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Michael woke up in the middle of a California King with the deep blue morning light threatening the peace. Four lungs whispered softly to him, two on either side of him. Everything was blurry, and it was nice in the dark. He didn’t bother to stretch. Instead, he lay there limp and content, Christine’s head on his chest and Jeremy drooling onto his shoulder.
Gross? Maybe. But that’s what you got used to after a few years of living together. They were in college now, working adults now, useful members of society now, all lovers now, apartment-renters and novel-readers and Chili’s aficionados now. Living and loving and healing together, now. Graduation was soon.
Christine minored in Theatre Arts, despite everyone’s protests that it should be her major. Then she announced her major was literature, and that she had all the time in the world to go back and earn another degree in theatre if she really really wanted to. It made enough sense.
Jeremy never quite figured out what he wanted to do, but he’d ended up with a Biology major somehow, and he figured if he could get through all the math and all the science-peripheral shit, and all the remembering-things, who knew? Maybe he really could be a biologist. It was something, and Jeremy liked science.
Michael had pursued several things, including a double major. Nobody really knew exactly what he was majoring in -- or minoring in, for that matter -- but all his friends knew was that he took a lot of art classes, a lot of history, music theory, ethics… He was fast-tracked through a couple of his prereqs between his high school AP credits, summer classes, and testing out. Jeremy called him a lucky bastard, Christine called him smart and hardworking, his parents called him their favorite son (though only ever in front of his brother).
As he was lost and wandering the halls of his thoughts, the sun rose fast and the minutes zipped by. Jeremy was the first one to stir, but all he did was detach himself from Michael and roll over. Michael knew he wasn’t asleep anymore, but he liked to pretend to be, so Michael didn’t say anything. Jeremy took a while to start functioning in the morning these days, a byproduct of quitting old habits and taking on new ones. He’d stopped rushing himself, mainly. He wasn’t waking up just to jerk off like he did when he was seventeen, and he wasn’t sleeping in til the last possible moment, only to bullet himself through his morning routine like a racehorse out of the gates. Biology classes and psych classes and whatever else had taught him those were bad, and he really was trying to take better care of himself. Michael was proud of him for that.
He was proud of him for a lot.
Jeremy rustled under his pillow for his phone, and when he realized it had slipped down behind the bed in the night again, he let it go with a groan and buried back down in the covers.
Christine woke up long after Michael had decided to get out of bed. Since her classes had finished (well, one professor was still having class next week, but that was next week) she had taken to sweatpants, messy buns, and Netflix marathons with her boys. A week or two of vacation was exactly what she needed, as reluctant as she’d been to accept it at first. However, it had done a lot for her health. Most visibly, there was a nasty acne breakout starting on her face and neck that had almost completely dissipated already.
Michael got Jeremy to help him make breakfast. As much as he’d wanted to just sit and play his new game, he couldn’t refuse a good meal. They didn’t have a lot of real groceries in their apartment, but they did really well with what they had, turning some leftover veggies and some eggs into omelets, some fruit that would’ve gone to waste uneaten all got blended up into smoothies, and they were pretty sure the pancake mix in the pantry was still good, so they threw some cinnamon in it and hoped that butter would mask any staleness.
Meanwhile, Christine had insisted on doing something productive, so she made a list - two lists, then three, then crumpled the first and last upon deciding the second was best - and picked up some essentials they lacked while Michael and Jeremy started to cook. They shared a bank account now, which was as strange as it was practical. Jeremy and Michael begged her to stay, to take the most advantage she could out of her time off and be lazy like them, but Christine was determined and laughed them off as she pulled her hair back into a ponytail and slipped on some shoes.
“Relax, I’m not going to have a breakdown just because I ran an errand . Okay? Besides, I’m getting restless. We should go out or something this week.” And that was that. She was way more efficient than either of them, anyway.
Michael and Jeremy made breakfast. Christine shopped. When she came back, Jeremy was sitting on the counter, Michael standing between his knees and talking to him. They perked up as she came in, and Michael turned all the way around. Christine had wanted to stop and watch them for a moment; she loved catching them together like that, but this time she didn’t have the time to. She crossed the room and sat the groceries on the counter next to Jeremy. They both ushered her in with their arms and wrapped her up like a lovely cocoon. Maybe she liked this better.
“What took you so long?” Michael asked and kissed her temple. Jeremy went in at the same time to kiss the top of her head and nearly collided with him. Christine just smiled and leaned into Michael.
“I couldn’t decide if I wanted ice cream or not. Then I couldn’t decide which kind, so I left that section and came back… I ended up getting four, so I figure we can just share. I also got distracted by like four samples stands.”
“That’s probably still better than I woulda done,” Jeremy groaned. His problem wasn’t one of ADHD, it was simply confusion. He had no idea how to handle himself in a grocery store. It was one of those places he didn’t go without one of his partners to chaperone him.
The small talk wasn’t empty. It was rich and robust and full like the coffee brewing in the pot next to them, making their house smell like pure, refined, pressed domesticity. The eggs smelled like sour, ripe adulthood, and the pancakes were their wondrous childlike natures. It all managed to work together, to work and be almost perfect, just like they felt they were together.
Jeremy, from up high on the counter, looked down at them with such adoration. How did he get this? By all rites, he really shouldn’t have been here, hadn’t earned this, and yet here he was with the two most amazing people he’d ever met. He felt more than lucky.
“Guys, you ever think about how we’re really like… adults now?” Jeremy’s hands had found their way to theirs. They both squeezed at the same time. “I never thought, you know, when I was a kid… I thought we’d be kids forever. Like, it was hard to think we’d actually grow up .” Michael’s face darkened just a touch as Jeremy spoke before he came back to the moment.
“Yeah, well, I’m glad we did, Jer,” Michael piped up.
Christine hopped up on the counter alongside Jeremy.
“So am I. Look around; we have this great, itty-bitty crappy apartment, full of our stuff, and it’s our home. When we were kids, all the stuff we owned technically belonged to our parents too, right? Except here, it doesn’t. It’s ours. I didn’t choose to share my life with my parents, as much as I love them, and if we were kids, we still woudn’t be choosing. But… here, I choose to share my whole life with you guys. Because I love you.” Christine was beaming, like the realization was washing over her as she said it, which tended to happen to her. Jeremy smiled and looked down at their hands. Oh, they’d be so surprised at graduation.