Chapter Text
“You never said anything about my hair.”
“It looks nice.”
Nancy smirked.
“What?”
“You don’t hate it?”
“Hate it?” Steve looked affronted. “Why would I hate it?”
She shrugged.
“Nance.” He crossed his arms and sighed melodramatically. “I of all people should appreciate good hair.”
“It is good hair,” she agreed. “I just thought… you know, it’s short.” The cut had been startling to her, the first time she saw it, even knowing that it would be a big change. She had forced a smile as the barber solicited her opinion, burying the churn of regret and excitement as she had replied, “It’s certainly different. Which is exactly what I need.”
At the time, she’d half assumed that she would fall back into her old look. But the style had (literally) grown on her. And so she’d kept it, despite the required daily maintenance.
“You’ve had short hair before,” Steve was saying now, where they stood by the front door of Robin’s “weird uncle’s” place in Philadelphia. Collecting their coats and bags and making plans for next month.
“Not like this.”
“Aaaaand…?”
“You don’t like short hair.”
“Wha- When did I say that?!”
She scoffed. “Wow, so many times! Don’t play the amnesia card.”
He’d told her so. On multiple occasions. Told her how much he liked her hair when she had it long. This usually accompanied by a pass at one of her brunette locks. Back when they’d dated.
“Huh.” He was staring at the floor with a caught expression.
“Remember now?” She grinned.
“Nnnooooo.” He looked back up dubiously (in the way he did when he was generating an excuse) and with a waggle of a finger. “No no no.”
She rolled her eyes.
“I said I liked long hair. There’s a difference.”
“Okay.”
“No, not okay! You’re a journalist!”
She almost corrected him to “intern” out of habit, but caught herself: It was true. She was a journalist now.
“You’re using your… journalistic wiles against me!”
“You mean semantics?”
“Those, too. And besides: That was the opinion of a younger Steve.” He placed a serious hand to his sternum and continued in a somber voice. “Steve is a man now.”
Robin—who always seemed to tune-in right in time to witness Steve’s lowest moments—guffawed before Nancy could. “A man?”
“Yes, Robin!” Steve’s voice cracked as he confirmed this fact. “A man!”
Nancy joined in on Robin’s laughter.
“You keep telling yourself that, bud,” Jonathan quipped, donning a light jacket.
“Look, all I’m saying is that I have grown—in all the right ways—”
Robin snorted. “Oh have you.”
“—and in doing so have expanded my views on what constitutes an… attractive women’s haircut—”
Jonathan sighed.
“—and it… well, it suits you, Nance.”
Nancy offered him a conciliatory smile. “Well. Thanks.”
“Also it looks kind of like mine.”
“Oh my god, don’t think I did this because of you!” she warned with a gasp and too much mirth for the words to be biting.
“I don’t.” Something passed over his eyes before he added, “Kristen has short hair these days, too.” To the entryway at-large, he suggested, “We should all hang out sometime. Us. Vickie. Kristen. Next time you all are back in Hawkins.”
“Sounds like fun,” Robin agreed in a tone that said they wouldn’t.
“Har har. I told you: Might be her, guys.” Steve shrugged. “And if it is, you’ll have to learn to love her just like I do.”
“Kristen wasn’t the one, huh?” Jonathan asked three months later as they settled into scratchy crimson theater seats for another showing of Dead Poets Society (Robin’s choice—Jonathan had wanted The Abyss).
Robin, sitting between them, laid a hand on Steve’s forearm. “But at the rate you’re going, one of ‘em is bound to stick. Statistically.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Steve dug around for a handful of popcorn. “Yak it up.”
“No, I mean…” Jonathan shrugged. “I’m sorry, man.”
Steve sighed. “I really thought it was her.”
Nancy shot Steve a more apologetic look across Jonathan. Jonathan appeared to have condolences covered, which didn’t surprise her: He really was a sensitive guy, and he and Steve seemed to have developed a sort of truce ever since she and Jonathan had broken up. Moreover, she didn’t have the heart to muster up sympathy for another one of Steve’s failed romances. Not right now, at least. The movie was about to start and she enjoyed trailers (especially trailers featuring Alec Baldwin).
Steve’s eyes flicked to Jonathan, caught hers, and then landed on the big screen.
Nancy’s attention also returned to the teaser for The Hunt for Red October. It looked like a good film. More up her alley than Pretty Woman, at any rate.
“You look nice,” Robin drawled. “Didn’t think pizza at Lil’ Frankie’s was occasion to dress up, but color me pleasantly surprised.”
“I kind of have plans after the play,” Nancy admitted, fresh from the airport and last to arrive at the group’s preordained meetup location over the holiday season back in Hawkins. She only had Christmas Eve and Christmas Day off from The Boston Herald, and Lil’ Frankie’s was one of a handful of Hawkins’s small-town eateries open on the twenty-fourth.
