Chapter Text
At the risk of sounding dramatic, if asked, Will would say that this was the worst summer ever.
It started with Dustin going to camp. That shouldn’t have been a problem, since Dustin had been excited for it, and Will had wanted his friend to enjoy it. But back in Hawkins, it made Will a fifth wheel to Lucas and Max plus Mike and El, all the time, and they hardly did anything fun. And then Dustin came back only to claim he had a girlfriend too. Then Will fought with Mike and destroyed Castle Byers in a fit of despair. And when he thought things couldn’t get worse, another Gate was open, courtesy of the Russians (and hidden under Starcourt, of all things), and the Mind Flayer used the fearsome Billy Hargrove and a whole bunch of other people to come onto their side, and Will and his friends had to fight both the Upside Down and Russians. And the rotten cherry on that poisonous sundae was that Hopper died, leaving El without a parent and his own mom without her best friend, whom Will was starting to suspect she may have loved, seeing the way she grieved when she thought no one was paying attention.
Except, well, El wasn’t exactly without a parent.
Because Dr. Sam Owens took it upon himself to create a falsified will for Hopper leaving everything to Joyce Byers, including custody of his adopted daughter, Jane Eleanor Hopper. Joyce got a lot of money between her own government hush money and what Hopper had (however much that was), but it also meant that El was a part of their family now, kind of (semi-legally, at minimum). Will didn’t disagree that, as an adult in the know (the only one aside from Bauman and technically Steve), Joyce Byers was the best person to take in El, and Will did think of her as a friend and wanted El to be safe. But that didn’t mean things were easy.
What was undeniable was that with El moving in, they had four people living in a three-bedroom house. And so, yet another bad thing to happen this summer was that they were moving.
At least they weren’t moving out of town. He knew his mother had greatly considered it. But ultimately, she had been given too many reasons to stay instead of getting a fresh start in another state, like she thought they all needed. Still, they were moving out of their house, where Will had grown up and where Chester was buried, into a four-bedroom house across town. Like their bungalow, the new house was relatively isolated and distant from their neighbors, in comparison to the typical suburban neighborhoods of Hawkins. It was one of the lakehouses alongside Lover’s Lake. It was a bigger house, with four bedrooms, three bathrooms, and two stories, plus a basement, so it was what they needed, but Will still wasn’t certain he’d like it there.
So on top of everything else, Will was spending the part of August before school started preparing to move, and then moving alongside his family. Will felt like he had spent an age just folding. It had become really clear how they were essentially packing up their entire lives.
Will didn’t want to feel resentful. But damn, he was so tired. Why did everything always happen to him?
🖌🥁
Most families moved in the summertime, and Will got it, school was out and therefore not a factor, but it must be the worst time of year to move, with the heat and the humidity and the number of people on the road.
Luckily, the Byers family had some really good friends. Dustin, Max, Lucas, Erica, Mike, Nancy, and even Steve and Robin had all agreed to help them move. Joyce had rented a moving truck for the big stuff, and Jonathan was packing as much as he could into his car, but it was still nice to have all of those extra hands. The Party and Erica had ended up staying at the new house while Joyce and the older teens drove back and forth to ferry things over for the younger teens to sort to the right rooms and unpack.
Joyce, of course, would have the primary bedroom and bathroom, so she had her own wing on the second floor. Jonathan ended up taking the downstairs “guest” bedroom, although he had made some noises about taking the basement instead (their mom did allow him to use part of it as a dark room). That left the two bedrooms on the opposite wing of the second floor. El decided she wanted the one at the front of the house, since one of those windows looked out to the road and the other looked out to the woods beside them. That suited Will just fine, though, since the back bedroom had a window that looked out to the same woods as El’s, and a window that looked out to the lake.
But it didn’t really feel like his room yet, even as he started setting it up once all of his belongings were in his room. The walls were plain and bland. His old room had echoes of memories in it, but this one didn’t. It was possible he’d eventually grow into the space, but he didn’t fall in love with it at first sight or anything.
Dustin and Lucas were helping Will put together and organize his furniture, which Will was grateful for. Elsewhere in the house, Max and Erica were deconstructing empty unpacked boxes, while Steve and Robin helped Joyce and Jonathan with their furniture, and Nancy and Mike helped El with hers. Will could hear the giggles coming from El’s room, although he wished he couldn’t. Briefly, Will wondered if this was a preview of what it would be like in the new house: Mike barely saying a quick “hi” to Will on his way down the hall to spend time with El.
Dustin nudged Will, bringing him out of his head. “Hey, now that you guys have a bigger house, maybe we can play D&D or have Party hangouts here - ooh, maybe we can even swim in the lake! Do you think your mom would let us swim in the lake when we’re done?”
Smiling despite himself, Will said, “None of you even have your swimsuits.”
“Max can just borrow one of El’s, and the rest of us can just wear our shorts or borrow your gym shorts,” said Dustin, grinning back at him.
“Well there’s no way she’ll let us swim if it’s dark out, so let’s focus on getting Will’s room done so we can see what else is left to do,” said Lucas.
Remembering that Will’s mom was quite paranoid (perhaps deservedly) about the kids being out after dark, Dustin and Will acknowledged Lucas’ point and refocused on the work.
They put together Will’s bed so that he could then make his bed, and afterward, Will started putting some of his things in the closet while Dustin and Lucas put together his dresser, so that Will could fill it with the rest of his clothes while they took a break and got water bottles for the three of them. Next, they put together and filled Will’s bookcase. After that, it was Will’s desk and the rest of his odds and ends: his art supplies, his desk chair, his lamps and decor, his curtains, etc.
