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stancy-simp · 2 years

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Nancy Wheeler vs The World

Steve x Nancy —12,244 words— [Read on Ao3]

Summary: All throughout high school Nancy had never interacted much with that Harrington boy. She had heeded her friend Barb’s warnings and dismissed him as a typical meathead jock.

However, during the events of Starcourt Steve got dragged into the mess concerning the upside down and Nancy found herself partnering up with him. To her surprise, they became fast friends soon after. Eventually, she wanted to become more than friends. But there was one small problem…

In order to win his heart, Nancy would have to defeat Steve Harrington’s seven evil exes.

TAGS: Nancy POV, crack treated seriously, fluff and angst, comedy, alternate first meeting, fast burn

Nancy Wheeler was having a rough day.

More of a rough week if she was being honest. Or a rough month if she was really being honest. Or a rough summer if she was actually really honestly being honest.

She was currently resting on her bed with only her eyes visible as she laid down, bundled up in three or four or five of the multicoloured afghans that her nana had crocheted for her over the years. An empty tub of Ben & Jerry’s New York Super Fudge Chunk sat discarded at the foot of her mattress and she was in the process of making a significant dent in a sleeve of Oreos.

For a moment she thought that the tape on her VHS copy of The Muppets Take Manhattan might have worn through from how much she rewatched it, before realizing that the image on her TV screen wasn’t blurring — rather, her eyes had just started tearing up again.

She and Jonathan had broken up three weeks ago.

No, that wasn’t exactly right. She had been the one to break up with Jonathan. Which made it really unfair that he had stoically walked it off and she was the one who had been breaking down ever since.

Nancy huffed and wiped at her puffy eyes from underneath her blanket fortress, feeling that familiar swell of indignant anger rise up in her throat like bile.

At the start of their summer vacation the two of them had managed to score an internship at the local paper and Nancy had been so excited at first. This would have been a chance for her to get some real world work experience. It would have been a foot in the door, and a great way to pad her resume when applying for positions in her future dream career.

But the men who worked at the Hawkins Gazette had turned out to all be chauvinistic jackasses of otherworldly proportions and a mere two weeks into her time there she had lost her temper. After multiple shifts where she had been nothing more than a glorified coffee machine, one of the senior reporters had thought he could give her a pat on the ass and get away with it.

Nancy had reeled back and gave him the dirtiest right hook she could manage for his efforts. She had watched on in satisfaction as the force of her punch spiked the man through six separate brick walls before he finally came to a halt, lodged in the seventh wall of the office’s dark room.

Jonathan, who had been in the room developing photos at the time, jolted up in shock at both the wanton destruction around him and the light that was suddenly flooding into his previously dingy workspace.

Her boyfriend had looked at her through the six smoking holes in the building and then at the reporter who was slumped over in the crater of the adjacent wall with cartoon canaries fluttering around his head.

And because Jonathan was a sweet, progressive gentleman, and because they were ‘Nancy + Jonathan’ — Hawkin’s ultimate power couple, she had assumed that he would have immediately rush to her side where he belonged.

Nancy felt her world shatter when Jonathan had given her a frustrated shake of his head and stumbled over the wreckage to go and help his coworker to his feet.

After the fact, he had tried all sorts of excuses on her – that he needed the job more than she did, that the guys from the paper could blacklist them if they wanted to, that she had overreacted.

When he had all but implied that working women would need to be ready to deal with that sort of behaviour — that it was just the way the world worked, and that she shouldn’t be naïve or idealistic? That was when she had called it.

She’d been waiting for the phone to ring ever since. Waiting for the call where he would just man up and say he was sorry so they could go back to being Nancy and Jonathan again.

But the call never came.

And she knew by now that the call was never going to come. For the first time in two years she was confronted with the prospect of needing to learn how to be Just Nancy again.

Nancy sniffled, watching as Kermit yelled at the other muppets and they all went their separate ways. She was in the middle of carefully crafting an Oreo sandwich by holding one Oreo in-between two other Oreos and…Okay, she was just planning on shoving three Oreos into her fucking mouth — but she was interrupted by the staticky sound of her brother’s name being called from across the hall.

“—ike? M—ke, are y— the—?”

Frowning, Nancy stood up, pushing her sixty pound blanket cocoon off of her as she did. “Dustin?”

When nobody responded, Nancy sighed and dragged her feet over to her brother’s room. She took a deep breath beforehand and reluctantly opened the door, plugging her nose as she did. When she swung the door open, a toxic dark green and purple cloud of gas billowed out into the hall, briefly rearranging into the shape of a skull & crossbones before dissipating.

Mike’s room perpetually smelled of used jockstraps boiled in an onion broth despite the fact that the little shit had never even seen a sports ball before.

Nancy waved her hand through the residual fumes, swearing that she could see something scurrying around in the corner, before hurrying over to grab Mike’s walkie-talkie and bolting back out of the room. She slammed the door shut and finally allowed herself to breathe in some fresh air.

One of the reasons why she had never bothered to try out smoking was because her room was right next to Mike’s and she was ninety-five percent certain that her little brother’s musk was a flammable resource. Didn’t want to risk the whole house going up in flames for a bit of rebellious teen whimsy

“Dustin? Is that you?” She held the walkie flat against her ear, trying to decipher anything she could through the garbled white noise. “Hello?”

“N—ncy! Please h—lp, we’re—!” Dustin’s frantic tone jolted Nancy upright. This was one of THOSE types of situations.

“Dustin?” She shouted, giving the device a few frustrated smacks when it cut off completely. “Dustin? Shit…”

‘Goddamnit, Mike,’ she thought, tossing the dead walkie onto her mattress and running her fingers through the tangled mess of her hair. ‘What’s the point of having the radio if you never change the stupid batteries?’

Nancy only had one set of double-A’s left and they were currently…in use. But desperate times called for desperate measures.

She shot a furtive look over her shoulder at her open bedroom door in order to check for her family before getting down on her hands and knees and pulling a shoebox out from where it was hidden underneath her bed.

Popping off the lid with a flick of her fingers, Nancy reverently removed the bright pink…massager from the box. She had secretly named it Mr Cruise.

Mr Cruise gave a sad whir as it struggled to pulse and vibrate for a few moment. Nancy winced, popping the batteries she needed out from the bottom of her little friend and kicking him back under her bed. She would need a replacement soon — she had really been putting the poor thing to work since her break-up.

She flicked the dead batteries out of Mike’s radio and popped in the new ones with one smooth flick of the wrist.

After switching it back on, she nervously held it back up to her cheek. “You still there, Dustin? What’s going on?”

“NANCY, JESUS CHRIST! THE OTHERS AREN’T ANSWERING! YOU NEED TO HELP US!”

Nancy’s head snapped back as Dustin’s shrill words literally shot out of the phone and blasted into the side of her face. She waved the blocky letters away and reoriented herself. “Not so loud! Just calm down and tell me where you are, alright?”

She could hear Dustin take an exaggerated deep breath before he got his bearings and continued on more steadily. “I’m with Steve, one of Steve’s friends and Lucas’ sister, Erica. We infiltrated a covert soviet laboratory hidden deep underneath Starcourt Mall, but now we’re trapped down here!”

“…Alright, on my way.”

“Look, I know it sounds—“ Nancy heard Dustin trail off, startled. “Wait, you believe me? Just like that?”

Nancy let out a sigh as she tossed her jacket on and looked around the room for her car keys, holding the radio between her neck and her shoulder as she got ready to leave. “Dustin we’ve been dealing with dimension-hopping flower monsters and an eldritch god made of smoke who wants to wipe out humanity. Russians invading is pretty tame these days.”

