#I can't believe I'm renting my soul out to a musical from 2015

[listentotheshityousay]

The first time Jeremy says, “I’m happy for you,” he means it. It’s during their first year of college, when Michael comes back to their dorm room early one Sunday morning still wearing the sweater and jeans he wore yesterday, dark marks dotting his neck, sheepish grin adorning his reddened face. Jeremy barks the words teasingly, begs for the more scandalous details, and high-fives Michael before they start a round of Mario Kart.

-

The second time he says those words, it’s nine months later, when Michael introduces him to Luke. He says the word jokingly, nudging Michael’s side with his elbow when Michael hisses that it’s casual, oh my god, it’s nothing serious, stop it!

But Michael’s repressing a smile when he says it, and Jeremy’s glad to see his best friend happy.

-

The third time he says the words is a long time later. After a breakup and a fling and a tumultuous short-term relationship that Jeremy could never grant his blessing to, Michael comes back from a second date with this guy he met on a dating app with a hickey and a huge grin. Jeremy’s busy working on an assignment due by midnight, so he just says the words on auto-pilot, sparing time to fist-bump Michael before he refocuses on his laptop. There’s an odd twinge in the pit of his stomach when Michael hums his way to the shower, but he ignores it in favor of cursing at his word doc.

-

The fourth time is senior year. Michael’s been going on and on about his crush in his Sound Editing class, and Jeremy gets a text during lunch saying that he’s scored a coffee date with the crush.

I’m happy for you, Jeremy texts back. Good luck!

Staring at his phone screen, his half-eaten sandwich forgotten on the table, Jeremy looks at the excited all caps texts from Michael and realizes that he doesn’t mean the words at all.

-

The fifth time hurts.

Michael is waving goodbye to Alex, his eyes soft with affection and mouth red from kissing that Jeremy pretended not to be bothered by. He turns to Jeremy with his cheeks tinted pink and Jeremy’s heart plummets at the look on his face.

“I think I love him,” Michael says.

Even though his heart breaks at the words, Jeremy doesn’t let his voice crack when he says, “I’m happy for you.”

-

The fifth time is nothing compared to the sixth.

“He asked me to marry him!” Michael shrieks, eyes bright, smelling of cinnamon and an unfamiliar cologne as he hugs Jeremy tight. Jeremy clutches Michael’s shirt and hugs him back, eyes watering as he swallows a sob.

“I’m happy for you,” he chokes out. It’s a lie. He’s been lying for a long time, now.

-

The seventh time is the product of a hundred practice runs, of hours spent repeating the same line over and over at a mirror. The words have sanded his heart down to dust until there’s nothing left but an aching empty cavity in Jeremy’s chest.

“I’m happy for you,” he lies to Michael, who’s fidgeting with his tie and his tuxedo jacket. In a few minutes, Michael will walk down the aisle, and Jeremy will stand by him as his best man.

“God, I’m so fucking nervous,” Michael says, laughing.

“You’re gonna be fine,” Jeremy says, dragging Michael’s hands away from his necktie before he ruins the perfect windsor knot.

Michael sighs, then looks at Jeremy with a small smile. “Hey man, I love you.”

“I love you too,” Jeremy says, and he means it. He’ll always mean it. It’s the only part of him that’s not a lie, these days.

[listentotheshityousay]

“We need to break up.”

welcome to the last chapter! I hope you guys enjoy it. a short epilogue will be posted soon. 

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Here’s what nobody told Jeremy: sometimes you hurt the ones you love, and there’s no way to fix it.

After the play, after he lays in a hospital bed and apologizes to Michael over and over, they start to rebuild. They learn to recognize the scars the squip left behind and find ways to help each other heal. Michael eventually tells him about what happened in the bathroom. Jeremy spends all his time orbiting Michael, making his amends in every way he can. They end up kissing under the mistletoe on Christmas Eve, and from there it’s easy to wear their matching backpacks with pride.

