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1. March 22nd, 2001. 6 years.
In the small kingdom of his bedroom, snuggled into the soft, warm yellow blankets on his bed, Will wakes up that morning with sunlight gently greeting his face. He blinks once, twice, thrice and rubs his eyes with his fist, fighting the sleep off him.
Will stays still for a while, with his face still pressed on the pillow, basking in the warmth of his bed, until the distinct smell of pancakes and hot chocolate hits his nose. The sweet smell of breakfast is powerful enough to completely wake him up, realizing what day it was.
Today was his birthday!
He kicks the blankets away and, with an energy only typical in small pups, he quickly makes his way towards the kitchen.
“Look who is up early!” His mommy says as soon as he enters the small kitchen. She sets the pan away from the oven before walking towards Will and scooping him up into her arms, hugging him with an intensity and love that was better than any cozy blanket. “Happy birthday, sweetheart.”
Will giggles and hides his face in the space between his mommy’s neck and chest as she continues to pepper little kisses on his temple. They remained there for a little moment, only the two of them in the kitchen, he in his mommy’s arms while she had her nose pressed on his neck, slightly tickling him. Will is only a small pup, his sense of smell not fully developed since he was too many years away from his presentation, but he knew what his mom was doing right now—she was scenting him, trying to rub her own omega scent on Will as best as she could, something that she always did to him and his brother Jonathan first thing in the morning.
(“It’s something mommy does so you and Jonathan can smell like me,” she explained to him one day while he was sitting on her lap after coming home from school. “That way everyone knows you’re my pup.” She finished her explanation with a light kiss on his temple, feeling warm and secure in his mommy’s arms.)
There’s a soft patter of feet on the floor that breaks the little silence, and Will takes his face from his mommy’s shoulder to see his brother Jonathan with a wide smile on his face, carrying a big wrapped gift in his arms.
“Happy birthday, Will!” He says while showing the gift to him like a trophy, and Will rushes to his brother’s arms, happy to be with two of his favorite people in the whole world. His brother just smiles and holds him tight, and maybe it has only been just five minutes since Will awakened, but he already knew that today was going to be the best birthday of all.
Minutes later, Will is sitting at the breakfast table unwrapping with eager hands the paper wrap of the gift. His eyes shine bright at the sight of boxes of crayons (with one hundred and twenty colors!), pencils, markers and even different paint brushes that came with a set of watercolors, and a big notebook with lots of white pages to draw upon. He traces his fingers over the crayons, admiring the many different colors—so pretty and so bright.
“Do you like it, Will?” Jonathan asks, sitting in front of him, as their mom carefully pours the hot chocolate into a mug.
Will enthusiastically nods and takes the notebook and the crayon box. He grabs a blue crayon and, before pressing it on the white paper, he looks at his mom, silently asking if it was okay for him to draw at the breakfast table. She just smiles at him and nods, threading her fingers on his hair.
His breakfast birthday comes and goes light and homely like that—his mom and brother quietly talking between bites and Will painting and eating the slightly burned (but otherwise delicious) pancakes and sipping the warm chocolate.
“So, remember Will that later today your friends are coming to celebrate with you,” his mom says as she takes the empty mugs in her hands.
“Mike too?” Will says for the first time in the morning, his eyes leaving the spaceship he was drawing for a second.
“Yes, Mike is coming. And so are Dustin and Lucas.”
Will smiles wide and bright at the thought of celebrating his birthday with his friends (the very first one!), and makes a motion to grab a green crayon. After a few strokes, his face twists in a frown and looks up to his mom again.
“And daddy is coming too?”
Jonathan’s body tenses in front of him and his mommy smiles in that tight way of hers that shows how hard she is trying to find the right words to say.
“Of course, sweetie. It’s your birthday. He’s just busy working.” It’s all she says and turns her back over the sink, scrubbing the dishes with more force than necessary.
Jonathan turned on the tv and the loud intro from the Rugrats fills the awkward silence of the kitchen.
Will is a small pup and, as such, there’re a lot of things he doesn’t quite understand. He doesn’t understand why his daddy is sometimes there, sitting at the table and talking in that loud and slurred voice of his, ruffling his hair in a way that Will actually doesn’t like at all, and how sometimes he disappears for days and makes his mommy so worried that she keeps biting anxiously at her nails until he walks through the door again. He doesn’t understand why there are nights when his daddy comes back home smelling so bad and mouthing hurtful words at him and his brother that makes Jonathan lock Will up in his bedroom until their mommy comes back from work.
Will doesn’t understand why he is sad that his daddy isn’t at the table right now, telling him ‘happy birthday’, even if each time his daddy looks his way he gets a horrible prickle under his skin.
Will doesn’t understand, and he doesn’t know how to talk to his mommy or to Jonathan about it, so he keeps his mouth shut and keeps on drawing with the green crayon, counting the hours left until his friends’ arrival.
///
“Will!”
“Happy birthday, Will!”
“Can we eat the cake now?”
“We have gifts for you!”
“I brought table games from my house!”
“Open them! Open them!”
Hours later, his friends come running through the door together, coming into the house with loud laughter and enough energy to power up a whole neighborhood. The little group clashed down on the floor in a puppy pile and Joyce and Karen Wheeler (who was in charge of driving the three pups) were looking at the scene with small smiles on their faces.
“Alright, pups, let’s go to the backyard. There are snacks and games there! You can open the presents later, honey.” His mommy claps her hands, drawing the attention of the four excited pups towards her.
Lucas and Dustin got up quickly from the floor, running to the backyard with a war cry for food and games, while the two moms started to put coats on racks, gifts on the table, and made their way to the kitchen for a small chat.
“Cake!” Dustin shouts, pumping his fits in the air in celebration.
Will and Mike are the only ones left in the Byers little living room—Will is giddy and giggling, a little too happy after the show of affection from his friends, and Mike is still hugging him, his nose pressed to his neck. Mike doesn’t truly know what the gesture means, but his mom does it to him and his sister Nancy each time they hug, so he does it to Will too (especially because Will always laughs at that, being particularly ticklish there).
“Happy birthday, Will!” he says again after getting up from the floor.
“Thank you,” Will answers back softly with red cheeks and a small smile on his face.
“Let’s go with Dustin and Lucas!” Mike grabs Will’s hands, doesn’t waste any second and starts walking towards the backyard. “I brought that game we played in my basement the other day! The one you like with the fantasy characters!”
So they spent the afternoon between fantasy games, sandwiches, pizza and sweets, and Will hadn’t had a more fun birthday. They dressed up as knights, wizards and princes, running in the Byers’ backyard and pretending they were in an enchanted forest with talking trees (Jonathan who had a bunch of fallen tree branches in his hands, and each time he talked to Will and his friends his cheeks turned deep red in embarrassment) looking for a guarded treasure by a mean and big dragon (the family dog, Chester, using a cheap paper mask), they fight to save the kidnapped princesses (his mommy and Mrs. Wheeler, who were doing their best to snap as many pictures they could so they could show them later to the both Mrs. Sinclair and Mrs. Henderson) and end up laying on the grass with bellies full of food and sincere laughter spilling from their lips. They were alone with just Jonathan, since his mom and Mrs. Wheeler had (discreetly) made their way back to the house to grab the presents and the cake.
Will was so happy at that moment that the absence of his daddy hadn’t crossed his mind all evening.
“The talking tree was so cool!”
“I still don’t understand the rules of that board game, Mike.”
“For my birthday we can play like jedi!”
“We can use broomsticks as lightsabers!”
Will gets up from the grass without saying anything, and starts walking towards the house.
“Bathroom,” he says to his brother before going inside.
