safeword

fifteen

Spring // 7 years later

Pen against paper, it scratches the surface. Touya is innately aware.

"So." She starts. His therapist. The bane of Touya's existence. "It's been about a year since you started on the mood stabilizer. How do you think things are going?"

Her name is Lucy - some prestigious kid from across the ocean who treated Touya's mind like a playground. Lucy is nice enough, however. She has kind, brown eyes. The ones you'd want to talk to, though Touya always feels forced. Her accent is funny.

Lucy waits for an answer, kind eyes shadowing Touya's stoic face. They've known each other for as long as Touya has been sedated - a year. It was all under your orders. A piece of him loathes you for it.

He laughs a little bit, though nothing was funny in his mind. "You want me to answer that truthfully?"

Lucy pulls her pen from the page, offering a half-shrug. "Truth would be nice, yes."

"I don't even remember half of it." Touya stops, then brings his fingers to his mouth. Since he stopped smoking, fidgeting with his lips or his piercings was the next best ailment. However, it had gotten so bad that he pulled his nose ring out. Ever since, he's content with letting the hole close up.

"You don't remember? What do you mean? Is it a feeling of disassociation or..?" Lucy leaves the question open-ended, wrist limp and palm-up as if she were declaring a point. A pair of thin glasses sits on the edge of her pinched nose. She doesn't wear them all the time, so Touya thinks she's phony.

"Just fuzziness," he shrugs as if she was supposed to read his mind. "Nothing really hurts anymore."

"Do you tend to seek out pain?" Her head tilts to the side, and she stares into Touya's settled eyes. Years of weathering looked good on him, nearly too good. His cheeks slimmed out, lines settled under his eyes, and his pupils were a little dimmer - less poignant. It makes him seem softer than the average 32-year-old.

"Of course, I don't seek out pain. It just follows me." He rolls his eyes as if she should know this stuff by now. After a year of uncomfortable, stuffy office visits Lucy still only knows surface-level information about her patient. Touya made her work for the three hundred dollar an hour check.

"I'm a magnet for it," Touya continues, stretching out his arms as if he were grasping at the words he was trying to find. "My father planted that curse long ago."

"That is a very roundabout way of shifting blame, Todoroki." Lucy scribbles a soft sentence on her page. Touya hates this - hates the self-righteous 'know it all' attitude the brunette carries. That's what happens when you come from money. There's no need for humility. "I do not believe that you are your father's son, and I also do not believe that pain happens to follow you. It's the way you respond to things that brings with it painful situations."

Touya nods as if he is paying attention. Instead, he was more focused on the way the evening light hit the pearlescent paint on the walls, almost making it glimmer.

"When was the last time you think you've felt real, genuine pain? Physical or mental."

Touya looks up, then furrows his eyebrows as he thinks. There was a job he was on three years ago when he snapped his ankle. It hurt like Hell, but it's all just surface-level. That wasn't real pain.

"I don't understand the question."

Lucy gives him a sort of blank stare. Touya was tiptoeing today. "How is your partner doing? How's Keigo?"

Touya scoffs and sits back in his chair. He could answer that question, but he didn't want to. It all felt too personal. "My partner is well. I know you know her pretty thoroughly."