Chapter Text
“Will…”
The sound echoed between the walls, walls that flickered and changed from tile floor and poster-filled hallways to a dark and desolate pathway that lead nowhere. Or it lead somewhere, but nowhere good.
“Will…”
His own name sounded strange to him, a series of indistinct noises that laced themselves together into an identifier. There were days he couldn’t seem to attach it to himself in his own mind and it seemed that it was just by chance that those sounds had been attached together to mean something.
“Will!”
Will recoiled from his own name as it doubled in size and in tone, one high pitched and the other low. It was too close, everything was too close. There were too many teeth and not enough places to hide. His breath hitched before doubling in speed and something touched his arm and he swallowed a scream and turned around ready to run. Instead all he saw was,
“Mike...hi.”
Mike had taken a step back away from Will’s violent reaction to being startled, looking unsettled himself, eyes relaxing back from being thrown wide.
“You okay?”
Will felt his heart drop to the bottom of his stomach and he plastered a smile on his face that he’d practiced in front of a mirror for hours until he’d gotten it just right. One of the long-forgotten ‘missing’ posters was folded and stashed away in his room only to be pulled out when he needed the reminder of what the expression looked like, his face wrinkled and folded but his smile genuine. He couldn’t remember how it felt, though.
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
---
It was an odd feeling, to come back to a place where he was mourned, a place he was never expected to return to. But Will supposed he’d have to go back to school eventually. His mom had held him tight and close like it was his first day of school all over again.
He squirmed, telling her he’d be ok and then laughed when Jonathan passed by, messing up his hair and telling him to hurry up. Will went through the motions like he wasn’t just as afraid to leave as his mother was to let him.
Walking the halls again was odd, and not just because certain areas of the school were taped off, one of the science labs was closed for an undisclosed amount of time. Mike’s eyes lost some of their shine when Will asked about it, so he stopped. Dustin pulled him aside and explained as plainly and as gently as he could that that was where Eleven disappeared.
The hallways were full of people that would stare at him, like he was a different kind of freak.
With the exceptions of Mike, Dustin and Lucas, conversations seem to fade whenever and wherever he appeared, petering off into an overwhelming silence. Silences he couldn’t fill.
Mr. Clarke had greeted Will warmly, not drawing attention to him before or during the lesson but pulling him aside after the bell had rung. His friends hovered nearby, spectators to another one of Will’s reunions with reality.
Mr. Clarke put one large hand on Will’s shoulder and opened and shut his mouth a couple times before he knelt down to level out their distance.
“It’s good to have you back, Will.”
And Will smiled, trying his best to channel the ‘miracle child’ that adults whispered about when they thought he wasn’t paying attention, the friend and son that’d come back from the Upside Down right side up instead of somewhere in the middle.
“Thanks, Mr. Clarke.”
--
Curled up on his bed with his arms wrapped around his legs, Will barely rocked back and forth, Jonathan’s new mixtape on but turned down as low as possible. The voice was slight and strained, barely reaching him, but background noise was better than no noise at all.
His fingernails dug into his arms, leaving marks that would fade by morning; his breath came in short gasps before it dissolved into a cough that reached into his chest to tear something out.
It fell on the bed sheets, making no noise.
Unfolding himself, Will scrambled for his nightstand to grab something, anything, to make it disappear.
His hand landed on wood that was covered. It wasn’t supposed to be. It felt like moss and human skin woven together to create a grotesque mockery of the familiarity of his home. The soft light from his lamp had faded, replaced instead by a glow that had no source. It covered him, blanketed him, trapped and hid him all at once.
Will bit down on his hand and resisted the urge to scream. It would find him if he made any noise.
He was still here, he never left, and he was never going to leave. He was going to be stuck here forever. He’d die one step removed from reality. He was going to die here in a world that didn’t care because it was empty.
Will hit the ground with a thud. It was soft, carpeted, normal and he reveled in it, gripped it tight, pulling out loose pieces and held on. He breathed in once, twice and then opened his eyes.
His room was back to normal, he’d barely missed the mixtape skipping to the next song. Will sucked in one long breath, waiting for it to break into another series of coughs but it didn’t. With little ceremony, he stood up and picked up one of his shoes off the floor.
The thing he’d produced wiggled and squirmed on his bed and Will steeled himself before swiping it off with the toe of his shoe. Once it landed on the ground he slammed the shoe down on top of it and leaned a good portion of his weight down from the top. Will couldn’t tell if it was just in his head, but he thought he could feel it moving beneath him.
He felt sick.
After what felt like an eternity, Will gingerly knelt down and lifted the shoe up slowly to find…
Nothing. Nothing squashed into the carpet, nothing sticking to the back of his shoe. Just an empty space.