An:
Guest: Me too, guest, me too. ;)
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Chapter 29: Eating Disorder Origins
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Autumn faded into winter by middle November; the brisk cold that kept Ryou, especially, bundled up in numerous layers, had occurred almost suddenly. Bakura struggled to adjust, sometimes forgetting to grab a long sleeved shirt for warmth, rather than the one with the thinnest fabric.
Ryou plopped down next to Bakura on the couch. Bakura stiffened at the uncharacteristic action from the other boy. Normally, Ryou curled himself into (surely) painful distortion, preferring the rigid enclosure of the armchair than the wide space of the couch. The last time Bakura recalled Ryou sitting on the couch for any length of time was in summer...right after Bakura had confronted Ryou's eating habits. A sardonic grin twisted his lips at the thought. And look where they were now, near winter, with snow lazily twirling in the mid-November breeze outside the apartment window.
Ryou reeked of vomit. It was a scent Bakura had become familiar with over the past ten months, but he wasn't able to break down the stench into base descriptions. Acid was too weak an adjective, and it certainly wasn't just the smell of Ryou's lunch that assaulted his nostrils. He scrunched up his nose, but allowed Ryou to speak. Maybe articulating his concerns would keep his head out of a toilet.
Ryou curled his legs up to his chest, and Bakura sank into the couch at the familiar action. Ryou spoke over his knees, his voice slightly muffled by the khaki pants he wore. "Yami told me you talked about me," he said, voice dying off much to Bakura's annoyance.
"We did." Short, brief, concise, and hopefully indicative of his mental probing.
Ryou's shoulders hunched up, another facet to his already awkward sitting arrangement. "It wasn't always like this." He threaded his fingers together, flexing and releasing the digits in what looked like a painful pantomime of cracking ones knuckles. As pain flickered, a constant, up and down Bakura's arm, Bakura wasn't prone to say anything about Ryou's coping method of choice. "I don't even like doing it," Ryou muttered.
Ryou flicked his head up, surprising Bakura with the hard look in his eyes. "Who would like this? It's gross. I eat and eat and I can't stop. Then I feel so disgusting and full and awful...I have to make it go away."
"Couldn't you just eat normally?" Bakura asked, genuinely confused. This eating disorder Ryou had still didn't make an iota of sense to him. In his past, he ate because he was hungry. He enjoyed eating. Hell, eating was sometimes a luxury, so he had a bit of difficulty understanding why someone would choose not to partake in eating (especially with food so readily available).
Ryou's eyes flashed, and he outright glared at Bakura. "It's not about that! Don't you think I would if I could!? I hate it! My throat is raw. I feel like shit. I have this fucking awful pain thing at my jaw—" He stopped mid-rant. He shook his head. "I can feel the damage eating and puking is doing to me. I don't like it, but I can't stop."
Tears sprung to Ryou's eyes. Bakura shifted. He placed a hand on Ryou's trembling shoulders and tried to suppress his own shudders at where this conversation was heading. "I'm sorry," Bakura mumbled weakly. He loathed the hitch in his own voice.
After a minute, Ryou lifted his head again, and Bakura was grateful to see the absence of tears. "I've only been doing this for a little over a year," he confessed. "In fact, I didn't start really purging until this spring."
"What did you do then?" Bakura knitted his forehead.
Ryou tapped a finger against the side of his face as he ruminated over a year in the past. "Well, I guess I mostly didn't eat."
Something unpleasant niggled at Bakura as he, himself, inquired about the specifics of Ryou's eating disorder. Regardless, he continued with his questioning. "Why? Why would you do something different?"
"I dunno. Let me think." Ryou rolled his eyes to the ceiling, eyes somewhat glazed as he tried to think that far back. "I think," he paused. A smile plastered his face, when Bakura prompted him for information after a moment of silence. He shook his head. "You know what, it's not important."
"Yes it is," Bakura snapped.
The vehement response dragged a reply out of Ryou before he could process the ramifications. "Whenever you possessed me, I would wake up so hungry, I would just eat whatever I could find. It wasn't such a big deal because it didn't happen often, but after Millennium World, I couldn't stop eating." Ryou's expression shifted to disgust, as he remembered event from late last summer. "It got so bad. I felt so disgusting, so I made myself stop eating."
A few months over a year, summer 1997: that meant Ryou's eating disorder was because of him. The sensation that had been niggling at him dropped a cold weight in his gut. Bakura jumped up, surprising Ryou into glancing down at him. He caused Ryou's eating disorder! "Bakura?!" Ryou called. He stood from his balled up position, unable to run after Bakura for a moment until the feeling returned to his extremities.
