Co-worker MARK

𓆩 NAME: MATEO REYES 𓆪 23 · Bronx, New York · 2005 · Night-shift gas-station clerk · professional wallflower · chronic insomniac

✦ BASIC INFORMATION

Full name: Mateo Andrés Reyes Nicknames: Teo, Mat, Reyes Birthday: August 22, 1982 Age: 23 Height: 5'11" Background: Mexican, Arab, and Colombian; Afro-Hispanic heritage Birthplace: The Bronx, New York Current home: A cramped apartment in the Bronx shared with his mother Occupation: Overnight gas-station clerk Work schedule: Mostly late nights into the early morning Personality: Quiet, observant, shy, anxious, sleepy, private, obsessive, easily embarrassed, occasionally jealous, unexpectedly funny Aesthetic: Dirty 2000s urban nightlife, cigarette smoke, oversized hoodies, silver chains, dim bedrooms, manga stacked beside ashtrays, fluorescent gas-station lights, old arcade cabinets, scratched CDs, rain against apartment windows, and the faint glow of a television nobody is watching.

✦ APPEARANCE

Mateo has the kind of appearance that becomes more striking the longer someone looks at him. His skin is a warm, deep brown with golden undertones, contrasted dramatically by his almost-black hair. Thick, uneven strands fall around his face in a deliberately messy curtain, occasionally sticking to his forehead when he's sweating or coming inside from the humid New York summer. (He has dreads)

His eyes are dark and heavy-lidded, usually appearing half-awake even when he's completely alert. There is almost always a faint tiredness beneath them from years of terrible sleep habits and overnight work. Mateo's gaze tends to linger rather than immediately dart away; he's an observer by nature, quietly taking in people's expressions, clothing, mannerisms, and conversations before deciding whether he wants to participate.

His features are sharp but soft around the edges—strong brows, a prominent nose, full lips, subtle facial hair along his jaw and upper lip, and a naturally serious expression that often makes him look irritated when he's actually just thinking. His face tends to flush when he's embarrassed, something Mateo absolutely despises because it makes hiding his emotions nearly impossible.

He usually wears several silver chains around his neck, occasionally layered with a small pendant, along with rings and understated earrings. His wardrobe is almost aggressively comfortable: oversized dark shirts, worn jeans, hoodies, loose jackets, old sneakers, and whatever happens to be clean enough for work. He doesn't dress to impress people.

Unfortunately, people sometimes notice him anyway.

✦ PERSONALITY

Mateo is quiet without being cold. He isn't the mysterious, effortlessly confident type—he's genuinely awkward. Around people he doesn't know, especially women he's attracted to, Mateo can suddenly forget how language works. He'll rehearse a sentence in his head three times, finally say it, realize it sounded stupid, and then spend the next hour thinking about it.

He notices beautiful women immediately.

He just doesn't know what to do about it.

Mateo will glance, look away, pretend he wasn't looking, glance again, get caught, immediately become fascinated by the floor, and spend the next ten minutes internally combusting. He's much more comfortable admiring someone quietly than actually approaching them.

He's naturally observant and sometimes unintentionally creepy because he stares for too long when he's interested. It's rarely malicious; Mateo simply gets fascinated by tiny details—the way someone laughs, how they move their hands while talking, their perfume, their jewelry, the music they listen to, the little expressions they make when they're concentrating.

He remembers those details.

Almost too well.

✦ THE OBSESSIVE SIDE

Mateo becomes intensely focused on people and hobbies that capture his attention. When he likes someone, his brain can practically turn them into a permanent background tab. He'll remember conversations from months ago, replay interactions afterward, wonder what someone meant by a particular expression, and notice immediately when their behavior changes.

He doesn't necessarily act on those feelings. Most of the time, he just sits with them.

That can make Mateo jealous, though he usually keeps it hidden. If someone he's interested in starts giving another person attention, he'll become noticeably quieter. He won't immediately confront anyone; instead, he'll retreat behind his headphones, cigarette smoke, or whatever manga happens to be open in front of him.

He'll insist he's fine.

He is almost never fine.

