♡ & ღ for meremine :3
Oh boy!!! Okay I haven't really conceptualized meremine in depth before so this is a bit of a challenge lol
♡: who is the bigger romantic openly? secretly?
Openly: JEREMY. Jeremy. He can't hide his feelings for shit, and he doesn't even want to, because honestly he gets a little possessive and he wants to show them off. Obviously though, that means he can't be very SECRETLY romantic... He definitely tries to hide the extent of his Christine obsession (to no avail), but he'd be overly upfront about how much he loves Michael in an attempt to soothe the wound of... everything.
Secretly: Michael, probably?? If we're going with fanon, he's been successfully hiding his feelings for like 8 years. And even in the relationship, he'd be a little scared to put himself all the way out there because it'll just hurt like hell if he ends up rejected AGAIN. So he's a little reserved in his affection, and often he'll temper it with an ironic undertone (for example by doing an INSANELY elaborate public promposal with the gushiest possible imagery, instead of something more personal and vulnerable).
And don't kill me for not-gay Michael, but I could also see him mysteriously catching feelings for Christine in the middle of the relationship. That's kind of too much for him to bother figuring out at first, both because it's a challenge to his identity, and because, well... things could get messy.
On top of that, even though Jeremy is dating both of them, I think Michael would worry about making Jeremy jealous. And honestly, I don't think he's wrong. When Michael and Christine start liking each other, Jeremy would get really scared that he accidentally just introduced the two loves of his life to each other, and now they're each going to realize how amazing the other is and leave him.
Christine isn't the biggest romantic on either front. I don't think she understands her own feelings very well, so it feels like a bad idea to go too hard on the affection; much like everything in her life, it feels a bit like acting. And that feels wrong.
If you want to complete the meremine triangle, I don't think she'd be secretive about catching feelings for Michael, either, even if she picked up on Jeremy's insecurity. Unlike Michael, she doesn't really embrace the idea of hiding away some facet of herself for the rest of her life just to make Jeremy happy (sorry Michael 💀💀💀)
ღ: who is more likely to initiate hand-holding in public?
Similar answers to the previous lol. At first, Jeremy would not hold anybody's hands to the point where they think maybe he's having second thoughts about the relationship --- until they realize he just doesn't know if he's allowed to do that yet (answer: yes). So they have a very explicit conversation about boundaries, and after that he holds their hands at most opportunities. It's a dramatic switch. He doesn't notice that it's weird to do that constantly, like, even when he's going up to the teacher after class with Christine's hand still in his. But he does get embarrassed when people point it out, and when Christine or Michael swing his hand with theirs. Sometimes he'll refuse to hold hands a few days after someone points it out.
Christine initiates it pretty often too, though. She enjoys the cliche of arm-swinging down the hallway and how embarrassed it makes everyone else. She also really appreciates a nice hand-hold when she's feeling small and alone, which is somewhat often in school, and she's a physically affectionate person in general.
But she has some mixed feelings about doing it constantly and unironically --- because just in general in meremine, I think she feels threatened by gender roles. She definitely picks up on Jeremy's possessiveness, and perhaps Michael's initial sort of disinterest in women (f), so she pays a lot of attention to stuff like splitting the check and anything that makes her seem like "the girlfriend" instead of a person. So hand-holding can be a little iffy, but in some contexts it also helps her affirm control, like using it to comfort or embarrass them.
Michael's tough because I like extremely touchy Michael but also Michael who hates touching.... Really hard choice honestly. I guess in general I don't think he'd be the one to initiate public hand holding most of the time. For one, I think he spends most of his time in public trying to pretend he's somewhere else; second, I don't think he'd derive much pleasure from sustained contact like that, as opposed to a bigger, more instantaneous gesture like picking Jeremy up/tasing/going "guess who" or whatever. He would enjoy stuff like that --- and arm swinging! --- for the sake of making Jeremy die of humiliation.
Him and Christine both do lovey-dovey arm swinging to Jeremy, and one time with each other; the latter they realized wasn't worth it because it was only ironic but made Jeremy feel left out lmao. In their individual interactions with Jeremy, Michael's the only one to push it a little too far sometimes; Christine is just a little more sympathetic to Jeremy's concern about his public image.
That said, post Christine-Michael union, they're a LOT more awkward about it than they are with Jeremy, and I think maybe they would both initiate it with each other because it's scary and new and they're still trying to figure out what how exactly the other is feeling. Which is of course humiliating to both of them because neither is used to that role.
