Work Text:
Nesting
Fruits went first. That’s not how it went the last time; fruits were good, nonfat, healthy and only a few calories each to boot. But they carried memories in ways that other foods did not, and I couldn’t find it in myself to carry on with them.
Raspberries were first to go: I tasted nothing on my tongue except for regret. Later, oranges. I’d always had a hard time swallowing them because they still burnt the back of my throat with their acid. Close my eyes and all I could see was the ocean, when I tasted blackberries, so those were gone too. I could not taste without longing, and I hated longing.
I didn’t, exactly, see this as restricting again. It wasn’t restricting. If it was I would be cutting down on other things too and I wasn’t. Considering Scorpius had just left me and I was living by myself, I actually congratulated myself on doing such a good job.
After fruits went breads. Muffins and pancakes and loaves and any sort of grain. They, also, carried too much weight. I ate them and became dense. And they, too, had an uncanny ability of carrying memories. Rye tasted of nothing except tears.
No problems here, I told my parents. I’m totally fine. Meeting my goal weight. Seeing the Healers weekly. I was not fine, I was not meeting my goal weight, and I was not seeing the Healers weekly. None of this was intentional, exactly.
“Are you sure you’re fine?”
“Yes.” (No.)
“Okay. We trust you.” (You shouldn't.)
“Thanks, Mum. I have to go. I’m getting lunch with a friend.” (Lying.)
“Lunch?”
“Yes, lunch. Don’t jinx it.” (Too late.)
“Well. Have a good time, Lucy. Your dad says hi.”
“Hi, Dad.” (Can’t bring yourself to look at me.)
Head out of the fireplace. Sit on the couch for an hour.
When Scorpius left I hadn’t known what to do. I’d continued eating because it was a matter of sheer habit by then. I was not good at being healthy. But I was good about being gung ho about Recovery and Life and my Great Purpose. I had even started to believe the things I was spouting out, bright-eyed and wistful.
Scorpius had understood, I thought. With the father he had and the family I had, he had known what I meant. I mean when I said that my great purpose would never measure up to the things that the rest of my family had done. I could try the rest of my life and never defeat a Voldemort, so I didn’t quite see the point.
*
I stopped going to the weekly Healer visits. I didn’t mean to. I had to reschedule one because of work, another because I had a coinciding appointment. Then as a whole stopped going all together.
Here is what my last chart reads: “Lucy refuses to have weight taken. Says she has been taking daily potions but symptoms do not appear to coincide. Shows interest in terminating treatment. Suspicion of reemerging eating disorder.”
I was nineteen years old. I was not determined critically or mentally ill. In fact for the most part I was still following the plan that Healer Patil had worked out for me. I did not have to do anything that I didn’t want to do. So I just stopped showing up. A Howler later and I was clear. I was free to do whatever I wanted to. Grandiosely, I thought that my recovery had been all about making choices. I was just choosing to not eat.
This I remember. I was at home with Roxy. I hadn’t planned on it, but she was better at keeping tabs on me than I was and she knew that I was due for some kind of afternoon snack. She did it for me. Took out bananas, a cereal bar, a glass of milk.
I was okay, I told Roxy, I’ll eat later, having that snack was just for weight restoration. (I was a liar.) She told me as much. Then I went into full-on hysteria. I screamed as loudly as I could that I COULD NOT EAT IT, it WASN’T SAFE, DAMMIT MY DAY HAS BEEN HARD ENOUGH ALREADY ROXY. I pushed the plate away, spilled the milk all over the floor, ran out of the flat into the cold. Barefoot. I would rather die of frostbite than eat a banana.
There was no problem. Well, there wouldn’t have been if Scorpius hadn’t left.
*
“You blame Scor for everything,” Rose told me. We were out for coffee. Well, she was. I was drinking tea too-slowly, pulling the warmth from the mug into my cold hands. No milk, no sugar. Water and leaves.
“I’m not,” I said. “But he understood. And now no one does anymore.”
“Stop being so fucking melancholy,” Rose said. “He wasn’t endgame. Get over it. You have lots of us left. You have me, you have Roxy, you have Lysander. You have your therapists if you would just go talk to them – and would you just fucking drink your tea, Luce-”
“I am drinking it,” I said. “I’m not hungry.”
“You’re fucked up,” said Rose. “You need help again.”
I was not ready to hear the truth bombs that Rose somehow managed to come out with every time she spoke. They hurt like hell, and I was already hurting myself enough. “I don’t want help. I’m fine Rose, really. I just have a sore throat. Give me a few days. I don’t want help.” I repeated myself. Just so she knew I was sure. “I want Scorpius.”
Rose had to visibly try to keep from rolling her eyes at me. “I’m sorry you have a sore throat, Luce. But you have to fucking get over Scorpius.”
