Chapter Text
It was lonely, creeping around the house at this hour. It wasn’t as if the Ootori estate was usually bustling with energy, of course, but with the staff all home and asleep in their beds, it almost seemed abandoned. Everything was too quiet, but whenever a floorboard creaked or the cupboards fell back into place with a louder thump than anticipated, those small sounds were almost comically exaggerated.
The hum of the refrigerator as he opened it was something close to hypnotising, especially with what lay within, backlit in the dark room. Food. So much food he couldn’t eat. He could just look a while, think of it all gliding along his tongue and down his throat. That had no calories, daydreaming. He knew what it all tasted like, so why put that trash in his lovely, empty stomach when he could picture it still so vividly.
He could feel his stomach rumble, inaudible yet demanding. More demanding than it should be after months of this; it should’ve learned by now that pleading wouldn’t make him break. At least, not anymore. When he first started, he’d fast for a few meals, and then the hunger would become to much and he’d stuff his face with whatever he could get his hands on. Sometimes he threw up after, back to the start but feeling less rotten than the times he didn’t.
He could choose to have a celery stick or two. Six calories a piece, mostly water. Some lauded it as negative calories, promising that it took more calories to chew and digest than it actually provided, but it was complete bullshit – unfortunately. Besides, if he started actually eating with such forbidden fruit right next to him, he’d just keep going and going until he couldn’t stop. Not just celery, either; sashimi, smoked salmon, cream cheese, the left-over sticky rice from dinner – the portion meant for him.
He could chew ice. That was zero calories, and cold water helps stimulate metabolism, and his had gotten unbearably slow. While his weight loss didn’t quite plateaux, it was a lot slower than usual, and he was almost constantly constipated. His guts were hard beneath his fingertips, swollen and irritated behind the pudge that dared to stay on his frame, not to mention the cramps. He’d stopped attempting to fill himself up with those cotton balls for the passed few days, which was probably one of the reasons why he actually felt his hunger so soon, but he needed to give his digestive tract a rest. He didn’t want to fuck himself up anymore and have to explain it to his father.
Still, despite his thoughts of celery and ice, his eyes strayed to the other foods in the fridge. Those chocolate donuts were beckoning his fingertips, making his mouth water, despite his dislike of sweets. It was sugars and fats, the things he was actively starving himself of, so of course his body betrayed him by wanting it so badly. Simple biology. If you get a random craving, it tends to be because it contains something your diet has been lacking – hence his own draw to basically everything he could see.
But, while he was fine, he felt no desire to meet those needs. He was beyond that, and it gave him such a high he had no need to sneak one of Akito’s brownies he brought back from some university party or other. All he had to do was hop on the scale and see if he lost any more weight.
That could be risky to his mood, however. Like playing Russian Roulette with cocaine. If he lost a suitable amount, he’d be on cloud nine for the rest of the day, head up in the gold and pink hued clouds, but if he hadn’t… Well, that sent him crashing back down to earth. Because that meant he wasn’t good enough, and an Ootori couldn’t be anything less than the best, and Kyoya was so, so good at starving.
The best anorexic is a dead one, some awful part of his mind whispered, rotting away until you’re barely bone – that’s skinny.
He shook the thought away, noticing the tremor wracking his shoulders. Whether that was because of the thought or the chill, he wasn’t sure, but it really was cold. The open refrigerator certainly wasn’t helping that, but he was used to it; he was always cold these days, and he felt giddy at the thought of what that meant. While he was sure he was fine, this meant progress. He’d soon be at his UGW, slow metabolism and constipation or not, and it would feel so good to be so tiny. Only a hundred pounds.
He already had an extremely low BMI, but in this game the difference between 14 and 16 was so wide and he needed more. He didn’t know if it was possible to go so low because of his height, but if anyone could, he was sure it was him. He was already so close to those thinspo boys.
He didn’t startle when he heard the door open. The sock-clad footfalls were quiet yet not silent in the stillness of the house and, in his mind, he wasn’t doing anything wrong. He just wanted to stare a little longer, think about those éclairs and the pastries and –
Yoshio was surprised to see someone in the kitchen at this late hour, very dim light visible under the heavy, oak door. Even Yuuichi was in bed at this point, and he himself had been asleep for a few hours before he woke up needing a drink. Still, it certainly wasn’t out of the realm of possibility that someone in the house was in a similar situation, but something frozen coiled in his stomach. An instinctual worry. He didn’t realise why, writing it off as ridiculous, until he opened the door.
Kyoya was just… standing at the fridge, staring inside, almost unblinking. The light illuminated his high, all-too-prominent cheekbones, the jut of his eye socket, how his collarbones stuck out and the ribs that emerged from sallow skin. He looked so sick. His hair, once glossy and thick, was dry and falling out in clumps. His rounded, chubby cheeks were long gone, replaced by sunken skin, and the spark in his eyes went out like an ember on cold slate.
He approached slowly, not knowing if Kyoya realised he was in the room, before placing his hand on the boy’s bony back. Prominent spine and yet more ribs, not to mention his scapula. It was like Kyoya was a reanimated corpse, slowly decomposing in front of them all, but between his long hours and mountains of paperwork, he… just didn’t realise how dire this all was. His youngest looked dead.
