Fic: If I Just Keep Breathing
Occasionally I post things instead of just writing and then forgetting about them.
Title: If I Just Keep Breathing
Fandom: Bandom (MCR)
Pairing/Characters: Bob gen
Rating/warnings Mature, HUGE FREAKING WARNING for eating disorders, including disordered thoughts and a description of purging
Summary: It took Bob most of his life to find a way to lose weight, but when he did he was so good at it he didn't want to stop.
Notes: Quite a few notes for this one, so bear with me.
1. I haven't tried very hard to stick to canon timelines, especially regarding when Brian stopped managing MCR. Canon timeline bends to the needs of my plot for this one, and I won't apologise for it.
2. I've avoided going into detail about Bob's disordered eating habits. What he actually does to lose weight is left pretty vague, partly to avoid triggers (for myself as much as for readers) but also because I don't want to give anyone ideas. I know just about every anorexic technique in the book, but I the fewer people know about them, the better.
3. What I've depicted in this fic is far from a textbook case of disordered eating, but it's based on my own experiences as an ED sufferer, so please don't tell me it's inaccurate because Bob doesn't go through symptom X. People experience EDs differently, just like everything else. This is one way it can happen.
4. Title from the lyrics of Skin and Bones by Jet. I know pluginzeta has used the same lyric for a title in the past, but I couldn't resist.
5. And thanks to gala_apples for getting me to write it.
It's not like feeling insecure about his weight is something new, that's the thing. It's always been there. It's just closer to the front of his mind when he joins the band, because he's not down the back of the hall with a sound board any more. He's on stage, in the spotlight, where thousands of people can see him. Yeah, their eyes are more likely to be fixed on Gerard, and a lot of Bob is shielded by his kit. But there's something about being on stage - and on stage with tiny, skinny dudes like Mikey and Frank, seriously, it wasn't hard to feel good about your appearance when you mostly worked with techs - that stopped it being an occasional thought and made it more of a daily one. When they were working on Black Parade and Gerard started to talk about getting costumes made professionally, having unique ones made for each of them, and measured to fit, Bob stopped ignoring the voice that wished he was thinner and started wondering what he could do to make it shut up.
***
He never got into the habit of posting on pro-anorexia websites, or even visiting them too much, but he knows they’re there. They’re not too hard to find when you’re desperate for something different after too many diets that didn’t work. They scared him, at first. There's something sick about them, a bit too much, a bit wrong, and they're clearly not for him. But there's something attractive, too, the community of it, the slogans and the encouragement that seem different, removed, just better than the stupid diets and exercise regimes that he's tried and don't seem to work and just make him feel like a failure. And there's something reassuring about the way so many of the girls on these sites use photos of his band as their avatars. He knows Gerard would hate that, he'd say that My Chemical Romance is supposed to save teen lives, not help them starve themselves to death, but Bob can't help but like that tiny bit of connection that those communities have to him. It makes him feel like he’s a part of it, even if he doesn’t think he’ll ever belong.
He doesn't keep going back to those websites, but they stick in his mind anyway. And the next time he finds himself standing in the shower, reluctant to even soap up his body because of the way he feels revolted at just touching his own stomach, he thinks about it, and it seems less disgusting than the way he feels now. He remembers a few of the tips, and as harsh as they are, they seem easier to follow than any of the diets he's tried - simpler, more honest, more real, as though he can beat his body instead of it beating him - and he thinks, why the hell not?
The first week, he carefully cuts out a lot of what he'd usually eat. He's hungry a lot more, but for some reason he doesn't mind it as much as usual. His body can complain all it likes. He's going to win. The first week he loses six pounds, and he feels elated.
The second week, he loses another five.
By the third week, he's only lost another three pounds. It's still good. He's still thinner. He looks at himself in the shower now and he sees less. Still more than he'd like, but less. But when he looks at the number on the scales he thinks I can do better than that.
***
The first time he tries purging is a rude shock. Kneeling in front of the toilet, the smell of his own vomit acrid in the air and the acidic burn in his mouth and down his throat, he feels pathetic. This is sick, he thinks, as he flushes it away and climbs to his feet, knees shaking. This was too far. He wasn't going to do this again. It wasn't worth it. He was just going to hurt himself more, and for what? For being skinny? Was that really fucking worth it?
He doesn't try purging again, but he feels bloated now whenever he eats until he's full. It was more comfortable to be a little bit hungry all the time. Hunger was safe. Hunger meant that he was on the right track, he wasn't getting fat again, he'd be able to look in the mirror without hating himself one day soon, really, he would. Hunger made sure that every time he stepped on the scales it was another little victory.
The first time somebody called him skinny, it was better than the first time he ever played on stage to an audience who sang his band's words back to him. He didn't think that losing weight would ever make him feel that good, but it did. He only felt a little bit sad that something like this could make him feel better than the band did.
