#thank u for giving me an excuse to write jancy oh my god i love them they are everything and more to me

[astrobei]

28 jancy <3

28 for touch prompts: feeling for each other in the dark

The last time Jonathan was inside the Wheelers’ house, it was the week before he left for California.

He didn’t go over to Nancy’s very often. Partly because the kids were always hanging out in the basement, and it was kind of a real mood-killer to be trying to romance your girlfriend in her childhood bedroom– which was already kind of a tall order– just for her little brother and all of his friends– including your little brother– to run screaming through the hall.

Plus, Nancy seemed to like it more at his place anyway. Jonathan supposed he got it, kind of, because it probably had less to do with some inherent beauty she was finding in their run-down couch and the spots on the walls where the paint had gone all patchy and the mysterious stain on the ceiling of Jonathan’s room that had been there as long as he could remember, and probably more to do with the fact that his house had a distinct lack of her family. And she always slept over anyway, because it was a lot easier for her to sneak out and then into his– since his mom definitely knew and also didn’t care even a little– than it was for him to risk Ted Wheeler’s wrath if he found him climbing through his daughter’s bedroom window, so.

So it’s been a second, is the thing. The last time he was here, he’d found some of her stuff while packing for Lenora and he’d driven over to drop it off. He doesn’t remember exactly what they were– t-shirts, maybe. Probably a stray tube of lipstick or two she’d left behind while getting ready for work. And the house was total chaos with his mom running around everywhere and Will putting everything off until the last minute and he’d just needed to get out–

Out, apparently, had been Nancy’s room. And just because he never really snuck in didn’t mean he didn’t know how to do it anyway, climbing up onto the roof outside the garage and then hoisting himself inside. Her room looked different back then. The college posters weren’t up yet, for one. There were different sheets on the bed, the old pink ones he remembers from the first time he’d been inside. 

“You got new posters,” is the first thing he says when he walks in. It’s not, like, the most charming thing he could’ve come up with, but it really is the first thing he notices. The purple and white of the Emerson College logo is scattered across the walls– a couple of triangular banners, a poster up by her bed.

Nancy’s watching him carefully. “Yeah,” she says. “I– uh. Wanted to celebrate. After Early Decision came out.”

“They’re nice,” he says, and it’s not a lie. They are nice. They look good. They’re–

–making him feel like total shit, because he hasn’t brought up the whole college thing yet, but he just got back and he hasn’t even showered yet and–

Nancy lets out a small laugh. “Thanks,” she says, strangely genuine. “I don’t know, I thought about them a lot when I was younger. College posters. Sweaters and t-shirts and basically anything I could get my hands on with Emerson College on it because it was, like, I just needed the reminder that I did it. That I’d be gone soon. And I always pictured walking into school wearing this sweater and everyone would know that I did it too, you know?”

Jonathan doesn’t know. He doesn’t. He really, really doesn’t, because he’d thought about NYU, when he was younger, but it was in a much more abstract sense than Nancy’s vision of college sweatshirts and acceptance letters and the way she’d had the layout of the posters on her wall planned out since she was six years old. Jonathan never thought about NYU sweaters and posters and parading into school and bragging about how he was getting the fuck out of here in the fall, because it was never really in the picture. Tuition, first, and then– after Will, after the Mind Flayer, after the move and El and everything– it was the location. It had always been a pipe dream.

Nancy knew she was going to go. Jonathan knew he wasn’t.

“Yeah,” he says anyway, because Nancy is looking at him expectantly and he knows she thinks that his acceptance letter to a school he never applied to is still waiting for him, abandoned somewhere on a California doorstep. He smiles, and it’s easier than he expected. “I’m proud of you, Nance. Seriously.”

Nancy beams at him. “Thank you,” she says, and then she scrunches her face up. “Okay, Jonathan, I missed you and I’m glad you’re back and I really want you kiss you right now but– and I know I hugged you earlier but I’m chalking that up to missing you so bad that I didn’t notice the–”

“I know,” Jonathan groans, and Nancy stifles a laugh behind one hand. “I know, I know, you don’t even need to say it.”

