Chapter Text
8th grade was a weird year for Mikey.
Not in the sense that it was horrifically bad— it was just… weird. With Illi moved on to high school, he felt stuck. Not that he’d ever admit it, but it was weird.
But Mikey was his own person. He’d survive the last year of middle school just like any other kid, and maybe having zero ties to his sister in the new year was a good thing. She… worked up quite the reputation, at no real fault of her own. 13 year olds were just cruel, and she was collateral.
So, approaching the school gates the morning of the first day, he tried to be hopeful. He was his own person. It would work out.
…The sight of you stood at the entrance gave him pause, however.
Sure, he was used to seeing you out there. You’d get dropped off early, and wait at the gate for Illi to show up all last year, ever since you became friends.
But Illi didn’t go there anymore. Did you forget?
You locked eyes with him in the next couple of seconds, and he tilted his head.
“Hi?”
“Hi,” You nodded at him. “Um… Illi told me we have the same homeroom, I think.”
“…We do.”
“Okay…”
You looked so nervous, but that was nothing new.
“Were you waiting for me…?” He questioned, and you looked embarrassed.
“Uh. Well— I just. Y’know, um, I don’t know where much is on the other wing of the building, and… I thought, um, if you knew more, we could go together. Or look for it together if you don’t. And. And yeah.”
Huh. He couldn’t say he expected that answer, but it also wasn’t super surprising coming from you. You were an anxious wreck, to put it lightly. Not that he wasn’t one himself, but you struggled to conceal it more.
And the idea that you were there to see him, specifically, well…
“Okay,” he said, and started to head inside. You delayed a bit behind him, but soon caught up.
…
Your walk through the halls was quiet between you two.
To Mikey, you were hard to talk to. Not that he disliked you, generally… but with you always waiting for the other person to lead the conversation, and with him doing the same, you two never had anything to say to each other.
You were his sister’s friend, anyway, so he couldn’t be too concerned about how close he got to you. He could make his own friends.
But it wasn’t a long walk to homeroom, and you weren’t that bad. He was cool with you. He didn’t want to think too hard about it.
That walking-each-other thing? That became daily.
Yeah, you both never talked to each other really, but he could always count on you being there at that gate at least 15 minutes before bell. You didn’t eat lunch together, didn’t exchange more than a nod during passing periods, didn’t even sit next to each other in said homeroom— you just walked each other there, every morning, and see each other off very briefly at the end of the day.
The whole year looked like that; it was easy, it was stable.
And of course, Illi not being at your school anymore meant you spent even more time at the McMillin household.
The way you and Illi could gab about absolute nonsense until dawn was proof that you could talk, you just wouldn’t talk to Mikey that way. And Mikey understood that, sure. You and Illi were both girls, you were close to her, it was just a different kind of connection.
He did find himself strangely bothered by it, though. Just a little. Especially when you slept over and he could hear you through the wall past midnight, involved in some long winded discussion with his sister about the music you liked or the new issues of whatever Illi bought at the comic book store.
He just figured it was because you guys were loud, and he needed sleep. And maybe the sound of his sister keeping him awake by yammering away with you when he didn’t really have any friends made him a little bitter.
But he was used to you; it was weirder to be at home and not hear you giggling so hard you were snorting, or to show up to school and not see you at the gate on your absent days. Maybe he couldn’t exactly call your relationship a friendship, yet, but he liked you. Not that he’d ever force his friendship on you when you very clearly had Illi, but sometimes the idea of knowing more about you on a different scale was really enticing.
That would stay a secret, though.
Mikey had an immune system like a tank, so whatever bug that tried to tackle him down had to be monstrous to break down his defenses.
Unfortunately, that bug seemed to find him the very first week of December. Sure, an upside to that was he didn’t have to go to school for a week, but with that being the only pro next to the stack of cons…
So, Mikey was quarantined in his room to keep his flu as contained as possible. The first few days were spent on throwing up and fever dreams, and the end of the week had him locked up, awake, riding out the sore throat and body aches miserably.
