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Steve tosses the keys in his hand to Robin, “I’ll stick with Nance, alright? You guys take the car, check out the shrink.” He turns back around to Nancy, frowning when he sees her lifted brow, “What?”
She shrugs, “Just… you’re gonna trust her with your car?”
“It’s just a few hours,” he says as he walks towards her, glancing back as Robin climbs in the driver’s side seat, “They’ll be fine. If she dings the car, I’ll just… tell my dad it was me.”
Nancy’s eyes narrow and she turns on her heel, leading the way to her car and Steve picks up his steps to catch up with her.
The drive to the library is weirdly tense between them, and he sits silently in the passenger’s side seat, drumming his fingers on his knee as Nancy explains to him about her conversation with Wayne Munson. He listens, but he also just can’t take his eyes off of her. Seeing her driving a car is-… it shouldn’t be hot. Why is it hot?
Why is it the most attractive thing he’s seen her do since she pointed a revolver in his face, or-or took the rifle from Hopper that one time?
He does his best not to be too distracted, though, asking the right questions when Nancy stalls or trails off.
It all sounds too wild to be true, but if Nancy has any kind of suspicion that it is, then he’s prepared to look through every book in the library to prove it.
“So, wait, I don’t get it,” he finally speaks up, nervously scratching the back of his neck, “If Victor Creel did all of this in 1959… why come back now? It doesn’t make any sense. It’s not even like an anniversary or anything, right? Why pick it back up again? Was he just missing the urge to… rip out people’s… eyeballs or… something?”
He nearly gags just thinking about it.
Nancy parks her car, turning it off and leaning back in her seat as she looks over to him, “Told you it was a shot in the dark.”
“Doesn’t sound like it to me,” Steve says, then mutters under his breath as he takes off his seatbelt, “Besides, I’ve seen you shoot in the dark, you shoot just fine.”
Nancy reaches out to touch him and Steve stops, his heart hammering the moment he feels the tips of her fingers on the back of his hand, “Wait-”
“Yeah?”
She blushes, she actually blushes, Steve watches her face, waiting, swallowing nervously as she looks up at him through her lashes, “You actually believe me?”
Steve frowns, brows knitting together, “Well… yeah? You’ve been right since the demogorgon. Why would I ever-... of course I believe you.”
Nancy searches his face, he’s not sure what she’s looking for but she just smiles wider and takes her hand back.
“Hey,” he leans in a little, “Are you okay? Why do you think I wouldn’t believe you?”
“Nothing, it’s just…” she shakes her head a little, “It’s silly.”
“Try me.”
She grabs her purse, clutching it in her hands, “I guess I just-I’m not used to that,” she admits, “Last year, with the rats, I was trying so hard to get anyone to take me seriously and, even when I had proof, it was just thrown back in my face. But you… you don’t even have that and you’re… not even questioning it?”
Steve shrugs, “I figure if it’s enough for you to mention it at all, it’s gotta be a lead you think is worth following. Who am I to question that?”
Nancy stares up at him, eyes wide and wet, he can see it, but she quickly blinks it away, “Thank you.”
Steve’s gaze follows her as she climbs out of the car and he does the same on the other side. He kind of gets the feeling that he either missed something the last year or was never clued in in the first place.
Either way, he’s glad to be able to give her something it looks like she needed. Intentional or not.
He follows her up the front steps and into the library, moving ahead and holding the door for her as she walks past while rolling her eyes but smiling fondly at him.
“What, I can’t get your door?”
“You’re incorrigible.”
Steve lifts a brow as he walks in after her, “I don’t know, I’d like to think that I adapt pretty well, and learn.”
Nancy huffs a laugh and taps the bell at the front desk.
“What, you don’t think I’ve changed?” Steve asks, leaning against the desk, “Be-because I’ve changed, Nance. I’ve changed a lot.”
