Disclaimer: Don't own Merlin.
Warnings: More angst and discussion of eating disorders
A/N: Thank you guys so much for the reviews and follows! I massively appreciate it :)
~III~
"Curled like a lip, a crust dries in the bin,
the supermodel's come-on-don't-touch sneer
for the camera – desire
caught, teased, time and again
until all the wants run dry
and there's only this rictus,
a cat raking claws
down the arm of the chair"
"You promised," Arthur says and though he doesn't repeat it, he can hear it echoing round his head like a mantra gone wrong: you promised you promised you promised.
Merlin is pale and his fingers are shaking – either due to the shock of being caught, or the after effects of vomiting, Arthur doesn't know. They stand like that for a few seconds, facing one another, a dripping tap beating out a rhythm behind them.
Arthur had wanted so badly to be wrong. Had forced himself to quell his suspicions. Had tried to keep from staring at Merlin all evening, had tried to sit still when he saw him leave the table. Had told himself he was being paranoid, ridiculous; because he'd been watching Merlin for the last two weeks and he'd been normal, happy – he'd been eating.
"I got sick." Merlin says, although he doesn't put much effort into the lie, beyond fixing pleading eyes on Arthur for understanding.
How easy it would be to believe him. To nod his head and clap Merlin on the shoulder and slip back into the easy camaraderie of the last fortnight. But the illusion's shattered now and all Arthur can see is the sad magician behind the curtain, with his drawn face and absolutely nothing up his sleeves.
"You made yourself sick," Arthur says without malice and his mind is always racing to figure out what he should do next, how he can avoid ending up back at square one with his friend…
"I could feel it coming up anyway," Merlin says helplessly. "I was just trying to speed things up."
Arthur doesn't answer.
"This doesn't change anything," Merlin says. "I've been sticking to it otherwise. It's just one meal."
Arthur still can't find anything to say, his mind is whirling round at a dizzying pace and it's making him sick, he can't think properly.
Merlin looks frustrated with Arthur's silence.
"You're not gonna guilt trip me about one bloody pizza, are you?"
Arthur lifts one shoulder, almost unconsciously, but to Merlin it must look like some kind of dismissive shrug because he's suddenly incensed.
"Why are you up here checking up on me anyway? Why is it any of your business? You have no idea what you're talking about!"
Arthur suddenly knows exactly what to say, but that doesn't make it any easier to say it.
"I know. That's why I'm telling Hunith."
The defiant expression on Merlin's face vanishes instantly, panic distorting his features.
"You can't," he says in a low, pleading voice.
"I don't think we have a choice anymore," Arthur says very carefully.
"Arthur, come on." Merlin tries to smile. "Alright, I was an idiot, I admit it, it was a really stupid thing to do but I promise I won't do it again."
Arthur doesn't remind him that he promised before because that would be cruel and the last thing he wants now is to be cruel to Merlin. He's not angry that Merlin lied, he's terrified. He knows his friend will see him telling Hunith as some kind of attack on him, some kind of punishment, but it's the opposite. Arthur has to help Merlin and it's become glaringly apparent that he can't do it on his own.
"We can tell her together," he says at last.
"Arthur, we don't need to go. I said, it was a dumb mistake. It won't happen again. Come one, everyone gets one mistake right? Don't be mad."
Merlin's tone is wheedling, would-be-casual, but his eyes are desperate and he's twisting his hands together.
"I'm not mad Merlin. It's not… I'm not trying to tell you off, I'm… You have a problem and we need to get you some help."
Merlin is shaking his head.
"We've been through this, I don't have a problem! I wouldn't have been sick if you hadn't made me eat so much! I've got a small appetite, it's just my metabolism, it's natural, I'm not-"
Merlin cuts off as the door swings open and a man enters. He looks curiously over at the two of them and Arthur is struck by the odd sight they make; two young men conducting their own private standoff in a restaurant bathroom.
The man clearly picks up on the vibe in the room because he relieves himself quickly, exiting the bathroom with soap still on his hands rather than use the hand drier located next to Merlin and Arthur.
The brief pause seems to have given Merlin time to regroup, because his voice is calmer when he speaks again.
"Look Arthur, I haven't mentioned this but Mum's not exactly having a great time at work at the moment. She hates the night-shift and the new manager's a pain in the arse and she always seems to be on call… I'm just saying, I really don't want to upset her right now."
"She needs to know-"
"Look, I'll make you a deal. Two more weeks, okay? I'll eat with you again. But this time I won't mess it up, I swear. If I do, then you can tell Mum, okay? Just two more weeks."
Merlin looks so hopeful and it breaks Arthur's heart to shake his head.
"You can't – we can't do this on our own. You need some proper support."
Merlin's face twists in dismay.
"Why are you doing this?" he asks and he sounds wounded.
