Chapter Text
The sound of aggravated stomping coming from his roommate’s quarters clued Jeff in well enough: Michael was ready to expel all of his frustrations to someone who would listen. 20-odd minutes was all he’d apparently needed before making his anger audible – an unnaturally long amount of time for someone as typically snappy as Michael, as far as Jeff was concerned. Understanding all he needed to, Jeff approached his roommate’s door, standing before it momentarily and getting as good a read of the room as he could from behind its barriers, before knocking.
“Is everything okay in there?” he inquired, feigning more worry and pity than he was genuinely willing to offer. Michael’s racket ceased upon his hearing Jeff’s voice, and a moment passed without an answer on his part. Without warning, the door opened before Jeff, and standing behind it was Michael, looking dejected and downcast. “So,” began Jeff, “I take it you’d like to talk about…whatever that was?”
“Commitment issues, Jeff!” Michael barked, his meek demeanour evaporating out of nowhere, to his friend’s bewilderment. “I do not have commitment issues!”
“I mean, you’ve got issues staying committed to stuff; but no, not commitment issues,” Jeff mused. Michael took a seat upon his bed, agitatedly crossing his arms and tapping his foot on the ground, which signalled to Jeff that his quip, as seemed true of most that day, had not landed. Jeff directed his attention from the disgruntled display of dismay before him to the room in which he had found many such displays before. It was just as neatly disordered as it had always been. What space on the walls hadn’t been surrendered to posters was designated to a number of shelves, sitting upon each of which were a plethora of different books and trinkets of all sorts. Very little of what should have been sitting upright or straight seemed to be, lending to the whole room an unusual but characteristic sense of life – a disorganized and busy one, all too familiarly Michael’s. Jeff found it difficult to get comfortable within the confines of his roommate’s abode, with how much seemed to be going on around him. It was hard for him to suppose that any woman would want to pay much attention to the scenery of Michael’s room either, given just how much of his more unmanaged essence it exuded; it was only fitting, however, that Michael went against considering this.
Returning his attention back to Michael, Jeff found him seemingly about to burst. Placing a hand on his knee to settle his incessant tapping, Michael spoke harshly. “Honestly, where does Sandy get off on telling me I’ve got commitment issues?”
“She really struck a nerve with that one, huh?” Jeff remarked.
“I am nothing if not a committed man! I sacrifice so much in the name of my commitments – I won’t put my acting on the backburner for anything, and she knows that!”
“And that’s probably why she thinks you’ve got a problem,” countered Jeff. A look of confused apprehension befell Michael’s face, but Jeff took the opportunity to continue speaking before he could get a word in. “Michael, you’ve always been great at picking apart what people say about you, so I shouldn’t even need to make this any clearer than it is; but here we are. Sandy knows you’re dedicated, and that’s exactly the problem. You've got all of your commitment funnelled into your career, when she knows you could spare some for her. Wouldn’t you find it infuriating to have the attention of someone you simply want to please dangled just that bit too far from your reach?”
The question clearly inspired some thought within Michael, his brow furrowing as he contemplated the words of his friend. “You should be able to put yourself in her shoes easily enough,” Jeff added nonchalantly.
“What do you mean?”
“Come on,” Jeff cocked his head slightly, “your entire career is built on a foundation of constantly chasing after validation and acceptance.”
“And so is Sandy’s!” Michael protested, jolting upright upon the bed as if Jeff had pushed some sort of button with his remark. “I can’t be the reason she can’t succeed! We’re already dating – she’s got me! She doesn’t have anything else but her career to chase after now! If I can work and maintain a relationship at the same time, why can’t she?”
“Are you really maintaining a relationship? Or are you just in one?”
With another question to sit on, Michael disgruntledly put his face in his palms, a weighty groan escaping his chest. As subtly as he could, he focused his attention on the wall to his left, seemingly lost in the fandom-centric décor adorning it. It was easier to stare at unwavering posters than at the judgemental yet indifferent man standing before him, now leaving him in the exact same position he’d left Sandy in prior to her fleeing – cornered, confronted, and belittled. “I don’t get what Sandy wants beyond what we used to have as friends,” he subtly confessed.
“Michael,” Jeff’s voice was soft yet stern, as if he was trying to avoid unneeded exacerbation, “she wants to love you, and for you to love her. You know, to be open and intimate with someone who isn’t just being paid to listen to her.”
“I could have given her intimacy as a friend!” Michael argued. Jeff’s eyes went wide as he glanced down at Michael, asking with his expression for him to rethink what he had just said over again. Michael himself remained still, however, now staring back at Jeff with an unfaltering intensity that made it very clear how set in his opinion he was.
