Chapter Text
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It’s not like he expected anything to go back to normal. In fact, he had long ago expunged the word “normal” from his vocabulary, because from the second he opened his eyes to find himself in the Upside Down, he knew that normalcy wasn’t really a thing that could exist anymore. Not for him, anyway.
Will Byers knew that he would never, ever feel normal again. He was getting good at faking it, but his time in the Upside Down & being possessed by the Mind Flayer had done irreparable damage. He had tried, he really had – He had done his best to shed himself of the memories and to find joy in the little things about being alive, like stopping to smell some flowers on the way home or listening to the sound of the birds singing in the forest. But when the flowers turned into the jagged mouths of the Demodogs, and the bird song turned into the screams of his family and friends while the Mind Flayer wreaked havoc on his body, he knew there was no fixing him. He was ruined, and all that the Upside Down had taken from him would never be returned.
And the worst part was, nobody really understood. Yes, Nancy had gone into the Upside Down and seen the monster. But she was never lost - Jonathan had pulled her back. Yes, his mom & Hopper had donned those crazy space suits & faced a horrible death to rescue him. But they had each other, and they got out of it together. Yes, Steve had fought the Demogorgon AND the demodogs, but his life and great hair continued on. None of them were irreparably marked by the Upside Down – They hadn’t huddled in a tiny fort for what felt like weeks, shivering on the ground and fearing every second that the monster outside would find you and kill you once and for all. They didn’t know what it was like to have an alien presence invade your body, to feel like a prisoner in your own skin, or to cause the death of hundreds of people - most that were strangers, but one that you loved dearly.
The guilt, the shame, the loneliness, the fear – The aftermath of his trauma was something that Will had never been able to articulate. He didn’t want anyone to know how many residual effects of the Upside Down were left inside of his body – How his chest still ached at the sight of flames, even just a campfire; how he still couldn’t sleep in the dark; how he couldn’t ride his bike alone, anywhere (not that his mom would let him). He was ashamed that he couldn’t just move on, and put the awful memories behind him. Everyone had moved on – Or at least, it seemed like it. Will still felt like he was running in place while everyone else kept walking ahead of him, leaving him behind. Always abandoned, lost, or trapped – That was Will Byers’ story, and he knew it well.
His mother was constantly fretting over him, asking if he wanted to talk about it. She would touch him a lot, like petting his hair or gently placing her hand on his shoulder, as if to convince herself that he was really there. He knew she didn’t meant to suffocate him – He understood firsthand what she had gone through while he was gone. She had fought for him, even after everyone had dismissed her as crazy - She had talked to him and he had heard her. She was his only lifeline when he thought he would be lost forever, and that was something he would never stop being grateful to her for. But just like everyone, she couldn’t truly understand.
He tried to find common ground with his friends. Eleven was the one that he knew would understand the most, but it hurt to talk about it with her. He had tried once, to talk about the Upside Down with her, and it had ended with them both crying and Eleven clasping tightly to his hand and saying “I’m sorry,” over and over again. He thought it was because she was too close to it, that maybe she understood the pain too much. There was a reason Eleven didn’t talk about Papa to her friends, and the reason was the same as Will’s hesitance to ever discuss his time in the Upside Down or as the Mind Flayer’s prisoner – All talking about it would do was open the wound. And he just so desperately wanted it to heal.
The Party did their best with him. Dustin would come over to his house and spend his time clowning around, wrapping himself in toilet paper and saying he was Will’s “Mummy” or trying (and failing) to juggle, all just to make Will smile. Lucas would always bike all the way home with him, even though it was super out of the way, and make sure he got inside safely before turning around to pedal back home. Will was sure it wasn’t easy for Lucas to ride alone either, but he knew that Lucas would rather it be him than Will. Max even took Will to the arcade with her sometimes, and gave him advice on how to improve his scores and cheered for him whenever he beat the next level. They were all trying so hard to make him feel normal again, and he didn’t want to be the one to break it to them that he never would be.
Mike, however, was a different story. If Will was ever going to be able to talk about it with someone, it was going to be Mike. But he was terrified. He was terrified because Mike was so pure and so good, and Will didn’t want to stain that goodness with all the darkness that he kept hidden inside.
Will never had to fake a smile around Mike. Mike was the only person that truly made him feel like he was safe, like nothing would ever hurt him again. Whenever he awoke from a nightmare, he would think of one particular moment between him & Mike, and it would always calm him back to sleep.
“Hey, well, if we’re both going crazy, then we’ll go crazy together, right?”
“Yeah, crazy together.”
Thinking about that moment still brought Will to tears, because Mike just cared so much. He thought about Mike’s steadfast presence in his life after he returned from the Upside Down - how Mike was always the first one to be at his side when he was having an episode and how he never, ever made him feel weird or embarrassed. Mike had been the one to bring him back from the Mind Flayer, if only for a moment, with his tender soliloquy about meeting Will on the swings for the first time. “It was the best thing I’ve ever done.”
Mike Wheeler was the best person Will had ever met in his life, and that had only become more true as time went on. He should feel like he could talk to Mike about anything, because Mike had never given him reason to believe any differently.
But along with the dark remnants of the Upside Down that Will still felt clinging to his insides, there was also a feeling that had begun blossoming in his chest whenever Mike was around that had begun to worry him. It was a warm, dizzying sort of feeling that made Will feel like he was floating a couple inches off the ground. It was the kind of feeling that was decidedly not what a boy should feel for another boy, and certainly not for his best friend.
And this, most of all, was the reason that Will Byers couldn’t talk to anyone about the things he felt inside – Especially not to Mike Wheeler.
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