He quickly goes to the bathroom, dodging both his mommy and Mrs. Wheeler chatting in the kitchen. Will is washing his hands when he hears the loud noise of a slamming door. It doesn’t take too long for his parents' voice to make an appearance.
“Where were you? Will has been waiting for you all day!” He can’t see her, but Will knows that his mommy is really angry right now.
“Give me a break, Joyce,” his daddy says. His voice sounds mean and slurred like always. “What is this? A police interrogation? Can’t a guy go to work in peace?”
“Work?! You call wasting away in some bar going to work?!”
“Don’t fucking start!”
“It’s your son’s birthday! Do you even remember it or were you too busy drinking with some whore?!”
Their voices were getting louder and their words meaner, and Will doesn’t understand a lot of what they’re saying, but one thing he knows is that he doesn’t like it. He doesn’t like it that his daddy wasn’t with them at breakfast this morning, he doesn’t like it that his mommy and Jonathan lie to him about his daddy just because he is a small pup, and he definitely doesn’t like the way he is talking to his mommy right now—nasty and rowdy and clearly not caring if anyone hears him.
“Don’t you care about your son?!” his mom finally yells, having lost all self-control regarding who may be hearing.
His daddy doesn’t answer—he just hears the sound of the car’s engine and tires scratching loudly against the ground, and Will knows that his daddy has just left him on his birthday.
And that hurts more than any word he could’ve said.
Will’s little heart breaks, and he doesn’t know anything better than to curl on the floor, knees pressed into his chest and cry the words he couldn’t say.
He cries because he is hurt.
He cries because he feels lonely right now.
He cries because he finally understands that his daddy doesn’t really love him, not in the way that his mommy loves him or Jonathan.
And that thought makes him sob harder, making him hide his face between his knees, making himself even smaller than he already was.
He cries and cries until someone comes knocking on the door.
“Will? Are you here?” He hears Mike’s voice ask, and Will doesn’t know why, but he doesn’t want his friend to look at him like this. “It’s time for cake and presents!”
Will stays in silence, hoping that Mike would leave.
But he doesn’t.
“C’mon! I want you to open my present!” He knocks on the door again and Will maybe can’t really see him, but he knows that Mike is pouting on the other side of the door. “I hope you’re not pooping ‘cause I’m coming in!”
Before Will could even stand up, Mike barges in filled with determination. His pout transforms into a worried frown as soon as he sees Will’s teary face.
“Were you crying?” He asks, and Will is suddenly so ashamed that he hides his face between his hands. “Hey, it’s okay, you know?” Mike’s voice is softer and it sounds closer than before. The warm weight of an arm around his shoulders tells him that Mike is sitting beside him, hugging him.
“Is it because of us? Did we do something wrong with Dustin and Lucas?” Will stops hiding his face to shake his head. He didn’t want to make his friends think that they had done something wrong. “Is it because Jonathan ate the last slice of pizza, ‘cause if it’s that I will fight him!”
Will shakes his head, again, but this time with a little smile after imagining how silly Mike would look trying to fight a much taller and stronger Jonathan.
“Then why were you crying?”
Will hesitates a little. He knows he’s not good with words—he talks little, and compared with the rest of the kids in his class, he’s behind them in speech development (that was something that worried both his teacher and his mommy and made his daddy look at him weird over the dinner table once). Will sometimes has a lot of things in his head and in his chest that he really doesn’t know how to say them or how to describe them, getting easily overwhelmed at the constant pressure of people talking to him, so he settles down to either speak only a few words or nothing at all.
But with Mike, his best friend Mike, Will never feels the ugly pressure. Mike just stays there, waiting patiently for Will to talk when he wants.
“I think that my daddy doesn’t love me,” Will finally says, fidgeting with the hems of his sleeves.
Mike just stares at him with big brown eyes and, with all the logic and wisdom a five-year-old could have, he says:
“Then he’s a dummy. But don’t worry! Your mom and Jonathan love you! And me too!” The smile on Mike’s face was so bright that Will couldn’t help but smile too.
“Really?” He asks.
“Yeah! I love you!”
“And Lucas and Dustin?”
“If they don’t love you, I’ll fight them!” Will giggles louder and Mike sees that as an opportunity—he leans forward and presses his nose on Will’s neck, slightly rubbing into the skin. The effect on Will is instant, laughing louder and happier at the tickling Mike’s nose makes.
Mike takes his face away from Will’s neck and smiles at his friend’s happy face. He was about to get up from the floor when something unexpected happened—Will leans forward and presses his nose against Mike’s neck, mimicking his action. Mike doesn’t laugh like Will, but doesn’t stop smiling either, enjoying his friend’s warmth.
Once Will stops with his tickling, Mike stands up from the floor and takes Will’s hand into his, making him stand up as well. “C’mon! It’s cake time!”
Minutes later, Will is standing in front of a chocolate cake, looking at the burning candle in front of him.
“Make a wish, honey,” his mommy says to him, no longer angry but with a little sadness in her eyes.
Will looks at the people on the table—Mrs. Wheeler with her camera and perfect white smile, Lucas and Dustin beaming at him with excitement, Jonathan and his mommy at his sides like a warm reminder that they would always be there, and finally over to Mike, standing in front of him over the cake, smiling and looking at him with shining brown eyes.
“I wish to always be with the people that I love, with my family.”
Will closes his eyes and blows the candle.
2. March 22nd, 2012. 17 years.
It almost felt like heaven—a feeling so good that Will didn’t want time to move on, forever frozen there, in his boyfriend’s arms.
Even if outside there was still a lingering cold from the last days of winter, inside Mike’s bedroom ruled a kingdom of pleasant heat and low, soft melodies that came from the forgotten The Smiths cd playing over and wet noises of kisses. Will was all over Mike’s lap, hands tangled in the dark curls of his boyfriend, thumbs caressing the sides of his face and lips and tongues clashing in a slow dance. One of Mike’s hands was squeezing his waist like it was a lifeline and the other was slowly making his way under the layer of clothes towards the swell of his ass.
Will had come there with the perfect excuse to study for one of the many exams they had before Spring break, so Karen Wheeler had prepared them numerous snacks and had ordered Holly to not bother her brother and Will at all because ‘They’re juniors, sweetie, they need to have an excellent performance on their exams for their college applications next year’ (Mike almost breaks down a loud laugh after his little sister had sarcastically muttered to his father if they were about to study for an anatomy quiz, and Karen left her with no dessert after the crude comment).
To be fair with Mrs. Wheeler, they did study at the beginning. It was just that the feeling of Mike moving under him, kissing his lips and neck, and the way he made Will bite his lips to suppress a moan was so much more enjoyable than studying algebra. Also, it was already late. Tired brains were no good at studying, after all.
Will could feel the way Mike was smiling against his lips—that kind of smile that made his knees go weak and that meant that his boyfriend was thinking of something particularly naughty. Mike’s playful tongue licked at the tip of his nose, making him giggle out of a mix of pure bliss and how ridiculous he was, so Will lunged forward to playfully nip at Mike’s tongue, making his boyfriend laugh as well.
Mike rolls his hips rougher than before, lightly biting just below his jaw, and Will can’t help but moan in his boyfriend’s ear.
Mike’s palm slid all the way down the hem of his pajama pants, squeezing Will’s butt and moving his hip upwards. Will felt the hard groin grinding against his crotch—the hard drag of Mike’s dick against his already wet core and cock. The friction made colors explode beyond his eyelids and Will couldn’t help but whine into Mike’s open mouth.
Mike peppered small, open-mouth kisses, trailing all the way down to his throat.
“Is this okay, baby?” He asked as he thrusted his hips again. Mike’s hot breath was hitting just above where his mating gland was, and Will was about to lose his mind.
