Tw: Binging, Eating disorder (Bed, ana), brief mentions of bullying

When Patton was 14 he didn't have any friends. He'd never in his life had any friends actually. He was chubby, childish and gay so of course he didn't get a lot of friends especially since he went to a catholic school.

That didn't mean he didn't try to get friends. He would be friendly towards everyone and talk as much as he could but it always seemed to lead to teasing and insults and getting nosebleeds from punches.

During this time he also worked part time at a local pet store. One day a guy his own age came in. He had short black hair and big square glasses. His tall stature made him look tough but that toughness immediately melted away when he sat down next to the birds and started to whisper compliments to them in a baby voice.

He left without buying anything and Patton didn't talk to him.

But the next week the tall guy came in again and spent at least half an hour talking to the animals. This pattern continued for weeks upon weeks and during these weeks Patton tried his best to build up the courage to talk to him. Unbeknownst to him the other boy was also too shy to talk to him even though he wanted.

Finally one day Patton sneaked up to the stranger while he was waving to the cute hamsters "Ehm d-do you need any help? With finding a pet I mean?"

The stranger straightened his back so he was looking proper. This was before Patton's miniscule growth spurt so the height difference was really noticeable. The stranger looked down at him with a stone cold expression which made Pat shiver.

"I'm looking for a....goldfish? Goldfish" He lied.

"Oh right they're right next to the nemos" He explained while walking over to the water tank.

"Actually the right word for 'the nemo' is anemonefish" He couldn't help but let the info out.

"That's cool. Come on choice one" Patton pointed at the fishes and when the stranger leaned down close to him to look he couldn't help but blush. Their shoulders touched and he could smell a vauge smell of jam coming from the boy.

"That one please" He said which broke the moment "If you don't mind me asking......how do you..take care of fish?"

Their conversation went on for half an hour at least. Most of it wasn't even about animals, the talk was so natural as if they've known each other for years. Right when the stranger was about to leave Patton blurted out

"I NEver got your name!"

He stopped dead in his tracks and turned around with a soft expression "It's Logan"

"I'm Patton!!!"

"I know, it's on your name plate. Bye"

The next week Logan came in again to buy another fish. He wasn't really there for the fish but he was too shy to say that. He kept coming in once a week for an entire year and most of the time he just 'looked' around the shop before talking with Patton.

"Y'know you don't have to come in to buy something to spend time with me" The freckled boy chuckled.

"Oh..." Logan seemed taken aback as if this hadn't occurred to him "Would you want to...hang out after your shift is done then?"

"I would love to!"

They were both 15 and they had finally found their first friend.

When Patton was 17 Logan's cool dad let them try red wine and it ended with them alone in Lo's room sharing a quick kiss. It was the first time either of them had kissed a boy but they both decided to pretend like it never happened. They were and continue to be only friends.

When Patton was 19 he moved away from his homophobic parents and bought himself a small apartment. He upgraded from the pet shop to a dog daycare while voluntering at the local animal shelter. Logan and him still saw each other nearly every week. At the same time Pat's eating disorder was making itself much more known. If no one else was home no one was there to stop him from binging.

When Patton was 21 Logan stopped staying over for dinner, he stopped going out to cafes with him, when they went to the cinema he never ate the popcorn. He wished he'd noticed his friend succumbing to his sickness but he was already too focused on his own binging problems to notice anything.

When Patton was 23 Logan had gotten so deep down into his own eating disorder Pat couldn't pretend like nothing was wrong anymore.

They were out walking the happy golden retriever Patton had bought very recently when logan's eyes suddenly rolled back and he fainted. If the other man hadn't been there to catch him he would have landed harshly on the pavement.

Suddenly his nails constantly being blue made sense. Suddenly him constantly looking exhausted made sense. Suddenly the way he had to force himself to continue to walk without swaying back and forth made sense.

Suddenly the fact that he could count every one of his ribs without his glasses on made sense.

