The AIDS crisis hit like a plague straight out of a Greek myth, the kind the gods would send when they were feeling especially cruel.

Throughout the 1980s and well into the 1990s, it tore through the gay community with ruthless precision. A community that had already been bruised and battered by hatred now found itself facing something invisible, something that did not carry a knife or a bat, but a diagnosis. Three years. That was the number people whispered about. Three years of hospitals, of weight loss, of funerals. Three years of watching your own body betray you.

And worse than the sickness was what came with it.

Because AIDS did not just kill you. It labeled you. It dragged your private life into the open and nailed it to a billboard. In the 90s, that could be a death sentence all on its own.

That was what Will Byers was afraid of.

Not monsters from other dimensions. Not shadowy creatures with too many teeth. He had faced those already and survived.

He was afraid of people.

Of being outed. Of walking home at night and hearing footsteps quicken behind him. Of slurs muttered under someone’s breath. Of fists. Of spit on the pavement near his shoes. Of becoming a headline or a cautionary tale.

He was afraid of getting AIDS.

The same boy who used telekinesis to kill Demogorgon's through the Hive Mind now felt his chest tighten at the thought of a blood test

College was supposed to be freedom. That was what everyone said. The best years of your life. Parties, music blasting down dorm hallways, cheap pizza at two in the morning, new friends, late night laughter.

Will spent most of it inside.

Inside the small dorm room you both shared. Inside his own head.

The old television on the dresser flickered constantly, its screen tinted slightly blue, the volume kept just low enough not to draw attention from the hallway. News reports. Specials. Documentaries. ABC running another segment about the spread of AIDS. Maps lighting up like war zones. Statistics ticking upward. Interviews where the narrator’s voice carried a subtle edge, as if the victims had somehow earned their fate.

They talked about people with the disease like they were something dangerous. Contagious in more ways than one. Like rabid animals that needed to be contained.

Will sat on the lower bunk, blanket wrapped tightly around his shoulders to keep the cold away. His shoes had been kicked off earlier and lay abandoned near the door. His hair fell into his eyes, and the glow of the television painted his face in pale light.

Pitiful was a harsh word for what you were seeing. But it hovered there anyway.

On screen, another anchor spoke about risk groups. About lifestyles. About consequences.

Will swallowed.

“Jesus..."

He didn't bother hiding the fear from you. Not when it was just the two of you in the room with the door closed and the blinds half drawn. He had never officially come out. No dramatic confession. No grand declaration. But the truth lived in the quiet spaces between you. In the way his voice changed when certain actors appeared on screen. In the way he flinched at certain jokes. In the way he watched the world like it was always waiting to catch him slipping.

You knew.

And he knew you knew.

He had his suspicions about you, too. Suspicions that you weren't exactly pin straight. But he would never ask.

He wouldn't ask, because in this world, being openly queer felt less like honesty and more like stepping into traffic and hoping the cars decided to swerve. And he didn't wish that on anyone.