Chapter Text
It’s December 15th, 1988 and Hawkins, Indiana is drowning.
No inch of land goes unscathed by the icy downpour that pelts the little town and its winding roads. For weeks, all of Hawkins has been under some sort of gloomy spell that it can’t shake. Some wonder if it will ever stop, if maybe the town will disappear in a surge of flood water that takes out homes, well-tended flower beds, sweeping away cars, bikes, and street signs in its wake. This will never happen, of course; nothing bad ever sticks forever in Hawkins. Havoc comes and goes like the rise and fall of a rollercoaster. This is how it has always been.
It’s on this day, just as the sun dips unnoticed behind the trees surrounding his father’s trailer, that Will Byers realizes he’s truly alone.
Safe from the torrential weather behind the slate grey shingles, Will lays bundled up in the living room, not quite asleep but not truly awake either. The growing shadows have hidden him in the mismatched pile of quilts he dragged from the chest at the end of his brother’s bed. He’s been enjoying the sound of the rain landing and trickling down the glass patio door for almost 45 minutes, huffing the silence that radiates through the trailer like he can’t predict the next time he’ll experience such peace. It isn’t a far fetched thought; the Byers household scarcely gets to experience silence like this, and so instead of indulging himself in a book or diving into his sketchbook like he usually would on rainy days, Will only waits, his hooded green eyes fixed on the droplets as they trickle downwards.
The realization creeps calmly into the room, across the floor and up his pantlegs, across his stomach, into his throat. A passing thought that balloons inside Will, filling him with a bitter sizzling as it pops and settles in. You are alone. Not the impermanent kind of alone, either. The hereditary kind. It doesn't take him by surprise, of course, because he has always been alone.
Almost always, Will thinks in frigid disagreement, drawing his knees to his chest as he minds the weather. Almost always.
He does prefer this definite loneliness to the meaningless company he knew before. The false comforts that brought him nothing but heartache, anger, guilt. The comforts that left him once more as he was ultimately destined to be; alone.
But it felt good at the time, though, didn’t it?
Even if it was wrong.
Stop it. You don’t think about that anymore.
He can live with loneliness. If he couldn’t, he always said he’d do something about it. Instead, he’s spending another night alone in the dark of his father’s living room, pickling in the sour smell of unclean bottles, burnt wood, and mildew. He was born into it; born to know it as intimately as any one person can know another. He can’t curb his loneliness any more than the moon can stop its cycles, or the ocean can stop its tides. It’s bound to happen, he thinks. I’m bound to be alone, and that’s how it has to be.
So why does it still hurt?
The silence is a blessing despite its short life inside the Byers’ double-wide, and it’s not long before the vibrant trill of their landline phone slices through it like a razor blade.
With a stiff groan, Will unfurls himself from his nest of blankets on the chesterfield and crosses the dim living room, down the hallway in his sock feet, padding across cold laminate as the phone belts a few more struggling rings. He doesn’t run, doesn’t even jog to the receiver, but there is a rushed nature to his stride that only he and his brother can really truly relate to. As he plucks the receiver off its holder, propping it between his ear and shoulder while turning back towards the living room window, a few blips of static rush through the phone before the caller finally pipes up in a thin, highly-cautious voice.
“Lonnie?”
Will pauses. Speak of the devil.
“He’s asleep, Jonathan,” Will says quietly, leaning into the wood panelling as he watches the storm wail and moan outside. From his end, Will can hear Jonathan pull away from the phone to let out a relieved sigh. He wasn’t meant to hear it, yet he can’t help but relate.
“Oh, hey, Will. I, uh… I didn’t wake him, did I?”
Jonathan goes quiet; he’s waiting for Will to check. Will does, of course, angling away from the wall and peering down the hallway with the receiver held away from his face. No heavy-footed stumbling. No cussing behind the painted face of his closed bedroom door. Drinking up the silence, Will returns the phone to his ear.
“No, thankfully,” he mumbles, eyeing the door; all too aware of it now. “He’s been sleeping all afternoon.”
“Good, that’s—that’s good. Uh… I was calling to talk to you, anyways. About tonight.”
His hesitance says enough; Will’s shoulders deflate with understanding. Sliding a hand into the front pocket of his jeans, Will thumbs two thin, rectangular slips of paper that he’s been keeping safe for the past two weeks. He can feel his heart plummeting before Jonathan has even clarified. He knows what’s coming.
