Chapter Text
Changmin stuck his finger down his throat, hunched over the white porcelain, mint flush fresh pack oozing into the water with bile and chunks.
Two mars bars.
520 calories.
Fifteen Arnott’s chocolate chip cookies.
1129 calories.
Three quarters of a Hawaiian pizza, thin crust.
930 calories.
Half a block of Cadbury dairy milk chocolate.
362 calories.
Half a packet of Lay’s cheese and onion chips, large.
550 calories.
3491 calories in total.
Throwing it all up? Priceless.
Well. Changmin’s rubbed raw throat burnt by acid might have something to say about that. Everything has its price, Changmin thinks, so it’s not a big deal. The freshly opened purple blue scabs on his knuckles on his right hand aren’t a big deal. The fatigue, swollen cheeks, headaches, and tingling hands aren’t a big deal.
He’s okay. He’s okay, he’s okay, and he will be okay because he’s Shim Changmin.
He wiped the edges of his mouth with two fingers, bile spit and sweat coming off in strings. Spitting into the toilet and flushing his latest binge down the pipes, Changmin squeezed mint green toothpaste onto his brush, scrubbing at the vile taste. Changmin had memorised the way chocolate, his favourite, tasted when coming up. Numbness coated his fingers and filled the pit in his chest that he couldn’t manage to fill otherwise. Maybe that was cause for concern. But it worked, and Changmin wasn’t complaining.
Gentle buzzing fuzzed through his brain. With the guilt washed away with the water, he almost felt like a person again. Like he could feel himself passed the fat and disgustingness that was him.
“Stupid,” he whispered to the mirror with narrowed eyes and hate coursing through his veins like red fire. “Stupid, fat, ugly piece of shit. You’re disgusting. Why did you think eating all that was a good idea? Oh, right, ‘cause you’re fucking stupid and useless.”
His cheeks were swollen from his latest purge. “Look what you’ve done. You’re just wasting everyone’s time and making things harder for everyone. You can’t go out in public like this, you ugly fuck.”
It had been four days since his last binge and purge. Four days since nothing but water, green tea, and laxatives. And he’d been doing so well until today. The cravings and cramps had spiked at his stomach like thick pins, stabbing and stabbing until he caved and dug into his stash, buried beneath his hotel bed and crushed at the bottom of a spare suitcase. He raised a hand in the air and brought it down with a hard smack against his cheek, hard enough to turn his head and make his neck crick. And he brought that hand down again, and again, seven slaps against his puffy cheek. One last slap to his stomach. It stung.
He deserved it.
Splashing water over his face, Changmin unlocked the bathroom door and toed out into the hotel room he and Yunho were sharing.
“Feeling better?” Yunho asked with a sympathetic wince, looking up from his phone, glasses slipping from the bridge of his nose.
Grimacing, Changmin plopped onto his bed face first. “A bit. I think I’m going to have to see a doctor again about my stomach once we get home. It’s probably the apple I had, though. Acidic stuff does funny things to my stomach.”
The trick is to keep everything out in the open. As soon as you start trying to hide things, people notice. But when you overly inform people, they don’t get suspicious. You give them bone and they follow it like a starved dog. You have to never hide information. Tell everything.
Yunho hummed. “Yeah, your stomach’s probably just intolerant to some kinds of foods, like those people who can’t eat gluten.”
Changmin rolled onto his back and let out a sharp breath of air, hair blowing from his face. “It’s so annoying. I’m probably going to keep losing weight and look like a stick.” Satisfaction ran through his fingers and to his toes.
“Yeah.”
Yunho crossed over to Changmin’s bed, sitting on the edge and pinching the collar of Changmin’s shirt, leaning in for a kiss. His eyes were hooded.
Changmin turned his head away at the last second, so Yunho lips hit his cheek; cold. Pure fear ripped through Changmin, lips numb and knees slack. He couldn’t let Yunho touch him. He was made of bile and fat and disgusting rolls and lumps, and he could not let him see. He would think Changmin was disgusting. He would knead the fat, feel his imperfections.
So, “not tonight, yeah?”
He blinked then leant back, hurt.
He must’ve been sick of the excuses by now. ‘I’ve got a headache, I feel sick, I’m tired, I think I’ve caught a cold, can’t – too busy tomorrow'.
“Yeah, yeah okay.” He looked at the floor, like he wanted to say something else. Instead, he moved back to his own bed, shoulders slumped and neck craned down. He gave a smile, thin lipped and strained.
Changmin yanked the blankets over his head, his hot breath fanning over him.
How much longer would Yunho wait until he wanted answers?