Emo Trinity x Reader

Patrick Stump x Reader - The Worries About Those You Love

Requested on Tumblr
Warnings: mention of eating disorder, mention of sleep disorder, self-harm
Word count: 1 881

In the beginning you did not even realize you were self-harming and if anyone would have asked you if you were, you would have denied it immediately. To you it was just a way of controlling your life; allowing yourself food and sleep when you were happy with the results of your work and denying it to you when you thought you had not worked hard enough. Maybe you knew that it was not completely normal since you lied to your colleagues and friends when they asked you how you had slept in the morning, and went to lunch with them, even when you had not 'deserved' it. Sometimes a friend made a comment how you looked tired, and that you should use the weekend to treat yourself with a nice spa day, or something, but you always waved it off, saying that you just had had a bad dream, when really you had barely slept at all.

The one person who noticed though was Patrick, your boyfriend, the one person you really tried to hide your unusual behavior from. For almost a year now you were sharing his flat, so he was always in close contact with you. He noticed early on that you were not in bed at night, when he woke up to use the bathroom. Usually he found you on the couch, reading one of the big, heavy non-fiction books that he owned. In the beginning he marveled at your ability to educate yourself even in the middle of the night when you had to be drop dead tired, but after a few weeks it started to confuse him more and more and he started to get worried. Then he started to pick up on your eating, or rather, not eating. At first he told himself he was getting over-sensible, or that everyone had a phase where they were eating less, but again after a while, it seemed to him as if you were starving yourself.

He tried to hint at it gently, asking if you wanted to see a doctor because of your bad sleep, or wanted to go out for dinner together, but you always denied.

It had been going on for almost two months, when Patrick was watching a documentary about forms of self-harm. You had joined him on the couch, not really interested in the topic, and rather in cuddling with your boyfriend. Over the course of the movie you started to realize that many of the things mentioned fit your situation perfectly and the realization dawned on you that you were actually self-harming. Only later you understood that Patrick had turned on the show intentionally.

Once you had understood what you were really doing to your body, you tried to change it. You forced yourself to eat at least three meals a day, they did not have to be big, but more than just an apple or a single slice of bread. And you went to bed. You tried to reestablish a healthy sleeping schedule and even if you could not fall asleep immediately, you stayed in bed and listened to Patrick's breathing at your side.

Patrick, who still had not talked to you openly about that matter, noticed your efforts. It calmed him down knowing that you knew what you were doing now, and that you were working to change it. He wondered if he should offer his help, but he was afraid to scare you away, so he told himself that if you wanted to talk, you would come to him.

For a while everything seemed fine. You were back to eating proper meals at a regular pattern, you were sleeping at least five hours per night and in general everything seemed to be back on track.

Except for the growing tension in you. You could not describe it. It was a buzzing in your chest and a need for movement that was not even close to being satisfied with excessive sport. Instead an unknown desire for pain started to cloud your mind on an almost daily basis. It started out with ice cold water in the shower, but quickly moved to clawing into your skin until deep, red half-moons of your fingernails adorned the skin on your thighs.

And suddenly you found yourself in the aisle of the supermarket, weighting the little box with dangerously sharp and seductively shining razor blades in hand. Patrick and you both used electric razors, so you had no blades at home. Without giving it a second thought, you threw the little box in the shopping cart.