Chapter Text
As a kid Jacob had often heard his mom bragging that Caleb was a “great eater.” The words were always said with a great deal of pride, and often directly after another mom has mentioned her troubles getting her own kid to eat. Most of the time the other mom would express jealousy and ask for advice, which would make Mom puff up and start talking in what Dad calls her “holier-than-thou voice,” whatever that means. Once, when he was four, Jacob asked if he had been a great eater too, the idea occurring to him out of nowhere as he colors at the kitchen table.
“You?” His mom laughed, cutting grapes in half for the toddler currently tugging on her pants “I couldn't get you to eat anything. You’d throw an unholy fit and throw your food across the room. You managed to slug your dad in the eye pretty good once. He had a shiner for a week and you still wouldn't eat your peas.”
“Oh,” Jacob said. He didn't remember that at all.
Mom finishes cutting the grapes and sets the plate on the table, helping Caleb up into a chair so he can begin tucking into them with gusto. Jacob wrinkles his nose and leans away. Grapes are gross. They're all gooey and sometimes they're too soft and don't burst in your mouth, and you can never tell if it's going to be sour or sweet until you've already bit into them. Even his disgust over grapes isn't enough to deter him from his question though.
“But I'm a good eater now, right?” He'd even eaten all his broccoli at dinner the night before, even though it was all mushy because Mom had forgotten about it on the stove when she had started angry-talking with Dad. And he never leaves any chicken nuggets behind. Sometimes he even helps Mom finish hers too!
“Hardly,” Mom sighs. “I wish you would eat your fruits and vegetables like Caleb. He doesn't have to be asked five times to clear his plate.”
It's one of the first times he gets compared to Caleb like this. It'll be far from the last.
-
When Jacob is 16 he stops eating.
He's not sure why he does it, exactly. It's probably mostly for attention, because sometimes he thinks a solid sixty percent of what he does is. Some part of him is probably hoping that one day Mom will snap and finally ask why he keeps leaving his plate untouched when they eat together, or why he never emerges from his room to get a bowl of cereal like Caleb does when they don't. Maybe he's hoping Dad will comment on the way his face starts sinking in after only a couple weeks, the way his clothes start hanging off him in a matter of months. Maybe he's hoping his kind-of-friends will comment on the way he goes missing from the cafeteria, spending his lunch periods tucked up in the tech booth that the theater director always forgets to lock.
The reactions he hopes for never come. Life goes on like normal, and no one seems to notice how Jacob Hill starts fading away.
Somehow, realizing this doesn't make him inclined to start eating again.
As a freshly turned sixteen year old he's still confined to the bus, in the process of saving up to get a car. He gets an after school job, and Caleb even offers to start looking for one over winter break as well so he can pitch in for the payments, in exchange for getting a ride whenever he wants and having the car when Jacob's away for his first year of college, since most schools don't let freshmen to have them anyways. But Starbucks pay is crappy and what he makes tutoring is even worse, so for now the two are forced to make the walk home from the bus stop every day. Jacob never minded before but something about it feels a bit more humiliating at sixteen, when a lot of the kids in his class have already been driving for months thanks to his late birthday. He tells himself it's better for the planet, but he can't completely block out the part of his mind that tells him that this would've been the thing that finally makes him seem cool to Caleb, who at fourteen has more friends and more muscles and more everything than him.
Hunger has always made him more irritable. He's irritable a lot these days.
As much as he hates what the walk represents, he never really minded the walk itself. He's read a bunch of stuff online about how fresh air, exercise, and sunshine are extremely important for people's mental and physical health. And other than the whole silent hunger strike thing he's always appreciated being healthy. Mostly. He doesn't go to the gym with Caleb even when he tries to rope him in, but that's just because he thinks he'd die if he went to work out with a bunch of freshmen and they were in better shape than him, not because he doesn't appreciate a healthy relationship with physical activity.
But lately he can't muster up any excitement for the walk. His feet drag the whole way, head swimming with thoughts of everything he still needs to do that day despite the exhaustion that settles deep in his bones.
