I'm back bitches,,,,,, with more of this story that hasn't been thought out (hah just kidding I thought out the next three sentences so get fukked). Also a lot of these are just going to be Christine and Jeremy centric bc this ship is just so,,,,,,,,,,, pure hhhhh. Also my daughter deserves all the love and validation (in order to give her that, I need to make her go through some rough shit in this be prepared), and I have yet to find a fic where Michael isn't in pain bc of Chris and Jer's relationship. Supportive Michael?,,,, on my computer? It's more likely than you think. (I'm sorry I'm the queen of unfunny jokes) also I totally fucked up the ending with the whole door thing last chapter, Jeremy was the one who opened the door but it's gonna kinda be different at the beginning of this one, bear with me bls
Christine needed to control her feelings, like. Now.
She could feel her heart beating faster every second, and wiped her hands on her green dress. As soon as she realized her 'feelings' for Jeremy, she felt different. Not 'bad' different, just 'weird' different.
Christine realizes that she might actually love him. This awkward, tall, gangly boy had been on her mind a lot lately, and him sitting with her as she cried and stained his shirt without complaining was one of the best things someone had ever done for her.
She wants to grow old with him, buy a house, go to college, have eight kids with him and oh god she needs to stop thinking like that right now.
She's pulled out of her head when he envelops her hand in his. She sends a grateful smile his way and he returns it as he fishes for the keys to his house. As he unlocks the door, Christine's nerves kick into overdrive and her hands start sweating so she pulls them from his grasp.
If he notices, he doesn't say anything, and ushers her into the house. She stands awkwardly in the hallway as he closes and re-locks the door. She slips her bag off and hangs it from the hook Jeremy usually hangs his bag.
He places his hand gently on the small of her back for a millisecond, and it sends warmth through her veins. As she thinks it, she realizes how cheesy that sounds, and realizes, oh no she's actually in love. (Oh no he's hot)
"Dad, I'm home!" Jeremy calls, and a pretty blonde woman peeks her head out of the kitchen doorway, drying her hands on a towel and immediately a grin breaks out on her face as she notices the two teens.
"Jeremy, good, you're here! I have to go to work in a few minutes, and your dad is at the store, but I started some spaghetti and wanted to know if you could finish it?" Christine wonders why she has such an odd work schedule, then notices the scrubs. Oh, she's a nurse. Wow. Mr. Heere really won the lottery with this one.
Jeremy nods uncertainly. Christine knows from experience how bad he is at cooking. She had tried toteach him once and it ended in them cleaning up hot water and raw pancake mix.
He was trying to make them pre-packaged ramen noodles.
Heidi sticks her hand out and Christine shakes it.
"You must be Christine. Jeremy's talked a lot about you," Heidi has a nice voice, Christine notices. It's kind of high pitched, but cute in a lazy, laid back kind of way.
Her blue eyes are sweet and crinkle around the edges when she smiles. Speaking of, her smile is kind and her blonde hair is wispy around the edges, and looks like she sprayed it with hairspray then crunched it with her hands. It's a nice look on her.
She waves them farther in, and Christine is hit by the sharp smell of spaghetti sauce. There are noodles boiling on the stove, and garlic bread is baking in the oven.
Heidi takes no time to brief them on what is happening, then grabs her coat and hurries out the door.
That leaves them standing awkwardly in the kitchen, until the noodle water starts boiling over, and Christine wastes no time in grabbing a towel and turning the heat on the stove down.
She wipes the excess water off the stove and sets the wet towel in the left side of the sink. She picks up the pot of noodles and pours it in the strainer sitting in the right side.
"Jeremy, can you stir the sauce, please?" He complies, but somehow manages to singe the wooden spoon against the burner.
Christine sighs, a bit dramatically, and jokingly rolls her eyes at him. She stirs the sauce and tosses the spoon in the sink (the side without the spaghetti in it.)
