Archive of Our Own

Will had known he was in love with Mike Wheeler since he was eleven years old, sitting in the back of a movie theater watching something neither of them cared about while Mike laughed at his own joke.

It came easily to him.

It's you. It's going to be you, and maybe it always has been.

He'd sat with that knowledge for five years and done absolutely nothing about it, which was something that he felt comfortable with.

Mike was his best friend. Mike was loud and dramatic and every time he entered a room, Will noticed. He was the most important person in WIll’s life, and he planned to keep it that way. So he started trying to shove those thoughts away to the best of his ability.

Then Mike presented alpha at fifteen, and Will presented omega two months later, and things got significantly harder.

The thing nobody told you about presenting omega (or maybe they tried and Will wasn't listening, which was possible, he'd been doodling a lot more in the margins of his class notes that week) was that it didn't change who you were. 

It just turned the volume up on things that were already there. The instincts had always existed, apparently, humming at a frequency Will hadn't been able to hear before. 

Now, they were loud. Now his body had opinions about everything. About rooms and warmth - where he sat and what he smelled and who stood close to him.

About Mike. Constantly, about Mike.

That was the part that made it complicated. Before, Will's feelings about Mike had lived in a private part of his brain, nobody's problem but his own. But once he presented, suddenly his nervous system had feelings about Mike, too. Had filed him under alpha, safe, food, and there was nothing Will could do except for try and be normal and hope that Mike didn’t noticed.

Mike noticed. Mike noticed everything, which was one of Will's favorite and least favorite things about him depending on the day.

The shame wasn't about being omega, exactly - or it wasn't only that. 

It was about being omega in front of Mike. It was about Mike seeing the instincts - the nesting, the way Will's body oriented toward him in a room without permission, the way certain smells hit Will and his brain turned to mush.

Looking at Will and seeing not his best friend of eight years but a designation, a thing with biological opinions about alphas.

Will did not want to be controlled by that. He wanted to be a person who chose Mike. There was a difference, and it mattered enormously, and he wasn't sure he could explain it to anyone, but the difference lived in his chest every day.

So he managed his feelings as carefully as possible, and kept the omega instincts out of sight. He sat next to Mike at lunch and in the basement and in the back of Joyce's car and let himself have exactly the warmth of a best friend and nothing else.

It was mostly fine because Mike is still mostly the same. Mike makes space - physically moves to create more room - whenever Will comes to sit with the group, which he's always done. Mike still passes him the controller first and still saves him the seat closest to the heater in the basement.

Except now they're both something they weren't before, and it's made everything weird and careful. Will missed the loud version of his friend so much it was its own separate wound.

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Will made his first nest a few months after presenting. 

He hadn't meant for it to happen. He came home from a bad day, one where nothing specific went wrong, but it was overwhelming anyway. He dropped his bag by the door and went to his room, sitting on his bed.

When he got cold, instead of using the blankets on his bed, he crept quietly into his mom’s room. Folded up on the dresser, always, was a green blanket. One with the fraying corner that was Jonathan’s first, and then his own when he was born. He snatched it, and went back into his room. Pulled it around his shoulders.

And then he was on the floor, which was closer to the wall, which was better somehow. He was tucking the blanket tighter, adding the hoodie from the chair because it smelled like him and that helped. He was rearranging things until the weight was distributed exactly right, until he was surrounded on three sides and the fourth side was the wall, and it was -

Really good, actually. It was really good.

He held that feeling for about thirty seconds before he realized what he'd made and then he took it apart so fast he got rug burn.

He put everything exactly back where it was, including returning the blanket to Joyce’s room, and sat on his bed to do homework until dinner.

But Joyce Byers had been an omega her whole life, and never once waited for someone to give her permission to take care of herself.

Will found the blanket three days after the nest incident. Sage green, soft, folded at the end of his bed like it had always been there. He picked it up and it smelled like laundry detergent and faintly like his mom and he had to sit down on the floor because his legs went strange on him.

She didn't say a word about it. She didn't say anything about the corner of the couch he'd claimed, or the way he always sat with his back to something solid, or the slightly too-long time he spent in his room these days and came out looking softer around the eyes. She just kept leaving more things. A pillow, string lights for his room, started putting his cereal on the lower shelf right where he could reach in the morning.

Little by little, she was helping him feel safe in every corner of the house in a new way.

⋆*･ﾟ:⋆*･ﾟ⋆*･ﾟ:⋆*･ﾟ

Joyce had also let Jonathan finally convert the shed in the backyard recently. 

He dragged extension cords from the house, insulated the walls with whatever he could find at the hardware store on a budget that was mostly leftover birthday money, sealed every gap where light could get in with a patience that had taken him the better part of three weekends. 

