The Eliot Spencer Sessions (And some updates)
Hi, it's been awhile. So here's the good news. I just finished the pitch hit fic I was writting for the Pictures2words challenge (better really late than never), life stopped eating me alive, I have the next chapter of The Legacy Job with my Beta, I'm almost done with the next chapter of Blind Man's Bluff, and I'm finally moving toward Two Knights Closing (another case of better late than never I'm afraid).
I also managed to recruit someone to the cult that is Leverage.
The bad news? I still have way too many things I need to write and not nearly enough time.
Title: The Eliot Spencer Sessions
Author: Magpie
Rating: pg-13
Genre: Nate/Eliot
Verse: BlackKing!WhiteKnight!Verse
Summary: Eliot goes to therapy. It does not go well.
Notes: This is actually something I wrote a long time ago but it kind of got lost on my hard drive. I found it again and figured I'd post it for the (hopefully) general amusement of my flist.
Takes place around the Top Hat Job in cannon and sometime before Quiet at Day's End in this verse.
I may have stolen the Phycologist (we'll call him Stanley) from another TV show. Points to anyone who can guess which.
Warning: Brief mentions of physical and sexual abuse as well as talk of suicide.
“Good morning Eliot. Sit down. How are you feeling?”
“…Fine…”
“We’ll start intake in a moment but why don’t you start off by telling me why you’re here”
“Nate told me to go.”
“And Nate is your…”
“Boss, and partner.”
“Partner as in…”
“As in.”
“I imagine that makes for an interesting dynamic, does the rest of the team know?”
“They figured it out.”
“And they were supportive.”
“Yeah, though circumstances worked in our favor”
“Really?”
“Nate’s old flame on our team found out the afternoon one of our more personal jobs started. It’s hard to be angry with a guy when you’re getting a first hand account of just the kinda shit life’s put him through.”
“I see. Now you mentioned you came because Nate told you to. Do you always do what Nate tells you to?”
“ ‘less he’s drunk.”
“Drunk?”
“Nate’s an alcoholic. Been sober for awhile now but those were an interestin’ few months before that.”
“We’ll be sure to talk about that then.”
“Look, Doc, I know what you’re thinkin’ but trust me when I tell ya that besides Nate tellin’ me to come he’s the last reason for me being here. If there’s one functional thing in my life it’s him. Even if it’s crazier than Parker.”
“uh huh… Maybe then the better question to be asking is why did Nate tell you to come here?”
“Well my dad never married my mum but in the couple months I saw him as a kid managed to instill a pathological need for me to protect my little sister in my brain which became a mixed blessing when I was eight and my mom married an abusive asshole who sent me to the hospital nine times before I was thirteen and he forbade my mom to take me there anymore because he’d started raping me and he figured someone might notice. This led to periods of apathy, depression, and anger which seemed to polarize though I still managed to protect my sister, fall in love, and find a father figure in my girlfriend’s father. When I was fifteen I tried to kill myself and that father figure saved me and decided to help me get social services to take me an’ my sister. They only took my sister an’ my step dad beat my mom to death when she finally stepped in to save my life when he almost did the same ta me.
After that I left town, hitch hiked to L.A. and spent two years living on the streets until the martial arts trainer at the local youth center I’d been spending almost all of my time at more or less sold me ta the highest bidder as hired muscle. I threatened, beat up, or killed whoever I was told for another two years as I climbed the ladder and bought myself back.
Eventually I got too good for my own good an’ my boss sent some goons to kill me on my twenty-first birthday, they probably would have but after three days tied to a chair I proved that I had developed at least the beginnin’s of depersonalization disorder and they triggered The Black Knight for the first time and I killed them all and escaped.
I ended up goin’ back home briefly, reconnected with my old girl friend, became a retrieval specialist and life went on without too much damage for three years until I was caught by a Russian Mob Boss and spent three months being tortured while giving myself a crash course in escaping imprisonment. I escaped and went home to my girlfriend ready to propose only to find her married to someone else. I went on a job I couldn’t possibly do without getting killed even at the peak of health, which I wasn’t, and ended up instead gettin’ thrown into a cell where I lay sick and diein’ until I got a cell mate named Nathan Ford who nursed me back to health, taught me how to play chess, gave me a reason to live, an’ became a surrogate father for awhile. After I saved us both he sent me to Croatia to protect the little people and I found new reason to live in learning, and my sister and her family. By then she was married with a two year old son and soon after that a daughter.
