"I don't like this," says Jonathan.

Will doesn't like it, either, but what's he going to do, turn Mike away? Whatever happened between Mike and El that led him to break up with her, you don't just stop feeling anything for a person just because you try to remove them from your life—Will knows that better than anyone. Mike is probably just as panicked and scared about El getting kidnapped as Will is. Will loves El like a sister—it startles him to even think about it, but it's true—but Mike was in love with her, even if things got complicated in the end.

But he doesn't know how to voice any of this to Jonathan without sounding like he's got the lowest self-esteem in the world, prioritizing Mike's feelings for El, of all people, above Will's own self-protection. "I'll be okay," he says instead, not believing it, not believing anything. "It's just until El is safe again. I've had almost a whole year to get over it. He doesn't have a hold on me like that anymore."

"You're shaking," Jonathan points out.

It's true: Will is wobbly on his feet, and his hands are trembling. To cover it, he crosses his arms and collapses onto his bed across from Jonathan's. "You can't worry about me," he implores Jonathan. "If you don't believe I can do this, I won't believe I can do this, and—"

Jonathan's face sort of crumples at this. "It's not that I don't believe in you. It's just—I was there. I saw what it was like for you. I don't want you to ever, ever put yourself at risk for Mike Wheeler or any boy ever again."

"I won't. I swear. My health comes first, I promise."

Is that a promise Will can keep, or is the temptation to sacrifice himself and fall apart going to be too much to overcome? He's been all right without Mike for what feels like a long time now, but is all of his progress going to revert the moment that Mike walks back into his life? Already, he can feel himself obsessing over how the rest of the night is going to go, but is that because Will is obsessed with Mike or because he's concerned for himself?

He thinks he's got three or four hours to prepare himself for Mike walking through that door, so Will is caught totally off guard when he hears hammering on the door no more than two hours and fifty minutes after they got off the phone. He's not ready for this. He's not ready for any of this.

Jonathan is hovering behind him like a bodyguard when Will yells to Wallace and Harmon, "Don't worry, it's fine, it's just my friend," and trudges up to the front door. He closes his eyes, braces himself, and opens the door.

For a second, he and Mike just stand there staring dumbly at each other. Mike's mouth is hanging open; he's a lot taller than he was last summer, and he's grown his hair out a little. He looks good—handsome—but the heat pooling in Will's stomach isn't because of attraction. If anything, Will feels terrified.

"Come on in," says Will blankly. He has to nudge Jonathan a couple of times to get him to back up and make room for Mike to come inside. "Jonathan, we'll be in the bedroom, okay?"

"Will—"

"Jonathan," Will repeats.

Jonathan's eyes are narrowed, but he's never been one to force Will not to make the decisions he's going to make, not even when he disagrees. He steps out of the way. Will feels a sudden surge of affection for him, and he smiles weakly before leading Mike down the hall and into Will and Jonathan's bedroom.

When Will plops down on his bed, he can breathe a little easier—at least now he doesn't feel like his legs are going to collapse out from under him. Mike doesn't seem to know where to put himself at first and eventually sits down on the edge of Jonathan's bed, knees drawn up to his chin, arms holding his legs together. He lets out a whooshing breath and says, "I guess we have a lot to talk about, huh?"

"I'm sorry," says Will, not even sure why exactly he's apologizing. "I just—I thought you ought to know. El was your…"

"I'm sorry I didn't tell you sooner that things were getting bad in Hawkins again," Mike interrupts. He says it in a big rush, like he's been preparing this speech in his head the whole drive here. "I just was worried I was going to make things worse for you by inserting myself back into your life and dredging up all the shit that happened when you first moved away, and I didn't want to do that to you, and I thought you would be safe here, and—"

"Mike, it's okay. Just—tell me what's going on."

So Mike tells him. Deaths, monsters, hallucinations—these are familiar ground for Will to tread, things he knows how to handle. It's stupid, really: give Will a monster from a parallel dimension bent on killing him and all his friends, and he knows what to do, but put a pretty boy in front of him, and he loses all of his shit. It's not that he's not scared. The thought that this Vecna thing could come after Max makes Will ache for her; he doesn't want anybody to get infected the way the Mind Flayer infected him all those years ago. Still, Will knows how to handle himself in a crisis—it's the quiet moments of reflection that he can't withstand.

So Mike fills Will in about Max, and Will fills Mike in about El, and they end up sitting there staring at each other as Will wonders whether Mike has ever felt further away than he does here and now. It shocks Will that he's able to form words at all, that he hasn't just collapsed into a puddle and melted away at the contact with the boy he used to love; they exchange details as if no time has passed at all, and yet so much time has passed that it almost feels like he's talking to a stranger, at least until Mike bows his head and mumbles, "I'm sorry I came here. I felt like I had to, but I shouldn't have. It's not like there's anything I can help with, and I should know better than to… than to put you through it."

