Sabretooth belongs to Marvel Comics. All other characters belong to me.

October 8th

I shifted in my chair by putting weight on my left forearm and tried to make myself more comfortable in my own overstuffed leather chair. My mouth was bone dry and there was a fingerprint on my glasses lense obscuring my vision. I didn't want to pull out my cloth and wipe them down though, I was concerned it would draw attention back to me and off my...client.

"What's a matter, doc? You look uncomfortable." He cupped his hand around his lighter against a non-existent wind and lit up a cigarette. My office was dark because I had turned out most of the lights on my way out the door for the evening when he caught me. The glow of the flame lit up his face revealing a clean-shaven jaw, bushy blond eyebrows, and three gold rings in his right ear that he didn't have during his last session. His hair was up in a ponytail tonight, bound by a leather strap. His massive hands, tipped each with a deadly sharp claw glinting in the moonlight from my window held my gaze. He caught me looking.

"I don't allow smoking in my office." I whispered, licking my cracked lips.

Mr. Creed seemed to consider this a moment while sucking hard on the butt. He nodded finally and crushed it against the sole of his black leather shoe and left it delicately on the end table beside him while blowing out the smoke. I had to remind him of this every session. Part of me wondered if it was because he came so infrequently to forget, or because he liked to see how far he could push the limits, like a petulant child in a grown man's body.

"Better?" He purred like a cat. I nodded in response.

"What would you like to talk about tonight?" I began the unscheduled therapy session, hoping that he wouldn't keep me terribly long. These were off the book appointments which were not appointed at all. Mr. Creed would show up out of nowhere and I was expected to stay until he was finished.

The brooding, blond hulk sat in his gray suit in the opposite overstuffed chair and rubbed his chin with the pad of a thumb, staring off into nothing for a moment. "We're fighting again, her and me." He replied quietly.

"You and your wife?" I clarified. I had no idea how this man was married.

"Course." His voice a low growl, but he continued to rub his chin and his green eyes didn't move from their spot to my right.

Mr. Creed had shown up in my office over a year ago, under similar circumstances; late at night as I was closing down my practice. The secretary had gone home half an hour before and I was just ready to leave myself. He was grinning at me in a way I didn't like while sitting in an empty chair in the waiting room, his right ankle resting on his left knee and his clawed fingers folded together in his lap.

"Your number's up, doc." He had taunted. I knew what he was at that point, just not who. He smelled like wet wool from the rain outside soaking into his jacket and newspaper boy cap, but he didn't move.

I didn't bother moving. My brother has sent the assassin, and by the looks of him, my number was indeed 'up'. The man outweighed me by one hundred and fifty pounds at least, and I had a limp in my left thigh from a car accident a decade ago.

I remember sinking down to a waiting chair on the other side of the coffee table, putting my briefcase down in a tired sort of manner and letting out an exhausted sigh. And I just started to talk. Words rushed out of my mouth that had been pent up inside of me my entire forty seven years. None of it would have made sense to him, but strangely, he sat there patiently. Nodding his head, listening. I went on for nearly an entire hour and the other man had not moved a muscle. He was a surprisingly good listener.

"Do therapists have therapists?" The assassin asked after I concluded my ramblings.

Mr. Creed sucked in his bottom lip and exhaled a sharp whistle to stir me from my reveries. I smiled faintly in apology.

"Do you want to talk about the fighting?" I prompted returning to the present.

"Naw, it's about nothing and everything. She's driving me crazy. She ain't being receptive." The word receptive came with large hand gestures to his expansive lap.

"I can see why that would be frustrating to you. Is she usually receptive? It's Emma, correct?" I poised the pen over my writing pad.

He grunted a yes before talking. "Sometimes. Sometimes not so much." Mr. Creed resumed rubbing his chin again and staring into oblivion. Something bothered him and I waited patiently for it to come out. "I don't think she loves me unconditionally anymore." It came out slowly and quietly.

"That's important to you." I responded in a statement rather than a question. It had been very important in the beginning for him to explain the type of 'cold-hearted bastard' he was. Coupled with a few Google searches of my own, I did not doubt he was a large-scale, homicidal sociopath who was proud of his ability to snap a person's neck without blinking.

