Chapter Text
November 24th, 1993
“-pregnant.”
Will inhaled sharply, suddenly tuned back into the conversation, and the water he’d been quietly sipping at went right back up his throat and out his nose, spraying across his side of the kitchen table. Three sets of eyes fixed to him as he sputtered, fanning his face against the burn in his nostrils and the tears welling up in his eyes, and he coughed a few times, desperately trying to recover faster.
“Um,” he said, and his voice was gravelly and choked. He coughed again, clearing his throat. “Uh, s-sorry. Sorry.”
Hop and El wore almost identical looks of confusion, bordering judgment, while his mother regarded him with wide, worried eyes.
“Are you okay sweetheart?” She asked, reaching across the table for his hand. El wordlessly got up, retrieving the paper towel roll off the counter and circling around to his side of the room. He covered half his face with his hand, cheeks hot with embarrassment, and all but snatched them away from her.
“I got it,” he croaked, waving her off. A glance up found his mother still watching, waves of concern wafting off of her. He turned his gaze pointedly back to the table, balling up a few too many towels and pressing them right in the center. “I’m fine, I’m fine. Just- went down the wrong pipe.”
There was a beat of awkward silence, three sets of eyes watching as he made a poor attempt at cleaning the table, before he finally grabbed three more towels and spread them out over the spill. He looked up, finding El’s eyes- she was the one who’d been talking, right?
“What, um-“ He cleared his throat again, brow furrowing. “What’s going on?”
El spared him another odd look, then dropped back down in her seat, splaying her hands out over the table.
“Kali,” she huffed, a slight whine to her tone. This matter was a great grievance to her specifically. “She’s pregnant.”
The furrow between Will’s eyebrows grew deeper.
“Your sister?”
El’s eyes flicked back up to him, narrowing with a slight wrinkle of her nose.
“No,” she huffed, as though this was the most ludicrous thing she’d ever heard. Which… okay, yeah, it had sounded pretty crazy to him too. Will had never met Kali, he’d only ever heard about her from El, and El hadn’t seen her since she was 13. All he knew was that she sounded super cool and bitchin, and also not at all the motherly type.
El drew in a breath, shoulders hiking up, before she dropped her elbows down on the table with a sigh.
“Your niece,” she said, and Will let out a soft oh.
The cat.
“She isn’t an outdoor cat, but I guess she must get out sometimes,” El explained, waving an irritable hand. “Because I took her to the vet last week, and she’s pregnant. With a whole litter.” She pressed a hand to her cheek, frowning. “Max said she’s a whore.”
Hopper snorted, brushing it off with a swipe of his thumb through his mustache, and Joyce rested a sympathetic hand against her daughter’s back. El lifted both hands again, something lighter in her expression now, and tilted her head.
“And I don’t know how I’m going to keep what could be up to 12 kittens in student housing.”
She paused there, leaving the statement hanging. Waiting for someone to pick up the bait.
And then-
“Oh, honey,” Joyce said, eyes lighting up. Her hand landed on her shoulder, squeezing. “Sweetheart, you got in?”
El nodded, a touch of excitement slipping through the cracks in her mask of exasperation.
“I got in,” she confirmed, a small smile on her lips, a soft breath puffing past them. “I start in the spring.”
“I knew it,” Hop declared, proud. He stood from his spot, throwing his arms out, and then he was scooping his daughter into a hug, earning a delighted squeal. “I knew you could do it, see? See how all that hard work paid off?” He pressed his lips to the top of her head, half his face lost in her curls, and huffed out a laugh. “I told you so.”
While the rest of them had been making their way through college, El had been playing catch up, cramming as much of a K through 12 education into a handful of years as she could. She’d stayed behind in Hawkins while the rest of them moved on, cooped up in her room at the end of the hall, scouring over textbooks and struggling through essays as Hop and Joyce cheered her on. Kali had been a gift last Christmas, a ‘we’re so proud of how hard you’re working, keep it up.’ This past summer, she’d applied to nearly every early development program within a couple of hours.
She’d wanted to be a child’s therapist since she knew what one was. Wanted to help someone the way she wished someone could’ve helped her.
To Will, his sister was one of the most inspiring people he knew.
“Of course you did,” Will scoffed, but it was with a bright smile, hands planted firmly against the table as he pushed up out of his seat. His back only smarted a little, and it couldn’t very well distract him when El was beaming at him, already hurrying out of her own chair.
At one point, Will had talked with her about maybe applying for a graduate program at one of the schools she was looking at, just so the two of them could experience some of it together. So she didn’t have to spend all of college alone.
Furthering his education was pretty low on his list of priorities, nowadays.
He didn’t have to go very far before she was colliding into him, with just the same amount of force as she’d done when he’d first arrived around an hour ago. She’d latched on and refused to let go for at least a minute, burying her face in his shoulder and rocking the both of them from side to side. And Will would be a liar if he tried to claim he didn’t hold on just as tight.
They hadn’t seen each other since August. Since the morning before they went out to celebrate Mike’s engagement.
He’d missed her terribly.
“Proud of you,” he murmured, just an inch from her ear. El gave him a short squeeze, smile pressed into the fabric of his sweater.
“You’ll have to give me tips,” she mumbled back, backing off just a little so she could meet his eyes. “For college. Since you know all the ins and outs.”
“I could probably do that,” he hummed, hands slipping from the small of her back to her hips. “Are you looking for tips about college, or about college?”
“Better not give her tips about college,” Hopper mumbled, jokingly gruff. El’s face pinched a little, lost.
“I don’t get it.”
“You’ll figure everything out just fine once you get there,” Joyce assured her, standing from her seat. “And you don’t have to worry about having kittens in the dorms, honey. You can give them away.”
El twisted out of Will’s grasp with a start, eyes wide.
“But they’re Kali’s babies,” she insisted. “They need to be with her.”
“Cats don’t work the same as people do.”
“But what if I want to keep them?”
The oven let out a shrill beep, and Joyce spun around with a start and a mumbled, “Oh, Jesus.”
“Mom,” Will said, dropping his hands and rounding the table, already moving to help. Joyce held up both her hands.
“We’re all good,” she assured him, and the room at large. “Everything’s good. That’s why we were in here, so I wouldn’t-” She popped the oven open, and the smell of sweet potato casserole wafted out into the room. She crouched down, moving to grab the dish, and Hopper wordlessly reached past her, snatching the oven mitts off their spot on the wall and holding them out for her. She took them with a short hum. “So I wouldn’t miss the timer.”
“I can help,” Will insisted, stopping just shy of invading her space, just sort of awkwardly (and nervously) hovering. It was how it was supposed to work, anyway. Every year of college, Will had spent the entirety of his fall break (a measly four days) at home with his family. He and El helped her prepare the last few dishes the day before, then helped with cleanup the day after, so that the holiday itself didn’t have to be quite so stressful for his mom.
It had never really been much of a holiday at all, when he was little, but as their family had grown and changed, so had his mother’s need to establish traditions. Their first real thanksgiving dinner had been that year they were in Lenora, when she’d nearly burned down the house trying to use the new stove.
Something to look forward to in November, she’d insisted, when Will had questioned her sudden obsession. It keeps me busy.
