Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

The thing about Hawkins is that no matter what happens, it never really changes. 

The huge oak at the end of the street is gone when she finally turns onto the cul de sac where she grew up. She knew it would be. It came down in a storm about a month ago and it had been the major topic of discussion when her mother had called. 

It had been reassuring, in a way. She could relax in the knowledge that the most exciting thing happening in Hawkins was the tree at the end of the street managing to fall in the exact right direction so that it didn’t take down any houses with it and how long it was taking to pick up the pieces. That was until her mother had somehow managed to segue from ‘they’re still cleaning up down at Millers' into ‘your father isn’t doing well and I think you should come home.’

Well, the ‘you should come home’ part was more implied than explicitly stated. But it was her saying that she didn’t want to worry Mike while he was settling into his second year at college that had first set her on edge, and the way her mother’s voice had trembled when she told Nancy that it wasn’t getting better that had her packing a bag. 

Karen Wheeler may be a lot of things, but Nancy knows that she’s always been immensely proud of her children and wouldn’t want to worry them if she didn’t have to. And she’ll always try to keep up appearances, she thinks, probably a bit bitterly before remembering that she’s trying to be kinder to mother these days. Her actually admitting that something was wrong is basically her mother telling her that her dad’s on death’s door step, as far as Nancy’s concerned. 

They’d only told her and Mike when they’d been home for Christmas. And even then, not until almost the last moment possible. They’d waited until they were all sitting down for lunch on December 27th before Nancy had to leave. 

She hadn’t even picked up on anything out of the ordinary. Her flight out of Boston had been delayed, and by the time she’d made it back to Hawkins on Christmas Eve she’d been immediately pulled into last minute set up and bundled into the station wagon to join the Wheeler’s annual appearance at the church before succumbing to jet lag and passing out. She’d noticed her father falling asleep in front of the tv in his recliner Christmas afternoon but that wasn’t exactly unusual behaviour for Ted. 

It had been the most normal lunch in the world, until her mother had announced 'your father and I have something to tell you' as Mike was reaching for the leftover potato salad. Then her father had told them, in that slow, almost uninterested way of his, that he was dying. Well, that’s not exactly what he had said, but Nancy’s always been able to read between the lines. Lots of people say only as much as they feel like they have to, know more than they’re letting on. You have to dig to piece the story together. 

Anyway, her father had said things like stage three, and her mother had stared at her reheated turkey and mashed potatoes, chin trembling, before she took a deep breath and told them that the doctors were still optimistic. That there’d been lots of success with the treatments that Ted was undergoing. 

Then Mike had flipped out about no one saying anything sooner, accused them of hiding things, and stormed upstairs. Lunch was pretty much finished after that. Her mother had excused herself, looking like she was one second away from openly sobbing, and her father had sighed one of those deep, long suffering sighs–except it didn’t make Nancy want to roll her eyes this time. She’ll never understand why girls got a reputation as dramatic when teenage boys literally exist.

She’d tried to talk to Mike but his door stayed firmly shut. She’d had to leave to catch her flight back almost immediately after. She remembers feeling like she should stay, but feeling utterly at a loss for how she could help. 

She’d tried, the New Year’s Party in Boston suddenly not feeling anywhere near as important as it had when she’d booked her flights. She told her dad she would stay as they stood in the driveway getting ready for him to drive her back to Indianapolis, but he just took her bags from her–he’d insisted even as Nancy tried to do it herself–and shook his head. 

“We’re not there yet, Nancy.”

She reaches to turn the volume on her radio down as she passes the tree. She remembers Dustin saying once, when he was in his nature phase and would spout off facts about plant species at random, that oaks are some of the slowest growing trees and the developers must have chosen to keep the tree when the suburb was being built. 

'It’s so cool guys,' he’d tried to convince them, 'that tree is the oldest thing on the street. It’s probably older than Hawkins!' 

That was before the kids were allowed to get home by themselves and Nancy was constantly being tasked with walking the group to the tree at the end of the street to meet whoever was getting them. Usually it was Joyce, flying into their neighbourhood in her beat up car at least twenty minutes later than she said she’d be to get Will, although it was Jonathan more and more showing up to walk with Will before it was decided the boys could be trusted to get home on their bikes. Dustin, blushing as she waved from the car at him, was always picked up exactly on time by his own mother, and she could watch Lucas get to his front door from the tree. 

A steady constant in her life for everyday of the eighteen years she’d spent in Hawkins, gone in one night. The neighbourhood looks strangely open, empty without the fixture at the intersection but it isn’t enough to make the town change. She thinks it’s a feeling more than anything. 

She feels different in Hawkins, like her skin doesn’t quite fit the carefully crafted image she’s made for herself anymore when she finally approaches the house on Maple Street. It had started to rain off and on the moment she’d crossed into Indiana from Ohio but it had gotten steady outside Hawkins, the wind picking up with the promise of another late summer storm.

She leans her head back and lets out an exhausted sigh when she finally pulls into the driveway and cuts the engine. Her mother had called about the tree two days ago and she’d barely stopped moving since, trying to wrap up her life on the east coast. It’s been almost fifteen hours of driving since she walked out of her door in Boston, the sun disappearing and taking the light with it hours ago.  

She turns the car back on when she realizes she forgot to turn her windshield wipers off and they’ve stopped halfway up. She watches as the branches of the tree next to her childhood home wave threateningly as gusts of wind sweep through the neighbourhood until she can’t stand sitting anymore. She’s surprised to see a light still on in the house. The rain flows down the windshield like a river and she starts to wish she hadn’t actually put her suitcases in the trunk instead of throwing them into the back seat like a normal person.

She takes one last deep breath before flinging the door open, quickly locking the door and hurrying to the trunk. The rain soaks through her coat to her sweater almost instantly and she can feel her hair sticking to her forehead and the back of her neck as she bends to pull her bags from the trunk. 

