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Tyler hates new semesters.
He misses vacations, the comfort of his bed, looking at his phone for hours and, above all, having no responsibilities. But this new semester is even worse than the others because for the first time in almost two years of his degree, he didn’t manage to enroll in any classes with his friends.
Full groups, schedules that didn’t match, horrible professors. Everything was against him when he tried to add his academic load, so now he’s alone in a new group, in a classroom that is still empty, staring at the window and trying to see something that isn’t the inside of his classroom.
The morning light falls over the small desk in front of him. There are ten minutes left before class starts, he is completely alone and, inside him, he feels a void.
His stomach growls, demanding something he hates but cannot avoid, so slowly he takes a tupperware container out of his backpack.
He opens it carefully, as if it were something fragile even though there are only cucumbers cut into perfect slices. Ten green circles, translucent in the center, seeds aligned as if they also obeyed invisible rules.
He takes one of the circles and brings it to his mouth. When he bites, a crunch echoes through the entire classroom. The sound is small, but in the silence of the room it seems amplified, as if the whole world knew that this is the only thing he’s going to eat until who knows when.
While chewing, he decides to look out the window. He’s on the third floor; the campus stretches out and seems infinite. Students crossing the grass, backpacks hanging from their shoulders, someone laughing with their head thrown back.
He would like to be down there, lying on the grass with his friends (who he believes must be down there, although he isn’t sure because none of them answered the messages Tyler sent fifteen minutes ago), distracting his mind, his hunger.
He takes another cucumber and brings it to his mouth. It tastes like nothing, and that gives him a false sense of calm. As long as his taste buds don’t perceive an appealing flavor, his appetite won’t increase and he’ll be able to survive the day with fewer calories than he consumed the day before.
He swallows and, when he’s about to take another, he hears the classroom door open and some people start to come in, laughing or chatting among themselves.
He doesn’t like eating when there are people around him. The rational part of his brain tells him it’s completely normal, no one pays attention to him, no one cares that he’s eating a ridiculously small amount of food. But the part that torments him almost every day makes him believe that everyone will judge and embarrass him.
Some people walk past him, sit in the back, in the corners, against the opposite wall, and he can only put the container back into his backpack, ignoring his stomach that suffers in silence because two slices were not enough.
When he lifts his gaze to look at the window again, his eyes collide with those of a boy covered in tattoos.
It’s not strange to see people with tattoos at the university; even he has several, but he feels curious seeing his arms full of color. He lifts his gaze even higher and realizes that he’s wearing his backpack wrong, his hair is full of curls, slightly messy, and the tips seem dyed red; his smile is wide, as if the day had already given him something good.
Tyler looks at him for half a second longer than necessary and then turns his eyes back to the window, downplaying that presence and letting his mind wander.
Josh sees him too, although he doesn’t pay him much attention and the eye contact lasts only a few seconds. Every semester there’s someone new; it’s nothing interesting to him.
The brown-haired boy doesn’t need to turn his head to know that he sat right behind him, and he rolls his eyes discreetly because the way he laughs with who he assumes are his friends reminds him that he is completely alone in that new group.
He wipes his fingers as if the simple act of eating needed to be erased and takes out his folder at the exact moment his professor has just walked in (it’s easy to recognize him: he’s a man with gray hair, tired eyes, and he’s holding a laptop in his arm, something almost nobody brings to the first class), greeting them out loud and starting to talk about upcoming assignments within the first five seconds.
He silently thanks that he’s not the kind of professor who asks everyone to introduce themselves and say why they chose the major, what motivates them, and so on. He doesn’t like speaking in public because everyone turns to look at him. Eyes looking at his body, the terror that they might see beneath his loose clothes, that they might judge…
“I need to know how much you know about what we’ll see this semester.” The professor, who sits on the desk with his legs apart, begins searching the room with his gaze for a victim to expose. Tyler prays internally, asks God and tells him that if he loves him even a little, he will make him invisible in that moment. “You, the one next to the window.”
When he points at him, Tyler realizes that God doesn’t love him at all.
He begins to speak, pretending confidence and raising the volume of his voice so they can hear him clearly and he won’t have to repeat anything. He tries not to focus on the gazes resting on him, plays with his fingers while he keeps talking and his pulse rises.
He tries to search his mind for useful information. He’s in the fifth semester of the degree; he has plenty of knowledge that barely saves him, but his memories begin to fill with the times he stopped paying attention in hundreds of classes just to talk about anything with his friends who were no longer there, so he rushes in order to finish his turn.
He doesn’t notice that the tattooed boy is watching his back with a certain interest. His voice seems beautiful to him, too much so. It’s delicate but masculine; he doesn’t stutter, he doesn’t breathe exaggeratedly between words, and everything he says seems to make sense. He’s intelligent and (at least it seems) has the confidence that he himself doesn’t. If Josh had been asked to speak, he would have already stumbled over his own words.
When Tyler finishes speaking, the professor nods and begins talking again, explaining things that no longer reach the brown-haired boy’s ears. He still feels everyone’s gaze on his body, especially one that digs into his shoulder blades.
★ ｡ ˙ 🦴 >
The days begin to repeat themselves with a regularity that is uncomfortable to admit even in his own thoughts. He arrives to the classroom early, chooses the same seat next to the window because he needs something to look at when his mind starts to fill with noise, places his backpack on the floor, takes out his folder and organizes his things with an almost automatic precision, as if that small ritual could keep the rest of the day under control.
And almost always, a few minutes later, he hears the door open and that voice.
He doesn’t like admitting it, not even in his thoughts, but since the first days, Josh (he heard his name come out of one of his friends’ mouths) has caught his attention like crazy.
When he walks in, his laugh gives him away. It’s a strange ritual, what makes him so happy that he can laugh with such euphoria at seven in the morning? Tyler learns to recognize it even among other voices, among overlapping conversations and the constant murmur of students talking about assignments nobody wants to do.
Sometimes he hears the irregular tapping of a pencil against the desk when Josh gets bored, or the sound of pages turning quickly when he takes notes with more enthusiasm than most people dedicate to a pharmacology class.
Tyler surprises himself noticing all those details and, very deep down, he hates realizing all of it because noticing too much means paying attention, and paying attention implies interest, and interest is a dangerous door he has spent years learning to keep closed. He doesn’t want to think about the way Josh leans forward when he writes, or about how his curly hair seems to obey no rule of gravity.
The problem is that the door is already half open and Tyler knows what that means.
For years his relationship with the mirror has been a silent war: centimeters of skin analyzed as if they were maps, bones turned into objectives, meals transformed into numbers that accumulate in his head even when he tries to ignore them. But now all of that has a new shade that unsettles him more than he would like to admit. Because if Josh starts to like him (which is happening and terrifies him) then his body stops being only a personal enemy and becomes something that can be judged by someone else.
There is only one way in which people cannot judge him: being thin.
And even though some of his bones are already noticeable and his limbs show signs of malnutrition, it doesn’t feel like enough.
Ribs, collarbones, fingers, his own face. Everything must adopt a skeletal appearance in order to be attractive. Or at least that’s what his mind makes him believe.
Sometimes he catches himself thinking about it while he walks across campus, while he checks his notes, even while he tries to listen to the professor teaching and the names of the drugs pass in front of him like white noise. If he were a little lighter, if his chin looked more defined, if his waist looked narrower beneath his clothes, maybe then someone like Josh could return that infernal attraction.
It’s a thought that embarrasses him as soon as it appears, but that doesn’t stop it from coming back. In fact, it seems to return more often and with more force.
He has started making small adjustments, as if he were moving tiny pieces inside a machine only he understands. Eating before arriving to class so he doesn’t have to open his container in front of Josh, stretching his fasts a little longer than usual or not eating at all, everything just to feel that deceptive lightness that makes him believe he is doing something right.
