Chapter Text
"Don't you have something to give to me?" The uncharacteristically sharp tone of Cosmo's mother questions her son the second that he walks into the living room with her.
He pauses for a moment, immediately regretting even coming downstairs this morning. It's not like he even came downstairs for anything important anymore - it's just his way of letting his mom know that he was alive, he thinks? It's an odd behavior of never wanting to be downstairs, but still needing to do anything but rot in his room daily.
"Maybe?" He says it as a question, not immediately knowing what she is referring to.
"They sent out report cards a month ago. You never gave it to me." He blinks at her, taking a few moments to recall even being given a report card at all.
"Oh! Uh, yeah..." His voice trails off, trying to remember where in his bookbag it might be. "I can... Go get it." He turns quickly, wanting to leave that upset gaze of hers as soon as he could.
In his room, he digs through his backpack, sorting through dozens of papers that do nothing but make his bag heavier. A couple minutes (way too long to have spent looking for a dumb sheet of paper) of searching finds him the report card he never truly looked at the first time.
The quick scan he does over the letter grades puts another rock of regret in his stomach. None of the class grades reached higher than a D, with most being cemented as an F. Even with no absences the entire semester so far, his grades couldn't survive the writhing turmoil in his head that refused to pay attention, refused to stay awake, and refused to even try on most days.
Despite the fear holding him in place, he knows he has to give it to his mom. He unintentionally procrastinated this long, and she'll get upset if he "lost it". The stairs creak loudly as usual, and he has to hesitantly hand off the report card to his mom sitting on the couch.
Each moment she takes to look it over makes him more and more nervous. He clenches his jaw and holds his breath, a familiar pressure in his chest spreading uncomfortably.
"You know," she says after a moment, turning to look at her son. "I'm not mad. I'm just disappointed."
That statement hit him like a bullet train. He knew his grades were bad - a lot worse than usual this time round - but hearing her say that struck something he didn't know was inside him. A wave of remorse immediately fills his chest with the urge to cry.
It takes him too long to reply. His gaze lowers to the ground where his bare feet stick to the hardwood that separates the living room and the rest of the house.
Why are you so stupid?
"I don't know..."
"I can't hear you when you're that quiet," she jabs at him again. He clenches his jaw into a distressed scowl, willing himself to say something even if it's not good.
"I'm sorry I'm so stupid," he tries again, bringing his head up to look at her. Their eyes meet for a moment before he gets nervous again and darts his vision away. "I don't know why I do this."
"What do you mean?" Mama Cosma's face is now etched with more concern than before. She knows exactly what you mean.
"I don't... Know why I can't do anything right. Why I can't understand school and keep my grades ok." Or why I can't keep friends, and always get bullied, and isolate so much, and can't lose weight as quickly as others. All the words that go unsaid still race circles in his mind, sealing the miserable idea that he'll never be able to do anything right.
"You still can't keep doing this, Cosmo. You're not much of a kid anymore."
"But I still feel like a kid!" He shouts suddenly, taking his mom by surprise. "It's been like this for years, I've- it's like I've never felt any older than fourteen, and I don't know how to fix it!" His previously only slightly fidgety hands now grip desperately at the hem of his sweater.
"Wha-"
"You don't know it! I don't know it! And I'm sorry that I don't understand math, or history, for chemistry, it just doesn't- work! In my brain!" His voice hitches while tears finally flow. They get soaked into the fabric of his sleeve with frantic wipes across his cheeks.
"Sweetie, I'm-" she can't finish the statement, but her expression finally leans into hardly-seen regret at his outburst.
"I'm just so stupid - I know I am! And I'm sorry, I'm SORRY!" His voice cracks, steadily increasing in intensity with each word until he can't take it anymore. A distressed groan spills from his lips while he covers his face with his cold hands. His thumbs move to cover his ears, blocking out his sobs when his own volume makes him more overwhelmed.
"Stupid... Stupid. Sorry," his mutters get lost in his hoodie sleeves. He can tell he looks terribly and utterly pathetic in the moment, so emotionally overstimulated and regretful and scared that all he wants to do is go back to his room and cry forever and ever. If his mom was at all trying to talk to him he had long since blocked her out so he could try and regulate himself on his own. Looking up after a few long minutes, he meets his mom's eyes. His eyebrows still scrunch in distress, but he recognizes his mom trying to coerce him closer.
"Come here," she requests, patting the cushion beside her and looking at her son with her own watery eyes.
He hesitantly obliges, walking closer to her position on the couch but refusing to take the seat beside her. Instead, he kneels down on the carpet, leaning against the cushions while his mother takes to physically comforting him for the first time in months.
He cries harder at the hands soothing him. One is placed on his shoulder, rubbing lightly against his hoodie fabric, while the other brushes his bangs from his face to tuck individual strands behind his ear.
