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It’s lonely, Nancy realizes – too late after the damage is already done – to have the relationships without the shared trauma.
She sits at dinner with her perfectly normal date – David, straight teeth, business major – and swirls the wine in her glass to keep from downing it. He talks about spending his summers hiking in Big Sur in a way that makes it painfully obvious he’s never seen a person’s intestines on the outside of their body. He doesn’t know how to scrub blood out of clothes, or shoot a gun, or bury a friend.
Nancy wishes she didn’t, either. She’s spent five months trying to put distance between the person she became to survive Hawkins and the person she wants to be now. She’s in college, nearly on track to earn her Bachelor of Journalism, progress cobbled together from challenged credits and distance learning, despite the time lost to quarantine. Still, for all her efforts to keep up with her peers, academically and socially, there’s something hollow in Nancy’s bones, an emptiness where the marrow is supposed to be that can only ever fill up with grief anymore.
She stares at David’s Colgate smile and checks out, lets the drone of his voice fill her up like static until the cheque comes. He walks her to her car, and when he leans in, she lets him save face by turning her head to give him her cheek, rather than push him away. Her hands are cold, and they ache, gripping the steering wheel, as she pulls onto the road.
Her chest burns, and her eyes sting, and she misses her stupid fucking brother. She remembers his eyes, the way the distance stretched between them until they were too small to see, staring each other down through the rear window of Joyce Byers’ car. It’s irrational, the way Nancy wants to go back in time to scream and stomp her feet and haul Mike out by his hair. And why? To be miserable in an apartment in Glendale – alone, even under the same roof as Holly and their mom? Joyce and Hopper – by some miracle, even Hopper – were willing to take him, and even though Nancy still isn’t sure where the dust settled between Will and Mike and El, in the heat of that last fight, then their desperate scramble to drop off the radar before the government could follow, she knows that Mike is nothing if not loyal. She’s seen him live without Will and El before, and if he’s earned anything, putting his life at risk to save the world, it’s the right to live that life whatever way he chooses.
Even if it takes him away from her.
At the intersection, rather than signal for the right-hand turn that will take her back to campus, Nancy heads East on Sunset Boulevard. She does it without conscious thought, the white matter in her brain still cotton wool and mothballs. Though she rarely goes inside the apartment, she knows the streets to get there like the back of her hand, knows where to park without paying where she won’t get towed. She knows the code for the door, and which stairwell has the working camera, and where the stains are in the hallway carpet.
She’s been to Robin and Vickie’s so many times, she hardly considers who else might be home to open the door until she knocks and he does.
“Steve.”
She shouldn’t be surprised, in hindsight. It’s the reason she never stays when she comes by to pick them up, because Steve Harrington lives in the two-bedroom unit, too. Because he’s Robin’s best friend, and they’re strangely codependent in a way Nancy’s always admired Vickie’s ability to live with.
What she does give herself grace for is her surprise at seeing who’s sitting at the dining table, a spread of cards fanned in his hand.
“Nance, hey,” Steve greets. He holds his grip on the door, awkward and unsure. “Robin and Vickie are actually out right now. Did you want me to tell them you stopped by?”
When she doesn’t answer, Steve follows her gaze with a backward glance over his shoulder. Nancy only just registers the way his muscles tense, the way the majority of her focus narrows to the guarded brown eyes staring back at her.
“I didn’t realize you guys still spent time together,” Nancy says. She doesn’t say they’re still friends – isn’t sure if they were ever friends, so much as reluctant allies.
“You’re still friends with Vickie and Robin,” Jonathan replies. It’s a fair comparison, and yet. Five months. It’s a long time to have never crossed paths.
“Have you been avoiding me?” she asks.
Steve sighs, shakes his head. “Any chance you wanna have this conversation on the other side of the door?” he asks, stepping back to hold it wider, a clear invitation that Nancy should come inside.
Nancy does, sliding off her shoes and leaving them in the entryway with the rest of the haphazard collection. Another thing she admires Vickie for putting up with – Steve and Robin’s whirlwind chaos, autopilot with half the steps missing.
Jonathan sets his cards on the table face down and stands, so they’re all hovering by the exit.
“How have you been doing?” Jonathan asks. It twists in Nancy’s chest in a way that either feels good or hurts – she isn’t sure which. “Good?”
“Missing everyone,” she replies, intentionally vague, and yet, she knows he’ll understand. “Even Mike, little shit. Otherwise, good. You?”
“Yeah,” Jonathan says, nodding. “Missing Mom. And Will – who isn’t a shit. And El. But doing okay.”
“You want a pop?” Steve calls, head already buried in the open fridge.
