AUTHOR: The Corruptor
RATING: PG with some mild swear words
CHARACTERS / PAIRING: Tristan and some other guy
SUMMARY: Tristan’s therapy sessions from GG: Season 1; 3rd person omniscient but mostly from the therapist’s POV
AUTHOR’S NOTE: Ok, here's "The Dissertation"! PROCEED WITH CAUTION... Very Long, Very Pro-Sympathetic-And-Complex Tristan Fic!! Just having some fun trying to sketch out Tristan’s character since we know so little about him. For those of you who might want to skip this (and there may be a couple of you. der!), the basic storyline for this fic is a rehashing of Tristan's thoughts and feelings about what's happened so far in Season One. And please… I’ve never been to a therapist before (though that’s really surprising) so I have no idea exactly how a session is supposed to be except for what I’ve gotten from TV and movies (great sources, if you ask me. D’oh). His main job here is only to help Tristan speak his mind. Also remember patient/doctor/reader confidentiality; since these are Tristan’s private sessions, some parts contain only short excerpts from each session, instead of the entire therapy session.
DISCLAIMER: I own nothing but the clothes on my back, and that annoying shrink. The rest was borrowed from GG and the WB.

It was quiet for a very long time. Ever since Tristan had stepped into the office and taken his usual position, slouched into the couch. For some reason, he no longer felt the need to speak anymore. And the man had allowed him the brief respite from having to dredge up all the painful emotions that they had touched on during their last session. Until now, when the silence was threatening to extend to the very end of their current session. “So how are things going now?”

“What?” He lifted his head up.

“Between you and…” He didn’t want to ask directly. If he did, the boy might clam up, as he was wont to do when things got too close to the painful truth.

“Who?” Tristan asked, innocently. Or maybe he really didn’t know who the man wanted an update on. There had been so many people they had discussed. Mainly girls. And Tristan wasn’t sure he liked that. It made him seem fickle, and superficial, as if that was all he thought about. All his life revolved around.

“Well, let’s start with you. How are you doing right now? I’m assuming nothing major or earth shattering has occurred lately. No new girls with crushes on you. No new girl you’ve developed a hankering for?”

The young man leaned back into the plush folds of the couch and offered a wry smile. “I’m… okay.” He seemed to think about it, and found the answer reasonable.

“Okay.” The man nodded, accepting it. Tristan did seem fine. A little on the tired side, but then again, he had a lot on his mind. “What about the others? Are things okay between you and Paris?”

Tristan fidgeted. “Yeah,” he said slowly.

“Would you care to elaborate?”

Not really. It was the last thing he wanted to do. He shrugged. “We’re okay, I guess.” But he sounded uncommitted to the answer, and unsure. “I mean, she wouldn’t talk to me for the longest time. She kept throwing Rory and me these evil looks, like we were in cahoots to try to humiliate her or something.” He paused, pained. “I tried to apologize to her. She wouldn’t hear of it the first ten or twenty times I tried to tell her how sorry I was.” In actuality, he hadn’t really tried that hard. He had been embarrassed, and he hadn’t really wanted to embarrass her again in the process. He had kept his distance, but continued to smile at her and say hi. It was Paris who had shot him down with an evil glare each time he tried to raise his hand in greeting, freezing his awkward but warm smile on his face. He wasn’t used to it. This new Paris. He had always found her to be more than receptive to his charms. And now she no longer was. Well, she wasn’t quite as receptive as she used to be. She hadn’t spoken to him for quite awhile. But now, they were able to say hi without him feeling like he needed to duck from her death glare. And she had even began to talk to him civilly when he asked her questions of unimportant natures. They were still working on repairing their relationship, but he knew better. It wasn’t their friendship that needed the mending. They never really had a friendship to begin with. It had been merely a crush on her part, and almost friendly indifference on his. “We’re getting there, I guess,” he mumbled.

“Okay.” He wouldn’t push it. It was something the boy would have to work out for himself. And it was clear that while he esteemed Paris’s friendship, it wasn’t his top priority. After all, he had gone almost sixteen years without being anything more than a classmate with the girl. “What about Rory?”

He didn’t want to discuss how things were going between him and Rory. And his uncomfortable expression said as much. He’d talk about anything else. His parents. Grandparents. School. Friends. But not Rory. Not yet.

