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NANCY
For ten years, Nancy’s worst fear has been becoming a mother.
It starts with her mother. Being six years old and watching Karen frantically trying to get Mike to stop crying, hearing her dad yell from the living room that he couldn’t hear the TV, watching her mother apologize. An odd sense of sick dread had filled her, and she’d realized all at once that she would rather die than live that life. When teachers asked Nancy if she wanted to be “just like Mommy,” she would feel that pit in her stomach and frantically shake her head. She didn’t play house with the other kids, didn’t like the baby dolls her grandma gave her for her birthday. She just couldn't pretend it was okay, not like everyone else.
Despite that, she does love her mother, who curls up with her at night and whispers stories to keep the monsters away, and tells her all sorts of fairytales. Nancy grows up to think they’re a bit ridiculous, but she puts up with it for her mother.
“That's dumb, why does she have to marry the prince immediately?” Nancy complains.
Karen laughs like she's the funniest thing on Earth, pats her head, and declares, “Oh honey, you'll understand once you're older.”
Nancy gets a bit older, and she still doesn't understand. Most of the time. Being around Mike and his friends is the exception. She dresses up for their campaigns, and they even occasionally rope in Will’s brother. She gets to do his makeup then. He complains less than most boys would, which is nice. The games are ridiculous but she and Jonathan play along anyway, despite any embarrassment. It's worth it for them. They're sweet boys, usually.
Then they start to grow up and annoy her more. They yell from the basement, loud enough that she can hear it when she’s on the phone with Barb. Nancy rolls her eyes and slams her door closed on them. After all, she’s only 15. She doesn’t need to worry about children, especially not her brother's friends.
Instead, she worries about clothes and boys. The things people expect from her. When she has sex with Steve in his way-too-quiet house, she gets to ignore any problems. She gets to ignore that he’s the perfect man her parents would adore, that he’ll want to get married and raise a family. It doesn’t matter then, not when she’s impulsive and young. She doubts Steve expects anything like that yet. After all, they’re just kids.
And then, suddenly, she doesn’t feel much like a kid anymore. Because the world is collapsing, and there’s monsters in Jonathan Byer’s living room, and she knows how to shoot a gun, and her best friend is dead and never coming back.
In the aftermath, being with Steve is almost a relief. The normality that used to bore her seems like the only thing keeping her stable, keeping her from diving head-first into the unknown abyss of insanity that is the Upside Down. They keep each other grounded, safe.
(Stifled.)
And then everything changes again.
And again.
***
It happens a week after Joyce packs up her family and leaves for California. After months of having Jonathan by her side--months of laughing at his stupid jokes and sharing CDs and proofreading articles--it feels strange to be away from him. It’s achingly lonely, and she realizes she doesn’t have that many friends outside of Jon. She misses Barb the way she did back when it all started, and she aches for anyone’s steady presence by her side.
She misses Will and El too, if she has to admit it. Having El around had been... well, a bit like having a younger sister. One who could actually speak in full sentences, something Holly hadn’t mastered then. And she’d forgotten what it was like to not come downstairs and see Will raiding their kitchen counters, greeting her with an anxious politeness that never seemed to go away, no matter how often he came over. Nowadays it’s like she can always tell someone’s missing.
It's a false alarm that does it. There's a blackout in their neighborhood while the kids are in the Wheelers’ basement. Her parents aren't home. Holly is at a friend's house. When Nancy runs downstairs, her shotgun clutched in her hands, the kids emerge.
She's standing by the window, peering out. She shushes them immediately when she hears their panicked whispers, focused on the shadows. Are they taking the form of an elongated, grotesque monster? Is that her neighbor checking outside, or are their limbs contorting and their skin bubbling to hide the rot underneath? She blinks away any tiredness, eyes focused and narrowed on every tiny movement.
“Nancy?” Mike says quietly, sounding so scared and resigned and determined. “What's happening?”
She glances at them, at Lucas clutching Max to his side and her hand around Dustin’s arm and Mike, always in front of them, his eyes wide as he grips a kitchen knife protectively. They're so, so young.
Oh, Nancy thinks numbly. Oh, as she realizes that she's the oldest one here. That it's her job to protect them now. Hopper isn't appearing with guns blazing, Joyce isn't coming to trick the monsters into submission, her mom isn't going to hug her close and whisper promises of safety in her ear. If those shadows take form and break down her door, Nancy is the only thing standing between these kids and certain death.
Nancy turns back towards the window. “Go hide downstairs,” she commands. They listen. If she was still 15 and naive, she'd delight in her brother obeying her for once. Instead, she trains her aching eyes on the outside world and doesn't move until the lights come back on.
***
The realization strikes something deep inside her. She can’t focus, can’t relax. She sits curled against her bedroom wall some days, when the kids are over, shotgun clutched tightly enough that it leaves imprints on her palms. Nancy is completely alone, and there is nothing she can do about it.
She could go to Robin and Steve, she supposes. But that seems wrong too. The two of them have been completely inseparable since the mall. It’s as if they were sucked into the same life and refuse to leave now, constantly orbiting around each other. It’s stranger to see one of them alone than with the other, these days.
They’re probably dating, she thinks. It’s an oddly bitter thought, considering how much she doesn’t have feelings for Steve anymore. If she were to consider it more, she’d realize she’s more jealous of the idea of them, of having someone who loves you so completely and fully and refuses to leave your side. But there are bigger issues than dissecting her nonsensical jealousy.
Jonathan is lying to her these days. Her friends at school think she’s too intense. She can't swim anymore. A small part of her, which she forces down as far as possible, resents Joyce more than she thought possible. Because she’s gone, she’s safe in California with her kids, meanwhile Nancy’s are hiding in a basement.
Nancy stares at her pastel wallpaper, and she prays the lamp doesn’t flicker.
***
Mike is gone. Mike is in California and Hawkins is under attack again and she doesn’t know if he's safe and Nancy can’t breathe.
***
When Mike comes out of that weird pizza van, in the aftermath, Nancy shakes apart with relief. He’s safe. She can crash into Jonathan’s arms and cling to him desperately, relieved when he holds her back just as tightly.
He smells like weed, and her eyes water because she feels like she doesn’t know him anymore. Her Jonathan doesn't smoke. Her Jonathan is kind and caring. Except Will is a little too old to be parented now, and she wonders how long he’s been adrift, lost without someone to take care of. Maybe drugs aren't all that surprising.
She doesn’t know anymore. She’s not sure she knows anything.
Before she can even try to put everything into words, Joyce comes bearing a previously-dead Hopper, who was apparently trapped in Russia the whole time. Great.
This is an awful combination, because Joyce and Hopper notice. They see Nancy, Robin, and Steve running around the hospital like a well-oiled machine, checking in on every kid. Nancy makes sure every exit is covered and patrols the hallways. If something is coming, she needs to know. And it helps to ward off the stench of grief hanging over all of them, the feeling that Max should be awake and bound to El’s side, the loss of Eddie.
She pushes it down and focuses on what they're here to do.
“Why do you still have that?” she says, gesturing to Steve’s baseball bat. It's not the nail studded one he adores, but she doubts they could bring that into a hospital anyway. They usually wouldn't even get away with this much, but the nurses are too busy running around in a panic to notice. Too many people injured in the Split, bodies wheeled past on stretchers. She looks away quickly.
