Chapter Text
Will is a lot of things, but blind is not one of them. He knows that El is beautiful. She’s wears her hair natural, so that it hangs free and wavy around and shoulders, and her skin is clear and kissed by the sun despite all the time she spends inside. Her teeth are white, and her laugh is clear like the chime of a bell, and her smile lights up her entire face like a light in a dark room. She’s still developing a sense of style, and most of her clothes are far too big and dangle loose on her small frame, but somehow, it suits her; makes her look dainty and feminine despite the clothes screaming nothing but Hopper, and it’s just…El. Just El. And Will can see every single reason why Mike likes her.
And in a similar yet completely opposite fashion, Will’s just Will. He’s fourteen and growing awkwardly into his body. He’s still a good head shorter than all of his friends, but his arms are growing and his legs are growing, and somehow he’s both small but gangly at the same time. He’s not getting muscle like Lucas, or hair like Dustin, or long (so long) and lean like Mike. He’s trapped somewhere horribly and uncomfortably between. And in the midst of all of that, he’s confused. There’s a part of him doesn’t want to grow—doesn’t want to be taller or more masculine, because there is comfort in being small. To be small is to be invisible, and to be invisible is to be safe. Or in El’s case, to be small is to be beautiful. And is it wrong of Will to want a little bit of both?
He starts out with snacks—nothing major, nothing anyone would notice. He trades chocolate ice cream with extra toppings for a small scoop of plain vanilla. Classic Coke smuggled into the movies becomes a bottle of water, chips become unbuttered popcorn, cookies and cake turn into fruit and whipped cream. His mom does notice the desserts, but she thinks he’s just taken an interest in his health and she’s thrilled for it. After all, what parent is going to complain that their kid isn’t eating as much junk food?
Will hasn’t weighed himself since the doctors at Hawkins lab, so he has nothing to base himself off of when he steps on the scale in the corner of their bathroom. He jots down the number and decides that it’ll be his starting point. He doesn’t have an end goal in mind, but he likes the idea of watching the numbers dwindle downwards, just like he’ll hopefully dwindle downwards. Not a lot, of course. But just…enough. Enough to feel right—enough so that he doesn’t feel like he’s crawling out of his skin.
Three weeks later, Will’s graduated. He can’t skip breakfast, because he and Jonathan almost always eat together, but he can skip lunch. He’s grown used to the empty feeling in his stomach, sort of come to enjoy it, even. Because when it gets bad enough, he gets a burst of energy, almost like he could bike for hours, or go back in time and fight Troy with his bare hands. It’s addictive in a way, the adrenaline rush he gets. And for the first time since he was taken to the Upside Down two years ago, he feels completely and utterly in control.
Mike and El have been ditching them all summer, and with Dustin off at camp, that leaves Will either alone, or tagging along like a third wheel with Lucas and Max. They’re nice about it, at least, but he can tell most of the time that they’d rather him be somewhere else. He can’t exactly blame them. If Will were dating someone, he wouldn’t want a loser friend tagging along all the time either.
If he’s lucky, he’ll get a few hours with Mike once or twice a week, but other than that, everything else belongs to El. It hurts him in a way that he’s not quite ready to admit, not even to himself. Not just the fact that he’s gone, but seeing him with El—seeing them hug, seeing them kiss, seeing them hold hands. Will realizes for the first time that he’s lonely, and maybe, maybe just a bit jealous.
He handles it the best way he knows how.
He starts skipping dinner.
Even though the store is closing, his Mom is still one of the only employees at Melvald’s, so on most nights she has to work late. And between Jonathan’s internship and relationship with Nancy, he can be out into the early hours of the morning, so, missing dinner is no problem for Will. He eats breakfast like normal, and leaves the house almost immediately whether he’s meeting Max and Lucas or not. Sometimes he goes to Starcourt Mall, other times he rides his bike around town. He even visits the library every now and then and reads until they close.
His fourteenth summer is the saddest and loneliest of his life.
He’s gone from checking his weight weekly to daily, watching the number tick down, down, down pound by meager pound. But when he looks in the mirror, he feels like he looks the same. Same weird gangly limbs, same round baby face. He still feels like he wants to burst out of his skin. He feels a little different though, but not in the way he wants. He’s starting to get colder now, even in the heat. There are days when he wears long sleeves, but his friends don’t even question it, brushing it off as either a Will thing or a fashion thing, he’s not entirely sure which. And sometimes when the energy comes; that adrenaline rush he loves so much, he breaks out into a sweat and his head swims in a way that makes him feel like he might faint.
It worth it though, he thinks.
Because he’s in control.
He’s in control of this one thing that feels like everything.
“It’s not my fault you don’t like girls!”
