Chapter Text
Will's alarm went off at exactly 7:00 am, his phone buzzing and shrieking against the wood of his nightstand like it had a personal vendetta against him.
He didn't move right away. He just laid there, staring up at the ceiling of his new apartment, listening to it scream at him while his brain slowly caught up with his body. The room was dim, the curtains doing their job, the kind of early morning quiet that only existed in places where nobody knew your name yet.
His hand eventually found his phone before his eyes did. He dragged it toward his face, and the brightness made him wince, squinting against the light like it had personally offended him.
7:00 AM.
And underneath that, in small, neat letters, the reminder he'd set for himself.
Take your medicine.
Will stared at it for a second longer than necessary. He always did. Not because he'd ever forgotten, he hadn't forgotten once in four years, but because there was something about seeing it written out like that, so simple, so clinical, that sat weird in his chest every single time.
Medicine. That's what he called it. That's what he'd trained himself to call it.
He turned the alarm off and set the phone back down. Then he sat up slowly, pushing his hair out of his face, and swung his legs over the side of the bed. The hardwood floor was cold under his feet. The apartment was quiet in that particular way that new places always were, full of a silence that hadn't learned his sounds yet.
He sat there for a moment, elbows on his knees, just breathing.
New city. New apartment. New school.
Nobody here knew him. Nobody here knew anything about him. He could be anyone, could be nothing, could just be Will Byers, art student, bad morning person, and absolutely nothing else. No footnotes. No asterisks.
Just normal.
Will lingered like that for ten more seconds, elbows on his knees, before he finally got up and headed across the hall to the bathroom to start his morning routine. The routine he hadn't broken once in four years.
His room behind him was still half a disaster, boxes stacked against the walls, some open, most not. He didn't mind. He'd already decided today was an unpacking day, a slow, intentional one. He'd organize everything, figure out where things lived, maybe walk to whatever grocery store was closest and stock the kitchen. A whole day of small, quiet tasks. The kind of day that felt like building something.
He pushed the bathroom door open and flicked the light on.
Will stopped in front of the sink, the way he always did, and looked at himself in the mirror.
He could see himself from the hips up. Messy brown hair going in three different directions at once, eyelids still heavy with sleep, shoulders slumped forward with the kind of lazy posture his mom had been trying to correct since middle school. He looked like someone who had just been dragged out of a very comfortable dream.
But that wasn't the part that bothered him.
Because underneath all of that, underneath the mess of it, there was something else sitting in his reflection that he couldn't ignore no matter how many times he tried. His hazel eyes were too bright, his lashes too long, his skin too clear, too warm, too glowing. The moles scattered across his face and neck and collarbones that he'd been self conscious about as a kid had somehow become another thing that made him look exactly like what he was. Soft. Pretty. Luminous in a way that had nothing to do with good genes and everything to do with designation.
Omega skin. Everyone always said it like it was a compliment.
Will had never once taken it as one.
He held his own gaze for exactly as long as it took to get tired of it, then reached up and pressed his hand to the side of the mirror, swinging it open.
Behind the door were two shelves, neat and deliberate. Bathroom supplies on one side. His medication on the other. Three pill bottles, a square box, and a small pump bottle of gel, all arranged in the order he used them. He'd packed this stuff first when he was moving. Before his clothes, before his sketchbooks, before anything else.
He set the supplies down on the edge of the sink for now and reached for his toothbrush first.
Will brushed his teeth, washed his face, and did his best to convince his hair to lie flat. It didn't fully cooperate but it was better than nothing.
Then he picked up the gel.
Numbing gel, the label read, in that plain, no-nonsense font that all these kinds of products seemed to use, like they were trying very hard to be clinical about something that was deeply personal. He uncapped it and poured a small amount into his palm, the familiar faint medicinal smell hitting him before he'd even started applying it.
He worked through it methodically. Wrists first, rubbing the gel in slow circles over the pulse points where his scent glands sat closest to the surface. Then the nape of his neck, then along his jawline, then last, the most uncomfortable part, his inner thighs, where the glands were the most reactive and the most impossible to ignore. When he was near other alphas, or when his emotions ran too high, his glands would start to throb. A deep, insistent ache that radiated outward and made his whole body feel like it was broadcasting something he never gave it permission to say.
It was the most annoying thing about being what he was. The way his own body just announced things without his consent.
The gel dulled that. Took the edge off. He'd been using it long enough that applying it felt like putting on deodorant, just another step, just another small act of maintenance. He told himself that every morning.
He put the gel back and opened the square box.
Scent patches. Small, skin colored, barely visible once they were on. They worked by absorbing and masking pheromone output, as close to fully suppressing his scent as anything topical could get. He'd tried four different brands before settling on these ones. They were the most reliable. The least likely to fail him at a bad moment.
