Mike comes down to stay for Easter weekend again. There are a million and one things that Will wants to tell him when he arrives, but he knows it's just his brain playing tricks on him, telling him that these things are important to say, when really it isn't safe to say them at all and they won't feel important anymore in a month, by the time he's moved on to the next set of really important things to say. It's all a big, stupid cycle, and Will wants no part of it.

Unfortunately for Will, he's trapped inside his mind with his own thoughts, important or not.

For the first day of Mike's visit, they avoid each other. Mike hangs out exclusively in El's bedroom, and at dinner, he stares when he sees Will popping open his bottle of antidepressants and taking one with his glass of milk. "You're supposed to take it with food," he mutters, the first words either of them have said to each other in nine months, and Mike quickly averts his eyes.

Will gets up in the night to pee, and when he's walking back to his bedroom, Mike stops him. "Hey. Can we talk?"

"No."

"Please, Will."

And against his better judgment, Will tells him, "Okay."

He follows Mike into the living room and sits carefully on the end of the couch, Mike plopping down too close for comfort next to him. Will feels like he might throw up. His skin feels cold, but his core is hot; his palms are clammy and sweaty. Mike seems to recognize that Will is anxious because he puts a hand on Will's knee and smiles tentatively. Will doesn't smile back.

"Every time El comes to visit, everyone in the party keeps asking us when she's going to bring you with her."

Whatever Will was expecting to hear, it wasn't that. "Oh."

"I told them that—you know, that we haven't been talking anymore—and Dustin said you can stay at his place if you want to. I—I get it if that's still too much. I know you said you didn't want to see me anymore."

You're right; I don't, Will wants to say, but he keeps his mouth shut, not wanting to provoke another fight and end up in the hospital again. God, is he pathetic.

"I'm not mad anymore," Mike says next, more quietly. His hand is still on Will's knee, and Will wishes he would take it off.

"Neither am I," he says carefully, chancing a glance up at Mike's face. Mike smiles again; Will looks away again.

Will wants to say—

—he doesn't know how to talk to Mike anymore, because the falling-out between them has shaped every aspect of Will's life and mental health both for the past year or more; he can't just sit here with Mike squeezing his knee and talk to him like a friend when Mike holds power over Will's very livelihood, his very ability to function. Mike has always held all the power in their relationship, and Will is done with it, or thought he was, but here Mike is, stirring shit up again like Will didn't just live through thirteen months of hell trying to recover from him—

—but he doesn't. It's like he said before: he is wholly and always a sucker for Mike Wheeler.

"I was hoping that it's been long enough for, you know, for you to have moved on and for us to be friends again, like before everything got so complicated."

The thing is, Will knows he's going to get himself into trouble by going along with Mike's wishes—that he still wants so, so much from Mike, and that that gives Mike too much power over him, that it won't be safe to be around him or talk to him like this until Will doesn't want anything from him anymore. He may have forgiven Mike for what happened, he may have accepted that Mike will never give him what he wants, but that doesn't mean that Will doesn't want it anymore, and that makes saying yes dangerous. He doesn't understand how he feels about Mike anymore, which is a vast improvement over knowing he's in love with him, but he still knows that he wants enough that he needs to stay away.

"I can't have another backslide like I did the last time we fought. I can't do it."

"I know," says Mike, and then he adds, "How can I help?"

Love me back, Will wants to say, but that wouldn't be fair to either of them, so instead he says, "Stay away from me."

Mike retracts his hand, and Will feels like he wants to cry. "I'm sorry you're struggling so much. I wish I could have helped you when, you know, when you slipped last summer."

"You could have called," Will whispers, hating himself for it.

"I know. I was pissed at you, and I was worried, but El said I would just do more damage if I tried to step in, and—and I listened to her. I still don't know whether I did the right thing."

And Will tells the truth: "Neither do I." Mike doesn't respond to that, just keeps sitting there next to Will with his eyes glazed over and his hand back in his own lap. Will continues, "The doctors think I might have a personality disorder, to—to react so badly to stuff happening in my relationships. In any case, the antidepressants are helping. I finally have my life back together, mostly."

"That's good," Mike mumbles.

"But I still think about you all the time. Too much to be healthy."

"I think about you a lot, too," Mike tells him, but Will doubts that Mike understands the depths of his obsession, and the sentiment just makes him feel more alone. "Like I said, I'm not pissed at you anymore. I'm not saying you were right about everything, but—but I was an asshole. I know that."

"Did I expect too much from you?" Will asks, because he wonders, sometimes.

