'You're insane, you've actually cracked, you- Jesus Christ, slow down!' Yuri gabbled, gripping at his seat. Otabek was driving to Jude's house, his foot practically touching the floor and his hands gripping the wheel so tight it looked as if he was about to wrench it off. His expression had clouded over and his eyes had darkened beyond belief. 'You can't just say you're going to kill someone and drag me along with you! That's- that's joint enterprise murder!'
'You didn't have to come.'
'If I just let you go I'd be complicit. I'd be, like... Aiding and abetting.'
'I'll say I took you hostage.'
'How romantic. Seriously, slow down or the only person you'll be killing is me!'
With a great display of reluctance, Otabek eased up his foot by about half an inch. Now they were only going about twice the speed limit- not that it mattered much, because about a minute later he exacted a death-defying turn into a housing estate and Yuri sat in the car and watched him as he marched up to a door. He couldn't face going with him, even though he knew somebody was probably going to die given the look on Otabek's face. He sat in the car with his house key gripped in his hand, as if it would be any use in a fight. His other hand he kept firmly on the car keys so he could ensure it was locked should Jude run out armed with a knife or something. He knew he was overreacting but his fear was hardly unwarranted and after the events of the day his nerves were understandably on the jittery side. Not to mention he was afraid that Otabek would follow through on his threats and actually do something really stupid on his behalf. He couldn't very well say no because he was too shaken up, but he hadn't meant for any of this to happen. After a few pensive minutes the door opened and Yuri watched as Otabek practically dragged Jude by the ear down to the car. He wrenched open the car door and motioned for Yuri to get out.
'I'm staying here,' His voice came out as a pathetic squeak. He couldn't face Jude, not after what he'd done. Just seeing his face for that half second had brought unwelcome memories flooding back from earlier.
'Get out the car, Yuri,' Otabek sighed, gesturing again, and this time Yuri did as he was told.
'I think this boy has something to say to you,' Otabek gripped Jude tightly by the collar of his shirt, a muscle jumping in his jaw as he spoke.
'I'm sorry,' Jude blurted out, his eyes not conveying any apologies but his body language suggesting he was very sorry to be in this situation now. 'Now will you let go of me? Seriously, get your hands off of me before I call the police! It's not my fault your boyfriend is a freak, is it?'
He spat the word 'boyfriend' with obvious contempt and Otabek, who had been on hisbest behaviour up until now given the situation, finally snapped. He slammed Jude into the car and leaned in close, pressing a hand against his throat as he writhed beneath him, not used to being the one pinned down.
'Don't you ever fucking talk like that again,' He growled, and Yuri was scared himself even though the anger wasn't directed towards him.
'Otabek, stop,' He stepped forwards to intervene but it was clear he wasn't done.
'If you so much as lay a finger on him again I will broadcast your name to the entire world. The only reason I'm not killing you now is because I don't think Yuri would be very happy about it, and this is a lot more than a human shitstain like you deserves,' Otabek shoved him hard again then let him go. 'Now fuck off.'
Jude gulped and stumbled away back home, his hands rubbing at his neck and his eyes wide. Otabek stared after him with a petulant fury in his eyes, his entire body trembling with barely contained anger. Yuri put a hand on his shoulder, not speaking just yet.
'You were terrifying just now, you know that, right?' He finally said.
'You have to understand that you can't spend your life being afraid of assholes like him. That's something you have to fight against, not run away from.'
'Easy for you to say. You're not the one being beaten up.'
'I know, I know. Point it, if you let them change you then they've won, you get me?'
'Please don't give me that shit. It's not as if 'they' are some abstract concept. 'They' are real people who can and will hurt me.'
'I know that's scary! God, do I know. The problem is if people like him start to think that they can get away with assaulting people and that it works they'll keep doing it.'
'Okay,' Yuri conceded with a heavy sigh. 'I just got scared- am I allowed to get scared?'
'Yes! Yes, of course,' Otabek wrapped him up in a bear hug, kissing the top of his head and rocking him from side to side. 'I'm not trying to gloss over what happened to you, I just don't want you to cause yourself any more pain than he did.'
'I don't really want to break up,' Yuri muttered, wishing he had just kept his stupid mouth shut about the whole affair.
'That's good, then. Had to admit, I was scared for a while.'
'Now you've got your attempted murder out of the way, can you take me home?'