“But-”
“No,” said Rose, waving her hand and taking a sip of her drink. “I’m sorry, Lucy, but you need to listen to me. Scorpius has nothing to do with the way you’re acting right now. Maybe you romanticized him and fixed yourself for a while for him, but you have to fix yourself for you now, Lucy. You have to.”
“I am fixed,” I said petulantly. (What I really wanted to say, but would not in front of Rose: what was the point in being fixed? I did not understand.)
Rose sighed. “There’s nothing I can do, Lucy. I’m not your guardian angel. But neither is Scorpius. You have to know that.”
“I do,” I said. I lied.
*
“I’ve got another job, Roxy.”
“Another one?” (Yes. Another one. Third in as many months.)
“Where?”
“Sales clerk at the Apothecary? Diagon Alley?”
“You hated Potions, Lucy.” I had. It was that or the Three Broomsticks though, and when it came to supplies or food, I think we both knew which I hated more. Small pause. “Lucy? I think that’s where Scorpius works.”
I stopped answering.
I was hypervigilant when I worked. I did not like delegation. Everything that occurred was my responsibility or it was done wrong. I saw this as a positive attribute – something I didn’t have many of. But it always inevitably led to my firing because I was not a team player. I was always hopping from job to job. Won’t be long here anyway before I’m out of the way of Scorpius. I didn’t take up much space at all, really.
*
“I’m Katie,” said the supervisor. “I’m in charge here, which means if you need anything, you shoot up sparks, okay?”
“Okay,” I said, glancing around. I hadn’t really looked into whether Scorpius was really working here, hoping that Roxy had been wrong and that he didn’t.
“I’m going to let Scorpius show you around, okay, Lucy?” Katie asked. I heard Scorpius’ name and didn’t reply for a few seconds. (It was that and that I was immensely tired because I hadn’t slept and hadn’t eaten for about a day.) “Lucy?”
“Yeah,” I said, coming to. “Yeah, okay.”
“Hey, Luce,” Scorpius said, waving to me from across the store. I looked back for Katie, but she was gone. I wasn’t sure where she had gone.
“Hey,” I said, walking to him and trying to avoid knocking over something unidentified. I had to catch myself when I lost my balance only once.
“You’ve gotten thin,” he told me, and I cringed. That was maybe number one on the list of things Not to Say.
“Not really,” I said, looking down, shuffling my feet.
“Lucy,” he sighed.
“What? I’m fucking fine, Scorpius. You’re the one who dumped me.”
“You don’t have to get all defiant,” he said. “I don’t have to be around you constantly to tell you that you’re not the same.”
“Just show me around,” I said. I wasn’t trying to push the topic; I wasn’t interested in lying to Scorpius. I wasn’t completely sure why. I was telling myself, deep in the back of my mind, that I wasn’t going to lie to him. I reasoned this with: because when we got back together I didn’t want to have lies standing between us. But that wasn’t why, because I wasn’t actively planning on letting him take me back.
Maybe, I thought – later – I was just tired of lying.
*
“Lucy,” Katie said, snapping her fingers in front of my face. “Lucy, I swear to Merlin. You’re so bloody out of it, it hurts. Put the damn books on the shelves and go home, please. Take a nap. Drink a smoothie.”
“I’m fine,” I said, coming to. “Really. I can stay.”
Katie rolled her eyes. “You look like you’re going to pass out. Go home. It’s not the end of the world, Lucy, really.”
I put the new books onto the shelf methodically. I picked up my purse. I began to walk to the front door of the store.
I did not make it to the threshold before I collapsed.
This was not the first time that I had passed out. I wasn’t blaming it on eating – I was still following the plan, after all, barring the complete deletion of fat from my diet. But it was the first time that I had fainted with no prior warning. Before this, my vision had always begun to blur, black spots had always formed, This time, everything just went black.
I woke up in St. Mungo’s. Scorpius was beside me.
“What the hell happened?” was the first thing I had courage to ask.
“You passed out,” he told me. “Almost made it out of the store, but you didn’t. You’re in St. Mungo’s. I think they’re trying to readmit you without your consent.”
“They can’t do that!” I said furiously, sitting up from my bed and feeling another rush of dizziness.
“They can,” Scorpius said sadly. “You were doing so well, Lucy. What happened?”
“You did,” I said, with more acid in my voice than I had intended. A Healer walked up to my bed and handed me a potion.
“You need to drink this,” she said. “I don’t know how you’ve gotten this far.”
“Neither do I,” said Scorpius, which wasn’t surprising, considering this was the closest I’d been to him in months. I wanted to scoff at the thought that he would pretend he had been watching me all this time.
“No,” I said. “Listen to me. I’m fine. I just got off the meal plan because I’ve been working so much. I can stop working as much, start eating normally again.”
“I’m sorry, Lucy,” said the Healer – I couldn’t read her name tag. “You’re not stable enough to be considered a reliable source of your health. If you’d like to take some Veritaserum, we have some on hand, but otherwise we’ll have to keep you here.”
