Learning To Count(Otabek x Yuri) [boyxboy]

Chapter Seven

Yuri couldn't get the kiss off of his mind. It seemed as if every time he closed his eyes to blink or to sleep he was accosted by images and sensations not familiar to him. He felt Otabek's hands lingering on his waist again, his fingers holding him so gently and yet being so solid and safe. He tasted his lips against his own, warm and slow-moving. He couldn't get rid of the taste of it. He saw flashes of Otabek kissing Rafael and he now realised that the biting in his stomach hadn't been due to disgust, but jealousy. He couldn't rid himself of that picture either. He didn't know what any of it had meant; Otabek had only asked to try it. Was he trying to figure things out after kissing Rafael? Or was Yuri just another giggly kind of drunk thing like that? It was entirely possible that Otabek had still been drunk from the night before. This dominated his thoughts as he walked to school the next day, meaning he was distracted for the while from the storm that would inevitably be brewing for him there. When he saw the gates, the realisation settled over him and he was unable to walk a step further, his feet gluing themselves to the pavement opposite. That was when his friends began calling him from across the street, having waited for him at the gate like they usually did. He was pretty surprised because he had been completely ignoring them on every social media platform, so he'd assumed they were done with his bullshit.
'Yuri, come here!' Guang Hong called, and at first he wanted to pretend he hadn't heard, but seeing their faces looking so concerned ignited the sickening hunger for validation within him and he diligently crossed the street to join them. They didn't mention a thing for the first few lessons, although he could sense a lot of eyes on his back wherever he walked. Once it got to lunch hour, however, he knew they'd kick up a stink- and they did. The second the bell rang for lunch a firm hand was gripping his shoulder and steering him down to the canteen, where food was piled onto his plate without a word or autonomy. He just stood and stared haplessly until somebody dragged him to a table and sat him down with it.
'I don't want this,' He grumbled, not even daring to look at it. The idea of eating in front of so many people- especially now they knew he had anorexia and he felt strangely obliged to make sure they didn't think he was eating or that he was a fake- struck him with a sense of cold panic.
'Guang Hong told us what you said,' Michele said this awkwardly, not meeting his eyes. It wasn't the kind of thing guys would talk about to each other and Michele didn't exactly want to be playing therapist to his friend. 'So, uhh... Eat it.'
'If you don't, I swear to god I'll force it down your throat,' Mila threatened with unbridled menace.
'I'm not hungry,' He bargained, his leg beginning to bounce with agitation.
'Yes you are.'
'I just... I feel sick,' He dropped his head in his hands, delivering an oscar-worthy performance of nausea by rubbing his eyes lethargically then screwing them shut and pinching the bridge of his nose. 'Can you guys..?' He trailed off, waving vaguely at the tray to indicate that he wanted them to clear it away.
'You feel ill because you're hungry,' Mila pushed the tray closer to him. 'So eat.'
'No, I-'
'No more bullshit excuses!' She slammed a hand down on the table, towering over him and her eyes burning a hole in his skull. The sudden noise brought the room almost to a hush, and for a moment everybody turned to stare at the commotion.
'I'm going to the nurse,' Yuri whispered, standing up and keeping his eyes trained to the floor, not looking back as he stalked towards the door.
'Yuri, wait!' Mila jogged after him and grabbed him by the arm as he walked as fast as he could down the hallway in the opposite direction of the nurse's office. 'Jesus, I could snap your arm.'
He ignored her, tearing away and continuing to walk.
'Come on, come back,' She called, not giving up the chase. 'We're just worried about you.'
'I'm fine, honestly,' He forced a smile, shrugging like he wasn't about to throw up from nerves. 'I was only kidding. I'm fine.'
For some bizarre reason, he wanted her to know he wasn't kidding. Maybe it was his sick obsession with validation- he got a twisted kick out of people looking at him and seeing him as ill. It made a difference to how he regarded himself. He wanted them to be terrified for him, but to look upon him with a strange sense of awe. He craved that fear for him; it made a difference to how he regarded himself. He felt like people cared about him, even if only because they were a little envious of how thin he was determined to get. He could see it in the girls a lot- they often tried to match his portion sizes, and he was glad he wasn't a girl because they had much worse restrictions and expectations placed on them. If anything, he actually would prefer that bodily oppression because then he would be encouraged to lose weight rather than gain muscle and be the typical strong man all the girls supposedly fell for. Those strong men in turn fell for the skinny girls with hourglass waists and a thigh gap. Thinking about it, hadn't a guy fallen for him? Was that how it worked? He often perceived weight as the most influential marker for anybody looking at him and he couldn't see past anybody's weight himself. Looking at everybody else, he didn't see them as fat. Some of them he was gleeful that he was skinnier than them (although sometimes he convinced himself that his eyes were lying and he was bigger than everyone) and some of them he compared himself to and ordered himself to get smaller than them. All these monstrous mind games were wreaking havoc with his friendships, but he couldn't escape the vicious cycle. The ugly truth of it all was that he couldn't stand to be around most people because he hated being seen. He felt disgusting. They all probably looked at him and wondered if he was supposedly anorexic, then why was he so fat? Surely he ought to have been skinny if he was passing out? These malicious thoughts overwhelmed his vision like a pestilential swarm and he gripped at his sides as if trying to hold himself together. It did nothing to quell the rumbling within his stomach, the darkness within demanding food. He wouldn't give in to its pleading. He was stronger than that- he could last a day or two at least before he ate again. Even then, he would not binge eat. He would have a small snack to sustain himself, but what then? Would the cycle of restrict, snack, restrict, snack and so forth continue? He couldn't foresee himself losing weight like that. Those small snacks still had calories in, and calories meant fat. He knew that his body was already going into starvation mode again and that if he ate anything at all his body would store it and he'd gain weight exponentially. The only answer that remained was to never eat again (unfortunately, very unrealistic because he was pathetic and couldn't be persuaded to withhold himself from food for more than a few days at most) or to exercise it off. He had read about people overexercising, but he'd never really tried it because he was lazy and hated to put the effort in. Starving was painful but it was passive. He didn't have to do anything- in fact, it was an absence of doing something and thus much easier than burning the calories he so religiously avoided.
'Why won't you talk to me?' Mila placed a hand on his arm and he flinched, blinking hard and gritting his teeth. 'Fine. Point taken.' She left him stood alone in the corridor, and he got the feeling he was going to be alone for quite some time.