“Water, if you have it,” she replies, and Steve comes back with a bottle.
He moves past her to take his seat at the table. “Deal you in for the next hand?”
Nancy hums. “I probably shouldn’t stay.”
Wood screeches against linoleum as Steve kicks a chair out. It nudges against Nancy’s shins.
“Sit,” Steve insists, so she does.
Despite the initial implication of finishing the round, Steve sweeps the cards off the table and returns them to the main deck. He shuffles.
“What are we playing?” she asks.
Jonathan takes the seat across from her. She’s on high alert, hair standing on end at the nape of her neck, like swimming in Lovers Lake, bracing for the moment reeds wrap around ankles, poised with the logical explanation, a reassurance for the knee-jerk panic of assuming they’re monsters instead of harmless plants.
“Go Fish,” Steve says, with a shit-eating grin, and despite her anxiety, laughter punches from Nancy’s lungs in a rush.
“Very mature,” she teases.
Steve shrugs. “We were out of gummy bears for poker.”
“Red is black, orange for blue,” Jonathan explains.
“That seems subjective,” Nancy says.
“False,” Steve argues. “Everyone knows the yellow gummy bears are the worst, hence standing in for twenty-five. White is fifty.”
“White is not better than yellow,” Nancy says, scooping the cards up to add to her hand as Steve deals them.
“House rules,” Steve insists, and Nancy rolls her eyes, but lets him have it.
“And what does Go Fish win us?” she asks instead.
“We don’t play Go Fish for stakes,” Steve replies, a feigned expression of horror plastered across his face. “God, Nance, we aren’t animals.”
Nancy laughs, feels the joy under her ribcage, like a key turning, cracking her open and prying her apart. She’s laughed with Robin and Vickie, joked and teased and smiled, since they all made the trek out West. And yet, it’s undeniably different to be laughing here, in her sock feet, with Steve and Jonathan, two people she has, at various times in her life, imagined spending the rest of that life with. She’s wanted a forever in Jonathan, and a forever in Steve, and the laughter makes her ache for it, however ill-advised, all over again. Especially after Hawkins. After everything they’ve been through. Nancy is ravenous to devour something good.
“Really, though,” she says, bumping someone’s toe – Jonathan’s or Steve’s, she isn’t sure – under the table. “Have you guys been hanging out this whole time?”
Jonathan shrugs. “It’s kind of impossible,” he says. “To be friends with anyone who hasn’t been through what we’ve been through, I mean.”
“I think what Byers means is that I’m a fantastic conversationalist,” Steve interjects. He rolls his eyes, but doesn’t seem actually annoyed. It’s on the tip of Nancy’s tongue to tease him for taking a swing with such a big word, but she stops herself short. Steve is intelligent. She’s seen it again and again, even if it’s taken her too long to accept.
“I get it,” she says instead. “I’ve missed you guys, too.”
Even if it’s the reason she and Jonathan broke up. Hell, on the other side of the coin, it’s the reason she and Steve broke up. There’s trauma and baggage – so much trauma and baggage – and it’s never served her to hold onto it all, the same as it's never served her to put it all down.
“Nancy?” Steve asks.
Nancy looks at him, eyes open and vulnerable, and hums.
A wicked grin lifts the corner of Steve’s mouth. “Got any threes?” he asks.
Nancy laughs. “Go fish.”
They play the game through until Jonathan, with his stonewall expression, has well over half the deck collected in his pile of pairs. Halfway through, Steve got up and came back with a chilled bottle of vodka from the freezer and a Coke for Nancy to mix. She protested about driving, but he waved her off with a straightforward “couch pulls out,” and Nancy hadn’t wanted to argue. Or go home.
She sits, cross-legged, in front of the entertainment center and sifts through the VHS collection while Steve and Jonathan set up the pullout, as advertised. Job done, Jonathan offers her his hand, and she lets him guide her to her feet. She passes Steve her movie of choice and settles back against the creaky mattress springs with Jonathan, lets Steve fuss with the VCR and mutter curses as the credits roll on screen.
As Steve sets to work rewinding the tape, Nancy reaches out with her ankle and hooks it around Jonathan’s. He starts, looks at her with wide, surprised eyes. She raises an eyebrow but says nothing, makes no move to disengage, and Jonathan accepts her touch without further protest.
“Did you see this yet?” Steve asks Nancy, his attention still on the VCR.
“I was sort of doing other things when it came out,” Nancy replies. Other things, like outsmarting MPs and planning Crawls and trying not to die.
“It’s good,” Jonathan says, his voice a soft, familiar sound at her right.
