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“You have to try.”
“I can’t, Hizashi.”
Hizashi leaned forward, arms crossed on the table, “Please, Shouta. You haven’t eaten since yesterday morning, you can’t go on patrol like this—you’re shaking.”
Shouta dragged a frustrated, trembling hand through his hair, leaning back in his chair and turning his head to the side. Two bowls, one of plain white rice and the other miso soup sat on the table in front of him, untouched. Hizashi had finished eating almost half an hour ago, his bowls pushed to the side so he could lean toward Shouta, across the table from him. Shouta glanced at the food out of the corner of his eye, then pressed a hand over his mouth to cover the gag that wracked up his frame.
Hizashi grimaced, watching dark hair fall in front of Shouta’s eyes.
“Do you want me to make you something else?” Hizashi offered.
Shouta shook his head, hand still over his mouth. He took a deep breath, letting it out slowly before removing the hand once he was sure he wasn’t going to vomit, and brushed his hair back again, face pale. Hizashi waited, watching his trembling hands rest on the table. He could hear Shouta’s leg bouncing under the table.
“Will you please just let me have one of the protein jellies?” Shouta said, low enough that Hizashi had to lean forward to hear him. “There are enough calories in those.”
Hizashi bit down the frustration, huffing through his nose, “No, it’s not the same. You know that, it’s just going to make you feel more nauseous.”
They’d been dealing with this since high school—when it was really terrible and neither of them knew what was going on. It had seemed to get better as he matured, but in the past few years, it’d gotten worse again from stress. Somedays Shouta could eat multiple meals a day, no problem. Other days he’d do his best, and eat snacks here and there. They knew his safe foods, and he could always fall back on them. But on the bad days, he got stuck in his head, convincing himself there was something wrong with any food placed in front of him. He’d make himself sick thinking about it. Sometimes it’d even last a handful of days at a time.
He’d described it to Hizashi like the food was made up of something it wasn’t, or that it was contaminated. He’d convince himself that he’d bite into a meal and it’d crumble away into bugs that would crawl into his mouth and lodge in his throat, or that it’d be infected with mold that would cling to his skin for days, or be full of toxic chemicals. It didn’t matter if he’d cooked it himself or if he’d watched Hizashi prepare it. Once the thought took root in his head he struggled to stomach anything. They didn’t eat at restaurants or get takeout most of the time because of it; Shouta had to see it made or it had to be prepackaged for even a chance of him eating. Shouta admitted to knowing how illogical it was, but it was like he couldn’t convince his body and he’d yet to overcome the anxieties.
Hizashi hated having to force him to eat and watch him after in case he tried to throw it up, which he’d caught Shouta doing in the past more than once. But when Shouta hit the point of trembling because he hadn’t eaten in so long, Hizashi had to do something about it. Especially with him still trying to go out on patrol, he’d pass out mid-fight.
It’d been a few months since it’d been bad like this, though.
“Will you tell me what brought it on?” Hizashi asked gently, reaching across the table to rest his hand over Shouta’s. Sometimes there would be a cause for the sudden food aversion, sometimes not. Shouta’s hesitant silence told him there was a reason this time.
Shouta shifted, eyes flitting across the table, meeting Hizashi’s, then settling on their joined hands, “S-someone left onigiri in the staff fridge at work, and it’d been in there for too long. The container was clear, and I could see mold on it.”
Hizashi pursed his lips, feeling guilty for getting frustrated. That would do it. At least it hadn’t been an emotional trigger this time. Something small like that could generally convince Shouta that any food he came near for a while would be contaminated. Shouta looked ill just remembering it, his lips twisted and nose scrunched up.
“I’m sorry, baby,” Hizashi sympathized. He stroked a thumb across the back of Shouta’s hand. “I don’t think you should patrol tonight if you really can’t eat.”
“‘Zashi—” Shouta protested.
“No, I’m serious, that was our deal,” Hizashi stopped him. “You can’t do hero work if you haven’t eaten all day. And it’s been two.”
Shouta gritted his teeth, a red flush of embarrassment crawling up his neck. He groaned, “This isn’t fair.”
“I know.”
Shouta pulled his hand away from Hizashi, rested his elbows on the table, and hid his face in his hands, “Why can’t I just do it? It’s just food.”
“Plenty of people have problems with food, Shouta.”
“But like this? It doesn’t even make sense. I’m a hero. This is stupid.”
“It’s not stupid,” Hizashi sighed. They’d been over this hundreds of times. “It doesn’t always make sense, you know that. It’s an eating dis-”
“I know what it is,” Shouta snapped.