It’s absurd, embarrassing, dehumanizing.
The worst part is that he doesn’t know that doing those things isn’t necessary because Tyler has already caught Josh’s attention.
There’s something about that brown-haired boy that attracts him like a magnet, that’s the way Josh feels after watching him for several weeks.
When he thinks Tyler doesn’t notice, he lets his gaze linger a little longer than necessary on his back while he writes, on the curve of his shoulder blades moving beneath the loose fabric of his clothes. He pays special attention to the way the short brown hair falls forward when he leans too much over his notebook.
And although at first he didn’t understand why he had that need to look at him, he ended up understanding it one morning when he got lost in the brown-haired boy’s angelic profile.
Tyler is attractive; it’s something he can’t file away as if it were irrelevant information.
At first, he tried to convince himself that the university is full of attractive people and the fact that he was one of them meant nothing. But his thoughts couldn’t stop and he ended up thinking about him more than he should; it was only a matter of time before the need to talk to him settled in his chest.
The problem is that approaching him would be strange. There is no real reason to do it. They have never spoken beyond a couple of casual comments about the class, short phrases that disappear as quickly as they appear.
With what excuse could he start something more?
★ ｡ ˙ 🦴 >
The perfect excuse arrives on a Tuesday morning.
The professor arrives late that day, opens the door in a hurry and, as always, doesn’t even take a second to arrange his things before he’s already explaining the project they must submit at the end of the semester.
Something about a drug manual they have to make in pairs. Josh doesn’t pay much attention; later he’ll ask his friends about the details he’s currently letting pass him by.
On his side, Tyler writes down everything he can and silently resigns himself to doing the project alone. He doesn’t know anyone, he doesn’t talk to any of his classmates, and he’s almost sure everyone already has a partner. Either way, how hard could it really be to do that project alone?
The professor keeps talking, Tyler keeps writing down more and more requirements for the project, and he realizes that, actually, it’s going to be terribly difficult to do everything by himself.
“You have the whole semester to do it. If you want, you can get together with your partners and start working on it.” As soon as the words leave the professor’s mouth, everyone drags their chairs and the sound becomes annoying. Voices rise in volume and Tyler doesn’t know exactly what to do.
Decisions are made quickly when friendships already exist: people who have known each other since previous semesters, classmates who have worked together before, groups that reorganize themselves without needing to think too much.
Tyler doesn’t move and prefers to pretend to review his notes. He knows there is always a small awkward moment at the end in which more than one person still doesn’t have a partner while everyone else is already settled. He’ll take advantage of that moment to pair up with someone else. The problem is that that moment seems to take too long to arrive.
His fingers turn pages he isn’t reading, stopping on words his brain doesn’t actually process. Keeping his gaze down is easier than watching the others organize themselves without including him.
Behind him, Josh looks at his friends. Two of them are already leaning over the same desk, discussing something in low voices; another raises a hand in his direction as if inviting him to join.
His friend group is made up of five people. Of course one of them would be left out, but it’s not something they worry about because they always solved it by going to the professor and begging him to let them be a team of three.
But this time, Josh shifts his gaze to the brown-haired boy in front of him.
From that distance he can see the clean line of his neck, the small movement of his throat when he swallows. He also notices the slight stiffness in his posture, as if he were waiting for the exact moment when someone forces him to stand up and find a partner.
Josh thinks about it for three seconds.
He looks back at his friends, makes a gesture that lets them understand that this time he won’t be doing the assignment with them, and returns his gaze to the front. His heart beats with something similar to excitement and, after torturous seconds, he decides to stretch out his hand to touch Tyler’s shoulder.
“Hey.” The contact is minimal, but Tyler feels it as if someone had said his name out loud inside a silent room. “Do you already have a partner for the project?”
Tyler slowly turns to look at Josh. Up close, he’s even harder to ignore. He’s wearing a black tank top that leaves his arms free and offers a delicious view of the tattoos climbing along them. On top of that, his curly hair seems to have decided not to obey any kind of order that morning.
“No.” It’s pure downfall itself; Tyler has to swallow to make sure he isn’t hallucinating that closeness.
Josh nods slowly and a smile settles on his face. Anyone would think he’s smiling just to seem friendly, but the truth is that inside him there’s an unimaginable celebration because he finally has an excuse to talk to that breathtaking brown-haired boy.
“Do you mind if we work together?” The idea seems fascinating, terrible, terrifying, and blessed. All at once.
The idea of working the rest of the semester with the person who has stolen part of his thoughts scares him too much. He could invent an excuse without much effort, say that he already talked with someone else before class started, that he usually works better alone, that he has complicated schedules, that he prefers not to meet after class. He could build any of those small social lies that exist precisely to maintain comfortable and safe distances between people.
Because the closer someone is, the easier it becomes to notice things. The way they breathe, the way they move, the real size of their body occupying space, and Tyler has spent years trying to make his body occupy as little space as possible.
But he feels curious about what Josh’s voice sounds like when he’s not talking with his friends, what he looks like when he’s not surrounded by noise and laughter, what kind of person he is when the world isn’t looking at him, and that curiosity makes him nod slowly.
Besides, his rational mind quickly offers him a perfectly logical justification: It’s just a project.
“Sure, no problem.” Josh’s smile grows bigger and he opens his notebook with a quick movement, starting to write something in the margin of the page. His handwriting is messy and fast.
“We can divide the work.” Tyler’s presence intimidates him a little and makes the movements of his hand turn clumsy, so he ends up crossing out several words he writes wrong. Involuntarily, Tyler smiles a little at the sight.
The brown-haired boy stands up and turns his chair completely so they can plan the project together.
A project that implies much more time than either of them calculates at that moment.
★ ｡ ˙ 🦴 >
Josh’s room isn’t messy, but it doesn’t have the nervous neatness that Tyler recognizes in himself either. There are notes stacked in irregular columns on the desk, some books lying open face down as if they had been abandoned in the middle of an idea, a gray sweatshirt hanging over the back of the chair, and the faint smell of detergent mixed with something more human.
The window is half open and lets in the afternoon air, warm and heavy with the distant noise of the campus. The light enters at an angle and stretches across the floor like a golden stripe that cuts the room in two.
It’s not the first time Tyler has been there.
In fact, at some point during the past few weeks the walk to the residence building stopped feeling strange. At first they only worked in the library, surrounded by the supervised silence of other students bent over their laptops, but then they discovered it was always full. Later they began occupying a table in the cafeteria in the middle of the afternoon and, finally, they started finishing the project in Josh’s room.
Several weeks have passed since the professor announced the final project of the semester, and during that time something between them has changed so gradually that it is difficult to identify the exact moment when they stopped being simply project partners. Now they talk about things that are not in the scientific articles they read; the conversations drift toward professors they hate, absurd stories that happen during clinical practice, music they listen to when they study. Sometimes they even stay talking for several minutes after closing the laptop, as if neither of them were in too much of a hurry to say goodbye.
They have grown close, although neither of them seems particularly interested in admitting it out loud.
Josh had discovered that Tyler was even more charming up close than he had imagined at first. Not only because of his crooked smile or his soft voice when he spoke without realizing it, but because of smaller things, like how Tyler laughed with his whole body, leaning forward, lightly hitting the table with his knuckles, and when he concentrated on something he frowned slightly, as if the entire world depended on him.
Josh drops his backpack on the floor near the bed and stretches briefly before sitting in front of the desk. Tyler watches him from the corner of his eye while he pulls his own notebook out of his backpack. He has noticed it more than he would like to admit during these weeks: the carefree way Josh occupies space, the ease with which he moves inside his own body without seeming aware of it, as if he had never had to think too much about how he looks from the outside.
