Chapter Text
Morning in New York never arrived quietly.
It came in layers—sirens weaving through the streets below, a car horn held too long out of impatience, the muffled argument of neighbors bleeding through thin walls. Someone upstairs dropped something heavy. Somewhere nearby, a radio played a song Will didn’t recognize, the bass vibrating faintly through the floor.
The apartment was small, barely holding the two of them, but it was theirs. A secondhand couch pushed against the wall. A coffee table scarred with old rings. Sunlight fought its way through the grimy window, catching dust in the air and turning it golden.
Will sat cross-legged on the floor with a mug warming his hands, steam curling up toward his face. Across from him, Ryan leaned against the couch, book open in his lap, one ankle hooked casually over the other. A cassette played softly from the tape deck by the window—something mellow, guitar-heavy, the kind of music that didn’t demand attention.
Will didn’t have class that day. Ryan didn’t either. It was one of those rare mornings with nowhere to be.
“I swear,” Ryan said without looking up, “if Mrs. Klein upstairs vacuums one more time, I’m going to lose my mind.”
Will smiled faintly. “At least she does it during the day now.”
“That’s growth.”
Ryan glanced up then, smiling back, eyes warm and easy. Will returned it, automatically. He liked Ryan’s smile. He liked the way mornings like this felt safe, uncomplicated.
Still—
his chest ached with something he didn’t have a name for.
His gaze drifted to the window. The street below was already crowded, people weaving past one another like they were all late for something important. A bus hissed as it pulled away from the curb. Somewhere, a dog barked endlessly.
Too loud, a part of him thought.
He missed the quiet.
Back in Hawkins, mornings had been gentle. Mist clinging to the trees. Crickets still chirping even after sunrise. The creak of the porch steps. His mom humming in the kitchen. The woods behind the house breathing slow and steady, like they’d always be there.
Sometimes he missed it so sharply it startled him.
Will took a sip of coffee, eyes unfocusing as memory crept in the way it always did—uninvited, persistent. Hawkins wasn’t just a place. It was faces. Voices. Laughter echoing through basements and fields.
Mike.
The thought came the way it usually did—soft, sudden, unavoidable.
Every now and then, without warning, Will found himself wondering what Mike was doing. If he still talked with his hands when he got excited. If his voice still cracked when he was nervous. If he still stayed up too late thinking about things he couldn’t fix.
Will had told himself he was over it. Over him. He had moved across the country, built a life, fallen into something new and steady. He was supposed to be past that version of himself—the boy who waited too long, who loved too quietly.
And yet.
Ryan didn’t know Mike. Didn’t know any of it, really. He knew about Hawkins in the vaguest way—small town, weird stuff, trauma Will didn’t like talking about. Ryan knew Will liked to draw, liked early mornings, hated hospitals.
He didn’t know about the way Will still felt hollow when October came around.
Will’s eyes drifted to the phone on the kitchen counter.
The beige landline sat there innocently, its cord coiled neatly beside it. It hadn’t made a sound. It wasn’t doing anything.
Still, Will looked at it longer than necessary.
Eleven flickered across his thoughts then, sharp and sudden—the last image burned into his memory. Her standing at the edge of the gate as everything collapsed behind her. The sky tearing. The world ending. And then—
Gone.
No body. No goodbye. Just absence.
His fingers tightened around the mug.
The phone rang.
The sound was loud, abrupt, wrong—cutting through the music, the city noise, the quiet safety of the room. Will startled so hard he nearly spilled his coffee.
For a second, he just stared at it.
Ryan looked up immediately. “You want me to get that?”
Will blinked. His heart was beating too fast. “Um—” He swallowed. “No. I— It’s probably my mom.”
That wasn’t entirely a lie. Joyce did call sometimes from wherever she and Hopper had decided to roam that month.
Will stood, legs unsteady, and crossed the room. He lifted the receiver.
“Hello?”
There was a pause. Just long enough for his breath to catch.
“Hey.”
The voice hit him like muscle memory.
Mike.
Mike Wheeler.
