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Maybe he should’ve confronted it earlier.
“You sure that’s all you need for the day? Really?”
But honestly, it didn’t bother him.
“Yeah, look, I know you’re part bat, but that can’t be healthy.”
It just wasn’t something he thought about.
“Lad, are you alright? You’re breathing a bit heavy.”
Even though it was killing him.
“Shit! Get him to the infirmary!”
He didn’t remember when it started. Hell, could anyone? It was hard to pin down exactly when any of his self-destructive habits began. He smoked, he did coke, he was sure others who did as well couldn’t recall exactly when it started, just that it began and never stopped. Maybe it was in high school, or college, sparked by some body image issues. Maybe at some point, he decided to make some cuts to increase his productivity.
After all, something you learn when trading on the stock market is that you don’t have a lot of control, or at least not as much as you’d like. It’s not chess, it’s throwing dice. You can load them, shift the table around a bit, maybe even fudge the numbers, but the outcome is out of your control. It’s a terrifying thought, and something he didn’t want to think about. So he controlled all he could. That included his calorie intake.
He did know that, at some point before he graduated, he began to cut back on how much he ate. It was a cost-cutting measure, a productivity thing, that’s how he rationalized it when it first began. Besides, losing weight was always a good thing, wasn’t it?
One week at Harvard he managed to live off of nothing but energy drinks and a single pizza he ordered at the start of the week. It wasn’t healthy, he knew that, but it got results. He got out of there a year ahead of schedule.
When he graduated, that mindset persisted. Now, he dedicated his life to the grind.
Every minute of the day, buy and sell, buy and sell. Meetings, conferences, calls, a fully booked schedule. There just wasn’t room for anything else. He’d eat a single cup of ramen and some mice, and that’d be it for the day. One time, he sustained himself upon nothing but coffee and a pack of M&M’s. His stomach protested, and that was promptly acknowledged and ignored. He was doing great after all, wasn’t he? He was saving so much time and money because of it.
Then, to ease the monotony, at some point, he began to do hard drugs. Just something to fill the void in his life. He smoked cigarettes and weed back at Harvard, maybe even earlier at Lowell, but it all changed when he took that first line. He could never go back after that. He could never ignore his senses entirely, it just made it easier to pretend he wasn’t wasting away in a body he refused to maintain. It got a lot harder to look at himself in the mirror after that, so he started growing out his fur to compensate. If he couldn't see the problem, it didn't exist.
Then, he met Malevola. Then, he was a wanted criminal. Then, he had a real friend for the first time in years. Someone who got closer to him than anyone else. The only person in his life who’d seen him under the suit was her. Even with the intimacy they shared, he could still hide behind the fur. He dreaded to think of her realizing how little of him there was past it.
She didn’t have a point of reference for what he should look like. Hybrids weren’t rare or anything, but it wasn’t unexpected for people to not know many. So, he was the reference most people he met had for one. The only other one in the public eye was Sweetalker, and he was built like a brick wall, so people assumed that he was the exception. He liked to think that too. The idea that he’s stunted himself this whole time wasn’t exactly pleasant.
It didn’t even end there. Becoming the megabat was a painful thing. It always left his body a mess. It stretched his skin like he’d lost weight, It was impossible for him to build any muscle because of it, and it always showed off how gaunt he really was under the fur.
Even at SDN, even after trying to turn his life around, it barely changed.
Maybe some ramen and coffee in the morning. A few rodents for lunch, some more coffee. Something from the vending machine if he felt like it. If he had dinner, it was probably a bug he caught on his way home. He rarely ate more than that. Definitely more than he’d have in the past, but nowhere near enough.
And it was always getting worse.
He’d wake up with hunger pain more often than not, and would have to just try and wait out the nausea. It was the norm for him to spend a few minutes of the day in agony.
Even if he wanted to, he could barely choke down something actually substantive. His body rejected real food at this point.
His heartbeat had been slowing down. He was moving less. He was getting colder. That stupid smart watch he threw away said he averaged about 2,000 steps a day. That was counting hero work.
If he thought about it for too long he cried. His health was a mess. He barely moved, he barely ate, the fact he functioned at all was a miracle. He’d been running on fumes for God knows how long, only a matter of time until he finally broke down. Wasn’t like he could fix it either, he dug himself far too deep to be rescued at this point.
His best hope was for nobody to know.
Fortunately, his fur covered it up for the most part. Hell, in the winter he looked like he gained weight sometimes. Shave the forearms and hands, show nothing else, and it looks like you’re average build, even a bit buff. Definitely got a few compliments from that.
Even as the megabat, nobody noticed. How were they supposed to know his monstrous form was worryingly thin? Hell, they probably didn’t know most hybrids didn’t turn into monsters if they were normal for too long.
But that was fine. Nobody had to know, nobody needed to find out.
And he had to keep pushing himself.
Keep up the work ethic, keep up the attitude, keep going on like nothing was wrong.
Until he couldn’t anymore.
It was just another day. He got out of the megabat form. He felt like shit after, as always. He was walking in the office, started talking with Punch Up. Beef started scratching his leg. He didn’t remember blacking out, or hitting his head on the floor. He just remembered waking up with a dull, throbbing pain in his skull.
Then he saw Malevola looking over him.
Then he saw he was in the infirmary.
...Fuck.
He expected anger, or disgust, or anything really. He would've deserved it all. Anything but what he got. To his own shock, most of that anger was directed at herself, not at him. She was still mad at him, he expected that, but he didn’t expect sympathy. He didn’t expect understanding. He didn’t expect her to stay.
He was always wrong. Of course she would stay. Why wouldn’t she, what was he thinking?
He’d be there for a while. First an IV drip, then moving on to actual food. It took a moment for him to adjust. He left pretty quickly after.
From there, nobody would let him starve himself again. Malevola would force him to eat every morning and night. Robert would make sure he was having more than just a few rats for lunch. Someone on the Z-Team would make sure he remembered if neither of them did.
Having someone constantly remind him to actually eat food and drink something other than coffee was annoying at first. Almost demeaning in a way, really. He wasn’t a child, he shouldn’t have to be told this.
But he had to keep living now, didn’t he?
Running on fumes worked fine temporarily. It wasn’t healthy to begin with, but it was justifiable to him. There was always a deadline, always a goal, always something he needed to reach, and if he had to cut corners to get there so be it.
Now, there wasn’t a goal. He just had to keep living, no end in sight. He was working with a finite mindset in an infinite field, and people like that tended to burn out or die. He didn’t intend to die anytime soon, not anymore.
So he kept living.
And living.
And living.
For once, it didn’t hurt.