Chapter Text
Rain in New York wasn't rain; it was a state of the world. It didn't fall – it hung in the air as a cold, fine mist, turning the evening city into a blurred watercolor where the lights of streetlamps and neon signs melted into yellow-orange spots, like memories that refused to come into focus.
Will stood by the window of his Brooklyn apartment and watched the drops slowly crawl down the glass, merging into strange, temporary rivers. The rhythmic tapping against the windowsill was white noise, drowning out the more insistent sounds – the ones that came from within, from the quiet depths of memory.
Seven years. Seven years had passed since he got on a bus with one suitcase, an old portfolio for his drawings, and a feeling like he was tearing his way out of a tightly wound cocoon. An escape. It was exactly that, though he told himself – and his mother, and Jonathan – that it was an opportunity. A chance to start over with a clean slate, in a city where no one knew his story. Where the word "Upside Down" brought to mind nothing but a bad horror movie, not that icy shiver of fear down the spine, sticky and ancient as fear itself.
The first years were a fog, thick and soundless. A small design school, odd jobs at print shops, a dorm room with three roommates whose breathing at night merged into a single, alien chorus. He learned to be invisible. Learned to talk about the weather, about work, about new movies, carefully skirting any questions about his childhood, his family, about ‘where'd you get that scar on your side?’ He built the new Will Byers brick by brick. Calm, competent, a bit closed off. Normal. Brick by brick, until the wall seemed solid.
Now, at twenty seven, he could look around with cold satisfaction and admit: he had succeeded. His apartment in one of the brick buildings wasn't luxurious, but it wasn't a closet either. It was his space: clean, organized, done in muted, earthy tones. A gray sofa, bookshelves of unfinished wood, a wide desk cluttered with sketchbooks, tubes of paint, and professional design magazines. On the wall – a few of his own works in thin frames: abstract compositions, plays with texture and light, nothing personal, nothing that could give away anything except good taste and a carefully calibrated, safe emptiness.
But there were other islands in this interior, like cracks in a smooth surface. On the bookshelf, between art history and typography volumes, stood an unassuming photograph in a wooden frame. In it, Joyce and Jonathan hugged him on the doorstep of the Hawkins house on his high school graduation day. Their smiles were wide; his – slightly tense, strained, as if even then he carried within him that cold, quiet point of loneliness. He remembered how hard his heart was beating then – with pride, with fear of the future, with an unspoken ache that had already nested somewhere under his ribs, quiet and alive.
And on the nightstand by the bed, in the shadow of the lampshade, stood another photograph. Small, in a silver frame. Two young men sat on a park bench, both in jeans and hoodies. Will and Carlton. Carlton, but everyone called him Carl. In the photo, Carl was laughing, head thrown back, and Will was looking at him with a soft, unveiled tenderness he only allowed himself here, within four walls, locked away from the world. The photo was taken two years ago, soon after they started dating. It was taken by one of Will's friends, Millie, who knew the truth. Will kept it as a talisman, as proof that his life wasn't just work and past trauma. There was something warm, real, fragile.
It was this photo his gaze lingered on longest in the evenings, when the city noise outside faded to a hum like the distant rumble of emptiness. He thought of Carl. About their evening phone calls, when Will, lying on the sofa, listened to his stories about trading operations, his colleagues, weekend plans – plans that were always a complex puzzle of "chance" meetings in neutral places and carefully crafted alibis. Claire. The girl from Boston. He hated that name, but it was their shield, fragile and transparent as ice.
Sometimes, in the quietest moments, when even his ginger cat slept curled at his feet, memories broke through the dam. Not bright flashes, but sensations: the smell of pine needles and damp earth, the cold of an underground bunker, sticky and physical, a hum coming not from machines but from emptiness itself, the underbelly of reality. And faces. Lucas, focused and loyal, Dustin with his unrestrained enthusiasm. El...her piercing, fearless gaze. And Mike. Always Mike. His voice, sounding like a command and a promise at once: “We'll find you, Will. I promise.” A voice that had once been an anchor.
Will closed his eyes, rubbed his eyelids hard with his fingers, trying to erase the pictures. That was long ago, that wasn't here. Here was New York. Here was his desk at the agency, where he was valued for precise work and quiet reliability. Here were his Saturday workshops at a small art school, where he taught students the basics of composition, and they saw in him simply a talented, somewhat strict instructor. Here was Carl. Here was his life, built, calibrated, safe. A fortress of silence and schedule.
He placed his palm on the cold glass. The city below lived its life, knowing nothing of the Upside Down or the losses of a small town. Sometimes that thought was comforting; sometimes – unbearably lonely, as if he were the last person remembering the world's true shape.
