Fizzy Tried. @fizzywashere87 - Tumblr Blog

Our Pas de deux

[ SYNOPSIS ] — When a careless comment triggers your eating disorder relapse, Megumi is left confused as to how to approach the situation until you leave him with no choice. w.c: 8k

[ PAIRING ] — bf!megumi fushiguro x ex-ballerina!reader

[ TAGS ] — fem!reader, non-sorcerer au, they are adults.

TW: eating disorder, body dysmorphia, food restrictions, guilt tripping (from reader), toxic ballet culture, angst w a happy ending, hurt/comfort, relapse and recovery, emotional confrontation, therapy is mentioned. art by: @/sa2men on twt.

[ A/N ] — THIS FIC IS A REQUEST! However, a similar idea has been sitting in my drafts for a very long time, I wrote it for myself first to help me with recovery, so I would like apologise to anon first if it doesn't match their request 100%. Thank you to however reads this, and for those that also struggle with their eating disorders, I want you to remember that you are worth more than your ed, it is difficult to navigate through life with it and I am very proud of those that continue to go on despite it. You matter and I love you.

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The lights were always too hot. That’s what you remembered most. Not the ache in your calves or the pinch of toe shoes, but the way the stage lights bore down on your shoulders like a judgment. You could feel them even before the curtain rose, a warmth that made your leotard feel two sizes too small.

You were the tallest in your class that year, which should have been an advantage. Long lines, your first instructor had said when you were six, pressing down on your shoulders to lengthen your neck. You have the bones for it. But somewhere between ten and eleven, your body had decided to curve in ways the other girls' hadn't yet. Your thighs thickened. Your hips spread just slightly, and suddenly your lines weren't so clean anymore.

"Again."

Madame Dupont's voice cut through the rehearsal studio like a blade. You were at the barre, sweat cooling on your neck, one hand resting on the wood that was slick from the last hour of work. The other girls had moved to their water bottles. You were supposed to join them.

"Just you," she clarified, and the room went quiet; it always did when someone was about to be made an example of. "The développé. I want to see it."

Your stomach clenched. The extension from passé to full arabesque required your leg to lift and hold, floating up as if it weighed nothing at all. The other girls could do it with a kind of effortless grace, their legs rising as if pulled by strings. Yours fought gravity every inch of the way.

You returned to the barre. You set your feet in fifth position and felt the tremor that was already starting in your standing leg. You lifted into passé, felt your thigh burn, and then extended.

You saw it in the mirror before you felt it, saw the slight wobble in your supporting ankle and the way your extended leg didn't quite reach the height the others achieved. Your hips tilted, compensating. Wrong. It was wrong.

"Enough." Madame Dupont didn't raise her voice. She never did. That was almost worse. "You see the problem, yes? The line breaks here." She pointed with her cane vaguely toward your thigh, toward your hip, and you felt your face flush hot. "It disrupts the whole silhouette. You are fighting your own body. A dancer cannot fight her body. A dancer's body is her instrument, and yours is… resistant."

You lowered your leg. The silence in the room was sticky, uncomfortable. You could feel the other girls not looking at you, which was somehow worse than if they'd stared.

"We will continue to work on this," Madame Dupont said, already turning away. "But you should consider whether the corps is perhaps a better fit for your physique. Skip dinner today; breakfast tomorrow too."

You nodded because that was what you did. You nodded and you didn't cry, not there, not until later in the bathroom stall with your hand pressed over your mouth so no one would hear.

The role was Giselle. The peasant girl who dies of a broken heart and becomes a spirit, all gossamer and grief. You wanted it so badly you could taste it, something metallic and desperate at the back of your throat.

You started skipping breakfast because it was the easiest meal to miss. Your mother left for work early, and she never checked the trash to see if you'd actually eaten the toast she laid out. Lunch was harder—the school cafeteria had monitors—but you learned to push food around your plate, to take bites so small they barely counted, to wrap things in napkins, and to bury them at the bottom of your bag.

The weight came off slowly at first, then faster. Your thighs stopped touching at the very top when you stood with your feet together, and you would stare at that gap in the mirror like it was proof of something. Proof that you could do this. Proof that your body wasn't resistant after all, that you could mold it into whatever shape you needed it to be.

Your développé improved. Madame Dupont noticed. She didn't praise you—she never praised anyone—but she stopped correcting you, and that felt the same. Better, even.

When the casting went up, you found your name at the top of the list. Giselle. You stared at it for so long that the letters started to blur and you had to blink hard to bring them back into focus. Your heart was pounding so fast you felt dizzy, but it was a good dizzy, a victorious dizzy.

You called your mother from the studio phone. She cried. You didn't.