Joyce had watched him do it from the kitchen window and hadn't said anything except make sure you're not tripping the breaker and then quietly bought him a proper safelight for Christmas that year.

Will had always known not to go in without knocking. That was just the rule, the same way Jonathan knew not to touch Will's sketchbooks. Some things were yours and everyone understood that.

He knocked their knock - three fast, two slow - and Jonathan's voice came through the wood, “Come in!”

Will slipped inside and stood in the red-lit dark while his eyes adjusted. It smelled like chemicals, and something that was deeply, specifically Jonathan - old wood, developing fluid, omega. 

He had everything arranged neatly. Chemicals within reach, the chair positioned in the perfect place, photos strung at exactly the right height on lines that crossed the low ceiling, everything in arm's distance.

Oh, Will thought.

Oh, Jonathan has one too.

"You good?" Jonathan asks without looking up from the developing tray.

"Yeah," Will says. He leans against the door. "This room always smells the same."

Jonathan glances up at that. "That a complaint?"

"No." Will looks around. "I like it a lot actually."

Jonathan watches him for a moment with quiet attention, then he pulls the extra stool out from under the table with his foot, nudging it toward Will.

Will sits down.

They don't say anything else for a while. Jonathan works while Will watches. The red light makes everything feel separate from the rest of the world, hushed and safe, and Will feels something in his chest unbend slowly like a fist unclenching.

"Mom rearranged the living room again," Will says eventually.

"Third time this year."

"The corner's different."

"Yeah." Jonathan turns a photo in the tray. "She does that when she's -" he pauses, choosing a word. "Settling."

Will looks at him. Jonathan doesn't look back, but his mouth does something soft.

"Do you -?" Will starts to ask, but stops himself.

"Yeah," Jonathan says. No clarification of the question and no big moment made of it. Just yeah, as he tips his head almost imperceptibly at the room around them.

Will looks at the room. At the nest Jonathan has built without ever calling it that.

"Does it get easier?" Will asks. "The -" He gestures vaguely at himself. The everything.

Jonathan is quiet for a moment. "Yeah - it all does,” was what he said. “The first year is really loud, but you’ll find how to feel like yourself again.”

Will thought about this for a long time. He stood in the doorway of his own room afterward and looked at it differently - at the corner, at the desk chair that would make a good wall.

He didn't build the nest that night, but the next time he did, he left it standing for an hour before he took it apart. That was, at least, some sort of progress.

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The Party had a meeting in Mike’s basement on Friday night because El's powers had been doing something new and everyone wanted to see.

She was focusing on floating things. Starting with a pencil, then an eraser, but getting larger as the night went on. At one point, she had floated the chair that Dustin was sitting in just to mess with him.

Will was sitting against the basement wall with his sketchbook in his lap, drawing nothing in particular. Which actually meant that he was drawing Mike.

It just kept happening. He'd start with something else like the basement stairs, and then his hand would drift and Mike would appear in the margins. The line of his jaw. The way his hands moved when he talked. Will would notice after the fact and turn the page.

He’d filled the majority of his current sketchbook like this.

Mike was across the room deep in a debate with Lucas about whether telekinesis would count as a ranged attack in D&D, which was the kind of argument that could and often did last for the entire night. He was gesturing with his whole body, and his voice had raised to a volume just above acceptable. 

"Ranged means physical projectile," Lucas was saying. "A rock, an arrow-"

"Ranged means the attack originates from a distance," Mike said. He had pulled out the handbook full of definitions, which lived permanently out on the floor of the basement. "It is literally defined as-"

"You're going to quote the handbook."

"I'm going to quote the handbook because the handbook-"

"Mike," El said, placidly, from across the room. The pencil she'd been floating dropped and she looked at the ceiling. This was not supposed to be the topic of conversation for the night, and the boys had stopped paying attention to what actually mattered. 

"Right," Mike said. "Right, yes." He sat down and only lasted about thirty seconds. "But for the record-"

"Mike!” It was Dustin this time.

"Okay - I’m just saying."

Will watched from the sidelines, feeling a warmth in his chest about how normal this all was. Despite all of their new biological genders, and the uneasy feeling of not being prepared for whatever Vecna is planning next, they were all hanging out in the basement together again.

And he had missed getting monologued at about campaign decisions, he had missed Mike at full volume.

"You doing okay?" Mike asked, and Will startled, because Mike had crossed the room and was now crouching in front of him with his face very close to Will's own and his scent (rain and clean air and that faint electric edge, the storm-before-it-breaks smell) directly in Will's breathing space.

Will had to push his reaction down, told it to calm down. 

"Yeah," Will said. "Totally."

Mike's eyes moved to the sketchbook, and by instinct Will tilted it from him slightly away. Mike's mouth did the thing where it tried not to smile.

