1 - 20 of 344 Works in Pining Mike Wheeler
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in every life i find you (this time i choose you) by secretxgardensinmyxmind
Fandoms: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
19 Mar 2026
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Summary
After a fight with Will, Mike Wheeler finds himself in a universe that isn’t his.
Then another.
And another.
Across countless different lives, Mike sees how things between him and Will could end: the worlds where they never meet, the ones where they drift apart, and the ones where he realizes too late what Will meant to him.
The only thing that remains the same in every universe is the version of Will guiding him through them.
And somewhere between those worlds, Mike begins to understand what this journey is trying to teach him.
Or: Mike Wheeler travels the multiverse and finally gets the hint
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Harder (Cause This Love Shouldn't Go To Waste) by SageByler
Fandoms: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
19 Mar 2026
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Summary
“Fuck..” Will lets a whimper slip through his lips.
Mike looks up with yearning eyes, wipes his mouth, and finally gets off the dirty bathroom floor.
Will immediately tries to unlock the bathroom door, but is stopped merely by a hand.
“When will I see you again?” Mike says in a hushed voice.
Will grabs Mike's face. “You will see me when you see me. You know this.” Will tries to comfort, pressing a kiss to Mike's temple, but Mike is tired of this charade.
It had been 10 years of this quiet charade. Ten years of Will and Mike living lies.
“I don't think I can do this much longer."
or
Will Byers and Mike Wheeler keep a purely physical relationship underwraps for ten years, but feelings are complicated, and words get tricky.
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After Will moves to Montauk, Sunday night calls become the only thing holding the distance between them. But the dream won’t leave Mike alone.
He returns to the same beach night after night, a place he’s visited too many times before. This time, instead of running, he crosses the water.
Will is waiting. Close enough to touch. Close enough to kiss. And when Mike wakes, the feeling doesn’t fade.
The next morning, alone in an empty house for three weeks, Mike tries to convince himself it was only a dream.
Then a pale yellow envelope arrives in the mail.
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‘And I know that’s silly, because we call on Sunday nights. But it’s not the same. It’s never just you and me anymore. I mean, obviously I like talking to Dustin and Lucas, but they don’t get me. Not like you do.’It’s almost frightening how closely their thoughts mirror each other. Every Sunday he wishes, quietly, that the calls could just be them. No interruptions. No overlapping jokes. Just Will’s voice and the space between them.
He’s never said it out loud.
And now here it is, written plainly in ink, resting between his fingers.
‘I can’t say things to them that I would easily say to you. No one knows me like you do, Mike,'
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Will turns evil but his love and longing for Mike mixed and corrupted in to a terrible obsession of longing and jealousy.Mike believes he is better off with Will and longs to run away from his friends to the one he had loved since birth.
- Language:
- English
- Words:
- 452
- Chapters:
- 1/?
- Hits:
- 8
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Summary
It starts in the winter of 1990, with Robin Buckley getting dumped over the phone, Will Byers signing a lease on his first apartment in a boarding house on Bleecker Street, and Mike Wheeler crashing with Jonathan during a season of New York snowstorms.
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"-I’m sorry I didn’t know sooner. In a way I did. I thought I was upset because I feel like I hurt Jane by not loving her the way she loved me…but that wasn’t it. It didn’t make sense…to me…because I…because I-” Mike can’t even finish.
Will feels his heart swell, but it still stays ready to deflate.
Mike suddenly feels like he can’t breathe, and that Will’s face is too close but not close enough. He feels their teary gasps mix together in the air of his bedroom. He can’t take it anymore. His mind effectively goes blank.
He rushed forward, closing the gap between them. Will’s eyes are wide as he feels Mike’s mouth connect with his. The air feels incredibly thick. Thick with confession, a decade of tension, and realization.
Does Mike love him too?
OR
summerof89gate, but sad and horny ft. 90s college in nyc!
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Will shrugs sheepishly, fidgeting with the buttons on the cuff of his sleeve. “I guess the point is,” he starts slowly, “there’s not some path laid out for us, right? Things can change.”
Mike exhales, running a hand through his ruffled hair. “Honestly? That kind of scares me too.”
“I know,” Will says, his voice soft. This moment, enveloped in the night, feels impossibly charged, like something he could remember forever. “But I think… maybe it doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Maybe things will turn out completely different from how we thought they would, and everything will be better that way.” He nudges Mike’s side. “And you have me. We can change together, right?”