Croatia was… interesting… I came home after two years, reconnected with my sister again, went on retrieving, and life carried on it’s merry until two years ago when I got hired by a man in Chicago to work on a team run by Nathan Ford, my old cell mate and once but no longer father figure. Things went badly but we got our act together and after a few changes we all decided to work together as a team. Nate and I fell in trust an’ then in love, even if we wouldn’t admit it and then after all the mess and Nate getting Sober and having to blow up the offices and relocate to Boston I got a call from my sister that my abusive step father had escaped prison and kidnapped my niece and nephew who are nine and twelve years old. I went down there to rescue them, the team found out all about why I am who I am and what That Man did ta me, and I killed That Man in order to save my sister and niece.
And in the three months since I’ve been having nightmares and Nate claims my behavior has become erratic and my possibly split personality has very violent tendencies so we’d rather not have him let lose.”
“…”
“Yeah. I feel the same way.”
~*~
“How about we do intake? This is just a standard thing we do to give me a better idea of who you are and where you’re coming from. There is no right or wrong answer to these questions, just answer them as honestly as you can.”
“…”
“Alright. How about we start with your name, just go with me.”
“Eliot Spencer.”
“And that’s your full legal name?”
“No.”
“Thought so. Do you mind if I call you Eliot?
“Do ya mind not spendin’ ten minutes on something we already established?”
“How would you describe your childhood between the ages of 1 to 13? Were they happy?”
“…No…”
“Would you mind elaborating?”
“Yes.”
“…Did you have any problems in school?”
“No.”
“Did you get along with your classmates?”
“Yes and No.”
“Yes and No?”
“I had friends but I was a angry kid in a small town.”
“Why were you angry?”
“Cause my daddy treated me too much like a prince why do ya think I was angry?”
“…”
“…”
“…”
“…Problems at home…”
“your leisure time was mostly spent?”
“With my little sister.”
“How much younger than you was she?”
“Three years two months one day.”
“That’s rather exact.”
“She likes numbers an’ always thought it was funny. I was born in the 1st month on the 23rd day and she was born 3 years 2 months and 1 day later. Joey’s weird like that.”
“Joey’s your sister?”
“Short for Josephine, she never liked it though so we always called her Joey or Jo.”
“And you’d say you spent most of your time with Joey as a child?”
“Unless we were doin’ chores, fightin’, or asleep if we were at home we were together. Between my mom workin’ to keep a roof over our heads before she married and… the issues after we had ta watch out for each other.”
“You said you split up when you were fifteen. Before that was there any time you’d been separated for a long period of time.”
“No. Not more than a couple sleepovers or overnights at the hospital.”
“I see. Getting back on track how would you describe your adolescent years? That’s ages 13 to 18. Were they happy?”
“No.”
“I don’t suppose you’d care to elaborate?”
“I don’t suppose you were actually listenin’ earlier were you?”
“Touchy are we?”
“…”
“Did you have any problems in school?”
“Well I officially died when I was fifteen so I think you could say my academics were sub par for the last three years or so.”
“I don’t mean to be insensitive but you look very alive to me.”
“That’s sweet of ya to say. I faked my death ta get out.”
“And you never went back?”
“A few times, once I’d changed enough no one recognized me.”
“Did you have many friends?”
“A few, until the whole death thing. I didn’t get too friendly with people when I was on the streets. Not after Annie died.”
“Annie?”
“A street kid I ran with for awhile. Died of exposure the first year I was on the streets.”
“What did you spend your leisure time doing?”
“Training.”
“To fight?”
“To survive.”
“Trainning that’s served you well I gather.”
“…”
“Describe a particular event or person that’s had an impact on your life.”
“How much is Nate paying you to ask these questions?”
“Look. I understand you’re uncomfortable. I understand you don’t particularly want to be here and I’m guessing the only reason your even trying to cooperate is because Nate asked you to try to not murder me or make me want to murder you in frustration. But this is what I do. You all have an angle right? Something you do better than anyone else and that’s why Nate’s pulled you together and sometimes what the others do doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to you right off the bat. Think of me as a special consult Nate called in cause I do this better than anyone else. I ask questions, you answer them, I ask more questions, you answer them, we talk, and at the end of the day you don’t have to like me, you don’t have to want me to go out with your team for beers later but you have to trust that I at least know what I’m doing.”
