the long awaited acathexis sequel! it's abandoned now and probably won't ever be picked back up. but! you guys can read it if you'd like. and if you even know what i'm talking about at all. ♥️ because it's been almost five years now. ♥️
content warnings for consensual sex going a little bit sideways due to trauma and also mild flashbacks to past rape
Things are different, after what happened.
Neither of them go to parties for a while, after. It goes unmentioned between them. They go to their classes and study groups, hang out in the apartment together when it's convenient and eat meals together like normal. Kendall stops drinking until he's done with the antibiotic course.
It does hit Kendall, eventually, that the guy who… That he's also on campus. Somewhere. That Kendall might run into him, and not know. He tries to avoid thinking about the possible bystander. Or bystanders.
They don't go back to the frat house.
When they do return to the party scene, Stewy stays glued to his hip. Not in a way that's super noticeable, but. Kendall notices. They don't lose track of each other in the throng of bodies anymore. When Kendall goes out to smoke Stewy says he needs some air and joins him. It should be stifling. It isn't.
After the last of Kendall's test results come back negative, they fuck to celebrate. Well, they get high together to celebrate and then it turns into fucking.
Stewy assumes Kendall will want to top, like he's fucking… traumatised, or something. Kendall waffles for a second, torn between taking advantage of the somewhat rare opportunity to have his dick up Stewy's ass and proving that he's not broken just because of a bad fuck he barely remembers.
"You sure? It's not every day I let you put your filthy cock inside me."
"Yeah, I'm sure, now get over here and fuck me."
Stewy preps him slow, mouth sucking on the head of his dick. After two fingers, Kendall gets impatient. Stewy's fucked him with no prep before, pushing inexorably forwards, lube and pressure giving Kendall no choice but to let him in. But even compared to how much prep he normally gets, this is taking forever.
"Stewy, please, just fuck me."
"Bossy. Maybe I want you all soft and wet, huh? Maybe I want to feel like I'm fucking your pussy, baby girl."
Stewy slips in a third finger and Kendall full body shudders.
"Don't say shit like that," he pants, grinding down on Stewy's hand.
"Oh, like you don't love it when I talk about what a pretty girl you are for me."
"Shut up and put my dick back in your mouth."
"More like your clit," Stewy says and then he fully engulfs Kendall, turning his next reply into a long groan.
Despite Stewy's teasing, it isn't long before he's pulling his mouth off Kendall and replacing his fingers with his cock. Even with all the slow prep, Kendall gasps at the friction, Stewy's cock slotting into place for the first time in over a month. The fullness when he bottoms out forces a low groan out of Kendall.
"There she is," Stewy murmurs, stealing any response Kendall could give with an open-mouthed kiss.
It's good. It's so good Kendall forgets about everything else, forgets himself, becomes nothing more than a body getting fucked by someone who knows all the right tricks to make him feel good. He feels more physically present than he's been in weeks.
Stewy comes with his hand wrapped around Kendall's cock, keeps fucking him until Kendall's pushed over the edge too.
After, Stewy collapses half on Kendall, panting against the side of his face as he tries to catch his breath. That's when it all falls apart, a little.
There's cum between Kendall's thighs, messy and wet, and he feels stomach acid crawl up his throat. His breaths go shallow, his mouth waters unpleasantly. The sheen of sweat on his body freezes, making him feel cold and clammy and disgusting.
"Get off," he says, too-quiet voice breathy and panicked.
"Hmm?" Stewy murmurs, hazey and drunk in the afterglow.
"Get off," Kendall repeats. He pulls himself out from under Stewy, darting into the bathroom and dropping to his knees in front of the toilet and vomiting up all of the baghali polo ba mahiche and tahdig that Stewy had made that night. Tears fall down to join the mess, reflexive at first but then continuing. Stewy almost never cooks. Kendall feels wasteful and filthy.
When he's down to dry-heaving, Stewy comes to stand beside him, a careful hand rubbing Kendall's shoulder.
"Hey, you good?" Stewy asks, like he even has to ask.
"I need—" Kendall gags again, spitting bile into the bowl. "I need a shower."
"Okay, let's get you up," Stewy says, pulling him off the floor and steering him into the shower.
Kendall's desperation outweighs his embarrassment and he immediately uses the spray from the handheld showerhead and his fingers to clean himself out. His cock jumps from the feeling and he folds forward, dry-heaving again.