Get home, change, go to work, come back home, do homework, go to bed and get a few restless hours of sleep. Then get up tomorrow, go to school, get home, change, go to work, come home, do homework, go to bed, probably have another night terror and piss everyone in the house off with his screaming. Wait, no, tomorrow he needs to work on that history project since he isn't closing for once. Okay, work, then library, then home, and he should probably shower somewhere in there, because he might have gym tomorrow, or is that Thursday?
Oh. Suddenly the sky is above him. Well, the sky is always above him, but now he's staring up at it. What a lovely sky. Pale blue, practically no clouds. Ten out of ten.
“Bro,” Caleb says, face appearing in his vision and blocking the really quite pretty sky. “You just freaking passed out.”
“Did I?” Jacob asks, sitting up and thinking that doesn't sound right. Surely passing out would hurt more.
“I caught you on your way down,” Caleb explains his unasked question, which in any other situation would freak him out because they aren't the kind of siblings with weird telepathy powers, but he's too busy with Caleb helping him sit up before moving away and hovering awkwardly. “You were out for like ten seconds. I feel like that's a long time, like, relatively speaking. Ten seconds of passed out time is like 2 hours of regular time or something.”
“That makes no sense,” Jacob informs him, getting to his feet and swaying slightly as the world suddenly tilts around him.
“Woah, slow down.” Caleb reaches out to steady him. “People don't normally just randomly pass out right? Do you need to go to a hospital or something?”
“No, Caleb, it's not that big a deal.” He collects himself enough to roll his eyes, because if anything can overpower clinical levels of exhaustion, it's the need to argue with his little brother. “I'm just tired, I'll be alright. We gotta get home, I only have fifteen minutes to change and then I need to head to work. People pass out all the time.”
“Seriously?’ Caleb asks skeptically.
“Yeah, seriously. Read a book,” Jacob says, lying through his teeth.
“Whatever. Will you at least eat something before work?” Caleb asks, eyes wide and pleading. It's an expression he hasn't worn around Jacob since he was still trying to crawl into his lap and watch him play Pokémon, promising to be quiet before inevitably asking a million questions. “You always get home after dinner and I know you never eat the plate Mom saves for you. I see her throw it away the next day when she's making you a new one.”
“Yeah, don't worry, I'll have a protein bar on my way.” Jacob injects as much forced cheer into his voice as he can, reaching out to ruffle Caleb's hair. He realizes how concerned his brother must be when Caleb doesn't even bother to dodge, just accepting the action as he reluctantly allows Jacob to start walking again.
“Have two,” Caleb says, voice light but expression troubled. “Actually, take an extra one with you too. They legally have to give you a break every five hours, right? There's like, child labor laws and stuff.”
“Yeah, there are ‘child labor laws and stuff.’ Seriously Caleb, don't worry about me. And please don't tell Mom and Dad about this, okay?”
“I'm not a narc,” Caleb scoffs. He keeps his face forward but looks at him sideways through his fringe that's now sticking in every direction. His voice is concerned when he continues, which is fair because Jacob knows if their roles were reversed he would be freaking the fuck out. “But maybe you should talk to them instead.”
“We'll see,” Jacob says, saying the words with enough finality that he’s practically daring Caleb to try to continue the conversation. Thankfully, he doesn't.
Still, the silence gives Jacob a chance to consider something. If he's only doing this for attention, why does the idea of his parents knowing he passed out fill him with dread?
He only feels worse when he finally gets home after a walk that takes twice as long as it should. He has barely enough time to throw on a uniform before scarfing down a protein bar under Caleb's scrutinizing gaze. He tucks a second in his pocket where it is promptly forgotten, and it isn't until he's heading home for the day after work, turning down his coworker’s offer of a free pastry that was never claimed, that it occurs to him that this may be becoming something of a problem.
Well. Jacob Hill has developed a patented method for dealing with problems, ever since he found himself feeling embarrassingly flustered around the coolest boy in his eighth grade class. He'll just do what he did then, and repress the hell out of it until college, when he can safely deal with it away from his parents and everyone else he's ever known.
It's almost winter break. What's a year and a half?