The week before the performance, you stopped eating almost entirely. Just water, just black coffee, just the occasional apple cut into slices so thin you could see light through them. You were still hungry—you were always hungry—but hunger had started to feel like something else. Like discipline. Like control. Like the only thing standing between you and the corps, between you and Madame Dupont's dismissive cane waving at your unacceptable body.

Performance night. The theater was full. You could hear the murmur of the audience through the curtain, hundreds of people settling into velvet seats, program pages rustling. You stood in the wings in your white peasant dress, your heart hammering so hard you could feel it in your temples.

The first act went well. Your feet found their marks, and your arms traced the air the way you'd practiced a thousand times. The hunger was a hollow ache in your stomach, but you were floating above it, running on adrenaline and terror and the blinding heat of the lights.

And then, during your solo—the famous mad scene, Giselle's heart breaking—something went wrong.

It started as a lightness in your head, a kind of fizzing at the edges of your vision. The stage tilted. You tried to compensate, tried to keep dancing, because that was what you did; that was what Madame Dupont had drilled into you: you danced through pain, through exhaustion, through anything. The show didn't stop.

But your body stopped.

You didn't feel yourself fall. You only heard the collective inhale from three hundred people, a sound like all the air being sucked out of the room at once. And then nothing.

You woke up backstage. Someone had put a cold cloth on your forehead. Your mother was there, which didn't make sense because she was supposed to be in the audience; she was supposed to be watching you be brilliant. Her face was pale, and her eyes were red, and before you could ask what happened, you heard Madame Dupont's voice from somewhere above you, clipped and cold.

"This is what I was afraid of. I knew she wouldn't be fit for the role."

You closed your eyes again. You wished you hadn't woken up at all.

You quit ballet that summer. You told your mother it was because you'd lost your passion for it, and she believed you because she wanted to. She'd been scared by the fainting, scared by the sharp lines of your collarbones that had started showing through your skin. She took you to a doctor, then a therapist, then a nutritionist. You learned words like "disordered eating," "restriction cycle," and "refeeding," and you hated all of them because they made your control sound like illness.

But you got better. Sort of. You stopped counting calories and started counting other things—steps on your phone, laps in the pool, and miles on the treadmill. It wasn't the same, you told yourself. It was healthy. Everyone should exercise. Everyone should stay in shape. You ate three meals a day, reasonable portions, nothing extreme. You didn't weigh yourself more than once a month. You were fine. You were absolutely fine.

And then you met Megumi.

Megumi was quiet in a way that made you feel quiet, too, like his presence turned down the volume on the anxious voice that usually whispered in the back of your mind. He didn't talk much, but he listened, and he watched, and he noticed things. The first time he kissed you, his hand had come up to cup your jaw so gently that you'd almost cried. No one had ever touched you like that before, like you were something precious instead of something to be managed.

For two years, you were happy. Genuinely happy. You moved in together. You adopted a cat and rented until you could find an affordable apartment to buy; you lived in the same city as your friends, and work was close by. Life was great; it was supposed to be great. A life where food was just food, where your body was just your body, where the ghost of Madame Dupont's voice had faded to a whisper so faint you could almost forget it was there.

Almost.

Until one particular day, when Megumi left his phone unlocked on the kitchen counter while he was in the shower. You weren't snooping. You were looking for a takeout menu he'd mentioned saving, and his messages were right there, and you saw your name in a thread with one of his coworkers.

Megumi's girlfriend is sweet. She's a little bigger than I expected, though. I thought you only dated skinny girls lol

Your thumb had frozen over the screen. You read the message four times, each word burying itself into your chest like a splinter. The coworker who'd sent it—some guy named Tanaka who you'd met exactly once at a work happy hour, who poured you a drink and chatted your ear off until Megumi had to take you away—had probably forgotten he'd even typed it. It was a throwaway comment, the kind of casual cruelty people deployed without thinking.

Megumi's response had been immediate and cold: Don't talk about her like that. What the fuck is wrong with you?

But you barely registered his defense. All you could see was a little bigger than I expected, and suddenly you were twelve years old again, standing at the barre, Madame Dupont's voice in your ear. Your body is resistant.

You closed the phone. You put it back on the counter exactly where you'd found it. When Megumi came out of the shower, hair damp and all over his face, you smiled, asked if he still wanted Thai food, and walked towards him to dry his hair properly.

You ordered a salad. No dressing.

It crept back in slowly, the way it always did. You started by cutting out snacks, the mindless eating that happened while you and Megumi watched movies on the couch. He'd offer you a handful of popcorn, the bowl balanced on his knee, and you'd shake your head. "Not hungry." He'd frown, just slightly, but he wouldn't push. That was the thing about Megumi—he noticed, but he trusted you. He didn't know what to look for.

Then came the smaller portions. You'd cook dinner and serve yourself half of what you used to, pushing the rest around your plate until it looked like you'd eaten more than you had. You started skipping breakfast again, telling Megumi you'd grab something at work. You never did.

