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stevebabey · 2 years

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everything leads to you

a/n: gasp! another friends to lovers fic, u can’t stop me! will i write another trope? eventually. but not today hehe word count: 4.4k summary: you don’t want to read into the hints steve’s putting down and maybe, you’re a little clueless as well. fear not, robin’s here to hatch a plan to get two pining fools together. friends to lovers.

There were plenty of things Steve loved about you.

Be it your quick wit, your unabashed kindness for the kids, and especially your bright eyes, the wholesome energy that seemed to light up your entire body. Your obliviousness? He didn't love as much.

Well, maybe obliviousness is the wrong word. Whatever it is, it comes with your go-with-the-flow attitude, never wanting to give more weight to moments that didn't need them. And it worked well most of the time.

When Dustin had broken his wrist the first week into summer, goofing off at the skate bowl with the party — your house had been just around the corner and none of them had hesitated to hurry down and fetch you.

As you —albeit badly but hey, learners permit counts— drove Dustin to the hospital, he had cradled his wrist and asked if you wouldn't tell the others he had cried. "What crying?" you replied with a smile, taking your eyes off the road for a moment to smile comfortingly at him — then swerved to keep the car straight.

You'd done the same for Steve when he poured his heart out about Nancy at first the party after Tina's. Too heavy on the gin, you'd sensed his façade cracking and pulled him to the back porch. The last thing you needed was Steve dealing with any more whispers in the hallways tomorrow. Steve had felt pathetic, head in his hands, tears leaking through the cracks.

But you had dutifully listened throughout it all, resting your head on his shoulder to comfort him. And when you fed him the water and Advil that would save his life tomorrow, he whispered, words wobbling, "Can you not tell anyone about this?"

You smiled, nudging his hand that held the water glass, your voice matching his whisper. "About what?"

It's a sunshine trait of yours, sometimes bleeding into your genuinely terrible memory which happens to make you an expert secret keeper. But, it also means there is no such thing as hint-dropping with you. It's probably why you and Robin are best friends.

Steve's witnessed it before and it baffled him, the flow of conversation between the two of you which pinged about like a pinball machine. Robin's mouth moving at a million miles an hour and you, taking it all at face value without a second thought.

Most people get caught in Robin's whirlwind sentences, especially Steve who gets stuck the moment she seems to mention something left field. It's an art form, watching you nod and deliver the perfect response, having kept up with everything that falls out of Robin's mouth. Like now;

"See, Steve?" She calls over her shoulder from where she was leaning counter of Family Video, yourself on the other side. Steve was reshelving tapes, the stack high in his hands and it didn't seem to matter that he hadn't been a part of the conversation at all. In fact, Steve's not even sure who Robin's talking to when she calls out again. "Someone who can keep up!"

"Uh huh!" He calls back, moving enough tapes so he can peer over them. His heart jumps as he realises who it is, your eyes meeting across the store. You brighten, straightening up and sending a wave across the store. Steve goes to do the same instinctively, only realising his mistake when the tapes in his hands topple to the ground.

Crouching to pick them up is a saving grace; you won't be able to see the embarrassed ruby colour of his cheeks. He can hear Robin's usual jibe of 'dingus' at the counter, and by the time he's gathered all the tapes again, you're about ready to head out the door. You must be in a hurry, considering you usually take the time to talk to Steve as well.

"See-ya Robin!" You grin, pushing off the counter, and at the sight of Steve's head popping back up from between the shelves, you bid him goodbye as well, another yell across the store. "And bye Steve!"

It sends his heart thundering, your lively sunny disposition that Steve finds impossible to frown around. You have the unique ability to make him feel like a foolish 15-year-old again; reduced to pink cheeks and lines that never come out as smooth as they sound in his head. By the time he's re-shelved the stack and wandered back to the front counter, Robin is waiting. She leans backward, her back to the counter and elbows propped up.

"That might be your most dingus moment yet."

Steve grimaces, eyes narrowing. "Yeah, thanks for that." He speaks sarcastically, a hand combing through his hair.

"I don't understand why you get so weird around her," Robin began, winding a spare piece of twine between her fingers. "You two have been friends for the longest time; hell, she put up with you in high school. That deserves some type of award."

Steve busies himself, aligning tapes on the counter to avoid the blundering conversation with Robin. "I am not weird around her."

Robin snorts. "Yeah right — just know there's been another mental tally added to 'you suck'."

Steve scowls, his expression sarcastic at his best friend's words. Annoyingly, as usual, she made a decent point. You and Steve had been friends for a fairly long time, connections through each of your parents that meant the two of you inadvertently spent a lot of time together growing up.

You didn't exactly roll with the 'cool' kids when it came to high school, though mainly through the fact you didn't give a lick about popularity. Your friendly relationship with Steve likely kept your name out of the gutters, especially when he had to shoot down his friends who liked to jeer, asking why he was still friends with the likes of you.

Being friends with Jonathan Byers didn't help in that regard. In fact, technically, it could be blamed for dragging you into the absurd crazy situation of Will's disappearance. You had been there in the crucial moments, palm sliced and armed with the axe Joyce had battered the walls with, ready to fight a monster you'd never seen before for your friends.

But nothing was as seared in your mind as the pivotal moment when Steve came back.

You had just watched him scamper out the door, with half a mind to follow him but you wouldn’t do that to Jonathan or Nancy. And then in between the terrifying flashes of Christmas lights, your axe knocked from your hands, he had come back. Bursting back through the door he had just escaped through and saving all three of you.

And well, there are just some situations you can't through without getting closer on the other end.

It's not like you hadn't been friends before but after? Consider you joined at the hip. At some point, Steve realised that you had likely been the most consistent person in his life for, like, ever. Even now, you're here, still sticking around after batting practice on demodogs in the junkyard and busting him out of the Russian base. It's why Steve can't ruin it.

"Okay, there's no need to pout dude. That shit only works on y/n."

Steve blinks, pulled from his thoughts with a soft shake of his head. "M'not pouting." He mumbles, but can't shake the mopey expression in his head.

What a cruel world — you're close, but not close enough and Steve doesn't think he’s allowed to ask for anything more.

Robin sighs, tilting her head to examine Steve as she takes pity on him. Admittedly, she thought 'king steve' wasn't capable of being nervous but it took about three shifts at Scoops together for him to tank that assumption. You were his achilles heel, the crush he could never shake. And now, a year or so later, he was still pouting about it.

"Why haven't you just... tried asking her out?"

"Yeah, right." Steve scoffed but then he gave a sigh, realising he wasn't being helpful. "Look, I do want to— but she’s probably my oldest friend at this point and the last thing I want to do is build myself to ask her out and then try pretend that the rejection won't kill me completely."

In a nervous motion, Steve dragged a hand down his face, muffling a frustrated groan. Robin had the urge to call him a drama queen but held her tongue for once, seemingly aware that he would just keep rambling if she kept silent.

"So, instead I’ve tried, like, drop some hints—"

"Hints?"

"Yes, hints!” Steve repeated, louder this time. “Like, I don't know, lingering touches — the moves I used to put on girls! y/n's seen me pick up chicks before."

"Hello! Are we friends with the same y/n?” Robin's face twisted into a perturbed expression, flinging her hands out in front of her as she spoke. “You know that even if she's picking up any hints, she'd never comment on them. That's like, what she does best."

