Fic: Stranger Things, "Le bel age"
Livejournal! Hello. These dumb kids gave me a lot of feelings, so here's some fic. Also at AO3.
"Le bel age"
Fandom: Stranger Things
Pairing: Nancy/Jonathan, Nancy POV (3rd person)
Rating: T
Words: 6300
Senior year was a slog.
It wasn’t supposed to be. It was supposed to be their crowning glory. She and Barb had had it all figured out since they were freshmen. The clubs they were going to be president and secretary of, their elaborate plans for senior skip day. Nancy was going to be valedictorian, and Barb would be editor of the Hawkins Student Gazette. They weren’t going to lord it over underclassmen; they were going to be mature and benevolent. It was going to be their last farewell to childhood, their wide open gateway to the adult world.
But Barb wasn’t here anymore. And Nancy had grown up a little ahead of schedule.
It wasn’t all bad, really. Except for missing Barbara, which took little bites out of her every day, most of it wasn’t bad at all. It just...was. There was homecoming, which was nice. There were football games, and then basketball games, and then baseball games. Nancy did a lot of homework in the bleachers.
She kept her grades up, for the most part. It was advanced bio that almost did in her GPA. She stood over the tray, grimly clutching the scalpel, but as soon as the blade slid into the fetal pig’s pliant, mottled skin she felt something between nausea and panic, and shoved the whole thing away. She stayed home with the flu the rest of that week. Steve bought her his cousin’s old lab notes for fifteen dollars.
Sometimes on Saturday mornings, she went to the diner with Mike. Mom said they couldn’t afford a tutor because of Holly’s pre-school, but she probably just wanted them to spend more time together. Sometimes she helped him with his English essays or social studies assignments--he just wasn’t interested, was the thing--but usually they just talked about whatever. Nancy was fine with that.
The best part of senior year (or maybe the worst part, a perverse, reckless part of her whispered) was that nothing weird, otherworldly, or supernatural happened at all.
Well. One weird thing did happen.
Jonathan Byers got a girlfriend.
Her name was Alison. She was from Chicago, and she was cool. Not Hawkins cool, like giving a jock a handjob in the back of a Mustang, but actually cool. MTV cool. She wore black jeans and band t-shirts and big black boots. She came to school in crazy outfits that anyone else--anyone like Nancy--would get laughed out of class for; daisy dukes over ripped up tights, a skirt she sewed herself out of her father’s old neckties. Her hair looked like she never brushed it, and it was perfect. Hell, Alison was so cool there was an Elvis Costello song with her name. Nobody had written a song about a Nancy since like 19-freaking-40.
They went out a few times, the four of them, on double dates that started out the ultimate in awkward, but got to be casual enough--a couple times for pizza, once to the next town over for Chinese. Jonathan and Alison shared all their food, chopsticks casually invading each other’s plates. Alison split a pot of tea with her, and they talked about books.
Nancy really liked Alison. That was the worst part.
She saw them making out a lot. She didn’t watch them making out, but you couldn’t help seeing when they were so blatant about it, in the parking lot after school, or the stairwell before homeroom, or behind the shop building during free period.
The surprising thing was how… confident he seemed with it. You only get that comfortable from doing it a lot. Not doing it doing it, though... probably that too. So, you know, good. Good for him, she was glad he was happy.
Anyway, it wasn’t any of her business.
She scored a 1530 on her SAT, and her mother put the results up on the refrigerator. Nancy was neither thrilled nor disappointed. Getting into college was her job now, and she put her nose to the grindstone. When she met with Mrs. Palmer, the guidance counselor, she asked Nancy if she might want to start coming to her office once a week, just to talk. Nancy didn’t.
Jonathan and Alison both got into the Art Institute of Chicago. She found out at senior assembly. “I thought you wanted to go to NYU?” she asked him later. He had mentioned it once when they were all hanging out in her basement over the summer (she was already elbow deep in brochures, so she had asked). The way he’d said it at the time, though, he might as well have said he wanted to go to college on the moon.
He laughed. “When I was in second grade. Nancy. You can’t always want the same things you wanted when you were a kid.”
Don’t you still feel like a kid sometimes? Even a little bit? Even now? she wondered. I do.
Everyone at school assumed she would follow Steve to Indiana University, like they were married or something. She ended up applying to Princeton, Dartmouth, and Brown; Mount Holyoke, because that was where Barb wanted to go; Indiana, for her parents and Steve.
She also applied to UIC. As a safety school.
Her mom put all the acceptance letters up on the fridge, too.
Steve had a big rager at his house after graduation (she was salutatorian), and practically the whole class showed up. Even Tommy and Carol. Even Jonathan and Alison made an appearance. High school hierarchies melted away amidst freedom and chaos and trays of Jell-O shots. Steve put his arm around her and said, “This is going to be an awesome summer.”
They broke up in August.
Her dad drove her to college. The gray plain of Lake Erie was like the dull sameness of Indiana made of water instead of land, New York and New England leafy blurs. After they’d dropped the last load of cargo into her dorm room, he put an encouraging hand on her shoulder and said, “Good luck, kiddo.” And there she was: Nancy Wheeler, Ivy League Girl.
She found out from her mom over the phone when Jonathan came home halfway through his first semester. It made her crushingly sad. She’d imagined him thriving, being interested in his classes, going to rock shows on weekends, taking amazing pictures of architecture.
Mom said it was because he needed to help Joyce for a while, implying they were out of money, and maybe he’d go back in the spring. Mike said it was because Alison dumped him.
She’d never liked Alison.
Her mother sent her money for a plane ticket when she threatened to take a bus home for winter break. Twenty-four hours after her last final, she was Hawkins Nancy again, eating the same family dinner as always, doing the same chores, sleeping in the same bed.
The day the world split open, she was walking home from downtown with a bag of groceries for her mother, struggling to keep a grip on the brown paper under her puffy mittens. Mom had offered her the car, but she’d gotten used to walking in Providence. It gave her a chance to think, or to observe the world around her when thinking was too hard. It made her feel vigilant. Sometimes she walked at night, later than she should, challenging the darkness, hand in hand with her fear when there was no other hand to hold.
It wasn’t quite dark yet when he pulled up beside her, but dusk was beginning to swallow the sky, already heavy with clouds, and a fast, wet snow was starting to fall. She recognized the car in her peripheral vision almost as soon as she heard it slow, stopped and half-turned toward it, expecting Joyce Byers to roll down the window and call, Sweetie, do you need a ride?
But Jonathan was getting out of the driver’s side and walking around the front end. “Hey,” he said, standing in front of her for the first time in four months. He wasn’t wearing gloves or a scarf or anything, seeming immune to the cold in that way that boys had, except for shifting his weight back and forth between his feet. He held out his hands and inclined his head toward the street, taking the grocery bag out of her arms almost before she realized what he was doing. “You still walk fast.”
“Hi.”
“Hi,” he repeated, and opened the passenger door. She got in, and tracked him with her eyes as he walked around the hood, put her grocery bag in the back seat, and got back behind the wheel. The car was warm; her nose and cheeks tingled from the temperature change. He looked at her and smiled. “Hi, Nancy Wheeler.”
“Hi,” she said once more, with a laugh.
“Okay,” he said, “Now that that’s out of the way…”
They went about a block before she said, “I heard you were back.”
“Yeah.” He left it at that. “I heard you were home on break. Is Harrington around?”
“Steve’s in Hawaii with his parents. I heard. We actually haven’t talked for a while.”
A beat went by. “Oh.”
“Did you… like Chicago?”
“Sure,” he said. “You know. Tall buildings. Big lake.”
“Sounds great. Do you think you’ll go back?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. I guess…” He seemed to struggle with whether to continue. “...This sounds stupid. I guess I got homesick.”