“…Okay, fair. Thanks, Nancy! Sorry for bothering you…”

She felt her lips quirk up in a tiny grin as she bounded down the stairs and waved goodbye to her mom. Typically, Karen would probably ask where she was going, but it seemed that her mother was just glad she was finally getting out of the house again. “Don’t worry about it, Dustin. Want me to pick anything up on the way there?”

“A couple Slim Jims for me, please.” The sound of a muffled voice interrupted Dustin for a moment. “And a Dr Pepper for Steve. He said he wants to get the taste of blood out of his mouth.”

Nancy frowned worriedly as she marched around the back of her car to pop open the trunk and examine the makeshift armoury she had MacGyver’d back there. “Blood? Is he alright?” Nancy asked, sifting through some grenades and a medieval flail to retrieve her .357 Magnum, giving it an experimental aim down the sights.

“He may have gotten tortured by the Russians for a few hours…” Dustin admitted in a guilty tone before lowering his voice to an enthusiastic whisper, presumably only for her ears. “He took it like a champ though! He’s so cool!”

Nancy reached deeper into the trunk, hauling out a rocket propelled grenade launcher that was about as long as she was tall, resting it against her shoulder as she closed the trunk shut.

She had heard tell of Mike’s group of friends’ borderline hero worship of Steve Harrington but she had thought it was all just a weird inside joke until now. Nancy had trouble reconciling the image the party painted of Steve with what little she remembered of the guy.

Much like anyone who had functioning eyes, there was a brief one week period of her life when Nancy had entertained the idea of cozying up to Steve Harrington to shoot her shot. His supposed bad attitude notwithstanding, when her pubescent hormones had been going haywire she had wanted nothing more than to climb him like a redwood. Her best friend Barb had rightfully dissuaded her of the idea. In the end Nancy had been convinced that she would have merely ended up as yet another notch on King Steve’s debauched throne.

Except…the loveable goofball who periodically doused his hair in Farrah Fawcett spray and dropped anything he happened to be doing at a moment’s notice just to help out some random kids he had no personal obligation to sounded nothing like the Steve Harrington she had built up in her head.

For a split second she wondered if maybe she had been wrong to avoid him throughout their years spent together walking the same halls of Hawkins High. Didn’t matter much now, she supposed — he had graduated just before the summer started and she still had one year left.

Snapping out of her wandering thoughts, Nancy opened the driver side door and tossed her rocket launcher to lean upright in the passenger seat before peeling out down the street with the dreary tones of The Cure playing from her tape player.

Ugh — one of Jonathan’s mixtapes that he had made for her. With a scowl, Nancy popped the cassette out and threw it, hard, out her window.

Unfortunately, she had forgotten to roll up her window before doing so, and it bounced off the glass and ricocheted back into her face. Rubbing at her forehead, Nancy looked at the window and saw that the impact of the tape had created a crack in it — in the shape of a heart with a deep break running straight down the centre.

Figuring that she would have to replace the whole window now anyway, Nancy growled and elbowed it, enjoying the cathartic sensation of the broken heart bursting into hundreds of shards underneath her arm.

Nancy leaned her body halfway out the broken window to toss Jonathan’s mixtape out onto the road ahead of her, driving it over with her car for good measure. She then reached into the glovebox to dust off one of her own old tapes, inserted in and turned the volume up to the max as she floored the gas pedal.

As she drifted her way to Starcourt to crack some soviet skulls and save a few damsels, Nancy guiltily mused that this little diversion might have been just what she needed to get her out of her post-Byers funk.

There was nothing quite like knocking some heads to help remind herself who Nancy Goddamn Wheeler was.

******

Dustin briefed Nancy on the entire situation as she sped through the streets of Hawkins, filling her in on the finer details of their predicament and letting her know where the secret elevator to the underground base was located.

As Nancy pulled into the back of the mall near the loading bay, it seemed as if Dustin and his crew had already made some headway into their little escape attempt because a group of well-armed guards were posted up by the shuttered door.

Nancy slowed the car to a stop a good fifteen feet away from them all. She shut off the ignition before carefully poking her head out her busted window to address the guards, who all looked back at her in bewilderment. “Hey, are any of you guys able to validate my parking? My dad will kill me if I get another ticket…”

One of the Russians smiled and removed a stamp from his breast pocket, moving to walk forward to mark her ticket for her when the bigger man in front of him held him back with a hand to his chest. “We talk about ‘dis, Anton. You are supposed to be mean, scary henchman. You scare little girlie away — not validate parking.”

The smaller man’s lip twisted uncertainly, gaze flitting between Nancy and his commanding officer. “…She say please.”

“I don’t care she say please.” The man’s square jaw flexed. “You heff’ to project menacing aura. Is your job. I put my neck out on line getting you henchman work so you no heff�� to keep working at the Burger Kings and now you are going to make fool of me?”

“I maybe validate her parking…menacingly!” Anton suggested, stabbing his stamp out in a shiv-like motion and looking to his superior for approval.

Nancy held up her hand when it looked as if they were going to continue arguing. “Sorry, I’m actually only here to pick up my friends, so…”

“You know password?” The broad man asked, his grip tightening on the grip of his assault rifle.

“Sure! I have it right here, let me just show it to you…” Nancy bent over to retrieve the RPG laying on the floor of the passenger seat and promptly fired it out the car window with a satisfying THWOOP, watching as the rocket whistled over and impacted directly in the centre of all the burly goons.

Nancy leaned over to place the still-smoking launcher in the backseat. While she was back there she grabbed her little plastic bag of snacks which she had gotten from the corner store and hiked it up to hang off her shoulder before palming her revolver and leaving the car.

She also placed a bubblegum air freshener on the rear view as she left because the scent of gun-smoke and viscera was really hard to wash out of your interior if you let it settle in.

Nancy held the back of her hand close to her face to examine her nails as she walked over to the smouldering entrance of the elevator that she had blown open, neatly sidestepping any lingering flames or spare body parts that were scattered about the pavement.

Her nail polish was a flaky, chipped mess, she observed with a grimace. Part of her had wanted to keep it for as long as possible because she had last painted them before the breakup and she was feeling sentimental. Maybe she’d ask her mom to try out a new colour on her when she got home. It was time for a new coat.

She was so busy staring at her hand that she almost bumped into the diminutive guard from before, the only one who had been outside the blast radius of her explosive.

The man looked up at her, shellshocked, from where he knelt at her feet. A nondescript piece of one of his friends fell out of the sky and landed next to him with a wet thud. He reached forward with a shaky hand and validated her parking for her.

“Thanks!” Nancy grinned, offering the man an affable grin and holding her hand out to him. “You can go if you want. I really am just here to pick up my brother’s friends.”

Anton accepted her help and was easily tugged to his feet. Nancy tensed when he reached into his coat pocket but relaxed when he merely pulled out a small booklet of Burger King coupons and handed it to her in thanks. “Spasibo…spasibo…”

“Oh, you didn’t have to do that!” Nancy pocketed the coupons regardless and waved to Anton as he waddled out of sight with a thousand-yard stare haunting his eyes. “What a nice guy…”

Nancy stepped into the elevator and pressed the button to descend to the lowest level, crossing her arms as she waited. She let out a groan as she thought to pat down her pockets and found that she had forgotten to bring any spare ammo.

Holding out her revolver, Nancy flicked the cylinder open to check the bullets. Or, rather, bullet. Singular. She only had one left in the chamber from the other night when she had propped up various items Jonathan had given to her over the years in her backyard and taken potshots at them.

“God, I’m really rusty…” Nancy murmured, absently flipping and twirling the magnum around in her hand. “Rookie mistake.”

Whatever. One bullet should be more than enough for a subterranean lair of evil Russian invaders. She’d just have to make it count.

The elevator finally dinged as it came to a stop and Nancy quickly stepped out. The girl sighed at the sight of the seemingly endless walkway stretching out in front of her before taking off at a full body sprint.

