A week in, Tyler stops calling, and Dylan breaks up with his laptop, shoves it off to the side of the bed and curls small.
The days kind of blend into each other after that.
Blind item: Which twenty-something actor from a popular MTV show barely caught his vomit in his hands before tripping to the nearest trash can to finish up? Clues: He's not on the MTV show anymore. He's not acting anymore. He's still twenty-something? And male? Probably. No guarantees.
He's, like, startlingly sober. Like, getting drunk would not fix how fucking sober he is.
Getting high would make it worse.
He's not scrolling through Tyler's replies, apology and concern getting more and more distant, oh no. No, his mind's already memorized those. Turns out that great memory for scripts turns fucking kamikaze with nothing to do, and just pulls out all the ingredients for a mental breakdown and takes off to find some more.
Wah, wah, poor little self-sabotaging headcase.
SOFT PAN in on TYLER, our PROTAGONIST: staring down at his phone, a soft frown on his face. Eyes like the prettiest marbles you've ever seen, only prettier. Perfect stubble frames the kind of pout that makes everyone watching want to kiss it better. He's probably drowning in offers, right now. But, no—he turns them all down, because he's just that much of a GENTLEMAN.
Abrupt FLASH CUT to DYLAN, the ANTAGONIST. Hair like a cartoon of an electric shock, Justin Bieberish body. Camera probably catches him mid-stroke: even a mother could never love that O-face. On his bed, surrounded by trash, stinking—How can we physically demonstrate how disgusting he smells right now? He's probably adjusted to it—Will accept suggestions. Actual plumes of toxic smoke would probably be going too far.
We watch TYLER, our hearts breaking for him, read a string of bullshit excuses. He's [word that means "fuckable" but also means "we will cut the throats of anyone who upsets him"], but stoic, fully capable of getting out of bed and being a normal adult man despite whatever he's dealing with emotionally.
MONTAGE of TYLER being functional, charming, everyone's favorite person, juxtaposed with DYLAN clutching his gut to keep from vomiting major organs.
Roll credits.
Really, it's a shame Dylan never wrote that screenplay he was talkin' about. He's clearly such a fucking pro at it.
Tyler's not the only missed call, oh no. The entire phone situation has become a little too daunting. Susan is probably gearing up to sue Dylan for screwing her out of her ten percent. Posey sent four text streams in varying levels of casual concern. Holland ships Dylan a box of strawberry shortcake cake pops that spell out STILES LIVES IN MY 3, and Dylan opens the box and stares and stares and kind of melts into the ground.
He means to thank her, he does, but instead he eats like twelve of them, and spends the next undefined blur of time convulsing on the bathroom floor, and then eating anything, drinking anything, keeping food down, thinking in straight lines, and standing up without immediately regretting it kinda rule themselves out as realistic lifestyle choices.
He wakes up freezing, head cloudy, throat sour. Skin soaked through with cold sweat, t-shirt sticking to him like a band-aid. Kind of maneuvers into the shower, where it becomes apparent that standing is no longer a thing he can successfully do.
The fun times just keep coming. Sit down shower, alright, Dylan's always wanted to know what it feels like to detox from drugs without actually ever getting to enjoy the being high part. This is cool, he can use this—could have, could have used this if he was still a working actor, if he ever played an addict, or a fucking broken person. Still, maybe Tyler can...
And no, nope, bad direction. Bad train of thought choice, because this tsunami wave of, like, anxiety and fucking—grief comes over him then, and he's just kind of flattened under it, heart pounding and pounding, until he can't breathe at all.
Really, if Posey wouldn't have let himself in and called 911, things might've actually gotten pretty bad.
So maybe Dylan kinda stopped eating for a while.
It's just easier, you know, than eating and being sick, and being sick, and being sick. Except then he ate like, way more than his body could handle anymore, and kind of almost killed himself.
"That's not," Dylan says, when his doctor tries to explain this to him. "I mean, c'mon. That's—Like actually dead, killed?"
Which leads to this whole tangent about eating disorders, which—Dylan doesn't, he's not—He's never had to lose weight. Like, he could always eat whatever, it never stuck. So obviously he doesn't have—well, obviously. He doesn't obsessively stare at himself in the mirror, all critical, he mostly resigned himself to his whatever body the day it showed up and never really changed. So all of this is obviously insane.
He just—stopped being hungry, for a while, there. You're not supposed to eat when you're not hungry; the five minutes stalking Tyler to his trainer taught Dylan that much. That's not even about losing weight, that's just—basic Person 101. Intro to Eating.
Also, Dylan calls bullshit, because Tyler is literally all muscle, no fat, and he's fine. Dylan, he's not fat but he's got, you know, an actual stomach, not six protruding—He's obviously still got some nutrition to spare, is the point. Stored some away for winter.
