Made a post about Eddie's mother and now this is happening apparently | now also on ao3 as a multi chapter fic
Two years after Eddie discovered the identity of his mother, Nancy Wheeler arrives at Hawkins High. She's still tiny – comparable to Eddie when he was fourteen and had yet to hit his growth spurt – and she's practically glued to this tall ginger girl with thick glasses at all times.
Eddie can't help but look at her whenever they cross paths, and it doesn't take long before he has to draw the disillusioned conclusion that the two of them couldn't possibly be more different from each other. She's nothing like Eddie, with his perpetually loud and boisterous presence, but rather the kind of girl who's always quietly giggling with her friend in a corner of the cafeteria or in the library doing homework. She's very pretty and Eddie strongly suspects she could easily be hanging out with the popular crowd, if she wanted to – he sees how certain guys look at her. But she doesn't seem too interested in any of that, rather sticking with her nerdy friend and dedicating her time to the kind of extracurriculars that ambitious girls are supposed to do.
'Eddie! Hey, Eddie! Munson!'
Jeff has to snap his fingers in front of Eddie's face before he finally gets his attention.
'What?' Eddie startles.
'I've been talking to you for like, the past ten minutes. What the hell can be more important to you than the plot of The death of Captain Marvel?'
Eddie has to muster all his self-restraint to not look over Jeff's shoulder across the cafeteria to where Nancy Wheeler and her friend are sitting two tables over. But alas, he is not exactly known for his vast amounts of self-restraint.
Jeff follows his gaze and gasps.
'Nancy Wheeler?' he hisses emphatically under his breath, leaning closer towards Eddie. 'Dude, are you kidding me?'
'Jeff,' Eddie says, flatly, to stop him.
But Jeff marches on. 'The jocks won't stop talking about her, man! Don't you dare become like that, you –'
'Ew,' is all Eddie has to say to that. 'Dude, you are so wrong, it's not even funny.'
Jeff risks another glance over his shoulder.
'Her friend is cute,' he says.
'Wasn't looking at her friend either,' Eddie answers, accompanying his words with an eye-roll.
A smile crosses over Jeff's face. 'Good,' he establishes.
Luckily, if there's anything Eddie is good at, it's to take an opportunity when he sees one: he latches onto this fascinating piece of information and spends the rest of their lunch break teasing Jeff relentlessly about his little crush on a certain freckled freshman.
He's pretty sure that Jeff is way too shy to ever ask any girl out – and even though Eddie might be pretty damn stupid, he's not exactly stupid enough to meddle in this one. That'd be a recipe for a disaster of boundless extent.
He can't help but wonder what it'd be like, though. He knows it's an utterly useless daydream in multiple aspects, the most important one being the way he sees Barbara Holland looking at Nancy. It easily betrays to him that the chances are very slim that Jeff would be her type in any way. But he still can't stop imagining what his life could be like if Jeff and Barbara were dating. He imagines the four of them hanging out together. He imagines getting to know Nancy, really getting to know her. He imagines the two of them seeking out each other's company whenever their two best friends would be doing stupid date stuff. They'd become fast friends, even though they'd seem like an unlikely pair; they'd simply have this instant familiarity around each other, connect like they were always meant to be bound to each other in some kind of way, despite all their differences. He'd come to her house all the time, get to know her - his - family, learn all about her secrets, her hopes and dreams... She'd joke about Eddie having become like an older brother to her and he'd get just as close to Mike and baby Holly... Maybe he'd even grow closer to Karen. She'd take him under her wing, make him homemade cookies like she's done for all her other kids, and give him a look, every now and then, that told him that she knew who he was, and that she was sorry...
He knows it's not good for him to lose himself in those kind of daydreams. He's always been a big daydreamer, but this one is becoming an obsession that borders on being unhealthy. More often than not, he'll zone out in class losing himself in scenarios where he's somehow a part of the family in the big house in Maple Street. Not only does it feel ungrateful towards Uncle Wayne and is it ruining his already questionable grades, it's also a special kind of torture for himself, to be dedicating so much of his time inserting himself into a family that will never actually be his.
'You're Eddie Munson, aren't you?'
He almost drops his lunchbox one day when he's at his locker and Nancy suddenly appears out of nowhere behind him.
'Jesus, you scared me, can you not sneak up on me like that?!' he blurts out to conceal how his heart is suddenly beating in his throat. Fuck, he never really wanted to talk to her, that was never part of the plan. He didn't even know she knew who he was in the first place!
