Chapter Text
Will Byers has never touched another person. At least, not in the way people are meant to.
No skin-to-skin contact. No accidental bump of shoulders while squeezing past one another in a crowded hallway or the unexpected brush of fingers when two hands close around the same mug. No quick hug goodbye. None of the tiny, ordinary touches people carelessly trade without realizing they’re using a currency far more valuable than money.
Will has been starving for eighteen years now.
There have been cautious, supervised encounters, of course. A scientist maneuvering his wrist with gloved hands, attentively adjusting the angle of his arm as if Will were a fragile object that might fracture under the wrong kind of pressure. Two fingers pressing briefly against his pulse, counting the clinical beat in silence with eyes fixed on a monitor instead of the frightened boy being examined.
In Will’s life, touch has always been treated like fire in a room full of oxygen. Better to not strike the match.
Once, when he was younger, Joyce forgot. She had been kneeling in front of him in the Observation Room while he recovered from another nightmare that had dragged him from sleep screaming.
Exhaustion was etched across her face after being awake for what was probably close to twenty hours. And just then, in a thoughtless moment of sleep deprivation, she reached out and cupped his cheek with her bare hand.
The contact lasted no longer than three insanely fast heartbeats, maybe even less, but Will memorized the profound warmth of her stroke blooming through every nerve in his body like sunlight hitting bare skin, although he doesn’t know what that’s like.
Those precious seconds embedded themselves beneath his ribs, preserved perfectly alongside every birthday, every Christmas and every memory that had ever convinced him life was worth surviving for.
Even now, years later, he recalls that moment with painful clarity, the same way people recall near-death experiences or religious visions.
Will went completely still beneath her palm, eyes wide as he stared back at her, caught somewhere in between instinct and paralysis and unable to decide whether to lean in or pull away.
Why did something so simple feel so overwhelming?
“Uh—” A scientist behind Joyce cleared his throat. “Ma’am…”
Joyce flinched as if the sound had physically struck her before pulling back instantly, like she’d made a mistake she couldn’t erase. Her hand disappeared, as well as the comforting warmth that came with it.
Will didn’t understand why at the time, but he did recognize the look on her face. It wasn’t anger or embarrassment. It wasn’t guilt, either.
It was fear. Not fear of him, though. Fear for him.
They called the no-touching-rule precaution. Adults have a remarkable talent of dressing fear in prettier words to make the habit sound reasonable when it isn’t.
Will learned early on how far that word could be extended when it was applied to him. It meant there were rules he wasn’t allowed to question and boundaries that existed whether he understood them or not. It meant that even touch itself was treated like a risk, every human interaction marked by an invisible line he couldn’t cross.
It kept him safe. It also kept everyone at a distance.
Eventually, he stopped wondering what another person’s hand might feel like closed around his own. Stopped imagining hugs, comfort, or even love. At least, he told himself he had. Some hungers become easier to survive once you convince yourself they were never yours to feed. The question of what would happen if he ever crossed that line faded with those longings.
What would happen if someone touched him…
… and didn’t let go?
─ ⋅✶⋅ ─
By the time Will’s eyes reluctantly peel open, the hum has already nested itself deep within his skull, echoing behind his temples.
It travels through the walls in a low, constant vibration, subtle enough that most people would probably stop hearing it after a while. Will never does. Some days it even drowns out his own thoughts.
He groans and drags both pillows over his ears, pressing down hard until the fabric crushes against his face in a useless attempt to muffle the sound.
The tremor pulses through the station at all hours, making the entire structure seem to breathe around him. Will considers the whole place to be a sleeping animal and he’s nothing more than a heartbeat trapped inside its ribcage, listening to lungs that weren’t supposed to be his to borrow.
When he was little, he believed the pulse was his own. He used to lie awake at night and tried to match his breathing to it, convinced that if he could just sync up with the rhythm, the noise would start making sense. Eventually, he learned it wasn’t coming from him at all.
It was the station: air filtration, thermal regulation, pressure stabilization — an invisible orchestra of life support systems, sustaining everyone inside.
To Will, it’s his safe haven. Or prison. Depending on the day, it manages to become both.
