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✶✶✶
It is spring, and Mike and Will are fifteen.
Hawkins still hums with the movement of the military, the daily back-and-forth of buzzing helicopters and distant gunfire as residents go about their business — but now it does so in the steady vibration of warmer weather, and the smell of gunpowder mixes with the sweet scent of daffodils whenever Will steps outside.
It’s an odd contrast, and it fascinates Will: a whiff of hope amidst the leering scent of their impending doom, a finger reaching out from the sun to brush his frigid cheek.
Being able to go outside without fifty coats on means that Will and Mike quickly make it a habit to get out of the Wheeler house, away from the basement they’d spent the winter in. The places they reacquaint themselves with differ — the train tracks, now abandoned; Mirkwood and the forests between neighborhoods; the old car lot — but their conversations remain the same.
They talk of their lives, of the crawls, of California and Hawkins. It doesn’t matter what, as long as it’s something.
On one of their outings — the day they discover the unlocked and unsupervised gate to the Hawkins Community Pool and enter to poke around for swim equipment — Mike looks at Will from knee-deep in the shallow end, pants rolled ridiculously as he searches for old pool toys, and asks, “Do you ever think about hope?”
Will frowns. “What do you mean?”
“You know, with the way that things are right now. Having hope,” Mike says, “Do you ever think about it?”
Will considers. In the past few months, Lucas had been trapped by Max’s bedside; Dustin had descended into a neglectful sort of moodiness; El had grown more frustrated with her training since she started; the military presence had grown more suffocating each week.
Mike speaks before Will can. “I think about it all the time.”
“Same,” Will admits, lowering himself to sit and dangle his calves in the pool water. “But it gets hard sometimes. With,” he gestures aimlessly, “you know, everything.”
In the distance, they hear gunfire.
“In the movies, they never let you save the world and be happy,” Mike says. There’s somehow a smile on his face — similar to the one Will remembers from when they were kids. Endearingly crooked. Cute. For a moment, Will’s breath catches. “At least not happy in— in the way you want to be.”
“Do you think we will?” Will asks quietly.
“Save the world, or be happy?”
“Both.”
“I think we’re going to be the first. We’re better than the movies,” Mike says. When Will scrunches his nose, disbelieving, he insists: “I swear! Here, give me your pinkie — promise with me— ”
Will laughs. “Mike, c’mon.”
“I’m serious!” Mike thrusts out his pinkie, across the water, staring expectantly up at Will until he reluctantly extends his own. It links with Mike’s, swaying for a moment, then longer when neither pulls away. Will doesn’t say anything when they break apart.
He can feel where Mike’s skin had touched him, even briefly. Electric. He searches for Mike’s eyes and startles when he finds them staring directly back at him.
“What are we even promising?” Will asks.
Mike grins. “To be happy. Or to find happiness, I guess. After saving the world — which we will do, by the way — I think we’ll deserve it.”
Will hums in agreement, and as Mike resumes his wading in the kiddie pool, he stares down into the little ripples in the water. To be happy. What scene raced through Mike’s head as he’d said it?
Will was already familiar with the dark curls and crooked grins of his “happy.” His happy had said it all, really, right here in this town only three years ago. Did you really think we’d never get girlfriends? Had Will really thought they wouldn’t grow up?
If he had a choice, he’d stay here forever. He would continue to plant daffodils in his gunpowder garden with Mike, if he’d let him. Loving his best friend was easy if nothing else in the world existed, but his garden was sure to blow up eventually. Will wasn’t so sure he could keep Mike’s promise.
✶✶✶
They return to the abandoned pool a few weeks later, this time dragging Lucas and Dustin away from planning the next crawl long enough to go with them. They protest, but eagerly jump into the water once prompted enough, and quickly start to splash and slap each other in a manner remarkably similar to feral cats.
For a moment, ten years of upside-down terror mean nothing — this is the Dustin and Lucas Will remember from when they were kids. He watches bemusedly with Mike from the edge of the pool as Lucas tackles Dustin into the water and emerges sputtering.
