Rory and Sebastian

-- All characters are over the age of 18 --

Gaining my uncle, and my parents' permission, to go away for my first weekend alone with Rory was surprisingly easy. My uncle was close to our side of the family and he was Evan's godfather; he liked me and we played tennis together, every now and then. Rory had apparently had to work on his father's permission a bit more, but his mom was on his side, which helped clinch the final victory. I was excited when I picked him up after school on Friday afternoon; I'd gone home to quickly change into jeans, a sweater and pick up my weekend bag.

The drive was just over an hour and the weather wasn't great, but we chatted easily. He made me laugh with a story about how annoyed his friend Virginia had been in school today and I was pleased to see him toss his phone into the back of the car shortly after we left. All his attention was on us for the weekend. I liked that.

There was one moment, on the motorway, when the rain got particularly bad and I had to concentrate as I merged, that the flow of conversation naturally dropped off. When I glanced back at him a few minutes later, he'd lapsed into a deeper kind of silence and he was staring out the window into the gray torrents outside. I quickly nudged him on his leg, then put my hands back on the steering wheel. He turned to look at me and smiled a soft, slightly apologetic smile. His dark hair was bouncy; freshly washed. He was wearing a gray speckled sweater and jeans. His handsomeness was as soft and unobtrusive as his smile. Fuck me, I loved him.

'What's up?' I asked.

'Nothing,' he half-lied. 'Nothing really.'

'So something.'

'Yes, but it's not particularly interesting. It was a weird stream of thoughts.'

'What were they?'

I could hear a widening smile in his voice. 'No. I draw the line at being boring, Sebastian.'

I laughed.

'I can't wait to see your uncle's house.'

'It's nothing too special,' I qualified, 'but it's nice. From what I can remember. It's really decent of him to lend it to us.'

'It is,' Rory agreed. 'I can't believe you only brought such a small bag.'

'I don't plan on wearing too many clothes this weekend, baby.'

'I bet you don't.'

'And why'd you bring so many? The most you'll be wearing for most of tonight and tomorrow is my cum shot across your face and chest.'

'You're disgusting,' he laughed.

'You won't be saying that later when you're begging to be fucked until you can't see straight.'

'Do you ever have any ... I don't know ... fantasies?' he asked, nonchalantly. The nonchalance was a ruse. Rory was capable of being seductive and passionate with ease, but kinky was something he could pull off in a million years.

'Fantasies or fetishes?' I asked.

'Well, both, I suppose.'

'I could go with being tied up for a little bit,' I shrugged, 'by you. But nothing too weird.'

'No Fifty Shades, then?' he teased.

'Fifty Shades of Gay?' I rejoined, 'Hells no.'

He giggled.

'What about you?' I asked.

'No, not really,' he admitted. 'I'm worried it makes me dull. I just like sex, I suppose. Of the regular, normal kind.'

'Trust me, Rory, what we do is not regular. It's spectacular.'

'I'll take your word for it, since I suppose you have more experience,' he shot back. It was a good-natured jibe, but I scowled. He knew I didn't like that being brought up in conversation. 'Don't pout,' he admonished. 'It was a joke.'

'I'm not pouting, Rory. Girls pout.'

'Then you must be a big ole girl, my love, because, right now, you are quite definitely pouting. Love you.'

I turned to look at him properly and my face cracked into a smile. He was a smug bastard, yes, but I loved him. And he was mine.

'Keep your eyes on the road, Sebastian. I don't want to die tonight.'

We reached the house just after it got properly dark. It was a stone cottage, renovated and modernized by my aunt and uncle. I thought it was pretty; Rory, as the child of someone obsessed with architectural digests, thought it was stunning.

'I'd love a place like this,' he said, as I locked the car door. And then, as reminder of the lifestyle he'd grown up with he added, totally unconsciously, 'For weekends, obviously.'

I hid my smile. Spoiled little brat. He hurried up the path, to avoid getting soaked in the rain, and I fished the keys out of my pocket. We'd stopped for groceries on the way and he was carrying one of the bags. Obviously, I'd be cooking. Rory believed he was a genius in the kitchen, but even the full force of my love for him couldn't make me agree with him.

