Chapter Text
It had been days since Will Byers went missing.
In the interim between the news broadcast which announced it and the present, Steve hadn’t really thought about it that much. Kids went missing sometimes. They usually turned up pretty quickly, having slept in the shed because they lost their keys or having spent the night at a friend’s after forgetting to call home. Steve was pretty sure he’d never even met the kid.
Except more time passed with no news. Steve had thoughtlessly appreciated the slender shape of Nancy’s body beneath her neat little pencil skirt as she approached Jonathan Byers. The guy had glanced down at her in shock, still pressing push-pins into the notice board; beneath his fingertips was the face of a little boy, beaming and innocent, captioned with the word ‘MISSING’ in tall, bold letters.
He hadn’t really understood why it bothered Nancy as much as it did. All he managed to get out of her was that Will Byers was close to her little brother, and that he was torn up about it, which brought the grand total of facts that Steve knew about the missing boy up to three.
One, he was Jonathan Byers’ little brother. Two, he was friends with Mike Wheeler. And three, he’d been missing for days.
Which was why Steve’s current obsession was so confusing. That night, quite coincidentally, he’d passed the notice board on his way out to the parking lot. He’d seen that round face, cast in black and white, with a bright smile beaming out from under a bowl cut. It had to be an old photo, because Will looked no older than nine or ten.
It seemed like those eyes had followed Steve the entire way home. In the dusk light, he’d found himself peering relentlessly over his shoulder, searching for nothing. Every shadow seemed to conceal a little boy that no one else could find.
Steve’s empty house had grated against his already raw nerves. He was tired. Nancy was being totally weird and Steve was constantly having to perform to cheer her up. He’d screwed up a test and received another set of dismal results, as if he didn’t already have enough. His parents were due home by the end of the week, which meant he’d have to come clean about both Nancy and his crumbling academic career, to which he dreaded the fallout.
And now, he was being haunted by the thought of some dumb kid that he didn’t even know.
If it really wasn’t just an unfortunate misunderstanding, a mountain constructed from a molehill, what was the alternative? There were a good few.
He could have gotten drunk and toppled into the quarry, or lost on the walk home. One bad step in the forest and he’d run the risk of breaking something important, leaving him trapped there and unable to call for help. He might even have done it on purpose—sure, he was young, but even little kids could kill themselves or run away from home.
Or, someone had taken him. Hawkins had always been safe in Steve’s experience, but the Byers were an odd bunch. Steve was by far most familiar with Jonathan, and even there he had very little to say. The guy was quiet, isolated, and super weird. Constantly clinging to his camera and scarcely sharing a word with anyone, Steve wouldn’t exactly be surprised to find out that the elder Byers had experienced some psychological snap and offed his own little brother in a daze.
Through the rumour mill, Steve could confirm that Joyce Byers was crazy. She lived in some little bungalow off Cornwallis and the only time that Steve had ever seen her, she was grocery shopping with a cigarette hanging off her bottom lip. He wasn’t convinced that she did anything else at all.
The cherry on that particular cake was Lonnie Byers, who was so foul that he’d maintained the reputation of being the worst man in Hawkins despite not having actually lived there for several years. He was seen publicly exclusively while drunk, wearing a sweat-stained wifebeater and jeans with holes in them, cursing out random passers-by for the sin of being in his immediate path to the car which he was probably going to knock someone's fence down with.
All to say, the possibility that Will Byers had been killed by one of the psychos he had the misfortune of being related to, with the rest there to help cover it up, was a popular enough theory that Steve wasn’t the only one who’d thought of it. The only person who’d actually said it was impossible was Nancy, but she was too pure-hearted, in Steve’s opinion.
Nonetheless, the idea of that little boy in the poster being dead in his dad’s trunk or something made Steve feel like throwing up. The stubborn anxiety that he couldn’t shake eventually got him to his feet, where he grabbed a heavy coat from the rack on his way out of the door.
Steve needed to keep moving, even though he knew how reckless he was being. If it wasn’t an accident, or an inside job, then it was possible that there was a kidnapper, or even killer, in Hawkins.
Sure, the type of guy to pick up a kid like Will Byers probably wouldn’t have much interest in someone like Steve, but it was still an unnecessary risk to take. It was just that before Steve could convince himself to go back inside, his mind ran away with the thought of just what kind of guy might pick up a kid like Will Byers.
Where did that put Will? In someone’s basement or dumpster, or even the footwell of their car? That was assuming he was alive. Considering how much time had passed with neither hide nor hair of him, it was far more likely that his kidnapper had already finished him off, having already done whatever they took him for.
Steve’s skin crawled. Night had properly fallen, and the weight of the darkness sat heavily on his shoulders. He buried his cold nose into the fur lining of his coat and tried to squint down at the ground beneath his feet. He could hardly see a thing, but he felt the coarse concrete transform into soft leaf litter and didn’t have to raise his head to know that the trees had blocked out the last dregs of light from the moon.
It felt right, somehow. Such a maudlin train of thought seemed destined to carry him into the pitch black of the very woods that had vanished Will Byers.
He wondered if it had looked just like this that night, if Will had only been able to make out the hulking shapes of the trees and nothing else as he wound around them, trying to find his way home on his own. There’d been a storm that night, Steve recalled; had Will had to fight against the thick mud, blinded even further by the downpour? Had he even been able to hear the sounds of his own breathing over the battering of rain on the leaves?
Steve could hear the search party. They’d started up near the Byers house the day after Will was reported missing, slowly expanding out further and further into the woods. Their shouting—their begging—melded into white noise beneath the gentle susurrus of wind among the branches. Steve wondered if Will could hear them, wherever he was. Were he hiding in the hollow of a fallen tree or locked in someone's basement, maybe he could hear the hundreds of voices shouting his name and know that, no matter what, someone was searching for him.
