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stancy-simp · 2 years

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Nancy Wheeler vs The World

Steve x Nancy —12,244 words— [Read on Ao3]

Summary: All throughout high school Nancy had never interacted much with that Harrington boy. She had heeded her friend Barb’s warnings and dismissed him as a typical meathead jock.

However, during the events of Starcourt Steve got dragged into the mess concerning the upside down and Nancy found herself partnering up with him. To her surprise, they became fast friends soon after. Eventually, she wanted to become more than friends. But there was one small problem…

In order to win his heart, Nancy would have to defeat Steve Harrington’s seven evil exes.

TAGS: Nancy POV, crack treated seriously, fluff and angst, comedy, alternate first meeting, fast burn

Nancy Wheeler was having a rough day.

More of a rough week if she was being honest. Or a rough month if she was really being honest. Or a rough summer if she was actually really honestly being honest.

She was currently resting on her bed with only her eyes visible as she laid down, bundled up in three or four or five of the multicoloured afghans that her nana had crocheted for her over the years. An empty tub of Ben & Jerry’s New York Super Fudge Chunk sat discarded at the foot of her mattress and she was in the process of making a significant dent in a sleeve of Oreos.

For a moment she thought that the tape on her VHS copy of The Muppets Take Manhattan might have worn through from how much she rewatched it, before realizing that the image on her TV screen wasn’t blurring — rather, her eyes had just started tearing up again.

She and Jonathan had broken up three weeks ago.

No, that wasn’t exactly right. She had been the one to break up with Jonathan. Which made it really unfair that he had stoically walked it off and she was the one who had been breaking down ever since.

Nancy huffed and wiped at her puffy eyes from underneath her blanket fortress, feeling that familiar swell of indignant anger rise up in her throat like bile.

At the start of their summer vacation the two of them had managed to score an internship at the local paper and Nancy had been so excited at first. This would have been a chance for her to get some real world work experience. It would have been a foot in the door, and a great way to pad her resume when applying for positions in her future dream career.

But the men who worked at the Hawkins Gazette had turned out to all be chauvinistic jackasses of otherworldly proportions and a mere two weeks into her time there she had lost her temper. After multiple shifts where she had been nothing more than a glorified coffee machine, one of the senior reporters had thought he could give her a pat on the ass and get away with it.

Nancy had reeled back and gave him the dirtiest right hook she could manage for his efforts. She had watched on in satisfaction as the force of her punch spiked the man through six separate brick walls before he finally came to a halt, lodged in the seventh wall of the office’s dark room.

Jonathan, who had been in the room developing photos at the time, jolted up in shock at both the wanton destruction around him and the light that was suddenly flooding into his previously dingy workspace.

Her boyfriend had looked at her through the six smoking holes in the building and then at the reporter who was slumped over in the crater of the adjacent wall with cartoon canaries fluttering around his head.

And because Jonathan was a sweet, progressive gentleman, and because they were ‘Nancy + Jonathan’ — Hawkin’s ultimate power couple, she had assumed that he would have immediately rush to her side where he belonged.

Nancy felt her world shatter when Jonathan had given her a frustrated shake of his head and stumbled over the wreckage to go and help his coworker to his feet.

After the fact, he had tried all sorts of excuses on her – that he needed the job more than she did, that the guys from the paper could blacklist them if they wanted to, that she had overreacted.

When he had all but implied that working women would need to be ready to deal with that sort of behaviour — that it was just the way the world worked, and that she shouldn’t be naïve or idealistic? That was when she had called it.

She’d been waiting for the phone to ring ever since. Waiting for the call where he would just man up and say he was sorry so they could go back to being Nancy and Jonathan again.

But the call never came.

And she knew by now that the call was never going to come. For the first time in two years she was confronted with the prospect of needing to learn how to be Just Nancy again.

Nancy sniffled, watching as Kermit yelled at the other muppets and they all went their separate ways. She was in the middle of carefully crafting an Oreo sandwich by holding one Oreo in-between two other Oreos and…Okay, she was just planning on shoving three Oreos into her fucking mouth — but she was interrupted by the staticky sound of her brother’s name being called from across the hall.

“—ike? M—ke, are y— the—?”

Frowning, Nancy stood up, pushing her sixty pound blanket cocoon off of her as she did. “Dustin?”

When nobody responded, Nancy sighed and dragged her feet over to her brother’s room. She took a deep breath beforehand and reluctantly opened the door, plugging her nose as she did. When she swung the door open, a toxic dark green and purple cloud of gas billowed out into the hall, briefly rearranging into the shape of a skull & crossbones before dissipating.

Mike’s room perpetually smelled of used jockstraps boiled in an onion broth despite the fact that the little shit had never even seen a sports ball before.

Nancy waved her hand through the residual fumes, swearing that she could see something scurrying around in the corner, before hurrying over to grab Mike’s walkie-talkie and bolting back out of the room. She slammed the door shut and finally allowed herself to breathe in some fresh air.

One of the reasons why she had never bothered to try out smoking was because her room was right next to Mike’s and she was ninety-five percent certain that her little brother’s musk was a flammable resource. Didn’t want to risk the whole house going up in flames for a bit of rebellious teen whimsy

“Dustin? Is that you?” She held the walkie flat against her ear, trying to decipher anything she could through the garbled white noise. “Hello?”

“N—ncy! Please h—lp, we’re—!” Dustin’s frantic tone jolted Nancy upright. This was one of THOSE types of situations.

“Dustin?” She shouted, giving the device a few frustrated smacks when it cut off completely. “Dustin? Shit…”

‘Goddamnit, Mike,’ she thought, tossing the dead walkie onto her mattress and running her fingers through the tangled mess of her hair. ‘What’s the point of having the radio if you never change the stupid batteries?’

Nancy only had one set of double-A’s left and they were currently…in use. But desperate times called for desperate measures.

She shot a furtive look over her shoulder at her open bedroom door in order to check for her family before getting down on her hands and knees and pulling a shoebox out from where it was hidden underneath her bed.

Popping off the lid with a flick of her fingers, Nancy reverently removed the bright pink…massager from the box. She had secretly named it Mr Cruise.

Mr Cruise gave a sad whir as it struggled to pulse and vibrate for a few moment. Nancy winced, popping the batteries she needed out from the bottom of her little friend and kicking him back under her bed. She would need a replacement soon — she had really been putting the poor thing to work since her break-up.

She flicked the dead batteries out of Mike’s radio and popped in the new ones with one smooth flick of the wrist.

After switching it back on, she nervously held it back up to her cheek. “You still there, Dustin? What’s going on?”

“NANCY, JESUS CHRIST! THE OTHERS AREN’T ANSWERING! YOU NEED TO HELP US!”

Nancy’s head snapped back as Dustin’s shrill words literally shot out of the phone and blasted into the side of her face. She waved the blocky letters away and reoriented herself. “Not so loud! Just calm down and tell me where you are, alright?”

She could hear Dustin take an exaggerated deep breath before he got his bearings and continued on more steadily. “I’m with Steve, one of Steve’s friends and Lucas’ sister, Erica. We infiltrated a covert soviet laboratory hidden deep underneath Starcourt Mall, but now we’re trapped down here!”

“…Alright, on my way.”

“Look, I know it sounds—“ Nancy heard Dustin trail off, startled. “Wait, you believe me? Just like that?”

Nancy let out a sigh as she tossed her jacket on and looked around the room for her car keys, holding the radio between her neck and her shoulder as she got ready to leave. “Dustin we’ve been dealing with dimension-hopping flower monsters and an eldritch god made of smoke who wants to wipe out humanity. Russians invading is pretty tame these days.”

“…Okay, fair. Thanks, Nancy! Sorry for bothering you…”

She felt her lips quirk up in a tiny grin as she bounded down the stairs and waved goodbye to her mom. Typically, Karen would probably ask where she was going, but it seemed that her mother was just glad she was finally getting out of the house again. “Don’t worry about it, Dustin. Want me to pick anything up on the way there?”

“A couple Slim Jims for me, please.” The sound of a muffled voice interrupted Dustin for a moment. “And a Dr Pepper for Steve. He said he wants to get the taste of blood out of his mouth.”

Nancy frowned worriedly as she marched around the back of her car to pop open the trunk and examine the makeshift armoury she had MacGyver’d back there. “Blood? Is he alright?” Nancy asked, sifting through some grenades and a medieval flail to retrieve her .357 Magnum, giving it an experimental aim down the sights.

“He may have gotten tortured by the Russians for a few hours…” Dustin admitted in a guilty tone before lowering his voice to an enthusiastic whisper, presumably only for her ears. “He took it like a champ though! He’s so cool!”

Nancy reached deeper into the trunk, hauling out a rocket propelled grenade launcher that was about as long as she was tall, resting it against her shoulder as she closed the trunk shut.

She had heard tell of Mike’s group of friends’ borderline hero worship of Steve Harrington but she had thought it was all just a weird inside joke until now. Nancy had trouble reconciling the image the party painted of Steve with what little she remembered of the guy.

Much like anyone who had functioning eyes, there was a brief one week period of her life when Nancy had entertained the idea of cozying up to Steve Harrington to shoot her shot. His supposed bad attitude notwithstanding, when her pubescent hormones had been going haywire she had wanted nothing more than to climb him like a redwood. Her best friend Barb had rightfully dissuaded her of the idea. In the end Nancy had been convinced that she would have merely ended up as yet another notch on King Steve’s debauched throne.

Except…the loveable goofball who periodically doused his hair in Farrah Fawcett spray and dropped anything he happened to be doing at a moment’s notice just to help out some random kids he had no personal obligation to sounded nothing like the Steve Harrington she had built up in her head.

For a split second she wondered if maybe she had been wrong to avoid him throughout their years spent together walking the same halls of Hawkins High. Didn’t matter much now, she supposed — he had graduated just before the summer started and she still had one year left.

Snapping out of her wandering thoughts, Nancy opened the driver side door and tossed her rocket launcher to lean upright in the passenger seat before peeling out down the street with the dreary tones of The Cure playing from her tape player.

Ugh — one of Jonathan’s mixtapes that he had made for her. With a scowl, Nancy popped the cassette out and threw it, hard, out her window.

Unfortunately, she had forgotten to roll up her window before doing so, and it bounced off the glass and ricocheted back into her face. Rubbing at her forehead, Nancy looked at the window and saw that the impact of the tape had created a crack in it — in the shape of a heart with a deep break running straight down the centre.

Figuring that she would have to replace the whole window now anyway, Nancy growled and elbowed it, enjoying the cathartic sensation of the broken heart bursting into hundreds of shards underneath her arm.

Nancy leaned her body halfway out the broken window to toss Jonathan’s mixtape out onto the road ahead of her, driving it over with her car for good measure. She then reached into the glovebox to dust off one of her own old tapes, inserted in and turned the volume up to the max as she floored the gas pedal.

As she drifted her way to Starcourt to crack some soviet skulls and save a few damsels, Nancy guiltily mused that this little diversion might have been just what she needed to get her out of her post-Byers funk.

There was nothing quite like knocking some heads to help remind herself who Nancy Goddamn Wheeler was.

******

Dustin briefed Nancy on the entire situation as she sped through the streets of Hawkins, filling her in on the finer details of their predicament and letting her know where the secret elevator to the underground base was located.

As Nancy pulled into the back of the mall near the loading bay, it seemed as if Dustin and his crew had already made some headway into their little escape attempt because a group of well-armed guards were posted up by the shuttered door.

Nancy slowed the car to a stop a good fifteen feet away from them all. She shut off the ignition before carefully poking her head out her busted window to address the guards, who all looked back at her in bewilderment. “Hey, are any of you guys able to validate my parking? My dad will kill me if I get another ticket…”

One of the Russians smiled and removed a stamp from his breast pocket, moving to walk forward to mark her ticket for her when the bigger man in front of him held him back with a hand to his chest. “We talk about ‘dis, Anton. You are supposed to be mean, scary henchman. You scare little girlie away — not validate parking.”

The smaller man’s lip twisted uncertainly, gaze flitting between Nancy and his commanding officer. “…She say please.”

“I don’t care she say please.” The man’s square jaw flexed. “You heff’ to project menacing aura. Is your job. I put my neck out on line getting you henchman work so you no heff’ to keep working at the Burger Kings and now you are going to make fool of me?”

“I maybe validate her parking…menacingly!” Anton suggested, stabbing his stamp out in a shiv-like motion and looking to his superior for approval.

Nancy held up her hand when it looked as if they were going to continue arguing. “Sorry, I’m actually only here to pick up my friends, so…”

“You know password?” The broad man asked, his grip tightening on the grip of his assault rifle.

“Sure! I have it right here, let me just show it to you…” Nancy bent over to retrieve the RPG laying on the floor of the passenger seat and promptly fired it out the car window with a satisfying THWOOP, watching as the rocket whistled over and impacted directly in the centre of all the burly goons.

Nancy leaned over to place the still-smoking launcher in the backseat. While she was back there she grabbed her little plastic bag of snacks which she had gotten from the corner store and hiked it up to hang off her shoulder before palming her revolver and leaving the car.

She also placed a bubblegum air freshener on the rear view as she left because the scent of gun-smoke and viscera was really hard to wash out of your interior if you let it settle in.

Nancy held the back of her hand close to her face to examine her nails as she walked over to the smouldering entrance of the elevator that she had blown open, neatly sidestepping any lingering flames or spare body parts that were scattered about the pavement.

Her nail polish was a flaky, chipped mess, she observed with a grimace. Part of her had wanted to keep it for as long as possible because she had last painted them before the breakup and she was feeling sentimental. Maybe she’d ask her mom to try out a new colour on her when she got home. It was time for a new coat.

She was so busy staring at her hand that she almost bumped into the diminutive guard from before, the only one who had been outside the blast radius of her explosive.

The man looked up at her, shellshocked, from where he knelt at her feet. A nondescript piece of one of his friends fell out of the sky and landed next to him with a wet thud. He reached forward with a shaky hand and validated her parking for her.

“Thanks!” Nancy grinned, offering the man an affable grin and holding her hand out to him. “You can go if you want. I really am just here to pick up my brother’s friends.”

