Archive of Our Own

"It's not my fault you don't like girls, Will! It's not my fault you haven't presented yet."

The words are still cutting through Will cleanly in little pinpricks of white-hot agony, as he stands in the middle of the woods and stares at what definitely used to be Castle Byers at some arbitrary point — now nothing more than a gravesite, a marker of destruction. It's all a mess of soaked and sodden wood, darkened and bound to be gathering mold in the next few days, alongside a bunch of wet leaves and broken-off planks.

The sign itself lies around in scattered fragments, a few splinters of it having become embedded in his skin. He can't be bothered to take them out one by one, because the pain doesn't register; it is minuscule, compared to the words reverberating through his skull like a mournful gong.

"I'm not trying to be a jerk, okay? But at some point, we've got to grow up. We've got to get mates."

He should have seen it coming, he thinks. This entire summer, he has been wearing the blood-drenched, ruinous scars of his possession on his skin while everyone else in the Party is on cloud nine, figuring out dates, indulging in romance, and relishing in the euphoric feeling of first kisses and first loves. This entire summer, he has had to take his anti-depressants nightly just to be able to get out of bed in the morning and function as someone who can converse with the people around him without letting them see the worst parts of himself, while his best friends are off bringing their girlfriends for moonlit strolls and cinema dates, reluctantly letting him tag along like a third wheel they're being forced to keep around, a glorified pet.

This entire summer, he has been seeing the Mind Flayer behind his eyelids whenever he closes his eyes at night, remembering the way the particles entered him, violated him, and his friends hadn't — they hadn't —

Will's neck prickles, painful and sharp, and his stomach flips over itself, his innards giving a nauseating jolt. No, he thinks automatically, despair and devastation making his hands shake and his knees tremble. Even so, a strange, burgeoning heat develops over his skin, crawls over his nerves, steals over them like the devil sent to devour him entirely. His hand floats up to rest over the back of his neck, covering it from view as if that would help it any, although the realisation sinks in anyway that the focus of his nightmares for the past few months — past year, even — is back And he feels his heart sink right down to the soles of his shoes while the strange heat spreads to every single one of his extremities, so potent and sensitive he can somehow feel it in the tips of his nails.

He's been to enough assemblies held in the gym by health ed teachers, where they droned on and on about dynamics and the three secondary genders, how everyone usually begins presenting at the age of thirteen. He'd watched as every single one of his friends presented; first was Mike as their pack alpha, then Lucas as another alpha, then Max as an omega, while El and Dustin were classed as betas. He's watched them all grow up and leave him in the dust, their conversations commiserating about the pains and aches of being an alpha or omega that didn't involve him, inherently left him out and confused, not knowing what they were going on about.

But he's gleaned enough bits of knowledge to know what this means. He knows what it means to feel that prickle in the back of his neck, and that heat in the pit of his stomach and every inch of his skin. He knows what it means to now feel… feel as if he cannot stand, cannot even move, cannot twitch a single muscle, while his skin aches and the back of his neck feels weirdly vulnerable in the aftermath.

The Mind Flayer has returned to Hawkins. Will Byers is also going into heat.

How funny, he thinks, as he staggers back and falls on his knees, staring at the mess that is Castle Byers, while his skin erupts in a heat he does not want. Mike had been berating him for not presenting according to everyone's schedule, had been blaming him for being the last one to present, and he had basically shoved him into this unwanted presentation. His words still ring clear in Will's skull, back during the argument at his house after he basically laughed at Will for wanting to play a single campaign he'd been planning for months. Will does not think he can ever forget it, the ache of realising the one boy he thought would always be by his side was leaving him behind — wanted to leave him behind, in fact.

The alpha got his wish, at least. Will is now presenting as the very thing he has never wanted, the very thing his father always insulted and degraded him for.

There's a shout resounding from the woods behind Will. He stays on his knees, then curls around his throbbing stomach where a pounding ache is slowly but stubbornly making itself known, and breathes. The rain hasn't let up in the slightest bit possible, and it continues to patter down on his skin, the individual drops feel like knives digging in, carving out holes for themselves.

To make things worse, his position where he's curled up on the floor makes the sodden leaves on the ground feel like they are scratching at him, driving his oversensitivity up until he feels as if he might perish from it. In addition, there's wild notes of daisies and chrysanthemums and vanilla clinging to the fine hair of his nostrils, uncontrollable, unmistakeably his own — as if a bomb has exploded in the vicinity, the resultant gunpowder singeing the air.

Will breathes it all in, and what comes out is a choked sob.

The shouts get closer, and then Will jerks his head up so painfully he can feel a crick in his neck form, when a hand lands on his shoulder. A very familiar, very warm hand, with the fingers lightly pressing in to avoid hurting him. Jonathan.

"Hey, buddy," his elder brother says tightly, his face pinched and drawn from stress. His hair is sticking to his forehead, too, his shirt a second skin on his body due to the incessant rain, and his scent is sour from tension and fear — he must have been calling out for quite some time. But he's here, and he's an instant comfort, his mere presence making Will relax into the sticks and leaves by his feet. His scent immediately curls around Will, soft undertones of rose and honey embracing him, consoling him. "You had me worried, you know? I went to the house, saw your bicycle — fuck, what the hell happened to Castle Byers, what — "

His voice abruptly and devastatingly cuts off. Will instantly knows what he has realised and what he has scented in the air. And there is something about it that makes an undercurrent of shame in his gut sour and curdle into something tangible, something he wishes he cannot feel. After all, he knows Jonathan, an omega himself, never wanted this for him. They had so many conservations where the hope for it was threaded through in Jonathan's words, even with the truth of Will's anatomy hanging between them.

