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“Okay, I’m going to be back tonight in a couple of hours,” Joyce quickly says as she emerges from the hall, scrambling to find her keys and wallet, ever-the-tumultuous. Her hair is curled, and she has a bit of makeup on—she’s going on a date with Hopper tonight. They’re cute, in that sort of sickly-sweet, honey-like way. She’s smiling more than she ever used to, lately. It’s nice. “El is at Mike’s. I’m picking her up when Hop and I are done. Please don’t burn the house down or destroy it, boys.” She explains and then finds her keys on the table, a few feet away from Jonathan and Will, sitting opposite one another, both eating dinner that Jonathan cooked. “I’m serious.”
Will cracks up a bit. “We will not burn the house down. Copied. No promises on not destroying it. Maybe a demogorgon will appear while you’re away.”
“Will, that’s not funny, honey,” Joyce scolds, tsking her son. She raises her eyebrows at him as she quickly approaches Jonathan, cradling his head with her arm and kissing the crown of it a couple of times, then rounding the table to Will, doing the same to him, and pulling away. She stands still for a moment, studying her son. He awkwardly blinks away from her eye contact—hey, he thought it was funny, and judging by the smirk on his brother’s face, Jonathan thought it was too! “Oh, Will, you need a haircut, honey,” she says finally, reaching out and ruffling his hair—she’s right; after all, it’s gotten so long it’s almost falling in his eyes, but it still flushes him nonetheless. Of course—it wasn’t about his joke at all! “Okay, maybe that’ll be tonight’s activity once I’m home. El’s bangs could probably use a nice trim, too, now that I think about it. Jonathan?”
“No, mom,” Jonathan responds immediately, cringing a bit. “Long gone are the days I allow you to come near my head with scissors.”
Joyce rolls her eyes at her son but moves along anyway. “Oh, please, Jonathan. Be nice,” she scolds lightheartedly but slips her shoes on at the door nonetheless. “Okay, okay. Evening activity lined up. Please be safe, boys. I love you both,” she says, giving them both a wave and opening the door, disappearing and shutting it behind her a moment later, just nearly missing her sons, sending her a chorus of love you, too, mom.
After her whirlwind, both boys sit in silence together for a moment before Jonathan cracks up a bit, which catches Will’s attention. “What are you laughing at?”
“Mom,” he says simply, a ghost of a smile still on his face. “I just can’t believe she still gives you that bowl cut.”
“What’s wrong with it?” Will asks—even though he definitely knows already, but nerves bubble up in his chest anyway, and he tries his best to swallow it all back down. It’s so stupid, so childish, it’s just a hairstyle, for God’s sake, yet his heart has dropped to his stomach already. “I like my hair. I think. I don’t know.”
Jonathan raises his eyebrows across the table at Will, hesitating. “Really?” Will can’t read Jonathan’s face very well—he’s squinting a bit, but that’s pretty par for the course, and he’s got a ghost of a smirk on his lips. Jonathan can’t read Will too well, either—he seems anxious, maybe, but he often does lately; that’s pretty par for the course, too, and he really can’t imagine what exactly about mom’s bowl cuts would make him anxious. “You really like mom’s haircuts?”
Will only shrugs. “I don’t know. They’re fine. Should I not?”
“Aren’t they a bit…out of style?” Jonathan asks. He leans back in his chair and pushes his plate forward.
“When have you ever cared about style?”
Jonathan squints again, admittedly a bit taken aback. He’s still not exactly used to seeing Will be this sassy and being on the receiving end of it, though it’s better than the withdrawn Will he’s known for the past couple of years—he’ll take his brother teasing him as much as he’d like if it means he’s becoming more comfortable being himself again. Admittedly, in the few years following Will’s disappearance, Jonathan was afraid he’d never get to see his brother just be Will again—thankfully, though, lately, he’s finally begun coming into his own once more.
He thinks it’s done Will some good being home in Hawkins again after their west-coast stint. Still, it sort of makes Jonathan’s heartache, like a hollow reverberation deep in his chest that makes him shaky in the hands if he thinks too much about it; he still can’t believe Will’s nearly as tall as him now, and how rapidly the last handful of years passed him by—but he’s grateful every day that he gets to see Will grow up at all, so he’s alright with taking what he can get.
