"It's a combination of psychoanalysis, cognitive behavioural techniques, Grofian holotropic breathwork, Celtic paganism, and Taoist sorcery. Sessions can run from an hour to three, usually no more than once every two weeks, maybe more often if the person is struggling. It's formal but fluid, like a martial art I suppose."
Max sipped his tea. "Are you accepting new patients?"
Callan smiled. "Now that would be a conflict-of-interest, but you know that."
Max smiled. "Who said it was for me? Are you suggesting I need some therapy?"
Callan smiled too and looked at Max. Max held his gaze. Their banter was a script, they both knew it, the rote exchanges that people performed almost unconsciously, but when two experts at communication were involved the artifice of it all was too apparent.
Callan was anticipating Max commenting that it seemed as if Callan was trying to prove himself, justify his new career path, and he had his argument ready, about the merits of slow and graceful change rather than the sound and fury of their action-adventure exploits, about supporting individuals in gentle ways, about how real change and real healing was a long process.
Except Callan also knew that Max knew a comment like that could sound like a judgement, and that Max liked to pretend or at least perform that he was very non-judgmental. And furthermore, that by insisting Callan had nothing to prove Max would be implicitly positioning himself as the authority even as he explicitly denied the role.
And Callan was also acknowledging that part of him did feel as if he had to prove himself, to validate this new approach to the kind of work that they had all been doing for so long; and Callan knew that his relationship with Max was in many ways a manifestation of that dynamic within himself, that Max was in some sense a spirit he had summoned into his life to challenge him and push him to be better.
Callan knew too that Max knew all of this, and that Max was at the very same moment wondering if he should make the comment about Callan proving himself and if doing so would somehow prove that everything Callan was thinking was true.
And somewhere within the swirling, tangled mesh of subtext and near-telepathic mutual understanding was the mystery of what Max really did think about Callan becoming a practicing psychologist... And what Callan really thought about what Max thought...
They both sipped their tea.
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