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FP spent most of his life feeling hungry - just a little. And when that was his normal state, his senses were so dulled to it that he could go full weeks eating sporadically without ever crossing the threshold from hungry into ravenous.
But whenever things got slightly better, whenever he got used to eating more and more - say if he had a good week with a lot of time spent at Fred’s house - he’d curse himself for giving in and getting comfortable when it was finally taken away, because the hunger would hurt all the worse.
That was today.
Because he’d had enough to eat all week, his stomach had protested skipping last night’s dinner. He’d fallen asleep feeling weak and hungry and woken up ravenous, though it was the first meal he’d missed after a week of good luck. But Saturday meant he wasn’t in school, and he was particularly hard up this month after paying rent, so he’d ignored it. The hunger had been sharp and acute by noon. By one, it was excruciating. By four it was becoming unbearable.
He wanted badly to exercise some kind of willpower or mastery over his hunger, but it hurt. His stomach ached with how empty it was, and it was impossible to think about anything but food, impossible to focus his mind on anything but wishing he could eat. He’d met Fred around twelve-thirty, and they’d since spent the afternoon walking around outside, their usual weekend dawdling. FP had hoped the pain would go away with some distraction, but it wasn’t happening. Now as they walked it was all he could think about, and there were black flecks dotting his vision in the sunlight, a thin band of headache around his head, tightening in pressure. His stomach burned with hunger. He couldn’t remember the last time it had hurt so badly, not since the horrible stomach flus he used to have as a kid.
“Fred,” he spoke up, aware as he did so that he was betraying some rule he had invented for himself, and yet realizing belatedly that he was in too much pain to care. He wasn’t sure if it was his own voice speaking - it felt disconnected from him, everything swimmy and hot outside of his head. He had stopped on the sidewalk and Fred had gone on ten or so paces ahead of him before realizing FP wasn’t alongside him. FP folded his arms over himself, a gesture of insecurity as much as hunger. “I need to eat something,” he heard his voice say quietly when Fred turned around.
Alarm flickered across Fred’s face - for FP to admit he needed anything when he typically refused to ask for any kind of help meant things were dire. “I didn’t have breakfast,” FP qualified, hoping he sounded nonchalant.
“Breakfast?” Fred’s big brown eyes looked worried. “FP, it’s four. ”
To his credit, he didn’t overwhelm him with concern or reprimands. He looked more innocently concerned than anything, which just made FP feel worse. For completely opposite reasons: he had gone longer without food before. He shouldn’t be this hungry already.
“Okay, let’s get food,” Fred said immediately. He took a few steps back to thread his arm through FP’s on the sidewalk, who was still standing dazed where he’d stopped. “What do you want?”
“Anything,” FP replied, distracted by how immense the pain was in his abdomen. His headache was blazing too, wide and fierce. He was having trouble breathing and standing upright, but he tried his best to keep his voice casual. “Something fast.”
Alarm touched Fred’s eyes again, but the hands that steered FP toward the end of the street were firm and decisive. “Let’s go to Pop’s,” he said calmly but firmly as they walked. “Come on.”
FP let himself be walked up the road to the diner. Shame was grating faintly at his mind, but it couldn’t penetrate the all-encompassing hunger that had taken over his senses. He was desperate for food, and his pride was a secondary concern.
“Pop, can we get a plate of fries, ASAP?” Fred asked the owner the minute they were in the door. Somehow, FP followed him to their corner booth and sank onto the sweaty vinyl. He sat hunched over for sixty excruciating seconds while Fred went up to the counter to order further and scurried back with a steaming hot plate of french fries. He placed it in the middle of the table, eyes swimming with worried love and questions that FP ignored.
“Here,” said Fred easily, taking one, FP forcing himself to wait until it was in Fred’s hand before his own hand moved out and grabbed three fries at once. He stuffed them in his mouth and went back for more. He ate them two or three at a time, not tasting a thing, not noticing at all how they burned his mouth and tongue, just desperately wanting to get rid of the horrible empty feeling in the pit of his stomach as quickly as he could. A waitress brought over two hamburgers and a dish of onion rings when he was three-quarters of the way through the plate, and the hunger was still clenched hard and strong in his ribs. The appearance of the food had erased his self-control; he ate without pleasure or enjoyment, only a sick sense of desperation.
