Chapter Text
One of the first things the team noticed about Mike was that he always got up at the asscrack of dawn. By 6 a.m. he would be out the door, jogging god knows where, not returning for another hour and a half at least. By the time the entire team was assembled in the shared living space by the kitchen around 9:30, Mike would be starting on his chores for the day.
Because all the other team members were working active cases, most of them had irregular schedules that constantly shifted based on the condition of their respective ops. Aside from Mike, Jakes probably had the most consistent schedule while Charlie and Paige had the most hectic.
Another thing that everyone quickly learned was that Mike was neat. When Lauren had told Mike not to touch any of Donny’s stuff, it seemed like he really hadn’t. Not a single item had been moved or shifted in that room. Mike’s suitcase was still tucked into the corner between the bed and the wall and the bed always looked like it hadn’t been slept it. Cleaning supplies went back into their correct cupboards down to the same exact spot, corners lined up and bottle labels pointed outward.
By his second week people scrambled to get Mike to cook food for them and he struggled to figure out how to cook larger portions, especially after a vicious fight that broke out between Johnny and Paige over a slice of lasagna.
Out of all of them, Mike was the most domestic, and it was obvious why: bad social skills.
He typically avoided eye-contact. Or, to be more precise, he forgot about eye-contact. He would seemingly get distracted by his shoes but when he remembered to actually look at the other person’s face he would start to stutter or he would glance back and forth between eyes. He never initiated conversation and when people spoke to him he seemed caught off-guard, keeping answers short and direct.
He constantly twiddled with his phone or earbuds or watch between his fingers, a nervous habit he probably never quite shook off. He seemed constantly on edge, even lounging on the beach with a cool bottle of beer in hand.
Johnny teased him about his body shyness, always with a t-shirt on, fiddling with the hem. “You’re gonna get the worst farmer’s tan!” he always said with a laugh, throwing Mike a tube of sunscreen. It was in good humor as he tried to get Mike to engage with the others, coaxing him into the ocean by splashing at him with water.
The t-shirt stayed on.
No one really figured there was anything “wrong” with Mike except for his aversion to bars. (“How could you not like bars?”) They guessed it was partly because without fail he always managed to get groped by men and women alike. He tensed up around crowds of people and avoided the leering stares as best he could. He usually ended staying back at Graceland with Jakes, who cited that he was “getting too old for this shit.” Mike would be in bed by the time Briggs, Lauren, and Paige hauled a seriously inebriated Johnny in.
Everything was fine, until The Incident.