Otabek ended up staying late into the night, so late that Yuri's mother refused to let him drive home and set up a bed for him on the couch downstairs. Yuri complained a bit because he didn't want to be alone after the day he'd had, but his mum was insistent. He supposed it would have been the same with him and a girlfriend; she'd never let him sleep in the same room as a girl because apparently it was completely impossible to keep their hands from off of each other if they weren't the same gender. He waited until she was asleep and sneaked down the hall, his light frame no longer able to make the floorboards creak, and hesitated for a moment by her door. If she heard him going downstairs in the middle of the night she would undoubtedly know what he was doing and intercept him on his way. He listened in at the door and made sure he could hear her gently snoring away before the crept silently passed, not even daring to breathe. He gripped onto the banister as he walked down the stairs as if that would muffle his steps some, although he wasn't in any danger of waking anybody up. Otabek was asleep on the sofa and he could see his silhouetted form as he shuffled past the sitting room. He was lying on his side with his arm dangling off the edge of the couch, his face relaxed and soft. Yuri sighed and allowed himself to lean against the doorway for a moment longer before he shuffled past and into the kitchen, where he pulled out the softest foods he could find. He was under no illusions about the state of his body and even with his toxic mindset he knew he had to be cautious with how he proceeded. His brain yearned to be filled with food more than his shrivelled stomach did and it was this that caused these binging sessions where he crammed himself so full of food he didn't even have to force it back up again. Once he started he couldn't stop, so nowadays he often planned ahead for these binge/purge sessions with rigorous preparation. He forced himself to go days without food just for these moments of complete self-indulgence, only to tear himself apart from the inside out. He rifled through every cupboard and the fridge and freezer to find anything he could use to curb the overpowering cravings that were clawing at his mind. He sat on the floor surrounded by wrappers and plates and whatever the hell else he could find, just gorging himself. He couldn't even taste the food- it wasn't even for measure anymore. It was just a way to hurt himself further. It had started with just purging small amounts of food and thinking they were large portions, but now it had spiralled out of control into a mess of feasting and throwing up for agonising hours on end. It was beginning to feel as if he was stuck on some repeat cycle and he would never be free. He certainly couldn't stop himself from gorging on the food before him, forcing it down his throat with a compulsively reckless abandon. The worst part wasn't even the gut-wrenching ache in his stomach- the worst part was the guilt and shame he felt for his complete lack of control. The resistance he had built up to food was crumbling away in such a rapid fashion that he'd quickly become a disgusting mess of an excuse for a human being. He hated himself more than ever before, and the fact that he hated himself for eating at all- even when he forcefully expelled it all afterwards- showed that recovery was never going to be an option for him. Besides, he had a terrible relationship with food. Either he didn't eat for days on end or he stuffed his face and threw it all up. His jaw ached from chewing and he felt practically comatose from the amount of food he'd just shoved down his throat. He wanted nothing more than to curl up into a ball and cry, but he knew full well if he did that he'd end up digesting everything and become colossally fat. This was the sole motivation that drove him to haul his heavy body to its feet and stagger drunkenly down the corridor to the downstairs bathroom where he always purged so that his mother wouldn't hear. It slipped his mind that Otabek was just in the other room and would no doubt be woken up by the sounds of him retching and coughing his lungs out. He forgot that in the face of his stomach already turning and he barely even made it to the bathroom before he was vomiting. He gripped at the toilet seat as it felt like his throat was sliced by thousands of knives at once. Tears dripped down his face as he gagged and clawed at his own stomach in an attempt to force out yet more until it was just stomach acid and blood. Deep down he knew this was killing him, but deep down he also knew he didn't care.
God, did he hate who he'd become. Believe it or not, he had been the happiest person on the planet just a short year ago. He had been the sort of person to have thirds if they so pleased and laughed at girls who dieted, throwing anorexia around like it was an insult rather than a terrible disorder that caused more pain than pleasure.
'Why wouldn't you want pizza?' He had laughed with his friends, but now he wished he could scream at his past self that it wasn't about trivial things like taste. Every meal was a battle, every time he saw food he felt like clawing his own eyeballs out so he wouldn't have to, every time he breathed in the sweet scent of his mother's cooking he wanted to cry. He missed his young naive self, even if he had been disgustingly dismissive of how exhaustingly painful it was to go through an eating disorder, because at least he had been happy. He wanted to go back to a time when he had made his mother happy, bringing home good report cards and complimenting her food rather than her being dragged into his school every day to discuss his terrible grades and screaming matches when he couldn't bring himself to eat her food. Every now and then his mood would lift a little and he would manage something small and she'd be so supportive and excited that he would feel like throwing himself in front of a car for causing her to be so elated by something so banal as him eating. He had ruined her life- he was still ruining her life. She didn't deserve to see her son die. He hated what this disease had done to everybody else, not just himself. He longed for that happiness he had once owned and the light in his mother's eyes that was now replaced by a perennial dull worry. Every now and then his grandfather would drop by and be alarmed by how his grandson looked.
'You need feeding up, boy,' He'd say, and his mother would start crying and then he'd run to his bedroom and have to listen to them arguing. His grandfather berated her for letting him get like this and she yelled at him that she was trying her hardest to help him but he was unreachable. Yuri hadn't seen his grandfather for a few months, and he was sure he'd be even angrier now if he saw how frail he'd become. Even he could see it. He could now wrap his hands round the tops of his thighs and his ribs looked like a keyboard. When he put his fingers around his wrist they overlapped by almost two inches. He could touch his index finger an thumb around his ankle.
