Comic, cartoon, and web series One-Shots

Relapse - Charlie (Heartstopper)

(Rated PG-13. Trigger Warning for explicit self-harm, panic attacks and general self-loathing. Charlie is having a bad time!)

Charlie stared at the door that had just slammed.

His head was still running hot from the argument, and he could feel his heart beat out of his chest, practically begging to follow Nick out the door.

You idiot.

He stomped back to the kitchen from the house's entrance.

He opened the kitchen door and Oliver stared back at him, with a curious look on his face.

"He's fine. It's just an argument." Charlie said too quickly.

'Just an argument' his ass. It was their first argument, at least one this big. And it was his fault, and now they were going to break up, and Nick was going to hate him, and Charlie would go back to being the lonely gay kid at school again, and he was going to die lonely and miserable, and fuck off, he still has to eat this lasagna.

He hated lasagna. It's too filling. He wasn't even sure why they're having it in the first place.

Charlie got up from the table, bringing his plate with him. "I'm gonna eat this later, it's cold now." It wasn't. It wasn't smoking hot out of the pan but it was still warm. It wasn't edible, though. That meant if he tried to eat it, the pit in his stomach may eat him back. He absolutely could not-

He caught himself. He was spiraling again. He'd already had a bad day, and coupled with the fight, it was about to erase months of work.

He needed to find something else to eat.

"Finish up your food, we can watch TV after."

Oliver gave a "Yes!" to this. Okay, his brother was happy. That was one glint of worry out of his filled-to-the-brim-with-mistakes brain.

"What show?" Charlie asked.

"Dr. Who."

He grabbed the remote. Turned the TV on. He navigated to Netflix, and then to the show.

Once Oliver was sufficiently distracted, Charlie went back into the kitchen. There had to be something edible in here.

He opened the fridge.

There's a lot in it.

That meant he had options. That's a good thing, he told himself. He could choose what to eat. No one was going to get mad, and he wouldn't get worse. Win-win.

His eyes fell onto a block of cheese. Why do they even have fancy cheese in the fridge? Was his mom going to bring it to a party? Well, that was off limits.

Plain white bread. With butter? No, the back of his head ordered. Who eats plain, untoasted bread with butter? Nobody. Not even nobody, only anorexic freaks.

Plus, he had it for lunch, and it took half an hour to choke down a single slice. No.

Fruit? No. Leftover takeout? Hell no, he had no idea what's in there, and it could be bad by now.

Charlie was starting to get mad. "Okay. Just eat your food," he said to himself. "Eat your fucking food." He turned back to his plate.

But now the lasagna was actually cold, and now he needed to shove it down his throat, every tiny last piece of mincemeat and floppy noodle and chunks of red sauce and solidified cheese, and he will literally die if he did that.

Not literally. He'll probably just have a panic attack, if he wasn't having one now. He could feel the blood rushing in his face and hands, getting hotter with each passing second. Pricks sparked up his neck, and there were tears welling up like lightning in the back of his eyes.