Tomorrow was Wednesday, a regular workday. Will turned from the window, turned off the living room light, and headed to the bedroom. He needed to sleep. Just another day in a long string of identical days. That was his victory, his quiet, unnoticed victory over the past – the ability to live in the present, where every step was predictable, and the only monsters were project deadlines and the eternal lack of time.
Morning began with Swiss-clock precision. At six-thirty, the alarm rang – not harshly, but with a soft, insistent trill. Will turned it off without opening his eyes and lay for a few more minutes, listening to the city beyond the wall gradually waking up: rare car horns, the distant rumble of a garbage truck, someone's footsteps on the stairs. These sounds were an anchor, tethering him to the reality of here and now, to a world without magic and horror.
He got up, threw on a worn robe, and went to the kitchen. The ritual repeated day after day: turn on the drip coffee maker – a housewarming gift from Joyce – pour food into Sparky's bowl, the cat already rubbing against his legs, meowing pointedly. While the coffee dripped, Will stood by the window, watching the gray light of a winter morning slowly replace the night's blue. His face in the glass reflection was calm, almost empty. That's how it was supposed to be. A mask without cracks.
The smell of coffee filled the small kitchen, thick and bitter. He poured it into a large ceramic mug, black, without patterns, and sat at the table. The first sip – bitter, scalding – was like a key starting an engine. He looked through the notebook where he'd written the day's tasks the night before. Nothing urgent: continue work on the logo for a new organic cosmetics line, review final layouts for a charity foundation brochure, an eleven o'clock meeting about the spring campaign for a pharmacy chain. Routine. An ordered world.
The silence was broken by the sharp, piercing ring of the landline on the wall. Will flinched – he always flinched at sudden sounds, his body remembering survival instincts – then stood and picked up the receiver.
“Hello?”
“Will? It's me,” Carlton's voice sounded even, businesslike, but Will caught a hint of tiredness, a muted tension. Carl was probably already in his office in the Financial District, in another world.
“Carl. Hi, you're up early.”
“Meeting at seven-thirty. Wanted to catch you before work.” A momentary pause filled with the distant hum of office life behind Carl. “How are you?”
“I’m fine, same as always. Just made coffee.” Will leaned against the wall, winding the phone's spiral cord around his finger. He looked at the photo in the living room, the one with him and Carl together. That strange feeling – talking to a person whose face looks at you from the desk, but whose presence must remain invisible, ghostly.
“Listen, about Saturday,” Carl continued, lowering his voice as if even here, in his own apartment, Will could be overheard. “I was thinking, maybe we should go to that Italian place we went to last time? Just...earlier. Six?”
Six. Before the main crowd arrived. Before there was even the slightest chance of running into a colleague or acquaintance. Will felt the familiar, dull irritation mixed with guilt, a heavy lump in his throat. Carl was just trying to keep them both safe. Their fragile, secret world.
“Yeah, okay.”
“Great, I'll book a table under the name…” Carl hesitated slightly; the habitual lie didn't always come easily, even after two years. “Under Michael. Like last time.”
“Okay.” Another pause, more awkward, ringing. They'd covered the main point; small talk was hard over the phone when both knew the line might not be safe. “Good luck with the meeting.”
“Thanks. Don't overwork yourself either. I'll call tonight.” And Carl hung up; the conversation lasted less than three minutes. A short, underground rendezvous.
Will slowly placed the receiver back on the hook. The silence in the apartment became absolute again, but now it seemed louder, filled with the echo of the unsaid. He finished his cooling coffee, feeling the bitterness spread not just on his tongue but somewhere inside, in that very cold point.
An hour later he was ready. Black jeans, a dark green turtleneck sweater, a worn corduroy jacket. A briefcase with a tablet and folders. He gave Sparky a farewell pat on the head and stepped out into the gray, cold morning, merging into the city's flow.
The subway was already full of noise and the warmth of bodies. He squeezed into a car, found a spot by the door, and pulled out a sketchbook from his briefcase. As the train rattled through the dark tunnel, his pencil automatically drew lines, geometric shapes on the paper, refined, devoid of any personal touch. These were exercises for the brain, a way to drown out the inner noise and outer din, an incantation of control.
The office greeted him with its usual bustle. The air already smelled of coffee, fresh paper, and the static electricity from powered-on monitors. On his desk waited a stack of faxes – revisions from yesterday's client, printed on thin, squeaky paper. He turned on his computer, and the monitor hummed, slowly booting up the system, a digital world of order.
