Note: Warning for an intrusive memory focusing on some of Robert Berdella's (real) crimes that he committed against his victims. Also just general Efnisien shenanigans.
*
Dr Gary was waiting for him outside of the door leading into his office, which never happened, which meant Dr Ferguson was already in the office. Efnisien stared at Dr Gary, feeling cold all over despite the jumper and the scarf. After washing it, he'd decided to wear it today, feeling frazzled and definitely not wanting anything to do with this fucking session. He wanted to wrap the whole scarf around his face and disappear.
'Remember everything we went over last week?' Dr Gary said steadily. 'This is your session, you employ us, and you can order one or both of us to leave at any point, or you can walk out.'
'Uh huh,' Efnisien said, staring at the door and thinking about Dr Henton and feeling like he was going to vibrate right the fuck out of his flesh.
'All right, come on in.'
Dr Gary opened the door, and Efnisien walked in. His eyes widened when he realised that Dr Ferguson looked nothing like Dr Henton. He didn't know why he assumed they'd look the same, but they didn't.
Dr Ferguson was slender and wiry, he had long, wavy blue hair that was purple at the tips, and blue eyelashes, and blue glasses, and he wore a blue Hawaiian shirt, and he was definitely wearing lip gloss or something. Efnisien stared at him, stared at Dr Gary as if to say, You couldn't have given me a fucking heads up?
Then he made himself sit in the chair he always sat in. Dr Gary sat alongside Dr Ferguson, which Efnisien thought was basically like cornering prey at this point.
Dr Ferguson looked at Efnisien and smiled, it seemed genuine enough, then he looked at something on his tablet. Which had a blue cover.
'You...' Efnisien said, his voice drying up in his throat when Dr Ferguson looked up at him again. He had a really feminine face. 'You really like blue, huh?'
'Today I do,' Dr Ferguson said.
'Huh.'
A lot of words were floating up inside of him. Offensive words. And spontaneously that PhD candidate's thesis on microaggressions and slurs floated up in his head and he realised he had no idea what kind of person Dr Ferguson was. What gender. But Dr Gary had used he and him pronouns, so like, a guy? He had a guy's voice. It was softer and sweeter than Dr Gary's, but it was still a guy's voice. Efnisien had no fucking idea. Dr Ferguson's hair looked really silky and nice.
'Should we get started?' Dr Ferguson said in a voice that sounded like it wouldn't be amiss sweetly selling pastries in a bakery. 'Dr Gary has let me look over parts of your file, and I know that this is a difficult session for you, so I'm going to infodump in the first ten minutes to make sure you at least get some benefit of my knowledge before you kick me out. Anyway, please call me Mika. I don't care much for honorifics.'
'Are you a doctor, though? You um, you did your thesis? What did you do it in?'
Dr Gary was staring at him with a calculating look on his face. Efnisien recalled he'd never asked Dr Gary what his thesis was in. He felt embarrassed, humiliated, like he was doing the wrong thing already.
'I am a doctor,' Mika said. 'I did my thesis on the psychological health of nonbinary and genderqueer teenagers in public school systems, with specific focus on sex offenders and victims of sexual abuse. And then my thesis supervisor got mad at me and told me to either drop the victims or the sex offenders, or to split it into two separate theses, so I wrote two theses. And then I published two books.'
YOU ARE READING
Falling Falling Stars
RomanceEfnisien is a victim who has done terrible things, and had terrible things done to him, trying to get his life back on track after spending time in a juvenile facility. Arden is a co-owner of a bookstore, who meets Efnisien one day and goes from thi...
