#aka five times jeremy didn't say yes to michael's proposal and the one time he did

[listentotheshityousay]

The first time Michael proposes marriage to Jeremy is when they’re seven years old.

“We should get married,” Michael says, absolutely serious.

Jeremy gives the idea some serious thought. Which is difficult, since he doesn’t quite understand how marriage works in the first place. “What happens when we get married?”

“We get to be together forever.” Michael throws his hands in a wide circle to illustrate a seven-year-old’s version of forever. “We’ll be a family, so that means we can live together, too. And, uhhh, we can have a dog!”

Jeremy’s eyes go wide. “A dog?”

“Maybe two dogs,” Michael says magnanimously. “And a cat.”

Which is how Jeremy ends up running downstairs to ask his mom if he can marry Michael and get two dogs and a cat, and then comes back to his room radiating disappointment. “Mom says we can’t get married cuz we’re both boys.”

“What?” Michael pouts. “That sucks.”

Jeremy nods. “She said there’s a different thing for us, and it’s kinda like getting married but not really. And she said we’re too young to do anything like that anyway.”

“How old do we have to be?”

“I dunno. Maybe like, fifteen? Fifteen is pretty old,” Jeremy muses.

Michael groans and smushes his face against a beanbag chair. “Ugh, fine. We’ll get married later.”

“We can’t get married,” Jeremy reminds him.

Michael scowls. “We’ll get kinda-but-not-really married, then.”

“Whatever.” Jeremy’s too crushed by the disappointment of no dogs (or cats) in his immediate future to be invested in this topic anymore. “Hey, you still wanna play that game my dad bought me yesterday?”

-

The second time Michael proposes, they’re thirteen years old.

“Dammit, Jeremiah Heere, marry me,” Michael whines.

“Nope,” Jeremy says.

By now, they know a lot more about how marriage works, that same-sex marriage isn’t legal in New Jersey, and that marriage is for people who date each other, not for best friends. Jeremy’s pretty aware that he’s never going to marry Michael Mell.

“Jeremy, just marry my goddamn Sim, oh my god.”

At least that doesn’t matter in The Sims.

Jeremy sniffs. “Build me a better house first, and then I’ll think about it.”

“Goddamn you,” Michael grumbles, but he starts building that house anyway.

-

The third time is when they’re sixteen and Michael’s half-delirious with the flu.

“Here,” Jeremy says, seating himself cautiously on the edge of Michael’s bed, holding a steaming mug of tea. He helps Michael struggle upright, and then surrenders the mug to Michael’s grabby hands.

“Fuck yeah,” Michael sighs, his voice hoarse in a way that makes Jeremy want to shiver. “God, I could marry you.”

Jeremy laughs, the inside of his stomach tying itself into knots. His fingers burn from where they brushed against Michael’s as he passed over the mug. “Go to sleep, dumbass.”

“Seriously,” Michael croaks as Jeremy bullies him back under the covers, “marry me.”

Same-sex marriage has been legal in New Jersey for just about a year, but it doesn’t change the fact that Jeremy’s acutely aware that he’s never going to marry Michael Mell, and he’s made his peace with that, but it still hurts.

“Go to sleep,” Jeremy repeats, because if he tries to say anything else he’ll burst into pieces, tears spilling over, words ripping out of him. I want to, ask me, ask me for real, ask me and I’ll say yes. Let me say yes.

-

The fourth time, they’re eighteen. It’s their last week of high school and they’re laying on Jeremy’s bed together, ankles entwined, Michael tracing a line of dark bruises down Jeremy’s throat with a fingertip. Jeremy doesn’t bother to hide his shiver at Michael’s touch.

“I’m gonna ask you to marry me,” Michael says. In response to Jeremy’s startled look, he adds, “Not right now. I know it’s kinda early for that, and we still have college, and maybe we won’t last that long,” he scrunches his nose at that, like it’s a distasteful, illogical thought, “but one day, I’m gonna ask you.”

After all this time, it still surprises Jeremy, the idea that he can have Michael after all. That he just might get to marry this boy and keep him for the rest of his life. It’s been a while since he learned the taste of Michael’s tongue and the warmth of his mouth on Jeremy’s skin, the way Michael’s voice sounds when he whispers I love you into the crook of Jeremy’s neck, but it still feels unreal sometimes. Like this could all be taken away and Jeremy will wake up to a cold, empty bed.

So he doesn’t say ask me right now. They’re still young and he’s still learning to trust in this new future that he’s allowed to have. He doesn’t say yes, I’ll say yes.

Instead he presses their foreheads together and lets himself learn to believe in this. “I’ll be holding you to that.”

-

They’re twenty-three and drunkenly walking home to the little apartment they live in together when the fifth time happens.