-
He gets through high school by the skin of his teeth. He gets through college similarly, though he figures out the gay thing pretty quickly after only a few nights of experimentation. He eats sometimes, doesn't others, and for the most part there isn't much rhyme or reason, except for when he's stressed. He eats less when is, always has, but he suddenly finds himself unable to even tolerate the smell of food when he's within twenty four hours of an exam. He also finds out that you can get drunk much faster and cheaper if you don't eat for two days before going out, and spends the money he saves on drinks buying textbooks instead and attempts to pay off the principal for his student loans.
He starts smoking his junior year during Dead Week when he does the math and realizes he needs an 85 on an exam to pass the class, and decides his normal black coffee isn’t going to cut it. He keeps smoking afterwards, citing the favored motto of college students everywhere that ‘drunk cigarettes don't count,’ and then later citing the lesser quoted motto of ‘whatever, I'm an adult, plus I can quit whenever I want, okay?’
He graduates college somehow. He starts looking at rent prices and hiring listings and salaries and decides to give Teachers Without Borders a try and he loves it, he really does, especially the way being so constantly absorbed in helping people makes him forget to see eating as a sign of weakness. There's no time to really think about that while he's there. When he's hungry he’s a worse teacher, and these students deserve him at his best. And sure, they're really not that busy a lot of the time, but when there's no students there's poker or a surprising amount of sex or something else to occupy his mind.
The tapeworm doesn't hurt, providing him with the familiar and comforting pangs of hunger even when he eats more often than he has since high school.
He gets back to the States and drifts for a while. He gets a few year long contracts, subs in a few places, couch surfs and rents spare rooms by the month and hostels by the day. He even finds himself homeless for a brief and exciting period of time after he violates an apparently very strict “no guests” policy in one hostel. He stays with said guest for a couple days until he wakes up alone with all the cash missing from his wallet, which would have pissed him off more if it had been more than $14, and if the guy's plan of robbing him and leaving him in his own apartment (that he assumedly would have to come back to at some point) hadn't been so hilariously stupid. He once again is eating sometimes and not eating others, though for a while the habit is built more around his pay days than his stress levels. He gains a few pounds, not that anyone is keeping score, and eventually lands in Philly.
He gets an apartment and a boyfriend and a job that he thinks he may love. He has friends outside of work that are mostly Zach’s friends but don't seem to overly dislike him, and has a few people at work who actually seem to straight up like him, even if the rest of them very much do not.
He tags along for group lunches, happily participates whenever they order food in. It's easy to forget to care about the process of eating when he's with a group of people all eating the same thing, he discovers. There's a freedom from self consciousness that comes from eating with a bunch of other stressed out tired teachers who are just doing their best to get enough fuel in their bodies to go back to teaching.
He starts to look forward to going out to eat with the other teachers, in a way he doesn't think he's ever really looked forward to eating. For the most part, food to him has felt like a necessary evil. But when it's coming with a chance to get to know his coworkers better, it feels like something positive.
The worst part is, he should have known. Nothing positive ever seems to last very long for him.
-
One thing about Abbot that sets it apart from his other schools he's worked at is how close the teachers are. Most of that is definitely due to Janine and the way she manages to worm her way into everyone's hearts whether they like it or not, taking him with her because they are, after all, trauma bonded, even if that's not what that phrase means at all. The point is, they're close, which apparently means that they often do things together during the school day beyond just a quick run for lunch. Being an upstairs teacher means he's mostly exempt from this because his students have a different schedule. What he is not exempt from, apparently, is the donuts.
“Who's on donut duty Monday?” Melissa asks one day when they're all packing up for the weekend, referring to the rotating assignment of who brings two dozen with them on their way in on Mondays. It's one of the few things Janine has tried to implement that has actually been a resounding success. Technically the rule is that you have to be on the list of participating teachers and staff to eat any, but no one minds too much if someone who forgot to eat breakfast that morning snags any that are left after the teachers who take turns buying get first dibs. Still, Jacob's never touched one, even on the rare occasions that any managed to go unclaimed all day and the person who brought them practically shoved them in people's hands on their way out the door.
“I think it's Jacob” Janine says, probably sounding perfectly innocent to everyone else, but Jacob knows her and knows that there is an evilness to that smile.