By the time she makes it through the Wheeler’s front door she thinks she must look like she swam across Indiana to get there. She’s a sight, if the shocked look on her mothers face is anything to go by as she stands in the doorway shivering and dripping rain droplets onto the mat. 

“Nancy!”

“Hi, mom,” she grins, trying not to let her teeth clack together. 

“What are you doing here?” her mother questions her, moving to usher her into the house. “Why aren’t you in Boston?”

“I’m gonna come home for a bit.” She drops her bags by the door, slowly unzipping her jacket. 

“Nancy–” her mother starts, breaking off as Nancy manoeuvres her jacket off so that it doesn’t drip onto the floor and steps into the entryway. The kitchen light is on, a steaming coffee mug sitting on the table. She steals another glance at her mother, taking in her appearance properly. 

Her mother has always been more likely to be up late than her father, but that’s hardly saying anything. She’s never exactly been one for burning the midnight oil, far more likely to be up unreasonably early and make it everyone else’s problem. She looks tired, like she hasn’t slept properly in months and maybe a bit thinner than Nancy remembers from Christmas. 

She pretends not to notice how watery her mother’s eyes look as she twitches her housecoat tighter around her neck. “I’m staying,” she says, firmly.

She wakes up reluctantly, feeling exactly like she’d driven fifteen hours the day before. She’s never been more grateful for the quality of the mattress in her childhood bedroom. It’s a huge step up from her bed in Boston.

She’s barely taken in muted gray light streaming in through the curtain when she’s overcome with an uneasy feeling, like she’s being watched. She jolts up when she rolls over to find a pair of eyes a foot from the bed.

“Jesus Christ, Holly,” she breathes out, clutching her comforter. “Don’t do that shit.”

“Give me five bucks or I’m telling mom you said a bad word,” her sister tells her gleefully. 

“No.”

“Ten.” 

“That’s not how you negotiate,” Nancy rolls her eyes, slumping back down against her pillows. 

“Uh, yeah, it is,” she tells her, in the self-assured way only preteens can pull off. “You make them desperate, then up the price.”

 Nancy doesn’t remember her being so skilled at extortion last time she was home. “That only works if I’m desperate.”

“Mooomm,” Holly calls, turning to the door. 

“Hey,” Nancy sits up, “what the hell?”

“Twenty,” her sister turns back to her, smirking, “final offer.”

“Sorry, Nancy,” her mother materialises at the door, sounding slightly out of breath. “Do you mind taking Holly to school? We should have been on the road already.”

“Of course,” she answers quickly. Holly rolls her eyes and imitates her eagerness with her back turned so their mother can’t see. “Be right down,” she smiles at her mother, waiting for her to head back down the stairs so she can smack her sister.

“Ouch,” Holly squawks, as Nancy’s hand connects with the back of her. “You’ll see,” she fixes Nancy with a glare before following their mother down the stairs. 

They’re in the car less than twenty minutes later. The storm last night took more of the neighbourhood's scenery with it, branches scattered across the street. The Millers' other tree is looking particularly unsteady. There’s a dangerous tilt to it and a crack running down the middle exposing the heartwood.

The route to the school is familiar, but the reminders of 1986 have crept into the fabric of the town. Signs in cornfields promising heaven were old, but the influx of signs in town begging for deliverance from evil were definitely new. There’s a survival store on the corner of Main and 25th that popped up a few years back, and a billboard promising comprehensive insurance packages against natural disasters. 

Harrington is printed neatly in the corner. She feels a wry smile pull on the corners of her lips. She wonders if anyone tried to tell Robert Harrington that a ‘supernatural event’ policy would be more useful. Not that she thinks he would have listened if anyone had.  She’d never felt particularly warmly about Steve’s parents the few times she’d met them. Mr. Harrington had talked about himself throughout the entire dinner the first time she’d been over, Mrs. Harrington humming along in agreement while cutting her food methodically into perfect square pieces. She might ask Nancy a question about herself in between her husband’s pauses to draw breath, but Robert Harrington had an unparalleled ability to turn the conversation back to his achievements.

It feels strange to pull into the middle school parking lot. The bricks are the same brown they always were, betraying nothing about any changes that might have happened inside. She knows they had to do some rebuilding. Demogorgons don’t seem to have qualms about property damage. She’d seen it for herself the last time she’d set foot in Hawkins Middle, chaperoning Mike’s Snow Ball. 

She remembers feeling so happy that night. The look on Mike’s face when El had walked through the door, Max rolling her eyes and pulling Lucas to the dance floor. Will, alive and safe, looking endearingly uncomfortable swaying with a pretty girl with a clip in her hair. Dustin looking like he’d spent entirely too much time with Steve. That feeling of something that was just beginning when she’d looked at Jonathan. The way they’d all believed that they’d done it, defeated the mindflayer and saved Hawkins.

“How come you don’t take the bus?” she asks Holly, putting the car in park just as a yellow school bus pulls in across the lot.

“I missed it.” Holly tells her, like Nancy’s missed something obvious. “Geez, you really don’t take in anything in the mornings do you?” 

“You didn’t tell me that!” 

“Whatever.” Holly grabs her bag from the back seat and shoves the door open.

“Wait!” Nancy calls out. Holly stops, her hand on the handle. “Do you need to be picked up?”

“No,” she scowls, “I literally just told you I missed the morning bus.”

“Ok then,” Nancy mutters as her sister slams the door and runs towards the building. “Sorry I asked.” 

She takes the long way back to the house.

She’s surprised how much is the same. The library was rebuilt in ‘87; the brighter, cleaner brick the only sign that part of it had crumbled into dust five years ago. Even the saplings were planted in the same spot, their age only betrayed in their height.

