Chapter Text
There’s a bottle of vodka rattling around the trunk of Jonathan’s car.
Nancy made sure it was at least cushioned by a blanket, in case of any sharp turns, but it’s been back there for over a month.
“We should drink that,” she says, prompted by a clunk on the car ride home from the Snow Ball, Mike and Will uncharacteristically silent in the back seat, Mike staring dreamily out the window, Will’s eyes downcast. About par for the course for most middle school dances, Nancy thinks. (At least in her experience. She can’t remember seeing Jonathan at any of theirs.)
“What?” Jonathan asks, over the sounds of what Nancy’s pretty sure is Joy Division streaming out of the radio.
Another clunk.
Nancy flicks her eyes toward the back of the car. “That.” The vodka, she mouths. “We should, you know. Put it to good use.”
“What are you guys talking about?” Mike asks. Less annoying little brother, more genuinely curious. Seeing Eleven, or Jane, as she’s insisting on being called now, must have actually done some good. (Nancy sacrificed her favorite Wet n Wild eyeshadow to the cause, but seeing Mike’s face when she walked in made it all worth it.)
“Nothing,” Nancy says, Jonathan echoing her a beat later.
“Do you seriously have a shotgun in the back of the car?”
“No!” Nancy scoffs, with mock outrage. “I keep that in my purse.”
It’s a testament to how much Mike has been affected by the evening that he doesn’t react as he normally would; meaning that instead of a smack from behind her, Nancy only receives a “Ha ha,” followed by a kick to the back of her seat.
“Don’t ruin my car,” Jonathan admonishes him mildly, eyes on the rearview mirror. Nancy can see the crease in his brow as he takes in Will’s quiet demeanor, and she reaches over, pulling his hand into hers. (It’s still a new enough thing for her that she feels a thrill every time she does it. She can hold his hand. They can drive around together. They belong to each other.)
She twists her mouth into a smile, trying to reassure him with a tight squeeze that Will is fine, or at the very least, that the danger he’s in is not of the actual life-or-death, Upside Down, shadow monster kind, but rather garden variety middle school peril. Who danced with who. During what songs.
He gives her a weak smile in return, then looks up into the rearview again. “I need to get some gas, do you guys want anything?”
“Three Musketeers,” both Mike and Will say as one, and then they’re absolutely falling over with laughter in the back seat.
Nancy looks back, frowning. “Why is that funny?”
The boys only laugh harder, as Jonathan pulls into the gas station. “Three Musketeers, got it. Do you want anything?” he asks her, to which Nancy shakes her head. The car rocks a little as the door slams behind him, and Nancy’s left with the slowly petering out giggles coming from behind her.
Nancy belatedly remembers the twenty dollar bill shoved into her hand by her mother on the way out the door for this exact purpose, and jumps out of the car, throwing a “Stay here,” over her shoulder.
Only to almost get run over by a vaguely familiar maroon BMW, which screeches to a halt just a foot from her.
“Sorry!” Nancy cries, putting her hands up in apology, and then, “Steve?”
Steve Harrington is looking at her through the windshield from under his hair, one hand extended out protectively toward someone in the front seat. Dustin.
“Nancy?”
Nancy feels that this may have been inevitable, that of course she was going to almost get run over by her ex-boyfriend and the boy she danced with as she ran to catch up with her current boyfriend outside a gas station in the middle of the night.
(She wonders what life is like outside of small towns in Indiana. Simpler, probably.)
“Holy shit, Nance, are you okay?” Steve is in front of her, somehow. She didn’t even see him get out of the car.
“No, that was my fault, sorry. I shouldn’t have—”
“Steve?” Jonathan’s running toward them.
“He almost ran me over,” Nancy tries to explain, and Jonathan pulls up as he reaches them, looking wary.
“Not on purpose, Jesus, she jumped out in front of me.”
“Jonathan?”
“Nancy?”
Now Dustin’s out of the car. And Mike and Will. Nancy wonders if she’ll ever hang out with other people in her entire life.
“I’m fine,” Nancy says to their little group, “everyone’s fine. It’s going to take a lot more than Steve to kill me.” Considering what they’ve gone through and survived, it’s probably true.
Steve frowns at her. “Uh, thanks?”
“What are you doing here, anyway?” Mike asks.
“Getting gas,” Dustin drawls, the obviously left unsaid.
