He goes a little crazy, sitting there in the passenger seat waiting to fall asleep. Mike may or may not think that he does fall asleep—it depends how closely he's listening to Will's breathing, whether he's willing to believe that Will really would slump there with his eyes shut for this many hours just to avoid talking to him. But Will has had two years to rely on his trazodone to help him fall asleep every night, and apparently, Will can't seem to get tired anymore without it.
He's not sure whether it's due to withdrawal or just because he's under so much stress, but his thoughts are spinning out of control. By two in the morning, he's started feeling obsessively guilty for spending so much time fixated on Mike and so little worrying about El. By three, he's convinced himself that El and Max are probably both dead by now. By four, he's afraid that they're both up in heaven or somewhere that they can see how little attention he's paid either of them in his thoughts all day and that they hate him for it.
It's a little after four when Will feels the car starting to slow down. He's alarmed at first—the engine didn't fail or something, did it?—but then he realizes what's happening when the car pulls to a stop, Will hears rustling noises on his left, and Mike says, "Hey, Jonathan? Can you take over driving for me?"
It takes Jonathan a few seconds to wake. "What time is it?"
"Four-fifteen."
"You should have gotten me up sooner. Aren't you, like, half falling asleep by now?"
"I've been too worried to have slept even if I'd tried. I figured I might as well put being awake to good use."
Their voices fade for a second as Will hears more rustling, then the sound of car doors opening and shutting. When Jonathan speaks again, his voice comes from the driver's seat on Will's left. "Hey, look, I'm sorry about El. I'm worried about her, too."
"It's not just because of El," says Mike so quietly that Will has to strain himself to make out the words.
There's cold silence for a second, and then Jonathan says, "Well, you're damn right if you're worried you're going to mess up my brother. You better be really damn careful what you say to him. You weren't there. You don't know what it was—what he went through."
"For the last time…" But Mike seems to think better of whatever he was going to say. He changes tack. "He told me after you went to sleep that he doesn't have his meds with him—you know, the ones he takes for depression. He told me it might get bad."
"God damn it," Jonathan swears. "I didn't even think about that with everything happening."
"I'm doing to do whatever I have to to help him, okay? I swear. Whether it means listening to him or distracting him or leaving him alone—I'll do it. I'll do anything he asks me to."
Will holds in a sigh. Mike doesn't know it, but he's doing the exact thing that put Will in danger in the first place—trying to save Will. Wanting to save Will.
Nobody says anything for another long moment. Finally, Jonathan asks, "Can you still sleep if I play some music? It'll help me stay alert on the road."
"Yeah, sure, whatever. I've got some cassette tapes in the glove box, if you'd rather listen to anything in there than the radio."
A second later, Will feels the heat of Jonathan's arm a few inches from Will's stomach—hears the glove box unlatching. "I didn't know you listen to James Taylor," says Jonathan.
"I've got his new album in there," says Mike with a strain of pride. "Just came out this year. He hasn't even released any singles from it yet."
"Cool," says Jonathan, his voice sounding a little begrudging.
Will hears him stick the tape in the deck, but Jonathan must press rewind because it doesn't start to play right away. They're back on the highway by the time Jonathan pushes another button and the music starts to come through the speakers.
Will listens hard to the opening notes of the first song. It sounds like your standard soft rock fare, with a poppy drum kit underneath some kind of guitar or synth or something plucking out the melody. Half a minute in, James starts to sing.
For the first verse and a half, Will doesn't make much sense out of the lyrics, but then James intones, "They were true love written in stone," and Will figures, oh. This is a love song, something about a couple whose love for each other was unbreakable. Not like him and Mike. Nothing like him and Mike. Mike never loved him, not like that, and by now, Will doubts whether the thing he felt for Mike was love at all.
The next two verses are where it gets interesting—where the point of view character says he and his friends "couldn't bear to believe they might make it" and "used to run them down." Still, James sings that there "wasn't nothing to hold them down," that "our golden ones sail on." There's no chorus, really, though there's some repetition at the end of the song to "hold them up," this mythical couple that Will will never belong to.
