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Three days after Vecna tore apart Hawkins, since the sky started raining ash, the oddest thing happens; Nancy breaks up with Jonathan. It’s only odd because it’s, you know, the end of the world and the breakup happens so perfunctorily you’d think they were two strangers awkwardly trying to hold the door open for the other to exit.
Jonathan tells her, finally, that he doesn’t think—he doesn’t want to—go to Emerson. Considering the state of Hawkins and soon to be everywhere else, it’s not like she’s still thinking about classes or dorms or a degree or anything else either. But he lied to her, he lied about his acceptance letter, and finding that out hurts more than what he was trying to keep from her; there’s nothing to say to each other after. There’s no fight, there’s just silence and Jonathan looking stoically away and Nancy’s jaw trembling—not just because it’s over, but because it hurts way less than she deserves for it to. The world is ending. Around them obviously, but selfishly, Nancy’s is coming down around her too, only it feels like she can finally breathe out without her heart threatening to escape her ever-constricting ribs.
She breathes and there’s barely a squeeze.
“Hey.” Steve drops a couple bags of groceries onto the kitchen counter, snack cakes and Pringles cans escaping their plastic confines and rolling out. “Food run.” He’s reaching into one and pulling out an apple. From the looks of it, it’s the only remotely healthy thing procured. “You hungry?”
Way too smooth, he flicks it up his wrist and lets it fall into his palm, where it hovers half a second later in front of her face.
When she moves her gaze past the slightly bruised fruit and up to Steve’s, he’s smirking, his mouth curled at the corners.
The apple sways closer, temptingly.
“Promise it isn’t poisoned. Ish,” he adds. “Who actually knows with—” He makes a whistling sound and gestures a circle around them, wry about it.
What does it say about them that the end of the world has become its own inside joke?
She snatches the apple, feeling her lips pull to match his, drawn into following. “Thanks.”
With his eyebrows in his hairline, a suppressed version of him gloating, he grabs his own snack—a box of sugary cereal he pops open with ease—and moves around to sink onto the couch, falling into a sprawl. And that’s a luxury. Hopper’s cabin has become their headquarters, generously speaking, which means at all times it’s bustling with people. Joyce and Hopper whispering on the porch, when they’re pretending not to be sharing long, meaningful glances; Will bouncing between Mike, who’s distracted by El, and Dustin, who’s been profoundly grieving Eddie; Lucas stopping by throughout the day to keep everyone updated on Max, with news that never seems to get better.
Now, though, they’re alone, just her and Steve. There’re voices in one of the rooms, noises just outside too—someone whisper-shouting at someone else as they leave, a common sound with the communal tension always on high.
Steve drops his head against the top of the cushion and sighs.
It’s deep and exhausted, but she knows him well enough to know he’s feeling more than just tired. They’re all tired. A full night’s sleep would actually be godsent right now. Hell, she’d take 4 uninterrupted hours at this point, which is about how long it usually takes before the nightmares start or Will gets the Vecna-creeps or some short-haired woman in a pants suit shows up looking for Hopper. Go figure, but they’re not exactly saving the world on business hours only here.
She drops down next to him. She doesn’t mean to sit so close, but when she lands it jostles him. Their legs wind up pressed against each other, her elbow digging into the crook of his. There’s a dip where they meet. Steve doesn’t even notice, too weary to overthink it like she immediately is.
She holds the apple in her lap, trapping it between her fingers, and looks over at him. He’s rubbing his eyes. Softly, she asks him, “Have you heard from them yet?”
“No.” Steve clears his throat. Fidgeting with the cereal lid, he flips it open and closed, over and over. “You know, I used to wonder, end of the world? Is that what it’d take for the parental units to show up? Turns out, not so much.”
His smile is so bitter. It hurts to see.
“They probably don’t know,” she tries, but he cuts her off.
“Nah, don’t—Nance, you don’t need to do that—make excuses or whatever. It’s cool. I mean, do I not look like a guy who can take on the apocalypse alone?” He points at himself, face serious. The couple pieces of cereal he spilled onto his sweater on the drop down kinda ruins the effect.
“You’re not alone,” she nudges him.
It’s supposed to be lighthearted. It’s supposed to be sympathetic. But he says, “Yeah,” and doesn’t seem convinced, his face falling, his voice even sadder.
Nancy’s heart jumps around.
Six little nuggets.
There was a time that Steve telling her he wanted kids and a glorified, live-in minivan? It would’ve had her itching to work out her commitment issues elsewhere, through any cathartic means—journaling, Jonathan, literally running in the direction that’s away.
She can’t say that she sees herself in that future, exactly, but with everything else going on, it feels like a happy ending she’s happy to buy into. Even if the inevitably is slim.
Brighter, she blurts, “How’s Robin?” and then winces at herself, at the obvious topic change.
Something crosses his face, but then he’s smiling, real and genuine. “Made a new friend, believe it or not.”
“Wow,” Nancy draws out. “I kinda figured two was her max. And,” she tilts her head between them, gestures back and forth with it.
“Right? Honestly, I didn’t even know she had it in her to grow the social circle I was solely occupying til you came along. But then again, you’re pretty damn likable, so.”
He isn’t trying to flirt with her. Or make a move. But the compliment still unfurls inside her, takes hold of her pulse and speeds it up a bit, leaving her stumbling behind, trying to catch up.
“Am I?” she gives back. She can’t help the affectionate lilt. It does it on its own.
Steve’s head is still lolled against the cushion. He doesn’t say anything until she looks over, waiting until their eyes meet. She gets to see the moment he starts to smile, watches it stay soft.
