𝚆𝙷𝙴𝚁𝙴 𝙸𝚂 𝙼𝚈 𝙼𝙸𝙽𝙳? ⇢ ʙʏʟᴇʀ

the paladin

Will Byers liked red. 

He liked the colour blue as well, but red seemed to be his favourite. This he guessed by common sense: his winter jacket was laced with crimson material, and the sheets and subtle detailing in the comforter he kept on his bed fell in agreement. So this is how he knew, when he couldn't recall it himself: Will Byers liked the colour red.

Will Byers liked horror films, or, at least, he liked the film Jaws. This was another concept he had decided was true, and the professional looking, iconic film poster that he had pinned up on his wall proved his point.

When Will had initially been released from the hospital and permitted to go home, only a few days after he'd been admitted, this was one of the first things he noticed when entering his bedroom as a brand new boy, devoid of previous connotations of what his room looked like to him. He had brushed his fingers carefully over the thin, well kept poster paper and stared into the half open jaws of the goliath shark that sat menacing in a safe, 2D format in front of him. It seemed almost tacky to him, then: did he find it tacky before? He must have, Will assumed.

From the previously safe trove that was his own bedroom, Will could hear his mothers tender voice speaking at a hushed frequency, presumably into the mouthpiece of their home phone. Joyce was soft spoken as it was, a woman with a kind face and motherly charm that Will was sure she had inherited long before he was ever born.

He could imagine why he must have loved her, and he felt like he could love her once again. Just the concept that she was his mother, that she was the one who raised him and kept him safe all of those years that fell fuzzy against the back of his mind: some part of him loved her already, even if he could hardly remember who she was.

Will sat patiently on the edge of his bed, as though he was sitting in a stranger's room, hand pressed flat against the comforter as if he was judging it's cushioning. The tips of his pale fingers traced the soft, barely visible lining in which the material had been stitched and sewn so that it would last as long as it could before splitting. He imagined, in a way, that his brain was something like this: fabricated so that he would remember his friends faces, their laughs and their names and his favourite foods and the days he must have spent hanging out with his brother. The brain was meant to do that, wasn't it? Remember? Will found it odd, odd and a bit frustrating: the fact that he couldn't find the sadness inside of him like he expected there to be. Maybe it was because he wasn't sad, he was hurt. Irritated, even. Maybe he couldn't remember how good everything had been before, everything that he would be sad to miss. Maybe.

A gentle knock against the hardwood frame of the doorway into Will's room startled the boy out of his brief trance, and he turned his attention to Joyce as she leaned into the doorframe. He hadn't even heard the phone slide back into it's wall holder, but then again, he hadn't even been looking for such a signal. It took the boy a moment to notice the pale coil around her finger, the phone clutched in her palm like she was hiding a deadly weapon.

"Hey, honey. D'you feel like going out today?" Joyce spoke gently, as though she was approaching a tiger who had slipped out of it's enclosure and was pacing circles around her. She wasn't afraid, no: rather, she seemed tentative, a little bit more aware of the fragility of the young boy sitting in front of her. She had a sleepless smile on her lips, and something about the pale rings underneath her eyes suggested she was something other than cheerful that morning. It made Will's stomach twist a bit, seeing her like that. He didn't know what she looked like when she was fully there, but he knew what absence looked like in her gaze. He didn't like it.

"Your friend, Lucas, he just called looking for you. Wanted to know if you want to hang out with him and the boys for a while" Joyce proposed with what sounded like a hopeful undertone saturating her suggestion. Her chocolate brown hair was pulled back away from her face, sitting in a low bun that she could barely make from the length of her hair. Her eyes never left his face, and it took Will a moment before he realized why she was surveying him so hard.