Anton accepted her help and was easily tugged to his feet. Nancy tensed when he reached into his coat pocket but relaxed when he merely pulled out a small booklet of Burger King coupons and handed it to her in thanks. “Spasibo…spasibo…”

“Oh, you didn’t have to do that!” Nancy pocketed the coupons regardless and waved to Anton as he waddled out of sight with a thousand-yard stare haunting his eyes. “What a nice guy…”

Nancy stepped into the elevator and pressed the button to descend to the lowest level, crossing her arms as she waited. She let out a groan as she thought to pat down her pockets and found that she had forgotten to bring any spare ammo.

Holding out her revolver, Nancy flicked the cylinder open to check the bullets. Or, rather, bullet. Singular. She only had one left in the chamber from the other night when she had propped up various items Jonathan had given to her over the years in her backyard and taken potshots at them.

“God, I’m really rusty…” Nancy murmured, absently flipping and twirling the magnum around in her hand. “Rookie mistake.”

Whatever. One bullet should be more than enough for a subterranean lair of evil Russian invaders. She’d just have to make it count.

The elevator finally dinged as it came to a stop and Nancy quickly stepped out. The girl sighed at the sight of the seemingly endless walkway stretching out in front of her before taking off at a full body sprint.

Within five minutes of running the walkway soon opened up to the proper base of operations and Nancy skidded to a halt, coming face-to-face with upwards of thirty of Russia’s finest staring back at her.

One bullet. She would need to get this just right.

Nancy zigzagged in between volleys of incoming gunfire, attempting to maneuver both herself and her opponents into the perfect position.

As she bounded through the room a few men fell to the ground, victims of friendly fire. Nancy dropped down to baseball slide between the legs of one lanky guard when he made to charge at her and then she kipped back up, wasting no time and immediately sending another nearby guard flying into two of his friends with a jumping headscissors takedown.

Nancy rolled forward into a crouch as she hit the floor, whipping her gun out to the side and aiming it at a nearby railing.

She swore the bullet made a screeching sound like a bald eagle as it soared through the air. The bullet bounced off the hand railing at just the right angle to come flying back her way, straight between the eyes of the henchman who had been behind her, lunging at her with a trench knife. The bloody bullet continued its trajectory through the man’s skull, pinging off a fire extinguisher and then passing through the heads of two other men.

The bullet continued its grim dance, flitting about the room like a deadly hummingbird as it made quick work of all of the men in its way. It ricocheted around for a good thirty seconds, making pinball sound effects with each bounce before finally piercing the skull of the last soldier left standing.

The round rebounded one last time against the fluorescent light above Nancy and shot straight down at her.

Nancy caught the bullet between her teeth as turquoise sparks fell down on her from the light tube above, the fire extinguisher shot out foam and a nearby corpse sprayed blood like a geyser from the open wound above his eye, bathing her in red, white and blue.

“America…” Nancy whispered reverently, spitting the spent bullet to her left with a soft pinging noise.

The sound of whooping and applause broke her out of her brief patriotism attack. When she turned around she saw Dustin hopping up and down on his feet and pointing at her, while Erica and another girl who was around Nancy’s age stood behind the excitable boy.

“That was incredible, Nancy!” Dustin beamed, looking up at her with sparkling eyes. Like, literally sparkling. “You have to teach me how to do that!”

Nancy held up her hand to shield her eyes from the brightness of Dustin’s smile. “Sure,” she promised. “If you stay in school and don’t do drugs I’ll teach you some day.”

“It was alright, I guess.” Erica stood next to Dustin and crossed her arms, looking Nancy up and down. “Keep it up and maybe I’ll let you be my campaign manager when I’m older…”

The older brunette opposite Nancy placed both her hands between Dustin and Erica’s heads, parting them like the red sea as she shoved her way through the kids to shake Nancy’s hand. “Hey! Thanks for the assist. You’re Nancy Wheeler, right?”

Nancy gave the girl’s hand a firm shake, wondering how she knew her name. “Uh, yep! That’s right…and you are?”

The girl grimaced at the blood she got on her from Nancy’s handshake. She wiped her bloody palm on her Scoops Ahoy shirt, inadvertently creating a bright red X on her chest. “I’m foreshadowing.”

“Huh?” Nancy frowned.

“I said I’m Robin Buckley!” She offered a lazy half-smile. “Good to meet you.”

“Yeah, you too…Hey, where is—“ She cut her question off when her Nancy Sense started tingling. Her eyes shot up just in time to see that one of the Russians was still alive and leaping at her with his knife raised above his head in a downward stabbing motion.

There wasn’t much she could do to defend herself. She had already used her one bullet and the tip of the guard’s knife was mere inches away from her face.

Then, as if in slow motion, another figure entered from out of her line of sight, leaping up six feet in the air to shoot their body out horizontally and nail her assailant with a picture perfect dropkick to the face.

The Russian blasted off towards the wall with a sonic boom, as a few of his stray teeth lingered in the air for a moment before clattering to the floor.

The guy who delivered the dropkick nimbly backflipped from the force of the strike and landed on his feet like a cat, running a hand through his thick voluptuous hair to fix it in place.

Nancy put serious effort forth to click her jaw back into place from where it was hanging open dumbly as she made eye contact with none other than Steve Harrington.

Even battered and bruised from hours of KGB interrogation, and wearing an absurd sailor boy’s uniform from an ice cream parlour, Nancy still couldn’t help but think he was a prime cut of meat.

“Why are you licking your lips so much?” Dustin piped up from behind her.

“I—Shut up!” Nancy deflected, wiping her mouth with her sleeve. “I…lost my chapstick, that’s all.”

Steve approached her uncertainly with a curious expression on his face. “Hey, I used to see you around school all the time but we never really…” He cut himself off with a shake of his head, extending his hand out to her. “Anyway, I’m Steve.”

“I know,” Nancy smiled thinly, giving his hand one firm shake. “Everyone knows who you are. You…probably don’t remember me. I’m—“

“Nancy Wheeler,” Steve finished for her with amused eyes. “Course I remember you, c’mon…”

Nancy’s eyes drooped bashfully before locking on to the strangely flattering Scoops Ahoy shorts and forcing her eyes back up before she started blushing.

“Legs,” Nancy said intelligently.

“What?”

“Uh!” Nancy floundered, feeling the aforementioned heat rise in her cheeks. “I said you must have strong legs! That was a hell of a kick just now…”

“Oh! Well, you know.” Steve rubbed at the back of his neck, smiling. “I play a lot of basketball, so. Forget about me though — the way you took out all those commies was amazing!”

“Ah, thanks…It was nothing, really,” Nancy clasped her hands in front of her, smiling up at him through her eyelashes.

In the background Robin whispered to Dustin through the corner of her mouth. “Is this like some sort of heterosexual mating ritual?”

Dustin squinted his eyes at Steve and Nancy thoughtfully. “I don’t know…When Steve described it to me he said there would be ‘sexual electricity.’”

Just as the words left Dustin’s mouth, real tangible stems of lightning began sparking between the two teens, connecting them like tesla coils, though they didn’t seem to notice. “Ah, there it is. Yep, they’re totally gonna do it.”

Robin turned a skeptical look on her young protégé. “Do you even know what ‘it’ is?”

“Yes! Obviously!” Dustin scoffed, putting his hands in his pockets as Robin and Erica both raised their eyebrows at him, silently urging him to go on. “Well, first of all — you take your shirts off,” he said with a knowing grin as if he were describing the most hedonistic act imaginable. “And then you just kinda—“

Dustin made a sort of vague undulating hugging motion while wriggling his fingers as the two girls watched on in horror. “Man, they really need to update the sex ed program…” Robin murmured.

Across from them, Nancy was reaching into her bag and handing Steve the Dr Pepper he had requested. He gratefully took it from her and pressed the cool can against one of the growing bumps on his head, letting out a sinful moan at the relief it must have brought. “God, Nancy. Thank you…”

“No problem,” Nancy squeaked as steam billowed from her ears.

Nancy’s eyes zeroed in on Steve’s Adam’s apple as he greedily gulped at his soda, with some distant part of her subconscious animal brain begging her to lunge forward to lap at the sweat glistening on the lean column of his neck.

Steve caught her and seemed to misinterpret the reason why she had been staring. “My bad,” he sheepishly shook the can at her, sloshing around what little was left. “Did you want some? It’s just that being, y’know, tortured and stuff always makes me kinda thirsty…”

“You’re not the only one who’s thirsty,” Nancy thought.

“What did you say?”

Nancy cringed. “Oh shit, I said that out loud,” she thought.

“Said what out loud?” Steve frowned, twisting his lips.

Jesus Christ! Keep the monologue internal, Wheeler!

Nancy cleared her throat and played with the end of her sleeves. “I said no, thank you. I don’t really like Dr Pepper anyway…”

Steve looked at her consideringly before turning his thoughtful gaze on the can in his hand. “Yeah, it’s kinda bullshit, huh?”

“Pardon?”

Pointing at the side of the tin, Steve read aloud. “See here? It says ‘made with 23 flavours.’ But there’s just one flavour really — the flavour of Dr Pepper…right?” Steve shook his head. “‘Made with 23 flavours.’ That’s just a stupid way of saying ’23 ingredients.’ Like, you wouldn’t look at a cake and say — ‘This cake has milk, eggs and flour in it! That’s three flavours right there!’ Dumb…You’ve convinced me, Nancy. Dr Pepper is stupid as hell — bet you he isn’t even a real doctor…”

Worried, Nancy brought a hand up to inspect the wounds on Steve’s head. “God, they really did a number on you, huh?”

“Nope,” Robin popped the P at the end of the word, cheerily moving past them while ruffling Steve’s hair. “He’s always like this, unfortunately.”

“No, c’mon Robin. Don’t be like that, you gotta weigh in on this Dr Pepper thing…” Steve frowned when Robin didn’t respond and turned around to look at her. “Robin? Oh…shit.”

Robin was quickly scurrying back towards them, being chased by a new squad of Russian soldiers who were now blocking their only exit. But the worst part was who was commanding the group.

“Oh, Anton…” Nancy looked at the tiny blond Russian in disappointment.

“You know this bozo?” Steve inquired, moving to stand beside her.

“I let him live,” Nancy shot a meaningful look at Anton, “after I killed the rest of the guards back upstairs.”

Anton guiltily scuffed at the floor with his combat boots, refusing to meet Nancy’s eyes. “Anton is very sorry, little missy…but he thought about it and it was either continue to be soviet henchman or go back to flipping patties at the Burger Kings…and Anton would rather die than go back to customer service!”

“Fair,” Steve and Robin nodded in sync.

Nancy quickly took charge of the situation, turning to look at Robin, Dustin and Erica. “Dustin, on the radio you said they have buggies around here to quickly drive through the walkways, right?” When Dustin nodded, she motioned for them to move. “You three head back the other way and fetch one! We’ll hold them off here!”

Tilting her head in Steve’s direction, she gestured at the group of angry soldiers. “Are you okay to fight?”

Steve carefully rolled his shoulders, feeling out how bad his injuries were. “Don’t know if I’ll be able to keep up with a gal like you, but I’ll sure try.”

With a challenging smile, Nancy nodded. Steve nodded back.

And then they were both charging down the hallway side by side. Steve went high, taking to the air once again with a spinning back thrust kick as Nancy went low, sweeping out the legs of three separate men.

Soon, they found themselves back-to-back surrounded by guards as they picked the men apart one by one as they attempted to close in.

Despite the fact that they had only just formally introduced themselves, Nancy and Steve moved together like they’d been doing this for years. Nancy felt like she was dancing and savoured every moment of it, because no boy had ever taken her dancing before.

Nancy deflected an incoming punch with a crossblock, and as her attacker’s arm sailed past her Steve took the opportunity to blindly grasp it, wrenching it down against his shoulder with a sickening crunch and judo flipping the man over onto his back before dropping his knee down against his windpipe.

Reaching out instinctively, Steve picked up Nancy with ease and spun her around in a circle, allowing her to knock out several of the men surrounding them with the swinging arc of her feet.

Steve set her down gracefully, granting Nancy the opportunity to hop up and grab a Russian by his shoulders, plant her feet on his chest and fall backwards, monkey-flipping the man backwards. “Heads up!” Nancy called.

Steve wordlessly heeded her call-out, jumping up to grab the man in mid-air and suplexing him down to the ground.

As they built momentum and their opponents’ numbers progressively dwindled, Nancy and Steve become more aware of their fleeting touches — every brush against one another sending tingles up their spines.

At one point, Nancy had grabbed a goon by the collar and was reeling her arm back to clobber him when she saw Steve was also primed to punch the man out.

They each stepped away simultaneously.

“Oh, I’m sorry! I didn’t know he was yours! You can go ahead and knock him out,” Steve offered chivalrously.

“No, no! You got to him first, you should do it!” Nancy insisted.

The guard who they were arguing over held his hands up with a fond smile. “You two remind me of when I met my Svetlana back in fourth grade…Is okay, I do it for you!” And then the man had delivered a swift uppercut to his own chin, falling unconscious to the floor.

They had both smiled at each other shyly and hopped back into the fray.

As Nancy was straddling one man’s chest and raining down hammerfists to his face, she tossed Steve a look over her shoulder. “You know…you should hear the way those kids talk about you.”

Steve scoffed, head-butting the bridge of a soldier’s nose, causing the man to fall back against the wall, wailing in agony as blood poured down the front of his fatigues. “They only like me because I let them play Snakes & Ladders at my place.”

“Dungeons & Dragons,” she corrected.

“Whatever,” he rolled his eyes, driving his knee into someone’s solar plexus and feeling their ribs pop under his thigh.

“No, it’s not just that. They’re always going on about how cool you are…” Nancy hesitated, looking over at him. “I think I finally see why now.”

And Nancy almost felt the need to cover her face at how openly flattered Steve looked. After two years of dealing with a sullen, brooding Jonathan it was giving her brain whiplash to interact with a boy who wore his heart so openly on his sleeve. “Well, hey, you aren’t so bad yourself, Nance.”

“Nance?” Nobody had ever given her a nickname before. She was feeling many dangerous things at the moment and struggled to keep them from boiling to the surface. She’d been talking with the guy for fifteen minutes, she needed to get a grip.

“Oh, I mean, I could not call you that, if you don’t like it?” Steve offered, looking embarrassed.

“No!” She was quick to assure him. “I like it! It’s…” Incredible. Overwhelming. “It’s nice.”