Rubbing the two tickets together in his pocket, Will swallows hard, pressing the receiver tight to his skull.
“You’re bailing,” he whispers, crushed.
He feels minuscule for being as let down as he is. The tickets in his pocket are the result of him putting away his final paycheck from working part-time at the theatre last summer, and he can feel the meaning inside of their papery, mass printed faces. He and Jonathan had planned to go see the reshowing of Killer Klowns from Outer Space months ago, to make one hell of a night of it, ever since they’d seen the Hawk Theatre’s marquee announcing its limited return to the silver screen one morning when Jonathan was driving Will to school. Back when that used to happen. Back when his brother still lived a few doors down from him for more than a few weeks out of the year.
He knows how important this is to me, Will thinks, refraining from whining like an upset child as his nails dig into the cool cover of the phone. What could be more important than this?
School. School is more important.
“Will, I’m not— listen, I really wanted to be able to go, alright? But I’m just—” A scuffle on the other end, the sound of the mouthpiece being brushed. “I’m really preoccupied here right now.”
Being an adult. Or being the opposite of an adult. Working, or pretending to work. Staying away from here, ultimately. Will hates being as bitter as he is.
“Will?” Jonathan murmurs, and Will is drawn back in, clearing his throat as though that might fend off his disappointment.
It’s not like this was the only reason I got up today, he thinks harshly, his stomach turning.
“It’s fine.”
“You could still go see it, y’know. Maybe Dustin or Lucas would go with you?”
Will flinches. Not from hearing his best friends’ names, of course, and not at the suggestion of doing something with them specifically. He tries to recall the last time he did something with his brother that hadn’t begun and ended with them sitting cross legged on Jonathan’s bedroom floor, complaining about their father. He finds, trapped beneath a creeping sense of hurt, that he can’t remember.
“I said it’s fine.” His words are clipped by the sudden creak of bedsprings from the end of the hall. He leans into the wall harder, digging a thumbnail between the paneling. “You have a life, Jonathan. It’s not your fault that you have a life.”
“You’re mad at me, aren’t you?” Jonathan asks quietly from his end—just as their father shuffles out of his bedroom.
Will’s eyes fly to him, if only to assess the shape that he’s in. Lonnie moves quietly, barefoot, down the hall towards the kitchen, fitted in an old white t-shirt and plain, slate-grey pyjama pants freckled with burn holes. He doesn’t give Will a second look. Letting out a less than half-assed grumble as he passes his youngest son, Will’s teeth instinctually clench together. Hard.
On the other end of the line, Jonathan presses on.
“Will?”
“Yeah, I’m here. No, I’m—” Will hesitates, watching Lonnie drag himself to the fridge, kneeling down and pulling open the cooler. He looks dead on his feet in the pale, cold light that floods his wrinkled face. “I’m not mad, I’m just—we were going to do this together, y’know? Us.”
“I know, Will, and I’m sorry, but—”
“Who’s on the phone?”
Every muscle inside Will tenses at his father’s subtly slurring voice bouncing from the kitchen. The rattle of the cooler sliding shut rings inside his ears like a train whistle. Pressing the phone harder against his ear, Will acts as though he doesn’t hear his father’s half-asleep questioning.
“— And it gets really busy here, y’know? With finals going on and working shifts at the paper, I don’t even have the time to call Mom most days,” Jonathan finishes, completing the point of a sentence that Will only heard half of. “I’ll be back before you know it. Real soon, alright? Don’t skip out just because of me.”
“I get it, Jonathan, but I’m not replacing you. We can go another ti—”
“If that’s your mother,” Lonnie calls from over the kitchen sink. “tell her to wire me the fuckin’ child support she owes me if she wants you to eat this week.”
With a lit flame beneath his poor mood, Will’s stomach yanks itself into a sickening knot and he turns to look at his father. Pulling the phone from his ear, he watches Lonnie’s perma-drunk antics with disdain. He’s propped against the counter with a chilled can of beer in his hands, trying with dumb inadequacy to crack open the top. As he finally gets a hold on the tab and pulls it upwards, a cool krrak announcing his success, Will loses grip of his temper. Something he never really has trouble with. Something he only gives into when Joyce is brought up.
“If you need your money so bad, talk to her yourself for once.”