So then there's a speech about how all bodies are different, wow, shocker. And fine, maybe there's something there, being eighteen, kind of seeing Tyler, like, the apex of physical human male perfection, and being like, cool! Wonder what I'll look like when I'm a—a man. Shut up. And then getting to twenty-two, -three, -four, like, nope, you're gonna look sixteen forever. Also, your attempts at facial hair will look like stray pubes. Sorry, bud.
But—yeah, no. Dylan wasn't actually, like, competing—or trying to reach that, what, are you crazy? His face is on fire just hearing himself, his humiliating little admission, why would he even say that? Dylan knows what's possible, in his life, okay, he's not gonna start trying to—This dude's really off base, is the point.
Blind item: which blockbuster reject—
"Dylan," the doctor says. "What you have is a disease. It's nothing to be ashamed of."
"I'm not," Dylan says. How is this his life. "I'm not ashamed, I just—I don't have it."
But it's one of those catch-22 things: That's exactly what someone with an eating disorder would say.
Try getting out of that one.
Posey looks worse than Dylan's ever seen him. He lifts his head from his hands when he sees Dylan stir; his eyes are swollen. Dylan's gut twists.
"I'm," he says, but Posey cuts him off with a red-rimmed glare.
"Don't fucking say fine. I found you," His voice is low, hoarse. "I'm done losing people. I'm done."
That's a gut punch like nothing else, and Dylan deserves it. He's been so fucking selfish for so long. He doesn't know what came over him.
"Anxiety," Posey says. "And depression. You told me. I should've—"
"I didn't say depression," Dylan hedges.
"Yeah, well you may has well have!" Posey bursts out. "You didn't text for a month, and I thought you were just,"
"Bitter," Dylan offers. It's a little bit true.
"Hoechlin just about had a heart attack," Posey says. "I wasn't gonna tell him until I figured out what was up with you two, but fucking TMZ got the 911 call—"
"You're shitting me," Dylan says, head thudding back against the pillow. If his career wasn't already dead in the water, this would be what took it out. And Tyler— "How much does he hate me?"
Posey narrows his eyes at him. "You think he hates you."
Dylan nods like a bobblehead, pleading.
"He's been out in the hall for hours," Posey says. "He thinks you don't wanna see him."
Dylan closes his eyes, squeezes them shut tight. The tears come anyway.
"I'm such a jackass," he says. "We've conclusively, after months of double blind studies, we can definitively say that I am the biggest asshole."
"You forgot something," Posey says. "When you were busy collecting all that information."
"Doubt it," Dylan says bleakly.
"You bet," Posey says. His eyes are bright, fixed on Dylan's, challenging. "Fucking peer review."
"I'm sorry," is the first thing that tumbles out of Dylan's mouth when he sees Tyler, Tyler in the doorway looking so tired, and so scared, and then shoving all that back somewhere and coming closer, closer, closer, saying, "No, I—I'm not gonna take it."
"Not," Dylan says blankly, and then it comes back, thumps through him, the stupid movie. Tyler thinks this is about some movie, thinks—
"It doesn't matter," Tyler says. "Not more than you. I'm not—" His hands are trembling.
"You can't do that," Dylan says.
"Watch me," Tyler says, and glares at the ground, and Dylan can't let this go on.
"That's not what this is," Dylan says. "You didn't—do this to me. You can't fix it."
"That's when this started," Tyler says stubbornly. "And I should've—"
"It started when I got fired," Dylan says. "You weren't even on the same continent. I just—lost my appetite, you know? And then I just started vomiting all the time, and it was just—easier—"
"Not to eat at all," Posey says.
"For a month," Tyler says, looking destroyed. "And I never even—"
"It's happened before," Dylan admits, resigned. "When I was like thirteen. No one figured it out then either. I didn't want them to." He catches Tyler's gaze, holds it. "I have, like, the best parents in the world, okay? I didn't wanna..."
But he can't, he can't explain it, the way it works in his head.
"So stop trying to make this your fault somehow," he says. "I'm the headcase, it's not—"
"You're not," Tyler says, horror replaced by steady reassurance in an instant. "It's an illness. It's not your fault."
"Yeah, mental illness," Dylan says, only half jokingly.
"It's not your fault," Tyler repeats, like he's on a very special episode of 7th Heaven, but something about it, the pleading look on his face, grabs at Dylan's heart and twists.
"It's like cancer," Posey says. "You wouldn't judge someone with—"
"I was a dick," Dylan says. He can't take this impossible sympathy a second longer. "To both of you. That's not a fucking symptom." He shakes his head. "None of this is an actual—I did all of it. I got myself fired. I stopped eating, I stopped answering the phone, I went psycho on Tyler for getting good news. None of that's in the fucking DSMV."
"It fucking is," Posey says.
"O'Brien Syndrome," Dylan suggests. "Won't my parents be proud."
