Chapter Text
Until the day Will Byers had gone missing, he had always been invisible. And after he was found it didn’t take long for him to disappear again.
Sure some people saw him. But only pieces of him; fragments of a broken mirror reflecting back what people wanted to see.
His friends saw his love of life, and art, and dungeons and dragons, but never it’s absence. Jonathan saw his reluctant smiles and the ways he didn’t belong, but never their depth. Joyce saw her son, but never the way he saw himself.
As for the rest of the world, on the rare occasion they bothered to glance at him, they saw a freak. A weirdo, a nerd, a baby, a sissy, a fag.
Even when people stared and gawked, nobody ever saw him.
Nobody ever saw Will Byers.
The alarm clock didn’t care that Will was invisible.
With a groan Will rolled out of bed, stumbled across the room, and smashed on Darth Vader’s stupid plastic head until he stopped beeping at him to wake up. He was very much not in the mood to wake up. Unfortunately, he didn’t have a choice. Life marches on, no matter how loud or long you shout at it to slow down. To stop.
Some days it seemed the continuous flow of time was the only thing that kept Will’s hollow frame moving forwards. Other times it felt it was holding him back.
Will peered into his closet. Even though they’d moved into their new house months ago, nobody had gotten around to putting doors on it. As a result everyone could bear witness to the disastrous mess within. Jeans piled haphazardly and t-shirts falling to the floor. Periodically Will attempted to tidy it up - to fix the problem. It worked to no avail.
Shrugging on a pair of jeans and a t-shirt, Will gazed wistfully into the mirror. Early as it was, heat already hung in the humid air. Still he reached for a long-sleeved button-up, pulled it on, and checked to ensure it covered his wrists. Like every other thousand times he had checked, it did.
Stumbling down the hallway, then the stairs, Will found himself in the kitchen. Collapsing into a chair, he inhaled the sweet scent of lovingly-prepared pancakes. Eleven was already sat at the table, staring intently at the cross-word. Time and a lack of stress had steadily expanded her vocabulary since the whole apocalypse thing had gone down all those months ago. Joyce and Hopper were busy laughing at their (somewhat successful) attempts at flipping pancakes. They always seemed to exist in a world of joyful carelessness just outside his grasp.
”Morning,” Joyce singsonged, like a bird outside the window an hour too early to be appreciated.
“Morning Mom,” Will responded. “El, Hopper.”
Part of him wanted her to ask him how he’d slept. What he was thinking about. Why he was wearing long sleeves in the sweltering heat. Again. Instead, Joyce returned her attention to the stove top.
It didn’t matter. Will would have only answered in lies anyways.
Sometimes being invisible felt like a super power.
If people can’t see you they can’t worry about you. They can’t wonder why you’re broken, or why you just can’t seem to cope with life when everyone else is just fine, or ask if you’re okay. When you’re invisible you don’t have to answer if you’re okay. You don’t have to answer you’re not okay.
Invisibility was comfortable. It grew with Will, allowing him to breathe freely. Anything can become a friend if you become familiar enough with it.
Invisibility kept Will safe. If you remove the target, people tend to find something else to throw stones at. Nobody can hit you where it hurts most.
”Oh, that reminds me,” Hopper said. “There’s some mail. I think some of it was for one of you.” He gestured between Will and El with the ladle, splattering batter across the floor in the process. Scolding him playfully, Joyce immediately moved to take care of the mess.
El jumped up and dashed towards the stack of letters on the counter. The novelty of receiving letters had never worn off for her. She always seemed to find pieces of magic in the mundane. Will wondered when he had lost this ability. Sometimes he thought he might have buried that crucial piece of himself with Castle Byers.
A massive grin lighting up her face, El turned to face her family. “It’s for me,” she announced excitedly. “From Mike.”
Mike who lived a short bike ride away. Mike who saw her everyday, who just yesterday had spent the whole day snogging her senseless. Mike who was supposed to be his best friend, who had once sworn the best day of his life was the day he met Will on the swings, only to reconsider and decide that actually his life began the day he disappeared off the face of the planet.
Sometimes being invisible felt like a curse.