"Because I'm scared for you," Arthur says simply. He doesn't add that he's completely out of his depth and he should have realised that sooner; but he'd hoped it would be easier, hoped that he could intervene and Merlin could be saved.
Merlin sets his mouth in a grim line.
"You're not telling her," he says.
"I won't tell her if you will," Arthur says quietly.
"No-one's telling her." Merlin's voice is low. "I mean it, Arthur. You tell her and I'll never speak to you again."
That one takes Arthur's breath a bit, but it isn't even a choice, not really, because he'd rather have Merlin alive and hating him than…
Arthur's research into eating disorders hadn't been easy. He read about the psychology of anorexia, about behaviour patterns and external triggers and obsessive routines. He read page after page of first person accounts about secret keeping, midnight exercise jags, extra pockets for hiding food – a whole mind boggling array of tricks to facilitate the illusion of normality.
But the bits that stuck with him the most, the paragraphs and images he can't get out his head, are the long term effects. He is tormented by pictures of stick limbed girls with sunken chests and hollow eyes, squinting at the camera. Of emaciated boys in hospital beds, stalky arms resting on white sheets, head tipped back against the pillow like a body laid out at a wake. Some of the pictures tell a story of redemption, it's true; people who've gone from five stone to nine, people who realised they would never leave that hospital bed again unless they conceded they were ill and asked for help. But more often it seems to go the other way. This is my sister, who died of heart failure weighing just fifty eight pounds. This is my boyfriend, who overdosed after a seven year battle with anorexia.
This is my friend, who died because I could not save him.
"I have to tell her," Arthur says and Merlin's mouth works furiously for a moment, staring at Arthur.
Then he's gone, pushing out the door of the bathroom before Arthur has time to say another word.
~III~
Arthur doesn't know whether Merlin's gone straight home to try and head him off at the pass, or whether he's just run away somewhere but he supposes it doesn't matter. He has to go straight to Hunith's anyway, right now, before he loses his nerve. He ignores the sick, heavy weight in his stomach as he drives; tries not to listen to Merlin's words echoing in his head.
(i'll never speak to you again)
Well. So be it.
Hunith's sat on the sofa watching television when Arthur arrives, he can see her through the window. He feels a pang for interrupting what is probably her only night off this week. He spent the whole car journey thinking about Merlin; he only now has a chance to spare a thought for Hunith. He's about to deliver a genuinely devastating piece of news to Merlin's mother, with no warning. How will she react? Will she be angry with him? Will she even believe him?
It's too late for all that now so he steels himself and knocks on the door. Hunith's face blooms into a smile when she sees him.
"Arthur! Lovely to see you, dear."
Then she peers behind him, looking slightly confused.
"Is Merlin with you?"
So he's not come home then.
"No," Arthur says. "He's… still out."
"Oh, okay… would you like to come in and wait for him?"
"I actually wanted to talk to you. About Merlin."
The same look of confusion crosses Hunith's face, then it's replaced by something he can't quite place. But it's not the worry he might have expected. She nods, and ushers him in.
"Tea?" she says and Arthur agrees, because tea's good for shock and he fears that's what he's about to give her. A part of him also wants to delay the inevitable, sit on the slightly threadbare sofa and breathe in that comforting smell that Merlin's flat has – homely in some indefinable way that his own mansion of a house never is.
Hunith re-enters, handing him a mug of tea and he takes a sip, preparing his opening line. But she speaks first.
"I think I know what this is about, Arthur."
Arthur feels a curious mix of both relief and anger. Relief that Hunith was aware of the problem, and then a flash of anger that she didn't seem to have done anything about it. She was a nurse, how bad was she going to let it get before intervening?
But something doesn't quite fit. Hunith looks weirdly nervous, almost as though she's weighing Arthur up and trying to predict his reaction. It just seems… out of place, somehow.
"Right… okay… so you've noticed…"
He trails off but Hunith seems to pick up his meaning.
"It's not exactly hard to spot." Hunith says, and she gives Arthur a sad smile. "Merlin's never been the most subtle of creatures."
Arthur half-nods, still disoriented.
"I'm surprised you didn't see it sooner, to be honest," Hunith says with a bit of a sigh, and Arthur feels a sudden flush of guilt. However he had expected this conversation to go, he hadn't imagined that Hunith would bring up his lack of awareness.
"I've known for a while now," Hunith continues. "I suppose the signs were there for years though really."
Arthur is surprised by how calmly Hunith is talking. She doesn't seem overly worried at all; more wistful.
But then she turns to him and she suddenly looks terribly anxious.
"You won't hate him, will you Arthur? Or stop being his friend?"
"What? God no, of course not!" Arthur says, horrified.
"Because I don't think he could bear it."
"Hunith… I would never… All I want to do is support him. That's why I'm here."
Hunith gives him a wobbly smile.
"I knew you wouldn't abandon him Arthur. You're such a good boy."
