Summary: Follow-up to The Man and The Egg. The problem with trauma-well, one of the problems with trauma-Seth thinks, is that you can take pretty much anything in life-any choice he makes, any mood he's in, any way he relates to anyone or anything-and make it about The Trauma.

TW for implied/referenced childhood sexual abuse, depiction of PTSD and questions around Seth's current relationship dynamics.

A/N: I'm thinking this will be roughly 6 or 7 chapters. For those keeping score at home, Ryan will likely enter the story from Chapter 2 on. I would recommend reading The Man and The Egg first, as it provides helpful context.

Also, I'm not sure if the timeline works with when the Nintendo 64 actually came out, but I'm running with it.

Deconstructing the Egg

Chapter 1

The problem with trauma-well, one of the problems with trauma-Seth thinks, is that you can take pretty much anything in life-any choice he makes, any mood he's in, any way he relates to anyone or anything-and make it about The Trauma.

He'd really thought he'd managed to assemble a pretty decent showing for himself, all things considered. He had a humble yet respectable number of friends, regular publications in the Harbor High Lit Mag, a smoking hot and hilarious girlfriend and a pretty active sex life with said smoking hot and hilarious girlfriend.

It can feel like forever ago that he was sitting outside of Dr. Max's office, waiting for his parents to get out of their little post-therapy chats with the good doctor. Dr. Max had those ridiculous overstuffed chairs in his waiting room, the kind where your feet couldn't quite touch the floor, somehow making his 10-year-old self feel smaller and more pathetic and more radioactive than he already felt. He'd sit there with a giant knot in his chest, staring at his sneakers as they bobbed awkwardly in the air and imagining how they talked about him, imagining their heated debates over whether or not he could ever become un-damaged goods.

Seth liked that it could feel like forever ago. He liked that it could feel like an entirely different life that had happened to an entirely different person, a person he felt little connection with or ownership over.

The problem, Seth thinks, sitting in the school's lounge with a sketchbook propped on his knees and an overly caffeinated beverage at the ready, is that he let his father re-introduce him to that entirely different person he'd just about forgotten existed.

And once his father opened that door, he kept opening it, popping his head in and casually suggesting that that radioactive 10-year old hadn't really gone anywhere, that maybe he'd just gone underground, adopted more of a sleeper agent type role.

His father is good at seeing things and making them about The Trauma, in looking at Seth's suddenly decent showing in life and questioning the quality of its construction. And it seemed like his father had an alternative theory for everything, every choice he's made or mood he's been in, or way that he has related to anyone or anything, even himself, leaving Seth with two versions of his life, one in which he's a reasonably normal-if somewhat neurotic-teenager, and one in which his psyche is still a tangled mess.

It's hard to know which version to believe. On the one hand, you can really twist anything and make it fit neatly into The Trauma, but it doesn't mean it really goes there. On the other hand, he's just not sure how to go about categorizing these things. Dr. Max said that was another side effect of The Trauma, not being able to identify what he's feeling, not feeling able to know himself well, not knowing what battles to pick in life because he's not sure what really matters.

"Hey Cohen!"

Summer suddenly pops up from behind the couch, abruptly separating Seth from his thought spiral.

Seth's body jumps, one hand snapping his sketchbook closed and his other flailing arm nearly sending his overly caffeinated beverage sailing towards the pool table. He swallows shakily, feeling his head go light.

"Someone's jumpy today," Summer says, shooting Seth a smug grin as she drops herself onto the couch next to him. She leans forward to kiss him.

Seth smiles into the kiss, resting a hand on Summer's knee and letting his sketchbook slide from his hand to the coffee table.

"Mmm," Summer puts a hand on Seth's chest and pushes back slightly, her eyes narrowing. "God Cohen, you're like, shaking," she says. "Did I really scare you that bad?" The "eww" is unspoken.

"What? No, of course not." Seth attempts to look incredulous. "I've just been hitting the java way too hard this morning. You know how I get." He holds up a slightly trembling hand in evidence. "These school baristas really oughta cut a guy off after awhile. I am in no shape to be driving like this."

"Sure," Summer responds with an indulgent nod. "Is that also why you were drawing an egg with like, a monocle and tophat?" she asks, arching an eyebrow as she gestures towards his sketchbook. "All the 'java'?"

Seth forces out a weak laugh. "That's actually an assignment for class. My teacher's maybe gone off the deep end on that one." Seth can feel his head bobbing up and down, too fast, too many times to appear anywhere close to normal. "All the caffeine probably isn't helping the creative process though. You bring up a good point; I should really consider switching to decaf." He pats Summer's knee again and leans in for a hopefully distracting kiss, allowing his other hand to drift up to brush a lock of dark hair behind Summer's ear.

He pulls away after a few moments, and is relieved to see that sweet and slightly glazed look in Summer's eyes. She bites her lip and looks up at him through dark eyelashes.

"My house later?" she asks coyly.

