Work Text:
Soulmarks appear on your twenty-fifth birthday.
She's known this, been taught this for almost her entire life. It was a diagram in a middle school biology textbook, a source of contention in one of Karen and Ted's many one-sided screaming matches, a lesson for twelve year olds in school alongside discussions of menstruation and puberty. Soulmarks and their promise of ordained monogamy are relatively non-controversial for something so definitive — perfect for the Reagan era and abstinence-only-until-marriage education. It's a tradition. On your twenty-fifth birthday you register your soulmark like eighteen year old boys register for the draft. It wasn't mandatory, only encouraged; soulmark dodgers aren't punished with jail time like draft dodgers. It was better to avoid love than it was to eschew your responsibility to war.
Soulmarks appear on your right wrist. They start as a smudge, a hint of something that could be mistaken for dirt, until unfurling into something else entirely. The shapes don't make any sense, the zags of raised skin as indecipherable as a fingerprint. They require either careful study, ink-prints, or scans. The promise of modernity is that this is supposed to be easier, the whir of a courthouse fax machine promising you your soulmate in arm's reach.
Nancy's parents got married in 1959. They were both a distance from twenty-five. At the time, it didn't matter — her father started college, her mother was ready to move out of her parents' house, and they were sure enough. Plenty of people married before their soulmarks appeared, and some were lucky enough that it all worked out anyway.
For as much as the headlines would broadcast the instances of cross-continental matches and language barriers, people tended to be most well-suited to the people that understood you and your town and your neuroses anyway. There were statistics on matches that showed their typical radius, and they fit along a neat bell curve. You could find your soulmate within an average of less than 100 miles from where you spent the majority of your life.
"Right under our noses," some newlyweds would say, red-cheeked and grinning.
("We can see it with our eyes," same-sex couples would tell reporters, holding their wrists next to each other to be rendered in high-contrast black and white. "No matter what the courthouse says, if the government says it's not a match they're blind. We're not. We're not stupid.")
(They — the clerks at the courthouse desks, the Supreme Court, governors and senators and politicians — said up until the late 60s that it was impossible to tell matches on couples with different skin tones; the government has been wrong before, and it'll be wrong again.)
The system is flawed.
Nancy knows flawed systems, and she knows them well. She knows to question the textbooks, the politicians, the easy assumptions. The world has split enough under her feet. She's chased enough leads that have led somewhere unexpected — rats aren't always just rats and uneven accounting is sometimes just evidence of bribery. She knows easy answers aren't always the correct ones, Occam's razor be damned.
Soulmarks are a system, their matching an enforcement mechanism, and it's one of few things she and Jonathan agreed on for the length of their relationship.
(He'd had his list of counter-arguments. Who was the government to sink its talons further into everyone's life, and how did they know the matching symbols meant anything? It could be completely random, could not be nearly so binary. Could it be real when the government clearly was so eager on tipping its fingers on the scale for couples that dared to deviate outside of established norms? Didn't they have some semblance of free will?
"Bullshit," she'd called it, gunpowder lingering in the air. She wasn't just another suburban girl waiting to settle in her government-approved life in a cul-de-sac. She wasn't her parents, either. She wanted more. She could want more.
Later, she'd trace her eyes over the matching scars over their hands, and a part of her would hope it meant something more meaningful than any symbol blooming on her inner wrist could. But that thought doesn't last; it never does.)
Her mother and father have discordant symbols covered by her father's watch and her mother's bracelets. Usually you have to squint to identify the differences; that's not the case with their marks. They're different shapes entirely, apparent the moment their wrists are bare. When Holly overhears their mother use words like 'mistake', Nancy has to reassure her Karen means the marriage, not the kids. How they're supposed to parse the two is anybody's guess.
And besides, people didn't have to wait to live their lives. As catastrophic as that could turn out for the likes of Karen and Ted, plenty of people still got married without having matching wrists or before their marks could bloom. Or people chose not to marry or partner up at all. That was real and worth something, no matter what the official seal of their county courthouse had to say about it.
All of this is to say:
Nancy Wheeler turns twenty-five on a brisk day in early November. The trees are down to their last straggling leaves, and the appointments on her calendar are exclusively related to her work. She tells no one there of her birthday. She's gotten friendlier with some of the Boston Herald crowd — the secretaries who remember her coffee order, the wide-eyed interns who aren't completely jaded yet, the Lifestyle reporter she'd expected to hate for writing nothing but fluff but grew to like more than anyone on staff who wrote a sentence of anything deemed hard-hitting. But these aren't deep relationships, not even close. Everyone seemed to know better than to pry into Nancy's life.
So when the phone on her desk rings, Nancy expects it to be a source following up with her. She doesn't expect Robin's cheery voice on the other end of the line.
"Happy birthday, Nancy Wheeler!"
"Robin, this is my work phone! I told you it was for emergencies only—"
"Oh," is Robin's response. Nancy can almost hear the frown in her voice. "Okay, I can call later, but I have a late shift at the radio station and might not—"
Nancy immediately feels guilty for her response. No wonder she was so abjectly terrible at maintaining adult friendships; her circle pretty much consists of Robin's calls and the occasional after-work drink with Alexis. It wasn't as if she'd be away from her desk for much of the day regardless. "No, no, I'm sorry, Robin. It's fine. I'm just waiting on a call about a case and it's… it's fine."
"And you can hang up as soon as you get another incoming," Robin promises. "But you're like, a million miles away, so I'll feel bad if I don't call you on your birthday."
"Not a million." Nancy shakes her head. "You're only in Chicago, Robin."
"Which is basically a million from Boston," Robin says. "It's brutal out here, Nance. I'm in Massachusetts for school and I'm closer to you, I'm in Chicago for work and I'm closer to Steve, but either way it's a pretty rough custody arrangement for either of you and especially for me. Why can't everyone just drop everything and move to Chicago for my personal convenience? Why do you all have to have lives and jobs and obligations that are in, in many ways, direct opposition to my life and job and obligations?"
Nancy exhales through her nose, a substitute for laughter. "And Jonathan is in New York."
"And?" Robin repeats. "You know I have not spoken to that man since the Incident of 1990."
"No one calls it that," Nancy retorts. "And I think it was really just a misunderstanding, really."
"You and I both know that's not true, and you and I both know I largely put up with your ex-boyfriend so you wouldn't feel so bad about leaving him out. I already have one Nancy Wheeler ex-boyfriend in my Rolodex, thank you very much, and I like mine a lot better. Speaking of your love life…"
Nancy groans into the receiver. "No. No, Robin, you are not calling me at work to—"
"It's your twenty-fifth birthday!" Robin objects. "C'mon! Please tell me you're going to get up from your desk at some point today and go to your appointment at the courthouse—"
"There is no appointment. I'm not doing all of that. Any of that, actually."
"But yours could actually be fun," Robin chastises, and Nancy can hear her pacing over the phone. She pictures her doing so, limited in her movements only by the extension of the phone cord. "My twenty-fifth isn't until March and if I go to the courthouse mine is gonna go all — beep-brr-breooogh!"
"Is that the dial-up sound?" Nancy asks, nearly wincing at the imitated sound.
"Error not found," Robin clarifies. "Y'know, girl can't match with girl and all that, not in the eyes of pretty much any county courthouse. There's some inkprint zines in the lesbian scene, but that's a lot of legwork on my end. For you, finding your soulmate could be as easy as getting a license. Easier, actually! No test!"
"And then be stuck with whatever guy has the same late-developing birthmark?" Nancy rolls her eyes. "Yeah. I'll pass on that one, Robin."
"Nance, have you even looked at your arm yet?" Robin asks. "My mark is pretty much still in blob-territory, getting closer to something, but I know yours must be like, fully-developed today."
"No," Nancy answers, lying. It didn't matter anyway. It was still a bunch of useless raised squiggles, mostly covered by a watch with a thick band. Her twenty-fifth birthday present to herself, thank you very much. "And I'm not going to. It's all just a bunch of bull—"
"Shit, yeah yeah. Just because you go to the courthouse doesn't mean you're going to know immediately. It's days of checking against a bunch of records, and then after all that you could just end up like Steve and have no one on file."
Nancy coughs, then clears her throat. "Sorry. No one on file? What about Mary?"
"Mary is twenty-four," Robin replies. "And, uh, if I had to guess, I don't think she'll be a match."
"If you had to guess?"
"I hate talking about one of you without the other," Robin groans. "It feels weird. Forget I said anything! Other than happy birthday, and please go to the courthouse!"
