Chapter Text
Session No. 6
The office was filled with diffused daylight. The sun hid behind the clouds, and the room alternated between brightening and turning gray. The plastic turtle on the windowsill stood turned sideways, as if listening while pretending not to.
Hermes sprawled on the couch, performing exaggerated fatigue. One leg in a bright yellow sneaker dangled down, the heel slowly, almost hypnotically, tracing short semicircles on the floor. He twirled the hoodie drawstring between his fingers, twisting it, letting it go, catching it again. The movement was rhythmic, pointless, calming.
Alice sat in the armchair slightly to the side, not opposite him. She flipped to a new page in her notebook before she began, and she began cautiously.
"At the last session you spoke a lot about Apollo. I thought we could continue…"
"Doc," he interrupted lazily, without changing position or taking his eyes off the ceiling, "if we talk about Apollo one more time, I am going to start charging you money. For renting space in my head."
He spoke lazily, stretching the words, but the laziness already carried a defensive edge.
Alice didn't raise an eyebrow.
"Alright," Alice said very calmly. "Then let us not talk about him. What do you want to talk about?"
She paused. Silence followed, one in which it was possible to hear a quiet hum from the air conditioner somewhere in the neighboring office.
Still, Hermes turned his head and looked at her with surprise.
"Seriously?"
"Absolutely."
He sat up sharply, pulled his legs under himself, and crossed them. His eyes lit up.
"Excellent. I want to be smarter than Athena."
Alice blinked, but kept a neutral expression.
"In what sense 'smarter'?"
"In every sense," he said quickly. "Not strategy and boring wars and who outplayed whom. But that she would acknowledge at least once that we are a good team. That I'm not just a 'clever boy with wings,' but a full-fledged player."
He waved a hand.
"And that Artemis…" he paused, choosing his words, "well, that she would be less sarcastic. Seriously. She has that constant look, as if I am dirty because I actually like bodies. Desires. Skin. Smells. All of it."
Alice tilted her head slightly.
"And you like that?"
"Of course I do," he said lightly. "I have tastes."
He fell silent for a second, then added with a sly intonation,
"I like the dimples on Apollo's ass. That is a very adult and mature preference, right, doc?"
Alice held a perfect therapeutic pause, just long enough for him to feel a flicker of vulnerability, but not long enough for him to shut down.
"Yes," she said calmly, without a trace of irony. "Quite."
Hermes spread into a satisfied, almost boyish grin.
"Exactly. And Artemis acts as if she is just trying to mock me. Humiliate me." He grew more animated, speaking faster. "If she has not tried anything, then others should not have preferences either. And if she had tried, she would have preferences too. Kinks. Right?"
Alice nodded.
He suddenly began speaking faster, gesturing more actively:
"And so," he made a gesture in the air with his hands, "it's not humiliating or shameful for me at all to admit that I like how Apollo blushes to the tips of his ears when I tell him I like his dimples. And how he tries to pretend he doesn't care. And the sounds he makes when I bite him there. Or how…"
He cut himself off.
The words hung in the air.
Hermes fell silent. He slowly lowered his gaze to his hands. His fingers froze on the drawstring.
"Damn," he said quietly, almost in a whisper. "I really didn't want to talk about him."
Alice smiled softly, almost warmly.
"But you did anyway," she said.
He exhaled. Without laughter this time.
"Yeah."
He leaned back again and stared at the ceiling, as if his entire biography were written there.
"Apparently, he really is everywhere."
"Or," Alice said carefully, "you were not talking about him. So much as about what you like at all. About the right to choose. About the right to have preferences. About the right not to be ashamed of what you like."
Hermes slowly turned his head and looked at her for a long time.
"Clever, doc."
"That is your thought," she replied. "I only voiced what I heard."
He smirked, but without the former cynicism.
"I hate it when you do that."
"You notice?" she asked.
"Yes," he admitted, almost reluctantly. "And that is exactly why I keep coming."
At that moment the clouds parted, the sun became brighter for a second. The light in the room shifted again, and tiny dust motes began to shimmer in a golden column of light, while the plastic turtle suddenly looked almost alive.
Alice made a brief note in her notebook:
"The patient uses humor and sexuality as a means of devaluation and defense. However, the content spontaneously returns to Apollo, not as an object of guilt, but as an object of desire and recognition. The focus is shifting from 'relationships' to the right to want without shame."
She closed the notebook.
"At the next session," Alice said, "I would like to talk not about Apollo, but about what happens to you when you don't justify your desires."
Hermes rose from the couch in one smooth, feline movement and stretched like a cat.
"That sounds dangerous."
"A little," she agreed.
He smiled, for the first time in the session genuinely.
"Then see you, doc."
He winked at the turtle on the windowsill, as if it were aware of all his secrets, and left, quietly closing the door behind him.
The turtle remained standing sideways, still pretending not to care.