The hunger came back like an old friend. You'd missed it, in some twisted way you couldn't explain. The clarity it brought. The sense of control. Every time your stomach growled, it felt like one step closer to the finishing line.

Megumi started watching you more closely. You caught him tracking your plate with his eyes, noticing the way you cut your food into smaller and smaller pieces, the way you chewed each bite for too long. He didn't say anything, but his silences had always been louder than other people's words.

The dress was for Megumi's work gala, a formal thing at a hotel downtown that he'd been dreading for weeks. You'd offered to skip it, but he'd asked you to come—actually asked, his hand finding yours across the dinner table, his dark eyes serious. "I don't want to go alone," he'd said, and that was as close to "I need you" as Megumi ever got.

So you went shopping. Alone, because you wanted it to be a surprise.

The boutique was one of those places that smelled like expensive perfume and judgment, the kind of store where the saleswomen looked you up and down before deciding whether to help you. This one was young, maybe twenty-two, with a sleek ponytail and a name tag that read KARIN.

"Can I help you find something?" she asked, her tone suggesting she'd already decided you were a waste of her time.

"I'm looking for a formal dress. Cocktail length, maybe. Black or dark blue."

She nodded and pulled a few options from the racks. Most of them were fine. Nothing special. And then she held up a dress that made your breath catch—deep emerald green, silk, with a neckline that plunged just enough to be interesting and a skirt that would hit just below the knee. It was beautiful. It was exactly the kind of dress that would make Megumi's eyes go soft and startled the way they did when you surprised him.

"Can I try this one?"

Karin glanced at the tag, then at you. "We have it in a six. What size are you usually?"

"Eight, I think."

She looked at you again, longer this time. Her mouth pursed slightly at the corner. "This brand runs small. You might want to try the ten."

The ten. You felt heat crawl up the back of your neck. "I'd like to try the eight, please."

"Sure." Her shrug was almost imperceptible. "Just so you know, our return policy on formal wear is strict. If you rip a seam trying to force it…"

She let the sentence hang. You took the dress from her hand.

In the fitting room, you pulled the dress off the hanger and stepped into it. It got stuck at your hips. You tugged, harder than you should have, and heard the awful sound of fabric straining. You tried the zipper. It wouldn't go past your ribs. You sucked in hard and pulled, and the zipper moved another inch before it jammed completely.

You looked at yourself in the mirror. The dress was half-on, bunched around your waist, the zipper gaping open over your back. The silk was creased from your efforts. Your face was flushed and your eyes were bright, which warned of tears. You looked exactly like you felt: like a failure.

You couldn't get the dress off fast enough. You practically tore it over your head, not caring about the seams, and shoved it back on the hanger. You pulled your own clothes on with shaking hands. When you pushed through the curtain, Karin was there, one eyebrow already raised.

"Not quite right," you managed, your voice tight. "I'll keep looking."

"Of course." She took the dress from you, and you didn't miss the way her eyes flicked down your body and back up. "Let me know if you want to try any of our extended sizes. We keep them in the back."

You left without buying anything. On the sidewalk outside, the sun was too bright and the air was too warm, and you couldn't breathe properly. You pulled out your phone and texted Megumi with fingers that still trembled.

Didn't find anything. The dress wasn't really my style anyway.

His response came quickly, because Megumi always responded quickly to you: We can look somewhere else this weekend.

It's fine, you typed back. I'll figure something out.

You stopped at the gym on your way home. You ran until your legs burned and your lungs ached and the voice in your head finally, mercifully, went quiet.

For the next two weeks, you ate less than you ever had, less than you had even during the ballet years. You started tracking again, not calories but something simpler: how long you could go between meals, how light you could make each plate, and how many times you could say I'm not hungry before Megumi stopped believing you, because now you had Megumi to worry about too.

He stopped believing you around day four.

"You didn't eat lunch," he said one evening, leaning against the kitchen counter while you washed dishes that didn't need washing. It wasn't a question.

"I had a big breakfast."

"You had black coffee."

You scrubbed harder at a plate that was already clean. "I wasn't hungry."

"You're never hungry anymore." His voice was level, controlled, but you could hear the worry underneath. You'd known him long enough to recognize the signs—the slight tension in his jaw and the way his hands were shoved deep in his pockets like he was trying to keep them still. "What's going on?"

"Nothing's going on. God, Megumi, can't I just not be hungry sometimes?"

He didn't answer. When you turned around, he was still watching you, his dark eyes unreadable. But he didn't push. He never pushed, not then.

You wished to God he had.

The dress from the boutique haunted you. You dreamed about it—the emerald silk, the way it had refused to close over your body, Karin's knowing look. You started visiting the boutique's website late at night when Megumi was asleep, scrolling through the product photos, reading the size chart over and over until the numbers blurred together.

