please dont say you love me // tracob au

epilogue

"Do you think about that a lot?" 

"Think about....what?" Troye asked softly, keeping his eyes trained on his antsy hands in his lap. He knew the question but didn't really feel like answering at the moment. His energy was already drained as it was.  

"That feeling of regret. Do you feel like you didn't get to do enough when Connor was alive? Like you couldn't give him enough?" 

Troye hesitated, "Yeah."

"Do you feel that maybe because you didn't give him everything he deserved that maybe you don't deserve for somebody to give you that?" Dr. Janoff asked. 

Troye looked down to his legs nervously, not wanting to make eye contact. Dr. Janoff took his lack of an answer as his answer. 

"Well Troye our time is just about up, but I want you to think about all the ways you feel that you think you're not enough for Jacob for next time okay? Think about all the things that he does for you that you feel you don't deserve. The quicker we can identify those things, the easier it will be to get rid of them." She paused and looked at Troye's hands which still in his lap. "I know tonight might be a little...hard so feel free to call me and leave me a voice message and I'll get back to you as soon as I can okay? If you need to." 

"Okay," Troye said, letting a tear fall but he tried to quickly wipe it away before she could see. It was the usual routine by now and Troye was just used to it. 

Troye let out a sigh of relief as he stepped out of his therapists office. It always felt like a weight was off his shoulder when he walked out of there. He was almost thankful that Jacob had dragged him into the therapy thing once again, but he still felt like a jumbled mess in that beige little room. It felt weighing on him, that every time she'd ask a deep or personal question he'd have to dig up from the deeply buried chest of memories that he was doing a fine time repressing. And that talking about them was like breaking open the stitches once again and feeling hopeless all over again. Jacob had tried to explain it to him, that he hadn't stitched himself up correctly, because repressing the memories and pain and acting like they don't exist isn't the way to fix things. He said that Troye needed to talk about them in order to handle them the right way so he can get his emotions out and then properly tuck it away in his brain, and properly stitch up the wounds once again. And so Troye silently nodded, he knew Jacob was right....he seldomly was wrong these days. 

He knew Jacob had spent time to find him a good therapist- one who specialized in grieving the death of a loved one. It took him a few tries to get one that had experience in dealing with gay relationships, since most of them were so heteronormative that Jacob was scared they might have a negative effect on him. But Dr. Janoff was more than accepting and welcoming and was the warmest of them all. Jacob had tried so hard for him. So he tried to do something he hadn't done with all of the other ones Tyler and his mom had forced on him: he tried to open up. To listen. To actually listen to the question and understand that he wasn't okay, even if he tried to tell himself he was fine. So far it was going well. Dr. Janoff tried her hardest to be understanding of Troye's slight stubbornness and inability to talk about his feelings, and so far she had been the most successful out of the four to get through to him. 

He wiped a few tears from his eyes as he stepped into the elevator after waving bye to the receptionist that he'd gotten to know over the past few months. She was always warm and welcoming to Troye whether he had a smile on his face, an anxious frown or was in tears after his session. She always had the right words to give him as he signed out and made his next appointment at her desk in the lobby. He liked her.

Once the elevator closed, he hit the ground floor button as Paradise by Coldplay started playing through his headphones. Jacob was almost always ready for him right in the parking lot out front and sometimes Troye needed those few minutes to listen to a song and to emotionally prepare himself for seeing Jacob again. Getting out of the cloudy headspace of a session could be difficult and the music helped him. Usually that required spending an unusually long amount of time in the bathroom wiping his tears or splashing some water on his face.  It helped him get into the right mindset.