PSYCHIATRIST IS A DISH BEST SERVED COLD Standard disclaimers apply. These characters aren't mine, except for Dr. Frodel, I'm just messing with their lives a bit. Permission is granted to archive on fkfanfic.com, the ftp site, and the cotk site. This story is a quick sequel to my previous story, In The Grand Scheme of Things, which is available at my new homepage address: http://filebox.vt.edu/users/diharris/Homepage.htm As with all of my short stories, this has not been beta read except by me, so be warned :) Comments, questions, feedback, and all that good stuff may be sent to Diane Harris at aria5@vt.edu! PSYCHIATRIST IS A DISH BEST SERVED COLD "You agree with me, I'm correct..." his voice oozed thickly out of his mouth, deep and low in a rich murmur. God, I want to eat him... Frodel stared blankly ahead. "I agree with you. LaCroix's correct..." he stated mechanically. "LaCroix! You can't hypnotize the therapist! That's no fair!" LaCroix let his eyes dart to the left to peer at his peeved protigi. Gah! He was thinking in alliteration... must be a side effect of this sappy session... "Nicholas, you are perfectly welcome to hypnotize him as well, I wasn't singling you out..." he replied calmly, a slight sneer spreading across his face. Gah! Stop it! "He wasn't singling you out..." Frodel repeated, still looking blankly at the wall. LaCroix licked his lips. Oh, curses! Why hadn't he eaten before he'd gotten stuck in this ridiculous, yet slightly entertaining, meeting? Nick sighed. This was just not fair... "Look, Frodel..." Frodel just stared. "Frodel?!" Nick waved a hand in front of his expressionless face. Yup. He was out to lunch. LaCroix snickered. His experience with hypnotism was far greater than Nicholas's feeble abilities. But Nicholas... well he was apparently smarter than he looked. Nick grabbed a roll of papers off Frodel's desk and whacked him one like it was a two-by-four. Frodel blinked and shook his head, visibly confused. "As I was saying... Uh... What was I saying?" he asked. "You were saying that I was correct in my assumptions?" LaCroix prodded with his voice, staring deeply into the man's eyes. "No, no it wasn't that..." the man said absently. LaCroix rolled his eyes. So much for that form of amusement. His eyes wandered the room as Frodel stumbled over the cobwebs that had suddenly developed in his mind. Thump thump... Thump thump... DAMN, just keep your eyes away from his neck, Lucien... "Ah yes, you were explaining to me why you tried to kill Nick's friend..." Frodel finally finished, as if his mind were a record suddenly snapped back on track. LaCroix glared. He _still_ had to do that... "Nicholas owed me." Frodel looked curious. "For what?" he asked. LaCroix felt a brief pang in his heart. He would never be over that. Never. "I fell in love with his sister," he said suavely, his voice betraying none of the pain this subject dredged up inside of him... Dr. Frodel raised an eyebrow in disbelief. "But isn't Nick your son?" LaCroix sighed. He would make a point of killing Natalie as soon as this was over. "Yes..." So? Where was this going? "But wouldn't that make Nick's sister your daughter?" Frodel, sounding very confused, was back at his clipboard, scribbling like a madman on a caffeine overdose. "No..." Thump thu STOP! "Ah, it was by a different marriage then?" Dr. Frodel stated, comprehension flooding his voice. "You could say that..." This was getting boring again... "But still, doesn't it seem like you have an unhealthy obsession, here? Perhaps this love was an extension of your feelings towards Nick..." Frodel suggested, stopping the movements of his pen for a brief moment. LaCroix looked at Frodel and then back at Nicholas, who was sitting quietly in his chair, looking very eager to participate. "I sincerely doubt that..." LaCroix replied. Frodel looked a little surprised. "That's... Um... ok, go on..." "I fell deeply in love with his sister, Fleur. She was sick, dying. I could have saved her but Nicholas wouldn't have it. In exchange for my lack of action, he said he would allow me to kill the next... terminally ill person he fell in love with," LaCroix explained as vaguely as possible, but belatedly realized he'd created yet _another_ quirky psychosis for the good Dr. Frodel to investigate... "Nick falls in love with dying people a lot..." Dr. Frodel said with an understanding look. It made LaCroix feel sick to his stomach. "Oh, always, despite my _constant_ warnings that it's a sick, unhealthy thing to do..." LaCroix said with a roll of his eyes. He seemed to be doing that a lot lately. "I object!" Nick cried, standing up from his chair and practically flying at LaCroix. "Relax Nick, nobody's on trial here. Why don't you tell me about this attraction you seem to suffer?" Frodel said soothingly. Nick sat down. "I want to be like them... I spend my time around them all the time in an attempt to be like them... I can't help it if I occasionally fall for one..." "You want to die?" Frodel asked with a raised eyebrow. Nick looked back at the doctor. "Well... uh... I suppose you could put it like that..." he said with a quirk of his head. Their problems sounded so much weirder when he was trying to explain it to an objective third party... "Have you ever tried to commit suicide?" Nick looked at the ground in response. "Yes..." he said hoarsely. "Why didn't you succeed?" "I don't have the strength to go through with it. And there's someone in my life right now..." Nick commented with a small smile, obviously thinking of Natalie. "The one that LaCroix wants to kill?" Frodel asked. "Yeah her," Nick said nonchalantly. LaCroix snorted softly, but Frodel only nodded. "I see..." "And why do you want to kill yourself?" Frodel asked Nick softly. "Because I hate what I am. I hate being a va... virtually indestructible guy." "Uh huh. Why?" LaCroix finally couldn't take it anymore. "Oh give me a break, my son has a death wish. It's not that hard to comprehend..." he hissed, but at Nicholas's and Frodel's harsh stares, he sat back down quickly. "So let's recap. Just to make sure I've got everything straight. LaCroix wants to kill your girlfriend because he loved your terminally ill sister and you wouldn't let him cure her and he vowed to kill the next dying person you fell in love with, which, of course, is the said girlfriend. You fall in love with dying people a lot, which angers LaCroix into becoming aggressive with you because he thinks it's unhealthy for you, hence making you depressed a lot and feeling the need to kill yourself and restarting the whole vicious cycle again." Frodel took a deep, labored breath, trying to recover from that vicious attack of run-on sentences... LaCroix shrugged, trying desperately to ignore his growling stomach. Nick nodded. Yeah, that was a good summary, but... A long silence, the three simply stared. "LaCroix?" "Yes, Nicholas?" "Eat him." THE END P.S. The ending to this one was a promise I made to someone who sent feedback on the prequel. I agreed. LaCroix needed a break :) Diane Harris (aria5@vt.edu)