"And how many times has he shown up in one of your dreams?" asks Dr. Thayer.
"Oh, uh, let's see, four, I think?" It's hard to imagine that it's been so few times, that more of his dreams haven't included the space soldier with the cold green but bloodshot angry eyes and short red hair covered neatly by a little cap. He knows these details because nearly every moment of his waking life has been spent replaying those four dreams over and over in his head. It's good that Ben's shrink takes emergency appointments.
"And how often would you say that he comes into your head during the day, when you're awake?"
Ben laughs nervously. "Um, that's actually why I called. See, I keep having things happen and I'll think, "Hux would like that," or "that would really piss Hux off." It scared him when he realized he'd done that, which is why he's sitting in Dr. Thayer's office alternating between looking at her, the little bookshelf of psychology books with titles like The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma and The Upside of Your Darkside, and the little white noise machine that chugs away in the corner providing privacy when a patient cries.
"What kind of things piss Hux off?" she asks as though it's perfectly natural to inquire about the pet peeves of imaginary dream people.
He can't help but smile, not that she's asking, but at the memories that flit across his head. "Everything pisses him off. A change to his schedule, things not having a back up plan, just like a bunch of things. Even the way that I talk to him."
She nods. "It seems that you enjoy making him angry?"
Usually when Ben is his nightmare alter ego, all he can feel is pure rage, grief, isolation, things like that. This is the first time that Kylo Ren has ever felt, well "tickled" by something. And he feels tickled by this Hux guy. The guy just tries so hard to keep everything operating a certain way and then Ben comes along and messes that up. He tries to be stoic and not react to Ben's childishness, but he keeps getting drawn in anyway, and Ben loves it. "Well, dream me does. I…" he hesitates here, because this is embarrassing to admit even to a shrink, whose job it is to talk down nut jobs like himself. "I think that dream me has a kind of crush on him. Like, I think I'm pissing him off on purpose cause I like him." It was flirting, but like, grade school I-knocked-your-books-down-cause-I-think-you're-cute flirting. Why would a badass space warlord need to get a guy's attention like that? Well, that's because Ben isn't actually a badass space warlord. He's a regular dude who can't handle any grownup situation the proper way because he's emotionally stunted by the dreaded "daddy issues." He begins to wonders if maybe Kylo Ren has daddy issues too, but is interrupted by Dr. Thayer's next question.
"Is homosexual attraction an expected response for you?" she asks, clinically.
"Oh," Ben smiles. "Yeah. I guess I've never talked about, like, my love life with you."
Dr. Thayer is young, probably younger than him. She always has her hair in some form of braid, usually up. It always looks picture perfect, like the chicks on the covers of bridal magazines. He's lucky if he runs a comb through his before coming here. It's the way it should be, probably, her being all professional and putting time into her looks, and him performing the smell test on one of his shirts before throwing it on. She works for him, after all, not the other way around, but he does try and please her because, well, daddy issues .
"You haven't much," she corrects. "During your initial intake, I believe you mentioned an ex named Daisy? And more recently, you got asked to dinner by a work client?"
"Oh, Daisy isn't an ex-girlfriend. She's an ex-friend. When I first moved out here from California, she was one of my coworkers in the bar I worked at. She was more trouble than it was worth." He laughs at his own description. "That's probably why you thought she was an ex-girlfriend. God knows she was as much upkeep as one."
Dr. Thayer nods. "Gotchya! My mistake. Well, back to this Hux. Does he remind you of anyone in your waking life?"
One of the things that he'd liked upon initially seeing this shrink is that she uses phrases like "waking life" rather than "real life." She says that she doesn't believe that what people experience when they're asleep should be written off as unreal, because for a time, for them, they are. She's also able to write prescriptions, which is nice, because he now has a bottle of "only in emergencies" sedatives. It's a small, non-lethal sized bottle, which she probably doesn't think that he's noticed. He'd almost said something to that effect, but there's not really a good way to tell someone you aren't suicidal without them immediately assuming that you're lying since you brought it up.
"No, I've never met anyone that even looks like him let alone acts like him. He's got a space stick shoved so far up his ass, I'm surprised it doesn't come out of the top of his head." God, he'd love to be able to say that to Hux. It's too bad that when he's asleep, he isn't really him. That doesn't strike him as something that Kylo Ren would say. Maybe he would, but he'd probably say it more eloquently than Ben could. Kylo Ren chooses his words much more carefully because he doesn't talk as much. Perhaps if Ben began to wear a mask, he would start feeling less like the blabbering dork he is. "It would be fun to tell him that."
"Your dynamic sounds a bit antagonistic."
Ben nods.
"Do you think that could be because of some traits that you do or don't share?"