“Rad.” Steve shot her a dopey grin, and Nancy tucked her hair behind her ear in response.

And then Steve also tucked his hair behind his ear.

And then several of the Russian soldiers bashfully tucked their hair behind their ear, blushing as they were seemingly caught up in the moment.

Nancy and Steve took advantage of the moment by delivering twin roundhouse kicks to the group, sending them all flying in different directions.

The only enemy left standing was Anton, who was glaring at them with determination burning in his blue eyes. He slowly reached down and unsheathed his blade from where it was tucked into his boot.

“This is your last warning, Anton,” Nancy frowned, shifting to a defensive stance. “You don’t have to do this…”

“Yes…” Anton grimly intoned. “I do. For the motherland!”

The Russian let loose a warrior’s cry as he surged forward at them with his knife drawn.

When Anton’s legs shot up in the air, Nancy thought he was attempting an incredibly athletic martial arts kick. As it turned out, he had merely slipped on one of the other Russians’ blood.

Steve and Nancy’s eyes both curiously tracked the tiny man’s trajectory as he sailed through the air. When he descended, his knife slipped from his grasp and the two teens winced as Anton fell back-first onto his own knife.

“Gah!” Anton yelled, trying and failing to stand as he quickly grew pale. “I have been stabbed in the back…by myself! Such…tragic symbolism! There is a lesson to be learned in here somewhere…”

Nancy sighed and kneeled down to place a hand on Anton’s shoulder as his breaths grew shallow. “It didn’t have to be this way, Anton…”

Anton choked back some blood and faced Nancy with the certainty only a dying man possesses. “Is better to die as a peasant soldier…than to live as a Burger King…”

The light left her Russian frenemy’s eyes and Nancy solemnly stood back up. Hoping to bring some levity to the situation, Steve vaguely gestured around at the dozens of soviet soldiers scattered around at their feet. “From Russia With Love, my ass…”

Nancy huffed a laugh despite the situation, turning to look up at the taller boy. “You’re an idiot, Steve.”

Steve’s eyes crinkled up in good humour at the jab. “Yeah, well you’re b—“

Whatever Steve had been about to say was interrupted by the shrill beeping of the little buggy that was barrelling towards them.

The vehicle skidded to a stop inches away from them with Robin resting her elbow against the steering wheel. “Hop in, losers. Lets make like borscht and spill.”

Nancy smiled at Steve’s mumbled ‘That doesn’t even make sense’ and clambered up to squeeze into the backseat with him, Dustin and Erica.

She tried to fight the treacherous feeling creeping up in her chest as she sat, pressed halfway into Steve’s chest in the crowded back seat. It wasn’t anything serious, she decided. Nancy was just newly single and Steve was the first attractive, friendly guy she had spent time with since she’d broken up with Jonathan. And she wasn’t looking for some cheap rebound — it wouldn’t be healthy for her and she didn’t want to do that to a guy like Steve.

This was just a fleeting infatuation. It would pass.

******

THE HIGH PRIESTESS

Five months had passed since Starcourt and Nancy Wheeler was hopelessly in love with Steve Harrington.

After their first interaction, she had thought her little flickering barely-there spark of a crush would burn itself out within days.

But Hawkins was a small town. And now that Steve Harrington was A Person She Knew, instead of A Stranger She Walked Past, it seemed as if she ran into him constantly, even when he didn’t go to school with her anymore.

Running into each other at the grocery store had gradually evolved into Nancy inviting him to come in and talk for a few minutes whenever he would drop Mike off at her place.

Offering to stay and keep him company when he babysat Holly, effectively defeating the purpose of getting a babysitter in the first place, had then led to straight up hanging out as friends without hiding behind any pretences.

With each moment spent in Steve’s presence he was unknowingly fanning that tiny ember resting between her ribs into a massive, all encompassing inferno that threatened to burn her from the inside-out if she couldn’t direct it elsewhere soon.

And the incredibly frustrating thing was — Nancy was ninety-nine percent certain that he felt just as strongly about her, and yet he refused to act on it.

Every second they spent together was charged with unspoken sentiment, stolen glances and lingering touches. Nancy had done everything she could to let him know how badly she wanted him short of shouting it from the rooftops — and she was seriously considering even that these days.

It was part of the reason why she had asked Steve for a favour today. She had needed to spend an extra few hours after class working on some last minute additions to next week’s school newspaper.

Nancy’s car was in the shop until Monday so she couldn’t drive home. Nancy’s mother had driven her and Mike to school in the morning, but let her know that she’d only be picking up Mike because Nancy was staying at the school for quite a while and Karen was too much of a nervous driver to drive the car when once it got dark out.

So, Nancy had used one of the school’s pay-phones to call and ask Steve if he wouldn’t mind giving her a lift just this once. Of course Steve had Stevely said ‘You kidding? I’ll drive you every day if you need me to.’ And Nancy had needed to clear her throat in embarrassment when several other students saw her giggle and twirl the phone cord around her finger.

She had decided that this would be the day where she would just come out with it and say what she needed to say. It was atypical for girls to be the ones to ask guys out but neither her nor Steve were ever in danger of be considered normal.

The clicking of Nancy’s shoes echoed throughout the empty halls of Hawkins High as she made her way to the exit. She pushed open the double doors, and smiled brightly at the familiar silhouette of Steve waiting underneath one of the lights in the parking lot.

He walked over to meet her halfway and Nancy gave him a tight hug, unabashedly mushing her face into his chest. “Hey, there’s my favourite guy!”

“Oh, I’m the favourite now, huh?” Steve let his chin rest on top of her head, rubbing his hands up and down her arms. “Don’t let Tom Cruise know — it’ll break his heart.”

Nancy peeked up at him with mirth in her eyes. “Okay, maybe you aren’t my favourite. Definitely in the top five though.”

“Uh-huh,” Steve rolled his eyes, slinging an arm around her and beginning to walk back across the lot. “Guess I’ll just have to try harder then. How was chess club?”

“Newspaper club,” Nancy sternly corrected, reaching up to flick his ear.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Steve said, completely unapologetically. “I have trouble telling the differences between nerd gatherings.”

She merely rolled her eyes in response. “We can’t all be all-star athletes, Steve.”

Steve gave her a lazy shrug. “Hey, my offer still stands to teach you how to hit three-pointers every single time. You could be captain of the team in no time with my coaching.”

Nancy hummed and sidled up closer to him, enjoying the comforting weight of his heavy arm around her neck and reaching up to hold onto his wrist. “Where’s your car?”

“Parked it in the street” Steve explained, looking up at the moon. “The ramp up into the parking lot is way too steep. It’s hell on my suspension.”

“Yeah, well most high schoolers don’t drive sports cars that are way too low to the ground,” Nancy smiled, reaching up to pinch at his skin.

“Sucks to be them,” Steve smirked, and Nancy desperately wanted to kiss him.

God, but they were practically dating already. They cuddled, they talked about their dreams, they spent most of their free time together but they still hadn’t spoken about the obvious tension surrounding them. It was giving Nancy a serious case of emotional blue-balls.

“Steve…” she whispered, perhaps too quietly because the boy hadn’t heard her.

“Hey, Nance?”

Nancy’s eyebrows twitched at the anxiousness in Steve’s voice. “Yeah?”

“Listen, I…” Steve took his arm off her shoulder to reach into the pocket of his jeans. “You’ll probably think it’s stupid, but I just thought I’d ask anyway…”

She crowded closer to him in anticipation. Was it finally happening after all this time?

Steve cleared his throat, pulling out what appeared to be two paper tickets. “So…me and my old man watch wrestling sometimes. It’s like…the only thing we have in common. And he managed to score some pretty sweet seats at a WWF show on the thirtieth. But he told me this morning he won’t be able to make it ‘cause he has to be at a conference that day…so I thought maybe you’d—“ Steve roughly swiped at his hair as a humiliated flush bloomed on his cheeks. “God, I’m — Nevermind, I’m sorry. Don’t know what I was thinking. There’s no way you would want to—“

“Who’s on the card?” Nancy interjected, causing Steve to look down at her uncertainly.

“Uh…It’s pretty stacked,” Steve cautiously gave her a small grin. “Hulk Hogan and Macho Man are going to fight for the heavyweight title, Brutus Beefcake is gonna be there, Tony Atlas is gonna be there…should be pretty sweet.”

Nancy looked at the ground as she racked her brains, trying to jog her memory. “Wasn’t Bret Hart supposed to wrestle that night too?”

“Oh yeah, he’s…wait,” Steve looked down at her in delighted surprise. “You watch pro wrestling?”

Nancy’s eyes crinkled at how impressed he looked with her. “Mike watches it on Saturdays and I pretend to hate it…but I think I enjoy it more than he does, honestly. A bunch of oiled up guys in tights grappling with each other? What’s not to like?” She pointed a warning finger up at him as an afterthought. “But you can’t tell Mike that. I’ll skin you alive if you do.”

The casual threat of murder seemed to fly right over Steve’s head as he excitedly nodded down at her, practically wagging his tail like a puppy. “Totally! So, you wanna go with me?”

If there was ever a moment, this was it. Nancy had to know. She couldn’t keep existing in this strange relationship limbo they had found themselves in.

“You mean…like a date?” Nancy smiled hopefully up at him.

Nancy’s stomach swooped unpleasantly when Steve’s smile fell. “Nancy…I don’t know if—“

“Have I been misreading things?” Nancy asked, blinking rapidly when her voice cracked. She felt so damn embarrassed.

“No!” Her head snapped up at Steve’s vehement denial. “God, no. Nance, you…” Steve let out a shuddering breath, placing his hands on his hips. “Ever since we started talking it’s like…It was like when I met Dustin and Robin, you know? They slotted themselves into my life and I felt more complete because of it. Dustin’s like a little brother, Robin’s my best friend and you’re my…”

“I’m your?” Nancy prompted when he trailed off.

“You’re my Nancy,” Steve looked down at her with his big stupid earnest brown eyes.

“But not your girlfriend?” Nancy pushed.

And Steve’s face reacted to the idea with such open yearning that it dispelled any of Nancy’s insecurities. “I want that more than anything,” he said, probably unaware just how much that statement knocked the wind out of her. “But I’m scared.”

“Why would you ever be scared of me?” Nancy timidly reached forward to grab his fingertips.

“Not scared of you,” Steve clarified, gently threading his fingers through hers. “Scared of losing you. I’ve got…baggage — a past. Historically speaking, my love life has been nothing but disaster after disaster. I don’t want that to happen with us. I thought…just being close with you would have to be enough for me.”

“Everyone has a past, Steve.” Nancy soothingly rubbed her thumb across the rough skin of his knuckles. “And that’s just the way everyone’s romantic life is — every relationships end in disaster until you eventually find the right one. Don’t you think we deserve a shot?”

Steve’s eyebrows turned up and he looked away from her, finding it more and more difficult to deny them this. “You’ll think less of me once you know. I’ve…been around a bit.”

That might have been true two years ago, when Barb had rattled off a list of Steve’s former conquests to her. Now, she just reached up to cradle the apple of his cheek and gently tilt his head to look at her once more. “Steve, there are seven billion people on the planet. You could have gotten with every single one of them and I wouldn’t care as long as you chose me in the end.”

Steve thinned his mouth to try and hide the small wobble to his lip. “All seven billion? Even if I banged your dad?”

Nancy sneered and lightly smacked him in the shoulder. “Don’t be gross.”

Steve snickered and discreetly wiped at his eye with his thumb. “Sorry.”

“So?” Nancy asked, hooking her arms around his midsection. “Gonna give me a chance, big guy?”

Resting his palms down on her thin shoulders, Steve shot her one last nervous look, but she could tell that she had successfully hooked him. “There is one more…complication when it comes to dating me.”

Huffing in frustration, Nancy waved away his concerns. “I’ll do anything I have to do. I…I really care about you, Steve. Let me prove it to you.”

With an endearingly shy smile, Steve nodded. Unable to contain herself, Nancy got up on her tippy-toes and pressed a lightning-quick peck against his lips.

Despite it being the most PG-rated kiss of her life, Nancy felt jittery and lightheaded as she dropped back down flat on her feet. Steve was similarly affected, touching his fingers to his lips as if he couldn’t believe what had just happened and staring at her like she had hung the moon and the stars.

Nancy’s ecstatic grin dimmed when she saw Steve’s wince with a mumbled ‘oh shit.’

“What is it?” Nancy placed a concerned hand on his bicep.

“I forgot that the first kiss with someone new is what sets them off,” Steve groaned, raking his fingers through his hair.

“Sets who off?” Nancy asked, baffled.

As if in response to her query, a set of giant neon red words flickered into existence above their heads in the night sky.

HERE COMES A NEW CHALLENGER

Nancy’s gaze drifted past the floating words to the clouds in the sky which were shifting and parting as dozens of humanoid figures descended from the heavens.

She squinted, trying to make out any features of the shadowy masses as they all approached and landed one by one in the nearby football field.

Nancy curiously headed towards the entrance, barely registering Steve’s warning to do otherwise. As she got closer, each of the floodlights around the bleachers snapped on, bathing the entire field in light.

Now that everything was lit up Nancy could see that the beings that had fallen to the earth were…cheerleaders?

About twenty cheerleaders, give or take. Each one had a fluttery set of angel wings and a halo floating above their heads. They were clothed in the familiar Hawkin’s High cheerleading uniform, save for a white cloth bandaged around their eyes.

And they were all stood in a horizontal line, directly facing her.

“Uh…Can I help you?” Nancy shouted from a healthy twenty feet away.

She fought the urge to clap, impressed, when all of the girls sparked their pom-poms together like flint and steel, setting them alight in their hands.

One angelic cheerleader in the middle stepped forward. “Give me a C!”

“C!” The rest of them repeated in unison.

“Give me an H!”

“H!”

”Give me an R!”

”R!”

“Give me an I!”

“I!”

“Give me an S!”

“S!”

“Give me an S!”

“S!”

“Give me a Y!”

“Y!”

“What’s that spell?!” The cheerleader roared, as they all held their flaming pom-poms skyward.

“Chrissy?” Nancy incredulously asked, looking up at the rumbling clouds. “What the hell?”

One last person fell from the sky, not bothering to gently descend as the others had. This figure dive-bombed from the clouds with a quintuple-corkscrew front-flip, creating a massive crater in the field where they landed.