The blank ceiling that has watched him wake up every morning stares back at him. He wonders whether it knows him better than the sky ever will.
With a sigh, Will forces himself to sit up, rubs the sleep from his eyes and pushes his tousled hair out of the way. The locks stubbornly fall back into place, soft and uneven from where Joyce trims it herself whenever it gets too long. She tries her best to make it look neat, but it never quite works out.
Will doesn’t mind, though. It’s one of the few parts of him that isn’t controlled, which probably sounds like a stupid thing to care about, considering it’s just hair, but still, it matters to him.
He stands and does a full-body stretch before collapsing back onto the mattress with a thud. His muscles carry a stiffness that doesn’t fully go away here. Normogravity conditioning helps, but not enough to erase what Mars does to a body over time.
His room looks exactly the same as it did yesterday, and the day before, and every day he can recall.
Smooth-looking white walls curve into one another without a single sharp corner in sight, as if the dorm has been designed to eliminate the possibility of any injury. There are no windows, only a giant digital display embedded into the wall across from his bed. It’s dimmed now, but he knows what the projector can show if he turns it on.
Earth.
He’s seen it up-close a thousand times. Not with his own eyes — never like that — but through the screen’s recreations. Blue oceans stretching endlessly, clouds gracefully decorating the sky, city lights shimmering gold in the night, entire continents resting beneath a thin atmosphere that somehow manages to hold all that wonderful chaos together.
How can a planet so saturated with life feel so impossibly far beyond his grasp?
Will doesn’t turn the screen on.
He’s learned that if he glances at Earth too early in the morning, it’s the perfect formula to ruin the rest of his day, the vivid images of it lingering behind and haunting him through the station.
Not in a ghost-way. More in a smelling-perfume-on-your-shirt-three-days-later kinda way.
When insomnia won’t leave him alone, he sneaks into the Observatory Dome at the far end of the station where the largest window in the entire facility faces Earth through real glass instead of the projection in his room.
For a handful of weeks each year, Mars floats into alignment and Earth burns as a tiny blue ‘star’ in the sky. He always sticks around until the cold from the glass beats the warmth out of his skin, unwilling to leave while he can still see it.
Soon, the orbit would shift and Earth would slip from view once more, vanishing into the darkness as though it wasn’t even there to begin with.
What would Mike think if he saw Earth like this?
Will swings his legs over the side of the bed, his bare feet brushing the floor. The temperature in the station is controlled, but the ground carries a coldness that seeps into his bones, the chill prickling along the back of this neck.
He’s never been entirely sure whether the cold belongs to the room or if he’s simply carried it with him for too long.
At precisely eight o-clock, a mechanical click in the wall announces his door unlocking, revealing a small robot effortlessly balancing a plate of breakfast. A narrow strip of blue light runs across its frame, flickering once as the machine comes to a stop near the edge of his bed.
“Good. Morning. Will.”
Will named it Atlas when he was seven. Back then, he’d insisted the robot needed a real name if it was going to keep bringing him food.
“Morning,” he mumbles, voice still rough with sleep.
“Nutritional. Intake. Prepared. Please consume. Within. The designated. Time. Frame.”
Will grins at that. “Yeah, yeah. I got it.”
The tray extends toward him, revealing three pieces of slightly burnt toast with a thin layer of peanut butter on it.
How surprising. Truly groundbreaking stuff happening in the culinary department.
Peanut butter shows up in almost every breakfast. Apparently the substance stores well enough for long-distance shipments from Earth, which means everyone here has been shoving it down their throats practically every day, pretending not to be completely sick of it. At this point, Will is pretty sure it has become one of the station’s fundamental food groups. Not that there are many alternatives.
They do cultivate their own vegetables in the sunroom under artificial grow lights: lettuce in shallow beds of water instead of soil, a few beans and — if you’re lucky enough — at times even the occasional tomato.
Will likes strolling through there. It’s comfortably warm, humid in a way that feels severely misplaced on a planet so cold. The air carries the scent of damp leaves, not disinfectant. He closes his eyes while he’s in there and imagines that’s what Earth smells like: alive.
