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The mirror is the bearer of all truth, it can only show what it sees, the mind is what distorts the truth. Sweets didn’t realise just how much his mind had been distorting his body until he finally saw how he looked like. It had been five months since he’d first made the conscious decision to skip dinner and since then he’d seen his body through a funhouse mirror.
Five months ago he was a healthy weight, now his bmi is in the lower tens and getting even lower, his weight is lower than a hundred pounds. He didn’t realise that he looked the part. His face has always thin, prominent cheekbones that are coloured with the natural blush of his face but now his face seems to have melted away. It’s as if his skeleton is poking out.
His stomach churns from unsettlement. He wanted to look like this but now that he does it feels wrong. This was sickness, this was an eating disorder but something inside of him told him to get sicker. To live on the bitter taste of coffee and eat only slices of fruit and salad. To have people beg him to eat something.
He needed to keep going until he was dragged to the hospital. Then he could admit that he was really sick.
—
When Sweets was six years old, he was finally taken out of his abusive home and adopted. If life was perfect then things would settle down, he’d get over the past and fall into the role of the dutiful son. Maybe if it was a novel everything would have fallen perfectly into place but he couldn’t get over the past or the scars that littered his back or every sign that he should be wary of his new parents.
His trust had been shattered on the ground like a dropped plate, his new parents were being so welcoming but so had his foster dad. As a method of not having to get close he pulls away from any kind of connection they try to form, he spends more time than needed at his school work. He’s already two grades ahead so his homework is more intense and when he’s not working on the kitchen table he’s hidden away in his room.
The only time that he has to be around his parents is during mealtime, there’s an unspoken rule that it has to be eaten together. Sweets hate it, the scent of food makes him feel nauseous and as soon as he takes a bite it turns to ash in his mouth. It doesn’t matter what the food is, he can’t stomach it.
So he doesn’t eat.
His parents don’t try and force feed him nor do they keep him at the table for long. They believe that he’ll eat when he's hungry but for the time being he only eats at school. At his new school he isn’t some unlovable child, he’s a sociable kid from a stable home. He doesn’t feel so damaged.
Eventually he begins to trust them, he starts to believe that maybe they won’t hurt him and suddenly it’s a lot easier to eat. Food begins to taste like genuine food. He finishes half of his plate and then the full thing. He doesn’t look so frail anymore and he begins to appreciate his mothers cooking.
He could get used to this.
—
In high school he does wrestling, cross country and track. He goes from a day full of AP classes to athletics and then back to school work once he goes back home. School is too easy and he’s already grades ahead leaving him one of the smallest in the school. He has no friends, just a minor interest in the human condition and a wish to be somewhere where he belongs. He listens to heavy metal while doing his homework.
His wrestling coach is always talking about weight, he’s in the lowest class but his weight itself isn’t the lowest. And he eats a lot, his plate is always cleared and he constantly finds himself hungry. When he thinks about his diet he starts to feel his stomach churn. His body is made of ultra processed food, one day it’ll start to bite him back.
Somehow, eating begins to fill him with guilt. Food fits into two boxes, healthy and extremely unhealthy. There’s no middle ground, there simply can’t be a middle ground because food can’t just be food. He eats fruits and vegetables, protein, a lot of protein and enough carbs to prevent brain fog, he wouldn’t dare eat anything sweet. Even the thought of eating cake on his birthday makes his breathing become jagged.
His track coach tells everyone that thinner is faster, he looks down and thinks that if he shreds some pounds maybe he could become the fastest on the team.
It’s a gradual change as he begins to form the ideal diet. He swaps bars of chocolate to fruit, bread to rice cakes that taste like polyester, he pretends to like them and his parents are naive enough to believe. Nutrition becomes the most important thing for him, he tracks the amount of protein he eats and convinces his parents that it’s all to be a better athlete. He tells them it’s what all the kids are doing nowadays.
It’s easy, too easy. He’s still eating a good amount of calories though less than he should be eating and he’s smaller than he was but he’s not emaciated so it couldn’t be that bad. He wasn’t fainting and nobody was concerned so he kept going.
—
College was different. For the first time ever he was completely on his own, free to make his own food decisions. Along with his studies he’d also joined the swimming team, he knew exercise was important but he was ready for a break from high school athletics, swimming was that break. Letting the water take him allowed him to relax, it was like playing piano.
His studies are still the most important thing to him. Nights are spent in the library with books to his side and papers filled with scribbled notes. Psychology takes over his body, understanding the human condition makes him feel so euphoric that he feels nearly feverish. He doesn’t eat dinner anymore, there’s no time to eat when he has so much work to do.
(“You are eating well?” His mother asks over the phone to her son who hasn’t eaten in a day. If his stomach didn’t rumble then he’d forget that food was even a thing.