Nancy held her arm in front of her face, shielding her eyes from the massive shockwave. When she looked back up she saw Hawkin’s head cheerleader, Chrissy Cunningham, glaring at her with a gold necklace of the number seven hanging around her neck, surrounded by her choir of angels.

Before Nancy could ask what the ever-loving fuck was going on, Chrissy similarly sparked up her pom-poms and stepped towards Nancy ominously.

“With each life we snuff out, we light up one pom-pom in the fallen’s memory,” Chrissy’s sweet voice rang out like wind chimes. “Together, our holy fires make for a veritable light show of blessed agony!”

“Uh…Okay?”

“But you, Nancy Wheeler!” Chrissy pointed a burning pom-pom at her threateningly, ignoring the interruption. “I shall make certain that your flame burns the brightest!”

The angels behind Chrissy began their routine, hopping in place and cheering as several of them dove into back-handsprings and cartwheels. “Your time is up — You’re out of luck! Nancy Wheeler, you are fucked! Goooooo Chrissy!”

With an enraged valkyrie shriek Chrissy leaped forward, lunging directly at Nancy with her burning fist poised to run her through.

Nancy held her hands up in a ‘T,’ the universal time-out gesture. “Sorry, Chrissy! Can you stop for a sec?”

Chrissy’s war cry abruptly cut short as she skidded to a stop, leaving a burning trail in the grass behind her. “What’s up?”

“Thanks,” Nancy gave her a grateful smile, leaning forward. “Can I just ask why you’re trying to murder me right now?”

The bubbly girl tilted her head to the side confusedly. “Did Steve not tell you?”

Nancy glanced back at the boy in question as he worriedly watched everything through the chainlink fence surrounding the football field. “I think he may have been about to, but I cut him off,” she smiled regretfully.

Chrissy’s eyes lit up in understanding. “Oh, did you just get together? Like, just now?”

“Yeah…” Nancy looked at the other girl warily. “How did you know—“

“Congratulations!” Chrissy beamed at her, giving her a friendly touch on the shoulder. “Well, I mean NOT congratulations, obviously — because I’m one of his evil exes, but you know what I mean.”

“Sorry — evil exes?” Nancy balked.

Chrissy snapped her fingers and a floating scroll appeared and unfurled before Nancy’s eyes, revealing a lengthy contract titled ‘The League of Evil Exes.’ It appeared as though seven different people had each signed the bottom of the page with a small red X.

The cheerleader waited politely as Nancy grabbed the parchment and skimmed through the details of the contract.

“It says here that I have to fight to the death with…seven people?” Nancy incredulously looked up from the paper at Chrissy.

“You got it, sugar!” Chrissy confirmed, before proceeding to sucker punch Nancy with a vicious uppercut, leaving a flaming trail in the wake of the arc of her strike, sending Nancy flying twenty feet back into the fence.

“Oh, Jesus! Nancy!” Steve fell to his knees, placing a reassuring palm on Nancy’s back through the chainlink. “Why don’t we just call it off and you can forget all about this shit, huh?”

Nancy took several heaving breaths, spitting blood from her split lip to the side before looking back at Steve. “The only way I can be with you is if I do this?”

Steve nodded resignedly, offering her a sad smile. “Yeah, way more trouble than it’s worth, huh? So let’s just—“

“I’m doing it.” Nancy stood back up, dusting herself off and rolling her eyes when she saw Chrissy happily waving at her in the distance. “You’re not getting rid of me that easily, Harrington.”

“But it’s dangerous,” Steve frowned, looking frustrated that she wasn’t understanding. “You could get hurt…”

Nancy leaned forward and carefully kissed him on his forehead from where it was leaning against the fence. “You’re worth fighting for. Don’t you dare ever imply otherwise in front of me again.”

She turned away from Steve’s silently awestruck expression, rolling up her sleeves as she marched her way back over to Chrissy and her underlings. Nancy would have to smooch some self-worth into that boy once she had settled things here. Despite his carefully crafted cool guy image, Steve seemed to have no idea how much of a catch he was.

“Gosh, sorry!” Chrissy fussed over Nancy when she saw her bloody lip. “I’m just doing my job!”

“Yeah,” Nancy frowned. “Me too.”

Nancy jumped forward with a brutal bicycle kick, returning the favour from earlier and sending Chrissy careening back into the angelic cheerleading squad behind her.

The girls caught their leader, tossing her back up into the air so that she could flip and land back on her feet. “Looks like it’s game time, girls! Let’s show Nancy Wheeler the true power of school spirit!”

“Go Tigers!” They shouted in chorus as several of their rank jumped up to spin into the air and toss their flaming pom-poms in Nancy’s direction like makeshift fireballs.

Nancy dashed and dodged through the incoming fire, making short work of two nearby stragglers. The angels howled and burst into clouds of white feathers as Nancy cut a swathe through them.

One of the girls took flight, maneuvering herself out of Nancy’s reach and landing behind her. From her new position, the cheerleader hooked her arms under Nancy’s and locked her hands behind Nancy’s neck, leaving her stuck in place with her midsection totally exposed.

Nancy recognized both the tanned skin of the girls arms and the small scar on her palm from a sewing accident in home economics class. “Becca? Is that you?”

“Hi, Nancy!” Becca chirped next to her ear. “It’s so good to see you! Is that a new top?”

“Huh?” Nancy looked down to examine her striped jumper. “Oh, thanks. Yeah, it was on sale at Spencer’s…”

“The colour really suits you,” Becca smiled before snarling and yelling over at her friends. “I’ve got her! Gut the bitch, Chrissy!”

“Nice one, Rebecca!” With a flash of her pearly white wings, Chrissy swooped over and began hammering dozens of rapid-fire punches to Nancy’s torso.

Out of sheer desperation, Nancy drove the back of her skull backwards into Becca’s face, freeing her arms as the girl exploded into a mess of downy soft feathers.

Before Becca’s halo could clatter to the ground, Nancy grabbed it and managed to hook it around Chrissy’s neck, pulling back hard to choke the life out of her.

Chrissy gagged, taking flight once more to try and shake Nancy off of her. “Get the mascot, girls!”

Back on the ground, the remaining cheerleaders bundled together and shook their pom-poms together in a summoning ritual. Chrissy drove one of her elbows back into Nancy’s ribs, causing her to lose her grip on the halo and begin the long, long fall back down to earth.

As Nancy was falling towards the group of angels, they all shouted “Goooooooo Tigers!” and pulled their pom-poms back. A massive tiger materialized and burst out from the middle of their joined arms — leaping into the air to try and catch Nancy in its’ mouth.

Nancy corrected her course mid-air, twisting her body around so that she straddled the tiger’s back. She grabbed the gigantic feline by the scruff of its neck and it instantly fell under her dominion. That trick worked on all kitties, no matter how big they were.

The rest of the cheerleading team panicked and scrambled to avoid Nancy as she drifted the tiger around the football field, encouraging it to swipe and chomp at any girls that fell within its range.

Nancy hopped off of the tiger, picking up a stray feather and shaking it enticingly like she would a cat toy. The tiger’s eyes excitedly tracked the movement of the feather and she tossed it back into the pile with the rest of them.

The tiger hopped into the pile of dead angel feathers and began playing and rolling around in them, thoroughly distracted and effectively removed from the altercation for now.

Nancy limped over to a now pouting Chrissy who was rubbing at her sore throat. “First you sucker punch me, then you have all your friends gang up on me, and now you sic a tiger on me?” Nancy shook her head. “How much more do you intend to cheat?”

“Me?!” Chrissy yelled, looking truly upset for the first time since the fight started. She pointedly fiercely at Steve. “He’s the one who cheated!”

Nancy’s eyebrows quirked up and she turned to glance at Steve who was frowning ashamedly down at his sneakers.

The rest of the world apart from her and Steve faded away to black as he locked eyes with Nancy. Despite the fact that he was whispering to her from across the field, she could somehow hear every word crystal clear.

“Chrissy Cunningham was my first girlfriend,” Steve admitted. “When I was a freshman I saw starting high school as an opportunity to be whoever I wanted to be. And I really wanted to be cool…”

An image formed behind Steve of himself as a young boy — shorter, stockier and notably lacking his iconic haircut. Nancy absently mused that she wanted to pinch his cheeks.

“No, actually, I didn’t want to just be cool,” Steve clarified as the image of the boy behind him shifted so that he was now reverently staring down at a crown resting in his pudgy hands. “I wanted to rule the place.”

‘King Steve,’ Nancy thought.

“The first step in doing that was getting the cutest girl in my grade to go out with me…I didn’t even know anything about Chrissy, I just knew that my dad was always telling me that all great men had a beautiful lady hanging off their arm,” Steve scoffed, looking ashamed with himself.

“What happened?” Nancy looked back over her shoulder at where Chrissy stood frozen in place.

“We dated for a month and everyone thought I was the shit, just like I had hoped. But me and Chrissy had nothing in common and…one day she caught me kissing someone else in the gym after school.” The floating projection changed to reflect Steve’s words, showing a young bracefaced Chrissy running away from a guilty looking young Steve with tear tracks staining her face.

“The whole thing ended up affecting her performance in class and she ended up having to repeat the year…all because of me,” Steve shook his head. “To this day, it’s the worst thing I’ve ever done.”

“You were thirteen, Steve…” Nancy wanted to walk over there and wipe the sorrowful look off his face.

“That’s no excuse,” Steve firmly stated. “But you’re right. I was a stupid kid who had no idea what he was doing. It’s not an excuse — just an explanation. And I need you to believe that I would never do anything like that again.”

“Of course I believe you.” Anyone with eyes could see that King Steve had long since been dead and buried. All that was left now was Steve Harrington and that was more than enough for Nancy.

“Thank you,” Steve gave her a bittersweet, grateful smile as the world came back into focus around her.

Nancy sighed and turned in place to face her opponent once more. “Chrissy, I know you’re angry but all of this happened over five years ago. I’m not saying that you have to forgive Steve but you have to let it go.”

“You think I don’t want to?” Chrissy huffed in exasperation, frowning at her. “It’s that stupid pact that I signed! As long as he’s in charge of the league of evil exes I’m contractually obligated to keep fighting Steve’s new dates…”

Nancy zeroed in on that new piece of information Chrissy had revealed to her. “As long as who is in charge?”

Shuddering, Chrissy fixed her with a deadly serious look. “Pray that you never find out.”

Nancy gulped. She wished she could just skip all this nonsense and make out with Steve in the back of a movie theatre like regular teenager did. She threw her hands up in the air dejectedly. “Well, Jesus, Chrissy! I don’t want to have to kill you over this!”

“Well, it’s not like I’ll be dead-dead or anything,” Chrissy shrugged before looking at Nancy quizzically. “Uh, you know that in fights with evil exes, whenever one person ‘dies’ they just wake up at home afterwards with a killer headache, right?”

“Oh! Yeah…I knew that,” Nancy lied unconvincingly.

Chrissy’s jaw dropped as she gawped at Nancy in horror. “Oh my god! You’ve been trying to kill me for real this entire time? What are you, a psycho?”

“You flew down from the sky and summoned a tiger to attack me!” Nancy fired back, crossing her arms defensively.

“Wow…” Chrissy looked at her consideringly, eyes flitting over to where Steve stood far behind her. “You must really like him.”

Nancy nodded softly. “I do.”

Offering a slightly melancholic smile, Chrissy stood up straighter. “I’m glad. Part of me is always going to be sore over what he did…but I forgave him years ago. With how much he’s worked to be a better person, I think he deserves to be happy.”

Fighting back the urge to do something stupid, like hugging the person currently trying to kill her, Nancy smiled back at Chrissy. “I think so too. Listen, I’m going to deal with this League of Evil Exes bullshit. And then you’ll finally be able to move on with your life.”

“I’ll hold you to that!” Chrissy extended her hand forward for Nancy to shake with dangerously innocent doe eyes.

Nancy snorted, smacking the offered hand away. “Not falling for that again. Getting suckered once was embarrassing enough…”

Chrissy’s eyes shined with laughter as her cheeks dimpled. “Now you’re learning, hun! Let’s finish this!”

Nancy and Chrissy charged simultaneously and clashed in the middle, their closed fists smacking against each other. They traded quick strikes for a moment before Chrissy managed to cartwheel behind Nancy, lock her arms around her waist and flip her backwards with a german suplex.

As Nancy was trying to catch her breath she heard Chrissy yell “formation!”

What was left of Chrissy’s cheer squad sluggishly assembled themselves into a human pyramid. Nancy watched in horror as Chrissy bounded up her pile of friends and jumped up at the apex, leaping two stories in the air and hurtling back down to earth with a diving atomic elbow drop.

Nancy just barely managed to roll out of the impact zone as Chrissy pounded into the spot she had been laying in not a second earlier, sending dirt and grass flying everywhere.

They both scrambled to their feet and Chrissy yelled “Formation!” once again.

One of the battered cheerleaders leaped feet-first towards them and Chrissy grabbed her by the ankles, spinning her around in a circle.

With each rotation, the Cheerleader tried to grab at Nancy with outstretched hands. When Nancy back-stepped out of her range yet another cheerleader jumped in to extend the chain by one.

Nancy kept backing up further and further away, as Chrissy kept adding more of her teammates to the barrel of monkeys chain of cheerleaders she was spinning around.

Chrissy increased the velocity of her spins, forcing Nancy to avoid the stream of cheerleaders by ducking underneath them. On the next go around she tried to hop over them like a skipping rope but the girl on the end of the chain had managed to finally grab her by the legs with a victorious sneer.

“Oh shit.”

Nancy was spun around the entire length of the football field at speeds that she was pretty sure broke the sound barrier and then the cheerleader let go of the grip she had on Nancy’s calves, sending her soaring through the air, crashing into the maintenance shed at the end of the field.

The shabby shack crumbled under the force of the impact, crashing down around her. Nancy could just barely hear the girls cheering from underneath the rubble.

“We beat her red — down in the shed! Nancy Wheeler’s surely dead! Goooooo Chrissy! Woo!”

