It's Tuesday night, three days after Mike turned Will's whole world upside down again, and Will doesn't think Jonathan believes a word that's coming out of Will's mouth right now. It's fair enough: Will doesn't believe his own bullshit, either.

Ever since he made contact with Mike again, Will has been driven by one critical wish: not to end up feeling the way he felt any of the times before when he gave Mike too much power over him. Every time he's said anything to Mike—hell, every time he's said anything to himself—he's first asked himself, is this going to screw him up? Is this going to be like last time? Is he going to get attached enough to fall apart if and when he and Mike splinter again?

He thought he was being careful, but apparently, he hasn't been near careful enough. The last thing Will ever wanted was to end up lying in bed, unable to concentrate on any damn thing, obsessing over his relationship with Mike Wheeler—and yet here he is at eight o'clock on a weeknight, doing that exact thing.

No: the last thing Will ever wanted was to lose Mike. He thought he had his priorities straight, but he didn't, and the sooner he admits that to himself, the sooner he digs himself out of this grave.

"I'm fine," he tells Jonathan now, even though he's not fine, even though nothing about this is fine. "I'm in control. See? I'm communicating and everything. I'm not just—unresponsive, not like last time."

"Yeah," says Jonathan, "but you're not getting your studies done during the day, and you're not doing your hobbies. Outside of coming to meals and not saying a word during any of them, you're not doing much of anything but sitting staring off into space or—or lying in bed refusing to move. You're worrying me and El, and Mom and Hopper have figured out that something is up, and honestly? If you don't tell Mom what's happening, I might just tell her myself."

That gets Will's attention. He's lying on his side facing the wall, but at this, he rolls over so that he can at least look Jonathan in the face, even with Will's head still smushed against the pillow. "You can't tell Mom. You can't. You promised."

"Yeah, well, that was before you fell into a depression coma for three days. Are you even taking your trazodone? Are you?"

"Of course I am," says Will bitterly. "I'm not stupid."

"Aren't you? Because it was pretty damn stupid of you to get involved again with Mike."

"I had to. I was careful."

"Well, clearly, you weren't careful enough—"

But something inside Will just snaps. "Fine. I fucked up. Is that what you want to hear? Does it make you happy to see me pay for it?"

Jonathan's jaw actually drops. He takes a second to just stare at Will, and then he gingerly sits down on the bed and oh so carefully drops a hand on top of the part of Will's shoulder that's peeking out from behind the blankets. "No. No, it doesn't make me happy, and I'm sorry to come across to you that way."

Will hasn't felt this tired in months, and Jonathan's hand feels good on Will's shoulder, and he says, "It's hard enough that I can't even trust myself, okay? I need you to trust me even when I can't, Jonathan, but you've been on my back ever since I reached out to Mike again, and I know it was naive of me to do it, but I had to try. I had to try. You know I did."

He can tell Jonathan wants to argue, but to his credit, Jonathan doesn't. "And now? When shit starts going down again in Hawkins and we all get dragged into it?"

Will closes his eyes. "We could have picked El up in Ruth without Mike coming along. You and Mom and Hopper could have saved me from the Demogorgon and the Mind Flayer without Mike's involvement. There were enough of us to stop the Russians without Mike and I both needing to be there."

Sighing, Jonathan squeezes Will's shoulder. "I don't want to make you feel worse. I just… god, Will. I've watched you work so hard to pick yourself back up, and I—this whole situation has been making me crazy. I hate seeing you like this. I want to give you—"

"Everything?" asks Will bitterly. "That's what Mike wanted to do, too, and look how that turned out."

"You don't need him," murmurs Jonathan. "I know it doesn't feel like that now—"

"You have no idea what it feels like now," says Will before he can help himself.

Jonathan sighs again. "Then tell me what it's like. I want to understand. I want to be here for you through this."

But Will can't explain it, not to Jonathan or Mike or El or maybe even Carlotta. How do you explain to somebody healthy what it feels like for your whole existence to hinge on somebody else's word?

There's a knock on the door—Will stiffens—but it's only El, looking lost and clutching Mom's recipe book in her hands. "I'm going to cook," she says awkwardly. "I thought you might like to help."

Will really isn't in the mood to get out of this bed at all, let alone for something as productive as cooking. "We've already had dinner."