And then, the light at the end of the tunnel. The scale—the one you'd bought in secret and hidden under the bathroom sink—showed a number you hadn't seen since you were seventeen. Your stomach was concave in the mornings. Your hip bones jutted out just slightly, a silhouette you'd almost forgotten you could achieve. You were tired all the time, and your head ached constantly, and you felt like you were made of glass, but the number on the scale kept dropping, and that was the only thing that mattered.

"The boutique got a new shipment," you told Megumi one morning, your voice carefully casual. "They have a dress I want to try. Can we go before dinner with Yuuji and Nobara?"

He looked at you for a long moment. "The place you went before?"

"Yeah."

"I thought you said the dresses there weren't your style."

"They got new things in. Please? It won't take long."

He agreed. You could tell he wanted to ask more, but you were already pulling on your coat, already moving toward the door, and he followed because he loved you. That was the problem. He loved you enough to trust you even when he shouldn't.

The boutique was the same. The same perfume-scented air, the same whisper of judgment. Karin was there, too, her ponytail as sleek as ever, and she recognized you immediately.

"Back again?" she asked, and there was something almost amused in her voice. "Looking for anything specific?"

"The green dress. The silk one. I want to try it again."

She retrieved it from the rack without comment. The same dress. The same size. Eight. You took it to the fitting room with your heart hammering so hard you could feel your pulse in your throat.

The dress slid over your hips like water. The zipper pulled up smoothly, without resistance. You stood in front of the mirror and stared at your reflection, at the way the emerald silk draped over your collarbones and skimmed your waist and fell to just below your knees. It fit. It fit perfectly. It fit better than perfectly—there was room to spare.

You pushed open the heavy, stepping out onto the showroom floor. Megumi was standing near the register, scrolling through his phone, looking deeply out of place among the tulle and chiffon. When he looked up and saw you, his expression went through a rapid series of micro-expressions you couldn’t quite track. Surprise. Shock. And then, something else. Something dark and devastating that should have been happiness but wasn’t.

Before he could even open his mouth to speak, Karin appeared at your elbow.

“Oh, wow,” she said, and her voice was entirely different now—warm, enthusiastic, the sycophantic voice of someone who saw a fat commission check. “That looks amazing on you. I told you this brand runs small, right? You’ve clearly been putting in the work since last time. It’s really paid off.”

You preened. You couldn’t help it. The validation from this stranger was like a drug. You’d done it. You’d proven her wrong. You’d proven Tanaka wrong. You’d proven Madame Dupont wrong.

You turned to Megumi, beaming, expecting to see the awe you felt. “What do you think?”

He was staring at you. But he wasn’t looking at the beautiful dress. He was looking at you. He was looking at the bruised hollows under your cheekbones, the sharp, jutting angles of your shoulders, and the way your wrists looked so thin and fragile hanging out of the short sleeves. His face was pale, his jaw was clamped tight enough to crack his teeth, and his eyes—

His eyes looked horrified.

"Can we talk outside?" he asked, his voice very quiet.

Your smile faltered. "What's wrong? Doesn't it look good?"

"We'll talk outside." He turned to Karin, and his expression was so cold that she actually took a step back. "We're not buying anything. Thank you."

He walked out. You had no choice but to change back into your own clothes and follow, your cheeks burning, confusion and anger already starting to curdle in your stomach.

He didn't say a word in the car. The silence was thick and suffocating, and you spent the whole drive working yourself up, building a case for yourself, preparing for the fight you could feel coming. By the time you got home, you were almost vibrating with defensive fury.

He threw his keys into the bowl. You whirled on him before he could even take off his jacket.

"What the hell was that?"

"You know what that was." His voice was still quiet, still controlled, but there was a tremor underneath it now. "How much weight have you lost?"

"I don't know. A few pounds. Why do you care?"

"A few pounds." He repeated the words like he couldn't believe you'd said them. "You've lost more than a few pounds. Your clothes don't fit anymore. You don't eat. You haven't eaten a real meal in front of me in weeks."

"I eat. I just—"

"You just what? Push food around your plate? Tell me you're not hungry? Hide in the bathroom after meals?" He stepped closer, and you saw that his hands were shaking. Megumi's hands never shook. He was the calmest person you ever knew. "I'm not stupid. I've been watching this happen for weeks, and I didn't say anything because I thought—I don't fucking know what I thought. That you'd talk to me. That you'd trust me."

"This has nothing to do with trust. This is my body." You heard your voice rising, cracking, but you couldn't stop it. "I'm allowed to lose weight if I want to. I'm allowed to want to look good. You don't get to control what I do with my body."

"Control?" He looked like you'd slapped him. "You think this is about control? You're starving yourself. You're literally disappearing in front of me, and you think I'm trying to control you?"

