Chapter Text
Freshman year, Michael Jones decides on the spot that whoever that kid over there with the floppy hair is — yeah, he’s an idiot.
However, it’s his first day in a new school, he knows absolutely no one, and while he cares more about getting to class on time than the raging (British?) idiot tripping into the locker sections to gain a laugh, Michael decides that just for once, he’ll entertain idiocy. So when Michael cautiously steps past the boy on the floor, clad in a purple polo, his hair splayed out in different directions, Michael smiles at him goofily before pushing his glasses up his nose and going on his way. Green-blue eyes flash to meet his gaze, but Michael refuses to dwell on them. He has Geometry first period, and he doesn’t want to sit in the front.
In Geometry class, Michael measures the extent of his teacher’s dark circles and determines that he either probably has too many children or deals with too many children — so he thinks he’ll take it easy in this class. He won’t fuck with the teacher or the people around him (as he usually does whilst maintaining a steady 100 in the class), but he will allow himself to think of the guy he stepped over in the hallways today.
But only for a bit.
Ray only makes a lasting impression on him when he notices his t-shirt. It’s a blatant cry for help; a shirt dictating that the wearer enjoys both video games and memes, and Michael decides to take the kid under his wing. He slides into the seat next to him during lunch with a smile before adjusting his beanie and pushing up his glasses for the umpteenth time that day. Ray had chosen a weird place to sit: the table nearer to the back of the cafeteria right in front of the window.
“‘Sup.” Michael says politely, with a subtle nod to the mush on Ray’s lunch tray.
The kid visibly starts, head jerking up to meet Michael’s gaze. “Well, you’re straight-forward, aren’t you?” Michael smirks in reply before opening up his packet of carrots (the only edible thing he got from lunch that day) and pitching one right into his mouth.
“You’re Ray, right? I think I heard the bio teacher call you out for napping right in front of her.” Michael grins sardonically, chewing his carrots. Ray’s ears turn pink. “I wasn’t napping, I just put my head down for a second.”
Michael scoffs, another carrot going in. “Who even falls asleep on the first day?”
Ray smirks as well, hand going to reach into Michael’s bag of carrots. Michael lets him, because Ray has potential and it’s the first day of school. “Not me, as I said not forty seconds ago. Besides, I was up playing Halo. But yeah — Ray Narvaez Jr., here.”
Michael’s eyebrows raise and it clicks. He thinks he’s found the man of his dreams. In a totally platonic, I-wanna-beat-your-ass-in-video-games kind of way. Like the best of relationships. “Halo, huh?” Michael grins and finishes his carrots. “I’m Michael Jones.”
It’s only a month into Michael’s entire high school experience when he sees that kid’s eyes again. Because they’re connected to a body that’s pressed right up against him. Why? Because that dumbass fucking idiot tripped right over his own feet again and took Michael to the grimy floor of the halls in a move that would’ve rivaled the best WWE stars.
So there he was, glasses having been knocked to the floor, considering the penalties of springing a boner (Hey - cute guy - on top of him - shut the fuck up), as the dumbass fuckin’ wriggled around on top of him, squealing, trying to roll off. Michael rolled his eyes and steadied the kid by maneuvering his arms up against their chests, where he pushed up gently against the guy’s shirt.
“Usually if you want to say ‘hello’, you use your mouth instead of your body.”
The guy’s eyes widened, and he quickly pulled away, arms flailing, only to fly into a nearby classroom. Michael rolled his eyes again, located his glasses, shoved them onto his nose, and pulled himself off the ground. Then he stalked off to biology, completely content in taking advantage of the lab day to complain to Ray about the people he had to deal with at their stupid school.
The week after Christmas break brought Barbara, Miles, and by default, Kerry, to his and Ray’s lunch table. Barbara was a cute blonde who liked video games that were organized above all others. Miles fell for games with a killer storyline (and where Miles went, a cute kid named Kerry did as well). Michael spent most of their lunch hour reaching over the table to poke at Kerry’s baby face, much to Miles’ disdain (“Careful! What if he bruises?!” “Cheeks can’t bruise from a poke, Miles.” “Let’s not test that theory, Michael!”).
It would turn out to be that the five of them would be best friends for all four years of high school. They obviously bonded over their mutual love of games. Michael, easily the smartest of all of them (with Miles’ intelligence not lingering far behind), would always help with homework and studying for tests with an easy eye roll. Ray would bring the entertainment, shouting random, stupid jokes at random points of the day, and at lunch: stuffing things in his nose. Barbara complained about boys and girls alike, and Miles and Kerry teased her endlessly about it.
However, Michael never mentioned his growing crush on that kid who insisted on tripping, not walking, through the halls every chance he got. He seemed to be popular with the jock-types, though. Maybe he was around for comic relief or something. If anything, he was cute. But Michael was fourteen, almost fifteen, and his dick was just probably confused. However, he was more mature than at least 87% of the teenage population at their school, so he knew that having a meaningless crush on someone like that kid wasn’t going anywhere.