He never let it get too bad. He'd heard about what happened to people who really starved themselves. The hair loss, the fragile, breakable bones. The heart attacks. He wasn't like that, he told himself, stubbornly, as he piled on another hoodie to keep himself from shivering on a mild spring night. He wasn't going to let himself get sick. He'd just found a quicker way to get thin, that was all. He wasn't at the mercy of yet another fad diet, having to check what he ate every day, worrying about whether he was living up to a stranger’s arbitrary rules about what to eat. He was in control, of his body and himself. He was winning.
***
If anyone in his band noticed his weight loss, they didn't mention it. In some ways, it irritated him. He'd worked so hard to get this thin, so that he could look good, and they didn't even notice? Fuck 'em. But at the same time, it was a relief, too. He'd found himself creeping back to those sites sometimes, too. Even though they weren't like him, all those insecure teenage girls who thought nobody would love them unless they were thin, or worse, the ones who thought they could escape their abused bodies if they abused themselves enough. They scared him, with their images of emaciated bodies, nothing but skeletons draped in fragile skin. But what scared him more was the stories from girls who had been found out. Tales of therapy, hospitalisation. Forced feeding. A doctor monitoring your weight, keeping you in their care until they decided that you were fat enough.
The thought of that scared him in some deep way that the pictures didn't. The shame of his bandmates looking at him like he was broken instead of fixed, like he was sick, like he was pitiful. And the thought of someone insisting that he eat more, fatten up, and stop treating food like the enemy.
***
He let slip on camera that having someone call him skinny was his proudest moment, and Frank teased him for the rest of the interview. He tried to keep a smile on his face, but as soon as the cameras stopped rolling he darted outside, hunching his shoulders against the wind, and stomped a thudding rhythm around the car park.
"Stupid," he muttered to himself. His stomach growled, a welcome sound. He could go a few hours without a snack yet. "Fucking idiot, Bryar. Why the fuck did you say that? Stupid, stupid, stupid fucking..."
"Hey."
He stopped and whirled around suddenly, and there was Frank, grabbing at his shoulder. "What?"
"I just wanted to say I'm sorry," said Frank, and he looked like he really meant it, which was as shocking as Frank saying sorry in the first place. "I didn't think you’d beat yourself up over it."
Bob shrugged and tried to sink deeper into his hoodie. He'd fucked up this time, he'd gone and said something and now they were going to know, after everything he'd done to try to keep this to himself.
"You know I don't actually think you're going to make all our fans anorexic, right? You’ve heard Gerard. He won't fucking shut up about how they have to love themselves and shit."
Bob let out a long, slow, sigh. There was a burning sense of shame, deep inside him, that that should have been what he was worried about, the effect his words would have on the kids, and not whether it would make his bandmates suspect that maybe he wasn't okay. But for now, he could bury it under the relief and just say "Yeah, Frank. I know."
***
Bob could kid himself that he was healthy until he started getting sick. It happened once, and then he never quite got better, and then he got even sicker again. They were still touring like crazy, and he was determined that he wouldn't let being sick interrupt their work, so he pushed on through it, but the truth was, he was exhausted.
"You should see a doctor," said Brian, after a particularly exhausting show. Bob had dragged himself offstage, sat down heavily in the wings, and Ray had to half-carry him back on stage for the encore.
"We don't have time. I'll be fine."
"No you won't. Go to the doctor, Bryar."
"I'm going to bed," said Bob, and headed towards his bunk, but Brian had known him too long to let Bob stay in denial about his health for a second.
"I mean it," said Brian, fiercely. "You can't keep going like this. If you don't stop and get better then you'll just collapse later on and then I'll have to find a drummer with half an hour's notice."
"I'm going to bed now, Brian," said Bob, loudly, and pulled the curtain across his bunk. He'd be fine. He knew he would. He was thinner now, wasn't that supposed to be healthier? Even if he was tired all the time, even before he got sick. And even if his eating was the problem, the doctor was just going to tell him to eat more, and Bob couldn't do that. He just couldn't.
***
When he woke up the next morning, there was a note from Brian with the date and time of his doctor's appointment in a few days, along with the assurance that Brian would drive him if Bob couldn't make it himself. Don't think I've forgotten the time you got frostbite, asshole. it said, at the end.
***
There was nothing particularly wrong with him, the doctor said. A mild virus, but he prescribed some pills and said Bob should get better soon as long as he didn't forget to take any. The only odd thing was that Bob's immune system seemed to be pretty weak. Was there anything else that had been troubling him lately?
Bob made some noncommittal noises, afraid of saying anything that would give away the fact that he'd all but stopped eating. His doctor was used to Bob saying nothing, though, just like Brian was, so after a moment he sighed and said it was probably just the touring lifestyle messing him up, and that Bob should try to cut back on the cigarettes, and then he was free to go.
(Not that Bob had any intention of cutting back on the cigarettes.)