Will moved his own hips down, reaching out for that sweet pleasure, and tugged one of Mike’s curls with need, making his boyfriend groan. Maybe he was looking a little desperate, but he truly didn’t care at all.
“Please don’t stop,” Mike just smirked again before kissing and nipping at his neck with nothing but love.
Hips moved rhythmically, setting a clumsy but oh so sweet pace that made them both go crazy.
Hands roaming, caressing and setting a trail of ticklish fire after their touch.
Mouths that collide with one another, kissing, biting and sucking.
“Oh, shit!” Mike groaned, before gripping Will’s hip hard, and speeding on his pace.
Everything was just too much, and soon the two of them came at the same time.
Their ragged breaths were now playing along the ending notes of There is a light that never goes out, and only then did Will realise how much the room reeked of him—the place was flooded with the scents of vanilla, lavender, cinnamon and arousal. He hid his face on Mike’s neck, suddenly ashamed of himself. He prayed that neither of the sleeping adults in the house could smell the stench (he would rather throw himself out of a moving car before having to face Ted Wheeler smelling like sex, cum, slick, and his unpresented son).
“Hey,” Mike kissed his temple, hands never stopping the soft strokes at his sides. “I’m gonna get us something clean, okay?”
“Hmm,” he answered.
Now curling on the bed, watching Mike’s back as his boyfriend was looking for the extra set of clothes in his closet, Will couldn’t stop his thoughts from running wild—he imagined waking up beside Mike every day in some small apartment in some big city. He imagined the domesticity, having breakfast together, walking together in the mornings and kissing goodnight before wrapping their arms around each other.
(And he also imagined the way Mike would undress him and make love to him. How pretty his neck would look with a red mating bite and how cute their babies would look—with Mike’s dark curls and Will’s hazel eyes.)
He bit his lower lip, trying to find the right words to say.
See, two weeks from now, on March 22nd, Will was going to turn 17 years old. And truth to be told, he was really excited about this year’s birthday. Eleven years had passed since his sixth birthday, and ever since then there wasn’t a single one where Mike hadn’t been at his side.
Not only would it be the first one with Mike as his boyfriend (he still gets giddy each time he remembers the way Mike had confessed to him in his basement and the way kissing each other for the first time felt), but also it would be the first one after his presentation.
His first birthday as an omega.
And he knew exactly how he wanted to spend the day with his boyfriend.
“Mike,” his voice came out of his mouth before he had gathered all the sufficient courage to speak his mind. “I want to spend my birthday with you.”
His boyfriend was now walking towards him with a confused gimmick and a pair of clean underwear in each hand.
“Like every year?” He asked, as he pulled his dirty pants and boxers down with no shame whatsoever and grabbed the clean pair.
“No,” Will got up from the bed and began to slowly change his dirty clothes. First, he dismissed his socks, one by one. Then, he pulled down his pajama pants with a tantalizing pace. His dirty panties came last, and Will felt a jolt of satisfaction at the feeling of the cold air hitting his heated core and the heavy stare of Mike’s dark eyes on him. He reached for one of the forgotten underwear in Mike’s hand and put it on. “I want it to be just us. Together.”
By the way Mike’s cheeks were now redder than before, Will knew that his boyfriend had understood what he meant with those words.
They weren’t shy about each other's bodies, but since Will’s presentation, everything felt new to them—every new sensitive spot, every new reaction, every new craving that Will discovered.
Everything was new and foreign and so fascinatingly exciting.
And the best part was that they were learning together and Will didn’t feel scared for one second if Mike was there with him. No matter how much his presentation had hurt or how alien his newly developed body parts seemed at the beginning, Mike had been at his side at all times, helping him without even asking what to do.
And Will loved him so, so very much.
Mike was his everything.
His best friend.
His boyfriend.
His soulmate.
And his future al—
“You want us to go all the way down?” Mike asked, standing closer to him. His face was still red, and his eyes were shining and wide open in that particular way that reminded him of a big puppy.
Will felt his own cheeks flushed. He moved his hands towards Mike’s left hand and started to play with it, suddenly nervous. Longer fingers closed around his, playing and intertwining and leaving a light tickling with each single brush.
“I-I mean, it’s something that I’ve been thinking about it for quite some time,” he finally said, his eyes darting from Mike’s face to their intertwined hands. “But only if you want to!”
Oh, God, what if he feels like I’m pressuring him? Will thought with shame flooding his entire body.
“Hey, look at me, baby,” Mike lifted Will’s face with his unoccupied hand and left it there. His thumb was rubbing soothing circles at the edge of his jaw, and Will felt his knees go weak at the tenderness of the touch and the warmth in Mike’s eyes. “Do you really want to do it?”
“Yes!” Will nodded as well, to show how much he wanted it. “And you?”
They were now much closer than before—hips brushing, Will’s arms around Mike’s neck and noses so close to each other that Will could smell the rosemary shampoo that his boyfriend used (he couldn’t wait for Mike to finally present so he could know what his scent smelled like).
“Of course I want to!” Mike said with a little too much enthusiasm, a smile stretching his face handsomely.
Will giggled and started to pepper little kisses all around his boyfriend’s face. Mike tightened his hands around his waist and led them to the bed, where they continued with their cuddling and little make-out session.
Between kisses and little, tender strokes, the both of them fell asleep on the bed, not minding that the cd was still playing or that they would wake up tomorrow facing the Wheeler’s pointed looks at the breakfast table (they had definitely smelled what had transpired in Mike’s bedroom). Everything was good as long as Will had Mike’s arms around him.
///
“So… Mike and I are going to spend my birthday night together.” Will dropped the bomb on Max and Jane while they were studying for their chemistry test in Jane's bedroom. “Like, together, together.”
Max’s face was a poem consisting of an open mouth and too big blue eyes, and Will was almost sure that Jane’s loud squeal could be heard all the way down to the neighbor’s house.
“Oh my God!” She practically screamed. “You’re gonna lose your flower!”
“Jesus! Don’t call it that!” Max was now laughing like a hyena, clutching her stomach, while Will was trying to make her still squealing sister shut her mouth. “Dad is downstairs! Shut up!”
“Where are you going to spend the night?”
“Are you planning on buying something sexy for Mike?”
“Please tell me you’re not thinking of having sex for the first time in that musty basement, I’m sure there has to be mold in those walls somewhere.”
“Oh my God, Will, we should totally go shopping for lingerie, this is huge!”
“And don’t even think of doing it in his car, either! You deserve a proper bed, princess.”
“We could buy matching sets!”
“Oh my God, Jane! Why would we buy matching lingerie sets?! Shut up!” Will practically screamed after the nagging of the girls, his cheeks flaming red.
Max and Jane broke down in a fit of laughter and Will hid his embarrassed face on a pillow, already regretting sharing his plans with them.
“Okay, but seriously though,” Jane said after a while, still a little out of breath. She laid down on the bed at his brother’s side and threw her arms around him, pressing her face to his shoulder. “We’re happy for you.”
“Yeah, losing your flower is an important event,” Will threw an old teddy bear at Max’s face after that.
“You two are unbearable.”
“Oh, don’t be a meanie, Willy bear,” his sister threw her arms around him, pressing her nose on the spot of Will’s neck that always made him tickle.
Max watched them from the bottom of the bed, holding the teddy bear in her arms and smiling warmly at them. Before picking up her discarded chemistry book, she talked once again, not really thinking about the impact of her words on Will.
“You know, I always thought that Mike wanted to wait until his presentation as an alpha to seal the deal,” she then re-opened the book and focused her attention on whatever she was studying.
Will stopped laughing and Jane could feel the way his body tensed at Max’s words. He rose up slowly, frowning just so.
“He said that to you?” He asked Max.
