A/N: This chapter's been stuck for awhile, but I need to make a few thank you's before I let you guys read it.
Joanne: Thank you so much for all your Roger-input and help and encouragement and ego-boosting. This chapter would be a blank page without your help.
Leah: Thanks for tolerating my endless babble and neurotic whining, and also for the Roger characterization help.
Andy: For all your help on Session Four, and just your dedication to reading this never-ending fic of doom.
All the readers of The Whole of the Moon: I know I don't update as often as I should, but thanks to anyone who checked out Sessions because of TWOTM.
All the readers of Sessions: Thanks for reviewing and not slamming me, even though I'm sure some of you want to. Sham on and keep reading. I've got one more to go. And now...Session Nine.
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Session Nine
Standing in the elevator, I idly glance over at Roger. His once-blonde hair is now in a state of perpetual brown. Eyes that are a much darker blue than my own search around. I'm assuming for an escape. He doesn't want to be here. Maybe more so than I do. His hands are shoved in the pockets of his too-comfortable jeans and he leans back against the wall. Turning to me, he breaks the silence.
"So what does this shrink want?" His gruff voice asks. I turn to him as well, my own worn t-shirt pulling as I do so.
"She's not a shrink, she's a therapist. And I don't know what she wants. I barely know what she wants from me..." My voice is childish in comparison to his.
"So what am I supposed to do?" He asks, sounding almost accusatory.
"I don't know, Roger...just answer her questions, alright?"
The elevator doors slide open and I watch as Roger slides out with some form of wariness. I follow him and we make it past the desk and into Dr. Lopez's office without incident. She's already sitting there, waiting for us. Waiting for this all to explode. For some reason I feel like the weeks I've spent here have been culminating to this one moment. This has been leading up to this. Something here is going to happen. I don't know what. Maybe I'm going crazy...or crazier and this is nothing. Just another session. Just one more towards the end.
"Hello..." Dr. Lopez says looking over Roger like he's an alien from another planet, but then finally settling back and extending her hand. He shakes it, looking at her in the exact same way. I sit down in my usual seat, leather creaking as it fits my form.
"Hey..." Roger mutters, taking a seat beside me.
"You're Roger, I assume." I wince, expecting a sarcastic comment from him.
"Who else would I be, do I look like Emma?" Bingo. Dr. Lopez raises an eyebrow and makes a few notes.
"Well...how about you tell me about Mark."
I narrow my eyes at her. "Say what?"
"I want to hear how you are at home from someone other than you."
Roger squints a little and shrugs his shoulders. "I don't know, he sits around the house, does some camera crap, watches TV. Goes to the bathroom...whatever..."
"Does he leave the house a lot?" She asks. I squirm in my seat.
"Beats me. I mean, he's usually around when I am, locked in his room, tinkering with his piece of shit camera." Roger shifts as well, beaten boots sliding around on the untainted carpet. I still feel awkward and weird and not right.
"Does Mark pick fights with you, Roger?"
"Oh come on!" I find myself squeaking out in protest. That question was unfair, and Dr. Lopez knows it.
"All the fucking time. But I mean, that's just Mark."
"I don't pick fights with you, Roger, if anything, you do some big attention-starved action and make me want to rip your eyes out."
"Roger..." Dr. Lopez interrupts, flipping through her notebooks. "If there's anything I've learned about Mark..." She looks over at me, avoiding having to talk about me, and deciding rather to talk to me. "It's that you don't like to fight. At all, actually, your reactions to Cindy, your reactions to Emma. It seemed both times that you were just struggling to look the other way, to not react. Do you agree?"
On the spot. Answer. Say something. "I--I don't know, I mean...come on, when you have things like that thrown at you, what would you do?"
"Well, I'm sure someone who tries to turn the other cheek when confronted wouldn't be one to instigate a confrontation."
Roger sits up a little and I feel myself freeze. This can't be good.