He peeled the backing off the first one and pressed it to his left wrist. Then his right. Then the nape of his neck, smoothing it flat with two fingers the way the instructions said, though he'd long since stopped needing to read them.
He stepped back and looked at himself in the mirror again.
Same messy hair. Same tired eyes. Same moles, same warm skin, same face.
But quieter now. Contained. The version of himself he could actually work with.
Will exhaled slowly through his nose, put the box back on the shelf, and reached for his pill bottles.
Will opened the first pill bottle.
Heat suppressants. The stronger ones, the kind his doctor had needed to write a specific note to even get him access to at the pharmacy. This particular formula didn't just soften heats or make them manageable, it stopped them entirely. Shut the whole thing down before it ever had the chance to start. He hadn't had a proper heat in almost a full year now, and that was exactly how he wanted it. He shook two pills into his palm, capped the bottle, and set it aside.
Then the second bottle. Then the third.
Two pills from each, shaken out with the practiced efficiency of someone who had done this so many times it had stopped feeling like anything at all. The second bottle was his secondary heat suppressant, a backup layer, something to catch whatever the first one missed on harder days. The third was his pheromone suppressant, the one that kept him from smelling like what he was. From walking into a room and having every alpha in it turn their head without even meaning to.
He stood there for a moment with his palm flat and open, six pills sitting in a neat little pile against his skin.
Six. Every single morning. Since he was fifteen years old.
He didn't let himself think about it too hard. He never did. He just closed his hand loosely around them, put everything back in the cabinet in the right order, turned off the bathroom light, and walked into the kitchen.
The morning light was coming in thin and pale through the window above the sink, the kind of early light that hadn't fully committed to being daytime yet. The kitchen was mostly bare, a few boxes on the counter he hadn't gotten to, the basics unpacked just enough to be functional. He'd fix that today.
He reached up and opened the cabinet to his left, the one he'd specifically unpacked first yesterday, and took down the glass his mom had let him take with him. It was plain, nothing special, just a regular drinking glass, but Joyce had pressed it into his hands when he was loading the car like it was something important. He believed her that it was.
She was the only omega he knew personally. Or the only one he let himself stay close to, anyway.
It wasn't that he had anything against other omegas. It wasn't that simple. It was just that omegas gravitated toward each other naturally, they always had, clustering together in that quiet, instinctive way that Will had observed from a careful distance for four years now. And the problem with being around other omegas was that they knew. Not always consciously, not always right away, but eventually something would slip through. A habit he'd picked up without realizing, a reaction he couldn't quite suppress fast enough, something in the way he carried himself on a bad day. Omegas noticed other omegas in ways that had nothing to do with scent.
So Will kept his distance. Friendly but not close. Warm but not familiar. He couldn't afford to pick up habits he'd then have to unlearn in front of everyone else.
His mom was the exception. His mom was always the exception.
She'd been there when he presented at fifteen, three days of confusion and low fever and something shifting under his skin that he hadn't had words for yet. She'd sat with him through all of it, calm and steady, and when he'd finally understood what was happening she hadn't flinched, hadn't made it into something bigger than it needed to be. She just held his face in her hands and told him they'd figure it out together.
They had. Four years later, here was the proof. Six pills, a cabinet full of supplies, and a whole new city where nobody knew his name yet let alone anything else about him.
His family knew. That was it. Joyce, obviously. Hopper, his stepdad, who was an alpha and had handled the news with exactly the gruff, quiet protectiveness Will had expected from him, going with Will to his first specialist appointment without being asked and never bringing it up unless Will did first. Jonathan, his older brother, a beta, who had taken about forty eight hours to process it and then come back and punched Will lightly on the shoulder and said it doesn't change anything like Will had needed to hear it, which he had. And El, his stepsister, also a beta, who had simply looked at Will with those big serious eyes and said okay and then asked if he wanted to watch a movie, which had somehow been the most comforting response of all.
That was his whole list. Four people in nineteen years.
He wanted it to stay that way.
Will turned on the faucet and filled the glass, watching the water rise. Then he set it on the counter and shook three of the six pills into his palm, tipped them into his mouth, and swallowed them down with a long drink of water. Then the other three.
He stood there after, glass in hand, looking out the window at the street below. Unfamiliar buildings, unfamiliar trees, unfamiliar everything.
New city. New start.
Six pills and four years of practice, and nobody here would ever have to know a single thing about him.
Will finished the last of his water quickly, rinsed the glass, and set it in the sink. There was something sitting in his chest that he couldn't quite name. Not happiness exactly, not nervousness exactly, just something that lived in the space between the two. Hope maybe. Or the cautious, fragile version of it that came with knowing how easily things could go wrong.
He didn't let himself sit with it for too long. He never did.
He put his phone on the floor beside him and got to work.