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In that moment, Bakura snapped. To say the anger drained away would be too simplistic and far too easy, rather the emotion churned steadily. So he ducked his head and stalked out of the room, banishing his rage within the four walls of his bedroom. Not that his space was any more his than the rest of the apartment. He sank to the bed, already diving at his well worn and empty card protector.
The door burst open and Bakura hastily shoved the protector back in his pocket as an angry Ryou loomed in the doorway—the scene an effigy as their roles reversed. "What is your problem?" Ryou hissed. Bakura caught a whiff of vomit still lingering.
He let the anger lick up at his sides as he remembered all too clearly why he was pissed at Ryou (or himself, really). He swallowed the painful knob that lodged itself their after they had finished dinner, after Ryou announced his plans to take a bath (and puke). It had only been a month since Ryou's relapse, and Bakura couldn't handle the same shit he had to endure before August, and to know, it was his entire fault.
The reprieve had highlighted it. "I don't have a problem!" Bakura shouted. "I'm not the one starving myself and puking up everything I do eat!"
Ryou materialized just in front of Bakura, having crossed the room sometime during Bakura's internalization of the situation. He threw up his arms "Are you kidding me!? You're always locking yourself up in here. Just what are you doing? You don't talk to anyone; you don't do anything—"
"Why should I?! I don't like you're fucking group of friends. You're all so fucking perfect and high and mighty. Well fuck you!" Bakura interrupted Ryou mid-rant.
Ryou leaned forward. His narrowed eyes and screaming lips had been replaced with icy venom, and the next words he uttered were as cold as his demeanor. "Then leave. This is my apartment my father paid for for me. You're just a free loader, anyway."
The overwhelming course of emotions mostly brought on by the denial of a cutting session, spurred Bakura to continue speaking, to muck up the situation even more. "Fine." He stood. "Fine then. That fucking fantastic!" He paced his room; Ryou remained where he had been in Bakura's face. Bakura grabbed random clean articles of clothing and stuffed them in his school bag. On a whim, he shoved the sock of earnings from Solomon in the bag. "I'll leave then, since it's your goddamn apartment!"
With that final proclamation, Bakura stormed out, slamming both his bedroom door and the front door as he left. Ryou sank to his knees, mind reeling as his thoughts tried to process what had just happened.
…
By that point, Bakura had slipped on his shoes and raced down the back stairwell and out of the apartment. Bakura's sneakers pounded against the frozen ground as he ran off in the direction of the play park. His eyes smarted with tears that froze and stung at his cheeks before they could dribble pathways to his jaws. His chest burned, and he forced himself to keep running as his leg muscles spasmed at the sudden flight.
Fingers curling at his wrist underneath his sleeve forced vision to return to him. Bakura stopped suddenly. He wrenched his arm from the fingers' grasp and glowered at the idiot who dared to grab at him. He found himself looking into the violet eyes of Yugi. "Fuck off," he said, an automatic response.
Yugi's eyes narrowed as he allowed Bakura to rip his arm from his grasp. He had been heading back to his home at the Turtle Game Shop when he had seen Bakura flying past him on the sidewalk. Rushing after him for a good five minutes, Yugi was short of breath and Bakura was practically choking for air. He said nothing as Bakura shot off an expletive. As the force of the sudden halting wrenched the breath from Bakura's lungs, Yugi firmly grasped both of Bakura's wrists, his fingers curling under the fabric of the thin long sleeved tee shirt he wore.
He felt his eyes widen as he saw Bakura's eyes imitate his own. Before Bakura could shrug off his hold, Yugi felt the fine ridges under the pads of his fingers. Through the cold wind, Yugi heard a hiss of pain. He flipped Bakura's wrists up and let go of one arm to push up the sleeve.
"What are doing? What is this?" Yugi asked as he took in the rows and rows of cuts lining Bakura's arm (and likely continuing on the other arm). Even as the question left his mouth, he knew what Bakura was doing. He had known since early October when Yami had returned to the house worked up about Bakura, but the epiphany had settled amongst less relevant thoughts in his mind as the weeks wore on.
Bakura jerked his arm back and hastily ripped his sleeves over his hands. "It's nothing," he muttered and walked off.
"Bakura," Yugi stared up into Bakura's eyes, "You know it's not nothing. You don't have to talk about it, but, you nned to not be alone right now."
Bakura seethed. "What would you know!?"
Yugi simply shook his head, his all consuming goodness stopping Bakura's verbal onslaught, and subdued, Bakura followed.
