Dirty Water || Boyf Riends Timeloop AU

|| Part Four ||

"Michael is going to go home in three hours. All you need to do until then is make them an enjoyable three hours. This is imperative."

Jeremy groaned, rolling over from where he was asleep on the ground. He could still hear Michael's slow breathing from on top of his bed, so there was really no reason for the SQUIP to have woken him up so early.

"You are a slow thinker. I'm ensuring that you'll have the time to plan. You should thank me for doing this."

"This is all that you know how to do," Jeremy muttered, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. He sat up, picking his phone up off of the floor. One of his earbuds had fallen out while he slept. The SQUIP grunted unhappily in the ear that held the other one. "This is literally all that you know how to do. You were literally programmed to do this."

"I can do so much more than this, Jeremy. I can do anything at all."

"Except be, you know, a living thing?"

"That was insensitive. I am hurt."

Jeremy scrambled to dig himself out of the hole he'd just flung himself into. "Sorry! I just meant, like, you know, you literally aren't alive, so—,"

"I was demonstrating my ability to use sarcasm," the SQUIP's voice managed to sound smug. "I can also do standup comedy and damsel in distress, if you're interested in my other emotional modes."

"Your emotional modes? Jesus, that's dark," Jeremy scrunched his nose up, shucking off his shirt from the day before and tugging off his pants. He checked over his shoulder, pausing for a moment until he was sure that Michael was still asleep. Right. Gotta...remember that he's not alone right now.

"Maybe stop thinking about the fact that you're not wearing clothes and do something about it, instead."

Right! Right, yes. That was something that he should definitely do.

Jeremy rummaged through his drawer, yanking out the first pair of pants that he saw and pulling them on. He grabbed a tan shirt from where it was hanging up in the closet—a shirt from one of the summer camps he went to with Michael when they were little—and pulled it on, fully aware that it clashed with the pants that he'd picked from his brilliantly random selection.

"Wake him up."

"W—how?"

"Jeremy Heere, you think too much."

Jeremy bit his lip, prodding Michael's shoulder and receiving a halfhearted intake of air as a response.

"Michael," he mumbled, gifting his friend with another slightly harsher poke.

"Stop poking him!"

"Then what do you suggest I do?"

"Push him off the bed."

"That's not any better."

"You asked me what I suggest you do, not what you would think best to do in this situation. And that is what I suggest. It is not my fault that you don't know how to run highly advanced technology."

"Go fuck yourself, how about that?"

"Are you...talking to yourself?" Michael gave Jeremy a groggy frown of confusion, squinting up at him from where he was running his hand along the bedside table to try and find his glasses.

"Wow, Einstein! Another brilliant study!"

Jeremy felt his face flush. He pressed Michael's glasses into his hand, waving his other hand around as he tried to come up with an excuse. "I'm just thinking out loud," he lied.