whateveritiswhateveritwas
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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.
- Language:
- English
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- 151,782
- Chapters:
- 7/12
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Bookmarked by whateveritiswhateveritwas
03 Jun 2026
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Will could not help the question that burst from his lips, it had been ricocheting around his brain like a stray tennis ball and was simultaneously causing him the most excitement, distress and exhilaration he had felt in his entire life.
“Are you my husband?” he blurted. Mike blinked in surprise.
“What?”
Will lost his nerve slightly. He wondered if he had been horribly wrong about this, and maybe in this strange timeline he was just a friend staying over and maybe he’d made a mistake and the daughter wasn’t really his daughter and—
Will faltered. “Um, I — well, I just thought you were — I mean, you are my husband, right?”
Mike looked very alarmed. He was staring at Will as though he had grown a second head.
“Obviously…?” he said, “Are you feeling alright? Did your mom make you try her D-I-Y coffee again?”
When nineteen-year-old Will Byers wakes up to find himself in his forty-three-year-old body, he must—with no experience whatsoever—play the part of world-renowned freelance painter, father of two very troublesome teenagers, and most strangely of all: Mike Wheeler’s husband.
- Language:
- English
- Words:
- 114,230
- Chapters:
- 13/13
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- 1
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Bookmarked by whateveritiswhateveritwas
20 Apr 2026
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Whatever was thrumming between them, whatever was dripping from the low cadence of Mike’s voice — it was the same thing that had bloomed behind Will’s eyelids as he locked eyes with Mike in that lamplight. A tension seemed to rise, one that Will couldn’t make any sense of. He wanted to write it off. Wished that he could.
New York City, 1990. Normalcy bleeds into domesticity bleeds into longing.
Bookmarked by whateveritiswhateveritwas
01 Mar 2026