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finntheehumaneater · 3 months

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These dirt roads are empty, the ones we paved ourselves

part two

Just a short little thing so that I can’t panic and back out of finishing this fic. Based on this post by @eddie4bat-president. And I hope it was okay that I wrote it, it just SPOKE TO ME

title from “A House In Nebraska” by Ethel Cain (as always 🩵)

Steve knew that Nancy wasn’t going to work out. He knew, but he was holding onto what little hope he had left that maybe, just maybe, he was wrong. That maybe this would last and he wouldn’t have to end up alone again—crawling back to Tommy like a fucking obedient dog because even though he was friends with Billy, he was still all Steve had left.

Carol didn’t talk to him anymore. She went off with her friends. Nancy said that was a good thing—that he was away from Carol and Tommy and that he was friends with Jonathan now, even though he and Jonathan only ever hung out when Nancy forced them too. But she didn’t understand. Tommy and Carol may have been assholes, and he had always known that, but he had been one, too, but they knew too much to just drop him like they had.

It hadn’t been easy. There had been yelling and fighting when they all met up at Steve’s house the next time. Tommy had thrown something—a vase, maybe—and Steve had gotten in trouble for that when his mom had gotten home. He had told her that she had broken it. She wouldn’t have believed him if he had said it had been Tommy, but he didn’t want there to be a chance. His mom was bad, but Tommy’s mom was worse.

“Steve?” A voice cut through the fog shrouding him and he turned, his eyes searching Nancy’s face. She had that look in her eyes—like she was mad at him. He didn’t know what for. It was expected and annoyed, and it made his shoulders drop.

He cleared his throat.

“Yeah? Nance?”

“I asked if you brought your things?” She repeated, slowly. Like she thought that Steve wouldn’t be able to hear her if she talked normally. It stabbed through him like a knife—but he wasn’t mad, he knew she was just annoyed and she didn’t mean anything by it. She was just…like this.

“I, uh…” he spun around, looking over his shoulder and nearly bumping into something. Lots of faces. Loud. Lockers….oh. School hallway. Right. He forgot it was Tuesday. “No. No, I left…my backpack in the kitchen.”

Nancy scowled, and Steve wanted to be anywhere but at school. The people here didn’t like him anymore, not since Billy. He didn’t want to be shoved around by people who thought he was worthless now that he wouldn’t make fun of people.

“You left it in the kitchen,” she repeated, her eyes narrowing.

Steve nodded, his face flushed. It wasn’t his fault. She had practically thrown herself at him near the counter, pushing him against it with something desperate in her kisses and her touches, smoothing over his arms and his chest and his shoulders. It hadn’t really seemed like she was into it, but she had started it, and he knew better than to ask—just going along with it and letting her have what she (maybe) wanted from him. Anything if it kept her close and (maybe) happy. “We were…we were kissing, I…”

“You forgot it because we were kissing?” She sounded accusatory now, her fingers twitching from where they were digging into her white cardigan, arms crossed over her chest. It was one of the ones with little pink flowers—that he had gotten her from Christmas—laid over the long green dress that sweeped to her ankles, winched at the waist and sort of pleated, the cotton scratchy. His mom had bought that for her after she found out they were dating. Said she deserved something nice from her since she seemed like such a nice girl. And she was. She was a nice girl.

“I got distracted,” he whispered, stepping forward and cupping his hand around her elbow, knowing that she kind of hated when he got touchy in public now—didn’t get why because she used to love it—because he just needed to touch something or he was going to lose his mind among the kids smoking over by the bathrooms and the girls chatting by his locker. One of them was leaning against it. He was dreading asking her to move in a minute. “I-it’s fine, though, Nance, really. I have all my books in my—in my locker. I’ll be okay.”

He watched careful, cautiously, when the corner of her mouth quirked up and she breathed out a laugh, pressing her hands to his shoulders and pulling herself up onto the toes of her sneakers to press her lips to his cheeks, murmuring, “what am I going to do with you, Steve Harrington?”

Steve smiled, wrapping his hands around her waist and shrugging, feeling her hands press down a bit harder when he did to keep herself steady. “Dunno, Nancy Wheeler.”

She scoffed, leaning back slightly and falling back to flat feet, slipping her hands down to his chest, lightly gripped at the fabric of his t-shirt. An old one that he let her take without asking because that’s what girlfriends and boyfriends were supposed to do, right? She never wore them out in public like Carol wore Tommy’s clothes, though. But Nancy was different. “Don’t call me by my full name.”

“But you can call me by mine?” He teased lightly, pressing a kiss to her hairline, moving down to her eyebrow and only stopping when she laughed and gently grabbed his jaw, pushing him back. His hands slipped from her waist.

“Yours sounds better.”

“Mmm, does it?”

She nodded, crossing her arms again. “Yeah.”

“I mean—Nancy Harrington…kinda sounds nice, don’t you think?” He was only joking—and he didn’t mean to make her upset by it, honest, it was a joke—but he watched as her shoulders rose up to her ears, tense and tight, shrugging and looking away. Towards one of the posters for that weird club her younger brother wanted to join. They didn’t take middle schoolers, though.

“We should get to class. Steve,” She whispered, saying his name as an afterthought, like she forgot who she had been talking to. She reached out to brush her hand down his arm quickly, fixing the sleeve of his t-shirt from where it had hiked up before she turned. He didn’t follow her for a moment.

He didn’t know how he had fucked this up so badly. She had her future all planned out—and apparently she didn’t know if he was a part of it. She was going to go to some fancy college up north and become a journalist. And he fit in there somewhere if he was still around.

He had thought that she was in his future, too. A house, six kids, long drives on the coast to beaches that would leave sand in their shoes for years…he hadn’t told her that, though. She wouldn’t have liked it. Called it what it was. A dream. Because who would want kids with him? Everyone turned into their parents. And six controlling and manipulative people was six too many. Seven too many if you counted himself. It was only a matter of time before he started to enjoy those meetings he was occasionally dragged to. Before he would cut his hair short—buzz it, even—and marry young. Get rich. Get hateful. Get sick. Spend the rest of his life wishing and hoping that things would work out when they wouldn’t.

That’s what was in store for Steve Harrington. Never Steve Wheeler.

He asked the girl leaning on his locker to move and she did. Her hair was cut short, to her shoulders and light brown. She had been talking about band practice. Trumpet, maybe? He grabbed his books and walked to the classroom door. He stood outside and waited. For what? He didn’t even need to finish highschool. He could drop out. Work for his dad. Run away into the woods. Drown in the ocean with sand in his lungs.

Someone pushed past him, arms full and frizzy hair down past her shoulder, twisting and curling in a flash of deep, rich brown. Her leather jacket rubbed against his arm and she muttered something. Maybe a sorry, and then there was a thud, but she didn’t stop to pick up whatever she dropped—maybe she didn’t notice?

Her voice was deep. Pretty.

“Eddie!” Someone called, and he turned to see where she went but she was already gone. The thing was still there, though. A notebook. It looked a bit fancy, like she had spent a lot of money on it.