"Yeah, guess it is." He chuckled humourlessly.

"It's important for you to be loved." I called this technique 'poking'. I didn't know which way my client needed me to take this conversation, so I would throw out simple statements, hoping they would nod or correct me.

Mr. Creed glared at me from beneath his eyebrows. That had been the wrong direction.

"It's important that Emma loves you. Why?"

"It wouldn't be a far stretch to believe I don't make friends easily. Those that can stand to be around me are the kind whom I don't want around me."

"Such as?" I prompted, still not having taken any notes.

"You know those women who marry mass-murderers on death row? They ain't all right in the head." His long fingers brushed across his knee and back, feeling the texture of his dark gray slacks.

"Has this happened to you before?" I prompted.

"Loons throwing themselves at me or thinking I'll be their best friend? Yeah, a couple over the years. Nothing weirder than having one of them follow you around when you're on business."

"How did you handle it?"

"Usually ended up guttin' 'em."

We were both silent for a long while.

"Being together with Emma meets a lot of your needs. Love, companionship, family." I tried to poke again.

Again my client grunted in the affirmative but didn't elaborate. He didn't want to talk along this line.

"Why do you think she's not being receptive to you?"

A great shake of his head was my answer.

"Have you considered her needs?" I ventured carefully. Green eyes pierced me to my seat and his lips turned into a silent snarl.

"What ain't I givin' her? She's got a roof over head, food in her belly, clothes on her back, and I'm protectin' her. And I ain't cheap, she's got the best of the best if she wants it."

"Have you considered that not everything a person needs is material? Like love?"

Mr. Creed made a strange noise and waved his hand at me like I was talking out my ass. "I love her. Course I love her, that fuckin' cow."

"Do you call her that to her face?" I was beginning to see the problem in the relationship.

"Term of endearment." He muttered looking out the window to my left now.

"Is it possible that her unreceptiveness and your fights have been a result of the way you treat her?" Empathy was not Mr. Creed's strong suit.

"I treat her just fine." His body language said he was being defensive and guilty however.

"Mr. Creed," I swallowed and sat forward in my chair. "your personality, your life history - granted I know very little and you won't speak of your childhood at all - I'm certain that you're a sociopath." He grinned at that, but I continued to the point. "Sociopaths don't feel love. They don't understand it, they can't empathize with another person. They don't exactly bond well with people. How do you know you love your wife? Or rather, why haven't you killed her yet?"

I struck something within him, but I wasn't sure if it would end my life that night. He stared at me and I couldn't read the expression. Maybe shocked, maybe pensive. Finally he looked away back out the window.

"She tried to leave me once. It felt like I was dying inside, like I was being crushed to death inside my own body. That's gotta be heartbreak. You don't get a broken heart if you don't love something."

The absence of pain is love. What a twisted way to think. It made me curious about his childhood. He profiled like an abused child might from what I knew of him. But now was not the time. I scribbled that thought on the notepad balanced on my knee before continuing.

"Do you tell her you love her?"

"Yes. Sometimes. Maybe. Not really."

"Do you maybe show her you love her instead?"

"I told you she ain't being receptive at the moment." He replied irritated.

"Are there other ways you show her you care? Bring her flowers, listen to her when she wants to talk, help her with the dishes, run errands for her?"

"I'm her husband, not her boyfriend."

I really wanted to go home at this point. I had had a long day and it was past the dinner hour. My own wife would be sitting on the couch almost ready for bed within the hour. I didn't need a stubborn client right now. I inhaled and found my reserve of patience for clients like this.

"No one wants to be nice to someone who's a jerk to them." I stated plainly. Perhaps my well of patience was running dry.

Mr. Creed's lip twitched but he was silent in agreement.

"Go home, bring your wife some flowers, tell her she looks beautiful. Stop being selfish, callous, and manipulative." Said the psychologist to the sociopath.

Strangely, that seemed to work and the bull of a man got to his feet, concluding our session. He dropped a hand on my shoulder and thanked me. "Be seein' you." He waved over his shoulder and exited my office into the night.

I exhaled loudly, picked up my scarce notes, and locked them into the safe where I stored all of my current client files, ready to go home and catch the last of the evening news.