“Yeah, go Tigers, bitch…” Nancy groaned, struggling to lift herself up off her belly. When she forced her head up her eyes immediately locked on to one of the tools the school custodian had left in the shed, as the moonlight reflected off a set of sharp metal teeth. “Groovy…”

Chrissy and her friends’ early celebration was cut short by the unmistakeable roar of a chainsaw revving to life. Their heads slowly turned to the side, watching as sparks flew when Nancy Wheeler sawed her way out of the busted shack.

The bloodied girls looked to Chrissy for guidance, who merely shrugged helplessly in response. “I’m the head cheerleader…you guys go first!”

The six remaining angels reluctantly began flipping towards the shed. Nancy set the chainsaw on the ground and the teeth caught on the earth, causing the chainsaw to rapidly putter forward along the ground on its own accord.

Nancy hopped onto the handle of the chainsaw, riding it along the ground like a motorized skateboard. As the cherubic cheerleaders approached, Nancy’s face screwed up in concentration as she ollie’d the chainsaw into the air, meeting them halfway.

Flicking her back foot outwards, Nancy kick-flipped the chainsaw, causing the whirring blade to spin wildly, cutting down all six of the cheerleaders in one fell swoop. Nancy rolled forward as she hit the ground, catching the chainsaw in her open arms and pointing it at a surrendering Chrissy.

Chrissy held her hands up high, trying to back away from Nancy as she stalked forth, chainsaw in hand. “But I’m a cheerleader!”

“Oh yeah?” Nancy cocked an eyebrow. “Well, welcome to halftime!”

Nancy swung the chainsaw up, grinding it up the whole length of Chrissy’s body, bisecting her down the middle. Pink sparkles and glitter erupted from Chrissy’s body before Nancy spun around and thrusted her heel forward, kicking both halves of her body and sending them sailing through the end zone at the back of the field.

Fireworks shot out from the the goalposts as the NFL theme song began playing. Nancy let out a deep sigh of relief and dropped the chainsaw, watching with tired eyes as it sped off the school grounds and down the street.

Whoops.

Oh well. Nancy hoped there would be no repercussions to accidentally allowing a rogue chainsaw to roam free.

Nancy limped her way back over to the entrance, patting the tiger on his belly as she did. She barely had time to register Steve jogging towards her before he was lifting her up into the air by her waist.

“That was so badass!” Steve crowed, spinning her around in a circle. Nancy laughed at his enthusiasm, threading her fingers into his thick head of hair and leaning down to press a kiss to the crown of his head.

“Thanks! But can you let me down? My ribs…” Nancy winced.

Steve immediately placed her back on the ground, fussing over her cuts and bruises worriedly. “God, Nance, I’m so sorry…”

“It’s alright,” she shuffled closer, resting a hand on his broad chest. “It’s nothing serious, really! I just need to ice it and I’ll be good in a few days.”

Her assurances didn’t seem to do much to comfort Steve, as he examined one of the cuts on her cheek and patted her mussed up hair into place. “It’s just — you know there’s six more exes still, yeah? I hate the thought of you getting roughed up because of me…”

Nancy gently tugged him down by his collar, pressing a lingering kiss to his soft lips, allowing herself to savour it more than she had with their fleeting first kiss from earlier.

“For you? I’d go up against the whole world, Steve,” she gave him a tiny little reproachful nip to his lower lip in warning. “Learn to live with it.”

Steve finally smiled that dopey heartsick smile she loved so dearly. She wished she could bottle up Steve’s happiness and keep it safe in her pocket.

“Aye, aye, ma’am,” Steve agreed, giving her a small peck on the bridge of her nose before gently placing an arm over her shoulder, being extra careful of her wounds. “Ready for that ride home?”

“Please,” Nancy sighed gratefully, slipping her own arm around his narrow waist. “I swear, as soon as I get home I’m going to soak in the bath for an hour.”

Steve looked down at her faux-suggestively. “Oh yeah? There room for two in there?”

Nancy made a big show of pretending to try to escape his grasp, grateful that it was probably too dark out for him to see the colour spread across her face. “Oh my god, I changed my mind. I’m breaking up with you…”

Her boyfriend’s responding laughter echoed through the empty parking lot as they trailed away. Unbeknownst to the young couple, a pair of crimson red eyes were watching from the shadows of the nearby tree-line.

The watcher observed as Steve opened the passenger side door of his beamer and lent Nancy Wheeler a hand in getting into her seat. As the BMW eventually pulled out and drove away, the burning red eyes receded back into the darkness of the woods with a low metallic growl.

And if anybody had bothered to look up at the stars that night they might have seen a constellation of seven small exes, before one of them blinked out of existence.

#stancy #steve harrington #nancy wheeler #steve x nancy #stranger things #strancy fic #my posts

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stancy-simp · 2 years

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Maybe I Never Stopped [NSFW]

Steve x Nancy —10,801 words— [Read on Ao3]

Summary: Ever since they had joined forces to bring down Vecna, Nancy and Steve had quickly begun to worm their way back into each other’s hearts.

While everyone was sticking together at Murray’s place to plan their next move, things finally come to a head when Nancy sees something that she wasn’t meant to witness.

TAGS: Nancy POV, tooth-rotting fluff, crack treated seriously, comedy, exhibitionism, getting back together

Nancy Wheeler had always been an early riser, much to her family’s chagrin.

While Karen, Ted and Mike would still be grumbling to themselves, wiping the crust out of their eyes and dragging their feet out of bed, she would already be finished getting ready for the day without a hair out of place. Often, the only company she’d have at around six a.m. would be Holly, who still had that childlike early morning energy which Nancy had never outgrown.

This was the situation she found herself in after she woke up in Murray’s secret getaway as the sun was still rising and the rest of their ragtag group was still getting some well-earned shuteye.

Nancy quietly padded down the hallway on bare feet to put a pot of coffee on for everybody when she saw something out of the corner of her eye and realized that she was not the only soul awake for once.

Tucked away in one of the guest rooms that they had both shared the night before, Steve and Robin were sitting next to each other on the edge of one of the cots, facing away from Nancy. She had just been about to go and wish them a good morning when she noticed that Robin was rubbing a hand across Steve’s back as his shoulders gently shook up and down.

Nancy abruptly froze in place and stared in a sort of horrified fascination as Steve crumpled forward to rest the palms of his hands against his forehead as he quietly wept.

It felt sort of like the first time she had seen her mother cry. Before you ever see a parent cry for yourself you vaguely acknowledge that it must have happened at some point, but witnessing it firsthand still feels surreal. Because up to that point you might have viewed them as unflappable pillars of strength. And when that person who you’ve built up in your mind as practically invincible shows that deep of a crack in their armour it can shake you to your core.

That’s how Nancy felt watching Steve break down. Because as long as she’d known him she had never seen him like that. It was just a fact of life — the sun rose every day, water was wet, the sky was blue and Steve Harrington Did Not Cry.

For a split second Nancy foolishly considered just sprinting away from the scene playing out before her, yet quickly found her resolve and moved to find out what was troubling him.

As if she had sensed Nancy approaching, Robin tilted her head to the side and made eye contact with her. She discreetly shook her head at Nancy with a tight-lipped smile and nodded back at the door. Nancy understood the gesture for what it meant.

‘It’s not your fault, but it’s not something you can help with. You should go.’

Nancy couldn’t help but frown at the insinuation, feeling sort of offended. Over the past few weeks since they had linked back up to take the fight to Creel she had felt as if she and Steve had made a lot of headway in repairing their fractured rapport.

She had been gearing up to protest and check on Steve despite the warning until she truly considered why Robin believed she wouldn’t be able to help him. And the only answer was one Nancy hated to consider — that Steve was crying because of her.

Feeling put off balance, Nancy gave Robin an anxious thumbs up and stealthily left for the kitchen once more.

After she put the coffee on she sat down at the table and mindlessly thumbed her way through the previous morning’s newspaper, lost in her thoughts. Just yesterday night the kids had started a late evening movie marathon but quickly fell asleep. Eventually, Hopper, Joyce and Murray had also left the room because they were arguing over something or other. Then Robin had given them both A Look and went to bed as well, leaving the two of them alone in a room with a bunch of sleeping kids.

Just those few short hours she had spent quietly goofing around and watching cheesy action flicks with Steve had been like a balm for her weary soul. She couldn’t remember the last time she had laughed that much or felt so utterly at peace.

For her to then find Steve supposedly weeping over her the following morning when she had thought things were finally starting to heal between them was concerning, very much so.

But it wasn’t as if she could have just broached the subject to him out of nowhere, she had no idea how to kickstart that minefield of a conversation.

With no solution to her worries in sight, Nancy fidgeted in place as she waited for more people to get up — eager for any sort of distraction. This was a rare occasion where she did hate waking up early.

******

Several hours passed and people slowly began to crawl out of the woodwork and assemble in the living area.

They were all taking one last day of rest before putting their heads together to try and figure out how to deal with the gigantic crimson-red faults that were running through Hawkins and spewing deadly upside down cooties everywhere.

Because that was their lives now, apparently — puzzling out how to close portals to hell that were kilometres long while the actual military just kept a perimeter around the town’s border and shooed reporters away.

Nancy was sitting with Hopper, Joyce and the kids in the living room, half-watching Thundercats and idly talking shop with Hopper about each of their preferred sidearms.

Their chat was interrupted by the sound of stifled grunting coming from Steve’s room. Nancy jerked up in her seat, fighting her reflex to go to him when she remembered what she saw earlier that morning. It might not be her place anymore, she thought, biting at her lip.

Eventually, Eleven was the one who decided to stand up and walk over to the bedroom. “I will check on Steve.”

Hopper’s eyes widened comically at his daughter’s statement. “No. No! You do not — come back here!”

Sitting in the chair beside the man, Joyce rolled her eyes and smacked Jim’s arm. “Oh, calm down, you big baby.”

Hopper pushed her hand away like a big hairy toddler and tried to stand up to no avail. The legs were up on his lazy boy, causing him to flop around like a beached fish as he tried to escape his seat. “Goddamn chair!” He quickly gave up on trying to stand and reached down the side of the chair, frantically cranking the handle to lower the legs.

“Seriously, Jim,” Joyce sighed. “Just let the girl see if he’s okay. What’s your problem?”

Turning his wild eyes on her, Jim sped up the arm turning the handle. “My problem is that we just heard a teenaged boy, alone in his room, grunting, and now my damn daughter is going to go open his door.”

Nancy can’t help the light pink that blooms on her cheeks as Joyce’s eyes widened and she conceded the point. “Okay, yeah…Maybe you should stop her.”

“You think?” Hopper growled as his feet finally touched the carpet and he hurled himself forward with the urgency of someone sent to disarm a nuclear warhead.

Nancy watched with a wince as Hopper failed to reach El in time. The girl casually opened up Steve’s room and her face turned bright red at whatever it was she saw inside.

Somewhat worried for the young girl’s virtue, Nancy tilted her body and craned her head to the right in order to peer through the doorway. She was relieved to see that Steve was merely shirtless and that his hands weren’t between his legs.

Still, Hopper bodily picked Jane up by her shoulders and set her back down far away from the door. He bent down at the knees to look El in the eyes. “What did I say about looking at Steve?”

“If I look at Steve for too long, you will revoke my Miami Vice privileges,” Jane dutifully recited, still red in the face.

“And?” Hopper prompted, squinting.

“And my Magnum P.I. privileges.”

“And?”

“And my Starsky and Hutch privileges.”

“So, what are we going to do?” Hopper stood back up and looked down at her with his arms crossed.

El sighed despondently and scuffed her socks against the floor. “Not look at Steve.”

“We’re going to not look at Steve. Good.” Hopper tweaked her ear and shook his head, leaving the room mumbling something under his breath about impressionable daughters and needing a drink.

Jane trodded back over and let out a shuddering breath as she plopped down next to Nancy. “Pretty…” She murmured, eyes flicking back to Steve’s doorway.

Nancy barely held back a snort at that as Mike squawked indignantly from across the room. ‘Tell me about it kid,’ she thought to herself.

“Welp,” Nancy stood, enjoying the feeling of her joints popping as she stretched. “Guess I’ll go see if he’s alright then.”

“Wait.” El reached out and gently grazed Nancy’s wrist with her fingertips before she could move away. “Nancy. Is Steve your…boyfriend again?”

Nancy’s amusement and desire to tease overpowered any discomfort the question might have otherwise caused her and she smiled down at El fondly. “He is not my boyfriend. Why do you ask?”

El’s face betrayed nothing as she blinked up at Nancy with big innocent doe eyes. That is, until a few seconds of weighted silence passed and her cheeks flared up again. “No reason…”

Nancy smirked to herself as she walked away and heard Mike’s offended squawking increase in pitch by a few octaves. She leaned against the frame of Steve’s door and knocked against the wall to get his attention. “Hey. Everything going okay in here?”

“Huh?” Steve glanced up at her from under his bangs and god, she thinks it should be criminal for someone to look so good. “Oh! Mornin’, Nance. Yeah, I’m fine. Just…” He held up the sweater he had in his hands then gestured vaguely at his injured torso.

Ah, he couldn’t get his top on. It was practically tradition at this point that at least once a year Steve got mangled badly enough to impact his ability to function for a month or two.

The demobat bites didn’t end up killing him, but they absolutely did result in a pretty nasty infection. She couldn’t help thinking about…about Eddie. As she remembered the sight of Steve getting choked and assaulted by those very same bats she bit back a shudder at the idea of Steve meeting the same fate, had they not intervened when they did.

And after feeling so helpless when she found Steve crying earlier in the day, she jumped at the opportunity to be useful somehow. “I’ll help you put it on!”

Steve fiddled with his hands and looked to the side. “Ah, you don’t have to. I mean, I can just call Robin in or…”

Right. He could get Robin to help. Platonic with a P Robin Buckley who was evidently the only one permitted to help Steve Harrington anymore. Nancy frowned and barely fought the urge to pout. “I’m just helping you put a sweater on, Steve…It’s not a big deal.”

“…No, yeah. Totally.” Steve nodded. “It’s just that—“ He faltered when he saw the look on her face, shooting her a bashful grin and handing over the sweater. “You know what, sure. Thanks. Thank you. Uh, appreciate the help.”

Nancy smiled when he obediently held his arms towards her and let her slip the garment over his fluffy head and down his body, only hissing slightly when the hem grazed over his bandages.

