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‘That was good, wasn’t it, Jerma?’
‘Uh, uhh, y-’
Jerma groaned again and buried his face in his pillow for the umpteenth time as he heard himself over his phone’s speaker let out a high-pitched ‘hm-hmm’.
God, what a fucking idiot.
He had been playing the clip over and over on his phone for at least twenty minutes, hiding his face in his hands and in his pillow while desperately trying to stop feeling… whatever he was feeling right now. Embarrassed, for sure. That’s a given. It’s him, of course he’s gonna feel embarrassed. Half of what he does for a living consists of making a fool out of himself and, not to brag, but he’s pretty self-aware, so he feels embarrassed a lot. Whatever.
But (and this knowledge is stuck in his frontal lobe probably because of the self-awareness), as much as he wishes he could just blame it all on just good-old shame, and as much as that does come into play, he can’t shake the feeling. The feeling. Whatever that is.
He hears Emilia- He hears Ludwig giggling on his phone, muffled, and he raises his face from the pillow to look up at the phone he’s holding in his hand, nose still hidden behind his other forearm, ready for the fast retreat he knows is coming.
Ludwig is sitting down on the big queen-sized bed and patting the spot next to him, looking up at him expectantly and grinning. Jerma watches Dollhouse Jerma huff out a nervous laugh and shake his head, red in the face as he looks back to the camera and cringes, pretending to have a headache. Current Jerma cringes too, but not for the same reason.
Emilia was back and chat was very, very happy. So happy, it seems, that a whole 73% of them had agreed on making Jerma and Emilia have- Woohoo. It seemed unreal to him, given how shitty his live apology had been to them, but Ludwig had insisted on having them make up.
‘For the masses, Jerma,’ he had explained to him backstage, spreading his hands wide in a gesture that reminded Jerma more of an explosion than of a mass, ‘I mean, Jermilia is what eeeveryone wants. It was trending for a second on Twitter. Everyone loves a good ending.’
He wasn’t sure how much of that was true, but sure, he would also enjoy not being depicted as a cheater in front of eighty-thousand people. Which had already happened. So he might as well try and salvage it by having Emilia forgive him, at least.
So, Emilia came back. Third day, just before the party, Emilia came back with a shitty excuse about having left some stuff over and had then proceeded to give a speech about how they found out that his house had burned down, about how much they missed him, and about how they forgave him for sleeping with Death.
‘I’ve loved you since the second I heard your voice’ were their exact words as they spread open their arms and waited for Jerma to lean in for a hug.
And Jerma had looked over at chat and watched the rainbows and the jermaVenuses pour in, smiling and shaking his head as he quietly hugged Emilia. Muttering a quick 'thank you' while he avoided looking at them directly, like if Emilia kept beaming at him like they had been doing for the past ten minutes it would kill him, or at the very least blind him. 'Woohoo with Emilia, Jerma, 73%, that's high!' , read into his ear as he felt Emilia press their nose into the nook between his shoulder and his neck. The proof displayed on one of the monitors backstage, the long bar sitting right on top of 'Kiss them' and 'Dance', as Ludwig pressed his lips to his skin just once.
Emilia. EmiliaEmiliaEmilia. Stop trying to- Stop. Just stop fucking doing that, oh my God.
Jerma covers his face with his pillow again and presses its sides over his ears. He needs to not be breathing, to not be hearing, to not be speaking, he needs to be put into a fucking coma and wake up to amnesia, he needs someone to take his brain out of his head and scrub it clean. Honestly, fuck Ludwig, and fuck whoever decided to let him have multiple parts. It's not fair that he has to keep doing this when Ludwig can just call him Jerma and mean it however the fuck he wants to. It's not fair.
Not that Ludwig would ever mean it in any… Jerma doesn’t… He’s not trying to- Fuck.
His face is warm as he props himself up on his forearms. Jerma presses his fingertips to his eye sockets until he starts seeing spots and stars dance behind his eyelids. He has to calm down. He can feel his fucking heart try to break his ribcage open, Christ, he’s lucky it hasn’t happened yet.
It’s just- It’s hard. To separate Ludwig and Emilia completely.
He knows, logically, he understands that Ludwig was acting and that he wasn’t actually flirting with him. He told him he used to act as a kid too, he was a theatre kid all throughout high school, of course he would know how to act seductively.
How to bat his eyelashes and pucker his lips while he speaks.
How to look and sound like a cat purring when he says Jerma’s name.