Steve's brain stopped reeling for a moment, stunned. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t considered that before. Robin barreled on, stealing his attention once more.

"Look," she began, voice softer and sincere. "I can do my best to talk to her but—"

"Yes!"

"But," She emphasized. "No promises, Harrington."

Steve nodded, his heart thundering a little faster at the prospect. "Okay, yeah, wing-woman me."

Then, as if he remembered who his best friend was, Steve raised his brows in her direction. "You know this means you’ll have to say nice things about me."

Robin rolled her eyes. "Surprisingly enough, dingus, I'm a pretty decent wing-woman when I'd like to be."

Steve couldn't contain his snort. "Oh yeah, to who?"

The argument over who was the better wing-person kept them both entertained for the rest of the shift.

—

It’s a little surprising when the tape Robin dumps onto the couch beside you, along with some candied popcorn from work, is Sixteen Candles.

Mainly surprising when you consider Robin’s usual distaste for romance films — “I’ll watch em’ when they start putting the hot ladies with equally hot ladies, instead of bland men.” she had said when you’d first asked.

But obviously, that didn’t seem to apply to tonight.

“Not that I mind,” You begin, picking up the tape and flipping it over in your hands. “But why the genre switch? I thought we said we were watching ‘Once Upon A Time In America’?”

Robin flopped down beside you on the couch, swinging her legs up onto your lap and releasing a sigh large enough it looked as though her entire body deflated a bit.

“I know but I’ve gotta ask you some lovey-dovey questions and this will make you so much more pliable.”

You double-take, mind stuttering as it pings off in every direction. Lovey-dovey questions? Robin gives nothing away, simply cracking open the popcorn and shoveling it into her mouth. Her enthusiasm made you wonder if she’d skipped dinner at work again, too forgetful to bring some with her but Robin only lifted her feet from your lap.

“Be a dear, won’t you?”

Smiling amused, you slid off the couch and unboxed the tape, feeding it into the slot. The screen flickered, grains distorted before it focused and the opening sequence began. You tailed back to the couch, lifting Robin’s ankles and letting them land back in your lap as you sit.

Robin offers the bag of popcorn and you snag a handful, still eyeing her suspiciously. You’re surprised when she stays composed, eyes trained on the screen and you take the hint: she’ll ask her questions whenever she feels like it.

You let yourself enjoy the movie; you’ve seen it a dozen times now, reciting lines along as it goes. “I can’t believe they forgot my birthday.” you whisper along and Robin nudges you with her foot, grinning at your performance.

It’s nearly halfway through the film when Robin finally speaks up, turning her eyes on you — you do your best to pretend the potential questions haven’t been distracting you the whole film.

“So,” she begins and you have the acute feeling that you’re being studied. “Steve.”

“Steve?” you echo, confused, and turn to face her.

“I just noticed he’s been nice to you recently. Extra nice. Abnormally nice. Like I have to beg the dingus to pick me up from parties but he offers you the moment you mention them! Didn’t he bring you a strawberry shake the other day for no reason? Just ‘cos you like them?” In typical Robin-fashion, the words fly out one after the other without a break in between. When she finally pauses, you blink and try to process all her words.

“Yeah, but Steve’s just being nice?” You don’t mean for it to come out as a question but all of a sudden, it’s a great question. Of course, you’ve been secretly reveling in the niceties that Steve gives only to you; your cheeks hot and heart thumping whenever your thoughts drift back to the boy.

“Right?” You ask, the movie is completely forgotten as you try to pick apart the implication of Robin’s words. The next words escape you before you can register what you’re saying. “You don’t think he likes me, do you?”

Even saying the words aloud makes you flush, lips twitching up at the thought and you remember Robin’s scrutinizing gaze a moment too late.

“Aha!” She scrambles up from her spot on the couch, launching over to your side. “I knew it, I knew it. You like him.”

You splutter, trying to recover but it’s fruitless as Robin presses her hands to your cheeks and feels the undeniable warmth of your blush. It doesn’t help that she continues in a sing-song voice, “You’re blushing.”

You huff a laugh and push her hands off your face, resolve crumbling as you admit. “Fine! I just... I didn’t want to read into anything. He could just be being nice, Robs.”

Robin grins, tucking her hair behind her ears as she relents her closeness, leaning back to slouch on the couch now that she gotten you to crack. “Somehow I doubt that. I can’t believe it — I was on the money! I told Steve you’d say something like that.”

For the first time in your friendship with Robin, you’re barely able to keep up. each new sentence sends your mind reeling but by the time you open your mouth, she’s barreling on.

“You have to tell him. obviously. The dingus is completely enamored with you. It’s been drivin’ me crazy at work whenever you come in — I swear he loses at least half his brain cells when you’re nearby.”

“Wha— did he tell you?” You wince at how excited it comes out, unable to help the glee that leaks into your words. Robin, thankfully, doesn’t comment on it.

"No! But it doesn't take an idiot to figure it out."

"Well,” you smile mischievously “You are an idiot."

Abruptly, a pillow hits you over the head, thrown by Robin and you begin to laugh as she pelts you with another, muttering about ‘never trying to set up her shitty friends again.’ "Ow! Okay, I was kidding!"

Robin finally halts her attack and huffs, blowing a stray piece of hair from her face. She fixes you with a pointed look. "You'll be the idiot now if you don't do anything about this."

You can’t help the way the pout on your lips, a thousand excuses rushing up your throat but all that comes out is, “ughhhh.” because Robin is right. Robin is always right.

Your eyes flick to the television and you can see Robin biting her lip in suspense, wondering whether she’ll have to continue playing matchmaker for the next month until one of you bites the bullet and does something.

“We finish Sixteen Candles first,” You point to the television and can’t help the giddy grin, nerves and excitement combined in your stomach. “Then, we plan.”

—

Steve doesn’t know what’s got Robin so antsy.

Sure, half of the time Robin walks around like she’s got ants in her pants, skittish and unable to sit still for too long. But this is a different sort of antsy than Steve has become accustomed to — shit, did she give coffee another try?

Steve does his best to ignore her pacing, pushing the reshelving cart through the aisles idly as he works through the last 20 minutes of his shift. He does manage to get at least half of them done before his attention is stolen again by Robin picking up the phone, 5 minutes before he’s done. Peculiarly, she’s not answering a call but instead making one.

She turns and steals a glance at Steve, then looks at the time and Steve just knows she’s up to something.

Eyes narrowed in suspicion, Steve pushes the cart back to the counter and abandons it, leaning back on the counter opposite Robin. She speaks into the receiver of the phone, clutching it with both hands and Steve feels a pang of worry in his chest — nothing’s happened, right? Before he can get a chance to ask, Robin is slamming the phone down and spins around to face Steve.

“Who was that?”

“Doesn’t matter. The real question, Steve, is why didn’t you shave today?”

The question takes him aback, surprised enough that when Robin comes closer, she gets about an inch within his hair before Steve remembers to duck. He swerves away from her fussing hands, brows raised.

“Woah, woah! What are you doing? You know you can’t touch the hair!” Steve whines, reaching up to fix it. “What’s all the fuss about? Who’d you call?”