Will’s mind flooded with him—dark hair falling into his eyes, the way he chewed on his lip when he was thinking, the sound of his laugh echoing in the basement. Bike rides. Walkie-talkies. Shared looks that said everything and nothing at the same time.
“Hi,” Will said, voice barely steady.
“Will. It’s Mike.”
As if Will wouldn’t know.
As if there was any version of reality where he wouldn’t.
“Yeah,” Will said softly. “I know.”
Another pause. Awkward. Familiar.
“How—uh. How are you?” Mike asked.
“I’m… good. Yeah. Doing good.” Will glanced back at Ryan, who had returned to his book but was clearly listening anyway. “How about you?”
“Fine. I mean—yeah. Fine.”
They filled the space with nothing. College. Work. Weather. Mike mentioned Hawkins like it was just another town, not a place soaked in memory. Will told him he was in New York, that it was loud, that he was adjusting.
Then Mike cleared his throat.
“So,” he said. “I was thinking… this Halloween. Um.” He hesitated. “You could come to Hawkins. Like—like the old days.”
Will closed his eyes.
“I called everyone,” Mike continued, a little rushed now. “Dustin, Lucas, Max—they’re all coming. Steve too. I just thought—maybe we could all be together again. Just for a bit.”
Will felt something crack open in his chest.
Two years. Two years of telling himself he’d moved on. Two years of building something new on top of old foundations that never quite stopped shifting.
Ryan looked up then. Met his eyes. Silently mouthed, Who is it?
Will covered the receiver with his hand. “Old friend,” he mouthed back.
Mike was still talking, explaining, filling the silence like he always did when he was nervous.
“—I mean, you don’t have to, obviously. I just thought I’d ask.”
Will stared at the wall, at a crack in the paint shaped vaguely like a lightning bolt.
He knew this feeling. The pull. The way Mike always managed to reach him without trying.
“Yeah,” Will heard himself say. “I’ll come.”
The word echoed.
“Really?” Mike sounded lighter instantly, relief bleeding through. “Okay. Okay, great.”
Will hung up a minute later, heart still racing.
He stayed where he was for a moment after hanging up, the phone still warm in his hand. He didn’t put it down immediately. He just stood there, staring at the wall like it might explain what had just happened.
Behind him, the cassette clicked softly as the song ended and rewound itself.
Ryan turned the page of his book.
“Will?” he said, not looking up yet. “You okay?”
Will set the receiver back in its place very carefully, like if he did it wrong, the phone might ring again. He walked back to the couch and sat down, this time closer to the edge, knees pulled up slightly, shoulders tight.
“I’m… yeah,” he said.
Ryan finally looked up.
That’s when his expression changed.
“You’re not,” Ryan said, gentle but certain.
Will exhaled through his nose and rubbed his palms together. The city outside felt louder now.
“I’m not going to make it to the Halloween party,” Will said.
Ryan frowned. “What?”
“The one at Sam's,” Will added quickly. “Next week.”
Ryan stared at him. “But—we’ve been planning that for, like, a month.”
“I know.” Will’s voice dropped. “I’m really sorry.”
They had planned it carefully. Not loudly. Not in a way that would make people talk.
They hadn’t wanted matching costumes or anything obvious. Just something subtle. Something only people who already knew would notice.
They’d spent hours walking through thrift stores, debating fabrics and colors. Laughing when something looked ridiculous. Sitting on the floor of the apartment later, surrounded by discarded ideas.
They’d finally settled on it last night.
Two students from Dead Poets Society. Nothing labeled. Nothing explained. Just the same world, the same era. Blazers that looked borrowed, ties loosened, notebooks tucked under arms like they mattered. To anyone else, it would look like coincidence—two college guys dressed vaguely academic, vaguely old-fashioned.
At the time, it had felt important. Almost urgent.
Now it felt… distant. Like something that belonged to a different timeline.
Ryan closed his book and placed it on the coffee table. “Why?”
Will hesitated.
“A friend called,” he said.
Ryan waited.
“From back home.”
