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Sitting in the corner of the waiting room is a tiny little end table, tucked up against the wall, littered with a varying amount of pamphlets.
It’s easy for Marc to find himself distracted by them; reading them over from where he sits, he traces each letter of the front pages into the knee of his jeans, slowly dragging his fingernail against the material, it works for a good distraction as his heart travels up his throat with each passing second.
On the other side of the door that sits in front of him is a doctors office, and in that office is where his dad is at, probably wringing his hands together, giving the doctor a slew of information, worries, all the bad stuff he doesn’t say out loud to Marc.
A doctor that sits on the other side of the waiting room. A doctor that’ll pry and persist and itch under Marc’s skin like a bug.
In the other corner of the waiting room is a stack of children’s books and toys. The room is empty, for now, and as Marc’s eyes gloss over the collection sitting empty, Steven nudges in the back of his mind and Marc flinches.
Of course Steven would wish to front; he wants to play and be distracted, and usually when Marc was feeling as anxious as he was right now, he’d allow it: give Steven access so he gets to be the one to read picture books and arrange little action figures on the floor so that neither of them had to face anything bigger than they were.
But allowing Steven to front right now might result in something catastrophic.
He’s about to be called in, to talk to this doctor about certain stuff, and if Marc can’t regain control in time, everything he’s worked for in the last couple of months might just spiral totally out of control.
He goes back to tracing letters on his pant legs, but there’s another persistent nudge from Steven, trying to squeeze his way to the front. Marc is pretty resilient in holding down his own to keep control.
He’s halfway through retracing the pamphlet for eating disorders when the door swings open and Marc is startled. Steven becomes more hellbent on fronting but Marc slides him back into the far corner of his mind again.
In the doorway is his father; worn and drawn in, he looks at Marc with a sense of pity. Like he’d lost all hope.
Behind him stands the doctor: a tall, proud man, his face is drawn with harsh lines, eyes small and narrow. He frightens Marc a little bit.
“Marc?” His dad speaks, voice soft, unsure and tentative. “The doctor would like to speak with you now,” he tells him. His hands are clasped together. His lips are pulled in a downward curve. “Is that alright?”
Part of Marc wishes he could just give into Steven’s wishes. Go play with the colorful toys and look at the books on sea creatures and mummies.
But instead, he hauls himself out of his chair and sullenly walks towards the office.
He’s not surprised when his father doesn’t stay beside him. The doctor ushers him in and his dad does this awkward kind of hover, like he can’t quite make his mind up on how to act and behave, and it results in a weird kind of hand on shoulder movement that Marc does his best not to squirm away from.
“I’ll be just out here, alright?” He says, slow and hushed. It makes Marc’s skin crawl, but he’s able to keep a smile plastered on his face, just to humor his father, he watches him return to the empty waiting room, the door softly closing beside him.
The doctor starts talking, even when Marc is still watching the door.
“So, take a seat, Marc.”
Marc does exactly that, sinking into the plush leather, worlds away from the cheap plastic of the waiting room seats, he imagines his father sat here just moments ago, probably nervously drumming his fingers against the arms, blunt fingernails worn down by nattering teeth leaving little half crescent marks in the material.
The doctor, Dr Emmet is what the golden little plaque on his desk reads, is a balding man with a round face, his skin red and blotchy, Marc knows that this is a man that means business. He isn’t timid and weak like his father. There’s a look behind his eyes that reminds Marc of his mother.
He shrinks into his seat a little.
“So I had a little chat with your father,” Dr Emmet says from his seat across the desk, hands resting atop next to a little pile of papers. “He told me that there was this little… character… you like to do, hm?”
Marc feels his cheeks blush; talking about Steven to anyone makes him feel uncomfortable. It was never supposed to be a thing that anyone knew about. But once his dad had caught a glimpse of Steven fronting, he’d pushed and pushed and pushed and now here they were, tripping up over each other.
He squirms in his seat, the leather creaking under his weight.
“It’s…” his voice feels small. “It’s nothing,” he then says. “I just… I just did it as a joke.”