“I’m gonna go finish paying,” Jonathan says haltingly, backing away. Nancy follows him, slipping her hand into his again, leaving the boys bickering over how gas isn’t the only thing you can get at a gas station.
“Are you okay?” Jonathan asks her once they’re inside.
Nancy laughs. “I can’t believe after everything, monsters, mind . . . whatevers, Steve almost takes me out with Dustin in the passenger seat. But yeah,” she says, squeezing his hand once more. “I’m fine. And I have something for you. Well, from my mom. She feels bad that you keep driving me places.”
“She knows that’s part of it, right? The whole, I’m dating your daughter thing,” he says, smiling fondly down at her.
I love you, she thinks. (She hasn’t said it yet. She’s not sure why.)
“Well, you had to deal with Mike tonight, so,” Nancy says instead, throwing the twenty on the counter, “on four, please.”
Steve’s just pulling his car up next to the pump when she comes back outside, and Nancy wonders if a near-death experience is enough to get them over whatever lingering awkwardness that still lies between them. (They didn’t break up so much as fall apart, but it’s hard, going from boyfriend-and-girlfriend to barely speaking. She misses him, almost in the way she’d missed Jonathan, before. He was there, and now he’s not.)
“Hey,” he says, stopping her, hanging off the open door. “I am sorry.”
“It’s fine. All my fault,” she replies, shaking her head, walking over and leaning against the front of the car she’d spent so many mornings in. (Evenings, too.) “How . . . how are you?” Simple. She can do this.
“Oh, you know me, Nance,” he tosses off, running a hand through his hair, a careless grin on his face. “It’s tough work, chauffeuring these little shits around.”
“I heard that,” Dustin calls over to them.
“We can take Dustin home, if um, you need to get somewhere.” Nancy runs down the list of parties happening tonight in her head, but her invites have been thin on the ground as of late. (Not that she minds. She doesn’t want to give Bauman too much credit, but after some careful self-examination, one of the things she’s realized is that standing next to Steve while he had conversations she wasn’t interested in wasn’t really how she wanted to spend her Saturday nights.)
Steve makes a face. “Nah, Mr. and Mrs. Harrington are in Vail, so. Taking advantage of having the house to myself.”
“Shotgunning?” Nancy realizes she has to clarify which kind, which probably says something about her and the life she leads. “Beers, that is.”
“It’s not quite as fun when no one’s there to shout chug at you,” Steve says, a little sarcastic.
Nancy grimaces. “Yeah, well.” She looks around, searching the area for a response, but the only thing she finds is Jonathan, hanging the nozzle back on the pump. He nods at them.
Steve waves back.
Off Nancy’s look, he shrugs. “What?”
“Um,” Nancy says, nonplussed.
“He’s not the worst guy. You’ve got good taste, Nance. Present company not excluded.”
Nancy smiles to herself, ducking her head to hide it, because he isn’t wrong, on any count. She glances back up.
For a brief second, so quick she might be imagining it, Steve’s carefree attitude slips, and the only thing on his face is naked emotion. His eyes flick to hers, and Nancy can almost physically feel the loneliness within him, and then it’s gone, the bright, devil-may-care smile back once more.
Nancy flinches, and with it, the awkwardness comes rushing back. She stammers for a second, trying to remember the thread of the conversation, and when she speaks again there’s a note of concern in her voice she wishes wasn’t there. “So, how are you doing?”
“You already asked me that,” Steve says, wincing.
“Right.” She knows there’s no way of saving this, figuring it’s best to extricate herself from the situation and try again next time. “So, I’d better,” she says, gesturing vaguely back toward Jonathan, toward Mike and Will.
“Oh, yeah, sure.” Steve looks almost relieved. “See you around, Nance.”
Nancy can’t help but feel like instead of fixing things, she’s only made them worse.
“Should I ask?” Jonathan says, unconcerned, once Nancy’s settled herself back into the front seat.
She shakes her head. “I just wanted to, I dunno, see how he was doing. We never really . . . cleared the air, I guess. Everything was just so, well, you know.”
Jonathan doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t have to. He knows.
“He also said you weren’t the worst.”
“Wow.”
Nancy rolls her eyes at him. “It’s just. We’re all mixed up in this weird thing together. Every time the world’s about to end, we’re all at your house, trying to stop it. It’d be nice if we could not feel like we’re pulling teeth every time we see each other.”
“That might just be you,” Jonathan points out. “Steve and I, we’re . . . fine.”
Nancy can hear the lie. “Are you?”
