Lacklustereded

(Warning, I have yet to finish The X-Files, and I haven't even touched The Lone Gunmen (yet), so this is just a crazy crack filled imagining. However, there will be some key points in all three series mentioned).

Both are born around or in 1967, and are related through their fathers -- one who became a loser and one who was pro-government (can be half brothers or fully-related, I don't think much is known about Lonnie's side of the family and I can't find much on Bertram's either).

They don't see each other often, only at forced family reunions that stop after Joyce and Lonnie separate and their shared grandmother passes. They weren't entirely close either, and both thought it was weird they were so similarly named. Jonathan rarely does anything far from Will, the youngest Byers in the entire family by that point.

But at some point, in the 80s, John Fitzgerald hears about something going on in Hawkins, Indiana from his father, who's merely commenting on the sudden influx of military being seen there in '83 and '86. He knows of Will's disappearance, but they're states away and by the time Will's found, his family didn't have time to go up and help with the search. Joyce, on occasion, calls his mother during the year after Will is back, but it ends in November of '84.

He meets Jonathan once more during that time, just after the loss of Hopper. His family is driving through, just so happen to be in the area on a road trip, and help them start packing before they head off to California. It's there he reads a few newspapers about the mall fire, sees the haunted look in Jonathan's eyes, and just assumes that he was closer to the fire than originally told.

They won't see each other again after this. At least, not physically.

In the late 90s, John has been helping Mulder with the X-Files for a bit now, and he happens to find something related to what had been going down in Hawkins, Indiana during the 80s.

He finds his cousins names among them, of a story of a young girl experimented on, who is reportedly dead in '87 who had powers. Of Will, an up-and-coming artist, who had not only been declared dead but had also been taken to a world beyond their own. Of a group of kids (because that's what they were at the time) doing more work in protecting the citizens of the country than the government his father had so highly praised.

He doesn't get a chance to really talk about it before he's back on a different case with Frohike and Langly, helping the FBI with strange disappearances and possible alien contact.

He doesn't get a chance to really try and look for either one of his cousins, to tell them of what he now knows - that the haunted look in Jonathan's eyes, the exhaustion in his aunt, and the anxiety that never left Will's shoulders, were the cause of monsters created by other monsters.

Jonathan Byers attends a funeral for John Fitzgerald Byers on April 21, 2003. Will, who barely remembers the man, is besides him at the funeral, as is his mother and step-father. He hears what they tell him how John died, but Nancy and her digging tells him something else only weeks later.