That’s the easy out: lie, lie and continue to lie. He’d sooner rather be in trouble with his father for wasting time and dollars than have to even try and explain to this stranger of a doctor the complexity of Steven’s existence.
Dr Emmet doesn’t seem to care about what Marc tells him. He’s clearly been forewarned about him lying like his dad had expected.
He leans back in his chair, looks down at Marc, his nose long and crooked, like he must’ve broken it at some point in his life, yet Marc can’t imagine a man like Dr Emmet ever getting himself into any kind of trouble that involves a broken nose.
“He said that you called him Steven. Is that right, Marc?”
Marc sinks lower into his seat. The mere mention of Steven's name causes a little ghostly ripple of icy cool air down his back. He waits to see if Steven’ll nudge again. He doesn’t.
“He’s not real,” Marc says, his words a little clipped.
Dr Emmet hums, low and heavy in the back of his throat. He looks incredibly skeptical, which causes Marc’s gut to clench uncomfortably.
“Now Marc,” Dr Emmet says, trying his best to sound comforting, yet, it comes off condescending, like he’s talking down to Marc. He may only be 13 but he’s looking at him like an adult might towards a helpless child, lost in a store, stray from their mommy; all full of selfish pity.
“If we want you to get better,” he continues, leaning forward in his seat this time. “Which we do,” he says with a quick quirk of his brows. “I’m going to need to hear the truth from you, hm?”
Marc shifts his gaze away from his, focuses on the little mesh pen pot on the desk, traces the lines on his pant legs again. Takes a steady, deep breath.
“I told you,” he says once he’s found his voice, lifting his gaze upwards to meet Dr Emmet’s. “He’s not real. It’s a joke. I’m not— I’m not crazy, okay?”
His heart is pounding in his chest. He imagines part of that to be Steven, banging away at the inside of his ribs, desperately clawing to get out, he knows that right now he’ll be pushing to try and front.
Marc feels scared. Trapped, like the walls were suddenly closing in on him in this doctors office.
And Steven has always been there to step in when those horrid feelings crowded Marc too much.
But right now he’s shoving him aside, wishing he could turn to face him and tell him “just lay low for a bit, Steven. Please.”
Because Marc knows what’ll happen if this doctor meets Steven.
He’ll probably send him home with a belly full of pills and a one way ticket to a stay at the hospital until Steven is bled dry from his consciousness.
They’ll sit him down in therapy sessions until he’s brain dead from all the convincing they’ll work on him to tell him what he’s lying to his doctor about.
That Steven isn’t real. That Marc is okay. That anything about his shitty, horrible life is perfectly fine.
He doesn’t doubt that his father told him anything beyond what he was scared about: why Marc needed someone like Steven protecting him.
If Dr Emmet asked Marc knows he’d easily play the fool. He knows that his father is weak and easily bent, and that if he doesn’t give him a satisfactory answer as to why his son was behaving the way he was, then the doctor could slap on an excuse and send him on his merry way, no questions needed whatsoever.
Dr Emmet grins. He has perfect teeth.
“Nobody is calling you crazy, Marc,” he assures him. He pins him with a quizzical look. “Would it be possible? To meet Steven, perhaps? Maybe he could do the talking, hm?”
Anger slices through Marc like a hot knife. He grips the edges of the chair's arm and feels the nice leather moan under his grip.
“No.” He says, chest lilting with each heavy breath. “I told you! I told you…”
Dr Emmet doesn’t seem rattled by his sudden outburst. If anything he looks somewhat bemused by it.
A tinge of shame echoes throughout Marc as he unfurls his fist against the chair, easing the tension out of his shoulders when he leans back again.
“It’s okay to feel angry,” Dr Emmet tells him. The corners of his thin, white lips curl upwards. He pinches his eyes to look at Marc. “Does Steven make you angry?” He asks, voice almost hushed. “Does he make you feel bad?” His eyes sparkle with excitement. “Does Steven make you do bad things, Marc?”
Marc stands this time, body trembling, heart racing, he feels hot iron burning in the back of his throat.
He can feel that familiar nudge in his mind, pressing like a tongue at a wobbly tooth. But as the rage subsides once more, Marc knows that the nudging wasn’t from Steven this time.
