This was obviously breaking patient-doctor roles and guidelines, Claire thought as she found Trevor lying on her couch when she woke up that morning. She wrapped her robe tighter, "What-- what are you doing here? How did you get in?"
"So many questions, so early in the morning. What is this-- the Spanish Inquisition?" Trevor placed his finger in the stack of papers he was reading and sat up. "I have it on good authority by the way that the Spanish Inquisition was really only started by priests who were a bit too into BDSM. I guess they forgot the safeword."
Claire didn't even bat an eye, that would have only given him encouragement to go on with that train of thought. Instead, she pushed his feet off her mahogany coffee table and wondered if other shrinks had patients this completely mental.
Then she noticed what he was reading and her face fell. "Oh.. Trevor. You weren't supposed to--"
"Wasn't supposed to what? Find out that you wrote a whole book on me? Figure out that I'm being studied just for some psychological essay to get the great Dr. Allen into the tightly wound Freudian circles she so desperately wants to hang out in?"
She immediately grabbed for the papers, knowing it was far too late to do anything about this situation. He'd found out. He'd read practically the whole thing by the look of it. He pulled the pages back, creating a tug of war until both their hands slipped and the papers went flying up in a great big snowfall.
Claire sighed. "Real mature."
"Kinda like it's so mature to write me a whole ode and not even come to my temple to perform it for me naked." Trevor sat back down on the couch and starred up at her. "Don't I have a say in what goes into your masterpiece? Or am I just the insect being slowly scrutinized under your microscope."
She sighed again, this time for the hurt she'd caused him. "I'm sorry, Trevor. I was going to change all the names and identification information before I published it."
"I don't care that you wrote it, Claire. People have been writing about my family as far back as Homer, and he was as lousy a poet as they come. And he had a horrible voice when he was orating, it sounded a little like a dying duck caught in a vacuum." He started screeching in his impression of Homer, "Sing, Goddess, Achilles' rage, black and murderous, that cost the Greeks incalculable pain, pitched countless souls of heroes into Hades' dark--"
"Trevor, Trevor stop." Claire put her hands to her ears, blocking out the newly formed headache as best she could. "Is this punishment? Is listening to you punishment for writing this because if so I'm sorry and please shut up."
Trevor stopped immediately, with a huge impish grin on his face. "Like I said, Claire, I don't care about the book. I just think you're missing some key details that could make it really shine like Shakespeare. If there's going to be a masterpiece written about me, after all, it should be a bestseller at the very least. And at most, people should be forcing kids to read it in schools and calling it a classic for as long as civilization continues."
"Delusions of grandeur." Claire nodded and pretended to make a note to herself. "Anything else I should put in my book." She emphasized the word 'my', that's how she thought of it even now when he was pressuring her to add him as a ghostwriter.
"You could add in more about my nice abs and cute butt."
"What?!" She shook her head, and then waved that thought away. "Oh, yeah, Trevor. I'll make sure that's in paragraph number one of the first chapter, right up there with all the important facts of the case."
"And that's another thing," He crossed his arms. "Stop referring to this situation as 'the case of the delusional Trevor Hale'. You're sitting in the presence of a god, you've gotta stop arguing the 'he's only a sad psychologically disturbed human' angle if this is ever going to sell."
"Right? And should I just turn in my psychologist license now or wait until they lock me up for taking part in this mass hallucination?"
"It didn't stop Homer."
"Homer lived in a time when people actually believed that Gods came down from Mount Olympus and mingled with the humans." She narrowed her eyes. "They also believed the sun was swallowed during eclipsed, and oh, yeah, their lifespan was an average thirty years."
He shrugged. "Can't win them all. But at least he had the guts to write down what he really felt and what he believed, instead of having his profession dictate it to him like a little trained monkey. Care for a banana, Claire?"
She balled up her fists. "What? You don't think I wrote down what I truly believe in here? You think I'm hiding some great big revelation from the audience?"
"I think you have your doubts as to who I am and what I am and you won't even acknowledge them because you're afraid of the damage it would do to your career." He shot back. They sat there as the words sank in and she tried to find a way to respond.
"I--" She stuttered. "Well, I.."
"Tell me you don't have one kernel of doubt in that head of yours, Claire. Tell me that all the knowledge and education they tried to chase the faith out with is still there. Tell me that you are at least one-percent certain that I might be who I say I am."
"I-- I can't do that." It was a lie, and they both knew it. She wouldn't let him get the upper hand though, and couldn't let her colleagues down by submitting to the ideas of someone who had been locked up for being non compos mentis before.
"If that's how you feel, Claire." He nodded slowly, almost defeated but still strong. He headed for the door, turning around only once with a hint of a smile on his lips. "But if you ever want to get your head out of your books long enough to see what's really around you, let me know. I'll give you the whole exclusive story."
The door closed behind him, but the bait was already set and they both knew she would go for it.
-The End-