Michael slurs, “Hey, Jer. Babe. We should get married.”

It’s a topic that they haven’t really discussed in a long time. They were too busy with college to ever think about it, and after college they were too busy getting jobs and finding a new apartment and paying rent. Their lives have settled into a comfortable routine now, the two of them creating a home and life together, intertwined at the roots, and in retrospect, it’s not an entirely ridiculous idea.

But even the most sensible of ideas are pointless when the person spouting them isn’t anywhere near sober.

“You’re drunk,” Jeremy says primly. He only had a beer, so he’s feeling a light buzz but otherwise quite clear-headed. Michael’s draped an arm over him so that he can lean half his body weight against Jeremy as they walk, so Jeremy isn’t inclined to take any of Michael’s declarations seriously at the moment.

“Yeah,” Michael says, because he’s quick to agree with things like that. “But I still wanna marry you.”

Jeremy huffs. “Okay, first of all: this is the kind of thing you gotta think through for a while instead of saying this on the spur of the moment. Secondly, we’re kinda young for that—not too young, but kinda young. Third, you’re drunk.”

“But Jer,” Michael whines, “don’t you wanna marry me?”

I do, Jeremy almost says, but he bites the words back. No point in arguing this with a drunk Michael. “If you really wanna do this,” he says instead, “ask me when you’re sober.”

Michael grumbles all the way back home, because he’s an annoyingly stubborn drunk, and it really speaks volumes about how doomed Jeremy is that he wants to marry him anyway.

-

The next morning, Michael doesn’t say anything about last night.

Jeremy ignores the twinge of hurt deep in his chest and doesn’t say anything. It’s not like he’s brave enough to be the one to ask first, after all.

-

Three weeks after that drunken, forgotten conversation, Michael comes home from work and drops a CD on Jeremy’s lap.

“I need you to give me some feedback on this,” Michael says. There are dark circles under his eyes and a stiffness to his shoulders that give away how tired he is under his smile. He’s been working a lot of overtime lately, especially since he was promoted just under a month ago. “Gameplay should be somewhere around ten to fifteen minutes.”

“I’ll do it now.” Jeremy heads over to Michael’s work desktop set beside the couch, because it’s better equipped for testing a game out than Jeremy’s laptop, and the screen is bigger.

Michael presses a quick kiss to Jeremy’s cheek. “Yeah, I’m gonna get changed. Lemme know if there’s any bugs.”

The game itself isn’t much of a challenge. It’s a pretty straightforward point-and-click adventure game, with little room for error and not a lot of plot, which is an anomaly from the usual plot-heavy stuff Michael’s company likes to churn out. The graphics are a lot simpler, too. Probably because they’re still testing things out, Jeremy figures. At least there don’t seem to be any bugs or anything he’d consider a red flag at this stage.

He clicks his way through a bedroom, then a classroom, and then a college campus, and by the time he’s eventually reached a tiny apartment that looks familiar and a red sprite has approached his blue one, he’s thinking it can’t be, can it?

“Jeremy Heere,” the little red sprite says, and suddenly it has a voice, it has Michael’s voice. “Will you marry me?”

“Oh my god,” Jeremy says, and turns to see Michael standing behind him, dressed in a button-up shirt and his dress pants that he only wore twice for job interviews, his grin sheepish as he rocks back and forth on his feet.

“So I thought about it,” Michael says in a conversational tone, his thumbs hooked into the pockets of his pants, a corner of his mouth quirked up in a fond smile. “I’ve been thinking about it for a long time, actually. And I thought about it every day for the past three weeks while I bribed six different people into helping me make the most technologically complicated proposal of all time, and I haven’t considered the alternative even once.”

He pulls out a small black box from his pocket and Jeremy’s heart relocates to his throat as Michael goes down on one knee.

“Jeremy Heere,” Michael says, smiling up at him like he’s never even once thought of a future without Jeremy, like he’s never even considered Jeremy saying no. “I’ve wanted to marry you since we were seven years old and we can adopt as many dogs and cats as you like, and maybe some real kids too, if you want that kind of thing. Everything you want, anything I can do for you, I want to give it to you. Starting with myself. So, what do you want?”

Jeremy’s voice trembles when he says, “Ask me again.”

Michael blinks, then breaks out into a smile as bright as the sun. “Will you marry me?”

“Yes,” Jeremy says, choking on his words, his tears, this happiness that bursts out of him, unstoppable. “Yes, yes, yes—”

He falls of his chair and onto his knees, scrambling to kiss Michael as hard as he can, and there’s a ring sliding onto Jeremy’s finger, forever promised in the way Michael smiles against Jeremy’s mouth. Their future together unfolding from this very moment. 

And for the first time, Jeremy doesn’t doubt that future at all.