#stancy fic

[steddieasitgoes]

written for @eddiemonth Day 6 Prompt: Crush cw: period typical homophobia read on ao3 | link to my ao3 Eddie Month series

The Hawkins High Library is somehow both quiet and bustling. There’s not a free table in sight; students hunched together in groups of twos and threes. Loners are forced to share with others. All of them with their noses deep into study guides, highlighters perched between tense lips. Some flip through flashcards, mumbling answers as the librarian watches over with a stern look, ready to shush anyone who dares make a sound. 

The sun beats down on the small room, rays of warmth promising free days to come. Summer break is on the horizon. All that stands between them and three months of endless freedom is finals. 

Finals, which, in Eddie’s case, don’t just promise a summer of freedom. But a life free from high school altogether. Assuming he manages to finally pass Mrs. O’Donnell’s chemistry final. 

The odds of this happening, though, are not very great. Especially since he’s already failed her chemistry class once before. (Honestly, Hawkins High should just hire a new chemistry teacher and stop putting everyone through her miserable class.) 

But it’s okay because Eddie’s actually been trying this semester. 

As in, he finally suffered through the mortifying ordeal of asking for help and landed himself the best tutor that Hawkins High has to offer: Nancy Wheeler. 

With her help, he’s managed to bring his F up to a low D- which isn’t great, but it's the closest he’s ever been to passing. Now, all he has to do is get a C on the final and submit some lame extra credit essay, and he should be able to turn that D- into a D+ and pass the class. 

At least, that’s the plan. 

Which is why he’s currently tucked away at a library table opposite Nancy and the King of Hawkins high himself, Steve Harrington, instead of bumming around in Jeff’s garage planning their summer Hellfire campaign. 

“Okay,” Nancy says, pulling his attention away from the giant library window. She’s holding an index card in her hands. Her usual pristine manicure chipped. Nails bit as short as possible. Eddie supposes the stress of finals even gets to the nerds. “A proton has what kind of charge?” 

“Positive.” 

She nods, not one for verbal praise, and flips to the next card. “What happens in an endergonic reaction?” 

Shit.

He should know this one. 

Eddie taps his pencil against the table. Tilts his head back until his eyes are focused on the ugly popcorn ceiling of the library as if it holds the answers. It doesn’t, unfortunately. Frustrated, he buries his head in his hands for a moment before peering up at Nancy with his big brown eyes and a solemn look on his face. 

Steve scoffs beside Nancy, looking up from his own study guide to throw an arm possessively around her. 

Eddie’s about to call him out on his weird macho man behavior when his stomach starts to growl. Jesus H. Christ. He knew he shouldn’t have skipped lunch today. 

Nancy sighs, shaking Steve’s arm off of her as she stands. “I’m going to go grab us some snacks from the vending machine.” 

“You’re the best, Wheeler!” Eddie smiles, watching as Nancy walks away. 

When he turns back to the table, ready to flip the flashcard over to learn what an endergonic reaction is, Steve is glaring at him. His arms are crossed tightly across his chest as he leans back in the chair. Eddie can tell he’s trying to look casual and unbothered, but the tension in his jaw and the rage in his eyes say otherwise. 

“What’s got your panties in a twist, my liege?” 

Steve scoffs, shaking his head. “Do you think I’m stupid, Munson? I can see you flirting with my girlfriend right in front of me.” 

Eddie stares at Steve dumbfounded, wide eyes blinking as Steve continues to glare. There’s a rumble in the pit of his stomach, one that stems from laughter instead of hunger, but Eddie bites the inside of his cheek to keep it at bay. Something tells him laughing at Steve isn’t going to end well for him. He might have a bad track record when it comes to fights, but the only punch Eddie has ever thrown was accidental at a haunted house. And he ended up bruising his own hand instead of the clown’s nose. 

“I don’t have a crush on Nancy.” 

“Sure you don’t,” Steve hums sarcastically, crossing his arms even tighter. 

The stupid sleeves of his striped polo strain against the bulge of his biceps, and Eddie tries his best not to stare. Oh, if only you knew the truth, Harrington.

“Every guy here has a crush on Nancy. Especially since they know they can’t have her.” 

This time, it’s Eddie who scoffs. Objectively, sure, Nancy’s cute and all. But, the audacity of Harrington to think every guy wants her just because he has her is more irritating than comical. He doesn’t think Nancy would be too thrilled about it either. 

“I don’t know what to tell you, Harrington, but I don’t think about Nancy like that.” 

“So, what are you a queer then?” Steve snaps. 

Eddie feels his skin heat up like the blood is rushing to his cheeks and his ears, and then, as quickly as the temperature rises, it sinks, sending him into a numbing cold. Judging by Harrington’s wide eye gaze, Eddie assumes he looks like a guy who’s two seconds away from hurling or passing out on the floor. Both of which he’d welcome. Anything is better than having this conversation with Harrington. 

“Wait,” Steve says as if Eddie has the strength to get up from his seat. “Shit, I’m sorry. I— I don’t know why I said that. I shouldn’t have said that. I’m really sorry, man. I’m trying not to be this asshole, and then I go and say asshole shit like that. I just—“ Steve drags both hands down his face as he groans.

“You’re in love with her and don’t want another freak stealing her from you?” Eddie supplies, totally caught off guard by the sound of his own voice. Honestly, he’s kinda proud of himself for stringing together a coherent sentence, let alone a dig like that, after Steve’s insult-turned-apology. 