He stops cleaning before he feels done, too aware of Stewy, who's intently focused on lathering up a washcloth like Kendall's not being a fucking freak right beside him.
"Can I…?" Stewy proffers the washcloth, reaching a hand out to touch Kendall's arm.
Kendall stares down at the tiles, nods numbly. With the water pouring down his face he can't tell if he's stopped crying.
Stewy scrubs him from throat to feet, covering him in a thick layer of suds, adding more soap as needed. When he reaches his ass he hesitates.
"You good?" he asks, waiting for Kendall's nod before carefully but thoroughly cleaning him up. It's nauseating and soothing in near equal measure. Kendall wants to die from shame.
"I just…" Kendall starts, losing the words immediately. Clears his throat to try again. "I was, was thinking about…"
"I know," Stewy says, kissing Kendall's temple and kneeling to clean Kendall's legs and feet. Kendall closes his eyes, ducks his head down and to the side to avoid making eye contact.
"We should use condoms next time, I guess," he says, eyes closed. "I don't know why I'm— Why I'm being so stupid about this."
Stewy cups a hand over his closed eyes and pulls him forward, into the stream of water. It cascades over him, soap running off and down the drain. Stewy smooths his hands over Kendall's face, wiping away any lingering tears.
"You're not being stupid." Stewy says, folding Kendall into his arms. "It's fine."
Kendall should push him away, shrug it all off, but he can't. The physical contact is intoxicating and the comedown from his freak out reminds him of the afterglow he should be in right now. This is so fucking embarrassing.
"Can we pretend this didn't happen?" he says into Stewy's neck.
"What do you mean?" Stewy asks.
"Go back to how we were before I— you know."
Eventually, Stewy replies.
So they get out and dry off and get under the covers and with Stewy wrapped around him Kendall can almost forget.
They spend a few weeks exchanging handjobs and blowies like they're back in high school. Neither bring up anal. Kendall fucks a girl he brings home from a party. He starts to believe that he's fine, that it was an outlier.
They come home drunk from a party. Sit down on the couch to watch TV but immediately switch to making out. Kendall straddles Stewy to grind their dicks together through their clothing.
Stewy picks him up, barely avoids over-balancing. Halfway to his bedroom he almost drops Kendall to the floor, so Kendall wisely gets his legs underneath him and lets Stewy walk him backwards until they reach the bed.
He pulls his shirt off and lies back with his legs spread invitingly, dares Stewy to object. He senses a minute pause when Stewy turns back with the lube, but the motion is smoothed out by him tossing it to lay beside Kendall and then he's reaching back into the drawer for a condom. Kendall considers arguing for a second but thinks back to last time and bites his tongue.
After Stewy's pulled his pants off of him and gotten him opened up, he pulls Kendall's knees up to his chest, squeezes his legs together to press his cock between his thighs and thrusts a couple of times.
"Hey, remember this from back in the day? Remember that time you came just from my cock rubbing your taint?"
Kendall blushes. He does remember that time.
"I was 16, I had a hair trigger."
"Riiiight, whatever you have to tell yourself."
Stewy guides his cock forward, latex helping him slide in smoothly. It feels weird, they haven't used condoms in long enough that it feels unnatural. Not bad, just… different.
When he's sheathed himself fully, Kendall reaches for his hip to hold him in place. "Wait, let me-" he says, wrapping his legs around Stewy's waist and shifting his hips so they'll be as flush as possible. He uses his other hand to jerk off, trying to upgrade his semi to a full, focusing on Stewy's cock inside of him, Stewy’s scent, his sheets, his wallpaper.
"Come here," he murmurs, shifting his hand from Stewy's hip to his arm to pull him in for a kiss. Their mouths are slow, sensual, but his hand between them is almost frantic. Stewy carefully does not move his hips.
"You okay?" Stewy asks when he pulls away to breathe.
"Yeah, it's just whiskey dick," Kendall whispers. He doesn't know why he's whispering. He kisses Stewy again, and a little louder, says, "You can start fucking me now."
"Bossy," Stewy chides, and starts moving, nearly pulling all the way out before sliding back in and knocking the breath out of Kendall's chest.
After a few minutes, Kendall starts to feel… anxious? No, restless. He starts to feel restless.
"Harder," he says, reaching past his cock to move his balls out of harm's way.
Stewy runs his hands over Kendall's chest, letting his fingers catch on his nipples before trailing down to grip his waist. "What's the magic word, baby?"
