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Visiting the Byers’ house to check in every now and again is a given, in Nancy’s opinion. After everything the rag-tag group have been through, it makes sense for them to lean on each other.
Who else can they turn to?
They’re not allowed to tell anyone else about the events of that night, or the previous nights, but that doesn’t mean Nancy doesn’t want to talk about them.
She’s getting better at thinking about it all now; can let her mind wander to the Upside Down without visibly cringing, which is a start. The nightmares still come, but they pass, and they leave a desire to voice her fears in their wake. At least that makes it feel real, not like something she’s made up in her head.
So she goes after school, knocks on the Byers’ front door, armed with her purse and a smile. Jonathan greets her, eyes widening fractionally and trying not to look bewildered. “What—what are you doing here?”
“Um,” Nancy says, suddenly feeling out of place. She shifts her feet, wanting to wring her hands. Something about being around Jonathan since everything happened makes her nervous.
She’ll just blame her fidgeting on Indiana’s cold winter.
“I just thought I’d see how you were doing,” she offers, her smile reappearing to mirror one of Jonathan’s own.
“Oh...” He says, looking at her like he’s enchanted by her. “I’m doing okay. What about you?”
“I’ve been better, but, I’m getting there,” she says honestly.
They stand, looking at each other with soft smiles until Jonathan starts.
“Oh sorry, d-do you want to come in?”
“Nah,” she says, “I was thinking I’d stand here and make conversation with your front door instead.”
He laughs and stands aside. The house has changed dramatically since that night, and Nancy lets her eyes wander around the room she’s slowly becoming more and more familiar with.
She tries not to think about all the excuses she’s been making to come over recently.
Mike likes to visit Will, which is always a good one. She drives him over whenever he asks. Sometimes she and Jonathan study together in the living room, his mother watching them out of the corner of her eye. Nancy sees her mostly watching Jonathan, smiling at his smile. She’s glad they’re healing.
She hopes she’s healing too.
Sometimes she says she just needs to talk. Or not talk. Just to have someone there with her. Jonathan seems to understand, or at least pretends he does. He shows her his photography and his music and doesn’t ask questions.
His gaze will linger on her every so often, or their hands will brush by accident. Nancy always feels her heart rate pick up and tries to ignore it. She’s with Steve. She likes Steve.
As much as she knows this is true, Nancy’s starting to think it might not be enough.
Coming out of her reverie, she sits on the couch, Jonathan coming to join her. “D’you want anything? Drink?”
“N-no,” she says, wanting to kick herself for mimicking his stuttering. “I just want to talk.”
“Okay, well, there’s no one else here. My mom went to the grocery store and Will is out with his friends so... Whatever you need.”
She smiles gratefully and tries not to notice how closely they’re sitting. The fact that it doesn’t bother her is what scares her the most.
“I know we’ve said everything there is to say,” she says, looking down at her hands as they rest in her lap, “I just... Sometimes I still can’t get my head around it.”
“I know what you mean,” he replies. “Sometimes I look at Will and I can’t believe he’s back. Then I look again and I can’t believe he ever left.”
She feels herself begin to relax in his presence, shoulders loosening and contentment washing over her in a way that makes her almost sleepy. He makes her feel safe. He’s the best at making her feel that way, after everything. She hates that he can do it without even trying, unlike Steve, who does everything to accommodate her and still can never truly understand the horror she went through.
Maybe no one can. Not really.
Steve knows of her friendship with Jonathan and doesn’t fight it. Says that whatever she needs to feel better, after the ordeal, he doesn’t mind. Nancy aches with how good he’s being, and how it still feels like he’s coming up short.
Putting that out of her mind for now, she says, “Sometimes I look at Mike and I can’t believe he managed to hide a girl in our basement.”
That makes Jonathan laugh, and Nancy’s infinitely glad she opted for a lighter tone today. It’s nice to see him smile. Since they’ve started hanging out, he’s been getting better, coming out of his shell.
He’s actually not a bad conversationalist, at least when Nancy’s around. And he’s the closest thing she’s had to a best friend since Barb.
“He probably can’t believe it either. And a girl with superpowers? Even better.”
