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There was something ironic about how so many conditions seem to actively prevent their own treatment. The pain of fibromyalgia keeps patients from even leaving their houses on many days, let alone getting physical therapy. Depression saps your strength and willpower and sends you spiraling down a neverending destructive loop. The latter was, unfortunately, something Magnus was very familiar with. The combination of unmedicated ADHD - or, as he preferred to call it, the Incurable Fuck-Up Disease - and pressure to succeed in school had burned him out like a Roman candle. Unfortunately, the Incurable Fuck-Up Disease was almost indistinguishable from generic laziness from an outsider’s perspective, and he’d spent the years between what Americans could call middle school and his last year of primary school spiraling down and down and down. No one believed him when he told them he wasn’t being lazy, that he was trying but his brain just didn’t want to work until he eventually began to believe that he was lazy, that he was a problem, and he needed to fix that problem and the only way to fix it was to- When he finally snapped, he was nowhere near rock-bottom. He’d chosen a bridge on a warm, sunny day in spring - not the most fitting time to die, but he deserved at least one good thing before he went, right? He’d been stopped by a passing university student who’d held him back until his brother arrived to take him home. For years, Magnus had resented that student for saving his life; now, he just wondered if they were doing all right. His rock-bottom had come not even a month later, despite the best efforts of his friends (most of his family save for Berwald had dismissed him as a lost cause by this point), when his self-loathing reached the point that he began to doubt that anyone actually cared about him and decided that he deserved to die, and if he wasn’t allowed to die, then systematic self-destruction was good enough. It had been years since that spiral, but the wounds had never fully healed. The scars would rip open at the slightest provocation, and his head would fill with a tide of seething self-hatred and despair. This was why Magnus was sobbing hysterically in his dorm room at 11:00 at night over a fucking math problem. He was trying not to make too much noise to avoid waking his roommate. The poor guy slept lightly; Magnus had once accidentally woken him just by giggling. He wasn’t doing a great job at it, which, paradoxically, only made it worse. Math was never his strong suit, and not for a lack of trying, but for some reason he just couldn't get it. Even when he thought he’d figured it out, he’d end up going nowhere with it. If he’d been in a better mood, he might’ve cracked a joke about it being his archnemesis in a shonen anime. The obvious solution was to look online, but he didn’t even know where to start. The next solution was to put it aside and do something - literally anything - else, but that was as good as admitting defeat, and Magnus was the type for whom admitting defeat was worse than the actual failure, and failure was completely unacceptable. And all the while, his brain was screaming at him for attention, demanding he do something, anything, to stave away the omnipresent dread of boredom. He buried his head in his hands. He knew when he was like this that he needed to talk to someone, that he shouldn’t do it alone, but who else did he have? Matthew slept irregularly, Berwald was inconsistent at getting back to him, and Abel… His phone buzzed. He fumbled for it and struggled to read the contact information through the blur of his tears. He’d almost forgotten that he’d changed the names of his contacts to dumb jokes, because to say he was confused when he saw the phrase Sugar Daddy on the text banner would be an understatement. But, well, speak of the Devil. He scrubbed his eyes with his sleeve to try and clear them enough to see properly and struggled to unlock his phone; he kept putting the password in wrong or the keypad mistook the streaks of tears he kept leaving on the screen for touch. When he finally got it, the text did nothing to help his mood. Have to put a rain check on next week. Bullshit happened. He set the phone back down, his brief bright mood fizzling out instantly.
Fuck.
He heaved a breath, and his eyes started burning again. Why? Why was something so small and stupid enough to set him off like a stash of white phosphorus? Why did it hurt like he’d been shot in the heart? Without thinking, he rolled up his sleeve and started clawing at his forearm. His nails left chalky white marks across his skin. The hurt drained away, replaced by a churning tidal wave of guilt. When he’d fallen apart, he’d stopped eating in a bid to force his brain to work properly. He didn’t learn that counted as self-harm for another year, after he dug a pencil lead into his palm for the exact same reason and his friends finally - finally - forced him to see a counselor. He’d tried to wean himself off of the worst of those habits, replacing them with scratching or biting. He hadn’t felt the compulsion to hurt himself in months, and now he was falling apart over a stupid text and a math problem- “You okay there?” Magnus nearly jumped out of his skin. He whirled around. His roommate stood in the doorway, one hand on the door frame, the other tucked close to his body just under his chest like he was trying to make his silhouette as compact as possible. He liked Eduard. He was a distant cousin of Timo, Berwald’s partner; they didn’t figure that out for a while, though, since Eduard rarely talked, and Magnus didn’t feel like prying until Eduard overheard Magnus mentioning Timo’s name during an argument with Berwald over the phone. They didn’t talk a lot now, either, but especially not about their pasts. Magnus worried that he’d fall apart if he tried, and he got the sense that whatever lurked in Eduard’s past was far worse than Magnus’s. There was a reason Magnus didn’t want to disturb him. Magnus bit his tongue and nodded. A pang of dread shot through him when he remembered he hadn’t covered up the scratches, and he subtly tugged his sleeve over them. Or not so subtly, because Eduard’s eyes drifted down to the marks anyway. He blinked; his eyes widened. He looked almost like a deer in headlights. The pain Magnus had been so desperate to bury came surging back, and he braced himself on instinct for what he was sure was inevitable. But Eduard said nothing about it. He just looked away and pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “I’m going to get some cocoa,” he said quietly. “You’re welcome to join me.” More than anything, the thing that had truly convinced Magnus that Eduard and Timo were related was how both seemed to think any mental turmoil could be solved with a cup of hot chocolate and a chat. The most annoying part was that nine times out of ten, they were right. Magnus and Eduard shared a kitchen with another set of dorms (the bathrooms were less communal, thank God). One of the students in the other dorm was visiting family; Magnus didn’t know him well enough to know his name. The other, Herakles, could probably sleep through a hurricane. He wasn’t worried about being interrupted. “You don’t have to say anything,” Eduard said, “But are you doing alright?” Magnus bit his tongue. The lie would be obvious - he was never known for being good at it - but the reason was so stupid- “I fucked up on a math problem,” he said. “It’s never been my strong suit, and this feels like it just proves it.” Fuck, there went the waterworks again. He sniffled and wiped his face with a sleeve.