“…”
“You’ve got a good glare. I know you’re not going to kill me and it still makes me feel like I should run and hide. It’s a pretty fine handle you’ve got on that rage of yours. It serves a hitter pretty well doesn’t it. Keeps you on edge, always having to keep a tight grip on yourself cause you know exactly what you’re capable of. And the job? You tell yourself it’s for the adrenalin rush, and sorta it is, but you know you’d go crazy if you didn’t have something to do, someplace to go, an enemy to fight and guard against. It keeps you sane, and helping people, protecting your team, it makes it just a little easier to sleep at night. How am I doing?”
“…”
“You know there’s something going on inside you but you don’t understand what it is. You’re trying to hold yourself together but nothings working the way it used to, not that any of it worked very well to begin with. You’re in nine kinds of pain and you’ve been that way so long the idea that you could get better is terrifying because you’re half convinced this is just the way you’re supposed to be.”
“You diagnosed me in twenty minutes?”
“You came in with the self diagnosis of possible dissasociative identity disorder, which I haven’t nearly diagnosed by the way. I had you profiled in about two. It took me about ten to figure out you’ve got one of the most severe cases of PTSD I’ve ever seen suppressed to the point you can still function. If that’s comorbid with any other conditions is going to take a bit longer to figure out.”
“...”
“Have you ever had an addiction to alcohol, nicotine, or other drugs…”
~*~
“…Do you have any chronic fears or anxieties?”
“Well, I worry ‘bout whether or not I’ll be alive tomorrow a bit. Does that make me paranoid?”
“In your profession, I can’t really say it does.”
“I also worry about my team.”
“Your team?”
“Yeah. The world’s already dangerous enough without being a team of criminals working with a hitter half the world’s governments want dead or working for them and no one else. Not even touching on the fact half of them are crazy an’ the other half are bound to snap any day now.”
“So you’re worried they’re going to turn on you? Or they’re unreliable.”
“No!”
“Then what?”
“I’m worried about whether or not they’ll be alive tomorrow. It’s my job to protect them, not that any of them even try ta make it easy for me. It’s like herding cats.”
“…”
“Hardison and I talk about dreams sometimes. He’s not used to nightmares and I try ta help but… he keeps coming at me with this ‘you can’t protect us forever’ and I know I can’t, there’ve been times I havn’t, but… doesn’t mean I can’t try.”
“…”
“This is another thing we’re gonna be commin’ back to aren’t we?”
~*~
“Now you can answer these questions yes or no. You don’t need to explain, though you should feel free to do so if you’d like. Have you ever had suicidal thoughts and if so when?”
“Yes. Most of my early teens, during the three months I was in Nishka’s prisons, for awhile afterwards, and a few occasions when I was in Croatia during the war.”
“Have you ever had a suicidal attempt and when?”
“When I was fifteen. Not sure if the job I took in Cairo counts.”
“Cairo?”
“About a month after Nishka’s I took a job I knew was over my head even when I was in good health when I was in pretty bad health.”
“Suicide by thug?”
“That’s a lot more academic than what I’ve called it.”
“Which was?”
“Fucking stupid?”
“I see.”
“You say that a lot.”
“Have you ever had suicidal plans and when?”
“When I was fifteen, not sure if Cairo counts as plans, and for the past six years.”
“…the past six years?”
“I’m a hitter, I’ve got a hitter’s backup plan. A cyanide cap on a back molar. Bite down the right way and swallow I’m dead in under five minutes.”
“…”
“It’s incase you get caught and they’re intent on killing you slow and you’ve got no way out. Less a suicide than giving yourself the mercy stroke.”
“I see.”
“There’s those words again.”
~*~
“Well, that’s the end of intake and looks like we’re about out of time for today.”
“So…”
“So what?”
“What does that mean?”
“Honestly, I think at this exact point in life you could get by without my help. You’ve managed to survive some pretty bad traumas without much of a support system and you’ve managed to find a pretty strong one now. That said I think I could help you.”
“…”
“You’ve been through a lot, and you’ve dealt with it as best as you could but I can help you work through things, deal with them, confront old injuries so the next one isn’t the straw to break the camel’s back.”