"Thank you for the birthday wishes, Robin. Really. But I'm not doing that. Doesn't it seem kind of suffocating to you? Having one person in all the world that something we don't understand, can't understand, is saying we have to…" Nancy gestures, unseen over the phone and uncomfortable. "Rotate our entire lives around?"
"I don't think it says that," is Robin's earnest response. "I think it's kinda nice, actually, would be nicer if it worked for me in practice. But as lonely as life can get, Nance, don't you think it'd be kinda a good thing to have a partner? Especially one that, y'know, is statistically unlikely to make you miserable?"
"People in love can make each other miserable all the time. There's plenty of headlines to prove it."
Divorces between people with shared marks are rare, but not unheard of. Widowers with symbols that'll never find their match again. She knows well enough to know that nothing is a guarantee.
"Who knows," Robin quips. "Maybe I'll get lucky and your soulmate will live closer to Chicago, and you'll leave that job you h—"
Nancy hangs up on her.
Her phone starts ringing again shortly thereafter.
"I can't believe you—"
"I'm not miserable."
"I didn't say you were miserable. You doth protest, I just said you hated—"
"I don't hate it."
"If Rupert Murdoch is tapping this phone, he can listen to me say I think he sucks balls."
"These phones lines are not tapped, and Jesus Christ Robin." The latter part of the sentence is hissed into the phone.
"Sor-ry, but I seem to recall a conversation about how you're disgusted by the headlines of your own paper—"
"Robin."
"And the Tribune and the Sun-Times are both very fine papers, by the way. Like, swimming in Pulitzers kinda fine papers. You could work with Roger Ebert!"
"I really don't want to have this argument again."
"Fine," Robin groans. "Sorry, I'm being a jerk. It's your birthday and I'm giving you a bunch of shit for your life choices. Me, of all people. Imagine that!"
"I think you're doing pretty well, Robin," Nancy says, her voice earnest. "And I'm a little all over the place. You'll be in Hawkins for Thanksgiving, right?"
"Yes! You're not avoiding it this year, are you?"
"I didn't avoid last year, there was just a deadline and…"
"I'll hold you to it." Robin hums. "You'll be in for a few days, right? Please say yes."
"I'll get in Tuesday night," Nancy says, her eyes going to her desk calendar. "Week and a half from now, right? Flying in on Tuesday, flying back on Sunday."
"Need someone to pick you up from the airport?"
"No, that'll be my dad. Besides, you don't even have a car."
Robin doesn't acknowledge this. "We're doing a Thanksgiving thing that Wednesday, the kids will be there. By telling me your itinerary you've already agreed to come, by the way. Steve is spatchcocking a turkey, and if you know what that means you're way ahead of me. Have you been to his house yet, by the way?"
"Uh…" Nancy hesitates.
"It's very cute, you'll like it. He's very excited to host and have all the kids over, it's all very Julia Child. Max and Lucas are just a few blocks away, Dustin won't shut up about mashed potatoes, Will might bring a boyfriend, and it'll be nice."
"Nice," Nancy repeats. She itches underneath her watch strap. She does not look underneath it. "Yeah, that sounds nice."
Nancy goes back to her apartment that night the same as she does every night. She is twenty-five and nothing has changed. She feeds Ripley the cat, reads whatever headlines she missed during the workday on the couch, finishes her line edits until her eyes are too heavy to keep open, and barely processes the phone ringing after she dozes off. By the time she's vertical again, blinking the sleep out of her eyes after the interruption, the answering machine beeps and the tape starts whirring.
"Just wanted to call and say happy birthday, Nance. Hope you're doing okay."
The message is brief. Steve's voice sounds warm.
Nancy sighs. She should call back, should thank him, should stop being a coward. There are a lot of shoulds, all overlapping one another, and she's not prepared to disentangle one from the other.
Calling back would mean reliving the last time they talked, an argument she can't take back. Her accusing him of staying in Hawkins because it was easy, him accusing her of being miserable at the Herald because she was afraid she was wrong. Answering one emotionally bruising shove with another, pot calling the kettle black, the list of descriptors for the last meet up the four of them dared to try goes on.
It was a year ago, after their meetings reduced from monthly to quarterly to once a year. She told him he was too afraid to leave Hawkins, he told her she was too afraid to leave her job. Steve will always choose what's comfortable even if it means he doesn't grow, Nancy will always choose discomfort. They were both probably right. That doesn't change anything, though.
Trauma bonded or not, some relationships were always just wishful thinking. That's always been true of her and Jonathan, once they both got enough distance to see it clearly. It's a miracle Robin and Jonathan put up with each other as long as they did, what with Jonathan's easy judgment and Robin's aversion to anything resembling a verbal filter. And Nancy and Steve were just two people that dated once in high school. They didn't have room to be anything more.
So Thanksgiving, a reunion in a week and a half, a call on her birthday…
"It's a lot," Nancy admits in the car. Surprise of all surprises, it's Mike who picks her up in their dad's car. "Being back here."
"Yeah," Mike says, older and broader than she can ever remember her little brother. He's been at Notre Dame, closer than where Nancy fled to. "It is."
Nancy feels her gut twist as soon as she realizes the bruise she's so clumsily bumped into. "I can't imagine how hard it must be for…"
She trails off awkwardly, mouth hanging partially open.
Mike doesn't say anything for a moment. His eyes stay on the road. "We're moving on," he says, voice intentionally light. "Aren't we?"
Nancy just stares at him for a moment. Her little brother. He was inconsolable for so long. She plays with the leather at her wrist. She wonders how he'll feel when his comes in. If he'll find a match, if he'll want to. If he doesn't, will he feel relieved that the memory is uncorrupted? Or feel the sting of another piece of evidence for the perplexing young widower he's become? Will he be angry, upset if there is a match? Or would that mean growth, healing…
"Moving on," Nancy repeats, turning her head to look out the window. "Something like that, yeah."
Her mother brings it up over the dinner table.
"Nancy, honey, why are you covering your wrist? The guy that bad?"
She plays it off as a partial joke. Nancy doesn't laugh, only tucks her right hand under the table and pulls her sleeve further over it. "Let's just say I don't have a lot of faith in the government after everything we went through," she says, trying for glib but landing somewhere harsher.
Holly looks at her, eyes curious, then looks again at their parents. That's a mystery she must have solved a long time ago. Of that, Nancy has no doubt.
"When I turn twenty-five, there's no way I'm going to the courthouse," Holly says decisively. "They lie when they feel like it, don't they?"
Their father makes a disgruntled noise. "Now, now, as stressful as those… incidents were."
"When the United States military held your kids hostage for forty-eight hours and subjected them to torture, you mean?" Mike asks, voice hard. "Those incidents?"
Nancy freezes. It's the most he's ever said on the subject. They were split up quickly after Eleven disappeared. She tried counting the hours she spent with her hands zip-tied behind her, tried calling out for Robin or Jonathan or Steve — calling for Steve again, to burst through the wall with an old fire extinguisher and give her a hand out. But they knew she killed their men; they had it on tape. For a moment she was certain it'd be an execution for her executions. Her just desserts for mistaking killing men for being the same thing as killing monsters.
"We just want information," they told her. They didn't ask very nicely for it.
Mike knew so much. It must have been so much worse for him.
Nancy looks at him, resists the urge to reach across the table for him. "Mike, I—"
She doesn't know what she wants to ask: 'Are you okay? Is there anything I can do about it now? What was I supposed to do then? How could I have saved her and you then?'
The words turn to ash in her throat, and instead she turns to her mother and says, "See what a disaster dinner conversation turns into when you bring up my love life?"
No one laughs.
Nancy can only hope this next dinner doesn't go quite so disastrously, but she's not optimistic about it.
Robin swings open the door of a brick Tudor with a wide grin on her face before Nancy can even lift her hand to knock. "Wheelers!" she greets, hugging Nancy first before moving over to Mike. "If you smell burning, it is not—"
"The potatoes are safe," Dustin interrupts behind her. He moves to be next in the hugging queue, starting with Nancy and ending with giving Mike a few extra hearty pats on the back. They both look relaxed, clad in their socks and comfortably crowding the entrance as if this is their home too. Knowing them, knowing Steve, it may as well be.
"It's Lucas's attempt at cornbread. I think it's fucked," Max shouts from somewhere further in the house.
"It is not fucked!" The protest emanates from the back of the house, what must be kitchen.