“Wait. The Hawkins Elementary Christmas play? We’re… going to that?”
Steve: “Uh, yeah we are. Those kids have worked hard to bring to us Oklahoma!”
Jonathan: “I’m filming it, Robin. I thought I mentioned this…?”
Nancy: “You don’t have to go, but Holly’s in it and I’ll be there.”
Robin held up her hands. “Okay, okay! Sheesh. Count me in. Doesn’t get much more Christmas-y than… Oklahoma!”
“What kind of plans?” Jonathan asked Nancy as she smoothed her navy velvet bodycon cocktail dress. “Family stuff?”
“That, too.”
“You got a date?” asked Steeve with a smirk.
“Actually… yes.”
Robin’s mouth dropped open. “Oh my god.”
Nancy’s eyes darted side-to-side to take-in the wide-eyed ones around her as she chuckled. “Surprise!” To Jonathan, she added, “I was going to tell you. It’s just been… fast. And last minute.”
“That’s… It’s fine.”
“His name’s Thomas. He’s a journalist. At The Herald. We’ve been going out for a few weeks and I really didn’t think he’d be coming home with me for the holidays, but…”
“Workplace romance?” Jonathan translated playfully.
Nancy squinted. “Weird?”
“Kinda?” He offered a sheepish grin. “But good weird. One of us was bound to be first.”
Life happened.
They skipped January: Jonathan was in Los Angeles for a “study away” J-term. They decided that every other month would be a more sustainable schedule.
February was ice skating.
“I thought I’d last longer than an hour,” Nancy groaned from her seat on a bench, tearing through the laces before she gingerly peeled her second skate from what she knew to be a blistered heel. Her grey sock was wet, but not bloody, which confirmed the blisters could be worse. She almost removed the sock for a visual inspection, but it would have sucked to pull a damp sock back on an already sore foot. Besides, Steve was sitting beside her and she didn’t want his pity.
“Now you know where to tape up next time,” he quipped.
She laughed. “Yeah. Next time. I get to pick where we go next time.”
“Oooh. I’ll have to tape up my gun fingers.”
“Do you know which ones those are?”
He scoffed. “Excuse me. I do know how to hold a gun now, thank you. Well, a pistol, at least.”
“Oh?”
“Got a Glock and a membership at The Gun Club.”
She didn’t hide her surprise.
“Just in time for the end of the world. I know. Hold your applause.”
“I’m… actually impressed.”
“Hah.” The self-depreciation drained from his features. He continued in a lower—if not still light—voice. “Not gonna lie. I thought a lot about that thing you said. Me being better off with a weapon I could use.” Before the Mind Flayer.
Her brows creased.
“I really didn’t have an excuse not to be familiar with a gun. Not when I knew what was coming.”
“Steve… I didn’t mean it like that. I wanted you to be safe.”
“Maybe not. But it was true anyway.” He smirked a little. “Maybe part of me was in denial.”
“Really?” She cocked a doubtful eyebrow. “About… about Vecna?” she clarified this in a low voice and after a cursory review of their surroundings to ensure no one was in hearing distance. Habit. She toyed with the skate still in her hands, heeding the blade. “Diana Ross would like a word.”
“Not that. About… putting in the work. About being in peak form for when that creep came back. El and Hopper knew. Dustin knew. …You knew. You all… did something about it.” He exhaled. “I played fart tapes on The Squawk.”
“You never missed a beat with the fart tapes.”
“Sometimes I’d blow into my palm if I wanted to mix it up.” He mimed the motion.
“You and Robin had a different role to play. Which you did. And everything worked out.”
“But it might not have.” He grunted. “Hasn’t always.”
Her eyes narrowed. “…Are we still talking about guns?”
“C’mon, Nance. It’s a bad habit of mine.” He shrugged. “Coasting.”
“But if you’d coasted into the Upside Down, you’d be dead. And what about the fact that you’re working two jobs now? Or even before, before all that: What about basketball? Or swim?”
“That’s different. I’m good at sports. Practice is hard work, but it was work I was motivated to do. I haven’t always been so good at putting in the work for things that don’t… play to my interests. I just kinda figured I had my strengths and weaknesses.” He paused. “It was lazy.”
She was quiet for a moment.
“You weren’t.” He smirked a little, his words subdued. “So I figured: Better late than never. I’ll never be as good as you, though. You’ve always been driven. It’s pretty cool to watch.”
“I dropped out of Emerson. How’s that for driven?”
His grin turned lopsided. “That’s different. And you’re at The Herald now.”
She scoffed. “Yeah, that just kinda worked out. I didn’t really have a plan.”
“You didn’t coast for the important stuff. For your family. For the people you… you care about.”
The conversation had taken a turn for the personal. What about Jonathan? Or Steve himself? …Or even Thomas now? “You know that’s not true,” she said in a low voice. “I do my own share of going through the motions.”