How to spend the right amount of seconds looking at Jerma to make him wonder if he said something wrong or if he has something on his face or if he’s going insane because Ludwig’s cheeks are pink and his tongue is pink and his lips are pink and his eyes are so, so dark. So dark that Jerma has to drop the bit and physically remove himself from the situation, laughing manically as he walks away, annoying and loud like he does when he’s around Ludwig. A laugh that barely means anything more than Jesus Christ.
But then, even then, Jerma doesn’t get the kiss.
On his phone, Dollhouse Jerma sits down next to Emilia and tries to play it off again like he’s being forced into the situation.
‘Well, guess I’m doing this!’ he says to the camera while pressing his lips together and setting his hands on his thighs. What a shitty fucking boyfriend.
‘Yes, we are.’
Dollhouse Jerma lays down and turns his head to face Emilia as the camera zooms in. Emilia’s whole body is turned towards him. That’s not in the script. That actually goes against the script.
‘Thank you. For, for forgiving me, I, you have no idea, I’m so, so sorry, that was so-’
Emilia shuts him up by reaching forward and gently taking his glasses off with a smile. All Jerma can see is hazelnut brown glowing at him. He turns his head back towards the ceiling as he swallows.
‘Hey, no worries, dude. Also, please be good at this.’
Jerma snorts and turns to the camera, trying to slip in one last stupid sex joke, but Ludwig is already slipping under the covers and Jerma abandons the bit halfway to quickly catch up.
Under the covers, thrashing around and kicking up the sheets, Ludwig looks so warm. The lights shining down on them make him near perfectly visible and Jerma can’t help but watch.
The proximity is intoxicating. It sticks to his insides, warm and fluttery, makes him feel like there’s something stuck in his throat, something between a scream and a sob. It’s impossible to keep his eyes still. They’ve been closer, so much closer, but as he looks over to see his eyes screwed up in Ludwig’s signature laugh, his perfect hair growing messy and falling over his forehead, the only thought running through Jerma’s brain is ‘Do not get any closer’.
Ludwig seems to have missed the memo.
The thing that most embarrasses Jerma is that you can see it perfectly in the video. Sure, you’d have to guess what exactly was going on, but it’s not a hard guess. It surely wasn’t for most of the people on set. It really wasn’t a hard guess for his girlfriend, given how dead-set she was on keeping him away from Ludwig during the aftermath party.
You can see the thrashing on one side get less purposeful and more of a secondary thought. You can see it stop completely on the other side and then watch the silhouette of a person turning sideways.
If you turn your volume up, like Jerma has been doing for the past few replays, you can kind of hear a few smacking sounds and then you can get a really good scare when Jerma’s sigh resounds perfectly clear through the speaker set right next to your ear. You can then proceed to scream ‘Oh my God’ into your living room, and after that, you can realize how shot your voice is and you can feel your face get possibly even hotter from that alone. Cleanse and repeat for… Honestly, at least ten times. He’s been watching this clip since Ludwig sent it to him.
Which is also a thing he doesn’t get but, you know, whatever, he’s cool. Sometimes friends just want to remind you of the horrible, terrifying thing you’ve been trying to forget about ever since the last time you hung out together. That’s what friends are for. It probably makes sense, given how Ludwig knows he was only acting and doesn’t have to spend hours wondering if he kissed him as Emilia or as Ludwig.
Yeah, Jerma beams, he was acting. He was just acting as Emilia, he did something Emilia would do. Under the covers. Where no one could see him but Jerma.
He slaps his face a few times and tries to will his brain away from that spot. The ‘What if…?’ spot. Because it really doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. They are both adult men who worked together on a project. Not to mention, he’s taken and he’s pretty sure Ludwig is, too. He still feels it gross and sticky on the back of his neck.
Fact is, it’s really hard not to think about it.
He finds himself getting itchy with it whenever he runs across Ludwig’s face on accident, or whenever he tries to force himself to keep his texting with Ludwig dry and trivial and ends up texting him for hours anyway, or whenever he tells himself he’s only watching one of his VODs while he waits to fall asleep at night because it was the first video suggested to him on YouTube.
It pulls at him from so deep inside him he feels like if he lets go he might end up turned inside out like a sock. His heart quick and fast for everyone to see and his bitten lips inside him, trying to stutter out some excuse no one could ever believe. He feels possessed.
It’s almost routine now.
Open one email.