Still, he desperately craves the taste of Earth-grown fruit. A peach, warm from sunlight instead of synthetic lamps. Or one of those big, sweet strawberries Joyce keeps telling him about that stain your fingers red. Perhaps, he’ll be able to sink his teeth into a crispy apple someday. Maybe, for once, he can actually enjoy food that hasn’t traveled through vacuum seals.
He takes the tray with toast and Atlas retracts his arm with the same precise efficiency. “Have a. Productive. Day,” it adds on autopilot.
“Yeah, you too, buddy,” Will mutters sarcastically.
He swallows the toast down in silence, eyes glancing at the robot now retreated into the corner of the room, inactive and waiting for the next instruction. Each word it speaks is pulled from the same limited set stored somewhere in his system.
When Will was younger, none of that mattered. He spoke to him the way lonely children talk to stuffed animals. He used to tell him about the dreams he had, the books he’d read and the many questions he had about Earth. Sometimes, he’d ramble for nearly an hour while Atlas stood there silently processing commands it couldn’t answer.
Each night before bed, Will whispered goodnight, only to be answered with nothing else besides sleep cycle acknowledged.
He kept saying it for almost three years.
It took him a while to admit he was trying to find companionship in something incapable of returning it. Even so, Atlas is the nearest thing to friendship he’s ever known.
Besides Mike, of course.
Mike talks too fast most of the time, as though his thoughts are moving quicker than his words can follow. He interrupts himself mid-story, doubles back, changes subjects without warning, laughs at jokes before he reaches the punchline and says things that probably should’ve stayed inside his head.
He’s gloriously unscripted. There’s no pattern Will can map out ahead of time. Their conversations are messy and unpredictable in a way it could never be with Atlas. They’re real.
Mike is real.
Will wonders what he’s having for breakfast every day. Probably something stupidly normal he can barely even picture. Cereal, maybe. Or — judging based on Mike’s incredible cooking skills — burnt waffles. Maybe he’s slouched at the kitchen table, still half asleep, complaining about work while sunlight streams through a window left open for the morning air to rush in.
The thought pulls him away from his own breakfast. He looks down at the half-finished meal in front of him, then checks the time: 08:46.
Will finishes the last few bites, clears the tray, and swaps his pajamas for fresh clothes before making his way down the corridor. He’s supposed to be in Observation by 9:00. His digital watch flashes 8:57 back at him.
The station is quiet. Not silent — never silent — but muted in a way that feels unnatural.
All hallways look practically identical, doors lining each side of the corridor with only text and numbers distinguishing them from one another.
Will has every corridor mapped out. He knows which hallways run colder, which doors hiss a little louder, where the scent of antiseptic lingers longest. This place lives inside him as much as he lives inside it, though there are some doors Will isn’t allowed through. He’s learned not to ask about those. Not because he stopped being curious, but questions are unlikely to survive the journey to an answer in here.
Will steps past the entryway to the training room, or the Conditioning Room as scientists like to call it.
The station compensates for Mars’ gravity enough that people can function normally, but it doesn’t fully cancel it out. You don’t float here, at least not in the way you’d imagine space. You feel your weight pressing into the ground, but each movement carries a slight delay, as if the planet is just a fraction less committed into holding you down.
Will has never known anything else.
He was born into this version of gravity. It taught him how to walk, how to run and how to fall. It doesn’t confuse him. His body, however, is still human, created for a life on Earth, not here. That’s why his days follow the same exhausting cycle: wake up, eat crappy peanut butter toast, stumble through his cognitive assessments in the morning, then physical therapy in the afternoon.
The exercises aren’t to make him stronger. They’re about preventing his body from growing weaker by adapting too well to Mars’ lower gravity. Every piece of equipment in the room is calibrated to simulate Earth-level resistance, keeping his muscles from slowly weakening in ways he wouldn’t notice until it would be too late.
Between sets, when he’s busy pretending his legs aren’t threatening to file for divorce, he imagines Mike attempting the same workout, most definitely complaining about it and probably also pretending he isn’t totally struggling.
Will grins at the absurd thought and nearly trips over his own feet while taking a right turn down the final hall that leads to the Observation Room.
