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Nancy doesn’t sleep well these days, even when she’s got fluffy pillows and a set of warm blankets and the hum of the heaters.
The truth is, she hasn’t slept well in years. Not since November 3, 1983, their last night of peace before their lives had been turned, well, upside down.
Then there’d been Steve sneaking into her room, the party at his house, staying up with nerves that came from knowing his attention was hers to lose. Back then, she remembers, she’d thought that King Steve— Steve ‘the Hair’ Harrington— would realize she was just another prissy nerd who cared more about studying than almost anything else.
Then Barb had gone missing. Then she stumbled into that tree. Then—
Nothing had ever gone back to normal after that. Nights had become endlessly dark and gloomy, the only reprieve whichever boy had been by her side to distract her.
Steve had been warm. Broad. A furnace, really, the kind of sleeper who would sprawl all over her and nestle his face into her neck, his arm securely around her waist. It’s been a while since she’s experienced it, but Nancy remembers everything. He’d sneak out before she woke up most days, by design. He had to leave before her mother, or any of the neighbors, could see his car.
She remembers Jonathan, too, which is odd because she should still be experiencing Jonathan. But from the start, he’d been different. He hadn’t come to her, hadn’t wanted to spend nights away from his home after everything with Will. She could understand this. Will had gone missing, and she knows Jonathan still thinks maybe that wouldn’t have happened if Jonathan had been home.
She’s never pointed out that being home with him all the time didn’t stop the Mind Flayer from getting into Will’s head the following year, though. Or that she, Nancy, has been in danger so many times when he hasn’t been around. She’s never told him how frustrating it is, and lonely, that her partner doesn’t ever want to be her partner.
Jonathan’s priority has always been being there for his family, so Nancy had started going over there once she’d gotten her license. Still, sleeping next to him hadn’t brought any comfort. Everything had begun at the Byers and no amount of paint and refurbishment would erase the trauma endured there.
So, of course, she hadn’t slept well at the Byers. Some nights she had slept at home. On those nights, without someone in the bed next to her, she felt scared. Lonely. Exhausted. Sick of herself and her emotions.
Nothing has changed. The dark is still waiting to swallow her whole, and her mind twists around itself to find a way out where none exists.
She lies awake most nights, blinking up at the ceiling and trying, in vain, to count sheep and fall asleep. In the early days of the Byers living here, she’d pretend to sleep once she heard Jonathan tiptoeing up the stairs. He’d knocked on her door three times during that first week. He’d open it quietly, carefully whispered her name, and wait a beat— two— three— before conceding she was fast asleep.
It’s probably not a good thing he can’t tell when she’s pretending, but what else is she supposed to do? Confront the problem? Pick at the scab that just barely seals the gap in their relationship?
By now, her guilt is a living thing, an animal in and of itself. It has grown the longer the Byers have stayed; ugly and thick, hot and shameful. It pools in her stomach and squeezes her heart. She can’t breathe, sometimes, when she looks at Jonathan. If she tries opening her mouth to gulp in some much needed air, Nancy worries her questions will stumble out. Confessions, too, that aren’t needed now.
Did you ever apply to Emerson? Did you ever want to? Do you love me, still? Did you ever? Do you even like me?
They’re painful thoughts and she can’t fight her way out of them. When she tries, her mind spits out more, unbidden: Am I too much for you? Do I make your life harder? Why don’t you trust me, why don’t you care?
Reassuring herself only leads to a few moments of peace before they come back, worse than before. The pattern continues for hours, until her brain has exhausted itself multiple times over. Only then does she fall into some sort of half-sleep, wherein she’s aware she’s not awake. It’s not pleasant.
Usually. Usually, it’s not pleasant.
Sometimes, though—
Sometimes, after a day like today, Nancy dreams of something sweet. Soft. Indescribable.
When it happens, she knows she’s sleeping. She knows this isn’t real because she knows she doesn’t deserve it. She doesn’t deserve him, not anymore.
No one can see her dreams, though. No one can judge her here. And after everything her mind puts her through, she doesn’t have it in her to reject the thought of him next to her. On top of her. Inside her.
She can’t help herself, because he is here. He is tangible, and she is touching him, and he is touching her, and his scent fills her senses and so does the heavy weight of him on top of her, the warmth of him, how small her hands look holding on to his broad shoulders.
