Jeremy walked into the house, floorboards creaking underfoot, dust spilling into the air, cold white moonlight filtering in through forever open windows and overhead cracks. This time, for the first time in ages, he had his instant camera looped around his neck and clenched in his shaking grip. Because last time, for the first time in ages, Jeremy had walked the entire lonely house and Michael had not been there.
Supposedly, this was a que. Supposedly, Jeremy should have taken the hint from the phantom nails pushing into the back of his neck and the soles of his feet. The dust near the rafters was hanging like illuminated stardust, perfectly weightless. The leaves of the trees outside stirred, and ghost hands of wind brushed against the insides of his arms. Jeremy raised his camera to the rafters and pointed and clicked; it was the only sound in the room. The dust shifted.
The photo rolled out into Jeremy's waiting fingers. The shiny surface of the print tugged against his grip as he pulled it free. His hand with the picture dropped to his side, gently waving the photo back and forth. He didn't watch as the rafters started to bleed into captured existence.
Jeremy's stomach felt tight. It was an external sensation, as if Michael's hands were pressed up against his torso. Jeremy wondered if they were. A shock of chill went up his spine, passing through him in a wave. Jeremy turned around and pointed and clicked and pulled the photo loose.
He continued farther, towards the sitting chair that was dragged to an upright position in the corner of the room. He had done that, ages ago. He had fixed the chair, ages ago. He sat and handled the photos in front of him. The second one wasn't done yet, but the one of the rafters was a clear depiction. Michael was sitting on a cross-beam, hands clenched on wood and face turned on him. His eyebrows were drawn together. A snarl marred his cheerful face. His posture was tight and frigid.
Jeremy raised and pointed and clicked at the room at large.
Looking at the second picture, he had managed to capture Michael again. He had caught him in the process of turning back to face Jeremy, cockiness and triumph etched into the lines of his body, and a smirk on his half seen face. It was malicious, in a sense, but Jeremy smiled anyway, because it looked halfway normal. His smile was not necessarily a happy smile, because it was halfway not.
Jeremy didn't get to check the third picture. A sudden dizziness accosted him, his vision throwing in and out of focus, the sense of his own body placement suddenly questionable. He didn't know where his feet were. He tried to swat at the air in front of him—getting passed through was startling to Michael, too—but he didn't know if his hands were moving or not. A few seconds later his vision came back into himself.
Jeremy couldn't breathe. It felt like there was something in his throat. He told himself to breathe normally anyway, and when he looked down he could see his chest rising and falling in gentle, deliberate waves. He didn't stop looking, because if he stopped looking he wouldn't be able to tell if he had stopped breathing.
Jeremy knew Michael couldn't hurt him like this. Michael knew he couldn't hurt him like this, so Jeremy was at least comforted knowing that Michael wasn't so mad he wanted to actually bring him harm. But Michael was angry enough to break his own promises, and that was a lot angrier than Jeremy had ever seen Michael.
Jeremy sat there and took it, watching his chest, because if there was one thing be believed it was turnabout is fair play, and no one deserved fairness in this world more than Michael. And there was nothing Jeremy deserved more than this—this at least.
When the feeling stopped, he raised his camera quickly and pointed and clicked. Then he looked back at the third picture he hadn't gotten the chance to examine before, and his removed composure fractured just a little bit.
Michael was stalking towards him in the photo. Rage. There was just rage in his face and his body, and Jeremy almost swore that he could see it leaking out and staining the air around him. One hand was already slightly outstretched. A cold feeling washed down his back, and it wasn't from Michael's touch. He questioned his earlier beliefs, and wondered if maybe Michael did want to hurt him a little bit.
His fears were assuaged with the fourth picture. Michael was standing in front of him, one hand brought up to clench the other's arm. His shoulders were drawn down and in; he was biting his lower lip, shame coloring his features. Jeremy felt guilt up and flood him, his face flowering and his nose stinging in a forecast of tears that wouldn't grow enough to fall. He felt like shit, though. Jeremy knew he deserved to cry. He could hear Michael berating himself.
I can't believe I just did that. How could I do that? I'm terrible.
Jeremy shook his head, still staring down that the picture. "No, don't you dare feel sorry," he mumbled. "Don't feel sorry for something I deserve." He said it to the picture, but he knew Michael could hear it.
You did, you totally did, and you honestly deserve so much worse. But that doesn't mean I should have done it. Jeremy thought Michael would say something like that. And then Jeremy would say, Stop being so much better than me, and Michael would return, Can't help it if I just am.
