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The jumper swallowed Luke whole.
It was one of Sam’s old university jumpers, charcoal grey with cracked lettering across the chest, sleeves long enough to hide his hands completely. Luke had sat curled in the corner of the couch with his knees tucked against him, fabric bunched around his stomach like he was trying to disappear beneath layers of cotton and static electricity.
Rain tapped softly against the flat windows, just a typical London day.
The kitchen light was sharp dig behind him. Too harsh. It made everything feel visible and sterile.
Jay was leaning against the counter cutting strawberries into uneven pieces because she knew people ate easier when food looked less intimidating. Sam was at the stove pretending not to watch Luke every seven seconds.
The room smelled like garlic rice and soy sauce.
Luke hated that it smelled good.
“That one’s mine, by the way,” Sam said casually, nodding toward the jumper.
Luke pulled the sleeves further over his fingers. “Finders keepers.”
“You broke into my wardrobe.”
“You’re married to a doctor. Buy a new one.”
Jay snorted softly.
The joke landed, but only halfway. It hung in the room afterward like a paper airplane losing speed before even taking off.
Luke’s eyes stayed fixed on the television despite the fact nothing was playing. Just a dark reflective screen. A mirror pretending to be furniture.
Sam lowered the stove heat. “You haven’t eaten since yesterday.”
“I had coffee.”
Jay immediately pointed a strawberry knife at him. “That sentence just medically offended me.”
Luke shrugged one shoulder.
The jumper slipped slightly at the collar, exposing the sharp angle of his clavicle before he tugged it back into place.
Jay noticed. Sam noticed. Neither commented.
That was the thing Luke loved most about them. They noticed quietly.
No dramatic concern. No weaponized pity. No “just eat.” No speeches wrapped in inspiration quotes like stale candy wrappers.
Just noticing.
Sam plated a small portion instead of a full meal. Intentional. Non-threatening. The kind of portion that didn’t loom.
Luke noticed that too.
“I’m not hungry,” he muttered.
Jay carried the bowl over anyway and set it on the coffee table without forcing it into his hands.
“Cool,” she said. “Then you can ignore it professionally.”
Luke stared at it like it had personally insulted him.
Steam curled upward in thin ghosts.
His stomach twisted painfully at the smell and immediately his brain retaliated with familiar venom.
Too much. You already take up too much room. Look at you. Look at your body.
He pulled his knees tighter to his chest.
The jumper sleeves covered nearly all of him now.
Sam finally sat beside him on the couch, careful, leaving space between them. “Bad brain day?”
Luke laughed once through his nose. “That obvious?”
“You stole my jumper for your emotional support. That’s usually a clue.”
A tiny smile flickered across Luke’s face before disappearing again.
Silence settled for a moment.
Not empty silence. Safe silence.
Rainwater hissed through the gutters outside.
Jay sat cross-legged on the floor in front of the couch, chin resting against the cushion beside Luke’s knee. “You know your body isn’t a moral issue, right?”
Luke’s jaw tightened immediately. Defensive reflex.
“Jay…”
“No, listen to me for thirty seconds,” she said gently. “Your body is not a tax you pay for existing. You do not earn food by suffering enough first.”
His eyes burned instantly. Annoyingly instantly.
He hated crying. Especially over things that sounded true and around people who knew the facts.
Sam leaned back into the couch cushions. “Also, for the record, your body has carried you through every horrible thing life’s thrown at you. Frankly, I think it deserves Jay's garlic rice.”
Luke looked down hard at the bowl.
His throat hurt.
“I just…” His voice cracked quietly. “I don’t like being perceived.”
Jay softened immediately. “I know.”
“And eating makes me feel…” He gestured vaguely toward himself. “Visible.”
Sam nodded like Luke had said something perfectly logical.
Because to him, it was.
“No one here is measuring you,” Sam said softly. “You don’t have to shrink to deserve to exist in this apartment.”
Luke swallowed hard.
The rain outside grew heavier, drumming softly against the windows. Not because it had, but because the room seemed to become more protected.
Jay reached forward and tugged one of the oversized sleeves lightly. “Also, this jumper makes you look like a sad borrowed marshmallow.”
Luke let out a startled laugh despite himself.
“There he is,” Sam said quietly, smiling.
Luke rubbed at his eyes with the sleeve cuff. “You two are annoying.”
“And yet,” Jay replied, “you choose to live here voluntarily.”
Another silence.
Then slowly, carefully, Luke reached for the bowl.
Neither of them made a big deal out of it.
That helped more than anything.
Luke held the bowl in both hands now, thumbs tucked nervously against the warm ceramic. The steam fogged the sleeves of Sam’s jumper.
He stared at the rice like it was an exam he hadn’t studied for.
The headache behind his eyes had started hours ago, dull and heavy, pressing against the inside of his skull. His stomach hurt in that awful hollow way that no longer felt like hunger after a certain point. Just pain. Sharp little cramps twisting inward.
Jay noticed him pressing his lips together again.
That usually meant he was trying not to cry or throw up. Sometimes both.
Sam kept his voice gentle. “What’s going on in the brain aquarium?”
Luke huffed weakly through his nose at the phrase.
Then quietly:
“How much do I have to eat?”
The question landed softly in the room.
Not stubborn. Not manipulative. Just scared.
Jay’s expression shifted immediately, because that was never really about the food.
It was: How much space am I allowed to take up? How much before I become too much? How much before people are disappointed in me?
Sam answered first, calm as rain. “You don’t have to finish it.”
