It's not easy for Will, talking to Dustin and Lucas now that they know at least some of what Will has been hiding. He's barely hung up with Mike for the night before Dustin calls demanding answers, and he gets the same treatment from Lucas the following morning. It's not that Will doesn't want someone to talk to about the mess between Will and Mike and Will's mind, but it's hard to know where to even start, and he doesn't know how to explain the terror that grips him every time he talks to Mike without sounding like a melodramatic loser.

He's reminded of this in a terrible way five minutes into his call with Lucas when Lucas says, "I don't understand what's the big deal. You like him, right? And he says he likes you back. If it's about you being gay, then you've got nothing to feel bad about, nothing, and if it's not—do you know what I would give for Max to wake up so I could be with her? Do you?"

It makes Will feel like a piece of shit. Lucas has a point: Mike is alive and awake and available, and so is Will, and what's Will's problem, anyway? Why can't he just get over himself and go after what he wants without everything needing to get so complicated? Still, it's different—he knows it's different. It's not Lucas's fault he doesn't understand; if it's anyone's, it's Will's for not knowing how to let Lucas into this part of his life. But Lucas's inability to relate just serves to make Will feel more alone than ever.

So he switches tack. "But you and Max were broken up before her coma, weren't you? Just because you loved each other didn't mean it was working."

"Yeah, and I didn't understand that, either. I know losing Billy was hard on her—for years, it was hard on her—but I was trying to help her. You, her, Mike—why can't anybody around me just let each other in when they're struggling? Having people who can be there for you is supposed to make life easier, not harder."

When they hang up, Will buries his face in his hands and thinks—really thinks—about what it is he wants from Mike, anyway. He wants to be close to him, to connect with him, for them to mean something immediate to each other again—but even more than that, he wants to feel safe again when he's with Mike, not the way Mike used to make him feel but in a new way, a healthier way. He wants to feel safe by virtue of knowing he can have Mike without needing him, not like—not like Mike's going to be the one to protect him. He wants to protect himself, and he wants to know that he can walk away from Mike at any time without falling apart, and if he's got to be vulnerable to Mike, he wants to do it on his terms before Mike has the opportunity to make Will vulnerable.

Will doesn't ever want to feel like he did all those days he was grieving Mike—seeing Mike with El right in front of him and yet so far away—falling apart right in front of Mike when Mike was trying to offer him the world. He'll do anything, even the thing that terrifies him—even be Mike's friend—if it means he can avoid a repeat of June the next time Vecna comes back into their lives.

And it is going okay, at least so far. Carlotta was right: it's a lot easier to talk to Mike about meaningless things for short periods with his antidepressants and his coping mechanisms and his strategies than it was to try to live on the road with him for a week without any of that. Will's heart still starts racing every time seven o'clock rolls around, but it usually calms down a little within the first couple of minutes of their conversations, especially on the days that they don't talk about anything of much significance.

In a way, it's kind of nice just getting to know Mike again. They've been out of each other's lives in any kind of meaningful way for so long that he doesn't really know anything about Mike anymore outside of what Dustin and Lucas have occasionally mentioned. He's still the same old Mike—loyal, determined, opinionated, emphatic—but he seems more mature, too, and not so quick to judge anyone, though maybe Will should have figured that out on his own based on Mike's reaction to him last June.

When Will calls him that night, he feels eager to get back to the small talk and away from anything heavy, but Mike has other ideas. "Can I just ask you something really fast?" he tells Will in a careful voice. "I wanted to ask you last night, but I just…"

Will represses a sigh. "Yeah. Sure."

"Dustin said he asked you to come to Hawkins for winter break, and you said no, but then you started talking to me every night after that. Why? I mean, I'm happy you're not avoiding me anymore, but why wouldn't you want to see me if you want us to talk? We could have used that time to… to get right with each other."

Here it is: the question Will has been dodging for days. "I wasn't ready for that much contact yet," he mumbles. "Too much too soon could end up just like June, even if this time I have my trazodone."

Mike pauses. "You weren't ready?"

"I mean, I'm still not, not for—days on end like that."

"But we could see each other? I could come and visit you for a few hours sometime, maybe?"

Will panics. "I mean—can I just—? I want to talk to my therapist about it before I commit to anything. I don't know what's…"

"Right," says Mike, sounding only a little disappointed. "Yeah, that makes sense. Sure. Just—let me know if you ever decide you're up for it, okay? I'd really love to see you."

