Habituation.

The process of becoming so used to a continuous stimulus or condition that your psychological and emotional response to it becomes diminished or altogether disappears.

Conditioning.

Desensitized.

The pain no longer aches. Or rather, the pain is so damn near constant that he's forgotten what it feels like to feel any different. It's just part of him now. At first it had felt like a knife buried deep in his chest, stuck between his ribs and tearing at his heart. It hurt to move and to think. Every breath brought a fresh wave of pain.

But over time, he's gotten used to it. The sharpness of the knife has dulled. He's gotten used to its presence between his ribs. He's used to the ache in his heart. The way his stomach rolls no longer feels dizzying, and the nausea is constant enough to ignore.

The first few days had been a fresh new hell. He hadn't been able to sleep, but he also hadn't been able to get himself out of bed. Going to class was simply going through the motions, but he barely heard anything his professors said. Jasper tried to make conversation with him several times, but eventually gave up when his only responses were one word mutterings or grunts.

He threw himself into his game.

It was the only thing to truly distract him, and the only thing he could throw himself wholeheartedly into. It was the only thing that mattered, and the only thing that has mattered in the past few years. It's the only thing that should matter now. This is his life's work. This is what his brother wanted him to do. This is what he promised his brother that he would do. He has to finish it for him.

Time becomes a strange concept. It seems to drag by, sluggish and thick, sliding past him like molasses. And at the same time, it rushes. It flies past him without his awareness or consent. It drags and speeds in intervals, switching without warning, leaving him in a constant state of vertigo. He zones out and the clock says three hours have past, but his memories remain blurry and uncertain.

He disregards time as much as he can. He sets alarms for his classes, so he won't miss them, but other than that, he lets himself forget.

He loses himself to numbers and calculations and algorithms. He loses himself to pixels and fractals that make up his designs. He loses himself in walls of text. In dialogue options. In damage calculations. In weapon selections. In game market prices. In item selections. In ability brainstorming.

His fingers are a slave to his mind, flying across the keyboard and feeling as numb as the rest of him. His eyes burn, and he only trudges to bed when the burn becomes too much to bear and his eyes refuse to stay open. Then he curls up in bed, sometimes still fully clothed, often without brushing his teeth, and lets his body shut down.

It feels less like sleeping and more like a slip into unconsciousness. It's dreamless and dark. He wakes with a start most mornings, unable to go back to sleep and mind immediately latching onto the things he doesn't want to think about. He drags himself out of bed and to his desk, boots up his computer, and loses himself all over again.

Jasper, thankfully, is a heavy sleeper and doesn't seem to mind Kyle's odd hours or his new, sleepless schedule. If the light from his laptop screen bothers Jasper, he doesn’t say anything about it. Kyle can usually hear him snoring just minutes after he's crawled into bed. He envies him for that.

Jasper does, at one point, bring up his behavior. It's offhanded and casual. Just a comment about Kyle being in their dorm a lot more often now and asking if he's still seeing that jock guy. Kyle answers with a stiff and guarded no, but Jasper doesn't get the message. He pushes. Asks if they broke up and that's why Kyle is condemning himself like a hermit.

He says it as a joke, teasing and light hearted, and Kyle knows he doesn't mean anything hurtful by it. But it's too close to home. It finds that knife that's dulled in his chest and twists.

Kyle snaps at him. He doesn't remember all of what he says. He doesn't remember the words or his phrasing, but he remembers the venom. He remembers the anger. He remembers how, in that moment, he wanted to hurt Jasper as much as he was aching himself. He remembers saying some pointed things. Hurtful things.

He remembers Jasper's face.

He remembers it like a snapshot. A picture that remains in his memory even as the words around it fade. Jasper's eyes wide and mouth hanging open. His face contorted in surprise and shock. Another picture of it fading into hurt and confusion and betrayal. Another picture of it twisting into anger, closed off and cold and indifferent.

Jasper hasn't talked to him much since, and Kyle feels terrible. Whenever he sees his roommate, he feels a fresh wave of guilt roll through him. But soon enough, even that starts to dull. He gets used to the constant emotion of it. He stops looking at Jasper when he moves around the room, and keeps his eyes focused on his laptop screen.

If he just works on his game, everything will be okay. Everything else will fade. The pain will go away. He just has to work until it goes away.

He just has to work.

He just has to focus.

He just has to forget.

* * *

While he's wrapped up in his game, in his coding, in his planning, and his work, he's fine. It's easy to push everything else aside and simply run calculations and plans in his head. It's when he stops that things get bad.

Cry Thunder is an unsteady dam. It's barely holding back the flood waters that threaten to crash in and sweep him away, drowning him violently and without care.

The moment he stops working and stops focusing, he barely gets a breath in before the waters start to trickle in. Thoughts of his brother and thoughts of Jake. They rush into his mind in tandem, creating havoc and swirling him down into dark, watery depths. He feels like he can't breathe. He feels like he can't think. His body starts to go numb as his mind drifts away from it, breath coming ragged and fast as a panic attack edges closer.

The numbness keeps him from feeling the anger, brittle and white hot. Whenever he stops working, whenever he lets himself breathe and the thoughts come crashing in, his anger burns hot and it burns fast. It rips through his veins, aching in his heart and simmering in his lungs.