“Well, the shower is free,” Nancy suggests, absolutely not sounding even a little subtle. “My mom can run a load of laundry and if you have any spare clothes, you can–”

“Yeah, okay, I get it,” Jonathan says, but he can’t help laughing. “I know.”

Nancy throws her hands up, but she’s grinning. “Jonathan, I’m saying this as someone who loves you–”

“Okay!” Jonathan heaves the duffel bag onto one shoulder and shakes his head. “Yeah, I’m going– do you have a towel I can borrow, actually?”

“Oh, yeah, hang on–”

—

Jonathan is coming to realize, slowly, that it’s all about the little things in life. Like whatever people had been saying about stopping to smell the roses and the morning coffee was totally true this whole time, but he’s also adding his girlfriend’s name-brand body wash to the list. God, okay, yes. This is nice. The second the cabin gets running water again, Jonathan is going to make it his personal mission to hunt down the generic version of this.

If the stores haven’t been swallowed up in the earthquake, he thinks gravely, running a hand through his hair and lathering up the suds there. He’s never taking something as simple as soap for granted again, is the lesson he’s learning here. And for a moment, as the water shuts off and the last of the soap swirls down the bathroom drain, thoughts of college and his family and the end of the literal world– for real this time, none of that rat-flesh-monster nonsense– swirl away with it. It’s just him and this stupid, wonderfully clean towel.

God bless Karen Wheeler’s taste in laundry detergent.

When Jonathan gets back to Nancy’s room, she’s sitting on the bed, knees pulled up to her chest, staring off into space and facing away from him. “Hey,” he says softly, just in case she didn’t notice him come in. “What’s on your mind?”

Nancy doesn’t startle, so she must have heard him after all. “Oh,” she sighs. “Nothing, I was just– nothing.”

That doesn’t sound like nothing, but Jonathan knows when to push and when not. Now, when things are still a little new and unfamiliar and it’s the second time Jonathan’s stepped foot in Nancy’s room in six months– counting twenty minutes ago– is not the time.

He lets it go. Later. They have time– they have to have time. “Okay,” he says simply, then runs the towel through his hair one last time. “Um, is there somewhere I can put this?”

“Oh!” Nancy jumps up from the bed. “Yeah, here, let me just grab– or you could just let it dry and use it later if you wanted– I mean, maybe you won’t need to use it again because maybe the cabin will have water after all, but you could– actually, I’ll just take it,” she finishes, all in one quick, frantic breath, then plucks the towel neatly out of Jonathan’s hand.

Jonathan feels a little bit overwhelmed. He’s tired and his brain has been operating at 50% capacity at most for days now, which is probably what he gets for subsisting solely off of gas station snacks for three meals a day. “I,” he starts, and then Nancy blinks up at him, eyes a little wide and very frazzled, and he pauses. “Are you okay?”

“Yes?” Nancy blinks again. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“You’re a little all over the place,” Jonathan laughs, shifting his stance on the carpet. “It’s just a towel.”

Nancy looks down at the towel in her hand, up at Jonathan, back down at the towel again, then promptly drops it onto the carpet.

“What,” Jonathan starts, “are you–”

Nancy leans forward and kisses him.

It’s a little bit awkward, because Jonathan’s quite a bit taller than her– this, obviously, hasn’t changed, because they both stopped growing years ago– and it’s been a while. It’s been months, and they hadn’t so much as held hands or touched pinkies like repressed lovers in some old-timey Victorian novel.

It’s a little bit awkward, for a moment, where Nancy’s on her tiptoes a little and she’s holding Jonathan’s face in her hands, and he’s kind of caught off-guard. It’s kind of awkward, and then Nancy lets a little huff from somewhere deep in her chest, and the noise is so Nancy, so endearingly frustrated but trying not to show it, that it’s like his hands are moving on autopilot in response. He’s got two hands in her hair before he realizes that he’s moved, and she lets out another little huff from the back of her throat and then it’s not awkward at all anymore.

