#how...do i tag this sksjs um-

[blistering-typhoons]

cw for food, relationships to food one can classify as an eating disorder, mentions of starvation, mentions of ptsd

watson doesn't occupy himself too much with keeping holmes fed until he himself starts eating again.

he returns from the war with no appetite for anything, spiritual or physical. he gambles his money away, wasting it away just as the flesh wastes from his bones.

he all but rots in a hotel room that is not a home. he eats whatever he can afford, when he can afford to eat at all.

the hunger that pines in his chest almost feels like the loneliness that resides there as well. he wonders which one will consume him first, which one will disintegrate the walls of his stomach and burn him alive.

a stomach which murmurs constantly but which only fully growls the first time he takes a meal in 221B.

sat at the dining table in a living room which he can almost feel become his own. sat across the most intriguing man he's ever met, who exchanges with him a few sly barbs with shining grey eyes. as if they've known eachother forever.

mrs hudson brings them their food and smiles down at him. there is no pity in her eyes, merely a challenge.

just try to refuse, young man.

he doesn't, of course he doesn't. firstly out of politeness, but politeness all but disappears once he first smells it.

a meal. homecooked.

served at a table that he can feel becoming his own. shared with the most brilliant man he can feel becoming his own.

small pieces of his soul stitch back together that very first time he takes a meal in 221B. it only continues to grow whole afterwards.

(mrs hudson is always sure to provide a sandwhich or something to the like whenever she can tell he's not eaten.

he rarely even needs to ask.)

it is only when he starts to eat again does he take care to make sure holmes does the same. his techniques gentle over the years from the somewhat fiery insistence in those first few months.

he thinks back to being curled up in a hotel bed with hollow ribs, and hates the thought of holmes suffering the same.

he understands his friend's habits more as time goes on. understands it to be a different suffering to his own.

he learns when to prod and when to wait.

and when to say nothing when holmes joins him for lunch.

right there at their very own dining table.