“I’m not about t-“
“Eliot be honest. You know yourself. If something were to happen to Nate or Joey or anyone on your team… If something were to happen. Do you really think you’d be okay?”
“…”
“I’ll see you next week.”
I also managed to recruit someone to the cult that is Leverage.
The bad news? I still have way too many things I need to write and not nearly enough time.
Title: The Eliot Spencer Sessions
Author: Magpie
Rating: pg-13
Genre: Nate/Eliot
Verse: BlackKing!WhiteKnight!Verse
Summary: Eliot goes to therapy. It does not go well.
Notes: This is actually something I wrote a long time ago but it kind of got lost on my hard drive. I found it again and figured I'd post it for the (hopefully) general amusement of my flist.
Takes place around the Top Hat Job in cannon and sometime before Quiet at Day's End in this verse.
I may have stolen the Phycologist (we'll call him Stanley) from another TV show. Points to anyone who can guess which.
Warning: Brief mentions of physical and sexual abuse as well as talk of suicide.
“Good morning Eliot. Sit down. How are you feeling?”
“…Fine…”
“We’ll start intake in a moment but why don’t you start off by telling me why you’re here”
“Nate told me to go.”
“And Nate is your…”
“Boss, and partner.”
“Partner as in…”
“As in.”
“I imagine that makes for an interesting dynamic, does the rest of the team know?”
“They figured it out.”
“And they were supportive.”
“Yeah, though circumstances worked in our favor”
“Really?”
“Nate’s old flame on our team found out the afternoon one of our more personal jobs started. It’s hard to be angry with a guy when you’re getting a first hand account of just the kinda shit life’s put him through.”
“I see. Now you mentioned you came because Nate told you to. Do you always do what Nate tells you to?”
“ ‘less he’s drunk.”
“Drunk?”
“Nate’s an alcoholic. Been sober for awhile now but those were an interestin’ few months before that.”
“We’ll be sure to talk about that then.”
“Look, Doc, I know what you’re thinkin’ but trust me when I tell ya that besides Nate tellin’ me to come he’s the last reason for me being here. If there’s one functional thing in my life it’s him. Even if it’s crazier than Parker.”
“uh huh… Maybe then the better question to be asking is why did Nate tell you to come here?”
“Well my dad never married my mum but in the couple months I saw him as a kid managed to instill a pathological need for me to protect my little sister in my brain which became a mixed blessing when I was eight and my mom married an abusive asshole who sent me to the hospital nine times before I was thirteen and he forbade my mom to take me there anymore because he’d started raping me and he figured someone might notice. This led to periods of apathy, depression, and anger which seemed to polarize though I still managed to protect my sister, fall in love, and find a father figure in my girlfriend’s father. When I was fifteen I tried to kill myself and that father figure saved me and decided to help me get social services to take me an’ my sister. They only took my sister an’ my step dad beat my mom to death when she finally stepped in to save my life when he almost did the same ta me.
After that I left town, hitch hiked to L.A. and spent two years living on the streets until the martial arts trainer at the local youth center I’d been spending almost all of my time at more or less sold me ta the highest bidder as hired muscle. I threatened, beat up, or killed whoever I was told for another two years as I climbed the ladder and bought myself back.
Eventually I got too good for my own good an’ my boss sent some goons to kill me on my twenty-first birthday, they probably would have but after three days tied to a chair I proved that I had developed at least the beginnin’s of depersonalization disorder and they triggered The Black Knight for the first time and I killed them all and escaped.
I ended up goin’ back home briefly, reconnected with my old girl friend, became a retrieval specialist and life went on without too much damage for three years until I was caught by a Russian Mob Boss and spent three months being tortured while giving myself a crash course in escaping imprisonment. I escaped and went home to my girlfriend ready to propose only to find her married to someone else. I went on a job I couldn’t possibly do without getting killed even at the peak of health, which I wasn’t, and ended up instead gettin’ thrown into a cell where I lay sick and diein’ until I got a cell mate named Nathan Ford who nursed me back to health, taught me how to play chess, gave me a reason to live, an’ became a surrogate father for awhile. After I saved us both he sent me to Croatia to protect the little people and I found new reason to live in learning, and my sister and her family. By then she was married with a two year old son and soon after that a daughter.