“Midnight snack?” He inquired. He meant to sound casual, but his voice came out so soft that he almost didn’t recognise it. Like, if he even thought about talking at his normal volume, it’d shatter Kyoya into pieces, “There’s some tasty things in there – it must be hard to decide.”
He sounded like a moron. But what do you say in this situation? He had no clue, and never had; not with Kyoka, and not with Kyoya. She’d fly off the handle at a moment’s notice, and he learned (eventually) how to handle it – but this was different. This was prolonged, silent, and had gone on far too long. Kyoya never made a scene, never said a word – he just wilted away in the little corner he allocated for himself.
“Just looking,” Kyoya murmured, eyelids drooping and making him look so incredibly exhausted. Those words only made the coil in his gut stiffen further, and his heart drop.
“Really? Well, you didn’t eat much dinner, so you must be very hungry by now,” He urged, trying not to sound panicked, “The rice was good, and you barely touched it. Perhaps you could finish it off…”
He reached over Kyoya’s shoulder, even if he had to stand on tiptoes to do so, retrieving the small container. It wasn’t as if it was a culinary masterpiece – it was just rice, even if it was seasoned well – but he could see Kyoya’s gaze following it. Hungry. Because, of course he was. All it really took was for him to snap off the container’s lid to entice the thin – much, much too thin – boy to take it in his own shaky hands. He almost cradled it to his chest, as if it were precious, and Yoshio finally found the will to move.
He stepped out from behind Kyoya; he’d much rather face him in this moment than stay staring at Kyoya’s skeletal back. He went around to the left, allowing the refrigerator to stay open, the dim light much better than the harsh ones overhead. He didn’t even need to get cutlery, Kyoya was just eating it with his fingers, breath hitching and sobs swallowed with the bites of rice, tears overflowing his eyes and falling over too-prominent cheekbones.
“There we go,” He breathed, voice dangerously close to a coo, hand automatically reaching up to wipe the tears away with the pad of his thumb. How long had it been since he did that? It always felt like Kyoya had grown up so fast – a baby resting in his arms one moment and a teenager the next. It wasn’t like the other boys, and felt even more jarring than Fuyumi’s own fast childhood. But, he supposed, that was his own fault; work and the divorce taking up so much time that he barely saw the baby of the family, and he supposed that somewhere along the line… it became a habit.
Was that what this was about? Something in him pondered. Was this his son trying to get the attention he always craved but was never given?
But now wasn’t the time for depressing musings. Part of him needed to know how far this had gone, how little Kyoya weighed, how sick he was. But Kyoya just looked so exhausted, dead on his feet and eating small pinch after small pinch of sticky rice, straight from the container. He was eating something, and therefore, it wound all be okay until the morning. For now, he just needed Kyoya to sleep and, perhaps, he wouldn’t be so sickly when morning came.
While Kyoya certainly didn’t finish the whole portion of rice, he was just happy he’d had something. In fact, if he had finished the whole thing, that could lead to more bad things than good. He didn’t want him in pain, after all – especially not from something like that.
“Let’s get you to bed, it looks like you could just curl up on the floor now,” He prompted, putting the leftovers back in the fridge and finally letting the door close. It was dark, but the moonlight was just bright enough to see the outlines of any potential hazard, and that was enough. The only response he got was a small nod, and he took his son’s hand and led him back to his room.
The movements were so familiar, but distant. He could remember doing this with Yuuichi – occasionally Akito and Fuyumi – but… not Kyoya. Because it never was. How had he overlooked him growing up for so long? Well, he was certainly feeling terrible for it now, watching the boy take slow, shuffling steps behind him.
Luckily, Kyoya's room wasn't too far away, but it still seemed to take whatever energy Kyoya had left. He just slumped on the edge of his bed, staring at nothing, hands cradling his stomach like he'd eaten a feast, looking completely uncomfortable. He was even shivering, despite the house actually being quite warm, but that was almost to be expected when someone had such little weight to them.
Still, despite the nurturing, paternal side of himself he was indulging in, Kyoya wasn't a child anymore. He didn't particularly like being coddled, after all, and he didn't want to increase his son's discomfort. It was enough that he'd eaten.
He was certainly surprised when, as he turned to leave after Kyoya managed to tuck himself in, he could feel a weak tug at the hem of his sleep shirt.
Kyoya was curled up so tightly that it almost seemed painful - back-breaking - and he was trembling beneath the plush, winter duvet. After what felt like an eternity, Kyoya's eyes glazed and almost teary, he spoke. "Father... I'm cold..."
After a second of debating what to do, thinking about the futility of more blankets when the boy couldn't even produce heat to trap, he gave him the softest smile he could muster. "Do you mind moving over, Kyoya?"
He was shot a confused glance, but Kyoya complied, and he slid under the covers himself. Holding his arms out to his little boy, he thought about how this would be, well, weird to Kyoya, but... While he couldn't call himself a good father, the least he could do was share some body heat.
It seemed like Kyoya couldn’t even contest – too cold and too tired – snuggling into his father’s arms and letting his eyes fall closed, the shaking subsiding as he fell asleep.
Yoshio closed his eyes also, and tried to tell himself that they’d tackle tomorrow when tomorrow came.