Her eyebrows twitched up as she got a good look at the sweater now that he had it on. To say it wasn’t his usual style would be an understatement. It was bright orange, several sizes too big to the point where he was practically swimming in it, the stitching was uneven and it said ‘STEVE’ in bold brown letters across the chest. And the second ‘E’ was crooked. It was probably the ugliest sweater Nancy had ever seen.

Steve seemed to notice her examining it and sheepishly coughed into his fist. “Uh, Mrs H made it for me, so.”

“Mrs H?”

“Dustin’s mom,” he clarified with a grin.

Jesus Christ. Nancy barely resisted the urge to reach forward and squish his cheeks together.

Instead, she offered him her arm to help him stand up and her breath caught in her throat when his larger hand gripped her own. It felt as if little flickers of electricity were dancing all along her arm and up into her chest.

When she pulled him up he stumbled slightly, bringing his face dangerously close to hers as she steadied him. Suddenly, as she looked into his warm hazel eyes, what she wanted more than anything was to mend whatever it was that was still broken between them. “Why were you crying this morning?”

She winced at her frank question as soon at the words left her mouth, but she was also glad to have just put it out there rather than dancing around it.

Steve floundered for a second from having that sprung on him before shuffling his feet in place. “Wasn’t crying,” he sulked.

Nancy rolled her eyes and cocked her hip. “Okay, why were you ‘not crying’ then?”

Steve looked as if he’d rather be anywhere else in the world other than right there having this conversation. It frustrated Nancy to no end. “Steve?”

The boy sighed and looked her in the eye. “It’s just — I had a really good time yesterday. Really good. With you.”

“And that…made you cry?”

“Wasn’t crying,” Steve insisted.

“Steve.”

He looked up at the stucko ceiling and let out a deep sigh through his nose. “It’s just that…I’m confident that we’re going to beat this upside down nonsense, right? Like, for good this time. I don’t know why, but I have a strong feeling we’re finally going to put an end to this shit soon.”

Nancy nodded along. She felt similarly at this point. They had come too far to fail now, had sacrificed too much, and could practically be considered professional monster hunters at this point. “And?”

“And,” Steve continued with a sad downward tilt to his lips. “Once we put Vecna in the ground and close up Satan’s asscrack you won’t have any reason to hang around me anymore.”

Nancy sputtered for a moment, struggling to find the words to respond. Steve couldn’t honestly think she’d just drop off the face of the earth once they’d dealt with with Creel! “Of course we can keep hanging out! Why do you assume I’d want to stop?”

Steve scoffed as he put his hands on his hips and shrugged. “Like we hung out so much after that demodog fiasco when El shut down the lab?”

“That was different,” Nancy frowned, not backing down from the challenge in his eyes. “We had just—“

We had just broken up, she wanted to say. She tactfully avoided saying it outright but she could tell that Steve filled in the blanks. “Okay, how about after Starcourt? It’s been almost a year and whenever we ran into each other before Vecna you looked at me like I was friggin’ contagious.”

“I was just…busy! With school!” She tried, tucking some stray hair behind her ear. “I would have spent time with you if you’d have asked…”

“I did ask, Nancy.” Steve huffed, scratching at his undoubtedly itchy sweater. “After like the third or fourth time you told me you were busy I took the hint. Last thing I wanted to be was some pathetic dickhead hounding you for a moment of your time like a peasant.”

She hated this. She hated they were back to speaking like this when they’d been getting along so well previously. “That isn’t fair,” she whispered as lips pursed.

‘It isn’t fair because I was in a strained long distance relationship,’ she thought. ‘It isn’t fair because I was worried you would be too tempting.’

Once Steve noticed her distress she could see all of the fight drain from his body as he closed his eyes for a moment and then looked down at her with a fake smile. “Look. Just forget I said anything, yeah? We’re cool. I guess I’m just cranky from the Dracula bites and Robin’s chainsaw snoring.”

Nancy felt an abstract sense of panic spark inside her as he nudged his way past her and out into the hall — felt as if something precious was slipping through her fingers.

“Steve!” She followed along behind him, unwilling to let the conversation end on that note.

“Don’t wanna talk about it anymore,” Steve stated, staring resolutely ahead as he approached the living room where most of the crew was now watching Family Feud together.

“Well, too ba—“

“Hey!” Steve clapped his hands together with a bright smile, drawing everyone’s attention to him and effectively cutting her off. “You guys hungry? How ‘bout I fix us up an early lunch?”

The kids all whooped and hollered in agreement except for Mike, who was sending Steve a death glare, and Eleven, who was looking anywhere but Steve and fiddling with the ends of her hair.

“Great!” Steve clicked his tongue and shot a pair of finger guns at the group, not noticing Jane’s small gasp. “One round of Five-Star Harrington Specials coming up!”

“Five stars according to who?” Mike groused from where he was curled up in the couch with his arms crossed. “What makes it five stars anyway?”

Steve knowingly tapped the side of his nose. “Well, it must be my secret ingredient, obviously.”

“Which is?”

“Love,” Steve deadpanned.

“Oh my god,” Jane whispered, knuckles turning white as she twisted the fabric of her pyjama pants. “He puts love in the food, Mike…”

Steve left the room with a wave, paying no mind to Mike squeaking in distress. “Alright, I’m gonna go raid Murray’s pantry! Alone! By myself!”

“I’ll come with!” With a false cheery smile for the kids’ benefit, Nancy hurried to catch up with Steve, moving to stand in front of him. “Would you just talk to me?”

With a huff, Steve sidestepped her and entered the kitchen. “I told you it’s not a big deal so just drop it and—“

The two of them froze in place as Steve opened up Murray’s walk-in food pantry and found a man bound and tied up to a wooden chair inside of it.

“Uhh…” Steve helpfully provided, hand slack against the doorknob.

Nancy reached over and plucked a nearby can of creamed corn off the barren shelves and held it behind her back as the man’s wild eyes shot up at them. If push came to shove she was confident that she could throw the hefty can like a fastball and ding him straight in the temple from this range.

“Please…” The ragged looking man rasped, looking between the two of them pleadingly. “You have to get me out of here!”

“Who are you?” Nancy subconsciously went into mama bear mode and stepped forward to stand between the stranger and Steve.

“I have been kept captive in this depraved prison for years…” the man let out several hacking coughs, dipping his head down to wipe the spittle off his chin with his filthy shirt. “The man you call Murray — he keeps me locked in here with him as his pet! He makes me wear…outfits. Makes me talk to him as if I were his precious little boy…For the love of any god that is listening, please free me from this unending torment!”

Nancy and Steve share a brief horrified glance before they’re interrupted by the man wheezing out a long drawn-out laugh. “Is only joke! Yuri had you going though!” The man, Yuri apparently, performed a bunch of small hops in his chair so that his back was now facing them. “Okey-dokey, little yankee babies — come over here and cut Uncle Yuri loose, eh?”

Baffled, Steve scoffed and walked straight past Yuri to begin combing through what little food was left on the shelves. “Yuri — You’re that Russian prick that stabbed Hopper and Mrs Byers in the back. We’re not helping you, dude. So get that idea right out of your head.”

Yuri made an affronted face and blew a raspberry at Steve. “Stab in back? Who knew Americans were so sensitive? It was only a little bit of banter! Learn to take joke!”

Nancy leaned against the wall and looked down at the scraggly man in disbelief. “You drugged them and handed them over to the Russian government.”

“Bah, Yuri thought we moved past this little hiccup in friendship,” Yuri rolled his eyes and looked to the side. “You drug, kidnap and transport someone to KGB black ops torture jail one time and people never let you forget about it…”

Yuri’s eyes snapped to Steve when he clicked his teeth at the man. “Oh! Little yankee Bambi boy with big brown eyes Yuri gets lost in thinks he is so big on his high horse! You think you are so great with your fancy hairs — Yuri used to have hairs like you, you know. And all the girlies in the village would want to kiss Yuri on the mouth! Until one day, he develop eczema on his scalp and it ruin everything! Now Yuri have to use hygiene products for babies because everything else agitates his head. It can happen to you too, so don’t you look down on Yuri!”

Steve turned to look at Nancy with wide eyes, their spat momentarily forgotten. “Murray was right. The commie really doesn’t ever shut up.”

Nancy nodded sympathetically as Yuri dramatically reeled back in his seat. “Yuri is not communist!” The man pulled at the zip-ties which kept him fastened to his armrests. “You can not assume Yuri’s political beliefs solely due to his country of birth! This is blatant xenophobia and Yuri will not stand for it! You cut Yuri loose now so he can challenge you to a duel!”

Turning away from where he’d been rifling through a cupboard, Steve swivelled in place to point at Yuri. “Hey, hey! I am not xen…uh, xenophiliac!” Steve tilted his head towards Nancy and whispered to her from the corner of his mouth. “What is that?”

“Xenophobia,” she corrected. “It’s like racism, just…against whole nations rather than groups of certain people specifically.”

Eyebrows lifting in surprise, Steve merely nodded. “Oh, then yeah. I guess I am. I mean, fuck Russia, man. Seriously.”

Nancy let out a put-upon sigh as Yuri yelled “aha!” and snarled at Steve.

“Well, okay, no.” Steve admitted, scratching at the back of his neck consideringly. “Maybe not fuck all of Russia. I’m sure some people there are cool. But, like, if I did hate Russia I’d have good reason to.”

“What could possibly excuse your blatant bigotry, little boy?” Yuri huffed.

“Oh, I have plenty of reasons, but I can forgive all of them except for one.” Steve strutted over to the bound Russian, counting on his fingers. “Setting up a secret lab in Hawkins? I can forgive that. Torturing me for hours in a tiny sailor boy outfit? I can forgive that too. The cold war? Forgiven. But what I can never forgive…” Steve leaned down, deadly serious and practically nose-to-nose with Yuri. “I can never forgive that big blond asshole for killing Apollo Creed.”

It was satisfying to see Yuri’s expression wrinkle in confusion, even when Nancy was probably making the exact same face. “But…is only movie?”

Steve’s eyes widened in offence and he looked to Nancy for support. Nancy could only give him a half-shrug. “I mean it’s a great movie, Steve. But it is only a movie, it wasn’t a documentary…”

Looking as if he couldn’t believe what he was hearing, Steve turned away from her with both hands raised. “Nance, I’m going to let that slide because we have history, but you—“ Steve rested one hand on his hip and pointed down at Yuri with the other. “If I ever catch you besmirching the good name of Rocky Balboa again you’re cruisin’ for a bruisin’, man. And I’m not joking.”

Miraculously, that managed to shut Yuri up for a moment or two, so Steve went back to digging through the scraps of available food. After a while he breathed out a disappointed sigh. “It’s hopeless. I can’t make anything halfway decent with what’s left in here. I don’t think Murray was stocked up to accommodate ten-plus people staying here for over a week. We really cleaned him out…”

At this, Yuri perked back up. “You are hungry? If you let Yuri free he will bake you the most mouth-watering sharlotka you have ever eaten! My babushka’s recipe,” he puffed his chest out proudly.

Nancy and Steve simultaneously shot dry looks of contempt at Yuri, causing him to sweeten the deal. “You drive hard bargain, baby capitalists. Yuri bake you…two sharlotka! Final offer.”

“Give it up, mister.” Nancy shook her head at the man. Honestly, it was getting sad.

“Seriously, guy. Nobody here is letting you go until Hopper decides what to do with you.” Steve clapped his hands together, trying to get rid of the dust on them.

“Bah, to hell with you anyway!” Yuri shouted, twisting in his chair and hissing at them. “Oh, and by the way — Ivan Drago should have beaten that silly little Italian man in end of Rocky 4!”

Without a moment’s thought, Steve blindly reached out and grabbed a bottle of sriracha. As he stalked over to Yuri, Steve shook the bottle in his hand menacingly.

Yuri gulped, leaning back in the chair as far as he was able and looking at Steve with wide eyes. “You would not…It was only joke! You would not give Yuri…the spicy shampoo? Not your good friend Yuri!”

Nancy intervened, resting her hand on Steve’s shoulder. “I…have no idea what ‘the spicy shampoo’ is, but maybe we shouldn’t be torturing prisoners of war? There are kids down the hall.”

Reluctantly, Steve holstered his sriracha bottle as Yuri showered Nancy in praise. “Oh. Bless you, little зайка! Bless you! Come here so Yuri can tell you secret as reward for your kindness!”

“What? No.” Nancy’s nose scrunched up.

“C’mahn, Yuri’s arms are tied! What can he do? Is important secret, come close!”

She knew she shouldn’t, but Nancy’s curious nature tended to overpower her reasoning. It was no wonder she wanted to be a reporter. She crouched down to be eye level with Yuri, looking at him expectantly.

“Yuri’s secret…is that your little bald friend Murray is not the only one trained in martial arts. Now…feel the full force of my Yuri Kick!” Yuri looked at her fiercely and bucked in his chair. When he couldn’t kick his legs up under her chin as he had planned he tried again to no avail. After a few awkward seconds he glanced down and noticed that Murray had also place zip-ties around his ankles. “Hehe…whoopsie poopsie! Yuri forgot about those ones…”

Looking at Yuri incredulously with raised eyebrows, Nancy stood up and waved a hand at Steve. “Whatever. Give him the spicy shampoo.”

“Yes,” Steve hissed and pumped his first, twirling the sriracha bottle back into his palm like a revolver as he flicked the lid off with his thumb.

“No, no, no, no! Wait! It was only joke!” Yuri yelled, only for it to fall on deaf ears. Nancy watched with detached satisfaction as Steve began pouring a healthy dose of sriracha all over Yuri’s hair.

The two teens winced as the Russian’s wails soon echoed throughout the tiny pantry, practically piercing their eardrums. “I can’t believe you gave Yuri the spicy shampoo, you dirty rascal! After all we’ve been through! Gah! Yuri has sensitive scalp, he told you this! Fiend! My eczema! Oh, it burns like my hatred for you! This is most cruel and unusual punishment! The spicy shampoo has been outlawed in most countries for good reason! Aiiiiie!”

After giving Yuri one last look of condemnation as the man thrashed around, Steve set the bottle of sauce back down and left the room with Nancy tagging along.

The pantry door shut closed behind them, with the muffled shouting behind it being the only evidence that the past five minutes hadn’t been some bizarre fever dream. Nancy turned her head to look up at Steve. “Should we…feel bad about doing that?”