Whew, great start of your day, Byers! You almost stumbled head-first into a wall thinking about Mike Wheeler.
Joyce is already inside when he arrives. She stands in front of the main console with her back to him, one hand braced against the edge of the desk as lines of data scroll across the monitors in front of her.
The glow from the screens reflects on her hair, catching the strands that have come loose from whatever attempt she made to keep it pulled back. Her posture is slightly slouched in a way that tells him she’s tired, even if she won’t say it out loud.
“Morning,” she greets without glimpsing over her shoulder.
Will pauses in the doorway. It isn’t unusual she knows it’s him. He arrives at the same time every day, walks at the same pace, breathes in the same cadence. Still… there’s something special about being recognized that sticks.
“Good morning,” he replies in a cheerful attempt.
Joyce turns and offers him a smile that doesn’t quite reach her eyes. He notices that more often lately.
“How’d you sleep?”
Will shrugs lightly as he fully steps into the room. “Fine.”
Her right eyebrow rapidly shoots up. “You always say that.”
“I always sleep.”
“Sleeping and resting are not the same thing, young man.”
“Ew, Joyce!” he huffs out with a hint of amusement, wrinkling his nose. “Don’t call me young man!”
“Fine, fine.” She holds up both hands in fake surrender, and the smile that comes with it is real this time, small and quick before it slips away. “Noted for the record.”
The room falls quiet again shortly after, filled only by the mechanical hum vibrating through the walls and the soft tapping of fingers on Joyce’s tablet. She sets it down and gestures to the chair. “Ready?”
Not particularly, but Will heads over and drops down into the seat anyway. “Sure.”
Check-up #1: vitals
(blood pressure - heart rate - oxygen levels)
Check-up #2: reflexes
(eye tracking - movement - response time)
Check-up #3: cognitive response
(patterns - memory recall - problem solving - reading comprehension)
Joyce wraps the monitoring band around his arm with practiced care, her gloved fingers brushing against the fabric of his sleeve instead of his skin.
The cuff tightens as it takes his blood pressure before gradually releasing its grip again.
Will watches her while she reads the results. There are dark circles beneath her eyes, more noticeable than yesterday. There isn’t much to do here except learn, observe and memorize. He’s become very good at all three.
“You stayed up late again,” he utters.
“So did you.”
“You don’t know that.”
A smile ghosts across her face, “I know you.”
Will presses his lips together, the blinking lights of the monitor beside him suddenly being very interesting.
Joyce isn’t like the other scientists, no matter how much they pretend like she is. She’s the one who stays a little longer. The one who asks questions that don’t always have to do with his health. The one who sits beside his bed in the middle of the night, trying to calm him from whatever nightmare that dragged him back to consciousness. She’s the closest he’s ever had to a living parent.
After checking his vitals, she moves onto the routine series of questions.
“Any discomfort?” Her eyes flick between him and the tablet in her hands.
“No.”
"Dizziness?" Nausea?”
“No.”
“Headaches?”
“No.”
She hesitates a little before asking, “Anything unusual?”
Will considers the question. He was born on Mars, raised inside a research station, forbidden from being touched. Everything about him is unusual. That’s the entire point of having to go through these daily tests. I don’t exactly have a doppelgänger roaming the deserted nothingness of Mars, do I? But he understands what she’s asking.
“My left shoulder kinda hurts after yesterday’s training,” he admits. “I think I slept on it weird.”
Joyce nods right away, probably relieved he answered truthfully. “Sharp pain, or soreness?”
“Just soreness.”
“Can you move it normally?”
Will rotates his arm experimentally. “Yeah. Feels fine.”
“Good. We’ll keep an eye on it and ease up on the upper-body exercises this afternoon.”
Joyce always talks about his problems like they belong to the both of them, like she’s always there to carry some of the weight.
Guilt curls low in his stomach, especially since he’s still lying to her. He has been for several weeks now. About Mike, the chats and the fact that he hacked the station’s security system months ago just to talk to someone his own age. The first true friendship he’s ever experienced has been blossoming in complete secrecy.
Joyce shines a small flashlight into his eyes for the reflex exam, and Will has to force himself to stay still while his thoughts refuse to.