Max looked up from her book, seeing just how tense Will had gotten after her comment. She hadn’t presented yet (the only ones in their friend group with their official designations were Lucas, Dustin and Will) so neither she nor Jane could smell the slight tinge of distress coming out of Will.
“I mean, it’s something that I heard like, a year ago? It was after you presented. Maybe he changed his mind.” Max stretched her hand to squeeze Will’s knee in an attempt to give him comfort. Jane’s arms hadn’t left his brother for one second.
Mike had confessed his feelings for Will way before he had presented. It was last summer and, for some reason (he later discovered that it was after a jealousy fit), Mike decided that he could no longer hold his feelings for him, and Will wanted to retain the memory forever in his heart.
(“I don’t care what our designations turn out to be in the future,” Mike had said to him, caressing his face like it was the most precious thing in the world, under the dimmed lights of the Wheeler’s basement.
Will remembers the way his heart was beating so fast in his chest that he thought that Mike could hear it. He remembers the way the red tips of Mike’s ears were peaking from his hair. And he also remembers how confident he seemed in his words and how the way he said ‘I love you’ sounded like ecstasy dripping from his lips into Will’s ear.
“All I know is that I love you and I want to be with you in this life and in every single lifetime.”
It felt surreal in a way that it was better than any of the fantasies Will had over the years about Mike suddenly knocking on his door with a dozen roses and kissing him silly.
“I’m yours. I will always be.”
Will kissed him back, trying desperately to answer ‘I have always been yours, and I’ll always be too’.)
Neither of them had worried about their future designations then, and when Will presented, the two of them thought that it was only a matter of time for Mike’s presentation.
(“You know that I don’t care what you turn out to be, right?” He told Mike two weeks after his presentation as an omega. “Alpha, beta, omega, I don’t care. I love you just the same.”
Mike just smiled and pulled him into a kiss.)
He really meant those words, but a little voice inside him was biting his ear off about ‘but what if he doesn’t want to be with you if he isn’t an alpha?’.
“Hey,” Jane nudged his arms with her elbow, snapping him out of his thoughts. “Whatever you’re thinking, just talk to Mike. Don’t let it go to your head.”
Will just smiled at his sister, knowing that she was right. There was no point in getting lost in his own doubt now.
///
Will was waiting the next day at Mike’s car in the school parking lot for his boyfriend, Dustin and Lucas. It was already late, and the only people left in school were the janitors and the few students who were leaving their respective clubs. Thursday afternoons were the only days that the four of them left school at the same time—Will had art club, Dustin was in the robotics club, Lucas had afternoon practice with the basketball team and Mike had his with the swimming team (it was a total mystery to them why Michael James Wheeler, the number one sports hater, had joined the swimming team in their first week of high school and never backed down)—so they’ve always made plans to leave together and do something fun just the four of them.
Will was busy texting his sister until he smelled Mike’s shampoo, making him snap his head towards him.
“Hey, Baby.” His boyfriend greeted him with a quick kiss on the lips, resting his hands on Will’s hips. “Lucas is still in the shower. His practice took longer than usual.” Mike’s hair was still a little wet, making a few droplets fall into his face. “Were you waiting for too long? Where’s Dustin?”
Will shook his head, smiling at him. “No, I got here a few minutes ago. Dustin texted me that he got delayed because there was a problem with some circuits that almost caused a fire.”
Mike’s eyebrows disappeared behind his bangs in surprise.
“I’m starting to think that he’s building a bomb for the graduation ceremony next year.” Will laughed and pulled his boyfriend towards him for a kiss. His paint-stained hands traveled to Mike’s curls, slightly pulling them and enjoying the way Mike would groan each time he did that. They stopped kissing after someone whistled at them, cheeks pink.
Will thought that maybe it was time to question his boyfriend, given that they would be alone for a little bit.
“Hey, I wanted to ask you something,” one of Mike’s hands, which had never left his hips, lightly pinched his side, encouraging him to keep talking, and Will made sure that his eyes stayed focused on Mike’s Adam’s Apple, which was less intimidating than his boyfriend’s puppy eyes. “It’s about what I told you the other day, about having sex. It’s just that I heard that you once said that you wanted to wait until your presentation to have sex with me, and if that’s what you want, then that’s what I want too! I just hate the idea that I’m pressuring you or making you go faster than you would’ve wanted or making you feel insecure about what your designation may be, and I really just want you to know, again, that I don’t care if you’re not an alpha and—”
Mike’s hand squeezed his cheeks, cutting Will off mid-monologue, forcing him to meet his eyes. His expression is tender and his eyes are shining as if Will was the cutest thing he ever laid eyes on.
“First, you need to breathe,” his voice came out with a hint of mischief, as if he was trying very hard not to chuckle at Will’s antics. Nonetheless, his thumbs were rubbing little circles on his face, and Will felt the tension on his shoulders disappear little by little. “Second, it is true what you heard—when you first presented, I wanted to wait until I presented as an alpha.” Mike’s cheek turned a deep shade of pink, slightly embarrassed about what he was going to say. “I had this fantasy of spending my first rut with you, losing our virginity and… mate. Mark you as my omega and you mark me as your alpha.”
Oh.
Will’s face turned into the same shade of red as Mike’s.
His boyfriend’s confession wasn’t about some insecurity of his about the uncertainty of his designation.
No.
The words that came out of Mike’s lips spoke of a devotion deeper than anything he could’ve imagined. It spoke of an ever-lasting commitment, about love and trust and feeling so sure about his feelings for Will that he was ready to make that step so young.
Mating was basically marriage with the exception that there wasn’t a way out of it, and a lot of alpha-omega couples waited years to mate, his own mother being an example of that. (Lonnie was a beta, so they couldn’t mate even if they tried. But with Hopper, the alpha man that now Will called dad, she had waited almost a year after marriage to finally mate with him.)
“You really want that?” He asked, his voice merely a whisper. Mike’s eyes were wide open, and Will detected a hint of fear.
“I-I mean, it was just a fantasy! It’s a really big deal! We will mate only when you’re ready and, of course, we could only do that if I’m an alpha after all, but the point is that—”
Will cuts his boyfriend off the same way he did before—taking his face between his hands and making him look at his eyes.
“I don’t think that you understand how much I love you Mike,” he pulled him down to kiss him deep, his tongue pushing past Mike’s lips as if the inside of Mike’s mouth was its true home.
Mike groans, sounding almost like a growl, and presses Will down against the car hard, their hips clashing together in a collision of pure pleasure. The kiss is far too filthy and passionate and so intimate that they really shouldn’t be kissing like that in the school’s parking lot, but he truly didn’t give a shit given that his boyfriend had basically confessed to him that he loved him so much that he was ready to give Will his entire life.
And Will loved Mike so much that he was ready to give his entire life to him too.
“I swear to God if you two don’t stop making out right now, I’m throwing myself at the next speeding car that I see.” Lucas’ voice makes them detangle themselves from one another, laughing at his friend’s face.
///
It was already past noon on March 22nd, and Will hadn’t heard from his boyfriend all day. And yeah, maybe it may seem that Will was exaggerating just a little bit given that it was only 2 p.m. and he had made plans with his friends to celebrate all together late in the afternoon, but Mike was always the first one to call him to say happy birthday, the first one to be at the breakfast table, sitting beside him and talking so much in the morning that his dad would always end up threatening him to forbid him to enter the house ever again.
So yeah, not hearing anything from Mike was something worrisome for Will.
“Maybe he’s just preparing a big surprise for you,” Jonathan said. His omega brother had come all the way back from college to spend the spring break at Hawkins, and right now he was draped all over the couch, watching old The Office reruns with Argyle and Jane.
“But he didn’t even call,” Will said, pacing non-stop in the living room while looking at the phone in his hand as if Mike would magically text him. “Did he say something to you?” he asked his sister, hovering his thumb over the call button.