"You never know, buddy," he had said once, the hope in his voice painfully obvious, when Will had been asking him about it after yet another screaming match between their parents. It had been about Jonathan's gender, and Lonnie had shouted a few slurs aimed at Will as well before the older omega brought them both into his room and locked the door. "I was… I was unlucky. But you might be different. You might be a beta."

"Is it so bad?" Will had asked tentatively. Over the years, he had borne the brunt of his father's cruel and direct words, had it beaten into him with the force of his fists, the stench of alcohol stinking the air between them. He had seen brutally violent and vicious slurs and expletives be spray-painted into the sides of their house, snarled in his wake at school and by Troy and his goons as they shoved him around. He had witnessed the way Jonathan would curl into himself whenever they were out and about in public, something as simple as buying milk from the local mart turned into a humiliating act of sorts, with mocking hisses following them around as they tried and failed to complete their chores in peace.

And still, he had hope. He loved his brother, loved the way Jonathan looked after him in the mornings and evenings, tucked his nest around him and invited Will into his own. In Castle Byers, Jonathan had built Will's first nest for him, arranging a set of clothes and toys and fabrics in a way that made it feel like a home away from home. When he grew up, he knew that the person he wanted to be the most like was Jonathan.

"Being an omega?" Will had prompted, when Jonathan remained silent.

He had hesitated for an anxiety-inducing moment, during which Will bit his lip and said nothing, aware that he must have crossed a boundary of some sort. Then, he changed the subject to something about a latest album release he had been dying to talk to Will about. The words burned to ash beneath Will's tongue, and the undeniable truth sank in. Don't be an omega, not in this town.

Challenge failed. He is an omega, and he has just destroyed his first nest his elder brother built with him. He is an omega, and he has been abandoned by his pack in a trend that's lasted for the entire summer, all of his packmates having long outgrown him with mates of their own to look after and tend to. He is an omega, and he is alone.

Will curls into Jonathan's arms, and crumples into silent, suppressed tears. Any louder, and he might drive Jonathan away, too.

*

Will remembers Jonathan's first heat. He remembers it far too well.

The day began with his older brother saying he was feeling ill and couldn't go to school. Will had been too young to understand, but his mother had taken one look at Jonathan's pale cheeks and trembling hands, the way he was swaying on his feet with one arm curled around his abdomen, and urged him to go back upstairs to his room. Thankfully, his father had been out for the whole day, probably out cold at some bar in the next town, which meant it was just Joyce and Will all alone in the house.

With his elder brother sequestered away in his bedroom, Joyce fretted all over the place in a burst of violent energy Will saw as wilder than normal — she called in sick at Melvald's, she brought blankets up repeatedly to Jonathan's room, massive heaping piles of them unearthed from god knows where, and she piled snacks up outside of Jonathan's doorway. All of his favourites; those peanut crackers he was addicted to, Reese's cups, strawberry-flavoured twizzlers, a few fruits and bottles upon bottles of water and Gatorade. And then, she sat Will down at the dining table.

It was Saturday, which meant it was Mike day. Will would usually be carted off to the Wheelers in the morning and the two of them would spend a few hours planning out details for a campaign in the basement before Karen Wheeler treated the boys to a delicious lunch of her homemade lasagna. Specially vegetarian for Will, with mushrooms and pickles spicing the dish up, her own twist on the tomato flavour making it the best thing he'd ever tasted.

This Saturday was derailed, though. Joyce informed Will that his elder brother had presented as an omega and was having his first heat, and gently urged Will to spend the rest of the day at the Wheelers as planned. Will abjectly refused, and insisted on cancelling just for today, far too caught up in his worry for Jonathan and how he would be dealing with the heat.

Back then, Will's school hadn't gone through the talks on dynamics yet and Joyce was always cagey with the details of what it meant to present as an alpha or omega — all Will knew about omegas was from his father, that they were wimpish and weak and fairylike and deserved to get their asses handed to them. Needless to say, knowing Jonathan was now one of these omegas his father constantly insulted felt like a slap in the face for Will.

They had gone back and forth a few times, Will's nine-year-old tenacity warring with Joyce's aged assurance that she knew best. But Will was persistent, and even swore he'd bike back himself from the Wheelers if he was brought there, before his mother finally gave in.

The rest of the day was spent with Will dutifully and regularly placing water and snacks outside Jonathan's door. At one point, he decided to take all his plushies from his own room and deposit them at the doorway too, every single one — Mr Fluffles, a sprightly tiger Jonathan bought him from Melvald's with all his allowance for the month, Mrs Sprinkles, a strong and mighty bear he got as a Christmas gift from Karen Wheeler, and Morrissey, an absurdly soft puppy with floppy ears that he got as a hand-me-down from Jonathan. Toys were hard to come by and Will cherished them when they did, so he wanted Jonathan to get some assistance from them, too.

The entire house was silent, apart from the muted sound of Jonathan's sniffles and cries and the pacing footsteps of Joyce in the kitchen. Meanwhile, Will gnawed on his fingernails and tried not to bite them down to the quick. The worry ate him alive, and at around midday after lunch, he began knocking on Jonathan's door unrepentantly and obstinately, demanding to be let in and see if his brother was still alive. Before Joyce could pull him away — a reprimand already visibly forming on the tip of her tongue, Will noted with a wince — Jonathan cracked the door open and said hoarsely, "He can come in."

Inside the bedroom, it was a mess. The scent of rose and honey was so thick in the air that Will felt as if he'd stepped inside a boutique of some sort, a hidden tone of stress curdling and intensifying beneath it. A pile of hoodies, blankets and shirts was lying in the middle of the bed in the shape of what Will vaguely recognised as a nest, some of the clothes being Will's own. Stray water bottles were strewn all over the floor as well, empty and rolling around on their sides.

