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Suicide prevention books and articles stopped helping after a while.
All the tips on distracting oneself and finding outlets or things that make one happy got old after Mike reached his thirties.
Writing helped for a while. He’d write characters who shared his lack of will to live anymore but survived anyways… or didn’t survive. It varied on how close he came to jumping off the quarry cliff again or taking every different painkiller or sleeping pill he owned. He wrote about almost every separate way he could— a character could commit, but he ran out of ways after a good year and a half.
Planning D&D campaigns only distracted him for a few months, there was no one to play them with, anyways.
Calling each party member to check up on them didn’t take his mind off anything for longer than an hour each call. He could only call Dustin and Lucas, since Lucas and Max were happily married and shared a phone line. But the Sinclairs’ could only call twice a week, and Dustin had to call first; he was usually at the library, and his college dorm didn’t have a phone, so he’d have to use the pay phone outside the library or wherever he was at the moment. But since he was usually using a pay phone, he could only stay on call for so long.
And Will.
The only thing that took his mind off of and on the topic all at once was the strong and talented brunet who was supposed to be Mike’s best friend. After all, it was what Mike declared on the tower. Well, admittedly, he worded it horribly. Friends? No thanks. Best friends! Wasn’t exactly the smartest way to declare that he wanted to stay close after everything that happened, especially not to a traumatized boy who had come out as queer just a few hours before the whole mission. And especially not the way Will had looked at Mike so lovingly during his rather odd coming out speech.
Melvald’s didn’t sell milkshakes, Will hated getting lost, especially in the woods after all that’s happened, and how he said it to the whole team, not just the party and family.
Nothing was the same.
Mike used to love trying new things (only if they related to his current interests), he was one of the most flexible people in the party. Was. And then everything fell apart.
Will Byers had left him years ago; Mike had no idea where he had gone off to or where he was. For all he knew, Will could be in Canada or Europe or on the other side of the planet, and he wouldn’t know.
The party had broken off a year after Will had disappeared. Having an absent cleric made campaigns more difficult. No healer, no magical protector, no one smart enough to even get through an hour-long campaign.
All Mike could do was pretend everything was the same. Gaslight himself, essentially. I can’t wait to see Will and our friends soon and play a campaign. Maybe Will can sleepover again. He’d start writing letters to Will— and the other members of the party, occasionally— in hopes he could send them out to each member. Except, he still didn’t know Will’s address, and El was pronounced dead, and Mike already talked to the Sinclairs’ about every week already, and Dustin only checked his mail once a month. Fuck, Mike was running on pure delusions and hope.
He felt as if he was copying Will as a last resort for life.
And by copying, he meant revisiting his childhood to remember when he wasn’t consistently considering cutting his life short.
Mike started at the comic book store, which had closed down two years ago. Then the basement to the Wheelers’, which was reclaimed by Holly and her friends and left behind just how Holly’s party had left it. He would retry opening his D&D book, but he tried that too many times to work again.
And then there’s Castle Byers. He and Will used to hide in there and read comics and write campaigns together. He hadn’t seen it since he and Joyce were searching for a missing Will. Afterwards, Mike had gotten caught up with El and then everything following the Billy situation and Nina and Vecna shit.
If Mike was being fully honest with himself, he was rather excited and relieved at the thought of seeing Castle Byers after everything. It might be a little damaged from the years of being untouched, but it was more than likely still intact from how sturdy Jonathan had built it.
Jonathan wasn’t great at engineering, but Mike was aware of how long the structure stayed in tact from when it was built when Will was only five or six all the way until the boys were thirteen.
Mike put on a thin coat and his battered converse he really should’ve got rid of when he graduated college with a writing degree. He was staying with his parents’ during this period of searching for a purpose to stay on this wretched planet, so of course, he was stopped in his tracks before he could close the door behind him.
“Micheal? Where are you heading, honey?” His mother, Karen’s, voice was much more fragile than the last time he’d heard from her. She was already in her seventies by now, going to bed at eight thirty now. Mike favoured his mother over his father, but not when he wanted privacy. It was being ignored and neglected or checked up on every hour. Thank God Mike had an excuse now.
“On a walk, mom. I’m an adult, I don’t need to be monitored,” he sighed, gripping the chipped metal doorknob and slowly started closing the door behind him, half preparing for his mother to allow him to leave or ask more questions.
“I know, Mike, but I’m still your mother. Stay safe, I love you,” Karen smiled gently, tilting her head fondly. She had become a much gentler woman with age.
