He's self-conscious in the morning, like Mike is going to spit back in Will's face what they did last night and just how little Mike liked it, but Mike does nothing of the sort. If anything, Mike just looks guilty. He keeps dodging Will's eyes and getting jumpy whenever Jonathan asks him a direct question, even if it's just about when they're going to go pick up the car.

Jonathan wakes Will up at eight-thirty so that they can get the car by nine, which means that Will, who didn't fall into an uneasy sleep until around three, once again feels exhausted. Soon, he promises himself, he'll get back on the trazodone, and it'll allow him to spend a whole day in bed. It'll be great, and as an added bonus, maybe he'll have vivid enough dreams to distract him for a while from everything his brain keeps vomiting up.

Will can't really believe that he and Mike made out last night. If you asked him even four days ago whether he was ever going to speak to Mike again, he would have said no—and now he's not only spent days on end in Mike's company but knows what it feels like to really kiss Mike when Mike wants it and is kissing him back. The more he thinks about it, the more the little hot air balloon in his chest swells—

But it's no good. He knows it's no good because, now, he really feels like he's going to fall apart when Mike inevitably leaves for Hawkins in a few days and leaves Will all alone.

It's not just about Mike leaving him, either. It's about how hard Will fought to teach himself how to function without Mike in his life—because it feels like Will has just thrown away months of progress just for a chance to take whatever he can get from Mike for a few days. Doesn't Will care about taking care of himself? Hasn't Will learned that it's dangerous to be around Mike?

And yet—it's not like Will asked for this. He didn't ask to go off his trazodone, and he didn't ask for Mike to show up in his stupid new Jeep with his dumb platitudes about taking care of Will, and he definitely didn't ask to spiral back into a depression linked directly to Mike's presence in his life. Can you really blame Will for having a single moment of weakness? With the way Mike was practically throwing himself at Will last night, could anybody have resisted that?

Still, he knows he should have resisted—should have been stronger. Maybe, if Will hadn't kissed Mike, he could have shaved a couple months off the recovery that he's going to have to start all over again in a couple of days.

But Will did kiss Mike. He kissed him, and he can't stop replaying how it felt—how Mike tasted. He thought he was beyond all this, and then Mike had to go and—

It suddenly occurs to Will that he's got to act like everything's normal if he doesn't want Jonathan to figure out that something's up. God, Will doesn't even want to imagine the disappointment with which Jonathan would look at him if he found out how badly Will screwed up last night.

But when Jonathan offers to drive, and Will climbs into the back of the Jeep, Mike bypasses the front door and gets into the backseat, next to Will. "You don't want the front?" Will squeaks.

Mike shrugs. "I'd rather sit back here with you."

Jonathan is glaring bullets at Mike from the driver's seat, but he doesn't voice any complaints. "With any luck, we'll be there in under two hours. Buckle up."

Mike's sitting in the middle seat to avoid Harmon's bloodstains behind the passenger seat; Will can feel the heat of Mike's hip and leg pressed all up against Will's own. When Jonathan turns around to face the windshield, Mike lifts one hand out of his lap, lets it hover in midair for a split second, and then drops it casually into Will's lap.

Mike's looking at him, but it takes Will a few long moments to summon the courage to look back. When he does, Mike cracks a hint of a smile.

This is bad. This is really, really bad.

Mike inches his hand along Will's lap until his pinky brushes against Will's.

"Is this okay?" Mike whispers.

"I don't know," Will breathes back. "We shouldn't be doing this. I don't know what we're doing."

"Me neither," says Mike. He interlocks their pinkies together and rubs his thumb gently across Will's thigh.

Will's terrified eyes flick back in front of him, but Jonathan is obviously looking at the road—Will is sure he can't see a thing. Will swallows.