It wasn't until later that Bob realised why he felt so disappointed right then, and why he hesitated at the door. Brian had bought him a slice of chocolate cake while he was waiting, as an apology of sorts, and he accepted Bob's excuse that he didn't feel well enough to eat it but he'd save it for later. Bob opened the box when they got back to the bus, when there was nobody else around to see. It looked delicious. It smelled delicious. It was the best looking thing Bob had seen in months. His stomach growled and his mouth watered, and despite how much he liked being in control, right then he wanted to say "fuck you" to weight loss and eat the damn cake.
But no matter how much he wanted to, he couldn't stop himself from dumping the whole lot in the trash.
***
Bob got better, eventually. (Or at least, his virus went away. It was as healthy as he got these days.) Brian didn't stop watching him, though, and it was the kind of attention that made Bob more than a little uneasy. It was getting harder and harder to avoid eating with the rest of the guys because Brian kept inviting him. He could keep saying no, of course, but he knew he could only refuse an outright invitation so many times without being rude. And if Brian was already suspicious then avoiding restaurants was only going to confirm it.
Still, it frustrated him no end that he had to eat more than he wanted, even when he tried to keep to ordering smaller meals, not eating it all, rearranging his leftovers on the plate so it looked like he'd eaten more than he had. He knew he didn't look all that different, but he felt bloated and disgusting after eating a few proper meals in a row. It was bothering him so much that he kept thinking about experimenting with purging again. He couldn't, though. That would be even harder to hide.
It was the next time he got sick when Brian finally cornered him, alone in the bus while the others were out exploring, and said "You don't eat enough, Bryar."
"I'm sick," Bob rolled over, turning his back to Brian. "Of course I don't want to eat."
"Get up," said Brian, in the voice he usually reserved for when Gerard was being a diva. "We're going to have some coffee and toast and talk about this."
Bob sat in the back lounge of the couch, hunched over under his blanket, and nibbled at the buttered toast Brian had made him while Brian carried on about how Bob had responsibilities and had to look after himself, and that meant taking a break if he needed to.
"I don't want to let the band down," said Bob, putting down the half-eaten toast.
"Did Mikey let the band down when he took time off?"
"No, but..."
"But how the fuck is it different, Bob? You think you're helping everyone by keeping going, but if you keep going like this you're going to drive yourself to death, and that really would let everyone down. So stop being so damn selfish." He glared for a moment, then added "And finish your toast."
"I'm not hungry."
Brian sighed. He looked at his hands for a long moment. "I think that's the problem."
Bob swallowed, trying to hide his rising panic behind a defensive glare. "I'm not hungry because I'm sick, asshole."
"You're making yourself sick," Brian snapped.
They stared at each other in stony silence until they heard voices up the front of the bus and Bob got up to leave.
"Wait." Brian hissed, and grabbed his wrist. "I'm serious about this, Bob. I'm worried about you. You're making yourself sick, and what are you getting out of it? Being thin? Who the fuck cares Bob?"
"Fuck off."
"No," said Brian, infuriatingly. "I'm not going to sit here and let you starve to death."
"I'm not starving," Bob hissed. "I eat."
"Not enough."
"What are you going to do about it, force feed me?" He stumbled over the last words, despite his bravado.
"I have to do something."
"Yeah, you do." Bob snapped. "Leave me alone. You don't get to tell me what to do."
It was the only thing he could think to say before he stomped out to the front of the bus to welcome back the rest of the guys. But it didn't make him feel any less like a surly teenager.
***
Over the next few months, the only thing Bob was grateful to Brian for was that none of the others ever overheard their fights. But they did fight, over and over, hurtful, repetitive arguments that left Bob more and more afraid of where they were heading - and more determined not to let Brian force even a mouthful of food onto him. He started to feel safer when they were with the rest of the band, knowing that Brian wasn't going to say a word about Bob's health, even though Bob could feel his disapproving gaze no matter what he was talking about with the others. When Bob fell ill again, he was almost proud of it. He was even going to be sick if he wanted to. Brian couldn't tell him otherwise.
The downside of being sick was that when he was confined to his bunk, he couldn't escape Brian's lectures.
"I told you so," said Brian, unmoved by Bob's coughing. "You're a danger to yourself, I mean it."
"Leave me alone."
"Maybe I should. I could just leave you here and take care of the people in this band who don't want to destroy their lives."
"Why don't you, then?" he sighed. He was over this. He just wanted to sleep.
"Because you're my friend and I love you whether I want to or not," Brian huffed. "And if you won't take care of yourself then someone has to."
He felt that fear again, that terror that Brian was going to take him out of the band, put him in therapy or a hospital or something, and force him to get... to change. But for a moment there, he felt safer than he had in months.
Most of the time, though, the fear won out. Every mealtime Brian would try to guilt him into eating some more. He'd go out of his way to find the things that he knew were Bob’s favourite snacks, even if it meant flying them from Chicago to Spain. Every moment he could get Bob alone, Brian said everything he could think of to take a break, or get help, or just fucking eat something. Anything. And as wrapped up as he was in his own problems, Bob could still see how their fights were hurting the band. He didn't know what more he could do, though, when he spent more and more of his time just fearing what would happen when Brian had enough and found a way to get Bob fucking committed or something.
