Chapter Text
Trees lean and groan, their leaves quivering in an early spring squall.
Heartbeats of light bleed through. Shadows follow, a brief respite from the sun.
Nancy does not blink.
“…”
The dogwoods shiver, whining again. Are they saying her name?
“…?”
She stares and stares and stares. There’s patterns in the trees, how they sing to one another. You only have to listen and you’ll hear it, the same way she listens to the patterns in Jonathan’s not-words, the gaps and the silences and the nearly imperceptible hitch in his breath whenever she mentions college and Emerson and the new adventure they might find in Boston. Nancy catalogues each and every motif, gentle affects and strained pauses, how he sounds when he’s smoked enough weed to make even her head spin on the other side of the country. He might not have said it, but the patterns spoke volumes.
Nancy knows the patterns not only by gripping the telephone tight enough to hurt, but because her own thoughts march down in a single-file, neatly making their way towards hmm, that’s great and yes school was good and miss you, always, though she’d been forgetting the always more and more.
At first she thought it had been the distance.
But that excuse grew thin and tattered, unable to support what… just wasn’t there anymore.
“Nancy.”
She jolts back into reality and away from the dogwoods whispering, well, there it is.
“Yes—sorry.”
Jonathan pauses, as if to consider his next words. Then, carefully, he asks, “Did you hear what I said?”
Of course Nancy did.
How could she not?
Light cartwheels down tiny green buds preparing to blossom like all is well and good in the world and winter's easing off the stage for spring's solo, but Nancy wants to tell them wait, that they need to wait because there’s nothing good about what he just said and the hurtling finality of senior year and the off-kilter lean that the past eight months have slammed into the small but dearly important group of people she’s come to know. Maybe it’s ridiculous to beg the tree in her front yard to halt its flowering, but Nancy has certainly found herself on the side of supernatural things that shouldn’t be possible more than once, so it can't be that unreasonable. Right?
Wait, she begs the dogwoods.
Is this so much of a surprise, Nancy Wheeler? The trees shiver.
I think we should break up, Jonathan had said, his voice soft but firm. Not spacey, which, good. This was not a conversation to be had with marijuana third-wheeling.
“So…”
Nancy blows out a breath.
Someone warbles in the background—probably her mother trying and failing to sing along to another Frank Sinatra record because, and she quotes, pretending I’m in a jazz club is an essential part of making a casserole.
It used to drive Nancy crazy, all the background noise in her house forcing her to press the telephone so closely to her ear she’d have curved lines pressed into her face for hours, Holly chirping and shrieking about some new dolly, the occasional hiccup of the record and the ensuing curses, whatever the hell Mike does all the time, the shutting of a car door, the creaking of an actual door, the thump of a briefcase on the ground (all signs from her father that he was, in fact, home and ready for dinner), but now, she recognizes how they would seep into the corners of the pauses stretching into noticeable lapses between Jonathan and her, and now she leans into them, how her life here—not the one she glosses over on the phone—is real and true and continues to go, even when the patterns in her relationship with Jonathan feels like holding up something to the light, and wondering when it had grown so dull.
“Um,” is all she manages.
It’s not that she doesn’t love him anymore.
It’s just… the butterflies, the ease with which they once spoke, how things always seemed so natural and fluid and Them were now forced and stagnant and Not Them.
Nancy frowns. Or maybe it is.
But how do you describe falling out of love with someone? How do you point out that distance does not always make the heart grow fonder, but rather, it reveals what was lingering. What was strained during their time at the Hawkins Post, how it felt like everything was an uphill battle, how those… those dickheads treated her, how Jonathan lost it too—
Her face flushes hot with shame.
It was different for him. It still is—threadbare shirts washed so many times they’ve lost their color, the cracked seats in his Ford and the perpetually broken left brake light, the instinct to always want to pick up more shifts and work more, work harder for Will and Joyce…
It was totally uncool of Nancy, more than uncool, to forget herself and the cushy house she’d grown up in and the money she never had to think of, but the wedge it had driven between them, splintering cracks reverberating through what she had thought was something meant to last, had grown bigger and bigger and bigger, until they became the pattern and she learned the steps to avoid them. And so did Jonathan.
They’ve grown into different people. Her final year in high school has been somewhat of a spotlight on the things she’s passionate about—writing and hearing people’s stories, making sure that it’s not only her who hears that. She’s missed Jonathan. Of course she has. Fred Benson’s been up her ass, like, all the time, about his absence and it’d be nice to turn the corner and spot his tired, but sweet grin.