I’m sure it keeps me out of your hair, too, she’d joked, scrunching up her nose with a teasing smile. Will had laughed, waved her off, and gone back to his homework.
After Jon, the dinner had nearly tripled in size. No one had ever said anything about it.
“You drove all the way out here,” his mother protested, setting the casserole out on the counter. It looked good- she’d come a long way from the disaster of ‘85. She waved a hand, nearly swatting at him. “Go spend time with your sister. Hop can help me just fine.”
Will took in a short breath, puffing out his cheeks as he watched the back of his mother’s head. Hopper stood to her right, a hand on her back, quietly rubbing between her shoulderblades. She was looking at him, some silent conversation passing between them. Something tightened in his throat.
His mom turned to look at him over her shoulder, and he let the breath out in a sigh.
“Yeah,” he conceded, nodding. “Okay.”
The screen went fuzzy with static the moment the credits ended, and Will started the increasingly strenuous task of easing himself off of the couch.
It wasn’t so bad, for now. It wouldn’t have been a problem at all if his parents hadn’t gotten such a plush couch. It was the kind that you sunk into without even really trying, falling lower and lower into the cushions until suddenly you were staring up at the ceiling instead of the television. His mom had trouble getting up out of it sometimes too, choking out a laugh as she waved a hand for Hop to help extract her. Will was surprised she hadn’t disappeared right into the cracks of it, with how small she seemed to him some days.
(He wasn’t much taller than her, not really, but he held onto those handful of inches with all he had. Lonnie hadn’t been all that tall either. Will was doomed from the beginning.)
Will pried himself up with a grimace, one hand braced against his stomach with the other gripping the edge of the cushion, and slowly sank down onto the floor, dropping to his hands and knees so he could crawl over and pop the tape out. The case was still sitting on the tv stand, and he made quick work of putting it away on the shelf. He left the static of the tv on, climbing back to his feet in the soft glow.
The light reached El where she was still seated on the couch, sunk down into the cushions with her head tilted back. It had rested on Will’s shoulder at one point, but he’d carefully guided her away when she started to drool.
His gaze lingered for a moment, watching her gentle breaths in the faint light, then walked over to grab the blanket on the other end of the couch, carefully unfolding it between his hands. He flicked it once, twice, then lifted it up, draping it over her and tucking it close around her shoulders.
She slept on, undisturbed.
Will let out a breath, rubbing the pinch in his lower back, and started off toward the kitchen, careful to avoid the spots that creaked. It was almost eerily silent, now that the movie was over. There wasn’t the soft rustling of trees outside, not like there had been at his childhood home. This house was much further into town.
He almost missed it.
Almost.
There wasn’t much about Hawkins he’d ever really managed to bring himself to miss.
The kitchen was mostly put back together when he arrived, dishes cleaned up after and stashed away in the fridge. He was careful to avoid it, not trusting himself to not send something toppling over, and went for the cabinets instead, reaching blindly in the dark and hoping he’d come across something appetizing.
His hand knocked against a box of something that rattled, cereal probably, and the quiet scratch of claws on tile followed almost seconds later.
Will turned, and there was Kali, rounding the corner and staring right at him, green eyes nearly glowing in the moonlight.
He grinned.
“Hey, pretty girl,” he murmured, closing the cabinet behind him and reaching for the next one, the one he knew El stashed the cat treats in. Kali wandered her way over, far less graceful than she’d been the last time he saw her, and he met her halfway, both hands propped against his knees as he crouched down.
He tore the top off the little tube in his hand, and her eyes zeroed in on it, tongue poking out from her mouth.
“Hi, honey,” he hummed, waving it out in front of her. She took another few steps forward, and he got a good look at her in the light cast through the kitchen window, a streak of white along the shadowed tile. She was rather round.
She certainly didn’t seem bothered by it. She lapped at the end of the tube, sniffing along his fingers, and she didn’t put up any protest when he started to carefully scratch between her ears. A soft rumble followed the touch, and his smile grew, dragging his nails along the nape of her neck.
She was a cat- fat and pleased with herself was her natural state of being.
Will could only really relate on one of those things.
“Don’t worry about Aunt Max,” he mumbled, squeezing more of the treat out of the tube and keeping up with the scratches, brushing his thumb up and down the markings on her forehead. “She just says stuff sometimes. Thinks she’s funny.” He drew a line down her back, tracing her stripes. “Besides, she’d say the same thing about me if she had the chance.”
Not that he thought she’d ever be so blunt, at least he hoped she wouldn’t. But Max had never been someone who tried very hard to keep her thoughts and feelings to herself. She was very honest, and just a little bit judgmental, sometimes, and, well… blunt.
Max would never call Will a whore. Mike, yeah, she probably would, especially in this situation, but never Will.
She absolutely would, however, give him judgmental looks, and drop little comments on his taste in men. Specifically, his taste in taken men.
Max would not call him a whore, but she would certainly think it.
Who wouldn’t?
It was true, wasn’t it?
Kali let out a soft chirp, and Will refocused on her, tilting his head with a soft smile. He pressed his thumb between where her eyebrows would be and pushed down, giving her an angry little furrow.
He grinned.
“For what it’s worth,” he hummed, squishing her face as much as she’d allow, which she seemed content to put up with for as long as he was feeding her. “Uncle Will thinks you’re the sweetest. And so does your mama. She loves you more than anything.” Something flickered in his expression, and he leaned closer, lowering his voice further. “Thanks for being there for her when I can’t.”
Kali licked the last of the treat off the crumpled plastic, and he gave her fur a few more careful strokes, all the spots he knew she liked from previous visits, before she finally seemed to grow bored. She made another noise- she never really seemed to meow, not like any other cat he’d met- then started her own trek in the direction he’d left, slowly lumbering towards the couch in the other room and the faint glow of the tv.
Will stayed crouched for a moment after she’d gone, staring off into some middle distance, letting his eyes glaze over, before he slowly, carefully started to stand back up.
A hand came to rest at his middle, and it lingered as he turned back to the kitchen cabinets. He narrowed his eyes at them, drew in a breath, and walked over to the counter, sliding open the junk drawer and rifling through it.
He grabbed an old stack of post-it notes and a pen.
On the top paper, he scribbled the pen until the ink started to bleed out again, scratching it back to life.
On the second, after he’d torn away the first, he wrote, On a walk. Be back soon. Don’t worry.
He paused, bit his lip, and wrote some more.
Please.
He tore that one off, stuck it to the fridge, and stashed everything back in the drawer.
His shoes were right where he’d left them, kicked off by the door in the flurry of movement and excitement that had met him when he’d arrived. He was careful to avoid the spots that creaked again as he made his way over, hardly daring to take a breath. El was still asleep on the couch, Kali now curled up on her lap, and the single glance he spared them as he passed found the cat watching him, tracking his movements with a level of alertness only something mildly nocturnal could accomplish. He held his finger to his lips as he kicked his shoes on, hoping the treat he’d given her had established a sort of truce.
Kali didn’t budge an inch, and Will grabbed his jacket off the coat rack, shrugging it over his shoulders.
He grabbed a key off the hook, opened the door, and slipped out.