They both choose not to comment on the trauma that losing Eleven has caused, the weight it’s put onto all the kids' shoulders—even Will. Especially Mike. They have enough darkness; she thinks that they’re allowed to shed a little light.
“Does it bother you?” Nancy asks on impulse, hoping she doesn’t regret this. “That that... Thing has been in your house?”
Jonathan’s face closes up briefly, his forehead scrunching before it smoothes out and he meets her gaze evenly.
“I try not to think about it. Not a lot we can do to change it now, anyway.”
“Yeah,” she says, feeling stupid for ruining the moment. Their light-hearted bubble. “Yeah, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked that.”
“Hey,” he says, gently bumping her shoulder with his. Nancy smiles involuntarily. “You can ask whatever you want, I don’t mind. It’s a valid question.”
They lapse into silence for a while, leaving Nancy time to think about everything. About the fact she’s sitting in Jonathan Byers’ house, and a little over a month ago, he was just the weird guy she vaguely knew through their brothers. She thinks about the fact that now, he’s slowly becoming the most important person in her life.
“I never thanked you,” Nancy says out of the blue. “For when you pulled me out of the Upside Down. I never thanked you.”
“You don’t have to,” he says, mouth quirking at the left corner, the ghost of a smile. “I’m right here. I’ll always be right here.”
Later that night, Nancy lies on her bed, staring at the moon through her window and knows, despite the good day, there is no escaping her nightmares. Knows the visions will continue to come. They plague her whenever she’s alone, when she’s at her most vulnerable.
It feels like that place is with her always. Not always, a voice bubbles up and whispers, not when Jonathan’s around.
Dismissing that train of thought, she looks at her window, at the frame. How small it seems compared to the sky and the world beyond, and even the world she knows is beyond that.
Nancy feels bigger than everything else somehow, knowing that this universe is so much more than just her. It reminds her of struggling into an old outfit that she really loves. Now, it’s just that bit too tight, but she’s been wearing it for so long, she has to at least try to squeeze into it. To fit into the space she once so easily occupied.
Secretly, Nancy knows it’s not that simple. The outfit hasn’t changed, but she has.
She’s grown, and with that growth, become something she doesn’t know how to quantify anymore. Doesn’t know how or where she fits.
You know someone else like that, she thinks suddenly.
Nancy stopped worrying about any and all voices in her head as soon as they had come. Wayward thoughts seem nothing compared to the visions of the monster, the Demogorgon, as Mike and his friends call it.
Looking around her room is painful, and she winces trying to avoid the pictures of her and Barb, looking anywhere but— She feels like somehow, in the space of a week and the month that followed, she’s outgrown everything she used to know.
Everyone she used to know, too.
There’s something simultaneously terrifying and reassuring in that realisation. That maybe she won’t go from the suburban girl to the suburban mom with nothing in between after all.
Some days, she lies on her bed, staring holes through the walls and wondering if life will ever go back to anything resembling normal, or will they all just pretend forever that it already is. Some days, she works herself up into a frenzy, angry and fraught, wanting to scream, tear her hair out, something. Anything to bring some justice to this situation. To Barb.
Some days she cries and gasps for air, like something is sitting on her chest and pushing out all the air. Selfishly, on those nights, she wishes it was Jonathan sleeping beside her, and not Steve. Jonathan sneaking through her window. Jonathan holding her whilst she cries.
Nancy blinks hard and shakes her head, as if the physical movement will somehow stem her thoughts. It’s moments like these that she feels most selfish.
Moments when her thoughts are not of her dead best friend, but of herself.
But Nancy remember the past too vividly, is too consumed by it. Maybe it’s not the same anymore. Maybe it’s okay to be a little selfish if it helps her cope, if it helps her move on. Maybe it’s okay to focus on the one person who understands the particular brand of pain that is loss better than anyone else.
Maybe, maybe, maybe.
Steve keeps asking to take her out, and Nancy knows she can’t say no forever. She just starts to say no one in three times, so he doesn’t suspect anything.
The next day, it’s early evening and they’re sitting in his car, him driving. Before she might have looked at him, made doe eyes as he blathered on about something or other, charm personified. Now he’s mellowed, still talking about nothing, but maybe in a way Nancy could find endearing, if she tried.