Within five minutes of running the walkway soon opened up to the proper base of operations and Nancy skidded to a halt, coming face-to-face with upwards of thirty of Russia’s finest staring back at her.

One bullet. She would need to get this just right.

Nancy zigzagged in between volleys of incoming gunfire, attempting to maneuver both herself and her opponents into the perfect position.

As she bounded through the room a few men fell to the ground, victims of friendly fire. Nancy dropped down to baseball slide between the legs of one lanky guard when he made to charge at her and then she kipped back up, wasting no time and immediately sending another nearby guard flying into two of his friends with a jumping headscissors takedown.

Nancy rolled forward into a crouch as she hit the floor, whipping her gun out to the side and aiming it at a nearby railing.

She swore the bullet made a screeching sound like a bald eagle as it soared through the air. The bullet bounced off the hand railing at just the right angle to come flying back her way, straight between the eyes of the henchman who had been behind her, lunging at her with a trench knife. The bloody bullet continued its trajectory through the man’s skull, pinging off a fire extinguisher and then passing through the heads of two other men.

The bullet continued its grim dance, flitting about the room like a deadly hummingbird as it made quick work of all of the men in its way. It ricocheted around for a good thirty seconds, making pinball sound effects with each bounce before finally piercing the skull of the last soldier left standing.

The round rebounded one last time against the fluorescent light above Nancy and shot straight down at her.

Nancy caught the bullet between her teeth as turquoise sparks fell down on her from the light tube above, the fire extinguisher shot out foam and a nearby corpse sprayed blood like a geyser from the open wound above his eye, bathing her in red, white and blue.

“America…” Nancy whispered reverently, spitting the spent bullet to her left with a soft pinging noise.

The sound of whooping and applause broke her out of her brief patriotism attack. When she turned around she saw Dustin hopping up and down on his feet and pointing at her, while Erica and another girl who was around Nancy’s age stood behind the excitable boy.

“That was incredible, Nancy!” Dustin beamed, looking up at her with sparkling eyes. Like, literally sparkling. “You have to teach me how to do that!”

Nancy held up her hand to shield her eyes from the brightness of Dustin’s smile. “Sure,” she promised. “If you stay in school and don’t do drugs I’ll teach you some day.”

“It was alright, I guess.” Erica stood next to Dustin and crossed her arms, looking Nancy up and down. “Keep it up and maybe I’ll let you be my campaign manager when I’m older…”

The older brunette opposite Nancy placed both her hands between Dustin and Erica’s heads, parting them like the red sea as she shoved her way through the kids to shake Nancy’s hand. “Hey! Thanks for the assist. You’re Nancy Wheeler, right?”

Nancy gave the girl’s hand a firm shake, wondering how she knew her name. “Uh, yep! That’s right…and you are?”

The girl grimaced at the blood she got on her from Nancy’s handshake. She wiped her bloody palm on her Scoops Ahoy shirt, inadvertently creating a bright red X on her chest. “I’m foreshadowing.”

“Huh?” Nancy frowned.

“I said I’m Robin Buckley!” She offered a lazy half-smile. “Good to meet you.”

“Yeah, you too…Hey, where is—“ She cut her question off when her Nancy Sense started tingling. Her eyes shot up just in time to see that one of the Russians was still alive and leaping at her with his knife raised above his head in a downward stabbing motion.

There wasn’t much she could do to defend herself. She had already used her one bullet and the tip of the guard’s knife was mere inches away from her face.

Then, as if in slow motion, another figure entered from out of her line of sight, leaping up six feet in the air to shoot their body out horizontally and nail her assailant with a picture perfect dropkick to the face.

The Russian blasted off towards the wall with a sonic boom, as a few of his stray teeth lingered in the air for a moment before clattering to the floor.

The guy who delivered the dropkick nimbly backflipped from the force of the strike and landed on his feet like a cat, running a hand through his thick voluptuous hair to fix it in place.

Nancy put serious effort forth to click her jaw back into place from where it was hanging open dumbly as she made eye contact with none other than Steve Harrington.

Even battered and bruised from hours of KGB interrogation, and wearing an absurd sailor boy’s uniform from an ice cream parlour, Nancy still couldn’t help but think he was a prime cut of meat.

“Why are you licking your lips so much?” Dustin piped up from behind her.

“I—Shut up!” Nancy deflected, wiping her mouth with her sleeve. “I…lost my chapstick, that’s all.”

Steve approached her uncertainly with a curious expression on his face. “Hey, I used to see you around school all the time but we never really…” He cut himself off with a shake of his head, extending his hand out to her. “Anyway, I’m Steve.”

“I know,” Nancy smiled thinly, giving his hand one firm shake. “Everyone knows who you are. You…probably don’t remember me. I’m—“

“Nancy Wheeler,” Steve finished for her with amused eyes. “Course I remember you, c’mon…”

Nancy’s eyes drooped bashfully before locking on to the strangely flattering Scoops Ahoy shorts and forcing her eyes back up before she started blushing.

“Legs,” Nancy said intelligently.

“What?”

“Uh!” Nancy floundered, feeling the aforementioned heat rise in her cheeks. “I said you must have strong legs! That was a hell of a kick just now…”

“Oh! Well, you know.” Steve rubbed at the back of his neck, smiling. “I play a lot of basketball, so. Forget about me though — the way you took out all those commies was amazing!”

“Ah, thanks…It was nothing, really,” Nancy clasped her hands in front of her, smiling up at him through her eyelashes.

In the background Robin whispered to Dustin through the corner of her mouth. “Is this like some sort of heterosexual mating ritual?”

Dustin squinted his eyes at Steve and Nancy thoughtfully. “I don’t know…When Steve described it to me he said there would be ‘sexual electricity.’”

Just as the words left Dustin’s mouth, real tangible stems of lightning began sparking between the two teens, connecting them like tesla coils, though they didn’t seem to notice. “Ah, there it is. Yep, they’re totally gonna do it.”

Robin turned a skeptical look on her young protégé. “Do you even know what ‘it’ is?”

“Yes! Obviously!” Dustin scoffed, putting his hands in his pockets as Robin and Erica both raised their eyebrows at him, silently urging him to go on. “Well, first of all — you take your shirts off,” he said with a knowing grin as if he were describing the most hedonistic act imaginable. “And then you just kinda—“

Dustin made a sort of vague undulating hugging motion while wriggling his fingers as the two girls watched on in horror. “Man, they really need to update the sex ed program…” Robin murmured.

Across from them, Nancy was reaching into her bag and handing Steve the Dr Pepper he had requested. He gratefully took it from her and pressed the cool can against one of the growing bumps on his head, letting out a sinful moan at the relief it must have brought. “God, Nancy. Thank you…”

“No problem,” Nancy squeaked as steam billowed from her ears.

Nancy’s eyes zeroed in on Steve’s Adam’s apple as he greedily gulped at his soda, with some distant part of her subconscious animal brain begging her to lunge forward to lap at the sweat glistening on the lean column of his neck.

Steve caught her and seemed to misinterpret the reason why she had been staring. “My bad,” he sheepishly shook the can at her, sloshing around what little was left. “Did you want some? It’s just that being, y’know, tortured and stuff always makes me kinda thirsty…”

“You’re not the only one who’s thirsty,” Nancy thought.

“What did you say?”

Nancy cringed. “Oh shit, I said that out loud,” she thought.

“Said what out loud?” Steve frowned, twisting his lips.

Jesus Christ! Keep the monologue internal, Wheeler!

Nancy cleared her throat and played with the end of her sleeves. “I said no, thank you. I don’t really like Dr Pepper anyway…”

Steve looked at her consideringly before turning his thoughtful gaze on the can in his hand. “Yeah, it’s kinda bullshit, huh?”

“Pardon?”