Steve doesn’t say anything, just stares at Eddie with those stupid wide eyes, and his even stupider lips barely parted. 

“What? It was kind of hard to ignore the little lover's quarrel you and Byers got into last winter. But trust me, Harrington. You have nothing to worry about. All I want from Wheeler is her help passing chem. As soon as I get that, I’ll be out of both of your hair.” 

Eddie can tell Steve’s thinking of a way to respond to that, but he never gets the chance because Nancy reappears just then. She dumps a handful of “brain food” on the table  — mostly trail mix concoctions and a lone Snickers bar — and passes each of the boys a bottle of water. It’s not exactly what Eddie was hoping for when she left for snacks, but he’s not about to complain. 

“Okay, so, endergonic reactions.” 

+ + +

Truthfully, Eddie should stop making plans since they never seem to go his way. What was supposed to be a chill, music-filled spring break has turned into quite the opposite. 

Instead, he’s spent the last two days in hiding, with only a handful of people keeping him safe, including Harrington and Wheeler, of all people. 

So much for staying out of their hair, he thinks manically, as he walks in tandem beside Steve in the actual hell-like version of Hawkins. They trail behind Robin and Nancy, Eddie rambling on and on about Steve, but he just can’t shut up. Maybe it’s the nerves, maybe it’s the memory of the three of them back in that library, maybe it’s just Eddie self-sabotaging because seeing Steve in his vest is doing things to him. Things he doesn't have time to deal with, especially not when Wheeler is right there.

Whatever it is, Eddie’s about to do the stupidest thing he’s ever done, aside from jumping into Lover's Lake in the first place.

Steve stops walking the minute Eddie starts talking about why he followed them here. They stop beside a tree, and Eddie angles his body so he’s in front of Steve. Probably closer than he should be, but Eddie’s not about to step backward. Not when there could be a creepy vine ready to trip him and give their positions away to the hoard of bats in the sky. No, thank you. 

He presses on instead, talking about Nancy and her incredible reaction time to Steve being dragged deeper and deeper into the murky waters. 

“Now, I don’t know what happened between you two, but if I were you, I would get her back,” Eddie says, eyes locked with Steve’s. “Because that was an unambiguous a sign of true love as these cynical eyes have ever seen.” 

With a hand clasped over his heart, Eddie watches as Steve glances towards Nancy’s direction. There’s a moment where Eddie thinks Steve’s actually going to listen to him. Run after the girl of his dreams and professes his undying love to her in the middle of the hell dimension version of Hawkins. But then, he slowly turns his head back toward Eddie and shakes his head. 

“I don’t...” Steve hesitates, eyes flickering to Eddie’s lips for the briefest of seconds before settling back on his eyes. He shakes his head. “I don’t have a crush on Nancy, man.” 

Eddie cocks his head in surprise. Lets a cackle of a laugh escape his lips as he stares back at Steve in disbelief. “You don’t have to bullshit me, man. It’s pretty clear you still have a thing for her. I mean, every guy in Hawkins has a crush on Nancy, remember.” 

Steve’s brows knit together, lips agape in that same stupid thinking face he gave Eddie all those years ago in the Hawkins High library. It’s aggravating how cute it is, even now when Steve’s covered in blood and grime and God knows what else. 

“Yeah, well,” Steve says, eyes slowly tracking Eddie from head to toe and back up again. “Turns out you were right. Not every guy has a crush on her. Some of us have eyes for someone else.” 

Just as Steve starts to lean in, the ground beneath them starts to rumble and shake, sending them both toppling to the floor. Whatever moment just happened between them disappears as the reality of their situation hits them again.

There’s no time for crushes when their lives are at stake. 

[playingfetchwithdinosaurs]

long drive back to you

Pairing: Steve Harrington / Nancy Wheeler Rating: Teen Words: 6.4 K

Summary:

“You know what, it’s fine,” he concedes, turning towards Robin again. “Just, just drive slow!” “What?” Max and Dustin exclaim at the same time, looking at Steve in complete shock. But Robin doesn’t say anything, instead she looks at Nancy with a soft, yet curious gaze, as if she’s looking at an answer to a question she hadn’t thought existed. Or, the Steve goes to the library with Nancy story that would not leave me alone

Read on Ao3

AMAZING Mood board thingy by @bloop-bloop-boop

[scoopertrouper]

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.

[harringtonlovers]

just what i needed

a stancy fanfiction

ao3

chapters

* third person, steve & nancy centric!

summary: nancy wheeler finally felt herself at peace, adjusted to the busy lifestyle of a college student at Emerson College. All while balancing her junior year and a job, Nancy figured things were starting to look up. That was until Steve Harrington, one of her first friends at Emerson, comes back after finishing his first tour with his rock band, Gold Rush. The only problem? Nancy despises everything about Steve. Now, challenged to have Steve back in her circle, Nancy is brought back to her freshman year at Emerson. Letting her guard down would be the last thing she did. At least, that’s what she tells herself. It is extremely difficult when Steve is irresistible. He knows just how to push Nancy’s buttons, and charm her pants off with his music and alluring smile.

tags: angst galore; friends to enemies to lovers; steve harrington is a rockstar; nancy works at a record store!; long fic; stancy :)

“ I don't mind you comin' here, and wastin' all my time, time. 'Cause when you're standin' oh so near, I kinda lose my mind, ”

- just what i needed, the cars.

