a love letter to “touch like velvet”.
If you haven’t already read this fic, somehow, you need to read it. I’m not saying that in a “oh my god this fanfiction is soo cute! I ship them so much! #fangirl!” type of way, and it’s understandable that you might think that considering the circumstances, but I don’t mean it like that. I mean that this piece of fiction genuinely blew me away, cut through any and every expectations I had for a silly little byler fanfic on ao3, and left me with something I will never forget. I am not exaggerating, I am not being dramatic, I am not a crazed byler stan. I know this was first created as a piece of fandom fiction, it was made for stranger things, around the characters Mike Wheeler and Will Byers in 2018, but honest to god, it doesn't feel like it. No, this story feels raw, it feels emotional, it feels original. I always considered myself a stickler for canon compliance, even if it had to diverge a little, I didn’t see a point in creating whole alternate universes or abandoning core plot devices. I remember this fic being recommended to me maybe once or twice, I skimmed the tags and description, brushed it off as it did not sound up my alley at all. Until I was bored and in need of something new, just something to pass the time while I procrastinated math homework. I started reading at nearly eleven at night, and I am writing this now at 6:30 AM immediately after finishing. I don’t know how to get across the message that this story, this writing, these characters, has deeply and truly touched my soul in a way I haven’t felt ever about any literature ever. I cannot explain to you how this has changed my life. I can’t even begin to. Nobody can understand what I am feeling at this moment for this work of art, but I do. I do. This review contains spoilers for everything in this fic, and I truly truly am begging you to read it before this.
Let me start with the characters, because I think that’s the most outstanding thing. Right off the bat I was a little annoyed reading this fic. Because it had so little tags, I hadn’t realized it wasn’t canon compliant, and was hesitant when I saw that they were introducing Will and Mike as strangers. How weird was that? Most of the appeal for byler, at least to me, was the long-lasting forged childhood friendship that seemed to have no limits. Regardless, I found myself unable to stop reading. It was a decision I felt long before Mike even came into play. The genuine raw pain and emotion trapped inside the seventeen year old husk that was Will Byers struck me right in the chest. You can feel the sadness, the disappointment, yet you don't feel pity, no you don’t even think to. It's not that. It's understanding. The author, Victor Ivan, also known as “ciders” on ao3, said he was nineteen when he first started writing this, which means he knew the pain of being a queer, closeted, trapped seventeen year old all too well. And if you know that feeling as well, or if you’re like me, living in that feeling currently, or even if you’ve never felt that feeling at all, the words stab you all the same.
“When I turn eighteen, I’m gone, Will thinks. When I turn eighteen, I’ll find a way to be okay with myself, or I’ll find a way to change.
Being seventeen is hard—Will knows this—but being seventeen and still stuck in the closet, to Will Byers, feels like staring down the barrel of a loaded gun. He’s got the money stashed away to leave, he’s got the will to go, but you cannot run from fear. You can only hide.”
It's heartbreaking and real and so utterly human that you can hardly help it. I didn’t stick around through my annoyed meeting of Mike because I had hope for byler, I stuck around because a deep-rooted, sentimental part of me had hope for Will. This Isn’t even halfway through the first chapter, and I’m attached enough to this boy that I want to stay. I want to give him a shot.
Then comes Mike Wheeler, barging into Will’s life like a chaotic ball of light and sunshine. He’s impulsive, he's callous, he's a little cruel. He’s spontaneous and loud and so opposite of Will, and metaphorically and literally speaking–he saves him. He bursts into this sad, internally homophobic abused boy's life and fills it with something he’s foreign to. Life. It perfectly captures that essence of “the end of the ***ing world” and “call me by your name” coming of age beauty, the laughter, the danger, the teenage-ness of it all.
“Will thinks time spent with Mike is so much better than time spent without him. Definitely.”...” Will is laughing. Hard. He finds it hilarious, even. Because their laughter echoes around the brick walls boxing them in as they sprint away from the cops, and Will thinks, honest:
This must be what living feels like.”
And part of you, or more accurately me, wanted to hate it. “Thats not how Mike acts”, I told myself, scoffing at his shameless flirt tactics and queer pride. “Thats not in character. That’s not the Mike I know – the Mike I’m comfortable with.” Yet you can’t help but love him anyways, because of the warmth he blooms into Will.
Then you’re barreling through the story faster than you realize, and before you can process it, he’s transformed. Alongside Will, you peel apart the layers that are Mike Wheeler, and inside, you find him again. The familiarity hits you like a truck, as uncomfortable as it is. You kinda want him to go back.
