#itd explain the personality problems too i mean what haha who said that

[fishyizm]

not enough people consider the funniness of stealth transmasc akito i think

[stellarspecter]

blease can we have ur director's commentary on the part of long time coming that mirrored LGW ?

author’s notes will be in bold.

sorry if this is the wrong part. i didn’t intentionally write any of this fic to mirror LGW - how could i? the song wasn’t even out yet! so it’s very interesting to me that you draw that parallel. i can see why you’d say that, of course - both deal with jeremy’s reasons for abandoning michael. my reasons are definitely more bullshit than the show, though.

Michael found his former best friend right where Christine had said he’d be: the stairwell in J Hall that no one used because it was so far away from anything else. (it probably goes without saying that i base this high school on my own high school, which hasn’t been majorly renovated since 2009, and they only added a bit of a hallway. my school was built like there was no plan and they lettered the hallways according to no system at all. we have A-G halls, then J, K, L, and T halls. i don’t know what they were thinking.)

He looked like he was writing something on his arm. Michael caught a glimpse of black ink before he interrupted his writing time. (ooh, ~foreshadowing~)

“Hey.”

Jeremy jumped about a foot in the air and rushed to put his pen away and push down his sleeve. When he saw who it was, his eyes hardened.

“Why are you here?” He asked flatly.

“Christine said I should make you see that I’m amazing and I deserve to be back in your life, so.” He shrugged. “I’m doing that. Hopefully.” (haha, sick reference to my first meremine fic lmao)

Jeremy didn’t have much of a reaction to that, so he tried something that almost certainly would. “Why did you leave?” (bullshit reasons, michael. very bs)

Jeremy stayed with his back facing his former best friend. Michael tried again. “Why did you abandon me?” There was still no response. He barrelled on. “Was it because I wasn’t good enough? Because I was boring? Because you cared more about popularity than your best friend?” He let out an ugly laugh. “What a fucking Slytherin. (jeremy is a slytherin and you all can fight me on that. also as soon as i thought of this line i immediately had to find a way to include it.) What was so bad about me that you had to abandon me like that?” He was nearly yelling at this point. “What did I do wrong?” His voice softened to just above a whisper. “How do I fix it?”

“You didn’t do anything wrong.” Jeremy’s voice almost sounded like he had been crying, but that couldn’t have happened. “It was me. You were too good for me.” (here comes the bullshit)

Michael couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Jeremy thought that he was better than him? What? Michael was the one that fell apart as soon as Jeremy left, how could he be too good for him?

“So… you left because you thought you weren’t good enough?”

“That was part of it. Mostly it was because I was tired of being bullied and I cared so much about popularity. I thought if I was popular, I’d be happy.”

Michael swallowed nervously. “And were you?” (when i wrote this and i was trying to think of a reason for jeremy to abandon michael, i came up with this whole thing and i realized, on some level, that it was kind of bullshit but i didn’t really care. i just said fuck it and put it in because i couldn’t think of anything better. rereading this, though, really drives home the point that this makes not a lot of sense and is very bullshit. thanks for coming to my ted talk.)

Jeremy turned to face him. His face was red and blotchy from where he had been crying and Michael was reminded of the time he had to calm him down from an anxiety attack in sixth grade. “How could I be happy without my player one?” (the feels! crying boye. angsty boye. friend boyes again now.)

That was what did it for Michael. He rushed towards Jeremy, arms spread wide for a hug. It was the first time they had touched in four years. The hug was not a disappointment. Maybe it was a little salty and snotty from how hard both of them were crying, but that was a minor discomfort when Michael had just gotten his best friend back.

They ended up sitting down with their backs to the wall, holding each other and asking questions about their lives during the years they had missed.

“Why did you have to stop being friends with me to be popular?”

“I guess I didn’t,” Jeremy realized. “I think I was in such an all or nothing mindset that it always seemed like one or the other, you know? Like, popularity or you. I didn’t realize that I could’ve kept being friends with you and be popular. And honestly, I think the real reason is that I didn’t think I deserved it.”

Michael furrowed his brow. “What do you mean?”

“I didn’t think I deserved to have you in my life,” he explained. “I thought that I was a loser and you were this amazing person who somehow wanted to hang out with me and it was all just because I happened to be lucky enough to be seated next to you in kindergarten. I thought that being popular might fix that, but, well. We know how that went.” (why would that fix anything, jeremy? dumbass) (let’s pretend that this isn’t Very Bullshit and try to explain it! jeremy’s mom had just left him and he was feeling very Bad about everything, but especially about himself, blaming himself for his mom leaving. he was definitely struggling with feeling worthless, and needing to amount to something would have been a big concern. well, what’s the only thing that seems to matter to a nerdy loser eighth grader? popularity. he thought that he would be Better once he was popular. maybe he even thought that he could come back to michael. but once he became one of them and learned how they felt about nerdy loser boys, he knew (”knew”) it was all or nothing, popularity or michael. true to his slytherin nature, he chose popularity.)

“Yeah.” Michael was silent for a moment, thinking through all that had transpired in the last hour. “So… does this mean that you want to come over and play Apocalypse of the Damned with me?”

Jeremy smiled. “I would love to. Although,” he added, his smile slipping away, “I haven’t played since eighth grade.”Michael smiled back. “That’s okay. I haven’t either.”

“B-but Michael, that’s your favorite game!” Jeremy looked at him with wide eyes.

“I wasn’t lying about what I said back there. It’s a two-player game,” he said with a gentle smile. “And I couldn’t really find anyone else who would play my lame retro shit with me.”

“Well, lucky for you, I love your lame retro shit,” Jeremy replied. His smile looked a little dopey and it made Michael feel like maybe his feelings weren’t so unrequited after all. He smiled back at his newly acquired old best friend and snuggled further into his embrace. Currently they were huddled up against the wall, Michael nearly in Jeremy’s lap by this point. God, he was glad that discovering he was soulmates with Christine led to rediscovering his best friend. (okay, so this is definitely some bs here. having them be so cuddly and lovey after having not spoken at all for four years? there’s definitely a lot of bitterness and regret and guilt there in a big Hot Mess. even though this is definitely bullshit, i’ll try to justify it by saying that they just want to be back to the “normal” of four years ago and ignoring their glaring problems. just imagine that there is an anger-ridden, angsty conversation that happens not in this fic where they air out all of that Stuff.)

bonus content! here’s some of my planning for this fic:

Soulmate marks only start showing up when you’re 13

Should jeremy or christine be his soulmate first?

With jerm itd have been harder to hide in middle school

And why has christine only just now showed up

Have christine and jerm been soulmates this whole time

So like jerm and chris were soulmates and jerm was also michael’s soulmate or is she new for both of them

Maybe they were always soulmates but she never wrote

But it would be more in character for jerm to never write

Okay well lets just say she’s somehow new and jerm and michael were somehow able to hide it from each other

I mean they would have only had to hide it for less than a year before they stopped talking but still

There were a few months where jerm didn’t write to michael at all bc his mom just left and he stopped believing in soulmates

He never told michael what happened and he only started writing again bc there was absolutely nowhere else to write down these lyrics and he was absolutely going to forget them because it was 2 am

looking over my old planning now, it’s kind of funny how much backstory i obsessed over and never even mentioned in the fic. and the way i planned out the confrontation and the ending didn’t really happen either. i guess writing has a way of doing that - getting carried away by the story and just going where it takes you.