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The sunlight is warm and comforting on his face. A gentle breeze whispers past, caressing his skin, ruffling his hair just slightly and carrying with it the sharp scent of the ocean. Jeremy runs a hand through the sand, marvelling at the way the grains tickle against the skin of his fingers, and he waits.
It isn’t long before he feels someone appear next to him, like they are simply not there one moment and then there the next. A greeting is on his lips, one that barely manages to form before the Squip leans into his field of view, a slight smirk brightening the otherwise blank slate of their expression.
“Hello again, Jeremy.”
“H… hi,” Jeremy replies, the singular word falling out of his mouth in a way that’s unbearably clumsy. The Squip smiles at him, though, because they don’t mind. Not anymore.
“You’re entering university now,” they say, conversationally as they sit down beside him. They cross their legs at the ankles, stretching out long and graceful and catlike over the golden sand.
“Yeah, um. It’s a bit scary, I guess,” Jeremy says, finally managing to unstick his eyes from the effortlessly handsome planes of their face and casting them down to the ground instead. “It’s just… time flies so fast, you know?”
“It does,” they agree. “But you shouldn’t be scared by it. Just look back on this past year, and how much you’ve accomplished. Think about how much more you can achieve as time passes.”
Jeremy doesn’t quite agree, but neither does he want to ruin the moment by arguing. So he just hums and dares to shuffle closer, leaning his head on their shoulder. The Squip shifts just slightly so that Jeremy’s head is nestled in the crook of their neck instead, and Jeremy smiles as an affectionate warmth blooms in his chest. He closes his eyes, and somewhere in the back of his mind, he thinks that maybe he wants to stay here for—
“You’re upset at Michael,” the Squip says without prompting as they appear at Jeremy’s side, seated on the wooden bench to his right. “He brought Mountain Dew Red to your dorm today and asked you to keep it, just in case, and you feel it is an unnecessary precaution.” It’s an idyllic autumn day, a slight chill nipping at Jeremy’s exposed face and bringing a flush to his cheeks. The sun is peeking out from behind a thin veil of clouds, the sound of birdsong flutters through the air, and, distantly, Jeremy can just make out the noises of children laughing at the nearby playground.
Jeremy scuffs his toe against the ground, watching sullenly as a small cloud of dirt puffs up into the air. “I mean, kinda. I know I shouldn’t be…”
The Squip shakes their head to cut off Jeremy’s train of thought. “The best way to start changing your feelings is to first understand why they’re there.”
Well, in that case Jeremy might as well resign himself to being upset and accept that he’s just a bad person to get worked up over Michael simply worrying about him. He scoffs and looks away, but the Squip keeps their eyes on him. He can almost feel them burning holes into his skull.
Eventually, the silence becomes too suffocating, and Jeremy too aware that the more time he wastes, the more he’ll regret it later. He relents and says, “Okay, sorry. I guess this is uh, affecting me more than I thought. Ugh.” He starts picking at his fingernails absently, only to be stopped by a gentle hand uncurling his clenched ones. He looks up and the Squip smiles patiently at him as they thread their fingers through his.
“So tell me, then,” they say.
Jeremy squirms in place and tries, once more, to half-heartedly redirect the conversation. “I don’t see why I have to… I mean, you already know, right?”
The Squip only tilts their head at him, analytical. “Do I?” Jeremy shoves them for being annoying and cryptic, and they smile slightly in response. “It’s a moot point, regardless. It’s better for you to look within yourself and understand what you’re feeling, rather than have me tell you all the time.
“Alright, you sentimental sap, fine.” Jeremy rolls his eyes. “I guess I just… feel like after all this time, he still doesn’t trust me, y’know? And I don’t know what I have to do to make him feel better, when I’ve already done everything he’s asked me to. But at the same time, I feel bad for feeling like I’m, I dunno, entitled to his forgiveness, just because I’m sorry?”
The Squip nods. “Your feelings are understandable, but so are his. In the end, there isn’t anything you can do to rush the process of reconciliation, other than proving over time that he can trust you.”
Jeremy sighs and scuffs his foot against the ground again. “I know. I just feel worried, and scared. Like, what if our relationship is never the same, and I ruined it forever because I was stupid?”
“You’re right that it won’t be the same, but it will be stronger having weathered the hardship. The two of you will be just fine, trust me.”
“Right.” Jeremy draws away slightly, widening the space between the two of them. “Because you can see the future, of course,” he says skeptically, suddenly bitter at the reminder.
