Chapter Text
"Senior year isn’t how it looks in the movies," Jonathan says.
He's hovering outside the bathroom, half-dressed for work, leaning against the doorframe as Will scrubs at his teeth sleepily. It’s bullshit, Will thinks. "Senior year doesn’t look good," he tells Jonathan, spitting toothpaste into the sink. "Not even in the movies."
He twists the tap and cold water sprays out, drenching the basin and the front of his shirt, which makes Jonathan laugh. Will turns around to glare at him, but he has already disappeared, leaving the door open on it's hinges. Instead, Will scowls to himself and shoves his hands under the stream of water. It's ice cold.
When summer had first started, it had felt like an eternity stretching out in front of him, an expense of time and heat, slowly dragging itself forward. Even with the countless trips back and forwards between his dads, and helping his mom in the shop and even cleaning out the loft, it had felt limitless. Will had hated that feeling. But now as he shoves fresh notebooks into last year’s rucksack, he aches for that endless feeling. Summer wasn’t long enough to stop senior year. Instead, it had delayed it, and it had, inevitably, arrived.
Will scrubs at his eyes with the backs of his hands. Stretches. Feels his shirt pull at the seams with the strain.
He finds his mom in the kitchen. She’s reading a paper, eyes flicking restlessly between the broadsheet and the hallway through which Will appears. When Will appears she stands up, a smile cracking her features. Will doesn’t even try to return it. Just grabs the carton of milk left on the side and returns it to its home.
She’s talking before Will can stop her. A garbled stream of “have you got your books?” and “what’s your first class?” and “do you need a lift?” Will answers them all with a shrug. She sighs. When her shoulders sag like that she looks like she’s melting, Will thinks to himself. Like ice. Fragile and melting.
“Will,” she says his name like a cry for help. He shoves a slice of bread in his mouth so he doesn’t have to answer. “You promised me you were gonna try this year.”
Will feels like he’s going to heave. Instead he swallows the bread. “I always try in school, mom,” he lies. His voice is scratchy. He hasn’t spoken for days, he realises numbly. He’s been too busy locked up in his room, trying to single-handedly beat Commando.
She sighs again. Sags again. “You know I don’t mean school.” She grabs for the empty glass on the table and shoves it on the draining board. If Will had tried that he would’ve cracked it.
He keeps his eyes trained on the glass, so he doesn’t have to look at his mom. "You don't have to make me feel shitty," he mumbles. "I already feel shitty."
“You don’t know what could happen," she says, ignoring him. "Just try it, okay? Try the whole 'making friends and having fun' thing If you won’t do it for yourself, at least do it for me?” Her eyes burn into the side of his head. She’s holding her car keys, and if she doesn’t leave soon she’ll be late for work.
Just to stop her getting fired, Will meets her eyes and nods.
She presses a kiss to the side of his head as she leaves, and it almost eases the shadow that hang across the first day.
He cycles to school.
Jonathan had offered him a lift on his way to work, but he wasn’t even dressed yet and he’d feel even shittier knowing he maked his brother late, so he had waived him off and slinked back upstairs to bury his head under his pillow for five more minutes.
First days are always the worst, Will thinks as he pedals down a particularly sloped hill that seems to carve into the core of the earth. But first days are worse if they're Bad Days too. It's not a Bad Day today - it's just that his head feels like it’s splitting in two by the time he pulls up and his hands are shaking too badly to do the bike lock so he just leaves it, discarded on the floor. He had a coffee before he left, but all he really wants to do is go to sleep and never wake up.
It’s unfortunate, really, that he sees him there.
After three years of high school, Will has a perfect routine, that allows him to avoid Mike with almost genius precision - except he’s stopped to tie his shoelace when his car pulls into its regular parking spot. Will can’t help but watching as he steps out.
Mike hasn't changed much over the years. He’s been stretched out, sure, and he’s grown into the features that earned him the name of ‘frog face’, but beside that he looks the same. His clothes are still plain, unassuming, crumpled but well-kept. He’s kept the same haircut for the past three years of high school, and that doesn’t seem to have changed as he enters the fourth. It’s too long, Will has always thought. It hides his eyes too much.
Mike doesn’t see him, because Will is good at making himself invisible. Instead Mike keeps his eyes on locking his car and searching around in his backpack. A few of his new friends, a couple of the guys from the track team holler his name and Mike looks up, grinning as he waves to them.
Will makes his getaway.
He keeps his head down as he crosses the parking lot and pushes his way through the crowded double doors at the schools entrance. It’s the first day of senior year and Will curses himself for already messing up the perfectly balanced routine. He shoves his bag into his locker, a mixture of pride and disappointment swelling in his stomach.
Proud because Mike didn’t notice him.
Disappointed because Mike didn’t notice him.
He takes a few deep breathes, eyes screwed shut, then slams the locker closed. All he needs to do it get to first period, which is only across the hallway, but before he can get there he feels a hand on his shoulder, shaking him slightly. “Byers!” He turns on his heel slightly and the grip on his shoulder loosens, allowing him to come face to face with a breathless but grinning Lucas Sinclair.