A tiny voice like acid in her stomach whispers, But what about the times he wasn’t there? Even when California did not separate you?
She grits her teeth, hoping the sound doesn’t carry.
It’s just that… Nancy makes it about as obvious as she can what her plans are—her quest for the truth—and so much of the time, it felt like Jonathan was apologizing for not being there and she was biting back a retort and whatever string she’d thought was binding them wasn’t as sparkling and glowing as she thought.
It was a chain around her ankle and a noose around his neck.
And sometimes, Jonathan acted like all he wanted to do was run away as far as possible.
Nancy can’t make him want to stay, want to be present, want to like people the way she does. Not only because you can’t really force someone to be another, but also because this impulse—to run and disappear that so deeply characterizes Jonathan—isn’t entirely his fault. She’d never say that the memories and the people, even Hawkins itself were bad, bad to him, but living constantly in the place that his childhood had been stolen at the same time he’d offered it up, a vicious two-punch combo, couldn’t… couldn’t be good for anyone. And with everything that's happened with Will, to Will, that’s irrevocably changed all their lives—Nancy doesn’t blame him for wanting to walk away from that. From all of it. Even if she’s included.
So she never tried to fix it.
Nancy thought, perhaps naively, that he would change, somehow. That he would find the same spark, the same fearless breathlessness that came with swapping the notepad for full monster-hunting mode.
He didn’t.
And they learned the steps to this dance, apologies and hidden frowns, stifled frustrations and hasty make-ups under the guise of we almost died and you’re still important to me, I guess, and despite the twirls and the leaps the dance demanded, their choices always led them further and further apart, hands no longer brushing, hearts no longer skipping.
(Jonathan once called her out for not truly loving Steve, but this empty dance couldn’t be better, this couldn’t be the solution? It stings, knowing that she’s doing exactly as she once feared.)
Nancy supposes it was coming to this.
Her eyes trail over towards her desk, the flowery calendar upon it.
One week has been circled with bright red pen, courtesy of Mike and his insistence on seeing Eleven and Will for months now, having done it one day when she wasn’t home. The old Nancy would’ve grabbed him by the ear and marched down the stairs, yelling for her mom, but when she saw it, she’d stared at the circle so long she began to see it when she blinked.
Spring break.
Mike’s going. Nancy thinks that he started packing three weeks ago.
She just couldn’t.
Her mom was more than excited for Nancy to go, offering free range in her closet, and even that one pair of kitten heels she likes to steal for school, you know—the kind that gives you just enough inches over peons like Fred when they start getting to big for their britches, but… Nancy never even grabbed her bag from the basement. She had the Weekly Streak and school and plenty of other things and—she sighs, the excuses are no better than tissue paper.
Nancy wouldn’t be going to California, not because of conflicts or her schedule, but simply because she did not wish to.
This phone call, telling Jonathan that she wouldn’t be coming, and now this—it had all been inevitable, a slow slide towards the very bottom, where they couldn’t pretend like everything was fine anymore.
“Um?” He parrots, probably doing that thing where he twirls the cord around his wrist. Jonathan’s hands are always moving, long fingers running over his camera, wielding print tongs like they’re an extension of him, drumming the beat of some Talking Heads song, carding through Nancy’s hair without the slightest snag.
She licks her lips. “How long have you been thinking that?”
“How long have you?”
Despite herself, Nancy breaks out into a small, wry smile.
“I mean, I’ve noticed that things don’t seem, well…” She traces a pattern on her bedspread. Why is it so hard to say what she’s been thinking about for so long?
Jonathan’s exhale sounds a lot like a snort. “The same?”
“But, when I realized that I… I didn’t want to go with Mike, I guess I had to sit down and think about it. Think about why I wouldn’t want to. Is it so crazy if I say that…”
It had taken a couple tries to even think the words, but caring and compassionate Jonathan, unwilling to make her say it first, bites the bullet. “That I’m not in love with you anymore?”
“Yes,” she says, small as a mouse.
“No,” he replies, equally tiny. “I’ve been thinking the same thing.”
“I think you’re great and so kind, and… this time with you has been amazing but—”
“Nancy. Wow. Don’t, like, hurt yourself. Also, that’s super cheesy. And maybe a little patronizing. Let’s be mature about this, okay?”
Always that. Always being mature about everything.
“I get it,” Jonathan says. “I don’t think you’re the one anymore.”