That Friday he found himself particularly miserable— he was still too sick to get up and do anything, but just well enough that he had the mental capacity to go stir crazy.
He was thinking about sneaking out onto the roof, just so he could taste the outside air, when there was a knock at his bedroom door.
“…Yeah?” He croaked, and grimaced at the sound of his own voice.
“Can we come in?” Illi called from the other side of the door, and Mikey grunted.
“Who’s ‘we?’”
“…I’m here too,” you muttered, quieter than Illi’s voice.
Mikey’s heart lodged itself in his throat.
“Um… I guess…?” He ran his hands through his hair, suddenly very aware of the mess he was. “If you want? It’s— I’m sick.”
“We know that, dummy,” Illi huffed.
“I know you know that,” Mikey shot back.
“I have stuff for you,” you spoke up again, and Mikey was even more surprised.
“Okay…? Um. You can come in,” he conceded, and tried not to cringe too much knowing you’d see him looking all gross.
Illi cracked the door open, and you appeared from the side. “Hi. So. I know technically that you’re not supposed to eat too much sugar when you’re sick and stuff… but…”
You stiffly set a bag on his bed. “Um. So— I made cookies, and stuff, and… then there’s cough drops in there. There’s, like, the honey ones which taste really good and then the menthol ones that my parents swear by. They’re disgusting but work better. And… yeah.”
Oh. That was thoughtful of you.
“Thanks…” he muttered, and coughed a bit. You nodded at him, and then backed yourself out of his space.
“You’re welcome. Um… let me know later if you need copies of notes and stuff for anything you need to catch up on…”
You didn’t give him time to respond— you just stepped out and closed the door behind you.
…What just happened?
…
As soon as you were out of sight, he slowly rolled over and smothered his face in his pillow.
He was… very embarrassed. For some reason. Thanks? That’s all he could come up with? You dropped off a care package. You.
Once again, he found himself confused by the idea that you even thought about him at all.
His heart thumped at an intensity that couldn’t be healthy for him, and he cringed even harder at this situation. Was he that starved for attention that a base level friendship gesture had him going into cardiac arrest? He wanted to be struck down then and there.
Whatever. He was sick. He wasn’t in his right mind. You were just a thoughtful person. You were a sweetheart at your core, even with your rough edges. It wasn’t any kind of special attention, and he was just losing his mind from being in solitary confinement. Everything was fine.
During your Spring Break, you three ended up in town more than once.
You and Illi liked to hit the music store, comic store, and get some kind of treat in the little strip mall before heading back to her place and holing up in her room. Mikey would come along just for the convenience of coming along. He liked those places anyway, and he had no problem just hanging behind you guys while you did your thing.
This particular time, though, he did take note of how whispery you were both being on the way to the music store. Not like he would pry into your inside jokes whatsoever, but he was a touch curious why Illi was smiling like that, and why you looked so sheepish.
…
You three had only been flipping through the new arrivals for a few minutes before an employee approached.
He was a young guy— clearly older than you lot by a few years, but young— with a lip ring, glasses, and dark brown hair that had chunks of red dyed in here and there.
“Hey, welcome in. You guys looking for anything specific? We just got a ton of titles in.”
Mikey saw it— he saw the way your mouth opened and closed, the way your brain lagged in forming a sentence, and something twinged in his chest.
“We’re just looking, thanks,” Illi spoke up before you could let too much time slip by, and the employee nodded and walked off.
Then Illi was jabbing her elbow into your arm like crazy, and you looked like you wanted to die.
“Oh my god,” you mumbled, ducking your face while pretending to look through vinyl. “Kill me. I need to die, right now.”
“Oh, stop,” Illi huffed at you.
“I’m so serious.”
“He’s cute! It’s not your fault he’s cute.”
Mikey could not believe what he was hearing.
If you asked him in that moment, he would’ve said that it just felt gross to hear that. He wasn’t used to hearing that kind of talk from his sister, especially not aimed at you and your own likes. Honestly, it was hard to wrap his mind around the idea of you liking anybody— from what he knew based on overhearing (read:eavesdropping on) your conversations with Illi, you thought most boys were irritating. So what gives?