“Look straight ahead for me.”
He obeys and the beam catches his iris, making him squint.
“Sorry,” Joyce murmurs.
“Don’t worry, nothing I’m not used to.”
“Believe it or not, this is considered highly specialized work.”
That earns a chuckle out of him. “Pretty sure your job description is more complicated than that.”
“Now that you mention it, the Nobel Prize committee has been awfully quiet about my flashlight technique.”
Will shakes his head in amusement as she moves onto the next test. The cognitive assessments are the part he dislikes most, no matter how flawlessly he runs through all of them.
He sinks a bit deeper into the chair, his answers turning more automatic as his attention is drawn from the screen in front of him to the monitors displaying the station’s exterior camera feeds.
“You’re drifting again,” Joyce gently reminds him.
Will blinks, pulling himself back to her. “Sorry.”
She peers up at him, holding his gaze for a split second longer than necessary.
“What?”
“It’s just that… You’ve seemed a bit distracted lately.”
Will looks away first and that alone is probably enough of an answer for her.
His eyes settle somewhere past her shoulder. After all these years, Joyce knows the signs — when his shoulders tense up, his answers grow too careful or when his fingers start picking at the cuff of his sleeve to avoid eye contact. She recognizes when he has his guard up and doesn’t want to let anyone in.
Some people learn your favorite color, your birthday or your coffee order. Joyce perfected the language of his silences. Sometimes she understands him too well. Other times, not nearly enough.
“You can tell me things. You know you always can.”
Will draws in a long breath, his attention dropping to the floor. He knows she means it sincerely. That’s what makes it worse, because where would he even begin?
Hey Joyce, I think the loneliness here has started growing roots inside of me and is slowly eating me alive. I really hate this place and oh! I also secretly hacked interplanetary communications to chat with a friend from Earth you know nothing about.
Instead, he tilts his head slightly before responding, “I do tell you things.”
Her features soften in a way that tells him she doesn’t believe him for even a second. “You know that’s not what I meant, sweetheart. I can see when something’s bothering you.”
He knows she sees through all the cracks he’s trying so desperately to hide. Thankfully, she’s always been gentle enough not to pry them open. That’s one of the things Will appreciates most about her.
Joyce never tugs at his locked doors with both hands. She patiently waits outside of them with enough trust he’ll eventually unlock them on his own. On his better days, he thinks he might. Most days, though, the words stay lodged too deep in his chest to even begin untangling.
How is he supposed to explain his feelings to someone else when he barely understands them himself?
How do you mourn a mother you don’t remember? How do you explain the strange grief that comes with missing a life you’ve never lived? A planet you’ve never touched? A freedom you’ve never been allowed to experience? A friend you’ll never get to meet?
There are certain losses in life that don’t leave graves behind.
Opening up in an environment that’s often too small for vulnerability scares him. Your feelings can’t go anywhere once they exist out loud. There are no crowds to disappear into, no bedroom doors to slam before taking a walk to cool off, no city lights to wander under until the ache in your chest becomes manageable again.
Some things are safer left unspoken, at least for now.
He can’t put his entire well-being in Joyce’s hands, can he? That wouldn’t be fair on her. Besides, there are some questions she always tends to skirt around rather than address directly.
He’s tired of everyone swallowing down his mother’s name halfway through a sentence, treating the words like fragile glass on their tongues, as if knowledge would wound him. And maybe they’re right. Maybe knowing more about her would hurt, but he doesn’t care anymore. He’d take anything over the current silence surrounding her. It has had eighteen years to prove it can wound people just as deeply.
He pinches the bridge of his nose. Will is supposed to be reading for his last cognitive response test, but the words blur together on the screen, his attention drifting to Joyce’s previous statement.
You can tell me things.
The sentence has been circling inside his head like a satellite. Maybe that’s why he can’t shake off the question that’s been burning on the tip of his tongue for quite some time now.
“I know you want me to tell you stuff,” he whispers, eyes fixated on the paragraphs like they might anchor him, “but can I ask you something instead?”
“You just did.”
“Um.” He gulps, fingers fidgeting with the sleeve of his sweatshirt. “Can I ask you something you’ll actually answer?”