"It's fucked, Lucas! I told you, you can't just substitute olive oil for vegetable—"
"I'm sorry, are olives not a vegetable now?"
"They're a fruit," Robin says, so lowly she may very well just be speaking to herself. "Olives are a fruit. It's fine. I'll eat it anyway. You guys can stick your shoes wherever, we've been putting coats on the guest room bed, and—"
"We brought pie," Nancy offers, lifting the box in her hands a little meekly. "Well, I can't be trusted in a kitchen, apparently, so it's store bought."
"At least it's not burnt," Mike says, not unkindly. He kicks off his shoes and moves where directed, shrugging off his coat and taking Nancy's. Nancy tries not to watch him too carefully, tries not to nervously orbit him. She can't tell if he's feeling more brittle or if she is and it's just making her paranoid.
"You can bring it to the kitchen," Robin offers, sweeping her arm and ushering Nancy forward. "I feel very hostess, bossing people around in someone else's house."
"Oh, c'mon, Rob," Steve says, and he's closing the oven as he does with a meat thermometer still in hand as they enter the kitchen. "The roommate offer still stands if you ever get sick of paying that rent for a shoebox in Chicago." He notices Nancy and nearly drops the thermometer. He doesn't, only sets it down and quickly moves to wash his hands.
Nancy would say something, now, but the sound of the faucet and the ongoing olive oil argument in the next room make it hard to be sure she'd be heard.
Steve turns back around, drying his hands on a kitchen towel. "Ah, sorry, gross turkey stuff. Good to see you, Nance."
The sleeves of his thick, cable-knit sweater are rolled up. The raised skin on his wrist is visible as he gestures, but she doesn't examine it, eyes intentionally snapping back to his.
"Thanks for having us," Nancy says, voice cordial. She lifts the pie box in her hand. "Uh, where should I put…"
"Here," Steve says, patting an open space of counter top. "Here is fine. Sorry it's a little chaotic, it's, uh." He scratches his hair, shorter than she remembers it before.
"It's Thanksgiving," Nancy says, lips curling upwards as she sets the box down. "If it wasn't a little chaotic at Thanksgiving, it'd be weird."
He visibly brightens. "Right! It's Thanksgiving. Kinda always wanted to host, y'know, with everyone back under one roof." Steve points, ostensibly, to his own roof. "I know everyone is thousands of miles away and all, but it's nice that we could do this. For the holidays."
"Yeah," Nancy agrees earnestly. "It's nice."
Steve stares back at her for a moment, then clears his throat. Robin is mysteriously absent after her initial introduction. Steve gestures to a loaf of cornbread that looks more charred than baked. "I have the boxed stuff," he says. "Do you think they'd be offended if I…"
"Probably," Nancy nods, biting back a laugh. "Might cause an incident. I think we just have to put up with it. What's this I hear about you and spatchcocking?"
"Oh, it's as sexy as it sounds." Steve snorts. "You break a bunch of bones, you butter under the skin—"
"That's disgusting."
Steve keeps going. "It's pretty much the only way to make sure the moisture is right, and it cooks way more evenly. Granted, that meant a giant bird took up a good fifty percent of my fridge space, but," he shrugs, "that's just the price you pay for a good Thanksgiving."
"Is it?" Nancy asks, eyebrows raising.
"Yeah, pretty sure." He grins, crossing his arms. "Did you want the wishbone?"
"I'll pass," Nancy replies, looking down at the floor as she smiles. "The house is nice, Steve."
"Yeah?" he asks, his voice soft. "You want the tour?"
Nancy almost says no. Her instinct is to say no. Instead, she answers, "Sure."
The house was built in 1930, before the Tudor style fell out of favor after World War II. He says the realtor told him this. He's half convinced the guy was full of shit because he was a used car salesman before he got into the whole realtor thing, but the inspector said the bones were good and that was good enough. It has four bedrooms, two and a half baths, and a basement,
"Prime for finishing," Steve says over his shoulder as he pulls a string that turns the lights on. He starts down the stairs, and Nancy follows him. "The dry-walling is a whole project, but I guess that's what summers off are for," he continues, hands on his hips as he rocks backwards on his heels.
"Pretty sure your basement is the size of my apartment," Nancy says, looking around at the concrete.
"Big city rents or Hawkins mortgage payments," Steve replies good-naturedly. "It's like I've been telling Robin."
"You must be glad she's closer."
"Three hours beats fourteen, I gotta admit. Think you'd ever come back to the Midwest?"
Nancy exhales. "Maybe Chicago," she says, and this is as close as she'll allow herself to get. "Someday."
His expression turns more serious, then. "Nance, about what I said—"
"Steve!" Robin shouts, opening the door. "Your timer is going off!"
"Shit," is Steve's automatic response. He starts racing towards the stairs. "That'll be the turkey."
Dinner is nice.
Really, she means it. It's good to see the kids who aren't kids anymore. Mike seems lighter here, more like the version of him Nancy remembers from 1986. Max and Lucas, still to her surprise, didn't leave Hawkins and instead commute to classes at IU. Max is still riotous and sharp, and Lucas still looks at her like he'd play her favorite tape over and over again. Nancy knows that soulmarks won't make any difference for them when they bloom.
Dustin is thoroughly enjoying his time at MIT, the puzzles he gets to solve and the trips he and Steve still manage to go on. Nancy shouldn't feel a pang at the thought, shouldn't think of asking Steve to tell her the next time he's in Boston. Steve briefly looks at her as Dustin describes a rented camper and a trip to Acadia, and Nancy hopes she's quick enough at averting her eyes back to Dustin to be deemed unsuspicious.
Will doesn't bring his boyfriend, much to Robin's disappointment ("Shame we didn't get to embarass you with stories about the end of the world," she says wryly, sticking her spoon pointedly in her mashed potatoes.) But he seems lighter, happier, too. They all do. It's like they've settled into their skin, grown into people who can process everything that happened to them without conscious effort, moved on.
Nancy looks at her brother and wonders if they just might be uniquely cursed. Him by his loss, Nancy by a tension she can't even understand.
"Happy late birthday, Nancy," Dustin tells her, voice magnanimous. "Heard it was the big 2-5."
"I'm getting old," Nancy replies, shaking her head. "Think I even found a grey hair the other day."
"I hope that's not genetic," Mike mutters, and she gives him a playful shove next to her.
"And a neat new tattoo to go with…" Dustin trails off, cocking his head pointedly in her direction. "Anything interesting?"
"I don't know," Nancy says with a shrug. "Choosing not to know, actually. The only marks I'm interested in matching are the crime scene kind." She cringes slightly, rapping her fork against her plate. "That came off way better in my head, but you get the point."
"A conscientious objector," Robin says, then stuffs half a roll inside her mouth.
"I wouldn't compare it to war," Nancy replies carefully, shooting Robin a sideways glance.
"Love is a Battlefield, and all of that," Lucas mutters.
"Do you teach your kids abstinence until mark and marriage, Steve?" Max asks, tilting her head towards him.
"By school district mandate, I'm pretty much required to," Steve answers. "There is still a stash of condoms in one of the drawers, because I'm not stupid and I'm really hoping they're not either. That's off the books, though, and I'd prefer it if you didn't tell the school board."
"Chastity and self-discipline," Robin recites. "Thank you Ronald Reagan."
"The recommended curriculum is a little…" Steve winces. "Bad. It's bad. They know what to put on a test and what shit they shouldn't do in real life and that's what counts.
"Do you show off your nifty soulmark to anyone?" Dustin asks, craning his neck to look.
Steve rolls his eyes, and it's now Nancy notices him tugging at his sleeve. Down, wool over his wrist. "To them, it just means I'm old. Pretty sure they think that already. So. Nothing new. Boring day at the courthouse, that's all."
"Any matches?" Max asks. Nancy tries not to read into the way she glances in her direction.
"I think I should go cut the pie," Nancy suddenly declares. She moves to stand, and her chair scrapes against the wood.
She doesn't listen for Steve's answer.
It's cold on Steve's porch, but he lingers. Nancy fits her coat around her shoulders, her arms wrapping tightly around herself. Mike starts the car, and it's a game of Tetris to get all of them out of the driveway. Nancy is about to start directing traffic, then join Mike on the drive home, when Steve starts speaking.
"Thank you," he says. "For making it. I know it's — I know this isn't your favorite, any of this, Hawkins or me or—"
"What do you mean?" she asks, brow furrowing. "Steve, I—"
"Hang on. I know I went over the line last time we talked, and I'm the last person that you need to give you a whole lecture about your job. So I just wanted to say I didn't have the right to do it. I'm not in your life enough to know you like that, to judge you like that, and I'm sorry, Nance. Really."