It seems to take forever for them to get to Ruth, and when they do—

Look, it's not like Will has forgotten why they're in Nevada. El is in trouble, and he's worried about her. Will knows he's sick and awful for not paying more attention to that crisis than to the one happening in his head with Mike, but how is he supposed to help that? Now that they're in the town El's supposed to be in, however, it's starting to sink in that Will's going to have to face up to whatever terrible things have happened to El here for the last couple of days—that she might even die if the Army people get to her before Will does.

El could be dead already, for all they know, and here Will is, holding hands with her ex-boyfriend and obsessing over the way Mike feels about him. Will sickens himself.

Will's hand feels cold when Mike lets go so they can get out of the Jeep. They think they're out of luck—that Suzie's coordinates are wrong after all—until they spot the military tire tracks leading off the road. This is it, Will tells himself. This is when they find out whether they're too late to save her.

But as it turns out, El doesn't need much saving. She's down on the ground when Jonathan first spots her; there are Army men crawling around the bunker and a helicopter hovering above her, but she gets up and takes down the helicopter with her mind, and the thing blows up itself and everybody it crashes into. Well, that answers one question: apparently, Owens's plan worked insofar as El has gotten her powers back. She certainly couldn't have done that last week.

"Shit, shit, shit," Mike is screaming as they get out of the car. "El? Eleven?!"

Here it comes, Will tells himself. He braces for it. He clings to the memory of kissing Mike—holding his hand—like he's never going to get a do-over because he knows he won't, not now that Mike and El—

But Mike doesn't kiss El when he runs up to her. They hug, sure, and touch foreheads, and cup each other's cheeks, but they don't kiss. It's coming any second now, though, Will is sure of it—

And then El turns her head and lays eyes on him. "Will? Will!"

"El," Will croaks.

She hobbles around for a second and then comes straight toward Will. He shoves down his guilt. At least she's alive. At least they made it here together, no matter what else happened or is coming.

When El flings her arms around Will, he's not expecting it. Even this past year, as they became real friends for the first time, they never actually voiced to each other how they felt about one another. Will doesn't think they've ever even hugged before, though they're certainly hugging now. It feels nothing like it felt to have Mike's arms around him last night; it's comforting and firm, even a little urgent, but not fiery.

It feels good to be held. It feels so good that he clings to her, buries his face in her shoulder, and—

It's not like Will means to start crying right there in the middle of the desert with El holding him upright and Jonathan and Mike both staring at them, but it's been a long, emotional few days, and Will is so tired. He's tired of being tired, of feeling so damn lonely, of drowning inside his own mind without anyone or anything capable of pulling him back out. He doesn't know what's wrong with him, and he doesn't know what the hell he and Mike are doing, but his sister is alive. She's alive, and she's here, and she's holding him up as he weeps all over her as if he, not El, is the one who has the right to be sad.

"What's wrong?" El murmurs in his ear. She sounds confused, but she doesn't let go.

"I… I…"

"We've been on the run," says Jonathan, who seems to have come up behind Will to greet El, "and it forced him to go cold turkey off his antidepressants. It's been a rough couple of days."

"We have a lot to tell you," Mike adds. "Hawkins is—"

"I know about Hawkins," El interrupts. "We have to get back there. Tonight."

"But we're at the other end of the country," Mike protests. "Jonathan has almost maxed out his credit card. We can't—"

El ignores this. "Will, I have to… I have to say goodbye to Papa before he… Can you stand?"

Something dully registers in the back of Will's mind as Mike asks, "Papa? I thought Brenner was dead."

"Not yet," says El, "but almost. Will?"

Will tries to hold it all in, but he can't. He can't. "I've got him," says Jonathan quietly; he pries Will out of El's arms and into his own, and Will nestles his head into Jonathan's chest and breathes in his forever-familiar smell.

He manages to get himself under control by the time El has left and come back. "Sorry," says Will, mopping at his eyes.

Jonathan's still got a bracing arm around Will's shoulders. "El, how bad do we need to get back to Hawkins?"

"Bad," she says softly.