Immediately after calling him in, Jonathan curled up inside the pile. Will, nine years old and itching to hug his elder brother who reeked of distress and pain so potent his unmatured senses could pick up on it, climbed up into the pile and curled up beside him. He refused to move until Jonathan tentatively unfurled and wrapped his long, gangly arms around him. At such a young age, Will didn't really know how to control his unmatured pheromones to console Jonathan but it hadn't mattered; the tension leaked out of Jonathan like a leaking tap, and he slumped into Will's side, puffs of air warming Will's cheeks.

"Does it hurt?" Will asked, soft and unsure.

Jonathan nodded, looking abjectly miserable. There were tear tracks on his cheeks, two spots of colour high up on them. "Everywhere," he whispered morosely, hugging Will tighter against himself. "I hate this. I hate it. I hate being — " he cut himself off, and sniffed in abject dismay.

His voice was also wet and clogged up with tears, and Will didn't know what to do. His elder brother never cried, usually — he has always been the stronger one of them, the smarter and braver one. He knew when to make their father back down and when to avoid him by holing up inside their rooms to avoid his wrath. He was always the one protecting Will, standing guard against the dangers of the outside world, teaching him about the music he should listen to and the radio shows he should tap into.

The positions had been reversed, now, and Will didn't know what to do. He didn't know how to make Jonathan feel better.

And then he spotted Mr Fluffles hidden in the crook of Jonathan's elbow, and he smiled happily, showing off his missing front tooth. "Mr Fluffles is helping you," he said earnestly, poking at the toy. "Isn't he?" He craned his neck around, eager to find the other toys to bring them by Jonathan's side as well.

Jonathan's words, though, stopped him. "Not Mr Fluffles," he said quietly and earnestly, and bopped Will's nose with his knuckles. "Your scent's all over him. It helps."

Somehow, that felt even better than if the toy alone had helped Jonathan. Will practically beamed, and the answering smile he got felt like the sun was peeking out of a doomy overcast of grey clouds, and they spent the rest of Jonathan's heat cuddling in the nest.

In school the week after, Mike had berated Will for cancelling their planned weekend together, sounding even more incredulous and furious when Will explained it was for his older brother — "Are you serious? I don't even spend Nancy's ruts with her, ew!" — but for once, it didn't make Will feel disappointed to be the subject of his best friend's rage.

It was all for his brother, after all.

The remembered pain of the heat, though, stayed. Especially in the days after, when news spread that the eldest Byers boy had presented as an omega. Will's father was apoplectic with rage, and he smashed in one of the windows, their altercation giving Jonathan a black eye, Joyce a reddened cheek and Will a new set of nightmares. He then disappeared into the dark of the night after Joyce abruptly reached the end of her patience with him and demanded he get the fuck out of the house.

"This fucking family's full of fucking omegas, anyway," Lonnie had spat, before pointing his finger at Will, eyes full of a daggered rage. "He'll be one too, the fucking pansy. The worst one of you all."

That wasn't the end of it, unfortunately. He would come back regularly for at least a year since, and get into shouting matches with Joyce that were so horrid Will and Jonathan had no choice but to duck into their bedrooms to save their own skin.

To make things worse, the Hawkins residents were full of scorn. News of the split between Joyce and Lonnie spread, and most began hissing that of course a family as destitute and undeserving of good luck as the Byers would pop out a male omega — the disgrace of it all, the dishonour of it all. Even worse that Joyce, an omega herself, now had no alpha and was taking on the burden of bringing up her two boys all on her lonesome.

Of course her eldest boy would turn out to be an omega, they would say. Just wait for her youngest to follow in his footsteps.

Jonathan shrunk in on himself, and the stain of his secondary gender left his imprint on Will, even as he thought that Jonathan being an omega wasn't that bad. He liked Jonathan's scent, after all, liked how the rose and honey curled around him whenever their father yelled too loud and raised his hand against them. He liked the way Jonathan fussed over him in the mornings, discreetly scenting him before sending him on his way to school. He liked it when Jonathan stole Will's plushies at night and returned them smothered in his own scent for Will to take comfort from as well.

In a town like Hawkins where alphas were prized and omegas were a source of humiliation and upset, though, that didn't matter. What mattered was that the eldest Byers boy was an omega, the youngest was well on his way to likely becoming one, and that said more about them than their actual characters ever could.

*

Will loses time. He blinks, and he's curled in Jonathan's arms, crying into his collar, prickling heat and pain searing him from within while the rain continues to fall. He blinks, and he's inside his room, nestled amid a pile of familiar clothes, a towel over his head and another over his shoulders.

A chocolate bar is pushed into his hands, half-melted but somewhat edible. "Eat," Jonathan says obstinately, when Will shoves it away, a dull throb churning in his stomach and turning it inside out. It hasn't let go once, not even to give him a single second of respite, and he realises that all those years ago, Jonathan hadn't been exaggerating when he said he felt the pain everywhere. "You need your strength. Especially after you just destroyed your first nest I built with you. What were you thinking?"

"I don't need it," Will whispers, ignoring the second part of Jonathan's reprimand as he begins to feel at his cheeks, which are sticky with tears and hot to the touch. Every inch of his skin is, and it scratches where they rub against the clothes of the nest. Even so, Will cannot deny that it is a comfort, the shirts and sweaters and scarves and —

Mike's hoodie is among the pile. A full-sleeved pullover Will was given once on a wintry day, which he forgot to return. He stretches his leg out and kicks it to the floor, and ignores the way Jonathan exhales out a sudden, understanding gust of air. His lips press together, as his keen stare lets Will know he now can parse out why the first nest Jonathan and Will built together is in shattered ruins in the middle of the woods.

