Paper Doll

Petya was disintegrating in front of his eyes. Nikolai didn't know why his lover had stopped eating, but he knew he had, because whenever they were in bed together, Pyotr was bony and thin and felt like a paper doll of a human being.

And now Pyotr, who was normally full of life, near-manic, slept much more, low on energy.

It made Nikolai curious at first. Pyotr had once stupidly told him (when they had just started sleeping with each other and everything was new and exciting) that he would do anything for Nikolai. Anything.

That was, of course, before he had fully understood what such an offer meant. Before he had started to really understand Nikolai.

Still, he was relatively sure that if he told Pyotr to eat, Pyotr would do so.

But where would be the fun in that?

So he started feeding Pyotr. He started keeping a bowl of salted almonds and cashews next to his bed, and when they were together, he nonchalantly held one up to Pyotr's lips.

And Pyotr ate.

He accepted the almonds without hesitation, chewing once or twice before he swallowed and then calmly waiting for Nikolai to give him another. After ten almonds, Nikolai kissed him, tasting the salt on his lips. Then he fed him ten more, until the bowl was empty.

Pyotr then pressed against him, demanding for another kind of hunger to be satisfied.

Nikolai bought croissants for breakfast and ripped them into small pieces, feeding Pyotr one piece of flaky pastry after the other.

He started keeping little things on him that he could give Pyotr. Apple slices and pieces of chocolate and cookies, he held them all to Pyotr's lips, and Pyotr ate without protest.

But it was still all scraps, and they did not live together yet, so on some days, Nikolai knew that Pyotr ate not a single thing because he would not eat anything but what Nikolai fed him.

He saw his lover disintegrating in front of him.

And it began to make him angry.

Pyotr's frail arms and protruding bones did not evoke sympathy or pity in Nikolai. No. Whenever he saw how Pyotr had gotten thinner again, he felt angry.

He wanted to slap Pyotr for being so stupid. What was the point of such self-violation? Pyotr was not a teenage girl who could control nothing in her life but her body.

Nikolai waited for Pyotr to stop, controlling his anger. Waited for Pyotr to start eating again as if he had never taken a break from it. Whatever stupid fancy this was, it would surely pass. It had to.

Because Nikolai noticed how he got more and more aggressive with Pyotr. Not physically, he never hit him. But he felt aggression rise in his gut whenever he saw how Pyotr had gotten smaller again. He felt a never-before felt desire to bite and scratch him, to make him bleed, to harm him. Make him feel alive and exposed.

It confused him, this almost overwhelming desire. He wanted to bury his teeth in Pyotr’s flesh and rip chunks of it out. He wanted to consume Pyotr.

Take this and eat it. This is my body.

Nikolai had never felt very deeply. He…did not dislike Pyotr. But it was neither passion nor love that made him agree to a relationship with him, merely the fact that he could stand Pyotr’s presence more than he could stand anyone else’s.

Pyotr had always been the one in love, whereas Nikolai was the one who was accepting of the affection he was shown. To a degree.

Oh, there had been moments when he had felt desire for Petya, but it had never reached his core. Some part of him had always been in control. Detachedly watching what happened. His feelings had never blinded him, and both acting and not acting upon them had always been a possibility.

So this was…worrying.

The fact that he felt it burning inside him – the wish to rip Pyotr’s flesh out and taste his blood and consume him was so enormous that Nikolai could not comprehend it.

It irritated him. Drove him mad, sometimes, when they were in bed together and he saw just how small Pyotr had become. A paper doll of a human being. Then the urge to bite and tear and make him part of himself was almost not to be suppressed.

He hated Pyotr in those moments. Hated him for not caring, for allowing himself to waste away and shrink. Hated that he desired him so much that it made his mouth water.

Only when he fed Pyotr, he felt this anger subside. When Pyotr accepted scraps from his hands, it felt soothing. As if he was not just satisfying Pyotr’s hunger, but his own.

But just like the scraps were not enough to stop the process of disintegration for long, they were not enough to bring Nikolai peace.

One evening, when Pyotr pulled him into bed, Nikolai felt something break within himself. He snatched his hands back, knowing that if he had to touch Pyotr for another second, he would lose it. Would bite him open and swallow his flesh in chunks until there was nothing but a bloody mess left of his lover.

“Can you finally stop this nonsense?” he snapped.

Pyotr’s eyes were unusually indifferent as he looked at Nikolai now. It was unsettling.

Wrong.

It was wrong.

Slowly, Pyotr lay down, never taking his eyes off Nikolai. “What do you mean?”

“You know damn well what I mean.” Nikolai could not keep the heat out of his voice. Another wrong detail. Pyotr was the one who got biting, emotional, heated. Nikolai kept his cool. Always.

Pyotr sighed, tired. Nikolai grabbed his wrist and pressed it, hard enough to hurt. “Look at this! I could snap you in half! It would not take much.”

Pyotr’s gaze wandered slowly from Nikolai’s fist around his wrist to his face and back. Then he shrugged, just the tiniest of motions.

“You are free to do whatever you like.”

“Shut the fuck up!” Nikolai snarled. “I don’t know what the fuck you want from me, but this is not how you are going to get it!”

What he wanted to say, he realised as the words left his mouth, was this: Please don’t do this. Don’t give me so much power. You were always the one who pushed back when I pushed you, no matter how much in love you were. Even when you loved me the most, you kept a part safe from me. Don’t offer yourself up to me like the lamb being led to the slaughterhouse. I won’t be able to resist the temptation. I will not be able not to break you, and what do we have left, then?

Pyotr was frowning while he was looking up at Nikolai. His cheeks were hollow and his skin deathly pale. A paper doll.

He began to laugh with his body, inaudible, so that at first Nikolai did not understand why he was shaking. It was more movement than sound, and still Nikolai felt like he could kill him in that moment.

“Oh, Kolya,” Pyotr finally got out, “Nikolash, Kolyenka. My sweet prince.” He reached up with the hand that was not in Nikolai’s grip and stroked his lover’s face. “Do you think everything in my life revolves around you?”

Nikolai stared down at him, the seconds ticking by silently.

As he had accused Pyotr, it had made sense, in the distorted way in which Pyotr’s thoughts always made sense if you looked at them askew. Starvation as a form of punishment or liberation, starvation as an action tangentially related to their relationship. Something Pyotr did both to himself and to Nikolai.

Something that put Nikolai’s anger at Pyotr wasting away into proportion.

When Pyotr pulled his hand back, Nikolai let him.

“Tomorrow, I will eat. I promise.” Pyotr’s voice was quiet, but calm. Nikolai nodded, more to himself than to his lover.

He kept still for a few seconds, taking in Pyotr’s impossibly small figure as he lay down on his side. Then he followed him onto the bed, pulling him against his chest. He still felt the weightlessness of his lover’s body, but there was no anger anymore.

The next morning, Pyotr ate breakfast.