couples_therapy September 30.3
Do you listen to your partner?
He would say that I don’t, but I do. Even if I don’t believe in or subscribe to what it is he’s saying, I listen to everything that he says. There are moments when I know he’s testing me, when he thinks I’m not listening because my attentions are divided or something else seems to be more pressing, or I look at him a certain way and he's sure it means I'm tuning him out because what he's suggesting is so out of the ordinary and so beyond comprehension that surely I'll never even give it the time of day, or him until he's moved on to something else.
But the truth, the truth hidden beneath the surface, is that I'm always listening to him. I became used to the sound of his voice the first night we had the chance to speak, when he told me about his sister and I was shivering on a hotel bed from the relenting fear that came from mosquito bites at the small of my back. I could see his face well enough in the darkness, we had a few patches of moonlight from outside to help us, but it was his voice I remembered.
I know things about him that he would have probably thought I'd forget, from how many times he's seen Plan Nine from Outer Space to what he says when a home run is hit (for not only his favored team but the opposing ones, with the latter a variation) and a thousand other little things that would make his eyebrows lift in curiosity if he ever knew.
I always listen, but he doesn’t always know that I do, and I wonder if that’s something that needs to change or just part of what makes us who, and what, we are.
Muse: Dana Scully
Fandom: the X-Files
Word Count: 302