“No,” she answered, her eyes not leaving for one second the braid she was making in Argyle’s hair. “But maybe Jonathan is right, you shouldn’t make yourself worry like that.”
“Do you want some purple palm tree delight, my dude? It’s good for the nerves.”
“No drugs in the house!” His mom yelled from the kitchen and for a moment everyone relaxed in laughter.
Will slumped on the couch next to his brother, and soon he was engulfed by his arms. The sweet tangerine and blueberry scent of Jonathan helped Will, making the rapid beat of his heart slow down and close his eyes in relaxation. Will presses his face further into his brother’s neck, trying hard to not worry too much about Mike. Maybe Jonathan and Jane were right—it was his first birthday as boyfriends, and maybe Mike was trying to surprise him with something. His boyfriend was romantic like that, there wasn’t any point in being paranoid.
They stayed like that for a little, the four of them squeezed into a too crowded couch, just enjoying the company. The little peace is broken by the loud sound of the ringing bell, and before anyone can move, Will is making his way towards the door with his heart in his throat.
Mike
Mike
Mike
Mike
Will opens the door and his hopeful expression turns into a confused frown when he sees Karen Wheeler on his doorstep instead of his boyfriend.
“Hi, Mrs. Wheeler! Uhm, is everything all right?”
“Will!” Her face is tight with barely concealed tension and for a second Will thinks that, just maybe, something terribly horrible happened to Mike. “Happy birthday, sweetie. Is Joyce at home? I need to talk to her.”
Mrs. Wheeler doesn’t even wait for Will to answer—she just walks past him and makes her way towards the kitchen where his mom is still busy finishing his birthday cake for the night. Will can’t help but notice that she didn’t answer his question, and the bitter taste of fear climbs up his throat, leaving an acidic trail behind it.
Will closes the door and hurries to the kitchen, ignoring the pointed looks from the living room couch. He enters the kitchen right when his mom is greeting Karen with the same confused grimace as Will.
“Karen! Is everything all right?” She asks after a quick hug.
Mrs. Wheeler darts her eyes between him and his mom, clearly not knowing what to say. In the momentary silence of the kitchen, Will notices something.
Mrs. Wheeler’s usual scent is spiked with nervousness and taunted tension and something else—an entirely different scent that didn’t belong to anyone in the Wheeler household. Will sniffs as discreetly as he can, identifying the chocolate notes, the strong mint, something that he thinks is hazelnut and… arousal.
Alpha’s arousal, to be more specific.
Something clicks inside him, but he’s suddenly too shy to speak aloud his thoughts.
“Mike has presented, just this morning,” she breaks the silence, and Will feels the wild rush of blood on his face. “He’s an alpha!” She throws her arms in the air, trying to ease some of the tension on her shoulders.
“That’s fantastic news!” His mom hugs a too tense Karen and smiles at his son. “Will was so nervous thinking that something had happened to him!”
Mrs. Wheeler laughed awkwardly and squeezed his hand, and Will had the feeling that the gesture was meant to comfort her more than him.
“You see, his rut hasn't hit him with full force yet, and, in a moment of clarity, he told me something that maybe you two should know…” she tightens her grip on Will’s hand, and he holds his breath in anticipation, already knowing what she would say. “...he told me that you two made plans for this. That you both wanted to spend his first rut together. Is this true?”
Will’s face feels too hot, a little too embarrassed about having to talk about his sex life in front of his mom and someone who Will considered like a second mother figure in his life, but he nods nonetheless with a shy smile on his face.
His mom takes a sharp breath, but Will doesn’t really care at all.
“Yes, that’s what we both wanted,” he finally says, and it takes everything in him to not bolt out of his house and start running to Mike’s house.
Karen and Joyce shared a look, that kind of concern that mothers only could have regarding to their pups, no matter how grown up they were, and Mrs. Wheeler talked again.
“You don’t need to feel pressure in doing anything, honey.”
“It’s okay if you change your mind,” his mom chimes in.
“It’s a big step to take, and maybe it’s better to wait until Mike settles down properly into his alpha designation.”
“You two have all the time in the world, Will. There’s no need to rush things through."
“Exactly, Mike can spend this rut with just some of your clothes so he has something with your scent.”
“That’s an excellent idea, Karen! Will, why don’t you pick—”
“NO!” At first, he doesn’t notice that it’s him the one that screams in frustration, but everything becomes just too much.
The voices of his mom and Karen are mixed up in an almost painful cacophony, their words echoing in his mind and hurting his heart. He just wants to be with Mike and Mike just wants to be with Will. So, why do they have to wait? Why wouldn’t they trust them in their decision?
Will takes a deep breath of air and stands a little straighter, hoping that he doesn’t look like a little pup throwing a tantrum.
“We talked about this before and we both really want this,” he says, his voice coming out lower and softer, hoping that his pleading would work. “It’s not something rushed, or a decision made out of pressure.”
His mom opens her mouth to talk, and Will cuts her off before she could even mutter a single protest.
“He’s my alpha, mom, and he has always been at my side, helping me, ever since we met as little pups. I want to be at his side and help him this time.”
The honesty dripping from his mouth is so raw and pure, that Will can’t help the few tears that fall from his eyes. Mrs. Wheeler's tense expression melts into something between tenderness and heartbreak, and his mom’s shoulder slumped in defeat.
“I’ll be in the house at all times, Joyce. They wouldn’t be alone,” Karen finally says, and his mom just nods a little. Will rushes to grab a few things from his bedroom and, before he can even really notice, he’s in the passenger seat of Karen Wheeler’s car, making his way over his alpha.
///
“Mike!”
Will barely closes the door before he is imprisoned by a familiar pair of arms. The scent hits his nose hard and makes his whole body just hot, flustered and so very wet. Mike’s scent is delicious and so very irresistible that Will could spend his whole life hiding in the alpha’s neck, just surviving by the smell alone.
“You’re here, you’re here, you’re here,” Mike chants in desperation, pulling away from Will’s body just barely enough to take a look at him. His face is flushed and sweaty, with a few wet curly strands of hair plastered onto it. His pupils are so dilated that the blackness swallows all the warm brown in his eyes, and he’s looking at Will like he’s the most beautiful and most delicious person in the whole wide world.
Will’s eyes dropped below Mike’s neck, and drinks into the sight of his boyfriend’s naked body—the red flushed neck and the swollen mating gland, the tensed freckled shoulders, the heaving sweaty chest and the hard leaking member with a knot forming at the base, proud and inviting against Mike’s lean stomach. Will melts, purrs and kneels all at once, feeling the blood rush to his little cock and the slick coming out of him, and before Mike could even make a sound, he just takes Mike’s dick into his mouth, hands gripping the alpha’s hips with a strong hold. Mike could only growl loud and raspy, before taking Will’s head in his hands and just thrusting his hips, setting an almost brutal pace, fucking Will’s mouth and throat.
“God, baby, you’re an angel. You’re a divine gift only meant for me,” the alpha keeps blabbering almost feverishly, his words varying between praising words of Will’s warm mouth and how perfect and breathtaking he was.
And Will just takes it, crying out of pleasure and out of love, soaking in Mike’s words, emptying his mind and letting his instincts take control of him. He’s right where he wants to be, with Mike, his best friend, his boyfriend, his alpha, and there was nothing that could ever change his mind about them.
Mike thrusts one, two and three times more, coming so much inside Will’s mouth that the omega can only swallow a little before he’s coughing up the rest. There’s come all over Will’s lips and cheeks, dripping from his chin in a manner that makes Mike go crazy with lust, scooping up Will in his arms and throwing him over to the already ruined bed. Next thing he knows, he’s kissing his omega, hot and messy with too much teeth and tongue, licking his own come of his pretty face, and enjoying the sweet moans that sounded better than anything he’d ever heard before.