There’s some changes. A new clothing boutique. A different sign on the hardware store. Orange flowers in the beds that used to have pink, although could just as easily be down to Janice Peters finally retiring from the Town Hall. 

She can’t quite decide if it’s heartwarming or suffocating, the way that Hawkins has stubbornly persisted, refusing even to bend to the forces trying to break it.

There’s movement at the Miller house when she pulls back into the Wheeler’s driveway. Mr. Miller and another man are standing in the yard, each taking turns gesturing at the tree before Mr. Miller holds up a hand like he’s telling the other man to wait a moment and jogs back to the house.

She’s just thinking that there’s something familiar about the head of hair left standing in the yard when he turns towards her just enough for her to get a glimpse of a side profile that belongs to Steve Harrington. She’s already out of the driveway and on her way down the street when Steve does a double take in her direction.

“Nancy?” 

“Hi,” she smiles, lifting a hand in greeting and as she heads towards Miller’s again

“I didn’t know you were going to be in town!” Steve’s smile is so bright she thinks the grey actually recedes a bit in the sky.

“Yeah, well it was sort of last minute,” she tells him, crossing over the curb to the sidewalk in front of the yard. Last minute is putting it lightly. She’s pretty sure she accidentally quit her job with the message she’d left at work in her rush to get back. “I just got in last night.”

“That’s great,” Steve beams. “What are you doing today?” he asks, quickly turning his wrist over to check his watch, and glancing back at the door. “Do you wanna get lunch? I can pick you up when I’m done here.”

“Sure,” she raises an eyebrow. “It’s like nine in the morning, though.”

“So we call it brunch, then,” Steve waves a hand. “Plus, this might take a minute. George is a talker,” he drops his voice, leans in a bit like he’s telling her a secret. She almost rolls her eyes. Anyone in this town could have told him that. Her mother has been trying not to get caught talking to George Miller for years.

The door to the house opens just then, announcing Mr. Miller’s return.

“Run,” Steve whispers.

“Nancy!” He calls as he crosses the lawn towards them. “Good to see you. How’s your dad?”

“Hi, Mr. Miller,” she answers. “He’s doing well, but I was just telling Steve here that I’m just back from the pharmacy, so I’ve got to run. Nice to see you!” she calls over her shoulder, stepping back down from the curb. 

“So, I grabbed my policy while I was in there,” she hears him start and she turns quickly, concealing her smirk at Steve’s pained look as she leaves alone him to listen. 

It’s almost two hours later when Steve finally knocks on the Wheeler’s door, finally having escaped. She recognizes the familiar route to the Hawkins Diner as he fills her in on all the painful details of assessing claims before he finally pulls the car into a spot.

“That escape was masterful,” he tells her as they cross the parking lot. “You gotta teach me how to do that. Did you really have to go to the pharmacy?”

“Thanks,” she smirks, stepping past him as he holds the door. The dinner is empty except for an elderly couple seated in the booth closest to the door and the middle-aged waitress seated at the counter with the morning paper open to the crossword. 

“Wherever you want,” she calls without turning around as the door chimes. Nancy follows Steve as he walks to the last booth, furthest away from the elderly couple.

“Seriously, Nancy. Please. That should have taken forty-five minutes, tops,” he groans as he slides into the booth. 

“You’re working for your dad, then?” she asks, seating herself across from him.

“Oh. Yeah. For a while now.” He’d sounded surprised for a second. She racks her brain, desperately trying to remember if this is something she should have known. “I guess I probably didn’t tell you,” he says. She breathes a sigh of relief. “Haven’t seen you in a while.” 

“Yeah, not since–” she starts, trailing off. She hadn’t seen any of the old gang at Christmas. She’d missed Thanksgiving too, she realises. “Since last Christmas, probably,” she finished, slightly shocked that she hasn’t seen the boy across from her in over a year and a half. “Do you like it?” 

“It’s ok,” he shrugs. “Spending an entire morning with Mr. Miller is just one of the many perks, you know?”

“Yeah?” she quirks an eyebrow at him, “I heard he brought his policy out.”

“Should’ve stayed, Nance, you missed some real thrilling stuff.” 

She warms a little at the use of her nickname. She’s Nancy in Boston. She was Nancy to Jonathan. They didn’t do nicknames. They were always Nancy and Jonathan. She has no idea why, really. She doesn’t let anyone at work call her Nance, either. She needs to be taken seriously, professionally. She can’t afford nicknames.

The waitress chooses that moment to appear at the side of the booth, pen and pad in hand. She smiles when Steve orders waffles.

“What?” he shrugs, “that kid was onto something.”

“So,” she asks, after their menus are gone and the fresh cups of coffee are placed in front of them. “Are you gonna cover it?”

“Miller’s trees?” She nods in response. “Oh yeah, of course. We’ll take out the other one too. Always were but he still pretty much read his policy word-for-word to me,” Steve rolls his eyes. “I don’t even read those things to be honest,” he waves a hand. “You buy house insurance, insurance pays when circumstances beyond your control damage your house, right?”

“Doesn’t always seem to work that way.”

“Well I haven’t been fired yet,” Steve shrugs. “And believe me, my old man would.”

“How come you ended up working there?” she asks before she can stop herself and she wants to take it back immediately. She just thought he didn’t want that. He deserves a career he enjoys, she thinks, but she could have phrased that better.

He’s quiet for a minute, breaks away from her gaze to stare into his coffee. “Sorry,” she offers. “I’m not–you don’t have to explain anything to me.”

“No, it’s fine,” he meets her eyes again. “My dad needed the help, honestly. Plus, this’ll help on a resume a bit too, so it’s not just working a register since I graduated high school.” He shifts forward, wrapping his hand around his mug. “It’s not that bad either. Really. It gets a bad rap ‘cause it seems like you pay these premiums forever for no reason and then lots of providers find a way to get out of covering it when something does actually go wrong, but–like today–you can actually help people, take care of them. Make unexpected disasters a little less daunting.”

