1 - 20 of 71 Bookmarks by smallviverrid
Navigation
List of Bookmarks
-
Tags
Summary
“What exactly does this pact entail, then?”
Mike leans forward very seriously, bringing his face close to Will’s.
“When they make it legal for you to get married, because they will.” He pauses, as if to make sure that Will is listening. Will laughs and nods for him to go on. “And if we’re both still alone and miserable—”
“Wow. Is that the awesome future you’re painting for us on our last night?”
“Shh.” Mike is doing a decent job at staying in character, but the crinkles around his eyes are giving him away. “If we’re both still alone by then… and at least partially miserable. That part’s important,” he continues dramatically, “I’ll marry the shit out of you, William Byers. Deal?”
Or, before heading off to college, Mike and Will make a pact. Fifteen years later, gay marriage is legalized in the state of Massachusetts. These two events are intrinsically linked to one another.
- Language:
- English
- Words:
- 40,241
- Chapters:
- 1/1
- Collections:
- 1
- Comments:
- 282
- Kudos:
- 1,110
- Bookmarks:
- 440
- Hits:
- 21,242
Bookmarked by smallviverrid
25 Jul 2026
-
talk to me dirty; talk to me sweet by thesweetestdream
Fandoms: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
02 Aug 2026
Tags
Summary
Will and Mike accidentally overhear a couple talking dirty over the walkie, and start repeating some of the filthy phrases to each other for shits and giggles. What starts as a joke, soon turns into something they can't stop doing – and can’t tell anyone about.
Or:
Mike and Will start talking dirty to each other for fun. What they don't consider is that it would accidentally turn them on.
- Language:
- English
- Words:
- 140,845
- Chapters:
- 17/17
- Comments:
- 24,898
- Kudos:
- 104,621
- Bookmarks:
- 13,314
- Hits:
- 2,998,788
Bookmarked by smallviverrid
12 Jul 2026
-
Tags
Summary
The water ebbs around them, slow and tranquil, but the storm raging inside Will is anything but.
All he sees are Mike’s eyes as he closes the gap. A drop of water rolls down his neck, disappearing into the naked line of his collarbone.
“Say no if you don’t want me to,” he murmurs. “Push me back.”
Or, Will gets swept into Mike’s irresistible pull after a single night that changes their friendship forever. Late night talks turn into even later night kisses, friendly nudges to intoxicating touches, and the creaking of bedsprings now means something other than the return of Will's nightmares. Each new change blurs the line between friendship and something more, and as Will struggles to stay afloat through Mike's confusing storm, he starts wondering what it is exactly they are - and whether he'll sink for good in trying to find out.
Series
- Part 1 of To love is to drown
- Language:
- English
- Words:
- 219,131
- Chapters:
- 12/?
- Comments:
- 745
- Kudos:
- 1,916
- Bookmarks:
- 640
- Hits:
- 102,030
Bookmarked by smallviverrid
11 Jul 2026
-
Tags
Summary
The smile that spreads across Mike’s face is involuntary, like it must exist in Will’s presence. It’s like he waters the parched soil of his mind.
Mike doesn’t realize how badly he needs him until he’s had a drink. And right now, he thinks this weekend is exactly what he’s been needing.
OR: After years of grappling with his feelings, Mike visits Will in Chicago for a weekend during his junior year of college.
Series
- Part 1 of SKYA Universe
-
Tags
Summary
Mike is spending the last urgent summer days with Will in Hawkins. He’s also writing in college. Somehow, these two things are always happening at once.
Or, ‘Funny how there’s a face underneath my face.’
- Language:
- English
- Words:
- 104,916
- Chapters:
- 22/22
- Comments:
- 2,615
- Kudos:
- 1,544
- Bookmarks:
- 598
- Hits:
- 50,721
Bookmarked by smallviverrid
30 Jun 2026
Bookmarker's Notes
cannot believe i didnt have the bookmark. the fic of all time.
-
Tags
Summary
Mike Wheeler is thirty years old, three years married, and incredibly unhappy. After an unexpected AOL Instant Messenger group chat with the Party, Mike reconnects with Will after several years and realizes that maybe his life doesn't have to be so bad.
Or: A 2000s epistolary fic in which Mike falls in love with his childhood best friend and cheats on his wife.
-
a lesson in coasting: an idiot's guide to gay allyship by michael j. wheeler by cinnamoncider
Fandoms: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
06 May 2026
Tags
Summary
“So, I’ve been thinking," Mike throws his head back into the sofa’s head rest. “You know how I talk about girls all the time?”
The pencil in Will’s hand freezes for just a moment, something Mike wouldn’t have been able to tell at all if he wasn’t staring right at Will’s hands to avoid his gaze. “So?”