It was tragic that his worth came down to just these stupid measurements he'd created for himself. At first, his only goal had been to have a thigh gap. It had just been something silly at first, something to strive for. He had always told himself he'd stop after a few pounds- he wouldn't let it get dangerous. Just a little bit of weight loss for summer couldn't hurt. It had descended frighteningly quickly, as it almost always does in the case of dieting based on ideals such as he had inflicted upon himself, into an eating disorder. This had in turn spiralled into anorexia, and now with the way things we're going it was probably going to end in tears. Namely, tears at his grave. He was overtaken by a rattling fit of coughing that had him hacking up blood and trembling. He felt faint at the sight of the blood and had to lean against the wall, wiping his hands against the floor mindlessly. His eyes began to close of their own accord and he fought to keep them open, aware that he had a lot of cleanup to enact before his mother woke up. He heaved himself up and washed his hands off in the sink, where he was racked with another coughing fit and bright red blood spattered against the white of the sink. He washed it away and splashed water into his face until suddenly his stomach turned again and he was forced to crouch over the toilet as what had to be just water and acid by now burned its way up from his throat. The door handle turned just as he was recovering from this sudden bout of sickness and he realised all too late that he had left it unlocked. He scrambled to slam it hastily and refuse entry to whoever was outside and had obviously heard him puking his guts up.
'Yuri, I'm coming in,' Otabek pushed hard against the door and forced entry. He looked tired and confused, but concerned all the same. When he saw Yuri cowering in a corner, blood on his shirt and the bathroom reeking of vomit and acid, he knew his suspicions had been correct.
'Please go,' Yuri whispered. 'I don't want you to see me like this...'
'How often does this happen?' Otabek fixed him with a steady gaze, not moving to touch him as he didn't think he'd be comfortable with that.
'Never. Nothing's happeni-'
'Be honest.'
'Almost every day,' Yuri admitted, hanging his head in humiliation and shame. He was more embarrassed to be caught eating than throwing up. At least he was finally displaying behaviour typical of an eating disorder. He put the seat of the toilet down and sat down heavily. 'I'm a lot more fucked up than I'd have anyone believe.'
'Come on. We'll get you cleaned up and in bed,' Otabek outstretched a hand, which Yuri took hesitantly and allowed himself to be led from the bathroom into the kitchen, where Otabek poured him a cold glass of water. He sipped at it slowly and tried to ignore the burning sensation in his throat as he did so.
'I'm going to help you,' Otabek said this with a tone that implied he was very, very serious. 'I swear I mean it this time.'
'I don't need help,' Yuri knew he sounded stupid saying this. He'd just been caught in the act of doing something that very obviously insinuated he needed help. He was just hesitant to say he didn't want it.
'I don't want to say something stupid like you can talk to me, but you can talk to me,' Otabek reminded him, sitting down beside him and stroking his hair delicately. 'Because I'll listen. No matter how stupid you think it sounds.'
'I- I'm sorry, I can't,' Yuri hung his head dejectedly. 'I don't even know what I could say that explains this. I hate it.'
'I know, baby. I know.'
For what felt like the thousandth time, Yuri began to cry in front of Otabek. This time the tears were silent and slid down his cheeks without purpose or even much of a reason. Otabek just held him and waited until the tears subsided to help him up the stairs. He sat him down and helped off with his shirt to put on a fresh one sans blood. Then he lay him down and tucked him in, kissing his cheek and leaving him to get some rest.
'Don't leave,' Yuri murmured softly and Otabek couldn't dream of refusing him when he was as damaged as he was right now. He lay down next to him and did his best to pretend he wasn't panicking. He couldn't even put his arms around Yuri because he was reminded that there was nothing left to hold anymore. He was so emaciated that you couldn't touch him anymore without feeling a bone sticking out.
'I'm not leaving, but you have to promise you're not going to leave me,' He whispered back.
'What? I'm tired, I'm not going anywhere.'
'I don't just mean now.'
'Oh... I'm actually getting better, you know,' Yuri lied to make him feel better. It was plain to see how terrified he was and he didn't want to scare him off just yet. It was nice to feel less lonely every now and then. 'That doctor gave me some meds that are helping. I know it doesn't seem like it, but tonight was just a blip. Relapsing happens, right?'
'Right.'
'But I'm getting better. I swear. Look, you can even come with me to the doctor's this weekend if you want.'
'I don't-'
'I want you to. I hate it there.'
'Then of course I will,' Otabek slowly snaked an arm round his waist, pulling him close and making him feel supported and protected.
'They'll tell you I'm getting better. I've gained weight, seriously.'
'Okay,' Otabek nodded, even though he knew it wasn't true. He half wanted to convince himself it was. 'Now get some sleep, alright?'
Yuri sighed and nestled into him, but Otabek got the feeling he wouldn't be able to sleep as easily as the boy in his arms for a very long while.