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California is more than Jonathon deserves, he thinks, lying in the back of the pizza van that took them all the way across the country and back again. He can still smell Nancy on him, the floral press of her curls to his mouth, his lies still taste like her perfume, lead and lavender on his tongue. But here is California, just as they left it, bullet holes in the walls of the living room, Hopper and his mom, El and Will. Argyle. The hot terror of the sun beating down on them out here in the desert, Lenora sulking and wilting in that wild heat.
Argyle passes him the joint. It’s weird being out here with Argyle again, like nothing has changed. Like Argyle doesn’t know what his nightmares are about now, like he hadn’t saved them from that house when there were guns and Will and El needed Jonathon to be strong and he couldn’t and Mike was there and he was only one almost adult (where were Steve and Nancy, the ones who always support him in a crisis, Steve who could take care of the kids, where were they) and then Argyle was there with his stupid pizza van and Jonathon feels so bad for dragging him into this. For making him dig graves and drive across the country and make salt baths in pizza freezers.
He thinks he doesn’t deserve California and he doesn’t deserve Nancy and he doesn’t deserve Argyle.
But Argyle said, “ Just let your troubles float away ” and here they are in the desert, in the back of a pizza van they took on the road trip from hell, and he still has his best friend.
“I should do something about Nancy,” he murmurs, in the hot dry heat, it’s so not Hawkins it thuds in his chest like a second heartbeat. “I need to tell her I can’t do Emerson.”
Argyle is quiet for a long moment. “Do you love her?”
“Yes.” And it’s the truth, he’s loved her ever since 1983. “And she’s going to hate me for this. She has this whole plan: us in Emerson, being arty college students and — All I ever wanted was to go to NYU. And now all I want is to go Lenora Community, stay near the kids.” Stay near you, he doesn’t say.
“If you love her, man,” says Argyle in his smoke choked voice, “you need to tell her all of that.”
Jonathon knows he’s right.
“But… I think you should go NYU. You know, I don’t think your family is gonna stay here much longer.”
He blinks. “What?”
Argyle shrugs in the bright sunlight, where Hawkins’ shadows don’t reach. “They’ll want to go home.”
“But — but they’ve made a life here.”
Argyle levels him with a look more serious than normal and even though his eyes are bloodshot with weed they’re very wise. “Nah, man. The kids haven’t got no friends. Your mom has a work from home job. Her man is back, and I think he loves Hawkins, even though it’s the worst place in the world.”
“But Will could feel it, the monster,” he says, “Hawkins is too dangerous.” It’s decaying. It’s a black spot on the world. It isn’t Lenora, with an endless blue sky and the wide, wide desert. He takes a shaky drag of the joint, looks at Argyle who is staring at him like —
“That’s exactly why they need to go back, man.”
Jonathon thinks about tiny women called Nina in the desert and salt baths in the freezers of a Pizza Boy. “When’d you get so wise, man, huh?”
Argyle grins at him and Jonathon wonders how he found someone who doesn’t mind his hair is bleaching blond in the desert sun, and he never wants it to go back to brown. “Don’t stay here, man, I know you want to. But go NYU, you’re clever.”
“I don’t have the money.”
“Man, I think with everything you know, the government won’t mind shilling out a little more y’know y’know.”
He stares up at the sun bleached roof of the van. “I’ll tell her.” He doesn’t say, Come with me , even though he wants to. Because he knows Argyle won’t survive a cold winter in New York, knows that Argyle has to stay somewhere warm, where memories are sunny and burn like dying stars in the planes of Jonathon’s memory. “I love you, man,” he says, because he should say it more often.
“I love you too, man.”
*
Nancy stares at the phone, now quiet in her hand. Nance, I can’t… I don’t want to go to Emerson. I’m waiting for a letter from NYU, I never even applied to Emerson. Nance, it’s not what I want . She thinks, sullenly, about Steve and his guileless face and how she’s made the wrong choice again, even though that isn’t fair to either of them.
She’s crying, suddenly, and can’t stop it, as she hides in her room. She’s thinking about Emerson, about the dream she had of a little one bedroom apartment. Jonathon with his camera. Her with her typewriter. She knows now, with a sick little thud to her heart, it was always a lie; it was always a silly little kid’s dream. How can she imagine Jonathon there now when she knows — has always known, even when she didn’t want to, when the Boston dream had been too deep — she knows that’s always where he’s wanted to go: New York. When she knows that’s what he’s always needed, how can she deny him.
