Chapter Text
'What's it matter anymore?
You believe the lies I tell
There's no meaning to the words
But we still sing these words well
And if we all left it alone
I'm sure it will work itself out fine
They are playing with your numbers
And we are running out of time
Be Nice To Me - The Front Bottoms
Michael has his father to thank for his height, yet despite the great lengths his body reached, he wished he found a way to disappear. It is a talent to be able to slip into shadows and hide yourself away when you’re not needed, and Mikey was familiar with the feeling of not being needed. Needed or wanted for that matter.
Mikey roams the school, jumping from group to group, knowing he doesn’t really belong with any of them, but also knowing that they don’t hate him being there. That’s the extent of Mikey’s connections with them. Always acquaintances and never friends.
But Mikey only has himself to blame for that. He knew he had a free ticket straight to the top, with the boys who prowl around the oval and picked up on swearing before they actually knew what the words meant. He didn’t want to be those boys.
Except he still hangs out with them from time to time. If not for any other reason then to prevent being forgotten. And sometimes they’re funny. And sometimes he thinks to himself that they may not be that bad. And then one of them will always say something stupid, or do something stupid, and he feels out of place all over again.
So Mikey just sort of does his own thing.
Sometimes you see him at the canteen buying lunch that day. Sometimes you see him talking to a teacher just passing by. Sometimes you see him with one group of kids or another.
And then sometimes you don’t see him at all.
Today, Mikey sits in the library, in a back corner he gets to early so no one sees him come in. It’s too hot to be outside as it tends to get at the start of the year during summer. Otherwise he would just be sat out on a bench somewhere.
It is cool in here. Mikey keeps his hat on regardless. He wears it backwards, letting his hair fan out underneath it. He feels his earrings tickling his neck when he moves his head too quickly sometimes. And when he looks in the reflection of his black phone screen, he sees the janky eyeliner he applies to himself before he leaves everyday. And he won’t take the hat off until he showers and goes to bed that night.
He knows it’s weird to be conscious of how his hair looks without a hat on, or how bare he feels his face looks without the eyeliner, or simply the satisfaction of accessorising yourself everyday. Mikey knows the boys would think that all to be weird. So Mikey sits by himself, sometimes at a secluded bench, or in the bathrooms, or in the library when he doesn’t feel like being stared at all day. Every part of him seems to stand out, from his head to his toes, and the length in between.
It’s not hate he hides from. No one has said to his face that they hate him, or that they think him weird. In fact, whenever he joins a group for a day, everyone seems happy to have him. And he knows his uniqueness draws some other kind of attention, from girls he doesn’t want the attention of.
But again, he only has himself to blame. All he would have to do was tell them that he wasn’t into them.
But that would create hate for him to hide from then.
As caged and judged as his position may seem here, he’s afraid that this is as free as he will get.
Mikey tries to wedge himself into the back corner of the quiet reading section of the library. He takes up the whole seat, on a weird bean-bag-but-not type chair. And he watches the minutes tick down on his watch, in between flipping the pages of a book that he would never admit to packing into his bag every day.
Sometimes, Mikey pulls the book onto his lap, or his laptop, or some workbook to do some homework, but doesn’t do anything with it. Sometimes, Mikey tends to let his mind wander to places it shouldn’t. He tells himself to stop thinking about him, yet the thoughts are so sweet.
Perhaps he’s not hiding from everyone else, but hiding from himself, separating himself from him so he won’t take over his mind. Sometimes he fears it’s too late for that. Because every time he takes himself over to his friend group, he’s welcomed with his smile and a hand on his broad back.Mikey is probably the only person that he’s ever had to look up to, being tall himself, yet Mikey wouldn’t care to break his neck downwards if it meant there was a chance.
A chance that he might not be a complete dick.
Because it’s always him that says something stupid, or does something stupid. It’s always him the boys are laughing with. And he’s always the one to make Mikey feel so fucking out of his depth.
Yet here he is again, skimming the words on the page but not reading them. Instead he’s reading too much into the way his stupid words don’t meet his eyes when he says them. Or the way he seems to fidget with the bottom of his shirt when he’s about to do something stupid. Or the way that he always seems to spot Mikey first from across the field whenever he decides to join them down there. And he takes multiple glimpses in his direction just to make sure that he really is coming to join them. Because Mikey multiple times before has taken a last minute turn to the courts instead, where a different group tends to be.
Mikey starts from the top of the page again, and actually reads the words presented to him. He says each word in his head to stop any other picture from working its way in. He’s almost finished this book. A book that was the last of a trilogy. The full and complete ending to the story he’s buried his mind in for the past couple weeks comes to settle before him.
Mikey sits there surrounded by other stories waiting for him. Yet he won’t pick up a single one of them. The whole point of a library is to burrow the books here, and yet he’s never seen anyone do so. Sometimes, when the new year comes, he witnesses the new year 7’s perusing the shelves pointing to the spine of a book they know, but never going to pick it up. They look around for the front desk with the red scanner and the computer screen to burrow books from, and they notice that they can’t find it. And they notice the dust that collects atop of the plastic covered book covers, and on top of the pages as they sit in the old shelves. And then they walk away, and Mikey hardly ever sees them back down the aisles again.
Which is why he picked this spot. A quiet corner in the quiet part of the library that everyone gives up on their first week of being in this place. Mikey sits where all the lost causes are. Like his stupid daydreams of that stupid boy who does stupid things that make him feel fucking stupid.
Mikey closes the book he’s finished reading and puts it back in his bag. He sits with 5 minutes left to show for it. He’s scared to sit in the silence, worried his thoughts will run away from him again. He doesn’t have time to put some music on through earbuds, he’ll hardly make it through one song properly. And he’s got nothing left to read.
Mikey is scared to leave the library before everyone else does, worried that they will all see him coming out of his spot. It’s kind of hard not to notice a giant like him.
And it’s kind of hard to hide one.
But again, Mikey only has himself to blame.
His mother had been working at gyms for years, and had been bringing him along with her whenever she could. Ever since he was old enough to go into the actual gym area on his own, his mother urged him to train. And Mikey wasn’t shy to sports either. He never quite committed to one fully, but would play a season with some friends who needed a player, or on his own if he found something that interested him.
So, as people tend to do, Mikey only grew bigger the more he worked out, and the older he got. His height caught up to his muscle, and his muscle caught up to his height, and left him a giant.
While Mikey does only have himself to blame, he wouldn’t have it any other way. He notices the widening of people’s eyes when they see him for the first time, and the lingering they tend to do whenever he’s just minding his own fucking business. It’s always funny the first time. But when they stare…and they always do, it makes his skin crawl as if he can feel the blood crawling from one extent of his body to the other.
So Mikey tends to cover up what he can. He wears long pants as often as he can, although the summer heat makes it hard to do. He likes winter, so that he can wear two jumpers and his long pants as often as he wants. By this age, he can see the other kids around him trying to wear less and less. Mikey only grew wary of his own skin at the sight of others. And whenever some girl tried to brush her fingers across his own while they were just talking, it made him flinch. He knows it’s weird to be scared of those moments. And the other boys would laugh at the way he wants to run away whenever he catches one of the girls looking for a bit too long.
He used to think that maybe these things would make it obvious to everyone else. But no one seems to notice anything.
So Mikey, or the version of him that they all want to touch and admire, roams the school with a frown always on his face, his eyes lowered, mouth strangely shut, with both all the friends in the world, and none at all
***