“The college is feeding me well, nothing compared to your cooking though.” Lance replies and then he wonders how long he can go without eating. )
Study, study, study. Don’t eat, not because he’s trying to starve himself but because he simply doesn’t need to eat unless he can’t focus on studying anymore then he’s allowed a chicken salad with no dressing. Dressing is a waste of calories. He’s losing weight but he doesn’t care. He gets dizzy when he stands up but decides that he’s fine because he hasn’t yet fainted.
It’s easy, manageable.
His head isn’t filled with thoughts of food and nobody’s fretting over any lost weight which he’s admittedly lost a lot of. He could get used to this.
—
“You’re so thin.” His father says he's in the hospital after just having a stroke. Lance just finished his finals and he isn’t ready to start losing his parents. “They can’t be feeding you well over there.”
Sweets can’t believe that his Dad has just had a stroke and all he can care about is his weight. He didn’t deserve to be loved like this.
“You don’t need to worry about me, studies show that more stress could make you sicker.” It was easier to let the psychologist in him take over than deal with all of the pain inside of him.
“You’re my son, how could I not worry about you?” Lance had to blink back tears.
—
His parents both die once he finishes graduate school, within weeks of each other. He goes from having a family to lean on for everything to having nobody. It hurts, it hurts so fucking much. It feels like his body has been ripped apart and sewed back together with every blood vessel and organ put in the wrong place. He isn’t sure how he’s ever supposed to be a functional person again.
Psychologically, he knows that he’s just grieving and he’ll learn how to deal with the grief. He could talk about all the hormone changes and chemicals being released by the brain but realistically he’s only twenty one years old and logic isn’t going to make anything better.
For a minute he eats like a normal person, he gorges on fried takeout food and calorific meals, it gives him a clear mind that allows him to yearn for everything he’s lost. He doesn’t want to think about it, it makes his entire body shudder so he doesn’t. He throws out all the food in his parents house and doesn’t eat a single thing. Listening to the rumble of the stomach as his body begins to eat itself is easier.
Lance hasn’t eaten for three days when he makes it to the funeral, he makes his speech as the world spins around him and stumbles over his words.
But he doesn’t have a problem with his eating, he’s simply trying to cope. He’s about to start working as a psychologist for the FBI and he can’t show himself mourning. Not eating helps. It’s not an eating disorder, he’d know if it was because he’s trained to recognise eating disorders.
And after the funeral he does slowly start to eat again, pieces of chocolate (only saw pieces, even a vending machine bar has far too many calories) salads without dressing, never full meals. He can’t stand feeling full instead he enjoys the euphoria of feeling empty. He feels superior to others being able to survive with such little food.
—
As he starts his job at the FBI, he finds himself beginning to eat more. He joins his colleagues at the diner and goes out drinking at night. Overall, he’s getting a good amount of calories in and it allows him to excel so he doesn’t pay attention to his diets. He doesn’t swim anymore but he’s started hiking and it keeps him fit. Eventually he also gets a gym membership.
Then, his past life becomes more exposed. Brennan witnesses the scars, that older psychologist figures him out just by reading his book and now his past is out in the open. He hates how everyone gets to know just how damaged he is. After the family meal he’s forced into, he can’t eat breakfast. He doesn’t feel hungry, he doesn’t really feel anything but shame.
The abuse wasn’t his fault and he doesn’t need to hide anything especially when both Brennan and Booth had been through their fair amount of abuse. It feels different for him, he’s a psychologist, he’s supposed to know how to deal with this sort of thing yet it’s all messed up. He drowns his feelings in emptiness, the only calories that really hit him are the calories of alcohol but even that he can’t drink too much of.
Everyone sees him as a child, they say it straight to his face and with each pound that falls off his body he begins to look younger.
—
The diner is a common meeting place when it comes to working with those at the Jeffersonian institute, they talk about cases over balanced meals with unknown calories. Lance hates the diner, he hates how all the food is cooked with oil and the salads are portioned so small that it’s basically just a slice of lettuce but it’s the easiest way to communicate. The cases are more important than his feelings.
He’s sat at a table with Booth and Brennan, he’s ordered a sandwich and a portion of a salad but even the scent of the food causes bile to rise through his throat. He’s been in enough food situations to know exactly how to handle this situation, it’s not like anyone’s focusing on his plate anyway.
“Psychologically, studies show that children who are raised by parents with a certain mental condition become more susceptible to having that condition themselves.” He cuts up his food as he speaks, grabs some of his sandwich and puts food close to his mouth but before speaking he puts it back down. “Our murderer likely has a family history of psychosis so going through medical records could help.”
Booth quickly gets on the phone to the FBI and then both Brennan and Booth run off without even saying bye.