"Will," Jonathan says gently, and that, more than anything else, makes Will stop and raise his head in bleary, pain-filled awareness. The throb snakes around his back and inches its way up his chest and he rubs at it idly, tears forming in the corners of his eyes from the sting. Would simply dying make it stop? "I know what I'm talking about. Please, listen to me, okay?" He pushes the chocolate back at Will and this time, Will takes it.

He knows Jonathan's dying to ask about what happened out there to leave Will in such a state, and he's dying to prod Will further on why he destroyed Castle Byers, but his older brother surprisingly doesn't. Instead, Jonathan drops the issue entirely, and he does what Will had done for Jonathan's first heat — he protects, he loves, he cares.

He brings over a bowl of mushroom soup and doesn't leave until Will reluctantly finishes every last drop. Then, he places a heat pack on top of Will's stomach, right where the throb's most painful, and presses it there until the ache lessens bit by it. When he's off to get more snacks to last Will for the rest of the heat, Will belatedly realises he's already been changed into an old shirt that used to belong to Jonathan and a pair of his most comfortable, loosest sweatpants. His brother has also picked out all of the splinters from his ankles, covering the cuts in tiny Disney-patterned bandaids.

The acts make Will's eyes sting. He'll always have his brother, he thinks. Even with the shame coursing through him of forever being lodged in the dirt and the grime of the Upside Down, doomed to stay stuck and trapped. Even while the rest of his friends moved on, even while his best friend sped ahead and left him in his wake after digging into the most tenderised spots in him.

His brother is still here, his brother still stays, and his brother still cares.

That should be enough. It isn't, because the words Mike spoke still claw scratches at the sides of Will's brain, leaving behind bleeding, gouged-out marks that ache and pulse and echo just like the gate of the Upside Down. A reminder, over and over again, of how utterly horrible this entire summer has been to him.

He thinks of the argument, of the dismissive cruelty in Mike's and Lucas' eyes while he valiantly trudged on with the campaign. He thinks of this entire summer, watching everyone grow up and have fun and live, while he still felt trapped in the clutches of what he's been going through for the past two years and not feeling like a single person around him cared about what had happened to him. He thinks of the fact that he's been punished for wanting to — to have fun, for once. To enjoy the things that mattered to him. To want the people he lo — the people he cared for to enjoy those things as well.

It's so unfair, Will thinks with a lump in his throat, his eyes reddening with tears. The world keeps turning, and Will keeps getting stuck. Stuck, stuck, stuck, stuck in the Upside Down, stuck in the clutches of the Mind Flayer, stuck as an omega —

A fresh throb restarts again in his stomach and he curls over it, moaning and whining and wishing it would all just fucking end. This is the sort of pain that made his brother hole up in his bedroom and cry all those years ago. Will gets it, now — he wants to do nothing but sink into his blankets and disappear. He wants to throw the bottle of anti-depressants lying by his bedside at the wall, a reminder of the rift that's growing between him and his friends, him and his old self. He wants the pain to end, and he wants to forget this summer.

Things cannot possibly get any worse for him, and then they defy logic and do.

Jonathan comes barging into his bedroom, jaw set with tension, as sharp notes of distress roll off him in waves so jarring that they make Will pop his head up from where he'd been lightly dozing in a pain-filled, uneasy nap. "Listen," his brother says, the skin around his eyes tight as he folds his arms across his chest, "Mike and Lucas are by. They — they say they need to see you."

A wave of nausea automatically rises in Will, and it is so violent he thinks he might hurl. Wouldn't that be a sight, he realises — all that regurgitated chocolate and soup and water and crackers on the nest, dirtying the sheets, the clothes, his skin. Even without realising it, or being aware of it, he's already shaking his head. "They can't be here. Send them away," he croaks. "Please, they can't — I don't want them here. I don't want Mike here."

Jonathan's watching him carefully, hands clenched by his sides. Will can't parse what he's feeling, can't tell what's the emotion that's in his eyes, and the uncertainty of it makes something in his gut twist. The last Jonathan knew of Will and Mike, they were thick as thieves and best friends to boot. He doesn't know that this summer has been wrought with distance and friends willingly drawing themselves away, undercurrents of tension and differences and a fierce argument in the rain.

And now, Will's asking him to not let Mike in, when he'd always do it otherwise.

The knowledge of it, the contrast of it, how shocking it must look to Jonathan — all of that makes the nausea pulse in Will's stomach again. He grabs the heat pack, presses it against his abdomen, and closes his eyes, staring at the black of his eyelids.

A few seconds pass, before the sound of Jonathan's footsteps padding to the front door resounds in his head. He continues closing his eyes as he hears Jonathan speak in a hushed, firm tone, likely keeping his voice low for Will's sake, before Mike's aggravatingly loud and domineering voice drowns it out. The unmistakeable scent of an alpha wafts into the room — bergamot and cedarwood — and against his own wishes, Will leans into it. He breathes it in, even when he wishes he could push it away.

"Can't just say that, I need to see him — " Mike is saying, loud and obstinate. There's a thin undercurrent of pain underlying it.

"And he doesn't want you here," Jonathan retorts, rude and uncaring. "So leave."

"I'm not leaving when he's in pain. I fucking know it and I can smell it. I'm not leaving when he's like this," Mike snaps, his voice hot and angry and caustic, while he cuts right to the quick, to the crux of the matter. Worst of all is the anxiety in his words, a running undertone that seeps into Will's skin, a parasite bound to eat into his nerves.

No apology, Will thinks sourly as he shifts around in the nest to feel more comfortable, just demands. Pushing and pushing and pushing only after he's not explicitly wanted, demanding to dig his nails into Will only after Will runs.