He never even considered that the thing that would give could be Brian.
Not that it was Brian, really, it was the rest of the band, somehow coming to an agreement that it was Brian who had to go. They all came to Bob, all wide eyes and apologies, silently begging him not to fight what they'd done, begging Bob not to leave with him.
"I'm so sorry, Bob," said Gerard, gripping his hand. "We all know how close you and Brian were, but it just wasn't working any more."
The very first thing Bob felt was relief. It made him too disgusted with himself to even consider telling Gerard that the way they'd treated Brian was pretty shit.
***
It was a couple of days after Brian left - without even speaking to Bob - that Bob realised nobody had nagged him about his eating for a while. He was sitting around a table at a roadside diner with the rest of the band, as they had so many times, staring at the tiny plate of food that he'd ordered and barely touched. And the rest of them kept talking to each other, and to him, like it wasn't even there. Frank even kept sneaking fries from Bob's plate and giving Bob this innocent look as though Bob hadn't noticed. As though Bob didn't know exactly how many calories were on that plate. As though Bob cared about someone else eating his food.
He was free to eat as little as he wanted, and none of them were going to say a word.
He was free.
He was scared.
***
The Black Parade tour, which had just about driven all of them mad, finally came to an end and Bob dragged himself back to Chicago where at least his surroundings were normal. He got sick again almost as soon as he got home. By now Bob had given up trying to convince himself that he was really healthy and it was just a cold, that he wasn't doing this to himself. He just crawled into bed to wait it out, until he could get better again.
What he really wanted was someone to sit with him and make him a coffee. Or some chicken broth. He wouldn't even think about how many calories were in chicken broth, he just wanted someone to hold him and feed him and make him feel loved. Then maybe he'd feel like he was going to get better. Not just get over the cold, but really, truly get better. But the only people in Chicago that he could face when he was this miserable were his parents and Brian. And he didn't want his parents to see him like this.
He still didn't call Brian.
He just lay there with his dogs, hoped that whatever he'd caught this time would make him lose a little more weight, even though he didn't need it. He knew he didn't need to. He didn't hate his stomach any more, but he didn't like that he could see his ribs through his skin now, either. Bob was done justifying this. It was fucked up, it was fucking him up. It might even be killing him.
He just didn't know how to stop.
***
When they finally got around to starting work on the new album, it at least got Bob out of the house and out of his head. He felt better than he had in a long time, even without Brian around. He still had his moments of frustration, and he just about stormed out on Gerard when he came back after a couple of weeks' break and said they had to throw out half the work they'd done because it no longer fit with Gerard's fucking vision or whatever. That fight ended with Bob and Gerard standing outside and moodily smoking cigarettes at opposite corners of the building for the rest of the afternoon, until Bob finally got sick of cigarettes and decided to offer a truce. They wound up staying there long into the night but the new music was worth it. Holy shit, was it worth it. By the end of that recording session, Bob felt like he was flying.
The following day, he and Gerard sat down for an afternoon smoke, companionable this time. They talked about the last tour, and how messed up it got, though Bob never went into details about what he was going through, and the next tour, too, what Gerard had planned. And despite how tough the last one had been, Bob was really, honestly starting to feel excited about doing shows again.
"I have to shape up again, though," Gerard said, ruefully, poking his own stomach. "I got way too fat to really shake it on stage. What's your secret, Bobert?"
Bob knew this was the moment when he should tell Gerard that he was talking nonsense and he was an amazing performer no matter what he looked like. He'd said it before when Gerard complained about his weight, sometimes with Brian giving him a confused glare the whole time, so he knew his lines, too. But this time, instead, it came out as "I didn't eat anything but a slice of bread a day for a week once, and I lost eight pounds."
"Really? Huh," Gerard said, looking at Bob thoughtfully.
Bob cursed himself for the slip, and braced himself for what had to come next. Questions. Concern. The suggestion, yet again, that Bob should get some help, even though Bob had no goddamn idea how anyone could fix this without killing him in the process because he couldn't see a way to live without this anymore. Except that then Gerard said something worse.
"I'll have to give that a try."
***
The call came in the middle of the night, or at least at six in the morning, which was close enough to the middle of the night for Brian Schechter. He would have ignored it, as his wife sleepily suggested. For any other guy, he would. For any other guy who let Brian get sacked without a word in his defence, he'd have a litany of expletives ready to fire. But for Bob, he just looked at the number and picked up.
"Brian," said Bob, his voice breathless and cracked, "I need to stop."
"Okay," said Brian, "Tell me where you are."
"At home. I... I don't know what to do any more. Maybe I should quit the band. I don't know. I just, I need help, or something, I don't know what else I can do."
It was the closest thing to panic he'd ever heard from Bob, and it was a little scary, to tell the truth, but Brian just pulled on some jeans and walked out to the car because this, at least, was a start.