'You should've kept your sweater on,' he chastised. 'You're soaked already.'

My t-shirt was clinging to me because of the rain, but it'd been too hot in the car to keep my sweater on. I'd forgotten to put it back on when we got out.

'But then you wouldn't have had an opportunity to perve on me, would you?' I asked, kissing him on the lips.

I opened the door and we stepped in. A blast of cold air hit us, since the house had been unused for a couple of weeks. My teeth chattered as we stepped inside and Rory, who'd noticed, threw me a smug, triumphalist smirk. He'd been right about keeping the sweater on. Douche.

'Fuck off,' I laughed, in reference to his smile. I put our bags down and searched for the central heating button. The cottage, inside, was pretty, too, and the ground floor consisted of a kind of open plan kitchen, living room with a big old fashioned fireplace, T.V. and a wooden staircase leading upstairs. With the cold shooting through me and my stomach grumbling, even I wasn't horny right now. The bedrooms could wait.

'Shall I cook?' he asked. And he was serious. Jesus.

'No,' I replied, 'you're shit.'

'I am not!'

'You're a terrible cook. I love you, but you're horrendous.'

'I am not horrendous.'

'Okay, you're maybe not horrendous, Rory, but you're not as good as me.'

He looked at me levelly. 'That t-shirt's a hideous color on you, you know.'

I laughed again. He'd evened the score nicely. I defiantly yanked the t-shirt up off over my head I stood in front of him, topless, and he involuntarily bit his lip. He wanted it. I smirked.

'Is this a better color, Rory?'

He nodded and smiled, coyly. 'I suppose.'

'Come here.'

He walked into my arms, by the kitchen island, and we kissed. 'How happy are you that we did this?'

'Let's go get a towel,' he said tenderly, tracing my shivering skin with his hands. 'I'll dry you.'

Rory seemed like he was going to eat a lot at dinner, but then checked himself. I'd noticed recently that he'd been eating more; in front of me, at least. I liked it and it made me happy, but I knew that he was bound to have good days and bad days. I didn't want to nark on him constantly to eat more than he felt like, because I didn't want to turn eating into a chore. I also noticed that every time, before he ate, he'd stop and stay entirely still for a second or two. Initially, I assumed that he was gearing himself up to eat but then it occurred to me, at some point after new year's, that he was actually probably pausing to mentally say grace in his own head. I don't know how I reached that realization, but I knew, somehow, that I was right.

Rory's religion was something of a mystery to me and it was not one I brought up, too often, in conversation. I'd made the mistake once of probing him too deeply about what, I thought, were the patently stupid bits of his faith's teachings. Instead of rising to the challenge and firing back with some witty repartee, he flushed and fell silent. The only thing I could get him to concede upon, sincerely, was that he did not, in any way, agree with Catholicism's teachings on homosexuality. A tiny part of me had lived in fear that somewhere, deeply buried, he harbored a fear that he was inferior or a sinner, because he was gay.

'No,' he'd said, quietly, 'I don't agree with that bit. At all.'

But bringing it up with him or asking too many questions seemed to make him uncomfortable and uncharacteristically shy, so I usually dropped it and was content to lumber along in my own happy agnosticism. Except for the fact that I did want to know what he believed, and why. I wanted to know everything about him and to understand him. It took years before I got the knack and sensitivity to discuss his spirituality with him properly and to get results.

Rory had seemingly gotten more Catholic since we'd started dating. Or maybe, like many religious people, it only became more obvious once I spent more time with him. It wasn't like he was fanatic; far, far from it. Nor that he particularly followed his church's teachings -- his behavior in bed with me proved that! But there was something in him that innately respected the Catholic Church - far more than I, personally, felt that it deserved. He would also cross himself when we passed a Catholic chapel; he didn't like blasphemous jokes, and of course there was the fact that I'd noticed that he had started saying grace, silently in his head, before each meal. Even though I'm quite prepared to admit that I wasn't, and still am not, a big fan of the Catholic religion, I didn't mind it that much and if it made him happy and caused him no harm, then that was good enough for me. But somehow, on some deep and intrinsic level, I'd already realized that when the outward signs of Rory's religion became more obvious, it was because something wasn't quite right with him on the inside. That he was focusing on the rituals and comforts of his faith, because he needed them to steady him. Rory was never very good at telling people his weaknesses or his fears; that's why he got on so well with God. God didn't need to be told; God already knew.