[thelonelybrilliance]

A hard thunder broke my sleep. As if roused by a god, I stood straight up; my rested eyes moved about, seeking acquaintance with place. I found myself on the edge of a chasm; a sinkhole of anguish; one that welcomes infinite grief.

So dark and deep, so hazy that even my penetrating vision couldn’t make out a thing.

                        We descend now

                        into this sightless world,

my guide, totally pale, said and then continued:

                        I’ll go first;

                        you follow second.

I saw him drain his color; I asked:

                  How can I go?

                  You’re afraid—

                  you who’ve comforted me

                  through all my doubts.

He replied,       It’s the pain

                        of the people down there that empties my face.

                        It’s pity

                        that you’ve mistaken for fear.

                        And it’s the long way

                        that pushes us now.

                        Let’s go.

“The Inferno,” Dante Alighieri, Canto IV

(tr. Clare Louise Harmon)

[completeutterstancytrash]

Stancy Week 2024 Prompt 1: Favourite Scene

Guys, I'm so excited for Stancy Week, hosted by @echoing-oursong !

For the first prompt, I went with the 'Spider Hair Scene' from season 4 episode 5.

Is it my favourite scene?

Who knows, but how could I possibly choose, especially from all the scenes that season 4 has fed us with!

So I went with this one, because damn they are so whipped for each other and the show knows it too!

[harrington-love]

If you're a Stancy...

Check out my first ever Stancy story!! And let me know what you think :)

[lostmynovelties]

the greatest films of all time (were never made)

Summary: Hawkins is rebuilding, and so are Steve and Nancy. Warnings: mature sexual content Word count: 11550 Note: Happy Stancymas @mwritesarchived​! I hope you enjoy and have a happy holiday season! Shout out to the Goose to my Maverick, @mousewitched​, for listening to me talk about this for over a month, and reading every single time I made any change to the Google Doc. Love u. Thanks so much to @stancysecretsanta​ too! 

on ao3.

[playingfetchwithdinosaurs]

or, the long-distance best friends to lovers college AU text fic that no one asked for

Pairing: Nancy Wheeler / Steve Harrington

Rating: Teen to Explicit || Status: Updating weekly on Fridays

Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - No Upside Down, Long-Distance Friendship, Texting, Chatting & Messaging, Friends to Lovers, Getting Together, Happy Ending, Mutual Pining, the tension's thicker than a bowl of oatmeal, Friendship, Romance, Teasing, Humor, Puns & Word Play, so many puns im not even sorry, Eventual smut, Other Additional Tags to Be Added

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Read quack quack fall in love on ao3

[scoopertrouper]

could you write about steve and nancy's first major fight (and reconciliation) after they got back together post s4?

anon, i hope you're happy. this prompt ate my brain, chewed it up, and then decided it didn't like how it tasted and spit it out. i was at the ZOO with an adorable little toddler, watching him watch the turtles in wonderment while also thinking "yeah, but WHY are steve and nancy fighting??"

ultimately i think the characters here still need some fine tuning/fleshing out and the premise really only works if you don't think about it too hard. i will probably revisit this in the future with a much stronger editorial eye. 😬

that said, i hope you still very much enjoy this impulsive, self-indulgent 5k words of breaking up (not really lol) and making up schmoop (+ warning for tasteful-ish spice at the end - sorry if that's not your thing).

***

can’t let you slide through my hands

“I don’t like this.”

Nancy hates her voice right now. It’s a quivering, slip of a sound, and she can barely hear it over the slamming echo of her heart inside her ears. 

But Steve hears it. He always hears her, even when it’s something he doesn’t want to hear. 

And if he’s trying to ignore her – trying to pretend the slow, careful grind of whetstone over the edge of his ax has drowned out her words – well, the brief glance he can’t help but flick in her direction gives him away entirely. 

“Steve.”

“Nancy.” 

Each syllable is even, practically toneless, and she hates it. 

“Why are you doing this?” Normally she’d work a lot harder to quash the weak, plaintive note that suffuses the word why, but he’s not listening to her and she doesn’t know what else to do. How else to get his attention. 

“You heard Hopper,” he says with that awful, carelessly empty inflection. “They need all the help they can get.”

Nancy’s fingernails bite into her palms. The sting of it somehow grounds and incenses her, all at the same time. 

“He only said that after you asked him if you could go.”

And hadn’t that been a kick in the pants – Nancy, resigned to staying behind playing bodyguard at Hopper’s request, while Steve only too eagerly offered to tromp off into the woods with Team Distraction like some kind of kamikaze lamb for slaughter. 

(That’s not fair. She knows that of the two of them, she has what could be considered the more important job. Stay at the cabin. Protect El. Make sure nothing happens to her if this frankly suicidal diversionary tactic doesn’t work and they’re attacked during yet another round of psychic Marco Polo with the biggest, baddest ugly they’ve faced yet. 

And she knows Hopper wasn’t lying – they probably could use Steve’s help out there, his seemingly infinite supply of athleticism. Just like she knows that it’s actually a huge compliment that Hopper's trusting her to help keep his daughter safe. So no, she’s not being fair. But also – it’s not fair.)