"We haven't had dessert," El points out. "Joyce and Hopper are in their room. What do you say?"

He looks from El to Jonathan and back and just—these people are trying so hard to help him, and he can't seem to shape up for them. It makes Will feel like a mooch and a failure. "Okay," he mutters, "but I might not be much help."

"I don't need help," says El just as quietly. "I just want to be with you."

He has to admit, he feels a little more alive when he and El filter into the kitchen and start banging around getting out ingredients to make Grandma's favorite apple pie. Ever since El started cooking in earnest, the Byers-Hopper kitchen has been pretty fully stocked at any given moment with most standard cooking and baking supplies—mixing bowls, whisks, sticks of butter, paper parcels that leak flour and sugar onto the countertops. They start with the crust, mixing flour, salt, butter, and eventually water into a dough that Will suspects is too sticky, but they're not really cooking just to cook—he's pretty sure El just wanted to get Will out of his room.

He wouldn't say that her plan to cheer him up is working, exactly, but he feels a little more alive now that he's not bed-bound, even if the hollow pit inside his chest hasn't filled in at all. See? he tells himself. He can still do things and spend time with people without Mike around. He doesn't need Mike to hang out with his sister, and he certainly doesn't need Mike to feel loved.

And Will does feel loved, sort of. He knows how much his family cares about him—it's not like he's forgotten that. He just—their love doesn't seem to be the kind that matters most to him whenever Mike is in his life.

The stupidest part of all of this is that Mike isn't even gone. He called on Saturday night, then again last night, then again about an hour ago. There's no logical reason for Will to be overreacting so badly, as if Mike is dead and gone and never coming back—

—but, for all it matters, Mike is gone. If Will can't handle the tiniest imperfection in their relationship, he obviously shouldn't be in this relationship to begin with, and that means he's got to start treating Mike like he's far, far away.

Mom pops out of the master bedroom right around when El is putting the pie in the oven. "It smells amazing out here," she says. "What are you making?"

"Pie," says El decisively. Jonathan, who's sitting on the couch, looks up from his book to make eye contact with Will and clears his throat pointedly.

Tonight isn't the first time Jonathan has threatened to tell Mom what's going on with Mike. Will can't even begin to express how much he does not want to have this conversation with her—laying his humiliation bare for his mother, of all people, to see. After everything Mom has done to care for him and raise him right, he feels like he's gone and thrown all her advice out the window and shamed her as this shell of a person who can't do anything right, least of all relationships, and to put that on display for her—

But Will thinks Jonathan means it this time when he says he'll tell her if Will doesn't. In some ways, that would be easier—at least then Will could dodge the worst part of the conversation—but he knows Jonathan will give a skewed picture of what's happening, and that wouldn't be fair to Mike. Honestly, it wouldn't be fair to Will, either, not when Jonathan can't truly understand what's happening inside Will's head. He doesn't think he knows how to make anybody understand it, except maybe Carlotta, and that's only because she's got voodoo powers that Will will never understand.

"Mom," he begins, and then he falters.

Jonathan gives him an encouraging nod. "What is it, honey?" asks Mom, but Will just—stands there dumbly without any of the words he wants or needs.

He looks at Jonathan again. "I can't."

"Yes, you can, Will."

"Will, sweetie, what are you talking ab—"

He decides that a "rip off the Band-Aid" approach is his only chance. He scrunches his eyes shut and blurts, "I'm in love with Mike."

For a second, no one says anything. "With Mike?" echoes Mom in a shaky voice. "You two are dating?"

"Not exactly," mutters Will. "We might have been, maybe. I don't really know. Whatever we were, we're not happening anymore. It's not normal love, Mom. It's…"

When he opens his eyes, Mom has got her concerned face on. El and Jonathan are both staring at Will like they've never seen him before.

"It's why I needed to go on trazodone, and it's why I started therapy, and it's why I got diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. There's something wrong with me." His voice cracks. "There's something really wrong with me."

When he feels a hand on his waist, he flinches and whips around, but it's just El, who winds both her arms around him and tucks her chin in between his neck and his shoulder. "I'll clean up here," she says softly. "You two should go and talk."

