EAT.

EIGHT

Trigger warning: Disordered eating, self harm, depression, brief mention of suicide.

For the first time in his life, Andy is cleaning his own intentionally spilled blood from the sink, and for the hundred and first time, there are tears rolling down his cheeks and a trembling to his hands.

He doesn't know why he did it. He doesn't know why he thought it was ever a good idea. He doesn't know what he was hoping to gain from it, what sort of emotion he might have been able to draw as the blade sunk in. He doesn't know why, but now it's done, and if has to deal with that. That, and everything else.

It wasn't his arm, his wrist, or even his thigh that he attacked, but his left ribs, because he hates that he can't see the outline of them perfectly yet, that he isn't able to feel each indent as much as he yearns to do. Now, he sees how stupid of an idea that was. He can't take his shirt off before anybody now. Though, as of recently, that idea makes him grimace. He must keep covered. It's better that way, and how will they ever find out if they can't see?

They do say, what they won't know won't hurt.

* * *

A week passes.

A week of the same routine of waking early, skipping breakfast, save for a black coffee, driving in to the studio on an empty stomach and a tortured mind. A week of getting angry at his bandmates, his friends, of distancing himself to avoid letting them discover what he's doing, of isolating himself. Sitting in the car to eat, only he doesn't eat. A week of picking at food, of crying over half a salad, of pulling at his hair until his head hurts, of screaming at the mirror and sitting on the bathroom floor struggling for breath, of reaching for the razor and adding defeatedly to the growing collection of wounds because at least when he's in physical pain, he has something else to focus on.

By the end of the week, he's so exhausted he fears he could fall, could die on the spot. That thought comforts him for a moment. He sits in one of his kitchen chairs on the Sunday evening and wraps his fingers around his wrist, sees how big of a gap he can create between them. He picks up his phone and puts it down again. He drops his head onto the table and closes his eyes. Then he opens them and lifts his head. He yawns. He wraps his fingers around his wrist again. He checks his phone. He wonders what would happen if he were to call someone. He shakes his head and puts it down.

Don't be stupid, Andy, if you tell them, they'll make you stop.

Instead, he gets up and pulls the smallest of his knives from the block, sitting back down and looking at it sadly. It'll make you feel better, Andy. You know it will. Pain is what you want. Pain is what we want. He turns the knife over in his hand. Yes, pain is what he wants, what he really wants, and so he lifts his shirt and, with a face of concentration, presses the tip of the blade firmly into his left ribs, clenching his fists and tightening his grip on the handle.

Afterwards, with the bloody knife before him on the table, he cries. It makes it hurt more but he doesn't care.

* * *

On Monday, he's late in. He got caught up earlier with regrets of what he keeps doing, what he keeps insisting will be the last time. It will never be the last time, he realises now, but still, he tells himself never again. He's late and he's tired, and though he tries to hide it with coffee and concealer and smiles, they know. They may not say anything about it, but they know.

During Saviour he almost starts crying. He wishes someone would say all those things he sings about to him. That they'll be there, remind him not to bleed, they'll hear his cries, praying for life. He longs for someone to work out what's happening so he doesn't have to tell them, but then those mean things remind him that if that were to happen, he'd have to stop, and that won't do, so he shakes the longing temporarily away, and when it returns, which it always does, it's worse. It's a longing so intense that his heart aches and his head screams.

Screams for someone to pull him out of this.

By lunch, he's ready to go back to bed, and in the car, he cries again. Head against the door, hands over his face and shaking, as they do often now. The rain pelting on the windows and the metal roof brings him a certain comfort. The sky is crying with him. Perhaps that's the only sort of Saviour that will ever be sang to him. He didn't bring any food today. He stopped doing that more than two weeks ago, and he can add his daily calories up in his head now. It comes to no more that two hundred every day, and most of those are liquid. He'll have the odd salad or apple, but that usually just makes him feel worse, though he only does it to attempt to fight off the dizziness that seems to be a constant bully.

His head is pounding and his ribs burn. A consequence of all the blood he's drawn. After more than twenty minutes, he lifts his head and wipes his eyes and sternly tells himself to stop crying, that it's pathetic. Then the tears start up again and the cycle repeats.

Only this time, when he lifts his head, a figure is stood outside the window, drenched like they've been there for ages. Andy looks at them for a long time without any visible reaction. It's difficult to make out who it is through the droplets distorting the glass. He can just about see that they have long hair, and then they knock on the window and he looks away as they wait.