Nearly seven years had passed since Hawkins had nearly torn itself apart.

Since the night the sky burned red and the ground split open, since Eleven gave everything she had to seal the rift for good. Her sacrifice had ended the nightmare — the Upside Down sealed, the world spared — but it had left a hollow ache in everyone who survived it. Hawkins rebuilt slowly, quietly, as if afraid to draw attention to itself again. Memorials went up. Names were etched into stone. Life went on, because it had to.

Graduation came not long after, heavy with grief and strange relief. Caps tossed into the air, applause echoing off the gym walls, and beneath it all, a sense that something sacred had ended. It was that night, after the ceremony, when the world finally felt still enough to breathe, that Mike found Will alone behind the school — and told him the truth he’d carried for years. There were no monsters chasing them, no urgency except the kind that came from the heart. Just two boys standing under fading summer stars, choosing each other at last.

They left Hawkins together not long after.

New York had been intimidating at first — loud, sprawling, endlessly alive — but it gave them something Hawkins never could: distance. Space to grow. To heal. Mike found his place in words, working his way into a position at The New York Times, editing and writing pieces that explored the strange and the human with equal care. Will, finally free to create without fear, flourished at the Met, his art bold and haunting, shaped by memory but no longer ruled by it.

They built a life that was quiet and full and theirs. Mornings spent sharing coffee by the window. Evenings curled together on the couch, half-watching old movies, half-lost in conversation. A love that had survived monsters, distance, grief — and somehow come out softer, steadier, real.

Which was why, when the invitation arrived in the mail, Mike stared at it longer than he meant to.

Hawkins High School. Five-year reunion.

He’d tried to laugh it off, tried to pretend it didn’t matter. But the thought of going back — of walking streets that still remembered who he used to be — made something tighten in his chest. He was content in New York. Happy. Safe.

Will, on the other hand, had smiled.

Not a forced smile, not a nostalgic one — a hopeful one.

“We don’t have to stay long,” he’d said gently, “But… I think it might be nice. To see how far we’ve come.”

And just like that, Mike caved. He always did.

Now, after a long, cramped flight and an even longer drive from the airport, they pulled into the familiar driveway of the Wheeler house. The porch light glowed warmly against the dark, unchanged in a way that made Mike’s chest ache. Holly had practically demanded they stay here for the week, excited beyond reason at the thought of having her big brother home again.

Mike cut the engine and sat there for a moment, hands still on the wheel, the past pressing close around him.

“Still think we should’ve gotten a hotel,” he muttered, glancing sideways at Will — already smiling softly, already home in a way Mike wasn’t sure he’d ever be again.

But if he was going to face the ghosts of Hawkins, he was glad he wasn’t doing it alone.