Attachments (Tronnor AU)

Stay

noun

       • a rope supporting a mast; a suspension of legal proceedings; a short time spent as a visitor or guest.

intransitive verb

       • to remain in place; to wait; to reside temporarily.

transitive verb

       • to support; to endure; to stop, restrain.  

Dr. Crowle is a thin, bird-like woman with spools of dark hair and prominent cheekbones. The air around her is mitigating to anything shared in this room, her expression charitable and disposition tolerant. If Troye had had any reservations about coming to see her, they were dispelled the moment she shook his hand and smiled.

The space they're in is small and comfortable, three simple sofas gathered around a low table. There's a clipboard abandoned on the table's surface next to a box of untouched tissues, and it's stacked with worksheets and blank pages meant for taking notes. Karen, as she'd told him to call her, prefers to copy everything down after, so as to give him her full attention while they're together.

"It sounds like a healthy relationship you have, between you and your boyfriend," she's saying, smiling warmly as she readjusts the embroidered green cushion beside her. "Do you understand the difference between healthy relationships and unhealthy ones? I don't mean anything by that. Just that many people don't."

Troye runs his hands down the sides of his jeans, leaning against the backrest of the couch. He'd spent the first fifteen minutes of their session carefully composed, but now he makes himself comfortable in his seat. "I do. I mean, I didn't before, but... Connor's really good at that, you know? Teaching me things like that. I mean, not teaching. Showing? He..."

He pauses, toys with the cuffs of his sweater. It's hard to find the words for things he doesn't have much experience saying out loud. Not that he and Connor have never had any kind of conversation around this, but most of their dialogue is subtext or expressed more in actions than in words.

Karen seems to know what he's trying to say, though. It's what's made him sure this was the right decision, one he should continue to revisit going forward. He has a feeling this is going to work out.

"The people around us are a very essential part of the healing process," she says, easily steering the conversation where he's trying to take it. He likes that she doesn't seem to be one for taking the reigns and forcing him in the direction she wants, the way everything he'd thought about therapists had convinced him she would. She doesn't ask prying questions or redirect to topics that make him uncomfortable, and if she does it's always with an easy escape route and a genuine expression. "It's good that you have someone who's, from what I gather, understanding and willing to help."

"Yeah, it's..." Troye takes a breath, smiling in spite of himself because if there's one thing his boyfriend is, it's understanding. Connor dropped him off at this appointment and kissed him goodbye, not hurt in the slightest that Troye didn't want him to come in. "It's good. It was hard at first because I'd never had that, I guess, but we've worked through it. Connor's safe. Like, I have a lot of trouble with people most of the time, but I never have to worry with him."

Karen hums. "Worry about what?" she asks curiously.

"That he'll hurt me? That he'll make me do something I don't want to? I don't know."

His tone is a faltering mess of sudden nerves, because they're dangerously close to approaching the things that drove him to seek her out in the first place. He wants to get there, to talk about it without stumbling or feeling sick to his stomach, but it's hard. His knee-jerk reaction to the subject is to close up and pull away, or crawl into Connor's arms and not say a word.

"You know, there's a greater amount of people worth your trust than people who aren't. The world's often not as horrible a place as we think it is," Karen offers kindly, coaxing his frazzled nerves into a calmer state. It barely works, the endings too frayed and prone to vibration, but he appreciates the effort nonetheless.

"Maybe," he replies, because that's all he can say without feeling like he's lying.

Karen shakes her head, but accepts his response. Her nails are lavender, a soft and soothing shade, and they drum against the jeans she's wearing to a thoughtful beat.

"Do you..." she starts, pauses, reconsiders. "If you could change one thing in your life right now, what would it be?"

It's a big question. Massive, even. It takes him too long to find the answer, to reach back and scan through every aspect of his existence and find the thing that doesn't fit. There's a lot he wishes he could change, a million little things that still haunt him when he lets himself acknowledge his ghosts, but maybe it's better if he says something that isn't impossible. An achievable goal, no matter how difficult. Something that would still make a difference.

"The flashbacks," he decides, swallowing the constricting feeling trying to overtake his airway. "I can be okay with the panic attacks and the freak-outs and how hard it is to trust people, but I don't want to have to keep reliving it. I don't want to keep feeling like I'll be taken back there at the drop of a hat."

Karen's expression morphs into something sympathetic, like everything in her is suddenly aching for him. It's different than pity or false empathy, and he appreciates that she isn't giving him anything he doesn't need.

"Vivid recollections of the situation are actually very common in sexual abuse survivors-" she begins.

"I like the term victim, actually," Troye interjects. His heartbeat hesitates, the coming admission sticking to the walls of his throat before he forces it out into the safe space around him. "It's kind of like a reminder that I didn't want it. I didn't choose it. It... It wasn't my fault, you know? It was something that was done to me, not because of me."

Karen looks thoroughly impressed by this disclosure, something close to pride turning the corners of her lips up. She tucks her hair behind her ear, crossing her legs and resting her elbows on them as she leans forward. The room is cold, probably because of the window and the snow piled up outside.

"Troye," she begins kindly. "I think what we're going to try first is CBT. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. Here." She reaches for the pad of paper, drawing it towards her. "Let's start with the thought to feeling connection."

The session feels like moving forward. It's taking the final steps on a journey he'd started two years ago. He wonders where he'd be now if he hadn't left his last foster home, hadn't shared Dan's measly possessions and started busking on the streets to feed himself. He wonders what would have happened if he and Connor had never met.

Maybe things would still be okay. Maybe the law of averages would still have kicked in and taken matters into its hands, balancing all the shit he's been through with something good for once.

He feels, for the first time since he was born, like maybe there's nothing wrong with him after all. Like his mother was wrong to accuse him of being an abomination, wrong not to love him and wrong to let him go. Like the abandonment he's faced his whole life hasn't been because of him, but rather some cruel twist of cosmic fate. Like maybe he can move past it all, for real, to a place where it doesn't haunt him anymore.

Yeah, Troye thinks, breathing out a sigh of relief at the prospect of finally making some progress. This is going to be good for him.