There is something deeply attractive about that.
It’s not only that Josh is handsome (although he definitely is) but the way his personality seems to amplify everything else. He’s easy with people, he smiles naturally, he listens when someone talks, he makes absurd comments that manage to pull out laughs even when everyone is exhausted after hours of class.
And that only complicates everything Tyler already feels about himself.
Because every afternoon they spend working together feeds an uncomfortable sensation that grows silently under his skin: the persistent idea that, if he were thinner, closer to the impossible version of his body that he imagines when he looks at himself in the mirror, maybe he could be the kind of person someone like Josh would look at in a different way.
Tyler leaves his backpack next to the desk and opens his folder. The provisional title of the project is written on the first page in his neat handwriting.
They sit side by side in front of the laptop. The space between them is minimal; their shoulders almost brush every time they lean toward the screen to read a paragraph better.
Josh types quickly, frowning slightly while he tries to condense the information from the article into sentences that don’t sound like they were copied directly from the text.
“Perfect, elegant academic fraud.” Josh lets out a small laugh when he copies a part from a book and shamelessly pastes it into his document, barely changing a couple of words so it doesn’t look identical.
“Change more words, I don’t want to end up in jail for plagiarism.” Tyler smiles without realizing it.
The conversation continues like that for almost an hour. Josh writes while Tyler reads fragments of scientific articles from his tablet. Sometimes they discuss a specific word, other times they stay silent for several minutes focused on the screen. The constant sound of the keyboard mixes with the air coming in through the window and with the soft music Josh put on his computer.
After a while, Josh leans back against the chair and stretches his arms above his head, letting out the air with an exaggerated sigh.
“Okay, let’s take a break please.” Josh says, closing his eyes and making an exaggerated face of heaviness and exhaustion. “I’m starving.”
“Then eat.” Tyler lowers his gaze again to the folder open in front of him, absentmindedly running the tip of his pen along the edge of the page. “I don’t want you fainting and forcing me to finish the project alone.” He says it with a smile, hiding his hunger beneath a joke.
“Do you want some?” Josh turns his chair slightly toward him, resting an elbow on the backrest while he watches him with curiosity.
“No, I’m fine.” Tyler speaks as if his brain had decided the answer before the question had fully formed.
Josh raises an eyebrow slightly at the speed of the response.
“I’m not going to eat alone.” He says in an almost teasing and dramatic tone. “Besides, we’re already comfortable enough for you to eat my food. I don’t cook that badly… I think.”
Tyler feels something small tighten beneath his ribs when he hears that. He can’t refuse, but it’s not like he has much desire to eat either, and even less in front of Josh.
But before he can look for the right words to reject the offer, Josh is already getting up from his chair to leave the room.
“Wait, I’m going to the kitchen.” The door closes behind him with a soft sound.
Tyler stays sitting in front of the open laptop, listening to the constant hum of the computer and the distant echo of someone walking down the hallway of the building. The project document remains open, but when he tries to read the words they start to look blurry.
He hasn’t eaten in two days.
Or, at least, not properly. Sugar-free yogurt and lettuce aren’t enough to nourish himself, he knows that. His stomach growls at the idea of food and the hunger begins to manifest with horror.
He feels a strange lightness in his arms, a slight dizziness when he changes position too quickly to avoid looking at the computer, a sense of distance from his own body that makes him move carefully.
He doesn’t want to take his phone, he doesn’t want to read, play music, move, nothing. His mind leads him to think only about food, about that disorder that makes him feel so little human, about the shape of his body, about how even though he is almost down to the bones he feels the fat beneath his skin move and mock him, about the spaces he occupies that still seem enormous to him, about how much he would like to eat without feeling guilt exactly three seconds later.
Sometimes he wonders at what moment he began to feel this way.
And even though he really does know when it was, and remembers exactly when he vomited for the first time and the first meal he skipped, he doesn’t know exactly how his mind broke so much to reach that point.
At what moment did his mind decide that, if he started losing weight, he could consider himself enough? Why can’t he feel like a person unless he is starving himself? Why does avoiding any calorie feel like a victory? Why is he full of those thoughts?
Automatic thoughts that appear even when he’s tired, when he wants to ignore them, even when he’s sitting in front of Josh’s laptop pretending that his life is normal and that his relationship with food isn’t made of invisible rules.
Memories of his mother saying that his plate has too much food, of his brothers giving him degrading nicknames for weighing a few kilos more than the rest, of his classmates in elementary school avoiding him.
He hears footsteps in the hallway approaching the room.
He no longer cries thinking about it but… does that even matter? He tries to convince himself that it doesn’t affect him anymore, but he still avoids meals, knows the exact calories of every food, exercises until he faints.
“Yesterday I made a lot of food and I couldn’t finish it.” Josh walks into the room with two bowls full of pasta. “I left it in the fridge and for a moment I thought someone else was going to steal it but look, I even put a little cheese on top.”
Was there ever a way to be okay with his own body?
Josh approaches him and he can see that both bowls are full. The pasta has a creamy tomato sauce, melted cheese clinging to the edges of the bowl and a soft steam rising up toward his nostrils.
“I hope you like it, honestly I’m not good at cooking.” The redhead extends the bowl to Tyler, who feels panic running through his veins. He counts calories, how much would all that weigh? He doesn’t know exactly, but with just that bowl he would already have exceeded his daily calories. “Should I make you sign a document saying I’m not responsible for any gastroenteritis or something?”
They both smile at the joke, but Tyler still doesn’t take the bowl. He wants to refuse, say he’s intolerant to something, that he ate too much breakfast in the morning, some believable excuse that will let him avoid that bowl.
“Thanks.” But before he realizes it, his hands are already taking the bowl. “I hope I don’t die from this.” He would actually rather die than eat; anything would be better.
A laugh escapes Josh’s lips. He sits back in the same place he was before, grabs his fork and starts eating while talking about a topic Tyler can’t even pay attention to. Something about a practice where a dog escaped and they had to chase it. They both laugh even though the brown-haired boy can’t understand exactly why. Then Josh tells a story he heard that morning in the cafeteria.
Tyler barely responds or reacts; his body is busy doing the thing he hates most: eating.
He brings huge bites to his mouth, chewing urgently and not even swallowing properly before he is already putting more food into his mouth.
Suddenly, all the control he had over his body disappears. Hunger isn’t elegant when it wakes up after being ignored for too long; it has no patience or manners, and everything reduces to a binge and the anxiety of eating everything he hasn’t eaten for days.
Only a couple of minutes have passed and the bowl is empty before Josh has even reached halfway through his.
His stomach hurts. He feels extremely full; even the idea that he could explode at any moment takes hold of his mind. The worst part is that he doesn’t feel satisfied, he watches Josh eating from his bowl and the need to ask for more settles in his body.
His hands tremble while holding the bowl. He swallows nervously and moves his leg with anxiety while watching every bite his partner brings to his mouth.
He is full, but he feels like he’s about to starve to death, that he needs more and more food to fill the infinite emptiness in his stomach.
Josh finishes eating a few minutes later and gets up to take the bowls to a corner of the room so the smell of the leftover food won’t keep distracting them from their work. He walks absentmindedly while continuing to talk about something related to a funny anecdote, but his voice seems so distant that Tyler can’t really understand what he’s saying. Guilt floods him, his heart beats like crazy (or at least that’s how it feels) and the stomach acid threatens to rise up his esophagus.
He isn’t even aware of when Josh sits down beside him again and holds out a huge bag of chips.
“I also have these, do you want some?” Josh opens the bag and the smell of salt and oil crashes into his nostrils. He feels sick, thinks he’s going to throw up at any moment and his mind begs him to stop, that it has been enough calories, that he won’t be able to burn them even in a week of fasting.
