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Steve, in the face of the world ending, the stakes of my lovelife feel spectacularly low. - Yeah. I mean, I get you there.

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season 1 // season 4

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one silver lining to the nigh ABSURD gap between ST4 and ST5 is that i have all the time in the world to lean in on my increasingly delulu vision.

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True love won't desert you.

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One thing I love about Nancy and Steve is that they aren’t some regular-ass Right Person, Wrong Time trope. They start out as Very Obviously Wrong Person Just Because Their 80s Archetypes and Love Triangle Structure Have Conditioned Us to Assume That, they go straight into Oh Damn Possibly Right Person, Super Fucking Abysmal Chaos Time, and now they’re Right Person, Apocalypse.

I’m clearly rooting for Old Flame Battle Couple Back to Back Badasses Second Chance Romance Teaming Up to Take Down the Very Thing That Tore Them Apart with a Love Revelation Epiphany and a Big Damn Kiss Splattered With Interdimensional Goo.

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today tumblr kindly informed me that it has been a year since i created this blog, which in essence means that these dumb teens have had me in a chokehold for OVER 365 DAYS.

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In my head, I do everything right

[insp]

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I cannot wait for Stranger Things to end and for these boring ass takes to dry up.

Stancy antis when they take the words of a man who has barely just met Nancy and never even MET Steve as gospel: 🥰🥰🥰

Stancy antis when a character says something in season 1 of a 5 season show DESPITE watching character growth happen on their screen that NEGATES THE TWO MINUTES OF DIALOGUE THEY REPEATEDLY CALL BACK TO: 🥰🥰🥰

Stancy antis when Nancy is shown to ACTUALLY be interested in Steve again, when Steve is ACTIVELY being portrayed as the type of partner she wants currently in life and beyond, when she is struggling to connect with Jonathan but EASILY vibing with Steve, when Nancy is adrift and bereft and Steve shows up and anchors her, when Steve ACKNOWLEDGES that they weren't right for each other the first time around but maybe they are now: 🙈🙈🙈🙉🙉🙉

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My early 90s Nance and Steve don't look like they spent half of high school on the frontlines of a war against interdimensional evil. To the outside world, they're just a regular, ridiculously pretty young couple with mysterious scars, who are planning their next road trip and trying very hard to act like they're not about to hook up in a library.

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They're so Stancy coded. I need the duffers to reference this film next season! Steve and Nancy go on the date to watch it pleaseee

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steve walking in the woods with dustin and telling him that there’s no point in falling in love with someone because they’re only going to end up breaking your heart. steve walking through a different set of woods two years later with the girl that broke his heart and thanking her because she didn’t just break his heart, she also ended up changing his entire life.

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Whenever official script pages come out, I'm sure everyone loves to see which bits stayed and which ones got changed. Of course, I'm always going to pay special attention to Nancy and Steve.

In the script, Nancy’s originally supposed to tend to wounds on Steve’s bare, bloody chest, and she attempts to cut the tension by asking him to turn around so she can tie his bandage off in the back. In the show, we know the bats were more interested in gnawing on Steve's obliques. So we see Nancy wrap the torn piece of her shirt around Steve’s middle as he groans and runs his fingers through his hair, she cinches the makeshift bandage tight and ties it off right above the front of his pants, he breathily thanks her, she exhales, "Yeah," and smiles up at him, and then it's a long, affectionate gaze. Nancy has stopped the bleeding but not the tension. Isn't that fun?!

I lovelovelove teeny tiny changes and how the direction/acting expands it all. We'll never know whose choices they were, but they are choices!

1. They could’ve kept this literal two seconds of Robs smirking at the vest and preparing to deliver a quip. Depriving us of any Stobin is always going to get a boo from me. Boo.

“Byersesz.”

2. A Lonnie Byers mention becomes just “a revolver.” Suddenly the line flows much better and, more importantly, there’s a decent chance at least 2 of the 3 people hearing that line wouldn’t know who the hell that piece of shit is anyway. The change shifts the focus onto the important thing, which is that the revolver is Nancy’s now. Nancy Wheeler has guns in her room. Whether it’s for simplicity's sake or it was just clunky to make that surname a possessive, we don't know. But the Byers name is left out of the conversation*, and Nancy and Steve share a smile as they recall the batshit moment before their relationship involved saving each other from monsters.