Pointing at the side of the tin, Steve read aloud. “See here? It says ‘made with 23 flavours.’ But there’s just one flavour really — the flavour of Dr Pepper…right?” Steve shook his head. “‘Made with 23 flavours.’ That’s just a stupid way of saying ’23 ingredients.’ Like, you wouldn’t look at a cake and say — ‘This cake has milk, eggs and flour in it! That’s three flavours right there!’ Dumb…You’ve convinced me, Nancy. Dr Pepper is stupid as hell — bet you he isn’t even a real doctor…”

Worried, Nancy brought a hand up to inspect the wounds on Steve’s head. “God, they really did a number on you, huh?”

“Nope,” Robin popped the P at the end of the word, cheerily moving past them while ruffling Steve’s hair. “He’s always like this, unfortunately.”

“No, c’mon Robin. Don’t be like that, you gotta weigh in on this Dr Pepper thing…” Steve frowned when Robin didn’t respond and turned around to look at her. “Robin? Oh…shit.”

Robin was quickly scurrying back towards them, being chased by a new squad of Russian soldiers who were now blocking their only exit. But the worst part was who was commanding the group.

“Oh, Anton…” Nancy looked at the tiny blond Russian in disappointment.

“You know this bozo?” Steve inquired, moving to stand beside her.

“I let him live,” Nancy shot a meaningful look at Anton, “after I killed the rest of the guards back upstairs.”

Anton guiltily scuffed at the floor with his combat boots, refusing to meet Nancy’s eyes. “Anton is very sorry, little missy…but he thought about it and it was either continue to be soviet henchman or go back to flipping patties at the Burger Kings…and Anton would rather die than go back to customer service!”

“Fair,” Steve and Robin nodded in sync.

Nancy quickly took charge of the situation, turning to look at Robin, Dustin and Erica. “Dustin, on the radio you said they have buggies around here to quickly drive through the walkways, right?” When Dustin nodded, she motioned for them to move. “You three head back the other way and fetch one! We’ll hold them off here!”

Tilting her head in Steve’s direction, she gestured at the group of angry soldiers. “Are you okay to fight?”

Steve carefully rolled his shoulders, feeling out how bad his injuries were. “Don’t know if I’ll be able to keep up with a gal like you, but I’ll sure try.”

With a challenging smile, Nancy nodded. Steve nodded back.

And then they were both charging down the hallway side by side. Steve went high, taking to the air once again with a spinning back thrust kick as Nancy went low, sweeping out the legs of three separate men.

Soon, they found themselves back-to-back surrounded by guards as they picked the men apart one by one as they attempted to close in.

Despite the fact that they had only just formally introduced themselves, Nancy and Steve moved together like they’d been doing this for years. Nancy felt like she was dancing and savoured every moment of it, because no boy had ever taken her dancing before.

Nancy deflected an incoming punch with a crossblock, and as her attacker’s arm sailed past her Steve took the opportunity to blindly grasp it, wrenching it down against his shoulder with a sickening crunch and judo flipping the man over onto his back before dropping his knee down against his windpipe.

Reaching out instinctively, Steve picked up Nancy with ease and spun her around in a circle, allowing her to knock out several of the men surrounding them with the swinging arc of her feet.

Steve set her down gracefully, granting Nancy the opportunity to hop up and grab a Russian by his shoulders, plant her feet on his chest and fall backwards, monkey-flipping the man backwards. “Heads up!” Nancy called.

Steve wordlessly heeded her call-out, jumping up to grab the man in mid-air and suplexing him down to the ground.

As they built momentum and their opponents’ numbers progressively dwindled, Nancy and Steve become more aware of their fleeting touches — every brush against one another sending tingles up their spines.

At one point, Nancy had grabbed a goon by the collar and was reeling her arm back to clobber him when she saw Steve was also primed to punch the man out.

They each stepped away simultaneously.

“Oh, I’m sorry! I didn’t know he was yours! You can go ahead and knock him out,” Steve offered chivalrously.

“No, no! You got to him first, you should do it!” Nancy insisted.

The guard who they were arguing over held his hands up with a fond smile. “You two remind me of when I met my Svetlana back in fourth grade…Is okay, I do it for you!” And then the man had delivered a swift uppercut to his own chin, falling unconscious to the floor.

They had both smiled at each other shyly and hopped back into the fray.

As Nancy was straddling one man’s chest and raining down hammerfists to his face, she tossed Steve a look over her shoulder. “You know…you should hear the way those kids talk about you.”

Steve scoffed, head-butting the bridge of a soldier’s nose, causing the man to fall back against the wall, wailing in agony as blood poured down the front of his fatigues. “They only like me because I let them play Snakes & Ladders at my place.”

“Dungeons & Dragons,” she corrected.

“Whatever,” he rolled his eyes, driving his knee into someone’s solar plexus and feeling their ribs pop under his thigh.

“No, it’s not just that. They’re always going on about how cool you are…” Nancy hesitated, looking over at him. “I think I finally see why now.”

And Nancy almost felt the need to cover her face at how openly flattered Steve looked. After two years of dealing with a sullen, brooding Jonathan it was giving her brain whiplash to interact with a boy who wore his heart so openly on his sleeve. “Well, hey, you aren’t so bad yourself, Nance.”

“Nance?” Nobody had ever given her a nickname before. She was feeling many dangerous things at the moment and struggled to keep them from boiling to the surface. She’d been talking with the guy for fifteen minutes, she needed to get a grip.

“Oh, I mean, I could not call you that, if you don’t like it?” Steve offered, looking embarrassed.

“No!” She was quick to assure him. “I like it! It’s…” Incredible. Overwhelming. “It’s nice.”

“Rad.” Steve shot her a dopey grin, and Nancy tucked her hair behind her ear in response.

And then Steve also tucked his hair behind his ear.

And then several of the Russian soldiers bashfully tucked their hair behind their ear, blushing as they were seemingly caught up in the moment.

Nancy and Steve took advantage of the moment by delivering twin roundhouse kicks to the group, sending them all flying in different directions.

The only enemy left standing was Anton, who was glaring at them with determination burning in his blue eyes. He slowly reached down and unsheathed his blade from where it was tucked into his boot.

“This is your last warning, Anton,” Nancy frowned, shifting to a defensive stance. “You don’t have to do this…”

“Yes…” Anton grimly intoned. “I do. For the motherland!”

The Russian let loose a warrior’s cry as he surged forward at them with his knife drawn.

When Anton’s legs shot up in the air, Nancy thought he was attempting an incredibly athletic martial arts kick. As it turned out, he had merely slipped on one of the other Russians’ blood.

Steve and Nancy’s eyes both curiously tracked the tiny man’s trajectory as he sailed through the air. When he descended, his knife slipped from his grasp and the two teens winced as Anton fell back-first onto his own knife.

“Gah!” Anton yelled, trying and failing to stand as he quickly grew pale. “I have been stabbed in the back…by myself! Such…tragic symbolism! There is a lesson to be learned in here somewhere…”

Nancy sighed and kneeled down to place a hand on Anton’s shoulder as his breaths grew shallow. “It didn’t have to be this way, Anton…”

Anton choked back some blood and faced Nancy with the certainty only a dying man possesses. “Is better to die as a peasant soldier…than to live as a Burger King…”

The light left her Russian frenemy’s eyes and Nancy solemnly stood back up. Hoping to bring some levity to the situation, Steve vaguely gestured around at the dozens of soviet soldiers scattered around at their feet. “From Russia With Love, my ass…”

Nancy huffed a laugh despite the situation, turning to look up at the taller boy. “You’re an idiot, Steve.”

Steve’s eyes crinkled up in good humour at the jab. “Yeah, well you’re b—“

Whatever Steve had been about to say was interrupted by the shrill beeping of the little buggy that was barrelling towards them.

The vehicle skidded to a stop inches away from them with Robin resting her elbow against the steering wheel. “Hop in, losers. Lets make like borscht and spill.”