He rips Will’s clothes off, and the two of them get lost between heated kisses, hair pulling and stroking every inch of skin possible. They nip at each other’s necks endlessly, Mike kisses Will’s soft stomach so much that there’s a belt of red blemishes around his belly button, his tongue gets lost inside Will, and he licks, sucks and even bites until the omega’s thighs are nothing but a trembling slicked mess and Mike’s face is covered in Will’s essence. Will licks every spot of his come off Mike’s face, discovering that he liked the way he tasted on his tongue.
Before thrusting himself inside Will, Mike pauses, and simply stares at Will’s face. His face was still flushed, the rut fever still high, but there was a glimpse of clarity behind the darkened eyes. Mike pauses for a moment, seeking permission in Will’s green eyes. The omega just smiles at his alpha, intertwining their fingers, and they finally become one.
And it all just makes sense.
It was something much deeper than just pleasure at the burn of Mike’s knot inside him. It was completion, two missing pieces finding each other, fitting together with perfection. They dance together, they bite, they kiss, they scream in pleasure and, when they come together at the same time, Mike bares his neck and Will bites hard enough on his mating gland, tasting the copper and the chocolate, the mint, the hazelnuts and everything that Mike was made of.
Mike
Mike
Mike
His alpha.
His mouth leaves his mate’s neck, wet with blood and saliva, and he bares his neck to his alpha with bated breath. The meat tearing under Mike’s teeth comes with a pleasure so strong that Will cries and comes again, screaming his alpha’s name like a God’s prayer.
When Mike pulls out of Will’s neck, they share one last kiss, tasting each other’s blood on their tongues. Before sleep can claim them, Mike rubs his nose against Will’s and gifts him a tender smile.
“Happy birthday, baby.”
Will just smiles back and closes his eyes to sleep.
3. March 22, 2024. 29 years.
It was almost 11.30 p.m., and if it was like any other day, Will would’ve been in bed, either feeling the rise and low of Mike’s chest on his back while they were cuddling after a long day at work or sleeping (or maybe he would’ve been in Mike’s lap or in any other position, enjoying the sensation of his alpha’s knot inside him). But Will was alone, wearing nothing but a pair of Mike’s boxers and one of his alpha’s hoodies, nursing a forgotten cold tea in his hands while he paced restlessly on the carpeted floor of his and Mike’s apartment, anxiously waiting for his alpha to walk through the door.
Will had initially wondered if it had been a good idea to make Mike buy a pregnancy test so late into the night, but he quickly found it in himself that he couldn’t wait for the morning to come.
He needed answers right now, and he refused to feel any disappointment if the result came back negative on his fucking birthday.
They’d been trying for a pup for almost two years with no success, and Will was getting tired of getting his heart broken after so many pregnancy tests with only one line.
It had all started two years ago, May 6th to be exact, just when their niece Jackie, Lucas and Max’s pup, was born. He would never forget the first time he held her niece in his arms—small, skin still wrinkled like a prune, the smell of milk and baby powder coming out of her strong and invading the hospital room, and so very beautiful. She felt just right in his arms, like a missing piece, and he knew right there that he didn’t want to wait any longer for a pup.
(Will would never forget the look on Mike’s face, looking at the two of them with such tenderness and eyes full of desire. He didn’t need to rely on their mating bond to know that his alpha was thinking the same thing as him.)
They had always wanted children. It wasn’t a wish or need born out of pure biological instincts, but rather out of the pure love they’ve always had for each other—a physical proof of that, half Mike and half Will, something that belonged to them and only them, but it’d never felt like the right time before. They were always too busy with different things.
First, they needed to finish college. Then came the year they decided to travel and they almost ended up settling down in a lost little town in southern Italy. When they came back, almost penniless but with a million memories, Mike got a job at a small but profitable publishing house and Will started working in an art gallery downtown thanks to a college friend.
Soon, they both thought, we’re still young, we’ve got plenty of time.
And just like that, they kept postponing the pup talk until the sign came to them clear as lightning.
Holding Jackie for the first time was the sign that Will and Mike were looking for. They didn’t need to wait any longer.
So, for the last two years of their lives, they’ve been trying for a pup non-stop.
At first, they knew that things would take longer than they would’ve wanted. Will had been on birth control ever since he presented at sixteen, and it would take some time for his body to re-adjust itself after ten years on the pill.
“Both of your tests came back with positive results,” the fertility doctor, a beta woman with an easy smile, told them in their first appointment. “You are an omega with excellent health and normal hormone levels, Mr. Byers. It’s common in cases like yours to get pregnant within the first three heats after stopping taking birth control. Besides, you already have a mating bond, which always increases the chances of pregnancy. ”
That didn’t happen, obviously.
The first year passed between heated love-making sessions and wishful thoughts—about which color they would choose to paint the nursery’s walls (green, obviously), if they needed to move to a bigger place in the suburbs (maybe later in life and with a second pup on their way) or if they should get a kitten or a puppy for their future child (the building they lived didn’t allow pets, so maybe after they moved somewhere). Neither Will nor Mike lost their hopes—these kinds of things took time. They needed to be patient.
But the second year of trying hit them harder in an unsuspected manner, and it almost broke them down.
It didn’t matter how much sex they were having, how much money they were spending on the fertility appointments or how many scientific articles he read online about ways to boost his chances of getting pregnant, it all came down to the same dead end—each pregnancy test came back negative and each month his heat came as strong as a slap to his face.
Soon, the negative results began to affect them too.
They’ve never been like that in all the years they’ve known each other. It was like a toxic mold that was slowly infecting everything that made them, well, them—Will almost became a hermit, only going out of the house to work and locking himself in his studio to paint and draw until his fingers went numb (his paintings were darker, shapes too sharp and colors too cold that it didn’t feel like something he usually made). Mike was downright nasty with everyone but Will, getting into fights over the telephone with his father so often that he stopped talking to him for over the course of five months, and he isolated himself by spending almost all of his extra time in the gym ‘blowing off some steam’.
(It was so bad that the rest of their pack had to intervene after a D&D session hosted at Dustin and Jane’s house where Mike and Lucas ended up growling at each other's neck. The next weekend after that night, Dustin and Lucas took Mike on a fishing trip and Will spent those two days with Max and Jane, carrying Jackie in his arms all the time and pretending that he couldn’t see the worried looks that the girls shared behind his back.)
There were days that they barely talked to each other, just little words like ‘good morning’ or ‘we’re out of orange juice’. It was a ridiculous sight—two people who had known each other since the tenderness of childhood, best friends since the moment they’d met on the swing sets, fell in love and got together even before they presented as alpha and omega, happily mated and legally married, barely talking to each other because they were having trouble conceiving. Even the sex had lost its appeal, turning into something mechanical and dreadful.
And Will would always hate himself for that, but at some point he was convinced that Mike was cheating on him, or at least, he was about to.
(“Just tell me the truth!” he screamed at the alpha one night after an unbearable silence. “Tell me that you want some other omega who can give pups to you! Stop lying!”
“What are you talking about?” Mike’s voice was dangerously low, his scent reeking of bitter chocolate and anger, mixing with his own sour vanilla scent in a toxic cloud of pheromones.
That night they had ended up screaming at each other like they’d never done before, crying and having the best sex they had for over a year in Will's nest. When morning came, he woke up feeling lighter and better, enjoying the way Mike drew lazy circles on his back and how warm and strong his alpha’s arms felt around his body.
“I think we need to take some time for ourselves. Talk with a couples therapist or something,” he said, softly whispering in his ear. “This is starting to hurt us. And I’m afraid of reaching a point of no return.”