I think the biggest turning point in Mike’s character for me was the dinner scene. He’s invited Will to his parents house for dinner, to loudly and proudly come out to them, Will posing as his fake boyfriend. He’s looking for trouble, he’s argumentative, and it's all this wonderful facade that I’ve grown used to. Then something happens, something conflicting, something that the text recognizes. In earlier chapters, Mike was slapped across the face by his now ex-girlfriend. He laughed it off, he popped all these jokes, he blamed Will and let him take the grunt of her outburst while pressing a cold milkshake glass to his cheek nonchalantly. So when Mike’s mother strikes him across the face at the dinner table, part of you expects that same reaction. Your jaw drops, but there’s no real danger here, not for Mike. For Will, maybe, this is a horrible situation to be in for him. But this is Mike. He’s a cartoonishly animated character, He’s happy-go-lucky, He wanted this reaction, he almost coaxed it out of her, and he could deal with this.
“This is where the laugh track is supposed to kick in. Or maybe the theatrical sound of crickets. Or maybe the credits. The credits, definitely. This show is fucking over.”
Then, when you least expect it, he nearly cries.
“Now, he looks like a miserable child.
Here, hunched over at the table, twisted towards Will with his head down, pushed back tight in his chair like the tablecloth might burn his skin right off, Mike holds his face with his furthest hand from Will, fingers pressing unkindly against the skin over his cheekbone. He’s bleeding, but only slightly; a thin sliver against the flushed pink flesh of his mouth, curving down to where his lips meet in the middle. His brows are furrowed over glassy, emotionless eyes. Nothing, no expression crossing his face seems real.”
This is the first but not the last sign that Mike Wheeler is, at his core, just a seventeen year old queer boy from a broken family. You start to feel stupid for ever expecting him to be anything else, you rethink the scene of him jokingly threatening to jump off the roof, your chest tightens and you, the reader, sitting in bed looking at your phone screen, feel guilty for this fictional character. He lets this mask slip in vulnerable moments with Will, seeming touched and on the verge of tears because Will got him a birthday gift. He crashes in his bed after trudging through his window in the rain, and in the dead of night, says he’s sorry, then quickly deflects like it never happened. It hurts, because it's all so unsaid. You wish you could just see it from his perspective, but at the same time, you know what's lying there for you.
And then it’s revealed that no, you actually don’t know. Again in the rain on his back porch, talks of his childhood and medication. In the backseat of Nancy Wheeler’s car, as she tears up out of the fear that he might hurt himself. Secrets he spills to Will about having dropped out months ago in private, about his fantasies of running away to California or Arizona. You don’t know anything about him at all, and at the same time, you know everything that really matters.
This Isn’t just about Mike, though. You learn all these revelations through Will. Will, who watches Mike closely, observes the rainbow stickers and the painted nails and the way he’s endlessly confident in his sexuality. You watch Will, a turtle shell of a boy, shoot witty replies and run from cops and grow into himself. Will, who once depressingly wished to run away too, wished to pack up in the middle of the night and leave Hawkins without fanfare, because who would miss him? And now, after everything, surrounded by friends and loving faces who love him for HIM, and all of him, on his eighteenth birthday, realize he’d be leaving something behind. Realize he was scared to leave, because for once in his life, someone would worry. It's a beautiful telling of queer tragedy and hope, and I think I can speak for everyone when I say it was a much needed hope after the dumpster fire that was season 5.
And that's my point, it doesn’t feel like stranger things. You find yourself getting lost in these characters, getting to personally and deeply know them, so much so that their TV show counterparts blend into the background. I had the passing thought that, “I wanna draw these versions of Will and Mike.” And then I paused to think, what would I draw? It would just be will and mike, on the surface sure, but deep down I knew they were so much more than that. They weren’t Michael Wheeler and William Byers, they were someone else entirely. (edit, i did end up drawing them, they’re on my page :) )With a few simple name changes, this fanfiction could so quickly become a beautiful piece of original work that I’m positive would get its own movie adaptation and go insane.
These characters alone are brilliant, of course, but it’s the connection that really matters. It's the whispered queerness, it's the secretly gay, it's the genuine and real queer culture that existed in 1989. It’s in the way Nancy and Robin both struggle in the background to cope with the loss of each other, it's in the way Max and Jane save their hand holdings and lean ins for the safety of the arcade back room. It's in the way Lucas and Dustin are accidentally insensitive but earnestly apologetic, because how could they know any better? It’s in the way Will and Mike talk, interact, and support each other. When Will was going to write a note on Mike’s wall after he realized that he was struggling, part of you expected it to be “I love you.” A large part of you wants it, actually, you wanna feed into the romantic fluffiness and cuddly fanfiction-ness of it all, the self indulgent butterflies and kissing and what not. But Victor knows that’s not the true message of this work, and so instead, incredibly powerfully and beautifully, Will writes –
“I believe in you, Mike Wheeler.”
It’s the type of message that makes you tear up and put your phone down for a second, because in Will’s scrawny, stretched out writing due to his broken hand, he's not just talking to Mike. He’s reaching past the fourth wall and talking to the sheltered, closeted and oppressed queer youth behind their device screens everywhere. And he's saying, I believe in you. I believe in you, reader.