Luke stared hard at the bowl.
“But how much?”
Jay rested her chin on the couch cushion again, eyes level with him instead of above him. “Enough that your body knows you’re listening to it.”
Luke looked unconvinced.
His fingers tightened against the ceramic.
“My stomach hurts,” he admitted quietly, voice rough with embarrassment. “And my head won’t stop pounding.”
“That’s because your body’s running on fumes and spite, Luke," Jay said
“Mostly spite,” Sam added solemnly.
A tiny laugh escaped Luke before he could stop it.
The headache pulsed again immediately afterward, making him wince.
Sam’s face softened. “Hey. No heroic suffering tonight, alright? This isn’t something you win.”
Luke looked down at himself, at the oversized jumper swallowing his frame whole.
“I just feel…” He swallowed hard. “Wrong lately.”
Jay’s voice stayed impossibly gentle. “Your body isn’t wrong for changing.”
“But it doesn’t feel like mine.”
That one hurt to hear. Not dramatically. Not loudly.
Just honestly.
Sam reached over and tugged lightly at the sleeve Luke had stolen months ago. “Then we help you feel at home in it again. We don’t punish it into obedience.”
The apartment fell quiet except for rain against the windows and the faint hum of the refrigerator.
Luke finally picked up the fork. His hand shook slightly.
Jay and Sam very deliberately did not watch the bite happen.
That was part of the ritual too. Privacy inside care.
Luke managed a few bites before setting the fork down again, breathing unevenly like he’d just run uphill.
His stomach still hurt. His head still hurt.
But less sharply now. Less like his organs were folding in on themselves.
Jay stood slowly. “I’m making tea.”
“Is it the gross sleepy one?” Luke asked weakly.
“Yes.”
“You poison me in this house.”
Sam nodded gravely. “Medically supervised poisoning?”
Luke rolled his eyes, but the tension in his shoulders loosened by a fraction.
Jay was climbing on a chair to grab the tea when she spotted it.
“Well,” she muttered.
Sam looked up from where he was folding laundry on the couch. “You say that in two situations. Either you found a spider or someone committed a crime.”
Jay held up the nearly empty jar of instant coffee between two fingers.
Sam blinked once.
Then twice.
“That was full three days ago.”
“Mhm.”
The kitchen light buzzed softly overhead. Luke was still curled on the couch beneath the oversized grey jumper, half-asleep now, knees tucked against his chest while some nature documentary played untouched on the television.
Neither of them spoke for a moment.
Because suddenly several things clicked into place all at once.
The headaches. The shaking hands. The nausea. The not eating. The constant exhaustion hidden beneath restless energy.
Sam sighed quietly into the pile of towels. “Christ.”
Jay climbed down from the chair without another word and set the coffee jar gently on the counter. Not slammed. Not theatrical. Just placed there carefully like something fragile.
Luke startled slightly at the sound anyway.
His eyes blinked open slowly behind crooked glasses. “What?”
Jay leaned against the counter casually. Too casually. Deliberately casual.
“How much coffee have you been drinking?”
Luke froze.
Not obviously. Most people probably wouldn’t notice.
But Sam noticed the way his shoulders tightened beneath the jumper.
“…Coffee amount.”
“Luke.”
“Medical amount.”
Jay crossed her arms. “That jar was full.”
Luke looked away immediately toward the television screen.
The silence answered for him.
Sam rubbed a hand over his face. “Bud.”
“I’m tired all the time,” Luke said quickly, defensive now. “Coffee makes it stop for a bit.”
Jay’s expression softened almost painfully.
Because underneath all the sarcasm and stubbornness, there it was again:
Survival math.
If I drink enough caffeine, maybe I won’t need food. If I stay awake enough, maybe I can outrun my body.
“You can’t run a human body on instant coffee and pure anxiety,” Jay said gently.
Luke pulled the sleeves over his hands again. “I know.”
“And caffeine on an empty stomach is absolutely part of why you feel sick.”
“I know.”
But the way he said it sounded less like agreement and more like defeat.
Jay walked over quietly and sat on the arm of the couch beside him. “Hey.”
Luke kept staring forward.
She nudged his shoulder lightly with her own. “I’m not angry.”
That finally made him look at her.
“You’re not?”
“No. Concerned, yes. Deeply judgmental about your coffee choices, absolutely. But not angry.”
Sam pointed from the laundry pile. “That coffee tastes like burned drywall.”
“It was on sale,” Luke mumbled.
“Your organs are going to unionize.”
A tiny smile flickered across Luke’s face before disappearing again.
Jay’s voice stayed soft. “You don’t have to earn rest chemically, you know.”
Luke looked down at the sleeves hanging over his hands.
“That’s easy for you to say.”
“No,” Jay said quietly. “It’s easy for me to recognise because I used to do the exact same thing in med school.”
That caught him off guard.
She continued before he could argue. “Coffee for breakfast. Energy drinks instead of meals. Pretending dizziness was just a personality trait.” She shrugged lightly. “Turns out human beings are annoyingly biological.”
Luke let out a tired laugh through his nose.
Sam stood and disappeared briefly into the kitchen before returning with a glass of water and a granola bar.
Not a meal. Not pressure.
Just reachable things. He placed them beside Luke wordlessly.
Luke stared at them for a long moment.
Then quietly:
“My stomach hurts less after eating earlier.”
Jay smiled a little at that. Small enough not to scare him away from the admission.
“Yeah,” she said softly. “Bodies tend to appreciate being included in the survival plan.”