Eddie The Banished, it read on the first page. There were some notes, half-assed and not at all coherent. But mostly it was covered in drawings. Of things with horns and claws, people with pointed ears and flowing dresses, swords. Lots of swords. So many swords to the point that it was kind of concerning.

He picked it up. He would have given it back, but…the girl was gone. And he needed a notebook anyways…he’d find her after school. Besides, how many Eddie’s could there be? Maybe she belonged to that demon club thing. It seemed…like a place where people who really liked swords would hang out.

He slipped inside the classroom and gave Ms. Click a smile and a wave. She smiled and waved back, didn’t comment on how he was late or tell him to do better. Just watched him until he sat. The trumpet girl was behind him, glaring at him. That didn’t matter because Nancy was next to him, tugging the notebook out of his hands. “What’s this? I thought you left yours?”

He grabbed it back quickly, shrugging it off and setting his books down next to him. “Found a spare in the locker. Don’t use this one all that much. Dad bought it for me.”

Nancy eyed him suspiciously, like she didn’t believe him, but she dropped it. He looked up as the door opened and that red head walked in. Tam….Tammy? Tammy. Yeah. Her. It wasn’t like he hated her or anything, she was nice. But she was too optimistic. A total dud. Wanted to move to Nashville and become a singer. She couldn’t even sing, god, it was like she was tone deaf. And, because she always was, she was humming as she sat at the desk next to his.

And I need you now tonight….

And I need you more than ever…

He opened the notebook after giving her a small wave and a polite smile. He had forgotten lunch in his backpack, too. But it was good that he didn’t have a class before this today, because otherwise he would have been too tired. It was his off day from sports. To relax and hang out with his girlfriend.

He was going to miss his bagel, though. They were the highlight of the school day.

It was hard to find a blank page in the notebook, but when he did…the one next to it looked…great. He would have never been able to draw a hand that good. The lines were smudged, like the person was in a rush, and the page was crinkled slightly. He smoothed over it, careful not to damage the drawing further.

The hand was familiar, but he couldn’t place it. He saw a lot of hands in basketball. A lot of hands everyday. But there was a small dot on the side of the pinky. The hand was curved, like it was throwing something up and out. He looked down at his left hand. There was a dot there, too.

Next to the hand drawing was a shoddy person, just a shoulder and shirt collar with some curved lines for tousled hair at the neck. There were dots on that drawing, too. He felt behind his jaw, over the thin raised line from shaving yesterday morning—when Nancy had told him that his stubble had gotten too bad and it felt weird to kiss—and…shit, there were moles there. Three. Like in the drawing.

He flipped the page before anyone could see the drawing—didn’t need to be made fun of for being a nerd and for being soft—and tried to focus on Ms. Click as best as he could, all while feeling the piercing glare of Trumpet Girl and Tammy’s soft gaze. Nancy’s side-eyes as she made sure he was looking up towards the chalk board when Ms. Click wrote. His hands kept drifting back to his jaw. His mind kept drifting back to the drawing.

It was weird that the person in the drawings were (maybe) him. But it made sense. Girls at this school liked him. Tammy liked him. Trumpet Girl didn’t seem to, but he didn’t care. Nancy liked him. She did. She told him she loved him so she did, she wouldn’t lie about that. Not to him.

Maybe it was the same with that Eddie girl. Maybe Eddie liked him, too. That wouldn’t be surprising. He might be soft, but he still had great hair.

DISCLAIMER: this is not a Nancy hate fic!!! I love Nancy!!! Her and Steve are just not meant for each other :)

also I love fics where Steve seems Eddie briefly and goes “woman :)” and then meets him and goes “wait. No. What. Not a woman?”

Permanent taglist: @anne-bennett-cosplayer @estrellami-1 @here4thetrama @goodolefashionedloverboi

people who might be interested…?: @jadeylovesmarvelxo @precioussteveharrington @himbosandhardwear @steddiewithachance

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steddieasitgoes · 7 months

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written for @eddiemonth Day 6 Prompt: Crush cw: period typical homophobia read on ao3 | link to my ao3 Eddie Month series

The Hawkins High Library is somehow both quiet and bustling. There’s not a free table in sight; students hunched together in groups of twos and threes. Loners are forced to share with others. All of them with their noses deep into study guides, highlighters perched between tense lips. Some flip through flashcards, mumbling answers as the librarian watches over with a stern look, ready to shush anyone who dares make a sound.

The sun beats down on the small room, rays of warmth promising free days to come. Summer break is on the horizon. All that stands between them and three months of endless freedom is finals.

Finals, which, in Eddie’s case, don’t just promise a summer of freedom. But a life free from high school altogether. Assuming he manages to finally pass Mrs. O’Donnell’s chemistry final.

The odds of this happening, though, are not very great. Especially since he’s already failed her chemistry class once before. (Honestly, Hawkins High should just hire a new chemistry teacher and stop putting everyone through her miserable class.)

But it’s okay because Eddie’s actually been trying this semester.

As in, he finally suffered through the mortifying ordeal of asking for help and landed himself the best tutor that Hawkins High has to offer: Nancy Wheeler.

With her help, he’s managed to bring his F up to a low D- which isn’t great, but it's the closest he’s ever been to passing. Now, all he has to do is get a C on the final and submit some lame extra credit essay, and he should be able to turn that D- into a D+ and pass the class.

At least, that’s the plan.

Which is why he’s currently tucked away at a library table opposite Nancy and the King of Hawkins high himself, Steve Harrington, instead of bumming around in Jeff’s garage planning their summer Hellfire campaign.

“Okay,” Nancy says, pulling his attention away from the giant library window. She’s holding an index card in her hands. Her usual pristine manicure chipped. Nails bit as short as possible. Eddie supposes the stress of finals even gets to the nerds. “A proton has what kind of charge?”

“Positive.”

She nods, not one for verbal praise, and flips to the next card. “What happens in an endergonic reaction?”

Shit.

He should know this one.

Eddie taps his pencil against the table. Tilts his head back until his eyes are focused on the ugly popcorn ceiling of the library as if it holds the answers. It doesn’t, unfortunately. Frustrated, he buries his head in his hands for a moment before peering up at Nancy with his big brown eyes and a solemn look on his face.

Steve scoffs beside Nancy, looking up from his own study guide to throw an arm possessively around her.

Eddie’s about to call him out on his weird macho man behavior when his stomach starts to growl. Jesus H. Christ. He knew he shouldn’t have skipped lunch today.

Nancy sighs, shaking Steve’s arm off of her as she stands. “I’m going to go grab us some snacks from the vending machine.”

“You’re the best, Wheeler!” Eddie smiles, watching as Nancy walks away.

When he turns back to the table, ready to flip the flashcard over to learn what an endergonic reaction is, Steve is glaring at him. His arms are crossed tightly across his chest as he leans back in the chair. Eddie can tell he’s trying to look casual and unbothered, but the tension in his jaw and the rage in his eyes say otherwise.

“What’s got your panties in a twist, my liege?”

Steve scoffs, shaking his head. “Do you think I’m stupid, Munson? I can see you flirting with my girlfriend right in front of me.”

