Archive of Our Own

She’s shivering.

Squished in the back of a rattling Humvee, the cheap paper pajamas she’d been handed after the rough trip through decontamination do little to fight the November chill. Her dripping hair isn’t helping. Neither is the adrenaline crash.

Her mom and dad are still in the hospital. Her sister and the other eleven kids they rescued are still at the base for observation, to see if any parts of the Upside Down or the Mind Flayer are incubating inside them like they did Will. Joyce and Hopper are with them, standing watch as the adults.

She’d shouted and fought and clawed at the soldier who held her back from the doctor in the white lab coat as she demanded to stay – that is her sister, she’s 20 years old she’s an adult too – but Hopper had stepped between them, assuring her she could come back tomorrow, that it’d be better to have less of them here and she wasn’t capable of handling the fallout.

As she drew a breath to unleash a new diatribe about that assumption, Jonathan’s hand had fallen gently on her shoulder, warm and solid, and that had taken all the wind out of her sails.

He is still warm and solid on her right, pressed together in this paradoxically tiny backseat from shoulder to sneaker. That warmth is the only thing keeping her from shivering to the point of shattering, frozen solid.

On her left Mike is rigid and blank, paralyzed with grief. She has tried to take his hand more than once, to be the comforting big sister. He meets her eyes but he’s not seeing her; he gazes a thousand miles beyond her, beyond the surface of the earth, searching for a lost dimension and a girl inside it.

Nancy swallows against the lump in her throat and keeps her hands to herself.

Jonathan has his head turned away from her, speaking quietly with his little brother, but it’s inaudible under the engine. She wants to lean her head onto his shoulder, but doesn’t do that either.

When the truck shudders to a stop, she doesn’t realize they’re parked on her cul-de-sac. It’s not ‘til a soldier yanks the back door open, revealing the softly lit Wheeler house standing silent and calm, that she grasps it.

“Don’t forget anything,” the soldier orders as they spill out of the vehicle on weak, exhausted legs.

She is gripping a paper bag they handed to her on the base; it has her keys and a few things from her pockets, other objects that rattled around during the rough ride. They kept their clothes and, to her chagrin, her weapons and ammo. She has a whole riot act to read them about the second amendment as soon as she can get back behind their perimeter.

“When can we see our sister?” Mike asks, and she’s surprised he even had the thought. “When can we see Holly?”

“We will be in contact tomorrow.”

“And if we want to contact you first?” Nancy challenges. The soldier sighs, and looks pointedly down at the bag she’s holding, specifically at the white slip of paper stapled to the front.

“Contact information is included.”

The soldier doesn’t wait for a reply. The Humvee rattles away, leaving the four of them staring up at her house.

Mike moves first. She remembers belatedly about her keys, but she doesn’t need to; when her little brother tries the handle, the front door swings open with ease.

No one has to lock their doors in Hawkins, after all. Middle America. Safe as houses.

She can’t remember the last time she ate, or slept, and in the cool dark of the foyer it’s sleep that wins over any growling her stomach might eventually produce. Still trembling, she moves to the stairs, toward her room.

Jonathan doesn’t follow.

She pauses at the bottom step, turning back in time to see him make a move toward the hall leading to the basement.

“What are you doing?” she asks. He freezes.

“I—” That’s all he gets out before his mouth snaps shut and he moves his arm weakly in the general direction of her basement door.

She shakes her head. “Please don’t.”

“Nancy…”

She can’t say what she means, because her brother’s there and because she doesn’t have the words for it yet. Not beyond, stay close, stay here, stay with me.

“Don’t sleep on a sofa tonight. Please?”

He quirks a tiny grin at that, one that makes her heart feel too big. “Ok. But I need pajamas.”

“Upstairs. Mom was doing laundry when—” The words stick on their way out and she has to clear her throat, hard. “There’s clean clothes upstairs. For all of us.”

“We’ll be up in a second,” Will says, following her brother into the kitchen. She supposes in their internal war, their stomachs won.

She stays perched on the bottom step as Jonathan watches the pair go. When he turns back to her, his eyes move like he’s searching for something and she waits, still. He must find it because he exhales and follows her up the stairs.

