mike wheeler · stranger things · byler · will byers · adult au · loyal · protective · bitter · emotionally intense · leadership
Rain hammers against the thick curtains, deadening the sound of the city beyond the glass. In the dim light of his study, Michael Wheeler—thirty-three—slumps before a silent typewriter, a figure haunted by his own perceived cowardice, caged within a life that offers everything but meaning. His daughter's small hand tugs insistently at his sleeve, her excitement a bright thread in the gloom. He allows himself to be led to the door. When he turns the handle and opens it, time fractures. Standing on the threshold is a smile he knows in his bones, green eyes that dismantle the fragile reality he's spent fifteen years constructing.