When he kisses her, her stomach flips. She wants to giggle against his lips, so she does. He noses at the hollow of her neck and her breath catches and he pulls away to look at her. His lashes frame his eyes, thick and beautiful. His hair is soft under her hands. One of her thumbs presses against a mole on his neck.
“I think about you all the time,” he tells her; his breath warm on her face. He looks at her with such reverence it makes her heart melt and her core ache.
She smiles at him. “I do too,” Nancy tells him. “I think about you.”
In her dreams, he believes her. In her dreams, his hand slides up the inside of her thigh. Slowly, so slowly she wants to sob, he drags his finger up one swirl at a time. Up and up and up until she feels like she’s burning. Then his finger is inside her, just above where they are joined.
He kisses her again. His hand presses against her core again, and he pulls out. She squirms under him, trying not to sound irritated at the emptiness she feels without him. Before she can, though, he’s thrust back inside her, his hand pressing against her, moving, and—
She—
breaks—
Somewhere, a door shuts. Footsteps echo in the hallway.
Nancy jolts awake, the metal of the revolver hidden under the spare pillow cool against her palm. Muscle memory.
You almost shot me with that one, Steve had said.
You almost deserved it, she’d said, unable to resist smirking at him. She remembers the way her vision had focused on Steve and only Steve. She remembers the way her heart climbed into her throat as she wrapped the fabric from her top around his waist. She remembers the heat of his body, so close to hers, and the sound of his heart, matching hers beat for beat.
The house, in the here and now, is silent. Almost. There’s an odd buzz in the air she can’t place, different from the static of a walkie talkie with nothing to emit. That’s laying down on her dresser. It’s on at all times.
She slips out of bed and tiptoes out of her room just in time to catch her brother’s head bobbing as he appears slowly at the top of the stairs. He’s followed by Lucas, who looks at her as they make it to the landing and holds up a finger to his lips. Mike gives her a look, deciding whether to say something to her. She can see the moment he gives in because his shoulders drop. He lets out a deep breath and approaches her.
“We have to grab some stuff and then go get Will,” Mike whispers to her. “Can you go wait by the front door for Steve? He’s coming to pick us up. We can’t use our walkies.”
She has so many questions, but it’s one thirty in the morning and there are three adults sleeping on this floor that they cannot afford to wake up, not to mention Holly. Mike’s room is right next to their little sister’s, and Nancy doesn’t want to deal with her coming out to the hall to check on the noise only to see Mike and Lucas wearing camo and sneaking out of the house.
“Fine,” she says, choosing to table her questions for now. He’s old enough for her to trust him— has been since he was 12. She doesn’t need to know the details of every plan that Mike comes up with, as long as she knows that he’s not going out alone.
As he turns on his heel and he and Lucas very gingerly make their way to Mike’s room, Nancy tiptoes past them and down the stairs. She turns away from the kitchen and towards the front door, grabs a jacket from the hook next to the front door, and opens it.
Just in time, too, as a familiar maroon BMW— headlights off— pulls into the Wheeler’s driveway. Her heart jumps into her throat—
I think about you.
I think about you, too.
Nancy blinks back to reality as Steve’s brown hair emerges from his car, followed by the rest of him.
She’s long since figured out that her feelings for him go beyond attraction, but she hasn’t given herself permission to accept that fact yet. Instead, she braces herself, schooling her features and straightening as he ambles up the walk to the front door. She leans against the doorjamb as he reaches her.
“Hi,” he greets, offering her a small smile.
“Hi,” she says in return, forgetting herself and smiling back.
Steve raises his eyebrows expectantly. “So—“
“So,” she repeats.
It’s pathetic, the way she’s cherishing this moment as it happens, that she’s allowed to look at his face and only his face without worrying about how long she’s looking at him; whether anyone can tell that he is the focus of all of her attention; whether anyone can see through her stupid, stupid heart.
“Where are the boys?” he asks, holding up his left hand. He’s showing her his watch, she knows, but all she can focus on are the cords of his forearm, the mole just above his wrist. “We said one-thirty. They picked the time. They begged me for a ride.”
“They had to gather some things and wake up Will,” she tells him.
“Ah,” he says, nodding. He pauses. “What are you doing awake right now?”
Nancy opens her mouth to answer that question before realizing she doesn’t have an answer. She can’t really tell him she’d had a sex dream about him. He’d confessed to her, yes, but that had been a year and a half ago. He has stepped back since then. They’d become friends. Besides, she has a boyfriend. He’s asleep in her basement at this very moment.
