Challenge: Year End Reflections (fic)
Over the last year, did things go pretty much as you'd expected or planned, or did your life take a significant, unexpected turn? Overall, was it a good year or one that you want to put behind you as fast as you can?
Dr. Fyellegedde smiles evenly at him, peering over Tucker's file and waiting for an answer. In response, he rubs his left eye gingerly and blinks. Takes a sip of coffee and sits back in the comfy chair of doom, knees spread wide.
"Or did you have any plans... at all?" She adds, impatiently. He stares back at her, keeping his mind blank, aside from a Karok nursery rhyme that was meant to nurse the unwilling spirits of dead babies. Yeah. Suck on that, telepathic, sycophantic bitch ... and your whole style of 'therapy gone wild', Tucker thinks. Because that language is hard to pronounce right, and if it gets stuck in your head incorrectly... you could be in for a long night.
Her annoyance at Tucker is thinly veiled, he can tell she's ready to pop by the thin white line above her upper lip. This has been a tought past couple of months for the counseling department, on the 6th floor of Wolfram & Hart. The good doctor, herself, has been using magical and chemical means to cope her way through the holidays. Everyone heard about her behavior at the New Year's administration party (that Tucker declined to go to) -- everyone who was remotely psychic or telepathic, anyway. It was sort of a miracle that she wasn't also put on probation.
"I had plans," Tucker finally says, throwing her a bone. Dr. Fyellegedde looks vaguely self-satisfied, and sits back in her chair. Tucker's almost sure that if he could see through her desk, she'd be mirroring his spread-kneed posture. It's a competition for who has the biggest balls, and Tucker's only barely in the lead. "I moved out to the East Coast from LA, didn't I? That wasn't easy, I'll have you know. I had a pretty good set-up in LA. Freelancing. Tons of shit to do. A girlfriend... sort of."
"So, why did you move, if you had everything so dialed in?" the therapist asks, idly twirling her pen like a baton.
"Bored," Tucker replies, immediately. It's a canned answer and completely untrue. Okay, he'd been a little bored, sure. And he didn't really have a girlfriend, he had a consistent booty call. And his work was sporadic and sort of sketchy. Pauly Shore still owes him $6000 bucks for cleaning up a little Tse-Tse'she infestation at the Comedy Store. But all in all, LA had been working out all right for him. Better than Seattle and way, way better than Phoenix.
The real reason that Tucker moved to Boston was two-fold: one, to get closer to a girl named Miwa Deranja -- who he had an impossible crush on and who'd alluded to having a place for him to stay; and two, to get away from the Chinese warlocks who wanted him to pay up for the tattoos he'd gotten when he was still hanging out with the other Tucker. Lesser reasons included: putting a continent between he and Amy (the guilt! the guilt!), he and Sunnydale, and he and his mom. Besides, Wolfram & Hart's newest HQ was in Boston and he wanted to get back in with them. Work up the power reserves to give those Chinese magic gangsters what they wanted, plus interest.
"And did moving to Boston go as planned?" Dr. Fyellegedde asks, trying to draw at least one solid answer out of the ever-unwilling Tucker Wells.
Did it? No. Within a month of living with Miwa, she got sick of Tucker's questions about pre-incarnation, Japanese demons and the yakuza. The sex was good, when they had it, but that ended completely when she walked in on him with his new toy, the Warrenbot. The robot shit freaked her out, she said, because where she'd come from, a golem was a golem and the flesh and blood creatures didn't tangle with the mechanical. (Ironic, of course, as she had a robotic hand that he tangled with on more than one occasion, to ecstatic results.) Maybe she was jealous. But, whatever the case, after she came home to find Tucker and the Warrenbot naked and spent on the couch, she never really looked at him the same way. And she wasn't very impressed with his new friends: Kara, the fifteen year old Slayer, namely... but also Lilah from W&H; Wesley, his new boss; Holden, the vampire he'd gone to high school with; Alan, the self-impressed lawyer; Connor, the not-angry-enough prodigal son; and Todd Campbell, "The Immortal." Only one of those people was actually his friend, of course: Kara. What kind of 25 year old guy developed a creepy, semi-platonic relationship with a little girl? And one who was the same age as her daughter who was being raised in Japan to take her place in the long line of Miwas?
