Eat Your Words

Chapter Twenty-One

When Sebastian came back home that afternoon, he unwrapped the box and felt his heart beat ten times faster when he saw the eating disorder brochure. He flipped through it, and tried to read it, but his hands were shaking so much he couldn't. So instead, he laid down on his bed, clinging onto the new sweater with the new sweater smell and cried in it.

You can tell us stuff, you know that… right? Jeff's words kept on banging into his head.

I lost my virginity about a year ago and he just ditched me, Sebastian wanted to say. I hate him. I hate everyone.

Sebastian put the sweater back in the box, and then taped the wrapping back together. Because that made fucking sense. He put the ribbon on too, like he hadn't torn right through it like a fucking monster. Sebastian didn't have anywhere safe to put the box—somewhere where those creepy crawlies wouldn't invade. Gross. His room gave him that suffocating feeling where it was so hot, and you felt like you didn't have enough air in your room—Sebastian honestly felt like he'd been choked on by the dick of humanity. And he didn't want his new shiny gift to be here.

Sebastian went downstairs, dressed in just his pyjama bottoms, and tossed the box into the back of his car.

He regretted it instantly the next morning when he woke up and then opened Facebook for the first time in ages.

They had a picture of him in his shitty fucking neighbourhood, in his Spiderman pyjama bottoms leaning over the car and it looked like he had droopy stomach fat, but he didn't. It was just because he was… leaning down! Is THAT what you're telling yourself, you fucking pig? Sebastian thought to himself bitterly. Right now, all he wanted to do was literally tear off his hair. These pictures were a far cry from the diuretic death pictures that he posted of himself.

Sebastian couldn't help but read the comments and every one of them made him wish he could stab himself.

He thought that he was about to do something stupid, but then someone actually called him! HIM!

He hoped it was someone that had enough balls to say what they wanted to say to his fucking face instead of typing it behind their pretty Facebook account miles away from Sebastian... fucking cowards!

Sebastian picked up the phone without even looking at who was calling because his hands were sweaty, and he could hear his heart pounding in his fucking ears. Sebastian didn't get how he could look so fucking fat! He almost lost it when he read about how this guy heard that Sebastian was so obsessed with pizza that he keeps day-old pizza grease in his bag. A comment that amassed apparently FIFTY-TWO likes, and thirty-fucking-two replies. There were fifty-two people that found it hilarious that Sebastian still couldn't get that oil slick smell out of his old Nike backpack.

"Sebastian?" it took him a few seconds to recognise that voice as Nick's. Nick Duval.

"What do you want?" Sebastian hissed back, and then he realised that that was how Nick greeted him too before. But at that time, Nick didn't have a picture of him in his threadbare Spiderman pyjama bottoms leaning against a car, with his stomach out in display like that. Jeff gave him an eating disorder brochure—he bet that Blondie wished he could take it back now on account of Sebastian being a tub of LARD. "I ain't gonna sleep with your boyfriend if that's what you're wondering. He gave me a sweater, not a fucking blowjob."

"N-n… no," Nick stuttered, and Sebastian could almost see his face getting red. "I'm sorry about the BUMU post."

I'm sorry you're such a fat lazy pig like I predicted was all Sebastian could hear. "Why? Did you post it?"

"What?" Sebastian could imagine Nick getting even redder. Strawberry Nicky. "Of course not! Do you think I did?"

"I was just asking," Sebastian mumbled. "Don't get your panties in a twist. Why else would you feel sorry for it?"

Sebastian could feel his heart thumping in his chest still, and his throat go dry. He wished he could throw himself off a window, if he wasn't sure that the BUMU Facebook group wouldn't post about how fucking dramatic he was.

"I mean I'm sorry that someone found it funny," Nick sounded annoyed. He was talking slow, anger entwined in every syllable that he said. "There? Does that please you, your highness?"

Sebastian forgot that he was in the phone for a minute because he was staring at the post. The more he looked at it, the more he morphed into this creature that had pounds and pounds of body fat hanging off his—fuck. He could feel wetness in his eyes. His ears were wet from all the fucking sweat, and his hands were still shaking.

"Sebastian?" Nick's voice was filled with concern. "Sebastian, are you okay?"

"Sure," Sebastian replied almost automatically. He actually wasn't sure what the question was.

Sebastian paused and then really looked at his picture. He could see little bruises on his arms from where his father recently held him down and socked him in his face (which currently sported a black-eye that he covered up with his mother's old, allergy-producing MAC collection—which he took with him from the house along with three boxes of Twinkies that he fucking hated), and a mostly faded bruise on his side. Sebastian rubbed his back, where his father belted him a few times in the last twenty-four hours.