When dinner was over, I lit the fire and we lay down on the sofa together to watch a movie. The rain pounded against the windows and the wind howled. It was the archetypal February weather, but it added to that sense that I'd been looking for. Isolated romance. Rory and I were, at last, completely alone with one another.

The movie was good, but with the fire crackling, the exhaustion of the school day, the drive, the food, the wine and the weather all catching up with us, we both soon drifted off to sleep. By the time I woke up again, the clock above the fireplace told me that it was eleven o'clock at night. The storm outside had not abated, but the movie had looped back to its menu.

Standing up, I felt Rory stir from where he'd been sleeping on my chest. He looked groggily as I walked over and placed another couple of logs on the fire. I walked back and put my hand down the sweatpants I'd put on before dinner, when I'd changed out of the wet jeans. I re-arranged my balls and stretched.

'We've been asleep a long time, baby,' I observed.

Rory nodded; still clearly stupid with sleep. He leant up as I lay back down, then put his head back on my chest. I stroked my hand up and down his side and listened to the weather; in a moment, I felt the steady, heavy breathing which told me he'd slipped back into his sleep. The heat from the fire and the happy peace of the situation put me into my own doze again. I woke up about twenty minutes later and shook Rory.

'Okay, baby, bed time.'

He reluctantly stirred himself and followed me upstairs. The bedroom had a big bed and timber-framed roof that slanted down. Rory used the bathroom first and emerged in a pair of pajama bottoms and a t-shirt; I went in after, brushed my teeth and stripped down to my boxers. It occurred to me that we mightn't even have sex on the first night away together, given how sleepy Rory had been downstairs. But as I returned to the bedroom, he was sitting up in bed, gazing at me. Now wide awake, with a mischievous look on his face. In the dim light of the bedside table, I could see that his big, brown eyes were dancing. I knew what was coming.

'Oh,' I whispered, with a cocky, pleased smile. 'Well, that answers my question.'

He opened his arms for me as I reached the bed. Our lips and then our tongues met and he laid back onto the pillows, spreading his legs to accommodate me as I lay on top of him. I was hard almost instantly and could feel that Rory was already at full salute. From the way we were grinding against each other, I knew it was going to be a good night. He pushed me off him and rolled me over onto my back.

My boner had already poked through my underwear and Rory quickly pulled them down, and threw them away. He licked up and down my cock, like it was a lollipop, spat on my balls and began massaging them, and then began bobbing furiously, up and down. Moaning with delight as he did it. I hissed with pleasure and put my hand on the back of his head.

'Look at me,' I ordered. He did and then broke away from fellatio to catch his breath; spit was already hanging out of his mouth. I guided his head back down there and he fucked his own face up and down on my dick. I saw tears start to stream out of his eyes and he was so turned on that he stuck his hand down his own pajamas and started masturbating. He didn't break eye contact with me.

'Fuck! Let me feel the back of your throat.'

He obediently lowered himself down and I kept my hand on his head, encouraging him; he was choking, spit was falling out of the sides of his mouth and tears streamed down his face. The choking became louder and he was masturbating himself more furiously. When his face was nearly purple, he pulled off and let out a deep, guttural gasp for air.

'Get on your back,' I commanded. He did and I yanked his pajamas off. His impressive erection was pointing at me, but instead I went up to kiss him; as hard and deeply as I could. Then I put my head between his legs and flipped them up in the air. As I rimmed him, he mewed with pleasure and then he began gasping as I tongue-fucked his widening, wet hole. The one I'd devirginized. The one I'd soon see my spunk leaking out of.

