I’ve spent years perfecting my craft.

Not the art of healing—that’s for amateurs who still believe in happy endings. No, my work is about precision. The shaping of minds until they fit the mold I’ve designed for them. I’ve had dozens of case studies over the years, each one another notch in my archive of controlled outcomes. But perfection? That’s harder to find.

Patients break too soon. Or they’re too guarded. Or they listen to the wrong voices and claw their way back to independence before I’ve finished my work.

Then you arrived.

At first, you were just another face in the waiting room. Another voice, another set of problems. You spoke of your ex-fiancé, of how he bent your reality until you no longer trusted your own choices. You said it like a confession, as if admitting it would purge the weight. All I heard was the opportunity.

People who’ve been reshaped before they’re pliable. You were already conditioned to lean on someone else for guidance. I didn’t have to force dependence—I only had to make you believe it was care.

It began with listening, letting you spill every detail so I could map you perfectly. Then came the small cuts. Suggesting your friends didn’t understand you. Reminding you that they couldn’t see what I could. Slowly, you stopped consulting them.

Slowly, you stopped questioning me.

The medicine was the final thread. A low-dose stabilizer, nothing dangerous—except for what it did to your sense of balance. One brief “supply delay” and you were calling my office twice a day, voice edged with panic, desperate.

That’s when I knew you were mine.

Almost a year now. You see me more than you see your family. You’ve let me decide when you need me. And when you don’t.

Now, we’re here again. You’re in the patient’s chair; hands folded neatly in your lap like you’re waiting for permission to breathe. I flip open the file heavy with your secrets. Another session. That’s all this is.

At least, for now.

But after today, I think it’s time to step past that neat, sterile boundary between therapist and patient. To claim something I’ve been refining for a year.

I let the silence linger, savoring the way you shift under my gaze.

“Shall we begin?”