“Illi, I can never come back in here,” you hissed, and she rolled her eyes at you. “I didn’t know he would talk to us this time.”
“He was doing his job, it’s fine. He will literally not even remember that or think anything of it by the end of the day.”
“He looks like he’s 25,” Mikey blurted, and your attention snapped to him.
“…So?” Illi huffed, and you only looked more mortified.
“So he’s too old?”
Illi deadpanned at her brother, and sighed, like that was the stupidest thing that had ever come out of anyone’s mouth.
“First of all; he’s 19. Second— he’s still good looking! That doesn’t mean she’s chasing the guy down!”
Mikey still grimaced, and you turned to start flipping through the A’s to escape.
“Still weird,” he mumbled, and then went off on his own to look at CDs.
He couldn’t say he exactly felt sorry for you both come August, when cute music store guy left for college.
Despite middle school being the most dreadfully boring and/or stressful years of Mikey’s life, freshman year started off pretty strong. By strong, that meant everything felt normal again— at least to Mikey.
You were all back to being together at school in the morning, with the added bonus of you no longer getting picked up and dropped off when your mom started a new job. So, you’d walk to and from school with Illi and Mikey.
And Mikey made a friend in Pre-Algebra— Frank Iero.
So, he felt better about himself. He didn’t feel reliant on a friend of his sister’s for company, and he thought less and less about you. You had your own thing going on with Illi, anyway— you’d spend pretty much every lunch with her in the music room, hanging out with her friend Ray who she met the year prior.
…
It only lasted for so long.
One of the first times Mikey had invited Frank over to screw around for a few hours happened to be the same day Illi wanted you to come over, too. You’d think that be a nonissue, but the second you walked through the door, Frank pointed his finger dead at you and gasped.
“What the hell are you doing here?” He feigned horror, and you caught on right away, pointing at yourself in a ‘who, me?’ gesture.
“Excuse me? Are you new here?” You countered, and Illi and Mikey just… looked utterly confused.
“Do you two know each other…?” Illi dared to ask, and you chuckled while you peeled off your shoes.
“We have science together, she’s my lab partner,” Frank mused. “You all know each other?”
“I’ve known them since middle school, I have seniority over you, this is basically my house,” you jested back at Frank.
“If it’s your house, you wouldn’t mind getting me a drink?”
“I would mind, actually, since you greeted me so poorly.”
…Mikey could feel himself making a face.
“You’re not a very good host, then,” Frank sighed, “Illi, you should get me a drink.”
“Ew, die.”
“Oh!” You clapped your hands together. “That reminds me, Illi— I didn’t get to tell you what happened during lab the other day—“
“With the guy who exploded a gummy bear?” Frank butted in.
“Shut up! I’m telling the story!” You snorted, and then both you and Frank launched into this verbal essay of sorts that was only really funny to Illi because of the way you both told it.
Mikey just felt icky from the inside out, again.
It wasn’t long before your little circle had formed with the addition of Ray.
It just made sense that it would go that way, given you all knew each other and got along well. Why divide your attention amongst all your friends when you could all just hang out together?
To Mikey, it was only a good thing in some ways.
He liked Frank, he liked Ray, and he didn’t mind hanging out with you and his sister.
But watching the way you and Frank interacted with each other made him sick to his stomach, honestly. Because it only reinforced how much Mikey didn’t get you.
…
“Hey, hey, hey,” Frank poked at you repeatedly, and you gave him the flattest look ever.
“What?”
It was lunchtime; you and your group were sat in a circle outside on the cement. Illi and Ray were engaged in their own conversation that you were previously listening on, and Mikey was zoned out. Well— not anymore, but he was.
Frank started digging around in his backpack for his notebook. “You’re in Pre-Algebra, right?”
“No, uh. Algebra 1, actually,” you corrected, and he huffed.
“Okay, Miss Smarty Pants. Whatever— can you help me with something?” He started flipping through the pages of the notebook, and you quirked an eyebrow.