She’s surprised how much it actually makes sense when he puts it like that. 

“It’s probably not forever.” He takes another sip of coffee. “What about you, how’s Boston?”

“Good,” she answers quickly, cheerfully. It’s almost a reflex. “It’s good,” she says again, when he waits for her to elaborate. “Work’s been really busy.”

And it’s the truth. Work is really busy. It’s just a bit more like her summer job all those years ago than she had hoped it would be. It turns out that top-secret government sanctioned human experiments are sort of hard to come by in the world of journalism.

She does get to do slightly more than make coffee and answer phones, though. She gets to do the leg work for the stories the more senior journalists get to write about with almost no recognition. Sometimes she’ll even get to write her own pieces about what the paper deems inconsequential, like the weather or the new stop sign confusing drivers. 

She understands what Steve is saying. Her job at the paper is a good foot in the door, but she doesn’t think it’s where she wants to stay. She just needs to prove herself enough that they let her start writing real stories, and then she can find a different paper where they actually do investigative journalism instead of just reporting. If she even still has a job.

“When do you have to get back to it?” Steve asks, confronting her with one of the aspects of her up and leaving Boston that really could have used more planning. 

“I don’t know yet. I’m gonna stay as long as my parents need me.” She glances out the window, sees his face change slightly out of the corner of her eye. 

“Sorry, I didn’t even ask. How is Ted?”

“I don’t really know.” She takes a sip of her coffee, suddenly feeling bone-tired. Takes another and almost chokes. “I haven’t really seen him yet. He wasn’t up when I got in last night, and they were leaving for treatment in the city by the time I got up.”

“I’m really sorry, Nance,” he says, softly. She doesn’t expect to want to cry at that. She just doesn’t think anyone who really knows her, knows her family has asked her that yet. Her father is just a nameless, faceless Mr. Wheeler to her friends and coworkers in Boston. 

Only Jonathan knew her from back home, and he’d been long gone to New York by the time she’d found out. He hadn’t called. Nancy wonders if she’s being too hard on him sometimes, holding onto a bitterness he doesn’t deserve over the silence. After all, they broke up a long time ago and there’s nothing to say he even knows. Except that she knows Mike would have told Will. And at the very least Joyce would know.

Their food arriving saves her from having to see if her voice betrays how close she is to tears or not. Steve immediately sets out to drown his mountain of waffles in syrup and a comfortable silence falls between them. It feels easy, and she feels more like herself than Nancy’s felt in months. That’s what she puts it down to when she breaks the silence first.

“I’m not even sure I have a job to go back to.” He looks up from his plate, his surprise at her words evident in her eyes. “I mean, I wasn’t joking when I said my trip was kind of last minute earlier. My mom called Friday night and I was packed up and in my car Sunday morning.”

“That’s a quick turn around.” 

“Yeah, and John’s not really that great about approving vacation hours at the best of times so I can’t imagine this will have gone over well. I’m pretty sure he’ll just accept this as my resignation.”

He opens his mouth, but he looks a little bewildered. Like he’s not sure where whatever he’s about to say is going. She cuts him off before he can start. 

“It’s fine, honestly. I don’t think that was a forever job, either.” He still looks a bit like a baby deer caught in headlights. “I mean, writing, that’s a forever job for me,” she amends. “Just not at that newspaper.”

She thinks he relaxes a little bit. “Are you thinking about working while you’re here?”

“I hadn’t really gotten that far,” she sighs, pushing her food around her plate. She quickly calculates how many months she can still pay rent, wonders if she’ll need to break her lease. “I guess there’s always the Hawkins Post.”

“Didn’t you get fired from the Hawkins Post?” Steve asks her around a mouthful of waffles. 

“What? No! Well technically, but he was flayed! It didn’t count.”

“No? So they gave you your job back?” 

“I didn’t want it back!”

“Oh yeah. Uh huh.” 

“Besides, pretty much none of the senior staff there made it to the end of that summer.” She tightens her grip on her fork in the silence that falls, remembering how Tom had melted in front of her and flowed down the hallway to morph with Bruce and how she’d been certain she was going to die as the mindflayer crawled on top of her. A lot has happened since then. Worse things, things that should probably terrify her more but when her brain cycles through its rolodex of nightmare material, that’s the one it keeps coming back to.

She tries to hold back her shudder as she watches him tip his mug back to drink. 

“See, I remember that summer having a lot more Russians and secret bunkers,” he says, setting his coffee back down. “Too bad you didn’t choose to hunt that lead down instead. That’s definitely a better front page.”

She laughs in spite of herself. He’s always been better at this than she was, able to separate things out and wrap the bad parts up into neat little boxes to store away. 

“What I remember is Scoops Ahoy,” she offers, jumping on the opportunity to keep the conversation light. 

“Oh, come on,” he protests immediately. “I did way cooler stuff that summer! Have I mentioned I was interrogated by the Soviet Army? Saved a town from certain doom? Scoops Ahoy was like three months of my life.

“Three months but the memories of that outfit are forever,” she grins. She thinks the tips of his ears turn slightly pink.

“You know, Robin worked there too. How come she never has to take any shit about this?” 

“She wore it better than you.”

“No way,” Steve shakes his head at her. "It was those hats. They totally threw my game off, which was fine for Robin ‘cause her hair is about being down, but mine needs volume.”

“I wish I had covered that story instead. Then you could have been front page in that outfit on every newspaper in the US. Teen Boy in Sailor Outfit Foils Secret Soviet Operation.”

“Right, the sailor outfit was kind of central to the whole thing,” he rolls his eyes, shovelling waffles into his mouth. “Official government-issued spy uniform.”

“America deserved to see it.”