"Why wait?" Seth smirks, relieved to feel like he's getting some kind of tenuous hold of himself again. "I'm sure we could find a supply closet somewhere with a little ambiance." He scrunches his face at her playfully. "A little, you know, mood lighting."

"Eww, Cohen." Summer swats the back of his head with an open hand. "Way to ruin the moment," she huffs, although she's half-laughing and her brown eyes still have that little glint in them.

"Oww." Seth rubs the back of his head. "I was just throwing out some ideas, trying to keep things spicy; no need to get violent."

"Don't be such a baby," Summer responds, rolling her eyes. "It was a love tap, Cohen." She crinkles her nose at him and gives him one more long, lingering kiss. "And I think we'll keep things plenty spicy at my house later." She grins that coy little grin again before announcing that she needs to get to class and sauntering away.

She glances back at him just once and wiggles her hips just a little, just for him, still half-laughing, and Seth can't help the grin that stretches across his mouth.

He is smiling, and then he picks up his pencil and sketchbook again and then he is frowning, realizing that he is left again with those two versions of himself, of his relationships, of the interaction that he just had that left him smiling, but he can just see his dad's forehead wrinkling in concern, see Dr. Max nodding thoughtfully behind some kind of judgment, some pronouncement of pathology that he'll couch in nicer terms than what he's probably thinking.

Seth scowls at his overly caffeinated beverage.

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

And the nightmares, well, those are also a problem, and one that has gotten worse in the past few months, and one that he doesn't really know what to do with.

It'd be one thing if he always had control over what he did when he was startled awake in the middle of the night. On many such occasions, he might just throw up in the bathroom and then white-knuckle his way through the rest of the night, and that was one thing. That was manageable, and that was contained. It was a thing that could happen and then the knowledge of said events could be relegated to somewhere else in his brain until it suddenly became a thing that hadn't really happened at all.

But the nightmares are a problem because every now and then, his abruptly woken up self-the tangled psyche self-decides to go rogue and bust into his parents' bedroom, decides to wake up his dad like he's six and not sixteen years old, reviving an old ritual Seth had been sure he'd left well in the past.

That was not a thing that could keep happening, and prevention was a difficult nut to crack. He didn't know when he would or wouldn't have a nightmare, and he couldn't trust himself to keep them to himself anymore.

He knows Dr. Max would be encouraging him to find empathy for that 16-year old, the one who can't always be sixteen, who sometimes gets cornered into being six years old and mute and terrified and alone again. He'd ask Seth to think about what that 6-year old is asking him for, what he needs from him. He'd discuss ways to take care of the 6-year old and the 16-year old and the radioactive 10-year old and the tangled psyche and anyone else who might be rattling around up there. What Dr. Max wouldn't do is help him come up with ways to hide, because Dr. Max felt that keeping everything contained was somehow bad for him, and not the cornerstone of him maintaining some semblance of a normal life.

So he doesn't want or need therapy. He knows what therapy will be about, and it will not, for one thing, help him keep his nightmares to himself, help him keep the whole cast of characters in his brain in-line and compliant.

The only real solution he'd come up with for the nightmares was to never sleep, which was actually going surprisingly okay. It had, at the very least, given him a lot of unimpeded video game time.

And that's what he's doing, mindlessly playing some game or other, at some ungodly hour or other, when his dad shuffles into the living room and plops down next to him, casually throwing an arm across the back of the couch.

Seth feels his heart in his throat, but he tries to keep his gaze fixed on the television, tries to radiate calm and cool and collected while also trying to find some kind of escape hatch. He can sense his dad formulating his opening statement and it's really best to cut that off at the knees, because the man doesn't really stop once he starts going.

Ryan, Seth thinks.

"I was actually just about to go see if Ryan's awake," Seth says, starting to gather himself to stand.

"It's 3:30 in the morning," Sandy informs him, putting a gentle hand on his arm, halting his escape. "Sit."

Seth frowns, but he stays seated.

"You know you can't avoid me forever," Sandy muses. "We do kind of live together."

Seth doesn't say anything, just keeps tapping the controller's buttons, barely cognizant of what he's even doing anymore. He starts repeatedly tapping X and watches as his character lobs grenade after grenade at nothing in particular.

"I'm not avoiding you," he mutters finally. "And before you ask, I'm fine."

"You know, you keep saying that, and then we keep meeting like this."

Another grenade sails through the air, another far-off explosion.

"And you tell me you're fine with our talk, but I haven't seen Summer around since." Sandy pauses. "You know, my intention wasn't for you to feel like you had to hide her away."

Seth had wanted to act natural, to allow their whole talk to quietly become something else that had never happened, but he knows he's been messing that up and he knows he's being weird. It's just that the idea of bringing Summer around, of exposing her to his dad's ongoing bushy-eyebrowed scrutiny, is too much for him. He can just picture it: Summer whacking him on the arm and him accidentally making eye contact with his dad, making eye contact with his dad's concern and his pity and his judgment. His father who will think he is looking at the 6-year old or the 10-year old and not the 16-year old sexually active Lit Mag superstar he's trying very hard to be. Seth feels nauseous just thinking about it.