Croatia was… interesting… I came home after two years, reconnected with my sister again, went on retrieving, and life carried on it’s merry until two years ago when I got hired by a man in Chicago to work on a team run by Nathan Ford, my old cell mate and once but no longer father figure. Things went badly but we got our act together and after a few changes we all decided to work together as a team. Nate and I fell in trust an’ then in love, even if we wouldn’t admit it and then after all the mess and Nate getting Sober and having to blow up the offices and relocate to Boston I got a call from my sister that my abusive step father had escaped prison and kidnapped my niece and nephew who are nine and twelve years old. I went down there to rescue them, the team found out all about why I am who I am and what That Man did ta me, and I killed That Man in order to save my sister and niece.
And in the three months since I’ve been having nightmares and Nate claims my behavior has become erratic and my possibly split personality has very violent tendencies so we’d rather not have him let lose.”
“…”
“Yeah. I feel the same way.”
~*~
“How about we do intake? This is just a standard thing we do to give me a better idea of who you are and where you’re coming from. There is no right or wrong answer to these questions, just answer them as honestly as you can.”
“…”
“Alright. How about we start with your name, just go with me.”
“Eliot Spencer.”
“And that’s your full legal name?”
“No.”
“Thought so. Do you mind if I call you Eliot?
“Do ya mind not spendin’ ten minutes on something we already established?”
“How would you describe your childhood between the ages of 1 to 13? Were they happy?”
“…No…”
“Would you mind elaborating?”
“Yes.”
“…Did you have any problems in school?”
“No.”
“Did you get along with your classmates?”
“Yes and No.”
“Yes and No?”
“I had friends but I was a angry kid in a small town.”
“Why were you angry?”
“Cause my daddy treated me too much like a prince why do ya think I was angry?”
“…”
“…”
“…”
“…Problems at home…”
“your leisure time was mostly spent?”
“With my little sister.”
“How much younger than you was she?”
“Three years two months one day.”
“That’s rather exact.”
“She likes numbers an’ always thought it was funny. I was born in the 1st month on the 23rd day and she was born 3 years 2 months and 1 day later. Joey’s weird like that.”
“Joey’s your sister?”
“Short for Josephine, she never liked it though so we always called her Joey or Jo.”
“And you’d say you spent most of your time with Joey as a child?”
“Unless we were doin’ chores, fightin’, or asleep if we were at home we were together. Between my mom workin’ to keep a roof over our heads before she married and… the issues after we had ta watch out for each other.”
“You said you split up when you were fifteen. Before that was there any time you’d been separated for a long period of time.”
“No. Not more than a couple sleepovers or overnights at the hospital.”
“I see. Getting back on track how would you describe your adolescent years? That’s ages 13 to 18. Were they happy?”
“No.”
“I don’t suppose you’d care to elaborate?”
“I don’t suppose you were actually listenin’ earlier were you?”
“Touchy are we?”
“…”
“Did you have any problems in school?”
“Well I officially died when I was fifteen so I think you could say my academics were sub par for the last three years or so.”
“I don’t mean to be insensitive but you look very alive to me.”
“That’s sweet of ya to say. I faked my death ta get out.”
“And you never went back?”
“A few times, once I’d changed enough no one recognized me.”
“Did you have many friends?”
“A few, until the whole death thing. I didn’t get too friendly with people when I was on the streets. Not after Annie died.”
“Annie?”
“A street kid I ran with for awhile. Died of exposure the first year I was on the streets.”
“What did you spend your leisure time doing?”
“Training.”
“To fight?”
“To survive.”
“Trainning that’s served you well I gather.”
“…”
“Describe a particular event or person that’s had an impact on your life.”
“How much is Nate paying you to ask these questions?”
“Look. I understand you’re uncomfortable. I understand you don’t particularly want to be here and I’m guessing the only reason your even trying to cooperate is because Nate asked you to try to not murder me or make me want to murder you in frustration. But this is what I do. You all have an angle right? Something you do better than anyone else and that’s why Nate’s pulled you together and sometimes what the others do doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to you right off the bat. Think of me as a special consult Nate called in cause I do this better than anyone else. I ask questions, you answer them, I ask more questions, you answer them, we talk, and at the end of the day you don’t have to like me, you don’t have to want me to go out with your team for beers later but you have to trust that I at least know what I’m doing.”