Jeremy snapped another picture of the room, this time holding it delicately in his hands as he watched the colors fade in. He tried to decipher it before it was done, like Michael always does. He could see Michael sitting in the center of the room, one hand brought up to his face. It was much longer before the picture was clear enough to see Michael's face, and even then Jeremy couldn't distinguish what exactly Michael was feeling. A war of emotions.
The hand was half covering one eye, and the other was mostly closed in angst. His nose was drawn up in disgust and rage but his lips were parted and downturned. His eyebrows were peaked in what might have been pain, or frustration, or even confusion. Jeremy wondered if Michael still looked like that, or if he was looking at him, or if he was even still sitting. Jeremy put the camera in his lap and stared down at it. He needed to stop stalling and get it on with.
"I'm sorry," he started. "I know you don't want to hear that, but I am. I fucked up so badly and I just…" He dragged his hands down his face. "I'm not here to patch things up or whatever the fuck. I don't deserve shit, honestly. I know I should just leave you alone, but I need to say this." Jeremy propped his chin under his hands, his eyes closed. There was no point in opening them just so he could talk to an empty room. "I think you deserve to hear this, at least for some goddamn closure. Just so at least you can stop thinking about it all the time—and I know you are. You… you deserve the truth from my mouth. And a lot more than that, but that's all I have right now."
Jeremy took in a big breath of air and let it out, trying to flush all of the shakes from his voice. "I—…" Jeremy's breath caught; he cleared his throat. "I told Squip that he was right, last time he came to town. That there was a ghost living here, and I knew him. And I told him where you lived." Jeremy told himself he wouldn't, but his voice cracked and the tears that had been films over his eyes grew until they were small globules. They began to run down his face in hot streaks over his blushing skin. "It was the worst decision of my life, and as soon as I said the words I hated myself for it and—" Jeremy choked slightly, swiping at the water. Finish, he urged himself. You bastard, finish. Michael deserves this. "—and I knew right then and there that our friendship was over. That I just single handedly ruined us for no apparent reason other than this guy was my idol when I was like, five. But I didn't want it to be over, so I lied to you about it."
There was a brief pause where the only sounds were Jeremy's quiet sniffles. "I think I knew the whole time that it was only going to stretch it out a few more days. I knew that Squip was eventually going to come here and find you and tell you that I told him you were here. But I'm a moron—you know that—so I just ignored that and showed up at school like nothing had happened, and hung out with you and pretended it was like a normal day. God, I didn't even warn you that I thought Squip might be coming for you; I just ignored it and wished it would go away." Jeremy gave a hitched, bitter laugh. How terrible that was struck him again.
"Then it all went to shit, and the Squip almost captured you because you were so caught off guard you couldn't even hide yourself properly. I felt like a piece of shit—I am a piece of shit, I know; after all that I did, there's not way I'm not. I was just so scared that you would get hurt and it would be my fault, and I was so guilty because you were so scared. We finally got rid of him and you asked me again if I told Squip where you were. And of course I just lied again, like a fucking liar—" A stronger sob, enough to break off his sentence burst up out of his throat. "I don't know what's wrong with me." Jeremy wove his hands through his hair and tugged on his scalp. "I don't know what, after 12 years of friendship, would have me do something so sick and convoluted. I never wanted to hurt you—and I know that sounds like a dirty fucking lie, but it's the truth because I'm done lying. I did it anyway, and it did hurt you. I hurt you, and I'll never forgive myself for that." Jeremy rubbed at his eyes, words and apologies still spilling unbidden from his lips. "You deserve so much better than me, you've always deserved so much more than I could give you. Shit, I deserve so much."
Jeremy wiped away his tears long enough to pick up the third photo he had taken, where Michael would forever be frozen in a rage-blind stalk towards him, half-see through and tinted blue. Everything about him was tinted blue. His skin, and his hair, and his hoodie. It was nothing like Michael was supposed to look like. Michael's hair was black and his skin was warm brown and his hoodie was deep red with a million different patches all over it that you couldn't even see in the photo because they were too washed out. It made him feel like he did this to Michael—mostly because he did. "I deserve everything you want to do to me," Jeremy cried, holding the picture up by the corner while he sobbed into his other hand. He gasped when it was plucked from his grasp, jolting straight in the chair to see Michael standing in front of him.
Michael had matching tear tracks painted on his face, and was biting his lips together as he stared at the photo of himself. Jeremy couldn't stop staring, mostly because he hadn't seen Michael in days—the longest in years—and because he finally looked like himself again. Solid. Real. Michael. But also because Michael was crying, and despite the boy being pretty emotional himself, Jeremy almost never saw him cry. Michael chuckled a bit sadly. "Damn, I look freaky in this photo. I guess this is why people are scared of ghosts."