"Yeah," says Will helplessly. "I'll let you know."

It's Sunday night, and his next appointment with Carlotta is on Wednesday. It's during the day, but that's not a big deal: Jonathan doesn't have class until the afternoon on Wednesdays this semester, so he's able to drive Will, and Will's schedule is flexible thanks to homeschooling. It makes Will feel a little bad that he can't drive himself to his own stuff—he is almost eighteen, and he's got his driver's license—but Mom can't really afford to buy Will his own car right now, and Will sure doesn't have the savings.

Maybe he should get a job, not just so he can save up for a car, but so that he can add another piece to his life that doesn't include Mike. Carlotta does always tell him that the key to avoiding dependency is to expand your life as much as possible, so that it doesn't all have to hinge on one thing—or, in Will's case, one person.

"Can I ask how therapy is going?" asks Jonathan in the car as he's pulling out of the driveway. They had to look outside of Sullivan to find a therapist at all, so they've got a ways to go before they'll get there: it's about a twenty-minute drive to go from home to Carlotta's office.

"It's good."

"Will you be talking to her about whoever it is that's got you hogging the phone every evening lately?"

Jonathan glances sidelong at an embarrassed Will, then back at the road. He's smiling, but Will knows that smile is about to disappear the second Will tells him—"You noticed that?"

"Will, of course I noticed that. We share a bedroom. It'd be pretty hard to miss. You keep disappearing every day after dinner, but your shoes are still by the door, and I can tell you're not in El's room talking to her, either. You've been talking on the phone in the basement, right?"

"Maybe."

Jonathan smiles again. "So who're you talking to?

Will fixedly looks away from Jonathan and out the passenger side window. "Mike."

Jonathan's voice morphs. "Mike?"

"Carlotta knows about it. It was her idea, actually. She says if I—"

Harshly, Jonathan says, "Then she doesn't know what she's talking about. She wasn't there. She didn't see you."

Will bites his lip. "Yes, she did."

"What?"

"She saw me for the first time in July, just a couple weeks after the road trip we took with him. I was still a mess. I was a wreck for fifty-five minutes one-on-one with her every week at first. She hasn't forgotten that."

"Then she's incompetent. Any halfway decent therapist would realize that Mike is bad for you. He's really, really bad for you, Will, and I don't want to see you fall apart again because of him."

"I'm not going to fall apart. It's going to be different this time. I have tools now that I didn't used to, and—"

"You know what you sound like right now, don't you? Every addict thinks it's different this time, that they can handle it, but—"

It's a good thing Will's still looking out the window because he can feel his face turning beet red. He's not really used to using that word out loud with anybody but Carlotta, and to hear it coming from Jonathan, the person Will wants most in the world to believe in him… "I didn't used to be on trazodone, though, and I didn't used to be in therapy. It is different. I just—"

"You just what? You just—what?"

"I have to be ready, okay?" A note of desperation worms its way into Will's voice. "If Vecna comes back, and Mike and I get thrown into something together again, I have to be ready for that. I can't just keep hiding from him and be totally unprepared for when—"

"Is that what you think? Will, you have a choice here, okay? You have a choice. If you want to skip out on this whole thing with Vecna and never talk to Mike again—"

There it is again, the idea that Will has a say in any of this. Right now, Jonathan sounds exactly like an angrier version of Carlotta—sounds like El. You're wrong. I don't have a choice, he tries to say, but what comes out instead is, "But I don't want to never talk to Mike again."

This shocks Jonathan into silence, at least for a second. "I thought you were done with needing him in your life. I thought you had moved past this."

"I did. I had. But I—just because I don't feel like I need him to survive anymore doesn't mean I can throw away everything he's ever meant to me."

"And I'm supposed to believe that the way you feel about him is totally platonic?—that he's not just going to disappoint you all over again?"

"It's not like that. Mike and I…"

"I'm not stupid, Will. Don't expect me to believe that all you're ever going to want out of him is friendship."

Will takes a deep breath. "That's not what I'm saying."

"Then what are you—" That's when it clicks, or at least, Will assumes that's when it clicks. Jonathan confirms it a second later. "I thought Mike was straight."

"So did I," says Will weakly.

"You're telling me that, after everything he put you through, you want to date the kid?"