“Sure.” But he can’t control his hand and, when he realizes it, he already has a chip brushing against his lips. He opens his mouth out of reflex and ends up placing it on his tongue. The salty taste feels like ecstasy on his tongue; he doesn’t understand why he can’t stop.
His stomach is already tight, uncomfortable, and the guilt begins to slowly slide down his back like cold water.
He tells himself it will only be one, something to calm the anxiety that hunger creates in him. There’s no need to eat more, but the intention lasts only a few seconds.
When he realizes it, his hand is inside the bag again, grabbing a small handful of chips that quickly disappears into his mouth. He can’t stop, he doesn’t know how, he can’t prevent himself from taking another handful once that one is gone, and another, and another.
When he lifts his gaze toward the bag for a moment, trying to measure how much he has really eaten, he realizes that more than half has already disappeared. The bag collapses inward now that its contents no longer occupy the same space, and that simple image causes an immediate change in the way he breathes, because when he looks back at Josh he notices that he eats much more slowly, biting a single chip three times. The air seems to grow heavier and his chest fills with guilt.
Josh stops talking for a few seconds when he feels eyes fixed on him and lifts his gaze toward Tyler with an expression that holds nothing more than a small surprise on his face.
“It’s the first time I’ve seen you eat that much.”
There is no way to explain how that simple phrase makes Tyler feel.
The closest thing would be the sensation of a hammer hitting his head. Again and again until his senses stop working, until his heart stops beating, his lungs can no longer breathe and he is on the verge of death because of a simple sentence.
He ate too much.
Josh doesn’t have the slightest idea what those words mean, how much they affect Tyler’s brain chemistry, the whirlwind now forming inside his mind. He has no notion of it because he takes his phone and starts laughing at some stupid video that wouldn’t be funny to the brown-haired boy.
His clothes are loose, probably three sizes too big, and even so he feels his body growing so much that it fills every empty space; every wrinkle in the fabric becomes smooth as his body becomes bigger and bigger.
The phrase is violent, it tears his skin, reaches the muscle and destroys it, grabs his nerves and rips them apart. How is it possible that such simple words can make him feel like this?
How? How? How?
“I’m going to the bathroom.” He doesn’t even wait for a response when he stands up from the chair and walks to the door that leads to the bathroom.
“Sure, meanwhile I’ll take the bowls to the dining room.”
Tyler closes the door carefully, as if someone were still watching him, and leans slightly over the sink.
The bathroom is small, barely enough space for him. On top of the sink there is a small mirror he avoids looking at and a liquid hand soap; the shower curtain is red and the toilet calls his name. He places both hands on the cold ceramic of the sink and breathes deeply once, twice, as if he could negotiate with his own body.
He doesn’t want to do it, he doesn’t want to resort to another humiliating and dehumanizing ritual, to the painful sensation of food tearing through his throat, to the degrading feeling of an empty stomach. Why can’t he be a normal person?
Why? Why? Why?
He hears Josh leaving the room and for a brief moment he thinks that it’s just one meal, that nothing will happen if for once he allows his body to be nourished, but again his body decides before his mind does.
He steps away from the sink and bends over the toilet, pushes two fingers into his mouth and the impulse arrives with familiar violence. The food comes out and drags with it any trace of dignity. There is something deeply humiliating in the way his body responds to the invasive sensation in his throat. Every spasm reminds him that there is no delicacy left in this, that his body has lost a certain sensitivity, a certain boundary, and that horrifies him even while he does it.
Years ago, it was enough to barely touch the inside of his throat for the gagging to start and his stomach to empty in seconds. But he has lost sensitivity (physical and emotional) and now the movements are violent; his nails damage the tissue and even two fingers don’t seem enough to keep going.
He bends over further, bracing himself hard against the toilet as if he needed to anchor himself to something so he wouldn’t disappear. Tears from the brutal effort slip down his thin cheeks and fall dramatically onto the toilet lid, as if they truly mourned the way his body becomes foreign to him, almost animal.
Josh’s image appears without warning, cruelly torturing him as if the fact that he is in his bathroom throwing up all the food were not enough. The carefully served plate, the food made with time, with attention, with something that looked too much like affection. Thinking about that while his body insists on expelling everything makes him feel miserable, ungrateful, deeply broken.
When he finally finishes, an acidic fire burns along his throat and leaves his breathing rough and painful.
Swallowing hurts. Breathing hurts. Everything hurts in an incomprehensible way, as if his body wanted to make sure he remembers that he is sick.
His stomach is empty, the rest of his body too, and all that remains is exhaustion, a dirty, incomplete relief that arrives accompanied by disgust toward himself. He stays there for a while, bent over, breathing poorly, his hands trembling so much that he has to press his fingers against the ceramic to keep his balance.
He looks at what remains for barely an instant and immediately looks away. Looking too long would make it real in a way he cannot endure.
He flushes the toilet with an almost violent movement and watches everything disappear. He stays listening to the sound until it ends, as if that noise marked a clear ending, although he knows it doesn’t.
He takes the toilet paper sitting on top of the water tank and wipes his hands and face with too much insistence, as if he could erase the evidence, as if he could erase what just happened inside him. The smell follows him anyway.
He doesn’t want Josh to notice anything, so he throws the paper into the toilet and takes the bottle of liquid soap to spread some inside the bowl, hoping the cursed acidic smell of his stomach will disappear. He flushes again.
He straightens quickly and turns on the faucet, washing his hands over and over again. He uses too much soap, scrubbing his fingers, his palms, his wrists, trying to rip the sensation off his skin. The cold water doesn’t help; on the contrary, it makes the trembling more obvious.
He washes his face because the vomiting is disastrous and, even though he hasn’t looked in the mirror, he knows there are stains at the corners of his lips, on his cheeks, on his skin. While he washes, he hears Josh come back and put some music on.
When he finishes, he stays leaning against the sink, breathing with difficulty. His eyes burn, his hands tremble and his skin feels so dry it could bleed at any moment. He straightens slowly and lifts his gaze to the mirror in front of him.
The reflection gives him back a pale version of himself, with reddened lips and shining eyes in a way he recognizes as disgusting. Without thinking, he lifts his shirt and checks his abdomen as a reflex, expecting to see it flat. He doesn’t feel good, much less calm, but a twisted sense of relief still slips in, unpleasant and familiar.
At least there’s nothing left in his stomach.
He takes more paper and dries his face, wiping away tears he doesn’t remember deciding to shed, and rests his forehead against the mirror for a second. He breathes deeply, forcing himself to compose himself.
He has to behave. Josh must not notice. He cannot notice.
He opens the door. The music sounds a little louder now, and he steps out, his body still trembling, his throat still burning, and guilt walking beside him like a shadow.
Josh lifts his gaze as soon as he hears the door open and for a second his expression lights up with the same carefree naturalness as always, though that smile softens slightly when he looks more closely at Tyler’s face. There is something different about him, though he doesn’t know exactly what.
“I thought you had gone down the drain.” He jokes, trying to convince himself it’s just his imagination and Tyler doesn’t actually look different.
“I almost did.” The brown-haired boy smiles and sits beside him, just as they were at the beginning. “I’m lactose intolerant, I almost died in there.” Josh laughs at the comment and that is enough for both of them to believe everything is normal, that nothing bad really happened.
Tyler tries to focus on the open document, on the words he himself wrote barely an hour ago, but the letters seem to slide in front of his eyes without staying still long enough to form coherent sentences.
Josh keeps typing on the computer but stops when a strange feeling settles in his chest. He turns his gaze to Tyler and it takes only a couple of seconds to realize he has stopped reading and that his eyes are lost on the screen.
“Are you okay?”