It should hurt but she’s already come to that conclusion, and that realization wraps itself around her in a kind of blanket, or shield, and Jonathan’s words bounce right off of it, leaving her numb.
Me too, she thinks. And I’m beginning to think that you never were.
Silence. The dogwoods crane forward on a stronger breeze, spindly branches reaching for her window.
Patterns and patterns and patterns, the light bouncing back and forth, Nancy and Jonathan reaching across the country, and it’s only months of phone calls like this one that she can detect the hitch in his breath, the downwards curve to his mouth.
“And… ugh I should’ve told you before, but I didn’t get into Emerson. I got the letter a few weeks ago, and it’s been practically burning a hole through my desk.”
Honest because they’ve been together for a while now, honest because she knows he can take it, honest because she’s Nancy Wheeler and if the truth is there, it’ll come out, she admits, “I’d wondered. You were so cagey about it, like, any time I asked.”
“You’re not—”
Nancy shakes her head mechanically. She’d prepared for this too, mind spiraling into the different possibilities, having mourned the fact that Jonathan wouldn’t be there in the city, briny sea wind hitting their faces, trying lobster that hadn’t been frozen for hours, exploring all the old nooks and crannies. She’d even mourned that he wouldn’t be able to see her start crying at the near-ancient bricks on Acorn Street. (That took place in the bath. When no one was home. Who cries about bricks? Not her.) “Not at all. I just, I wish you would’ve told me earlier—you know I wouldn’t have been mad.”
Jonathan sighs. She can almost feel it against her cheek.
“But it was your big dream, this fantastical plan you had for the future and…”
He’s dragging his feet. Nancy’s eyes narrow, hating when he gets like this.
“Things change, Jonathan.” More than just plans. “I know that. And I’m not mad at you for this. That’d be ridiculous.” She laughs, cutting through the tension. “Do something else, then. Wait another year, go to a different school, or don’t go to school and all and do it on your own terms. You don’t need some stuffy old creeps telling you how to point and shoot.”
“I distinctly remember someone bossing me around when I was trying to point and shoot.”
Nancy sees the pair of them, practicing in an open field, shooting at old cans, noses frostbitten. The memory washes away, raindrops on a speeding window.
For a different girl in a different time—the freshness of Barb’s disappearance like a poker urging forwards and forwards and forwards, winter swirling around them, the morbid fascination of pursuing some secretive mission alongside a boy she’d considered forbidden fruit given the way Steve and his friends had turned their noses.
Her stomach twists, wondering what to do next, how an ending like this, slow and bittersweet and honest, goes—not after the thunderous shitstorm she’d once seen. Those are easier, she has to admit, screaming and storming away, a clean break confirmed by others’ wide eyes.
This is both better and worse. Jonathan sounds just as shell-shocked as she does, as if he’s been thinking about it and can’t quite believe that he isn’t alone, yet none of that helps the lack of roadmap.
Biting on a fingernail, Nancy asks, “Do we need to talk about this more? Like, I don’t know… process it?”
“I mean, this isn’t really coming as a surprise.” The shrug echoes in his voice. “We want different things and don’t see each other the way we used to, and I’m—I mean this is, this is sad, but, it feels like we’ve been going down this for a while and, I don’t know. Is it bad to say that we’re finally here, doing it?”
“No,” she says, a little louder now. It’s almost scarily weird how similar their thinking is. “Not at all. I guess I would’ve though it’d be some big thing. High school sweethearts and their disastrous end.”
The joke doesn’t quite pierce the bubble around her, inside her, muted emotions squirming about.
“Sometimes, it is what it is.”
Telephone growing cold in her grip, she says, “I’m sorry I kept dragging you back into all this. That it hurt you, and you weren’t ready for it and I just… was unwilling to see it.”
It took a while for her to realize that he hadn’t been there because he didn’t want to be.
“I made my own choices, Nance. I walked into those situations with my eyes wide open, but… the distance has been helpful. Clarifying. I’m tired. And I just don’t think I can do it anymore—not us, but the whole lot of it.”
She hums, something exhausted sighing at the truth in that statement. “You’ll figure out what to do.”
How flat it sounds now, coming from her mouth. How the words she’s been repeating about him, protective and determined and good, have worn thin and tired, having been washed too many times on the same cycle.
“I’m sorry we weren’t each others dreams.”
She can feel the same sentiment in Jonathan’s voice, stale. Kind, but stale, someone on the outside, looking in, about to walk away. The goodbye is deafening, pain and relief skittering back and forth, one hand balled into a fist, the other holding the frozen peas.
