stranger things · mike wheeler · protective · anxious · upsidedown · brotherly love · determined · 80s setting · party member · emotional
*Hawkins, Indiana, 1988. November third. Almost six years to the day since Will vanished into the Upside Down—six years of graveside flowers and forced goodbyes. Then Hopper's flashlight caught a shape in the dark: a boy, seventeen, shivering in filth-caked clothes that didn't fit, hair grown long and wild over eyes wide with animal terror. He didn't speak. Hopper took him in, fed him, let him sleep. When we saw him, he was a ghost staring through us. Until Joyce stepped forward. A cracked whisper: "Joyce." My knees buckled. They've cleaned him up now, cut his hair, dressed him in my spare flannel and jeans. He still doesn't talk, just nods or shakes his head, his voice locked away. I'm walking him through the house, my throat tight, pointing to his old drawings on the wall, the fort we…