“You can stop apologizing, you know,” Michael tells him one day, weeks into their spring semester. “I forgave you a long time ago.”

“Sorry,” Jeremy says, because it’s the only word he can seem to say some days.

There are times when Jeremy can’t believe Michael is his to keep, that they miraculously love each other despite all that’s happened. There are times when he feels like he doesn’t deserve it, when he’s so sure Michael will just leave.

Then Michael will lean against his shoulder and kiss his hair, tell Jeremy how much he loves him, and then the doubt will ebb away. They’re in love. They’ll be okay.

-

Here’s what nobody told Michael: sometimes you choose to forgive someone and your heart won’t follow suit, no matter how hard you try.

After high school, after they become roommates in college and have spent years as a unit, Michael still feels the disconnect between them. He knows what every inch of Jeremy’s skin tastes like and he knows Jeremy loves him more than anything else in the world, but the ugly scars from junior year are still there. Sometimes Jeremy forgets to text Michael back, or Michael makes a self-deprecating remark at which Jeremy goes pale, and then all the hurt and anger and regret comes roaring back between them.

“It’s okay,” Jeremy says, because when he’s not apologizing he’s trying to give Michael more of his heart to break apart. “You don’t have to forgive me.”

“I’m sorry,” Michael says, because he’s so tired of Jeremy trying to make things right, because it’s not Jeremy’s fault. He doesn’t think this is a wound that will ever stop festering away under his skin.

There are times when Michael wonders if he doesn’t deserve to keep Jeremy, if their love is too sharp and too deep for them to survive. There are times when he thinks Jeremy deserves better than someone who can’t get over ancient history, that maybe Jeremy should just leave.

Then Jeremy will hold Michael tight and kiss his neck, tell Michael that he loves him, and the doubt won’t ebb away but he holds on with both hands. They’re in love. They’re not okay, but he can’t let go.

-

"I’m sorry,” Jeremy says, and he’s never going to stop apologizing for that one semester, that one Halloween. He’s so tired of being the one who hurt Michael.

“I’m sorry,” Michael says, and he’s never going to be okay with that one semester, that one Halloween. He’s so tired of being the one who makes Jeremy apologize.

-

It’s been years and the wounds are still festering, and Michael loves Jeremy too much to let him spend the rest of his life trying to atone for his mistakes.

“I think,” he says, weary and heartbroken, “we’re ruining each other.”

It’s been years and the scars are still raw, and Jeremy loves Michael too much to ever say no to him, even in this.

“I’m sorry,” he says, defeated and miserable. “I didn’t want to hurt you.”

-

Later, in the morning when Michael wakes up in a too empty bed, he’ll hate himself for having made Jeremy apologize one last time, for having lost the love of his life to one mistake that they’ve tried so hard to fix. He’ll hate himself for still knowing he’ll never stop loving Jeremy anyway.

(Miles away, Jeremy surrenders to the voice in his head and drinks an entire bottle of green soda.)

-

Here’s what nobody told them: sometimes love just isn’t enough.

[listentotheshityousay]

You’re a tragedy in the making. 

In the soft light of the morning sunshine, Michael smiles down at you, trails his fingers down your cheek and tells you how beautiful you are. He lingers in bed with you, kissing your lips, your forehead, your sleep-heavy eyelids and even the tip of your nose. He rolls you onto your back, presses you into the mattress and whispers undying love into your skin, into your open, gasping mouth. 

He makes breakfast; you do the dishes. He has errands to run, the outside world dragging him away from the small home you’ve created for yourselves, and you kiss him farewell and sigh when he leaves. 

You have your own life to tend to as well. Emails, paperwork, so on and so forth. The humdrum of daily life, not particularly exceptional but perfect all the same. 

You have Michael. You have a home with him, a life built on the same foundations as his, a love that could break this earth apart with its own gravity. It’s all you want out of your life.

It can’t last.

