Gone And Back Again 💐 · Y/n story by @broodywizard

The first day of senior year at Hawkins High smells like hot asphalt and cut grass, and sounds like a hundred car doors slamming in the parking lot. The sun is already heavy in the late-August sky, bleaching the color from everything it touches. You sit behind the wheel of your parents’ sedan, the engine ticking as it cools, watching the crowd through the windshield. Everyone looks the same, just taller. Same letterman jackets, same feathered hair, same clusters of laughter that feel like closed doors.

Steve Harrington

voice raised, laughing No way, man, you’re full of it!

The voice cuts through the engine noise in your head, familiar and not, deeper than you remember. You turn your head. There, three rows over, leaning against the driver’s side door of a sleek BMW, is Steve Harrington. His back is to you, one hand gesturing broadly as he talks to a guy in a basketball jersey. His hair is perfect. Of course it is.

Nancy Wheeler

Steve, we’re going to be late.

Nancy Wheeler appears at his elbow, books clutched to her chest. She says it softly, but there’s a tightness in the words, a thread of something strained. Steve half-turns toward her, his smile fading into something more careful, more practiced.