When Mike drops Will back off at home for the day, Will dodges Mom and Hopper's questions about how it went and makes a beeline for El's bedroom. He knows Jonathan will want to check in about how everything went—make sure that Will is okay—but Will doesn't think he's ready for Jonathan to know exactly what went down between him and Mike today, and he doesn't want to have to lie to Jonathan in the meantime, either. It's weird with El because she and Mike dated for so long, but maybe, in a weird way, that means she'll understand.
Will hopes she'll understand, anyway. He doesn't have many people to talk to these days, and he's not seeing Carlotta again until Tuesday evening.
"Hi," says El when Will knocks on her door and steps on through. "How did it go?"
"Okay. Weird. Is it all right if I talk to you about it? I don't have to if you don't want to."
"No, it's all right. Thanks for asking."
She's sitting against the headboard of her bed, and Will crowds in next to her and lays his head on her shoulder. It's almost the same position as he and Mike were in just a few hours ago in that theater, but it feels totally different. El doesn't put her arm around him, for one thing, but that's not it: the emotional charge just isn't there with her like it was with Mike.
It's still nice, though. In some ways, it's actually nicer than letting Mike hold him was. At least, with El, Will knows neither of them is ever going anywhere, and yet he also knows that he'd be fine if she did. With Mike, Will doesn't have either of those guarantees.
"Are you and Mike dating now?" El blurts before Will can even begin to tell her about his day.
Honestly, Will has to think about that one for a moment. Are they dating? What they did certainly felt like a date, especially when they were cuddling during the movie, but afterward, when Will tried to hold his hand over lunch…
"I don't know," Will admits. "We should probably talk about it—we should probably talk about a lot of things, actually—but I'm kind of scared to even go there. I feel like I break it every time I touch it, you know? I don't want to break it this time."
"What happened?"
El nudges Will forward a little so that she can loop her arm around his waist. It feels good there.
"We just… we went to the movies, and when we were there, we sat—kind of like this, actually. He had his arm around my shoulders, and at one point…" But Will can't bring himself to admit out loud that Mike touched his cheek. It felt so nice—and scary—and he's afraid he'll break the magic if he voices it out loud, especially when it's probably never going to happen again, judging by how hard Mike's hand was trembling when he did it. He shakes his head and continues, "Anyway, I told him I should take some time and not talk to him for a little while, just to make sure my head is on straight, and then he got kind of—weird. He looked sad, and I tried to hold his hand, but he snatched it back pretty quick."
"He was mad at you?"
El's voice sounds a little angry—a little protective—and Will can't help but love her for it, even as he says, "No, I don't think that was it. It was almost like I embarrassed him or something? I don't know. I mean, I know this is all… new for him."
"Because you were just friends for so long?"
"Well, that," Will acknowledges, "and, uh, because I'm a boy. I think he's trying to be okay with that, but I don't think he really is yet."
"I'm sorry," says El. "That isn't fair, not when you've been trying so hard to rise up for him."
Will shrugs. "It's okay. I've had a lot more time to come to terms with being gay than he has. Not that he's completely gay! I'm not saying he didn't love you. I just mean—"
"I know." There's a hint of laughter in El's voice. "It's okay."
"This is really weird, right? I mean, I should find somebody else to talk to about him, shouldn't I?"
El assures him, "Maybe it's weird, but I don't mind. I think I would have minded a year ago, but I don't anymore."
"How are you doing with where you two left things, anyway? I feel like I talk so much about my problems with Mike and never listen to yours."
"There's not much to tell. It's over. I'm okay that it's over. I think I might have… I didn't have many friends other than him, and I think I put too much worth on him when we were together."
Will snorts. "Yeah. Yeah, I know exactly what you mean." He hesitates. "I'm glad you and I are friends now. I like talking to you."
El pulls Will a little closer with the arm encircling him. "Me too."
He ends up hanging out in El's room most of the rest of the day, mostly because he's avoiding Jonathan. When Mom asks at the kitchen table how it went seeing Mike and Will says it went fine, Jonathan doesn't look convinced, but Will can't bring himself to be honest about it, not even when they're in their room alone together before bed. It's not that it was bad to see Mike, exactly. It was just… a lot, and Will doesn't think it's going to help him at all to have Jonathan piling on him for making terrible decisions as he's trying to process it.
It feels weird not going to the basement at seven o'clock to call Mike. In some ways, he's relieved—at least Will has been spared of his usual racing heartbeat and sweating and stuff in anticipation of talking to Mike—but it's also a little alarming to think how quickly Will was able to get in the habit of expecting that rush of emotions every night.
Does it just feel weird not to talk to Mike tonight, or is Mike's absence making Will feel empty? He spends a lot of time puzzling it out and comes to the conclusion that it's just weird and doesn't really feel bad. Good—that's yet another sign that Will is being healthy about all of this.
When Will is lying in bed, long after Jonathan has started snoring, he keeps replaying in his mind how it felt to snuggle up to Mike's chest—for Mike to put his arms around Will and hold them there—how the tiniest brush of their elbows or pinkies sent shockwaves down Will's spine. God. God.
To be safe, he decides to wait a few weeks to call Mike again. He feels sort of bad, making Mike wait like that without giving him a word to indicate what Will is thinking about any of this, but it's not about Mike, and Will hopes that Mike will understand that. He feels good about it in his session with Carlotta on Tuesday, but the more days pass, the more Will wonders exactly what's going on in Mike's head during all those days of silence. Does Mike regret all of it? Is he going to answer the phone next month and say that all of this has been a terrible mistake and they need to go back to just being friends? Is Will imagining that they were ever anything more than friends in the first place?
