Vague spoilers in the author's note through trigger warnings and a kind of hint at an ending.
A/N: Additional TW for medical trauma and forensic medical exams and references to suicide, as well as the standard trigger warnings related to sexual trauma and dark humor related to it. This got intense, and went all kinds of places I didn't expect when I started writing this chapter. I don't always warn about things so clearly, but this ends on a pretty tough note, so please take care of yourself.
Seth picks at a loose bit of fabric on the arm of his chair, using all the willpower at his disposal to stop his leg from bouncing up and down-his body wanting to run, but made to sit still and await his doom.
Every few seconds, he feels his left eye twitch.
This seems like exactly the look to bring into therapy, when one is wanting to put forth a healthy and sane image.
His dad sits next to him, a magazine about bass fishing open in front of his face.
Sandy Cohen: Bassmaster.
Seth contemplates stepping into the bathroom to either compose himself or freak out properly, but then he'd run the risk of being in the bathroom when Dr. Max came into the waiting room looking for him.
Then he'd have tohear the muffled sounds of Dr. Max and his dad comparing notes.
"How's he holding up?" Dr. Max would ask in a solemn whisper.
"I think he's pretty nervous to talk to you," his dad would say, looking equally grave. "And I think he's really upset withme right now."
"You did the right thing, Sandy..."
And then he'd have to leave the bathroom at some point-if only to prevent the inevitable two knuckle knock at the door, his dad's voice low as he said"Seth? Everything okay in there?"-and then he'd feel two sets of eyes watching him leave the bathroom and watching him collect his backpack and watching him walk into Dr. Max's office.
He already hated that moment, the moment each week when Dr. Max opened the door and looked at him and smiled in a way that he probably thought was warm and welcoming, but was actually nauseating and terrifying.
"Hey Seth?"
Seth feels a nudge at his shoulder and looks over at his dad.
"Did you know that the elephant in the sport of bass fishing's room is the forward-facing sonar controversy?" His dad's eyes never leave the magazine.
Seth squints. "You know, they haven't covered that one in school yet."
"Some education I'm paying for, huh?" His dad looks at him and then looks away, back at the glossy color photos of giant bass and the fishermen who wrangled them. He clears his throat.
A classic Sandy Cohen maneuver. The ice was officially broken; now it was time to brace himself. Seth slides down in his chair, tucking his chin into his chest, muscles tensing as he waited.
"I know you're probably not very happy withme right now, and I don't blame you."
Why did he have to do this?
Seth needed this time to focus, to figure out how he was going to survive therapy.
Sure, he'd mostly been spending the time panicking, but he was working up to the strategy part.
He doesn't need any distractions.
"But Seth, I'm not sorry I told him."
Seth puffs out his cheeks in a sarcastic smile at that sentiment, glad he and his dad aren't actually looking at each other for this one.
"I don't like to upset you and I don't like to violate your privacy, but it's my job to make sure you're okay..." Hisdad sighs. "...and honestly, even if it weren't, I'd do it anyway, because I love you more than anything and I hate to see you hurting."
Seth chews on his lower lip, trying to will and blink away the heat building behind his eyes.
He lets a minute go by, his fingers still picking at the fabric on his chair, wondering if it would be easier if his dad would just be mean to him sometimes, if he could just be angry at him in a way that he didn't have to wrestle with or puzzle out or feel guilty about.
He would like to have like, one uncomplicated, easily-identifiable, non-confusing emotion at some point.
And he'd like to be able to hurt himself in a way that only hurt himself, so that he doesn't have to feel guilty about that too, doesn't have to nurse this sick heavy pit in his stomach because he was letting down his dad, his dad who hated to see him hurting, and there was, without the decency to hide it from him better.
"Are we okay?" his dad asks, looking away from the bass to look at him again. "I really want us to be okay."
Seth doesn't have to look over to know that his dad's face will be serious and apologetic and gentlypleading, and that his eyes could bore holes through him with the sheer force of his sincerity.
"Yeah," Seth says after a beat, addressing the loose thread on the arm of the chair. "We're okay."
He doesn't know if he means it, but it's easy enough to say, and probably the least he can do.
From the corner of his eye, he can see his dad's face break into a relieved little smile.
It was weird and a little stupid, to have that much power over yourparent.
Granted, Seth used the power imbalance to his advantage when he could, but it was also a little unnerving, the natural order of the parent-child relationship upended, Seth never really having to worry about being in trouble and his dad always so desperate to make things right when he messedup.
There's a soft metallic clicking sound.
Seth jumps a little in his seat.
It's never unexpected that Dr. Max's office door will open, but it's still always a shock to his system.