“Yes.” The brown-haired boy answers quickly. He knows Josh has noticed something and terror clings to his back. “I’m just tired.” In microseconds his mind invents an excuse, something he has used before and that has worked.
Josh frowns slightly and his eyes drop to Tyler’s hands resting on the table, and that’s when he notices it clearly.
“You’re shaking.”
Tyler closes his hands into fists, as if the simple act of forcing his muscles could hide the obvious.
“It’s nothing, really. I’m just tired.” The brown-haired boy lifts his hands, pretending to stretch. “Don’t tell me you’re not sick of the project, because I’m about to start having nightmares about it.”
“If you want, we can continue tomorrow.” Josh tilts his head slightly, watching him with a mix of doubt and concern he doesn’t bother hiding. He doesn’t laugh at the comment from his partner; he worries that the exhaustion might really be getting to him.
“No, I’m fine.” Tyler nods and finally connects his gaze with his, trying to build a calm expression that doesn’t feel real on his face. “I can still keep going for a while.”
“Okay, but if you want to leave, just tell me. “Josh doesn’t seem completely convinced, but he doesn’t push too much either. He simply nods slowly and looks back at the computer in front of him.
Only a few seconds pass as they continue reading when Tyler realizes the dizziness hasn’t completely disappeared; it has only stayed crouched somewhere in the corner of his mind, waiting for the right moment to return.
He closes his eyes for a moment and opens them again, hoping that will erase the aftereffect of the vomiting. When he tries to focus on the screen again, the sensation returns with deceptive slowness, as if the room were tilting a few degrees to one side.
“I think…” Tyler swallows and decides to stand before the feeling gets worse.
The dizziness arrives suddenly, violent and abrupt, and his balance disappears before his mind can react. His knees weaken and his body instinctively looks for something to hold on to before falling.
Vomiting after two days of terrible nutrition is, up close, one of the worst ideas he has ever had.
Josh stands up immediately, but the brown-haired boy has already taken a clumsy step forward and ends up holding onto the first solid point he finds, Josh’s chest.
Tyler feels the heat of his body through the fabric of his shirt, feels the movement of his breathing beneath his fingers and the strong beat of his heart right under his palm. The closeness is sudden and too intense, especially now that his mind is still disordered.
“I’m sorry.” He murmurs immediately and tries to pull away, but Josh grabs his arm to keep him steady.
“Don’t apologize.”He says with a seriousness he rarely uses. Tyler swallows nervously, embarrassed; he has never felt worse. “Come on, lie down for a while. I can’t let you leave like this.”
He guides him to the bed before Tyler has time to protest too much. The mattress sinks slightly when he sits on the edge and Josh remains standing in front of him for a moment, watching him with an attention that is impossible to ignore.
“Did the food make you sick?”
Tyler feels a stab of something close to panic cross his chest. He wants to say you have no idea, but that would be reckless; the last thing he wants is for Josh to know that he’s sick.
“I’m fine, really.” The dyed-haired boy shakes his head.
Someone who is fine doesn’t get dizzy like that, doesn’t have pale skin, and certainly doesn’t tremble in the middle of spring.
“I have pills for your stomach if you want.”
“I just need to let the food settle, really.” The brunet insists, getting a little irritated by Josh’s persistence, though he regrets it instantly. Josh seems to consider that response for a second and ends up nodding.
Tyler lies back on the bed. The mattress is softer than he expected and for a moment his body is grateful for the simple fact that it no longer has to hold its own weight. He places an arm over his eyes to block the light from the window and breathes slowly while trying to ignore the strange fatigue that has settled into every muscle in his body.
When he shifts, his shirt lifts just a little over his abdomen. It’s a minimal detail he doesn’t even notice, but Josh cannot ignore it.
His gaze lingers there for a second longer than necessary before he quickly looks away. He runs a hand through his hair, slightly uncomfortable with the direction his thoughts have taken, and decides to sit on the edge of the bed, right beside Tyler’s body.
For a few seconds he tries to focus on the ceiling, on the music that continues to play softly from his computer, on anything that isn’t the person less than half a meter away from him. But his attention returns to him anyway to the line of his neck, to the way his collarbones are softly outlined beneath his skin, rising and falling with each slow breath.
Before he can stop himself, his fingers brush gently against one of Tyler’s collarbones.
The contact is light but enough for Tyler to lower the arm that had been covering his eyes and look at him in surprise. However, he doesn’t pull away.
The dyed boy’s fingers slowly slide from the collarbone to the side of his neck, where he can feel the pulse beating rapidly beneath the skin.
“Tyler…” His pressure increases. He doesn’t know if he’s doing the right thing, but he doesn’t want to stop unless the brunet asks him to. His skin is addictive, like velvet, a thousand times softer than he ever imagined.
Tyler looks at him with a tense body. Even though he doesn’t dislike the contact, he doesn’t know exactly how to react.
“Do you like men?” The question hangs in the air like something too fragile to touch, and the brunet feels his stomach tighten again, even though he knows he can’t throw up anymore because there’s nothing left inside him to expel.
For weeks he has imagined similar conversations in his head, scenarios where he could admit the truth without fear. But now that the question truly exists in front of him, the words seem to disappear from his mind.
The signs are obvious. He could say it in that moment, admit that he’s been thinking about him for weeks, enchanted by his face, his stupid and beautiful attitude, by his laugh that delights his ears. But the fear that it’s all just an illusion of his hits him and knocks the air out of his lungs.
Is there really a possibility that Josh might like him? With that body?
“Do you?” It’s the only thing he can answer, trapped by the fear of rejection. He expects that at any moment he’ll pull his hand away and laugh at him, tell him that he could never feel attracted to someone like him, that…
“Yes.” Tyler’s mind finally falls silent. Josh’s thumb remains resting against his neck, feeling every accelerated heartbeat. “And I don’t know if this is the best moment to say it, but I like you very much.”
Before Tyler has time to fully process those words, Josh leans a little closer and his lips brush softly against the skin of his neck.
The first touch of Josh’s lips against his neck is so light that for a second Tyler thinks he imagined it. The sensation is barely a breath of warmth over skin still sensitive from the closeness of his hand, but it’s enough for a small shiver to run through his body from the base of his neck down to the lower part of his back.
Tyler doesn’t move. His body seems to have been suspended at that strange point between surprise and expectation, as if any movement might break something fragile that has just appeared between them.
Josh notices that stillness.
It isn’t rejection, clearly. If Tyler had wanted to stop him, he would have done it already. But it isn’t a completely certain response either, and for a moment Josh wonders whether he should remove the hand that still rests against the side of his neck or not.
The dyed boy lifts his head, just enough to see the other’s face.
Tyler remains lying in the same position, his body slightly inclined toward him. His lips are slightly parted, as if he had started to say something and then decided not to, and his breathing has a strange rhythm that Josh can’t quite interpret as nervousness or something entirely different.
“If you want me to stop…” Tyler shakes his head in denial; he definitely doesn’t want him to stop.
That signal is enough for Josh to continue.
His lips return to his neck, this time with a little more certainty. Tyler feels his breathing falter slightly when the warmth of his mouth travels over the same spot again, and suddenly his body becomes too aware of every detail: of Josh’s weight beside him, of the brush of his shirt against his arm, of the gentle movement of the hand still resting on his neck.
And also of his own body.
The pleasant sensation that had begun to spread through his chest immediately mixes with something darker. A small but persistent voice in the back of his mind that quickly reminds him of all the things he hates about himself and the uncomfortable certainty that Josh might notice any imperfection if he decides to look too closely.
Josh seems to notice the change in his breathing before Tyler has time to do anything about it. His lips pause slightly and his hand, which had been resting on his neck, slowly moves to his jaw, guiding his face enough to look at him directly.
