The guys who looked like me

Psychology session Laing style

Toms POV

So here I was. Crossing the Floor, a second time. Standing in front of the door with the number 2505 next to it, a second time. Slowly I raised my hand and knocked. Once. Twice. With the third time, the door gave way and I suddenly stood in Dr. Laings Apartment. I looked around preparing for everything creepy that might happen. Or maybe my hallucination. I rubbed my arm and loosened up my tie a bit. In confusion, my eyes wandered around this strange apartment. Those concrete columns made me uncomfortable and the fact that Dr. Laing wasn't here and his door was still open just made everything worse.
"Dr. Laing?" I said raising my voice a bit. After not receiving an answer I added: "May I come in?" Again looking around confused I noticed a glass door that led to a big balcony. Should I enter it? Should I go away? After deciding that invading the private space of a psychiatrist was enough breaking the law I turned around to leave the apartment. There went my chance of ever figuring out what was going on with my head. I had perfectly managed to destroy everything.
"As I can see you already invited yourself in." I flinched and turned around. Then stuttered.
"I... I am really sorry." Dr. Laing was standing in the glass door leading to the balcony holding a cigarette in his right hand. The smoke faded into the apartment and the smell of the tobacco slightly made me wanna cough. He stared at me intensely and I felt even more uncomfortable. I took a deep breath.
"Listen... I know that my running away wasn't reasonable. I am really sorry." The doctor -who still looked like myself-  made a step towards me and dropped the cigarette on the floor of his own apartment. Then with maddening slowness, he stepped on it and crossed his arms.
"So... let me get this straight. After running away from me in fear you have decided to come back to apologize?" He looked at me unconvinced. I nodded slowly.
"I also still want to take the session..." I added and tried to look not as much as desperate as I felt. Still staring into my eyes the man in the white shirt nodded slowly and sat down on a couch nearby the window. I wasn't sure but for one second he seemed relieved. I dropped this thought after I couldn't find any reason for that, maybe it was just that he could be sure now that a psychopath like me wasn't running around the city without any chance of getting caught. I couldn't help myself and had to look back to the cigarette lying on the ground. What kind of human did something like that? I looked back at the doctor who didn't even want to pick it up to throw it away.
"I have experienced much more awkward with other patients, Mr. Hiddleston. You don't need to apologize."  At this point, I wasn't sure if I could imagine anything more awkward than this but I thought I'd let it slide since I was interested in what this more awkward thing was. My look must have been like an open book so he explained while gesturing me to come closer: "Sadly I am not allowed to tell you about this to make you feel better. I often have patients with anxiety problems." His look got even more intense as if he was trying to look right through me.
"Do you think you are one of them?" His voice had a slight touch as if he was interested but also more this kind of interest that you have when you get a new toy. While walking towards the couch I figured that anxiety was the smallest of my problems. Also, I figured that this Psychiatrist was quite strange and didn't behave like the ones I got to know so far. Those were trying to make me comfortable while this one was trying to do the complete opposite. So either he had a different strategy or he was just really bad at what he was doing. None of those options made me trust him.
"I am not sure but this is not the reason for my appearance today." His eyebrows went up quite a bit.
"So, what is the reason?" He asked and looked at me waiting for an answer. I looked back at him, not sure how to start. After I had decided that sitting down might help me to think about it, my eyes wandered to the free spot next to Dr. Laing on the couch.
"May I?" Right on the way of sitting down, I got quite surprised by his answer.
"No, you may not." I looked at him a little bit shocked.
"Am I supposed to stand around here for the whole session?" I asked confused and got surprised by his answer, once again.
"If you have a problem with my techniques you might wanna go right now." My eyes widened a bit while his hand showed the way towards the door I just came through.
"I am sorry, I didn't want to insult you in any way." I stood right before him, only some feet apart.
"To be honest, if I wanted to waste my time by listening to your apologies I would have told you so." Now my eyebrows nearly touched the sky.
"Listen, Mr. Hiddleston, I am a therapist. I have heard way more strange and awkward things than you think, so just tell me what's on your mind." I crossed my arms and stared back at him. Not sure if I should just walk away. Never have I been treated this disrespectful. My eyes wandered between his face and the door. But curiosity made me stay. I really wanted to find out what was going on. Shifting my weight from one foot to the other I answered his question.
After this step, we got into talking. Most parts of the conversation were me telling him about the things that had happened recently while he just stared into my eyes. To be fair there were also parts when he gave me advice but mostly the advice wasn't directed specifically onto my problems. So those two hours were a complete waste of time and strength. I can tell. Two hours standing around and talking to a person who is staring at you isn't fun. We ended the conversation with shaking hands and him telling me if I wanted another appointment I should discuss it with the woman working at the reception. I figured that was nothing I wanted to do.
Exhausted I walked across the floor and finally into the elevator that I had to wait for as good as another hour.  At least it felt like that.

