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Nancy isn’t proud of the fact that she has a habit of drifting every time the world doesn’t end. The first time it happened, she could explain it away as lingering grief. She’d lost her best friend—sue her for being a little out of it for a while. But the second and third times? Well, she supposes that she could claim it was fear that made her distance herself. That doesn’t make it any easier to justify, though. Doesn’t make it any more likely that people would understand.
It was fear that made her shut out Steve after their breakup, and fear that made her avoid Robin in school even after the events at Starcourt logically should have drawn them closer to each other. It was fear that made her sit in silence at the dinner table each night instead of bickering with Mike or answering her mother’s questions about school and her new stint at the newspaper club. And when the Byerses moved to California, it was fear that made her cut phone calls short and avoid thinking about the future of her relationship with Jonathan altogether.
It isn’t fear of the unknown. Nancy knows perfectly well what happens to the people she cares about when she allows her guard to lower too much. So she keeps her walls up and burns bridges and only dips her toes into other people’s circles when she knows that they’ll be as vigilant as she always is because the ground could swallow them up at any moment. And when it’s all over and they’re licking each other’s wounds, she takes a step back again. Keeps her fear locked away in her chest, airtight and invisible. Allows people to resent her a little, maybe—or at least to be baffled by her. It’s safer than letting them get too close and watching them disappear.
It isn’t even just fear of what she knows she could lose at any moment. It’s fear of what she’s gained for all the wrong reasons. The allies, the support, the admiration. The problem is, she thinks, that she doesn’t quite know how to be someone everyone still admires without a weapon in her hands and a plan in her head. She doesn’t know what to offer to keep these people around. And every time she’s drifted, she’s never looked over her shoulder to find someone battling against the waves in her wake. She’s never caught someone chasing after her. She’s never heard them beg her to turn around.
The drift has always been easy and comfortable. It’s always been the right thing to do.
But after Vecna, things changed. Nancy took a good look around herself after that final battle and decided that she was tired of drifting away. She’d almost lost the people she cares about too many times, and she wasn’t going to let herself lose them again.
It was Nancy who suggested their first movie night. She waited until her parents took Holly to visit their extended family for a weekend, then sent Mike on his way to Lucas’ house for a sleepover. She wasn’t sure who to call first; she eventually settled on Eddie, because things were still tense between her and Steve, she thought it best to invite Jonathan last in order to assure him that it wouldn’t be just the two of them (seeing as they were fresh out of a break-up), and something about dialling Robin’s number made her unreasonably nervous. She needed to be on neutral ground for a little longer. Eddie could be neutral.
Eddie was still in bad shape after the first fight with Vecna. He’d been in a hospital bed throughout the second, with Max only a few rooms away. For a while there, they’d all been unsure of whether either of them would survive. Even if they did, there was still the matter of Eddie’s accusations to handle. Hopper’s miraculous return from the dead was a blessing in more ways than one, in the end. It didn’t take much convincing from him for everyone else to accept Eddie’s innocence.
When Nancy called, Eddie was in the middle of having his bandages changed by his uncle. It was as good a sign as any, Nancy thought, that she was making a mistake. That there had always been a good reason for her drifting. That now would be no different; that people weren’t going to just alter the course of their life to return to her side. Eddie was busy recovering. Jonathan would want space after their relationship ended. Steve was… complicated. And Robin—
Well, Robin made Nancy nervous. Maybe it was because she was the first real girl friend Nancy had made since Barb. Maybe it was because she was always so intense, with her mouth that moved a mile a minute and her hands that never seemed to stop waving. Nancy couldn’t pinpoint the exact reason, but she knew that she wasn’t quite ready to address it regardless. The option to give up and take a step back was oh-so tempting.
But then, Eddie said yes. Yes, he would love to hang out with Nancy outside of the apocalypse. Yes, he would love to watch a terrible movie and eat way too much popcorn on the Wheelers’ couch while he pretended that his sides didn’t still sting. Yes, he would love to get out of this damn trailer for a while. No offence, Uncle Wayne.
So, after Eddie, it was just a matter of extending the invitation to everyone else.
It was more pleasant than Nancy could’ve dreamed, in the end. They watched movie after movie until they were all slumped against each other with drooping eyelids and full stomachs. They fell asleep like that, holding and supporting each other. What a wonder that was: becoming a unit, a team, friends even when there was no battle on the horizon. Even when there was nothing but normal life ahead. Even when Nancy was still so, so scared of it all going wrong.
