Paul straightens up his office in the time between Paris's departure and his four thirty. It doesn't seem like anything terribly out of the ordinary: mother called in a few days beforehand, got an appointment for her bastard son who's moody, depressed, yada yada. Nothing quite so dramatic as a possessed arm.

There isn't much to tidy in his office, new as it is, and even less to unpack. The time inches past far too deliberately for its own good, and Paul grows more and more anxious as the minute hand stretches for the six. One can only rearrange a nearly empty desk so many times before it almost feels better to be doing nothing.

The office door opens-- rather loudly-- and admits a young man in his late teens, perhaps early adulthood. He obviously isn't moving with particular care.

First off, he's tall. He's somewhere around six feet, and might even be taller if it weren't for the habitual slouch that the terminally tall often develop. His clothing is casual-- grey winter jacket, blue-grey striped button-up t-shirt over a faded black lon-sleeve shirt, and well-worn but not scruffy jeans. Comfortable, fade-into-the-background clothes.

His natural appearance is somewhat difference. Sure, his hair is a dusty dark brown... sure, his skin is only medium pale, not really remarkable... but there's a streak of white running up through his hair above his left eye, and the left eye itself is white-- not all white, but a white iris and a white cornea separated by a black ring. The other eye is a dusty hazel and not terribly remarkable except in contrast to the left one.

He pauses just inside the door and looks around, his expression just this side of sullen.

What now...

Paul looks up - he was standing over his desk, his rolling chair pushed back, trying to line up his blotter and the bottom edge of the desk - and takes his hands from the desk. He clasps them in front of him in an attempt to scrape together his well-organized, adult appearance. He clears his throat to buy himself another few seconds worth of preparation. god, i need a secretary...

Seemingly to spite his preparation, it isn't until now that Paul, looking through slightly dirtied glasses, sees the white streak of hair above a piercing white eye. Words die on his tongue. He clears his throat again and averts his gaze to the bookshelves.

"Um...you're my, uh, four thirty? I'm Doctor Young, I don't think your mother gave me your name..." The reality strikes him moments after the words: in ten seconds, Paul's managed to fuck up all protocol, hell, even sociability with his patient. Especially bad with a teenager: teens tend to be more openminded, but a hell of a lot less forgiving.

who knows? maybe you got the one white-eye teenager in the world who's willing to respect a pathetic excuse for a doctor

A low-key glower is sent in the docter's direction, given a strange intensity by the presence of the white eye.

"Andrei. I'll assume you managed to get the last name." No doubt Miss Petrov had introduced herself as such. Maybe even as Anna Petrov.

He has a very faint accent-- just a little twist to his words, lurking somewhere in the deep realms of pronunciation. It's reasonable to assume it's a Russian accent-- the diluted version of the one his mother has.

He's feeling sullen. Feeling pissed off at having been guilted into coming to this. Feeling scared. Feeling stubborn. Stubborn, especially. Only half of this shows in the expression, in the way he moves.

He looks around for a chair, avoiding the doctor's eye.

In the center of the room, two armchairs face each other over a mahogeny coffee table. The one nearer Paul's desk is sleek red leather, deeply indented by red-cloth buttons; closer to the door is a more casual, more plush armchair, upholstered with a brick-red corduroy and seated on a swivel-piece. Paul steps around his desk, still avoiding the boy's eyes (not really a boy, though- not much younger than himself), and motions toward the chair. "Yeah, I got that much...take a seat, Andrei." His hand glides over the legal pad and pen placed at the edge of his desk, and they slip from the desk easily into his curled fingers.

But damn, is that glare distracting! It would've been a well-practiced glare even without the white-out eye, one that had seen a lot of use and still had the advantage of youthful novelty, but with the eye...

Paul makes his first note at the top of the page: Day One As A Psych.: Oh My God.

The kid grabs the sleek leather chair and slouches into his, allowing himself to slide low on the leat, long legs jutting out. He watches the doctor as if waiting him to fall on his ass. That's the word he'd use, too-- ass. It's just sitting there, in his expression.