He thought it would take some getting used to, kissing Nancy again. Like riding a bike, like it was something they might have to relearn, like maybe they got rusty and out of practice in the time he’d been gone. But it’s not any of those things. Nancy smiles against his lips, so wide that he can feel it, and her hands slip off his cheeks and around his neck and suddenly it’s like they’re standing in his empty room again, six months ago with the October light streaming in through the patched-up blinds.

“Hi,” Nancy breathes out as she pulls away. More than anything else, she sounds relieved– the single syllable so saturated with it that in that instance, Jonathan knows she was thinking the same thing as him. She sounds happy. Exuberant, maybe, if he’s feeling generous. But mostly just relieved. 

“I was scared it would be weird,” he admits, and Nancy’s smile grows. “Between us, I mean. Kissing you.”

She shakes her head. “I did too. Is that stupid? I mean, it’s us.”

“Us,” Jonathan echoes, the fading remnants of guilt nagging at him again “Yeah. It’s us.”

Nancy looks up at him like she’s about to say something, opening her mouth and then closing it again. “I– I’m glad you’re back,” she decides. “I missed you.”

That, at least, is a simple enough thought. “I missed you too,” Jonathan sighs. “Seriously.”

He’s still got his hands in her hair. He contemplates dropping them, stepping away, then thinks better of it. Contact– proximity– is something he’s never taking for granted again. He drops them to her waist instead, and she rests her forehead on his shoulder. “Maybe I’m just imagining this,” Nancy starts, voice low and muffled so that he can barely hear her, even speaking right up next to his ear. “And maybe this isn’t the time to talk about it, because you just got back and you’re tired and I’m tired and all I want to do right now is sleep, but–” 

She sighs, and Jonathan tenses. Braces himself for the inevitable– college, we need to break up because of college, you’re not going to college with me, I’m breaking up with you because of– 

“Did things seem– weird to you?” Nancy blurts out.

Jonathan frowns. Again, his brain is working at, like, 50% speed here, and dropping with every second he spends standing here awake and not asleep. “What?”

Nancy pulls her face away from his shoulder, but keeps her arms around his neck. That’s a good sign, right? You don’t keep holding someone you’re going to break up with. “I thought– for a while there, it seemed a little weird,” she says haltingly. “And I thought it was just me imagining it, but then I realized I was probably being a little weird too and I was wondering if it was just me, or if you–”

“Oh,” Jonathan breathes, then, “yeah, a little bit,” and Nancy’s eyebrows shoot up.

“Oh,” she echoes. “Okay.”

Jonathan leans in, rests his chin on top of her head. “I didn’t mean for it to be like that, I promise. Distance– it’s a bitch.”

“Agreed,” Nancy laughs. “I missed you so much, Jonathan, I– never do that again, okay?”

That meaning go away. Meaning be somewhere that’s not here. Meaning leave. 

Jonathan swallows. He hopes Nancy couldn’t hear it. “Okay,” he says quietly. Not a lie, and not a promise either. Neutral territory, for now.

There’s a clatter in the hallway. Nancy’s room door is closed for now, but the noises from the house still spill through the crack underneath– people settling in, digging out old sleeping bags and clothes, rearranging and making room for a whole second household of people to cram in beside them. 

Jonathan sighs. “Can we– table this, maybe?”

Nancy looks relieved. “Yeah! Yeah, I mean for now– I don’t care. I really don’t. I’m just glad you’re back.”

He drops a kiss to the top of her head. “I’m glad I’m back too.”

—-

Nancy’s shower is a lot quicker than his, but he figures that she’s also been bathing regularly for the past couple of weeks and therefore the miracle of the universe that is name-brand soap and lathered-up suds was likely lost on her. She comes back with her hair damp, wearing pajama pants and a t-shirt that’s at least three sizes too big on her frame. Jonathan looks up from the bed and tries to pretend like he hadn’t just been lying there for ten minutes of agonizing silence, waiting for her to come back.