“Am I making both of you watch it twice?” she worries.
Steve pushes play and shimmies back to join them. It occurs to Nancy that she should have sat in the middle, played the buffer, but Steve and Jonathan make no complaint about pressing shoulder to hip to thigh, so she doesn’t comment.
“No,” Steve says, in a way Nancy understands to mean yes. “I like it. It doesn’t matter.”
“Jonathan?” she asks.
He shrugs. “What Steve said,” he replies. “Why not revisit something if you liked it?”
The question feels heavy. Nancy tries not to squirm. “Because it’s the same thing every time,” she says. “The movie doesn’t change.”
“The movie doesn’t,” he agrees. “But each time you watch it, you’re different. You notice things you didn’t before. It’s never the same movie twice. Not really.”
On screen, Peter Falk perches a pair of glasses on the bridge of his nose and opens an antique hardcover book. The sofa-bed groans as Nancy sinks deeper. She rests her temple against the curve of Jonathan’s shoulder.
“It’s the same ending,” she insists.
“Hey,” Steve interjects, serious, but without heat. “Can we put a pin in all this talking in metaphors? At least until the setup is done. I’m not spending the whole movie explaining the plot because you weren’t paying attention.”
Nancy flushes hot, feels the shame in the burn of her cheeks, the lump in her throat. She has an apology poised on the tip of her tongue – is honestly surprised Jonathan hasn’t beaten her to it – but the bed creaks again, and Steve’s fingers are in her hair, which they can only be if his arm is around Jonathan’s shoulders. Jonathan accepts the weight of Steve’s touch, still but unflinching, so she does, too.
“This is about to be the most romantic shit you’ve ever seen anyway, alright?” Steve continues. “So, eyes forward. Lips zipped. Clear?”
“Clear,” Nancy agrees.
It is romantic. Painful, too, watching a love so profoundly rooted in connection and devotion flourish when the same has slipped from her grasp, not once, but twice. Steve’s fingers tingle against her scalp, and Jonathan is warm at her side. The metal bar of the pullout’s frame digs uncomfortably against her hip, but she doesn’t want to move.
They make it as far as the Cliffs of Insanity before Steve’s fingers get restless. They rub first in gentle circles, then lace loosely through the dark strands and tug. It’s not enough to hurt, just enough to quicken Nancy’s breath. She wants to hiss at him, to ask what he’s doing, but she’s too afraid that calling attention to the way his touch is changing will make it stop. Instead, Nancy lets her fingers wander to the top of Jonathan’s thigh, where she traces her own patterns.
The way Jonathan reacts is undeniable. He gasps, cants his hips with enough force to press the breadth of his shoulders against the long line of Steve’s extended arm, to stress the sofa-bed into groaning again. Steve hums, a satisfied sound, and presses his thumb harder at the base of Nancy’s skull.
“Are we doing what I think we’re doing?” Nancy asks, because she can’t help herself, has never met a question she hasn’t wanted to run toward headfirst.
“What do you think we’re doing?” Steve asks, but his voice is thick, and gravelly, and tells Nancy everything she needs to know. She rocks her hips to more protestations from the bedframe, and the implications of the sound ignites her blood.
“Oh, fuck,” Jonathan gasps. The bed shifts. Nancy watches Steve roll onto his side, watches him slide one thigh between the place Jonathan’s are parted. Propped up with one hand on the back of the sofa over Jonathan’s head, Steve stares down at him, and Jonathan blinks sluggishly back up.
“Yeah?” Steve checks.
Jonathan’s body is still tight, despite the surrender in his eyes, and Nancy leans closer to rest her hand on his chest. She kisses the top of his shoulder and feels him relax. He pants out a breath and nods, and Steve leans in.
They kiss, and it can’t be the first time. Nancy watches, enthralled by the familiarity they have with one another’s mouths. Five months is a long time to be alone. Nancy’s felt it. She can hardly blame them for feeling it, too.
“You’re beautiful together,” Nancy tells them, because it’s true.
They break their kiss to look at her, and Nancy props herself up, leans closer and steals Steve’s mouth. Jonathan’s lips press against her neck, and it feels so good, the scrape of teeth and glide of tongue on the vulnerable skin of her throat, while a second mouth plunders her without hesitation or remorse.
She holds aspirations of keeping things in check for all of fifteen seconds before the thrumming between her legs beats in her whole body like a drumline. She straddles Jonathan’s other thigh and rocks against him, feels the solid weight rubbing against where she’s sensitive, even through layers of fabric.
Steve releases her mouth, moves past her on the mattress and drops a kiss to the nape of her neck on his way by. “Take your clothes off,” he says, and she wholeheartedly agrees.