Eddie stares at Steve dumbfounded, wide eyes blinking as Steve continues to glare. There’s a rumble in the pit of his stomach, one that stems from laughter instead of hunger, but Eddie bites the inside of his cheek to keep it at bay. Something tells him laughing at Steve isn’t going to end well for him. He might have a bad track record when it comes to fights, but the only punch Eddie has ever thrown was accidental at a haunted house. And he ended up bruising his own hand instead of the clown’s nose.

“I don’t have a crush on Nancy.”

“Sure you don’t,” Steve hums sarcastically, crossing his arms even tighter.

The stupid sleeves of his striped polo strain against the bulge of his biceps, and Eddie tries his best not to stare. Oh, if only you knew the truth, Harrington.

“Every guy here has a crush on Nancy. Especially since they know they can’t have her.”

This time, it’s Eddie who scoffs. Objectively, sure, Nancy’s cute and all. But, the audacity of Harrington to think every guy wants her just because he has her is more irritating than comical. He doesn’t think Nancy would be too thrilled about it either.

“I don’t know what to tell you, Harrington, but I don’t think about Nancy like that.”

“So, what are you a queer then?” Steve snaps.

Eddie feels his skin heat up like the blood is rushing to his cheeks and his ears, and then, as quickly as the temperature rises, it sinks, sending him into a numbing cold. Judging by Harrington’s wide eye gaze, Eddie assumes he looks like a guy who’s two seconds away from hurling or passing out on the floor. Both of which he’d welcome. Anything is better than having this conversation with Harrington.

“Wait,” Steve says as if Eddie has the strength to get up from his seat. “Shit, I’m sorry. I— I don’t know why I said that. I shouldn’t have said that. I’m really sorry, man. I’m trying not to be this asshole, and then I go and say asshole shit like that. I just—“ Steve drags both hands down his face as he groans.

“You’re in love with her and don’t want another freak stealing her from you?” Eddie supplies, totally caught off guard by the sound of his own voice. Honestly, he’s kinda proud of himself for stringing together a coherent sentence, let alone a dig like that, after Steve’s insult-turned-apology.

Steve doesn’t say anything, just stares at Eddie with those stupid wide eyes, and his even stupider lips barely parted.

“What? It was kind of hard to ignore the little lover's quarrel you and Byers got into last winter. But trust me, Harrington. You have nothing to worry about. All I want from Wheeler is her help passing chem. As soon as I get that, I’ll be out of both of your hair.”

Eddie can tell Steve’s thinking of a way to respond to that, but he never gets the chance because Nancy reappears just then. She dumps a handful of “brain food” on the table — mostly trail mix concoctions and a lone Snickers bar — and passes each of the boys a bottle of water. It’s not exactly what Eddie was hoping for when she left for snacks, but he’s not about to complain.

“Okay, so, endergonic reactions.”

+ + +

Truthfully, Eddie should stop making plans since they never seem to go his way. What was supposed to be a chill, music-filled spring break has turned into quite the opposite.

Instead, he’s spent the last two days in hiding, with only a handful of people keeping him safe, including Harrington and Wheeler, of all people.

So much for staying out of their hair, he thinks manically, as he walks in tandem beside Steve in the actual hell-like version of Hawkins. They trail behind Robin and Nancy, Eddie rambling on and on about Steve, but he just can’t shut up. Maybe it’s the nerves, maybe it’s the memory of the three of them back in that library, maybe it’s just Eddie self-sabotaging because seeing Steve in his vest is doing things to him. Things he doesn't have time to deal with, especially not when Wheeler is right there.

Whatever it is, Eddie’s about to do the stupidest thing he’s ever done, aside from jumping into Lover's Lake in the first place.

Steve stops walking the minute Eddie starts talking about why he followed them here. They stop beside a tree, and Eddie angles his body so he’s in front of Steve. Probably closer than he should be, but Eddie’s not about to step backward. Not when there could be a creepy vine ready to trip him and give their positions away to the hoard of bats in the sky. No, thank you.

He presses on instead, talking about Nancy and her incredible reaction time to Steve being dragged deeper and deeper into the murky waters.

“Now, I don’t know what happened between you two, but if I were you, I would get her back,” Eddie says, eyes locked with Steve’s. “Because that was an unambiguous a sign of true love as these cynical eyes have ever seen.”

With a hand clasped over his heart, Eddie watches as Steve glances towards Nancy’s direction. There’s a moment where Eddie thinks Steve’s actually going to listen to him. Run after the girl of his dreams and professes his undying love to her in the middle of the hell dimension version of Hawkins. But then, he slowly turns his head back toward Eddie and shakes his head.

“I don’t...” Steve hesitates, eyes flickering to Eddie’s lips for the briefest of seconds before settling back on his eyes. He shakes his head. “I don’t have a crush on Nancy, man.”

Eddie cocks his head in surprise. Lets a cackle of a laugh escape his lips as he stares back at Steve in disbelief. “You don’t have to bullshit me, man. It’s pretty clear you still have a thing for her. I mean, every guy in Hawkins has a crush on Nancy, remember.”

Steve’s brows knit together, lips agape in that same stupid thinking face he gave Eddie all those years ago in the Hawkins High library. It’s aggravating how cute it is, even now when Steve’s covered in blood and grime and God knows what else.

“Yeah, well,” Steve says, eyes slowly tracking Eddie from head to toe and back up again. “Turns out you were right. Not every guy has a crush on her. Some of us have eyes for someone else.”

Just as Steve starts to lean in, the ground beneath them starts to rumble and shake, sending them both toppling to the floor. Whatever moment just happened between them disappears as the reality of their situation hits them again.

There’s no time for crushes when their lives are at stake.

#eddiemonth #eddie munson #eddie munson ficlet #eddie munson fic #steddie #steddie fic #steddie ficlet #stancy #stancy fic #stancy ficlet #nancy wheeler #nancy wheeler fic #nancy wheeler ficlet #steve harrington #steve harrington fic #steve harrington ficlet #eddie munson & nancy wheeler #dani writes

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playingfetchwithdinosaurs · 2 months

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i didn't know that i was starving till i tasted you

Pairing: Nancy Wheeler/Steve Harrington || Rating: Explicit || Word Count: 5.4K

Summary: “Steve,” she calls anxiously, head and forearms pressed up against the door, legs spread wide, her own arousal dripping down her bare thighs; the combination of being on display like this for him and the anticipation of what he has planned is killing her. or, Steve and Nancy get back to her dorm room after a date and Steve makes good on a promise. An outtake from Saturday, 03/04 from Chapter 8 of quack quack fall in love, that can be read as a stand alone

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#stranger things #stancy #steve harrington #nancy wheeler #steve harrington smut #nancy wheeler smut #stancy fic #vicky writes fanfic #can you believe i made a canva moodboard all by myself for this

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scoopertrouper · 11 months

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Was thinking about Barb’s funeral, the Hollands greeting Nancy and assuming she’s still with Steve + her surprise when Steve shows up.

no idea what it is about your prompts (if that was, indeed, what this even was lol), but damn.

every time i think - that's it! i'm going to write Steve and Nancy together now - i get a query like this, that digs deep inside my brain and won't let go until it's out. and then i saw this screenshot (because truthfully i had to do some googling to refresh my memory, it's been a minute since i did a full s2 rewatch) and it was game over.

this is maybe a little messy and not EXACTLY what you asked for, but I do hope, even so, that it seems true - true to the characters, and true to who they are at this particular moment in time (which, yes, is a warning for some fairly mild J&N content, if you can't hang with that at all).

it's all about the liminal spaces, man.