Title: If I Just Keep Breathing
Fandom: Bandom (MCR)
Pairing/Characters: Bob gen
Rating/warnings Mature, HUGE FREAKING WARNING for eating disorders, including disordered thoughts and a description of purging
Summary: It took Bob most of his life to find a way to lose weight, but when he did he was so good at it he didn't want to stop.
Notes: Quite a few notes for this one, so bear with me.
1. I haven't tried very hard to stick to canon timelines, especially regarding when Brian stopped managing MCR. Canon timeline bends to the needs of my plot for this one, and I won't apologise for it.
2. I've avoided going into detail about Bob's disordered eating habits. What he actually does to lose weight is left pretty vague, partly to avoid triggers (for myself as much as for readers) but also because I don't want to give anyone ideas. I know just about every anorexic technique in the book, but I the fewer people know about them, the better.
3. What I've depicted in this fic is far from a textbook case of disordered eating, but it's based on my own experiences as an ED sufferer, so please don't tell me it's inaccurate because Bob doesn't go through symptom X. People experience EDs differently, just like everything else. This is one way it can happen.
4. Title from the lyrics of Skin and Bones by Jet. I know pluginzeta has used the same lyric for a title in the past, but I couldn't resist.
5. And thanks to gala_apples for getting me to write it.
It's not like feeling insecure about his weight is something new, that's the thing. It's always been there. It's just closer to the front of his mind when he joins the band, because he's not down the back of the hall with a sound board any more. He's on stage, in the spotlight, where thousands of people can see him. Yeah, their eyes are more likely to be fixed on Gerard, and a lot of Bob is shielded by his kit. But there's something about being on stage - and on stage with tiny, skinny dudes like Mikey and Frank, seriously, it wasn't hard to feel good about your appearance when you mostly worked with techs - that stopped it being an occasional thought and made it more of a daily one. When they were working on Black Parade and Gerard started to talk about getting costumes made professionally, having unique ones made for each of them, and measured to fit, Bob stopped ignoring the voice that wished he was thinner and started wondering what he could do to make it shut up.
***
He never got into the habit of posting on pro-anorexia websites, or even visiting them too much, but he knows they’re there. They’re not too hard to find when you’re desperate for something different after too many diets that didn’t work. They scared him, at first. There's something sick about them, a bit too much, a bit wrong, and they're clearly not for him. But there's something attractive, too, the community of it, the slogans and the encouragement that seem different, removed, just better than the stupid diets and exercise regimes that he's tried and don't seem to work and just make him feel like a failure. And there's something reassuring about the way so many of the girls on these sites use photos of his band as their avatars. He knows Gerard would hate that, he'd say that My Chemical Romance is supposed to save teen lives, not help them starve themselves to death, but Bob can't help but like that tiny bit of connection that those communities have to him. It makes him feel like he’s a part of it, even if he doesn’t think he’ll ever belong.
He doesn't keep going back to those websites, but they stick in his mind anyway. And the next time he finds himself standing in the shower, reluctant to even soap up his body because of the way he feels revolted at just touching his own stomach, he thinks about it, and it seems less disgusting than the way he feels now. He remembers a few of the tips, and as harsh as they are, they seem easier to follow than any of the diets he's tried - simpler, more honest, more real, as though he can beat his body instead of it beating him - and he thinks, why the hell not?
The first week, he carefully cuts out a lot of what he'd usually eat. He's hungry a lot more, but for some reason he doesn't mind it as much as usual. His body can complain all it likes. He's going to win. The first week he loses six pounds, and he feels elated.
The second week, he loses another five.
By the third week, he's only lost another three pounds. It's still good. He's still thinner. He looks at himself in the shower now and he sees less. Still more than he'd like, but less. But when he looks at the number on the scales he thinks I can do better than that.
***
The first time he tries purging is a rude shock. Kneeling in front of the toilet, the smell of his own vomit acrid in the air and the acidic burn in his mouth and down his throat, he feels pathetic. This is sick, he thinks, as he flushes it away and climbs to his feet, knees shaking. This was too far. He wasn't going to do this again. It wasn't worth it. He was just going to hurt himself more, and for what? For being skinny? Was that really fucking worth it?
He doesn't try purging again, but he feels bloated now whenever he eats until he's full. It was more comfortable to be a little bit hungry all the time. Hunger was safe. Hunger meant that he was on the right track, he wasn't getting fat again, he'd be able to look in the mirror without hating himself one day soon, really, he would. Hunger made sure that every time he stepped on the scales it was another little victory.
The first time somebody called him skinny, it was better than the first time he ever played on stage to an audience who sang his band's words back to him. He didn't think that losing weight would ever make him feel that good, but it did. He only felt a little bit sad that something like this could make him feel better than the band did.
