A/N: Just throwing a quick additional TW because sometimes Trauma Humor is pretty jarring and blunt.
Chapter 3
Seth swipes the toe of his sneaker back-and-forth across the border between the grass and the concrete, staring fixedly at the blades of grass as his shoe bends them one way and then the other, at the tiny pebbles of concrete his foot dislodges and sends tumbling away.
He's trying to listen to his mom, but it's hard for him to focus, and the rushing of the giant tacky fountain and the birds chirping their mismatched tunes and the muffled conversations between other rehab residents and their family members kind of drown out whatever it is that she's saying.
And there's the headache hammering behind his eyes. That's kind of throwing off his focus.
So he's got this grass thing going, and that's about all he can manage.
He'd been looking forward to seeing his mother; he really had.
But then he'd actually gotten there, and between the weird stilted family session and the strangely chilling effect of watching a therapist praise his mom's self-advocacy like she was a kindergarten showing off her crappy finger-painting, and then his mom asking for a one-on-one walk-and-talk with each of them, and then feeling like he'd run out of anything to say to her after providing his in-depth and arguably harsh critique of the topiary garden animals littering the grounds, he has been ready to crawl out of his skin.
Or at least go home, take to bed for an indefinite period of time.
He's always wanted to take to bed.
His mom seemed so different—smaller, frailer, older, wobbly somehow. She kept smiling, but the smiles looked wavy on her face, like one of those cartoon characters whose outlines aren't fixed in place.
And she was awkward—nervous. Seth couldn't remember the last time he'd seen his mom seem anxious, but she kept touching her hair and twisting her wedding ring around on her finger, looking like she wouldn't mind crawling out of her skin either.
The family session was excruciating.
It wasn't just that the therapist, Jodi, exuded the touchy-feely and the patronizing in equal measure; it was seeing his mom look to this woman for guidance, for help knowing what to say next and then after that. His mother, who suffered no fools as a matter of course, who would've leveled a woman like Jodi with just a look if she'd tried that smarmy shit with her anywhere else, had beamed like a finger-painting kindergartener when Jodi had praised her commitment to her recovery and told them all how hard she'd been working.
He hated when Dr. Max or his dad said things like that to or about him. It all felt so condescending, like pat on the head and smug Look at the diligent little rape victim.
And they said that shit even when he'd barely done anything, even when he obviously wasn't working hard or getting any better.
Seth realizes that his mom has stopped talking and is now looking at him expectantly.
He loses track of human social skills at times, but it occurs to him that he's supposed to respond to something, although he has no idea what it is she's been talking about.
"Sorry, what?" He rubs at his forehead, wondering when his time will be up. He's so ready to tag someone else in.
His mom is hugging herself. Her lips are trembling.
Sometimes Seth spots danger coming several miles away; sometimes it sneaks up and punches him in the nose.
"It wasn't fair to you, the way I left you alone to deal with-with what he did." Her lips tremble some more, his suddenly cartoon character mom. "I'm sorry."
"What?" Seth's head feels like it's detaching from his body, his vision tunneling, a slow buzzing creeping into his ears, a swarm of bees slowly getting louder and closer and louder and closer.
His brain isn't cooperating, computing her words into anything intelligible.
"I just-"
It's like someone dumps a bucket of ice cold water over his head; he's suddenly and aggressively caught up to the moment now, even as his body is rapidly going limp.
He's absurdly reminded of this t-shirt he'd begged his parents for when he was about ten or eleven. It had one of those little square signs that they'd hang in shop windows on it, but this one said Out of My Mind-Back in Ten Minutes.
That had been the height of comedy, when he'd been ten or eleven. His mom wouldn't let him buy it, deeming it inappropriate for whatever reason, too edgy or too undignified.
It wasn't polite to make fun of crazy people.
It wasn't polite to be crazy.
But it fit, right?
Out of My Mind-Back in Ten Minutes.
Or
Out of My Body-Back in Some Unspecified Length of Time After You've Got Your Shit Sorted.
His mom's mouth is moving and she's saying something, but the swarm of bees has only grown louder and closer and angrier.