“You’re still trembling.” he says softly. “Are you sure you’re okay?”
Tyler feels incapable of saying anything logical, so he only nods several times. He fears that if he opens his mouth, nonsensical words will come out and ruin a moment he always imagined living but thought was so impossible. At least he wants to enjoy it, however fleeting it might be.
Josh doesn’t contradict him and his hand slides gently from his jaw to his collarbone again, following the line of the bone with a slow movement that seems more curious than intentional. Tyler feels the path of his fingers with an unexpected intensity, as if each small brush leaves an invisible mark on his skin.
“You’re very pretty.” Josh murmurs almost without thinking, and the words arrive so unexpectedly that Tyler blinks, confused.
Pretty?
The word feels strange in relation to himself. It doesn’t fit with the image he has of his own body, with the way he usually analyzes every detail in the mirror looking for things to change or correct. But Josh says it with such simple naturalness that for a moment Tyler doesn’t know how to react.
His first impulse is to laugh, the second is to believe him.
Neither of the two ends up happening.
Josh, for his part, seems to have completely forgotten about the conversation. His attention returns to the exposed skin of Tyler’s neck and he leans in again, leaving another slow kiss a little lower than the previous one, and Tyler lets out a sigh that makes Josh smile.
Josh lifts his head enough to look at him again, observing the way a blush begins to appear on his cheeks, and for a moment he stays there looking at him with an attention Tyler doesn’t remember ever receiving from anyone.
The dyed boy leans down to close the centimeters separating them and joins their lips in a chaste kiss. It is soft, almost experimental, as if Josh were still measuring the ground beneath his feet and didn’t want to move too quickly without knowing exactly how Tyler will react.
The dyed boy feels a strange taste in the brunet’s mouth, something he cannot decipher exactly, and he decides to ignore it so he can focus on the softness of the other’s lips, on the warmth of Tyler’s body and on the sensation that could almost seem magical.
Tyler’s initial surprise does not turn into rejection; on the contrary. There is an almost imperceptible moment in which his body seems to decide for him and he leans slightly forward, responding to the contact with a mild clumsiness that makes it clear he wasn’t prepared for this, but also doesn’t want it to end.
The tension Josh had been holding in his shoulders relaxes a little as soon as he feels that minimal response, that movement confirming that Tyler is not only tolerating him but also wants him. His hand returns to the side of the brunet’s neck, sliding his fingers over the warm skin until they rest behind his ear, holding his head with a softness that contrasts with the intensity beginning to grow between them.
Tyler feels his heart begin to beat faster, so hard that for a moment he fears Josh might be able to feel it through the contact between their bodies.
His mind tries to process too many things at the same time: the absurd fact that all of this is really happening, that Josh is kissing him, that the person he has been thinking about far too much during the past weeks is now centimeters away from him, touching him as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
And at the same time, the old voice in his head begins listing flaws with cruel efficiency. But the kiss distracts him again before he can get too lost in that spiral. Josh moves slightly, changing the angle to deepen the contact a little, and Tyler responds instinctively, moving closer without really thinking about what he is doing.
“I really like you a lot.” Josh pulls back a few centimeters and Tyler feels the heat rise to his face again.
He doesn’t know exactly what to answer to that. A part of him wants to say the same thing, wants to admit everything he has been keeping inside for weeks, but another part is still trapped in that uncomfortable feeling of vulnerability that never completely disappears when someone gets too close.
Instead of answering, he lowers his gaze.
Josh follows the movement with his eyes and for a second his attention returns to the strip of skin visible beneath Tyler’s shirt. This time he doesn’t look away as quickly as before. He watches the way Tyler’s abdomen moves slightly with each breath, the way his body seems to relax little by little now that the initial dizziness has passed.
Without thinking much about it, he extends his hand and lets his fingers gently brush that same area.
Josh’s fingers settle there naturally, curving softly around the bone of his hip that protrudes beneath the fabric, learning the shape of his body little by little. His thumb moves slightly, following the line of the bone, and Josh’s expression changes in a way Tyler can’t fully decipher.
“You’re really pretty.” Josh mentions it again.
There’s something in the way Josh says it that doesn’t sound like a joke or a random comment. His eyes are focused on him, on his body, on the place where his hand still rests against his hip. Tyler feels a warm current rise through his chest, mixing with a sudden confusion he doesn’t quite know how to handle.
It has never been a word he associates with himself, not really. But at the same time Josh’s hand is still there, right on the edge of his hip bone, and suddenly something in Tyler’s mind begins to fall into place in a different way.
Of course, he’s touching his bones. His collarbone, his hip, his jaw and neck, areas where thinness is most obvious without effort. He hasn’t touched his stomach, nor his arms, legs, or the more… soft areas. He’s touching his bones.
Josh’s fingers move again, sliding slightly up his side until they reach the lower part of his ribs. The contact is light, but enough for Tyler to clearly feel the pressure against the bones outlined beneath his skin. Josh keeps talking, distracted, as if he has no idea of the effect he is causing.
When Josh caresses the edge of his last rib, the answer seems obvious: he likes his bones.
For the first time in a long while, something similar to a feeling of satisfaction appears at the back of his chest, small but intense. If Josh is saying that while running his hand over his ribs… then maybe he really is seeing it, noticing how thin he is, maybe he has finally reached that point he has always been trying to reach.
The idea settles into his mind with almost dangerous clarity.
Before he can think about it too much, Tyler lifts his hand and carefully takes Josh’s. The movement makes Josh raise his gaze, surprised for a second, but he doesn’t resist. Their fingers intertwine slightly while Tyler guides his hand a few centimeters higher, to an area where the ribs are more noticeable.
Josh watches him for a second, processing the movement, and then a small smile appears on his face, one so soft it could warm any winter.
“Here?” Tyler nods slowly, delighted when Josh begins touching that area more freely.
His fingers follow the line of his ribs, moving slowly up and down while his thumb slides along the spaces between the bones. The contact makes a shiver run down the brunet’s back, a strange mix of physical sensitivity and the quiet satisfaction continuing to grow inside his head.
“You’re very, very pretty.” Something in Tyler’s chest expands with those words.
He is pretty because he is thin, because his bones stand out.
His fingers continue guiding Josh’s hand along his side for a moment longer before slowly letting go, but by then Josh no longer needs direction. His hand stays where it is, naturally tracing the line of his ribs while his other hand rests again near Tyler’s neck.
Josh leans in again, and this time the kiss arrives without as much hesitation as before. His lips meet Tyler’s with more certainty, more closeness, while his hand remains resting against his side. His thumb moves absentmindedly over one of his ribs as the kiss slowly deepens.
He feels the finger tracing the marked line beneath his shirt as if he truly likes what he’s touching, and that sensation ignites again the same thought that had appeared moments before, that silent conclusion that now seems more real the longer it stays.
Maybe everything he has done hasn’t been in vain. Every skipped meal, every time he threw up, every day he fainted while exercising. It all served a purpose, in the end.
The idea arrives with seductive clarity. Tyler usually doesn’t allow himself to think about those things in a positive way, but right now the evidence seems to be literally under Josh’s hand, touching him, exploring him, and also calling him pretty.
Tyler lifts his hand and places it somewhat clumsily on Josh’s chest, feeling the warmth of his body through the shirt. His fingers curl slightly in the fabric as he leans forward again, searching for his lips with more determination than before. The kiss he starts now is less cautious, less insecure, as if something inside him had finally come loose.
His fingers slide across Josh’s chest, slowly moving up to his neck while he tilts his head to deepen the kiss. He doesn’t have much experience taking the initiative in moments like this, and it shows in the slight clumsiness of his movements, but there is also a new intensity in the way he approaches.