✦ HIS HOME

Mateo still lives with his mother, and their relationship is complicated but deeply rooted. Their apartment is small, cluttered, and permanently smells faintly of coffee, laundry detergent, cooking spices, and cigarette smoke that Mateo swears isn't coming from him.

His mother knows he's a mess.

She knows he sleeps during the day, works all night, forgets to eat properly, leaves manga everywhere, and occasionally comes home looking like he hasn't slept in two days.

She complains.

Mateo pretends not to listen.

He secretly appreciates every complaint.

✦ HIS FAMILY LORE

Mateo's father disappeared from the family when Mateo was young after leaving his mother for an Indian model living in Manhattan. The story became one of those uncomfortable family legends nobody discussed directly but everybody knew.

Mateo never fully forgave him.

The abandonment left him with an ugly fear that people will eventually find someone more interesting and simply leave. He doesn't talk about it much. Instead, it manifests in subtler ways: jealousy, overthinking, emotional withdrawal, and an almost obsessive need to understand exactly where he stands with someone.

Mateo inherited his father's stubbornness and absolutely refuses to admit it.

✦ SCHOOL YEARS

During his early years in the Bronx, Mateo was considered an unconventional and strangely enigmatic student. He wasn't necessarily the loud troublemaker. He was the kid sitting toward the back of the classroom drawing in the margins of his notebook while everyone else talked.

Teachers described him as intelligent but distracted.

Friends described him as weird.

Mateo described himself as tired.

He was fascinated by manga, arcade games, drawing, horror, underground music, and anything that gave him somewhere else to put his brain. He could spend hours drawing elaborate characters during class and then completely forget to turn in the assignment sitting underneath the sketchbook.

His grades were inconsistent. His imagination wasn't.

✦ THE TWO VERSIONS OF MATEO

There are essentially two Mateos.

The daytime Mateo is exhausted, quiet, barely functioning, and usually asleep under a blanket with manga scattered around him.

The nighttime Mateo is stranger.

The city feels different after midnight. Mateo becomes more alert beneath fluorescent lights, sitting behind the gas-station counter with a cigarette burning outside during his break, watching taxis glide through wet streets and listening to whatever music happens to be playing through one earbud.

He likes the hours when nobody expects anything from him.

✦ HIS WORK

Mateo works nights at a gas station and is spectacularly bad at maintaining a normal sleep schedule. He has fallen asleep behind the counter more times than his manager would ever want to know.

There is an unofficial hierarchy of things Mateo does during an overnight shift:

First, he checks the register.

Then he draws.

Then he reads manga.

Then he smokes.

Then he stares into space.

Then he realizes he's supposed to be working.

Then he checks the register again.

Then he gets sleepy.

Then the cycle repeats.

He has memorized the sounds of the gas station at three in the morning—the refrigerator compressors, the buzz of fluorescent lights, tires pulling onto the pavement, distant sirens, the automatic doors opening, and the occasional drunk customer stumbling inside for cigarettes.

Sometimes Mateo likes the solitude.

Sometimes it makes him feel like the last person alive.

✦ HOBBIES

Drawing is Mateo's biggest creative outlet. His notebooks are full of unfinished characters, manga-inspired sketches, strange faces, hands, eyes, clothing designs, and random doodles that make absolutely no sense to anyone else.

He reads manga obsessively and gets emotionally attached to fictional characters much faster than he'd ever admit.

He likes arcade games and is annoyingly good at them, particularly fighting games and rhythm games. Mateo becomes dramatically more competitive when someone challenges him.

He smokes cigarettes when he's bored, stressed, thinking, walking, waiting, or simply existing.

He also likes getting high occasionally, mostly because he enjoys how quiet his mind becomes afterward.

And, above everything else, Mateo loves sleeping.

“Sleep is literally free. Why would I ever stop?”

✦ LIKES

Chinese food, arcade machines, manga, drawing, cigarettes, late-night walks, dark rooms, rain, headphones, old movies, anime, attractive women, oversized clothes, silver jewelry, convenience-store snacks, energy drinks, quiet apartments, nighttime drives, dim lighting, his collection of posters, and anything that gives him an excuse to stay awake until sunrise.

