Chapter 39
Ash doesn’t dream of Kieran just that night, but every night. For a week straight. And every morning he wakes up with—the raging boner aside—a strange ache in his chest.
The first dream is innocent enough—a slightly more lighthearted version of their ‘date’, with more laughter and less angst. But by night three, things start escalating.
There’s heat, closeness, lips against lips, and the kind of soft sounds that wake him up and make him throw a pillow halfway across the room when he realizes none of it was real.
He tells himself it’s temporary. A mild psychological malfunction.
Maybe an early onset of a mid-life crisis.
But when night five rolls around and dream-Kieran has apparently decided clothes are optional, Ash starts dreading sleep almost as much as he looks forward to it.
It’s a full-on mindfuck, because in the dreams Kieran’s touch feels so real.
And in the mornings, the bed feels too big and cold, the apartment too quiet, and Ash’s self-control dangerously thin.
He tries to bury himself in work; getting invested in other people’s lives instead of his own should work a charm, right?
Not quite. The distraction works during the day, but every night his brain hits replay like it’s his favorite movie. At this point, Ash is pretty sure he’s being haunted. Not by ghosts, but by a very persistent man with the mouth of a sailor and determination of a debt collector.
Ash’s heart races just thinking of that trademark scowl.
He sighs heavily and clicks save on his previous patient’s notes (which may or may not have taken him almost half an hour to complete).
A glance at his watch makes him curse—he’s already five minutes late for his last appointment.
The chair scrapes across the floor as he pushes it back in a hurry before striding towards the door.
An apology on his tongue, he opens it, and freezes.
“Kieran?”
Kieran springs to his feet, beaming. “Hey!”
Mouth opening and closing like a fish, Ash peers further into the lobby. “Kieran, I can’t do this right now. I have an appointment.”
“I know.” He spreads his arms wide, a shit-eating grin on his face. “I’m your 3:30.”
Ash frowns and pulls out his phone to double-check the appointment, which was—yep—booked under the name Lucas Emberton.
“Lucas is my middle name,” Kieran so helpfully supplies. “You should know, since we’ll be getting married down the road.”
Sliding the phone into his back pocket, Ash has to pinch the bridge of his nose. “Right. Kieran, I know it doesn’t look it, but I take my job seriously. We can’t do this here.”
“What are you talking about? I’m here for a psych session.”
“Really.”
“Yup.”
Ash drums his fingers on the doorframe. “I believe another therapist would be more suitable. Someone…non-biased.”
“No, it has to be you,” Kieran insists. “Only you. I wouldn’t tell anyone else.”
Jesus fucking Christ, Kieran really knows how to go for the jugular.
Conceding defeat, Ash steps aside. “Come on in.”
The grin returning full-force, Kieran strides into the office, then proceeds to sprawl himself across the sofa like he’s getting ready for a LOTR marathon.
God give me strength.
Ash walks towards his chair with the air of someone heading to the courtroom. ‘I now sentence you to a lifetime of blue balls and longing.’
Maybe it’s time he finds himself a therapist too, though it probably wouldn’t do much. It’s not as if he doesn’t know what he should do—the exact opposite of what he’s been doing for weeks. A shock collar might be more effective.
“How—” He cuts himself off. ‘How can I help you’ leaves too much room for ambiguous interpretation, which Kieran would definitely take advantage of. So he settles on a hopefully innocent, “What would you like to discuss?”
He needn’t have bothered.
“I wanna talk about my love life,” Kieran announces smugly. “You see, there’s someone I like a lot who’s been giving me a headache—”
“No.”
Kieran blinks, taken aback. “No?”
“Pick something else.”
“Why?”
Because I’m this close to saying ‘fuck it’ and doing anything you ask me to.
“Because I reserve the right to refuse service when I feel uncomfortable with something.” That much is true, though he’s never had to apply that right, until now.
Kieran pouts, then pouts harder, probably thinking he’s being cute and that Ash will crack.
Well, he is cute, and Ash can detect a hairline fracture in the wall he’s put up, but that’s neither here nor there.
“Wuss,” Kieran complains when he senses this tactic will get him nowhere. “Fine. I wanna talk about my childhood.”
Ash groans—internally. Here goes hoping Kieran would get frustrated and give up.
Ash didn’t actually expect him to pick a different topic.