Will just kissed Mike’s mating mark, the proof that they had chosen each other for as long as they had in this life, enjoying the way he trembled under his touch, and buried his face in his alpha neck. They were going to get better together.)
They went to therapy. They even stopped actively trying for a pup for a few months. And things got better, eventually settling back into a familiar rhythm where the only thing that mattered was the two of them.
And so here Will was, throwing the cold tea into the sink after taking a sip and almost throwing up because it was too bitter. His last heat had been in the early days of February, and neither of them had any particular hopes—they had decided to take things slow, after all, for the sake of their mental health.
But after that last heat, there were little changes that neither Mike nor Will could no longer ignore. Especially Mike.
(“You smell different,” his alpha said one evening. They were showering together and Mike was washing his hair like he always did.
“What? Different how?” He turned around a little too fast, and he almost slipped on the wet floor. Strong hands found their way to his hips in an instant.
Mike just shrugged and tried to pretend that it was nothing that important.
“Just a little more sugary. C’mon, baby, close your eyes and rinse.” He guided his omega under the spray of water by the hips, his eyes traveling down to Will’s belly for a second before focusing back on his hair.)
(“Ugh! That stinks!” Will pulled his sweater over his nose, scrunching his face in disgust at the terrible smell that—according to him— came from the food cart. Mike was looking at him like he had sprung out a second head.
“But baby, you love those pretzels,” he said with a confused frown on his face, darting his eyes between him and the guy that always sold them warm and salty pretzels—the very best of all New York City in their opinion, a little food cart that was on their way to campus and that had accompanied them throughout their college student years—.
“Yeah, but now they smelled like there’s something dead in there. Let’s go somewhere else before I throw up or something.” He tugged his alpha’s hand, leading the march.
They left that little corner of New York behind, choosing to ignore the way Mike’s eyes were burning in his back.)
(“What are these things?” Mike asked as soon as Will stepped foot in their apartment one Saturday afternoon. He quickly made his way towards his mate, taking the shopping bags out of Will’s hands.
He sneaked a glance inside of one of them and saw a big light blue blanket made of that kind of fuzzy fabric that Will liked, and a pair of small but thick pillows. The other shopping bags were stuffed with different animal plushies and blankets so small they could only belong to a small bed. Or to a cradle.
Will leaned on his tippy-toes and gave his alpha a light peck on his lips.
“Just new stuff for my nest. There’s a new shop down the street from the gallery and there are so many cute things that it made me want to buy almost everything on display. Oh, and take that hoodie off, I want to wear it now.”
Mike pulled off his hoodie and gave it to his omega without a second thought. He didn’t dare to say it just yet, but his heart was beating in a hopeful rhythm.)
On the morning of March 21st, Will had rushed to the bathroom as soon as he opened his eyes, fighting with all his might the sudden and violent wave of nausea. His alpha’s hands were on his back a second after hunching down on the toilet, rubbing soothing circles, and on his forehead, taking the wild strands of hair away from his face, as he emptied what little he had on his stomach.
“Will, I think you should get a pregnancy test,” Mike hadn’t even waited until Will had finished rinsing his mouth to spill what felt like a bomb to him.
“And I think you should go to work now,” he closed the door to their room and disappeared under the blankets and layers of clothes of his nest, not having the energy to deal with that right now.
Mike, wise as the D&D character of his mate, chose to give him all the space he needed, and practically didn’t bother Will with the matter all day.
But Will had been bothered by that.
There was an annoyingly high-pitched voice whispering endlessly in his ear about the tiny possibility of a pregnancy. And Will hated how something that he had been looking forward to for so long had turned into something that he was afraid to face. He couldn’t face another negative result. He wasn’t ready just yet.
So he spent his day as if nothing had happened that morning—he went to the gallery to supervise a new purchase, talked with a publisher about the possibility to work as an illustrator for a new edition of The Chronicles of Narnia, facetimed his mom, planned their next trip to Hawkins with Jonathan and Jane and sent silly instagram reels to Mike.
Night came, Mike came back home with it, and they had dinner, as usual. Two hours later, Will ran to the bathroom, spilling his guts over the toilet, again. Mike, who had been writing on his laptop until Will rushed out of bed, was clutching the bathroom door with so much force that his knuckles were paper white.
After what felt like an eternity of looking at his own puke on the toilet, Will turned to look at his mate with a pale face.
“Mike, I think you should go and get me a pregnancy test now.”
The alpha was out of the apartment a minute later, frantically putting on a coat and fumbling with the car keys with trembling hands.
Will sat down on the couch, clutching a cushion to his chest as if it was a shield, and checked the time on his phone for what it felt like the millionth time that night. 11.45 p.m. and still no sight of Mike. This was New York City, how difficult was it to find a pharmacy that was open 24 hours?!
Will pushed the cushion to his face, drowning a bitter scream with it, and then snuggled himself into Mike’s hoodie, basking in his scent as best as he could.
He needed Mike.
He needed his alpha right now. Will couldn’t stand the lonely uncertainty anymore.
The metallic sound of keys drew his attention towards the door, and his heart leaped inside his ribcage at the sight of Mike, entering their apartment with a brown paper bag in his left hand.
“Sorry for taking so long, you won’t believe how many people were at the pharmacy at almost midnight,” he said, slightly out of breath. Will knew that even if Mike was trying as best as he could to control his scent, the shaking hand holding the bag was snitching how nervous the alpha was.
Mike took off his coat and just stayed there, standing awkwardly in the middle of the room and looking at Will like a lost puppy. Neither of them dared to move for a minute, knowing that as soon as they did, they would’ve to face either an ugly truth or what would be the happiest moment of their lives.
The omega was the first one to break the spell. Will walked over to his mate, took the bag with one hand and, with the other, he held Mike’s hand, intertwining his fingers in a strong lock. He silently guided them towards the bathroom.
The motions came out slowly, as if they were taking all the time in the world to delay the result. He tossed the brown paper bag and the pregnancy box (after reading the instructions three times, of course) into the bin, pulled the boxers down and peed on the stick, all of this under Mike’s guarding gaze. Once he finished, he put the pregnancy test over the sink and sat down on the floor, knees to his chest, hiding his face between them.
Mike’s arms were around him a second later, re-arranging their position so the alpha’s back was pressed against the toilet and Will’s face was now tucked under Mike’s chin, nose rubbing into his neck in search of the alpha’s scent.
They didn’t speak or tried to say words of encouragement. Being in each other’s arms was everything they needed to calm the anxious beating of their hearts.
“You know, I think our neighbor next door got a cat,” Mike broke the silence, his voice muffled against Will’s hair.
“Really?”
“Yeah, I saw him in the elevator this morning with a bag of cat sand. He looked at me like I had discovered him smuggling cocaine or something.”
Will giggled into his neck and Mike shivered in pleasure at the sensation.
“Well, the building administrator is terrifying. Remember the little girl with her hamster pet?” Mike’s laugh made his chest vibrate.
“Fucking asshole making a little girl cry because of a rat.”
“Hamster.”
“Is a rodent, same thing.”
“A hamster is nothing similar to a—”
The loud noise of Mike’s phone alarm invaded the bathroom, echoing on the walls, sounding louder than any bomb in existence. Mike turned it off with a brush of his thumb, his arms remaining around Will.
“Baby?” He asked softly. Will’s face hadn’t left the curve of his neck.
“Can you do it? I don’t want to see it,” his voice came out like a weak whisper, but he knew that Mike had listened.
He felt one of the alpha’s hands leave him, stretching as far as he could to reach the stick over the sink without leaving their sitting position on the floor.
One, two, three, four and five seconds passed.
A choked sob left Mike’s chest and Will pulled out of his neck in an instant.
