Milkshake Hearts

Chapter 128: Clicked

A/N: For what it's worth, I'm a lesbian woman, and can't directly write from any sexuality perspective other than my own. Any other sexualities I go into in any depth through characters are researched and/or the perspectives are taken from personal friends with lived experience. That being said, the way sexuality is described may not be everyone's experience of that sexuality and some variation even within defined labels does exist. Also, I wrote this literally months ago, it is not at all related to real-Courtney's latest IG live, and MH-Courtney and MH-Shayne are fictional characters so do not necessarily match identities with people they're likened to.

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Shayne has spent more than enough time psychoanalysing his own obsession with going to the gym. He knows there's a part of it that is body image – but he's sorted through a lot of his own demons over a long time of therapists and Courtney, and he knows that focus is now a primarily healthy one – but a much larger part is meditative.

He doesn't need to think quite so much when he's working out. Form and routines come easy to him, and as he moves through his routines, his mind often settles into calmness, letting his persistent running dialogue of everything else in his life go to the side for a while.

Only, there's something that he's been pushing to the back of his own mind for somewhere between fifteen years and the last few days, depending on what he counts, and as his mind empties of his day-to-day, it makes itself known.

His workout suffers for it, as thoughts swim messily through his head. He hadn't talked to his therapist since before the wedding, and honestly, he didn't feel a need to go back anytime too soon – he'd been doing really well, and he had grown to find talking things over with Courtney was much more useful than talking to his therapist when it was just a personal issue anyway. He had the formal coping strategies down, he just needed to be able to get things off his chest.

It wasn't like he was upset. Honestly, when he'd stumbled upon a random Instagram post that just happened to bring up something that had been playing on his mind for half his life, it had felt like he'd finally found the missing piece in a puzzle that he'd been trying to finish for years. Still, it had his mind shooting back and sorting through all the times he'd tried to complete the puzzle in the past, taking up his thoughts.

He needed to get it out.

Probably to Courtney, although inexplicably, the thought makes him anxious. What if-

He couldn't actually come up with a what if. He knew she'd be her lovely, caring self to him about it, she'd let him talk through it and talk it out as much as his head and heart desired.

Still, when he returns from the gym, he's on edge, nervous. He's quietly glad that Courtney is busy lounged across the sofa catching up on YouTube on their TV when he gets home, allowing him to give her a simple greeting before he slips upstairs and into the shower to freshen up post-gym. He remains silent after he returns downstairs, too, pretending he is trying not to distract her from what she's watching as he makes his post-workout smoothie.

"How was the gym?" Courtney asks him, breaking their comfortable silence. He winces quietly, before he turns to lean back against the kitchen bench, facing her as she glances away from the TV to meet his eyes.

"It was alright. Not the best. I was distracted," he admits, watching her nod and her eyes fill with concern. She pauses, going to say something, and Shayne quickly turns back to the bench to needlessly tidy a couple of things. She understands, instead turning to ask him about what Mocha had done earlier in the morning.

Shayne explains, rapidly trying to distract himself with thoughts of cats and enclosures, eventually moving down onto the couch with Courtney to play with the cats as they move around at their feet. Courtney switches off the TV to join him, and it works, in a way. As soon as the cats decide to move elsewhere, though, Shayne feels anxiety crash back into the forefront of his mind. He isn't surprised when Courtney notices.