The memory of that missing poster was so clear in Steve’s mind. Everything around him was nothing but muddy blackness, his hearing muffled by the wind and the yells of the search party, his fingertips and feet gone numb in the cold. Without anything to distract him, he could only think, and he was thinking about Will Byers.
Something slammed hard against his knees. Steve cursed as he forcibly unwound himself from the knot he’d worked himself into. He blinked, readjusting to the darkness, and removed his hands from his pockets to rub at his aching shins.
“What the hell…” He muttered, slowly rounding this strange obstacle.
It was a fort of some kind, suspiciously well-constructed from fallen logs and leafy twigs. As Steve crouched down in its doorway, he saw ragged, rain-logged blankets tucked into the base of the fort, still rumpled, as though someone had only just been using it.
It wasn’t until Steve raised his head just a little, admiring the neat construction of the rounded roof, that he was finally able to make out the little sign pinned above the entrance.
CASTLE BYERS, it read in clumsily carved characters.
Perfectly empty and desolate. There was a metaphor there that Steve wasn’t really in the headspace to parse out.
Either way, some of the nervous energy in the pit of his stomach seemed to have burnt itself out, and in its wake, he was left tired and achy. The cold was catching up to him now that he was no longer moving, and he slumped into the dirt, mentally berating himself for wandering so far. He was not looking forward to dragging himself back home.
Steve tipped his head to rest it against the frame of the fort entrance, breathing in the faintly musty smell of the damp fort. By the lullaby of the search party screaming Will’s name, he found himself dozing.
“...stay or should I go?”
Steve frowned. Had the members of the search party decided to start singing? They must really have been getting desperate. That, or Steve’s fatigue was enough to make him imagine things. He shook himself halfheartedly, resting his hands on his knees in an effort to push himself to his feet.
“If I go there will be trouble…”
It almost sounded like a child singing. Steve managed to get his feet beneath him before his sluggish mind finally snapped to attention. It sounded like a little boy.
“If I stay there will be-”
“Will?” Steve whispered. “Will Byers?”
It was impossible. Steve knew for sure that the search party had already cleared this part of the woods. What were the chances that the kid had managed to slip past the hundreds of people searching for him to return to this fort, but hadn’t bothered to go home?
There was a long silence, one so drawn out that Steve almost managed to convince himself he’d imagined the sound altogether. Then, there was a soft exhale, seeming right in his ear.
“Who’s there?”
“I’m- I’m helping search for Will Byers. Is that you?”
Steve permitted himself the little white lie as he surreptitiously studied the small fort in greater detail. There was no gap beneath the bedding that someone could hide, and the detritus was beaten flat enough that it would definitely reveal someone buried beneath it.
Even through the darkness, he couldn’t make out any movement, and the voice was distinctly close, anyhow. Either Steve really had lost his mind—which seemed by far the most likely situation—or Will Byers was right in front of him, unseen.
“Yeah.” A voice replied, low enough that it seemed as though he didn’t want anyone to hear. “But I don’t know where I am.”
Steve swallowed, nauseous. “I’m at your fort.”
“Me too. But this place… something’s really wrong.”
Okay, Steve thought, so this is a horror movie. I can survive a horror movie.
“Wrong… how?”
“It’s like the normal world, but there are monsters. I went home to speak to mom, but it chased me away. I just want- I just want to go home.”
Steve’s heart was pounding against his ribcage. Will’s voice was fragile and frightened. It didn’t sound like a joke or an act; it sounded like a little boy who was terrified that he was about to die. Steve had to grasp the logs of the fort so he wouldn’t fall back over.
“I believe you. I want to help.” Steve lied.
What else could he say? I think I’m hallucinating this. I’d rather run away and pretend this never happened. Steve wasn’t that heartless, especially not on the off chance that this was really happening, rather than being hypothermia-induced psychosis.
“Are you safe?” He eventually summoned, unsure what else to ask.
There was another long pause. “For now. But it’s looking for me. Please, please help me-”
“I’ll try, okay? Shit, I don’t know how to- I don’t even-!” Steve cut himself off. There was no point in making the kid even more scared than he already was. Sure, Steve didn’t have the first idea of what this world full of monsters was meant to be, nevermind how to get someone out of it. And sure, if he told anyone, he’d be locked up in Pennhurst before he could even blink.
But if it was true, then this kid was relying on Steve, which was really pretty fucking unlucky for Will, considering Steve sucked at everything except basketball, swimming, and styling his hair.
“I’ll try.” He repeated, for lack of any better promise, and heard a gentle exhale in response.
“What’s your name?”
“I’m… Steve.”
“Thank you, Steve. Can you-”
“Harrington?”
Steve jolted upright, slamming his skull hard on the CASTLE BYERS sign. The pain made his eyes water and his head spin, and he fell flat on his ass, rubbing at the stinging injury with one hand. He peered up through tear-blurred eyes at the face of none other but Jonathan Byers, pale and confused in the low light.
He looked so much older than he was. He was a year younger than Steve, technically, but he looked about a decade older. He seemed exhausted, with dark eye-bags and red-rimmed eyes, and his hair sat lank and unwashed against his forehead.
He looked like he was grieving. Steve glanced up at the fort with a miniscule twist of guilt; his presence on their property was the last thing the Byers needed.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Jonathan asked, which was, frankly, a great question. Steve couldn’t exactly tell him that he’d coincidentally stumbled upon the place at which point he’d possibly communicated with the trapped spirit of his baby brother who was being hunted through purgatory by ‘monsters’, so he just scrambled to his feet and brushed the leaves from his clothes.
“Got lost. Uh, good luck. With the search.”
Then Steve turned and ran away.