“Depends on the question,” she replies cautiously.
Of course it does.
Will nods, trying to choose his words carefully before speaking. “Have you ever missed something, even when you’ve never really had it?”
Joyce’s fingers stop moving. The silence that follows feels different from the comfortable ones they’ve shared before. This one has an unspoken answer hiding inside it.
“Yes,” she confesses, not meeting his eyes.
“What was it?”
Her mouth presses into a thin line, shoulders tensing in immediate regret. “Will…”
She knows he’s thinking about Earth.
“You said you’d answer.”
“I said it depends on the question. And I did give you an answer.”
Will exhales through his nose and leans back in the chair. “That’s not really fair. You always do this.”
“Do what?”
“Answer without answering.” The words come out faster than he intends. Louder too, bouncing off the narrow walls in a way that immediately makes him wish he could take some of the volume back.
“Why can’t I know more? You always say it’s for my own good, but nobody ever tells me what the bad is. Like it’s obvious, except it’s not obvious. Not to me.”
He forces himself to slow down. There are a hundred questions fighting to get out, years worth of them, and none of them have ever gotten a straight answer. “Why does everyone act like Earth, my mom, all of it — like they’re secrets I’m not allowed to have?”
Joyce sets the tablet down and looks him right in the eyes. “I’m trying to protect you, honey. That’s all this has ever been.”
Protect.
One of the prime members of what Will calls The Sacred PPP Collection: precaution, protection, procedure. The adults working at the station are remarkably devoted to the trio. Sometimes he wonders if they’re handed a rulebook on their first day of work that merely states: When in doubt, repeat one of the P’s. Judging by their incapability of functioning without these neatly packaged safety words, he suspects the handbook exists.
“Protect me from what exactly?” Will asks, shoulders lifting in a shrug that doesn’t quite mask the tension underneath. “Information?”
“From things that could hurt you, Will. Do you think I like—”
He lets out a small, humorless breath. “Well, that’s kind of everything, isn’t it?”
“Sweetie, I don’t think you understand we’re—”
“Then help me understand, Joyce. Explain it to me. Please.” His heartbeat stutters against his ribs at an uncontrollable rhythm, a familiar pressure winding through his chest like a shadow that’s been waiting for the light to disappear.
He tries so hard to not let his frustration spill over onto her specifically — the one person here who genuinely looks at him before looking at his medical file. Lately, it’s been getting harder to swallow his feelings down before they escape. Especially since talking to Mike has shown him glimpses of a life that was supposed to be his, too.
“I just…” He presses his teeth against the inside of his cheek, buying himself a second. “I don’t see why I can’t—”
Will cuts himself off again, because he does get it. He’s been told enough times.
Your body isn’t built for Earth.
The gravity.
The pressure.
Your heart.
It would be too much, too dangerous.
How ironic, to be homesick for a world your body would struggle to bear.
“I’m sorry. It’s fine. I’m fine here.” The statement sounds so unconvincing that even he can’t pretend to mistake it for the truth.
Joyce thoroughly studies his face in that unnervingly precise way of hers. “You don’t sound like you believe that.”
There’s a pause before he adds, more reluctantly this time, “I just think it’s weird.”
“What is?”
He gestures vaguely around them; the walls, the monitors, the controlled stillness of his surroundings. “This. All of it.”
A slight pinch etches between Joyce’s eyebrows. “The station?”
“No.” He shakes his head once. “Well… yes, but not only that.” He hesitates before continuing,
“I’m the only one.”
Silence follows swiftly, heavy in a way that isn’t awkward, but the kind that nests itself between two people who both recognize the conversation has shifted into dangerous territory.
“I’m the only one who’s… like me.”
Joyce’s hand lifts before she seems to decide it should, fingers already twitching in the space between them, toward his shoulder, his arm, anything.
She catches herself mid-air. Her hand hangs there, close enough that he can feel the ghost of her warmth that isn’t allowed to exist between them. Then she lets her arm drop back to her side, the movement erased just as quickly as it came.
Will doesn’t think she realizes he saw it.
“You’ll always have me,” Joyce responds with a convincing tone.