*~*~*

Nancy’s coat is too warm.

That’s the first thought that comes to her, staring at a coffin that will, within the hour, sit buried beneath the ground.

Barb’s face smiles distantly at her through an altogether too-cheerful wreath of roses, next to the empty coffin as hollow as the hole it’s soon to be lowered into, and all Nancy thinks is – “I should’ve worn a different coat.”

It’s true that it’s unseasonably warm for an early December day. But even so, the smart black blazer she’s chosen should, in theory, be perfectly appropriate for the weather.

And yet Nancy is stifling – barricaded in by a gravesite to her front, and Jonathan to her left, and Barb’s perpetually smiling, two-dimensional face to her right. Warmth is creeping up her neck, and under her armpits, and between the shallow valley of her breasts, and she longs to rip off all her layers, to take off running until the breeze cools the sweat she can’t stop from trickling down her back.

This should be comforting, right? This is what she’s longed for – a resolution for Barb, for her parents. Acknowledgment that she’s not just missing, with all the implications that can come with that. She’s dead, and someone (something) has been held responsible for it, and now they finally get to say their last goodbyes.

But what has this whole year been for Nancy, if not one long, drawn-out goodbye? A goodbye to Barb, to her innocence, to the ability to even walk down the driveway at night without jumping at the smallest sounds.

A goodbye to…no. Nancy shakes herself. She’s not going there. Not today, at least.

“Nancy?” Jonathan nudges her, concern plain on his face (plain to her, anyway, and she’s grateful she’s gotten to know him well enough to read that). “I know the Rotary Club’s wreath is pretty ugly, but setting it on fire with your eyes isn’t gonna make it better.”

It’s exactly the kind of dumb-serious joke she needs to jolt her from the death stare she’s been leveling at the casket for the past five minutes, and it’s doubly effective because it’s Jonathan, whose quips usually masquerade as wry commentary on the disarray of his life. (Nancy’s new place in it notwithstanding, of course. She thinks.)

But it’s also jarring, knocking her even more off-axis because, well, telling stupid jokes to snap Nancy out of it when she’d get too far inside her own head was usually how –

No.

Not. Thinking. About. It.

Because Nancy’s not thinking about…it, she slips her hand into his. It’s chapped, but warm, and it fits better against hers with every passing day. Even if sometimes she’s startled to find the fingers are too long and the palm too narrow.

She gives him her best attempt at a smile.

“Sorry. This is…a lot harder than I thought it would be,” she admits. Then, because it feels right, she squeezes his hand. “Thanks for coming with me today.”

Jonathan opens his mouth to speak, but before she can find out what he plans to say, a familiar voice cuts in.

“Nancy?” It’s Barb’s mom. “Oh, honey, I’m so glad you made it.”

Just the sight of her – red-rimmed eyes, clearly in between bouts of crying – makes Nancy’s throat ache.

“I wouldn’t miss it,” she replies, returning the surprisingly fierce hug Mrs. Holland offers. She resists the overwhelming impulse to squeeze her own eyes shut.

Nancy had been prepared to give up far more than she’d ultimately had to to ensure this day would come – but everything she’d been ready to sacrifice would still have paled in comparison to the totality of this woman’s loss.

“It’s not the way I’d hoped our search would end,” Mrs. Holland sniffs, dabbing at her eye with a well-used tissue, “but at least this way, we get to say goodbye.”

She doesn’t look particularly grateful – in fact, she looks gutted, like she’s been turned inside out and scraped down to the last ragged, exposed nerve.

For one wild moment, Nancy wonders if it would have been better for them to spend the rest of their lives wondering. Living with the hope that Barb was still out there somewhere, and might find her way home to them.

Wonders if the closure she’d been trying to secure for them had actually been a selfish disservice. Not everyone, after all, is as desperate for the truth – as willing to compromise everything to get it – as Nancy. She’s realizing that, now.

But it’s too late to wonder. What’s done is done, and at least now they have something to visit when they miss her.

Mrs. Holland seems to have drawn herself back together, and Nancy’s prepared for her to move on, to steel her spine and greet the next group of sympathizers, but instead she’s casting her eyes around.

“Where’s Steve, honey? I’d love to say hi to him before the ceremony starts, he was always so sweet to come with you to see us.”

Jonathan stiffens beside her, and for a full five seconds Nancy freezes – no thoughts, no breathing, heart displaced into her throat.

Even through the haze of her own grief, it doesn’t take Mrs. Holland long to clock Jonathan, standing closer to Nancy than most good friends would, or to recognize the tension apparent in both their postures. Nancy doesn’t let go of his hand, but it’s a very near thing.

She doesn’t know what excuse she’s going to stammer out to break the stilted silence – doesn’t even know what, exactly, she’s trying to excuse – when she’s saved by the best, worst interruption.

“Hey, Mrs. Holland. Sorry I’m a little late, I got held up at the doctor’s office.”

He appears over Mrs. Holland’s shoulder like a shadow – a shadow with at least half-a-head’s height on her. He cuts a darker figure than Nancy is used to, dressed for the occasion as he is in somber charcoals and blacks.

(With an uncomfortable start, she realizes she recognizes the sweater he’s wearing. She’s the one who’d picked it for him, an impulse buy on a lazy Saturday afternoon at the Bloomington Gap. It looks as good on him in person now as she’d imagined it would then.)

The plain delight on Mrs. Holland’s face goes a long way toward easing the worst of the awkwardness. Steve accepts her hug and congenial pat on the cheek with a surprised smile, and it’s clear that he’s touched by how touched Barb’s mom is.

“Thank you for coming, Steve. It means the world to see people showing up for our Barb.”

“Wouldn’t miss it, Mrs. Holland,” he says, echoing Nancy’s sentiments with full sincerity.

Nancy is overwhelmed by a shame that rakes claw marks up the inside of her throat, because hadn’t she just been prepared to explain away his absence based on the assumption that he would?

This, for whatever reason, wasn’t an eventuality she’d prepared herself for, even considering he’d diligently showed up to every dinner with (somewhat) minimal complaint, had made polite conversation through the most painful pauses, and had somehow managed to win over Barb’s parents to the extent that her mother was asking after him at their daughter’s funeral.

(If Barb could only see them now.)

Through all of this, he doesn’t look at Nancy once, and that absence lands about as gently as a haymaker to her solar plexus.

“Well.” Mrs. Holland clears her throat, appearing seconds away from dissolving again. “Don’t be strangers. We’d love to have you both –” she catches herself, eyes darting between them, and then Jonathan, and then back, “– we’d love to have you over sometime for dinner again soon.”