Steve solemnly met her gaze head on. “We have to be right in the middle of the action because we’re the warriors…And without some challenge, or some damn war to fight then the warrior may as well be dead.”

“Uh…” Nancy’s mouth twisted in confusion.

Steve’s eyes shifted left and then back again. “Apollo Creed?”

She shrugged her shoulders with an apologetic smile.

The boy rolled his eyes and walked away. “I can’t believe I ever dated you.”

Nancy’s smile turned more genuine when she realized he was mirroring her own teasing words from the night before. The smile faded when she realized that he was still trying to avoid talking with her.

“Where are you going now?” Nancy did a little jog to catch up with him as he fetched his car keys from the bowl next to the front door of the bunker.

“Gonna go for a grub run,” Steve explained, unlocking the door and heading up the stairs. “Someone’s gotta make sure the rug rats stay fed.”

Nancy smiled at him, squinting as her eyes adjusted to the daylight. “The grocery stores are probably just as empty as Murray’s pantry. People stocked up once the town cracked in half.”

“Yeah, that’s what I figured too.” Steve’s steps crunched over the asphalt as they walked over to his beamer. “But my place has plenty of food. Like, way more than we’ll ever use, especially since my parents have been away on business for months. So I was gonna drop by the house and just…take as much as I can fit in the trunk and the back seat.”

“Oh!” Nancy exclaimed, gulping at the mention of the Harrington residence. She hadn’t seen the place in two years. “Well, it’ll go faster with some help, right?”

“Nance…”

“Please.” She insisted, biting at the inside of her lip to keep it from shaking like some stupid little girl who can’t control herself. “Just — one car ride! Give me one car ride worth of talking and then, if you want, I won’t ever bring it up again.”

Steve sighed and looked at her sideways. “That isn’t fair. You’re doing the face.”

“What face?” She asked innocently, proceeding to do The Face even harder, pulling up her eyebrows in the centre and blinking up at him with wide eyes..

“Goddamnit. Fine!” He acquiesced, pointing at her. “One car ride! And it’s only a half-hour drive so…”

“That’s fine! Yes. I promise.” She clasped her hands together and nodded earnestly as Steve shook his head and opened the driver’s side door. Nancy cleared her throat and held her hand out. “Can I drive?”

Steve leaned his elbows against the roof of the BMW and raised an eyebrow at her. “Seriously?”

Nancy shrugged her other shoulder and shook her hand out imploringly. “C’mon, gimme. I do better at serious awkward car talks when I’m the one driving.”

“Gimme gimme never gets.”

Nancy cranked up the strength of The Face by by twice as much.

“Alright, alright! Jesus…” Steve casually tossed the keys over to her and she deftly swiped them in midair.

She noticed that Steve was gearing up to Dukes of Hazard slide over the hood of the car to the passenger side, but when she gave him an unimpressed look he puffed his cheeks out and walked around like a normal person, stomping his feet like a petulant child all the while.

They both slid into their seats and as soon as Nancy turned on the ignition the radio immediately began blasting whichever cassette Steve had been listening to when he had last been in the car, which was apparently The Jackson Five because:

“OH BABY, GIVE ME ONE MORE CHANCE! WON’T YOU PLEASE LET ME—“

Steve feverishly scrambled to pop the tape out of the cassette player, and then tried to play it cool by sniffing, running his hand through his hair and leaning his elbow on the open passenger window.

Across from him Nancy’s face was similarly flushed because those lyrics had been a bit…on the nose. If that had happened in one of her guilty pleasure romance novels she liked reading in her spare time she’d have thought the author was a hack.

Coughing into her fist, Nancy smoothly pulled out onto the road and started making her way to Steve’s. And if she took the scenic route to extend the length of the drive a little…well, she could blame it on the fact that she hadn’t driven over there for ages.

After a moment of driving passed in tense silence Nancy realized that she was the one who wanted to talk so, regretfully, she supposed that she’d have to be the one to get things going.

After taking a left that led them out of the covert, heavily forested area surrounding Murray’s, Nancy was afforded a clear view of the ominous black clouds looming over the horizon, the sky frequently flashing with neon red lightning.

Oddly enough, seeing the very real approaching threat of the upside down slowly creeping in the background was what gave her the confidence she needed to do this.

She was Nancy Fucking Wheeler. Even if the general population might never know it, she had helped to save the world multiple times over. Just last week she had coldly gunned down a Nightmare on Elm Street wannabe without batting an eye. She could handle having a talk with a pretty boy in a car. She would just have to approach it like she did the rest of her problems — by being proactive.

“I have a proposal.”

Steve held his hand out of the car and wiggled his fingers, feeling the breeze whip through them when he smiled at her. “Geez, Nancy. You’re moving awfully fast. Well, alright. But there had better be a big rock on the ring, I don’t come cheap.”

She turned her head away from the road for a moment to fix him with a dry smile. “Not that kind of proposal.”

“Hasn’t even been ten seconds since you proposed and you’re already calling the wedding off. Knew you had commitment issues — mama warned me about girls like you…” Steve tsked, turning to look out the window to unsuccessfully hide his own smile.

Nancy breathed a small laugh out her nose, infinitely grateful for Steve’s natural ability to ease tension whenever he wanted to. “Seriously, just hear me out. It took me a few weeks of some heavy introspection, but I think I…finally understand how I feel about things. But I still don’t totally understand what’s going on in here.” She blindly reached over to tap at the side of Steve’s head.

“Very few people do,” he nodded sagely. “Kind of a genius.”

“Steve.”

“I mean,” Steve sighed and turned to look at her. “Not to be rude or anything, but I feel like I was pretty clear with how I felt back when we were going all First Blood on Freddy Krueger…”

“That’s different,” she shook her head, eyes flicking over to him before making a righthand turn. “That was upside down talk.”

“Upside down talk?”

“You know, the kind of talking that we only do when we’re afraid we might die.” Nancy gulped, now the conversation was veering off into dangerous territory. “One of the things I’ve realized is that…people have to try to be more than the trauma they’ve experienced. It’s hard sometimes, for sure, but if the only things keeping people together are the bad times then…one day you might wake up and realize you never actually had that many good times.”

In her peripheral vision Nancy could see steve looking over at her with a confused frown. He didn’t understand but then, that made sense because she wasn’t talking about Steve. She discreetly wiped a tear from her eye and continued.

“I’m just saying that I want to hear what you have to say with a clear head, now that things are relatively calm and we aren’t fighting for our lives,” she clarified, glancing at Steve.

“That’s fair,” he nodded.

“Right,” she chirped, nervously thumbing at the steering wheel. “So my proposal is this — Just say everything that you feel you have to say. And I promise that for the duration of this car ride I will not get angry at anything you say to me, and it will not negatively affect how I look at you moving forward.”

Nancy meant for it to be an olive branch, but Steve looked sort of intimidated by the gesture. She supposed she could understand that. Being asked to completely bare your soul to someone was a daunting task.

But, some of the things Nancy Wheeler adored about Steve Harrington was that he never backed down from a challenge, and he always tried to understand what she was saying, even if sometimes it took him a moment to get there. “So…like, clear the air, you mean.”

“Right! Exactly. I just think…there’s been a lot of miscommunication. I think it’d be good to just get it all out there.”

There was a lengthy silence but Steve ultimately agreed. “Yeah, I can do that.”

Immediately after that they fell into another lapse of conversation and they both nervously laughed in sync..

“Sorry,” Steve chuckled, fiddling with the hem of his hideous sweater. “I have no idea where to start.”

“Hmm,” Nancy flicked the windshield wipers on as a few raindrops suddenly began pattering against the car. “How about all that stuff about the six little nuggets and the Winnebago?”

That managed to shock a sharp laugh out of Steve as he rolled up his window. “What, you want to lead with that?”

The laughter was contagious and Nancy felt the corners of her eyes crinkle as she smiled wide at his reaction. “Oh yeah, you know, just something light and easy to break the ice.”

She watched Steve’s grin fade to something gentler as he leaned his head against his window and observed the rain droplets drizzling down against it. “A little over a year ago there was one day where Mrs Byers asked me to watch Will for the evening.”

Nancy couldn’t help but frown at the abrupt change in topic, but took it in stride like she said she would. “Yeah?”

He nodded. “This was…maybe a week or two before I got the job at Scoops, I think. Joyce had to cover for someone and pull the graveyard shift at her work and Jonathan had gone out…”

‘Jonathan had gone out with you,’ Nancy mentally finished for him when he trailed off.

Steve cleared his throat. “Anyway, she really needed someone to help her out so I was like, ‘Yeah, totally.’ Because I like Will, so, why not?”

She nodded along at the story. A lot of people would, perhaps justifiably, feel iffy about babysitting their exes’ new partner’s sibling while they were out on a date, but Steve had always had far more emotional maturity than he let on.

“It was a super easy gig, right? Because Will’s a great kid and he never wants to cause trouble for anyone. But the memory still stuck in my head because I had never seen Will like that before.”

“Like what?” Nancy asked, worried for Will despite the fact that this had happened over a year ago. “Like?” She nods her heads towards the red lightning several miles to the west.

“No, no. Nothing spooky this time,” Steve assured her. “He was just drawing. Which, I mean, the kid is always drawing something, huh? But he was angry this time, which was strange to me. He kept crumpling up the drawings and starting over again. I looked through some of the ones he threw away and to me they all looked practically identical, so I didn’t get it.”

Nancy could picture the scene in her head. It was out of character for Will, true. Typically, the only time she ever saw him truly at peace was either when he was with Mike or when he was drawing.

“So I asked him, y’know, ‘what’s wrong, buddy? You okay?’” Steve rubbed his hands down his jeans, frowning contemplatively at the floor of the car. “And he said – ‘I’m just frustrated. I have the drawing I want to make crystal clear in my head but no matter how hard I try I can’t get it on the paper’”

Nancy glanced over at him, waiting for some sort of reason for him telling this story.

“At the time I didn’t get it at all…but now I think I kind of understand what he meant.” Steve angled his head to lean against the headrest of his seat to stare at her with sad eyes. “You kind of make me feel that way sometimes.”

“Me?” Nancy turned away from Steve to face the road, still feeling his gaze flickering over her profile like a spotlight. “Why?”

“I feel like I’ve always got these really great, huge things I want to say to you in my head but when they pass through my mouth they go through some sort of idiot filter and come out all stupid.”

“You’re not an idiot,” Nancy frowned instinctively. She hated when he talked about himself like that.

“Okay,” Steve lightly agreed, clearly not believing her. “Point is, there’s something about you that makes my brain want to work above its pay-grade. It’s like you make me think things that even I can’t understand. And I can never find the right combination of words to say what I really mean. And unfortunately, sometimes, that means I blurt out a bunch of crazy shit about wanting to pump you full of six kids and go on a road trip.”

Nancy couldn’t fight the flush that rose on her cheeks at the way he had phrased it, but still felt the need to defend him from himself. “I thought it was sweet. Really. It just…caught me off guard.”

Steve grinned and snorted at her. “I bet. Look, I didn’t necessarily mean it literally. It wouldn’t have to be six kids, it could be two kids. It could be one kid. You don’t want to deal with pregnancy, we could adopt. You don’t want ANY kids? I’d settle for you and a chihuahua. Hell, I’d take a friggin’ pet rock if it meant being with you. All I was trying to say with that was…In my ideal life or whatever, when I make a home for myself you would be there with me. More than anything else in the world, that’s what I want the most.”

“God, Steve…” Her breath stuttered in her chest as Nancy looked over at Steve, hoping the dim lighting from the rain clouds would hide her watery eyes. “I think the words came out pretty well that time.”

And he looked right back at her with that same hopeful happiness she’d seen in the RV. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” she whispered back.

He sniffed, looking back out the window at the trees shaking from the beating the now heavy rain was giving them. “And I know you’re with Jonathan…But I–“

“I’m not.”

“Huh?”

“I’m. Uh, not.” Gulp. “With Jonathan. Anymore. We broke up a few days ago. With…everything going on we decided that it didn’t feel appropriate to bring it up with anyone.”

“Oh man, I’m sorry, Nance. That sucks.” And Steve sounded sincere enough that Nancy might have believed him if it weren’t for the fact that Nancy could see him beaming dopily in the rearview mirror, even though he was turned away from her.

“I can see you, Steven.” His guilty eyes shot up to make contact with hers through the mirror and he quickly schooled his expression into one of remorse.

“Oh, my bad. That wasn’t—I was just thinking of a joke someone told me,” Steve lied, like a liar.

“Oh? What joke was it?” Nancy challenged with a sharp smile.

“Uh…What do you get when you cross Steve Harrington with Nancy Wheeler?”

Nancy’s eyes rolled so far back it made her eyelashes flutter and she had to forcefully remind herself to watch the goddamn road. “What.”

“Can’t remember the punchline,” Steve smouldered at her. “Why don’t you tell me how it ends?”

She used every bit of her willpower to not even smile because she didn’t want to give him the satisfaction. “Ah. Robin told me all about these corny pickup lines of yours. Have they ever actually worked? Even once?”

“Just the one time, back when I was seventeen. Remember?” He gently knocked his knee against hers. “Can’t blame me for trying it on you again when it’s worked for me once already.”

She does remember. Back when she was still a doe-eyed sixteen year old and Steve Harrington was the coolest guy on the planet, despite him regularly peppering her with the cheesiest lines imaginable when they’d cross paths in the school hallways. He’d since become the dorkiest guy on the planet–but he was so unapologetically dorky that he looped back around to being the coolest again. Like a star becoming so dense it collapses in on itself.

Steve must have misinterpreted the silence from her reminiscing as discomfort because he pulled away sheepishly. “Sorry. I know I shouldn’t assume that just because you’ve broken things off with Jonathan that you’d want to immediately get back with me. Or like, even at all maybe. It’s just that…”

Not wanting to break his train of thought, Nancy just gave him the time he needed to mull over his words. So he could get them right.

“If you don’t want to be with me, that’s–“ Steve swallowed and put his hands in his pockets. “I’d learn to deal with it. But I can’t go back to the way things were, Nance. This past little while where we’ve hardly seen each other has been fucking awful for me.”

Her eyes widened when she saw him swiftly wipe the heel of his palm against his eyes. God, she hoped he wouldn’t cry again. If she had to watch Steve Harrington cry in person she’d probably need to pull over because she’d start crying too.