I rimmed Rory for nearly ten minutes and by the end he was nearly weeping through a mixture of pleasure and frustration. 'Please,' he half-sobbed, 'please, Sebastian. Put it in me. Fuck me. Please.'

I reached over to the bedside table, grabbed the lube and smeared it all over my cock that was still slick from Rory's blowjob. I pointed the head at his asshole and began to ease myself in. He threw back his head, smiled and let out a little squeal of happiness. 'That's it,' he encouraged. 'Oh, fuck, yes.'

I kept going, slowly and relentlessly, until my balls rested against him and I was buried to the hilt in his warm, wet, tight flesh. I was rough with him. I knew he wanted it. I fucked him, hard, banging the headboard off the wall and he twisted my nipples, making me groan. This was intense, visceral and fantastic. I loved him. I loved sex with him; it was perfect.

After a while, I flipped him onto his knees and entered him again. I kept up a torrent of curse-laden abuse; the kind I knew turned him on when he was in this mood. I kept asking how much he liked being my little bitch and if he liked being fucked like one. I reached round and jerked his deck and I could see sweat all over his back. Fuck knows, it was pouring off me by this stage, too.

'Sebastian, I'm going to cum,' he shouted. 'Soon.'

I pulled out of him and hurled him over, back onto his back. He bounced as he hit the bed and I slammed my full length into him. I slapped his hands away viciously and jerked off his cock myself. In a minute, his whole body tensed, his hands twisted into the sheet, his eyes and mouth hung open stupidly and ropes of cum shot through my hand and onto his torso and even hit his chin.

'Where do you want me to cum?' I asked, breathlessly.

'In me,' he whispered. His head resting on the pillow; his hair now sticking to his brow with sweat.

I pulled myself back, until only my head was in his asshole. Then, with something that I'm pretty sure sounded like a half-repressed roar, I came. A lot. The jizz shot into him and then dribbled past my cock and out of his hole. I held his legs up and put my mouth down there and licked some of the cum out. Then, I trailed up his chest and got some of his on my tongue, as well. And then I kissed him, as deeply as I could. He accepted the kiss and wrapped his arms around my back.

As we separated, I kissed his cheek gently and then landed soft kisses on his throat, as I collapsed on top of him.

'I'll move in a minute,' I promised, exhaustedly.

'Don't,' he asked. 'I like this.'

His hands trailed soothingly, up and down my back. I rolled off him in a few minutes and intertwined my fingers through his. We got up and showered together, quickly and mostly in silence. It was an efficient shower, but I soaped his back and he washed my hair. Then we dried off and padded back to bed, where Rory fell asleep again quickly. I found it harder to get to sleep, because of the epic nap we'd taken together earlier in the evening. But eventually, I nodded off.

I woke up at about six o'clock in the morning to see Rory, dressed in his pajamas, staring inscrutably out the window. The rain had eased, into a dull drizzle and it was still mostly dark outside. I couldn't tell what he was thinking, but his body language seemed tense; thoughtful.

'Hey.'

If he was surprised that I was awake and watching him, he gave very little sign of it. 'Hello,' he responded. It was so delicate, so soft and so entirely, disjointedly proper. As if we were acquaintances in the 1930s, not boyfriends who only a few hours earlier had been humping each other like there was no tomorrow. His mind was occupied by something he was trying to hide from me behind a wall of politeness.

'What's up?' I asked.

He shook his head and lied. 'Nothing, really.'

'Okay. Come back to bed, then.'

Lying on my side, I held open my arms and gestured for him. He walked over and lay on his side; I was the big spoon and wrapped my arms around him. He was shivering slightly and I kissed his neck. Our hands interlocked again.

'Tell me when you're ready,' I whispered.

Rory told me what was on his mind later that morning. He may have been ready, but I definitely was not. It was shortly after breakfast. The rain had stopped and we were going to go for a walk along the country lanes nearby. I had just eaten a full cooked breakfast; Rory was listlessly trailing his spoon through a barely-touched bowl of porridge. As I was bringing my plate over to the sink, he said it.

'I've been making myself sick after I eat.'