"Mom, stop."
His mom recoils at that, but only momentarily, her mouth setting resolutely in that grim determined therapy face-it's time to have that Hard Conversation.
"Seth, I need to say this," his mom says. "I know I brought him into your life—-
"Stop it."
"And I know I left you alone-
"You mean you left me with Dad. You can just say that, you know." Seth runs a rough hand through his hair, bile rising in his throat.
His mom is talking again, but he can't hear her, doesn't want to hear her.
"Is this what you talk about here?" He cuts in.
But he knows already, doesn't he?
It had been lurking just under the surface of that stupid family session, with his mom's thinly veiled references to The Trauma ("I know both you boys have been through so much"), and the full body icy shudder that had torn through him as he'd realized-and he's not sure why he hadn't before-that Jodi probably knew about The Trauma, that her little earnest smile and wide-eyed sympathetic head tilt weren't of the run-of-the-mill Sorry your mom's an alcoholic variety, but were rather the darker and more insidious strains of Heard about all the schtupping there, kiddo. Tough break.
The realization had been one of those the-call-is-coming-from-
inside-the-house moments that made him want to projectile vomit all over Jodi and her farm chic decorated office, knowing that she knew things about him he'd never told her and never wanted her or anyone else to know about, and things he'd never trust her with, because he'd pegged her as someone who would feel remiss in her duties in the caring profession if she didn't cluck sympathetically and tell Seth that her heart hurt for him or that she was awed by his bravery and his resilience in the face of all that schtupping.
Seth imagined a spray of vomit sniping Jodi's various ceramic chicken statues, sending them flying against the wall and splintering into a million tiny ceramic chicken shards. Anything to stop Jodi with her little soft glances, her encouragement to answer her questions and share his feelings, everything about her that was so suddenly and so glaringly laced with pity and with morbid curiosity, the main attraction freak at The Cohen Family Freak Show.
He'd clenched his jaw and said nothing and stared at the ceiling and white-knuckled it through the rest of the session.
And then he'd obediently followed his mom for a walk around the grounds, stuffing everything from the last hour into some far-off corner of his brain, instead laser focusing in on the subpar topiary garden and the cacophony of birds who couldn't settle on one tune and the piercing sunlight trying to fry his retinas.
And his mom could've let it stay that way, thin veil in place, everything tucked somewhere far away, never having to know what Jodi knew and how and why.
His mom swallows, looking away. "I-I've talked about a lot of different things here."
"Okay, and did the people here tell you to do this, to ambush me about it?" Seth demands.
It would be just like Jodi, frankly.
"No, of course not." The grim determined therapy face falters. "I just...I didn't think you'd want to do this around everyone else."
"I don't want to do this at all." His voice doesn't sound loud in his ears, competing as it is with that horrendous buzzing, but he can feel some force rising within his chest and erupting from his mouth.
Like maybe he's whispering, but maybe he's also yelling.
"You're right, I'm sorry." His mom nods, head bobbing up and down. "I'm doing this on my terms, not yours."
"Yeah well, why should tonight be different from all other nights, right?" Seth's shoe kicks at a loose pebble, sending it skittering towards the fountain. He inhales a shallow breath, black spots dancing in front of his eyes.
He wants to die.
It's stupid and cliche but he guesses that's what his brain falls back on at a time like this, because it just keeps saying it over and over again IwanttodieIwanttodieIwanttodie.
"You're angry with me," his mom says softly, arms still wrapped around herself, like it's all she can do to hold herself upright.
Seth shakes his head, trying to dispel the black spots and the pain pounding behind his eyes and that death wish that's usually content to hang out somewhere in the murky underground of his psyche, that doesn't usually spell itself out quite so explicitly and quite so persistently, but he can't seem to rid himself of any of it.
The shrieking birds and the burbling fountain and the wavy lines of his mother's smile and now her frown and the pounding bass in his skull and the fist crushing his heart and the dream of oblivion and the stupid grass and the stupid buzzing, louder and louder and louder.