“Uh… depends. I’m not that good at math.”
“Shut up. You’re in the class above me.”
“That doesn’t make me good enough to teach you something you don’t get,” you scoffed, but scooted a little closer to see what he was trying to show you.
Frank cleared his throat and tipped the page towards you. “Does this make any sense to you, or what? I just wrote it down cause it was on the board but I have no clue what’s happening here…”
Mikey peered over as well, unprompted, and when he saw the way your expression scrunched, he spoke up.
“I could help you,” Mikey offered, and Frank… clenched his jaw.
“Uh, maybe? I’m asking her right now.”
“…Okay?? But we literally just covered this— we’re in the same class,” Mikey scoffed, and Frank’s expression twitched. Just barely.
“Mikey, shut up.”
You glanced between the two of them awkwardly, and then leaned back into your own space. “Yeah, I have no idea what I’m looking at,” you resigned, “Sorry.”
Frank just chuckled, and he closed his notes. “Really? Maybe they need to move you back down to Pre-Algebra with the rest of us.”
“Hey!”
He poked you again. “You need to relearn some things.”
“Are you calling me stupid?”
“No, I’m saying you need to relearn Algebra basics.”
“You’re not even pre-learning them right now!”
…
Yeah, Mikey didn’t get you guys.
He wasn’t necessarily faulting you for Frank’s… weirdness, around you, but he didn’t understand.
Why the hell were you so comfortable with him? If you only met Frank that same year, just like Mikey, why were you able to talk to him like you knew him for ages? You knew Mikey just as long as you’d known Illi. What made him so difficult to talk to? He couldn’t equate this version of you with the quiet, nervous wreck from a year ago. He thought it was just Illi you opened up around.
Mikey just came to the conclusion that he was boring, honestly; something about him didn’t bring your personality out the way it came out with everyone else. He didn’t know why he cared. It just stung. Sometimes he found himself wishing it was just the three of you again, because at least back then he wasn’t stuck wondering if it was a problem with him.
He always had the morning walk to look forward to, at least.
Most of the time it consisted of Illi talking the both of your ears off on the way to school— you and Mikey didn’t have enough brainpower to talk much yourselves before 10am, so she always had the floor.
Just before he stepped out of the house on this particular Monday morning, however, he heard Illi let out a loud gasp— so he figured something must be happening.
When he shut the door behind him, he took in the sight of Illi holding your face in her hands, turning your head all different angles.
“It looks so good!” Illi shouted in your face, and you visibly cringed.
“Okay— get off of me,” you huffed, and she laughed.
…When she took a step back, Mikey got a clear look at your face.
You were wearing eyeliner.
Nothing else, no other kind of makeup. Just that. Which made sense— he heard you and Illi talk in depth about makeup before, and you were intimidated by it because you didn’t know what the rules were. And Illi had told you there are no rules, and you said that even still, you didn’t like the feeling of stuff on your face.
But it looked like you worked up the nerve to try something different.
This time, Mikey wasn’t so sure he could make an excuse for the uprising of weird tingly feelings inside regarding you; not in the same way he had been making excuses for over a year now. You were just pretty, plain and simple. The darkness smudged around your eyes made them look more striking, and it was pretty.
Illi started the slow walk along the street in front of you, and you both followed.
“Seriously, it looks really nice. It adds something, y’know?” Illi continued, and you pressed your lips together sheepishly.
“I don’t hate it…” you muttered. “At least I can’t feel it while it’s there…”
“That’s what I told you! You don’t have to do a full face of anything, y’know. There aren’t any rules. Do fun eye makeup and leave the rest of your face bare. It’s an art form, you don’t have to learn how to do anything you don’t wanna do on your own face.”
Even though you still looked a little unsure, Mikey could see the way you were happy with yourself. You never really let yourself admit to liking something completely until you felt approved of, but it was really obvious you did like it. You would’ve wiped it off before you showed up if you really doubted that it looked nice.
