Chapter Text
Friday, August 13th
Will rested his head against the glass of his mother's car's window. That peculiar tingling feeling started to creep into his ears as Indiana passed him by.
Indiana definitely wouldn't have been his first choice if moving had been up to him. The scenery was dull and verging on scratchy and there was nothing particularly interesting about Indiana of all places. If it was all up to him he'd still be in California, but it had been proven that California wasn't an option any more. Not after the events that had seemingly just finished.
So instead of California, Will was speeding down a highway in Indiana while Jonathan was hummed along to Once in a Lifetime. Will tried to mentally calculate just how many times they had gone through Jonathan's road trip playlist. They had to be at five or six by now.
They passed an emerald green road sign listing how many miles away they were from several semi notable towns. Hawkins, 65.
"Only about an hour until we're there." Jonathan said. Will nodded. Out of the entire Byers family, Jonathan was the most okay with moving. There was nothing really tying him to California, and a change of scenery was almost appealing to him.
While it was a mere hour until they arrived, the hour had the consistency of molasses and the minutes didn't seem to be in any hurry. But eventually, the plain dead grass started to turn into an actual city. Not much of a city, but a city none the less. Shops lined the street and sunlight shown through the gaps in the leaves on the trees, making it almost quaint. Cars took up space on the sides of the street and groups of people strolled down the sidewalk.
The robotic Google Maps voice directed them into a more residential part of town and soon enough arrival was confirmed with a "your destination is on the left". Will looked down to his wrist to check the time. 2:57. Pretty decent time. But regardless of what time they got there, there was only do much that could be done before Joyce arrived. "When is Mom going to get here?" Will asked.
Jonathan was tapping something out on his phone. "Not sure. Let me ask." He paused for a bit and then continued to tap. "Why don't you start taking the bags in?" While Joyce was driving the moving truck with most of their belongings, several bags had been stuffed into the back of the car. Will pushed the door open and stepped out into the concrete. He stretched a bit before walking to the trunk. A suitcase fell from the trunk but he was able to catch it and started to drag it to the house.
The house itself wasn't particularly ugly but it wasn't particularly visually appealing either. Red bricks coated the exterior. There was a decorative wood trimming on the edge of the roof covered in peeling white paint. As Will got closer to the house he could see the fraying corner of the screen in the screen door. The dust arrangements of the front porch implied that the previous owners had owned a welcome mat, but the welcome mat was long gone.
The inside was incredibly plain. Will scolded himself for the thought. Of course it's plain. What else were you expecting? The walls were either white or beige, varying from room to room. For the most part, save for the bathroom covered in tile, the flooring was an orange sort of wood with grime in the cracks. Will walked from room to room until he finally decided on a bedroom with a window looking into the backyard and a place in the wall where there had clearly been a hole despite being filled in. He was pretty sure it was a bedroom at least. It was pretty hard to tell from the other rooms due to having no furniture. He set down his suitcase.
"I call dibs on this room!" He called out into the hallway.
"Fine by me!" Jonathan called back. "I call this one!"
"Well that's fine by me!" Will started to walk back to the car. Left in the trunk was another one of his suitcases, one of his mom's suitcases, a few boxes and a miscellaneous duffle bag.. He took his suitcase and his mother's and started to carry them inside. In the corner of the room he claimed, he set down his bag. He walked from room to room again, trying to remember which room was the master bedroom. Eventually he found it and set down his mother's suitcase.
Jonathan walked into the house with the duffle bag thrown over his shoulder and a box in his arms. "Mom said she's about two hours out." He said.
"Okay."
"I'm pretty sure this box is yours." Jonathan set the box down on the floor. Will peered into the box. Inside were several sketchbooks with assorted art supplies scattered across the box.
"Yeah, definitely mine." Will picked it up and started carrying it to his room. After a while the younger two Byers had finished bringing in everything from the car and were left to wait for Joyce.
"How much longer until mom gets here?" Will asked.
Jonathan looked to his phone. "She said two hours about forty five minutes ago, so I guess just over an hour."
"Okay." Will walked to his room. His room. What a weird thought that such a miscellaneous void could be his. He sat in the corner and began to sketch. Art was a sort of default for him. It was his passion, but as of lately it had been more of a time filler due to his lack of inspiration. He wanted to draw something new, something he'd never drawn before, bit the task proved easier said than done. So instead of starting on anything drastic out boundary pushing, he went to his default: a portrait. This portrait was going to be a girl owning a worn face with messy hair falling over sad eyes. He finished the outline and continued to shading. As he was finishing up his regular shading and started to advance to the adding of drama and life to the picture, he heard his mother walk into the house. Will looked glanced down to his watch. There's no way that took an hour he thought, looking down at his sketch. In the end it made sense after he thought about just how meticulous he was with his art and how easy it would be to lose track of time.