“Just in case those guys from the football team come back for Max,” he says. Nancy nods. She doesn't know why she didn't think of that too. She should have thought of that. There's just so many things to worry about now.
Robin is hovering around Steve, anxious and terrified. They changed his bandages to proper supplies instead of Nancy’s dirt stained rags and cleaned his wounds, but she's still paranoid. She's also planning, examining security cameras and memorizing routes between hospital rooms. Nancy can't remember the last time any of them slept, other than small, bursting fits in plastic hospital chairs.
Joyce follows them into the hallway once, after they've regrouped from a snack run and are going to check on Max again.
“You know,” she says. “You don't have to do all this. You can relax.”
“It's no problem, Ms. Byers,” Steve says, and Nancy snorts at his manners. “It's kind of our job now.”
Joyce looks surprised, and Nancy sees a certain type of devastation in Hopper’s eyes when he follows behind her.
“I- I don't know about that. You're kids. Come on, just sit for a moment,” Joyce says. Her voice is so gentle and motherly, and Nancy snaps.
“Not anymore. Not since you left. You left, okay? And we didn't. It doesn't matter that you still care, because you weren't here. None of you were. We were alone and there wasn't anyone else to take care of the kids. We're the adults now, alright? You have to start treating us like it.” She's shaking when she's done, feels hysterical, unable to meet the hurt in Joyce's eyes. Steve reaches for her arm like he's about to comfort her, then stops like he doesn't know if his touch would be welcome. And that stings.
She feels Robin wrap and arm around her shoulders and lead her down the hall, softly telling Steve to check on Dustin for her. They sit on a bench, and Robin's hand on her arm is grounding as Nancy finally remembers how to breathe. She looks over at Robin, who smiles awkwardly, then quickly retracts her hand like she's been burned.
“Thank you,” Nancy tells her.
“For what?” Robin says, confused.
Nancy shrugs. “Helping.”
I don't think I could do this without you. I don't think Steve could. Jonathan is high and we're all alone and I'm so, so scared, she doesn't say.
Robin grins, exhausted but genuine, and knocks her shoulder against Nancy’s. “Well, we're a team now. That's what we do.”
“Yeah,” Nancy breathes. “Yeah, we are.”
She reaches over to intertwine her fingers with Robin’s, sinks into her side, and rests for a second.
***
Things are different with the four of them. There's other people, like Argyle who calls Jonathan almost every weekend, and Robin’s new friend Vickie. But when it's time to go home, it's always just them.
She doesn't kiss Jonathan these days. He doesn't try to kiss her either. She worries she'd somehow taste the weed on his tongue and she's sure he worries he'll taste the alcohol on hers. It's easier this way, when they can hold hands and lean into each other for safety and nothing else. It helps that the affection expands to Robin and Steve, who it turns out are not dating, but are the most intense best friends Nancy has ever seen. It makes more sense when she gets a close personal look at watching them bicker over movies or incessantly bully the other’s wardrobe.
Most days, she doesn't go home and get drunk in the safety of her room, or clutch her gun like a lifeline. She passes out in Steve’s living room, curled up around the others in a pile of pillows and blankets. For once, the loneliness subsides.
It helps that the kids are getting older. El’s powers get stronger every day. Dustin is making new gadgets and expanding past what any of them expected for him. Mike tries to use a gun, before quickly deciding that's a bad idea and he can just form the plans. So instead she teaches Will and Lucas to shoot, and they take to it almost as easily as she did. When they finally manage to hit a target perfectly and prance around the practice area, cheering and spinning each other around, she feels a bright sort of pride bubble up inside her.
They don't always need her to protect them now. And yet...
She doesn't know how to not be the shield between them and the Upside Down. These days, it's difficult to remember a time when she wasn't. It doesn't matter that they're older now, that they could probably take on a demogorgon and win. When everything implodes, Nancy goes first. Nancy enters the gates, and she makes attack plans, and she's willing to do whatever it takes.
(Nancy Wheeler is a murderer. She gunned down members of the military, with lives and hopes and people who loved them. She stares at her shaking hands, and allows herself just five seconds to collapse in Robin’s arms and bite back the urge to scream.
Then she forces herself up, and to the front again.
It's worth it, she has to remind herself, swallowing memories of bullet holes and horrified, human eyes. It's worth it for the kids.)
***
When Nancy first hears her parents are hospitalized, she has the horrible thought that if they die she’ll have to take care of Mike and Holly, stay in this town with them, and there’s no way she can do that forever. It’s a disgusting, selfish way to think.
It turns out she doesn’t even have to worry, because Nancy’s mother is incredible. She fights a demogorgon for Holly, she blows up demodogs for Lucas and Max. She's strong and fierce and protective and Nancy’s chest aches when she looks at her. Because how horrible is it that her mother manages to fight tooth and nail to protect her children from everything except their own father?
Nancy doesn't tell her that, because Karen loves her and she's trying her best. Nancy tries her best every day for her kids, and she knows it'll never be enough. So, obviously, her mother must be the same. She has to be.
And yet, sometimes Nancy thinks back to Mike sitting at a dining room, their father’s voice blank and primed to stab at things he barely understands about himself. She thinks of hurried dismissals when Holly tries to speak, of speaking over her and choking out her own voice until she learned to suppress it before he had a chance to. Of Karen sitting across the table, in the living room, outside her bedroom, and never saying anything.
And she wonders, Why was that never enough?
***
Ted Wheeler is laying in a hospital bed across from her, unconscious and blank. His face is peaceful.
“Why didn’t they care?” she asks Jonathan. He looks at her, his eyes so, so sad. Even when they’re nothing, at least he understands her.
“I don't know.”
***
“Mike?” she says quietly, opening his door. It's been a week of still, unsettling silence. Mike sits on the edge of the bed, staring down at a painting. She doesn't recognize it, it's not one of the ones he hangs on his walls.
Slowly, Nancy walks over and sits next to him.
“That's a cool dragon,” she says.
Mike laughs humorlessly and tosses the painting aside. It falls into one of the many, many messy corners of his room. It's been like this for eight days now. Their parents aren't doing much to help, which is typical. She doesn’t know why she’d thought they would. So, Nancy has to do that instead.
“El’s dead,” Mike whispers. “El’s dead and I couldn't even tell her I loved her.”
And he collapses into Nancy's arms, sobbing. She tries to hold him the way her mom used to, when she was still young enough to cry. But her hands weren't made for gentle, motherly touches. Her fingers are calloused and the etch of violence is in the lines of her palm. She's meant to fight, to stand in front of them and protect. Not for this, not for emotions and grief and pain that she herself barely knows how to handle.
But Nancy has to try. So she holds Mike clumsily, as best as she can, and she lets him fall apart.
For once, it really is enough.
***
When she drives away, she doesn't look back. Maybe she's afraid she'll see something that drags her back to this town, into this mess. Maybe she's afraid she'll see nothing at all.
She thinks of everything ahead of her, of loneliness and years surrounded by oblivious people who will never know, never understand what she's done.
Her stomach twists into knots. She can't tell if it's fear or excitement.
***
STEVE
Steve has always wanted children. He realized in the stretches of silence when his parents were gone, that became longer and longer as he grew up. That maybe he couldn’t stand that kind of silence forever, that he wanted a house filled with noise and family. Besides, there was a plan for people like him. He'd grow up, move into a picket fenced house in the suburbs, marry a woman from proper standing, and have 2.5 kids in three years. He never even thought to challenge that idea (and he wouldn't for a while).
