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Once Vecna is defeated and the Upside Down is gone for good, the dust settles, and the military lets them go when they realize they’ve lost what they were after.
There’s nowhere to go but home.
Nancy asks Steve and Robin to come with her. She has a traumatized sister and a grieving brother to take care of, and her parents are still recovering in the hospital. Not to mention the Byers (her ex-boyfriend) still technically live in her basement.
She’s not alone, but she’d feel alone if she went home without them (without Steve).
She doesn’t have to ask twice.
There are still blood stains on the kitchen floor, and the upstairs is in disarray. Not surprising the military didn’t bother to clean anything up.
Her bedroom is one of the only rooms upstairs still fully intact after the demogorgon attack, and Nancy’s relieved when she finally gets the chance to slip away and have a moment to herself.
The battle is done. Their enemy is defeated, and they will never worry about the Upside Down again. It doesn’t feel real yet, and Nancy is overwhelmed by the amount of emotion that feels like it’s just sitting in her chest cavity, waiting for her to get a clue on how to even begin to unpack it all.
The easiest feeling she can address is the increasingly painful throbbing on her arm. Slowly, she peels off her jacket and then her sweater vest, and then her shirt. Standing in front of her mirror, she turns and grimaces at the ugly red gash tearing apart the skin of her bicep.
Grazed by a bullet at some point, and there was never time to stop and inspect the damage. She wasn’t lightheaded or passing out from blood loss so she assumed she was fine. No need to worry herself or anyone else over it.
But now she can see the skin around it is a bright, irritated red, and blood is crusted over on the edges but still looks wet in the middle.
She’s only just trying to figure out the best way to clean it in her sleep-deprived state when there’s a couple raps on her door, and then it starts to open, and she panics because there’s no way she has time to hide this before whoever is entering her room sees it.
“Okay, Ms. Byers is stuffing Holly full with food right now, and Robin’s totally conked out on the—”
Steve freezes in the doorway. Nancy stands frozen like a deer in headlights, her hand hovering over the wound as if she can somehow hide it from him. She can only watch dreadfully as Steve’s eyes immediately hone in on her arm.
Absolutely zero chance that he’s going to just ignore this or pretend he doesn’t see it.
“Holy... Nance, what happened?”
“It’s nothing,” she tells him on instinct, and his disbelieving eyes shoot to hers with a frown as he reaches for her wrist, pulling her hand away from the wound so he can take a closer look. His other hand rests upon her upper back at the small of her neck. Electric tingles shoot down Nancy’s spine.
She swallows thickly, staring into the mirror, and mutters, “A bullet grazed me when we stormed the MAC-Z. It’s not a big deal.”
Steve harrumphs, his thumb brushing lightly over irritated skin that’s coated in crusted blood. “How bad does it hurt?” he asks.
Like hell.
“It’s not so bad.”
Steve’s eyes meet hers again, and she knows he doesn’t believe her. But instead of accusing her of being the liar that she is, he just asks, “Is the first aid kit still in the hall closet?”
Nancy nods, and Steve leaves to go get it. Her skin still tingles in the spots where he was touching her. With a sigh, she moves and sinks onto the edge of her mattress. It dawns on her that she’s hardly slept or eaten anything aside from a Bopper in three days. She’s not sure she’s ever felt this exhausted before.
Steve returns a few moments later, the first aid kit in one hand and a wet rag in the other. He sits next to her on her bed and sets straight to work, not without warning that this may hurt a little. And it really does hurt as he tries to wipe clean the open wound as best he can even though she can tell he’s trying to be gentle. His left hand grips her elbow, holding her arm still while he works with his right, not that Nancy’s squirming away from his touch. She just bites her lip and bears it, trying and failing to ignore the once familiar butterflies pooling in the pit of her stomach.
“When we stormed the MAC-Z...” Steve mutters then lets out a deep breath and shakes his head. “Nance, that was—”
“A long time ago, I know,” she sighs.
It actually can’t have been more than 8 hours ago, but it certainly feels like it’s been days.
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
“Well, we didn’t exactly have time to stop for band-aids,” she mutters sardonically.
“You’re lucky you didn’t bleed out.”
“It wasn’t that deep.”
