Sometimes, Baz counted notions like “Strikes may be sympathetic in their goals and contexts, but they massively frustrate me personally” among the opinions he knew better than to express online.
For all he maintained certain online spaces where he could more honestly be himself—the twitter and instagram accounts with the “mutuals only” security; the tumblr sideblog that people needed a password to view; the tumblr community spaces he had more recently ventured into—Baz didn’t dare say such things among the friends he had on the accounts he didn’t let anybody in real life know about. Too many of them knew where to find his main accounts. They could have exposed what he wrote there by way of lashing out at him.
At the moment, expressing anything but full, unilateral support for the Amazon workers who wanted to be treated properly? Baz would have ruined himself by doing that. Besides, he did want to support them, in the part of his heart that wanted to be a good person. Fair and decent working conditions seemed like something they deserved. Amazon, as a company, constantly revealed itself to be tacky and nouveau riche by refusing to show its workers such courtesy.
Still, the package Baz was waiting on should have gotten delivered before Christmas. Scheduling deliveries around his housemates—trying to avoid any situation where one of them accidentally opened a box that wasn’t meant for them—had limited Baz’s options, forced him to move the delivery date three times already. He needed that package. He’d needed its contents for two months, at this point, but had only recently broken down, admitted that need, and purchased the tool coming for him.
Flipping over to the Amazon app on his phone, Baz sighed. The words “Out for delivery” mocked him, as did the unbolded note about when he could expect to see the blue Prime truck pulling up outside. When he clicked the little map that purported to track his package, it placed the van’s location marker somewhere……close-ish? Baz guessed? Not even a whole mile away, actually. Depending on how many deliveries the driver had to make, though, they could have taken hours to get to Baz’s place.
Leaning against the kitchen counter while he waited on his kettle, Baz pulled up the app for Bluesky, since that was where people were going in the final Twitter exodus. He hummed softly as he switched from his main account—a simple, straightforward place for him to post his art and his commission information—to the side-account where he could speak more freely. His following list loaded in, and part of Baz itched to forget his own troubles by looking at his Internet friends’ posts instead. Yet, the complaint nagging at him clawed up his nerves something awful, so he clicked the little blue circle with the white outline drawing of a pencil writing something. “New post” widget, his beloved.
might Keep Myself Safe when i can finally weigh in today lmao, Baz tapped out, his insides seeming to writhe in time with the slow, merciless bubbling sounds coming out of the kettle. pretty sure i underestimated how strong i’d need to be after getting roommates……
Understatement of the year, if Baz was honest, and considering it was only January 2nd, that probably shouldn’t have been possible.
Not even a full minute after he clicked “Post,” the red bubble that marked off a notification popped up. In the tab for those, Baz saw a reply from Mikaylah, one of the Friends Like These he’d known the longest: s**t babe i’m sorry :[ i remembered you getting the one in july, when did it turn plural? :[
late october, Baz typed back. staying on track was already hard enough with just G around (food in fridge & cupboards, he notices my habits more, etc). i wasn’t losing but i wasn’t gaining either so i thought it was okay. that’s all gone since J moved in tho 😭
Once that reply posted, he hesitated a moment, considered if he should’ve added more or not. The frustration had bubbled inside him for so long, though, he couldn’t help himself: plus midterms had just happened right before J moved in. hadn’t weighed in for a couple weeks. oct 10 was the last time my fat a** got on a scale & i still had ten pounds left before my gw 😭
135—Baz vividly remembered the number he’d seen on the scale before leaving for class on October 10th. Nearly two weeks before Sparta of Mars had corrupted into Captain Litharge. Offhand, Baz didn’t think he’d put on any weight between those two dates, but……well. Thanks to certain aspects of how and why Baz had slipped so badly, he couldn’t yet put any objective numbers on anything about his weight problem. At least, not anything new.
Squirming in fear of what the scale would tell him later today, Baz dug the small of his back against the edge of the counter. The sharp jolt of pain made him sigh in relief—but that, in turn, made Baz cringe. Although looking down, he wasn’t watching his phone closely enough to miss the ever-so-slight way his stomach distended, nor the way his workout tee wrinkled ever so delicately around his middle.