“For Hawkins?”
He laughed. “Fuck, no. For my mom and Will, though. And the dog.”
“You quit college for the dog?”
He returned her teasing smirk. “Hey, he’s a good dog. Besides,” he continued, “You might not believe this, but people at art school? Can be kind of pretentious.”
“Not like us real salt of the earth suburban folk, huh?”
“Exactly.”
She wished it was a longer drive home. “I was going to call you,” she said. “But my mom’s been keeping me pretty busy, getting ready for Christmas, and I thought--”
“No, yeah, I know. I mean, me too. Since you got back. I just… didn’t know when would be a good time.”
“Anytime’s a good time,” she said softly.
“Okay.” He nodded, keeping his eyes on the road. “Okay. So, uh, how’s Brown? You like it?”
“Yeah,” she said. “It’s good. Hard. You know.” They stopped at the last red light before her neighborhood, even though there wasn’t another car on the road.
“That’s good,” he said. “I always pictured you fitting in out there.” To her creased brow, he responded, “I mean that in a nice way.”
She turned her eyes to the windshield, the clunking wipers and the clumping snow, her mind drifting back to campus, imagining him imagining her. “Thanks.”
“Have you made a lot of friends and stuff?”
“Some.” She wondered what he meant by ‘and stuff.’ “Why, you worried I’m lonely?”
Instead of the quick comeback she expected, he paused before stating quietly, “I know you don’t need me to worry about you.”
She looked at his profile, and then down at her mittens before she murmured, “Maybe. Might be nice, though.” The signal turned green. Nancy thought she saw it flicker through the swirling snow.
A second later, the evening outside caught some eldritch spark, and flared into blazing light.
Nuclear war, was her first thought when her head stopped buzzing. Her eyes were still squeezed shut, and she was hunched uncomfortably over the gear shift in crash position. Jonathan was curved over her awkwardly. She could feel his weight on her back, the pressure of his hand atop her head. She listened for a moment, and heard his soft inhale near her ear, echoing a beat behind her own. “Jonathan?”
“Are you okay?”
“...Yes. Are you?”
“I think so.” Their voices landed strangely, dull and muted, as if the air was trying to swallow their words before they could get to each other. Jonathan started to sit up, and while she cracked her eyes open and found herself focusing on the car’s ashtray, he said, “What the fuck. What the fuck. ”
Why would they nuke Indianapolis? she thought, and quashed a panicky giggle. Then she remembered how her senior English teacher had made them watch Testament, and her stomach lurched. She reached out for Jonathan’s knee.
“Nancy.”
“I’m okay.” She pushed herself upright. “How far away do you think it wa--? What the fuck? ” Something told her this wasn’t World War III after all.
It was day. Or, not day, but a simulacrum of day. The sky was a uniform sickly pink, no sun or clouds in sight. There was no mushroom cloud on the horizon. There was only a desiccated, desaturated world which appeared to be nothing so much as the brittle skeleton of their own. Oh, no. You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.
He glanced over at her. “Is this…?”
“No,” she shook her head. “This is… somewhere else.”
“Oh. Well… great.”
The car’s engine had died, stranding them in the middle of the street. Not that there was any traffic to worry about. Rusty hulks of station wagons and mid-size sedans sat parked permanently along the crumbling curbs. Beyond that, patchy yellowed lawns, and houses like matchstick models of themselves. The pavement that stretched out in front of them was cracked and domed like the top of a cake.
She felt warm, and yanked off her mittens. Jonathan looked at her again. Looked to her for what to do. “There has to be a way out,” she said.
“Right. Guess we’d better find it.” He turned the key, but the ignition didn’t catch. As he tried again, Nancy checked the mirrors, and gasped. She gripped his arm.
“Look.”
They both stared into the rearview, afraid to blink or turn around in case the image disappeared. Nancy twisted in her seat first, and saw it through the back window: perhaps thirty yards behind the car, the sideways world was sliced off cleanly, and waiting beyond was a field of twilight blue behind a sheer curtain of falling snow.
They burst from the car and ran. The road crinkled like wasp’s nest paper under their feet. Jonathan’s longer stride sent him ahead of her, so he reached back for her hand, and they sped for the divide. Nancy yelped when Jonathan collided with an invisible wall, an instant before she would have; she felt the strange shivery impact travel up her arm. Instead of bouncing off, he seemed to hang there for a second, before stumbling backward.
“Oh my God, are you all right?” She grabbed him by the chin and tilted his dazed face toward her so she could look into his eyes. He blinked, and nodded.
“Yeah. Yeah, I guess.” He touched her wrist, and she pulled her hand back. “Looks like it’s not going to be that easy.”
“Of course not. Why would it?” She frowned, and pressed the tip of her finger forward until it couldn’t go farther. She flattened her palm against the barrier, and pushed. There was the impression of resistance, a barely perceptible tingle, but mostly, the barrier seemed to absorb whatever force she applied, the way a baffle absorbed sound. She punched it, and instead of rebounding, her fist sank uselessly into a cushion of nothing. Snowflakes danced under a streetlight, so close, a universe away.
Beside her, Jonathan crouched, testing the wall at ground level. She turned around and leaned her back against it, and tried to think. The partition curved off slightly to Nancy’s right, cutting diagonally across the intersection, and continued as far as she could see. Jonathan stepped back, picked up a chunk of flaking pavement, and hurled it in an arc as high as he could. The rock stuck in midair for a moment, and then dropped straight down.
This was getting them nowhere.
“If there’s a wall, maybe there’s a door,” she said. You pulled me through a door once. He looked like he remembered.
“Yeah, has to be.” He wasn’t good at projecting confidence.
Nancy started walking back to the car. Something about the eerie light or the arid air made her eyes itch. There was a faint coppery smell in the air, and, aside from the noises they themselves made, not a single sound.
Jonathan got the car keys from the steering column and went to open the trunk. It wasn’t until she saw him take off his jacket that she realized how hot she was, so she slipped out of her parka and folded it over her arm. Inside the trunk was an army green duffel bag. Instead of bear traps in it, there was a roadside assistance kit. He took out the jack, and handed her the tire iron. “Just in case.” He took her parka from her and stuffed both coats into the bag.
“The groceries too,” she said, and retrieved them from the backseat. They might have to make them last.
He hoisted the duffel bag onto his shoulder. “So. We walk?”
She looked to either side once, then set off to the right. “We walk.”
They followed the barrier as closely as possible, skimming it with their hands when they could, looking for weak points. They crossed driveways and traversed backyards, saw spruce trees half bushy green and half dead as ash. Before long, they found themselves across the street from the Wheeler house. They stopped and stared at the unblinking Christmas lights, and Jonathan put his arm around her shoulders. Nancy saw her mother through the kitchen window. “Come on,” she said.
Twice, cars drove by on the other side. The first time, they shouted at the oncoming Chrysler, waving their arms, screaming their heads off, to no reaction from the driver. The second time, they didn’t bother. Where part of the little hatchback should have bumped up against the barrier, it disappeared, cross-sectioned, and reappeared whole again on the other side.
They’d been walking for maybe an hour--her watch had stopped working--and she was no longer sure where they were. She wondered if distances worked differently on this side. They’d lost sight of familiar landmarks as the border wended into the woods, and they trudged through dusty soil and the charcoal shells of trees. She tucked her head into her upper arm, wiping dripping sweat off her forehead and upper lip.
“Hang on,” he said, and stopped abruptly.
She raised the tire iron, but it wasn’t a warning, which she quickly realized as he pulled his tee shirt over his head and held it out to her. “Here.”
Her eyes widened. “What--?”
He stretched his arm out further. “You can’t wear that. You’ll pass out.”