It's probably not intentional, but it seems like mentions of Jonathan within the Hawkins group are kept to the RU scenes. This kind of reinforces to the audience that he's “not there” for Nancy during all the dire, near-death, end-of-the-world shit. And who is here? And has been here all along? With shared history through and beyond trauma?

Here's their third flirty held gaze in a hell dimension in under an hour.

3. As we know, after the UD-quake ends, Nancy and Steve are still clinging to each other pretty hard. If they weren’t looking out for giant bats and Nancy were in a corset instead of a cowl neck, they might look like a paperback on Karen Wheeler’s nightstand. Nancy's reaching out for the rock face in some shots and one-arming it in others, but check out her solid grip on Steve.

Tender is the ‘Quake.

To see that they were originally going to hold this pose a moment longer and detach after Steve says, “So what are we waiting for?” is kind of hilarious. And there was no “Steve and Nancy slowly peel themselves off each other, stunned due to the

? The only stage direction in there was "Steve lets go of Nancy"? Someone really just gave me this juicy awkwardness, as a treat?

GIF by @alwaysthequietones

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this is not a prompt, just a regular question for you to answer; have you ever entertained some AU's for stancy in your head? (besides the spiderman one which sounds so cool btw)

the spider-man AU is one of those ideas that is so cool and so perfect that I WISH it were mine. there are SO many things you could do with it, and kudos to @slashergirlnancy for having the galaxy brain necessary to bring it to life in gifs.

but otherwise, in terms of stancy AUs, it’s funny. normally I’m all about that life, but for whatever reason, all the layers of Steve and Nancy’s current canon story are supplying enough fuel to keep a thousand creative fires burning. the emotional progression and second chance romance of it all are THAT good.

that said, there is one idea that is near and dear to my heart (I sometimes think it might be the only thing that could compel me to give multi-chapters another shot). it’s actually barely an AU at all, at least not at this point in time (tho it almost certainly would be once s5 is wrapped).

basically i have this really clear vision in my head of a Steve and Nancy who, for whatever reason, missed their second chance while they were still teenagers and, in a funny little twist of fate, end up reuniting 5-10 years down the line in a new city, once they’ve had a chance to live a little and grow into their own skins.

maybe i am showing my age in a big, big way, but there is something very sexy to me about, idk, the ordinariness of two adults coming together once they’ve settled into their careers and homes and everyday lives. they go to the gym and cook themselves dinner and can buy their own alcohol, and now they’re just waiting to see if this one last thing slots into place, should they ever meet (or re-meet!) the right person.

(don’t get me wrong, writing about angsty teenagers is fun, but it’s also kind of hard when you have to think of 3,000 excuses to explain why their parents wouldn’t be questioning 110% of what they’re doing. unless, you know, it’s Steve. 🥲)

also in this AU i think steve is a firefighter. just for, you know…reasons. and nancy is obv the star reporter no matter which universe we’re inhabiting. and robin is a little more out and proud and very into the alt rock scene. she has her own place but mostly hangs out at Steve’s and drags him to underground shows on school nights and listens to more Garbage than he can stand, usually.

so yes anyway anon i am sorry for describing literally the most boring possible AU that i may write someday if i can find a way to make it interesting outside my own head. but that is what it is lol.

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hey, just want to say thank you for all of your amazing stancy fics! your content is always a joy to read and has made the wait for s5 all the more bearable💐💐

um, thank YOU, my anonymous friend. i took a long break after i finished i’m coming out because i was creatively tapped and work was insane, but sometime early this year i came to the realization - holy shit, we really AREN’T gonna get s5 for another two years!!

and THEN i realized that even when we get it - there’s still the possibility it won’t go the way i want it to! 🫠

so now i write to fill the void and maintain my delulu little vision, and the fact that you guys seem to enjoy it as much as i do is just an added little treat! so thank you for this note and for reading. 💘

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

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

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

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

it's all about the liminal spaces, man.