The living room first. He rolled out the rug he'd spent too long picking out, smoothing the edges flat with his palms, stepping back to make sure it was centered. Then the coffee table, which took longer than it should have because the instructions were unhelpful and one of the bolts was being difficult. He got there eventually. The couch went against the wall, facing the window, which felt right in a way he was glad about because he wasn't sure he had the energy to move it again. Then the pictures. His family arranged carefully on one wall, Joyce and Hopper, Jonathan and Argyle, El with her hair down. A few of his own paintings filling in the gaps, pieces he'd done over the last couple years that he actually liked enough to keep.
He stood back and looked at it all.
It was starting to look like somewhere a person lived.
He sat down on the rug after that, cross legged, and pulled the box of art supplies toward him. This one he wanted to go through slowly. Pencils sorted and accounted for, sketchbooks stacked in the right order, his good brushes wrapped carefully in cloth the way Jonathan had taught him. He went through it all piece by piece, unhurried, the morning quiet and easy around him.
It was only when he set down a tin of charcoals and realized his hands were slightly unsteady that he noticed how warm he was. Hot actually, now that he was paying attention. His mouth was dry and his head had that faint distant feeling that came with not drinking enough water. He'd been at this for almost two hours without stopping.
He picked his phone up off the floor and checked the time.
8:47 AM.
A few messages from his mom. A few from Jonathan. He looked at them long enough to see that everyone was just checking in, nothing urgent, and felt something warm and quiet move through his chest. He'd reply later, once he was actually settled enough to sound like a person. He turned the screen off and set the phone on the coffee table.
He should change soon. He was still in his pajamas and he wanted to get to the grocery store and back before it got dark, get his kitchen actually functional, stop surviving on granola bars and tap water.
He padded into the kitchen and grabbed his glass from the sink, turning the faucet on and watching the water rise. He was already thinking about the grocery list, mentally walking through what he needed, when he heard it.
A soft trickling sound. Faint but distinct, coming from somewhere below him.
Will set his glass down on the counter and turned the faucet off, standing still and listening. It continued for a second after the water stopped, then went quiet.
He crouched down and opened the cabinet doors under the sink.
At the bottom, pooling slowly at the base of the pipe, was a small but very deliberate puddle of water. The joint where two pipes met had a slow steady drip coming from it, quiet and patient, like it had been doing this for a while and saw no reason to stop.
Will stared at it.
He closed the cabinet doors, stood back up, and turned to look at his kitchen ceiling for a moment the way people do when they're asking the universe a question they already know the answer to.
Four years of planning this. A new city, a new start, nobody knowing anything about him. And on day two his sink was leaking.
Will dried his hands on his pajama pants and walked back to the living room, grabbing his phone off the coffee table and sliding it into his pocket.
He stood there for a second looking down at himself. Pajama pants, an old oversized t-shirt, hair that he'd done his best with earlier but had since given up on. He debated changing. It was early Sunday morning and the landlord's office was just downstairs, and honestly he was irritated enough about the leak that he didn't have the patience to find an outfit. He decided against it and grabbed his keys.
The hallway was quiet when he stepped out, that particular Sunday morning stillness that made everything feel slightly slowed down. He took the elevator down, watching the numbers, running through his head what he was actually going to say to the landlord. I just moved in and my sink is already leaking felt both accurate and sufficient.
He found the office at the end of the ground floor hallway and almost immediately clocked that the lights were off inside. He tried the handle anyway. Locked.
There was a small printed sign taped to the glass.
Office closed Sundays. For emergencies call the number on your lease.
Will stared at it for a moment.
He turned around and that's when he noticed the guy standing a few feet away, hands in his pockets, apparently having just arrived at the same conclusion. Tall, dark curly hair that fell past his ears, a worn graphic tee tucked loosely into his jeans. Will clocked it without meaning to, the way he always did with anyone new, an alpha, easy and immediate, the way you notice the weather when you step outside.
The guy turned around and noticed Will at almost the same moment.
"Here for maintenance?" he asked.
Will stopped, glanced around the empty hallway once like he was checking the question was directed at him, then looked back and nodded slowly. "Yeah, actually. I just moved into 302. My sink is leaking."
The guy's eyebrows shot up. He straightened slightly, something shifting in his expression from mildly resigned to genuinely interested. "Really. I'm in 303." He rubbed the back of his neck. "What a coincidence. My AC randomly stopped working, that's why I'm down here. But clearly they aren't open on Sundays so." He glanced at the dark office, then back at Will. "Since you're literally right next door, this is probably a good time to actually introduce ourselves." He extended his hand. "I'm Mike."
Will looked at the hand for half a second, then shook it. "Will."
"Nice to meet you Will." Mike dropped his hand, already thinking, something practical turning over behind his eyes. "A leaking sink is usually pretty easy to fix depending on where it's coming from. I have tools if you want, I can take a look at it. Might save you waiting until Monday."