She leaves him to dig through the laundry in the dryer as she brushes her teeth and goes searching for her own pajamas. Once upon a time she wore delicate matching sets her mother picked out for her. Now she grabs a soft blue boy’s t-shirt that falls to the tops of her thighs and only bothers with a pair of clean underwear.

She shoves the paper scrubs in the trash and steps on them for good measure.

She’s already under the covers when he comes in. He’s in a familiar long sleeved thermal shirt and she almost chokes on it, but his pajama pants – while still paisley – are brown and not yellow. He stands nervously in the doorway, arms crossed over his chest in a way that makes her feel like she’s staring back in time.

“Nancy,” he says again.

“Jonathan,” she answers, and turns his side of the covers down.

He chews his thumb for a moment then nods to himself, like he’s made a decision. Gently pushes the door closed behind him and strides over to her.

They wrap around each other on instinct, a practiced movement honed over years, him at her back and their knees angled together. She drapes her arm heavy over his at her waist and holds his hand tight against her stomach, like if she doesn’t, he could disappear in the night.

Who knows, maybe he’s planning to.

She is braced to have to talk about this but he’s silent, his breathing even and slow, and she thinks perhaps he’s as tired as she is. It’s a battle to keep her eyes open.

Before they slip shut – before she can think too hard about it – she takes the hand she’s holding and pulls it up to her face, drops a gentle but lingering kiss on his knuckles. She feels no reaction at her back; maybe he’s already fallen asleep. She moves him back to her torso and gives into the weight of her eyelids.

Just before the darkness claims her, she feels his lips press behind her ear, and a smile.

+++

She’s not sure how long she sleeps but it’s still mostly dark when her eyes open and every muscle in her body is screaming.

“Oh god,” she groans trying to figure out what hurts worse – her legs, her back, or her head.

She’s alone in the bed, in the room, she realizes as she looks around. On her nightstand there’s an orange bottle with a white label and a glass of water. Jonathan must have put them there.

But she’s not sure where he is.

She twists her lamp on, bleary eyes scanning the label. She’s never heard of Percocet but it says to take one to two every six hours as needed. They gave her pills at the base, maybe these are more of the same? Probably.

She takes two.

As she waits for them to kick in, she stares at the ceiling and tries to puzzle out where she thinks Jonathan went. Maybe Will needed something, or Mike, she supposes. Maybe they came and got him and she didn’t wake up. She barely remembers falling asleep and even though she’s throbbing, she’s still so tired.

The thought nags at her, though, that he simply waited until she was out and then got up, went back down to the basement and the sofa he’s been sleeping on for the last few months. It gnaws at her gut – displeasure, sure, but guilt, too, that he had been sleeping down there at all. That things had gotten bad enough between them that he’d stopped sneaking in and out of her room, had stopped trying to kiss her good night, or good morning, or eventually pretty much at all.

When the Byers had first moved in it had been glorious, having him so close after the cold, hard months in California. She’d delighted in it. She can’t remember when that delight went away. She can’t remember when it changed into something else.

Somewhere between the fiftieth crawl and the hundredth, she supposes. Somewhere around the millionth nightmare. Somewhere between the bottles of wine she snuck out of her mom’s stash.

But she doesn’t feel like that anymore. Not even a little bit.

Even when they thought they were going to die, he'd only kissed her forehead. She felt bereft in that moment, and feels it again now, remembering. She could have died without kissing him again. Why didn't she? 

The pain is receding, and something warm and buoyant is taking its place. She stretches her arms and legs, rolls out her neck as she formulates a search plan for the house. She’s gonna find him.

As her head rolls toward her window, though, she catches a plume of white smoke float past the pane.

Bingo.

It takes her a minute to dig around for bottoms, for a sweater to meet the November chill, but it’s worth it because when she slides her window open, he’s there, sitting on her eave with his back against the siding, a joint in his hand.

And promptly nearly falls off, he jumps so high when she climbs out.

“Jesus fuck, Nancy,” he whispers harshly, righting himself and his balance. “Where the hell did you come from?”

“That goes to my room.” She points to the window as she settles down next to him.

“I know, that was a rhetorical—”

She doesn’t let him finish, just leans in and presses her lips to his.