"You've been quiet," Mike said, his voice soft.

"El's floating a pencil, Mike. There are bigger things in the room,” he said with a level of sarcasm under his tone, even though he most certainly had not been focusing on them.

“Okay, yeah, fair."

"Also Dustin keeps saying 'cognitively speaking' like anyone even understands what that means.”

Mike laughed - short and startled, and looked down at the floor with his hand over his mouth in that way he had when something caught him off guard. It had been a while since Will had made him laugh like that.

"He really has to cool it with the thesaurus,” Mike agreed, before looking down at the ground.

Will could tell he was trying to find the words for whatever came next.

"Hey," Mike said, quieter. “I've been - I know things have been weird lately. Like, between us. I just want you to know that's not -" He stopped and started again. "I don't want things to be weird."

"They're not weird," Will said immediately, which was the most blatant lie he had told in recent memory.

Mike gave him a look.

"They're a little weird," Will allowed.

"A little -" Mike stopped himself with visible effort. "Okay, fine. A little weird. I've been trying to be - considerate? I guess, about the whole thing. And I can tell it's making everything worse and I don't know how to stop."

Will looked at him. This was more like it, having an actual conversation with Mike. So he let himself lean in and admit something out loud. "You're more careful with me than you are with anyone else."

"Because it matters more," Mike said, slightly too fast, then immediately looked like he regretted saying it, so he redirected. "I just don't want to overstep."

"The problem is you're so worried about overstepping that you're not stepping at all. You're just standing there not saying anything to me half the time and it's weird."

Mike opened his mouth, closed it. "That's a very specific critique."

"I've had a lot of time to think about it."

"So what do you want me to do?”

"Just be normal," Will said. "That's all I want. I want you to be normal with me."

Mike was quiet for a beat. “Can normal include me sitting closer? Because the floor over there sucks and you're near the blanket pile."

Will stared at him, feeling himself start to smile.

"For my back," Mike added. "Purely ergonomic."

"Sure, Mike," Will said. "Purely ergonomic."

Mike moved to sit next to Will against the basement wall, close enough that their shoulders touched, and Will pulled the blanket pile into his lap and handed half of it to Mike without any other words.

El was doing something with the pencil again, and across the room Lucas and Dustin had gotten into their own argument about whether Dustin's documentation counted as scientific method, and for the first time in months Will's skin felt like it fit correctly.

The rain-and-petrichor smell of Mike settled around him. Will breathed it in once, closing his sketchbook so that he didn’t think about what was on the pages.

Mike reached over without looking and adjusted the blanket over Will's knee where it had slipped.

-

As things began to settle with Mike, school had started to get worse. 

Sophomore year everyone started to present, not just him and his friends. 

Egos started to get bigger, and Troy Walsh had recently presented as an alpha and decided that it was going to be everyone else’s problem.

He sat two rows behind Will in history class, and Mr. Rosen was doing a unit on the designation rights movement - the push through the late sixties for omega workplace protections and the Education Access Act of 1978 that had made programs like the one at Hawkins High legally mandatory. 

He was the kind of teacher who presented everything with deliberate neutrality, both-sidesing things that Will privately felt did not have two sides, and today he was walking through the opposition arguments with the same flat academic tone he used for everything.

Proponents of the traditional model argued that designation-based social organization reflected a natural order that had existed across human societies for centuries, Mr. Rosen said, writing “NATURAL ORDER” on the board in chalk.

Will kept his eyes on his notes.

Critics of the Education Access Act claimed that integrated classrooms created unnecessary friction and disrupted the learning environment for all students, Mr. Rosen continued.

"I mean, you can see where they were coming from though," Troy said, loud enough to carry, but casual enough to be deniable. "Scientifically speaking."

Mr. Rosen paused in the way teachers paused when they were deciding whether to engage. "The scientific consensus on designation determinism is actually quite contested, Troy."

"Sure," Troy said. "But like, natural order. Some things just make sense."

Will wrote a note in the margin of his paper, the handwriting came out smaller than usual. He started to become more aware of Mike, who sat right next to him and was practically starting to vibrate.

The lesson moved on, Will kept his eyes forward.

The second time was after Mr. Rosen turned to the board to write something. Troy leaned slightly toward the kid next to him. "Must be weird though,  being in a class where you're like, the subject."

Will's pencil slowed.

The third time Mr. Rosen was at the back of the room helping someone with a question. Troy leaned forward and said, “Hey, Byers - this part's probably familiar to you. The natural order stuff, right?"

Will ignored him to the best of his ability, breathing in and out by counts of four. He thought that maybe this was just something he had to get used to.

After the bell he went to his locker and stood with his forehead almost touching the cool metal and breathed. He was fine, he was completely fine. Troy had been saying variations of this since Will presented and Will had survived all of them. This was just Tuesday.

