Page 49 of Steam

* * *

By October, it’s at a fever pitch and Owen can’t look at his actions close enough to figure out where it started. His day is made up entirely of food and self in varying degrees—and thinking about it makes him furious. He should be stronger (and smarter) than this. He’s not goddamned 20 years old.

But the longer he’s lived with the cycle of self-loathing, the more sophisticated it has gotten.

When he’d been a teenager, he punished himself with blades—dull and sharp, lifted from a utility drawer or pulled apart from a safety razor. Now he does things that don’t leave such obvious marks: pounding his knuckles against the spots in the apartment that won’t be damaged, forcing himself to walk in the heat, withholding food until he feels sick to his stomach.

It doesn’t make a dent in the way he feels—and even with a drastic change in how he’s eating, it doesn’t seem to change how he looks.

He’s the least desirable out of all six of them—no nice musculature, no nice proportions, no sweet narrow prettiness like Levi or cut firm planes like Reese. There’s no redeeming aspect of him, and if he didn’t goddamned work with them, he knows the rest of them wouldn't give him the time of day.

So it’s life in the background—drinking black coffee to cut the fatigue and hunger as he fasts through the morning, listening to the endless talk about numbers. Fucking numbers, the bane of his existence. Squat numbers, a new deadlift PR, and new fastest mile time. Five pounds of fat lost or two pounds of muscle gained. Goddamned body fat percentage. How many calories they were all eating a day, how the macros broke down.

The complaints about eating enough to keep up with what they were doing in the gym were the last straw.

If there had ever been an opportunity for Owen to join them in lifting, he’d missed it. He’s been left so far behind that he’d look too foolish to join them. Everyone in the gym would single him out. Who’s the fucking fat weirdo hanging out with those Youtube video game guys? Owen can’t face it.

He takes a little solace in the fact that Levi has never taken up with them in the gym—but Levi has never been fat, either.

Levi didn’t grow up with a system of self-worth that was based not on how talented he was or what grades he made but instead a number—his weight, something that had always felt vaguely out of his own control when he was a kid. By the time he was making his own decisions about what he ate and how he spent his time, Owen felt too locked into old habits, anyway, to change much.

Yeah, he’d grown up. Yeah, he’d reached a weight that the BMI scale said wasn’t dangerous. But you don’t just leave that fat kid mentality behind.

When things got stressful, it was always there waiting for Owen.

The cycle of measuring, fasting, eventually failing, and punishing himself for it was as familiar to Owen as a childhood home.

* * *

“You think Owen is OK?” Cash asks.

He and Trey are alone in Cash’s apartment, basking a little in the afterglow. Cash expects Trey to make some comment about how shitty his pillow talk skills are—but instead he finds Trey propping himself up on one arm and looking at Cash seriously.

“No, I don’t,” Trey says, seriously. “And I have no idea what to do about it. He won’t talk to me.”

“But you’re his boyfriend,” Cash insists, as if the label they put on their relationship makes any difference. Trey just shakes his head.

“Did something happen?” Cash asks. He hadn’t expected Trey to have any idea what he was talking about—and suddenly they’re both realizing how desperately they need to compare notes with the rest of the team.

* * *

Mid-October becomesa time of quiet observation and trying to understand what’s bothering Owen.In the end, it’s quiet and contemplative Aaron that puts two and two together.

He pulls Trey aside one day with a raised eyebrow and a tilt of his chin. “Talk to you for a second?”

Trey just nods and they find a quiet spot down the hall.

“It’s a body thing with Owen,” Aaron says.

Owen had been keeping to himself but Aaron had a talent for making himself unobtrusive. He’d approached Owen—asked if he could stay over, tailing him around the apartment the next day, around work, skipping the gym, spending a second night.

Aaron is the shyest out of all of them and the first to drop out of group activities. One-on-one attention from Aaron is rare enough that anyone on the receiving end doesn’t tend to question it—and Aaron knows it. He doesn’t mind using that to his advantage if it means he can get to the bottom of what’s going on with their friend.

“So I just, you know. Watched a little,” Aaron says. He breaks eye contact, shakes his head. “He’s not really eating enough. And he was like a different person when you guys started to get ready to head to work out.”

“I thought he didn’t give a fuck,” Trey says, not disagreeing but not understanding. “I mean, Levi doesn’t go to the gym either.”

Aaron shrugs, hitching his eyebrows.

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