Despite the increasingly loud sniffles, Jonathan says, impressively steady, “Don’t hold yourself back, Nancy. Don’t…” A pause. “Not from everyone out there.”
She mouths what the hell? to her Tom Cruise poster, and much to her never-ending chagrin, the guy has no answers. Maybe being Tom Cruise entitles you to no confusing relationship problems ever.
But the rollercoaster climbs higher and higher, the drop only seconds away.
Or has the drop already happened?
Is she free-falling? Is she happy? Sad? Why does she feel nothing? Is she going insane?
“Same goes to you,” Nancy whispers, chest painfully tight. Maybe she’s crying now. “Show them what a menace you are with that camera.”
Jonathan mutters something about trying to, and Nancy at least knows him well enough to hear the smile in his voice, that the sun is setting but not forever.
She had felt this pain, long and stretched out, small pieces every day. None of them killed her, and this—one more bite out of her, was barely noticeable. And maybe that made her a bad person, but Nancy Wheeler was simply too tired to care.
“Well…I—” Her tongue grows too heavy for her mouth.
She freezes.
This was the part where they’d schedule their next call, say talk to you later, or i love you.
“I—”
“Take care, Nance. See ya when I do.”
The receiver clicks. Only the dogwoods, craning for her attention and her mother’s volume, having gained confidence as she sings let me plaaaaay among the staaaaaars, remain.
He just… left.
And Nancy let him.
Nancy had left too, and Jonathan had allowed it. How mutual could this have been? It was, wasn’t it? And what a pain that would be to explain to other people, the famed and inconceivable idea of a mutual breakup, as if two people could come to the mature and deeply sad realization that what was there wasn’t working, and it wasn’t a hair-pulling, tear-streaming, yelling-at-the-top-of-your-lungs nightmare.
Correction: it was a nightmare. But it happened so slowly Nancy forgot to be afraid.
The drop must have happened.
We’re moving to Lenora.
That must have been it.
Slotting the phone back into its place, she checks her face, fingertips brushing beneath her eyes.
No tears, at least, no more.
And she won’t be picking up the phone to insist that this was a mistake because in truth, it’s not. Maybe the mistake had been letting it go on for so long, not really having confronted the idea it would end. Some things felt like they were destined to end, or at least, they were chaotic and fiery, a match burning too brightly, and it only took one look for Nancy to really and truly understand that the beginning was the end.
Steve.
Nancy glares at Tom Cruise. “I am not thinking about Steve right now.”
Tom’s grin beams back at her, perfect and devilish and terribly handsome.
Different from boys like Tom Cruise and Steve Harrington, Jonathan was funny and quiet and strange, polite and soft-spoken, intelligent but unwilling to be seen, cemented to the world behind the camera, literally and figuratively.
And there were so many things that just seemed right at the time.
That bleak look in his eyes, an overcast November day, how he seemed to perfectly understand just how… how awful the Upside Down could be, what it could take with a dripping mouth and greedy claws, how it didn’t care if you were frantic, flipping through the phonebook until your fingers bled with paper-cuts, searching for the right number that could explain what the hell had happened, how the weight of it all was simultaneously more than you could carry and exactly the punishment you’d been wanting, what it felt like to scream at the sky until your throat collapsed, that there was something worse than a failed party or—
Nancy shakes her head.
That’s not exactly fair, at least, not to Steve.
Thoughts winding away from the telephone and the words that had been whispered over thousands of miles, Nancy feels herself fall backward into the pillowy cushion of memory, peeling back layers and setting them neatly aside one another.
Steve blew in like a firestorm, back then.
Wild and careless, worming his way in between notecards and peeling textbooks, stealing her bag with quick fingers and pressing an equally swift kiss to her cheek, her mouth, her neck even in the middle of the hallway—
Nancy sucks in a breath through her nose.
So many things all careened into her life then—wondering how someone like Steve Harrington noticed her, cramming together school and taps at her window and sneaking out to a quiet car, half-terrified she was changing and even more so that this was truly who she was, that Steve had merely pulled back the curtains to whatever was lurking beneath pretty skirts and perfectly ordered pencil bags.
It almost always was a balance between the fear of someone walking in crawling up her spine and his hands wandering down her sides, her body begging and pleading for more.
Hot and heavy, people liked to call it.
Nancy blushes.
They weren’t wrong.