Disgusting.
Eduard made no crude remarks, though. “That’s not the only thing, is it?” he asked. Magnus shook his head. “My-” He hesitated. Eduard probably didn’t give a shit, considering he was in frequent contact with Timo and Estonia was supposedly marginally less conservative than the rest of the Soviet Bloc, but so was the US, and he’d been burned before. But fuck it. “My boyfriend had to cancel on me, and I-” The words spilled out of him before he could stop them; once the dam had breached, there was no way of sealing it until it had all drained away. “I was always ignored or punished for asking for help growing up, and I’m so used to people pushing me away because I’m obnoxious or not good enough or- or they just don’t have the time or energy to deal with me, and I always worry they’re gonna abandon me and I- I-” He stopped, biting back the tears. The hurt burned in his chest like a solar flare. “I know he didn’t mean to hurt me, but I couldn't handle the frustration and the hurt at the same time and I just kept thinking about how I can’t do anything right and I just… broke.” He drew in a breath. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled. “I shouldn’t have dumped all that on you at once-” “If I wasn’t prepared, I wouldn’t have asked,” Eduard said. He idly stirred his cocoa and sighed. “I was almost the same way when I was younger, too,” he said quietly. “I was…I was the only one of my siblings who was my parents’ blood child; the other two were the result of an affair. My parents didn’t want to take them in and dumped the responsibility of taking care of them on me. They expected me to be both mother and father and a student all at once, and they always seemed to find something wrong with what I was doing or what my brothers were doing, but I always got off lighter than them. I…” He bit his lip and looked down at the countertop. “When we moved to America, they got into a fight with my younger brother. They locked him outside overnight, which…wasn’t as much of a threat as it would’ve been back home when we lived in the middle of nowhere and the winters dropped below freezing regularly. He ran to one of the neighbors’ houses and asked them to call child services. They called the police instead, and the police took him right back to our parents’ house. I don’t know what they did to him; they didn’t let me see him after that, but I heard it.” He shuddered. “He disappeared a few days later, and I never found out what happened to him.” “Jesus Christ,” Magnus mumbled. Eduard chuckled weakly. “It...it wasn’t a fun childhood, that was for sure. I was able to sneak out one night and call my aunt; she took in my youngest brother, and as soon as I was sure he was safe, I ran away. My parents didn’t even put up a fight.” He took a sip from his mug. His eyes were downcast and sorrowful. “Did you ever notice that I hate the sound of slamming doors?” he asked. Magnus shook his head, then paused. He had noticed, actually, but he just assumed it was the weight of the sound, not any sort of trauma. “It reminds me of being back there,” Eduard said. “It’s probably the most ‘normal’ of my traumas. I can’t shower in water that’s too hot or cold, there are some foods I can’t eat without feeling like I’m going to be sick. I…I changed my name because just hearing it made me anxious for a few years. I felt stupid for it - all of it - for so long, and I bottled it up until I couldn't hold it in anymore.” “What’s your point?” “My point is that it doesn’t matter how stupid it seems; trauma is trauma, and pain is pain. Ignoring them because you think they’re ridiculous or pathetic is only going to make them worse.” Magnus frowned. “Yeah, but your parents were abusive?” “And yours weren’t?” Something about the look in Eduard’s eyes sent shivers down Magnus’s spine. It was an intensity he hadn’t thought the shy, quiet, relentlessly polite boy in the room across from his was capable of. “It’s not always on purpose,” Eduard said. “But what they did hurt you anyway. Just because you love someone doesn’t mean you can’t hurt them, either. It’s when it becomes a pattern that it becomes abuse.” Magnus dragged a finger through a crack in the granite countertop. Eduard had a point, but that didn’t mean Magnus could manage to make himself believe it. “If you want, I could show you how to finish that problem,” Eduard added, and even though it was such a jarring change in topic, Magnus welcomed the excuse to talk about anything else. He smiled weakly, but genuinely. “Thanks. I’d…I’d like that.”