She doesn’t think she wants to try, really, and that thought makes her mouth twist with guilt.
Never did she mean for it to get like this. For all Steve’s bravado, she believes he’s a good guy deep down. He’s even proved it to her. Washed away the cruel words—Nancy the slut Wheeler—and saved her life. Jonathan’s too.
Jonathan.
Somehow, it always seems to come back to him.
She and Steve don’t talk about it, but sometimes it’s like he’s there, even when he’s not. This Jonathan shaped void between them that they don’t acknowledge, can’t acknowledge.
It’s not like she doesn’t like Steve anymore. Feelings like that can’t just be turned off. He’s still the ruggedly handsome guy she so desperately sought out at the beginning of all this. Despite that knowledge, Nancy knows feelings can change too. Some events can’t be ignored. All the moments that happened between her and Jonathan: they can’t be ignored.
Nancy’s getting tired of trying to.
There’s just something missing between her and Steve, which makes her sad. She wishes she could go back to before, that things had played out differently. She wishes a lot of things, these days.
Steve takes one hand off the wheel and laces his fingers between hers. Such an innocent gesture. She squeezes once and gives him a smile, used to the routine of painting on a grin and pretending everything is alright.
As if anything will ever be alright.
He glances at her and then back at the road, almost reading her mind. He bites his lip and says, “Hey, we can’t beat ourselves up about everything forever, right?” She nodes minutely and stares blankly at the road ahead. “I know it’s hard, but, we have to try, don’t we? I’m trying. I need you to try too.”
That’s easy for you to say, Nancy wants to tell him. Your best friend didn’t die. You’ve never been to the Upside Down. You don’t understand.
Then she huffs, annoyed with herself. It’s not fair to be angry at him for something he can’t control, can’t change.
She nods again and Steve seems satisfied, letting go of her hand. Nancy tries to keep her sigh of relief as discrete as possible. She doesn’t know how much longer she can do this; pretend she’s okay when she’s not. Pretend that she doesn’t want to navigate her life with someone else by her side. Someone who likes to make mixtapes and loves his family more than anything.
He’s wormed his way into her mind and she can’t seem to get him out, even if he did have to take creepy photos to do it. But, all things considered, she thinks she can let that one go. If you look, none of them come off well from that week.
The car gets parked and Nancy moves robotically through the motions of getting out, shutting the door. It’s like she’s sleepwalking, as if her head is empty and filled with white noise like static on the radio.
Static on the radio.
Gone! Gone! Gone! Gone! Gone—
“C’mon Nance,” Steve says as he pulls her toward the movie theatre. “Let’s have some fun. Get back to normal.”
Nancy doesn’t think she knows the meaning of the word anymore.
Jonathan comes to her in a dream that night. He’s sitting at the end of her bed, wringing his hands, posture rigid.
“Jonathan?” She asks, crawling out from under her blanket. Then she’s there, sitting right next to him, pressed up against his side.
This feels important somehow, and she stares at his puffy and bruised eyes, wanting to cradle his face but not knowing if she’s allowed to.
“You’ve been crying,” she murmurs.
“What?” He says, smiling a little. “I’m a fan of Thumper.”
As dreams always do, this makes perfect sense. Nancy smiles.
“It’s okay,” she says, “I cry sometimes too.”
“We’ll be alright,” Jonathan tells her. “We have each other.”
They lay back on her bed, like they did the first night, and this time Nancy doesn’t hesitate. She feels guilty as she curls up in his embrace, but can’t help feeling safe once more.
He leans down, gently pressing his cheek to her hair. She thinks that’s oddly affectionate for someone who generally tends to avoid most people, but lets her confusion get lost in the haziness of everything around her.
Then he whispers: “What’s the weirdest part? Me or the bear trap?”
“You,” she replies honestly, smiling into his chest. “It’s definitely you.”
“What’s the weirdest part,” he says again. “That I love you or you love me?”
She spaces out for a second and doesn’t reply. The world goes dark and then she feels a hand frantically grappling for hers. “Nancy, where are you?”
“Jonathan? Where are you?” She calls him, but can’t see anything. Someone’s put the world to sleep around her. “I’m right here,” she tells him.