For all that it had been easy to drift before, it was so much easier to make the movie nights routine. Even after Jonathan decided to move back to California with Argyle a month ago, the rest of them continued to meet at least once a week for a night of laughter and comfort and forgetting. After that first time, Steve’s house became the new meeting point. He keeps extra blankets in the living room, and has a seemingly permanent stock of popcorn in his kitchen. He keeps Robin’s favourite drinks and Eddie’s favourite chocolate in his fridge, and he always sprinkles a little extra salt over Nancy’s popcorn, just the way she likes it.
(They’ve spoken, in the time since everything happened. Nancy wasn’t content, per se, to leave everything in the past and move on. But she also wasn’t planning to ever address what Steve told her in the Upside Down—about the Winnebago and the kids and the life he wanted for them both. Maybe that was cruel of her. The simple truth of the matter was that she didn’t know what to do with what he’d given her, and part of her hoped that, in time, they could both forget. Move on, find other people. Remain friends, if possible. If that was something Steve would want.
It was on their third movie night when Steve pulled Nancy into his kitchen to apologise. He didn’t take back what he’d said. In fact, he made it known that he never could. He told her that there would always be a part of him that loved her and wanted a future with her.
“But any future is better than no future,” he said. “I’m realising that now. Honestly, Nance, for us… I just want to be friends. There was a time when I wanted more, but now— I’m not settling, exactly. It’s just that circumstances have changed. We’ve changed. I just want you in my life. That’s all.”
“I want you in mine, too.” It was easier to admit than she’d ever thought it would be.
Steve smiled. “Friends, then?”
“Friends,” Nancy said.
And that was that.)
They’ve had a good run. It’s been months since they started this little routine of theirs. Eddie doesn’t need to wear bandages at all now, and the marks around Steve, Robin, and Nancy’s necks have almost faded completely. The scar leftover on Robin’s arm from the second fight with Vecna is younger, fresher, so Nancy still keeps her eyes on it from afar. She asks about it when she gets the chance. But even that will have completely healed soon enough, and then they’ll really have a chance to move on and leave everything in the dust.
Nancy feels closer to these people than she’s ever felt with anyone else. She can’t fathom how she ever considered letting the distance between them grow instead of paddling towards them until her hands were sore. She loves them all dearly, and she looks forward to movie night every week.
But this week? This week has her mouth set in a permanent pout. A cloud hangs over her head. She knows that she’s being unreasonable, but she can’t help it.
See, it’s one of those rare occasions when Nancy’s parents both want to go out and spend time together, away from the kids. This leaves Nancy to fully embrace her duties as eldest sister and take care of Holly. Not Mike, who barely waits a minute after Karen and Ted leave before telling Nancy he’s on his way to meet his friends. There was a time when she would have told him that he needed to stay home just to be difficult, back when they were both younger and a lot less mature. Back when they didn’t know what sort of regrets a no like that could lead to. Now, Nancy tells him to be safe and to call him when he arrives at Lucas’ house. He promises he will, even though she knows from experience that he’ll be so excited to see them when he arrives that he’ll forget. But that’s okay. She’ll dial the Sinclairs’ number in an hour to check in on him anyway.
Nancy is excited to spend time with Holly. Really, she is. She loves looking after her sister, especially when it’s just the two of them. She only wishes that this had happened on any other night.
Shortly after Mike leaves, Nancy calls Steve. She keeps the conversation short and sweet, because she knows how much Steve overthinks. The more detail she goes into, the more he’ll worry, until he’ll likely hang up the phone himself and drive all the way to the Wheelers to personally check on her. A simple I can’t make it tonight, but I’ll see you guys next time suffices.
She spends the next hour making dinner for herself and Holly. She leaves the leftovers in a pot for Mike to eat when he gets home, then cleans up while Holly sits at the table with her new colouring pencils—a gift from Max, who convinced the other kids to help her gather the money needed to replace the pencils she used to draw the Creel House. Although Max can’t use her hands anymore and might never regain her vision, she sometimes visits to sit with Holly and listen to her chat away about her drawings.
“What are you drawing this time?” Nancy asks as she switches from washing the dishes to drying them.
“You,” Holly says. “And Mike, and me.”
“Oh yeah? What about Mom and Dad? You could make it into a family portrait.”
Holly sticks her tongue between her lips, giving it some thought. After a moment, she nods.
“Okay. But then I’m gonna draw another one of our friends, too. Max and Dustin and Erica.”
