Chapter Text
Mike Hanlon spends a long time on his own. It’s a matter of months at first, when he gets out of college. No parties, no dates, no get-togethers. He notices the difference and sinks into this new habit. He doesn’t think much of it. In hindsight, he doesn’t realize what he’s about to face.
It doesn’t feel like long until it becomes a matter of years. Decades. No parties, no dates, no get-togethers. No people to call friends any longer. There’s some invites, sure. Carole Danner keeps asking whether he would like to try her cookies sometime. Mike keeps politely declining.
It’s loneliness now: or maybe it always has been. It’s a great, big, ugly monster he carries on his shoulders. He’s started to hunch under its weight. It whispers sometimes, screams more often than not. A reminder. A warning. It is coming and you cannot escape it. You will be alone always and then you will die. It’s unbearable. He bears it anyway.
It’s one Friday night in particular when he eventually, finally feels bad for himself. Lets himself feel that way. He’s been awake too long when he’s sitting with his head in his hands and thinks, it’s been twenty-four years of this. It’s been twenty-four years and I am alone.
And, right now, he thinks he’s allowed. He thinks he might be crazy for not having felt bad for himself any sooner. It’s been a fifth of a century, it’s been his entire adulthood without a real friend. It’s been loneliness since his friends began to move away, and doesn’t that feel like a lifetime ago. He’s spent a lifetime in solitude; he’s spent a lifetime holding everything in, and now he feels as if he might burst.
Mike is sitting on his bed, only moving to take the occasional sip of water. A newspaper on his nightstand functions as a coaster. After the fourth time of putting down his glass, he picks the paper up.
He flips through the pages determinedly. There’s something he’s looking for, although he couldn’t tell you what. He knows when he sees it. His fingers rest on the page of the paper’s advice column, and Mike scans over the page. His eye falls on the icon the writer uses to sign off: a turtle. There’s a vague realisation, slipping away from him a second later.
Here’s the thing: Mike knows this column is meant for victims of disloyal partners and teenage gossip. The problem is: Mike is alone and desperate. Yes, desperate, not for the first time in his life but probably for the second, and he has nowhere else to go. Maybe, no, he’s certain that this is the only chance at intimacy, at vulnerability, at something along the lines of friendship he has. Anonymity, he thinks, is the only shot he has.
He goes looking for a pen in the midst of his mess and when he finds one he writes, and writes, and before he knows it, he has a letter: an acknowledgment of the hurt he’s going through, something touchable that says I am not okay because that’s what this is. He is hurting. This big, ugly monster has broken his back.
He finds an envelope to write down the paper’s address and picks out a stamp. On it is a picture of a robin, picked with Stanley in mind. Everything seems to be a reminder of his friends now that loneliness has him in a chokehold. He reminds himself with the cut-outs on his walls. Pictures of his favourite Marsh designs and promotions for Bill’s books, advertisements for Stanley’s business and the company he knows Eddie works for. A poster of Richie’s first big tour. Photographs of Ben’s buildings.
(If he doesn’t remind himself why he’s doing this, Mike thinks he might go mad.)
He puts the stamp on gently, slowly, to ensure it’s put on straight. It feels like it should be, like this is too important of a letter for it to be crooked. When it’s on he moves the envelope to rest on his desk, filled with paper and filthy dishes. Silently, Mike promises himself to clean tomorrow.