Ryan nodded slowly. “Okay.”
Will kept staring at his hands. He could feel Ryan watching him, but he didn’t look up.
“Is everything okay there?” Ryan asked.
“I think so,” Will said. Then, after a beat, “I mean—maybe. I don’t know.”
Ryan shifted closer, their knees brushing. “Do you want to go?”
That question lodged itself in Will’s chest.
“I don’t know,” he said again. “But I think I have to.”
Ryan studied his face, searching for something Will wasn’t giving him. Then he leaned back, exhaling quietly.
“Okay,” he said.
No anger. No demand for explanation.
That somehow made Will feel worse.
---
The rest of the day passed strangely.
They made lunch but barely ate. Ryan talked about a class he was behind in. Will nodded in the right places, smiled when expected. Inside, his thoughts kept circling back.
Will nodded again when Ryan paused, like he was waiting for a response, but Will hadn’t heard the last sentence. Or the one before that. His mind kept slipping, drifting backward, replaying the same moment over and over.
Mike called.
The words still didn’t feel real.
He could still hear the way Mike had said his name. Not rushed. Not casual. Like he’d been holding it in his mouth for a second before letting it go. Will pressed his thumb into the edge of his plate until it left a faint white mark, grounding himself.
Will liked Ryan. He really did. Liked the way he listened, the way he didn’t demand explanations Will wasn’t ready to give. And that made everything worse, somehow. Because he didn’t know what to do with the feeling sitting in his chest now—this mix of guilt and longing and something unresolved that refused to stay buried.
He told himself it was nostalgia.
That once he actually saw Mike—once they talked like normal people, like adults—it would fade. That he’d been projecting something old onto something that didn’t exist anymore.
But the thought of seeing him made his stomach twist.
Three and a half years ago.
The Squawk.
His voice shaking, hands cold, heart in his throat as he tried to explain something he barely understood himself. Saying too much and not enough at the same time.
I don't like girls
He’s just my Tammy.
Even now, the memory made heat crawl up his neck. He remembered how quiet everyone had gone. How Mike had looked at him—confused, then apologetic later at the tower, saying he hadn’t seen it, hadn’t understood, had been too wrapped up in himself.
Best friends, they’d said.
And then there was the painting.
God.
The painting in the van, on the way to rescue El. The lie he’d told about it. How he’d never corrected it. How Mike had believed him.
The embarrassment hit him fresh, sharp enough that he looked away from Ryan, blinking hard.
He hadn’t talked to Mike about any of that. Not then. Not later. And somehow, years had passed anyway.
Will had stopped measuring closeness by frequency a long time ago.
There had been a time—right after everything ended—when he thought staying connected meant constant proof. Calling more. Writing more. Checking in, just to hear someone breathe on the other end of the line and know they were still there. But life didn’t work that way. It never had.
There were long stretches where he didn’t hear Dustin’s voice at all. Weeks where Lucas existed only as someone he thought about in passing. Max lived entirely in memory now—unchanged, frozen in the last moment he’d seen her. Letters went unwritten. Calls were postponed. Postcards arrived late, if they arrived at all. Birthdays were remembered days after, followed by apologies that didn’t need explaining.
And still—nothing broke.
As a wise man once said, they’d all got shared trauma.
It was true. Surviving something like that together changed the shape of things. It made distance irrelevant. It made time small.
They didn’t need to talk every day to stay close. Silence didn’t mean distance. Time didn’t mean loss.
Because when Dustin did call, Will never had to remember how to be his friend. Lucas still sounded like Lucas. Max, even absent, still existed in him exactly as she always had. They all are still felt solid—like someone who would show up if it mattered, without needing to be asked.
What held them together wasn’t effort. It wasn’t maintenance.
It was survival.
Family. Not friends.
That’s what Will told himself, anyway.
He thought about how little he had really talked to them since Hawkins, how lives had spread out like ribbons in every direction, and yet… somehow, some unspoken thread remained.