Kendall huffs, lays an arm across his eyes. "Please, fuck me harder, Stewy. I wanna feel you with every step I take tomorrow. Is that good enough?"
Stewy laughs, pulls Kendall's arm away from his face to pin his wrist to the bed, steals a quick kiss before saying, "Shit, baby, that was perfect."
Stewy starts fucking him so hard he'll have bruises from where he's holding him in place, maybe even bruises on his ass from Stewy's pelvis. Kendall moans in staccato, each noise correlating directly to the moment Stewy's hips pull flush against him. He feels his spine get taut like he's getting close, but he doesn't think he is, it's just a growing sense of tension.
There's a glob of excess paint on Stewy's ceiling that he's never noticed before. Or maybe it's an air bubble. There's a tiny dark shape on one side of it and it occurs to him it might be a bug that flew into the paint and got stuck.
That would be a terrible way to die, he thinks. To be flying and then just like that, enveloped in a seemingly harmless substance that you can't escape from. It would have asphyxiated, he guesses. He wonders how long it even takes, for a bug to die from a lack of air. They're so small, it's not like they need a lot to—
He blinks, pulls his eyes away from the ceiling, notices Stewy's presence still between his legs. There's a painful pressure and he looks down through blurry vision, following his arm down his stomach to where his hand has a death grip on his cock and balls. When he loosens his fist, colour ripples over his skin as blood is finally allowed to rush back in. His erection is completely gone, probably has been for a while. He readjusts his hand so he's just keeping his bits out of the way, getting off is a lost cause at this point.
Stewy must have let go of his wrist at some point so he brings his arm up to his chest, curls it around nothing. Doesn't really know why. He looks back up to the ceiling and it takes him a few seconds to find the bug. If it even is a bug.
"Ken. Hey," Stewy starts talking again, pulling Kendall's eyes back down to look at him. He's making a face but Kendall doesn't know why. "Are you with me?"
"Yeah, I'm right here," Kendall says. He's whispering again, even though he doesn't mean to.
"I'm gonna pull out, okay?" Stewy says, softening his voice too.
Kendall furrows his brow but nods. He missed something. Maybe Stewy wants to change positions? He likes to tease Kendall for being a pillow princess, maybe he wants him to ride him. It's been a while since they've done that.
But after Stewy steps back he takes the condom off and ties it, throwing it in the wastebasket by the bed. He reaches into the bedside table drawer and pulls out the packet of wipes, uses one on himself. He's still hard. He gets another wipe and uses one hand to spread Kendall's legs, glancing up to look at his face. Whatever he sees makes him grimace and he cleans him up with gentle, impersonal touches.
"Did I do something wrong?" Kendall asks, voice small.
"No, Ken, you didn't do anything wrong," Stewy says, but he's lying, Kendall can tell.
"I'm sorry," he says, feeling very lost. He pulls his lip between his teeth, then hesitantly offers, "Do you want me to blow you?"
Stewy's eyebrows raise for one split second before they return to their original place. His lips thin. Kendall thinks he might be upset.
"No, that's okay. Let's just go to bed, yeah?"
Kendall sits up. Bends down and picks his clothes up from the floor. He gets to his feet, feeling unstable. He's still drunk. Or maybe drunk again, because he hadn't felt this drunk earlier. He walks towards the hallway and notices his legs are trembling.
"Hey, where do you think you're going?" Stewy asks, voice tight.
Kendall turns, clutching his clothes to his chest. "To… bed?"
There's another little pause. Stewy's doing a lot of little pauses these days. It doesn't feel like a good sign.
"Just sleep in my bed tonight, you're already in here."
"O-Okay," Kendall stutters, dropping his clothes by the door to be dealt with tomorrow. He walks over to the bed and gets in on the side of the bed that Stewy's left for him. It's the place Stewy usually sleeps and he doesn't understand why Stewy is giving it to him. He doesn't feel like he understands anything.
They settle for a moment before Kendall breaks the silence.
"You kinda left," Stewy says, voice careful in a way that it never is.
"I mean I was fucking you and then it was like you weren't there anymore. Like, 'the lights are on but nobody's home,'" Stewy says, turning onto his side so he's facing him. Kendall stubbornly stays on his back. He's afraid of what he'll see if he looks at Stewy, or maybe he's afraid of what Stewy will see.
"So?" he whispers, eyes deliberately seeking out the spot on the ceiling again.