His feet took him all the way off the porch and down the front lawn without a thought. He’d done this sort of thing what felt like a hundred times, back when he’d lived here. There’d been quite a bit of sneaking out when he was 17 and 18, wandering off to a friend’s house, or just somewhere else, anywhere else. He’d felt suffocated by the place, drowning in grief, and there’d been some nights that the only way he could clear his head or calm down was to get out.
He’d been doing a lot of walking recently, too. It was supposed to be good for him. For the baby.
He kicked at a chunk of loose asphalt near the edge of the road, and it went clattering along, rolling to a spot a few feet away.
There weren’t any friends to visit around here, nowadays. They were all miles away, happy and safe and free of the place. The Sinclairs still lived here, he knew. Erica just graduated last spring. Mrs Henderson still lived in that old house, alone with her cats and waiting for visits from her increasingly busy adult son. Max’s mother left a while ago.
The Wheelers had been gone even longer. The moment Mike graduated, they took Holly and got the hell out. He knew they’d wanted to leave even sooner. They’d started to look into properties a week after the funeral, their daughter’s body barely cold in the ground. Mike had gotten into a row with them about it. I have one semester left. Please, don’t move me this late in the game. Please let me graduate with my friends.
And, when that hadn’t seemed to convince them, You can’t just leave her behind and pretend she never existed. She’s your daughter. She’s my sister. Don’t just fuck off and abandon her.
Mike hadn’t admitted that part to him. He’d shamefully admitted it to Lucas, too worried about bothering Will when he was battling his own grief, and Lucas had told Will about it almost a year after the fact, muttered in low voices. He’s really cagey about all that. I think it bothers him a lot more than he lets on. Maybe you should talk to him about it.
He hadn’t ever gotten around to it.
Their dead siblings had very quickly fallen into the category of subjects they didn’t discuss, along with that painting from when they were 15, their fight at 14, and any other tough subject that Mike made a point to ignore and Will never had the energy to bring up. Those tough subjects had only piled up as they’d gotten older, and maybe Will should’ve expected that one day they’d just stop talking altogether, that everything would suddenly be a tough subject, and that the thought of trying to talk to Mike at all would make him lightheaded and queasy.
Maybe, he should’ve tried harder to bring that stuff up when he had the chance. Maybe it would’ve saved them.
Or maybe, it would’ve ended them sooner, and he wouldn’t be in this situation.
Will knew all the shortcuts to get where he was going. He knew the path through the old park a few streets down, where to cut between a patch of trees and weave around bushes. He knew which roads to walk down, which ones to cross, which yards to wander through and stay wary of deer droppings. He followed it almost automatically, the compass in his head, and it only took him a little longer than usual with the way he got winded a little more easily now, the way he had to take a few breaks to catch his breath and shake out the cramps trying to coil in his legs.
The gravel parking lot crunched beneath his shoes soon enough, and he crossed it with his hands in his jacket pockets, shoulders hunched. There was quite a bit of mud about, from some rain storm that had passed through before his visit, and he was careful not to slip. A fall could be bad, really bad, and then he’d feel like an irresponsible idiot for leaving the house alone.
It was a short trek back, past the other stones and the great big gate, which they’d never gone to the efforts of locking very well. The cemetery did have set visitation hours, but that had never stopped him before. Most of the times he’d wound up here had been the middle of the night.
He no longer cared about the mud by the time he got there, legs sore and back aching, and so he lowered himself to the ground, sitting criss-cross in front of his brother’s stone.
“Hey,” he huffed, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, rubbing a hand against his face. “Sorry it’s been a bit. I’ve been super busy, like, blowing up my whole life.”
He didn’t get any sort of reply. He imagined one anyway. Imagined this was him dropping down on his brother’s couch, arriving abruptly to his apartment in the middle of the night, and that Jonathan was still standing by the door, halfway through a greeting, only to fix him with a very pinched, very worried look.
Or a dry, tired one, depending on how patient he was feeling.
What happened?
“So,” Will said, and he shifted, clamping his hands over his knees, jabbing his thumbs into the sides. “I don’t think I got the chance to tell you- I don’t know if he ever came to say anything, to you and Nance, but Mike’s engaged.”
Oh.
“I don’t like her all that much,” he admitted, staring at one of the longer blades of grass. It looked like the rainstorm had dissuaded the landscaping crew from coming through recently, because everything was just a little more overgrown than usual. He imagined a messy apartment, Jonathan’s things tossed around half of it, Nancy’s the other. Their intermingled junk, just like his mother’s and Hopper’s, like Robin’s and Vickie’s. The mundane beauty of a shared life. “She’s… god, I’m going to sound like an asshole.” He pressed a hand to the side of his face. “She’s bland. She doesn’t really contribute to any conversation. None of the party likes her, not really, but nobody’s brave enough to say that to him. Max told me she hates her, but Dustin and Lucas are still under the impression that she’s taking a while to warm up to everybody, since we’ve all been friends for so long and she only met all of us a few months ago. And it’s only been a few months. That’s crazy, right? Mom and Hop took years to get engaged, and they’d known each other for decades.”
He wasn’t sure what Jonathan would say to that. He’d like to think he’d agree with him. He was pretty sure he would. But maybe Jonathan would see through him, would see it for what it really was. Jealousy.
You knew this would happen eventually, his mind’s version of his brother sighed, settling in on the couch beside him.
A careful hand on his shoulder.
I’m sorry.
“It’s fine,” Will muttered, not even caring that he was talking to himself. “It doesn’t matter, anyway. It’s his life. If he’s- if he’s happy with her, then… I’m happy for him.”
Fingers kneading into his shoulder, rubbing steady circles into the muscle. Will sucked in a shuddering breath, shivering.
“I-“ Something tightened around his throat, a string coiled tight and taut, and he swallowed, staring down at his lap. “I could’ve ruined that for him. I still could. I might. I don’t-” He blinked a few times, brow scrunched together. “Um. Things… happened, things I didn’t- I didn’t really plan to do, or mean to, but I wanted it. I wanted to. I know that makes me bad, since he’s with her, and- and even if for some reason he wanted it too, it’s not fair to her. It’s not fair to her, she loves him and she has this whole life planned with him, they’re getting married, and I could tear all of that apart just by showing up.”
He sucked in a sharp breath, squeezing his eyes shut.
“I’m pregnant.”
Silence. Another breath, shaking on the way in. He hadn’t really said it aloud yet, not like that. Not so bluntly, so direct. Robin and Vickie knew, and his doctor, but that was it.
“I’m having a baby,” he stated, letting the words sink into his bones. “You’re gonna be an uncle. And Nancy’s gonna be an aunt, not just because you’re together, but because it’s his kid, Jon.” His heart raced, and he tried to place where Nancy was in this scenario. Was she down the hall in her room, sleeping? At the kitchen table, pretending not to eavesdrop? On the other side of the couch? “And I haven’t said anything, I don’t know how to say anything, because I don’t wanna ruin this life he’s building for himself. I don’t wanna hurt him, or her. I feel like the worst person in the world, which is- it’s all wrong, because isn’t this supposed to be the happiest moment of my life? Aren’t I supposed to be happy? What’s wrong with me?”
More silence. He was drowning in it.
