Chapter Text
Jeremy hasn’t put the napkin down since lunch.
It’s been three days since the last note, and he’d given up on the idea that he might receive another one. He’d decided that he was deluding himself, and that no one could possibly see him that way, no matter how badly he wanted them to. Maybe it had been Rich or Jake or some popular person trying to play with his feelings for a quick laugh. Maybe someone had put it in the wrong locker. Hell, maybe Jeremy had sleepwalked to school, written the note, and put it in his locker himself. Unlikely, sure, but more likely than someone actually having feelings for him. Probably.
After accepting his theory as truth, Jeremy had felt progressively more and more down in the dumps. Not enough to impact his daily life— thank god, he doesn’t need that to get any worse— but in the little things. He’s vaguely aware that he’d started hanging his head lower as he walked down the long, crowded school hallways, and that he’d been keeping conversation with anyone outside of Michael and his dad to an absolute minimum. Getting to sleep had been more difficult than usual, as the late hours of the night had been split between speculating over who could have sent it and calling himself stupid for thinking that that note could snowball into something else. Something good.
But today, as he had opened his locker to unceremoniously shove his binders in it, a napkin fluttered out and came to rest on the ground between his feet. Not thinking much of it, Jeremy had grabbed the napkin with the intention of throwing it away before noticing the red ink bleeding through the back. He flipped the napkin around in his hands to see not a short sentence, like the last note had been, but a whole paragraph of carefully crafted text crammed onto the relatively small and thin surface. The washable marker had been traded for a red ballpoint pen, cursive much more sloppy than before.
“i am completely head over heels for you. i’m sorry that this whole note thing is so awkward, but i have no other ideas on how to express this and i HAVE to express this somehow!! i want to tell you so badly how cute you are and stuff. but i just can’t say it to your face. i’m sorry. i hope it’s okay to keep leaving notes like this.”
Having more to go off of gave Jeremy more material to speculate on. The tone was nervous and maybe even scared, but genuine. The first note was one thing, but this one makes it pretty damn obvious that this has to be someone with a crush on him, even with the voice in the back of his head yelling the opposite. There’s assurance now that this is indeed happening, that it’s real. Someone likes him.
So, naturally, he hasn’t stopped thinking about it.
“Jeremyyyyy.” Michael groans, flomped onto his beanbag. “Cmon, man, you said we’d play today! We need to practice for when the remake drops. They say it’s gonna be super hard, and we’ve only got like t-“
“Thirty-two days.” Jeremy cuts him off, sighing in exaggerated exasperation and carefully setting the napkin on top of his backpack. “I know, man, you told me this morning. But that’s still over a month!”
“Yeah, but we’ll need all the practice time we can get!” Michael looks at Jeremy intensely, only to be met with a mildly irritated frown. “Fine. If you don’t want to play, I’ll kick you out of my basement.”
Jeremy snorts. “No you won’t.”
“Wanna try me?” A spark ignites in Michael’s eyes as he climbs to his feet, clearly coming up with some kind of dumb plan.
Michael does this, sometimes. He gets an idea and acts on it without a second thought, like blowing his entire bank account on a rare Apocalypse of the Damned figure, or showing up at Jeremy’s house at two in the morning to drag him to the next town over to a really good 24/7 pizza place he heard about. Usually, though, it’s tame, silly ideas like whatever he’s coming up with right now. Jeremy’s noticed that Michael always gets this look on his face when he does something like this. Amused, mischievous, and pushing any potential consequence to the side. Carrying the strong belief that, no matter what he does, it’s all going to work out. He’s just that confident.
Jeremy would envy him for that if it didn’t suit him so well.
“Hey, man, what are you-“ Jeremy asks, but the next thing he knows, he’s being dragged backwards. Upon looking up, he discovers that his best friend has looped two fingers through the handle of Jeremy’s beanbag and is pulling it around the floor of the basement. “What the hell?!” He scoffs, swatting Michael’s hand and fighting back a smile.
Unfortunately, he’s very aware that he’s losing that fight.
“You disrespect me,” Michael scolds, “in my house! And you expect me to let you stick around?”
“There’s not even a door down here, dude!” Jeremy laughs as he tries to pry Michael’s hand from the handle, long legs dragging the ground. “Were you planning on somehow taking me up the stairs?”
Michael pauses, bringing the beanbag to a stop. He hadn’t thought that far. “..Yes.”
“Good luck with that.” Seeing an opportunity, Jeremy grabs a handful of Michael’s hoodie and yanks it down, causing Michael to stumble downward and fall backwards onto the chair beside Jeremy with an oomf. Jeremy sits smugly beside Michael, who has found himself uncomfortably slung upside-down over the beanbag with his legs resting over the back. They glare at each other for a few short moments before Jeremy puts his hand over his mouth and starts to snicker.
“Hey, what the hell, asshole? You’re laughing at me now?” A huge grin spreads across Michael’s face, betraying his effort to act annoyed. He sits up and musses Jeremy’s hair, barely managing to say “How about that, huh?” before Jeremy pushes him away, still giggling. Michael pushes him back playfully, attempting to knock him off the beanbag, but Jeremy manages to hold his own as he gently shoves Michael away from him again. “My beanbag.” Jeremy challenges.
“Not anymo-ore!” Michael singsongs before he lunges over to initiate a push-fight for the beanbag. “Gimme it! Get off the bag!”
“No way, man!” Jeremy laughs, doing his best to shove Michael off the bag while still staying on it himself. It’s a valiant effort on both sides, despite the objective stupidity of the whole thing. The only pause comes when, in the flurry of hands, Jeremy feels himself hit plastic. For that brief second, he lets his guard down. “Whoa, hey, your glasses-“
Before he knows what’s happening, he’s on the ground, having lost contact with the chair entirely. Instead, he finds himself laying on Michael’s corny bright green shag rug. As bad as it looks, Jeremy has to admit that it’s pretty soft. So, he knows that he’s on the ground. He’s lost the fight, but there’s a more pressing matter here.
Michael is hovering over Jeremy in a way that must be extremely uncomfortable, hands on either side of Jeremy’s head and weight resting on one knee, the other leg extended behind him. Michael must have tackled him to the floor, because there’s no other possible way for them to end up like this if he hadn’t. He’s turned his head away from Jeremy to look back at his other leg. “Still on the bag.” Michael turns his head to look back down at Jeremy with a smile, revealing that his glasses are, in fact, extremely crooked. “Gotcha, Heere.”
“Your glasses.” Jeremy says.
“My what?” Michael responds.
“Your glasses.” Jeremy chuckles, slowly reaching up to adjust the glasses for him. “They were crooked.”
And then the world goes quiet.
This happens sometimes. Sometimes, especially when they make eye contact, it feels like nothing else exists besides him and Michael. Few and far between moments where air catches in his throat and he gets this weird feeling in his stomach.
He tries not to think about it too much.
Eventually, Michael rolls his eyes and backs off of him, letting himself relax on Jeremy’s beanbag. “Can we just practice the game now that I’ve successfully conquered your chair? Or do you need to re-read that napkin for the thousandth time?”
Oh, shit, the note. Jeremy had actually forgotten about that for a few minutes there. “Oh.” He mutters, casting his gaze to the napkin still sitting on top of his backpack.
“No.” Jeremy says, turning back to Michael. “Let’s play.”