Nancy grins. Those three are Holly’s favourites. It’s obvious in the way her eyes light up every time Max wheels her chair into the kitchen to sit with Holly, or Dustin places his cap on her head while the boys take a break from playing in the basement, or when Erica brings her collection of figurines and dolls to the house to show Holly.
Even though she sees those three the most, Holly likes everyone else too. She follows Steve around like a puppy whenever he’s here, and she loves playing with Robin’s rings. Nancy has even caught Eddie letting Holly play with his hair before.
It all makes Nancy so happy, because it’s all she wants for Holly: for her to have a normal life, surrounded by people who love her and will do anything to keep her safe and happy. She’s the only one left of them who doesn’t have to grow up encountering unspeakable horrors. Nancy is so grateful that she has friends who are as determined to give Holly a good future as she is. She’s so glad that she’s allowed those people to be there for Holly.
She finishes drying the dishes just as Holly starts working on her second drawing. Nancy takes the seat beside her at the table and asks her questions, handing her new pencils every time she asks for one and laughing when Holly makes Will’s hair ridiculously (and accurately—poor kid) bowl-shaped.
Holly is almost done when there’s a knock at the door. Nancy drops a kiss on Holly’s head and leaves her to add the finishing touches to her stick-figure of Robin. When she opens the front door, she has to do a double take. Because—speak of the devil—it’s Robin herself standing there, hands stuffed into the pockets of her jacket and her bottom lip held between her teeth as she smiles.
“Hey,” she says.
“Hi?” Nancy tilts her head. But it doesn’t matter how bemused she is; she can feel herself smiling. Robin has a tendency to make her do that.
“I know you couldn’t come to movie night, so I thought I’d bring movie night to you,” Robin explains. “I hope that’s okay.”
“Of course. But— I don’t want you to miss out because of me. If you’d rather still go to Steve’s—”
Robin snorts. “Don’t worry, I’d much rather be here. Steve and Eddie can flirt without me around to bear witness for once.”
She brushes past Nancy then, which is enough to distract her from thinking about Steve and Eddie and their flirting, which apparently is something that other people have noticed. Interesting.
“We’ll have to keep the movie kid-friendly tonight. I’m looking after Holly.”
“Yeah, I gathered from what Steve told me. Where’s Mike?”
Nancy rolls her eyes fondly. “He and the boys have chosen the Sinclairs’ place for their base of operations tonight. I’m just thankful they didn’t choose to come here. The quiet has been nice.”
She realises only too late how that sounds, when Robin grimaces.
“I don’t want to disturb you if you’d rather just have a quiet night in with Holly—”
“No, hey. Don’t be silly. I want you here.”
Robin still doesn’t seem convinced. It takes her a while to accept, sometimes, that she’s wanted. That Nancy wants her. Maybe it’s because Robin has done some drifting of her own in the past. The way Nancy acted around her when they first met can’t have helped; she’s trying every day to make up for that.
She reaches out and wraps her hand around Robin’s wrist, swiping her thumb across the bone. Robin’s fingers twitch.
“I want you here,” Nancy repeats. “I promise.”
Robin swallows. Nods. “Okay. I’ll get the movie set up?”
“Okay. I’ll grab Holly.”
Neither of them move right away. Nancy should be terrified of that, probably. The longer she keeps herself anchored and floating, the harder it becomes to turn her back on her people for even a second. But Robin has a way of soothing her twice as much as she scares her—which is an amount that is frightening in itself. So she smiles, gives Robin’s wrist one last tap, and pulls away slowly.
She knows it won’t be for the last time.
The three of them huddle together on the couch in a pile of blankets. Nancy has made enough popcorn to feed a family of five, and somehow it all gets eaten. Holly’s eyelids start drooping before they’ve even watched half of the movie, and by the time the end credits are rolling, she has her head in Nancy’s lap and her feet in Robin’s. Nancy carries her to bed, tucks her in and kisses her forehead. She can hear Robin shuffling around in Nancy’s room across the hall—changing into a pair of borrowed pyjamas, just like Nancy had told her to—and the sound settles her as she watches Holly breathe deeply. She brushes Holly’s hair away from her face and lingers for a little longer, just for the sake of it. Just because she can, and she wants to, and she can’t imagine herself doing anything else anymore. Can’t imagine herself willingly pulling up that anchor and letting herself drift away from the here and now.