Nancy’s mouth finds Jonathan’s, and they fumble to undress each other while separating as few times as possible. His hands down her back feel like a homecoming, the twist of his wrist to unclasp her bra familiar. She lets him drag it down her arms and toss it to the floor alongside his shirt, so both their chests are bare.
“Fuck me,” Steve groans. Nancy pulls her mouth from Jonathan’s to look at him, standing at the foot of the pullout with a roll of condoms unfurled in his hand like a royal scroll, like some kind of formal decree.
“I was kind of hoping you’d fuck me,” Nancy teases, gratified by the way Steve’s swollen dick jumps in the underwear he’s dressed down to. She turns to Jonathan, so they’re pressed nose to nose, and asks, “is that okay?”
“Yeah, it’s okay,” Jonathan says, then works his thumbs under the waistband of her jeans and underwear to drag them down in one go. Nancy rolls her hips to help him along, rocks from one knee to the other so Steve can grab the hem and help yank her legs free.
Steve is big, but Nancy is wet, and Jonathan presses his thumb against her clit to rub circles that make her even more ready to take him. By the time Steve rolls the condom on, Nancy wants to beg.
“Fuck, Steve, please,” she pants, and Steve doesn’t make her wait. He presses up against her back, straddles Jonathan’s thighs the same way she does, and uses the leverage to rock on the hinges of his knees. He fucks up into her.
“God, it’s so deep,” Nancy whines, and it burns, but it’s the good kind of burn. She feels him in her throat, and her eyes are wet, and Jonathan’s hands cup her face to catch the tears with his thumbs.
“You’re amazing,” Jonathan sighs. He kisses her, and Nancy grinds her hips back to meet Steve’s thrusts. She and Steve each brace one hand against the back of the couch, then move in tandem to stroke Jonathan’s cock. It’s just this side of too dry, even with the precome leaking from Jonathan’s slit, and when Steve brings his hand up to Nancy’s mouth, she spits in it without needing to be told.
Steve rides her hard, and the frantic pace carries over to the way they touch Jonathan, to the way Jonathan sucks her nipples and rubs her clit, firm and demanding.
They come in a cascading wave. Nancy is first, tremors like earthquakes rippling her muscles. Her hands spasm and clench, and she moves them both to grip Jonathan’s shoulders. Her cunt squeezes around Steve's dick, and she sobs with how good it feels. Her release is messy and wet, and Jonathan adds to the mess a few deft strokes of Steve’s hand later. Steve is last, seconds behind, just before Nancy’s overstimulation tips from pleasurable to painful.
Steve and Jonathan both catch their breath against the column of Nancy’s throat, and between the press of their bodies, it’s the safest she’s ever felt.
“We actually did that,” Nancy says, once she’s able to breathe normally.
“Is that okay?” Steve asks. He pulls out, gentle as he can, and kisses her thundering pulse.
“It’s definitely a different movie,” she replies.
“So, maybe a different ending, too,” Jonathan suggests.
Nancy has to admit, he might have a point. She still feels the dark drag of everything she and Jonathan share, the way all the places their bodies touch pull against her like quicksand. But then, there’s Steve, helium at her back, her very own set of wings, flapping hard against the maelstrom.
“Yeah, maybe,” Nancy agrees.
They clean up, then strip the sheets. While Jonathan remakes the bed, Steve gets to work rewinding the movie, until Buttercup is once again dragged from the water to the – relative – safety of the boat.
Nancy doesn’t realize she’s fallen asleep until the sudden change of the light behind her eyes startles her awake.
“Sorry,” Robin whispers, finger still hovering over the power button on the TV.
Nancy turns her head, and there’s Vickie, too, waving from the kitchen where she’s filling a glass with water. Her heart thunders in her chest, and the adrenaline makes her briefly dizzy before she realizes that no one is yelling. No one’s even upset. Nancy knows Robin and Vickie are together, knows that this is West Hollywood, and a lot more goes here than it ever did in Hawkins, Indiana. She takes a deep breath and lets her heart rate slow before opening her mouth.
“Good night?” Nancy asks.
“The best,” Robin says. She reaches out to Vickie, and Vickie takes her hand without hesitation. “We’ll tell you all about it in the morning. For now, get some sleep.”
“Goodnight,” Vickie says.
“Goodnight,” Nancy replies.
They disappear down the hallway, taking the overhead light with them as they go, and Nancy settles comfortably into the dark with Jonathan on one side, Steve on the other. It makes up for the godawful way the bedframe digs into her ribs.
Just barely, but it does.