"You're not happy for me! I finally fit into that dress, and you couldn't even pretend to be happy for me. You dragged me out of there like I'd done something wrong. You're supposed to support me. You're supposed to be on my side, and you're not! Some kind of boyfriend you are"

The words left your mouth and landed like a physical blow. Megumi's face went blank for a second, completely blank, and then something behind his eyes seemed to splinter.

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" he repeated, his voice dangerously low. "I'm a terrible boyfriend because I don't clap and cheer while you starve yourself into a dress size?"

"You don't get it—"

"No, I don't get it!" His voice finally rose, cracking through the apartment like a whip. "I don't get how you can look at yourself and not see what I see. I don't get how you can think this—" he gestured disapprovingly towards your hips, the same Madame Dupont did"—is something to be proud of. And I sure as hell don't get how I'm the villain for being terrified that the person I love is killing herself right in front of me."

"I'm not killing myself! God, you're so dramatic! I lost some weight. People lose weight all the time. That just shows I have discipline. It means I set a goal and I reached it, and you can't stand that because it wasn't about you."

"About me?" He let out a laugh that had no humor in it, sharp and jagged. "You think any of this is about me? I don't care what size you are. I have never cared what size you are. I care that you're lying to me, hiding from me, flinching every time I touch you because you're afraid I'll feel your bones. I care that you can't eat a meal without looking like you're about to cry. But sure, I'm the terrible boyfriend. I'm the one who's wrong here."

"You are wrong! You're wrong to make me feel like this—like I'm crazy. I'm finally happy with how I look. I'm finally in control. And you want to take that away from me because it makes you uncomfortable."

"Because it's not control!" He was almost shouting now, his composure completely gone, his dark eyes blazing. "You're not controlling anything; all you're doing is punishing yourself for something that was never your fault, and you're so deep in it you can't even see it anymore. You think that saleswoman's compliment means something? She's a stranger. She doesn't give a shit about you. I'm the one who's been here, every day, watching you vanish. I'm the one who loves you. And you're calling me terrible?"

You opened your mouth to fire back, to say something cruel and cutting that would make him hurt the way you were hurting, but before you could, your phone's ringtone echoed over the room.

Nobara's contact photo lit up the screen, her grinning face an absurd contrast to the anger crackling in the room. You grabbed the phone with shaking hands.

"Where are you guys?" Nobara's voice was full with impatience. "Yuuji's been waiting for like twenty minutes, and the waitress keeps giving us dirty looks."

You couldn't speak for a moment. Your throat was too tight. Megumi was still standing across from you, his chest heaving, his hands clenched into fists at his sides so tightly that his knuckles turned white.

"We're on our way," you managed, and hung up before she could ask questions.

The silence that followed was heavy enough to crush you. Megumi stared at you for a long, awful moment. His anger hadn't cooled—if anything, it had settled into something more brittle. Something that looked like hurt dressed up as fury.

"We're going to this dinner," he said, his voice flat and cold in a way you'd never heard directed at you before. "And when we get home, you are going to tell me exactly what's going on."

He grabbed his jacket from the hook by the door. He didn't even look at you.

"Fine," you bit out, even though nothing about this was fine. Nothing had been fine for weeks, and you were both too angry and too scared to admit it.

The restaurant was one of those cozy ramen shops that Yuuji had discovered and then insisted everyone try, the kind of place with steam-fogged windows and the smell of pork broth so rich it made your head swim the moment you walked in. Your stomach cramped at the smell—hunger, always hunger—and you pressed your hand against your abdomen like you could quiet it through sheer force of will.

Yuuji and Nobara were already at a booth near the back, Yuuji's pink hair sticking up in its usual disarray. He had already ordered an array of appetizers, little plates spread across the table like a buffet, and his face lit up when he spotted the two of you walking toward him.

"Finally!" He was already scooting over to make room, patting the booth seat enthusiastically. "I was starting to think you guys got abducted by aliens or something. Sit, sit—I ordered like half the menu; we're gonna feast."

You slid into the booth across from him and Nobara. Megumi sat beside you, close enough that his shoulder could have brushed yours, but he kept careful distance. The cold fury from the apartment still radiated off him in waves you could almost feel, and you were still simmering with your own anger, your own hurt. Neither of you had spoken in the car. Neither of you looked at each other now.

Nobara, sharp-eyed as ever, clocked the tension immediately. She looked from your tight expression to Megumi's rigid jaw, and something flickered across her face—recognition, maybe, or concern—but she didn't say anything. She just took a pointed sip of her drink and let her gaze slide over to Yuuji, who was blessedly, mercifully oblivious.

"So," Yuuji said, pushing a plate of gyoza toward the center of the table, "I've been thinking about this all day. The pork ramen here is supposed to be life-changing. Like, actually life-changing. The guy who owns this place trained in Sapporo for like twenty years. I'm gonna get the big bowl. Who's with me?"