"Boys!" She called. "Help me unload the truck" Will got up from his corner and emerged from his room. He walked down the hallway and into the living room. His mom stood in the doorway holding two boxes, both with the words "kitchen" scrawled over the surface. Joyce found her way to the kitchen as Will and Jonathan walked to the moving truck. The most accessible items were several other kitchen boxes. Will took three boxes in his arms. The third towered over his head and he had to tilt his head to the side as not to push the box from it's place. He walked into the house and set the box down in the kitchen. He hadn't yet seen the kitchen, but it was pretty much exactly like the rest of the house except for the things that made it distinctly a kitchen.
The Byers moved boxes and furniture into the house for the rest of the afternoon and well into the evening. Will's stomach growled and apparently he wasn't alone.
"I'm ordering Chinese food." Joyce announced.
"Alright." Will said as he rolled his nightstand to his room via dolly. All the boxes had been brought into the house and all that was left was furniture.
"It would be nice if we had two dollies." Jonathan noted as Will approached the truck.
"Yeah."
"I'll handle the rest of the furniture. You can go inside and open boxes and assembled furniture or whatever."
"Okay." Will started to walk back inside. In the living room Joyce was hovering over a piece of paper, staring daggers into it with several pieces of wood sprawled out in front of her. "You need help?" Will asked.
"Sure." She didn't look up from the paper. Will sat down next to her and looked at the paper. Instructions for a coffee table. His mother's angry facial expressions made a good deal of sense to him as he looked over the instructions. Each of the pieces had been given a name A5, H7, etcétera. However there were no pictures and the words seemed almost intentionally vague.
"Wow." Will said halfway to himself, halfway to his mom.
"I know right! How am I supposed to 'connect B6 and R1'? Am I supposed to use a screwdriver? Do they have connections built in? It doesn't look like it!" She held up two pieces of wood that Will assumed were B6 dnd R1. They struggled with the coffee table for about ten minutes until there was a knocking on the front door.
"Oh! That must be the food." Joyce stood up and walked to the door, eager to escape the coffee table. "Jonathan! The food is here!" She walked back into the house, takeout bag in her hand. Jonathan emerged from the bathroom where he had been hanging a shower curtain with only slightly more success than Will and Joyce had been having with the coffee table.
The Byers gathered in the kitchen and brought three chairs to the table. Joyce began digging through one of the boxes that had been next to the wall in search of plates, while Jonathan searched for silverware. Once both had been found they all sat around the table and passed the food around, filling their plates. Will shoveled rice into his mouth while Joyce spoke of plans for moving in.
"... And my hope is that we would finish sometime in the next three days before school starts."
Will choked on his food. "School?" He asked, incredulous. School was the last thing on his mind.
"School starts on the sixteenth. That's in three days."
Will's eyes widened at the realization that he would be going back to school in three days. Three days was no where near enough time to properly adjust to a new town. "Could I skip the first week and take some time to adjust?" He knew he was asking to much, but what harm would asking do?
"You can't just skip the first week of school."
"But..." He trailed off. Argument was futile. Of course he was going to have school, it wasn't like time would freeze to accommodate him. But it would've been nice if school wasn't being thrown at him out of the blue.
"What d'you say about back to school shopping tomorrow?" Joyce suggested.
"Sure." Will took a bite of an egg roll. Once dinner was done, the Byers went back to assembling furniture and unpacking. And though it was a challenge, Will and Joyce managed to assemble the coffee table and situated it in a corner next to a worn couch. Joyce deemed the coffee table enough work for one night and decided it was a good time to go to sleep. Will and Jonathan made their way to their rooms as well.
Will closed his bedroom door behind him and stared blankly into the room that was supposed to be his. The room belonging to him seemed to be such a foreign concept and the house being his home was verging on unfathomable. It left him feeling nothing but an overwhelming numbness. His home was California, not here in Hawkins Indiana. After a few moments of mulling it over he decided that the room was not "his room" but rather "the room in which he slept" and the house was not "his house" but instead "a place of residence". The newfound terms made living in Hawkins easier to grasp, easier to understand.
He changed into pajama pants and a baggy t-shirt and started to dig through a box for his comforter blanket. Once he found it, he flicked the light switch and lied down on his mattress. He hadn't assembled his bedframe yet and his mattress was sitting on the floor.
He sat up for a moment and considered drawing some before going to sleep, but decided against it. He was tired. He laid back down and pulled the blanket over his shoulders.
He fell asleep numb and empty, but he was tired enough that the numbness was trivial. It couldn't keep him awake for long before he dozed off and indulged in rest.