Mike smiles a little and shakes his head. "No. No, you never asked for anything I couldn't give."

But he wanted to, even if Mike doesn't know that. Will wanted to, and he still wants to, sitting here with Mike's thigh touching his on the couch cushion, close enough that Will could just lean in and kiss Mike if he thought there was a chance in hell of Mike reciprocating. "I should go," he says, and his voice wavers, and he hates himself so much in that moment.

"Okay," says Mike, steeling his shoulders a little.

But Will's self-control fails him and he can't resist reaching forward for a hug. Mike drapes careful arms around Will's shoulders, and his waist is warm where Will's arms are wrapped around it, and Will stuffs his face in Mike's neck and feels his whole body starting to shake.

"Hey," says Mike gently. "Hey, it's okay."

It is not okay. He's just wiping his eyes dry on the shoulder of Mike's T-shirt when he hears footsteps behind them and El's voice saying, "What's going on?"

Will can feel Mike jump in place, but he doesn't pull away, and neither does Will. "It's nothing," says Mike. "Will was just going back to his room, right, Will?"

It feels like a rebuke, worse than any rejection Mike has given him until now, and Will snatches back his arms and stands up. "Right. I'll—I'll see you tomorrow."

"Will—"

He ignores Mike, shoves past El, and makes his way back to his bedroom. "What happened?" Jonathan asks once Will has closed the door and engulfed the room in darkness.

"Nothing. Mike and I talked a little. Nothing happened."

"Are you sure?"

Will doesn't reply.

El knows. Will doesn't know whether Mike told her or if she figured it out on her own, but when he says "hello" to her at breakfast the next morning, she just glares at him without answering as she pours herself a glass of orange juice. Mike receives the same treatment, which Will finds—not hopeful, exactly, but interesting nonetheless.

Mike doesn't seem to know what to do with himself with El pissed at him and Will trying to avoid him. He winds up in El's room with her most of the time, but all Will can hear is silence—no voices and not even any kissing noises like usual. At lunch and dinner, he sits next to Will, although Mike doesn't try and make conversation with him. And Mike curls up on the couch with a sci-fi novel and his thoughts at, like, seven o'clock that night, long before El probably plans on going to sleep.

Will knows he shouldn't, but he comes out into the living room anyway after Mom and Jonathan have both gone to bed. "Weird day?"

Mike smiles sheepishly at him as he presses a bookmark inside his book and snaps the cover shut. "El put it together. She's mad at me for not telling her—she thinks it means we have something to hide. I'm sorry; I never meant for anyone to find out who you didn't want to know about—about you."

"It's okay. I'm surprised it didn't happen sooner." Will sits down and lays his head back against the couch cushions, thinking. He keeps his voice very low and quiet, hoping that no one will overhear them. "I appreciate you being so cool about it instead of thinking I'm gross or whatever."

"I'll be honest: it grossed me out at first," says Mike. Will feels very hot all of a sudden. "I just never thought about you that way, you know? And I don't know anybody else who's… not that I know of, anyway. But I know you can't help it. I know you didn't ask for this, and I know you would never try to make me do anything I didn't want to."

Will can feel heat rising in his cheeks. "I shouldn't have kissed you that one day. I don't know what I was thinking. I wasn't thinking—I didn't mean to, and then the next thing I knew—"

"It's okay. I'm not mad or anything." Mike pauses. "I don't think it's gross anymore."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. That doesn't mean I want to… I'm still with El, and I still don't like boys that way, but I do… I mean…"

Will waits with bated breath, but Mike doesn't seem to want to finish his sentence. "You can't talk that way to me. It makes me think there's a chance, and I can't afford to think that there's a chance when there's not."

"Sorry."

Mike opens his arms a little, and Will collapses into them, silently cursing Mike and his good intentions and his platonic love. He knows better than this, but he never thought he could ever have this again, and it feels too good to let go.

"I'm not trying to send mixed signals," says Mike. Will snorts, burrowing deeper. "Really, I'm not."

"Then you should stop coming around here. Have El go to you over the holidays. I don't know how far this is going to set me back, but it's going to set me back."

"But I still want you as my friend, and I know you want me as yours. Why does it have to be more complicated than that?"

"Because it is," says Will, straightening up and releasing Mike's neck. "Because you don't understand. The way I feel about you isn't healthy for either of us."

Mike frowns. "What's so unhealthy about love?"

"Because this isn't just love anymore; it's dependency—addiction—obsession. I need to know that I can function from day to day without you in my life, and you haven't been gone long enough for me to be able to do that yet."

"But I need you in my life, too," says Mike quietly.