“Mm, no, that's impossible because I'm not on the list, sorry.”
“You are now,” Janine informs him brightly. “C'mon, we can start switching it up sometimes if you really don't like donuts but you should join in!”
“I'm actually kind of surprised you aren't already signed up,” Gregory remarks, eyebrows furrowed. “Seems like something that would normally be right up your alley.”
“Yeah, well, I'm not a big fan of donuts, or any other pastries for that matter. Plus there's not really anywhere I could stop on my way in, the only thing between my apartment and here is residential buildings and a gas station.”
“C'mon,” Melissa groans. “You're telling me we already have one person who won't eat pizza, and now you don't like donuts? Who the hell doesn't like donuts?”
“I don't,” Jacob says simply. “Seriously, if you guys ever want to go out for drinks I'm more than happy to buy the first round, but count me out of the donuts rotation.”
“Boo,” Janine pouts, looking like she wants to continue the argument before Barbara cuts her off.
“If the boy doesn't want to participate he doesn't have to,” she argues. “We should respect that, even if he apparently has terrible opinions on breakfast food.”
“Thanks Barb- hey!”
“Yeah yeah,” Melissa groans. “But seriously, who's getting them then? Because I covered this week and I'm going to be p.o.-ed if I don't get any Monday.”
“If Jacob really doesn't want to participate then I think it's Lisa’s turn,” Janine says, turning to Jacob with a sad expression as if to say are you sure you don't want to waste money and drive ten minutes out of your way to buy food you won't even touch?
Jacob just turns away and goes back to trying to organize the papers he's shoving in his bags, because the answer to that is, unsurprisingly, yes.
He tunes out the rest of the conversation, which he thinks might involve Ava accusing Janine of just trying to wiggle out of paying for her share, and focuses instead on the uncomfortable feeling that starts growing inside him.
When did the idea of eating a donut start to feel like the end of the world again? He casts his mind back to everything he's eaten in the past few weeks. He continues to bring more or less the same lunch to school every day and eats it mostly without thinking about it. Him and Zach have both been busy lately, cooking less and eating out more, spending money they don't have on doordash when they're too tired to even drive somewhere. If he thinks about it, he remembers himself gravitating more towards lighter foods when they're scrolling through options, eyes automatically finding the calorie listings when he's trying to decide between two options. But that's not a problem, right? Normal people do that all the time. It just means he's conscious of what he eats and how much he spends.
“Hello? Earth to Jacob?” Janine says, snapping him out of his thoughts. He realizes the teacher’s lounge has started to clear out while he was thinking, only a few stray teachers who prefer to get their grading done here before leaving for the day remaining.
“Sorry Janine, what were you saying?”
“I was just trying to apologize for pushing you back there, I didn't want to make you feel uncomfortable or like I was pushing you to do something you didn't want to do.”
“It's okay,” Jacob smiles and shakes his head. “No hard feelings, I meant what I said about being more than willing to pitch in if we ever do something else as a group. I'm just really not a donut fan.”
“And that’s fine!” Janine says, super enthusiastically, like it may not actually be fine. “I just wanted to make sure we're good, y'know?”
“Yeah of course,” Jacob nods. Truthfully it's a bit refreshing sometimes to have a friend who might be more anxious than he is. He recognizes the need for reassurance for what it is and decides to throw her a bone. “You have any plans for the weekend?”
“No,” Janine says quickly before backtracking “But not in like, a lame way. I’m not someone who wanted to have plans but couldn't make any, y'know? Just thought it'd be nice to have a relaxing weekend. Alone. By myself.”
“Totally, totally. Well if you wanted to take a break from all that relaxing alone I was planning on maybe getting coffee tomorrow morning at Goldsteins and taking over a table for a couple hours? Zach is having friends over for something that's apparently going to involve a lot of singing so I figured my chances of actually getting any grading done would go up if I went somewhere else.”
“Yeah!” Janine agrees, eyes lighting up. “That sounds totally great. I could work on some lesson plans.”
“Great,” Jacob echoes. “Carpool? I'll pick you up at 9?” Janine's nodding starts to resemble a bobble head.