"I said some things, too." She swallows, fiddling with the watch strap on her arm. "Things I didn't — you love it here, Steve, and that's worth something. That's special. I wish I felt that way about Boston, about my job, about—"
Anything is the next word on the tip of her tongue. She pulls the leather of her watch back, a nervous twitch she should never have developed, and then swears as the metal clangs against the brick of the porch.
"I'll get it," Steve offers immediately, squinting in the dark light. Nancy grasps past the front door to turn the porch light on; she's still getting used to the early dark of late autumn. Steve makes an 'ah-ha' noise, and holds her watch in his hands. "I got it," he announces. He reaches for her wrist, unthinkingly, and she barely remembers why it was so important to cover.
Steve blinks once, twice at the raised pattern on the skin of her inner wrist under direct light. And then he clasps her watch and drops her hand like it's burned him.
Nancy gapes at him. It all happened too quickly for her to do more than that.
"Have a good night, Nance," he says, reaching for the door handle. He doesn't look behind him, not even as Nancy stands there staring at his back. "Safe drive."
He closes the door behind him.
Nancy remains on the porch, dumbfounded until the sound of honking rips her from her reverie.
There are a few different possibilities.
She writes them all out, neatly numbered in her yellow legal pad.
The first is that Steve realized he did something that was more intimate than he meant to. This is the most likely option, and is numbered as such accordingly. Of course he didn't mean to look at her wrist and its new mark, of course he only intended to return her watch. He was embarrassed. She was embarrassed, too. It was just an awkward situation for everyone.
The second is that Steve was not only embarrassed at the intimacy, but their marks were so discordant that it made the idea of them ever dating laughable. He'd moved on, he was no longer the boy he was in 1983 or even the twenty year old from 1986 who still had what-ifs. But a part of him might have wondered like she did, and that was just a door summarily slammed shut. Just like the one Nancy found herself behind.
It wouldn't have worked out anyway — Steve the hometown hero with dreams of a full house, Nancy the neurotic reporter whose nerves were frayed by staying too long in any place. They're too different. They've been molded into different shapes. One theory for the late bloom of marks is that they account for this, the match settling with your prefrontal cortex. If the marks have any authority at all, they'd know this.
The third, least likely option is that he dropped her wrist in recognition.
This doesn't merit any further examination. She doesn't write anything underneath it. Marks were too complex to recognize instantly, no matter what interviews with the love-struck claimed. It'd be almost as nonsensical as recognizing a fingerprint from sight alone. They're not as complex, and they're more visible and less microscopic, but still. They were complicated enough that you couldn't glance.
And then there's all of the other reasons, too varied to list out. Steve in Hawkins. Nancy in Boston. Steve settled with kids. Nancy permanently unsettled. If they were two maps, they were of very different places.
It's just not possible.
She still runs her finger over the skin of her inner wrist, feeling the raises and eyeing the discoloration like it'll tell her the truth. Could she memorize the path, given a year? If she could bear to look at it, feel it every day, multiple times a day, from the initial indentation near her palm down the visible trunk of her veins?
It's hard to know.
When they were younger, much younger, Nancy remembers this:
Steve with his arm around her midsection, nose nuzzled in her neck. He'd clambered in through her window, her flashcards littered across her bed like confetti. He'd stayed long after it was clear they weren't doing anything but studying. His hand found hers, his fingers tracing her palm before moving down to her wrist.
Her wrist was bare, of course. His was too. They were too young for that, and it was too soon. But his thumb rubbed over the skin of her wrist, and a part of her hoped. This feeling could last forever. In nine years, who was to say they wouldn't wear matching marks? She wondered if he was thinking the same thing she was, wondered if she wasn't the only one falling, wondered if she could build something new and her own that looked nothing like her parents' marriage.
But she was sixteen, he was seventeen, and neither of them knew anything.
Barb died days afterwards, and she stopped believing in fairytales.
"You're really not curious?" Mike, of all people, is the one to ask her this. He gestures to her wrist as she closes the trunk. He offered to drive her back to the airport, claimed it was on the way to Notre Dame even though Indianapolis is in the opposite direction.
Nancy shrugs. "I don't need to know."
"Is it about the government registry part? I can understand that," he offers, settling into the driver's seat as Nancy climbs in through the passenger door. "Not exactly reassuring to have them involved."
"A little," Nancy admits. "But that's not all of it."
He's quiet for a moment. It's either because he's thinking of what to say or waiting for her to say it.
"I just can't imagine spending the rest of my life with someone because we have matching symbols on our wrists. I have a life, a job, things I want to do and see and accomplish. What kind of free will is just… giving your life away to a person who has the same mark? Who could understand everything we've been through, Mike? Some random guy named Jared who works at a bank in Indianapolis? A guy named Mitch who lives in Canada and has a family and friends and all of these people who will never understand why I flinch at power surges and go to a gun range to unwind?
"I'm never going to be who they expect me to be, who they want me to be, so why entertain it?" Nancy finishes with a sigh. "Why get your hopes up?"
"What about the guy," Mike counters. "Jared or Mitch or whoever it is. What if he's just sitting around, waiting for you?"
"There are people whose matches are dead or never register or just marry someone else. And they just go on with their lives, and they build relationships because they want to. Not because they have a mark on their wrist telling them to."
"What if their hopes are up and they spend the rest of their lives waiting for a match to show up?" Mike asks.
"I hope no one is stupid enough to do that," Nancy mutters.
Mike is silent, and Nancy soon realizes her mistake.
"It's not that — I didn't mean —"
"I guess I'm not the most impartial person about waiting around for someone assumed dead."
Nancy feels so guilty she's nearly nauseous.
"Mike. Really, I wasn't — I was thinking about me. I just…" she exhales through her mouth. "I just assume the worst. Sometimes things are better than I think they will be. But I don't like counting on that. I want to feel like I have some choice in the matter, like I can decide what my life looks like. I don't know. I don't have it all figured out."
"You pretended to for a long time," he tells her.
She barks out a laugh. "Yeah. Key word there, pretended. I just want to feel like there are choices, you know?"
"Sometimes there are," he says.
Another beat of silence passes.
"Do you think…." Nancy trails off. The question is sitting there, but she can't verbalize it.
"No," is Mike's short answer. "That's just because I already know who my soulmate was. And she won't be there."
Nancy spends much of the rest of the drive staring at her hands. She does not look under her watch, does not let herself examine the skin of her inner wrist.
"Christmas?" she asks, crouching to speak to him after she exits through the passenger door. "I was able to get some more time off of work. The perks of some tenure, I guess."
"I'm actually going on a trip with some classmates over winter break," Mike says. "It's an overseas thing."
"On Christmas?" she asks, puzzled.
"Yeah."
"Okay," she says slowly. She's thinking logistics now. She'll have to figure out how to get him his gifts before he leaves, will have to make another set of plans for the time off she's already requested. "Send us a postcard? I'm sure Holly would love that."
He gives her a thumbs up, she grabs her bag from the trunk, and Mike is gone.
She stares after his car, unsure why this parting note makes her feel so unsettled.
"I'm quitting," Alexis, the lifestyle editor and Nancy's only work friend, announces in early December. She punctuates this announcement by flopping into the chair next to Nancy's desk.
Nancy stops typing to gape at her. "You're not serious."
"I am," Alexis says, pushing her braids out of her face. "I'm quitting, and they'll probably get so pissy about it that they don't let me finish the two weeks of notice."
"We were in this together," Nancy groans, leaning forward on her desk so her face is in her hands. She looks back up at Alexis. "This feels like abandonment."
"You should quit, too," Alexis replies. "Did you know no one is getting a pay raise this year? I hear they're talking layoffs, and I'd rather be as far away from that as possible before the ship starts sinking."
"And go where?"
"I got a job offer for a column at Essence. If I could bring you with me, I would, but…"
"Point taken," Nancy replies. "But I am a college dropout, and this has been my only journalism job that wasn't a school paper or a…" Nancy attempts to recap her time at The Hawkins Post in a way that doesn't end with 'sexist bosses eaten', and very nearly fails. "High school internship."
"Apply," Alexis insists. "Anywhere else. I could feel this job killing me — do you want to know how many times I got notes back on my column complimenting me on being so 'articulate'? I'm working crazy hours to meet deadlines to write about flannel and sad rock boys in Seattle. Meanwhile, we won't even talk about the guys on the Politics beat."