He can see the ghost of a smile on the edge of her lips and he can’t tell if it’s at his expense or because he’s charming her, and then she says, “I know,” finally looking over at him, “In the big ways. The most important ways.”
She then lifts her hand and fixes the collar of his jacket, fingers lingering as they slide down his chest in a mindful way.
“But,” she tilts her head side to side a little, looking him over, “In other ways, you’re still the same guy.”
“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?” he asks slowly, frowning.
“Definitely good.”
As Steve starts to lean in to get more details, Marissa comes from the back, smiling and leaning forward the moment she sees Steve.
“Mr. Harrington,” she says, not even glancing at Nancy, “Back in for more books already? Your hands look pretty empty to me, don’t think you can bribe me a second time in a row.”
“Uh, no, actually, could we-”
“A little birdy told me that you’re not dating at the moment,” Marissa continues, cutting Nancy off as she reaches out to touch Steve’s arm, “Any chances you’re free this evening? You could… help me around the house.”
“He’s not free this evening,” Nancy chimes in, voice cold, “Or any evening moving forward.”
Steve’s brows furrow as he glances between them, “Nance-”
She reaches out and takes his hand, staring at Marissa with a murderous look in her eyes, “I’m his girlfriend, so I’d appreciate you not flirting with him.”
“Oh, is that so? You two are dating again?”
“We are,” Nancy responds as Steve opens his mouth to correct her, “Now could we get the keys to the basement archives? We’re in a bit of a hurry.”
Marissa looks at Steve and then back to Nancy, and then she moves away from the counter, “Of course, gimme one second.”
Steve pulls his arm from Nancy’s grip and looks at her, “What the hell are you doing?”
“She was wasting our time flirting with you. We don’t have time for-”
“She always flirts with me,” Nancy turns her cold stare on him and Steve lifts his hands up, “Hey now, don’t look at me like that, I didn’t do anything wrong,” he says in his own defense.
“So you don’t flirt back?”
He chuckles and shrugs, “Of course I do, it’s just innocent flirting; she’s like twice my age. There’s nothing wrong with helping a woman feel better about herself, you know?”
Nancy’s eyes narrow. It’s not difficult to imagine steam coming out of her ears with how mad she looks.
“If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you were jealous,” Steve says as he observes her - the set of her jaw, the pout of her lip.
Nancy’s always been a hard one for him to read.
He thought he was getting to know her pretty well and then she turned around and got shitfaced at Tina’s party, and told him she didn’t love him, and then slept with Jonathan Byers to prove it. Before that moment, he never would’ve believed it.
So maybe she’s telling the truth, and this isn’t about him, and is only because they’re pressed for time. But his alarm bells are going off and it’s too hard to ignore.
Impossible, even.
Especially when her eyes widen and her breath hitches and her cheeks flush more, and she can’t meet his eyes anymore the moment the words come flying out of his mouth.
Holy shit.
No way.
Steve leans in a couple of inches, trying to get her to look into his eyes, but she still won’t.
He wants to push a little more, but he thinks about Jonathan being stuck out in California, all alone without her, the strain that such a long distance relationship can have even on the strongest of bonds, and he backs off, smiling tightly as his throat burns, “Alright.”
Nancy looks surprised when he moves away from her and finally Marissa comes back and offers them the keys. Steve takes them as the much needed distraction they are and winks at her, watching her tut and wave him off.
She’s flattered.
She’s easy to read.
Most people are so easy to read. Nancy, not so much.
But as she sends him this hurt look that he’s not sure he’s ever seen on her before, or, at least, not before Halloween of ‘84, he thinks that maybe he can read her. Maybe, with her, he just needs to put in a little more effort because she’s not like other girls.
Steve follows Nancy to the basement, watching how she pointedly refuses to look at him even when he hands her the keys. It’s all over her, in plain sight even - how rigid her back and shoulders are, the way she doesn’t talk to him unless telling him where to look around the cramped file cabinets once they abandon the newspapers.