I stopped and stared. As if I couldn't quite understand what he was saying. Or didn't want to. His tone was devastatingly matter-of-fact; his diction was flawless; his volume, quiet -- the only sign, at all, that he was in anyway upset or nervous about what he was saying. After a few seconds of a thunderously loud silence, he finally looked up from the patterns he was tracing with his spoon in his breakfast bowl. He looked at me. And I saw him swallow, as if trying to hold his nerve. It was the same tactic he'd adopted when we'd fought over Joshua Peterly -- he was trying to stay calm, in the hope that it would diffuse the situation and minimize the issue. If he kept his stiff upper lip, maybe then I wouldn't lose my shit.

'You've what?'

'I've been ... making myself sick.' I saw him start to get slightly flustered, now. Apparently having to say it, out loud, for a second time, was more than he'd mentally prepared himself for. 'It's happened before,' he explained, 'before I met you. When I was younger. When...'

'How long for?'

'Pardon?'

'This time. How long has this time been going on for, Rory?'

'Since about Halloween, I think.'

And that was it; the moment he said that a bolt of rage shot through me like lightening. I hurled my plate from my hand into the wall and it smashed. I saw Rory jump and his mouth popped open. His artificial calm was shattered by my fury. He hadn't been expecting this kind of a reaction.

Looking back on it, I'm sure that morally-speaking, I should've been kinder to him. Cradled him and kissed him and taken him in my arms. But at the time, I felt so livid I thought I was going to burst a blood vessel in my brain. I thought of all the times I'd thought he was getting better. Of all the times I'd loved him and done everything I could to make him feel better and more secure about himself. Of all the times I'd been so stupid as to miss the fact that he was always tired or pale or that it took him weeks to get over an illness that other people could get over in days. I thought of every time he'd ever gone to the bathroom when we were at restaurants. Of how I'd failed him and how he'd lied. How he was doing the same thing he'd done when Josh had started tormenting him: excluding me. Telling me, implicitly, that he didn't trust me; that I couldn't help; that this was his problem. Not ours. Not mine. I felt my chest constrict with the weight of anger and upset, rage and sorrow, in equal measure. I was furious at him and at myself.

'Are you fucking kidding me?'

'I...'

'Do you ... Rory, fuck! Do you get what this is like for me? Have I not done enough? Have I not held you and cradled you and fucked you and loved you and done everything I can to make you feel better? Did you, or did you not, fucking promise me when the whole Joshua Peterly thing happened that you'd never lie to me about stuff like this, ever again? Have you... Fuck! You ... I mean, are you fucking trying to break my heart?'

He sat there; pale and mute. No tears.

I walked over to the front door and swung it open. He stayed where I'd left him: 'Do me a favor, Rory. Don't follow me.'

I walked down the path and passed the wall. For about ten minutes, I walked through the roads near my uncle's cottage. Every moment of the last few months ticked over and over in my head and I felt nothing but a futile sense of anger. How could I have missed it? I prided myself on knowing and noticing everything about him; I liked the fact that he seemed to know and notice everything about me. We hadn't physically had time to become as close as other couples do, obviously, but one of the main things I loved the most about our relationship was our synchronicity. It was our emotional compatibility with one another. I felt it even in our in-jokes and how we finished each other's sentences. Now, I felt shaken in everything I'd thought about Rory and me. How could I believe that our synchronicity was what made us work, when I'd missed something so big? And not just recently, but for months. There'd be times I'd seen him become distant, lost in thought or agitated at himself, but I'd never pressed for what specifically was wrong with him. Because I didn't want to upset his happiness. Because I thought that, at last, we were happy. And now I realized that only I had been. That for almost the whole time we'd been together, Rory had been encased in a private whirlpool of misery. And not once had he reached out to me. Not once had I helped.

As I walked, though, the cooler part of my brain began berating the angry part of it. The guy who liked to read books and think began winning out over the meat-headed boyfriend. What the fuck do you think he's trying to do now, I asked myself. He had just told me. It'd clearly been on his mind to tell me for a while; that explains all the silences. I'd told him to tell me when he was ready, this morning, but when he did, I threw a plate, screamed at him and left.