He was halfway through the burger by the time he started tasting the food for the first time. The pain in his stomach had finally lessened, and every bite of melted cheese, crisp lettuce, bun, meat, and ketchup made him want to cry with how good it was. FP savoured every mouthful, feeling like it was the first meal he’d ever eaten. He finally started slowing down with two bites to go, picking out two onion rings and leaving the rest for Fred. FP turned his face abruptly to the window, alarmed by how close he was to crying.
The hunger had gone but he felt disoriented, off-kilter, emotional. Guilt and shame poured in, self-loathing settling in the place where he had been hungry and desperate. He had no money. He was not Fred’s responsibility. He shouldn’t have let Fred see him in this state, he shouldn’t have shown him how bad it was.
And at the back of his mind was regret and fear; the knowledge that this had maybe only prolonged his suffering. Because he’d be hungrier later, maybe this badly again, and he’d have nothing to eat, nothing tomorrow, a vicious cycle that only got worse and that he could never be finished with. He longed to go back to being hollow and numb. No matter what happened in his life, meals would never be guaranteed. The futility of it all was so hopeless that he wanted to scream.
“I’m sorry,” he said instinctively, still facing the window, furiously trying to control his breathing. If Fred would only look away, maybe he could wipe his cheeks quickly, and that would be the end of the tears, only they kept coming, his throat sealing closed and his eyesight filling with water. It was way too much to stop. He couldn’t look back at him.
“It’s not a crime to be hungry, Effie,” Fred said softly. It was not the thing that FP wanted to hear when he was trying to stop himself from crying. Tears filled his eyes so quickly they burned, and some ran helplessly down his cheeks as he tried to turn his head further away to avoid detection. He stared at the signal arm across the railroad tracks as though it was the most fascinating thing on earth. The lump in his throat refused to go down.
“I can’t pay you back,” he managed, shame for both this and for the tears eating through his wavering voice. He struggled to take deep, calm, breaths to stop the crying. He hated himself when he cried, and he was desperate that Fred did not see how badly this had affected him.
“I’ll worry about who pays me back,” was Fred’s reply. He touched FP’s knee under the table, lowering his voice. “I buy you food because I love you.”
That was it. FP’s feeble attempts at controlling his crying disintegrated. He stood up quickly, turning his head to the other side and bowing it so he could hope Fred wouldn’t see how wet his face was.
“I have to- I have to go-”
He swallowed the rest of that tearful sentence as he pushed his way to the bathroom, closing himself in the first stall and stuffing his fist into his mouth. Backing against the wall, he took long, deep breaths of oxygen, fighting for control. Tears ran down his cheeks.
Stop crying, just stop crying, stop crying, please. Just calm down. That’s all I’m asking.
He tried to breathe slowly. Even tried to be compassionate with himself, tried to think of other things or make himself useless bargains, tried to go numb or count to a hundred or dig his nails into his palms to stop it. It didn’t help. Growing up, the ability to stop crying on a dime in front of his father had been a survival skill - but even then, he’d struggled to choke back his tears. Now shame and sadness made him dizzy; he felt shaky and miserable and helpless and completely vulnerable. Every time he thought he had his tears under control, another one would slip down his cheek and erase his efforts.
“FP?” Fred, of course, couldn’t let him go without following him. He was already in the bathroom behind him, hovering outside the stall.
“Fred, can you just leave me alone for one second?!” FP yelled angrily, frustration making him slam his open palm into the metal edge of the stall. He wiped his tears furiously with the back of his hand, the collar of his shirt already damp. He bit down on his lip hard.
Fred paused. FP could see his black Converse on the other side of the stall door. He hadn’t locked it - Pop’s bathroom doors stuck in the frame. Fred pushed it open and stepped inside the stall without hesitating.
FP felt his whole body shaking. He wasn’t sure if it was hunger or nerves or anger. Fred stood there with his bright brown eyes boring into FP’s face, and then he took two steps closer to him and opened his arms for a hug. FP gave in. He let Fred’s arms fold around him and scrunched himself down into the embrace, shoving his face in Fred’s neck and squeezing him like a life raft.
Fred held him silently. FP felt the tears he’d tried so hard to vanquish slide hot and silent down his cheeks and into the crook of Fred’s neck. He didn’t sob, just felt the tears coming silently of their own volition as though something deep within him had sprung a leak. They rolled down Fred’s neck and soaked the collar of his shirt.
