Chapter Text
Jeremy: Can u come over?
sorry
you’re probably asleep
ignore these texts in the morning
Michael: omw
Jeremy: sorry did i wake u?
Michael: no. leaving now
Jeremy lets his phone slide out of his hands and onto his chest. He presses his palms into his eyes until he sees stars. He opens his eyes and watches the colors in his vision wiggle on his ceiling. Then he does it again until the back of his throat isn’t tight anymore and he can breathe normally.
Jeremy counts to thirty, then picks his phone up and rolls off his bed.
He sits on the edge of his bed, feeling like he's about to get the flu. He can hear the blood rushing through his ears and his head is absolutely pounding. Jeremy closes his eyes and cracks his neck, but the sound only makes the throbbing worse. Jeremy sits very still, waiting for it to go away. When it doesn’t, he stands up.
Jeremy looks around his bedroom and feels this overwhelming urge to get out.
Everything in here feels so wrong, so out of place. Jeremy feels like the walls are closing in and like he is running out of space to exist in, even though he has the biggest bedroom in the house. He tries to push the feeling away before he starts panicking again.
As if in a trance, Jeremy walks to his closet and finds clean clothes to change into. His T-shirt is damp and his hair is sticking to his forehead. Everything feels clammy and heavy. And that just won’t do.
Jeremy digs through his T-shirts without thinking, and pulls out a nice shirt with some rapper’s logo on it. A voice in his head tells him needs to wear it. Jeremy feels his chest constrict again as he shakes his head as tosses it aside. He swears he feels a shock go down his spine, but that can’t be right. He continues digging until he finds a plain blue T-shirt. No logos. The Squip would have called it a safe shirt.
Jeremy reluctantly agrees.
Next, he finds jeans and clean boxers, then he slams the drawer shut and leaves the room with the door open.
Jeremy never leaves his bedroom door closed anymore, if he’s not in it. What could be waiting for him on the other side freaks him out. Because sometimes he still sees the Squip, and although it has no power over him anymore, the thought of it lurking behind closed doors and in shadows is too much. Michael called it Schrödinger's Squip when Jeremy told him about it. Jeremy can't tell if he's going crazy or not.
So Jeremy leaves his door open.
In the bathroom, he strips down, turns the shower on ice cold, and jumps in, biting a hand towel so he doesn’t scream and wake his dad. Jeremy forces himself to stay under the spray as he runs the cold water over his face and through his hair.
He shuts it off, shivering and breath coming rapidly. His body is still in shock but his brain is awake and alert. Plus, the part of it that's been telling him to kill himself in Keanu Reeves' voice for the past two hours is wonderfully silent. Another benefit of cold showers.
Jeremy wraps himself up in a towel and sits on the toilet with his knees pulled to his chest. He rocks back and forth as he waits for the feeling to come back in his toes and for his heart rate to calm down.
He rubs the rough towel over his face a few times and through his hair until it's sticking up in odd directions, but mostly dry.
The stark bathroom light makes the darkness under his eyes stand out that much more against his pale skin. He frowns at them in the mirror, then shakes his head. No time to worry about that. Michael will be here any minute.
Jeremy shoves his clean clothes on, even though his back is still damp from the shower. Shower damp and sweat damp are not the same damp, so he can deal.
Jeremy turns off the bathroom light, shoves on his shoes without socks, and walks out into the night. The moon is crescent and providing little light for Jeremy to see anything. The air is thick with humidity that sticks to Jeremy, making him the wrong kind of damp again. The shadows do funny things to his eyes, but he's happy so long as none of the shadows are wearing sparkly coats.
He has too much energy to sit on his porch like usual, so instead he walks down the drive and back up. And repeat and repeat.
His shoes scrape against the cement and crickets chirp somewhere in the distance. One chirp is closer than all the rest, though. Jeremy stops pacing and listens, trying to place it.
He narrows the cricket’s location down to a square foot by the time Michael’s tires are crunching over gravel at the bottom of his driveway. Michael parks and turns off the car and gets out. He’s doing this half-jog thing to the front door, but freezes when he sees Jeremy. After a moment he sighs and his shoulders drop.
“Dude, you scared me,” Michael says, approaching Jeremy. “I thought you were a murderer.”
“Just me,” Jeremy looks away from the cricket area to Michael's general direction. “I'm sorry for bothering you in the middle of the night. It’s really stupid.”
Michael shakes his head. His hair isn’t done up like usual, and instead it’s flopping down into his eyes. “You never bother me,” Michael says.
“Um, I probably should have made sure it was okay when I was texting you, but c-can we like, go somewhere that isn’t here?” Jeremy stammers out.
“Is that why you’re standing in your driveway staring at grass at three in the morning?”
Jeremy nods, not quite meeting Michael’s eyes.
“Um. Yes. Yeah, we can go somewhere,” Michael says, though he doesn't sound so sure. “Uh, but can I run inside first and get a jacket or something?”