*~*~*

Nancy’s coat is too warm.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No. 

Not. Thinking. About. It.

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

She gives him her best attempt at a smile.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(If Barb could only see them now.)

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

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

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

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

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

It’s excruciating.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Hopefully.)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Steve’s mouth flattens.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Happy enough.

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Dunno if you're taking anymore prompts but here's one from me if you feel like it.

S4 Nancy and Steve talk while switching off Max watch duty. About how they became the adults of this mess with no outside help and their worries if they can stop it.

i haven't fully asked for prompts in few weeks, but i like getting them. i make no promises about timeliness (and to any readers of my frozen lake series over on ao3, reading this while stewing about how long it's been since an update: i'm sorry, but actually these prompts are helping i swear. and i will be finishing it. i promise), but if i ever get overwhelmed i'll turn asks off. while the inbox is open i say keep the fic prompts or meta questions coming!

anyway yes i love this idea. truly a smorgasbord of sadness mixed with forceful optimism: my jam

-

Steve had been a deep sleeper at least as long as teachers had been making a note of it on his report cards. Had being the key word.

He'd forgotten that part of himself, if he was being honest. Sleep wasn't something Steve could count on the last few years: elusive to come by at night and when found filled with night terrors that had him working up a sweat and waking up exhausted.

When he curled up on an armchair in the Wheeler's basement, he wasn't expecting to fall asleep. Lucas had signed up for the first hour of rewinding Max's Kate Bush tape and checking the batteries of the walkman, and Steve said he'd go second but figured he'd stay up to talk if Lucas wanted. Lucas said didn't want to, so Steve closed his eyes to wait him out.

His body sank into the cushions, his joints relaxing in their bends. The chair smelled like the potato chips the party devoured on their game nights, the carpet of soda toasted (and spilled) over successful rolls, and in the air the sharp smell of laundry detergent.

The closest Lucas got to breaking was putting a blanket over Steve, and it brought the laundry smell closer. Something almost floral, like a meadow outside of a chemistry classroom. Spring Scented, he remembered from a time when he used to bury his head in Nancy's pillows at night and wish he could sleep til morning.

However they'd land at the end of their date, Nancy would lay a hand flat on his back or his chest, just resting there without moving it for so long he thought she'd drifted off, which felt like it gave him permission to do the same. But then her hand would slide off his skin, leaving just her finger dancing up and down.

It tickled at first, and if that didn't wake him she would poke and drag, and if that didn't wake him her fingernail would scratch.

Steve's nose tickled, and he jerked awake on the chair.

"What the--"

"Shhhh," Nancy pushed her hand over Steve's mouth, and he blinked blearily up at her. His lips were chapped and he wanted to lick them but Nancy's hand was there. He blinked slowly up at her, trying to orient himself around the confusion of waking up in Nancy's basement - so close after a year and a half of designed distance - as she pulled her hand away. "Sorry, I didn't want to scare you, it's just time for your watch."

"I was supposed to go after Lucas."

"I was awake already, so I told him to let you sleep. You looked peaceful, I didn't want to ruin that for you." Her mouth opened as though to say more, but she clammed up and sat back on her heels.

He wasn't surprised she'd woken up early and stolen his shift; Nancy slept worse than Steve did -- or at least she had last time he'd been privy to her sleep patterns. They used to stay up half the night talking on the phone when neither could sneak out, recounting their days or even sharing dirty daydreams until one of them fell asleep to the sound of the other's voice.

"Did I miss anything else?" he whispered as low as he could.

Nancy settled with her back to the chair Steve was sitting in, her head inches away from his leg. There were four other people in the basement with them but she was so close he could make out her familiar breathing easy.

"Just Dustin talking in his sleep."

"What did he say? Anything embarrassing?"

Nancy snorted and craned her head to squint up at him with her reluctant smile, lips pursed slightly.

"Don't tease him just because he had a dream about Farrah Fawcett. He was counting something for her, which is dorky but cute."

