Writing Gravitation: Therapy [PG-LS]

[PaganAngel]

[i]Summary: The boys of Gravitation go in for some one-on-one mental counselling... why? I don't know. Just because.

Note: I published chapter 1 of this on gurabiteshiyon.net, but for reasons not worth going in detail about I can't post there anymore, so I think I'll finish this fic here on OB. So there.[/i]

~~Ch 1~~

Doctor Daisuke Kimura woke up that Friday morning knowing that he'd do better just to throw his alarm clock against the wall and crawl back into bed. All right, so he felt that way every day, but could you blame him? After all, he was a psychiatrist, a shrink, if you will, and his occupation was quite ironic considering he himself was teetering on the brink of insanity. Yes, Dr. Kimura had little love in his exasperated heart for his job, and he was always somewhat reluctant to start each day. But today was different. Dr. Kimura had a gut feeling that this was going to be a day unlike any other.

Groggily he rose and turned on his shower, allowing the water to heat first before stepping in. He watched the mirror in the bathroom slowly steam up and then jumped when, out of the corner of his eye, he noticed the reflection of something that didn't belong here.

It was a photograph, a portrait of a pretty, young woman with wavy brown hair, and next to her, a boy, no older than six or seven, the spitting image of his mother. The picture was framed in a fancy border of gold. Of course, it had to be gold. Tomoyo had always loved gold. Of course, Dr. Kimura would know, having invested thousands of dollars in that stupid wedding ring that Tomoyo had ended up chucking off a bridge six years later before running off with that stupid French metrosexual, Jacques von Douchebag, or whatever the hell his name was, and taking their son Hideki with her?.