Arriving at home I changed my clothes to go jogging. It would be the perfect activity to clear my head and get focused again. Just walking out of the door and breathing in the fresh air made me feel better.  After one hour I reached a little park with a small pond, some ducks and one really comfortable-looking bench. I decided to sit down for a while and watch the ducks swimming around in the shining water. Little white clouds wandered on the sky and the sun warmed my sweaty face. I took a deep breath and started to think of all this crazy stuff that had happened to me. I felt like one of these people in those movies and books that I had just too little time to watch and read. But nature and fresh air really helped to put things in perspective. I was a PR-Manager with a remarkable reputation, so I would stop running around like a complete lunatic and start on focusing on my job again. This included jogging back to my mansion and calling back my assistant. This last thing really did make me focus on the important things. The president of the united states of America had just sent me a job offer. The same president whose election I had completely missed. Ooops. Should have come to me first. In that case, there wouldn't have been any human being in the world who hadn't heard of it, who hadn't heard of him. Loki of Asgard. We definitely had to change something about the name. But that was another conversation that I had to take care of while I was looking at this stupid letter again. When I got home I had showered which also had helped to clear my mind. Now as I was standing by the window holding this stupid letter in my right hand it appeared to me that although I had some counter-arguments, this was my big shot.
After a little sigh and a big revolt of my assistant on the phone who told me to -quoting now- fucking take that damn job, I confirmed and accepted the offer. That was the biggest opportunity in my career that I could possibly get. The president's Public-Relations-Manager.
Wow. My family would freak out. Just like my assistant. Now a little smile made my cheeks wrinkle. Maybe this wasn't so bad after all.
The only problem that I had to solve was that he looked exactly like me and I would probably get a heart attack looking at his face. But maybe I'd get used to it, just like I got used to Dr. Laing's face. Okay. Maybe I would never. I was pretty sure I would never get used to it. Anyways I had to deal with that. I needed to be professional, not just because he was the president but also because... Yeah, I just ran out of reasons but this first one was pretty convincing. However.

I sat down on my bed starting to prepare some ground rules for the meeting with Mr. Laufeyson or however I was supposed to call him, given that after looking him up I found out that he had as good as ten other names. But we would work on that either, I guess. In any case, one of those rules I had designed was 'not freaking out while looking at him'. Another one was 'never ever mention that we look exactly the same' since nobody else seemed to notice, which was really annoying.

I fell back on my bed and closed my eyes. What a day.
"Oh, you tell me!"
Next second I sat straight up in bed with open eyes. The voice is back.
"You bet it is."
Go away!
"Well, this is rude." The voice said angrily.
Well, I don't care this is my head! Get out! I thought, also getting angry.
"As you can see I don't care either." He responded.
I went with my hands through my hair, speechless. The loose strains fell in my eyes. Maybe I've had not enough sleep the past two nights, another explanation would be both alarming and unacceptable. The voice seemed to be gone. After I had set my alarm for six o'clock in the morning I went to bed.
The night was restless and filled with dreams that seemed so real I could actually feel the pain, smell the smoke and sometimes even hear the unpleasant sounds of buildings crashing down like stone avalanches. All in all the next day started as tiring as the last one had ended.