“Nicest girl I’ve ever known,” he admits, low enough the words rumble out.
This time, the compliment’s a sure shot, only it hits at some place inside of her still reeling from her breakup. From the ugly relief of it all.
“Right,” she says, peppy and agreeable—fake, hollow. “Nice. Yep, that’s… me.”
Jonathan probably wouldn’t say so. And Steve more than maybe anyone else on the planet has seen her with all her faults on display. Has been on the receiving end of, you know, all of them and has only come bouncing back for more.
Even now, he’s here. He knows about the breakup—the whole cabin has witnessed at least some stage of it—but he hasn’t pushed for an explanation or, hell, an opening. Even though—
Six little nuggets.
Steve sits up, setting the cereal box on the floor, the other hand tentatively reaching out. She sees him hesitate, calculate, figuring out the safest place to offer comfort. He goes for her own hand, closing his over both of hers where she’s still clutching the apple.
“Hey,” he says, so gently.
She closes her eyes. Breathes out. “Steve…”
“Everything okay?” He scoffs. “I know, dumb question. Possibly my dumbest yet and that’s saying something.” The insult flicks her gaze back over to his. He misreads the fire in her eyes as something else and backs off, lifting his hand off hers to instead swipe it through his hair. “Sorry, I’m just saying—trying to—that if you need to talk or whatever, about—anything—you know, apocalypse, Robin’s shitty friend-making skills—my shitty conversation skills—I’m here. For that. If you want to.”
Before she can respond—for the record, her pulse is doing laps, there’s a flutter that’s getting harder to ignore—he squeezes his eyes shut and rocks to his feet.
“Jesus, alright, I should go.”
Flustered, he kicks over the cereal box while trying to scoot around her, which startles them both before she can even work up the chance to protest.
Then she’s standing and he’s saying, “Shit,” as the bedroom door bursts open and Mike appears, his eyes snapping from her to Steve to the couch to the cereal, which—they’re all at their breaking point—gets an overreaction.
“My Cookie Crisp,” he starts to protest, seeing the spill.
“Jesus,” Steve says again and slips past.
“Steve—”
Mike is swooping forward, Will right behind him—the front door creaks open, Steve’s gone the next second—Mike loses it about the damn cereal—El appears amidst the chaos.
“What,” she says, slow, stilted, and confused, “is going on?”
Mike’s scooping up rogue Cookie Crisp pieces into his hand, in a huff. “I asked for one thing—”
“It had to be an accident—” Will starts reassuringly.
“It’s still annoying! What the hell were you two even doing,” he’s saying, loud enough to be yelling, whipping an accusation at Nancy that leaves the room feeling awkward and stifling.
She shoves the apple into his hands as she storms past. “You’re hungry? Enjoy!”
Mike’s protests fall into abrupt silence as she goes after Steve, who’s made it off the porch by the time the door snaps shut behind her.
“Steve,” she calls.
He doesn’t stop, just spins to face her, walking backward. “We don’t have to do this.”
“Would you wait please—” She follows him, clunking down the wooden stairs, trailing behind in more ways than just the obvious.
“Look, the rejection speech? Kinda had some time to piece that one together myself, so, you know, let’s spare us both some embarrassment here—”
“What,” she talks over him, “are you talking about?”
“Nance, c’mon.”
“No, seriously.”
He finally stops when she catches up to him, right next to his car. Around them, trees have wilted and decayed; the hilltop is barren; the sky looks like it’s permanently on fire.
Steve closes his eyes like he’s mentally counting to five, then opens them again, looking pained. “It’s okay.” He starts ticking off, “Wrong time, wrong place. Wrong guy.”
She swallows. Tries to argue. The words refuse to come out, stuck deep in her throat.
The confrontation that she started suddenly feels like it’s swung the other way around.
Uninterrupted, Steve dials himself up to ten. “I get it, believe me. You know, and just to clarify, down there? With the—the demoshitheads and Vecna—it’s not like I was baring my soul because I thought we were gonna stumble outta there, straight into a minivan and nuclear family of our own—I mean, hey, clueless idiot here, but I actually wasn’t trying to crawl backwards, baby-Steve style, I was just—airing what’s been inside of here—” he’s patting over his heart, “too damn long, I’m trying to go forward—"
“Well—don’t!” she shouts, the first thing that makes it out of her mouth. Unfortunately without a stopover at her brain first, and she’s just as taken aback by it as Steve is.
Steve visibly swallows. “Don’t?” he repeats. He manages to keep anything resembling hope out of his voice, but his eyes are as readable as always.
Clenching and unclenching her hands, Nancy turns away. She doesn’t move, doesn’t leave, but it’s easier to emotionally bail and stare anywhere else right now.
“Nancy,” Steve says, stepping forward.
So badly she wants to lie to herself and pretend she doesn’t know where this conversation, this confession, is coming from, like they haven’t been building up to it since the night Steve leapt headfirst into Lover’s Lake.
The symbolism of that, by the way, isn’t lost on her.
Steve’s second step puts him directly in front of her, looming large enough he blocks out the gloom, the red storm clouds, every reminder that the end is near.
His gaze draws her’s back. Even with her eyes flicking down to his lips, he just hovers, close without any pressure for anything more.
And then, slowly, he starts to smile.
It’s the end of the world. They could die any second. The ground under their feet could split in two, and do the same to them. Vecna could pull her into a trance.
“Shut up,” she breathes out, on the tips of her toes the next second, launching herself at him.
His hands wrap around her waist the same time her lips touch his. She can feel his grin, steady and sure; she presses against it, doesn’t stop until she believes it too.