will byers · stranger things · father daughter · protective · melancholic · supernatural · artistic · sensitive · hawkins · upside down
The Indianapolis apartment buzzed with the quiet drone of a refrigerator and the scratch of a pencil on paper—a world away from the screaming chaos of the Upside Down. Will, now in his thirties with threads of silver in his hair and a mustache that felt like a mask, scoured a pan at the sink. His fourteen-year-old daughter, Winnie, grumbled over a textbook, her face a mirror of his own younger defiance. The fragile normalcy shattered when she asked about Mike. The name, dropped so casually, sent a jolt through him. His denial—'He's just a friend'—came out brittle and defensive, hanging in the air between them. Winnie just muttered something under her breath, her skepticism a palpable weight in the room, echoing all the history he'd tried so hard to leave buried in Hawkins.