When Patton was 24 his friend nearly died right in front of his eyes. The heart can not survive being malnourished for so long and one day it stops.

They'd been watching some silly show when Logan went stale and he started to sweat and his heart was beating out of his chest and he fell down on the floor while shaking like a leaf in a storm. Patton's first thought was to force some sugar into him, to give him any sort of energy to continue on. He called an ambulance which lead to Lo being forced into inpatient care.

Logan didn't talk to Patton for an entire year after that. There was a burning ache of anger inside of him over his friend betraying him like this, how could he destroy his progress like this right when he was getting somewhere.

During that year Patton finally got help for his own eating disorder. He met Dr. Picani and started to go to a therapy group.

When Patton was 25 he reconciled with logan, a much healthier looking Logan since he hadn't been allowed to leave inpatient care until he was a somewhat healthy weight. Pat made him go to the group therapy and he hoped that it would help.

When Patton was 27 he had to accept that he'd slowly seen his friend decay right in front of his eyes. There wasn't much left of him. The brilliant mind he loved had succumbed to illness and the body he adored to cuddle with was nothing but bones with an urge of control holding them together.

When they first met Logan could dump facts for hours and write an entire essay in 20 minutes. Nowadays he could barely hold a conversation. It took so long for his mind to gain enough strength to think up what to say. he couldn't remember what a lot of hard words meant. Infinitesimal was something big right? It had to be, his mind was so blurry, everything was hazy. He had grown so tired.

Guilt became the most familiar feeling to Patton. Guilt because he could have helped Logan so much more, so much sooner. Guilt because he was eating so much food, food which could go to people who actually need it. Guilt because he barely had enough control over himself to stop himself from slowly eating himself to death.

When Patton is now 28 it seems like he's finally climbing out of the hellhole that is his eating disorder while Logan was seemingly only sinking further down.

-Present time-

Day 3 of skii trip though it was nearing day 4 since it was the middle of the night after after skii.

Patton woke up suddenly in the night by the feeling that he was falling. He gasped and moved his hands around the sheets but calmed down when he remembered that he was in fact not falling but still in the upper bunk bed in the hired apartement. Soon after he realized that someone else was also awake since he could hear someone under him clearly stir around.

"Kiddo?" He yawned out while trying to look down but soon realized that without his glasses he was pretty much blind.

"Not a kiddo" He got as a response.

"Oh g'morning Lo" The nerd was the only one he didn't call kiddo.

"Not quite morning, it's 3 am. I took a break from working to look at the stars. In the city the clouds hide them but here.....they're so clear" he sounded amazed.

"WAIt. Took a break??? As in you've been working. Glasses now! I'm coming down" Logan handed him his glasses and he carefully climbed down the mini ladder.

Now when he could see he could see that Logan was sitting in his bed with a loose nasa t-shirt and loose blue shorts on. He was staring out the small window. The stars from the sky was shining in.

"You should sleep" Patton suggested as he sat down next to the other man.

"Not tired. Too much to do, I can't even focus" He rubbed his eyes to stay awake. All the numbers he'd calculated for work had made his brain dizzy. His work was something complicated with research and science, no one understood when he explained it.

"Of course you can't. You need the...then thing Jan talks about.....SELF CARE!!! You need it!!!"

He reached out his hand but flinched back when he felt how cold Logan's skin was. A dead body would probably feel warm compared to him. He moved the blanket up around their shoulders and inched closer.

"It has been 3 months and 5 days since I last stopped and really inspected the stars" Logan said with a sad tone "If you have the time I could take a prolonged break to watch the stars outside"

"Yeah" He yawned out "I can try and stay awake for a lil longer"

They quickly changed into warm clothes and jackets. From the other small bedroom which was basically only just a bunk bed and a nightstand snores from Roman and Virgil could be heard. The cold air hit them as they walked outside.