She’s thinking about what he said, “It’s only four hours drive, Nance. We’ll see each other, I swear.”
And how it’s not waking up in the same bed. How it isn’t a one bedroom apartment in Boston. How she hadn’t even thought when she had said, “No, Jonathon. I — maybe, as friends, we might but I — I can’t, I can’t do long distance again.” Not when California had meant not seeing each other, had meant phone calls where she couldn’t even tell if Jonathon was paying attention to he was so high. California where Jonathon had fallen in love with life, not her. And it’s painful, like losing a limb. This person who understood her so well, peeled away because of distance, because of timing, because in the end they had wanted different things, no matter how similar they were.
Jonathon had said, “Okay, Nance. Okay. We’ll… Rain check, huh? On us.”
“Yeah,” she had said, almost crying by that point, “yeah. Rain check, on us.” And it’s a promise that it’s never going to be forever. Because she knows Jonathon, knows who she wants to be with when it’s the end of the world, the end of her life. And it might be twenty years away, or maybe as soon as they finish college, or maybe they’ll run into each other at the end of their lives in an old people’s home, mourning their dead husband and dead wife and just fall straight back in where they left off. Because it’s her and Jonathon, and nothing will keep them apart from holding hands as the world caves in.
*
Eddie doesn’t know how it happened really, that he fell in love with Hawkins . Hawkins that hates him. Hawkins that is the literal worst. Hawkins with the alternate dimension strapped underneath it. But here he is, on the other side of all that, with an apprenticeship at the mechanic place across the street from Family Video, working on cars all day. And sure, some hicks won’t let him serve them, and some do for the thrill of a murderer servicing their car, but some people don’t even know who he is, and others just nod and smile at him and say I never believed it .
He takes breaks across the road, winding up Steve and Robin who tell him, without ever sugar coating it, that he brings sales way down. He kind of loves them for it. For never sugar coating this shit. He’s heard them often enough fucking recreating their torture at the hands of the Russians who lived below Starcourt (and isn’t that a roller-coaster). And he knows it’s getting better because old ladies stop running away from him in the street and he even gets a small article in the newspaper about how he’s helping the community working at the shop , about how the heroic story the government made up was so comforting to everyone, about how he’s a staple figure in the Hawkins community. Sure it’s shit sometimes, and sometimes he wants to leave and never look back, but it’s Hawkins, and it’s his home for some fucked up reason.
It might be because of Steve as well, if he’s being honest. Steve who watches him work on cars when he’s on break. Steve who lets him sleep in his bed when the trailer is itching at his skin, when Chrissy feels all too close. Steve who, if Eddie is being real with himself, he is a little in love with.
And there’s Robin. Robin who calls them “her boys” and hits them around the head, who thinks Eddie is being an idiot and should just fuck Steve and have done with it.
The kids, who have started calling him and Steve “mom and dad” with varying degrees of fondness and irritation.
Hawkins: sort of the worst place in the world, with the best people. And sure, half the town hunted him down with pitchforks and wanted him dead and now he’s a sort of town legend and kids come to watch him fix cars and whisper about how he could kill them with a wrench, or whatever. But Eddie’s always wanted to be famous, always wanted to be the centre of attention. Here he gets a lot of it (a lot of Steve’s attention, too).
One day he’s loitering in Family Video, pretending to help Steve stack tapes even though he doesn’t work here and is just waiting for the right opportunity to crush Steve against a shelf as he reaches above him to put something in the right slot. He knows Steve will laugh at him, eyes knowing. They like this game of cat and mouse, however much Robin says it’s dumb. Nancy comes in, wrinkles her nose at him like she can smell motor oil or perhaps the smell of someone in love with Steve Harrington, she must know it well by this point.
“Jonathon isn’t coming to Emerson,” she says. Nancy isn’t so much part of their group — he and Steve and Robin are the group, they’ve had enough sleepovers in Steve’s bed to say that, he thinks — but he’s also pretty sure they’re like the only people Nancy tolerates in Hawkins, so here she is with relationship drama. Eddie doesn’t know if he likes Nancy, she’s smart sure but (he promises this isn’t jealousy over Steve) sometimes he thinks she doesn’t know how to act around him, she acts like he’s something fragile, or something to be avoided, something she doesn’t like.