"I'll stick with the miso," Nobara said.

"Lame. What about you?" He looked at you, eyes bright with expectation. "You always get the good stuff. Remember that time we split the tonkotsu at that place in Shinjuku and you ate like three quarters of it? I was so impressed."

The memory hit you like a punch to the chest. That had been over a year ago, before the message on Megumi's phone, before Karin and the emerald dress, before the hunger had crawled back into your bones and made a home there. You'd laughed that night, laughed so hard you'd snorted broth out your nose, and Yuuji had nearly fallen off his chair, and Megumi had watched you both with that quiet, soft expression he got when he was looking at his favourite people.

Now you couldn't even look at the menu without your stomach twisting into knots.

"I'm not super hungry," you said, your voice too bright, too brittle. "I'll probably just get a salad or something."

"A salad?" Yuuji looked personally offended. "At a ramen place? That's like going to a sushi restaurant and ordering chicken nuggets. Come on, at least get the small bowl. We can share!"

He was already pushing a menu toward you, grinning, and the gesture was so warm, so Yuuji, so completely unaware of the landmine he was stepping on—and still the panic rose in your chest. The thought of a full bowl of ramen, rich and heavy and swimming with oil, of putting that much food into your body, of undoing weeks of work in a single meal—

"I said I'm not hungry." The words came out sharper than you intended, an edge of warning.

Yuuji blinked, his grin faltering just slightly. "Okay, okay, no pressure. But if you change your mind, you can totally steal some of mine. I always order too much anyway." He nudged the plate of gyoza closer to you. "At least have one of these while we wait. They're the garlic kind you like."

It was such a small thing. Such an innocent, generous thing. A friend offering to share his food, the way he'd done a hundred times before, the way you'd always accepted before. But now the sight of the gyoza—golden and glistening with oil—made your stomach heave with a mixture of hunger and revulsion and fear so intense it felt like drowning.

"I don't want one," you said, your voice tight.

"Are you sure? They're really good—"

"I said I don't want one, Yuuji!" Your voice cracked across the table like a slap. "Why can't you just leave me alone? Why does everyone keep trying to force food on me like I can't make my own decisions?"

The silence that followed was deafening. The couple at the next table turned to look. Nobara's drink paused halfway to her lips. And Yuuji—sweet, kind, wonderful Yuuji, who had never done anything but try to make you smile—looked at you with an expression of such genuine, wounded confusion that you felt something inside you shatter.

"I was just…" He trailed off, his hand still hovering near the gyoza plate, his brow furrowed. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to push. I just thought… you always liked sharing food with me before…"

The hurt in his voice was unbearable. You couldn't sit there another second. You couldn't look at his face or Nobara's sharp eyes or the plate of gyoza that was still steaming innocently between you. You shoved yourself out of the booth so fast you nearly tripped, your hip catching the edge of the table and rattling the glasses.

"Bathroom," you choked out, and fled.

The bathroom was small and brightly lit and smelled like cheap floral air freshener. You locked yourself in the stall and pressed your back against the door and slid down until you were sitting on the floor, your knees pulled up to your chest, your hands pressed so hard against your mouth you could feel your teeth through your lips.

What had you done? What had you done?

Yuuji's face kept replaying in your mind—the way his smile had crumbled, the way he'd apologized even though he hadn't done anything wrong, the way his hand had hovered there, frozen, still trying to give you something you'd thrown back in his face. He was the kindest person you'd ever met. He was Megumi's best friend. He was your friend. And you'd just humiliated him in the middle of a restaurant for offering you a dumpling.

Your breathing was coming in ragged, shallow gasps now, your vision blurring at the edges. You were ruining everything. You were ruining your relationship, ruining your friendships, and ruining yourself. You couldn't eat, and you couldn't not eat, and either way, you were failing. Either way, you were too much and not enough at the same time.

You didn't know how long you sat there. Time had gone strange. But at some point, you became aware of voices outside—not in the bathroom, but somewhere nearby, muffled through the wall. One of them was Megumi's.

"…didn't do anything wrong. She's going through something. It's not about you." His voice was low and steady, but there was a protective edge to it, a warning.

Yuuji's voice, still sounding small and confused: "I know, I just… is she okay? What did I say? I don't know what I said, I didn't mean to upset her."

"It's really nothing to do with you,". Megumi's tone softened, just slightly. "You didn't do anything wrong, Yuuji. I mean it. I'll go check on her. Just… give us a minute."

You heard footsteps. Then a knock on the bathroom door, firm and familiar.

"It's me." Megumi's voice, closer now, right outside. "Open the door."

"Go away." Your voice came out raw and scraped, barely recognizable.

"You know I'm not going to do that."

You pressed your forehead against your knees. You could feel the cold from the tile seeping through your jeans. You didn't answer.

