Work Text:
Cal was tired. Tired of everything. Tired of the stupid fucking school, of his family, of everyone wanting things from him. His mental illnesses, like the psychopathy, depression or unspoken anorexia really weren’t helping either. Most of the days it was hard for him to even get out of bed in the morning. He woke up and immediately got overtaken by an awful sense of dread for the world around him. For the most part, he learned to live with it, but sometimes it still kicked his ass.
Like now, he was sat at the dinner table, staring at the food on his plate like it just insulted him. He didn’t even feel disgust for the food anymore, just a feeling of strange emptiness. Looking at the plate, he could tell exactly how many disgusting calories it would give him, and how much work he would have to do to rid himself of them.
He had to figure out how to do this, quick. Before his parents or siblings could notice. Quick. The mashed potatoes (240) he could hide under the chicken (230) and spread the rest around his plate so that it would look like he ate more. He could eat some of the chicken, only a little bit and then hide the rest in a tissue that he could later throw away. The salad he wasn’t worried about, it was just a salad. He could burn those calories just by walking back to his room. This was fine. He could eat the salad to make it seem like he ate more, volume wise. It was going to be fine.
So he took the first bite. He remembered to chew a lot, to put his fork down while he was doing it. He swallowed, took a sip of his water.
He took another bite, this time out of the chicken. It was really good, he momentarily stopped thinking about the calories.
Third bite, out of the chicken again. This time he didn’t put his fork down.
Then came the fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh bite, he lost count after. He ate the entire salad, then the chicken, then the mashed potatoes while he was at it. He decided it was fine. His body needed fuel sometimes. It would be fine. It would be fine.
Until it wasn’t. He realised it really wasn’t fine when he was about 3/4 done with his plate. He still finished it.
Staring at the empty plate, he felt sick to his stomach. He could feel the familiar nausea filling his body.
Fuck, fuck, fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck
he had to get rid of it
he had to get rid of everything
before it was too late
quickly
Quickly.
He tried to keep a collected appearance as he got up from the table, thanked for the food and quickly put his plate away in the sink. He nearly ran to the upstairs bathroom. It was far enough to the living room so that nobody would hear anything.
Calvin closed the door and immediately got on his knees in front of the toilet. He didn’t waste any time shoving his fingers down his throat and moving them around, trying to trigger his desensitized gag reflex.
He succeeded.
At first, not much came out. Just a few chunks.
His movements became more frantic, more desperate. He shoved his fingers as far as they would go. He had to get it out. Quickly. Before he digests it, before his body absorbs the calories.
Sooner than later he started throwing up bigger, better. Soon enough he vomited almost everything he ate for dinner and that day. Tears welled up in his eyes as he realized what he was doing and what he has become. He couldn’t eat a fucking dinner with his family without going to puke his guts out. At this point his hand was covered in his own vomit, but he couldn’t bother to clean it off, desperate to get everything out of his system.
As he was shoving his fingers down his throat again, his heart stopped in his chest at the sound of the door opening. Was he really so stupid that he forgot to lock it? He couldn’t bare himself to look at whoever just entered, he just wiped his hand on a nearby towel and curled in on himself, trying to make himself as small as possible. He basically curled into a ball, his knees high to his chest and his forearms covering his face, which was buried deep down.
“Cal? What the fuck?” He heard, the voice being the last one he would want to hear in a situation like this. He felt more tears pour into his eyes and his throat close up. He couldn’t fucking believe it. He was so fucking stupid. He forgot that he invited Andre to come over around the time dinner ended. He was so focused on his bullshit that it slipped his mind completely. Now, the person he admired the most in the whole wide world knew the awful truth about him.
He heard Andre step closer to him and squat next to him, staring at him. They sat there like that, both silent. Cal didn’t want to look at Andre, didn’t want to face how weak and pathetic he was. He knew that Andre would just laugh at him and call him names. Why wouldn’t he? Cal was sick.
“What happened?” Andre prompted carefully, his hand landing on Cal’s arm in a gesture he hoped came through as comforting.
The question was more rhetorical than anything else. Andre wasn’t stupid. He noticed how Cal squirmed around food when they went out to eat or how he seemed to get smaller and smaller every time they saw each other. He never said anything because if Cal didn’t want to eat then fine, as long as it didn’t interfere with their missions. Usually, it really didn’t, but lately Cal has been looking more sick and more like he would faint at any given second. Andre had to admit that he was getting pretty worried, Cal was his best friend after all.
“Calvin.” Andre said with a stern voice when he didn’t get an answer. He sat and reached to take Cal’s arms away from his face. At first he resisted, but he didn’t have enough strength to do it for very long. He let Andre push his arms away and uncover his tear stained face. “What were you doing?”
“You’re not stupid” Cal answered, looking seemingly everywhere but Andre’s eyes or face. “You know what I was doing”
Right. He wasn’t stupid. Maybe he was just in denial about how his best friend and favourite person in the world was ruining himself.
“Why?” was the only thing Andre could think of asking, or saying. He could see Cal close in on himself even more than he already was. It was clear he didn’t want to answer the question. And Andre noticed, of course he noticed.
Andre felt himself get a bit frustrated with Cal, with the lack of cooperation. But seeing his best friend so vulnerable broke something in him. The usually confident and brass teenager was now sitting in front of him with his tail under himself, waiting until for Andre to leave him alone. Andre would do no such thing. In fact, he did the opposite. After a second of hesitation he leaned into Cal’s space and wrapped his arms around him.
Cal froze for a second, unused to this kind of intimacy between them. This hug felt too soft for them, for the army of two. After he came to terms with it he relaxed into Andre’s arms, leaning into the hug.
“’M sorry...” he mumbled into Andre’s shoulder. Andre squeezed him harder, trying to let him know that he had nothing to apologize for.