Chapter Text
Rich had been in the hospital for almost a week now, his body covered in bandages that the nurses had to remove from time to time to take care of the burns lying underneath.
To some extent he was glad he was passed out when he first arrived at the hospital — right after the fire. That way he didn't have to see the confused faces of nurses and doctors when they discovered the truth — Rich was a fraud. Or at least that's what he thought of himself at the moment, now that his SQUIP was gone.
You see, Rich was trans. He was born a woman but that just… didn't fit. It never did. And after some identity crisis he finally got that.. it'd never fit. So that's why he went through the haircuts, the name change, the binding… It had been hard. It was still hard, sometimes. Especially because of his father.
“Emily, please bring me this”, "Emily, please come here”. Emily. Emily. Emily. He dreaded that name. He hated it. Made him wanna punch something over and over again until the pain in his fist was enough to make him forget about that name. Made him wanna peel his skin off and get a new one. Made him wanna die and be born again as a true man.
Maybe he was overreacting. That's what the SQUIP had told him. “Don't get so worked up, Rich. You need to be more chill.”
At least at school he was called by his real name. The only good thing about people not giving a damn about him before he got his SQUIP was that people didn't remember who he was before. So, no Emily. Just Rich.
However, that didn't mean he was able to be himself. Not fully, at least.
As the SQUIP had good things like boosting his testosterone, training his voice to be low, erasing his lisp or damn, making him popular, it also had bad stuff. The shocks, for example. He couldn't think about some stuff, couldn't look at certain people or couldn't let his lips slip out. If he did, the SQUIP would shock him, sometimes so much he just settled for not speaking at all, just to prevent his lisp from showing up.
So yeah, the SQUIP wouldn't let Rich be himself either. If he even tried he would get a shock, and not to mention the constant manipulation. The SQUIP taking his dead mother's form and voice, his dad's sometimes too. It was tiring, to say the least.
No real Rich. Not at home, not at school… sometimes not even in his own mind. Maybe that was the reason he decided to end it all.
The fire.
He barely remembered it. The SQUIP taking his mother's voice and form… he lighting up the gas… warmth, light, pain. And then… Black. Black until he woke up at the hospital covered in bandages.
So that's how he ended up in the hospital and eventually met Michael Mell.
Was “meeting” the right term to use? He technically had known Michael for a while. The antisocial headphones kid. The gay loser. The stoner with a PT Cruiser.
But, those people weren't Michael. They were just… twisted images created by his friends who liked to put cruel nicknames on people. Nicknames that he himself had used, forced by his SQUIP.
Maybe “meeting” was the right word after all, since those weren't the real Michael. Just as he wasn't the real Richard Goranski back then.
Anyways. It was at the hospital, a Thursday, when he had properly met Michael.
Although… he technically had met him a few days earlier. Not properly. Or at least not how he would have liked. But it was the day Jeremy was brought into his room.
“Ask your friend, the antisocial headphones kid,” Rich told Jeremy when he asked why the SQUIPs were gone, cringing internally at the sound of his lisp.
“Uh… Michael?”, Jeremy asked, confused.
“Yeah.” Then, a question. Sudden and unexpected. Completely out of place and no SQUIP to stop it. “Is he your boyfriend?”
It surprised him more than it did Jeremy. The SQUIP had made him push those feelings, that curiosity, so deep down that he had forgotten they even existed in the first place. That was when something clicked in his mind. Oh my god I'm totally bi.
Jeremy shook his head, and just then Michael entered the hospital room. He gave Rich a look and walked past him awkwardly. Almost scared.
“Uhm, hi, Rich,” was the only thing he said before closing the curtains around Jeremy's bed.
Rich's heart dropped. Right, he was Michael's bully after all. Since the SQUIP had somehow fixed the fact that he was Jeremy's too, he had almost forgotten about it.
Shame filled him along with guilt. Michael was scared of him. Because he had let the SQUIP turn him into a shitty person. A bully.
He stared into the closed curtains, hearing Michael and Jeremy's whispers until a nurse came to take him to one of his many medical tests.
He was asleep that Thursday afternoon when the nightmares started. His mother. The SQUIP. His father. Fire. Jake. Screams.
He jolted awake, shaking violently and sweating. Michael was across the room, staring at him with a shocked and — maybe deep down — worried expression. Jeremy was sleeping, just as he was before the nightmare hit.
He stared at Michael like a deer in the headlights, wishing he could just sink into the floor and disappear forever. His body couldn't stop shaking and his eyes were burning with suppressed tears.
“Uh, Rich…,” Michael mumbled tentatively.