Nancy winces in understanding. "It's… not great."
"The bags under your eyes are bigger than a Jansport, Nancy."
Nancy's hand reflexively brushes underneath her undereyes. "Wow, okay. But the work, Alexis! If I don't do it, if I—"
"What are you working on right now?"
"A follow up piece."
"A follow up piece?"
"From a murder two years ago."
"Don't tell me it's the same—"
"Yeah," Nancy admits. "It is. They want a retrospective now that it's been two years since the—"
"Nancy," Alexis interrupts, pleads as she leans forward in her chair. "Stop doing this to yourself. Please. Get out of this place. It will steal your soul if you let it. This is a place you stay at for a year, maybe two. You get yourself some bylines, and then you get out. How long have you been here?"
"Three years."
"See, that's anywhere from one to two years too many," Alexis says, moving to stand back up. "Get out while you still can."
This is the parting note Alexis leaves her on, rapping her knuckles against Nancy's desk before she leaves.
Nancy doesn't quit.
Not right then, anyway. It's not a sensible course of action, even if Alexis has given her a lot to think about. It's true she'd rather be doing her own investigative journalism rather than recycling the same quotes, it's true that she'd rather not feel so embarassed of the paper she worked at — but this is the hand she's been dealt, and this is the life she's supposed to have wanted. She dropped out of Emerson after dreaming about it for years, what if leaving this job is yet another mistake? What other paper would have her?
She applies at other jobs, including in Chicago. It's a start. She doesn't tell Robin about it, afraid she won't be able to endure the embarassment if she tries and is summarily rejected.
Christmas is strange without Mike.
There's a place setting missing at the table, and her mother clearly isn't thrilled about a trip taking predenence over a family holiday.
"What kind of school friends plan a trip over Christmas?" she asks the question, over and over again, to people who aren't well-positioned to answer her. Nancy mailed her gifts to Notre Dame, but her mother keeps Mike's presents wrapped underneath the tree as if to prove a point. Mike isn't coming to unwrap them, but they'll likely linger there for months until whenever he makes his next reppearance in Hawkins.
Robin is nearly as dubious. She invites Nancy for lunch at the newly-remodeled and reopened Benny's, and spends much of it quizzing Nancy over her knowledge of her brother's whereabouts.
"Abroad, you said?"
"Overseas," Nancy corrects, trying to recall the exact wording. "I was so taken aback by it I really didn't press it further. We were at the airport, I had to start boarding, and…"
"That's convenient of him to drop it on you then." Robin hums in between bites of her french fry. "He doesn't seem the type to do wild adventures with college friends. Does he have college friends?"
"Apparently," is Nancy's answer. "The rest of the kids didn't know about it? I'd assume they did."
"Not much more than you," Robin replies, frowning. "I quizzed Dustin, and ran into dead ends with him as quickly as I did with you. I feel like they know something, though."
"I should have at least asked the country. What kind of sister doesn't ask the country?"
"And your mom has no idea?"
"She's pissed about it, believe me," Nancy snorts, taking a long sip from her coffee mug. "But no. He told her over the phone then basically hung up on her. Do any of the kids know his college friends?"
Robin shakes her head. "Weird, right?"
"Huh." Nancy crosses her arms and bites her lip. "Yeah, that's weird."
"What's your theory?" Robin asks, wiggling her eyebrows.
"My theory?"
"You must have a theory, Miss Investigative Reporter. He's your brother. Where do you think he is?"
"I don't know," Nancy answers, mostly honestly. She runs a hand through her hair. It's getting longer. "I've been trying not to pry and be the nosy sister."
"Nancy Wheeler," Robin says flatly, "trying not to pry. That's like a fish trying not to swim."
"Fine." Nancy sighs. "I've thought about it. I just don't like what I come up with."
"Don't like it?" Robin repeats. She dips her fry into her milkshake. "You think he's engaging in a bunch of debauchery in Greece or something?"
"No. That would probably be more of a healthy, college kid kind of thing to do."
"So unhealthy?"
Nancy exhales slowly. She lowers her voice and leans over the table. "I think he's looking for her."
"For…" Robin's eyes light up, and it doesn't take her long to connect the dots. "Eleven? It's The Theory, right?"
Nancy furrows her eyebrows together. "The Theory?"
"It's a thing the kids have talked about," Robin says, waving her hand. "I only know because Dustin told Steve, and Steve told me, but basically they think there's a good shot that El is alive."
Nancy slumps. "He's going to be so heartbroken, Rob."
"If he's wrong," Robin says, emphasizing the qualifier.
"We saw it happen."
"Eyes can be deceiving," Robin counters. "You and I both know that. Either way, he'd get closer to an answer. Isn't that something?"
"He could spend his entire life looking in every corner of the world," Nancy says, voice laced with concern. "He could bankrupt himself in the process, forget how to live a life that's his, all for a hope that has a slim possibility of being real."
"People do it all the time, Nance," Robin says, gesturing with both hands. "That's just life. That's just love. Nothing you can do about it."
Nancy's frown deepens. "I just don't want him to get hurt."
"It's too late for that. It's been too late for that. But yeah," Robin continues, "that's just life. He'll be alright. He's in love, Nance. People survive that every day."
Nancy groans. She throws a napkin in Robin's direction, who dodges it with a raise eyebrow.
"When did you get all wise?"
"Chicago," Robin answers, throwing the balled napkin back in Nancy's direction. "It's the water there, actually."
The occasion of almost everyone back in Hawkins for the holidays calls for yet another gathering at Steve's house. Robin, once again, presents this less as an invitation and more as a demand. Nancy could try to argue with her, but that wouldn't lead anywhere. She's looking forward to seeing the kids, and dreading the embarrassment she might relive in Steve's company again. When she walks through the front door and sees Jonathan, the dread only multiplies.
Next to him sits a girl with dark hair and multiple facial piercings she does not recognize. Max, Lucas, and Robin sit on the couch opposite them.
"Nance!" Robin says, shooting up as the door creaks open. "You're here! Yay!" It's an awfully stiff 'yay', and Robin doesn't stop talking as she takes hold of Nancy's shoulders. "So, why don't we catch up for a sec while I take your coat, and—"
"Nancy!" Jonathan says, also now standing. He edges closer to them, a little awkwardly. "It's good to see you! I wanted you to meet Mel, she's—"
"His soulmate," Max finishes, ever the one to cut to the chase.
Nancy's mouth forms a perfect 'o' for a moment before she collects herself. "Wow. Congratulations, I didn't know you were in town—"
"Joyce and Hop are, too," Jonathan explains. "They're in from Montauk. They wanted to see everyone, and Mel wanted to see where I grew up—"
"And the source of all the monsters," Mel adds, sounding good-humored. Nancy shoots Robin a look, and Robin presses her lips together until they disappear. "Demogorgons, right?"
"Monsters is just fine," Hopper interjects, a bottle of cabernet in his hands as he walks in from the kitchen. "Nothing left of them now, but I'm sure we can take you on a drive along of these old parts."
Nancy's eyes flit around the room, her confusion and vertigo only growing. She's overloaded with information, and Robin's facial expressions are not helping.
"Jonathan mentioned you were great with guns," Mel adds, sounding genuinely curious as she turns to Nancy. "You sound like a real badass."
"I—" Nancy begins, and finds the words do not leave her throat. She turns to Robin, eyes wide. "Uh, coat?" she asks belatedly.
Robin nods enthusiastically, and takes her by the arm to the guest room. She shuts the door behind them, hands raised placatingly.
"In my defense, I don't think any of us knew this was happening until he showed up."
"This," Nancy repeats, turning her head to look back at the door. "As in, Jonathan showing up with his soulmate? Who he's told everything to?"
"Healthy communication?" Robin offers weakly. "Really, it says a lot she believed it. There might be a screw loose in there."
"His soulmate," she repeats, disbelieving. "He did it. He actually went and did it."
"Counter-cultural guys." Robin nods, raising her fist to shake it. "They're always so weak. It's always 'question authority!' and then if the state points you in the direction of your perfect girlfriend, then it's game over."
"He told me soulmates were bullshit," Nancy says, heat in her cheeks rising. "That it was a violation of free will, individual autonomy, that it was just—"
"Yeah," Robin agrees. "That's Byers for you. You wanna know the worst part? Can I just rip it off like a band-aid?"
Nancy is still reeling. "What?"
