Work Text:
You had already heard it from Nancy before you met Jonathan back at The Squawk. And you kind of felt selfish because just days before, Jonathan had told you he plans on proposing to her, you had gone through a heartbreak and crying yourself to sleep, and now you felt happy their relationship was over.
Did it make you a horrible person? It sure felt like it should. But after Nancy told you that Jonathan actually ended up unproposing to her because he had realised just hours before proposing that they aren’t meant to stay together and they should just continue as friends. Neither of them was heartbroken really, maybe slightly wistful at most, but not heartbroken in a way you had been.
“Nancy told you, didn’t she?” Jonathan muttered the moment he saw how you looked at him. He sighed. “I’m fine, if you came to ask that.”
“Yeah, Nancy told me you agreed on breaking up together,” you replied, sitting down on the sofa. “Are you able to return the ring?”
He chuckled, shaking his head. “I forgot it at the Upside Down. I guess it doesn’t matter, though — we’re about to attempt the impossible and save the world. I’ll pay the loan back eventually — if we survive, that is.”
You were silent for a moment, just listening to him fiddling with a smashed radiophone, before it clanked against the table and he huffed. “And that’s done for too. Just my day.”
“Sounds like you want to talk about it after all,” you said quietly, and he turned to look at you. “It’s okay if you do. You were together for a long time.”
He sighed, turning back towards the table, staring at the radiophone again for a moment before he nodded and collapsed over the sofa next to you. “Yeah. I guess I do.”
He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, slightly bouncing his knee while lacing and unlacing his fingers. “This morning I sat on my bed, inspecting the box in my hands, mentally practising how I’d propose. I thought that… marrying her would lead to some picturesque life with a white picket fence, two kids and a dog, a perfect family that they teach us about at middle school.”
“So, what changed?” you asked, holding yourself back from taking his hand into yours.
He stopped bouncing his knee suddenly, instead focusing his gaze on a dirty spot on the floor. “When I was in that room, sitting on that table, watching the room fill up with that liquid… I don’t know, I just had this feeling that if a miracle happened and we’d get out, I don’t want to wake up when I’m pushing forty, have those two kids jumping on my chest demanding breakfast and have Nancy Byers stirring awake next to me, but we’d look at each other like we were roommates at most rather than a husband and a wife. Everyone would smell our marriage reeking with unhappiness, but we’d just force ourselves to push on for the kids.”
You swallowed, silently urging him to continue.
He did. “I love Nancy. I do — but not in a way I used to. I think… we just stopped caring about each other in that way months ago. I want to stay in touch and be friends with her until we’re old and senile, but I can’t see us getting back together ever again. It dragged on for this long only because continuing felt a safe way forward — ending it could have resulted into a feeling of emptiness. What now, with Nancy we at least had a plan for the future, even if that future wasn’t what we wanted. And I guess… I was also scared how Nancy would react if I dumped her, if I’d break her heart. But after finding out she felt the same, it was easier to do.”
You smiled sadly. “I’m glad you were strong enough to step away, even with all that weighing on you.”
“Yeah,” Jonathan agreed, turning his gaze slightly to your hand resting in between you, and carefully laid his own hand over it. Your heart rate spiked up, but you pushed your flustered facial expression down before it had a chance to appear. “Me too.”