Nancy smiled at Steve’s mumbled ‘That doesn’t even make sense’ and clambered up to squeeze into the backseat with him, Dustin and Erica.

She tried to fight the treacherous feeling creeping up in her chest as she sat, pressed halfway into Steve’s chest in the crowded back seat. It wasn’t anything serious, she decided. Nancy was just newly single and Steve was the first attractive, friendly guy she had spent time with since she’d broken up with Jonathan. And she wasn’t looking for some cheap rebound — it wouldn’t be healthy for her and she didn’t want to do that to a guy like Steve.

This was just a fleeting infatuation. It would pass.

******

THE HIGH PRIESTESS

Five months had passed since Starcourt and Nancy Wheeler was hopelessly in love with Steve Harrington.

After their first interaction, she had thought her little flickering barely-there spark of a crush would burn itself out within days.

But Hawkins was a small town. And now that Steve Harrington was A Person She Knew, instead of A Stranger She Walked Past, it seemed as if she ran into him constantly, even when he didn’t go to school with her anymore.

Running into each other at the grocery store had gradually evolved into Nancy inviting him to come in and talk for a few minutes whenever he would drop Mike off at her place.

Offering to stay and keep him company when he babysat Holly, effectively defeating the purpose of getting a babysitter in the first place, had then led to straight up hanging out as friends without hiding behind any pretences.

With each moment spent in Steve’s presence he was unknowingly fanning that tiny ember resting between her ribs into a massive, all encompassing inferno that threatened to burn her from the inside-out if she couldn’t direct it elsewhere soon.

And the incredibly frustrating thing was — Nancy was ninety-nine percent certain that he felt just as strongly about her, and yet he refused to act on it.

Every second they spent together was charged with unspoken sentiment, stolen glances and lingering touches. Nancy had done everything she could to let him know how badly she wanted him short of shouting it from the rooftops — and she was seriously considering even that these days.

It was part of the reason why she had asked Steve for a favour today. She had needed to spend an extra few hours after class working on some last minute additions to next week’s school newspaper.

Nancy’s car was in the shop until Monday so she couldn’t drive home. Nancy’s mother had driven her and Mike to school in the morning, but let her know that she’d only be picking up Mike because Nancy was staying at the school for quite a while and Karen was too much of a nervous driver to drive the car when once it got dark out.

So, Nancy had used one of the school’s pay-phones to call and ask Steve if he wouldn’t mind giving her a lift just this once. Of course Steve had Stevely said ‘You kidding? I’ll drive you every day if you need me to.’ And Nancy had needed to clear her throat in embarrassment when several other students saw her giggle and twirl the phone cord around her finger.

She had decided that this would be the day where she would just come out with it and say what she needed to say. It was atypical for girls to be the ones to ask guys out but neither her nor Steve were ever in danger of be considered normal.

The clicking of Nancy’s shoes echoed throughout the empty halls of Hawkins High as she made her way to the exit. She pushed open the double doors, and smiled brightly at the familiar silhouette of Steve waiting underneath one of the lights in the parking lot.

He walked over to meet her halfway and Nancy gave him a tight hug, unabashedly mushing her face into his chest. “Hey, there’s my favourite guy!”

“Oh, I’m the favourite now, huh?” Steve let his chin rest on top of her head, rubbing his hands up and down her arms. “Don’t let Tom Cruise know — it’ll break his heart.”

Nancy peeked up at him with mirth in her eyes. “Okay, maybe you aren’t my favourite. Definitely in the top five though.”

“Uh-huh,” Steve rolled his eyes, slinging an arm around her and beginning to walk back across the lot. “Guess I’ll just have to try harder then. How was chess club?”

“Newspaper club,” Nancy sternly corrected, reaching up to flick his ear.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Steve said, completely unapologetically. “I have trouble telling the differences between nerd gatherings.”

She merely rolled her eyes in response. “We can’t all be all-star athletes, Steve.”

Steve gave her a lazy shrug. “Hey, my offer still stands to teach you how to hit three-pointers every single time. You could be captain of the team in no time with my coaching.”

Nancy hummed and sidled up closer to him, enjoying the comforting weight of his heavy arm around her neck and reaching up to hold onto his wrist. “Where’s your car?”

“Parked it in the street” Steve explained, looking up at the moon. “The ramp up into the parking lot is way too steep. It’s hell on my suspension.”

“Yeah, well most high schoolers don’t drive sports cars that are way too low to the ground,” Nancy smiled, reaching up to pinch at his skin.

“Sucks to be them,” Steve smirked, and Nancy desperately wanted to kiss him.

God, but they were practically dating already. They cuddled, they talked about their dreams, they spent most of their free time together but they still hadn’t spoken about the obvious tension surrounding them. It was giving Nancy a serious case of emotional blue-balls.

“Steve…” she whispered, perhaps too quietly because the boy hadn’t heard her.

“Hey, Nance?”

Nancy’s eyebrows twitched at the anxiousness in Steve’s voice. “Yeah?”

“Listen, I…” Steve took his arm off her shoulder to reach into the pocket of his jeans. “You’ll probably think it’s stupid, but I just thought I’d ask anyway…”

She crowded closer to him in anticipation. Was it finally happening after all this time?

Steve cleared his throat, pulling out what appeared to be two paper tickets. “So…me and my old man watch wrestling sometimes. It’s like…the only thing we have in common. And he managed to score some pretty sweet seats at a WWF show on the thirtieth. But he told me this morning he won’t be able to make it ‘cause he has to be at a conference that day…so I thought maybe you’d—“ Steve roughly swiped at his hair as a humiliated flush bloomed on his cheeks. “God, I’m — Nevermind, I’m sorry. Don’t know what I was thinking. There’s no way you would want to—“

“Who’s on the card?” Nancy interjected, causing Steve to look down at her uncertainly.

“Uh…It’s pretty stacked,” Steve cautiously gave her a small grin. “Hulk Hogan and Macho Man are going to fight for the heavyweight title, Brutus Beefcake is gonna be there, Tony Atlas is gonna be there…should be pretty sweet.”

Nancy looked at the ground as she racked her brains, trying to jog her memory. “Wasn’t Bret Hart supposed to wrestle that night too?”

“Oh yeah, he’s…wait,” Steve looked down at her in delighted surprise. “You watch pro wrestling?”

Nancy’s eyes crinkled at how impressed he looked with her. “Mike watches it on Saturdays and I pretend to hate it…but I think I enjoy it more than he does, honestly. A bunch of oiled up guys in tights grappling with each other? What’s not to like?” She pointed a warning finger up at him as an afterthought. “But you can’t tell Mike that. I’ll skin you alive if you do.”

The casual threat of murder seemed to fly right over Steve’s head as he excitedly nodded down at her, practically wagging his tail like a puppy. “Totally! So, you wanna go with me?”

If there was ever a moment, this was it. Nancy had to know. She couldn’t keep existing in this strange relationship limbo they had found themselves in.

“You mean…like a date?” Nancy smiled hopefully up at him.

Nancy’s stomach swooped unpleasantly when Steve’s smile fell. “Nancy…I don’t know if—“

“Have I been misreading things?” Nancy asked, blinking rapidly when her voice cracked. She felt so damn embarrassed.

“No!” Her head snapped up at Steve’s vehement denial. “God, no. Nance, you…” Steve let out a shuddering breath, placing his hands on his hips. “Ever since we started talking it’s like…It was like when I met Dustin and Robin, you know? They slotted themselves into my life and I felt more complete because of it. Dustin’s like a little brother, Robin’s my best friend and you’re my…”

“I’m your?” Nancy prompted when he trailed off.

“You’re my Nancy,” Steve looked down at her with his big stupid earnest brown eyes.

“But not your girlfriend?” Nancy pushed.