“I’m right here,” he replies, an echo. An echo of another time and place. His voice sounds fainter, his grip on her becoming weaker. “I’m right here. I’ll always be right here.”
“Jonathan?”
“I’m right here,” he repeats, and Nancy feels the darkness like it’s physically pressing in on her. She wants to give herself to the shadows. Maybe that would be easier.
The world is quiet and he says: “Follow my voice, Nancy.”
When she wakes up, she’s alone.
The dream follows her around for the whole of the next morning like an invisible shadow, clinging to her skin and whirring in her brain. She remembers all of it and knows even now that it means something.
Nancy makes her bed and goes downstairs to have breakfast. It’s a Saturday and she’s supposed to be seeing Steve again today, but a part of her wants to cancel.
She’ll try and fight that feeling later, but knows that it’s futile.
As things stand, she isn’t kidding herself. She knows she’s not in love with Jonathan, as much as she isn’t in love with Steve. A connection doesn’t equate to love.
And yet.
There’s a magnetic pull between her and Jonathan, one that she can’t help but be reeled in by. It makes her want to seek him out for comfort. To talk to him. To be beside him even when there’s plenty of other vacant spaces for her to fill.
She knows this should scare her, but what scares her most is that it doesn’t.
These thoughts come to an end when she sees Mike standing in the kitchen, two plates of pancakes in hand accompanied by a small smile.
“I thought we could eat in the basement together.”
She glances around at the pristine worktops and then quickly looks away, not wanting to see her reflection. She hasn’t been looking at herself that much lately. Nancy’s afraid of what she’ll find if she looks too closely.
“Your friends not here yet?”
“Nah,” Mike says, “And I wanted to talk to you.”
In an effort to maintain the pact they made that night over a month ago, she follows him down to the basement. They sit on the couch and she doesn’t look at the fort she knows is there. Eleven’s fort. Instead she looks at her little brother, at the lines under his eyes. The slight downturn of his mouth. She wasn’t lying when she said she was worried about him.
“What did you want to talk about?”
The policy of no more secrets stills stands. No more lies. She's just glad he hasn’t asked her about Jonathan again directly yet, because she’s not sure if she’ll have to break the pact for that one.
“I miss her,” Mike says.
The admission costs him, Nancy observes. It’s a heartfelt one, and to his sister no less. He avoids her gaze, neither of them touching their pancakes.
“We were going to the Snowball together.”
With that, a tear rolls down his cheek and Nancy pulls him toward her, cradling him and softly shushing into his hair.
“I’m sorry, Mike,” Nancy says, feeling as helpless and hopeless as him. “I’m so sorry.”
“I just want her back!” He sobs, and Nancy nods, thinking of Barb. Thinking that for everything that’s right, now, some things are terribly, terribly wrong.
“I know,” she says, holding him tighter, “I know.”
It’s not like they can talk to their parents about any of this, not really. They don’t know half as much as they think they do, or pretend to. Their mother would fuss too much, and their father would care too little. Those are facts Nancy’s learning very quickly, as if her eyes have been opened to them for the first time.
They hug until Mike’s sniffles subside. It’s the first time they’ve properly done this, where he’s confided in her and cried about it, since everything happened.
Covert glances and pointed looking away when the other tears up is nowhere near the same as this.
It doesn’t even feel like it’s been that long, but at the same time, it feels like an age has passed by. Like’s she’s perpetually waiting for a car to pick her up and it’s never coming. She thinks maybe Mike feels a little bit like that too.
“Who do you talk to, when you get sad?” Mike asks, and she pulls back to look him in the eyes.
“What?”
“Who do you talk to?” Mike says again, knowing she heard him the first time but letting it go.
“You don’t have to worry about me,” Nancy assures him. “I’m okay.”
“I hope it’s Jonathan,” Mike says as if she hasn’t spoken at all. “We both know we lied to each other that night.”
Nancy blows out a long breath, not knowing what to say, but unable to deny his statement either. She wonders when her brother grew so wise. Wishes he never had to face a tragedy that made him age this much, this quickly.
“I didn’t lie to you Mike,” she says carefully, trying to conjure up the right words. “It’s more complicated than that. You won’t understand.”