"So." He inspects the older man. "Mind if I smoke?" Obviously expecting a 'yes, I mind.'

The leather chair the kid slid into is nearer the desk than the corduroy one, and is facing the patient upon entrance to boot. The sleek, shining red exudes authority, while the rotating brick-tint offers comfort. Simply put, the wrong ass is in the wrong chair.

Paul, tired of being caught off-guard (in his own office, for Chrissake!), steps around the coffee table and plops into the corduroy. "Could you open the window if you do? Don't have much ventilation in here, and I don't want to go setting off any alarms.

The kid seems to realise that. In fact, he seems to have done it as a challenge, though he also doesn't seem about to mention that fact if the doctor won't. He rises and walks to the window, opening it. For a moment, he considers staying there, but he's not about to give up the seat.

He has a cigarette between his lips as he sits back down in the leather chair, and lights it as he slides into his accustomed slouch.

This is all done without speaking.

Paul fights the urge to steal the kid's seat - take back what's his, more like it - and, instead, tears out the first page of his legal pad and crumples it to his palm. Beneath it, on a new sheet, clean except for pen-indented trails at the top of the page, he writes: Andrei Petrov, late teen, stole my chair&smokes. rebel w/o a cause?

The kid retakes his seat, and Paul looks up, forcing himself not to flinch away from the glare. The opposing eyes make him feel off-balance, like he has lead weights in one pocket. "Well, Andrei, why don't you tell me why you're here?"

His left hand comes up and he pulls the cigarette from his mouth with two long fingers.

"Because my mom guilted me into it." He obviously doesn't want to be here. Doesn't think he needs it. Also, in some way, worried of what the doctor might find out.

This said, he replaces the cig between his lips and takes a drag, flicking his gaze off the doctor.

Paul's lungs, having seen almost ten years of life at a university (making him one of the youngest graduates to get his doctorate in the school's history), are hardy, and don't ache in the slightest as the traces of cigarette smoke slip down his nostrils and into his chest. With an air of curiosity, Paul looks over the rim of his glasses and uses the psychologist's most prized utility: the question based on a choice word in the patient's last sentence.

"Guilted you?"

"Nagged me into coming," Andrei clarifies, his mismatched eyes roaming the room for a place to knock his ash.

"You know. The evil power that all mothers master in." A smile-- the words are sarcastic, but they're a joke.

Paul grins and pretends not to see the kid's cigarette predicament. On one of the mid-height bookshelves is a small gilded bowl that could pass for an ashtray if it were't so expensive-looking. (It is, in fact, just that: an expensive ashtray. Stressed, smoker patients have a tendency to burn through cigarettes like candy on the couch.)

"Mothers are notoriously good at that. Why do you think she wanted you to come see me?"

He doesn't go after the bowl. In fact, he stretches out a long arm and taps the ash into the garbage, then brings the cigarette back into range.

Because she suspects I'm a freak. Hurt, fear. Buried quickly in sullen anger and general antipathy.

"I don't fucking know," he mutters. "Probably she thinks I'm fucking on drugs or something." He rolls his eyes-- no, he's not on drugs. His mother is out of touch. His mother never bothered to be in touch.

Bitterness clouds Paul's thoughts for a moment or two; he barely notices. His own emotional fluctuations don't usually amount to much in-session.

Curious, though: the kid isn't angry at his mother, or his reaction would've come sooner. No, it is the reason he's angry at. His mother just happened to have been the voice of reason, so to speak. Happy with her otherwise? It doesn't sound that way.

As usual, the psychologist's process is largely internal. Paul's thoughts, when spoken, amount to this: "Why would she think that?"

"Isn't that something mothers always think when they can't 'relate' to their sons?" His tone suggests that yes, it is... and that the problem of not relating is probably more on her end than his. It also suggests that he's trying to not suggest anything with his voice.

He sticks the cigarette into his mouth again and eyes Paul up.

An excellent point. The kid's intelligent, and Paul finds himself a little scared by it. Somehow you'd wish that a person capable of inspiring as much doubt as the kid did earlier were more beast than human. Sick, yes, but when is judgement ever not, on some level?