"What the hell do you think you're talking about?" He asks Dr. Lopez. I cringe and do my best to sink into my seat.
"Excuse me?" She stutters, adjusting her glasses.
"How long have you known Mark...no, how long have you seen him, maybe once a week for two months? And you think you know him? You think you can tell me, his roommate, who has lived with him for five fucking years that I don't know what I'm talking about?" Roger fumes.
"Watch your language, please." She warns. Funny, she's never told me to watch my language.
"No! I will not watch my fucking language, I'm not your fucking patient!" Whoa. Score one for Trash Mouth over there. I actually find myself slightly entertained by watching them. "And Mark shouldn't be either!"
"What makes you say that?" She asks, calm, cool...annoyingly collected.
"Because...you come in here, and think you know him just because he's told you a few secrets! Just because you ask him some questions about his childhood doesn't mean jack shit! You know nothing when it comes to Mark. Nothing."
"How do you know the things we've talked about, Roger?" She asks, scribbling down some notes. Roger stands, and I scoot back in my chair.
"Will you quit taking those goddamned notes? You're not here to analyze me!"
"Roger..." I warn. This has gone on just a minute too long.
"No." He snaps. I back off, as trained. He barrels on like a speeding 18-wheeler on the wrong side of the highway. "I know what you guys talk about in here, I know the stupid questions you ask him, I know how you brought Emma and Cindy in here, and just let them go. I know that, because guess what? Mark tells me things because he wants to. Not because I make him, and not because he has to. You've got him all fucking wrong! You think he comes in here and shows himself to you in full? You think he's being completely truthful? Cause he's not. I can guarantee it. I know Mark a hell of a lot better than you do..."
"I'm not disputing that, I..."
"No. No, but you're trying to pin his problems on me..."
"Roger, this isn't about you..." I chime in. He looks down at me with almost a glare. Just enough to set me on the wrong side of comfortable.
"You're right, this isn't about me. But when you come home and tell me that you two did nothing but chat about how fucked up I am in comparison with the rest of your life, what am I supposed to think?"
"Roger..." Dr. Lopez speaks up and he whirls back to look at her. "What I'm seeing here...is that you need Mark, correct? You need him to survive, you depend on him, and you value him, and he's someone that you connect with. And you're afraid that by coming here, Mark is going to learn that you may need him, but he doesn't need you. And then all the insecurities that keep Mark tied to you are going to be cured, and you're going to be left in the cold."
"This isn't about me!" He shouts again. "Look, lady, you can sit here all the fucking live long day trying to figure out how I factor into Mark's little problem sphere or whatever the hell you call it. But what you don't know about Mark and me for that matter, I could just about squeeze into the Grand Canyon. So do us all a favor and drop the whole charity act. You're not doing shit by sitting here and trying to place blame."
"Roger, for Christ's sake, she's just trying to help!" I manage to finally raise my voice above a squeak.
"My ass she's trying to help!" He slings back, and I roll my eyes. "Don't you see, Mark? This is a waste of your time! This whole thing is a waste of your time!"
"How!?" I shout back. "How is this a waste of my time, what better things should I be doing? How is this not helping!?"
"Because! You're not crazy, Mark! Therapy is for people who can't talk to anyone else! You can talk to me, you can talk to Joanne, and Jesus, as much as I can't stand listening to her, you can talk to Emma! If you didn't spend so much time getting wrapped up in other people's problems, and actually decided to worry about yourself once or twice a week, maybe you wouldn't freak out and break a fucking window! You wouldn't need to come here if you just stopped being so damn generous! Be selfish for once in your life, it won't kill you!"
"Dammit, Roger, you don't understand, you never understand! Coming here and talking to someone who forgets about it as soon as I leave the room is so much easier than telling you, or Joanne, or Collins, or Emma! I like being able to bitch to Dr. Lopez and not have to make explanations, or justify anything, or over explain. I like knowing that as soon as she leaves this building, she could care less about my problems!" Realization hits me. All of that is true.