""So?' Fucking 'so?'" Stewy says, voice getting louder before he takes a deep breath and exhales, real slow. "Let's just talk about it in the fucking morning."
They do not talk about it in the morning.
When Kendall wakes up he immediately slips out of the bed, blinks and rubs at his puffy, sleep crusted eyes so he can see, grabs his clothes to put in the hamper, and goes into his room to change. He's out the door in minutes.
Just as requested, he can feel Stewy with every step he takes. It doesn't feel as good as he thought it would.
He skips their shared class. Avoids every location on-campus he can imagine Stewy going. Stays late in a dark corner of the library and doesn't think about why.
Eventually, he has to go home. He's being stupid. Stewy's just mad because they had bad sex. They've had bad sex before and likely will again. It doesn't mean anything. He'll make it up to him.
When he comes in, Stewy's on the couch reading but he puts the book down before the door's closed.
For a moment they just look at each other.
"Where were you?" Stewy asks, voice light, tone casual. It sounds forced.
"I was studying," Kendall says. He realises how obvious the lie is immediately. He'd left everything behind that morning, even his class supplies, and he's very obviously empty-handed. He feels so stupid.
"Um, I just wanted to say that I'm really sorry about last night. I guess I was drunker than I thought. I didn't mean to piss you off, so. I'm sorry. It won't happen again."
Stewy leans forward to put his head in his hands and mutters something to himself that Kendall can't make out, but then straightens back up. He pats the couch cushion to his left.
Numbly, Kendall lets his legs walk him over and sits down.
"So, Ken," Stewy says, conversationally but with an edge. "I get that this is a big ask, I really do, but I need you to wake the fuck up so that I can stop being the only one putting in the leg work here. Can you do that?"
"What is that supposed to mean?" Kendall asks, genuinely baffled.
"You're not dealing well with what happened," Stewy intones.
"Last night? I got limp dick. What do you want me to say?"
"I want you to admit that being raped three months ago is having an effect on you. On us."
Without thinking it through, Kendall stands up and walks a couple of paces away. When he realises what he's done, he stops and turns back around but isn't sure what to do after that, doesn't know how to play it off.
"Kendall, you can't ask me to be the only one of the two of us that knows that, okay? I can't be the only one who's looking out for you," Stewy says, voice trembling. "I had to stop fucking you last night because you were crying and staring at nothing and then you asked me if I wanted a blowjob like nothing was goddamn happening. Do you know how fucked that is?"
Kendall jerks his eyes up to look at Stewy, tilts his head in confusion. "I wasn't crying…?" It comes out as more of a question than he wants it to.
"You were! You fucking were! You had tears streaming down your face, I swear to god, Ken."
Kendall looks at him. He's not lying. Has no reason to. It would explain a lot about last night, actually. He stumbles back over to the couch, throws himself back down next to Stewy. He doesn't know what to say or what to think.
"I thought I hurt you," Stewy says, takes a shaky breath. "I still think I hurt you. And I don't think you know any better than I do whether I did or didn't and Kendall, that scares the shit out of me."
They're both quiet for a moment, Stewy's words settling over them unpleasantly. Kendall's mind is racing. He wishes he wasn't so very sober.
"Does this mean you're not gonna have sex with me anymore?" he eventually asks. It's the only thing he can bear to address.
"I mean, I kind of don't have any other choice, right?" Stewy says, rubbing his face and sniffing. Oh fuck, he's crying, Kendall thinks. "If you're just gonna lie back and think of England because you refuse to acknowledge that anything's going on with you then, yeah. We can't do that anymore. Can I trust you to be honest with me if I ask if anything like that has been happening when we're just fooling around?"
"Yeah. Um, it's- It's only happened this time, I guess."
"Did it happen the time before this? Is that why that happened, because I made you relive it and didn't even notice I was hurting you?"
"No! Nothing happened that time, not until. Until after. And you weren't, hurting me or, or m-making me, uh relive it or whatever, this time. I just spaced out really bad, like that time at Kevin's party. Or that time in Belize."
Stewy scrubs his hands over his face, mutters, "Yeah, except you weren't crying with my dick up your ass either of those times." He sighs, clapping his hands on his knees. "Okay, so. Your ass is off the menu for the foreseeable, fooling around is TBD, what are you gonna do about your fucking denial complex?"
Kendall wants to deny that he has one but is able to see the irony before he can get the words out. Eventually, he settles on honesty: "I don't know."