I wasn’t about to fight, mostly because I knew I would lose. I sank back into bed. “Fine.”
“Drink the potion, please,” she said. “I’m going to come back with some real food.”
Real food had implications that I wasn’t ready to deal with yet. Just the words real food were implying what I was doing was fake, and wrong. That I should be stick-to-your-ribs and full of soul. But I was already full of muchness; I couldn’t comprehend that I needed more.
I looked up at Scorpius. “Aren’t you going to leave?”
“No,” he said. “I’ll stay here. I don’t think you should be alone right now.”
I didn’t question him, mostly because he was right. I did not want to be alone. (If that’s the truth then why did I isolate myself from everyone, including him? I wasn’t sure. I feared touch because I craved it so much. Opposed to want, I pulled myself away.)
“Scor, listen. I’m not doing anything. I’m fine. Just get me out of here, please.” I was thinking back. I had stopped eating fruit, stopped eating grains, eliminated fat. But it wasn’t a big deal, really. I was meeting my goals that didn’t involve those things.
“It’s not like I know your records, Luce,” he said. “I’m going to go owl your parents.”
“No – don’t,” I said with a hint of urgency in my voice. “I don’t want them to know.”
“They’re your parents,” he told me. “They need to know.”
“You wouldn’t tell your parents,” I said, accusingly. “You hate your parents. Don’t tell me what to do.” He began to get up. ”And please don’t fucking do it for me.”
“I’m not,” he said. “I think you have some decisions that you need to make on your own.”
“Why are you here?”
“I’m worried about you,” he said. “I have been for a while. I still care about you, Lucy, even if you’d rather forget that.”
“I would.”
“I’m not going to leave you again,” Scorpius said, with a tone of finality in his voice. He did not wait for me to say, what if I didn’t intend for you to stay?
*
I hated it. More than anything, I hated it. But I, very slowly, began to get better. It was not an immediate process. I first had to accept the idea that there was a problem, again, which took time and effort and more tears than I was comfortable admitting to. I had to fix how very, very fucked up I was mentally. It was something that magic could not do for me. That was the hardest part. There was no potion, or spell, or herb that could fix me. I had to do it, do it myself.
And Scorpius was still here. I didn’t know why he was, for whatever reason, here with me again. I could not contemplate the idea that he wanted to be around me only when I was sick, which was, no matter what I was skirting around, the truth. I honestly did not understand him anymore. It had taken me a long time and the prospect of having him back to realize that I did not at all want him. He was sort of emotionally abusive. He was here for me when I was not doing well but when I was okay, he decided that I didn’t need him anymore and left me. I was not going to take him back. But I could not bear to tell him to leave.
Instead of an eating disorder, I held onto Scorpius.
Here are the things they told me: that I was using Scorpius as a coping mechanism. That maybe Scorpius was using me as a coping mechanism. This was a new thought that I had not previously considered- that maybe I was not the worst fuckup on the planet. That there were other sick people here, even if it manifested in different forms.
I was discharged from St. Mungo’s for the second time in late April. I went out and bought all the food that I was planning to eat for the week. Every meal and every well-balanced snack, I set out and plunked myself down in front of the counter. I did not always succeed, and doubted I ever would. But for the first time, I began to try.
Scorpius came for dinner one night. I could not tell you how many times he asked me how I was doing and if this met my exchanges, when I was finally to the point that I could do it myself. I decided, carefully, that this was the last time I was going to see him.
He was getting ready to leave. Put on his coat, almost out the door so that he could Disapparate into the night. Then he paused. “You look beautiful right now,” he told me.
“Thank you,” I said. Clipped as I could. “Finally not dying, I guess.”
Scorpius chuckled a little bit – not a full-fledged laugh. “Come here, Luce,” he said, and then he was kissing me (his mouth tasted like raspberries and firewhiskey) and I was trying to find the strength that I needed to push him away before we were on the couch together and he was taking my bra off. I did not immediately push him away. I couldn’t. I craved human touch so intensely and his hands were so warm on my cold skin that it was not a simple task to tell him no.
I was just making it worse by not stopping him immediately. I knew it, and he knew it, but I had forgotten the way he tasted and the way his stubble rubbed against my mouth (and other places that I had long since stopped thinking about). We were both half naked on my couch by the time I finally managed to come to my senses. “You have to go,” I said.
“Go?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said. “Go. I’m doing better now, so it’s not like you’re about to stay around for much longer anyway.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Scorpius said.
“Oh, don’t do that,” I said. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that I need to assert myself.” Saying this did not feel like it was me. It felt surreal and off, and I wished that I did it more often.
“Fine,” said Scorpius. “I’ll go. But I’m the only person who ever understood you. Good luck on your own.” He got up, threw his shirt back on, slid the buttons back together with a flick of his wand.
He was gone before I could whisper, “I’m not on my own.”