Jasper comes to see Will every night that week.
Will doesn't plan for it, exactly. Sure, it occurs to him that first night in the diner as he watches Jasper push food around his plate without eating it that it would be nice to have this to look forward to every night—to get to take a break from the throw-up flu constantly happening inside his head—but it's not like he makes the decision right then and there to start calling the Cullens' house on the regular. But it'll be midnight or one or two every night, and he'll be sitting there in the basement biting his lip to hold in his screams, and he'll think, why not call Jasper? Jasper did tell him to call when he needs to, and Will needs. He still doesn't understand how, but he knows he'll feel better when he sees Jasper, so why should he deprive himself of that?
It's always Jasper who answers the phone, always quickly, always sounding fully alert. "Do you ever sleep?" Will jokes one night as he's sipping on a milkshake as Jasper watches him. "Or eat or drink, for that matter?"
"I eat. I just don't eat anything they serve in a joint like this."
"You said you and your family follow some kind of restrictive diet?"
"Yes." Jasper doesn't elaborate. It's one of the most frustrating things about him: Will feels like Jasper knows Will's entire life story, but Jasper shuts right down anytime Will tries to get anything out of him. It makes him feel off balance, like he's just some stupid kid pouring his heart out to somebody who's got no desire to give anything back to him.
And he wants Jasper to give back. He wants. If he's going to tether his sanity to Jasper, he should at least—
But that's not what's happening here, is it? It can't be. Mike is the one Will is addicted to, and Will knows better than to allow it to happen all over again with anybody new. He likes to think he's learned enough from Mike to go running and screaming in the opposite direction from anybody who might make him feel the same way Mike does. Besides, with the singularity with which Will is always so fixated on Mike, it wouldn't make sense for him to attach to anybody else yet, not while Mike is still plastered across Will's brain.
And yet—
He has to admit that Jasper does intrigue him, and not just because of his beauty. It's the way he listens so intently, like Will is the only other person in his world, and it's the way he never, ever seems to judge, not even when Will knows he deserves judgment. It's the way he's a good listener and a smooth talker, and his laugh—Will could listen to Jasper laugh all night.
He finds himself staying out later and later each night, just dreading the moment he goes back home and the hell swarms back into his mind. On the eighth night, Will lingers in the passenger seat of the Ferrari for a moment as Jasper pulls up to Will's house.
"Can you stay?" Will bursts. "Just until I fall asleep? Every time you leave, it's like…"
Half a dozen emotions flit across Jasper's face, but he doesn't vocalize any of them. "Don't you share a room with your brother? I would think you wouldn't want him to wake and see me."
"You don't have to say anything. You don't even have to come inside. You could just, you know, sit on the window ledge and…"
The longer Jasper sits and looks at him, the more Will's overwhelming sense of peace starts to slip out of place—at least, until Jasper bows his head and says, "Okay. I'll sit with you."
It's the first time in weeks that Will has lain down in bed without his head vomiting up shame. He's exhausted—across a whole week of sneaking out late at night, he's built up a sleep debt—but he clings to consciousness as long as he can, wanting to savor the feeling of safety, of satiation.
It's not until morning that he starts to worry.
True, being around Jasper helps Will feel more in control of his emotions—but is he really the one in control if that ability is dependent on Jasper being close by? Didn't being with Mike used to make Will feel this way before Will moved away from Hawkins? Isn't this just history repeating itself?
It can't be, he tells himself firmly. There's no way he'd be that stupid, and anyway, he's obviously still not over Mike.
But he keeps finding his mind drifting back to Jasper all day, just like it has all day most days this week, and when it does, it alarms him. He'll be more careful, Will promises himself. He'll set boundaries—make absolutely sure that he's moderating his exposure to Jasper and limiting how frequently he depends on him.
He's not going to call Jasper tonight, he tells himself when he's sitting with El studying at the kitchen table, his mind a million miles away from Ampere's law where it's supposed to be. He can call him tomorrow, but he won't do it tonight. Will can get through one day without Jasper, can't he?
Trouble is, Will doesn't have a lot of things in his life to distract him from Jasper's absence. Homeschooling means that he spends pretty much all day every day cooped up in the house with the same few people. He doesn't go for walks, not anymore: he's too afraid of what he might do if he gives himself the opportunity to go back down to the river.
