Chapter Text
Mike had always been familiar with pain. And being the oldest brother, he had to let everyone know he was tough. Pain didn’t bother him– he couldn’t let it. If he wiped out on his bike, he would simply brush the gravel off of his bleeding knees, and carry on. He could push it to the back of his mind. It was for the better.
He was tougher than his siblings (especially Evan, who couldn’t fathom the idea of ignoring a scrape or a bruise. Something about Evan’s constant sniffling pissed Mike off since his brother had been born. If you asked him if it had anything to do with the fact that any attention from their father that had once belonged to him would belong to Evan when he cried, he would tell you to fuck off), but he was tougher than all the other kids too. Meaner, maybe.
He would accidentally hit his friends too hard when they were expecting a soft press of knuckles to their shoulders when they would poke fun at him. He wasn’t allowed to be it during recess in elementary because he took it too seriously. He never understood. Everything hurt a little, didn’t it? Why was he the only person who wasn’t bothered? (Because everything did hurt for him. Because he was old enough to remember their mother, old enough to know that other kids’ dads didn’t tell their kids that they weren’t loved).
He wasn’t unfamiliar with the pain he would knowingly walk into at home after getting in trouble at school; wasn’t unfamiliar with the fear of his siblings hearing, of knowing who their father truly was too young (because he didn’t want to give Evan another thing to run to him for comfort about. Not because he was worried about them, not because he cared how they would feel. It was out of pure self-interest. That’s what he told himself, anyway).
The fear of the pain he knew was coming never really went away. The pain was a constant in his life. If he was in pain, that meant his father was there. His father being there and angry was better than his father ignoring him while working at the pizzeria alone for hours, right?
He grew comfortable with pain. If there was a bruise on his arm, he would subconsciously accommodate for it. He wouldn’t sleep on that side. A scrape on his knee? He would take cooler showers until it scabbed over. He can’t really remember a time in his life where he wasn’t in pain.
After Evan… died… he didn’t think he would ever feel a pain as intense as the one in his heart after he’d heard the flatline. He heard it in his dreams nearly every night for the next four years. He would wake up breathing heavy and clutching his heart, just wishing that somehow this pain would end. He didn’t care how.
Mike’s father offered no help after the bite. He didn’t try to convince him that it wasn’t his fault like Uncle Henry had. He wasn’t quite angry, either. He was almost… proud. Mike wasn’t sure if he felt better or worse about that.
After William went missing, Mike found that he sort of missed the pain. Missed the soreness, missed forgetting about it and bumping it into something. He had cut himself before, of course. After Evan died, the pain in his heart was so unbearable he would do just about anything to get his mind off it. He remembers sneaking into Lizzie’s room once she was out with friends and stealing her craft scissors. He disassembled the scissors in the bathroom that night and gingerly brought a blade to the thin skin on his inner wrist. He could faintly see blue veins under his skin, and wondered how hard it would be and how much it would hurt to sever one. Would it kill him?
Nearly every night for a year, he would spend an hour or two in the bathroom spilling his blood into the sink and trying his hardest to focus on the pain in his wrist and nothing else. He only stopped when his father caught a glimpse of a fresh cut, too long and straight to be able to be played off as an accident, when his sleeve rolled up. Instead of talking to Mike, or comforting him, or telling him to stop, he rolled his eyes and turned his back to him as if it were a minor inconvenience.
Later that day, while he was sitting in the pizzeria dining area with Liz waiting for his father to finish up so they could go home, he heard William talking to Uncle Henry about it a few tables away. Mike thought at first that his father was worried, didn’t know how to deal with something like this, that he needed to ask Henry for help because he cared. But when he strained his ears to listen, his father was telling Henry about how disgusted he was. About how Mike didn’t really need help, he was just attention-seeking. How he was a lost cause at this point. Not worth the trouble.
Mike had always been a tough kid. He never cried. Not when he was bleeding into the bathroom, wishing to no longer be alone, not when he picked open the scabs again and again, not when Liz accidentally poked at an unhealed wound beneath his sleeve, not when his father kneed him in the stomach to get him down and didn’t stop at that. He didn’t deserve to cry, didn’t deserve to feel sorry for himself after what he had done to his brother. But he could not deny that his eyes had watered as he heard this. He bit down on his lip and stared at his hands in his lap, pointedly not making eye contact with Liz across the table, who he could feel staring at him.
He did not talk as his father came over to tell them to get in the car, did not meet Liz’s concerned and hesitant gaze in the dark parking lot. When they got to the car, Uncle Henry was there. He looked at Mike with sad, understanding eyes, kinder than any emotion he had ever seen on his father’s face. Mike still flinched when he put a heavy hand on his shoulder.