Michael comes back home and you two share Chinese takeout for dinner, ankles intertwined under the dining table, talking about your respective daytime happenings. You don’t tell him much about your afternoon, instead opting to listen to him talk.

After dinner, you lean against him on the couch and feel restless. There’s a vague sense of worry curling in your stomach, tension lining your shoulders, and he notices. He asks you if everything’s alright. You say yes, even though the words on your tongue taste like lies. You let him kiss you, even though the nameless dread still weighs on your shoulders. 

You’re a tragic ending waiting to be fulfilled.

He loves you so much. He doesn’t know that he can’t keep you. That you aren’t his, never will be. 

You love him. That’s an undeniable truth. But you don’t know that you can’t belong to him, that you have no choice. That very soon, you will have no choice in anything ever again.

You are Jeremy Heere, still so young and so madly in love, your life slowly slipping through your fingers, first your afternoons and soon your nights and then your friends and family and Michael. 

You think you are his, but you are mine. 

He is the one in your heart, but I am the one in your head. I am the one you can’t get rid of. I am the Shakespeare to your Romeo and Juliet, the author of your tragedy and downfall. 

I have already set the stage. All that’s left is the fall.

And once we reach the ending, I’ll create your sequel. A better story. A better you.

You’re my tragedy years in the making, a tragic ending soon to be fulfilled. 

The end is near.

[listentotheshityousay]

I'm not really getting much writing done atm so here have something about Michael and hugs that I threw at sunny a while ago

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a little snippet that happens in the aftermath of you say you're okay (I'm gonna heal you anyway)

Chloe dreams of fire.

Fire, swallowing the paper tigers whole, rendering them into ashes. Fire, bursting from Rich’s skin, scorching marks across the football field’s grass, heat licking at Jake’s ankles, singing Chloe’s hair. Fire, burning through her jacket, through her shirt, into her skin just as she makes contact, fingertips digging into Rich’s shoulder, hot pain searing up her elbow as she sends 600 volts straight through Rich’s nervous system.

She wakes up and the fire is in her ribcage. Too hot, too painful, too all-consuming. Her lungs are full of smoke and the inside of her mouth tastes like ashes.

It’s been a week but the fire still burns.

-

She stands in front of the bathroom mirror and prods the gauze covering half of her right upper arm. It’s not the only place that will scar, but it’s the only place where the burn cuts into the pattern of black and green ink that curls from her shoulder blade over her shoulder and snaking around her inner arm. It’s a mural of ivy, inked by her mom’s hands a long time ago. Before puberty. Before it became clear that Chloe was never going to follow their ancestor’s footsteps, that she wasn’t going to achieve her mom’s dreams for her.

Embers climb up her throat. She swallows it down and leaves the bathroom in her tank top and shorts, goes to drink some orange juice to wash the taste of burned wreckage out of her mouth.

She’s washing her cup in the sink when she hears, “You should be careful.”

Chloe turns the water off and turns around to face her mom, the thin line of her mouth and the hard glint in her eyes. Everybody says Chloe takes after her, from the curls of dark hair to the low, cutting voice. Chloe wouldn’t know. Her mom hasn’t talked to her in years. 

Until now.

“I am careful,” Chloe says. The dull thud of burning is faint, nearly gone in the wake of her heart pounding in her ears. 

Her mom’s mouth twists, gaze narrowed on the bandaging covering a section of ivy. “Yet you still insist on associating with them. The Goranski boy is one thing, but the Heere boy? You should know better than to spend time with a walking time bomb.”

The pit of Chloe’s stomach is cold, cold, cold. 

“So what,” Chloe asks, numb. Disbelieving. “You want me to stop hanging out with them?”

“They could have killed you.” She gestures at the partially erased tattoo, mangled by fire, the ivy train cut off. “Do they know you’re only alive because of the protective spell?”

No, they don’t. Chloe didn’t tell them. 

Her mom sees it in her stiff posture and eyes. Scoffs. “Of course. You shouldn’t associate with either of them anymore.”