"Stop," Tyler says. "You're not the only person I know with major anxiety. I just didn't put it together." He tips up his glasses, rubs his eyes. "I should've—It just manifests a little differently. But the ruminating, and avoiding the phone—"
"Loss of appetite," Posey says.
"Oh my god," Dylan says, his head swimming. "It doesn't have to be this whole thing, okay? Can't it just be, you know, me, being a—a selfish—"
"No," Tyler says softly.
"No way, dude," Posey says.
"Well why not?" Dylan says, exasperated. "Why do I have to be—sick, or insane, why can't this just be something fixable?" His throat is killing him, making his eyes water, and he hates—how he does this to himself, makes something out of literally nothing, wastes everyone's time. "Shit," he realizes, elbowing himself upright. "My parents—what if they heard—"
"I didn't say your name," Posey says. "You're not in the news, it's not—It's just me, freaking out. They don't even know if I know you."
"But Hoechlin," Dylan says.
"I just had a bad feeling," Tyler says. "And I would've called Tyler anyway, but I had to make sure—" He stops. "Do you want to talk to them?"
"I can't," Dylan says, adrenaline spiking just considering it. "I'm telling you, they're the most supportive—They're gonna think they did something wrong."
"It's not about blame," Tyler says.
"They wouldn't blame themselves if it was cancer," Posey says, and Dylan snaps, "But it's not. I don't even know if it's anything for sure, the doctor thinks I have a freaking eating disorder—" He shakes his head. "You guys aren't psychiatrists, okay, you're guessing. I'm not gonna worry my mom over some stupid—stomach virus, or—"
"You know that's not what this is," Tyler says.
"Or mono," Dylan challenges. "Fatigue, loss of appetite, vomiting—it doesn't have to be some—" It doesn't. Dylan's not, like, talking to people who aren't there, or blowing his brains out. This was just a bad couple of days, you know? A bad year. No need to sound the alarm, send everyone running. "I'll figure it out, I swear. I just have to find a job, and start packing my schedule again. I'm fine as long as I'm working."
"I'll talk to Jeff," Posey says. "The show's not the same without you, man. He wants you back, he's just too proud to admit it." He looks at Tyler. "You too."
"Stiles is dead," Dylan says, staring down at his fingers. "I screwed up. I got the memo, okay, it's over."
"It doesn't have to be," Tyler says.
"What is?" Posey says, frowning.
"Me, acting," Dylan says. "Pretending I could—" A lump slots into his throat, chokes him. "I had a good run," he says after a couple of covert thick swallows, trying not to sniffle, but also not have an exposed snot situation. "Better than most people get."
"You're not serious," Tyler says.
"What the fuck are you talking about?" Posey says. Dylan can't help but grin, if a little wanly. Always the diplomat, Posey.
"I got fired," Dylan reminds him. "And I was—Blue Mind's on Netflix. And it has like, a zero star rating. I don't know what the fuck I was thinking, the whole time. I was trying to like, do this deep, this really intricate—" He scrubs at his eyes, his jaw. "I got lucky, okay? Stiles was funny. Now it's over."
"Blue Mind's the most boring fucking piece of shit I've ever seen," Posey says. "You couldn't've saved it. No one could've."
"I liked it," Tyler says.
"It was completely up its own ass," Posey says. "That doesn't suddenly white out all the crazy shit you're able to do. Stiles wasn't a fucking fluke."
"I don't think Blue Mind was that bad," Tyler says, almost to himself. "The scene by the water—"
"Oh god, don't," Dylan says, his skin turning to lava just remembering.
"Or, or the part with your girlfriend, the breakup—"
"I was literally ham in that scene," Dylan says. "Just—hammin' it up. Chewing the scenery."
"Oh, be quiet," Tyler says. "You've never overacted in your life."
"Kate was dead," Posey says. "Peter. No one gives a fuck. They want you back, man."
"I bitched about Jeff's writing," Dylan says. "On set. In front of like forty people."
"He can't fire you for being sick," Posey says, practically vibrating with the sudden realization. "If—if someone's sick, and it affects their work—You can't fire them, that's discrimination!"
"I'm not—" Dylan says, and gives up, exhausted. His throat is killing him, he's gonna pass out in a minute.
"Dylan," Tyler says, and Dylan can't, he can't deal with this. With the glasses and the stubble and the eyes and the face, and all this reassurance, like he's his dad or something. And now he thinks Dylan's crazy, and they're never gonna have sex ever again. Dylan's always gonna be this fragile little—and he needs to throw up, he needs to throw up right the fuck now.
"Bathroom," he chokes out, eyes already watering, and bolts past them, past Posey's self-righteous advocacy and Tyler's intervention-y soft-eyed understanding and support, and barricades himself in the bathroom, and takes a breath, and blows and blows and blows.