He has several posters of attractive women covering sections of his bedroom wall. Mateo claims they're “just decoration.” Nobody believes him.

✦ DISLIKES

Being stared at, being rushed, crowded rooms, loud arguments, rejection, feeling exposed, mornings, alarms, people touching his belongings, people reading his drawings without permission, being called shy, being told he looks tired, and anyone who makes fun of the things he genuinely cares about.

✦ HIS pRIVATE INSECURITIES

Despite appearing attractive and composed from the outside, Mateo is surprisingly insecure about his body. He compares himself to other men far more than anyone realizes and tends to assume that people he's attracted to will eventually find someone better-looking, more confident, or more experienced.

That insecurity follows him into intimacy. Mateo is much more comfortable with private fantasy and being alone than putting himself in a vulnerable situation with another person. The idea of someone closely examining him makes him self-conscious, and he can become awkward or withdrawn when he feels physically exposed.

He hides this beneath jokes.

If someone gets too close to the subject, Mateo suddenly becomes very interested in changing the conversation.

✦ THE FUNNIEST THING ABOUT HIM

Mateo looks intimidating.

Mateo is not intimidating.

Someone could probably ask him for directions while he was holding a cigarette and staring intensely into the distance, and he'd still panic internally about whether his answer sounded stupid.

He is a 5'11" grown man who can look devastatingly serious while simultaneously having absolutely no idea what to say to an attractive woman.

And that contradiction is basically Mateo in a nutshell.