It wasn't supposed to happen like this.
It wasn't supposed to be hiding in a van, three scared little kids hidden behind him, standing between them and monsters he never could have imagined. It wasn't supposed to be carting them through toxic tunnels and trying to control his raggedy breaths, pushing them forward to make sure he's last to get out. He wasn't supposed to be seventeen.
He knows he's not a parent. They're not his kids. They have homes and lives and he shouldn't be involved in any of it. But afterwards, when Will’s curled against a terrified Jonathan and Joyce and Mike is refusing to let go of his hands, Dustin slides up to him.
“We all called our parents,” he says, his voice hoarse. “We're staying here tonight. Sleepover, you know?”
Steve nods. He does know. In the aftermath of the first attacks, Nancy had gone home with him. It felt... wrong, somehow, to leave Jonathan after they'd fought and almost died together. But he was clinging to his mother and shaking, and they'd exchanged one look before remembering they didn't fit in there. With families like that, who clung desperately to each other in the wake of tragedy. He and Nancy weren't meant for that kind of open affection, so they curled up in his bed together. They didn't sleep or talk, just held each other as tightly as possible and did anything possible to avoid looking at the pool. Even in all the horror, it was nice to be understood so well.
Looking back, Steve wonders if he just imagined that last bit.
“You should stay too.”
Steve blinks. “I'm sorry?”
Dustin rolls his eyes, like Steve is being stupid.
“Stay, dumbass,” he grumbles. “What else are you gonna do, go home and be alone and scared? Just call your parents or whatever.”
Steve doesn't tell Dustin that he doesn't have to call, that no one will pick up if he does. Dustin, with his childlike smile and fearlessness, has never known a world in which he wasn't loved unconditionally.
Instead, he sleeps over. Nancy shoots him a guilty look as she slips into Jonathan’s room and he just smiles reassuringly, ignoring the ache in his chest, as he leans back on the couch. Dustin immediately curls into his side. Lucas, slightly more hesitant, keeps an inch of space before he promptly passes out and collapses onto Steve. Max stays a good foot away.
“Hey,” he whispers. “What you did back there was really cool.”
“With Billy?” she asks.
He shrugs. “With everything.”
Max’s lips crook up in a smile, and she scoots an inch closer.
***
Steve styles Dustin’s hair for the school dance and gives him excellent advice, in his opinion. He teaches Lucas how to cook, since his parents both work and they’re too busy to help. He compliments Will’s art and gets routinely bullied by Mike. He, Nancy, and Jonathan get their hair done and nails painted by El at a mildly awkward sleepover. He even helps Max find the perfect dress for the dance, for some reason.
“Why me? Why not, I dunno, Nancy?” he asks her, shifting through clothes and mentally cataloging which ones won’t clash with her hair.
“I’m not really close with Nancy like that.” Max shrugs. “Besides, you have okay style.”
“Okay?” he repeats, grinning.
“For an elderly jock, yeah.” She ignores his offended protests and snatches the dress from his hands, skipping off to try it on.
Most of Steve’s friends are kids, and they’re somehow the healthiest friendships he’s ever had.
***
After the mall fire is thoroughly extinguished and Steve’s officially thrown up all the drugs, he goes up to Dustin and Erica.
“I’m sorry,” he says immediately. “You two had to break us out of a fucking torture chamber alone, and that had to have been terrifying. I should have been there to help or- I don't know, do something useful.”
“I wasn’t scared,” Erica grumbles. Her fingers shake where they’re clutching the blanket the paramedics gave her.
“And besides, you were really high. It’s not your fault,” Dustin protests. He never seems to blame Steve for anything, never gets angry. Steve sometimes wonders how long it’ll take before the hero worship dissipates and he realizes just how flawed he really is.
Steve shrugs. “Still.”
And there’s really nothing any of them can say to make it better.
He goes to his car, where Robin’s already huddled in the passenger seat.
“Can we go to your house?” she asks quietly. “I can’t-”
She cuts herself off. Steve understands.
“Yeah, of course,” he says. Dustin and Erica’s parents will be there to pick them up soon. Robin’s won’t, and he doesn’t ask why, and she doesn’t question his parents not being home. They fall asleep in the same bed, wound together tight enough that he doesn’t think they’ll ever separate, and he tries not to cry from relief that she stayed.
***
Driving the kids (and Robin, who he’s permanently stuck with now) everywhere doesn’t feel that odd. It keeps him out of his house and busy, and that’s all he asks for. Even if he could do without Mike and Max arguing every two seconds about who gets a window seat. Mike always gets exiled to the trunk, and Steve feels an odd sense of pride with every argument Max wins.
And then Max suddenly doesn’t need a ride anymore, and when he asks she just mutters something about preferring the bus. Mike gets his window seat, but he doesn’t seem that happy about it. None of them are, these days.
Life goes on. Steve adapts, like he always has. He trains Lucas in basketball and leaves packages of supplies on Max’s doorstep when he notices her looking tired and gossips about middle school drama with Erica and “helps” Dustin with homework and tries to gently ask Mike about his feelings. That last one doesn’t go well. They joke about how he’s gotten so strict with them, how his rules for his car are ridiculous and he’s acting like Dustin’s mom with her minivan. He doesn’t think much of it.
Until, one night, when Robin’s perched on his couch with a bowl of popcorn and the bell rings. She’s there all the time now, as if she’s made it her personal mission to fill the space with noise.
“We could watch St Elmo’s Fire!” she calls, sorting through his DVDs.
“Is the furry red guy actually in that one? I thought he was a kid's character.”
“Don’t know. Think he’ll breathe fire?”
His laughter dies when he opens the door to see Dustin, his face tear-stained. He immediately collapses into Steve’s arms. He blinks through his shock and quickly hugs back, pulling Dustin inside and locking the door. They stand in the entryway for several minutes, Dustin clutching Steve and shaking. Robin pokes her head to check in. Her eyes widen with panic and she quickly runs off to the kitchen. Which is probably for the best, she’s awful with crying people.
Once Dustin calms down and sits on the couch, sandwiched between the two of them, he explains that he’d been to the dentist for the first time since the mall. Steve’s about to ask, but then he remembers a tray of very specific torture tools and the words die on his tongue.
“Did your mom not do anything?” he asks, gently squeezing Dustin closer.
He shrugs. “She worries. But I can’t tell her anything. I used to- We all used to go to Joyce and Hopper, before. When this stuff happened.”
Steve feels himself go lax. Oh. They haven’t just been spending more time with him because they want to, they’ve been doing it because there’s no other option.
He thinks of all the things he does with them. Things parents should do, should teach their children. Stupid little things like how to throw a ball, shopping for clothes. And they’re not doing those things--but he is. God, has Steve been parenting these kids?
He’s the only adult, he realizes. All of them have been to hell and back, been tortured and at the brink of death, fought things most people couldn’t even imagine, and he’s the only one who’s 18.
Steve sucks in a breath and tightens his hold on Dustin. If he’s the only one who can take care of them, he’s sure as hell going to try his best.
***
He doesn’t blame them, he admits to Robin one night. He can’t. Hopper died, and even if he wasn't exactly active in the kids’ lives he was still an adult they could look up too. And you can't be angry at a dead man. After all that, it's not surprising Joyce took her kids and left. Even if he can see how much pain and hurt that choice has caused, he can’t be angry that she made it. Anything to protect your family, right?