“So all the hot water was gone,” Nancy rolls her eyes, “because my idiot brother took the world’s longest shower earlier.”

“Can you blame him?” Jonathan laughs, sitting up further on the bed. “It’s been a long week.”

Nancy hovers by the doorway for a moment, like she isn’t sure whether she should walk back into her own room. “I don’t know how you did it. All three of them, for so long. By yourself.”

“Argyle was there,” Jonathan points out on a technicality, already distracted by the sight of Nancy all warm and soft in her ridiculously big pajamas. He beckons her forward. “Hey. Come here.”

She relaxes visibly. “So impatient,” she says around a growing smile as she makes her way over to him. “Are you tired? We can go to bed.”

She says that so easily too. We can go to bed, like it’s second nature, just the two of them.

Jonathan moves over on the bed to make room. It feels smaller than it used to, even though, again, neither of them have done much growing in the last couple of years. The whole room feels smaller. He wonders if that’s how it was for Nancy, tacking her college posters up on the wall and counting down the weeks until her flight was set to take off from the Indianapolis airport.

He turns to Nancy, who’s lying on her back and staring up at the ceiling. It’s like deja vu, lying here on top of her covers and breathing in the scent of her soap and tracing his eyes over her silhouette.

“You’re staring,” she whispers, eyes darting down to meet his, and Jonathan blinks.

“Oh. Sorry.”

“Don’t be. I was too, earlier. You just didn’t notice.”

That makes him smile. “Lights on?” he asks, then realizes that maybe that’s not something she does anymore. Maybe she’s moved past that, and now she’s insulted because she thinks that he thinks that she’s four years old, or something–

“If that’s okay,” she says softly, looking a little surprised. “It’s stupid, I know, I thought I’d stop and I almost did, and then– the last few days–”

Jonathan gets it. He thinks about Will’s body twisting around on the bed and lying awake at night into the early hours of the morning and then the first time he’d smoked, how he fell asleep faster than he can ever remember, and didn’t wake up at the smallest creaking of the floorboards anymore. How he’d asked Argyle if that was normal, if he should be worried about a bad reaction, and Argyle had just laughed and clapped him on the shoulder. 

“It’s not stupid,” he says, instead of any of that. “I have my things too.”

She looks like she might ask about it, what his things are, but then she yawns sharply. “Okay,” she says, through the tail end of it. “Let me know if you want me to turn it off.”

He won’t. “Okay,” he agrees anyway. “I will.”

There’s no weed in his system, so he doesn’t expect sleep to come easily tonight, even with this tiredness that seems to be seeping right down into his bones. This is restful enough for now, and he’s not complaining– a real bed under him, clean clothes. The weight of Nancy’s body next to him, the slight dip in the mattress where she’s laying. He waits, listens until her breathing slows, falling into an easy, tentative rhythm.

Jonathan doesn’t remember when the last time he slept over was. Again, it wasn’t really worth the commotion– her mother’s tendency to walk into the room without knocking, then getting worried if the door was locked. The hordes of kids that would be hunkered down in their basement, during the summer especially. Trying to get out without alerting suspicion.

He sighs, rolls over until he’s facing the back of Nancy’s head. She’s always done this– drift away from him in sleep, until he wakes up the next morning to find her curled up on the opposite side of the bed. He smiles, and for a moment, considers reaching out, maybe draping an arm around her waist, tucking his face into the warm curve of her neck. Kissing the top of her shoulder, just because she’s there, and he can.

He doesn’t though. No need to risk waking her up.

He’s about to drift off– sleep lingering, tantalizing, just out of reach– when it happens. Something shifts, something changes, and he isn’t alert enough to realize what’s happened until Nancy lets out a small noise next to him.

His eyes fly open. The room is pitch black.

The lamp has turned off, and the hallway light is no longer bleeding through the crack in the door either. The glow of the nearby streetlamp is gone too, even though the blinds open plenty wide enough to let it in.