A sassy brother is worlds better than no brother at all.
“I care plenty about style, I’ll have you know,” Jonathan retorts back, crossing his arms over his chest.
Will now scoots forward on his chair across his brother as if to challenge him. “Oh, yeah?” He asks, resting an arm on the table between them. “Tell me literally any style trend that’s happened in the last, like, year that you’ve taken part in.”
“Hey, I don’t have to disclose anything to you, Byers,” Jonathan says back. Both of them are biting back smiles together. There’s a lull between them momentarily, but this is probably the most he thinks he’s seen Will smile and joke around in who knows how long, so Jonathan tries to break the silence. He doesn’t want to let this go so soon. “You know, maybe we could get you into Steve’s hair salon and give you a little…you know, hair makeover,” Jonathan suggests, though his tone is so light; he knows Will would never take him up on the offer.
Sarcastically cracking up, Will scrunches up his nose at the mere offer. “Never. Though I still can’t believe you hang out with Steve Harrington. Of all people you could hang out with, and you choose Steve. Steve! Regularly!”
“I kind of can’t either, honestly. It’s mostly just because of Nancy, though, and, you know, wherever Nancy goes, Robin follows, and wherever she goes, Steve follows, and Eddie if we’re lucky,” Jonathan explains. The past few months have definitely not been what Jonathan had expected to be—and, yes, Steve Harrington becoming one of his closest friends over his time spent back at home was very high on the list of things he’d have never called happening. “Though I guess far stranger things have happened here in Hawkins, right? Plus, don’t you and your friends hang out with them all the time, still? Haven’t he and Dustin been friends for years now?”
Shrugging, Will glances down at the table. “Me? I haven’t even really met any of them like the rest of them all have, never mind hang out with any of them.” Jonathan cocks his head to the side in curiosity and kicks Will’s foot under the table when he realizes Will isn’t planning on elaborating but clearly has more he wants to say. When it comes to Will, Jonathan’s always had a knack for noticing his tells. “What?”
“What is it?”
“What’s what?” Jonathan just raises his eyebrows because Will definitely knows he knows that Will is playing dumb. Will rolls his eyes in return, “I hate when you do this.”
“Yeah, I know you do,” he says, but he nudges Will’s foot with his under the table again anyway, and Will’s shoulders slump forward. His foot bounces under the table. Jonathan sits still, eyes glued to Will, but Will’s looking nearly everywhere but at his brother.
“They all left me behind,” Will all but spat out, and Jonathan immediately furrows his eyebrows at the confession at hand—well, suffice to say, this definitely isn’t what Jonathan was expecting to hear come from Will today. “Especially before we moved.”
“Left you behind?” Jonathan repeats, slower. “Your friends?”
“Yeah, the party,” he clarifies.
“Well, I think you sort of left them behind,” Jonathan supplies. “We’re kind of the ones who moved away.”
Will swallows. “That’s not what I mean. Like, okay—all last summer, they didn’t want to play D and D, but always hung out with their girlfriends and went on their dates and hung out with their new, older, cooler friend group that they made together while I was…well, you know. A little occupied. I hardly even know Max, let alone Steve Harrington!” Both of them crack a bit of a smile at the joke. Jonathan wracks his brain for an answer, something to ease Will’s mind, but he continues on before he can begin to try and reassure him. “And you know they all joined a new party almost as soon as we moved away? After Mike promised they wouldn’t? I just got…I don’t know. I got forgotten about. Left behind. Even now that we’re home and everything’s calmed down, I barely know why they still hang out with Steve—he’s, like, thirty! And Robin—who even is Robin? And Eddie...like, of course he just has to be a DM, too, because why wouldn’t he be?”