“I think enough people saw it,” he groans. “But all things considered, I still think I actually came out on top that summer.”

She raises an eyebrow. “Soviets included?”

“Soviets included,” he nods, starting to cut through another waffle, “at least they drug you before they beat the shit out of you.” 

She reaches for her coffee. She’s never really heard this part of the story. Nancy has overheard Dustin mention it to the others but always in a flippant, casual way about how babysitting Steve and Robin was more stressful than fighting off demogorgons. 

“I would take coming down in the Starcourt Mall washrooms over coming to after a polite conversation with Billy Hargrove in the back of a car full of thirteen year olds with one of them driving any day. And I’d definitely take it over flesh-eating bats trying to snack on my intestines.”

He falls quiet for a second, turns to look out the window. She doesn’t need to wonder if he’s thinking about Eddie. She is too. So much for keeping it light.

“Seriously, Lucas being Max’s chauffeur for life might be a blessing in disguise.” He says it jokingly, but she hears the sadness underneath. She lets out a half amused laugh. 

Usually, in the light of day she knows they did everything they could. But sometimes, when she’s lying awake, thinking about who might be better off if they’d never met her, she can’t help but feel responsible for how it had turned out. She had been the one trying to drag them into the upside down, guns blazing. She’d promised she wouldn’t miss. She just should have promised to do it faster.

“I should go see them,” she sighs. “It’s been too long.”

“Hey, you know what?” Excitement creeps back into his tone. “Hopper and Joyce usually try to have us over for dinner every couple weeks; me, Lucas, and Max. Robin comes too whenever she’s in town. Next one is this Friday. You should totally come!”

“Maybe,” she hedges.

“Come on, Nance,” he finishes his coffee, setting the mug down next to his now-empty plate. She’s kind of impressed he made it through all those waffles. “We always get together when Dustin’s home. This could be your ‘welcome home’ supper.”

“Yeah,” she traces a finger around the rim of her mug, “it’s just…” 

It’s just she doesn’t really want to have supper at her ex-boyfriend’s parents house. 

“Oh,” Steve says, suddenly uncharacteristically hesitant, “Is it–I mean–I heard about Byers,” he trails off.

“Oh, you heard about that?” She asks, keeping her eyes on her coffee. She know she's being ridiculous. It’s been almost a year. This is where their families live. Of course people know.

“Yeah. Henderson told me. I guess Will probably told him. Or, I mean I don’t know, Mike could have.”

“It’s just funny,” she answers, her lips twisting into a thin smile, “how news travels about you when you don’t even live here.”

It’s just that inference that grates at her. That people are talking about her. The old Hawkins rumour mill keeps churning whether she wants to participate or not. 

“No,” Steve says quickly, “I mean, no one really talked about it. We’re just kinda stuck together for life if you think about it, right, ‘cause all that shit with the Upside Down, there’s only so many people who you can talk to about that and then everyone is friends or together or related so really it’s like a pretty tight group and I didn’t even ask Dustin he just told me and–”

“Steve,” she interrupts him. It’s not like it's his fault. “Relax, it’s fine. And it was a long time ago.” 

“So does that mean you’re coming to supper?”

Nancy takes a deep breath. She has fought monsters from another dimension. She has fought a murder-happy psychopath with telekinetic abilities. Dinner is nothing.

And Steve looks so hopeful. She thinks it would be like kicking a puppy to say no at this point.

“Fine,” she sighs.

The way he beams makes her know it was definitely the right decision. “I’ll pick you up.”

It feels like the drive to Hopper’s cabin takes forever, Nancy’s fingers tightening around the edges of the empty casserole dish her mother had pushed into her hands as she was trying to make it out of the house before Steve reached the door.

'Make sure you tell her thank you!' Karen had called after her. 'And that it was delicious.'

The way Holly had scrunched up her face behind her mother’s back leads Nancy to believe that’s not quite the truth. Nancy’s experienced enough of it herself to know that Joyce’s cooking can be a little hit or miss. It’s not exactly that Joyce can’t cook. It’s just that she’s always trying to do a million things at once, and food is often forgotten just long enough to still pass as edible if you scrape the burnt bits off. 

She feels Steve glance at her again, like he wants to ask something but can’t quite bring himself to do it.

She’d done her hair twice and changed her outfit five times trying to get ready for dinner. She’d finally forced herself to sit down and take a breath when she’d realized she was debating if wearing a pattern would send the wrong message or not. It’s ridiculous to be this nervous. She and Jonathan ended things on good terms. Joyce is incredibly reasonable.

Except when it comes to her sons. Then she’ll ignore a body pulled from the quarry and insist her son is trapped in her walls and speaking to her through the lights, anyone who doubts her be damned. 

She forces herself to loosen her grip on the dish a bit and focus a bit more on her surroundings. Smile at the appropriate moments in Steve’s story. Try and relax into the sound of his voice.

“What do you think, Nance?” 

“Uh, yeah,” she answers, hoping to cover the fact she hasn’t actually been listening to what he’s saying, just letting the steady rhythm of his voice calm her.

He shakes his head slightly, unconvinced at her poor attempt to carry on conversation. “I don’t know what you’re so worried about. It’s just the Chief and Mrs. Byers.”

She raised a pointed eyebrow, letting what he’s just said sink in as she leans forward and flips down the sun visor to look in the small mirror. She turns in her seat to face him.

“It just feels weird,” she sighs. “Like I need to act appropriately sad.”

“Oh yeah,” he nods. “Totally. And, just for my own reference, how sad is that?”

“I don’t know,” she groans, leaning against the headrest before checking her appearance in the mirror. She’d switched the patterns for a solid top and had just been in the middle of wondering if it would come off as disingenuous, as if she’s muting herself for their benefit and Joyce will think she’s secretly happy to have ended things with Jonathan when Steve had pulled up.