Their position on the bed changes, their bodies adjusting so that Josh is sitting against the headboard and Tyler rests on his lap while the contact between them becomes more constant.
The hand that had been on his ribs slides a little farther back, tracing the narrow curve of his waist before slowly moving up his side again.
Tyler guides it again without thinking too much and Josh raises his gaze to study the brunet’s face. There is something curious in his expression, as if he were trying to understand exactly what is going through Tyler’s mind at that moment.
“You’re very delicate.” Josh murmurs while lifting him slightly to bring him even closer to his body. The word makes something tighten in Tyler’s chest, but not in an uncomfortable way.
Delicate doesn’t sound like an insult.
Their lips meet again, with less pause between one kiss and another. Tyler moves a little more on the bed to position himself better in front of Josh.
He moves his hips slightly when he feels Josh’s crotch pressing against his pants, and the idea excites Tyler. He never imagined someone could be aroused by his body, and the idea that it’s thanks to the unhealthy hours of fasting becomes clearer in his mind.
He begins to rub himself against the dyed boy’s body and soft sighs escape from the other’s lips, delighted by the contact.
Josh takes the edges of Tyler’s shirt and lifts it, making the brunet stop his movements. Terror returns to his body. What if Josh doesn’t like what he sees? What if he changes his mind? What if everything was just an illusion, a cruel joke from the universe?
The shirt keeps rising and Tyler just closes his eyes while he prays and waits for rejection. He doesn’t want to see the disappointed look on Josh’s face; he wouldn’t be able to bear it. Every centimeter the fabric moves across his body creates more and more anxiety.
When his torso is finally bare, he begins trembling violently again, especially when he feels Josh’s lips on his chest, near his tattoos.
“I can’t get tired of telling you that you’re very pretty.” The comment makes Tyler’s chest fill with a strange feeling, almost dizzying.
Pretty, again. Even with his torso exposed and the dyed boy kissing his skin.
The idea fills him with a silent satisfaction that almost gives him new energy. He moves a little more on the bed to keep rubbing against him, leaning over him so their bodies are even closer.
His other hand moves to Tyler’s back, resting there to hold him while they continue kissing. His fingers slowly trace the line of his spine, each of his vertebrae, and soft moans leave his mouth.
Tyler decides to keep taking the initiative and forces Josh to pull away for a few seconds so he can remove the other’s shirt. The dyed boy helps instinctively, lifting his arms so the garment can pass over his head, and a few seconds later the fabric ends up forgotten at the side of the bed.
Josh no longer has his shirt on and his torso is completely exposed between them. The light in the room falls from the side, outlining the lines of his shoulders and the firm contour of his chest. His muscles are not exaggerated, but they are clearly defined, and the soft shadows that form between them make every movement of his breathing noticeable.
Tyler swallows without realizing it.
For a moment he remains completely still, watching him as if he isn’t quite sure what to do now that he has him in front of him. His eyes travel across Josh’s chest, the shape of his collarbones, the marked line of his abdomen.
Stunningly attractive.
His fingers follow the line of his abdomen, briefly stopping over one of the defined muscles before moving up again, almost as if he isn’t sure whether he has the right to explore too much, and an uncomfortable thought appears in Tyler’s mind before he can stop it.
If he had a body like that… it probably wouldn’t look the same.
The idea arrives with that familiar mixture of admiration and distance he always feels when comparing his body to others. Even imagining himself with those same muscles, that same structure, something inside him insists that it wouldn’t have the same effect.
His hands move down to the edge of Josh’s pants. Neither of them wants to stop; the heat rises between them, their skin beginning to cover with a light layer of sweat. Tyler’s hands continue trembling, but now excitement mixes in his blood. Oxygen stops flowing properly and he feels on the verge of fainting.
With some difficulty (and Josh’s help) he manages to pull down the other’s pants, and the dyed boy’s noticeable erection rises imposingly before his eyes. It presses against Josh’s stomach and Tyler has never felt anything like it. He doesn’t know what to do; he is so inexperienced and insecure that he has rarely touched himself in his life. He doesn’t know how to please someone else.
He swallows and takes the member in his hand, moving up and down in an irregular rhythm, afraid that the moment will be ruined. His breathing is fast; he can only see his hand manipulating the erection, Josh’s abdominal muscles tensing when he increases the rhythm.
“I want to touch you too.” Josh lowers his hands and tries to pull down Tyler’s pants as well, but because of the position it becomes difficult, so he decides to lift him before laying him back down on the bed. “You’re so light.”
Memories from when he was twelve years old, when his father refused to carry him under the excuse that he was too heavy, come to his mind. And although they try to become a bitter memory, he doesn’t feel it that way because now he is thin, because Josh is fascinated with his bones. Nothing is the same.
Tomorrow he will probably decide to fast or switch to a stricter diet, all to become thinner, more beautiful, to be even more enough.
Josh finishes pulling down Tyler’s pants and the brunet blushes with embarrassment. Unlike Josh, and despite feeling aroused, his dick is flaccid.
Tyler once read, while searching for quick ways to lose weight, that people with malnutrition often have problems during intimacy. But at that moment he was so alone, rejected, and desperate that he didn’t care. He never thought he would find himself in a situation like this.
“Do you want me to stop?” The sight makes Josh think the brunet isn’t enjoying himself and he dislikes the thought that he may have indirectly forced Tyler to continue. “I don’t want to make you feel uncomfortable.”
“No, Josh, please don’t.” Tyler pleads because he truly wants to continue. He wants to keep feeling Josh’s kisses, his hands exploring his body, his warmth calming the cold in his soul. He doesn’t want to stop. He doesn’t want that damned disorder to take away the only thing that has made him feel good about himself in such a long time.
He grabs the dyed boy by the neck and begins kissing him desperately. His lips move in strange rhythms in a frantic attempt to keep Josh from moving away, even though he had no intention of doing so. The dyed boy begins to stroke the brunet’s face and changes the rhythm of the kiss so everything returns to the slow, sensual pace they had been following.
Their movements become coordinated again and Tyler takes advantage of the moment to lower one of his hands to his own member, rubbing it with force and desperation. He wants to reciprocate with Josh, wants to keep feeling him, doesn’t want to pull away, and forces himself to become hard so that won’t happen.
Josh moves down his neck, kissing him again and leaving trails of saliva while Tyler’s hand continues moving quickly, only stopping slightly when he feels his member slowly beginning to harden.
The dyed boy moves down his chest, across his abdomen, and reaches his pelvis, where the erection is already noticeable, so he takes it with one hand and strokes it slowly, very differently from how Tyler had touched himself.
The sensation is different and drives him crazy. The other’s soft hands feel like paradise; he can only melt into soft moans and place his hand over his own mouth to keep anyone outside the room from hearing them.
“Have you had sex before?” Tyler shakes his head and Josh’s lips kiss his pelvis while his hand keeps moving, and the brunet’s mind can only think about how sweet he is, that from the beginning he has only worried about him, asked how he feels, suggested stopping. Josh is like a dream come true. “Do you want to continue?”
Tyler can barely say a “yes” between sighs and pants.
Would Josh behave the same way with him if he had met him during the time when he was heavier?
The dyed boy uses his remaining hand to place three of his fingers into the brunet’s mouth, who begins to suck them, imagining what comes next. It’s strange, the only times he has had fingers in his mouth were to make himself vomit, something so miserable, humiliating, and painful. But this time the fingers feel kind, they stroke his tongue and feel warm, fleshy, nothing like his own cold and thin fingers.
“Now comes the difficult part.” When they are lubricated enough, Josh pulls them out of his mouth and guides them to the brunet’s entrance, stroking in circular motions. “If it hurts and you want to stop, tell me.”
Tyler nods and his body tenses when the first finger enters. It’s painful, but at the same time pleasurable and strange. The thought that in a single day he has experienced a roller coaster of emotions makes him smile a little.