Still, the only reason the kid's sticking to the drug story is because it's a convenient cover. If drugs were the problem...well, Paul would know. The kid's too sharp for it. "If this were really about drugs, do you think your mother's first priority would be sending you to a psychologist?"

He snorts. "Who knows." He thinks of her as smarter than that, but still finds it easy to imply that she couldn't find her way around a wet paper bag.

"She's probably just feeling guilty or something." He knows he doesn't need this, and he doesn't want to be here. Who knows, the doctor could fucking hypnotise him and get him to admit he's a freak... or something. He's intimidated by the prospect of the doc delving deeper and he's determined not to show it.

The topic revolves around the kid's mother, and Paul is grateful for that: he looks and sounds wary about discussing himself. Makes finding the real root of the problem more difficult, but it's by no means unusual. (Paul's thoughts on blaming one's emotional instability on poor parenting or other contributing factors are less than sympathetic, and his thoughts toward psychologists who encourage the practice are downright violent. Reparations can't be truthfully established until some responsibility has been taken.)

"It sounds like there's a communication problem, and you don't think it's on your end. Am I right?"

"Maybe." Determined to be difficult.

He takes a quick puff of the cgarette and frowns. "Anyways, I'm not the one who'd rather work than raise a bastard kid." The words are flat, like it's something he's been telling himself for years and he's almost beaten all the emotion from the phrase.

Deep emotional stuff. Paul could be called wrong by either diving into the depths of it right now, or by fiddling around with the unimportant conversationals.

He scribbles to his notepad: working mom, kid blames comm. gap on her

Paul makes a dive. Small one, but undeniably a dive nonetheless. "Did she really have a choice?"

"You always have a choice, man," he says, tapping the ash into the trash can again.

"We'da lived fine if she'd just had one job. We'da lived better than fine if she had just one good job." he scowls, briefly.

"Anyways, aren't you supposed to be psychoanalyzing me, not my mom?"

Paul shrugs. This scene, played out in movies and his mind more than enough, has always been his favorite.

"That's the general idea, yes. I should be breaking down your mental barriers, finding that the root of all your stress and disillusionment truly lies in one obscure childhood event, one that was so distressing that you've forgotten all about it, and it is only through painful recollection and deep hypnotic trance will it ever be dug up from the infinite depths of your mind.

"The fact is, Andrei...for the most part, that event is usually just being born. Unhappiness, depression, confusion, aimlessness, these are not the result of sexual molestation or being left alone in your room for eighteen hours for seeing your parents going at it in the sack. They are a direct result of one thing: life. And it is only through understanding how you live and why you bother doing what you do every day will anyone, myself least of all, ever begin to understand you.

"If you're depressed, unhappy, troubled, anything I'm not going to find a reason for it by probing you for deep psychological trauma. Hell, if it's there, I'm not even going to be the one to find it. You'll find it, and take from it your own reasons. I'm just here to help."

He presses his back into his chair and rolls his shoulders. "Now that I've preached most of my doctrine at you...your thoughts? Increasing terror, strong desire to flee?"

"Never fucking said I was raped as a kid, Doc." He scowls, cigarette forgotten momentarily.

"Never fucking wanted to be here in the first place. So you don't need to preach to me-- save the bullshit for someone who actually is messed up."

He adjust his position, moving restlessly but not getting up or leaving.

"Aright?"

Avoid the subject of fear altogether.

Paul nods. A moment later, he tears the top page from his legal pad, crumples it, and tosses it into the trash-can/ashtray.

Getting to his feet, he says, "Well, I can't say it's been a pleasure meeting you, Mister Petrov, but it has been most exciting. Can I show you out, or can you manage?"

His brows draw down.

"What the fuck are you talking about?" he says, sitting up but not standing.

Nothing as complicated as reverse psychology: Paul just wants to see what happens. The kid doesn't want to be here, thinks he doesn't need to be (which may well be true), and yet he stays. Either his mother is much more convincing than she sounded on the phone, or Paul just found the weak point, the point of denial, in the kid's argument.