So, Tucker moved into a place that Campbell had set up for he and the Bot. Raised a couple of Frioh. Raised a Yasha demon that wound up terrorizing half of Boston, and injuring his new Slayer friend, and this woman that he'd worked with. Everything was going all right, from Tucker's point of view, until Andrew showed up, looking for a place to stay. As soon as he saw the Warrenbot, Tucker had no real control over his situation. The Bot, who turned out to be alarming more Warren than Bot, was game for whatever. But Tucker wasn't. He and Andrew fought more viciously than they had when they were kids. The household was really uncomfortable, due largely to Tucker's inability to accept that he'd been connecting to the Warrenbot more than he'd connected with anyone flesh-or-blood, ever. Tucker's way of dealing with this particular crisis was by getting fucked up, and staying that way. He got back into heroin, drank himself sick, started buying drugs from Kara's little school friend, Paul Sidoni, and only left the house to get wasted, go to work, and get laid. He didn't even have to leave the house to fuck Amy: she flew all the way from Vegas to attend the housewarming party they threw (shortly after discovering they'd been being taped without their knowledge by their landlord, Mr. Todd Campbell), and Tucker and she went at it in the bed he'd been sharing with the Bot for weeks. And then, later, another ex-girlfriend, Jezebel, came through town and got a very special tour of the Boston branch of their common employer, and then an extra-special tour of an alley down the street.
That's about the time that Tucker realized that he was in trouble. He'd never given a shit about cheating on a sexual partner before, but suddenly, he felt the need to confess to the Warrenbot about all his transgressions. And the Bot, or the Warren-ness of the Bot, was so accepting and generous about it! It was horrible. Tucker remembers the depression and confusion of last April. He fell in love with a robot. It sucked! He tried to reprogram it, but let's face it: Tucker's just not as good with cybernetics as Warren is/was. He botched it so bad. He tried to rectify it, or at least gloss over it, by treating themselves to a weekend of body swappage: all from Remus. That was fun, and Tucker warms a little at the memory.
After that, shit got really weird. Tucker finally figured out a way to get the real Warren back. He blew his entire mojo wad on paying a visit to Kh'Ysk Jhad, trans-dimensional travel agent. It was grueling, but in the end, totally worth it. He came home with a flesh and blood Warren, to add to the robot version that was already populating his Warren collection. For one night, he hogged them both. The next day, he had Remus come over and take the little bit of soul that was in the Bot and put it back into Warren, thereby transferring a huge chunk of memories, knowledge and (apparently) whatever it was that loved Tucker. Convenient, non?
Right about then, Tucker and Warren, the Bot and Andrew left their tainted apartment, boobytrapped it, and moved in with Kara and Darla. Kara was fresh out of a possession coma-thing. She needed the company and Wesley and Ben's house had all but been abandoned at that point, anyway. Tucker didn't really have anywhere else to go, plus, he knew that he wasn't long for Boston. He was being shipped off to Minnesota for a month-long training session at the secret W&H training ground (Mall of America, since there are no secrets here). The promotion was, really, the highlight of his professional life, in 2005. Double the money, three times the power, most of the clearance.