“I just want my best friend back,” he croaked, digging his fingers into his arms, where they’d wrapped around himself. “I don’t know why I thought I could do this. I’m gonna be a really shitty dad. I already know I’m gonna mess this kid up, and then they’re going to hate me, and they’re going to want their other dad, and- and maybe I should just give them to him, and to her, and I should just do everybody a favor and leave. I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m doing.” He choked on a breath, hiccuped, and scrubbed an angry hand across his damp cheek. “I don’t know what to do.”
He pressed the heel of his palm under his eye, hiccuping again.
“And El got into school!” He yelped, voice sharp and wobbly. “I’m so proud of her. She’s been working so hard. I don’t want to- to steal her moment, with this, I don’t- and M-Mom’s probably going to be so disappointed in me. She wanted us to have it easier, but now I’m having a baby with somebody else’s fiancé, and I’m probably gonna have to do it all alone, and she’s gonna worry. And-!” He let out a sob. “And Hopper’s gonna kill Mike.”
His fantasy couldn’t progress any further than that. He had no clue what his brother would say to any of this. Would he join Hopper in hunting Mike down? Would Nancy? Would they try to calm him down? Would they call Mike the moment he left and spill everything?
He didn’t know.
God, he wished he knew.
“I- I need you,” he told the headstone, staring at the letters etched into the surface. “I need you. Please.”
A soft gust of wind swept past, sending a shiver up his spine, and he took another shuddering breath, squeezing his eyes shut. There was something almost peaceful out here, removed from the rest of the town by stone archways and rotting fences. A safe haven in the worst place on earth.
Will curled his legs, knees up to his chest, and brushed a hand back through his hair, resting his cheek on his knee. He tried, desperately, to syphon some of that peace.
He couldn’t tell if it was working.
“Um,” he said eventually, sniffling rather pathetically. He rubbed at his eyes again, glancing at the stone. “So. That’s what’s been happening with me.” His hand trailed back to the side of his head, and he leaned into it, unwinding a bit of the tension in his shoulders. “What’s new with you?”
Joyce was on the porch when the house came back into view.
Will spotted her before she saw him, seated on the old porch swing El had insisted was the biggest reason they’d needed to pick the house. She had it rocking slowly, one foot perched against the floor- still just in her socks, despite the cold, which meant she’d seen his note and hadn’t chosen to go after him, that she’d trusted him- and she had one arm wrapped around herself. She was wearing one of Hopper’s jackets, big enough to swallow her whole but certainly plenty warm, and he could see her plaid pajama bottoms poking out underneath. She had a cigarette in a death grip in her other hand, but she made no moves to bring it to her mouth as he approached, just letting the smoke trail up over her head and past the awning of the porch.
She spotted him when he got about five feet from the edge of the lawn, instantly perking up. There wasn’t an ounce of tiredness in her eyes.
She very rarely slept through the night this time of year.
He started his way up the path to the porch, and she wordlessly made room on the swing, collecting the extra fabric of the coat around herself. Will hopped up the last step, and she fidgeted for a moment, something small and metal in her other hand, before holding out her own cigarette.
He paused.
His mother knew he smoked. Had known, for a while. She’d caught him a few times after he started, those last few months he’d lived here, but she hadn’t had the heart to scold him for it. He’d seen her start going through more of them after the funeral, seen her efforts to cut back go down the drain. She hadn’t been in any place to tell him off for it.
So she’d made a deal with him.
If you’re going to do it when you’re here, you’re going to do it with me or Jim. Don’t sneak around behind our backs.
At the time, that had successfully dissuaded him from smoking around the house at all, because he’d wanted nothing less than to sit with his mom or Hop and feel them watching him while he did it. But he’d taken her up on it at their wedding, joined them outside after the cake was done, and they’d fallen into a habit of doing it once or twice any time he’d come back. His mom knew better than anybody how much he struggled to sleep when he was visiting, and he knew she struggled just the same. It was… comforting.
And he wanted to. He wanted to so badly. But he hadn’t touched a cigarette since he’d found out about the baby. He’d tossed the pack he had on him at the hospital, and he’d asked Robin to toss out his spare pack when he got home, asked her to take it somewhere he wouldn’t know to look, so he wouldn’t end up rifling through their trash for it later on.
So he stopped where he was, averted his eyes, and scuffed his shoe against the wood.
“I quit.”
“Oh.”
When he looked up, his mother’s eyes were wide, lightly surprised. She blinked up at him, glanced back at the cigarette, and something warm blossomed on her face, something proud. She pushed the swing forward so she could reach the banister and snubbed the cigarette out on the railing.
Will blinked.
“You don’t have to,” he started, even though part of him was pretty sure it was bad for her to be smoking around him, that it was just as bad as if he was doing it himself. She was his mom. He wasn’t going to tell her what to do.
But she just shook her head, smiling warmly.
“If you can quit, so can I,” she said simply, and that seemed to be that. She looked at him, probably saw the puffiness around his eyes, the flush in his cheeks, and didn’t say a word. She waved a hand, swiping away some of the lingering smoke, and he joined her on the swing.
Her shoulder lightly bumped into his, and he leaned back in, letting the contact linger. She dropped the cigarette on the ash tray by her feet and wrapped an arm around his shoulders.
“So,” she hummed, a little raspy. Her voice had gotten a little rougher as she’d gotten older, especially this late at night. A mix of late night cigarettes and not having anything to say, not using her voice for hours at a time. “How’s life in the big city? You didn’t say much earlier.”
Will hummed, dropping his head on her shoulder.
“Loud.”
She chuckled, rubbing her hand up and down his arm.
“Makes sense,” she said, nodding along thoughtfully. “Lots of people around. Sometimes, I miss how it was just us and the trees at the old house. It’s safer here, with neighbors right next door, but sometimes I think of those nights when I’d just sit with you and your brother out in the yard, and we’d lay in the grass and look at the stars. Jonathan always knew what all of them were called.”
Will didn’t say anything in response to that, suddenly a little more worn down. The late hour was finally catching up to him, that and the long drive earlier.
“Can you see the stars where you are?”
“Barely,” he admitted softly. “Too much light pollution.”
“I’m sure there’s plenty to do, though,” she mused. “Plenty to keep you busy in the city. Nothing happens out here, not anymore. And I don’t mean-” She made a face, one he caught out of the corner of his eye. “They don’t really have much going on at all anymore. Nobody gets together to plan anything. They don’t do the big fairs, or the community events. I think everybody who cared about that sort of thing left and started over someplace else.”
“Probably,” he agreed, letting his eyes flutter. He could see his mother fidgeting, could see her flicking her lighter open and shut, open and shut, channeling endless restless energy.
Another gust of wind swept past, and he shivered. His mom turned to look at him with a worried little frown.
“Are you layered up enough?” She asked, pocketing the lighter and reaching to press the back of her hand against his cheek, letting the touch linger. “You know it can get cold out here, honey.”
“It’s colder where I’m at,” he admitted, an amused smile tugging at his lips. “You know that, right?”
His words went ignored as she continued to fuss, still just as much of a mother hen as she had been when he was 12 years old.