Robin, incessantly annoying and usually unable to be quiet for the life of her, is quiet. Seemingly sworn to silence, she just chuckles and shakes her head, eyes bright.

“Nobody!” she says loudly because apparently, she can’t lie very well either.

Steve scrunches his nose, confused. He considers puzzling over it, sure that with enough pressure Robin would crack and release her secrets as she always did. But a glance at the clock tells him it had just hit 6 o’clock. He’s a free man.

Steve shrugs off his vest without a moment to waste, already feeling lighter knowing that he could enjoy the rest of his day off — as much as he enjoys getting paid to stand and chat with his best friend, Keith worked the other half of this day, and any shift with Keith was considered a bad one.

“Okay,” Steve finally speaks, gathering up his items from behind the counter and swinging his keys around his fingers. “Well, don’t burn the place down while I’m gone, alright?”

Robin was nodding fervently, still attached to the desk beside the phone and attempting to look casual. She seemed a tad too distracted, eyes dancing past him into the parking lot of the Family Video store.

“Hey, did you ever— I mean, did you, uh, wing-woman me at all? I know you two had your usual movie night last night.” The words come out more nervous than Steve intends and he clears his throat, willing his cheeks to stay cool.

“Yeah!” Robin responds instantly, the word nearly shouted and Steve blinks, leaning forward into the counter eagerly. He waits for a moment to see what she would say, only growing more confused as she twists her lips to keep any further words from tumbling out.

“So? What— did she seem interested? Do I have a chance?”

“I think,” Robin squeaks, as though she can’t contain the glee in her voice. “You better just go ask her yourself.”

She extends her arm out, one finger pointing out the glass windows to the parking lot. Steve follows it, spinning quickly to spy what she was referring to and— there you are, leaning against his car and looking pretty as ever. You’re reclined against the driver’s door, a book clasped in your hands and your head bent over it, lost in the story.

Steve whips back around, only slightly more nervous than he had been a second ago, and hisses at Robin, as if you could hear them all the way from the parking lot.

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“What d’ya mean ‘what does that mean?’ Go talk to her dingus. I’ve worked my magic.”

Steve pauses, his limbs locked as he scours Robin’s expression to make 100% sure that she wasn’t pulling his leg. It would be a tad too cruel for her usual pranks, some remnant worry leftover from his previous friendship with Tommy H that makes him worry, but Steve relaxes at what he finds on her face. Barely restrained joy, her bottom lip trapped in an attempt to hide her grin.

Despite knowing Steve can trust her with this, it doesn’t deter his nerves which are beginning to feel fried as he peeks over his shoulder, stealing another glance at you leaning against his car.

The peach-coloured sundress you’re wearing flutters in the wind and that doesn’t help either, Steve swallowing down a groan at how bewitching you look, wrapped up in the evening sunlight.

He steels his nerves. With a terse nod to Robin, Steve starts out the door, barely hearing what Robin calls out to him as he goes.

“If you have any lip-balm it would be a good time to—”

The rest of her sentence is sealed inside the store as the door hisses shut. Steve tries not to overthink that sentence, thankful his lips don’t feel chapped as he licks them nervously. He approaches the car, trying his best to shove down the nervous feelings and appear somewhat charming. Harrington Charm, he thinks to himself.

“Hey, stranger.” He greets, an easy smile tugging at his mouth as you look up from your book. He tries not to revel in the delight that perks up your expression, previously furrowed in concentration as you squinted to read your book.

“Hi.” You reply sweetly, snapping the book shut and holding it to your chest as you cross your arms shyly. Then, you seem to think the better of it, spinning and placing it upon the roof of Steve’s car before turning back to him — you hope your smile isn’t giving away your jitters. The plan, you think to yourself, stick to the plan. What was that again?

“Not that m’complaining but I gotta ask wh--”

“Do you trust me?” You don’t mean to cut him off but the words rush out the moment you gather enough courage to say them. “I- I wanna try something.”

He responds too quick. “Sure, yeah, anything.”

A flush crawls up his neck, embarrassed over his over-eagerness that is surely giving him away. But he doesn’t get time to recover, about to stammer out a poor cover-up, because your hands reach up to cup his face and then you’re kissing him.

You’re kissing him.

It’s a whirlwind; there’s a rush of emotions bursting through in Steve’s chest, a sudden surge of utter euphoria wrapped in surprise that sets each of his senses alight. It’s like he’s been struck with lightning, his world cleaved in half — all the moments leading up to this kiss and all the moments that will come after. Everything leading to this, to you.

Your soft and supple lips pause for a moment, prepared to pull back and deal with the damage in case you’ve been led wrong by Robin but Steve doesn’t let you — his hands finally awaken and there is a desperation, a fervor, hidden in the gentle motions of his hands which cup your jaw and pull you closer.

He kisses, deeper this time, as though he’s trying to learn the curve of your mouth all in one go, memorizing it as he drinks in the affection from you. Your hands are in his hair, arms around his neck to pull him evermore closer. Steve swears that he can recognize the warmth of love in the press of your lips, familiar, as you’ve loved each other all this time and yet, it’s new.

The kiss feels like ‘where have you been?’ whispered from both of you, a mixture of desperation and relief.

‘right here. i’m just been waiting for you to find me’.

“You kissed me.” Steve breathes, shock coating each word — the only thing he can think to say after your lips part. It’s uttered with such disbelief that for a moment, you seriously wonder if Robin fed you a whole bunch of nonsense despite the kiss that just set your heart racing.

“I did.” You whisper, eyes darting over his face to try to decipher his expression. Beneath his faint freckles, the skin blooms pink and you hope, you pray it’s a blush — it certainly feels like there’s a fire beneath your skin after that kiss.

“Is that alright?” A moment of worry where your heart feels suspended halfway up your throat but then, he smiles. Bright and brilliant, the spell of shock is broken and it launches him in action, his hands caressing the side of your face tenderly.

“Yes! Holy shit, yes, that’s more than alright, I just—” His sentence breaks off when he captures your lips with his once more and he hums lovingly into the kiss. Something inside you preens, knowing now that he undoubtedly has wanted this as much as yourself.

He pulls back, breath a little ragged “You just took me by surprise, sweet girl.”

The pet-name makes you soften unbearably, leaning into his chest and nuzzling into the hand that holds your cheek. As if your adoration isn’t evident enough, your prepped explanation springs to mind and spills out your mouth without a second thought.

“I'm sorry, I'm not too good with words so Robin thought a kiss would work— and, I'm sorry I missed your hints, I was worried I might be reading into something and mfh—"

Your words are smothered beneath another chaste kiss and you don’t even mind, already stretching up onto your toes to kiss him harder, fingers curling around the fabric of his polo shirt. Breathless is how you feel, pulling back after a moment and feeling something close to drunk off Steve’s kisses — your head is spinning again and it makes your face split into a wide grin, then giddy laughter tumbles out before you can stop it.

“Never—” Steve begins, leaning forward to lean his forehead against your own. The tip of his nose brushes yours and you feel delirious, enchanted by the ardent and affectionate look in his eyes. “ —apologise for kissing me. You can— Christ, you can kiss me anytime you like.”

You’re aware the expression on your face betrays just how enamored you are with him, with this moment; the rays of the setting sun travel through the trees and blanket the parking lot in a soft burnt amber.