“If she wanted someone to talk to, or to spend time with, she had me! And she had our friendship!” Michael explained, rather bombastically. “I don’t think our relationship had to go beyond that.”
Jeff threw his gaze to the ceiling, letting out a peeved and impatient sigh as he did so. “You couldn’t offer her romantic intimacy,” he finally clarified, his shoulders relaxing as if waiting to speak had left a great deal of weight upon them. “That’s what she’s after, Mike! Sandy loves you, as more than a friend. Have you ever been with a woman who was satisfied with just friendly intimacy?”
Indeed, he hadn’t. Michael thought back on all of the relationships he’d been in, and how short-lived they had all been. Of course, all of his prior lovers had wanted intimacy beyond simple platonic appreciation; but in response, Michael had never been able to satisfy them – not in the right way. His idea of intimacy had never been good enough, to his confusion and bewilderment. Looking back upon the matter made him feel even more confronted and agitated than he had before, making concluding the ordeal of dwelling seem that much more tantalising. Unconsciously, Michael began tapping his foot again, albeit rather calmly.
“With all due respect,” Jeff began, “your track record makes me wonder why you even bother agreeing to pursue romantic relationships at all.”
“Because!” Michael snapped, speaking as if all of his deepest and most complex thoughts on the matter would be conveyed perfectly to Jeff via his tone. It was clear that this, however, was not the case. A moment passed before he spoke once more. “They show interest, and I figure I can entertain it. They've got to have a reason for asking, you know? But it’s never enough to just treat them the way I’d want to be treated. They act like we both need to give up on ourselves for each other.”
“Is that how you see it?” Jeff asked.
“That’s how it is,” Michael affirmed confidently. The look on his face conveying an air of mild restlessness, he glanced at the door from over Jeff’s shoulder. “Maybe that’s what it means to be romantically committed to someone. Well, guess what?” Michael’s voice quickly adopted a confrontational sound, as if he were venting directly to a partner rather than his friend, catching Jeff off guard, “I can’t do this, if that’s what it means!”
With a great deal of zest, Michael sprung up from his bed to his feet, pacing across the floor as he ranted, bombast overtaking his tone. It was a dramatic sight; one that Jeff watched intently, taking careful note of Michael’s words as they began to reveal and confirm quite a bit to him. Punctuating his words with aggressive gesticulation, Michael’s proclamation carried on. “It’s not that I have an issue with commitment. I have an issue with distraction! And I am not going to sit here and let myself be distracted trying to satisfy someone who will never be pleased, when I could be out there pleasing the masses, doing what I actually know how to do!”
Very apparently lost to the high of his newfound energy, Michael directed his gaze to Jeff, who looked back at him with wide eyes, clearly taken aback by the sudden attention. “I’m going to tell her,” he announced eagerly.
“Sandy?” Jeff spat. “You’re going to tell her what, what you just told me?” Michael nodded, quickly preparing to exit the room. “I have to. She’ll understand.”
Shaking his head, Jeff replied. “Oh, man. Michael, you know Sandy; she really, really won’t.”
“She will if I let her down easy, Jeff!”
“She cried when that guy let her down after giving her the Heimlich, remember?”
“Well, I can’t just let her think I don’t care about her!” Michael argued. “You’ll see. When this is all over, she’ll realize just how much better we were for each other when we were friends, and everything will be back to normal! It’s the best outcome for both of us, and you’ll agree in the end, too!”
“Well, your prior relationships and my present judgement would tell me that this is probably your best resort,” Jeff admitted. “But something about how confident you seem tells me it’s still going to blow up in your face.”
“Don’t conflate my confidence and your cynicism,” Michael retorted, his grip firm on the doorknob. It was clear he was waiting for a cue from Jeff – another passive attempt to try and stop him; but upon being met by silence, he proudly left the room, not even bothering to shut the door behind him on his way out. Not even the swagger with which he marched was enough to convince Jeff of Michael’s ability to make his plan work as smoothly as he seemed to believe it would, even regardless of how positive the overall outcome was supposed to be.
Stubbornly fled and left alone once more, Jeff directed his attention back to the posters on Michael’s walls. Scattered like sloppily adhered sheets of wallpaper, they told the story of the peculiar man himself with nothing more than their arrangement and content. They weren’t inviting or agreeable – they served only to please Michael and his sensitivities. This was, Jeff supposed, Michael’s room after all; perhaps, he’d only ever envisioned himself staying there, entirely unaccompanied. After his rant, it seemed plausible enough to be fact. In his own way, Michael had made himself understood to Jeff, who now sat putting all of the pieces together in his mind. Though he himself could not conclude for Michael, Jeff knew with certainty; there was certainly a word for him out there.