Mike is only here because Will presented. If he hadn't, Mike would probably still be planning on how to get El back with Lucas, now that the inconvenience snapping at his ankles for the entire summer is gone from the scene. The lure of Will to Mike now is his omegan status, and the painful reminder of it aches as bad as the throb in Will's stomach. And with it, the heat intensifies, a rising crescendo of fire that feels so all-consuming that Will cannot tamp down on his abruptly loud sob of pain.

The voices at the door go so silent that Will, for a moment, deliriously wonders if they all left. Typical, he thinks drowsily, pressing the heat pack into his skin. Typical of Mike to leave, typical of Mike to —

Then, Mike suddenly calls out, his voice shaking tremulously, as if he's barely restraining himself from dissolving into tears, "Will? Will?"

Will stays silent. Even with the throb spiking in agony, as if petulantly reminding him he's still in heat, he stays silent and bites down on his tongue so hard he can feel blood fill his mouth.

"Will, hold on," Mike barks determinedly, and it's so misguided that Will wants to do nothing but laugh. And then he wants to do nothing but cry, great heaving sobs wrenching their way out of his throat. He can almost draw up the image of Mike in the doorway in his mind's eye, his hair plastered to his forehead and clothes drenched from the rain. "Hold on, I'm coming, alright? I'm coming — "

"No, you're not," Jonathan snaps, evidently having reached the end of his rope of patience when it comes to Mike. There's a sharp thud, a yelp, a few scuffling noises, and definitely more than a fair bit of vulgarities thrown in from both Jonathan and Mike, before Jonathan's finally sprinting back through the door and slamming it shut behind him.

Almost immediately, a barrage of knocks rains down on Will's bedroom door. The knocks are loud, radiating fury and desperation and self-righteous rage all at once, a mishmash of emotions that digs its way into Will's skull and worsens his already-bad headache into something untenable and unbearable. For a moment, all he can do is breathe through the pain, press his fingers into the sides of the heat pack, and exist in the hollowness of the moment, the sheer emptiness of it. In between each knock is Mike calling out helplessly, desperately.

"Will! Will, I'm sorry, alright, please let me help, please! I can help, please, just let me in!"

This is what his and Mike's friendship has been reduced to, Will thinks. An olive branch here and there, between stretches of humiliation and embarrassment. Will is embarrassing, embarrassing, embarrassing, and Mike is forcing his way through the embarrassment he's been a direct cause of, like he has any right to Will. Any right to his sensitivities, to his love, to his care.

The knocks and shouts continue, and this time Lucas joins in, although he graciously sticks to only shouting his apologies through the door. With a mighty groan, Will heaves himself out of the bed, setting the heat pack aside with no small measure of reluctance, and sways on his feet. It's incredible how much the heat has rendered him so utterly useless and unable to function, limbs feeling loose and wobbly, his breath trembling in his chest. He feels as if he's wading through water, and the pain is so constant, so overreaching, so all-encompassing, that it does not help even the slightest bit.

This will be the case for the rest of his life, he remembers. That, at least, had sunken in from what his health ed teacher said during those assemblies in the gym — from now on, each heat is a period of stress and agony and tension, his inner omega urging him to find an alpha and perform his biological function in life. From his eighteenth birthday, the heats will turn sexual, and that is when the true humiliation and shame of it all will truly begin — this is just the precursor. The appetiser to the hellhole that is Will's life.

Still, live it he must. He takes a few steps forward, and ignores the wary expression in Jonathan's eyes.

"I can tell them to fuck off," Jonathan says, and his voice is grave, his eyes severe from it. Will knows he's deadly serious, too — he will act on his threat, even as an omega facing off against two younger alphas. He will chase Mike and Lucas away, with a bat if the need arises, and he will stay by Will's side for the rest of the night. Just like Will did for him.

"I don't know what they did, but you destroying your first nest for it means they fucked up," Jonathan continues, his voice urgent and low. "That is on them, not you. Heats are always bad, and you don't have to make yourself feel worse for these knothead alphas. Just say the word, and I'll kick them out."

The words sink in the space between them, and Will breathes it in. The truth in them, the compassion of it, makes the throb lessen a little, too. Jonathan's right — Mike and Lucas had fucked up. It's not on Will to still attend to them, take care of them in the only way he knows how.

Somehow, that makes what he wants to do next a little easier on him. "No need," he says — remembering the rain fiercely slapping against his skin, remembering how Mike had looked when Will had bitterly spat out, "I guess I did," before biking off into the darkness of the street. He remembers the defensive guilt that had shone through in Mike's eyes, the way his words made Will feel a certain type of way he never thought Mike would make him feel. He remembers the fraying ties in their pack, remembers the abandoned dreams of being their pack omega lying crushed at his feet.

He needs to see them. He needs to — he needs to set the record straight.

Jonathan's eyes rove all over him, and Will has no idea what he sees; the paleness of his cheeks, maybe, the way he can barely stand on his own, swaying vigorously on his feet and about half a second from toppling over, or perhaps the minute tremble in his fingers betraying his fatigue. "I'll be inside the room to give you guys your space, but I'll come out at the first sign of trouble," Jonathan promises, and then hesitates, before handing a thick sweatshirt to Will. "Helps with the chill."

"I'm not cold," Will protests, before taking stock of himself and momentarily pausing. He is cold, he realises — it's a very slight, bare chill, but it lingers on his skin like a layer's been stripped off. And the heat is more or less absent now, even with the pain still lingering in his bones and the sinewy thread of his muscles.

Catching the question in Will's eyes, Jonathan snorts. "You're between waves," he explains, while Will takes the sweatshirt from him and slings it on. "The heat will return. Until then, it's best to bundle up."