It's like a snippet out of the life Will wishes he could have—the best life he can imagine for himself as a gay guy, anyway, who's bound to be up against this same kind of adversity if he ever did get himself into a relationship with another man. "They were glued together, body and soul, that much more with their backs up against the wall," says James. Will can only imagine what it would feel like for Mike to work with him instead of against him when Will's back—his mind—was up against the wall.
James doesn't understand, just like nobody ever does. It's painful to hear. When it's over, Will wishes Jonathan would rewind it and play it again so Will could live in his fantasy just a few minutes longer.
It's half past five, and Jonathan has played the whole tape and stuck Jim Croce in to replace it, by the time Will finally, finally drifts off to sleep. It's an uneasy slumber, with Will's thoughts swirling around still and the passenger door uncomfortable against his back and skull, but he must go out for a while there because he doesn't notice until he wakes properly around eleven that Jonathan and Mike have switched seats again.
"Welcome back," says Mike, glancing at him. "You must have slept really well last night. You were out for a long time."
That's right: Mike thinks Will fell asleep while Mike was still driving, hours before Will actually did. Will's got no desire to reveal the truth—that he ignored Mike for all those hours, then listened in on Mike and Jonathan's conversation—so he just shrugs and says, "Didn't feel like I was all the way out. I wish we had a couple pillows or something; that would have made it easier."
"Hear, hear," calls Jonathan from the backseat.
"How many more hours to Suzie's?" asks Will.
"Maybe five," estimates Mike. "We're in Wyoming right now. Utah's right on the other side of the state line, and Salt Lake City is close to the border."
Jonathan adds, "Mike and I were just talking about looking for some fast food place where we can get breakfast. You hungry?"
"Yeah, that sounds good. It'll be good to get out and stretch for a minute."
Honestly, Will has always hated road trips. Being in the car for too many hours makes him feel off balance and a little sick to his stomach. Of course, there are a lot more reasons than that why Will feels off today, and too much time in the car is squeezed way down at the bottom of the list. He feels like someone or something has hollowed him out on the inside, like he can't quite get a grip on who he's supposed to be or what he's supposed to be feeling. Worse, he wants Mike to be the one to fix it. He really, really wants to stick close to Mike's side until Mike fixes it.
He tries to remember everything he's learned—all the ways that he knows Mike is bad for him. It's not even Mike's fault that Will shouldn't be around him, but the fact remains: Will shouldn't be around him, not for anything. What they're doing here is dangerous, and it would be more dangerous still for Will to indulge it.
Still, he feels suffocated by Jonathan's presence because it means that Will and Mike can't say a single free word to each other. Will can't shake the nagging feeling that everything would be better if they could just—spend some time. You know? Like things would be okay again if only they could relearn each other and get comfortable around one another again. If Will could prove to himself that he can handle it—if he could pass this test—
After all, what was the point of everything he went through if he didn't learn something from it? Why grow if he's just going to regress the second he's put back into an environment with Mike Wheeler in it?
At the next McDonald's they pass, they pee and scarf down their Egg McMuffins in record time so that they can get back on the road. El's life is hanging in the balance, after all, and for all they know, taking a few extra minutes to get up and stretch and dillydally could mean the difference between her surviving or getting blown up by the same people who shot Harmon and Wallace. Still, it makes Will feel a little more alive to walk around, stand in line, and get some food in him, even if it is awkward to use the urinal at the same time as Mike.
He hopes she doesn't die. God, Will hopes El doesn't die. If she freakin' dies before Will gets a chance to tell her that he's glad he had her as his sister this past year—before they cook a casserole together that they don't burn—before she gets over Mike the way Will did (at least for a while)—
For that matter, how is El going to react when she sees Mike with Will and Jonathan when they come and rescue her? Jesus, Will hopes that they're not going to have a big, romantic reunion. He knows it's selfish, but he doesn't think he could handle Mike and El getting back together right now.
