Page 54 of Steam

“Yeah? And I’ve got a complicated boner for your self-loathing ass,” Reese says through a smile. “So I’m going to need you to not starve yourself and start keeping it real—and I’m willing to work with you on that if it means you don’t hide from us again.”

“Reese—”

Reese interrupts him, sitting up now, taking him by the shoulders.

“You have to eat, dumbass,” Reese says, still smiling—and Owen laughs hard at the absurdity of it, the obviousness of the statement, the thing he wouldn’t admit to himself and the thing that nobody was willing to call him out on—and after a moment Reese is laughing too.

“Fuck you, Reese,” Owen says, still laughing, shaking his head.

“I swear to Christ I’ve never met such a dumb nerd,” Reese says fondly, dropping Owen’s shoulders.

“This is the weirdest pep talk I’ve ever gotten.”

“Look—if you want to talk about body recomposition, I’m your resource—”

“Yes, Reese, you’re a veritable font of information—”

“No, fuck you, I’m serious—if you want to do something different, we’ll talk about it. But not until numbers and exercise stop shorting out your brain,” Reese says. “If you want to come to the gym, come to the gym. I never pressured you about it because—shocker here, Owen—you don’t need to look or be any different than you are right now. But if it’s something you want to do, I want you there.”

“All disordered bullshit aside, I could objectively look better,” Owen says.

“No,” Reese says. “You couldn’t. You could look different, but you couldn’t look better.”

“I disagree.”

“Well I fucking disagree,” Reese says, laying a hand across Owen’s thigh. “And if you don’t want to go back to seducing your own hand in your lonely little one-bedroom apartment, I’m gonna guess my opinion is a little more important here.”

Owen lets his eyes rest on a nearby wall. It’s too much for him to try and take a compliment at face value right now.

“Owen. You’re like surreal good looking. Gain weight, lose weight—whatever—you are someone I wanna get with,” Reese says, his voice dropping into a jokey tone that still somehow makes it clear that he’s not joking. “And if I wasn’t already with you, I’d be figuring out how to get with you.”

“It’s nice of you to say—”

“It’s not nice,” Reese clarifies. “I like fucking you, Owen. I like spending time with you. I think about you when you’re not around. We all do. We give a fuck.”

They’re simple statements and they still have Owen blinking back tears.

“Just let me do the after school special thing for a second, OK Owen?” Reese asks.

Owen nods.

“You already know this shit but it helps to hear it out loud. Eating isn’t being weak. Food isn’t a reward. Yeah—we both have a complicated relationship with it—but if you don’t let yourself eat when you’re hungry, you basically just feel like shit all the time. Am I right?”

Owen nods.

“I care about you, Owen. And at the risk of sounding gay, I love your body.”

“Reese you routinely have sex with five men, I don’t think--”

Reese interrupts him, speaking louder and clearer.

“At the risk of sounding gay, I love your body, Owen,”Reese says louder, and Owen is laughing again. “I know I can’t solve this for you, just like you can’t solve my shit. But I’m also not gonna pretend like I don’t notice it when you’re doing something really dangerous to yourself. I’m going to hold you accountable for eating enough food until you’re not so stressed out and self-loathing. And when you get really stressed again? Come and tell me.”

Owen nods.

“I’m serious—see how chill this is? It doesn’t have to be some dramatic after-school special shit,” Reese says. “Like, I get it, ok. But you can’t fuck yourself over like this anymore.”

“Thanks, Reese.”

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