He heard Mike before he saw him.

He couldn’t quite make out the words, but would hear his voice behind him. He was pissed, Will knew that for sure. He turned around.

Mike was in the hallway outside the classroom door, Troy Walsh was in front of him, and the two alphas were pressurizing the corridor with their pheromones, people clearing out around them and giving them space.

Troy was bigger than Mike, broader, and he was puffing out his chest to show it.

Mike was not doing the thing you were supposed to do when a bigger alpha squared up at you, which was give ground. Mike was standing exactly where he'd planted himself and did not move. Whatever alpha instinct was supposed to make him take a step back, he was ignoring it completely.

"Say it again," Mike said, perfectly even. "I didn't catch all of it from the front of the room."

Troy laughed, but it had an edge to it now, the laugh of someone recalibrating. "Wheeler, relax, it was just-”

"It wasn't. I've been watching you do this since September and I'm done watching."

"You're seriously going to-" Troy stepped forward slightly. Deliberate. The scent of him sharpened, an alpha emphasis that was supposed to signal back down. "Over Byers?”

Mike didn't move, not one inch. "Yeah," he said. "Over Byers."

"He's an omega, Wheeler, I'm just-”

"You're done," Mike said again, with the finality of someone closing a book. "I’ve been watching you say that shit for the past month, and it’s over. And Will will let me know if you give him any more shit.”

Then Troy did what alphas did when they decided something wasn't worth it - made it look like leaving had been his plan, like he was choosing to walk away rather than being refused. He laughed again, shook his head, and went.

Mike watched him go. His shoulders didn't come down immediately.

Then he turned around and found Will standing six feet away and his expression shifted completely. The confidence left his body, and he looked much less certain than he had just a moment ago.

"How long were you standing there?"

"Long enough," Will said.

Mike looked at him carefully, reading his face the way he'd been doing since they were eight years old. "Was that - are you-?"

"It was okay," Will said. He meant it was more than okay, it was you defending me like an alpha. Instead, he just said, “Thank you.”

Mike breathed out, some of the set went out of his jaw as he walked closer to Will. "He's been doing it all year," he said, lower. "Every time and I kept waiting to see how you wanted to handle it and then I realized you weren't going to because you shouldn't have to be the one to - it shouldn't be on you. It's not on you." He was rambling slightly, which happened when he was coming down from something. "You shouldn't have to handle it."

"No," Will agreed. "Probably not."

Mike looked at him.

"Walk me to next period?" he asked, not sure how to sit in this moment any longer.

"Yeah," Mike said. "Obviously."

They walked side by side down the hallway, close enough that their arms occasionally touched, and Will thought that this was maybe the best he was ever going to get.

At lunch the Party assembled at their usual table. Will was still reeling from the morning, and then last period he got a C on his Algebra test, which was really just a cherry on top of the shit day.

Dustin was mid-theory about Steve Harrington's designation, and Will sat with his sandwich and tried to listen.

He was fine until Lucas said something offhand about omega week accommodations in a tone that meant it had never once cost Lucas anything to say, like he was talking about the weather outside. And nobody at the table even noticed.

Will sat there with the weight of how much he hadn’t told anyone. How much he was desperately trying to keep inside about the “omega weeks” and what they were actually like. How building a nest sometimes felt like he had committed a crime and had to clean up the evidence. 

He didn't eat much of his lunch.

He took the long way home, or, the longer way. Through the part of the neighborhood where the trees were close together and it smelled like pine and cold mud. He stopped under the big oak on the outskirts of his neighborhood, stopped biking, and stood there for a while with one hand on the bark to breathe.

He went home.

The nest he built that afternoon was the best one yet.

He knew what he was doing now. Green blanket first, that was always the foundation, then a few from his bed. The old flannel from the back of his closet, the second-favourite hoodie, he threw in a scarf this time too. He turned the desk chair to create a wall. He drew the curtains and turned the string lights on and the room went amber and exactly right.

He added his sketchbook. He added the stuffed dog, which he was done pretending wasn't on the second shelf of his bookcase where he'd kept it since age seven. He adjusted twice and then sat back and looked at what he'd made and felt something finally settle.

He sat in the middle of it and kept taking big, gulping breaths.

He got the sketchbook and drew for a while. Shapes, then something more specific, the view from his window resolving slowly into the neighbor's oak tree that he visited earlier. He filled two pages and felt the bad day start to dissolve.

He was still sitting in the middle of it twenty minutes later when he heard the front door, Joyce's voice, and then footsteps. But Joyce's footsteps went left toward the kitchen, and these went right down the hallway, and then there was a knock at his door.

Three fast. Two slow.

Will went absolutely still.