Just to test it, he moves to the side opposite of where she tells him to look in and she stops, turning and lifting her brows expectantly at him.
Steve folds as well because he can only keep his mouth shut for so long, so he leans against the cabinet and stares back at her, “You and Jonathan are still together.”
“... We are.”
His eyes narrow, “So, I don’t get it. What’s going on?”
She looks away from him again, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Nance,” he moves a step closer, “Look, I’m not gonna pretend to understand what’s going on between you two, but… if you need me, I’m here.”
She continues flipping through files, lips pursed.
“If you want me,” he trails off until she looks at him, he stares back, eyes dead set on hers, “I’m here for that too.”
He leaves it at that, walking towards the end of the filing cabinet and looking through, starting from the end. He lifts a box of reels from the Weekly Watcher and, just as he’s about to take them to the reader, Nancy finally speaks up.
“I think Jonathan wants to break up with me.”
Steve stops, leaning his arm on the cabinet again and lifting his brows.
Jonathan would have to be stupid to do that. But… he meant what he said to her in the car: if she says something, she has to have a good reason for it. He’s not going to doubt her just because the idea of breaking up with Nancy Wheeler is an unfathomable thing to him. Granted, he technically did it too, so maybe it makes a little sense.
That said, he broke up with her because she didn’t love him. Clearly she loves Jonathan, though he supposes the feeling could… possibly… not be mutual.
“Because he didn’t come to see you, or because of something more?” he asks, trying to be as understanding as he can, considering they’re talking about Jonathan.
“That’s part of it,” Nancy admits, “I guess… he’s been really distant on the phone. I know he’s busy with California, but we only talk once a week and, even when we do, it’s like he just… he just checks out of the conversation. He’s distracted, or he forgets to call in the first place even though we’ve had a set time and day of the week that hasn’t changed since he moved. Or he ends the call really early - he always ends it. Sometimes they don’t even last five minutes.”
Five minutes is a lot to pay for, for a long distance call, for someone like Jonathan Byers. And he doubts Nancy hasn’t been pinching pennies since she was five years old, to save up for either, like… a house, or college if she didn’t get in on a scholarship - just in case.
But, when you put that beside everything else, it does sound like she’s got reason to worry. Not that he doubted her in the first place.
The rub is that, even from his own perspective (which is minimal at best), he can already see the problem without much more context. Honestly, he didn’t really need most of what she gave him to come to the inevitable conclusion.
Back when he and Nancy were dating, he was on the phone with her almost every night that his parents weren’t home - which, admittedly, was more often than not. But they’d be on for hours. Steve’s fallen asleep to her voice after being on just shooting the shit and being self-indulgent until nearly one or two A.M. more times than he can count.
One of them would end the call, but it wasn’t always her and it wasn’t always him. And most of the time it was because they were either being dragged off of it by their parents or the need to sleep.
And that was when they lived like… a fifteen minute drive apart.
Some of it was before they were even officially dating.
He can’t imagine how rabid he would be for time to talk with her if he was on the other side of the country, unable to touch her, unable to see her.
“I want to be mad at him about it but part of me feels like maybe I deserve it, I guess,” she turns back to the cabinet and Steve walks over the moment he starts to see her bottom lip tremble.
He touches her back and, had she pulled away he would’ve dropped it, but she leans into him the moment he touches her. She doesn’t stop leaning into him, though, dropping her head against his chest and Steve almost stills entirely, too nervous to move or breathe.
“The Weekly Watcher?” she asks as she looks at him in confusion, “Why do you have reels from The Weekly Watcher?”
“I don’t know, he’s like a wizard that casts some sort of spell, curse thing, right?” Steve shrugs, “I figured maybe they would’ve covered it or… humored the guy, I guess. I don’t know, it’s stupid, but…”
Her eyes widen and she immediately takes it from his hand, “Well, you didn’t doubt me. Why should I doubt you?”
Steve blinks as she motions for him to follow, so he does.