Will hesitated. His first instinct was to say no, he was fine, he'd just call the number on the lease, it wasn't a big deal. His second instinct was that it was actually a pretty big deal and he didn't own any tools yet and the idea of waiting an entire day with a leak under his sink was genuinely annoying.
"Yeah, okay," he said. "Sure. Thank you."
They fell into step beside each other heading back toward the elevators, Mike's long legs setting an easy pace that Will matched without thinking about it. The hallway was narrow enough that they were closer than strangers would usually walk, and that's when it hit him.
Sandalwood. Pine needles. Something underneath both of those that Will didn't have a name for but that registered somewhere deep and animal and instinctive before he could stop it, warm and grounding, like a window cracked open on a cold morning.
Will turned his head to the other side, looking at the wall, jaw tight.
He knew what that was. He knew exactly what that was and he didn't want to know it. His patches were on, his suppressants were in his system, he was fine, this was nothing, this was just a neighbor who was helping him fix a sink because the landlord's office was closed on Sundays and it didn't mean anything at all.
He stepped into the elevator when the doors opened, moving to the far side, putting a casual, unremarkable amount of space between them. Mike stepped in after him. The doors slid shut.
Will watched the numbers change and said nothing and told himself very firmly that everything was fine.
The elevator ride was short and quiet, not uncomfortably so, just the natural silence of two people who had known each other for approximately four minutes. Will kept his eyes on the doors. Mike leaned against the back wall with his hands in his pockets, relaxed in the effortless way that Will had always privately found annoying in people, like existing in a room cost them nothing.
The doors opened on the third floor and they turned left down the hallway. Will got his keys out, stopping in front of 302, and unlocked the door. He pushed it open and stepped aside.
Mike walked in and stopped just past the doorway, taking in the apartment with a quiet, unhurried look. Not nosy, just observant, the kind of person who noticed things without making a production out of it.
The living room was mostly together now. Rug centered, coffee table assembled, couch against the wall. The pictures were up, his family arranged on one side, his own paintings filling in the rest. A few boxes still sat open near the edges of the room but it was getting there, slowly starting to look like somewhere a person actually lived.
Mike's eyes landed on the paintings and stayed there for a moment longer than Will expected. He didn't say anything about them, didn't make it into a whole thing, just looked in that same quiet observant way and then moved on. Will appreciated that more than he would have appreciated a compliment.
"Kitchen's this way," Will said.
Mike followed him in. Will opened the cabinet under the sink and stepped back. Mike crouched down without hesitation, one knee on the floor, leaning in to look at the pipes with the focused expression of someone who genuinely didn't mind doing this.
"Yeah, see this fitting here," Mike said, pointing. "It's just loose. It happens in older buildings, pipes settle and things shift. You don't need a plumber, just a wrench."
"I don't have a wrench," Will said.
"I know, I said I'd grab my tools." Mike stood up, brushing off his knee. "Two minutes."
He let himself out and Will stood in his kitchen listening to the apartment door across the hall open and close. He leaned against the counter with his arms crossed and looked at nothing in particular and told himself there was absolutely no reason to feel weird about this. A neighbor was fixing his sink. That was a completely normal thing that happened between completely normal people.
Mike came back quickly with a small beaten up toolbox and got back down under the sink like it was nothing. Will stayed where he was, watching without particularly meaning to. Mike worked with this focused, single minded energy, like whatever was directly in front of him had his complete attention and everything else had temporarily ceased to exist.
"You go to NYU?" Mike asked from under the sink, voice slightly muffled by the cabinet.
"Yeah," Will said. "Art program. First year."
A short pause. The sound of something tightening. "No way. Film. Also first year."
Will looked at the side of the cabinet. "Seriously?"
"Yeah." A beat. "That's kind of insane actually."
"A little bit," Will agreed.
Mike went quiet again, working. Will looked out the kitchen window at the pale Sunday morning outside. The street was slow and easy, a few people with coffee cups, a dog pulling its owner toward something interesting on the sidewalk.
"Try it now," Mike said, sitting back on his heels.
Will reached over and turned the faucet on. They both listened. Nothing. No trickling, no dripping, just the clean uncomplicated sound of water running the way it was supposed to. Will turned it off.
"That's it?" Will said.
"That's it." Mike stood, closing the toolbox. Matter of fact about the whole thing, no waiting around to be thanked.
"Thank you," Will said. "Really. I would have been stressing about that all day."
"Don't worry about it." Mike picked up the toolbox, then seemed to consider something for a second before he said it. "My dad taught me. Plumbing, basic electric, all of it." He paused, and then in a voice that was clearly not his own, lower and self important in a way that made it immediately obvious who he was imitating, he said, "all alphas need to know how to maintain a house for an omega."
He rolled his eyes after, the impression dropping back into his normal voice. "His words, not mine. He said it so many times I could probably fix a pipe in my sleep."
