"You're saying the talking fox actually wants us to unload our trauma on a bunch of strangers?" she asks, hating this more and more with every passing second. "What's the point of that? Studies have actually shown that forcing people to divulge things like that just causes more trauma."
She's managed to keep quiet about some of the darker aspects of her family life, with Peter only knowing that her parents fight a lot - about money, about one another, about anything that grabs their attention on any given day - but not really knowing any of the more intimate details. She'd been planning on keeping it that way until their relationship had gotten more serious, like when they'd inevitably start discussing living together sometime after graduation and he'd need to know why it had taken so long for her to really open up and trust anyone. But even if life has a great knack for never turning out how she'd planned - even with her constantly expecting worse-case scenarios - she still can't imagine opening up in that way with anyone but Peter.
Especially since he's an open book to her, whether he means to be or not. She's had the impression that there's something wrong, some weird barrier keeping them from being as comfortable as they usually are, and she's just assuming that it's these two years of being jolted around the multiverse that's to blame. That can do a lot to a person, to a relationship, and her ever-present paranoia can't help but wonder what it's done to him and what it'll do to them.
Instead of giving voice to any of those concerns, though, she gives Peter's hand another squeeze in an effort to reassure him that she's there for him. "Hey. I'm here now. You've probably made friends in all this time, but if there's ever anything you're forced to talk about, you can lay it out on me. Weird multiversal fox magic or otherwise."
no subject
She's managed to keep quiet about some of the darker aspects of her family life, with Peter only knowing that her parents fight a lot - about money, about one another, about anything that grabs their attention on any given day - but not really knowing any of the more intimate details. She'd been planning on keeping it that way until their relationship had gotten more serious, like when they'd inevitably start discussing living together sometime after graduation and he'd need to know why it had taken so long for her to really open up and trust anyone. But even if life has a great knack for never turning out how she'd planned - even with her constantly expecting worse-case scenarios - she still can't imagine opening up in that way with anyone but Peter.
Especially since he's an open book to her, whether he means to be or not. She's had the impression that there's something wrong, some weird barrier keeping them from being as comfortable as they usually are, and she's just assuming that it's these two years of being jolted around the multiverse that's to blame. That can do a lot to a person, to a relationship, and her ever-present paranoia can't help but wonder what it's done to him and what it'll do to them.
Instead of giving voice to any of those concerns, though, she gives Peter's hand another squeeze in an effort to reassure him that she's there for him. "Hey. I'm here now. You've probably made friends in all this time, but if there's ever anything you're forced to talk about, you can lay it out on me. Weird multiversal fox magic or otherwise."