If people can’t see you, they can’t help heal the cuts left by the stones. They can’t reach out to give you a hug. And sometimes Will really just needed a hug.
Sometimes when you spend your life invisible you begin to wonder if maybe living your life doesn’t even matter. If anybody would notice if one day you just disappeared.
People noticed when Will disappeared. But they never seemed to realize he never truly returned.
Part of him died in the upside down. In a way it seemed fitting the rest of him should die in this Hawkins.
Will didn’t think about death very often. At least, he didn’t used to. Then again he’d never thought a lot about living.
Everyone else had moved on from the years of trauma. The shroud of death had lifted from above their heads, even if it took a while. Will couldn’t escape the feeling death was right around the corner. Not that he was scared a demogorogon would kill him. In fact, this confidence was what scared him the most.
Hopper never liked Mike. Unlike him that wasn’t the reason Will wanted to burn the letter. Joyce attempted to shush Hopper’s protests as El tore open the letter.
Will didn’t need to read the letter to know how it ended.
Love, Mike
Two words Will knew he’d never read addressed to himself.
Will didn’t know when he’d started to love Mike.
He also didn’t know why he couldn’t stop.
Mike had never loved him. Not in the way Will wanted him to. In a butterflies dancing in your stomach, longing glances lasting longer than they should, lying awake at night thinking about you kind of way.
But until that night he’d also never loved anyone else. Will came back from the dead to find this had changed. The cherry on top was when the girl became his sister approximately five seconds after he met her.
Will remembered that day on the swings. Carried it in his pocket just above his heart. Remembered how invisible he’d been, until Mike saw him. Mike chose him, and Will had chosen him ever since.
They were inseparable as children, always right beside each other. Even after they met Dustin and Lucas, everyone always knew there was something different about them. Just nothing different enough about Mike.
Will was a freak. It never bothered him until he realized it was supposed to. The way he looked at Mike never made him hide his eyes in shame, until he realized gay didn’t just mean weirdo or sissy. Gay meant the way he always wanted to brush Mike’s fringe off his face, be the first to listen to his ideas, and the only one to exist as an extension of him. It meant he didn’t belong. Could never belong.
Will was always the outsider. He was the most invested in dungeons and dragons, the last to shuffle out of art class, and the first to complete extra reading for science. He could quote all his favourite films and there was something about the way he carried himself others always found slightly queer.
Gay was different. Gay meant family and friends averting their gaze, never being loved, never having kids, AIDs, suffering and death.
Everything in Will’s life seemed to circle back to death.
Joyce placed a heaping stack of pancakes in front of Will, absolutely smothered in maple syrup. He smiled his thanks. Contorted the puppet that was his body in just the right way to express that he was a normal human.
Everyone settled around the table and tucked into their plates. Hopper devoured his food in seconds. He’d returned to an adequate weight since Russia, maybe even surpassed it a little. But the way he looked at food like it could be taken away at any point hadn’t left him. Will could understand that, the way memories bleed into the present.
Hopper’s towering frame was one of those things that sometimes pulled Will into the past. Will didn’t know how to trust a father-figure not to break out in a violent drunken rage. Lonnie’s scowling face had an awful way of replacing Hopper’s when he went red in the face or was too rough in his handling of household artefacts.
The relentless threat of Lonnie lived through Hopper. Not that Hopper would ever do anything to hurt Will, not when he’d done everything to save him. But the vital distinction between the two men sometimes vacated Will’s mind.
Will was too young when Lonnie stormed out the door that fateful night to remember most of the lifetime that lead up to it. But the black eyes, split lips, and words seared into his psyche were enough to justify the fear that welled in his chest.
Lonnie was the first person to recognize Will was different. A faggy excuse of a son, as he used to put it to the four year old. A result of his mother’s lack of discipline and a good whack every once in a while.
There’s something about other people deciding who you are before you have the opportunity to find out yourself that follows you around. How can you love something when you’re first introduced to it through other’s hatred?
Unlike Hopper, Will could only pick at his food. It wasn’t that it was bad, Joyce was the queen of pancakes. It was just that - well, he didn’t really know. At some point food had stopped feeling like a source of pleasure, and more like a chore he couldn’t be bothered with.