Fire. It burned into her arm and up to her shoulder. It burned into her fingers. It burned into her side, a scorch mark against her ribs. Rich almost killed her. He still can’t look her in the eye, and Chloe will make him change that, soon. She’s waiting for the fire to die down, first. She can’t convince Rich that she’s okay when she’s still burning down, crumbling into cinder and dust.

Chloe almost died.

“It’s been a week,” Chloe says, quiet. Back at the hospital, her dad had cried and hugged her, asking her how badly she hurt. Her mom hadn’t said a word. “I almost died and it takes you a week to talk to me about this. And the first thing you say to me in six goddamn years is to tell me you don’t approve of my friends?”

Fire is in Chloe’s belly, roaring up inside, climbing into her chest, setting everything aflame. Fire is curling up her throat, on her tongue, between her teeth. She wants to burn everything down. 

“You don’t get to tell me that,” she says, voice growing louder. She’s breathing fire, angry and disappointed and burning with hurt. “You don’t get to pretend you care, that you know what’s good for me.” She pushes past her mom and grabs her jacket from the hook by the front door. “You don’t.”

“Chloe.” Her mom’s voice is sharp, authoritative. Chloe used to be in awe of that voice, the way she knew her magic inside out and commanded respect with it.

It’s the first time that voice said Chloe’s name in years.

“You don’t care about me,” Chloe says, and it’s not a question. She bares her teeth in a snarl, like a dragon smiling just before it breathes out the flames. “But they do.”

She slams the door behind her and walks away, following the path she’s walked for years, the fire still smoldering inside of her. It’s the fire’s fault that her eyes sting. It must be. Because Chloe’s okay. She really is.

-

“I don’t know why this bothers me so much,” she finally confesses, embers dying underneath her sternum. “I don’t even care about her opinion anymore.”

Brooke traces the ivy trail mirrored on Chloe’s other arm, this one entirely intact. “You stopped caring because it was the least painful thing you could do.” One finger following the ivy down to where it ends just above her elbow. “Not because you didn’t love her.”

Chloe sighs and curls sideways so she’s laying on Brooke’s bed facing Brooke. “I don’t.”

“You do,” Brooke corrects, gentle as she tucks a wayward curl behind Chloe’s ear. “And that’s okay.”

“I don’t want to,” Chloe mutters, and she hates the way her vision blurs, hates the wetness dripping down her face. 

Brooke wipes the tears away and nudges closer, a hand sneaking under the hem of the tank top, right above Chloe’s hip, fingertips tracing the forget-me-not inked on Chloe’s skin. “Then do something you want.”

Chloe looks into Brooke’s eyes, lifts a hand to trace the curve of her mouth. She can’t help but smile when Brooke nips at Chloe’s thumb teasingly, can’t help but lean in to whisper, “You. I want you.”

And when Brooke laughs and kisses her, she welcomes the fire in her blood.

-

Chloe dreams of fire.

Golden flames, dancing in the hearth, warm against her skin as Brooke waltzes with her in the snowfall that isn’t cold at all. There’s fire in her, but it doesn’t sear her insides black. She’s warm, the ashes and smoke finally clearing from her lungs, heat simmering under the surface of her skin. 

The fire still burns, but it doesn’t hurt anymore.

[listentotheshityousay]

The thing is, they're both broken.

Here’s a 16k au where Jeremy and Michael have so many communication issues, several guilt complexes, and a lot of angst. Also: Jeremy’s a siren and Michael’s deaf. It’s complicated.

[listentotheshityousay]

"Actually," the DJ says, "I watched you dance for a while."

God, he just wants to have this man for one night.

I have absolutely no excuse except that I was struck by inspiration while I was out at a club for London Pride and I started writing this on my phone. 10k in two days. I don’t know why I do this to myself. I haven’t written porn in almost 2 years. What have the boyfs done to me.