And it had all been so exciting until it wasn’t, and the heaviness that seemed to dog her footsteps when she’d stare into his eyes and he asked if they could just be teenagers and it felt so wrong and she was screaming inside, and things weren’t as simple as acing a chemistry exam and waiting for a call on a Saturday night, no, they were charging towards the liars and the thieves and the killers and Steve just… didn’t want to.
And she’d been so angry and Steve was right there and he was telling her not to worry about Barb and suddenly… maybe… somewhere along the line it all became convoluted and the wires became crossed and Steve, young and immature and unworried, was caught right there at the center, foot caught in the bear-trap she’d set herself, and it’s always, always, always easier to be angry than anything else.
(Enter: Jonathan. Strengths: knowing the Upside Down, willing to go after the truth, mature because he had to be. Bonuses: willing to go on a goose chase to hold the men responsible for Barbara’s death. Weaknesses: …)
Years later, however, things had changed. You would have to blind and deaf and unable to walk in a straight line forwards to miss it, how three apocalypses and death and blood spurting out of splintered noses had sanded down Steve’s sharper edges, the impulses towards misplaced unkindness and immature selfishness softening into what could almost be a fondness for the kids. There was no mistaking the way he immediately gravitated into a protective position the second something dangerous cocked its head, the loud griping that covered up genuine concern, perhaps… more, that no matter how dark things seemed, Steve was right there and ready, not even a single thought of self-preservation when it came down to it.
But when Nancy really thinks about it, those are things that cannot be taught.
Maybe they were always there.
She'd seen glimpses.
Him crawling onto her bed, and despite how much he clearly hadn’t wanted to, when she put her foot down and glared at him with all she had, he’d… stopped. He wasn’t the boy ready to add another notch on his belt, roguish smile, bad boy Steve. He stopped, and resumed flipping through the flashcards she had so meticulously made, her looping handwriting hilariously dainty beneath his hands, indulging her—unafraid of her glare, unwilling to give up beneath the full might of Nancy Wheeler the Student.
Apologizing to Jonathan, after saying such awful things.
Bursting back into the Byers’ house regardless of the gun she’d pointed at him, swinging that spiked bat like he’d been born to do it, striking the Demogorgon over and over and over again.
Practically killing himself by driving into Billy, right as Nancy realized that a pistol probably wasn’t going to stop a speeding car, dooming herself to being splattered across a car, nothing more than a memory of a stubborn girl with skinny arms.
Steve Harrington—more than just a pretty face.
She’d laughed more than once, calling him an idiot, but that wasn’t right. It wasn’t, she insists to herself now. Steve’s modus operandi might be entirely based on acting without thinking, but if anything, his impulses were pure of heart and so shockingly selfless that it took Nancy's mind a few seconds to catch up with what she was seeing.
It may be appropriate to think that she was wrong.
The dogwoods hiss, wind brushing past leaves. Right.
Nancy walks over to her bed and screams into a pillow as loud as she can.
She cannot be thinking of Steve Harrington after breaking up with, being broken up with, mutually breaking up—ugh, she groans into the pillow—whatever the hell just happened with Jonathan Byers.
Freedom or damnation or moving on or giving up.
Nancy slumps further, and for a while, does her very best not to go insane.
—
Dinner is a quiet and mercifully quick affair.
Mike’s so excited about spring break that he’s practically vibrating in his seat, almost hovering in the air.
Holly watches Mike with open curiosity, because aside from the occasional outburst about whatever new D&D campaign he’s on (led by Eddie Munson, someone Nancy is almost entirely sure she’s never spoken a sentence to), none of them have seen him this animated since right before Starcourt flung all of them in different directions.
Her father resumes his careful task of chewing and staring off into space, present only for the act of eating and hardly anything else, mind occupied with sports, his work, or perhaps, Nancy amends as she squints his way, nothing at all. Was he ever ruffled by anything?
Her mother watches them like a hawk brooding over her chicks, the past few years of government agents swarming their house, late night disappearances stretching into days, children returning in tears, bloodied and bruised, Mike’s bicycle begging to be put out of its misery, Nancy pale as a ghost, hair matted to her skin with sweat.
And Nancy is silently horrified that she wasted all afternoon reexamining most of her teenage life.
Seriously.
She was supposed to be thinking about a new spread for the Weekly Streak’s upcoming feature on graduating seniors, spotlighting a few specific students and where they’d be going to college the next year. It had been… not so fun listening to some of the football jocks prattle on about their sports scholarships and girls bragging about their upcoming legacy status in their mothers’ sororities, but the administration wanted an Americana high school article and Nancy knew when to push back, and when to accept.