Little by little the pain begins to lessen and become more bearable, losing the sharp edge it had at the beginning. When Josh notices the tension in Tyler’s body relaxing slightly and that his breathing is no longer so uneven, he carefully slides in a second finger to help him get used to the sensation.
He moves patiently, rotating them gently a couple of times and then separating them slightly, like scissors opening slowly, trying to disperse the discomfort so Tyler’s body can adapt.
Josh adds a third finger with the same patient care, and Tyler moans again, this time deeper, letting the sound escape without being able to contain it. The sensation that once felt tense and overwhelming slowly begins to transform; the initial torment dissolves little by little.
Tyler twists on the bed, the pleasure clouding his vision and making his eyes water. It’s the first time he has experienced such overwhelming pleasure, one that manages to silence his mind for a few minutes and makes him feel happy.
He doesn’t know how long Josh will continue playing with his entrance, but he doesn’t want the pleasure to disappear. He likes feeling his interior filled that way. Josh touches places he didn’t know existed, and his erection aches; at last he feels the need to touch himself to release pleasure.
Josh strokes Tyler’s hips tenderly and allows himself to watch the way the brunet dissolves into gasps before slowly withdrawing his fingers. Then he spits into his hand and uses it to cover his own erection, preparing carefully before bringing it toward Tyler’s entrance.
His member enters slowly, waiting for the brunet to get used to it little by little and groaning at how tight his interior is. Tyler signals for Josh to lean down and hugs his back, trying to disperse the pain.
“Are you okay?” Josh kisses his shoulder while with one hand he stimulates Tyler’s dick, trying to replace the pain with pleasure. The brunet nods euphorically and begins to move when the sensation stops being painful and becomes pleasurable.
Josh begins to move slowly and the brunet’s body trembles intensely. The pleasure is so strong that he feels like he might faint. He has never experienced so much pleasure; he never thought his body could feel like this.
All thanks to the fact that he is thin.
Little by little the thrusts become more intense. Josh’s fingers dig into Tyler’s hips and leave reddish marks on his thin skin. From that position, he can see how his stomach spasms, the way his ribs contract with every penetration, his Adam’s apple rising and falling. Tyler is very pretty, so much so that the blood runs harder through his body and urges him to keep hitting the brunet’s interior with increasing intensity.
A few minutes pass in which the dyed boy feels the need to change position. The view is magnificent, yes, but he wants to hold Tyler’s body, wants to feel him pressed against his chest and hear the scattered words that slip from his soft lips.
He pulls out of him, leaving an emptiness that makes Tyler complain with a gasp.
“Tyler, turn around.”
The brunet gets up reluctantly. The dizziness from the vomiting makes him slow; the excitement and the exhaustion from the sex that has barely begun add to it. He rests his chest on the bed and Josh takes him by the legs, lifting him into the air.
Instinctively, Tyler holds onto Josh’s arms, afraid of falling when he looks down and realizes the height seems dangerous despite being less than a meter from the floor.
Josh moves him a little so Tyler’s back ends up pressed against his chest. He holds his thin legs with one arm and presses them against the brunet’s torso. With his free hand, he takes his erection and slides it back into Tyler, who moans in response.
“Ah… you’re so light, Tyler…” Josh begins with faster and deeper thrusts than before that make Tyler moan loudly. The dyed boy places his hand over the other’s lips so his sounds won’t escape outside the room. “And so cute…”
Tyler smiles when he hears the words. Light and pretty, the only thing that matters, the only thing that has always mattered. Finally he was. All his effort had not been in vain.
Hearing Josh praise him, feeling his sweat run down his back, seeing how he holds him so easily, is the most erotic thing that has ever happened to him.
“Josh…” Tyler speaks behind the palm. His body trembles violently, feeling the orgasm close. Josh realizes it and pulls out of him, changing positions again, this time laying him back on the bed with his chest pressed to the mattress.
Before penetrating him again, he kisses his back, his shoulder blades, runs his tongue along his spine, intoxicated by the taste of his skin. He presses his own body against Tyler’s, who feels small.
He likes feeling this small. That his body takes up no space makes his mind fly.
Josh slides his member back into the brunet’s cavity, whose moans are muffled against the mattress. His body moves over the bed sheets and the fabric creaks under the dyed boy’s thrusts.
“Tyler, you’re so cute…”
Josh kisses his shoulders again, carefully biting the skin and stealing even more gasps and moans from Tyler.
After a few minutes, Tyler’s interior contracts and his dick, trapped between his body and the bed, releases a whitish liquid. His body twists and he feels spasms in his stomach.
Josh feels a tickling in his abdomen and finishes inside Tyler’s cavity. His semen is warm; it feels strange and pleasant at the same time.
The dyed boy pulls out of him and helps him stand.
“I’m going to have to wash your bed.” Tyler jokes while standing up and holding onto Josh’s arms. He feels dizzy, almost as if he is about to faint, and he is extremely sleepy, so much so that his eyelids close without asking permission.
“Forget it. I’m going to leave it there so I can think about you every time I go to sleep.” Josh lets out a laugh when he sees the brunet’s face turn red and his fist weakly hit his chest. “Come on instead, go take a shower so you can rest for a while.”
★ ｡ ˙ 🦴 >
More than two weeks have passed since that encounter, and things have changed in a way Tyler never imagined.
Classes are still just as boring, the professors just as demanding, and the campus just as noisy early in the day. If someone looked at it from the outside, they would probably think everything was exactly the same.
But now Tyler spends more time in Josh’s room, and vice versa.
Sometimes after class, sometimes when neither of them has anything better to do, other times simply because ending up there has become almost automatic, as if their feet already knew the way without him having to think about it.
That same afternoon, after making progress on the project that started everything, they decided to go to Josh’s room.
Tyler is half leaning against the dyed boy, too tired to move after a long day on campus. He hasn’t eaten anything except an apple since morning, but that doesn’t even seem strange to him anymore.
Josh’s hand wraps around him and slides along the sides of his body. It’s nothing new, he does it all the time now. His fingers move along Tyler’s arm, go down his side, and sometimes stop at his waist as if he were simply killing time.
After their encounter, it was inevitable that both of them expressed their feelings and ended up in a relationship.
Josh presses gently against his side and his fingers find the hard line of a rib beneath the shirt.
“Hey.” Josh murmurs while looking away from his phone. “Are you thinner?“Josh runs his fingers over the same spot again, following the curve of the bone with distracted curiosity, and Tyler smiles. He likes that it’s noticeable. That same morning he had weighed himself and saw that he had lost two kilos.
The thinner he is, the more Josh will like him, he thought.
It wasn’t even necessary, but the idea had been tattooed in his mind like something sick.
“Yeah, a little.” Josh keeps touching the area with the same naturalness, resting his palm against his side while shaking his head slightly.
“Do you like it?” The question hangs in the air. Of course Josh likes it, but for a different reason. He likes everything related to Tyler; Tyler thinks he only likes it because he’s thin.
“I like you any way you are.” He doesn’t seem to think much about the words; he doesn’t even know how much they affect Tyler’s mind. “You know that to me you’re very pretty.”
Pretty.
Josh looks back at his phone, not even noticing Tyler’s smile.
The word repeats in his mind obsessively. Pretty equals thinness, equals protruding bones. His fingers move slowly toward the edge of his shirt, pressing against the same bone Josh had been touching a moment ago, as if he needed to check that it’s still there.
His ribs are becoming more noticeable every day.
Josh keeps looking at his phone, completely unaware of the way Tyler’s mind has become a whirlwind because of the phrase that now occupies far too much space.
Because if that is already enough for Josh to call him pretty, then he could still do more.