"Deep breaths?" Dr. Kimura willed himself to calm down. He just had to make it through today and then he'd have the whole weekend to wallow in self-pity, just as he did every weekend in between reruns of vacuum infomercials. He grabbed the picture in question and hurled it in the trash can, satisfied with the shattering noise it produced. After his shower, he cooked himself a serving of instant ramen- the only provisions remaining in his one-room apartment- and as he sat on the floor eating it, he wondered how it was possible to have a Ph.D. and have to worry about paying the rent each month. But Tomoyo had taken every last penny of his when she divorced him, none of which she should have had a claim to anyway. Tomoyo was an aspiring actress- or in simpler terms, a mooch- and was all too quick to marry a DOCTOR, after all he was loaded and it wasn't as though there'd be any FEELINGS involved, at least not for her? as for Kimura, who the hell cares about how he feels?. At this bitter thought, Dr. Kimura snapped a chopstick in half, throwing the remains across the bare house. Sighing, he looked down at his watch- one he'd bummed off a guy from work- and decided it was time to head to the office.

~~~***~~~

Dr. Kimura stepped into the dimly lit office and fought the strong impulse to burst out in tears. He had psychotics of every flavor there in his waiting room, and a few who redefined insanity entirely. There was a pink-haired boy, clinging to the arm of an older blonde man, babbling incessantly though Dr. Kimura couldn't comprehend a word of it for the life of him; a man in his early thirties, humming an impromptu tune as he made a stuffed, pink rabbit on his lap dance; a man with platinum blonde hair, a pimp hat, and a feathery coat, casting shifty glances around the room; and a? JESUS CHRIST, was that American carrying a GUN? Whispering reassuring words to himself under his breath, he walked to his secretary's desk like a condemned man walking down Death Row, and asked, almost afraid to hear the answer, "What's my schedule look like today, Hitomi?"

"You're booked solid, doctor." Hitomi was wearing one of those stupid, I-love-the-world-and-everyone-in-it smiles, complemented with a "Have a Nice Day!" pin set on her chest. Hitomi, of course, loved life. Hitomi has had a steady boyfriend for over a year and just last week he proposed to her. Hitomi had no complaints about life, but she didn't have to deal with raving lunatics on a daily basis, either.

"When do I start?" I grumbled.

"Right away," she said, referring to her clipboard, blowing a bubble with the watermelon-scented gum in her mouth. "Let's see? Shuichi Shindou?"

The pink-haired young man jumped up from his seat. "That's me!" he called.

Hitomi beamed. "The doctor will see you now, sir."

The guy- Shuichi, was he called? - groaned. "Why do I have to go first?" he whined.

Hitomi made a "tuh" noise, rolling her eyes. "Because this is a poorly written fanfic, silly. The main character always goes first."

"Alright, fine." Shuichi grudgingly made his way to the front of the office, following Dr. Kimura through the open doorway. Dr. Kimura seated himself in his swiveling, rolling office chair, the one that always made him feel so important and superior; the one that gave him the only true high in his pitiful existence. It was his little way of saying, "I have a degree in psychology, and guess what? You don't."

"Please, Mr. Shindou, have a seat on the couch."

"Cool!" Shuichi said, plopping down on the striped sofa. "It's just like in the romantic comedies when the main character gets super depressed and goes to the shrink-" the doctor winced at this belittling term, he was a psychiatrist, dammit- "and the doctor makes him sit on the couch and relive his childhood and interpret ink blots and stuff-"

"Fascinating," Dr. Kimura interrupted quickly; the kid had nearly suffocated, having said that whole sentence (run-on though it may have been, but a sentence nonetheless) in a single breath. Not that he'd really terribly mind if Shuichi Shindou dropped dead. It was just that no patient had ever died in his office, and given that this job was the only thing keeping him from the homeless shelter, it seemed in his favor to prevent any unnecessary death.

"So, Mr. Shindou, how old are you?" He tapped his clipboard nonchalantly with a purple gel pen- Hitomi's, of course, and grape scented too- drumming a staccato beat that matched the ticking of the clock that was moving steadily slower each second.

"You can call me Shuichi, and I'm nineteen."

"Uh-huh." Dr. Kimura checked off the box under "blame it all on teenage hormones" on Shuichi's analysis sheet. "What do you do for a living, Shuichi?"

Shuichi raised an eyebrow incredulously. "I'm a singer. Haven't you ever heard of Bad Luck?"

Bad luck? Dr. Kimura thought. I'm witnessing it right now. He merely shook his head, though.

"Don't you have a TV, or a radio, or SOME communication with the outside world?" Shuichi tilted his head in confusion.

"No."

The look on Shuichi's face was one of complete preposterousness. Not that Shuichi would ever think "preposterousness" was anything besides an herbivorous dinosaur, anyway. "Man, you really need to get a life," Shuichi declared.

Yeah, rub it in, is what Kimura thought, but what he said was, "That's not of importance here. Please tell me about yourself, Shuichi." He raised a Styrofoam cup of lukewarm coffee to his lips.

"Well?" Shuichi tapped his chin in concentration. Thinking was apparently something to which Shuichi wasn't terribly accustomed. "Like I said, I'm a singer in a band. We're really popular around here, but you wouldn't know that." He shot a glare at the offender of the said sacrilege. "I've been living with my boyfriend for about?"

Dr. Kimura coughed up a mouthful of the tepid coffee, leaving a splendid brown stain on the front of his white shirt. "W-what?" he choked.

"What what?" Shuichi asked.

"What did you just say?" Dr. Kimura responded.

"I said, 'what what?'" was Shuichi's reply.

Dr. Kimura slapped his forehead. Pink had hereby replaced blonde as the ditziest hair color known to man. Dr. Kimura knew there was only one way to deal with a ditz of this magnitude, and that was to spell it out for him. "So, let me get this straight (he inwardly chuckled at the pun). You have a boyfriend?"
"Mm-hmm."

"Is that mm-hmm yes or mm-hmm no?"

Shuichi rolled his eyes. "Since when has mm-hmm ever been no?" Kimura had to admit, he had a point.

"So then, you're gay?"

"Mm-hmm. But-"

"Hold on." Kimura held up his hand, halting Shuichi mid-sentence. "From now on, let's agree to not say 'mm-hmm,' okay? It's sort of confusing."

"Mm-hmm- I mean, okay."

"So tell me about your, um, boyfriend," Dr. Kimura prompted.

"Well, his name's Yuki, and he's well?" Shuichi broke off then, looking for the words to say. After a pause of several seconds, Dr. Kimura pressed him to continue with a quick "Mm-hmm?"

"AHA!" Shuichi jumped from the couch, pointing at the wrongdoer. "YOU SAID IT!"

"I- I didn't!" Dr. Kimura stammered. "I said 'uh-huh'! There's a big difference!"

"Yes you did! You said 'Mm-hmm'! I heard it!"

"I did not!"

"Did too!"

"Did not!"

"Did too!"

"Uh-uh!"

"Mm-hmm!"

"THERE!" Dr. Kimura cried, exasperated. "You said it too! Now can we PLEASE move along?"

"Sure. Uh?" Shuichi scratched his head. "What were we talking about again?"

"Erm?" it took a minute before either of them recalled. "You were just about to tell me about your boyfriend. Tell me some of the things you like about him."

Shuichi was stuck on this one. Anything he could say about Yuki was either a negative comment or a statement that, due to its explicit nature, was better left unmentioned. "Um, I don't really know, to be honest with you. He's really mean and cold and sometimes I get the feeling that he hates me. No, on second thought, it's not like he hates me; he acts as if he really doesn't care about me, and that hurts even worse." Shuichi had gone from hyperactive to hypersensitive in a matter of milliseconds. "He never shares his feelings with me, and he's always blocking me out."

"And in spite of all that, you stay with him?" Dr. Kimura was perplexed.

"Of course!" Shuichi seemed insulted by the question. "I love him! He's my Yuki! I'd do anything for him! I'd willingly die for him!"

"I see." Dr. Kimura checked the box on the paper next to "manic depression". "But? why?"

"Huh?" Shuichi asked, distracted, watching the world's largest fly make its way throughout the office. Groaning, Dr. Kimura added another checkmark to the box labeled "short attention span". As he did, he got a glance at his watch, and realized they were already three minutes over the allotted time for their session.

"Well, Shuichi, it looks like we're out of time, I guess we'll have to meet again!" Like, for instance, in hell, he amended himself mentally. He followed Shuichi out the door, and then leaned over Hitomi's desk. "One nutcase down, a billion more to go. Who's next?"

Hitomi looked down. "Eiri Yuki."
~~~~

[i]Thus ends chapter 1... I'll write chapter 2 whenever I feel like it... see ya then.[/i]