"I hate this," Will says dourly, pulling the cuffs of the sweatshirt over his hands to make sweater paws. He knows he looks ridiculous, honestly, with his hair sticking to his scalp, his fingers shaking with exhaustion, and his lips likely bloodless from the exhaustion of suffering through the heat. He'll be facing Mike like this, and the knowledge of it sits uneasily in his chest.

Fuck it, Will thinks, and wrenches the door open.

*

The day Mike presented had been a bad one.

Will had woken up in the morning with heaviness sitting on his chest, cumbersome and bulky, his poker scar stinging horribly in his side even though it hadn't ached in months. He had gone through the motions a shadow of himself, and had barely registered inhaling his breakfast before his brother drove him to school. Outside the gates, he'd stopped and turned to Will, concerned.

"Everything okay?"

"Yes," Will had muttered, looking away. It wasn't, obviously. You don't escape getting lost in an alternate dimension before being possessed without a few wounds and that morning, each wound had decided to flare up, reminding Will of how fucked his head was. Will usually dutifully takes his anti-depressants too, but occasionally, he would skip it — and one of those occasions was that day.

Jonathan had looked like he wanted to say something. Instead, he'd bitten down on his lower lip, sighed, and watched quietly while Will got out of the car.

The day inevitably became worse with Mike being a no-show.

"Maybe he's late," Lucas had suggested, while Dustin and Max had nodded, both looking unconvinced. Will wasn't convinced either, and when Mike continued being a no-show, the concern overrode the heaviness and depression-induced inertia of the morning. Something had to be wrong, Will had reasoned, something had to be off. The fear that it could be Upside-Down-related set in before long, and the four of them biked — well, Max on the back of Lucas' bike — over to the Wheelers the moment the final bell rang.

The truth of it, though, couldn't be farther than what they'd cooked up in their heads.

Mrs Wheeler had answered the door, and she had winced, looking at them each in turn. "He's presented as an alpha. He's having his rut, kids," she had said gently, and Dustin's jaw had dropped, while Lucas had gaped, stunned and unable to speak due to the shock of it. Will couldn't even scrape his thoughts together coherently enough for an appropriate response — all he could think of was Mike, his best friend, now an alpha. Mike, his best friend, the first to present in their pack. Mike, his best friend, struggling in the throes of an alpha rut.

"Can we help?" Will had asked meekly before he was even aware of the words falling out of his mouth, and Mrs Wheeler had looked scandalised, hand flying to her mouth before she set it down with a nervous flutter.

At the time, Will didn't know what was so untoward about wanting to help. Later, he'd realised the whole town had known Will would present as an omega before Will himself did. The reality of it was in his eyes, in the apple-red of his cheeks, in the effeminate way he talked and smiled and covered his mouth while laughing and looked down at his shoes as he walked. They slapped the label on him, like one would a price tag on a jar of pickles before leaving it on a shelf, and the way he was treated thereafter was predetermined, predestined. An omega before he was an omega.

Mrs Wheeler's reaction, therefore, was natural.

"Oh, you're very sweet, darling, but no," Mrs Wheeler said fretfully, twisting her head to look over her shoulder at someone in concern, before turning back to them. "It's okay, sweetheart. I'll let Joyce know once the rut is over."

With that as their cue, the other three had left and headed for their bikes mounted by the fence. Will, though, had hesitated, shifting nervously on his feet while rummaging through his backpack. Under Mrs Wheeler's keen eyes, he fished out a cardigan of his own — rather grandpa-like, grey with white buttons. Just last week, Mike had teased him for it, proclaiming it to be the sort of thing his Grandpa Joe would wear.

"Maybe this would help," Will had said, offering the cardigan, and Mrs Wheeler had taken it, balling the soft fabric up in her hands.

"I'll be sure to pass it to him, darling," she said, and there was something too warm and open in her smile. As if she was in on a secret about Will that Will did not know, as if she was in on something Will could not be allowed to find out. It made Will feel unseated, uneasy, and he'd bid a quick farewell before rejoining his impatient friends.

The first heat and rut will always last about twelve hours. The day after, Mike was back in school, and he'd returned Will's cardigan with an unreadable look in his eyes. Before Will could ask him if the cardigan had helped, he had immediately turned away and began talking about heading out to see El after school. No expression of gratitude, no words of thanks, not even a simple it helped — Mike instantly launched into detailing his plans for himself and El, to a chorus of boos and a jeer from Max.

Will shrunk into his seat, the cardigan scrunched up between his hands as he went ignored by the rest of the Party. He'd then shoved it into his backpack, shame curdling in his stomach.

*

Mike had been sitting on the floor, his gangly legs stretched out in front of him while his head rests in his hands. The moment Will opens the door and steps through, shutting it behind him, he shoots up straight and jumps to his feet. He's staring at Will in that intense way he used to, back when things were normal and Will was certain of his best friend always staying by his side. Lucas is beside him, already leaning against the wall, wringing the hemline of his shirt between his hands.

Both of them look like as if they've been dragged through hell and back. They are drenched head to toe from the rain, clothes sticking to their skin as they stare at Will in wide-eyed, aghast shock. The tips of Mike's fingertips are bruised, and his knuckles are reddened — likely from knocking furiously on Will's door over and over again.

"Will," Mike breathes out, and reaches a hand towards Will. The expression on his face crumples swiftly into open regret, corners of his lips turning down and eyes becoming large and watery when Will flinches away, plastering his back to the wall. Still, he carries on valiantly. "Will, I'm sorry. I didn't — I didn't mean to say all of that, I swear, I didn't mean to. I'm sorry, I really am."

