Chapter Text
Everything changes in three quick seconds. Not a change, a realization, nagging at Nancy to let it in. Nancy’s heart thumps hard in her chest once. Like a cannonball thrown with force right at the center. If she’s being honest with herself, which she swats the feeling away before even allowing it to become a thought, it’s not just terror that hit her heart. It’s the distant faint memory of something else. And then she jumps into the cold water of Lover’s Lake after Steve being pulled to the depths by god knows what. She doesn’t hesitate, she just moves. Nancy is set with the steely determination that is at the core of who she is, ignoring anything Robin or Eddie have to say.
Emerging from the gate into the hellscape that is the upsidedown, Nancy finds Steve lying on the dried up horror version of Lover’s Lake bed being torn up by three demo bats. It looks like they have a personal vendetta against him the way they are trying to rip him apart. As easy as breathing she pushes the terror aside before it can even really take hold. It takes her two seconds to grab an oar off the ground and start wailing the creatures off of him. Robin must have ignored Nancy’s directions to stay put and followed her right in, because she’s suddenly fighting at her side. Steve would do just this for any of them. Jump in to help and protect without a moments thought. He deserves that treatment back and clearly is inspiring it in those around him in spades. That has become clear to Nancy this week.
Nancy is throwing her weight into smashing the bat, whose tail is wrapped around Steve’s neck, with all she has. In her desperation she doesn’t hear the bat coming that lands on her back and claws into it. Robin helps her fight it off. Nancy doesn’t have a care for her own wound. The second she’s able to, she whips her attention back to Steve.
But he stands there no longer needing any help. The last offending bat’s tail is in one hand as he whips and slams it back and forth into the ground over and over. A flush of heat and embarrassment intertwines themselves inside Nancy body and twist around each other like a helix. He shouldn’t look sexy doing this and it feels really wrong to be thinking he’s sexy at all. The feeling shoots through her nerves and travels to every inch of her body until she feels like live wire. She tells herself it’s just her body reacting to the adrenaline. Biology dictates your sex drive increases when in proximity to mortal harm as its last ditch effort at procreation. That’s all this feeling is. A biological reaction, Nancy reasons with herself.
Yet there is her friend, and he has become her friend as they got thrown back together this week, shirtless and dirty and bloodied. He's panting with adrenaline and effort as they all watch him slamming the bat down one last time and ripping his assailant’s neck from its body with leverage from his bare foot. If Nancy was trying not to stare at him when he tossed his shirt off on the boat earlier, she certainly is utterly failing now.
Blood drips from his mouth as Nancy steadily starts to approach him. She fears he might collapse now that the adrenaline is surely wearing off. She fears of how intense the injuries might be. Her need to assess overrides her flush of embarrassment.
“Are you okay,” comes out of her mouth on instinct even though it’s a ridiculous question. Of course he isn’t okay. Nancy reaches right out to touch him. She starts to rove her eyes and her hands over his upper torso looking for and assessing damage. It shouldn’t be so easy but her body just remembers what it’s like to be familiar with Steve like this. Touching bare skin without thinking, even though the circumstances here are drastically different than the last time she touched his bare chest. Her whole body lets out a heavy sigh of relief when she realizes he’s at least stable for now. Hopefully until they can get him out of here and to a doctor to treat the wounds properly.
“Well they took about a pound of flesh, but other than that, yeah never better,” Nancy can’t believe he’s joking right now. It calms her though, knowing he still seems in good spirits despite it all.
A few minutes later Nancy is trying to quiet her breath as the group huddles under a giant boulder in the woods that they ran to for cover, praying the swarm of demo bats above don’t detect them. But the moment they start to move, thinking they’re in the clear, Steve’s steps stumble and he catches himself on the boulder.
“Oh shit. shit.” The words come out of his mouth like a whisper. Like his body can barely manage to make sound.
Nancy rushes, her tone worried, “Steve? Jesus.” Again she is right in front of him.
“I’m fine. I’m fine.” He’s not fine.