If he was going to parade around shirtless, he got to be fucking careful or else the next fucking feature would be about how his new boyfriend didn't approve of his fakeorexia.

"Sebastian!" Nick's voice pulled Sebastian out of his thoughts. "Sebastian, you don't sound so good."

"I don't sound so good?" Sebastian reiterated. "I didn't say a fucking thing!"

"You're breathing real fast," Nick told him, and Sebastian wished he could obliterate his lungs. He supposed he couldn't say that he was on a run since it was blazing hot bull balls outside. The only way Sebastian would be out on a run right now was if he wanted to be sent to the hospital due to an impending heat stroke. "I'm about to leave the Lima Bean. I can get you some coffee if you want… how about if I can drive over to your area? Where do you live?"

Sebastian looked outside of the window. There wasn't anything green where he lived. And they weren't preppy-looking Warblers with their expensive Lima Bean coffees, happily smiling sitting outside in the sunshine.

"Sebastian, I'm seriously worried about you. Blaine is too. We just want to see you," Nick tried to convince him. "Come on! Don't… Don't make me ask the BUMU Facebook guy where you live. Judging by their post frequencies, at least one of the administrators is active—and it doesn't seem like they value anyone's privacy."

Sebastian considered momentarily what kind of asshole knew where Sebastian lived but didn't care.

"I never had a guy this desperate to see my fucking bedroom," Sebastian smirked. "Get me a capp with soy."

He didn't send the address to his current 'home'—get real. The second that Nick Duval and Blaine Anderson saw his house, they'd cry because there were pieces of pepperoni permanently stuck onto the wall, glued by rat droppings and shattered photos of Sebastian, Lena and his mother. There were so many sticky patches in the floor that Sebastian had to retire his favourite pair of fucking shoes because they turned into radioactive from all the chemical waste they got clogged with. He kept his house jeans cropped and didn't plant his ass anywhere where there were amorphous green or yellow fluids. Well, most of the time. Unfortunately, it was a pretty unavoidable scenario.

Instead, Sebastian sent them the address for their mother's house.

He drove all the way there himself, and he knew that shit was about to go down. He didn't even bother changing from his loose Hulk pyjama bottoms, and mismatched oversized pink shirt. Which, of course, didn't look gay on him.

It took Sebastian about an hour to get there with his piece of shit car. He sent Blaine and Nick real unclear directions to the place that he called his childhood home. Sebastian looked over the mirror, fixed his make-up up to hide the purple-blue bruises just underneath the surface. Great. He looked like a fucking ghost with this foundation. He knocked on the door. Sebastian was calmer than he was in ages, knowing he wasn't going to face the mould museum tonight.

Lena opened the door and she just stood there, staring at him with big brown eyes. She looked stunned.

"Sebastian?" Lena had just dropped the box of cookies that she was holding. She looked like she was about to break into those waterworks—careful, Lena. He got AIDS after all. Just looking at him long enough would surely infect her and give horrific period-shits for the rest of her life. "Oh my God!" she threw herself at him, sobbing.

It was almost like you weren't a fucking cunt to me when mom threw me out was what he wanted to say, but Sebastian decided to stay nice, so he could to prevent getting his fat, freckly ass flung out again. See? He was nice.

"Mom won't be home until later," Lena answered, sniffling. "Mom said Dad changed! I almost don't believe it!"

"Yeah," Sebastian invited himself in. "He's father of the fucking year," he said sardonically.

"And-and he doesn't do that stuff anymore?" Lena asked, and she sounded like she didn't really want an answer to that. She just wanted to convince herself that he learned the errors of his ways and now he only drank green juices and posed with pretty woman in big name magazines. Sebastian saw Jean hack up more green stuff than he saw him eat it. "So, it can't be that bad, right…? Mom said that Dad said that you guys are doing okay. She was worried that he didn't change and-and that you were… she was worried that he might do something to you like-like before!"

He cursed when he saw a carrot cake on the counter. Sebastian wished he could just throw that cake at her face.

"With the things that he used to do…" Lena shuddered. "It was horrifying! But now…maybe I can visit sometime!"

And taint her manicure over a roach-infested pit of doom? Sebastian would like to see that. "Sure. That'll be great."

Sebastian remembered seeing eleven-years-old Lena flinch when his father snapped his fat wrists like it was wafer-thin. He was six years old and she just fucking stood there and watched it happen. She left him lying alone on the fucking floor, CRYING, when she was baking cupcakes for her class. How fucking dare you tell me that he fucked YOU up?

You know what? At least his mother gave enough of a shit to take him to the hospital. She made better cupcakes too!

"You look good," Lena suddenly propped him out of his thoughts and said something that made him want to hurl all over her fake Jimmy Choos. "It's good to see you with a little meat on you."