And Steve’s face reacted to the idea with such open yearning that it dispelled any of Nancy’s insecurities. “I want that more than anything,” he said, probably unaware just how much that statement knocked the wind out of her. “But I’m scared.”

“Why would you ever be scared of me?” Nancy timidly reached forward to grab his fingertips.

“Not scared of you,” Steve clarified, gently threading his fingers through hers. “Scared of losing you. I’ve got…baggage — a past. Historically speaking, my love life has been nothing but disaster after disaster. I don’t want that to happen with us. I thought…just being close with you would have to be enough for me.”

“Everyone has a past, Steve.” Nancy soothingly rubbed her thumb across the rough skin of his knuckles. “And that’s just the way everyone’s romantic life is — every relationships end in disaster until you eventually find the right one. Don’t you think we deserve a shot?”

Steve’s eyebrows turned up and he looked away from her, finding it more and more difficult to deny them this. “You’ll think less of me once you know. I’ve…been around a bit.”

That might have been true two years ago, when Barb had rattled off a list of Steve’s former conquests to her. Now, she just reached up to cradle the apple of his cheek and gently tilt his head to look at her once more. “Steve, there are seven billion people on the planet. You could have gotten with every single one of them and I wouldn’t care as long as you chose me in the end.”

Steve thinned his mouth to try and hide the small wobble to his lip. “All seven billion? Even if I banged your dad?”

Nancy sneered and lightly smacked him in the shoulder. “Don’t be gross.”

Steve snickered and discreetly wiped at his eye with his thumb. “Sorry.”

“So?” Nancy asked, hooking her arms around his midsection. “Gonna give me a chance, big guy?”

Resting his palms down on her thin shoulders, Steve shot her one last nervous look, but she could tell that she had successfully hooked him. “There is one more…complication when it comes to dating me.”

Huffing in frustration, Nancy waved away his concerns. “I’ll do anything I have to do. I…I really care about you, Steve. Let me prove it to you.”

With an endearingly shy smile, Steve nodded. Unable to contain herself, Nancy got up on her tippy-toes and pressed a lightning-quick peck against his lips.

Despite it being the most PG-rated kiss of her life, Nancy felt jittery and lightheaded as she dropped back down flat on her feet. Steve was similarly affected, touching his fingers to his lips as if he couldn’t believe what had just happened and staring at her like she had hung the moon and the stars.

Nancy’s ecstatic grin dimmed when she saw Steve’s wince with a mumbled ‘oh shit.’

“What is it?” Nancy placed a concerned hand on his bicep.

“I forgot that the first kiss with someone new is what sets them off,” Steve groaned, raking his fingers through his hair.

“Sets who off?” Nancy asked, baffled.

As if in response to her query, a set of giant neon red words flickered into existence above their heads in the night sky.

HERE COMES A NEW CHALLENGER

Nancy’s gaze drifted past the floating words to the clouds in the sky which were shifting and parting as dozens of humanoid figures descended from the heavens.

She squinted, trying to make out any features of the shadowy masses as they all approached and landed one by one in the nearby football field.

Nancy curiously headed towards the entrance, barely registering Steve’s warning to do otherwise. As she got closer, each of the floodlights around the bleachers snapped on, bathing the entire field in light.

Now that everything was lit up Nancy could see that the beings that had fallen to the earth were…cheerleaders?

About twenty cheerleaders, give or take. Each one had a fluttery set of angel wings and a halo floating above their heads. They were clothed in the familiar Hawkin’s High cheerleading uniform, save for a white cloth bandaged around their eyes.

And they were all stood in a horizontal line, directly facing her.

“Uh…Can I help you?” Nancy shouted from a healthy twenty feet away.

She fought the urge to clap, impressed, when all of the girls sparked their pom-poms together like flint and steel, setting them alight in their hands.

One angelic cheerleader in the middle stepped forward. “Give me a C!”

“C!” The rest of them repeated in unison.

“Give me an H!”

“H!”

”Give me an R!”

”R!”

“Give me an I!”

“I!”

“Give me an S!”

“S!”

“Give me an S!”

“S!”

“Give me a Y!”

“Y!”

“What’s that spell?!” The cheerleader roared, as they all held their flaming pom-poms skyward.

“Chrissy?” Nancy incredulously asked, looking up at the rumbling clouds. “What the hell?”

One last person fell from the sky, not bothering to gently descend as the others had. This figure dive-bombed from the clouds with a quintuple-corkscrew front-flip, creating a massive crater in the field where they landed.

Nancy held her arm in front of her face, shielding her eyes from the massive shockwave. When she looked back up she saw Hawkin’s head cheerleader, Chrissy Cunningham, glaring at her with a gold necklace of the number seven hanging around her neck, surrounded by her choir of angels.

Before Nancy could ask what the ever-loving fuck was going on, Chrissy similarly sparked up her pom-poms and stepped towards Nancy ominously.

“With each life we snuff out, we light up one pom-pom in the fallen’s memory,” Chrissy’s sweet voice rang out like wind chimes. “Together, our holy fires make for a veritable light show of blessed agony!”

“Uh…Okay?”

“But you, Nancy Wheeler!” Chrissy pointed a burning pom-pom at her threateningly, ignoring the interruption. “I shall make certain that your flame burns the brightest!”

The angels behind Chrissy began their routine, hopping in place and cheering as several of them dove into back-handsprings and cartwheels. “Your time is up — You’re out of luck! Nancy Wheeler, you are fucked! Goooooo Chrissy!”

With an enraged valkyrie shriek Chrissy leaped forward, lunging directly at Nancy with her burning fist poised to run her through.

Nancy held her hands up in a ‘T,’ the universal time-out gesture. “Sorry, Chrissy! Can you stop for a sec?”

Chrissy’s war cry abruptly cut short as she skidded to a stop, leaving a burning trail in the grass behind her. “What’s up?”

“Thanks,” Nancy gave her a grateful smile, leaning forward. “Can I just ask why you’re trying to murder me right now?”

The bubbly girl tilted her head to the side confusedly. “Did Steve not tell you?”

Nancy glanced back at the boy in question as he worriedly watched everything through the chainlink fence surrounding the football field. “I think he may have been about to, but I cut him off,” she smiled regretfully.

Chrissy’s eyes lit up in understanding. “Oh, did you just get together? Like, just now?”

“Yeah…” Nancy looked at the other girl warily. “How did you know—“

“Congratulations!” Chrissy beamed at her, giving her a friendly touch on the shoulder. “Well, I mean NOT congratulations, obviously — because I’m one of his evil exes, but you know what I mean.”

“Sorry — evil exes?” Nancy balked.

Chrissy snapped her fingers and a floating scroll appeared and unfurled before Nancy’s eyes, revealing a lengthy contract titled ‘The League of Evil Exes.’ It appeared as though seven different people had each signed the bottom of the page with a small red X.

The cheerleader waited politely as Nancy grabbed the parchment and skimmed through the details of the contract.

“It says here that I have to fight to the death with…seven people?” Nancy incredulously looked up from the paper at Chrissy.

“You got it, sugar!” Chrissy confirmed, before proceeding to sucker punch Nancy with a vicious uppercut, leaving a flaming trail in the wake of the arc of her strike, sending Nancy flying twenty feet back into the fence.

“Oh, Jesus! Nancy!” Steve fell to his knees, placing a reassuring palm on Nancy’s back through the chainlink. “Why don’t we just call it off and you can forget all about this shit, huh?”

Nancy took several heaving breaths, spitting blood from her split lip to the side before looking back at Steve. “The only way I can be with you is if I do this?”

Steve nodded resignedly, offering her a sad smile. “Yeah, way more trouble than it’s worth, huh? So let’s just—“

“I’m doing it.” Nancy stood back up, dusting herself off and rolling her eyes when she saw Chrissy happily waving at her in the distance. “You’re not getting rid of me that easily, Harrington.”