"I'm sorry, sweetie. I'm so sorry," she whispers, voice hitching with her own tears. The words get lost in his head, still a swirling tornado of self-hatred and regret at all he's done. Why did he have to do all of this just to get an apology? To get this temporary comfort that's bound to be ripped down the next time he's in her vicinity while she's upset?
"I didn't know. I'm sorry," she whispers.
It takes minutes for him to come down from it all, sniffling snot down the back of his throat in uncomfortable streams. By the time most of it has passed, he still lies with his face pressed against the polyester that supports him. His mother's hands have found their spots, one placed on his back in between his shoulder blades. While the other holds his left hand, rubbing her thumb across the back of it.
"I'm sorry I didn't see it before," she sighs to him. He turns his head and sits up more to look at her again. How could you not have seen this, he thinks. You're lying. It was all laid out in front of you for the past three months, and you didn't take any measures to try and find the root of the problem, or what the problem even was to begin with!?
Instead, he utters an "'s fine."
"It's not fine - I'm such a horrible mom." Cosmo has to stop from sighing. He's heard her say this before, and it bothers him every time.
"You're not-"
"Yes, I am... I should have noticed." He decides to not argue, knowing that no matter how many times he reassured her, she wouldn't accept it.
After a few minutes of silent comforting, Mama Cosma is slow to retract the embrace of her son. She tries to catch his eyes, but he refuses to look back at her.
"Did any of this have to do with how much weight you're losing?" He nearly flinches at how sudden the statement felt. Why does she have to ask this?
"... Kinda," he sighs.
"How much have you lost? Twenty pounds?" He hates how easily she's asking these. With some of the comments she's made in the past regarding food that would always set him off so badly, he feels awkward to be talking openly about some of it.
"I don't know... Like thirty," he responds in a mumble, knowing he's still lying. It's more like forty. He was reaching desperately for the low 100s now.
"That's not healthy, sweetie."
I know.
He just shrugs.
"I'm- I should go," he mumbles with no excuse. He can't handle being here much longer. "Imma be in my room. I love you, bye."
Mama Cosma is still slightly upset, but lets her youngest son leave for the comfort of his bedroom. Her 'I love you too' goes seemingly unheard.
Back in his room and laid on his bed, there's a storm that remains a dark roar of constant thoughts. That conversation fronts his mind, filled with regret and fear and concern.
He's been getting worse.
A few days of eating more than normal - eating too much, too much, why did he do that - shot his weight up like nothing else. He's lost a bit since that scary spike up, but the thoughts fueling that loss had begun to falter in what they wanted. It had always been to starve. To skip meals and exercise and fast and do anything to get lower and sicker. But suddenly, there's been a reasonable voice, something uncommon yet louder than what he was used to.
Maybe you should recover.
He doesn't know how a voice made by his own mind could sound so polite. It was loving and gentle in a way he had never experienced from anyone before. It was full of soft requests, little whispers of recovery will be good. You won't feel tired, you won't be scared of your body. On the surface, he knows it's not that simple, but maybe… he would be able to push past it all?
That voice combatted in a tug of war with his desire to get worse. Some days were better than others. From today, it looks like it should be terrible, and he should act accordingly with double the hatred, double the starvation.
But that new voice is pushing the opposite. It doesn't even sound like his own voice - his own thoughts, - so why does he want to listen to it so much?
Maybe it's because deep down, he's scared of where he'll end up. All he hears online are people who have been disordered for months, years, longer than him, and all those hospitalizations, near-death experiences, and actual deaths from, what, just not eating?
He could end up like one of them.
That's not healthy.
Food has become an enemy. Every time he cares to look at his face in the mirror, he can tell he looks different. His eyes lost their light, left sunken and tired at lack of sleep and food. His skin is thin and freezing cold all the time, strands of hair get pulled from the roots with each brush-through, and he's dropping weight like it's nothing.
Do you know how you got here - why you got here?
Why?
There's no reason.
There was no reason for him to create all these feelings, no reason for him to create the exhaustion that resides heavy in his bones and behind his eyes. Every day that he wakes up he feels like he's making a mistake. He's imperfect in every way, so he doesn't deserve to let people see him, right? He's been mentally tearing himself to shreds more and more each day just because he... Wanted to? Because he got too scared of becoming an adult? Because he wanted to control his appearance? Because he wanted a "temporary change"?
Each day was slow until it spiraled like water down a drain. Everything was ok until it had pulled him down the road of self-hatred and fear at every little thing. The look of someone else compared to him, the little comments made to him about every individual thing, the room that became a prison cell riddled with reminders that he's terrible and should get worse. All those things, all those internalized feelings - they were all 'just because'?
What has he done to himself?
You should recover.
Should he?
You should recover.
I should recover.
He'll try… If it falls through, he can always go back. So... Right now it's the first day, the first hour, the first moment of something new.
Something tells him that it won't be too bad.
