Work Text:
Steve is eighteen when he realises he will never truly stop loving Nancy.
The acceptance takes time. It takes getting laid over and over again and feeling nothing. It takes crying over pictures of them together at 2am in the dim light of his lamp. It takes slapping himself across the face, cursing at himself, and many, many tears, but it comes. It comes, and now he’s here, standing in the Hawkins High gym being handed a piece of paper saying he survived hell.
He would be lying if he said it didn’t mean anything. He feels his chest seize up when they call his name, his clammy hands shakily grabbing the diploma as he walks across the stage, and he feels his breath hitch as sweat beads down his forehead. It was as if he stops for a moment, him frozen in time as the whole world continues on without him. It was like trying to catch a train that had left merely seconds before your arrival at the station. It left you out of breath, annoyed, and worried that you would be late.
In some ways, he knows, the analogy doesn’t make much sense. What was there to be ‘late’ for in real life? There was no school for him to miss, no work for him to be late for.
Lingering in the back of his mind, though, there is something. Internally, whether he likes to admit it or not, he is afraid of being left behind. He’s afraid of his friends going off to university elsewhere and finding love and getting married and having kids and moving on, moving on from Hawkins and moving on from Steve. He’s afraid that one day he’ll wake up and everyone will be gone, even the kids, even Mike’s little sister he knows nothing about. And he’ll still be eighteen, standing on the top of that stage in 1985. Nothing will have changed, except everything will have changed.
He gulps, blinking back to reality, and hurries off the stage before they can shove him down the stairs so the next person can come on.
He’s thinking again. That’s the problem, he knows. The problem is he’s staring at the people sitting in the uneven rows of plastic folding chairs and wondering if they experience the same thing he is, wondering if they know that he’s having a mid-life crisis at eighteen. Wondering if someone out there understands how he feels and is willing to be there to whine about it at 3am with him.
Yearning for someone else’s love, he knows, is nothing but a recipe for disaster. He discovered this in the bathroom at the Halloween party all that time ago, (was it even that long ago?) when Nancy called him and their entire relationship bullshit. He discovered it when he found out Nancy and Jonathan had slept together before she’d even broken up with him. He discovered it when Nancy couldn’t tell him she loved him, when she couldn’t say the words he’d longed to hear for so long. The words no one had ever told him.
As much as he tries to convince himself he was over her, that he’d moved on, he can’t. He just can’t bring himself to forget that perfect smile she always wore or how it felt to run his fingers through her hair. No. He can’t. He won’t, even if he’d never be able to experience it in real time anymore. At least he’d have his memories.
* * *
Steve is eighteen when he realises that, while he might never truly get over Nancy, that didn’t mean his heart is completely closed off to loving anyone else.
This acceptance came with just as much difficulty as the first realisation did, as much as he hates to admit it, and it comes at the oddest time possible.
It comes when he’s on the phone with Nancy herself. He doesn’t know how he ended up talking to her, anyway. One moment he heard the phone ring and he dragged himself to the other room to pick it up, the next he’s speaking to his ex-girlfriend about how college is going.
On the other hand, Steve also doesn’t know how he got accepted into any schools in the first place. With his shitty grades, who the hell would want him?
Apparently Indiana State did, though, much to his surprise and confusion, but he didn’t question it. Instead, he waved his ignorant parents goodbye, packed a single backpack, and immediately moved into the school’s provided dorms. Financially, college wasn’t a problem. His father was willing to pay for anything if it meant Steve being out of the house, and this logic came in handy when it came to school.
“So how’s journalism?”
The question comes out dry and crackly, almost as staticy as the speaker back at Tommy’s house.
“Good,” Nancy responds brightly, not acknowledging the emotionless tone of Steve’s voice. “What about you? What are you majoring in, again?”
Of course she’d forgotten what he was majoring in. “Business,” he practically spits in response. “It’s not really interesting so far.”
“Well, I’m sure it’ll be good,” she reassures him, and while he wants to believe her, he knows it isn’t true. Business was the only thing his father allowed him to major in, and Steve despises it with every fiber of his being, but he knows the last thing he wants is to be an even bigger disappointment than he already is. “Business can’t be that bad, can it?”
At that, Steve snorts. “Yes, it can. And it is. It’s horrible and I understand nothing. People talk but nothing registers in my brain; they’re just sounds.”
Nancy goes silent, and Steve can tell she’s trying to think of a proper way to respond. Maybe with an idea as to how to make it better or maybe with a reassuring comment that won’t mean anything. Either way, he doesn’t want to hear it.
“Listen, good luck with your journalism. You’ll do great,” he says. “I have to go, but we’ll talk later, ‘kay?”
Nancy says okay and they hang up, but for some reason dread is settling in the pit of Steve’s stomach.