“No no You’re not. You’re losing blood.” Nancy is in problem solving mode as she guides Steve, easing his body weight back against the boulder so he doesn’t fall over. The bats tore chunks of flesh just above the waistband of his pants. Where the v of his hips used to be before they became obscured by two wounds and a lot of blood and grime. His hands absentmindedly venture down to the wounds. Nancy knows she has to stop this bleeding. She kneels down to the cold forest floor and begins to rip the bottom of her shirt up for a makeshift bandage. She tries not to think about who knows what ghastly upsidedown germs lay on the skin of Steve’s stomach and on Nancy’s own shirt. She just has to slow down his bleeding right now. They can worry about infection later. Nancy can’t let anything happen to him.
Robin crouches down next to Steve and start going off. Her emotions getting the better of her, “Okay. So the good news is I’m pretty sure wooziness is not a symptom of rabies. But if you start having muscle spasms or hallucinations. Like do you feel like someone is watching us? I keep feeling like I see a person out of the corner of my eye. Oh my gosh do I have rabies?!”
“Robin, stop! There’s nothing in this clearing with us. If there was it would have attacked us already.” Steve’s voice booms with more authority than his weakened body should be able to produce at the moment. It works and he stops her rambling thank god. She was driving Nancy insane. How can Steve focus on anything when they’re hanging out together?
“Or if you start feeling aggressive. Like you want to punch me, let me know.” Robin trails off, like she just can’t help but finish her ramble.
“Robin, I kinda want to punch you,” The effort to speak turns Steve’s breath to panting in short bursts as Nancy focuses on trying to rip her shirt apart faster. She knows Robin told her that her and Steve are platonic but their relationship is still so confusing to Nancy. She refuses to poke that bear because why should she care about their relationship at all.
“Okay.” Nancy cuts them off as she frees her makeshift bandage from the rest of her shirt.
It seems Steve has some whits about him because he was clocking Nancy’s movements and knew exactly what she was doing. He moves in perfect motion at the same time Nancy lifts herself up onto her knees and into position. Steve bucks himself off the rock, entirely by his hips, right into her personal space. It’s impossible to lie to herself and ignore the heat that lights up in her body at the compromising position. The familiar position. Somewhere they’d been before albeit minus the blood loss and terror. Her far less then he’d been in the reverse position but that was neither here nor there and Nancy needs to focus. “You ready?”
“Yeah. Just do it,” Steve is trying his best to distract himself from everything as Nancy wraps his wounds. He won’t let himself faint. He lifts his useless hands up above his head. He has to grit through the pain.
“Sorry,” She says tentatively at him. He bites his bottom lip. He absolutely refuses to allow himself to remember how it felt to be this close to Nancy and have her touch him so intimately.
“It’s okay,” Steve lies as his head tips up to the sky. He just focuses on breathing while she secures his life for at least a few more minutes.
“Too tight?” She asks when she’s finished, peering up at him like she desperately just wants him to feel comfortable and safe. And it melts Steve. He hasn’t felt this level of care, especially from her, in a long time.
“No thats good,” He eases himself back into the rock, finally able to rest for a second. But her fingers don’t leave his body. She’s fusing with where she’d tied off the scrape of her shirt, then starts tucking it into the waistband of his pants. This all feels like too much. But, like a train wreck, he can’t open his mouth to break the spell of this weird bridge between them that has formed anew. He does manage to tear his eyes away from where she’s touching him to look at her face. She looks like she has tears forming in her eyes and she’s shaking just slightly. Worry is etched into every part of her beautiful face. Worry for him.
She lifts her big doe eyes from behind her long lashes and looks up at him. It feels like the wind is being knocked out of him. He stares right back at her, “Thanks.”
Her eyes can’t take the eye contact and they lower back down. “Yeah.” She seems nervous. And why is that so cute and why is this proximity to her again letting Steve feel hopeful in ways he absolutely should not when it comes to Nancy Wheeler.
Eddie breaks the spell for them. Nancy hadn’t thought about how little Eddie knows about this place and how they have to explain things to him. She forgot how little he knows about the party’s history too when she says, “We don’t have to go all the way downtown for guns. I have guns, in my bedroom.” Eddie’s shock is almost comical. “A Russian Makarov and a revolver.” His surprised face reminds her of a lot less panicked version of Steve when he first got thrown into all this that day he found her and Jonathan baiting the demogorgan with firepower.
And apparently Steve’s thinking the same as he brushes up next to her with mirth, “Yeah, you almost shot me with that one.”
Nancy can’t help herself and she smirks over at him. “You almost deserved it.” It slips out of her mouth flirty. An old pattern of banter. Nancy is embarrassed by how easily she’s slipped back into this rapport with him. Like her body and mind kept these feelings locked in a box in her mind she didn’t know about.