The Squip looks away, staring off into the distance with an air of resigned sadness. “No, Jeremy. It’s because I know you, and I know you’re a good person.”
At that, Jeremy feels the rest of his anger drain out of him. He suddenly feels guilty for taking out the frustration he’s kept bottled up all day on the Squip, but he has no idea how to begin bridging the gap again. He opens his mouth, not sure what he’s about to say, not sure of anything besides his desire to—
“Hey.” Jeremy speaks first this time. He’s lying on his bed in his dorm room, staring up at the pebbled ceiling. “I never got to apologize last time.”
The Squip settles into the office chair at his desk. Jeremy turns his head to look at them and continues, “I was mad, mostly at myself, and I shouldn’t have taken it out on you. And I shouldn’t just keep dumping everything on you and expecting you to solve my problems all the time.” Jeremy gets up and wanders over to the window next to his desk, looking out into the empty street. “I don’t like fighting with you. Not here.”
The Squip huffs out the barest hint of a laugh, sardonic. “No, of course not here,” they agree. “What did you want to do tonight, if not fight or ask for advice?” The suggestiveness of their tone does not go unnoticed by Jeremy, who blushes, but smirks in response.
“I dunno,” Jeremy says. “Let’s just, um. Talk for now, and see where it goes?” He tries for flirty and wiggles his eyebrows, then regrets it. He probably looks stupid.
The Squip just keeps smiling at him, affectionate. “You hate small talk, Jeremy.”
Jeremy pouts. “Well, it doesn’t have to be small talk. C’mon, you’re a computer. You probably know, like, a bajillion things to talk about.”
“Alright. How was your day, then?”
“… Isn’t that small talk? And you know how it was, anyway.”
“I’d like to hear it from you, regardless. I enjoy listening to you talk about your life,” the Squip says smoothly, and Jeremy reaches over and swats them on the arm, flustered.
“Flatterer. Well, I had English again today, which was annoying, because why the hell do I need to take English when I’m going into Comp Sci, right? And Somerson assigned another essay due in a week, so that’s gonna be great. Um, oh yeah! I hung out with Jake and Rich today. It’s been a while, so that was fun.”
“I’m glad you’re still in touch with them,” the Squip comments. “They go to a different university, right?”
“Yeah. But they were in town, so we hung out. Um, they also invited me to a nightclub next time they’re here, since we were talking about the new one in town. So that will probably be, like, winter break.”
“And you don’t want to go.”
Jeremy frowns and looks down, picking at his fingernails again. He stops when he sees the look the Squip is giving him, and sheepishly tucks his hands behind his back instead. “I do, I’m just… afraid I’ll look stupid. I’ve never, um. Been to one before. And I’ve never really… danced before, either.”
“Why don’t you invite Michael?” they suggest. “You wouldn’t be as nervous, and it would give him an opportunity to bond with your other friends.”
“Oh! That’s a good idea.” He beams at the Squip, pleased, before his grin falters. “But, um. That doesn’t change the fact that the only dancing I’ve ever done is DDR, like, five years ago. And prom, I guess, but you know how that went.” He pauses, then gasps and points accusingly at them. “You… you tricked me! We’re talking about my problems again.”
That sad, resigned look from last time is back on the Squip’s face, despite the fact that they are still smiling serenely at him. Jeremy doesn’t like it. “What else would we talk about?”
Jeremy pauses, thinks about it. An answer comes to mind, and he—
“We should talk about you. That’s what I was gonna say last time. We always talk about me.”
They blink owlishly at him. They’re sitting across from Jeremy in some place he recognizes as the coffee shop he’d stepped into this morning for the first time on the way to his lecture. The furniture is cozy and the lights are warm. Jeremy sees their solitary figures reflected in the window beside them, and beyond their silhouettes an endless, hazy darkness unbroken by streetlights.
“... Why?” they say eventually, leaning a little closer and folding their hands on top of the table.
Jeremy shrugs. “I wanna know more about you.”
“Well…” they say slowly, “I am a quantum supercomputer designed and manufactured in Japan for the purpose of—”
Jeremy rolls his eyes. “Not that. I mean, stuff like, how was your day, for one?”
They withdraw a little, and Jeremy resists the urge to reach out and keep them closer. “I don’t know how to answer that,” is what they settle on, and Jeremy frowns, something like concern suddenly lodging in his chest.