Will felt something loosen slightly in his chest, unexpected and involuntary. He knew that exact brand of well meaning, suffocating expectation. The weight of a secondary gender being handed to you like a set of instructions before you'd even figured out who you were. He understood it maybe more than Mike would ever know.
"That's so annoying," Will said, and he meant it genuinely, not just as something polite to say.
"Incredibly," Mike said flatly, but there was something underneath it that wasn't quite bitterness, more like exhaustion, like someone who had spent a long time quietly disagreeing with something and had gotten tired of explaining why.
Will laughed before he could stop it, something about the deadpan commitment of the impression catching him completely off guard. It came out small and genuine, the kind of laugh that didn't ask permission first, and he pressed his lips together after like he could put it back.
Mike went still for just a second.
He wasn't looking at the toolbox anymore. He was looking at Will, with this expression that Will couldn't quite read before it was gone, something that had shifted quietly in his face, like he'd noticed something and wasn't sure what to do with it yet. His eyes stayed on Will a beat longer than was strictly necessary, taking him in without being obvious about it, the way you look at something that caught you off guard in a way you weren't expecting.
Then he blinked and looked away, closing the toolbox latch with a soft click.
"I should go," Mike said, picking it up. "I need to call around about my AC, or just attempt to fix it myself and probably make everything significantly worse." He said it dryly, already moving toward the door. "I'll see you around."
"Yeah," Will said. "For sure. And seriously, thank you."
He followed Mike to the door without really deciding to, stopping in his own doorway as Mike stepped out into the hallway. Mike crossed to 303, keys out, and got his door open. But he didn't go straight in.
He turned around.
Will was still standing in his doorway. Neither of them said anything for a moment, just looking at each other across the narrow hallway with the particular stillness of two people who had run out of reasons to keep talking but hadn't quite moved to leave yet. Something easy and unhurried sitting in the space between them, like neither of them were in any real rush.
Will felt a small smile pull at the corner of his mouth without his permission. Mike's expression had gone soft in a way that was quiet and unguarded, a gentleness that Will didn't expect from someone he'd met less than an hour ago.
Will raised his hand in a small, slightly shy wave.
Mike looked at him for one more second, something still sitting in his expression that he didn't say out loud. Then the corner of his mouth turned up, slow and genuine, before he stepped back into his apartment and let the door fall shut behind him.
The hallway went quiet.
Will stood in his doorway a moment longer, looking at the closed door across the hall. Then he stepped back inside and closed his own door and stood in the middle of his entryway while his heart did something loud and unnecessary against his ribs.
His face was warm. Not just a little warm, actually warm, the kind that crept up the back of his neck and into his cheeks without asking. He reached up and touched the nape of his neck without thinking about it and immediately registered the low insistent throb of his scent gland pulsing beneath his fingertips, slow and rhythmic and deeply inconvenient.
He dropped his hand.
He walked into the kitchen, turned the faucet on, and watched the water run clean and steady into the drain. No dripping. No trickling. Just water behaving exactly the way it was supposed to.
He turned it off and stood there with both hands on the edge of the sink, staring into it.
Mike had come over within an hour of them meeting. Had crouched on his kitchen floor on a Sunday morning with a toolbox and fixed something without being asked twice. Had talked to him like he was just a person, easy and direct, no strangeness to it, no agenda. And he'd looked at Will laughing like it had surprised him in a way he was still quietly working out.
Will was still thinking about that expression when his phone started buzzing hard against his thigh.
He grabbed for it clumsily, fumbling it slightly before getting a grip, and looked down at the screen.
Mom. Facetime.
He accepted the call and Joyce's face filled the screen immediately, bright and warm, clearly already mid smile before he'd even appeared properly.
And then Will became suddenly, acutely aware that he was standing in his kitchen in his pajamas. The same pajamas he had been wearing when he met his neighbor. When he stood in his doorway smiling at his neighbor. When he waved at his neighbor like some kind of person who did not own a single pair of real pants.
He closed his eyes. His eyebrows pulled together tightly.
"Will? Honey, why do you look like that?"
He opened his eyes.
"Hi mom," he said.
Joyce's face was close to the camera the way it always was, like she hadn't quite figured out the ideal distance after all these years of video calling. Her hair was down, a mug of something hot in her hand, the familiar warm light of the Hopper kitchen behind her. It was early enough that she was probably still in her robe. Will felt a sudden and overwhelming fondness for her that he didn't have words for.
"You look flustered," she said, tilting her head slightly. Not accusatory, just observant in that specific mom way that Will had never once in his life been able to get anything past.
"I'm not flustered," Will said. "I just woke up."
"It's almost nine."
"It's Sunday."
Joyce gave him a look that said she wasn't entirely convinced but was willing to let it go for now. She took a sip from her mug. "How's the apartment? Did you sleep okay? Is the bed comfortable, because if the mattress is bad you need to say something now before your back gets used to it and then it's too late."
"The bed is fine mom."