A pause. Then, quieter: "Yuuji's not upset with you. He's worried. Nobara too. They're not mad. They just want to know you're okay."

"They should be mad. I yelled at him for no reason. I'm a terrible person."

"You're not a terrible person. You're going through shit, they understand." The door creaked slightly, like he was leaning against it. "Do you want to leave?"

The question was so soft, so careful, that it cut through the spiral of panic in your head. You lifted your head from your knees. The fluorescent light was too bright, making spots dance in your vision.

"Yes," you whispered.

"Okay. I'll talk to them. Meet me outside in five minutes. Can you do that?"

You nodded, even though he couldn't see you. "Yeah."

"Okay." His voice gentled even further, the anger from earlier completely absent now, replaced by tenderness wrapped in exhaustion. "Five minutes. I'll be waiting."

You heard him push away from the door. You heard his footsteps retreat.

You sat there for another minute, maybe two, until your breathing evened out and your hands stopped shaking enough that you could unlock the stall. You splashed cold water on your face. You looked at yourself in the mirror—really looked—and for the first time in weeks, you saw what Megumi saw. The hollow cheeks. The sharp collarbones. The way your eyes seemed too big for your face, too bright, too hungry.

You looked like you did back then, standing in the wings, about to faint on stage.

You looked like you needed help.

Megumi was waiting outside, leaning against the wall with his hands in his pockets and his face tilted up toward the dark sky. The night air was cool, a welcome relief against your flushed skin. He didn't say anything when you appeared. He just pushed off the wall and started walking toward the car, and you followed him, and the silence between you was different now. Heavier. More honest.

He drove. You didn't ask where you were going. You didn't care. You watched the streetlights pass and tried to find the words for what you needed to say. The fight replayed in your head on a loop—the things you'd thrown at him, the accusations, the way he'd finally broken and yelled back. And then the dinner. Yuuji's face.

"Megumi."

"Yeah."

"I'm sorry." Your voice was small, raw. "What I said back at the apartment—implying you are a terrible boyfriend—I didn't mean it. I was angry. I was defensive. But I shouldn't have said it. And what I did to Yuuji… God, Megumi, I yelled at him for trying to share his food with me. What is wrong with me?"

He didn't look at you, but his jaw tightened. "You really think I want to control you?"

"No. I know you don't. I just… I couldn't see past myself. I couldn't see what I was doing to you. To us. To everyone." Your voice cracked, and you had to pause and swallow hard. "I'm sorry I made you feel like you were the problem. You're not. You've never been the problem."

He exhaled slowly, a long breath that seemed to carry some of the tension out of his shoulders. "I shouldn't have yelled at you either. I just… I've been so scared. For weeks, I've been watching this happen and feeling completely helpless, and today, seeing you in that dress, seeing how happy you were about something that's hurting you so badly… I didn't know what to do with that. I handled it wrong."

"We both did."

Silence again. But it was softer now, less jagged. He pulled the car over to the side of the road, a quiet residential street lined with dark houses and sleeping trees. He killed the engine and turned to face you, and in the dim light from the streetlamp, you could see the exhaustion in his face, the shadows under his eyes, the redness around them.

"Talk to me," he said. "Please. What's going on?"

So you told him.

You told him everything. The ballet. Madame Dupont. The fainting. The way the audience's gasp had echoed in your dreams for years afterward. The slow, painful process of trying to fix your relationship with food, and how fragile that fix had always been, how it had only ever been held together with discipline and denial and the refusal to look too closely at your own thoughts.

You told him about the message on his phone. A little bigger than I expected. You told him about Karin, about the dress, about the way her look had gutted you. You told him about the scale hidden under the bathroom sink and the hunger that felt like an achievement and the way you'd convinced yourself that disappearing was the only way to be worthy of him. You told him about the voice that lived in the back of your head, the one that sounded like Madame Dupont, the one that whispered not good enough, never good enough, resistant, too much, take up less space, be less, be less.

By the time you finished, you were crying. Ugly, messy sobs that made your chest heave and your nose run. Megumi had pulled the car over fully, and now he was just sitting there, his face pale and stricken.

"I didn't know," he said, his voice hoarse. "I knew something was wrong. The message on my phone—I could never tell you about it, I didn't want to upset you, so I just deleted it and moved on, and all this time you knew."

"It wasn't your fault. It wasn't about you. It's this… thing in my head. It never really went away. I just got better at ignoring it, and then I couldn't anymore."

"I don't know how to stop. I don't know how to eat like a normal person. Every time I try, it all comes back, and I can't—I can't do it alone, Megumi. I've been trying to do it alone and I can't."

"Tell me what you need. Tell me what to do."

"I don't know what I need."

