They've been on the road for three hours by the time it occurs to Will that he didn't bring his trazodone.

He can't blame himself for that, of course. They were being shot at by federal agents who are hellbent on finding and murdering El; Wallace is probably dead back at the house, and Harmon died right in front of their eyes in the backseat of Mike's Jeep. They had to get out of there before they got themselves killed, too, and there wouldn't exactly have been time for Will to stop by the bathroom and root around for his prescription bottle in the medicine cabinet while they were fleeing for their lives.

But the fact remains that Will doesn't have his trazodone, and that spells really, really bad news. He wasn't in any kind of condition to have a lucid conversation about the biochemistry of serotonin modulators when he was first prescribed it, but when he talked to Dr. Liskola talked a month after he started taking it, she gave him a big, fat warning about the dangers of withdrawal syndrome that frankly scared him out of ever, ever wanting to go cold turkey off the things on his own.

Trazodone has a short half-life, which means that withdrawal symptoms are usually short in duration, but start almost immediately and are more intense than those due to withdrawal from other types of antidepressants. (Of course, the term "short" here is relative, and it's going to be lengthened by the fact that Will has been taking the things every evening for the last two years.) There's a whole list of side effects that result from trazodone withdrawal—agitation, confusion, anxiety, irritability, insomnia—but what really concerns Will is that abruptly stopping taking antidepressants means that, during the withdrawal period, the symptoms he was having before he started the things are likely to come back stronger than ever before.

Before Will got his prescription, he was so depressed, so obsessive about the deterioration of his relationship with Mike, that he was practically comatose. He didn't leave his bed for anything but the bathroom for a week. Even before that terrible week and the terrible fight with Mike that provoked it, Will had been so down all the time that his brain and his mood had sucked out of life everything that gave him happiness—everything that gave it meaning. Sure, going on the trazodone didn't fix all that—only getting some real distance from Mike this past year really cured it—but at least it dug him out of the immediate hole he'd found himself stuck in. At least, once he started trazodone, Will could laugh at Jonathan's jokes, hug his mom, enjoy writing and painting again.

If he was that bad off before the pills, and his symptoms are going to return even worse than before without them, how bad are the next few days—weeks, maybe—going to get? Don't forget, too, that he's under an insane amount of stress right now with El being missing, Max apparently being on her deathbed, and Mike being here with Will in this car, casting shifty looks at Will while Mike drives as if Will isn't going to notice it.

When they first got in the car, Mike originally started taking them east, back toward Indiana, where they might at least be able to help Max—but then the phone number Harmon gave them pointed to a computer in god knows what town, and they turned around and headed west toward Salt Lake City in the hope that Dustin's girlfriend, Suzie, might be able to tell them where that computer is located. According to Mike's atlas and Jonathan's quick figuring, it's going to take them about a day of wall-to-wall driving to get there from here. Will doesn't mean a day from morning to night; he's talking a full-on twenty-four-hour trek across the country, longer if they pull over to get any sleep.

Can Will hold it together until they get to Utah? Or is he going to devolve into a depressed, nonfunctional mess before they even reach their destination?

He's going to have to warn Mike and Jonathan what's coming. It's the last thing Will wants to do, but he's going to have to if he wants them to have any idea what they might be in for when the withdrawal symptoms kick in—and he's going to survive it better the more support he has from the people around him. Will just—desperately wishes that Mike weren't one of those people. Why couldn't Dustin or Lucas or Max have been the one to road trip with Will and Jonathan halfway across the country? Why did it have to be Mike?

Will knows exactly why, of course. Mike is the one who used to be in love with El. Nobody else would have thought it was worth it to abandon Max just to chase El around the country with no idea where she is or what direction they should be headed. And on top of that, there's everything Mike said that Will still doesn't really understand about coming here to Sullivan to see him.

He wishes Mike had never come here. He wishes he could just get Mike alone for five minutes so that Will could pick his brain about how he feels until Will gets it, but there's no privacy here in Mike's car with Jonathan tucked in the backseat trying not to sit on the bloodstains that Harmon's corpse left behind before they buried it on the side of the road.

Will can't believe this is his life right now. Will doesn't want to believe this is his life right now. If only he could go back to a week ago, when his addiction to Mike was a dream growing more distant by the day, and the biggest thing Will had to worry about in life was whether he'd be able to afford going to a four-year university next year.

But even that isn't entirely true, is it? Will's life has been quite stable for quite a while now, but that doesn't mean he hasn't been grappling with problems under the surface. For one thing, he carries around some pretty crippling self-loathing over his inability to keep his shit together whenever Mike is nearby. For another, he's slowly starting to admit to himself that he's a basket case of mental instability.