“Love you too,” He punctuated his sentence with the door clicking shut behind him. He stood stationary on the front porch for a good three minutes, staring at the houses next to and around his parents’ house. He let his gaze Linger on Lucas’ old house, which was sold a few years after he graduated, having new owners. He’s not fully sure where his parents went, but he knows Lucas and Max live somewhere in California.
Mike would ride his bike to Castle Byers, but having a scraggly thirty year old on a bike after not touching one for a little over a decade was probably not the greatest way to travel. It’s fine, even if the old Byers’ house was on the other side of town, Mike didn’t have much to do.
So he trudged, and rather desperately. It was a last resort, after all, and he didn’t know how much longer it’d keep to ache in his bones quiet. He was running out of time, just as everyone, but his time was running short.
He felt the sizzling under his skin slowly rising into a bubble, begging to begin popping and boiling over the metaphorical pot as he passed Dustin’s old house and the path to Castle Byers grew shorter. The Byers brothers’ and Byers-Hopper couple (Hopper-Byers? Mike couldn’t remember, he hadn’t seen them in a little over a decade and it was at their wedding in which he left early for because he had gotten sick), their family all lived in New York, and their house was sold and quickly demolished during their time in Lenora.
If there was a time to turn back, it was right about now. It had crossed his mind more times in the past ten minutes than Will had come to see Mike. Well, the amount of times that Will had visited Mike was an easily countable number of zero, so that could be compared to rather anything at this point. Will had actually called Mike twice.
The first call was only twenty minutes at maximum, maybe thirty. It consisted of mostly silences that used to be comfortable until they just weren’t anymore and bland small talk. Hi, how are you? Good, thanks. Yeah, I start my classes this Wednesday. I’ve already been searching for jobs. Yeah. I need to finish unpacking, I’ll call you back later.
The second call was something filed in Mike’s mind as bone-crushing and guilt intensifying memories. Mike had practically memorized the call with how many times it replayed in his head once the sun set every night.
“Mike, I can’t do this anymore. We’re not children anymore, I… I can tell you’re leading me on, you have been our whole goddamn friendship, and I wasn’t sure it was intentional until that stupid comment after I came out. You’re purposefully trying to give me hope. I’m done. I have a boyfriend, I have a successful job doing what I love, I’m fine. I’m better off without you. Stop trying to find pieces of someone else in me. Don’t call me back.”
Mike couldn’t even get a word out. Will called, Mike picked up, Will told Mike off, and then he’d hung up on Mike. Mike was left listening to the dial tone for about an hour while sitting on the floor, back against the wall until he fell asleep crying.
Mike had been found looking down at the water over the quarry cliff like it held the secrets to his existence. Maybe the water did know. He had stared at it and it had stared back at him for the five to ten seconds he was left floating in the air back up to the edge of the cliff. The cliff knew him better than anyone now. He had confessed his grievances into the air most nights he visited. The wind responded gently, just like a certain brunet had whenever Mike had called Troy a mouth-breather. Other times, he had just hummed songs he found comfort in as he laid on the rock, looking at nothing in particular.
The Byers’ house was… gone— he was already aware it was demolished— but they hadn’t built anything in its place. Just left it in shambles. What a stunning metaphor for Mike’s life. He willed himself to walk past the empty space where a small, yet warm house was supposed stand and continued walking into the forest, jerking whenever he stepped on a twig, pine cone, or dried leaf and it had made a noise. There wasn’t anything terrifying in these woods, perhaps a rabid squirrel, but he felt cruel for disturbing the quiet environment.
These noises meant he had crunched or broken something, and it felt like he was hurting someone who didn’t exist anymore.
Every snap and crack had forced Mike to stop and stare down at the snapped twig or flattened piece of bark and tear up. He was reminded of a young Will, who had apologized for stepping on an ant or even ‘getting in it’s way.’ Mike felt compelled to bend down, whisper a weak ‘sorry,’ and mourn the damaged leaf silently for a while. And he had done so about three times before resulting in stepping around anything that would make a noise on impact.
All was forgotten when his eyes landed on a familiar tree, carved letters indented into the bark, worn and barely there. Jonathan had used a pocket knife gifted to him for his tenth birthday by the boys’ ‘father,’ it was hard to label him as anything other than evil, and calling him a dad felt too generous.
Will + Mike
Of course, + Lucas + Dustin! were imbedded into the tree too, less worn as they were carved in a few years more recently than the two former names.