Robin doesn’t ask why he sounds so bitter, doesn't ask about the empty house. She already knows. Steve’s barely ever had parents, he sure as hell doesn’t know what to do. He can’t mess them up, fail them like everyone else. He can’t.
She doesn't have a response for that. But she listens. She's the only person who's ever done that, who's cared enough to put up with his entire mess and match it in turn. Most days, he thinks he'd have died already without her.
He doesn't tell her about everything else with the Byers. Doesn't tell her about Jonathan and the guilt deep inside him that twinges whenever he sees him. The words and violence he'll never take back, never escape. The way he still doesn't think he's seen anyone as pretty as Jonathan when he was beating Steve into the ground.
***
Max is strapped up to a million machines, unconscious, bleeding from her eyes. They failed the plan. They failed her. Steve can’t stop rotating the past eight months in his head. Should he have pressed more? Done something other than leave mysterious care packages on her doorstep? Asked questions, demanded answers, done anything to help? It wasn’t enough. He was supposed to keep them safe and he couldn’t even do that.
“How did we let this happen to her?” Steve whispers, watching her unconscious body.
“I don't know,” Nancy says quietly. “I don't know.”
She rests her forehead against her knees. Steve wraps an arm around her shoulders. He can’t remember the last time he touched her, but she sinks into it like she’s been waiting. Steve wonders if they can ever forgive themselves for failing this so completely.
He hopes Nancy can, at least. She deserves so much more than this mess, and he prays she manages to escape this town and all its shit as soon as possible.
“She wrote me a letter,” he tells her. “Her friends, and me. Just me.” He curls into Nancy. “I didn’t mean this. About the six kids. I didn’t want it to happen so early.”
“I know,” she says. He rests his head against hers. It doesn’t hurt as much anymore, not the way it would years ago. It eases the festering guilt in his chest, softens the edges of it.
Steve is dangerous. There is blood underneath his fingernails and scraps wrapped around a gaping hole in his stomach and a nail-stubbed bat clutched between his blistered fingers. Nancy is capable of violence they never could have imagined, it's ingrained so deeply into her that he knows she struggles to separate herself from it. Neither of them know how to be gentle with each other. Maybe they never did.
Together, they listen to Max’s rhythmic heartbeat.
***
“You would’ve liked Eddie,” he tells Jonathan one night, after the girls have already passed out on the couch. Having them all in his house so often is nice. It's good. The silence feels less suffocating, the hallways less empty. It's not a home, not even close. But, these days, it manages to be a little closer to one.
“Yeah?” Jonathan says. He looks up at Steve, his eyes oddly dark in the low light. His stomach twists.
“Yeah.” He clears his throat, glancing away. “He was good with the kids, you know? Would’ve been nice to have the extra help.”
He thinks of Eddie with Dustin, racing across that field. Of the rare excitement in Mike’s voice when he talked about him. It would have been easier if he was around, he thinks. Maybe more fun too, if his boundless energy in the Upside Down was any indication. It makes his chest ache oddly. Steve’s grieved so many people, most of them still being alive, but he’s never had to grieve the possibility of a person before. It shouldn't hurt this much.
“Plus, you could have bonded over music or something. You’re both pretentious about that weird stuff,” Steve says, just because he knows it’ll make Jonathan scoff.
“I’m not pretentious-”
“You totally are.”
“That’s rich coming from you.”
“Excuse you, I am very open minded and accepting.”
Jonathan rolls his eyes and knocks his shoulder into Steve’s. He leaves it there, and the small bit of contact makes something warm spread through Steve’s body.
***
All Steve does lately is mess up. He knows this level of anger, of fear, isn’t natural. Not for your supposed best friend, your little brother. His most buried thoughts whisper that it is. He should know from all his years of eating dinner in his too-big living room and watching family sitcoms until late at night. Parents always care about their children, don’t they?
Steve isn’t Dustin’s father. He’s barely older than him, he teases him too much, he’s too mean and immature and not at all fit to be a parent.
And yet.
They bicker again before they attack the Turnbows and Dustin spits out a furious, “Stop acting like you’re my dad, Steve” that sends shockwaves through Steve. Dustin’s eyes widen, as if he wasn’t expecting his own words. This shift between them, the knowledge that their relationship has changed so much since that summer, the thing they actively work not to acknowledge, is tossed out into the light and it's burning alive.
The plan is set in motion before they can talk about it, and Steve snaps back into planning-and-monster-hunting mode and tries to pretend he doesn’t feel like throwing up.
When Dustin collapses into his arms, sobbing again in a horrible, heavy imitation of that night years ago, Steve clutches him as tightly as he can and hopes, desperately, that this can be fixed. That he can fix it.
***
“Your new car is ugly,” Max announces.
“I didn’t have that many options,” Steve mutters, glaring at an unashamed Dustin. “Just try not to get your greasy fingerprints over everything.”
“Got it, Mom!” Lucas says brightly, helping load Max’s wheelchair into the trunk, where it bumps into an irritated Mike, still trapped back there. He doesn’t complain as much as he would before when Max delights in her window seat for the first time in years. Steve feels a bit guilty about stuffing him back there, but it made the most sense with their limited space. Months ago, before everything happened, he’d thought about getting a bigger car to fit everyone.
He doesn’t need it now. He can fit five kids into this one. (Five, not six, and that knowledge still makes his chest feel like it's caving in).
Dustin calls shotgun, because Robin is gone now. She’s off at college, being wonderful and smart, and she’s not here to sit next to Steve and complain about his driving skills and do makeup and laugh over pretty girls. He misses her like she’s a limb someone's brutally hacked off his body, and he knows the kids are taking it just as heavily. Robin didn’t ask him to come with her. She knows he can’t. His responsibilities are here, with the kids bickering in his backseat, with the cracked roads and the paranoid neighbors and the house he hates.
But that’s what Steve is here for. To take care of them.
***
ROBIN
Robin’s never been fit to take care of a child. She almost dropped her baby cousin on his head once, and her parents quickly decided to not hand her more children anytime soon.
But teenagers are a little less fragile than babies, especially Steve’s. No, instead Robin is the one who feels woefully unprepared most days. Her experience is contained to getting tortured by Russians and throwing fireworks at a creepy huge spider thing.
(The Mindflayer, because apparently the kids are DnD obsessed dorks.)
She doesn't know how to handle any of this, and it sinks in while she's in Steve’s car, watching him talk to Erica and Dustin. They're startlingly calm, and meanwhile she can feel the panic she'd suppressed for hours finally bubbling to the surface. These weird little kids who bullied Steve all summer and annoyed her constantly are way too unafraid after literally almost dying, and she has no idea what she's doing here.
For Robin, there wasn't really a before and after concerning the Byers. Everything from the end of summer blurs together in a haze of monster fighting and parallel dimensions and nights sprawled out in Steve's bed, where he doesn't ask for anything other than what she can give and doesn't even seem to want anything else, completely content to be her friend and nothing more. Despite the insanity that's wrecked her life, it makes her feel like she can breathe for the first time. She’s safe now, safe from something that still seems even scarier than the monsters.
So, she doesn't notice for several months, longer than she would like to admit. When she finally does, it's on an ordinary day. They're driving the kids to Steve's for a group hang out, Robin is frantically searching for one of her rings that she dropped two minutes ago, and Steve tells Max and Lucas, “Oh, by the way, I grabbed those chips you like. For the movie.”