Jonathan’s eyebrows shoot up his forehead—he’s not sure he’s ever heard his quiet-as-a-mouse brother talk this much at once, never mind with as much fervour as he just did. Jeez. How long has this been stewing inside of him? He briefly thinks back to one of the last times he and Will had talked, really talked to one another, months ago, over a pizza parlour freezer filled to the brim with artificial salt water on the road to Utah, where Jonathan had said he’d love Will no matter what, that he wished he’d come to him more than he had recently. Jonathan’s heart bursts at the way Will’s grown, how he’s becoming more comfortable with Jonathan again. He couldn’t ever express how much he missed it, how much he’s cherishing it now that it’s starting to happen more once again. “I think you’d like them if you gave them a chance,” Jonathan says finally. “Want to know what Steve did to me once back in high school?”
Will’s eyes flicker up to Jonathan wordlessly.
Jonathan takes that as a go-ahead to continue. “He smashed that old camera of mine on the ground,” Jonathan admits. “Into, like, ten billion pieces. That’s what happened to it. I was so pissed at him, Will, you have no idea. My favourite hobby, my passion, was gone in a matter of seconds. I could hardly look at him.”
“What the hell?” Will says. “Why would he do that? Why do you hang out with him after that?”
“Because he’s not a bad guy, Will. Even if he’s ‘like, thirty’. He’s…protective. He helped save your life, with all the rest of your friends. To be fair, too, neither is Robin, or Eddie, or Nancy, or Vickie, for that matter. Or any of your friends—even if they’ve been total assholes to you—which is shit, by the way. You don’t deserve it. You know you don’t, Will. But they’re teenagers, you know? Teenagers are shitty to their friends. It’s how life goes.”
“They all have their person, though. It’s not just stupid teenager stuff anymore. Max, Lucas, Dustin, Suzie. Even you have yours, and mom,” Will pauses. He swallows. His eyes shift back and forth as if he’s contemplating what to say next. “And since we were, like, five, I always thought that’d be Mike, like, without a doubt, ever, but…” he can’t find it in him to finish his sentence.
They both know exactly what goes unspoken.
“El loves you, Will. You’ve been a great brother to her, you know? You’re stable to her, you’re like her rock, and she needs you. And, well, Mike…” Jonathan pauses. He’d more than managed to put two-and-two together on their road trip with Mike and Argyle in regards to how Will really feels, after some time of assuming, but it’s been clearly a sensitive subject to his brother, given he’s hardly even brought Mike up around Jonathan since that day in the parlour, never mind that whole situation, and he’s wanted to leave it for Will to tell him about when he wants to, on his own accord. That being said—Jonathan’s definitely been less than impressed with Mike’s less than stellar behaviour toward his brother as of late. He knows they’re still young, and in love for the first time, and so oblivious—God, so, so oblivious—but he’s been protective of his brother since the day he was born; at this point, it’s just instinct. “I think he’s a bit…clueless with everything. He’s a stupid teenager, always caught up in his own head, all his own stuff. Just like you sometimes, hey? Too caught up in your head sometimes?”
Will bites down on his trembling lip. This is why he doesn’t dare bother bringing Mike up anymore—his soul feels heavy, feels sore, still, at the mere thought, and he knows he can’t keep it together. “God, Jonathan, he’s so stupid,” Will grumbles quietly. Jonathan hesitates but reaches a hand across the table and puts it on top of one of Will’s, splaying out, squeezing his fingers softly. “He’s so stupid. I don’t get how he doesn’t get it.”
“That he is,” says Jonathan apprehensively. “But he lead the party to find you for a week. He was your first best friend. He still cares about you, even if he’s been shitty at showing it, okay? I promise. He loves you,” Jonathan pauses, hesitates, debates. “Even if, you know…maybe, it’s—”
“Don’t,” is all Will says. His hand lays completely limp in Jonathan’s. Jonathan squeezes Will’s fingers again, with the words they both know were right on the tip of Jonathan’s tongue hanging heavy in the air, and Will hangs his head between them both.
“I won’t,” Jonathan tries to soothe. “And I won’t say it. You don’t have to say it, I don’t care. But I…well, I figured, I guess.”
“I know you did,” Will swallows. “You gave me that whole speech and I saw how you looked at me, how you looked right through me, and…and I hate it. I hate that you did, that you figured it out. I hate that I couldn’t hide it forever. It’s like I’m just made of fucking glass. It’s…the worst part of me.”