Like the crack of a whip against his ass, that captures Lonnie’s attention immediately. Clutching the can in his hand, he leans sharply around the kitchen entry to stare at Will as though he’s just spontaneously combusted right there in the hallway. Before he can witness his father’s violent expression, Will spins back towards the landline and returns the receiver to his ear. Jonathan is aware of everything despite the miles and miles between Indiana and Ohio State, but Will can’t find the time to listen to him.
“Fuck. I did wake him, didn’t I?”
“You know what? Don’t worry about it, alright? It’s just a stupid movie anyway. Listen.” Will coils the phone cord around his finger and lets it slide away. “I’m gonna go, but, uh… I’ll see you when you get home, okay?”
“Will,” Jonathan barks, knowing in some sense what situation the boy is in, but having his protest denied.
“Bye, Jonathan,” Will utters into the phone, quietly dropping the phone into its holster with a click that feels deafening in the home’s returning quiet. He doesn’t know why his words feel so final, but something about them rings heavy.
For a brief second, he wants to lift the phone up again, dial Jonathan’s number back, get an answer, get something. He wants to tell him to drive across state lines anyways, just in case, because he might need to. Hell, he does need to. The situation never goes too far when he talks back, but that only means that one day it will. Someday it will bite him; he just can’t tell how close that day is.
Stepping away from the receiver, Will is immediately met with a vicious shove that smacks him back-on into the wall, his shoulder blades singing with pain against the faded panels.
“The fuck did you just say to me, boy?” Lonnie spits through a squared jaw, his can left on the kitchen counter to drip condensation as he corners his youngest. He isn’t tall—none of the Byers, besides Jonathan, really are—but what he lacks in height he makes up for in confidence, and he looms over his son with ease. “You remember where you’re standing, don’t you? You know whose house you’re living in?”
Will wants to stay quiet, of course; he wants to say nothing and receive nothing in return, but it never quite works out that way. His heart rate skyrockets, and he inhales sharply as he opens his mouth.
“I just said—if you—”
He’s interrupted by the pale flash of his father’s hand rising to grab the front of his shirt, balling up the fabric inside his fist as he yanks Will forward with a jolt. Their noses nearly smack against each other as Lonnie’s eyes burn into his face. His breath is a sobering punch; ripe and sour with tobacco and sleep, inescapable.
He’s not angry with me, Will tells himself, and in some strange way, this comes as a relief. He’s tired. He’s hungry. He’s in pain. But he’s not angry. With years of experience, Will knows his father’s anger better than he knows himself. Frustrated, irritated. Feeling disrespected, even. Not angry, though. Will knows because he’s seen angry. It’s uglier than this, and he knows it. Angry breaks noses. Angry busts headlights.
Anger hurts in a different way.
“You think I want a smartass answer?” Lonnie snarls in response, his voice raising a few octaves as his grip never loosens. The panicked part of Will wants to pry his hand off. The seasoned part of Will remembers what happened the last time he tried to do that. “I worked all night. I don’t need any of your shit. I ask one simple thing of you when you’re staying here, so I expect you to do it without any fucking attitude. Is that too hard for you?”
As Will stares at the bridge of his father’s crooked nose, the tip of his cheekbone, his forehead, anywhere but his eyes, he realizes—hatefully—that he is shaking.
After several unending seconds of unbroken staring, Lonnie’s fingers unfurl from the collar of Will’s shirt and he steps back, teetering, turning towards his abandoned beer as though all the irritation in his being has simply evaporated. Snatching the can from the counter and stepping back towards the hallway, Will flattens himself against the wall to let his father glide seamlessly by. He flinches, instantly berating himself for it, and watches Lonnie disappear back into his bedroom, the door ramming shut behind him as he goes, knocking a decade-old family picture from the wall where Joyce had hung it in another lifetime.
Will stands there for what feels like a century, vibrating, before he finally reaches up to straighten the crumpled neck of his sweater with trembling fingers. He hates himself for innumerable reasons, but the most significant is his lack of adjustment. He figured he’d be used to this by seventeen, but some part of him won’t cooperate. Some part of him knows it isn’t right.
Just because it isn’t right, doesn’t mean it should scare me, Will thinks. Even if it does scare him. Even if it should.
Though it is a hideous though, it is not a foreign one: Will reminds himself of how lucky he is. Lucky because he didn’t get hit tonight. Lucky because he never has.