The stove is still turned off and the sauce is moved away from the hot burner. She makes three plates of spaghetti (hopefully Evan likes spaghetti sauce. If not, she's fucked), and pulls the garlic bread out from the oven. (She burns her hand a little and Jeremy kind of freaks out, but she puts some ice on it and continues being the good Mom Friend™ she is.)
Speaking of Jeremy, Christine sends him upstairs to get Evan when his fussing gets too much for her.
She sets the plate at the Heere's dining table (which is now clean and free of bills and random papers, thanks to, Christine assumes, Heidi.) As she Christine-dances away from the table, her phone buzzes on the counter. It's Rich.
Fuckinsale: hey do you wanna go get groceries w me tomorrow
Chchchchicken: ?
Fuckinsale: my old mans out of town and Michael is eating me out of house and home inbetween
Chchchchicken: rich don't say it
Fuckinsale: sex stuff
Chchchchicken: rich why are you like this
Fuckinsale: bls chris
Fuckinsale: i need food
Chchchchicken: fine but you better buy me some dippin dots
Fuckinsale: thank
Fuckinsale: also when did we need to have our essays done for english
Chchchchicken: Monday
Fuckinsale: fuck
Chchchchicken: RICH
Fuckinsale: its fine I'll figure it out
Chchchchicken: you better bc im not helping you
Fuckinsale: :(
Chchchchicken: i have to go eat w Jeremy and his brother leave me alone
Fuckinsale: ooh~
Chchchchicken: dont
Fuckinsale: use protection
Chchchchicken: /:
Chchchchicken: bye
Fuckinsale: bi
Chchchchicken has left the conversation
Fuckinsale: hahah get it bc im bi
Fuckinsale: im so funny I make myself cackL E
Fuckinsale: oh she left
Christine puts her phone away and mentally makes a note to leave early enough to go to the store with Rich tomorrow.
She gets some parmesan cheese and whatever else you put on spaghetti out of the cabinets and sets them by the plates.
As she does, there is stomping from the stairs and she snaps her head up as the two boys head down the stairs. Jeremy comes down first, followed by a kid about their age.
He has light brown hair and blue eyes, filled with honesty, which is odd, considering his backstory (though Christine isn't one to judge, considering her boyfriend vored a computer to be with her). This is Evan, she assumes.
He must've just said something funny, because Jeremy is still laughing as they trek into the kitchen.
Jeremy stops suddenly, gripping Evans arm so he stops too.
"Oh-oh my god. Evan look. It's my mom," he starts to bounce slightly, and that makes Christine's heart explode because he's so cute. "Look, she made us dinner! Check the fridge, she might have packed us a lunch, too!"
She ignores Jeremy, because he's honestly taking her role as everyone's mom too seriously, and reaches out to shake Evan's hand. He seems to hesitate a bit, then shakes her hand gingerly, like he's afraid he'll hurt her.
She introduces herself, trying to be open and friendly. According to Jeremy, he has anxiety, and she really doesn't need to be part of, or the whole, reason another person has a panic attack. (She still feels bad about off-handedly being the reason Michael spent most of last Halloween in the bathroom.)
They sit down to eat, and halfway through, hear Mr. Heere enter and the rustling of paper bags. There's a loud grunting noise and the sound of something falling.
Jeremy leans back in his seat to see and immediately pushes his chair back on all fours, pretending he was eating the whole time. His face turns red with contained laughter and his shoulder are shaking.
Christine pokes him with her fork and asks him what's wrong. He just shakes his head and tries not to laugh out loud, for fear of-something. Christine isn't really sure what he saw, and definitely doesn't want to know.
They continue eating.
Eventually Mr. Heere comes in, disgruntled and carrying a bag with a giant hole in the bottom, muttering about the "damn wet grocery bags" or something. Again, Christine really does not want to know.
Mr. Heere looks surprised to see Christine, which is odd. Maybe it's not surprise, but-actually, she has no idea.