He closed his eyes tight, rubbing at them with his shaky hands, slightly worsening the irritation of the big burn on his face. Memories of the nightmare flooded him, especially his mother's voice saying horrible things to him over and over again.
He must had been making some weird stuff, or maybe the fact that he was rubbing at his burn was worrying enough to Michael, because he stood up from the side of Jeremy's bed and approached Rich’s.
“Hey, you're gonna hurt yourself, Rich.” Michael reached out, but just as he was about to touch Rich’s arm, he faltered and pulled away. “Should I call the nurses?”
That made him jolt. He pulled his hands away from his face and looked up at Michael.
“No!” He instantly felt embarrassed for his outburst. “I… It's fine. Sorry for, uhm, bothering you.”
Michael seemed taken aback by Rich’s words, which made him think that it was because of his lisp. Rich almost hit his head, like he used to do when his lisp slipped out, but he held back, not wanting to freak Michael out even more.
“You don't have to apologise, you know.” Pause. “Are you okay?” Michael asked him.
Rich felt worse, honestly. After bullying Michael the whole year, he was being nice to him. Guilt blended with the rest of feelings that were swirling in his mind. He hated himself. He hated himself so much for obeying the SQUIP, for letting him ruin his life and the lives of all the people around him.
Michael simply looked at him while he spiraled, patiently waiting for him to answer. Too awkward to push and too scared of making stuff worse.
Rich's mind kept reeling, thinking through every decision he had made in his life, every time he'd listened to the SQUIP. He looked up at Michael and saw his worried — but still kind — expression and almost broke down in tears.
“Why the hell don't you hate me?” was all he managed to say to Michael, his voice strained.
Michael's eyes widened a bit. Rich stared at him, waiting for an answer. He couldn't believe Michael didn't hate him, he couldn't believe that he was asking if he was okay, that he was trying to help.
“...hate you? I… No, man,” Michael answered, visibly uncomfortable.
Rich laughed bitterly. Because what else was he supposed to do? Cry and freak Michael out? God, he was a mess of feelings and regrets, and all he could think about was Michael being kind to him after he made his life hell all this time.
“I bullied you for like- a whole year,” Rich said like it was the most obvious thing in the world and Michael wasn't getting it. “I made your best friend get a SQUIP and end up in the hospital. How can you be talking to me at all?”
He laughed again. He felt like an idiot. A crazy person, almost. He just couldn't stop laughing at the absurdity of it all.
“Well, yeah, you were a bully,” Michael gave in.
He seemed to realize it wasn't the right thing to say after a few moments, but his words had calmed Rich down a bit, at least his bitter laughs had subsided.
“Then, why? Why be nice to me?” Rich pressed on. It still wasn't enough, he needed a reason, he needed to at least grasp into something that told him he wasn't so bad of a person after all, even if he knew it wasn't true.
Michael was about to speak, his mouth halfway open, when Jeremy spoke:
“Rich, my SQUIP made me ditch Michael a few weeks after I got it. I can't imagine what it made you do for a whole year,” Jeremy stated bluntly. He seemed to have woken up because of Rich’s laughter. All that he hoped is that Jeremy hadn't seen him almost breaking down because of a stupid nightmare.
Rich felt Michael tensing a bit after Jeremy's words, since he was quite close to his bed. Rich looked at both of them, their understanding calmed him down a bit, but still… Why were they giving him empathy?
“Look, I can't say I don't care about the bullying and that…,” Michael started, tentatively. “But, dude, Jeremy was like- a completely different person after he got his SQUIP.”
Michael looked at Rich intently, as if he was waiting for him to get it. But after he didn't give any sign if doing so, so Michael continued:
“What I'm trying to say is that I do not like your... squipped version or whatever. But I can’t judge you now based on that, because that's not who you are anymore,” Michael paused, thinking it over. “Or at least I hope so, man. You were a dick.”
That's not who you are anymore. The words resonated in his head. Who was he now? Who did he want to be? He was so used to other people, the SQUIP, or even his father telling him who he was. But right now? Michael was… leaving it to him. Giving him the chance to choose. And he didn't know how to deal with that much freedom.
He shook his head, snapping out of it. He didn't want to space out when Michael and Jeremy were so aware of him. He avoided their eyes.
“I… I guess I'm not that Rich anymore.” He gave a weak chuckle. “Man, I just can't understand you guys being so forgiving.”
“We all went through this SQUIP stuff,” Jeremy said, giving Rich a small smile. “I'm not saying we all went through the same, obviously, I meant—”
Michael cut Jeremy before he started rambling, backing up from Rich’s bed a bit.
“What he means is that you're not alone in this, man. We get it,” Michael paused, scratching his arm awkwardly. “To a certain point, at least.”