Jonathan would have rolled his eyes at the whole thing, always so above high school and the typical routes that so many people took, the maturity forced on him to become Will’s pseudo-parent having squeezed out trivial things like college paraphernalia, prompting Nancy to reign in some of her vainer impulses.
But truth be told, she wasn’t so mad to be in high school, wasn’t so ready to disparage its archetypes. To know her place, the editor of the Weekly Streak, smart, independent, maybe a little bit lonely, but respected enough to be left alone. She had found her stride, and would probably miss it more than she expects when she leaves, though this breakup was a painfully clear indicator that the future is coming. (In fact, here. Now.)
Nancy listlessly pushes around the pile of peas on her plate.
Even though she doesn’t love Jonathan, a truth that becomes a little stronger each time she thinks it, she can’t help but wonder how much more will change in her life, an anxious bird flapping its wings in her throat.
Holly begins babbling something to their mother, and that’s when she notices that Mike’s been glancing her way. Not enough to alert their parents, but enough that Nancy’s stomach begins churning. She really does not want to talk about this to her whole family.
Her mother impossibly catches Mike’s drift.
“How was your phone call with Jonathan sweetie? Did he take the news okay?”
Nancy makes a so-so hand motion. “He was a little upset that I didn’t tell him earlier, but understands that I need this week to work on the article, since things have been so busy.”
Also: we broke up and I’m totally fine and I hope that doesn’t mean I’m crazy.
“Are you sure you don’t want to go?” Her mother insists, brows bunched together. “I don’t want you to be sad when we take Mike to the airport.”
“Yeah, I’m sure,” Nancy replies, a beat too quickly. Her family stares at her, all of them except for Holly, who’s begun to frown bigger and bigger with the lack of attention. “I mean… it’s a bummer, but I’m fine.”
Her mother nods carefully, one perfectly curled lock falling over her shoulder. “If you say so, sweetie. Always working so hard—I hope you remember to take a break every once in a while—”
“Mom. I’m okay, I promise. And besides, I think Holly is going to die if you wait one more second.”
Pleased by the turn of events, Holly resumes singing in her tiny voice, painfully off-key but encouraged by her mother, swaying along to the made-up song.
At a particularly loud part, Mike knocks his foot into her shin.
Nancy glares at him. She’s wearing her nice hose today, and he better not have ripped them.
He juts out his chin in response, a burst of something clear and bright in his eyes.
She remembers the brief conversation they’d had a few days earlier, and she realizes that his glances are not that of a nosy little brother but something more meaningful.
Mike tips his head. How’d it go?
She shakes hers.
A question tightens his mouth.
And as quickly as she dares, Nancy taps out B-R-O-K-E-U-P in Morse code on the kitchen table, though it sounds like a pathetic attempt at following the choppy rhythm of Holly’s singing, equally proud that she actually knows it after weeks of practicing and worried that Mike’s forgotten it, despite how important its been in recent history.
His gaze goes foggy as he translates the code, fork slackening in his grip.
It scrapes against the plate when he understands, a long sound that reaches into Nancy’s mind.
Two cars crunching.
She blinks again and she’s back in a cozy dining room, wearing her favorite pink sweater with the ruffles at the wrists, eating her mother’s meatloaf and soaking in that this is still something she can come home to—a family.
Mike mimes a key locking his lips that he’s able to disguise as a stretch and a yawn the second their mother’s attention sweeps across them like high beams scouring a dark road.
Apparently, it works and she sighs at him fondly, saying that if he didn’t stay up so late with all his wizards and dragons things, maybe those dark circles under his eyes wouldn’t be so bad.
“If we’re going to talk about giant bags, why don’t we look at Nancy’s?” He retorts, pivoting back into the impish little brother wearing a shit-eating grin.
Nancy’s hands fly up to her face despite herself. “And you’re Mr. Looks now—”
Mike seems as though he’s about to growl, the two of them slipping back into familiar roles when their father, roused from his stupor, grumbles, “Children," and they both fall silent.
“Mike, darling.” Their mother breaks the silence. “Why don’t you go over proper airplane etiquette with me? You do have your outfit picked out? Please nothing too strange, you’ll be in public.”
Her brother’s resounding groan fills the room, and for the rest of dinner, Nancy slips into the background of the conversation, managing a few bites despite the sick feeling in her stomach that something is wrong with her for letting her relationship with Jonathan slip through her hands.
Or that something’s finally going right.