Mike nods, looking back, his eyes shining in the moonlight. “Yeah,” he murmurs, “yeah, we can change together.”
In November 1983, seven years after meeting his best friend on a swingset, Will Byers disappears on the way home and nothing is ever the same again. Over the next seven years, snowballs turn into avalanches. Sometimes it just takes time.
- Language:
- English
- Words:
- 15,204
- Chapters:
- 1/9
- Kudos:
- 2
- Hits:
- 24
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Summary
The photo showed Will and Mike, standing side by side, arms interlocked together. A perfect peachy sunset was spread out dramatically behind them, as if it were posing too. Mike was looking at the camera with a goofy smile on his face, probably laughing at something Will had said.
Will, on the other hand, wasn’t looking at the camera at all.
Just Mike.
Written across the bottom of the polaroid in black permanent marker were the words:
“Just Like Heaven.”
***
A few years post-finale, Will tells Mike that he thinks El really is out there somewhere.
But all Mike can seem to think about is Will.
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The party reunites in Montauk for Nancy and Jonathan's wedding weekend—five years after high school graduation, five years since they all scattered to different cities and different lives.
Everyone else has moved on.
Everyone except Mike.
He’s still trapped in that night fourteen months ago—the night he was drunk and reckless and lost Max forever.
He knows brushing it off was the right choice. That she could never actually want him—not the same way he wanted her. Better to call it what it obviously is: a drunken hookup between friends.
He knew she'd be at the wedding. He thought he was ready.
He’s about to discover just how wrong he's been about everything.
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OR: Mike is an idiot, Max is fed up, and excessive emotional miscommunication ensues.
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Summary
A year and some change after college graduation, Mike Wheeler is living in his parents' basement.
It isn't as pathetic as it sounds - he's also got a publishing deal, and he's putting the finishing touches on his debut novel.
It's even more pathetic than it sounds - he's got nobody left to hang out with in Hawkins except his ex-girlfriend and his sister's ex-boyfriend, and his best friend isn't returning his calls. He's just gone out on a blind date orchestrated by Steve Harrington, and it totally doesn't shatter his perception of reality when it turns out his date's an actual, real life, genuine bisexual, and Steve maybe set them up thinking he is too. He's totally not spiraling. Everything's hunky dory.
Really, it's ideal timing. Will's due in Hawkins for Thanksgiving any day now, possibly with his beloved sack of hair gel, the ur-yuppie, Country Club Carlton. Mike definitely still knows how to exist in a room with him.
OR: Mike goes through a late bi awakening, crashes out, comes out, grapples with Catholic guilt, and pines over a Will Byers who might no longer have a place in his life for him - not necessarily in that order.
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tell me that you love me (just once) by jaywritesandwrites
Fandoms: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
17 Mar 2026
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Summary
“That’s not true—“
“Then say it. Say it, Will!”
Will hesitates. “Say what?”
A beat. Then—
“Tell me that I’m wrong. Tell—”
He gulps. Will’s eyes dilate in shock.
“Tell me what’s going on with you, Will. For fuck’s sake, just talk to me!” Mike exclaims.
A stray sunbeam crawls up Mike’s cheek. At first, Will believes it to be another hallucination: that odd glassy sheen around his best friend’s waterline.
But when he concentrates, he notes that it isn’t a trick of the light at all. Rather, wetness brims in Mike’s eyelids, staining his eyes red.
Oh. Oh no.
OR
It's January, and Will Byers doesn't know how to act around his best friend anymore. But he has to hold strong. He has to keep his feelings to himself. If he doesn't, he'll lose everything.
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Set after season 4 and before season 5. Loosely inspired by "you took my heart (I was sleeping)" by lameparties.
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In the summer before college, Mike Wheeler devises a five-step plan to finally confess his love for Will Byers and court him properly once they’re in college. As the Party spends their last chaotic summer together, Mike’s careful timeline crumbles, so he might need to scrap the whole damn thing and seduce him already.
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Summary
Mike Wheeler is eighteen years old and he isn't sure he knows anything anymore.
It's November of 1989 and Mike is miserably making his way through his first semester of college. It’s been two years, 24 months, 737 days since the Upside Down vanished. Mike has been drowning, pulled under by the rip tide. He’s starting to see where the light hits the surface.
