Taedium (BillyWill)

10

Oh god I'm SORRY. I promised this chapter would be less jarring and packed and for some reason it's 19k words?? It's just two scenes, but they yap and yap and yap and it keeps going on and on and on so I'm sorry😭 lots of dialogue here, but we learn a lot about them!
I'm warning now, the conversations are a bit all over the place😭
I'm putting a big CW too! There's mention of gore, mention of child abuse, mention of death, mention of alcoholism etc.
I know it might look a bit?? Random?? But what I'm putting out here all seem necessary to me. I just want to really put emphasis on Will's trauma because the show REFUSES to for some reason. But for a kid that went through so much like he did.. I feel like the psychological repercussion, survivor's guilt and trauma response just.. aren't explored enough, so I really want to bring justice to Will, and Billy.
Anyway! Hope you enjoy if they just yap and yap constantly, I promise, next chapter is the last one like this, after I'm done with the exposition and I can start going into the serious stuff.... He he

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Will's uneasiness lingered like a shadow. The silence between him and Billy during the car ride from school spoke volume about that.

Truth was, he was still a bit shocked about what happened prior at Eddie's, learning all of that, maybe made him fear his loss. And stupidly, unconsciously, maybe he tried to take his distance before being too hurt by him.

But also there were parts of him Billy didn't know, and that he didn't want him to know. Fragments of his life that he'd much rather keep shrouded. Billy could understand a lot of things, and he was comforting, and nice to talk to. And even if he couldn't understand what it was like to be gay, he still did his best with Will and gave him the ressources he needed. With his comforting presence, he was a confidant in many aspects. But when it came to stuff like bullying, he really didn't think Billy could help much.

First of all, because Billy never went through it, he assumed. Billy was more the type to bully people than to be bullied. And even if he were to be bullied — he could most definitely fight back. Billy, exuding strength and confidence, seemed impervious to the plight Will faced. He wouldn't take shit from people. Just like Bob didn't take shit from Mr. Baldo.

And second of — because he was tired of feeling like a loser. He was tired of feeling like he was so inferior to him. And truly, he was grappling with the paradox of wanting Billy's understanding, yet fearing the widening gap that set them apart. With his other friends, they were a bit all equal. They were all being bullied. He didn't want them to be but it was the case. Lucas and Dustin were different too, Dustin also didn't have a dad, and all of their party suffered from Troy and James, they all could understand, they all shared the same burden. But Billy was different. Billy couldn't possibly know what it was like. Billy was everything Will could never be. Their lives just kept highlighting the stark contrasts between the two.

Billy was hot and strong and and sportive and straight and popular and untouched by the relentless cruelty of school kids. If Will were to tell him about how every single day he found those daily notes in his locker, how the kids mocked him at school, he would just feel even worse. It would only deepen the chasm, reinforcing his perception of inadequacy.

He was never really good at talking about stuff anyway. Ever since the upside down -and how everyone's behavior started to change around him- he retreated into a stoic silence, a self-imposed armor against vulnerability. He wanted to prove he was strong, that he could handle everything on his own. It was out of question to start acting like a baby that cried in his mother's arms when someone at school was being mean to him. He would take it and shut up, like his father would've wanted him to do.

There were occasions when they still figured it out. His friends saw some of the notes falling from Will's locker when he opened it as they were beside. And there was that time when Will drew himself as a zombie. Maybe as an attempt to make fun of the situation, render it comical. To think — yeah, I'm a zombie, look at this cool design. But Jonathan saw it and started asking questions. There was also the time his mom witnessed the Zimmerman brother's picking on him, as well as looked at the footage of the masked teenagers scaring him at Halloween. The conversations were not fun.