“Oh.” She took it, and he turned around to offer her privacy. “Thanks.” His shoulders were smooth and even, and his spine was starting to shine with sweat. There was a birthmark the size of a felt-tip pen-point below his right ribs.
“Okay?” he asked, and she started as if he’d caught her staring.
“Almost.” The turtleneck stuck to her as she yanked it off. Her skin was damp and reddish underneath; she couldn’t have stood it much longer. She tugged her bra back into place and slipped on Jonathan’s shirt, soft cotton and the smell of Tide and Sure and boy. “I’m done.” He turned around, and she turned her attention to stuffing the balled-up inside-out sweater into the duffel on top of their coats.
“Better?”
“Much, thanks.”
He ducked his head and nodded, combed his bangs off his face with his fingers. A flush was creeping down his neck… but that could have been a trick of this strange light.
They picked up their gear and walked on.
Once he asked her, “What do you think happened?”
“Maybe another experiment,” she guessed.
“Maybe,” he said, “there are just cracks in the world, and we fell through.”
The night deepened on the other side, and the snow slowed and stopped, pulling down their curtain and leaving a reflectionless pane of glass. It seemed like if she touched it she ought to feel the cold, but it was like touching an image of winter on a television screen. On their side, the sky never changed, and the air never moved. Nothing moved but them. As they jumped over a still, sulphurous stream, exhaustion, frustration, and fear ganged up on her and knocked her off her feet onto the far bank. He skidded to her side.
“Jesus! Nancy?”
“I’m fine,” she said, but it came out half-sob. “Can we--? I need to stop for a while.”
“Yeah, of course.”
He sat down hard beside her. For the first time she noticed he looked as tired and scared as she felt. She closed her eyes and rested her temple upon his bare shoulder, but it was too hot to stay so close for very long.
“We should have something to eat.” She dug around through their provisions and found what she was looking for. They split a Quaker Chewy granola bar--it was warm and sticky, and she licked the chocolate chip smears off her fingers--and a Five Alive juicebox, as if they were sharing Kindergarten snack. They had gone to Kindergarten together, but she didn’t remember ever sharing snack with him.
When they were finished, she tucked the trash back into the bag, not realizing what she was doing until she heard him laugh. Even in another dimension, she would not be a litterbug. “Leave only footprints.”
“Too bad I left my camera at home.”
“Yeah, too bad.” She zipped up the duffel and arranged it behind her like a bolster. “I can’t think of anything else I’d want to take from this place.” He reclined next to her, and they watched the unreachable night forest like a movie. Like a nature film, she thought, and not a minute later, Jonathan nudged her leg and pointed off to the left.
A red fox emerged from the underbrush and stepped into a clearing of moonlit snow, so close she could see its whiskers twitch. It sniffed and pawed at the ground, snowflakes decorating its muzzle. She felt herself smile, in spite of everything. It hunted a few minutes more as they observed silently, then raised its head, alert. The fox turned its bright gaze in their direction, and Nancy held her breath. Its tail flicked twice; it set off, moving straight toward them with its bouncing lope, and disappeared.
Nancy exhaled, and found her fingers interlaced with Jonathan’s on the dusty ground between them.
“Nancy…” His eyes were sad, and something else. She opened her mouth before she thought of what to say.
Before either of them could speak again, a powerful clap of sound battered the air around them, like the flapping of an enormous flag. They scrambled to their feet. A rustling like a million insect wings filled the woods, and finally the barren landscape stirred to a kind of life. Dead leaves jumped into the air. Little whirlwinds of debris seemed to chase them as they ran in search of any kind of cover.
Jonathan was faster, tugging her along. When she broke away, realizing they’d abandoned their supplies, he yelled her name and chased after her. They slammed into each other as she was hefting the duffel onto her back, and he fell. He took her extended hand and they began running again, side by side. The thunder bellowed again, and along with it a gust of wind shoved them face first to the ground, as a vast shadow passed overhead.
Not thunder, she knew. Wings. They futilely tried to shelter each other. Nancy heard a shriek, and didn’t know if it was her own scream. She’d dropped the tire iron; if only she had a weapon, she could fight, she could at least hurt it, whatever it was...
“Look!” Jonathan shouted.
The shadow hovered, but beyond it… beyond it, the shape of the world was changing. The barrier, she realized. The barrier was receding like a tide, the edge racing toward them, eating up the yellow earth and the pink sky, bringing them closer and closer to home, or to oblivion. They knelt, clinging to each other, as the alien landscape shrank in on all sides. Nancy saw a flare of light, smelled ozone, and felt a sensation that made her think of Holly pushing Play-Doh through a mold.
An instant later, they were shivering in the dark. The other place was gone, folded up and stuck into a pocket, and they were...safe.
Safe and cold. The snow was soaking through her jeans and freezing her knees, so Nancy stood, hugging herself. Jonathan did the same, only he was bare from the waist up. Without considering it, she stripped off his shirt and handed it back to him, then unzipped the duffel bag and pulled out the rest of their clothes. They dressed quickly and wordlessly, clouds of breath dancing in the air. She laughed once in relief, and flashed him a ‘we survived’ grin. But his face was so serious, almost somber. He leaned forward until his forehead touched hers.
They leaned against each other, like trees.
Only after he’d pulled away again did he give her a crooked smile, and say, “Weird shit always happens when I hang out with you, Nancy Wheeler.”
She snorted. Between the frigid air and the near miss--and the company, maybe--she felt oddly invigorated. “I bet Alison hasn't even been to one alternate dimension.” And then, immediately abashed, “Sorry.”
She sensed more than saw him shrug. “It’s okay. It was mutual.” He gestured ahead of him. “I think that’s a streetlight.”
They started weaving their way carefully through the trees. “Sorry,” she re-apologized. “You don’t have to talk about it. I just… I know it’s hard,” she said, “when it’s the first person you loved.”
He was a few paces ahead of her, so he stopped and turned to look over his shoulder for a second. She almost tripped over a root. He smiled, or she thought he did, then turned back and kept walking. “She’s not the first girl I loved.” The sudden flush she felt had nothing to do with fear or cold.
It was, in fact, a streetlight. What it lit was the parking lot behind the A&P. “Motherfucker,” she muttered, and the exclamation made him laugh. “We walked in a circle.”
“It’ll be easy to find the car, then,” he said. “Come on. My feet are freezing.”
The car was where they’d left it, the only one on the street without an icing layer of snow. Tire tracks ran underneath it, perpendicular. A bit warily, they got in, and Jonathan fished the keys from his jacket pocket. “So. I guess I’m driving you home.”
They moved slowly along the quiet streets, the peaceful lawns and cheery lights feeling not quite solid to her yet. “I let my guard down,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“For two years I’ve been on guard for monsters,” she confessed, “and for one minute, at the worst possible time…”
“Hey,” he stopped her. “You can’t be on guard every minute. Nancy. What kind of life is that?”
She didn’t have an answer. Neither said another word until they pulled up in front of her house. The lights were still on in the living room. How could it be they hadn’t gone to bed yet, when it felt like an eternity had passed?
“I guess your mom isn’t going to want those groceries now.”
She frowned, thinking of the cold cuts especially. “They’re garbage,” she agreed. “I’ll tell her I went to a movie and forgot.”
“They’re probably worried about you.”
“Yeah, probably.”
They looked at each other as she hesitated. She touched the door handle, and he blurted, “Come home with me.”
“What?”
“Just… I think you should.”
Yes, okay, let’s go. She glanced at the house. “What do I tell her?”
He squeezed the steering wheel, frustrated. “I don’t know. Say you’re staying over with a friend.”
