Chapter Text
It was late on a Saturday night, maybe one or two am.
Tyler’s whole house was quiet.
His parents had gone to bed hours ago, and Zack, Jay, and Maddy had followed not long after.
Tyler was the only one still awake.
He sat cross-legged on his bed. His bedside lamp cast its glow on his bedroom, illuminating the notebook on his lap and the pen poised in his hand.
Tyler’s earphones were jammed in his ears, the sound of a slow piano song trickling through the buds. He chewed his pen as he listened to the notes he had written; contemplating how to articulate what he wanted to say through the lyrics that would accompany the song.
He tried out a lyric, singing softly over the noise of the piano keys.
The lyric sounded right, and Tyler smiled softly, quickly scribbling it down in his notebook, scared he might forget it.
He felt excited, inspired, and lost in his music.
He bit his lip then began to run his tongue over his teeth, thinking about which lyrics should follow the already forming song. It was a habit he had picked up long ago when he had started songwriting at sixteen.
But this time, something didn’t feel right.
Tyler ran his tongue over his teeth again, feeling the familiar chipped and worn-away curve of the enamel.
He shuddered.
But his worn and damaged teeth didn’t inspire fear in him, or even worry; they didn’t cause him to react at all. Sadly, this was the normal state for Tyler’s teeth and had been for a very long time, longer than Tyler could ever remember.
It was something else. Something didn't feel right. He ran his tongue over his teeth again, and this time felt something that sent a chill down his spine.
A familiar looseness.
Tyler’s heart filled with dread as he flung his notebook aside, all thoughts of the song forgotten.
He collapsed on the floor in front of his full-length mirror and raised a hand to his mouth, his fingertips skimming the ridges of his teeth.
Big mistake.
Tyler gasped as his tooth crumpled and fell from his gums in front of his very eyes.
He turned away from his reflection and picked up his fallen tooth, grasping it in his calloused palm.
Tears slipped down his face, clouding his vision and blurring his reflection as he began to panic.
This was all too familiar.
Tyler didn’t need to look into the mirror in front of him to recognise what was happening.
Besides, he could feel it.
His nightmare, the thing he had dreaded the most, was coming true.
One by one and each quicker than the last, his teeth began to crumble and fall from Tyler’s gums, landing on his tongue. Tyler barely had time to react before the teeth began sliding down his throat.
He choked and clasped his throat in shock, panic rising inside him.
But it was no use.
He couldn’t stop it.
He never could.
He was too late.
It was useless, pointless, stupid to even try.
The damage had already been done.
***
He woke up with a jolt, gasping and struggling to breathe.
Panic immediately set in, and his bones filled with dread as he relived his dream. He felt nauseous and his mind raced at just how real it had felt, how possible it could have been.
His heart was hammering and he was drenched in sweat, meaning his t-shirt was stuck to his back, and his hair was plastered to his forehead.
All of a sudden, Tyler felt trapped, contained.
He struggled out of the bedsheets that had become loose in his distressed sleep and almost tumbled out of bed, unsteady on his feet.
He could feel his face become hotter and flush a deep ruby red as the panic set into his body.
His dream had felt so real.
Maybe because it had been an exaggerated version of Tyler’s reality.
***
Tyler paced his dark bedroom as he gasped for air and willed himself to calm down, desperate not to wake the sleeping boy who had been lying beside him.
But it was too late.
Josh, who had felt the bed shake as Tyler fell from it, was roused from his sleep and quickly became aware of his boyfriend’s panicked state.
Immediately, he knew something had happened but he wasn't sure yet what that was.
“Ty?” he questioned as he rubbed the sleep from his eyes and looked up at his boyfriend, still in his bed. “What’s going on?” he asked, his eyes wide as he tried, unsuccessfully, to stifle a yawn. "Are you okay?"
He reached for the lamp on Tyler’s bedside and switched it on, clothing the room in a soft light.
“Josh,” Tyler gasped, emotions of surprise, relief, and sadness flashing across his face, making it clear that he was upset he had woken his boyfriend, but also relieved that Josh was awake to comfort him.
Dealing with nights like this alone, was one of the hardest parts of living with mental illness. He was so thankful Josh had been sleeping over that night.
“Don’t worry about waking me up, Ty,” assured Josh calmly. He knew his boyfriend too well. “Just tell me what happened.”
Tyler’s answer was short and concise but told Josh everything he needed to know. “It happened again...I had another dream about my eating disorder.”
Tyler didn’t need to say anymore.
Josh’s face immediately creased into worry and he stumbled out of the bed, just as clumsily as Tyler had moments before.
He took Tyler into his arms, folding the smaller boy into his body. Tyler nuzzled into Josh’s neck, grateful for his warmth and comfort, as he tried to process that what had happened was just a dream.
