Title: Insanity And Its Quirks
Full Descript: Matt Rutherford has checked in to a mental hospital specifically for treating teenage mental illnesses. He's clinically depressed-who isn't? But the pamphlets never said anything about making friends, roommates with secrets, thrilling riots, schizophrenic dancers, and maybe even a love interest.
A/N: Remember, this is an AU. Here, Ms. Pillsbury was never involved in school counseling, just became a psychologist. Glee club never existed, and the kids never met, or even went to the same school. Also, don't expect every chapter to be this long! I was surprised how long this actually turned out. Well ,enjoy.
According to his files, Matt Rutherford is clinically depressed. It's an idiotic term, he thinks. What does 'clinically' even mean in this context. He may be sad at some times, but never depressed. He just sometimes gets really down, and the world starts to sink, and he can't even manage to crawl out of bed-
Yeah, he's depressed.
His current therapist, Mrs.'Call Me Emma' Pillsbury recommended to his mother that he should be going to the Ohio Youth Mental Hospital. The name sounds like it's a freaking YMCA.
Another thing about Matt is that he has a sense of humor. At least, he thinks so. It's what's keeping him from collapsing into a nervous breakdown as he enters the front doors of the asylum-ahem, hospital. The walls are much too clean. You could see your reflection in the floor. The plants are all fake, and the receptionist so much as bites your head off if you do more then breathe loudly. After a few tearful goodbye hugs from his mother, Matt was taken into his first private therapy session with a doctor, which was the 'initiation' of sorts. Everyone had to have this session before he could meet his new roommate and go to group therapy.
He was ushered into a claustrophobically small room, and the walls were a ill beige color. The doctor twitches his mustache, and speaks in short sentences.
"You're Matt," Doc says, eyes sweeping over him.
"So they tell me," he says jokingly. The doctor is unamused. Crap, if his therapist doesn't have a sense of humor, then he was doomed.
"Why are you here, Matt?" he asks. Ah, the typical question. Like the don't already know.
"Apparently I'm clinically depressed," Matt says.
"Are you?"
"I guess."
"You guess? So you're not sure?" Man, this guy is a douche. Thereby earning the name Dr. Douche from now on.
"I'm clinically depressed," Matt says confidentially. Dr. Douche nods, and continues to ask inane questions, like "What do you dream about?" and "Do you have many friends?"
Then he's shown his new room. It has two beds, and one window. With bars on it. Like a prison. It makes him feel even more nervous, stomach sinking down to the floor. They present him with his backpack.
"Here's your stuff. To comply with hospital rules, some items have been removed," one of the nurses says.
"Like what?" he asks, digging through his bag.
"Your cell phone, your iPod, and various belts and watches that have sharp attachments that may be harmful."
This was going from worse to horrendous. Without his iPod, he would probably become even more depressed. His breathing gets heavier, and he clutches a bed post.
"Your roommate will be coming back to lunch in ten minutes. Get settled," the nurse continues, oblivious to Matt's panic attack. She leaves, closing the door behind her. He notices with chagrin that there's no lock on the door. Speaking of doors, there's no door to the bathroom. It's just an archway. Meaning he was going to have to pee without a door. How bad can this place get? He shuffles into the bathroom and splashes water on his face, trying to calm himself down. He looks at himself in the mirror, seeing if he's really there. A stubble is growing on his chin, and he has some food in his teeth, but other than that, he's fine. Perfectly fine.
In a physical sense, of course.
Emotionally, he was freaking out. He was going to be living here forever, until he gets un-depressed. He wanted to scream and run, but he locked his jaw firmly in place. He will not be a disappointment to his mother. He will get better.
Right?
"Hello, anyone here?" a voice asks, opening the door with a knock.
"Uh...me?" he says tentatively.
"Who's me?" the voice asks, coming into the bathroom. "Oh," it says. A boy is in the doorway. His hair is a mop of wild curls, but short. His eyebrows are kind of thick, but Matt is really paying attention to the 100-watt smile that he's flashing. The boy sticks out a hand to shake. "Hi, I'm Blaine. You must be the new roommate."
"I'm Matt. At least, that's what they tell me," he says, shaking the hand. Blaine laughs, and Matt relaxes a bit. Thankfully someone isn't so uptight in this place.
"Welcome to the Youth Asylum," Blaine says. "That's what we all call it here. Or just the Asylum, for short."
"Cool, I guess," Matt says. He sticks his hands in his pocket.
"Sit," Blaine says, gesturing to the beds. Matt slowly sits indian style on top of the covers. He begins to take off his shoes, but stops when Blaine visibly flinches.
"Uh, can you not take off your shoes?" Blaine asks. "I have a phobia." He gives an awkward laugh.
"Sure." Matt shrugs, and puts them back on. "Is that why you're here?"
"For a foot phobia? As if." Blaine laughs some more. Matt wants to ask why he is there then, but he figures it would be too nosy, him knowing this Blaine guy for about two minutes. "Ready for group therapy?" he asks.
"What's group therapy?" Matt asks.
"It's where all of the teens, there's about 20 or so of us, sit in a circle and talk about our feelings," he explains.
