The Academy: Ensnared

16. Domspace

A/N//: Look at me go. For those who lost hope in me. Look. Two chapters. Two days. Feel happy 'cause god only knows that this next is gonna give me writer's block.

WARNINGS: Drug-Abuse, addiction, mental illness, age-play, brief mention of suicide

Christopher

Chris was positive about very few things in life. He was always big on things not being set in stone. It will change at the drop of a hat, and there's nothing you can do about it. Nothing was necessarily certain, especially in the long term, but there was one thing that Chris was positive about.

He hated therapy.

He didn't hate his therapist. No, that wasn't the case. And it wasn't necessarily Gregory's fault Chris hated therapy. The man was only doing his job. And he was good at his job, he supposed. If he had the ability to dredge up all of these emotions in Chris and help him sort through them, then he had to be doing a good job, right? But Chris still hated therapy.

It wasn't easy. When his stepmother said to 'go see a therapist. It's simple', he shouldn't have believed her. Signing up to see the therapist and setting up appointments, now that was easy. But the actual therapy? That wasn't easy. He should have watched Good Will Hunting with her father when he suggested it because it might have made this entire process a hell of a lot easier.

He felt so emotionally exposed after his hour-long sessions with Gregory. He felt exposed in a way that felt worse than streaking through public. Each of his emotions had been laid out on the table for Gregory to dissect along with the experiences that went along with them. If he had to choose between the two different types of exposure, he'd gladly take streaking over laying his emotions bare any day.

This week, they had somehow gotten onto the topic of his relationships with both Janette and Amelia. The differences between the two. How he'd changed the sort of person he was between the two relationships. How he's treated these two very different people in different ways. Gregory helped him analyze all of the changes that he'd made, but after it all, Christopher had just felt... Empty, exhausted, overworked, overanalyzed, overwhelmed, and anxious.

All emotions he typically didn't associate himself with. Not anymore. Gregory always knew how to bring back the shit he'd tried so hard to bury six feet under.

After walking out of Gregory's office, he couldn't bring himself to go back to his apartment. He knew Amelia wouldn't be back until after dinner. She was going to grab something from the shopping areas for herself and Moira. And each step he took toward his apartment had him spiraling deeper and deeper. His thoughts were getting more and more tangled. The darkest recesses of his depression were rearing its ugly fucking head, and he couldn't keep himself afloat. He couldn't be alone, so he went to the first place he thought would relieve the tension in his shoulders. The only place he could relieve every stressor he had from his life without Amelia there.

He went to visit her. The Lioness. His former mistress.

That wasn't actually her name. It was Katherine, but when he'd been with her, he'd referred to her only as Miss, Ma'am, or Mistress. Everyone else had referred to her as the Lioness because while she was also a professor at the Academy, she was also the wife of the professor Master Lyonell. Not that their marriage had lasted very well. Christopher had seen to that, really. Not long after she'd taken him on as her submissive, Master Lyonell had filed for divorce. He was convinced the man still had some sort of grudge against him, but he couldn't prove it. He was too damn professional.

But Mistress was perfect for him. He gave control to his life that had otherwise lacked it.

When he had entered his father's school as a submissive at fifteen years old, he was in a rough patch of his life. It wasn't just rough... It was dark. He had no mother to nurture him. He had no father to guide him. He had dropped out of school because he couldn't do it on his own. Victoria offered him no semblance of motherhood. She was neglectful. So, in order to run from all of the pain he'd felt... He turned to drugs. He'd turned to the euphoric feeling that they offered him. It was at least some release from his pain.