His expression glazed. He lifted his eyebrows in a quick motion. “I can’t speak to other times you may have gone through the motions. Buuut from personal experience… I never asked. About the important stuff. And I should have. Easier to coast, remember?”
“We were young.”
He shrugged.
“Vecna was different. Simple.” It had been different, then. Easier, in a way. Easier to figure out what she wanted. Easier to do what needed to be done because it had been obvious.
The end of the world was obvious.
The moments in between and after—choosing where to live, where to work, who to love, what to do with her time, with the rest of her life—those were not so easy. She was a good student (well, up until Emerson, and even then she had pretty close to straight A’s before she quit). She thrived on structure. She was less certain of how to be successful when she was in charge of defining that.
“Are you happy?” she asked bluntly.
“Uh. Yeah. I think so?”
She laughed. “It’s a simple question.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Feels like a trick question.”
“It’s not.”
“You aren’t?”
“I don’t know.” She paused. “You’ve always been good at that.”
He arched his brows. “At being happy?”
“Yeah.”
He snorted. “It’s not that complicated.”
She grinned. “See, I envy that about you.”
“You don’t know how to be happy?” he asked in a joking fashion.
“I’m not sure if I do.”
The sincerity in her words silenced his retort.
“Two years ago made sense. We either won. Or nothing else mattered.”
He opened his mouth with a frown, then snapped it shut.
“This is going to sound crazy. But sometimes I miss that simplicity.”
“But that’s not a life, Nance. You’ve got your job and us and Thomas. And what about your family?”
She waved a dismissive hand. “See? Even my family made sense then. Now my… my siblings and I argue about the dumbest things. Again. My father does…” She laughed, a little exasperated. “And my mother… she’s… you know, she’s still there.”
His expression clouded.
“She’s making it work,” Nancy translated with a lilt. She let the frustration wash from her features as she continued. “And sometimes? Sometimes I can’t stand them.”
Steve settled back into the bench with an exhale.
“I didn’t feel that way two years ago.” She cocked her head. “Well, not as much. They all still drove me nuts sometimes. But it was easier to put that aside.”
“Maybe… that’s part of what we fought for. What you fought for.” His lips twisted wryly. “The ability to care about dumb things again.”
“I hate that.”
“It’s life.”
She grew quiet. “I was ready to die, two years ago.”
He studied her.
“It would have felt right.” She shook her head. “I was doing things that mattered.”
The sudden softness in his face—the knowing there—and the tight cast of his brows and the skin around his eyes: Those startled her honesty away. She hunched over at the way she knew he wanted to make her feel better. He glanced down at her fidgety fingers on her skate and she half-feared he was going to touch her.
He clasped his hands together in his lap.
A sick relief washed over her.
“Your life matters, Nance.”
“I know that.”
“I know you know that.” He shrugged tightly. “I can say it though, right?”
She allowed for a ghost of a smile. “Yeah. You can say it.”
“Shit, dude.” He exhaled suddenly.
The expletive broke the mood. She glanced up at him with furrowed brows.
“Sorry.” He leaned back into the bench, kicking a twitchy foot. “I mean—this is why I’m here. Stuff like this.”
“Skating?” she asked warily.
“Yeah. Skating.”
In front of them, Jonathan fell on the ice in a flurry of limbs, and Robin pointed and laughed. The rink was crowded, but Nancy figured they would notice her and Steve’s absence soon. Probably already had.
She caught Steve grinning as he, too, watched Jonathan’s struggle.
“You’re mean.”
“And so is Robin!” His mirth faded. “But all of this, Nance. This is what I’m here for.”
She paused.
“If I don’t have anything else, it’ll have been a good life.”
It wasn’t saving the world. Or exposing governmental corruption. Or figuring out her purpose. But it felt good. Friends. People who cared. The blisters to prove that she was still here. “This has been nice. It is nice.”
Steve nodded. He didn’t dissect her moment of vulnerability further (at least out loud) as he added, “As long as Jonathan can pencil us all in, eh? Between LA and wipeouts.”
She laughed.
Steve’s grin faltered into something softer for a millisecond before he turned his attention back to the ice and an approaching Jonathan and Robin (who must have heard Nancy).
And then Nancy was defending herself from finding cheer in Jonathan’s misfortune (all in good fun, of course) and decisions were made that enough battle scars had been collected to call it an afternoon and that was that.
“See you in two months, Nance.”
Deep down, she knew Steve would take her back if she asked. If she was single. If he was single. Maybe even if they weren’t. She should have felt guilty for thinking it, but there it was. The thought.
He might have told Jonathan that he realized he and she were never in the cards, that she was independent (oh to have been a fly on the wall for that conversation). But she saw the way his eyes still lingered.
It would be unfair to take advantage. And she was a different person now than the girl who had fallen into someone’s arms because she was uncertain and lonely.
“Bye, Steve.”