Steve finally looks up, and he’s wearing that face she’d gotten all too familiar with during the last couple months of their relationship, round one – the one that says he’s trying to see where she’s coming from, but he’s getting annoyed in spite of himself. She hasn’t seen it in quite some time, but she supposes it would’ve been silly to assume it had been retired for good. Neither of them has changed that much.

“Nance. Come on. You know I’m gonna be way more useful out there than I would be here. I’m a garbage shot, anyway.”

Nancy scoffs.

“So you’d rather be cannon fodder instead?”

He props the ax next to the door to the front door of the cabin and crosses his arms, looking a little wounded. 

“Jesus, give me some credit. I’ve made it this far, haven’t I?”

“Sure, as long as someone’s there to follow your ass through a gate, and beat off the demon bats, and bandage you when you’re bleeding out all over the place!” 

She knows she’s probably starting to sound unhinged. She knows it. But she can’t help it. She does not want him to do this. This is not a good plan.

His face twists, and he looks like he wants to grab her – hold her like he would’ve if this were still September of senior year – but he pulls back at the last second. He does that a lot, now, like he’s still not totally sure what he has permission to do. 

She wishes he hadn’t. Touching him would be infinitely preferable to shouting at him. If she was touching him, she could grab on tight. Refuse to let go. Keep him anchored here by sheer force of will. 

“Nancy, I don’t get it,” he says, tossing his arms up helplessly instead of putting them around her. “This was exactly what your plan was the first time. Cause a ruckus. Create a diversion. Fly in under the radar. It worked once. Ish. We can make it work again, at least long enough for El to try and flush the creep out of hiding.”

Nancy’s jaw drops.

“Worked? Define worked, Steve!” Her eyes are burning. “Eddie is dead! Max is in a coma, maybe…maybe…” as good as dead “…forever. There is a gate to hell splitting the whole town open down the middle, and Vecna is still alive. Only now we have no idea where he is or what he’s doing! In what way would you say any of what we did worked?”

“Because we hurt him,” he responds immediately, low and hard. “We hurt him, and now – now we know he bleeds. We can hurt him again, Nancy, I gotta believe that.” His mouth thins. “Eddie dying, losing Max –” his voice cracks on the “a”, but he soldiers through it “– it all sucks. I hate it. But it wasn’t your fault. They knew what they were getting themselves into.” He pauses, and squares his shoulders. “They weren’t like Barb.”

Nancy’s mouth tastes like ash, and for once she can’t blame it on the air toxicity.

“Barb? Who said anything about Barb?” She’s trying to keep her breathing under control, but her voice sounds far away. “This has nothing to do with her.”

“Bullshit.” 

He looks at her dead on as he says it, like he knows she knows exactly what he means, and she sees red. She’s not sure what’s about to come out of her mouth, but she knows that whatever it is, she’s probably not going to be proud of it – and this time, she won’t be able to use spiked punch as an excuse, nor will she be granted the dubious mercy of drunken amnesia. 

“This has nothing to do with Barb,” she says slowly, “And everything to do with the fact that sometimes, I wish you weren’t so fucking stupid.”  

He flinches back like she’s slapped him and honestly, she might as well have. She feels sick. 

It’s the worst fight they’ve had – actually the only fight they’ve had – since they decided to try again, and what does it say about them that they didn’t last more than ten minutes before they started ripping out the stitches on old, barely healed wounds?

“Well you asked for this,” Steve finally replies, voice quivering minutely. “You’re the one who came to me and wanted to give this another shot. So you tell me which one of us is stupid.”

It hurts. It was supposed to. Nancy immediately feels herself deflate, like he’s sucked away all that was keeping her upright and angry. 

For once, she doesn’t have an immediate response and Steve doesn’t wait for one anyway, whirling on his heel and storming back into the house. 

He’s forgotten his ax. The blade gleams at her, mocking, from where it sits against the door frame. 

She’s a bit shaky, and she needs a minute to collect herself before she goes back inside. Everyone in the cabin is gonna know they’ve been fighting – the walls are not soundproof – and it’s humiliating.  

More humiliating is the fact that this is coming when they’ve hardly been back together two months (and when she’s barely been officially broken up with Jonathan for five). She knows what it looks like,  what she looks like – bouncing back and forth between two men on a whim because she can’t manage to choose once and for all who she wants.

But it’s not like that. Her relationship with Jonathan had been dead long before she’d been able or willing to admit it, and this thing with Steve is so new and old at the same time that it’s just – it’s hard to find her footing, sometimes. 

They’ve both changed so much, but now she’s realizing that there are ways they’ve stayed the same, too. And with the good always comes the bad.

Okay. Okay. She takes a deep breath, then two. She can’t stay out here forever. She has to go back inside, and hopefully they can awkwardly circle each other until they’ve cooled down enough to talk it over like the adults they almost are. 

Because she’s not giving up after one (shitty) fight. Rather than make her second guess her choice, Steve’s parting shot had the reverse effect – it had clarified exactly how stupid a decision it wasn’t. She had wanted this. She still wants it. 

It’s only been two months, sure, but she’s been happy, really happy (a miracle considering the world is literally ending around them). 

She hopes he’s felt the same, last ten minutes notwithstanding.

Damn it. She shouldn’t have said those things to him. That one thing. Guilt is settling over her like a blanket, thicker and more noxious than even the poisonous air of the Upside Down. 