Jonathan was at the library and he was supposed to be the only other person who knew that knock.

Jonathan taught someone, Will realized, and his heart did a million things.

"Yeah?” he asked, and his voice sounded strange.

Then, muffled through the door, Mike's voice. "Hey, um, can I come in?"

Will looked at his room, around at the nest he was sitting in the center of. At the stuffed dog, which he would deny.

This was exactly what he had been afraid of before. Mike seeing this, seeing him doing the most visibly omega thing that Will did. 

But Mike had learned their knock. Mike had gone to Jonathan, or Jonathan had gone to Mike, and someone had thought he should have a way to reach Will when Will needs reaching.

That was a lot to hold.

"Yeah," Will said. "Come in."

The door opened and Mike stood in the doorway, Will watched him take in the room. He was still in his jacket, hair windswept and cheeks flushed. He'd biked over in a hurry.

Will waited for it - for the discomfort or overcorrection that he’d been dreading. He’d been bracing for this exact moment for months. Where Mike didn't know the right move and fumbled it, and Will had to watch.

It didn't come.

"Can I sit with you?" was what he asked.

Will didn’t know how to absorb this, but he wasn’t going to turn him down.

"Yeah," he said. "Take your shoes off first, please.”

Mike looked so genuinely relieved at Will’s answer, that Will almost melted. He toed off his sneakers outside the doorway and came in, closing the door softly behind him. He sat down just outside the edge of the nest, barely touching one of the blankets. He sat right next to Will with his back on the same part of his bed, bringing his knobby knees up to rest his arms on top.

His scent came with him, the kind that made Will think of the sky right before a storm when everything went still. It settled into the room without crowding it.

Will breathed it in and felt something in him slow down.

"Your mom let me in," Mike said. “She was headed to run an errand or something, told me she’d be back later if I wanted to stay for dinner.”

"I figured."

"I tried calling, but she said you didn’t want to come to the phone. Dustin told me you left lunch weird." Mike looked at his hands. "I wasn't going to come. I actually sat in my room for an hour telling myself you probably wanted space, and then I was here anyway."

Will looked at him. "I don't want space."

Mike looked up.

"I'm tired of it."

Mike held his gaze for a moment. "Me too," he murmured. "I'm really tired of it."

They sat with that.

"The Troy thing," Will started to say.

"I'm not sorry about it."

"I know."

"He's been doing it since September. I watched him do it every day and I physically could not stop myself this time."

Will picked at the fraying edge of the green blanket. "I was embarrassed, for like two minutes, and then I wasn't."

Mike looked at him carefully. "Yeah?"

"Yeah, I guess I appreciate it more than anything. That you stood up for me, even though you probably would have got your ass beat,” he laughed a little, trying to lighten the mood.

Mike was quiet for a moment. "It's not everything I wanted to say to him," he said, lower. "But it was what I could say in the hallway."

Will looked up.

Mike was looking at him with that expression. Will knew it, had known it for a long time.  It was the one that meant Mike had been sitting on something and was finally going to say it. Will had seen it before campaign reveals, before the time in seventh grade Mike told him he was the best person he knew, which Will had carried around for two years without knowing what to do with it.

"Can I-?" Mike said, and gestured vaguely at the edge of the blanket.

Will lifted it and held it out.

Mike took it like it was something careful and tucked it around his own knees and something clicked so completely into place that Will didn't know how to account for it. 

Mike was in the nest. Mike was in the nest like he was allowed to be there, like it was normal, like it didn't expose anything.

"I have a thing," Mike said eventually, at the ceiling, in the tone of someone confessing to a parking violation. "Where I rearrange my room."

Will waited.

"Like, the furniture. I've moved my bed four times and my mom actually confiscated my Allen wrench, but I've been telling her it's feng shui for three months."

Will stared at him, a little bit endearingly, like he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. "Mike."

"What?”

"That's nesting. You moved your bed four times-"

"It was for the room, making sure that everything had a place.”

"Mike."

"Fine," Mike said, loudly. "Fine. Maybe it's - I don't know what it is. Alphas don't-” He stopped for a moment. “I didn't know that's what it was because nobody told me, so I've been calling it something else, and now you're telling me what it actually is. And maybe it’s adjacent to nesting, and I'm having a moment about it here, so if you could just-”

"I'm not laughing at you," Will couldn’t let him go on thinking that.

Mike stopped.

"I've been building this-" Will gestured at the nest around them. "And tearing it apart, every time, for months. Because I didn't want anyone to see it." He paused. "Because I didn't want you to see it."

Mike went very still.

"Because I care what you think. Especially you, and I didn't want you to look at me and see the omega stuff. Instead of just me."

The room was quiet. The string lights hummed faintly.