Lucas Sinclair. The boy who used to test out Will’s dodgy rockets. Go with him on family camping trips. Share his sleeping bag.
They’re not friends, not really. They haven't been friends since middle school. But still, Lucas always talks to Will between classes and invites him to every party he throws. Not that Will ever shows up. The thing is, people like Lucas. He’s cool, and he’s funny, and he runs the student council. He has plenty of friends. Hell, he has a girlfriend that scares the living shit out of most of their classmates. People don’t like Will. They avoid him like the plague. They used to bully him. Now they just ignore him. Will isn’t sure which is worse. Despite this Lucas always talks to Will. Will doesn’t have the energy to tell him that its social suicide, so he talks back.
“Hey,” he says, trying hard to meet Lucas’ eye.
Lucas is grinning, despite the fact that it’s Monday and its high school and he’s talking to Freaky Will Byers. “How was your summer, dude?”
Will shrugs. Noncommittal.
"Yeah, mine too," Lucas says, laughing awkwardly. "Where are you headed?" Will nods towards the classroom opposite. "Algebra 2." "Fun." Lucas's tone suggests its anything but. “Look dude, I was just wondering if we had any classes together. Max is a literal science genius and she’s the other side to me, and I remembered that you used to love the more artsy stuff, so I was just… ”
Will shakes his head. He doesn’t need to know what classes Lucas has, because he’s not in them. Lucas is in all AP, because he actually studies. He actually cares. Will doesn’t anymore, so he’s rotting in the middle sets, doodling all over his test paper. That’s what his dad had said, anyway, over the phone to his mom.
His interaction with Lucas ends with a hurried “see you later, Byers” and the other boy disappearing into the crowd of students.
Lucas is gone before Will can say anything return. He pushes his way to his first class.
Jonathan was right, in a way, Will thinks. Senior year isn’t like it is the movies. It’s boring, and grey and slow. Just like the rest of high school.
His first two classes are fine. Mundane, but fine. Will actually manages to stay awake. Actually manages to pay attention. Doesn’t drive his compass into his forearm in an effort to stay present.
Max is in his English. She’s the complete opposite of Lucas. Her hair stands out against the whitewash of Hawkins, as does her colourful vocabulary and her mismatched wardrobe. It’s common knowledge that she’s a self-proclaimed stoner, which just makes her dating the school’s poster boy even funnier. But they fit each other. They make a good couple, Will thinks.
For all Lucas had said about her being a genius, Max seems to still struggle with basic conjunctions. She smiles at Will when she comes in, a small smile that doesn’t extend to a gesture of friendship. Back in middle school that would’ve made his chest ache. Now he feels nothing.
Max had moved to Hawkins after it had all happened, and she had hurt Will. Later, he had realised he had done all the hurting himself.
The first class they had together – Biology, if he can recall right – she had talked to him and passed him a crumpled note. The next day, she had sat as far away from him as her seat would allow. He had seen her that lunch, talking and laughing with Mike and Lucas. A week after she had her tongue down the latter’s throat.
Will had cried for days and days. Now, he just smiles back and then tries to forget she’s even in the room.
He doesn’t have any classes with Mike. Because Mike is clever, always has been, and he’s into sports now. When Will first saw him running track, it’d had felt like a punch in the chest. A reminder that Will doesn’t know him anymore. That he’s not allowed that privileged look into Mike Wheeler’s mind he had once had.
At lunch he avoids the cafeteria. It’s a swarming pit of hell. He had realised that quite quickly. In fact, he can count on his hand the number of times he’s eaten in that hell hole. He tells himself it’s because it’s busy and crowded and dirty.
Really, it’s because the cafeteria is Mike’s. That’s his terrain. Where he eats with the rest of the track team. Or his arty movie club. Sometimes it’s where he sits with Max and Lucas. Their group fell apart back in middle school, the same day Will had fallen apart. But the three of them still sit together, sometimes. A reminder of old times sake. A tight-knit group, minus the problem at its epicentre – Will.
So he eats outside, as far from the school building he can get. He doesn’t eat on the grass, because in summer that’s busier than the cafeteria. He eats on the line of dirt at the school’s perimeter instead.
He pulls himself through the rest of the day, then throws himself on his bike and pulls himself home.
Really, there’s not much high school left to go. In less than a year he’ll be out of Hawkins. He’ll be able to breathe again, far away from the whispered gossip and the shadows and Mike Fucking Wheeler.
When he gets home throws his bike against the wall. His legs feel like jelly when he pulls himself up the porch steps, the thought of his bed calling to him like a beacon of light.
The door gives way under his hand and he frowns. Did he forget to lock it? No one should be home for hours.
His questions are answered when he’s greeted by three faces crowded into his kitchen.
His mom, face pinched, leaning against the kitchen counter.
A man, nursing a cup of coffee, squinting at Will.
And a girl. Staring straight into Will’s soul.
He considers bypassing them completely, going straight to his room and drowning out all three of them with music. Something heavy and fierce.
But his Mom is staring at him, and he had made a promise, to try, so instead Will clears his throat.
“What’s going on?”