He falls silent, his eyes roving all over Will like a heated iron, scalding every inch of his skin and leaving it burnt. Lucas picks up the slack, eyes flicking between the two of them warily before settling on Will. "I'm sorry, too," he says softly, genuinely, and at the startling sincerity of his words, Will feels his shoulders slump. He's always been weak when it comes to Lucas. "We should have treated your campaign more seriously. It was cool stuff, Will, honestly. We were jerks, and we shouldn't have done that. We'll play it tomorrow, yeah? After…" His throat works, and his voice trails off, with the reality of Will's present situation at hand hanging between them now. It feels especially evident with Will's cheeks still flushed from the heat, the sleeves of the sweater pulled over his hands as he stands there in clothes loose on him.

He feels young, unmoored and untethered in a world that's becoming more and more foreign to him, and both alphas are looking at him as if they see something new, something uncovered — uncharted territory, something they can plant their flag on. Mike's jaw is agape and his cheeks are pink as he takes in the way Will's hair is messed up from the heat. His gaze is also focused in the region of Will's mouth, where Will had been biting his lip as he white-knuckled it through the pain of the heat.

Meanwhile, Lucas' eyes are so wide they're as big as saucers, fixated on the sweat drying on Will's exposed collarbone. It makes something in Will's stomach turn, the realisation that he can only be the subject of their attention as an object attainable to them, different and other.

He is so, so tired of not being seen, he thinks. He is tired of being stuck. He is tired of his heat, and he is tired of the two boys in front of him. Tired, tired, tired, the exhaustion sinking into his bones and tainting his heart.

"Okay," Will says flatly. "Forgiven. You can go now."

He waits. Neither boy moves.

"We're not — Will, I really am sorry," Mike says softly, and this time his voice is pitched at the tone he always uses with Will. It hurts, and the dull throb in Will's stomach starts anew. He wraps his arms around himself and starts rubbing his thumb up and down in a self-soothing gesture, wishing for the comfort of his nest and heating pad. "I shouldn't have said that, I would never — I don't know what I was thinking, I was being an idiot — "

"You shouldn't have, but you did say it," Will says dully, and Mike's voice grinds to a halt. He looks so shocked, so guilty, and at any other moment Will might have given it up and accepted Mike's apology but here and now, Will can feel the ache from the heat wringing his bones dry. He can feel his temples pound from the residual throb, and he's swaying on his feet. All of it compounds towards a restless irritation and resentment he's decided Mike will be the target of. "You said it, and you can't change it. But it's okay, Mike, honestly, it's okay. I've forgiven you both, it's okay, so please, just… just go. Just go home, and let me deal with this myself."

His words sink into the air between the three of them, and the shock of it registers, reverberating and real. Will's eyes snag on Mike — on the devastation in the brown of his irises, of the way his hands shake by his sides, his chest heaving in huge breaths. He must be taking in lungfuls of Will's newly matured scent, sucking it in like oxygen, and the thought of it isn't entirely unpleasant to Will. That, in turn, just makes the self-loathing in his chest all the more stronger.

He's always flayed himself open for Mike. Even now, he's still doing it.

Will takes a step back, and then belatedly remembers the prickling of his neck back in the woods. "The Mind Flayer's back," he says abruptly, and both Mike and Lucas jerk in place, their heads shooting up to stare at him in unison. The sight is weirdly comical, and makes Will want to laugh. He tamps down on a slightly hysterical giggle and continues, "I felt it outside. We can talk about it tomorrow."

"What? No," Mike argues, frowning, straightening up from where he'd been slumped against the wall. He's found a new purpose, now, a new purpose that doesn't involve fixating on the way Will wants him out of his house. It's clearly lit a fire beneath him, made him abruptly realise he's the pack alpha and he has to take charge. Whatever works, Will thinks sourly. "No, we have to talk about it right now — "

Typical of him. Will feels another dull throb in his stomach, and tightens his arms around himself. "Tomorrow, Michael," Will repeats, raising his eyebrows, "after I'm done with my heat. Since I've just presented."

Like you yelled at me to, goes unsaid, and Mike's mouth clicks shut, his words tapering off into an abrupt, abashed silence. It's loud like a gunshot, resounding in their ears, with both alphas just looking at him as if they're waiting on a gesture or a move that will let them know all's fine and well. It all makes Will shake his head in exasperation as he moves to turn back into his room.

Before he can open the door to re-enter his nest, Mike's hand lands on his wrist, big fingers wrapping around him in a hold that is easily breakable and fragile. A gentle squeeze follows — and even that slight touch feels like an open flame held to his skin, making sure a burn forms. Will wrenches his hand back and holds it to his chest, as Mike immediately staggers back and lifts his hands up in a gesture of surrender. The rejection, though, has clearly hurt him — it is evident in the slight reddening of his eyes, the way his lip trembles before he forcefully steadies it, scent souring in distress.

"I'm sorry," he says again, softer, as if repeating it over and over again would make the truth of it stick, would make Will believe it, too. "Please. Let me help. You're in pain, I know you are, just let me help."

Will stares at him, mind racing in disbelief, and then he runs an exhausted hand over his face, dragging it down his mouth. It's too late for Mike to come to this realisation, he thinks, when he should have done so while Will was still unpresented. Instead, now Will's in heat, Mike's offering to help, and Will's stuck wondering if it's because Will is Will or Will is an omega.

It doesn't matter, either way. Mike is still the boy who broke his heart in the rain. He is still the boy who has been treating Will as if he's nothing but thin air after years of protecting him and caring for him. He is still the boy Will cannot help but love, cannot help but resent.

Unbidden, the thought of the grey cardigan pops back into his mind. The manner with which it had been pushed into his hands, scrunched up and clean, not a trace of his scent lingering in it. The manner with which Mike had ignored the fact that he had ever had it in the first place. The manner with which it had been shoved into Will's backpack, a source of his humiliation.