“Yes, I will see you there,” she confirms, awkwardly drawing out the pause between words like she does when she's barely refraining from adding finger guns. Jacob is beginning to worry that they may know each other too well at this point.
Thankfully, he's never found a better way to throw someone off when they start worrying than making sure he eats in front of them as soon as possible. He’ll just get a nonfat latte and a scone or something, and then order as many black coffees as it takes for the rest of his time there to not get kicked out. Maybe a muffin if deciphering the essays takes longer than expected. They have a great vegan cranberry orange with way fewer calories than a regular one.
-
“Honey?” He calls, voice raised so that it can carry through the small apartment. “Do you know where we put the scale?”
“Mm, I think we threw it out babe,” Zach calls back from the living room. Jacob stands up so quickly from his position kneeling on the bathroom floor that he knocks his head on the open cabinet door above him.
“That doesn't seem right,” he argues, blinking the spots out of his vision as he leans out the doorway to avoid having to shout the rest of the conversation. “You know I never throw things out.”
“It was a year ago, I think. You went on that health kick, remember? You got a gym membership and everything. Then you decided it wasn't making you happy and you were going to quit.” There's no judgment in Zach's voice, but Jacob can't stop himself from imagining that there is.
He vaguely remembers that, he thinks. The fuzziness of the memory is probably more related to the effects of the 'health kick,’ as Zach put it, than its age.
He'd started caring about food again, but in a different way. Before, he'd never really given much thought to his body, beyond the vague hope that something about his appearance changing would trigger his parents to stop fighting for long enough to remember they had two sons. This time losing weight had been the end goal in and of itself. He's not sure what had even sparked it, looking back. Maybe his jeans got tight or Zach made some perfectly innocuous passing comment, or maybe his brain just decided that he was getting a bit too comfortable. Whatever had caused it, he'd started losing weight. A lot in fact, probably dangerous amounts. Zach had even asked him if he was getting sick because his ribs had started poking out at sharp angles and he no longer had the energy to do anything except go to work, come home, and pass out.
He thinks that might have been what triggered the total abandonment of the ‘health kick’ too, because Zach hadn't sounded like he liked what he saw at all. He'd seemed concerned, as he asked if maybe he should try switching up his diet and exercise routine a bit, because whatever he was doing was clearly not helping him get any healthier.
So almost like flipping a switch he'd stopped overnight, gone back to his old routine like nothing had changed. The ill-advised diet probably hadn't lasted more than a few months. The next morning he cancelled his gym membership and argued his way into a refund for the month, using the money to buy a smoothie on his way to work. After a few weeks where he didn’t step foot on a treadmill and ate three meals a day, Zach had commented that whatever he'd started doing was working much better and he seemed a lot healthier. He'd felt better too, more energetic and better able to focus and do his job.
So then why was he already planning the detour he'd take to Walmart tomorrow on his way home to buy a new scale?
“Right, I remember that,” he tells Zach. “Maybe I'll give it another go, though.”
“Okay babe,” Zach agrees easily, though there's some concern in his voice. “Whatever makes you happy, but you know I think you're perfect as you are, right?”
“Of course babe,” he replies, switching off the bathroom light and joining Zach on the couch, stealing a handful of popcorn as he settles in. “I think you're perfect too,” he adds.
I'll be better this time he tells himself. What's the point of a diet if your partner doesn't like the changes? The scale will be to make sure he's not losing too much weight, if anything. He just wants to start eating a bit healthier, that's all.
He'll have to do the calculations to find out how many calories were in that handful of popcorn later.
-
“I thought I was supposed to be the picky eater.” Gregory's voice appearing next to him startles Jacob out his mildly dissociated thoughts. He'd apparently at some point grabbed a plate containing nothing but celery. He's not even sure where the celery had come from. Someone must have decided to bring a veggie tray, and was probably then ruthlessly mocked. He hopes it wasn't Janine, she really needed a win this week.
He probably shouldn't be zoning out this much at work. Thank god for being a 6-8 teacher. The teachers with younger students have to be fully aware during these assemblies, ready to swoop in at any moment when the kids inevitably start pulling out teeth or vomiting or fighting. Fighting is never not a risk for him, but they're at least old enough to understand that fighting during a pizza party means you don't get any pizza, so they usually wait until after they're back in class to deal with whatever grievances they have against each other.