“Well, I’ve been thinking, right?”
Will looks up, but Mike isn’t looking back at him. He’s picking at a loose thread on the couch cushion. “What, about girls?”
“No,” Mike shakes his head, “about boys."
Will nearly chokes on his tongue. “You’ve been thinking about boys?”
or, mike conducts an uncomfortably elaborate semester-long personal inquiry project on how to be a better straight ally to his gay best friend. for educational reasons only. obviously
- Language:
- English
- Words:
- 26,936
- Chapters:
- 1/1
- Comments:
- 215
- Kudos:
- 1,216
- Bookmarks:
- 350
- Hits:
- 14,796
Bookmarked by smallviverrid
08 Jun 2026
-
i never knew my name until you spoke it from your chest by piecesofsunlight
Fandoms: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
06 Jun 2026
Tags
Summary
When Mike first filled out the paperwork, he didn’t know if anything would come of it. He’d just arrived back in Ithaca after a spring break visit to the city. His neck was stiff from the weird nap he’d taken on the bus. It was snowing, in April. He didn't even have any friends to call up and announce his return, unless you counted his roommate, Jeremy, who greeted him with an indifferent head nod and a “hey, man” when Mike spilled through the door of their dorm room, shaking melting snowflakes out of his overgrown hair.
He trudged across campus the next day, past dirty iced-over snow drifts that seemed like they might never melt, and knocked on the door of his advisor’s office.
“If I wanted to transfer to another school next year,” he said, fidgeting with his backpack in his lap as he sat down in the squeaky vinyl-backed chair, “how would that work?”
Bookmarked by smallviverrid
07 Jun 2026
-
i'll dream awake (now i'm wide awake) by starrylance for lxthetruth
Fandoms: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
24 Mar 2026
Tags
Summary
“Do you want to be my friend?”
Mike learns what it means to be brave. It begins with love.
Bookmarked by smallviverrid
26 May 2026
-
Tags
Summary
“It’s okay. I know it’s… hard for you.”
“Yeah,” Mike exhales through his mouth. With the way Will is spread out on the bed, his shorts have ridden up on his thighs and it’s making it hard to breathe—Will is all comfortable and unguarded, and Mike can sense more than see the vein running up the side of his knee, along his inner thigh and then even higher up.
Mike’s eyes rest there for a second. He imagines following the scent, his nose pressed to Will’s skin. Pushing the fabric of his shorts out of the way, all the way up to his groin. Burying his teeth just underneath the junction of it, where the skin is softest and the vein pulsing warmest.
Or, Mike returns from the Upside Down changed, with a newfound hunger for blood—Will’s blood, specifically. It’s getting harder and harder to resist.
- Language:
- English
- Words:
- 40,079
- Chapters:
- 1/1
- Collections:
- 1
- Comments:
- 136
- Kudos:
- 700
- Bookmarks:
- 198
- Hits:
- 7,115
Bookmarked by smallviverrid
15 May 2026
-
a year without her (a year with you) by secretxgardensinmyxmind
Fandoms: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
17 Mar 2026
Tags
Summary
Eleven is gone. And Mike feels like the world should've ended that day.
Over the next year, he tries to convince himself that he's just grieving. But winter doesn't last forever. Spring brings rain and cracks in old walls. Summer arrives hot and relentless - and so do the feelings he's been trying to outrun.
By autumn, when Will's future no longer includes Hawkins, Mike has to decide whether he's brave enough to stop pretending.A four-season story about loss, growing up and falling in love when you least expect it.
Bookmarked by smallviverrid
01 Apr 2026
-
- Words:
- 99,254
- Works:
- 2
- Bookmarks:
- 140
-
- Words:
- 202,526
- Works:
- 4
- Bookmarks:
- 62
-
Tags
Summary
It's 1997 and the ghost of Mike Wheeler walks back into Will Byers' life twice in one day: first in a Midtown coffee shop, then as the writer assigned to his graphic novel. Eight years of awkward distance now have a deadline. Collaboration is a special kind of torture when the person you're building a world with is the one who broke yours.
- Language:
- English
- Words:
- 124,309
- Chapters:
- 16/16
- Comments:
- 893
- Kudos:
- 1,796
- Bookmarks:
- 691
- Hits:
- 63,388
Bookmarked by smallviverrid
25 Mar 2026
-
Tags
Summary
Mike grins so widely that he displays each one of his baby teeth. "Open it," he says. "It's a card. I made it for you."
When Will gingerly peels the birthday card open, Mike’s uneven handwriting is displayed across the page.
The p’s in happy are backwards, the y wobbly and curled at the end, and the k in Mike is also flipped the wrong way. The word birthday is etched in their kindergarten teacher’s steady print, and it seems like she'd also added the punctuation for him.