"I'm not angry with you," he says. "I'm not anything. I just..." His mouth falters. "I just..." He rubs at his mouth. "I need to go."
"Maybe I could go with you to therapy sometime. We could talk about things with Dr. Max." His mom looks at him, eyes anxious and pleading and earnest. She reaches out to him.
Seth backs away from her reach, stumbling over his feet before righting himself somehow.
"Fine, sure," he says. "He'd probably appreciate seeing the proof of life on you. I've been meaning to ask for a picture of you with today's paper. I'm pretty sure he thinks you're just like, some shared delusion Dad and I have going."
His mom flinches like he's just slapped her in the face.
He's not supposed to have that effect on her.
She's supposed to scold him, call him rude and bratty and ungrateful.
He's not supposed to be able to hurt her.
"I know I've let you down," she says instead.
Seth squints. He wants to cry. He wants to punch his legs and every square inch of his body until he's entirely black and blue and made of bruises.
He wants to do worse.
"You haven't let me down. I'm-I'm sorry. I'm just tired." Each breath ignites a new four-alarm fire in his chest. "And my head hurts. I just-I just need to go." He starts to stumble again, backwards and away.
oooooooooooooooooooooooo
Seth has no idea where he's going, has just blindly hurled himself in whatever direction, but he's barely put any distance between himself and his mom before he almost barrels straight into his dad.
He feels a hand on his chest, stopping his movement, before he's aware of his dad, or of Ryan beside him.
He looks up, ready to fight, ready to launch himself at whoever is touching him, all of that coiled pent-up energy going somewhere.
It's a ludicrous thought-Seth Cohen starting a fight, Seth Cohen a combatant, Seth Cohen an aggressor-but he'd done it once before, had had to scrub someone else's blood out of the cracks in his knuckles.
But he looks up and it's his dad's hand on his chest, blocking his way forward, and his dad's concerned face looming in front of him.
He still wants to hit him, but now he's confused.
"Seth? What's wrong?"
"Nothing's wrong." Seth shakes his head, feeling all the receptors in his brain tumbling around, unsure if he's going to hit someone or run or collapse. "Can we just—can we go? I need to go home."
Ryan's doing that weird Ryan thing where he's drawing up to his full height and his jaw is clenching and his eyes are darting around, looking for whatever the threat is, like he expects to find a roving pack of water polo players out for blood.
"I'm fine." Seth directs it to Ryan, to his unspoken questions. "It's cool. I just gotta go."
Ryan nods, jaw still clenched, eyes still darting around.
"Seth…" his dad's eyebrows knit together. "I hear you, but your mom wanted some one-on-one time with Ryan. Maybe you could tell me what hap—"
"Fine, that's fine." Seth cuts him off. "Can you just give me the keys? I need to get out of here."
His dad looks reluctant.
"I'm okay. I just need to get out of here." Seth holds out a hand. "Please, Dad."
His dad continues to look reluctant, but he reaches into his pants pocket and slowly pinches out the car keys. He dangles them over Seth's outstretched hand, then pauses.
"I can come with you," he offers. "I can grab us some coffees. We can talk."
"You don't need to hold my hand," Seth snaps.
"I know that," his dad says evenly.
Ryan's eyes meet Seth's again and Seth shakes his head.
It's fine; he'll be fine. He just needs to get out of here.
"Look, I'm fine. I'm just tired and I have a headache." Seth swallows. "I just wanna take a nap in the car."
"Do you want me to wake you up to say bye to your mother before we go?"
"Fine, yeah." He needs this conversation to end.
His dad-mercifully-drops the keys into Seth's hand.
Seth immediately turns and hurls himself in what he hopes is the direction of the car.
"I have my phone on me, if you need anything," his dad calls after him.
oooooooooooooooooooooo
Sandy approaches the Range Rover, wincing sympathetically as he catches sight of Seth's lanky frame pretzeled into a distinctly uncomfortable looking position across the backseat, arms shielding his face, his sneakers bobbing off the side of the bench seat.
He'd have been inclined to give Seth a little more space and time to decompress, but Kirsten had made him promise that he'd go check on him.