When he first started taking trazodone, Will used to tell himself what Mom always told him—that plenty of people need a little bit of help to get their emotions in check and take pills every day to do it. But Will's depression was never minor, and it's probably not the only thing wrong with him, either. Dr. Liskola floated the term "borderline personality disorder" during that one-month check-in appointment Will had with her, and as much as he rejected it when he first heard it, he's starting to run out of ways to justify his unstable relationship with Mike or the loss of his sense of self that he experienced when he was addicted to Mike. Even the simple fact that he was addicted to Mike—normal people in love don't have to use the word "addiction" to accurately describe what they're feeling. Will doesn't know anybody else who has that problem.

So he does what he does best: he avoids it. He avoids it all the way until midnight, when Jonathan interrupts the terse silence to ask Mike if he'd like Jonathan to take over driving for a while so that Mike can get some sleep. When Mike declines, Jonathan yawns and announces, "Well, then, I'm going to sleep for a while. Wake me up in a couple hours, and I can take over for you, okay?"

Will feels a little awkward not offering to help drive, but he probably shouldn't, not when he's about to go into antidepressant withdrawal and certainly not when he's barely gotten behind the wheel of Jonathan's car since getting his learner's permit a year ago. It's not like he ever has anywhere to go in Sullivan. His only friends there are Jonathan and El, and he lives with both of them.

When Jonathan starts quietly snoring in the backseat, Will's nerves start to flare up. They're still not exactly in private, but he and Mike are the only two conscious ones in this car now, and…

"Will?"

They've barely said a word to each other since they made the call to Harmon's computer, and hearing Mike's voice cut through the silence now makes Will jump a little in his seat. "Yeah?"

"Are you okay? I can hear you thinking really loudly over there, and—"

"I don't have my trazodone."

"What?"

"My pills. My antidepressants. I left them at the house, and I can't get more without a prescription that I don't have."

Mike doesn't take his eyes off the road, but his eyebrows furrow. "That's not such a big deal, is it? If this goes the way we want it to go, we'll have you back in Sullivan and back on them in a few days."

"You don't understand. Missing even one dose could be dangerous, let alone a week's worth. I could… revert."

"Revert?"

"You don't know. You weren't here. It was bad, Mike, really bad."

"How bad are we talking?"

I don't want to talk about it, Will tries to say. Instead, what comes out is, "I romanticized it, too, you know."

"What?"

"The way you took care of me—especially when the Mind Flayer was possessing me. I liked leaning on you. I liked letting you take care of me. I liked the way it made me feel—at first."

"At first?"

"Yeah. At first."

Mike is blasting the A.C. in order to stay awake; it's cold on Will's bare arms, and he can feel gooseflesh breaking out on them. He likes it cold, Will suddenly remembers. He shivers for reasons that have got nothing to do with the temperature in the car.

"I still think about it sometimes," says Mike.

It's Will's turn to ask, "What?"

"How it felt to take care of you. How it would feel to take care of you like I used to. I just—I didn't think you'd ever let me again."

Will hesitates. "I shouldn't let you. That's what got me into trouble the last time."

But it's more complicated than that, and Will knows it. What happened between him and Mike wasn't Mike's fault—it was entirely Will's. The only thing Mike ever did wrong was not love Will back, and that couldn't have been helped, could it? Will, on the other hand, was a train wreck of emotions, and he took all of them out on Mike without any regard for whether it was fair.

It wasn't fair, not to Mike and certainly not to Will. What got Will into trouble wasn't allowing Mike to mistreat him in any kind of way—it was Will being sick on the inside and not having the emotional maturity to cope with it.

He's not a religious person, but he takes a second to pray to god that he remembers how this feels in forty-eight hours, when he's in the thick of his trazodone withdrawal. He prays that he learned enough from what he went through not to do that to himself again—that he learned enough to be a better version of himself, to shut down his obsession, to be the kind of friend Mike deserves.

Because Mike did deserve better, didn't he? He deserved for Will to make an effort to stay in touch—for Will to express his sadness to Mike in mature, healthy ways when he felt like Mike wasn't trying—for Will not to screw everything up with his stupid feelings of dependency—for Will to have respected that Mike was with El at the time and to have kept his hands to his goddamn self.

It's a miracle that Mike doesn't hate him. It's totally surreal to be sitting in Mike's car, listening to Mike talk about how he likes taking care of Will.

"Can you do something for me?" asks Will softly.

Mike glances at him, then back at the road. "Anything," he says, his eyes fixed in front of him.

