sum: Kemp blows out the candles in three blows, puff puff puff. It's not eight, and Kristen's never been prouder. / or, the story of falling in and out love with a fellow elusive therapy patient. KristenKemp.
a/n: Happy Birthday Juana (Glittering Moonlight)! I hope that you have a happy birthday and like this fic, :) It's sort of short and there's probably an infinite amount of sp&g mistakes, so sorry about that in advance! Even though this is weirdish, I like how everything turned out; hope you do, too! I also wrote this because every fandom should have a TherapyAU, or that could just be me.
keep my issues drawn
kristen/kemp
Kristen deems herself quite fortunate that she is not easily afraid, or afraid of the dark for that matter when the power goes out, in the middle of the Valentine's Day Dance at Briarwood High School. Pervy boys are taking this opportunity to feel up French exchange girls in the dark who squawk in reply, squealing as they try to run out the blocked entrance demanding a lawsuit and Kristen just grins before hearing something.
It's a familiar sound, and not one of the more nuisance like that have reoccurred often enough during her fifteen years — ragged breathing, in and out. The breathing is coming from a close enough distance and bodies separate from each other, clinging onto random strangers as they freefall through the consuming darkness. She feels around in the general vicinity for a first aid kit, and manages to pull something that resembles the overall shape of a paper bag, and walks over until the gasps get clearer. Kristen picks it up in her hands, and places it in two rougher pair of hands which have a tight grip on the person's throat.
"It's going to be okay," Kristen lies; she's had panic attacks before, and it's not going to be easy or okay, not for a long time also known as forever. "Just breathe slowly, in and out, in and out," she chants the mantra, having heard it repeated to her in the same manner countless times.
The breathing starts to slow down and some sort of vomit ends up into the bag which Kristen immediately throws into one seems to be a garbage can, scenting herself over with a small Guilty parfum bottle, a gift courtesy of Massie, her only real friend. "Thanks," a rough voice says in a breathless manner and Kristen's aware that though the panic attacks are not quite over, the person is quite used to them, and perhaps has some experience with handling the issue. "I'm Kemp, Kemp Hurley?" Kristen has heard the name more than once, in the hallways, in the girls' locker rooms, on the badminton court, everywhere.
He's everywhere. Nevertheless, she reminds herself never to judge someone by their reputation and smiles through the darkness, glad that the light is not there for him to see her clenching her teeth, her fingers clawing into pointed collarbones. "Kristen Gregory, Captain of the Briarwood Girls' soccer team, Class President, and in the running for this year's valedictorian," she announces, feeling for the first time rather instead of smug of her accomplishments, as though she is saying them in a weird manner.
"What's a girl like you doing here?" He chuckles; Kristen drops her assumptions about not judging somebody by their reputation and resists the urge to place her blood-caked fingernails on his slimy little throat before remembering, oh, right. She's not a vampire, though it seems like something that would come handy every once in a while. "I mean," Kemp coughs and sounds a little regretful. "Did you come with anybody?"
"—'lo?" Kristen replies in a hoarse voice; nobody was going to take Little Miss Class Valedictorian, one of the guys and the girl with the extremely broad shoulders to any public event, let alone private. At least not anymore; she brushes thoughts of Dune out of her mind and smiles. "I'm weird," she stutters, immediately regretting the words but they all start spillling out as she confides in a complete stranger. "People don't tend to like me, since I'm awkward and I'm not this typical kind of person and people don't understand me — one of them did, but he's gone, and that's that."
She can hear the smile in his voice, "I like you." And, the words are honest and real and beautiful, and she feels tingles and butterflies in her stomach, and everything's just the way that it should have been; but, should she trust him and tell him everything and break down the walls, but it's wrong.
She kisses him slowly and quickly — it's sloppy and awkward, just like all first kisses are; and it's broken off quickly enough and she runs, not caring who or what she bumps into on the way out. For a moment, Kristen wants for Kemp to call her back, to say anything but all she hears is the everlasting silence.
.
It starts off with this really bad breakup — Kristen has convinced herself that it's the only normal reason to start to go to therapy, even though everybody tells her secretly that there's no normal in the world of therapy. After days and days of endless crying, her mother had signed up for therapy at this godforsaken, dingy school in the middle of nowhere in which she was forced to take three trains and two buses, each consisting of three hours in the early morning, and somehow after she stayed awake through all of that, help would be provided.