"It's just until we know El is safe, right?" says Will weakly. "If I were you, I wouldn't want to stay put in Hawkins feeling powerless to help her, either."

"At least in Hawkins I could help investigate," Mike argues. "Here, I'm just… in your way."

Yes, you are, Will ought to tell him if he has any appreciation whatsoever for his own safety. Instead, he says, "Is that really what you think I think of you?"

Mike looks up. There's a glimmer of hope in his guarded eyes. "I thought when you stopped calling that it was because you'd started hating me."

"I don't hate you," says Will, feeling numb. "I mean, maybe a little, but I never… I just needed to get past it. I needed to move on."

"Did you? Move on?"

Will doesn't answer. He thought he had four hours ago, but he really, really doesn't know anymore.

It's late, so he sets Mike up for the night in El's bedroom. He figures it's probably weird for Mike to be sleeping in his kidnapped ex-girlfriend's bed, but Harmon and Wallace have claimed the living room already, and the alternative would be for Mike to trade with Will or with Jonathan, either of which might be even weirder. There's no way in hell Will is sharing a room with Mike tonight, and he wouldn't want to subject Mike to Jonathan's disapproval all night if the two of them were to share.

This is okay, Will tells himself. This is fine. Sure, he was anxious before Mike arrived, but now that Mike is here, Will is handling himself better than he ever thought he could. He hasn't cracked up; he hasn't broken down crying or shouted himself hoarse; he and Mike haven't even argued.

He just keeps—waiting for the other shoe to drop. This can't be sustainable, can it? How long can Will survive Mike without devolving back into the mess he was a year ago?

Will can't sleep, not even after Jonathan comes to bed and passes out snoring the next bed over. Finally, at a quarter past one in the morning, Will gives up trying and pads out of the bedroom to get a glass of water for the kitchen.

Wallace is passed out in the armchair, while Harmon is sprawled on the couch, but neither of them stirs at the sound of Will walking into the kitchen or turning on the tap. He's filled up his glass and is on his way back to his room when he hears a door creak open in the hall and footsteps start to creep closer.

He wants it to be Jonathan, but it's not. It's Mike. Will suddenly feels nauseous, reminded horribly of that Thanksgiving when he and Mike kissed in this same doorway.

"You can't sleep, either?" whispers Mike.

"Apparently not. I feel too…"

"Yeah. Yeah, me, too. Will you come back to El's room with me for a while? I just…"

It's a bad idea. Will knows it's a bad idea. But he grits his teeth and nods and follows Mike down the hall.

In El's bedroom, Mike hovers just beyond the doorway and doesn't sit down. "I'm sorry I came here. I shouldn't have done it. I should have stayed in my lane."

Well, too late now, Will thinks. "It's okay. You're worried about her. I'm worried about her, too."

"It's not just about her. It's… I wanted to see you."

This, more than anything else that has happened on this awful, awful day, catches Will by surprise. "You did?" he says dumbly.

"It was selfish. I know it was selfish. But I missed you so much this year—longer than that, even; I've missed you for a long time, ever since we…"

The polite thing would be to tell Mike that Will has missed him, too, but he can't. He made a promise to Jonathan that he'd take care of himself, and taking care of himself definitely does not involve making himself vulnerable to Mike ever again.

"And I think I…" Mike continues. He screws his eyes shut, looking almost like he feels ashamed of himself for something. "Sometimes I think I like being around you because I—because you always used to let me swoop in and take care of you. The way you treated me made me feel like there was something I could do—like I was worth something. I know that's horrible—"

"It's not horrible," Will lies.

"Yes, it is. It is when I know it doesn't help you, and I came here to—to try to do it anyway." He laughs darkly. "See? Selfish."

"Yeah, well, you're not the only one. El was supposed to be my friend—she was supposed to be my sister—and I still…"

"You couldn't help how you felt."

"No, but I could help it when I kissed you," Will says. It's like every self-deprecating thought he's had in the last year is suddenly spilling out of him, and he's powerless to stem the flow of them. "I could help it when I kept hanging around you like a lost puppy instead of doing the smart thing and taking some space long before I finally did. I knew you were bad for me, and I blamed you for it instead of taking myself out of a situation that I knew wasn't good for me."

They're still standing there stupidly in the dark, Will backed up against the door, Mike a hair's breadth away. Will's knees are shaking again. Mike insists, "Listen to me. Listen to me, Will. I've had a lot of time to think for the past year about everything that happened, and—and I wasn't fair to you. Okay? I wasn't fair to you. I was so caught up justifying how I felt about you that I didn't—"

"How did you feel about me?" breathes Will.