"No. Maybe? Not right now." As usual, it feels like Will can't find the right words. "I'm not thinking that far ahead yet. A lot would need to happen before I could do that. I might never be able to. I know that."

They've hit a red light, and Jonathan looks over at Will and sighs. "You get why I'm worried about this, right? I don't need to explain that to you?"

"Yeah. I get it, and—I appreciate it." As disconnected, unable to communicate, and frustrated as Will feels—as much as it crushes him not to have Jonathan's approval—at least he has a brother who's looking out for Will's best interests.

Jonathan purses his lips. The light turns green, and he looks back at the road. "Promise me you'll be careful?"

"Okay. I promise."

When they get to Carlotta's office, Jonathan drops Will off at the door and promises to be back in an hour to pick him up. Will's a little early. His usual seat in the waiting room is already occupied by a man with graying hair who looks to be in his fifties, so Will crosses to the other side of the room and sits down as far away from the guy as he can manage.

He never likes this part of therapy—always feels like he's too out in the open, too exposed, like anybody could walk in on him and see that he's one of Carlotta's patients. Mercifully, it's almost ten o'clock, and Will only has to wait a few minutes for her to come and get him. "Will?"

"Hi, Carlotta." He follows her down the familiar hallways past her coworkers' offices and into her own. His favorite chair is the one right next to the door, and he plunks down in it and helps himself to a lollipop from the table beside it. (Will doesn't care how old he is: therapy is always uncomfortable, even if it's good for him, and he deserves a reward, even if that reward is sweets.)

Carlotta always starts his sessions with a neutral "How are you?" as she sits down and swivels her chair away from the desk against the wall so she can face him. She puts her elbows on her knees, clasps her hands together, and leans forward intently, her kinky black hair falling in her eyes.

"I'm fine," says Will. He figures there's no point in avoiding the inevitable, so he adds, "I, uh… I called Mike. I've been talking to him a little bit every night."

"Every night?" Carlotta repeats.

"I know it seems like a lot." Will trips over the words a little. "But it's not for very long at a time. We talk for, what, like, ten minutes before we hang up? And I didn't want—it's not like I count down the minutes until our conversation every night. It's kind of the opposite, actually. I never want to do it, and I freak myself out really badly before I call, and it's not until we've started talking a little that I start to calm down. I just thought that, if I spaced it too far apart, I'd start avoiding it and wouldn't get enough exposure, and it would take too long to get us to an okay place, and…"

She smiles kindly. "Is it me, yourself, or somebody else who's put you on the defensive?"

Will sighs. "Sorry. It's my brother. I told him in the car that I've been talking to Mike again, and he wasn't very happy with me for it."

"What did he say to you?"

"The usual. I don't know if it's me or Mike he doesn't trust, but he doesn't think it's safe for me to be talking to him."

"Did he use those words?—that he doesn't trust one or both of you?"

He thinks back. "No, I don't think so. But it doesn't feel like he does, you know? And it's hard because… I don't even know if I can do this, but I feel like I have to, and then I feel like there's no way I can if not even Jonathan believes in me."

After pulling her journal off the desk and jotting down a note about this, Carlotta asks, "How do you know that you have to?"

Here it is again—everybody else's conviction that Will could avoid Mike forever if he wanted to. "Of course I have to. Vecna's coming back. He put Max in a coma, and it tore Hawkins apart. No way that happens and he just disappears forever."

"Say Vecna does come back," says Carlotta. There she goes, engaging with Will about the Upside Down—he still doesn't believe that she believes him, but at least she's willing to entertain it. At least he can talk freely here and she's not going to throw him in the nuthouse. "I can see how your sister's role in it might pull you into a situation like that, but who says Mike has to be involved? He only came in June because you called him to tell him what was happening."

"Yeah, but what about when I got lost in the Upside Down? What about the Mind Flayer? What about the Russians?"

"You lived in Hawkins at the time, didn't you? You had reason to see each other every day."

"Well, Hawkins is still the center of it, and Mike still lives there."

"But he might not when Vecna comes back," Carlotta reasons. "Odds are, he'll be away at college whenever that facedown happens."

Oh. Will hadn't thought of that. After a moment's consideration, he says, "He said he wants to go to Purdue so that he can be close. I'm sure that, the second anything fishy happens in Hawkins, he'll take the week off and drive back to be a part of it."

"Was Mike's involvement in the past really because he wanted to protect Hawkins, or was he just trying to protect you?"

