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“Move, I need to change the sheets.”
“Don’t punish me because you got messy.”
“It’s not my fault we never make it into your bed.”
Michael’s too drained to crack into laughter at that, but he manages a smile that breaks Jeremy’s heart into gummy bears anyways. Except the words he’s saying don’t match what that smile is- the smile that says I’m totally into you and content where I am and the mouth that says, “It’s totally your fault, horndog,” and Jeremy just whacks him over the head with a pillow, hard enough to hurt and hard enough to put his stupid glasses at risk.
Jeremy doesn’t notice at first, mostly because it can be hidden under the roiling broiling heat of the moment every time and because it only kicks that heat into a higher ranges, and because, y’know, it’s a pretty common thing, plenty of people like their hickeys like they like their coffee, dark, deep, and strong.
And like, just look at the porn, plenty of people are into way more messed up stuff than he is, so what if he really likes the way Michael’s nails leave marks into his skin, long and red and sore for days, burning and reopening every time he slouches his back or scrubs too hard in the shower or just picks at the tiny thin scabs that form over them. It’s because it’s hot and it gets him off and he thinks Michael really likes it too, something that marks Jeremy Heere as visibly his yet something only Michael gets to see. It’s not gross until he makes it gross, overthinking and overworrying the sensitive skin.
Because he does that sometimes, too, and they don’t talk about it, because Michael hasn’t figured it out and Jeremy’s not going to like, tell him, that one of the reasons he likes having sex when he’s feeling down (besides the obvious) is because underneath it all there’s a little voice in his head (his own, thank G-d) that says you deserve this when Michael gets a little too rough and bites a little too hard and leaves crescent moons and bruises and sometimes open red wounds.
Except sometimes, Michael isn’t all that oblivious, and sometimes Jeremy is still sitting on his bed when Michael comes back from the bathroom and he hasn’t moved to throw the sheets in the wash at all and he’s staring at nothing, instead, Jeremy is really good at staring at nothing instead, and he’s running fingers over his neck, where red marks have already started to bloom. His shoulders will go next. His back is stinging. It was really good.
Michael’s I love you so much you stupid idiot fuck smile was cracking around the edges and being replaced with the something’s wrong and I don’t know what oh shit smile, he could already tell in his peripherals, because he was really good at reading Michael’s smiles. Not all of them were as gummy bears as the first one. This one, in fact, felt gross. Sure enough--
“Jeez, you look… rough.” Not all of them were from tonight. But they added up. “You gotta tell me to calm down when I’m- I didn’t mean to- shit, Jer-”
[Cut him off .] “It’s fine!” Jeremy tried, voice breaking and squeaking. “I got this- I can-” He’s trying to talk over and it’s not working and he’s so tired and he just wants to put these sheets in the wash and collapse into his naked mattress and fall asleep.
“Lemme get something,” Michael insists, but he doesn’t move.
“It’s fine,” no no no he’s going to say it, “‘s not like I don’t deserve this anyways.” [Don’t act so coy. You wanted to talk about this.] He didn’t. He didn’t. While Jeremy is trying to ignore the voices in his head and find the one that’ll get him out of this situation, Michael is processing, freezing like a glitched out game. He couldn’t look more uncomfortable if he tried. Jeremy, unsurprisingly, is only feeling more guilt as he watches this. Michael was feeling good and he had to go and ruin it.
“Jer,” Michael starts, and Jeremy winces and shakes his head [ Michael is trying to comfort you. Ignoring him will only make him more persistent] he really hates the Squip [ acknowledge] especially when he’s naked [ Michael is speaking to you] he gets his head above the static just in time for “--listening?” And when he looks up, at Michael, he doesn’t like the round eyes and raised eyebrows he sees. Mostly because they look so concerned.
“I’m listening,” Jeremy says.
“Now you are,” Michael grumbles, and pauses, looking at him for a moment.
“I like it,” Jeremy says, a little loudly, because maybe if he interrupts Michael’s train of thought with this he’ll throw him off and get what he wants, which is just to ignore this.
“I don’t,” Michael says (liar.) and finally sits down on the bed. Michael is always taller, but Jeremy doesn’t think he can handle the height difference between them sitting and standing while having this talk because it sort of makes him feel like a stupid little kid. Which he isn’t. He knows that. But he also is.