“Don't say that. Make me understand!” Mike exclaims, full of a sudden fury. He pulls back completely and stares at her, his anger rubbing off on her as her brow creases and mouth twists.
“Fine,” Nancy says. “I don’t want everything to change, okay? If I don’t stay with Steve, then Barb died for nothing. If it doesn’t work out, then what was it all for? How can I ever stop blaming myself for what happened to her if she died waiting for me to be done with a boy I don’t even like anymore!”
She’s breathing heavily, conscious she shouldn’t be having this conversation with her younger brother and Mike is looking at her with narrowed eyes.
“That’s stupid,” is his insensitive reply. “It wasn’t your fault the Demogorgon took Barb, and if you have the chance to be with the person you actually like, then you should, ‘cause some of us don’t!”
He goes then, runs upstairs, leaving Nancy by herself in the basement. His reply is juvenile, one of a child not yet comprehending the complexity of romantic relationships. But then, maybe that’s not fair, Nancy thinks. He harbours a genuine love for Eleven, however childish. She knows he cares about her in a way that’s pure and based on mutual trust, mutual devotion.
She wishes she could bring her back for him. Wishes she could bring back Barbara, for herself. Wishes a lot of things.
Mike makes everything sound so simple, so easy. Maybe he knows better than she does, after all. Maybe she and Steve were right then, but they’re not now. That’s allowed too, isn’t it?
She cancels with Steve on Saturday, and wills herself not to call Jonathan on Sunday. She calls him much less then she’d actually like to, no matter how much his voice soothes her. He has enough going on with his own family, with his brother. He’d only started attending school again last week, finally reassured his brother wouldn’t disappear the minute he let him out of his sight.
On Monday, Nancy sees him in the corridor, alone. She’s alone too, and then she’s calling out his name before she’s even decided what she wants to say. Her brain gets muddled a lot, these days.
“Hey,” he says quietly, coming over to her.
They can both feel the stares of other students, but they’re left alone. It’s probably because everyone’s wary of Jonathan now— His brother did come back from the dead after all.
They tell everyone that they identified the wrong body; the water disfigured the face and they didn’t know it wasn’t Will when they buried him. People believe most things if they’re said with enough conviction, Nancy finds.
“Hey,” she replies, equally soft. Something about him makes her softer around the edges. “How are your classes going?”
“Not as good as yours, I’d bet,” he says and smiles. Nancy can’t help but smirk. “Still got a 4.0 GPA?”
“3.999,” she replies, teasing. “All that monster hunting got to me, in the end.”
They skirt around the important issues, as they always do when other people are around. Crying about the monster, Barb and anything else is reserved for when they’re alone, away from the prying eyes of people who will never understand.
“I had a dream about you the other night,” she blurts out, wanting to take it back the second she’s said it.
“Oh yeah?” He asks, regarding her curiously. That soft smile still plays at his lips, one she’s seeing more and more of these days. She supposes he has a lot more to smile about. “What happened?”
Nancy studies him as he leans against a random locker. He’s wearing his jean jacket, the one he’d worn the night she’d given him the camera. He loves that camera. He’d told her later that night, when he was at home and Steve had gone. He had called her, thanking her for the present enthusiastically. She wishes she could have seen his smile then. They’d spoken for a long time, Nancy willing herself not to tentatively flirt, not to let herself get in too deep.
She sighs to herself, knowing it hadn’t worked.
“You asked me what was weirder, the bear traps or you.”
“And what did you tell me?” Jonathan plays along. He almost grins, one of the biggest smiles Nancy’s ever seen from him, and it makes her stomach flutter.
“I told you that you were weirder, definitely.”
This seems to be the right answer, and it’s worth it when his face stretches into a full blown grin. He shakes his head, giving her a fond look that he normally saves for when he thinks she can’t see him looking.
She doesn’t tell him it’s the first night she hasn’t had a nightmare since she went to the Upside Down. If she does that, he might start getting the right idea, and she doesn’t know if she’s ready for that yet.
Then he says, “Come with me to the dark room, I took some cool pictures over winter break,” so she goes.
She’s bouncing Holly on her hip whilst her mother makes dinner. Nancy coos to her younger sister and looks at her, praying as she always does that she will be unaffected by recent events.
