Disclaimer: These are not my characters, and I make no profit from them.

Sessions—Part 2

Thursday, lunch with Mark was all-you-can-eat Mongolian barbeque, at a place that was close to campus. It was a step up from hotdogs, Westerfield decided, but still aimed at the limited budget—and unlimited appetite—of the average student.

McCormick seemed to know his way around the fixings, and instructed him in the art of fitting as much into the bowl as possible. "It cooks down," he'd said casually, when Westerfield had eyed the nine inch high mound he'd created for himself. "How hot do you want the sauces?"

"Nope," Westerfield shook his head, "if I start giving my patients dyspeptic looks this afternoon, I may trigger a rash of relapses."

This got him a quick laugh. "Okay, teriyaki and straight-up peanut oil, then." He pointed to the right items. "Just as long as you don't mind looking like a wimp."

"I'll deal with it," Westerfield smiled, as the content of their bowls were transferred to the grill and returned, as predicted, in a decently compacted form.

Mark forged a path to one of the quieter corners, where he'd spotted an empty table. Westerfield saw him pull up momentarily, and cover a wince, after an accidental collision with a departing man who looked like linebacker material. But that, and the fading bruises on his face, were the only trace indicators that two and a half weeks ago he'd been close enough to death to spit on its shoes.

Overall, the psychiatrist thought, he'd have to say the man looked happy, an astonishing difference from his mood a month earlier, or even when he'd talked to him briefly in the hospital.

"You're looking pretty good," Westerfield commented, as he edged into the corner seat.

"Well, it would have been hard to look worse," Mark replied with an expression of mild chagrin. "When I started back on Monday, I told 'em all it was a skiing accident. That, at least, has some panache."

"Beaten up by crazy political extremists wouldn't cut it, eh?"

"Not hardly, too much explaining to go with that one." McCormick grimaced. "I'm just really glad I'm past the point in the educational process where you have to write papers saying what you did on your vacation." He shook his head. "I'd have some real doozies."

Westerfield gave that an absent nod and pulled his tray over as he sat down.

"And everything's back to normal on the home front?" he asked, in a tone that would have been casual, from anyone but a psychiatrist.

Mark's face went a little blank, as though he'd intended to answer a simple 'yes' as a mere social ritual. Then there was a glimpse of deeper emotion, as if he was remembering something and trying to decide just how truthful to be.

"Now, yes," he flashed a quick, almost pained smile, and then added, "normal being a relative term with us." There was one of those long pauses, left to itself by the older man.

McCormick finally went on, "It was a little rough there at first, that afternoon after I talked to you."

Westerfield raised an eyebrow, by way of encouragement.

"I ," Mark swallowed on the one word, looked down, looked up again, and put a little more determination behind the word. "I can't believe I did it. I must've been a lot angrier than I thought."

"Did what?"

"Oh," the younger man shook his head in disbelieving wonderment, "I dragged him to the cemetery, Woodlawn, where his wife and son are buried."

"Lieutenant Harper mentioned that to me," Westerfield said calmly, "He dropped by to pick up the notebooks late that afternoon."

"He did, did he?" Mark said with some chagrin. "Well, okay, I probably scared the shit out of him, too. Must've thought for a moment there, that he'd be hauling me back to the hospital and Hardcastle to the lock-up." He shook his head slowly; there was a ghost of a worried smile.

"Yes, he said something to that effect."

"But it wasn't like that at all," Mark frowned. "I think we . . . we sorted some things out."

Westerfield nodded once. "That sounds good, then."

"Maybe," the man's frown had deepened. "It's just that, there's things we don't talk about, you know?"

"So I gathered," Westerfield replied dryly.

"There's things I don't talk about," Mark added, with a little more emphasis.

"And you're worried," Westerfield asked, "that this is some sort of quid pro quo thing?"

He got a nod in return.

"Would you use anything he said to gain an advantage over him?"

"No. Of course not."

"Do you think he would do that to you?"

"No," this came as quickly as the first, and then, a little more slowly, "but he might . . ."

"Not understand?"

Another nod.

"Well, I doubt he wants to hear them. Judge Hardcastle doesn't strike me as the sort who needs everything out on the table in any relationship."

"You picked that up on the first session, huh?" Mark said with a thin smile.

Westerfield gave a short laugh, then added, "But you shouldn't underestimate him. And, anyway, affection can go a long way toward creating understanding and acceptance."

"Affection?"

"Yeah, affection . . . it's like love, only for guys." Westerfield grinned.

The waitress brought tea and wonton soup, smiling down at both of them with benign disinterest, in the way of youth toward its elders, then departing with their trays. Westerfield briefly reconsidered the man across the table, suddenly seeing that he was at least ten years older than most of the other clientele in the restaurant.

"Is it hard?" he asked abruptly, "I mean, to fit in?"

The question had come out unexpectedly, and as the fruit of simple curiosity. The other man seemed to take it as such, and looked around him for a moment, as if he was considering it for the first time.

"Well," he finally replied, with a shrug, "not really, I guess. Maybe I don't try all that much. I've always been an outsider." He smiled. "At least around here, if you offend someone's sense of proprieties, they don't try to get you in a dark corner and shove a shank into you."

He said it lightly, but the look in his eyes gave it an air of understated veracity.

"Anyway," he took in the room, and everything out beyond it, with one sweep of his eyes; then he was looking back at Westerfield with an intensity that was almost fierce, "I've never felt more like I belonged anywhere than where I'm at right now."