"Hi, Seth," Dr. Max stands with one hand on his doorknob, smileextra soft and extra sympathetic, like he's preemptively apologizing for what he's about to do.
ooo
Seth had been trying to block out what had happened at the mall, trying to banish it from his mind.
So much of his life seemed to be like that, trying to act like a normal person while inside there was theguy taking note of everything going on around him, but then the other guy, the guy whose job it was to keep every horrible thought and memory and sensation somewhere far, far away from him.
It probably went without saying, but that guy was truly terrible at his job.
They didn't know what it was like to live with all that, his dad and Dr. Max, and then to have stuff like the mall come out of nowhere and join the montage of shame and humiliation.
It wasn't just The Trauma, it was all the times he'd been made to tell about it and made to relive it, and always,somehow,for his own good.
Like it was sitting in a doctor's office, giant paper gown hanging loose on his stupid skinny body and sliding off his shoulders every two seconds while they poked at him and took pictures of him, even lifting the front of his gown for a few choice snapshots, validating Seth's suspicion that, even if it looked like he imagined any old penis probably looked, there was clearly a layer of filth and grime visible to anyone who really looked, and then it was immortalized in film, for anyone to gawk at.
And it was the added brutality of needing his dad in that doctor's office because he didn't know any of those people, but also hating that his dad was there because it meant there was someone else in his life carrying around the memory of the doctor lifting the paper gown and the flashbulbs exploding, the memory of them making him bend over the exam table so they could take more pictures Seth never wanted to think about. It didn't just live in his brain and the brains of anonymous faceless medical personnel. It lived at home with him too, was something that could creepinto his mind without warning when his dad looked at him, and those were the kind of thoughts that turned his legs black and blue.
And throughout that whole thing, there was the soundtrack of the doctor's gentle but business-like tone as she announced:"You're gonna feel your hand on my shoulder/leg/bottom."He can hear her in his head sometimes, feel his skin crawl with the words, bile churning in his throat, wishing she'd use some word other thanbottom, wishing she wouldn't use any word at all, that she wouldn't have gifted him with a soundtrack to pair with the sensations of the latex gloved hands crawling all over his body and the lights they shined to illuminate every part of him that he only wanted to keep hidden, and his dad's face, pale and drawn and only just barely keeping it together.
Some nurse had patted his shoulder and tried to be comforting and told him countless times that he was so brave, that he doing great, and sure, he was doing great at something he already knew that he was great at: surrendering and letting people do things to his body that he didn't want them to do.
He was clearly bound for success in life.
The mall thing was nowhere near as bad as the doctor's office thing, but he'd also been hoping that his life was done creating new horror stories for him.
But all the memories twist and bleed together: there's the doctor standing over him, kindly explaining all the ways they were going to torture him, but then he's five years old again and his parents are hugging him goodbye in a hospital hallway and then he's walking to Steven's car, one of his tiny hands engulfed in Steven's much larger one, his other hand shoved into the pocket of his jeans, fiddling with the toy Jeep Nana Nichol had just given him and not thinking about much of anything, but then he's thirteen again and his dad is kneeling on the ground in front of him in the fitting room, promising that he'd take them home as his hands reached out to try to disentangle the swim trunks from around his ankles, before Seth could protest, before he could beg him not to make it any worse, yell at him that, feeble and pathetic as he was, he could still figure out how to change his own clothes.
He could see all of that, scenes switching at breakneck speed, like his mind didn't know which awful thing to settle on but it also didn't need to choose, could send him back-and-forth through time as it pleased, no rhyme or reason, nothing to hold onto.
"Seth?"
Seth's jaw is clenched, his hands curled into fists at his sides.
"Seth? Where are you right now?"
Seth forces a shallow breath.
He's starting to panic.
Or maybe he's continuing to panic, but he'd been kind of checked out there for a minute, and now he's back and two seconds from either hyperventilating or blacking out.
He can't take it that Dr. Max is here.
His fists are clenched tight and ready, but he can't do anything about it, not with Dr. Max staring at him like he knows exactly what he's thinking about doing right now.
He gnaws on his tongue, pressing down until he can feel the grooves of his molars digging into itssurface, but that pain isn't enough.
He can usually dissociate enough in therapy, makehis mind curiously blank, but he can't seem to do it today.
"Seth? Can you name five things for me?"
Seth's eyes narrow.
He hates this fucking game, this stupidgrounding exercise, like he's a freak or a dog in obedience school.
Normal people don't have to do an inventory of the room in order to function.
"Seth?"
Whatever.
He doesn't have the energy to protest against it, like he might on any other day.
His gaze flits around the room.