It’s a beautiful thing, too, the way Mike takes it a step further a few chapters later and says, “I believe in us, Will Byers.” It’s a message that love is important, love is worth it, and to believe in that love whole heartedly no matter how impossible it feels due to the oppression of your society because no matter the sex of your partner you deserve happiness. And this is a message that carries out all the way to the end of the story, you deserve to live in a house that you feel safe in, you deserve people who know ALL of you and love all of you, you deserve light and laughter and to go to school without the lingering fear of slurs or harassment. You deserve a happy ending. And Will Byers doesn’t just reach through the screen to say this while holding our hands, he turns his attention to Robin and Nancy, queer residents of Hawkins who didn’t get a happy ending, and passes the message along in the very last chapter, showing that no matter who you are, or what happened or where you are, this applies to you, and it’s never too late.
“You’re right,” he tells her, clinging to the brown paper like a lifeline. “But good things still live here, Robin. No crappy weather or people can kill the best stuff. It’s just too powerful.” … “It’s the company I keep.” He draws his cup into his palm and allows the unbreaking heat to steal him as he says, “You don’t have to let this place kill you. People are stronger than hatred. It took me a while to figure that out, but now that I have–well.” .. “You need to know that too,” he says. “I know you do.”
It fosters such an unconditional feeling of love between the pair. Through Will’s abusive dad, bullies, and internal struggles, Mike is there. Mike is there with a cinnamon hot chocolate and an array of bad jokes, he’s there with a hug and an understanding. Through Mike’s crappy home and mental struggles and general ambitionlessness for life, Will’s there. Will’s there in the rain on his doorstep, Will’s there with a comforting embrace at night and words he so desperately needed to hear all wrapped up in a mixtape and bleach hair foils. It's amazing, and without even directly relating to queerness, it brings you that sense of “It's us against the world” that's so perfected in oppressed LGBTQ media and coming of age stories alike. It's unmatched and familiar and beautiful and so important, especially now more than ever.
Being queer in this day and age feels like an endless battle. And yes, some might say we are the most LGBTQ progressive that we’ve ever been, or maybe we were back in the covid era. Either way, this kind of homophobia does exist. Sometimes you can’t see it at first, sometimes its hidden in layers of subtext, like the way stranger things never once says the word gay in fear of it being too woke but had Joyce say queer and fag in the first 20 minutes of the first episode in season one. Sometimes it's loud, like the queerbaiting and denial of byler after years and years of milking money and attention out of queer stranger things fans. But oftentimes, almost always, it's effective. In a work of fiction an endless unconditional love like this is a given, but in real life? Why must queers have to suffer through trials and trials and endless challenges just to be happy together? Why can’t we ever just exist normally, safely, and contently? Why are “gay” or “bisexual" or “pronouns” seen as overly woke and sensitive content that can make or break a show even if just uttered once? It's 2026. This message shouldn’t still be one that needs to be said to this day, and yet, it is, and that’s why I feel like this book is so important. You need to read this. You need to hear this message. You need to know somebody out there believes in you.
Okay, thats enough about this fic, I want to talk for a moment about its author. Even just in the author's notes, Victor Ivan has a way of touching you with his writing. It took him a long time to finish this story since its release in 2018, and stumbling upon this gold mine today after stranger things has ended, it's weird. I got to read his growing up and inspiring story all in one night, and yet somehow, the sincerity and emotion behind his words still reached me. I still felt a part of the community he talked about.
“I've said it before, and I meant it then, and I mean it now: this story has an end, a kind, hopeful end, and you all deserve to hear it.”
Several times throughout this night I thought to myself, this person needs to be a writer. I didn’t know his name or even who he was outside of the username ‘ciders” until the very last chapters, still, I believed in him with such a passion. Sometimes when reading fics I’d get the feeling that the author should genuinely pursue a career in writing outside of a hobby, but never in my life have I felt it as strongly as I felt it for Victor Ivan. So when I got to the very last authors note at the end of this beautiful work, and saw that he had not one, but two works published with stunning reviews while working alongside his wife who’s also a writer, my heart swelled with pride. A little smug part of me wanted to say I knew it, you bastard, I knew it! Then a softer part of me said, I knew it. I knew you could do it. I saw it, I believed, like a badge of honor, like you told me to.
I think it just goes to show that queer media matters. This work, this fanfiction on archive of our own, it matters. It’s important. You, you, the queer youth, you matter. Your stories matter, beyond crappy unresolved endings and beyond hidden homophobia, you deserve a life worth living. And it's out there. Even if you have to pack up in the middle of the night and hoard cash and haul ass to Arizona—or even if you just have to escape for the night in the brown-sugary sweet glow of a sticky diner called Honey’s, it’s there.
p.s: if this fic had a theme song, one that doesn’t directly show up in the fic like a lot of them do, it’d be “I’ll believe in anything” by Wolf Parade. Listen to it, read the lyrics, it’ll hit you.
https://archiveofourown.org/works/14328540/chapters/33064551