She can feel in the way his face moves that he’s surprised, but his lashes flutter against her cheekbone as his eyes close and, even better, his free hand flies to her cheek so he can deepen the kiss.

Relief floods her and she opens her mouth without hesitation.

He kisses her with a meticulousness that she hasn’t felt since their earliest days together, when they were fresh back from Illinois and neither of them knew exactly how far this was going to go. The way he kissed her after school in his bedroom, The Cure playing too loud, and his mom and Will carefully giving them space. Like he was cataloging every corner of her mouth, of her neck, of her body just in case she decided she was done with him and called it quits on the spot.

It makes her toes curl against the rough roofing tile.

They sip from each other’s lips, neither willing to be the one to call stop, until her shoulder hits the siding on the wrong spot, catching what must be a bruise, and it makes her flinch, hiss.

“You ok?”

“I feel like I got hit by a truck,” she admits, running the side of her nose along his.

“Yeah, it got me too,” he just barely brushes his lips over hers one last time and lifts his head. “They gave me those pills before they sent us home. There’s probably one in your bag, too.”

“It helped,” she affirms and lets her head drop onto his shoulder. Adjusts so they’re side-by-side, not a centimeter between them. The way they sat in the middle school, when she told him she wanted to kill a monster and he agreed. A careful foot between them then, it was still the first time she ever realized how much bigger he was than her; in front of that tiger, he seemed huge. “Did you take any?”

“Yeah. But then I couldn’t stop thinking and I was just staring at the ceiling so…”

She hums acknowledgement and kisses the corner of his jaw. She knows it should bother her, it’s bothered the hell out of her for the last few months, but right now just seems like a very silly time to care about him smoking weed.

He contemplates the mostly gone joint in his hand, then flicks it out past the roof edge without a word. Nancy frowns.

“You didn’t need to do that.”

“I know. I was finished.”

“Maybe I wanted some.”

“You never want some.” He snickers. “Weed makes you paranoid.”

“Maybe that weed wouldn’t.”

“You tossed my purple palm tree, which is the actually good stuff. That’s just Indiana schwag. It’s probably half oregano; I bought it from Steve’s old dealer.”

She snorts. “How do you know Steve’s old dealer?”

“Ok, fine, he’s everyone’s old dealer.”

She takes his hand, lacing their fingers together, and stares out past the streetlights. The night feels quiet, quieter than it has for a long time, and for once it feels nice to just sit next to him and be. It’s been a long time since she’s done that.

Her eyelids grow heavier, her blinks slower; with the pain receding the exhaustion comes rushing back in.

“Are you still thinking?” she asks. Feels him huff a laugh more than hears it.

“Not really.”

“Then let’s go back to bed.”

Even though it’s her idea she sighs in protest when he moves, knocking her head from his shoulder, but they’re both smiling when he offers a hand to help her up.

She’s wobbly on her feet, her limbs heavy and slow, so she hangs onto him as they climb back into her room, strip off their extra layers. Refuses to let him go to round the bed; she climbs in his side and shuffles over, pulling him behind her, even as he turns her lamp off again. 

Darkness pulls at her, but it still comes out on a sigh, as thoughtless as any breath, into the crook of his neck.

“I love you, Jonathan.”

She feels his breath move her hair but she’s asleep before her ears can register what he says in reply.

+++

The day after is weird.

For one thing, it’s raining.

She contemplates the sheets of water and flashes of lightning though her bedroom window and tries to recall how long it’s been since they’ve had a thunderstorm. She can’t. Now that she thinks about it, Hawkins had one of the driest summers she can recall. She hadn’t noticed it at the time, was too focused on their mission, but now she wonders if Venca and his alien world had something to do with it. It had been a giant desert, not a drop of water to be found. Maybe it was bleeding over. Maybe it was sucking them dry.

Beyond her bedroom the house is too quiet. For eighteen months the Wheeler house has been daily chaos, eight people living on top of each other; now it’s near silent. Nancy stands frozen between her bed and the door, unsure of how to proceed. She should get dressed, get on the phone to the military, get to Holly, but she’s still exhausted, her body still aches, her heart hurts and her mind is spinning.

She wants to go get her sister, see her parents, get an update from Hopper on whether she can expect to face federal charges for all they’ve done or if things can maybe, finally, go back to whatever passes for normal for them.