Once Will’s room was finished, Lucas and Dustin went downstairs while Will organized his things in the bathroom he was going to share with El (lucky Jonathan got his own bathroom, though Joyce had already told him he needed to keep it clean since it was also the guest bathroom).
Thud!
Will jumped, but relaxed as he saw it was only Mike and El, setting down El’s bathroom box. El still hadn’t gotten her powers back since she strained them at Starcourt, so she’d had to do more heavy lifting instead of using her powers, which she wasn’t used to, and so wasn’t super grateful. Will couldn’t imagine what it would be like to be without a major part of him, like El’s powers were to her, all of a sudden. But Will was still going to jump at loud noises.
“Oh, you’ve already gotten started,” said Mike. “Cool, you can help with the shower curtains.”
He certainly could, and he was just a little bit taller than El, so he probably would be better at it, but something still felt off to Will about the way he said it.
“Yeah, let’s get them up,” was all Will said, though, and admittedly, it was easier with two people doing it instead of one.
El kept up the conversation, talking about how glad she was that everyone was here, and that her room looked nice, and it was bigger than the one in the cabin, and she liked having so many of Hopper’s things in the new house. Only in this space was it now obvious to Will that she was trying to keep her chin up about the big changes and missing Hopper, and Will felt a little bad about his own frustrations about the move.
With the three of them working together, they were soon done with the bathroom and stepped out into the hall. The stairs were toward the back of the house, where the two upstairs stories met in an open area that was probably supposed to be some kind of den, so they walked down the hall in the direction of Will’s room.
“Do you want to see my room?” Will offered. “Dustin and Lucas and I got everything set up, I think.”
“Sure,” Mike shrugged and followed Will to his room.
Will wasn’t sure what he was expecting, and maybe he was expecting too much, but he couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed when all Mike did was poke his head in the doorway and say, “Oh, that’s nice. Come on, let’s go down.”
Yeah, Will knew there was more to do, but it also felt like at least a bit of a rejection that Mike wouldn’t even step foot into his room.
When Will got downstairs with Mike and El, he saw that everyone was working on setting up the kitchen and living room. His mother was supervising the kitchen, as there were many little things that could go into several different cabinets or on various counters, and it made sense for her to decide what would be the correct place for everything, so at least someone knew where everything was by breakfast time in the morning. The four older teens (Jonathan, Nancy, Steve, and Robin) seemed to be on furniture duty, while the rest of Will’s friends were on the small stuff: putting up decor, deconstructing boxes, helping Joyce in the kitchen, etc.
“Hey Mom, do you want us to put the dinner table in the kitchen or the dining room?” Jonathan asked as he and Steve came to stand on either side of it.
“Oh, just put it in the kitchen if there’s room,” said Joyce. “We did without a dining room all these years, I’m honestly not sure what we’d do with one now.”
“You could turn it into a library/study room, or maybe a den,” Steve offered as he got ready to lift the table.
“Those are some nice ideas, Steve,” Joyce called after them as Jonathan and Steve got the kitchen table set up in the breakfast nook area of the kitchen, Nancy and Robin following behind with the four chairs.
So Will joined the rest of The Party (and Erica) in helping fix up the house. Slowly, it became less of an empty shell. Putting their framed photos up was especially important in making it feel less like someone else’s house, but there were other things too. The stack of flattened boxes by the front door steadily grew larger and larger. Their movies were returned to their proper place in the TV stand, the familiar objects Will was used to seeing every day found their way to new homes, and even the kitchen was starting to look like it was ready to be used as a kitchen.
Eventually, Steve and Robin left and came back with a stack of pizzas, a half dozen two-liters of soda, some napkins, plastic cups and plates, and a bag of ice. The tantalizing scent of pizza got the attention of everyone in the house, and they finished what they were doing and converged in the kitchen.
“Oh, thank you, you two, I’ll have to pay you back,” said Joyce, looking relieved. “Let’s go sit in the living room, everyone! Careful, watch your step!”
Luckily, there were no major spills or wipeouts after tripping on everything, and they settled into the living room to chow down.
“Hey, Ms. Byers, could we go swimming in the lake after dinner?” Dustin asked as they all sat down on the living room floor for some pizza and soda.
“Well, you all worked really hard today - and I’m grateful for it and proud of you all for it - so I think you’d all enjoy it more and have more energy to stay out longer if you all came back tomorrow to swim out in the lake,” Joyce offered graciously.
They were all aware it was a denial, but she had been so reasonable and diplomatic about it that none of them cared.
Instead, they finished their food, and it was a nice night. Nancy was taking Mike with her and agreed to drive Lucas and Erica back home again (they lived next door to each other, so Nancy had brought them in the first place). Steve took the rest: namely, Robin, Dustin, and Max.
None of the family stayed up for much longer after that, since it had been such a long day with the move. All they really did was clean up after the dinner and bid each other goodnight. Will quickly brushed his teeth in the bathroom before going into his bedroom and quietly shutting the door.
However, even though Will got into a familiar bed, it still wasn’t a familiar room. He ended up staring blankly at the ceiling, his mind refusing to let him fall asleep. It could be that he was legitimately unsafe, or maybe it was just that the house was a different house, and his brain was anxious about that, in case something happened, and Will may not be familiar enough with the place to find the quickest route out.
Hopefully, things would get better.
Or at least easier.