"You say you don't have a problem, and damned if I see anything immediately striking about you. Psychologically." Afterthought, brief strike at the kid's eye and hair. See if that's tender ground at all. Might be too much at once, might lead to violence, but what the hell. Wounds usually heal. "Besides, even if you do have a problem, I can't do a thing about it unless you're willing to work with me. So good-bye, and have a nice evening." Paul side-steps from the space between his chair and the coffee table and makes his way to his desk.

The kid half-flinches as his hair and eye come into question, and he stands, tossing the cigarette at the doctor, angrily.

"Fuck you," he says.

Still not moving towards the door.

Mom, I beat up that psychologist you sent me to. Oh, yeah, that'd be a great letter home....

The cigarette spirals through the air and hits Paul's sleeve. Ember bursts from the tip and leaves gray and black splotches on the white cotton, ruins it forever. The cigarette tumbles to the floor and bounces back up on the carpet before coming to a rest. Ash crumbles onto the carpet.

Paul crushes his anger down (and there's a lot of anger just now, probably a culmination of things finally coming to bear) and stoops to pick up the cig. He turns and flicks it out the window. The wind catches it and whips it away.

He falls back into his desk chair and says as calmly as he can manage, "You're welcome to stay, but as far as I'm concerned, this session is over. If you're worried I'll tell your mother you stormed out, don't bother. I'll make up something convincing if she asks why you're not coming back."

His legal pad is on the opposite side of the desk. Paul grabs it, slides it over, and starts to write.

Patient Andrei Petrov is standing across the room from me, a look in his eyes (scary to begin with) that would kill me if it had the chance...

"Like fuck you will."

This could either mean, there is no way I'm letting you lie to my mother or, there is no way I'll believe you when you say you'll lie. The tone for either is pretty much the same.

"If the session's over, why am I welcome to stay?"

Paul doesn't look up from his scribbling, which is continuing in the same vein as before, partially to give him something to do and partially for an explanation in case the kid takes him out.

"Why not? I'm not doing anything confidential here, and if you show up at your place early, your mom might think something's up." Here, he does glance up, but only for a moment. "If she's home.

"You're welcome to anything on the shelves. There's some good stuff up there, if you're much of a reader."

"Doc, I'm nineteen. I'm in University. I live in a fucking dorm."

He scowls, though seems somewhat less irate than before. Still making no move to leave. He looks like he's thinking about it, though.

Now Paul looks up in earnest. "Oh, university, of course, my fault. Keaton or elsewhere?" Keaton was Paul's home for a full ten years, and still is in some ways. His interest is genuine.

"Keaton." He gives the doctor a faintly suspicious look.

First he was kicking me out... now he's fucking interested in my life like a real person instead of a fucking shrink.

Paul sits up in his chair a fraction, thoughts of therapy mostly out of his head. "Declared a major yet?"

"Sorta," he says, his tones still suspicious. "I'm doing a general BA... ort of a bit of everything."

He pauses and, tentatively, offers Young a delf-deprecating half-grin. "It's the old 'I dunno what the fuck to do with myself' degree."

Paul chuckles, both at the wittiness and out of nostalgia. "As much emphasis is on knowing exactly what you want to do by the time you're out of high school...doesn't really matter. Half my friends switched their second year, and the others have careers in a completely different field now."

The kid's nervous, sure, but it's a hell of a lot better than fighting. Better than silence, too: Paul's seen enough of that today.

"Yeah."

Pause.

"I'm at least going to stick around for a full session-whatever-thing. I probably owe it to Mom anyways."

Responsible, at least somewhat compassionate...not a bad kid when he isn't being hounded by a shrink, Paul figures.

"Alright. That leaves-" Paul glances down at an unremarkable wristwatch. "-forty-five minutes." He scratches under the leather band absently. "Who knows? Maybe you'll learn something."

Andrei snorts and sits down again... in the leather armchair again.

"Yeah, like fuck I will. Did you have any real questions?" the words are harsh but the tone isn't, though it might have been a few minutes ago.