"And you ate? Real food, not just whatever was left in the car."
Will thought about the granola bar. He thought about the six pills he'd taken with a glass of water and called it a morning. "I'm about to make something," he said, which was technically a plan and therefore not entirely a lie.
Joyce looked at him for a second longer than the question warranted. Will had learned a long time ago to hold very still during these moments, the ones where her mom radar was running quietly in the background, scanning for something she couldn't name yet.
"How are you feeling?" she asked, and her voice had shifted just slightly, softer, carrying the specific weight of a question that meant more than its words.
Will knew what she was actually asking. She was asking about his levels, about his glands, about whether the new city and the new building full of strangers had set anything off. She was asking all the things she always asked without being able to ask them directly because El was somewhere in that kitchen and Hopper could walk in at any moment and even after four years Joyce was careful about it in a way that Will both appreciated and found quietly exhausting.
"I'm good," he said, and meant it mostly. "Everything's fine. The routine is the same."
Something in her face settled. Not all the way, it never went all the way, she was his mom and she would probably be quietly worried about him until one of them ceased to exist, but enough. She nodded once and took another sip of her coffee.
"Good," she said. "That's good baby."
There was a comfortable quiet for a moment, the kind that only existed between people who knew each other well enough that silence didn't need filling.
"I started unpacking the living room this morning," Will offered. "I put the paintings up."
Joyce's whole face changed. "The one of the field? With the light?"
"Yeah."
"I love that one," she said, almost to herself, with this soft private pride that she never quite managed to hide when it came to his art and probably never would. "Send me a picture when it's all done. I want to see the whole wall."
"I will."
"And call Jonathan back, he's been checking his phone all morning like you're going to text him any second."
Will smiled despite himself. "I was going to call him later."
"He knows, he's just Jonathan." She said it with the fond exasperation of someone who had loved Jonathan Byers for a very long time and had made her peace with all of it. "Oh, and Hopper wants to know if you need anything. He won't say it himself obviously, but he asked me twice this morning if I'd heard from you so."
Will felt that familiar warmth move through his chest, the specific kind that Hopper always managed to produce in him without ever really trying. The man communicated almost entirely through actions and gruff silences and asking Joyce things he should have just asked Will directly, and somehow it never felt like anything other than love.
"Tell him I'm good," Will said. "Tell him the apartment is solid and I already had to fix the sink."
Joyce raised her eyebrows. "You fixed it yourself?"
"My neighbor helped actually." Will said it before he thought about whether he wanted to say it, and then it was just out there in the air between them.
Joyce's eyebrows stayed up. "Neighbor?"
"He lives across the hall." Will kept his voice very even. "He had tools. It was a loose fitting, it took like ten minutes."
"That was nice of him," Joyce said, in a tone that was doing its absolute best to be casual and not quite getting there.
"It was just a sink mom."
"I didn't say anything."
"You have a face."
"I always have a face, Will, it's just my face." She took a pointed sip of her coffee. Her eyes were doing something warm and amused above the rim of the mug that Will chose not to acknowledge.
"I'm going to go make breakfast," Will said.
"Good. Eat something real."
"I will."
"And Will." Her voice softened again, dropping back into that quieter register that she saved for the things that actually mattered. "I'm proud of you. For doing this. You know that right?"
Will looked at her on his screen, standing in her kitchen in the house he'd grown up in, and felt something press gently against the inside of his chest.
"Yeah," he said quietly. "I know."
"Okay." She smiled, wide and warm. "Call me tonight."
"I will."
"Love you."
"Love you too mom."
The call ended and Will's kitchen went quiet again. He stood there for a moment with his phone in his hand, looking at the black screen, the apartment still and Sunday-soft around him.
Then he looked down at his pajamas.
He needed to change. He needed to eat something real. He needed to finish unpacking and make a grocery list and figure out the rest of his day like a functional person.
He pushed off the counter and headed for his bedroom, pointedly not thinking about the apartment across the hall or the way the hallway had felt standing in it, or the expression on Mike's face right before his door had closed.
Pointedly.
—
Will changed into something real. Jeans, a soft flannel over a plain t-shirt, his worn sneakers that he'd had since junior year of high school and refused to throw away on principle. He ran a hand through his hair in the mirror, got it to cooperate mostly, and decided that was good enough for a Sunday.
He made himself actual breakfast after that. Eggs, toast, the last of the orange juice he'd packed in a small cooler for the drive up. He ate standing at the counter because his kitchen table chairs were still in a box somewhere and he hadn't gotten there yet, looking out the window at the street below while he worked through it slowly.
The city was waking up around him in that particular Sunday way, unhurried and soft at the edges. Someone was walking a very small dog that was taking the walk extremely seriously. A couple was sharing something from a paper bag on the stoop across the street, passing it back and forth without talking, comfortable in the easy silence of people who had run out of things to need to say.
