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He was supposed to be happy. They had won. Henry was dead, the Mind Flayer was dead, all of his friends were alive and well. Except for him.
He couldn't figure out how to get over everything that had happened and it fucking sucked. The monsters that tortured him were gone but Will Byers still felt like the 12 year old boy trapped in the Upside Down begging to god—to someone, anyone—to save him, but knowing deep down he was going to die in that place. And, well, he had died in there, hadn't he?
Sometimes Will wondered; he knew the rumors that spread around the town when he disappeared, he knew that people talked about how Lonnie's kid was a weak little fag who had probably fallen into the hands of an older man that kidnapped, raped and killed him. Did they know that was exactly what had happened? Did his friends, his family, know that the rumors they tried to deny were actually true?
Usually he was glad his mom and Hopper had brought him back, but today, like most of his bad days, he locked himself in his room and cried for hours, doing his best to be quiet while he sobbed and asked why, why him, why did he have to live, why couldn't they have found him when his dead body was already cold and decaying.
On days like these his family and friends didn't know how to act. His mom would be all over him at first, until one day she tried to touch him and he flinched so hard she looked like she was going to cry. After that, she just knocked on his door and said that if he was hungry she had left a plate with food in front of his door, even though she knew he never opened his door.
On the other hand, his brother tried to leave him alone, Jonathan was still feeling guilty over how he had distanced himself from his brother in the last couple of years. They were definitely closer now than they've ever been when they lived in Lenora, but still far from how close they used to be. However, Jonathan still knew his brother well enough to know when to leave him alone for a moment or when he needed someone to talk to.
Will and Jane were in a weird phase, they didn't hate each other, but they didn't necessarily love each other very much. He never truly hated her, even when he tried to, and he knows she never hated him either, but it was impossible to ignore the tension between them—the girl who stole his best friend's attention and care and then suddenly became his sister and the boy who had said best friend's attention and love back now that the world wasn’t ending.
When Jane broke up with Mike after his weak excuse of a love confession she did so believing that it would wake him up and make him realize how he truly loved her. Instead, Mike shared a house with Will for eighteen months and confessed how stupid he was to not realize the way he had been in love with Will since they were children in the first four months. Since then Jane and Will had come to terms with each other, had even become a little closer after Max started to invite them to hang out with her, but the silence between the both of them still turned awkward.
The rest of the party knew how much Will wanted space on those moments, but they would do something to show they cared. They avoided showing up at his house unless something unavoidable happened because Will would always feel guilty for having basically ignored them while they tried to care for him, so nowadays one of them would radio him on his walkie-talkie to let him know what he had missed at school or to tell him about a movie they rented for the party to watch when Will was feeling better.
As for Hopper… He was… Complicated. He knew that Hopper wanted to help and he was grateful for it, seriously, he was! But on his bad days his brain would try to protect him and he would fall back into the instinctual feeling of seeing a father as danger.
Lonnie Byers hadn't bothered any of them in years but Will thought that he would always feel his presence around him. Like Henry, Lonnie still haunted him, it didn't matter if he stripped all his clothes off or if he covered himself from head to toe and hid himself under the weight of as many blankets and pillows he could find, he still felt their hands all over him, touching, gripping, slapping, stroking him.
Thinking about Lonnie brought back memories he would rather forget. He never told anyone about the things his father did, the closest thing to that was when he asked Mike to fuck his thighs because he was desperate to replace the bad memories with good ones. He knows Mike understood what he meant, but his boyfriend knew not to push him to speak until he was ready to do it. Over the years, he had thought over and over if or how he was going to tell everything to his mom or Jonathan, but the issue was that he was sure his mom would feel guilty about it, that she would blame herself for staying with the man who was even more evil than she had imagined. Jonathan wouldn't be so different, he would put the blame on himself and spend the rest of his life believing that he could have done more, when in reality he was as much of a defenseless kid as Will was.
A sudden static noise took him out of his spiraling thoughts and his tired and tense body relaxed when he heard Mike's voice coming from his walkie-talkie, "Will? Hey, uh, I haven't heard from you the whole day and it made me a little worried, you're okay?".
They had their own channel so they could speak with each other without risking one of their friend witnessing them, as Dustin had once said, "Acting like they had been stitched together since birth and now they were being forced to live apart from each other for the first time in their lives."
Will, gathering all his strength, lifted his head and right up from the mountain of pillows he was under and grabbed his walkie, "Not feeling well today", he forced himself to say.
"Oh, I'm sorry baby," Mike replied in a concerned voice, "Do you need help? I'm here if you need me, you know that right? I can help if…"
Will didn’t want to cut him off but he was so tired and he just wanted to sleep, and he knew exactly what he needed right now, "Can you keep talking? About anything, just wanna hear you", he murmured.
Barely a second later, Mike answered, "Yeah! Of course! Well, today was boring, I mean, sure I went to school and then Lucas dragged me to go to gym with him—you accept someone's invite one time and now he thinks you're a gym freak as well—but uh, yeah! He dragged me to the gym and it was okay, but I didn't see you all day so it was boring. Max made fun of me, she said I looked like a soldier in the trenches daydreaming about his wife at home and she wasn't so far off from the truth, it's like I see you everywhere, like you're always in the back of my mind even when you're not physically close to me… Well, I mean, I kinda sound like a creep don't I? Fuck okay, uh, sorry, it's just, I love you a lot, you know? Yeah, anyways- Oh! You're not gonna believe this, Dustin said that he found…"
As Mike's voice filled his room, Will let himself rest at last, knowing that when he woke up Mike would still be around to make sure he was okay and to tell him not to worry about anything. Feeling safe and assured that he was loved, Will fell asleep.