Looking into her eyes is the most difficult thing of all. No matter how different the two of them are, those eyes are proof of what they have in common: almost too big for their faces and so expressive that every emotion they have is easily betrayed in their gazes. Looking at her, really looking at her, shows him the phantom life that could've never been his anyway more clearly than anything else.
He sees himself, two years old, holding a newborn in his arms. He sees the two of them giggling and playing with a baby through the bars of a playpen four years later. He sees them on a playground, swinging side by side and getting mud on their hands in a sandbox. He sees the two of them grow older: him making her laugh by making up silly stories about her barbies, her practicing with make-up on his face, him sharing his newfound love for good music with her; the two of them dramatically complaining about their parents together, him teaching her to play guitar, her on his bed talking about boys; all taking place in that big house that Eddie will never even set foot in, because he belongs there just as much as the raccoons that sometimes plague their trashcans.
'Are you stalking me?'
Eddie blinks. The way she looks at him knocks the breath right out of his lungs: her chin is tilted upwards and there's something almost defiant in the way her eyebrows are curved. Suddenly, she seems to have much more in common with Eddie than he thought, this freshman girl with neatly braided hair challenging the local trailer trash drug dealer without an ounce of timidity.
'Uhhhh,' he dumbly says.
'Do you want something from me?'
'N-no,' he stutters.
'Then stop staring at me all the time, creep,' she says sharply.
Before he can say anything else, she turns her back to him and walks away.
He knows pretty damn well he shouldn't stare, but he finds himself glued to the floor, unable to look anywhere else while Nancy's tiny frame disappears among the crowds of students filling the school halls.
This one hurts more than anything else; even more than that time just after he found out, when he was soaking wet and staring into the Wheelers' warmly lit kitchen from behind the bushes in their garden.
She has no clue who he is; no clue how closely their lives are intertwined. She didn't see in his eyes what he saw in hers. Of course she didn't. How could she? He's just Eddie Munson, the school freak, after all. Completely and utterly incomparable to little miss perfect Nancy Wheeler. He's the weirdo whose creepy gaze she had intercepted one too many times in the cafeteria, making her so uncomfortable that she felt the need to stand up for herself and say something about it.
God, he needs to let this go.
Update: pt3 is now here
303 notes
·
View notes
Late night thinking about Nancy Wheeler who we're introduced to as almost an extension of The Party with Dustin offering her pizza and Lucas agreeing that something is wrong with her. It's almost like we're being told that she's still very much a child.
But we're shown someone who is desperate to grow up, to shed her innocence, to be viewed as an adult. (in the way teenage girls often are) And thinking about that, as a narrative metaphor it makes sense that Barb dies the night Nancy loses her virginity. Narratively she gets what she wants, so of course there's no going back. Barb as a representation of Nancy's childhood is part of what makes her death a tragedy. The idea that she was begging Nancy to leave the party, to hold on to girlhood just a little longer and Nancy refused and told Barb to go home? To imply that Nancy didn't need her as a guardian anymore? Only to spend the rest of the week desperate to find her. But it's too late, she can't go back.
And there's something so twisted and unavoidable about Mike, who did get his best friend back, who does get to live in childhood a little longer. STILL BE SO DESPERATE TO GROW UP.
36 notes
·
View notes
Deep Dive Into the Heart of Nancy Wheeler Masterpost
In this series I am going to be exploring many of Nancy Wheeler’s best character moments, and perhaps expand the meaning of a few scenes you haven’t thought much about. She's so much more than just the fierce smart one. Despite her many walls and people’s misunderstandings about her, this girl has a heart of gold. Here’s how I know.
(Links will be added as they are completed. Concepts will be changed and added as ideas develop, but here is the current outline of planned posts.)
Who was she before Barb’s Death:
Introduction
Identity Crisis
Best Friends
Older Sisterhood:
Talk with Mike (Season 1)
Concern (Season 1)
A Study of Traits:
Introversion in someone who knows how to talk
Why is Nancy such a Good Investigator? (It’s not what you think)
Courage: A Study of Reckless Behavior
What are you willing to do for love?
The Unlikely Optimist
Patience is a Virtue: She's trying, I promise
A Fury Mined and Saved
Miscellaneous Scenes:
The Snowball Dance
Dinner at the Hollands
Instinctive Reaction to Flayed!Tom
The Cutest Witness
Officially Friends?
33 notes
·
View notes