Kirsten had been vague about what exactly had happened between them, saying only that she'd pushed him too hard and he'd gotten upset.
Angry. She'd said angry, actually, and seemed irritated when he'd tried to soften it to upset.
"You don't have to protect me from our son's feelings, Sandy. He was angry."
Sandy's eyes narrow as it occurs to him that the engine is off and all the windows are up.
Squinting, he peers in at Seth. It's hard to tell around his arms guarding his face, but it looks like Seth's eyes are closed. Still, his son was a frequent offender when it came to feigning sleep to avoid school, confrontation, chores, take your pick.
Sandy reaches out and gently pulls at a door handle. It's locked, and he realizes his mistake too late as the car alarm shrieks to ear-piercing life.
Seth bolts up in his seat, hands flying to his ears before thinking better of it and wrestling with his pocket for the keys.
He pulls them out, then fumbles them to the floor. It's another thirty seconds or so before he's retrieved them and silenced the alarm, jabbing at the button a few extra times for good measure.
Sandy watches Seth's shoulders heave and a shaky hand comb through his hair.
He braces himself for a quip about his skills at making an entrance or his general idiocy, but Seth doesn't acknowledge him, instead shoving the keys back into his pocket before flopping back onto the seat and re-pretzeling himself.
He gently raps his knuckles against the window.
"Seth?"
Seth doesn't move.
Sandy knocks again.
"Seth, I'm not leaving until you talk to me for a minute."
It could help sometimes, appealing to Seth's pragmatic side.
One lanky arm reaches over and gropes for the door handle. Seth jostles it open just slightly.
Sandy pulls the door open the rest of the way and is hit with a blast of oppressively hot air.
"What?" Seth's voice is low. His eyes stay closed.
"Can I have the keys?" Sandy asks. "I'm gonna turn the air on; it's boiling in here."
"Relax," Seth grumbles. "They're not going to arrest you for leaving your teenager in a hot car."
"Even still, I'm sweating just looking at you."
"That's not how bodily functions work, you know." But all the same, Seth starts to wrestle with his pants pocket again, a difficult feat given how he's contorted himself. Grunting, he's eventually able to extract the keys and he thrusts them out behind him, towards Sandy.
"Thanks." Sandy palms the keys. He pauses there for a long moment, debating the wisdom of doing anything more than turning on the air conditioner and heading back to Kirsten.
"Dad?"
"Yeah?"
"I-I really didn't—" Seth's breath hitches.
Sandy has to bite his lip to not jump in. Both Dr. Max and Jodi had pointed out that he had the tendency to fill silences and to butt in with reassurances and fixes before his family members-none of whom were quick to share difficult emotions or describe difficult problems-had the chance to complete their thoughts, to fully express their feelings or their needs.
Kirsten doesn't need to be protected from Seth's feelings, and Seth doesn't need to be protected from Seth's feelings.
Or so they tell him, anyway.
Seth swallows.
"I-I didn't mean for it to go like that." Seth's voice is low and mournful.
"I know, kiddo, I know." Sandy reaches out and gives Seth's shoulder a light squeeze. "It's okay, okay?"
Seth nods a little, face pressed into the seat.
Sandy frowns, aware that he's tossed out another empty reassurance that didn't exactly fix anything or make anyone feel any better.
"I don't know exactly what happened with you and your mother, but I think this all means that you're starting to feel your feelings more, and that's a really good thing."
"Wahoo," Seth mumbles, pumping a sardonic fist in the air.
"I mean it, Seth. I think we're all feeling it today."
"Yeah well, I'm the only one in the fetal position in the back of the car," Seth points out.
"You might be the only one of us doing it right," Sandy counters.
Seth snorts. "You need to work on your spin game there, old man."
"I mean that too," Sandy says. "I know it's tough, but I think we need to get these things out, whatever it was you and your mom talked about."
"But what if-"
Seth cuts himself off and Sandy lingers awhile, hoping he'll pick up where he left off. Seth stays quiet though, and, not knowing what else to do but to minister to the straightforward needs of the moment, Sandy crosses around to the other side of the car and goes about turning on the car and silencing the show tunes that start to play and blasting the air conditioner.