It hurts worse than a punch to the gut, worse than the Mind Flayer pouring into his body, worse than that first day he came back to school and found an article jammed into his locker about himself with the eyes crossed out and Zombie Boy scribbled over the bottom in bold ink. Mike’s face is contorted in anger but Will can’t find it in himself to feel guilty, because it hurts. Of course he doesn’t really think of El as ‘some stupid girl.’ He likes El, really he does. How could he not like her? How could anyone?
But he also likes the idea of it being just them again, even if Dustin’s gone MIA. All he wanted was for things to be like before, even if it was only for one day: Mike, Lucas, Dustin, him, and a good old-fashioned game of D&D. He hasn’t been feeling well the last few days, his head has felt foggy and his body’s been weak—he hasn’t been getting the same bursts of energy that he used to. The fatigue, the headaches…It’s been giving him a bit of a temper; something he’s not used to, and something his friends definitely aren’t used to either. He tries hard not to lose that temper now.
Will can’t believe Mike’s noticed.
More than that, he can’t believe Mike would dare use it against him.
He wants to scream at him for not remembering, for not remembering that Will used to be the most important person in his life. That it used to be him tucked under his arm. Maybe it was never for long, but sometimes, as they walked into the arcade or home from school, it was him. They’d shared sleeping bags and beds, secrets and stories, they’d hugged, and when they were young, they’d even held hands—at the park, on the swings. Will wants to scream ‘can’t you remember that?’ because while Will may have been replaced by Eleven, nobody had replaced Mike for Will.
And now, Mike looks guilty, and he’s talking, but Will can’t really hear him because his head is swimming and his voice sounds miles away. Hunger is gnawing at his stomach deep and hard, because this is the very first day he’s gotten to skip breakfast too—his very first day of absolutely nothing. He had been so proud—is so proud, because finally, he’s empty. His body is just as empty as he feels, and something inside of him loves it.
“—That we were just gonna sit in my basement all day and play games for the rest of our lives?” Mike’s voice fades in, exasperated.
“Yeah, I guess I did. I really did.” Will answers, even though he really didn’t expect that at all. Wish for it? Yes. Expect it? No.
Will needs to get out of there, needs to get away from the people who swear they love him and then act like they don’t, needs the vacant comfort of his aloneness like he’s managed to find all summer. He hops on his bike and rides into the rain, despite Mike yelling after him, despite the stars bursting in his vision.
It’s just a sign that he’s empty—the stars.
He’s got it all under control.
They’re looking for a bowl in the cereal aisle when Will faints. It doesn’t happen like it does in the movies. It’s a short process that seems like it takes hours and feels less like fainting and more like the world is collapsing on itself. The edges of his vision turn black, and everything suddenly creeps away, far away, as if the whole aisle and Lucas has been sucked down into a tunnel. Then, the floor underneath his feet disappears and his head swims in a way that makes him feel like he’s going to puke, and down he goes.
He wakes up to Max barking at Lucas to go back to Eleven.
Right.
Eleven.
The bowl.
The Mind Flayer.
And he fainted. They’re trying to save Hawkins and he’s on the ground because he fainted.
A feeling of worthlessness curls deep and unforgiving in his gut and he places his hands underneath him so he can try and get up.
“No, no, no, no,” Max scolds him, gripping him by the shoulders to shove him back down. Her hair hangs over him like a red halo, and it distracts him from the confused furrow of her brow. “Will? Are you wearing more than one shirt?”
Yes. Three actually. He’s just so cold all the time.
“Why?” He asks, but Max is already pulling his shirt up by the hem and checking herself. “Hey!”
“Oh my God!” she exclaims.
“It’s fine, Max! I’m fine!”
“Will, have you seen yourself?”
Will thinks of the baby fat that’s still settled in the underside of his biceps and the thick of his thighs.
“Yeah, so what?”
“You’re…you’re concave.”
That’s a big and grossly inaccurate word to describe him, he thinks.
“You’re exaggerating,” he says, trying to sit up again. This time, Max lets him.
“Look, we haven’t known each other that long, but I know that there’s no way your ribs have always looked…like that.”
“My ribs are fine.”
There’s a pained yelp a couple of aisles down.
“You should go help El. I’ll find the bowl.”
Max keeps looking at him, like she’s trying to stare directly into his soul.
“Are you eating?” she asks.
“Yes!” Will sighs, exasperated.
“Are you eating enough?”
“Max,” Will wraps a careful hand around her wrist to ground her. Her skin his warm, so warm under his cold fingers. “I’m okay. I’ve got it under control.”
There’s another cry, and Max stands up, flipping her hand so that she can grab his wrist and pull him up with her. The universe spins as he’s lifted upright.
“We’re not done talking about this. Find the bowl,” she says.
Then she’s gone.