Jonathan nods. "Okay. So we'll—we'll ask someone for the number of the nearest airline and try to get a flight back there tonight. I can't afford tickets for all of us, but I can try to buy one for you, at least. Mike, you want me to drive?"

"Sure," says Mike. Shoot, Will is thinking, that probably means Mike and El are going to cuddle up to each other in the backseat—but then Mike adds, "I call shotgun."

"I'll sit in the middle seat," Will offers. "There's a lot of blood behind the passenger seat. One of Owens's people died back there."

"What?" El says.

"It's a long story," hedges Jonathan. "Come on."

But when they stop off at a gas station where Jonathan places the calls, the earliest flight to Indianapolis isn't until tomorrow morning. It's bullshit—it's not even noon yet—but apparently, the one flight to Indiana tonight is already full to capacity. It's a moot point, anyway: Jonathan's credit card probably wouldn't even go through if they charged it.

That's how the four of them end up breaking into the nearest restaurant they can find that's closed on Sundays, so that El can dump salt and water into a freezer and use it as a sensory deprivation tank in order to access Max's mind. That's the other thing: apparently, Max isn't out of the woods just yet. In fact, El is pretty sure Max is going to die tonight unless El piggybacks off of Vecna to get into Max's mind.

According to El, Max isn't planning on sacrificing herself until tonight, which means that the four of them have got a few hours to kill before El needs to get into the tank. Mike and El keep glancing at each other when the other isn't looking, and Will figures he should give them some time together, both because they've probably got a lot to talk about and because he can't stand to be around it another second. So he offers, "I'll fix us lunch. They're bound to have something ready-made in the fridge, aren't they?"

But to Will's shock, Mike immediately adds, "I'll help. El, we'll talk more in a little bit, okay?"

So Will apprehensively follows Mike into the kitchen and stares into the open fridge instead of Mike's face. "I thought you two would want to catch up," Will finally says when Mike doesn't speak first.

"We should, right? I know we should. There's just… a lot of history between me and El."

"There's a lot of history between you and me, too, but you still wanted to talk to me. You didn't come running to the other end of the country just to avoid her."

"I told you already," says Mike thinly, "I didn't come her for her. I broke up with her, and I don't regret that. I mostly used her as my excuse to come here for you."

"But that doesn't make any sense," Will argues.

"Why not? Why doesn't that make sense?"

Will doesn't answer at first.

"Will, come on," says Mike in a gentler voice. "Why couldn't I have come here for you?"

Will sighs. "You broke up with El because she was possessive, right? Because she tried to control you and keep you all to herself and didn't really want you to have other friends?"

"Yeah. I did."

"Well, how am I any different from her?"

Mike blinks. "What?"

"I wanted you all to myself, too. I ragged at you for not being exclusively devoted to me the way I felt like you were to her. I punished you for that. What makes me any less possessive over you than El was?"

"Because you never… Will, you never told me I couldn't be close to other people. Just because it ended up being too hard for you to stay friends didn't mean that you ever tried to cut me off from her or anybody else when we were still in each other's lives. If anything, you were the opposite of her. I wasn't giving you what you needed, and you took everything I put you through for so long. Besides, El is just—you have an actual medical reason for having handled things the way you did."

"And El doesn't? You don't think she has PTSD from all the shit she went through in the lab? She's even more ill-adjusted to society and to dealing with her feelings than I am, and that's saying something."

The refrigerator door is still hanging open, but Will's not looking inside it anymore. His eyes are fixed straight on Mike, who's staring back with his jaw loose and eyes wide. "Look, I had my shot with El, and it didn't work," Mike retorts. "We didn't work. You and I… we never had that chance, not really."

"We both already know that you and I wouldn't work, either. It's not your fault. If it's anybody's, it's mine, or maybe it's no one's. But I can't do it."

Mike's hands go up to his head. "I don't understand. Isn't this what you wanted? Don't you get that I'm trying to give you what you say you've always wanted?"