"A jacket?" Jeremy asks, looking up at Michael. A jacket in this humidity is a death sentence, in Jeremy's opinion. But then Jeremy notices Michael's arms crossed over his chest, like he's hugging himself. Michael’s wrists are nestled close to him and, oh, he’s not wearing his bracelets.
This awful realization pools into his chest, and he feels slightly less awful that he called, because Michael only takes off his bracelets to do one of two things, and Jeremy knows he wasn’t sleeping.
Because of how his arms are crossed, Jeremy can’t see if he did anything or not yet. Maybe he texted just in time. Jeremy hopes so, at least.
Michael squirms under the staring. “I, um. I rushed over here when I got your text. I didn’t have time to, um. Yeah,” Michael shakes his head. “Yeah, let’s get out of here.”
Didn’t have time to do anything or didn’t have time to throw a hoodie or bracelets on, Jeremy doesn’t ask.
Jeremy walks Michael to the front door, but hangs back as Michael quietly goes to Jeremy’s room.
As long as Jeremy can remember, some of his clothes have always been at Michael’s, and some of Michael’s at Jeremy’s. It made unplanned sleepovers much easier, and it’s never really stopped. The Squip wanted Jeremy to get rid of Michael’s clothes, and Jeremy is glad it never got the chance to go through with that plan.
Michael reappears a minute later with a plain pink hoodie thrown on. It’s messed up his hair and offset his glasses just slightly. Jeremy resists the urge to fix them when Michael steps in front of him.
“Let’s go,” he says tiredly. Jeremy follows.
Jeremy pulls at the passenger door, but it’s locked. Michael goes around and unlocks it as he climbs in the driver’s side. Jeremy pulls again, this time it opens. He slides in.
Jeremy has always loved driving at night, but only after midnight. There’s a certain feeling of freedom that comes with drives at those odd hours. Everything is quiet, the roads are desolate. Everything feels new and exciting, like you're the universe's favorite secret.
Michael’s car is warm and cozy. He’s playing Marley softly through the cassette player. Jeremy feels safe.
The ignition putters to life as Michael turns the key. He sniffs and finally fixes his glasses, then looks at Jeremy, who notices his eyes are bloodshot, and not the high kind of bloodshot. He looks away.
“Literally anywhere but here.”
“Okay,” Michael says, pulling away.
Jeremy keeps glancing at him as he drives. He is leaning forward a bit further than usual. He's holding tension in his expression, but Jeremy can't quite place where, and he looks damn tired. And Jeremy feels so stupid again that he had to text Michael to come get him, just because Jeremy was having a bad night.
“I’m sorry for bothering you at such a dumb hour just to drive around,” Jeremy says again after a few blocks.
“Jere, you’re so fine, and, uh,” Jeremy watches Michael. His eyebrows are pulled together and he’s staring at the road a little too closely. “I’m, um. It’s good that you texted me. When you did.”
The silence that follows is so thick, Jeremy can almost hold it, and while he still feels stupid about having to bother Michael with his shit, he doesn't regret it.
“You didn’t, um. Y-You didn’t hurt yourself, right?” Jeremy stammers out in the most awkward way possible. And God, he could just shoot himself then and there.
It’s just that he doesn’t know how to deal with this stuff, and he’s never sure if what he’s saying could hurt Michael in any way or upset him, or if he's actually helping, or if Michael wants him to just shut up already.
Michael just exhales long and hard and gives Jeremy one shake of his head. And that’s it.
Jeremy looks away. He wishes Michael would tell him about it. About why he does it, or what caused him to feel like he had to do it this time, or anything so Jeremy could help him, for fucks sake. And Michael promised he would call Jeremy if he ever wanted to do that. And it’s the one promise he’s always breaking, and Jeremy wishes so badly he wouldn’t. He wants to help him, God, he wants to be there for Michael, but he doesn’t know where to start, and Michael isn’t telling him. And Jeremy doesn’t know how else to ask.
And even if Michael did talk to Jeremy about it, Jeremy is still sure he'd screw it up somehow. He already can barely deal with what Michael does show him. Hell, he can barely deal with himself.
And these days, Jeremy wants to be there for Michael more than ever. He knows he can't make up for what he did, but he wants to try. He just doesn't know where to start.
“Jere?” Michael is looking at him, stopped at a red light. But no one is at the intersection. His blinker is on, sending little flashes off into the darkness as the signal clicks. Jeremy looks at Michael.
“God, tonight just fucking sucks, doesn’t it?” Jeremy says, holding the eye contact.
“Yeah." Michael shakes his head and looks back towards the light.
“Yeah.”
The light turns green. Michael turns, pushing on the accelerator a little too hard. He drives down the street a minute, then turns into a familiar gravel parking lot.
“I need coffee,” Michael says as he throws the gear shift into park.
Jeremy looks at the circles under his eyes and smirks. “No, you don’t.”
Michael glances back at Jeremy, his eyes warming ever so as he returns the small smile. “No, I really don’t.”
Jeremy gets out of the car, followed closely by Michael. The diner lights are glowing in the dark morning. Jeremy wraps his arms around himself, listening to the crickets' songs as he follows Michael into the building.