“Yeah, well,” Steve sits back, setting the bloodied rag on his knee and frowning at her arm, which hardly looks any better than it did before. If anything, it’s more pink and swollen than it was before. “It looks like it could already be getting infected. And your face is a little red. I hope you’re not getting a fever.”
Nancy lifts a hand to her cheek. It does admittedly feel a little warm, and she doesn’t feel great, but again, she’s been running on adrenaline with no sleep and no food for three days.
Steve searches around in the first aid kit and pulls out some gauze and antibacterial spray. He shoots her an apologetic look as he says, “This is gonna sting a little.”
It’ll sting a lot, she’s sure. With a shrug, she tells him, “I can handle it.”
“I know,” he mutters.
It’s not as bad as Nancy anticipates, but it's still pretty painful. She bites her lip again, hands clenching into fists, and watches Steve out of the corner of her eye. His tongue pokes out slightly between his lips in concentration as he covers the area with the antibacterial spray then covers it with gauze and wraps it with the medical tape secured during Mike’s brief stint learning to ride a skateboard from Max. (Unsurprisingly, her brother was far too clumsy and accident prone to keep that up for long.)
All the while, Nancy can’t help thinking of Steve taking care of a crying child who’s just fallen off their bike, patching up a skinned knee or a cut elbow, and her tummy does a nervous flip flop at the thought.
It’s not like that with him, she had told Jonathan.
She didn’t break up with Jonathan because of Steve. She and Jonathan had enough problems to break them up on their own. The Steve of it all...
Well, she’s not sure what Steve is to her these days- hasn't wanted to think about it, has been too afraid, too guilty, too unsure of it all.
But she can’t deny that sitting alone with him, newly single, watching him take care of her, the gentle touch of caring hands on her skin, is stirring something deep within her.
Feeling the need to say something, Nancy says aloud for the first time, “We broke up.” Steve pauses, the medical tape rolled halfway around Nancy’s arm as his eyes shoot to hers. Clearing her throat, she clarifies, as if he needs it, “Jonathan and I.”
Whatever Steve is to her now, she figures he at least has the right to know.
Steve clears his throat then returns his attention to her arm. He doesn’t speak until he’s finished wrapping her injured bicep. When he does finally speak, he says, “I know.”
Nancy’s eyebrows shoot up in surprise. “You do?”
“Jonathan told me.”
“He… did?” She can’t imagine when they possibly could have had the time to have that conversation (or any conversation) in the last 24 hours, but apparently, the surprises tonight are never-ending.
“Wish I could say I’m sorry, but...” Steve sighs and shakes his head. “I’m not.”
And before Nancy has time to even begin to ponder what that is supposed to mean, he meets her eye, his lips pursed, and adds, “And I’m not saying that selfishly, okay? It’s just... I mean, we’re friends, right?”
And Nancy nods. A friend. That’s what Steve is to her. Of course.
“And as your friend—” (There’s that word again.)— “I don’t like seeing you miserable.”
Nancy looks away, biting her lip, not sure what to say to that, how to feel about it. How many times over the last year and a half has Steve found her drinking herself sick in the kitchenette of the Squawk and given her a ride home, sometimes with a high Jonathan in tow (most of the time not)?
She doesn’t know for sure, obviously, but it was enough that he and Mike had a routine for sneaking her into the house without her parents noticing down to a tee.
She supposes she’d thought (or hoped, maybe) that she needed the alcohol to muster up the nerve to be honest. Apparently, what she really needed was to be threatened with death to come clean.
“That should hold for tonight,” Steve says, and when Nancy looks back to him, he’s packing away the first aid kit. “But we’re going to have to clean it again in the morning, and you should probably go get it checked out by a doctor. I don’t know if that’s going to need stitches.”
Nancy sputters. “Stitches?”
Steve blinks in surprise at her strong reaction then points out, “It’s an open wound, Nance.”
“Yeah, but...” She stares down at her lap, her hands fidgeting nervously. “It should just heal on its own.”
“Maybe,” Steve sighs, “But I think either way, you’re going to need more than what you’ve got in here if you don’t want that getting infected.”
Nancy sighs again, unwittingly thinking of the hospital- the place where she realized Barb was never coming back; a gory gut monster that almost killed her; crying in the bathroom, covered in her mother’s blood, while her parents lay in limbo with doctors treating injuries from something they don’t even know exists.
Maybe she’s not too eager to return to the hospital.
But maybe Steve is right.