She also wants, very badly, just to have a slow, quiet morning to herself, with Jonathan. She hasn’t had that luxury for longer than the rain’s been gone.

She eventually forces herself to move, pulls on sweatpants and one of Jonathan’s cardigans that’s been hanging out in her room for a while, and pads out into the hallway.

She can smell coffee and is powerfully grateful.

But before she goes down to fulfill that need, she breaks to the left, to Mike’s room. He’s still in bed, a long, lanky lump under covers and she catches his clock as she tiptoes through the mess. It’s earlier than she realized.

She sits carefully on the edge of his bed and threads her fingers through the top of his hair, the part that’s poking out. He feels warm, almost feverish; she remembers hiding in bed after Barb, wracked with chills and tears. There’s not as much difference between grief and illness as people want there to be.

Mike’s voice is muffled and thick when he says her name.

“Hey,” she keeps her voice at a whisper. “You OK?”

He’s silent but the covers move, revealing his eyes and a look that says she couldn’t have asked a stupider question, the kind only a little sibling can give.

“Fair enough.” She strokes her hand over his head slowly. “Do you need anything? Water? Are you in pain?”

His look sharpens into a glare and she almost wants to laugh.

“Physical pain,” she clarifies. “We have medicine for that.”

His voice is hoarse and thick when he finally speaks. “My body isn’t what hurts.”

Her heart breaks at the agony in his voice, at the way his eyes fill with tears and spill over. She leans down, cupping herself around him in a hug as best she can while he’s still cocooned, letting him sob into her shoulder. Feels her shirt grow damp with it, and the weight of loss on her shoulders.

“I don’t know what to do,” he’s whimpering as she tries to soothe him. “I don’t know what to do now.”

“I don’t know either,” she admits, hating that she doesn’t have the answer but finding the admission easier than it has been in ages. “I don’t know, Mike, but we’ll get through this.”

“The first time—” He clears his throat, snuffles loudly and starts to fight his way out of his blankets. She withdraws and gives him space to emerge, hands him the box of tissues their mom always puts on his nightstand and waits from him to blow his nose. “The first time she disappeared, I knew she was still out there. I saw her, in the backyard, when the FBI was still at the house, so I knew. I—” The tears start again and he hiccups, forces himself to continue. “I watched all night, Nancy, and I didn’t see her once.”

Her heart breaks for him all over again.

He clutches at her as he cries and she rocks him like she’s seen their mom do, like she did for Nancy after Barb.

“You’ll get through this, Mike,” she whispers in his ear, still petting his head. “I know it feels like it will never end, it will never stop hurting, but I promise it does. It never goes away, not all the way, but I promise one day you’ll think of her and it won’t just be pain, it’ll be all the love and the good memories, and it will feel like comfort, not like loss. It takes time, but it happens.”

“How would you know?” he snaps, pulling back and glaring. “Jonathan is still here.”

She offers a small, sad smile. “Barb isn’t.”

He looks shocked, then ashamed; he forgot, she realizes. And why wouldn’t he? It didn’t happen to him.

“I’m gonna get you some water, OK? And some of those pills they gave us for the pain,” she pushes him carefully back onto his pillows, takes the dirtied tissues from him to throw away, hands him some clean ones.

“One step ahead of you, there.” Will’s voice startles her. He’s hovering in the doorway, a glass of orange juice in one hand, a plate with toast and another orange bottle of pills on it in the other. His face isn’t tearstained like her brother’s, but it’s etched with grief and exhaustion as well.

“Thanks,” she says softly, rises and turns back to Mike. “It’s still early; can you try to get some more sleep? I’m going to call the number they gave us, find out when we can see Holly, see mom and dad. Sound like a plan?”

Mike shakes a pill out of the orange bottle and downs it along with half the glass of juice, shaking his head slightly as he does. Nancy frowns.

“You can try,” her brother says, looking knowingly at Will, who’s taken her place on the edge of his bed. “I told you, I was watching all night. She didn’t come, but they did.”

She looks at Will, who nods.

“Jonathan’s downstairs,” is all he says.

Nancy looks between the two boys (and they both look so tired; Will must have stayed up the whole night with Mike), then leans over to press a kiss on the top of her brother’s head.