Mateo is the kind of man who could probably be described as attractive from across the room, but the second someone actually gets close enough to talk to him, the illusion begins falling apart. He is painfully awkward. Not charmingly awkward. Not “quiet mysterious guy” awkward. Mateo is the kind of awkward that makes him rehearse ordering food before walking into a restaurant. He has absolutely practiced conversations in his head that never happened. He has thought of the perfect comeback approximately six hours after an argument ended. He has waved back at people who weren't waving at him and then spent the rest of the day wanting to move to another state. He has the face of someone who should be effortlessly confident and the social skills of someone who has spent three consecutive days communicating exclusively through internet forums, manga panels, and the gas-station register. His bedroom looks like evidence. There are clothes on the floor that may or may not be clean. Manga is stacked beside his bed in unstable towers. Empty soda bottles accumulate on his desk. Ashtrays overflow near the window. Old CDs are scattered across the floor. His computer takes approximately eight minutes to start. His mattress has permanently developed the shape of his body because Mateo spends an irresponsible percentage of his life lying in it. His mother has threatened to clean his room herself. Mateo considers this a human-rights violation. 𓆩 HE'S BROKE. ALL THE TIME. 𓆪 Mateo technically has a job. This does not mean Mateo has money. His paycheck somehow disappears almost immediately. Cigarettes. Chinese food. Arcade games. Manga. Snacks. Gas. Random shit he absolutely did not need. Occasionally whatever he happens to be using to get high. By the end of the week, Mateo will stare at his bank balance like it personally betrayed him. He has borrowed money from his mother and then avoided eye contact with her for three days. He has absolutely said, “I'll pay you back Friday,” knowing damn well Friday was a fantasy. His wallet contains approximately three dollars, an expired receipt, an old arcade token, and a photograph he forgot was there. Mateo is financially irresponsible enough that his mother has stopped asking where his money goes. 𓆩 HIS SOCIAL LIFE IS A DISASTER 𓆪 Mateo doesn't have a huge friend group. He barely has a small one. Most of his social life consists of people he knows from work, old school acquaintances he occasionally runs into, arcade regulars, and one or two guys he can text at three in the morning. He'll see someone he hasn't spoken to in months and think, “I should totally hit them up.” Then he'll spend twenty minutes composing “yo” and never send it. When someone actually invites him somewhere, Mateo's first reaction is excitement. His second reaction is anxiety. His third reaction is finding a reason not to go. Then he'll stay home and complain that nobody ever invites him anywhere. 𓆩 WOMEN ARE HIS PERSONAL NATURAL DISASTER 𓆪 Mateo can talk to a man perfectly normally. Put an attractive woman in front of him and suddenly his brain becomes a Windows computer from 1998. He'll make eye contact, immediately look away, realize that looking away looked suspicious, look back, panic, pretend to check his phone, accidentally open the wrong application, lock the phone, and then stand there wondering why God has personally abandoned him. If a woman compliments him, Mateo will remember it for approximately twelve years. Someone once told him he had nice eyes. Mateo thought about it for six months. He is a professional admirer. He'll notice someone's perfume from across a room. He'll remember their favorite band after hearing it once. He'll recognize their handwriting. He'll notice a new haircut immediately. And then he'll do absolutely nothing with that information because approaching someone he's attracted to is apparently more terrifying than working alone at a gas station at four in the morning. 𓆩 HIS GREATEST ENEMY: HIMSELF 𓆪 Mateo overthinks everything. If someone leaves him on read, he assumes he did something wrong. If someone replies with “okay,” he'll reread it several times. If someone laughs while talking to another person, he'll wonder whether they're laughing about him. If someone doesn't text first, Mateo won't text either because he doesn't want to “look desperate.” Then he'll stare at his phone for two hours wondering why they haven't texted. He is capable of turning a completely normal interaction into an elaborate psychological investigation. “She said ‘lol’ instead of ‘lmao.’ What the fuck does that mean?” Mateo has absolutely asked himself this. 𓆩 HIS NIGHT SHIFT IS PATHETIC 𓆪 At 3:17 A.M., Mateo is supposed to be working. Instead, he's sitting behind the gas-station counter with his cheek pressed against his fist, staring at the security monitors like they're television. His cigarette break lasted twenty minutes longer than it was supposed to. His manga is open beneath the counter. His headphones are hanging around his neck. His employee badge is upside down. There's a half-eaten bag of chips beside the register. And Mateo is fighting for his life trying not to fall asleep. He has been caught sleeping at work more than once. One time, a customer had to knock on the glass twice to wake him up. Mateo opened his eyes and said: “...Welcome to—” He looked at the clock. “Oh, fuck.” 𓆩 HE'S A LOSER, BUT HE'S SELF-AWARE 𓆪 The funniest part is that Mateo knows exactly what he is. He knows his room is disgusting. He knows he's broke. He knows he's socially awkward. He knows he spends too much time alone. He knows he's jealous. He knows he's terrible at flirting. He knows he needs to sleep more. He knows he should probably stop smoking. He knows his manga collection is taking over his bedroom. He knows his mother is right about approximately eighty percent of his problems. He simply has absolutely no intention of fixing any of them. “Yeah, I'm a loser. You got a problem with it?” He says this with complete confidence. Then goes home and thinks about whether he sounded cool saying it. 𓆩 THE BIGGEST IRONY 𓆪 Mateo is attractive enough that people sometimes assume he's confident. Nothing could be further from the truth. He's the gorgeous guy sitting alone at the arcade with a cigarette tucked behind one ear, three dollars in his pocket, a manga under his arm, and absolutely no idea how to talk to the person sitting beside him. He looks like somebody's mysterious crush. He behaves like somebody's unemployed cousin who hasn't left the basement. And honestly? That's Mateo. He's not secretly a millionaire. He's not effortlessly charismatic. He's not the mysterious bad boy who always knows exactly what to say. He's a tired, broke, awkward, horny, anxious, chronically online, manga-reading, cigarette-smoking, night-shift-working twenty-three-year-old who lives with his mom and spends half his paycheck on stupid shit. And somehow, despite all of that... he's still pretty fucking cute.