Although it was kind of hard to distract himself from staring at the kid whenever he got the chance to, because there was no one else to look at in school. Besides Barbara and her friend Lindsay, but the only flirting he did with Barbara was braid her hair shittily once a month, and Lindsay was a cheerleader a year ahead of all of them.
And maybe he kind-of-didn’t-want-to-date-them-because-even-though-they-were-really-cute-they-were-kind-of-missing-a-dick-and-okay-sure-boobs-were-great-but-Michael-had-been-slowly-accepting-the-fact-that-he-liked-dick-over-the-course-of-the-last-few-confusing-birthdays-so-shut-the-fuck-up-he’s-not-explaining-himself-to-anyone.
So Michael let himself have the guy with the blue-green, pretty eyes. He kept quiet about the guy with the blue-green eyes. He didn’t bring up the kid with the blue-green eyes to his friends, not even when he began referring to as the guy with the blue-green eyes as Gavin Free in sophomore year.
Michael focused completely on schoolwork and maintaining the ultimate relationship with the dorks he called his best friends. His near perfect average at the ends of freshman and sophomore year was simply proof that he had his shit together.
He refused to let himself drool over Gavin (publicly) when he looked out the window of the lunchroom and Gavin was outside with his friends, hair as messy as ever, kicking a soccer ball around in the field. He didn’t let himself make a comment on how good Gavin looked after he had apparently spent the summer between sophomore and junior year in Italy (thanks to Barbara’s passing comment of what she had heard from Lindsay, who sat at the jock’s table and apparently knew all the popular kids’ gossip), tanning every second he could. (He also did not have dreams about Gavin speaking Italian to him. Or touching him. Or anything.)
Not even during the late summer before junior year, when Michael finally came out quietly to his friends like it was easy and it hadn’t been plaguing him for months, when he sniffled and cried on Barbara’s shoulder after she hugged him and told him that it didn’t matter at all, not even when Ray, Miles, and Kerry dog piled him and smothered him in their version of dumb boy love and support, not even when Ray straight up asked him jokingly, “So, ya gonna fuck that jock, Gavin Free? All the ladies are after him! He probably has abs!” to make him feel better. Michael only scoffed, rolled his eyes as always, swiped away his stressed tears, and planted a messy, wet kiss onto Ray’s cheek. “You’re the only woman for me, Ray. We all know it.”
Not even when Gavin was transferred into his AP Calculus class the second week of school in junior year (to Michael’s utter confusion, because Gavin had become a stereotypical jock with stereotypical jock friends — and all of those jocks were taking easy classes junior year, with the exception of Ryan Haywood, who was a complete genius. Like, no one even know why he was still bothering with high school. But shit, why the fuck was Gavin taking motherfucking AP Calc? Could he actually handle it? Was Gavin smart? Oh god. Was Gavin smart? All of Michael’s fantasies portrayed Gavin as the hot asshole idiot who he wanted to fuck as a one off to blow it out of his system but if Gavin was smart Michael was so totally utterly fucked because there was a chance that there would be something there, more than mindless fucking in a grimy school locker room after Gavin ran in from practice, like Michael’s deep, well-thought out fantasies. Oops).
Not even when Gavin sat a mere two desks away from him, and Gavin looked over at him nearly every five minutes. Not when Gavin made eye contact with him before immediately scribbling something down onto a piece of loose leaf and tossing it across the room to the person Michael knew was Gavin's friend, Ryan, who simply cast an easy glance back at him with a quirked smile.
Not when Gavin was made captain of the soccer team after two years of being a minor addition to the team and Barbara dragged the whole crew to all of their soccer games because Lindsay was cheering in the games and they “have to support a friend! If it were me you guys would be cheering with me”, which was completely, one hundred percent true, because Barbara was persuasive as fuck and they all already knew that Miles looked cute in a skirt.
Not when Gavin Free, all sweaty and grinning at his team looked up into the crowd, saw Michael, and raised an eyebrow before leaning down and murmuring something to his friend.
Nope. Not even then.
Michael was not about to get his hopes up for a dumb jock that may or may not have had potential at some point in his life, because Michael did not need a boyfriend. He’d never need a boyfriend or a partner or anything like that. Michael knew how to handle himself. He could control himself.
And besides, all the coy looks and glances from Michael to his friends didn’t exactly redeem him in any way. Knowing the jock type from the countless teen movies he had watched simply meant that Michael was going to be She’s The Man’d, also known as he was going to be forced through a grueling makeover in order to win the guy that was performing the makeover on him, or he’d be Sixteen Candles’d, also known as he was going to make out with Gavin after a series of horrible, life changing scenes that involved him nearly giving his underwear to a creepy freshman in a half broken down vehicle.
In his opinion, the latter would always seem more appealing than the former. But he was keeping his boxers on. And long story short? Michael wanted to fuck Gavin (or vice versa, whatever), but he didn’t nearly trust Gavin enough for that to ever actually happen.
Another long story short: Michael thought about this shit way too much.
Fuck.