And as if to prove his point, he says, “I mean, you don’t seriously want to survive everything we just went through just to be taken out by an infection, do you?”
And Nancy glances up at him to see a small half-smile tugging at his lips. If she recalls correctly, she said the same thing to him about 18 months ago.
Rolling her eyes, she mutters, “This is just your payback for making you get stitches last year.”
“You said it, not me,” Steve says, “But hey- I'm still here, aren’t I? Who knows what would’ve happened if I hadn’t listened to you? Maybe I would have just gone home and died in my sleep or something because I just let all those demobat bites go unchecked.”
Nancy lets out a humorless chuckle, but her heart clenches in her chest just at the thought of Steve dying. “Don’t say that,” she utters softly, her eyes squeezing shut, and she sees him hanging off the edge of that tower, sees his hand slipping, watches him fall and fall and fall—
“Hey... Nance, I was just kidding,” Steve says, voice soft.
She shakes her head, hating that her eyes are teary when she opens them again. “You really scared me tonight, you know?”
“I scared you?” Steve asks in disbelief.
“I thought you were a goner.”
“Yeah,” he says with a sigh, his shoulders slumping as he looks away. “So did I.” He glances at her, seeming to hesitate, debating if he should say something, then clearly decides to do it because he follows that up with, “How do you think I felt when you offered yourself up as bait?”
“Someone had to do it,” Nancy says with a shrug of the shoulder. “You didn’t have to go falling off the radio tower. “
“Yeah, ‘cause that was my goal all along.”
“I’m serious. If Jonathan hadn’t caught you, if you had—died—”
Her breath catches in her throat, and she can’t finish the thought.
A world without Steve—without laughter, without the levity she hasn’t wanted to admit he brings to her life, without unceasing acts of kindness that she doesn’t deserve, without a steady hand and eye having her back, always without her ever having to ask…
That’s not a world she wants to know, not a world she wants to live in.
It’s not like that with him.
But… isn’t it?
“Hey, Nance…”
When Nancy looks at Steve again, it’s to find his eyebrows have creased thoughtfully, and he’s sucked in the side of his cheek. He’s clearly thinking hard about something. When he meets her eye, he sighs and says, “Look… The six kids thing… The dream…”
Her heart thuds in her chest, and her breath catches yet again as the words she’s been so afraid of addressing for far too long shoot to the forefront of her mind.
You’re there. You’ve always been there.
“All of that… It was just… just a daydream, okay?” Steve says, yet there’s something in his eyes, something pained and sorrowful, that lets Nancy know that it’s much deeper than that. She remembers that look in his eyes that night in the Upside Down. It’s seared into her memory after all.
“Steve, I—”
“You don’t want six kids, I know,” he says, and she would be lying if she said his acknowledgement of that didn’t give her at least a bit of relief. “Hell, I don’t even know if I really want that many or not. The number’s not the point. The Winnebago, the little nuggets—I’ll stop calling them that, I promise—none of that really matters. It’s not real, any of it. The only part of it that ever mattered was…”
He trails off, staring down at the floor, exhaling deeply.
Nancy fills in the blank, her voice barely above a whisper. “Me.”
Steve’s eyes are a little misty when he looks back to her and gives the faintest of nods. Nancy lets out a breathless laugh, her eyes also teary again. She shakes her head, trying to clear it of all the confusion she feels in her heart.
It’s too soon, she knows, to jump into another relationship. She just broke up with Jonathan. She has no idea what she wants out of a future she didn’t believe she was going to live to see. And her family needs her. They’re going to need her for a long time, and they need to be her priority.
But Steve…
She knows the nervous anticipation she feels when she knows she’s going to see him, the way her heart skips when she catches him watching her across the room, the way her eyes are magnetically drawn to him no matter where they are, no matter what they’re doing, the way her heart was stirred with pride and something that felt a little like adoration as she watched him step up today and come up with the plan for rescuing Holly and the other kids—
That’s not nothing.
And maybe she doesn’t know quite what it is yet, doesn’t have a name for it yet, but she wants to figure it out- with time.
“Personally, I think calling them nuggets is kind of cute, just… maybe in a smaller quantity.”
Steve’s eyes shoot to her again, and she can tell she’s taken him by surprise. His lips twitch up into a smile, but then it fades, and he clears his throat. “You don’t have to say that, Nance. I know we want different things.”
