an: hello everybody, sorry if I'm a day late! I had a paragraph to rewrite for this chapter and didn't have time to do it yesterday. Anyways, here it is, and it's kind of a fill chapter regarding to the Auslly storyline, but also kind of important for Austin's "journey." I'm sorry if I've indulged a bit too much in smut in the past chapters (like someone pointed out). You should know there will be only one more NSFW chapter and it won't be coming up soon. Anyway, I hope you enjoy this one!

day twelve

Austin woke up to a pounding headache and very blurred memories of the previous night. He sat up, eyes still unable to open completely, and stretched his stiff limbs, sighing when the bones of his back cracked. He rubbed his eyes before glancing around. A single sun ray had managed to sneak past the drawn curtains and illuminated the room enough for him to see that Dez was still sound asleep in his bed. He reached for his phone on the nightstand to check the time: 7:32AM, way too early considering they'd snuck back in just four hours prior.

Austin thought about just sinking back into the pillows, but his head hurt too much and he probably wouldn't have had an easy time falling back asleep. He got up and wobbled towards the bathroom, lightly closing the door behind him. He tried to remember the clinic's policy for getting pain killers, but the only thing he was sure of was that it would involve much more effort than he could give. The easiest thing would be trying to go back to sleep until lunch, and hope the migraine would go away on its own. Therapy was scheduled for early afternoon and, since it was Saturday, he had no other commitment.

He took the plastic glass on the sink and filled it up with tap water. He emptied it in a matter of seconds, finding relief when the cold liquid hit his sore throat. He hadn't realized how thirsty he'd been, too focused on the headache. He filled the glass again, before checking out his reflection.

He looked like hell.

His eyes were swollen and red, with faint purple shadows under them. His hair was all over the place and he looked ghostly pale. The image wasn't unfamiliar, it was his typical hungover one, but he wasn't sure it was gonna go unnoticed by the facility staff. He didn't know what the consequences to sneaking out and smoking pot were, but they would probably involve a prolongation of his stay and a call to his parents, both things he dreaded immensely.

He noticed he was still wearing the tee shirt from the night before, and he also noticed that it smelled of weed and sweat. He didn't remember much from last night, aside from a general recap of what he'd done and who he'd met, together with the memories of mind-blowing sex in someone else's car. He smiled to himself.

He needed a shower.

After the fight with Dez, Austin had every intention not to talk to Patrick ever again. Unfortunately, therapy sessions were mandatory, and he was still his shrink.

He entered his studio and calmly closed the door behind him, before sitting down in his usual chair. Patrick smiled and put down his pen.

"How was lunch?" he asked, like he always did when they met in early afternoon.

Austin didn't answer.

"I had the cob salad and it was fantastic. Antoin really surpassed himself."

Austin couldn't really see what was so impressing about a salad, but still didn't respond.

"You look tired."

They finally looked into each other's eyes, and Austin had the weird feeling that Patrick knew everything about the previous night. He couldn't have, though. It was impossible.

"I didn't sleep much," he finally said, very carefully.

Turns out the shower had woken him up too much for him to be able to go back to sleep after. That, and the memories of the magazine article about Kira and Trent, mixed with flashbacks to the best, hottest sex of his life, had kept his brain too alert to slip into consciousness easily. He'd spent the rest of the morning wandering through the facility, intermittently fighting annoyance and arousal while hoping to run into Ally somewhere, without having to go knock on her door. He'd been unsuccessful, and she'd been a no-show at lunch as well.

He wasn't worried, not really. She was probably sleeping in.

"How come?"

"Dunno. Thoughts."

Austin cursed at himself. He'd been too distracted thinking about Ally to remember about his decision not to talk to Patrick ever again. Oh well, he was gonna have to choose a different approach.

"What kind of thoughts?"

He shrugged. "I don't know. Girlfriend, parents, my shrink plotting with my roommate to get me to confess to an illness I don't have," he answered casually, eyes hard.

Patrick seemed surprise, but not really guilty. He didn't say anything.

"I thought you couldn't talk about patients to other people."

Patrick shook his head. "I can't discuss what we talk about or matters of your private life, but there's no rule against encouraging two patients to open up to each other."

"That's not what happened. You told Dez to open up to me so I would do the same thing with him, just like you suggested I did with Ally! It was sneaky and backhanded!"

"Now, that seems a bit exaggerated. What's so bad about sharing your story with a friend? Dez wouldn't have told me anything you told him in confidence."

It bugged Austin how calm he was being about the whole thing. Like he really didn't see why he could possibly be mad about him and Dez conspiring at his expense.

"I have nothing to say to anyone. I'm fine!"

"Do you know how many times you've repeated that you're fine?" Patrick finally seemed a little irritated as well. "You're in rehab. You're not fine!"

"Then why don't you tell me what's wrong with me? Because I have no fucking idea," Austin spat back. "Tell me, so I can maybe finally understand why everybody keeps freaking out so much."

Patrick shook his head, back in his composed-therapist stance. "If I tell you it won't make a difference. You'll just say I'm wrong, in the same denial behavior you've showed since you've got here."

"I'm not in denial!"

"As a professional, I would disagree."

He was so damn frustrating. What did he have to do to convince him there was nothing wrong with him? He wasn't an addict, he had no need for a shrink, nor for rehab.

"Austin, if I released you right now, what would be the first thing you'd do?"

Austin frowned, took aback by the question. "I don't know..."

"Sure you do. Think about it."

"I would go meet my friends, I guess."

"For a drink?"

Austin sighed. "What would be so wrong with that? I'm sure even you have a drink with your friends, once in a while."