“Look, it’s no big deal. It’ll be fine,” he looks over at her. “You look–,” he turns his head sharply back to the road. “You look fine.”

She gives herself a final glance before putting the visor back up, hoping the purple she’d settled on isn’t so close to blue that it seems like she’s trying to convince people she’s sad. She just doesn’t want Joyce to think of her as some spiteful ex-girlfriend trying to rub her happiness in peoples’ faces. 

“It’s not really about how I look. It’s about…” she searches for a moment, trying to find the words to describe it. “How often do you have supper with your ex's parents?”

“Your parents? Every now and then,” he answers, keeping his eyes fixed on the road. She rolls her eyes and checks her appearance one last time in the mirror. She’s grateful for his attempts to lighten the mood, but he’s accidentally hit on the other thing Nancy is afraid will be less than endearing to Joyce. She’s starting to be a little bit worried that she’s happier around Steve than she should be, and she’s not entirely convinced showing up with her highschool boyfriend sends the right message anyway. 

She doesn’t have time to properly consider asking Steve to drop her on the side of the road. He makes the final turn into the lane and Nancy finds herself officially out of time. When she steps out of the car she walks up to the building putting a determination she doesn’t quite feel into her steps, hears Steve following just behind her. Her heart feels like it’s going to beat out of her chest as she reaches the porch of Hopper’s cabin, white knuckle grip firmly back in place on the casserole dish.

Steve jumps up the step behind her, so close that she can feel the heat radiating off him as he reaches up and over her to knock once on the door before pushing it open. He walks in immediately, calling out a cheerful greeting to Hopper as he grumbles about ‘damn kids acting like they own the place.'

She takes one last breath to steele her nerves before stepping over the entryway into the cabin, fixes her brightest smile in place. 

“Nancy!” Joyce is suddenly in front of her. She always forgets just how short Joyce really is. She has such a presence, a tenacity about her that makes her seem to tower in Nancy’s mind.  “We are so glad you could make it.” Joyce’s arms are around her before she can even offer up the casserole dish. “It’s been too long.” 

She can hardly remember why she was so worried as she lets herself relax as much as she can with the casserole dish between them. She catches Steve’s eye over Joyce’s shoulder.

“Told you,” he mouths from his perch next to Lucas on the arm of the couch.

It feels the same as it always did after that, Nancy easily falling back into the rhythm she’d been afraid she’d forgotten. Joyce promises to bring another casserole by soon when Nancy relays her mother’s message about how much they’d enjoyed it. Lucas makes a face similar to Holly’s when she’d been leaving the house when Joyce suddenly says 'oh, the supper!' and rushes back to the kitchen.

Hopper just offers a wave and a 'good to see you, kid'  as she passes by him to take the empty spot next to Max, who fills Nancy in on just what she’s missed in her time away from Hawkins. It’s hard for her to wrap her head around just how much life has changed for Max and Lucas in the years since Vecna. As if the rehab for Max’s legs hadn’t been hard enough she had suddenly found herself firmly planted in Hawkins, learning to manage without her sight while her class graduated and moved away. Except Lucas. 

“You know, I’ve actually come to like Hawkins,” Max smiles. Nancy watches her hands as she twists the white-gold engagement ring on her finger, decorated with raised dots that run along the band. “It’s not nearly as boring as I thought it would be when I moved here.”

Joyce calls them to dinner, which to Nancy’s delight is only slightly black around the edges. It goes as smoothly as Nancy could have hoped for; Joyce talks about Will and El navigating college together, about how much Jonathan loves the photography program at NYU he’d worked so hard to get into without any hint of resentment about his detour to Boston on the way to his dream school. Steve and Hopper complain about the members of Hawkins’ self-appointed neighbourhood watch, like Hopper hadn’t been chasing Steve through fields from parties all that long ago. Max and Lucas tell them they’ve picked a date for the wedding but don’t have anything else planned which almost makes Nancy break out in hives.

She volunteers to do the washing up when all that’s left on their plates are blackened edges, Steve and Lucas offering to help as well after some pointed looks from Joyce. It goes quickly with the three of them working together, Lucas drifting back to the living room as soon as they’re seventy-five percent done. Steve lingers a bit longer, putting away the dishes in the higher cupboards and glancing at her as if waiting for approval before following Lucas.

Nancy wipes down the countertops slowly, taking in the people in the other room. Steve was right, she thinks. She really didn’t need to have been as worried as she was. These people are more than her ex-boyfriend’s family to her. More than her brother’s friends.

She stays in the kitchen when she’s done, sitting back down at the table. She can’t stop watching; how Max seems to gravitate towards Lucas, how he seems to anticipate whatever she might need before she even seems to know it herself. 

“Penny for your thoughts,” Joyce drops into the kitchen chair across from her. 

“I don’t know if they’re worth that much,” Nancy offers her a smile. “Just–Max and Lucas. Seems like they do ok.”

“Yeah,” a gentle smile finds its way over Joyce’s features, like she’s looking at her own children. “They do just fine.”

“Who does?” Steve asks, dropping into the free chair next to Nancy. “Me?”

“Max and Lucas,” Joyce tells him, voice coloured with an annoyed fondness. 

“Oh yeah,” Steve says, reaching for the tray of cookies left on the table. “Have you seen the new place yet, Nance?”

She shakes her head. “I’m going over there Sunday to help out,” he tells her. “You should totally come. Max,” he calls, twisting around to place the living room. “Nance is coming to your house Sunday.”

“Hey! What about me?” Lucas calls back. “It’s my house too.”

“Sure,” Steve answers, patronizingly sweet. “Of course it is.” He turns back around, a sudden look of realization hitting his face. “You’ll come, right?”