They don’t talk about it, in the Wheeler house. Any time it gets so much as referenced at the dinner table, her dad gets up and storms away, muttering about their conspiracy theories and how the government does everything it does to protect them. Nancy and Mike always share a look, not bothering listen to a word he says. Once, she even caught her mother rolling her eyes at her father’s behaviour, but she’d never voice those opinions.
Nancy’s sure her mother would believe her, if she ever told her the whole truth.
“So, when are you going to invite Jonathan over for dinner?”
Nancy looks at her mother and stops her gentle swaying. “What?”
Karen isn’t even looking at her, pointedly not looking as she stirs something in a pot. “When are you inviting Jonathan over for dinner?”
“Why would I invite him over for dinner?” Nancy bites back, feeling defensive all of a sudden.
“You said he was your friend, didn’t you? You could ask him to bring Will too, I’m sure Mike would like that.”
All of this is said with a casual, innocent tone. Nancy relaxes a little at the extended invitation to Will, but knows what her mother is asking without her having to say it.
“Steve’s my boyfriend, Jonathan’s just a friend.”
“He treats you well, though, doesn’t he? He’s a good friend.”
Nancy narrows her eyes in suspicion whilst Holly grabs onto a piece of Nancy’s hair. She’s wearing it down today. “Steve treats me well, too.”
He does. It’s the total truth, and Nancy feels lucky, grateful for his support. No matter what happens between them in the future, she’ll always be thankful that he was there for her in this tumultuous time in her life.
“Jonathan’s just a friend,” Nancy says again, avoiding her mother’s sudden and piercing gaze. It’s like she knows all her secrets without even trying.
“Mhm,” her mother agrees, looking away from Nancy. Then she asks gently: “Who are you trying to convince, me or you?”
Nancy finds she doesn’t actually know, anymore.
“I made you a mixtape,” Jonathan says a few nights later on the phone. “I mean, if that’s okay. I was going to give it to you as a Christmas present and I know it's late, but... I wanted it to be perfect.”
Nancy holds her breath on the other end of the line, phone cradled to her ear as she wills her heart rate to slow down. She’s in her room, glad no one else can see the excitement she can’t hide when he calls first. “That sounds great.” And then, as an afterthought, “You better have all my favourites on there.”
“I do,” he says, sounding bashful. “And some of mine too. Your music taste is kind of limited.”
“Hey!” Nancy laughs. “I take offence to that; my music taste is perfectly fine!”
“Okay...” Jonathan replies, dragging out the vowels of the word. “We'll agree to disagree about your questionable music taste.”
She wants to say something like, you’re an idiot, Jonathan Byers, but that phrase is Steve’s, and it’s not fair to take it from him. So instead she says:
“You’re the worst, Byers.”
Before, he might have been hurt by that, but Nancy knows that he knows that that’s the kind of thing friends say to each other in jest. She tries to disregard how flirty all their conversations unintentionally are.
“Right back at you, Wheeler.”
Nancy can practically feel his smile.
The worst part about knowing she’s going to have to break up with Steve is carrying it around with her. She’s been steadily working up the courage to do it the past few weeks, since Jonathan had given her the mixtape, knowing it’s not fair to hold Steve back when a part of her wants to be given to someone else.
There’s also a third part of her that just wants to be alone.
She phones him up and instead of hello, says, “I need to talk to you.”
Something in the resigned, bittersweet way he says, “Okay,” lets her know that he knows what’s about to happen, and she hates herself a little bit more.
Steve lets himself in through the window and joins Nancy on her bed. They sit shoulder to shoulder and she’s sure he must be able to feel her shaking.
“I...” Nancy starts, finding it hard to force the words past the lump in her throat. “I’m sorry Steve...”
“Please don’t,” he says suddenly, taking both of her hands in his and looking earnestly into her eyes. “Whatever it is I did, I can fix it, I promise. Just don’t do this. Give me another chance to try.”
Nancy cringes and turns away, equal parts happy and guilty that he’s fighting for her.
“You didn’t do anything wrong, Steve.” Nancy’s voice sounds hollow even to her own ears.
“So why are you doing this?” She meets his eyes and sees there are tears gathering there, and feels her own pooling. This is so hard, but she knows she has to. There’s no good that will come from stringing them both along any further when her heart’s not in it.
