Chapter Text
“So how did that make you feel?” Can you express your emotions to be a little bit more?”
Jesse knows what it’s like to feel emotional. Not that anyone would know, ask just about any chick he’s dated, friend he’s had, or person he’s bumped into on the street, and they’d tell you his skin’s as thick as the leather on his boots. And it’s not that that isn’t true. It is. But when you’ve gone through as much as he has, as much as he has completely alone… it kind of starts to eat at you a little.
No one ever sees it, no one ever has seen it. But dealing with that, the sheer force of having to do it all by himself, having to put on a smile, go through with it being the rock, how he has to be the comforter, and never the comforted, it’s not a great feeling. Or feelings, would be more accurate. He’s sure he’s felt every single emotion known to man.
When Jesse was a toddler, he got it figured out that he had two basic feelings. Happy and sad. And yeah, other things came into the picture, mad, excited, and so on, but really, they all were just places on the spectrum between the two original feelings. He’d realized pretty quickly that one of those emotions should be repressed, and one of them should be expressed. Especially in his family, with the early pressure put on him by his father, he’d picked up on that fast.
But he’d always been infatuated by that, how feelings could overtake someone so quickly, and in so many different ways, seeming endlessly different and complex. But how really, at the highest level of everything, there were only two. What he hadn’t known, is just how far those two could go.
So, sitting here now, forced into the overly bright, obnoxiously colourful family counselling room, on Danny’s orders to help out Stephanie, he knew exactly how to play things.
“I mean, yeah, it wasn’t great seeing Steph freak out like that, but I think I handled it pretty well. I mean, what other option was there? That’s why I’m there, right, to help out? I think I’ve always been generally good at dealing with all the kiddie stuff anyways.” He cleared his throat. “When’re the rest of the people gonna get in here? Why is it just you and me right now? Isn’t this for Stephanie?”
The therapist smiled from over her clipboard, but something about her face made Jesse feel uneasy. He recognized that smile. It wasn’t real. It was a mask, a mask to hide the meaning she truly wanted to portray. “We always start with individual meetings for family trauma counselling sessions. They’ll be in here in just a little bit.”
Jesse leaned back against the couch, pulling a leg up closer to his chest. “I mean, not telling you how to do your job here, but this wasn’t really a family trauma. More so of a… a Stephanie trauma, so to speak. I mean, none of us really cared, we’re all old enough to know that people are late sometimes. Traffic happens.”
The therapist looked at him closer. “Well yes, but even adults can be traumatized by things like that. It’s completely normal. Expected, really. Especially for a family situation like yours, after losing your sister to a car accid-“
“I said this shouldn’t be about me.” Jesse cut in sharply. ‘Pull it together, man.’ His brain whispered. ‘The curtain’s starting to fade. Don’t show her the truth.’ He took a deep breath, letting it out slowly and selecting rehearsed smile number eleven from his facial library. Relaxed, open, and charismatic. This face should do it. Make her take her nose out of where it doesn’t belong.
“What I meant was,” He paused, slowly removing his leg from the couch and leaning back a little further. “I think this should be more about Steph. Not about me. I’m doing great, really babe, there’s no need to ever worry about me. I’m sure you have more than enough of your own problems to deal with. So can we get the show on the road and move on to the family thing?” He stood up, the smile slipping a bit. “Let’s get the rest of the gang in, I think we’re done here.”
He opened the door and left, but as he walked the hall to the waiting room, something nagged in his brain. How had she seen it so easily? There was no way that she should’ve been able to see through his act. The act that’d taken him years to perfect; he’d mastered the art of keeping it cool. So how had she been able to almost make him crumble?
“Something isn’t right in there.” He mumbled to himself, before rounding the corner and stepping out to where his family was waiting, and plastering on smile number four, determined not to let one woman shape how the world saw him.