“We’ve . . . talked,” Jonathan says, evasively. “We parked next to each other last week.”
“I don’t think ‘Morning, Harrington’ counts as talking.”
“Hey,” Jonathan scoffs, affronted. “We’re on a first name basis now. I said Steve.”
Nancy raises her eyebrows at him, then sighs. “I just . . . I think he’s lonely.”
Jonathan gives her a complicated look, but all he says is, “That’s not your fault.” He’s wrong, because it is, technically, her fault, but Nancy lets it slide.
“I just wanted things to be less awkward. But it looks like that isn’t going to change anytime soon,” she concludes with a huff, rolling down the window so she can scream for Mike to get his ass back in the car.
The only problem being that when she goes to stick her head out said window, Steve Harrington’s face is already in it.
“Holy shit,” Nancy yelps, her heart racing. (At least now they’re even on scaring each other to death.) “Sorry,” she says preemptively, hoping he hadn’t heard her.
“Is everything okay?” Jonathan asks Steve, his gaze focusing past him to where the boys are still arguing.
“No, nothing’s wrong—it’s just,” Steve stutters, “that was seriously awkward, right?” Nancy flushes at the confirmation of his overhearing, but Steve doesn’t wait for her to confirm that yes, it was incredibly awkward. “And, that sucks. Because I think you two might be the only friends older than thirteen I have left. And, uh, I’m not really sure on the friends part.”
Nancy doesn’t know how to respond to that, but she knows she has to say something. “Steve—”
“Anyway, um,” Steve continues, cutting her off, his eyes fixed somewhere on the seat in between them, “do you guys want to . . . hang out?”
Nancy blinks, her response lost, her mouth hanging open.
“It’s just, I’ve got the house to myself, like I said to Nance, and I dunno, maybe you guys wanted to . . . talk? Or just, whatever? I have beer? We don’t have to drink beer, I don’t know how you feel about beer, I mean, I know how Nancy feels, but uh. Yeah.”
The empty silence that follows Steve’s rushed statement reminds Nancy of the Upside Down, in that it might legitimately kill them if they stay in it for too long.
Jonathan comes to the rescue. “We’ve got a bottle of vodka in the trunk.” An offering.
Steve beams at him. “Okay, now we’re talking.”
Nancy’s mouth is still open, and she shuts it with a snap, still trying to reconcile what’s happened in the last few seconds, glancing between the two boys on either side of her, first to Steve, who’s looking at her expectantly, to Jonathan, who, despite having offered up their vodka (which she had vague plans for drinking tonight anyway), Nancy can’t quite believe is up for this.
“Come on, Nance, your boyfriend’s in. We can trade war stories. We can argue over who owns my bat.”
Jonathan actually smiles, and Nancy thinks this might not be the worst idea Steve’s ever had.
“Okay,” Nancy says, throwing caution to the wind. “Yeah. Let’s do it.”
The look of relief on Steve’s face convinces Nancy that this is a good idea, that they can get through this. Not two and one, or even individuals. They can be three people who took down a monster together once more.
“So. All of us. Your house,” Nancy confirms.
“Yeah, just gotta drop this shithead off first,” Steve says, with affection.
“Stop talking about me like I can’t hear you, I can hear you!” Dustin screams, exasperated. Steve pulls his head out of the window to extend a pointed finger and a death glare toward him.
Nancy takes advantage of his momentary distraction to whisper, “Are you sure? We can still back out, if you want.”
Jonathan tilts his head toward her. “You want to go.”
“That’s not—”
“And who knows. We’re in a weird thing. Maybe I want to move past ‘Morning, Harrington.’”
“I knew it,” Nancy hisses, and then Steve’s attention is back on them.
“So yeah, ditch the kids, and I’ll see you guys at my place? Nancy knows how to get there.”
“Yeah. I know.” She doesn’t mention that Jonathan does too, because that would take them to a completely different level of awkward. One they might not be able to return from. Steve, if he's thinking it, doesn't say anything. Neither does Jonathan.
“Awesome.” Steve flashes another grin, and then shouts, “Henderson! Let’s go!”
“All right, Jesus, I’m coming!” Dustin shouts back, and then Steve’s grabbing him by the back of the collar and pulling him away.
As Mike and Will walk back to the car, Nancy looks over at Jonathan. “You're sure you want to do this?” she asks, again.
Jonathan breathes out, resolute. “Let’s go get drunk with Steve Harrington.”