They grin and thank him, and Robin needs to pause. She doesn't do stuff like that. She doesn't know exactly what kind of food the kids like, or the ins and outs of their home lives, or what their nightmares are about. And Steve does. He's first to hear when they win a campaign or get an A on a math test, before even their parents.
Before even their parents.
Oh shit.
And once Robin sees it, it's impossible to ignore.
***
The guilt eats her alive some days.
She's new, and inexperienced and she doesn't know how to help. She can't be a parent, she can barely take care of herself as it is. She's a frazzled, neurotic mess who talks too much and still acts like a teenager. There are nights when she calls Steve at 2 in the morning, muffling her sobs into the sweater she stole from him, and begs him to pick her up. He does, and they go driving until she's calm. Some nights they end up watching the sun rise, tear tracks still drying on her cheeks, parked by Lover’s Lake. The view is best there apparently, which doesn't stop Robin from joking endlessly about it.
(“Trying to pull the moves on me, Harrington?”
“As if, Buckley. I have standards now.”)
But Steve doesn't cry. He never breaks down, and she can't stop the nagging feeling that she's a burden to him, that he feels like he has to take care of her the same way he takes care of the kids. As if she's a child. And maybe that's the problem. Robin, unlike all of them, hasn't been forced to sacrifice her childhood yet.
Her mother's voice rings in her ears some of those nights, scolding her. Reminding her that she's just always such a mess, really, Robin. Would it hurt to calm down a bit?
Her father’s is notably absent, which is probably the least surprising thing about it all.
***
Erica, surprisingly, is the one who gets to her.
She shows up at Robin’s front door one day. She doesn't seem upset or distressed in any way, but Robin’s probably not the best judge of that. Still, she has her arms crossed and levels Robin with a disapproving look, like she's done something wrong already.
“I need help,” she announces immediately. “We need to read some stupid classic novel for English class, and the author was a massive jerk who can't write normally.”
“...Right,” Robin says, because she thinks she's supposed to agree.
“So, you're gonna be my translator.”
“Great, um, why me, though?”
Erica shrugs as if it's obvious. “You're a nerd.”
Robin blinks. “So are you?”
“Yeah, a chemistry and politics nerd, not a book one. Do you have good snacks?”
It's fun, actually. Turns out Erica’s even cooler when they're not fighting something to the death. And she's tougher than any kid Robin has met, which is concerning in its own way. But she's really smart once Robin helps her decode the dull old English literature. When Robin’s parents come home, they're sitting on the couch surrounded by candy wrappers and Erica is passionately analyzing the episode of My Little Pony they're watching.
Erica still doesn't let Steve drive her because she'd “rather ride next to Daryl on the bus than show up with you losers.” But she shows up at their houses occasionally, when Tina’s too busy to hang out, and it's good.
(Months later, Erica finally breaks down in Robin’s living room. She doesn't cry, but she lets Robin hold her as she shakes apart. For the first time, Robin realizes how small she is.)
***
Robin gets it now. That horror-stricken moment where she thought she was going to lose Steve, that she'd watch him bleed out surrounded by vine infested rot. Being in the Upside Down, watching Nancy get possessed, almost losing Max, dragging Dustin away from Eddie’s dead body-
She gets it. She wishes she didn't.
***
Hospitals are cold and sterile and awful. They make Robin feel absolutely useless again. She can't fight anything that comes after them. Violence isn't part of her the way it is for the others, it doesn't come easily. So she plans, strategizes, and tries to do something no matter how stupid and miniscule it all feels. She tries not to think about Max giggling into an ice cream cone, passionately talking about movies with Robin, clutching Lucas in one arm and Will in the other, young and carefree and lovely in the summer sun.
She's shit at not thinking about things. Focusing turns out to not be her thing, who would've guessed?
The Byers’--plus Hopper, she supposes--return is a welcome distraction. She never really got to know them, just knew Jonathan in passing from school. Will and El are less of a mystery, actually, because Mike doesn't shut up about them. Ever.
She deals with Nancy’s breakdown the best she can and does everything to ignore the rapid fluttering in her chest when Nancy takes her hand. They have other priorities right now, and Nancy’s boyfriend just got here.
Nancy has a point, she admits to herself. Maybe a small, festering part of her is also burning with her own clumsy form of anger. It's nothing like the fire alive inside Nancy, but it smoulders, coats her throat in smoke. It's hard to tell who it's directed towards anymore. Maybe Joyce for leaving, maybe at Hopper for being an idiot and getting captured and not thinking of everything he was leaving behind. Maybe Murray for being the most useless piece of shit she’s ever met..
She steps outside for a second, breathing in deeply, before she falls to the ground and drops her head onto her knees.
“Are you okay?” a voice says. She looks up to see a very awkward Jonathan Byers standing there. He's all weird angles and knobby limbs, like someone made a human being out of wet spaghetti.
“You’re like spaghetti,” she blurts out, too tired to focus on her words. She winces immediately. God, she can hear her mom’s disapproval from here.
Jonathan drops down next to her.
“Thanks,” he says, unphased. Or high. Robin’s suspicions rise when he takes out a pack of cigarettes.
“That stuff’ll kill you,” she mumbles.
“That's a lie. From the government,” he says, his voice grave.
Robin giggles quietly, then laughs louder, shaking. Jonathan joins in, and they're collapsing into each other's sides, cackling madly at something that isn't even funny. She's tired, and delirious, and this weird, torn-up boy is a complete stranger who she's tied to by weird supernatural forces. Her life is so fucked.
(Jonathan becomes a good friend. She sits by Steve’s pool with him as the sun rises, talking about music and fathers and nothing at all. He makes her feel calm, steady.)
***
Afterwards, nothing actually changes other than the addition of El. The kids still come over after school, still confide in them. There are adults now, experienced people who have been through things ten times worse than Robin or Steve (or Nancy and Jonathan, because now they actually have Nancy and Jonathan and she doesn't know how they got so lucky in the middle of hell). But they come to them. And sometimes, when it's a rare day not shrouded in grief and worry and fear, it's good. Steve and Lucas will bake, and Erica and Dustin will mock every move Mike makes, and they'll show El a new movie and exchange stories about California and high school and every normal, trivial thing in between. Jonathan will call Argyle, who's apparently on some crazy road trip with Suzie and her cool goth sister, and they'll wrestle over the phone to see who can talk to them first. Robin will sit upright by Nancy's side until they inevitably drift closer, until their knees are knocking together and Nancy's head is on her shoulder, curls tickling her cheek.
Some days are good.
***
“They're just kids,” Steve whispers.
“So are we.”
And finally, two years after Robin spilled her guts to him in a dirty bathroom, Steve breaks down. He falls apart in her arms, and she holds him through it, because she always will and he finally seems to know that too.
“You don't have to always take care of me,” she says softly, lovingly brushing his hair away from his face. He only cries harder, and clutches at her gratefully.
***
Will might be the sweetest kid she's ever met. Being friends with Jonathan brought them closer before, but now she gets him. And it's thrilling, finding someone else like her. Well, besides Vickie, but she doesn't know if girlfriends count.
He’s scared and anxious but giddy with delight while he asks her about Vickie and girls and boys and everything. It takes her back to the weeks after that bathroom, whispering things to Steve that she'd never told anyone and feeling faint with the wonder of it all. She helps Will through it, makes sure he knows there's nothing wrong and gives him space to just talk.