“Aw, sorry Nance,” Steve says, face creasing in that sorry look that makes you want to start apologising to him and promising to bring him the moon or something.
“It’s fine. I guess I kind of knew he was always… he always wanted to go to NYU and I guess I’m happy for him but… we’re taking a break, or we’ve broken up, or… I guess, we’ve broken up until we run into each other again.”
“Sounds complicated,” says Eddie, staring at her. Sometimes he forgets she’s just a girl, she’s still Nancy Wheeler even if she keeps guns in her shoeboxes.
“I’m going to Emerson next year,” says Robin, and her eyes are wide on Nancy.
Nancy fumbles, as if she’s not sure if she’s happy about that or not. Then her face clears and it’s so honestly happy Eddie feels bad for ever having disliked her, even if she’s never going to look at him like that because he’s trailer trash and she’s a Wheeler. “Wow, Robin, that’s great! I’ll have been there a year, I can show you around and —” She claps a hand over her mouth. “It’s going to be so much fun.”
Robin is grinning at her, relieved like she wasn’t sure what Nancy’s reaction would be.
“This is great,” says Nancy, “I thought I was going to be alone out there.”
Eddie watches Steve’s face, catalogues its fond exasperation.
“You’ll do amazing at Emerson, Nance,” Steve says. “And we’ll always be back in Hawkins whenever you need us.”
Nancy’s face crumples a little. “You’re still not going to college? Steve I think —”
“Nance.” His voice is firm and kind. “I want to stay here. For the kids. I’m not a city guy.” He turns back to sorting tapes. “I’m a small town, picket fence kinda guy. Me and Eddie will be okay.”
He blinks. Steve just… he still manages to surprise him sometimes. “Of course,” he says, and he hopes the voice crack isn’t as noticeable to everyone else as it was to him, “Hawkins militia, staying right here ma’am.” He catches the curve of Steve’s grin as he turns away and knows, just knows, that he could be happy here in this hell town for the rest of his life. “Obviously we’ll miss you, though.”
“Obviously,” says Steve. “But we’ll see you for the holidays, Nance. And Robin, the gap year you’re spending all of it at my house. I don’t care.”
Robin laughs.
He sees Nancy’s frown, unfocussed and confused. The kind of look people get around the three of them like they don’t get it. Is Robin fucking both of them? Is something more sinister going on? Are Eddie and Steve —? He decides he doesn’t care what people think. And he looks at Nancy Wheeler, who is smart, definitely, but has a lot to learn from Boston she can’t learn here in small town Hawkins, and Robin who needs to see the world to believe she has some place in it, and thinks they’ll do just fine. Better than fine. He has Steve and they’re waiting for when everyone comes home, even if it’s just for a visit, even if people find new lives in strange new places, they’ll hold down the fort here, for when people realise they need a snatch of home , of Hawkins.
He doesn’t mind staying, not when it’s with Steve.
*
Robin watches as Eddie and Steve smile privately in the little crevice between two shelves of tapes and thinks they’re idiots. Her idiots. And she can’t, for a moment, remember where she begins and they end. They’re so dumb, for dancing around each other like this, when they obviously want each other so badly.
She thinks they’re so brave to stay, thinks she couldn’t. Thinks the world is out there and it’s so painfully sharp like fractured glass she wants to grab it in both hands and smother it against her chest. Wants to smash through it, find the rainbow layers of broken glass. Find something for herself in those shards, until she can come home with it to Steve and show him the mess of her hands, torn and shredded from the world, and he will pat her head and say I’m proud of you .
She remembers how scared she was when she realised Steve would stay here, in Hawkins. Because he couldn’t leave. He needed to stay for the kids, to protect the gates, to be the last man standing, because he was in love with the town he grew up in. She thought she might not be able to leave him. Bur as she watches Nancy swaying out of the door, caught in the cool sunlight of Hawkins, and Eddie flattening Steve against the shelf obnoxiously so he can reach up and put a tape away, she knows he’ll be just fine. Steve has Eddie.
“You and Nance are totally gonna get it on in Boston,” says Steve.
“Nancy Wheeler?” says Eddie, because he’s never made it a secret he doesn’t really get her. “She’s the straightest girl I’ve ever met.”
“Nah,” says Steve, authority on all things Nancy Wheeler, “there’s definitely something. Her and Barb, I reckon, a bit of a will they won’t they.”
