Chapter Text
Gus stood on land watching Henry's boat approach the pier. Henry saw him from a distance and seemed to think about turning around. He drove the boat up and tied it to the cleat.
Gus walked down, standing on the dock while Henry got his stuff in a bag in preparation for disembarking.
“What is your problem?” asked Gus, bluntly.
“I don't have a problem,” said Henry, irritated.
“Then why are you acting like this? I know you do actually care about Shawn, so why are you being such a dick?”
“Because there's nothing wrong with him! He's just dramatic.”
“His shoulder gets dislocated at a breeze, his–”
“Dislocations hurt a lot more than that. I bought it time and time again, I'm done.”
Gus took a moment to just stare at Henry in an attempt to be calm and reasonable when he did respond, “Shawn ran around with a bullet through the same shoulder like it was barely happening. He's a stubborn guy who pushed through. Like you taught him to do.”
Henry looked furious for a moment, then to Gus’s deep surprise, broke. He leaned on the rail with both hands and kicked the side of the life jacket box as hard as he could, “fuck!”
Gus blinked at him and cocked his head a little, “what's up?”
Henry shook his head, grabbed his bag, jumped out of the boat, and started stalking down the docks toward land. Gus followed, a lot more curious than he had started.
Henry got to his truck and threw his bag in the back. He leaned on the bed with his head down.
Gus came up next to him, “what's happening here?”
Henry finally turned around and leaned his back against the truck instead, meeting Gus’s gaze.
“I took him to the doctor so many times when he was a kid. Madeline said they would have found something if it was wrong. That he was doing it for attention. So I stopped taking him. Told him to stop making excuses, making shit up. If this is all true, I just let him…”
Gus was speechless for a moment. Then he put his hand in his pockets and took a deep breath, shaking his head.
“They barely understood it at all then. Even if by some miracle they had identified it, and remember his doctor didn't now, I had to figure it out…there wasn't really anything that you could have done.”
“Yeah there was,” said Henry, turning to yank his car door open, “I could have cared that he was in pain.”
Henry got in, slammed the door, waved furiously at Gus to get out of the way, tore out of the parking lot trailing diesel exhaust in a cloud. Gus coughed and hurriedly stepped out of the fumes.
Well. This certainly hadn't been the problem he thought was happening.