“What friend?” She scanned her mental yearbook, trying to think of someone plausible she’d gone to high school with whose parents her mother didn’t know, wouldn’t call. He mistook it for stubbornness.
“I don’t know, Nancy, but--” He calmed himself down, and when he turned to search her face for an answer he suddenly looked more frightened than he had all night. “If it happens again…”
She imagined being stuck alone on the wrong side of the barrier, where he couldn’t see her or hear her calling him, didn’t even know she was there. Hammering and hammering with all her might and not being able to break through. Jonathan...
I’m going to kiss you tonight, she decided. She said, “I’d hate for us to get separated.”
“Yeah.”
“Okay. I’ll think of something,” she agreed, and sprang out of the car. As she trotted up the front walk she planned what excuse to give her mom, calculated how much to tell Mike. He whined a little about wanting to go with her to Will’s, but she convinced him he had to stay and look out for Mom and Dad and Holly if something happened. She ran to her room, stuffed a change of clothes into a backpack, climbed onto her desk chair, used a nail file to unscrew the vent near the ceiling, and reached in for the shoebox that contained the gun. Just in case. She hugged her mother tightly at the bottom of the stairs, and fled before she had to think of any more lies.
When she closed the car door behind her again, he looked relieved. “Ready?” he asked.
Her jaw set, her heart thudding, she nodded. “Ready.”
The porch light was on at the Byers house, but there was no activity inside. Nancy brushed her hand over a string of cheerful red garland and touched the antlers of a plastic reindeer as Jonathan unlocked the door. He stomped his feet on the doormat, knocking the snow off his shoes, and she did the same. The living room was cozy and normal, a half-decorated tree in the corner and a basket of laundry on the couch. Still, it felt strange to be there. She stood with her hands in her pockets near the front door.
Jonathan found a note on the refrigerator. “Hopper took Mom and Will to the movies,” he said with obvious relief. “Will’s on a mission to see all three endings to Clue. ”
That slice of regular life, of little brothers, struck her unexpectedly with strong emotion; he approached her quickly, then stopped a few steps away, as she roughly wiped tears from her face, embarrassed and not sure why. It wasn’t as if he’d never seen her cry. Then again, she hadn’t cried for a very long time. “Sorry.”
“Don’t--”
“Weird day, you know?”
“Yeah.” She watched him lift his hand, but he only hooked the cuff of her sleeve with two fingers briefly before retreating to his own space. “Yeah, I know. I mean… I’ve had weirder, ” and she wanted to hug him right then just for making her laugh.
Instead, she took off her coat, and he moved back toward the kitchen.
“Do you want some coffee or tea or something? I think we have some of those Swiss Miss packets with the gross marshmallows.”
“Tea’s fine.”
When he returned with the mug, the corner of his mouth twitched, and he told her, “You can sit down, you know.”
They both perched on the edge of the couch, a hand’s span apart. She sipped slowly, and minute by minute, real warmth seeped back into her body. The longer he sat quietly beside her, the more her jagged edges were smoothed away.
She caught sight of the VCR clock across the room. “I can’t believe it’s only nine-thirty.”
“I know. Do you want to watch tv for a while? Maybe… take our minds off it?”
“Sure, I think Love Boat is on,” she joked.
“Okay, maybe not.”
“Jonathan…” He turned, like his whole body was listening. “I… I would have really freaked out if you weren’t there today.” He shook his head as if he didn’t believe her. “No, I mean it,” she insisted.
“Yeah, well, if you hadn’t been there, I’d be… I don’t even know. Gone, probably.”
“Don’t say that.”
“Freaked out, definitely.” He paused and looked at the floor, then turned back to her with admiration in his eyes. “You’re the strong one, Nancy. You should know that by now.”
Then why do I feel like if you don’t hold me down I’ll blow away?
He stood, and picked up the laundry basket. “I’ll take the couch. You can have my room. When Mom and Hopper get back… maybe we’ll tell them, I don’t know.” She could tell he was unsure about involving his mother.
Nancy was conflicted, too. Her main impulse was to handle it, because that’s what she did; she handled things. If it was only a one-time, freak incident, maybe it could be theirs, together, their secret. If it wasn’t, then the whole town could be in danger, and a small part of her still ached to run and tell a grown-up, the grown-ups will fix everything. But the older she got, the more she knew that grown-ups were just as helpless as everybody else, and Joyce Byers and the chief were no different.
“We don’t have to decide now.”
While Jonathan went to get his room ready, Nancy used the bathroom, scrubbed her face with hot water, brushed god-knows-what out of her hair as best she could. “Don’t lose your nerve,” she ordered her reflection, bracing herself on the sink. She wondered what Barb would tell her. Life’s so goddamn short, Nancy.
She peeked around the corner on her way back to the living room, but he wasn’t in sight. As she sat there, she noticed she was bouncing her knee up and down, and pressed her palms into her thighs to settle the fidgeting. As much as she tilted herself and craned her neck to peer down the hallway, she couldn’t see into his room.
“Screw this,” she muttered, and rose from the couch.
She watched him tucking clean sheets around the corners of the twin mattress, and then experimentally arranging mismatched blankets--over the pillow, then under, over again. When he was satisfied, she reached over and flicked off the light, and he looked up, startled. “It still kind of hurts my eyes,” she explained, and walked to the foot of his bed. “You don’t have to give up your room.”
“I don’t mind.”
I want you to mind. “So, I guess I never said, but… thanks for the ride.”
“Hey, anytime. Sorry about the detour.”
She took a step closer. “Yeah, well… we got here.”
He crossed his right arm over his chest and rubbed his biceps.
She skimmed her fingertips over his forearm and felt the goosebumps. “Are you still cold?”
“Kind of.”
Their voices chimed softly in the quiet room. It was a beautiful, alive kind of quiet. Nancy leaned forward, and carefully put her arms around him, resting her head on his shoulder. “Better?”
He touched her hair so lightly she barely felt it, like his hand was a falling leaf. “Yeah. Much better.”
The posture was awkward, too much distance between them. She released him, and he stared at her in a way she recognized from a long time ago.
She reached for his left hand and held it in both of hers, turning it up and tracing the line across his palm with her thumb in the same nervous, soothing motion she so often did to her own.
“What happens now?” he whispered.
“Now, now? Or later, like tomorrow?”
“Later, I guess…” His other hand flexed at his side. “I think… I’m pretty sure I know what’s happening now.” Still, there was a slight question in it.
She guided his arm around her waist. “Whatever happens…” Static electricity pulled his tee shirt to the wooly fibers of her sweater. His sneakers and the toes of her duck boots scuffed against each other as they tried to take up the same space on the floor. She clasped her hands around the back of his head and looked up into his expectant face. “...This is the least weird part.”
She didn’t know who kissed who, not the first time. Or the second. Or the third. She knew when he finally embraced her like he had every right to that there would be plenty of times in the future to keep count.
“We’re okay. It’s going to be okay this time,” he reassured them both.
She hugged him tighter, gathering his shirt in her fists, craving his nearness and his scent, and offering her own. “I know.”
Neither of them knew that, really, but it was what they wanted to be true, and this had become a night for knowing what they wanted.
Soon her boots were kicked under his bed, near a pile of jeans and a turtleneck sweater she’d nearly jumped out of when he tentatively slid his hand under the hem, and his neatly made bed was in disarray.
His palm was warm on her back, and she pressed closer, searching for the pulse in his throat. “It was you,” he said, and she felt the vibration. “Earlier, when I said… I meant--”
She smiled against his jaw and moved her face nose to nose with his. “Yeah, I got it. Thanks.”
He laughed, for just one breath, and they kissed again. He brushed her hair back. “Nancy…”
She waited, suspended, a moment, and another, and then one moment more. “...Yes?”