“It’s positive,” His voice was merely a whisper, but in the quiet of the night it sang louder and sweeter than anything he had heard before. There were tears falling from Mike’s brown eyes and the hand holding the pregnancy test was shaking with excitement.
Will snatched it and saw with his own eyes the two lines on it.
Positive.
It was a positive result.
His breath hitched, and his heart began beating so fast that he feared for a moment that it would leap out of his chest. Mike’s hands tightened on his hips and Will took his eyes off the stick to look at him—he was smiling brightly through his tears, and Will thought that Mike had never looked so happy.
“We’re having a pup!” he said to his alpha before throwing his arms around him, hiding his tear-stained face on his chest and listening to Mike’s happy heart beat.
Suddenly, everything that happened over the last two years made sense. It almost felt like all the pain, the screams, the tears and all the sad moments were worth it. It all came down to that moment, Will in Mike’s arms, crying and laughing at the same time, being so goddamn happy that nothing else mattered outside that bathroom.
Finally, he thought, we're going to be a complete family.
Mike checked the time on his phone and smiled, holding his mate tighter.
“Happy birthday, love,” Mike whispered in his ear, and Will thought that he could die out of happiness at any moment now.
It was the best birthday gift he had ever received.
4. March 22nd, 2030. 35 years.
In the small kingdom of his and Mike’s bedroom, snuggled into the soft, warm blankets on his bed, face pressed against the pillow that smelled like chocolate, mint and hazelnuts (Mike’s scent) and vanilla, lavender and cinnamon (his own scent), Will wakes up on his birthday with sunlight gently greeting his face. The side of the bed where Mike sleeps is empty, only a warm indent left behind like a memory of his body pressed against his.
Will stays still for a little, allowing his body and mind to properly wake up. His brow furrowed in a frown when he realized how silent the house was. It was early in the morning, barely 8 a.m., but the Wheeler-Byers household hadn’t been a quiet place ever since their first pup Maggie was born. And so much quietness in a house full of pups was like the calm before a 4-scale storm.
He placed a hand over the tender skin of his belly, right over his womb, and rubbed light strokes with the pad of his thumb.
“What do you think your siblings and daddy are up to, little bug?” he whispered to his two-month-pregnant belly. “Should we take a look downstairs or stay in bed until they break something?”
Will had just made himself comfortable against the bed’s headboard, when he heard a couple of thundering steps making their way, climbing the stairs quickly and loudly. The familiar laughter of his pup reached his ears and Will couldn’t help but smile tenderly.
“Maggie!” Mike’s voice had that commanding but sweet tone he only used when telling their pups an order. “No running with Jace in your arms!”
The bedroom door opened with a loud THUD! and Will was greeted with the sight of his 4-year-old twins, June and Winnie, beaming at him.
“Happy birthday, mommy!” They squealed at the same time, climbing into the bed and throwing their arms around him. Will hugged them tightly against his chest, burrowing his nose against their brown curls, and peppering soft kisses in their temples.
“I told you to wait so we could all wake up mommy together!” Maggie was standing on the door, stomping her foot on the floor and frowning at her sisters with a pout so identical to Mike that it made Will’s heart melt every single time he looked at it. She was holding a half-awake, half-asleep Jace in her arms, the youngest pup in the house.
June stuck her tongue out to her older sister and Winnie pressed her face further in Will’s chest, her eyes drowsily closing as sleep was calling out to her. Of all the pups, she had always been the heaviest sleeper, and she was always sneaking to Will’s nest to take a nap.
Will laughed softly at his daughters’ antics and patted the empty spot of the bed beside him.
“Come here, love.”
Maggie beamed at him with that sweet smile of hers and rushed to the bed, with little Jace secured in her arms. Jace was now fully awake, making a grabbing motion towards him.
“Mama! Mama!” Will took his one-year-old pup, peppering his face with kisses and making his son burst out in loud giggles.
A soft pair of hands grabbed his cheeks and Will turned his head towards his oldest daughter. She gave him a loud kiss on his cheek.
“Happy birthday, mommy!”
“Thank you, my love.”
They spent the next minutes like that—Will and his four pups cuddling in bed, simply enjoying the warm bed and their mother’s sweet hugs. When Mike enters the room, holding a big breakfast tray in his hands, the pups break their silence and start talking one over the other (mostly Maggie and June, given that Winnie was already fast asleep and Jace could only blabber ‘mama’ and ‘papa’ and “no!”).
“We made you breakfast with daddy!” Maggie proudly declared.
“And I cooked with fire!” June said, as if it was one of her biggest achievements.
“No you didn’t, that was daddy.”
“But I helped him with the spitula, it’s the same thing!”
“It’s spatula, dummy! And it’s not the same thing!”
“It is!”
“It is not!”
“Stop it girls!” Mike said in his alpha-dad voice while Will laughed at the little bickering. He placed the tray on the nightstand, and made his way towards his omega.
Mike kissed him, lifting his chin with one hand and placing a hand on his belly, rubbing circles on the exposed skin as a silent greeting to the baby there. He didn’t say ‘good morning’ or ‘happy birthday’. He didn’t need to—their intimacy spoke for them in a language only available for them.
“Ew!! Daddy! No kissing!” June said, most likely sticking her tongue out in childish disgust.
“Mama mine, papa!” Jace slapped Mike’s chest, making the both of them break their kiss, sharing a laugh.
“No, mama is ours, Jacey,” Maggie tried to explain to her little brother in a way that Mike always called it her inner Nancy Wheeler.
“Nope!” The alpha scooped both Jace and Maggie in his arms, making the pups squeal and giggle at the same time. “Mama is mine!”
“Very mature, Michael,” he said with no real bite to it, reaching for a glass of orange juice.
“Can we eat now?” Winnie’s sleepy voice said. She was awake, most likely from the ruckus caused by her siblings, rubbing her eyes with her little fist and leaning on Will’s chest.
Minutes later they were all settled down on the big bed eating breakfast—Jace on Mike’s lap, eating the little pieces of banana and kiwi that his father was giving to him; Maggie and Winnie were sitting at his side, their mouth full of chocolate pancakes and eating them as if there was no tomorrow; and finally there was June, who had temporarily forgotten her breakfast for the sake of telling her last dream like it was a New York Time’s bestseller.
“And then the princess turned into a dragon and then she ate the knight so she wouldn’t marry him!” She finished, throwing her arms in the air in a dramatic gesture. “You can use it in your next book, daddy, and mommy can make the drawings too.”
“That’s a brilliant idea, love,” Will pulled his daughter closer to him, rubbing his nose on her little neck, making June giggle at the tickling feeling.
Mike grabbed his chin, pretending to give it a thought.
“I think feminism will love it, Junie,” he said, making his mate laugh while he helped Winnie get some strawberries.
“What’s feminism?” Maggie asked, wiping the chocolate from her face with a napkin.
“Girl power.”
“Cool!”
Will felt small arms shaking him lightly, and he took his eyes from Winnie to see June pressing her face on his arm, looking at him with wide brown eyes.
“Are you going to make a birthday wish, mommy?” She asked, rubbing her face on his side.
“Mommy needs a candle and a cake for that, dummy.”
“Maggie,” both Will and Mike warned their eldest pup as June told her sister to ‘Shut up!’.
“I’ve already got my birthday wish, love,” Will said, stroking the tip of his daughter’s nose with his finger.
Her eyes widened with childlike wonder. “Really? What was it?”
Will smiled at her, pulling her closer to him and giving her a kiss on her temple. He vaguely remembers all those years ago, the earliest memory he has of a birthday, and the wish he made as a pup. As he answered to June, his eyes soaked into the sight in front of him—Mike surrounded by three of their pups, sharing a familiar and domestic scene.
“You.”