With a brief parting squeeze of Nancy’s shoulder, she moves on to Karen and Ted, and Nancy lets out a tight breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.

Finally, with no other distractions at hand, Steve acknowledges them, proffering a brief nod he doesn’t wait to see returned before he’s crossing to Jonathan’s left, settling a careful handful of paces away from them.

It stings, and Nancy considers saying something – what does she have a right to say, really? – but there’s no time, because the service is already starting.

It’s excruciating.

It’s barely 30 minutes long, and Nancy feels every single second of them. Almost immediately, Mrs. Holland loses the composure she’d managed to cling to through talking to Nancy, Steve, and Nancy’s parents, and now she’s sobbing into her husband’s shoulder, heaving sounds that echo painfully across the cemetery.

Steve is standing several feet away, still as a stone, but she feels his presence so acutely that he might as well be as close to her as Jonathan currently is.

She wishes he hadn’t come at all. Wishes he could make it easy for her to turn the page away from the Steve-and-Nancy chapter of her life – wishes she could write him off as an obvious mistake that dragged on way too long before crashing to its inevitable conclusion.

Instead, he keeps stubbornly defying her expectations. Letting her go with Jonathan with unbearable grace. Keeping her brother and his friends safe (even after he’d already been beaten to shit). Showing up for Barb’s funeral when he’d known she’d be here and had every reason not to come.

It’s maddening, because – look, she doesn’t regret her choice, okay? Jonathan is just – he’s a better fit. He’s been there for her, been with her, and he gets her. He gets that sometimes you can’t create understanding by explaining.

Gets that – that anger entwined with despair that she can’t control, this huge, black feeling inside that festers and grows until it demands an outlet, requires a purpose or a target so that it doesn’t turn inward and hit self-destruct.

She doesn’t have to describe that to Jonathan – not in words – and it’s a relief, because she wouldn’t even know where to begin.

So no, what she’s experiencing isn’t regret – at least, it doesn’t usually feel like it. But sometimes it might get close, on the odd occasion she sees him around school, tossing his perfect hair and flashing his surprisingly kind smile. All good looks and casual charm, with that little bit of Steve Harrington je ne sais quoi that Nancy has always admired and resented in equal measure (especially when it has girls twirling their hair at him in study hall, from the seat that used to be Nancy’s).

Or on the evenings when she can see his Beemer through the living room picture window, passenger side doors flinging open so that Dustin – usually only Dustin, but sometimes Dustin plus Lucas, or Max, or even Mike – can spill out into the street, chattering a mile a minute, shouting back at the driver’s side even as they make their way to the front door.

Especially during times like those, she can’t help but wonder – if he’d been like this while they were still dating, would that have changed things? Or was he always like this, and she was too wrapped up in herself and her guilt to notice?

She doesn’t like the way it makes her feel, to think about that, so she usually pushes it out of her mind.

Nancy has spent far too long feeling far too terrible about things that are far outside of her control, and she’s just – she’s tired. Exhausted. Because she did what she set out to do: she got Barb’s parents the answers they needed to move on.

Even if it doesn’t feel as good, as victorious, as final as she thought it would – it’s done. And now, it’s time for her to move on. From everything. Including Steve Harrington.

(Hopefully.)

She spends much of the remainder of the service in a fuzzy, numb fugue, barely aware of more than the anchor of Jonathan’s hand and the sound of Mrs. Holland crying, which has quieted to small snuffles that are somehow worse than the sobbing.

It’s terrible – she’s been waiting for this moment, this closure, for more than a year – but now, she can’t wait for it to end. Needs it to end so that she can shove the dull hurt into the overstuffed closet in her mind, right next to her anger and whatever it is she still feels when she looks at Steve. So that she can lock it up and walk away from it for good.

She’s been waiting for this for more than a year, but the next ten minutes feel even harder to get through than that.

But finally, the end comes. The reverend says a final prayer, the casket is lowered into the open grave, and Barb Holland is put to rest, in spirit if not in body.

Nancy doesn’t think she’s been crying, but when she lifts her face and feels the breeze against the damp-tight skin of her cheeks, she realizes she must’ve been. She was warm before, but now she’s cold, and she wipes the tear tracks from her face with her sleeve.

The Hollands are still standing in a tight clutch over the gravesite, showing no signs of moving anytime soon, but Nancy doesn’t know if she can stay another minute.

(She doesn’t think she’s needed for this part, anyway.)

“Nancy?” Jonathan murmurs at her, asking without asking if she’s ready to leave, taking her small nod as tacit assent.

As they’re turning to go, she accidentally locks eyes with Steve, who’s turning in the same direction, and she barely stops herself from flinching back.

There’s a barely-there line of bruising still visible on the right side of his forehead, and all at once, she remembers that he’d said he was late because he’d been held up at the doctor’s.

Her first impulse is to ask – are you okay? Nothing about the way Billy Hargrove had brutalized his face was within the bounds of a normal high school fight, and it makes her sick that that shithead is still swaggering around school like he owns it, hitting up parties and leaving a trail of swooning rejects in his wake.

But are you okay? is the kind of privileged information she doesn’t have a right to anymore – and the question is too broad for her to be brave enough to want to know how he’d answer. So she bites her tongue against asking, swallows it down and instead says –

“Thanks for coming today.” It’s barely a whisper, and he and Jonathan are both visibly surprised. “You didn’t have to.”

Steve’s mouth flattens.

“Of course I did,” he responds immediately. “Jesus, Nancy, I’m not that big of a –” He fumbles his words and looks covertly around, clearly rethinking whatever he was about to say based on the surroundings and circumstances. “I was just – I was never not gonna come, okay?”

He mumbles it, staring at the ground with his hands stuffed in his pockets, and Nancy feels that sense of shame clawing up her throat again. Sometimes, she forgets. Sometimes, she gets so caught up in the fact that Barb died because Nancy left her that she forgets – it was his pool.

She doesn’t know what to say; somehow, she doesn’t think I’m sorry is gonna cut it for this or anything else that’s happened over the last couple of months, and she’s not even completely sure what she’d be apologizing for in the first place. But she tries.

“No, Steve, I didn’t mean it like –” He cuts in before she can even form half of a coherent sentence, rocking back on his feet.

“It’s fine, no big,” he exhales in a rush. “Anyway, I gotta go get Dustin before he blows, like, a year’s allowance trying to beat Max’s Centipede score. So. Uh, see you both around school, I guess.”

She thinks both she and Jonathan make some vague noises of agreement, but he’s already escaping down the hill to his car in fast, long steps.

Out of the blue, she realizes that he must’ve shortened his stride for her when they were together. There’s no way she’d have been able to keep up, otherwise.

(Funny, considering it always felt like he was the one who needed to catch up to her.)

If this had happened just two months ago, Nancy thinks, she would’ve been standing next to him during the service. Holding on to him, and matching (trying to match) his steps. Sliding into the front passenger seat of his car like she belonged there. Maybe he would’ve driven away with just one hand, keeping hers in the other – or maybe he would’ve given her a soft, lingering kiss to try to chase the day’s troubles away.

It wouldn’t have worked, but she would’ve liked the feeling anyway.