“It’s okay,” soothed Josh as he rubbed Tyler’s back. He could feel his heart beating rapidly against him and willed it to calm down and allow his boyfriend to catch his breath. “I’m here now, Ty. I’ve got you. It’s over. Just tell me about it whenever you’re ready."
***
It had started when he was fourteen.
It hadn’t been intentional. These things rarely ever are.
Mostly, from what he had observed or read about, eating disorders started accidentally. Most of the time, the sufferer didn’t realise they had a problem until it was too late, even if to those around them, it was painfully obvious.
That was the thing about eating disorders: they creep up on you. They consume you, without you even realising. And all too soon, almost with no warning at all, it’s too late.
Too late to fight back, and too late to want to.
Looking back on it now, Tyler should have realised he was destined for something like this to happen, some sort of mental illness. Maybe not an eating disorder, but something, something bad.
Mental illness ran in his family, at least on his dad’s side, and like with most things in life, including his looks, Tyler took after his father.
He could remember weird, obsessive, compulsive behaviours from his childhood; counting, repeating both his actions and his words, and feelings of sickness and guilt, of impending catastrophe should he ever try to ignore his compulsions. Visions of his family members becoming ill or getting into accidents stuck in his mind, chilling him, pushing him to complete the same tasks, over and over, until he was satisfied, until it felt right. He searched for the perfect number in everyday life, desperate to find the right one, the perfect one, the one that fit.
The number of times that he would repeat his actions on his bad days, on the days that he felt too scared or weak to ignore the voices in his head.
He settled on twenty-eight.
It became his favourite, and most hated, number.
Tyler was also no stranger to bouts of sadness, often accompanied by forms of self-harm. One of his earliest memories was sitting underneath the wooden dining room table, biting his arms, leaving marks that were red, blotchy, angry.
He might have been about five.
To Tyler, biting his skin was not only a way to let out his frustration but also to show that he was in pain; that he was hurt, angry, burned.
And as Tyler got older, he became more conscious of both himself and others.
He began to look at those around him, scrutinizing their every movement, their bodies, and the way they would move.
Was he the same size as his friends, or was he larger? Was he smaller?
Tyler used to think he knew. He used to think the answers were obvious, but as he grew older, the answers that had once seemed so clear to him, seemed to fall further and further away, until he was left grasping at nothing.
Seemingly all at once, the issues that had been with Tyler since childhood but pushed into the back of his mind, seemed more present than ever. All the issues that, as a child, Tyler had deemed an annoying, albeit normal, part of life, suddenly seemed scary and imposing on his mostly happy and untroubled life.
Suddenly, all these issues, seemed to bleed into one another, creating a chaotic mess of mental illness. It had always been coming, but Tyler, who had been too busy with school, basketball, and his friends, had never seemed to notice.
Tyler’s bouts of sadness seemed to lead to depression. His occasional self-harm, which happened rarely, in times of passion, anger, and frustration, led to the cutting that Tyler needed to survive. He traded biting his skin for cutting it and became obsessed with the way the blood flowed out of his body; with the way the cut healed over and created an ugly scar, a new addition to his once smooth and unblemished body.
Tyler wanted everyone to know how much he was hurting. He wanted his outward appearance to match how he felt inside.
Tyler told himself that by cutting his skin, he was letting the badness leak out of his body. Really, he was letting it seep back in.
Worst of all, Tyler’s body issues, his need for control, his compulsions, and his obsessive behaviours, lead him to the one place he never thought he’d be. An eating disorder.
For Tyler, counting numbers to bring relief, turned into counting calories to be able to breathe.
Quickly, it became worse.
Slowly, it had gotten better.
But it never fully went away.
His mind told him to restrict his calories, control his portions, skip breakfast, and forget to take lunch to school.
He fed into the familiar need for control without a second thought. He couldn’t explain why this was happening to him. He didn’t know what had started it, and he certainly didn’t know how to end it.
But like every compulsion and obsession he had suffered through in his childhood, he wanted to obey it.
Tyler couldn’t remember the first time he had stuck his fingers down his throat. He was probably about fifteen. Too young.
It became a routine. He couldn’t get away from dinner with his family, no matter how easy it might have seemed to other people. It caused too many arguments, too much tension, too much suspicion. By that time, Tyler had already alienated his family members to the point of what seemed like no return.
So every night, after dinner, Tyler made his way to the bathroom he shared with his brother, and purged.
It was horrific. That fact didn’t change, no matter how often he did it, or what it was that he was throwing up.
He often cried after it. He had become mentally, and physically exhausted.
He knew he was punishing his body, breaking it day after day.