"And don't you get that I hate myself for not being able to handle it? Mike, I wish I could. I wish so badly that I could, but I can't. It's just, this last year, I finally thought I figured out who I was—who Will Byers was—and then you came back, and I can't remember anymore. Everything I am when you're around is defined in relation to you. I don't want to live like that."

Mike is frowning. "How could you not know who you are with me? I know exactly who you are. You're smart and shy and loyal. You love to paint and draw and write. You're sincere—almost painfully, sometimes—and you're sad, but not all the time. You have a really nice smile. I like it when you smile, and you used to smile when you were with me, but you don't anymore, and I don't understand why you don't. You're right, Will: I don't get it. How can you not…? I spent all this time—all this time—trying to understand how you felt about me, but it's more than that. I keep trying to understand how I feel about you, and I don't… and you're giving me nothing."

Will is breathing rather hard. "So what you're saying is that you overcame how disgusting you thought I was at first so that you could go out with me, and now you think I owe it to you to do it now that you've made that decision for the both of us."

"No. No. I just…"

And it's so stupid because, when Will steps back and thinks about it, he doesn't even know why they're fighting. Why can't he just be a normal fucking human being and accept what Mike is offering him and be happy about it? Anybody else in Will's position would be goddamn grateful for Mike to be standing here offering him the world, but instead—

"I'm sorry, Mike. I don't know what's wrong with…"

Mike's telling him not to be sorry, but Will suddenly realizes—he's going to have to face it. The doctor who gave him the trazodone was right: he does need to see a therapist, too. Sure, part of this—probably a large part—is because he's off his meds, but the pills didn't stop him from getting messed up from the moment he called Mike about El. They're not a magic bullet, and if he ever wants to improve, he's got to get proper treatment.

No wonder Will keeps feeling like he hasn't learned anything. Maybe he is normal—normal for someone who's living with mental illness, anyway. Maybe being sick means not being able to cure himself on his own. Maybe all this time, when he thought he was learning and growing, he had only taken himself out of the situation that triggered him in the first place. Maybe doing so didn't have any bearing at all on teaching him what to do when he fell back into the deep end.

"Actually, that's not true," he says quietly. "I know exactly what's wrong with me. I have depression, and I haven't been taking my medication, and—and I have borderline personality disorder. It means I have unstable relationships. That's what's wrong with me, Mike. That's what's wrong."

Mike's face falls. "Will—"

"We have El back," says Will, talking fast. "She doesn't need to go into Max's mind until tonight. I'm going to go out, and I'm not going to come back until El is ready, okay? I just—I need to clear my head."

Mike takes a moment to digest this. "You shouldn't go out there alone, not when you're like this. Can you—can you have Jonathan go with you? I just want to make sure you'll be… safe, that's all."

It's not like Will is thrilled about the prospect of leaving Mike and El alone here together, but Mike's got a point. Besides, maybe Will should start listening to Mike when he insists that he and El aren't getting back together. "Okay. That's probably a good idea."

But when Will emerges from the kitchen and announces that he's going for a walk, before he can even invite Jonathan along, El immediately asks if she can accompany him. Will meets Jonathan's eyes, then El's, and says, "Sure. Are you okay with going for a few hours? I just… I need to get out of here for a while. I don't feel good."

"Sure," El echoes, smiling faintly. Will smiles back.

Outside, in the fresh air and away from Mike, Will feels like he can breathe a little easier. "Better?" asks El.

"A little. I'm sorry. All week, I've been making everything all about me when you're the one who's been to hell and back."

"It's okay. It isn't your fault."

"I really lost my shit this week."

El shrugs. "I know. Jonathan told me."

"I kissed Mike."

To her credit, El doesn't look angry. On the other hand, her flat, expressionless face can't be a good sign, either. "Oh."

"He wanted us to… but I said no. I don't know if I can ever have that with anybody and be healthy, but I'm pretty sure I can never have it with him. Definitely not now."

