Letters I'll Never Send; Byler

Mike Wheeler has written Will Byers a hundred letters.
He's sent none of them.

Every draft is a confession he's too scared to make - about the distance between them, about the silence he created, about the feelings he can't name without his chest tightening. When Will moved away, Mike thought ignoring the ache would make it disappear. Instead, it grew teeth.

Now Will is back in Hawkins, living under the same roof, sitting in the same classrooms, breathing the same air... and Mike can't look at him without wanting something he doesn't understand.

Will Byers has stopped waiting for letters that never came.

He's spent years learning to shrink himself, to swallow the hurt, to pretend he doesn't still orbit the boy who once asked him to be his friend on a kindergarten swing set. But being near Mike again - really near him - makes every buried feeling rise like a tide he can't hold back.

And when Mike starts acting strange - jealous, quiet, too attentive, too distant - Will doesn't know whether to hope or run.

As old wounds reopen and new truths surface, the boys find themselves caught in the space between fear and longing. Between what they say and what they mean. Between the letters Mike never sent and the ones Will never received.

Disclaimer I don't own the characters.