His colleagues gradually settled into their spots. Martha from the copy department called over the partition:
“Will, morning! Did you see the new brief from Greenfield Cosmetics? They want the logo to 'breathe eco-friendliness.' I asked if they just wanted a leaf drawn, they got offended,” the girl rolled her eyes.
Will nodded, the corners of his lips twitching in a semblance of a smile, light and soundless. “I'll send you options by lunch. No leaves.”
He immersed himself in work on the organic cosmetics logo. On the screen, he fussed in the program, refining a shape meant to evoke both a bud and a drop of water. It was complex, meticulous work requiring full concentration. Every pixel had to be in place, every curve conveyed the right feeling. Here, in this digital space, order and control reigned. There was no room for vague fears and ghosts of the past. Only tasks, parameters, client wishes that could be broken down into components and turned into visual form. Alchemy without magic.
He worked uninterrupted for two hours. Sometimes his fingers reached for the graphics tablet on their own; he made quick sketches on paper before transferring the idea into digital. The world shrank to the size of the monitor, to a white document, to the tip of the cursor, obedient in his hand. Here he was the god of a small universe.
When he finally leaned back in his chair to check the result, his face remained impassive. The logo turned out well – good, clean, modern, conveying the right message. He saved the file, adding the date and version to the name. Another brick in the wall of his professional reputation. Another day lived correctly, without breakdowns.
Will glanced at the clock. Almost time for the meeting. He printed several logo variations on the laser printer, admiring how the smooth paper produced clear, perfect prints. Gathered his folder, notebook, and a couple of pencils.
His day was scheduled by the minute. And that was exactly what he needed – predictability, control, moving forward on set rails where there was no room for unexpected turns or encounters with monsters.
The meeting took place in the standard conference room on the seventh floor. A large oval table of light wood, leather chairs that creaked slightly with every movement, and one wall completely covered with corkboards, studded with printouts, photos, and colored sticky notes. The air was stuffy and smelled of old coffee someone had brought in a thermos.
Will took his usual spot – not in the center, but not at the edge either, somewhere in the middle on the side. Close enough to be in sight if asked, but not in the epicenter. He laid out his folder with logo printouts, his notebook, placed a pencil parallel to the table edge. Emily, a junior designer, sat next to him and immediately started sketching something quickly in her sketchbook – an idea that must have struck her in the elevator.
As the room filled and Susan, the creative director, laid out her papers, Will allowed himself to zone out for a moment. His gaze slid over the young faces of two new interns sitting reverently quiet at the very end of the table. They looked at everything with wide eyes full of ambition and nervous energy. He saw himself in them, as he was three years ago – full of doubts and muted fear, but with hope.
Back then, he joined the agency after a year and a half of drifting through small studios and freelancing. His portfolio was strong but not brilliant; however, he was resilient and precise. Will didn't generate crazy, breakthrough ideas like some colleagues. He took a raw, often vague idea from a client or art director and honed it to diamond clarity. He worked quietly, often late, when the office emptied, and only the hum of the cleaners broke the silence. He learned programs inside out; he knew how each type of paper would behave when printed, which font would evoke the right association, and which would cause subconscious irritation. His advancement wasn't a meteoric rise but a slow, steady climb. He was valued for reliability. For never missing deadlines. For his work not requiring endless revisions – he seemed to understand what was needed from the first try. That was his superpower – the ability to read between the lines, to guess the unspoken. A skill honed in years when reading the mood in a room mattered too much, when the wrong look could cost everything.
“So, folks, let's begin,” Susan's voice brought him back to the present. The meeting was about the spring campaign for a regional pharmacy chain. The discussion was lively, at times chaotic. Copywriters argued over slogans, marketers threw around target audience numbers, and project managers worried about the budget.
Will spoke almost not at all. He listened, made short notes in his notebook, marking key points he'd later need to translate into visuals. He was asked directly about possible color schemes for a series of posters. He answered briefly, technically, offering three options, justifying each from the perspective of perceptual psychology and this season's trends. His words were met with nods; Emily poked his elbow approvingly under the table.
At some point, while one manager passionately argued the necessity of increasing the budget for a TV commercial, Will's gaze snagged on the interns again. One of them, a guy with glasses, hung on every word, his face lit with genuine interest. Will suddenly remembered with painful clarity his first big project here. A logo for a small publishing house. He spent two weeks on it, nights, in the empty office flooded with the cold light of neon lamps. He drew hundreds of versions, finding a flaw each time. He was shaking with responsibility then. He was afraid of not living up to the trust, afraid of being exposed as a fraud, afraid everyone would see how unreliable, strange, damaged he really was.
