd braced herself for the dating horror stories she'd heard so often but by some stroke of luck she'd met Henry, a far cry from what she'd been told to expect. He was kind and they got on even better than she could have hope. So despite her intention to only dip her toe back into dating she'd found it easy to agree to a second date and then a third

There was no sense of anxiety as she waited for him, confident that he'd show despite how the minutes ticked on. And her certainty was proven right, soft smile on her lips as she greeted him. Their embrace was brief but more reassuring than any in her last relationship. "Good, thanks. We've been picking up cases so I feel like we're starting to gain some momentum." Sympathetic smile hovered over her features and she thought about asking if he wanted to talk about it. But the way he dodged an explanation made her decide against it, instead opting to show there was no hard feelings. "It's fine, it gave me plenty time to study all the options try to decide what I want to drink. But I'm still torn. Have you been here before? Any favourites?" Wry smile was sent his way, slight deprecation about her own indecisiveness. "You too, I'm glad we could do this."

With Ava, though, there was no pressure for such a thing - they both admitted their reservations to one another upon first meeting, sening that they were safe with each other, and vowing not to take anything too seriously. Their truce made it easier to navigate whatever it was they were doing, the lovely, lilting dance of getting to know one another. Ava was easy to talk to, to banter with, to enjoy the company of - it was a good use of his time, being with her. A net gain. He hoped he could provide the same to her.

"Oh? More clients? Did you manage to land the one you were telling me about?" Henry's brows raised, impressed and excited by the notion of Ava's success. Settling in, he mulled over her question. "Honestly, I usually get whatever their seasonal lager is. Painfully boring. If you're not a beer fan, though..." he continued, looking over the menu. He flipped it around to face her. "The cocktails are always good."