One thought after another collided in his mind until, without realizing it, his hand was on the phone. Fingers hovering over the buttons. He took a breath. One, two. Finally, he pressed them, letting the connection bridge the miles.
The line crackled once before it connected.
“Hey.”
There was a half-second pause on the other end, like the word had landed unexpectedly.
“Will?” Dustin’s voice lifted immediately, bright and disbelieving. “Oh my god—hi. Hi. What the hell, man. What’ve you been up to?”
Will smiled despite himself, fingers tightening around the receiver. “Uh… nothing. Just… you know. Stuff.” A beat. “What about you?”
Dustin huffed out a laugh. “Yeah, well—remember that thing I told you about? The thing Steve and I were talking about?”
“The… thing?” Will said, already knowing.
“Yeah. That.” Dustin rushed on, excitement tumbling over itself. “Not like—nothing weird. Not detectives or anything.” He lowered his voice instinctively, like someone might be listening. “More like… a facility. A place people can come to when something’s wrong and nobody believes them. When things don’t make sense.”
Will’s chest tightened. Of course that’s what they’d build.
“We’re calling it the Outreach Center. For now,” Dustin added. “We’re still figuring it out. But yeah—we’re looking at places. Offices. Like, real ones.”
“Wow,” Will breathed. “That’s… that’s huge.”
“Yeah,” Dustin said, quieter now, like the reality of it had just caught up. Then, almost carefully, “So… I’m guessing that’s not why you called.”
Will swallowed. “I got a call from—”
“Mike,” Dustin said immediately.
Will exhaled. “Yeah.”
There it was. The name that sat heavy between them.
“I got it too,” Dustin said. “And honestly?” His voice dipped. “I was relieved. Like—actually relieved. I’ve been worried about him, Will. For a while.”
Will’s brow furrowed. “Worried how?”
“He dropped out,” Dustin said. “College. A year ago.”
“What?” Will sat up straighter. “Why? He liked it. I thought he—”
“Yeah. Me too.” Dustin sighed. “He didn’t really say much. And we don’t… talk that often anymore. But still. You can hear it in his voice, you know? Something’s off.”
Will stared at the wall across from him. “I didn’t know,” he said quietly.
“That’s why this felt like… I don’t know. An opening,” Dustin continued. “Like maybe this is the excuse. Halloween. Everyone in one place. I can talk to him without it being weird.”
“Are you staying long?” Will asked.
“Probably not,” Dustin admitted. “I’ve got too much going on here. The Center, paperwork, Steve breathing down my neck.” A faint laugh. “But at least I can talk to him. Face to face.”
“Yeah,” Will said. “Same. I’ve got classes. I don’t think I’ll stay after dinner either.”
“So you’re coming,” Dustin said, like he needed to hear it out loud.
“Yeah. Lucas and Max too, right?”
“Yeah. And Steve. He lives there, so—kind of unavoidable.”
Will hesitated. “What about the others? Nancy? Robin?”
“I don’t think so,” Dustin said. “Mike didn’t mention them. And Jonathan—”
“—he’s touring,” Will finished softly. “With that band. He’s their videographer or something.”
“Yeah,” Dustin said, smiling into the phone.
“Music, cameras. Guy’s living his dream.”
“We all deserve that,” Will said after a moment. “After everything.”
“Yeah,” Dustin agreed. Then, more honestly,
“It’s just… Mike. He’s the one I’m worried about. Feels like he never really got a happy ending.”
Will closed his eyes. Mike’s laugh. Mike’s anger. Mike standing between them and everything terrible like it was instinct, not courage.
“Yeah,” he said again, but this time it hurt.
“I don’t think Nancy or Robin will make it,” Dustin added. “But… we’ll see.”
“Yeah,” Will said. “We’ll see in a few days.”
“Yeah, man,” Dustin replied. “See you there.”
“Bye, Dustin.”
“Bye, Will.”
The line went dead with a soft click that felt louder than it should have.
He let his arm drop, the phone resting loosely in his hand. The room felt too quiet again. His thoughts weren’t sharp — just crowded. Dustin’s voice. Mike’s name. Hawkins. Halloween. All of it sitting in his chest at once, heavy and unmoving.