This tree meant Mike was close, close to his last shred of life before the brink. He was already teetering on the edge like he was as Troy urged Mike to the point of the cliff with a knife to Dustin’s teeth. God, he thought about that moment too much. He was only twelve, but he didn’t seem to hesitate long. He hesitated more when telling El he loved her.
Well, it was different. He was trying to save his friend, maybe one of his only two left at the moment. He was being brave. He was lying to El claiming he loved her— lying wasn’t brave.
Mike wasn’t brave. He had lost the title the second he broke his silly oath to Will as a child. A ‘silly oath’ he took exceedingly seriously.
“I, Paladin Mike The Brave, pledge a very special oath to Cleric Will the Wise. I will protect him and keep him as safe and happy as possible. I will stay with him forever and ever and ever and ever—“
And he repeated ‘and ever’ until him and Will burst out into giggles. This “forever” lasted but eight years. He stayed loyal to Will, and then El came back after Will got rid of the Mind Flayer from his body.
Mike was manipulative, at least he was in his own mind. He saw El as a replacement for Will when he was looking for the only person that understood him, and took advantage of the fact she was a girl. She looked a little like Will, and Mike would date Will any day, but boys dating boys was ‘disgusting,’ in his dad’s words.
And then Will came out as gay. “I don’t like girls,” and Mike could only think that’s an option? To be fair, Mike knew boys liking boys was possible, but he thought everyone just… ignored that desire. Pushed it down, sucked it up, and dated women. But Mike was already dating El, he couldn’t just drop her and everything just because he figured out it was an option— hell, they’ve been dating for years… not counting the few times they’ve broken up.
Mike would wait it out, like he always did. Wait for something to go away, wait for something to happen.
And then El died. It felt like betrayal going off to love someone else after everything. They hadn’t broken up before she died, so was he still technically in a relationship? Was he supposed to stay loyal to her even though she wasn’t here anymore? Mike could cry out loudly at the thought.
He was forever stuck in a relationship he didn’t want.
Mike traced Will’s name on the bark before trudging just a little farther. Maybe Will’s drawing and photos were still in Castle Byers. Even if not, it would still have the sign claiming ‘All friends welcome’ would still be there, Will wouldn’t just take it down—
Oh God.
Mike wasn’t fully paying attention to where he was walking, thinking he’d stop when he noticed the shape of Castle Byers, but there was nothing there. He had weakly jammed his toe into a slab of wood, and of fucking course it was the sign saying companions were free to come and go as they please. The yellow paint had faded, barely there.
Mike didn’t notice when he started crying. He sniffles and hiccuped pathetically, falling to his knees as he began weakly pulling at pieces of wood to try and find something, anything to indicate this was from a storm, from weathering, not somebody’s cruel act.
There was an old photograph. Torn in two, brown from dirt and an odd texture from being soaked in the rain so many times. It was Lucas and Mike in their Ghostbusters’ costume from grade eight’s Halloween. The other half was missing. Will’s old baseball bat he could barely hold when they were little sat next to the destroyed fort. This was deliberate.
The only few people who knew about this structure was Mike, Jonathan, Lucas, Dustin, Joyce—
and Will.
Oh. Will destroyed this.
Mike found the other half of the photograph, Will and Dustin in their costumes. The picture was torn down the middle, separating little Will and Mike.
This was Mikes fault. No one had ever made Will angry like Mike did.
“It’s my fault,” Mike’s voice was choked from crying. It didn’t sound like him. His words were ignored by the environment around him. No leaves crunched, the wind didn’t blow, the sky didn’t cry with him. He was alone.
Mike would never have Will back, Mike didn’t deserve him anyways.
Mike laid down in the rubble, clutching the two halves of the photo in his arms. His hair would have soil in it when he sat up, but he didn’t mind. He couldn’t hold on much longer, anyways. He cried for a while, gently kissed the photo of little Will for a few minutes, clawed at his skin until it was raw and the scratched flesh elevated slightly, until the sun began to set.
It needed to end. It would end if Mike had any control over it, and thank goodness he did. With both halves of the photo, Mike stood on his feet, his weakened legs not much help at the moment.
He hobbled, sobbing too loud to hear the twigs and acorns crack underneath his feet, too sorrowful to care. He knew where his feet were taking him, and he didn’t feel even the most minimal shock when he saw his watery reflection beneath him.
“I’m sorry, Will.”
Then Mike was floating downwards, no magical presence to bring his feet back to solid ground this time.