“And that you are my friend,” Jacob says, recovering quickly from the mild heart attack. Seriously, sneaking up on a guy like that was just rude. “My stomach's just a bit upset tonight, figured I'd save the pizza for the kids.”
“Still, celery? You know you actually burn more calories eating that than you gain? Plus, it feels like eating wet hair.”
“I like it,” Jacob defends. “Also, how much wet hair have you eaten to make that comparison?”
“You don't have to have actually eaten something to know what the texture would be,” Gregory scoffs. “It's called imagination.”
“Ah, imagination,” Jacob says wistfully. “I haven't heard that word in so long. It's all been sucked out of my students before they reach me.”
“That's because none of your students ever had Janine. Pretty sure even when her kids are jaded fifteen year olds they're still going to be infused with the powers of positivity and glitter glue. Hey!” He yells suddenly, turning towards two students who are trying to sneak out of the gym. “Sit back down, you know you need to ask if you have to go to the bathroom.”
“Ugh but Mr. Eddie we're booooooored,” one of the students whines, a girl Jacob thinks is in Melissa's class.
“Not my problem,” Gregory says. “There's fifteen more minutes left before recess, you can wait with the rest of your classmates.” The two students stomp back over to their seats, pouting.
“What kind of kids get bored at a pizza party?” Gregory complains, much quieter.
“Yeah, at least the older kids can entertain themselves. Granted, they do it by playing on their phones that I've given up telling them they aren't allowed to have, but…” he trails off, not sure how to put a positive spin on the sentiment.
“At least today's Friday. Tomorrow starts two days off with no having to yell at children.”
“Yeah, I'm not sure I'd call them days off. I made the mistake of telling the kids they could either do a presentation or a five-page paper thinking they'd all just make a PowerPoint, and now I have 20 papers to read. I guess I underestimated how much social anxiety kids have these days.”
“Yikes. Sucks to have to do all that when you're already not feeling well.”
“Hm?” Gregory nods towards his plate of celery. “Oh right, yeah. I'm sure I'll be fine by tomorrow.”
“You sure? You seem a bit out of it today. Janine set you up perfectly to sing a Taylor Swift song earlier and you didn't take the bait.”
“Definitely, just need a good night's sleep tonight and I'll be back on my A game. Also, I want to know how you knew that. Dare I dream that our Gregory is a secret Swiftie?”
“Definitely not. Janine was complaining about it to me, something about karma being both a man and a cat? I didn't really get it.”
“Fair enough,” Jacob shrugs, lips twitching. He's been avoiding his friends and bit lately, he realizes. He'd forgotten how fun it was to talk to them.
His favorite thing about not eating is the way it forces him to prioritize his energy. By day two of a fast he always has just enough in him to make sure his students get an engaging lesson and that none of his friends or coworkers notice anything wrong. He normally doesn't have enough left over to start any extra superfluous conversations.
He’d never thought much about it until the time he went out with Zach and some of his friends during a fast. Zach had commented about him being quieter than usual as they got ready for bed afterwards, thanking him for playing it cool and not ‘talking everyone's ear off’ all night. At the time he wasn't sure if he was more embarrassed or pleased. Now, he just enjoys the way the memory gives him something to cling to when the gnawing in his stomach starts to tip from comforting into painful. It reminds him that at the end of the day, he does it to make himself a better person.
Still, he apparently needs to make sure he's not neglecting his friends too much. It's pointless to try to make himself a better friend if he's just going to worry the people around him.
Not that there is anything to worry about. He's not a dumb sixteen year old anymore, acting out for attention. He knows how to avoid fainting: he learned the warning signs for when his blood sugar starts to get too low a long time ago, and now whenever the tremor in his hands goes from “slight” to “going to spill coffee on himself,” or the spots in his vision don't fade within a few seconds of standing up, he makes sure to get something to eat as soon as he has a chance. He's entirely in control of himself, and definitely doesn't have any sort of problem.