“Have you been okay out there?” She asked, chewing her bottom lip. “I know Robin means well, but she can be a bit…spacey. You’re eating enough, right? Your face looks a little thinner. And you’ve seemed so tired, baby. I’ll make you something.” She was moving to stand, now, and Will had to lift his head to let her, brow furrowing as she took both his hands in hers and started to pull him up as well. “I’m a failure of a mother if I let you starve.”
“Mom-”
“It’s no trouble at all,” she assured him, tugging him to his feet. If she found it any harder than usual, she certainly didn’t say so. “Need something to keep these old hands busy, anyway. There’s a million more productive things I could be doing than smoking, and feeding my son is certainly one of them.”
There was no reasoning with his mother when she set her mind to something like this, so Will let himself be dragged, helpless to stop it. She guided him back into the house, pausing long enough for him to kick off his shoes, and then he was being led over to the kitchen with his jacket still half on, sparing a brief glance in the direction of the couch as he passed. The tv was off, now, and El was nowhere to be found. His mom had probably found her when she’d gotten up and helped her off to bed. Fussed over one kid in the absence of the other.
Will had grown a lot more patient with his mother over the last few years. He’d given her quite a lot of trouble for all the hovering she did when he was a teen. He’d even snapped at her a few times, when he was 16 and sick of it, and then when he was 17 and angry at everything. Being away for school had given him the distance to think about it, and to realize that it had never really been about him. His mother didn’t act the way she did because she thought he couldn’t do things for himself, she did it because she loved him. Because it was her way of showing it, always had been, and she was a woman of action who felt the need to do and do and do.
Because she had love for three kids, and only two to give it to.
Will sat himself down as he was instructed, pulling up the nearest chair at the kitchen table, and he watched as his mother started to flit about the kitchen, moving almost on autopilot. It took until she was opening the fridge, loaf of bread already sat out on the counter, that he figured out what she was doing.
When he was a kid, and he’d wake up hungry in the middle of the night, his mom would always sit him down and make him a grilled cheese. It was easy, and it didn’t take a whole lot of ingredients, something they didn’t exactly have in abundance in a pre-Hopper household. Just cheese, bread, and butter, and sometimes not even butter if it was one of the weeks where she couldn’t get enough hours at work.
She always managed to make it taste good, though, no matter what she had to stretch thin.
She’d given him a really good childhood.
“Hey,” he said, and she paused halfway through buttering one of the slices of bread, turning over her shoulder to look at him. He held her gaze, earnest. “You’re not a failure of a mom. You’re a really good one. The best, really.”
Her eyes widened a touch, surprised, before melting into something softer and just a little wishy washy. She blinked a few times as though trying to keep her composure.
“Thank you, baby,” she said warmly, beaming. “That means more to me than you could ever know.”
“Yeah,” he breathed, curling his fingers against the worn wood of the table. His mom’s gaze lingered for one more moment, soft and tender, before she turned back to her work, setting the pan over the stove. He swallowed against a sudden lump in his throat. “Mom?”
“Yeah, sweetheart?” She called over her shoulder this time, keeping her eyes forward so she wouldn’t burn anything.
Will stared at the back of her head, words caught somewhere in his throat. It was wrapped around his neck, choking him again, and he dragged his nails across the wood as he inhaled. A careful tap tap tap followed as he tried to take a page from her book and channel some of his nervous energy.
“I’m pregnant.”
The words didn’t seem to properly settle for a moment. His mother nodded, then paused, frowning down at the sandwich. He could see her expression even with her back turned, the confused furrow to her brow and the narrowing of her eyes.
He stayed perfectly still, holding his breath.
“You’re,” she started, then stopped, baffled, as though she surely must have heard him wrong. She turned to look at him again. “What?”
It was a lot harder to hold her gaze this time, but he did it, feeling as though his lungs might burst from the breath he was holding.
“I’m pregnant,” he repeated, far less confidently than the first time, not that it had been quite so bold then either. It was a bit more mumbled when he tried again, and he shrunk into his seat a little, under the weight of her attention. “I’m gonna have a baby, Mom.”
“You’re gonna have,” she echoed, brow still furrowed incredulously, like every part of this conversation in the last two minutes had suddenly swapped to a different language, and she was trying to make sense of the tiny subtitles at the bottom of the screen. The same face she’d make when Jonathan used to make her watch foreign films with him, when he’d rave about how good they were while she squinted at the screen, lost.
Something must have clicked, because she moved suddenly, stumbling a little and trying to catch herself against the handle of the stove. She missed by a mile, catching the handle of the pan instead, and the resulting clatter made her jump. It fell to the floor, and she hurried to catch it, eyes wide and unfocused, until-
She dropped the pan with a start, letting it fall to the floor, and snapped her head back up. Her hand flew to her mouth as she stared at him, and he stared back, perhaps just as startled. It was a standoff, terrifyingly silent in the dim lighting of the kitchen.
Her other hand to flew to cover the first, and she made an odd noise in the back of her throat, high-pitched and strangled, and then, before he could even start to get up, she screamed.
Will was up within seconds after that, hurrying over to where she was quickly dissolving into tears on the floor, letting out a string of worried, “Mom, Mom, hey, Mom, it’s okay, Mom-”
Her arms wrapped around him with a startling level of strength, and she fell into him at just about the same time that there was a clatter down the hall, abrupt and hurried, followed by rushed footsteps in their direction. Hopper arrived in a state of disarray, standing wild-eyed in the doorway, and El arrived on his heels seconds later, wearing a twin look of worry.
Hopper’s gaze immediately snapped down to where Will was on the floor, holding his sobbing mother with a look of frazzled panic.
“What happened?” He demanded, starting towards them, and Joyce’s cries grew louder in response, babbling incoherently into Will’s shoulder. El stayed right where she was, looking on with a sense of bewilderment. Will himself wasn’t much less confused. This was a bad reaction, right? She was upset? He’d made her upset.
“I- I was just,” Will started helplessly, keeping his arms wrapped tightly around her to stop her from sinking onto the floor. “We were- we were talking, and-
“A baby,” Joyce sobbed, clutching at his jacket so hard that it had dragged down his arms, hanging on at his elbows. “My baby’s- oh, baby, baby, my baby-”
Hopper looked to Will, and Will stared back with a helpless shrug, opening and closing his mouth uselessly. Man, don’t look at me, I don’t even know.
“Hey, Joyce, honey,” Hopper said gently, resting a hand on her back. “Maybe try easing off a little, I think you’re freaking the kid out.”
Joyce only sunk into him further, muffling a strangled whine into his shoulder. Will tilted his head, hiding part of his face in her hair.
Oh, god, he broke his mom.
“Mom, it’s okay,” he muttered worriedly, feeling mildly embarrassed at being found like this. A scene. He was causing a scene. Everybody was up and worried now. “Hey, it’s okay.” He brushed a careful hand through her hair, hiding his own flushed face away behind her. He took a quick, shuddering breath, and lowered his voice to a whisper. “It’s okay.”
One of her hands pressed into his back, then dragged down it, repeating the motion in quick, shaky strokes. She took her own breath, quaking with it, before turning and pressing her cold nose into the crook of his neck, smearing tears against his skin. She made some attempt at words, still jumbled up and lost in her sobs, before moving both hands to his face to force him to look down so she could press a firm kiss to the crown of his head.
