teach me gently on how to breathe || tradley/brad

جاهل

"And where does Tristan come in with all of this?" his father inquires.

"Right," the curly-haired boy mumbles. "Well, there's not a lot to it. We met in the medical center, and after a while we just sort of started hitting it off."

His parents exchange incomprehensible glances before his dad speaks: "You met him in the medical center?"

"Um, yeah?"

"That means he has an eating disorder," his father notes.

Brad furrows his brows at the judgment laced in his voice. "He's anorexic, yeah."

His parents exchange the same look from seconds ago again. "Oh," his mum utters.

"What's wrong?"

"It's just he's..." his mum trails off and looks towards her husband to pick up where she started.

"... he's sick," he slowly finishes.

"Aren't I apparently sick?" the teenager challenges, his tone defensive.

"We're not saying that he's sick as if it's necessarily a bad thing. Well, it is kind of a bad thing, but it's just... not a good idea for anorexics to mix, relationship wise," his mum elaborates.

"There's nothing wrong with him," Brad defends. "He's perfect. He makes me happy, and I like him a lot. And by the way, we're not even together yet. We're just sort of talking right now."

His mum lets out a sigh, glancing at her husband again. "We just don't want anything or anyone interrupting your recovery, Brad."

"My "recovery" is not being interrupted," Brad attempts reassuring her. "It's funny how you guys let me hang out with two bulimics on a daily basis, but it's like I'm commiting a sin when you find out I've been talking to an anorexic."

"Friendships are sometimes okay when it comes to eating disorder, but when two people with eating disorders start dating, it's messy," she tells him, like she knows.

"Messy?" Brad repeats. "Messy how?"

"He can encourage you to starve yourself, Bradley." Brad scrunches his face up in disgust. He can't even believe they're having this conversation. "What about your leg? Was he encouraging you to sneak out of the house behind our backs?"

"That's ridiculous. You know that."

"There's no harm in asking," his dad chimes in. "We want you to be okay, Brad."

Yet you keep doing things that make me unhappy, Brad angrily thinks to himself, like sending me off to medical centers. "He makes me okay. I swear to you both when I'm with him, I feel the most okay I've felt in forever."

"Okay," his dad mutters, standing up from the couch and stretching. "Just head up the stairs. It's nearly midnight."

The curly-haired boy frowns at the TV, realising his favourite cooking show went off while his parents were doubting his relationship - or whatever he's supposed to call the thing the two boys have going on. "Fine," he angrily mumbles, pulling himself off the couch and onto his crutches. He retrieves his phone with zero messages and zero calls from the couch and limps up the staircase. He wishes he could ring Tristan and rant to him about how unfair and close-minded his parents can be, but he realises whether the two boys were still on good terms or not, he still couldn't tell him why he's upset. He wouldn't want to make Tristan feel bad about himself.

And then sadness overlays Brad's anger and frustration, because the one person that can actually make him happy is trying to hide themself from him.