Perhaps, inviting Mike into his bedroom might ease the ache in his stomach, the heat that is threatening to return. It is not worth the pain that comes after, though. It is not worth the embarrassment, the humiliation, the knowledge that he's giving a part of himself to an alpha who wants someone else and does not see him in the way he wants him to.

"Go home, Mike," Will says softly, now, and tries and fails to ignore how Mike's expression crumples in dismay, his eyes watering all over again. "We can talk in the morning."

He slips inside the bedroom, and slams the door shut.

*

The rest of the night — and half the morning — passes by in a haze of intermittent cold and burning heat stealing over his skin in waves, accompanying the prickling of his skin and the dull throb in the lower part of his stomach. He sleeps in fitful bursts, waking up occasionally to the pain of the heat coursing through his veins and extremities, Jonathan's half-asleep hand dazedly and tiredly smoothing down his hair while he hums a tune that sounds like home.

At some point, in the bright and early hours of the morning, Will wakes up with the sting of tears in his eyes from an unremembered nightmare. Jonathan is fully asleep by then, his hand still lodged in Will's hair with one leg thrown over Will's thigh. Gently, so as to not wake his brother up, Will reaches for Mike's pullover which he had kicked to the floor, snatching it up to clutch it towards his nose. He'd fallen back asleep quickly after, with a lump of equal parts self-loathing and bitter resentment lodged high up in his throat.

When the heat ends, the sun is high up in the sky, shining bright waves into the room and lighting up its darkest corners. Will's eyelids feel gummy and wiry from the lack of a good night's rest but he still cracks them open, watching as Jonathan bustles around the room. He looks exactly like their mother when he gets in one of these cleaning moods, as he sweeps the empty snack wrappers into a dustpan and clucks his tongue at the clothes kicked out of the nest and onto the floor in the middle of the night.

Upon seeing Will awake, he smiles gently. "Seems like it's ended," Jonathan observes, walking over to place the back of his hand against Will's forehead, and Will nods in relief. The ache is gone, and so is the strange turn of chill and heat — all that's left in its wake is a layer of thick sweat, enough to make Will feel grimy and in desperate need of a shower.

Some other things are left, too. Daisies and chrysanthemums and vanilla hang high in the air, a reminder of Will's new status as an omega. His scent gland too, newly formed over the course of the presentation, is swollen and heated to the touch.

Jonathan momentarily stops sweeping the floor with the broom, and balances his chin on top of it. "You might want to step outside for a look," he says sagely, a smile playing at the corners of his lips. "I think… well, I think you're not going to be too mad at what you find."

Mystified and too tired to argue with Jonathan's words, Will keeps the blanket tucked around his shoulders like a cape as he clambers to his feet. He proceeds to plod over to the door, stepping over a random Gatorade bottle that's been half-drunk, before pushing it open.

And then he just — stares.

Right there on the ground, sleeping in uncomfortable positions, are Mike and Lucas. Lucas is on his side, head pillowed on his arm while Mike is on his back, arms and legs spread out like a starfish, dried tear tracks glistening on his cheeks while his mouth is open with a line of drool leading down to his chin. It can't have been a breeze, sleeping like that on the cold, hard wooden floor with not even a blanket or pillow for cover or support — but they're both snoring away, dead to their surroundings, parked outside Will's bedroom door like the world's fiercest thirteen-year-old bodyguards.

Beside them, too, are makeshift weapons. There's a baseball bat with a few nails drummed into it at Mike's side, and at Lucas' side is a frying pan and a stick. It's obvious enough why the weapons are there, and for a moment, Will is starstruck by the implications of it.

He waits for the natural resentment, the self-loathing, the bitterness to come flooding him at any moment. But it doesn't — instead, he feels softened to the very core of him, open and vulnerable, warmth filling his chest at the sight of his two best friends willing to stay the night like this and protect Will with their makeshift weapons. Even after Will rebuffed their apologies repeatedly and all but told them to go home, obstinate to a fault in the throes of heat.

"They really care for you," Jonathan says quietly from behind Will, as Will continues staring at the two boys on the floor, hiding a smile behind his hand. "Even if they're horrid at showing it." He laughs a little, and runs his hand through his hair, messing it up in the back. "They remind me of some people I know."

Will snorts into his hand. All year — and about half the summer, too — he's had to watch Steve and Nancy fight like a pair of knothead alphas over Jonathan. Gifts to the house, a brand new camera, recently purchased albums from music stores out of town, sweaters that stunk of their scent; it's been hilarious to watch. Even more hilarious to see Jonathan pick up the phone to yell at the alphas, his scent betraying how he was not altogether that displeased at the displays of alpha dominance and chivalry.

Will had asked him once, over breakfast, which alpha he'd choose. Jonathan had pointedly diverted the conversation, his cheeks and ears pink with embarrassment.

Of all people, he'd know better than the rest about alphas who blundered and fucked up along the way, but cared all the same. And on this, he wouldn't lie to Will.

Will's attention is redrawn back to Mike, who now snuffles in his sleep, before raising his hand and smacking Lucas in the face with it. Lucas doesn't even stir, letting out a loud snort before continuing to snore in bliss, nose twitching as he does so. Will smiles wider, and gingerly steps over their legs, tugging the blanket higher around his shoulders.

"Yeah," he says, equally quietly. "I know they care."

Later, Mike and Lucas will wake up properly, and shuffle into the kitchen with matching sheepish expressions on their faces. Jonathan will grill them for what they did to Will over toast and eggs, before Will hesitantly broaches the subject of the Mind Flayer's return. And then, they'll have to get the Party back together, and figure out, yet again, how to battle an evil that does not seem to want to leave them alone.

For now, Will heads for a shower, the edges of his blanket trailing in his wake.

He has a heat to wash away from his skin.