He never let it get too bad. He'd heard about what happened to people who really starved themselves. The hair loss, the fragile, breakable bones. The heart attacks. He wasn't like that, he told himself, stubbornly, as he piled on another hoodie to keep himself from shivering on a mild spring night. He wasn't going to let himself get sick. He'd just found a quicker way to get thin, that was all. He wasn't at the mercy of yet another fad diet, having to check what he ate every day, worrying about whether he was living up to a stranger’s arbitrary rules about what to eat. He was in control, of his body and himself. He was winning.
***
If anyone in his band noticed his weight loss, they didn't mention it. In some ways, it irritated him. He'd worked so hard to get this thin, so that he could look good, and they didn't even notice? Fuck 'em. But at the same time, it was a relief, too. He'd found himself creeping back to those sites sometimes, too. Even though they weren't like him, all those insecure teenage girls who thought nobody would love them unless they were thin, or worse, the ones who thought they could escape their abused bodies if they abused themselves enough. They scared him, with their images of emaciated bodies, nothing but skeletons draped in fragile skin. But what scared him more was the stories from girls who had been found out. Tales of therapy, hospitalisation. Forced feeding. A doctor monitoring your weight, keeping you in their care until they decided that you were fat enough.
The thought of that scared him in some deep way that the pictures didn't. The shame of his bandmates looking at him like he was broken instead of fixed, like he was sick, like he was pitiful. And the thought of someone insisting that he eat more, fatten up, and stop treating food like the enemy.
***
He let slip on camera that having someone call him skinny was his proudest moment, and Frank teased him for the rest of the interview. He tried to keep a smile on his face, but as soon as the cameras stopped rolling he darted outside, hunching his shoulders against the wind, and stomped a thudding rhythm around the car park.
"Stupid," he muttered to himself. His stomach growled, a welcome sound. He could go a few hours without a snack yet. "Fucking idiot, Bryar. Why the fuck did you say that? Stupid, stupid, stupid fucking..."
"Hey."
He stopped and whirled around suddenly, and there was Frank, grabbing at his shoulder. "What?"
"I just wanted to say I'm sorry," said Frank, and he looked like he really meant it, which was as shocking as Frank saying sorry in the first place. "I didn't think you’d beat yourself up over it."
Bob shrugged and tried to sink deeper into his hoodie. He'd fucked up this time, he'd gone and said something and now they were going to know, after everything he'd done to try to keep this to himself.
"You know I don't actually think you're going to make all our fans anorexic, right? You’ve heard Gerard. He won't fucking shut up about how they have to love themselves and shit."
Bob let out a long, slow, sigh. There was a burning sense of shame, deep inside him, that that should have been what he was worried about, the effect his words would have on the kids, and not whether it would make his bandmates suspect that maybe he wasn't okay. But for now, he could bury it under the relief and just say "Yeah, Frank. I know."
***
Bob could kid himself that he was healthy until he started getting sick. It happened once, and then he never quite got better, and then he got even sicker again. They were still touring like crazy, and he was determined that he wouldn't let being sick interrupt their work, so he pushed on through it, but the truth was, he was exhausted.
"You should see a doctor," said Brian, after a particularly exhausting show. Bob had dragged himself offstage, sat down heavily in the wings, and Ray had to half-carry him back on stage for the encore.
"We don't have time. I'll be fine."
"No you won't. Go to the doctor, Bryar."
"I'm going to bed," said Bob, and headed towards his bunk, but Brian had known him too long to let Bob stay in denial about his health for a second.
"I mean it," said Brian, fiercely. "You can't keep going like this. If you don't stop and get better then you'll just collapse later on and then I'll have to find a drummer with half an hour's notice."
"I'm going to bed now, Brian," said Bob, loudly, and pulled the curtain across his bunk. He'd be fine. He knew he would. He was thinner now, wasn't that supposed to be healthier? Even if he was tired all the time, even before he got sick. And even if his eating was the problem, the doctor was just going to tell him to eat more, and Bob couldn't do that. He just couldn't.
***
When he woke up the next morning, there was a note from Brian with the date and time of his doctor's appointment in a few days, along with the assurance that Brian would drive him if Bob couldn't make it himself. Don't think I've forgotten the time you got frostbite, asshole. it said, at the end.
***
There was nothing particularly wrong with him, the doctor said. A mild virus, but he prescribed some pills and said Bob should get better soon as long as he didn't forget to take any. The only odd thing was that Bob's immune system seemed to be pretty weak. Was there anything else that had been troubling him lately?
Bob made some noncommittal noises, afraid of saying anything that would give away the fact that he'd all but stopped eating. His doctor was used to Bob saying nothing, though, just like Brian was, so after a moment he sighed and said it was probably just the touring lifestyle messing him up, and that Bob should try to cut back on the cigarettes, and then he was free to go.
(Not that Bob had any intention of cutting back on the cigarettes.)
