short fic: Don't disappear (III)
Author’s note: This wasn't supposed to happen either...
Rating: NC-17/M
Pairing: Arthur centered (RP character)
Words: 2.000
III.
Something's not right
Shadows appear
I close my eyes
Is this real
Don’t disappear
~
The room was weirdly depressing for a psychologist. Arthur couldn’t remember the woman when he walked in. Not the way he had tied her brown hair in a tight knot behind her back, the way she friendly smiled at him and extended her hand for him to shake or the way she said his name with a high-classes tone. As if she was better than he was. She didn’t look so friendly in her tight black knee-length skirt with matching blazer. Underneath she wore something white, but that was the last place Arthur was going to look at when she was wearing her blazer closed. She invited him further into the room before closing the door behind her. There was an easy setting. A desk with a chair and an arm chair in front of a couch. It was exactly how you’d expect a room like this would look like. The only thing that seems to freak Arthur out was the tiny clown on her desk.
“How have you been, Arthur?” She had taken her place in the arm chair while Arthur took place on the couch.
“I’ve been better, I think,” he answered, his eyes scanning the room instead of focusing on her. Honestly, he still wasn’t sure why he was here other than he had agreed to it because his wife was worried. The only that didn’t make sense to him was how he wanted to make his wife so happy when Adrian was on his mind at all time.
“Why don’t you make yourself a bit more comfortable,” she offered him. He wasn’t sure why he followed her directions but Arthur found himself putting his feet up on the couch and lied down, his head on the arm chair with a small pillow in his neck and his fingers entwined in front of his chest, looking up at the ceiling and breathing slowly in and out.
“I want you to close your eyes, Arthur. Take a few deep breaths and go to your happy place.” Arthur closed his eyes and took a couple of deep breaths just like she told him, but going to his happy place? What did that even mean? Just at the second of him thinking what his happy place could be, he saw Adrian’s face coming to him again. He was smiling at him, those hazel eyes glistening in the sun and making him feel all giddy inside.
“Arthur, can you hear me?”
“Yes.” Adrian looked so happy and handsome. God, how could this man take over his life so much and make him want to be someone completely else than the person he was right now? The room seemed to completely disappear but it didn’t felt like he was falling asleep. Just like falling into a trance.
“Tell me about your dreams.”
Arthur took a few deep breaths, just staring into Adrian’s eyes in front of his closed eyelids as he thought about the question. Without thinking who was asking them, he started to tell her. “There is this man and we usually lie in bed together, wrapped in each other arms and I feel complete and happy there.”
“Do you know who the man is?”
“Yes.” Arthur took another deep breath. “He is my boyfriend.”
“What’s his name?” she asked, writing stuff down in the notebook in her lap while she continued to fire questions at him.
“Adrian,” Arthur answers simply and proudly.
“And your wife?” she asked. Arthur furrowed his eyebrows, confused about the question as he saw the change of demeanour of Adrian’s face as well, starting from a pout and complete sadness to hurt and even anger.
“It’s only Adrian,” Arthur answered. He was scared that if he opened his eyes right now, Adrian would be gone for good and he didn’t want that. He wanted to stay with him; he wanted to be back in his arms in the bed and cuddle with him, kiss those lips and feel completely safe and satisfied.
The psychologist continued to ask questions about the dreams he had and then the blackouts. Arthur didn’t know why it was so easy to answer them when he saw Adrian encouraging him with those gorgeous hazel eyes and that handsome smile on his face. He never wanted to open his eyes again, but she had different plans when she took him out of his trance. Arthur blinked a few times but Adrian was gone and he was back in the room.
There was something unsettling suddenly. There was something missing and he couldn’t quite figure out what it was while she was scribbling on. He needed to be out of this dark room, away from that creepy clown and this woman that seemed to know him but he still had no idea what was going on.
“Arthur, I think your wife was right when she thought your PTSD has returned in a way. There are a lot of similar and the same symptoms you’ve been suffering before. Have you been feeling anxious lately?” Arthur nodded and she hummed.
Just fifteen minutes later, Arthur was sitting back in the car next to his wife. She had picked him up after dropping him off. With the blackouts he hadn’t want to risk getting a blackout while he was driving.
“I’m not taking drugs,” Arthur refused when she had giving him a prescription to ease his nerves and for the dreams at night. There just was no way he was going to walk around like some wackjob!”
“Honey,” she spoke so gently and placed a warm hand on top of his while they were still in the parking lot. She hadn’t even put on her seatbelt yet after Arthur got inside the car. “I love you and I don’t like to see you this way. Think of the children.”