“That’s all,” he smiled, the quietest joy she’d ever seen. “Just Nancy.”
"Le bel age"
Fandom: Stranger Things
Pairing: Nancy/Jonathan, Nancy POV (3rd person)
Rating: T
Words: 6300
Senior year was a slog.
It wasn’t supposed to be. It was supposed to be their crowning glory. She and Barb had had it all figured out since they were freshmen. The clubs they were going to be president and secretary of, their elaborate plans for senior skip day. Nancy was going to be valedictorian, and Barb would be editor of the Hawkins Student Gazette. They weren’t going to lord it over underclassmen; they were going to be mature and benevolent. It was going to be their last farewell to childhood, their wide open gateway to the adult world.
But Barb wasn’t here anymore. And Nancy had grown up a little ahead of schedule.
It wasn’t all bad, really. Except for missing Barbara, which took little bites out of her every day, most of it wasn’t bad at all. It just...was. There was homecoming, which was nice. There were football games, and then basketball games, and then baseball games. Nancy did a lot of homework in the bleachers.
She kept her grades up, for the most part. It was advanced bio that almost did in her GPA. She stood over the tray, grimly clutching the scalpel, but as soon as the blade slid into the fetal pig’s pliant, mottled skin she felt something between nausea and panic, and shoved the whole thing away. She stayed home with the flu the rest of that week. Steve bought her his cousin’s old lab notes for fifteen dollars.
Sometimes on Saturday mornings, she went to the diner with Mike. Mom said they couldn’t afford a tutor because of Holly’s pre-school, but she probably just wanted them to spend more time together. Sometimes she helped him with his English essays or social studies assignments--he just wasn’t interested, was the thing--but usually they just talked about whatever. Nancy was fine with that.
The best part of senior year (or maybe the worst part, a perverse, reckless part of her whispered) was that nothing weird, otherworldly, or supernatural happened at all.
Well. One weird thing did happen.
Jonathan Byers got a girlfriend.
Her name was Alison. She was from Chicago, and she was cool. Not Hawkins cool, like giving a jock a handjob in the back of a Mustang, but actually cool. MTV cool. She wore black jeans and band t-shirts and big black boots. She came to school in crazy outfits that anyone else--anyone like Nancy--would get laughed out of class for; daisy dukes over ripped up tights, a skirt she sewed herself out of her father’s old neckties. Her hair looked like she never brushed it, and it was perfect. Hell, Alison was so cool there was an Elvis Costello song with her name. Nobody had written a song about a Nancy since like 19-freaking-40.
They went out a few times, the four of them, on double dates that started out the ultimate in awkward, but got to be casual enough--a couple times for pizza, once to the next town over for Chinese. Jonathan and Alison shared all their food, chopsticks casually invading each other’s plates. Alison split a pot of tea with her, and they talked about books.
Nancy really liked Alison. That was the worst part.
She saw them making out a lot. She didn’t watch them making out, but you couldn’t help seeing when they were so blatant about it, in the parking lot after school, or the stairwell before homeroom, or behind the shop building during free period.
The surprising thing was how… confident he seemed with it. You only get that comfortable from doing it a lot. Not doing it doing it, though... probably that too. So, you know, good. Good for him, she was glad he was happy.
Anyway, it wasn’t any of her business.
She scored a 1530 on her SAT, and her mother put the results up on the refrigerator. Nancy was neither thrilled nor disappointed. Getting into college was her job now, and she put her nose to the grindstone. When she met with Mrs. Palmer, the guidance counselor, she asked Nancy if she might want to start coming to her office once a week, just to talk. Nancy didn’t.
Jonathan and Alison both got into the Art Institute of Chicago. She found out at senior assembly. “I thought you wanted to go to NYU?” she asked him later. He had mentioned it once when they were all hanging out in her basement over the summer (she was already elbow deep in brochures, so she had asked). The way he’d said it at the time, though, he might as well have said he wanted to go to college on the moon.
He laughed. “When I was in second grade. Nancy. You can’t always want the same things you wanted when you were a kid.”
Don’t you still feel like a kid sometimes? Even a little bit? Even now? she wondered. I do.
Everyone at school assumed she would follow Steve to Indiana University, like they were married or something. She ended up applying to Princeton, Dartmouth, and Brown; Mount Holyoke, because that was where Barb wanted to go; Indiana, for her parents and Steve.
She also applied to UIC. As a safety school.
Her mom put all the acceptance letters up on the fridge, too.
Steve had a big rager at his house after graduation (she was salutatorian), and practically the whole class showed up. Even Tommy and Carol. Even Jonathan and Alison made an appearance. High school hierarchies melted away amidst freedom and chaos and trays of Jell-O shots. Steve put his arm around her and said, “This is going to be an awesome summer.”
They broke up in August.
Her dad drove her to college. The gray plain of Lake Erie was like the dull sameness of Indiana made of water instead of land, New York and New England leafy blurs. After they’d dropped the last load of cargo into her dorm room, he put an encouraging hand on her shoulder and said, “Good luck, kiddo.” And there she was: Nancy Wheeler, Ivy League Girl.
She found out from her mom over the phone when Jonathan came home halfway through his first semester. It made her crushingly sad. She’d imagined him thriving, being interested in his classes, going to rock shows on weekends, taking amazing pictures of architecture.
Mom said it was because he needed to help Joyce for a while, implying they were out of money, and maybe he’d go back in the spring. Mike said it was because Alison dumped him.
She’d never liked Alison.
Her mother sent her money for a plane ticket when she threatened to take a bus home for winter break. Twenty-four hours after her last final, she was Hawkins Nancy again, eating the same family dinner as always, doing the same chores, sleeping in the same bed.
The day the world split open, she was walking home from downtown with a bag of groceries for her mother, struggling to keep a grip on the brown paper under her puffy mittens. Mom had offered her the car, but she’d gotten used to walking in Providence. It gave her a chance to think, or to observe the world around her when thinking was too hard. It made her feel vigilant. Sometimes she walked at night, later than she should, challenging the darkness, hand in hand with her fear when there was no other hand to hold.
It wasn’t quite dark yet when he pulled up beside her, but dusk was beginning to swallow the sky, already heavy with clouds, and a fast, wet snow was starting to fall. She recognized the car in her peripheral vision almost as soon as she heard it slow, stopped and half-turned toward it, expecting Joyce Byers to roll down the window and call, Sweetie, do you need a ride?
But Jonathan was getting out of the driver’s side and walking around the front end. “Hey,” he said, standing in front of her for the first time in four months. He wasn’t wearing gloves or a scarf or anything, seeming immune to the cold in that way that boys had, except for shifting his weight back and forth between his feet. He held out his hands and inclined his head toward the street, taking the grocery bag out of her arms almost before she realized what he was doing. “You still walk fast.”
“Hi.”
“Hi,” he repeated, and opened the passenger door. She got in, and tracked him with her eyes as he walked around the hood, put her grocery bag in the back seat, and got back behind the wheel. The car was warm; her nose and cheeks tingled from the temperature change. He looked at her and smiled. “Hi, Nancy Wheeler.”
“Hi,” she said once more, with a laugh.
“Okay,” he said, “Now that that’s out of the way…”
They went about a block before she said, “I heard you were back.”
“Yeah.” He left it at that. “I heard you were home on break. Is Harrington around?”
“Steve’s in Hawaii with his parents. I heard. We actually haven’t talked for a while.”
A beat went by. “Oh.”
“Did you… like Chicago?”
“Sure,” he said. “You know. Tall buildings. Big lake.”
“Sounds great. Do you think you’ll go back?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. I guess…” He seemed to struggle with whether to continue. “...This sounds stupid. I guess I got homesick.”
“For Hawkins?”