"Will," Mike said quietly, very careful. "When have I ever-”

"Never," Will said. "You never have. That's not about you, it's about me. It's about me being-" He exhaled. "Being in love with you and being terrified of you knowing something about me that feels like it might give it away."

Silence.

Will looked at the string lights. He had not planned to say that, what happened to pushing it down?

"Being in love with me?” Mike asked.

"Yeah."

"Like - currently?”

"Actively, yeah." Will kept his eyes on the lights. "You can say something now, or not, I guess. Either way is-"

"Will." Mike's voice had gone very soft, which was unusual enough that Will looked at him. Mike was looking back with an expression Will had never seen on him before - something open and slightly overwhelmed underneath it. "I've been in love with you for years."

Will stared at him.

"I'm not-" Mike's voice cracked slightly, so he cleared his throat. "I'm not saying it to - I just want to be clear that this is not new information for me. This is extremely old information. I haven’t stopped thinking about you for years, and I’ve been going insane trying to not say anything to you.”

"You've been in love with me for years," Will said, repeating his words back in disbelief. 

"And then you presented and I presented and everything got so much more complicated and I didn't know how to - I was scared. That you'd think I only - that it was about the alpha-omega thing and not about you, and I couldn't figure out how to say it in a way that made it clear that it's always been you specifically, so I just - didn't say it."

Will looked at him. At the familiar face of him, slightly flushed now, talking too fast, which was Mike when he was really telling the truth with no filter.

“It’s always been you for me, too,” he said slowly, since they were already saying things they couldn’t take back. 

“I think it started to hit me when you were first taken. I couldn’t control myself, and no one really understood why. I didn’t even really understand it either,” Mike looked more serious as his mind brought him back, eyebrows furrowing.

Will grabbed his hand with a newfound confidence, till reeling, but wanting Mike to know that he was right here.

He continued, “But I can actually remember the moment that it hit me, that maybe what I was feeling was normal if I just looked at it differently. And it’s going to sound really stupid, but we were at the arcade, and you bumped into one of the machines, and turned around and apologized to it.” 

Will snorted - because yeah, that sounds about right.

Mike laughed with him, squeezing his hand tighter. “I knew that what I was feeling was just about how special you are to me, and how I was afraid to lose that before we had the chance to be anything else.”

Will knew he was maybe staring a little bit too hard, but couldn’t bring himself to stop. This was the moment he had dreamed of, and it was better than he imagined, but it was also overwhelming. How could he contain anything that he was feeling?

He let out a little whine, and Mike immediately pulled him into his arms, nuzzling his head on top of Will’s.

"I've thought about it a lot,” Will said into his chest. “About how much I wanted this.”

“Me too,” Mike replied softly, brushing his fingers over Will’s bare arm.

"And you were scared I'd think it was the designation thing?”

Mike hummed.

"And I was scared you only saw the designation thing."

Mike blinked at that, pulling away slightly so that he could look into Will’s eyes. "What?"

"I was ashamed." Will said it plainly, because it was true. "Of the omega stuff - because I'm in love with you and I didn't want you seeing me do omega things and thinking that was all that I was." He looked at the nest around them. "That's why I've been tearing these apart for months. Because if you saw one you'd know something about me and I didn't know how you'd look at me after. And then you came in just now, and you looked at it like it was just my room. Like it was just me."

Mike was quiet for a moment, and when he spoke his voice was lower. "It is just you. It's always just been you, Will. The designation thing is-" He shook his head. "I didn't even know about the alpha thing until this summer. I'd already been going insane for two years by then."

Will looked at him. At the complete earnestness, what Will had always loved most about Mike even when it drove him insane. Mike Wheeler could not be half-hearted about anything, including loving people, including loving Will, apparently.

Mike started to lean in, just saying, “Will?”

Will closed the distance.

The kiss was soft, and it was Will’s first. Brief at first, tentative, and then Mike made a small sound that was probably not intentional and his hand came up to the side of Will's face and stayed there, warm and careful. Will felt it somewhere he didn't have a word for.

They pulled back and looked at each other.

Mike's ears were spectacularly red, and he suddenly looked younger.

“Wow,” was all Mike said, flustered.

Will leaned in again this time, never wanting this moment to be over.

Mike kissed him, and this time it wasn't brief. Will's hand found the front of Mike's jacket and held on. Mike's thumb traced a slow deliberate line along Will's jaw, and somewhere outside the amber string-lit room was another world that they would have to think about at some point, but nothing could get to them here.

They broke apart slowly.

Mike pressed his forehead against Will's, and they just stayed there for a moment.

"I'm never going to let you forget that you apologized to the Dig Dug machine."

“Oh no, you loved it.”

Mike laughed, breath warm against Will's face. 

He pulled back enough to look at Mike properly. “You’re going to be my alpha?”