“I’m not talking to you,” he tells the doctor, refusing to sit. “I don’t have to, and I won’t. I won't tell you a damn thing.”
Dr Emmet stares him down for a minute, and for a fleeting moment, Marc wonders if this session will end in a screaming match between them. There’s something tickling the back of his mind that wishes for it to be true.
But instead, the doctor leans backwards again, rocking gently at his chair, he rests his elbows on the edge of the test, tucking his bony hands underneath his pudgy chin.
“Hm,” he says after a long silence. “I see you enjoy resisting me, Marc. Which is understandable. We are mere strangers to one another.” He smiles again. “But I feel the more we push, the stronger we become, hm?”
Marc is still standing. His fists are balled up at his sides. He really wants to cry.
“I think… we shall call it a day today, yes? Yes, this is a rather good place to end today's session.”
He doesn’t look at Marc again when he picks up his fountain pen and starts scribbling elegant notes along the paper in front of him.
“I wish…” he says slowly as he continues to write, “to meet Steven at some point.” He pauses before looking up, grinning again. “I would like that very much, Marc.”
Marc says nothing more as Dr Emmet finishes off a few last minute notes before he’s standing to show Marc out of the room.
When the door opens, Marc’s father is already hovering by the door.
“Mr Spector…” Dr Emmet holds out his hand. Marc’s dad engages in a very weak handshake. “There is a lot of work to do, with your boy here,” he says, right in front of Marc. “But I do believe that this is something that can be fixed.”
Their hands fall away and Elias’ hand finds itself being nervously clutched by his other one, his mouth falling into a little o shape.
“So… so you think it’s…” he says, voice dropping to a lower register.
Dr Emmet chuckles lowly. He glances at Marc the same time his father does: like they had just remembered him standing there between them.
“I think regular sessions should be helpful in understanding your boy’s troubles here, hm?”
And just like that, Elias is writing out a cheque, bumbling a thank you and ushering Marc out of the waiting room with a heavy hand on his shoulder, his steps too quick to keep up with.
When they get in the car, it’s silent.
He doesn’t ask how Marc feels. He doesn’t ask about the session (though, Marc has a growing suspicion that he just spent the entire time with his ear pressed up against the door anyways). He doesn’t ask anything, he doesn’t have the gall to.
And as they drive home, Marc wonders how much of this his mother is aware of.
Does his dad lay there of a night as they drift off, talking about their days when he suddenly lets slip “oh, I think our son has something wrong with him.”
And even if he did say it out loud, would she even care to listen?
Or would she use it against him? Would she call him crazy and evil? Would it be another reason to wrap that belt around her fist and bring it down against the backs of his legs?
A gut wrenching thought gnaws at Marc’s gut.
Would she blame Steven for what happened?
Would she coax him out; lull him into a false sense of security and crumble the world he lived in when she’d spit in his face and tell him what a rotten, horrible son he was. What a killer he was?
He closes in on himself, counting trees and houses as they pass them by, and by the time he gets home, it’s easy to let Steven front. He locks his bedroom door and heads to his books. He reads and he reads and he has no recollection of the therapy session that Marc had just endured. And when it’s dinner time, their mother doesn’t join them, opting to drink alone in her room, Marc knows that she’s working her way up to beating him again tonight.
He eats in silence, his father’s shifting gaze growing more and more anxious, Marc knows that his own father is afraid of him. Like he’s the bad guy in this house.
And when they go to bed, it’s Steven that gets them dressed into their pajamas, Steven that brushes their teeth, hums along as he checks the mirror for any zits (or spots as he calls them). And when they’re under the sheets, drifting towards unconsciousness, Marc is able to front again.
He listens out for the silence of the house, so loud it feels deafening. Nobody to kiss him goodnight. Nobody to check in on him. He lays there alone and cold.
He can’t physically hug Steven but he can bring his knees to his chest, wrap his arms around his legs and go into the tightest ball he possibly can make.
So when Steven wakes the next morning, it’ll almost be like he’s hugging him back.
And in the grand scheme of things, that’s good enough for Marc.