Joyce looks suspiciously like she’s trying not to laugh at him, but Nancy agrees without giving him a hard time about it. There’s something about the way he says it that pulls at her, like he’d genuinely prefer it if she came instead of inviting her as a courtesy. It makes it hard for Nancy to say no to anything he asks when his excitement seems to make everything around him light up.

It’s dark by the time they leave Joyce and Hopper’s cabin and Nancy can finally sink into the passenger seat of the car.

“Not so bad, right?” Steve asks, picking up speed as they leave the lane and pull onto the road.

Nancy sighs, trying to figure out the best way to agree without telling him he was right. “No. Not as bad as I thought. It’s just…different, you know?

“Tell me about it. In highschool, I dated this girl and then somehow ended up babysitting her brother after she broke up with me. Super weird, but turned out pretty good.”

“She sounds great.” 

“She really was,” he flashes her a quick smile. 

Nancy leans her head back against the seat, suddenly exhausted now that she’s no longer keyed up with nerves. She can make out the shapes of the pine trees that blur together out the window, the headlights illuminating the dotted yellow line and the familiar cracked asphalt as they head back to the town. She could probably tell exactly where they were with her eyes closed just from the curves in the road, except Steve takes a turn she isn’t expecting. 

“What are we doing here?” she asks when Steve finally stops the car at the base of the tallest hill within half an hour of Hawkins.

He shrugs, pushing open his door. “Figured you could use a moment to like, I don’t know, decompress or something before you go home.”

She doesn’t realize just how true that is until he says it, not ready at all to return to the slightly suffocating atmosphere in her house with her mother trying desperately to keep up the most transparent of appearances that things are fine, her father shrinking before her eyes, and a sister insisting on making things difficult. Steve rummages around in the back of the car, finally pulling out a six pack with only half the cans present.

“Three beers?” She raises an eyebrow. “Wild night, huh?”

“Take it or leave it.” He tosses a can at her that narrowly misses her head. 

“Aren’t you supposed to be athletic or something?” 

He places a hand on his chest, as if deeply offended before setting off up the hill. They climb to the top, mostly in silence except for when Nancy cracks the can and beer immediately foams over her hand and runs down the can.

When they finally arrive at the top, Steve promising to let her have the third can since half her drink was left on the hill, Nancy pauses to take in the view. She always forgets just how pretty it is up here, Hawkins lit up in the distance and an endless map of stars above them.

“This,” Steve begins, dropping to the ground, “is where we came to get Planck's Constant from Suzie.” 

“Suzie!” Nancy laughs, lowering herself significantly more gracefully to sit next to Steve. “I can’t believe she actually existed.” 

“Dustybun,” Steve chokes out, “I owe that girl so much. She sang that stupid song. And she knew that stupid number!”

“Thank god for nerds,” she agrees.

“Careful, Wheeler,” he smirks, passing her the one remaining can. “I think they call that friendly fire.”

“Hey! I am not,” she protests. 

“Uh huh. What was your gpa again?” 

“Studious,” she allows. “Not nerdy.”

“Funny you should say that,” Steve turns to her, a mischievous gleam in his eye, “because I have it on good authority that you would dress up for D&D campaigns.”

“Who–Dustin!” she groans. 

“Actually, it was Mike.” Steve takes a long swig from his can. “Pretty nerdy if you ask me.”

“Mike? Seriously?” she groans, finishing the last dredges of her unfortunate beer. “Is there no such thing as family loyalty anymore? And it was like one time.”

“I’m telling you, Wheeler,” Steve shakes his head, “you’re a fully paid up member of the nerd club.”

“No way,” she insists, making a show of cracking the second can and raising it in a toast to him. “This is not nerdy of me.”

“That’s what a nerd would say,” he tells her, leaning back on one elbow. “To try and convince people they’re not a nerd.”

She rolls her eyes, taking in the scene in front of her. She can see the street lights along the highway that leads into Hawkins and the downtown core lit up slightly brighter than the residential neighbourhoods. There’s a dark space in it, the empty lot that once housed the Starcourt Mall still sitting vacant. 

“What was it like that night?” she asks, trying to imagine what Steve and Robin had seen from the top of the hill that had them rushing back. 

He laughs. “You know, until you showed up it might have been one of the most normal things that happened to us back then. A secret Soviet operation is actually plausible to the general public, you know? And I was so high you probably could have convinced me I just had a really bad trip the next morning if I didn’t already know about the Upside Down.”

“How did that even happen?” She turns back to meet his eyes when he doesn’t answer immediately. She can feel hesitation as he holds her gaze for a few long moments before he finally begins to speak. 

What follows is a long story that begins with Dustin's radios, Robin’s proficiency at languages, and Erica being small enough to fit through the vents. She thinks he skims over the middle part–grey rooms with fluorescent lighting and an array of dentist’s tools–judging by the way his eyes slide from hers when he talks about it. It ends with watching Back to the Future in the old Starcourt movie theatre, strangely enough.

“No joke, I thought Alex P. Keaton was trying to bang his mom,” Steve tells her, “so yeah, it was weird, but stranger things have happened. Happened immediately after that, actually.”

Her can is almost empty when she lifts it to take another drink, having steadily disappeared as he talked. She more or less knows the rest of the story from there. In hindsight, they probably shouldn’t have let Steve drive but she doesn’t think she’d ever been more grateful to see him then when he had slammed into the side of Billy’s car.

Although, that’s probably not true. Steve seems to have a sixth sense for showing up at unexpected moments exactly when needed, charging into the Byers house with a baseball bat after she’d pointed a gun at him and screamed that she would shoot him, emerging out of the woods at the Hawkins Lab, bat in hand with three kids in tow, stepping out of the car when she was trying to explain to the police what happened to Fred and she knew that finally someone was going to believe her.

“I’m glad you were there,” she says.

“Told you supper would be no big deal.”

She feels his eyes on her as she finishes her beer and stretches out to lay beside him on the grass. She wonders if she should tell him she meant more than just the supper. She wonders if he knows.