Mike nodded back enthusiastically, “Of course - we’re going to be together forever, my omega.”

Will smiled widely.

"Okay," Will said.

"Okay," Mike said back. "Good." He looked at the nest, at the blankets and Will’s stuffed dog that he kindly said nothing about. "Is this okay? Me being in here?"

Will looked at his room. At all of it.

"Yeah," he said. "It really is."

Mike settled back against the bed. Will settled next to him, closer than before, and Mike's arm found its way around his shoulders again. They sat in the amber quiet for a long time.  

Will eventually started to draw in his sketchbook again, Mike pulling out his own schoolwork for something to do.

"Is that me?" Mike said eventually.

"No.”

"It's definitely me - it has my hair.”

"Lots of people have hair, Michael."

Mike leaned over and looked at the sketchbook properly and Will let him. Mike's expression did something soft and wondering.

"You've been drawing me," he said, biting his lip just slightly.

"For a while, yeah."

"How long is a while?”

"I'm not going to tell you that."

"Will."

"Absolutely not."

Mike looked at him, his smile was slow and a little devastating. "Whatever you tell me cannot be more embarrassing than what I said."

Will looked at the sketchbook, and thought that now was maybe the best time to just get it all out there. “Since maybe the seventh grade," he admitted.

Mike stared at him.

"Don't look at me like that," Will whined, feeling a blush warm his cheeks.

"I'm not-”

"You're about to say something."

"I was just going to say," Mike said, very carefully, "that I have never felt more understood in my life."

Will put the sketchbook face-down on his lap and covered his own face with both hands. Mike laughed - unguarded, the loud version - and Will felt it against his shoulder where they were pressed together. 

He lowered his hands.

Mike was still smiling. “Seventh grade?”

"Don't."

"Okay, I won't." He did not look like someone who would not. "I'm just saying that we have both been going insane about each other for, like, an embarrassingly long time.” 

“What a waste - lots to make up for.”

"Agreed," Mike said. He reached over and turned the sketchbook back over and looked at the drawing again for a long moment. "Can I have this one?"

Will looked at it. It was just Mike, like he had drawn a million times before.

"Yeah," he said softly, already starting to tear the sheet out. "You can have it."

Jonathan came home at five-fifteen and found two pairs of shoes in the hallway outside of Will’s door - Will’s beat-up Reeboks and a pair of Nikes he recognized. He stood there for a moment, smiling a little before going to his own room to drop his bag down.

Then he went to start dinner.

Will came to find him twenty minutes later and hugged him from the side, nudging his head into Jonathan’s shoulder.

Jonathan put down the knife he was using to chop an onion.

"Hey, bud,” he said.

"Hey," Will replied, words muffling into Jonathan’s shoulder.

They stayed like that for a moment, Jonathan covered Will's hands with his own.

"Good?" he asked.

"Really good.”

Jonathan nodded and didn't ask anything else, because that was Jonathan. Will eventually let go when he was ready.

Jonathan picked the knife back up and Will went to get plates to start setting the table - four spots. Mike appeared in the doorway, trying to appear neutral, but he was doing a terrible job at controlling his face.

"Can I help?" Mike asked, watching the two Byers siblings putter around the kitchen together. 

Jonathan saw right through him when he looked up. “Can you actually grab the salad stuff from the fridge? There should be some iceberg and a few dressing options that we can throw on the table.”

Mike nodded. He was always more willing to help out when he was around Will’s family, wanting to take care of them all in his own way.

So he got to work, and followed Jonathan’s instructions.

Jonathan started on the sauce, pan sizzling as he threw the chopped onions in. 

The kitchen air was thick with warmth, and started to make Will’s stomach growl in anticipation. Will bumped Mike’s hips as he walked by, moving onto the silverware.

Joyce came home to the three of them and stood in the doorway for a moment taking it in. Jonathan at the stove, Will on the counter swinging his legs back and forth while eating some of the bread that he broke into early. Mike was right next to him, chopping up lettuce and placing it into a large bowl.

"Hi, honey - glad you stayed," she said to Mike, moving fully into the house and locking the door behind her.

"Hi, Mrs. Byers," Mike said, because he had never called her Joyce.

She hung up her coat, and moved into the kitchen without any instruction, giving both Will and Jonathan a kiss on the side of the head before she started to help move everything to the table for dinner.

Once everything was ready, Will looked around at all of his favorite people sitting at the same table together. It wasn’t anything special, just a Tuesday that had started bad, and ended here.

It still didn’t feel real, that he had kissed Mike earlier in his room.

Under the table Mike's foot found Will's and stayed there, pressed up against him. Will looked up and caught his eye, smiling a little under his eyelashes.