"Okay. Then we'll figure it out together." His hand catching yours in a warm grasp, "I'm not going anywhere. I don't care how long this takes. I don't care how hard it is. I love you. Not some version of you that fits into a dress or some version of you that doesn't eat. You. All of you. The one who watches bad reality TV and steals the blankets and makes fun of me for using too much conditioner. The one who shared tonkotsu with Yuuji and laughed so hard broth came out her nose. That's who I want. That's who I've always wanted."

You were crying again, harder now, but it felt different. More like relief than heartache.

"I'm scared," you whispered.

"I know." He pulled you against his chest, one hand cradling the back of your head, the other wrapped around your waist. "But we can find a professional if you want; we can look. If you don't, I'll look for how I can help from here. Whatever needs to be done, we will do it. I just want you to know that I love you no matter what, it doesn't matter how much you eat or even less. I could not care about it, I just want you to be safe, and healthy and actually live for yourself, that's all I ever wanted."

You stayed like that for a long time, wrapped around each other in the front seat of his car while the streetlights flickered overhead. You could feel his heartbeat against your cheek, steady and solid and real. You could feel his hands on your back, gentle but grounding, like he was afraid you'd disappear if he let go.

When you finally pulled back, your face was a mess and your head ached and you were so tired you could barely keep your eyes open. But something in your chest felt lighter. Something that had been wound tight for years and years had loosened, just a little.

"Megumi?"

"Yeah?"

"Can we go home?"

He kissed your forehead, soft and lingering. "Yeah. Let's go home."

He made you food when you got back to the apartment. Nothing complicated—rice and steamed vegetables and a piece of salmon he'd been saving for tomorrow. He put the plate in front of you and sat down across the table and waited.

You stared at the food. Your stomach clenched. Every instinct you'd been feeding for the past month screamed at you to push it away, to make an excuse, to retreat.

Megumi reached across the table and took your hand. His fingers were warm and steady.

"Just one bite," he said. "That's it. Just one. You need to start slow since your stomach most likely shrunk.

You picked up your fork. Your hand was shaking, but his hand was steady, and when you lifted the first bite to your mouth, he squeezed your fingers.

"Good," he said, his voice soft and certain. "That's good. You're doing so well. Keep going."

You took another bite. And another. The food felt heavy in your stomach, foreign, but Megumi didn't let go of your hand the whole time. He kept murmuring quiet encouragements, little things like I'm proud of you, and just one more bite, and you're so strong, you have no idea how strong you are. And when you finally put down your fork with half the plate still uneaten, he didn't push. He just brought your hand to his lips and kissed your knuckles.

"I'm proud of you," he said again.

And for the first time in a very very long time, you believed it.

Later, curled against his chest in bed, the cat purring at the foot of the duvet, you felt his hand trace gentle patterns on your shoulder blade.

"We'll call someone tomorrow," he said quietly. "A therapist. Someone who knows how to help with this. I'll go with you if you want. I'll wait in the lobby. Whatever you need."

You didn't answer. You weren't sure you could. The words were there somewhere, tangled up behind the exhaustion, but before you could force them out, Megumi was already moving.

He shifted onto his side and pulled you with him, settling you against his chest like it was the most natural thing in the world. One arm slid beneath your head, the other wrapped around your waist and tugged you in until there was no space left between you. He tucked his face into the crook of your neck and stayed there, his breath slow and even against your skin.

"I mean it," he said, quieter now. "Whatever you need."

A kiss, pressed just below your ear. Then another, softer, at the curve of your jaw. His hand moved up your back in a slow line, palm warm through the thin fabric of your shirt.

"You don't have to say anything right now," he murmured. "Just… stay here. Let me hold you. Okay?"

You managed a small nod, your throat too tight for words. He felt it. His arms tightened around you in response, solid and steady.

"I'm not going anywhere," he said. "This—us—it's not conditional. It never was. You don't have to be fine for me to love you."

You turned your face into his chest, and he let you. His hand came up to cradle the back of your head, fingers threading gently through your hair. He didn't shush you. He didn't fill the silence with empty comfort. He just held you, anchored you, while your breathing slowly steadied against his heartbeat.

After a long moment, his lips found your forehead. The kiss was unhurried, deliberate, like he had nowhere else to be.

"You ate tonight," he said quietly. "It was a start. That's all that matters, and I am really happy you did."

He shifted, pulling the duvet up around your shoulders and tucking it in with one hand while the other kept you pressed firmly against him. His leg hooked over yours under the covers, tangling you together in a way that felt less like restraint and more like a promise.

"Get some sleep," he said. "I've got you."

You felt his hand resume its slow pattern on your back, tracing absent shapes through the fabric of your shirt. His chin rested against the top of your head. His heartbeat was steady beneath your ear.

"I love you," he said. Simple. Certain. Not a reassurance he was waiting to have validated, just a fact he needed you to know.

You closed your eyes, and let yourself get lulled to sleep by the sound of his heartbeat.