Ludwig’s brown eyes going from ecstatic to soft. His grin becoming a hint of a smile on parted lips.
Trash.
Ludwig lowering one hand from above him, Jerma following the movement with his eyes, watching Ludwig yank him closer with a strength he didn’t know he had in him. The thrill of it.
Next email.
Ludwig smashing his lips on him in the least savoir-faire way possible. The awkward angle of it and the way it still burned hot through him, immediately waking him up, like a bucket of ice had been thrown at him. He can feel Ludwig try to keep up pretenses and kick at the covers with his feet, but both his hands are on his face now and they grip at his neck like he might fall down through the mattress if he lets go.
Download attachment.
Ludwig readjusting the angle and slotting their mouths just right, pulling at his lower lip with his teeth, licking his teeth and coaxing his tongue with his own. Feeling the air turn electrifying as a sigh gets torn out of Jerma and not even having any time to panic about that because Ludwig is pulling him right back in, digging and biting and getting closer, so impossibly closer, so impossibly warm.
Compose.
To: kjbfewndiocunwefdkjs2908.;
Jerma was never really good at answering his emails or getting work done in general, but it has become progressively more and more embarrassing to come up with excuses. Not that he needs to excuse himself to anyone, he just wishes he could try and blame it on anything else when he feels his pants get tighter and tighter while he’s answering emails. Anything other than ‘Hey, remember that one time you made out with your friend in front of thousands of people?’.
Dollhouse Jerma and Emilia are coming out from under the covers. Both of their faces are scarlet red and both of their hair is messed up. Ludwig is breathing a bit harder than he is, but it might have been in an effort to sell the bit. Jerma never really knows how far Ludwig’s bits go.
He almost turns sideways to look at him, accepting his fate, before a voice in his ear goes ‘Energy bar is really low, we’ll let you go to sleep and go to commercial break in the meanwhile, okay?’ and Jerma makes half a nod and then freezes, remembering he’s not supposed to react.
The lights fall low and the scene turns blue, as Jerma stares at the ceiling and swallows around the lump in his throat. He doesn’t dare sneak a single look at Ludwig. Actually, he does. He’s staring at him.
“Are you okay?”
Jerma really can’t look away.
“...Yeah. Thanks.”
Jerma watches Ludwig rise from under the covers and give him a simple smile, before picking up Jerma’s robe and leaving the room.
He doesn’t really know what to make of that, and it sure shows on his face when he has to “find out” about it after the commercial break. At least he didn’t have to act for that look. Ludwig had explained at the party afterward that he was thinking of Emilia’s storyline.
“Look, Emilia was gonna betray you all along, right? Like Emilia, slash me, was gonna throw you out of the house to make it the Ludwig Dollhouse. Why would they do that after they became your sweet lovey-dovey partner?
“Then why did they sleep with him?”
“I dunno. Revenge, maybe. Maybe, at the end of the day, Jerma was nothing but meat to them,” and Ludwig had looked at Jerma, eyeing him up and down, fixating a second too long on his neck as he quickly licked his lips, “It makes sense.”
So, fine. He can admit it to himself. No one is listening in on his thoughts, though they probably wouldn’t have to in order to guess what he was thinking. He’s always been obvious.
He might have a bit of a crush. It’s a work crush. It’s normal, it happens, it’s definitely happened to him. It’s a crush, who fucking cares, it’s nothing. It’s nothing. It’s consuming him from the inside out and haunting his daily life as well as his dreams, it’s taking him apart and not bothering to build him back up, it’s setting him on fire every time someone even mentions Ludwig even just in passing, making his ears perk up like a dog hearing his master call him. Whatever.
All that matters is that he keeps it under control. Not too much hanging out, not too much talking about him. Damage control for having a brain obsessed with making him make bad decisions and have worse thoughts about said decisions. As soon as his brain goes back to normal, he can ask Ludwig to collab again and hope Ludwig wears a mask or something so that Jerma doesn’t have to stare at his lips.
He takes a few breaths in and out, like he knows he should do when he gets like this.
It’s fine. It’s all fine. It’s not awkward.
Jerma opens up his messages and clicks on Ludwig’s chat. The link to the video still up, sent at 1:09 AM.
‘oh my god jerma they put our dollhouse clip on pornhub’.
It’s been an hour. It’s probably safe now.
‘Hahah, that’s so fukcing funny. i should put the whole str eam up there’
He tries not to scratch his face when he sees a speech bubble pop up less than a minute after.