The month in Minnesota was brutal. Tom Cruise, Kiki's scary real face, strange days of torpor and nights of training. And then there was the whole "murdering people on company time" thing. That was fucked up, but the drugs helped take the sting away a little... or at least it dulled the clarity of the memory. Happily, it ended abruptly, and Tucker came back to Boston. Andrew was gone, and had forgotten to take the Bot that Tucker had given him. Ingrateful little fuck. There were some good times, and some bone-shuddering bad times, as Warren and Tucker finished out their stint living with Kara. There was that whole thing with Remus... which Tucker never told Warren about, and that continued after the first time. Too much drinking. Fighting with Toddles and Alan. Unfortunately, Todd Campbell really does own almost everything in Boston, so it was difficult to find a place of their own. Eve Hart and her assistant helped considerably. Eve was handy like that. Is handy like that. (Boy oh boy, is Tucker happy that he never tried to hook up with her.)
Everything after returning from training is stored in strange, brief flashes of memory for Tucker. That's because he'd been on the meds. And this therapy shit... it wasn't helping. Not really. It's good for summarizing and self-obsession, but it isn't really fixing anything, is it? Flashes: Kara, dying; Warren and Bruce and fights; Amy, and coming out to her; work, work, work; Remus and giving he and Kirill the demons; no summoning at work, no summoning at home; finding out he had herpes, and then taking a cure for it; hours and hours of telepathic consultation with the Partners and the staff; meeting people for drinking; hiring Wes and shunting off as much work as possible onto him (funny how he always asked for more!); and parties... so many parties. Halloween and Warren's demony-self getting it on with Gwen in the bathroom, flirting with Kara. Tara coming onto him, right in front of Alan. Bonding with Todd over mutual hatred of Harry Osborn. The, uh, corporal punishment of one of W&H's richest clients [name withheld upon request]. And Remus, doing dirty, drunken things with him in the employee bathroom. Comforting Kara. Kissing Kara. Buying Kara a pony (who thought that brilliant plan up?). All a blur.
Right up to three days after Remus and Kirill's Christmas party. Everything blurry clears up around that day, when Tucker found out that he took Kara's virginity in the bathroom, as a Christmas party was going on the other side of the door. Kinda blipped that whole event, much to Kara's (and his own) horror. Couldn't remember a goddamned thing. Drinking and drugs have always been part of Tucker's life, so the blacking out thing... that was new. Or, to be more specific, they've been a part of Tucker's life since he left the group home and went off his medication. He'd previously looked at his vices as self-medicating, but as taking anti-psychotics is now a job requirement for his new position as conduit, it suddenly wasn't working out. Being fucked up didn't work out like it used to. Tucker started having "episodes" -- as Dr. Fyellegedde called them -- which culminated in a series of fights, arguments, angry fucks and a dizzy, fumbling deflowering in the aforementioned bathroom.
Something had to change. Tucker -- who is now owned not by the Chinese mafia, but by Wolfram & Hart, who essentially bought out the marker on his soul -- realized that he couldn't stop taking the meds. It's a contractual obligation that he agreed to. That and these therapy evaluations. He basically cannot lose his job. So, the illicit intoxicants had to go. Which brings us back to today: sober Tucker. Still surly. Still capable of love. Still ruining his own (proverbial) Prom. Still not sure what to say. But now, sober.
Yesterday, Tucker asked Warren if maybe they could just move to the secret cabin in Maine, indefinitely. Warren was reluctant, saying that he barely leaves the house as it is, but Tucker sees it like this: no brains, no headaches; no temptations, no trespasses; no nothing, no doing. They could just hide out up there! Tucker can tele-commute! And fly to Boston for meetings. He could do it, he's sure of it, even if a year ago the idea of living with just Warren in the woods somewhere would have been laughed at. Copiously. By him. Anyway, it doesn't matter, because Warren said no. Or, more precisely, Warren said that it would be okay on a trial basis, which is the softer way of refusing.
Tucker looks at his therapist and smirks, after several minutes of thinking his answer through while simultaneously shielding his thoughts with the Karok lullaby. He tilts his head at her curiously and repeats, "Did last year turn out how I thought it would?"
Dr. Fyellegedde wakes up a little. Tucker suspects she can sleep with her eyes open, which would be a notable talent as a therapist. "How you planned, yes. Did it?"