He's angry at Jake. Jake, with his stupidly pretty face and stupidly attractive body and his stupidly adorable laugh and smile that make Kyle melt every time. Jake made him forget his brother. Jake's presence in his life made him forget the one person he promised never to forget. Jake made him forget his priorities, swept up in the excitement of the moment and the heat of passion. He never thought he'd be one to be blinded by a pretty face, but here he is.

He's angry at his parents. They should have called him when he forgot to call them. They should have gone to his brother's grave. They claim to be moving on, but to Kyle, it feels like giving up. He refuses to give up or let go. He doesn't want to let his brother go.

He's angry at himself. He's disappointed and guilty and mad at himself for letting himself forget. He let himself get distracted. He let himself live in some stupid fantasy where someone like Jake might actually like him and let himself believe that maybe if he came out, it wouldn't be so bad. He let himself forget what's really important, and he knows better than that.

And honestly? He’s mad at his brother. His brother left him. He said he would always be there for him, and he left. Kyle knows he didn't mean to die, but he still left, and now Kyle has no one. He feels alone, and no one understands.

He works until his eyes burn and his body begins shutting down. He works until he's exhausted enough to fall into bed and go to sleep without having to think. He works until he's ensured a dreamless, thoughtless sleep.

And then he wakes up, and he does it all over again.

* * *

He works well into the night, as has become his habit. He doesn't think he's looked away from his screen in hours. He knows Jasper has already gone to bed. He heard him get ready an hour ago, and somewhere around that time he turned the lights off.

Kyle feels himself getting frustrated. It's a tick beneath his skin, crawling and restless. His eyes narrow, blurring at the edges and burning as he looks over a paragraph of coding. It's wrong. It looks wrong. But he can't figure out why. He's been stuck on this bug for hours. He hasn't gotten past it. His vision has been going in and out, and his focus hasn't been much better. He thinks there might have been a while there where he passed out. He can't remember much.

With a grunt of frustration, he saves everything and closes his laptop. Tomorrow. He'll come back to it tomorrow. He should sleep now before he passes out on his keyboard.

He rubs his eyes, feeling water well up at the corners in an attempt to relieve the persisting dryness. When he opens them, gray dots dance at the edges of his vision. He can see them, even in the dark of the room. And they don't fade. That can't be a good sign.

He pushes himself to his feet, intent on going to the bathroom, but his balance wavers. His knees lock up, and his vision swims. He stumbles a couple steps, hitting the wall next to the door to the bathroom. His breaths are slow and ragged as he clings to the wall, trying to stop the vertigo. Everything is spinning, slow and disorienting.

It takes far too long for everything to come back into focus.

He steps into the bathroom, closes the door, and turns on the light.

He's caught by his own reflection. He looks far too pale. His skin feels greasy, and his hair looks matted and gross. He honestly can't remember the last time he took a shower. He realizes with a start that he's pretty certain he's only taken one since he broke it off with Jake. He tried once, and the thoughts came swirling in and pushed him toward a panic attack, so he's been avoiding the shower ever since.

Dark and heavy bags hang under his eyes. His eyes themselves look hollow and distant. His clothes are rumpled and dirty, and he's not sure when he last changed them.

He looks terrible.

It's then that his stomach rumbles, loud and twisting, clenching his gut painfully. He grits his teeth, wrapping one arm around his middle and using his other hand to prop himself up on the counter.

He can't remember the last time he ate. Yesterday? He thinks it was yesterday morning. He hasn't drank much either. He knows he hasn't been eating very well lately, but this is the longest he's gone.

He knows he needs to eat. Logically, he knows. He needs to put something in his stomach to keep him going, but the thought of food makes his stomach roll. No matter how hungry he is, he feels nauseated by the thought of eating anything. His throat feels thick, tongue sluggish and swollen. He's not sure he'd even be able to get himself to swallow if he tried.

It's a bad sign. A very bad sign.

He stares at himself in the mirror, eyes wide with the mounting horror of realization.

The last time he was like this was right after his brother's death. He isolated himself. He lived in the dark of his room. He didn't talk to anyone, not even his parents. He didn't eat anything and barely drank anything. His sleep was sporadic and far between.

He ended up passing out and having to go to the hospital.

He hadn't meant to starve himself, but he was too upset to eat. He'd been put on fluids until his body could work back up to food. It had been a terrible experience. He had worried his parents, who had just lost a son. He had been stuck, surrounded by nurses with pitying eyes. He hadn't been able to work on anything.

He knew his brother would have hated to see him that way.

He would hate to see him this way.

He can't let it happen again. He doesn't want to fall that low again. He can't fall that low again. If he does, he's not sure he'll be able to come back, and he doesn't want that. He has to be strong. For his brother, and for himself.

He needs help.

He can see the tears welling up in his eyes in the mirror, vision blurring with them. They're warm as they run down his cheeks.

He needs help.

He collapses into bed that night, teeth brushed, body showered, and wearing clean pajamas. He feels better, but only by a fraction. His stomach still hurts, his body aches, and he still feels emotionally numb.

Tomorrow. Tomorrow he'll go to the counseling office and make an appointment. Tomorrow, he'll find a way to get better.

For his brother.

For himself.