“We're co-parenting now,” she tells Jonathan after Will comes out, brushing away tears of pride.
She's not sure he understands, but he knocks his shoulder into hers and smiles fondly, so she figures it doesn't matter either way.
***
Nancy Wheeler is the most brilliant, terrifying woman Robin has ever met. When Robin turns to her in the midst of battle, sees her fiery eyes and startling intensity, the determination and power ingrained in her every move, her stomach drops.
She knows she'll never feel this way again, not for anyone else.
***
When she leaves, she doesn't cry. She's relieved, mostly, that she can finally get out of this stupid, awful town.
It's just horrible that she's leaving such an important piece of her behind.
She doesn't manage to let go of Steve before the kids pile onto them in one tight hug, making him laugh wetly. She squeezes Erica and Will tightest, and for once Erica doesn't protest. When she pulls back and sees all their miserable faces, she realizes with a start that she may have underestimated her presence in their lives, and has to blink away fresh tears.
Her parents didn't even come to say goodbye.
When she drives away, she finally lets them fall. It feels like freedom. It feels like grief.
***
JONATHAN
It's hard for Jonathan to remember a time when he wasn’t raising someone.
One of his earliest memories is being young, too young to remember a specific age. His parents are fighting in the next room over, and Will starts crying. He's just a baby, of course he does. Jonathan waits, but no one comes to check and the screaming only gets louder so he clumsily picks Will up and cradles him close to his chest. He's too uncoordinated for the position to be very comfortable, but it somehow works. Will calms down.
Joyce lets Jonathan hold him more after that. He's honored and takes it very seriously that he's allowed to care for Will now. So, when Will is three and Joyce is working, Lonnie gets a little too upset at Will and he steps in front of him. Then he does it again, and again, and again. He makes Will promise not to tell anyone. Will gets good at promises, and Jonathan gets good at hiding.
It's easy, really. Lonnie never bruises his face. He's a drunk piece of shit, but he's smart enough to avoid that.
In the end, it isn't even Joyce who leaves him. No, Lonnie is the one who decides he's bored of their little family and fucks off into drugs and alcohol and younger women, who Jonathan can’t help but pity.
And they're all that's left.
***
It's not his mom’s fault.
There aren't any better options. She has to work, to take care of them monetarily. She really tries her best, is there for them as much as she can be. And Jonathan is thirteen.
He's thirteen and there's no better options, so he picks up work wherever will hire him and takes care of Will. He makes breakfast, wakes him up on time, and pretends he doesn't notice his mom passing out drunk on the couch every other night.
He has to train himself out of flinching at sudden movements, and he’s barely successful at it. But it’s enough that the kids at school don’t realize how terrified he always is, how prepared he is for an attack. The way his shoulders tense and his spine is curved rigidly whenever a man approaches him. It’s not natural. He can’t stop it.
When Will finally realizes Lonnie isn't coming around again (and Jonathan had locked himself in his room and cried when he heard the news, because he finally wouldn't have to hide the bruises from his mom anymore), he runs out into the woods. Jonathan tracks him down and finds him sitting in a small clearing. Will always goes there when he's upset, says the trees make him feel better. He’s not crying, just staring quietly at the wall.
“Come on,” Jonathan says, nudging his shoulder. “Let's build something.”
They get supplies and build a little, misshapen house that Will excitedly declares is a castle. Jonathan doesn't protest when he asks for the “No Girls Allowed” sign, bottles up everything that goes along with that and hides it until Will realizes for himself.
It's all a bit ridiculous, but Will’s reddened eyes crinkle in a smile once they're done, so Jonathan figures it's worth it.
***
Grief is suffocating. Jonathan can't breathe, can't think or sleep from how the guilt tears at him. Not when his brother's dead body is lying in a lab and his mom’s gone completely off the rails, because she couldn't be there for Jonathan for once in his fucking life.
Seeing Will again feels like breathing, like his heart is finally pumping blood again instead of uselessly sitting in his chest.
And, among it all, like a beam of light in Jonathan's wreck of a life, is Nancy Wheeler.
“Mike thought he was alive. The whole time,” she admits quietly, after Jonathan pulled away from Will long enough to sit down with her, surveying the blank hospital. She's holding her own arms, and Jonathan wonders why he didn't think about her when all this happened. She's known Will for most of her life, grown up with him. When they were very little, she would come over after school with Mike and help Jonathan make them dinner. The four of them would watch a movie together and she'd glance over at Jonathan, amused, when the boys started bickering.
“Really? But he didn't know about-” Jonathan cuts himself off, unsure how to describe the enormity of what has happened.
She shrugs. “Yeah. But he didn't give up for a single moment, he was- insane, really.” She glances at Will’s hospital room, where the boys' excited voices are echoing through the hall.
“Of course he was,” Jonathan says, slumping down. “He and Will have always been... special.”
He meets Nancy’s eyes and she stares at him for a second. Something settles in his stomach. They look away at the same time. Now isn't the time to address this, any of this, but he realizes with a start that she knows. About everything, and she's still here.
He's never had someone do that for him before.
“I gotta go, Steve is taking me home,” she says, standing up. She smiles down at him. “We'll see you Monday at lunch, right?”
Jonathan blinks. “Y-yeah?” It comes off more as a question than anything else, but Nancy smiles and strides off, apparently taking it as confirmation that he’ll be eating lunch with her and her asshole jock boyfriend from now on.
He glances back at Will’s room and--for the first time in what feels like years--smiles.
***
Joyce is protective now. More than she was before. She barely lets Will breathe some days, when the nightmares are particularly bad or the shadows seem to creep outside.
And yet, Will somehow ends up in Jonathan's room on those endless nights.
“Jon?” he says softly, and Jonathan blinks sleep away as he turns to look at him in the doorway.
“Hm?” he hums.
“Can I- it's just-” Will struggles, and Jonathan doesn't need to see him to know he's tearing at his frayed shirt, fingers moving anxiously. He struggles to actually talk about what happened down there, what he saw and did. They all do.
Jonathan pulls his blankets back, and Will eagerly climbs in.
“Your hands are freezing,” he groans, but hugs him back just as tightly, as if clinging to him will make Will safe forever and keep him from ever, ever being in that situation again. As if Jonathan can prevent everything, as if he wasn't completely fucking useless the first time.
But this. He can do this. When Joyce is fighting monsters and theorizing and willing to die to save Will, he can at least do this. He'll cook breakfast and drive Will to school and comfort him at night. Anything as long as it keeps him alive.
***
Jonathan doesn't like Bob at first. He appears suddenly and then never leaves, hanging around their house and acting like it's normal. Like he's family.
But then he realizes, somewhere in between their first family dinner in ages and the offer to attend a parent teacher conference for Will, that he hasn't had to work as hard in weeks. He's not constantly alert, focused on what Will needs. Because Bob is an adult, and Bob steps into the role of a father so, so easily, and Jonathan doesn't have to do it anymore.
He doesn't know how he feels about that at first. It's an impossible thing to let go of, being someone's caretaker. But, slowly, he loosens his hold a bit. He gets to leave for the night sometimes, go walk around with Nancy and throw tin cans off the quarry and be a stupid teenager, because Bob is home with Will. Jonathan thinks that maybe, for once, they might be becoming a family.
(Bob dies, torn to shreds by the same monsters that stole Will from him, replaced him with a ghost. Jonathan wonders if it'll always hurt this much.)