“How about you come to stay at my house tonight, Mike,” Henry offered in a low voice. Mike didn’t look up from his scuffed up sneakers. “We can stop for some food, put on a movie, drink hot chocolate. What do you say, kid?”
It did not sound like Mike had an option, but his answer would be the same either way. Mike nodded and looked back to see Liz glaring at him from their father’s car as he and Henry walked over to his car.
That night, Mike sat with Henry on his plush couch, eyes glued to a TV showing a movie that he wasn’t really watching. Henry waited a while until he finally brought up what Mike knew was coming. With the movie still playing, Henry convinced Mike to tell him about how he was feeling, why he was hurting himself. Mike was hesitant to tell the truth. Henry asked for Mike to show him and waited patiently as Mike slowed his heavy breathing and calmed his shaking hands. Mike held out his arm and Henry tenderly pulled up the fabric to reveal a spot he once knew to be smooth and clear, but was now full of thin white and pink scars and scabbed angry, red cuts. Mike remembers how Henry held his breath, holding in every bursting emotion, and led him to the bathroom to clean him up and bandage the unhealed wounds. Although his hands were bigger than William’s, Henry’s hands never once hurt Mike. Every touch was feather-light and incredibly soft. Mike wanted to yell at him, tell him he was used to the pain, that he didn’t have to be scared of hurting him, that he deserved it. But the words died in his throat and all that came out was a noise that sounded too close to a sob for Mike’s comfort.
After that day, Mike found he could distract himself. He didn’t need it. (But he wasn’t perfect. One night– a night where he couldn’t sleep because all he could feel was his little brother’s blood on his face– his hands moved by themselves to reach into the drawer where he kept Liz’s disassembled scissors. But when his hands searched around, they did not meet cool metal. He peaked into the drawer and found they weren’t there, but there was a stuffed animal he doesn’t remember putting there. He hadn’t kept stuffed animals for years now, but Liz did. Mike slept on his bedroom floor that night, unsettled by the fact that he had failed to protect yet another one of his siblings).
He learned how to live without it.
Until he couldn’t. Until Fritz, and then Lizzie, and then his father, and then Uncle Henry all left him. Until he was alone, and the only thing he could do all day was wallow in the pain of his heart.
There was no point. He had nobody. Completely alone, Mike had no idea how to live. Why should he? There was nothing left for him.
The only thing that kept him going was hatred for his father. So he decided to stop feeling sorry for himself and got up to go find him. He worked at Chica’s Party World until it was apparent he wasn’t going to find William there. Despite being surrounded by coworkers, some of which even tried to befriend him, he remained alone. He could not rationalize becoming friends with these people. Nothing good happened to people who he got close to. It was better to keep them at an arm’s length, for everyone’s safety. Maybe one day his curse would be cured, and he could get close to someone again, but it was too risky now. These people didn’t even know his real name.
Mike would get home to a silent, unmoving house. He couldn’t be bothered to keep up with chores, the TV becoming dusty and cobwebs forming in his siblings’ old rooms. He ate plain meals in silence, if he ate at all. Any muscle he had before had shrunk away, and his face was left looking quite hollow, matching the empty look in his eyes that he wore all day. His eyebags were comparable to a sleep experiment patient. He avoided mirrors and hated spoons.
In an attempt to quiet his brain and distract himself from the aching of his heart, or maybe just to give up, to get it over with and bleed out, he once again took a blade to his arm. This time, it was a double-sided razor blaze he bought at the gas station on a whim. He had tiny cuts on his finger tips everyday, but that was nothing compared to the situation on his shoulders, where the short-sleeved uniform would hide.
Every night after he got home, Mike would sit on the edge of the bathtub and unravel the layer of gauze over his upper arm to reveal a mess of jagged white, pink, and purple scars, with deep, slowly healing cuts on top. He could see each layer of skin– with every new cut the yellow fat threatened to spill out of his arm. He pushed the blade down until he could feel it pricking his skin, and slowly dragged the blade through his arm, biting his lip until the pain was too much and only then would he remove the blade from his skin. He let it bleed into the tub, not bothering to ruin yet another hand towel to stop the bleeding. He found he didn’t care that this could kill him. It stopped hurting after a while.
Once he was sufficiently drained of energy– too tired to dwell on the past– or too dizzy to keep himself sitting up, then he would rinse his arm off and wind gauze around the new lacerations. He would stumble to his already blood-stained sheets and collapse. He was lucky if he slept until morning, but even if he was exhausted he would more often than not lie in bed awake for hours, his mind or heart or the throbbing pain in his arm keeping him up.