She leaves Holly’s door cracked open and pads across the hallway to her own room, where she finds Robin sitting at the end of her bed. Nancy’s pyjamas are a tad too small on her, but she doesn’t shrink under Nancy’s gaze as she once might have. Nancy fixates on the freckles dotting her shoulders and the flush creeping beneath the silky shirt she’s wearing, and Robin lets her.
They’ve both come far, since their anchors embedded themselves in the sand beneath them.
“Do you want to call Steve?” Nancy asks, because she knows that it’s a thing he and Robin do. The calling each other at night. The checking in. It’s something she’s considered doing herself, a couple times now. She’s never quite had the courage to dial a number, but she’s cradled the phone against her ear for long enough before that she’s fallen asleep with it squashed between her cheek and her pillow.
Robin shakes her head. “I don’t want to disturb him if he’s finally— You know. Occupied with something else.”
“Right. You did mention something about Steve and Eddie flirting.”
“Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed.”
Nancy snorts. “No, I definitely have. I was just worried I was overthinking it all. Seeing something that wasn’t there.”
“You, um. You aren’t jealous, are you?”
This time, Nancy has to slap her hand over her mouth to contain her laughter. She hops up to close her door completely, not wanting to wake Holly up.
“Oh, absolutely,” she says as she plops back down onto the bed. “I knew as soon as I saw Eddie crouching beneath Skull Rock that I was in love with him. His soggy-cat looks and loser personality have totally charmed me. I need him, Robin, and you’re the only person I can turn to for help—”
Robin, who had looked horrified at the beginning of Nancy’s speech but now has her eyes squeezed shut and her head thrown back in laughter, gasps out: “Okay, okay! I get it! Please stop!”
Nancy sits back and watches Robin laugh. Satisfaction sits warm and heavy in her gut. It isn’t often that she manages to make Robin laugh like this, so it’s all the more special when she does. Robin’s face is splotched with pink, and her nose crinkles in a way that should be kind of ugly. Nancy thinks she looks beautiful, though. She’s always beautiful, but especially like this. Especially with joy making her light up from the inside out. Especially when the cause of that joy is Nancy.
God, Nancy has missed this: the happiness and the warmth and the bone-deep certainty that this is where she belongs. Things that, although she tried, she could never truly find with Steve or Jonathan. Things that she knows she’ll only ever find with a friend. Things she hasn’t felt since she had Barb at her side.
A fog she hadn’t even known was in her head suddenly clears.
Nancy always knew that the way she loved Barb was different from the way she loved Steve. But that was the way that things were supposed to be. What reason did she have to question that?
Every time she was with Steve but was thinking of Barb, she chalked it up to her simply missing a friend. When her entire world crumbled in the wake of Barb’s death, she thought: That’s just what grief is.
When Jonathan became someone better for her than Steve could be but she still craved something more, something different, she assumed that the muddled state of her mind was a result of everything else they were dealing with. Who wouldn’t want more than what they have in a town like Hawkins, where girls are only allowed to serve men and look pretty instead of having their own ideas? Who wouldn’t want something different when all they know is monsters and pain and death?
But now, with Robin sitting at the end of Nancy’s bed—laughter lines around her eyes, happy tears on her cheeks, Nancy’s pyjamas sitting too tight around her body, popcorn crumbs stuck to the corners of her mouth—Nancy knows the real reason why loving Barb was different. Why loving Barb was more.
Because she loves Robin in the same way.
Maybe, those things that she couldn’t find with Steve and Jonathan aren’t things that she can only find in a friend at all. Maybe they’re just things that she can only find with girls.
She supposes she should be scared of that, too. But she isn’t rocked by the realisation. She doesn’t capsize. The sun peeks out of the clouds above her head, and she feels…
Well, she feels like this has been a long time coming.
She waits for Robin’s laughter to fizzle out before saying, “Hey. Is it crazy that I think I might be in love with you?”
And maybe this has been a long time coming for Robin too, because her eyes only blow wide for a second before she’s pressing her hands to her rosy cheeks and grinning.
“As crazy as alternate dimensions and superpowers? No. But it’s still maybe a little crazy.”
“Is it a bad kind of crazy?”
Nancy shuffles closer. Robin doesn’t need to follow in her wake; she’s already ahead of her, arms open and waiting. Their knees press against each other, warm and solid.
“No,” Robin says. “It’s a really good kind.”
When they both lean in, when their lips touch, when one of Robin’s hands comes to rest on Nancy’s shoulder— Nancy sinks into the touch, the moment, Robin.
Suddenly, they’re in the same boat.