Mike raises a hand to his forehead. "I thought it was gross, okay? But at the same time, I kind of… I think I romanticized it a little, you know, the idea that I was the only one who could take care of you, the only one you trusted with this big secret, and—I liked feeling needed. You were stuck in the middle of these competing… that wasn't fair. It wasn't. I took you for granted. If I weren't such a bighead, I would have tried harder to stay in touch with you before I knew how you felt, and after—I mean, for one thing, I wouldn't have asked you to come see me after I broke up with El. I would have tried harder to respect your space. I should have…"

Well, at least Will isn't the only one here who can't tamp down his confessions. He can't get enough air. Mike says he romanticized Will's feelings for him, and Will can't breathe. "I shouldn't be in here," he says haltingly. "I should… I should go back to my room."

"Right." Will can hear in his voice how pissed Mike is at himself. "Of course. I—yeah. Please."

Will bolts.

If Will thought he wasn't tired before, there's no way now that he's getting any sleep anytime soon tonight. All this time that Will was in hell, Mike liked it—even enjoyed entertaining the way Will felt about him. Mike said it himself: he took Will for granted.

He needs to be reasonable about this. Mike probably didn't realize what he was doing while he was doing it, and can Will really blame him for not having the perfect and perfectly supportive reaction to finding out his former best friend was unhealthily, dependently in love with him? Mike probably didn't realize until the hospital just how distorted Will's feelings for him were, and even after that—he himself admitted that he felt conflicted because a part of him thought that Will's attraction to him was sickening. Mike probably wasn't in any shape at the time to be honest with himself about any level on which he might have wanted Will to feel what he was feeling.

It's just—all this time, Will has based his whole recovery around the idea that he needs to get beyond his feelings for Mike because Mike is never going to reciprocate them. It never occurred to him that Mike might to some extent want what was happening.

That isn't the only reason Will moved on, he reminds himself. He could recognize clearly by the end that what he felt for Mike wasn't good for Will, and moving on was as much about taking care of himself as it was about feeling rejected. Still, he can't help but wonder: when Mike used to think about Will's love for him, what did it feel like for Mike? What did Mike imagine in the privacy of his mind on nights when he was alone with his thoughts, even his fantasies?

Suddenly, Will feels sickened with himself. El, not Mike, is the one he should be worried about. She's probably off in some remote facility being forced to do god knows what in order to save Hawkins again, as if she hasn't already given her whole life and sanity to that town. When is it enough? When does El get to be free?

And then he thinks with sudden conviction, when does Will get to be free? Hasn't he given his addiction to Mike Wheeler enough of his life, his sanity? He thought he was beyond it, but now…

The next morning, Mike looks half-alive, like he was up half the night, too. Jonathan, damn him, slept like a baby and has way too much life in his eyes, and he keeps looking from Will to Mike and back at the kitchen table like he doesn't trust for a second either of their intentions. It's fair enough, really. Will doesn't trust either of them, either.

There's not much to do here with Wallace and Harmon hovering around refusing to let them leave the house, claiming it's for their own protection. School's out for the year, which means Will and Jonathan don't have any homework to keep busy with. Will tries to paint, but he feels like he can't get into it—can't concentrate and lose himself in it like he usually does with Mike sitting reading in the other corner of the room.

Well, Mike is pretending to be reading, anyway. Every time Will sneaks a glance at him, Mike's eyes are frozen in the same place on the page.

Mike is not Will's entire universe, Will reminds himself for the millionth time. Having Mike Wheeler in his house isn't even Will's biggest problem right now. El is probably going through hell right now, and people in Hawkins are dying, and Max—

Will can't even remember the last time he talked to Max. Was it over Christmas? Thanksgiving, maybe? If they all make it out of this alive, he swears, he'll do a better job of keeping in touch—not just with her, but with everyone back in Hawkins (everyone except Mike, anyway).

Mike says, "Come back to Hawkins with me."

Will blinks, positive that he heard that wrong. "What?"

"We're not doing El any good sitting around here, are we? If we go back to Hawkins, we can at least be doing something to make a difference. I just feel bad, you know? I feel guilty. Max needed me, and I abandoned her for…"

"For El?" suggests Will when Mike makes no move to finish his thought.

Mike ducks his head. "For this. For you." Again, Will feels like he can't get enough oxygen. "I'm not saying I don't still care about her, but… I mostly came here to see you. I didn't like where we left things, and I thought we could—"

But Will doesn't get a chance to find out what Mike thought they could do because, at that instant, gunshots ring out from the living room. Horror, but not surprise, rises in Will's chest; in a way, it feels like he's been waiting for this moment for years.

"We need to go," he tells Mike. He raises his voice: "Jonathan?"

"Let's get to my car," Mike implores. "Come with me. We have to run. Run!"

And Will runs like he was made for this—like he knew he was never going to stay safe.