***
California is awful. He misses Nancy with an intensity that's unsurprising. He calls her whenever his mom isn't busy and listens to her talk for ages, content to just hear her voice again. No, the surprising part is how he misses Steve. It's odd, but he misses just having someone his age who understands this whole mess. And before he left, Steve passed him his number, hastily written on a Melville’s receipt. He’d shoved it into Jonathan’s hands and muttered something about calling when he had the chance, then quickly turned to say goodbye to the kids, leaving him dazed. Jonathan has considered calling, but he doesn't even know what he'd say. So he thumbs the numbers over and over again, wrinkles the paper until the ink faded in spots. It doesn't matter, he has it memorized by now.
He's staring at it when El comes into his room. She still pads around the house like she's not sure she's supposed to be there. Her grief hangs around her like a cloud, making every movement look painful.
“Jonathan?” she says softly. “School begins tomorrow. Do you think I could borrow a shirt?”
“Oh yeah, of course,” Jonathan says, flinging open his closet. “Why not borrow one of Will’s?”
She shrugs. “All yellow.”
“And you're not a yellow girl?”
“Sometimes. Tomorrow I am purple.”
Jonathan nods, contemplating, then pulls out a faded purple sweater.
“This good?”
“Yes.”
She snatches it from his hands like he's going to take it away, then stares at him for a moment. Jonathan is silent. She turns and walks away. Jonathan’s fingers twitch. As she reaches his doorway, he blurts out, “Did you ever meet Bob?”
She shakes her head, confused.
“He dated Mom for a while, after everything happened. The first time, I mean. He was sweet. He made us dinner a couple times a week and listened when I talked about music. He liked Will’s drawings and was cool when it all started going crazy again.” He laughs wetly. It's like he's throwing up the words, spitting them out before he loses his courage.
“What happened to him?” El asks. He gets feeling she already knows the answer.
“Got eaten by demodogs. I didn't find out until I got back and- it was so ridiculous but he knew about Nancy, right? Loved when she came over. And after I got together with her I was just thinking Bob’s gonna be so happy to hear about this. And then...” he shrugs. “It's not exactly the same. It's not like I knew him for very long. But it was something. And if you ever want to talk about it...”
She watches him, unblinkingly, and nods slowly. “Not yet. Hurts too much. But... later.”
Jonathan nods. “Later.”
And she does, spends late nights draped over his bed, talking about late night TV and unhealthy breakfasts and one awful attempted haircut that left her crying. Tells him how one time there was a hastily bought bottle of nail polish that had to be removed immediately, but it was her first time getting to do something so normal. Like the pretty girls on TV. He tells her she can paint his if she wants, and she lights up like the sun.
Somehow, in the middle of a suffocating desert and drowning in loneliness, Jonathan gains a sister.
***
“I'm worried,” he confesses to Argyle, watching El, Will, and Mike sprawl out on one of the tables in the diner. It's one small moment of peace for them, and he hates to ruin it. In a moment, El will once again be submerged in the horrors they've tried so hard to keep her away from, and there's nothing he can do about it. The least she deserves is a moment with her brother and... whatever Mike is.
“About?” Argyle asks. His eyes are still slightly glazed over, but he gives Jonathan his full attention like he actually cares what he has to say. It’s a bit daunted, sometimes. But Argyle genuinely cares about him. Jonathan wonders if they’re best friends. He’s never had a best friend before, or even a friend he was particularly close to.
“All of them, I guess.”
Argyle nudges his side. “Don't worry, man. They're tough kids, they've got this. You worry too much. You're not their mom.”
Jonathan swallows around the lump in his throat, and doesn't try answering that.
He's been shitty at this. He's always high, floating. Nancy had tethered him before with school and guns and constant vigilance. Or Will had needed him too desperately for Jonathan to slip away. But now he and El are older, and they're getting more independent with every day, and Jonathan just couldn't handle the loneliness anymore. He doesn't know who to be when he isn't taking care of someone.
But he's not high now. He's sober (mostly) and present, and he's going to make sure all three of his kids come out of this alive. No matter what it takes.
***
They've changed since he left. Nancy is cold, calculated in a way she's never been before. Steve is flitting around for weeks afterwards, checking on all the kids and not even mentioning a single date. Robin is- Well, Jonathan never knew Robin, before. But he doubts she was always this much of a mess. He doubts she always seemed so weighed down by guilt.
For the first time, he leans on them. The four of them share duties, trading who takes care of which kid depending on the day. It's so different from raising Will with his mom. Maybe it's because they're all equally fucked up and have no idea what they're doing, or maybe it's because they don't seem to expect anything from him. Robin makes fun of his hair and trades mixtapes with him, laughs loud and a little ugly at his jokes. Nancy is calm, grounding him. She slots in against his side in a way that’s more mismatched, messier than before, and somehow feels better than it used to. Steve is... something Jonathan can’t put into words.
He doesn't think he's ever loved three people quite the way he loves them.
***
“He used to hit me,” he admits to Joyce one day, sitting on the couch in the basement together. Nothing really prompts him to say it, other than he was talking about it with Nancy yesterday and, well, among all the secrets they’ve kept from each other, it makes no sense to hide the important things anymore.
She flinches and turns towards him. “What?”
Jonathan can't bring himself to look at her. “Only when I made him angry. Which was really often, now that I think of it.”
“I never knew,” Joyce admits. Her voice is unsteady.
Jonathan shrugs. “I didn't want you to. Besides, he couldn’t leave. We needed the money.”
“Jonathan, Jon.” She cups his cheeks and makes him look at her. There are tears welling in her eyes. “I should have known. If you'd told me, I would have left. Do you understand? I don't care about money. You're my son.”
He feels himself trembling. How long has it been since he felt like that was true? “He used to hit you too. I knew. I heard it.”
Joyce's face crumbles. “Oh, honey. I should’ve been there for you.”
“You tried your best.”
She traces his cheeks, like she's seeing him for the first time. “You were- You're so young.”
And that's what makes him crumble, holding tight to his mother in a way he hasn't since he was a kid, before Will was born, before he stopped being hers and instead became a second parent. For the first time in years, he feels like a child.
She holds him through it, and he knows she loves him, and he wonders if it'll ever be enough.
***
It doesn't get easier, it turns out. His chest is tearing into shreds, ripped by the phantom claws of the monstrosity that they've finally defeated, and it feels nothing like a victory.
Oh, he thinks, cradling a sobbing Will and thinking of big brown eyes fixated on him like he's the only person in the world, learning how to carefully style long curly hair, flannels stolen from his closet, late nights and music and rainbow hairclips and everything that's made up his life for the past two years. It always hurts like this.
***
“Are you sure?” he asks Steve, hesitating by his car.
Steve rolls his eyes. “Dude, you got into NYU.”
“I know.”
“Robin and Nance are already gone. You stayed as long as you could.”
“I know.”
“So...” he shoves Jonathan, lightly. “Go. Get in that car and do all the cool movie things you have planned.”
Jonathan hesitates, then brings him into a hug, sudden and quick. Steve doesn't even have time to respond before he's pulled back, dazed.
“Thank you,” Jonathan manages. “For taking care of them.”
Steve nods. “You too. Will and El would have been lost without you.”
He stutters over her name, like always. But at least they can say it now. At least Jonathan doesn't have to swallow back tears whenever he so much as thinks of her.
He shrugs. “I did what I had to do.”