Nancy’s not sorry about getting mad. If he wants her to be his girlfriend again – and she hopes he still wants her to be his girlfriend again – then he has to understand that she’s going to have an opinion on when and how he hurls his body into the line of fire. 

But being mean on purpose? That one, she’s pretty sorry for. Calling him stupid hadn’t been intended to do anything but inflict damage, and she knows she owes him an apology (once the thought of talking to him again doesn’t make the confused snarl of anger and regret and affection that’s all tangled up in her chest tighten to the point of pain).

First things first, though. 

Chin up, go back inside.

*****

At first, she’s grateful for how simple it is to avoid him all afternoon. The cabin is tiny, even taking into account the hastily constructed add-on that had come once the Byers realized that returning to California wasn’t an option, their house was no longer theirs and Hopper’s cabin in its original state had nowhere near enough space to house them all.

But as the unofficial headquarters for their little hodgepodge Upside Down insurgency, it’s also in a near-constant state of low-grade chaos, which is pretty easy to disappear into – or, in this case, use as a convenient excuse to avoid someone.

(That said, tension is tension, and in this case it’s so apparent that even Hopper – whose unspoken approach to any relationship that isn’t his own generally veers toward the less he knows, the better – shoots them both some pretty unimpressed looks when Steve volunteers himself and Robin, unprompted, for the second of the day’s supply runs.)

Her relief edges into anxiety, though, as they get closer and closer to nightfall and Nancy still hasn’t had a chance to get him alone or even do more than accidentally catch his eye over the sad cans of stew they scrounge up for pre-op dinner. It sits like sludge on her tongue (and based on the look on El’s face as she dutifully shovels down spoonfuls, that’s probably not just Nancy’s guilt talking).  

In fact, it’s only as they’re packing up to leave that she realizes she’s probably going to have to go out of her way to corner him, because while Hopper’s come inside to say his goodbyes, Steve's nowhere to be found. 

And part of her really, really wants to be petty and leave it at that. Wants to keep stewing in her resentment and let him go off alone because he was too much of a coward to spare her a fifteen-second goodbye.

But the larger, louder half of her brain won’t shut up about how she’d feel if something happened and the last thing she said to him was…that, so she sucks it up and stomps toward the door, flinging it open and –

– startling Steve so badly that he jerks back a step, eyes widening with alarm.

“Jesus, Nancy, you scared the shit outta me!” She can’t muster up more than a couple blinks in response, and he scuffs one of the dirty planks of the porch with his boot. “Look, I know I’m not, like, your favorite person right now, but I still wanted to come say, uh, see you later. You know…just because.”

Oh, he is such an asshole.

She doesn’t know how to tell him this in a way that would help him understand what she’s actually trying to communicate, so instead, she yanks him down and kisses him hard, something she hasn’t done in public much this go-around. It’s a frankly awful smash of lips and teeth, and may in fact be the worst kiss Nancy has ever given or received.

Regardless, she thinks it gets the point across. 

She pulls back, mouth throbbing, and stares at him again, fingers clenched in the collar of his jacket as he stands there, stunned and swaying. 

“See you later, Steve,” she says pointedly, instead of “please, come back”, or, better yet, “don’t fucking go.” He softens immediately, and inches forward.

“Nancy –”

“Later,” she interrupts firmly. “When you get back. Okay?”

Steve eyes her for several long seconds, then relents.

“Okay,” he says, then he kisses her for real this time (gently, because ow), a brief little soft–as–silk press that leaves her wanting more than she can possibly hope to have at this specific moment.

When she goes back inside (she refuses to watch them roll off into the distance like she’s some kind of war bride, she carries a gun for Christ’s sake), she pauses for a moment, debating checking for the third time since midday that her rifle is loaded and ready. 

Jonathan is there, sitting tense at the two-person kitchen table, staring out into the woods as the rest of the gang helps prep El (or "helps" in some cases).

Most of the time, they’re pretty civil with each other. The breakup had basically been mutual, and she only gets a little livid mad now when she thinks about how he lied to her about Emerson. And kept lying to her. Until the only goddamn reason she found out was because – anyway.

Most of the time, if she ignores inconsequential context like that, they’re pretty civil. 

“Trouble in paradise?” he says, almost inaudibly. 

She takes her rifle to the living room. 

****

In the end, the night and the operation are both total duds, and doesn’t that just add insult to injury?

El searches for what feels like hours, pushing herself farther and farther until her nose is bleeding thickly enough that Joyce sternly calls time on the whole exercise. 

No go, is what El says afterward, wiping blood off her face. Some of it ends up smeared under one of her darkly ringed eyes, and she lets Mike fuss over her until it’s gone. 

Whatever psychic plane she usually ducks into is dead silent, and in the corporeal world, there isn’t a single peep out of anything Upside Down-adjacent, as Hopper reports via walkie-talkie. No stray demodogs, not even an errant vine around what’s usually one of the most active sections of the gate. 

And nothing from Max, who Lucas has taken to watching like a hawk – “just in case” – whenever they can spare him. Nancy’s not sure what’s meant to follow “just in case”, and she’s always been a tiny bit afraid of what Lucas might come back with if she asks – so she doesn’t. For once, she doesn’t need answers.

It’s eerie, and anticlimactic, and it leaves Nancy with an uneasy pit in her stomach. Under the circumstances, no news doesn’t always feel like good news.