Hizashi frowned, tapping his fingers on the table. Shouta’s therapist had talked about the importance of calling his ‘food thing’ what it was—an eating disorder—but Shouta had always been resistant to those words, like naming it made it too real and out of his hands. Hizashi kind of understood. When he’d been diagnosed with ADHD, he didn’t believe the doctor at first, but that’d come from his own stereotype of what a person with ADHD was supposed to be. He’d be lying if he said the term ‘Eating Disorder’ didn’t bring up a certain type of person in his brain, but he knew that it wasn’t exclusive to an age or gender.
He almost wished he could see what Shouta was seeing when he glanced at his food and grimaced, his face paling. It looked fine to Hizashi, but if he could see through Shouta’s eyes, what would it look like? Would the rice squirm with maggots? Would the foam on the soup look like mold, curdled and toxic?
“Is there anything you can think of that you might be able to stomach that’s not the protein jelly?” It was late, but he’d happily go to the grocery store for Shouta if it meant he’d eat something, even if they had just gone shopping the other day.
Shouta actually whined, rubbing his face with his hands, “I don’t know.”
“Do you want to look in the fridge?”
“No,” Shouta shook his head quickly. He made a face like he was trying not to gag, “If I look in there I’ll convince myself it’s all gone bad.”
“Okay,” Hizashi took a breath. “Do you want me to look, and I can tell you everything in there? I’ll only say the stuff we got yesterday so you know it’s fresh.”
Shouta was quiet, his elbow on the table and leaning his forehead against his fist. His eyes flitted across the grain of the wooden table as he thought. Hizashi was close to giving in and letting him just eat one of the jellies but making him stay home from patrol. Some nights it was fighting a losing battle from the start, but if he was hungry enough the next morning it was sometimes easier.
“What if…” Shouta started then paused, digging a fingernail into the table and rolling his lower lip between his teeth. He continued with a mumble, “What if there’s bugs in the fridge?”
“There aren’t bugs in the fridge.”
“I know, I know! Fuck, I—” He grimaced, and Hizashi could see the internal battle on his face in the way his eyes started to get glassy. It must be awful, for someone like Shouta to know he was being irrational but not be able to stop it. It’s like everything about the disorder went against his core personality.
Hizashi reached out and pulled his hand away from his face, the slightest tinge of an embarrassed red across his cheeks. “If you really can’t tonight, I’ll let it go, but you can’t go on patrol.”
Shouta nodded, giving in, and sighed, “I’m sorry. I know I’m difficult.”
“No, you’re not. It’s okay, today’s just a bad day, I understand,” Hizashi took Shouta’s bowls from the table and stood to bring them to the sink. He was irritated that he couldn’t help, but it was out of his control. It felt like they were at a point now where even if he could force Shouta to eat something, he’d probably go throw it up right after whether he wanted to or not.
After dumping the food, he set the bowls in the sink to be cleaned later. He hated wasting it because it was perfectly fine, but he also knew if Shouta saw it in the fridge after so vehemently rejecting it, it would probably set him back again. This is just how it was sometimes, especially after a bad day.
He pulled one of the pre-packaged jelly packs out of the cabinet and tossed it over to Shouta, who looked miserable and full of self-pity. Shouta caught it, and his hand hesitated over the twist top for a moment but opened it without looking and sucked it down fast like if he thought about it then he wouldn’t be able to. It was something at least, and they were a decent enough amount of calories that Hizashi wouldn’t worry about him blacking out or something, but small enough that he’d probably be famished in the morning. He probably already was starving, but his brain wouldn’t let him acknowledge it.
Hizashi walked around the table and wrapped his arms around Shouta’s shoulders, leaning against his back and pressing a cheek to dark hair. Shouta’s hands came up to rest on his crossed forearms, and he pressed back into the embrace.
“Thank you,” Shouta said.
“No reason to thank me.”
Shouta shook his head slightly, “I mean, thank you for being so—understanding. I’d get it if you got angry every time I do this, but you never get mad at me.”
“It doesn’t make me angry,” Hizashi said. “Just worried, sometimes, but I know this was just a bad day.”
It was true, he never got angry at Shouta, just frustrated at the situation, and concerned. But nowadays there were more good days than bad like this, and even on some of the harder days, they usually found something substantial Shouta could stomach. It was only once in a while that it was this bad. Shouta passed out a few times when they were younger, back as fresh-faced heroes. After it’d happened and Hizashi had spent an appropriate amount of time freaking the fuck out on him, he promised to tell Hizashi if he had to go longer than a day without eating anything, and he wasn’t allowed to patrol if that was the case.
Shouta didn’t try to hide it, he knew how dangerous it could be for him not to be at the top of his physical game, and he’s explained the mental fog he got from not eating impacting him as well. He reiterated over and over again when they were younger that it wasn’t a self-harm thing or something he wanted to be doing, he just didn’t have control over it.
Hizashi trailed gentle fingers through Shouta’s long hair. If he could take the problem away from him, he’d do it in a heartbeat, but illnesses didn’t really work like that. Despite this, he’d do his best anyway.