"Christine, I saw your mom at the store today," her head snaps up. She hasn't seen her mom for about two weeks. "Said she was in town for a poetry slam or something. Know anything about that?"
She thinks hard, then shakes her head. "No, she never said anything to me about it, but I guess I should ask her about it later." She's going to have a very interesting conversation with her mom later.
As much as she loves her mom (a hell of a lot more than her dad), her disappearing acts always annoy Christine. Especially when she and her brother are supposed to go over to her house for the weekend and she texts and says she isn't going to be there.
Christine picks up her plate and rinses it in the sink, placing it in the dishwasher after. She leans on the counter and stares at the sink faucet, contemplating tomorrow and the inevitable conversation with her mom.
She doesn't even realize Mr. Heere has left the room, followed by Evan after washing his plate. It's just her and Jeremy now, but she isn't even listening to anything.
She's lost in her mind, swimming through thoughts like water, unable to hear and talk, able to breathe but not trying very hard. She is, but not heavily. It's more of a light sigh, and she doesn't even realize she's breathing like that until Jeremy lightly touches her elbow.
She gasps a little when he does, jerking her head around to face him. She's pulled out of her trance and immediately wants to sit down. She leans on him a little, playing with her fingers.
"Are you okay? You zoned out there for a second," he says, still making contact with her elbow. The touch grounds her, makes her feel less floaty, and more real.
She gets like this sometimes. She just disembodies herself from her mind, lost in thought, hears nothing, feels nothing, does nothing, until she snaps out of it.
It usually only happens when she's stressed, which gives Christine a clear signal to take a breather before she wears herself thin.
It's helpful, she knows, just unfortunate when she's in the middle of class and suddenly realizes she's missed the last five minutes of notes, then has to miss even more so she can go to the bathroom and calm down.
"Yeah," she replies, "just tired. I need to sit down or something, maybe watch a bootleg or two with my wonderful boyfriend, you know, the usual homemade cure."
She's joking, though it would be nice to watch Falsettos or Great Comet with Jeremy, just like the old days.
She misses those.
Two hours later she and Jeremy are knee-deep into season three of Parks and Recreation (something she had started watching a while back thanks to Jake), and Jeremy has listened to Christine complain about Mark for the seventh time in thirty minutes.
Evan was downstairs with Mr. Heere, watching some nature documentary on the Discovery channel.
Laying at the foot of Jeremy's small bed with him, watching Netflix and joking around was something she's missed for a while.
"Christine, he's not even in season three, why are you still upset about it?"
"Because, Jere, he's just so- so- argh! I can't even talk about him anymore, I'm going to have an aneurism! I hate him so much, he's so selfish and doesn't know how have a good, healthy, relationship, and Anne totally doesn't deserve to be his girlfriend, because she's so much better than him!"
She grabs the remote and turns the tv off, and Jeremy protests loudly. She swats his shoulder lightly.
"Don't be a baby. You've seen this season at least four times now."
He mutters a grumpy "okay", before leaning over her for his phone, stretching his arm out toward the nightstand farthest from them, where it sat.
In his struggle to grab it, he flopped down on top of Christine.
And layed there.
She struggles underneath his weight (which wasn't much, because the only muscle strength she's gained lately is from moving props for theater, so she isn't the strongest), and awkawardly turns to hit his shoulder again.
"Get off me!" She screeches, gasping for breath under his body and between laughter. She turns around onto her back and beats her hands on his back.
While this is all going on, Jeremy is laughing and rolling around on top of his girlfriend, ignoring the feeling of her wriggling to get out of his grasp, of her fists gently pounding his back.
Eventually Christine gives up and resumes the show, no longer paying attention to Jeremy on top of her.
After a little, he grabs his phone and scrolls through twitter, harassing Jenna by tagging her in embarrassing pictures of her Rich sent him, laughing at the few three-in-the-morning-thoughts Jake has posted.
