Hatchetfield.

Lady's Thimble

Its been about a week since Henry gained some new roommate's, here's what he knows about them.

Paul

He's Emma's partner
He's a good guy and volunteers to clear the dishes after dinner
Drinks his coffee black
Head over heels for Emma
Tom

Served in Iraq
Emma's brother in law
Used to teach at the high school
Tim

Tom's son and Emma's nephew
Pretty quiet
No taste in music, doesn't appreciate classical theatre
A little wary of Becky
Becky

Tom's girlfriend
Was a nurse
Possibly was in a bad relationship before this one
Really wants to connect with Tim
Then there's Lex and Hannah, the one she probably knows the least about. Clearly something big happened to them in that mall, something different then just being controlled by a demonic doll– or whatever Becky said. They're good kids according to Tom, but he hasn't had much of a chance to speak with them. That's why he was pretty surprised when he saw Lex crying on his couch at 1am.

He was coming up from his lab with a glass of whisky, and he planned on watching the news (now the news was just an image of another city burning to the ground, but he needed to know) but instead he found a sobbing 19 year old.

Henry considered just going back downstairs, but she had already seen him by the time he had made up his mind.

She wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her jacket and stood up, clearly trying to act like she wasn't just crying, even though tears were still falling down her face. "If you need your living room you can have it back, I was just taking a break from my sister."

Henry backed away, "you need it more than I do." Wait that probably wasn't the right thing to say.

Lex shook her head, probably thinking something like 'great this is the guy I'm going to share a house with until I die in the nuclear apocalypse.' Or maybe not, Henry didn't really know what 19 year olds were like now.

She used the neck of her shirt to wipe away another tear, "do you mind if I use your tissues?"

He shrugged, "go ahead."

She grabbed the box that sat on an end table and blew her nose. "Thanks."

Henry nodded, that couch had seen a lot of his ugly crying too. "Do you need to talk or.." he trailed off.

Lex shook her head, "no, I just didn't want to wake up Hannah."

He nodded again, not sure what else to say.

"Who are they?" Lex asked, pointing to a picture that was next to the box of tissues.

That would be the reason he had tissues up here. "They were my friends in college."

"Were?"

"They passed away."

"Oh, I'm sorry." She looked down, "Ethan, that was my boyfriend's name. He uh- he didn't make it out of the mall."

Henry remembered Tom mentioning an Ethan, he said that he was one of his students too. "I'm sorry."

She nodded, "we were going to run away from this town together, Hannah would be with us too. We were going to go to California, we just needed a little more money and we'd be set." Lex laughed bitterly, "I was going to steal a Wiggly and sell it to some weird collector, look how well that plan worked out for us."

Henry wasn't that good at talking about emotions with people, probably because he had isolated himself in a protected fortress and only came out to get groceries and teach, so instead he walked over and sat down in the old leather armchair that was next to the couch.

"My friends all got sick at the same time. It was some mystery illness, I tried helping them, but in the end everything I did was futile." Henry sipped his whiskey, "It doesn't get easier, I'm sure Emma and Tom have told you that, but eventually you'll be able to smile when you think of him."

"Have you gotten there yet?" Lex asked.

Henry held up his whiskey, "sometimes there are things that help speed up the process."

Lex wiped her eyes, "thanks Professor. I don't usually talk about this stuff, especially not with a stranger, but..."

"Sometimes it's easier with someone who understands."

She nodded, "yeah, that."

Henry sat in that armchair for a while after she left, he didn't turn on the news though. Instead of watching burning cities he stared at an old picture, and allowed himself to go back to 5 o'clock on a Friday in the summer.

——

Henry: *finds Lex crying about her dead boyfriend* hey, that's the couch where I cry about my dead boyfriend(s)