…
He accidentally caught your eyes for a moment too long at the cross walk, and he cleared his throat awkwardly.
“It looks good,” he mumbled, and fidgeted with the straps on his bag.
…You grinned, to the point of trying to suppress it.
“Thank you, Mikey.”
Ray was easy. Mikey always felt his head clear up around Ray.
Between weeks of classes, homework, not getting enough sleep, pointedly ignoring the static in his head around you, and being so deeply annoyed by whatever you and Frank were doing— a Sunday afternoon to just screw around with his bass in his room sounded awesome. He could just shut his brain off.
It was an afternoon spent in silence, apart from communicating different musical ideas back and forth.
“You think we should get Frank over here?” Ray offered up.
Never mind. Peace ruined.
“Uh…” Mikey idly plucked at his guitar strings in an obvious stall. “Nah. I’m good.”
“Really?” Ray raised his eyebrows. “Why not?”
Mikey sighed.
“Because if we invite him, then Illi’s gonna be all ‘Oh, now I’m outnumbered by boys, I need a girl to balance it out!’ or something stupid and then all 5 of us will be here and no legitimate practicing will be done because Frank’s gonna be distracted the whole time.”
Ray chuckled. “True. That’s fair.” He strummed a few chords. “You sound irritated.”
“A little. It’s not a big deal, I just don’t want to be around all that right now.”
Ray hummed in acknowledgment.
“Be around what, specifically?”
“Frank being weird. He’s fine on his own. But— y’know.”
Ray caught on, and he grinned. “Oh, you mean the flirting?”
Mikey grimaced. “Is it flirting? He’s just immature and annoying around her.”
“I hate to break it to you, Mikes, but that’s what 90% of flirting looks like.”
Mikey just strummed idly. He didn’t really know what to say. He never fully considered the possibility that Frank might feel a type of way towards you; now that he was considering it, that sickness doubled in strength.
“Gross.”
Ray barked out a laugh, and set his guitar aside. “He acts stupid around a girl he thinks is pretty. That’s literally every dude ever. It’s just how he gets attention.”
“Still gross.”
Ray gave Mikey’s leg a little shove. Mikey pushed him back.
…
“I don’t act stupid around her,” Mikey blurted. “So I don’t get it.”
Ray raised his eyebrows a little, but decided not to touch on the implication right then. “That’s cause you don’t like her like that, Mikes.”
“…”
Mikey didn’t say anything in rebuttal. That’s… true. He didn’t like you like that. He had no reason to. You were Illi’s friend, in the end. Yeah, you were a big sweetheart and funny without trying too hard, and when you were trying hard it was endearing. And you were pretty when you laughed, and he liked hearing your voice through the wall between his and Illi’s bedroom past midnight. And he did want to be close to you, so much, that his chest hurt whenever you came around and matched everyone else’s energy but dwindled around him. He had to assume that was his fault; maybe if he put that kind of effort forward in the beginning, you’d like being around him more now— would you even want to be his friend if he attempted it 2 years too late?
…
There was a point to this, but he couldn’t remember what he was trying to prove anymore.
…Ray side-eyed him, after a full 30 seconds of incredibly pensive silence on Mikey’s end. Mikey had even stopped playing completely— he just sat there, the tips of his ears flushed.
“You’re not sayin’ anything,” Ray gave him a little nudge.
Mikey’s single response was to shrug.
“…Do you like her like that?” Ray pressed gently, and Mikey’s tongue felt numb.
As much as he told himself to say no, no, no! …His heart wasn’t fully in that answer, and Mikey didn’t like to lie.
“…You can’t tell anyone,” he finally replied, and his whole body burned now that this recurring mental spiral of the last couple years was finally out in the open.
Ray broke into a bit of a grin, but it was sincere and not smug. “I won’t.”
“I mean it. You can’t. Not Illi, not Frank. You can’t tell anyone.”
“Hey,” Ray huffed, and nudged Mikey again. “I won’t tell anyone. You have my word. We don’t have to keep talking about it anymore. You’re good.”
…
Mikey nodded, once, and that was that.