Tucker lies through his teeth, "Yeah. Totally. Everything's on schedule."
Tucker moved across the country, fell in love, got an amazing job, had more money than ever, paid off his debts, made a couple new friends, and bought a house in the wilderness. On paper, everything looks like it's coming up roses.
His doctor nods and smiles a fake, plastic smile. Her teeth are sharp-looking and too white to be natural. Suddenly, Tucker imagines her taking out her dentures before bed, and putting them in some effervescent glass of whitening liquid. Her teeth were the literal version of his fake-ass view of everything coming together "just as he'd planned."
"Excellent," she beams, falsely. "Would you say that it was a good year? Or one that you'd like to put behind you?"
"What do you think?" He returns.
"I'm asking you. As your therapist."
"Don't fuck with me, Dr. Feelgood, you corporate cockwhore. You're asking me as my judge and jury, but I don't answer to you... I answer to the Partners, who already know what I think. So, what do you think? You know what I've told you, what I've thought, what I've been written up for... my file is right in front of you, so you know exactly how much this Firm has on me. You know exactly -- right? exactly -- how much blood is on my hands, what's weighing on my conscience, who I've stuck my dick in over the last twelve months and that I've lost fifteen pounds since I went back on the meds. You tell me, then: would you say it was a good year?" Tucker settles even deeper into the chair, arches his eyebrow and indelicately, nay! shamelessly, readjusts his nuts.
Dr. Fyellegedde looks vaguely stunned and looks away when Tucker makes his vaguely personal, and completely inappropriate, gesture. It takes her a few moments to answer, as her training and psychic abilities battle inside her also highly medicated brain. She looks back to him and gives him the first glare that she's allowed herself to really throw at a patient. Ever. Tucker Wells, this glares for you. She knows that he pegged her. He has her number and he can't wait to stomp all the fuck over it.
"I'd say it was a very good year for you, Sir," she glowers, punitively.
Tucker folds his hands behind his head and narrows his eyes at her. With a grin, he sighs and replies: "Yeah. It was. It really was."
All things considered, of course.
Dr. Fyellegedde smiles evenly at him, peering over Tucker's file and waiting for an answer. In response, he rubs his left eye gingerly and blinks. Takes a sip of coffee and sits back in the comfy chair of doom, knees spread wide.
"Or did you have any plans... at all?" She adds, impatiently. He stares back at her, keeping his mind blank, aside from a Karok nursery rhyme that was meant to nurse the unwilling spirits of dead babies. Yeah. Suck on that, telepathic, sycophantic bitch ... and your whole style of 'therapy gone wild', Tucker thinks. Because that language is hard to pronounce right, and if it gets stuck in your head incorrectly... you could be in for a long night.
Her annoyance at Tucker is thinly veiled, he can tell she's ready to pop by the thin white line above her upper lip. This has been a tought past couple of months for the counseling department, on the 6th floor of Wolfram & Hart. The good doctor, herself, has been using magical and chemical means to cope her way through the holidays. Everyone heard about her behavior at the New Year's administration party (that Tucker declined to go to) -- everyone who was remotely psychic or telepathic, anyway. It was sort of a miracle that she wasn't also put on probation.
"I had plans," Tucker finally says, throwing her a bone. Dr. Fyellegedde looks vaguely self-satisfied, and sits back in her chair. Tucker's almost sure that if he could see through her desk, she'd be mirroring his spread-kneed posture. It's a competition for who has the biggest balls, and Tucker's only barely in the lead. "I moved out to the East Coast from LA, didn't I? That wasn't easy, I'll have you know. I had a pretty good set-up in LA. Freelancing. Tons of shit to do. A girlfriend... sort of."
"So, why did you move, if you had everything so dialed in?" the therapist asks, idly twirling her pen like a baton.