Sweets looks down at his plate, the cut up food that he’s going to have to pay off. His entire body feels calmer now that he hasn’t eaten but overall he feels terrible and as he stands up to pay the bill, he has to grip the table to ensure that he doesn’t fall over.
But he’s fine, his body is just adapting to postural changes.
—
“You’ve been shivering the entire time you’ve been interviewing that woman, judging by your body it looks like you’re underweight.” Brennan explains unprompted. “You could have a medical condition like anaemia or or B12 deficiency, if I were you I’d get blood work done.”
“Right, you don’t need to worry, it’s just a little chilly today.” Sweets lies, he thinks that being a psychologist should make him more convincing but it doesn’t.
“It’s always the same temperature here, you’ve dropped a significant amount of weight since we first met and I think that may be the reason for the coldness.”
“I was just with a suspected murderer, I’d say the shivering is just a symptom of anxiety.” Sweets bites the inside of his mouth and wishes that he hadn’t replied at all. He really hates himself sometimes, now he is making himself look bad at his own job. He was a disgrace.
“If it was anxiety it would have stopped by now.”
“Right, maybe we should get back to the case.”
And it’s shameful to be caught, to know that he could be forced to stop and eat like a normal person. Even Daisy hasn’t realised his not eating tricks and they're practically moved in together. Yet he also feels sickly proud, he’s doing so well. If he keeps going on like this maybe they’ll all stage some intervention and he’ll be forced under a feeding tube.
He shouldn’t want this, normal people don’t want this. But he does want this and he’ll do anything to get it.
—
When he was fourteen, Sweets landed in the hospital for three days. He’d only been in hospital one time beforehand which was when he was recovering from his abuse and required aseptic care. This time he’d been running, then he wasn’t running and then he was in a hospital bed with a bag of fluids connected to his arm.
He saw his parents sitting in plastic cheers, staring at him with scared expressions. Once they realised that they had woken up, they jumped out of the seats.
“What’s wrong with me?” He asked them, really he knew. He knew that he’d started restricting so much that his body couldn’t sustain itself. His entire body's systems had been slowing down and exercise was becoming harder with each day.
“You’re really underweight and malnourished.” His dad explained. “I just don’t understand, is there a reason that you haven’t been eating enough?”
“I just haven’t been hungry lately.” Sweets lied, he’d been ravenous lately, staying far away from the kitchen at all times. “I didn’t even realise that I’d been losing weight.”
“It’s ok, we’re going to get this sorted out.”
Sorting it out actually meant getting a diet plan from a dietician who he met once, following it closely until he was at the minimum healthy weight for his body and then he was allowed to unravel again. When he thinks back, Sweets realises that he’s been struggling with food for a lot longer than he’d allow himself to admit.
—
When sweets woke up he was lying on the floor in his kitchen. It was the third time that week that he’d woken up in some random place in his apartment. He knew this was a bad sign but it only made him want to get worse. Slowly, he forced himself to sit up causing black dots to appear all around. He was glad that Daisy wasn’t here to see this. He was glad that Daisy wasn’t here at all, he didn’t want to be around people ever again.
Somehow he managed to get himself on his feet, he caught his reflection in the microwave and saw a bruise beginning to form along his cheek. He sighed knowing that he’d have to buy some foundation to cover it up.
And later on in the shower he saw the effects over his entire body, he was covered in bruises. He looked like someone had given him a good run through. It was both disgusting and rewarding. It was all paying off, his restriction was working, and he’d make sure that it’d keep working.
He rubs shampoo through his hair and his hands end up covered in strands. And he can only wish to be different.
—
“You’re coming to get dinner with me and Bones tonight, we’re going to a Thai place.” Booth says to him. Sweets had no plans to eat dinner at all or do anything but go home and either head straight to bed or sit in a warm shower until he got dizzy.
“I already have plans for tonight.” He tells Booth, trying to keep his voice as casual as possible.
“Then you’ll have to cancel.”
“You seem very excited to get me to this Thai place.” Sweets commented, normally he would add some random psychology fact to it but right now he simply didn’t have the energy.
“Yeah well you look like you’re going to drop dead any moment so we want to make sure you get some proper food in besides, you can’t say no to a Michelin star restaurant.”
“Ok, I’ll be there.”
He pretends to have an appointment with a client but really he runs off to the bathroom to have a panic attack over the calories in Thai food. His breathing only begins to steady when he decides that he’ll wake up early tomorrow and burn off as many calories as possible in the gym.
—
Lance knows that he isn’t normal about food. Normal people can eat without much consideration, normal people understand balance but he’s never really been normal. He’s dedicated his entire life to understanding the human condition because he wanted to understand what would make someone hurt him as a young kid. And now he’s become a psychological problem.