"If I totally lose my shit when the trazodone leaves my system, can you just—remember that that isn't me? I mean, it is me, but—the real me is the person who learned something from all this. When I'm me, I know better than to regress, but when I'm not… just… don't hate me, okay?"

Mike rubs his forehead with one hand. "You're not going to regress."

"Okay, but I might. I might."

He looks at Will again. "I could never hate you, not for anything."

Stop saying things like that, Will ought to say. Instead, he just ducks his head, folds his hands together in his lap, and tries not to feel anything. It doesn't work, not that that's a surprise to him.

"You should try and get some sleep," says Mike. "We're in for a long drive."

"Yeah," Will mutters. He knows Mike is right, but this is the only chance he's had all day to talk to Mike alone, and as much as Will knows he shouldn't take advantage of it, he wants to. It's not because he needs Mike anymore, he tells himself firmly. He just—wants to clear everything up before Jonathan wakes up again. If Mike has to be here with them, Will wants them to be good.

A little voice in the back of his head reminds Will that the way to get good isn't through Mike. Didn't he learn his lesson all those times he saw or spoke to Mike after Will moved to Sullivan? There were so many times that Will thought the solution to his troubles would be to clear the air and get right with Mike, but it never worked, did it? The only way out was to be alone—to move on without Mike's help.

But that's not an option anymore, at least not for the next few days. If he has to take this road trip with Mike, won't the least painful thing be to learn to live with Mike instead of dodging his eyes and ignoring his questions?

Mike glances at him, then back at the road. Back at Will. Back at the road again. "It's going to be okay," he says softly. "Even if you start feeling really bad off your meds, like before, it's temporary, all right? Jonathan and I are going to get you through it until we can all go back to Sullivan and get you back on them."

It's not quite as easy as Mike makes it out to be, of course. When Will first started trazodone, he had to titrate it up to a therapeutic dose over a period of a few weeks before it was fully effective; he won't be able to just take one pill at his usual dosage and get rid of all his withdrawal symptoms. Besides, if Will really is borderline on top of having depression, being around Mike all day every day is going to throw him out of whack in a way that no pill will be able to fix overnight.

He doesn't tell Mike any of this, though. Will's whole problem was that he confided too much in Mike about things he should have leaned on himself and other people for. So instead, he says, "You shouldn't try and take care of me. I needed to learn how to be fine without you, and I shouldn't try and go back to the way things used to be just because you're here."

Mike doesn't answer immediately. When he does, his voice cracks. "You keep treating me like I'm—like I'm the villain in your story. I didn't make you do anything you did, you know. I was a shitty friend, but I wouldn't manipulate you like that."

Some kind of bubble bursts in Will's chest. "You're right. Sorry. I'm sorry. I didn't mean—I shouldn't have implied that the way I felt was your fault."

"Will—"

"No, you're right. You are. My brain is—it's a riptide, okay? And we both got caught in it. If anything, it was more my fault than yours. I'm the one with the broken brain."

"That's not—you didn't ask for this, either. You and your brain are two different—you're you, and it's not your fault you have… issues."

Will rips his eyes away from Mike to look out the window instead. "You can call it what it is, you know. I have mental illnesses. I'm sick. I've been very sick for a very long time."

"But not anymore, right? You've been okay for a pretty long time now, haven't you?"

"It doesn't really work like that," Will hedges. "I haven't had symptoms in a while, but that doesn't mean I'm cured. I'm probably always going to have… to go to war with myself in certain situations."

"Like when I'm around." Mike's voice takes on a steely edge. "That's what you mean, right? I make you sick."

"I didn't say—I don't blame you."

"Sure you don't."

"Mike, come on—"

"You know what? It's fine. It's fair, isn't it? You've been telling me for years that you shouldn't be around me, and you only got better when you got your wish. I should respect that, shouldn't I?"

"How many times do I have to admit to you that I'm the screwed-up one before you stop taking it so personally? I mean—" Will laughs "—haven't I tormented myself enough this last year hating myself for punishing you for something that was my own damn fault?"

He chances a glance back at Mike. Mike's knuckles are white as he grips the steering wheel hard; Will can barely make it out in the darkness. Mike takes a deep breath and says, "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have picked that fight. I guess it's just… hard for me to accept that I'm the one hurting you when I just wanted to save you."

You weren't trying to save me when you abandoned me for El after we moved away, thinks Will, but he doesn't voice it. If he's learned anything, it's that saying to Mike what he really thinks about him will only dig Will into a deeper hole. "I'm going to try and sleep," he says instead. "Night."

"Night," echoes Mike.

But Will doesn't sleep. He slumps uncomfortably against the passenger side door, closes his eyes, and tortures himself with everything he's ever done wrong.