Prompt: “I know you didn’t ask for this” 

(pairing: amber/henry. Genre: angst, fluff. Rating: pg. Words: 521) 

It’s really just unfair.  

Henry never asked for this – Henry never asks for anything, he just receives; takes everything life throws at him in stride with a smile and a bad joke to match, and Amber can’t fathom how he does it. With everything he’s been through since the day he set foot in the business, any other man would’ve thrown in the towel ages ago, but not her Henry. Henry just smiles, closes his computer and says, “life’s too short for that. I don’t want to go there,” and then he’s moved on. Just like that.  

If only Amber could do that. For the longest time, she’s thought that she can, but then she looks at how different her and Henry act, and she deducts that she’s all bark and no bite, and Henry’s all bite and no bark, except he would never hurt a fly.  

It’s not that he hasn’t asked about it, he has – sometimes at night when she can’t sleep, he somehow can’t either, and so he rolls over on his side and asks, “wanna talk about it?” and when she doesn’t reply he only smiles reassuringly, kisses her and gets her another drink of calming milk tea. It’s just the words, the damn words won’t come out, no matter how much she practices in front of the mirror. One should think she’d be a better actress after so many years in the spotlight, but that’s always been her members’ thing and not hers, and that really comes back to bite her in the .  

Today is the day, she’s decided. She’s going to tell him today, all of the words, the thoughts, the horrible thinking she’s been doing – all of it’s going to come out, she’s going to dump it all right there on Henry’s damn floor and beg him to help her clean it all up, and Henry – being Henry – will oblige without pausing to think about it for even a second. She’s been saying this to herself every morning for the past week and a half and never actually made it, but she’s determined to make today different. Today is going to matter.  

And then Henry comes home. She hears the key in the lock, Henry’s humming something (he’s always humming something. There’s always music with Henry, it’s one of the things she loves the most, mostly because she can’t stand silence), and he calls out to her in the same happy way he always does; like he’s happy she’s there, but also a little bit surprised by his own luck. And then, when he walks in, all of the words she’s spent the entire day trying to put in the right order completely disappear. It’s like she’s falling apart, slowly at first and then all at once, but before she hits the ground, he’s there to catch her, wrapping his arms around her with a small, discrete smile, saying, “I know. Not quite there yet,” and Amber swears she’s so in love, and so unfathomably lucky to have a Henry to begin with that everything else seems almost unimportant. It’s really just... Unfair.