Title: Starve
Author: Annie Oates
Fandom: X-Files
Pairing: Mulder/Scully (sorta)
Rating: R
Archive: Ask.
Disclaimers: Chris Carter met up with the characters. I just supplied the issues.
Warnings: Self-Injury, Heteroesque
Author Notes: Was previously published in X-Plicit Fantasies Three by Maverick Press. Summery: Mulder’s in a thoughtful spot.
Timeline: Dunno, I just write what the voices in my head tellme to. (AUish)
Feedback: Welcome, as always.

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So much is about control.
I don’t eat and feel fulfilled.
Look what I have done.
I am so strong I don’t need to eat.
I command even the basic needs of my body.
Which is good because the rest is spiraling out of control.
I gorge and fail.
I fail to make food into all my dreams.
As though by eating I become more.
I eat grace.
I eat balance.
I eat strength.
I eat wit.
I eat kindness.
I eat love.
I eat wealth.
I eat all my shortcomings -
all the things I see in that person I should be -
all the things that person I am is not.
When done I feel sick and bloated physically.
Sick and empty emotionally.
So I ruin myself and gain nothing but weight.
And then I land on the double-whammy.
Purge.
Out of control.
Enough that at times I am physically unable to keep food down.
I eat -
even a less than normal amount -
and can’t keep it down.
The food is heavy with guilt.
My stomach hurts from it.
I should be able to not eat -
yet, I need to eat -
to fulfill those lacking things.
I hurt.
I am not enough.
I do not have the skills needed to be happy.
So I was a failure at keeping dinner down.
I helped it along a little but if I hadn’t it would have set there -
uncomfortable -
a dead thing at the top of my stomach until it finally forced its way out.
I smell like vomit.
Plain water has the acrid bite of acid.
It’s surreal.
I empty my stomach.
Flush.
Wash my face and hands.
Go back to the office.
Put on my jacket and go for a 30 minute lunch-time walk with Scully.
It was a long 30 minutes.
Full of sweat and snot and her unending voice.
Her sounds providing a rhythm to my thoughts.
I mutter maybe 3 words.
I’m proud of that.
I feel strong.
I am a silent enigma - sure and steady.
The world falls in chaos at my feet while I stand still and tall -
only to rise and fall again -
I am unchanged.
Food is my drug.
I medicate myself.
I numb myself.
I am not unchanged, only uninvolved.
Today I refuse to medicate myself.
Instead I do without.
I am raw. Broken ends -
exposed nerves -
bone poking through skin.
My body does not fit in its space.
My smile is forced and brittle.
The words hollow and false.
My stench disgusts me.
They know.
They can smell it.
But do they pass it off as flu?
Bad chinese?
Expired tuna fish?
I am unaffected.
I am afflicted.
I am affliction.
I am stench.
I am disgust.
I am disease.
I am rot.
I am rotted skin shredding from maggot ridden flesh.
I suck the sour from my mouth.
I’ve so far managed to eat barely enough to keep a bird’s heart beating.
I run every day.
Before I go to work.
When I get home.
I walk during lunch with Scully.
I swim.
I have to use the next notch up on my belt.
I’ve lost 12 pounds.
I’ve gained control.
I didn’t even throw up yesterday.
It’s dark here.
But it’s my darkness.
I breed in this dank space.
Contempt - Control - Caution.
I learn how much I hate this shape, this mass.
How powerful control is.
How attractive quiet caution is.
I walk this precarious edge - this precipice.
I take each step and feel the earth shatter beneath my feet.
I am balance.
I am tightwire.
I hold tight to strength and walk the nerve.
I’ve eaten one meal today.
I am full.
I never have to eat again.
Scully just called.
She does not know.
She thinks my stomach is sensitive -
that I am sick -
that I should drink plenty of fluids and rest.
I do not tell her how sore I am from working out.
From doing without.
From throwing up.
She’s heard me in the bathroom.
Confessing my sins.
Purging myself pure.
She does not know.
The man in the mirror knows.
He sees my eyes.
The monster lurking beneath the flesh.
He knows I am disease.
Wise eyes appraise me and find me lacking.
Scully’s smiles still sparkles fireflies in my heart.
She will not know my disease.
She will not suffer.
But then again, she might.
Often I walk this knife’s edge.
Often I am cut.
Every time I wonder if this will be the last walk.
Will I make it to the end this time?
Is there an end?
Not in my line of sight.
Scully says she can see things sneaking up on me before I do.
I bet she didn’t see this coming.
Does she really know?
How I lay awake at night and trace the seams of my sweat pants with one blind finger?
Over and over.
How I watch porn in those late hours and pretend I’m someone else -
somewhere else -
something else?
I’ve told her in roundabout ways.
Taken out of context it’s plain to see.
Slipped into the overgrowth of conversation it’s a hidden secret.
I tell her I am lacking.
Stark and sterile.
I tell her I fear.
She hears me tell her I’m fine.
Really.
Her curiosity is appeased.
Her worry subsided.
I tell her I no longer hear voices - see faces.
I wonder if I ever heard them.
Saw them.
Or if distant memory hazes and lies.
I see flashes now.
So brief I wonder.
Is this hallucination?
Tricks of light and shadow?
My own monsters?
Glimpses of my own personal demons come to collect their pound of flesh?
What will a year’s time bring?
What will it take?
I must learn.
There is no contentment.
No happiness.
Only survival.
And the completion of death.
Perhaps I yearn to rejoin the cosmos.
To be blank energy.
Without matter.
Without form.
Void.
I am defunct.
I bleed.
For the second time this month.
The first time was on purpose.
This time is by accident.
Time to eat soon.
Time to not eat soon.
Time to throw-up after eating soon.
The world moves on and I stay in the axis watching the change -
the same -
the turning.
Quiet and still I sit.
Alone - unnoticed.
I make noncommittal noises.
Stay on the surface and move on.
React appropriately and do my duty.
Outside I’m a part of the wall.
Holding up my share.
Carrying my weight.
Inside I am a black hole.
Contained in silence.
I suck the substance from inside and leave myself barren.

End.