He laughed. “Fuck, no. For my mom and Will, though. And the dog.”
“You quit college for the dog?”
He returned her teasing smirk. “Hey, he’s a good dog. Besides,” he continued, “You might not believe this, but people at art school? Can be kind of pretentious.”
“Not like us real salt of the earth suburban folk, huh?”
“Exactly.”
She wished it was a longer drive home. “I was going to call you,” she said. “But my mom’s been keeping me pretty busy, getting ready for Christmas, and I thought--”
“No, yeah, I know. I mean, me too. Since you got back. I just… didn’t know when would be a good time.”
“Anytime’s a good time,” she said softly.
“Okay.” He nodded, keeping his eyes on the road. “Okay. So, uh, how’s Brown? You like it?”
“Yeah,” she said. “It’s good. Hard. You know.” They stopped at the last red light before her neighborhood, even though there wasn’t another car on the road.
“That’s good,” he said. “I always pictured you fitting in out there.” To her creased brow, he responded, “I mean that in a nice way.”
She turned her eyes to the windshield, the clunking wipers and the clumping snow, her mind drifting back to campus, imagining him imagining her. “Thanks.”
“Have you made a lot of friends and stuff?”
“Some.” She wondered what he meant by ‘and stuff.’ “Why, you worried I’m lonely?”
Instead of the quick comeback she expected, he paused before stating quietly, “I know you don’t need me to worry about you.”
She looked at his profile, and then down at her mittens before she murmured, “Maybe. Might be nice, though.” The signal turned green. Nancy thought she saw it flicker through the swirling snow.
A second later, the evening outside caught some eldritch spark, and flared into blazing light.
Nuclear war, was her first thought when her head stopped buzzing. Her eyes were still squeezed shut, and she was hunched uncomfortably over the gear shift in crash position. Jonathan was curved over her awkwardly. She could feel his weight on her back, the pressure of his hand atop her head. She listened for a moment, and heard his soft inhale near her ear, echoing a beat behind her own. “Jonathan?”
“Are you okay?”
“...Yes. Are you?”
“I think so.” Their voices landed strangely, dull and muted, as if the air was trying to swallow their words before they could get to each other. Jonathan started to sit up, and while she cracked her eyes open and found herself focusing on the car’s ashtray, he said, “What the fuck. What the fuck. ”
Why would they nuke Indianapolis? she thought, and quashed a panicky giggle. Then she remembered how her senior English teacher had made them watch Testament, and her stomach lurched. She reached out for Jonathan’s knee.
“Nancy.”
“I’m okay.” She pushed herself upright. “How far away do you think it wa--? What the fuck? ” Something told her this wasn’t World War III after all.
It was day. Or, not day, but a simulacrum of day. The sky was a uniform sickly pink, no sun or clouds in sight. There was no mushroom cloud on the horizon. There was only a desiccated, desaturated world which appeared to be nothing so much as the brittle skeleton of their own. Oh, no. You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.
He glanced over at her. “Is this…?”
“No,” she shook her head. “This is… somewhere else.”
“Oh. Well… great.”
The car’s engine had died, stranding them in the middle of the street. Not that there was any traffic to worry about. Rusty hulks of station wagons and mid-size sedans sat parked permanently along the crumbling curbs. Beyond that, patchy yellowed lawns, and houses like matchstick models of themselves. The pavement that stretched out in front of them was cracked and domed like the top of a cake.
She felt warm, and yanked off her mittens. Jonathan looked at her again. Looked to her for what to do. “There has to be a way out,” she said.
“Right. Guess we’d better find it.” He turned the key, but the ignition didn’t catch. As he tried again, Nancy checked the mirrors, and gasped. She gripped his arm.
“Look.”
They both stared into the rearview, afraid to blink or turn around in case the image disappeared. Nancy twisted in her seat first, and saw it through the back window: perhaps thirty yards behind the car, the sideways world was sliced off cleanly, and waiting beyond was a field of twilight blue behind a sheer curtain of falling snow.
They burst from the car and ran. The road crinkled like wasp’s nest paper under their feet. Jonathan’s longer stride sent him ahead of her, so he reached back for her hand, and they sped for the divide. Nancy yelped when Jonathan collided with an invisible wall, an instant before she would have; she felt the strange shivery impact travel up her arm. Instead of bouncing off, he seemed to hang there for a second, before stumbling backward.
“Oh my God, are you all right?” She grabbed him by the chin and tilted his dazed face toward her so she could look into his eyes. He blinked, and nodded.
“Yeah. Yeah, I guess.” He touched her wrist, and she pulled her hand back. “Looks like it’s not going to be that easy.”
“Of course not. Why would it?” She frowned, and pressed the tip of her finger forward until it couldn’t go farther. She flattened her palm against the barrier, and pushed. There was the impression of resistance, a barely perceptible tingle, but mostly, the barrier seemed to absorb whatever force she applied, the way a baffle absorbed sound. She punched it, and instead of rebounding, her fist sank uselessly into a cushion of nothing. Snowflakes danced under a streetlight, so close, a universe away.
Beside her, Jonathan crouched, testing the wall at ground level. She turned around and leaned her back against it, and tried to think. The partition curved off slightly to Nancy’s right, cutting diagonally across the intersection, and continued as far as she could see. Jonathan stepped back, picked up a chunk of flaking pavement, and hurled it in an arc as high as he could. The rock stuck in midair for a moment, and then dropped straight down.
This was getting them nowhere.
“If there’s a wall, maybe there’s a door,” she said. You pulled me through a door once. He looked like he remembered.
“Yeah, has to be.” He wasn’t good at projecting confidence.
Nancy started walking back to the car. Something about the eerie light or the arid air made her eyes itch. There was a faint coppery smell in the air, and, aside from the noises they themselves made, not a single sound.
Jonathan got the car keys from the steering column and went to open the trunk. It wasn’t until she saw him take off his jacket that she realized how hot she was, so she slipped out of her parka and folded it over her arm. Inside the trunk was an army green duffel bag. Instead of bear traps in it, there was a roadside assistance kit. He took out the jack, and handed her the tire iron. “Just in case.” He took her parka from her and stuffed both coats into the bag.
“The groceries too,” she said, and retrieved them from the backseat. They might have to make them last.
He hoisted the duffel bag onto his shoulder. “So. We walk?”
She looked to either side once, then set off to the right. “We walk.”
They followed the barrier as closely as possible, skimming it with their hands when they could, looking for weak points. They crossed driveways and traversed backyards, saw spruce trees half bushy green and half dead as ash. Before long, they found themselves across the street from the Wheeler house. They stopped and stared at the unblinking Christmas lights, and Jonathan put his arm around her shoulders. Nancy saw her mother through the kitchen window. “Come on,” she said.
Twice, cars drove by on the other side. The first time, they shouted at the oncoming Chrysler, waving their arms, screaming their heads off, to no reaction from the driver. The second time, they didn’t bother. Where part of the little hatchback should have bumped up against the barrier, it disappeared, cross-sectioned, and reappeared whole again on the other side.
They’d been walking for maybe an hour--her watch had stopped working--and she was no longer sure where they were. She wondered if distances worked differently on this side. They’d lost sight of familiar landmarks as the border wended into the woods, and they trudged through dusty soil and the charcoal shells of trees. She tucked her head into her upper arm, wiping dripping sweat off her forehead and upper lip.
“Hang on,” he said, and stopped abruptly.
She raised the tire iron, but it wasn’t a warning, which she quickly realized as he pulled his tee shirt over his head and held it out to her. “Here.”
Her eyes widened. “What--?”
He stretched his arm out further. “You can’t wear that. You’ll pass out.”
