Ruth, Nevada, where El is apparently being held, is only a 250-mile drive from Salt Lake City, but Will, Mike, and Jonathan are only halfway there when steam starts billowing out of the engine of the Jeep.
"This cannot be happening," Mike barks after the mechanic to whom they've towed the car informs them that he won't be able to repair the leak in the radiator until morning. "We have to get to our friend as soon as possible. Isn't there anywhere we can rent a car for a couple of days? Is there a taxi service we can call?"
"You didn't bring that kind of money with you here, did you?" snaps Jonathan.
"Anyway, you're in the middle of the desert, my friend," the mechanic informs them with a bracing grin. "The nearest car rental is a good sixty miles away, and there aren't any taxis that service this area."
"Damn it," swears Mike. "God damn it all. If we don't reach El tonight—"
"Your friend is just going to have to wait. There's a motel about two miles that way—" the mechanic jabs his thumb to the right "—that you can walk to if you want to get yourselves a couple of rooms for the night."
So they walk. Mike suggests hitchhiking after the first twenty minutes of this, but the mechanic was right: they're in the middle of the desert, and almost no cars are passing them on the walk over. Mike tries sticking his thumb out for the only one that they do encounter, but the driver gives no indication that she's seen them and rides right on past them as if they're not even there.
As far as Will is concerned, they're lucky they could even get Suzie's phone number from Dustin through Mike's car phone—that Dustin even answered, with everything going on in Hawkins—that Suzie could even tell them where and how to get the car towed when she did. Plus, Dustin was able to give them an update on the Hawkins situation: Max is still alive, at least for now, but for some reason, she has to play Kate Bush on her Walkman on a loop if she doesn't want this latest monster, Vecna, to get her. Will should be happy about this turn of events, and he is happy about it, but in some ways, it's worse for him now than it was before he knew—because now, he's got one less thing to focus on in order to take his attention away from Mike.
Mike tries valiantly to get a conversation going on the walk to the motel, but Jonathan refuses to engage with him beyond one-word answers to his questions, and Will by this point is in no condition to carry on much of a discussion. He can't concentrate long enough to follow Mike's stories, just catches snippets here and there that paint pictures more disjointed than the bits of vines Will drew when he was possessed by the Mind Flayer all those years ago. The part of Will that needs Mike too much, the part of him he thought he'd buried months ago, keeps screaming at Will that he's losing his opportunity to connect with Mike in what little time they have left together, and Will doesn't know the first thing he's supposed to feel about that. After all, it's not like the reason he's blowing Mike off is that he's capable of making any kind of good personal decisions right now.
Especially on top of the massive bills they got slapped with from the tow truck and the mechanic, they've got very little money left between the three of them, and Jonathan's already charged his credit card way beyond what the Byerses can afford this month. So when they get to the motel, they get themselves one room with two queens, and Will and Jonathan resign themselves to sharing with Mike for the night. At least Will doesn't have to sleep in the same bed as Mike—Jonathan offers to share with Will pretty much the second they get into the room.
The first order of business is for them each to take a shower while they wait for the pizza they order to arrive. They don't have any fresh clothes, so they'll have to change back into their dirty ones, but at least their hair and skin will be clean. Will goes first, desperate to get a few minutes alone; he's not planning to stay in there too long, but time gets away from him once he's under the water. "Hot water's almost gone," he says shortly when he comes out. "Sorry."
"You go ahead," Mike says to Jonathan. "I'll take the cold one." Fleetingly, Will wonders whether Mike might be sucking up to him just a little in order to try to get back into Jonathan's good graces, probably so that the rest of this trip from hell will be a little more bearable for them all.
When Jonathan shuts the door behind him in the bathroom, it suddenly hits Will that he's going to be all alone with Mike in this room for the next few minutes. "I'm going to bed," Will says abruptly, and without further ado, he climbs into the bed he's supposed to be sharing with Jonathan.
"Already? It's, like, six-thirty. The pizza—"
"Save me some. I'll eat it when I wake up."
"Will, are you sure—"
"It's fine, Mike. Just—just let me go."
Mike pauses. "Okay," he says very quietly as Will yanks the pillow over his head and tries to stifle the noise with it.
He doesn't fall asleep, of course, even though he's exhausted. He wonders whether both those things, the insomnia and the fatigue, are symptoms of trazodone withdrawal. They probably are. Judging by how deep inside his head he's been buried all day, he's probably in the thick of it by now.
The pizza arrives about fifteen minutes later during Mike's turn to shower. Jonathan doesn't look surprised in the slightest when Will unceremoniously removes his head from underneath the pillow and reaches for the box.
"How are you feeling?" Jonathan asks quietly when Will's on his second slice.
"It's fine. It's nothing I can't handle," Will lies smoothly.
Jonathan doesn't look convinced, but he doesn't seem to want to push it, either. "If you want to talk tonight—if you want to get the hell out of this room and away from Mike for a while—just say the word, and we can. You can take a break from him if you need to."
The thing Jonathan doesn't understand, though, is that there are no breaks inside Will's broken mind. There's something wrong with him, something seriously wrong with him, and getting out of this motel room for a few minutes isn't going to be anywhere near enough to fix him. He's starting to think there is no fixing him, which is a damn shame, really, because he'd managed to convince himself this past year that he had healed.
He's starting to get really, really sick and tired of being inside his head. Why can't he just shut it off for a while and get some peace? He sort of wants to talk about it—to use Jonathan as his outlet—but he's totally convinced that, if he did, Jonathan would get sick and tired of him, too.
He's a terrible, awful, self-pitying person, and the worst part is, he can't do anything to change it even though he knows it. What is wrong with Will? Why can't he just snap out of his thoughts like everybody else can?