“Anytime?” you ask sweetly, reveling in the warmth of his chest under your palms and the fire in his grin.

His eager kiss, fervent and stirring, is answer enough.

—

tags below!

@hawkinsindiana @harringtonbf @parkerroos @cptnleviackerman @skylergisondo @cultivatingkindness @aphrodites-perfume @lurkymurker @familyvideostevie @rogersharringtons @sattlersquarry @yellowharrington @milkiane

#it's a bit long and it feels waffley but hopefully u bitches LIKE waffles #mainly i pray u can't tell if wrote this is two separate batches #is my writing consistent? only tell me if yes otherwise shhhh #KENNY this was the FIRST sweet girl line i wrote and i wrote it AWHILE back hehehe #stevie ur welcome to kiss ME anytime you'd like #he deserves a good smooch #and i volunteer #ruby writes #ruby writes steve #steve harrington #steve harrington x reader #steve x reader #steve harrington fic #steve fic #steve harrington imagine #stranger things #stranger things fic #stranger things imagine

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unfinishedslurs · 1 year

Text

welcome to eden

this is a love letter. inspired by this song

As soon as Steve picks up the phone, she knows she’s making a mistake.

“Rob?”

“No,” she says instead of hanging up like she should.

“Nancy?” He sounds more alert now, and she can picture him standing up straighter, calling to attention at the sound of her voice. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

“Not really,” she sniffs, hating herself for it. “I—can we talk?”

He’ll say no. He’ll say no, because it’s one in the morning and he was probably asleep before the phone rang and she shouldn’t be asking to talk years after she broke his heart and didn’t even remember—

“Of course,” he says, and Nancy could kick herself. “Over the phone?”

“No. Not over the phone. I’m sorry, it can wait, you can go back to bed.”

She hears him huff a laugh, even though there’s nothing funny about any of it. “I wasn’t in bed,” he assures her. “Am I picking you up?”

Tears spring anew to her eyes. “If that’s okay.”

“Works for me,” he says. “See you soon.”

“See you,” she echoes, and hangs up.

She spends the time it takes pacing quietly in front of the front door, berating herself for using him like this. But she needs to talk to him, and the sooner it’s over with the better.

Headlights cut through the window way too soon, and she nearly throws herself out the door.

She gives him a look when she opens the car door, telling him she knows how many traffic laws he must have broken to get here this quick. He just grins in return, ready to point out the felony in her closet.

“Where are we going?” He asks, and her heart clenches. He’s so good. He’s so good, and she couldn’t-can’t love him like he wants. She has to tell him.

Tonight probably wasn’t the best night for this conversation, but her skin feels like it’s peeling off and the faster she says something the quicker it will be over with and she can go back to how it was before. Back when she didn’t have anyone to talk to, because Robin might never speak to her again after she breaks her best friend's heart for the second time.

Just rip the bandaid off, Nance.

“I don’t know,” she says instead. Maybe she’s a coward. “A field? Somewhere I can see the stars.”

“I can do that.”

The drive goes by in silence, Nancy staring stubbornly out the window. She can feel Steve periodically checking on her, and she knows he wants to know why she called. She can’t open her mouth to say it in the suffocating enclosure of the car. She rolls down a window.

They get to a field almost out of Hawkins, and the car is barely in park before she’s climbing out, going around to sit on the hood. Steve cuts the engine and follows.

She still doesn’t say anything. She called him to have a talk, why can’t she just open her stupid mouth—

“Nancy?” Steve asks, gentle in a way that used to make her melt. She pulls her legs to her chest, feeling vulnerable. “What’s wrong?”

“Jonathan and I broke up,” she finally gets out.

“Oh shit.” He looks genuinely surprised. “That sucks, I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, well, it was never going to be forever.” Except she’d thought otherwise. She thought they were Nancy and Jonathan, the two of them against the world. She hunches her shoulders. “We never talk anymore, and he was pulling away from me, and he was lying to me for months-“ she shakes her head, clearing the anger she feels at that. “It doesn’t matter. I’m starting to realize there’s things I need to work on, too. A lot to work on, actually.”

“I don’t know what that could be,” he says, flashing her a smile filled with boyish, roguish charm. “You’re already the best person I know.”

She sniffs, and suddenly she’s crying into her knees, shoulders shaking. He freezes beside her, before wrapping an arm around her and pulling her into his side. She leans in for a second, chasing the comfort, before remembering what she came here to do and ripping away violently.

“Fuck,” she whispers. “Fuck, I’m so sorry. I don’t—I can’t—this isn’t what I—“

“Hey,” he soothes. “Slow down. Let it out.”

She wipes her eyes, suddenly furious. “I don’t want to date you,” she says, finally looking him in the eyes. “I don’t—I’m sorry for calling you. I just remembered how much better you used to make me feel, but then I realized that’s like…really shitty of me.”

“Why?” He asks, as if Nancy didn’t come out here to break his heart again. “I want to make you feel better. I like knowing I can make you feel better.”

“I don’t want to lead you on,” she says, mouth screwing up. “That’s why I called you out here. And I know it’s shitty of me—“

“Nancy, you’re not leading me on. I…I don’t want to date you either.”

That stops her in her tracks. “Oh.”

“Yeah, oh,” he echoes quietly. “I—don’t take this the wrong way, okay, ‘cause I know I’m gonna sound like an asshole saying it, but, uh, I can’t do that again. And even outside of that, I don’t like you that way anymore. Uh, sorry.”

She tries not to sag at the overwhelming relief she feels at that.

“Are you sure?” She studies him closely, trying to see if he’s saying this for her sake or if he means it. “Back in the Upside-Down, and when we were fighting Venca, it seemed…”

He grimaces, and Nancy thinks if it wasn’t dark she’d see the beginning of an embarrassed flush on his ears. “I…may have been feeling things,” he admits. “I was testing the waters, I guess. I started feeling nostalgic, and you were there, and everyone was encouraging me, and it all just ended up in this weird…feelings soup. Sorry.”

“You said you wanted to have six kids with me,” Nancy reminds him. “And travel the country in a Winnebago.”

He groans, covering his face with his hands. “I am,” he says, “so sorry. I don’t know why I said that. That had to be so weird for you.”

“It was kind of sweet?” She tries, not letting her relief show. Not yet.

“We haven’t been together in years, and I decided to tell you I used to dream about you having my babies. How do you deal with me?”

“Well it helps to know you were dropped on your head. Puts everything in perspective.”

“Yeah, yeah, yuk it up.” He looks at her, really looks at her, and she tries not to fidget under his gaze. Too earnest, too caring for someone who doesn’t deserve it. He’s always tried so hard. To woo her, to be a better person, to keep back the vicious streak she still sees in him. “I meant it, when I said I loved you,” he tells her gently, no sign of that cruelty that had him painting her as a whore for the whole town to see. “Back then, I mean. I just wanted you to know that.”

She wants to cry. “I know. I’m sorry I couldn’t say it back.”

“It’s okay,” he says like he means it. He leans back against the windshield, looking at the sky. After a moment, she copies him.

They watch the stars together, and the air feels clearer.

“Where do we go from here?” She asks, afraid of the answer.

“What do you mean?”