“But it’s dangerous,” Steve frowned, looking frustrated that she wasn’t understanding. “You could get hurt…”

Nancy leaned forward and carefully kissed him on his forehead from where it was leaning against the fence. “You’re worth fighting for. Don’t you dare ever imply otherwise in front of me again.”

She turned away from Steve’s silently awestruck expression, rolling up her sleeves as she marched her way back over to Chrissy and her underlings. Nancy would have to smooch some self-worth into that boy once she had settled things here. Despite his carefully crafted cool guy image, Steve seemed to have no idea how much of a catch he was.

“Gosh, sorry!” Chrissy fussed over Nancy when she saw her bloody lip. “I’m just doing my job!”

“Yeah,” Nancy frowned. “Me too.”

Nancy jumped forward with a brutal bicycle kick, returning the favour from earlier and sending Chrissy careening back into the angelic cheerleading squad behind her.

The girls caught their leader, tossing her back up into the air so that she could flip and land back on her feet. “Looks like it’s game time, girls! Let’s show Nancy Wheeler the true power of school spirit!”

“Go Tigers!” They shouted in chorus as several of their rank jumped up to spin into the air and toss their flaming pom-poms in Nancy’s direction like makeshift fireballs.

Nancy dashed and dodged through the incoming fire, making short work of two nearby stragglers. The angels howled and burst into clouds of white feathers as Nancy cut a swathe through them.

One of the girls took flight, maneuvering herself out of Nancy’s reach and landing behind her. From her new position, the cheerleader hooked her arms under Nancy’s and locked her hands behind Nancy’s neck, leaving her stuck in place with her midsection totally exposed.

Nancy recognized both the tanned skin of the girls arms and the small scar on her palm from a sewing accident in home economics class. “Becca? Is that you?”

“Hi, Nancy!” Becca chirped next to her ear. “It’s so good to see you! Is that a new top?”

“Huh?” Nancy looked down to examine her striped jumper. “Oh, thanks. Yeah, it was on sale at Spencer’s…”

“The colour really suits you,” Becca smiled before snarling and yelling over at her friends. “I’ve got her! Gut the bitch, Chrissy!”

“Nice one, Rebecca!” With a flash of her pearly white wings, Chrissy swooped over and began hammering dozens of rapid-fire punches to Nancy’s torso.

Out of sheer desperation, Nancy drove the back of her skull backwards into Becca’s face, freeing her arms as the girl exploded into a mess of downy soft feathers.

Before Becca’s halo could clatter to the ground, Nancy grabbed it and managed to hook it around Chrissy’s neck, pulling back hard to choke the life out of her.

Chrissy gagged, taking flight once more to try and shake Nancy off of her. “Get the mascot, girls!”

Back on the ground, the remaining cheerleaders bundled together and shook their pom-poms together in a summoning ritual. Chrissy drove one of her elbows back into Nancy’s ribs, causing her to lose her grip on the halo and begin the long, long fall back down to earth.

As Nancy was falling towards the group of angels, they all shouted “Goooooooo Tigers!” and pulled their pom-poms back. A massive tiger materialized and burst out from the middle of their joined arms — leaping into the air to try and catch Nancy in its’ mouth.

Nancy corrected her course mid-air, twisting her body around so that she straddled the tiger’s back. She grabbed the gigantic feline by the scruff of its neck and it instantly fell under her dominion. That trick worked on all kitties, no matter how big they were.

The rest of the cheerleading team panicked and scrambled to avoid Nancy as she drifted the tiger around the football field, encouraging it to swipe and chomp at any girls that fell within its range.

Nancy hopped off of the tiger, picking up a stray feather and shaking it enticingly like she would a cat toy. The tiger’s eyes excitedly tracked the movement of the feather and she tossed it back into the pile with the rest of them.

The tiger hopped into the pile of dead angel feathers and began playing and rolling around in them, thoroughly distracted and effectively removed from the altercation for now.

Nancy limped over to a now pouting Chrissy who was rubbing at her sore throat. “First you sucker punch me, then you have all your friends gang up on me, and now you sic a tiger on me?” Nancy shook her head. “How much more do you intend to cheat?”

“Me?!” Chrissy yelled, looking truly upset for the first time since the fight started. She pointedly fiercely at Steve. “He’s the one who cheated!”

Nancy’s eyebrows quirked up and she turned to glance at Steve who was frowning ashamedly down at his sneakers.

The rest of the world apart from her and Steve faded away to black as he locked eyes with Nancy. Despite the fact that he was whispering to her from across the field, she could somehow hear every word crystal clear.

“Chrissy Cunningham was my first girlfriend,” Steve admitted. “When I was a freshman I saw starting high school as an opportunity to be whoever I wanted to be. And I really wanted to be cool…”

An image formed behind Steve of himself as a young boy — shorter, stockier and notably lacking his iconic haircut. Nancy absently mused that she wanted to pinch his cheeks.

“No, actually, I didn’t want to just be cool,” Steve clarified as the image of the boy behind him shifted so that he was now reverently staring down at a crown resting in his pudgy hands. “I wanted to rule the place.”

‘King Steve,’ Nancy thought.

“The first step in doing that was getting the cutest girl in my grade to go out with me…I didn’t even know anything about Chrissy, I just knew that my dad was always telling me that all great men had a beautiful lady hanging off their arm,” Steve scoffed, looking ashamed with himself.

“What happened?” Nancy looked back over her shoulder at where Chrissy stood frozen in place.

“We dated for a month and everyone thought I was the shit, just like I had hoped. But me and Chrissy had nothing in common and…one day she caught me kissing someone else in the gym after school.” The floating projection changed to reflect Steve’s words, showing a young bracefaced Chrissy running away from a guilty looking young Steve with tear tracks staining her face.

“The whole thing ended up affecting her performance in class and she ended up having to repeat the year…all because of me,” Steve shook his head. “To this day, it’s the worst thing I’ve ever done.”

“You were thirteen, Steve…” Nancy wanted to walk over there and wipe the sorrowful look off his face.

“That’s no excuse,” Steve firmly stated. “But you’re right. I was a stupid kid who had no idea what he was doing. It’s not an excuse — just an explanation. And I need you to believe that I would never do anything like that again.”

“Of course I believe you.” Anyone with eyes could see that King Steve had long since been dead and buried. All that was left now was Steve Harrington and that was more than enough for Nancy.

“Thank you,” Steve gave her a bittersweet, grateful smile as the world came back into focus around her.

Nancy sighed and turned in place to face her opponent once more. “Chrissy, I know you’re angry but all of this happened over five years ago. I’m not saying that you have to forgive Steve but you have to let it go.”

“You think I don’t want to?” Chrissy huffed in exasperation, frowning at her. “It’s that stupid pact that I signed! As long as he’s in charge of the league of evil exes I’m contractually obligated to keep fighting Steve’s new dates…”

Nancy zeroed in on that new piece of information Chrissy had revealed to her. “As long as who is in charge?”

Shuddering, Chrissy fixed her with a deadly serious look. “Pray that you never find out.”

Nancy gulped. She wished she could just skip all this nonsense and make out with Steve in the back of a movie theatre like regular teenager did. She threw her hands up in the air dejectedly. “Well, Jesus, Chrissy! I don’t want to have to kill you over this!”

“Well, it’s not like I’ll be dead-dead or anything,” Chrissy shrugged before looking at Nancy quizzically. “Uh, you know that in fights with evil exes, whenever one person ‘dies’ they just wake up at home afterwards with a killer headache, right?”

“Oh! Yeah…I knew that,” Nancy lied unconvincingly.

Chrissy’s jaw dropped as she gawped at Nancy in horror. “Oh my god! You’ve been trying to kill me for real this entire time? What are you, a psycho?”