“Dunno how I’m still friends with you lot,” Will jokes.
Mike smiles, but doesn’t say anything. His eyes are distant, Will notices, as if in the next town over. Will frowns. “Hey, are you okay?”
Before Mike can speak, Lucas calls from where he holds Dustin in a headlock, “He’s upset because — gerrofme, Dustin — because of El!”
“Someone’s got relationship issues,” Dustin teases from where he claws at Lucas’ grip, before his head is dunked beneath the water.
“Mind your business, assholes!” Mike yells, snapped away from his trance. A blush tints his cheeks — pretty, Will thinks — before he turns to Will, opening his mouth. He closes it. Swallows. “El and I, we broke up.”
Will stares. “What?”
“We broke—“
“No, I heard you,” Will rushes to clarify, “It’s just—”
“Crazy?” Lucas wades up to them, leaving Dustin sputtering behind him, and hoists himself over the edge of the pool with a grunt. “Yeah, that’s what I thought when I found out.”
“Why?” Will asks slowly, carefully. He catches himself fidgeting with a loose thread on his shorts and quickly slaps his hands together. Stop that. “Why did she break up with you, I mean.”
Mike frowns. “I broke up with her, actually.”
“What?” The shout comes from all three of them, then — but Will’s heart jumps erratically, and he has to force himself to catch it, to prevent it from beating out of his chest. The scent of the daffodils planted around the pool grounds hits him, a sweetly dizzying fragrance that overpowers his senses. Do you ever think about hope?
Mike eyes them. “Why are you guys acting like it’s insane? El broke up with me when we were kids.”
“That was temporary, man!” Lucas groans. “You guys were, like, thirteen. It’s different if you do it now.”
“I know,” Mike grumbles, “that’s the point. It’s not crazy.”
“You still haven’t told us why,” Will presses.
Mike glances at him, lips parted. “We just — we didn’t work. Like that. Romantically. And also she’s, you know, all caught up with training and stuff, she never had time to hang out anymore, and whenever she did I just didn’t feel like I could make her feel better, and it wasn’t like she didn’t want to — she did, but— ”
“Dude, it’s okay,” Lucas interrupts. “We get it.”
Mike exhales, and Will finds himself breathing slowly with him. Steady. Still. Lucas jumps back into the pool, and the sudden desire to dunk himself in its cool, clear depths overtakes Will, so he moves back to where the four had piled up their things on a pool chair to shed his shirt and shorts for swim trunks underneath.
Mike broke up with El.
Okay.
That’s normal — that’s fine. This is fine. It doesn’t change anything. Will exhales again.
He turns to find Mike looking at him from one chair over. His eyes are impossibly dark as they sweep across Will’s tanned shoulders once, twice — subtle enough that Will’s certain he’s imagining it. Mike’s lips part again, tongue forming around words that don’t seem to make it to the surface. He glances away.
Will turns around, smiling despite himself. “You seem happy,” he remarks over his shoulder, glancing back so he knows Mike hears him.
For a moment, no response. But then Mike’s face splits into a smile. “Yeah. I am.”
And Will can feel it, in Mike’s loose laughter, his easy jokes, in the way he dives into the pool and shakes his wet mop of hair out of his eyes in jest. He sees it in how the slope of his bare back doesn’t seem to fold under an invisible pressure as it had before. He recognizes it in each crease of his lazy grin: happiness, just as Mike had promised.
Later, as the Party is walking home — and Will is busy trying not to notice how the water drips off Mike’s jaw and pools at his collar — Mike stops.
“What is it?” Will asks.
“Daffodils,” comes the answer, as Mike points to the little yellow buds lining the pool’s fence. He bends down, carefully picks one, and rolls it between his fingers.
“Smell it,” Will urges, and Mike presses the petals open to take a slow sniff. “It sometimes mixes with the gunpowder scent, but I think they go well together. Isn’t that weird?”
“I don’t mind it,” Mike hums quietly.