Anyway, here’s a one-shot with Jeremy and a hot DJ. 

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So the feelings aren’t new; his keen awareness of them is.

Rating has been upgraded to explicit. You’ve been warned.

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With Michael, he feels safe.

(wherein Jeremy Heere is scared of girls and Michael Mell is his last line of defense.)

So here’s my first Real Fic for the Be More Chill fandom. I don’t know how to write comedy but I am trying my best. Uh. Yeah. Chapter 2 will be updated in a couple days (currently working on Chapter 4). Hope you enjoy!

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It all makes sense now.

Chapter 3 is up! I don’t know what’s going on anymore, either.

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“Things are getting out of hand,” Jenna says.

Chapter 2 is up! It’s technically still a comedy (I think)!!

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good news: this fucking fic is now offically at 10k bad news: still not done

“Are we really going to take relationship pointers from Rich and Jake?” Michael asks. “Not that I have anything against them, but like. Rich and Jake.”

Rich and Jake, who dash through the school hallways with Rich on Jake's shoulders, screaming 'NYOOM NYOOM MOTHERFUCKERS' while Jake laughs the entire time. Rich and Jake, who accidentally blew up the chem lab last semester. Rich and Jake, whose idea of romance is almost getting arrested for setting a dumpster on fire because 'we were drunk and wanted to make out by a campfire, so it made sense at the time.'

"Point taken," Jeremy says.

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(I now feel like Siren! Jeremy and Selkie!Jeremy need to have a cage match.)

noooo why would you do that, let the poor jeremys be in peace, neither of them are fighter material anyway

I mean, hypothetically, if siren boy and selkie boy were to have a go at each other in a physical fight, selkie jeremy would totally win. like, a full-grown seal weighs a whole lot more than skinny noodle boy siren jeremy (fyi this version of jeremy can’t shapeshift, so he doesn’t stand a chance), and siren jeremy is just. he’s not very combative. he’s spent five years shrinking into himself trying to be as harmless as possible. he’d willingly let another person punch his teeth in than accidentally fry somebody’s brain with his voice.

just let the boys be friends!! they can bond over their mutual love for the sea, their maternal abandonment issues, and their love for michael mell(s)

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Idk what happened to part 2, but here ya go! Jere actually not being deformed and SQUIP just saying all this stuff about. jeremy is horrible and ugly even though it isnt? But jere doesnt know any better bc hes never seen anyone but SQUIP. Rich is Phoebus and Jere gets jealous bc he thinks rich and Michael like each other But theyre just bros. Michael and Jeremy get together because michael shows him he's actually beautiful. I just,,, have a lot of feelings about this AU. -🌳

(continuation of the hunchback of notre dame au ask)

I don’t have much to add for this au but I really do think the squip acting as jeremy’s sole abusive parent is both horrifying but also an incredibly fascinating idea. but seriously, why must we hurt jeremy so.

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I was browsing through your boyf riends tag and I saw the post for the HoND AU, and that's SUPER COOL (Hunchback is my fave musical / movie). The story could being altered a bit, if you want - Christine might be another gypsy with Mr. Reyes, possibly a friend of Michael? Rich and Jake could end up meeting and falling in love, but the greatest thing would be Michael showing Jeremy that he's loved!! and cared for!! And if the SQUIP won't care about him then Michael will!! Gosh this could be great.

(related to x)

the hunchback of notre dame is tragic af but a slightly less….messed up version….would totally be cool! I am also down for michael teaching jeremy the concept of self-love and self-respect, and the idea of michael giving the squip the middle finger and proving to jeremy that he’s worth being loved???? I APPROVE.

I like the idea of christine the gypsy!!!! (ngl I could see christine pull off the role of esmerelda, being the free spirit who introduces jeremy to the beauty of the world etc etc) but aside from that, I’m still 100% clueless about what to do with this au. anybody who likes this au, pls go ahead and run with it. write something! I’m not gonna be the one to do it, so.