It wasn't until later that Bob realised why he felt so disappointed right then, and why he hesitated at the door. Brian had bought him a slice of chocolate cake while he was waiting, as an apology of sorts, and he accepted Bob's excuse that he didn't feel well enough to eat it but he'd save it for later. Bob opened the box when they got back to the bus, when there was nobody else around to see. It looked delicious. It smelled delicious. It was the best looking thing Bob had seen in months. His stomach growled and his mouth watered, and despite how much he liked being in control, right then he wanted to say "fuck you" to weight loss and eat the damn cake.
But no matter how much he wanted to, he couldn't stop himself from dumping the whole lot in the trash.
***
Bob got better, eventually. (Or at least, his virus went away. It was as healthy as he got these days.) Brian didn't stop watching him, though, and it was the kind of attention that made Bob more than a little uneasy. It was getting harder and harder to avoid eating with the rest of the guys because Brian kept inviting him. He could keep saying no, of course, but he knew he could only refuse an outright invitation so many times without being rude. And if Brian was already suspicious then avoiding restaurants was only going to confirm it.
Still, it frustrated him no end that he had to eat more than he wanted, even when he tried to keep to ordering smaller meals, not eating it all, rearranging his leftovers on the plate so it looked like he'd eaten more than he had. He knew he didn't look all that different, but he felt bloated and disgusting after eating a few proper meals in a row. It was bothering him so much that he kept thinking about experimenting with purging again. He couldn't, though. That would be even harder to hide.
It was the next time he got sick when Brian finally cornered him, alone in the bus while the others were out exploring, and said "You don't eat enough, Bryar."
"I'm sick," Bob rolled over, turning his back to Brian. "Of course I don't want to eat."
"Get up," said Brian, in the voice he usually reserved for when Gerard was being a diva. "We're going to have some coffee and toast and talk about this."
Bob sat in the back lounge of the couch, hunched over under his blanket, and nibbled at the buttered toast Brian had made him while Brian carried on about how Bob had responsibilities and had to look after himself, and that meant taking a break if he needed to.
"I don't want to let the band down," said Bob, putting down the half-eaten toast.
"Did Mikey let the band down when he took time off?"
"No, but..."
"But how the fuck is it different, Bob? You think you're helping everyone by keeping going, but if you keep going like this you're going to drive yourself to death, and that really would let everyone down. So stop being so damn selfish." He glared for a moment, then added "And finish your toast."
"I'm not hungry."
Brian sighed. He looked at his hands for a long moment. "I think that's the problem."
Bob swallowed, trying to hide his rising panic behind a defensive glare. "I'm not hungry because I'm sick, asshole."
"You're making yourself sick," Brian snapped.
They stared at each other in stony silence until they heard voices up the front of the bus and Bob got up to leave.
"Wait." Brian hissed, and grabbed his wrist. "I'm serious about this, Bob. I'm worried about you. You're making yourself sick, and what are you getting out of it? Being thin? Who the fuck cares Bob?"
"Fuck off."
"No," said Brian, infuriatingly. "I'm not going to sit here and let you starve to death."
"I'm not starving," Bob hissed. "I eat."
"Not enough."
"What are you going to do about it, force feed me?" He stumbled over the last words, despite his bravado.
"I have to do something."
"Yeah, you do." Bob snapped. "Leave me alone. You don't get to tell me what to do."
It was the only thing he could think to say before he stomped out to the front of the bus to welcome back the rest of the guys. But it didn't make him feel any less like a surly teenager.
***
Over the next few months, the only thing Bob was grateful to Brian for was that none of the others ever overheard their fights. But they did fight, over and over, hurtful, repetitive arguments that left Bob more and more afraid of where they were heading - and more determined not to let Brian force even a mouthful of food onto him. He started to feel safer when they were with the rest of the band, knowing that Brian wasn't going to say a word about Bob's health, even though Bob could feel his disapproving gaze no matter what he was talking about with the others. When Bob fell ill again, he was almost proud of it. He was even going to be sick if he wanted to. Brian couldn't tell him otherwise.
The downside of being sick was that when he was confined to his bunk, he couldn't escape Brian's lectures.
"I told you so," said Brian, unmoved by Bob's coughing. "You're a danger to yourself, I mean it."
"Leave me alone."
"Maybe I should. I could just leave you here and take care of the people in this band who don't want to destroy their lives."
"Why don't you, then?" he sighed. He was over this. He just wanted to sleep.
"Because you're my friend and I love you whether I want to or not," Brian huffed. "And if you won't take care of yourself then someone has to."
He felt that fear again, that terror that Brian was going to take him out of the band, put him in therapy or a hospital or something, and force him to get... to change. But for a moment there, he felt safer than he had in months.
Most of the time, though, the fear won out. Every mealtime Brian would try to guilt him into eating some more. He'd go out of his way to find the things that he knew were Bob’s favourite snacks, even if it meant flying them from Chicago to Spain. Every moment he could get Bob alone, Brian said everything he could think of to take a break, or get help, or just fucking eat something. Anything. And as wrapped up as he was in his own problems, Bob could still see how their fights were hurting the band. He didn't know what more he could do, though, when he spent more and more of his time just fearing what would happen when Brian had enough and found a way to get Bob fucking committed or something.