"I like her," Robin admits, wincing. "I do. I really didn't want to, because you know my opinion on Jonathan has never been all that great, so you know I don't think he deserves a cool girlfriend in the grand scheme of things — believe me, I'm firmly of the opinion that you were way too cool for him — but she's sharp. Jonathan is less annoying around her, if you can believe it. And, you're going to hate me for saying this, but I think you'll actually like her."
"This is," Nancy begins, her fingers rubbing at her temples. "A lot."
"Totally." Robin agrees. "I don't know the full story of the breakup you guys had forever ago, but it's gotta feel weird. Totally weird. Your ex just showing up with their soulmate, just as a 'Hey, by the way!'"
"He said he didn't believe in it," Nancy repeats her earlier sentiment, the gears of her brain stuck on this. "And he, what? Went to the courthouse?"
"Not quite" Robin answers. "Just so happens they were both living in New York. It's always so crazy to me, those coincidences, but I guess the whole thing is compatibility, and if you're compatible you're probably doing similar things in some way or the other, and it's all super weird whatever secret formula is in these little wrist marks, but — seriously, Jonathan being the first one called up to the plate? If you'd asked me to gamble, which I don't, really, but if I was asked—"
"Robin," Nancy interrupts, her headache growing as she presses her hand against her eye socket. "It's fine, really, I just need to grow up and—"
"Plus you add in old exes and old feelings—"
"There are no old feelings."
"But if there were, y'know, it wouldn't be super unjustified to feel a kind of way about it—"
"I'm just a little surprised," Nancy manages, both hands now covering her eyes, "that Jonathan of all people is suddenly a big proponent of soulmates. I can't count how many conversations we had about it. Really, it's like next he's going to buy a house in the suburbs and start working in insurance and listening to disco music."
"I like disco music," Robin protests.
"Everyone likes disco music, unless you make it your whole personality not to. Just like how everyone is probably at least mildly curious about who their soulmate is unless they've made it their mission not to be."
"Is that what you've done? Made it your mission not to be?"
"No!" Nancy retorts immediately. "Not like that. It just doesn't make sense for me, for my life. It's not some political statement, it's just—"
"A Nancy statement," Robin surmises. She looks back to the door. "Okay, I think we've probably used up the remainder of any time the coat check excuse gave us. Are you good? Do we need a signal, or something?"
"Where's Steve?" Nancy asks suddenly.
"Running errands with Dustin. Will and Joyce are getting some last minute Christmas shopping done, I don't think they were fully expecting our special guest either…"
"He didn't tell Joyce?" Nancy wishes she was more surprised.
"It's a Christmas Eve surprise for everyone," Robin says dryly.
Steve and Dustin make it back to the house before Joyce and Will do. Nancy isn't sure whether to be grateful for the existence of another elephant in the room, or if this will only make matters worse. But Steve greets her casually, easily, and he's nothing but a gracious host. There's no evidence of their awkward goodbye at Thanksgiving, and Nancy can only hope things stay that way. She flexes her hand every time she gets the temptation to reach for her watch, replacing one habit with the other.
Jonathan is happy to share about his meet-cute with his soulmate. One moment he's helping orgnaize archival footage as a favor to an old classmate, the next he's unknowingly filing away next to the love of his life. He'd asked her out for a drink, and they'd laughed in disbelief over their matching wrists in the dim lighting of a dive bar. Mel didn't believe it, so he'd drawn over his skin with a marker and transferred it to a napkin. The napkin lined up perfectly with her mark when pressed against her wrist.
Neither of them had gone to the courthouse, on or after their twenty-fifth birthdays. It just happened.
Nancy does her best to keep her face impassive.
Of course this is the loophole. Jonathan hadn't sought it out so much as been delivered the information, like a rubber-band bound newspaper hitting the sidewalk. It was always more romantic when it was accidential. All the perks of a perfect match with none of the cynicism of turning away from it or the indignity of asking the government for it.
When she turns her head to look at Steve, he's already looking at her. He quickly looks away, and she does too.
It's after dinner that Nancy claims she's due for a smoke break. She doesn't bother to grab her coat, just makes her way to the back porch. It's quiet. Snow blanketed Hawkins days ago, just enough to be thick and pretty without making the roads a nightmare. The sky is a hazy purple, and she can see her breath when she exhales. She breathes in, accepts the sharp cold, and breathes out her best approximation of cigarette smoke.
A few moments late, the back door creaks open.
"You don't smoke," Steve says.
"I could have started," she counters, wrapping her arms around herself. "Would be very hardball reporter of me. All the fashion."
"You gagged when you smelled it on my jacket in high school," Steve snorts, walking to lean against the same wooden railing she is. "That's why I quit."
Nancy hums. "I guess it'd feel unfair if I started smoking after that."
"Yeah," Steve says softly. He's only slightly illuminated by the back porch, the rest of him hazy in the snow's reflected brightness. "I guess it might."
They stand side by side in companionable silence for a moment.
"How are you holding up?" Steve asks, cutting right to it. "Not every day your old boyfriend comes to Christmas with a soulmate in tow."
"Don't tell me you have one too." Nancy nearly groans before remembering herself. "How is…" she trails off, realizing she's already forgotten the name of Steve's girlfriend. The girlfriend she'd forgotten to ask about entirely over Thanksgiving.
"Not it, if you were curious," Steve answers readily.
"She turn twenty-five?"
"Nope," Steve says, but that's all he offers on the subject.
Nancy weighs the merits of prying more. She decides against it. Even if she could open that can of worms, it's not wise for her to.
"I'm not like," Nancy fidgets, "jealous, if that's what you're thinking."
"Of Mary?" Steve asks, disbelieving. "I know—"
"Of Mel," she clarifies. "Jonathan and I have been over for a long time, for good reason. I was under no allusions that he was going to be my soulmate, or that we'd ever go back to that. But he was so certain. That's what I remember."
"About you?"
"About soulmates being complete crap," Nancy says, nearly laughing as she says it. "Seriously. It just seemed so set in stone for him, and now it's like he's completely sure of the opposite. It's just hard to remember the guy that's so, I don't know, warm and fuzzy in there is the same Jonathan Byers I dated."
"He should have been like that with you," Steve offers. It's automatic, the way he says it, and she can tell by the way he stiffens afterwards that he didn't mean to say it at all.
"That's not what it's about, either," Nancy says softly. "Think it's just the certainty."
"And you're not certain? Nance, you're like, the most 'go in guns blazing' person I know."
"That doesn't mean I'm certain," Nancy counters, shaking her head. "About much of anything. I think I was just hoping I'd be. Fake it until you make it, and all of that."
"Yeah," he replies, voice quiet. "I know all about that."
She doesn't know how to parse his response, to find it either of an admittance of bravado or a reminder of a past sin to apologize for. Instead, she changes the subject. "I think Mike is off trying to find Eleven. Did Robin tell you that?"
"I guessed as much," Steve admits. "Figured it was probably a matter of time."
"A matter of time?"
"Once Dustin told me about the whole Theory. If you think someone you love is still out there, you find 'em. That's just how it works."
"Even if it's really, really unlikely?"
"Against all odds. Phil Collins had it right on that one. Just the way it works."
"I'm worried it's going to break his heart," Nancy admits. It's more than she means to say, more heart than she usually wears on her sleeve, but it's concern for her brother. This feels permissable, feels like something Nancy can be a little vulnerable about.
"Maybe," Steve acknowledges. "Or maybe, y'know, his heart is already broken. So then it's just a matter of choosing to try to grit your teeth and ignore the pain, or try to do something about it even if the chances suck. I've done both."
Nancy can't think of what to say to this.
"And if you're brave enough," Steve continues, shoving his hands in his pockets. "The second is probably still the better choice. At least then, you know."
"What if you can't know?" Nancy asks. "What if you're just stuck not knowing?"
"I dunno." Steve says, looking at the ground. "Guess you just try to get comfortable."
Since Thanksgiving, Nancy tried not to look at her mark.
She failed. Nancy never got as far as the courthouse, but she'd examined it from every angle, smeared ink on the raised skin to produce faithful replications on paper, sketched it in her notebook as some absurd self-soothing mechanism. She wanted to dismiss it, wanted to leave it alone, tried to wall herself off from thinking of it. But it's like telling a kid with chicken pox not to itch. Itching once makes it all the more tempting to come back to it, again and again, no matter how much your brain tells you not to. If she didn't know the pattern on her wrist a month ago, she knows it now.
