Help Me (sequel to Save Me)

Chapter 103

Go read the story I'm writing with floatdownstream called Get Over It. It's Remdy (obvs) and I'm sure if you like 0this, you'll like that. :)

Trigger warning but not really

"I had some sort of flashback thing," Remington tells his therapist, "I don't really know what it was." He looks down at his hands.

Abigail reads the most recent pages in his notebook. He's written down everything he's eaten, as usual, and also written something about arguing with Andy, though it's very vague. "What happened?"

The boy shrugs. "I don't know. I just-" he goes quiet.

"This is a safe space, Remington. Whatever you need to say, you can tell me." Abigail senses that he's hesitant about telling her because sometimes he convinces himself that things he does or feels are stupid and that it's not a big deal.

"Me and Andy, we were...and I had to ask him to stop. I could kinda feel Holly on me. It was weird." He picks up the glass of water. "He stopped straight away, but Holly was still there. It was just odd." The water is cool as he swallows it.

The woman hands him back the notebook. "It sounds like you were triggered by being intimate with Andy. Did you find it hard to calm down?"

Again, Remington shrugs. "It wasn't easy, but I didn't feel like I was dying or anything. It just took a while for her to disappear. "I kept thinking about the first time she hurt me," he says. They haven't ever talked about this.

"Okay. Do you want to tell me about it? Get it off your mind?"

Remington nods. He explains about how, when she hit him the first time, he told himself that she wouldn't do it again, and that when she did do it again, he told himself the same thing. He says that he remembers counting how many times she did it, and how scared he was when he lost count somewhere around 90.

She listens and lets him tell her everything he needs to say before speaking. "It's good you can talk about it," is the first thing she says, and then, "it's no surprise that you can remember the exact day it first happened. That must have felt like a turning point in your relationship."

"Definitely. It was the first time I kinda realised that she wasn't treating me right. I guess I knew it for a long time before I-before I did anything about it. I was so scared of her hurting me more so I didn't tell anyone."

"Do you think things would have been different if you told someone sooner?"

Remington smiles thoughtfully. For some reason talking about it isn't upsetting him like it used to. "I think that I would have been less emotionally-um-damaged, and maybe the whole hotel thing never would have happened, but if I had told someone sooner, I probably never would have bumped into Andy when I did. I don't think we'd be married now if I had told someone sooner." He raises an eyebrow when Abigail smiles. "What?"

She shakes her head. "You've never done that before."

"Done what?"

"Found something positive among all of this. You just told me that you and Andy fell in love because you ran into him when you escaped Holly. That's you finding good things that came out of something awful. You escaped hell and, in turn, found your heaven

Remington smiles, too. "I guess every cloud does have a silver lining."

The two talk about the arguments Remington and Andy had, and he tells Abigail what he told Andy; about feeling like he's given the 'special treatment' because of what he's been through. She reminds him that it'll be difficult for people close to him to see him experience what he has and not want to treat him like he's really fragile, because they'll be scared of hurting him. Remington understands what she means, but he still wishes people would just treat him like they treat everyone else.

"It's different with Andy," he says, "because I live with him and he's there when I'm having bad days. I like it when he looks after me because he doesn't make me feel useless. But when Emerson looks at me like I'm a fragile little thing, it makes me feel so fucking useless. Like - if he thinks I'm so fragile, then maybe I really am?"

"You need to talk to him about it. Tell him that you're not as fragile as he makes you out to be."

After therapy, he gets in the car where Andy is waiting, and grins at him stupidly. "I want to go out for lunch," he announces.

Andy ruffles his hair and starts the car. "I will gladly take you out for lunch. How was therapy?"

"Good. I'm so grateful to have her to talk to, you know? It's reassuring to have a mental health professional tell me I'm not a complete fuck up who's gonna die alone."

The older chuckles, pulling out onto the main road. "Even if you were a complete fuck up, you still wouldn't die alone. You've got me."

Remington rolls his eyes and can't help but to blush. "You're the best husband and I love you!" He reaches across Andy and pulls the man's phone from his pocket, whining when Andy laughs at him.

"You're the best husband and I love you, too," Andy responds, "if I crash it's not my fault."

"Got it!" The boy sits back up with Andy's phone and at the same moment, it starts ringing. "Oh, it's Lonny, I'm gonna answer. Hi Lonny. It's Remington. Andy's driving. Yeah. I can definitely tell him that. Okay. Cool. See you later. Bye." He hangs up and looks at Andy. "So Lonny is coming round at half seven."

"Alright. You're cute when you're talking on the phone."

Remington snorts. "That's a stupid thing to say."

"You say that, but I can see you blushing."

"Shut up."

Andy pulls into a parking space by the road and the two get out, holding hands as they walk down the street. Remington pulls Andy into a shop to buy some more eyeliner, and they end up messing around with eyeshadow until a member of staff tells them to leave. They do, giggling like school children, and find a café to have lunch in. Remington gets Andy to choose him something of the menu because he knows, from recent experiences, that looking at the menu seems to make him feel way worse about eating, and he trusts that Andy will get him something he likes.

"So why's Lonny coming round later?" Andy asks, picking up his mug of tea.

The boy shrugs. "Dunno. He said he wanted to talk to you about something. Didn't say what."

"Oh, okay. He mentioned a while ago he was gonna get building work done on his house and might not be able to stay there while that's happening. Maybe it's that"

Their food arrives and Remington is happy with what Andy got him, though picks out all the olives because he just decided when he saw them that he didn't like them, even though really he does like olives.

Andy knows better than to mention it, and takes the olives from Remington so the boy isn't stressed out. "You know what we should do?"

Remington looks up. "What's that?"

"Get a pet."

The boy raises his eyebrows like he doesn't believe him. "You what?"

"We should get a pet. A cat, maybe."

"If you're being serious, which I hope you are, then yes, I want a cat. Let's get a cat!"

And so they decide, in that moment, that they're going to get a cat.