When Will was staring at his food he occasionally found himself wondering what would happen if he just stopped eating? He wouldn’t. It would be a miserable way to die. But maybe if he wasted away slowly it would give someone the chance to intervene.
Worriedly, Joyce watched Will stare at his plate. “Are you feeling alright?”
Will met her eyes, and immediately averted his gaze. He was scared she might see all the thoughts locked away behind them. “I feel a little off. I think I might have caught a cold,” he fibbed. Practice makes perfect, and Will Byers was a damn good liar.
“Oh you poor baby,” Joyce cooed, immediately jumping into mom mode. “You ought to be in bed. Go now and I’ll bring you up some tea. We can’t have you making yourself sicker by doing too much. Besides, you could use a break.”
She wasn’t wrong.
Will rose to return to his room. In the process of clearing the table he bashed into the table’s pointed corner and it bit into his thigh. With an inaudible grunt, he gritted his teeth in pain. Still he wasn’t exactly mad about it. Anything can become a friend if you become familiar enough with it.
It was an accident, the first time. Will was in a mood and his scab was itchy so the only reasonable thing to do was pick it. He let out a sigh of relief when it ripped off and crimson blood bubbled where it had once been. Morbid fascination overtook him as he studied the way his own blood coagulated on his arm.
Looking back he couldn’t say what exactly made him do it. What exactly he was hoping for as he reached for the broken ruler was beyond him. Still it didn’t stop him from placing the jagged edge against his wrist and gliding it across his skin. That was the beginning of long sleeves on too hot days.
There’s something about the sting that comforts Will, reminds him he’s still capable of feeling.
Curled up under the duvet, Joyce lay beside her (supposedly) sick son. Watching her children in discomfort sent her into a form of over-protective parent panic. Given this was how she reacted to a headache, Will was glad she didn’t know what was actually up. He was pretty sure she would never leave him alone again as long as they both lived.
The only thing stopping Will was others. They’d already held a funeral for him, two would just be excessive. It wasn’t fair to leave others in mourning, not to mention the cost!
Would anyone actually care though? Lucas and Dustin and Max had each other, and Steve would be sure to swoop in and look after them as much as he pretended he didn’t care. Mike was probably too enamoured with El to notice and El had ultimately only known him a few years. His mother had Hopper. She didn’t need her broken son constantly stressing her out. She’d be better off without him.
Eventually after swearing on his life (shame he didn’t care about it) he was fine, Joyce left him to take a nap. Staring at the ceiling he was overwhelmed by the ache. Initially it had been small. Easy enough to just ignore and get on with life, to move on. Now it weighed him down to the bed with it’s impossible size. It wanted to consume him, and he wasn’t sure he had the energy to resist anymore.
Before he left, Will had to say goodbye. He thought of the numerous final goodbyes the Upside Down had forced upon him over the years. Only one had been planned: Max’s letter.
Putting pen to paper had never seemed so effortless. For months he had collected the words inside him, and now they poured out onto the page. His hand stilled when he came to his mother’s letter. How do you tell someone you loved them so much you had to leave them. You had no choice.
Finally Will deemed his work sufficient and sealed the final envelope.
The first time Will thought he was going to die was that night in the forest.
The thing, whatever it was, lurched into the road. All of a sudden Will found himself on his side in the ditch and that hideous creature was lumbering towards him. Desperately he pulled himself to his feet and ran as fast as his pounding heart would allow.
Ran from the monster.
Ran from the danger.
Ran from death.
Now he welcomed it with open arms.
Will held the bottle of pills in his hands, examining the label. Joyce had left them so he could take one to combat his headache when he woke from his nap. Little did she know he had no intention of doing that.
Abandoning maths, he dumped a handful into his fist and began to swallow them one at a time. Then two, then three, then almost choking on five at once.
When he’d finished the lot he sat there for a moment. He should have cried. He should have run for help. He should have regretted it.
Instead Will felt strangely calm. Like he’d just brushed his teeth, not sentenced himself to death.
Yawning, he curled up in bed for one last nap. It was almost over.