That was then, though. Now, she’s following Jonathan to his little clunker that starts as often as it doesn’t. And he can’t hold her hand, because he needs both to manage the wonky steering.

But he’ll distract her by asking which tape she wants to listen to on the way back to his place, and when they get there he’ll hold her in silence until she feels like talking. And that – that works, too.

It’s not perfect. It won’t make the itching under her skin go away, and it won’t quell the constant urge she has to do and solve and act. But in its own way, it’ll feel as nice as soft kisses over the dashboard, and isn’t that enough?

Nothing is perfect, which is a truth that sometimes it feels like Nancy is taking the most painful path possible toward learning. Life is, as it turns out, a series of compromises. Maybe the Hollands won’t ever learn how their daughter truly died, but then again, maybe the almost-truth is good enough. It serves the same purpose, regardless.

Nancy has made her choices. They’re not perfect, not even close, but they’re her own, and she’s happy with them.

Happy enough.

#stancy #stancy fic #my stuff #prompt fill #steve harrington #nancy wheeler #maybe a little more pro-confusion than anti any ship #in this house nancy wheeler is allowed to be an uncertain teenage girl with lots of big complicated emotions

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thelonelybrilliance · 2 months

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THE GRAND FINALE... THAT'S RIGHT IT'S DONE!!!

Thank you to the fans :)))) I love u

#fic: the figurehead #my fanfic #my fic #my writing #stancy #stancy fic #stranger things #stranger things season 5 #this epilogue is just... fluff! it's just pure fluff #can you believe

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harringtonlovers · 4 months

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just what i needed

a stancy fanfiction

ao3

chapters

* third person, steve & nancy centric!

summary: nancy wheeler finally felt herself at peace, adjusted to the busy lifestyle of a college student at Emerson College. All while balancing her junior year and a job, Nancy figured things were starting to look up. That was until Steve Harrington, one of her first friends at Emerson, comes back after finishing his first tour with his rock band, Gold Rush. The only problem? Nancy despises everything about Steve. Now, challenged to have Steve back in her circle, Nancy is brought back to her freshman year at Emerson. Letting her guard down would be the last thing she did. At least, that’s what she tells herself. It is extremely difficult when Steve is irresistible. He knows just how to push Nancy’s buttons, and charm her pants off with his music and alluring smile.

tags: angst galore; friends to enemies to lovers; steve harrington is a rockstar; nancy works at a record store!; long fic; stancy :)

“ I don't mind you comin' here, and wastin' all my time, time. 'Cause when you're standin' oh so near, I kinda lose my mind, ”

- just what i needed, the cars.

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completeutterstancytrash · 9 days

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Stancy Week 2024 Prompt 1: Favourite Scene

Guys, I'm so excited for Stancy Week, hosted by @echoing-oursong !

For the first prompt, I went with the 'Spider Hair Scene' from season 4 episode 5.

Is it my favourite scene?

Who knows, but how could I possibly choose, especially from all the scenes that season 4 has fed us with!

So I went with this one, because damn they are so whipped for each other and the show knows it too!

#stancy #steve x nancy #stancy fanfiction #stancy fic #stancy week 2024 #katstancyweek #stranger things

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dreamfinder83 · 3 months

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I’m just gonna drop this here in case anyone is in the mood for some stancy family fluff

#stancy #nancy wheeler #steve harrington #stancyendgame #Stancy family #stancy fanfic rec #Stancy fic #stranger things

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whereyabeenloca · 2 years

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Nancy crosses her arms over her chest as soon as she gets in the car, Steve beside her turning the engine on as they head out into town from Hopper’s cabin. Was it maybe a little bit of a bad idea to be alone with him only a handful of days after his big confession in the woods? Probably. But she was feeling claustrophobic and suffocated inside the small space, and things between her and Jonathan were growing more and more tense by the minute- especially after their big blowout when his friend spilled the beans about his college acceptance letter. Robin was just going to talk her ear off about it, the kids were shooting her sympathetic glances her way at every moment, and truly, genuinely, she just really wants to sit in a comfortable, if not slightly awkward, silence with Steve.

They’re going on a supply run- groceries, guns, and gadgets, in their preparation for the looming apocalypse. She watches the trees around them get less and less dense as they pull out towards the main road, and she leans forward to turn on the radio to curb some of the tension hanging between them.

“'Cause I can't fight this feeling anymore

I've forgotten what I started fighting for

And if I have to crawl upon the floor-“

Nancy switches to another channel immediately.

“-a little bit closer

You're my kind of man

So big and so strong

Come a little bit closer-“

Click.

“When you love someone

It feels so right, so warm and true

I need to know if you feel it-“

She gives up on the idea entirely and turns it off, sinking back into her seat while she pretends to stare outside, at her chipping nail polish, anywhere but over at him. The hand he has on the steering wheel flexes, knuckles whitening before he relaxes the grip, and she can see out of her peripheral that he’s glancing over her way.

“Thought you liked the last one. At least, you did once,” he comments. A memory flashes to the forefront of her mind: the summer between her sophomore and junior year, when they’d been cruising the backroads of Hawkins together. Both of them singing the Foreigner song at the top of their lungs to each other, her holding an imaginary microphone and his stupid sunglasses balanced on the long slope of his nose. It makes her lips tug up on the edges when she remembers it, the tight hug she’s wrapped herself in loosening a little as her shoulders relax.

“No, you liked that one. I learned the lyrics after I saw it on one of your mixtapes,” the confession slips off her tongue before she can stop it and a flush rises to her fair skin, but she’s grinning out the windshield and sneaks a glance in his direction. Steve looks downright pleased with himself once he learns this, drumming his thumb against the car as they make a turn at the stop sign. With a resolved sigh, she turns the radio back on, but they just catch the tail end of the tune, and she can’t help but feel a little disappointed by it. Story of her life lately, it seems, as some Pat Benatar song plays next. There’s always some kind of interruption for them recently, and she’s torn between being grateful for it, and a little desperate to rip the bandaid off, to choke out the words that have been playing around in her brain for days.

“Four kids. And two dogs,” Nancy whispers in a voice so soft she prays he won’t catch it. But he is tuned into her, hanging on every word she will offer, and he slams on the brakes in the middle of the road, jolting them forward and then back, both of their arms coming out to brace the other automatically. They turn to look at each other, a little breathless and adrenaline making her feel dizzy without being disoriented. She blinks as they lower their hands, her initiating it first, as she folds her hands up in her lap to stare forward again while they remain unmoving. “I just- I figure six is a lot of college tuitions, you know? Four could be.. Doable. It would be a lot of work, but we could.. I don’t know. Sorry. Was this a bad time?” Nancy winces at herself, her smile turning sheepish.

“No!” Steve says it a little too quickly and scrubs his fingers back through his hair- a nervous tick before he presses down on the gas pedal again, moving the car at a snails pace like he wants to prolong every moment they will get alone. “No, that’s- it’s not a bad time at all.”