"Jesus, Mark, get a fucking diary then!" He shouts. He seems offended, shocked that I'd rather tell my problems to a stranger with a degree than to him.
"Roger...come on..." I sigh. I suddenly feel a headache coming on.
"No...I put up with so much shit from you, Mark, the yelling, the criticism, the..."
Snap. Something clicks and I let go.
"Oh, well excuse me Mother Theresa! You put up with my shit? Yeah, well it's a two way street! I put up with the drug use, I walked you through withdrawal, I pushed you to come out of your shell after April died, I put up with being ignored for Mimi! I let you walk all over me for a year, and I didn't act like a martyr for it! So don't come to me and tell me you deal with my shit, because you don't deal with it. You let it happen and you turn the other way!"
He pauses. There's a silence. Doctor Lopez is watching like a hawk.
"I turn the other way? Is that what you think?"
"It's not what I think, Roger, it's what you do! Just because we live in the same apartment and talk, doesn't mean you deal with my shit!" God, I can't stop, I can't stop letting this all out.
"That's right, because it's your shit! I shouldn't have to deal with your shit!"
"Yeah, and I shouldn't have had to take care of you while you could barely walk because you were so fucking high! I shouldn't have had to clean up needles while you were using, or...or spend every night in your room while you were in withdrawal, but I did!"
"No one asked you to save me, Mark! What, do I have a neon sign on my head that says 'I need help'?"
"I wasn't going to let you die!" I blurt. "But I dealt with your shit. Don't ever tell me I didn't. Maybe I didn't have to, whatever. The point is I did. I dealt with every second of it. I wasted a year of my life dealing with your shit, and I'm sorry if I come off as attention-starved when I ask you to deal with mine. You tell me you want me to worry about myself? To stop solving other people's problems? Well here it is, Roger. I'm done saving you. I'm done fixing you. It's my turn to worry about me. You're saying that I can come to you with my problems, fine. I will. You'll hear anything I feel the need to spill from now on, and you can choose to deal with it, hell, all I want is for you to listen without making it about you. You can take that as you want."
There's another pause from Roger and Dr. Lopez. I feel like I have nothing more to say. I've just managed to pretty much deal out my problems with Roger in one concise and only slightly scarring argument. Now, if I can escape this without a bruise or an even more broken ego, I'll consider this a successful venture.
"I wish you'd do this more often, you know. If you did, you wouldn't putting your hand through windows." Roger manages to speak up softly. Where is that voice coming from? That's his Mimi voice, I've never heard him use that voice in reference to me. I look up at him and shrug.
"Yeah, well maybe if I went to therapy more than ten times, I'd be able to do this more often. You know, the whole talking to you thing that I'm not so good at." I mutter, scratching at the back of my neck."
Silence. It unnerves me. It always has. I clear my throat and speak up again.
"You think this is a waste of time, Roger, but it's not. I mean...so I haven't spoken to Cindy since she was here, but maybe that's for the better. Maybe she needs time to work through her own issues with me. And maybe Emma does too. Maybe I needed to think about the same things. How I need to adjust myself to deal with them. You think therapy is a waste of time and money. Maybe it would be for you, I agree. You think it's for prissed-out, stuck-up rich boys who have issues with their mothers...okay, I can understand that. But for me...I guess it's kind of working. At least, these sessions have been. So, don't tell me that this is a waste of my time, okay? Cause...I don't know. It's worthwhile to me. Don't you think so?"
Roger's shoulders slump a little and he cocks his head to the left. "I guess. I mean...you haven't freaked out about groceries or anything lately." He sighs, one of those long, heavy, conceding Roger sighs, and shoves his hands in his pockets. "Yeah. I guess it's your thing Mark. I guess it's something you need to do."
I nod. Dr. Lopez sits up in her seat. Roger shuffles around aimlessly.
"Time's up, Mark..." She almost whispers. I stand and nod.
"Yeah...I'll see you next week."
