Chapter Text
The city was louder than Hawkins ever was, yet somehow, Will had grown used to the noise. It filled the hollow spaces of his days, blurring into a kind of hush he could rest inside. Five years had dissolved into the static of sirens, crosswalks, and evening light reflected on glass — and now it was hard to remember what quiet used to sound like.
The apartment he shared with Jacob was small, washed pale by years of indirect sunlight through the warped window. They’d chosen it for the way it caught morning light, how the walls blushed gold for a few minutes before turning dull again. But lately, those minutes came and went unnoticed. The sound of Jacob brushing his teeth before work felt louder than their conversations. An affection built of routine — hands brushing when reaching for coffee mugs, the murmur of “goodnight” uttered without looking up.
Will tried not to dwell on what wasn’t said.
Jacob had never told him he loved him. Not once.
Sometimes it felt deliberate, an invisible bruise Will kept touching just to make sure it still hurt.
He filled the silence with color. Paint smeared on canvases, half-finished sketches of faces he couldn’t stop remembering. In class, he painted cityscapes that never quite looked like New York — they were too quiet, absent of motion. His professors called it “nostalgic realism.” He thought of it more as homesickness disguised as art.
Jonathan and Nancy lived just a few blocks away, a comforting distance but rarely a comfort. They weren’t dating anymore — hadn’t been for years — but they stuck together like survivors do. Jonathan still took photos that no one ever saw, and Nancy wrote articles for local magazines, occasionally calling Will late at night to ask him what he remembered about Jane. They never said El. They always said Jane, as if renaming her could keep her from disappearing completely.
There were moments when Will swore he’d heard her laugh in his sleep — faint, like something behind a closed door. He’d wake up and stare at the ceiling, tracing the cracks above him like constellations, trying to remember what she sounded like. Then Jacob would stir beside him, and the world would tilt back to now.
He often thought of calling Mike but never did. They still talked, sometimes, on birthdays or holidays, each conversation a strange balancing act between too much and too little. Hawkins felt like another lifetime. Some nights, lying on his back, Will imagined it still existing exactly as it had — same air, same woods, same dust in the sunlight — as if his leaving had frozen it. But then Jonathan would call from the next block, his voice tired, and Will would remember: time hadn’t stopped anywhere. It was still moving, even in places he’d left behind.
Jacob kissed him before leaving for class one morning, a brief, easy thing that barely touched his mouth. Will smiled, said “see you tonight,” and meant it, but something inside him felt like paper about to tear. After Jacob left, the silence returned, thick as paint.
He turned to his easel, half expecting to feel inspired, but all he saw was a stretch of gray on gray. He dipped his brush in turpentine and thought about the years — how five could disappear like spilled ink, how so many names could fade into memory. The city rumbled beneath his window like a living creature, restless and awake even when he was not.
He didn’t know when he’d stopped expecting more — from Jacob, from college, from New York itself. Maybe around the time the first snow fell that year and stayed past March. Maybe the day he realized Jacob’s “You’re incredible” never led to “I love you.”
The kettle shrieked on the stove. He poured tea into a chipped mug and watched the steam curl upward, vanishing before it reached the ceiling. On days like this, Will wondered what it would feel like to be seen again — not in photographs, not in passing glances, but truly seen. The way Mike used to look at him all those years ago by the lake when they were still too young to call it love.
He shook the thought away, swallowed the tea though it scalded his tongue, and pressed a new sheet of canvas to the frame. Outside, sirens echoed off the buildings — notes of a city that never stopped apologizing for itself.
When Jacob came home that night, Will would smile again. They would cook something simple, talk about classes, maybe watch a movie with subtitles neither of them followed. And then they’d sleep in the same bed, close enough to touch but separated by the invisible boundary that had slowly grown between them over the year.
Will no longer knew when silence became comfort, or when comfort became distance. The only thing he knew for certain was that morning would come again — sunlight spreading thin across their apartment floor, painting the same light he’d once dreamed of and now barely noticed.