Summary: Ever since the upside down, Will had not been able to have a good night of sleep. Nightmares haunting him. He had resigned himself that he'd live with them for the rest of his life. But what if it didn't have to be like that? (sorry this summary sucks i promise the story is better)
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Cold sweats. Always the same nightmares. This feeling of being petrified, trapped and so helpless. The sensation of not being quite himself. So lost in his mind. Was it even still his?
Burning fire in his shoulders. He didn't have to be asleep to live, or sometimes relive, those horrors. The dark wasn't necessary because he became the dark.
Freezing toes and fingers. The darkness started his trauma, and the trauma created more darkness. The only light he could reach was the one he produced when his heart made the tiniest of spark.
Hot pain in his lungs. And he could lie and say everything was fine. After all the absence of light in his chest became his normal.
The absence of air shocked him awake. He sat up, as electricity traveled his entire body. You'd think Will had gotten used to it after years of never ending nightmares, but he never did. If tears drop could be bottled, there would be oceans of sadness he could drown in and end it all.
He had stopped to sleep over at his friends. He always had been a people pleaser, so worry them was the last thing he wanted even if it meant he had to deal with the night waiting to eat him. Luckily for him, the idea of sleepovers slowly disappeared into thin air as he and his friends grew up.
Four sleeping bags in Mike's basement became a bigger bed he could share with her. Laughter echoing in the Wheeler's house became deafening silence in the Byers's. Face hurting from smiling too much became back pain from all the burden on his shoulders.
From an outside prospective Will seemed completely fine. He was always a quite kid, so it made things easier. Sometimes someone like his mother or Mike would pick up on stuff. Like him spacing out for a moment, his breath quickening, a flicker of worry in his eyes, the goosebumps on his neck.
"Hey, are you okay?" Mike said pulling Will out of his trance.
"Yeah" They glanced at each other's lips briefly.
"Are you sure?" The insistence warming Will's stomach. He cares.
"Of course." Will immediately felt bad for lying to Mike. But he had to.
If there was a good part to it, which really there wasn't but in Will's messed up mind it kind of made sense, was the floating feeling in his body when he was on the verge of passing out. Sleep deprivation wasn't the solution but it made him drunk, not that he really knew what it felt like but he assumed.
Normally sleep deprivation could damage you and make you feel terrible, but Will lived in a constant state of horrible. As weird as it sounds, what he loved the most was the feeling of falling. That freedom he felt as his limbs lost control and simply collapsed.
He quickly stopped this habit when he actually collapsed in front of people. It was a Wednesday, 3rd period, math class. He hadn't had a good night of sleep in at least 2 weeks. The dark circles under his eyes should have made people suspicious. It kind of did but not enough to make them ask and Will liked it better that way.
The teacher, noticing Will wasn't paying attention to the lesson, made him go to the blackboard to solve a problem.
Will got up and that was the first mistake that caused the following ones.