I turned back towards the cottage. When I got inside, Sebastian had cleaned up the mess I'd made with my plate, tidied the kitchen and washed his own dishes. He was sitting at the kitchen table; a cup of steaming, untouched tea in front of him.

'The kettle's boiled,' he said. His voice sounded hoarse and far away. There was a pleading quality to it. As if he was saying, "See? I can still do some things right." Poor Rory. My poor baby.

I nodded and sat down at the table-corner seat, next to him. 'Thank you.'

'Where did you go?'

'I don't know. I just needed to clear my head.'

'Okay.'

'Rory, how could you have kept this from me?'

He shook his head, mutely. I looked at him and saw his eyes had almost-instantly filled with tears. Thick tears that soon spilled down his face. He shook his head again and tried to say, 'I don't know,' but it came out more as a cross between a whisper and a mime. 'I don't know,' he repeated. He seemed so helpless.

I reached up and wiped away the right-hand tears with my thumb.

'I'm so sorry, Sebastian.'

'Rory, we need to talk about this. I've tried making you feel better, but it's clearly not working and if we don't sit down and have a full, painful, humiliating, no-holds-barred talk about this -- I mean with no secrets, no lies, no fucking politeness -- then it's going to break my heart and ruin your life. Can you do that for me? For us.'

He nodded. Another run of tears spilt out of his lovely eyes.

'Okay,' I said, relieved. 'I'm going to light the fire and then we'll sit down and talk about this.'

I lit the fire and the heavy rain returned. We sat in different places over the course of the afternoon. Sometimes, together on the sofa; other times, I stood by the fireplace. Sometimes, he sat on the armchair, or on my knee. The talk lasted, I think, close to five hours.

Initially, it didn't go anywhere near the bulimia. Jesus, to use that word to describe your own boyfriend is disgusting, heartbreaking and surreal. Initially, I asked all the questions I'd ever had about how it had started, what triggered it, what Rory thought of himself, what made it better. I asked for the supplementary information I'd always wanted after the piecemeal snapshots Robbie had given me when I first began dating Rory.

Rory answered honestly; sometimes in excruciating detail, like I'd asked. Now and again, he'd hesitate or skip over something that he didn't think was relevant, but which I wanted to hear more about. In this supremely fucked-up situation, even Rory's interpretation of events couldn't be fully trusted. Perhaps his could be trusted least of all, given how differently he saw himself compared to how the rest of the world saw him.

He told me of a childhood in which everyone in the family had praised him for being such a beautiful little boy; always so well dressed by his mother, always doted upon by his grandparents and his godparents. Then, a disparaging comment made during the puppy fat years by a fellow classmate had made him realize he wasn't that child anymore. It was the same version of events given by Robbie; only when Rory told it, the story became dark and melodramatic. He saw it as a case of the kid who'd insulted him saying what everyone else had clearly been thinking and correctly, cruelly highlighting Rory's now-monstrous physique. But I knew that when Robbie, who'd been there on the day it happened, had told me the story, he remembered it as a throw-away remark that meant nothing to the deliverer and everything to Rory, the recipient.

Rory then described a time in his life when he'd been "fat." I, who'd been at school with him that year, remembered nothing of this. And I was quite certain that I'd have noticed, given that I didn't particularly like him back then but had never been able to rebut comments from other people that he was quite good-looking. Rory, of course, believed I was only saying this because I was now his boyfriend, not because it was actually true. His sad, distant smile when I told him this told me that he didn't believe me, but rather that he thought it was a very sweet gestured lie on my part. He was quick, too, to dismiss my suggestion that his friendship with the girls had exacerbated his problem. The girls weren't as nearly into diets and weight-loss as people outside the clique thought they were. The occasional holiday diet was talked about, but nothing too serious and Rory never, ever brought his problem up with the girls. Virginia knew he wasn't comfortable with his weight, but the only person who'd really know anything was Robbie.