The man seemed to understand the hesitation and reluctance. They would work towards it. “How is it between Paris and Rory? I know you mentioned that you were upset since you felt partially responsible for the disintegration of that friendship.”

Tristan’s face scrunched up in hurt. “No, I only felt partially responsible because I didn’t want to own up to it.”

“To what?”

“To the fact that I am responsible for it. All of it.” He sighed, discouraged. “They were just getting to be… I’m just…”

“So I take it not everything is fine where they’re concerned.” The man raised a brow.

Tristan stared at him, wondering if he were seriously trying to be humorous. He had picked an awfully strange time to be so. As if he were making light of Tristan’s pain. But he knew it wasn’t so. Still… “Oh, everything’s just peachy,” he said, sarcastically. “The one friend she could have had at Chilton and I screw it all up.”

“I thought you were her friend.”

“What?” Tristan’s head snapped up, confused. He hadn’t heard.

The man had noted the slip of Tristan’s tongue. “I said, I thought you were her friend.”

Tristan made a dismissive wave with his hand. “Yeah. I meant a female friend. You know. She needs other friends. She can’t be happy with just me. It’s…”

“It’s what?” he prodded. “Ridiculous?”

Tristan was unappreciative. “It’s not right,” he said, sullenly. “She needs other people for friends, too. I want her to be happy."

“And you think she’d be happy with more friends.”

“Wouldn’t she?”

He didn’t answer, merely posted another question. “What makes you think you’re not good enough to be her friend?”

“I didn’t say that. I just want her to be happy.”

“But you want to be able to make her happy,” he reminded.

“Yes. But.”

“Right now you…”

“Don’t.” The boy sighed despondently.

“You don’t know that.”

“I do,” he said.

“You don’t.”

Tristan made an annoyed face. “We’re not in kindergarten.” The man chuckled at the way Tristan always liked to keep things on an adult level. “I do know that. I know it every time I’m near her and Paris walks by. I know it every time Paris gives her a dirty look. And I know it every time Rory gets that pained expression on her face when she remembers why Paris is upset at her, and not at me anymore. It’s like she blames me for having known Paris for so long, for having been her crush for so long, that Paris can practically forgive me anything, and she can’t give Rory an inch.”

“She doesn’t blame you,” the older man cautioned to say.

“You don’t know that.”

“And you do?” He raised a brow.

Tristan hung his head. “No, I don’t,” he admitted ruefully.

“And what about you and Rory?”

“Ah, the million dollar question.”

“And what’s the million dollar answer?” The man waited, but no answer came.

“You’re only sixteen,” the man reminded gently. He was not trying to make light of the boy’s problems, or the boy’s pain. But he had to remind him that there were other things out there. And years of pain ahead of him. “When you look back on this, it’ll just be a blip in your memory. And you’ll probably laugh about it.”

“Maybe,” Tristan agreed reluctantly. “Or maybe it’ll be the turning the point. The beginning of the rest of my life. The point is, I don’t want to run into it half-assed. I need to be sure.”

“You’re right. Who knows. Maybe ten years from now, you and Rory will be having a wonderful life together. The point is, no one is sure. Not you. Not me. Not even her. How you feel a year down the line may not be anywhere near what you’re feeling at this very moment.”

“It just hurts so much to…”

“If you do it right, your life will be full of these little episodes of pain.” The man tried to smile, tried to reassure him. But he wasn’t sure he was doing a good job. The boy did not return the awkward smile.

“I’ve tried, you know. I know that I could probably get over her. Time. Space. Distance. Whatever. These things help. And you’d be surprised how easy it is to get those things even though you go to the same school with someone. But I don’t know. Maybe it’s just fate having a cruel laugh at my expense. No matter how hard I try to avoid her, we always seem to be thrown into each other’s path. Tell me that’s not someone’s idea of a cruel joke.”

“I’m not laughing.” The man’s face was blank.

Tristan took a moment to try to decipher the expression. He found he couldn’t, but he was pretty sure that the man was not making fun of him. He sighed, trying to keep the bitterness out of his voice. “Well, then that only makes the two of us,” he muttered, looking away, disgusted.