They held each other for at least three or four minutes, until enough tears had slid silently down FP’s cheeks that the well had run dry. He lifted his head and wiped his nose, sniffling.
“It’s okay,” said Fred, very very gently, when FP was too ashamed to speak. “It’s okay.”
Fred hugged him again, lifting his head to look up at his boyfriend’s face. He felt a strange clarity take hold of him, the part of himself that had always considered FP his bolder and stronger counterpart separating for the first time. He saw FP as though he had suddenly aged twenty years while FP had stayed a teenager; feeling not just love for him but the deepest surge of protectiveness he had ever known.
His best friend was the toughest and bravest and proudest person he knew. That hadn’t changed. But suddenly Fred saw he was also just a kid; a kid with no family or loved ones, who was scared to cry in front of other people and who was lonely and poor and who had been so badly mistreated that he was hardly scraping together the life that Fred took for granted. And for that one deeply significant moment, he vowed he would do anything for him. Anything at all. Because there was no one else.
Moving slowly, as though they had all the time in the world, he walked to the sink to wet a paper towel with cold water and wiped FP’s tear-stained face, pressing it gently to his flushed cheeks
“I’m sorry,” FP mumbled as Fred did so, staring at the floor.
“You haven’t done anything wrong,” Fred said firmly. He cupped FP’s cheeks and looked right into his eyes. “You have not done anything wrong, okay?”
He braced himself for FP to snap at him again, or to watch his friend hide his shame under a mask of bravado, but what happened was almost harder to witness - FP gave him a shaky smile and a nod, his face crumpling immediately as fresh tears rose up in his eyes. Fred flew into his arms again and hugged him with all the strength in his body. FP’s arms came up around him more slowly this time, his breathing harsh and erratic next to Fred’s ear, his thumb smoothing repetitively over the back of Fred’s shirt in a way that Fred knew was to calm himself down. He often watched FP soothe himself in little fidgety gestures, as if he was sometimes so close to falling apart that only the smallest repetitive tether to reality could keep him composed.
He listened to FP fight for self-control for only a few seconds before he released him. It hurt to let go, but Fred knew it was kinder to keep as much of FP’s pride intact as possible. FP lowered his head, looking up at Fred from this hunched position like he was guilty of something terrible.
“You wanna go home?” Fred asked, fighting to keep his voice calm. Both of them understood he was asking him over to the Andrews’ house. FP nodded silently, tension in his jaw. Fred put a smile on his face, even though his sadness felt like a physical knot in his ribcage. “I’ll go pay the bill. You meet me out front?”
FP nodded again. Fred turned to leave, which FP knew was a kindness to give him time to feel calmer, more in control. Fred paused at the door to look back.
“If you don’t come out, I’m coming back in,” he warned, teasing but friendly.
FP lifted the corners of his mouth in a little smile. Fred returned it tenfold and then left, letting the door swing closed behind him. FP fell onto his hands, braced against the counter that held the sinks, and stared at himself in the mirror. His eyes were pink, but he looked plausibly okay, with no glaring signs that he had cried. His expression just looked blank: empty and drained. He stared at the eyes of his reflection, allowing himself a few minutes to lose himself in his head, spiral into a hopeless self-reflection that got harder and harder to pull himself out of. His head ached and his eyes burned. Then, when he could bear being in the bathroom in front of himself no longer, he tore himself away from the mirror and left in a hurry, his hands shoved in his pockets, avoiding everyone’s eyes as he walked the length of the diner to leave by the front door.
The sun made everything feel different. It hit him in a warm, clean bath of light, no longer an enemy to his vision now that he had something in his stomach. Everything around him was solid and visible in a way it hadn’t been before. Fred, standing by the steps, looked up at him with eyes as warm as the sunlight.
“Ready?” he asked, and reached for FP’s hand.
“I’m going to pay you back one day,” FP said seriously, his shamed voice coming out a whisper. He kept his hands by his sides, allowing himself the briefest vision of an older version of himself - college-educated, money in his pocket, the life he wanted so badly but would never have.
“No you’re not,” interrupted Fred, firm but cheerful. “This is friendship, FP. You already have.”
He seized FP’s hand before he could argue and squeezed it, starting to pull him along the road over the train tracks toward home. When they reached the corner of the street, FP gave in, let his lungs fill with air, and quickened his pace so they were running side by side.