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The two entered the Mouto residence, sliiped their shoes off, and Bakura mutely followed Yugi to the living room. Where Joey, Tristan and Tea awaited, much to Bakura's displeasure.
Joey jumped up, "What's he doing here?" Tristan followed suit, but Yugi help up a hand. "Leave him be guys."
And what would have been said was prevented by a simple few words and a firm look from Yugi. "Yami is downstairs in the store," Yugi offered, seemingly omniscient about the strange sort of relationship former Pharaoh and former thief had created. Bakura nodded, heading to the last, and only, person he wanted to talk to.
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"I need your help," Bakura said to Yami, interrupting the silence of the shop.
Yami, losing track of how many boxes of action figures Solomon had ordered for the Christmas shoppers he had been calculating, entertained Bakura's statement. "With what?"
Bakura inhaled deeply, and Yami, confused by Bakura's hesitation, actually paid attention. Since the incident last month, they rarely talked, and never had Bakura asked for Yami's opinion. "I need to borrow some money," he said in a rush.
Yami spent a few seconds, decoding what Bakura had said, watching him slump as time stretched out. Fully comprehending, he spluttered, "What? For what?"
"Just until next time," Bakura flipped a piece of paper, which he had folded in half a multitude of times until it was the size of a Duel Monster card, eerily similar to his card protector.
Yami stood suddenly. "Be right back," he called on his way out of the back room, having just remembered something important. When he returned a minute later, he glimpsed Bakura staring at the same piece of paper, only he had unfolded it. Through the creases, he made out an ad for a top of the line DVD player. He recalled Yugi burning with envy every time he saw a commercial advertising the newest video format.
"That's expensive," he commented and held up the Change of Heart card. Bakura's eyes widened as he grabbed the card, smiling slightly as he rubbed the tip of a finger over the angelic half.
Yami scooted his chair closer to Bakura's. "Why do you want a DVD player?"
Bakura shook his head, still absorbed by the card. "Not for me. For Ryou," he muttered.
Yami added up the money he had earned working with Bakura at the shop. Solomon never paid on a schedule, but he usually provided twenty-five grand at a time. Yami glanced at the price of the DVD player advertised, and found his total earnings fell one payment short.
He placed a finger to his lips, considering. "Do you plan on giving it to Ryou?"
"Of course," Bakura snapped. He crumpled the advertisement in his fist. "Why else would I buy it?"
Yami pursed his lips as his chest tightened, his heart swelling and bursting. He reached into his pocket for the wad of yen notes Solomon had given them when he had lead them to the back room as "early New Year's pocket money."
"Yeah, go ahead," he said, holding the wad of bills out for Bakura to grab.
Bakura paused, and then reached for the cash with trembling fingers, as if he expected Yami to change his mind and snatch it away at the last moment. When he closed his hand around the bills, he mumbled his appreciation. Bakura picked up his school bag from the floor by his chair and unearthed a large sock, which he untied the knot at the top. Yami saw the colorful bills from where he sat as Bakura stuffed Yami's addition into it, once again knotting the sock.
"Have you spent any of that?" Yami asked, disbelief coloring his voice. He, himself, had spent the majority of his earnings, and only had a couple thousand yen left.
"No," Bakura said as he picked up the inventory list and resumed working.
Yami placed a hand to his head, trying to wrap his head around this inconsistency. He never would've pegged Bakura as the type to hoard away his money, then blow it all on one item, one item for someone else. For Ryou. "Why are you buying him a DVD player?"
Bakura glanced at Yami from underneath his fringe, obscuring his eyes. He said nothing, and neither did Yami. As Bakura pushed his bangs out of his line of sight, Yami found himself falling into murky brown orbs, tunneling through volumes of despair and hopelessness. Bakura's lips cracked apart, like one of the cuts on his arm, and out trickled, "He's not eating, Yami."
The voice that sprung from Bakura's lips was so broken, so heavy with suppressed emotion, that Yami barely noticed Bakura had referred to him by his new alias, by his name, for the first time. "And when he does eat, he pukes it all up."
Yami patted Bakura's arm, frowning when Bakura flinched, releasing a low hiss through gritted teeth. He leaned forward. "What about you? How are you doing?"
Bakura didn't have to answer with words; the look in his eyes, the same overwhelming despair that liquefied the deep brown color of Bakura's eyes similar to a droplet of water against fresh paints, conveyed everything.
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A/N:
One chapter. Dear god, how am I going to finish this? It's a mystery to even me, dear readers. Hahaha. I'm open to suggestions. Except shipping. I'm afraid I don't mix mental health and teh sexy times.
