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Ever since they've defeated Vecna, Mike has tried to kill himself 7 times.
He can't put a finger on it when it really started. When suicide became a normal part of his daily thought process, when images of slitting his wrists or allowing his body to dangle from a rope hung by hands that used to embrace his friends or set dnd campaigns became his everyday hell.
It was a gradual beginning. The cliffside and Dustin, his slowly souring mood as he grew older. Will leaving, Lucas becoming popular and leaving the party to rot in the dust, pretending he’d never played dnd.
He forgives Lucas, but knowing someone that you used to be close with could so easily turn you away for a moment of feeling like a somebody is an odd thing to learn.
It’s as if them killing vecna, them finally disposing of the evil that had begun this bullshit in the first place, was everyone’s breaking point.
Will’s locked himself away, nobody except his mom and occasionally Jonathan being able to reach him. Max has gone almost fully blind, only the slightest bit of light reception left. Nancy’s drinking again, Dustin’s getting into fights, El’s dead.
And to Mike, it feels like they all died along with El and Vecna.
As if he hasn't tried.
He lets his head hit the back of their bathroom sink. He’s sprawled on the floor, legs out in front of him and posture slumped. He sure feels like a dead man when he’s in positions such as this, hair greasy, bags under his eyes, half healed wounds on the underside of his wrists and forearms. He’s the perfect epitome of what he’s always imagined he’d become.
The unused razorblade held limply beside him taunts him. He’s scared this attempt may be futile, just like the first. The only difference between now and then is that he’s alone this time.
-
Mike can’t help but cry with Nancy looking at him like that. He's aware of how pathetic his situation is, sat upon the closed toilet with his forearms held out for his sister to bandage and face turned away.
Nancy had tears in her eyes when Mike risked a glance. He can see, out of the corner of his blurry eyes, the way her hands shake as she gets to her knees and opens the wheeler family’s - rather mediocre - first aid kit on the floor.
She takes gauze out first, scooting over to Mike and hovering over his wrists as if she’s unsure what to do.
he feels similarly, to be truthful. The sting of his wrists have long since faded, adrenaline kicking in and the large gashes turning to just a rather deep ache than fresh feeling. it gets under his skin, taking his emotions and allowing them to seep out in the form of red substance.
His blood has coated his hands, arms, knees, floor. It's everywhere around them, it’s smeared onto Nancy's sweater somehow.
Tears leak from Nancy's eyes, falling onto Mike's wrists and mixing with the mess of blood there.
her eyes widen just a fraction at the sight, seeming as if she hadn’t actually imagined a physical reaction to happen. as if she had just expected to wake up and for this all to be a dream, for her tears and mikes blood to be unreal. a sick nightmare.
their life has become a sick nightmare, hasn’t it? his girlfriend is dead (and god he couldn’t even say he loved her when she was fucking dying because he couldn’t get over the fact that he would be lying) from committing suicide via interdimensional monsters, his bestfriend hasn’t eaten in days, hasn’t unlocked his door for longer. His older sister is shedding tears over his own self inflicted injuries, his mother is still in the hospital as his dad is god knows where. According to Will on their short, lackluster calls that stopped a few days ago, Jonathan is getting high again and Joyce hasn’t set down her cigarette box since everything happened.
Nancy folds the roll of gauze into two thick squares, grabbing ahold of Mike's wrists and pressing them down.
He can feel his blood immediately begin to wet the gauze. He imagines they may need a towel to stop the bleeding, or hell the hospital.
He doesn't voice this. He just allowed Nancy to get a firmer grasp of both of his wrists and listens to the sounds of them both losing self control in the situation. Nancy's breathing heavily, gasping breaths and sobs slipping through momentarily. He cries silently, he always has, chest shaking all the while.
Mike feels like a little kid again, even though he’s the farthest he’s ever been from that.
-
It’s been a week and one day since they defeated vecna. 7 days. 7 attempts.
Mike watches the blood flow out of the gashes that line his arms, new and old.
This is his 8th.
_
Will hasn’t slept in days. not for lack of trying, god he’s been trying to close his eyes and let himself fall asleep for hours, but because of the nightmares.
they’re constant. Flashbacks of different images of the mindflayer, of El sacrificing herself, of the upside down. Older things too, like being bred for demogorgon production when he was 12, or having to jump from tree to tree in a sick attempt at survival in a place no kid should've survived.
Then besides the flashbacks, there's the things that his head conjures up all by itself. Such as Mike getting caught by Henry, his eyes being pushed into his skull, his limbs twisting and turning in directions that shouldn't be humanly possible. Sometimes it's his mom in the position, or Jonathan, but it's mostly Mike.
That's why he had stopped their, albeit silent and stilted, calls. He loves Mike, he loves Mike more than anyone, but he’s incapable of existing outside of his mind. He’s incapable of disconnecting Mike’s voice from Mike’s screams in his dreams. The awkward talk of how he and his sister have been melding with the begs and pleas of a mike dying at a sick man’s hands.
Everything is a constant reminder of what happened. The blood under his nails refusing to come out, the confinement to his bed, every single box in his room filled with a life he had lived in the middle of all of it.
He hasn't unpacked anything except the absolute necessities since his mom finally secured them a house in Hawkins again. Though his idea of ‘necessities’ may not exactly be correct considering how he's been living the past week. He has a blanket, a pillow, a sketchbook (that he hasn't used), a comic book (that he hasn't read), and a few changes of clothes (only one of which he's used.)
So in short, but there really is no way to shorten any of this shit, he hasn't been sleeping, his hygiene is shit, and everyone he loves is in a similar predicament from what he's heard.
He adjusts the blanket atop him to lay tighter around his shoulders, rolling over onto his back to face the ceiling instead of the wall. Wow, so different, really. The ceiling is much more interesting than the stupid chipped wall. An absolutely enticing display.
He hates it here. He's logically in the best place that he's been since he was 12, with Henry defeated and the upside down closed and almost everyone relatively alive (he refuses to acknowledge el’s death. She wouldn't, out of all of them she was always one of the most hopeful, the most upbeat. She wouldn't. Tomorrow he's gonna wake up to her banging on his door and telling him that he's late for school. In reality, he dropped out. In this ideal world, he's still in California and convinced everything is closed and everyone is alive.)
His life should be good; he's in a good place. But somehow, he’s never felt worse in his life.
His unwashed hair taunts him, the blood under his nails mocks him, the ceiling watches him suffer in silence and dares him to beg for a taste of hope.
If everything didn't stop after Henry died, Will doesn't think it ever will.