The older man could see it was true, and felt a shadow of what must have been Mark's panic the month before. A long time coming to the right place and then to wake up and find all of it gone. Which, of course, brought him back round to the really important question. He'd be willing to give it up again, if that's what was necessary?

He framed his next statement carefully. "I talked to Milt the other day." Honesty was the essential foundation of any relationship.

"Oh?" Mark's eyebrow went up in unspoken question.

"Yes," Westerfield sat back a little, still weighing each word before he spoke, "he said you'd offered to quit law school."

"He turned me down," Mark interjected quickly.

There was a pause before the younger man began again, more slowly. "He thinks he's the Lone Ranger, you know," he'd added that with a look of fond annoyance. "But he doesn't really get it." Mark frowned. "That 'Lone' part is all wrong. He wouldn't have lasted a month doing what he does without backup. Honestly."

"Oh, I think he gets it," Westerfield replied thoughtfully. "At least he seemed pretty sincere about retiring, if it meant you'd stay in school."

"Retirement?" Mark looked astonished. A moment later his hand went up to his forehead and he shook his head. "Is that what he thinks I mean? Hell, it's just two more years. And I'll have the summers off . . . mostly. I dunno, does he think everything is gonna change after that?"

"Maybe," Westerfield replied slowly. "Maybe it will. You'll change. He'll have to change, too."

The younger man's frown deepened. "But I thought he wanted me to go to law school."

"Yes," Westerfield agreed, "but, more than that, I think he wants you to do whatever will make you happiest . . . aside from stealing cars," he added with a smile.

"Oh," Mark grinned right back at him, obviously not offended, "no cars; I'm past that." Then his face sobered again. "No question. I want to be here. It's not for him . . . well, not just for him." He hesitated, then started up again, more slowly. "It's just that," he was studying the older man's face carefully, "if I had to choose, I mean, between Tonto and law school . . . I dunno." He was still staring, as if he was waiting for a sign. Finally he blurted out the question, "Is that crazy?"

It was Westerfield's turn to smile. "I thought we'd decided that 'crazy' wasn't such a useful term."

Mark sighed impatiently. "You know what I mean." He was staring past the older man now, as if the answer was somewhere out there. After a moment of silence, which Westerfield did nothing to fill, he continued on, "Did I stop being myself somewhere along the way?"

This time Westerfield had no chance to answer before the younger man leaned forward and continued on, "Doc, I spent two years in prison, every minute of it being told what to do, where to be. When I got out, the first thing I swore was that I'd never be in that position again . . . and less than six months later, there I was, cleaning Hardcastle's pool." He shook his head with an air of utter disbelief. "I mean, I said to myself, at first, that I'd do anything to keep from being sent back to Quentin, but my parole's been up for a year. What's my excuse now?"

"You have no family, do you?" Westerfield had said this abruptly, and it came out more as a statement than an inquiry.

Mark looked taken aback. "Um, no, not really."

"How old were you?"

"Ah, ten, when my mother died," he replied quietly.

"And your father?"

"Five," there was a little nervous hesitation and then, "He left when I was five."

"And later on?"

"My aunt and uncle." He grimaced "Then foster homes . . . I never lasted very long in one place."

"You are an outsider," Westerfield commented thoughtfully, then, after a beat, "I can see how you wouldn't get it."

"Get what?"

"Oh," Westerfield looked up from his thought, "ah . . . get that there's a difference between a prison and a family. Within a family, people do what other people want not because they have to, but because they want to."

"Doc," Mark smiled, "I never wanted to clean Hardcastle's pool."

"Well, maybe not," Westerfield smiled back, "but you wanted to be a part of his family so, ipso facto, the pool got cleaned." He shrugged. "Did you ever do what you were told to do in prison because you wanted to stay there?"

"No, of course not."

Westerfield nodded. "So you're not crazy."

"Insane," Mark corrected with a smile.

"Nuts," Westerfield grinned. "Whatever. You're not."

The younger man's smile faded somewhat. "And letting him be in charge of my life, that's normal, too?"

"Is he?"

There was a moment's silence. Then Westerfield went on, "He said he'd retire, just to make sure you didn't quit school. Who's in charge of whose life, here?"

"But," Mark swallowed hard, "I don't want to be in charge of his, either."

"Sorry," Westerfield shrugged again, "it goes with the territory. It's one of those family things. Anyway," he took a breath, "maybe 'in charge' is the wrong phrase here. It's really not so much that as it is mutual accommodation."

Mark stared at him doubtfully.

"But it is a responsibility." Westerfield held his gaze for a moment, and then went on, "I'd say as long as you want to be here in the first place, and as long as he's making his decision without resentment, and with a certain amount of self-interest, then that's what you've got here . . . mutual accommodation."

McCormick looked down at his soup, stirring it absently, then lifted his face abruptly. "But I don't want him to think he has to retire. I mean, not permanently."

"Then tell him that," Westerfield said practically. "But don't expect that in two years you'll be able to pick it up exactly where you put it down."

"I know," McCormick muttered. "Change. We talked about that . . . at least he's got a couple years to get used to the idea."

"Which one?" Westerfield asked the question with a tilt of his head.

"That he'll have a partner," Mark replied emphatically. "Instead of just a sidekick."

It was Westerfield's turn to look dubious.

"Okay," Mark grinned, "a junior partner."

"Change," the older man smiled back at him, "is never easy."