“I know. And I appreciate that—” He does. God, he does. Will glances at her through his eyelashes, gaze then dropping to her hands and the way she flexes her fingers inside the disposable gloves pulled taut over them. “But it’s not the same. You get to go back to Earth whenever you please. You talk to people I’ve never met. You have an actual life outside of this place.” A beat passes before adding, “I don’t.”
No one else has childhood photos of them growing up under this gravity — their first steps, first words, and every other milestone tied to these walls.
He’s not just different.
He’s singular.
A rush of emotions flash across Joyce’s face. Guilt, perhaps. Or heartbreak. Maybe both. Knowing her, it’s usually both.
She opens her mouth to respond, but Will beats her to it.
“I know why,” he says, standing up abrupt enough for the legs of the chair to scrape against the floor. “You don’t have to explain it again.”
He avoids her gaze entirely now, too busy tugging at the sleeve of his sweatshirt and pretending that requires his full attention. “I’m a bit tired. Gonna head back to my room.”
They don’t finish their conversation. They never do. Joyce tells him they’ll talk about it later.
Will has discovered that later is a peculiar place. It exists far enough into the future that difficult conversations rarely ever find their way there.
─ ⋅✶⋅ ─
By the time Will gets back to his dorm, the silence presses in from all sides, denser than the filtered air.
A hand drags through his hair before he slowly crosses the room, restlessness clinging to him in a way that has nothing to do with a lack of sleep.
He drops down onto the edge of his bed with a sigh, elbows resting against his knees as he absently stares at the floor without bothering to switch on the lights.
Have you ever missed something, even when you’ve never really had it?
Joyce has said yes. Not right away, but she said yes.
What was it?
Part of him wishes he’s pushed harder before leaving. Another part is relieved he didn’t, because what if she’d actually answered truthfully, giving him a glimpse into her own struggles and desires? Would it make him feel better dealing with his own shit? Would knowing make the emptiness smaller, or just give it a new name?
A soft chime suddenly cuts through the quiet, jolting him out of whatever train of thought he got lost in. Will’s head instantly snaps up in the direction of his computer across the room.
Another notification follows barely a second later, louder this time.
He’s already on the move before his brain fully catches up, almost tripping as his foot snags on the edge of the rug and he nearly collides with the desk in his haste.
The chair scrapes loudly against the floor when he sinks into it, fingers already dancing across the keypad, slipping through strictly prohibited pathways he wasn’t supposed to find. Impossible to bypass, scientists had told him. The security protocols would probably make most people give up immediately.
For once, it’s a good thing Will isn’t most people.
Turns out growing up isolated leaves a person with a lot of free time on his hands. Being raised around scientists who severely underestimate how observant he actually is does the rest.
When the curiosity door is already ajar, then who is he to not slip his foot through the doorway and only leave it standing half-open?
The screen’s pale blue glow overwhelms him for five solid seconds with the lights still out. He squints hard as the brightness catches his retinas, vision adjusting. When his eyes finally focus, a familiar username appears with a message beneath it.
[ CHAT LOG — USER PALADINMIKE STARTED THE CHAT ]
Paladinmike: HELLO???? Earth to Will
Paladinmike: You disappeared again
Paladinmike: Starting to think you’re doing it on purpose
Paladinmike: Which, RUDE, by the way
Will releases a breath he didn’t know he was holding.
And there it is again: this unfamiliar feeling in his chest brewing right behind his ribcage, planting itself into the hollow spaces between heartbeats with a warmth to it that’s difficult to define.
Mike has only existed in his life for a few months. A faceless stranger hidden behind a screen and a username Will probably shouldn’t trust as easily as he does. And somehow, in between late-night conversations and terrible jokes and debates on whether cereal counted as soup, Mike became the realest part of Will’s world. The kind of loud presence silence struggles to compete with, weaving himself into the rhythm of his days until loneliness no longer seemed to fit there quite as comfortably.
His messages carry entire pieces of another world tucked in between ordinary words.
Will watches the cursor blink back at him impatiently, expectantly.
Then, his fingers hover over the keyboard.
Earthlingwill is typing…