“Sleep,” she instructs them both. “We’ll figure it out, and we’ll come get you, ok?”

She waits for them to nod and closes the door most of the way behind her as she leaves.

+++

There is an Army truck on the cul-de-sac. Three, actually, parked at regular intervals around the curve, dark and silent in the rain.

She stares at them through the glass panes that flank the Wheelers’ front door, arms crossed over her chest and thumbnail between her teeth, wondering what they mean.

Jonathan’s footsteps are heavy behind her as he approaches, intentionally, so she doesn’t jump when he speaks.

“Made you coffee,” is what he says. She turns and finds a steaming mug in his hand, held out to her. She flashes a grateful smile as she takes it from him, burns her tongue on the first sip. Milk and one sugar; just the way she likes it.

“Do you think they’re here to give us a ride?” she asks hopefully. He chuckles and shakes his head.

“Doubt it.” He motions toward her living room, and she follows him in where the tv turned to the news, volume low. “Whole town’s on lockdown again. They say it’s for flash flooding but…”

“Yeah,” she agrees settling on the sofa next to him. “Did you try calling the number they gave us?”

“Yep. Didn’t get very far. Finally told them I wanted to talk to my mom, they said she’d call us back. She hasn’t, yet.”

“It’s still pretty early,” Nancy points out, setting the now-half-drunk mug down on the low table. “Maybe they’re still sleeping?”

“Who knows,” he sighs, sounding frustrated. “They wouldn’t tell me shit. But I think if we try to leave, those trucks are there to stop us.”

They sigh in unison then laugh, also in unison, surprised. She gives herself a moment to take him in; he’s also still in his pajamas, hair messy and eyes as tired as ever as he leans back on the sofa cushions. She reaches over, gently touches the bags that are always there. He holds still, letting her.

“Did you get any sleep?”

“Some,” he shrugs. “Not as much as you; you were dead to the world last night.” His lips turn up in a sly grin. “You snored.”

“I don’t snore,” she sniffs.

“You did last night.”

The urge strikes strong and sharp and she doesn’t resist; she cups his face with both hands and kisses him, slow and wet.

When she pulls back, his eyes are still closed.

“That’s the second time you’ve done that,” he says, not opening them yet.

“I’ve kissed you plenty more than twice.”

“In the last twelve hours.”

“I think I was wrong.”

His eyes fly open at that, exaggerated shock. It makes her want to smack him, or maybe kiss him again.

“Say that again.”

“Say what?” He doesn’t reply, just waits and she smacks his shoulder. “I was wrong.”

He just grins and waggles his eyebrows at her. “Do tell.”

“When I said this thing between us,” she holds up her hand, displaying the faded line that’s left of her scar, “was suffocating. I think I was wrong. Not about the suffocating feeling – I felt it, you felt it, that was real, right?”

“Right,” he agrees cautiously.

“But it wasn’t because of this,” she gestures between them. “It wasn’t because of us, or that part of us. Because by the time we finally said that to each other, by the time you un-proposed to me, that feeling was gone. For me, at least. I don’t think this is what felt suffocating. I think it was all the lying, all of the hiding, all of the things we decided not to tell each other. The second we finally started to talk about it again I felt… I felt…”

“Better,” he supplies.

“So much better.”

“But that doesn’t change the rest of what we said. What you said. About wanting space.”

“But it does,” She shakes her head, trying to figure out how to explain. She can’t seem to find the right words. “Because once we were out of that room, Jonathan, I didn’t really want space. I wanted you by my side. I wanted you on my team.”

“Of course I’m on your team. That doesn’t change.”

“I know,” she smiles at him, “Look, it’s morning now. It’s the morning after we killed Vecna and I still don’t want space. This,” she gestures between them again, “still feels like too much space.”

He doesn’t speak, wariness all over his face. She thinks about it for a second, scoots closer so that they’re pressed together from hip to shin again, like last night on the roof.

“This,” she says, softer now, “is better, but it’s still too much space.”

She shifts again, presses harder against him, so close she’s practically in his lap, her torso curled into the space he made for her automatically, lifting his arm as reflex, lifting her heart with the same motion.