Mike was still talking to his mom about how his family was doing, but his own smile broke through when he caught Will’s gaze out of the corner of his eye.

After, they moved to the living room. Jonathan took the armchair by the lamp, a book propped open in front of him. Joyce settled into her corner, adjusting the cushions a few times until she was satisfied. Will noticed Mike watching with quiet interest from their spot on the couch next to Will.

Joyce turned the TV on to Matlock, a show that she had been watching for years.

Mike's arm found its way around Will's shoulders somewhere around the ten-minute mark, and Will let his head tip sideways against Mike's shoulder and closed his eyes for a moment.

He heard Jonathan turn a page.

"Your mom keeps adjusting the cushion," Mike murmured, for Will only.

"Yeah." Will watches his mom settle, her shoulders dropping as she finds the right position. "It's just how she is. How we are."

Mike's arm tightened slightly around his shoulders. Will felt the rain-and-petrichor smell of him all around him. “Byers family thing?”

"Something like that."

Mike is quiet for a moment. Then, "I really like your family."

Will felt the smile before he could stop it. "They like you too - they always have."

Across the room Joyce was smiling too, at the TV for a scene that didn’t need it. She looked at Jonathan next, and he rolled his eyes, trying his best not to say something to embarrass them.

That night, Will had one more important item to add to his nest. Mike had left his jacket on the desk chair when he left. Will picked it up and held it for a moment, bringing it up to his nose to breathe in Mike and alpha. He put it at the edge of the nest.

He sat in the middle of what he had made.

He looked at his room. At the string lights looped around the window frame that Joyce had left, at the art on the walls. His art, his things, pages torn from sketchbooks and anything else he could get his hands on. Not the room he came home to after the Upside Down, not the room he'd hidden in during bad weeks. It was now his.

He picked up his sketchbook and drew until his hand got tired. He left the string lights on, but laid down in the nest, feeling held on all sides.

He thought about Mike's thumb moving against his knuckles in the amber light, patient and steady. He fell asleep thinking about it still.

The next morning, early before school, he heard a noise coming from his walkie talkie, tuned to the private station that he and Mike used when they wanted to talk.

“Mike?” he asked into the walkie, before adding, “Over.”

“I left my jacket,” Mike’s voice rang through. “Over.”

Will looked at the pile that he slept in, the jacket next to his pillow. “You did - over.”

“You gonna keep it?” Mike asked. “Over.”

“Yeah,” Will replied, a little shy. 

“You didn’t say over,” he heard Mike’s teasing voice ring through again. “And just so you know, I was thinking about what you said about wasting time. So I just wanted you to know that I am going to be so obvious it’s embarrassing at school today. I have a lot of pent-up hand holding to get through.” The words crackled through the line, but Will heard enough to understand. “Over.”

Will held the walkie in his hand for a second after Mike stopped talking, thumb still resting near the button. He didn’t answer right away.

He could see it already without trying very hard. The hallway outside second period, too loud, lockers slamming, people cutting between them like always. Mike walking next to him, talking about something that didn’t matter.

And then not having to hesitate, or push his own nature down. Just being able to reach over and take his hand.

Like Lucas wouldn’t say something, like Dustin wouldn’t absolutely lose his mind about it.

Will tipped his head back against the wall for a second.

“Okay,” he said into the walkie finally, softer than before. “Over.”

After he and Mike worked out the logistics of diving in head first to tell the party and the entire world, he dragged himself out of bed. He folded the nest neatly, not away, but tidy. Something that he could come back to.

Joyce was at the kitchen table with her tea and a book. Will poured himself orange juice and sat across from her with a muffin that he grabbed from the counter, as well.

"Good sleep?" she asked.

He hummed in response, taking a drink. 

She looked at him over her mug with a knowing smile on her face.

"Jonathan's in the darkroom," she offered.

"At seven in the morning?"

"I gave him a muffin, he’ll be fine.”

Will laughed, easy and right, and Joyce's eyes crinkled.

The Byers family were three omegas in a small house in Hawkins, and they had built themselves whole without anyone's help. They spoke in soft things left at the ends of beds. They didn't need anyone to complete them.

But it was okay to want. Will had learned that this year, in pieces. From the green blanket at the end of his bed, and a year of building and tearing down before finally, finally leaving it standing. 

This was finally just Will letting himself have something.

He looked up at his mom, "Hey, mom?”

She looked up and hummed.

"Thank you," he said quietly. "For the blanket."

Joyce looked at him for a long moment. "Anytime, baby.”

Will finished his juice before he went back to his room to get ready for school. 

The oak tree in the neighbor's yard is the same oak tree. The sky is the sky.

Mike’s jacket is warm around his shoulders, still faintly smelling like rain. His nest is waiting for him in his room.

It’s all still his - just a little bigger now.