“You’ve been so good to me,” she tells him, “But I don’t know how to be a normal girlfriend right now. I barely know how to be a normal person right now. You don’t need to get anymore caught up in that than you already are.”
“But I care about you!” He replies, sounding desperate. “Tommy and Carol, they don’t matter. I know they can be horrible and they’ve been my friends for years, but I’ll stop hanging out with them if you want me to. Whatever you need, Nancy.”
It’s that last line that gets her, the tears spilling over as she hears those three words said by somebody else.
“Steve I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I don’t know what else to say.”
He takes a deep breath, not letting go of her hands.
“Is this about Jonathan?”
Nancy blinks and tries not to react outwardly. She knows she owes him the truth, after everything he’s done for her, but she’s not quite sure she knows what the truth is herself.
“A little bit,” she concedes. “But not because I want to be with him over you. I just think that I need a friend more than I need a boyfriend, right now. There’s too much going on in my head and I can’t handle so many things at once.”
Steve is silent for a while and Nancy feels bad. She’s not quite being honest with the extent of her feelings for Jonathan, but she knows it would be deeply insensitive to bring those into her break up with Steve.
It’s not like she plans to immediately jump into a relationship with Jonathan anyway. She doubts he’d even want to. He’s got enough on his plate too.
She thinks maybe they can just be friends and see where it goes from there.
“I wish you weren’t doing this, Nancy.”
She wants to say, I wish I wasn’t either, or, I wish I wanted this, but Nancy wishes for a lot of things these days, and that isn’t one of them. She knows she’s making the right decision.
“Please don’t hate me,” she says selfishly, knowing he has every right to. Knowing he has every right to tell Tommy H. and Carol, knowing they have every right to hate her for screwing over their best friend.
“I could never hate you,” Steve says gently, letting go of one of her hands to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. “I’m sorry I can’t be what you need right now.”
Despite the fact she knows this is what she wants, she can feel her heart cracking at his words, unable to meet his eyes in fear that the ache will only grow stronger.
“I’m so sorry,” she says again, knowing it’s useless.
“You don’t need to be sorry.”
Steve is being scarily understanding. She half expected him to fly into a rage, to shout accusations at her and storm off, ready to tell everyone about the slut who used him for her own gain. Nancy knows that’s unfair. He’s more than proved he’s above that, deep down, even before this past month. The fact that he went to apologise to Jonathan not even knowing she would be there, is enough proof for her.
“I hope you find what you’re looking for, Nancy.”
He kisses her temple, letting his hand cradle her head and keep it to him one last time. She lets him, both of them now avoiding looking at each other’s tears. She feels the loss keenly as he climbs out through the window, and even more as she hears him drive away.
That doesn’t stop the distinct feeling that a weight has been lifted from her shoulders though.
One less person to pretend in front of, now.
Nancy sleeps off the weight that crying brings her, feeling drowsy as her head hits the pillow. There’s still so much of her headspace she needs to sort out, still things she needs to talk about and be comforted for. Now, at least, she thinks she can do it without feeling so guilty.
Only the weight of Barb is hers to carry now. Steve has gone and she hopes he doesn’t resent her too much, if at all.
She wonders what Barb would think of all this, what she would say. She hopes Barb would tell her she did the right thing—that putting herself first is the most important thing for Nancy right now.
She wonders what Barb would think of Jonathan.
She wonders what Barb would think of her.
She wonders.
It’s a Saturday again and Nancy gets up early, avoids her parents and Mike, then heads straight for Jonathan’s house.
Joyce answers the door, looking alive and smiling widely when she recognises Nancy. “Hey, Mrs Byers.”
“Nancy! Come in, come in.”
She seems to have come to life since Will’s return. Nancy supposes getting your son back would do that to you. She’d never admit it, but she’s slightly jealous of Joyce. It must have been so much easier to go the Upside Down with someone else, with a mission. She went and got to see the world and doesn’t seem to bear the same scars as Nancy, feel the same trauma.
Then again, adults can be very good at hiding things.