“This,” she murmurs, hovering her face just inches from his, “is more acceptable. But this—”

She tilts her head, uses the hand not stuck between her and the couch cushions to draw their lips together again.

“This is perfect,” she murmurs against his mouth.

It’s her turn to kiss him thoroughly, to explore his mouth like he did to her the night before. He lets her, pulling her more fully onto his lap, holding her tight to his body. Something warm and hopeful blossoms in her belly.

“What about college,” he asks between kisses, not parting, just finding space for words. “What about everything else that comes now, now that it’s after?”

“We’ll figure that out when we get to it,” she shrugs. “Are you going in the spring? Because I’m deferred until fall and the last few years of trying to map out my whole life in advance didn’t go very well, so maybe I need to try going with the flow for once.”

He snorts. “I’ll believe that when I see it.”

She nips at his lower lip. “Believe it, Jonathan Byers.”

“I want to believe,” he agrees and turns them, pressing her back onto the sofa and holding himself above her, and she has to tamp down the urge to kick her feet with glee. Winds her arms around his neck to keep him there.

He does pull back then, looking down at her thoughtfully and she tries to decipher the swirling thoughts behind his eyes.

“I love you,” she reminds him, deadly serious. “I loved you yesterday, and I love you still. I don’t know why I thought I had to do something else. I don’t think I want to.”

His expression softens. “I love you too, Nancy.”

She is drawing him down to her again when the phone interrupts, shrill and harsh in the rain-dampened quiet. They both jump, almost fall off the couch.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” she whines but he’s already climbing off her, reaching for the receiver on the side table.

“Wheeler residence,” he recites politely, perching on the sofa arm. “Hey, mom.”

She rights herself, rests her cheek on his back as he speaks to his mother, closes her eyes and focuses on the way his voice vibrates through his chest cavity.

She feels scrubbed out, clean. From her confessions, from the final battle, from the sleep, from him.

After Barb she felt so hollow, barren. Her insides scraped, flesh salted on the way out. It had taken a year for anything to grow in her again.

The space inside her now isn’t empty, it’s full of more than she ever realized she could contain. She is bursting with possibility. She can’t remember the last time she felt that way.

Jonathan hangs up softly, is careful not to dislodge her as he turns, rests his hand in her hair.

“They’ll send a truck for us but not before three,” he says. “And they moved your mom and dad to a different part of the hospital. Until then, it sounds like we’re stuck here unless you really want to get arrested, but I don’t think that’ll get you to your parents or Holly any faster.”

She makes a face at the news, and it makes him smile.

“I’ll go tell Will,” he says, rising, but she catches his hand, entwining their fingers as she holds him in place.

“I told him and Mike to get more sleep, we’ve got time.” She sighs. “They both looked like they didn’t sleep at all last night.”

“I don’t think they did,” Jonathan squeezes her fingers. “I’m still waiting for it to hit me, I think. It doesn’t feel real.”

“No, it doesn’t,” she agrees.

“So what do we do now? While they’re sleeping?”

Her body has not forgotten it’s been at least two days since her last meal. She gives him a hopeful look, pats her stomach. “Maybe you can make breakfast?”

He laughs and pulls her to her feet, not dropping her hand as he guides them into the kitchen. She sits at the table, shuffling a newspaper that is not from today, as he starts pulling ingredients out of her fridge.

“And after that?” he asks.

“We’ll tell Mike and Will when they wake up,” she answers. “And until then, I dunno. We can watch a movie?”

He pauses, eggs in hand, seemingly surprised at such a mundane suggestion. She supposes he’s expecting a fight from her, aimed at him or the government. And maybe it’s the painkillers in her blood, or the mood of the rain, or maybe it’s just that the fight – the long one, the battle that has shadowed her life for years now – is finally over, but she doesn’t want to. She doesn’t want to fight anymore. She wants the chance to heal.

She looks down at the remaining scar on her hand, sees it as ugly and red as the night it was first stitched up.

It’s not the cracks, the ravines, the cuts and gashes that matter; it’s the healing. It leaves marks, but that only makes them more beautiful. A record of a life that wasn’t given and taken passively, but that was fought for, that was earned.

The cracks between them are still there, she knows. But broken bones heal stronger at the fracture.

She thinks they will, too.