Arthur hated how she manipulated him like that, but the soft smile and the loving yet worried look made him give in. “Fine.” This seemed to make her happier when the smile got wider before she leaned in for a kiss. Then she moved back, put on her seatbelt and drove back home.
With the prescription drugs he took later that night, Arthur didn’t dream of Adrian. It was a bit unsettling to not see his face. Even the days after he couldn’t see him and it felt like he was even starting to forget what he looked like. Those hazel eyes were starting to look like a different brown colour and his smile was different. On the upside was that his wife seemed less stressed with how well Arthur was doing when he didn’t seem to have too many blackouts anymore. It only happened twice that week for only a short time but even during those blackouts Arthur didn’t dream of Adrian. Maybe he had been wrong what was up all along and it was just the PTSD that his wife and his psychologist were claiming.
“I have to admit, I feel less stressed and anxious now,” Arthur admitted when he was lying on the couch in the room again of his psychologist. Almost two months have passed and he had his wife seemed happier than ever, even trying for a third child now that their daughter’s first birthday was coming up close. “I haven’t had a blackout in four weeks and I sleep wonderful at night.”
“No dreams about him?” she asked in almost a monotone sound.
Arthur shook his head. “No,” he answered. “Not at all. I think it must be the stress that messed me up and tried to make me want to escape the reality. The only thing I can’t understand is how vivid everything was.” There were wrinkles on the front of his face when he thought back of it before he relaxed again.
“Sometimes our brains interject an alternative universe to escape to, a place that seems better and happier than the one we live in. Especially when someone is suffering from a traumatic experience, they are more likely to want to escape to this universe to the point where they think they can no longer live in this world anymore.”
“I guess,” Arthur said. What else could it be? The only thing everyone seemed to fail to tell him—and what he keeps forgetting—is what trauma he was exactly suffering from. “What happened to me?”
“What do you mean what happened to you?” she asked, obviously clueless about his question.
“What caused my trauma?” Arthur turned his head to face her and see if he could see anything on her face. There was something she wasn’t telling him and it was a bit frustrating; there was definitely more than she was leading on. “How come no one is telling me when I ask?”
“It is not up to us to tell you what happened to you. What’s important is that you want to get better and that you get the help you need. You put your trauma away inside a box in your head that you don’t want to open, which is completely normal for trauma victims. Some never remember what happened to them and when they do, it mostly turns badly for them. You should focus on what you’re feeling right now and that you want to stay happy like this instead of going back to that dark place.”
Suddenly Arthur got another horrific realisation that he hadn’t even noticed in the past months that he had been walking around. The only name he could remember was his own. And Adrian’s. He didn’t know his wife’s name or his children’s. How could he not know the name of the woman he was married to or the two children he had helped create? The worst part was how he had not noticed that he had never called her by her name, only called her Baby or Honey, or another pet name, and even called his son Son and his daughter Daughter. What kind of a husband and father was he if he couldn’t remember the name of the three most important people in his life?
Arthur heard her calling his name after him as he walked out of the room in the middle of a session. This wasn’t something he was able to solve while sitting or lying on that couch and answer her questions. The only way he could find out what was really going on was to find Adrian.
“Arthur?” Arthur stopped as he walked down the pavement and turned around to see his wife there. “Honey, what are you doing?” Arthur only cocked his head lightly, furrowing his brows when he looked at her. Something was off the way she was always there. Whenever he seemed to doubt something, she was there to try and manipulate him. “Let’s go home,” she offered, extending her hand with a smile on her face but he didn’t take it.
Instead, he turned around and started to run. He wasn’t even sure where he was heading, but he needed to get out of here.
Arthur stopped when he suddenly saw all of the gravestones around him. He was confused to how he got here. Just seconds ago he was running away on the pavement and now he was standing in a field with cold stones all around him. The sunny sky and disappeared and changed into a dark and cloudy early evening. The moon was coming up and lighting the headstones. He couldn’t read any of them. They were some weird language he didn’t understand. Arthur was more confused and he started to look for a way out when he tripped over one of the headstones. As he turned around, his eyes fell on the name—the only name he seemed to be able to read and remember.
Arthur Jackson Gates
June 13, 1990—August 25, 2014
Loving son, brother, boyfriend, friend and colleague
Arthur could feel his heart giving in. The pain in his chest became so severe by reading his own name that he was unable to breathe while tears started to dwell in his eyes, desperately trying to breathe. It was harder to keep himself up when he was unable to breathe. A person was coming closer to him, but he couldn´t see who it was through the tears. Then those calming hazel eyes appeared in front of him, a hand touching his cheek gentle.
“Come back to me, Arthur. I need you. Please, come back,” he whispered, hearing his voice so softly before everything disappeared.