"The white rook on the chessboard...the model of the Millenium Falcon by the window, the weird-looking cactus thing over there, the Lego head that rolled under your chair-" Seth squints-"...looks like a construction worker maybe...and the mug on your desk"-Seth squints again-"that says 'You Can Come Out Now; I've Had My Coffee.'" He gives Dr. Max a pained look, his voice tapering off into the vocal equivalent of a cringe. "...and they say I'm the troubled one."
"A gift from my niece," Dr. Max explains, looking a little amused. "I always appreciate the way you bring your own personal touch to this exercise." He gives him a little nod. "Now keep going: four things you can feel."
Seth's lip curls.
"The collar of my shirt on my neck, the couch under me, this hangnail, uhhhh..shoes on my feet."
It was hard to get too creative with that one.
"Good. Now three things you hear."
Seth sighs. "The clock ticking, the air conditioner...conditioning..." he pauses, stumped, the office lapsing into silence as he strains to hear anything recognizable as a sound.
There's a cough from the other side of the door.
Seth points at the door. "...and my dad coughing. Thanks, Dad."
"Very good."
"And before you tell me to keep going, like always I can't smell anything, and the one nice thing about my day was that I kicked this little eraser under the lockers at school and it felt pretty satisfying." Seth looks thoughtful. "I think I understand why people like skipping stones now."
"And how are you feeling now?" Dr. Max asks.
"Fine," Seth says. "But I was fine before," he adds.
It was annoying that the obedience school routine did help, did seem like it was settling the part of him that had been spinning out a few minutes ago.
He still wanted to hit himself, but theurge was more like a dull throb toward the back of his mind, not the overwhelming banshee shriek pulsating through his whole body and demanding satisfaction.
Not that he was about to admit that to Dr. Max.
ooo
He hates the grounding exercises, but of course, he's nostalgic for the grounding exercises and how nice and impersonal they are once Dr. Max starts into him about the mall and his beat-up legs.
Dr. Max talks and Seth tries to let the words bounce off him as he scowls down at his backpack, slumped at his feet in front of the couch.
The first several times he'd gone into his therapy sessions alone, he'd brought his backpack and set it on his lap and hugged it to his chest.
After a few weeks of this, Dr. Max made some comment about how he wore it like a chest of armor, noting that he clearly felt the need to put up a protective barrier between himself and everyone else.
So then the next week, Seth sat down with his backpack strapped to his back, so that his whole body jutted uncomfortably off the front of the couch, at which point Dr. Max remarked that it was like he was ready to bolt at a moment's notice, and wondered aloud how that affectedhim, never fully letting himself relax anywhere.
So ever since then, he's dropped his backpack next to his feet and refused to explain why he insists on taking it into the office with him in the first place, because there at least wasn't one neat and straightforward way to analyze that one.
Keep him guessing on something, anyway.
Still, he wishes he hadn't wasted all of his backpack hugging sessions right out the gate.
He could really use a chest of armor about now.
"Seth?"
"Hmm?" Seth blinks, realizing with some delight that he'd successfully glazed over most of whatever it was Dr. Max was saying.
"I'm concerned I'm losing you again here."
Seth doesn't say anything.
"I understand we're talking about a pretty difficult topic here, you hurting yourself."
"I'm not hurting myself." Seth fights to make steady eye contact with Dr. Max, but his eyes flick away for a beat. "And even if Iwere, I don't get why it would matter. If I want to feel pain, that's kind of my problem, right? It's not like I'd behurting anyone else."
"You don't understand why your dad would beworried that you're hurting yourself?"
"It's not like I'm, like, stabbing myself in the chest or something."
"Do you think about that, stabbing yourself in the chest?"
Seth winces, remembering that sarcasm and therapy were not always a good combination.
"Only right now, to get out of this conversation."
Dr. Max frowns. "Seth, do you have thoughts about killing yourself?"
"Who, me?" Seth scoffs. "Who'd want out of all this?" He gestures up and down his stupid gangly body.
"Seth, I-
"No," Seth interrupts him, huffing out an exasperated breath. "You take everything I say way too seriously. I don't want to kill myself, and I don't hurt myself. I run into furniture a lot, but my PE teacher has described me as shockingly uncoordinated."
"Your dad says there arequite a number of bruises on your legs."
"Well my dad's dramatic, okay? He got this whole thing into his head and he's running with it. It's not that bad."
"So you're saying it's a misunderstanding?"
"What, do you want me to show you?" Seth shoots back, one hand reaching for his belt. "That must be a real perk of the job, huh, making little boys pull down their pants for you."
Dr. Max draws back a little, eyes blinking rapidly, his usually stoic expression not able to fully withstand the moment.
Seth's eyes bulge.
"Is that what you think I want, Seth—to hurt you the way Steven did?" Dr. Max asks. "That I want to make you pull your pants down for me?"
It's his own words thrown back at him, but they feel like a sharp slap across Seth's face.