And, see, this is how Will knows that Carlotta doesn't really believe him. If she really believed the world was in danger, she'd understand that not everything Mike does is about protecting Will. The Upside Down isn't just some fantasy Will's created in his mind to cope with some unknown trauma, which means that there are plenty of bad things that really have happened in Hawkins that weren't all about Will's emotional safety. But Will doesn't dare voice this, not if it means that he's going to shatter this illusion they've kept up. He knows the day is coming that Carlotta calls him out and reveals that she doesn't believe his stories, and he still hasn't figured out how he's going to cope with losing her as a sounding board when that happens.

So for lack of any other way out, he goes along with it. "If I wanted to hide it from Mike, I'd have to hide it from Dustin and Lucas, too, or else one of them would tell him for sure what was happening. Don't you keep telling me that you want me to confide in them more?"

Carlotta makes another note in her journal. "Let's talk about that for a minute. Did you confide in Dustin like we talked about last time?"

"Yeah. And—and he and Mike both told Lucas, too, and Lucas called to talk about it, so I've talked to both of them at this point."

"And how did they take it?"

"I don't know. Fine, I guess?"

"Doesn't sound like it was fine."

"I mean, what were they supposed to say? They don't get it, and of course they don't, you know? Here I am, telling them that I'm gay and I like Mike and he likes me back, and they can't get their heads around why we can't just be happy together."

She nods. "Did you tell them how it's related to your diagnoses?"

"I tried. I told them what conditions I have, but I couldn't really explain them or explain how Mike is related to them. I just—where do I start? There's so much that's happened, and I feel like, if I say any of it out loud, it's just going to sound stupid, like I'm making drama out of nothing."

Carlotta hesitates. She's staring deeply into Will's eyes, journal forgotten; her pen actually falls out of her lap to the ground, and she doesn't reach down to pick it up, doesn't even break eye contact to see where it's gone. "Do they know what led to your hospital visit when you were first diagnosed and prescribed antidepressants?"

Will frowns. "Not really. I mean, it's hard to remember—I was really out of it—but I don't think so."

"Why don't you start there?" she suggests. "There was a whole story behind that, wasn't there? You'd stopped talking to Mike, and it was affecting every part of your life, and then you had some kind of fight with him that caused you not to get out of bed for a week?"

Will props one foot up on the chair and draws his knee to his chest. "I know it sounds stupid when you say it out loud—"

Carlotta interrupts, "It's not stupid, Will. If anything, I think that story more than anything might explain to them the effect this situation with Mike has had on your life, because it demonstrates how your well-being and your relationship with him are intertwined. It may not sound like a big deal for someone to be sad about losing someone they love, but it's a much bigger deal if they're so sad that they have to see a doctor because they can barely leave their bed."

He looks away. "They won't understand. I know they won't."

"Maybe not at first," says Carlotta gently, "but do you think they'll hear you out? Do you think they'll want to understand—to listen to what you have to say?"

He hadn't thought about it like that before. "I guess so," Will mutters.

Satisfied, Carlotta goes for her notebook again, then seems to realize about the dropped pen and roots around on the ground for it. While she's making a note for herself, Will switches gears. "There's another thing. I wanted to ask you—I mean—Mike mentioned when we were talking that he'd like to see me in person if I'm okay with that. Should I do it? I mean, do you think I'm… ready?"

She finishes writing and looks back up at him. "Do you want to see Mike? I don't mean do you think it's a good idea—I mean, would you enjoy seeing him? Would you look forward to it? Does the thought of it make you feel drawn to him?"

"No," he says immediately, "but—"

"Then you're ready," she concludes.

That much Will wasn't expecting, and he keeps dwelling on it all through the rest of his appointment with Carlotta and on the car ride home with Jonathan. If he doesn't want to see Mike—and Will knows he doesn't; he's a lot more scared of it than he is tempted—does that mean he's broken his addiction? On the other hand, what if she's wrong? What if seeing Mike in person will be enough fuel to load that gun in his hand again? She's always telling him that he's in recovery and that there are always going to be setbacks—triggers he can't avoid—whether they're with Mike or someone else down the line.

God, Will can't even imagine going through all of this all over again with somebody new in the future. At least he's gotten familiar, even comfortable, with the pain of the mess he made in Mike's life. He's got no desire whatsoever to do this kind of damage again to anybody new—or to himself.