In the meantime, though, he has bigger problems than Mike to worry about. Namely, he needs to figure out how to tell Lucas and Dustin the exact implications of his borderline personality disorder.
Will's not keen on having that conversation twice, so he winds up inviting both of them to come down to Sullivan the following weekend so that he can talk to them together. Neither of them has kept in touch very much with El, but Will insists on inviting her to hang out with them and warns them both ahead of time that she'll be around. He doesn't like the thought of her having nobody outside of their household to talk to, and he thinks it might be a little easier to tell Dustin and Lucas… everything with her there for moral support. Thankfully, they seem to be okay with the idea of El joining them.
When they arrive, Will's heart is racing just as hard as it did a week ago when Mike came down to visit. He's tempted to avoid having this conversation with them altogether, but he knows he'll feel better as soon as it's over with; even if it goes badly, at least then the anticipation of doing something unpleasant will be over. So the four of them all go for a walk downtown, and Will says straightaway, "So, um, I have to admit I had an ulterior motive asking you to come down here."
"Mike is your boyfriend now, isn't he?" says Lucas immediately. "It would explain why he's been acting so cagey ever since he came down here to see you last week."
Taken aback, Will laughs a little. "What? Actually, no, he's not. He's been acting weird?"
"He won't talk about what happened between you guys at all," Dustin elaborates. "We just figured he was embarrassed and trying to cover up what happened."
"I think he is embarrassed, but that's not what's going on."
"Then what's going on?" Lucas asks pointedly.
"That's… kind of why I wanted to see you. I wanted to explain some things."
He looks at El, who gives him an encouraging nod. "Well?" says Lucas.
Will feels like his legs are about to give out underneath him. This is the worst part, he reminds himself: it'll get easier once he's actually started talking. "Remember what I said about having borderline personality disorder?"
Exchanging a look with Lucas, Dustin says, "Yeah. What does that mean, anyway? You were really vague on the phone about it."
"It means I… it's like, I kind of…"
He looks at El again, who says quietly, "Unstable relationships."
"Yeah, but you and Mike have barely spoken in years now," says Lucas. "That's not so much unstable as just—nonexistent. And if your relationships are so unstable, why hasn't there been a bunch of drama between you and me or Dustin or—basically anybody but Mike?"
"It's not all of my relationships," Will hedges. "Mike's the only one so far, and I think it's because I have romantic feelings for him—or at least thought I did. I'm still figuring out what it all means, and I don't really know if what I feel counts as love so much as just…"
Dustin and Lucas are obviously not following. Will shoots El another desperate look and tries to remember what Carlotta suggested when he last talked to her about coming out as borderline to Lucas and Dustin. "Do you remember when I first started taking antidepressants?"
"Yeah," says Dustin right away. "I called you, and Jonathan said you wouldn't come to the phone—that you were barely getting out of bed. He didn't know why not."
"None of us did," adds Lucas.
"Then, all of a sudden, you had started taking pills, and you were acting like everything was normal, and you wouldn't talk about what had happened."
Will winces. "Yeah. That was—that was about Mike. We'd—I called him, and I accused him of not caring about me and said a bunch of really awful stuff to him, and we had a fight, and I couldn't… I couldn't. I just couldn't do it anymore, not without help—medical help. I knew the way I was thinking about him was unhealthy, but it wasn't until then that I thought I might actually be… be sick. I don't mean sick like disgusting or gross—I mean sick like actually, medically unwell."
Lucas says, "But you've fought with Mike before. We all fought with each other all the time as kids, and you were always fine."
"Yeah, well, when we were kids, I didn't feel this way about him."
Dustin glances at Lucas and then says, "I still don't get it. You didn't feel how about him?"
"It's like… an obsession. It's like I can't… take my mind off of him or be a real person outside of him. It's why we had to stop talking, and it's why I reacted so badly to us getting into that fight, and it's why I have to be really, really careful with how and how often I talk to him now, because I don't want to revert back to that. Talking to Mike isn't just hard for me—it's dangerous."
"Then why do it?" asks Lucas. "If Mike is so bad for you, why talk to him every night? Why ask him to come over last weekend?"
"Because of Vecna," says Will with a heavy sigh. "Because I don't want to live in fear of what happened in June happening again. And… and… maybe a little bit because I wanted to prove myself that I could learn."
Lucas and Dustin look at each other. "That you could learn?"
"Yeah," says Will, just barely gaining confidence. "The whole time I was with him last June, I was so pissed at myself for letting myself start spiraling again when I was supposed to have learned in therapy how not to be that way with anybody anymore. I thought, if I could do it the right way—put boundaries in place—I could show myself that I can trust myself again."
He's making a valiant effort here to explain everything that he's afraid to say out loud, but he's pretty sure neither of them is getting it. And how could they? Dustin and Lucas don't have any addictions; they can't possibly understand from experience what it's like to need anything that's not good for them, let alone wrap their heads around that thing being another person.
After another five minutes or so of this back-and-forth, Will has pretty much resigned himself to it being a lost cause—so he's totally taken aback when Lucas says, "Look, Will, I'm not going to pretend I understand when I don't, okay? But if you're saying that this is a problem for you, I accept that."
"Both of us do," chimes in Dustin, nodding. "We're really glad you told us, man. Sorry to make you have to try to explain your side of it a dozen times."
"It's okay," Will mutters, feeling rather hot in the face.
El reaches toward him to squeeze his hand and smiles. Suddenly, this whole day doesn't feel like such a colossal mistake.