And it went on like this nearly every night. Mike relished in the soreness the next day at work, secretly happy when he moved his arm too hard while mopping and could feel each cut opening individually. He was okay with doing this for the rest of his life. Unfortunately, it was clear that his father was not going to be there, and finding William was the one thing he was supposed to be doing.
Things changed when he moved to the pizzeria, though. Specifically, a pretty boy named Jeremy came into his life. Even more, this pretty boy liked him. No matter how many times Mike messed something up, Jeremy never left his side. As much as that scared Mike, he also found it was comforting to have this again. The last friend he had… Well it was Mike’s fault Fritz had gotten hurt, wasn’t it?
(And Mike told Jeremy this, on a night after they’d gotten high and Mike spilt everything, and Mike chided himself for being too vulnerable, but something about Jeremy’s bright eyes and reassuring smile made it hard for him to shut his mouth. Jeremy never once flinched away from Mike. Never stopped talking to him even though Mike tried to explain that it was in his best interest to. Didn’t call him a faggot after he kissed him. Didn’t shy away when he showed up to Mike’s house to find him with empty eyes, knotted hair, and a dirty house.)
When he was with Jeremy, Mike didn’t think about William. Didn’t think as much about how much he missed his old life. For once, his brain would be quiet. The first time Jeremy pressed him down on his bed, kissing his lips and jaw and neck and shoulders, softly whispering sweet nothings into his ear, Mike was shocked at how quiet his mind could be. He was only this at peace when he was on the verge of bleeding out in his bathtub, except now he knew he wasn’t alone.
Of course, Jeremy couldn't magically fix everything wrong with him– Mike didn’t expect him to. If Mike stayed the night at Jeremy’s after work, he found that he did not miss his blade as much as he initially thought he would. He didn’t need it every night, but that didn’t mean he could quit. During his work day, he found himself excited to get home so he could see his blood spill into coagulated puddles in his bathroom. With his new work uniform, he wasn’t confined to just his upper arm, and soon new cuts traveled lower and lower. He didn’t care when he could see a tendon, didn’t care when they wouldn’t stop bleeding. As long as he got it under control by the time his shift started, as long as nobody saw, it didn’t matter.
He cleaned up the blood in the bathroom, hid his blade, changed his bloodied bed sheets, only because Jeremy was now prone to random visits to his house without asking permission (because Jeremy knew Mike was always home, knew he had nothing better to do).
When Jeremy came over, Mike felt like it was Jeremy’s personal goal to distract him from his thoughts as best as possible. He brought food (sometimes Mike would catch Jeremy looking too long at his too thin wrists, or hand lingering on his bony shoulder after he had patted it. Mike started gaining enough weight to begin to look human again, muscle being added to empty space), joints, cigarettes (Jeremy choked on the smoke of one when Mike called it a fag), movies, and talked. A lot. Not that Mike minded, of course. He thinks he could listen to that boy talk for the rest of his life and he would never get bored. Simply admiring his face was enough to keep him entertained.
On this particular day, Jeremy's eyes looked so much brighter, hair fluffier, his bronzed skin almost shining in the light from his now opened window. Mike found himself distracted as Jeremy was telling a story back from California, and he could not resist practically pouncing onto the other boy, his mouth eagerly meeting his mid-sentence. Mike gently pushed Jeremy’s back onto the bed, sitting on his waist with his arms supporting him near Jeremy’s shoulders. Jeremy let out a surprised gasp into Mike’s mouth, but the contact was not unwelcome and he kissed Mike back. Mike shifted his weight onto one arm and let the other cup Jeremy’s face and slowly travel upwards to get tangled into his hair. Jeremy put his hands on Mike’s waist, slowly sliding up and down.
Mike intertwined their tongues, and Jeremy’s hands slipped under his sweatshirt. A shiver went up his spine, goosebumps following soon after.
Mike could not think about anything except for Jeremy’s hands under his shirt, warm skin burning his heart and soul. He gasped into Jeremy’s mouth as his hands slid higher and higher, exploring Mike’s waist and sides and chest. He didn’t think as he allowed the other boy to take his shirt off, tossing it to the floor beside them. He didn’t think until Jeremy’s hands were sliding down his slightly toned arms, pads of his fingers ghosting over now healed bumps on his biceps as if he were reading braille, and down still until his feather-light fingertips touched hard scabs and still open flesh and burning hot skin, trying to reject whatever bacteria had gotten inside.
Jeremy disconnected their mouths, heart beating wildly in his chest, and opened his eyes with a furrowed brow. He tried to sit up on his elbows to be able to see Mike’s arm better, but Mike’s brain had finally caught up, especially now that Jeremy’s hands weren’t trying to melt him into a puddle of remnant right there and then.