With how the night has fizzled, she doesn’t expect much when Hopper’s group rumbles down the drive – so the jagged, ugly cut she can see arcing down the left side of Steve’s forehead from even as far off as the front window comes as a nasty shock. (Though honestly, should it?)

“What the hell happened?” she demands, running to meet them before they can even climb out of the truck. “I thought you said it was quiet.”

“It was,” Hopper confirms, killing the ignition. “Not a crawler in sight. Wanna fill the lady in on what went down, Harrington?” 

The laughter is plain in his voice, and Nancy instantly relaxes. Whatever it was, it hadn’t been serious.

Steve looks downright mutinous as he crawls out of the back cab alongside Wayne. Good. See if he wants to abandon Nancy to go play Rambo after that. 

“Got into it with a tree branch,” he mutters, mortified. “Tree – one, Steve – zero.” He gestures up at his forehead. “Obviously.”

The fact that Nancy manages to mostly keep a straight face should probably automatically shortlist her for inclusion into some kind of Greatest Girlfriend Ever hall of fame. As it is, Dustin, (who’s been uncharacteristically quiet all night), does the dirty work for her.

“Jesus, Steve, is there anything you can beat in a fight?”

“Excuse the shit outta me, Henderson, but did I or did I not save your ass from goddamn Russian soldiers?”

“One Russian soldier, Steve. One. And I don’t even know if it counts when you mrrflmgh –” Dustin gurgles helplessly for a few seconds behind the iron hand Nancy clamps over his mouth before eventually giving up and going silent.

“I think what Dustin is trying to say is that he’s glad everyone’s okay,” she says with as much brightness as she can muster. “Right?” she asks pointedly, releasing him. There’s a long pause, and then he sighs.

“Sure,” he says with all the enthusiasm of a dental patient undergoing a root canal. “Glad to have you all back.” 

He shuffles back into the cabin, and Nancy knows that one of these days, someone’s gonna have to have a talk with him about his wild mood swings. But she doesn’t really want that someone to be her, so she’s refrained from bringing it up thus far.

“Someone’s gotta check that kid,” Steve utters almost inaudibly, agreeing with Nancy’s silent train of thought (and sounding more concerned than irritated). He’s sneaking glances in Dustin’s wake like he thinks he might be able to get away with following him.

Nancy clears her throat, ready to disabuse him of that notion.

“Some other time, Rocky,” she says, and she means it to be teasing, but it comes out too fond to be entirely successful. “Why don’t we get that cut taken care of, first?” 

She holds out her hand, and he only hesitates a second before he takes it firmly in his, palm to palm.

***

They stay linked like that as she leads him all the way to the tiny half-bath at the back of the new addition, and he only lets go when she shuts them in and urges him down onto the closed toilet so she can comfortably reach his forehead. 

For a few moments, he allows her to work in silence, wincing when she has to pour hydrogen peroxide over the cut (she still doesn’t know if you can actually get Upside Down rabies, but better safe than sorry with all weird dust particles floating around). 

Without the dried blood crusting it, it actually looks very superficial. Nancy breathes a sigh of relief, though she’ll still layer it with some antibiotic cream to be safe.

“I guess I just…don’t get it.” Apropos of nothing, Steve chooses this moment to speak quietly, picking up the loose thread of a conversation they haven’t even started yet. “The last time we were together, you were pissed because I didn’t want to get involved. Now I’m all in, and it doesn’t seem like you like that, either.”

Nancy’s fingers freeze on the cap of Neosporin.

“Steve.” She sets the tube aside and makes an executive decision – she needs to be touching him if he’s gonna insist on talking about this here. “Before we do this, can you do me a favor, first?” 

Nancy picks up his hands and haphazardly plants them on her hips before slipping her own up to cage his face. His brow furrows, but he doesn’t move an inch from where she’s arranged them. “Can you just…stop stopping yourself from touching me? I know we’re in kind of a weird place right now, but I promise you – if you want to, then there’s a pretty damn good chance I want to, too.”

The confused lines in his forehead don’t ease, but his fingers adjust and tighten around her sides until he’s holding her with surety. Surrounded by the warmth of him, the invisible string that’s been holding her shoulders taut all day loosens.

“I didn’t think you’d notice,” he says slowly, eyes skimming her face like she’s this entirely new person who just happens to still look and dress like Nancy. “I – of course I’ll stop. It’s not like holding you is some kind of hardship, Nance.” He looks down. “That still doesn’t answer my question, though.”

Nancy refrains from noting that he hadn’t asked a question, he’d merely made an observation. That level of pedantry probably won’t help much in her “get Steve to touch her more” crusade.

“I know,” she says instead. “But Steve, it’s not – I don’t get mad because you get involved. I love that. I think it’s…” She can feel a dull flush start to creep up her neck. “This can never leave this room, okay, but it can – it can be very hot when you go all action hero.” The flush has extended all the way up through her cheeks. Mercifully, he doesn’t comment on it, though a faint little glimmer that she hasn’t seen all day is creeping back into his gaze.

“Right back ‘atcha, Wheeler,” he returns with a trace smile, and oh! That’s flirting. That’s a good sign. “But then…why did you…?”