"Well, for starters you're still underage. But I guess that doesn't matter when you're a celebrity, does it?" his condescending tone was really irritating. "It wouldn't be just a drink, though, would it? It would be a few drinks, maybe a joint, maybe even a few pills. You would hook up with your girlfriend, wake up the next day with a headache and blurred memories, and down another glass of your favorite kind of hard liquor to make the bad feelings go away. Then you'll get back to work and it'll feel great at first, before your first meeting with the press. They're gonna ask you about rehab and you'll give them some bullshit about how you're grateful for the experience, how it helped you grow, or whatever your publicists will deem appropriate. But they won't just let it go, paparazzi will keep following you everywhere, trying to get your attention. Snap more pictures of you and your friends, your family, your girlfriend. Sooner or later the story will get out that you're still partying hard in your free time and your fans will start losing hope in you. There will be another hot teen idol to take your place, you'll start to fade into the shadows. People will stop taking you seriously and you will stop selling out. And if you don't have a drinking problem now, I assure you you will in a couple of years. You're nineteen, Austin. You have your whole future ahead of you."

Silence filled the room after Patrick stopped talking, and Austin could almost hear his own heart beating fast against his chest. He should've been totally unaffected by his words, but he wasn't. His palms were sweaty and his throat closed up. He was afraid, afraid that he might've actually been right. That maybe everything had not been fine. Maybe he was actually losing control.

He gripped the arms of the chair, teeth already digging through the inside of his cheek, biting hard enough to make himself feel pain. He could almost physically feel the struggle inside his brain between the part of him that still fiercely held on to the believe that there was nothing wrong with what he did, and the other that was starting to see what everyone was talking about.

"I don't—you can't know that," his attempt of a protest sounded pathetic even to him.

"Austin, I'm gonna stop being your therapist for a minute, alright?" said Patrick, joining his hands on the desk. He waited a few beats before his expression changed from unnaturally unperturbed to severe and strict, kinda resembling the perennial face of Mr. Carley, Austin's high school basketball coach.

"Get your head out of your ass and start to think about ways to deal with your crap, without blaming everyone else around you for it."

It lasted five seconds, just like he'd predicted. A moment later he was back to his therapist-smirk, getting way too much satisfaction in seeing his patient's shocked expression.

"You know what, I think that's all we're gonna be able to cover today. I'm gonna let you go early, with the hope you'll spend the rest of the hour thinking about what we've said today."

Austin got up robotically, nodded in Patrick's direction and headed for the door.

By the time he'd reached his room, his mind felt like an overheated computer. He rubbed his temples, trying to shake the feeling away, trying to forget everything Patrick had told him, but he couldn't. Every word was still annoyingly ringing in his ears. He threw himself on his bed and decided he would spend the rest of his afternoon sleeping. With no alcohol allowed on the premise, it was the only way he knew that would've helped him shut his brain up.

He stared at the ceiling, trying to slip into unconsciousness and finding it terribly hard to. His head kept buzzing, keeping him awake with a flood of haphazard thoughts, too many to actually make sense. He remembered how much he'd loathed the apathy he'd experienced so frequently in the time that had preceded rehab, and now he would've given anything to get back into that state.

He took his phone from his jeans pocket, turned it on and selected Trent's number from the contact list. He answered after only a few rings.

"Hey bro, I was starting to think you missed Kira more than me."

"What?" he was too confused to pick up on the sarcasm.

"You know, you've talked to her every day and I haven't heard from you since you checked yourself in!"

"Yeah, I'm sorry about that."

"You didn't happen to hear any rumors, did you?" asked Trent warily after a small pause.

Austin felt a gelid pit dropping in his stomach. Did he sound nervous? Guilty?

"What kind of rumors?"

"Just shit that's been going around about Kira and me," admitted Trent, surprising him. He'd thought he'd been a lot more vague about it. "Just tabloids hoping to sell more copies. Damn leeches."

"You can say that again."

"Yeah, anyway... to what do I owe the pleasure of hearing your angel voice?" he laughed, Austin did too, though the reference to the cheating rumors kept bugging him.

"Oh I was just—I don't know. Do you think I actually need to be here?"

"In rehab? To be honest, man, no more than I do." Austin blinked. He didn't know what to think about that. "Though I've never threatened to kill a poor son of a bitch in front of witnesses," Trent added after only a few seconds.

"Shit, why does everybody keep making a big deal about that? It's not like he's ever actually going to sue, he just wants some publicity for himself."

"Yeah, but it is kinda making you look like an asshole. Maybe you should reconsider what your publicists said about an apology."

Austin groaned. "Whatever, I'll think about it once I get out of here."

"Is everything okay, bro? You sound a bit whiney."

"My shrink told me to get my head out of my ass today."

"Charming."

"Yeah, but it still made me wonder if maybe my parents have a point. Maybe I do have issues I need to address."

"Now you're talking crazy, dude. There's nothing wrong with you, it's the biz that's messed up. You're just having fun! Don't let those shits make you think you're crazy for living the life most teenagers live."

Austin didn't answer. He agreed on a superficial level, but part of him still felt uneasy about the whole thing.

"Tell you what, I'll come visit you next week. I'll talk Kira into coming as well, it's gonna be a blast. Who do I talk to for permission?"

"Doctor Hale. Try to sell it to him as though you're actually supporting my treatment, though. They'll never let you in otherwise," he warned. Then he thought about it for a few seconds. "Actually, you should probably have Kira call."

"Sure will. Alright bro, I gotta go. I'll see you next week."

"Can't wait."

Austin put down the phone, not quite sure if his last sentence had been sarcastic or not.

an: Next update is on Friday, review in the meantime if you'd like!