Michael’s hands don’t touch him right now, but his eyes do, heavy as fingers dragging over each bite, bruise, and scratch mark that Jeremy’s collected over a few days of rough sex and sloppy makeouts. The tapes are practically audible in his head, a high-pitched rewind over Jeremy’s behavior and Michael’s reactions to it, and both of them are starting to reek of guilt.
“Can I-”
“Yeah?”
Michael kisses his shoulder. It’s awkward. Jeremy feels nothing but a dull prickle of nerves, and he wrinkles his nose.
It’s very, very, awkward. [ He doesn’t know what to say. Initiate conversation so ] deactivate, he thinks as loudly as he can, but then he’s just left with more awkward silence. God, he hates that word. It sounds and looks like it means. “I’m sorry,” Jeremy says, staring hard at the floor.
“Me too,” Michael says, a minute later, like he had to force the words out around a rock in his throat. “I should’ve known.” More, long, terrible quiet.
“You’re not gonna touch me for like a week, are you.”
Michael snorts, a weak little puff of air, and throws his hand on Jeremy’s knee, nudges their thighs a little more together. “I’m touching you right now.”
“You know what I mean,” he grumbles back, and Michael deflates what little bravado he regained for that moment.
“Yeah, I do.” He’s looking at him, now, Jeremy can tell, taking in his profile. He manages to resist looking back for a whole thirty seconds, and it’s immediately too much, and he looks back on the floor.
“I can’t, like,” Michael starts, and then he gets stuck, and Jeremy feels a lump in his throat. “I can’t be that for you?” Jeremy’s eyes are still down, and he realizes Michael’s free hand is running over the inside of his forearm, and the lump grows to a golf ball.
“That’s not the only reason why.”
“But it was one of them.”
Jeremy’s golf ball grows to a grapefruit grows to a watermelon grows to pinhead tears leaking out of his eyes.
“I’m sorry,” he croaks again.
“Me, too.” Michael pauses, giving Jeremy a chance to say something else, or maybe expecting him to. But he’s got nothing. It’s too much, too in the moment, too close to say anything else about it yet. “You wanna get these sheets cleaned up?” He doesn’t wait for an answers, starts yanking at them before Jeremy’s even finished standing up, and were it any other circumstances, he’d crack a joke about it being the first time Michael’s willingly done laundry in years. Instead he just stands up and goes to the bathroom and gets dressed, and by the time he’s done there’s not even a lump in his throat. There’s just Michael laying on his bed and untangling his earbuds.
Jeremy lays down, and Michael offers him one. He turns up something loud and weird that drowns it all out until Michael has to leave for home at eleven.
It hangs in the air between them for like a week until Jeremy brings it up in a text, unprompted, because he’s decided texts will be easier. Because this way he can keep track of all of his words and consider them before he sends them, and he doesn’t have to see Michael’s reactions in real time, he can just tell him. Admit that sometimes he still feels so bad even after all their emotional late night conversations and apologies and kiss-and-make-ups and sometimes he just needs to hurt so badly and he knows- he knows it sounds so messed up- he deletes that and writes fucked up instead- but Michael can give that to him, and-
and Michael tells him he gets it and they both know why but don’t mention it and Michael tells him he can’t give it to him and Jeremy gets that too and it’s just super weird now because he can’t help questioning if he’s hurting him and he doesn’t want to but he also doesn’t want to like never makeout with his boyfriend again because it’s kinda awesome and he misses it.
Jeremy thinks making out with his boyfriend is super awesome and he misses it too.
Michael has been spending too much time with Jenna, because he just sends back a long string of flirtatious emojis. If you can call a string that includes no less than four pumpkin faces flirtatious.
They talk about it, and they work on it. Michael cuts his nails. Jeremy tells him more often when to stop. Michael kisses every hickey he makes because he’s just that much of a sap and Jeremy does his best to shout over you deserve this with no i don’t and it only works sometimes. But sometimes is better than no times.
He runs his fingers over his skin and presses his thumb into sore spots, and he thinks it again. No, I don’t. He kisses his boyfriend and he thinks but this, I do. Which is even harder to believe. But he does his best. They both do. They’re working on it, and it’s getting better.