Steve leans against his side, stays there for a beat too long. “Didn't we all?”
Then the kids come rushing out, and he pulls away too quickly. It's colder without him.
When he’s saying goodbye to Will, he wonders if there will ever be a time when he’ll be able to have kids. It’s the first time he’s actually had a moment to wonder about that. After sacrificing his childhood for someone, could he also give up his adulthood? The thought doesn’t terrify him as much as it once would. Maybe he doesn’t have to figure it out now. Maybe...
He glances at Steve. He’ll know, eventually.
For now, he focuses on forcing himself to finally let go of Will. He’d crawled into Jonathan’s bed last night. The way he used to when he was 12 and scared of the world. He’d held Jonathan a little loser than he used to, smiled more confidently. And, despite all that, he’d still come to Jonathan. Will might not need him as a parent anymore, but maybe they can finally just be brothers. They can learn to live without each other, for the first time in their lives.
Will smiles tearily at him, and Jonathan feels a little less empty.
***
NANCY
Afterwards
They end up in Robin’s uncle's house a month after the kids graduate. He's out for the weekend, apparently on a fishing trip with his buddies. They take over his basement, of course, and Jonathan flits around it for a bit, delighting in how perfect the space is for his movie. They scope out the guest room and have to pause in the doorway.
“We should take the blankets,” Robin says, finally. “He has a very nice living room.”
So they do.
He has a pool, which Robin drags Jonathan towards, despite Steve’s yell that they should at least change into swimsuits, hurling themselves in the water and then loudly complaining about how cold it is. Nancy meets Steve’s eyes.
You'll be okay?
Yeah. You?
Yeah.
The pool itself was never the problem, after all.
The two of them, at least, have enough sense to tug off their outer layers. Robin wolf whistles at Steve, who kicks her shin and makes some comment about sexual harassment seminars at school. They swim around for a bit, getting into a particularly brutal water fight at point that ends with Jonathan almost drowning Steve. When he resurfaces, Steve shoves his wet hair out of his face and grins at Jonathan. He leans a bit too close to him, saying something softly, and Jonathan doesn't pull back, just smiles fondly. Nancy wonders if they even realize what they're doing, wonders if it matters.
Afterwards they sit in the deck chairs, sipping lemonade, silly and soaking wet and childish, when Robin announces, “I want to cut my hair.”
She makes Steve do it, and Nancy watches them giggle quietly to themselves over some joke she doesn't know. Robin reaches up to poke Steve's cheek, and he barely manages to look annoyed with her for a few seconds. Nancy’s smiling tearily when Jonathan comes back with drinks.
“Nance?” he says, concerned.
“Nothing,” she says hurriedly, wiping her face. “Just... happy.” We're alive. We made it, she doesn't say. He understands anyway, and takes her hand.
She'll never have feelings for him the way she once did, but she thinks it would be impossible to stop loving Jonathan. He's a tangible part of her soul that's present in every conversation she has with a stranger, every quote she makes. And he will be for as long as she's alive. They’re a bit like Steve and Robin, she thinks, amused, and almost laughs at what her past self would think of this.
Once Robin’s hair is sufficiently short, she presents it with a dramatic little twirl. Jonathan cheers. Nancy runs a hand through it, watching the choppy strands underneath her fingers, delighting in Robin’s answering blush. In the kitchen, Robin and Nancy sit on the counter while the boys cook, arguing playfully over what to make. Robin keeps yelling awful suggestions, to the point where Steve outright bans any mention of gummy worms. Nancy remembers walking past the kitchen when she was younger, pausing for a few moments to watch her mother cook. It was always empty other than her, leaving her to flutter around the kitchen and hum to herself for hours a day.
Compared to that, this fucked up imitation of a family meal is perfect. Robin’s feet are on the table and Steve keeps kicking Jonathan underneath it. He occasionally misses and kicks Nancy, who glares at him with less intensity than usual. Nothing feels as serious after a full day of sitting around doing nothing. She can’t remember the last time she felt like this.
“You know, I'm thinking about moving,” Steve announces midway through dinner.
Jonathan blinks, surprised. “You were just asking us if we missed Hawkins.”
“Well, yeah, and I'll always love it but...” he shrugs. “The kids are gone now. There's nothing to stay for, you know? And I can get a teaching job somewhere else.”
“Where are you going to go?” Nancy asks. She doesn’t have to. She already knows.
“I hear Northampton is nice,” he says with forced casualness. It takes Robin a few seconds to process his words before her face splits into a smile. She lunges at him, shrieking about how they're going to be roommates. Steve laughs, tumbling backwards off his chair with her.
“This deserves a celebration!” Jonathan declares, reaching into his backpack and pulling out-
“Oh no,” Nancy groans when she sees the Palm Tree Delight.
Robin cheers. “God bless Argyle and Eden,” she says, reaching over and taking a joint. She inhales with a shocking level of experience, then passes it to Steve. It's a ridiculous picture, the two of them tumbled onto the floor of Mr Buckley’s nice dining room passing around weed.
Nancy raises an eyebrow. “Seriously?”
“Art school kids are great suppliers.” Robin smiles, unashamed. This side of her is new. Since getting away from her mother, she's grown so far from that awkward teenager. She's braver, more unapologetically confident. (Radiant, Nancy’s mind whispers.) The same way Steve is unwaveringly gentle these days, and Jonathan is less afraid than he ever was before.
And Nancy worries less. She'll never lose that bit of herself, the soldier buried underneath perfectly styled curls and suits, who fought and clawed her way out of death. Just like Robin worries herself into silence and Steve can't sleep alone and Jonathan flinches at harshly slammed doors. But they're better now. And so Nancy sighs mock-reluctantly and takes the joint when it comes back around to Jonathan. He grins.
The four of them end up sprawled in a pile of pillows and blankets on the living room floor. They're completely intertwined, and she doesn't know whose foot is under her calf or whose hand is in her hair. Nancy thinks back to nights just like this, being 18 and terrified and knowing all they had was each other in that massive, unwelcoming house and that wretched town. It hurts a bit to know how different it is now.
At least Robin’s uncle, unlike the Harringtons, knows how to decorate. There are weird little knick knacks everywhere, souvenirs from trips and faded polaroids and aging lamps. It's comfortable, homely. Definitely nicer than Nancy’s apartment.
They'll end up in a house like this someday, Nancy thinks. She can't see it ending any other way. Some place nice, in an area busy enough for Nancy to thrive and big enough for Steve to get those six nuggets. (“Okay, not six,” he'd laughed last time she brought it up. “Three, probably. Or four,” he’d said, glancing at Jonathan, who didn't seem too upset with that.) It'll be well decorated and beautiful. They'll have a garden, one of the big ones for barbecues and neighborhood gatherings. It'll have to be big enough to fit all seven of the kids--their kids--for a huge family dinner every few months. After all, they'll need a place to rest, a safehouse, no matter how old they are. Nancy can picture it so clearly, the direction their lives are tumbling in. The four of them, years from now, forever in each other's orbit. They're too young now, not even 23 yet. There's a life to live and years to figure out who they are when they're not trapped and suffocating and terrified. When Jonathan’s allowed to know who he is without a child to raise and Steve's able to leave Hawkins and Robin doesn't have to worry about her mother and Nancy can just breathe. And for once...
(She brushes her fingers over Robin’s, until she flips her palm over and takes Nancy's hand.)
They have time.