"Can you come?" The sound of Will's voice horrifies him. "Can you all come?"

So they all wind up sitting in the living room together, Will wedged in between Jonathan and El on the couch, Mom perched on her knees on the ground across from him. He's been talking for only a couple of minutes before Hopper emerges from the master bedroom. He misses the exposition of this story, but seems to catch on pretty quick that whatever's happening is awfully personal; he turns to go and give them privacy, but Will figures he may as well do this thing all the way and calls, "It's okay, Hop. You can… you can…" So Hopper comes and sits next to Mom on the floor with his elbows on his knees and listens.

It takes about twenty minutes to get the whole story out, partly because Will can't find the words and partly because there's so much there to say. A lot of it is stuff even Jonathan and El haven't heard yet. His eyes are leaking, but he's not sobbing. It's just—so much. It's everything.

Five minutes in, El puts her head on Will's shoulder and keeps it there for the rest of the story. Ten minutes in, Mom raises a hand to Will's knee and drops it there to rub circles into it with her thumb. Before now, Will doesn't think he ever truly appreciated the power of nonverbal communication, but he probably should have. For one thing, there's always a lot of it between him and El, who still hasn't quite found her voice after all these years.

When he's done, nobody seems to know what to say. "That's it," says Will finally, mopping his face for the millionth time. "That's everything happening with me. If you think it's gross or sick, or you hate me—"

"No, honey," says Mom. It's the first thing she's said since he started talking; her eyebrows are knitted together , and her mouth is open. "I just—I can't believe I had no idea—"

"I'm sorry I didn't tell—"

"You've got nothing to apologize for, kid," says Hopper, swiping at his mouth with his hand. "We're all here for you. You don't have to go through this by yourself."

"Is this what you talk to Carlotta about every week?" Mom asks. "We thought it was about the Upside Down, but that didn't make a lot of sense. I mean, she wouldn't exactly believe you, would she?"

Will shrugs. "I've told her about it. I'm pretty sure she thinks I'm either lying or delusional, but she hasn't tried to convince me yet that it's all in my head. That's part of it, but… but Mike is a big part of it, too. Mike is the reason I started going."

Mom wipes her forehead and sighs and gets up on her knees so that she's a little closer to Will's level. "Will, I need you to listen to me, okay? It's going to be okay. Everything's going to be okay. I'm going to make sure of that. If I could take away your pain and keep it for myself instead—"

"But Mom, that doesn't help," says Will helplessly.

"Why not, baby?"

"My whole problem with Mike is that I wanted him to take care of me. I let him do it, and I unlearned how to take care of myself. The whole point of all of this is supposed to be that I'm supposed to do it myself."

Jonathan's voice sounds scratchy when he says, "Yeah, but that doesn't mean you don't get to have any support from anyone, does it? Just because it shouldn't always be Mike doesn't mean you're never supposed to lean on people."

"You've just got to spread it around," agrees Hopper. "You're in the driver's seat, but that doesn't mean nobody can come with you."

"And you can talk to us," Mom reiterates. "All of us. Sweetie, I don't—you don't—you keep calling yourself sick, and maybe you are, at least medically, but you're not… you're my baby boy." Her voice cracks. "You're my baby boy, and nothing you could do would make me love you any less. Do you hear me? You can't scare me away. I'm here for you, and I want to help you, and I don't know what you need from me, but whatever it is, I'll do it, Will. Okay? I'll do it. I don't know what I did wrong that made you think you were weak, but you're not weak. You're—"

"You didn't do anything wrong," Will mutters, feeling suddenly embarrassed. "I think I was just born messed up. It's nothing you did or didn't do to—"

He breaks off when the phone rings. "Shit," mutters Jonathan.

"What?"

"That's probably Mike. He didn't sound happy when I told him earlier tonight that you wouldn't come to the phone—said he wasn't going to give up trying."

"Shit," echoes Will. But he looks at his mom and tips his head against El's and realizes—he can do this. He can do this. "It's okay," he resolves, and he shrugs out of El's orbit and stands. "I can answer."

Hopper's voice sounds wary as he says, "What are you going to tell him?"

"That I'll call him back from the basement," says Will, "and then…"

He's not sure, exactly, but whatever it is, it's not going to break him. It's not going to break him.