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Will’s been here before.
The cold, etching itself into his skin and leaving a trail in its wake. Feeling it crawl along his skin and bury itself into his bones and tear him inside out.
They don’t get it. Why he needs to save Holly.
His skin itches, but he doesn’t scratch.
Nancy and Mike are understandably concerned, but it’s not the same. Mike is terrified for his sister, because he watched Will go through this four years ago. Nancy is terrified to see her family fall apart before she can fix it again. Even Jonathan is wired– because a sixteen year old boy never forgets having to plan their twelve year old brother’s funeral, even when he can’t even tie a tie or find the money to do more than bury the body and pray.
But Will feels it.
His voice is caught, hearing everyone panic. Not by choice– something makes his voice stick, makes his throat clench and gag, feeling something in his throat, something foreign, something that doesn’t belong there, something he still has nightmares about.
Holly Wheeler is twelve years old, and Will Byers can still feel the slime and gore seeping into his chest and his words and his memories, and he never wants her to know what it feels like.
He hasn’t told them. Not really. He remembers talking to his mom, when he was younger. “It got me, mom. I felt it…everywhere.” She hadn’t known what he meant, and he never elaborated. He’s pretty sure Steve and Robin have a sense of it, the way they’re soft with him but not gentle, not like he’ll shatter, but not like he can always handle the same rough edges as the others.
He’d thought about telling Steve, once. After Steve and Robin came back from the Russians, bloody and beaten and exhausted. Like maybe they’d get it. Like maybe they’d been hurt enough to know how he was hurt. Even if it wasn’t the same.
He isn’t sure what to call it, really. The concept of something so supernatural and foreign latching onto him and hurting him in such a human, monstrous sense. He knows what it feels like, though. He knows what he’d call it if someone asked. He knows he’d tell them he can still feel it everywhere, still feel it under his skin and in his mouth and in his head and when he sleeps and when he’s awake and when he’s fully clothed and when he’s showering.
He knows what it felt like, what it feels like, even if it doesn’t have a definitive name.
And Will Byers will not let Holly Wheeler feel the same way he does, like her skin needs to come clean off just to feel whole again. He will not let her suffer.