Another reply from Mikaylah pulled his attention—how bad’s it gonna be, you think? :[—but her question couldn’t erase the new image playing over and over in Baz’s head: his stomach rushing forward as he sighed, jiggling and blown up with so much fat, people felt sick just looking at him.
gurl idek 😭, he typed into another new reply. tbh the new scale should just say BIG FAT PIG when i get on it 😭 i’ve been so demure & mindful abt working out but srsly i’ll be lucky if my bmi’s still under 25 😭
Realistically, Baz didn’t think he could’ve let himself get that big in the past three months. If he had, then he surely would’ve noticed and he wouldn’t have had any clothes that fit him. Sure, his tee and these jeans were older pieces of his wardrobe—he’d sized down into them around age sixteen-and-a-half, shortly after weighing in at 150 pounds—and they snugged against his figure far more closely than Baz liked, at the moment. But he hadn’t needed to suck in that much while getting them buttoned, so they mostly fit.
(Unlike the current situation with some of Baz’s favorite bottoms. The slim-fit black jeans he’d bought himself as a present for whittling his waist down to 28 inches? Baz hadn’t worn them since the Tuesday after Thanksgiving. Wriggling into them and coaxing them up to their natural resting point had taken too long. When Baz had gotten them there and sucked in enough to get them buttoned, he’d given himself a slight [according to the replies on his body-check selfie]but unmistakable muffin-top.
For now, Baz had those jeans hanging on the interior door of his closet, mocking him to get his s**t together if he ever again wanted to squeeze his fat a** into them in this lifetime.)
Not that Baz knew for sure how badly he’d set himself back on his diet. He wouldn’t know that until the new scale got here. For a moment, all he knew was that the kettle finally whistled, so he could pour the hot water into his giant mug with the two tea bags waiting in it. How could Baz let himself worry about the new scale not having gotten here yet when he needed to make sure he perfectly brewed his tea?
The scale in the shared upstairs bathroom had been there this whole time, though. As he typed out a reply to a friend’s mirror selfie—“before i tell you what i think bb, would encouragement or bullying help you more rn?”—Baz mentally kicked himself for not having used the stupid thing as diligently as he should have, lately. Yes, he hadn’t quite felt safe in doing so, nor after Jayce had moved in. Negotiating any private time around Gilbert’s needs had already proven difficult, well before Ilmari had offered to give the newly minted Captain Litharge a civilian home. Failing to stay on top of himself had clearly had a negative effect on Ilmari’s weight and his figure.
But……it was fine. It was cool. Everything had to be fine, and as he flopped into the main living room area of the townhouse he shared with Jayce/Litharge and Gilbert/Vesuvianite, Baz insistently reminded himself that it would all be fine. He had a sizable mug of green tea, undoctored with any sugar or cream, and as soon as his new scale got here, Baz could go weigh in, figure out how bad things had gotten and how much he needed to fix, and make an actual plan for himself about it.
Something inside Baz didn’t want to simply let him believe that idea, though. Doubt twisted in the pit of his chest as he bent forward, elbows resting on his knees to prop him up while he played with his phone. It had been weeks of ******** up on his part and he could feel the truth of that, the side-effects of his own foul, terrible, rotten choices. Shifting how he sat made the waistband of these jeans tug around Baz’s middle. Not by terribly much, he guessed, but certainly by enough that he couldn’t pretend he still had any space between the fabric and his body.
Maybe he was blowing things out of proportion or being too sensitive about changes to his weight that others would have considered very slight. Maybe he had meticulously kept records about everything that had befallen him since October 22nd, both on his various hidden side-accounts and in the normal, pen and paper journal that he used specifically for Things Like This (not to mention the additional records in various apps he kept on his phone). Maybe some people would’ve said, as many of his Internet friends had done, that Baz’s mistakes of late weren’t really his fault or an indication that he’d done anything wrong, only that he’d tried to make the best out of a wretched situation that other people had forced him into.
But even as he hoped someone would blame other people or circumstances for this, Baz’s heart shuddered with guild over the thought. None of the excuses people could’ve made for him would change the bottom line: Baz had ******** up at his diet. The last set of measurements he’d done on himself no longer mattered because his flexible tape would show him bigger numbers today, just as soon as his Amazon delivery got here. When he finally stared down his moment of truth, the new scale coming for him wouldn’t give him any wiggle room about the cold, hard facts that Baz knew he needed to have thrown in his face.