Happy birthday, Will!
Love,
Mike WOr: Will Byers' birthdays from age six to adulthood, told through cards from Mike.
Bookmarked by smallviverrid
23 Mar 2026
-
you could kiss a hundred boys in bars by piecesofsunlight
Fandoms: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
17 Mar 2026
Tags
Summary
Will got shitfaced drunk for the first time in his life, that night in the Village. It was good to feel loose, dizzy, to leave the lonely boy shivering in the woods behind for a few hours. It was even better to feel eyes on him, wandering hands on the dance floor—to feel wanted, seen. He didn’t quite remember how he got from the club to the guy’s Chelsea apartment, but he remembered the rest. Hands, lips, muscled biceps. The pain, the stretch, the aching pleasure. The pre-dawn cab ride home. It was a wholly decent first time, all things considered. He told himself that in the dark, cold days that followed, hiding away in the studio, furiously working, avoiding all his new friends. The guy was nice; he used a condom, Will was 95% sure. Weeks passed. Will didn’t get sick. And the next time he picked up the phone and heard Mike’s voice on the other end of the line, he went out and did it again.
Bookmarked by smallviverrid
18 Mar 2026
-
my name is a sequel by slowklancing (notanannoyingfangirl), sunnyjolras
Fandoms: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
24 May 2026
Tags
Summary
It’s the start of spring semester, sophomore year at Brown University, and Mike Wheeler has a trio of problems. His parents aren’t happy that he recently declared his study concentration as English Literature rather than something more sensible. His friends are all moving on with their own lives and it feels like everyone is leaving him behind, even Will despite the fact that he’s only five minutes down the road at RISD. And the fantasy manuscript that he’s writing has a romance subplot that just keeps falling flat and storylines that keep brushing a little too close to the reality of Mike’s life. Mike doesn’t want to press too deeply into the character dynamics between the main trio of characters in his novel, despite the fact that his professor keeps urging him to do so, afraid that if he does then he might have to face some truths about his feelings for his best friend that he’s been keeping buried deep in his subconscious.
// An exploration of the complicated mind of Mike Wheeler through the lens of his novel “The Hand and The Heart.”
updating two chapters at a time.
-
Tags
Summary
It's 1992, and Mike and Will are juniors in college and living together in a tiny NYC apartment. Life is great. It's everything Mike could ever want: his best friend, an incredible city, and the world at his fingertips. The only problem? He's in love with said best friend and has no idea how he could ever tell him.
Luckily for him, he's presented with an opportunity to get much closer to him every Friday night, as long as he promises not to get all weird after. How hard could that be?
Or: Mike and Will become friends with benefits and the universe laughs because they're both ridiculously in love with each other.
Series
- Part 1 of Nirvana
- Language:
- English
- Words:
- 71,098
- Chapters:
- 5/5
- Comments:
- 1,301
- Kudos:
- 10,240
- Bookmarks:
- 2,676
- Hits:
- 233,518
Bookmarked by smallviverrid
22 Feb 2026
-
Art School Confidential by cyclogenesis (addictedkitten)
Fandoms: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
20 Feb 2026
Tags
Summary
In which Mike moves to Indianapolis after his first semester of college, rents the apartment next door to Will, and gets a job as a nude model in Will’s life drawing class, and then Will has to deal with all of that. (This is an ongoing process.) Featuring a domesticity speedrun, life in a university district in the early 1990s, mutual care-taking behaviors, baffling vegetables, Mike wearing a shirt with a kitten on it, and The Cure haunting the narrative.
-
Tags
Summary
Both of their bodies shake as they catch their breath. Will’s still hard, and his sweat is starting to dry uncomfortably on his skin, but all he can focus on is Mike.
It’s times like these he’s reminded how lucky he is to have Mike in this way. To see this side of him, this side that still feels too new and too intimate and too overwhelming all at once. Sometimes, he thinks he might be bitter. Resentful of his lot in life, being so painfully in love with someone who will so obviously never feel the same way. On his bad days, he even thinks he might resent Mike.
Like this, though, he knows that could never be true. Not really. Sure, it hurts, only ever having Mike halfway, knowing his body but never his soul. Yes, it’s going to kill him when Mike inevitably finds someone new and runs off into the sunset, leaving him in the dust again.
But it’s Mike. He'll take whatever he can get.
When he and Mike end up in bed together after graduation, they fall into something dangerously easy. Or, at least, it would be easy, if it weren’t the most painful thing Will’s ever done.
- Language:
- English
- Words:
- 12,500
- Chapters:
- 1/1
- Comments:
- 142
- Kudos:
- 2,981
- Bookmarks:
- 783
- Hits:
- 48,078
Bookmarked by smallviverrid
18 Feb 2026