"Sounds kind of..." Matt searched for the right words.
"Lame?" Blaine offers. "Totally. But as long as you don't cuss or throw any chairs, you get points."
Matt's eyes widen at that. "People throw chairs?"
"Not all the time. But there's this chick named Santana, and her 'talks' get pretty violent."
"Wow."
"Yep. But it's not all bad. About once a week, we have something called 'song therapy', where we all get together and sing. It helps us relax or something."
"Could we dance?" Matt asks, perking up.
"Sure. Just as long as we don't touch each other," he says. When Matt raises an eyebrow, Blaine elaborates. "There are a lot of rules here. But one of the main ones is that no one is allowed to touch eachother. Not even accidentally. If you do, you lose major points and get a 'detention'."
"What are points?" Matt asks. This is all getting seriously confusing.
"All in good time," Blaine says, and starts to get up. "But right now, it's group therapy time."
The group therapy room is actually quite big, despite the other rooms in this place. It consists of a circle of bright blue plastic chairs, and a lot of motivational posters on the wall. Apparently, there's different levels in this hospital. Young children, pre-teens, and teenagers. Matt's a teenager, obviously, and he can only have therapy sessions and interact with other teenagers. He'd rather play with a seven year old psycho then a seventeen year old babbling brook, but here we are. Other people shuffle in, and take a seat randomly.
There's a kid with a mohawk who looks thoroughly terrifying, a blonde girl who looks very lost, and an asian kid who can't seem to keep still. There are varying degrees of other kids, but it would take a month to list them all and their odd quirks. Besides, the therapist comes in to start. She's fairly young, and has a bouncing brown ponytail and kind glasses. She calls herself Dr. Kale.
"Welcome everyone," she says, looking around the room. "Today we have a new member, Matt Rutherford." People nod and say hello, but are mostly bored with Matt. "Matt, can you introduce yourself for me?"
Matt grudgingly stands up, clearing his throat. "I'm Matt. I'm sixteen." He begins to sit back down, but the therapist stops him.
"Why are you here, Matt?" she asks.
"Well, I, uh," he starts, stuttering uncontrollably. Several people snicker, and Dr. Kale shush them. She gives me an encouraging smile, and her teeth are sparkling bright. "I'm here because I'm depressed and stuff. But I dance and I like music. I think I just started to get really bummed out at one point, and it started to consume me, and eventually..." All of the emotions that have started to build up in the past few months are threatening to spill, and Matt quickly sits back down before he could start crying or something. Thankfully, no one seemed to notice his little freak-out. He tries to swallow the huge lump in his throat, but he ends up coughing. Really loudly.
"Very good, Matt. Now, who can explain the first thing we do here in Group Therapy?" she asks, looking around the circle. A girl in a thick animal sweater and long socks eagerly raises her hand. Dr. Kale calls on her.
"We start with I Like, I Dislike, where we say something that we liked today, and something we didn't like," she says promptly, then smiles. She has perfect teeth, too. Maybe they all have the same dentist.
"Good job, Rachel," Dr. Kale says. "Would you like to start?"
"Certainly," Rachel says, beaming. "I liked the kosher meal that was served in the cafeteria today. I didn't like my roommate calling me a condescending bitch. It was rude."
"I only called you a condescending bitch because you are one, you bitch," A Latino girl pipes up.
"Santana, no interrupting," Dr. Kale says. So this is Santana, the chair-thrower. "Why don't you go next?" she asks Santana.
"Fine," Santana says, pursing her lips. "I like how hot Puck's muscles looked today," she says, glancing at the mohawk boy. That earns some wolf-whistles from the group. Dr. Kale shushes them again.
"Santana, we don't approve of any sexual remarks in this area," Dr. Kale scolds.
"Yeah, yeah. I know. Anyways, I dislike any words that comes from Rachel's mouth."
"Funny coming from you, Santana!" Rachel says. "There's isn't anything that hasn't been in your mouth." That pulls up a round of 'oooo's from everyone. Including Matt. For therapy, this is becoming extremely entertaining.
"Damn, things are getting rough!" a black girl says. A fellow black person. Maybe he could high-five her.
"Girls, girls!" Dr. Kale says. "Calm down!" Both girls scoffed and looked away. Dr. Kale takes a heaving breath. "Who's next!"
"I like that there's another black person up in here," the black girl pipes up. "I dislike that he's depressed, though." Matt smiles for a second, before Blaine elbows him. Hard.
"What was that for?" Matt asks in a low whisper.
"I'll tell you later," Blaine mouths.
"I like Mercedes's outfit today," a boy says, pointing at the black girl's outfit. He's wearing a scarf and some fancy shoes. His hair is so perfectly combed it might be fake. "I dislike the new kid's shoes, though."
Matt looks down at his shoes. He doesn't see anything wrong with them, just dirty sneakers.
"I like that there's another dancer here," the Asian kid says. "I disliked getting up early this morning."
"Mike, that's your dislike every day," a boy with Bieber blonde hair says.
Mike shrugs. "It's a viable complaint. Getting up at 6am is a school thing. Not a mental hospital thing."