His dad coughs again, three loud bellows followed by a stuttering clearing of the throat, like he's really working on something there.
Maybe they should just call timeout on this whole therapy thing and go toss the man a lozenge.
"Seth?" Dr. Max is still looking at him, clearly unconcerned that his dad is out there, lozenge-less and alone.
"What?" Seth asks. "No. Sorry, I-I didn't mean that. I mean it's not like I think…" he sputters out. "This is also a 'don't flatter yourself' kind of moment, right? Like I'm not assuming I'm your type." He cringes. "Or really anyone's type,frankly. Sometimes I'm just conveniently located, you know? Only male child in the family kind of thing. I'll do when the pickings are slim, but nobody's first choice, that's me." Seth wobbles to hisfeet,his breathing starting to speed up. "Can I go? I really think I need to go."
"Seth, why don't we slow things down a little?" Dr. Max holds up a hand. "Everything's okay, you are safe, we can talk about this."
"I wanna go," Seth says,swallowing heavily. "My dad's outside. I'm gonna go." His voice cracks and he bends down to fumble for his backpack.
"Seth."
"You can't keep me here?" Seth can't help that it comes out like a question, and he hates that it comes out like a question, his voice pitiful and small.
"No, I can't," Dr. Max concedes. "You can leave at any point. Will it help you feel safer if we go get your dad? We can talk about ending our session early if you want."
Seth hesitates, his brain slowly working through itsdizzy horror to recognize that this was clearly a bluff on Dr. Max's part, that he'd been about to go and make a horrendous situation even more horrendous.
There was no way that his dad would let him leave.
He'd just join forces with Dr. Max and then there would be two people interrogating him, demanding that he turn himself inside out for them, instead of just the one guy who was paid to be nice to him and wasn't legally allowed to follow him home afterwards.
Assuming he survived this conversation, he could just leave.
"It's fine." Seth releases the backpack strap he'd grabbed, letting his bag thump to the floor. He sits back down on the couch,still dizzy and reeling, but grateful for whatever part of him it was that had pulled him back from the brink. "Never mind."
"Okay."
Seth swallows,looking around the room, feeling Dr. Max's eyes on him. "I-I really didn't mean that." Hisgaze drops down to his hands. "And I don't think you're like that. I don't know why I..." He sniffs. "I just think I wanted to change the subject or something."
"I think that's part of it," Dr. Max says slowly. "But I think you were trying to tell me something too."
"I definitely wasn't. Trust me; I'm never trying to tell anyone anything." Seth sighs. "And I really am sorry."
"You haven't offended me, Seth." Dr. Max gives him a little smile. "You know I don't usually say things like that so directly, but I get the sense that you're panicking right now, thinking you've upset me and trying to figure out how to fix it. That's not your worry, and we're here to focus on you."
"Yeah, well...I don't really love that either," Seth mumbles.
"And Seth, I'm glad you're trying to tell me things, however it might come out." Dr. Max pauses. "You're scared that I'm going the abuse the trust we've built and hurt you the way-"
"I said I know you're not like that," Seth cuts in, surprising himself at how loud his voice gets.
"Yes, you said that," Dr. Max affirms. "And I think part of you believes it, and another part of you thinks it would be too dangerous to let yourself believe that about anyone." He pauses, face creasing into a deep frown. "Maybe people care about you, but maybe their caring is all a trick, all a way to earn your trust before they betray you."
Seth doesn't say anything.
"So when you go to the mall with your dad, you could tell him what you were scared of, but it feels safer to just try to manage things on your own, to give away only exactly what you have to, but to really only trust yourself."
Seth huffs a skeptical little breath at the reach on Dr. Max's part.
"I trust my dad," he says, snickering. "I mean, I knowhe'snot like that. I mean, if anyone had the opportunity to put the moves on me, it'd be that guy."
"Even listen to how you joke about it," Dr. Max says. "Like that thought isn't that far from your mind, that being around you is an opportunity that you need to protect yourself against, like there are two categories of people: Those Who Have Hurt You and Those Who Haven't Hurt You Yet."
"It was a joke," Seth spits out, teeth gritted. "It doesn't mean anything. I don't think everyone's out to fuck me, okay?" His voice is a hoarse yell erupting from some dark depth, and black spots swirl in front of his vision. He feels like he's going to throw up, and there's that tight pinch in his groin again, like maybe he'll pee himself right there, just a big rapidly expanding puddle that will soak the leather couch and slowly drip to the carpets, each little wet splotch announcing"Seth Cohen, raging mental case, was here."
"It feels like it though sometimes," Dr. Max ventures, his words hovering somewhere in the space between a statement and a question.
Seth doesn't know what to say to that, so he doesn't say anything at all.