"You look cold," Steve observes, still on the back porch with her. He's wearing a cardigan, because he's the kind of guy that does that now. Wears cardigans and teaches and talks about drywalling and the merits of vulnerability. He tugs it off without seeming to think about it, and puts it over Nancy's shoulders.
She looks over to him to thank him, to insist he takes it back, to go back inside. One of those options is next, until she catches his bare wrist in the light of the back porch and —
Bolts.
Nancy slinks out of the cardigan, rushes through the back door, finds her shoes, and mutters something about forgetting something at home. There's a chorus of voices, and she ignores all of them while she grasps for her keys. Her shoes are still in her hands as she rushes outside, her socks are soaked, and she tosses them in the backseat as she reverses the car and gets the hell out.
She drives past her parent's house, past the high school, past the Hawkins city limits sign before she pulls over. Nancy reaches for her shoes in the backseat and puts them on, feet numb and mind not much better. She must have forgotten her coat at Steve's house. This is her father's car, and she should return it soon.
Nancy turns on one of the cabin lights, takes off her watch, and stares at the mark on her wrist under the light.
When she gets to her parents' house, she takes out her legal pad and pen in her childhood bedroom, and writes:
"Option 3 ???"
In the shower, she processes. Her body feels gradually less numb, and her mind with it. She could approach this logically. What does it have in store for her? What does a soulmark mean, anyway?
From a biology textbook's perspective, it's just another step of evolution once migration patterns extended outwards and humans realized their aches went beyond just hunger and thirst. Churches swore this was an extension of every Eve from Adam's rib, designated accordingly. Modern sociologists declared it a symbol of the comfort of familiarity, of meeting someone and sighing in relief, in recognition. Activists in the 60s declared it the opium of the masses, Vietnam widows declared themselves smeared with their husbands' blood as their wrists' matches lie limp in a pointless battlefield. It was soothing; it was gasoline.
Steve would rub her right wrist absentmindedly while they were dating, sixteen and seventeen and then seventeen and eighteen. Did he know, then? That if they lived through it, in less than a decade they'd have more than matching scars? He was twenty when he told her about his dream, when he looked at her and said,
"You've always been there."
How could he have known? While she dismissed the ease, the lightness she felt around him as something to be punctuated by guilt — why did she get to be happy while Barb was dead, in the very relationship she disapproved so much of it killed her? — Steve accepted it. Dove right in. Came back. Over and over again.
And Steve knew, for sure, when he saw her at Thanksgiving. He knew, and he didn't pull up his wrist alongside hers, didn't hold her hand in place while he showed her what he recognized. He'd never do that; when she runs, he lets her go.
The water is scalding hot. Nancy still isn't thawed enough to think of a solution.
It's late when Robin knocks on her door. Nancy opens the door, flushed red with embarassment and from the shower, as Robin steps past her and begins whisper-yelling.
"What the hell, Nancy?"
"I know," Nancy murmurs, eyes flitting towards the stairs to verify the knocking didn't wake anyone up. "Okay, I know."
"You just left! On Christmas!"
"I'm sorry. What did Steve say?"
"Nothing! He was just all mopey, and everyone figured it had something to do with why you went off like a bat out of hell, and it was a very awkward rest of the dinner! Mel had questions! No one could answer them! Least of all Jonathan!"
Each sentence is punctuated by another gesture, the height of Robin's hands increasing where her volume cannot.
"Have you seen Steve's mark?" Nancy interrupts.
"His mark?" Robin asks. "Yeah, he's not like, armbanding it like it's the 60s."
Nancy holds up her bare wrist.
"What am I supposed to do with that?" Robin is still whisper-shouting. "That's like, nonsense to me."
"You've seen Steve's," Nancy emphasizes.
"Yeah, I don't have it like, memoriz— Oh!" Robin yelps, her hand coming up over her mouth. "Oh! Oh shit! Oh, shit, I—"
"I know I'm being such a coward and an asshole and—"
"I knew it, you repressed—"
"You knew it? What do you mean you knew it?"
"God, I'm good. If we had a bet, I'd win. Dustin was all, 'oh, maybe she's just not twenty-five yet or maybe she only has one arm' and I was all 'or maybe it's Nancy and she's all independent woman about it' and — oh my God. And you ran? What am I talking about, of course you ran!"
"Of course I ran?" Nancy repeats, indignant even as her whisper-voice squeaks. "What the hell does that mean?"
"It means you ran, you runner," Robin says, nearly smacking her on the shoulder. "If I were quizzed over Nancy Wheeler's most likely responses to finding out her soulmate, and the options were: A) accept a loving embrace and the promise of committment, B) try to learn more about the situation with the soulmate in question, or C) —"
"I get the point."
"Run as fast as she can, I'm picking C every time! And of course your soulmate is someone who understands you, someone who knows you're gonna bolt—"
Nancy buries her face in her hands. "Jesus Christ."
"And loves you anyway, track star. Steve has been watching you run for how long now? A decade, give or take?"
"He hasn't." Nancy swallows, shaking her head. "It's not like that, Robin. He's moved on, he's dating, he's going after what he wants, and this whole mark thing probably just confused him—"
"I bet he's never been less confused by anything in his life. And I'm saying this about Steve Harrington."
"I have no idea what I want," Nancy says, and this is where she nearly breaks the volume of the conversation. "I don't know if I want my job or don't, if I want to stay in Boston or I don't, half the time I can't decide on breakfast and everything takes too long to make so I end up just drinking coffee and crashing in the afternoon. I am supposed to be certain about things, Robin! And I'm not certain, and I haven't been certain in such a long time!"
"Okay." Robin nods. "Okay, soulmates are like a team, right?"
"If this is a sports metaphor—"
"I'm not qualified to make one," Robin says, issuing a hasty disclaimer. "They're like a team, and you want someone on your team you can talk to when you're not sure about something or thinking something through. Is there really a better teammate than Steve? Speaking as someone who has used his platonic services for years—"
"I could go without the services metaphor."
"My point remains!"
"And Steve deserves to be with someone who wants the same things he does!"
That's the truth of the situation, the central tension of why Nancy is the last person anyone should share a soulmark with, let alone Steve. Steve deserves the constancy and kindness he shows everyone else, all the time, and if there's one person less capable of providing that Nancy isn't sure she's ever met them.
Robin sighs heavily. She pats Nancy on her head, and Nancy resists the temptation to swat her hand away. "You know, for such a smart person, you can be so incredibly dumb sometimes, Nance."
It's the day before New Year's Eve, and Nancy knows she can't avoid the conversation any longer.
It's tempting to return to Boston with this still unresolved. Isn't running an answer that Steve has taken before? But it's a shitty one, an unfair one, and if any part of him thinks it's his fault that she reacts like this and not her fault for being the one who is too — something to accept what any other person would be lucky to receive. She should let him go, kindly explain it's not him, it's her.
Nancy knocks on his door intending to do just that.
"You come to get your coat?" Steve asks, leaning against the door and sounding very much like he's trying to keep his voice light.
"I'm sorry," Nancy cuts to what she's already rehearsed. "About Christmas Eve. It was shitty, and you deserved an explanation that wasn't me just…"
The sentence hangs in the air.
"Running," Steve finishes for her. He puts her out of her misery. He's always been good at that. "It's okay, Nance. It's okay."
Nancy closes her eyes and shakes her head, the memory coming back to her. "No. No it's not, Steve, it's really not okay. I'm," she gestures to herself, half-laughing at the absurdity, "not okay."
Steve exhales. He props the door open. "It's cold. You want to come inside?"
Nancy crosses the threshold hesitantly. "I've been so unfair to you, I know I have, and I don't want to keep being unfair to you. When I saw your wrist, and I knew it matched mine, I just panicked."
Steve doesn't say anything for a moment, just shoves his hands in his pockets. "I was a little off guard when I saw yours," he admits. "At Thanksgiving. Not because I didn't know, I think a part of me did, but…" he pauses, shakes his head. "Think part of me also just thought it had to be wishful thinking. And how much does it matter if the other person doesn't want to be with you?"
Nancy processes this in silence.
"And I know it doesn't matter to you, and the truth is — it didn't even change anything for me. Because it was already there, because it's always been there, and I think it's just lived in my gut right alongside the knowledge that — mark or no mark, soulmates or not — you and I are just not in the cards. You want better, a bigger life, and I want that for you, too."
It's here where Nancy takes issue, steps closer to him. "It's not about you, Steve," she says, shaking her head vehemently. "It's not. And it's not about better, it's about the fact that I have no idea what I want and you have it figured out. You want something different, and that's fine."