“React the way I did?” He tilts his head in the slightest nod. “Because I wanted you to stay with me,” she finally admits, feeling more naked in front of him now than on the night she’d given him her virginity. “The hero thing – it’s nice and all, don’t get me wrong. And sometimes it’s necessary, but I – I don’t need that. I don’t need a hero. I just…want a partner. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.” 

“Nancy…” In a blink, the amused glint is gone. In its place, he looks raw, like she’s torn him down to the studs.

There’s a lick of hair curling over his ear that she’s taken to mindlessly stroking, and it’s easier to keep staring at that than look into his eyes while she gets this off her chest.

“When we got back together,” she continues on, “you made me a promise. Remember?”

“Yeah,” he replies, and his voice is achingly soft. “I promised you we’d come out of this okay.” He turns his face into her hand, lips brushing against her palm with every tingling syllable. “I meant it.” 

“Yeah, but.” Nancy chews her lip. “If I can’t convince you that you matter more than how hard you swing or how many hits you can take, if you won’t stay with me so we can work together and watch each other’s backs, I don’t see how that’s possible.”

Abruptly, Steve’s standing, nudging his way deeper into her space, and the way he can tower over her a bit, dark and solid – well, Nancy fancies herself a feminist, but not so much that she’ll pretend it doesn’t make her shiver in a good way.

“Goddammit, Nancy,” he croaks, and then he’s folding her in his arms, curling tight around her body. “I’m sorry. You’re right. I didn’t – I didn’t even realize,” he mumbles into the nook of her neck and shoulder. “Shit, I am stupid.”

“You’re not,” Nancy chokes, tightening her arms around his neck like she’d wanted to earlier. He’s still wearing his jacket, and the zipper is digging painfully into the V of her collarbone, but it barely registers. She thinks it would take a literal earthquake to dislodge her right now. “I shouldn’t have said that, I’m sorry. You weren’t even wrong, it’s just that – sometimes it’s still really hard to talk about her.” 

She doesn’t need to specify who the “her” in question is. There are definitely a few tears leaking into the leather of his collar, but no one can see them, so it’s neither here nor there.

“I get it,” he says, “but I wanna talk to you about this stuff. If – if you want to. With me. I know I wasn’t there for you before but I swear I can be that guy now.”

“I know,” she gasps, because he’s holding her so tightly that it’s hard to breathe, but if the tradeoff is losing this hot–all–over feeling of his hands on her, then it’s fine, air is overrated anyway. “You are. You are that guy. I want you, I want us. I want you to believe that.”

Their bodies are so constrained in this tiny space, but there’s something wild crackling in the air, something that raises goosebumps on her arms and makes it so that one minute she’s mouthing reassurances into his jaw, and the next, he’s tilting his chin and kissing her quiet, stealing her words with one wet, electric sweep of his tongue.

Yes. She fists his hair between her fingers, soft and a little overlong, swallowing down his helpless whine as she angles his head so she can open wider under him. 

This – this is why, so far, she’s barely been able to kiss him outside of the privacy of one of their rooms. 

Because every time, almost as soon as it starts, they’re set ablaze, twin infernos trying to consume each other alive. It was never like this before, so she has no roadmap for how to cope, how to process the overpowering need that has her spreading her legs to draw him closer and shoving her hands under layers of leather and cotton to get at sweaty skin. 

“Steve,” she whimpers into his lips, rocking her hips up in a pale facsimile of what she truly wants (but it still feels so good). “I need…”

“I know,” he groans, sucking gently at her sensitive pulse point until she’s keening quietly and grinding harder into the rigid seam of his jeans. Everything is tight, and hot, and she thinks she might vibrate right out of her own body if she can’t get what she’s craving.

The night they got back together, they’d had every good intention of taking it slow, of getting to know each other again before jumping back into the physical. 

But that had lasted about as long as it took for him to get a hand under the band of her bra, and eventually he’d ended up fucking her nice and slow behind the locked door of her childhood bedroom, trailing scorching kisses from her swollen lips to the tips of her breasts until she was shaking apart into the mattress, vision white and head empty of anything that wasn’t him – his scent, his body over hers, the quivering place where he nestled inside her.

They don’t have time for that now – they hardly ever have time for that, which probably doesn’t help quell the desperate desire – so they make do, as always, with what they can. 

They make do with his hips, pushing into hers again and again in easy, dirty twists, sensation blunted between two layers of jeans but still enough to have her choking back moans, nipples pebbled hard into two pinpricks of pleasure against the stiff padding of her bra. They make do with deep, messy kisses, which also muffle the needy noises they can’t contain as their bodies strain higher and higher toward a mutual peak.

They make do with hands, scratching up his back and through his chest hair. Squeezing at her ass and guiding her movements until all Nancy has to do is hang on for dear life and enjoy the ride. 

When she finally crashes over the edge, it hits out of nowhere, in flashing, pulsing waves that come hard and fast until she’s digging fists into his shoulder blades and sucking on his tongue in a frantic attempt to stay silent. He’s not far behind, and when he tears himself away from her lips to bury his head in her shoulder, she can feel more than hear the deep shudder of his groan as he trembles in her arms.

Finally, they both still, slumping back against the wall in a frazzled tangle, and reality comes seeping in one mortifying realization at a time. 

“We‘re…still in Hopper’s bathroom, aren’t we?” Nancy asks faintly.

“Yup.” He pops the “p” against her skin, but doesn’t look up. 