"I'm not hiding her away," he mumbles, rolling his eyes. "She's just been busy."

"Ah yes, the newfound passion for rhythmic gymnastics. Or was it the oboe?"

"Pretty sure it was underwater basket weaving and the French horn," Seth shoots back, punching at random buttons on the controller. "I'm also pretty sure Dr. Max wouldn't appreciate the whole flippancy thing."

He lobs a few dozen more grenades in silence.

"I'm sorry," Sandy says quietly. "I don't mean to make light. I do appreciate that this is very hard for you."

"Yeah, well..." Seth shrugs. "Guess I'm not really one to talk about making things light," he concedes.

They sit in silence for a few minutes. Seth switches from grenades to a bow and arrow, arcing shots at a distant mountain.

"I really think you should consider going back to therapy."

"Are you going to make me go?" Seth feels his dad's hand squeeze his shoulder gently. He resists the urge to shrug him off.

"I'm not saying that. I'd love for you to make the decision yourself."

Seth snickers. "So you're going to try to wait me out, but you're eventually going to make me. Got it."

"I didn't say that either." Sandy frowns. "But it doesn't have to be a big thing, going to therapy."

"Yeah well, you're not the one who'd actually have to go."

His dad's not the one who would have to just decide to be radioactive again.

"I only meant that a lot of people go to therapy. It's nothing to be ashamed of."

"Did you tell mom?" Seth asks, abruptly changing the subject.

"About?"

Seth shrugs. "All of it." He pauses. "The night…stuff. Trying to make me go back to Dr. Max...what we talked about." He glances at his father quickly before looking back at the screen. "She's been a little squirrely lately."

"She was...starting to notice a few things." Sandy says carefully.

Seth snorts bitterly. "You know, I've always loved everyone talking about me behind my back." He tosses another grenade. "Ryan hasn't said anything, right? Or Grandpa?"

"Not that I'm aware of."

"Good." Seth smirks. "Although if you'll remember, back in the day Grandpa did get me a Nintendo 64 when you told him about it, so who knows? Maybe I could wrangle a sports car out of my present suffering."

"I do remember the Nintendo 64," Sandy says, a small smile crossing his lips. "I even remember what you said when he gave it to you." He sees Seth's confused expression. "You said, 'I didn't realize this was a gift-giving type occasion.'"

Seth and Sandy exchange amused glances.

"Guess I was always all about the funny," Seth says, laughing softly. "I'm sure Grandpa didn't appreciate it."

Dr. Max and his dad were the only two people who ever sort of knew what to do when he told jokes about The Trauma or anything even remotely related to The Trauma, and even his dad couldn't always hang with it.

"I don't think I'd ever seen him so speechless," Sandy concedes, continuing to smile in spite of the small bloom of tension in his gut. He could laugh about seeing Caleb off-balance, but he also couldn't think back to that time without being struck with pangs of grief, of guilt, of helplessness. There was absolutely something funny about Caleb standing in the doorway, clutching a Nintendo box to his chest and stripped of all of his typical bravado, his deep and boisterous and confident voice suddenly low and stuttering and uncertain, but there was also something about it that made Sandy's chest ache, made his eyes swim.

"Yeah, you know, there are times I regret ever telling anyone, but then I might never have gotten a Nintendo 64, so maybe I kinda broke even." Seth stops, his small smile melting into a grimace, aware that he has stepped over the invisible boundaries of The Humor and drifted into territory that is Too Much for Other People.

Seeing his dad's face drift through a series of emotions only confirms what he already knows.

Seth stands up suddenly, not ready or wanting to hear whatever his dad might say next.

"I think I'm going to try to catch a little sleep before school," he says, not daring to look back at his dad as he wraps the cord around the Playstation controller and flicks off the television.

"Okay," Sandy responds. "I hope you can get some rest," he says earnestly.

Seth can feel his dad watching him as he trudges out of the living room and up to his bedroom.

It's not that he really wishes he'd never told anyone. It's just that it hadn't been real before he told anyone. It had been a thing that he had put away in the darkest recesses of his brain until he had almost convinced himself that it hadn't happened. And his brain had convinced himself that he'd never see him again, and that none of it really mattered, because what had never really happened could never really matter.

And then he'd been told he'd have to see him again and then everything had all spilled out all over everything and then his mother could barely look him in the eye and his father was clearly trying so hard to look him in the eye when he didn't want to, and his grandfather didn't even make fun of his scrawny arms or his chicken legs or his curly hair for like two years, and his therapist was the only one who could or would ever directly refer to what had happened, and Seth had become a new version of himself, smaller and more pathetic and more radioactive and more alone than he'd already felt.

So some days he just wonders what it would be like now if every nightmare thing that had ever happened had stayed in those darkest recesses of his brain, where they maybe belonged. And maybe then he'd be able to be just one version of himself, the version he'd selected for himself.

Seth throws himself onto his bed and closes his eyes, although he's reasonably confident that he's now too wired to fall asleep. This much is, at least, some comfort.