“What happens with us now?”

“Well,” he says gingerly, like he’s testing the waters. “I don’t know about you, but I’ve heard you’re a pretty kickass friend.”

Friends. She doesn’t know that she and Steve have ever been friends, not properly. Even after the apologies they made to each other, she doesn’t know that she could call what they had friendship. It wasn’t substantial on its own, needing Jonathan as the barrier between them. When it fell, so did they.

“I haven’t had a friend in a while,” she admits. “Robin is kind of a novelty for me. She’s amazing.”

It’s funny, in a way. She was so jealous of Robin, of how close she was with Steve in a way Nancy wasn’t. She’d thought, at first, that it was because they were so clearly dating. After Robin told her they weren’t, she realized how badly she’d just wanted friends. She missed hanging out with Steve, missed his laugh and his squint and his bitchy attitude. She’d hoped that eventually they’d get to that point, was sure they were almost there before Starcourt. In a way, she’d been jealous of Robin for stealing Steve. She knew it was ridiculous. Steve had found a friend, a real friend who hadn’t cheated on him or slept with his girlfriend. She couldn’t begrudge him that.

She just missed him.

“She is, isn’t she?” Steve grins, but sobers up quickly. “I didn’t really think about that. How lonely you must be, since…”

She’s already shaking her head. “It’s not your fault. I didn’t reach out.”

“I didn’t exactly reach out either.”

They fall silent again, at a loss for words. Barb’s death, as always, the canyon between them.

Finally Nancy huffs. “It’s both of our faults,” she declares, “or neither of our faults. I don’t know. I just missed you.”

“Well shit, Nance, I missed you too,” he says, touched.

“I’ve heard you’re a pretty kickass friend too, you know,” she says, glancing at him. He smiles.

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, Nancy Wheeler, I would be honored to be friends with you,” he says, and sticks out his hand to shake, like they’re meeting for the first time.

She stares at him, and starts laughing. “You’re an idiot, Steve Harrington.”

She shakes his hand.

Max has always felt like a mirror. One Nancy wanted to smash, pull her out of the shards of her reflective grief and hug. Stroke her hair the way she wanted someone to do for her and say you’ll get through this. So Max could hear it from someone who knows.

Except Nancy doesn’t know anything. Still drowns in her guilt, the ball and chain dragging her into the depths. She can’t help when she’s still such a mess, three years later.

Her hands clench when Mike says Max is pulling away from Lucas. She wishes she could look her in the eye and tell her you don’t have to be me. You can be better.

She’s Mike’s friend. They barely know each other outside of a quick hello as they cross paths or fighting monsters. Max has enough on her plate, she doesn’t need her friend’s weird older sister butting in to tell her how to mourn the right way.

Nancy just hopes she’s getting out of bed. Remembering to eat. Brushing her teeth. She had more cavities in the year after Barb died than she’d ever had in her life, and she knows Max doesn’t have insurance.

Now, sitting next to Max’s hospital bed, Nancy wishes she’d reached out.

With school back comes studying, and with studying comes Eddie Munson, in all his super-senior glory. Nancy is going to get him a diploma if it kills her.

He laughs when she tells him so. “Shit, Wheeler,” he says. “The day something manages to get you is the day this shithole goes down for good.”

Robin turns down her offer to form a study group. “I’m pretty sure if I joined, I’d just distract Eddie, and let him distract me, and we’d end up throwing things at each other until you killed us. Sorry. Steve’s going to help me study for finals, though!”

She looks at Steve, eyebrow raised. She’s pretty sure it’s fair to be dubious, since she was the reason Steve passed his finals in the first place.

“I’m her rubber duck,” he says as an explanation, and she nods in understanding.

Her mom isn’t about to let her study alone with a boy in her room, though, and especially not a boy like Eddie, so she drags him to the library three times a week. He complains, he bitches, he tells her he doesn’t care about his fucking history class anymore. She just hands him a Rubik’s Cube she found to keep his hands busy as she quizzes him.

Three sessions in, he slowly puts a worksheet down and screams into his hands.

“Stop that!” She kicks him in the shin. “If you get me kicked out of the library I’m never forgiving you.”

“I can’t do it,” he says, staring up at the ceiling. “I’m so fucking stupid, Nancy. I can’t even get past question two. Is this torture? Did I die and go to hell? That would be fitting, wouldn’t it? Doomed to repeat high school for the rest of eternity?”

“Stupid” her ass. She knows what kind of work goes into those campaigns of his, has absently flipped through his annotated fantasy novels and left feeling as if she’d seen the story anew. Plus, she went and made a tape of everyone’s favorite songs, just in case, and she knew damn well how quickly he’d taught himself to play the song he did in the Upside-Down. “Stupid” and “Eddie Munson” don’t belong in the same sentence, much less belong in the same space in his brain. She hates Hawkins High just a little bit more for it. “Stop being dramatic. What are you stuck on?”

“Fucking nothing! I can’t focus, it’s driving me fucking insane. I keep trying, I swear, but it’s like I can’t even read anymore! This always happens, I swear to God it’s killing me more than the fucking demobats ever did.”

“Don’t joke about that,” she snaps. “You’re smart, Eddie, you know that. You just need to try.”

His face twists, and she realizes that was the wrong thing to say.

“Oh, thank you, Miss Wheeler, why haven’t I thought of that? Sorry for wasting your time, I’ll get out of your perfect hair now—“

“Sit down,” she protests as he gathers up his stuff. “Eddie, I’ll help you work through the problem, okay? Just sit down, please.”

“No, Nancy!” He swings around, eyes wild. “It’s what everyone always says. Just sit still, stop doodling, be quiet, pay attention, try fucking harder…I tried, okay! I’ve been trying, I tried for fifteen fucking years, and I can’t do it! I might as well just drop out and get it over with. I’m fucking sick of this.”

“Okay!” She feels herself getting riled up. “You want to fail so bad, fine! I’m not your keeper, do whatever you want.”

“I will!”

“Fine!”

They stare at each other, not moving. Finally Eddie storms off in a huff, flinging open the library door in a grand gesture she pretends not to see. There’s a sinking feeling in her stomach, but she can ignore it.

She pretends not to notice when he comes slinking back five minutes later, shuffling his feet.

“Sorry.”

“For what?” She asks primly, going over her notes.

“Nancy, please.”

She sighs. “I’m sorry too. I’m just…frustrated.”

“I’ve been told I’m pretty frustrating,” he offers.

“It’s not…”

“It is,” he says, sitting down. “It’s okay. God knows I piss myself off with this shit.”

She studies him, looking over his defeated face like he’s one of her flashcards. “You’re trying your best,” she says, sounding it out. She can’t really make sense of it. After all, trying her best has always been straight A’s, not stopping until she knew everything she needed to and more.

“It’s not good enough.”

“It will be,” she says. “You’ve got me this time.”

“Listen, I know you’re trying to help—“

“Do you want fries?”

“What?” He blinks at her, shocked, as she starts packing up her things.

“We’re not getting anywhere today. Sometimes you have to step back, and come back with a clearer head.” Usually she locks her door and cleans her guns, the repetitive motion soothing her mind until she can think again, but she has a feeling that won’t work for Eddie.

“I usually just give up.”