“Jonathan,” Nancy gasps, and he reaches a hand out on instinct. Hers is already there, halfway between their bodies, fingers scrambling across twisted sheets until they interlock.

“I’m here,” he says. Any trace of sleep he might have been able to catch up to is gone entirely. “I’m here,” he repeats, and squeezes Nancy’s hand once. “What– why did the lights go out?”

“The electricity’s been going out sometimes,” Nancy says. Her voice is a little shaky. “Before you guys got here, after everything. The power lines are unstable, and it just happens sometimes but– usually I don’t wake up in the middle of it, and–”

“Come here,” Jonathan interrupts, and Nancy moves towards him until her body is curled into his. “I’m right here.”

“I thought I was back there,” Nancy says, muffled into the thin cotton of his t-shirt. “When I opened my eyes. I haven’t been back there since– and then Robin and Steve and– and Eddie and I had to go back and I opened my eyes and it was dark–”

She shudders, slightly, voice going thready and then trailing off entirely. Jonathan doesn’t say anything. What is he supposed to say? He hadn’t been there the second time around. As much as it kills him, this is a burden he can’t help her shoulder.

He wraps his arms around her back, pulling her in by the waist. He thought this would be strange and unfamiliar too, like he’d have forgotten what it’s like to have the shape of someone pressed up against you, like the weight of their body on yours would turn unfamiliar and alien with the distance. 

It’s not, though, and it hasn’t. It feels like maybe Nancy never left his arms.

“It’s okay,” he murmurs into her hair. She’s got her hands against his chest, fingers uncurling slowly over his sternum. “I’m here.”

“This is so stupid,” she laughs weakly, but she doesn’t pull away either. “I’m sorry, I’m– I didn’t mean to wake you.”

He wasn’t actually asleep, but he figures that’s maybe not the most comforting thing he could say. “Don’t be,” Jonathan says instead. “Seriously. Wake me anytime.”

“You need sleep,” she protests, but this is halfhearted too. “You’re tired.”

“Stop,” he admonishes, and Nancy falls silent. It’s not an easy task, getting her to stop talking, and it’s also not one he’s inclined to try his hand at very often, but right now, he needs her to stop. “I’ll get my rest later,” he says. “It’s okay. I have plenty of time to sleep.”

Nancy doesn’t say anything for a moment. He almost thinks she’s fallen back asleep, except her breathing is too carefully controlled and he can feel her pulse still coming down. He moves his hands from the small of her back to her waist instead, holding her like she’s an anchor.

“Thank you,” she says at last, which is kind of ridiculous.

“For what?”

“Being there,” she says, then shuffles impossibly closer.

“I’m not going to– not be there,” he tries, and she lets out a small noise that might have been a life. “You don’t have to thank me for that.”

“Before too, I mean,” she sniffs. “You’ve always been there, even before we– I just got used to having you around.”

Jonathan closes his eyes. “Me too,” he admits softly, more into the static air of Nancy’s room than to her. “I got used to you too fast. I’ve never done that before, with anyone.”

He’s never really had anyones before. He doesn’t say that.

“And then I had to forget that,” Nancy goes on, voice wavering slightly. “So fast. I finally had such a good thing and then it was gone.”

Jonathan makes a gentle, soothing sound, and brushes some of the hair away from her face. He can’t make out her face in the dark, but he can imagine it perfectly. It’s a skill he’s perfected, these last few months. Wide eyes, lips turned downwards just a little. Freckles, maybe, if it’s been sunny lately.

“You have me again,” he says, the fabric of her shirt bunching up under his palm as he shifts, rolling onto his back and pulling her along with him. She moves easily, pliant and warm, and makes a pleased sound as he readjusts the blankets around them. “You have me again,” he repeats. He doesn’t say for now. Maybe it’s the dark, or the proximity, or the gentle silence, but it doesn’t really seem like it matters. “I’m here.”