That logo was accepted on the first presentation; the client was thrilled. Susan patted him on the shoulder then and said: “Good work, Byers. Steady hand.” Nothing more. But for him, it was everything. It was a sign that he could survive here. That he could be not just Will-from-Hawkins, but Will-who-can.
The meeting drew to a close. Tasks were assigned, deadlines set. Everyone started to disperse, chairs scraping, papers gathered. Will slowly packed his things into his folder, feeling the familiar, pleasant fatigue after concentration, a slight dizziness from returning to reality.
“Will, stay for a minute,” Susan's voice stopped him at the door.
He turned. Most had left; they were alone in the conference room. Susan gathered her documents, her face focused, businesslike, but something animated lurked in the corners of her eyes.
“Something wrong with the pharmacies?” he asked, already mentally calculating which tasks might need urgent revision.
“No, no, pharmacies are fine. Your part, as always, is under control.” She closed her folder and looked at him. “I need your eye and your hands for a new project. A big one. Just got approached.”
Will nodded, expecting to hear the name of another bank or retail chain. His mind had already started breaking down the task: color palette, fonts, mood.
"A coffee chain, Seattle Brew. They're expanding to the East Coast, starting with NewYork. Serious budget, campaign needs to be large-scale, from packaging to outdoor ads. They need a fresh but confident look. I'm forming a team, and you'll be the lead designer on our end.”
“Understood,” said Will. This was good news, responsible but interesting work. An opportunity. Another solid brick in the wall. “When's the first client meeting?”
“Tomorrow at ten. Here, conference room B.” Susan reached for a cup of cold coffee. “On the client side will be their marketing director, and on ours...the project manager will be Mike Wheeler from the client services department. He's already working with them, gathering the full brief. You'll be in close contact with him.”
The air in the conference room suddenly became thick as honey, heavy and opaque. Sounds from the hallway – laughter, a phone ring – muffled as if someone had pulled the plug on the world. Will heard only the steady, growing hum in his own ears, like back then in the dungeons and the silence of the Upside Down. His fingers resting on the folder turned cold, as if touching ice. Inside, something snapped and fell into a bottomless well he had so carefully walled up over the years.
“Wheeler?” His voice sounded normal. Completely normal. He surprised himself with this automatic functioning of the body when the mind was already shattered.
“Yes, he's relatively new here, transferred from the Indiana branch, but has already proven himself. They say he's very persistent and good at finding common ground with the most difficult clients.” Susan looked up at him, attentive, slightly questioning. “You're from the same state, I think. Maybe we even know each other?”
A moment stretched into eternity, an icy eternity. Under the table, his feet involuntarily pressed into the floor, seeking support. Deep breath. Exhale. His heart pounded somewhere in his throat, wild and frantic.
“No,” he said, and his lips formed that light, indifferent half-smile on their own, his best mask, armor of mundanity. “Indiana's big. I don't think so. Tomorrow at ten, conference room B. I'll be ready.”
Will nodded, picked up his folder, and left the conference room. His steps down the hallway were even, measured, practiced. His face – calm as the surface of a pond on a windless day, beneath which dark, cold currents raged. He reached his desk, sat in his chair, placed the folder before him. On the monitor, the cosmetics logo file was still open – perfect, smooth lines, a symbol of control.
He reached for the mouse to save his work and noticed his fingers were trembling. Barely noticeable, almost imperceptible, but trembling, like back then after his return, when he couldn't hold a spoon. He clenched them into a fist, hid them under the desk, in the shadow.
Outside the office window, winter dusk slowly thickened. The lights of skyscrapers began to come on one by one, like a garland, like the countless eyes of an alien, indifferent world. Somewhere there, in another wing of this building, or maybe in the neighboring skyscraper, sat Mike Wheeler. Mike. And tomorrow at ten, their paths would cross. After everything. After all these years of silence, after the pain, after his own awkward, crushed confession that had just hung in the air between them, unanswered, like a wound that wouldn't heal.
Will unclenched his fist, spread his palm, and looked at it. Lines of life, fate, heart – all in place, ordinary lines on an ordinary hand. The same hand that once drew fantastical creatures in notebook margins, held a mop-handle sword in the basement, clenched in the dark from fear. Now it would have to shake another hand. The hand of a friend. The hand of the person he loved. The hand of a near-stranger.
He slowly turned back to the computer and saved the file. The mouse click sounded incredibly loud, like a gunshot. Then he closed the program, turned off the monitor. His workday was over. But something new, heavy, and unfamiliar had just begun. And the walls of his flawless, quiet fortress had given their first, almost inaudible crack.