“I don’t. Get your backpack, we’re going to the diner. Dinner’s on me tonight.”

At the diner, he makes her laugh so hard soda comes out her nose. The next day, they go to the library again.

After a couple of days, he solves the cube. After three weeks, he nearly kicks her door down rushing to show her the B he got on a test.

Two months later, he throws his cap into the air and his cane on the ground. Swings her around, both of them laughing.

“Nancy fucking Wheeler!” He crows. “Achieving the impossible yet again!”

“Eddie, put me down!” She shrieks gleefully as he stumbles. She barely makes it back to solid ground before two more bodies are slamming into them, Steve and Robin whooping in their ears.

It was weird, to see Steve and Robin effortlessly communicate the way she and Jonathan always had and have it be so unabashedly unromantic. She’d always thought that knowing someone like that was a sign you were meant to be, and they did it while still loudly proclaiming Platonic with a capital P.

She and Jonathan didn’t do it much anymore. It was like dancing to a song that was always a beat off, syncing for just one moment before stumbling again, unsure that they were still allowed this.

She’d known him better than anyone, once, and he’d known her the same. Now she wonders if that was ever true.

“So,” Eddie says, throwing himself onto her bed. “Steve.”

She sits in her desk chair, raising an eyebrow. “What about him?”

“You broke up with Jonathan, right? Are you going to get back with him? I thought you would, but it's been months and neither of you said anything.”

“No,” she says. “No, that’s not what I want. It’s not what either of us want.”

“Really?” He rolls over, eyes searching. “What happened there, anyway? With both your boys. I’m a nosy little asshole, and I wanna hear it from you.”

It makes her laugh, the way he admits to it so freely. He grins wolfishly at her, baring his teeth in a grin. That’s probably why she tells him the truth.

“I wasn’t okay, when I was with Steve,” she says honestly. “I was distant, grieving…I was a mess, and I stayed with him because I didn’t know what else to do. With Jonathan…I was getting closure, I was healing, and things were good between us. They were so good, but after a while, we just started to…deteriorate. I don’t know if we lost momentum, or if the stress just got to us, but we started fighting more and more,” She traces the desk with a finger, remembering the sour taste of Oliver Twist on her tongue. It was a shitty thing to say. “I thought we’d figured it out, for a little while, but then we just…stopped talking. I think, maybe if we’d talked more, we could have worked it out. But I’m…not upset that we didn’t, you know?”

It’s a different kind of loneliness when your partner won’t talk to you. It was different than grieving, different than not having anyone to talk to at all. Because even when she didn’t have friends, she had Jonathan. And then, slowly, she didn’t anymore.

“Nancy, you’re one of my best friends, so-”

“Steve is your best friend.”

“Steve is my best best friend,” she agrees. “But he’s also more than that? Like, I think we’re literally soulmates. Platonic with a capital P soulmates, but, like, it feels like more than friendship sometimes? Like sometimes it’s like he can literally feel my bad days even when I haven’t talked to him yet. He told me once he just knows sometimes. It’s like I hit my hip on my desk and he felt it, but emotionally. It’s wild. It’s like the drugs literally combined our minds. Where was I going with this?”

“I don’t know,” she says, slightly bewildered. She wants to ask how they do that, but Robin barrels forward.

“Right. So outside of mine and Steve’s platonic more-than-friendship, you’re kind of my best friend? And you’re, like, the coolest person I know.”

She blinks. She’s not sure she’s ever been described as cool before.

After Barb, Nancy tried to cut her own hair.

Her mom found her in the bathroom, unshed tears in her eyes and hair a mess on the sink and floor.

She hadn’t laughed, hadn't said oh, honey, your beautiful hair. Just clucked her tongue and took the scissors from her hands. Stepped behind her and took over, took the uneven mess and made it something good, something presentable.

She didn’t say anything until she was done, setting the scissors on the counter. “Sometimes,” she said, wetting her lips. “Sometimes we need a change, before we can move forward.”

The closer she gets to Emerson, the more she feels like she’s letting someone down. Mike. Max. Jonathan. All the people who have relied on her, all the people who trusted her to fight.

In a strange turn of events, her mom is the only one she doesn’t feel is disappointed in her. Her mom is more excited about college than she is sometimes. Chattering excitedly over dishes about the classes she’s going to take as Nancy dries and smiles and tries not to feel like the ground is being pulled from under her feet.

This is everything she’s ever wanted. Why does it feel so wrong?

She takes Eddie to the gun range, because having a gun in her hands has always made her feel safer. More in control. More like the badass protector she wants to be, than the scared little girl she feels sometimes.

Eddie stares down the scope of the gun and shoots like he has experience, but doesn’t hit a single bullseye.

“Your hands are shaking.”

“I’m in a fucking gun range and a bunch of small town hicks were hunting me not too long ago,” he snaps, taking another shot and missing the target completely. He swears and changes the magazine. “Excuse me if I’m a little bit on edge.”

She hadn’t really thought of it like that. “You didn’t have to come,” she says. “I just thought with everything that’s happened, you should know how to use one. Just in case.”

“I know how to use a gun,” he rolls his eyes.

“You know how to shoot one.” She looks from him to the target pointedly. “Not the same thing.”

“Deep. I could really feel the judgement there. Tell me, is there anything else wrong with me?”

“There’s security cameras all over this place. We’re not in Hawkins, so there’s no mob coming after you. I’m here, and I do know how to use a gun. No one is going to hurt you here.”

“I know all that.”

“Do you?”

He scowls at her. She looks back unflinchingly. She’s been here plenty of times, and the guys laughed at her until they didn’t anymore. By the time she brought Eddie, all she got was a raised eyebrow and a “boyfriend?” from Hunter at the desk. She didn’t know what was more incriminating, so she just shrugged.

“You’re kind of a pain in the ass, you know that?”

She rolls her eyes, taking the gun from his hands and lining up a shot. “I’ve heard worse,” she says, thinking about Nancy Dre-ew, and Nancy “the slut” Wheeler, and priss, and shoots. It hits the bullseye.

So do her next five shots.

Eddie looks begrudgingly impressed when she reloads and hands the gun back to him. It’s more satisfying than it should be, to realize that while he’d known she had guns he’s never seen her actually shoot before.

She raises a challenging eyebrow at him, and he huffs around a smile. “All right, all right,” he says good naturedly. “Let’s try this again.”

He does a little better this time around, now that he’s actually trying. He does a little dance when he hits one of the inner rings.

“Take that!” He crows. “I bet Steve couldn’t do this. In your face, Harrington!”

“He’s much more of a close-combat kind of guy, isn’t he?” Nancy agrees.

“Oh, yeah, definitely,” he says. “Does he really have a bat with nails?”

She blinks, caught off guard by the fact that Eddie hadn’t seen it. She never registered that he hadn’t used it during Vecna. Something about the fact seems weird somehow, as if it was as integral to Steve as his coiffed hair. “He keeps it in his trunk.”

“You and Byers need to update your Steve manuals. He said it’s under his bed now.”

“Ah,” Nancy says, thinking of all the times she’s slept with her pistol under her pillow. Empty, because she’s not stupid enough to sleep with a loaded gun when her little brother sometimes wakes her up after a nightmare, but the comforting weight of it alone makes it easier.