That's exactly how Will knows that Mike doesn't understand: if he understood, he wouldn't conflate wanting Will with needing Will, because he would understand that there's a difference, that one is acceptable and the other is not. "You don't get it," Will says. "I landed myself in the hospital because of you. I'm not saying that it was your fault, but it was a direct consequence of my reaction to this relationship, and I can't let that happen again. I need to be able to be my own person without you, and I don't know how to do that right now."

Mike rakes a hand through his hair, obviously thinking. "I just wish there were something I could do for you."

"There is; you just won't do it," says Will without thinking. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that."

"You're right; you shouldn't have. That's not fair."

Will feels his temper flaring up and decides it's time to leave right now before things get out of hand and his mom has to take him to see a shrink, quack or not. "I hope El comes around soon."

"Thanks. I do too."

Walking away was never harder.

The next night is Mike's last before heading back to Hawkins in the morning. Mike retires from El's room to the living room early again, and Will finds himself stalling at the kitchen table, dawdling over his stories, waiting for Mom and Jonathan to go to their rooms.

He feels drawn to Mike like a flea to a light in the nighttime. He's aware that this is exactly why he asked Mike to stay away, but it feels so good to be back on speaking terms that he's having a hard time bringing himself to care. Just one more conversation, he tells himself. Just one more hug. Then Mike will be gone and, hopefully, won't come back, and Will will go back to processing and moving on like he was doing before, and never mind that it wasn't working, because it has to work this time. It has to.

"We keep meeting like this," says Mike with a little laugh, maybe about five minutes after Jonathan headed to his room and left them to each other's company.

Will's hand is shaking so badly he can hardly write. He puts the pen down on the table and looks over at Mike, who's smiling slightly at him. Will tries to smile back but probably does a miserable job of it. "So it seems."

Mike pats the couch cushion next to him, and Will walks into the living room on shaky legs and takes his indicated seat. "Hey," says Mike, wrapping a careful arm around Will's shoulders. "Hey, it's okay."

"No, it's not."

"Come here," says Mike, and Will lays his head on Mike's shoulder and tries not to think about how far back this is going to set him after Mike leaves and Will's all alone again. "You're okay. You don't have to be scared."

Yes, he does, because what other than Will's fear is going to protect him? "I don't have anything to say to you, really. I just don't want to go yet."

"That's okay. We can just sit here."

Mike's neck and collar smell good—salty and cottony and sweet—and Will tries to memorize it for later, when all he has to remember Mike by are his circular thoughts and his memories. This is the most he will ever get of Mike, he tells himself, sitting here with him on the couch, Mike's arm around him, waiting to spring apart the second one of the other Byerses comes out for a nighttime snack, and he tries to make it count. Minutes pass, Will's wristwatch ticking away. Will counts up ten of them, then counts ten again.

And then, Mike clears his throat. "You said I don't get it."

"I did."

"Can you tell me what it's like? So that I understand?"

"It's like…" Will coughs. "It's like I think about you so much that I'm sick of you, all the time, but I can't change the channel in my brain away from you. Sometimes I can move you to the background—I didn't used to be able to do that, but I can now—but you're always there. I replay the same things over and over again, and all of it hurts.

"It's like you're the only real part of my life, and you're gone, so there's nothing left—just hollow things that I wish I could tell you about, so that you could make them real too, but I can't. You're gone all the time, and I have no idea what you think of me, whether you hate me for what happened or what, and I assume that you do hate me so that you can't let me down if I find out that that's the case, and I feel like I'm going crazy trying to decipher how you feel when I haven't spoken to you in months.

"It's like I'm nothing. It's like I'm nothing and you're everything, like you're everywhere in my head even though you're just gone at the same time, and I… and I…"

Will hadn't realized how much he needed to say that to someone. Embarrassed, he lifts his head up off Mike's shoulder and scoots backward away from Mike a couple inches, but Mike grabs his wrist, lets it go, moves his hand up to Will's cheek and settles it there. "I'm not gone," he says. "I was never gone. I was always thinking about you, even when I wasn't calling."

Will laughs hollowly. "That doesn't help. That just keeps me feeling attached to you. I don't want to feel attached to you anymore."

"I don't think I would, either, if I felt like that," says Mike gently. "But you're not sick."

Will raises an eyebrow.

"I mean, okay, yeah, you're unwell, but you're not—you don't sicken me."

He leans in to hug Will again, rubbing up and down his back, and Will screams at himself in his mind that this is all he's getting and he better be paying attention to it.

Shit, he thinks. Shit.