5

It is very easy for Callum to feel betrayed, or hurt, or that his trust has been misplaced. Emotions are wavery for him. They come and go, like how a witch's cauldron would casually explode as they began to add on different spices with a smoke similar to a mushroom poofing out. His emotions are fragile, almost like a child's. It is as if he is not quite fully emotionally intelligent even though he knows quite well what people are going through and the right way to react. He knows this. 

The thing is, it is a very different scenario when Autumn is involved. 

After his shift had ended, he had gone back home and found her dressing to go for hers. There were times he had almost been tempted to stay for hers as well, they wouldn't have been able to send him away even if they wanted to but he knew he wouldn't have been able to stand other people staring at her, touch her. 

Yell at her. 

It was common, he knew that. She never told him of course, but it had happened once and it had taken three of his colleagues to talk the bastard to leave their restaurant. Not that Callum hadn't found the male after and smashed his balls with a bat, but he knew there were others, and as much as it tormented him to let her leave every day, he did because she needed to. 

Even though they had been many times he had thought of smashing her kneecaps with that same bat. 

The feeling of waiting for her was similar to having his skin ripped out. He knew there were better males than he, richer even. He knew they would be softer, more... More. Whatever more was. He didn't know the things she wanted. He didn't understand her emotions perfectly. All he knew was she made him feel good and he had to treat her the same way she treated him. He was learning. He truly was. 

But there were times when she didn't act accordingly. That she didn't act the way he was used to that he had the walls of his world breaking so fast he could barely keep up.

She came back home last night, same as always. Callum didn't sleep. She was his sleep and the only reason he ever thought to wake. She was the thread that pulled and tugged at him, like a puppeteer and him her puppet. He was nothing but her toy to do whatever she pleased, and on the days she didn't seem to want to pull his strings, he would sit there hopelessly, never living, never dying. 

Existing.

Callum had not been inside her in fuck knows how long. He needed it last night. The thought of being one with her, feeling her hold him, tell him how much she loved him... It was all he needed. He had wanted to jerk off but that didn't work. It never did. So when he had seen her, of course, he had tried to get her in the same mood as he was. She smelled like the other people that had been around but he was going to fix that, and fuck, her lips. Every feel of her skin was igniting him. He was in heaven. A sliver of it. He needed it. He needed her. 

Autumn had told him she didn't want to have sex. Again. 

She said that there had been an accident at work and it really got her mood down, that all of the blood had set her off somehow. Callum didn't understand why that should have mattered, why she cared. Had it been her lover? Was it someone else? Didn't she miss his cock too? Why was he the only one trying so hard in the relationship? Was she disgusted by him? Was she still sad that he had hurt her?

The voice came again. It said to force her down and fuck her. Autumn liked it rough anyway. She would like it eventually. It said that if she felt his cock inside her again, she wouldn't want anything else. Or at the very least, threaten her. He could threaten effectively. She would fuck him if she realized he was not someone to gatekeep from her body. She belonged to him. He had blindly and wholly devoted himself to her. There was no one else he wanted more in the world. But he knew the voice was wrong when his heart began to hurt. 

He really couldn't understand it. Didn't every relationship need sex? He couldn't bear to be without her for an entire day and he was so sure she wasn't suffering half the way he was. If he had been in her situation and he knew she needed to get off, of course, he would have eaten her out. He would have. But she wasn't like him, at least not entirely.

So he held her in his arms even though he had thought of pulling her hair from her scalp. Even though his cock was hurting. He tried to pretend to care about what she was going through, to mirror as effectively but it wasn't working. He knew he was being selfish. He knew this. And the worst part of it all had been when she had finally slept next to him, the thought of choking her with a pillow had been so loud that he had reached out for help. 

And here he was. 

Callum is looking at Amber Cavanaugh, studying. She is almost similar to staring at an angel. Nothing is out of place, not a thing. Even in her shadow, it seemed like it had been positioned in the right place to give her more of a mysterious aura than anything else. She had been welcoming when he got in, the environment so warm that it made him think of stale bread. It amazed him how normal she seemed, how much of a porcelain doll she was. 

He couldn't see through her, of course, but he could sense it. He looks around her office, staring at the colours in which she had painted her walls, the effort she had made to seem normal. It made him imagine that if someone else had walked in, someone who was not him of course, would have seen the things that surrounded her office and immediately felt at ease. 

There were things here that gave the sense of a typical average child. Like she was relatable. One could easily find oneself trusting her because of how easy to explain the way they were to her. Perhaps, it was because Callum had been like that once. Mundane. Same as the rest. The superficiality of the place was so obvious it made his skin hurt like he was being overstimulated. Fuck, he hated the office. 

He distracts himself by thinking of his wife. He had not told Autumn where she was going. She was never going to know but the thought was killing him. He kept clenching hard on his phone, noticing she had called twice but he hadn't picked up. Perhaps if she calls again, he will pick up. Just one more time is all he needs. 

"What was it you wanted to tell me?" 

He blinks. This is the first time she has spoken to him since he got in. He can feel it. The snake-like tension. She is sizing him up. Trying to see what he wants to say. He knows she's not what she expected. Callum knows he can be very disappointed when he is first seen. His shoulder is slouched, his countenance almost like a shadow. Non-existent. Barely there. He knows this. He looks harmless. He knows. 

The words he says after are not in any way harmless. "I know that you have three types of patients each day. The first two are people similar to the background you grew up in. Well to do, buried in so much money that listening to their minuscule family problems disgusts you but you know the words to say regardless, and the third person is someone that you can barely afford your therapy. This person is poor, useless, the sort that once they disappear no one ever notices. With the same effort you fix the problems of the first two, you use that to break the mind of the latter. They are your social experiments, rats. You speak to them till they drive themselves to madness or suicide thinking that they had done so on their own accord but you had been the one to orchestrate since the beginning. Why do you do all of that? Because you are a psychopath that needs an outlet."