“Oh.” She took it, and he turned around to offer her privacy. “Thanks.” His shoulders were smooth and even, and his spine was starting to shine with sweat. There was a birthmark the size of a felt-tip pen-point below his right ribs.
“Okay?” he asked, and she started as if he’d caught her staring.
“Almost.” The turtleneck stuck to her as she yanked it off. Her skin was damp and reddish underneath; she couldn’t have stood it much longer. She tugged her bra back into place and slipped on Jonathan’s shirt, soft cotton and the smell of Tide and Sure and boy. “I’m done.” He turned around, and she turned her attention to stuffing the balled-up inside-out sweater into the duffel on top of their coats.
“Better?”
“Much, thanks.”
He ducked his head and nodded, combed his bangs off his face with his fingers. A flush was creeping down his neck… but that could have been a trick of this strange light.
They picked up their gear and walked on.
Once he asked her, “What do you think happened?”
“Maybe another experiment,” she guessed.
“Maybe,” he said, “there are just cracks in the world, and we fell through.”
The night deepened on the other side, and the snow slowed and stopped, pulling down their curtain and leaving a reflectionless pane of glass. It seemed like if she touched it she ought to feel the cold, but it was like touching an image of winter on a television screen. On their side, the sky never changed, and the air never moved. Nothing moved but them. As they jumped over a still, sulphurous stream, exhaustion, frustration, and fear ganged up on her and knocked her off her feet onto the far bank. He skidded to her side.
“Jesus! Nancy?”
“I’m fine,” she said, but it came out half-sob. “Can we--? I need to stop for a while.”
“Yeah, of course.”
He sat down hard beside her. For the first time she noticed he looked as tired and scared as she felt. She closed her eyes and rested her temple upon his bare shoulder, but it was too hot to stay so close for very long.
“We should have something to eat.” She dug around through their provisions and found what she was looking for. They split a Quaker Chewy granola bar--it was warm and sticky, and she licked the chocolate chip smears off her fingers--and a Five Alive juicebox, as if they were sharing Kindergarten snack. They had gone to Kindergarten together, but she didn’t remember ever sharing snack with him.
When they were finished, she tucked the trash back into the bag, not realizing what she was doing until she heard him laugh. Even in another dimension, she would not be a litterbug. “Leave only footprints.”
“Too bad I left my camera at home.”
“Yeah, too bad.” She zipped up the duffel and arranged it behind her like a bolster. “I can’t think of anything else I’d want to take from this place.” He reclined next to her, and they watched the unreachable night forest like a movie. Like a nature film, she thought, and not a minute later, Jonathan nudged her leg and pointed off to the left.
A red fox emerged from the underbrush and stepped into a clearing of moonlit snow, so close she could see its whiskers twitch. It sniffed and pawed at the ground, snowflakes decorating its muzzle. She felt herself smile, in spite of everything. It hunted a few minutes more as they observed silently, then raised its head, alert. The fox turned its bright gaze in their direction, and Nancy held her breath. Its tail flicked twice; it set off, moving straight toward them with its bouncing lope, and disappeared.
Nancy exhaled, and found her fingers interlaced with Jonathan’s on the dusty ground between them.
“Nancy…” His eyes were sad, and something else. She opened her mouth before she thought of what to say.
Before either of them could speak again, a powerful clap of sound battered the air around them, like the flapping of an enormous flag. They scrambled to their feet. A rustling like a million insect wings filled the woods, and finally the barren landscape stirred to a kind of life. Dead leaves jumped into the air. Little whirlwinds of debris seemed to chase them as they ran in search of any kind of cover.
Jonathan was faster, tugging her along. When she broke away, realizing they’d abandoned their supplies, he yelled her name and chased after her. They slammed into each other as she was hefting the duffel onto her back, and he fell. He took her extended hand and they began running again, side by side. The thunder bellowed again, and along with it a gust of wind shoved them face first to the ground, as a vast shadow passed overhead.
Not thunder, she knew. Wings. They futilely tried to shelter each other. Nancy heard a shriek, and didn’t know if it was her own scream. She’d dropped the tire iron; if only she had a weapon, she could fight, she could at least hurt it, whatever it was...
“Look!” Jonathan shouted.
The shadow hovered, but beyond it… beyond it, the shape of the world was changing. The barrier, she realized. The barrier was receding like a tide, the edge racing toward them, eating up the yellow earth and the pink sky, bringing them closer and closer to home, or to oblivion. They knelt, clinging to each other, as the alien landscape shrank in on all sides. Nancy saw a flare of light, smelled ozone, and felt a sensation that made her think of Holly pushing Play-Doh through a mold.
An instant later, they were shivering in the dark. The other place was gone, folded up and stuck into a pocket, and they were...safe.
Safe and cold. The snow was soaking through her jeans and freezing her knees, so Nancy stood, hugging herself. Jonathan did the same, only he was bare from the waist up. Without considering it, she stripped off his shirt and handed it back to him, then unzipped the duffel bag and pulled out the rest of their clothes. They dressed quickly and wordlessly, clouds of breath dancing in the air. She laughed once in relief, and flashed him a ‘we survived’ grin. But his face was so serious, almost somber. He leaned forward until his forehead touched hers.
They leaned against each other, like trees.
Only after he’d pulled away again did he give her a crooked smile, and say, “Weird shit always happens when I hang out with you, Nancy Wheeler.”
She snorted. Between the frigid air and the near miss--and the company, maybe--she felt oddly invigorated. “I bet Alison hasn't even been to one alternate dimension.” And then, immediately abashed, “Sorry.”
She sensed more than saw him shrug. “It’s okay. It was mutual.” He gestured ahead of him. “I think that’s a streetlight.”
They started weaving their way carefully through the trees. “Sorry,” she re-apologized. “You don’t have to talk about it. I just… I know it’s hard,” she said, “when it’s the first person you loved.”
He was a few paces ahead of her, so he stopped and turned to look over his shoulder for a second. She almost tripped over a root. He smiled, or she thought he did, then turned back and kept walking. “She’s not the first girl I loved.” The sudden flush she felt had nothing to do with fear or cold.
It was, in fact, a streetlight. What it lit was the parking lot behind the A&P. “Motherfucker,” she muttered, and the exclamation made him laugh. “We walked in a circle.”
“It’ll be easy to find the car, then,” he said. “Come on. My feet are freezing.”
The car was where they’d left it, the only one on the street without an icing layer of snow. Tire tracks ran underneath it, perpendicular. A bit warily, they got in, and Jonathan fished the keys from his jacket pocket. “So. I guess I’m driving you home.”
They moved slowly along the quiet streets, the peaceful lawns and cheery lights feeling not quite solid to her yet. “I let my guard down,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“For two years I’ve been on guard for monsters,” she confessed, “and for one minute, at the worst possible time…”
“Hey,” he stopped her. “You can’t be on guard every minute. Nancy. What kind of life is that?”
She didn’t have an answer. Neither said another word until they pulled up in front of her house. The lights were still on in the living room. How could it be they hadn’t gone to bed yet, when it felt like an eternity had passed?
“I guess your mom isn’t going to want those groceries now.”
She frowned, thinking of the cold cuts especially. “They’re garbage,” she agreed. “I’ll tell her I went to a movie and forgot.”
“They’re probably worried about you.”
“Yeah, probably.”
They looked at each other as she hesitated. She touched the door handle, and he blurted, “Come home with me.”
“What?”
“Just… I think you should.”
Yes, okay, let’s go. She glanced at the house. “What do I tell her?”
He squeezed the steering wheel, frustrated. “I don’t know. Say you’re staying over with a friend.”
“What friend?” She scanned her mental yearbook, trying to think of someone plausible she’d gone to high school with whose parents her mother didn’t know, wouldn’t call. He mistook it for stubbornness.
