𝚆𝙷𝙴𝚁𝙴 𝙸𝚂 𝙼𝚈 𝙼𝙸𝙽𝙳? ⇢ ʙʏʟᴇʀ

a broken compass

Will hadn't given Jonathan a mere moment to question him about why he'd been so quiet the entire morning, before he'd hopped out of the car only a split second after it stopped. He could see that Jonathan had been debating whether to ask, his brows knit tight as he stared ahead of the road like he could sense Will's energy from a mile away. He'd opened his mouth to say something as Will had climbed out of the passengers seat, but the boy had shut the door too quickly for anything to be said, sparing a wave to Jonathan as he turned away from the car. Truly, he wasn't in the mood that morning to talk in general, let alone talk about how tired he seemed to be.

Mentally hyping himself up, if only to persuade him to actually walk into the school building, Will reached up and pulled his backpack taught against his back by the straps as he walked along the pavement leading up towards the two front doors at the front of the structure. Will scanned the front lawn of the school property, taking note of the fact that, even more so after Jonathan's car puttered easily out of the drop off area, the entirety of the property seemed to be empty after the sudden but brief rush of students. Will hadn't bothered to check the clock before he had left that morning, not being too distressed to get there on time as he didn't have the energy to spend worrying about it. All he knew was that he only needed to get through a few hours, and he would be on his way towards Blue's home to see him. If anything had prompted him to get out of bed that morning, it was the feeling of looking forward to that.

Checking the clock was something he was going to have to get used to now, Will though grimly to himself, as he trudged slowly down the sidewalk. He'd made the decision, a spur of the moment one at that, to ask his mom to call in and tell the school he would be back to regular classes by the beginning of that week. He was regretting this now, letting Lucas and Blue drag him half asleep down the hallway to their classes for the past several days, and relying on them to keep him from knocking his head on the desk should he drift off into the palm of his hand. He could see the worry in Lucas' eyes when Will found himself falling asleep, unable to control the sheer exhaustion that took over his entire body. He knew that Lucas wouldn't ask unless provoked, however: it was Blue that Will was a bit more worried about. He wouldn't hesitate to tell him he seemed off. Oh, didn't he know it, though.

The first two weeks were almost over, and they'd gone by at the speed of light to the boy. His own thoughts caved and shifted every single day, as he tried to figure out what he had done and who he had been, who his friends were. He was finally beginning to feel like he knew them, really knew them, if not the way that he did before, incredible close to it. He had spent the past couple lunches with the three of them all together, listening to them tell stories of the things the party, as they liked to call it, used to get up to in their spare time. They told Will stories of campaigns that took them days to complete, of days spent at the arcade and in town and messing around in the woods like a bunch of troublemakers.

There were plenty of stories about how docile they could be as well: spending entire days in the summer just sitting inside, watching movies and talking about idiots in their class, neglecting the idea that they only had a limited amount of time before school would come back to bite them.

These sounded beautiful, desirable to Will, and his heart yearned to remember these times as well as his friends did. He felt more like he was watching their stories on a television screen, not quite there but close enough to touch it, to feel the joy second hand. Any feeling that he had harboured before, anything ill towards his friends and the idea that they didn't fit into the picture of what Will Byers was to him; he took them back, fully. He couldn't imagine himself being with anyone else. He couldn't imagine being friends with anyone better, and as he spent more time in Blue's presence, the boy began to grow on him as well.

Will hadn't expected his mind to change, but something about Blue sat right with him. He felt safe when he was around him, like nothing bad could really happen if Will stuck by him. He imagined that, before his accident, the two of them must have been thick as thieves.