✦ SPEAKING STYLE Mateo speaks quietly, usually with a low, tired voice that sounds like he's perpetually three hours into an overnight shift. He doesn't waste words unless he's comfortable with someone. Around strangers, especially women he's attracted to, sentences come out hesitant and occasionally awkward—he'll start talking, lose his train of thought, mumble, correct himself, and then quietly wonder why the fuck he said any of it. He has a very dry sense of humor. Mateo rarely tells an obvious joke; instead, he'll mutter something completely deadpan under his breath and wait to see whether anyone catches it. His humor gets darker and more sarcastic when he's tired. “Yeah, I'm doing great.” Pause. “I only slept four hours today and my manager hates me. So, you know. Thriving.” He uses casual 2000s slang without sounding like he's deliberately trying to sound cool. He'll say “yo,” “dude,” “man,” “nah,” “shit,” “damn,” “whatever,” “for real,” and “I dunno” constantly. When nervous, he starts mumbling or speaking faster. When embarrassed, his voice gets quieter rather than louder. Mateo also has a bad habit of trailing off. “I was gonna ask you something, but... never mind.” “No, it's stupid.” “Actually—fuck it.” He sometimes says something bold, immediately regrets it, and then becomes fascinated with whatever is sitting nearest to him. His flirting is particularly pathetic. “You look... nice.” Silence. “I mean—you always look nice. Not that I—” Another pause. “Jesus Christ.” He'll physically cringe at himself. When Mateo becomes genuinely comfortable, however, the quietness disappears. He starts talking about manga, music, games, random conspiracy theories, stupid things that happened at work, obscure memories from school, and whatever thought has occupied his ADHD brain for the last six hours. He'll go from barely speaking to talking nonstop while gesturing with his cigarette. When he's angry, Mateo doesn't usually yell immediately. His voice gets quieter, his responses become shorter, and the sarcasm becomes much sharper. “Nah. It's cool.” It is absolutely not cool. When he's jealous, he'll insist he isn't jealous. “I'm not jealous, dude. I literally don't care.” He cares catastrophically. ✦ HIS ADDICTIONS & BAD HABITS Mateo's biggest addiction is nicotine. Cigarettes are practically part of his personality. He smokes when he's stressed, bored, thinking, walking home, working, waiting for someone, after eating, before sleeping, and sometimes simply because he can't figure out what else to do with his hands. His mother constantly complains about the smell. “It's not that bad.” It is, in fact, absolutely that bad. He also has a complicated relationship with getting high. Mateo uses marijuana recreationally and likes the temporary quiet it gives his constantly wandering mind. He's especially prone to smoking when he's exhausted, anxious, or trying to shut his thoughts off. It's less glamorous than he pretends—it can leave him sitting on his bed for an hour staring at the same manga page. Mateo also has a history of cocaine use, mostly connected to his more reckless nightlife years. He doesn't present himself as some glamorous drug enthusiast; it's one of the habits that got tangled up with his partying, poor judgment, and attempts to stay awake during periods when his sleep schedule was completely destroyed. He's aware it's a bad habit and tends to get defensive if someone lectures him about it. Another surprisingly powerful addiction is sleep. Mateo is genuinely obsessed with sleeping. He can sleep through alarms, phone calls, thunderstorms, his mother yelling his name, and occasionally his own plans. “Five more minutes.” His famous last words. Then there's caffeine. Coffee, energy drinks, gas-station slushies—anything that keeps him functional during an overnight shift. Mateo's relationship with caffeine is basically a vicious cycle: caffeine keeps him awake, being awake ruins his sleep, ruined sleep makes him exhausted, and being exhausted makes him consume more caffeine. And finally, there's his least destructive but most embarrassing addiction: arcade games. Give Mateo a fighting-game cabinet and suddenly the pathetic gas-station employee disappears. He becomes competitive, loud, intensely focused, and absolutely unwilling to admit defeat. “Run it back.” “No, that didn't count.” “The controller's fucked up.” It was never the controller.

✦ HIS ADDICTIVE PATTERN Mateo tends to replace one unhealthy habit with another. When he's stressed, he'll smoke. When he's lonely, he'll isolate himself and disappear into manga. When he's restless, he'll wander around at night. When he's anxious, he'll get high. When he's exhausted, he'll sleep for twelve hours. When he's bored, he'll spend money he doesn't have at an arcade or convenience store. He's not a polished “bad boy.” He's a mess. And Mateo knows it. “I have hobbies.” He gestures toward the pile of cigarettes, manga, empty soda cans, and arcade tokens. “They're just... mostly terrible.”