“I don’t know, Nancy, but--” He calmed himself down, and when he turned to search her face for an answer he suddenly looked more frightened than he had all night. “If it happens again…”
She imagined being stuck alone on the wrong side of the barrier, where he couldn’t see her or hear her calling him, didn’t even know she was there. Hammering and hammering with all her might and not being able to break through. Jonathan...
I’m going to kiss you tonight, she decided. She said, “I’d hate for us to get separated.”
“Yeah.”
“Okay. I’ll think of something,” she agreed, and sprang out of the car. As she trotted up the front walk she planned what excuse to give her mom, calculated how much to tell Mike. He whined a little about wanting to go with her to Will’s, but she convinced him he had to stay and look out for Mom and Dad and Holly if something happened. She ran to her room, stuffed a change of clothes into a backpack, climbed onto her desk chair, used a nail file to unscrew the vent near the ceiling, and reached in for the shoebox that contained the gun. Just in case. She hugged her mother tightly at the bottom of the stairs, and fled before she had to think of any more lies.
When she closed the car door behind her again, he looked relieved. “Ready?” he asked.
Her jaw set, her heart thudding, she nodded. “Ready.”
The porch light was on at the Byers house, but there was no activity inside. Nancy brushed her hand over a string of cheerful red garland and touched the antlers of a plastic reindeer as Jonathan unlocked the door. He stomped his feet on the doormat, knocking the snow off his shoes, and she did the same. The living room was cozy and normal, a half-decorated tree in the corner and a basket of laundry on the couch. Still, it felt strange to be there. She stood with her hands in her pockets near the front door.
Jonathan found a note on the refrigerator. “Hopper took Mom and Will to the movies,” he said with obvious relief. “Will’s on a mission to see all three endings to Clue. ”
That slice of regular life, of little brothers, struck her unexpectedly with strong emotion; he approached her quickly, then stopped a few steps away, as she roughly wiped tears from her face, embarrassed and not sure why. It wasn’t as if he’d never seen her cry. Then again, she hadn’t cried for a very long time. “Sorry.”
“Don’t--”
“Weird day, you know?”
“Yeah.” She watched him lift his hand, but he only hooked the cuff of her sleeve with two fingers briefly before retreating to his own space. “Yeah, I know. I mean… I’ve had weirder, ” and she wanted to hug him right then just for making her laugh.
Instead, she took off her coat, and he moved back toward the kitchen.
“Do you want some coffee or tea or something? I think we have some of those Swiss Miss packets with the gross marshmallows.”
“Tea’s fine.”
When he returned with the mug, the corner of his mouth twitched, and he told her, “You can sit down, you know.”
They both perched on the edge of the couch, a hand’s span apart. She sipped slowly, and minute by minute, real warmth seeped back into her body. The longer he sat quietly beside her, the more her jagged edges were smoothed away.
She caught sight of the VCR clock across the room. “I can’t believe it’s only nine-thirty.”
“I know. Do you want to watch tv for a while? Maybe… take our minds off it?”
“Sure, I think Love Boat is on,” she joked.
“Okay, maybe not.”
“Jonathan…” He turned, like his whole body was listening. “I… I would have really freaked out if you weren’t there today.” He shook his head as if he didn’t believe her. “No, I mean it,” she insisted.
“Yeah, well, if you hadn’t been there, I’d be… I don’t even know. Gone, probably.”
“Don’t say that.”
“Freaked out, definitely.” He paused and looked at the floor, then turned back to her with admiration in his eyes. “You’re the strong one, Nancy. You should know that by now.”
Then why do I feel like if you don’t hold me down I’ll blow away?
He stood, and picked up the laundry basket. “I’ll take the couch. You can have my room. When Mom and Hopper get back… maybe we’ll tell them, I don’t know.” She could tell he was unsure about involving his mother.
Nancy was conflicted, too. Her main impulse was to handle it, because that’s what she did; she handled things. If it was only a one-time, freak incident, maybe it could be theirs, together, their secret. If it wasn’t, then the whole town could be in danger, and a small part of her still ached to run and tell a grown-up, the grown-ups will fix everything. But the older she got, the more she knew that grown-ups were just as helpless as everybody else, and Joyce Byers and the chief were no different.
“We don’t have to decide now.”
While Jonathan went to get his room ready, Nancy used the bathroom, scrubbed her face with hot water, brushed god-knows-what out of her hair as best she could. “Don’t lose your nerve,” she ordered her reflection, bracing herself on the sink. She wondered what Barb would tell her. Life’s so goddamn short, Nancy.
She peeked around the corner on her way back to the living room, but he wasn’t in sight. As she sat there, she noticed she was bouncing her knee up and down, and pressed her palms into her thighs to settle the fidgeting. As much as she tilted herself and craned her neck to peer down the hallway, she couldn’t see into his room.
“Screw this,” she muttered, and rose from the couch.
She watched him tucking clean sheets around the corners of the twin mattress, and then experimentally arranging mismatched blankets--over the pillow, then under, over again. When he was satisfied, she reached over and flicked off the light, and he looked up, startled. “It still kind of hurts my eyes,” she explained, and walked to the foot of his bed. “You don’t have to give up your room.”
“I don’t mind.”
I want you to mind. “So, I guess I never said, but… thanks for the ride.”
“Hey, anytime. Sorry about the detour.”
She took a step closer. “Yeah, well… we got here.”
He crossed his right arm over his chest and rubbed his biceps.
She skimmed her fingertips over his forearm and felt the goosebumps. “Are you still cold?”
“Kind of.”
Their voices chimed softly in the quiet room. It was a beautiful, alive kind of quiet. Nancy leaned forward, and carefully put her arms around him, resting her head on his shoulder. “Better?”
He touched her hair so lightly she barely felt it, like his hand was a falling leaf. “Yeah. Much better.”
The posture was awkward, too much distance between them. She released him, and he stared at her in a way she recognized from a long time ago.
She reached for his left hand and held it in both of hers, turning it up and tracing the line across his palm with her thumb in the same nervous, soothing motion she so often did to her own.
“What happens now?” he whispered.
“Now, now? Or later, like tomorrow?”
“Later, I guess…” His other hand flexed at his side. “I think… I’m pretty sure I know what’s happening now.” Still, there was a slight question in it.
She guided his arm around her waist. “Whatever happens…” Static electricity pulled his tee shirt to the wooly fibers of her sweater. His sneakers and the toes of her duck boots scuffed against each other as they tried to take up the same space on the floor. She clasped her hands around the back of his head and looked up into his expectant face. “...This is the least weird part.”
She didn’t know who kissed who, not the first time. Or the second. Or the third. She knew when he finally embraced her like he had every right to that there would be plenty of times in the future to keep count.
“We’re okay. It’s going to be okay this time,” he reassured them both.
She hugged him tighter, gathering his shirt in her fists, craving his nearness and his scent, and offering her own. “I know.”
Neither of them knew that, really, but it was what they wanted to be true, and this had become a night for knowing what they wanted.
Soon her boots were kicked under his bed, near a pile of jeans and a turtleneck sweater she’d nearly jumped out of when he tentatively slid his hand under the hem, and his neatly made bed was in disarray.
His palm was warm on her back, and she pressed closer, searching for the pulse in his throat. “It was you,” he said, and she felt the vibration. “Earlier, when I said… I meant--”
She smiled against his jaw and moved her face nose to nose with his. “Yeah, I got it. Thanks.”
He laughed, for just one breath, and they kissed again. He brushed her hair back. “Nancy…”
She waited, suspended, a moment, and another, and then one moment more. “...Yes?”
“That’s all,” he smiled, the quietest joy she’d ever seen. “Just Nancy.”