He scarfs down his food so that he can get back into bed before Mike emerges from the shower, but it's a long-ass evening trapped inside his own head, and he eventually decides he can't take it anymore. By this time, it's about eleven o'clock at night; they've been in this motel room for the last five hours. Jonathan is in bed next to Will, but Mike is still awake, staring at the TV screen looking as though he isn't catching a word of any of it.
"Did you have a good nap?" asks Mike in a falsely cheerful voice.
"I didn't sleep," says Will. He keeps his voice low so as not to wake Jonathan, whose heavy breathing suggests that he's conked out by now. "Apparently, I can't fall asleep at a reasonable hour anymore without my trazodone."
"You slept last night, though."
"I faked it. I lied. I was up until after five."
Mike pauses. "Did you hear me and Jonathan when we switched seats?"
"Yeah," says Will, figuring there's no point in covering it up. "Sorry."
"Don't be sorry. It's just… I just really, really want you to be okay. I don't know what to do. I feel like everything I do just makes you worse. Dustin said you were doing fine for months this past year with me out of your life, and then I show back up, and days later—"
"It's not your fault," Will says automatically.
"I know it's not my fault, but I still feel like I have to—take the blame or something. I feel like I can't… get free."
"You feel like you're not free?" he snorts. "How do you think it feels to be me?—to have your mental stability tethered to another person?"
Mike says quietly, "I know. I'm not saying…"
Will sighs. "I know you're not. Sorry. I'm not trying to blame you for anything. It's not your fault I'm a freak."
Frowning, Mike gets up from his bed and comes to gingerly sit next to Will on his and Jonathan's. Mike's eyes are kind and wide and sad. "You're not a freak."
"I am. I'm an abomination. I'm not normal."
"Screw normal. The world would be a very boring place if everybody in it were normal."
"Yeah, but if everybody were normal, there would be a lot less suffering to go around, wouldn't there?"
Shockwaves run down Will's spine when Mike claps a hand on Will's knee. "I like you exactly the way you are. I just wish I could… I want to be… I…"
"I know. Mike, I know."
"You don't know." Mike retracts his hand, uses it instead to run his fingers through his hair. "I'm not saying it was on par with what you went through, but it was hard for me, too, losing you from my life last year, okay? I missed you like crazy. I felt like an idiot for not fighting harder for you to stay my friend long-distance before everything went to shit. I still feel like an idiot. I keep replaying the last few years in my head, trying to find the magic solution that lets me come back to you—get through to you—"
"You can't have done," says Will helplessly. "It was all over when we were still kids, before I even knew how to recognize my feelings for you for what they were. I would have to have been a different person, somebody who didn't need you so badly, somebody who wasn't…" he takes a deep breath "…wasn't gay. Or else, you would have to have been gay. I know you're not, and—"
"Do you?" Mike murmurs. "Do you know that?"
Will feels like something very hot has just exploded inside his chest. "You made it pretty freakin' clear that everything you felt for El was something you didn't feel for me."
"I don't know anymore," Mike mutters wildly. "I had a lot of time without you to think. I told you already: I had a lot of time to play out scenarios in my head. And in some of them, at least after I broke up with El…"
Will takes a deep breath. "You said you thought it was gross."
"I did at first, but I don't know why I thought it was gross. Was it because I wasn't into you like that? Or was it really because I could picture it—I did picture it—and I felt ashamed of myself for it? And if I felt ashamed, was that because I felt guilty for being into it—for not being straight—or just because I knew it wasn't fair of me to want to entertain the idea of it and lead you on without really being able to follow through with it?"
Mike says this all very fast, but for the first time on this miserable day, Will follows along with every word he's saying. "That's not fair," he says finally. "You can't just dump something like that in my lap when I feel so…"
"So then tell me what to do instead. Tell me what to do because I'll do anything, Will, I swear to god, even if it's more than you think I bargained for, because, I'm telling you, I did bargain for it, and if there's any chance it could bring you back to me, it's worth it to me. It's worth it."
And Will needs to run. He was fine three days ago, before any of this happened, before Mike stumbled back into his life, before El went missing, before the trazodone withdrawal, and if what's happening now is any indication of what Mike Wheeler still has the power to do to him, whether Mike means for it to happen or not—
Hold them up, the song said. Never die young. Sail on to another land beneath another sky.
"Kiss me," Will dares him.
It's nothing like that fleeting kiss in the doorway over Thanksgiving three years ago because, this time, Mike kisses back, and he kisses back hard. Will puts his hands delicately on Mike's cheeks and clings to them, but Mike's hands are everywhere—Will's neck, his back, his waist, the place where his arms meet his shoulders. It's all Will can do just to keep up with the pace at which Mike's mouth is moving, and when he feels the tip of Mike's tongue licking gently at Will's lower lip, Will feels like he's going to die.
They're still sitting side by side on the bed, their bodies twisted to face each other, until Mike gets his hands on either side of Will's hips and starts to nudge Will down onto the mattress. Will's head hits the pillow. His hands creep forward, across Mike's cheeks toward his ears, to settle on his scalp; Will twists his fingers until they're buried in Mike's too-long hair, and Mike groans. The sound of it is louder, more abrupt, than any of the quiet words they've exchanged tonight, and as soon as Mike makes it, Jonathan starts to stir.
Mike flies backward into a sitting position between Will's legs. They stare at each other.
"Sorry," Will whispers when Jonathan snorts and rolls over to face the wall.
"No, I'm sorry," insists Mike. "I shouldn't… we shouldn't be…"
"You're right," says Will. "We shouldn't."
For a long time after Mike bolts to climb into his own bed, Will can't stop replaying in his mind the way Mike feels and tastes and breathes. He made out with Mike Wheeler. He made out with Mike Wheeler, and Mike—if Will isn't wrong—seemed like he liked it.
So why doesn't Will feel cured?