There were days when he got scared. His throat would burn and bleed, cracking when he talked. He was unable to sing. His hair became brittle, falling out often. His nails and hands turned blue as he shook, always unable to get warm.
And his teeth; they cracked and chipped and fell to pieces inside his mouth. That was one mistake that was still haunting Tyler to this day.
Years on, his hair was healthy again, shiny even. His cuts had healed, leaving silvery scars in their place. His throat didn’t hurt anymore, and he could sing again. And he was often warm, especially when huddled under the covers, with Josh at his side.
But Tyler’s teeth could never be repaired. They were a constant reminder of what had happened, what he had done to himself.
Tyler hated them.
***
Later, when Tyler had wiped away the tears that had fallen, and stopped shaking, he pulled away from Josh’s chest, and sighed shakily, tears still glinting in his eyes.
The sight broke Josh’s heart every time. He knew that the memories of Tyler’s eating disorder still haunted him.
Although he had never experienced anything like it, he wasn’t surprised that Tyler still struggled, not only with his memories but with the eating disorder itself. Tyler had violated himself in such a cruel and abusive way, that if anything, Josh was surprised he didn’t have these nightmares more often.
“You okay, Ty?”, he asked, rubbing Tyler’s arms softly.
Tyler nodded slowly, and Josh knew he was far away.
Josh watched his boyfriend, knowing he was reliving every detail of the dream he had just suffered through, and the memories that it had brought screaming back.
Tyler seemed to stare through Josh as a single fresh tear slid down his cheek. He nestled once again in Josh’s chest.
Josh continued rubbing Tyler’s back, softly, slowly, patiently. He knew he would talk when he was ready.
Moments later, Tyler’s sleep-ridden voice broke through the early morning silence, the sound muffled as his head was still pushed to Josh’s chest.
“The dream…It was one of the ones about…the teeth.”
Josh shuddered. He knew those dreams were the worst. "I'm sorry, sweetheart."
“It’s just so hard, because...,” Tyler swallowed, looking pained and unsure of whether to go on.
Josh waited patiently.
“Because,” Tyler eventually continued, “When I wake up, it’s not like it’s all over, that I can forget it and move on, you know? This is my real life." Josh knew that, although pressed into the comfort of his chest, Tyler was running his tongue over his teeth, feeling every imperfection; every tooth that was cracked, chipped, and worn away.
It was at times like this, that Josh felt at a loss to comfort Tyler. He couldn’t relate to him, couldn’t recount his own story, couldn’t tell Tyler how he had experienced the same feeling, or how he had moved to accept the flaws and imperfections that his illness had left behind.
He had nothing.
Instead, Josh could only try and understand.
***
They eventually moved back to Tyler’s bed and sat with their backs against his wall, their feet warm under the duvet.
Tyler leant into Josh’s embrace, comforted by his presence. Josh held Tyler’s hand, his thumb softly stroking the soft skin of his hand.
Tyler’s breathing finally became easy, steady, unlaboured. He was finally calm as Josh spoke to him softly, telling him how brave he had been to choose to recover, and how brave he continued to be by choosing recovery every single day since.
Josh told Tyler how proud he was of him, that he could go each day, now living and eating freely, when he had once been so trapped and suffocated by his eating disorder.
Josh told Tyler how glad he was that he was able to wake up from a nightmare about his past, and although it was a horrible reminder, it wasn't a reality, at least not anymore.
“It’s because of all your hard work, Ty,” he told his boyfriend softly, pride and assurance evident in his voice. “You built yourself up from nothing. What you have now, you created this. You achieved everything. Imagine, all those years ago, if you had kept going with your eating disorder, Tyler. If you had decided to keep starving yourself and throwing up every night. You wouldn’t have any of this. Everything you have, Tyler, you deserve. You did this.”
***
Josh thought that he never knew what to say. That his advice was useless because he couldn’t identify with what Tyler was going through.
He was wrong.
Tyler didn’t want to talk about how he had almost ruined his body, about how, for the most part, he felt he had ruined his soul. He didn’t want to talk about how the dream had triggered him, or the behaviours it might bring back. Although Tyler knew Josh would be there for him if he ever chose to talk about those things, he didn’t want to focus on them right now.
He felt attacked, and imposed on, the dream having interrupted his attempt to go on with life as normal and forget about what he had been through. Tyler wasn’t happy about it.
No, when Tyler got upset or triggered, he wanted to talk about the future, not the past. He wanted to talk about what he had worked so hard to build up, instead of what he had spent so long tearing down.
Tyler looked down at Josh’s hand clasped in his and watched the man he loved talk so passionately about all he had achieved and all that he would continue to achieve, now that he was healthy once again.
Tyler knew Josh’s advice was just what he needed.
Josh’s advice, like Josh himself, was perfect for Tyler.