"Do you want my advice?" Stewy asks and it's clearly a kindness to himself as much as it is to Kendall, that he asks first, before he bothers potentially wasting the energy. Kendall gets the sense that Stewy’s low threshold for frustration with him was reached quite some time ago.
"Yeah," he says, voice barely more than just breath.
"Get another therapist, one who specialises in this shit. Be honest with them. Do what they tell you to. Just outsource the whole fucking issue, let them figure out how you need to handle it and then handle it."
"What about my dad?" Kendall asks, trying not to sound argumentative, but instead it comes out plaintive.
"Do what you did at the clinic, give a fake name, pay in cash. Take a cab or let me drive you. He's not omnipresent, dude. You can keep secrets from him."
Kendall doesn't really believe him. His dad sees everything. But it's not like this would be any more damning than the original incident itself or any of the subsequent visits to the sex health clinic. If he's fucked, he's fucked. It won't make a difference. But at least maybe Stewy won't be upset with him anymore.
He exhales roughly, slowly lets himself collapse into Stewy, putting his head in his lap. He feels a shaking hand card through his hair, fingernails brushing against his scalp.
"Are you gonna fucking do it?" Stewy asks, voice soft above Kendall's head.
Kendall turns his head to meet Stewy's eyes. "Uh-huh."
Stewy cups his jaw, a firm and steady pressure. His lips turn up at the corners, just a little. "Good."
Kendall calls the sexual health clinic from a payphone to ask for a therapist recommendation. He has to say the word but he can't say the word so he speaks metaphorically, prattling off something about "therapists for people, uh, men, who've been injured, uh, sexually." They give him four names, all four of which are women. He is quietly relieved but refuses to think about why.
He carries the scrap of paper home with him like it's an irreplaceable and incredibly sensitive document, keeping his hand flat against it in his jacket pocket. He's scared someone will notice, will know, but it's just a list of names and numbers so that doesn't even make any sense.
He flips a quarter three times to pick between the names. Fate chooses Donna Morris. He calls immediately, using Stewy's cell instead of his or the landline, hands shaking as he dials. He makes an appointment for the next week after his classes are over on Thursday. He marks it in his planner as "outsourcing." He puts the scrap of paper with the names between two pictures in a photo album in the back of his closet. He doesn't panic.
The first appointment is very tense.
They make their introductions, and Dr. Morris, a white woman in her 40s, explains that this first appointment will start with an assessment of his history of traumatic events. She clocks his uncomfortable grimace and amends herself, it will be a series of questions that will help her to help him.
It feels immediately different than any past therapy. It feels different than his child psychologist, the people at the rehab, or any of the subsequent individuals he's dealt with to keep him straightened out. It occurs to him that he can just leave, just walk out, and she can't stop him, or make him come back, or do anything about it.
She's also not going to be reporting what he says to any of his dad's people or to his dad himself. She doesn't even know they exist, that that's something she could do, an alternative revenue stream alongside their sessions. Things he says in this room really shouldn't leave it, which is a mind-blowing concept.
Maybe it emboldens him. Maybe making Stewy cry made him desperate enough to try anything. He's not sure but he finds himself being painfully honest with her in ways he's never been with another person.
The first question she asks is "Before the age of 18, did any adult in your household often or very often: swear at you, insult you, put you down, or humiliate you?" and it's all downhill from there. Kendall wishes he could go do a line or two in the bathroom but he's worried about fucking up her first impression of him any more than he already will and for that specific reason he didn't bring coke with him anyway. He settles for picking at his nails and excusing himself to have a cigarette after the first hour.
He gets a really high score on the first one, which isn't actually a good thing. The second one, he thinks, goes similarly. Though he is embarrassed to discover that there are a couple of questions he has to take a pass on because he can't make himself even nod his head, nevermind describe the events. So he probably scores lower than his true score.
After the assessments are over, they discuss what happened at the frat party. Unfortunately, unlike the clinic doctor, Dr. Morris is not satisfied by a vague, stumbling account. She lets him give it, but then she starts over from the top, asking for the last things he remembers from before he was in the bedroom and working forwards from there.
He is horrified to realise, when explaining it to her, how obvious it is that a minimum of three guys were coordinating with each other to get him as fucked up as possible that night. Knowing glances and inside jokes that he'd shrugged off suddenly make more sense. The weird feeling he had when Scott from his Stats class told him, "Brooo, you've got to try it, this shit will change your life forever," and his buddy had laughed for no reason, it makes sense now.
