Chapter Text
Feel what you need to feel, and then let it go. Do not let it consume you.
He felt what he needed to feel, as it demanded to be felt.
The curve of his lips lifted his cheeks, made his eyes squint– he couldn’t stop smiling. A soft bubbling feeling rose and fell in his chest with his breath, blooming with each reminiscent thought of earlier that morning.
He caught himself tripping over curiosity as he composed a gladiolus nosegay– trying his best to ignore his teary, itchy eyes and blotchy hands. (Who’s allergic to gladiolus? Of all flowers, one of the most beautiful?) His curious mind wandered to Mike’s bedroom, which was likely directly above where Will stood. He wondered if Mike woke to the sweet scents of the flower shop, the way Will woke to the wafting aromas of the coffee shop. He wondered if, in Mike’s solitary and somewhat intimate mornings, he’d stretch and take a deep breath in– smiling as he exhaled the nearly sugary-sweet air that hung around him.
Will wondered if the scent lingered on his clothes, in his hair. If Mike smelled traces of his home when he held onto Will– the way Will smelled Edelweiss when he leaned into Mike’s hair. He let himself lean into the daydream– did raspberries make Mike think of Gould? Had he touched a single raspberry since that night? Were his fingernails stained with coffee the way Will’s were dyed with petals?
Flowers and coffee…. Will and Mike. Soulmates, Harvey would insist.
The near coincidental living spaces were one thing, but added also was the old olfactory trick, in which one must always sniff coffee grounds before smelling fresh flowers, in order to renew their sense of smell.
The way one must always have their Edelweiss Coffee before working at The Secret Garden. The way one must always have their Paladin before their Cleric.
Harvey was onto something, that was for sure.
“Thank you for calling The Secret Garden, say it with flowers,” Harvey croaked haphazardly in the next room.
Say it with flowers.
Cute, he thought. He’d never actually thought about how cute it was that Harvey insisted on voicing the slogan whenever employees picked up the phone.
Say it with flowers.
Will had taken to wiping his leaky eyes on the inner part of his elbow while working with such meticulous detail on the gladiolus arrangements. He sniffed and he huffed and he sighed, always returning back to intensely focus once again on his craft.
His fingertips were stained a sickly lavender hue, with petal and stem pieces stuck under the whites of his fingernails. It itched something awful, an itch that Will was sure wouldn’t dissipate with simple hand soap and water. For cases like these, he kept a toothbrush in his apron pocket to scrape out the softened petal and pigment from his nails. The bristles scratched the unbearable itch caused by his allergy, and cleaned the deep-set stains in the whorls of his thumbs.
Yes, Harvey had offered him gloves, and even a face mask– when working with gladiolus, but Will felt it took the heart out of his craft if he didn’t actually feel the work in his hands. He needed to feel the softness of the petals, and smell the flowers’ sweet fragrance– no matter how poisonous to him– in order to feel he’d done his job correctly.
“Sick again?” Harvey chucked, trimming some baby’s breath. They were Harvey’s favorite to care for, so Will always let him arrange the orders with baby’s breath.
“I’m fine,” Will sighed, a half-laugh slipping through his lips between sniffles.
“I can do it, Mr. Byers, I’ve told you before.”
“No, Harv. They’re one of my favorite flowers, you can’t take that away from me,” Will joked.
“Your favorite? From where I’m standing it looks like you should pick a new favorite,” Harvey laughed.
Will shook his head with a smile and continued to work. He was nothing if not a hard and determined florist.
Will’s eyes burned, his nose was runny, and his hands throbbed by the time he’d finished his work, but he set the bouquets next to Harvey in the cooler room proudly, having finished without a break.
“See? They might hate me, but they love me,” Will gestured at the gladiolus nosegays he’d completed.
“Beautiful work, Mr. Byers, as is expected from you,” Harvey smiled.
Will pulled his jacket around his torso and zipped toward the door.
“Hey, Mr. Byers!” Harvey bellowed. “Walk slow out there, and keep your eyes up. Wouldn’t want to–”
“Pass my soulmate by,” Will whispered, smiling. “Won’t letcha down, Harv. Promise,” he swore, pushing himself out the door.
– – – – – –
The night was calm, and still relatively bright. The clouds hung low, a peach-pink poem in the sky. They drifted, slowly but surely westward, and Will found himself questioning the last time he’d actually kept his eyes up on his walk home– the way Harvey always recommended. How many neapolitan skies had he missed while looking at his scuffed shoes? How many cardinals and doves had he lost the chance to see while counting the sidewalk tiles?
How many days had he missed a kind smile from a stranger while biting the inside of his lip, focused blankly ahead, blurring out his periphery in a rush?
Life was beautiful, and it had been beautiful this whole time. He’d just kept his eyes too close to the ground to see it.
The sky shone a creamsicle hue on the puddle-strewn streets of the city– it meshed perfectly with the scarlet and white headlights which beelined down the avenue. The neon signs flashed a kaleidoscopic lightshow into the light fog of the street. It was like a painting– he thought– the city in full and candid color.
He felt an ache in his face when he leaned against the Edelweiss Coffee entrance.
It was only then that Will noticed– he hadn’t stopped smiling since he left The Secret Garden.