atlantablack
Recent bookmarks
-
where everything was fiction, future, and prediction by samwenas
Fandoms: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
10 Jan 2026
Tags
Summary
Mike kicks his feet into the space in front of them, as he looks down at the ground. There was a time, a year ago now, where Mike’s first thought would be dangerous, something that could get him institutionalized if anyone knew. Now, he’s mostly contemplating how it would be if he takes Will’s hand again, links their fingers together, traces the back of Will’s knuckles, and slowly pours each of his feelings out into the open.
(Or, It's summer of 1989 and Mike Wheeler learns that he's allowed to be happy.)
Bookmarked by atlantablack
16 Feb 2026
Bookmarker's Notes
“Are you okay?” Mike asks softly.
“Yeah,” Will says, blinking slowly. He gets on his tiptoes and drapes his arms around Mike’s neck to balance himself. “Please,” Will says, his eyes wide and pleading. Mike knits his brows together and realizes that he has another drag in him.
“Are you sure?” Mike asks, looking at Dustin’s passed out form on the sofa. Will nods immediately and urgently. Mike takes another drag and holds it; he feels the hit build through his body, but then Will’s hands move to Mike’s hair, and Mike has never felt more grounded, even with the room blurring around them. He traces his thumb along Will’s jaw before hooking it under Will’s chin to crane Will's head upwards. Will immediately opens his mouth and Mike exhales smoke again; their lips brush again in the faintest ghost of a kiss, but this time Mike feels Will press back a little firmer, almost like a real kiss.
-
Tags
Summary
Mike’s mouth is warm.
Warm, and a little chapped, and pressing against his with an uncertainty that makes something in Will’s chest ache. He should pull away. He knows this. He knows it in the same way he knows not to touch a hot stove, not to stare too long, not to let himself imagine impossible things. His body seems uninterested in logic, though, and he supposes he can’t blame himself, not really.
Mike shifts slightly, trying to figure out what to do with his limbs. His lips move against Will’s with more intention, and Will’s breath stutters out of him in a way that is deeply embarrassing and entirely involuntary.
Oh, his brain supplies unhelpfully.
It’s something he’s imagined countless times before, kissing Mike Wheeler. He imagines it so often, in fact, that he cannot even recall the first time he imagined it. It’s an ever-present fantasy, always lurking in the back of his mind.
And yet, despite his thorough experience in imagining this moment, he somehow never imagined it quite like this.
Or: Five times it doesn't mean anything, and one time it finally does.
Bookmarked by atlantablack
15 Feb 2026
Bookmarker's Notes
“You know,” Mike murmurs after a pause, hand still tangled in his hair, “we could stay like this forever, if we wanted to.”
This time, when Will peers up at him, Mike is already looking back.
“Forever’s a long time,” Will whispers.
-
Tags
Summary
This is the first girl who’s ever asked Mike out — something he had, in the not too distant past, been terrified would never happen. And Mike just stands there, feeling like his dining hall dinner is about to crawl back up his esophagus.
Jeremy, Saint Jeremy, nudges him with an elbow. “He’s kind of private about it, but Mike actually has someone back home.”
Mike turns his head to look at Jeremy, expecting a knowing smile or the hint of a wink. But Jeremy actually looks sincere, which makes Mike’s eyebrows sink down, almost to the top of his nose.
“Will, right?” Jeremy supplies, forever trying to be helpful. “He’s at CalArts?”
- Language:
- English
- Words:
- 12,635
- Chapters:
- 4/4
- Comments:
- 259
- Kudos:
- 3,159
- Bookmarks:
- 839
- Hits:
- 32,261
Bookmarked by atlantablack
08 Feb 2026
Bookmarker's Notes
“Get up,” Will tells him, his voice raw. “Please.”
Mike gets up embarrassingly fast for someone who’s about to get decked in the face. It makes him wonder what else he would do just because Will asked. Jump off a bridge, probably. His parents had been wrong all along.
“You’re right,” Will bites out. “You are stupid.”
And then Will kisses him.
-
dear will (your love is all i want) by hxllcatspangled
Fandoms: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
22 Dec 2025
Tags
Summary
I think about finding you on the swings in the first grade. I think about the first time Jonathan showed us the DnD board game, and how excited you were to see all the magic stuff. How I kept giving you different characters to draw just to watch the way your eyes lit up. Was I in love with you then?
I remember stealing a tape of The Thing from Nancy and watching it when we were ten. I remember being so scared, but you were fascinated. I stuck it out just to watch you gasp when MacReady blows up the station. I remember grabbing your hand when it happened, and you held on. Was I in love with you then?
I remember the last words you said to me before you went missing. It was a seven. I remember when you came back, when I finally saw you again, and I thought my heart was going to stop. I swear to God, Will, it was like I could breathe again for the first time in days.
Mike and Will get through Vecna, get through a million almost-confessions and even more death scares. Then, three months later, Will finds a box of unsent letters from freshman year under Mike's bed.
Bookmarked by atlantablack
08 Feb 2026
Bookmarker's Notes
I wish I could point to some huge a-ha moment, like in the movies... Really, it was something slow and creeping.
I think about finding you on the swings in the first grade. I think about the first time Jonathan showed us the DnD board game, and how excited you were to see all the magic stuff.
Was I in love with you then?
I remember when you came back, when I finally saw you again, and I thought my heart was going to stop. I swear to God, Will, it was like I could breathe again for the first time in days.
I must have been in love with you then.
-
tell me, is it really love? by agustplz (shout_out_lou)
Fandoms: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
20 Sep 2022
Tags
Summary
Will Byers loves Mike Wheeler.
It shouldn’t be a big deal. Of course he loves Mike. He always has. But it’s never felt like this. It’s never hurt to think about it, but it also never felt like a revelation rather than a fact. It hurts, and there’s nothing he can do to ease the pain. He looks across the room at Mike and all he sees is beauty where minutes ago he only saw his best friend. He notices entire constellations in the freckles strewn across his nose, stars glittering in his eyes, and it all seems inevitable. He loves Mike. He loves him and it’s a foregone conclusion, a wish on a shooting star destined to burn out. He loves him and he can’t ever have him, not in that way, and there’s nothing in the world that can ever hurt him again quite like this.
OR: When the party dares Mike to tell someone he loves them for one hundred days, Will doesn't expect to be the unlucky recipient. He definitely doesn't expect it to consume his last three months in Hawkins. But like most things in his life, absolutely nothing goes to plan.
- Language:
- English
- Words:
- 30,609
- Chapters:
- 1/1
- Collections:
- 3
- Comments:
- 286
- Kudos:
- 4,082
- Bookmarks:
- 1,055
- Hits:
- 49,138
Bookmarked by atlantablack
03 Feb 2026
Bookmarker's Notes
But then Mike surprises him. He’s been surprising him a lot lately, but this feels different.
“I love you,” Mike murmurs. Everything in Will comes to a screeching halt, including the rhythm of his breath. He doesn’t think Mike notices; his fingers keep moving through his hair as if nothing has changed. Maybe it hasn’t. Maybe Will is the only one so affected.
“I really, really do,” Mike tells him, voice impossibly fond.