"I'm sorry," says El. "I know you love him a lot."

"I'm the worst brother in the world. I never should have laid a hand on him when you and he were still together."

To his surprise, El reaches in and grabs his hand in hers. "I wouldn't want anybody else for a brother," she says. "This year was… I had fun with you."

"Yeah," says Will weakly. "I had fun with you, too. Please don't die tonight, okay? If I lose you… I just really, really don't want to lose you."

And he doesn't lose her, though it comes close. She's screaming and thrashing and not responding when Mike turns to him and says, "Will, you have to talk to her."

"What?"

Mike urges, "Talk to her. Give her a reason to keep fighting. Ground her. You can do it. I know you can."

At first, Will doesn't know what to say to this. All he can think is how badly he failed El this last week—how inappropriate it would be for him to assume that anything he could say to her might save her. "It should be you," he insists. "You're… you're the heart, Mike. You're the heart of all of us, and—"

"No," says Mike vehemently. "I broke her heart, but Will, you're her brother. You were there for her when I wasn't. It has to be you. I know you can do this."

"Mike—"

"We don't have time for this. Will you do it or not?"

And Will feels like a dumbass, standing there watching as they're losing El all over again, but he owes her this, doesn't he? He crouches over her body and calls a little louder, "El, can you hear me? Eleven? I don't know if I can get to you, but if I can…"

He looks back at Mike, who gives him an encouraging nod, and Jonathan, who smiles thinly.

"You have to hang on," Will adds, his eyes snapping back to El in the tank. "You have to, okay? You've barely been my sister this last year, really, and… and we're not done yet. We can't be. We still have to cook the perfect casserole, and I need you to be around so I can finish the portrait I started of you, and…"

Will trails off. He feels like nothing he's saying carries enough gravity to make much of an impact. If he could just open up—

"—And I don't have a lot of people in my life, but I know I have you, and I can't lose you now. I need you right now, okay? I need you. We've got to get each other over Mike stupid Wheeler—" he laughs a little hysterically "—and I want you to be there when I get back on my pills and go to therapy and everything. It's going to suck, and it's going to hurt, and I can't do that by myself. I need Jonathan, and I need you, and if Vecna gets you tonight—if Vecna gets you, I won't be able to live with myself, not after the way I treated you and held you at arm's length for all those years. You were supposed to be my friend, and now, you finally are my friend. You're my sister. You're my sister, and I love you, and you have to hold on. You have to come back.

"I know you're not very happy, and I'm sorry that you're not happy. If you come back, maybe we can help each other, yeah? Maybe you can help me get past this horrible last week of my life, and I can make you feel less lonely, too—but I can only do that if you wake up. Wake up, El. Wake up!"

He doesn't think she will, but she does. She does.

Max, El says, doesn't get so lucky. They have to go back to Hawkins together, of course, after everything they know happened. After they stop by Sullivan so that Will can get his trazodone, he and Jonathan take Jonathan's car the rest of the way to Hawkins, and Mike takes his with El. "We should talk, finally," Mike says awkwardly to El, and to Will's surprise, the old jealousy only flares up for a moment.

In the car, he admits pretty quickly to Jonathan that he and Mike made out in that motel room. He's expecting Jonathan to be disappointed in him, and he thinks Jonathan is disappointed in him, but Jonathan doesn't chastise Will for this. Instead, Jonathan just sighs and says, "I could kill that little twerp, you know that?"

"Don't be pissed at him," says Will. "We shouldn't have done it, but it was as much my mistake as his, and I think he knows it was a mistake. I think he might… be just as confused as I used to be. His brain just picked a really unstable person to be confused about."

"Are you going to be okay?" asks Jonathan. "Is this going to set you back?"