Lucky.
As Will stands with his back to the wall, clutching at the neck of his shirt, he spots the small change dish on the end table beside the couch. In one blistering movement, completely forgetting the horrific weather, Will crosses the room and digs a hand into the dish. Fishing out no more than two dollars in change, he stuffs the quarters into his pocket and motors towards the kitchen table, his lungs tightening in his chest as the growing weight of the house starts to crush him.
Gotta get out. Gotta go.
God, it feels like I’m drowning.
Snagging the first of his jackets that he sees hung limply on the back of a kitchen chair, Will pulls his coat on with purpose, not bothering to zip up as he bolts to the shoe rack. He can’t throw his sneakers on fast enough, snatching up his backpack and shoving the front door open, embraced by the growing scream of rainfall against thick, fresh mud of their winding driveway. He kicks the door shut behind him with his heel, unaware of how loud it is beneath the rumbling downpour.
Somehow this is worlds better, Will thinks. Somehow.
He doesn’t know where he’s going at first, only that he is, indeed, going somewhere. Away. God, away. Forever.
Where does away begin?
He knows the way into town well, so he heads in that direction with a vague destination in mind. He hasn’t biked this far since he was a preteen and he’s never walked it, but anywhere is better than Lonnie’s cave, and that thought clings to him for the entire walk down the old dirt road that leads out to the Witcham and Hilton intersection. After approximately ten minutes of trying not to careen and slip into filling mud sockets in the back road, Will’s feet finally hit pavement and the road ahead of him spirals infinitely onwards.
Mirkwood, Will thinks fondly, observing the winding path for a second before realizing just how drenched he already is. He ponders the old name, one he and his friends had pinched from Tolkien when they were still starry-eyed kids, as he turns and pushes on towards town, rain splattering against his wind-whipped bangs. The streetlights are just strong enough to break through the sleet, keeping Will from accidentally losing his footing and twisting an ankle while walking the edge of the asphalt. He takes a moment to breathe despite the frigid wind. He needs it badly, more than he imagined, because outside of his house, Will can be Will—to his own imaginary extent.
Once I’m eighteen, I’ll get out of here, he thinks, hoping he’ll keep his own promise. Three and a half months isn’t that far away, and if he can manage to save up enough of his money, he can catch a bus and watch Hawkins disappear behind him in a cloud of exhaust. He knows how easy it sounds, and he knows it’s definitely much harder to actually do, but being seventeen feels like Hell. He can drive, legally, but he can never really leave. He can run away, he thinks as he does so, but he can never really stay gone. Under the not-so-careful eye of his father, Will Byers feels like an ant under a magnifying glass. His position isn’t helped, of course, by the fact that his friends, his brother, and his parents know nothing about him. Especially not the one thing he can’t seem to forgive himself for.
When I turn eighteen, I’m gone, Will thinks. When I turn eighteen, I’ll find a way to be okay with myself, or I’ll find a way to change.
Being seventeen is hard—Will knows this—but being seventeen and still stuck in the closet, to Will Byers, feels like staring down the barrel of a loaded gun. He’s got the money stashed away to leave, he’s got the will to go, but you cannot run from fear. You can only hide.
Through the darkness, as Will makes his way slowly but surely towards downtown, he can feel the tears coming even as they disappear seamlessly across his dripping face.
Why am I crying?
He wants to swat them away, but he can’t separate his own tears from the rain. Ripping his bag from his shoulder, Will digs through his belongings until he feels the familiar chord of his headphones, still attached to his cassette player. Hitting the on and play buttons in swift succession, Will leaves the device in his bag as he numbly stuffs the headphones into his ears. As though he’d been preparing for this moment, the lonely drone of Morrissey’s voice fills Will’s ears as There Is A Light That Never Goes Out begins to play. The shittier part of Jonathan’s old music taste, Will notes briefly, before that sick, sick feeling washes back into his throat.
It’s his brother’s shit music, sure, but tonight it brings him helplessly to tears.
Why am I crying? Why am I upset?
Nothing happened. Nothing even really happened.
As he leaves the trailer behind, silently settling on a destination, Will lets his head dip. A startling sob rips through his chest like a set of jagged claws, and a singular thought accompanies him on his way there.
Just because it isn’t right, doesn’t mean it should scare me.
The rain never ceases.