She gives another humorless laugh and shakes her head, her eyes filling with tears again as she admits, “Steve, I don’t know what I want right now.” She swallows thickly, avoiding his eye as she admits, “This whole year, I’ve just been surviving. I haven’t wanted to think about what you said in the woods. I didn’t want to make a decision between you and Jonathan, and I honestly haven’t allowed myself to think beyond any of this, so the thought of actually having a future…”
She shakes her head, her vision blurring as all the emotion that’s been weighing on her shoots to the surface with no warning.
“I don’t even know what to do with that.”
“Hey, Nance, it’s okay,” Steve says, his brows creasing in concern as she tries desperately to fight back the onslaught of tears building. (Seriously, can she get a grip? Where is all this emotion coming from?)
She’s not entirely sure what it is about the next moment that sparks it- whether it’s the way Steve is looking at her with all compassion and no resentment in his eyes (and he should resent her, he absolutely should) or the comforting way that he rests his hand on her back, sneaking it up underneath her hair to rub soothing circles on the spot that he still remembers is always tense- but it’s like her aching heart finally cracks, and the dam breaks.
Eleven. Mike. Holly. Her parents. Jonathan. Eddie. Fred. Barb.
It all comes pouring out.
And it’s humiliating.
It’s like once she starts crying, she can’t stop, and it’s an ugly cry. Like wailing, heaving for breath, hiding her face in her hands kind of cry.
It should send Steve running.
Instead, he doesn’t even hesitate to pull her into his arms, rocking her back and forth, stroking her hair and letting her cry, and she collapses under the weight of the last four years, clinging to Steve Harrington’s shirt like it’s all she has left.
She’s surprised her crying doesn’t attract the attention of the rest of the household, but no one comes to check and see what’s wrong, and for that, she’s thankful because it’s bad enough losing it in front of Steve. She couldn’t handle anyone else seeing her like this.
As the tears finally slow, and she’s able to catch her breath again, Nancy realizes Steve’s humming. She closes her eyes, listening to the sound and finding it so soothing for reasons she can’t even understand. It’s soothing enough she feels like she could fall asleep right here.
And after everything they’ve been through this week, nothing sounds better than a blissful escape into unconsciousness.
Only her sleep is destined to be anything but.
And then she thinks of Holly and Mike and realizes there’s no time to rest.
Reluctantly, she pulls herself upright, sure she looks a mess. Steve seems just as reluctant to let her go, and it’s as she starts to stand that he grabs her arm and pulls her back, his brows knit together in concern.
“Nance, where are you going?”
“I have to check on Holly, and Mike. I’ve been hiding away up here while they actually need me downstairs.”
But as she starts to stand again, Steve once again pulls her back. Nancy huffs at him. “Steve.”
“Holly and Mike are fine- or, I mean, they’re not fine. They’re as fine as they can be. I told you Ms. Byers was making sure Holly ate, and I already checked on Mike. He retreated to his room a while ago. He didn’t want to be bothered.” Steve’s eyes are serious as ever as he says, “Are we not going to talk about what just happened?”
“Why do we need to talk about it?” she asks, too embarrassed to quite meet his eye.
Steve gives a resigned sigh with all the exhaustion of someone who’s been completely worn down over the last 18 months. When she finally risks a glance at him, unable to help herself, she wonders for the first time what this last year and a half has been like for him, sitting idly by, watching her drink her misery away, listening to her drunken ranting about her boyfriend who hates him, and all the while, still being a friend to her, still supporting her on every Crawl even when he thought it was pointless, still caring for her endlessly…
She should make him absolutely miserable.
And yet…
“It’s okay,” Steve finally utters, brown eyes meeting hers again, understanding deep within them. “You always want to have a plan for everything, but sometimes, it’s okay if you don’t. You don’t have to have everything figured out right now. You’ll get there eventually. You always do.”
He is so kind to her, so patient, so gracious…
“I’m just... really tired,” she finally says, and her voice cracks because she’s finally being honest, and someone’s finally listening to her. She’s tired of running, tired of fighting, tired of pretending she’s strong and she’s fine when she’s not.
Steve lifts a hand, running it over Nancy’s hair, smoothing down frizzy, messy curls that desperately need to be washed, and she leans into the touch, her eyes fluttering shut, reaching a hand up and wrapping it around his wrist, wanting him to stay here with her forever.