Will considers it. Taking more trazodone wouldn't fully explain why he feels a little better already—he's only had it back in his system for about an hour, and not at the full therapeutic dosage—but he thinks getting out of Mike's car explains a lot. "Seeing Mike at all is what set me back, not kissing him. I still regret kissing him at Thanksgiving a couple years ago, you know, when he was still with El, but I don't regret kissing him the other day. I think it maybe… helped me figure out that Mike isn't the answer."

When they get to Hawkins, Max looks fragile and too young in her hospital bed. Will hopes to god that she wakes up and gives him a chance to repent for not having worried more about her while he knew she was in danger.

Mom, as it turns out, was not at a conference—she was in a freakin' Russian prison with Murray Bauman in order to break out Hopper, who it turns out is somehow still alive and just escaped death by demogorgon. Will doesn't know what this means for his living situation. El can't move back to Hawkins with the Army still on her back, so will she stay with the Byerses in Sullivan, or will Hopper take her back in? And if Hopper takes her back and leaves Hawkins to do it, will Will and his family move back? In a way, he hopes he won't. Hawkins is the only place he ever made any real friends, but Mike will still be there for senior year, and Will doesn't think he can handle being around Mike for even one more minute. Apparently, Mom and Hopper are dating now (what?), which means they'll probably want to live close together, away from Hawkins, and Will is probably in the clear.

It's awkward when they leave. Whether the Byerses end up moving or not, they've still got to go back to Sullivan at least for a little while, either to stay or—if, god forbid, they are moving back to Hawkins—at least to pack up their stuff and sell the house. Will feels a little more alive after a couple of days of seeing his old friends and avoiding Mike as much as possible, but he knows he's got to say goodbye—that he can't just leave it where they left it in that restaurant kitchen in Nevada.

When he finally gets Mike alone, Mike won't look him in the eye. "I'm really, really sorry for the role I played in what happened this week," he mutters almost bashfully to Will. "I know you worked really hard to build a life for yourself in Sullivan, and all I did was confuse you and mess you up and tear you away from that. It wasn't fair of me to use you to try to figure out how I felt about you like I did. I shouldn't have come—or if I did come, I should have kept my trap shut about how I've been thinking and feeling about you."

"You didn't do this to me," says Will. "My brain did. I'm not mad at you, but I do think it'll be best if we don't talk again for… I don't know how long. Maybe a while. Maybe ever."

Mike finally looks up, and he looks so sad that it makes Will feel even sadder. "I don't understand, but if that's what you need, then I accept it."

"I'm really sorry," Will says weakly. "You deserved somebody more stable than I was. I hope you find that someday, and I hope I—I hope me putting you through this didn't do too much damage."

Mike sighs. "Will, I don't want you to feel like… I need you to know that I care about you. I don't really understand how or what it means, but I really, really care about you, and I don't hold anything that's happened between us against you."

Will doesn't want them to leave it like this. Even more than he wants to get away from Mike right now, he wants to pave over all the problems and somehow get them to a place in the next two minutes from which he can actually feel good about walking away, like they resolved something here—like they grew together. Maybe that's not the case—maybe they didn't grow together—but Will thinks that he might, at least, have done some growing on his own in the last week, and he's got to accept that this is the best he can do by himself before he finds himself a therapist who can help.

He's got to stop treating himself like he's something broken that needs fixing. He's got to start believing that he's just… not finished yet.

Will croaks, "I'm sorry I couldn't be… I'm sorry I don't…"

Mike narrows his eyes, and something seems to—he makes a decision, Will can see it in his face, and then reaches forward and seizes each of Will's hands in his own. "I'll always be here if you change your mind, okay? Whatever you need, I'm here, even if that means we—that we don't get to have our time together. Everything's going to work out okay for you in the end. I promise."

And for the first time all week, Will believes it.

He steals that James Taylor cassette out of the glovebox in Mike's car before they go. For a long, long time, Will listens to the first track over and over every night, rewinding the tape whenever it reaches the end of the song.

xx

END OF PART TWO