“I’m not promising anything right now,” she warns, reaching up to fix her curls behind her ears. “I just wanted to.. throw it out there. Test the waters on how you might feel about something like that. If your dream is set in stone, or…” Letting the words trail off, she props her elbow up on the car door to balance her chin in her palm, her brow scrunched together while she takes in the black smoke polluting the sky, making everything dark and ominous.

“It’s not set in stone at all, Nance. It’s a team project, not a solo mission. Not at all,” he murmurs as downtown Hawkins comes into view, the military in full swing guarding the remaining civilians left. They’ll have to put a pause on the conversation as they carefully approach the local grocer, but for now.. For now, there is a weight lifted off her heart, and for the first time in quite a while, Nancy and Steve let themselves hope.

#stancy #stranger things #stranger things season 4 #steve x nancy #steve/nancy #nancy x steve #nancy/steve #stancy fic #my writing #Stancy fanfic #Stancy drabble #hope you like this #otp: unambiguous sign of true love #otp:you’ve always been there

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djokeery · 9 months

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decided to share a silly little excerpt from something i’ve been working on since february <3

#steve harrington #steve harrington fic #steve harrington fanfiction #stranger things fanfiction #stranger things fic #stancy #stancy fic #stancy fanfiction #(sort of)#idk what else to tag this but i hope someone out there enjoys it #bullshit

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playingfetchwithdinosaurs · 4 months

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or, the long-distance best friends to lovers college AU text fic that no one asked for

Pairing: Nancy Wheeler / Steve Harrington

Rating: Teen to Explicit || Status: Updating weekly on Fridays

Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - No Upside Down, Long-Distance Friendship, Texting, Chatting & Messaging, Friends to Lovers, Getting Together, Happy Ending, Mutual Pining, the tension's thicker than a bowl of oatmeal, Friendship, Romance, Teasing, Humor, Puns & Word Play, so many puns im not even sorry, Eventual smut, Other Additional Tags to Be Added

banners by cafekitsune | graphics by me

Read quack quack fall in love on ao3

#stranger things #stancy #stancy fanfic #stranger things fanfiction #steve harrington x nancy wheeler #steve harrington #nancy wheeler #steve harrington fanfic #fanfiction #stancy fanfiction #steve x nancy #vicky writes fanfic #qqfil #stancy fic

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scoopertrouper · 1 year

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If you’re still taking Stancy prompts, Nancy wondering what Steve is up to while they keep their distance in s3 is always my jam. Love love love your Nancy and Steve.

my first prompt fill!

i have to be honest, i don’t know if this is really what you were looking for? like, i admit there’s altogether more jonathan than probably anyone wants to see. but alas, i banged this out in like four hours last night and this is where my brainworm took me. thanks for prompting!

also, if you want to get a more exact idea of the kind of headspace i was in writing this, you’ll just want to listen to tswift’s death by a thousand cuts on one long, endless loop.

2,200-ish words under the cut.

-*-*-*

the only thing we share [is this small town]

She sees him sometimes.

Not on purpose. Definitely not on purpose, but Hawkins has a population smaller than the enrollments of some state colleges. It’s kind of inevitable that their paths will cross more than occasionally.

And it’s not that Nancy's avoiding him, exactly. It’s more that every time she gets a glance at him even in passing, it’s impossible not to recall the sad way he’d stared down at her the last time they’d really spoken to each other, resigned to an outcome she wasn’t even sure she herself had reconciled with yet.

It doesn’t make her feel good, and after the past year, she’s more than sick of seeking out reasons to feel bad.

So she doesn’t avoid him, but she also doesn’t not hide behind aisles in Melvald’s when she sees him pass by. And if they happen to be walking along the same side of Main Street at the same time, it just so happens that she’ll remember several urgent reasons why she needs to cross the road right away.

But that’s not avoiding. It can’t be, because Nancy doesn’t avoid. She barrels, head on, right into even the most fraught situations, because at the end of the day she has nothing without her resolute confidence in the fact that she is right.

She is right, and nothing – not Department of Energy hacks, nor the assholes at the Hawkins Post who make a sport of changing up their sandwich orders and the way they take their coffee every other day (“See if you can solve this, Nancy Drew…”) – can shake that certainty.

(Except sometimes – sometimes/especially when she sees Steve – a creeping sense of wrong begins to slither its way in, wraps icy tendrils of doubt around her carefully guarded resolve and squeezes. Hard.

But before it can do too much damage, before it can cause the kinds of hairline fissures that turn into cracks that end in endless interdimensional bloodshed, she turns away. Takes Jonathan’s hand, and looks into his eyes, and remembers why they’re the only two people in the world who could possibly get each other. Even when she can’t understand why he hovers in uncomfortable silence while those dickheads laugh at her. Even when he doesn’t get why she just can’t stop pushing, because a job’s a job and maybe if she let up a little they wouldn’t laugh at her so much.

None of that matters, because she and Jonathan…they just make sense. The photographer and the journalist. Shared goals. Shared trauma. Right? Right.

And so the ground steadies beneath her feet, and her breathing eases, and she sinks back into the safe surety of her belief.)

Most of the time, not-avoiding-Steve also facilitates not-thinking-about-Steve, which is easier now that he hasn’t been around town much lately. She’d heard via the grapevine – amid some derisive tittering that had irked her for reasons she preferred not to examine – that he’d gotten a job at the ice cream parlor at Starcourt, and that he wasn’t headed to college after the summer was over, because he didn’t get into a single school, can you believe it?

The guilt was suffocating. She puts it out of her mind.

So it’s a blessing in disguise that Jonathan’s aversion to crowds and hypercommercialism means that Nancy hasn’t spent as much time at Starcourt as she’d planned to once she heard they were putting in a Gap. Because less time at Starcourt meant less time not-avoiding Steve (and less time – and money – spent stress shopping).

In fact, Nancy’s been lured into such a false sense of security that she never sees the stupid commercial coming.

It’s evening, and still boiling outside, and she and Jonathan are languishing on his beat-up couch after a long day spent toiling in the darkroom (him) and chasing down a specific kind of pastrami on rye with grain mustard available only from the sole deli in Hawkins, which just happens to be about as far across town as you can get on foot (her, of course).

Nancy is the kind of mentally exhausted that means that while she’s valiantly trying to pay attention to CBS Evening News (she likes to flip back and forth between all the major network shows), she’s actually staring off into space as Dan Rather covers a TWA flight hijacking that she knows she should care more about.

The jingle of the commercial doesn’t even penetrate the fog until Jonathan scoffs.

“Christ,” he mumbles. “They’re still playing this shit on TV?”

“Huh?” Nancy grunts before she can stop herself, rousing from her stupor. (It’s only now that she realizes she’s been doodling daisies where she usually takes careful notes on each story’s lead-in.)

“The Starcourt commercial,” Jonathan says, nudging her with his shoulder. “It’s been open for, like, a month. When’re they gonna give it a rest?”

“Oh.” Nancy gets with the program, and laughs perfunctorily at the cheesy stock footage that’s eaten more airtime over the past six months than she’d ever thought city council would have the budget for. (Huh. Maybe there’s a story there.) “I kind of forgot about it.”

“Maybe…we could check it out soon,” Jonathan says, eyeing her almost cautiously. “See if it’s as awful as it looks.”

