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Will Byers is burning.
He can’t get away. The pain is forced onto him, refusing to relent no matter how much he screams and thrashes and burns.
It hurts. It fucking hurts.
Something is hurting him, something is hurting him, someone is hurting them.
He can barely hear the alarms of an ambulance. A telephone ringing. The calls of his Mom and Mike. It’s like gasoline was poured inside him, his ears filled up with the burning liquid. He can barely see through blurry tears, and his eyes shut with pain.
Fuck, it burns.
Stop it! Stop it! You’re burning me, you’re burning us!
He tries to curl in on himself, nails digging into his skin as if he could rip the fire out. The action brings little relief.
There’s something bright above him, blinding him and it hurts because it burns his eyes (but his eyes are already burning)
“Will, I need you to tell me where it hurts.”
Someone’s asking him a question but he doesn’t know if he can answer it, his tongue is burning and it feels like his mouth is being seared. But he tries and mumbles, “All over.”
“Where does it hurt the most?” The voice clarifies and Will is fucking burning, what don’t they understand that?
“EVERYWHERE!” He screams at them, “EVERYWHERE!” before he breaks down crying again from another wave of pain
It hurts everywhere and he can’t get away from it, it hurts! He needs to get away from the sandpaper tearing away his skin, peeling it off bit by bit but never lessening the pain.
There’s a mask over his face, and it gets impossibly hotter somehow before a new pain in his stomach makes him howl, and hands are touching him and it all fucking hurts.
His throat feels burned and scarred, blitsters opening up and bleed out blood live it’s lava. He sobs more, trying to find a way to allocate pain, arching his back because everything touching him is making it worse. He’s burning up, he’s charred away, but it won’t stop hurting
He thinks he’s pleading but it won’t stop.
So he continues to scream and thrash and burn.
Will Byers is burning, and there is no relief.
—
Will wakes up sore.
His body is tense, caught up in the sheets that keep him far too warm for his liking. He’s sweating, and it’s just like those uncomfortable days when a voice told him I like it cold.
It’s one of those bad nights. His jaw aches from holding in screams, and the sheets, his hair, hell even his pillow is wet from sweat. The dream- the memories - lingers in his head. There’s phantom pains trailing along his body, small twitches and spasms the only indication something hurt along his overall unblemished skin.
He needs a cold shower. He'd rather deal with a shiver and discomfort of too tight skin rather than burning pains.
Will slowly gets out of bed, dressing down as he walks to the bathroom. His footsteps are naturally quiet, only gained from running and hiding from monsters, Demogorgons and abusive dads alike.
He doesn’t bother turning the light on but he does take a moment to shove a towel in between the door and the floor. It muffles the sound of the shower when he turns it on to its coldest setting, at least from the outside. No one should wake up.
Instead of standing in the shower, he sits. The water dutifully pours onto him, and while he shivers, he doesn’t change the temperature. The burning sensation has dulled, from the vivid dream to the phantom pains to just a small memory. He holds his arms loosely, trying to relax his body as much as he can. It would feel better later if he relaxes now. He can’t help but curl his fingernails into his skin though as he sits there in the dark. Before he knows it, salty tears fall out of his eyes and mix with the cool water.
It’s just so stupid.
He doesn’t even remember the events, most of it hazed and blurred memories, causing the sensations. So to have dreams leaving him freaked out, his body tense and sore and burning? He knows people think it’s the cold that bothers him, which is true, don’t get him wrong, just true in a different way, but there’s a lot more to his relationship with temperature.
Which is so stupid because normal people don’t have complex relationships with the fucking temperature. They didn’t have to worry about registering temperature wrong, where 70 degrees felt too warm or where you almost got hypothermia because you couldn’t tell the ice bath was too cold to sit in for an hour. People just liked it hot or cold or warm or cool and there wasn’t much else to it. Will though?
Cold reminded him of freezing. In the literal, redundant sense, sure, but also of survival. Shivering in the Upside Down, freezing when he hears something growling, holding his breath to prevent monsters from hearing him, seeing the wisps of air when he finally feels safe enough to exhale, moving slower as sickness invades his lungs, dying and becoming a corpse before he’s brought back, throwing up slug-creatures, running and shouting at shadows, feeling Him everywhere, connecting to something larger than himself, losing control, liking the cold because He liked it.
And heat reminded him of burning. It’s not something he can just describe, except that there’s nothing like it. Burning yourself on a stove or hot pan? Rubbing sandpaper roughly against your skin? Nothing like having fire burn through your veins and nerves. It felt like the pain would never end, and sometimes Will thinks it never did.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
He shakes his head, letting droplets fly from his hair and a shaky breath out of his lungs. He gets up and turns off the shower.
He can think about that later, when he’s back in bed and staring at the ceiling. Or better yet, never, if he can fall asleep somehow.
But it’s one of those bad nights so he doesn’t fall asleep. Just lays there and feels the ghost sensation of burning.