#it is 3am and mike is rotating in my brain

[thegroundsofbrooklyn]

so after posting my jomike fic, i mentioned earlier that i have a fully fleshed-out mike backstory, and because i love my favourite anon, i am sharing it here for everyone's enjoyment.

just a bit of a preface: this is based entirely on west endsies mike. anything that may be canon in livesies is irrelevant here (such as mike and ike being twins) unless it's canon in west endsies. all of this is either based off of things that have either been directly confirmed / can be inferred from mark's performance, or is just totally made up. but i promise most of it comes from somewhere. the only thing that properly goes against canon is the concept of mike scabbing in the first place - but it's kind of a thing, because mikey boy exists, so just go with that.

and yes, the whole concept of mike being good at selling newspapers comes from this specific interaction with mark:

"two cents for a pape!!"

"i have a dollar?"

(contemplates very hard for a solid few seconds) "no." (walks off)

so, enjoy! everything is below the cut.

mike is an anxious mess. behind everything, he's an anxious mess. he's young, he's scared, he's hungry, and most of all, he's so, so alone. he's the one who's always ignored in group conversations. it starts off as a joke, and then over time it stops being a joke, and then suddenly he finds himself as more of a shadow than a real person. and the worst part? everyone else treats him like a shadow too. the thing he's most afraid of is being forgotten. being left behind. behind abandoned.

at a young age, he has a younger sibling who can't sell, so he works to earn enough to keep the both of them alive. that's why he's so confident selling; he's quick, but he knows when he's wasting time with someone who doesn't have the money he needs. but all the newsies know that it's never going to work - they hardly earn enough to keep one person on their feet, let alone two - and mike is forced to watch as his sibling starves, unable to feed them because if he isn't strong enough to sell, neither of them will survive.

after his sibling's death, mike is far more quiet, anxious, and constantly on alert. he starts to withdraw, lashing out at the other newsies. they don't know how to help him, so they start to give him space. from their point of view, he's in pain, and he needs time. from his perspective, the people who are supposed to be his family are leaving him behind, pulling away from him.

the only person who pushes and pushes to stay inside the walls that mike puts up is jojo. so he doesn't mind that nobody else cares, because he has jojo, and it's the two of them against the world, and with him, mike is as close to happy as he can be.

the catch? mike is hopelessly in love with his best friend. every word, every passing touch, every comforting hug, is just a reminder of what he doesn't have. every time jojo grabs his hand to drag him through the city, all mike can think is that that gesture will never mean the same thing to jojo as it does to him. but he's happy. he's happy because he gets to spend time with jojo, and for now, that's enough for him.

and then jojo starts to get closer to tommy boy. and it's not like he spends less time with mike, but it feels like every second mike would normally be sharing with his best friend, tommy boy is there too. and he is so scared that he's losing the one person who makes him happy.

but he does nothing to stop it. he does nothing to stop it because jojo's happiness is worth more to him than his own, and he knows he doesn't deserve a friend like jojo anyway, and jojo will never love him like he loves jojo, and some part of him hopes that maybe if he steps aside and lets jojo go and be happy with his new best friend tommy boy, jojo will realise that mike is all he's ever needed, and come back for him.

it never happens. the more time jojo spends with tommy boy, the more mike withdraws into himself; and the more he withdraws into himself, the more time jojo spends with tommy boy. it's a self-sustaining loop, and jojo never comes back.

mike is left alone in the world again, but this time he's angry.

he hates tommy boy for stealing his best friend, and he hates jojo for leaving, and he hates himself for letting him go, for never standing up for himself or fighting to keep jojo by his side, even though it never felt like a decision he got the chance to make, because what else could he have done?

so he snaps and lashes out and hides inside himself, and he starts following the most important newsies around because at least if they give him validation it's better than nothing. and they just let him follow them around like a lost puppy, because they're young and stupid too so of course they just use his loyalty to their advantage.

and then one day, the delancey brothers find him. they ask him to scab. and somehow, somehow they know exactly what to say to get him to agree. they tell him that it's his own decision. that the other newsies will get to see him doing something for himself and not anyone else. that he finally has the chance to make a choice for himself. and that alone wouldn't be enough to convince him, because all he can picture is jojo's face when he sees mike betraying him, and in the end it's about jojo to him. it's always been about jojo.

but then he hears the one thing that makes him snap.

"remember how you felt when jojo betrayed you?"

suddenly he remembers his anger, and only his anger, and he agrees to scab not despite the hurt it will cause jojo, but because of it. the anger he's been suppressing for ever and ever because all he wants is for jojo to be happy is not going to be held down any longer.

so he scabs.

and that, my friends, brings us up to nothing lasts forever.