“You flew down from the sky and summoned a tiger to attack me!” Nancy fired back, crossing her arms defensively.

“Wow…” Chrissy looked at her consideringly, eyes flitting over to where Steve stood far behind her. “You must really like him.”

Nancy nodded softly. “I do.”

Offering a slightly melancholic smile, Chrissy stood up straighter. “I’m glad. Part of me is always going to be sore over what he did…but I forgave him years ago. With how much he’s worked to be a better person, I think he deserves to be happy.”

Fighting back the urge to do something stupid, like hugging the person currently trying to kill her, Nancy smiled back at Chrissy. “I think so too. Listen, I’m going to deal with this League of Evil Exes bullshit. And then you’ll finally be able to move on with your life.”

“I’ll hold you to that!” Chrissy extended her hand forward for Nancy to shake with dangerously innocent doe eyes.

Nancy snorted, smacking the offered hand away. “Not falling for that again. Getting suckered once was embarrassing enough…”

Chrissy’s eyes shined with laughter as her cheeks dimpled. “Now you’re learning, hun! Let’s finish this!”

Nancy and Chrissy charged simultaneously and clashed in the middle, their closed fists smacking against each other. They traded quick strikes for a moment before Chrissy managed to cartwheel behind Nancy, lock her arms around her waist and flip her backwards with a german suplex.

As Nancy was trying to catch her breath she heard Chrissy yell “formation!”

What was left of Chrissy’s cheer squad sluggishly assembled themselves into a human pyramid. Nancy watched in horror as Chrissy bounded up her pile of friends and jumped up at the apex, leaping two stories in the air and hurtling back down to earth with a diving atomic elbow drop.

Nancy just barely managed to roll out of the impact zone as Chrissy pounded into the spot she had been laying in not a second earlier, sending dirt and grass flying everywhere.

They both scrambled to their feet and Chrissy yelled “Formation!” once again.

One of the battered cheerleaders leaped feet-first towards them and Chrissy grabbed her by the ankles, spinning her around in a circle.

With each rotation, the Cheerleader tried to grab at Nancy with outstretched hands. When Nancy back-stepped out of her range yet another cheerleader jumped in to extend the chain by one.

Nancy kept backing up further and further away, as Chrissy kept adding more of her teammates to the barrel of monkeys chain of cheerleaders she was spinning around.

Chrissy increased the velocity of her spins, forcing Nancy to avoid the stream of cheerleaders by ducking underneath them. On the next go around she tried to hop over them like a skipping rope but the girl on the end of the chain had managed to finally grab her by the legs with a victorious sneer.

“Oh shit.”

Nancy was spun around the entire length of the football field at speeds that she was pretty sure broke the sound barrier and then the cheerleader let go of the grip she had on Nancy’s calves, sending her soaring through the air, crashing into the maintenance shed at the end of the field.

The shabby shack crumbled under the force of the impact, crashing down around her. Nancy could just barely hear the girls cheering from underneath the rubble.

“We beat her red — down in the shed! Nancy Wheeler’s surely dead! Goooooo Chrissy! Woo!”

“Yeah, go Tigers, bitch…” Nancy groaned, struggling to lift herself up off her belly. When she forced her head up her eyes immediately locked on to one of the tools the school custodian had left in the shed, as the moonlight reflected off a set of sharp metal teeth. “Groovy…”

Chrissy and her friends’ early celebration was cut short by the unmistakeable roar of a chainsaw revving to life. Their heads slowly turned to the side, watching as sparks flew when Nancy Wheeler sawed her way out of the busted shack.

The bloodied girls looked to Chrissy for guidance, who merely shrugged helplessly in response. “I’m the head cheerleader…you guys go first!”

The six remaining angels reluctantly began flipping towards the shed. Nancy set the chainsaw on the ground and the teeth caught on the earth, causing the chainsaw to rapidly putter forward along the ground on its own accord.

Nancy hopped onto the handle of the chainsaw, riding it along the ground like a motorized skateboard. As the cherubic cheerleaders approached, Nancy’s face screwed up in concentration as she ollie’d the chainsaw into the air, meeting them halfway.

Flicking her back foot outwards, Nancy kick-flipped the chainsaw, causing the whirring blade to spin wildly, cutting down all six of the cheerleaders in one fell swoop. Nancy rolled forward as she hit the ground, catching the chainsaw in her open arms and pointing it at a surrendering Chrissy.

Chrissy held her hands up high, trying to back away from Nancy as she stalked forth, chainsaw in hand. “But I’m a cheerleader!”

“Oh yeah?” Nancy cocked an eyebrow. “Well, welcome to halftime!”

Nancy swung the chainsaw up, grinding it up the whole length of Chrissy’s body, bisecting her down the middle. Pink sparkles and glitter erupted from Chrissy’s body before Nancy spun around and thrusted her heel forward, kicking both halves of her body and sending them sailing through the end zone at the back of the field.

Fireworks shot out from the the goalposts as the NFL theme song began playing. Nancy let out a deep sigh of relief and dropped the chainsaw, watching with tired eyes as it sped off the school grounds and down the street.

Whoops.

Oh well. Nancy hoped there would be no repercussions to accidentally allowing a rogue chainsaw to roam free.

Nancy limped her way back over to the entrance, patting the tiger on his belly as she did. She barely had time to register Steve jogging towards her before he was lifting her up into the air by her waist.

“That was so badass!” Steve crowed, spinning her around in a circle. Nancy laughed at his enthusiasm, threading her fingers into his thick head of hair and leaning down to press a kiss to the crown of his head.

“Thanks! But can you let me down? My ribs…” Nancy winced.

Steve immediately placed her back on the ground, fussing over her cuts and bruises worriedly. “God, Nance, I’m so sorry…”

“It’s alright,” she shuffled closer, resting a hand on his broad chest. “It’s nothing serious, really! I just need to ice it and I’ll be good in a few days.”

Her assurances didn’t seem to do much to comfort Steve, as he examined one of the cuts on her cheek and patted her mussed up hair into place. “It’s just — you know there’s six more exes still, yeah? I hate the thought of you getting roughed up because of me…”

Nancy gently tugged him down by his collar, pressing a lingering kiss to his soft lips, allowing herself to savour it more than she had with their fleeting first kiss from earlier.

“For you? I’d go up against the whole world, Steve,” she gave him a tiny little reproachful nip to his lower lip in warning. “Learn to live with it.”

Steve finally smiled that dopey heartsick smile she loved so dearly. She wished she could bottle up Steve’s happiness and keep it safe in her pocket.

“Aye, aye, ma’am,” Steve agreed, giving her a small peck on the bridge of her nose before gently placing an arm over her shoulder, being extra careful of her wounds. “Ready for that ride home?”

“Please,” Nancy sighed gratefully, slipping her own arm around his narrow waist. “I swear, as soon as I get home I’m going to soak in the bath for an hour.”

Steve looked down at her faux-suggestively. “Oh yeah? There room for two in there?”

Nancy made a big show of pretending to try to escape his grasp, grateful that it was probably too dark out for him to see the colour spread across her face. “Oh my god, I changed my mind. I’m breaking up with you…”

Her boyfriend’s responding laughter echoed through the empty parking lot as they trailed away. Unbeknownst to the young couple, a pair of crimson red eyes were watching from the shadows of the nearby tree-line.

The watcher observed as Steve opened the passenger side door of his beamer and lent Nancy Wheeler a hand in getting into her seat. As the BMW eventually pulled out and drove away, the burning red eyes receded back into the darkness of the woods with a low metallic growl.

And if anybody had bothered to look up at the stars that night they might have seen a constellation of seven small exes, before one of them blinked out of existence.

#stancy #steve harrington #nancy wheeler #steve x nancy #stranger things #strancy fic #my posts

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