Milwaukee is frigid and Mike hates Lake Michigan, hates the wind and the cold but he can't stop writing about it, staring out at the horizon and wanting. He stumbles into having to face his collapsing means of control and carefully crafted walls. Mike is forced to see what he has been turning away from, a boy with brown hair and hazel eyes that is in his bones, in every beat of his heart, who he has known longer than he has known himself.
Will Byers who is so much a part of him he wouldn’t be able to carve him out if he wanted to.
Mike needs to decide whether he'll stay stranded on the shore, or if the water could grant him salvation. If he can survive never knowing.
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every page that i wrote, you were on it by bakemecookies
Fandoms: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
16 Mar 2026
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Summary
"Shit, I’m so sorry- um- are you all right?"
Mike stumbles over his words for a second, before reaching out a hand to pull the guy up.
And then Mike stops talking, their hands still entwined.
Because it’s-
"Will?"
"Mike?"
Time stops for a second. Because this was Will. The person Mike once told he would go ‘crazy together’ with. The person he used to spend hours with in his dusty basement, closer than necessary for a pair of eight-year-old boys, but they were Will and Mike.
This was Will. The person he never bothered to call after he left for university, just because he couldn’t deal with someone leaving him before he could leave them. The same Will who he let run to voicemail for months, before the calls stopped.
And here they are. Five years later.
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or, mike and will bump into eachother on a train, five years after they graduate (and five years since they last talked.)
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I’d be your little spoon (and kiss your fingers forevermore) by Bitemepls
Fandoms: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
16 Mar 2026
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Summary
Mike and will role play as their new made up characters “Michael” and “Willam” as an excuse to flirt and make out.
Mike decides to help will in gaining experience to hit on his crush easily. He suggests “teaching” will how relationships work by practicing with one another through role playing.
“It’ll be just like role playing in d&d except our characters have a crush on one another” Mike says casually as will’s face turns a darker shade of red.
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It was all worth it (when I met you) by Loversacrossworlds
Fandoms: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
16 Mar 2026
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Summary
Mike and Will college AU. They meet at a local coffee shop called "The Brew" and from there is where their story starts.
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Summary
REWRITE of stranger things season 5 but starting during the time skip bc we gotta know WTF mike did!!!! I will be writing the WHOLE season and fixing all the plot holes I possibly can. Slowburn byler because I'm fixing this for real. This summary will turn into a rant about how shitty the finale was if I don't shut up.
OR
Mike pinning hard for William Byers even though it is painfully obvious they are both in love, and Vecna taking advantage of his vulnerability.
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You showed me colours... but only if I had loved you better by vampl0r
Fandoms: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
15 Mar 2026
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Summary
Will always knew how he felt about Mike, but it wasn’t until he left Hawkins and moved to a small town just outside London that he finally felt free. Once he was out of that old “prison,” he moved on pretty quickly and even started seeing a cute British boy named Carlton. Life was lighter, easier.
Mike, on the other hand, wasn’t so lucky. He stayed in Hawkins, living alone in his apartment and pouring himself into writing. His books were successful, but they were mostly a way to distract himself from real life—and he still thought about Will all the time. His most popular book, If I Had Loved You Better, was basically everything he wished he could have said or done with Will.
One day, Will picks up the book and it hits too close to home. The words, the feelings… it all feels way too familiar.Before he knows it, he’s sending Mike an email, asking him to come stay for a week.
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Summary
Will doesn't have high expectations for his return to Hawkins. He wants to blend in, heal people, find clues about Robin's whereabouts and maybe wipe out a monster nest or two before he and Jane get killed by the most evil wizard of the millennium.
He hasn't considered that Mike might hinder his plans, because the Prince was meant to forget him eleven years ago.
Mike didn't really get the memo.
(sort of-not really cleradin Prince-Knight Mike/Wizard Will, ft. established witch girlfriends ElMax & Mike's horrible courting attempts)
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Throughout The Seasons I Have Loved You by thatforestfae
Fandoms: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
15 Mar 2026
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Summary
He hates how he treated Will in those years.
Mike saw how others hated people like him and he knows how all their stories end up because of them. Will was a victim, and Mike became the bully. He didn’t mean it, he wanted Will to stay close to him.
Too close.
Knowing that his escape out of those feelings was gone made him panic. When El broke up with him the first time, he knew that he couldn’t hide anymore. He thought he did everything right, they kissed, they hung out everyday, they kissed even more; typical boyfriend stuff.
But he was scared.
Scared of who he really was, about what people would think. What Will would think.
Or
The months of the year with Mike Wheeler's feelings through its ups and downs.