He didn’t hear Ryan approach.
He only felt him.
Warmth at his back. Arms sliding around his waist, slow and familiar, like Ryan already knew Will wasn’t going to turn around. His chin rested lightly against Will’s shoulder, breath warm through the fabric of his sweater.
“Hey,” Ryan said softly. Not questioning yet. Just present.
Will exhaled, the kind of breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding.
“You okay?”
The question wasn’t careful, but it wasn’t invasive either. Ryan never pried. He just noticed. Always noticed.
Will nodded, even though Ryan couldn’t see it. “Yeah,” he said. The word came out automatically. Too quickly.
Ryan didn’t move away. His arms tightened, just slightly — not to trap, not to demand. Just to remind.
“You don’t have to be,” Ryan said. “But… if you are, that’s okay too.”
Will swallowed.
He leaned back into the hold without thinking, letting himself be held fully this time. It surprised him, how much he needed it. How easily his body gave in, like it recognized safety before his mind could catch up.
Ryan’s hand traced small, absent circles against his stomach. Grounding. Patient.
“I know something’s wrong,” Ryan murmured. Not accusing. Just honest. “You don’t go that quiet unless it is.”
Will closed his eyes.
This — this — was the part that hurt the most. The gentleness. The way Ryan didn’t push but still stayed. The way affection was offered without conditions. Will craved it in a way that scared him, because it made everything else feel sharper by comparison.
“I’m really okay,” Will said again, softer this time. Less convincing.
Ryan pressed a kiss to the side of his neck, brief and unassuming.
“Okay,” he said, like he believed Will had the right to choose silence. “But I’m here. If you want to talk. Now, later. Whenever.”
Will nodded again. His throat felt tight.
Ryan rested his forehead against Will’s shoulder for a moment longer, then loosened his hold — not pulling away completely, just enough to give Will space without leaving it empty.
---
A few days later, Will packed anyway.
He told himself he didn’t need to. It was just Hawkins. Just dinner. Just a weekend, maybe not even that. He wasn’t staying. He knew that. He’d already decided.
Still, he pulled his duffel out from under the bed.
He folded clothes slowly, more carefully than necessary. A sweater he probably wouldn’t wear. An extra shirt he definitely wouldn’t need. Socks rolled and unrolled again, like the decision might change if he touched them long enough.
He didn’t name the hope while it sat there, quiet and unreasonable.
Maybe Mike would ask him to stay. Maybe just one more day. Maybe two.
The thought settled somewhere in his chest, fragile and embarrassing. He packed anyway.
Before he zipped the bag, he opened the desk drawer and took out the envelope he’d been pretending not to think about. Cash, folded and refolded. A few bills tucked behind a check he hadn’t cashed yet. Money he’d been saving carefully, meant for rent buffers and emergencies — not last-minute trips back to a town he swore he’d outgrown.
He counted it once. Then again.
It would be enough. Barely.
Ryan leaned against the doorway, watching without commenting at first.
After a moment, Ryan said, “I’m coming with you.”
Will paused, a sweater halfway folded in his hands. “You don’t have to.”
“I know,” Ryan said easily. “I want to.”
Will looked up then. “It’s just… Indiana.”
Ryan smiled, small and fond. “Yeah. And you shouldn’t have to go back there alone.”
That did something to him.
“I don’t really have anything going on here,” Ryan continued, like it was an afterthought.
“I’ll get a return ticket. Same dates as you. We’ll come back together.”
Will hesitated. He didn’t say what flickered through his mind — how complicated that made things. How grateful he was. How part of him wanted to be alone with his thoughts and another part was terrified of exactly that.
“Okay,” he said instead.
Ryan crossed the room and kissed his temple, brief and familiar. “Good.”
The airport was loud in that dull, constant way that made thinking harder and easier at the same time.
They’d bought the tickets the old way — a phone call, a wait on hold, then a stop at the counter with IDs slid across scuffed laminate. Will had handed over most of the cash from the envelope without looking at it too closely, like if he didn’t watch it leave his hands, it wouldn’t feel real.