They don’t talk later.
* * *
Steve is eighteen when he realises that there is no chance Nancy will love him ever again. If, of course, she even did in the first place.
How he finds this out is not a pleasant experience. Visiting Nancy for Christmas, he knows, is not a good idea in itself. But it’s even worse when traffic is bad and he arrives in the dead of night, covered in snow and shivering to the core, and accidentally walks in on Nancy and Jonathan having sex.
He doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to get that image out of his head. Walking in her apartment at 2am was bad enough, and he’d simply decided to plop his bag down somewhere and ask Nancy where he’d be staying. He had no idea Jonathan would be part of the mix.
The next morning is awkward. Very awkward.
Steve had (luckily) been discreet when he’d seen the two of them fucking, and had immediately shut the door as quietly as possible before pretending to vomit. Knowing they were together was bad enough, but seeing it with his very own eyes? That was an indescribable, terrible experience he never wanted to relive.
“So, Steve,” Jonathan begins, and Steve fights the urge to purposely choke on his toast to get him out of the conversation. “You’re majoring in business, right.”
“Unfortunately,” is all Steve mutters in response, not in the mood for speaking any more than necessary.
“How is it?”
“Nancy didn’t tell you?”
His words come out harsher than intended with an edge he hadn’t anticipated, and he feels the anger welling up inside him build instead of ebb away like he’s expecting. When Jonathan cocks his head to the side and says, “no,” Steve purses his lips and stands up.
“I forgot,” he says quickly, “I… have an assignment due after the break. Can’t afford to waste any time.”
Luckily, the excuse makes sense, and Jonathan and Nancy wave him goodbye as he leaves, wondering what the hell just happened.
Steve doesn’t stop to care.
* * *
Steve is barely nineteen when he has his first true mental breakdown.
He’s had plenty of small ones before. Getting so mad at the shitty school computers he punches the screen, crying over a 70% on an assignment because he knows his dad will kill him, and even yelling at Dustin to shut up because the kid was talking too much when he had a hangover. That last one was probably the one he regretted the most (although, the repair money for the computer stung almost as much, and if he thinks hard enough he can still feel his cheek sting from the slap his father gave him when he found out about the 70), but never has he experienced something like this. Something so horrible, so emotional and so numbing at the same time.
It happens on his birthday. It happens in the bathroom, the one with the leaky sink and the toilet that doesn’t always flush. It happens when he’s staring into the mirror, wincing at the dark circles rimming his bloodshot eyes and the paper cut on his finger.
It starts with remembering about his upcoming exams. Then it’s knowing that, oh shit, I fucking know nothing. And the cherry on top is hearing the doorbell to tell him his parents are here. At his apartment. To celebrate his birthday.
Steve doesn’t know why he invited them in the first place. He hates them, for God’s sake, and he’s almost 100% sure the feeling is mutual. They think he’s a failure with no future and he agrees, if he’s to be honest. He knows that once they come in, all they’ll do is ask about his marks. They’ll ask how prepared he thinks he is for exams and if he can show them the tests and assignments that have already been graded. He’ll obey, because he has to, and then comes the insults. Then comes the potential beating. Then come the tears.
Steve doesn’t know if he’s mentally stable enough to handle another one of those interactions.
He fumbles with the lock on the bathroom door and practically falls to his knees, ignoring the intensifying sound of his parents knocking on his door. Breathing hard, nausea rising inside of him, he feels the cold, hard tiles underneath him and cries. He knows he’s crying because his vision is becoming blurry and his jeans have tears stained on them now, but he doesn’t feel anything. He doesn’t feel the hot, sizzling anger that usually builds up when he sees his parents. He doesn’t have to supress the urge to punch them because it’s not even there. He just sits on the bathroom floor, images of failed tests after failed tests flashing through his mind like a video that keeps repeating, and cries as he feels everything crash down on him.
It’s not one of his better nights.
And then the phone rings.
It echoes in his head like a broken record player and he jolts upwards, ignoring the head rush that follows and slowly unlocks the bathroom door, padding out into the hallway as if a burgalar got in. As if his parents were already there, waiting for him to come out so they could scream at him some more.
“Steven?”
It’s his mother from outside and he almost seizes up, but he doesn’t, ignoring their ever-angry voices getting louder and louder with each passing second. “Just a second!” he calls back, wincing at the way his voice cracks in the middle but not having the time to sulk about it. He has to get to the phone, he has to—
He gets there just in time, fingers clasped around the cheap plastic as he presses the device to his ear, and he gulps. How much he wishes he could afford caller ID.
“Hello?”