"Figured out?" Steve repeats in disbelief. "Want something different? Nancy, I've been standing still for the same reason your brother is currently on another continent. Because I'm stupid and I'm hopeful that one day the chances won't be complete shit."
"It doesn't matter," she continues, "because we don't want the same things."
"I just want you, Nance! That's all I ever wanted, was you!" He pants, hand pressed to his chest as he says the words. "I don't care about the rest of it. Hawkins, the RV, the kids, throw the whole thing out. The most important part was always you."
She stares at him, stunned into silence.
"So just tell me," he says, begs, his voice wavering as he steps closer to her. "Tell me what you want, Nancy. Whatever it is. If it's Boston, if it's Chicago, if it's anywhere in the goddamn world. I'll go with you if you want me there."
"That's not fair to you." Nancy shakes her head. "It's just — it's not fair, Steve. You've made a whole life here, you have a job and a mortgage and girlfriends —"
"I'm here, Nancy, I've always been here. You moved on and I tried to, but it's always been you. No job, no mortgage, no dream means more to me than you do." He's painfully sincere, agonizingly earnest. He comes closer to her, his hands coming up to rest on either side of her face. "What do you want, Nancy?"
"I don't…" She wets her lips; her throat has gone dry. "I don't know."
"You don't have to have it all figured out. We don't have to have a perfect plan from here, Nance. But I just…" He stops, thumb brushing against her cheek. He's so close to her now she can feel his breath, radiating heat. "I just need to know if you want me. If I should hang this up for good because your feelings just aren't there, mark or no mark. Just tell me, Nance, and I'll drop it. Or tell me, and I won't."
She still says nothing, the words unable to form. He lingers, still framing her face and his head tilted down to hers, before slowly receding. His hands drop. He's walking away, turning away. She's cold in his absence.
"Steve," she calls after him.
He looks back.
Nancy strides over to him, collides with him as she tilts her head up to kiss him. "I want you," she says, mouth slanted over his mouth, and he groans. "I want you, I want you, I want you."
She chants the words, and he swallows them.
Steve lifts her up by her midsection, and her legs lock around his hips. One of his hands supports her, the other tangles in her hair as they keep kissing; he moans against her mouth as she scrapes her teeth along his bottom lip. He walks her backwards, and her head is carefully cradled before it can hit the wall.
When she looks at him, breathing heavily, she's granted the rare purview of being situated above him. Steve looks up at her with blown pupils.
"Are you sure?" he asks, breathless.
(She was once shivering in his bedroom, hair still wet from the pool, when he'd asked the same question.)
Nancy thinks of being sixteen and fearless. Maybe parts of her haven't changed, the ones that want the same things she did then: praise for her writing, pen ink that doesn't smudge on her hands, Steve Harrington. She wants her hands in his hair, his body in her bed, his jokes in her ear.
"Yes," she says, pressing the word against his lips with a kiss. "Yes," she repeats, and his mouth trails lower, his tongue traces the curve of her neck as she gasps and bucks her hips against him.
"You're so beautiful," he tells her, hands roaming. His fingers find her hand, running over the mark on her wrist as his face buries in her chest. "Fuck, you're so beautiful, Nancy."
He leads them back to his bedroom, her back against the mattress and Steve pressing endearments into her skin. He's always talked, always told her:
"You taste perfect."
"It's never been like this."
"You're so good for me."
Until Nancy puts her tongue in his mouth, or his is buried between her thighs. They're better at this, more practiced if more frenzied, and when Nancy flips them over so she's astride him she catalogues the differences: the broader shoulders, the sharper jaw, the way she's stiffening and gasping within seconds and not minutes, the mark on his wrist.
The mark on his wrist.
She feels a rush of unexpected possessiveness at the sight of it. He's marked for her, just her.
She intertwines their hands together, pressing their wrists together as he slides inside of her. "You're for me," she pants, her forehead pressed against his. "Just me."
"Just you," he agrees, kissing her until she can taste herself on his lips.
After, their hands are still intertwined.
"Can you promise me one thing?" Steve asks, their bodies slick with sweat. His hair is askew, and hers must not be much better. They're both in disarray after each urgently reaching for the other.
Nancy pauses. He squeezes her hand. "Yeah?" she replies, tilting her head up to look at him.
"Just talk to me," he says. "Before you start running, okay? If you still want to run, I get it. But just give me a chance to go after you or tell me to fuck right off. Just tell me what you're thinking. Okay?"
Nancy swallows. She pushes his hair out of his face and kisses him. "Okay," she promises. "Should I tell you what I'm thinking right now?"
"Yeah," he replies after a beat. "Yeah, I'd like that."
"I'm thinking that I love you," she says softly. "And I want you to keep going after me, but only if you want to."
"I want to," he says, pressing a kiss to her forehead. "That's how it works. You love someone, you dive right in. I went to state swimming, you know."
"Shut up," Nancy snickers, burying her head in his chest.
"You wanna say the line?"
"You're an idiot, Steve Harrington."
"And you're beautiful, Nancy Wheeler," he finishes, and she can feel his grin more than she sees it.
"That cat has bad energy," Dustin says, eyes narrowing on the creature that greets him from the doorway.
"Ripley?" Steve says in disbelief, carrying boxes over the threshold. "You're not serious. Dude, didn't you try to adopt a demon once?"
"It was a very early stages demon," Dustin defends himself, setting down the boxes in his arms in the entryway. "He was just a little guy, really."
"Think Ripley could take it," Steve says, stacking his boxes on top of the ones Dustin carried in. He leans over to scratch the black cat between the ears. "Demo vs Ripley, I think Ripley could win if she got out the thumpers."
"I'd rather not test it," Nancy says, hardly visible behind cardboard. Steve immediately steadies the stack, then moves the boxes to the floor.
"Have I mentioned how glad I am that bullying works?" Robin asks, lugging in a small end table. "In multiple ways, really, but especially as it relates to the newest Chicago Sun-Times staff writer and Chicago Public Schools' newest coach?"
Dustin pats Steve on the shoulder. "Don't let them hit you too hard with the baseball bats."
"Lucky for me, my head is already pretty hard," Steve retorts.
"And lucky for us," Lucas says, the next over the threshold with his own stack of boxes. "We got a hell of a deal on your old house."
"Shame you never got done with drywalling the basement," Max adds, and the box she drops in the rapidly filling entryway makes a solid thud.
"You're on your own with that one," Steve replies.
"The leasing agent of this place is pretty sure it's haunted," Nancy says, squinting at the cobwebs on the townhouse's crown molding. "Good deal on rent."
"And we're great with haunted," Steve adds. "Experts, even."
"Did you bring all of your guns?" Robin asks, nudging Nancy with amusement.
"License pending. No assault weapons allowed in Illinois, but that shouldn't be necessary," Nancy says with a shrug.
"What are you going to do, shoot a ghost?" Dustin asks rhetorically.
"Like we haven't shot at weirder," Max replies.
"I'm sorry, have you ever even shot a gun?"
"I'm really glad we're having this conversation, loudly and with the door wide open," Steve says sarcastically. "That'll really help our neighbors — our very close, city neighbors — not think we're absolutely insane."
He moves to shut the door to prove a point. He stops to do a double-take, keeping the door open. "Uh, Nance?"
"Yeah?" Nancy says, tilting her head to look toward the door. "It's not the moving truck, is it? I swear I put on the parking break—"
She rushes to prove exactly that, but stops when she sees who's at the door. Her brother looks lighter, happier. Beside him, her hair longer than she's ever seen it…
"Joyce and Hop said you all would be here."
"El!" Nancy exclaims, rushing towards to embrace the girl before she can think another second about it.
At this, there's a clamor from inside the house as everyone rushes out onto their small front porch. Nancy laughs in disbelief, Steve claps a hand on Mike's shoulder, and the everyone else is a mess of tears and hugs. Nancy pulls back to let everyone have their moment, a long-awaited reunion. Steve wraps his arm around her shoulder and pulls her in tighter to press a kiss to her forehead. They're both sniffling and smiling.
"Thank you, by the way," Mike says, carefully worming his way out of the mass of questions to approach them. "For telling me it was okay not to give up."
Nancy opens her mouth to reject the unearned gratitude, but she feels Steve shrug his shoulders.
"You're either stupid or you're the happiest you've ever been," Steve says, looking down at Nancy. She's crying in earnest, now, her hand squeezing his. "I've always felt like it's worth the gamble."