tbh they probably need some time to work up to kissing but ALSO YES I AGREE

What's Henry's "familial" role in the post-ink au? By this I mean: he's clearly almost paternal in his behavior, and they'll all need emotional support (which they can mostly get from each other, but not entirely [coughcoughsammy]). He also has his actual nuclear family, wife and all. Does he have to budget specific times for, say, having coffee with buddy? Does Sammy start to stick by him like a troubled child? Do the main cast set up excuses to get him to taking his f'ing wife on a f'ing date?

SO current thinking of the like.... set up (????) for Escape AU is that while Henry & Linda were in town, Henry finally followed up on Joey's letter and checked out the old studio and the events of Bendy and the Ink Machine happen and Henry's trapped in a loop for however long. When he finally escapes with the first person he's able to rescue, he desperately calls Linda and... eventually works out that she's still in their hotel room and she’s just like "yeah I’m still here, you just left a bit ago to meet with joey??? how did that go and also are you okay you sound, uh, stressed" b/c very little time has actually passed

Now that they know what’s going on in the Studio, both the Steins want to help, so Henry runs back in to pull out as many people as he can while Linda sets things up so that they'll have somewhere to stay. 

Once they see how everyone's initially adjusting to The Real World (various levels of "badly") they talk it over and decide to take things one step at a time -- they're able to get a very fixer-upper house outside of the city, but they want to see how things go before everyone uproots, so Linda will go back home and stay at her job for now, and Henry will stay here and maybe find some freelance work and help everyone adjust for the next [x amount of time]. After that they can figure out if everyone is gonna disperse with Henry heading back to CA, or if Linda will move to the East Coast so she and Henry can live closer to the JDS crew and keep helping out.

(a lot of this was Boo ( @inkyvendingmachine )'s ideas originally b/c I was just like IDK THEY ALL LIVE IN A HOUSE NOW and he started seriously pondering it xD)

Anyway more specifically about Henry--

Linda is understood to be the person who's providing housing for them; she also sends some money to help out, since a lot of them can't work and she has a slightly better job than Henry -- so everyone has to be cool with Henry occasionally sending her photos of how everyone's doing and keeping her updated. For his part, Henry is also kind of recovering, and Linda knows it -- he needs this time to be Doing Something that isn't just going back home and feeling like he doesn't fit anymore with months or years of experience that now feel like a dream -- he needs this chance to help the others and ground his own experience just as much as the rest of the crew needs his help to ground them in the real world. I'm not sure Henry like.... acknowledges this as much as maybe he should, that he's in the same place and deserves to be shown as much understanding and patience as the others do. He likely gets the same flashbacks and moments of being back in the Studio as the others, in addition to the emotional weirdness of having spent so long in a loop that only he was aware of, but as always, so many of Henry's feelings are internal that it's easy for him to decide his needs are the ones that should be set aside when things are rough.

I've joked with Boo that the first rule of the JDS escape house is "Don't Worship Henry Stein," but I actually really like this as something that was probably initially a rushed instruction to Sammy upon escaping, but eventually stuck around as something that Henry really does mean for everyone -- he is just a normal person who helped, not a saviour or a therapist or even really a leader, and the pressure of having to correctly fix or save everyone and everything would be just as likely to break him as Joey Drew Studios was -- he needs the others to not push him into that position.

Still, having Henry as a guy who can mediate and make the final calls and set up ground rules... helps. Not because he's a perfect mediator, but because he's someone from outside all the horrors of JDS's decline who tangibly cares about everyone there, and the others can trust and respect him for that reason.

Anyway, as soon as everyone is Stable Enough That Henry Isn't Worried To Leave Them Alone he's absolutely looking forward to taking some time away to stay with Linda and the household will have to survive without him for a bit (and there's probably at least one sitcom episode in that), and I also like the idea of Linda eventually coming to visit once things are a little less volatile. The idea of the rest of the house trying REALLY HARD TO SET EVERYTHING UP SO HENRY CAN HAVE SOME TIME AWAY WITH HIS WIFE is really cute and good....

[as an aside, I don't think Sammy would stick to Henry most of the time. I think, as an introvert in a house crammed full of people, he'd be desperate to carve away a sanctuary that is safe and quiet and spend a lot of his time hiding from everyone. He is weirdly compliant to Henry, though; he'll complain and snark about it but he'll loyally follow any instructions Henry gives him and make an effort to please him. Henry's more likely the one who'd seek out one-on-one time with Sammy to try to figure out why his old friend seems so afraid(???) of him.]