She lingered for a moment, half hidden in the mess of waves, and then she was peppering his face with kisses, his forehead and his cheeks and between his eyes. Will spluttered, caught off guard by the change (and even more self-conscious with El and Hopper watching on, both not quite as casually affectionate with one another as his mother had always been with her sons.)
“Mom,” he tried, a half-hearted protest.
She pressed another, longer kiss to the side of his face, cupping his jaw between her hands, then knocked their heads together.
“I love you,” she managed finally, only a little garbled and wrecked. She pulled back enough to look at him, eyes red and glassy. “I love you, baby. So much. I’m so-” She brushed her thumbs across his cheekbones, lips pressed together like she had to hold back, like she was bursting with it. They split with a wide grin and a wet laugh. “I’m so happy for you.”
Will’s eyes widened a touch, face softening.
“Yeah?” He asked, nervous. His mom nodded with another laugh, giving his face a small squeeze.
“Yeah,” she confirmed, beaming. Her smile wobbled, eyes still swimming with tears, and she turned to look at her husband with a short, shaky breath, not letting go of Will for even a moment. “Our baby’s having a baby.”
And she was gone again, grip slipping from Will’s face as her frame shuddered with another hitching sob. Hopper reached out almost automatically, face a little blank with surprise, and Will passed her over without complaint, because he was starting to get the feeling that if he stayed too close for much longer, he was going to end up a sobbing mess as well. He could already feel the sting of tears in his eyes and that too familiar itch at the back of his throat.
Hop shifted back, and Will had just enough awareness left in him to note the pan a few inches from his hand.
“Don’t touch that,” he blurted, making an aborted movement forward. A hand came up to wipe at his eyes, and nobody commented. “It’s hot. It was…” He let the sentence hang unfinished, not caring enough to offer anything else. He shifted, moving to stand, when a hand found his arm and helped him to his feet.
El’s touch lingered even after he was up, sitting on his shoulder.
“I got it,” she assured him, and she swept a hand in a short, effortless motion, guiding the pan up off the floor, into the air, and dropping it into the sink. Nevermind the half-charred sandwich still stuck to the surface.
She turned to look at him at the same moment that he opened his mouth to thank her, and it snapped shut just as quickly, suddenly pinned under her wide, curious eyes. She seemed to regard him for a moment, taking him in as though it was for the first time. He didn’t miss the way she scrutinized his sweater, like she was, for the first time since he’d arrived, considering what it might be hiding.
“A baby,” she murmured, quite blatantly eyeing his stomach before glancing back up to meet his eyes. “You’re having a baby.”
Will nodded, all of his previous nerves returning as she stared him down. There was something almost scarier about telling El than there had been his mom, or even Hopper. El wasn’t just family, she was part of the Party. She was one of the friends that he’d been avoiding, that he’d been hiding this from.
She was Mike’s ex-girlfriend.
Wasn’t that a weird thought? If you’d asked a 14 year old Will who would end up in this situation, out of the two of them, he would’ve scoffed and gone off to sulk. Mike and El’s happily ever after had seemed guaranteed from the start, and it had baffled the lot of them when they’d called it quits and never looked back.
What’s your secret? He almost wanted to ask. How’d you get over him so easily?
How do you get it to stop hurting like this?
Something softened in her expression, opening into something almost hopeful.
“I’m going to be an aunt?” She asked, looking just a little younger. She had a certain childlike wonder to her sometimes that none of their other friends had quite managed to hold onto. A certain innocence. It brought Will a great deal of comfort, that even after everything, his sister had managed to stay kind and curious. She hadn’t let the bad things break her.
Will nodded again, offering an affirmative hum. A small smile split her face, growing wider by the second. A sliver of teeth peeked out, tinted an off-white by a sugar habit she’d never managed to kick.
“You’re going to be a dad,” she said, and she was giddy, holding both of his arms now. She almost looked a little crazed, hair and pajamas askew from her violent sleep habits. (He’d learned his lesson from one night of sharing a bed for a sleepover in Lenora- never again.) Her fingers dug into his biceps, just a little softer now without his shots. “There’s gonna be a baby.”
Will nodded a third time, brow pinching.
“I said yeah already,” he reminded her carefully, almost worried. Did she not understand? Was it too late for all of this? Or… early? A glance at the clock- Jesus. It was nearing 3 am.
Happy Thanksgiving, he thought to himself, slightly hysterical.
El grinned, bouncing a little on her heels.
“You’re having a baby,” she repeated, and she finally let go of his arms in favor of throwing hers around his neck, tugging him down. There weren’t very many inches between them, but she let some of her weight hang off of him, so he had to lean forward just a little, settling his arms near her back to stabilize the both of them. Around this time last year, when he’d been on a bit of a gym kick, she’d gotten into the habit of fully throwing herself at him, jumping onto his back or into his arms and simply trusting that he’d catch her. He was quite grateful that she seemed to think better of it, in this moment.
He hooked his arms around her in return, dropping his chin down onto her shoulder, and he put up no protest when she pulled him in closer, breath warm as it tickled his ear.
“Proud of you,” she murmured, and that-
Well, Will really couldn’t be blamed if he started to sob into her shirt, wet and ugly, because he was incredibly sensitive and vulnerable right now, and because every other person in the room was in their own varying state of tears anyway. This family was a mess.
Hope you’re ready for this, he thought absentmindedly, and then he started to cry even harder.
September 11th, 2006
Fingers were tangled in his hair, and Mike never wanted to budge from this spot again. He had a very specific image in his head- the sun shining through the blinds, Will’s soft, sleepy eyes, the look he always gave him when they woke up like that, tender and gentle in the early morning.
He knew none of it would be what he opened his eyes to.
Something shifted beside him with a short grunt, and the grip on his hair tightened, earning a slight wince. Mike peeled an eye open reluctantly, and in Will’s place he found their six year old, latched on tight with one hand fisted in his hair and the other clinging to his shirt, nearly tugging it off by the sleeve. Ceci was out cold, still, a heavy sleeper like her brother, and she had the fuzzy pink covers tangled around her legs.
Mike’s muscles ached as he drifted back into awareness, stiff and sore after a night curled up to try and fit in the twin-sized bed with his daughter.
He hadn’t wanted to sleep in his own bed, not without Will. He’d gone to the couch the first night, after they’d finally all but kicked him out of the hospital, and he’d woken up in the middle of the night to Ceci trying to climb up with him, a blanket clutched in one arm and a stuffed animal in the other.
He’d gotten up, scooped her into his arms, and taken her back to her room without much protest, but she’d latched on tight when he went to leave again, tugging at his wrist to try and get him to sit back down. ‘Stay,’ she’d pleaded. ‘I can share.’
And so Mike had woken up in this same position for the past three days in a row, sore and aching but a little less alone.
He watched her for a moment, tracking the small twitches and pinches in her face, the way her grip tightened on his hair before loosening. He reached out a careful hand, resting it over her stomach (though it covered most of her torso, she was so small) and feeling the slow rise and fall as she breathed.
It took another moment for him to realize the door was open, spilling in the light from the hallway. He shifted, lifting his hand again so he didn’t wake her, and planted it on the bed instead, propping himself up with a careful lean of his head so he didn’t startle her into yanking out a patch of hair.