It's like his mind is at war with himself, and Will is his own casualty. He fantasizes about doing things he knows he's not supposed to be doing—dying, seeing Jasper, calling Mike—sabotages his own attempts and then regrets it afterward. His brain is running in circles. He can't take living like this, not without whatever voodoo witchcraft Jasper does to him to make him finally, finally stop.
How is he supposed to get through the night? How is he supposed to sleep ever again now that he knows what it's like to fall asleep with Jasper in his window?
A dull memory pings the back of his brain, warning him that he sounds just like he sounded with Mike during all those setbacks when Will was insisting that this time wasn't like the last. He needs it to stop. He just needs everything to shut up for a while, just while he recovers, just until he can handle feeling like this again.
Will he ever be able to handle himself? Is he ever going to stop feeling like he's shattering into pieces?
It gets to the point that Jonathan pulls him aside in their bedroom after dinner, wearing his big, disapproving frown. "What's going on with you today? I know you've been having a bad time for a few weeks now, but today, you really seem… like it's bothering you more than usual. Can I help?"
And Will doesn't want to tell Jonathan what's going on—to admit that he's fallen down again, this time with somebody new, like he didn't learn a single damn thing from what happened with Mike. He doesn't want to have to explain the effect Jasper has on him or how he could possibly be sick and greedy and cold enough to need Jasper as if Mike isn't in the picture at all when Mike is in the picture. If Mike ever found out that Will has grown to need somebody else the same way Will needs him—
This isn't healthy. He knows it isn't. Will's not supposed to be trying to give Mike the grand title of The Only Boy Will Has Ever Wanted, and he's certainly not supposed to feel ashamed of the idea of moving on—of lessening Mike's importance in his life. But is that even what he's doing? It doesn't feel like it is, not when he misses Mike every bit as much as he misses Jasper.
He's pathetic. He saw Jasper last night, and he's already in withdrawal. Will was a mess of dependency on Mike for a long time, but he's pretty sure that, at least when he first moved to Sullivan, he was able to get through a lot of days, let alone just one, without feeling like he couldn't settle just because Mike wasn't around.
It's like all the progress he's made in therapy is slipping through his hands. What's the use of teaching himself coping mechanisms if he reverts back to this shell of a person the second anything goes wrong?
He hasn't known Jasper for long, but he feels like he's in so deep with him that Will doesn't have the first clue how to explain any of it to Jonathan. Jonathan doesn't even know that Jasper exists.
"Today has just been really hard," Will finally answers. "Will you keep me company? El, too? I just… I don't think I can stand to be alone right now."
Jonathan half smiles and puts a hand on Will's shoulder. "Of course, buddy. Whatever you need."
"You don't have to call me 'buddy' anymore. I'm not twelve."
"Right. Sorry. It's so weird to me that you're almost eighteen."
Right—Will's birthday is coming up in a couple of weeks. Sometimes, it's hard to remember that the world is still spinning even as he stands still. He's turning eighteen, and he's been accepted to college, and he just needs to find out which scholarships he'll get and whether they'll be enough to cover Illinois's tuition.
"How late can you stay up?" he asks Jonathan, feeling totally pathetic. "It's just—I haven't been sleeping well, I get too sad to sleep and then I'm up half the night—and I, um… I don't know if I can make it if I'm the last one awake in the house again."
It helps a little, at least at first. El comes in a few minutes later, and the three of them stay up just sitting and talking until midnight, when El finally, apologetically turns in for the night. It's good to talk instead of doing what they usually do and working on their hobbies together in near-silence. The conversation helps keep Will's mind from focusing entirely on Mike and Jasper, even if it does keep straying back repeatedly in that direction.
But then El goes to bed, and twenty minutes later, Jonathan asks apologetically, "Are you going to be okay if I go to sleep?"
And Will is tired, tired enough that it's tempting to lie down and close his eyes, but Will never falls asleep right away, and he doesn't want to stop long enough to let his brain catch up to him. He still feels a little unmoored, going without Jasper tonight, and if Jonathan disengages—
"I'll be fine. Thanks for staying up with me."
Jonathan passes out snoring almost immediately. Will survives the next twenty minutes before he pads back down to the basement and picks up the phone.