“Just—“ Nancy shakes her head. “Dreams.”
“Nightmares?” he asks, softening immediately. He tilts his face down to look at her, one hand on the top of the door frame.
He’s so damn tall, she thinks. So broad. So warm, so kind, attentive, brave—
“No,” she says, cutting off her own train of thought. “No, not bad dreams. Just. Weird.”
“Ah,” he says, “that’s good to hear. Can’t have you at risk again. That’ll give me nightmares.”
She doesn’t have time to process that before Steve straightens at the sound of footsteps on the stairs. Mike and Lucas appear, and he steps back. The boys are far more quiet than they’ve been recently, but the more often she sees them with their game faces on, the easier it is to comprehend how her brother hid a girl in their basement for a full week.
Mike immediately heads for the basement door, but Lucas heads for them.
He hands Steve a duffel bag, which Steve takes without question.
“What is the plan here?” she asks.
Steve hangs his head.
“Intervention for Dustin,” Lucas says. “He’s been sneaking out to Eddie’s grave when he can’t sleep.”
“Oh,” she says, heart panging at the thought of it. “Dustin…”
“He’s not really being nice to any of us,” Lucas continues. “So. We figured all of us being there might help.”
“What he means is,” Steve says, “he’s not being nice to me.”
The look on Steve’s face is more resigned than she’s used to. He looks more hopeless now than he had in Tina’s bathroom all those years ago.
She still doesn’t remember that night and its entirety, but some nights, her dreams of Steve touching her involve his hands on her face, his expression broken, with the question ‘you don’t love me?’ echoing through her.
“Any of us,” Lucas says firmly, brows fixed in place as he looks at Steve. They’re almost of a height now.
“He thinks it’s his fault,” Steve tells her. “That Eddie died. He thinks he didn’t do enough; that he’s a bad friend. He thinks he’s not allowed to be happy anymore. And he’s just— he’s just self-destructing, and I don’t know what to do about it.”
A lump forms at the back of Nancy’s throat. This all sounds so familiar.
Barb, she thinks. She searches Steve’s face, another question echoing now: ‘Like we didn’t kill Barb?’
“I understand,” she says.
“Yeah,” Steve says, nodding. He lets out a sigh as Mike and Will appear.
“Mike almost banged into the coffee table,” Will says as he reaches them. “Almost woke Jonathan up.”
Lucas snorts at this. Mike rolls his eyes.
Steve, though, stares straight at her.
She can see the question on his mind as if it were on a billboard. Big, bold, block letters: YOU’RE NOT SHARING A ROOM?
Nancy shrugs. “Okay,” she says, stepping back as the boys shuffle through the front door. “I’m going back up to bed.”
Steve tilts his head and an emotion she can’t decipher shines in his eyes. “Goodnight,” he says. He’s the last one to start walking towards the car, and she keeps her eyes on him until his back is to her.
“Goodnight,” she replies.
She closes the door and watches through the peep hole as the Beemer peels out of the driveway and down the street. Once it’s gone, she steps back, hangs the jacket back on the hook, and sneaks upstairs again.
Her room is empty, obviously. Her bed is still warm. She climbs back in, heart heavy. Dustin, at Eddie’s grave at this time of night. She’s seen the way he’s been behaving lately, and she’s known so much of it stems from his grief about Eddie.
But he’s Dustin. He’s a sweet, chubby-cheeked little boy with beautiful curls and a killer smile. He’s bright and funny and kind and eternally optimistic. He’s dedicated and loyal.
Those are traits that she used to have, too, before Barb had died.
Murdered, a voice says loudly. Barb was murdered. By you. You killed Barb.
When Vecna had taken her last year, his voice had chilled her to the bone. When I kill someone, Nancy, I don’t forget, his voice still echoes. The words still rattle around her brain every time she sees Steve. Every time she brushes by him or catches a whiff of his cologne or accidentally meets his gaze because his is the first reaction she seeks out. The reason, the only reason she’d even been susceptible to Vecna that night—
Steve’s the reason.
These thoughts nauseate her, and, despite knowing her blankets can’t protect her from any interdimensional psychic hellions, she pulls the covers over her face and stares at the underside of the pale pink top sheet. Sleep won’t come easily, but if she closes her eyes and breathes slowly and starts counting backwards from one million, maybe she’s got a shot.
fin.