He rises again, slinging his pool bag over one shoulder, and extends his hand palm-up to Will. The flower rests in the center. “It kinda reminds me of you. Is that weird?”
Will can feel the flush on his cheeks, and for a moment, he forgets that he’s supposed to hide it. He takes the bud from Mike and cups it hesitantly.
“No,” he says. “I don’t mind it at all.”
✶✶✶
The next time they return to the pool, Mike and Will go alone again.
They arrive in the morning, bare chests prickling in the early breeze, which gives way to a sticky heat as they chase each other around and dive for rocks. It feels good, Will muses, to exercise his arms and get his heart beating fast again.
By the afternoon, they’d swam themselves out. Mike stretches while wading aimlessly, rolling limbs stiff from so long spent indoors, and Will watches him. Really watches him.
He’d grown more comfortable with watching Mike in the past few weeks. Mike was nice to look at, and Will has known for ages that they’ve grown, but he notices details about Mike’s appearance that remind him of it every day — his broadened shoulders, his firm jaw, the gentle shift of muscle beneath his skin as he pulls one slender arm taut or flexes his stomach.
Even as he’s grown comfortable, there are moments when Will has to consciously force his gaze away, as he did before the breakup. There’s an odd hunger in watching, new and uncertain; Will doesn’t know how to name the curl in his stomach that unfurls with it. He doesn’t know what Mike would think about it.
Despite this, Will can’t help the words that slip out of his mouth. “You look older.”
Mike stops stretching, turning to him. “I do?”
“Yes,” Will says. And again without thinking, “Do I?”
“Come over here,” Mike beckons. Before Will can tamp out the sudden surge of confidence that floods him, he shimmies off the pool edge and wades to Mike, who regards him for a moment. “Yeah, you do.”
“How?” Will asks, unable to hide the eagerness in his voice. “A lot?”
Eagerness — for what? To be perceived by his best friend? But then Mike raises a hand and touches his jaw, drags two steady fingers along it. Will nearly stops breathing.
“Here,” Mike murmurs, eyes following how Will’s hand reaches up to feel the bone of his own chin, “your face is firmer than before.”
“I can’t feel it,” Will says, swallowing the nervous lump that had risen in his throat. He is so close to Mike, and thinks he might be able to get drunk off the faintly sweet scent of him. “The difference, I mean.”
“It’s there,” Mike reassures him. He catches Will’s hand in his, and brings it to his collarbone. “You’re wider here, also. And this,” he touches the bulb of Will’s throat, impossibly soft. It bobs as he swallows hard, and Mike’s finger rides the motion.
“Where else?” Will breathes.
Mike pauses for a moment, wets his lips with his tongue; Will involuntarily narrows in on the motion. He points along the fine, dark hairs that have begun to run over Will’s chest, down his stomach, and—
If Will couldn’t breathe before, he definitely couldn’t now.
“That’s enough,” he says, more abruptly than intended.
He returns to sit at the edge of the pool, and Mike resumes his stretching. Will watches the wind dry his hair, takes in how the sun falls on his fair skin. He braces his hands on the pavement behind him and lets his head fall back as the wind carries the scent of daffodils growing by the fence.
Do you ever think about hope?
After some time, he hears the soft splashes of Mike coming to stand beside him. He opens his eyes.
“I wouldn’t be displeased,” Mike says. “With how you look now.”
Will’s face grows warm again, and they wordlessly rise to gather their things.
This time, when Will watches Mike, he senses something familiar beneath the doubt, the newness of their growing bodies, and the rumble of Mike’s voice when he speaks. If he squints, he sees the kindergartener he’d met ten years ago on those swings — limbs less long but still lanky, curls still wild, smile still so endearing.
Mike has never been unfamiliar, Will realizes. Neither of them have been to the other, even if they never talk about it. It doesn’t need to be said. The thought of it warms Will from the inside out — for a moment, as they pass the budding flowers to find the road back home, the hunger and happiness feel like one and the same.
I would know him in death, at the end of the world.