Rich looked up at Michael, and then averted his gaze to Jeremy, since he felt slightly less awkward looking at him.
“Damn… thanks, man. I don't know why I got so worked up over this,” he tried to mask his awkwardness with a smile, but it didn't quite work. “Thank you, really. You guys are too nice to me.”
Both of them gave Rich reassuring words as Michael returned to Jeremy’s side of the room and, this time, didn't close the curtains.
Even if Rich was a bit self-conscious of what to say and what not to say, they had a pretty nice conversation between the three of them. It almost made Rich forget that the only reason Michael was there was Jeremy. It made him forget that none of his friends had come to visit.
However, when the nurses finally came to drag Michael out at the end of visit hours, Jeremy excused himself and went to sleep. That gave Rich plenty of time to think.
He thought about Michael not hating him. About him wanting to help. Then he thought it was weird thinking so much about Michael so his thoughts drifted into his own friends. Could he call them friends anymore? He'd burned down the house of his best friend, putting at risk the lives of his other friends.
Now that he really thought about it, maybe there was a reason no one ever came to visit. But, even with that, they had sent him flowers, get-better cards and a bunch of other gifts. What did all that mean? Why send a gift and not visit?
Thinking about that stuff made his head hurt, so he decided it'd be better to just sleep. He glanced at Jeremy's side of the room, where he was sleeping deeply. He wished his naps could be as peaceful as Jeremy's looked.
With a sigh, he lay down as best as he could — given the layers of bandages covering his body — and closed his eyes, hoping for the nightmares to let him sleep this once.
—
It was not until a couple of days later that he and Michael could talk properly.
He was staring at the hospital ceiling — his phone had obviously been destroyed in the fire, so he had nothing to do most of the time — when Michael slowly approached his bed.
Jeremy was asleep. Rich had come to learn that Jeremy was quite the sleepyhead. He spent most of the day sleeping, except when Michael came to visit. Still, there were some times when he slept while Michael was here, in which Michael just slipped on his headphones and waited for Jeremy to wake up.
That day was different, though. Because Michael had approached Rich.
He looked at Michael when he was close enough and gave him a small smirk.
“Hey there, Headphones.”
The nickname had sounded cut—cool in his head, but just as he was saying it he realised it probably wasn't the best thing to tell Michael. That, mixed with how ugly his lisp sounded to him, made him cringe.
“Sorry,” he apologised, looking away.
“It's fine,” Michael waved it off, putting down his headphones.
Both of them hesitated, surrounded by an awkward silence. Rich's gaze was still averted, while Michael was kind of deciding where he should look.
“How are youuuu?” Michael asked, changing his sentence from ‘your burns’ to simply ‘you’.
“Fine, I guess.”
Rich shrugged. His gaze went back to Michael. What was the thing to say now? In times like this he wished SQUIPs weren't gone. Though if they weren't, he'd probably end up being a dick to Michael.
Rich forced himself to keep the conversation going, not wanting to be left alone to his thoughts again.
“How're you doing?” He asked, looking at Michael.
“Good! I'm glad Jeremy's okay now,” Michael answered in the usual bubbly tone he used with Jeremy, though he seemed a bit troubled.
“Yeah, that’s all thanks to you for getting rid of the stupid pills,” Rich said, gratefully.
“Hah… I guess it is.”
Michael smiled a bit, and Rich felt weirdly good for that. Looks like he wasn't that bad talking without the SQUIP! Maybe he actually could live without it and keep his cool-person status.
“Jeremy gets discharged tomorrow, right?” Rich asked, trying to seem happy about it. However, he actually dreaded the moment when he would be left alone in that room.
Michael's smile seemed to vanish at the question, and with it Rich’s hopes of being good at talking without the SQUIP's help.
“I… uh, did I say something wrong?” Rich mumbled tentatively, the insecurity clear in his voice.
Michael was quick to shake his head in denial.
“No, man. It's just… I still don't know how to feel about the whole SQUIP stuff, you know?”
Rich tensed up a bit, Michael mentioning the SQUIPs made him remember all over again how bad of a person he was. And having the day where Jeremy and Michael wouldn't be in the same room so close… Well, he didn't know how he'd deal with the guilt if they left.
Michael didn't seem to notice Rich’s internal turmoil, so he continued talking:
“I mean, I know the SQUIP made him say those things. But it hurt, man. I don't think I've forgiven him.”
Rich seemed to snap out of his thoughts at Michael's words. Why was Michael telling him all this? Him. Of all people.
“I… You're talking about Jeremy?” Was all that Rich could say, too stunned to fully grasp what Michael was saying.