“I was sorry to hear you and Byers broke up. Really,” Steve tells her after a moment, with such an open earnestness that she can’t imagine he’s anything other than sincere.

“Thanks,” she says quietly. She’s never sure how to respond in these situations. People seem to react by offering condolences, but it’s always felt like a disproportionate response. It’s not like Jonathan’s gone, not like they won’t ever see each other again, or like either of them was walking away completely devastated in the end. And she’ll always care about him, understand him because they walked through hell together. Murray was right, there’s nothing that ties people together like shared trauma. It’s not enough though, in the end, she had realised. You still need to want the same things, agree about the important stuff to build a life together. She knows they’re both better off for it.

“Hey, I think that’s the big dipper,” Steve says loudly, pulling her from her thoughts. “Shit, maybe it’s the little dipper. That’s a dipper though, for sure.”

She follows his arm to where it’s pointed at the sky. “Big dipper. Definitely.”

“Told you,” Steve gloats, dropping his arm back down to fold it beneath his head. “You know any more constellations?” 

“Ursa Major,” she tells him, turning her gaze away from him back to the star-filled sky. “It’s the big dipper, and then if you just go down from the bottom corner of the dipper a bit, do you see those two stars close together? And then a bit further along there’s two more stars super close?”

He nods, tilting his head towards her to follow her line of sight. 

“They connect to the other bottom corner,” she tells him. “And then from the top corner, do you see the one that kinda connects to those stars close together?”

“Ok, sure,” he nods again, expectantly. 

“That’s it.”

“That’s it? What the hell is it supposed to be?” he asks, confused, squinting at the sky like he’s trying to crack the secrets of the universe.

“A bear.”

“A bear? No way. How the hell do they figure that?” 

“I don’t really know,” she laughs. She sees him tilt his head even further, like the stars might rearrange themselves if he just looks harder.  “I guess I can see it a bit.” 

He turns his head to look at her, raising his eyebrows like he doesn’t believe her.

“Yeah,” she insists, “the close together ones are his feet! And then I guess the dipper handle must be his head?”

“I guess,” he squints back up at the sky. “What kind of bear’s neck is that long? You’re sure it’s supposed to be a bear?”

“Yes! Ursa major. Ursa means ‘bear’ in Latin.”

“Latin?” Steve hums. “You are a nerd, Wheeler.”

“Oh, shut up,” she laughs. “You really should not sound so happy about that.”

“No?” 

She lets her head fall to the side to look at him. “All your friends are nerds, Harrington. I’m like, the least nerdy person you hang out with.”

“I know,” he groans good naturedly. “Can you believe I used to be cool?”

“Of course,” she tells him seriously. “I remember you in high school.”

She sees his face twist into something she thinks is almost a grimace. “I was a douche in highschool.”

“Kind of,” she laughs. Then, more seriously, “I liked you, though.”

Steve just hums in response, keeps staring straight at the sky. She forces herself to pull her eyes away from him, not sure if she wants to watch his reaction. 

It feels like they’re on the precipice of something, like she’s dragged them to the edge and could send them stumbling over if she puts a foot wrong. She might even want to. She’s shy and reckless all at once.

“I’m sorry,” she says. She can almost feel the curiosity in his gaze burning into her, but she keeps her eyes on the stars. “For how that all went down. With Jonathan. I shouldn’t have left things like that, it was just all…”

It was all mixed up with Barb, and the guilt that had infiltrated every corner of her life until it had felt like every second where she felt okay was a betrayal, a sign that she was a bad person.

“It’s ok, Nance.” She can picture him shrugging as he says it. “You were sixteen. You’re not supposed to know what you want.”

“Did you?” she whispers, barely loud enough to hear it herself, something about the darkness making her feel just bold enough to say it. She isn't even sure he could have heard it.

Her heart picks up, beating faster than it was a minute ago, the buzz of adrenaline spreading to her fingertips. The air feels thick between them, like they’re dangerously close to Steve saying something like ‘thank you, for giving my head the biggest thump of its life’.

‘You’re there. You’ve always been there,’ the wind seems to whisper to her.

They hadn’t talked about it. It had just gotten swept away in the chaos of after, lost between the evacuations and funerals and rebuilding. And of course there was Jonathan and figuring out where they stood, and then she’d been graduating and moving to Boston. 

She hadn’t known what to say to him either. She’d been trying to figure it out and then Robin had mentioned something about him, Louise Simmons, and a second date and she knew from the way Robin looked like she had just accidentally revealed state secrets that it was something she hadn’t wanted to ruin for him. She just didn’t think it would have helped to hear anything from her when she was two weeks out from moving and he was dating anyway. And what could she have honestly said to him? I think you’re right, I think we could have made it and I think about it more than I should, but I’m sorry I just can’t, don’t ask me why because I might change my mind. 

It had scared her a bit, too, the way it had started to feel like her stomach was doing somersaults again when they were alone. She wasn’t even sure she trusted herself to say anything. She didn’t want to be that person anymore, jumping headfirst into a new relationship before she’d even ended the current one, like she had with Jonathan. She hadn’t wanted to think too hard about what that said about her. Once may be chance, twice is a pattern.

He’d never brought it up again. She sometimes wonders if it was because he regretted saying it. End of the world impulse decisions, and all that. 

“You know any others?” he asks, pulling her back to the present. 

“What?”

“Constellations. Do you know any others?”

“Oh,” she says, trying to shake something that feels close to disappointment that smothers the current in her fingertips and creeps up her spine, “um, sort of. Ursa minor is just above it. Same thing, basically, but with the little dipper.” 

She doesn’t manage it. It lingers as she points out shapes in the stars to Steve, stays firmly in place in her chest when they make the trek back to the car, then follows her into the house and crawls into bed with her.