Will watched them for a moment and then looked back at his eggs.
He spent the rest of the morning unpacking.
The kitchen first, working through boxes and figuring out where things lived. Plates in the cabinet to the left of the sink. Glasses next to them. Pots and pans in the lower cabinet by the stove, nested inside each other the way Joyce had taught him. He lined up his spices on the small shelf above the counter even though he only had six of them and the shelf had room for twenty, and decided he'd fill it in eventually.
Then his bedroom. Clothes into the dresser and the small closet, folded the way he liked them, organized in the quiet particular way that he'd always been slightly embarrassed about until El had told him it was just how his brain worked and there was nothing wrong with it. Books stacked on the shelf above his desk. His sketchbooks in a neat pile on the desk itself, pencils in the cup beside them, the good ones at the front.
He made his bed properly, smoothing the sheets flat and straightening the pillows, and stood back and looked at it and felt something settle in him. A room that looked like his room. A space that was starting to understand him.
By the time he'd worked through most of the remaining boxes it was early afternoon, the light coming through the windows warm and gold and slightly lazy. His body was tired in the good, honest way that came from physical work, the kind of tiredness that had an explanation.
He made a grocery list sitting cross legged on his made bed, going through his phone notes slowly and methodically. The basics first. Bread, eggs, pasta, coffee, the kind of coffee his mom had introduced him to when he was sixteen that Jonathan always said was too strong and that Will thought was exactly right. Fruit. Something green that wasn't just iceberg lettuce. He added dish soap and a sponge and then remembered he needed a wrench and added that too.
He paused on that last one for a second.
Added it to the list anyway.
He grabbed his jacket from the hook by the door, his keys, his wallet, and headed out. The hallway was quiet when he stepped into it. The door to 303 was closed, no sound coming from behind it. Will didn't look at it for very long.
The grocery store was about four blocks away, which he'd looked up before moving in and felt good about. The walk there was easy and cool, the kind of September afternoon that hadn't decided yet whether it wanted to be summer or fall, hedging its bets with thin cloud cover and a light wind that moved through his hair and made the city feel less overwhelming than it sometimes did from inside it.
He took his time in the store. Moved through the aisles slowly, reading labels he didn't need to read, standing in front of the coffee for longer than was strictly necessary before putting the right one in his basket. There was something grounding about it, the ordinary weight of choosing things, deciding what his kitchen would be stocked with, what his apartment would smell like when he cooked. Small decisions that added up to something that felt like building a life.
He was in the bread aisle when his phone buzzed.
Jonathan: okay but have you actually eaten today or are you surviving on granola bars again
Will stared at the message. Then he looked down at the loaf of bread in his hand.
Will: I had eggs this morning
Jonathan: mom told me about the neighbor
Will closed his eyes briefly.
Will: she told you that fast
Jonathan: she called me like ten minutes after she talked to you. she has a face apparently
Will: she always has a face
Jonathan: so who is he
Will: he fixed my sink Jonathan he's not a character
Jonathan: uh huh
Will: goodbye
Jonathan: text me when you're settled!! love you!!
Will put his phone back in his pocket and stood in the bread aisle for a moment with a loaf of sourdough in his hand, looking at nothing.
Then he put it in his basket and kept moving.
He got back to the apartment as the afternoon light was starting to go amber, bags in both hands, taking the elevator up to the third floor. The hallway was still quiet when the doors opened.
He was halfway to his door when he heard it. A muffled sound from 303, something mechanical and strained, cutting out, then starting again. Then a very distinct and very heartfelt are you kidding me?! from behind the closed door.
Will stood in the hallway with his grocery bags and looked at the door for a second.
He kept walking.
He got inside, nudging the door shut behind him with his foot, the latch clicking softly into place. His jacket came off first, hung on the hook by the door, and then his shoes, lined up neatly beneath it the way his mom had always asked him to and that he'd kept doing long after he'd moved out simply because it felt right. He padded into the kitchen in his socks, the hardwood cool and smooth under his feet, and started unpacking the grocery bags one at a time.
He took his time with it. Bread on the counter near the toaster. Eggs on the second shelf of the fridge where they wouldn't get bumped. The coffee on the shelf above the stove, label facing out, pushed back just far enough from the edge that it wouldn't fall. Small decisions, each one quiet and satisfying in its own way, the apartment absorbing them slowly and becoming a little more his with each one.
By the time he'd gotten through everything the window had gone from gold to something dimmer and softer without him noticing the exact moment it changed. Evening was settling in faster than he expected, the sky outside deepening into that particular shade of blue gray that came just before dark, the city below shifting into its nighttime version of itself. Streetlights were starting to flicker on down the block, warm and orange against the coming dark.
Will folded the empty grocery bags into neat squares and tucked them into the cabinet under the sink. He stood up and looked around the kitchen for a moment, hands resting on the counter behind him. Everything put away. Everything where it was supposed to be. It looked like a kitchen that someone lived in now, not just a room with cabinets in it.