“I’ll go get Jonathan,” Joyce says after sitting her down and offering her a drink. Nancy declines and waits until Jonathan appears. He comes to the living room without Joyce, and Nancy can’t help but feel grateful that they’re alone.
“Sorry,” she says immediately. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”
He’s sleep ruffled, rubbing at his eyes and he looks soft. He yawns and a sliver of skin appears where his long pyjama pants don’t quite meet the t-shirt he’s wearing as he stretches. She tries to avert her eyes, looking at his face pointedly.
“S’okay, I don’t mind,” Jonathan says and she believes him.
He gives her a warm, unguarded smile and she realises she never really got to appreciate how gentle he was when he woke up in her bed.
“So...” Jonathan leans his shoulder against the wall, deciding not to go and sit next to her just yet. “What brings you here bright and early on a Saturday?”
Nancy blushes, still feeling bad for waking him up, but he just laughs at her expression until her face drops. He furrows his brow as he observes her sudden change in mood and down-cast eyes. “Nancy?”
“Steve and I... We—we broke up.”
“Oh.”
Moving across the room, he sits beside her now, but not touching. He never seems to know where he stands with her, where their boundaries are.
“I thought you guys were... good?”
“I ended it,” she says instead of answering his question.
“Well, I guessed that.” At Nancy’s raised eyebrows, Jonathan continues. “He’d be an idiot to break up with you, and he’s not that much of an idiot.”
That startles a laugh out of her and he bumps his shoulder with hers, something he seems to do a lot. She guesses he feels it’s a safe gesture. Friendly without being imposing. She wonders will the lines between them start to blur even further, now.
“I just kind of need some time to process everything right now,” she tells him. “So yeah, I guess we were ‘good’,” she makes quotation marks with her fingers, “But...”
“But...?”
“I don’t know. It’s just—it’s easier to be around people who know the full story. There’s less explaining to do. Less pretending, if that makes sense.”
“Yeah, yeah. It does.”
They lapse into silence and for once she gets the chance to look at Jonathan, since he’s not looking at her, but at his hands. Specifically, the matching scar they both have on their palms. He traces it delicately and she becomes mesmerised, not realising she's reached out to trace it herself until she’s started.
Jonathan’s head shoots up in surprise, but he says nothing. Now it’s her avoiding his gaze as she runs her index finger up and down the raised bump. “Does it still hurt?”
“Not really,” he says, “What about yours?”
“No.”
He coughs and then smiles. “It was worth it.”
“Yeah,” Nancy agrees, “And now we match.”
Something about the simple truth of that statement floors Nancy. They went through such a big event together in such a short space of time. They were partners, warriors, a team. They work well together and she’ll be damned if she’s going to let that go.
But it can wait a while, she thinks. We can just get used to each other first, no need to define anything yet.
“Do you uh,” he stops and starts, nervous. “Do you want to talk about it? Steve?”
“Um,” Nancy isn’t quite sure what to say. “Not today. Today I just want to spend the day with you.”
She can tell he tries to stop the smile spreading across his face and fails, and it makes her feel warm. Slowly, she leans into him, forcing him to sit back against the couch as Nancy rests her head against his shoulder.
They won’t talk about this, either, she knows. At least for a little while. Jonathan’s only just gotten good at being her friend, and they’ll have to navigate this uncharted territory carefully, cautiously. Even Nancy, more experienced than him, knows she doesn’t want to rush whatever there is between them and mess it all up.
It means too much; he means too much.
They breathe in sync and Jonathan presses his knee gently to hers in a reassuring way, as if he’s telling her he’s right there with her.
“Nancy?” His tone is just as soft as it was the day she bandaged his hand.
She looks up at him, sitting up straighter so she can meet his eyes.
“Yeah?”
Neither of them say anything for long moments, just gazing at each other, seemingly having a silent conversation with their eyes. It’s okay. We’ll figure this out together. I’m here for you. There’s no rush.
The moment is broken when Jonathan asks: “How about I make breakfast?” Nancy grins in slight embarrassment, her rumbling stomach answering for her as if provoked by the question. He pulls her up tentatively by both hands, unsure if the gesture is okay. She goes, and holds his right hand in her left for good measure as they walk to the kitchen.
Whatever this thing is between them, Nancy’s sure it’ll be worth the wait.