“…”
“You’ve got a good glare. I know you’re not going to kill me and it still makes me feel like I should run and hide. It’s a pretty fine handle you’ve got on that rage of yours. It serves a hitter pretty well doesn’t it. Keeps you on edge, always having to keep a tight grip on yourself cause you know exactly what you’re capable of. And the job? You tell yourself it’s for the adrenalin rush, and sorta it is, but you know you’d go crazy if you didn’t have something to do, someplace to go, an enemy to fight and guard against. It keeps you sane, and helping people, protecting your team, it makes it just a little easier to sleep at night. How am I doing?”
“…”
“You know there’s something going on inside you but you don’t understand what it is. You’re trying to hold yourself together but nothings working the way it used to, not that any of it worked very well to begin with. You’re in nine kinds of pain and you’ve been that way so long the idea that you could get better is terrifying because you’re half convinced this is just the way you’re supposed to be.”
“You diagnosed me in twenty minutes?”
“You came in with the self diagnosis of possible dissasociative identity disorder, which I haven’t nearly diagnosed by the way. I had you profiled in about two. It took me about ten to figure out you’ve got one of the most severe cases of PTSD I’ve ever seen suppressed to the point you can still function. If that’s comorbid with any other conditions is going to take a bit longer to figure out.”
“...”
“Have you ever had an addiction to alcohol, nicotine, or other drugs…”
~*~
“…Do you have any chronic fears or anxieties?”
“Well, I worry ‘bout whether or not I’ll be alive tomorrow a bit. Does that make me paranoid?”
“In your profession, I can’t really say it does.”
“I also worry about my team.”
“Your team?”
“Yeah. The world’s already dangerous enough without being a team of criminals working with a hitter half the world’s governments want dead or working for them and no one else. Not even touching on the fact half of them are crazy an’ the other half are bound to snap any day now.”
“So you’re worried they’re going to turn on you? Or they’re unreliable.”
“No!”
“Then what?”
“I’m worried about whether or not they’ll be alive tomorrow. It’s my job to protect them, not that any of them even try ta make it easy for me. It’s like herding cats.”
“…”
“Hardison and I talk about dreams sometimes. He’s not used to nightmares and I try ta help but… he keeps coming at me with this ‘you can’t protect us forever’ and I know I can’t, there’ve been times I havn’t, but… doesn’t mean I can’t try.”
“…”
“This is another thing we’re gonna be commin’ back to aren’t we?”
~*~
“Now you can answer these questions yes or no. You don’t need to explain, though you should feel free to do so if you’d like. Have you ever had suicidal thoughts and if so when?”
“Yes. Most of my early teens, during the three months I was in Nishka’s prisons, for awhile afterwards, and a few occasions when I was in Croatia during the war.”
“Have you ever had a suicidal attempt and when?”
“When I was fifteen. Not sure if the job I took in Cairo counts.”
“Cairo?”
“About a month after Nishka’s I took a job I knew was over my head even when I was in good health when I was in pretty bad health.”
“Suicide by thug?”
“That’s a lot more academic than what I’ve called it.”
“Which was?”
“Fucking stupid?”
“I see.”
“You say that a lot.”
“Have you ever had suicidal plans and when?”
“When I was fifteen, not sure if Cairo counts as plans, and for the past six years.”
“…the past six years?”
“I’m a hitter, I’ve got a hitter’s backup plan. A cyanide cap on a back molar. Bite down the right way and swallow I’m dead in under five minutes.”
“…”
“It’s incase you get caught and they’re intent on killing you slow and you’ve got no way out. Less a suicide than giving yourself the mercy stroke.”
“I see.”
“There’s those words again.”
~*~
“Well, that’s the end of intake and looks like we’re about out of time for today.”
“So…”
“So what?”
“What does that mean?”
“Honestly, I think at this exact point in life you could get by without my help. You’ve managed to survive some pretty bad traumas without much of a support system and you’ve managed to find a pretty strong one now. That said I think I could help you.”
“…”
“You’ve been through a lot, and you’ve dealt with it as best as you could but I can help you work through things, deal with them, confront old injuries so the next one isn’t the straw to break the camel’s back.”
“I’m not about t-“
“Eliot be honest. You know yourself. If something were to happen to Nate or Joey or anyone on your team… If something were to happen. Do you really think you’d be okay?”
“…”
“I’ll see you next week.”