“Just tell me one thing,” he says, widening his eyes imploringly at her. “Did he look as sexy as I think he did? Byers won’t give me a straight answer.”

It’s a joke, but his cheeks are a little pink. She’s not dumb, she’s seen the looks the two of them share, as if he and Steve were circling each other. Caught in a whirlpool, waiting for the moment the vortex would drag them down and they could finally touch.

The looks between Eddie and Jonathan, too, that share a certain camaraderie she doesn’t entirely understand and at the same time understands all too well. Steve and Jonathan had always had a strange relationship, too close to not be friendship but not quite there. Surprisingly enough it was better after she and Steve broke up, Jonathan no longer avoiding them and the talk she’d forced the three of them into clearing the air. Sometimes, she’d wake up to Jonathan climbing into her bed, smelling of cigarettes and a hint of something stronger, and he’d tell her it was Steve who drove him there.

She’s a journalist. It’s her job to notice things. She just wasn’t ready to confront that reality, where the two boys she’d wanted wanted each other as well. But she’s grown since then.

She also knows that whoever Steve chooses, it won’t be easy.

“You know,” she says, considering, “when we were dating, Steve never pressed me up against the wall or anything you’d expect from the King.”

Eddie gets this look on his face, caught between confusion and caught out. “…okay? Did you want him to do that or something? Are you trying to ask me to hint to him?”

“No,” she says. “I’m just saying, he never did any of that. It was kind of funny. He always made it so that he was the one pressed against the wall.”

Eddie misses the next five shots entirely, and she laughs at him through it all.

She’s hyper aware of touching other girls now. She didn’t used to be. Even with Robin, who is a lesbian and definitely won’t hate her. Who’s probably gone through the same thing. She can’t help it.

What if they get the wrong idea? What if someone else sees? What if they can tell, what if they know, what if they hate me?

She hates feeling like this. She doesn’t know why it started, doesn’t know what’s wrong with her. She’s no stranger to casual affection—or at least she didn’t used to be. Why does it make her feel so tense now? It’s been years since she realized she liked girls, shouldn’t this have happened back then?

Deep down, she knows why. The Reagan sign in her front yard. Her dad sitting in his chair, the news always on. “Always that nasty disease, Karen, I swear some people are just asking for it.” She’s always known she could never tell him, but now she knows that if she gets sick he’ll say she deserves it. She doesn’t know what her mother thinks. She’s afraid to find out.

She’s growing up, and her fear is growing with her.

Objectively, Nancy knows she and Eddie don’t make sense.

They’re not cut from the same cloth, like Steve and Robin. They don’t calm each other down, like Jonathan and Argyle. They’re too different, too alike in all the wrong ways, for them to get along. They’re both snappy, a little mean. Eddie’s dramatic enough to get on her nerves, and she’s prim enough to get on his. At their worst, they have earth shattering arguments that end in them not speaking to each other for days.

When people see them walking down the street together, they whisper about “that nice girl Nancy Wheeler” and “that awful Munson boy.”

It’s not fair, never has been. Nancy hasn’t felt nice for a long time, maybe before Barb ever disappeared. Eddie isn’t always particularly nice either, but the court of public opinion takes it to extremes, twists him into something cruel instead of the kindness he carries under his leather armor. Someone to keep their children away from. It really is a shame, because Eddie loves kids in a way Nancy never has. She can see it in the way he interacts with them, his bright smile fading when a parent comes to drag them away. Even when he’s expecting it, his face falls, just for an instant, before spinning around with a grin that won’t reach his eyes.

Nancy wants to take him out of here. There’s an offer on the tip of her tongue that she knows he’d refuse.

He’s not her brother, but he’s not…unlike one. It’s almost like talking to an older, flashier Mike. He’s annoying, is what he is. He picks at her, keeps pressing over the littlest things. Tries to get under her skin, succeeds, until she’s on the verge of stabbing him with her pencil. Looks triumphant whenever Robin has to grab her arm to drag her away, rambling an excuse about “some girl thing I totally forgot, yeah it’s an emergency,” while Steve drags him the other way to have bro time.

“She loves it,” she’d heard Eddie crow delightedly once, when Robin didn’t get her out of hearing range fast enough. “Do you see that fire in her eyes?”

“Do I?” She asked Robin. “Love it?”

“I mean, far be it from me to tell you what you do and don’t like,” Robin answered. “But, uh, as far as I can tell, you totally love it. You look like you’re going to rip him to pieces and enjoy it, and he loves that. I didn’t think you’d be this much of a nightmare together, seriously, like, how are you two at each other’s throats one second and then best friends the next? Steve and I have debated locking you in a bathroom until you get along, but we’re kind of afraid you’ll kill each other.”

So no, Nancy and Eddie don’t get along. They’re kind of a nightmare together. They don’t make sense, and they don’t try to. They have other friends, who they get along with better, that they can seek out.

But when Eddie knocks on her window, the only surprise is that he could even get there.

“How?” She hisses, opening the window. He tumbles in, doesn’t even try to play off the utter gracelessness he’s displaying.

“Wowie, I am never doing that again,” he breathes, flat on his back. “You’re going to have to help me down the stairs when I leave, had to leave my cane at the bottom and I cannot get back down that way.”

She doesn’t even want to know what he had to do to get up on her roof with his bad leg. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m but another lover, nothing but an ant in the face of your unwavering beauty, my queen,” he says, batting his eyes at her. The dramatics don’t hit the way he intends, given that he’s stuck on the floor. He holds a hand out pleadingly, and she rolls her eyes, hauling him up until she can get him to her bed.

“Never mind.” She puts her hands on her hips, a gesture that is so obviously Steve she removes them immediately. From the glint in Eddie’s eyes, he notices.

She tries not to be jealous. She tries, she swears, but…

Three of the four (five? she doesn’t know what Argyle thinks of her) friends she has are dating each other. Two of them dated her, first. She can’t help but wonder, if she’d known that was an option, if everything would have been different. If she wouldn’t have this aching bitterness between her teeth.

(Nothing would have changed, she knows. She’d been too desperate for other things. Trying so hard with Steve so her best friend didn’t die for nothing. Staying with Jonathan because he understood her more than anyone else, so maybe they didn’t need to talk. It wouldn’t have helped anything. She still wonders.)

It doesn’t matter. What’s past is past, and she needs to move forward. She can’t stop to think about could-have-beens, because thinking about boys is what got her into this mess in the first place.

She closes her eyes, taking a shaky breath. That’s not fair. None of this is fair. None of it is fucking fair because Nancy stopped caring about fair when Barb died.

She needs a drink. She needs a nap. She needs to stop feeling like Atlas with the world on her shoulders.

She doesn’t do any of that. She calls Robin.

“Barb was my first kiss.”

“Really?”

“Yeah,” Nancy says, and keeps talking, because Barb is dead and Robin is a lesbian and she’s long forgotten what Barb’s favorite chapstick was back then. “We were seven, and I liked it but I didn’t know if I liked her. But I was convinced I was going to marry her, until my mom told me that girls don’t marry other girls. And I knew she liked girls when she died. She told me when we were fifteen, and I didn’t know the word bisexual but I knew I loved her and that was all that mattered. Not—not like that, not romantic, or maybe it was but it doesn’t matter because she was my best friend and I still love her but she’s gone forever. I loved her.”