Jeremy just stared, no longer trying to ebb the steady stream of salt from his eyes. He was sure that his face looked like a tomato, because he always blushed heavily when he cried, but he couldn't bring himself to do anything about it.
Michael lifted a hand and dragged it across one of his cheeks, wiping the already drying water away. "I'm so angry at you," he said, moving his hand over to get the other cheek. "I can't even fathom what would make you want to do that. Like, that could have ruined my entire life. I could have gotten captured, and taken away, and—man, I don't even know what Squip does with ghosts when he captures them; is it like a zoo? Would I have just been trapped in a container until I ran out? With like, people looking at me and shit? Or, what if he could just dispel me? Kill me. And I'd be dead—gone."
He shivered, sighed, and after a second of consideration, he amended, "I guess I'm not really alive. I—I know that, but it feels like I am. Like, I can't even remember dieing? So, I should just get to live like a person, right? I should get to have friends, and go to school, and get slushies even though I don't actually need to eat, and I should just be left alone by freaks like that. They don't need to come in and try and—and, discover me, or some shit. Captured and measured and prodded like a fucking animal. That whole idea is terrible." Michael looked up from the photo and stared directly at Jeremy. "You're the only person I really trusted. The only person that really cares about me. And you know how I feel, and I thought that you felt the same way." Michael's breath hitched. "How could you do that to me? How can I ever trust you like that again?"
Jeremy was not Michael. He cried so easily. Tears were already stinging at his eyes again and the blush from his last wave wasn't even gone yet. He wanted to look away from Michael, but he thought that he owed him this. "You can't," Jeremy replied. "I don't think you can."
"Bullshit," Michael hissed, startling Jeremy. "I refuse to accept that, and you damn well better, too, you asshole. You made this whole mess, so you get to clean it up. You don't get to walk away from it." Michael squatted so he was at the same height as Jeremy sitting in the chair. "I am so unbelievably mad at you, and it feels like you ripped my heart out of my chest and started stomping around on it. I don't know what was going on in your head when you told Squip everything. What kind of friend does that?"
Michael shook his head. "I don't know how long it will take for me to forgive you. Right now, I feel like I never will. I feel like I don't even know you anymore, because even after Squip was gone and I asked you if you told him, I was still thinking, 'There's no way Jeremy told him all that shit. Jeremy would never do that to me.' And you did. It was you. You're not even who I thought you were.
"I'm not forgiving you. Not a chance in hell when I still feel like shit and I still feel like you're shit. But I'll give you like… like a trust loan, or something. And that means you gotta pay it back, and make it worth my while." Michael stood and offered a dumbstruck Jeremy a hand. "I love you, man. And sometimes, love is really, really hard. Don't you dare think you can just walk outta my life like that."
Jeremy reached his hand up to grasp Michael's. The standing boy pulled him to his feet and into a hug, the camera on Jeremy's lap clattering to the floor and the pictures floating down after. Michael wrapped his arms around the other boy tightly and buried his face in his neck, a shaky sigh slipping out from between his teeth in a way that might have sounded a little bit like healing.
For a few still-uncomprehending seconds, Jeremy still there like an idiot, surprised even though he had taken Michael's hand. Then he returned the hug, his arms latching on to Michael's waist in a way that probably would have strangled him had the other needed air. Jeremy began to sob immediately, pushing his face into Michael's hoodie and probably getting snot and tears all over it. He thought that he'd never get to see Michael again, let alone hold him or hug him or talk to him. "Thank you, thank you thank you—" Jeremy chanted, crying harder if possible.
Michael laughed a little, and lifted a hand to pet the back of Jeremy's head a little mockingly. "There, there," he consoled. "And remember, this isn't 'I forgive you chapter closed all is well.' You better pay me back, Heere. I'm expecting some more apologizing and reasons for me to trust you again, you piece of shit." He tucked his chin in to get closer to Jeremy's ear to whisper, "Though, just between you and me, I think you can do it. I'm rooting for you, Jeremy."
Jeremy gave a wet laugh and nodded, never removing his face from Michael's chest. He would, he knew he would. There was no way in hell he would ever let this slide by him. There's no way he's ever gonna let Michael slide by him. He'd already made the worst mistake of his life by doing that once, and he wasn't ever gonna do it again. "I will. I will, I promise," he said, voice still choked by tears.
"Don't promise," Michael replied, still holding Jeremy to his chest. "Just do."