And it’s so weird to be in Family Video talking out loud with Steve Harrington and Eddie Munson about queer shit that Robin wants to laugh. She hates Steve for it though, the way he acts like if he pretends he doesn’t care the homophobes will pass him by, like if he pretends this is all normal they’ll be safe.
“And you have my blessing for a year from now to fuck Nancy, Robs,” he continues, “because I feel in my gut that you’re going to have a crisis over the fact she’s my ex-girlfriend.”
“I’m not going to sleep with straight girl priss Nancy Wheeler,” says Robin, like a liar, because Nancy is hot and if there was ever a chance —
Steve is grinning at her like he knows what she’s thinking about. “You have my permission to crush on my ex then,” he says, “if you’re not going to fuck her.”
“I wouldn’t.” She would. Even though it will be painful because she knows she will be a passing fancy, that Jonathon is always going to be the person Nancy goes back to. Even though she knows Nancy will never see her through to the end of time. Maybe that’s just what she needs: Emerson, Boston, and heartbreak. Maybe there are the shards she needs to pick up first, slice her palms and her heart with them, so Eddie and Steve can make her better. “You have my permission to fuck our other best friend.”
Eddie and Steve shoot her identical fuck off looks. She laughs. She loves them so much sometimes and it hurts she can’t stay, that Hawkins won’t be enough for her.
Maybe she doesn’t mind though. Not if they’re going to be waiting for her. And she has a year, a year with these idiots hoping they’ll sort their shit out before she leaves so she can be there to scream at them.
Different people, different lives, she knows they’ll always cross paths again though, here in Hawkins, or abroad. They’re too entangled now, by blood and gore, it’s too much, it’s nothing at all. She knows these are the faces she’ll see before she dies, old and craggy like hers, in rocking chairs by a fire. Her best friends.
*
Steve leans out over the balcony, smoking. Eddie’s arm is warm against his.
“Reckon they must be in Boston, now,” Eddie whispers into the dusky sky. A moth is fluttering against the wall beside his head.
It’s weird to think a year ago they were laughing about Robin and Nancy in Boston and now it’s real, it’s happening. After this summer, he’s pretty sure Nance and Robin are going to get it on as soon as Robin moves into that apartment. Jesus, he knows that’s going to be some heartbreak. He knows how it hurts to be left for Jonathon fucking Byers.
“Probably,” he says back to the night air.
Eddie takes the cigarette off him, stubs it out. Kisses him. Their balcony is hidden by the trees, it feels safe, feels so dangerous Steve might cry.
Behind them, their apartment, a couple of blocks from the mechanic, is golden light flooding across the pale planes of Eddie’s face.
Steve closes his eyes, kisses him back.
“I miss her,” Eddie whispers.
“Me too. She’ll be back for Christmas.” He grins. “Bets on whether her and Nancy will have fucked?”
Eddie laughs, shakes his head. “I’m not betting you shit.”
“Don’t you think it’s weird sometimes how all the people who got caught up in this shit are so different?”
Eddie doesn’t blink at his sudden change of topic, probably knew it had been eating at him, that Robin needed more than them. Needed Boston. “Nah, I mean, look at me and you. We’re different and that’s what makes us the same.”
He glares at Eddie. “That makes no sense.”
“It’s the truth. Robin’s coming back, Steve. Some day.”
He sighs. “Some day.” It feels like tides, tugging and ebbing at time. Some day , unquantifiable. Some day Nancy and Jonathon will find each other again. Some day he and Eddie will realise they’ve accidentally fallen into something deeper than love, a partnership that’s going to last them to old age and death. (Some day in California, a girl called Eden will start searching, Steve doesn’t know this, for a boy called Argyle, Steve doesn’t know any of this, but maybe he would have liked to know love stories were happening outside his sphere of people.) Some day, Robin will come back to them, and she’ll curl between them in bed. Some day Robin will find a girl who will love her until smile lines deepen to wrinkles and dreams of Russians and little sailor outfits seem like a bad joke half remembered.
And he knows it can’t be forever. Two bachelors living alone in a two bedroom, people will talk. The pitchforks will come out again. Maybe, some day, if Robin comes back, he’ll marry her to protect them all.
He sighs again, wishes Eddie hadn’t stubbed out his cigarette. “Some day.”