They flew out of New York early — too early for real conversations, too early for emotions to surface properly. Will watched the city shrink beneath the plane, all steel and glass dissolving into gray lines. He wondered, not for the first time, how many versions of himself he’d lived here without realizing it.
Ryan slept most of the flight, shoulder pressed lightly into Will’s arm. Will didn’t move. He stared straight ahead, hands folded, thoughts drifting where they always did when he tried not to guide them.
Hawkins.
Mike.
That phone call that still hadn’t settled into memory yet — still sharp around the edges, like it could cut him again if he thought about it too directly.
By the time they landed in Indianapolis, Will felt like he’d already crossed something invisible.
The bus ride was quieter.
Flat roads. Open sky. Cornfields stretching endlessly, the landscape changing in a way that felt both unfamiliar and painfully known. Will watched it all pass, heart doing that strange, uneven thing it always did when Indiana came into view — not fear exactly, not nostalgia either. Something heavier. Something layered.
Ryan reached over at one point and laced their fingers together without looking. No commentary. No questions.
Will let it happen.
The Hawkins sign appeared suddenly, small and unassuming, like it hadn’t once been the center of the universe.
“There it is,” Ryan said softly.
Will nodded.
The bus hissed as it pulled to a stop.
For a second, Will didn’t move.
Hawkins was right there — smaller than he remembered, quieter than the city he’d learned to survive in, but heavy in a way New York had never been. The air felt different. Thicker. Like it remembered him.
Ryan stood first, slinging his bag over his shoulder.
“This is it,” he said gently, like he wasn’t sure whether to sound excited or careful.
Will nodded and followed him down the steps.
The station was barely a station at all. A bench. A sign. A road stretching out into a town that had raised him and broken him and somehow let him leave anyway. He took a breath that felt like it reached somewhere deep in his chest, somewhere old.
Nothing had changed.
Everything had.
“Byers!”
The shout cut through his thoughts, loud and unmistakable.
Will looked up just in time to see Dustin barreling toward him, arms already halfway out like he’d decided hugging was non-negotiable.
Steve’s car was pulled over nearby, engine still running, Steve leaning against the hood like he belonged there — older, broader, but unmistakably Steve.
Before Will could fully brace himself, Dustin was there.
“Oh my god,” Dustin said, gripping him tight. “You’re real. You’re actually here.”
Will laughed, breathless, arms coming up automatically. “Hi to you too.”
Steve pushed off the car and walked over, grin softening when he reached them. “Look at you,” he said, giving Will a quick, firm hug. “College looks good on you, bud.”
Will felt something loosen in his chest. “Yeah. You look good too.”
Then there was that brief, awkward half-second — the moment where Ryan was still standing just behind him, waiting to be acknowledged.
“Oh,” Will said quickly, stepping aside. “This is Ryan. My—”
He paused, then said it plainly. “My boyfriend.”
Dustin’s eyebrows shot up. Then his face broke into the widest smile. “Nice. Hi. I’m Dustin.”
Steve nodded, warm and easy. “Steve. Welcome to Hawkins. Sorry in advance.”
Ryan laughed, shaking their hands. “I’ve heard… some things.”
“Only the good ones, I hope,” Dustin said, already reaching for Will’s bag. “C’mon. Let’s get you home.”
The car ride felt surreal.
Will sat in the back, Ryan beside him, watching familiar streets slide past the window. Houses he remembered biking past. Trees that looked the same, like time had skipped right over them. Others felt different — repainted, rebuilt, subtly altered in ways that made his chest ache.
“How long you staying?” Dustin asked, glancing at him through the rearview mirror.
“Just for Halloween,” Will said. “Probably.”
Steve hummed. “Probably’s doing a lot of work there.”
Will didn’t answer.
They passed the school. The old arcade building. Roads that still felt mapped into his bones. And then — without warning — the library came into view.
Will’s breath caught.