He pushed off the counter and went to his room.
He found his pajamas in the top drawer where he'd put them that morning, the soft worn ones, and carried them into the bathroom, draping them over the edge of the sink. The bathroom light buzzed on, bright and unflattering the way bathroom lights always were, casting everything in that honest, clinical glow that didn't leave much room for illusion. He moved through the space practically, efficiently, the way he'd learned to move through anything that had the potential to be uncomfortable if he gave it too much attention.
He started taking off his clothes, folding them out of habit, and then he reached for the patches.
He peeled them slowly, carefully, the way he always did. Left wrist first, pressing his thumb under the edge and pulling it away in one clean motion. Then the right, the one at the nape of his neck, and finally the ones on his inner thighs..which always felt the strangest coming off. Like releasing a breath he hadn't known he was holding. He balled them up one by one without looking at them too hard and dropped them into the small trash can by the toilet, listening to the soft sound of them landing.
The bathroom air found his skin immediately. Cool and quiet against the spots where the patches had been sitting all day, places that had been pressed flat and told to be quiet since seven that morning. Will rubbed his wrists slowly, one thumb moving in absent circles over his left pulse point, feeling the gland beneath it, no longer muffled or suppressed or managed, just there. Present. His.
And then, gradually and without any ceremony, in the small private space of his own bathroom with the door closed and the rest of the world entirely elsewhere, his scent came back to him.
Sweet. Genuinely, almost embarrassingly sweet. Something like vanilla, something like blueberries, something light and unhurried underneath both of those that he'd never quite been able to name, like the smell of a warm room on a cold day. Soft in a way that felt almost at odds with how carefully and deliberately he moved through the world. He'd always thought that was the universe's particular sense of humor, giving him a scent like that. All that work to be invisible and he smelled like something you'd want to go looking for.
He stood there for a moment and just let it exist around him.
In here it was fine. In here it was just him and his bathroom and the quiet tail end of his first real day in a new city, no one to manage himself for, no one's perception of him to maintain or protect. The part of the day that existed between taking the patches off and putting new ones on tomorrow morning was the only time his body felt entirely like it belonged to him, and he'd learned over the years to treat that time gently. To not waste it.
He didn't hate what he was. Not anymore. That had taken a long time and he was still somewhere in the middle of it on bad days, but mostly he'd made his peace with the fact of himself. What he hated was simpler and more specific than that. He hated the way the world took it and ran, the way it wanted to use what he was as a kind of shorthand for everything else about him before he'd had the chance to be anything at all. The way a designation could walk into a room before you did and rearrange everything without your permission.
In here though, with the patches off and the door closed and nobody anywhere near him, it was just fine.
He turned the shower on and waited for the water to run warm before stepping in, and then stood under it with his eyes closed for longer than was strictly necessary, the heat working slowly through his shoulders and the back of his neck, the day loosening and rinsing off him in pieces. He stayed until the bathroom was properly steamed up and his fingers had gone slightly pruney and he felt genuinely, properly clean.
—
He came to bed feeling light in a way that was rare enough to notice.
His hair was still slightly damp at the ends, curling a little the way it always did when he didn't dry it properly, and his pajamas were the old soft ones that had been through enough washes to feel like almost nothing against his skin. He moved through his bedroom quietly, the apartment settled and still around him, the city outside a low distant hum that wasn't unpleasant. Just present. Just the sound of somewhere large going about its business.
He turned on the lamp on his nightstand before getting into bed, the small one with the warm amber bulb that turned everything in the room soft and unhurried. The light caught the paintings on the wall, the family photos, the edges of the sketchbooks stacked on his desk, and for a moment Will just stood there in the middle of his room and looked at all of it. His things. His walls. His window with its unfamiliar view that he was going to have to get used to.
It looked like his room.
He got under the covers, pulling them up to his chest, and reached for his phone on the nightstand. Unlocked it and went straight to his alarms, checking out of habit rather than necessity. 7:00 AM. Still set. The reminder underneath it in its small neat font, patient and unchanging.
Take your medicine.
Will looked at it for a second the way he always did. Then he locked his phone and placed it face down on the nightstand, screen dark.
He reached over and turned off the lamp.
The room settled into darkness around him, warm and quiet, the kind of dark that felt safe rather than empty. Outside the window the city moved on without him, unhurried, indifferent, enormous. In here his sheets were cool and clean and his pillow was the right one from home and his scent patches were in the trash and his glands were quiet and tomorrow was still an entire night away.
Will closed his eyes.
He thought briefly, without meaning to. About calling Jonathan back tomorrow, about the way the hallway had felt standing in it, and the door across from his, an expression he hadn't fully caught before it was gone.
Then sleep came up quietly from underneath him and took him before he could think anything else.