Matt wonders if Dr. Kale is going to say something about these insults and complaints. But she just writes stuff down. Wonder what she's writing.
"I like the sky today," a blonde girl says, twirling her ponytail. "I dislike the voices telling me to burn things." Matt raises an eyebrow at Blaine, but he just shakes his head. Later he mouths. This is going to be one hell of an explanation later.
"I like the grub at lunch," a wheelchair boy says. "I disliked running into a wall this morning."
"I like Jesus," another blonde says. "I dislike cursing."
"I find that offending, Quinn," Rachel says.
"God is not offending!" The girl, Quinn, protests.
"I like Artie's glasses today!" an Asian girl interrupts, trying to keep everything on track. "I dislike the sweater vest, though." She smiles at the wheelchair kid.
"Thank you, Tina?" Artie says.
"Points for saying thank you, Artie," Dr. Kale says. "Okay, let's get into partnerships! Pick someone, and not your roommate!"
Matt looks over to Blaine anxiously, who shrugs apologetically. His eyes sweep over the potential partners. Luckily (or unluckily, however you see it) the girl Santana swings her chair around in front of him, and sits cross-legged.
"Hey, New Kid," she says, smirking. Crap on a kebab, this girl is scary; she crosses her arms and purses her lips, eyes glaring in tight line.
"Hi. It's Matt, actually." Matt stares at his hands, suddenly fascinated at every little detail. "So, what do we do?"
"Well, since it's your first time, we talk about how we got here in the Asylum."
"Uh...you first," Matt says.
"Fine." Santana studies her nails and starts to sound bored as she talks. "I was a prostitute ever since I dropped out of high school. My ma had no idea, she just thought I was going to school then sleeping over at friend's houses. I wasn't one of those fishnet girls on street corners, though."
"Then what were you?" Matt asks. Did he even want to know?
"I was a club 'escort'. I got fake I.D, and scoped out on the bars. My boss would refer people to wherever I was if they needed my services." she grins like the Cheshire Cat when she says "services" it sends shivers crawling down his spine, and he licks his lips nervously. "Apparently, my job skills got so famous that I was wanted more and more. I would do anything, and people liked that. I even got a few chicks in there. Chicks pay double, and I eventually got enough saved up to buy more expensive shit. It was fucking great, until an undercover cop caught me, and I was arrested for underage prostitution. The judge decided that I was doing this because daddy was an abuser, and I had serious emotional scars. Not true, I just liked the sex." She gives me a huge wink, and Matt clutches the chair a bit tighter. "So they sent me here."
"Uh..." What the hell was he supposed to say to that?
"Five minutes up! Switch partners!" Dr. Kale says, breaking the conversation. Bless her. Matt sighs a breath of relief, and Santana blows a kiss to him before walking away. Oh, shit.
"Kurt Hummel," one boy says, and sits in Santana's previous chair. "What did Santana say to you to scar you for life?"
"She told me about being a prostitute," Matt says. Kurt bursts out laughing, slapping his knee and holding his chest. After a few seconds, he wipes his eyes and takes a deep breath.
"That's an original one!" Kurt says. "She told me she was a thief who became rich until her mom found all of the money."
Matt stares at him blankly, completely lost.
"She's a compulsive liar," Kurt explains. "That story she told you was completely false. She just likes to mess with the new kids."
"So when she told that girl Rachel all of that mean stuff, she didn't mean it?" Matt asks.
"No, that's all true. Rachel is a real pain in the ass."
"Oh."
"Here, want me to give you the run-down on all of the kids here?" he asks.
"Sure, I guess."
"Well, here's what I know." he points at the wheelchair kid Artie. "That guy is from Arizona. He got in a car accident a few years ago, mom died, and he freaked out. Started screaming. All of the time. His dad got worried, and sent him here.
"The kid with the Bieber kid is Sam Evans. He used to be really insecure because kids made fun of him in elementary school. He tried to be really cool, and go with all of the trends. He went from girl to girl, trying to feel good about himself, but they all cheated on him. I'm convinced he's gay." Kurt points over to Mike. "That's Mike Chang. He's one of the best dancers here, along with the girl Brittany. I don't know much about him, only that his Dad was not cool with his dancing. I think he tried to kill someone." Matt gapes at the seemingly goofy looking kid, then his eyes shift back to Kurt.
"And you?"
Kurt waves the question away. "Boring, really. I was bullied severely, and eventually got seriously injured. Was in rehab for several weeks, then was sent here."
"Why were you bullied?" he asks.
Kurt visibly flinches at the question, and inhales sharply. "Oh, nothing. Just Neanderthal idiocy, and the fear of non conformity, that's all."
"Oh." There's a feeling that Kurt's not telling Matt everything, but he quickly disregards it. It's none of his business, after all.
"Okay, that's all the time we have today!" Dr. Kale says. "Dismissed to the free room."
Everyone stacks the chairs, and Matt follows. Blaine approaches him, a friendly smile on his face.
"How was it?" he asks.
"Well, let's just say you have a lot of explaining to do."
A/N: Anyone have a vote on who they would want Matt's love interest to be in the Asylum? It could be a boy or girl, tell me your preference!