It's not that Will still wants Mike to love him. He doesn't know if he ever loved Mike, doesn't know whether the things he felt felt the same as love feels to normal people—he honestly kind of doubts it at this point, considering that normal people don't have the kind of reaction that Will had to being rejected. Still, it's not like he wants Mike's love for El thrown in his face like that, no matter how long it's been or how over it Will has gotten. Mike can love her all he wants, for all Will cares anymore, but for the love of god, Will doesn't want him to do it somewhere that Will can see it, hear it, or know about it.
Don't think about Mike, Will tells himself for the millionth time. Think about El. Think about Max. Think about Hawkins.
It doesn't work because of course it doesn't. Nothing ever goes the way Will wants it to, not when it comes to his mental health.
Is he a terrible person for having his priorities so out of whack? Didn't he learn? Why can't he just learn?
"You okay over there, Will?"
Will blinks. They've crossed over into Utah by now, and it feels strange for Jonathan to address him directly, given how deep Will has been in his thoughts since they got back on the road. "I'm fine. Just, uh… just the stress. I guess it doesn't help that I don't have my trazodone."
"It's going to be okay. We're here for you, buddy," says Jonathan in what he probably thinks is a soothing voice. Will holds in a laugh: it probably took a lot of self-control for Jonathan to say we're instead of I'm.
"Can we just—talk about something? Anything? Anything to get my head away from it."
Mike chances a glance at him. "We've been together every minute of the last two days, and I don't really know anything about how the last year of your life went," he says haltingly. "Senior year is coming up. Have you started thinking about what to do after we graduate?"
"College, I hope," says Will. "I'll do community college with Jonathan if I have to, but I'm hoping for a partial scholarship, maybe to the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. I think I have a chance."
"He definitely has a chance," Jonathan says. It comes out sounding more defensive than encouraging, almost like he's daring Mike to disagree. "His grades are good, he can write a killer personal essay, and he got a 33 on his ACT."
"You got a 33?" echoes Mike, whistling. "That's really, really good, Will. Wow."
"Thanks," Will mutters, feeling suddenly self-conscious. "It's probably a long shot. My grades were crap in freshman and sophomore years."
"But not this year," says Jonathan. "You got straight As this year, and colleges like to see an upward trend in grades."
"Yeah, but I homeschooled this year. They're going to think Mom skewed my grades in my favor."
"You homeschooled this year?" Mike asks.
Right—Mike wouldn't know about that. "I did it with El. I didn't like her being stuck alone in the house all day now that Jonathan was away at school during the day."
"So you and El are, like, friends now?"
Will looks down. "Yeah, we're friends—more than friends. She's been like a sister to me ever since this year."
"Finally! You couldn't have done when she and I were still together?" Mike is obviously trying to keep the mood light by cracking a joke, but he fails on the delivery. His voice falters, and his smile doesn't quite reach his eyes.
Still, the distraction is working, sort of. Will is still obsessing in the back of his mind over the fact that Mike is here and talking to him and knows all the shit Will felt or feels for him, but it feels like he can regain a little normalcy by talking about something as mundane as school and plans for the future. "Where do you want to go to school?" he asks Mike, struggling to keep his brain focused on the conversation at hand.
"Purdue," says Mike immediately. "It's a great school, and it's close to Hawkins. I don't want to go too far away, not with all the shit that keeps happening. What if I'm needed back at home? I can't go far."
It figures: Mike always has had a complex about wanting to be the hero. He never did it for the recognition, either—he is that way because he can't stand to let anybody or anything be not okay without him trying to do something about it. It's one of the things that attracted Will to him from the start.
For a second, Will allows himself to entertain the idea of going to Purdue with Mike, imagining that he can afford the tuition and afford to sacrifice himself to the boy he might have used to love—that he and Mike have any kind of future together, even as friends. He entertains it, and then he shoves it down where it can't hurt him any longer.
They're probably just minutes away from Salt Lake City, he reminds himself. When they get to Suzie's, he'll have something else—something constructive—to put his attention on. When they get to Suzie's, his brain will have to take a break from tormenting him.
Won't it?