'Yet another cloudy day outside, it's all the same old sight, gray skies as always here.' Mathew sighed at the sight of the world outside of the broken building he was hiding out in and turned away from the window.
The sky sickened him now. It didn't used to. He was used to the wide expanses of the Canadian prairies and their skies. He was used to living skies not this bleak, dreary, unending clouds covering up the sky. But, he had left home a while ago. And the skies were never the same as before he left again. The sky outside this dilapidated building didn't seem to live at all; it was just there, taking up the space that the land wasn't already occupying.
He hated it. He hated this whole place, really. It definitely had not been his choice to live here, not in the slightest.
It was all that man's fault. It was his fault; Mathew knew for sure that he hadn't done anything wrong. That man hadn't needed to have reacted in that way. And Mathew knew he would never forgive him.
He had decided to tell his dad he was gay, he wanted to let him know, maybe even have some support. Instead his Step-dad just joined the ranks of those who had bullied Mathew throughout his life. He had told his Step-Dad he was gay and had been yelled at. He had been told to pack his bags and leave his home.
He had had to leave B.C. catching a ferry off of the island he lived on and going onto the mainland of British Columbia. He had lived there for a while before moving down to the States. There had been no message from home, no plea to come back and so Mathew had wandered around, doing odd jobs for people and couch surfing whenever he could.
It was on one day when he was randomly wandering around when he saw that there was a baseball match going on in the park by him. It seemed to be an unfair team, with the bigger team filled with bigger boys laughing at the others. Mathew had never liked those kinds of people, so he went to help them. He may have come from a country faithful to the sport of hockey but, the one thing he had always been good at growing up was hockey. He joined the losing team, with him there they won. Again and again the other team challenged him and he won every time.
He became known as the ace every team wanted. He was on the outskirts of the city and so it was gangs that eventually came to him. They would pay him in whatever he wanted to play for them. One of them even got Mathew hooked onto drugs so that they knew he would always be there. He helped them win their little rivalries and best of all; he was the best at it. He became a fixture on the playing field of the area.
He even gained a name for himself as the "Panda Hero". His favorite animal had been the polar bear before but, the people around him hadn't known that, they named him the panda hero after his white and black hoodie he always wore now turning gray from its continual usage. He was named after the rings around his eyes from his inability to sleep properly, he was probably even named after a panda because of how quiet and small he was. They said he resembled a baby panda at times. He was shy, quiet, cute, and harmless in the midst of the violence around him. His favorite animal changed to the panda.
Mathew had been there in that area ever since that day when he was fifteen and was told to leave his home. He no longer cared for his life; he lived only for that game, never wanting more from himself or the world around him until one day when a blond haired young man his age had cornered him after a game wanting to talk to him, to know him better than as just the baseball prodigy he looked up to. So, Mathew had feinted a punch the man's way and when his blue eyes had widened in shock and his arms came up to block the obvious fake attack Mathew ran away as fast as he could. He didn't need anyone and no one needed him. But, the Blondie kept on coming back and Mathew kept on running away until he couldn't anymore. After two weeks of their little game of cat and mouse, his little violent trick had been seen through and his hand caught in the other guy's strong grip. Of course that was when his body had decided it had had enough of his abuse towards it and Mathew had fallen unconscious from his lack of food and sleep into the arms of the stranger that had been stalking him.