Chapter Text
A junior in college, six feet tall and thinking he’s perfectly content with it all. Michael Mell moseyed on into his history class just seconds before the clock struck twelve pm. It was a basic, core course. Something most knockout freshman year if they hadn’t already taken the AP test during their high school days. But Michael here decidedly spaced his so called “mind-numbing” classes throughout his fall and spring semesters instead of taking them all once. He used these vapid courses to fill in small gaps while he fluffed the rest of his schedule with the much more appealing music-based curriculum.
The classroom was a small auditorium, divided into three sections and descending downwards to a podium where a scrawny, older man stood, straightening out papers and attempting to load up some sort of introduction powerpoint. When his computer seemed to be barely compliant, judging by what was or rather wasn’t being projected on the board, the elder adjusted the collar of his over-sized hawaiian shirt and cleared his throat in a fair acceptance that things weren’t going to go as planned. However, appearing to be ever the optimist, he stood in front of his desk and instead projected his surprisingly booming voice to the class.
After introducing the syllabus along with the course’s general purpose, Professor Hansen introduced himself. He was a sassy, exuberant old man whose passion for the olden days seeped through every humorous phrase that poured from his wrinkly mouth. Michael adjusted his glasses and snickered at one of his many silly quips, running a hand through his thick, dark hair and leaning back. Most of the students seemed to giggle along with him. Hansen then unraveled a tale about his great aunt Roberta, so Michael decidedly tuned that out. He turned to his left, unzipping the backpack he had placed in the empty seat adjacent to him.
Casually looking up after rummaging to fetch his jet-black laptop, Michael immediately noticed a remarkably relaxed face two seats away, paired with half-lidded eyes which stared idly back at the professor. The orbs were a deep blue that held the ocean and then some, and they seemed… Not necessarily bored or even upset, but rather uninvolved . It was almost as though he wasn’t even paying attention, but his gaze was clearly fixed on the professor, so he was listening. Michael looked above the eyes to see a head of dark-chestnut hair, so perfectly combed to the left that you should have to gel it to stay in place that way… And yet, it seemed so soft and product-free. Moving down to his lips, they were small, flat, and again, like his eyes, uninvolved. Not a single twitch stretched them to the left or right in a response to the jesters their professor offered, unlike the rest of the auditorium which was erupting in laughter. Michael looked up one last time and caught the man’s cerulean eyes just as he was turning to acknowledge his extended staring, and the perpetrator quickly turned away, knowing he was guilty.
It’s fucking rude to stare, Michael. He painfully thought to himself. Did he see? God, he probably thinks I’m being weird or something.
Well, now wait, that’s not right. Yes, common courtesy exists and should be considered, but this person’s opinion is of no importance to Michael. He wasn’t staring to be weird, just observant. The spectacled man quickly brushed it off and ignored the fluttering warmth in his chest as he flipped open his laptop and tapped in a login, focusing on the new lesson the buoyant professor had begun.
And yet, as the seconds ticked by, dumb joke after dumb fucking joke, Michael’s mind would occasionally go blank, and then fill, by the buckets, with the ocean. Not the ocean he saw this past summer during his family’s Hawaii trip. No, the sea he saw just moments ago, within his eyes; the crashing waves which flooded his mind without consent or ambivalence.