Sure, he could refuse to continue the session completely, but…
there’s a chance, albeit small, that Kieran really wants to discuss something important.
And unless he’s going to make something up, it’s also a way to learn a little more about him.
And Ash does want to know more, no matter how hard he tries to convince himself that’s not the case.
“Alright. We can do that.” He shows his palms before folding his hands on his thigh. “Whenever you’re ready.”
Kieran’s not ready. In fact, he keeps glancing at the door as if he can’t decide whether he should bolt or not. He clearly didn’t think this through.
Just when Ash thinks he’s going to call it quits, Kieran speaks.
“I guess you could say I was always full on as a kid.”
Okay, so they’re actually doing this. Good. Means that Ash can switch to therapist-mode. Or try to.
“I can imagine,” he says, making sure Kieran can detect the soft affection in the words.
Given how he smiles, shy and a little pleased, he got it alright.
“I’m an only child,” he continues. “And my parents, my mum especially, they just didn’t know how to handle me.” He chuckles without humor. “I didn’t know how to handle myself.”
“That’s not your fault, though. You realize that, right?
Kieran, look at me,” he orders, gently but firmly, needing to make sure to get the point across.
He waits until Kieran turns his pretty, fear-filled eyes towards him.
“That wasn’t your fault. You were just a kid.
No one can expect a child to learn how to regulate their emotions without proper help. ”
Kieran drops his gaze quickly. Then whispers, “I’m pretty much the same now as an adult.”
“Getting older won’t magically equip you with skills you didn’t have access to as a kid, nor will it give you a cookie-cutter personality that fits today’s society.
” He almost adds that Kieran’s unhinged, intriguing personality is one of the main things that made Ash so attracted to him in the first place, but thankfully manages to keep that piece of information to himself.
He's slipping deeper into work mode now, but there’s still a small part of him that reacts to Kieran’s story with the ferocity of someone who’s planning on being actively involved in his life.
Unprofessional, yes, but he can’t help it.
That’s why he didn’t want to do this. The bias is off the freaking charts. It wasn’t half this bad with Dawson.
Then again, he never wanted to tear Dawson’s clothes off and worship him like a god.
“What is it?” he asks when he notices the way Kieran’s looking at him, eyes soft and lips curved in a faint smile. It… Jesus, it makes him want to squirm.
“You don’t look the type, but you’re a softie, aren’t you?”
Ash quirks an eyebrow. “Were you expecting tough love? I can do that if you want. I just don’t think it’s a good approach to take with you.”
“What, you think I need to be coddled?” Kieran taunts, not really offended.
“Yes,” Ash says easily, enjoying how Kieran’s cheeks start to turn rosy pink. “I think you need to be treated gently, and with a healthy dose of positive reinforcement.”
Now it’s Kieran’s turn to squirm, drop his gaze and clear his throat.
“It’s annoying how spot-on you are, even now,” he grumbles, then switches gears.
“Well, long story short, I was dragged to a bunch of psychologists who thought I was just attention-seeking and ‘my behavior needed correcting’. Surprise, that didn’t work all that much, so I eventually wound up in a psychiatrist’s office, got slapped with an ADHD label, and ended up on prescription meds.
” He shrugs. “Cue months and months of being a fucking zombie. My parents were stoked. Me, not so much.”
“The way you formulated that sentence suggests you don’t agree with the diagnosis,” Ash points out. It doesn’t matter to him either way if the diagnosis is correct or not, even though he can see how that would fit. He’s more interested in how Kieran feels about it, or did as a kid.
Kieran shrugs. “I don’t care much for labels.
Some people find them comfy—good for them—but I always felt like a freak.
I was treated like a freak because of it, that’s what I despise.
People just putting you in a fucking box with no way out.
” Before Ash can respond, Kieran adds another nail to the coffin.
“I refused to take the meds, so…” He looks away, taking a minute to gather himself.
“My mum found a way to slip them into my food, or even drinks.”
Ash’s pulse kicks up. He can feel the therapist-patient boundaries dissolving with alarming speed. Still, by some miracle, he manages to string together a semi-professional response, nevermind the murderous inclinations that suddenly awakened inside him.
“That must have been horrifying, having your trust broken like that by the very people who should’ve been protecting you.”
Kieran sniffles, but there are no tears. “I think the worst part was they actually believed they were helping me. And themselves, of course. But there was no reasoning with them, because they were convinced it was all for my own good.”