“So…If you don’t want to be with me we have to still be friends, Nance. I need you here in some way or another, even if it isn’t necessarily in the way that I want. Because not much scares me anymore. I’m not afraid of disappointing my folks. Or fighting evil Russians. Or freaky interdimensional monsters. I’m not scared of demogorgons or Mindflayers or Henry Creel. More than anything in the entire world, what terrifies me the most is the idea that I might have to keep doing this without you.”

Nancy had to finally give up on driving the car at that point, pulling over to the edge of the road and rubbing her sleeve across her eyes. “Doing what without me?”

“Anything?” Steve hiccuped. “Everything? Two years was a really long time to mull over why I was so miserable and I’ve come to the conclusion that Steve Harrington just doesn’t make sense without Nancy Wheeler.”

Nancy had to remind herself to breathe. “Get out of the car,” she gasped.

“What? No, Nance…Come on.” And Steve looked so upset that it took her a moment to realize how that may have sounded to him.

“I’m not kicking you out of your own car in the middle of nowhere, Steve,” she laughed, unbuckling her seat belt with shaking fingers before opening the car door. “C’mon.”

Steve had good reason to look as confused as he did, but still dutifully followed her example and left the car. As soon as they both got out, within seconds they were drenched from head to toe from the sheet of rain pouring down on them.

“The hell are we doing, Nancy?” Steve had to raise his voice to be heard over the sound of the rain hitting his car, water dripping down the hair that was now plastered to his face.

“There wasn’t enough room in the car,” Nancy replied, feeling goosebumps raise on her neck and arms from the chill.

“Not enough room for what?”

“I don’t know,” Nancy said, and promptly grabbed him by the fabric of his sweater and forcefully pulled him down into a bruising kiss.

Steve let out a muffled noise of surprise before diving into the kiss just as eagerly, pulling her flush against his body. She couldn’t help but wrap her arms around her, letting one hand creep up the back of his sweater to dig her fingers into his bare lower back, already wet from his soaked through sweater.

God, but he had gotten bigger since the last time they’d done this. Their height difference was even more noticeable than when they were younger and his shoulders were so broad now. Her blood practically boiled at the choked sound he made when she bit at his lower lip.

Almost subconsciously, her other hand slipped down to tug at the zipper of his jeans. Steve’s hand stopped her and her heart stopped as she looked up at his conflicted face through her damp eyelashes. “Steve?”

“I…” Steve sighed, running a hand down her ribs and resting it on her hip. “If this is going to be a one time thing — I don’t think I can do that, Nance. It might be the thing that’d finally kill me.”

Nancy’s eyes softened and she got up on her toes to give him a small peck on the lips. “It’s not a one time thing. Not if you don’t want it to be…I don’t want it to be.”

His uncertain expression halfway made her heart swell, and halfway broke it. “Really?”

“Really,” she confirmed, as sure of that as she’d ever been of anything. “I…”

She remembered that day outside of the school gym two years ago when she had been drowning in grief—livid and confused. He had asked her to say something and the words got caught in her throat.

They come pretty naturally now.

“I love you, Steve.”

His jaw flexed as he peered down at her, chest rising with each deep breath. “Don’t – You can’t say that if you don’t mean it, Nancy. It’s not right.”

“Steve.” She reached up and cupped his jaw, rubbing her thumb across his lip and looking at him with all the sincerity in the world. “I love you.”

Steve let out a strangled noise and dove back in to capture her lips once more. She inhaled sharply when he turned them in place, pressing her up against the bumper and crowding into her space.

Things quickly turned heated again when Steve moved his lips to the hollow of her throat and began licking and nipping at the point where her neck met her shoulder.

Afraid that she might lose her balance from how lightheaded she felt, Nancy grabbed onto his wiry shoulders and decided to voice her thoughts from before. “You’re bigger than I remember...”

“I’m bigger other places too,” he bit at her earlobe. “Last time we did this I was seventeen. I’m still a growing boy, and I’ve been eating my vegetables.”

“Yeah?” Nancy breathed, running her hand down his firm torso to palm the growing bulge in the front of his jeans. Steve hissed through his teeth and looked down between their bodies at what she was doing to him.

Nancy was quickly losing control of her common sense. She had forgotten what it was like to be with Steve like this. For two years she’d been with Jonathan and he gotten the job done in the bedroom just fine but, well…She’d never be enough of a heartless bitch to say it out loud under any circumstance, but in the privacy of her own head she had no problem admitting that Steve really knew how to take her apart just the way she liked.

She had been demure and uncertain the first night they had spent together, back when he’d taken her virginity. But for the following year they had dated after that they quickly grew to learn what made the other tick. There was no ‘giver’ or ‘taker’ between the two of them. They switched roles so frequently during sex that it had resembled a wrestling match at times.

And she didn’t know if it was because of their time apart, all they had been through, the depth of their new feelings for each other or the thrill of doing this out in the open but their animalistic groping against his car was exponentially more intense than anything else she remembered from when they were dating.

When she hurriedly tugged down his zipper he stopped her again and Nancy honest-to-god almost bit his hand in frustration. “Whoa, Nance! We’re in the middle of the street! What if someone drives by?”

She knocked away his hand and pulled his jeans down to his ankles, breath shuddering as she gripped his ridiculously hard erection through his rain-soaked boxer briefs. “Hawkins had a population of less than ten-thousand, half of them evacuated, it’s storming and we’re on a back road nobody ever takes. If someone miraculously does happen to drive by, well, we’re friends with he chief of police. Nobody can do shit.”

Steve took half a step back to look at her with wide eyes, and Nancy took the opportunity to unabashedly stare down at the obscene way his wet boxers hugged all his fun bits. “My god, in the two years we weren’t together you lost your mind…”

She frowned at him, though she wasn’t certain he was necessarily wrong. “I’m not crazy, I—“

“No, no! It’s cool!” Steve stepped out of his jeans entirely and tugged her close again. “I’m into it.”

Nancy moaned when he cupped his wide palm between her legs, pushing up and rubbing with just enough pressure to make her knees buckle.

She barely heard him mutter “Well…Guess this is happening,” when he deftly unbuttoned her pants and tugged them down her legs, leaving her standing in her underwear in the middle of a long lonely road, bracketed by trees with her heart pounding in her ears.

Steve ran his thumb along the edge of her panties along her thigh. The sheer white cotton had been rendered practically transparent by the rain, leaving very little to the imagination. “Do you like these?”

“Not especially,” Nancy choked out, already knowing where this was going and very much looking forward to it.

“Cool, I’ll pay you back later.” And then Steve gripped the thin fabric with both hands and ripped them clean off of her.

Nancy saw red, maneuvering behind Steve so that she could not-so-gently shove him sprawling onto the hood of his own car. Steve’s eyes were impossibly wide as Nancy pulled his boxers down his legs and clambered up the bumper to straddle his hips atop the hood.

At this point, Steve appeared to be as unconcerned with the fact that they were both bare-assed on a public road as she was, as he abandoned all of his inhibitions and tugged his sweater off in one smooth motion, leaving him completely naked.

She followed suit, pulling her shirt up over her head. The thrill of doing something so daring with Steve, knowing there was a chance someone might drive by, combined with the unique sensation of the cool rain hammering against her hot naked body was working her into a frenzy.

He wasn’t inside of her yet, but with the position she had sat in, his cock was pressed directly against her, practically burning with arousal. “Do you have any—?”

Steve’s face paled as he looked at her in horror. “Oh god. I…No. I don’t have any condoms in the car…”

Nancy huffed a quiet laugh at how absolutely devastated he looked, leaning back against the windshield with his hands held over his eyes.

She reached down to grab hold of him, enjoying the hefty weight of him, ridiculously hard in the palm of her hand as she pressed herself against him and slowly grinded against his shaft. “It’s fine…I’ll take the morning after.”

Steve’s head snapped up to meet her gaze, lightning quick. His pupils were dilated to the size of pinpricks. “Really?”

She angled the blunt head to slowly tease against her, hoping to entice him into action. “Steve, if you don’t start fucking me within ten seconds I think I’ll burst into flames. I don’t want to drive to get condoms. So…please?”

Oh. She remembered the look he was giving her then. This was the part where she held on for dear life and enjoyed the ride.

Sure enough, Steve grabbed her by the waist and flipped her over onto her back. Nancy gasped when his hands trailed down to grip her hips. He wriggled back off the car and stood up, sliding her along the wet hood with him so that she was half laying down on the car, with Steve holding her lower body over the edge.

“S-Steve! Jesus!” She really shouldn’t enjoy getting manhandled like this, but good lord. Her body was more than prepared to accept him after all the foreplay, so when he began to press into her, slick and ready, he wasn’t met with much resistance.

Still, Steve was…sizeable and her mouth opened in a silent scream as he stretched her, feeling as if she was being pried open like a wishbone in the best way possible.

He grabbed one of her legs which were dangling helplessly in the air and hooked it over his shoulder, laying messy kisses against the crook of her knee and encouraging her to wrap the other leg around his hips as he began to thrust into her in earnest.

“God, you’re too gorgeous like this…” Steve reached one hand down to knead at her breast, with his thumb rubbing at her hardened nipple. “Hurts to look at you sometimes you’re so beautiful.”

“You’re so good,” Nancy helplessly responded, brain too scrambled to reply with something more poignant. “You’re so good, Steve. Love the way you touch me…”

She doesn’t know how long they went on like that for. It might have been five minutes or five hours. She gets lost in the sensation of rocking back against his deep thrusts, of kissing him just as passionately and listening to the sound of the rain pelting the metal of the hood around her, mixed with their mixed panting and sweet words.

She could smell wet grass, sweat, the lingering scent of ozone from nearby lightning strikes and Steve’s ridiculously expensive conditioner and she suddenly realized that she was getting very close.

“Steve…” she breathed, running her fingernails down the taut muscle of his forearms.

“I know. Me too,” he replied just as breathlessly. “Do you want me to—?”

“No!” She responded, perhaps too quickly. “Inside.”

Steve shuddered and nodded, eyes closed so tight his eyelids paled. Nancy connected the dots between his reaction and all that talk about six nuggets. It seemed Steve had a bit of a kink, she thought with a wry grin. She wasn’t willing to entertain thoughts of children so early in the relationship, but maybe she’d treat him to some dirty talk about putting a baby in her next time they did this.

God. ‘Next time.’ She supposed they were back together now. Nancy and Steve. Somehow, despite everything, they had found their way back to each other and Nancy had to swallow past the lump that suddenly formed in her throat. At least her tears were indistinguishable from the rain drops, so she could cry freely without feeling self-conscious about it. She considered the water dripping down Steve’s face and absently wondered if maybe he was doing the same.

Steve readjusted them both, planting his feet and getting a better grip on her hips as he found his second wind. With renewed vigour, he began hammering into her once more, chasing after both their orgasms. Well, technically she was going for her second orgasm but he didn’t need to know that. She didn’t want to feed his ego too much.

Her whole body shivered as she felt that familiar burning build up deep inside her. She reached up and tugged Steve down by the back of his neck, fiercely licking into his mouth as his large frame eclipsed her own.

Steve’s motions stuttered to a halt for a moment before his whole body went rigid and he forcefully pushed himself down as deep into her as was physically possible. Their joined lips muffled the shriek Nancy couldn’t hold back as the sensation of Steve spilling into her sent her over the edge as well.

They took a moment to regain their composure, looking into each other’s eyes and breathing against each other’s lips, periodically stealing little kisses. The two of them hissed as Steve slowly pulled out of her and flopped down to lay on the car next to her.

When they caught each other’s eyes, naked, in the middle of nowhere, lying on top of the car Steve’s dad had bought for him they both started cracking up at how ridiculous the situation was.

Funnily enough, despite what they’d just done to each other, what made Nancy blush was when she felt Steve sheepishly thread his fingers into hers. She glanced down at their joined hands and then up into his nervous eyes.

“Was that…okay?” Steve whispered, thumb rubbing against her knuckles. “You don’t regret it?”

The corners of her mouth twitched up in a small grin. “Not even a little bit.”

“Great! Uh, that’s rad,” Steve supplied, cheesing at her with his boyish smile.

Nancy huffed a fond laugh out her nose. Steve was better with words than he thought, but he always did lose most of his eloquence for the first fifteen minutes after having sex. Not enough blood flow to the brain maybe.

Her brows turned up when his smile drooped again, carefully avoiding meeting her eyes. “What is it?”

Steve leaned up on one elbow, gazing down at her with a carefully practiced look of nonchalance, but she could see the tension swimming in his eyes. He took a deep breath. “Uh, Highlander is still playing at the theatre. Dustin said it was pretty sweet so…”

The corners of her eyes wrinkled with fondness for the ridiculous boy beside her, running a comforting hand up his fuzzy chest. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. Maybe we could…take a little detour? Check it out?” Steve shrugged, tucking a wet strand of her hair behind her ear. “We can pick up food for those ungrateful bums on the way back. It’s not like they’re starving anyhow.”

Feeling like her chest was going to burst with elatedness, Nancy nodded, leaning over to peck him on his chin. “It’s a date.”

Steve’s answering smile of relief was one she would never be able to forget.

******

Across town, Dustin Henderson tapped his foot impatiently against the ground. “Well? Can you see why they’re taking so long?”

Most of the gang staying at Murray’s bunker was gathered together in the living room — the TV playing nothing but static as El sat cross-legged in the centre with a blindfold over her eyes, projecting her consciousness outwards to see when Steve and Nancy would be back with their food.

Slowly, with trembling fingers, Eleven removed the cloth from her eyes, revealing her bright beet-red face. “I…”

“What’s wrong, Jane?” Joyce placed a worried hand on her adoptive daughter’s shoulder. “Is everything okay?”

El sprang to her feet. “Ineedtogotothebathroomsorry!”

“What the hell was that about?” Will frowned, concerned eyes tracking the hallway his sister had sprinted down.

“Women.” Dustin nodded knowingly, bumping elbows with Will.

Meanwhile, both Hopper and Mike turned their narrowed eyes to the front door and whispered in unison — “Harrington.”

#stancy #steve harrington #nancy wheeler #steve x nancy #stranger things #stranger things 4 #stranger things volume 2 #stranger things spoilers #my posts #spicy

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