“You’re exhausted, Nance,” Steve says, “We all are. You should get some sleep.”
He’s right. Yet the thought of actually having to go to bed and fall into the inevitable cycle of nightmares fills her with utter dread.
For once, she doesn’t really think as she asks, “Stay with me? Please?”
Steve’s eyes widen slightly in surprise at the request. He holds her gaze, and for the first time in 18 months, she allows herself to look back into warm, comforting, deep brown without Jonathan-sized guilt in her heart.
The silence lasts only a few seconds, probably, but feels like an eternity.
She wonders what he’s thinking.
But then finally, he nods and utters, “Just let me do a couple things first, okay?”
So reluctantly, she lets Steve go and uses his absence to change into pajamas and climb into bed. He’s gone not quite fifteen minutes, but when he returns, he shuts the door quietly behind him and kicks off his shoes next to her dresser then pulls off his jacket and the baseball cap. “Mike’s light is off, and he didn’t respond when I poked my head in on him, but Holly’s settled in there for the night too, looks like. Ms. Byers said she’d check on them before she goes to bed.”
Nancy nods though she wonders if she should be in there too, if she’s failing as an older sister by staying in here with Steve tonight.
She watches him round her bed and perch himself on the other side. He glances over at her, like he’s making sure she hasn’t changed her mind, then swings his legs up onto the bed and settles down in the spot next to her.
They lay in silence for a few moments, then Nancy whispers, “Steve?” and rolls over onto her back, clasping her hands over her stomach and staring up at the ceiling.
Steve looks over at her. “Yeah?”
“How am I supposed to be there for him? For Mike?” Her voice is still hardly above a whisper, her heart aching as she thinks of her brother across the hall.
His wailing over Eleven tonight is another image that will be seared into her memory forever.
“How am I supposed to help him with his grief when I—”
When I can’t even handle my own?
Steve’s quiet for a long moment, maybe waiting for her to finish her thought aloud, which she doesn’t. Finally, though, he says, “I know you Wheelers like to take things into your own hands and handle them on your own, but… You don’t have to, not this time. You’re not alone in this, any of you.”
Tears spring to Nancy’s eyes once more, and she blames it entirely on the exhaustion. Biting her lip hard, she rolls her head to the side to look at Steve. “If I’ve learned anything with Dustin this year…” He sighs, and she momentarily eyes the mark on his cheek where she’s sure Dustin socked him for something. She never got the chance to ask him what happened between them at the lab.
“I’m here, okay?” Steve utters with utmost sincerity. “Robin’s here. Dustin and Lucas… We’re all here. You don’t have to figure it all out on your own, okay?”
Nancy doesn’t quite trust herself to speak, so she just nods though the words pierce her straight to the heart.
I’m here… We’re all here.
She’s carried her burden for so long on her own. The assurance of having someone else, someone steady, to carry this with her gives her a sense of comfort she didn’t know she needed.
It spurs her on just enough to do the one thing she never does, hates to do even: admit her fault.
“It’s not okay,” she murmurs. Steve frowns, his brows creasing in confusion. She stares at the ceiling, hands clasped nervously over her stomach as she goes on. “Ignoring what you told me in the woods that night. Leaving you hanging and refusing to make a decision. You deserve better than that.”
Steve sighs and sounds ready to object, but Nancy shakes her head at him, her lips pressed firmly together. “You’ve been a really good friend to me this year, Steve.”
He shrugs one shoulder. “It’s nothing.”
It’s not nothing. It’s everything to her. She can finally acknowledge that.
“I’m not saying no,” she finally tells him, and his eyes shoot to her once more, something shifting in them- something hopeful? Does she even know what hope is anymore?
“I just… I need time- to figure things out, where I’m going, what I’m doing, what I’m feeling.”
Steve slowly nods, glancing away momentarily. He clears his throat then utters, “Take your time. Whatever you need. It’s okay.”
She still doesn’t think it is actually, but it at least gives her something to work toward, makes her feel a little more like she has a purpose again outside of hunting Vecna and firing a gun and being generally miserable all the time. And maybe that's enough to give her at least a little hope, even if just for tonight.
They don’t say much after that. Nancy rolls back onto her side and turns off the light. With Steve settled in next to her, she falls asleep almost immediately.