He never even considered that the thing that would give could be Brian.
Not that it was Brian, really, it was the rest of the band, somehow coming to an agreement that it was Brian who had to go. They all came to Bob, all wide eyes and apologies, silently begging him not to fight what they'd done, begging Bob not to leave with him.
"I'm so sorry, Bob," said Gerard, gripping his hand. "We all know how close you and Brian were, but it just wasn't working any more."
The very first thing Bob felt was relief. It made him too disgusted with himself to even consider telling Gerard that the way they'd treated Brian was pretty shit.
***
It was a couple of days after Brian left - without even speaking to Bob - that Bob realised nobody had nagged him about his eating for a while. He was sitting around a table at a roadside diner with the rest of the band, as they had so many times, staring at the tiny plate of food that he'd ordered and barely touched. And the rest of them kept talking to each other, and to him, like it wasn't even there. Frank even kept sneaking fries from Bob's plate and giving Bob this innocent look as though Bob hadn't noticed. As though Bob didn't know exactly how many calories were on that plate. As though Bob cared about someone else eating his food.
He was free to eat as little as he wanted, and none of them were going to say a word.
He was free.
He was scared.
***
The Black Parade tour, which had just about driven all of them mad, finally came to an end and Bob dragged himself back to Chicago where at least his surroundings were normal. He got sick again almost as soon as he got home. By now Bob had given up trying to convince himself that he was really healthy and it was just a cold, that he wasn't doing this to himself. He just crawled into bed to wait it out, until he could get better again.
What he really wanted was someone to sit with him and make him a coffee. Or some chicken broth. He wouldn't even think about how many calories were in chicken broth, he just wanted someone to hold him and feed him and make him feel loved. Then maybe he'd feel like he was going to get better. Not just get over the cold, but really, truly get better. But the only people in Chicago that he could face when he was this miserable were his parents and Brian. And he didn't want his parents to see him like this.
He still didn't call Brian.
He just lay there with his dogs, hoped that whatever he'd caught this time would make him lose a little more weight, even though he didn't need it. He knew he didn't need to. He didn't hate his stomach any more, but he didn't like that he could see his ribs through his skin now, either. Bob was done justifying this. It was fucked up, it was fucking him up. It might even be killing him.
He just didn't know how to stop.
***
When they finally got around to starting work on the new album, it at least got Bob out of the house and out of his head. He felt better than he had in a long time, even without Brian around. He still had his moments of frustration, and he just about stormed out on Gerard when he came back after a couple of weeks' break and said they had to throw out half the work they'd done because it no longer fit with Gerard's fucking vision or whatever. That fight ended with Bob and Gerard standing outside and moodily smoking cigarettes at opposite corners of the building for the rest of the afternoon, until Bob finally got sick of cigarettes and decided to offer a truce. They wound up staying there long into the night but the new music was worth it. Holy shit, was it worth it. By the end of that recording session, Bob felt like he was flying.
The following day, he and Gerard sat down for an afternoon smoke, companionable this time. They talked about the last tour, and how messed up it got, though Bob never went into details about what he was going through, and the next tour, too, what Gerard had planned. And despite how tough the last one had been, Bob was really, honestly starting to feel excited about doing shows again.
"I have to shape up again, though," Gerard said, ruefully, poking his own stomach. "I got way too fat to really shake it on stage. What's your secret, Bobert?"
Bob knew this was the moment when he should tell Gerard that he was talking nonsense and he was an amazing performer no matter what he looked like. He'd said it before when Gerard complained about his weight, sometimes with Brian giving him a confused glare the whole time, so he knew his lines, too. But this time, instead, it came out as "I didn't eat anything but a slice of bread a day for a week once, and I lost eight pounds."
"Really? Huh," Gerard said, looking at Bob thoughtfully.
Bob cursed himself for the slip, and braced himself for what had to come next. Questions. Concern. The suggestion, yet again, that Bob should get some help, even though Bob had no goddamn idea how anyone could fix this without killing him in the process because he couldn't see a way to live without this anymore. Except that then Gerard said something worse.
"I'll have to give that a try."
***
The call came in the middle of the night, or at least at six in the morning, which was close enough to the middle of the night for Brian Schechter. He would have ignored it, as his wife sleepily suggested. For any other guy, he would. For any other guy who let Brian get sacked without a word in his defence, he'd have a litany of expletives ready to fire. But for Bob, he just looked at the number and picked up.
"Brian," said Bob, his voice breathless and cracked, "I need to stop."
"Okay," said Brian, "Tell me where you are."
"At home. I... I don't know what to do any more. Maybe I should quit the band. I don't know. I just, I need help, or something, I don't know what else I can do."
It was the closest thing to panic he'd ever heard from Bob, and it was a little scary, to tell the truth, but Brian just pulled on some jeans and walked out to the car because this, at least, was a start.