"Oh the hairspray dream again," Steve mused out loud, and had to clear his throat to whisper again. "He's told me about that one, he's had it a couple times I guess."

"Hairspray dream?" Nancy turned and pressed her side against the chair instead of her back, crossing her arms over her knees to rest her chin on them. "Have you tried to teach him your secret routine?"

"Yeah, but he's kinda bad at portioning his puffs."

"That's adorable."

"Thanks, I think."

"Your ego," Nancy shook her head, smiling as wide as she could her lips pressed together - Steve loved that smile, it always made him want to kiss her. "I was talking about Dustin."

Steve tucked his chin down to hide his own smile and smother any laughter that could wake up the rest of the basement. Nancy shifted to look around for them both, and he could spot exactly when she found Max as the smile slowly slid from her face.

"I reset the cassette less than 10 minutes ago." She spoke quieter than she had since Steve woke up, but it echoed between his ears. "Not due for another rewind for another 10 or so."

"Got it." Steve had committed the length of each side of Hounds of Love on the drive back from the graveyard, and he mentally figured out which song they were in. The Big Sky, he thought.

"I wish I could just burn the fucker out of her head," Nancy said suddenly, more a low growl than a whisper. "The Mind Flayer had Will before, but this is just so--different. I don't know what we're supposed to do."

"Who does," Steve huffed. He never knew what the hell was going on when monsters started showing up, preferring to just be there for all the morons (that he loved) who marched toward them. Sometimes Nancy had the answers that Dustin had skipped over, sometimes Chief Hopper or Mrs. Byers. But well, it's not like either of them were there. It was just Nancy. And Steve, for whatever he could do. "We're doing the right thing. "

"How can you know?" Nancy asked, and it didn't even matter how quiet they had to be because she sounded small, like she should never sound, even if she was the height of the average freshman. None of the freshmen Steve knew should sound that small either.

"Because Max is still alive, and that's all thanks to you and Robin. We've gotta be doing something right, right?"

"You make it sound so easy. Do you actually think we can handle this? Alone?"

"How are we alone? Am I not next to you right now? Has Dustin not been glued to my passenger seat? Are you not plotting to steal my best friend?"

Nancy slumped to her side, laying her head on the edge of Steve's seat so that her forehead just brushed his jeans.

"I'm not plotting anything. Maybe she just likes me better."

"Who could blame her," Steve mused. It shouldn't have made him smile, but he liked Robin and Nancy being friends. She probably wouldn't ever actually ditch him, and maybe if she wasn't so convinced Nancy was a prissy joyless control freak (or, not just a prissy control freak at least) they could hang out when the world wasn't ending. If the world didn't end.

"Steve," Nancy scolded, then relaxed deeper against his chair. "How are we gonna end this? I kept thinking today that I wished El were here and then I felt like such an asshole, because she's a 14 year old girl." Nancy's voice got high as she ran out of breath, releasing whatever she'd been bottling up since before Fred died, probably. "But just...so is Max. This stuff has never ended without El. or the Chief, or Mrs. Byers..."

"This stuff hasn't really ended at all, Nance. Like, ever." He spoke softly, because he didn't mean it to be harsh. He let his hand drop to his hip, close if she wanted to hold it. "We just...fix what we can. We're gonna find clues."

"Right." She didn't sound convinced. Resigned, maybe. That was how Steve felt. They'd keep searching and fighting and not sleeping because it was all they really could do, giving up and dying wasn't an option. "And then we'll get you a nice big stick to hit something with, and I'll watch your back."

"Exactly." They'd been there before. They might not know what the hell was going on, but they knew what to do when they didn't know what the hell was going on. "Thanks for letting me sleep. Now it's your turn. I've got this."

"The rewind is coming up. I'll sleep after."

"Promise?"

She rolled her eyes, but Steve held out his pinky in front of her face. Her eyes crossed and she looked at it like she had never seen one before. She probably hadn't in a while, since she was smart enough to avoid making deals with Erica Sinclair. But Steve wasn't, and he would do anything to keep Nancy from buckling under the pressure she put herself under.

"Promise."