"Bored," Tucker replies, immediately. It's a canned answer and completely untrue. Okay, he'd been a little bored, sure. And he didn't really have a girlfriend, he had a consistent booty call. And his work was sporadic and sort of sketchy. Pauly Shore still owes him $6000 bucks for cleaning up a little Tse-Tse'she infestation at the Comedy Store. But all in all, LA had been working out all right for him. Better than Seattle and way, way better than Phoenix.
The real reason that Tucker moved to Boston was two-fold: one, to get closer to a girl named Miwa Deranja -- who he had an impossible crush on and who'd alluded to having a place for him to stay; and two, to get away from the Chinese warlocks who wanted him to pay up for the tattoos he'd gotten when he was still hanging out with the other Tucker. Lesser reasons included: putting a continent between he and Amy (the guilt! the guilt!), he and Sunnydale, and he and his mom. Besides, Wolfram & Hart's newest HQ was in Boston and he wanted to get back in with them. Work up the power reserves to give those Chinese magic gangsters what they wanted, plus interest.
"And did moving to Boston go as planned?" Dr. Fyellegedde asks, trying to draw at least one solid answer out of the ever-unwilling Tucker Wells.
Did it? No. Within a month of living with Miwa, she got sick of Tucker's questions about pre-incarnation, Japanese demons and the yakuza. The sex was good, when they had it, but that ended completely when she walked in on him with his new toy, the Warrenbot. The robot shit freaked her out, she said, because where she'd come from, a golem was a golem and the flesh and blood creatures didn't tangle with the mechanical. (Ironic, of course, as she had a robotic hand that he tangled with on more than one occasion, to ecstatic results.) Maybe she was jealous. But, whatever the case, after she came home to find Tucker and the Warrenbot naked and spent on the couch, she never really looked at him the same way. And she wasn't very impressed with his new friends: Kara, the fifteen year old Slayer, namely... but also Lilah from W&H; Wesley, his new boss; Holden, the vampire he'd gone to high school with; Alan, the self-impressed lawyer; Connor, the not-angry-enough prodigal son; and Todd Campbell, "The Immortal." Only one of those people was actually his friend, of course: Kara. What kind of 25 year old guy developed a creepy, semi-platonic relationship with a little girl? And one who was the same age as her daughter who was being raised in Japan to take her place in the long line of Miwas?
So, Tucker moved into a place that Campbell had set up for he and the Bot. Raised a couple of Frioh. Raised a Yasha demon that wound up terrorizing half of Boston, and injuring his new Slayer friend, and this woman that he'd worked with. Everything was going all right, from Tucker's point of view, until Andrew showed up, looking for a place to stay. As soon as he saw the Warrenbot, Tucker had no real control over his situation. The Bot, who turned out to be alarming more Warren than Bot, was game for whatever. But Tucker wasn't. He and Andrew fought more viciously than they had when they were kids. The household was really uncomfortable, due largely to Tucker's inability to accept that he'd been connecting to the Warrenbot more than he'd connected with anyone flesh-or-blood, ever. Tucker's way of dealing with this particular crisis was by getting fucked up, and staying that way. He got back into heroin, drank himself sick, started buying drugs from Kara's little school friend, Paul Sidoni, and only left the house to get wasted, go to work, and get laid. He didn't even have to leave the house to fuck Amy: she flew all the way from Vegas to attend the housewarming party they threw (shortly after discovering they'd been being taped without their knowledge by their landlord, Mr. Todd Campbell), and Tucker and she went at it in the bed he'd been sharing with the Bot for weeks. And then, later, another ex-girlfriend, Jezebel, came through town and got a very special tour of the Boston branch of their common employer, and then an extra-special tour of an alley down the street.
That's about the time that Tucker realized that he was in trouble. He'd never given a shit about cheating on a sexual partner before, but suddenly, he felt the need to confess to the Warrenbot about all his transgressions. And the Bot, or the Warren-ness of the Bot, was so accepting and generous about it! It was horrible. Tucker remembers the depression and confusion of last April. He fell in love with a robot. It sucked! He tried to reprogram it, but let's face it: Tucker's just not as good with cybernetics as Warren is/was. He botched it so bad. He tried to rectify it, or at least gloss over it, by treating themselves to a weekend of body swappage: all from Remus. That was fun, and Tucker warms a little at the memory.