Eddie breaks their bubble again by chucking his vest right at Steve’s head. “For your modesty dude.” They all would have noticed the blush forming on Nancy’s cheeks, might have, if the sudden and violently shaking earth didn’t throw them towards the ground.
Steve grabs Nancy around the chest and yanks her back flush against his front, using the boulder behind them to stop them from ending up on the ground like Eddie and Robin. Nancy can barely hear the bats starting to swarm and screech above the treetops over the sound of her own heart beating so aggressively it feels like it’s going to burst out of her ears. She can hardly believe Steve had the strength to grab her so tightly and keep them upright when minutes ago he was fighting to keep just himself standing due to all his injuries.
“Yeah so guns seem like a pretty good idea to me,” Eddie heaves when the monsters flock has passed overhead, trying to keep the panic at bay in his voice.
“Is that- from when Barb caught us making out in the library?” Steve doesn’t have any hesitation in mentioning their previous romance because the gears are turning in his head as fast as Nancy flips all the following blank pages in her diary.
Nancy doesn’t have to turn her head far to lock eyes with Steve as he stands over her in the upside down version of her bedroom. She’s not embarrassed, she’s high on the feeling of them both clicking onto the same page at the same time. “My guns aren’t here because they don’t exist yet. This diary should be full of entries but the last one is the day Will went missing.”
Steve starts to slowly pace the room really taking it in. “It’s frozen in time.” He stares in wonder, picking up the teddy bear on her bed. The same one he joked with her when they were studying for chemistry. He’d tried to get her to ditch the books to hook up and she’d scolded him. He was such a dumbass. Thought he was hot shit but couldn’t read signals. Not when it really mattered. Is that what’s happening right now? Nancy seems like she’s flirting with him. Like their gazes are lingering and they’re being pulled back together like magnets. But is this all in his head? Just situational? The way she touched his body as she dressed his wound definitely didn’t feel situational.
“Dustin! Dustin!” Eddie is shouting like a maniac from downstairs. Steve Nancy and Robin rush down the stairs to see what the commotion is about.
The feeling of the world crashing and burning around him is a feeling Steve has been having way too much lately. He shakes Nancy as hard as he can trying to get her out of Vecna’s grasp. “Nancy, just stay with me! Stay with me okay!”
He shouts at the group in the right side up to hurry up, but really he’s begging. Begging them, begging Vecna, begging a god he no longer is sure he believe in, any force of nature that can save her. Because he cannot lose her. That just isn’t an option!
Think Harrington, think! Max used her favorite song. What’s Nancy’s favorite song? They dated for a year he has to know this. Memories flash quickly in his mind. Her beautiful smile and laugh driving around in his Beamer. What was on the radio? What did she like to hum along to?
Suddenly a thought stops him dead in his tracks and he starts singing broken from emotion and off key, desperation leaking from his voice. No thoughts. No plan. Just instinct.
“It's gonna take a lot to drag me away from you
There's nothin' that a hundred men or more could ever do
I bless the rains down in Africa
Gonna take some time to do the things we never had, ooh-hoo”
The party has gathered overhead looking on in shock as Steve shakes and barely gets the words out around the quiet tears streaking his face. Eddie catches on and rushes to grab his guitar to play along.
Steve’s heart is in his stomach as he rasps out the song praying for the life to return to her eyes. Come on Nancy please, you’re stronger than this creep.
“Hurry, boy, she's waiting there for you
It's gonna take a lot to drag me away from you
There's nothin' that a hundred men or more could ever do
I bless the rains down in Africa
I bless the rains down in Africa”
Nancy gasps and her eyes fade back to blue. Steve guides her down to the floor in his arms as she falls and holds her safely. She clutches to him even harder and starts to sob.
He soothes her, holding her gaze and stroking her hair back out of her face. “It’s okay it’s okay it’s okay. I’m here. I’m right here.”
Nancy looks up at him as pain and relief war on her body. He makes her feel like the world around them has stopped, protected in his arms. Yet she can see the carnage around them just outside the bubble. Vecna showed her the truth. She killed Barb. Not Steve. She doesn’t deserve him. She’s not good enough. Not good enough to save Hawkins, to save her family. She just falls apart in Steve’s arms.