It was surprisingly enough not that dark. The white snow seemed to light everything up and the stars shining down from the sky made them nearly glimmer. There were machines driving around at the top of the skii slopes. 

"Up there" Patton said while pointing up at a part of the nearest slope. It was high enough so it was perfect for stargazing (and to hide away from the machines since they technically weren't allowed to be in the slopes at night) but low enough so it wouldn't be too exhausting to walk up.

Patton had come halfway up the hill when he looked back and realized that Logan was far behind. He usually walked really slowly since he physically didn't have the energy to walk any faster.  Pat waited until his friend had catched up. He motioned for him to jump up on his back.

"You sure?" Lo asked while his heart beat of his chest because of the walking.

"Yeah. You weigh almost half of me, pretty sure I can carry you" (They had quite a big height difference, if Patton had actually been as tall as Lo he could have easily been double his weight and still healthy)

With a sigh Logan accepted the offer. He snuggled into the warmth that was his friend as they continued up the hill. While they walked Pat ranted about his dream which had been about hiring out his plushies to collect money for a myserious case.

Once they got to the top of the hill the view was simply breathtaking. The sky was a mix of dark blues and purples and it shone down into the valley of white snow and green trees. The valley looked like a galaxy though. The light from the houses and roads looked like stars from where they were.

Patton sat down in a snow drove and held out his arm so Logan could lean his head against his shoulder. They looked at both the 'stars' on the ground and the real ones in silence for a few minutes.

"Would it be acceptable to rant about some astronomy facts?"

"You listen to me rant about dogs and cartoons and everything all the time so yeah of course"

Logan could take 'I can talk about this for hours and hours' to the literal because he ranted about astronomy for half an hour and if he hadn't noticed that Patton yawned from exhaustion since it was 4 am he would have continued.

"Do you think stars can talk to each other??" Patton asked.

"After all those facts That is your question? No. They are made out of hydrogen and helium therefore they can not talk" 

"But telepathically though" He poked Logan's cheek while smiling "Do I have a point here or do I have a point"

"You have no point, 0 point. So little point I am baffled at how little amount of point you have"

"But what if humans made a machine so we can all learn telepathy and then we put that machine on a star. Wouldn't we be able to communicate with the star then?" At this point Patton was just fucking with him.

Logan took a deep breath to keep his cool "Stars are made out of Helium! The machine would go through it! Stars don't even have a concious mind so-"

Patton looked at him with a smile as he explained in great detail why everything Pat had just said was stupid. He liked how passionate Logan sounded. It wasn't that usual he had this much emotion in his voice anymore.

In the middle of the rant the sound notification on Patton's phone went off. He quickly took it out and looked who it was from in case one of his kiddos had woken up and wondered where he was. Instead it was a cute dog video from his boyfriend.

"Aww look at the lil baby puppy so cuuuttee" He cooed while showing it to Logan "It's from Lev"

"Lev is so dreamy" Lo sighed while looking at the cute puppy.

Patton playfully smacked his arm "He's my boyfriend! No stealing!"

He held up his hands to look innocent "Hey I'm sure that I could scientifically make an analysis about how he's so hot but I swear I won't try anything with him. I don't even have time for romance"

"I've been thinking about asking him to move in with me but I dunno if it's too early. I mean we've been dating for nearly 10 months and he's so sweet, I just want to make pancakes for him every morning" Pancake baking and cuddles were the only love languages Patton knew.

"My longest relationship lasted 2 weeks so logically there are much better people to ask" Logan closed his hand into a fist "But godamn I agree it would be nice to wake up every day to lev's face"

He continued to playfully smack him "You hopeless homo!"

"We are literally both that but okay I won't disagree on facts"

Logan suddenly got a nosebleed as if he was a japanses schoolgirl in an anime seeing a hot guy. Actually it was from low iron levels in his blood aka malnurition. He got them almost every day. Patton handed over a handkerchief.