He looks through Christine's tweets, smiling at the few she's recently posted, mostly group pictures of them all at school, at the spring carnival from a few week ago, because her twitter is full of sweet, innocent things. It's very Christine.
Then he sees that a few hours ago someone has tagged her in something a few hours ago. Just reading it makes him angry.
It's Dustin.
Hey thespianigula, did your boyfriend clean his shirt after you snotted it all up with your tears and problems? Because there sure are a lot of them, it seems
Underneath is a picture of her and Jeremy sitting on the bench, close together. Christine is looking down, and even from the distance, you can see the tears on her cheeks and Jeremy is staring at her helplessly.
Immediately he stiffens, blood boiling with rage. It's a low-blow, of course, but that's just like Dustin, to do something like that.
He tears his eyes from his phone when he feels Christine successfully pull herself from underneath him, grabbing her phone from beside her.
"I'll be right back. I'm gonna call my mom." She says, heading towards the bathroom. He grabs her arm gentl before she can go very far.
"Wait a sec, Chris, you might want to see this, it's kind of important." She starts to protest, until he shows her the screen.
Her immediate reaction is anger. Then to call Dustin and talk it over, but with a lot more screaming.
Maybe if they met in person, she could slap him, too.
Instead, she closes her eyes, takes a deep breath, and plans to resolve it later.
"Okay, I'll talk to him about it later, right now I have to call my mom." She says, and heads through the door that connects Jeremy's room to the upstairs bathroom.
Jeremy waits anxiously for her to come out, texting the Emergency Group Chat™ (made by him, including everyone in their friend group except Christine, for moments like these, when he had a Christine problem), about the situation.
They text back with things like I'll kick his ass!,,,, (Rich), and others like i can socially ruin that bitch if you want me to (Chloe), and Jeremy is suddenly glad he has friends like that.
Jeremy's head snaps up when he hears loud arguing from the bathroom. It's not exactly yelling, because she would never yell unless it was a joke and not out of anger, but she's very close to it right now.
That makes him even more anxious.
When Christine comes out of the bathroom, her face is kind of red and her mascara slightly smudged, and Jeremy opens his arms wide from where he's leaning on the headboard of his bed.
She falls into them gratefully, hugging her boyfriend's waist tightly. Her head is resting facedown on his chest, and she's shaking a little, he notices. He hugs her tighter.
Eventually, they go from leaning against his bed to laying down, Christine's face still pressed into his chest, clinging to him like a lifeline.
She's been doing that a lot, lately.
Christine has always considered herself a strong person. She takes care of her little brother when her dad gets too drunk (so, all the time), gets her work done on time, never asks for help on things she can handle on her own, but sometimes it's nice to be held.
Maybe that's why Jackson like hugs so much.
Jeremy is aware of Christine's every move, when she shifts a little, or breathes a little heavily, or stops shaking, just to make sure she doesn't faint from stress or something. (That almost happened before. It was a crazy night.)
When her breathing evens out and she stops moving, he hopes she fell asleep and didn't pass out or something. He moves his arm a little to grab his phone and check the time. 9:36.
He pulls the blankets underneath them down, trying not to wake Christine up. She doesn't, luckily, just shifts a little, and Jeremy is able to cover them both with the sheets.
He falls asleep, as soon as he turns his lamp light off.
OOF this is a lot shittier than I thought. I tried for angst but half of this was finished today bc I wanted to get it out so the sadness factor is very low and bad. Also Jackson is Christine's brother and if I didn't mention that I'm sorry he's kinda important.
im trying to make Christine's life kinda shitty rn bc the only way I know how to show affection for my favorite character is to make them suffer but it'll get better soon I promise.
get ready bc next chapter is when Christine and Rich go to the store so that'll be fun whoo
(the 'at' sign for like email and twitter etc. didn't work when I saved this for christines twitter handle so just pretend that's there oop)
bls forgive me if I make a mistake in grammar or spelling I proofread it but,,,,
bye hoes I quit with this altogether ugh