After that, shit got really weird. Tucker finally figured out a way to get the real Warren back. He blew his entire mojo wad on paying a visit to Kh'Ysk Jhad, trans-dimensional travel agent. It was grueling, but in the end, totally worth it. He came home with a flesh and blood Warren, to add to the robot version that was already populating his Warren collection. For one night, he hogged them both. The next day, he had Remus come over and take the little bit of soul that was in the Bot and put it back into Warren, thereby transferring a huge chunk of memories, knowledge and (apparently) whatever it was that loved Tucker. Convenient, non?
Right about then, Tucker and Warren, the Bot and Andrew left their tainted apartment, boobytrapped it, and moved in with Kara and Darla. Kara was fresh out of a possession coma-thing. She needed the company and Wesley and Ben's house had all but been abandoned at that point, anyway. Tucker didn't really have anywhere else to go, plus, he knew that he wasn't long for Boston. He was being shipped off to Minnesota for a month-long training session at the secret W&H training ground (Mall of America, since there are no secrets here). The promotion was, really, the highlight of his professional life, in 2005. Double the money, three times the power, most of the clearance.
The month in Minnesota was brutal. Tom Cruise, Kiki's scary real face, strange days of torpor and nights of training. And then there was the whole "murdering people on company time" thing. That was fucked up, but the drugs helped take the sting away a little... or at least it dulled the clarity of the memory. Happily, it ended abruptly, and Tucker came back to Boston. Andrew was gone, and had forgotten to take the Bot that Tucker had given him. Ingrateful little fuck. There were some good times, and some bone-shuddering bad times, as Warren and Tucker finished out their stint living with Kara. There was that whole thing with Remus... which Tucker never told Warren about, and that continued after the first time. Too much drinking. Fighting with Toddles and Alan. Unfortunately, Todd Campbell really does own almost everything in Boston, so it was difficult to find a place of their own. Eve Hart and her assistant helped considerably. Eve was handy like that. Is handy like that. (Boy oh boy, is Tucker happy that he never tried to hook up with her.)
Everything after returning from training is stored in strange, brief flashes of memory for Tucker. That's because he'd been on the meds. And this therapy shit... it wasn't helping. Not really. It's good for summarizing and self-obsession, but it isn't really fixing anything, is it? Flashes: Kara, dying; Warren and Bruce and fights; Amy, and coming out to her; work, work, work; Remus and giving he and Kirill the demons; no summoning at work, no summoning at home; finding out he had herpes, and then taking a cure for it; hours and hours of telepathic consultation with the Partners and the staff; meeting people for drinking; hiring Wes and shunting off as much work as possible onto him (funny how he always asked for more!); and parties... so many parties. Halloween and Warren's demony-self getting it on with Gwen in the bathroom, flirting with Kara. Tara coming onto him, right in front of Alan. Bonding with Todd over mutual hatred of Harry Osborn. The, uh, corporal punishment of one of W&H's richest clients [name withheld upon request]. And Remus, doing dirty, drunken things with him in the employee bathroom. Comforting Kara. Kissing Kara. Buying Kara a pony (who thought that brilliant plan up?). All a blur.
Right up to three days after Remus and Kirill's Christmas party. Everything blurry clears up around that day, when Tucker found out that he took Kara's virginity in the bathroom, as a Christmas party was going on the other side of the door. Kinda blipped that whole event, much to Kara's (and his own) horror. Couldn't remember a goddamned thing. Drinking and drugs have always been part of Tucker's life, so the blacking out thing... that was new. Or, to be more specific, they've been a part of Tucker's life since he left the group home and went off his medication. He'd previously looked at his vices as self-medicating, but as taking anti-psychotics is now a job requirement for his new position as conduit, it suddenly wasn't working out. Being fucked up didn't work out like it used to. Tucker started having "episodes" -- as Dr. Fyellegedde called them -- which culminated in a series of fights, arguments, angry fucks and a dizzy, fumbling deflowering in the aforementioned bathroom.