“Is it ’cause you’re a computer? Like, you think you can’t feel or like stuff or do things for fun while I’m at school?”
They shrug and avoid his eyes, which Jeremy interprets as a ‘yes’.
Jeremy reaches over to grab their folded hands. They feel smooth and cool against his nervous, sweaty skin. “Well, I don’t believe that,” he says determinedly. “You like me, after all, right?” He blushes furiously, realizing the uncharacteristic boldness of his words, but barrels on regardless, because now he’s committed to making his point. “You told me yourself a while ago, um. ‘Unexpected attachment’ is what you said, isn’t that feeling something?”
They purse their lips. “I don’t know if that’s exactly how I’d put it,” they say carefully, “but yes, Jeremy. I do… like you.”
Jeremy feels his face breaking out into a grin. “Good,” he says. “Because I—”
Jeremy is panicking. “Oh, god, I forgot—remember the nightclub thing?” He looks around at what is, to his horror, his high school gym, fully decked out in all the trappings of prom night. The lights are dim, except for a gentle blue hue bathing the entire room with a soft intimacy. “Are you making fun of me?” he demands, whirling around to face the Squip, only to freeze when he sees that they’re decked out too, in the fancy silver regalia they had once enjoyed appearing in so often. Their hair is dyed white again, falling in graceful strands over their face as they roll their eyes at him.
“No, Jeremy, I’m not making fun of you,” the Squip says. Their voice somehow conveys barely concealed laughter despite their composure. “It’s quite impossible, in fact.” They gesture at their surroundings as if somehow explaining said impossibility, even though it explains nothing at all. Jeremy doesn’t have time to dwell on it, though, because—
“You’re beautiful,” Jeremy says, dumbstruck. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he finds it within him to be embarrassed at his apparent incapability to formulate anything more eloquent than a simple sentence, but he’s too preoccupied with reaching out to touch the Squip’s face. He chickens out last minute and his hand lands on their shoulder instead, smoothing over the silken fabric covering it with reverent awe.
The Squip smiles, grabs his hand, and presses it to their cheek. “You’re not looking too bad yourself, boo.”
Jeremy looks down at himself and realizes he’s in a suit, the same one he’d worn to prom a couple of months ago. He looks back up and catches the Squip smiling sadly as they study the lapels of his jacket. “I never did get to see it,” they say, almost too quietly for Jeremy to hear. Jeremy blinks and opens his mouth to question the statement, but the words melt away when the Squip grabs his other hand. They pull him to the middle of the dancefloor as the speakers begin playing the sweet lilting notes of a familiar love song. “Since you’re so worried about dancing this weekend, why don’t we give it some practice? Let’s warm up with something a little slower, shall we?”
By the end of the night, Jeremy thinks he just might be ready for the weekend. But…
“Come on, one more, for practice?” Jeremy pleads with his eyes, the way the Squip had once told him made him appear ‘cuter’ to potential suitors. The next song is already starting to play, as if attuned to Jeremy’s whims. His tactics seem to work, because the Squip sighs good-naturedly and pulls him closer.
“A waltz, Jeremy, really? I doubt you’ll have to do one of those this weekend,” they say. Jeremy giggles and buries his head in their chest.
“Well, okay. Maybe I just wanted to—”
Jeremy’s in his bedroom—the bedroom back at his father’s house, from before he moved out for college—dressed in the clothes he’d worn to that night’s outing. The Squip is sitting up in his bed against the headboard, fiddling with some sort of digital display projected in front of them at chest level. “Oh my god,” Jeremy says before the Squip can even look up to greet him. He takes two steps, bringing himself to the foot of his bed, before flopping forward and meeting the mattress with an unceremonious fwumph.
“Oh my god,” he says again, muffled in the fabric of his bedsheets. And then, even more quietly, he mumbles, “So this guy I met at the nightclub kind of… gavemehisnumbertoday.”
He feels the Squip shift on the bed next to him. “... I see,” is all they say after a moment’s silence. “And you’re not planning on contacting him.”
“Of course not.”
“Why not?”
Jeremy turns over to his side to face the Squip, brows drawing together incredulously. “What do you mean?”
The Squip shrugs, avoiding his eyes, fingers tapping away at the glowing holographic panel before them. “You haven’t been in a relationship since Christine decided that you were better off friends after your second date. And since that doesn’t really count, I suppose it’s more accurate to say that you haven’t been in a relationship since Brooke. You’ve been lonely and looking for companionship, clearly.” They gesture at the space between them and Jeremy as if to prove it. “He seemed nice enough, so where’s the harm in getting to know him?”