The car slowed at the intersection, just long enough for the building to settle into his vision. Brick. Windows. Ordinary. Too ordinary.
His eyes burned before he could stop it.
Ryan shifted beside him, noticing immediately. “Will?”
He shook his head, staring hard at the floor of the car, blinking fast. His throat closed around the memory — Eleven standing there, bloodied and shaking. The gate. The light. The way she had disappeared like the world had swallowed her whole.
He shut his eyes tight, like that might push it away.
Steve glanced back, his expression changing when he saw Will’s face. He didn’t say anything. Just nodded once, like he understood more than words could cover.
Will opened his eyes again, forcing himself to breathe.
Not now, he told himself. Not yet.
As they turned onto Mike’s street, his nerves finally caught up with him.
His hands curled into his sleeves. His heartbeat felt loud in his ears.
He hadn’t seen everyone yet. Hadn’t seen him.
The house came into view — painfully familiar, unchanged in that way that felt unfair. The driveway. The porch. The place where so much of his childhood still lived, untouched by time.
Dustin pulled into the driveway and cut the engine.
“We’re here,” he said, softer now.
Will swallowed.
He wasn’t sure what he was walking into — old friends, old truths, old feelings he wasn’t convinced had ever really gone away.
And somewhere inside that house was Mike.
The thought settled heavy and electric in his chest as he reached for the door handle.
Will stepped out of the car slowly. The air felt tighter here, like it carried memory instead of oxygen. He could almost hear the echo of bikes skidding to a stop, the slam of the basement door, Mike yelling for snacks upstairs.
The front door opened before anyone knocked.
“Oh my—Will?”
Mrs. Wheeler’s voice broke in the middle, like she hadn’t expected him to be real.
Then she was there, arms around him, hugging him hard enough that it knocked the breath out of his chest. He froze for half a second before hugging her back, the familiar scent of laundry detergent and something warm and domestic wrapping around him.
“Look at you,” she said, pulling back just enough to cup his face. “You’ve grown so much. You’re—oh, you’re so thin. Are you eating properly?”
Will laughed softly. “I am. I promise.”
She noticed Ryan then, standing just behind him, uncertain but polite.
“Oh,” Will said, heart skipping once. “This is Ryan. He’s my—”
He swallowed. “My boyfriend.”
Something gentle settled over Mrs. Wheeler’s face. No surprise. No hesitation. Just warmth.
“Well,” she said, smiling at Ryan, “we’re very happy to have you here.”
Ryan nodded, visibly relieved. “Thank you, ma’am.”
Before Will could say anything else, someone barreled into his side.
“Will!”
Holly wrapped her arms around his waist, squeezing tight. Will blinked, then laughed as he hugged her back.
“Holly,” he said, stunned. “You’re—wow. You’re tall.”
She pulled back, hands on her hips. “I’m not a kid anymore.”
He smiled. “Middle school treating you okay?”
She rolled her eyes. “I’m in high school.”
That stopped him.
“Oh,” he said, genuinely startled. Then, quieter, “Right. Yeah. That makes sense.”
Time had moved on without asking him.
Lucas and Max appeared next, both smiling in that familiar, easy way that made his chest ache. Hugs followed — solid, grounding, real. The kind that reminded him these people still existed outside memory.
“You look good,” Max said.
“Yeah,” Lucas added. “Different. But good.”
Will nodded, unsure how to explain that he felt both at once.
They stepped inside.
The living room looked untouched by time. The same couch. The same framed photos. And then — just past the stairs — the door to the basement.
Will’s gaze lingered there.
He could see it all so clearly. Mike sprawled on the floor. Dustin shouting rules. Himself, sitting close to Mike without realizing why it felt important.
His chest tightened.
“Mike’s upstairs,” Mrs. Wheeler said casually, like she hadn’t just detonated something inside him.
Will’s breath caught.
Footsteps sounded on the stairs.
He turned.
Mike stood there, one hand on the railing.
The room seemed to fade, voices dulling into nothing but noise, because suddenly there was only this: the boy who had been his best friend, his almost, his always.