Something had to change. Tucker -- who is now owned not by the Chinese mafia, but by Wolfram & Hart, who essentially bought out the marker on his soul -- realized that he couldn't stop taking the meds. It's a contractual obligation that he agreed to. That and these therapy evaluations. He basically cannot lose his job. So, the illicit intoxicants had to go. Which brings us back to today: sober Tucker. Still surly. Still capable of love. Still ruining his own (proverbial) Prom. Still not sure what to say. But now, sober.
Yesterday, Tucker asked Warren if maybe they could just move to the secret cabin in Maine, indefinitely. Warren was reluctant, saying that he barely leaves the house as it is, but Tucker sees it like this: no brains, no headaches; no temptations, no trespasses; no nothing, no doing. They could just hide out up there! Tucker can tele-commute! And fly to Boston for meetings. He could do it, he's sure of it, even if a year ago the idea of living with just Warren in the woods somewhere would have been laughed at. Copiously. By him. Anyway, it doesn't matter, because Warren said no. Or, more precisely, Warren said that it would be okay on a trial basis, which is the softer way of refusing.
Tucker looks at his therapist and smirks, after several minutes of thinking his answer through while simultaneously shielding his thoughts with the Karok lullaby. He tilts his head at her curiously and repeats, "Did last year turn out how I thought it would?"
Dr. Fyellegedde wakes up a little. Tucker suspects she can sleep with her eyes open, which would be a notable talent as a therapist. "How you planned, yes. Did it?"
Tucker lies through his teeth, "Yeah. Totally. Everything's on schedule."
Tucker moved across the country, fell in love, got an amazing job, had more money than ever, paid off his debts, made a couple new friends, and bought a house in the wilderness. On paper, everything looks like it's coming up roses.
His doctor nods and smiles a fake, plastic smile. Her teeth are sharp-looking and too white to be natural. Suddenly, Tucker imagines her taking out her dentures before bed, and putting them in some effervescent glass of whitening liquid. Her teeth were the literal version of his fake-ass view of everything coming together "just as he'd planned."
"Excellent," she beams, falsely. "Would you say that it was a good year? Or one that you'd like to put behind you?"
"What do you think?" He returns.
"I'm asking you. As your therapist."
"Don't fuck with me, Dr. Feelgood, you corporate cockwhore. You're asking me as my judge and jury, but I don't answer to you... I answer to the Partners, who already know what I think. So, what do you think? You know what I've told you, what I've thought, what I've been written up for... my file is right in front of you, so you know exactly how much this Firm has on me. You know exactly -- right? exactly -- how much blood is on my hands, what's weighing on my conscience, who I've stuck my dick in over the last twelve months and that I've lost fifteen pounds since I went back on the meds. You tell me, then: would you say it was a good year?" Tucker settles even deeper into the chair, arches his eyebrow and indelicately, nay! shamelessly, readjusts his nuts.
Dr. Fyellegedde looks vaguely stunned and looks away when Tucker makes his vaguely personal, and completely inappropriate, gesture. It takes her a few moments to answer, as her training and psychic abilities battle inside her also highly medicated brain. She looks back to him and gives him the first glare that she's allowed herself to really throw at a patient. Ever. Tucker Wells, this glares for you. She knows that he pegged her. He has her number and he can't wait to stomp all the fuck over it.
"I'd say it was a very good year for you, Sir," she glowers, punitively.
Tucker folds his hands behind his head and narrows his eyes at her. With a grin, he sighs and replies: "Yeah. It was. It really was."
All things considered, of course.