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To be so detached felt holy, somedays. As if he was absolute, washed pure of all the dirt that arrives with breathing. He could shove it all beneath his fingernails, wait the nightfall out until his mind leveled itself. It wasn’t difficult, not typically. Not since he grew into himself, and everything began to cut too deeply – he refrained from peering down towards the wound at all. It left his clothes sticky and soaked-through carnelian, still he made no move to address the hurt.
Tonight was different. So different he had to bite the cloth to keep from yelling out, curl in upon himself to stop the gash through his stomach from leaking all over the pretty-white bathroom tiles. However, alive veins don’t just stop, and Mike Wheeler kept bleeding-out.
He was home, he knew that for the most part. Will had died. He knew that too. They had brought him back. It did not feel like they did, his heart hung so leaden and vomit churned in the pits of his stomach. He stood in the upstairs bathroom, knuckles curled around the marble countertop. To slam his teeth into the jarred edge was tempting, to take his head to the mirror and pray it killed him. Maybe he would’ve, if he could move at all.
His feet remain firmly planted to the floor, his eyes unblinking. The world spun out of view, dissolving into a blurry rush of movement as the air conditioner hummed and nightlight flickered. Will had died. His Will had died, the one that completed him, body and mind. It was so cruel he couldn’t do a damn thing about it. He lay on the couch below him, limp. Mike was upstairs, staring at himself in the mirror, how pathetic was that? It was shame-able, laughable.
His fingers curled in, skin painfully drawn back. His chest heaved harsher with every ongoing second, he ached to collapse into the fold of time. He did not want to be here. He snatched one of Nancy’s empty shampoo bottles in a swift motion, sending it barreling at the mirror. It landed with a hollow crack, however left barely a dent. He scrambled for more objects, not bothering to check what his palms latched onto. They all ended with the same urge to throw them again, destroy the glass until he couldn’t recognize the guilt in his eyes. A sorrowing noise, a quite-frankly ridiculous one, rang out in the bathroom. It was only seconds later he realized he was the one sobbing, whining, whatever it was this is. Wallowing in his self-made hell.
His foot found something as he moved to grab a soap dispenser, and he was down on the floor before he could process what had happened. Then the wretched cries came, the agonizingly-hot tears gushing down his red-rimmed eyes. He slammed his fists into the tile floor, a pitiful wailing crawling up his throat and out his bitten-through lips. He made no effort to settle himself, the door was firmly bolted. There was nothing anyone could do. He wanted to take a knife to Vecna’s heart, to spill his blood all over this clean marble. Fuck you, fuck you, was the only conceivable thought in his scattered mind – he didn’t know if it was directed towards himself or Henry. Right now he hated himself just as equally. All-consumingly, terribly, disgustingly.
When he exhausted himself and his knuckles began to sting from the repeated collision, his head met the frigid floor. He choked out his quieted lamentation, nails curling in the tender flesh of his knees as to draw blood. The sounds he made were no longer human, something far more horrible. He was something horrible. He doubled over, side pressed against the floor, arms moving to grip his sides. He was something beyond horrible, and it was unforgivable.