He doesn’t want to believe that he has a problem but he’s sat with Booth and Brennan and he hasn’t allowed a calorie into his mouth yet and his heart is pounding and he’s so terrified of putting the food into his mouth. The feeling of his body bloating until he’s so puffed up that he can’t even move and he wants to rip out his stomach and tear it all up.
Lance takes a sip of water and begins faking it. It’s so easy to pretend when Booth and Brennan are stuck in a conversation with each other. He shoves some of the food on the pocket of his blazer, cuts the rest of it up and gives compliments to the chef.
If this was a client he’d be talking to them about the hospital and dieticians that make meal plans, he’d be working through their past instead he’s in the big seat and he can keep on deoriateing.
The world around him is just multiple shades of grey merging together, he convinces himself that the colour will come back when he reaches his desired weight but then he reaches that weight and everything’s still monotone and then he lowers his desired weight. It just keeps on going, he wishes he could be weightless and then he wishes he was dead.
Yeah, he has a problem but he’s not going to do anything about it.
—
Life goes on. He doesn’t eat and he and Daisy break up and none of his clothes fit and he weighs himself everyday and he faints a few more times and he does his job.
Sweets knows that he’s not doing his job well anymore, he’s forgetting crucial information and has to read patient files multiple times. He’s struggling to understand the exact advice that his clients need or the correct profiles to give to Booth. All he really wants is to sleep but he can’t even do that anymore because the hunger eats in his body like a brain eating parasite that wants him to live in the kitchen filling up.
“Are you well enough to be giving me psychological advice?” Hodgins asks, he’s at the Jeffersonian to give out a profile. He hasn’t seen Hodgins in what seems to be months, time is spinning by so fast and he’s not certain what day it is.
“What do you mean?” Sweets asked though he obviously knows, he just wants to hear it from someone else so that he can believe it.
“Have you seen yourself?” Hodgins looks at him up and down. “You’ve dropped like three clothing sizes since I last saw you and you look deathly sick, have you been to the doctors lately?”
“I had the flu not too long ago and my appetite is still wrecked.” He’s surprised at how easily the lie falls out. Being truthful is a part of his job description but all he tells are white lies.
“You better start eating if you want people to see you as less of a kid.” The words hit him right in the chest and he feels his breath slipping away.
—
Lance has always been seen as younger than he is, he’s always been ahead of his peers, grades ahead in school and now in a job that most people couldn’t enter until their thirties. It was something that made him stand out from other people, his uniqueness and deep inside he still is that young child being beaten.
All he ever wanted was to be good enough. Good enough that the beatings stopped, that he hadn’t been through four foster families by the time he was six. Good enough that people listened to his insights and appreciated them, that his vast knowledge was seen as knowledge. But he could never be good enough for others, he’d never be the best at anything.
If he couldn’t be good enough for them then at least he could be good enough for himself so he had tried. He’d controlled himself until he felt as powerful as a God and all he’d done was hate himself in the process. It was almost laughable, he couldn’t even be good enough for himself.
—
“Have you noticed a change in Sweets lately?” Brennan asks Booth. “He’s been showing classic signs of malnutrition but I feel like something else is wrong.”
“He has been distant lately and if you’re going with your gut then something must be wrong.”
“I’m not going with my gut, he’s been less social and his profiles are rushed and inaccurate.” Brennan explained like she was the psychologist. “And though I know psychology isn’t a proper scientific field, his profiles have always given us excellent insight into the murders.”
“You don’t think it has something to do with his weight loss?” Booth wouldn’t admit it out loud but he’d grown fond of having Sweets around.
“It could be an eating disorder.”
“I thought that was a thing only teenage girls got.”
“Eating disorders can happen to anyone, actually they’re very common in early adulthood, Sweets did lose his parents before joining so he could be using food as a way to deal with the grief.” Brennan theorised.
“We need to go and confront him.” Booth said, dropping all thoughts about the murder and grabbing his car keys. He couldn’t imagine being an agent without having the psychologist around, he didn’t want to be an agent without the psychologist around.
—
As he walks out of the Jeffersonian he’s certain that he’s going to have a heart attack. He can feel exploding pain and then his heart beat speeding up though he isn’t sure if that’s an actual sign or just a symptom of his anxiety. If this was a client he’d tell them to take some deep breaths and then assess the situation but he isn’t ready to be calm so he goes to his car and thinks about how easy someone would find him.
‘This is it.’ He thinks and he doesn’t feel sad or panicked or happy. He’s content with death, it’s just another life stage. He wonders if his birth mother could have predicted this or if he should have noticed the warning signs when learning about eating disorders during his degree.
And the pain intensifies, he isn’t too sure what happens after that. He feels himself shiver, the only thing his body seems to be able to do lately, and then his surroundings seem to disappear. Sweets thinks that he might be able to hear something, hushed voices and then nothing.
And he thinks of his parents and hopes that he can be with them again.