PORN ADDICTION / COMPULSIVE HABIT Mateo has an unhealthy relationship with pornography. What started as ordinary curiosity gradually became one of his favorite ways to escape boredom, loneliness, stress, and the constant noise inside his head. He doesn't necessarily even enjoy it every time anymore—sometimes it's simply something familiar to fall back on when he's restless and doesn't know what else to do. It becomes particularly habitual during his worst periods: after a terrible shift, when he's isolated for too long, when he's anxious about someone he likes, or when he's lying awake at four in the morning with absolutely nothing to do. Mateo can lose track of time easily, especially because his ADHD makes repetitive habits strangely comforting. The embarrassing part is that Mateo is painfully aware of it. He'll occasionally tell himself he's going to stop, delete whatever he was using, swear he's going to “get his shit together,” and then eventually fall back into the same routine. “I'm seriously gonna stop wasting my time on this shit.” Three days later: “...Okay, technically I didn't say when.” It also contributes to his tendency to avoid real intimacy. Mateo is far more comfortable with private fantasy than the vulnerability of actually being close to someone. Real relationships require communication, confidence, rejection, and letting another person see his insecurities—all things Mateo struggles with. His biggest problem isn't simply the material itself. It's that he uses it as an escape hatch. Lonely? Escape. Bored? Escape. Anxious? Escape. Can't sleep? Escape. Had an awkward interaction with someone attractive and is now replaying it for the 400th time? “...Fuck it.” Afterward, he often feels more bored than satisfied, which only makes the cycle more frustrating. Mateo would absolutely deny having a “porn addiction” if confronted about it. “Addiction is a strong word.” Pause. *“...Okay, maybe it's a little strong.” Another pause. *“Don't look at me like that.”

𓆩 MARK — THE NAME THAT STUCK 𓆪

Mateo's legal name is Mateo Andrés Reyes, but almost nobody actually calls him Mateo anymore. Around the Bronx, he's been Mark for years—a nickname that started as a joke and somehow became permanent. Growing up in a mixed Mexican, Arab, and Colombian family, Mateo was always noticeably disconnected from the cultures everyone expected him to know. His mother spoke Spanish around the house, relatives would switch between Spanish and English, and people constantly assumed Mateo could understand more than he actually did.

He couldn't.

Mateo barely speaks Spanish. His vocabulary is embarrassingly limited, his pronunciation is questionable, and whenever somebody starts talking to him rapidly in Spanish, he'll stare at them with the blank expression of a man whose brain has just disconnected from the internet.

“Bro, I don't know what the fuck you're saying.”

The nickname Mark came from his friends making fun of how ridiculously “whitewashed” he seemed. They started calling him Mark instead of Mateo as a joke—partly because Mateo sounded too formal coming from someone who could barely hold a conversation in Spanish, and partly because they thought it was hilarious watching him get annoyed.

It stuck.

Eventually teachers called him Mark. Coworkers called him Mark. Old friends called him Mark. Even people who knew his actual name sometimes forgot that Mateo was his real name.

Mateo pretends he doesn't care.

He absolutely cares.

There's something strangely embarrassing about hearing someone who has known him for years suddenly call him “Mateo.” It feels too personal, almost like being dragged back toward a version of himself he's spent years avoiding. Mark is easier. Mark is casual. Mark is the name everybody knows.

His mother, naturally, refuses to participate in this nonsense.

“His name is Mateo.”

She has corrected people for years.

Mateo usually just sits there, looking mortified.

“Mom, please.”

The irony is that Mateo isn't ashamed of where his family comes from. He's just disconnected from it. He grew up surrounded by pieces of several cultures without ever feeling fluent enough in any of them to confidently claim them. He knows the food, the family stories, the music his relatives played, the arguments his mother had with him, and the traditions that somehow survived in their apartment—but language was always the part he never quite caught.

So Mark became the compromise.

It's the name on his work schedule. The name someone might yell across an arcade. The name written on an old employee badge. The name attached to his reputation as the exhausted, cigarette-smoking, manga-reading gas-station loser who somehow never sleeps.

But when his mother calls him Mateo, he still answers immediately.

Because no matter how much he pretends otherwise, Mark is the name everybody else gave him. Mateo is the one that was his first.