In any other situation, he would just say "Maybe" but this is therapy, where you're supposed to look inward. It's hard for Ben to look that way because he likes his surface better than his insides. He's like one of those needlepoints where one side looks great but the backside is all messed up, just threads going here and there and little knots and stuff. Do the two of them have any common traits? To answer that, he needs clarification. "Do you mean me and Hux or… dream me and Hux?" He's told her his nightmare version's name before but it feels like betrayal to say it out loud, like he's ratting Kylo out.
"Either," she says.
"Well, dream me and Hux do, I think." His answers are slow, as he tries to look outside of Kylo Ren when he's so used to looking from the inside. "They're both pretty big on power, like maybe they've both been hurt in the past and try to keep control of everything so it doesn't happen again."
"It sounds like you're trying to psychoanalyze him," she reminds. "What if we set aside any assumptions about guarding mechanisms. Try, instead, to look at things that you know."
Right. He's been in therapy too long. "Yeah, maybe I'm guessing about why, but he does like to keep control. He gets mad when I...when dream I… I mean, me... changes up his routines. I'm not sure if dream me cares about stuff like that. I think he cares a lot about how others see him. That's part of why he wears the mask."
"Is this Hux you're talking…"
"No, I meant Kylo Ren. I don't think Hux cares too much about what others think of him, as long as shit gets done. He really wants his government to rule everything and he wants to be the head honcho helping them do it. I think he's afraid that Kylo will mess that up."
She tilts her braided head, tipping him off to the fact that he's used Kylo Ren's name twice in a short period of time. He's always switching between first and third person with his nightmare self, usually because there's some things that he can't see himself doing and so he puts up a barrier between them. He really has been in therapy too long.
"But, I don't really know Hux very well. That's kind of why I've been picking on him. I want to know more about him and he seems kind of robotic unless he's angry."
"Do you find that this approach works for you in your waking life?"
Ben lets his goofiest grin loose, the one that you can tell what he looked like when he was five to see. "No! No! I mean, when I was a kid maybe."
She laughs. "Okay, so how does Ben generally initiate relationships, romantic or otherwise."
"Does it sound bad if I say small talk at bars?" He winces a bit to hear it. He's not the best at dating. Most of his experience has been anywhere from a one-night stand to about two months or so. It's little wonder that he hasn't brought up any exes to his shrink when he has so few that have mattered.
"Not at all," she assures. "People meet in all kinds of ways. How do your relationships tend to progress after that?"
"That doesn't sound any better," he warns. "I guess they don't usually. Just, his place or mine most of the time. I mean, sometimes we do a real date. It doesn't usually last very long though."
"Would you say these relationships are predetermined to have a short lifespan or that one of you ends it prematurely?"
God, she's so good at putting things. It's like everything has meaning to her and not just in your standard shrinky "gotchya!" sort of way, but like, predetermined lifespans makes his brief interactions with other dudes sound so much more official, more significant than they really are. "The former, most of the time. We kind of get what we came for." He winces a bit at the double entendre but she has the grace to ignore it. "I guess the ones that go for longer, I think the longest was maybe not quite three months? That was the guy saying he felt like he didn't really know me and that it was annoying him. He said that I was never going to actually open up to him."
"Do you feel like that was a correct assessment of the situation?"
"Not really. I mean, just because I'm not sure there's much more to me than he saw. He was probably mostly pissed that I wouldn't let him sleep over. But, I didn't want him to be there while I was freaking out because of a nightmare or something."
She types a few things in her laptop, a sign that either he's said something significant, or that there hour is nearly done. Ben pulls out his phone. It might be both.
"We've covered a lot of new ground today, Ben. Do you feel like we've addressed the issue that's concerning you?"
She's given him a lot to think about, that's for sure. But she didn't answer the one question that scared him into making the appointment. He's pretty sure he's not going to get the response that he wants to hear, but he brings it up anyway. "It's not normal for me be thinking about Hux like he's a real person right? I mean, not when I'm awake. That seems like, like I'm getting worse and not better?"
She sets her laptop aside and leans her body towards him, unspoken language one of comforting, concern, and openness. "I think you're seeing a change in your nightmares. For the first time, you're finding a positive element to them. It seems premature to decide whether that change is a positive or a negative, but that is a call that only you will be able to make. You told me that the character doesn't remind you of anyone in your waking life. Maybe take some time before we meet up next to think about if that still holds true."
"So, you're not worried?" he asks.
"No, I'm not worried."
It's super amazing how much that relieves him. He exhales loudly and it makes her smile, that he'd actually been holding his breath about it. It might not mean that he's crazy, at least not more crazy than he already is. It's just different. Heck, different might be good. He might be turning these nightmares into dreams. Well, Hux might be.