“I meant every word of what I said in that parlour in Nevada, Will, after I finally sobered up and realized,” Jonathan finally says. He interlaces his fingers with his brothers on the table, and realizes Will’s hand is trembling. Jonathan reaches his other hand across the dinnertable, too, to steady Will’s shaking. “I know we haven’t talked about it since, and we don’t have to, ever if you don’t want to, but that’s kind of why I said it all in the first place, back then. And I meant—mean—it from the bottom of my heart, okay? I swear. You have someone in your corner now. You don’t have to hate this part of you, Will. It makes you, you.”
Will sits silently, his head still hanging in front of his chest. Quiet tears stream down his face, and he’s internally kicking himself for losing his stupid, crying-over-the-Mike-thing streak—nearly a whole week down the drain! He hiccups once, twice, but finally reciprocates—a gentle squeeze back to his brother. Acknowledgement. “I do, though,” he says eventually. His voice is barely above a whisper. “I hate it, Jonathan. They all got to grow up without me, and date, and be normal people. They all got to grow up, and leave me behind, just like I was in the Upside Down. They’re not different. They’re not freaks, or losers, or Zombie Boy, or…”
It seems as though a lot is going unsaid. They both understand all the same.
“Well, fuck normal,” Jonathan says. “Don’t give me that look! I’m serious, I thought we agreed years ago that we were going to be freaks together, Will. If you’re a freak, if you’re different, I am too. I love you, and I love this part of you.”
Will nearly laughs. “I know you don’t mean that.”
“Who says? I’m not letting you go through shit alone anymore.”
“Everyone, ever,” Will finally supplies. “Like, never mind Mike, I can’t even stand to change my clothes, or my stupid, childish interests, or my terrible haircut from mom because I’m so afraid to…to grow up, to forget everything as well, everything they all forgot so easily! When I do, when I finally let it all go, it’s all going to be gone forever, like, the only piece I have of everyone before I went missing. Of myself. None of them get it.”
Jonathan purses his lips. He knows how heavy this shit must be on his brother’s soul, on his conscious. The worst part, too, is that he’s right—nobody understands what Will’s going through or what Will had to endure that winter, and his whole life, not even Jonathan himself. “God, Will, I knew you hated mom’s haircuts—also, okay, look, I know you turned your nose up at it, but I really think this means you’re going to need a Steve makeover,” Jonathan finally says, and Will cracks an ever-so-slight smile. “To…move on, you know? Not let go of it all, but…I don’t know, really. Try to begin to heal from all of this.”
“I don’t think I’d be myself without it anymore.”
“I beg to differ—look, I’ll call mom, I’ll let her know she can cancel your home-appointment, and we’ll go see Steve and work on the bowl. You’ll still be my little brother, just with a cooler haircut.”
Will squints his eyes at Jonathan. Jeez—Jonathan wonders who he must’ve picked that up from. “Can I at least think about it?”
“Well, what better a time than to meet The Hair Harrington?”
“That’s the dumbest nickname I’ve ever heard, Jonathan,” Will says, but he’s finally got a goofy grin on his face amidst his red eyes and flushed cheeks, and Jonathan can’t help but smile right back at him. Maybe he’s shit at advice; maybe he’s shit at consoling, maybe this kid has got more shit going on than he’ll ever be able to understand, but at least he’s smiling again, and goofing around, and being the sassy little shit Jonathan once knew him as. It’s a pretty beautiful start.
“It is, isn’t it?” He says. “But I swear, if anyone’s got any hair advice, it’ll be him. Maybe he’ll get Eddie in on it, too.”
“Do you not remember what he did to Dustin’s hair for the Snowball a couple of years ago? I’m going to look terrible!”
“You raved about how cool his hair looked for a week after the dance!”
Will narrows his eyes and kicks Jonathan’s leg underneath the table. “You just made that up!”
“And? So what if I did?”
Will tries to hold his evil glare but bursts out laughing, with Jonathan momentarily following suit. Everything feels right for just a moment in their cruel world. “If I agree, will you leave me alone about it forever?”
“No promises,” Jonathan retorts, but Will’s still smiling, anyway.
“Fine,” Will says. “Fine!”
Jonathan grins. “It’s high time to embrace your inner mullet, William.”
“Jonathan, absolutely not!”