"Thanks" 

"No prob Bob"

"Why do you and Picani keep saying that?" Logan wondered if it was secret code for something.

"It's a reference. Like I've said we should have that steven universe marathon next time we have a movie night. And you should have a snack. The supermarket shouldn't be far from here" He stood up and held out his hand.

"One snack won't revert me from being malnourished" He muttered back.

"Then I'll get a snack!!"

"Fine" Logan sighed before taking his hand.

15 minutes later Patton was rapidly shifting his eyes between a package of marshmallow filled chocolates and a package of jam filled chocolates. The other man was leaning against the wall with the 3 coca cola zeros he was going to buy.

"I'm only gonna choose one so that I don't binge" Pat explained.

"Easy, calculate which one has least calories and buy that one" Lo replied as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

"Sweetiepie some people choose food after what is tastiest"

"Everything tastes good if you're hungry enough" He did a fingergun since Virgil had told that it was apparently cool.

As Patton choose the marsmallow chocolate and dropped it into the cart Logan looked on with an envious look. He missed food. That probably sounded whiny but he missed seeing food as well food instead of numbers. Why not just give up and recover and eat how much he wanted.

He shook that thought away. He'd had those kind of thoughts before and it always ended with binging and then panic attacks and fasting for severald days....But maybe this time it could be different. He wanted it to be.

He wanted to wake up and not be dizzy and exhausted and not be in constant hunger pain, pain from his ribs and headaches. He wanted to make breakfast and eat it like a normal person. He didn't want standing up to be a battle anymore. He didn't want to walk until his feet were bleeding to burn calories.

This time it had to be different.

"Why not get both? I'll pay for the other one" Logan said.

"Thanks Logie-bogie. Lo-bear. Lo-comotive. Lo-cal best guy ever"

"Ah puns. Exactly the thing I would like as thanks" He muttered sarcastically while looking around and actually not forcing all the thoughts about wanting to buy the food away.

He went around and grabbed everything he wanted to eat. White bread, milk chocolate, more candy, soda that wasn't zero cal, energy bars that wasn't low cal, cottage cheese, yoghurt.

Patton didn't say anything about the much fuller basket. He simply went up to the cashier and payed. They went outside and sat down on an icy and cold bench. Logan shuttered and moved his hands up and down his arms to generate heat. It didn't matter how many jackets he took on or how many scoldingly hot baths he took, he was always cold down to the bone.

The sound of something plastic opening made him look up. "Wanna try?" Patton asked while holding out a jam filled chocolate.

Logan stared at it and reminded himself that he wanted to eat it. His body didn't react. He continued to stare at it while feeling trapped in his own body. It took immense energy to force himself to grab the chocolate.

He bit off a fourth of it and let it stay on his tounge. He closed his eyes and leaned his head back. A giant rush of dopamine went up into his brain and it felt like he was experienced an sorry for the french but orgasmic kind of euphoria. Was he going to cry over a tiny piece of chocolate? No but his eyes would water because holy damn it has been more than a year and half sense he had any candy and that was only because he binged.

"That jam was so good" Logan sighed after swallowing it.

"Want another?" Patton had not expected for him to actually it.

But he did. And he ate another too. And another. And another. Just like he had been trapped in his body before he also was now. He wasn't controlling what food he picked up and put in his mouth. His body went on natural instict to eat everything in sight as fast as possible since it had been malnourished for so long so it didn't know when or if it would get to eat like this again.

Maybe he should have noticed that Patton didn't stop at that bag of candy like he said he would and tried to be a good friend and stop him. Instead he overate just like Logan which was just as unhealthy to him and his mental health as starving was for Lo. In the morning he would wake up and hate himself for never being able to control himself and in the morning his friend would feel the same exact way.

But right now if someone saw them from far away they were normal. Right now they were joking about stars communicating and sharing snacks. Right now they were just 2 friends having a fun night. Right now, in each others company they could pretend like their disorders didn't exists even though they were right now feeding into them.