Jackson was standing in the doorway, squinting at them in the faint light. He had his shirt halfway on, bunched up at the shoulder on the side with the cast, and an impatient look on his face.
“You didn’t wake me up,” he accused, not bothering to keep his voice down. Ceci twitched in her sleep, and Mike winced, finally moving to carefully pry her fingers out of his hair. “I’m gonna be late.”
“Late?” Mike echoed, properly sitting up now.
“For school,” Jackson said, and there was a slight wobble to his voice, like the concept of school in general was something to fear, but he was standing his ground in the doorway, feet planted firmly. He was leveling Mike with a look he knew Will would laugh if he saw, poking him in the ribs and informing him, quite gleefully, that he’d seen the same look hundreds of times on a 12 year old Mike’s face.
‘Your attitude,’ he’d told him, time and time again since the boy was just four years old. ‘Karma.’
“We’re both going to be late,” Jackson added, sparing Ceci a pointed glance, and the girl stirred, opening and closing her hand on nothing. She peeled her eyes open with a little scrunch of her nose, squinting at the spot Mike had been before looking up at where he was now.
“Papa?”
“Hey, Cee,” he hummed, brushing a hand through her rumpled curls. “No school today, don’t worry.”
“Why?” Came Jackson’s voice, challenging. Mike sighed, rubbing at the side of his face.
“Because,” he said simply. “I said so.”
“I can go,” Jackson insisted, and he stepped into the room as Mike slowly peeled himself out of bed, leaving Ceci to roll back over and shut her eyes. Jackson stared up at Mike as he approached, almost pleading.
“You’re hurt,” Mike informed him plainly, and he gently pulled the shirt down for him, working it over and around the cast before going to fix the sleeve, rolling it down to his wrist so only a bit of the purple plaster was sticking out. “Doctors said no school for a couple of days, Besides, I have a meeting with your principal. So.” He glanced up at Jackson’s face, at the sleepy look in his eyes despite all the fuss he was putting up. He settled a hand on top of his head, ruffling a few curls. “School for me, but not you.”
“Why do you have a meeting?” Jackson asked, trailing after Mike as he left the room, following him all the way to the kitchen. Mike rolled his own sleeves out of the way, starting up the coffee machine before turning to the stove. He could see his son hovering out of the corner of his eye, could sense his worry. “What are you gonna say?”
“That’s for me to worry about,” Mike said, clicking on the front burner. “I’m the parent. It’s my job to handle the worrying.”
“What about Dad?”
“I’m doing the worrying for the both of us for the time being.”
He set a pan on the stove. Jackson walked up beside him, frowning down at it, before moving to grab the box of pancake mix. Mike bit his tongue to stop himself from interfering.
“Am I gonna stay home with Cec?” Jackson asked, trying to get the box open with just one hand for a moment before making an irritated little noise and handing it over. Mike popped it open with ease, pouring some out into the mixing bowl.
“Alone?” Mike clarified. “No. Aunt Holly’s coming over.”
“I could watch her alone.”
“I’m sure you could,” he agreed, filling the bowl up to the line with tap water before sparing a glance at his son. “But you’re down an appendage, and I’m worrying for two, so your aunt’s coming. It’ll be fun. Just like old times, right?”
He didn’t get a response for that one. He glanced over, and he found Jackson glaring down at the stove, frustrated tears brimming along his lashes. Mike immediately set the bowl down, turning to face him.
“Hey,” he tried, and Jackson kept his gaze stubbornly forward, avoiding his eyes. Mike crouched down, setting a hand on his shoulder. “Hey, baby, look at me.” The nickname seemed to knock something loose, because Jackson sniffled, tears spilling over his lashes. He turned to face his father with wide eyes and thin lips. Mike tried his best to keep his own face schooled. “We’re gonna get through this, okay? Together. You, and me, and Ceci, and your dad. All of us. You just gotta trust me for now, though. Trust that I’ve got this handled.” He needed somebody to. Nobody else seemed to think he had it under control. His phone was practically ringing off the hook with calls from worried loved ones, concerned colleagues, and doctors without a single update, just the same information over, and over, and over again. No news yet. Vitals the same. If there’s any development, we’ll let you know.
Jackson stared up at him, and Mike offered a thin smile of his own, smoothing the boy’s hair back out of his eyes.
“Can you promise me that?” He asked, voice a soft whisper. “That you’ll trust me?”
Jackson swallowed, blinking a few times to try and dry his eyes, and nodded.
“Yeah,” he rasped, scrunching up his nose. “Yeah, I trust you. I trust you.” He sniffled again, more tears spilling over, and Mike reached out before he could even start, wrapping his arms around him. The cast bumped into Mike’s side as Jackson tried to do the same, burying his face in his shirt. “I love you.”
“I love you too,” Mike murmured, giving him a tight squeeze. His son was still small enough that he had to lean down a little to reach his head, which pulled at all the wrong muscles with how stiff he was, but he planted a kiss on his curls nonetheless, lingering. Breathing him in.
He was starting to smell like a sweaty teenage boy.
Not quite so little anymore.
“Here,” he said, turning away before Jackson could catch a glimpse of the moisture trying to gather on his lashes. Mike’s nose twitched, brushing a hand absently across his face. “You can help. Blueberries, or chocolate chips?”
Jackson sniffled, no longer bothering with trying to hide his own tears, and scrunched up his face.
“Both?”
“You’re a madman,” Mike hummed, already opening the cabinet to fish out the chocolate chips. He waved a hand, and Jackson perked up a little, heading over to the fridge for the blueberries. “Lucky for you, everybody in this family is crazy.”
“Michael… Beers?”
Mike stood from his seat, warmth prickling along the tips of his ears.
“Byers,” he corrected, a tad short. The receptionist hadn’t committed any horrible act, but he was all worked up, being this far from his kids for the first time in days, and it seemed he didn’t have it in him to be polite. It didn’t matter, anyway. The woman just hummed, crossing something out.
“Byers,” she echoed, leaning a little too far into the y. “Mr Ross can see you now.”
Mike was already brushing past her, rounding the desk and heading towards the smaller office tucked towards the back. He had to open the door, had to jiggle the handle to get it loose, and it made an awfully loud creaking noise when he went to slip inside. Mr Ross was at his desk when he entered, head ducked down as he read over a stack of papers. He didn’t look up.
“How can I help you?” He asked mechanically, clicking his pen. He jotted something down in a margin, crossed out a word three lines down. Mike hovered, hand lingering on the doorknob, before he slowly eased it shut.
“Uh, hi,” he greeted awkwardly. “I just wanted to discuss getting my son’s assignments sent home for him.”
Ross paused, red ink bleeding out onto the page, and glanced up. It seemed to take him a moment to recognize him.
Not that he acknowledged it.
“Your son?”
“Jackson,” Mike clarified, a touch of irritation flaring. He stuffed it down, catching the back of the plastic chair they had for guests and dragging it forward, sitting inches from the desk. “Jackson Byers. I’m going to be keeping him home for a few weeks.”
“Weeks?” The man echoed, frowning. Mike clasped his hands in his lap, eyes roaming the room. He traced the pens on the desk, lined up in a neat order, the stacks of blank paper, the shiny new stapler.