“And…we’ve been in here a really long time.” Way longer than it would take to treat that cut on his head, anyway.

“Probably.” 

“My brother is out there. With his girlfriend. And his friends. Our friends.”

“He sure is.”

He sounds way more cheerful than anyone about to face down a firing squad of nosy teenagers ought to be – but then again, she’s remarkably relaxed, too.

Huh. Could it be that in the end, all they really needed was to get off?

(Probably not.) 

Steve finally shoves away from the wall and adjusts his pants, grimacing. 

“Okay, being honest, this might not’ve been our brightest idea,” he admits.

Nancy catches a glimpse of herself in the mirror just over his shoulder. Her face is flushed, and her eyes are bright. She looks pleased. Happy.

“Probably not, but can’t argue with results,” she teases, stepping back into his space and slipping an arm around his waist, under his jacket. 

He grins down at her, and he looks like such a man – handsome, and kind, and hers – that her heart skips. 

They’re not kids anymore, playacting at some great love that, in the end, was mostly smoke and mirrors. If they make it out of this, like he’s promised they will, they’ll be – they’ll be basically grown ups.

This time, it’s real. Maybe even for keeps. 

That should freak her out, but it doesn’t. 

He presses his smile to her forehead, chaste and sweet, and slings an arm around her neck. 

“Who am I to argue with the beautiful Nancy Wheeler?” he says with more than a bit of irony, and she laughs, because she wants to and he wants her to. “Ready to face the music?”

“Together?” Nancy doesn’t shield the hope in her voice. He dips his forehead to rest against hers, nudges their noses together.

“Wild demodogs couldn’t drag me away,” he says softly, sincerely, and the warm, secret feeling in Nancy’s chest – the one she’s been carrying around for months, waiting until she’s absolutely sure she has a name for it – balloons outward. 

Soon, it’ll be too big for her body alone to bear. One day, it will demand to be shared, and she’ll give it freely and joyfully. 

Not yet, but soon. 

“Come on, then,” she says.

She tugs him forward, and he follows.

***

(normalize panicking and giving an established character an extensive home reno complete with plumbing work smack dab in the middle of an apocalypse simply because you realized that the house's canon layout was not conducive to the main pairing getting it on as you had originally written.)

[harringtonlovers]

COME AND GET YOUR LOVE | ACT ONE

“ head over heels, no time to think.

it’s like the whole

world’s out of sync. ”

↳ chapter 1

↳ chapter 2

↳ chapter 3

↳ chapter 4

↳ chapter 5

↳ chapter 6

↳ chapter 7

↳ chapter 8

↳ chapter 9

nerd!nancy x jock!steve

fake dating

enemies to lovers

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[thelonelybrilliance]

THE GRAND FINALE... THAT'S RIGHT IT'S DONE!!!

Thank you to the fans :)))) I love u

[djokeery]

decided to share a silly little excerpt from something i’ve been working on since february <3

[completeutterstancytrash]

Stancy Week 2024 - Prompt: Music

Of course I had to go with this beautiful song!

Yea, it's more a Steve song but it's certainly his perspective of stancy.

I hope everyone's enjoying the week so far!

Sadly I've gotten sick so I might not be able to participate as much as I had planned :/

@echoing-oursong

[nancythebisexualslutwheeler]

But is this not the cutest shit you’ve ever read:

When she came out, her outfit had been laying on the bed, a baby blue paisley dress with a matching hairbow, and she heads downstairs to greet them. Ella Rose is in a matching outfit and she laughs, grabbing her out of her swing and bouncing her.

“Morning my Ella Bella, look how pretty we look! Do you look like Mama today?”

Steve’s wearing a shirt the main color of their dresses and white cloth shorts, hair messy, he’s already sweating,

“The car is packed.”

“I could have helped,” Nancy scolds, flipping Ella Rose upside down on her thigh so the baby squeals in delight.

Steve kisses her shoulder,

“Not today.”

[vanesawye]

Rating: Mature

Chapters: 1/1

Fandom: Stranger Things

Warnings: Creator Chose Not to Use Archive Warnings

Relationships: Nancy Wheeler/Steve Harrington

Characters: Nancy Wheeler, Steve Harrington, Robin Buckley, Karen Wheeler

Additional Tags: Hurt/Comfort, Angst, Grief/Mourning, Mutual Pining, Second Chances, Exes, Friends to Lovers, Drunk Sex, Overthinking, Service Top, Post-Apocalypse, Dystopia, Post-Season/Series 04, Post-Stranger Things 4 Vol. 2, Nancy Wheeler-centric, Past Jonathan Byers/Nancy Wheeler, Mild Smut

Summary:

Nancy and Steve pull their eyes away from the windows and look at each other, rattled.

"Anyone else here or…" Her voice is back. She can breathe again. It almost doesn't feel like it, in the dark and possibly alone with him for the first time in a long time.

"Just me," he sighs dryly, not thrilled about it. He leans against the stair bannister.

The foyer is empty with just the two of them. The ceiling sits high above them. This house is ideal for hide and seek, not living. It swallows them like ants. Just like when she and Barb arrived there together that night.

or,

A year after the gates Hawkins is cut off from the outside world. Vecna is in hiding. Nancy isn't the same hopeful she once was. With Steve in his empty house, she finds comfort she didn't know was still possible; but comfort is something she fears.