He returns to Seth's door, wishing that the time it had taken to do all that had given him some idea a good enough way to leave things before returning to Kirsten.
"Seth-
"I'm just gonna nap, okay?"
"Okay." Sandy nods slowly. The temperature in the car will become acceptable soon and Seth will undoubtedly lock the doors again when he goes back to Kirsten. There are no other immediate needs he can identify. "I'm gonna head back to your mother, but you'll let me know if you need anything?"
"Yeah."
Sandy leans forward and gives Seth's shoulder another comforting squeeze. He starts to straighten up, about to break contact with Seth when Seth's other hand shoots up and grabs Sandy's wrist.
"I, uh..." Seth clears his throat. "Tell her I'm sorry," he says plaintively, voice cracking.
Sandy has to work through the urge to tell him it's okay, and he'll keep it to himself that an apology would probably be the one thing to make Kirsten feel much worse than she was already feeling.
Not knowing how or if to acknowledge Seth's request, Sandy doesn't say anything, instead stooping forward at an awkward angle and kissing the top of Seth's head.
"Call me if you need anything," he says softly.
He's only a step or two away when he hears the thunk of the car door locking behind him.
oooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
"And I know I left you alone-
"You mean you left me with Dad. You can just say that, you know."
Rehashing the whole thing in his head, turning it over and over, Seth isn't sure why he said what he said.
Was he throwing it in his mom's face, that his dad was better at this whole trauma thing than she was?
Or was he maybe trying to absolve her in some way, to say that his dad had the whole mental health thing covered, while she claimed other parental territory: Back-To-School Shopping and College Prep and Navigating Newport Society With Fair-to-Middling Social Skills?
It wasn't leaving him alone and it wasn't the abandonment Dr. Max seemed to think it was. It was a simple division of labor.
Because obviously, if his dad hadn't picked up the slack, she would've been different, would've been the one to drive him to therapy and to coach him through blanking out and to sit with him through his nightmare nights and pester him about doing his dream rehearsal three times a day.
Obviously.
Maybe what he'd said was some convoluted combination of both accusation and absolution. He didn't really know how to make sense of it, but he feels like he needs to keep a tally of how much he was trying to wound her and how much he was trying to console her, and he's not quite sure how to score that one.
And he doesn't know how much damage he's done.
It's not like he'd devised an official game plan for visiting his mom in rehab, but there'd been the sketchy outline of a mission in there somewhere: make her want to come home.
He's fairly certain he missed the mark on that one.
And now gets to be further mad at himself for not turning on the air conditioner in the Range Rover. Obviously his dad was going to come check on him, and he's sure this is all going to be filed away as Something of Concern, something to talk to Dr. Max about, his continued disregard for himself or his need to punish himself or whatever stupid terminology they'd choose to label his behavior as destructive or diseased or disturbed.
Why must everyone-himself included-analyze everything he does and everything he says and everything he feels?
And now Jodi's entered the fray, with her chicken statues and her many gaudy necklaces that Summer would mock mercilessly and her exaggerated frowny face whenever anyone said anything Sad.
Jodi, another person invited to analyze him and his fucked up family against his will.
They all desperately needed him to know that he was more than what happened to him, but then assumed that everything-any choice he made, any mood he was in, any way he related to anyone or anything-was about The Trauma, like there was no telling where The Trauma ended and he began.
Sometimes he just wanted things to be quiet.
There's a light rapping on the window.
"Seth?"
More rapping, slightly louder this time.
"Seth, you awake?"
A pause.
"We're about to head out, if you want to come bye to your mother."
Seth stays very still, keeping his eyes shut, letting his dad's voice, muddled and murky and far away as it travels through the car window and into the car, blend with the white noise of the air conditioner's hum and his breath whistling in and out.
He isn't here or anywhere.
Out of My Mind-Might Never Come Back.
His dad says something else, all fuzzy and garbled, and then Seth hears footsteps walking away, gravel crunching underfoot.
It's quiet again.