Nancy does a double-take before she can stop herself.

“You said it’d take a literal alien invasion to get you to set foot inside that mall.” And with the bizarro turn their lives have taken over the past year, she can’t be entirely certain he’d been joking.

Jonathan shifts, and scratches the back of his head.

“Well – they do have a bookstore,” he says, defensive. “And, like, I know this internship hasn’t been what you were hoping, so it might be nice to –” His jaw drops before he can finish the thought. “Holy shit, is that Steve Harrington?”

Nancy’s head whips around so fast she almost hears a crack. And yeah, that is Steve Harrington. In vivid technicolor, standing behind a cash register next to a vaguely familiar-looking redhead with a tousled bob – Nancy’s pretty sure she’s seen her around school before.

She recognizes the discomfort in his face all too well – it had stared across the table at her every time she’d tried to quiz him on SAT vocabulary words last summer.

Only then, he hadn’t been wearing a hideous polyester sailor costume.

“That’s new,” Jonathan says, the ill-disguised laughter in his voice so uncharacteristic that Nancy’s head whips back around again. She’s going to need a chiropractor by the time this commercial ends. “I guess we definitely gotta check out Starcourt now.”

She rolls her eyes, and relaxes the fist she’d clenched around her pencil during the seven seconds – max – that Steve had been on screen. Jonathan doesn’t seem to have noticed her tension, and she’s grateful.

“What’s so interesting about watching Steve scoop overpriced ice cream?” she deflects skeptically, sinking further into the couch, wincing as she hits a spring. Now Jonathan’s the one who double-takes.

“Um. Nancy. It’s King Steve.” She doesn’t love the way he says that. “Dressed like a stand-in for The Village People. Slinging banana splits. What isn’t interesting about that?”

“It’s just a job,” Nancy retorts, face heating. “D’you think it’s funny that I run around buying lunch and pouring coffee for a bunch of dipshits who wouldn’t know a good above-the-fold if it hit them with a two-by-four?”

“Of course not, Jesus!” Jonathan sputters helplessly, shoulders hiking up to his ears. “I just meant – I didn’t – of course I don’t think that’s funny.” His mouth flattens. “I think it’s really shitty. You’re right, I shouldn’t make fun of anyone’s job. We don’t have to go to Starcourt. I just thought it’d be something we could do together.”

He looks deflated, and all at once, Nancy feels like shit. Jonathan was so serious all the time, and usually she liked when he let that go a little bit and dropped his guard. But she’s ruined it by getting defensive, and she doesn't even totally understand why.

“No, I’m sorry,” she backtracks, grabbing his hand and linking their fingers. It’s warm, as familiar as her own at this point. “It’s just…been a shit day. I overreacted.” She just has to work harder. Make them see how serious she is about this. Make them see how good she is at this.

All at once, she’s acutely ashamed of how lax and distracted she’s been, scrawling stupid pictures all over her notepad when she should be working. Improving her craft. Showing everyone that she belongs in that newsroom. Showing them that she’s right.

In return, Jonathan’s smile is strained, but it seems genuine enough. He squeezes her hand, with a strength that still surprises her sometimes.

“Things’ll get better. You’ll see. You’re brilliant. They’ll figure it out. Eventually.” He ducks his head, then looks up again, a little more relaxed. “Speaking of ice cream…I think Mom brought some Rocky Road home last night. Two spoons?”

Nancy nods, accepting the peace offering for what it is (even though she prefers strawberry).

“Yeah…that sounds good.” He leaves to clatter around in the kitchen, and she turns back to the TV, suppressing the urge to chew on the end of her pencil (what serious journalist walks around with bit-up erasers?).

Against her will, Steve’s face plays on a rewind loop in her mind’s eye.

Maybe it was just her imagination, but he’d looked miserable, and she was pretty sure it wasn’t stage fright (he used to preen whenever the yearbook photographers were in his general vicinity. It was equal parts endearing and annoying).

Had he really not gotten into any colleges? (None of her business.) His dad probably hadn’t taken that well. (Really none of her business.)

She should’ve tried to help him more, after the whole…incident. He’d been insanely concussed, and that couldn’t have helped with the whole college essays and applications thing. He’d already been having a hard enough time with it all.

But what could she have done? The thing with Jonathan had been so new, and every time she chanced a look at Steve, he was already staring back, hurt scrawled plainly all over his face.

It would be better now, though, right? A lot of time has passed. She’s firmly settled into her new relationship, and Steve is – Steve knows how to rebound. He’s always been good at that, on the court and in life.

Maybe she should go visit him. Not – not to laugh at him, but just to see how he’s doing.

Would that girl be there? The coworker? She’s cute, in a “probably listens to too much Depeche Mode” kind of way. So not Steve’s type. (Nancy, why would that matter?)

But they had been standing kind of close in the commercial. Maybe they’re friends?

Nancy snorts. Steve didn’t have female friends, except for maybe Carol, and that was mostly vis a vis that shit-for-brains Tommy. In fact, after he cut the two of them out, Steve didn’t seem to have many real friends. Or any. At all. He’d focused all his attentions on Nancy.

She swallows past the tightness in her throat. Anyway. This girl. Definitely – definitely not a friend. Maybe a friendly coworker. Or…

Nancy glares at the whites of her knuckles. None of her business.

It really isn’t. After all, she has Jonathan, and Steve has, well…whoever he wants, really. That’s never been an issue for him, not even after he’d been officially “dethroned”. Girls still lined up at his locker for crumbs of his attention, right smack dab where Nancy used to wait for him in between classes. She assumes that in that regard, not much has changed besides the venue.

In fact, she can see it pretty clearly: Steve, raking a hand through his thick hair every time a pretty girl happens to make her way into Scoops Ahoy. Drumming deft fingers against the glass of the freezer. Handing out free scoops of ice cream like they’re not gonna eventually come out of his check.

Suggesting that they stick around until he’s off-shift so they can catch a movie or – or – something else.

The pencil snaps. Startled, she stares down at her hand, where the two jagged pieces haphazardly dangle, connected by little more than a few bare slivers of wood. What the fuck?

She’s got pretty much no time to figure out what the hell just happened, though, because Jonathan picks that moment to come back into the living room, a carton with two spoons balanced in his grip.

“Sorry that took a sec,” he apologizes, and Nancy shoves the pencil’s remains in between the couch cushions before he can notice. “Will left eggs in the pan again, and I told him he’s gotta wash them out, like, right away or it’s a pain in the ass to scrub them off later –”

“It’s okay,” Nancy cuts in, unsettled by the stinging in her palm as he flops back down beside her. Despite the heat, he curls an arm around her shoulders. It’s light, and wiry, and she tells herself she prefers it that way.

“Dan’s kind of boring tonight,” Jonathan tuts, leaning back. “Wanna see what Tom’s up to?”

Nancy nods, curling into his side and scooping a spoonful of ice cream out of the container crammed between them. It’s creamy, and deliciously sweet on her tongue.

It’s just right.

(It has to be.)

#stancy #stancy fic #steve harrington #nancy wheeler #my stuff #prompt fill

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