Welcome to Gaia! ::

He shifted uneasily, letting her go and settling back on his knees and toying absently with the ends of his sleeves after he rolled them down. That particular brand of boyish misery was settling over him that indicated that he'd gone past anger and was just agitated and useless, desperate for a change of subject. It was obvious that he wanted to just snap at her again or plead with her to stop or both, but he swallowed hard and to his credit--the struggle was painfully clear--he made an effort, halting and irritated.

"It's all non-fiction, there's half your ******** problem. Either earnest-eyed reformed assholes preaching from a hilltop or detached academics putting on the sympathy voice. ********--" he made a pointless, empty, violent movement of his hand.

"But I don't know. What else is there? Junkie? Glamorizing theatrics and ********' marinated in f**. Digging the Vein and Requiem for a Dream both sad-eyed melodramatic bullshit to make a man roll his eyes even if Digging the Vein almost gets it sometimes. Written like a high school essay though. Couldn't half ******** read Trainspotting and reading it now'd be like having Rep yelling in your ear and for all that maybe the eight years would be easier to deal with." He moved again, restless, caged.

"You're just--you're gonna be out of your depth, America. OK? And it's fine. It really is, I know you think you need to but I don't--need you to... to get it. I don't want you to get it," he finished miserably. "I don't think you can. I can't get how you feel the way you do about making things better and relying on yourself and I don't think you can get this. That," he corrected, a pathetic bit of verbal distance. "There's something... wrong with me. That's it. Whatever."

His breathing was deep and uneven, and attempt and failure to steady himself.

"I don't want to sound ungrateful," he said finally, strained around the effort of keeping his voice level, "because believe me, I ******** am, but please understand that someone being proud of me is..." he hesitated, fumbling for the words for a long, long time.

"... the things that made me that," he said finally, "are still--I've still got them. I don't know if they ever go away. And when you say you're proud of me it's... I want to hold onto that but it's--terrifying--to think how easy it'd be to let that down. But I want you to be anyway. I promise I do."

He laced his fingers with hers, exhausted and resigned, disgusted by the fact that he found it so easy to put the label of bone-deep problems on himself and repelled by the realization that it was accurate (and where did that leave questions of culpability and recovery?); disgusted that he found it so hard to accept the label of strong. Disgusted that she would compare Russia and all the horrific things that had happened to her there, compare it even in passing, with his lifetime of bad decisions uninformed by trauma or anything more significant than a petty unwillingness to cope with even minor problems.

"OK," he said, finally. He wanted to say thank you but he wouldn't have meant it the right way, so he didn't. And then, tired: "Maybe I'll try to write it down for you one day. But I think you should return those books."