“Yeah. He's my best friend and he’ll always be. But he really hurt me, you know? And he hasn't like- properly apologised.”
“Wait. He hasn't?” Rich asked, maybe too surprised.
Michael looked at him running a hand through his hair.
“Well, not really. He tried at the play, but the SQUIP wouldn't let him and then… I guess he assumed it was all okay between us? Since I helped him with the mountain dew and came to visit here…”
“Yeah, man. But that's no excuse to… not apologise,” Rich paused. Then realised and tensed up.
He was being kind of hypocritical, wasn't he? Claiming that Jeremy had to apologise when he hadn't after bullying both him and Michael? Guilt came back. Hard.
“Oh, God. I'm a hypocrite, aren't I?” Rich said with a bitter chuckle. “I should be in my knees begging for both of your forgiveness.”
Michael’s eyes widened, and he raised his hands awkwardly.
“No, Rich. Really, you're forgiven,” Michael said, almost scared.
“No! But that's not fair. I was a total dick to both of you. Maybe especially to you. I should…” Rich trailed off, his mind swirling with ways of apologising.
“No, really. I get it, okay? Jeremy has told me the whole thing about the SQUIPs. I understand you had to—”
“No, Michael. You really don't get it, okay? If I ever got the SQUIP, it was because I wanted to. And if I ever bullied you, it was because I wanted to be popular and knew the way to do it was being a total dick.”
He honestly felt like crying. He felt horrible. Guilty. He felt extremely frustrated. Why couldn't Michael get it? Why was he being so nice after he—
“Rich, I know what it's like to feel like a complete loser, okay?” Rich looked at Michael, his train of thoughts coming to a halt. “That I felt completely fine because Jeremy was with me doesn't mean other people don't have to turn to an evil tictac.”
It was clear that his last words were intended to be a joke. To break through the tension. But Rich could feel the resentment in Michael’s words.
He understood.
Michael felt he wasn't enough. It wasn't just about Jeremy being mean to him under the SQUIP’s influence. It was about him feeling like he had to use a stupid pill to feel okay. To feel loved.
Rich's eyes widened a bit as he looked up at Michael. He seemed to falter at that.
“Uh, what?” Michael mumbled self-consciously.
“Look, I…” Rich trailed off, running a hand through his hair as he gathered the words. “I'm… really sorry. I shouldn't have shown SQUIPs to Jeremy in the first place.”
Michael let out a sigh. Then he stayed quiet, looking at his hands as if he was wondering what to do now.
“It's okay. Thanks to the SQUIP he can see how much he's worth, you know? Maybe from now on he will understand that being popular isn't everything.”
Rich let out a breath he didn't know he was holding. Michael's words had relieved his guilt, at least for now.
“Yeah. And if he doesn't I'll make sure to teach him,” Rich smirked. “I guess I know about how little being popular actually helps.”
Michael smiled, and that feeling of success filled Rich again. He liked making him smile. Maybe it was like some sort of subconscious compensation for all the things he did to him.
“Honestly, I kinda wish Jeremy didn't get discharged yet,” Michael stated, fiddling with the cable of his headphones. “I feel like there's so much we haven't talked about yet. And knowing Jeremy he'll go back to normal.” Michael made a small grimace.
Rich could imagine the awkwardness of it all. Kind of like the awkwardness of his own conversations with Michael.
“Hey, I'm sure if you talk to him things will turn out okay. I mean, you're Michael and Jeremy. I honestly don't know anyone else as close as you guys. I even thought you were dating!”
Michael chuckled at that, a dimple forming in his cheek. Rich found himself staring at it for a few seconds before looking away.
“I’ll admit the ‘Boyf riends’ thing was good. Although Jere wasn't so happy about it.”
Rich smiled. The mention of his past actions towards Jeremy and Michael left a sour feeling behind. But, at the same time, hearing Michael laugh about it made him slightly better. Like a bit of guilt being lifted off his shoulders.
A beat passed as both of them just looked at each other with a smile. Then, Michael adjusted his glasses and spoke again:
“Thank you for listening to my stuff. I definitely like your non-squipped version.”
Rich looked away, almost bashfully. I like your non-squipped version. Was that version the real Richard Goranski? Because he wouldn't mind if it was. If Michael liked it, then…
“That's what friends are for,” Rich answered before he could really think about it.
Friends? What the hell was he thinking about? Why would Michael want to be his friend?
“Well, uh, maybe—”
Michael cut him off: “Yeah, friends,” he said with a smile, patting Rich’s bandaged shoulder.
It made the burn beneath them sting. But honestly? He couldn't bring himself to care. He was Michael's friend.
The real Richard Goranski had a friend.