He hates the way his voice sounds, he realises, and forces himself into Don’t Speak Until Spoken To mode without even meaning to. “Steve? It’s Nancy,” comes the all-too familiar voice of Nancy Wheeler. “I just wanted to tell you—”
“Now’s really not a good time,” he responds, “like, really not a good time.” He swerves his head to the side to glance at his parents’ angry figures behind the door.
“I just wanted to tell you… I’m sorry.”
Well. Steve certainly hadn’t been expecting that. “For what?” he finds himself scoffing.
“PDA,” she says bluntly. “I know that makes you uncomfortable… especially because, y’know, it’s Jonathan.”
She didn’t have to directly call Steve out like that, but she did, and this is where the searing, white hot anger comes in. This is where the fear and frustration that should have been directed towards his parents was instead thrust onto Nancy, right or wrong. This is where Steve snapped.
“I’m not uncomfortable because it’s Jonathan, I’m uncomfortable because you’re my ex-girlfriend and I haven’t stopped loving you and probably never will. I’m uncomfortable because it means it’s truly over and yet you still keep inviting me to things as if you want me to be reminded over and over again of how shitty of a boyfriend I was. I’m fucking uncomfortable because WHO THE FUCK WOULDN’T BE?!”
By the time he finishes his breath is hitching in his throat and the nausea he felt just minutes ago has come back to bite him. He feels bad, of course, as anyone would, but for some shitty reason, the words aren’t ones he regrets speaking.
Nancy is silent. As she should be, Steve finds himself thinking, and before she can say any more, he hangs up.
When he finally greets his parents, apologising frantically for making them wait, his words are not forgotten. In fact, they are the only thing he can think about, even as his parents spit at him about his grades and remind him of his failures. Nothing else is present in his mind. Nothing.
* * *
Steve is nineteen when he realises that his and Nancy’s friendship might never fully form.
It’s a Friday, December night when he realises it, and he’s sitting in none other than the Wheelers’ basement, learning how to play Dungeons & Dragons. Believe him, the activity was not his decision, and while the game seems fun and all, he can already tell it’s not his thing. The types of games he likes are luck-based games that don’t require any skill. It’s better that way, he figures, since it gives Dustin less blackmail and overall less embarrassing stories for him to recount in twenty years to his kids. He can hear it now, almost, “Tell us more about Steve!”
“Well, kids, there was this one time when we were playing D&D—”
“Steve?” That. That’s Real Dustin, not Future Dustin who decided to expose Steve’s stupidity to his children. He turns his head to face him.
“You listening?” Lucas asks with the raise of an eyebrow. “You always seem like you’re regretting your life choices when we hang out.”
Well, he’s not exactly wrong there, he thinks, but doesn’t voice it. Instead, he simply grimaces. “Sorry,” he mutters, “just got a lot on my mind.”
Dustin shrugs and glances back at the board. He starts saying something else, but Steve isn’t listening. No, he’s listening to the voice coming from upstairs. He’s listening to the sound of a song, a beautiful ballad, a masterpiece. He can’t believe he’s saying this when said pretty voice is screaming, but here he is.
“No, Jonathan! No, I don’t—”
Steve forces a gulp and fixes his eyes back on the board.
And then the screaming stops. It stops, unlike he’d been anticipating, and footsteps are suddenly echoing against the eery basement walls. A figure then appears at the bottom of the stairs. And, just Steve’s luck, really, it’s Nancy. Fucking Nancy.
It’s his eyes she catches first, he notices, and he instinctively flinches at the unexpected eye contact. It wasn’t as if she was touching him or was even within a foot of him, so he’s not sure why his dumbass body decided to retract like a pill bug, but it happened, and Nancy saw it. He’s sure she did.
“Oh,” she finally breathes, tearing her eyes away. Steve is grateful. “I… forgot you guys were down here. Sorry, I’ll just—” She pauses as she begins going up the stairs again. “I’ll just go.”
His throat aches with the words he couldn’t bear to say, and as he watches her retreating figure, too shameful and afraid to call her back, he’s never felt more pathetic and weak in his entire life. Not when he first found out about the monsters, not when he and Robin were drugged by the Russians, not even when Billy smashed a fucking plate on his head. This is different. This cuts deep, so deep you wouldn’t see the wound if you didn’t squint, so deep it resonates in his aching bones.
So he decides to call it a day.
“I… have to go too,” he rasps, standing up and fumbling to push the chair back in. He wants to say more, he really does, but when he opens his mouth nothing comes out.
“Wait, is this just because my sister came downstairs?” Mike scoffs. He starts to say something else, but Max hushes him. She says something sternly he can’t quite make out, but he’s too far gone to hear nor care, and by the time he’s sitting on the tattered leather of the driver’s seat, Steve has had his second true mental breakdown.
Steve is nineteen when he decides to get over Nancy. Whether it’ll work or not, he doesn’t know, but at least he’ll have tried. At least he’ll have tried.