CHARACTER NAME: will byers
FACECLAIM: Tom Holland
PRONOUNS: he/him
CHARACTER AESTHETIC: the roll of distant thunder and the smell of an oncoming rainstorm on the warm summer breeze; the thickness and weight of homemade paper and the sound of charcoal running across the minute paper hills and valleys; hushed whispers of stories a friend told you once upon a time and firelight playing across your features; a calloused hand reaching out to help you back to your feet
LAST SONG PLAYED?: Someone Saved My Life Tonight - Elton John
THREE HEADCANONS:
AIM WITH THE EYE — The rifle that Will grabbed and loaded to defend himself before being taken to the Upside Down has stayed with him through the years. How it traveled with him through two different worlds, he couldn’t tell you— only that it was what kept him alive as long as it did when he was in the Upside Down and that it was in his hand when he woke up in the Way Station. Roland was the one who taught him how to break it down and clean the weapon to ensure it stayed in working condition and how to shoot it with accuracy even in the face of fear. The gunslinger had brought back several boxes of shells after his excursion in New York through one of the magic doors on the beach, including several boxes for Will’s rifle.
The rifle isn’t a gunslinger’s weapon though and as good of a shot as he is, it’s not nearly as fast as Roland’s guns or Jake’s ruger— even in the hands of a capable gunslinger like Roland. When Eddie Dean traveled through the Unfound Door to speak with Calvin Tower- the owner of the vacant lot at the corner Second Avenue and Forty-Sixth Street- he brought back Jack Andolini’s handgun (an AMT Hardballer) that he gave to Will to ‘replace’ the rifle. (As if he could ever be parted with it.) He carries the rifle slung across his back with a leather strap that crosses his chest and the Hardballer in a docker’s clutch on his left side. It’s the Hardballer that he draws whenever he’s thrust back into Hawkins and shoots at Steve Harrington when his car bears down on him.
SHOOT WITH THE MIND — Will’s time in the Upside Down/Todash Space and his resulting death has given him the Touch. For a while, his ability was tied to his connection to the still open door to the Upside Down in Hawkins and it was what gave him the ability to travel todash into Hawkins in the year 1983. However, when Eleven closed the door that connection severed and his abilities dwindled significantly. Will can't travel todash to Hawkins anymore but in his sleep, he is still able to access the "Empty Space" where he can find Eleven and check in on the ones he left behind.
He has what Roland calls “True Sight” though for how true it is or isn’t, Will can’t say. The sight comes to him mostly in dreams and while paper is a rare treasure in Mid-World, he was gifted a notebook with a few scraps of homemade paper by the old people in River Crossing and a handful of charcoal nibs that he keeps in his gunna where he records any important details of his dreams inside. In true Will Byer’s fashion, his recordings are mostly sketches- a few faces that stuck with him (Gasher from Lud, the Man in Black, Calvin Tower), landscapes (the City of Lud, the Other Kansas) or structures (Calla Bryn Sturgis’ meeting house, the Dogan)- with a few cramped and scribbled phrases that might be prove to be important later on.
He is not nearly as strong in the Touch as Jake is and that is more than fine with him. Will dreams of the Tower almost every night but in the nights before the Battle with the Wolves of Thunderclap, he started having dreams unlike any he’d had in a long time— he started to dream of Hawkins again. The faces of his mother and brother- older and more lined- swirled with those of his now grown childhood friends and others who’s faces he doesn’t know in places he’d almost forgotten- the gym of Hawkin’s Middle School, the arcade, Mike Wheeler’s basement. The night before Will and his ka-tet woke to save the children of Calla Bryn Sturgis and fight the mechanical wolves from Thunderclap, he dreamed of a boy he had never seen before walking down the stairs to Mike Wheeler’s basement. He was bloody and broken and the heartbroken look he had fixed Will with carried out of the dream and haunted him throughout the battle and still now sits curled in his heart and mind.
KILL WITH THE HEART — Will Byers has always suspected that he was different from the other guys but didn’t come to the realization that he was gay until very recently. When the rest of the guys were talking about the different girls in their class that were hot, he was too busy thinking about the next campaign, wishing with all his might that the conversation would turn back to that or to the latest Star Trek episode to avoid having to contribute to the conversation. As he got older and started to have thoughts of a more adult nature, it wasn’t Susannah or any of the women they’d seen in the towns they passed through that starred but his male companions. Eddie’s winsome smile or Jake’s bright laugh or the slight upward tilt of Roland’s mouth in an almost smile was what set Will’s heart thumping in his chest and his cheeks to burning. For a long while, he refused to acknowledge these thoughts or feelings, terrified that if the ka-tet were to find out that he was a queer, they’d break their bonds to him and send him away or worse: let him continue on with them but hold contempt and disgust towards him.
It was Father Callahan’s confession- during his story of Salem’s Lot and the events that unfolded after- of being in love with a man that worked at the homeless shelter with him in New York and the utter lack of reaction from Roland and the others aside from acceptance and understanding that finally loosened the constant knot of anxiety in Will’s chest. He didn’t need to tell the ka-tet as it turned out— when he had started to breech the subject with Jake after the Pere’s story, Jake surprised him by telling Will that he had known- they all had- and no, of course they didn’t think any differently of him. They were ka-tet— one from many— and Will’s confession was the last thing that would tear the bonds between them.
EXTRAS: PLAYLIST 1 ; PLAYLIST 2 ; PINTEREST
janainaart
dededos
andulkaphoto
germansingergirl
vaporwave