They made it sound as though she had a problem; but, she didn't. Nobody seemed to believe her, though. By the time Kristen ends up in front of the dingy building, she rings the doorbell of what seems to be an abandoned cat shelter. "Come in, dearie!" A warmhearted voice floats from a higher floor, and as she walks on, Kristen can't help but notice the ominous cobwebs that line holes in the walls, or the similarity between this woman's voice and her own grandmother.
Soon enough, Kristen comes across a woman with a large stomach and fading clothing, the quilted skirt with poetry lines, fraying at the edges — it was a look that could be pulled off by an adorable toddler, but this woman looked much past her sixties, if not her seventies. The woman directs her to a room near the top floor, at the edge of the building and Kristen realizes that this kooky woman is the director of a group therapy session; she gasps when she sees who's there. It's the boy that she kissed, Kemp Hurley; this is the first time that they're meeting face to face and throughout the session, while the woman is trying to give candy to make them speak, Kristen tries to make eye contact with Kemp, but he's just not even avoiding her, just not even glancing her way once.
In the parking lot, after the session she tries to approach him and kiss him again but he just pushes her away; he lets her into his car, with a smile. "You know, you've got to stop doing this," Kemp says with an easygoing grin, and for some reason Kristen has to remember that he's charming as hell — and he's everywhere, stuck to the back of her eyelids like a tattoo; (therapy patient : population of five) and has fucking dimples. Life just isn't fair.
She smiles back, leaning back into the leather car seat. "Doing what?" Kristen fingers the journal kept in her left pocket and remembers that she's not the only one with problems; Dr. Moon, the kooky lady, had told her that she had some obsessive compulsive disorder, but she ignores the lady, like always.
"I can only take a certain does of cute stalker girl every once in a while," he replies, but it's not with the same charm as the night before and Kristen can't help but notice that she'd rather like that boy in the dark rather the real one, the one in front of her who's quite blatantly turning her down. She takes a deep breath, and tries to control her emotions while a tear slides down her cheek, because nobody ever wants her.
Not even her own mother wanted her; she had left when Kristen was only six years old, sending the yearly gifts of scholarship subscriptions, Harvard letters, and notes of how she and Kristen's father had met. It had been in college, but she couldn't know the details for a while. That part didn't even matter though because the facts were already stated over and over again;
She's just Kristen Gregory — shallow, too smart for her own good, waste of space Kristen Gregory.
.
They meet up every once in a while.
Everything starts changing; Kristen's skipped class a few times to smoke and shop with Massie, one of those friends who was always there when you needed them because they didn't have any other friends and then she still managed to graduate at the top of her class. Kemp isn't there at the graduation ceremony; she picks up that night, at the Fitness Place, open twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, and can't help but feel afraid.
The seams in his polo are nearly ripping apart from the number of hours he's exercised but he explains everything to her in the car ride home; he can't do things that aren't in eight intervals. Then, he asks if this counts as a date and her world comes crashing down because he's been counting down to their eighth date since the moment they had kissed all those months prior.
She's not even sure if there'll be a ninth one. Later that night, Massie calls her a midnight and when she doesn't pick up her cell phone, she's immeidately deleted off contacts because then Kristen knows that the pictures of her and Kemp and the rest of the therapy session have been posted online, on the public high school website and doesn't speak to her again, at least not for a while.
Everything goes back to normal soon enough — Kristen continues spying on the next door neighbors; it's not illegal, she tells herself. It's not an obsession, it's not an obsession; "I can't have problems," she laughs to herself. "I'm Kristen Gregory. Kristen Gregory doesn't have problems." And she hopes that if she says it enough times, maybe she'll believe it.
Kemp knocks on her door, and asks her to take him to the fitness gym; she can't help but say yes. Kristen sits there, mindlessly twiddling her thumbs for the next seven hours; it's then when she wonders if she could go inside, force him to leave. He's thrown out five minutes later, under the reason of scaring the daycare children but he tells Kristen that he would have stopped anyway, because he was trying to fix himself, for her.
"We're going to do this together," she tells him, and for once, she's saying it more to herself than to him. "We're going to fix ourselves."
.
The two of them, and a whole crowd of somewhat friends are standing at the main dinner table at the Grill, and she envelopes Kemp in a tight squeeze, a bright grin spilling across both of their faces. She can't help but notice that he's already tensing up and Kristen worries constantly but this isn't the time to be thinking about facing her problems, because this isn't her day. Kemp's concentrating hard now, and he blows out the rose candles in three blows, puff puff puff.
It's not eight, and Kristen's never been prouder.
.
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