“There’s a situation at home,” he offered vaguely, avoiding his eyes. “Getting him to and from school is going to be hard for us, almost impossible, really-”
“We can arrange for him to be added to a bus route,” Ross offered, dropping his gaze to his work again, circling something towards the bottom. “There should be one that stops close to your house.”
“Transportation isn’t the only issue,” Mike insisted, the interruption rubbing at all the wrong places. “It’s a family matter, one I don’t really feel comfortable discussing, and-”
“There are systems in place to make sure that children can get to school no matter the situation,” Ross cut in, disinterested. “This country’s government cares about education.”
“So do I,” Mike snapped, scowling. “I’m a teacher. Which is why my kid’s still going to be educated. I just need a few weeks- a month or two, at most- where I can have everything sent home so I can work through it with him. He won’t fall behind, I promise.”
“Your son cannot miss school for that long,” Ross said, finally setting the pen down as he looked up at him again. “I’m already reluctant to give him a pass for the day. He was meant to have detention after last period, and we’re going to have a problem on our hands if he continues to miss it. He could face a suspension.”
“Detention?” Mike echoed, sitting taller. Ross regarded him with a dry, almost impatient look.
“Yes, detention,” he confirmed. “I told both your son and William quite plainly when they were here on Friday. Your son hurt another student. It’s not my fault if neither of them felt the need to communicate that to you.”
Mike drew in a breath, and it stuck, nostrils flared. The principal watched him for a moment, bored, before finally picking that damn pen up again and dropping his gaze.
Click. Scribble. Click.
“I expect to see him tomorrow.”
Click.
“He won’t be.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“He won’t be here tomorrow,” Mike said firmly. “Or the next day. I’m keeping him home.”
“Then keep him,” Ross stated simply. “Consider him suspended.”
“Consider,” Mike started, and he rose from his seat, placing a hand on the edge of the desk. Ross’s eyes flicked up, catching on his hand, before rising to his face. “That I’m pulling him out.”
“You can’t pull your child out of school to get out of a punishment,” Ross scoffed, incredulous. “There are rules, and laws. A suspension goes on his permanent record. That’s going to follow him for the rest of his schooling.”
“I’m telling you that I need him home, he’s hurt, and I’m not making him go to detention of all things, not now-”
“Clearly,” Ross muttered, low and under his breath. “Your wife is the reasonable one out of the two of you.”
Mike stopped. Maynard Ross turned back to his work, a wordless dismissal, and reached for the stapler, pinching his stack of papers together.
Mike reached before he could make it halfway, wrenched it out of his grip, and pushed it down into one of the weathered, wrinkly knuckles of the hand holding the papers together.
The old man drew back with a start and a gasp of pain, but Mike kept his hand firmly in place, pinning Ross between the desk and the stapler.
“My husband,” Mike said, voice low and shockingly even. “Is in the hospital right now. Because he got into an accident on the way home from a meeting with you.”
Ross winced, face contorting around a labored breath. Mike leaned closer.
“I’m pulling my son out of your school,” he pressed on, ignoring the slight tremor in his other hand, braced against the edge of the desk. “You’re not going to put anything on his permanent record, or do anything to get in the way. If you try, I’m going to become a huge pain in your ass. I’m going to go to your bosses, and I’m going to let them know that you never bothered to call home to let us know Jackson was being bullied, even though his teacher brought it to your attention, because guess what? I know her. We had a nice chat at a conference a while back. I know that this has been going on for months, and Will and I weren’t told until Jackson was getting in trouble for it, because nobody stood up for him or did anything about it. And,” Mike continued, lifting his fingers just enough for the stapler to release, sliding a new staple into place that he let hover over the first. “I know all about you, and your wife, and what she doesn’t know about Lucy.” He nudged his head over his shoulder, back towards where the receptionist sat in the main office, oblivious. Mike regarded the bewildered look on the man’s face with a smile that felt more like a grimace. “Those conferences get boring, and a lot of your faculty know a lot more than I think you realized.”
“You’re insane,” Ross hissed, baring his teeth as he stared down at his hand, at the blood dribbling down over his papers, blotting out the red ink.
“I’ve got government connections,” Mike said, a warning. “My father-in-law’s been a police officer my whole life. I know the system, and I know that you should be a lot more afraid of what I could do to you than what you could do to me. Call the police, and I’ll be in custody for an hour tops, and then your whole career will be over.”
Ross glared at him, free hand twitching against the desk, but he made no move to grab the phone sitting on the other side. Mike drew in a breath, never taking his eyes off him.
“Right,” he said, deflating just a little. “I’m glad we had this conversation.” And then, just as he moved to back off some more, he went back in, pressing a second staple into his skin. Ross let out another grunt. “And you’d better start praying, or whatever you do, that Will’s okay. That he’s gonna be okay. Because if he isn’t, and the last thing he ever did was sit in a room getting disrespected by you, you are going to regret it for the rest of your life.”
With that, he finally let up, taking a step back, and Ross cried out, cradling his hand to his chest. Mike didn’t spare him any more of his attention, stalking back out of the room, and he slammed the door shut behind him before the receptionist could get more than a worried look aimed in their direction.
A numbness overtook him until he was back in the car, feeling it rattle with the force of the door slamming. His body went through the motions, mechanical- he put the key in the ignition, twisted it, he buckled his seatbelt, he checked the mirror.
There was a sticker in the corner. A puffy one, one of the little stars that came on those multipack sheets. It had been there for years, fading in color overtime until it was a softer yellow than the bright gold it had been in the beginning.
Because this was Will’s car. They’d traded Mike’s old AMC Spirit in for a bigger, more family-friendly car when Ceci was born, and that car was gone, totaled, so all that was left was Will’s. He’d had this car since college. Mike had been in the passenger seat a few times back then, when it was a little newer, and the sticker hadn’t been there. But it had been for the entirety of the time that they’d been together.
He could picture it, Will driving with Jackson in the backseat, fiddling with a sticker sheet while he sat hooked up in his carseat. Could see Jackson trying to get his dad’s attention, prying a sticker off the sheet, and Will lighting up with a soft thank you, baby, before taking it and displaying it proudly on his rearview mirror.
Will’s car. Will’s ‘old vinyl’ scented air freshener, clipped to the vent. Will’s Disintegration CD in the player, worn in and skipping on the songs he’d rewind to play again. Will’s coffee stains on the ceiling, splashed about in a rush back in college, then when he was in a rush to get to work, to drop Jackson off at daycare on the way. When he was absentminded but thoughtful, and he’d show up for Mike’s lunch break, holding a lukewarm coffee with an inch missing from the top and drips down the side, and wearing a sheepish expression.
Mike drew in a breath, and it lodged in his throat. Pictures of You was droning along, mocking him, skipping in four different places because Will had worn it within an inch of its life, and Mike was drowning, he was drowning in it, he couldn’t breathe.
A strangled whine built in his throat, and he dropped his head to the side, letting it thump against the glass. The car went nowhere, engine purring, and Mike curled up in his seat and sobbed, a deep, gut-wrenching thing that fell quieter underneath the blaring of the speakers.