She feels Robin lay a tentative hand on her back.

“I had to look her parents in the eye and pretend. All those fucking NDA’s, I had to pretend there was hope. Pretend she was still missing. It was like everyone forgot about her except for me and them, and they sold their house to find their dead daughter and I wasn’t supposed to say anything and Steve kept reminding me about the fucking NDA’s—“

“Nancy…”

“It’s my fault,” Nancy says, staring at the water. “I lumped in Steve, because it was easier than being alone. He didn’t know her like I did. She was worried about me. She stayed because she cared, and look where that got her.”

“That’s bullshit!” Robin’s eyes are wide, and she waves her hands around as she talks. “If it’s anyones fault, it’s those—those scientist guys experimenting on El! They knew there was a problem, and they tried to cover it up instead of making sure people were safe. You didn’t know it was dangerous. How were you supposed to know it was going to end up as anything other than normal teenage drama? None of this is supposed to be real, you didn’t know—“

“But I left her,” Nancy cuts in. “I left her alone to go lose my virginity to a boy she didn’t even like—“

“He was your boyfriend, it shouldn’t have mattered if she liked him—“

“It doesn’t matter!” Nancy shouts, and Robin falls silent, mouth still moving. “It doesn’t fucking matter how it happened, because it did and now she’s dead and she’s never coming back and it’s all my fault.”

Nancy is sick of crying. Sick of feeling helpless. Sick of not being able to change the past.

“It’s not just Barb. I took Fred to the trailer park—he didn’t even want to be there, and now he’s dead. Eddie needs a cane, Max is almost completely blind and might never walk again and it was my plan that put them there. My plan that almost killed them. I’m responsible—“

“Fuck that.”

“Robin…”

“No, you listen to me, Nancy Wheeler,” Robin says, grabbing her by the shoulders. “You are one of the most remarkable people I have ever known. Max would have died without that plan. We all would have died. Venca-slash-Henry-slash-One would have won without that plan, and I am not going to sit here and listen to you blame yourself for saving lives. And-and Fred! Venca had already marked him, you know that. You couldn’t have done anything! And Barb is not your fault, okay? I-I-I know I can’t convince you, but I’ll say it as many times as it takes until you start believing it, because it’s true. You didn’t kill her. You didn’t kill anyone.”

“I killed Bruce,” she says, just to prove Robin wrong. And isn’t that shitty of her, to forget about him until she can use him to prove a point? She’s a fucking awful person.

“I don’t know who Bruce is, but given your track record I highly doubt that.”

“I bashed his head in with a fire extinguisher.”

Robin pauses, and Nancy’s stomach sinks. This is it, she thinks. This is what will convince her, this is what will make her see that I’m wrong, that I’m poison-

“What was he doing?”

“What?”

“Bruce. You had to have a reason for it. What was he doing?”

It’s like Robin doesn’t even care that Nancy just admitted to first degree murder. “He was flayed,” she admits, knowing Robin will take it as proof that she’s right.

“That’s not murder, that’s self defense,” Robin says, just like she knew she would. “Also, if he was flayed he was already dead. Sorry, I’m sticking to your side on this.”

“But I’m less torn up about killing my asshole coworker than I am about anything else. How does that not make me a monster?”

“He was already dead, Nancy!” Robin shakes her. “You’re not beating yourself up over it because you know he was already dead, a-a-and I know you’re using him to try and push me away and I won’t let you.”

“Robin…” she says, tears springing to her eyes. She’s so fucking sick of crying. So sick of the way she never seems to stop anymore.

“Nancy,” Robin says. “None of us are going to leave you. Stop trying to make us.”

She pulls her into a hug, and Nancy sags into it, boneless.

There, sandwiched between the sky and the water, Nancy starts to feel like she could forgive herself.

“Nancy,” Steve says, putting a hand on her shoulder and ducking his chin to look her in the eye. “They won’t be alone.”

Tears well up, unbidden, at the way he seems to understand her now in a way he never did before.

“I want this,” she insists.

“I know you do,” he says. “Which is why you’re going to go out there, kick ass, and take names. We’ll be here, okay? We’ll keep an eye on them.”

“I know you will.” She swipes a hand across her eyes. “Can you talk to Holly, too? She gets lonely.”

Steve smiles. He’d always loved Holly, when they were dating. He used to braid her hair sometimes. Asked her about her drawings, her TV shows, listened to her talk with the same attentiveness Nancy’s father had never shown any of them. He’ll be a good dad, someday. To someone else’s children.

“I’ll talk to Holly,” he promises. “Does she still like princesses?”

“Ladybugs,” she says. “It’s ladybugs, now.”

“Ladybugs. I can do that. Black and red, and they’re all ladies. What’s not to like?”

“There are male ladybugs.”

“Wait, seriously?”

She laughs, tearfully, but they’re happy tears. Steve wipes them away gently, and she smiles at him to let him know she’s okay. “You’re an idiot, Steve Harrington.”

“You’re the best person I know, Nancy Wheeler,” he replies, achingly sincere. “You’re gonna have the whole world under your thumb, I just know it. Ever thought of running for President?”

“Can’t be worse than the one we have now,” she says, grimaces as her own joke lands too bitterly to be funny. She sees his jaw tighten before he forces himself to relax.

“I’d vote for you.”

She grins at him, sharp to punch through the tension she’d made. “I’ll make Eddie my Vice President.”

“Oh, fuck no. You lost me,” he says, and Eddie makes an offended noise from where he’s stealing snacks from the glovebox. Jonathan swats him, and she smiles at him too. He smiles back, tentatively, and wanders to her side.

“You gonna be okay up there?” He asks quietly. She can hear the guilt in it, still, and she reaches down to squeeze his hand. The one with the scar that matches hers, so their palms line up. It feels full circle, somehow, the three of them together like this.

“I’ll be okay,” she confirms, and feels the truth of it in her chest. Her boys are here with her, the ones who have been there since the beginning. Eddie’s watching them fondly, munching on a granola bar. Robin is inside somewhere, rambling at her mother. Mike and Holly are probably still bickering over the last cupcake. She loves them so much, all of them.

“Of course you will,” Steve says. “You’re Nancy fuckin’ Wheeler. Nothing stops you.”

She wants that to be true. She can feel in her bones that it will be. Eighteen has nothing on who she’ll be at thirty.

She’s Nancy Wheeler, and the world won’t see her coming.

#welcome to eden au #stranger things fanfic #nancy wheeler #eddie munson #steve harrington #robin buckley #jonathan byers #this is the biggest thing i've posted so far #i ran out of the little fics i'm gonna have to start figuring out how to format the big ones #there's background steve/eddie/jonathan bc this was originally a companion piece to a seperate fic about them #that was 22k before i lost interest #i'll post that one eventually #can you tell nancy is my favorite character. i love u miss survivors guilt <3 #sometimes i think about how nancy has no friends for p much three seasons after barb died and i get very upset #jonathan could count but he also wanted to date her so i'm not counting it #I JUST WANT HER TO HAVE FRIENDS #i also love nancy/eddie friendship they're both judgy bitches #so is steve frankly. nightmare trio #i'm gonna write that ot3 one day (don't hold me to that)

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