She squeezes his hand.
"Have you… have you talked to him about it?" Arthur says.
"I've tried, but he doesn't want to. Well, you're a teenage boy Arthur, you know how it goes. He doesn't want to talk to his mum about that kind of thing."
Again, Arthur feels slightly surprised at Hunith's tone. She's talking as though Merlin has a mild XBox addiction or something, as opposed to a serious disorder. His voice is a little sharp when he speaks again.
"Don't you think you should insist? Because I think he's really in trouble here."
"In trouble?"
"Yeah, I mean, even I've talked to him about it. Or I've been trying. The last few weeks."
"You've talked to him about it?" Hunith raises her eyebrows in disbelief. "He knows that you know?"
"Well, yeah. Look, I've been trying to help him but I can't… I don't think I know how. He needs a proper support. Hunith, I think he needs medical help."
"Medical help?" It's Hunith's turn to sound bemused. "I'm aware it's not an ideal situation but I don't see how medical help is in any way relevant."
Arthur is in shock. He's known Hunith for seven years now and the two things he likes best about her is that she's full of empathy, and she loves Merlin more than anything in the world. But this total… under-reaction to what Arthur sees as a very serious problem is alarmingly out of character.
Perhaps she's in denial.
Arthur can see no other tactic than to talk plainly and clearly. It seems to be the only way he can get through to Hunith when she's being like this.
"Hunith, I think Merlin has anorexia. And whether we want to face up to that or not, it is a very serious condition and I do believe he needs professional help."
The silence that follows Arthur's statement is somewhat deafening. As Hunith's shocked face turns to face his, he worries he's gone too far, but he had to say something to snap her out of that eerie calm…
"I- I don't understand." Hunith says eventually.
Arthur nods.
"I know. I didn't want to think it either but these last two weeks he promised me he'd try and eat more and I really thought it was working but at dinner tonight he made himself sick and I just think it's gone on too long and we need to get him help…"
It all rushes out his mouth in one long cascade and then he notices that Hunith has gone completely white and she's clutching her chest and suddenly he knows, without a doubt he knows that they were at cross purposes this whole time, that she had no idea about Merlin until now.
"You didn't know," he says stupidly because he can't think of anything else.
"You think Merlin's anorexic?" she whispers, and there are already tears forming in her eyes.
"Hunith, I'm so sorry, I thought that's what we were talking about."
"No. No, I wasn't… Oh my God."
"He… I… He collapsed at school last month when you were away. And I noticed that he'd lost a lot of weight and he didn't have any energy, and there wasn't any food in the house. And I guess I realised I hadn't seen him eat much in a long time. But he wouldn't admit it. Then we… there an incident and we talked properly and he promised he would start eating properly. And that was two weeks ago but tonight at Pizza Express he just…"
Arthur trails off. He's not sure Hunith's even listening anyway. She's staring at nothing, arms wrapped around her middle like she's holding herself together.
There's another long silence and then she speaks.
"He told me he'd started running." Her voice is very quiet. "He came down for breakfast one day and his pajama bottoms were hanging off him. And I asked if he'd lost weight and he said he's starting running and it was changing the way he looked. And I… believed him."
"No-one else noticed either. He's good at hiding." Arthur says gently.
"I'm his mother," Hunith says and she looks absolutely heartbroken. "All these night shifts and doubles. And he was always in his room working, and I left him to it because it's his A-Levels and he's busy and I knew I'd have time to catch up with him once my rotation was finished. And now you tell me he's…"
Then she starts to cry.
Arthur freezes for a second. Because he's never admitted it, not to Merlin and barely even to himself, but he's always privately thought of Hunith as a kind of surrogate mother. He has no way of imagining what his own mother was like and Uther would never tell him; even the photos he has of her give little away. But when he became Merlin's friend and met Hunith, he started to entertain the private fantasy that his mother might have treated him the way Hunith does. She hugs him when she sees him, ruffles his hair and kisses him goodnight on the cheek, gives him advice about schoolwork and girls, and cooks his favourite meals when he comes round. When Merlin occasionally joked that Arthur was the son his mum never had, Arthur's heart always skipped a beat for a second, the secret hope flaring inside him that Hunith did look at him as a sort of second son.
And now she's crying and it's his fault because he told her so bluntly and ripped her world apart.
He is indecisive for only a few seconds more before he takes the risk and puts his arms around her, and when she grips him tightly back it feels for a second like a mother embracing her son.
But when she pulls back he remembers that it's Merlin who's really her son and it's Merlin who they need to talk about.
"I'm sorry I did this so badly," he says miserably, and Hunith shakes her head.
"I needed to know," she replies, her eyes bright.
And he braces himself for all the questions she's about to ask but then there's a noise at the door and suddenly Merlin is standing in the room.
And he pointedly doesn't look in Arthur's direction, as though Arthur isn't even there.