He’d need to update the current weight listed on his Accounts Like This, because Baz Lemarchand had ******** up enough to put on weight.
Scrolling through his new Bluesky timeline, full of friends finding themselves in similar positions after the food onslaught that defined the winter holidays, Baz felt less alone in this reality. Less like a complete failure. Even other people who held themselves to high diet standards as he did had spent the past few days weighing in, posting about their setbacks as they stood on their scales and let measuring tape embrace their waistlines, lamenting their various failures of willpower and setting goals for getting their diets back on track. But none of that half-reprieve changed the feeling, however slight, of squish that had crept onto Baz’s waistline.
Nobody he knew out here in reality had said anything, which should have encouraged him. But as he moved, Baz could feel his flesh folding pliantly, evidence of him having gained not just weight, which could also have come from muscle, but disgusting, pinchable fat.
A quick sniff-test in the middle of his scrolling said that his tea wasn’t ready for drinking yet. Unfortunate, that: tea would have filled Baz like that stupid holiday hot chocolate that his dads had insisted on him drinking with them the other day, without inflicting on Baz the same absurdly, horrifically high calorie count. As he liked a couple more of his friends’ posts, his heart sank over the memory of, in the middle of his third sip, scanning that café’s menu QR code and looking at the nutritional information for their special holiday drinks. 1,500 calories from just the medium size hot chocolate, plus another hundred from the whipped cream.
Considering how many other customers there had had those “buy ten, get one free” punch cards—never mind how many people Baz saw ordering the largest drink size or going back for seconds or thirds—maybe it wasn’t any wonder that, even having put on weight recently, he’d been one of the skinniest bitches in the café.
Grimly, he thought about his father—the dad who had actually sired him—and about the diet that Phillip Lemarchand had been on since Baz had been about twelve, the one that Baz often tried to be in solidarity with him about. Personally, Baz wouldn’t have called his father fat……at least, not anymore. He recalled the start of his father’s diet as if it had only happened yesterday. So many of Baz’s own records had been based on watching Phillip weigh in every Saturday morning, watching him cut calories and track his meals and progress in a little journal.
Father had weighed in around 265 pounds when he’d begun that diet. Per him—well, per his journal, which Baz had sneaked little looks at, despite knowing that he shouldn’t have—Phillip had put on about ninety pounds in the two years between Odette being born and starting the diet. Around Baz’s graduation from Romano’s, with great struggle on his part, Phillip had gotten down to about 190 pounds (not skinny, but definitely slimmer than he’d been in years), but that was a few years behind them and it showed. From his face filling out to his belly growing rounder, the weight gain made itself obvious on Phillip’s frame.
Offhand, Baz thought his father had probably gained twenty to twenty-five pounds. Nothing so horrible that he couldn’t lose it again with some commitment and hard work, but certainly not a small setback, either. If Dad kept pounding back those holiday special hot chocolates as he’d done during their time together, though? He’d only make it that much harder for him to recommit to his diet when he finally got back on track. Even one hot chocolate had made Baz itch for another as though he didn’t know where that sort of indulgence led.
Glancing out at the street again, Baz still didn’t see the Prime van. Patience was a virtue, and he knew that. Better than most people his age, Baz knew the value of patience. After all, he’d been dieting since age fourteen—ever since a physically rough six months had left him as tall as he would grow (five-foot-ten) and unmistakably chubby—and he had yet to see his true goal weight on any scale. He persevered despite that because he knew how important patience was. Right this second, though, patience didn’t help him much.
Patience wouldn’t help until Baz could take a deep breath and step on his new scale to face the music about how fat he’d gotten in the past three months. Even if nobody else saw the truth, even if they didn’t understand it, he knew that was the only word for a ******** up on this level. Objective numbers would help, but even if the scale maintained that he hadn’t gained an ounce, Baz would know, in his heart, that 135 pounds was Fat territory for him, now.
Not that it would matter unless he still saw 135 on the scale, which he almost definitely wouldn’t. In that case, Baz would simply need to accept having gotten Too Fat and work himself back down to simply being Fat. He’d been here before. Done this more times than he cared to admit. He needed to learn better already, but until he did? Baz knew what to do.
Posted: Tue Jan 07, 2025 9:11 pm
meeting Lianhua Feng, his favorite neighbor's younger sister
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