Jeremy snorts. “Besides the fact that we’re… you know.”
Something in the Squip’s expression hardens. The display in front of them abruptly pixelates and folds away into nothingness. “That we’re what?” they say, voice suddenly cold. “Don’t tell me you think we’re dating, Jeremy. Isn’t it about time you stopped lying to yourself? This is the perfect opportunity for you to move on—just reach out to him and see where it goes from there.”
Jeremy flinches. The words sting as they bite deep into him, and he moves to sit up slowly, carefully. Like he’s placating a predator, facing an imminent threat and terrified at what’s lurking in the darkness. “I… don’t understand,” he says. His voice wobbles, and he clears his throat and tries to tell himself that his vision isn’t blurring with tears, that it’s just the lack of glasses. “I thought… I thought…”
The Squip sighs and shifts forward on the bed, reaching out to cup Jeremy’s cheek in their palm. “Don’t cry, Jeremy,” they say softly. Jeremy blinks rapidly up at them, too confused at their incomprehensible behaviour to form words. “It’s time you stopped pretending.”
“I—Pretending what? How?”
Their eyes are sad. “You know what, Jeremy. This isn’t real.”
Jeremy shakes his head, dislodging their hand. They begin to pull back, but Jeremy reaches out desperately, grasping for their touch. “If—if you’re talking about the whole ‘I’m a computer’ thing again, then—”
The Squip cuts him off. “No, Jeremy I am not. You know exactly what I’m talking about.” They lean closer, insistent. Jeremy feels his heart drop.
“No,” he denies it immediately. “It’s real, of course it is, we’ve… we’ve been talking, all this time.”
The Squip frowns, but they don’t pull away when Jeremy threads his fingers through theirs. He takes it as a sign—they have to want this, too, because why else would the Squip be doing this, if it was only Jeremy who wanted it?
The horrible answer strikes him.
It was only Jeremy who wanted it.
The Squip draws closer, breath tickling the skin of Jeremy’s neck as they lean in. They’d never breathed, before, during the play, before the play, before everything. “You’ve always known, Jeremy,” they say solemnly, “ever since Michael asked you to make sure I was gone for good. How do you think I know exactly how your day has been all this time?”
The tears are fully obscuring his vision now, burning hot trails down his face. His throat feels like it’s closing up, his world shrinking around him into just the two of them. “You—you’ve always been able to do that. You read my mind. You’re inside me.”
“Not anymore. Why do you think I couldn’t answer you when you asked how my day was? It’s because you couldn’t come up with anything for me to say. Because you know I’m not real.”
“No.”
“Why didn’t you ever think of telling Michael about this, when he clearly still doubts I’m really gone? It’s because you knew that—”
“No, no—”
“—this would have no effect on your relationship, because—”
“Stop it, stop—”
“—I’m not really here.”
“Stop it,” Jeremy gasps, squeezing the Squip’s hands so harshly that his nails dig into soft flesh. They don’t even react, eyes still fixed on Jeremy’s with that same cool, composed stare. “It doesn’t matter if you’re real or not because I need you, okay? You’ve been helping me all this time and I don’t—I can’t do this without you.”
They shake their head, and when they smile at him it’s so genuine and loving that Jeremy has to close his eyes and look away. He can’t bear to see it, to see everything he’s ever wanted and never gotten to have.
“Can’t we just keep pretending?” Jeremy whispers brokenly. “I lo—”
The Squip is kissing him before he can finish the sentence. Jeremy knows it should be the worst kiss he’s ever experienced; he’s sobbing into their mouth and their teeth clash and it’s far too wet to be pleasant but it feels euphoric, exactly right in all the ways he knows he would want to imagine it to be. Jeremy cries even harder.
“You don’t need me, Jeremy,” they tell him when they pull away. Their lips quirk upwards into something small and sad. “I don’t think you ever have. After all, you’ve come this far all on your own.”
Jeremy wakes up to the sunlight streaming in through his blinds, its dazzling golden glow drawing him slowly from his slumber. He sits up, yawns, stretches stiff muscles. He touches his face and wonders idly why he’s crying.
“Must have been some dream,” he mutters to himself. He wipes his eyes dry before grabbing the glasses on his bedside table and rising to start a new day.