It was Robbie who'd been at his side the last time it had happened, when they were sixteen and Rory had rapidly lost shed-loads of weight, over a very short period of time. That, in fact, I did vaguely remember. It had been leading up to the school's summer vacation and I could remember looking at Rory one day in History class and thinking how thin he was. But, I was uninterested in him then and so I hadn't given it much more thought.

Over the course of the conversation, Rory raked up stories and neuroses that he'd hidden from anybody else ever. Like the agony he felt when people commented on how much alike he and Robbie looked; being mistaken for brothers or cousins. To Rory, it wasn't a compliment. Robbie was so dazzlingly handsome that Rory illogically assumed that people therefore thought he was the "ugly brother" and Robbie was the hot one. It never entered his head that people were making the link because Rory had something of Robbie's good looks; not because he was the ugly version of him. Then there was the new discomfort he'd experienced (exacerbated, if not created, by Joshua Peterly) - that he was too ugly and too fat to be dating me. That I exuded some kind of rude, jock health and vitality and so people must wonder what I was doing with someone like him.

From time to time, I could get Rory to concede that a certain point of view he had was stupid or incorrect. But for the most part, I just sat and listened. This is what I had wanted, no matter how hard it was to hear, and it was agonizing, this is what he needed, finally, to say out loud. It was what I needed to hear, too.

As it fell dark outside, I realized, though, that no argument, no logic, no platitude, no compliment, no hug, no endearment, nothing like that, could possibly break Rory out of the self-belief that what he was doing, whilst wrong and disgusting, was understandable. He knew making himself throw-up was wrong and harmful; that's why he'd told me. He wanted my help, belatedly, and to be honest with me. He wanted to reach out. But the hateful thing about his sickness was its power to convince him, somewhere inside, that as vile as his disorder was, it was the lesser of two evils. The alternative was for him to be fat. And I just didn't understand that because, as far as he was concerned, I was physically perfect. Which was dumb, on so, so many levels.

Drained by the conversation and seeing that I had to do something to save him from himself, I sat down next to him on the sofa and pulled out the mother of all emotional blackmails. It was manipulative and disingenuous, but if that's what it took, then that's what it took.

'Rory, I cannot get through to you about this and I really do think that you need to see someone, but in the meantime, I'm sorry, but I just can't live with this. But I can't live without you, either. I've been as supportive as I can, but now it's your turn to return the favor.'

'What do you mean?'

'I want you to stop throwing up after you eat and to stop skipping meals. But I don't want you to do it for yourself or because you think it's the right thing to do. Because you clearly won't. Instead, I want you to do it for me. I want you to prove that you do really love me and I want you to prove it by stopping all this. I want that sacrifice from you, Rory. No matter how hard it is for you or how fat you feel because of it. You have iron levels of self-control when you want to; more than most people I know. If you really love me, you'll stop this. Prove to me, and to yourself, that you love me as much as you say you do. And Rory, if you don't stop then I know that you don't love me and that will break my heart even more than what you're doing now is.'

He gazed blankly at me for a minute. It's the same face someone has when their king is checked in Chess, but you're not totally sure if they're going to keep on playing by moving him lamely to the next square and just prolonging the inevitable. But Rory Masterton was always one to accept defeat with dignity and after a pause, he nodded and said, 'Alright.' His tone was somehow both hollow and sincere. He would do it, for me, if not for himself. He was incapable, then, of doing it for himself, but he loved me totally and I'd thrown down the gauntlet. He either had to say yes to what I ask or break my heart. And Rory, I knew, would never, ever do that. I wish I'd felt better about my victory, but I felt as hollow and sincere as he sounded. More than anything, I just wished it wasn't necessary.

'Do you promise?' I asked.

He answered instantly. More confidently and purposefully than before, 'Yes. I won't do it again. No matter how I feel.'

I took his hand and we sat there, I think, for ten minutes, in silence. The rain kept going outside and I think that was a moment where a big part of my teenage version of love died away. I was becoming, more and more, an adult with Rory. Because I realized that love -- true love, which is what I knew we had -- would have moments like this. Where it was hard and awful and difficult. But it was still real - and as bad as he and I felt right then, we were in love with each other and we were in this together.

And he was my guy.

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