#canon/non-rp jeremy's feelings towards kai

[stonedgilbert]

how has everything jeremy's been through affected his ability to hold relationships? not necessarily romantic.

genuinely, jeremy... doesn’t have any ability to maintain relationships whatsoever. and it does seem like a bit of an over exaggeration when i say it, but it’s... true. and - it’s not even really just the supernatural stuff. even before all that happened, he was suffering socially and generally just not very adept at forming bonds to other people.

it starts with growing up without any friends of his own - the people he hung out with pre-his parents’ deaths were in large part just... elena’s friends. given his struggles with school and the sheer amount of time he had to pour into schoolwork with the help of his parents in order to keep some sort of decent grade point average, when the school year was in session, he genuinely didn’t have time for friends. he got home from school and started working on homework, and because he couldn’t do it, he’d usually end up working until his parents got fed up with attempting to help him and just gave him the answers so they could actually relax for the day - and that’s a large reason why he gets into art. it’s something he can do that doesn’t require other people, that takes his mind off of school, and helps him unwind after an entire day of stressing about things that he just doesn’t understand. it’s only sort of exacerbated by the fact that he’s naturally a very introverted person, and those things come together to create a disaster when it comes to his social life. in his younger years, his only companions were elena’s friends, and he wasn’t blind to the fact that in many ways, he was just viewed as her little brother. someone who followed after them, hung around when they probably didn’t actually want him there... an annoyance. they were the closest thing jeremy had to friends, but he was never blind to the fact that none of them were actually his friends.

and then his parents die and he’s no longer pouring all of that time into school because they’re not there to make him, and he’s in pain so he falls into the “wrong” crowd. he calls those people his friends but he isn’t blind to the fact that in large part, their friendship with him is conditional. they see him as the young kid - a sad puppy, if you will - who started following them around, and they don’t like it, but unlike a lot of them, jeremy comes from a comparatively wealthy family, and he’s got expendable income. he’s looking for attention, any sort of companionship, so he’s always willing to cover the tab for “party favors”, and at times even dips into the family medicine cabinet to bring them something stronger of the prescription variety. they let him stick around because he brings something to the table for their own habits, and they don’t actually care about him. even vicki, whom jeremy became infatuated with, in large part did stick around because of it as well. it’s all conditional, the sort of thing where none of them care if he stops showing up one day, apart from being a bit sad that they now have to find another way to pay for what it is that he’d previously paid for. (this, of course, is most obvious because of the vampire things, and how when his life starts getting consumed by the supernatural, none of them ever reach out to see why he stopped hanging out with them)

and then when all the supernatural stuff starts happening, he’s dragged into it, and he just doesn’t. have. time. to make friends. there’s so much other stuff going on that maintaining a normal social life just isn’t something he can do, and the first person he properly calls a friend is kol when he goes to denver - only to later find out that no, kol wasn’t his friend, it was all an act, and THAT, right there, is probably the Big Thing that messes jeremy up. the only person he has ever gotten to know that he thought had been a friend for genuine reasons, was someone who was only using him, keeping tabs on him, and so he... withdraws. after denver, and finding the truth out about kol, jeremy DOES NOT call anyone his friend. mentally, he can’t make that connection. he could hang out with someone every day, call them just to talk, but he physically. can. not. call. them. a. friend. it doesn’t matter what - he can’t. he keeps people at arms’ length, both because of the fact that he’s been hurt by everyone who’s ever gotten close to him (let’s not forget the fact that anna only befriended him/flirted with him so she could Literally Feed Him To Her Mother when she got the tomb open), and because... the people he knows seem to drop like flies. in jeremy’s mind, friends are dangerous. friends are only opportunities for you to get hurt, because they’re either using you or they’re going to die. 

in some ways, i could even attribute all of this to why jeremy’s feelings for kai are largely romantic, because... he doesn’t know how to be dedicated to someone in any way that’s not romantic. he’s seen what stefan and damon do for his sister, so he looks at it like “i would do this for kai, so therefore i must love him”. it’s why i do call his feelings for kai an infatuation, more than anything else, because to him, it’s the only thing he really understands. romantic infatuation. kai is the closest jeremy allows himself to having a friend, but because he is 1) physically/sexually attracted to him, and 2) has never had a friend before, he labels it love, a crush, whatever you want to call it, because he has kept literally every other person he’s ever met/gotten close to at arms’ length.

and then, when he leaves mystic falls and moves on from that, he... doesn’t make friends. doesn’t keep any personal relationships. because he’s never actually had to make a friend before, he doesn’t know how. in most verses post-mystic falls, (excluding legacies, bc i obviously have a different story for him there in order to make it possible for me to write in the legacies universe), he... lives alone. works odd jobs. has people who might be familiar with him, maybe casual acquaintances, but no friends. no people he has a beer with on a friday night after a long work week. just. people who he says a friendly word or two to, who might notice if he stops showing up, but only after a couple of weeks (as he usually sticks to a routine, so after a while i feel that his absence Would be noticed, but it’d take a while). and he doesn’t have a romantic life - he has people he’s gone on a date with, once, maybe twice, even more people who he’s only met once for a one night stand, but no... meaningful connections. because he’s never HAD to make a meaningful connection before, he doesn’t know how, and he goes through life not having those connections, until if/when he meets an extrovert who just goes “great you’re my friend now” and essentially forces their way into his life. EVEN THEN, he wouldn’t acknowledge them as a friend, even though they WOULD be.

but yeah. tl;dr is that not only did jeremy’s mental health suffer after everything he went through, but his social health as well, because he largely didn’t get the opportunity to develop the social skills that a lot of kids/teens do, and because of that he generally doesn’t really even know How to make/maintain relationships of any kind