They move on to the next morning, his experience with admitting to Stewy what happened and seeking medical care. Exhausted, he immediately gives up on sanitising his relationship with Stewy and discloses, for the first time in his entire life, the true nature of their friendship. It makes communication simpler but it does not make it quicker.
They end the appointment at the two and a half hour mark, ending with Kendall's abbreviated account of Stewy’s demand that he sort his shit out and a statement of his own desire to never put Stewy through that again. Dr. Morris congratulates him on following through on that desire and tells him he should be very proud of the progress he's made today and he quietly thanks her before shuffling back out to reception to pay in cash and book another appointment for the next Thursday. It doesn't feel far enough away.
He hails a cab and crawls in, numbly rattling off his and Stewy's address before pressing himself flush against the car door and curling his legs up to his chest. He holds off on calling Stewy for maybe five minutes before pulling out his phone and dialing the number. He's nearly bitten through his lip by the time Stewy picks up on the fourth ring.
Kendall doesn't know what to do with Stewy's attention now that he's got it but he is the one who called so eventually he manages to say, "I'm heading home."
"From your appointment? How did it go?" Stewy asks. He sounds almost bored over the phone but Kendall knows him well enough to know better. He's nervous. He's been nervous since Kendall told him about the appointment on Monday.
"It went okay. Hey, are you at the apartment?"
He nearly breaks apart at the seams.
"Uh-huh. Can you just talk to me until I get home?"
"Okay. Did you hear about William S. Burroughs? Apparently he had a heart attack and fucking croaked."
Stewy splutters in outrage and spends the rest of Kendall's cab ride on a tangent. It's perfect.
When he walks through the front door the smell of Stewy's cooking bring tears to his eyes. He stills feel bad about throwing up last time. Hopes it doesn't happen again but feels like it's completely out of his control. He wishes he could go back to when this smell just made him happy and not unsettled, wonders if what happened to him will slowly consume every bit of goodness left in his life.
Scrubbing his hand over his eyes, he drops his backpack against the wall and then hangs his coat up. He walks into the living room and beelines for Stewy, silently wrapping his arms around him for a hug.
"What happened?" Stewy murmurs, face pressed into his hair.
"Oh yeah? That's good." Stewy's hand reaches up, starts carding his fingers through Kendall's hair.
Now that he's safe in their apartment, Kendall feels like he's about to burst into tears. He wishes he hadn't said all that. Wishes what he'd said hadn't been true. Dr. Morris had been nothing but encouraging but he felt hollowed out, more wounded than he'd been before.
It hurt. It fucking hurt, explaining what had happened to a stranger, like he even understood it himself. Trying to justify drugging himself for their use, spreading his legs for them, while she took down notes. Even before that, talking about his childhood had been a pointless exercise in misery. They must've spent the first hour and a half on it, scraping and cutting at memories he hadn't touched in years, all so he could talk about something completely unrelated. Now that he was home it hit him that he could've just said no. He didn't understand why he hadn't.
"Stewy, I—" Kendall's voice breaks and he inhales sharply, fighting against the urge to cry. "I don't think I should go back."
"Hey, no, I'm serious," Kendall pulls back, rubs the back of his hand under his nose. "I think that was bad. For me."
Stewy sighs, closes his eyes. He grabs a joint from their stash and sits down on the couch to light it. They're both silent for a moment, Kendall standing alone on the rug awkwardly holding his own wrist, Stewy alternating between long slow drags and flicking ashes into the tray. Back and forth, back and forth.
"Are you just saying that because it was hard to talk about what happened?"
"No!" Kendall says, knee-jerk. Maybe. "I just… I don't know how she's going to help me."
"Kendall, this was your first appointment," Stewy's staring daggers at him, eye contact so intense it feels like it could cut him. He studies the carpet. "So, what, you're gonna give up because it made you uncomfortable."
It sounds stupid outside of Kendall's head. Stewy's right. It doesn't make sense to stop this early. The first appointment is always the hardest, Kendall knows that. And plus, he's partially to blame for letting the childhood stuff take up so much time. If he didn't want to talk about it he should've lied.
He sighs, scrubs his hands over his face and collapses next to Stewy on the couch.
"You're right. Forget I said anything. I'm just… I'm freaking out," he says, hand reaching out to grab the joint before it's gone. "What are you cooking?"
