#rivers headcanons

He is autistic and has aspd, though neither are diagnosed.

He feels very little joy or pleasure for anything except for his special interests. (mainly Homer/Greek myth and gardening.)

Gardening works very grounding for Henry. He loves the feeling of the ground beneath his fingers and the relatively repetative work has a calming effect on him.

He will measure the distance between the seeds when he plants them to make sure that they're all planted with the exact same and right amount of space between them.

His man will do anything to avoid the spines of his books from cracking.

He will, however, in the same breath annotate the hell out of all his books.

He could definitelly benefit from using a cane due to his limp, either constantly, or as an ambulatory user. However, he himself sees this as a sign of being weak and therfore refuses to wear one. He carries his umbrella with him everywhere for this reason instead.

His bad right eye leaves him with an impacted depth perception which has him running into things more often than he'd like to admit.

He is ace and somewhere on the aro spec. He is capable of feeling either sexual or romantic attraction, but only rarely and under very specific circumstances.

He get's horrible motion sickness during long car drives.

He is either very concious of his height and size or completely forgets about it. It depends on the day, but there is no in between.

On this note, he has absolutely body slammed into someone by accident on multiple occasions, because they were a good bit shorter than him and Henry simpy did not see them.

He talks to himself when he is alone or thinks no one can hear him.

His handwriting is very neat, but only because he forced it to be that way. His injuries from his car accident messed with his coordination and motor skills for quite a bit, which also fucked with his handwriting. Henry, being upset by this, would literally rip up the paper he was writing on and start over, if he did not see his handwriting as 'neat enough' during his recovery process.

As someone who's degree involved cultivation I can absolutely appriciate Henry's love for gardening and this honestly started off as a 'this interaction made me laugh' post, but I also find it so interesting.

This man is so calculated and can be very apathic and harsh and obsessed with control, but he is seemingly a lot softer and delicate around his flowers.

It is such an interesting little detail about him. He especially starts to, almost obsess, over it after the bacchanal and then, from what I remember, again/even more so after the whole Camilla and Charles thing.

Because do not get me wrong, effective gardening/cultivation does ask a lot of precise planning and making use of controlling factors from a person. However, it also asks for a lot of delecacy and care, a side of Henry we see a lot less. So that makes me wonder why Donna Tartt made Henry love gardening this much of all things.

Was it to show that he has a softer side after all? I honestly almost think that that is too simple for a character as complex as Henry. Perhaps this is me overthinking things, as I am very good at doing so, but every little characteristic from the Greek class is so thoughtfully chosen, I doubt it is just that.

Perhaps it is just too show that this man is obessive and needs control over everything as, from what I remember, he does talk about his plants in a way that very much feels like a need for perfection. But why there? Why with plants?

I think that maybe it was a way to keep himself from falling apart. Again, his obession with gardening becomes mostly apparent after the bacchanal. After the, accidental, murder of the farmer. And then again with Camilla. But also after the murder of Bunny. Obviously the snow was not planned. It was not planned that Bunny would not be found until that much later. This put dents in Henry's plan. Not to mention the whole group was slowly losing it around him. Henry being Henry cannot afford himself to fall apart. So he puts this into his gardening. That he can control more. He can choose the flowers, he is in control of the amount of water they get, et cetera. I think maybe he needed that control to keep himself calm. Surely if he can control the lives of some flowers, he can keep control of the situation at large. Besides, he is here, nurturing a life after taking two away. Maybe that makes him feel better too.